Twelfth Night (A Wendover House Mystery Book 2) (4 page)

Everyone’s life has barricades, of course. The trick is
learning to detour around them. Darwin thought of it as
adapt or die
. My adaptation to island life was to have the house
electrified.

We weren’t using the electric lights that night though. It
would not have been appropriate given that we were gathered to talk about
spirits and they do not care for artificial light. Firelight and candles were
the order of the evening and Jack, being closest, didn’t mind refueling the
fire from the cache of logs on the hearth. The flames danced merrily in the
chimney currents, glowing intensely in the twilight of the room as the wind
touched them. I think we were all grateful for the heat and cheery glow. Though
I had lit thirty odd candles, they couldn’t push back the dark entirely. The
corners remained shadowed, losing substance every time the fire died down. This
gloom wasn’t unusual in January but by
darkfall
the
clouds were as thick and tight as a shroud, winding tighter in the cyclonic current
that went round and round the island. The weather might have been ordered up
for a horror movie and I felt watched, as if the ghost were poised for some
action.

Softly, in the background, there was the
ticktock
of the mantle clock. I don’t much care for the sound of ticking, the measured
parsing of passing minutes, but I was fond of this clock because of its beauty
and because that night I wanted to know when we reached the midnight hour. If
the ghost was going to show herself, I thought it would be then.

It was probably no surprise that I was filled with
foreboding as we waited, and it made the fire and the human company all the
more welcome.

Jack lifted his glass to me when I glanced his way. He had
won the honor of being the Lord of Misrule by finding the tiny crown baked in
the king cake—a sort of egg bread that we had started the meal with. I smiled
back, trying to look natural. He was probably wondering why I had chosen ghost
stories over dancing—though how anyone could dance after eating that kind of
meal I couldn’t even guess.

“… and his spirit still walks because the coffin was too
short for the body and he can find no rest,” Ben finished.

We all clapped politely, though I had lost the gist of the
tale of the coffin-maker’s apprentice.

There was a long silence at the table when Ben was done. No one
seemed inclined to follow up. I glanced at the clock. It was still early but I
decided that I could begin anyway. I was getting ready to speak up about my
ghost when Harris cleared his throat.

“Well, since we’re telling scary stories, I had an odd thing
happen once. It was years ago, near Christmas, when I decided to forego a trip
back home and instead drove to Boston to see my girlfriend. Partly I went
because I missed my girl, but I also rebelled about coming home because I was
letting my hair grow long and I knew my father would have a fit and insist my
mother cut it. And frankly, I’d have sooner stuck my head under a buzz saw then
my mother’s dull shears. Bless her for her many virtues, but barber was not one
of them.”

All of us stared. If anyone had told me that Harris would be
the next person to share a ghost story I would have bet against them. It isn’t
because Harris doesn’t believe in ghosts—it’s that he doesn’t want anyone else
to know he believes in them. I was also staring because I simply couldn’t
imagine Harris with long hair, having a girlfriend, or being rebellious.

“The weather was as bad as you can imagine, and the weathermen
warned that more was coming, but I was young, in love, and not to be deterred
by a blizzard or two.
Ayuh
, I was once that numb.”

His smile was self-deprecating, but I knew he was feeling
something strong because Harris only lapses into Maine-speak when he is
distressed.

“It was fine in the daylight though the snow just kept
falling, but night was different. Night is always different.” He glanced at the
window and I wondered if he had noticed the darker patch of shadows growing out
there in the wet evening. “I’d made good time, crossed into Massachusetts and
was down the highway apiece, thinking I could make it to Clara’s by morning if
I pressed on. People were hurrying, impatient trying to get where they were
going with their fruitcakes and presents. There’d been some skids, some slides,
and even minor fender-bending, but the worst was avoided for most of the day
because the snowplows were there. But then I had to detour because of a dairy
truck overturned on the road and it stopped the snowplows on the opposite side
of the road with no way through.

“I could have waited for the wreck to be cleared, but I was
impatient and cold. Soon I found myself on a rather lonely stretch of byway. It
was dark and ill kempt, choked on either side with thick brush, and after a
mile or two I couldn’t even see the freeway lights. I’m not a fanciful person,
but it seemed like the whole world had just up and disappeared, like the
Rapture had come and left me behind.

“My windscreen kept fogging so I had my window open a crack and
was moving slow because of the snow. The wind was rattling around a bit but I
think there may have been some kind of hungry
crittahs
in those woods too. I surely had the feeling that I was being watched by
something unfriendly, and after a while it was getting to be all cold sweats
and white knuckles. My body was one giant ache from all the clenching and
staring, but there was nowhere to stop the
cah
.

“I really needed to eat. My last meal had been a large
coffee at a gas station and that was hours ago. And, I’ll admit, I was feeling
more guilty
with every mile and it was preying on my mind.
You are supposed to go home at Christmas, not out chasing girls.

“Finally, in the distance I could see some tiny lights and
it seemed a sign that perhaps I should turn off for the night. But just then I
noticed a woman sitting at the side of the road on a large, flat boulder that
was covered in snow. She was wearing a white party dress and had only a small
jacket, the kind.…” He made a gesture suggesting that it had only come part way
down her ribs.

“A shrug,” I suggested. “Or bolero.”

“Well, it wasn’t warm enough, that’s for certain—just silk
and beads. Nor were her satin slippers the least protection. Later I wondered
about her wearing that corsage—gardenias. They’re summer flowers. The smell
stuck with me for days even after I convinced myself that I was just tired that
night and dreamed up the whole thing.”

Ben’s hand twitched and I knew that he was wishing for a pen
and paper. This kind of story was meat and drink to him.

“Of course I stopped the car and leaned across to roll down
the window. I asked her if she wanted a ride. She smiled quite sweetly but said
nothing, and I found myself getting out of the car and opening the door for
her. I know that sounds crazy—but she seemed to expect it so….”

Harris trailed off and then shrugged off his act of misplaced
gallantry.

“She had no snow on her clothes, but I got out the car
blanket and put it over her. She was as cold as the wind outside and I worried
that she had frostbite or maybe hypothermia because she was so quiet and pale. The
heater was already on high, so all that was left was to find her some shelter.

“The road was narrow, sloping, and dangerous because of the
ice, and needed all my attention, but I found it hard to take my eyes away from
her face. It was beautiful, but so white and so sad. I asked her name again.
The heater was loud but I thought she said Candy.

“I asked where she was heading and she pointed at those
lights I had seen in the woods, which was a relief. The snowplow hadn’t been
out that way all day and even with snow tires it was getting hard to move. And
the cold was thick by then, an invisible fog that began to leach the heat from my
body in spite of my coat and gloves. My breath turned white and the heater
began to wheeze as it labored. But if the girl breathed even once, I couldn’t
see it.

“Finally there was a turnoff from the road and I was purely
relieved to see that house with its lights. I was shaking real bad by then and
feeling
gawmy
. I pulled close to the side door where
there was a path through the snow. A porch light came on. I got out of the car
and came round to the passenger side to help the girl out….” Harris swallowed.
“But she was gone.”

There was a collective exhale though I think we had all seen
it coming.

“I wasn’t in my right mind anymore. I tried to tell the old
woman who came out to the stoop that there had been a girl with me, and she
kept saying,
I know, I know,
and
urging me to come inside. I wanted to look for Candy but there were no
footprints to follow. No footprints at all. That unpleasant fact finally soaked
into my frozen brain and I let the old woman guide me inside.

“The old woman was Stella Caine, and after she had wrapped
me up and got some tea and soup in me she told me about Candy
Happ
. The people that owned the house before Mrs. Caine had
had a daughter who liked to sneak out nights to go dancing down in Hoffman. One
night she had been out, waiting by the side of the road for a friend to pick
her up, when a drunk swerved too close and hit her.
Killed
her instantly.
Turns out I wasn’t the first person who had seen Candy by
the road and not the first to give her a lift either. There’s been a half dozen
of us over the years trying—always in December—to bring the girl home.

“By then I wasn’t cold anymore, but Mrs. Caine insisted on
giving me a bed for the night. I figured that I might as well since the freeway
wouldn’t get plowed until morning and I was flat-out beat.

“I had some nerves climbing into bed that night, thinking
that Candy might come back again, but she never did. I felt horrible about her
dying so young, that death had given in to anticipation and steered that drunk
her way when she was little more than a child. But I was also damned glad to
get on the road the next morning and not see any girl sitting there by the side
of the road, waiting for a ride.”

There was sighing, some throat clearing and slumping back in
chairs as he had quit speaking. This story had gotten a little closer to home than
Ben’s had and I was glad that he had spoken up.

“Well, if we’re going to get personal,” Ben said, “then I’ve
another story for you. It’s nothing
so
sensational as
a spectral hitchhiker, but it’s stuck with me through the years. This was a
decade back. I’d been touring the battlefields of Scotland and giving myself a
cauld
gru
with all
the old bloody tales of battlefield ghosts. Culloden especially made me
shivery,
thinking of how many had died there. But I wrapped
up my research and put all that behind me—I thought—and headed south for a
small village called Little Brick Hill in England. I had a friend there who
lived in an old rectory that abutted a cemetery with tombs going back to the
reign of Henry VIII. The church was built by Catholics but had been spared the
desecration and looting that happened under Henry when he broke with Rome. But though
the building stood, many of the graves around it had victims of the religious
purges under fat Henry and then a bunch more from the civil war that was part
two of the religious mania that happened to that country. The church and cemetery
are supposed to be haunted and especially active at the time of the full moon
and in December—again December—when the innocent victims of the more murderous
crimes are thought to walk within the church that should have offered them
sanctuary but instead proved their prison.

“Maybe I was in a suggestive state—hell, I was definitely in
a suggestive state after a month of investigating Scottish castles and
battlefields and talking with people who absolutely believed in troubled
spirits reliving the trials of their mortal state. In fact I wrote a book about
it under a pen name,
Infernall
Apparitions and
Noyses
,
which is popular overseas. But I think what happened in England was real enough
and circumstantial evidence of some kind of survival, some lingering emotional
imprint on the ground where someone lost their life. Not a ghost exactly, not
an intact personality, just a last bit of something that lingered in the air.
It wasn’t a cavalier or a roundhead that I ran into though. And it wasn’t in
the churchyard where you’d expect to find a ghost. It was down in the rectory’s
basement.”

It was Ben’s turn to pour out some wine. Telling stories
seemed to bring on a thirst.

“My friend was elderly and had arthritic knees.
Unfortunately, he had his best wine laid down in the basement and it fell to me
to go down and get it. He gave me detailed directions, but I guess I went left
when I should have gone right and got a little lost. The basement was a marvel
though, built on old Roman ruins. It was a bit labyrinthine and the floor was
covered with dirt and debris so I couldn’t see the paving stones that might
have marked the way. Every room looked like every other. And because of the
accumulation of dirt that had raised the floor level, the Roman arches were
consequently very low, and I had to bend about double to pass from one room to
another. I wanted to come back down there with my camera and photograph
everything the next day.

“The light from the one electric bulb at the base of the
stairs was hardly adequate, but I was depending on it because there were no
external windows. The place was closer to a dungeon than any basement we have
here. So it figures, doesn’t it, that the lights would go out when I was in the
deepest, oldest part?”

Yes indeed.