Better Homes and Hauntings (18 page)

Nina suddenly blurted out, “I think my former boss snuck onto the island and destroyed my greenhouse.”

Suddenly, Cindy’s simultaneous declaration of “The house is definitely haunted” didn’t seem so dramatic. Although it did make Deacon roll his eyes a little.

Cindy patted Nina’s back. “She can go first.”

Nina gave the brief, emotionless summary of events that she’d been practicing in her head since the afternoon.

Deacon added a comment about the state of the greenhouse and said that Anthony’s crew had already cleaned out the mess.

It was strange to watch that livid flush creep into Nina’s cheeks, to hear the flinty, pissed-off tone in her voice. Nina had reached her breaking point. And apparently, her chewy candy center was made up entirely of anger.

“I’m sorry that I brought this with me to the island,” she practically spit. “And the offer to let you fire me stands. It wouldn’t be the first job this jerk has ruined for me, not that I can prove it. I just have to work harder to make sure he can’t ruin the next one.”

“Nina, I’m not going to fire you,” Deacon told her quietly. “It’s not your fault. You can’t control what some psycho does. I’m not angry with you. I’m a little angry with the people who installed my security system for not picking it up, but that’s not something for you to worry about. I don’t want you to worry, all right? Just focus on that water-garden thing, because I am very, very concerned about the possibility of living here without the right number of water lilies.”

She offered him a tense imitation of a smile and nodded sharply.

“And I have a few Tasers in my bag. You and Cindy are more than welcome to keep them with you if you don’t feel safe,” Dotty offered.

“You have
a few
Tasers?” Jake exclaimed. “Who would give you more than one Taser?”

“Who would give you
one
Taser?” Deacon asked.

“Have you ever ridden on the Metro in Paris?” Dotty snarked. “Well, until you do, don’t judge me.”

“We’re getting away from the point,” Deacon retorted. “Maybe my security company can provide you with mace or personal alarms or a Taser that might not electrocute you when you try to use it because Dotty dropped it in a puddle once.” He ignored the obscene gesture Dotty sent his way, tapping a few tabs on his phone to pull up a picture of Rick, which he promptly sent to all of the other team members’ phones. “This is a picture of Rick Douglas. If you see him, come to me immediately, and we’ll call my security team.”

Nina shot Deacon an incredulous look. How did Deacon know who her former boss was and pull up a picture of him so quickly? She knew it was unwise to question the skills of a Web wizard, but it seemed suspiciously efficient.

“Until then, keep your eyes open, and if you see anything strange, report it immediately. I’m having five copies of my alarm watch made, so that each of you can call for help directly, if necessary. They should be here in a few days.”

“That actually brings me to my point,” Cindy said. “The reporting issue, that is.”

Jake grimaced, as if he had hoped that Cindy would drop the subject in the face of Nina’s problem.

“What’s going on?” Deacon asked.

“Cindy and I had a, well, let’s call it an episode this afternoon.”

“An episode?”

“An incident,” Jake amended.

Dotty held up one hand, as if waiting to be called on, before interjecting, “Is an incident better than an episode?”

“OK, are we just not going to talk about this out in the open?” Cindy demanded. “I know that nobody wants to use the g-word first, but I can’t just ignore what I’m seeing and feeling. Jake and I saw two people on the lawn. We think it was Catherine Whitney and Jack Donovan, the original architect of the house. And it looked like they were having some sort of argument, maybe a lovers’ quarrel. And since they’ve been dead for about a hundred years, I think we can assume that’s not possible. A few weeks ago, I was on the steps to the third floor. I heard furniture moving upstairs, when no one was supposed to be up there. I tried to go upstairs to look around, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe. It felt like I was being choked. If Jake hadn’t caught me, I would have fallen headfirst down the stairs. Now, I came onto this island as a complete skeptic. But those two experiences, plus the feeling that I’m being watched no matter where I go on this island, have made a believer out of me.”

This pronouncement was met with a long, awkward silence.

Cindy looked up and down the table. “I can’t be the only one who’s seeing and feeling these things.”

No one made eye contact with her.

“No one’s willing to admit they’ve had an experience?” Her cheeks flushed red.

Maybe it was a mistake to be this candid with the others, particularly Deacon, who was looking at Cindy as if he smelled something funny. And that something was her termination notice. But damn it, she was fired up. She wasn’t crazy. She knew what she saw. And all horror-movie jokes aside, she certainly hadn’t walked
onto this island expecting to see something. And she was seriously regretting accepting that date from Jake, who was turning out to be a bigger weasel than she originally thought, leaving her hanging out to dry like this.

“I haven’t seen anything yet, but I wouldn’t be afraid to admit it,” Dotty said. “I understand if some of you are. Do we want to write down what’s happened to us on slips of paper, and we can read them anonymously?”

“This isn’t a sorority grievance circle,” Deacon grumped. “Let’s at least be men about this . . . or Cindy. We can be Cindy about it.”

Cindy preened a bit before saying, “Wait, how do you know about sorority grievance circles?”

Deacon cleared his throat. “Moving on. I haven’t seen anything.” He cleared his throat, tugging at the collar of his T-shirt. “I’ve had some weird dreams, but I think they’re just stress or . . . heavy psychological suggestions from my cousin over there.”

“What kind of dreams?” Nina asked. “Are you making a bed in yours?”

“Uh, no,” he said, shaking his head.

“Well, good, because it would probably be a little weird for you to dream about being felt up behind by a guy with sneaky hands.”

“That would be weird,” Deacon agreed.

“Wait, are you having multiple weird dreams or the same weird dream over and over?” Dotty asked.

“The same one over and over,” Nina said. “I’m wearing an old-fashioned dress, making a bed here in the servants’ quarters. A man comes up behind me and gets handsy. Everything changes, and I’m outside on the
roof. I can’t see his face, but the hands run up my neck and start to choke me. The next thing I know, I’m underwater, and I’m sinking.”

“Anything else?” Jake asked.

“My flesh melts away, and I become a skeleton,” she added, through pursed lips.

Cindy shuddered. “Gross.”

“You asked!” Nina exclaimed.

“Jake asked,” Cindy countered.

“Jake asked!” Nina amended, throwing up her hands.

“So you were choked and then thrown into water?” Dotty asked. “That sounds an awful lot like how Catherine died. But would Catherine be making beds in the servants’ quarters?”

“Well, she was awfully happy to be making beds there, which seems unusual for a high-society wife,” Nina said. “But at the same time, the sleeves on the dress I was wearing looked pretty fancy. Embroidered blue muslin, definitely too nice for a maid’s dress.”

“So unfair,” Cindy muttered, still bitter about her own “flashback” experience.

“Did you say embroidered blue muslin?” Deacon asked. “With silver at the sleeves?”

Nina nodded.

Deacon flopped back into the chair. “Oh, hell.”

“Why ‘oh, hell’?” Cindy asked.

“Because I’ve been dreaming about a woman in a blue dress with silver embroidery at the sleeves. Catherine Whitney. She’s standing up on the roof. I come up behind her, I’m about to kiss her, but instead, my hands close around her throat, and I choke her to death.”

“How often would you say you’re having this dream?” Dotty asked.

“A lot,” Deacon said. “A few times a week.”

“And you?” Dotty asked Nina.

“Once or twice a week. More when I get stressed out.”

“So you’re dreaming that you’re Catherine,” Dotty asked Nina, before turning to Deacon. “And you’re dreaming that you’re Gerald. Several times a week. And you didn’t think you should mention it?”

“It could still be the power of suggestion, all of those stories and theories you fill our heads with day in and day out,” Deacon protested. “Maybe Nina and I both saw a picture of Catherine wearing the same blue dress.”

“Deacon, I’ve seen every picture of Catherine Whitney ever painted or photographed. There are no pictures of her in a blue muslin dress with silver embroidery at the sleeves,” Dotty insisted. “And if you and Nina are having what sounds like the same recurring dream from different perspectives, several times a week, that has to mean something.”

“I’m not sure that makes it better,” Deacon said. “There’s a considerable creep factor in choking your own great-great-grandmother several times a week. Especially now that I know that Nina is inside her body while I’m doing it. Sort of.”

Jake raised his eyebrows. “So you’re admitting that you may be part of all of this supernatural woo-woo crap?”

With a lingering look at Dotty, who was smirking enough for three triumphant Whitneys, Deacon growled, “No! Damn it. Maybe.”

“Which means I win!” Dotty crowed, making Deacon thunk his head against the table.

While Dotty did a little victory dance, Cindy sent Jake a significant look. He shook his head. Cindy narrowed her eyes. Jake hesitated, dropped his fork onto his plate, and leaned back in his chair. “Fine. Cindy and I had an incident this afternoon.”

“Aha!” Cindy crowed. “So you admit it!”

“Yes, yes, I admit it,” Jake grumbled. Cindy’s lips quirked into a smile. Perhaps he wasn’t as rodent-like as she’d thought. Jake turned to Deacon. “I saw it, clear as day, Whit. They were as solid as you or me, and she looked just like the pictures of Catherine. Unless you’ve been experimenting with some sort of hologram technology or some extremely committed reenactors snuck onto the island along with Nina’s crazy ex-boss, I don’t have an explanation that involves real, live humans.”

“
Et tu
, Jake?” Deacon scrubbed his hands over his face.

“Me
tu
, bud. You know how much this house creeped me out when we were kids. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to you.”

Deacon groaned.

“Well, I hate to add to your ghostly stresses, but I don’t think the shadow-woman I saw on the roof was the result of seasickness meds,” Nina told him. “Especially when you consider that I saw her again on the main staircase the day Dotty showed up. I didn’t see her full body that time, just the bottom of her skirt and her waist.”

“Ghosts don’t usually show up as full apparitions
with features and distinct clothes and all that,” Jake told her. “You usually see a partial body or a shadow.”

“How do you know that?” Deacon asked.

Jake’s face flushed deep pink again. He sighed and pulled a copy of
Hauntings for Total Morons
from his laptop bag. “I bought it when I was hired. You know what kind of reputation this house has!”

“Keep that book away from Dotty,” Deacon said, staring at the orange-and-white softcover manual as if it was an explosive device.

“I’m a little upset that I haven’t had an experience yet,” Dotty said. “I’m a wide-open channel and the most creeped-out I’ve felt so far was when I found that picture of our great-great-aunt Bernice.”

Deacon and Jake shuddered simultaneously. “Not a handsome woman,” Jake explained to Cindy.

“I do think it’s interesting that Jake and Cindy are seeing the key figures—Catherine, Jack, Gerald—from the outside, as observers. But Deacon and Nina are experiencing things from the key figures’ points of view. Maybe the house or Gerald and Catherine are trying to tell you two something,” Dotty said.

Nina pondered that for a long moment. “Well, that is . . .”

“A singularly horrifying thought,” Deacon finished for her.

Nina pointed a finger at him. “Yep.”

“I think we need to keep track of who feels or sees what and when,” Dotty said. “It would help, I think, as I’m writing.”

“Oh, I know!” Cindy ran to Deacon’s room and dragged his whiteboard back to the table. “We’ll come
up with a list of phenomena, type up the notes, and keep a record of what happens while we’re here.”

Jake chuckled. “You really can’t help the organizational thing, can you?”

“Wait, we should have s’mores when we tell ghost stories,” Nina insisted, perking up at the thought of caramelized marshmallows and melty chocolate. “Do we have the makings for s’mores?”

They all shook their heads.

Nina frowned in a way that made Cindy want to give her a pony or something. “Maybe next time.”

Cindy cleaned the board and drew a rough timeline structure with a dry-erase marker. “OK, so who felt something first?”

“That would be Deacon,” Dotty said. “He had nightmares for years about the—”

“Dotty!” Deacon exclaimed, shaking his head.

“Deacon, you haven’t talked about it since we were kids. Pretending it away won’t work. You have to talk about it.”

“I was a kid!” Deacon protested. “I didn’t know what was happening. I could have been having an asthma attack.”

Dotty countered, “You don’t
have
asthma.”

“Whit, I think she’s got a point,” Jake said quietly. “I thought the whole point of coming back here was to prove that the house couldn’t scare you anymore.”

“I thought the point was to prove that your family’s fortunes have been recovered,” Nina said.

“There are several points!” Deacon exclaimed. But when faced with the knowing looks on both Dotty’s and Jake’s faces and the confused expression
on Nina’s, he sighed and finally said, “When I was a kid, I hated coming here. And not just because it was boring and there was no Internet connection. This place scared me. Mom and Dad would leave me in the entry hall while they skulked around the house, looking for silverware or art or—the holy grail of grasping Whitneys—Catherine’s hidden stash of jewelry. I never felt safe here. I never wandered, because nothing about this place screamed, ‘Hey, come explore!’ But one afternoon, I walked up the grand staircase, looking for my mom, calling for her, trying to get her to come closer so I wouldn’t have to walk farther into the house. I didn’t notice how cold it was getting. I made it to the third landing, and all of a sudden, it was like I was walking through Jell-O. I couldn’t move my arms or legs as fast as I should. And I was so busy panicking about that, that it took that much longer to register when
something
grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. It was holding me from the front, but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t breathe. I was only ten, but I could
feel
how much it hated me. It wanted me dead. It wanted to toss me down the stairs like a rag doll and break my neck. And I think that if my dad hadn’t poked his head over the railing to check on me, it might have. But I was also a scared kid with an overactive imagination. I didn’t see anything. I only felt it. And yes, part of the reason I started renovating the house was to prove that it can’t scare me anymore.”