by B. J Daniels
“I’ll drive out this weekend.” It was a ten-hour drive from Spokane, Washington, where she lived and worked as a reporter. She could get a few days off from the newspaper without any trouble, and she hadn’t seen her brother since the wedding and was worried about him.
“It might take more than a weekend,” Landon had said, adding, “It’s a big house.”
The mansion was indeed big, she thought as she looked up at it. Big and ugly as if built by someone who wanted not to just impress but shock. There was nothing engaging about the structure. All she could hope was that it was more hospitable inside, since she didn’t like old houses. As she stared at it, she feared coming here might have been a terrible mistake.
Alexa climbed out of her white SUV as the front door opened and her brother, Landon, came out to her. He looked so happy to see her that she shoved aside her misgivings.
“It is wonderful to see you,” he said as he hugged her tightly. “Thank you so much for coming.”
She drew back to study him, thinking how much she loved him. Sometimes she forgot how handsome and sweet he was. Their mother had called him her “little prince.” Both of them had adored Landon, but somehow he hadn’t grown up spoiled.
If anything, he was too generous with his money and his love, Alexa thought, as Sierra appeared in the wide doorway.
“Welcome to Wellington Manor,” Sierra said with a grand gesture. “That’s what the locals call it and I think it fits the place. You’re early. Supper’s not quite ready. The others are either napping or in town for supplies but should be back any minute.”
“The others?” Alexa asked her brother.
“We have friends helping get the house ready for guests,” Landon said as he reached into the back of her vehicle for her suitcase. “Only one suitcase?” He looked disappointed as he hooked the strap of her bag over one shoulder.
“I travel light,” she said with a smile and reluctantly let him lead her toward the mansion. She could feel tension between her brother and his new wife and suspected it hadn’t been Sierra’s idea to invite her to come for a stay.
She wondered whose idea it had been to have these friends help get the house ready for guests; after all Sierra and Landon had given up their honeymoon to come here and get started on the bed-and-breakfast.
As they walked toward the front entry, Alexa noticed something that hadn’t registered minutes before. Her brother was rubbing his left arm.
“Did you hurt yourself?” she asked and saw him glance toward his wife before he answered.
“Just me being clumsy.” He put his other arm around Alexa and smiled at his wife in the doorway. Sierra smiled back and disappeared into the house, leaving Alexa with the distinct impression that her brother was hiding something for Sierra’s sake.
The moment she stepped into the house, she felt the cold. It instantly crept into her bones and made her shiver.
“It’s a bit drafty,” Sierra said, no doubt having witnessed Alexa’s reaction.
She could see that both Sierra and Landon were defensive about the house. She fought not to show the effect it was having on her. The mansion had once been opulent, from the marble foyer to the huge sunken living room with its massive stone fireplace to the ornate stairway that swept upward to the floors above. Hallways ran from the living area like spider legs, disappearing in the dim light.
“Isn’t it beautiful,” Sierra gushed. “I just love it. Can’t you see it as a bed-and-breakfast? Wait until you see the rest of it.”
Alexa smiled at her sister-in-law’s enthusiasm. The house had recently been cleaned but there was still a musty smell as if the rooms had been closed up—even though someone had been living here. Only a little light bled through the high leaded-stained-glass windows. Heavy velvet curtains hung next to the lower windows and while the glass had been recently cleaned, even the summer sun seemed to be having a hard time getting through.
“I’m sure you’re tired after your long drive,” her brother said, apparently wanting to talk to her alone. “Why don’t I show you to your room.”
“Oh, you’ll want a tour first,” Sierra said, sounding both surprised and annoyed at her husband’s suggestion.
“I would love one later,” Alexa said quickly. “Landon’s right. I would like to freshen up first.”
Sierra looked disappointed. “I’ve just been so excited to show you the house. My great-great-grandfather designed it, you know.” She gave a little pout but said, “I guess I’ll see how supper is coming instead. I think I hear the others pulling in now.”
“I’d love to see it after we eat, thank you,” Alexa said, relieved her sister-in-law hadn’t insisted. She sensed Landon’s need to talk to her, and whatever this was about, he hadn’t wanted Sierra to hear.
He was quiet as he led her upstairs through what seemed like a maze of hallways before stopping at an end room. Opening the door, he stepped back to let her enter.
“Sierra got the room ready for you,” he said, pride in his voice.
Alexa was reminded how much her brother loved his wife and how careful she had to be around Sierra so she didn’t hurt his feelings. She knew she wasn’t being fair. She barely knew the woman and chastised herself for not giving Sierra more of a chance.
“It’s beautiful,” she said as she entered the room. And it was.
The wood floors were buffed to a golden shine, and the huge canopy bed was adorned in white linens. An array of pillows were piled against the carved wooden headboard. An antique vanity stood against one wall, with two matching highboys and a loveseat and overstuffed chair on the other.
“The house came filled with furniture,” Landon said. “There is even more up on the third floor. The last resident used that floor mostly for storage. The place really is huge, isn’t it?”
He sounded nervous and while she was anxious to know why he’d gotten her here, she warned herself not to push.
“Sierra chose this room because of the view and the peace and quiet,” Landon said. “It’s the farthest from where the construction work is going on. We’re remodeling some of the lower rooms that were built as servants’ quarters.”
“The view is wonderful,” Alexa said as she stepped through the open French doors onto a small balcony. The land seemed vast and endless—just like the clear blue sky overhead. She’d never been to Montana before, but all the stories she’d heard about it seemed to be true. It really was amazing country. She could imagine what it must have been like when thousands of buffalo roamed it.
As she stared out, a cowboy on a horse came into view. Something in her froze. She stood transfixed as he rode from the stand of large cottonwood trees and into the sun and sage. For a moment she’d thought she’d conjured him up from her imagination because he looked so at home in the saddle with this landscape in the background. He wore jeans, boots, a red-checked western shirt and what she thought must be a Stetson resting on his longish, raven-black hair. A brown-and-white mutt of a dog ran along a few yards off to the side of his horse.
Alexa held her breath, wanting him to turn and look in her direction. She desperately needed to see his face.
Just when it appeared he would ride by without looking in her direction, he glanced up at her.
Chapter Two
Only two of the vehicles were still parked in front of the old Wellington mansion, the red sports car and the white SUV, Marshall Chisholm noted as he rode his horse by the house. The former street was no more than a narrow dirt lane with rows of huge, old cottonwood trees on each side.
The sports car had California plates, while the SUV was licensed out of Washington State. Neither rig looked as if it might belong to drug runners out of Canada hiding out here. The expensive sports car had a Montana State University sticker on the bumper. College students?
As he came out of the trees, he got his first close-up view of the house. He’d never paid much attention to the old place. Truth is, there was something about it that had always put him off. That and no
doubt the stories he’d heard over the years.
Even up close, the mansion still didn’t draw him. There was nothing in its design or the size of the place that made him want to stop and look. It was the three vehicles he’d seen here that had him curious. He wondered where the black SUV had gone.
As he circled around the place, he looked up at the blank windows, thinking he should probably just go knock at the huge front door and introduce himself as the only neighbor.
He was chewing on that idea when suddenly a young woman with long, dark, curly hair, wide violet eyes and the heart-shaped face of an angel appeared on a second-floor balcony.
But it was what he saw behind her that startled him. His horse suddenly snorted and jerked her head, eyes wild as she reared up. His western hat fell off as he fought to stay seated. He’d never seen the mare react like this before and knew he was lucky he hadn’t been bucked off.
As he regained control of his mount, he glanced up again. The young woman was still standing there, but the image he’d seen behind her was gone.
She stood in the morning light, lithe, wraithlike against the darkness behind her. A vision. Her hair floated around her face, falling about her shoulders in stark contrast to the white of the blouse she wore.
His dog, Angus, barked, making him start again. Everything about being here was making him jumpy as hell. He told himself he was letting his imagination run away with him. That and the stories he’d heard about the mansion—even though he’d always said he didn’t believe a word of it.
“Hang on a minute, Angus,” he said, glancing at the impatient mutt before looking back at the mansion window. The woman was gone.
Marshall felt a knot form in his belly as he continued to stare at the window for several long moments, trying to assure himself he hadn’t imagined her any more than he’d imagined that other image standing behind her.
He wished to hell she would reappear just to prove to himself that she’d been real though.
You don’t really believe that was a ghost you saw.
Of course, he didn’t. But still there had been something about her, something ethereal, angelic. While what he’d seen behind her… He spurred his horse, chuckling at the strange trail his thoughts had taken. He didn’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses. Or evil spirits.
But as warm as the summer morning felt with the sun hot on his back, he felt a chill.
“ALEXA, DID YOU HEAR what I said?”
She stepped back into the room, but she couldn’t shake the rush of sensations she’d felt when she’d seen the handsome cowboy’s face. A strange, wanton desire—and darkness.
Both frightened her by their intensity. She recalled how desperate she’d been to see his face. How she had needed him to look at her.
She shuddered, shocked by what she’d felt as much as by the force of it. Often she got sharp first impressions, but she’d convinced herself that other people got them too and often didn’t recognize them. Everyone met people and in an instant decided if they liked them or not, and never questioned why.
Plain old intuition. She’d even convinced herself that her mother had probably merely been good at reading people, so of course her daughter had picked it up as well. Alexa wanted to believe that rather than the other possibility.
Since she was a girl she’d been haunted by the memory of waking to find her mother standing over her, telling her to look at something at the end of her bed.
Just the thought of it after all these years gave her chills, but she’d convinced herself that what she’d seen was nothing more than her imagination. Or part of a bad dream.
Unfortunately sometimes she felt things, sensed things, she didn’t want to know about. She’d found it easier not to get too close to anyone. As long as she kept her distance and her defenses up, she could live blissfully oblivious about the people around her and their fates.
None of her earlier sensations, though, had ever been as powerful as what she’d felt when she’d seen the cowboy’s face. Desire and darkness.
“Are you all right?” Landon asked as he touched her arm and she flinched.
“Yes.” She shook her head as if she could shake off what she’d felt moments before. It had been so potent. “I’m just tired. It was a long drive.”
“I hated to ask you to come….”
“No,” she quickly reassured him. “I’d been wanting to come for a visit.” Her brother reminded her of light. There was something so pure and innocent about him. He was loving and devoted, open and trusting.
Unlike her brother, she had never been open or trusting.
“You sounded strange on the phone,” she said as she drew him over to the loveseat between the two highboys. “I was concerned.” Alexa still worried why he had invited her here, almost pleading with her to come.
“I didn’t mean to trouble you,” he said, but looking at him she could tell something was wrong and said as much.
“Like I told you on the phone, it’s the house.”
“If you don’t want to remodel it for a bed-and-breakfast then—”
“It’s not that.” He seemed to hesitate, his gaze locking with hers. “You’re the only person I can tell this to who won’t think I’m crazy. The house is trying to hurt me,” he said dropping the words like stones into the room.
“What?” Alexa said, thinking she must have heard him wrong.
“You asked about my arm? A cabinet fell on me, but there have been other near misses since we got here.”
“Landon, do you realize what you’re saying?”
He nodded. “Do you remember when we were kids and Mother used to ask you if you saw…things that the rest of us couldn’t see?”
As if she could forget. Alexa got up and moved to the open French doors again. There was no sign of the cowboy she’d seen earlier. “Landon, I’ve told you. I don’t have the sight.”
“Mother was convinced that you blocked it. That you were simply afraid of it but that if you let yourself—”
“Mother was wrong,” she said, turning to face him. “This is all her fault,” she continued with a wave of her hand that encompassed the house. “If not for her beliefs, then you would never be thinking that because of some isolated accidents…” The rest of her words died in her mouth as she saw her brother’s crestfallen face. “This is why you got me here? To tell you whether or not this house is haunted?”
Her brother suddenly looked so young, so vulnerable, her heart nearly broke for him. “Something is wrong in this house,” he said with obvious fear.
Before she could question him further, there was a knock at the door.
“Please don’t say anything about this to my wife,” he whispered hurriedly.
Alexa felt sick to her stomach. She couldn’t believe this is why he’d gotten her here.
“So how do you like your room?” Sierra asked as she stuck her head into the doorway.
“It’s lovely,” Alexa told her, though still upset from her conversation with her brother. She was angry with him for getting her here under false pretenses and, at the same time, worried about him. Landon was scared. But he also had enough of their mother in him that he was prone to overreaction and flights of fantasy. His hasty marriage to a woman he barely knew and getting involved with this white elephant of a house were two perfect examples.
“You did a beautiful job,” she said to Sierra. “I really think you have a talent for this.”
Her sister-in-law beamed at the compliment. “I can’t tell you what that means to me.” She let out a pleased sigh. “Supper is ready. Afterwards I will give you a tour of the house. You really have to see it to appreciate how amazing it is.”
Landon followed his wife out of the room, hesitating only long enough to say to his sister, “We’ll talk later.”
As Alexa stepped out into the hallway, she felt a winterlike draft that stole her breath. She suppressed a shudder as she saw her brother watching her and realized Sierra was also intently focused on her.
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Of course her brother would have told his wife everything about his family—Alexa included.
“HAS ANYONE HEARD ANYTHING about the people who are staying at the old Wellington place?” Marshall asked as casually as possible during supper at the Chisholm ranch that evening.
While he and his five brothers all had their own houses, they still had breakfast most mornings at the Chisholm Cattle Company main house—and were always expected for supper unless they were out of town or dead.
Their new stepmother, Emma, had a hard-and-fast rule about them being at the table on time, showered and shaved and without any manure on their boots. So tonight they were all seated at the table, his father, Hoyt, stepmother, Emma, and his five brothers, Dawson, Colton, Zane, Logan and Tanner.
“I heard something in town about a bunch of hippies moving into it,” Colton said as he helped himself to more roast beef from the huge platter in front of him. “You want Halley to check on it?” Deputy Halley Robinson was Colton’s fiancée.
Marshall chuckled at the hippie remark. Anyone from California with relatively long hair was considered a hippie in this part of Montana. The word covered a lot of territory.
He thought of the woman he’d seen at the window. “I think they might have bought the place.”
“That’s news to me,” his father said, frowning. “I’d have known if it had come on the market. I’ve been trying to buy it for years and was told the family wasn’t interested. Since the old woman who lived there died, the place has been tied up in the estate.”
“I wonder then if the people I saw over there might be related to the original owner,” Marshall mused.
“What is your interest anyway?” Zane asked, studying him.
“Just curious,” Marshall said, feeling all eyes at the table on him. He was a terrible liar and they all knew it. “I can see the place from my house. I noticed activity over there, three cars, and just wondered what was going on. As I was driving in for supper, I passed a local hardware truck headed out that way with a lot of supplies in the back.”