Bump in the Night

by Meredith Spies

  “He took off when the bottle came flying out,” Weems said. He spared the open billiard room door a longing glance. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”

  “We’ll make sure to film your objection for the official record.”

  Weems behaved himself and didn’t say one single word when the attempt at automatic writing failed to yield any results. We recorded the room, took more pictures of the damage, and made the decision to leave everything as it had fallen for the time being, in case more images were needed later. We shut the door to the billiard room and, lacking a key as it had departed with Ernest, Weems scribbled a note on one of the pages from the attempted automatic writing and stuck it in the door jamb, precariously balanced against the knob warning people off entering the room.

  Ezra looked peaked, to be generous. “I need to have a lie down,” he muttered, clutching his cameras to his chest. The bag containing the various meters and other equipment hung from his elbow, banging against his legs as he lurched his way down the corridor towards the other wing where our rooms lay.

  “Ez, wait up,” I called after him, taking a few long strides in his direction.

  “I just need to have a rest,” he said. “Look after your fella there. He looks like shit.” Ezra offered a small, pained smile and turned away, moving at an uneven clip down the corridor towards the rooms on the other side of the landing.

  “I’m really fine,” Weems protested when I turned back to him. “Go keep an eye on him. I’m going to go,” he made a vague motion towards the stairs. “Find some coffee or something.”

  “I think they only have tea downstairs.”

  “I can work with that.” He was still holding the whiskey bottle between his fingers. “I’m going to try and get enough of a signal to do some research on this, too. If I can get an approximate age, we can figure out when it was shut up in there and who was in residence at the time.” He waved me off when I hesitated. “Go, go!”

  Fuck. “Meet me in the library later. We’ll debrief.” He must have been feeling somewhat himself. A small and dirty smirk made those laugh lines by his mouth appear for just a moment. “Be good,” I chastised, though I’m sure my own smile wasn’t any less suggestive. “Will you be okay till then?” I asked more seriously. “I know today’s been a bit—”

  “I’m fine. Go on, check on Ezra. He didn’t look well at all. I’ll be looking into this,” he said, giving the bottle a careful shake.

  I walked backwards a few steps before he rolled his eyes and turned pointedly away, heading for the old service staircase at the far end of the corridor, the narrow passage that would lead him directly to the old servant corridor near the library. I made myself turn away and affect nonchalance even as I wanted to run after Ezra and Weems both.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Julian

  “Soup’s on!” Charlie’s light tenor was loud enough to startle me after the relative quiet of the library over the hours I’d been holed up inside. The pang of relief I felt at not being alone in the library was embarrassing. I nearly hugged Charlie when he entered brandishing delicious-smelling bags of fast food burgers and fries from the chain in town. “You didn’t tell me what you wanted to drink so I guessed and grabbed you a soda.”

  “Oh great goddess Caffeina, praise and glory and honor is yours,” I intoned gravely, accepting the bladder buster sized cup of fizzy drink from a very bemused camera man.

  “I get it, man,” he said, shaking his head, shaggy hair tumbling in his eyes. “We’ve all got our addictions. Mine’s kombucha.”

  “Seriously? That tea with the fungus in it?”

  “That’s the stuff.” He grinned then made a slurping noise. “Good for the body, you know?”

  Just the idea of drinking fermented tea with a mucus-like wad of fungus in it made my stomach try to turn itself inside out. “I, ah…”

  “Dude, I’m fucking with you. That shit’s nasty. I’ve got the caffeine monkey on my back too.” He saluted me with his own cup of soda. “Don’t spill any of that in here. Jacob’s gonna be out for blood when he gets back and you don’t wanna give him an excuse to go off.”

  “Wait, Jacob’s not with you?” I asked, trailing Charlie to the door. “Did something happen? Is he okay?” With Heath being taken ill, Ezra feeling like shit, and CeCe complaining about her stomach earlier, things were looking grim in the health department for our mess of a shoot.

  Charlie was fascinated by the bags in his hand. “Oh, it’s nothing. He’s just doing some meeting in town for a few more hours and said he’d try to drive back up tonight if the roads were still opened. They’re doing some random closures as the flooding goes down in the area.” He brandished his cup at me again, not meeting my eyes when he smiled. “I’d better go feed the ravening masses before I’m over run!”

  There was no other soul to be seen in the foyer or library. Charlie headed for the study like he could feel the breath of the hell hounds at his back. “Charlie,” I called.

  “Yeah?”

  “What about Heath? Is he alright?”

  “They’re keeping him overnight. Pissed as hell, man. That’s gonna be a huge chunk of change, even with insurance,” he said over his shoulder, still walking. He didn’t turn back, just sped his steps. I thought about following him, but chided myself mentally. What good would that do, looking like a stark raving twit by cornering the camera man and demanding to know Jacob’s business? I couldn’t shake the feeling Jacob was up to something, though, something more than a nebulous meeting. He’d not only sent Charlie back alone, he’d stayed in town with no means of returning to Hendricks House unless he walked or suddenly developed the power of flight. I could hear a cheer as Charlie presented the remaining crew with their food and wondered if anyone had notified Fellowes and Baxter burgers were here.

  JulianWeemsPhD: Feel up to eating?

  CeCe: You really do have the douchiest text name. Why do you need to put your full name and degree?

  JulianWeemsPhD: Does that mean I get your onion rings?

  CeCe: Ass. Bring me my food so I don’t have to drag my zombie leg downstairs.

  CeCe: Also bring Oscar and Ezra’s. They’re hanging out with me in the second floor study.

  Well. That answered that. I stopped by the downstairs study and pretended not to notice when Charlie looked a bit nervous when I approached him for Fellowes’ and Baxter’s food, giving everyone a polite smile and answering a few questions about tomorrow’s proposed shoot in the conservatory. Apparently, as Jacob’s brother in law, I was the default go-to guy when he was off site, something I could not dissuade anyone of despite Stella’s presence and her weapons-grade glower. I booked it upstairs as quick as was prudent, wrinkled, grease-stained bags clutched in one hand and sweating, slippery drink in the other, only to find CeCe sitting alone in the study. She smirked at the slight hesitation when I came through the door. “Your man’s taken his bestie to his room. Ezra’s looking like death warmed over. I think we should ask Jacob if he can get Ezra to town—”

  I handed her the double onion, double cheese, extra mayo burger before taking my own out. I waited until she’d swallowed her first bite before telling her, “Jacob’s still in Bettina. Charlie’s back though.”

  She set her burger down and leaned forward, the menacing glare in her eyes reminding me forcibly of our mother the times we’d done fucked up big time. “He’s already left? The hell?” She whipped the afghan off her leg and yanked her pant leg up to reveal the long, angry, puffy wound on her leg. “He was supposed to take me into town now that the roads are opening!”

  I decided it was best not to tell her he took Heath to the hospital and not her. Instead, I said, “We can get you there, Cec. The crew has that rental SUV and Ernest has the house car.” Though it would be more likely Ernest had jumped in the car and taken off to parts unknown after the earlier debacle.

  “Fuck. No. I’ll just… I’ll go in the morning. I’m not going to chance your driving in the dark, on un
familiar roads, in shitty weather. I want to make it to the hospital, not the morgue.” She grabbed her burger and gestured to the room at large with it before taking another bite and saying, around a mouthful of food, “I refuse to haunt this place with the other sad ghosts. I plan to die at Versailles and haunt Paris.”

  We ate in relative quiet for a few more minutes, broken only by Cec asking me how the shoot had been going. I gave her the highlights, not mentioning how Ezra had filmed today’s footage. “Stella’s on us to do the day two booths but after yesterday’s bullshit—”

  “What did Stella do?” Cec’s eyes grew huge as I relayed my experience from the day before, Stella’s aggressive and weird questions and curt dismissal, her downright rude behavior. “Fucking Hell, I told him to fire her. It has nothing to do with me being jealous and everything to do with her being a shitty assistant producer and director.”

  “Jealous? Why would you be jealous?”

  Cec didn’t answer for several long moments, fussing over the remains of her burger and slurping half my drink before she finally flailed her hands in mute frustration. “Jacob and Stella screwed around last year. For like… the whole year.”

  “…oh.” I leaned back against the settee, my food sitting hard and heavy in my gut. “Cec, why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, reaching for her fluttering hand. She jerked back, turning her face away from me and staring at the darkened window, shoulders and neck one tense line of anger and hurt and embarrassment. “If I’d known—”

  “What? You’d have made him unfuck her?” Her curl of a smile was sad, tired. “We hashed it out. All three of us then just me and Jacob. He made a mistake. A huge one, but a mistake. If Stella hadn’t sunk so much money into the company, he’d have fired her. And,” she cut me off, “he hasn’t done it again. Not for her lack of encouragement.” Her brittle bravado cracked a bit, leaning towards me just a little. “She’s downstairs, though…”

  I nodded. “I just saw her. She’s definitely downstairs. When I grabbed your food from the crew.”

  “Don’t give me that look, Jules. I’ve always hated that look.” She took a savage bite of her burger and chewed with all the aggression she could channel into eating. After she’d swallowed it down, she shot me another glare. “Seriously. Don’t. I didn’t give you the sad eyes when the whole mess with Reynaud was going on and he fucked you over at work.”

  “You kinda did,” I muttered. The mention of Reynaud, of the reason I’d lost my job and, ultimately, ended up where I was, made my skin crawl with shame. “But Reynaud was my own screw up. This isn’t your doing.”

  “So no puppy dog eyes! Give me, I don’t know, angry guinea pig eyes or something! Be a fierce warrior rodent on my behalf but do not pity me. We acted like adults and sorted shit out.”

  I wanted to question that, to point out that, if they had sorted it all out she wouldn’t be sitting upstairs with an infected wound and her husband’s hopefully ex mistress downstairs while Jacob was fucking off to do who knew what in town rather than helping his wife and doing his job for the show. Instead, I took another sip of my drink and offered her the rest. She shook her head but took it anyway, melting back into the settee with a pained sigh. “I wish you’d let me take you into town.”

  She shook her head again. “In the morning, if…”

  If Jacob’s not back. I nodded. “First thing, one way or the other.” I gathered up our trash and gave her a kiss on the forehead, which she made faces over but gave me one of my own before I escaped her orbit. “Want me to get you some tea later? I saw some chamomile in the tea chest earlier on the snack table.”

  “You mean when you were orally pleasuring that peach to make Oscar squirm?” she teased. “Oh, we all saw it.”

  “I did nothing of the sort.” I so had. “I just like stone fruit.”

  “You are so weird. And yes, I’d love some tea please. No rush though.”

  I saluted her with the crumpled up bags and made my way back downstairs, stopping by my room to grab two books before swinging by the kitchen, getting rid of the trash and snagging a bottle of water from the ice chest of drinks and perishables the crew had dragged out of the ballroom. Baxter staggered in as I left, looking ten kinds of wrung out. “Jesus, I should take you with me and Cec in the morning,” I said, drawing back to let him pass. “What are you doing down here? I thought Fellowes was tucking you in.”

  “He’s in the library. Talking to the maid.” Baxter lurched towards the counter. “Fuck me, tell me there’s hot water.”

  “Here.” I gently chivied him out of the way and made him sit in one of the heavy duty cane chairs around the kitchen’s small butcher block table. The camp stove had been left out and it was a quick job turning it on and getting a pot of water boiling. I added enough for Cec to have her tea, too, and got out the tea chest while the water began to heat. “What kind do you want?”

  He lifted his head from where he’d had it resting on his hands atop the table. “No fucking clue. Peppermint, I guess? My stomach feels like it’s turning itself inside out.”

  Belatedly, I remembered I left his and Bellows’ food in the upstairs study and sent a text to Cec to let Fellowes know. She sent back an eye roll emoji and called me a wuss but promised to make sure he knew.

  CeCe: Or I could just give you his number and you could text him yourself…

  JulianWeemsPhD: Did you just send me an article on how to sext?

  CeCe: I’m the best sister ever.

  “So I noticed you didn’t say anything about the maid,” Baxter said from his perch at the table. “Ignoring it or have you crossed over to this side of the veil?”

  I swept a glance over his pallid, sweaty features. “Between the two of us, I don’t think I should be the one worrying about crossing a veil any time soon.” Truth be told, I didn’t know what to think. I know what I’d seen earlier, both in the library and then in the billiards room. And I knew that denying it, especially the second incident, would be the most base kind of denial, denying something just to save face. “Given what we saw happen earlier,” I said carefully, “I don’t think there’s any way I can deny something odd happening.”

  His gaze narrowed to bare, glittering slits. “You saw something, didn’t you?”

  I poured water into the cups I’d set out for him and for Cec. “Peppermint. Sugar or no?”

  “None, thanks,” he said, his smile small but definitely amused. “That yours then?”

  “Oh, no. It’s for my sister. She’s always had trouble sleeping. Chamomile sometimes helps. I think it’s mostly in her head since the compounds present in chamomile which could possibly help induce sleep are present in only minimal amounts but,” I shrugged. “It’s not hurting anyone and she gets some rest.”

  “You must be a joy at parties,” he muttered. “I’ll take it up to her. Oscar says she has my fries,” he added, waving his phone a little. He shuffled over to grab the cups. “Don’t give me that look. I’ll be fine. I just need to rest some more. This isn’t the first time I got gut-punched by one of these investigations.”

  “That’s not as reassuring as you think it is,” I called after him. I wasn’t sure but I think he laughed at me as he trudged up the stairs. I took a minute to clean up after myself and make sure the camp stove was disconnected from the fuel bottle. With only the white lantern light for illumination, the ordinary kitchen shapes became elongated, menacing specters lurking in the corner of my vision. I’d managed, so far, to keep my thoughts about the… experience… in the library under control but, with the stretching fingers of the pie safe’s shadow reaching across the counter, the sweetly scented cool breeze pressing in around the edges of the window, I believed in ghosts. Just for a few seconds. Just until I reminded myself that I was tired, that I wasn’t the first person to have a hallucination due to poor or little rest.

  But she hadn’t been a figment of my imagination. I knew it deep down. I’d known it since the second I saw her. I didn’t want to know i
t though. Without any sort of underpinning to the knowledge—no viable scientific evidence of ghosts, the afterlife, ESP or, hell, anything remotely related to what I’d experienced, all I had to go by was Fellowes.

  “You’re thinking awfully hard.”

  I jumped, oversetting one of the empty teacups near the camp stove. “Jesus! Are you sure you’re not psychic?” I demanded, scooping up the pieces from the floor. “Don’t come over here—there’s shards.”

  “Shit, that’s not one of the antiques is it?” Fellowes asked, grabbing a broom from the small utility cupboard near the proper stove. We swept up the tiny bits of broken china together, clearing the floor before we finally looked at one another properly. “So. You were thinking about me?”

  “Yes,” I allowed, “but probably not how you’re hoping, if that smile is anything to go by.” Damn his dimples, they were going to distract me and make me say something stupid on camera, I just knew it.

  He tipped his head graciously. “I harbor no hopes but the ones you’ve given me,” he said, his voice dipping into plummy tones as he affected a theatrical air. “Though,” he added in his regular voice, “I was rather hoping for some coffee.”

  “On it.”

  We ended up at the table, picking over the last of his fries. He’d retrieved his food from the study but said CeCe was nowhere to be seen when he’d gone up. We were in an angel-bright cocoon of lantern light I was tempted to tell him about Stella and Jacob, as little as I knew about it, but caught myself in time. What good would that serve? It’d be gossip just to get him to linger a bit longer. I shifted in my chair, eyeing my empty mug, drawing up short when something hard jabbed my hip. “Oh!”

  Fellowes blinked at me. “That sounded surprisingly jubilant.” He pushed his own empty mug to one side and leaned towards me, hands folded on the table top and eyes crinkling with eager amusement. “Was it something I said? Or was it something you thought? Maybe you thought of something you’d like me to say?”