Phantoms

am I.”
    “Honey, you wouldn’t be flaking out on me if you—”
    “I’m going,” the girl insisted, letting go of Jenny’s arm. “Let’s get it over with.”
    They went into the house.
    Standing in the foyer, Jenny looked through the open door on the left.
    “Vince?”
    Two lamps cast warm golden light into every corner of Vince Santini’s study, but the room was deserted.
    “Angie? Vince? Is anyone here?”
    No sound disturbed the preternatural silence, although the darkness itself seemed somehow alert, watchful—as if it were a crouching animal.
    To Jenny’s right, the living room was draped with shadows as thick as densely woven black hunting. At the far end, a few splinters of light gleamed at the edges and at the bottom of a set of doors that closed off the dining room, but that meager glow did nothing to dispel the gloom on this side.
    She found a wall switch that turned on a lamp, revealing the unoccupied living room.
    “See,” Lisa said, “no one’s home.”
    “Let’s have a look in the dining room.”
    They crossed the living room, which was furnished with comfortable beige sofas and elegant, emerald-green Queen Anne wing chairs. The stereo phonograph and tape deck were nestled inconspicuously in a corner wall unit. That’s where the music had been coming from; the Santinis had gone out and left it playing.
    At the end of the room, Jenny opened the double doors, which squeaked slightly.
    No one was in the dining room, either, but the chandelier shed light on a curious scene. The table was set for an early Sunday supper: four placemats; four clean dinner plates; four matching salad plates, three of them shiny-clean, the fourth holding a serving of salad; four sets of stainless-steel flatware; four glasses—two filled with milk, one with water, and one with an amber liquid that might be apple juice. Ice cubes, only partly melted, floated in both the juice and the water. In the center of the table were serving dishes: a bowl of salad, a platter of ham, a potato casserole, and a large dish of peas and carrots. Except for the salad, from which one serving had been taken, all of the food was untouched. The ham had grown cold. However, the cheesy crust on top of the potatoes was unbroken, and when Jenny put one hand against the casserole, she found that the dish was still quite warm. The food had been put on the table within the past hour, perhaps only thirty minutes ago.
    “Looks like they had to go somewhere in an awful hurry,” Lisa said.
    Frowning, Jenny said, “It almost looks as if they were taken away against their will.”
    There were a few unsettling details. Like the overturned chair. It was lying on one side, a few feet from the table. The other chairs were upright, but on the floor beside one of them lay a serving spoon and a two-pronged meat fork. A balled-up napkin was on the floor, too, in a corner of the room, as if it had not merely been dropped but flung aside. On the table itself, a salt shaker was overturned.
    Small things. Nothing dramatic. Nothing conclusive.
    Nevertheless, Jenny worried.
    “Taken away against their will?” Lisa asked, astonished.
    “Maybe.” Jenny continued to speak softly, as did her sister. She still had the disquieting feeling that someone was lurking nearby, hiding, watching them—or at least listening.
    Paranoia, she warned herself.
    “I’ve never heard of anyone kidnapping an entire family,” Lisa said.
    “Well… maybe I’m wrong. What probably happened was that one of the kids took ill suddenly, and they had to rush to the hospital over in Santa Mira. Something like that.”
    Lisa surveyed the room again, cocked her head to listen to the tomblike silence in the house. “No. I don’t think so.”
    “Neither do I,” Jenny admitted.
    Walking slowly around the table, studying it as if expecting to discover a secret message left behind by the Santinis, her fear giving way to curiosity, Lisa said, “It sort of reminds me of something I read about once in a book of strange facts. You know— The Bermuda Triangle or a book like that. There was this big sailing ship, the Mary Celesta … this is back in 1870 or around then… Anyway, the Mary Celesta was found adrift in the middle of the Atlantic, with the table set for dinner, but the entire crew was missing. The ship hadn’t been damaged in a storm, and it wasn’t leaking or anything like that. There wasn’t any reason for the crew to abandon her. Besides, the lifeboats were all