Twelfth Night (A Wendover House Mystery Book 2) (6 page)

Time passed and she began to feel sleepy—almost drugged. Her
eyes were starting to close when she felt something shift in the atmosphere. Someone
new had entered the room and his presence sent a shiver down his spine.

She squinted into the flashing lights and was only able to
focus enough to see the outlines of a man in black. He wore an old-fashioned
cutaway coat—like the conductor at the symphony. And he felt cold—frigid as the
worst day in February, which should have been nice in the heat but somehow
wasn’t.

Behold, as goblins dark of mien, and portly tyrants dyed
with crime…

Perhaps sensing her scrutiny, he looked away from the crowds
and down at her—and then
into
her. His dark gaze locked onto her face like
some laser sight, and then the barb went right through the skin and down to the
bone. And when he didn’t find what he was looking for in her marrow and heart
and stomach, he started looking through her thoughts—her soul—fine-combing her
nerve endings as she went.

The sleepiness disappeared, but she remained unable to move
except to shiver with something that was part pleasure but mostly alarm. This
man was sinister, dangerous, and it was belatedly occurring to her that no one
knew where she was—not
even
her “friends.” That she
could disappear that night and no one would come looking for her for a very
long time.

“You don’t look like you want to die—and yet you are here.”

She didn’t see his lips move, but she heard his voice even
above the music and laughter.

A waiter walked by and offered her a tray with some kind of
fruit. He didn’t look at the dark man, didn’t even seem to see he was there.
Nor did he comment on the rancid meat smell that was beginning to taint the
air.

Brandy shook her head, trying to clear it, and the waiter
turned away.

“I—I don’t want to die. Help me,” she managed to gasp as the
waiter moved toward another group. He seemed not to hear her and her head
lolled back, suddenly too heavy to hold up.

“But you will die. Look about you. Look!”

And Brandy did. For a moment the world went out of focus as
two images were overlaid and fought for ascendancy. But then they married,
sharpened, and she saw how evil the place was—what an abomination she had
walked into, no matter how clean it seemed on the surface. Her host was wearing
some kind of pig snout. It had tusks. He was talking to a hyena in a red dress.
She had blood on her lips. And there were sharks in satin shirts with heavy
gold chains.
Sniffing.

Because there was blood everywhere. And the room was full of
people. Dead people in funny clothes like the kind from old silent movies—and
they were staring at her, pity in their dead eyes.

“The drug is in your body. It may be too late,” the dark man
said. “You may be joining us here.”

“No.” Brandy struggled to her feet. The room spun lazily and
she felt sick to her stomach. “They wouldn’t dare. I’m—I’m not
nobody
. My mother loves me.”

“No one will stop Robbins, least of all himself. He does not
have second thoughts. The insane never do. I never did.” He laughed.

She had to get out.
Somehow.
Maybe
she was just having a bad trip—a reaction to those pills she had taken. After
all, how did she know if they were just downers, or something else? Why had she
taken them?

But maybe this was all real on some level. Maybe her brain
was showing her scary things because it knew that those men were some kind of
sharks, and if they tasted her blood they would keep after her forever.

Brandy began to weave toward the nearest door, avoiding
bodies—dead and alive, not sure which she feared more.

“Where are you going?” a pig man asked her. He touched her
hip and it hurt. He had cloven hoofs instead of hands.

Outwardly she was calm but inside she began to shudder. It
took all her training, all her will to stifle her urge to scream and keep the
shudders hidden inside.

“Bathroom,” she gasped, forcing a smile at the bristled
face. It wasn’t a mask. No mask was that good.

“Don’t be gone long,” it snorted, its voice getting thicker.
Less human.

“I won’t.”

She managed to escape the large room with its flashing
lights but found herself inside some kind of conservatory,
a Victorian structure
made up of iron gingerbread painted flat black and filled with giant panes of
frosted glass whose surface suggested refined sugar, but cut like a million
tiny razorblades when she rubbed up against it. There was blood all over the
glass, the orchids, and the crushed oyster shells of the path.
Old blood.
Shadowy blood.
Ghost blood.
Now her blood too.

She whimpered and rushed on as fast as her rubbery legs
would carry her.

There was a door. It opened onto a pool—bright with light and
shimmering tile.
Except there was a body in it.
A naked woman.
Her mouth and eyes were open.

Brandy walked around the edges of the enclosure, telling
herself that she couldn’t really be walking on bones, that it was just sticks
and twigs, and the wind she felt was a Santa Ana—not a breath of hell.

She found her way to the sculpture gardens. They were oddly
dark and dank under the red moon—rotten—festooned with ancient cobwebs that
reminded her of every monster movie she had seen at the drive-in. There were
weird, mummy-like shapes projecting out of the high walls and perched on
pedestals, all covered in thick blankets of lichen and web and dead vines.
Cracks in the walls leaked thick water—or maybe blood—and there was one large
dent in the north sidewall that looked like it had been formed by a car. Hadn’t
there been a story about someone committing suicide by ramming a car into the
wall?

She prayed she didn’t fall into any pits—mantraps—but she
figured they were there. All haunted castles and mansions had them. She watched
her feet, staying away from the wriggling fungus cocoons that tried to trip
her. She told herself that the battered stones in the wall were not giving way.
That there was nothing bricked up in the niches. No one was moaning inside the
concrete.
The ground only seemed to have woken up and started whispering—sometimes sounding
mournful, sometimes angry.

Panic gave her enough strength to climb the rusted side gate
when she found it, hidden by thorny creepers. It was chained shut but she
wasn’t about to ask anyone for help opening it.

She tore her dress and gouged her leg, but she managed to
keep her feet long enough to stagger out into the road.
Where
she was hit by a car.

When she woke up again, she was in the hospital. She had a
cracked pelvis, seven stitches in her left leg, and a pumped stomach.

There were police guarding her door. There was also a lot of
press waiting in the lobby. Word had gotten out that a young starlet had been
injured fleeing from Hale House and the party that went so wrong. Bad drugs, dozens
overdosed,
three dead. All witnesses fled. Everyone
wanted to talk to her about the guest list.
And the bodies.

It had finally happened. She was famous.

Later Brandy married—and then divorced—the man who ran her
down that night.
But not until he had launched her modeling
career by featuring her in his lingerie catalogue.

Watching the news that week as she recovered in a friend’s
apartment, she found out who the sinister dark man was. Charles Hale had been a
producer in old Hollywood. He was also suspected of being a multiple murderer,
though no bodies were ever found and no charges were leveled. The picture they
showed was old—after all, he had died in 1929—but she recognized him anyway.

“It was partly the drugs. Maybe all the drugs that made me imagine
the animals. It had to be.” Her voice was hoarse, pleading. “That’s what the
doctors said. But … but I think the drugs brought me near death and let me in on
something no one else could see. Maybe I should have told the police more but I
… I just didn’t tell anyone because no one would believe me. You probably don’t
believe me.” She sounded mournful.

Like Brandy, I wasn’t so sure that it was all drugs, and that
left me feeling cold. I had assumed that I had seen the worst my ghost could
do. What if I was wrong?

“Good God,” Mary whispered. I was glad she stopped there.
Our wine-soaked brains couldn’t absorb any more. I’m sure Brandy struck everyone
as being an airheaded material girl rather than someone more imaginative and
spiritual. But whatever she had seen that night had shaken her to her bones and
filled her with dread that could reach across decades and still touch her. She
had come to the edge of the rational world and crossed over someplace no one
else ever wanted to go. In fact, I think everyone—excepting perhaps Ben—was
hoping to forget the story as soon as possible.

“I have a story too. A real one and I never talk about it
either,” Jack said quickly, surprising me. Supernatural stuff had never been
his bag. He went on, perhaps hurrying to get the story out before he changed
his mind. “This was not too long after I moved to Chicago. A buddy of mine was
getting married and we took him out the weekend before the wedding for
a barhop
, a sort of goodbye to single life, a last debauch
thing.”

We all exhaled at the change of subject and I passed Brandy
a handkerchief, though she wasn’t really crying so much as brooding. I didn’t
think we were really ready for another ghost story, but no one wanted to talk
about what had happened to Brandy. Truth or hallucination, it didn’t need
discussion.

“Tim liked historic bars, so we were hitting the old ones,
some in hotels, some underground. I was getting tired since I was just off my
crutches and not used to walking, but Tim was kind of tight and he was going on
about how he loved me like a brother—and not a Cain and Abel kind of brother—so
I stuck it out in spite of the aching leg.

“The last place we visited was called
Del’s
.
It used to be run by a wise guy called Fat Friday. He had rubbed out the
original owner and moved in on the bar, the bootlegging, and on
Del’s
girl, Mona.
More about her later.
I gotta tell you
though,
they raised girls tough out
there.”

The sound of the clock faded away. The wind continued to
sing its violent cantata, but it too was muted. Jack, as raconteur, was doing
as good a job as anyone could have.

“By then it was late and down to just Tim and me. The others
had gone home or to strip clubs, but I was feeling pretty fascinated by all
these old places and drunk enough to be sentimental, so I stayed with him while
we
ankled
it uptown.”

I almost smiled at his use of this old slang. Jack was a
Dashiell Hammett fan and sometimes used the vernacular.

“All the bars we had visited had atmosphere, but this place
was different—I felt it the minute I walked in. There was a kind of anger in
the air—and cold. Tim kept right on walking but I stopped by the coatrack for a
minute to check out the crowd.”

Jack took a swallow of wine. I don’t think he was so much
thirsty as preparing himself to go on. Normally his grimace and glower would
have been
a blight
on the mood, but it only enhanced
our dread of what was coming.

“No one looked on the verge of going postal, no guns or
knives, so I ignored my crawling skin and followed Tim to the bar. The barkeep
was a tough guy with a big
breezer
that had been
broken a few times. He didn’t need the knuckle tattoos he sported to
intimidate, but some men just don’t do subtle. And I guess in his job it saved
time to advertise in places drunks would see before all hell broke loose on
them. I also don’t think he had a lot of imagination because he never seemed to
be uncomfortable, which I would have been once I knew what went on there.

“So, Tim stumbled and I helped him up. He and I were kind of
leaning on one another as we weaved our way to the bar. The air was thick with
cigarette smoke and the choke of decades of cigars and cheap booze and sweat.
It was nasty—but every table and stool was taken—and we really needed to sit
down, at least I did. My leg was finally giving out.
‘There’s
no chairs
,’ Tim said. And he was right.
Except there
was one table at the back.
It was a small oaken round with a deep gouge
and a funny stain on one side. There was also a chair that looked like it had
come out of a fancy restaurant. You know the kind—the rubbed red velvet with
gold tassels and big buttons and carved legs that look like animal claws.”

I nodded since he was looking at me, waiting for a prod.

“So, nobody is sitting there at the table, but there’s a
tumbler of whisky and a cigar sitting in an ashtray right in front of the
chair. Tim says to me, ‘Twenty bucks says you won’t sit in that chair.’ Tim’s a
little pale. But so was everyone in that light and he’d been drinking, so I
didn’t think that much of it.

“I looked at the barkeep but he’s busy pulling beers. So, I
said, ‘Sure I will,’ and went over to the table.”

Jack paused.

“I’ll admit that I had had a lot to drink, but you know that
I’m not a fanciful person even when I’m falling down drunk. Not the kind of
person who imagines things—at least not supernatural things. But I was feeling
something unnatural that night.”

Jack looked away.

“The barkeep made me wary, not a stupid red chair, or so I
told myself. But the closer I got, the colder it got. At about six feet I could
see the small hole in the upholstery. My breath was coming out white too. It
was hard to see in the smoke, but I swear my breath was frosted.