Restless Spirits Boxset: A Collection of Riveting Haunted House Mysteries

by Skylar Finn

  He listened patiently without asking any questions or interrupting, then said, “I’m sorry you’ve been dealing with that, Em. I wish you would have told me. Do you think maybe the stress of moving is getting to you? I mean, you’re totally isolated in this old house with just me and Widget for company, and she won’t even go into half the rooms in the place. There’s no one for you to talk to besides me or that weirdo handyman. The stress of the move, trying to write your novel—I don’t want to say it might be a projection of your imagination, but what else could it be?”

  In spite of the fact that she’d been telling herself very similar things for the past several days, Emily was insulted at the implication that it might be all in her head. “Jesse, I know what I saw! I’m not making this up. How can you say that?”

  “I know, and I believe you,” he said hastily. “It’s just that you’re so good at telling a story—you can scare me without even trying—and you haven’t been able to write for a while, so, you know. Maybe it’s coming out in other ways.”

  Emily considered this. She knew that people who were unable to sleep for long periods of time sometimes had waking dreams. Maybe her writer’s block had resulted in something similar. But that wasn’t enough to explain what she’d seen. Emily shook her head.

  “No, I’ve considered that, and there’s definitely something weird going on,” she said. “I think you might have been right about this place.”

  “That’s funny, cause I’m starting to think that you were,” he said. “This is a great opportunity. I know it’s not ideal, but what is? I think maybe we need to see this thing through.”

  “That’s it?” Emily was shocked. “You’re like the number one conspiracy theorist of all the things wrong with this house. You don’t think there’s anything weird about what I just told you?”

  “It’s definitely weird, all right. I just don’t think it’s weird enough to warrant giving up our lottery ticket, you know? I mean, if you’re truly uncomfortable, then obviously we need to have a larger discussion. But I really don’t think it’s going to take me long to get the work done. Let’s just see how it goes for the next couple of days and then we’ll reconvene. And also—I got hoagies.”

  “Okay, I guess,” said Emily. She wasn’t remotely satisfied or reassured. It all seemed very logical and reasonable, but why didn’t she feel any better?

  The next day, Jesse stuck around the house to fix the window in the basement and Emily was relieved. Just knowing he was there and she wasn’t alone in the house was enough to calm her down.

  It wasn’t enough to return to the typewriter, of which she’d had just about enough, but she decided it was time to take her office back. Hastily stowing the typewriter back in its ominous cracked black case, she shoved it behind the couch and sat down at her desk. She opened her laptop and hit the power button, rubbing her arms while she sat waiting for the computer to boot up. It was freezing in here.

  Emily thought of her seasonally inappropriate clothing in the bedroom upstairs. Florida was not exactly known for its winter gear, and Emily knew she was unprepared to deal with the temperature change. She just figured she’d pick up stuff from a local store when they got there, but with all the chaos of the last few days, she’d never gotten around to it. Maybe Matilda had something she could wear.

  Emily went upstairs to the door at the end of the hallway. She felt weird about going into Matilda’s room, even though she’d left it to her: it, and everything in it. Even if Matilda had died of natural causes, it still would have felt strange going through her things. Knowing that she didn’t made it somehow even worse.

  Emily pushed the door open with a creak. It was a pleasant, welcoming room with its own small fireplace. A sleigh bed took up one wall and a bookcase filled with mysteries took up another. There was a long dresser with a vanity mirror and two matching bedside tables ornamented with Tiffany lamps.

  Emily wondered if maybe she had been letting her imagination get the better of her. Standing in Matilda’s bedroom in broad daylight with nothing strange or mysterious happening, it seemed like everything was perfectly normal.

  Emily went to the armoire. It was the identical twin to the one in the attic. She opened the heavy wood doors and peered inside.

  Matilda’s clothes were neatly organized by color, spanning from neutral autumn tones to bright pastel spring hues. Her shoes were lined up along the bottom beneath the clothes. Emily reached in and pulled out a thick, cozy cardigan, slipping it on over her thin chambray shirt.

  “That’s better,” she murmured with a sigh of relief.

  No sooner had she uttered these words than the window blew open with a loud report like a rifle, the sash banging furiously against the wall. An impossibly strong gust of wind rushed into the room, knocking over the lamps on the bedside table and pulling the books from the shelves. It blew so hard Emily could barely walk across the room to close the window, and she fought to take each step. The wind blew her backward and she fell onto the floor. There was a loud, shaking sound, and Emily looked up in horror to see the armoire listing from side to side like it was drunk. With an endless loud creak, it tipped forward.

  Emily screamed and rolled to the side just as the armoire crashed onto the floor in the very space she’d been only seconds before. The wind suddenly ceased. Emily fought to catch her breath as adrenaline pumped through her veins.

  Struggling to her feet, she caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror over the dresser: her own tangled hair and wild eyes followed her across the room as she ran for the door and thundered down the stairs.

  Emily went straight to the basement door, where the sounds of the circular saw whining carried up the steps and into the hallway. She shivered as she descended the steps towards the workbench where Jesse, goggles on, oblivious, operated the saw. She plunged her hands into the pockets of Matilda’s cardigan to warm them, startled when her hand wrapped around a small, hard object. Emily stopped at the bottom of the stairs and pulled it out.

  Clutched in her hand was a black spiral bound book: Matilda’s diary.

  7

  Forgetting her plan to tell Jesse what happened, Emily sank to the bottom step of the basement and immediately began to read. She felt as though she was inside of one of her novels. She needed to know what was going to happen next.

  The vultures were here again today, clawing at my door looking for scraps. Will they never cease? I would think they would know by now that I will never, ever sell to them—no matter what they offer.

  It pains me to admit how tempted I’ve been in the past. Maintaining this place hasn’t been easy for a woman alone, let alone with the children to take care of. I would never let on to anyone how hard it gets at times, not even Cynthia—but she’s been getting curious. She seemed to buy my story about the electric company accidentally taking four thousand dollars out of my account instead of the four hundred I owed them as the reason for her check bouncing last week, but I think Cynthia might be shrewder than she pretends to be.

  Between the bank, Cynthia, the property managers, and that meddlesome Richard always poking his nose into my business, I’ve got a full plate on my hands, and that’s not even counting the responsibility of the children. This is all really for them. I would have no purpose without them. I’m so grateful to them, really. I don’t know what I would do if I failed them. I don’t think I could live with myself.

  “Em?”

  Emily jumped, flying at least a foot in the air. The diary thudded to the ground beside her. She’d been so absorbed in the story, she hadn’t even heard Jesse approach her.

  He lifted the goggles off his head. “Whatcha doin’?”

  “I found Matilda’s diary,” she said.

  Jesse stared at the small black notebook on the ground. “Where’d ya get that?”

  “Her room,” she said. She felt a flash of annoyance at his questioning look. “I needed a sweater, okay? I was cold.”

  Jesse held up his hands with an air of surren
der. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “But you didn’t believe me,” she said. “When I told you what I saw.” She hadn’t realized how much it had been bothering her until she said it out loud. She felt tears form in the corners of her eyes.

  “Hey, hey,” said Jesse, taking her into her arms. “Don’t cry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I didn’t believe you.”

  “But you don’t,” said Emily, drying her eyes.

  “It’s not that,” said Jesse. “It’s just like, it was one thing to joke about, you know? It was bad enough knowing something happened here. But thinking that there’s still something weird going on—it’s like, too much, you know? I guess I just don’t want to believe it.”

  Emily stared at the little book in her lap. “Maybe there’s something in here that will tell us what happened. I wish we could just ignore it, but it’s not going away. I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, too, and it didn’t do me any good. If anything, I think that it just made everything even worse.”

  “Okay,” said Jesse. “How about this: you build a fire with our newly acquired YouTube skills, and I’ll pick up food. We’ll meet up in front of the fireplace and maybe we can go through the diary and find out what happened to Matilda. Deal?”

  “Deal,” said Emily.

  She regretted it almost immediately when she realized it would leave her stranded in the house alone, but she felt too proud to tell Jesse that. Instead, she waited till he left, then called Widget into the living room. She barricaded them in the room by closing the many doors that led in and out of it.

  She went to the fireplace to build another fire, preferably a massive, roaring one, but there was scarcely enough wood left for even a small fire. She decided to look outside to see if there were any firewood bundles stored somewhere on the property. It occurred to her that there might be some in the basement, but she didn’t relish the prospect of going downstairs without Jesse home.

  Behind the house, there was an old toolshed at the far edge of the lawn. Emily imagined something popping out at her as soon as she opened the door. She shuddered, deciding to leave that as a last resort. The stairs from the kitchen door to the yard had a small alcove beneath, which seemed an obvious and logical place to store firewood. It was darker than she would have liked, but it seemed like a preferable alternative to exploring the toolshed.

  Emily activated the light on her flashlight app as she crouched and slipped under the stairs. She shone the light around all the corners under the porch before shuffling forward, hunched over. She approached what she thought was a small bundle of wood, only to find it was nothing more than a black garbage bag covering a pile of bricks. Emily shone her light on the pile, squinting. Behind it, there was a wooden rectangle in the wall. Upon closer inspection, she realized it was a door.

  Emily reached for the narrow wooden strip set into the door’s surface and turned it clockwise. The door swung inward. Emily hurriedly set the bricks to the side and pulled the door open the rest of the way. She peered into the opening. Set into the side of the house was a long, dark passageway. It was impossible to tell where it led to without going in.

  Emily paused at the entrance. Clearly, this was a terrible idea: she had no idea what was in the walls of this house. Maybe it was filled with rats, or bodies, or more ghosts. Yet she felt a strange pull she couldn’t account for, one that led her forward. In spite of what the townspeople said, after reading Matilda’s diary, Emily couldn’t accept that she had bad intentions towards the children. Maybe some evidence lay within the house’s walls that would exonerate her.

  The passage was narrow and low, just wide and tall enough for a child to walk upright and an adult to walk bent over. Emily swept the beam of her light back and forth, revealing a series of narrow twists and turns. At one point, the passage appeared to tilt swiftly upward, as if on an incline. Emily moved forward, running one hand along the wall as she went. At the first bend, she was surprised to feel another roughly hewn latch under her hand. Turning it, she poked her head through and was surprised to see that it opened up to a corner of the cellar. She closed the door again and continued along the passageway, which now sloped upward and then turned left. At the turn, she found another door: this one inside the pantry in the kitchen. Emily closed the door and continued.

  The secret passage led all over the house, with each door opening to a different room: the parlor, the living room, Aunt Matilda’s bedroom, and a second bedroom, decorated for a young girl. The doors were all concealed within closets or behind furniture: a couch and a chair, in the living room and parlor respectively; the closets in Matilda’s room and the second bedroom.

  At the door into the second bedroom, the passageway abruptly bisected: ahead, the passageway sloped gently down an incline, presumably back into the living room. Behind Emily, across from the small door, there was a ladder: the attic? she wondered.

  Just then, she heard the front door open and shut. “Hello?” Jesse called from somewhere below her.

  Emily assumed he couldn’t hear her from within the walls, so she exited the passageway in Andrea’s room and ran down the stairs. Jesse stared at her as she entered the kitchen. Glancing at her reflection in the kitchen window, she saw that her hair was sticking up crazily and she was covered in dust bunnies.

  “Jesse, you’ll never believe what I found!” she said breathlessly.

  “Was it Richard’s soul?” Jesse rested two bags of something savory-smelling on the kitchen table.

  “There’s a secret passageway in the walls and it leads all over the house! There are doors into practically every room.”

  “Why do I find this information less than reassuring?”

  “This means that maybe Matilda wasn’t responsible,” said Emily. “I mean, anyone who knew about the passage could have come into the house at any point and taken all of them! They might have been asleep in their beds. That’s why no one heard anything, and that’s why there were no signs of a struggle.”

  “And this is a good thing?”

  “It clears her name and proves she didn’t do it,” said Emily triumphantly before adding thoughtfully, “we just have to figure out who did.”

  “Maybe it’s time we revisit the question of the property management company,” said Jesse. “I mean, it would be a quick fix and an easy out.”

  “Jesse, we can’t! Matilda flat-out refused to sell this house to them, no matter what. Richard thinks they might have something to do with what happened to her and the kids. We can’t just give them the house, it would be like letting them win. And whatever money they give us would be nowhere near what this place is worth.”

  “I don’t know, babe,” said Jesse, tugging at his hair. “I mean, what else can we do? Start running a haunted Airbnb and hope all the freaks show up to get their paranormal jollies? Cause I’m not really seeing a whole lot of alternatives here.”

  “There has to be another way,” said Emily. “I don’t think Matilda or this girl are trying to hurt us. I think they want us to help them. I think they want us to find the people who hurt them and bring them to justice.”

  “Emily, you can’t be serious. That’s like combining the efforts of the Ghostbusters with everybody on CSI! Normal people, people like us? We’re not meant to go around solving crimes and bringing people to justice. Can’t we just go to the cops?”

  “And say what? ‘My dead aunt wants us to bring her killer to justice?’ They’re not going to buy it, Jesse. They’re going to think we’re crazy or wasting their time or both.”

  “Well, what are we supposed to do?”

  Emily contemplated the diary. “There must be something we’re not seeing.”

  “I don’t know if I want to see it. Can we just leave and come back later?”

  “We don’t have anything to go back to,” Emily reminded him. The two sat in momentary silence, reflecting on this unhappy fact. Jesse was the first one to speak.

  “All right,” he said. “What can we d
o? Is there somebody else we can talk to? Somebody else that knew them, besides Richard or the cops? Somebody else who might have known what was going on?”

  Emily thought of the locket.

  “Yes,” she said, surprising herself with the certainty she felt. “I know exactly who.”

  Boulder Creek was low that time of year, and in spite of the cold, the banks were littered with people in the grass: people with backpacks, people with tents. They were mere feet away from the happy people who traversed the park, exclaiming over the Christmas lights that had gone up in early November. They were miles away from having a warm bed to sleep in that night.

  Emily and Jesse made their way across the lawn, peering closely at the occasional couple as Emily checked their likenesses against the photographs inside the locket. She stopped, distressed, pausing beneath a tree growing out of an overhang near the water’s edge. Jesse came to a sudden halt beside her.

  “Jess, what if they’re not here? Maybe they’re in a different spot, or maybe they picked up and left town—” As she spoke, the locket suddenly grew so hot in her hand that she dropped it off the overhang and it promptly disappeared below.

  “The locket!” Now Emily was even more distressed. She had just lost the most valuable possession of a dead girl who tragically lost her life under unknown circumstances. She was trying to help her, and she couldn’t even get that right. Emily stumbled down the muddy bank after the locket and Jesse followed.

  “Maybe we should go back—” he started as Emily came to a halt.

  Beneath the tree, in the small shelter the overhang provided, were a couple. They looked up at Emily and Jesse with mild alarm. Emily and Jesse clearly weren’t cops, but they weren’t anyone the couple recognized, either. Emily saw the locket glinting on the ground in the moonlight. She picked it up.