Twelfth Night (A Wendover House Mystery Book 2) (7 page)

“Tim was following me but he stopped about four feet out.
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t do it.’ But if course I had to—guys code, right? He’d
dared me and we made a bet. So I kept going even though I didn’t want to. I got
right to the chair and reached out a hand—and it was shaking by then—but just
before I could touch the chair back, something jerked it away. Only a couple
inches, but I swear it moved.

“That was enough for me. I felt sick to my stomach and am
sure I looked it because Tim pulled me away and rushed for the door. The people
in the bar laughed behind us. We moved as fast as we could back onto the
street. Outside it was still warm, but we had to walk several blocks before I
could get warm. While we were walking, Tim told me the story about Fat Friday
and how
Del’s
old girlfriend Mona had finally had
enough of him beating on her. She walked into the club on Christmas Day and
shot him in that very chair. He’s been there ever since. It’s his blood
staining that table. Nothing can get it out.” Jack’s voice was revolted, his
face pale. I knew better than anyone the kind of fear he had felt. It happens
at the brainstem and can’t be intellectualized away, no matter how many logical
arguments you make. When you touch the
other
,
you are changed by it.

I glanced at Ben and could see he was fascinated. He would
be. This kind of thing was right up his alley. Jack and Brandy were probably
going to appear in a book someday soon—well disguised, of course, and probably
released under a pen name.

“The new owner tried getting rid of the chair because now
two guys had been killed while sitting in it and the thing was clearly bad
luck, but the first guy he hired to carry it up the stairs got shoved down the
staircase—by nobody he could see. The next guy tried to take it out in a
freight elevator out back, but it got jammed, the whole mechanism fused like a
welder had been at it.”

Ben grunted encouragingly. I knew he was taking mental
notes.

“Night after night, the barkeep would come in and find a
shot glass on the table and broken bottles on the floor. Finally they gave in
and just started pouring out a glass every night once the sun went down. Fat
Friday had had his routine and he was sticking to it.

“Tim told me that he had tried to sit in the chair before
but had been so unnerved that he’d chickened out before he reached the table.
He wanted to know if it was just his nerves reacting to the story or if
something was really there in the bar. That’s why he’d tried to get me to do it
for him.

“I can’t prove anything, but something was there—and I
wouldn’t go in that bar again for any amount of money. I put it out of mind
because you can get brain damage thinking about spooks and stuff, but I haven’t
really forgotten. So, yeah, Brandy, I believe you about your ghost. I totally
and completely believe you.”

The spell broke. The bubble of silence popped and I could
again hear the clock ticking off the seconds, counting down the hours.

“I knew someone,” the queen said abruptly, her words
slightly slurred. I think we were all a little startled to hear her speak. She’d
been silent for hours. “She was blind. So she couldn’t see her ghost, but she
could hear it. And it was nasty—oh yes, it was.”

There was a giggle but it didn’t last long. The memory of
her blind friend brought up some buried fear and it cut through the alcohol and
laughter.

Some amount of dread is pleasant, but we had passed beyond
that point. We weren’t telling stories
anymore,
we
were conducting therapy and maybe even exorcism. I think we all probably wanted
to stop it, but our fascination was ever stronger. We were compelled to go on.

“Her name was Liz—is Liz, I guess. She was from upstate.
Tough broad.
Peace Corps, but not the kind
usually drawn to nursing.
Not really my type—too
cunnin
’.
But I knew her from school and I’d heard
about her accident—and I was in Bangor anyway, so I did my Christian duty and looked
her up.”

Her Majesty’s lips were small and pursed. Mary looked like
her usual sour self. It shouldn’t surprise me to learn that she had ever lived
anywhere else since she had obviously gone to nursing school, but somehow it
did come as a shock. She felt like a fixture of the island, as trapped here as
any of my family had ever been.

“I got to her apartment near dusk. It was on the third
floor. There was no elevator and the stairs were dark. I was wet because it had
started raining and I had forgotten my umbrella. The day had started sunny
enough, but you just can’t trust the weather in October. Though I think now maybe
that wasn’t why it was raining.”

Her eyes flicked over to me and then quickly away.

“Liz was always kind of pale but I could see right off that
she wasn’t well. She was also packing up boxes as fast as she could. There were
clothes and books all over the floor. At first I thought maybe she looked so
bad because of the accident—’cause she was overdoing it, making herself sick.
The wreck took her eyes but also broke several bones.

“But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all….”

Everett took her hand and Mary smiled gratefully, easing her
hard features into something more attractive. It was a kind gesture on
Everett’s part and surprised me a little. I tend to think of him as being a
universal jerk, but of course he isn’t really—just, say, about ninety-five
percent jerk.

Her other hand crept up to the table and gripped the edge.
The black taffeta of her dress crackled as she leaned forward. When she spoke,
her voice was no longer colorless, and once the dam opened she was—like the
others—a verbal river in
spate
, words pouring out of
her with more turbulence than precision. We understood her though even with the
confusing pronouns that littered the story.

“We both knew a girl in college named Caroline. Kind of mean,
dishonest, though Liz would make excuses for her because Caroline worshipped
her. You know the type. A little dumb too. Heavy—fat really.
Digging
her grave with an ice-cream spoon because she was so miserable.”
This
was the Mary I knew—judgmental and spiteful. “She flunked out the first year—no
stomach for the work—and she went to char for some old lady downstate who
needed a practical nurse. Liz didn’t keep particular track of Caroline after she
left school, but Caroline liked Liz and always sent a Christmas card telling her
what she was up to, and Liz felt obliged to write back.”

“One day, at the end of summer, about a week after Liz came
home from the rehabilitation center, Caroline turned up on her doorstep. At
first Liz thought she was being nice, checking on a sick friend, but that
wasn’t it. Caroline hadn’t even heard about the accident.”

Mary took a few deep breaths. No one spoke. Even the fire
seemed still and listening as we neared the part that frightened her. That
would frighten us.

“I don’t know what really happened. Just what Liz thinks
happened.
And that….
That is bad enough.”

Everett squeezed her fingers. He wasn’t smirking. No one
was.

“Liz said that Caroline thought she was being followed—haunted—by
the old lady she used to work for. The old woman had died. No one was surprised
about it because she was old and ill—and so damned mean that people were kind
of happy she was gone and not about to ask questions. Liz said that she thought
… she thought that maybe Caroline had killed her. Maybe gave her too much
medicine.
Or not enough.
Caroline didn’t admit that,
but what she did tell Liz was that when the family refused to pay her last
week’s wages, she took the old lady’s pearls. They were old and big, hidden in
her dresser, and Caroline figured she deserved a bonus so she … she took them
when she left the house.”

Okay, so maybe Mary wasn’t being spiteful. Maybe Caroline really
wasn’t a nice person.

“Almost at once things started to happen to Caroline. At
first it was just that she kept hearing the old lady’s walker in her bedroom at
night. The right front wheel had squeaked. She asked Caroline to oil it, but the
lazy girl never did. Caroline tried sleeping in the living room, but the sound
followed her. She went to a motel, but still she kept hearing the squeaking.
Then other things began to happen. Caroline said that the ghost was trying to
hurt
her, that
it broke glass when she stood near
windows or mirrors, and made the gas stove turn on when she went to sleep at
night.”

Mary reached for her wine glass with her free hand and took
a long drink of the mulled wine.

“Liz was shocked by all this, of course. She told Caroline
that if she believed that she was being haunted she should give the necklace
back to the family. I don’t think Liz really thought there was a ghost, but you
have to say something, right? But Caroline said she didn’t think that it would
help to give the necklace back because she didn’t know where the family was,
and the old lady hadn’t liked them anyway and planned to be buried with her
pearls—though of course she couldn’t be, because Caroline took them.

“And then Caroline asked if she could leave the necklace
with Liz. Just for a while.

“Liz started to say no, but she heard Caroline put something
on the bookcase across the room. She guessed what she had done and told her to
take the necklace back, that she didn’t want stolen property at her house.
Caroline got hysterical. She started to cry and plead. Liz kept saying no, she
wouldn’t keep it. Then they both heard it, a squeaking. Like a wheel. And it
came right through the front door. It was in the hall and then it was in the
room.

“Caroline gasped and then panicked. Liz doesn’t know exactly
what happened, but a window broke and there was a scream and … and Caroline
fell out. There was an iron fence under the window and…. Liz wanted to go to
her but she said that she—she felt something.
In the room.
Looking at her.
Something cold and
cruel and calculating.
After a moment the squeaking retreated and Liz
said she knew she was alone again.

“Out in the street people
were
yelling. She wanted to check on Caroline—though what could she do, being blind,
and anyway, she had to be dead, didn’t she? But first Liz needed to make sure
the necklace wasn’t still there.
Because police would come to
the apartment to talk to her.
But mostly because she was afraid of what
she felt in the room with her and didn’t want it to come back looking for its
property.”

I could understand the blind woman’s feelings. Mary’s
description was beastly and the small hairs of my arms were standing on end. I,
too, had had a horrible feeling when I touched a ghost’s possessions. From my
reading I had already learned that not all ghosts are orderly, predictable, and
methodical. But some are, and the ones who are not just emotional residue, just
lingering impressions of some event, they are aware and capable of harm. I
hadn’t felt that Hannah wanted to hurt me, but could she mean harm to someone
else at my table? Could I let that happen? Could I stop it?

“Liz wasn’t used to being blind yet so it took a while to
search the bookcase and all around the floor, but the necklace wasn’t there.
Either Caroline had had it when she fell. Or the—the ghost took it.

“Liz moved out as soon as she could and went home to her
folks. She had wanted to try making it on her own but she was too scared to
stay there. I saw her on her last day in the apartment and she made me look
everywhere to be sure that the necklace wasn’t still there someplace. It
wasn’t. I checked every box we packed. Just to be sure.
Because
part of me believed her—believed the ghost had been there.

“It’s been thirty years but I haven’t forgotten.”

I didn’t think the rest of us would forget either.

“And I have to admit that I feel much safer on the island.
They say ghosts can’t cross water.”

According to my research that wasn’t true. At least certain
types of ghosts who haunted people or movable objects could definitely cross
water. But I didn’t bring this up. It would be cruel to take away her sense of
safety.

Ben expelled a pent-up breath. I think we had all gotten
more than we bargained for when he kicked off the evening with a simple story
about an apprentice. Unfortunately, my plan carried the defect of its virtues.
Everyone was ready to believe me now—and we were all frightened.
Perhaps too frightened.
Would anyone want to help me with my
ghost?

I was considering what to do, but it seemed our cup was
about to
runneth
over. Just when I was ready to
suggest coffee, Bryson decided to share his encounter with the
wyrd
. So I settled back in my chair and let him have his
turn.

“Back in March of ninety-eight, Gus Mason, out at the
lighthouse, came down with appendicitis. Usually there is a backup, but the flu
was going around bad that year and there was no one to
come
help.

“Technically, the lighthouse belongs to Canada and we’re not
supposed to be there without permission, but there was no time to call anyone
once Gus’s appendix burst. So I sent Everett with the life-flight helicopter
and I stayed to mind things so the other keeper, James Monroe—he’s passed on now—wouldn’t
have to pull his head out of the commode.

“The light was dismal because of the clouds, but the weatherman
wasn’t predicting any storms or fog and I figured, it being late March, that
maybe things would stay peaceful.” He glanced at me. I was getting used to it.
Weather, good or bad, was often blamed on the Wendovers.