Harrison Investigations 1 Haunted (21 page)

"I was very good friends with Adam Harrison's son, Josh, when we
were in high school. He was bright, funny...charming. But most of
the kids stayed away from him. They thought he was strange. He
didn't run around giving out prophesies or anything, but there were
moments when it was a little eerie. He knew when it was going to
rain or snow, when the ponds had frozen over solidly, when the ice
was going to break. There were other little things. He would be
cramming for a test when we weren't supposed to be having one, and
then we'd walk into a class to find out that we were having a pop
quiz. He knew when Mrs. Malone was going to be out for an extended
time, because he had known when her husband was going to die. He
didn't know everything-it wasn't as if he had a crystal ball that
offered up any image he wanted to conjure. There were just times
when he did know things that there was really no earthly way he
should have."

"I think I did know that Adam had a son. He was actually
my grandfather's friend. They were both tremendous history buffs,"
Matt offered, his voice soft as he spoke behind her. "Where is his
son now? Does he work for Adam as well."

Darcy shook her head slowly. "Josh is dead."

"I'm sorry. Truly sorry." Then, a moment later, "What
happened?"

Darcy shrugged and inhaled again. "We were in a car accident.
I'd been dating someone in high school forever, but we had a huge
breakup just before senior prom. I asked Josh to go with me. He was
great, but Hunter had a real jerk of a friend, and he decided to
chase after Josh and play chicken with the cars after the prom.
Hunter's friend was killed as well. I survived. And..."

"And?" he said, prompting her after a moment.

She turned around at last, her eyes meeting his. "At the
funeral, I felt as if I was talking to Josh, as if I saw him. And
it had been very strange, because he had known he was going to die.
But he told me that it was all right. After that.. .well, I began
to know the little things as well. Where something was when it had
been lost. At first, it wasn't so bad. There were just little
things, the day-to-day things. Just the way it had been with Josh.
And I thought-and even the therapist I went to thought-that I was
creating conversations with Josh in my mind as a way to accept his
death."

"But you weren't?" He was still soft-spoken, watching her with
curious eyes, and not those that as yet condemned and warily shut
her out.

"But then, I started seeing other ghosts," she said flatly,
watching for his reaction.

A slight smile twitched his lips, but he was making a serious
effort not to mock her. "What ghosts?"

Again, she shrugged. "I went to NYU, as I told you."

"Yes?"

Darcy kept watching him. "I was walking by one of the very old
Episcopalian churches near my dorm and I ran into a woman in front
of the church. She was pacing, looking really nervous and
distraught, and," she added wryly, "though my folks had warned me
when I went to school not to talk to strangers, she was so upset
that I stopped and asked her if she was lost, or if there was
anything that I could do. She looked at me as if she had seen a
ghost, and said, 'You can see me?' I told her that yes, of course,
I could see her. She touched my shoulders, and looked as if she was
about to cry, and at the same time, she looked incredibly relieved.
Then she said, '1 beg of you, find my granddaughter, Charisse, and
tell her that the diamonds are in the Shirley Temple doll. Please,
please, do this for me. She's in there now, in the church, and I
can't seem to reach her, no matter how hard I try. She just can't
see me.' I thought then that she might be seriously unhinged and I
tried to reassure her, to tell her that, of course, her
granddaughter could see her, and that she just needed to talk
to her. But the woman shook her head violently, becoming so
distressed that I told her I would go in and tell Charisse that the
diamonds were in the Shirley Temple doll, whatever that
meant. I left her on the sidewalk and started to walk into the
church. I turned around, and I couldn't see her anymore. When I
opened the door to the church, I saw that a funeral was taking
place. Since I felt like an intrusive fool, I walked back out and
looked for the woman again. I couldn't find her. I went back to my
dorm. That night, when I was sleeping, I woke up to the sound of
sobbing. I nearly had a heart attack. The woman who had been in
front of the church was sitting at the foot of my bed. I had chills
that went straight into my bones, goose bumps broke out all over my
flesh. I couldn't even scream, I was so scared. But then, the fear
just kind of locked in on me. She was sobbing in such horrible pain
that I did manage to reach out and touch her. And she looked at me
and said, 'You told me that you'd tell Charisse. You don't
understand, she supported me, and she had nothing, and I knew
that I was dying, but that it would be all right, because when I
died, she could sell the diamonds, and she and the children would
be okay. Please, she cared for an old woman when no one else cared,
she with Ben dead in that awful train accident, with two jobs and
three children. You've got to help me, help her, you have to, she
can't hear me, though I try so hard.' I knew, I just knew then,
that she was dead, that she was a ghost, and that I was somehow
communicating with her just as if she were real, and sitting with
me, talking to me, in the middle of the night."

"Perhaps you were dreaming," he said. His tone was logical and
matter-of-fact, but he wasn't looking at her as if she were
insane.

"Perhaps I was. But it gets even better." She paused just a
moment, watching him carefully. "You see, Josh was there again. It
was as if he had come in behind the woman. And he seemed as natural
about being there as if we were back in school, and he had met up
with me in the cafeteria. 'Darcy, please, she just needs a little
help. She can reach you, and she can't get through to her
granddaughter. Darcy, it's a little thing. Just find her
granddaughter,' he told me."

"So..." Matt said, and the word was elongated, betraying a
bint of doubt. "You told Josh that you would find the woman's
granddaughter?"

She smiled. "No."

"Then what?"

"I don't really remember. I woke in the morning, certain that
I'd had a dream myself. But I couldn't quite accept that. I went
back to the church, and I found the minister, and I asked if there
had been a funeral the day before that might have involved a woman
named Charisse. He said yes, that a young woman named Charisse
Whittaker had been the one to make arrangements for the funeral of
her grandmother, Lanie Beacon. He asked if I was a friend of
Charisse's. I told him not exactly, but that I had known Lanie. He
seemed surprised, since apparently, Lanie had been very ill for
some time. I asked if he could get a note to Charisse for me, so I
wrote suggesting that she look in the Shirley Temple doll for the
diamonds. He promised to get it to her for me."

"And he did?" Matt queried.

Darcy nodded. He wasn't touching her. He just leaned against the
balcony, listening, as if she was telling him about any event in
her past.

"And then?"

She hesitated. "Three days later, Charisse called me. She was
practically hysterical with gratitude, she had been nearly
destitute, paying off her grandmother's bills. Though Lanie had
been sick for a long time, apparently, she hadn't been in her right
mind before she had died, and so she hadn't told Charisse much of
anything about her jewelry. She had known that her grandmother had
a few pieces, and had hoped to sell them to be able to pay off the
funeral and medical bills. As it turned out, Lanie had actually had
quite a small fortune in jewelry, gifts her mother had given her
from her family, who had been some kind of Russian nobility. At any
rate, Charisse was grateful to me, and sadder than ever about
Lanie, because her grandmother had been so careful to hold on to
the gems so that she might have them when Lanie died. She asked me
how I knew, and I told her the truth. She didn't seem to doubt me
at all, she just kept saying thank you and asking me if I needed
any financial help or if I wanted any kind of reward. I told her
that I was fine and that I hoped everything would go well for her
and her children."

"She didn't want to meet you to say thanks?" Matt asked.

Darcy smiled wryly. "She couldn't have been nicer or more
grateful-on the phone. She expressed no desire to meet me. I think
the whole thing was quite...creepy for her."

"After that?" Matt asked.

"There were more...happenings. I was a theater major at the
time. When I first went to college, despite what had happened on
prom night and after, I thought I had the perfect life. I was in
school in New York City. There was competition coming out of the
woodwork, but I was also in the land of opportunity. I had
wonderful film classes as well. An opportunity to work part-time
for MTV. And, yes, I had some work modeling and I was making really
decent money for a student. Then, I dreamed one night that I was at
a funeral with a friend whose brother had died. It was so real that
I told her how sorry I was the next day. She wanted to know why I
was sorry. I realized that I had been dreaming, but then a week
later her brother was killed in a boating accident. Naturally, I
went to the funeral. And she accepted my condolences then, but I
could see in her eyes she didn't want me anywhere near her, it was
almost as if...as if I had somehow caused it to happen. I was
seeing someone at the time too. Fairly seriously. We broke off that
night. I felt terrible. As if I were some kind of a pariah. I went
out to Queens the next day, to the cemetery. And I didn't actually
see Josh then, but it was as if I could hear him. I wasn't exactly
suicidal-but I was feeling fairly desperate. But while I was just
sitting there, I felt as if Josh were by me, telling me that I
needed to go and see his father. I remembered Adam, how very kind
he had been to me at Josh's funeral. While I was having that
thought, I could swear that I saw all kinds of ghosts walking
around the cemetery. One man in particular. He was wearing some
kind of a uniform, but I didn't know what it was. I walked over to
the gravestone where he was standing, and saw that he had died in
1780. The gravestone was hard to read, it was broken and untended,
but I finally made out the words 'Revolutionary Hero.' So...I
started telling him how grateful the nation was for all that had
been done to give us our freedom, that we were far from perfect,
but a truly great nation in the ideals for which they had fought
and died. Anyway, he smiled, and disappeared, and I didn't feel
quite so terrible, and the next day, I looked up Adam
Harrison."

"And he told you that you weren't ill, or insane, but that you
had a special gift?" Matt asked. She couldn't tell if there was
skepticism in his voice or not.

"Not that day," Darcy told him, smiling. "He broke down crying,
and asked me about Josh, and I told him that Josh was just as he
had always been, kind and there to help. And he asked me, next time
I saw or heard his son, to tell him how much he had loved him, and
cherished every day that he'd had him with him. Then he asked me to
come back. That's where we began. I did go back. I submitted to all
kinds of tests, and I met other people who worked for him. People
who experienced events the way that I had, and people with
different forms of...extrasensory perception. I wasn't going
to go back to school at first, but Adam suggested that I should,
that we would keep close contact, and that he would be ready for me
full-time whenever I was ready to come back. My interests had
changed, however. I wanted to study human psychology, to help me
deal with the people who had a bad time dealing with me. And
I was fascinated then with history, architecture, old
homes...." She paused, shrugging again. "And I'm a good student. I
don't think my IQ is off the board or anything, but I'd always had
a good bent toward the academic. So I studied, acquired the degrees
I wanted...and then went back to Adam. Full-time."

He was quiet, watching her, waiting, perhaps, for her to say
more. The night breeze continued to drift gently around them.

There was no more to say. And she was disturbed to realize just
how anxious she was for him to say something that would show he
wasn't so disturbed by her that he would turn away. Not now,
perhaps. He was, in his way, a true gentleman. Raised to
courtesy.

She didn't want to care. She knew better than to care. She
shouldn't have gotten involved in any way with him, because she had
studied so hard, learned so much about the human psyche. When she
frightened people, they turned away. By the nature of her
existence, she frightened people.

"So...?" she murmured, wishing she didn't sound quite so
desperate. She had longed to sound casual. Things were the way they
were. She couldn't change the way that she was-God knew, she would
have done so years ago were it possible.

"There must be a certain satisfaction in feeling that you've
helped someone," he said. "Even if it does happen to be someone
dead."

He sounded polite, courteous, and even gentle.

"Are you making fun of me?" she asked very quietly.

"No."

"But I know that you don't believe in ghosts, or the occult, in
any way."

He smiled. "I can't say that I'm convinced. That I can suddenly
fall on my knees and say that I'm a true believer."

"Then?"

"I believe in you," he told her.

The breeze moved.

She must have heard him wrong.

"What?" she whispered.

He made a move toward her, taking her into his arms. His thumb
stroked her chin in a way that made her incredibly warm. His
eyes touched hers.

"You are quite different."