Sorcerers of the Nightwing (Book One - The Ravenscliff Series)

by Geoffrey Huntington

  “Yeah,” Devon agreed.

  “Come on, we’ll cut through the woods to get into town. It’s faster than going by the road. And I can give you the complete rundown of all our family ghosts. You’ve got to get to know them if you’re going to live here.”

  They traveled down a well-worn path, twigs snapping and leaves crunching under their feet, the sky above them crosshatched by tree limbs. Along the way, Cecily eagerly recounted the legends of the ghosts of Ravenscliff.

  First, of course, there was Horatio, the founder of the house, and his wife Chloe. Horatio still guarded the house, Cecily told Devon, and Chloe wanders aimlessly. Chloe Muir had died giving birth to her third son, Randolph, who was Cecily’s grandfather and Mrs. Crandall’s father. But it was Randolph’s brother—Horatio and Chloe’s first son—who was the fiercest legend. The notorious Jackson Muir.

  “The warlock,” Devon said.

  “Don’t laugh.” They had emerged from the woods into a meadow of wild blue asters and bright yellow tickseed. “Mother refuses to ever mention his name. She won’t hang any pictures of him in the house, even though every other ancestor is on the walls. She was just a little girl when her uncle Jackson died, and I think he scared her real bad. But she loved his poor wife, Emily, who was so unhappy being married to that creep that she jumped to her death from—”

  “Devil’s Rock,” Devon finished for her.

  She nodded. “She supposedly found him in bed with another woman, and so she took the plunge. The old man, guilt-ridden, died from his grief.”

  “It’s all very Wuthering Heights.”

  Cecily was smiling. “I’ve heard her out there, you know. Emily’s screams on a windy night.”

  Devon narrowed his eyes at her. “Do you really believe them? Do you believe there are ghosts in the house? Things you can’t explain?”

  She considered the question. “Ever since I was a girl, I’ve heard things,” she said finally, the frivolity gone from her voice. “Skeptics don’t last long here. That’s Simon’s line.”

  “Simon? Oh, the servant. I’ve yet to see him.”

  “He keeps to himself mostly. But he believes all the legends. Said he’s seen all the ghosts.”

  “Have you?”

  Again she considered her answer before replying. “There have been occasions when I’ve seen things, someone moving away at the end of the hallway when I turn the lights on quickly. And I’ve heard things—”

  “Like sobbing?” Devon asked.

  She looked at him without surprise. “So you’ve already heard the sobbing.”

  “Yes,” he told her. “Last night. I thought it might have been Alexander, but I don’t know now. I’m quite sure he was outside my door, trying to scare me, but then I heard this sound, coming from downstairs …”

  Cecily was nodding. “When I was a girl, my mother told me not to be frightened by anything I heard or saw in that house. ‘Nothing here will hurt you,’ she assured me. ‘This is our house. We respect our house, and our house respects us.’” She laughed. “Strange thing for a mother to say to a little girl, huh?”

  “Not if the ghosts are real,” Devon said.

  “I do believe they’re real.” She smiled again, and started down a steep path cut into the cliff on the other side of the field. “But they won’t interfere with you. The only spook you need worry about is that very-much-alive little cousin of mine.”

  “I think I can handle him.”

  Cecily looked back at him. “I think you can handle just about anything you want,” she said coyly, batting her long eyelashes almost comically. “Now watch your step along this path. It gets a bit treacherous.”

  Devon felt his cheeks redden, and it wasn’t from the high altitude. Cecily was nothing if not persistent. She was several feet ahead of him on the path, showing off her familiarity with these craggy old rocks. Her red hair was loose and bouncing around her shoulders, its highlights reflecting in the sunshine.

  “Cecily,” Devon called.

  She spun around smiling, eyes closed, as if she expected him to catch up with her and kiss her. But instead he asked: “What’s the story with Rolfe Montaigne?”

  Cecily opened her eyes, a little disappointed. “Rolfe is really our only competition in this town,” she said, as the path leveled out and opened into another field. Tall cat-o’-nine-tails grew like mangy children, their velvety hoods already turning to seed. “Ever since he came back to Misery Point a little over a year ago, Rolfe has been systematically buying up as much real estate in the village as he can—just about anything that’s not already owned by us. His biggest catch was a restaurant called Fibber McGee’s. It’s the most popular place in the summer, and Rolfe brought in all these big-name acts. He’s practically put our restaurants out of business.”

  She turned around and winked at Devon impishly.

  “Don’t tell Mother, but I went there a couple of times this past summer. It’s awesome. Very artsy. That’s where all the celebs hang out when they’re on vacation here. I saw Shia LaBeouf there!”

  Devon looked up ahead and, through a break in a wall of yellow maples, he spotted a graveyard. The path took them straight through it. Old brownstone markers protruded crookedly above tall yellow grass. Suddenly he felt a chill that belied the sunshine on his face, while around him the air conversely grew warmer.

  The heat, he realized, was definitely not coming from the sun.

  “So,” he said, keeping his eyes and ears alert, “that’s why Rolfe and your mother don’t like each other.”

  “Well, that and—” Cecily stopped in her tracks, causing Devon to nearly run into her. “Look, I personally don’t think he was to blame, but it remains a fact—”

  “That he killed a kid?”

  Cecily looked at him. “Did he really tell you that?”

  “Yes.” Devon swallowed, concerned that the heat around him was rising. “I thought he was just trying to scare me.”

  “Well, actually it was two kids,” Cecily said. “A boy and a girl. Rolfe spent five years in prison for it. They were in his car when he crashed. The prosecutor said he was drunk, but Rolfe said he was drugged by someone, so he couldn’t remember exactly what had happened that night. But he always insisted it wasn’t him at the wheel of the car. Still, it was Rolfe’s old Mustang that was pulled out of the bay, and the boy was inside, dead. The girl’s body was never recovered. It must have been washed out to sea.”

  They were getting closer to the graveyard, and Devon kept watch for whatever might be causing the heat. “So why do they think it was Rolfe who drove off the road?” he asked. “Were there any witnesses?”

  “Two people testified that they saw Rolfe emerge from the water,” Cecily said, even more upset by this part of the tale. “So I guess if Rolfe really was drunk at the wheel, then he deserved to go to prison.”

  “But it sounds as if you think maybe he wasn’t? That maybe the witnesses were lying? That maybe they were the ones who drugged Rolfe? But why would they do that?”

  “Well, there are all sorts of stories—”

  Cecily stopped talking. They had reached the cemetery by now, and the sun had suddenly disappeared behind a cloud.

  “Creepy, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Devon admitted.

  He looked around. The graveyard wasn’t big, with no more than a dozen stones, but it overlooked the ocean, giving it an openness that made it seem larger. The grave markers were weathered from the rain and the wind and the salt of the sea. A few had fallen over into the tall grass. Most were brownstone, but a number were slate, and the one in the middle was white marble, crowned with an angel that was missing one wing; it lay on the ground in the grass beside her. Near the edge of the woods, farthest from the sea, stood three small crypts, each made of a dark red stone.

  “This is our own personal graveyard,” Cecily explained. “These are the first Muirs, Horatio and Chloe and their children and servants. They didn’t want to be buried in with the
poor slobs down in the village, you see.”

  Devon had taken a few tentative steps through the wild golden grass that nearly obscured the stones. “Is Jackson buried here? And Emily?”

  “Yes,” Cecily said, pointing to the largest stone, the one in the middle with the broken angel on top. Devon approached it, observing the monument with a strange fascination. On one side of the stone was etched:

  JACKSON MUIR

  MASTER OF RAVENSCLIFF

  Cecily came up beside Devon and scoffed. “Mother always bristles when she sees that. Jackson was never master of the house. His brother—my grandfather—was. But Jackson always felt that he was the rightful heir. I don’t know why Grandfather allowed him to carve that on his stone.”

  Devon walked around the marble structure. This side faced the sea and was coated with a crusty white brine, but he could still make out the words engraved there:

  EMILY MUIR

  LOST TO THE SEA

  Devon looked over at Cecily. “So her body was never recovered?”

  Cecily shook her head.

  Devon looked again at Emily’s name. “Just like the girl in Rolfe’s car …”

  Cecily let out a sigh. “So old Jackson is all alone under that big marble stone. Bitter old man. Deserves to be alone.”

  Behind them they could hear the sea crashing on the rocks below.

  With just the slightest hesitation, Devon placed his hand against the marble. Immediately he pulled his hand back, shouting out in pain. It was burning hot. He looked down at his palm. The skin was bright red.

  “What happened?” Cecily asked.

  “I guess … the stone was hot from facing the sun all day.”

  Cecily gave him a look, but she didn’t pursue the matter, thankfully. Devon hoped she didn’t ask to see his hand.

  The girl had started wandering off through the tall grass, heading toward what looked to Devon to be a staircase built into the side of the cliff.

  “Come on,” she was calling. “We need to get down to the village before the town hall closes.”

  But something else had now caught Devon’s eye. A large brownstone marker off to the side of the cemetery, an obelisk set upon an octagonal base. Even from where he was standing, Devon could make out the name engraved there.

  “Cecily,” he said, pointing. “Look.”

  She turned, and saw what he meant.

  DEVON

  That was all that was engraved on the stone. They both walked all the way around it. No other names, nothing. Just Devon.

  “I never made the connection,” Cecily said. “I mean, I’ve seen this stone all my life, but I didn’t remember it until just now.”

  “What could this mean?” Devon asked, feeling the letters carved into the stone, which were cool, not the least bit hot or foreboding. “Might this be—”

  “A clue?” Cecily echoed, wide-eyed.

  “A clue to what?”

  It was a new voice, a rough, gravelly bark that came from the woods behind them. Devon made a small gasp, certain that when he turned, he’d see a corpse, muddy with maggots after decades in the ground, sitting up in the tall grass and pointing a long, accusatory, bony finger at him.

  But Cecily calmed him. “It’s only Simon,” she said.

  The Muir caretaker limped through the grass. He was no corpse, but he was frightening enough, Devon thought. Small and bent, his face was drawn inwards, his eyes most of all, deep and black. Even from across the graveyard they bore into the boy.

  “Simon,” Cecily called. “Who’s buried here?”

  “Whatchu doin’ in the cemet’ry, Miss Cecily?” he growled.

  “Oh! You haven’t met Devon, have you?” She giggled a little. “Devon March, this is Simon Gooch, our caretaker. And gardener. And chauffeur. And cook.” She laughed. “Our everything!”

  Simon had reached them. He stood only to Devon’s shoulders; surely this was not the man he had seen on the tower last night. That man had been taller and more broad-shouldered. Devon did his best not to recoil from the caretaker. Simon’s breath was foul, and his hands were small and scarred with short stubs of fingers. Devon noticed one was missing: the ring finger of his right hand.

  Doing his best to be polite, Devon extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Simon,” he said.

  The caretaker did not accept it. He just kept looking up into the boy’s eyes. “So you’ve come to live at Ravenscliff, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  Simon’s face was deeply lined; Devon couldn’t make out whether he was forty or seventy. His hair was thick and black, cut unevenly around his face.

  “Simon,” Cecily said, her voice reproving. “Don’t be snarly now.”

  He grinned up at her, exposing perfectly shaped white teeth. They startled Devon. “Never for you, Miss Cecily. Never for you.”

  “Then tell us who’s buried here,” she insisted.

  “Don’t know. That ain’t a Muir grave.”

  “But look. It said Devon. And Devon here thinks he was born around here. He doesn’t know who his parents were.”

  Simon looked back at Devon, but uttered nothing more.

  “It just seems such a coincidence,” Devon said.

  “We’re going to the town hall,” Cecily told Simon. “To search for a birth record of a boy named Devon born fifteen years ago. Now we know to look under first and last names!”

  Simon remained silent, his black eyes intent on Devon’s face.

  “Well, we’ve got to get going,” Cecily said, taking Devon’s hand and leading him toward the cliffs. “Simon, tell Mother we’ll be back in time for dinner.”

  They hurried through the grass. Devon turned around once: Simon still stood there, waist deep in the yellow grass, staring after him. He was several yards away by now, but Devon could still see something burning in his eyes. Fury. No—fear. But why?

  Cecily took her first step onto the steep staircase cut into the side of the cliff. Devon looked back again, drawn by this terrible little man. But this time it wasn’t Simon he saw standing in the grass. Whoever stood there now was much taller, for the grass had nearly obliterated the caretaker. Now it didn’t even reach the man’s knees.

  Devon felt the heat rush at him, like exhaust from a truck, as intense now as it had been last night when the creature had come through his window.

  There, in the full, bright sunshine, Devon recognized the man as the same he had seen the night before on the tower: a tall man with dark eyes, dressed entirely in black, as if in mourning. And Devon now understood who he was.

  The man was Jackson Muir.

  The Secret Room

  “Devon!”

  Cecily stood on the edge of the cliff, her long red hair caught in a sudden wind. “Devon, are you all right?”

  Devon turned to look at her, tearing his eyes from the thing standing only a few yards away in the swaying grass. His face was white.

  “Gosh, I didn’t know you were so afraid of heights,” Cecily quipped.

  Devon couldn’t speak. He just pointed behind him.

  “What?” Cecily asked. “What is it, Devon?”

  “Him,” he managed to say.

  He turned back to where he had seen the ghost—but nothing remained in the spot except for the grass, now pummeled by a wind that surprised both of them in its ferocity.

  “Who? Devon, who are you talking about?”

  Devon looked across the graveyard. The trees now bent in the harsh wind; crows in the trees swooped out from the branches, calling out warnings of another impending storm. But there was no man. Jackson Muir’s monument stood solemnly amid the waving grass. Whatever had been there was gone.

  “Nothing,” Devon managed to say. “It was nothing.”

  “I think a storm’s rolling in,” Cecily said, looking up at the sky. “We should hurry.”

  Overhead, deep purple rainclouds spread like watercolors across the pale blue sky. The wind bit at their cheeks; the bitter dampness of the sea crept down the back of
Devon’s shirt like a dead hand.

  He decided not to tell Cecily about the ghost. He looked up into the sky and figured they had enough time to make it into town. Seagulls circled overhead, calling out their melancholy warnings. Devon and Cecily descended the staircase along the cliff, looking over the roofs of the village. It was the first glimpse Devon had had of Misery Point in the daylight. It was a charming place, really: neat, colorful shops and boutiques lined a center street and a long, narrow, sandy beach stretched lazily beyond. At the end of the main drag the land rose sharply again into new cliffs, and there, about halfway up, Cecily pointed out one of the Muir family restaurants.

  At the far end of town, a white square building sat very close to shore. “That’s the Muir cannery,” Cecily told him. “Keeps folks employed year-round. Total gross-out stink, though. Imagine spending your day filling cans with tuna fish and crab meat.”

  The sky remained pregnant with rain. The day grew dark with clouds, and the wind added a chill. They emerged into the village behind a t-shirt and souvenir shop. A sign hanging from its front door proclaimed:

  THANKS FOR ANOTHER GREAT SEASON—SEE YA IN MAY!

  Down the street, Devon recognized Stormy Harbor. Across the way were more shops, most of them boarded up except for Adams Pharmacy and a True Value hardware store. A few old Victorian homes, all painted white, graced well-manicured lawns. Beyond them, stretching out toward the beach, summer cottages were built up on stilts, all evenly aligned and shuttered down for the winter.

  Close to the pier, Cecily gestured toward a restaurant. “That’s Fibber McGee’s,” she said. “Rolfe’s place.” It was a sprawling, California-style eatery perched at the very edge of the land, a silver and spun-glass resort with an incredible deck overlooking the water, pink and green umbrellas dotting the veranda. Devon recognized Rolfe’s silver Porsche parked out in front.

  The town hall was at the end of the road: an old brownstone structure with a clock tower. Inside, the footsteps of the two teens echoed down a high-ceilinged hall, and Devon felt his hopes rise. When the bespectacled woman in the clerk’s office plunked a large, dusty volume down on the counter in front of him, he could barely open it. Is this it? he thought. Is this the first step on my road to the truth?