Twelfth Night (A Wendover House Mystery Book 2)

by Jackson, Melanie

  Chapter 3

  “Good God,” Mary whispered. I was glad she stopped there. Our wine-soaked brains couldn’t absorb any more. I’m sure Brandy struck everyone as being an airheaded material girl rather than someone more imaginative and spiritual. But whatever she had seen that night had shaken her to her bones and filled her with dread that could reach across decades and still touch her. She had come to the edge of the rational world and crossed over someplace no one else ever wanted to go. In fact, I think everyone—excepting perhaps Ben—was hoping to forget the story as soon as possible.

  “I have a story too. A real one and I never talk about it either,” Jack said quickly, surprising me. Supernatural stuff had never been his bag. He went on, perhaps hurrying to get the story out before he changed his mind. “This was not too long after I moved to Chicago. A buddy of mine was getting married and we took him out the weekend before the wedding for a barhop, a sort of goodbye to single life, a last debauch thing.”

  We all exhaled at the change of subject and I passed Brandy a handkerchief, though she wasn’t really crying so much as brooding. I didn’t think we were really ready for another ghost story, but no one wanted to talk about what had happened to Brandy. Truth or hallucination, it didn’t need discussion.

  “Tim liked historic bars, so we were hitting the old ones, some in hotels, some underground. I was getting tired since I was just off my crutches and not used to walking, but Tim was kind of tight and he was going on about how he loved me like a brother—and not a Cain and Abel kind of brother—so I stuck it out in spite of the aching leg.

  “The last place we visited was called Del’s. It used to be run by a wise guy called Fat Friday. He had rubbed out the original owner and moved in on the bar, the bootlegging, and on Del’s girl, Mona. More about her later. I gotta tell you though, they raised girls tough out there.”

  The sound of the clock faded away. The wind continued to sing its violent cantata, but it too was muted. Jack, as raconteur, was doing as good a job as anyone could have.

  “By then it was late and down to just Tim and me. The others had gone home or to strip clubs, but I was feeling pretty fascinated by all these old places and drunk enough to be sentimental, so I stayed with him while we ankled it uptown.”

  I almost smiled at his use of this old slang. Jack was a Dashiell Hammett fan and sometimes used the vernacular.

  “All the bars we had visited had atmosphere, but this place was different—I felt it the minute I walked in. There was a kind of anger in the air—and cold. Tim kept right on walking but I stopped by the coatrack for a minute to check out the crowd.”

  Jack took a swallow of wine. I don’t think he was so much thirsty as preparing himself to go on. Normally his grimace and glower would have been a blight on the mood, but it only enhanced our dread of what was coming.

  “No one looked on the verge of going postal, no guns or knives, so I ignored my crawling skin and followed Tim to the bar. The barkeep was a tough guy with a big breezer that had been broken a few times. He didn’t need the knuckle tattoos he sported to intimidate, but some men just don’t do subtle. And I guess in his job it saved time to advertise in places drunks would see before all hell broke loose on them. I also don’t think he had a lot of imagination because he never seemed to be uncomfortable, which I would have been once I knew what went on there.

  “So, Tim stumbled and I helped him up. He and I were kind of leaning on one another as we weaved our way to the bar. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the choke of decades of cigars and cheap booze and sweat. It was nasty—but every table and stool was taken—and we really needed to sit down, at least I did. My leg was finally giving out. ‘There’s no chairs,’ Tim said. And he was right. Except there was one table at the back. It was a small oaken round with a deep gouge and a funny stain on one side. There was also a chair that looked like it had come out of a fancy restaurant. You know the kind—the rubbed red velvet with gold tassels and big buttons and carved legs that look like animal claws.”

  I nodded since he was looking at me, waiting for a prod.

  “So, nobody is sitting there at the table, but there’s a tumbler of whisky and a cigar sitting in an ashtray right in front of the chair. Tim says to me, ‘Twenty bucks says you won’t sit in that chair.’ Tim’s a little pale. But so was everyone in that light and he’d been drinking, so I didn’t think that much of it.

  “I looked at the barkeep but he’s busy pulling beers. So, I said, ‘Sure I will,’ and went over to the table.”

  Jack paused.

  “I’ll admit that I had had a lot to drink, but you know that I’m not a fanciful person even when I’m falling down drunk. Not the kind of person who imagines things—at least not supernatural things. But I was feeling something unnatural that night.”

  Jack looked away.

  “The barkeep made me wary, not a stupid red chair, or so I told myself. But the closer I got, the colder it got. At about six feet I could see the small hole in the upholstery. My breath was coming out white too. It was hard to see in the smoke, but I swear my breath was frosted.

  “Tim was following me but he stopped about four feet out. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t do it.’ But if course I had to—guys code, right? He’d dared me and we made a bet. So I kept going even though I didn’t want to. I got right to the chair and reached out a hand—and it was shaking by then—but just before I could touch the chair back, something jerked it away. Only a couple inches, but I swear it moved.

  “That was enough for me. I felt sick to my stomach and am sure I looked it because Tim pulled me away and rushed for the door. The people in the bar laughed behind us. We moved as fast as we could back onto the street. Outside it was still warm, but we had to walk several blocks before I could get warm. While we were walking, Tim told me the story about Fat Friday and how Del’s old girlfriend Mona had finally had enough of him beating on her. She walked into the club on Christmas Day and shot him in that very chair. He’s been there ever since. It’s his blood staining that table. Nothing can get it out.” Jack’s voice was revolted, his face pale. I knew better than anyone the kind of fear he had felt. It happens at the brainstem and can’t be intellectualized away, no matter how many logical arguments you make. When you touch the other, you are changed by it.

  I glanced at Ben and could see he was fascinated. He would be. This kind of thing was right up his alley. Jack and Brandy were probably going to appear in a book someday soon—well disguised, of course, and probably released under a pen name.

  “The new owner tried getting rid of the chair because now two guys had been killed while sitting in it and the thing was clearly bad luck, but the first guy he hired to carry it up the stairs got shoved down the staircase—by nobody he could see. The next guy tried to take it out in a freight elevator out back, but it got jammed, the whole mechanism fused like a welder had been at it.”

  Ben grunted encouragingly. I knew he was taking mental notes.

  “Night after night, the barkeep would come in and find a shot glass on the table and broken bottles on the floor. Finally they gave in and just started pouring out a glass every night once the sun went down. Fat Friday had had his routine and he was sticking to it.

  “Tim told me that he had tried to sit in the chair before but had been so unnerved that he’d chickened out before he reached the table. He wanted to know if it was just his nerves reacting to the story or if something was really there in the bar. That’s why he’d tried to get me to do it for him.

  “I can’t prove anything, but something was there—and I wouldn’t go in that bar again for any amount of money. I put it out of mind because you can get brain damage thinking about spooks and stuff, but I haven’t really forgotten. So, yeah, Brandy, I believe you about your ghost. I totally and completely believe you.”

  The spell broke. The bubble of silence popped and I could again hear the clock ticking off the seconds, counting down the hours.

  Chapter 4


  “I knew someone,” the queen said abruptly, her words slightly slurred. I think we were all a little startled to hear her speak. She’d been silent for hours. “She was blind. So she couldn’t see her ghost, but she could hear it. And it was nasty—oh yes, it was.”

  There was a giggle but it didn’t last long. The memory of her blind friend brought up some buried fear and it cut through the alcohol and laughter.

  Some amount of dread is pleasant, but we had passed beyond that point. We weren’t telling stories anymore, we were conducting therapy and maybe even exorcism. I think we all probably wanted to stop it, but our fascination was ever stronger. We were compelled to go on.

  “Her name was Liz—is Liz, I guess. She was from upstate. Tough broad. Peace Corps, but not the kind usually drawn to nursing. Not really my type—too cunnin’. But I knew her from school and I’d heard about her accident—and I was in Bangor anyway, so I did my Christian duty and looked her up.”

  Her Majesty’s lips were small and pursed. Mary looked like her usual sour self. It shouldn’t surprise me to learn that she had ever lived anywhere else since she had obviously gone to nursing school, but somehow it did come as a shock. She felt like a fixture of the island, as trapped here as any of my family had ever been.

  “I got to her apartment near dusk. It was on the third floor. There was no elevator and the stairs were dark. I was wet because it had started raining and I had forgotten my umbrella. The day had started sunny enough, but you just can’t trust the weather in October. Though I think now maybe that wasn’t why it was raining.”

  Her eyes flicked over to me and then quickly away.

  “Liz was always kind of pale but I could see right off that she wasn’t well. She was also packing up boxes as fast as she could. There were clothes and books all over the floor. At first I thought maybe she looked so bad because of the accident—’cause she was overdoing it, making herself sick. The wreck took her eyes but also broke several bones.

  “But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all….”

  Everett took her hand and Mary smiled gratefully, easing her hard features into something more attractive. It was a kind gesture on Everett’s part and surprised me a little. I tend to think of him as being a universal jerk, but of course he isn’t really—just, say, about ninety-five percent jerk.

  Her other hand crept up to the table and gripped the edge. The black taffeta of her dress crackled as she leaned forward. When she spoke, her voice was no longer colorless, and once the dam opened she was—like the others—a verbal river in spate, words pouring out of her with more turbulence than precision. We understood her though even with the confusing pronouns that littered the story.

  “We both knew a girl in college named Caroline. Kind of mean, dishonest, though Liz would make excuses for her because Caroline worshipped her. You know the type. A little dumb too. Heavy—fat really. Digging her grave with an ice-cream spoon because she was so miserable.” This was the Mary I knew—judgmental and spiteful. “She flunked out the first year—no stomach for the work—and she went to char for some old lady downstate who needed a practical nurse. Liz didn’t keep particular track of Caroline after she left school, but Caroline liked Liz and always sent a Christmas card telling her what she was up to, and Liz felt obliged to write back.”

  “One day, at the end of summer, about a week after Liz came home from the rehabilitation center, Caroline turned up on her doorstep. At first Liz thought she was being nice, checking on a sick friend, but that wasn’t it. Caroline hadn’t even heard about the accident.”

  Mary took a few deep breaths. No one spoke. Even the fire seemed still and listening as we neared the part that frightened her. That would frighten us.

  “I don’t know what really happened. Just what Liz thinks happened. And that…. That is bad enough.”

  Everett squeezed her fingers. He wasn’t smirking. No one was.

  “Liz said that Caroline thought she was being followed—haunted—by the old lady she used to work for. The old woman had died. No one was surprised about it because she was old and ill—and so damned mean that people were kind of happy she was gone and not about to ask questions. Liz said that she thought … she thought that maybe Caroline had killed her. Maybe gave her too much medicine. Or not enough. Caroline didn’t admit that, but what she did tell Liz was that when the family refused to pay her last week’s wages, she took the old lady’s pearls. They were old and big, hidden in her dresser, and Caroline figured she deserved a bonus so she … she took them when she left the house.”

  Okay, so maybe Mary wasn’t being spiteful. Maybe Caroline really wasn’t a nice person.

  “Almost at once things started to happen to Caroline. At first it was just that she kept hearing the old lady’s walker in her bedroom at night. The right front wheel had squeaked. She asked Caroline to oil it, but the lazy girl never did. Caroline tried sleeping in the living room, but the sound followed her. She went to a motel, but still she kept hearing the squeaking. Then other things began to happen. Caroline said that the ghost was trying to hurt her, that it broke glass when she stood near windows or mirrors, and made the gas stove turn on when she went to sleep at night.”

  Mary reached for her wine glass with her free hand and took a long drink of the mulled wine.

  “Liz was shocked by all this, of course. She told Caroline that if she believed that she was being haunted she should give the necklace back to the family. I don’t think Liz really thought there was a ghost, but you have to say something, right? But Caroline said she didn’t think that it would help to give the necklace back because she didn’t know where the family was, and the old lady hadn’t liked them anyway and planned to be buried with her pearls—though of course she couldn’t be, because Caroline took them.

  “And then Caroline asked if she could leave the necklace with Liz. Just for a while.

  “Liz started to say no, but she heard Caroline put something on the bookcase across the room. She guessed what she had done and told her to take the necklace back, that she didn’t want stolen property at her house. Caroline got hysterical. She started to cry and plead. Liz kept saying no, she wouldn’t keep it. Then they both heard it, a squeaking. Like a wheel. And it came right through the front door. It was in the hall and then it was in the room.

  “Caroline gasped and then panicked. Liz doesn’t know exactly what happened, but a window broke and there was a scream and … and Caroline fell out. There was an iron fence under the window and…. Liz wanted to go to her but she said that she—she felt something. In the room. Looking at her. Something cold and cruel and calculating. After a moment the squeaking retreated and Liz said she knew she was alone again.

  “Out in the street people were yelling. She wanted to check on Caroline—though what could she do, being blind, and anyway, she had to be dead, didn’t she? But first Liz needed to make sure the necklace wasn’t still there. Because police would come to the apartment to talk to her. But mostly because she was afraid of what she felt in the room with her and didn’t want it to come back looking for its property.”

  I could understand the blind woman’s feelings. Mary’s description was beastly and the small hairs of my arms were standing on end. I, too, had had a horrible feeling when I touched a ghost’s possessions. From my reading I had already learned that not all ghosts are orderly, predictable, and methodical. But some are, and the ones who are not just emotional residue, just lingering impressions of some event, they are aware and capable of harm. I hadn’t felt that Hannah wanted to hurt me, but could she mean harm to someone else at my table? Could I let that happen? Could I stop it?

  “Liz wasn’t used to being blind yet so it took a while to search the bookcase and all around the floor, but the necklace wasn’t there. Either Caroline had had it when she fell. Or the—the ghost took it.

  “Liz moved out as soon as she could and went home to her folks. She had wanted to try making it on her own but she was too scared to stay there. I saw her on her las
t day in the apartment and she made me look everywhere to be sure that the necklace wasn’t still there someplace. It wasn’t. I checked every box we packed. Just to be sure. Because part of me believed her—believed the ghost had been there.

  “It’s been thirty years but I haven’t forgotten.”

  I didn’t think the rest of us would forget either.

  “And I have to admit that I feel much safer on the island. They say ghosts can’t cross water.”

  According to my research that wasn’t true. At least certain types of ghosts who haunted people or movable objects could definitely cross water. But I didn’t bring this up. It would be cruel to take away her sense of safety.

  Chapter 5

  Ben expelled a pent-up breath. I think we had all gotten more than we bargained for when he kicked off the evening with a simple story about an apprentice. Unfortunately, my plan carried the defect of its virtues. Everyone was ready to believe me now—and we were all frightened. Perhaps too frightened. Would anyone want to help me with my ghost?

  I was considering what to do, but it seemed our cup was about to runneth over. Just when I was ready to suggest coffee, Bryson decided to share his encounter with the wyrd. So I settled back in my chair and let him have his turn.

  “Back in March of ninety-eight, Gus Mason, out at the lighthouse, came down with appendicitis. Usually there is a backup, but the flu was going around bad that year and there was no one to come help.

  “Technically, the lighthouse belongs to Canada and we’re not supposed to be there without permission, but there was no time to call anyone once Gus’s appendix burst. So I sent Everett with the life-flight helicopter and I stayed to mind things so the other keeper, James Monroe—he’s passed on now—wouldn’t have to pull his head out of the commode.

  “The light was dismal because of the clouds, but the weatherman wasn’t predicting any storms or fog and I figured, it being late March, that maybe things would stay peaceful.” He glanced at me. I was getting used to it. Weather, good or bad, was often blamed on the Wendovers.