Hacienda Moon (The Path Seekers) (20 page)

 
”What were you trying to say, Baby B?” Tandie whispered. The massive house not only made the loudest settling noises she’d ever heard, but the size of it made Tandie realize her loneliness and all the anxious feelings associated with it.

At once, a bright light illuminated Tandie’s face. The girl ghost she assumed was Eliza Chelby stood with a serene but emotionless expression in the study’s doorway. Tandie’s hands trembled. She dropped her pencil and held a hand to her chest. Unable to move, she stared at the apparition.

“I can see you.” Tandie stood up slowly. “Eliza?”

The ghost girl nodded.

“Do you have the other seven pages from my book?” It was a farfetched question for an equally strange moment.

Eliza shook her head in a slow side-to-side motion.

“Did Samuel or maybe Joseph take them?” Tandie asked, her heart pounding in her ears. The child’s spirit was shrouded in a sadness that winded Tandie. Eliza had somehow suffered a terrible death. Tandie’s maternal instinct told her this more than her psychic one. She longed to take the child in her arms and assure her that everything would be okay.

Eliza frowned and shook her head again.

“Oh boy. Can you talk to me?”
 

Eliza nodded and said, “I have something for you.”

Tandie trailed Eliza to the kitchen where she pointed at the wide china cabinet sitting at the far left wall. It was empty so she had never thought to move it before; but she had wondered how she was going to explain to Saul that she didn’t want to keep the space-eating hulk. She peeked behind it. A cool draft tickled Tandie’s face.

“Wait a second. There’s something…here…”

She walked around to the other side of it. A small opening between the cabinet and the wall created a space just large enough for both her hands to fit in. She jerked and pulled on it until she created an opening large enough to fit her body inside.

“Mental note. Must join the gym next week,” she said and placed her hands on the cabinet, grunting as she pushed.

The cabinet slid forward inch by inch. A hard
push moved the massive structure out far enough for Tandie to be able to turn around. One last back breaking push and Tandie found what she was looking for—the outline of a door that blended in with the kitchen’s golden wallpaper. It called to Tandie with its hidden mysteries.

“How much do you want to bet that this door explains the missing bedroom?” She glanced over at the girl’s ghost standing still and silent. Her bright light was like a beacon in the dimly lit kitchen. The girl stood with her thumb between her lips, another gesture that tugged at Tandie’s maternal instincts. She wanted to reach out to the girl who reminded her so much of her own moon-faced daughter.

Tandie pierced the wallpaper with her fingernail and ripped it down until the hidden door was fully exposed. The next challenge was finding a knob. She trudged over to the pantry, pulled out Eric’s toolbox and a screwdriver, and removed
the knob from the door. Praying that the knob from the pantry door she held was as ancient as it looked; she headed back over to the mystery door and attached it. The cams fit. She made a tiny yelp to celebrate her small victory and then glanced at Eliza still sucking her thumb and staring as if she were hypnotized by something.

She placed her hand on the knob, hoping she didn’t experience a repeat of the stuck door episode that played out in the fourth room upstairs. To her relief, it gave way. A burst of stale, wet air engulfed Tandie. She fanned her nose. The room held the stench of an area sealed for an undisclosed amount of years, reminding her of a neglected fish tank.

She glanced down at the
wooden steps vanishing in the darkness. They led to a cellar and no doubt what could’ve been considered a fifth room for servants back in the day.

“I can go no further. I have to leave you now,” Eliza said with a frightened expression on her face. “Look for the magic brick. I must go.”

“Wait! Magic brick? What does that mean?” Tandie asked the fading spirit.

She now stood alone and faced exploring a gaping black hole with no light. The only sounds were whatever was dripping in the cellar combined with her ragged breathing. Chills flooded over her body with a vengeance. Yet she was determined to discover what secrets Chelby Rose held. She hadn’t felt such passion since before the time she lost her sight.

Using her cell phone’s small light, she felt along the wall and stepped down on one creaking step at a time.
One wrong step and she would become a permanent spirit roaming the halls of Chelby Rose as well. Her fingers passed across something wet and slimy along the way. Focusing on the area at the bottom of the stairs, she wished Eric had left a flashlight lying around somewhere. What kind of contractor owns a tool box without a flashlight?

Tandie thought of Eliza Chelby’s ghost and her hesitation about coming down to the cellar a moment, just before her hands raked across a switch on the wall.

“A light! I knew this room couldn’t be that ancient.” Tandie hoped the switch worked and she let out a long sigh after she flipped it up and the room sprang to dimly lit life.

Tandie scanned her surroundings. The room was about four hundred square feet or less. A small cot with sheets gray from dirt and years of grime sat against a far wall. A dingy white dresser with nicks and gashes in the wood and a cracked mirror sitting on top was against the adjacent wall. She stood in what would’ve been considered the fifth bedroom back in Chelby Rose’s glory days.

The room vibrated with energy of past memories, and something stirred deep in her stomach. The feeling was the familiar pang she’d experienced ever since that tragic day she entered the woods with Chelsea and the other kids. Norma Atwater said she had the ability to travel back in time if she channeled a spirit. The thought of having an ability like that was both frightening and invigorating.

Closing her eyes, she gave in to her inner signal and concentrated on the youngest Chelby daughter’
s image in her vision. A brief flash of a clean Eliza Chelby running up the stairway in fright played through her mind and disappeared just as fast.

“Look for the magic brick.”

Still inside the vision, Tandie closed her eyes again. She put herself at the top of the stairway and followed Eliza’s gaze as she peered down to whatever had frightened her. A laugh echoed in the darkness, prickling the girl’s skin. As if she were somehow signaling Tandie, Eliza glanced down to an area between the cot and the dresser.

The vision cleared, leaving Tandie with a light head. At once, she sprinted to the corner and examined the grime covered wall. At first glance, the bricks looked normal. On the second scan, she found one that jutted out about a half-inch more than the others. She wiped away the dirt from the brick and pulled on it. Groaning from years of disuse, it came out of the slot after some effort. Behind the brick, a book lay in a hollow area.

Tandie reached in, pulled the book out, and dusted it off. It was a black leather diary with words written in calligraphy on the paper inside it. She flipped through the old pages conserved well inside the airtight space over the past two hundred-plus years and read the name carved in gold letters on the front
: Alice Chelby.

Back upstairs, Tandie settled in at her writing desk and began reading.

December 3, 1748

My dearest diary,

It has been almost two months since the man of my life and I met and declared our love. He grows weary of my hesitation to marry him. I haven’t the nerve to reveal the true reason for my deliberation, the fear of Ella Maud and her voodoo priestess mother. Oh how I fear Ella’s jealousy and hate of our love.

Alice

Tandie pulled a delicate yellow note from inside a gap between the pages and unfolded it. The thin paper contained a poem written in a different handwriting from Alice’s.

Mi Amor, I give thee all of mi.

To thy beauty, I pledge love eternally.

I wash thou hacienda in colors

like a sunset over sea.

Where the moon cradles our love,

I see she is flying free.

Mi Amor, how I love thee,

Under the hacienda moon,

shall be where you always find mi.

Dizzying pressure thrummed in her temples just before the sight took her. Maybe the sensation was so strong because these were her first true visions in almost a year. Or maybe she was excited. Whatever the reason, Tandie’s vision came on with a force that she had never experienced in any of the others.

* * *

In Tandie’s vision, she became Alice Chelby of 1748 running through the woods to meet her lover, Enrique Fontalvo. With skin as pale as snow and hair as dark as the most sinfully sweet chocolate, she marveled at how different it felt being in another female’s body and mind. Especially someone who was a different race from herself. It didn’t matter. She was a woman who would do anything to save the man she loved.

Charging into the secret cabin they shared, Alice bounded over to Enrique who met her at the door.  “I cannot stay long. I think she is following me,” Alice said out of breath.

“We have to show her we are not afraid.” Enrique pulled Alice into his taut arms. In his embrace, she felt as if they could take on the world that was so against their love.

“She does not care, Enrique. Ella wants you for herself. I think she has even convinced that voodoo priestess mother of hers to hurt us in some way,” Alice said, her chest filled with worry, her eyes blurred with the tears she didn’t want him to see.

Enrique released Alice, walked to the door, and glanced into the woods. “Colonel Dryden’s men know that I have been hiding here.”

Alice gasped and held a white gloved hand over her mouth. Dryden’s men would show no mercy if they found Enrique. He was one of the soldiers from the Fortuna, the warship that attacked the city three months ago. “What? How could they find out? Do you think Ella told them?”

“I am not certain. Some of the other surviving soldiers are hiding in a place near Bald Head Island. They have a place for me.” Enrique’s soulful dark eyes pleaded with Alice’s light brown ones for understanding. He had been through so much pain and heartache since that night the Fortuna was destroyed. He had worked hard to mask his Spanish accent and to blend in with the local citizens.

“Oh, Enrique, you cannot go. I found a way to trick the evil. Nanee gave me a talisman to ward off bad spirits and their spells.” Alice buried her face against her lover’s chest. A familiar scent of the deep woods filled her nostrils, making her feel secure and stirring the earth rocking desire she had for him. They were never able to get enough of each other, and she wanted him to make love to her right then.

“Alice, I must go. They will kill me if they discover our secret.”

“And what about us?” Alice demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“Search your heart for that answer.” Alice moved Enrique’s hands to her stomach and met his gaze.