Into the Gloaming

by Mercy Celeste

  “No offense, but I think I’ve had all the excitement I can stand in one lifetime,” Austin said, wondering who he was talking to, or even what he was talking about. He could hear papers shuffling behind him. Jemma picked up the destroyed journal. She could keep it. His inner curiosity-cat was sufficiently killed. He didn’t care to find out what happened to the last people to live in the house. He didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone or anything related to the house. And that thought sent a jolt of pain twisting through his chest.

  He grasped his shirt over his left breast and prayed like hell he wasn’t having a heart attack. He was too fucking young for a heart attack.

  “I’m going to close the house, at least for the time being,” Heath spoke behind him. “I’ve already informed the board that there are unforeseen issues with opening the house as a museum. Money, specifically the lack of it, makes people sit up and listen. So… until… yeah, it sounds insane, but until we know this place isn’t some portal to hell or something, I think it’s for the best.”

  No one disagreed. Least of all, Austin. He ate his pizza in silence and wondered why Heath and Rory had seen a person in his apartment and he hadn’t. He snorted, and almost choked on his pizza. Why did it bother him that he wasn’t the one with the full-blown ghost encounter this time? He should be thrilled that he wasn’t the one leaning over a toilet because he couldn’t handle the thrill.

  “Ghosts are energy… or they feed on energy, right?” Austin’s experience with the supernatural could be broken down into the twelve seasons of the TV show with that title. “Or is that just something Hollywood made up?”

  “Not a clue,” Jemma stated. He flinched when the big book she’d been carrying thumped on the table in front of him. “I’m getting a slice of your pizza.”

  “Help yourself,” He finished his slice and regarded the leather-bound book with suspicion. He wasn’t going to open it. Even if his inner curiosity-kitty was threatening to prowl.

  Heath joined him at the table. His soda replaced with a beer. He declined cold pizza.

  “It’s a photo album. Donna took the trunk y’all found today to their apartment. It seems… benign, out here. I couldn’t touch anything but this without feeling like I would lapse into a coma. But…” she used a clean paper towel to open the cover. “Look at these.”

  Austin took the paper towel and carefully paged through the photo album. “These aren’t professional portraits.” He noted off the bat. “These look like snapshots.”

  “Someone living in the house had an early portable camera.” Jemma scooted her chair to sit right beside him. She pointed to some blurry attempts that were saved. “Probably from before the family finances crumbled. They’re smiling. The girls are both little. Very little. The younger one with long glossy dark curls and the standard white dress and black stockings most children wore, even the boys back then. The older one was a little beauty. But… the younger child is always looking away. And Heath… is always missing.” She looked up to the man with the same name and face. “Sorry, it’s, I don’t know what to call him.”

  “I was named for him, it’s his name, as well,” Heath said, as he lifted the lid on the pizza box. He hesitated for a moment, a look of indecision on his face, before grabbing a slice and stuffing a bite into his mouth. “There is some mention of a hobby. And there was an old brown box camera found in the basement. It wasn’t salvageable, so it never made it back to the house.”

  “That would have been helpful to know,” Jemma replied dryly.

  “Why? Until this moment we didn’t know there were photos other than those that are hanging on the walls in the house. It would have been helpful to have found that attic room during the renovation.” Austin added to defray the argument before it started.

  “How did you miss an entire room?” Rory sounded stronger now. He pulled out a chair at the table and grabbed a piece of pizza. “You’d think that would be noticeable. Even if the door was walled over. The dimensions of the upper floor should have been enough for any architect to figure out there was a hidden room up there. Or blueprints. Or just looking at the outside and noticing the windows.”

  “The door wasn’t covered over. It was there. Plain as day,” Heath said, scratching his chin. “I looked at all the blueprints. Everything we had from when the house was built, to the renovation and… there wasn’t a room.”

  “So, you’re saying the door just magically showed up the other day and opened for you and Donna to go exploring?” Jemma sounded just as cynical as Rory. Same disbelief in her voice.

  “Did you ever see the door?” Heath asked and reached for another slice of pizza. “We should order more pizza if we’re going to sit around arguing all night.”

  “Who says I will let any of you stay here into the wee hours?” Austin turned the page in the old photo album… scratch that, this was a scrapbook. There was a lock of hair attached to the next page. And a square of fabric. But no pictures. Just a name. Isabel. That was all. A chill ran from his fingers down his spine. Every hair on his body standing on end. “The menu is on top of the fridge.”

  “Order a vegetarian pizza, light sauce.” Jemma stretched in the seat beside him, the old sweatshirt she wore, pulling tight across her body, showing exactly what she didn’t have under it. “And wine. I need wine.”

  “And gloves,” Austin added, nodding to the pantry. “HC died in August 1917. I just read the entry Culla wrote about it. She said he left for Savannah and didn’t return. She said the police said it must have been a robbery gone wrong.”

  “And now we have to put the journal back together and hope the damage was only to the spine.” Jemma brought back the box of gloves he kept on hand for working in his spare time, along with his last bottle of wine and four glasses.

  “Meat lovers, extra cheese,” Rory said when Heath picked up his phone to place the order. “Anything pasta they might have too. I’m starving. It’s been a long day.”

  “Austin?” Heath asked, holding his phone while the specials played.

  “Uh… something sweet. I’ve had enough pizza. Whatever they have.”

  Heath nodded and stepped outside to place the order. He was gone for a while. When he came back, he wasn’t alone. Britney and Donna, dressed in pajamas, followed him with bottles of wine and the crate that had sent Jemma into a full faint.

  “Heard there was a party,” Britney trilled happily as she ran her hand over Rory’s shoulder. “Study group. My favorite.” She winked at Austin and started moving food to the counters while Donna laid out two more large scrapbooks.

  “Pizza will be here in half an hour. I ordered a beer. I love a place that delivers beer.” Heath grinned as he straddled a chair. He looked nothing like he did when he first arrived. Less buttoned up and… uptight. He looked… freer. Like he had a huge weight lifted from his shoulders. The grin lit his eyes, and he winked when he met Austin’s gaze. “Okay, what are we doing?”

  “We’re hunting for skeletons in your ancestor’s closets,” Jemma said, teasingly.

  The words sent a frisson of electricity racing through Austin’s body. The pretty freckle-faced redhead sitting on top of the pizza box on the counter didn’t wink or smile. He grimaced in horror. And his face disintegrated before Austin’s eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Heath checked his phone one last time before turning it off. The battery nearly drained from the massive number of notifications he’d received since this afternoon. Clark had stopped drunk texting him sometime around midnight. He frowned at the last message.

  “Is he okay?” Austin asked from the armchair he seemed to prefer. The tables were all a mess of artifacts, and pizza boxes. But they were alone, finally. Heath hadn’t noticed when the others had left. He was too tired. His mind too stimulated. Maybe he’d had too much wine. Maybe the black and white images he’d pored over were burned into his retinas.

  If he sat still long enough, he could swear he could hear, or smell, or taste… somethin
g that wasn’t part of this life. The clang of metal on metal. The whuffle of a horse. He loved the scent of sweat and dirt and the air so warm he could feel it on his face.

  “You’re far away, is everything okay?”

  Heath dragged his wandering mind back from where ever he’d drifted off to. “Yeah… sorry. Yes.” He sat up straight on the sofa and tossed his phone onto the coffee table. It landed on the weighted down pages of the destroyed journal. “Just tired. And overwhelmed, right now.” He stifled a yawn and rubbed his eyes. “I should go. It’s…” He checked the clock on the microwave. “Nearly three in the morning.”

  “Yeah, we stayed up way too late talking about ghosts. Like our own little Scooby Squad or something. Real ghosts or historical ghosts. I’ll say this. Your family is fascinating as hell. And mysterious. None of the official biographical data you sent matches what I’m reading in the journals. People are running through your family tree without official branches. You do know that, right?”

  Heath slumped in the seat and slipped lower until he almost reclined. He propped one bare foot on the coffee table. His mother would slap him if she caught him sitting like this. “There’s no proof those children were part of the family.” So many children in those pictures. Most of them looking exactly like the surviving children. All female. Only Heath stood out as male. Older. Taller. Haunted. He’d always had haunted eyes. They all did. Except Heathcliff senior. He seemed… smug. The sister a ghost of a woman caught in some photographs, her head turned, her eyes never fully developed. Always seemingly prim and proper, as befitting her role as a spinster sister… “Too many children. Who just… disappear?”

  “Noticed that, did you?” Slurring his words, Austin smiled tiredly, his eyes drooping sleepily. “It’s like… the wives never lasted long. There were three. Did you notice that none of them were ever pregnant in the photos? I mean, I know that wasn’t something people did back then. Pregnancy was indelicate. They pretended it didn’t happen. Especially in genteel southern aristocratic families. Oh look, a new baby. How wonderful.”

  “Are you saying… what are you saying?” Heath wasn’t following.

  “Your great-grandfather has dark hair. You have dark hair. Your great-great-grandfather has lighter colored hair. The woman who was Heath’s mother had light hair. The woman who was Heath’s wife had reddish hair. And honestly, the children in the paintings, hair color doesn’t match the photographs I’m seeing. Maybe it’s a case of lighter hair when they were young, but there’s no photographic evidence that HC’s other two wives ever had a child.”

  Heath let that all swirl in his head. The blurred images of his great-great-aunt. Her old-fashioned clothing. The voluminous skirts when the other women wore the more streamlined fashion of the era. Her hair is so much darker than her brother’s. “Oh my god, you’re saying… oh my god.”

  “The youngest daughter is mentally challenged. I mean, I can’t diagnose her. But… in the journals she’s depicted as little more than an animal. And…” Austin sat up quickly, pointing the middle finger of his broken hand at Heath, not in a rude gesture, but as if he didn’t realize he was doing so. “She stayed the same size for a long time. A LONG ASS TIME. The older girl wasn’t much bigger than her in the first photos. Did you notice that? And the kid… she wasn’t there for a while… oh my god.”

  “Are you implying they had a… replacement Ruth? Incest. You’re… saying the younger girl was by his sister?”

  “I’m saying they were all by his sister. Like some Game of Thrones thing. Except, maybe, Heath. I think old HC married and got his male heir. Something happened, and he… kept his sister in the family way. They hid the children in that house.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I am absolutely drunk.” Austin made a drunken noise that sounded so very condescending. “I couldn’t make shit like that up, sober.”

  “There’s no proof of your accusations,” Heath said, trying to weigh his words. He gripped the arm of his chair with one hand and pushed the other hand through his hair, pulling slightly. His phone flashed. It hadn’t shut off. Another drunk text from his ex while his… he was going to say current but… even if what Austin said this morning was the truth, they were still nothing more than two people who had a slight attraction to each other.

  “No. I didn’t say there was. I’m just speculating after looking at the photos and what very little written material there is,” Austin said in that same slurred condescending voice. Like he was amused at Heath’s expense. “All I can do is form a hypotenuse… Hypotomous.” He waved his broken hand around as if he was swatting at a fly.

  “Hypothesis?” Heath helped him out. He tried not to smile when Austin rolled his eyes.

  “That’s what I said.” Austin huffed and continued middle finger pointing. “I mean, I’m not saying for real that your great whatever he was, porked his sister. But… back then, and they were isolated way out here in what was country, probably with no other girls around, incest happened a lot. Hell… it still happens. You know how many people find out their older sisters are really their mothers… who might be twelve or thirteen years older than them. I mean. Who knocked them up? And why hide it? And I got into history and anthropology because I enjoyed studying war and society building, and here I am doing some backwater genealogy shit… no offense. So… I’m drunk, and there’re fucking ghosts with no faces, and some bad shit went down here back in the day. And no one knows what it was… and if you don’t fuck me soon, I’m going to… I don’t know… pass out.”

  Heath scrolled through the text message he swore he wouldn’t open, or read, or respond to, with Clark saying he missed how Heath fucked him while he listened to Austin ramble on about ghosts with no… “Wait? What did you just say?”

  Austin sat up in his armchair, his eyes were suddenly less bleary looking. “Either go back to him and fuck him, because I know that’s what he’s asking, or take me to bed and fuck me. I’m tired of being… just… make a damn decision. If you want him back, let me go. If you want us both… it’s not going to work that way. Not saying I’m looking for long-term. Not saying I’m looking for a one-night-stand either. I’m saying… if you are having second thoughts about him, I will not be your rebound fuck. You want something with me… make a decision. I can’t say that any plainer. Stop stringing me along or go to him. Pick. Now.”

  “And Rory?” Heath turned his phone off and made sure it was off this time.

  “The leprechaun bouncer is doing him in his sleep and he’s freaking out about it. I was the only thing real in his life. We’ll… figure it out. We have not fucked. We don’t plan to fuck. He stays in my life. I’ll deal with the leprechaun molesting my best friend when I sober up and realize how insane that sounds.”

  “Leprechaun, doing what, now?” Heath had to grin at the insanity of that statement. He stopped grinning when Austin didn’t out-and-out define his relationship with the bartender. As if he hadn’t said a million times before that there was nothing between them. Maybe the visual evidence to the contrary made Heath have doubts.

  But then, he couldn’t deny the visual evidence of some strange specter that was attached to the bartender across the street. And with each passing day, Rory looked more and more haggard.

  Almost like Austin, with his constant dizzy spells, that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the accident.

  “We agreed to wait until we can meet somewhere outside of the influence of the bad juju this place keeps throwing at us.” Heath reminded him.

  God, he was so stupid.

  Austin was throwing himself at Heath with every fiber of his being. And Heath would walk the hell away.

  “I don’t remember that exactly.” Austin huffed, anger in his voice and demeanor. “When did we decide that?”

  “Before we went upstairs the other night to investigate the ghost in the attic and woke up in a bedroom, stark naked, with a termagant calling us twats. We were both drunk then. And you’re definitely drunk now.
So… no, Austin, as much as I want to take you to bed right now. The answer is no.” And that hurt more than anything Heath had ever had to do in his life. And maybe his past life.

  The vision of a man with no face haunted him. He’d seen him that afternoon. And Austin had mentioned something similar. Something about those ghosts didn’t feel ghostly. Exactly. Not that he had much experience with ghosts before this week.

  Or maybe he was just freaked out by all the talk of ghosts and overbearing fathers.

  “Don’t let Jemma hear you call her a terma… termagianmite. She will have your balls for earrings.” Austin pointed at him again with that middle finger that seemed to be the only one that worked on his broken hand.

  “You’re drunk, Oz. We’re not having sex until you’re sober. And that is final.”

  “As long as you don’t call me Oz when you… screw… me.” His face pinched up like the leprechaun he’d mentioned earlier. “I should throat-punch whoever started that. I swear.”

  “It’s cute.”

  “You’re cute.” Austin’s smile turned dopey. “I… really… don’t want to be a rebound fuck.”

  Heath dragged in a deep breath and closed his eyes, looking for strength. “Another reason we should wait.” God, that hurt to admit.

  Austin’s dopey smile faded away. Hurt entered his eyes for a moment. “Thank you for being honest. I appreciate that. More than you understand.”

  Heath nodded and dropped his gaze to his knees. “I can’t pretend it doesn’t hurt you know. I loved him. And he betrayed me so many times. I say I’m over it. I say I’m ready to move on… but… it still hurts. So much. Like I’m being stabbed in the chest over and over with each text message. Like… that’s all I ever was to him. Some guy to fuck. But never… good enough to be with, in the light of day. Like I was just supposed to understand about his career and his fans and his feelings for Felicity. And Austin… I don’t want that. I don’t. I want—”