Coup de Glace
Page 8
“It’s still a loss. Whether you remember or not, it hurts to lose a loved one.”
Reg shook her head stubbornly. They followed Bella into the house.
The interior had been updated, but it was obvious that it was an old building that had been through several renovations and refittings. The big panel TV on the wall was at odds with the rustic interior. There was modern furniture mixed with old hand-turned wooden pieces. There was a startling contrast between the scarred coffee table that had been worn down with hundreds of hands and boots over the years, and the tablet computer laying on top of it.
“Home, sweet home,” Bella said, making a wide motion to indicate the house.
“It’s very homey,” Erin said.
“Have a seat. I’ll show you the albums.”
Erin and Reg made themselves comfortable at opposite ends of the couch, and Bella sat between them. She flipped through the thick pages of the book, browsing through the faded pictures showing her grandparents, her mother as a little girl, and then eventually a picture of Grandpa holding baby Bella in his lap. He looked much older than he had in the other pictures, thin, his hair sparse, eyes distant behind his glasses. He had just a hint of a smile on his face, looking down at his granddaughter.
“Weren’t you just the cutest baby,” Erin said. “That’s a sweet picture.”
Bella ducked her head. “Thank you.”
“Did you ask your mom anything about your grandparents since we talked?”
“No, not really. She saw me looking through the albums, and I asked her if she missed them, but…”
“I’m sure she misses them, even after so many years.”
Bella nodded. “She said she did. She said she wasn’t that much older than me when she lost them,” Bella’s brows drew down. “But she must have been… in her thirties. Almost twice my age.”
Reg laughed. “It’s all relative. She means she was too young to lose them, that she wasn’t ready to be independent and all on her own so soon.”
Bella looked impressed. “Yeah, I guess. I wouldn’t want to be all on my own now, either. I’ve still got so much to learn… and I want to go to college…”
“What do you want to study?” Erin asked.
“Business management. I’d like to get an MBA, but I probably won’t be able to do that right away. Need to make some money before I can afford to get a masters.”
“Wow. That’s quite an undertaking. Not a lot of women go into business administration.”
“I think it would be really cool,” Bella enthused. “I’ve always been interested in how businesses work and all of the financial formulas and benchmarks.” She shrugged awkwardly. “And baking. I like that too.”
“Sounds like you’re set to cook the books,” Reg offered.
Bella giggled. “No way, I’m not getting involved in anything shady. I’ll only use my powers for good.”
The conversation gradually petered out, and Erin was trying to figure out how to tactfully ask Bella for more information about her grandmother, and maybe a tour around the property and the barn. There wasn’t much she could get from sitting on the couch looking at old photos.
“Do you have anything that belonged to your grandma?” Reg asked. “I think it’s time…”
Bella turned a shade paler. She’d been relaxing and having a good time and was maybe trying to convince herself that she wasn’t actually going to have to deal with her grandmother’s ghost.
“Something that belonged to her? I don’t know…”
“Maybe an article of clothing? Jewelry? Hairbrush? Your mom must have kept some of her things.”
Bella thought about it for a minute, then nodded. “Uh… yeah. My mom has this locket that used to be Grandma’s. It even has a lock of her hair in it, from when she was a baby.”
“Perfect. That makes it even better.”
Bella didn’t move.
“Go get it,” Reg encouraged.
“It’s in my mom’s room.”
“Okay.”
“I’m… not supposed to get into her stuff.”
Reg scowled. “What are you, two? You’re not messing anything up. You’re just borrowing it for a few minutes to enhance our chances of speaking to your Grandma. Your mom would want that for you. You’re not keeping it, and neither am I. It’s going to go right back into the jewelry box when we’re done, and she’ll never know the difference.”
“I don’t think she would want me to.”
“Of course she would. She wouldn’t want to take away an opportunity for you to know your grandma. Never.”
“Well…”
“Come on. Tell her, Erin. It’s not going to hurt anything for her to borrow her grandma’s necklace for a few minutes.”
Before Erin could open her mouth to answer, Reg was already talking over her. Maybe she had anticipated that Erin wouldn’t be quite so quick to tell Bella to disobey what she knew her mother would want her to do.
“Why don’t I go up with you? You can show me where it is, and you won’t even have to touch it. Maybe I’ll be able to feel something more when I go into her bedroom. Is she in the master bedroom where your grandmother used to sleep?”
Bella was looking a little dazed as Reg got to her feet and encouraged Bella to stand and take Reg to the bedroom.
“Yes, the master bedroom. It’s really not any bigger than the other bedrooms, but that’s where grandma and grandpa slept, and probably their parents too, for generations.”
With more encouragement from Reg, Bella walked with her to the bedroom to get the necklace. Erin stood up as well and walked around the room looking out the windows and studying the various pictures and knickknacks. It was only a couple of minutes before Reg was returning with Bella, waving the old locket at Erin.
“Got it. We’re going to head out to the barn.”
Bella caught Reg’s arm. “Do we have to go out to the barn? Can’t we just do it here? It’s more comfortable, and you’ve got the locket, so you can call her, right?”
“This is a complex process, Bella. You can’t oversimplify things. It’s not just like dialing someone up on the phone. If the place that your grandma has been haunting is the barn, then that’s where we need to go. Where her energy will be the strongest.”
“But I don’t really even know if she is. I mean… she might be… but maybe it’s somebody else, who’s been haunting it for years. Maybe there’s something else going on. I don’t know for sure that Grandma…”
“Quit being such a scaredy cat,” Reg snapped. “Just pull yourself together and come. This is what we’re here for.”
Cowed, Bella followed along behind Reg. Erin caught up to them and put her arm around Bella.
“It’s okay. I don’t think there’s anything to be scared of. And you can always change your mind. If you don’t want to do this, then just tell Reg. Stand up to her and don’t let her run over you.”
“No…” Bella’s voice was small. “She’s right. I keep trying to find excuses not to do this, when I know it’s what I want. What I need. It’s just so frustrating… to want something and to be scared of it at the same time.”
“I know.”
They followed Reg toward the barn in silence. It was a big red affair, just like on TV and all the picture postcards. But as they got closer to it, Erin saw that it had fallen into disrepair. The wood sagged and buckled. It hadn’t been painted in a long time. There were no sounds of animals coming from it.
“What do you farm?” she asked.
“Goats,” Bella advised, giving Erin a smile. “Milk, meat, hair, hide. Everything but the bleat, my mom says.”
“Where are they?”
Bella moved forward to help Reg to open the barn doors.
“Not in here. They’re in the pasture right now. When we bring them in, it’s to a more modern barn back there. This one—” She grunted as she pulled the doors open, “—isn’t being used anymore.”
Chapter Twelve
S
Reg spun in a slow circle as if trying to pick up the ghost’s psychic vibrations. Erin rolled her eyes. She knew it was all for show. She hoped Bella wasn’t actually falling for it. She was a smart girl with a good head on her shoulders, if she’d just stop being scared of spooks.
“Grandma…” Reg called in a low, faint voice. “Grandma Prost, are you here…?”
There was a sudden flapping of wings and Erin jumped. She looked up into the barn’s rafters, fully expecting to see them lined with bats, but they were not. Instead, there were birds. They were disturbed by the visitors, but they didn’t all rush out in a cloud of mad flapping and shrieking. A few flew out. Others fluttered around, alighting here and there, not settling back in. Others simply eyed the visitors with cold, black eyes and then ignored them.
“Creepy,” Bella muttered. “It’s all too creepy.”
“It’s nothing,” Erin said lightly, though her heart was still thrumming too fast in her chest, “it’s just a few birds. Nothing to be scared of.”
Reg walked around, eyes closed, the locket clasped between two hands and held over her head. Whether or not her little haint Geiger counter was supposed to be working or not, Erin didn’t know. Reg didn’t say whether she could feel the ghost there.
“Grandma Prost,” Reg intoned again, “Bella is here to talk to you. She wants to commune with you and to know why you haunt this place. Can you give us a sign that you hear us?”
More flapping of wings distracted Erin from other potential signs. She forced herself to ignore the birds and the overwhelming ammonia smell of their guano, and to look around the barn. There were pieces of equipment that she didn’t recognize, that had been sitting there rusting for a long time. Other hand and garden tools that she recognized. A thick layer of dust and frosting of bird excrement over everything made it look as if it had been standing empty for generations, not just since Cindy had returned to her childhood home.
“How long since it has been used?” Erin asked Bella.
“What? Oh, the barn? I don’t really know. Not since I can remember. I don’t think it was ever used for the goats.” Bella poked her head in the door and looked around with more interest and a little less fear. “No, this isn’t outfitted for goats. Mostly this is equipment for clearing and gardening.”
Erin took a couple of steps so that she was inside the barn. She didn’t walk in very far, not wanting to risk a bird taking aim at her head. There was an ancient fridge or freezer on one wall. More garden implements. Some dangerous-looking knives that Erin assumed were for clearing brush or hand-cutting crops. They hadn’t been used for a long time, but Erin figured they were probably still sharp enough to do damage. She hoped that Grandma hadn’t been killed with something like that. It was hard enough to deal with a death in the family, without it being by gory violence.
Reg saw the direction of Erin’s eyes and started walking toward the knives, arms outstretched as if groping in the dark.
“I feel something. It’s… drawing me this way…”
“No, it’s not,” Erin snapped. “It’s definitely coming from the other way.”
Bella’s eyes got wider. “Do you feel it too?” she asked eagerly.
Erin shook her head, but her eyes were on Reg. She didn’t want Reg putting any thoughts in Bella’s brain. Not thoughts of violent or bloody death.
Reg stopped, then backed up a little, acknowledging Erin’s dictates on the matter. She could have told a good story with the knives, but she would find something else instead.
“Grandma Prost… come join me, Bella, it will be stronger if we can magnify the pull by both of us being close together.”
“No, I’m just going to stay out here.”
“Come inside, Bella. You need to be in here. You have Prost blood and I don’t. She wants to know that a member of her family is here, and it isn’t just someone trying to fool her.”
Erin wanted to ask who would be trying to fool a ghost, but bit her lip and kept her comments to herself.
Bella wavered, her toes just over the line formed by the doors. “I’ll just look in. I can see from here.”
“Come in. Nothing is going to hurt you. Why would your grandmother do anything to hurt you?”
“I’ve seen Poltergeist. Ghosts are fed by feelings. They take all of the negative feelings from the air around them, and they use their power to make things happen. To hurt people.”
“What bad feelings, Bella?” Erin asked softly. “Are there a lot of bad feelings around the farm? In the barn?”
Reg’s eyes flickered over to Erin. She liked the role Erin was playing, acting as Bella’s confidante. Providing balance to Reg’s role.
“No,” Bella said, forcing a laugh. “What bad feelings would there be in the barn? No one has used it in years. And the farm has been my home, where I’ve been loved and cherished. It’s not a bad place.”
“Then you don’t think there are any bad feelings for a ghost to feed on?”
Bella frowned. She looked quickly around the barn. “No, nothing bad happened here. It was just shut up after Grandma died.”
“Why?”
“Because…” Bella made a helpless gesture. “Because they did, I don’t know why.”
Erin walked around the edge of the wall, exploring a little further. “Did your grandma garden? Were these things hers?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
On a workbench, Erin could make out a bundle of cloth with a flower print. A gardening smock? An old men’s shirt that Grandma could pull on over her dress when she didn’t want to chance getting it dirty? Erin didn’t touch it. Just made note of it and went on. “There’s nothing to be worried about here,” she told Bella. “You can come in.”
Bella tentatively took one step into the barn. She looked around, eyes wild, expecting something bad to happen the instant she set foot inside.
“See?” Erin prompted. “Nothing to worry about.”
Like Erin, Bella didn’t seem to want to walk under the rafters full of birds.
“Your grandmother’s spirit is strong here,” Reg announced. She stood absolutely still, then her eyes rolled back in her head so that only the sightless whites showed. Her face was a mask. Bella gave a little shriek and grabbed Erin’s arm for stability.
“It’s okay.” Erin wanted to tell Bella that it was all just an act. She and Reg had spent many hot summer afternoons trying to come up with the worst, scariest faces possible. Inside-out eyelids, cheeks puffed out, tongue dangling lifelessly… they had come up with some pretty gruesome ones. Reg’s eyeball rolling was just the beginning.
“What do you want to say to your grandmother?” Reg asked in her spookiest rasp.
“I don’t know. Nothing. I don’t want anything.”
“Why would you disturb my rest without a reason? You must have had a reason!” Reg’s voice was not her own. It was a good approximation of a Tennessee accent. The low, gravelly quality covered up any imperfections or slip-ups. It was the shaky voice of an old woman. But one who had just awakened from the grave? For some reason, Erin didn’t think so.
Bella was rooted to the spot. “I’m sorry… I just wanted to… I just wanted to make sure you knew that you were loved. That people cared when you disappeared. Grandpa too. Mom said he was really broken up about it. He just went downhill the years after you were gone. He wasn’t ever the same. Whatever happened… he mourned you. He did.”
“Where is he? Where is Ezekiel?”
“He’s… in the cemetery. There’s a plot there… for you too. But we never had a bo
dy to bury…”
“Why didn’t you bury me?”
“We didn’t know what happened to you. It was before I was born. I don’t know. Nobody wants to tell me about it.”
“It’s so cold here,” Reg drew the words out, “why is it so cold?”
“I don’t know. Cold in here? Is that what you mean?”
“It’s so cold.” Reg wrapped her arms around her body. She swayed back and forth. “It’s so cold and cramped in here. Please let me out.”
“In here?” Bella spoke urgently. “Where? Where are you? I’ll make them take you out and put you in the grave beside Grandpa’s, if you’ll show me where you are. I’ll take care of it. Then you won’t need to haunt the barn any more, and we’ll all be happy.”
“I’ve been so cold for so long…”
Bella covered her mouth. She stumbled backward, out the barn doors again. She took a deep breath and continued to retreat, until she was in the sun. She lifted her face up toward it, eyes closed, letting it beat down on her face and warm her. Erin followed her out, worried she was going to faint if she tried to go back to the house on her own.
“It’s okay, Bella. Bella, it’s just Reg. There isn’t any—”
“There isn’t any reason to be scared,” Reg covered easily, reaching them. “She’s restless and confused, but she isn’t malevolent. You can understand how confused she is, can’t you?”
Bella nodded. She lowered her face and opened her eyes to look at Reg. “I’m confused, so I can only imagine how hard it would be for someone who didn’t even have a brain to sort it out. Can you imagine being alive one minute, and the next thing you know, you’re dead? You can’t do any of the normal things anymore. You can’t talk to the people you love. You just watch everything going on without you.”
Reg looked impressed. This mark had a good imagination, even if she did lean more toward finances than storytelling.
“I think that with another session or two, we’ll be able to figure out what’s bothering your grandma and to sort it all out—”
“No.” Bella’s hand closed around the locket that Reg held in her hand, and she took it away. “No more. I didn’t know if this was a good idea from the start, and now I know it’s not. My mom would be horrified if she saw what you were doing in there. We’re good Christian people, we don’t go around communing with the dead.”