“I’ll tell you what I used to tell my students,” he said, rising somewhat stiffly, arms clutched oddly at his sides to hold down the diary. “If you can show me proof of your theory, then I will acknowledge you’re right. Otherwise…” he winked. “Otherwise, it’s all just a theory.”
Jacob and CeCe stood aside as he headed for the foyer. “Where’re you going?” Jacob called after him. “I need to go over the revised schedule for tonight and tomorrow!”
Weems didn’t reply.
CeCe waved it off with a slight shake of her head and a tight smile. “If you’re insisting on going in to town,” she said to Jacob, “then I’m going to insist you bring actual food. I’m real damn sick of peanut butter sandwiches and diet soda.”
“Fine, fine. Anything I can get y’all?”
Ezra shrugged. “A burger might be nice…”
CeCe’s expression brightened. “If you’re bringing back burgers, I’d love a cheeseburger and onion rings. Oh! Let me go ask the crew what they want and take some orders! I’ll come with you! If there’s a fast food place open, other stuff is open too. Maybe the doc in a box can take a look at this cut.”
She limped on her bad leg out of the room, leaving Jacob gazing after her indulgently, but with a definite air of annoyance. He turned back to us after a moment, his expression falling. “I don’t suppose y’all know anything about the diary, do you? I had in in my office in the carriage house earlier but it’s not there now.”
Ezra stiffened beside me, but I put on my best I swear, headmaster, I don’t know how the goat got into the library face and shook my head. “Maybe the ghost wanted it back?”
Jacob’s eyes narrowed. “Make sure you’re available late tonight. Take whatever you need for your headache, Oscar. And Ezra… Don’t faint again. We’re doing the second floor tonight.”
CHAPTER NINE
Julian
My room was freezing, despite the fact it was at least eighty outside and humid to boot. Between the bands of thunderstorms, the weather had settled into a swampy mess that reminded me of home a little too much, especially once I found an intrepid mosquito trying it’s best to get dinner from the back of my hand. One more ghost joined the alleged bunch at Hendricks House before I even got my bedroom door shut. I’d appropriated one of the glaringly bright camping lanterns from the makeshift storage space in the ballroom, plucking it out of Jacob’s personal stash of equipment and set it on the bedside table, turning the lamp to the lowest setting. Despite the relatively early hour—barely four o’clock—it was plenty dark inside the house thanks to the still overcast sky outside and the general lack of windows not blocked by towering oaks or crawling vines. Gingerly, I set the diary beside the lantern and paged through it until I reached where we’d left off downstairs. “Christ,” I muttered to the empty room, “she was fucking unhinged.” The entry went on for three pages, detailing a lengthy dinner party held by the newlywed Mr. And Mrs. Hendricks. The writer had smiled and made nice, complimenting the food and decor and congratulating them on the news of their impending happiness. “‘She claimed to be expecting in December, but I know better. They will have a miraculously large, healthy baby several months early. What a miracle, what a blessing. It is amazing how many of these simpering little cunts deliver of healthy babies so early after they seduce and corrupt the minds of gentlemen like Matthew.’.”
As Fellowes said, fucking yikes. I turned the page.
November 1
What did I say? A healthy little boy, born surprisingly early. Mother and child are doing fine. How wonderful.
November 3
Matthew Hendricks has ruined my life. He’s destroyed everything! How could he abuse my love—our love—so? I thought, no I’d hoped, that I’d been wrong. That he was merely doing what was expected of him and not truly ensnared by L’s machinations. She’s poison, the most vile of grasping whores. I am expected to simply—No! To gratefully, gracefully, accept her attempted sop of kindness? The entire village is mad. They are all seduced by her lies. The most evil of demonesses—
March 12
What choice do I have. My life is Hell enough as it is.
The entries became simple lists for several pages after that, erratically kept notations of purchases made in town, orders from the greengrocer, a few brief comments about people in Bettina, all bland and benign. Several blank pages followed the last notation about the new lending library being built in the village center and a wistful comment about missing a trip to Manhattan due to bad weather making the roads impassable, bemoaning such a rural life and wishing she had been wiser in choosing her partner. “Well, well, well… Looks like someone got over Matthew Hendricks after all,” I murmured. Outside, the wind blew hard again, pushing a cold draft through the old windows. A soft knock fell on the door, quiet enough for me to pretend not to hear it at first. The second round was more insistent, followed by a hissed “Doctor Weems! Open the door!”
I shoved the diary under one of my pillows because apparently I was channeling my inner porn-hiding fifteen year old self, and made sure I was at least vaguely presentable before opening the door on Jessica. She was grinning, cheeks flushed pink in the bright lantern light as she bounced on her toes in front of me. “I’m going to guess you have good news?”
“You’re so smart,” she cooed.
“Is that sarcasm?”
“Would it make a difference if it was?”
“…no. What’s up?”
“Something in the downstairs library. It’s about Paul Hendricks.”
“What?” I stepped back into my room, holding the door wider. “Come in, come in. Did Fellowes find…?”
She shook her head. “No, I did! I found it and I knew you needed to see it! Come on, before someone else gets light fingered.” She winked at me, turning on her heel to practically bounce down the corridor, disappearing into the thick shadows by the stairs. I could hear the trip-trap of her kitten heels all the way down the wooden stairs. Hesitating for just a few seconds, I wondered if I should change my clothes first. I was barefoot, wearing my jeans from earlier but down to a worn out old t-shirt from my undergrad days rather than the button up and sweater vest I’d decide would be my on screen uniform for the duration of the shoot. Jessica’s loud, clattering steps had stopped. “Doctor Weems, come on!” she shout-hissed. “Get your cute butt down here!”
Christ. I grabbed the lantern and headed after her, making sure the door to my room was shut and locked behind me. I caught up with her at the foot of the stairs. “Where’s everyone else?” I asked, realizing belatedly how quiet the downstairs was. I could hear the muffled, distant murmur of low voices and something heavy being moved, but there was no cacophony of voices as Jacob demanded this or that, no scurry of crew members setting up for a shoot. Even the tables that had been in the foyer were missing, tucked into the ballroom no doubt, as that had become our makeshift staging area and storage room.
“Mr. Grant is with Mrs. Grant in their suite, Charlie and the rest of the crew are organizing equipment for tonight’s shoot, Stella is…” she trailed off and made a face, pausing at the library door. “Well. Stella is.” She flashed me a toothpaste advert smile and threw open the door. “Look!”
“I see a lot of dark,” I said. Between the heavy clouds blocking the sunlight and the thick curtains someone had closed over the windows at either end of the room, it might as well have been midnight in there. I raised my lantern as Jessica held her hand up to point out something, her fingers accidentally knocking into the plastic casing around the LED bulbs and making then flicker. “Sorry,” I muttered as the lantern flickered. She wasn’t smiling anymore, just staring at me intensely.
“Second shelf,” she said, gaze going unfocused and soft. “Third one down, about your chest height. Fourth from the right, scuffed red cloth cover.” She snapped her gaze back to mine and smiled with considerably less wattage. “You’re investigating Paul Lacroix-Hendricks’ death, right? I mean, with all the other stuff g
oing on? Check it out.”
I hesitated, despite the urgency in her tone. An oily, creeping sensation moved down my back, spread across my limbs. Something was urging me to run, to get the Hell away from the library now, physical pain shooting down my legs as I literally forced myself to stand still. What the Hell? I cleared my throat and aimed for something near professionalism, despite everything in my body screaming at me to run away. “We should get Oscar for this, shouldn’t we? I mean, he’s the ghost whisperer or whatever.”
She narrowed her eyes, voice going hard around the edges as she said, “I’ll go get him. You grab the book while you can.”
She reached for me like she was going to shove me into the room so I moved before she could touch me. Brandishing the lantern ahead of me, I spotted the book fairly easily. It was the only red cloth bound book on the shelf. I glanced back to see Jessica still in the doorway, a silhouette against the gray light of the foyer with her face turned away from me. The book was worn around the edges, the binding softly fuzzed with ages of wear. Where the title should have been imprinted on the spine was a dark smudge in the general shape of letters. “The title’s worn off,” I said. I looked up again and she wasn’t there, but I could hear the murmur of voices beyond the door. I tugged the book from the shelf and carried it to the settee where I’d been pressed close to Oscar what felt like days ago instead of mere hours. Without the crowd of bodies in the library, it felt cold and strange. I felt cold and strange, disconnected somehow. The second before a fall when you know it’s about to happen but you can’t stop it, just before fear sets in you are certain this is about to hurt. The urge to flee was strong again and, despite being alone in the room, I felt a spike of embarrassment. I’m a grown man. I know better. There’s not a damn thing in here in the dark that’s not here in the light.
A voice that sounded suspiciously like Oscar’s replied softly in my thoughts. You’re right, but what if you’re just not able to see all the things there, dark or light? And they’ve decided you’re a rather tasty looking morsel all on your lonesome?
Fucking Hell. I needed either more or less coffee, I wasn’t sure which. I cranked up the intensity of the lantern until the room was flooded with the stark blue-white glow of CamperMax’s finest and flipped open the book.
It was a recipe book.
An old one, from the looks of things, but just a collection of recipes ranging from simple soups to complex feasts. There was a section in the back, about forty pages, of curatives and treatments for everything from deep splinters to the ague with a side jaunt for ‘ladies’ troubles’ which included childbirth related problems. It was fascinating, no doubt about that, especially as it seemed the recipes were all specific favorites of the Hendricks household over the years. A quick peek at the flyleaf showed me the title: Hendricks House Recipes: 1890-1910. Jessica was still talking to someone in the foyer, voices low and fast. I had questions, chief among them being what the hell did this book have to do with Paul Hendricks? A very soft, distinctly feminine, sigh, drew my attention out of the book again. “I can appreciate this is interesting but I don’t see—”
I didn’t see Jessica, is what I didn’t see.
A very petite, round-faced young woman stood just a few feet away. She was sad, crying openly but quietly, fingers pressed to her lips like she wanted to hold the sound in. A loud bang in the foyer made me jump, my heart already pounding so hard I thought I might die from it. She was gone when I blinked. The overhead lights came on and someone deep in the house cheered. Carefully, I turned off the lantern and closed the book. I rose to my feet and tucked the book under one arm before walking slowly to the library door. Jessica was nowhere to be seen but Jacob and Charlie were wrestling a large plastic tub labeled Cables: Don’t Tangle These Please across the floor with no care for the finish.
“Christ, you alright?” Jacob panted. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He laughed hard at that, Charlie’s softer snicker nearly lost under the rollicking guffaws from Jacob.
“I, ah. I think I’m going to go upstairs for a bit,” I said. My head didn’t want to sit right on my shoulders. The world felt soft and fuzzy around me, smothering rather than comforting. A bone-deep weariness crept down my legs, making me sway on the stairs and clutch the railing.
Jacob set down his end of the plastic bin and took a few steps towards me. “Are you okay? Seriously, Jules. You’re all pale and sweaty.”
I shook my head. “Just tired,” I said, almost believing it. That had to be the reason, I decided, even as I leaned heavily on the banister. Whatever I’d seen was a hypnagogic hallucination. There. That’s the word. Hypnagogic. I pushed myself upright, forcing a smile no one believed. “I just need a nap before we get on to the second floor.”
Jacob glanced back at the bin and Charlie, then at me, a worried crease marring his forehead. “I can take you into town. The doc in a box is seeing people and—”
“Really. I just need rest.” If I said it again, it might be true.
“You look like shit.”
“You’re such a charmer. Careful there or my pants might just fly right off.”
Fellowes quirked a brow, his dimples popping as he barely suppressed his smile. “I heard you had a moment?”
“Heard from who?” I stretched out on my bed, eyeing Fellowes in the doorway. He’d knocked once before pushing the door open, apparently confident in his welcome. “Did you see Jacob?”
“Nope.” He took half a step into the room before pausing, his brows creeping up a little.
“It’s fine, come in.”
He shut the door quietly behind him. “One of the crew’s taken ill,” he said after the briefest pause. “It looks like it might be appendicitis.”
“Shit. Which one?” I thought of Jessica and Charlie, the only two of the crew I’d really had regular interactions with other than Stella. “Was it—”
“Heath. One of the camera guys. He was actually supposed to be the one working on the second floor shoot with us in a bit.” A small smile curled across his expression. “Ezra put on his big boy voice and reminded Jacob we’ve done this before, without a crew trailing around after us, and he knows how to record an investigation thank you very much.” Fellowes perched himself on the end of my bed, his weight making it dip slightly, my ankle pressing against his hip with the movement. “Technically, we’re not allowed to touch the film crew’s equipment but Ezra can do some magic with his phone and may or may not have sneaked in a handheld.” He paused again, this time turning his attention to the door. His lips twitched like he wanted to say something and I realized I was spending way too much time staring at his mouth if I knew what that looked like. He darted a quick glance at me before scowling at the door again.
“Did it do something to offend you?” I asked, shoving myself up onto my elbows. I really did feel ridiculous—a grown man, taking a nap mid-afternoon all tucked up with a book and a cup of tea (which I’d yet to drink, because that’s what you do with tea, really… make it, feel pride in that, then set it down and forget to drink it before it’s gone stone cold and terrible), but with my little episode in the library, I was convinced I needed far more rest than I was getting.
“Huh? Oh, ah. No. It’s just…” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Just a ghost being very insistent.”
Shit. He looked, in a word, guilty. Like he was ashamed of what he was saying. “Hey, it’s fine. I’m not going to tear into you. You keep acting like the other shoe’s going to drop and I hate thinking that I’m coming off as that much of an asshole.”
His eyes flew open. “You’re not. I’m just skittish, I suppose.” Another glance towards the door, but he didn’t frown this time. Just gave a tiny head shake.
“You’ve met other skeptics before,” I reminded him. “Didn’t you even say I was the nicest one?” I braced my elbows on my knees, suddenly very intent on his answer. Hadn’t he said that? Or was it just me hoping?
His soft chuckle made those butterflies in my sto
mach roll over and happily kick their legs in the air. “You are. And that’s why I’m nervous. You’re nothing like I’d been expecting. Well, not so much expecting as afraid of, to be honest. Even when you’re poking at my skills and methods, you’re not attacking me. I…” he trailed off. “Truth be told, I rather like you a lot.” A dull pink flush stained his cheeks and the tops of his ears. He really did look like a faerie prince then, all sharp angles and soft colors, his moss-green gaze drawing me in to a world I hadn’t believed in, and probably wouldn’t after we were done.
“I rather like you a lot, too,” I answered, unable to stop my smile. I felt like a teenager again, finding out my crush did too like boys that way, and me particularly. I wanted to giggle but I held it together because…Well. Giggles aren’t a good look on me and I found out years ago that giggling wasn’t the best way to convince a guy to let you see him naked at any point in the near future.
“Which is why it’s kind of hard to tell you this,” he said on a sigh, just as if I hadn’t spoken. “I know you’ve decided a lack of sleep led to your incident in the library.”
Defense mode engaged…Shields up. Though… why? If anyone, wouldn’t Fellowes be the perfect person to speak with about what I saw? Or rather, imagined? Maybe discussing it with someone who purported to see ghosts could give me some insight and I would be better able to parse out the situation and determine the root cause of my little hallucination, something beyond the hypnagogic angle which didn’t really fly. Not when I had gotten at least six hours of sleep the night before and wasn’t at the point I was dead on my feet, which would be when something like a hypnagogic hallucination would kick in. “It’s been a weird few days.”
Fellowes stared down at my ankle where it pressed against his hip, his fingers tangling in complex ladders as he fidgeted out a thought or idea. Finally, he came to a decision and just slumped a little. “Well, we’re going to be starting in the billiards room in about an hour,” he said, a smile that didn’t reach his eyes or make his dimples pop pasted onto his lips. He patted my leg and rose to his feet. “More good news: Hendricks County announced the power grid will be fully functioning by midnight tonight.”
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