A Haunting at Hensley Hall (A Ravynne Sisters Paranormal Mystery)

by Merabeth James

  Meg gave Annie a hug, “Thanks for looking after Freddie. I hope he wasn’t too much of a nuisance? Especially with the police out here looking around.”

  “Haven’t seen nary a one. As to Freddie, he wasn't a bit of trouble. We had us a walk maybe a half hour ago. Would have brought Tavish along, but he be too old to put up with a spry pup like yours. Would you be mindin’, if I go back to me own place and leave the dishes. I have a bit of a headache and me stomach has been all aflutter this day. Too much goin’ on for an old woman like me.”

  Both sisters were instantly concerned. Annie was never sick. “Please, go right home and rest up. Can we get anything for you?” Meg asked in alarm.

  “Just don’t be leavin’ me kitchen in a mess. Now it’s off I go before it be gettin’ too dark and I fall over me own big feet and break me hip.”

  “Do you want us to walk Tavish for you?” Charlie asked.

  "He can piddle on his pad. But thank you both and lock everything up tight. I don't want no murderin' kidnappers cartin' you two off."

  ***

  Sometime later, after securing every door and window and leaving lights burning in most of the downstairs' rooms, the sisters climbed the back stairs with Freddie clattering on ahead of them. “You’re welcome to spend the night with me,” Charlie told Meg.

  “I want to spend the night alone. I think…hope really more than anything…that Breanna will try and contact me. Maybe she knows where Brittany is,” Meg said with the brightest smile she could manage, which wasn’t much.

  Charlie took the hand with the now ragged fingernails and dropped it with a sigh. “If you hear Old Thumper, promise me you’ll come running. My door is never locked.”

  After Meg promised, they said their ‘good nights’ and went their separate ways. Charlie took up a vigil by the window, watching the yard. The moon had slipped behind a thick layer of clouds and it was quite dark. Too dark to see much of anything. She turned to her other senses and listened to the night sounds, waiting for one that didn’t belong, or a cessation of those that did. Then the hair along the back of her neck rose and she knew someone was out there. If it didn’t mean leaving Meg unprotected, she would go down there and have a look around.

  Not that that would be too smart, but she’d been not ‘too smart’ before in her life and was tottering on the verge again. Zack. She must trust him, or she wouldn’t have given him Breanna’s journal. But what did she know about him? Precious little! And quite probably none of it was true. But from somewhere…some place…she knew him. It teased along the edges of her awareness and she let her mind wrestle with it, as she continued her vigil.

  Meanwhile, Meg lay stretched out on her bed with Freddie snuggled beside her. “Breanna! I really need your help here! There’s a girl missing again…young like you. In fact, she looks like you. Her name is Brittany and I think you may know where she is. Maybe Devon is involved., and your father, though I don’t know how.”

  Freddie whined, circled three times, and burrowed under the blanket, clearly annoyed at all the noise. Meg watched the shadows drift from the corners. The sheer drapes blew inward on an errant breeze…ghostly. She shivered. Was the temperature dropping, or was it only her imagination? She yawned and watched the shadows on the ceiling. One looked like a little black cat. Where was Cloud these days? She wasn’t aware she was falling asleep. And then she did.

  She awoke, shivering with cold, and felt an electric current crawling just under her skin. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling! Was this supposed to happen when a spirit manifested, she wondered sleepily? It never had before. She looked around and saw Breanna, standing by the window looking out into the night.

  “Breanna,” Meg called, “are you looking for Devon? Please tell me where he is? And Brittany, the girl I told you about if you were listening, which you might not have been, so I’ll tell you again. There’s a girl, who looks like you, who has gone missing. She seems to have vanished from here last night and no one knows where she is. Can you help us find her?”

  Breanna seemed to shrink and swell…shrink and swell… until she settled on the ‘swell’ part. Like steam from a teakettle she drifted across the floor until she was hovering at the foot of Meg’s bed. She glowed a sickly green like the phosphorescent dial on an alarm clock. Her eyes were enormous….her mouth contorted with pain and there was a jagged wound in the left side of her head. She was wearing the white dress from the portrait and it was streaked with rusty brown stains that Meg feared was blood. All in all, beautiful Breanna was a horrific sight!

  Meg pulled the covers over her head and counted to ten, then took a peek. Breanna was still there, only now, she was hovering directly over her with one long pointy finger just inches from her nose. “Devon!” she began to wail, starting at a low pitch and rising quickly, till Meg was forced to protect her ears with both hands.

  “Devon. What about Devon?” Meg prompted, watching her frozen breath waft upward, wishing fervently that Breanna wouldn’t float so close. She was beyond cold and, from the whining and digging Freddie was doing, he was in danger of being a pupsicle at any moment!

  “He needs help…needs you!” Breanna told her hollowly, then began to dematerialize until she was nothing more than a puff of greenish smoke that passed through the ceiling.

  “Hey! Come back here! How? Why? Where? I need answers to those questions,” Meg called after her.

  Charlie burst into the room. “I could hear you hollering through the wall! It’s cold as death in here! She’s been here, right?”

  “Cold as death is right! She was here and she was kinda scary. Had a head wound…blood…not something I want to see again, but I’m sure she showed us that for a reason. She said Devon needs help. That he needs me,” Meg told her tremulously. “But she didn’t tell me how I could help. He’s close by and he must be in danger. Oh, Charlie! What do we do now?”

  “You had to ask me that? For now, you and Freddie are coming with me. We need some sleep and you’re not going to get it in here.”

  “I have a bad, bad feeling….” Meg began.

  Charlie rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Meg!”

  “Shutting up, Charlie!” she said with a long sigh.

  ***

  Brittany tried to open her eyes but couldn’t…nor move her hands or feet. Her head pounded viciously and she found it hard to breathe around whatever was stuffed in her mouth. “Dear, God,” she prayed desperately, “please, please, help me!” She squirmed and tugged at her bonds, but it was useless. She could smell damp earth and mold. It was cold so very cold!

  A hand stroked along her bare leg, up from her toes to her knee then along her inner thigh. She tried to scream, but the noises she made only seemed to amuse her tormenter. He was laughing. A hand found her breast. “You are so beautiful, even now, Breanna,” a voice whispered close to her ear. She moaned and her tears tried to find a way past whatever covered her eyes. Silently, she begged again, please ,please please….

  "You want this, you know you do. Let me show you how much your father loves you."

  ***

  The next morning, Charlie and Meg found a note taped to the stove. It read: Touch of the flu…will be in me place if you can’t be sparing me for a single day. I’ll be right as rain by tomorrow. It was needlessly signed “Annie”.

  Meg smiled. “Now I can show you what Annie’s been teaching me!”

  Charlie sighed. “Can’t wait.”

  “Stop already. I’m pretty good, though I still consider ‘cooking’ more of a necessary evil than anything else,” Meg reassured her.

  “Great! I’ll make us some coffee. I need it badly! Then I'll set the table out here. We don’t have to be the ‘fine ladies of the house’ this morning.”

  “Okay by me. We’ll have…I know….pancakes. Blueberry pancakes if we have any blueberries, which I don’t know. And bacon….lots of bacon and fresh squeezed orange juice if we have any….”

  “Oranges. Suppose we both get started,” Charlie said. “And
we have to be careful we don’t disturb anything, or Annie will have both our heads.”

  Meg hummed, as she began to search for what she’d need. Which was just another indication of her resilience and strength, Charlie thought, as she watched her sister break eggs into a stainless steel bowl. “I hope you appreciate I’m making these from scratch,” Meg told her in mid hum.

  They had just settled down to breakfast, when they heard footsteps coming down the hall and the swing door opened. It was Zack, looking a bit sleep tousled. He stood just inside the door taking in the scene. “Where’s, Annie?”

  “Under the weather this morning…nothing serious she says,” Meg told him.

  “I didn’t know either of you could cook,” he told them, sniffing the air suspiciously. “And it actually smells rather good.”

  “We can, at least Meg can. She’s been taking lessons. Want to share? It’s part of the deal that you’ve never taken us up on. In fact, I hear several of the waitresses at the ‘Coffee Pot Cafe’ in town are madly in love with you,” Charlie said with a smile she managed to conjure up from somewhere, though her heart had just turned over twice. He had way too much power over her and it scared her to death.

  “I have to fight them off every morning. And, Meg, I’d love whatever you have ready.”

  Meg smiled in reply. “Have to pour a few more. How many?”

  “Maybe three? And some bacon from that mound I see on the counter? But coffee first! Black please.”

  “I’ll get the coffee, Meg,” Charlie said, gesturing to Zack to grab a seat. He took the chair next to the one she just vacated. Returning with another plate, cup and silverware, she spread them in front of him and went for the coffee pot. There wasn’t a moment she didn’t feel the heat from his eyes and she found herself growing uncomfortably warm.

  As she poured his coffee, he brushed against her arm and she felt a tingling awareness that was even more unsettling. She made a point of relocating her chair several inches away from his, before she sat down.

  Meg carried a stack of pancakes to the table. “Help yourself,” she told Zack. “We don’t stand on ceremony around this house.”

  “So I noticed,” he murmured, as he loaded his plate.

  “I wonder why the police haven’t been crawling all over this place? Annie told us nobody’s been out here,” Charlie said, as she poured herself a second cup of coffee.

  Zack answered her question. “It seems Brittany’s cell phone was found about half a mile up the road, so the cops think she had given up on Jayson and was walking towards town, when she was taken. They still haven’t ruled out the ‘runaway’ angle though, but at least they are considering that there may be more to her disappearance than that. They think she may have hitchhiked and been picked up by a stranger.”

  “The stranger in town thing,” Charlie mumbled to herself.

  Zack raised one black brow, “What in the hell does that mean?”

  “That’s what the cops thought when Mary Watson and Bea Kingsley were kidnapped and killed, then they pinned it on Jeremy Johns. When there was a third murder, after he committed suicide, they blamed Devon Hensley.”

  “The Devon we think is still alive.”

  “Exactly, though neither Meg nor I think he committed the murders. We do think his father was capable of it and that Devon may have been involved in some way, but we don’t believe he could have committed those atrocities.”

  “Remember Tommy the stableboy nanny Nell told us about?” he reminded her.

  “It was Timmy and we don’t know that it wasn’t an accident. And I’m not convinced Brittany wasn’t taken from down by the gates, where she was supposed to wait for Jayson. I’m going to go down there now and check around.”

  “Mind if I tag along? I seem to be caught up in this as much as you two are for several reasons.”

  “Which you won’t divulge,” Charlie said. “Meg, you need to come with us. I don’t want you here all by yourself.”

  “Nonsense. Snooping around is your thing. Besides, someone has to clean up Annie’s kitchen and I’m the only on who has even an inkling of where everything belongs.”

  Charlie shot her a sharp look and left the room, leaving Zack and Meg staring after her in surprise. She returned moments later, carrying her gun. She handed it to her sister and asked, “Do you remember how to use this?”

  Meg grimaced and replied. “You taught me at the gun range. Told me I might need to know how to protect myself, if you couldn’t. How could I forget? But I don’t like guns and wish you would keep it with you.”

  Charlie gritted her teeth and counted to five, before she replied. “We are not going to discuss this now. You will keep this gun with you at all times when I am not with you. You are not to leave this house until we get back. If you do not do exactly what I have just told you, I will kill you, Meg, with my own two hands.”

  “At least it won’t be with a gun!” Meg told her with a touch of petulance, returning her glare with one of her own. “I am not your child! I am an adult! Freddie and I will stay here and we will keep your gun close by, but only ’cause I want to…not because you’ve ordered me to!”

  Charlie knew it was hopeless to argue further. She could only trust her sister would be sensible enough to do what she’d ordered?

  Maybe she was being too heavy handed with her, but now wasn’t the time to examine that. She always only meant for her own good and surely she realized that by now?

  When she would have said something more to Meg, Zack grabbed her elbow and steered her towards the door. Outside, she heard the door lock click behind them and smiled. Zack shot a glance at her and caught her smile. “You’re riding her too hard. She’s all grown up and doesn’t like….”

  “Being bossed around. I know. I just can’t seem to help it. I’ve always had to rescue one member of my family, after another, from some disaster and being ‘bossy’ just seems to be part of the deal,” she told him irritably, as she headed down the drive.

  “Maybe you try too hard. Who takes care of you?” he asked, falling in step next to her.

  Charlie stopped and looked at him. A light breeze tugged at his hair…his eyes were dark and unreadable…while his mouth wore that beguiling smile that made her pulse quicken. “No one. I don’t need, or want, anyone to take care of me!” she lied, hoping vehemence would lend credence to her words.

  He cupped her chin with one hand and leaned in closer…too close. She wanted to slap his hand away, but she didn’t. Instead, she held her breath as he leaned closer still. His lips brushed hers. A feather touch that promised much. She shivered reflexively and would have pulled him even closer, but he moved away with a low laugh. Her eyes were full of her bewilderment, as she looked into his. “Still don’t remember me, do you?” he asked, then moved on ahead, calling over his shoulder, “Coming”

  She shook off the tumult of sensation he had aroused as best she could and caught up with him in three long strides. “Wait a minute. What did you mean back there?”

  “You’re the one that likes to ‘snoop’ according to your very own sister. Meanwhile shall we do what we came out here to do?”

  Angry now, Charlie brushed past him and almost ran towards the front gates, stopping less than thirty feet from the end of the drive, where a marble bench nestled in a screen of rhododendron bushes. “I’d be willing to bet that was where she waited for her boyfriend,” Zack told her, when he reached her side.

  “Perfect place to see what’s coming and going without being seen,” she murmured frostily. “I’m going to snoop around, if you don’t mind!”

  He smiled to himself, hoping she wouldn’t notice. She clearly wasn’t in any mood for levity. Charlie made the first find. “Look…a freshly broken twig and too high up to be some animal.”

  “And over here,” he called. “The leaves have been disturbed. The top ones are still too moist.”

  She bent down next to him, as he carefully turned over the leaves. He picked up one and showed it to
her. “What does that look like?”

  “Looks like dried blood to me. This was where Brittany was taken and not without a struggle of some kind,” she replied.

  “Yep, we need to get the cops out here. Chief Beasly needs some serious redirecting,” he told her.

  “He’s not going to believe anything I tell him. Would you, if you hadn’t been to Meg’s séance and saw what you saw?” Charlie asked, refusing to look at him directly.

  “Probably not. He’ll insist on the ‘stranger in town’ theory like before,” Zack replied, his fingers aching to brush back a stray tendril of silvery blonde hair that threatened to poke her in the eye. And then he did.

  She jumped back, and, reflexively, smacked at his offending hand. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  “You were in danger of losing your sight in one eye. They are beautiful eyes. A matched set and they should stay that way,” he told her with a smile lifting one corner of his sensual mouth.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re here investigating a crime scene. I’m not playing whatever game you’re playing and, I might add, not playing very well,” she scolded as primly as her mother ever had. “Whoever did this must have known she was here. Followed her from the party? I don’t think it was just a chance meeting.”

  His smile deepened, then vanished. “Or Jayson told one of his friends, who beat him to her. The cops need to ask him that. Find out who knew she’d be waiting here all alone in the dark.”

  “Adrian left early after a fight with Rayne,” Charlie told him with a thoughtful frown.

  “The very same Adrian, who was with her the night she was chased through the woods."

  “The very same. Maybe we need to find out where he is?” she asked.

  “Sounds like a bug we could safely put in the Chief’s ear. Let him poke around and see if he’s holed up in town somewhere,” he told her.