“Well, that’s what we heard, right? She was mistaking other people for him? They think she maybe saw him in the fire and walked right into it?” She sucked in her breath and shuddered.
James paused. “Yeah, supposedly,” he said. “I don’t like that part of the story.”
“I don’t like any of it,” Lenora said. “But it sounds like you’ve thought about it a lot.”
He shrugged and they both looked at the painting in silence.
“Lenora?” he asked, eyeing her profile.
She didn’t say anything, her gaze fixed on the painting.
“Lenora?” he asked again and this time he touched her arm.
She jumped and yelped, charging to the stairs, her shoes thudding as she climbed them.
“Hey!” he called, running after her. As she reached the top of the stairs she stopped so abruptly James ran into her.
“Whoa! Sorry!” he grabbed onto the bannister to keep from falling. He moved around her on the landing, wondering why she had gasped, but he didn’t see anything except a few closed rooms in a hall. “Are you okay? I really didn’t mean to scare you like that downstairs.” The blackness enveloped them upstairs and Lenora’s features became fuzzy in the surrounding glow of their flashlights. He resisted reaching out to make sure his hand didn’t pass right through her.
“It’s just…” she whispered, which made him realize how hushed The House was. She shook her head and exhaled. “I mean, it was that picture. I, I felt it. It was like…hunger.”
“Hunger?” he repeated and thought about how he’d felt hotter when he stood in front of the painting.
“What, you didn’t feel something looking at that?” she asked, but James only shrugged again.