by K. J. Emrick
“Oh yeah? Who?”
“The town historian.”
Chapter Four
They had taken over an hour at the bookstore looking through those books. It was getting close to nine o’clock, well past sunset, and the stars overhead cast faint silvery light down on the Earth. It shimmered on ethereal tendrils of mist that clung possessively to the edges of buildings and to the trunks of trees planted along the sidewalks.
“Is this the place?” Jon asked her. The house was a gray three story place with tall windows that were probably the originals from when the place was first built. An apple tree spread its branches in the front yard, the leaves turning shades of reds and yellows for autumn. Jon parked in the driveway and craned his neck to look up at the house through the windshield. Whistling, he said, “Wow. I’d hate to have to be the one to paint this place.”
“Benson LaCroix is in his eighties, Jon. I doubt he paints his own house anymore.”
“Still. Houses this big are a lot of work. Maybe he should have sold it to that cellphone company that wanted to put up a tower here. Might have been easier for him.”
Darcy sort of agreed with him, but still. “It’s his home. His family grew up here, if I remember correctly, just like my house belonged to Aunt Millie before me, and to her mother before that. Some people get attached to places like that.”
“Yeah, I can understand how that could happen. Still. A lot of work.”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Tell you what. I promise that when you’re in your eighties I’ll hire someone to take care of our house. Okay?”
He squeezed her hand, then kissed the knuckles of her fingers. “Deal. Come on. Let’s go see what the town historian can tell us.”
Their footsteps echoed on the long porch. The air was chilly, and Darcy tucked her arms around herself as Jon knocked on the heavy wooden door. She really wished that she had something more than her light jacket with her. Note to self, she thought. The next time she went investigating a mystery, she was going to dress in layers.
There were still lights on inside Benson’s home. Darcy had been worried he would be in bed already. She shouldn’t have worried, because after a few seconds she heard him inside. “Hold on, now, hold on,” he called to them. “Just let me get my slippers.”
Jon’s cell phone rang at the same time that Benson opened the door. Excusing himself, he stepped back off the porch and over to the car. Darcy knew from the way he answered that it was the police department, and she wondered if they had maybe identified the woman who had been lying dead on Helen’s lawn. Benson was standing in front of her, however, and she didn’t have time to ask about the call.
“Well, hey there Darcy Sweet,” Benson said to her. He folded his purple bathrobe tighter over his pajamas and gave her a bright smile. His eyes were magnified behind the lenses of his glasses. “What brings you over to my home so late at night?”
Benson was a nice old man who was still as sharp as a tack. Even if his dark ebony skin had faded a little with age and his curly hair had turned white, he would never be considered feeble. He’d been here in Misty Hollow longer than Darcy could remember and it seemed fitting that he was in charge of the museum and the historical documents for the town.
“I’m sorry to bother you so late, Benson,” Darcy said by way of greeting. “I was wondering if you might have some time for me to pick your brain?”
“Might not be much there to pick,” he joked, with a little laugh, “but anything I can do to help you, I’m always here. You know that. Come on in.”
She followed him in, glancing over her shoulder at Jon. He was intent on the phone call and didn’t notice her.
Inside, Benson brought them to the living room and motioned for her to sit on a plush gray couch. He sat opposite her in a recliner that looked just as comfortable, his checkered pajama bottoms hanging loosely as he crossed his legs. Darcy had been in his home before and she liked how cozy it seemed, with deep brown carpeting and walls painted a warm forest green. She also appreciated how nearly every room had a bookshelf or two, full of everything from fiction novels to technical manuals. More than a few of those had been purchased from her own shop.
“Now then,” Benson said to her, settling his glasses on his nose and then steepling his fingers at his chest. “What can I do for the famous Darcy Sweet?”
“Famous?” she repeated, a bemused expression on her face. “What makes you say that?”
“Don’t be so modest! That whole affair last month with the car accident on Main Street? That got picked up by the national news, you know. You’re all but a household name nowadays.”
Darcy shifted uncomfortably on the couch. She knew that the accident and the investigation surrounding it had made headlines. There had even been a few phone calls to her home asking for an interview. She was used to people in Misty Hollow jokingly asking for her autograph, but national news? She didn’t know how she felt about that.
“Um. Well, something else has happened and I need your help. No one knows the history of Misty Hollow better than you.”
He nodded, pride shining in his eyes. “That’s true. Don’t no one know half the things I do. Did you know there used to be a group of Shakers settled here? That was quite the scandal back then, let me tell you.”
“That’s interesting,” Darcy said, not meaning to cut him off but wanting to keep the conversation on topic. Jon would come back any minute, probably with the name of their victim, and they couldn’t afford to get caught up in long historical anecdotes. “Benson, if I asked you about a man named Nathaniel Williams who used to live here in Misty Hollow, would you be able to tell me anything about him?”
Benson froze where he sat, his smile rigid, his hands perfectly still. Darcy wasn’t even really sure he was breathing until he blinked and licked his lips. “Nathaniel Williams. Now, why would you want to go and ask about him?”
“Well,” Darcy said, thinking quickly, “his name came up in connection with the Town Hall today and I can’t seem to find anything about him anywhere so I was hoping that you knew something.”
He stared at her, and Darcy could feel his reluctance to talk. He swallowed, and nodded his head, and got up from his chair. He looked different as he did. Older, Darcy thought. His arms shook as he pushed himself up and his feet shuffled on the carpet. “On second thought it is kind of late, Darcy. Tell you what. Why don’t we save this question for some other time. Tomorrow, maybe? Yes. Tomorrow. That’d be good.”
Darcy didn’t understand. “Benson, I kind of need to know about this now. The longer I wait, the worse things are going to be…”
She realized she’d said too much, more than she had intended to, and she tried to stop herself but it was too late. She could see that Benson had already figured out this was much more than just a casual question on her part.
“Something bad done happened, didn’t it?” he asked her.
She could have lied. She didn’t, even though it would have made things easier. “Yes, Benson. Something bad happened. A woman has been murdered. You know what I can do. What my abilities allow me to do. I’ve talked to you about it before. I think the ghost of Nathaniel Williams is involved in the killing, and I think there’s going to be more of it, if I don’t figure this out.”
Not to mention that the ghost had apparently used one of them to kill that woman. That part was probably best left unsaid, Darcy thought. At least for now.
“Yes,” the older man mumbled. “Sooner. Sooner rather than later.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Darcy asked.
He brought his eyes back up to focus on her and smiled almost apologetically. “Darcy Sweet, you just have this magnetism about you, now don’t you? You attract trouble like honey attracts flies.”
Darcy figured that she’d been compared to worse things than honey. He was right, though. Trouble seemed to find her here in this quiet little community.
He took in a deep breath and then sighed it out heavily. “Well, come
on then. Let’s go on down to my study.”
Benson’s house might be three stories high but it wasn’t very big in terms of floor space. The living room fed right into the kitchen and dining room, and then off that was a smaller room that was built floor to ceiling with shelves stuffed with books. A small desk of dark wood sat in the very center of the room. Papers and more books filled up the desktop. Benson walked around to the chair behind the desk and sat down.
“Uh, I had another chair in here,” he said, looking around at everything. “Oh, there it is. Over there in the corner under the collected works of Shakespeare. Just put them books down on the floor and scoot that chair on over here, will you?”
Two thick tomes, both with soft brown covers featuring a picture of the Bard holding a rolled piece of parchment, were on the seat of a folding metal chair. Darcy moved them carefully to the floor like he had asked her to, then carried the flimsy chair over. Benson had already taken a book off one of the shelves behind him and opened it up on top of everything else on the desk.
“Misty Hollow’s got a long and sordid past,” he started. “Most folks don’t know that. Way back when, this whole area wasn’t nothing but trees and rocks and a few wooden shacks. Group of ten people came here to scratch out a living. Wasn’t no religious community like the Quakers or the Adventists. Just a group of friends who wanted to make money off owning the land and selling it to newcomers. Kind of a get rich quick scheme. That’s where Misty Hollow came from. Wasn’t even called that back then. Had a different name.”
The chair was just as uncomfortable as it had looked as Darcy sat down in it. She listened to Benson talk, picturing the events of the town’s creation as Benson told them. It was the same story she’d read earlier, but he was filling in the bare facts with real description and making it possible for Darcy to imagine being there. “What did the town used to be called?”
“Had high hopes for the place, those original settlers. Called it New Heaven.” He paused, tapping a finger against the page in front of him. “Turned out to be more like New Hell. See, these folks who bought the land here called themselves friends but there was always bad blood between them. Two in particular. Those two were the leaders of that little group, but they sure weren’t friends. Roderick Chauncy was one of them. Other was Nathaniel Williams.”
Darcy startled as something sleek and heavy jumped up from the floor, landing softly in her lap. Benson’s pretty gray cat with the white tipped ears looked up at Darcy with a little mewl, then settled into a curled up ball and let Darcy rub her fur. “For Pete’s sake, Twistypaws,” Darcy greeted the feline. She waited for her heart to settle back down from where it had leapt into her throat. “How about next time you wait for the ghost story to be over before you pounce on me like that, okay?”
Chuckling, Benson continued his tale. “Now. This feud of theirs continued for a few years. Lots happened in them early years, but nothing that will interest you right now. The wilderness started becoming a town. More people came in. Fast forward to the year 1795, and you’ll see an all-out war between Williams and Chauncy over who actually owns the land. Turned into a mini civil war, from everything I can piece together. They tried to kill each other. Both them had their supporters, with everything from muskets to pitchforks to bare hands and teeth. Ended up with a handful of people dead before Nathaniel Williams and his people finally got arrested by Misty Hollow’s first ever lawman.”
He looked at her with a raised eyebrow, obviously waiting for her to ask something.
“Wait. You don’t mean…?” Darcy knew her family had come from some of the first settlers in the area. One of her cousins had traced their roots back to England, proudly displaying her lineage map at a family get together. From overseas, the family had migrated here, to this very spot. But could it be? “Who was the lawman?”
“Fellow by the name of Whitmarsh Grace. He got himself elected by the group living here to put an end to the feud. That’s exactly what he did. Seems to me your mother named your sister after that part of the family.”
Actually, that wasn’t the reason at all. Darcy’s mom had been so happy at the birth of her first baby that she had declared it a miracle, and so her older sister had been given the name Grace. Now that Benson mentioned it, though, maybe there had been more to it. Maybe the old family name had influenced her mom more than she had realized.
So her great, great, great, great, and so on ancestor had been responsible for arresting Nathaniel Williams. “What did he do?” she asked. “I mean, to arrest those people?”
Benson turned a page. There was a full color reprint of a painting, an artist’s rendering of a man hanging from thick rafters inside a building somewhere while people looked on with grim faces. His dark fingers slid across the picture like he was reading the scene by touch alone. “Didn’t exactly arrest them. More like beat them all to within an inch of their lives. He got him a few deputies who liked to do their talking with their fists and rounded everyone up. There was six of them in Williams’ group. Every single one of them faced hanging for the murders they’d done. Five of them repented and placed the blame at Williams’ feet. Said it was all his idea. Those five got sent to the stocks for a week, starving out in the weather, locked in place, while people spit at them and threw garbage in their faces.”
Without looking, his finger settled over Nathaniel Williams. Right where his heart would be in the painting.
“Williams here, he got himself hung for the crime. With his dying breath, he cursed Roderick Chauncy. Cursed the town. Cursed everyone. Said he would rise up from his grave and kill everyone.”
“The story I read said he was killed for being a witch.”
Benson shook his head. “Nope. Wasn’t no witch. Wasn’t no Pilgrim either, but that don’t stop people from calling him that. He was just a jealous, money hungry man angry at the whole wide world.”
Darcy looked at the painting of the man who would come to be known as the Pilgrim Ghost, hanging from a rope as punishment for his sins. She studied his face. It was the angry visage of a man who had been wronged, a man who hated everyone, and everything. The rest of the picture was just as vivid, from the faces of the gawkers to the timbers of the Town Hall to the intricate designs carved into the beam the hangman’s noose was suspended from. Even the grandfather clock standing in the corner was rendered in perfect detail. The hands showed Darcy the time of the hanging. Eleven fifty-nine. Through the windows she saw the black sky of night.
It was one minute before midnight.
The exact time that the clock on the Town Hall was stuck at.
The door to the study burst open and Darcy jumped up from her chair, unseating Twistypaws. The poor cat streaked out of the room between Jon’s legs, like a streak of furry lightning.
“Sorry,” Jon said to them. “I didn’t mean to let the door bang like that. Hi, Benson. Do you mind if I borrow Darcy for a moment?”
“Sure, sure. Kind of the end of my tale, anyway.”
He went to stand up, but Darcy had one more question.
“Did Williams ever make good on his threat?” Coming from anyone else that would have seemed a bizarre thing to ask. Ghosts couldn’t curse people. They couldn’t rise up from the grave and exact revenge.
Except in Darcy’s world, they could. And did.
Benson settled back into his seat, with a sad nod of his head. “In 1796, year after Williams was hung, the Town Hall burnt down. With Roderick Chauncy in it. Five decades later, the main support beam in the new Town Hall cracked and came crashing down on the head of Whitmarsh Grace’s grandson. Boy died where he stood. Other things have happened here in Misty Hollow, if you haven’t noticed. Some of it is just normal small town stuff. But the rest of it? No, sir. Can’t be this much evil in one town less it has a source.”
He didn’t say what that source was, but the implication of his words was clear.
“Darcy, I need to talk to you,” Jon whispered. “Now.”
“Okay. Benson, than
k you,” she said. The old man only nodded, staring down at the picture of the hanging Nathaniel Williams. He was lost in thoughts too dark to share, perhaps, or worrying about the ones he had already shared.
They left him there in his study, and Jon ushered them out of the house as quickly as he could. Twistypaws watched them with quiet cat reserve, looking like she had already forgotten about the fright Darcy had given her. Although the way her tail twitched Darcy wasn’t so sure.
Out in the driveway, at the car, Jon huddled close to Darcy and held his voice pitched low. “They identified the woman.”
“Really? Who was she?” Darcy was still processing what Benson had told her inside. She wanted to know who the victim was and how she could possibly fit into the nightmarish history that Misty Hollow had come from.
“Her name was Bonnie Verhault. She was a real estate agent.”
“So, nobody from Misty Hollow.”
“No. That’s why none of us recognized her. We didn’t know her. But guess what she was doing in town?”
“Jon, how could I know…” Real estate agent, Darcy thought. What did real estate agents do? “She was here to buy property? Here in Misty Hollow.”
“You got it. Specifically she was here looking to buy land out on Coldspring Road next to where the new Dollar Store complex is going in.” He smiled grimly, like he’d swallowed something sour. “Wilson did some digging, looking to see who owned the land out there, to see if maybe whoever owned it would have a grudge against her for buying it. Guess what name the property is listed under?”
Darcy felt a chill go up her spine. “Williams. It’s the Williams family land.”
“You got it. It’s belonged to their family since back in the 1700s. None of them still live in Misty Hollow, but they still hold the deed in absentia.”
Things were starting to come together, but Darcy didn’t like the way it was shaping up. Nathaniel Williams was a murderous spirit, intent on revenge and holding onto what he thought was his, even from the grave.