Ghosts had been a part of my life since I was a small girl. The first time I saw one was at Sugar Hill, and I recalled it perfectly. I was standing in the second-floor hallway when the ghost ran right through me as if she had not even seen my six-year-old body trembling in front of her. I screamed, but the transparent woman with the anguished face did not look in my direction. Instead, she stared into the darkness that chased her. Then the sound came toward me, the relentless banging, and I knew that it knew I was there. Unlike the ghost that fled from it, it saw me clearly. It paused, the sound accompanied by a barely discernible form. Then it collapsed into a compact smudge, a kind of ball of darkness, and it sped toward me. I passed out and woke up soaked in urine. That was where my grandmother found me.
“You saw them, didn’t you? The ghost and the demon?”
I didn’t speak for four days. I couldn’t speak. Finally, they got bored with asking me questions and seemed to forget about me. Until I turned twelve. Then I had been given the ring.
Now it was part of my life, and I have never taken it off my finger. I’d given up trying years ago. It was loose and slipped off easily now as if it had released me from my duty at long last. It had been a part of me, just like those seasonal family dinners and the piles of journals and Grandmother Margaret’s videos. As much as I tried to deny them, they always had been a part of me, and I was no closer to putting those ghosts to rest than any of the Dufresne women before me had been. The most I could hope for now was not to become a ghost myself. I wanted to pass into the eternal night without a chance that I would come back. I had to set things right. I had to get things ready.
No, I couldn’t be too late. This was right. Avery Dufresne would take my place. I would place the ring on her finger and go home without it. In the words of John the Baptist, I would decrease, and she would increase. I laughed aloud at the ridiculous comparison. I covered my mouth and ignored Mitchell’s questioning look reflected in the glass. My thoughts tended to wander where they shouldn’t. I must stay focused, at least for a little while, right? I closed the shade and leaned back in the seat. Mitchell had his laptop open. I still couldn’t figure those things out. They were like strange futuristic contraptions to me. I missed the days of pens and paper. Yes, it was time for me to say goodbye.
Mitchell typed on the keyboard neatly, despite his big fingers. “Look, there she is. Oh, no, look at this. Breaking news about our Avery.”
My eyes popped open, and I leaned over to read the news. The headline read: AMERICA’S SWEETHEART FIGHTS FOR HER LIFE AFTER ATTACK.
I caught my hand to my chest and asked Mitchell to read it to me. This was not mere chance; it couldn’t be. There were forces at work here, and they wanted to stop me. It wanted to stop me. How could its power have reached Avery? We had worked so hard at keeping Avery away, protecting her from all this, just in case. We had done everything we knew how to do, but it hadn’t been enough, had it? According to the article, she had died and had been resuscitated. I took a deep breath and wondered what this meant. She wasn’t dead yet. If I could get this ring to her, put it on her finger, it would protect her. It would keep her safe, at least for a while.
I read the article several times, then called News Quarter. I had to get hold of Avery. I spoke with a young woman named Jen, who told me Avery was at University General and that her best friend had her cell phone. After we hung up, I called Avery’s phone over and over again. No answer. On the last ring of my last effort, a young woman answered.
“This is Tenille. May I help you?”
“Tenille?” My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat. “Tenille, I am Avery’s great-aunt, Anne Dufresne. I need to know where she is. I have to see her. I will be in Atlanta in about an hour. Can you meet me at the airport?”
“Yes, I can meet you. What time did you say?”
“What time, Mitchell? My great-nephew says we’ll be there at 3:30 p.m.”
“I’ll be there. How will I know you?”
“Look for an old lady with a giant.” My voice sounded tired, even to my own ears.
“Maybe it would be easier if you texted me your airline and flight number. I’ll greet you at Baggage Claim with a sign. I am so glad some of her family is going to be here. She’s going to need you. I look forward to meeting you, Ms. Dufresne.”
“Fine.” I hung up, hoping I didn’t get involved in any more small talk than necessary. “Well, Mitchell, it appears that we came at the perfect time. We have to see her now. Now, don’t sulk.”
He nodded solemnly. “What will it mean if…”
“No ifs, and there is no plan B.”
He closed his laptop gently and looked at me over his broad chest. “There’s always Summer.”
I made a pffft sound with my lips. “Not Summer. I thought maybe once, but no. This ring goes to Avery, and there will be nothing Summer can do about it.”
“Except chop off her finger,” he whispered like a freight train. He should not repeat family gossip here. Not on public transport.
As if it knew we were speaking about it, the ring felt warm on my skin.
“Summer will do what she’s told. I’m not so old that she won’t listen to me anymore.”
“As you say, Aunt Anne. Why don’t you nap for a few minutes? We won’t arrive for another hour.”
“I might do that. Hand me my mask, please, and my little pillow.” Mitchell pulled my supplies from my tote bag and handed them to me. I needed to take another dose of pain medicine, but it made me loopy, and I wanted to be clear-headed when I spoke with Avery. If I spoke with Avery.
I slid the satin mask on my face and fell asleep quickly, my protector by my side. I dreamed I was at Sugar Hill on the day that everything changed for me. I was twelve, and Grandmother Margaret was dying. Her mind was not working so well anymore. Sometimes she wore her bra on the outside of her clothing, and she would call me by my sister’s name. When she got very sick, she did much crazier things, atrocious acts, but I chose not to think of those. I wanted to remember my grandmother the way she used to be before she became so frightening.
One stormy night, not long before she died, she summoned me to her room. Antoinette, her maid and companion, came to find me. I had been putting my dollies to bed. It was probably a silly thing for a twelve-year-old to do, but they were mine, and I loved each one of them. Their sweet porcelain faces wore eternal smiles, and their lace and linen dresses were yellowed slightly. These had been Grandmother’s toys once upon a time.
I found my grandmother in the upstairs parlor. She was burning papers, letters, postcards, and other things. I found it odd that she would sit on the floor, covered in soot, but she reached for me with a smile. Would she put me in the fire too? As if she read my mind, Grandmother Margaret said, “No, dear. I would never harm you. I am your Matrone. And one day—the ring has told me this—you will be the Matrone too. Come, let me show you something.”
And that was it. There was no pomp and circumstance when the ring passed to me, not as I had hoped there would be for Avery. I remembered sheets of rain pounding the old glass windows of the plantation. The upstairs windows were warped already, but the rain made them look even stranger. I remembered the giant trees slapping one another like angry poltergeists. The lights flashed off and on and finally went out, but nothing extraordinary happened. Grandmother Margaret slid the ring off her finger and put it on mine without so much as a “May I?” I never expected it, nor did I understand what it meant. Until the next morning, when I went down for breakfast.
Like a living thing, the ring had shrunk to fit my finger as I slept that night. What was once a large, clunky jewel on the knuckle of my grandmother’s gnarled hand had become thinner, smaller, and daintier on mine.
Now I would have to do the same for Avery. Sneak into her hospital room and slide it on her finger. Then I would sneak away and die, leaving her to figure out what I had done to her.
Yes, I was an evil person, but I could not die with the ring on.
&
nbsp; Nobody had ever died with the ring on. That would be the end of everything.
I did not want to be the first.
Chapter Four
Avery Dufresne
I felt like I was being smothered, and I couldn’t understand why. I wanted to scream, but something was in my throat. My eyes fluttered open, and I struggled to look around me. I was in a hospital, surrounded by machines. Am I on assignment? The machines were dinging and pinging, and I realized I had a tube down my throat. Panic rose up in me. Am I dying?
Suddenly a woman stood over me. She isn’t a nurse, is she? She wasn’t dressed like a nurse at all, but her voice comforted me. “Avery, calm down. This is only temporary. Help is on the way, and after that, you’ll be on your own for a while. Go home, Avery.” She kissed my forehead, even though I didn’t know her, and then she left me alone. I passed out again, and a few minutes later, a nurse came in.
“Oh, my God! She’s awake! Call her doctor! Ma’am, you’ll need to leave for a few minutes.”
“Really? I am her Aunt Anne. I insist on staying. I have a strong stomach.”
“Fine, just stand behind the curtain, please. Get the doctor, Amber! Get in here! She’s choking herself!”
A flurry of activity happened around me, and I gagged as they slid the tube out of my throat. For the next thirty minutes, they performed tests to prove I could breathe on my own. Eventually, I was given pain medicine and woke up some hours later. I could tell that a significant amount of time had passed by the way the sunlight had moved across the room. That was something Vertie had taught me, reading the sunlight, studying the sky. I’d made fun of her for teaching me such things when I was a kid, but now I remembered. And the remembrance brought tears to my eyes. I could barely move and was hurting all over.
“What happened? Why am I here?” I whispered to the person I heard near me. It was the nurse, the one who had the tube removed, not the person who had kissed my forehead.
“You were attacked, Miss Dufresne. You came in last night. Your friend Tenille and your aunt and cousin stayed the whole day today.”
“Can I have some water?” I begged with a scratchy voice. The nurse scrambled for a cup and handed it to me. I drank the water like I’d been in the desert for a year. I needed to drink more, but she refused and said something about drinking a little at a time.
I handed her the cup back and noticed the ring on my left index finger. I had never seen it before. It looked silver, maybe even pewter, with a fiery red ruby and tiny diamonds surrounding it. I tried to remove it to look for an inscription, but it wouldn’t budge. “What in the world? This isn’t my ring. I think this belongs to someone else. Help me get it off.” I tugged at it weakly and soon fell back against the pillow, exhausted. That was when I noticed the pad of fabric taped to the side of my face and neck. “What happened to me? Amber is your name, right?”
“I don’t really know, Miss Dufresne, and I am not supposed to talk about it with you.” She’d forgotten about the ring, and so did I for the moment.
“Why?”
She looked ashamed but said quietly, “Because of the trauma. The doctors don’t want you to remember too soon what happened to you. What is the last thing you remember?”
“I remember…I remember David Greeley storming out. I remember my producer, Amanda, looking pretty ticked off at me. I got in the car, and that’s all I can remember. But there’s something else, isn’t there? Was I in a wreck?”
“I can answer that.” Tenille walked into the room with a smile on her face. “Thanks, Amber. I’ll take it from here.” She sat beside me on the bed. Tenille looked like a pretty tablecloth with her yellow and white checked dress. Somehow, she made the look work.
“Spill the beans, then. What happened?” I croaked at her.
“Oh, Avery.” She flung her arms around my neck, and I yelped in pain. “I am so sorry. I forgot…I’m just so glad you’re alive. He stabbed you, Avery. Some guy kidnapped and stabbed you. They say you died on the way here because you had lost so much blood. I gave blood for you, and so did some of your friends from work.”
I groaned. The thought of Ed Stanwyck’s blood running through my veins was just too much. “What? I don’t remember any of that. Are you sure?”
“I can’t believe you don’t remember, but I guess that’s a good thing, Avery.”
“Please tell me I don’t have Sandwich’s blood running through my veins.” I had to find something humorous to think about.
“I don’t think so. Please don’t be mad at me for telling you. Doctor Stauffer says you will remember soon enough. That’s when it will get tough. I can’t believe you are awake! It’s a miracle, really. You had to get over fifty stitches. Inside and out. The guy, the madman who did this, really tried to take you out. I’d say you have a guardian angel or something watching over you.”
The image of the woman, the one who wasn’t a nurse, flashed before my eyes. Had she been an angel?
I remembered what Amber said, and I tried to process the information. “I don’t have a cousin or an aunt, do I? Have I forgotten them too?” The pain I felt in my neck, throat and chest was getting worse by the second. This was unbearable. I began to writhe on the bed, trying to get comfortable. Tears were in my eyes again, but so far I hadn’t allowed them to fall.
“I have known you for seven years, and I have never heard of an aunt or cousin, but they insist they are your relatives. The nurse was telling the truth; they have been here the whole time. A representative from the network has been by here every day, as well as Candace.”
Tenille’s voice began to fade, and I felt sleepy, sleepier than ever before. “Avery? You okay? Avery?”
Then she was gone, her voice lost in a haze of pain. The pain diminished, and I fell into a deep sleep.
I wasn’t in the hospital anymore but at a baseball field in Norfolk, Virginia, where my father had been stationed. The Mighty Astros were about to win the game, and I was screaming my head off, cheering them on. The entire naval base had come out to witness the event, and it was just one happy day in a string of happy days that made up my young life. I liked living on base. It was like having an extended family, with lots of kids to play with at all times. Our base’s elementary school had taken a field trip to watch the base teams play. Dad wasn’t among them. He’d gone to the hospital with Mom. She was having some kind of surgery that I didn’t understand at all. She would be home in a few days, she’d told me when she kissed my forehead, leaving a light pink lipstick stain on my skin. I rubbed it away, aggravated that she would do such a thing.
I’m a grown kid now. I mean, I am nine, Mom. Give me some space.
She smiled sadly and said, “You are growing up too fast, Avery. Stop it.”
“Sure, Mom,” I grumbled back at her good-natured smile.
“Listen to Grandma Vertie, kiddo.” Dad rubbed my hair, adding to my irritation. He looked at his mom and said, “On second thought, Mom, listen to Avery. I’ll be home soon.”
“Get out of here, you rascal!” my grandmother joked, coming to stand behind me and placing her hands protectively on my shoulders.
I hated it when the adults did this. They ganged up on me and treated me like a kid, and I wasn’t a kid anymore. Individually, they treated me like a grown-up, but when they were together, it was a whole other story. I was almost ten, practically grown. Just a few more days until I would be in the double digits. I liked my Grandma Vertie well enough, but I resented being left behind. I wanted to go with my parents. If there was something to be done at a hospital, I needed to be there, not hanging out here, and I told them so. They patted my head and told me that was the way it was going to be. In the words of my mother, “You can like it, or you can lump it.”
“I choose the lumps!” I whispered at her back as she walked away from me.
“I can hear you,” she called back cheerfully. That also made me mad. If I thought reasoning with my father would be any easier, I was wrong.
“Vert
ie needs someone to hang out with. She wants to go to the game, and you want to go to the game. Mom’s got to have this procedure. It’s going to be fine.”
My Grandma Vertie, Dad’s mother, had come up from Georgia to stay with me. She was great fun, not like other grandmothers. She liked to play and didn’t mind spending hours playing board games and eating junk food with me. She usually came up for an extended vacation in the summer, but we never went to her house even though I always wanted to go. She brought a photo album with her this time, and we’d spent a few minutes before school that morning poking fun at Dad’s high school pictures. I liked seeing Dad as a kid. It was hilarious and weird.
She sat beside me in the bleachers, her striped visor pulled down to protect her skin. I had on a red hat with a black “P” on it for Pirates. Dad played for them one year, and I loved the team. As they rounded the bases, I screamed until someone touched my arm. It was a cold touch, so cold it made me stop screaming. I looked around but saw no one near me. I looked behind me, but there was no one.
I heard a voice on the wind say, “Don’t be afraid,” and then nothing.
“Miss Dufresne? I need you to come with me.” A man stood in front of us, and my grandmother grabbed my arm protectively. Her hands were not cold at all. I wondered again who had touched me.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
He told us his name, but I couldn’t hear him. I was too busy looking around, hoping to spy who was playing a trick on me. The Pirates were rounding the bases, and the crowd roared with excitement. I had a hot dog in my hand and refused to give it up as we shuffled down the wooden bleachers, my grandmother practically dragging me from the game. Once we were down and out of the ball field, the man spoke to us.
The Hauntings Of Sugar Hill: The Complete Series Page 5