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

And I found this mattered to me more than I had thought. I
was here because I had grown tired of my old existence, heavy with the labor of
keeping my grandmother’s dream alive and light on friendships, because I had no
time for anyone. Here I had made friends, was accepted because of the family
name and because I was making an effort to fit in. Would that change if I began
to bring up the old unpleasantness? Did I want to rock the boat?

Harris would certainly believe my story.
Mary
and the Sands brothers too.
Probably.
But what of Jack and Ben and Brandy?
It is one thing to be
thought a bit unconventional and another to be seen as insane by the last two
friends I had on the outside and my one intellectually inclined neighbor. The
thought of Jack’s pity especially made me squirm.

What to do? Could I go back to being idle and pretend I
didn’t know my ghost was there? I didn’t think that she would let me. I couldn’t
hear her voice with my ears, but her misery was always at the back of my mind
and though it waxed and waned with the daylight hours, the grieving never
ceased. I would sometimes sit quietly, inviting her to talk to me, but she
didn’t talk. Maybe couldn’t talk. So I was left making empathetic guesses and
trying to push the worst of her pain away so I could function. The nonstop
emotional isometrics as we battled for my mood were exhausting. Something had
to be done. Hopefully I had hit on the right thing. We would know soon.

“Having nowhere else to go, the apprentice accepted sleeping
in the basement where at least there was no snow to freeze him.” Ben’s tone was
portentous. Fair enough. Basements are creepy places. I was none too fond of my
own. It needed to be cleaned out but I hadn’t been able to find the will to do
it.
Every time I considered making the effort, inertia pulled
me back.
There was just so much
stuff
down there and I had other distractions luring me away.

Not that I was really getting much done elsewhere. The
autumn had been spent sitting around doing almost nothing except apologizing to
my great-grandfather’s cat, Kelvin, for abandoning him to Ben’s care while I
went back to Minnesota and packed up my belongings and wrapped up business
matters. It took a while to mop up all my unexpected emotions at selling the
paper, and saying my final goodbyes to her friends.

The unusual lethargy that followed me back to Maine was a
form of shock, I think. Getting moved to the island and disposing of my grandmother’s
newspaper had taken more effort than I had expected, even with the help of
Harris Ladd—who very much wanted me on the island for his own whacky reasons
and would move mountains to get me there by New Year’s. He had even arranged
for Mr. Benson, the electrician, to bring power to the house. Wiring a new home
is not difficult, but Wendover House is far from new and Harris was worried
about destroying this architectural marvel.
And maybe
exposing the smugglers who were using my sea cave to store their Canadian
whisky.
Still, he had gone against his better judgment and done this for
me and I was grateful.

My thoughts were dragged back to the table as Victoria
snorted to wakefulness and forced her head erect. Her eyes were bleary. Perhaps
I should make coffee. We had all had a lot to drink. Though I liked people to
be mellow and receptive, I wanted everyone capable of forward thought and
momentum when I told my story. We had some problem solving to do.

Brandy leaned forward and began to fan herself, calling
attention to the very low neckline of her gown. She stared raptly at Benjamin
and my neighbor was enjoying the attention. That was fine. Ben was a sort of
celebrity-writer and used to admiration from the public. He cut a fine figure
since Nature had not visited the worst of the middle age indignities on him.
And he had both money and charm. He could take care of himself—if he wanted to
avoid Brandy’s wiles. He might avoid them since she wanted marriage and he said
he didn’t. I had told Ben once that I wanted a relationship with someone who
really knew me. His response had been to shake his head and say, “That only
works if you have no flaws. It’s better to get involved with someone who still
has illusions about you.” Brandy couldn’t have many illusions left when it came
to men, but she was great at pretending.

Behind Brandy was a window that looked out into the garden. I
had not drawn the curtains or pulled the shutters. There were greenery and candles
in the window but it was not a festive prospect beyond the glass. If I went to
it, what would I see? What would the others see? Just the wind that had tried
to tear the rain away—and failed, as it so often did on this island whose
weather defied meteorological explanation? Would we see more—things more frightening
than storm clouds? Could I end up with five more houseguests at least until
dawn?

That wouldn’t be convenient, though Jack was good about
helping and I would not find myself alone with the dirty dishes and laundry, and
the need to make breakfast for eight out of the party’s grisly remains.

“What is it?” Harris whispered, leaning forward to speak in
my ear. His eyes were fixed on the dark glass.

“I thought I saw Kelvin,” I lied. And then, when I saw
Harris looked shocked, I clarified.
“The cat—not my
great-grandfather.”

“Of course.”

But there was no of course about it. Harris Ladd, legalist
and rationalist in all other ways, believes in curses and ghosts and I think he
always half expects a visit from the astral plane when he comes to the island. Probably
he thought my great-grandfather had come back to haunt him for installing
electricity in his house. Of course, hearing it was the cat might not reassure Harris
either since Kelvin had “taken a spite” to him, and there is a local tale about
witches transforming themselves into cats and tormenting people.

In the beginning I had sneered at such ideas—and still I
take everything I hear and read with a big grain of salt—but little by little I
was coming to think that maybe there was more in heaven and earth than I had
previously dreamed. Take Wendover House and Little Goose Island. From the first
day, the house felt not just lived-in but actually alive, an antique but one
which wished to be used. It was too pleasant to think of it as haunted, at
least not in any traditional way. In fact it was the opposite. It felt
enchanted. Not so large as a fairytale castle, and not made of so many rooms
that it had a south parlor or a west wing, but spacious and able to accommodate
any size of gathering that I might want. And though old, it had adapted well to
modern conventions and needs. I have a living room, a bathroom, a porch. The
rooms easily lent themselves to changing fashion. Furniture moved about easily,
though I had felt little need to change anything.

There was also a smuggler’s cave reached by a secret stair.
But now that the cave was empty of illegal whisky, even that felt oddly charming.
In fact, the only places I did not feel at home were the basement, the backyard,
and one room in the attic where the family’s dirty secrets were stored.
Everywhere else I basked in the glow of contentment.

This had never happened to me before, but from day one I had
understood that the house needed to be inhabited and little was required to
make it feel like
my
home, thanks to
Harris removing some of the more disturbing artifacts and secreting them in a
hidden room in the attic. I loved every curtain and cushion and shrub in the
yard, and felt they loved me back. It was perfect in every way. Except that I
was not like my great-grandfather. I needed power—lights, a computer, and
refrigeration. I am an effete creature of the late twentieth century and I
require these things to be happy.

And now I had them—for the low, low price of one crying
ghost. There is always a price, isn’t there?

Actually, there were fewer outlets in each of the upstairs rooms
than I would like, but in some rooms we were lucky to have them at all. Mr.
Benson had employed great ingenuity in this matter. The man was an
architectural surgeon.

Case in point, the blue room.
It
was during the wiring of my grandmother’s old bedroom that I began to dream
about the dark-haired woman. We had had to pull up part of the floor, which had
proven rather easy because someone had made a secret compartment there already.
In it I found a letter—unreadable and crumbling except for one little bit at
the bottom of a page …
and he ordered
that she be putt to death, the
executione
to be no
later than five of the clock. There being no road in this extremity of the woods,
it was a deed witnessed only by those who came on
foott
….
And there was a brittle yellow handkerchief and a lock of brittle, butterscotch-colored
hair that I believed came from an adult and not a child. The color was also
very familiar. Touching it raised gooseflesh on my arms and I thought of
stories of death contamination and how the sins of the fathers were visited on
the children ’til Kingdom come, Amen.

Mr. Benson’s voice interrupted my sudden dread and shocked
me into action. As little as I wanted to touch those artifacts, even less did I
want someone else to see
them.

“…
glad
that the leaf-
peepahs
have gone.
They—
sonova’oah
—uh,
sorry for the language.
But I’ll be
murdehd
if
I can see any way around this stud. I—
are
you okay,
Miss? Did you find a rat?” Concern replaced annoyance. Apparently Mr. Benson
expected to find rats and also expected me not to like that.

“No rat. I’m fine,” I managed to say as I scooped up the
paper, cloth, and hair with reluctant fingers and hid them with my body. The
hand that touched them went numb and cold.

“Why don’t you sit down,
Miss.
There’s no need for you to work here.”

“How about some lunch?
Maybe we can
think of another way around the wall when we get some food in us.” My voice
sounded almost normal as I dumped them in the first receptacle I found. It
happened to be my grandmother’s old jewelry box.

“
Ayuh
, that
would be
cunnin
’. You make
some wicked good
chowdah
, Miss. No one would guess
you were from away.”

I forced a smile. This was a compliment of no mean order.

We ate. Mr. Benson thought of a work-around for the wiring.
I sat with a cold hand that only gradually regained feeling.

The woman I saw in my dreams that night—and sometimes waking
hours in the days after—was nameless and faceless, a figure of darkness that
eyes couldn’t always detach from the rest of the dark around her. She never
actually entered the house, though I thought she wanted in. Instead she stood
in the garden looking up at my grandmother’s window, night after night, twisted
hand raised in supplication. I think that she was crying as well as sometimes screaming,
but it was difficult to tell because tangled hair covered her face and she was
always standing in the rain.
Even when it wasn’t raining.

At first I dismissed her as a nightmare, like one of Scrooge’s
blots of mustard or underdone potatoes, conjured up by those horrible words on
that yellow paper. But night after night she came back, and I know that after
the first sighting I was not asleep when I saw her.
Always in
the same place.
Always looking up at the same window.
My grandmother’s window.
I have always believed in my
senses and I didn’t think my eyes lied.

It took my mind a while to accept that this room had
belonged to people before my grandmother. This sounds stupid now, but so
completely did the house belong to me that I just couldn’t seem to admit that I
had ancestors who had been living and dying in that house for almost three
hundred years. It was
my
house—
mine
—and for a while my
great-grandfather’s. But the ghost persisted and eventually I did accept the
emotional truth that others had felt this way before me. And, God willing,
others would feel that way after. We didn’t own the house, the house owned us.

These facts reluctantly accepted, if not liked, it followed
that this apparition was probably a relative who had lived here, and I found
myself driven to discover who she was. Her dress was early eighteenth century.
Back then, only my family had lived on the island.

I began to have daytime reveries, thoughts—memories almost—of
a dark forest. I/she was always bound, riding in a cart. Though my daydreams
revealed nothing definite of the identity of whose terrified thoughts I was
sharing, I had begun to suspect that she was the woman who had been accused of
ensorceling
Everett and Bryson Sands’ ancestor, the
lecherous Colonel Sands.
The one who had cursed him from the
gallows, and whose bloody handprint appeared on his tombstone and would not wash
away.
The legends were unclear about her identity and she was never
named in the accounts I’d read, but the Wendovers have a certain “look” and this
ghost had it. Like my grandmother. I have it too—the dark hair and strong
features with even stronger bodies.

Information from beyond is a kind of lens that focuses the
brain on things it didn’t see before though they had probably always been
there, trying to gain our attention. Let me add that I did not fear her. I felt
horror and pity at her state, but did not sense that she wished me harm. The
ghost was not after me. She wanted something else. At least, I believed so. The
pain she caused me with her memories was unintentional.

Consumed by an ever-growing curiosity and a desire to prove
my theory that she was kin, I began going through all the books stored in the
attic. At first glance the old books seemed boring and irrelevant, just like most
of the other books in the library. I read lots of them and the pages were
absolutely buttered with boring facts about boring people.
The Reverend Hayworth, seeking the rewards of Heaven by
shewing
the prodigious benefits to avoidance with putrid
locals and
rootts
of plants near unto the forest
where word of the Savior who died to
redeeme
mankind
has not yet been received
….