The Blackham Mansion Haunting (The Downwinders Book 4) (4 page)

“Henry’s group met at his house routinely and developed a
reputation for a short time as the séance not to be missed. Most were locals,
but some traveled from Idaho and Nevada to participate. They liked to try and
contact the people buried in the cemetery next door, although some members of
the town found that distasteful and expressed objections. People I talked to remembered
participating in a few of the séances, and their descriptions of it were quite
colorful and exciting, with rappings, ectoplasm, object manifestation — the
whole shebang.

“For a while it was an every-night, sometimes all-night
affair. Besides the frequent guests who would attend once or twice, there was a
loyal group of followers who rarely missed a séance. Amasa Lyman was not one of
them; his notoriety within the state kept him traveling. But a couple of his
sons were heavily involved and committed to the practice. There were others,
too; Mormon names you’d recognize. They met there and by all accounts conducted
very intense and lengthy séances.

“There were other places where it was popular, too…plenty of
places in Salt Lake, Ogden, Price, Logan. When the national fascination with it
faded, it left those towns. But it didn’t really stop in Paragonah. Henry
hosted séance after séance, and the core group of participants stuck with it,
as those with a passing interest peeled away.

“Then, suddenly, just after the turn of the century, it came
to a sudden stop.”

Winn was ready to ask, “What happened?” but he could tell the
professor was about to continue and didn’t want to interrupt.

“At first, participants began to disappear. One of the
members of the circle wouldn’t be there when it completed. It’s as if they’d
gotten up and walked out during it, and no one noticed. At first, people
thought that was exactly what had happened — that for one reason or another,
someone just got up and left while it was dark, and assumed they were at home. Trouble
was, they weren’t at home, or in town, or anywhere to be found. They just disappeared
into thin air, never to be seen again.

“As I mentioned, by this point Spiritualism was no longer
fashionable and was looked down upon by the tight-knit Mormon communities. The
disappearances became a big problem for the group. Family members of the
missing people began to point fingers at the group, accusing them of killing
and hiding the bodies as part of a ritual. The Spiritualists were mystified by
it all, and some of them dropped out, frightened by the disappearances, afraid
it might happen to them, too, if they continued. Others just wanted to disassociate
themselves with the movement, embarrassed by the growing notoriety surrounding
the vanishings.

“But a core group of seven or eight people continued to meet
and hold their séances, regardless. They were dedicated, true believers. They
wanted to discover what was happening, and felt that contacting the dead would
be the easiest way to get the answer. It turned out to be a bad decision.”

“What happened?” Deem asked, nearly on the edge of her seat.

“The whole group were found in the house, all knocked out
cold,” the professor said. “It was as if they’d fallen into a coma, and
couldn’t be revived. Family members took their bodies and cared for them until
they eventually passed. None of them survived.”

“Henry was one of those people. His wife, who never participated
in the séances, was the one who found them. She kept him at home for a while,
caring for him, but she moved from the mansion soon after, and the place went
vacant. It was unsellable in Paragonah — the entire town considered it a
haunted, evil place, and wanted nothing to do with it. When outsiders inquired
about purchasing it, they were rebuffed so strongly it never sold, and it stayed
within the family to this day. I don’t think the current owners give it much
mind.

“Naturally, such a place is going to live on within a town’s
folklore, at least for a while following the events that established its
reputation. It became the target of many childish dares over the years. For a
while the popular teenage challenge was to spend a night in the house. That
stopped when people who took the dare were found comatose the next morning,
just like Henry and his group. This cemented the reputation of the place as
demonic and cursed.

“Over the years, many have considered the idea of a curse
irrational, and set off to prove it wrong. There were more incidents of people
becoming unresponsive after sleeping in the house. The town considered condemning
and leveling the place several times, but the family was never amenable to that
idea, and no local contractor was willing to set foot on the property to take
the work. So it sat.”

The professor stopped and took a long drink from his root
beer can. “The most recent rumors are certainly urban myth, built upon the
reputation of the place. Hardly worth mentioning.”

“I’d like to hear them,” Deem said.

“Well, as I say, you must classify what I’m about to tell you
as the typical kind of irrational story that grows from an historical place not
well documented, such as the Blackham mansion. In more recent times, it’s said
that spending a night in the house will cause you to wake up somewhere else,
miles away. As though you’re picked up and moved while you sleep!” He scoffed,
taking another sip. “People say all kinds of crazy things you have to discount.
I’ll never forget one old woman I talked to. She said that when they were kids,
they dared each other to go in and try to get away from ‘the Creepsis.’ I asked
her what the Creepsis was, and she said it was what they called the thing that
walked around in the house.” He chuckled. “I found the name so unusual; it
really made an impression on me. I tried looking into the etymology of it, but
came up dry. I’ve remembered it all these years. Creepsis!” He chuckled again.
To Winn it seemed like feigned amusement.

“Wow,” Deem said, turning to look at Winn. He could tell she
was a bit overwhelmed by the information, unsure what to make of it or how to
respond.

“Was there ever any attempt to explain what happened to Henry?”
Winn asked. “Or explain what happened to his friends?”

“There was one point of coincidence,” the professor replied,
“that had a lot of people in Paragonah speculating a hundred years ago. The
disappearances seemed to occur around the same time an executed serial killer
was buried at the cemetery. Some people felt the serial killer’s conviction was
erroneous and that they’d hung the wrong man, citing the subsequent disappearances
at the Blackham mansion as evidence of the man’s innocence. The odd thing about
that theory was that the only people disappearing were the ones in Henry’s
house, the ones participating in the séance. That led others to believe that
the serial killer’s ghost was continuing the work it had conducted in life,
preying on the souls of the people in the séance. Members of the church in the
town saw it as a just result of the participants having opened themselves to
communication with the other side. It became a popular sacrament meeting
subject, and helped turn the tide in the area against Spiritualism of any kind.
Particularly in Paragonah.”

“Do you know who the serial killer was?” Deem asked.

“A man by the name of Willard Bingham. He was accused of a
string of murders from St. George to Tremonton over three years. There was
plenty about him in the local records. By all accounts his murders were violent
and gruesome. There was a lot of brutality in the west at that time, and people
were a lot more accustomed to lawlessness. Even by those standards, Bingham was
a monster. Of course, his reputation made it easy to hang more on him after
he’d been put in the ground.”

“Do you think that’s true?” Deem asked. “The serial killer
was responsible for the disappearances at Blackham mansion?”

“Of course not!” the professor replied. “Pure superstition! At
that point the killer was incapable of doing anything other than rotting. Why,
do you think he rose from the grave and spirited those people away?”

“Maybe,” Winn replied. “I’ve seen the dead do some pretty despicable
things.”

Winn watched as the professor cocked his head at him. “I’m
sure you didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Cloward said. “I tell you these
details merely in the role of repeating folklore, not because I believe any of
it. The facts of the matter are the house and its inhabitants. The rest is
speculation, and I’m relating that as context. Nothing more.”

“Did they ever find the bodies of the ones who disappeared?”
Deem asked.

“No. Not that I ever found in my research. There were some
memorial markers placed, but from what I could discover there were no bodies
under them.”

“Then what do you think happened to them?” Winn asked.

“That is a mystery,” the professor replied emphatically, “and
will likely remain one for a very long time. I can tell you that in my line of
work, some lines of inquiry just come to an end, and you can’t find anyone
living or any document anywhere that can explain the conclusion of the story,
and you have to live with a string of unexplained events that appear unusual
because we don’t have all the facts.” He paused, looking at them for agreement.
“Happens all the time. It doesn’t mean anything supernatural occurred, such as
the ghost of a serial killer kidnapping or killing them. Right?”

Winn could tell the professor was well practiced at
explaining a rational theory and having others agree with it.
You’d have to
be, to be a successful academic,
he thought.
In his line of work, no
one’s going to take you seriously if you espouse supernatural explanations. He
wouldn’t have had a career if he did. But there’s a part of him that doesn’t
entirely believe everything he’s saying. Do I call him out on it? I know Deem’s
not going to bring up what she experienced in the house, and he already
suspects I’m not on the level, with what I said about the dead. What do I tell
a closet-gifted professor emeritus with such a strongly voiced opinion?

“Right,” Deem injected, smiling while agreeing with him. “We
appreciate your time.”

The professor stood and escorted them back through the house,
asking them questions about where they’d gone to school and what careers they
hoped to have later in life. They exchanged goodbyes at the front door, and
Winn observed the professor’s grandson tugging on the starter cord of the
lawnmower, trying to revive it. He walked across the grass to the kid.

“You look tired,” he said, watching the child tug on the cord
without success. Sweat was pouring down his forehead.

“This lawn is brutal,” the boy replied, “and this mower
sucks.”

“How about I tell the old man you flooded it, and it needs to
sit for a few?”

“Would you?” the kid asked. “He’d never believe me if I said it.
He’d think I was trying to get out of working.”

“Sure, kid,” Winn said, turning to walk back to Deem, who was
already at the Jeep. He called back to the professor over his shoulder.

“He flooded it! It’s gotta sit for ten minutes before it’ll
start!” Cloward acknowledged him with a wave.

He got into the Jeep, and Deem joined him.

“It wasn’t flooded, was it?” Deem asked.

“I don’t think so,” Winn replied. “I didn’t smell any gas.”

“Why’d you lie to him?”

“He’s been lying to himself his whole life,” Winn replied. “He’s
used to lies.”

When they arrived at Carma’s several hours later, they found
David sleeping in the drawing room and Carma on the phone.

“I don’t understand what you mean by an e-ticket,” she said.
“Why can’t you just deliver the tickets to the house, like last time?”

Winn and Deem exchanged quick glances, wondering what Carma
was up to. Then they wandered to the back porch, hoping to leave David asleep.
Winn turned on the misters, and a light fog of water began to descend from the
awning overhead.

“The water’s too hot for the first minute or so,” Deem said,
retreating to a shady area away from the nozzles. “It makes me feel like a
lobster.”

“It’s too hot out here not to have them on,” Winn replied.
“They’ll cool down in a minute.” He landed in a recliner.

“What do you think Carma is up to?” Deem asked. “Sounded like
travel planning to me.”

“Who knows,” Winn replied, closing his eyes and waiting for
the mist to cool.

Carma burst onto the patio, a notepad in hand. “I don’t
understand! Perhaps one of you can explain it to me.”

“Explain what?” Deem asked.

Carma sat in a padded chair next to Winn and began fanning
herself with the pad. “Oh, those misters are way too hot!” she said, looking up
at the tubing and nozzles that encircled the awning. “Awful, annoying water!”

“Give them a minute, they’ll cool down,” Winn said. “Ten
minutes from now it’ll be nice and comfortable out here.”

“These travel agents!” Carma said, looking once again at her
pad. “They’re so lazy nowadays. They won’t run the tickets out to the house
like they used to. I say it’s damned inconvenient.”

“You going somewhere?” Winn asked.

“No, Winn, you are,” Carma replied. “You’re going to take
David to a specialist in Missoula. You have a flight out of St. George in three
hours. Unfortunately the travel agent is being very uncooperative, and you only
have e-tickets, whatever the hell those are.”

“I didn’t know there was any other kind of airline ticket,”
Deem said. “What, they used to be made of paper?”

“What else would they be made out of?” Carma replied,
exasperated. “It’s a
ticket
. It
has
to be made of paper,
otherwise, how would you use it? What’s an e-ticket made out of? Air?” Her eyes
widened as she looked at the two of them for an answer.

“When’s the last time you booked a flight with your travel
agent?” Deem asked. “And they sent you paper tickets?”

“Not that long ago,” Carma replied. “Ten, twenty years?”

“Before I was born,” Deem muttered.

Carma paused. “Don’t say that. It makes me feel old.”

“No one’s used paper tickets for years now,” Winn said. “Your
travel agent can’t deliver them because they don’t even print them anymore.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous,” Carma said, leaning back in her
chair and raising her face to the misters, which had finally begun to cool.
“How do they know whom to let on the plane?”

“You show your ID and give them the confirmation number,”
Deem replied. “That’s all you need.”

“Well, no wonder 9/11 happened!” Carma said, flabbergasted.

“What time is the flight?” Winn asked.

“6 PM,” Carma replied. “I couldn’t get you all the way
through to Missoula tonight, so you’ll stay in Salt Lake overnight, then take a
7 AM flight tomorrow morning. The appointment with the specialist is at 10, and
your flight back is at 4. You’ll be back in St. George round 9 PM tomorrow. It
would all be in an itinerary, but they refused to drive that out to the house,
either. They wanted to email it. I refused.”

“Let me call the travel agent and give them my email
address,” Winn replied. “They can send it to me.”

“Here’s their number,” Carma said, turning the pad to Winn.
As he plugged the number into his phone, he saw the notes Carma had made about
other parts of the trip — the car rentals, the hotel, and the prices. It added
up to quite a bit of money.

Once he finished with the travel agent, Winn put his phone
away and turned to Carma. “They’re sending it to me.”

“How?”

“Email. On my phone.”

“Oh, good heavens!” Carma said, irritated. “How will you
print it?”

“I don’t need to print it, it’s on my phone,” Winn replied.

“Well, that’s completely unacceptable!” Carma sputtered.
“What if your phone battery dies? Then what will you do?”

“I’ll email a copy to David,” Winn said. “Our phones won’t
both die.”

Carma threw up her hands and raised her face to the misters.
“This world, going straight to hell in a handbasket…” she muttered upward.

“This trip is last minute,” Winn said to her. “I saw on your
pad how much it cost. Are you sure? That’s a lot of money, Carma.”

Carma sighed. Winn could see the coolness of the mist calming
her, and the muscles on her face relaxed. “Money is the least of my concerns.
I’m far more concerned about that boy and figuring out what’s wrong with him.”

“Who’s the specialist?” Winn asked.

Carma raised her head back into position and looked again at
her pad, turning back a page. She ripped the paper from the pad and handed it
to Winn.

“At least that’s on paper,” she said. “Winston Talbot.
Outside of Batchelder, he’s the closest. I wouldn’t send either of you boys to
Batchelder ever again, given how she treated you before. The woman is a
total…well, you know.”

“I believe you called her a c-word,” Deem said.

“Yes, she’s a c-word,” Carma replied. “So Winston is our best
bet. I’ve already made arrangements for the bill to come here, so don’t let him
extort money out of you, either.”

“I don’t have any extra clothes here,” Winn said, rising up
from the lounger. “I should go back to Moapa and pick up some.”

“You don’t have time,” Carma replied. “Buy a few in Salt Lake
tonight to get you through. I’ll give you some cash.”

“Well, thank you, Carma, but you don’t have to do that,” Winn
said.

“Back in the day, long before they got really good at
catching counterfeiters, Lyman made a killing,” Carma said, reaching into the
pocket on her house dress. “For the last hundred years it’s all been invested,
so money is the least of our concerns right now, young man.” She peeled off
five one-hundred dollar bills and handed them to Winn. “That should cover the
cars and the hotel and food, with a little left over for clothes. And buy a
little something for David, too, to lift his spirits.”

Winn turned to look at Deem, his surprise hanging on his face
like a mask. It had been a while since he’d seen five hundred dollars sitting
in the palm of his hand. Deem just shrugged at him. He felt himself slowly raising
his jaw back into position, and he lay back down on the lounger.

“Well, thank you, Carma,” Winn said, tucking the money into
his jeans. “I appreciate it. That’s very kind of you. I’ll spend it carefully.”

“Maybe some tighter jeans,” Carma said, rising from her chair
and walking back to the house. “I know you’ve got plenty to display, and the
ones you’re wearing require far too much imagination for my taste.” She
disappeared inside.

Winn turned back to Deem, who was blushing. “She’s a dirty
old woman!” he said, laughing.

“No comment!” Deem replied, suppressing a smile.

▪
▪
▪

He doesn’t seem sick,
Winn thought as they passed through the small security line
at the airport, keeping an eye on David in front of him. They found a spot to
sit in front of large windows that offered an end-to-end view of the runway.

“You look like you’re used to travel,” Winn said to him, as
they settled into seats and placed their bags on the floor.

“My parents flew everywhere,” David replied. “A lot on
business, but some for pleasure, vacations. They took me along once I was old
enough. I’m used to airports.”

“And this leg from St. George to Salt Lake,” Winn replied, “I
suppose you’re used to that, too.”

“They were prop planes, back when the airport was on the mesa
above Bluff Street,” David said. “Really bumpy during the summer. Not so bad
since they built this new airport and you can take a jet.”

Winn hadn’t done much traveling in his life. His mother left
him with nothing but a trailer for an inheritance. He’d sold it and bought his
own after she died, not wanting to keep memories of her around. Then he found
the cheapest plot of land he could plant his trailer on — the outskirts of tiny
Moapa, Nevada. Occasional construction jobs kept him going, and it was all he
needed to get by; he owned the trailer and his Jeep outright, and he didn’t
have expensive tastes. Quite the opposite.

David, on the other hand, was accustomed to money. Winn had
seen David’s house when they helped him empty it in preparation for going on
the market. It was a large, comfortable place, full of mementos of family trips
and expensive toys like ATVs. In the days following the discovery of his
parents’ murder, Carma had stepped in to help David manage his inheritance, and
David had decided to sell the house and as much of the furnishings as possible.
They’d removed all of the personal items and put the home up for sale. Winn
suspected that between the sale of the house and whatever life insurance his
parents possessed, David was well off and might never need to work a day in his
life. Carma hadn’t directly confirmed it, but he knew she wasn’t worried about
David’s financial situation.

What had been much harder was allowing the bodies to be
found; exposing the graves in such a way that no one could implicate David.
They all knew who murdered David’s parents — Lizzy had confessed before Deem
killed her.
Killed herself
, he heard Deem correct inside his head. Deem
had been emphatic that everyone remember it the right way: Lizzy’s attempt to
kill Deem resulted in Lizzy killing herself. But they couldn’t share that
information with the authorities without wrapping themselves up in an
unexplainable story that would never be believed.

They spent some hard time with David, going over options. The
easiest was to just leave his parents in the desert, where they’d likely remain
unfound. Both Carma and David were against it. In the end, they found a way for
a random hiker to call in a suspicious grave off the old highway. When there’s
a large collection of birds hovering in one spot in the desert, it’s usually a
bad sign. Clark Country deputies took care of the rest.

It allowed David closure. The funerals were tough, but David
had a solid group of friends from high school and college that got him through
it, and he moved into the room at Carma’s house immediately after Carma
extended the invitation. David had been overwhelmed by the prospect of dealing
with his parents’ estate, but Carma stepped in to guide him through the
details. It had been a rough couple of months, but they survived together. Winn
remembered a recent dinner at Carma’s when David had broken down, thanking them
for what they did to keep him going through it all. He said he considered them
his new family, and that he knew they couldn’t replace his parents, but he was
grateful that they’d filled a huge gap in his life. Winn had been touched by
the kid’s sincerity, and it had softened a good amount of the animosity he’d
initially felt toward him.

Now, sitting in the airport, waiting to fly to Salt Lake,
some of the animosity returned, and it bothered him.
Petty,
he thought.
You’re
being petty. Yes, David has more money than you. So does Carma. Deem too,
probably — her family is well off. You’re just white trailer trash who marveled
at five hundred dollars like you’ve never seen that much money in one place.
None of the others would have considered five hundred dollars significant
enough to drool over. It was just disposable spending money to Carma, but you
reacted like she’d given you a handful of diamonds. Kinda pathetic.

And now David talking about how familiar travel was to him
and his family.
He probably went to all kinds of exotic places with his
parents,
he thought, feeling resentment rising. He knew it was irrational
and unfounded to feel that way, but it was there, nonetheless.
Popular high
school quarterback who probably never had to worry about anything a day in his
life.

Except his parents.
Oh yeah, forgot about that for a second.
He felt bad,
and the resentment dissipated. However privileged David might have been, he
didn’t deserve to lose his parents, especially not the way he lost them;
throats slit, their eyes burst.

Of course, before he lost them, he had parents who loved him
and he loved back,
he thought.
I never had that. Not for a moment. I have no idea how that
feels.
The resentment returned.

Why am I riding this stupid rollercoaster?
he thought.
Don’t be more
pathetic that you already are. Stop.