by Mary Bowers
“No. One is a simple maid who died in 1936. The other is my friend, from The Realm of the Shadows.”
“Ah, yes,” she said mistily. “I was aware of him as soon as I came onto the estate.” Given the news coverage, I was pretty sure she’d been aware of him long before that. “He died in the river, did he not? Yes. He is near. But we will find your young girl first. Seth tells me he will wait. He is interested. It is the investigation you were pursuing when Seth gave his life, is it not?”
Teddy nodded solemnly.
“Then naturally he is interested.”
I glanced at Ed, but the candle reflecting on his glasses hid his eyes from me.
Purity closed her eyes and began to gently sway. In a few minutes, I realized she was humming, so softly that I couldn’t tell when she had started. The imperceptible humming gradually became a charming little melody, and as it developed, it turned into a song, framed by the sweet, clear voice of a girl.
“How shall we find our way back home,
“Johnny, Bobby, Billy?
“How shall we find our way back home
“After all this time away?”
She repeated the stanza a few times, and then she fell silent and became peaceful.
This was followed by another long wait, and I found myself listening for the wind to stir the trees outside. Whenever I heard it, I was strangely reassured.
Suddenly she said, “Is that you?” She cocked her head childishly and simpered. Then, “Yes, I hear you. Will you find our lady for us? Will you find our girl? The one who died here so long ago. She’s here,” she said playfully. “I feel her. No? Why not?”
She seemed to be listening.
“Yes, it is naughty to cause your own death,” she went on. “But she is not a bad girl. Not really. She is only sad.”
Sad.
Nobody else at this table knew what it meant, that sadness, but I had felt it before, and I felt it again now, creeping toward me along the floorboards like a rolling fog. When it reached my chair, it came around my feet, my legs, my knees, and began to rise around me, trapping me. Then it began to drain the living warmth from me like the earth surrounding a coffin. My eyes began to prickle and I closed them, still holding the warm hands of the men, not because I’d been told I had to, but because they were warm and strong, holding me down. I couldn’t be taken away to a terrible place while the men held onto me. Purity’s voice had become a low, meaningless hum in my ears.
The little maid crouched beside me on the floor, hunkered low, like a frightened animal, then her arms trailed up along my legs and suddenly fastened around me. I felt a heavy pressure as her face pushed against my belly and moved from side to side, as if drying tears on my shirt. The pressure of her grip grew stronger until it seized my lungs and stopped my breath.
I became rigid, and I felt the hands that held mine tighten into iron bands holding me prisoner.
I let out a sob. I knew, because I had seen, in that album, on the table beside me at Frieda’s house. And now I saw it fresh and new, printed this very year, 1936, and shining in silver embossing, new on my lady’s desk as I waxed the floor around it. I stopped my work and set the mop aside, and with both my hands I lifted the heavy bond of the invitation and I read it over and over.
Mabel hissst at me. I must get back to work; Missus would see me and sack me on the spot, and then where would I go?
I didn’t matter where I would go. I would wait. I would wait where I always waited, in the loft, by the window, looking down, and he would come to me and explain how he had been forced into the arranged marriage, and he would take me away, as he’d always said he would.
And so I waited.
I ran my fingertips over the initials that I had carved. My lover’s initials: “H.B.” Hunter Barrett. He would come. And if he didn’t, I would die.
“Wake up, Taylor.”
I opened my eyes to see the faces of the men above me, and an exhausted Purity lying artfully against the back of her chair, wanly smiling.
“What happened?” I asked groggily.
“Purity was successful!” Teddy said. “Brilliantly successful! We reached the maid at last. She hung herself because she’d been caught stealing the silver plate from the butler’s pantry. The Cadburys made her confess in front of the whole congregation at church, then fired her. The humiliation was too much to bear. The exorcism was beautiful! She will rest peacefully now. You may proceed with your plans for the barn. She’s gone.”
“You fell asleep,” Ed said, disappointed in me. “You missed it. Anyway, we were successful, both in reaching Ellen, and in reaching Seth.”
“He’s comfortably settled in the afterlife, and he was thrilled at Purity’s handling of Ellen. Really, Taylor, I don’t know how you could’ve slept through all that.”
I was still a bit shaky, and in no mood for his blather. “You saw Seth?”
Teddy giggled. “He thought you were adorable, sleeping like a baby and gripping our hands for all you were worth, like a frightened little child. He says the initials carved on the window frame have nothing to do with the maid. That was just a stable boy who was bored. We gave Seth your regards,” he added as an afterthought.
“Uh huh.”
Ed was on the move. “I’ve got to transcribe the recording and put my impressions down while they’re still fresh. Teddy, do you mind helping Purity get her things together?”
He beetled off.
“It’d be a pleasure,” Teddy said warmly.
From the look on Purity’s face, Teddy was going to get lucky tonight, if he wanted to.
From the look on Teddy’s face, he knew it, but he didn’t want to, really.
Chapter 20
That night when I finally got to bed, I was especially lonely. When your household boils down to a ghost-hunter and a grumpy old housekeeper, you are truly alone. It would’ve been so good to talk to Michael, to tell him all about the séance, really tell him about it – the séance that I had been to, not the one-act play the others had been having.
I was still too stubborn to call him, but something more subtle occurred to me. Michael usually played golf on Wednesdays, but he had quit golfing. If I just happened to go into Tropical Breeze, and if I should still be there, say, around lunch time, I might just possibly run into him, purely by accident, if he went to Don’s Diner for lunch, and there was an excellent chance he would. He hated eating at home alone.
So . . . .
I felt a sudden burning need to go downtown on Wednesday morning, and once I had my diabolical plan in order, I couldn’t wait to go. It was still too early for lunch, but I could kill some time – I mean, I needed to check on things – at Girlfriend’s.
I parked in the alley behind the resale shop, as usual, and went inside. Nobody was in the back room, so I went on into the showroom.
My faithful Florence was arranging a new window display, and when she saw me coming, she said, “Oh, Taylor, thank you, thank you, thank you. I thank you, Wicked thanks you, my houseplants thank you –“
“Your houseplants?” I said, laughing.
“She overwaters them.”
“Hello, Wicked,” I said over my shoulder. The shop cat is a practical joker, and likes to sneak up behind me and then fly past my head, scaring the life out of me. I couldn’t see him preparing to launch, but I knew he was there.
With a disappointed growl, he gave a token leap anyway, and I smiled at him to let him know he hadn’t scared me. I reached out to scratch behind his ears, but since I’d spoiled his fun, he backed up, glared, then leapt onto the top of the entertainment center we used as a display cabinet and began washing himself.
“Be that way,” I told him.
“What on earth would make you bring Myrtle back to Cadbury house?” Florence asked, adding quickly, “Not that I think it’s a bad idea.”
I didn’t answer because I’d seen something that shocked me speechless. I pointed upward to the picture rail.
“When did sh
e come back?”
“Oh, Basket? She was at the back door this morning. You bad girl,” she told the cat, “making us all wonder where you’d went. And after Taylor took you in and gave you a home.”
At the back door. This morning. And last night we were fooling around with séances. Barnabas had told me my experience with the goddess Bastet had changed me forever, and now I believed him.
When Vesta had been murdered, she had called upon the goddess Bastet to avenge her. That’s when the black cat had first appeared to me and begun to guide me toward achieving justice. Then, without explanation, the cat disappeared. Now she was back, and I didn’t understand why.
“I don’t need you now,” I told the cat.
“Oh, hush,” Florence said, shocked. “You’ll hurt the poor thing’s feelings. She’s glad you’re back,” she told “Basket.”
Basket didn’t care. Or rather, Bastet didn’t care. Florence had given her a name eerily close to the goddess’s name, and I had always wondered about that.
“She knows what I mean,” I said, still gazing into the cat’s intensely green eyes.
Immediately, it began again. That haze of green permeating the room, the sounds and scents of another time and place crowding around me, just beyond the edge of my senses.
“I know what happened now,” I said desperately, wanting to let the goddess know I didn’t need her anymore.
“What on earth?” Florence was saying, but I didn’t pay any attention to her.
“I can do this without you. Really I can.”
The regal black cat rose, paced the picture rail back and forth one time, then settled in her place again and blinked her eyes slowly, one time.
“Oh, you don’t think I can?” I said.
Florence was really worried now, offering me tea, but I ignored her.
With an infinitesimal lift of her chin, the cat stared at me.
“Well, I’m not taking you home,” I told her. “I’m not living in my house now. Somebody else is, and there’s a dog.”
The cat glared in outrage. Then the green eyes narrowed knowingly.
“Okay, okay, so I’m living at Cadbury House now, and I don’t have any pets there. You can’t come!”
She leapt down, walked over to me, levitated to a table beside me and continued to stare.
“Oh, all right,” I said. “But just for this one night. Myrtle likes cats, right Florence?”
“Only Wicked, and you can’t have him!” she said, convinced now that I was coming unglued.
“Well, if Myrtle is allergic to Bastet, so much the better.”
Florence put her hand on my arm and turned me away from the cat. “Her name is Basket, not Bastet. Now you come right along to the back room. I’m going to give you an aspirin and some tea. No, I won’t take no for an answer!”
So by the time I got to the diner, I’d had my tea. And an aspirin.
As I walked in the door I looked around casually, then drooped. Michael wasn’t there.
“Yes, its’ only the diner,” the floor waitress said. “Were you expecting the Kasbah?”
“Oh, hi DeAnn,” I said. “No, it’s just that it’s always so cold in here and I forgot to bring a jacket. I got a little chill.”
“Huh. Most folks tense up when they get a chill, they don’t droop, but whatever you say. Listen, honey, why don’t you just call him?”
“Oh, hi Walter,” I said, ignoring her pointedly.
Walter “Wizard” Sheets was at the counter having a malt, and he saluted me with it. “Hey, Taylor.”
“Mind if I join you?” I hiked myself up onto the stool next to his and gave a nod to J.B., the counter waitress, which was all I needed to do to get my lunch. She’d bring me an unsweetened iced tea and grilled cheese sandwich with fries automatically: it was all I ever had there.
I turned back to Walter. “So you and your crew are still hanging around, eh? Actually, I saw Teddy yesterday.” I leaned in. “We had a séance.”
“I know. With the psychic from Spud.”
“You know her too?”
“We know all the local whiz-bangs.”
I reared back. “Wizard! Blasphemy!”
“Not any more. Want to know why Teddy’s hanging around Cadbury House? Because he’s sniffing around for his next act. The show’s been cancelled.”
I was stunned. “He never said a word about it.”
“It’s called denial. Teddy’s the only one who didn’t see it coming. I mean, come on, one of the ‘talent’ gets killed because of some crazy stunt and he thinks the network won’t notice?” He shook his head. “Only Teddy could be so dense. And now he thinks that if he can come up with a blockbuster idea fast enough, he’ll get the show back and everything will go on as it did before. I don’t think he can imagine life without it.”
“What was he doing before?”
“Like your friend Edson does – professional paranormal investigator – not that you can really make a living at that unless you have a reality show or write a lot of books. Teddy can’t write, and there are only so many people who want to get rid of a ghost, have the money, and are silly enough to think you actually know what you’re doing. But don’t worry about him. His daddy’s rich, which is why Teddy gets to fool around with the paranormal instead of getting a real job.”
“Oh, man,” I said, feeling sorry for Teddy in spite of myself. My order had come, and I picked up a hot, salty French fry and crunched it. “So that’s it? You guys are kaput?”
“We’re finishing up the shoot at the St. Augustine lighthouse tonight. We’ve got a contract to fulfill for a complete season, and this will finish it. They’ve refused the footage from Cadbury House, for reasons obvious to everybody but Teddy. And then . . . like you said, kaput.”
“I’m sorry. What are you going to do now?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I’m a mechanic. I’ll find something. But it was fun while it lasted, and it gave me time to perfect a little invention of mine. Look.” Enthused, he stood up, lifted a satchel from the floor, set it on his stool and opened it. Then he took out a strange-looking object that looked like an old-fashioned folding wooden ruler. At one end was a pair of pincers and at the other, a small handgrip.
“A folding grabber,” he said proudly.
“A folding what?”
“Grabber. You know. That thing about a yard long with a trigger mechanism that makes the pincers at the other end grab things that are out of reach. I guess you don’t have any old folks in your life, do you?”
“No. Not that old, anyway.”
“Well,” he said, “one day you’re going to need one of these yourself, and you’ll have one you can easily keep on the tray of your walker or stash in the side pocket of your wheelchair, so it’s handy whenever you want it. I’m going to call it the ‘Emily,’ in memory of my mom. She sure could’ve used one of these. Her grabber was always falling off the tray of her walker.”
“Well, that’s terrific, Walter. I’m impressed! I hope you make a fortune with it.”
He ducked his head, looking like a shy bear. “Aw, I didn’t do it for the money. I did it because I think seniors need it. I’m even working on an extension model, which will reach out seven, nine or eleven feet, though that one needs some work. I passed out some prototypes to my friends. The feedback is that it’s a little glitchy, and I have to give some thought to whether or not there’s even a market for it. With these thin sectors, by the time you get it fully extended, it’s starting to knock things over instead of grab them.” He chuckled, gazing down at his invention affectionately. “My mom could only reach the bottom shelves of her kitchen cabinets, so all the others were empty. If I can perfect it, I might come up with something that will let you bring down a jar of peanut butter from the top shelf without dropping it on your own head.”
“And what about the . . . I think Seth told me you were working on a ghost trapper?”
He looked at me sideways. “I would’ve worked on a para
normal eggbeater, if they’d told me to. They gave me a workshop and a budget, and didn’t make me sign anything saying my own inventions belonged to the production company. I got an old washing machine out of some dump, took the control panel off, rigged up some wires and dials, and presto! – a containment device. I even put blinking lights on it, for when they gave me a ghost to, ahem, contain, if ever.”
We laughed together, then he reached over the satchel, picked up his malt and finished it, then got his wallet out to pay the bill.
I put a hand on his arm and held it. “Walter, your mother would’ve been proud.”
He looked down at his feet, smiling and blushing. “Thanks. Well, good luck with the shelter. Hopefully Teddy will give up and go ghost-hunting somewhere else soon.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” I said.
Chapter 21
Going back to Cadbury House would’ve meant stopping at Girlfriend’s and picking up the black cat. I tried to think of something, anything else I could do in town, just to delay it. Strangely, it never occurred to me to simply forget about the cat and go home. As before, she had a hold on me, and I resisted. I decided to go knock on Bernie Horning’s door and see what she was up to. Her house was within walking distance from Locust Street, and she would’ve been getting this week’s Beach Buzz ready by now.
She opened the door, saw that it was me, gave me a conspiratorial stare and glanced left and right, as if spies were hiding in the bushes.
We were alone and she knew it, and finally she leaned forward and said, “Lance Skinner has planted a mole on us.”
I digested this silently for a moment. Then I said, “I knew it. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Get yourself in here,” she said, disappointed I hadn’t fainted dead away from the shock. “Let’s talk.”
Once I was seated at her breakfast bar, she leaned against the kitchen island and stared at me. “Okay, sister, spill it.”
Pieces of the puzzle were falling into place so fast, I couldn’t find the words to explain. Bastet had been right: I pulled on the string, and it all came unraveled. And I had needed to pull it toward myself – myself, Cadbury House, and my old house.