Dead Willow (4 page)

- The Rusty Gate -

A Pre-Civil War farmhouse, it was abandoned at the turn of the century. The deed to the farm passed to the county in 1908, and the land and buildings were sold at auction. It was purchased by

Eunice Louise Pembry

in 1910, and reconstruction began. With the help of the hard working men and women of the community of Willow Tree, the renovations were completed on

December 14, 1913

This commemorates 100 years of faithful service in the continuing care of this historic landmark.

The framed placard hung on the wall of the
Rusty Gate
lobby. Recessed lighting in the ceiling cast an ethereal glow on the treasured words. Jess ran her fingers along the edge of the hand-carved walnut frame and admired the effect. A commemoration from the governor himself. Not a bad way to spruce up the place.

She scribbled her notes quickly as she headed for the line leading up to the front desk. Parents were bustling this way and that, dragging luggage and toddlers, fighting for a spot at the front. Irate customers pounded their fists and poked stubby fingers at check-out bills, while patient desk clerks smiled and nodded. Children with plastic swords and Flintlock pistols zigged and zagged between people’s legs, each one firing the imaginary ‘shot heard round the world’.

It was the
Willow Tree Festival
in all its glory.

The reenactors were out in force, salting the lobby with gray and blue uniforms. Several had attempted to bring in muskets and other lethal-looking paraphernalia, only to be shooed away by the hotel staff.

Make that ‘inn’. Jess still didn’t get the distinction. The size of this place could have given the
Marriott
a run for its money. This abandoned farmhouse had obviously been added on to several times in the last hundred years. And, while the look was still 1800’s, she doubted the flat screen TV’s and WiFi were original equipment.

Yeah, we didn’t mind going back in time, just not too much.

The front desk was a good thirty feet long with desk clerks every five feet or so. The lady clerks were all decked out in the era’s finest. They apparently wore layers of petticoats under their dresses, as hoop skirts would never let them get close to the front desk.

Men were costumed in the uniforms of the war, alternating even numbers of gray and blue so as not to start the war all over again. The men wore caps and the ladies bonnets.

Business was conducted on laptops which sat out of sight below the long, molded top of the front desk, keeping the present from intruding on the cherished past a much as possible.

The walls were all of dark, rough log construction. The seating in the lobby, while comfortably padded, were made of rough hewn wood, and could have complimented the home of General Grant himself. A fire crackled in the large hearth, and it was real wood. Throw in a few potted willow branches and a Union flag or two and the illusion was complete.

After a few minutes in the lobby, a normal person would start to feel out of place.

Jess was certain that, had she asked, they would have provided her a Civil War era dress and bonnet to accompany her on her stay in Willow Tree. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t be asking.

“Welcome to the
Rusty Gate
. How may I be of service?”

Jess looked up from her notepad, totally unaware that the family in front of her had concluded their business. She came face to face with a striking woman, who appeared to be in her early forties. She wore the requisite costume dress, but no bonnet. Her hair was done up in traditional style, pulled back into a bun, which was covered with a knitted hair net. But the thing that caught Jess’ attention was the one bit of present day paraphernalia that all the employees of the
Rusty Gate
shared - the gold name tag.

Hers said “Eunice”.

“Um, I just … ” said Jess, pointing to the ostentatious placard on the wall, “I just saw your name.”

The woman’s expression never flickered, causing Jess to flicker hers.

“But, it couldn’t be yours, could it?”

The woman smiled and let Jess off the hook.

“No, my dear, but she could be my great, great, great grandmother, Eunice Louise Pembry. Just call me Eunice.”

“Thank you for clearing that up,” said Jess, chuckling. “I thought I was going crazy there for a minute.”

“Well, you might still be,” she joked, “but at least we’ve figured out who I am.”

“Well, ‘Eunice’, my name, I’m pretty sure is Jess Granger and I believe I have a reservation.”

Eunice typed on her keyboard behind the desk. “Let’s see … yes, here it is. Jessilyn Granger, one single.”

“Please don’t call me Jessilyn,” Jess asked her in a lowered voice. “It’s a long story.”

Eunice gave her an odd expression for an instant, then went back to her keyboard.

“Alright, no N, no Y, no L, no I,” she said, hitting the backspace key each time. “There … she no longer exists. That is, until you checkout, and then she’ll show up on your credit card receipt.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Sorry,” said Eunice, like she really meant it. “So, will you be staying with us through the festival?”

Jess considered how much she should tell Eunice about her stay here. It wasn’t like they could kick her off the property just because she thought the inn
might
be haunted, she reasoned. She decided to put it out there and gauge Eunice’s reaction. If she was as shocked as Crystal, then maybe it was time to call this a wild goose chase.

“I have it on good authority that the
Rusty Gate
is … haunted.”

Eunice didn’t blink.

“And what authority might that be, my dear?” she said, with a tone as dry as a desert wind.

Shit! Jess had been caught in a half-truth. There was no ‘good authority’; there was only an anonymous tip, and Eunice had called her on it. She could toss it off as a joke, or she could lie her ass off. Punt or kick a field goal - which should she do?

As she stared at the stony face looking back at her from across the desk, something was itching at the back of her mind.

Eunice hadn’t said no.

The expression on her face wasn’t shock and it wasn’t a denial; it was more like … an accusation. It was as if Eunice believed that the
Rusty Gate
had been betrayed and she wanted a name.

Jess could sense the shift, like a splash of cold water in her face. The amiable innkeeper was gone. The real Eunice was coming out.

“Someone who prefers to remain anonymous,” bluffed Jess, hoping that Eunice wouldn’t see her sweat.

“You’re a journalist,” said Eunice, taking a half step back, as the last of the humor drained from her face.

“You say that as if it were a bad thing.” Jess had a feeling the witty banter wasn’t working anymore.

“Why do you look for the dead, Miss Granger,” she asked, “when the living are so much more interesting?”

Jess felt like someone had just let the air out of her tires.

“I guess because the living never seem to want to pay my bills.”

“Well, I doubt that our ‘ghosts’ will either.” Eunice fumbled with something behind the counter. Then, she handed Jess a key card to room 213. “But you’re welcome to try.”

Eunice looked passed her to the next person in line, and just like that, Jess had been dismissed. She stepped away from the desk in a fog, as the couple behind her jostled into position. As she made her way down the hall to the elevators, she wondered where she had taken such a wrong turn.

Perhaps, she was just out of practice. It had been a while since she had done a truly ‘investigative’ piece. Most of her recent blogs had been researched from the comfort of her own laptop. Field work required stealth, and Jess had come in like a rampaging buffalo. She knew better.

On the elevator ride up, she started to tick off her options again. She may well have burned this particular bridge, but there was still something about this Eunice. During the exchange, for just a moment there, she had felt something that made the prickly hairs on her arms stand up.

She couldn’t name it, but there was a story here, and it was time to put on her reporter panties and find out what it was.

It had called to her from the window.

Jess had stood in room 213, her outstretched fingers on the windowpane, as if she could actually reach out and touch it.

And now, she
was
touching it. She ran her fingers over the rough edges of the iron gate, flecks of reddish brown coming off onto her fingertips, and she marveled at the oddity of it. There really was a rusty gate. The ‘haunted inn’ had been named for the entrance to a cemetery. A one hundred and fifty year old cemetery.

This story was going to write itself.

‘Weeping Gardens Cemetery’ said the curved wrought iron sign over the entrance, and it was all coming into focus. This town wasn’t just a collection of Civil War enthusiasts. This town was built around a Civil War cemetery.

Jess’ gaze wandered over the seventy or so markers sticking up out of the black soil on the other side of the fence. Most were badly weathered, some to the point of being illegible. She saw names that had long since passed into obscurity, like the owners beneath them. Ambrose, Beauregard, Hiram, names that only a mother could love. She searched for one name in
particular, but many stones were turned away from her, and many more obscured by the shadow of the town’s namesake.

The shadow of the giant weeping willow.

It was easy to see how the town had come to be known as Willow Tree. The tree could probably be seen from space, thought Jess. It was like this enormous, green umbrella, sheltering those who slumbered beneath its drooping boughs.

The wrought iron fence that encircled the cemetery had most likely been built when the tree was about half its present size. Now, it towered over
sixty or seventy feet into the sky, and its branches hung out over the fence, its green hanging leaves tickling the iron tips.

Jess thought that she had never seen a tree so green and lush. Normally trees of this vintage were in the autumn of their years, their trunks dried and splitting, their branches bare and withered. It being the autumn of this year, she would at least expect the tree to be shedding its leaves.

But the leaves on this tree defined the word ‘green’, the color deep and vibrant. There was barely a leafy needle on the ground. The almost overpowering scent in the air was like a spring day, leading Jess to wonder after their secret. Were they using some kind of super-fertilizer? Then she remembered that she was looking at a cemetery, and she shivered at the morbid implication. Was it normal, she wondered, for the soil of a cemetery to be more fertile? She admitted to knowing nothing of horticulture. She didn’t remember this chapter in her high school biology class. But if that were the case, it certainly put a new slant on the name ‘Weeping Gardens’. The tabloid potential alone was staggering.

“Excuse me!”

The shout from behind startled her and she jerked her hand from the iron gate, cutting her finger on the rusty jagged edge.

“
Ahhh!” she grunted, wincing as the sharp pain crawled up the back of her hand. Her finger went reflexively into her mouth in an attempt to suck the pain away. She examined her middle finger, where a thin slice along the pad had begun oozing bright red blood. Before she could find something to cover it, a few drops spilled off of her fingers onto the ground, where it was sucked up by the thirsty soil.

Jess could have sworn she heard a moan drift out of the cemetery on the wind. Must be delusional from the pain, she reasoned.

The man who had shouted came running up, spouting apologies and staring wide-eyed at her injury.

“Oh my God!” he exclaimed. “I am so sorry, miss! That was stupid of me!”

He was fumbling around in his pockets as if he had some magic elixir to offer her. He finally pulled a white handkerchief from his back pocket. She didn’t know many men who carried handkerchiefs these days.

“Here, this is clean, I promise.” He took her hand in his and wrapped the white linen around her finger, and she let him. While he doted on her crippling injury, she gave him the once over.

Seemed that trees weren’t the only things they grew well here in Willow Tree.

His head of coal black hair was trimmed short, tapering down to just a trace of side burn. He wore yesterday’s beard, which was just enough, and he seemed to still be working off last summer’s tan. As she watched his rugged hands tend to hers, she noticed no trace of a ring. Then, she mentally slapped herself in the face.

What the hell was she doing looking for rings? She had just met this guy, who had caused her grievous bodily harm, no less, and she was already picking out china patterns?

She must have lost a lot more blood than she realized.

“Well,” he said, releasing her hand slowly, “I think you’ve stopped hemorrhaging. Again, I’m really very sorry. I was just trying to warn you that they don’t like people touching the gate, or the tree, or … anything. I’m Patrick, by the way.”