All Things Lost (48 page)

     I nodded.

     “There may be some connection there. Can you show me where it is?”

     I felt my eyes grow wide at the idea of going up there again, and in the middle of a huge storm, but I took a deep breath and nodded.

     “I can show you,” Adam said, noticing my unease.

     “Actually, I'd rather Killian did it,” Judy said firmly. “I want to hear the story directly from him and get his impressions. And I'd rather the rest of you stayed here.”

I heard Kane give a little sigh of relief.

     “You know,” Adam started, “I had a lot of trouble with this at first. I didn't want to accept that there might actually be ghosts. It just seems so unreal, like something out of a horror movie.”

     “Oh, they're real,” Judy assured him. “They aren't like what you see on TV or movies most of the time. Very often they are people who died violently or suddenly with something important to them left unfinished.”

     “Unfinished business,” Kane said softly.

     Judy smiled at him. “Yes, unfinished business.”

     “Will they go away if their business gets finished?” Kane asked.

     
“Sometimes, and sometimes not.
I'm not sure why they sometimes don't. Maybe they are trapped in this plane, unable to return because of some decision they've made, or maybe they just prefer to stay here, they've grown accustomed to it.”

     “I hope she leaves if we figure out what she wants.”

      “Why? Is she really harming anyone? Most don't really mean to hurt the living, unless maybe you had something to do with their untimely death.”

     
“What about all the things you hear on TV and in stories about evil ghosts?”
Kane asked.

     “There are other beings at work than just ghosts,” Judy said carefully.

     “Like what?” Adam asked sharply.

     “Do you believe in angels?” Judy asked in return.

     “Well, yes, I guess so.”

     “Well, Judaic history, the Bible, Torah, whatever you want to call it, tells of the fall of some of the angels.”

     “Lucifer,” I said.

     
“Exactly, along with a third of the host of heaven.
Since it also says that the angels were as many as the stars in the sky or the sands on the shore, even a third of them would have been an enormous number. Many of them were twisted after the fall, evil if you will. They are often called demons.”

     “So you're saying-” Adam was cut off as the front door swung open with a loud bang before being slammed shut again. Micah and Steve re-entered the room now soaking wet and carrying three flashlights.

     Steve handed Judy hers and he kept the other one. Micah kept the one he'd brought in.

     “Well, Killian, let's go,” Judy said cheerfully.

     “Where are you going?” Steve asked as Micah opened his mouth, no doubt to ask the same thing.

     “Killian and I are going to go upstairs so he can show me the door to the cupola. I'd like the rest of you to stay here and wait. I don't anticipate us being gone very long.”

      I could tell Micah was dying to go but he leaned back against the wall without a word although his eyes followed us as we left the room. I switched lights on as we went although not every fixture had a bulb in it. Judy started talking to me in a low voice almost as soon as we were out of the room.

     “Killian, I have no doubt that you are a sensitive. I've always thought you might be and this just confirms it. Now we just need to figure out how strong your gift is. Your impressions and feelings could be invaluable to figuring this out.”

     “But I don't have any impressions,” I said, “and my only feeling right now is carefully controlled terror.”

     She laughed. “I guess this must be somewhat scary considering it's your first time. It is your first time, right?”

     
“First time?”

     “Seeing the spirit of a dead person?”

     I hesitated a moment before answering and that was all the answer she needed. “It isn't, is it?” she said, jumping on my meaningful pause.

     “Maybe,” I said stubbornly. I wasn't ready to talk about Seth. Besides, that was different. I knew him and he wasn't scary at all. Except for when he woke me up in the middle of the night by sitting on my bed.

     Judy let it go, although I was sure it wouldn't be the last I heard of it. “Tell me the whole story of what happened when you saw
Amalie
.”

I quickly told her the whole story, which didn't take long since there wasn't that much to tell. When I had finished, she asked, “And what were your impressions when you were in the hallway, or in the cupola?”

     I thought back. “I felt like there was something in the hallway with me when I came out of the room I was painting in, but I didn't see anything except that the door was open, the cupola door. I didn't feel anything in the room. Well, actually, I was really scared on the stairs going up there, but that was just because I was so afraid of what I might see. Once I got up there and saw it was empty I was fine.”

     “Or maybe you felt something in the staircase, some latent emotions.”

     By now, we'd reached the hallway on the third floor. I flipped the switch and a single light bulb lit the corridor. It was enough to see that the door was closed. We walked down the hall and stopped in front of the door. It was latched. I felt a chill go up my spine as Judy reached out and unlocked it. She turned the knob and the door swung open with an eerie creak, the perfect sound effect for the scene. She stepped back.

     “Light?” she asked. It seemed as if we had both suddenly run out of words, or maybe our thoughts were just too taken up with the moment at hand. Or maybe Judy felt the same sense of tension and foreboding that I felt. I reached around her, keeping her in front of me still, and threw the switch. Nothing happened. I flicked it back and forth a few times but it was obvious the bulb had burnt out.

     “Good thing I brought the flashlight,” Judy mumbled and clicked it on. A narrow, somewhat weak beam cast a path up the worn wooden steps. The dim light from the hall didn't reach much past the first couple steps and beyond that there was just an inky gloom punctuated by the flash of lightning. I wasn't at all keen on going up there but I was less keen on staying down here by myself, so when Judy started mounting the stairs I was right on her heels.

     About halfway up she suddenly stopped with a sharp intake of breath and began to sway back and forth unsteadily. I grabbed her around the waist and she braced herself against the wall with one hand.

     “What is it?” I whispered hoarsely.

     “Don't you feel it?” she gasped.

     “Feel what?”

     “My God,” she moaned thinly. Her knees seemed to buckle and she began to sink down onto the stairs. My grip slipped from her waist to under her arms as I began to frantically try and drag her back down the stairs. “No,” she said, her voice stronger. She pulled herself back up and quickly ran up the last few steps. I quickly followed.

     She just stood there for a minute, staring back down the stairs. The room was constantly lit up with flickering blue-white light as one streak of lightning followed after another with almost no pause in between. The roll of thunder was an almost deafening rumble up here, like a passing parade of Harleys. The glass in the windows rattled in its panes from the wind, rain and thunder. If I hadn't been so terrified I would have been awed by the sheer majesty of Nature. I felt like I was in the very center of the storm.

     Judy spoke, her voice bringing me back to the present with a thud, “Something happened on these stairs.”

     “What?” I said, my throat tightening.

     “I'm not sure,” she said slowly. “I felt a wave of pain down there that almost dropped me to my knees, physical pain. And I sense death.”

     I had to gulp several times before I could speak again, “Could that be the ghost?”

     “No, I don't think so. It felt…different. I felt mourning too. And…”

     
“And what?”

     “I don't know, but whatever it is, it's a part of the steps now, like a psychic stain.”

     We were both quiet for a minute; there was just the sound of thunder in the small room.

     “Why would she come to this room?” she asked, almost to herself.

     “She came to watch for her husband,” I answered. “You can see quite a ways up the river from here. He was a sea captain. She would come up here to wait for him.
Except he never came back that last time.
He died at sea.” I was babbling and I knew it. She'd probably already heard all this before but it was preferable to the silence. “Maybe that's why she keeps coming back, she's still waiting for her husband. And that's why she's mourning. Maybe she even killed herself or died on the stairs.”

     “Poppycock,” Judy said, waving away my suggestion. “That kind of melodramatic romantic crap only happens in those old Victorian gothic novels. No real woman strong enough to run a house like this on her own would pine away waiting for a husband to come back that she barely knew.”

     “Barely knew?”

     “He was much older than her, right?”

     “Well, yeah.”

     “And he was away on the sea for months at a time, probably for much of the year. No doubt she did keep watch for him, if for no other reason than to be ready for him when he arrived, welcoming him like any good wife. But I seriously doubt that she was so in love with him that she threw herself down the stairs to her death when he failed to appear on schedule. Besides, Steve didn't say anything about her dying tragically, and trust me, the newspapers of the time would have mentioned it if she had. My guess is she died of some illness. There is the taint of death on these stairs though, and what is it that draws her here?”

     I was about to suggest we go back downstairs and discuss this with everyone else when a huge streak of lightning hit somewhere close to the house. The accompanying sound was like an explosion and left my ears ringing. The flash itself left me blind for a few seconds. When I blinked away the spots I realized that the hall light was out now too. I hadn't realized how the dull glow had been a kind of anchor until it was gone. The only light now to be seen came from the flashlight in Judy's hand and the ever-present lightning.

     “That sounded close,” Judy said. “Maybe we'd better go check on the others.”

     “Sounds good to me,” I said weakly.

     She started down the stairs with me right behind. Again, she stopped abruptly about halfway. I reached out to steady her but she didn't seem to need it. Her body had become rigid. I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and I knew without looking why she'd stopped so suddenly.

     “I think,” Judy said under her breath, “that she wants us to follow her.”

Chapter 28

     At Judy's words I felt as if ice water had flooded through my body. Following
Amalie
Marnien
anywhere wasn't exactly on my `To Do' list. Seth's vague warning about the ghost fluttered through my mind and I dug my heels in mentally.

     Judy slumped to one side, as if desperate to avoid the apparition's gaze.
Amalie
looked past Judy to me, her eyes locking with mine. Despite having seen her once before I found that I was far from prepared to see her again. Even in the uneven light from the lightning she was easy to see. I was struck anew by how different she looked from the way ghosts were portrayed in TV shows and movies I had seen. She looked as solid as Judy or I, no transparent specter or gray ghoul, and yet there was something strangely insubstantial about her, some deep knowledge that she didn't belong here in this plane. She was wearing the same dark mourning dress she had been wearing the last time I'd seen her, and the same expression of intense sorrow. Her penetrating stare left no doubt that she wanted something.

     I was trapped in that gaze like a fly in a spider's web, powerless to break away on my own. Suddenly she turned away, breaking the spell. My knees buckled and I sat down heavily on the steps with a thud. Judy recovered before I did. She grabbed my wrist and tried to yank me up. I pulled sharply away.