by Wendy Webb
Matthew tried the door—it was locked. I fished my house key out of my purse and unlocked the door. We stepped across the threshold and looked this way and that, but the house seemed as empty as it had been the day before. Our footsteps echoed as we walked through the foyer to the living room, parlor, and library, flipping on the lights in each room as we went.
“Do you think she came inside and then locked the door behind her?” Matthew wondered.
“Miss Bouchard?” I called out, but there was no reply. “Marie! Are you here?”
Matthew shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe she went upstairs? Or …” He walked toward the kitchen as I grabbed my cell phone out of my purse and hit redial. The nurse’s cell rang and rang, eventually landing in voice mail.
“Miss Bouchard, this is Grace Alban,” I said. “We’re here at the house now. Not sure where you are. Please give me a call when you get this message. And again, I’m sorry for this mix-up.” I clicked off and dropped the phone back into my purse.
Matthew came from the direction of the kitchen, shaking his head. “She’s not in there, either.”
“I’m betting she got into the cab that brought her here from the airport and went to a hotel or something,” I said, glancing up and down the main hallway.
“But why would she do that?” Matthew squinted at me. “You told her we were coming right away.”
He was right. She wouldn’t have gone anywhere. With that realization, a seeping sense of dread began to fall around us, as real and tangible as the rain outside.
“The chief said Mercy is still at large,” I said, wrapping my arms around Matthew’s waist and eyeing the staircase. We both stood there for a moment, neither knowing quite what to do, before he unwound my arms from around his waist and held my hands. “Let’s do a quick check of the upstairs and—”
But his words were cut off by the sound of the buzzer, soft and low and distant. I frowned at Matthew and hurried toward the ringing, pushing open the kitchen door, with him at my heels. I stopped short when I saw the display. Somebody was buzzing from the master suite, over and over and over again. I shot Matthew a look—his face was a mixture of confusion and suspicion—and I hit the intercom. “Hello? Who’s up there?”
The ancient device crackled and sputtered with static, but behind all that noise, I heard a thin, faraway voice. “Mama …? Mama, is that you …?”
I held Matthew’s gaze for an instant, and then we both burst out of the kitchen and bounded up the stairs, headed down the hallway toward the master suite in a full-on run. I flew through the door, Matthew close behind. “Amity!” I shouted, checking the closet, the study, the bathroom, the patio. But nobody was there. No Amity, no Mercy, no nurse, nobody.
While Matthew checked the media room and Amity’s room, I dialed my daughter’s cell phone.
“Hey, Mom,” she answered, and the relief that washed over me was so strong that I thought it might knock me to the ground.
“So, you’re okay,” I said, leaning against the doorframe.
“Sure,” she said. “Why?”
“No reason,” I said too quickly. “But remember, don’t come back to the house right now. You can stay at Heather’s for a while, right?”
“Yeah, Mom. Not a problem. But … is this about Jane?”
“No, honey,” I said to her. “Jane’s resting in the hospital and she’ll be fine. Just promise me you won’t come back to the house until I call you to tell you it’s okay.”
“That’s fine,” she said, and I could almost see her shrugging her shoulders. “It’s raining too hard to go anywhere, anyway.”
I told my daughter I loved her and hung up, and the tears I was holding back began to fall. Matthew was at my side in an instant and took me into his arms.
“She’s okay,” he said into my hair. “She’s okay.” He pulled away and looked me in the face. “But Mercy is obviously here, playing with you.”
“Let’s find her,” I said to him, clearing my throat. “I want this to end. I’m tired of being afraid in my own house.”
We headed down the hallway, calling the nurse’s name all the while, and found that the guest rooms where Mr. Jameson’s lads had been staying were similarly empty, the disarray of unmade beds, half-full water glasses, and clothes strewn on the floor—as the boys had hastily gathered their belongings to move to the hotel—a stark contrast to the neat, untouched silence of rooms unoccupied.
Matthew took my hand. “Come on,” he said, leading me to the back stairs. “She’s probably on the third floor.”
At this, I stopped. “Should we call the police, do you think?”
Matthew pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed. After a few quiet words with the police, he hung up.
“I didn’t realize this storm was so bad,” he said to me. “They might not be able to get here for a while. Apparently, it’s a mess out there. Trees down, roads impassable. There’s some flooding downtown. They said to wait for them in the living room.”
“But the nurse!” I protested. “We can’t just stand here and do nothing until they show up. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Agreed. If Mercy is still armed, that nurse is in danger. And by the time the police get here, we can have the third floor checked out. I think we can handle her together if we find her before they get here.”
She was a seventy-year-old woman, for goodness’ sake. Armed, dangerous, yes, but if we found her, Matthew and I could certainly subdue her.
Still, as I climbed those stairs, the gnawing in the pit of my stomach tightened into a hard knot. I hadn’t been up to the third floor in years—it was a part of the house my family rarely used. There was the extensive nursery and children’s quarters where Mercy was living, along with the children’s library and a few guest rooms in one wing. A ballroom, closed off from the rest of the floor, with a set of double doors on one end and an elevator on the other, so party guests would neither be troubled by children nor the prospect of climbing the stairs in high heels.
As we crept hand in hand through the children’s quarters—several small, connected rooms—we saw my aunt’s clothes hanging neatly in the closet and her bed made with tight corners, just as Jane had always done. If Mercy was here, she hadn’t slept in this bed since she’d put Jane in the hospital. I checked the secret doors—locked. The other guest rooms were silent and unused, dust hanging in the air.
“Let’s check the ballroom,” I whispered to Matthew, leading him down the hallway, turning the lights on as we went.
We pushed open the double doors, and as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, with the rain beating down on the floor-to-ceiling windows on the wall facing the lake, I squinted at the sight of something that shouldn’t have been there.
I exchanged a puzzled glance with Matthew and crossed the room to flip on the light to get a better look.
There, in the middle of the ballroom’s dance floor, was a ring of stones obviously brought up from the lakeshore. In the middle of that ring, a silver bowl containing the ashes of what had been a small fire. Strewn about outside the ring—photographs. As I looked from one to the next, my throat felt dry as I recognized shots of Amity, myself, Jane, Carter, Mr. Jameson.
Under it all—symbols, thick black lines that looked Celtic in nature. Matthew blanched, gulping in a mouthful of air. “What is this?”
That knot in my stomach was working its way through my whole body. “It’s for the girl in white,” I said, my voice a harsh whisper. “It looks to me like this is where she dances these days. What better place than a ballroom?”
Matthew was staring at the fire ring, his eyes wide and round. “But wouldn’t the police have found this when they searched the house earlier? Why—”
I interrupted his thought. “Maybe she came back after they had gone. Or maybe she never left at all.” I turned around in a slow circle. “I’ve always thought it was sort of futile, the police searching this house. It’s a game of hide and seek they can’t win. There are
too many places to hide.”
Matthew crossed the room to take my hand. “I think we should go downstairs. Now. We can wait for the police in the library or even in the car.”
We pushed through the double doors and made our way down the hall toward the staircase, descending it hand in hand, me squeezing his a bit tighter than I had intended. As we passed the second-floor landing, I heard voices coming from the floor below. Not voices. A voice.
Matthew and I stopped in our tracks to listen, my heart pounding.
“Miss Grace!” I heard. “Reverend Parker! Are you here?”
Matthew and I hurried down the rest of the stairs to find Carter standing near the front door, holding a massive umbrella in one hand.
“Oh, Carter, thank God!” I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck, trying to catch my breath.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Miss Grace, I’m all wet!” he fussed, pulling away. But I saw the smile on his face and the twinkle in his eyes. “I just returned from my wonderful stay at the hotel—thank you so much for that—and I saw the reverend’s car in the driveway.”
We got him up to speed—the police were on their way, Mercy was still missing, her nurse was now also missing, and we had checked the entire house and found nothing.
“Nothing, except a very strange sight in the ballroom,” I said.
Carter squinted at me. “What do you mean, strange?”
I told him about the fire ring and the photographs and what looked to be Celtic writing scrawled on the floor. He let the umbrella drop from his hand.
“I meant it, Miss Grace, what I said in the hospital waiting room yesterday,” he said to me, a frightened look in his eyes. “She cannot stay in Alban House for one more day. She simply cannot.”
I shot Matthew a look and said, “Carter, I think it’s time you told us everything you know about Mercy.”
“Indeed, Miss Grace—” he started. Then there was a massive crack of thunder and lightning, and everything went black.
CHAPTER 35
I fumbled for the long matches on the hearth in the parlor, and soon the kindling I’d laid in the fireplace ignited, bathing the room in a warm, yellowish glow.
“It’s terrible outside,” Carter said as he slipped off his overcoat and draped it on one of the chairs. “Power is out all over town. The poor taxi driver had quite a job of it getting me home from the hotel. It’s like a puzzle trying to drive anywhere because so many trees have fallen onto the roads. They’re predicting straight-line winds and hail before it’s all said and done.”
At this, the whole house shook. I settled onto the sofa and grabbed an afghan. Usually I loved being at Alban House during a thunderstorm—it was such a solid fortress, I knew that even the worst of nature’s fury couldn’t damage it or hurt me. But this was different somehow. It felt dangerous and confining, as though we were trapped in the house instead of sheltered by it. I wrapped the afghan around me and listened as the wind howled and the waves crashed against the shore.
Matthew joined me on the sofa and draped an arm around my shoulders. “This may sound a little hysterical, but I’m going to say it, anyway,” he began, looking at Carter and me in turn. “None of us is going anywhere because of this storm, including Mercy, and it might be a while before the police get here. We don’t know where the nurse is, but she may well be with her. Or, I hate to say this, she may well have come to harm.”
He paused before continuing. “I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not crazy about this whole situation. Because of that, I think we should all stay right here in this room together. No wandering alone to the kitchen, no going upstairs. And, not to be indelicate, but if one of us has to use the bathroom, we’re all going.”
Carter nodded gravely. “Agreed,” he said. “Neither of you really knows what you’re up against. I do. She is not a harmless old lady. Not by a long shot.”
Matthew moved closer and held me tighter. “Now seems like a good time to tell us what you know,” he said to Carter.
Carter crossed the room, nodding his head, and opened a decanter of scotch that was standing on the sideboard. “I’m sorry to be so bold, Miss Grace, but this calls for a little fortification.” He poured us each an ample drink. “What do they say—it’s five o’clock somewhere?”
He handed Matthew and me lowball glasses almost half full of scotch and sank into an armchair across from us. I took a sip and felt the spicy liquid warming me from the inside as I curled my legs up onto the sofa and leaned into Matthew.
With the wind roaring outside, the rain punishing the windowpanes, and the fire crackling in the fireplace, Carter took a gulp of his drink and began to speak.
“It was just this same time of year, the early summer of 1947. The war was over, and I was a young man fresh off the boat from England. I served in a regiment with a friend of old Mr. Alban’s in the war, that’s how I came to work here, you see.” He smiled a melancholy smile, his eyes focused on the past. “My fiancée had been killed during one of the bombing raids in London, and when the war was over, I just couldn’t go back there. Not without my darling Roz. I desperately needed a new life, away from everything that reminded me of her, and Mr. Alban gave me that.”
I looked at him with new eyes. My whole life, he had just been Carter, our impossibly kind driver. I had never realized he was in the war, or had had a fiancée, or … well, anything. My face reddened with the shame I felt for not ever asking, or even thinking to ask, about his life before he came to us.
He went on. “The girls, Fate and Mercy, were just children then, no more than ten years old. And what scamps they were! Always playing hide and seek, racing around the place like puppies, tormenting their brother. I wanted a new life, and indeed I got it, coming to a house filled with so much love and laughter.” He let out a deep sigh. “But then everything changed.”
He took a sip of his drink, and I saw a shudder pass through him.
“That’s when Mercy fell ill?” I nudged him to go on.
He nodded. “Influenza. A bad strain was going around that year and both the girls caught it. Fate recovered, but poor little Mercy got weaker and weaker until …” He shook his head. “I was in the carriage house when I heard Mrs. Charity’s screaming, a wail the likes of which I hope never to hear again.”
“Jane said Mercy died, Carter,” I said. “But surely that’s not the case … Right?”
He locked eyes with me, and in his, I saw fear. “It is indeed the case,” he said, his voice low and wavering. “The whole household was in mourning. Mr. Alban retreated into his work, Johnny became unusually quiet and withdrawn, and poor little Fate was lost, absolutely lost. But it was Mrs. Charity who scared us the most. She was utterly and completely destroyed. It was as though her own life force had been extinguished when her daughter died. She was but a shadow of the vibrant person she had been.”
The image of my father on the horrible day when he realized Jake and Jimmy were dead swirled through my mind. And it hit me how much grief this house had seen over the years. So much suffering, so much death, family mourning loved ones over and over again. I thought about my conversation with Harris the night before, and I could see why people believed my family was cursed. The tableau of grief seemed to play out the same way for every generation. We were all haunted by tragedy.
“We laid poor Mercy to rest in the family crypt,” Carter continued. “And life went on. Mr. Alban, especially. Even Charity seemed to be perking up, coming out of it, and we were all so relieved. We had no idea her change in mood was because she had put a plan in place. If we knew about the evil she was preparing to invoke we surely would have stopped it.”
As he lifted his glass to his lips, a crack of lightning sizzled across the sky and lit up the room with its flash. I noticed his hands were shaking and his face had gone white.
Matthew shot me a look. “What type of evil are you talking about, Carter?” he asked.
Carter sighed and shook his head, a faraway look in his eyes. “T
his goes back to Mrs. Charity’s family in the old country,” he began.
“The family Jane and her mother worked for?” I asked, remembering her history.
“That’s the one,” Carter said. “I got this straight from Jane, so there’s no speculation here when I say that Mrs. Charity came from a long line of women who had …”—Carter seemed to be searching for the right words—“… rather special abilities.”
He looked from Matthew to me, as though we would understand. But I was still confused.
“You’re saying they were—what? Healers? Medicine women?” I asked.
“Healers, psychics, witches, whatever label you want to attach to them fits,” Carter said. “They practiced black magic, the lot of them. They passed the art from mother to daughter, right down the line.”
I squinted at him and noticed Matthew was shaking his head, a look of disbelief on his face. I wondered how his strong faith would dovetail with a story like this, and I sensed we both were thinking the same thing: this was veering off into the realm of fairy tale and legend. “That’s what Jane told you?” I asked.
“And what her mother told her,” Carter said, nodding. “They saw it all when they worked for Charity’s mother, I’ll tell you. But when Mr. Alban married Charity and brought her here to his home in America, Jane and her mother with them, they believed that was the end of it. Charity hadn’t seemed interested in the family ways, so to speak, and was more than happy to move far away. She was more interested in being the lady of this fine manor, being a good wife to the husband she adored and raising the children she doted upon.”
“Until …?” I prodded.
“Until she lost one of those children,” Carter said, shaking his head and taking another sip of scotch. “Shortly after Mercy died, Charity’s mother and grandmother traveled to Alban House for a visit. Charity had summoned them. And when they arrived, they were carrying—I saw it myself—an ancient-looking book.”
I snuggled closer to Matthew. He shook his head, a small, almost imperceptible movement that told me he wasn’t buying this fantastic tale.