Restless Spirits Boxset: A Collection of Riveting Haunted House Mysteries

by Skylar Finn

  She let herself through the front door. The cold washed over her in waves. Her feelings of dread intensified upon confronting the empty house. What if she never saw Jesse again?

  Well, not entirely empty. Widget ran into the living room as Emily entered. She leaned over and picked her up, burying her face into Widget’s soft fur. Tears pricked Emily’s eyes and spilled over as she remembered the first Christmas she ever spent with Jesse. It was when he gave her Widget.

  Emily set Widget down gently and wrapped her sweater around her more tightly. The house was frigid, even colder than it was outside. Emily checked the thermostat, puzzled to see that it read seventy-five. It felt like it was twenty degrees in here.

  Emily decided to build a fire while she waited for Cynthia’s instructions. There was obviously something wrong with the heater and given the circumstances, she felt like it was beyond her to determine what was wrong with it, let alone fix it.

  She went out the kitchen door and down the back steps to the wood pile under the stairs. Something was amiss. She glanced around, paranoid. The wood pile had shifted several feet to the left and lay in a jumble of logs when it was normally neatly stacked and organized. The door in the wall had drifted open, as if pushed by an unseen hand.

  Emily stared at the door, paralyzed with fear. Had Cynthia returned for her? Was she waiting in the walls of the house?

  As Emily gazed into the darkness of the tunnel just beyond the door, a pinprick of light flared in the abyss and hovered there like a lightning bug. The small gold light hung suspended in the doorway and Emily, as if drawn along an invisible string, drifted closer. The feeling she got from the appearance of the light was not one of worry or fear, but a benevolent sense of reassurance and comfort.

  “Hello?” She pushed the door open wider. The light drifted along the passage ahead of her. Emily followed it. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  It wasn’t that she expected a response, exactly; the ghosts had never verbally communicated with her and she didn’t expect them to start now. For some reason, Emily didn’t think they could. Something about the boundaries of space and time and death seemed to stand between them and the living in a way that precluded casual conversation.

  Emily was surprised when the light paused and flashed three times. She looked over and saw that they were in front of the door that led to the basement.

  Emily pushed the door inward, hesitating at the threshold. Thoughts of Cynthia lurking in a corner weighed heavily on her mind. The light glided ahead of her into the basement, as if reassuring her there was nothing to be afraid of. It paused in the corner and grew brighter, until the space beneath it was illuminated. Emily saw a cardboard box on the floor, its flaps neatly folded under one another. She reached up and pulled the chain above her head, flooding the basement with harsh white light. The small gold light remained until Emily opened the box. Then it faded from view.

  There was a pile of carefully stacked books in the box that Emily quickly realized were photo albums. She lifted the one on top. As she carefully turned the laminated pages, she saw picture after picture of Matilda and the kids, but more often than not, just the kids. And not only Andrea, Tricia, and Bobby: these photographs spanned many years. The earliest ones at the beginning of the album were taken on film and had the quality of old postcards. Some were Polaroids. The newer ones had been taken digitally and were printed on shiny white photographic paper.

  In all of them, the children portrayed were smiling and happy. Some were playing outside—tag, hopscotch, baseball, soccer. They were blowing bubbles and proudly holding up drawings or cookies they baked. On the last page of the album was an envelope beginning to yellow at the edges. Emily carefully pulled it from the album, careful not to tear the delicate paper.

  She opened the envelope. Inside was a handwritten note and two photographs. The first was of an older man, holding two small children. The second was a school picture of a young boy with a brown bowl cut. She unfolded the note and read the carefully-printed block letters.

  Dear Matilda,

  I just want to thank you, as I do every birthday and always will, for what you have given me. You gave me the opportunity for a good life by providing me with shelter and safety when I otherwise would have had none. I had no home and no family when I came to live with you. I remember how afraid I was. After a while, it was as if I had always lived there. It came to feel like home. The bad memories faded. I got to play like other kids and go to school. I thought about what I would be when I grew up, instead of whether or not I would eat that day.

  This is the first picture I ever had of myself, taken when I came to live with you. The other photograph is of my sons.

  I now have two children and a family of my own. I trace the beginnings of this happiness back to the time I spent with you and the sanctuary you provided. I am sure that without it, none of these things would be possible. With it, all things are possible.

  With love and gratitude always,

  Timothy McFadden

  Tears welled up in Emily’s eyes and threatened to spill over onto her cheeks as she read the letter. She thought of how many lives Matilda had changed. She realized in that moment how much this house meant to Matilda and how important it had been to her to help the kids who lived in it. It made what Cynthia had done seem a thousand times more heinous than it already did.

  As Emily folded the letter up and returned it to its envelope, a new and powerful resolve rose up in her: not only would she get Jesse back, but she would make sure that Cynthia Harkness never hurt anyone again.

  As if Cynthia could hear her from whatever dark and evil lair she inhabited, Emily’s phone chimed. The text said it was from Jesse. Emily opened it grimly.

  COME TO THIS ADDRESS TO COLLECT YOUR REWARD, the message said. There was a shared location beneath the text. Underneath this was a photo of Jesse. He was tied up, gagged, and blindfolded. Emily gave a strangled cry. Her hands shook as she called Richard. “She gave me the address.” Emily could barely get the words out. “And she sent me pictures of Jesse. He’s tied up and gagged someplace. I’m afraid they hurt him, or worse.” She couldn’t bring herself to vocalize her greatest fear.

  “How does she know we won’t take the pictures to the police? It’s evidence!”

  “Richard, we can’t! If we go to the police, she’ll kill Jesse. We have to do this ourselves.” Emily took a deep breath. “Do you own a gun?” she asked.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said slowly, “I own several. What did you have in mind?”

  “I think we need to protect ourselves,” said Emily. “I don’t believe that anyone capable of what Cynthia Harkness has done plans to keep her word. And I have no intention of going in there without a few tricks up my sleeve.”

  4

  Cynthia adjusted her oversized black sunglasses and pulled the brim of her straw hat low over her eyes. After the massive blizzard she’d left behind, life in the Caymans was truly a beach. Ray had been thrilled when she finally appealed to him for help: he’d been pushing money on her for months, likely out of the hope that if she accepted his aid, it would lead to their reconciliation, and she’d finally accepted. She made several vague and unspecified references to terrible hardship imposed on her by Matilda, which would ideally serve to cast further doubt on the woman’s character after Cynthia disappeared—at least, as far as Ray Harkness was concerned.

  Cynthia took a sip of her Mai Tai as she contemplated these past few months. Matilda Meade had been easy to impress. During her brief interview, Cynthia had to do little more than tell the woman about her experience as a nanny in New York, which Cynthia could tell impressed Matilda. As if there was something more glamorous about cleaning up after rich New York brats than cleaning up after poor brats locally. Cynthia claimed her husband left her, when it was quite the other way around, which she figured would earn sympathy points with lonely old spinster Matilda.

  Once she had the job, it was only a matter of time and working out th
e details. Cynthia figured that if she got herself into Matilda’s good graces and stayed there for long enough, the older woman—who seemed to have no family to speak of, at least not one that she ever talked about—was bound to consider Cynthia the closest person to her. Matilda frequently confided in Cynthia how worried she was about what would happen to the children if anything happened to her. Cynthia knew that Matilda would want someone to keep things going in her absence.

  Having to play the thoughtful caregiver had been quite the arduous task. Cynthia disliked children and always had. The nannying job in New York had been the most well-paying gig she could find as an inexperienced undergrad, and the kids were so zonked out on psych meds she barely had to do anything, anyway.

  The kids Matilda cared for were different: needy and insistent. She couldn’t turn around without one of the younger kids wanting to color with her or have a book read to them or sing songs. Cynthia dutifully complied so as not to blow her cover, but she sometimes felt that while Matilda seemed blind to Cynthia’s true nature, the children saw through it. They never really fully seemed to trust her. Although that certainly hadn’t stopped them from asking her for things.

  Then there was the older one, Andrea. Andrea was different. She never seemed to ask for anything at all. Watchful and silent, she seemed to appear out of nowhere and followed Cynthia like a shadow, which drove her insane. The girl was curious and naturally inquisitive, which was massively inconvenient for Cynthia’s purposes. She was always poking her little nose where it didn’t belong.

  Cynthia caught her rummaging through a hallway closet on the first floor one morning and immediately yelled at her to get away. The girl looked mortified and ran off to her room, where she hid for the rest of the day. Unbeknownst to her, Andrea had been troublingly close to discovering what Cynthia had long ago realized was the most important and useful secret of the house: the hidden network of passages that ran through the walls with concealed entrances in numerous rooms throughout the house.

  She also suspected the girl was prone to eavesdropping on her infrequent though heated exchanges with Matilda over money. Cynthia tried her best to keep her temper in check; she was, after all, predicating her plan on Matilda’s sense of loyalty and love, but Cynthia still had to eat, didn’t she? Matilda was terrible at math, awful at keeping track of anything more complex than checking the mail, and seemed bereft of any organizational skills whatsoever. Half the time she seemed little aware of what month it was, let alone what day. One day in particular, Cynthia had been unable to bite her tongue. Short of going to Ray and begging for scraps, which she had no intention of doing, Matilda was Cynthia’s sole source of income. And half the time, Matilda either forgot to pay her or seemed irrationally convinced she already had. On the rare occasions she did remember to pay Cynthia, the checks bounced. This was both humiliating and inconvenient.

  Matilda always made up some excuse as to why: they’d over-drafted her account taking out too much for the electric, someone must have added an extra zero by mistake, can you imagine? Cynthia could not. After three straight days of polite inquiries and subtle reminders, Cynthia finally had to resort to flat-out refusing to work if Matilda didn’t explain why her checks kept bouncing.

  “Didn’t I just pay you?” said Matilda, sounding annoyed. Not even absent-minded and confused, but actually irritable about it!

  Cynthia lost her temper. Not really, of course; if she’d lost her actual temper she would have had a body to dispose of much sooner than she’d originally planned. But she did lose her temper more openly than the sweet persona she’d cultivated these long months ever would have.

  “No one makes that many mistakes over so many months, Matilda,” she said. “I know there’s something else going on. Why can’t you just be honest about it? You know I have problems of my own. Can’t you see that you’re making it worse?”

  Matilda flushed. She looked horribly embarrassed, which gratified Cynthia. Good. Let Miss Martyr display a rare moment of humility for once. Matilda confessed the obvious: she’d concocted this orphanage fantasy with no realistic plan or awareness of how much it would actually cost, and now she was in over her head and saddled with debt.

  Cynthia was exasperated. Who conjured up a pipe dream of running a home for wayward kids without bothering to find out the bottom line? Matilda might have inherited a property worth a great deal of money, but Matilda herself was worth little to nothing. Cynthia estimated her net worth to be somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five dollars and some change. She had no savings, no IRA, no CDs, and her sole assets seemed to consist of the house and a broken-down Dodge Dart out back by the shed.

  Cynthia, who was often left unattended in the house when the brats were down for their nap and Andrea was off staring into space or whatever it was that girl did all day, had done her homework. She’d searched every drawer and filing cabinet, every nook and cranny. Matilda was not one for either locks or security. Anyone could have robbed her blind at any given moment, and she probably wouldn’t have noticed. Not for several days, at least.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Cynthia asked her. “I’m an extremely organized person, Matilda. I could have helped you untangle this mess you’ve gotten us in. I still can, if you’ll let me.”

  Matilda sighed. “It’s too late,” she said, and a chill of horror skated up Cynthia’s spine. What did she mean, too late? What had the old bat gone and done now? Were her months of research and hard work about to go swirling down the tubes because Matilda had catapulted herself into debt and tried to hide it (badly)?

  As it turned out, this was exactly the case. Matilda confessed she was planning to finally cave and sell out to those pushy property managers, Darla and Roger. Cynthia had closed the door in their faces on more than one occasion. They were almost as determined as Cynthia was to get their mitts on the house, although certainly not willing to go to the same lengths, Cynthia felt sure. Of course, Matilda had buckled and caved to the first people to push her into doing so. How unsurprising.

  At this point, Cynthia had scarcely been able to contain herself. All the patient planning, all the meticulous care, all this time spent coloring and holding inane conversations about unicorns and dragons—all for nothing. She’d be back to square one. Probably even worse, considering Matilda seemed unable to pay her at all at this point.

  “How can you sell out like this?” Cynthia had demanded. Perhaps she could appeal to the woman’s earlier righteous indignation she’d always exhibited at the prospect of selling to the property managers. “You’ve done nothing but bad mouth them the entire time I’ve worked for you, saying how you’d never sell, and now you’re just giving in, just like that? When were you planning to tell me? Was I just going to walk up to the house one day and see the For Sale sign on the lawn? Was that how I was going to find out I was out of a job?”

  Matilda stuttered some incoherent apology about how selfish she’d been and the terrible position she’d put Cynthia in. Cynthia had long noted Matilda’s remarkable gift for stating the obvious. She was livid that Matilda had shown no sign of relenting, and multiple alarm bells were going off in her head. She’d have to act quickly, before it was too late.

  Cynthia mumbled something meant to be somewhat reassuring but probably wasn’t, as Matilda remained thoroughly distraught. Cynthia said something about how she understood her fear, but it hadn’t entitled her to be dishonest and manipulative. She might as well have been talking about herself, and the irony didn’t escape her. Typically, she tried to hold up a mirror for Matilda to see the self-sacrificing martyr she was obviously trying so desperately to be, but things were rapidly spiraling out of control and Cynthia’s mask was starting to slip.

  Cynthia left the house immediately. She grabbed her purse and didn’t bother saying good-bye to Matilda when she left. No sense in maintaining any pretense now. If things had spun as wildly out of control as Matilda claimed, the plan would have to be stepped up immediately. With any luck, Matilda would be
out of the picture in a matter of days.

  As soon as she left, she called Watkins to make sure she was still the beneficiary named in the will. Who knew how long that would last? If Matilda was thinking of selling out to the property managers, it would only be a matter of time before she paid a visit to Watkins to change their arrangement. The plan would have to be implemented immediately.

  It was now or never.

  Once Cynthia got rid of them all, it was like a tremendous weight off her shoulders. No more having to act the martyr: Cynthia, the eternal caregiver. Cynthia, the Mary Poppins of Matilda’s Home for Wayward Children. Pretending to be like Matilda in order to gain her favor had been exhausting, but now it was over. She’d never have to deal with any of it again.

  Cynthia polished off her Mai Tai and sighed with bliss. Watkins had taken care of everything. All she had to do was wait.

  And what a place to wait this was. Cynthia was surrounded by surf, sand, and the sound of children’s voices would soon become a distant memory.

  Her phone rang. Cynthia squinted lazily at the screen. What now?

  “Hello?” she said, glancing up as the poolside server returned. “Yes, I’ll have another, please. What? What? No, not you—I said, I’ll take another. No, not you! I’m talking to the server. Yes, thank you. And you—what did you just say to me?”

  Cynthia sat up in her deck chair, feeling as though someone had just thrown a bucket of cold ice water on her hot skin. “What do you mean, she has a great niece? What is that, even? Who leaves their only asset to their great niece? Does every person in this woman’s family hate her that much? I thought she didn’t have family! That was the entire point!”

  Cynthia listened for a few minutes while she tried to keep her previous Mai Tais down. Her gut was suddenly churning horribly. She thought everything was taken care of, and now it seemed that everything was going to slip through her fingers, yet again. Why did this keep happening? Would nothing go her way?