by Regan Forest
“This describes the situation. It represents creating new atmosphere, meeting with an old friend. That must be me.”
No, it must be Cody, Ellen thought, and said nothing. She drew a second card.
“The Sun. Oh, dear, it’s reversed. That means uncertainty, loneliness, depression from loss of a relationship.”
Ellen felt uneasy. “Swell. Maybe we shouldn’t do this, Mere.”
“Hey, it can get better. This isn’t the entire story. Here, see? The next card is the Lovers. A man and woman bonded in love. This placement is hope and aspiration.”
Ellen sat numbly as Meredith continued, turning card after card. Nine of Pentacles, reversed: poor judgment. Eight of Swords: trapped by insecurity and fear. Ten of Cups, reversed: lack of fulfillment. Queen of Swords: a strong, unyielding woman; barrenness, separation.
Meredith seemed to be getting nervous, as jittery as Ellen. “I’ll admit this doesn’t look very good as far as your decision to leave,” she said. “This is...weird.” She looked up. “But we have to keep going because the last three cards are the most crucial and could be more hopeful.”
Ellen sighed and reached for the eighth card. “The Fool? Oh, terrific. What does this one mean?”
“It’s your attitude in the matter. It portrays an imaginative mind but a misinterpretation of the environment.”
“What? A misinterpretation of my environment? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Cards don’t kid. They merely inform. The next one will be significant. It will reveal your hopes and fears.”
When Meredith caught a glimpse of the ninth card, she sucked in her breath. The picture was a burning tower in a raging storm with a full moon shining. “The Tower! Damn!”
“It means disaster, doesn’t it?” Ellen wheezed.
Meredith’s voice became very soft. “It represents a disruption, or failure, but failure that can lead to a new life.”
“Are all the cards so horrible?”
“No, but yours happen to be less than encouraging.”
“The last card has to be better than the Tower.”
“The last card gives the outcome of your question.”
Ellen sighed heavily. “I guess we might as well look.”
Below nine swords, a woman covered her face in despair as she leaned over what might be a casket. Ellen stared at it in horror, then looked up at Meredith. “Well?”
“I have to be truthful,” her friend said hesitantly. “This card represents disappointment, loss of self-assurance, and disturbing dreams. It’s not a positive message.”
“So what should I take all this to mean? In relation to my question?”
“It’s pretty clear, isn’t it? What happens will be disappointing, not what you expect. In fact, Ellen, the cards are warning you not to go to New York.”
“But that’s ridiculous.” Even as she said it, Ellen felt a surge of fear. Meredith had turned almost white. Yet she must have had misgivings beforehand or she wouldn’t have suggested consulting the cards.
“It’s not ridiculous and you know it. You need to think about this.”
Ellen was near tears. “It’s not as if I had choices.”
“There are always choices.” Meredith touched the Fool card. “This one is damned interesting. Misinterpreting your environment.”
“Only a fool could do that.”
“I dunno, buddy. I’d like to be positive but this is upsetting. How long will the three gowns take to finish?”
“Two to three weeks, at my present rate. I work long hours. I’ve turned down offers to create two more.”
“You won’t leave town before I get back. Jeff and I are leaving for two weeks in Seattle. He has some kind of horse seminar and I’m going along. Have you had any time to see Cody?”
“Some, but I resist it. The more I see him, the more I’ll miss him. It’s just...too hard.”
“He can’t be very happy about that.”
“No. He works long hours himself and has all sorts of projects, but he’ll always make time for me. I’m the one who’s being difficult. I’m not equipped to handle all these new emotions.”
“Your life has suddenly become pretty complicated. And I’m not helping, am I? With this Tarot reading. Damn it, why don’t you stick around here awhile longer, see what develops with Cody?”
“After knowing me all my life you’re suggesting—?”
“I go by the cards,” Meredith said. “The cards don’t lie.”
13
IN THE LIGHT FROM A window high in the mansion stairwell the shadow of a bird fluttered against the wall. Ellen drew back in alarm, filled with unease and not wanting to climb any farther into the mysterious house. Some unseen presence, however, was impelling her to go higher.
A sound of breathing was so near. The presence horrified her, but she couldn’t stop herself from following it. She looked back into the darkness below, thinking she heard a dim echo of footsteps. Where was Cody? Why didn’t he appear? He should be here, like before, but he wasn’t. She was alone with the ghost.
This didn’t feel like the other dreams. The ghost was too close...too real. Frightened, she wanted to call out for Cody, but something stopped her.
She turned and gasped. The filmy figure of a woman floated in the stairwell behind her. The ghost wore veils, white and gauzy and wafting in a breeze that wasn’t there. Her face was indistinct. Ellen felt her pulse throb in her throat; her knees trembled. The ghost hovered, making escape down the stairs impossible; there was no way to go but up.
She reached the topmost landing from which a pillared archway led into the ballroom where she and Cody had danced in another dream. Opposite the arch was a small open door revealing a stairway to the attic. The ghost drifted toward the ballroom entry. It was as if Ellen were being herded like a sheep to slaughter, but as dismayed as she was, a curious excitement was pushing her. Something was up there. Something important.
The stairway was dark and steep and extremely narrow. Halfway up, Ellen thought she heard Cody call from somewhere below in the depths of the house. Immensely relieved, she called back. Her voice echoed against the confining walls. Turning, she wanted to race down to find him, but the ghost was behind her. Light illuminated the eerie white form although there was no source of light in the stairwell. What did the ghost want? Why did it keep moving upward, blocking her way down? “There’s no place left but the attic!” Ellen breathed, in a vain attempt to argue with the phantom.
She called Cody’s name again before she rushed the remaining distance up, because the figure was getting so close she could feel a chill and smell an odor of sweet perfume. The stairwell was closing in like a cage!
A low-ceilinged attic opened up before her. Light flowed in dusty streams from a high window. Old furniture and trunks and boxes were stored here amid dust and cobwebs.
Suddenly the ghost was in front of her, moving through the shadows toward a far corner where it hovered and shivered, as if caught in a chill wind. The sight was so macabre, Ellen shuddered. Did it want to be followed now? To that far, dark corner? No, I can’t, she thought. This was the ghost’s abode, and Ellen had no intention of remaining in it. Now was her chance to bolt back down the stairs. With eyes still fixed on the apparition, she backed up slowly and turned to run. But a shadow filled the doorway.
Cody!
Thank heaven!
His voice came like a sweet, deep echo. “Ellen! What is it? What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
She tried to run to him and couldn’t. Her feet wouldn’t move. Her voice caught in her throat with a choke. “Cody! Do you see it?”
Brushing aside cobwebs, he took a step forward, into a beam of light where disturbed dust sparkles were dancing. In that light was also the brightness of his eyes turning from blue to silver. His gaze was fixed on the far corner and the ghost. What was he seeing there?
Abruptly, Ellen awoke. She looked around in the darkened room, confused. What had wakened her she didn’t know.
The only sounds were those of night crickets. She had wakened too soon; the dream was incomplete. What had Cody seen?
She sat up stiffly, trying to shake off all the images and sensations of the dream, but they wouldn’t leave. She leaned back against the headboard and stared at the dark ceiling. It was the same ghost she had seen in the window when she was a kid! That same filmy thing floating behind the upper windows.
The ghost’s will had been compelling her to go to the attic. In the dream, Ellen had been unable to go against that will. Frustrated, she threw aside the blanket, found her robe and headed down to the kitchen. Cody had wanted to come by last night after he got off at the radio station, but she had insisted she had to work late on the gowns. If he had been here, would she have dreamed of the ghost?
Why not? He had been lying beside her when she dreamed they were dancing in the blue ballroom. Overcome with a new emptiness, Ellen began to pace, wanting something desperately, not knowing what. She picked up an apple from a bowl on the counter, washed it under the tap, and then slammed it into the sink in a frustrated burst of anger. Damn it! Why the mansion? Why always the mansion? What was it about that empty house that haunted her—literally haunted her? Why wouldn’t it leave her alone?
The ghost—was it real? Had she really seen it those many years ago? “This is too much!” she said aloud. “This has gone on long enough! I want to find out what this is all about! Somehow I’ve got to get into that house, whether Meredith thinks it’s bad luck or not!”
* * *
JUST LIKE IN THE PAST—so often in the past—Ellen found herself in front of her own haunted house gazing up at the small windows under the roof. The ghost’s attic. It would be dark in the house, but as long as it was daytime, some light would shine in through the high windows. If she was going up there, it had to be while there was still daylight.
There had to be a way.
Anticipation of the unknown stiffened her whole body as Ellen made her way up the front steps and tried the door. As expected, it was locked. Looking to make sure no one was around, she circled the house and tested the back door; it, too, was locked. She walked along the side, brushing aside weeds in old flower beds, feeling strange to be so near the house at last.
A basement window would be the only way. Stepping cautiously to make sure she wouldn’t scare up a snake, Ellen found a broken window. The grass was pressed as if someone had been here recently. Kids, maybe. After three hard tugs, the window opened far enough to crawl through!
She let herself down into the depths of the big house and looked around intrepidly. Wires lined the space under the ceiling, strung for drying clothes; otherwise there wasn’t much here other than a wooden table, two iron lawn chairs, a wheelbarrow, and a wall of closed cupboards.
She hurried up the stairs to the kitchen, a small room with white-painted cabinets, and rushed from there to a center hall.
Standing there in the front foyer, gazing into the living room, Ellen gasped in surprise. The house was still partly furnished. Yet it looked nothing like it did in her dreams. Although the layout was amazingly the same, the furniture was plain, bordering on shabby. In her childhood imagination, it had been so magnificent, with beautifully carved antiques and splendorous fixtures. And in the dreams it had been the same.
Her disappointment was unreasonable, Ellen scolded herself. After all, who would leave priceless furnishings here to gather dust, year after year? This was just old stuff that wouldn’t be worth trying to sell piece by piece, stuff Carolyn Meullar had no use for. It was not like in her dreams. Yet how did she know the layout of the house when she had never been here?
Ellen walked from room to room in fascination. Behind the shabbiness of the furniture and the layers of dust was a solemn, imposing beauty. Stately pride. It was as wondrous as she had imagined, because she could see beyond the neglect to the possibilities. Something was vaguely welcoming, and something was more than a little frightening. The ghost...was it here?
It was here! Ellen knew she wasn’t alone. She could run back to the basement window and get away, but the energy of the house—or of something in it—held her captive. She had come because she had to know what her dream meant; and she was going to find out, no matter what. This left no choice but to go to the attic.
The oak-railed staircase with its high window sending down shafts of light was exactly like in her dream. The window reminded her that if she wasted any more time, evening would bring darkness.
Her footsteps made no sound on the worn carpet of the stairway as she forced herself to begin the climb. She reached the landing where Cody had appeared in her first dream. The mysterious echoes of the house were unnerving. Her own breathing was too loud. By the time Ellen reached the third floor, her hands were ice cold and her heart was thumping. Glancing behind again and again, she half expected to see the ghost appear as it had last night, but the stairway was empty.
Still, she felt it. There was something or someone here, and the feeling was strongest on the third floor. Propelled by the ghost’s energy, Ellen turned left at the landing and found the door to the attic stairs. Not wanting to linger on the narrow stairway, she ran to the top....
The attic looked exactly as she had “seen” it, and this was astounding. How could she have known? Ellen stepped into the shadowy room. She turned slowly toward the corner. The ghost was there—hovering as before! Ellen drew a startled breath, but the apparition was not as frightening as it might have been, had she not expected it. Like in her dream, it floated in filmy white veils. A woman? Ellen’s fear eased; the ghost wasn’t threatening, after all.
Trembling, she took a step forward, and the ghost moved slightly away as if it didn’t want to discourage her from approaching the mysterious corner. It had led her here.
She sensed movement in the doorway behind her. Ellen’s heart jumped. What if someone found her trespassing? She turned around.
“Cody!”
“Ellen?”
“What on earth...are you doing here?”
As stunned as she, he had not moved from the entry. “Here in the attic? I might ask you the same—” His voice stopped abruptly. His face registered astonishment. “The ghost!”
Staring at the filmy spirit, he said incredulously, “I dreamed this!”
Ellen reeled with dizzy disbelief. “What did you say?”
He brushed aside cobwebs and strode into the empty space between them. To her astonishment, he addressed the ghost directly, as he had done before, when he couldn’t see it. “Who are you?”
The apparition merely stared.
Ellen touched his arm. “Cody, did you say you dreamed this?”
“Yes, exactly this. We were here—you and I and...her.”
“Last night?” she asked in a high, weak voice. “You dreamed last night that we were here?”
“Yeah. I thought there was something important in this attic, because the dream was so real.... I felt compelled to—” He stopped and moved his eyes from the ghost to her, remembering Mrs. Volken’s warning about Ellen coming into this house. “Why are you here?”
Her voice broke. “I dreamed it. Last night. The same thing.”
“My God!”
Neither of them spoke for a full thirty seconds. In that time the light in the attic brightened as a cloud moved out from over the sun. Ellen fought for composure, wiping at a tear on her cheek. Finally she choked out, “The same dream?”
“In the dream I came in and found you exactly as I did now. And you turned around and said my name, just like now. Was it a dream or a premonition? Or what?”
“I don’t...know! Cody, I don’t know! That...ghost! It doesn’t move. It just stays there, right where it—”
“Where it led you,” he finished when her voice halted. “I woke thinking there’s some secret here. Did you come through a basement window?”
“Yes...”
“When I saw the window was open, I wondered for a split second if you were here, and then forced the id
ea out of my head.” Cody said this as he was inching forward. “Why this corner? There’s nothing here!”
She was right behind him. “But there must be. Why else would we both dream it and feel it so strongly? Why else would the ghost linger? Why wouldn’t it disappear?”
Looking constantly over their shoulders toward the hovering spirit, they knelt down, and Cody ran his hands along the wall. “Here’s a loose board.”
Ellen watched while he tested the board to see how much it would move. As it rotated sideways on a single nail, the adjoining board moved also, to reveal something solid behind it. He reached in and felt a handle.
Ellen gasped. “There is something hidden! The ghost did deliberately lead us to it!” When she turned around, the specter was gone.
“No question about that,” he said. With a yank, he pulled out a small, scratched leather suitcase.
She muttered, “She has left...I think.”
He brushed dust from the case. “Maybe now that we’ve found what she wanted us to find, she doesn’t have to stay.”
Ellen rubbed her eyes. “A ghost conveying messages in dreams? Oh, it’s too much to...” She watched him examine the rusty lock. “What is it? Can you get it open?”
It took some jimmying to get the sides to part. Silence filled in with the dimming light as he pulled it open to reveal the contents: a few papers, a leather-bound notebook, and a box tied with a blue ribbon.
Ellen lifted out the notebook and opened it, moving it to catch the dim light from the window. “It looks like a diary of some kind. There’s a date. ‘February 17, 1902.’ And a name. ‘Iris Whitfield.’”
Mrs. Volken’s warnings no longer were important to Cody. Ellen was safe as long as he was here. He was supposed to be here, with her. The dream was proof of it. He was searching through the papers, which appeared to be legal documents. The light was too dim to read the fine print. “The writer of the diary must have hidden this case,” he said. “Well hidden. For a reason.”
“Maybe we’ll figure it out when we read what the diary and these papers have to say.” Ellen flipped through the pages of the notebook. Each page was handwritten, carefully. Near the back of the diary, the handwriting was more hurried, less precise. She said, “It’s too dark to read it.”