The Haunting of Maddy Clare (22 page)

Moores shrugged. “We’ll see. Hard to charge someone for destroying their own property, you know. I could fine her for mischief, perhaps—public endangerment. If any sparks had caught on the neighboring buildings, we’d have a serious mess on our hands. However, the Clares are a respected family in these parts. And it didn’t happen.” He rubbed a hand on his forehead. “It’s the rest I can’t make sense of. I’m hearing stories of birds on the roof—crows, to be exact. You see those?”

“Yes,” said Matthew. His former shock had disappeared, and under the constable’s gaze he was strong, confident, and perfectly clear. I marveled at the strength it took. “There were birds on the roof, nesting, it seems. They flew away when the fire got going.”

“A large number of them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You ever recollect seeing crows in such large numbers before?”

“No, sir.”

“Is it true you went back into the barn to rescue Mrs. Clare?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You staying at the inn across the way?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Planning to leave town soon?”

“No, sir.”

“Your friend up there.” Constable Moores jerked his chin vaguely toward the stairs. “I hear he’s had a bit of a breakdown. Is that so?”

Matthew crossed his arms again. “I suppose,” he said.

“Ever happen to him before?”

A muscle twitched in Matthew’s jaw. “Not that I’ve seen.”

“Know him well, do you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’d call him stable—overall?”

“
Yes.
Sir.”

“Ah, well.” The constable rubbed his head again and stood. “I hear he was rambling about attack formations. My own son was sick for a year after he came home. We had to send him away for a time. Your friend had a bit of a shock, then?”

The questions were so subtle, so quick, it was impossible to see how the constable was leading the conversation. “A bit of a shock, yes, I suppose,” Matthew said.

“So, it was there, then.”

“Pardon?”

“The ‘manifestation,’” the constable quoted. “The ghost. You said you were trying to contact it. Looks like you succeeded, or at least your friend thinks you did.”

Matthew was quiet. “Does it matter?” I asked.

Again the constable looked at me as if I’d just come in the room. “I’m just trying to piece the story together, young lady.” His voice was flat, but his sharp eyes took me in. “Did you see this ghost, then?”

“No,” I said, truthfully.

“Ah.” Constable Moores turned back to Matthew. “What about you, son?”

The two men looked at each other, a challenge between them. Something dark passed over Matthew’s eyes. “I didn’t see it,” he said at last.

The constable looked at Matthew for another long moment. “So—perhaps your friend was deluded, then?”

“I don’t know,” said Matthew.

“All right, then.” Constable Moores stood, his shoulders drooping as if admitting defeat. He picked up his round hat. “Don’t leave town, son. You either, young lady. I may need to talk to you again.”

As we ascended the stairs to Alistair’s room, I grasped Matthew’s elbow. “The policeman,” I said. “Perhaps he could help us.”

He paused and looked at me. “I don’t see how.”

“He knows these parts,” I said. “He knows all the people. He may be able to fill in the gaps—find out what happened to Maddy.”

He shook his head. “He won’t help us. He’s more likely to have us locked in a madhouse or a jail before helping us with anything. As far as anyone knows, Maddy simply killed herself. There was no crime.”

“What about the attack before she came to the Clares’? That was certainly a crime.”

“Which they tried to investigate at the time. But when the victim won’t speak, there isn’t much to go on.” He saw my expression. “Sarah, whatever she may have told you in that barn, we can’t go to the police with it.”

“All right,” I said. “We’re on our own. Let’s see if Alistair is awake and I’ll tell you what I know.”

Alistair was awake, propped up against his pillows. He looked groggy and tired, but when he turned his eyes to us, they were his eyes—Alistair’s eyes—we saw. I let out a deep breath of relief. He had come back from his world of delusions.

“Jove,” he said. “My head hurts.”

I sat on the edge of his bed. Matthew pulled a chair near and sat on it, leaning forward. “You all right, old man? It was rather rough back there.”

“I think so.” Alistair rubbed his forehead absently with his fingertips. “I remember the barn—the fire. Was there a fire? Things got all jumbled at that point.”

“There was,” I said. “Everyone is fine.”

“The barn is gone, though,” said Alistair to me. It was not a question.

“Yes,” I said.

His eyes brightened with the old obsession. “Fascinating. If the barn is gone, then where is Maddy?”

I exchanged a look with Matthew. Where, indeed? “I don’t know,” I admitted.

Alistair looked at the ceiling, his eyes calculating, as if he could find answers there. “A dilemma. If the place haunted is destroyed, what happens to the manifestation? Is it tied to the place, or independent of it? Does she leave, or haunt a pile of charred wood?”

“Alistair,” I said, touching his wrist. “We must think quickly. Maddy spoke to me in the barn. She told me things.”

Alistair’s eyes were focused on me now, bright and interested. “What did she say?”

I took a breath, and tried to paraphrase what Maddy had said
in her dark, disturbing language. “We know that when she came to the Clare house she was—injured,” I said.

“Yes, yes.”

“She told me she had been”—I reddened, for I had never spoken of such things before, but I pushed the words out—“violated. By—by three men.”
Three of them on me,
she had said.

Alistair and Matthew were silent now, both staring at me. “Did she name them?” Matthew breathed.

“I don’t think she knows,” I said.
Find them,
I heard Maddy say. “She told me to find them. Did you not feel it? The anger? I thought it would choke me.”

Alistair looked bemused, but Matthew looked shocked. “Yes. I felt it. That was her?”

“Yes. She told me to find the men. As for the rest of it, I think—” I bit my lip. “She kept saying,
Poor little dead girl, staring at the sky
. I think it means to find—where she is buried.”

Again they both looked at me in surprise. “She’s not in the churchyard?” said Alistair.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. She’s given me glimpses—visions of it. Very brief.” I looked from one to the other, watched them realize I had been keeping this from them. “It is only a snapshot—a place in the woods from which I can see a redbrick chimney over the tops of the trees.”

Alistair and Matthew exchanged glances. Matthew shook his head, once. Alistair turned back to me. “It doesn’t sound familiar. You say she’s buried in this place? How do you know?”

“How do I know anything?” I answered. “I don’t—not truly. I can’t prove anything in a court of law. But she showed me this place, and she asked me to find it. She’s furious that she has been buried somewhere. She wants us to right what is wrong.”

“And if we don’t?” Alistair asked, softly.

I looked steadily into his eyes. “She wants you. She told me she’ll—take you, unless I do as she asks.”

“You mean she’ll kill him?” said Matthew.

“I don’t know. I’m afraid it will end up that way, whether she intends it or not. But, Alistair, she seems to be able to—affect your mind. You said things were jumbled. Do you remember anything after the fire?”

“I hardly remember the fire at all,” he admitted. “Everything was mixed up. It was like in dreams, you know, where time has no meaning, and nothing makes sense.” He blinked, remembering, and I saw a look of fear cross his eyes. “She can do that to me, then? Why? Why, in God’s name?”

“She…” I was embarrassed again. “She, ah, likes you.”

“Likes me? I thought she hated men!”

“Not you,” I said. “She finds you…beautiful.”

He stared at me in bewilderment, as did Matthew, and I realized I would not be able to explain. It was the girls who locked themselves away, who had never felt the loving touch of a man, who, when they loved, loved the fiercest. Maddy and I were different in every way, but this much I understood.

Maddy wanted Alistair, and she was determined to have him. And if I did not find the men who had attacked her, if I did not find her grave, she would take Alistair over completely, and she would never think it wrong. He would end up in a madhouse, or, yes, likely dead, perhaps by his own hand. And what would happen to Alistair after death?

I shook away these frightening thoughts and came back to the present. “We need to do something,” I said. “The constable was just downstairs. I thought perhaps he could help.”

“No, no.” Alistair flung back the blanket. He was fully dressed in the bed, and he sat up, scanning the floor for his shoes. “We can’t have the police in this. It’s too crazy. We’ll start with Mrs. Clare—interview her again. Mrs. Macready, too. There may be something they remember that we’ve missed. Then we’ll go back to the inn. Matthew—the recorder?”

“I saved it,” said Matthew. “But not the camera. I’m sorry.”

“Ah. Well, I believe I may have dropped it, right before—right before. It was broken anyway. But the recorder may have picked something up. I’d like to know.”

“And then what?” I asked.

“And then we’ll pay a visit to the sexton, Jarvis,” said Alistair. “He told us he buried Maddy himself. Either he lied, or someone has fooled him. I intend to find out which.”

Mrs. Clare was sedated, and unable to talk to anyone, and Mrs. Macready sent us away. She refused to be interviewed herself. “There’s been too much today,” she said—and, indeed, her reddened face looked tired. “I’ll not have any more. Not for myself, not for my lady. I’ll not be talking to you unless she tells me to, and that’s final.” She looked at us. “You need a rest yourself—all of you do. Maddy is gone. I can feel it, the quiet. We can all rest now.”

I thought of Alistair’s question—where was Maddy with the barn gone? But Alistair simply asked Mrs. Macready, in his sweet, charming manner, if she would relay the message to Mrs. Clare when she woke that he wished to speak with her. We left Falmouth House and walked to the inn.

In the second blow to our plan, we had not even reached the main path before Alistair’s mind began to wander again. He complained of a headache first. Then he cocked his head, as if listening. “Do you hear that? That music?” By the time we got to the
inn, his eyes had started to cloud over, and he was stumbling. He had been given back to us only briefly, and now he was gone again.

I hid my dismay as we helped him to his room, as we laid him on his bed, as Matthew removed his shoes. I hid my panic as he again started to talk of the war. He had come out of his fog once; perhaps he could do it again. But what if he could not?

What would we do without Alistair?

Matthew shut the door behind us as we stepped back out into the hall, and a choked sob escaped my throat. I felt hot tears of despair flow down my cheeks.

Matthew put his hands on my shoulders and looked at me. “Jesus, Sarah.” I could hardly see him through the tears in my eyes. I couldn’t seem to stop crying.

Matthew gripped me harder. “Sarah. Don’t cry. Do you hear me? Don’t cry.” There was a note of desperation in his voice, as if he was near the breaking point himself. “Just don’t, all right? Just don’t.”

I shook my head so vigorously I felt my hair fly against my cheeks, but it was foolish. I was already crying and I could not promise to stop. He let me go and somehow, in that darkened hallway, we swayed toward each other, as if unable to help it. All I knew was that I was closer to him, feeling the warmth coming off him, and it was impossible not to touch him. I slid my arms around his neck and pressed my cheek into his shirt.

He didn’t resist. He stood there, hot against me, and then his hands came up, his palms tentatively pressing my waist. He smelled like smoke and sweat. I closed my eyes. His hands traveled to the small of my back, pressing me closer to him, my belly to his, our bodies flush together. One of his hands rubbed up my back, the palm along my spine. I felt my tears drying on the rough fabric of his shirt beneath my cheek.

With the pressure of his hands, he backed me up. I felt the wall of the dim hallway at my back. He pushed me against it, slow and sure, pressing his body into mine. I raised my head from his shoulder. He tilted my chin and kissed me.

He was insistent, though not rough. He ran his thumb along my jaw and opened my mouth, taking no argument, sliding his tongue into me. I was like hot wax, burning from the ache deep in my belly, my body molding effortlessly to his. I opened my mouth when he bade me, and kissed him back. He was strong beneath my hands, the muscles bunching and flexing along his arms and his back, and I felt him again and again, unable to get enough. One of his hands dropped to my hip and he pressed against me, the two of us fitting together perfectly, and he kissed me harder. My body remembered his, remembered the feel of him inside me. I wanted him again.

He broke the kiss but did not let me go. I felt his warm breath on my lips. In a daze I felt his hand slide up my body, my waist, my rib cage, a touch that felt possessive. He had me pinned to the wall. He looked into my eyes, his own dark with lust and with his uncanny intelligence.