“You said, you talked to her?” Ella questioned Shawn. “Did you ask her?”
“Yes. Until she is absolutely certain it isn’t going to fall into the wrong hands ever, she’s not saying.” Shawn fought to keep calm. Unable to shake the sense of urgency she was tempted to push Ella harder. “Wait you said, chalice.”
“That’s what the boys called it,” Ella clarified. “It was most definitely the cauldron you asked about. I never understood, why they called it a chalice. Then again, I didn’t spend a lot of time around them.”
“Miss Westbrook,” Ro chimed joining the party. “The crew left for the day,” she added for Shawn’s benefit. “Why call what a chalice?”
“The big bowl, we’re looking for,” Faith snapped.
“Oh, probably because they were planning on drinking from it,” Ro reasoned. “Der Meister verlangt pures Blut.”
“The master demands pure blood?” Ella blanched.
“I heard those words whispered in the wind and we do know she was very upset when the construction crew arrived.” Ro offered to Ella who just blinked.
“Did you just answer my questions before I asked them?” Ella gasped clutching her cane in an effort to make a break for it. “Okay, so you jokers are the real deal.” She sputtered briefly wondering if this was what a heart attack felt like. “To be blunt I would rather you had been drunk.”
“Yeah, me too,” Faith agreed. “Ro, we need to search this place again.”
“Oh, goodie maybe we can find more dried sage. Someone seriously went overboard on this place.”
“It’s the only safe place on the island,” Faith annoyingly pointed out.
“It’s the only safe place on the island,” Shawn repeated. “Because Temperance ensured that nothing evil could enter this room. If nothing evil can get in, the cauldron isn’t here. She wouldn’t have gotten it past the threshold. It’s somewhere else.”
“Great, we get to play in the woods with the monsters,” Ro whimpered. “I just couldn’t keep my mouth. Come on Faith, the goats are waiting.”
“Goats?”
CHAPTER 44
The wind picked up along with the thunder and lightning. Delia felt a tightness in her chest. She stumbled out of the woods. The whispering growing louder. At first she had managed to ignore it. Now, it was proving impossible. In the beginning this job seemed like a dream come true. Somehow, it had quickly turned into a nightmare.
“I should have known. When Nicky and Doug got into it. I should have known.” She chastised herself. The wind devouring her words.
‘You shouldn’t have come here! Now, you’re ruined.’ A distant voice cackled.
Blindly she kept moving until she was standing on the edge. All of her life she had worked hard. She had turned her talent into success. Now, it was all slipping away. Her parents had always been proud of her following in her father’s footsteps. How was she going to face them? How was she going to be able to explain that she lost everything on one job?
God help her if the local unions caught wind of her mostly using convicts. It was the only way to keep the project up and running. The only other option would be to use substandard material. For her that wasn’t an option. If she didn’t stick to her standards, people could die.
For the first time in her life she felt as if she was backed into a corner with no way out. Staring down the twenty foot drop she watched the waves violently crash against the rocks.
‘There is a way. Just take a step forward and all your troubles will be over.’ The cryptic voice encouraged. Icy cold hands latched onto her shoulders nudging her closer to the edge.
‘Do it! It is the only way out.’
“The only way,” her words drifted off as she stared down at the harsh terrain.
“Hey!” A voice called out just as she lifted her foot ready to step over the edge. “There you are.” Ro announced as she tried to catch her breath. “Quite the scene.” She sputtered clasping Delia’s arm. “Bit windy to be standing so close to the edge.” She added gently tugging her away from the edge.
“I need to-“She tried to explain the need to step off still calling her. “It would be so easy. I just need to –“
“To help me.” Ro cut her off. “I could use a little help looking for this punch bowl. Did you know that the voice in your head doesn’t sound like your actual voice? No one’s does.” She threw out in an effort to distract the woman who was still staring at the cliff. “Of course the conversation going on with you just now, that wasn’t just you. There was someone else giving you advice. Bad advice if you ask me.”
“It would be so easy.”
“Would it? Leaving your family behind wondering what went wrong. You said you have nieces and nephews. Do you want them growing up without their Aunty?”
“No!” Delia shouted her dark eyes finally focusing. “What just happened?”
“The bad man tried to get you to off yourself,” Ro quickly surmised still nudging her closer to solid ground.
“It made so much sense. The money problems-“
“Which will pass,” Ro reassured her. “I’m not giving up. In fact I’m kind of counting on you to help. Your team surveyed the whole island. Any anomalies we’re missing?”
“No,” she snapped. “There’s nothing. Except-“once again her words drifted off. “Nicky’s report. There was something. I didn’t really read it thoroughly.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I was sidelined with having to fire him. Nicky has been with me since his undergrad days. He worked his way up. The guy was my right hand.”
“Why did you fire him?”
“First day here, he punched Doug in the face. When he couldn’t explain why, I had to let him go. Doug could have sued.”
“Was he a violent guy?”
“Nicky? Heavens no. The harshest thing I have ever seen him do was his drag performance of Rolling in the Deep.”
“Bad?”
“Horrible. Worthy of Adele slapping him in the face. Nicky isn’t the type to get angry. Upset and pouty but never angry. I need to talk to him. For starters I need to offer him his job back. That is if I’m still in business by the time I get off this island.”
“Ha,” Ro laughed. “Sorry, Gilligan’s Island. Good one.”
“Right, you can read my mind.” Delia snorted before smiling.
“I’ll take you thinking about sitcoms instead of what you were considering just a few moments ago. With the weather I doubt the ferry will be returning tonight. Why don’t we take shelter in the house?”
“Sounds good. Anything to get away from this cliff.”
“Goats?” Ella repeated.
“Whoever or whatever we are dealing with has a knack for tapping into our fears.”
“And one of you is afraid of goats? Seriously? I’m sorry but I grew up on a farm, one of the last things that would scare me is a cute little goat.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“There isn’t a great deal that I find unnerving.”
“What about the last time you were here with the boys and Temperance?” Shawn was grasping at straws, looking for some confirmation.
“The boys in general made me feel uneasy and that was before we knew that they were Nazis.”
“The police found out after they had died,” Shawn wearily explained. “Anything else. You were a young woman then.”
“My biggest fear in my youth was that I would lose, Tempe. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, worrying that something or rather someone would come between us.”
“Which is exactly what happened.”
“I guess.”
“No, it is what happened. Someone, I suspect, Helena was behind all of this. She hooked the boys up with Temperance. I think she was spiking her bourbon and had them spike the bottle of gin that was here. That is probably why, Temperance’s mother had a heart attack. Do you remember, what happened to the bottle of bourbon?”
“The bottle?” El
la sputtered. “How can I remember something that happened so long ago?” Her voice trailed off as the details became clear. “No, wait. I smashed it. I was angry. I went to pour a drink. It was the bottle of bourbon she been overly found of before we went to the island. I don’t know what got into me but I threw it against the wall.”
“Probably, saved your life. Or at least spared you from some severe medical problems.”
“Helena? She was a witch but to spike Tempe’s drinks and send those men to us. Why? I knew she was vindictive and jealous but that is a bit much even for her.”
“After Temperance, passed away how did she act?”
“Strange even for her. She was beside herself, keeping her distance for the most part,” she grimly explained. “Then when she chose to be a part of things, she of course blamed me. She and Reggie threw a fit when they discovered that I was named the main beneficiary. He and Helena went out of their way to make my life difficult. I never knew that her plan was to leave me the bulk of her estate. I would have told her not to do it. Don’t get me wrong over the years having money has been a life altering experience. I would gladly give every penny to the Reggie’s of the world if I could have just a little more time with Tempe.”
“I asked her about Helena,” Shawn shyly confessed. “It struck me as odd that the two of them would have been together.”
“Struck me as downright bizarre.”
“They weren’t. According to Temperance the only romance existed solely in Helena’s imagination.”
“It could be so easy, just believing everything you are telling me. The ring you described, that was certainly Helena’s. I remember it clearly. It was very ostentatious. Also, Temperance, picked it up on one of our trips. Helena, told her she wanted a poison ring. Temperance found that one in Budapest. The main reason it sticks with me is because when Tempe gave Helena the ring, she asked how could thank her. Temperance responded by asking her to pay for it. Helena had a habit of asking Tempe and others to pick up things for her and forgetting that they weren’t gifts.”
“I got the impression that was how she rolled. I not only saw that ring on her but I saw it pouring something into a crystal bottle in your home. These men were engaged by a woman to disrupt your relationship.”
“That most definitely sounds like Helena.” Ella answered sounding defeated. “The woman was a viper and she never liked me. But killing Temperance that is over the top even for her.”
“That may not have been her intention. She simply may have wanted to stir up trouble between the two of you. The people she chose to accomplish that weren’t exactly trustworthy.”
“To say the least,” Ella scoffed. “
“Feeling better?” Ro carefully questioned handing Delia a cup of hot chocolate.
Delia gratefully accepted as she looked around. “I really do dig this place. All the comforts of home, small on the carbon foot print scale and you can go anywhere with it.”
“Almost,” Ro conceded. “I’ve hit a few height restrictions along the way. But it does have a lot of advantages that a standard RV does not.”
“I can’t believe that I almost,”
“Don’t. You can’t think about what this place is trying to do to us.”
“What I don’t get is there is all these protection artifacts in place. They’re so strong that evil can’t reach it. But somehow, it is still strong enough to screw with us.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s like toxic waste. Somehow its negativity is seeping through the ground.”
“And how do we stop that?”
“Got me,” Ro confessed. “First things first. Let’s find the sucker.”
“It’s getting nasty out there,” Faith wasn’t surprised when both Delia and Ro jumped when she burst into the house. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you guys.”
“No, not to worry. We’re just running from spooky creatures and you barge in wearing a hoodie. Why would that scare us?” Ro growled.
Faith apologized again shedding the windbreaker she was wearing. “Here’s a question. All the times we ran away from big bad ghouls, why didn’t we duck in here? There’s no power in the cottage.”
“The power in here hasn’t been reliable and when one is running from a giant spider thinking isn’t topping the list. Running is topping the list. Plus, I’ve seen a ghost in here.”
“Ghosts are the least of our worries.” Faith snorted looking around. “Is that your Wi-Fi router?” She directed towards Ro. “The lights are on.”
“We have signal,” Delia scrambled to her feet. Without hesitation she had her phone out and was making a call.
“That is so weird,” Ro sputtered. “This is the first time I got a signal out here.”
“Nicky, it’s Delia,” she shouted into her phone. “I don’t have much time. First things first, I want you to come back. That is if I still have a business after I leave this island. Second, tell me about the anomaly you found. Right. How big? The main building. Do you know anything else . . .? Hello? And it’s gone.”
She stood there staring at her phone while the others just looked at her. Unable to withstand the silence any longer, Faith dove right in. “So, how’s Nicky? Better still who is Nicky?”
“My assistant, whom I had to fire after he sucker punched Doug. That was during some of the initial inspections. Before I had to let him go he mentioned an anomaly. But since I was filling out his termination paperwork, we didn’t get into much detail. There is a large underground space that runs from what would have been the old basement to the barn.”
“That’s pretty large.” Faith agreed.
“Yes, in fact we were about to dig it up. I just needed to pull the barn down. That’s the space where the main building is going to be placed.”
“I don’t know about the two of you,” Ro interjected. “But I seriously doubt we’re going to make any progress tonight. How about one of us heads down to the dock and begs Kirby to come back. While the others head over to the cottage and ask Miss Westbrook what’s with the big hole under the barn?”
CHAPTER 45
Suddenly the air in the cottage was freezing. Ella was stunned as she spied the wisps of her breath greeting the air. “It got cold very quickly.”
“Oh, good you’ve finally decided to show up.” Shawn barked at the misty image lurking behind Ella. She stood and lit an old oil lamp and the shadow quickly became clearer.
‘I saw my Ella, earlier. Isn’t she beautiful?’
“Yes.”
“I see the parlor trick is about to begin.” Ella sniffed just as a clapped of thunder boomed. “That does not sound good. Well, since if I’m not mistaken we are stuck here why don’t you get on with your show?”
‘As skeptical as ever!’ Temperance laughed.
“You’re not helping.” Shawn snapped having had her fill.
“Maybe I can,” Faith announced as she Delia stormed into the cabin. “Is she here?”
“Yes, and as stubborn as ever.”
“I suppose that when the two of you met it was all hearts and flowers from the first moment you laid eyes on one another.” Ella bemoaned.
“Actually, we couldn’t stand one another,” Shawn explained.
“What?”
“It might have had something to do with it being my job to disprove Shawn’s life’s work.” Faith merrily explained.
“On more than one occasion she referred to my gift as utter rubbish.”
Shawn shook her head when she heard Temperance laughing. “What the two of you didn’t get off on the right foot?”
‘I made an ass out myself.’
“How?”
‘In an effort to say something smooth, I ended up hitting on her in a boorish manner.’
“Okay, so she hit on you?” Shawn tossed out hoping to get Ella back to understanding the situation. Instead, she received a dubious glance.
‘Stubborn as ever. I like to own beautiful things.’
“That’s what you said?”
‘In context it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.’
“I like to own beautiful things, how is that not as bad as it sounds?”
“It was,” Ella barked. “I was ready to fall at her feet until she spoke.”
“You got past it,” Faith encouraged shaking the rain from her jacket. “Don’t you think it’s time you finally tell her how you feel?”
“You are a pushy lot.”
“We’re running out of time,” Delia pleaded. “Whatever you need to say, please say it.”
“She’s really here?” She nervously squeaked.
“Yes.” Shawn asserted. “We’ll leave if that’s what you need.”
“What?” Delia sputtered as she squeezed the rain from her cap. “Have you looked outside?”
“Fine, stay. I don’t mind. You see I recently discovered that the ring I thought was from her brother was from her.”
‘How could you not know it was from me?’
“How could you not know?” Shawn quickly translated.
“The note. It wasn’t there. I suspect Helena and her mother had something to do with that. I never knew that the ring was from you. If I had I never would have taken it off. I loved you. I loved then and I love you now. After all of these years, I’m still in love with you. I should have told you. I meant to tell you. I always thought there would be time. Each time I planned on telling you, I was afraid.”
‘Afraid?’
“Afraid that you didn’t feel the same. That one day you would leave me.”
Shawn blinked with surprise wondering if somehow Ella had heard Tempe.
‘Never. It was always you.’ Temperance confessed kneeling before Ella.
“She said it was always you.” Shawn offered.
“This is beautiful, however,” Delia frantically began. “Miss Westbrook could you tell me what is under the barn?”
“The wine cellar.”
“The wine cellar?” Delia stammered. “According to my assistant it runs from the basement of the house to the barn. How much wine was in there?”
Muraille Island Page 28