Restless Spirits Boxset: A Collection of Riveting Haunted House Mysteries

by Skylar Finn

  Restlesss Spirits Boxset

  Skylar Finn

  Contents

  The Haunting of Meade Mansion

  The Haunting of Meade Mansion- Book 2

  The Haunting of Meade Mansion Book 3

  The Haunting of Riley Watson Book 0

  The Haunting of Riley Watson Book 1

  The Haunting of Riley Watson Book 2

  Copyright 2019 All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means without prior written permission, except for brief excerpts in reviews or analysis

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  The Haunting of Meade Mansion

  1

  It was January in Colorado, and a fierce wind carried snow down the mountains, blanketing Boulder. A single streetlamp lit the long and rambling private lane which led up a steep hill to the old Meade House. It had sat uninhabited at the top of the hill for as long as anyone could remember until its current owner, Matilda Meade, moved in and opened her home to local children in need. The homeless population led to runaways and abandoned children, who often found themselves at Meade House when they would have otherwise been left out in the cold.

  On this particular night, as the blizzard raged outside, Matilda fixed hot cocoa for the children while Cynthia, her assistant, dutifully set out grilled cheese cut into crust-less triangles on the dining room table. The two youngest, Bobby and Tricia, were brother and sister just a year apart in age. They sat at the high wooden kitchen table, legs swinging. Tricia watched the window with worry as the snow blew past, giving a little jump each time the wind howled. Bobby was oblivious, absorbed in the work of eating his grilled cheese.

  Andrea, the oldest, had come to Meade House only days before. She was reluctant to leave her parents, who often slept in the park or the woods behind the library, changing locations often enough not to be detected. One unlucky night, a passing bicycle cop shined a light into their tent. Andrea was placed in custody with Child Protective Services. Within a day, she found herself in the backseat of an old Buick, bumping up the long lane to Meade House. The caseworker told her how lucky she was: it often took months to place a child even temporarily, but Matilda just happened to have a spot open up.

  Andrea fidgeted with her hair, not eating. Matilda placed a mug of hot chocolate in front of her and smiled warmly.

  “You’re not eating,” she said. “Whatever is the matter, dear?”

  “I—” Andrea started to say but was cut short by a loud bang. The power went out and the whole house went dark. Tricia and Bobby screamed. Tricia began crying loudly. She was afraid of the dark.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, it’s just an outage,” came Matilda’s voice in the dark. “Cynthia, take this flashlight. I’ll go to the fuse box and see if I can get it back on or if it went out with the storm. If it’s the storm, I’ll have to get to the backup generator. Take the children upstairs to the attic. It has the fewest windows.”

  The bright beam of the flashlight popped on. Cynthia picked up Tricia and reached for Bobby’s hand. “Come on, everyone. We’ll just go upstairs and wait for the storm to pass. It will be over before you know it.” She led them out of the kitchen as Andrea trailed behind.

  In the attic, Cynthia pulled the door shut securely behind them. Tricia and Bobby huddled together on top of the toy chest. Andrea sat cross-legged on the old rug decorated with trains. Across the room, the beady red eye of the carousel horse glinted. Andrea hated that horse.

  “When will the storm be over?” asked Tricia, her voice quavering.

  “It’s hard to say, dear,” said Cynthia. “But it’s almost morning now, and when the sun comes up, the snow will melt and the power will come back on. In the meantime, we’re all here together. Everything will be fine.”

  Downstairs, an earsplitting scream reverberated off the walls. There was a crash, and it sounded like something large and heavy had tipped over. Andrea flinched. It didn’t sound like everything was fine.

  “What happened?” Bobby cried.

  Cynthia glanced towards the attic door. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Maybe Matilda fell. I’ll go check on her. Andrea, watch out for the young ones. I’m going to lock you in.”

  Cynthia left before Andrea could ask her the many questions that raced through her mind, like who screams like that because they fell? and if it’s nothing, why are you locking us in?

  The attic door closed behind Cynthia and Andrea heard the lock click into place. The children wept softly. Andrea tried to think of something reassuring to say.

  “Hey guys, you want to play a game?” she asked.

  “In the dark?” asked Bobby.

  “We’ll play hide-and-seek. We’re going to hide and Cynthia’s going to find us when she gets back, okay?” She ushered the children into the toy chest. “You guys stay here and be as quiet as possible, like little mice. Okay?” She put her locket on the edge of the lid before closing it so it couldn’t shut all the way and trap them.

  Downstairs, a second scream cut through the air. More crashes sounded. Footsteps creaked up the stairs. Andrea closed her eyes briefly, trying not to cry. The footsteps paused on the second-floor landing, then resumed.

  “Andrea?” came Tricia’s terrified voice from inside of the toy chest.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re just playing a game, remember? Stay there and keep quiet.”

  Andrea shined the flashlight around, looking for a place to hide. The beam of light landed on the old armoire across the room. She approached the armoire, the flashlight shaking in her hand. She hated Miss Cynthia for leaving them. She had never felt more frightened in her life.

  Andrea climbed into the armoire, pulling the doors shut behind her. For a moment, the space was illuminated, then she clicked the flashlight off and was plummeted into darkness. Outside the attic door, the footsteps grew louder as they slowly ascended the steps: thud, thud, THUD THUD. Andrea trembled inside the armoire. The attic door creaked open. The footsteps approached the center of the room and paused. Andrea waited. The footsteps came toward the armoire. The doors opened. Andrea screamed.

  Inside the toy chest, Tricia and Bobby held each other, shaking and crying. Tricia screamed when she heard Andrea as Bobby frantically tried to shush her. The heavy footsteps approached the toy chest.

  The lid was thrown open. The children screamed and screamed. They would never have stopped, had their screams not been cut violently short.

  2

  Emily sat at her laptop, staring at the blinking cursor. It had been this way for weeks now. She either hated everything she wrote and dragged it straight into the trash or couldn’t write anything at all.

  The door to the studio apartment opened and Emily sighed with relief. She and Jesse had been married for seven years, but the knowledge he was home never ceased to reassure her. Jesse’s upbeat nature countered her constant pessimism, and he always encouraged her no matter how poorly her work was going.

  Jesse came in and placed the mail on the desk. He was covered in plaster dust. On the weekends, he and his band played gigs around town, but during the week he was up to his neck in whatever construction work he could get to make ends meet. Kissing Emily on the head, he went over to the small galley kitchen and placed two grocery bags on the counter.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “I’m starving,” said Emily. “Jess? What is this?”

  Sandwiched between her latest unpaid student loan bill and yet another credit card bill with FINAL NOTICE stamped across the outside was a l
etter from the landlord.

  “Huh?” asked Jesse. “I dunno, just the usual bloodsuckers, I guess.”

  “Jesse, this one’s actually important,” she said, slitting the envelope open. “I mean like, in a more immediate sense.” Emily scanned the letter and sighed. “So, we need to re-sign the lease or give our thirty-day notice.”

  Jesse ran a hand through his tousled dark hair. “What’s the trouble? We re-sign, right? No way we’re coming up with the deposit for a new place.”

  “He wants to raise the rent by a hundred dollars,” said Emily. She felt the added tension on top of the frustration she already felt about her work. Their sable Sheltie, Widget, seemed to sense her distress. She trotted across the room, her little black nails clicking on the tile, and jumped into Emily’s lap. She buried her hands in Widget’s fur and tried to calm down.

  “A hundred dollars!” Jesse spat grape soda across the counter. “How? Why? This place is just as crappy as it was last year. What changed?”

  Emily shrugged, unable to form a response. They were barely getting by as it was. They had at least always been able to pay rent until now, but this would send them over the edge.

  Emily’s phone vibrated, rattling on the desk. Emily picked it up: an unknown number with a Colorado area code.

  “Hello?” she said uncertainly.

  “Is this Emily Meade-Martinez?” said an unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line.

  “This is she,” Emily said cautiously. She generally didn’t answer unknown numbers out of the assumption that a collections agent lurked on the other end of the line, but this voice was polished, refined, and clipped: more like a posh butler than a bill collector.

  “This is J.R. Watkins of Watkins, Taft, and Simms, Attorneys at Law,” said Watkins.

  “Oh no,” said Emily. “Are we being sued?” In the kitchen, Jesse’s eyes grew wide.

  “Sued?” Watkins sounded puzzled. “Heavens, no. If anything, I would say this is quite the opposite of litigation. I’m an estate lawyer, and I worked for your aunt, Matilda Meade?”

  “Yes, that’s her,” said Emily, puzzled. “I thought she disappeared?”

  “A while back, yes. Very unfortunate. The police have yet to recover her body, but I’ve been informed there is zero reason to think her alive: no activity on any of her accounts, no known communication with anyone that she knew, and her house has sat abandoned for some time now.”

  “Oh,” said Emily, wondering what this had to do with her. “I’m sorry to hear that.” Emily had never known her aunt, who for reasons unknown was estranged from everyone in her mother’s family. Emily had only met her once as a child.

  Jesse mouthed what’s going on? at her. Emily gave a little half shrug, mouthing no idea.

  “To clarify, I should probably state that her death has been declared in absentia,” continued Watkins. “Which means that, for all intents and purposes, she is now deceased. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but on a less sad note, I’m also calling to tell you that you’re in Ms. Meade’s will.”

  “I am?” Emily was totally confused. She hadn’t seen her aunt in twenty years, not since she was a kid. What was she doing in her will?

  “Yes. It seems that she wanted you to have her house.”

  “Her house?” Jesse jumped on the couch with Emily and Widget and tried to put his ear next to the phone. Emily gave him a look and put the phone on speaker.

  “Oh yeah,” said Jesse. “Or you could just do that.”

  “I’m sorry?” came the polite tone of J.R. Watkins, attorney at law.

  “Nothing. That was just my husband, Jesse. So, wait, you mean to tell me Aunt Matilda left me her entire house?”

  “The house and the accompanying property,” said Watkins. “It’s quite a good bit of land for this area, especially with the housing market here. Lovely place.”

  “I’m sure it is,” said Emily. “I’m just not quite understanding how this all happened. I haven’t spoken to my aunt in years.”

  “Yes, Ms. Meade did mention she had some familial difficulty, but she spoke quite fondly of you nonetheless. And she was very generous, something of a local philanthropist. It was in her nature to be giving beyond what any of us normally expect.”

  “That’s incredible,” said Emily. “I mean, wow. This is just so unexpected. We’ll need to discuss this and get back to you, if that’s all right.”

  “Of course,” said Watkins. “The property is yours to do with as you see fit…regardless of what you might choose. Good day.”

  “Good day,” Emily echoed without thinking before pressing the button to hang up. Jesse immediately burst out laughing.

  “‘Good day’?” he repeated. “Who is this guy, Mr. Belvedere?”

  “Some rich lawyer giving me my rich aunt’s house,” said Emily. “Do you know what this means?”

  “Um, we get Mr. Belvedere to sell the joint and buy ourselves a sick place here?”

  “Jesse, as of next month, we have no place to live. We can’t sell the place remotely and wait for the money to come through while we sleep on a park bench here. We should just go out there, look at the place, see if there’s anything worth keeping, then sell out and figure things out from there.”

  “Move? To your aunt’s place?” Jesse looked appalled. “Are you crazy? Do you know how cold it is in Colorado?”

  Emily pulled up the average temperatures in Boulder on her computer. “It actually doesn’t look that bad.”

  “There’s like a forty-degree range there, daily! That’s like living in a desert on top of a mountain. Have you ever even lived above sea level? Let alone…” He leaned over and looked at her screen. “Five thousand feet? Why don’t we just move to the Himalayas?”

  “We don’t have a free house in the Himalayas,” said Emily. “Look. We don’t have the money to stay here. A month from now, we’re going to have to decide whether we move into my parents’ basement or yours. And if you want to be in your thirties, married, and living in your parents’ basement, I think we’ve acquired different priorities. So, unless you suddenly get signed to a major label or I write an entire novel in about a week, there’s no quick fix for the mess we’re currently in. Except for this.”

  Jesse, frustrated but unable to form a counterpoint, fell silent. Emily, sensing her window of opportunity, continued.

  “Look, it’s not forever. We go there for the winter, renovate it, sell it, then buy whatever house we want, wherever we want. We won’t have to pay rent. I’ll have time to work on my novel, and you can work on your music whenever we’re not doing stuff for the house.”

  Jesse sighed, tugging at his hair till it stuck straight up. “Let me get this straight. You want to move to Colorado for the winter to fix up some creepy old building a dead lady gave you while you try to write the Great American Novel? Does any of this sound familiar to you?”

  “This isn’t The Shining! We’ll be in the middle of a town, in a totally normal house. I’m sure everything will be perfectly fine—”

  “—said everyone in every horror movie ever,” said Jesse.

  “Do you have any better ideas?” said Emily. She knew she had him there.

  “No,” admitted Jesse. “I don’t.”

  “It’s this or the basement,” said Emily.

  Jesse shuddered. Her parents—austere, formal, and convinced their daughter could have done better than a musician-by-night/foreman-by-day—made Jesse deeply uncomfortable. His parents, while loving and accepting people, unceasingly harangued the pair about grandchildren. Emily didn’t mind the propaganda, but Jesse wanted them to be in a better place financially before they even considered it. And his mother was relentless.

  “Okay, okay, fine,” he said. “Six months and we’re out. No matter what happens.”

  “Six months,” Emily repeated. “No matter what.”

  Widget barked as if in agreement with them, and Emily hugged her as a feeling of relief washed over her: no more rent hanging over
their heads, and a chance to catch up and maybe even get ahead. She felt like their luck was finally starting to change.

  It only took a week for them to pack their scant belongings. They rented a small truck, loaded their few boxes, and climbed into the front seat with Widget between them.

  “Good-bye, crappy studio in a questionable part of town,” said Jesse as he turned the key in the ignition. “We won’t miss you at all.”

  Emily felt a pang, although it wasn’t for the apartment. It was the realization they’d be leaving behind everything they’d always known in exchange for the unknown. Anything could happen. It was both thrilling and terrifying.

  It was a thirty-hour drive to Colorado, and they alternated driving and sleeping in shifts. When it was Emily’s turn, she watched the landscape pass through the window, feeling the distance between their old lives and new increase more and more with each passing mile. As she drove, she wondered if this could be the thing to change their fortune: would Emily be able to write again? Would Jesse find a band he could play with? Would they ever get out of debt?

  When they were both awake, they speculated on what their new lives might bring.

  “You know, this reminds me of the Gold Rush, or the Oregon Trail,” said Jesse. “People who head out West to find their fortune?” He seemed to be warming up to the idea. “It’s funny how that hasn’t changed since the old days.”

  “We just have a moving van and smart phones instead of a covered wagon and cholera,” said Emily.

  “Remember the game? In elementary school? My family always died of cholera.”

  “You have to play as the banker,” said Emily. “It’s the secret to winning. That way you have enough money for buffalo meat and bullets and when half your family drowns in the river or you lose one of your wagon wheels, you can afford to replace it.”

  Jesse snorted. “We’re never gonna be the banker.”