The Sugar Hill Collection

by M. L. Bullock

  “Well, hello, Arnold Lee. You are the spitting image of your dad. We went to school together. Are you driving today?”

  “Nope. He won’t let me.”

  “He will one day. I’m sure of it. You look almost old enough to drive to me. How old are you now?” Reed asked him playfully.

  “I’m almost nine.”

  “Geesh, I was close. Well, give it some time.”

  “Where to, sir?” Handsome smiled, pleased that his grandson was being treated so kindly.

  “Avery needs to go to Thorn Hill, and that’s it for the evening.”

  Handsome paused at the door handle but remembered himself. “I’ll take that luggage, miss.”

  “Thank you, Handsome—and Arnold Lee.”

  The boy closed the car door behind me, and I stared at Reed through the tinted glass. I wished he was coming with me, but I was a big girl. I could do this.

  Time to face the ghosts of Thorn Hill all by myself.

  Chapter Five – Jessica Chesterfield

  The My Haunted Plantation crew looked like we’d been taking part in some kind of evil scientist’s insomnia experiment. Destinee, my motel roommate and fellow sensitive, had such dark circles under her eyes that you could easily believe she’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. I didn’t look much better. Thankfully no cameras were rolling this morning. At least the camera guys had enough sense to sleep in.

  I was all that was left of the original My Haunted Plantation crew. Megan and the rest of the gang were premiering the new My Haunted Town show, and I barely knew the people who crowded around the table of the greasy spoon where we met for breakfast. I was so tired that eating breakfast seemed disgusting, but hey, that’s how my new team leader did things. Three hours of sleep and up again. Did this guy ever sleep? Jarvis Heights was actually a likable guy, if a bit pushy, but I wasn’t liking him too much this morning.

  I’d been working in the field of paranormal television for the past year, and my skin really showed it—I practically looked like a ghost myself. I needed a break, both physically and emotionally. Big time. The money had been good, and when I first signed my contract with the Paranormal Channel, $20,000 a month seemed like an insane amount. Now not so much. I’d done a lot with the cash, but I found myself bored and more than a little jaded. I believed in the supernatural world, but I had serious doubts about the motives of the higher-ups at the Paranormal Channel. They wanted us to do “everything we could” to bring them some proof of the paranormal, and we weren’t supposed to fudge the data. But it happened a lot. The only really positive thing I could say about the channel was if they found out about said fudging, they’d can your ass.

  Unfortunately, that’s what happened to Becker. And why he’d done that, I’ll never know. I sighed thinking about our last conversation. He wanted me to back him up, but I knew better than to get involved in his storytelling. Or lying. Whatever you want to call it. But I missed him.

  I guess the truth was I’d had a thing for Becker for a while. Even though he had the morals of an alley cat and made horrible decisions that called his character into question nearly on a daily basis, I had a crush that had grown over the past two years. And for him to put me in such a position really ticked me off. But I still liked him. I checked my phone constantly to see if he’d sent me a text or an email. What did that say about me?

  Jarvis talked, and I pretended to study the menu. What was the name of this place again? Oh yeah, the Iron Skillet. Hmm…that was original. Not.

  “Jessica?” And then everyone was looking at me.

  “Yeah?” I said as I slapped the greasy menu down on the table.

  “First impressions, please?”

  We’d walked through Haley’s Landing last night. It was a “lost” plantation in Arkansas near the big town of Sheriff’s Bluff. It was a heartbreaking oddity, that old house hidden in the woods with trees poking out of the roof and no glass in the windows. What had been beautiful and sprawling, surely the center of a once-thriving area, had disappeared into the forest in just over a hundred years.

  “I didn’t sense anything at all,” I said bluntly. Probably too bluntly.

  Jarvis sipped coffee from a plain white ceramic mug. “Really? Not even in the ballroom? We had some significant spikes in there. You should have experienced something, I reckon.”

  Feeling cranky, I sassed back, “Well, I reckon I didn’t. If that’s all, I’d like to go to bed now.”

  The crew stared at me. Yeah, I was being rude as hell, but I didn’t care. What did they know? Dang rookies. I wasn’t a robot. You couldn’t just send me into a room and get readings. I didn’t care what the gadgets said. Sometimes they coincided, and other times they didn’t. My sensitivity didn’t work that way. And if there was nothing there, there was nothing there.

  Destinee piped up, “I had a different experience, Jessica. I had this overwhelming sense of dread in that room. Didn’t you feel that?”

  “The only thing I feel right now is tired. Very tired. I can’t seem to catch up on my sleep.”

  She didn’t respond to me but said to the rest of the group, “It was almost like the room was used to death and wanted more of it.”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. She was such a liar. At least she was better at it than Becker had been. I left the restaurant and went back to the Podunk motel connected to it. I didn’t wait for anyone’s permission. Someone might have called after me, but I couldn’t be sure. I was so tired, I felt like my eyes were going to bleed.

  I slid the key into the lock and went inside, locking the door behind me. I climbed back into the bed and kicked off my tennis shoes. Oh yeah, this was where I wanted to be. It took me all of about two minutes to fall asleep. And I slept hard. When I woke up, it was two o’clock.

  I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of the blanket around me and the pillow under my head. It wasn’t home, but it was cozy. Destinee insisted on turning on the air conditioner last night, and I thought I’d freeze to death. I didn’t need a lot of AC to keep cool. But now the room felt perfect. I sighed. For a cheap motel, this place had remarkably comfortable beds. Or I had just been that tired.

  Then the feeling crept up my spine. That feeling you get when you know someone is watching you, when you know you are being spied on. I glanced around the room without moving my head. I didn’t want whoever was in here to know I was aware of their presence.

  I didn’t see anyone and called out in a soft voice, “Destinee?” She didn’t answer, but the feeling didn’t go away. I sat up slowly and then saw a figure standing silently in the corner.

  It was Avery Dufresne. The former newscaster had a blank expression on her pretty face and blood on her neck, and all her hair had been chopped off. I flung the covers back and just about screamed her name. “Avery! Oh my God! What’s going on?” My mind told me there was no possible way she could be here, but with all my heart I wanted to help her.

  I’d met America’s Newscaster earlier in the year when my former team members and I investigated Sugar Hill. Now, there had been an investigation—we’d found skeletons in the walls and proof of a centuries-old murder. Well, two murders. But the truth was that much more was going on at Sugar Hill, and I’d come to love Avery’s heart. She had tons of money before she came to Sugar Hill, but she had even more now that she’d been named the family’s financial representative. And she used every dime allowed for good. She helped build a hospital, funded surgeries for family members and even invested in Dufresne businesses. And she wasn’t the one who told me all this; the people around her had. They loved her. She made me wish I were a Dufresne, not because I was greedy but because it would be cool to be a part of something like that.

  I walked closer to the image, my hands outstretched, but as soon as I got close enough to touch her, the image shimmered like it was a pool of water that someone just skimmed their fingers across. And then she was gone. I suddenly felt cold and sad. So very sad. I heard the door open behind me, but I didn’t
want to take my eyes off the spot in case she returned.

  “Um, Jess? You got a minute?”

  It was Jarvis and Destinee. My roomie sat in the cheap vinyl chair with her arms crossed and a judgmental, I-told-you-so expression on her face, while Jarvis stood there looking all alpha. I was pretty sure his toned physique was the only reason he landed the job as case manager. That’s how it was in this industry. The camera had to love you or you were out. And then the door opened again. It was one of the camera guys. To the average person, this unexpected meeting might have seemed intrusive, but I had signed a contract giving up my privacy rights for the good of the show. I had no idea what was about to happen, but I sensed a new story line emerging. I could imagine the headlines on the paranormal blogs tomorrow.

  “Jessica Chesterfield Gets Canned for Not Faking Ghosts.”

  But that’s not what they would say at all. In fact, the Paranormal Channel’s kind blurb would say something like, “Jessica is taking some time off to take care of a personal situation. She’ll be back in the fall—or next year. Or never.” What that really meant was, “We aren’t happy with Jessica’s performance. We’d like to spend some time taking a long, hard look at her contract before we fire her.”

  Jarvis ran through his lines, letting me know that I’d been put on “probation” with My Haunted Plantation. Some members of the group apparently felt I might put them in danger somehow, but the how wasn’t exactly clear to me. Destinee piped in once or twice, to say how much she cared about me and she’d miss me but that I really needed to refocus. She smiled and promised to keep my place for me. Yeah, right. I trusted her less than I trusted Megan, and that wasn’t much at all.

  I left that night. I didn’t call my parents or any of my friends back home. I would in a day or two. I rented a car and headed south to Alabama.

  Now the real work would begin. I hoped I wasn’t too late.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Six – Avery

  My arrival at Thorn Hill prompted nothing as frightening as before. No mystery man stalked me on the wraparound porch. No crystal chandeliers swung precariously overhead or mysteriously crashed to the ground. Even the painting of Susanna Serene Dufresne appeared benign. Just a harmless, beautiful painting of a remarkable woman who now overlooked the parlor where she used to sit with her lover and pass the time.

  And where was Ambrose? Why were there no pictures of him here? I’d only found the one at Sugar Hill, in the Angel Gallery, and I’d spent way too much time staring at him, memorizing his face. Maybe I would find one here, hanging forgotten on a wall or squirreled away in an attic.

  I did my best not to think about Ambrose—I’d heard the warnings—but it was difficult not to for reasons I didn’t completely understand. Or wish to admit. Like a devilish mood ring, Susanna’s wedding band warmed on my finger as if to testify to that fact. Yes, it was difficult not to think of Ambrose, and it became more difficult every day. I’d told no one about it, not even Summer. I kept my rising curiosity, or whatever this was, to myself. But my resolve to keep him at bay was waning. I found it harder and harder to resist the temptation to call out to him, to say his name on purpose, especially since he had been haunting my dreams of late.

  In the most recent, I dreamed of the two of us lying in the grass near Sugar Hill. I could see the house out of the corner of my eye. Geese flew overhead, honking as they sped by, and there was a gentle slapping of water nearby. Ambrose leaned over me; tiny bits of grass and flower petals were in his hair, which fell around him like a soft halo. His white shirt was unbuttoned, and I relished the feel of the dark hairs under my fingers as I touched his chest. His wide smile thrilled me. We were happy, he and I, in that moment. He wanted me, worshiped me, loved me. And I wanted nothing more than to surrender to those expressive dark eyes and respond to his gentle touches.

  And then he began to come to me at night. He’d catch me in that place between awake and asleep—he wouldn’t actually appear, but I would know that he was there and that he was there to please me. Serve me. Love me. I wanted so badly to surrender. How easy it would be!

  Speak my name, my love. Speak it, and we’ll be as one again. Speak my name, my soulmate, and all will be well.

  But I couldn’t.

  How could I allow myself to be enveloped by his spicy scent or believe that he was anything but dead? He was a grasping spirit hoping to reclaim what he’d lost, his soulmate, Susanna. But I was not her, and it was the ring he was reaching for, wasn’t it? At those times, I had to think like a journalist. What would I say to someone who told me a story like this? I would never have believed it. No, I couldn’t engage this…thing…I had to be scientific.

  Maybe the ring was the key to all this. If I could just figure out how to undo Sulli’s misbegotten spell, I’d be okay. No, it couldn’t be a spell. Did we believe in such things nowadays? Maybe it had some sort of psychic energy or disturbed the electromagnetic whatever and triggered hallucinations? Yeah, that was the theory I’d go with for now. I had to figure this out. I had to end the ring’s power, but at this point, my concern might not matter after all.

  I was sure that more than anything Bray wanted the ring. And what did he propose to do? Chop my finger off to take it? I couldn’t get it to budge, but to be fair I’d kind of given up on removing it. It was a part of me now, like the Dufresne name and the title of matrone. And now it might all be gone.

  I heard Handsome pull the car away slowly, and I felt very alone. The old chauffeur didn’t like my coming here, I knew that. He was worried about me, which was sweet of him, but there was really no way to avoid this. Sure, no one had asked me outright to leave Sugar Hill, but Bray’s accusation was clear. I was an impostor. I needed to go. Rather than inconvenience anyone, I had done just that. Now here I was…and now what? I’d call Reed later and see what the next step would be. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too difficult to fend off Bray. Maybe he was just full of hot air. But then that nagging voice had to ask the question, “But what if he’s right? What if I’m not a real Dufresne? What if I’m not entitled to the ring?”

  With a sigh, I took my overnight bags upstairs and stood in the hallway. I wasn’t going back to the room I stayed in the last time. I decided to stroll down the hall and look for a new room. I hadn’t seen one car in the driveway, and I didn’t think to ask if there were any housekeepers here, but I didn’t need anyone’s help. The place was clean and tidy, and I knew from my last visit that someone kept the fridge stocked nicely at all times. I poked my head in a few rooms but kept looking.

  Finally, I settled on a smaller room at the end of the hallway. I knew for a fact this wasn’t Susanna and Ambrose’s room, and this wasn’t the room where Chase was shot either. I put the bag on the bed. This room had white walls and pink rose curtains. It could easily have been a child’s or young woman’s room. It felt empty of sadness, and I loved the hardwood floors in here. The full-size bed was just big enough and sumptuous-looking enough to get lost in. I could use a nap right about now, but I wasn’t ready to hit the hay just yet. I had other things to do, like dig into Grandmother Margaret’s videos. Surely there was something in there that would prepare me for what was to come. Maybe. Either way, I had to finish this project. It had been one of the few things Miss Anne asked me to do. I also had a few of Vertie’s journals, but for some reason I was reluctant to start those. I couldn’t figure it out. I loved my grandmother, but reading her words, knowing that she knew all about this and never told me, just didn’t sit well with me.

  I shoved my clothing in perfectly lined drawers and then walked downstairs to forage for a snack. I settled on a sandwich and an apple. Might as well eat something healthy. I thought about going upstairs to review the tapes, but what were the chances there would be a VHS player up there? I thought I’d seen one squirreled away in the parlor and decided that was as good a place as any. Luckily for me, I did find a rather dusty VHS player hidden in the media cabinet. I pulled it out and connected it to the flat screen te
levision. Things sure had changed since the last time I was here. Jamie, Summer and I had been in here when we got the news that the skeletons had been found in the walls of Sugar Hill. And to think Arthur Dufresne put them there! At least, I supposed he had. He was responsible for the construction that had walled them in. I shivered at the thought. Imagine being walled up somewhere and left to die.

  I sure come from some evil stock.

  Poor Jamie. I’d basically cast him off like an old shoe, but who could blame me? He’d gotten a bit intense those last few weeks we were together, and he hadn’t even called me since he left Sugar Hill the day of the barbecue. I’d had one strange phone call from his ex-wife, but she was vague and kind of nosy. I didn’t feel the need to tell her a thing…and I didn’t really know anything to begin with. I didn’t have time to think about this. I’d worry about it tomorrow. I hit the play button and was instantly mesmerized by my great-great-grandmother’s face.

  She must have been a lovely lady at one time. She was definitely animated and excited about retelling her family’s long, complicated story. I finished up my sandwich and listened for any details that would help me break the curse and ditch the ring. Yeah, it was time to get out of Belle Fontaine. Away from this crazy, ungrateful family and this incestuous spirit that wanted nothing more than to possess me. I shivered at the thought and pushed the memories of my dreams out of my mind.

  The next thing I knew, I wasn’t sitting in the parlor at Thorn Hill watching the tapes. I was sitting in the room with Margaret. I could see her blue dress suit perfectly, down to the tiny white flowers sewn into the lapels. I could see her short, cropped curls, her pearl earbobs and each line of her face. Nope. This was not some grainy video. I was here. And Anne was here. And they knew I was here.

  “Look, Annie. Look who decided to join us.”