The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run

by Matthew S. Cox

  Bye bye Mommy.

  14

  Wilhelmina

  Thursday, August 30, 2012

  Mia walked along the fancy corridor of a large building, probably the courthouse. People in suits or dresses passed by, everyone offering sympathetic looks or sorrowful nods. Their hair appeared strange, the women’s attire most noticeably older, out of style.

  She peered down at herself, in a black dress, clutching a decidedly un-fancy pastel blue purse close to her gut. A plain brown coat covered her arms to the wrists. The words ‘Room 4’ repeated in her thoughts at a whisper while she made her way deeper into the stark corridor of black and white tiles, gazing at small signs on the wall by every door.

  A young police officer, perhaps halfway into his twenties, stepped in front of her. “Mrs. Kurtis…”

  “Yes,” said a different woman’s voice from Mia’s mouth, heavy with sadness, mostly whisper.

  “We’re all so very sorry for your loss.” He bowed his head, glint flashed from a small gold bar on his chest engraved with the word ‘deputy.’

  Mia nodded. Guilt kept her silent. She should have done more. Should have left sooner, skipped work that night, taken Robin with her…

  “Are you sure?” asked the cop.

  “Yes,” replied Mia in a toneless voice.

  “You understand what will happen?”

  Mia didn’t much care if they shot her, arrested her, executed her, or whatever. Robin was gone. Nothing mattered anymore. “I do.”

  The deputy nodded and reached under his jacket. He looked around, then pulled out a small revolver, which he dropped into her purse. “It’s a snub. Not much for accuracy. You’ll have to be close. If it was my kid, I’d do the same thing.”

  Mia nodded. “Thank you.”

  She tugged the zipper on the purse shut. The instant it closed, she lurched upright in bed, squinting at sunlight.

  Her brain tripped over itself at the sudden transition, reducing her bedroom to an environment as alien as if she’d been abducted by creatures from a UFO. She couldn’t fathom where she’d wound up or how she got there—until her alarm went off two minutes later.

  Reality crashed into her. Home. Bedroom. House. Ghosts…

  Dead child.

  Ignoring the blaring clock, Mia buried her face in her hands and wept. The raw grief that had consumed her the previous night lessened by an order of magnitude. Rather than finding her daughter, it hit her only as hard as if it had happened to a friend’s kid.

  Get it together, Mia. That poor girl died years ago. Nothing I can do. She forced calm over herself, then crawled out of bed to kill the annoying alarm. Adam being out of bed already struck her as unusual since she hadn’t yet adjusted to the new paradigm of living here. Back in their apartment, she woke up much earlier than him to mitigate the horrendous commute. His new job required him there a little sooner than she had to be at the museum, so he’d become the one who had to get up first, if only by twenty minutes.

  The note on his pillow, however, did stand out as odd.

  She snatched it up to read.

  Hon, had to go in early today for a meeting. Call me if you need to talk. I need to know you’re okay.

  “I’m okay.” Mia set the note down and sighed. “Except for not remembering how I wound up in bed.”

  After hurrying a shower and getting dressed, she sat on the edge of the bed to put her shoes on. While she fixed the straps around her ankles, the bed to her right shifted from weight settling down. She peered up at a small indentation… like a child sitting beside her.

  “Robin?” asked Mia, thinking back to her dream. “Is your name Robin?”

  A disembodied whisper replied, “Yes.”

  Mia attempted to hug the air beside her, and wrapped her arms around a cold spot. She tried to say ‘I’m sorry,’ but her voice hitched in her throat as grief resurfaced. Sudden crying came from the hallway, the distant voice indistinguishable between a woman or a child.

  Adam stopped at the coffee machine in the staff room after the meeting ended, refilling for the second time. It annoyed him that he’d been dragged out of bed an hour and twenty minutes early to listen to the dean talk about the library and some improvements to the athletic field, then touch base with the various department heads. Nothing that came up in the meeting required him there, all of it every bit as easily conveyed by email.

  He exited the room grumbling to himself, though he had no intention to complain about anything, especially not on his first week. In fact, he probably wouldn’t rock the boat for at least another few years unless something serious happened.

  “Professor Gartner?” asked Paul from behind.

  Adam stopped and turned.

  His TA walked up to him, along with a large-framed woman with long silvery-grey hair and a warm expression. Her blue eyes still held a spark of youth despite faint wrinkles around them suggesting she’d gone past fifty. She wore a number of necklaces made from wooden beads of various sizes, each bearing a small medallion or talisman with markings in an unfamiliar written script. The most prominent resembled an oak tree enclosed in a circle.

  Adam nodded in greeting. “Hello, Paul, and…”

  “This is Professor Wilhelmina Marx. She teaches history. She’s also interested in the paranormal. I showed her the images you took of the footprints and the orb video. She said she knows about your house already and was surprised someone had moved into the place again, much less also worked here.”

  “Miss Marx?” asked Adam, offering a handshake.

  She accepted. “That’s right. Mr. Gartner.”

  “Paul tells me you’ve moved into number six a few days ago.” She clasped her hands in front of herself. “I live just down the road in ten.”

  Adam’s eyebrows perked up with interest. “Oh. That’s a coincidence and a half to be working at the same school as one of my neighbors.”

  “Quite.” Wilhelmina smiled. “Welcome to Syracuse University.”

  “Thanks. Still feeling my way around, but I like it so far. Hoping to be here for a good while.”

  She nodded once as if to say ‘but of course.’ “Psychology?”

  “Yep.”

  “I mostly teach history of western civilization, though I also run a few electives on ancient European groups and traditions. Been teaching here going on twenty-two years now.”

  Adam blinked. “Wow. That’s impressive. Hopefully, I can enjoy the same kind of stability.”

  “That’s good. So, Paul tells me you chase ghosts as a hobby.”

  “My interest in paranormal research goes beyond hobbyist, though it’s far from easy to get any administration to take parapsychology seriously. Even asking about it usually results in everyone calling me a nut.”

  Paul chuckled. “Showed her the footprint pic with the ruler, she thinks the ghost is around seven years old, uhh, if it’s really a ghost.”

  “Tell me, professor,” said Wilhelmina with a glint in her eye, “how do you feel about druidy, witchcraft, that sort of thing?”

  “I don’t really have much of an opinion, to be honest, but what little I’ve seen of it seemed fascinating.”

  Wilhelmina fidgeted with her tree amulet. “I dabble a bit at it.”

  “She’s basically a paranormal Wikipedia,” said Paul.

  “Amazing.” Adam grinned. “I’m guessing you probably don’t get along too well with that Weston guy?”

  Wilhelmina smirked. “We don’t see eye to eye. I think he’s a fool, he thinks I should be burned at the stake.”

  “Whoa.” Adam whistled. “He’s one of those? The man didn’t strike me as that unhinged.”

  “Well, I doubt he’d be inclined to literally burn me at the stake, but somewhere inside, I’m sure he wants to. And, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think he’s a fool for being a Christian. He’s a fool for thinking his beliefs are the only ones that matter.”

  “So, you think the spirit is seven years old based on the size of the footprint?” Ada
m scratched his head. “Are you an expert tracker, too?”

  “Probably looked at a shoe size chart,” muttered Paul.

  Wilhelmina laughed. “Neither of those. I knew the family.”

  “You…” Adam stared at her, frozen in a mixture of curiosity and guilt. If this woman knew the family, that made them less ‘ghosts to experiment on’ and more actual people. His eagerness to find answers crashed headlong into his aversion to being disrespectful. “Knew them?”

  “I did… babysat for them a few times when I was thirteen.”

  “Oh, man.” Adam rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry.”

  Wilhelmina shook her head. “It’s all right. Enough time has passed that I can talk about it. I hadn’t been particularly close to them, just a teenage girl in the area when a babysitter was needed. Of course, you know in a small town like Spring Falls, everyone knows everyone. Not like the big cities where people can live there thirty years and not even know the name of the people next door.”

  “Vic,” said Adam. “Was the man’s name Vic?”

  “Yes.” Wilhelmina’s white eyebrows rose a tick. “Before I get too impressed, did you find that on Google?”

  “No. I actually haven’t done all that much research yet. I didn’t want any preconceptions to influence my experiments. And gee… it sounds so wrong to think of it as experiments if you knew the people.”

  “They’re all dead, Mr. Gartner.” Wilhelmina looked down. “As I said, in a small town, everyone sees everyone else’s dirty laundry. Vic was a mean drunk. Worked most of the day at O’Riordan’s Garage. Used to go home most nights and get a bit physical with his wife.”

  “And the daughter…” Adam sighed.

  “Robin. No, not so much. With her, he mostly screamed. None of us are really sure what got into him that night, but violence wasn’t exactly out of character for him. Best I can figure, Evelyn—that’s Vic’s wife—finally had enough of him knocking her around and planned to take off with the daughter. He got wind of her plans. She worked over at the Pinecone, local diner. Usually didn’t get outta there ’til well after midnight.”

  Adam hooked his thumbs in his pants pockets and stared at the floor. “He wanted to hurt her in the worst way imaginable. Likely, he had no particular anger toward Robin, but she represented the best way to destroy her. Guessing he didn’t put much effort into avoiding the law? Men in that situation are typically either suicidal themselves or indifferent to their own survival, or they feel they have every right to do what they did.”

  “Well, yeah. He ran, but didn’t go far. That wretch killed that beautiful little girl before Evelyn came home. She found her.”

  Adam gasped. “Oh, no… That explains…”

  “Hmm?” asked Wilhelmina.

  “My wife. I’m convinced she’s gifted”—he tapped the side of his head—“and she picked up a vision of… something in the girl’s bedroom. It had to be. She let out this god-awful scream and collapsed in sobs, probably re-living the moment the mother, umm, Evelyn, found the girl’s body. It hit her so hard she passed out.”

  “Wow,” said Paul. “Is she all right?”

  Adam looked at his phone. One text read ‘I’m okay, about to leave for work. Thanks for putting me in bed.’ “I think so.”

  “Intense.” Paul fidgeted.

  “What happened to Vic?” Adam looked back to Wilhelmina.

  “The Coopers in number seven heard Evelyn screaming and called the cops. They figured Vic was letting her have it bad. Police showed up, found her upstairs holding Robin, rocking back and forth. Anyway, make a long story short, they picked him up a few miles outside town on the bridge near the falls, drunker’n hell. Still had the bloody hammer with him.”

  “Might’ve been trying to drink up the courage to jump?” asked Adam.

  “The falls aren’t that big. Wouldn’t have killed him, but drunk as he was, being in water might have. Evelyn shot him in the back of the head during the trial. She’d been seated right behind the, ehh, what is it… the defense table. The judge called a lunch recess or some such thing and”—Wilhelmina pointed a finger gun at the wall—“pow! She emptied all six rounds into him from as close as me to you. ’Course ya don’t kill a man in the middle of a courthouse and get away. She just stood there and let the police arrest her. Everyone knew the cops turned a blind eye to her bringin’ that weapon into the courthouse. ’Least everyone I talked to figured the cops agreed with her. Poor Evelyn died in a cell awaiting her trial for killing Vic. We all expected her to get off, or maybe wind up in psychiatric care. Officially, they called her death a ‘suicide by undetermined means,’ but, if you ask me, the poor woman died of a broken heart.”

  Adam brushed a tear from the corner of his eye, thinking about the way Mia had been wailing last night. “I can believe that.”

  “That’s so, so, horrible.” Paul exhaled. “We think they’re haunting the place.”

  “Wouldn’t doubt it.” Wilhelmina swiped some of her pewter hair from her face, wooden bracelets clattering. “No one’s stayed in that house for long. Took forever to sell the first time since everyone ’round here knew what happened in there. Some out of towner bought it in ’76, best I can recall. I don’t remember the guy much. He had a city mentality, never talked to any of his neighbors. That man kept the house the longest. Something chased him out around 1988 or so.”

  Adam took out a small notepad and began jotting.

  “The house sat empty until 1991, I think it was this girl Ellen L-something… Long, if I remember, who bought it. Poor thing. Only a year or two into her thirties. Made decent money, can’t recall what she did for a living, though. She had the place a year before she fell down the stairs and landed wrong. Lost the use of her legs. Went back to Utica to move in with her folks. Place sat empty for a long time after that. Then it was Mr. O’Ryan. George. I want to say he moved in sometime in ’96. Something spooked that man terribly. He took off in the middle of the night after a month. Wouldn’t even come back to collect his things. Hired movers to do it for him.”

  Adam looked up from his writing. “After a single month, something in there scared him so much that he wouldn’t set foot in the place again?”

  “Correct.” Wilhelmina tapped her chin. “Around 1999, maybe early 2000, the Vaughans moved in, a somewhat older couple. After about two months, they started having Pastor Parker there three times a week. Middle of the night, early in the morning, weekends. Mr. Vaughan always had bruises like he’d gotten into a nasty scrap over at Johnny’s.” She raised a hand and whispered past it. “Spring Falls has three bars, and that’s the one the down-and-outs frequent. People go there to erase time.”

  “Ahh.” Adam jotted that down.

  “The Vaughans lived in the house about two years, but finally gave up on it after Mrs. Vaughan nearly suffocated in her sleep. They said some kind of ‘demon’ sat on her chest, so heavy she couldn’t get any air. Even claimed to have little handprint bruises on her neck.”

  Adam squirmed at the memory of Mia telling him the ghost girl had crawled into bed between them. Could she have tried to kill Mrs. Vaughan by kneeling on her chest and choking her, or might she have had some manner of coronary event and blamed the ghost for it?

  “Did they take pictures?” asked Paul.

  “Not as far as I know. Most recent people to live there were Phillip & Arlene Weir, about three years ago. Really sweet couple. I remember them gettin’ on towards forty but they didn’t have any kids. They were friendly with Pastor Parker, but not to the same degree as the Vaughans. Maybe he learned his lesson that going in there and screaming scripture at ghosts only makes them angry.”

  “The Weirs…” Adam wrote that down. “That name sounds familiar. I remember it from the sale, but we never met them.”

  “How long did they last in the place?” asked Paul.

  “About six months. Left a couple weeks before Christmas.” Wilhelmina tapped a finger to her chin. “Heard they started arguing a lot.
She wanted to leave, he didn’t want to sell—for financial reasons. Arlene took off early one morning, but only made it a little ways down Minstrel Run before she wrapped her car around a tree. Damn near broke her neck. Cops couldn’t determine if she swerved to avoid something or tried to kill herself on purpose since she hadn’t hit the brakes. Either way, as soon as she got out of the hospital, they left the area.”

  “Well, Professor.” Paul grinned at Adam. “Two years is the record to beat, but it sounds like things will become interesting between one and six months from now.”

  He chuckled. “They’re already ‘interesting.’ I’m just hoping they don’t become dangerous. How long ago did Vic kill his daughter?”

  “September, 1970. The murder happened on a Wednesday. I still remember my parents telling me about it the next day. Didn’t feel real. Still doesn’t. Robin was such a cute, happy child… except when her father was around. That man chased the joy right out of her, but she bounced back whenever he left.”

  Adam shook his head. “Such a damn senseless tragedy.”

  “Oh, crap.” Paul hurried a few steps away. “We’ve got five minutes before class.”

  “Drat.” Adam stuffed the notebook in his pocket. “It was wonderful to meet you, Professor Marx. I’d love to discuss as much about ghosts, druids, or that poor family as you’re willing to put up with. Would you like to stop by sometime for dinner?”

  “It’s been forty-two years since I’ve been in that house. I wonder if she’ll remember me.” Wilhelmina thought for a moment. “Sure. Perhaps I can even help the three of you get along.”

  “Great.” He backed up. “Need to run to class.”

  “Me too.” She wagged her eyebrows. “Nice meeting you as well, Professor Gartner.”

  With a final wave, Adam jogged down the hall toward his classroom.

  15