Castle Moon

by Mary Bowers

  “Hmmm, yes she is,” Julie said. “She tried to get Life to do an article and photo spread on it when she first put it together. They weren’t interested.”

  “No, we haven’t seen it,” I told Charlotte, ignoring Julie. “Oliver mentioned it, but by then I was tired, and I don’t think he intends to include it in our, um, experiment. It’s not haunted, is it?”

  “Not that I know of,” Charlotte said, turning back to the dishwasher and turning it on.

  Julie made an unladylike snort but said nothing.

  “What about the rest of the dungeon?” Ed asked eagerly.

  Charlotte regarded us seriously. “No, I don’t think anybody’s reported strange sightings anywhere down there. Nobody spends much time down there. Not even Maxine. I never see her go there anymore.”

  “Where have the sightings been?” Ed asked.

  Charlotte looked uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. “Mostly on the second floor. That’s where the family’s bedrooms and sitting rooms are. Julie, Jeralyn and I have bedrooms on the other side of the top floor from your rooms. By the way, if you happen to be on this side of the castle, go ahead and use the staircase in the corner of the staff dining room; that would be the fastest way up to your rooms. Nobody uses it much anymore because it’s out of the mainstream of traffic. We tend to forget it’s even there.”

  “Maxine may use that staircase,” Jeralyn said. “Wouldn’t it be the shortest way from her suite to the murder room?”

  “I suppose it would. I’ve never seen or heard her on those stairs.”

  “I see,” Julie said. “Even Maxine isn’t interested in her murder room anymore.”

  I was fascinated by the details of the castle, but Ed was obviously bored by them. He wanted ghosts.

  “So most of the sightings have been on the second floor?” he said. “Nothing in the great hall, or on the roof?”

  “Not that I know of,” Julie drawled.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Jeralyln said. “I haven’t been in the castle all that much yet.”

  But there was no answer from Charlotte, and Ed looked at her, waiting.

  “I – don’t know,” she said at last.

  “What does that mean?” Ed asked.

  “It means just that,” she said shortly. “I don’t know.”

  “I’m not asking for cold, hard facts. We’re dealing with something else entirely, and we’re going to be conducting our investigation starting tonight,” Ed said, settling his glasses further up on the bridge of his nose. “Any information you can give us would be a help.” When Charlotte started to protest, he added, “Even if it’s only a guess, or a feeling.”

  That settled her down, and finally she said, “It’s just that I’ve noticed Oliver mentioning his father more lately. Not that he thinks he’s haunting the castle or anything. He misses his father. That’s all.”

  “Anything else? Even something that gives you chills, and you don’t know why?”

  “This is stupid,” Julie muttered. She walked across the kitchen and went back into the dining room.

  But Charlotte took him seriously, and was really trying. “Nobody likes the dungeon, of course. And I’ve never liked the great hall much. Honestly, though, I have never felt that the castle was haunted. It’s just . . . too big for two women to be living in alone most of the time. I’ve tried to talk to Maxine about getting a beachfront condo.” She stopped suddenly when Oliver came in and stood by the work table, staring at Ed.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he said. “We need to begin.”

  “Won’t you have something to eat first, Oliver?” Charlotte asked politely.

  “I’ve eaten. I brought some sandwiches to my office before the rest of you came down. I’ve laid out my plan of action, and I need to explain to the two of you what’s been going on here. Our earlier meeting wasn’t as productive as I intended it to be, but I realized that Taylor was having some kind of reaction. Now we need to get down to business. You’re all right now?” he asked, looking closely at me. Actually, it was more of a statement than a question.

  I nodded.

  Under the ceiling lights, his eyebrows jutted out enough to shadow his eyes and make him look villainous. He had changed into dark clothing and, to my surprise, he had a box-type EMF meter hanging from his neck by a lanyard. Ed noticed it and was pleased.

  As Oliver pivoted and left the kitchen, Ed picked up his satchel, said, “After you,” and we followed him out.

  Chapter 8

  The dining room was empty when we went back through, and if Fawn had asked Julie to clear the table, she hadn’t done it.

  Oliver led us back to the great hall and took a seat at a grouping close to the fireplace. The room had a hollow feeling, and I felt like we were sitting alone in a deserted concert hall. I took a seat with my back to the fireplace, and Ed sat down, put his satchel on the floor and prepared to take notes.

  “The cat?” Oliver asked suddenly, looking at me.

  “Oh! She’s been following Jeralyn around.”

  “Call her.”

  “Mr. Moon,” I said. “Oliver. Have you ever had a cat?”

  He shook his head.

  “They come when called – if they think you’re going to feed them. When we conduct an investigation,” I went on, terribly confident, almost dismissive, “Bastet and I have our own way of working things out. It doesn’t always call for us to work together. She considers herself an equal partner, and she’s always been there when I’ve needed her. When she is not physically present . . . well, let’s just say we have a connection.”

  I tried to maintain a high-handed air while watching him closely, hoping he’d buy it. Something in his eyes told me he didn’t, that he was laughing at me, but his expression remained serious, so I hoped for the best.

  The only audible response I got was a grunt. Suddenly he gave Ed a sharp look.“I’ve been reading up on things. You’ve heard of the shadow people?”

  Ed was surprised and pleased. “Naturally.” He’d been fiddling with his little recorder, and once he had it set up, he gave Oliver his full attention.

  “I’m being shadowed. Of course, I tried to handle it myself at first. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself, and I didn’t want to get the family name associated with something ridiculous. But the more I dug into it, the more I realized that experiences such as mine are not only well-described by other people, but they’re becoming more common. That’s when I knew I needed professional help.”

  “Do you understand exactly what the shadow people are believed to be?” Ed asked.

  “I told you, I’ve researched it. Shadow people: ghosts that attach themselves to the living, almost physically, and stay with them when they leave the area they began to haunt. Victims have described the feeling of always having someone behind them, just back of their field of vision, a presence peering over their shoulders, always with them, always aware.”

  Ed was impressed. “It’s a new description, but I believe that the phenomenon is as old as any other type of haunting. It’s just that people are becoming more open about their experiences, and you’re right, they’re describing this type of possession more often.”

  “Possession?” he said, alarmed.

  Ed patted the air, trying to calm him. “Wrong word. Pardon me. I suppose I use the word possession because the entity keeps itself so close. Are you feeling the presence now?”

  Oliver stared at Ed, and his voice thinned out. “I always feel it. Something pressing against the back of my neck. Something cold and furious. Sometimes I awake in the night feeling as if it’s strangling me from behind. I haven’t been able to sleep.”

  “At all? Sleeplessness brings its own problems.”

  “Oliver,” I said, slowly, not wanting to step into the discussion, but feeling that I had to. “Have you ever heard of sleep paralysis?”

  “This doesn’t sound like sleep paralysis to me,” Ed said quickly.

  “What’s she talk
ing about?”

  Ed gave him the textbook definition, as dismissively as he could, and even to me it sounded different from my own experience.

  “Why did you bring it up?” Oliver demanded.

  I paused, composed myself, then described my experience earlier in the evening, emphasizing my skeptical reaction to it.

  Ed gaped at me. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I recognized it right away for what it was,” I said. “Besides, there hasn’t been any time. The next time I saw you, you were eating a sandwich in the kitchen. We haven’t been alone together since.”

  “But you’re convinced it was Orion Moon,” Ed said.

  “I didn’t say that. Oliver, have you ever sensed the presence of your father?”

  He regarded me cunningly. “You did. Didn’t you. Down in the dungeon. A few hours ago.”

  I clamped my mouth shut.

  “Look, lady,” he said, “I’m not giving you the payday of a lifetime to hold out on me, or to try to deny what you know damn well. Besides, if I’m going to make a fool of myself, you may as well, too.”

  I did a double-take, and he seemed to pull himself up and be surprised at his own words. Then we both burst out in tired, startled laughter. Ed watched us impatiently.

  “If you two are finished,” he intoned, but somehow the moment had forged a bond between Oliver and me. From that moment on, his personality shifted. Much as he tried to hold onto the eccentric curmudgeon persona, he just couldn’t, at least not with me. I began to realize that there were wheels within wheels, but I decided that much as I’d like it to be true, the whole shadow people story wasn’t just a cover.

  No, of course not. Because if he didn’t want us here to get rid of his shadow ghost, why did he have us here at all?

  * * * * *

  The moment passed quickly, and Oliver went on in a calmer manner. It was as if laughing about it had brought him through the crisis, at least temporarily. “I am not delusional, though God knows, I probably should be by now. Something is trying to kill me. That’s why you’re here. Oh, I know, you brought all your gadgets and that box thing, thinking you’re going to catch something and hold it, study it, or dissect it. You can help yourself. I won’t stop you. If you put Cousin Clarice into a box for the rest of creation, it’ll serve her right. But the reason I’ve got you here is to protect me. It’s trying to kill me, and I want you two to stick with me every minute, especially at night. Tomorrow is my grandfather’s birthday. I’ve known from the start that something was going to happen this week. You’re here to protect my life, and – listen to me very carefully, because I mean it – if you let me be murdered, I will haunt you.”

  This time I didn’t laugh, and neither did Oliver. We’d passed our crisis now, and in the underlit room in a castle, with the pounding of the ocean coming through the castle walls dully, we were too emotionally exhausted to laugh.

  “I’m going to do my very best, Mr. Moon,” Ed told him steadily. “But I can make no promises.”

  “Well, I can. Let me die, and you’ll never be rid of me.” He stood up, and we jumped to our feet too. “Now, let’s begin. Stay with me. Never let me out of your sight. Act as if my life depends on it.”

  “You have my word,” Ed told him. He looked at me. “What equipment do you want to use?”

  “Equipment?”

  “Will you carry the sound recorder? Clip it to the front of your waistband and keep it running at all times, even if nothing seems to be happening. We may hear nothing at the time, but there is sometimes a voice in the playback. It’s not heavy; in a few minutes you’ll forget it’s even there, but try not to brush against it with your arm. It sounds like a car wreck on the playback.”

  “Okay, I’ll be careful.”

  “And take a flashlight. You too, Oliver. And you have your EMF.”

  Oliver seemed embarrassed. “I went on one of those ghost walk things in Savannah last year. They gave us these gadgets to look for ghosts in a warehouse. I was the only one who got a reading. So I thought it might be useful. Got myself one.”

  “Excellent,” Ed told him. “Here, take these.”

  He handed us tiny, solid-feeling flashlights made of black metal. They set inside the palm of the hand like a heavy lead pipe. I’d used one of Ed’s flashlights before, and knew how powerful they were, but Oliver had never seen one like it, apparently. He looked it over, then turned it on while it was aimed at his own face and dropped it with a curse. Ed picked it up and held it so Oliver could see the control button.

  “Like this, sir. Illuminate with this setting. If you’re attacked, click it this way and it will pulse rapidly. Aim it at the entity and it’ll confuse it and give you time to get away. Also if you get separated from us and want to get our attention without calling out, use that setting.” He snapped the light off and handed it to Oliver, who shoved it in his pocket, suppressing a growl.

  I hooked the sound recorder next to the placket of my slacks and moved my arms experimentally. They didn’t hit the little box. I decided to keep my flashlight in my hand.

  “Ready?” Ed said.

  I nodded.

  “This way,” Oliver said, and he led us back to the spiral staircase.

  * * * * *

  We went up. I was a little ashamed of how relieved I was that we weren’t going down to the dungeon. Even the skinny little arrow slits weren’t letting in any light now. The way was lighted with small, yellowish sconces that spread light thinly up the cylinder of coquina enclosing the stairwell. We would come to the end of one fixture’s veil of light before we got to the edge of the next one. Oliver led, I followed, and Ed was behind me, which was a good thing. If I had been the last in line, I would have constantly had to fight the urge to look behind me.

  We reached the second floor, where the family bedrooms were, and Oliver stepped out of the stairwell and stopped in the angle of the hallway. He was looking down the aisle between the gallery railings and the bedrooms on the south side when Ed projected his entire arm to the left of my head and whispered, “There!”

  My throat snapped shut. I turned my head in time to see something pale at the far end of the hall. It was there, and before I could fix on it, it was gone. I wasn’t sure I had seen it at all, but Ed was still pointing to the exact spot where it had been.

  “Past the furniture,” Ed said in a voice that was husky but calm.

  “Did you see it?” I asked. “I only got a glimpse.”

  “A human form,” he said. “I picked up a thermal image.”

  I looked at Oliver and saw shock on his face. It confused me; hadn’t he expected this? If not, what had he been about to show us? As I watched him, he composed his face and gave me a classic, “Ladies first,” gesture with his hand. He was trying to be manly, but his hand shook.

  Ed was moving. Fast.

  We followed, passing a suite of furniture similar to the one outside our bedrooms on the third floor. The chunky shapes of armchairs and settees hunkered together in front of a low night light. The well of the great hall below the balustrades was a yawning hole.

  “Whose room is at the end of this aisle?” Ed asked Oliver, pausing to turn. I saw him scanning with his thermal camera.

  “It’s Ryan’s,” Oliver told him.

  “Is he prone to sleepwalking?”

  “You think that was Ryan?” Oliver asked.

  Ed didn’t answer. Instead, he turned around again, scanning, walking, moving slowly now.

  In the silence of the night I heard the pulse of the ocean beneath us, surging, hissing, then pounding, pounding. It was like a heartbeat thumping inside the stone walls of the castle, monotonous and eternal. Then, suddenly, there were bumps and voices.

  Ed stopped instantly.

  “What was that?” I hissed in his ear.

  “Up ahead,” Oliver said behind me. “Go!”

  We went rapidly to the end of the aisle, finding ourselves at a dead end between two bedroom doors, one on our left and one on our
right.

  “That room is empty,” Oliver said, indicating the one on the right. “The other one’s Ryan’s.”

  We turned left and faced the door just as it came open and hit Ed in the shoulder.

  A filmy shape slipped from the room and silently flew past us.

  Chapter 9

  “After her!” Ed said, his voice gritty but still, absurdly, quiet.

  I had frozen to the spot, and when I looked, I saw Oliver flat against the door to the empty room. Our eyes met, and we turned at the same moment and ran after Ed.

  “Flashlights!” Ed called, not bothering to keep his voice so low.

  I heard thumping in the room behind us – Ryan’s room – but I didn’t turn around. I realized that I still had Ed’s flashlight gripped in my hand, and I fumbled with it and turned it on. I aimed it down the gallery-way and saw Ed struggling with an indistinct form. Oliver got around me and went to help Ed.

  “That damn woman!” I heard him growl as he passed me.

  I turned to my left and something caught my eye. Something below me, beyond the stone railing of the gallery, down in the well of the great hall. Something massive and shimmering, moving in stop-motion, like an old, old movie. I blinked, and the head of a man came into sharp focus, turning, resting on the mantel of the fireplace, dimming, becoming an alabaster bust again.

  “Taylor!” Ed called. “What’s the matter?”

  I shuddered, stared at him, then pushed myself forward as best I could, lurching slightly.

  By then, other doors were opening, and I saw young Horace coming down the aisle in a tee shirt and pajama bottoms. “What the hell?” he said.

  Elizabeth, flowing along behind him in a long gown, took his shoulders from behind and shook him. “Don’t talk like that. What in the world is going on here, Uncle Oliver?”

  “I thought the servants slept on the third floor,” he said drily. He was standing back, watching the struggling figure in Ed’s arms.

  “Uh, a little help?” Ed said to Oliver. But by that time, Julie had stopped fighting him, knowing she’d been trapped.