Chapter Twelve
“So who wants to go first?” Dylan asked the group.
Over the bonfire’s dancing flames, Dylan’s eyes locked with Beth’s. Beth grinned at Dylan’s subtle wink.
Across the circle, a voice piped up. “Go first?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said. “Tell us why you decided to spend the night in a murder house.”
It had been made clear from the get-go that nobody wanted to discuss this. After the pre-dinner tour, rugged up around the backyard dining table with the fire behind them, they’d exchanged pleasantries and small talk, hesitating to venture into anything that poked at the grizzly.
Their quiet group was an odd mix. There were six guests, a group of eight including herself and Dylan. The two young couples from Sydney were friendly, a down-to-earth group of friends who had met through Bible study. When Dylan had brushed by Beth in the kitchen before dinner to collect the sliced potatoes, she’d whispered that she thought the four were there for a scare more than anything. “I think this is the wildest thing they’ve ever done,” Dylan had murmured, and Beth agreed—she’d gathered the same thing from the way one of the girls had grasped her crucifix pendant as she’d stepped into the homestead, her eyes alight with unbridled excitement.
Then there was the Wiccan guest, Leslie, who’d monopolised dinner conversation recounting the time a spectre had grasped her by the back of the neck during a midnight tour of Sydney’s Quarantine Station. The woman sported grey regrowth of her mauve hair and made experiencing the paranormal a competitive sport. Beth predicted that, if something didn’t make contact with Leslie in the Blaxland Homestead that night, Leslie would fabricate a story regardless.
“You were all chatty over dinner…” Dylan said. “Nobody wants to go first?” She turned to face the young woman beside her. “Well we all know that Grace is here under sufferance.”
The group laughed. Grace blushed. “Leave her alone,” Beth chuckled.
Grace, an interning journalist from Sydney, had been sent by her editor to write a travel article on the homestead, and she’d been the last to arrive. Dylan had no choice but to start the tour without her, so Beth had waited behind in the gift shop. She’d charged to the bathroom in the meantime and missed seeing Grace’s car pull up. She’d found her standing outside the front door of the homestead, pressing the disconnected bell.
Grace had apologised profusely for her lateness. “I’m not sleeping alone in one of the murder rooms, right?” she’d asked nervously when Beth had shown her where to place her pack and sleeping bag in the parlour. “Well,” Beth had said, feeling the eyes of the mannequins on the back of her head, “Not alone, no. But if you’re squeamish, you may not want to park your sleeping bag over by that loveseat.”
Dylan added another log to the fire, and soon enough, the group warmed, slowly opening up at Dylan’s assurance that nothing was off-limits, that nothing phased the two of them—they’d seen and heard it all.
Beth watched through the flames as Dylan moved on to tales of past experiences at sleepovers, of cold spots and smells, voices caught on recordings and photos magically erased from phones by morning.
Listening carefully, Beth considered her business partner. The group was enthralled by Dylan’s storytelling, her loud gestures and animated eyes. It was the same way Dylan had connected with her during their first few weeks, when they’d circled each other, unsure and undecided. But Dylan wasn’t like that with her anymore. She was quieter, calmer, more relaxed. The change had transpired so gradually that, until that very moment, Beth hadn’t even noticed there had been a shift. Dylan had grown as comfortable with Beth as Beth had with her, and as Beth watched her friend talk, one simple fact grew increasingly apparent—things had changed between them.
Dylan was midway through a haunting tale when a voice spoke up from across the fire. “Can I ask a question?”
Beth’s head snapped to her left. Leslie wrapped her shawl about herself and raked her hands through her wild purple hair. “Why don’t you let your guests sleep in the bedrooms if the beds are replicas? Wouldn’t it be more profitable to offer bed and breakfast stays?”
Dylan shook her head. “Although the beds may look comfortable, the only one with a real mattress is Sarah’s room—the previous owner purchased a mattress for the room when she slept in there a few years ago while her cottage was being renovated due to storm damage. Other than Sarah’s bed, all the other beds are just a thin layer of padding on plywood to create the illusion. And besides that…well, I’m afraid that there are too many items inside the homestead that we can’t exactly glue down. I don’t mean to imply that there’s a trust issue, but some groups…well, it’s just a matter of conservation.”
Beth looked up at the homestead. They’d illuminated the south face with an additional floodlight, and the house looked ethereal, like a mansion from a gothic novella. What a sight it must be to meet the house for the first time, she thought. Their guests had travelled hours to learn about the Blaxlands, to spend a night in the late-Victorian manor, but it had been handed to Beth on a platter. It belonged to her. Her eyes trailed up over the opulent cast-iron lattice of the first and second floor balconies, and higher, to the twin chimneys on the slate roof. It could have been an ominous sight—to their guests it probably was—but Beth knew that when the time eventually came, it was going to break her heart to say goodbye.
With her eyes glued to her phone as she waited in the hallway to use the guest bathroom, Beth didn’t realise Dylan had come back into the house until she tapped her on the back. Beth startled. “Christ, Dyl!”
Dylan frowned at Beth’s armful of toiletries, her change of clothes. “Hey,” she whispered, “Go upstairs and use my bathroom.”
Beth pushed off the wall. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course.” Dylan scoffed. “It’s you. I mean, unless you can’t hack it without a mirror…”
“I’ll do my best.” With a smile, Beth wandered through the kitchen and took the back stairs to the loft.
When she’d washed her face and brushed her teeth, she changed into yoga pants and buttoned up her long-sleeved, red checked shirt. She folded her day clothes into a pile on the overnight bag she’d taken up to the loft that morning. Lifting her bag down from the bed, she surveyed the room. She may as well make Dylan’s bed while she was there.
When the covers were pulled up, the pillows arranged, she frowned at the lump at the base of the bed. She yanked out a pair of Dylan’s track pants. Worn thin at the knee she remembered them as those Dylan had worn to bed the night they’d slept together after the festival. Folding them, she crossed the room and reached up to place the pants on a pile of clothes on the high dresser. She stilled a hand on the heap until she was sure the mountain wouldn’t collapse onto Dylan’s small collection of trinkets and perfume bottles, her few photo frames.
Beth scanned her eyes over the two at the front. A wedding portrait of a couple Beth guessed to be Dylan’s parents, and a young boy, grinning in a school uniform, his large school bag half his size. Beth smiled. He looked like Dylan. She’d never mentioned a brother. Perhaps he lived interstate. The perfume bottle at the front was uncapped. Beth stood on her toes to search the surface of the dresser for its top. She plucked it from a pool of hair ties and bobby pins. Before she knew what she was doing, she was lifting the bottle down to inhale the familiar scent.
A soft knock sounded. She swiftly capped the perfume bottle and returned it to its spot. “Come in,” she murmured.
Dylan poked her head around the door. Her cheeks dimpled. She closed the door behind her and pressed her back against it. “Did you tidy up in here?”
“I…I folded my things, and then I made the bed, and…” Her cheeks heated under Dylan’s amused stare. “Did you come up here to change?”
Dylan nodded. “They’re all in the parlour, and Leslie’s in the bathroom. Speaking of Leslie, help me keep an eye on WitchiePoo, okay?”
Beth grinned.
> “I saw her eyeing the dress when I was giving the tour earlier in Sarah’s room and I’ve just got this weird feeling about her.”
In Sarah’s room, a dress lay over the chair in the corner. Whether or not it had ever been Sarah’s was debatable. Elma had always claimed it belonged to Sarah. It was too small to be the second Mrs Blaxland’s, too large to have belonged to Sarah’s stepsister. Beth raised an eyebrow. “You think Leslie would pinch the dress?”
“No, I think she’d do something even weirder.”
“Like what?”
“Like try it on.”
“Are you serious? She’d never fit into it.”
“I think she’d give it a red-hot go.”
As Beth laughed, Dylan beamed, her gaze darting over Beth’s face. “So can I change?”
“Oh, yes.” She reached across the floor and snatched up her slippers. “Sorry, I’ll see you downstairs.”
Beth carried the kitchen heater down to the parlour. They’d turned the central heating on early in the afternoon, but the oil heater added just that extra warmth. As she passed the bottom of the grand staircase and approached the end of the hallway, Beth could hear murmuring in the parlour. Leslie was upstairs, Grace in the kitchen. It was the four from Sydney.
One of the young women: “Dylan’s weird. There’s something about her.”
One of the men: “She’s hot, though.” A slap against skin. “What?” A laugh. “She is.”
The other woman: “Do you think she’s with Beth?”
A male voice: “I don’t know. I don’t reckon Beth swings that way.”
A soft, feminine lilt: “They’re together. You can see it.”
Beth retraced her steps and then, scuffing her feet loudly across the hardwood floor, stepped into the parlour.
The group looked over to the doorway. Caught, they busied themselves arranging their sleeping bags, the two men arguing like cavemen over who could pump their air mattresses faster.
Beth smiled. “Geez, Jake,” she said, watching as he put all his might into working the foot pump. “Dylan ought to give you a discount making you do that.”
His girlfriend Jessica scoffed. “Please, he’s only pumped two singles.” She pointed across the room to three double air mattresses. “Dylan did all three of those. She has legs of steel.”
Beth exhaled harshly. She didn’t need to be reminded. Her eyes landed on the double mattress wedged against the corner wall beside the mannequins, two familiar sleeping bags laid out on top.
“Who has legs of steel?”
Beth turned. Dylan crossed the parlour and shifted the single air mattresses for Grace and Leslie into place like a game of Tetris.
“You do,” Jessica laughed.
At the comment, Dylan had the decency to look embarrassed. Her hands slipped into the pockets of the track pants Beth had folded minutes before, her gaze darting across the parlour before it locked on Beth’s. She nodded down at the heater in Beth’s grasp. “You want me to take care of that?”
Beth shook her head. “I can plug in an oil heater.”
“Can you?” Dylan teased, her gaze shooting between Beth and the socket between the mannequins.
Beth set the heater on its feet before the mannequins. With the plug between her hands, she crawled across the air mattress Dylan had set out for the two of them. Steeling herself, she felt between the mannequin skirts and plugged in the heater.
Here we go…
Palms and knees dipping into the mattress, she reached out and flicked on the heater. The thermostat light switched on. She twisted and locked eyes with Dylan.
See, Dylan’s gaze assured her, I told you it was just the old vacuum.
Before long, Grace and Leslie rejoined the group. “Grace, you want to sleep on the floor next to the loveseat?” Dylan joked.
Grace cringed as she waved her sleeping bag out over her single mattress. She eyed the spot. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll pass.”
“What about you, Jake?” Dylan teased.
He shook his head. “Jess would freak when she gets back from the bathroom.”
His friends egged him on, and caving under the pressure, he shifted the double mattress closer to the vacant block of carpet by the loveseat. On Jessica’s return, she grew wide-eyed, asserting that she would be sleeping on the very edge of their shared mattress, as far from the loveseat as possible.
While the group got comfortable, Dylan dimmed the lights. Beth’s sight adjusted to the moonlight. She exhaled softly and settled back against the wall. It had been a long day, and until the darkness swallowed up the parlour, she hadn’t realised what a toll entertaining their guests had taken.
The mattress sank under Dylan’s weight as she crawled across it to sit against the wall beside Beth. Their arms touched as she propped herself up.
“I thought we were sharing a sleeping bag,” Beth whispered, her socked feet slipping against the skin of their sleeping bags as she tried to warm her toes.
“Disappointed?”
Yes. She leaned forward and unzipped one of the sleeping bags, the floral scent of Dylan’s laundry detergent reaching her as she spread the unzipped bag across both their laps. She tried to focus on the group’s pre-sleep banter, but cross-legged, the heat of Dylan’s thigh pressed against hers. Every so often, she felt Dylan’s eyes on the side of her face as she spoke with the others.
When the night ticked past eleven p.m., conversation died. The room was dark. Dylan shuffled, arranging their bags.
“Do you want to sleep against the wall, or on the edge?” Dylan whispered.
“On the edge, please.”
Even in a room full of strangers, something felt different, more charged than their previous night together. That night, the tension had slackened to friendly. Now, lying there together with the wind howling, she was wired.
“Hey, Dylan?” Jake asked across the room.
Dylan’s voice was huskier than usual. “Yeah?”
“You got a Ouija board?”
Laughter twisted into murmurs, private whispers. Beth shifted. They rolled closer together, only a single corrugated lump of the air mattress bridging the gap.
They both listened as Grace muttered something about a cold spot to the Sydney four. Dylan turned her head and breathed an inaudible laugh, her breath warm on the side of Beth’s face.
Beth chewed at her bottom lip.
“Dylan?” Grace’s voice was soft.
“Yeah?”
“Are cold spots really a thing?”
As she listened to Dylan’s answer, Beth raked her hands though her hair. Reaching upward, she flinched when her touch caught on the lace at the base of Mrs Blaxland’s skirt. Her gaze shot up to the mannequins above them. She drew a deep breath. God, her hair reeked of campfire smoke. Was it bothering Dylan? She gathered the strands to one side, pulling the handful around her neck to keep it from tickling Dylan’s face all night. Suddenly, Dylan’s fingers stilled on her wrist, calming her combing hand. Beth licked her lips. Could Dylan sense that she was nervous?
While Leslie kept the group entertained with an account she’d read on an online haunted-Sydney forum, Beth rolled onto her side, attempting to put some space between them. But Dylan was having none of that. Dylan’s hand slipped lightly across Beth’s sleeping bag to settle around her hip. Beth stiffened as she felt Dylan shift closer, her breath warm on the nape of her neck.
“Hey?” Dylan whispered, for her ears only.
“Mmm?”
“What I had with Rose…it’s not something I think about.” She flexed her hand over Beth’s hip and softened her hold. Her hand soothed higher over the curve of Beth’s hip, then low again. “It was never a thing. I…I don’t think about her.”
The insinuation was clear: I think about you. Arousal spiked in the pit of Beth’s stomach. With an ache growing between her legs, she bit back a whimper. Her pulse roared as Dylan’s hand ran up to her waist again, assuring her, and Beth’s body arched back into
the touch.
Dylan’s response to Beth’s encouragement was instantaneous. With a quiet groan she buried her face in Beth’s neck and shifted closer. She sighed into Beth’s hair, seeming as if this contact, her innocent grip of Beth’s hip, was as maddening for her as it was for Beth. Through Beth’s sleeping shirt, warm lips pressed to her shoulder.
Beth’s eyes shot open. What the hell am I doing?
She lifted the top layer of her cocoon, her knee knocking against Dylan’s as she crawled across the air mattress and felt for her jumper and slippers.
“What’s wrong?” Dylan whispered.
Conversation on the other side of the room seemed to stall.
Beth swallowed, her body a livewire. “Nothing’s wrong. I just need some air.”
As she grabbed her jumper from the end of the bed, she could feel Grace quickly avert her gaze.
Beth left the room, tugging on her slippers as she walked quickly down the hallway. She unlocked the back door and pushed it open.
The bonfire had shrunken, but its low flames were still warm. She drew a deep breath and tossed on a few sticks. When had this wanting begun? When had the longing to simply be with Dylan intensified to this? What had been mild curiosity and easy attraction for the first two months had suddenly developed into so much more. Beth had never felt so completely drawn to another woman, especially not in such a short time.
Over the crackling fire, Beth didn’t notice Dylan had joined her until she was standing beside her. They were quiet. Beth turned her head slightly, just enough to see the way the firelight turned Dylan’s hair golden. She licked her lips and looked away.
“You’ve been out here for a while,” Dylan murmured.
“It just felt kind of hot in there…”
“Right.” Dylan reached down and picked up one of the poker sticks and tossed it into the flaming pit. “I wanted to give you space but I needed to make sure you were okay.”
Beth looked over. Dylan’s eyes were glassy, from the smoke or fatigue, Beth wasn’t sure. “I don’t know what just happened,” Beth whispered, her eyes on Dylan’s lips. “I’m sorry. I don’t,” she paused, “I don’t know…”
Where There's a Will Page 14