This time it worked.
For now.
“I thought I saw a woman this morning,” she admitted.
“A woman?” Detective Davidson raised his eyebrows.
Heidi nodded. “Staring in my window. But, I looked away for a second and when I turned back, she was gone.”
“For heaven’s sake.” Vicki sighed and rolled her eyes.
Brad held his palm toward his wife to shush her. “Did you get a good look at her? What did she look like?”
Oh boy. Heidi shrugged. “It was almost—she was a ghost.”
She saw the officers exchange glances.
“I mean, it was that fast. It was creepy and I—I was freaked out. So, I left. I wanted to see my mom in town, and I had things to do anyway.”
“You didn’t call the police?” Officer Tate asked, no accusation in his voice, just a curious quirk to his mouth.
“Call them for what?” Heidi responded. “There wasn’t anyone there.”
“Did you check?” Detective Davidson asked.
“You mean look out the window?” Heidi saw Vicki take a step forward. She could sense the warmth from Rhett’s arm. He’d long since dropped his grip, but he hadn’t moved away. “No. I mean, sure I looked out the window. But I didn’t go around the lodge to confront anyone. I figured—”
Nope. Best to stop there. One mention that Heidi had even entertained the idea that it had been a spirit, a ghost or apparition in the midmorning light, and Vicki would want Heidi to see her psychologist again. This had nothing to do with her mind, but everything to do with that blasted doppelgänger from the photo that had Heidi seeing sideways.
“You think it could be—” Officer Tate’s question was cut off by Detective Davidson, who held his hand up and stopped the man mid-sentence.
“Could be what?” Heidi asked.
Detective Davidson side-eyed his partner, and his lips pressed together as if he didn’t believe a word of what he was about to say. “It’s nothing, Ms. Lane. Just an old legend in the area about a woman from way back when that supposedly haunted these parts.”
“What? That Misty Wayfair legend?” Vicki rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh.
“Misty Wayfair?” Heidi shot a glance at Brad, then at Rhett. For the first time, a tiny smile tipped Rhett’s mouth. Or maybe not. As quick as she’d thought she’d seen it, it was gone. Like the image at her window. “Who’s Misty Wayfair?”
She remembered the name, scrawled on the back of the photograph. Now it made her skin crawl.
Detective Davidson leveled an irritated glare at Officer Tate. “It’s nothing to be concerned about. Ghosts don’t toss a room and leave threatening messages on mirrors. Well, perhaps a poltergeist, but . . .” He gave his head a quick shake as if he was losing it and rubbed his eyes. “So, here’s what needs to happen. Doors should be locked. Alarm systems won’t work here ’cause you’re too far out for Wi-Fi, right?”
Brad nodded.
Detective Davidson responded with his own. “Thought so. You may want to consider putting in one based off your landline. Of course, this whole thing may have been a prank by some local kids. Who knows? Definitely keep your doors locked from now on, windows too. We’ll keep an eye out on the place, ask around, see if there’s anything else we can find. But for now, the best thing to do is just be sure the place is as secure as you can make it.”
“Who is Misty Wayfair?” Heidi demanded.
The room fell silent. Well, it should fall silent, Heidi figured, because her voice had come out shrill and adamant. Even Vicki had stalled the lifting of her teacup halfway to her mouth.
When no one jumped to answer, Officer Tate gave his partner a hesitant look before responding. It seemed he was the more superstitious of the two.
“She was murdered back in the late 1800s. Story has it, Misty Wayfair is seen from time to time these last hundred years or so. She runs barefoot in the woods, looking for a way out. It’s like she’s trying to escape.”
“Escape? Escape from where?” Heidi took in the faces around the room. None of them seemed to believe the story, and yet no one would look her in the eye.
Except for Rhett.
He answered her with the blunt honesty she’d both wanted and feared.
“The asylum.”
“The asylum?” Heidi responded in disbelief.
Officer Tate had found his voice again. “There used to be an asylum in these parts. Way back when. They say Misty Wayfair’s ghost somehow got locked up with the patients after she was murdered. When the asylum closed, and the patients were dispersed back in the twenties, Misty’s spirit got trapped there. She never left.”
“So they say,” Heidi finished for him, an icy chill traveling down her spine.
“So they say,” Officer Tate affirmed.
Chapter 10
Thea
Did you hear the wailing last night?”
Mrs. Brummel’s question made the spoon freeze halfway to Thea’s mouth. She stared over the silver at the woman pouring her a glass of milk for breakfast. The boardinghouse matron didn’t seem bothered or unnerved. It had been all Thea could do to keep her wits about her after returning to her room last night. She’d tried to convince herself that she’d been caught between that foggy world of the river and the forest, and that the vision she’d seen across the river had been a mistake. An illusion.
But she hadn’t heard wailing.
“No. I didn’t.”
“Oh, you lucky thing!” Mrs. Brummel paused, milk pitcher hoisted in midair, her right hand propped on her hip. She reviewed Thea with her sharp gaze, and the neckline of her black dress rose so high and so tight around her throat, it seemed as if it would choke the woman if she even tried to swallow. “That ridiculous cat.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue.
Thea brought her spoon back down to rest on the edge of her bowl of oatmeal, Mrs. Brummel’s only breakfast option at the boardinghouse so far.
“A cat?” she choked out.
Mrs. Brummel’s thin eyebrow jaunted upward, and her lips pursed. “Martin Amos’s cat, Pip. I daresay, that thing could raise the dead with its caterwauling. He’s looking for a female cat, no doubt.”
A hot blush flooded Thea’s face. She pushed the bowl away from her and tossed the napkin from her lap onto the tabletop. “I’ve much to do today.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Brummel was nosy.
“At the portrait studio.” Thea supplied an answer, though she didn’t need to. What seemed like moments later, Thea had gathered her belongings for the day and made haste from the boardinghouse. She was more than capable of chitchat when it served a purpose, but discussing the romantic adventures of a feline was not something Thea wanted or could focus her attention on.
She shuddered as the toe of her shoe ventured onto the road that split the main street of town. A large wagon rumbled past, with a wave of a brawny hand from the logger sitting high atop the wagon seat. This street really was, for all sakes and purposes, the only street of interest to the public. But she couldn’t help her vision straying to the borders of the forest across the river. The bare legs and feet, the obscure face, the long, dark hair . . . no. She had seen someone in the woods. It had been no illusion. She couldn’t shake the suspicions that she’d caught a glimpse of Mrs. Brummel’s Misty Wayfair ghost. The murdered woman who haunted the Coyles after Mathilda Kramer had married Misty’s lover, Fergus Coyle. Was it for revenge that she haunted them? A hatred for anyone bearing the Coyle name? Thea couldn’t shake the story from her mind.
“A spirit searching is a horrible thing. They haunt until they find rest. Some never do. If there’s something unsettled between them and another, they’ll wander for eternity.”
Mr. Mendelsohn’s words still raked a cold set of fingers up Thea’s spine. This awareness of the afterlife was something she wished she had not been educated in. She’d never seen evidence to support Mr. Mendelsohn’s suspicions. Never a whisper in the night, never a thump or a
thud. No articles moved when no one was around. Nothing but the eerie coldness a person felt when they sensed something—someone.
Mrs. Mendelsohn had countered that Thea would position herself on the wrong side of God were she to take up a study of the spirits. That God had banished King Saul for no less, and it was sheer witchery.
Reaching the corner, Thea moved to round it and head toward the back entrance of the studio. It would be unlocked by seven-thirty promptly each morning, Mr. Amos had instructed. The front door, not until nine.
A movement startled Thea, and she palmed the side of the building, freezing in her steps. The lean frame of Simeon Coyle emerged from the studio. He paused and nodded, speaking to someone—more likely than not, Mr. Amos. His left hand clutched a black satchel, worn with scuffed leather at the corners. Large enough to carry his photograph album, or perhaps photographs on cards Mr. Amos had already developed and set.
She blinked. Simeon lifted his hand in a slight wave and turned toward the river. Not toward town, as one might assume, although he was probably not well received there. But neither did he go in the direction of the Coyle home, which was located almost halfway to the main base of the Kramer Logging post.
After a moment’s hesitation, Thea decided to follow him. Regardless of the uneasiness that spread through her at the sight of him dodging the edge of town and heading toward the one-lane bridge that spanned the river, Thea couldn’t put aside the questions rising in her mind. The Coyles were, as Mrs. Brummell had stated, a strange family, and now only two of them remained. If they were being haunted by a ghost, was this why Simeon darted around as though trying to avoid attention? And, she couldn’t just ask Mr. Amos what Simeon did, or about his coming and going from the portrait studio. The old man had made it quite clear the first day that his association with Simeon Coyle was to remain unquestioned and unspoken of.
But remembering Mary Coyle’s face as she’d stared at it through the lens of her camera, and seeing the peculiar photographs Simeon had in his album, Thea had to know more. If there was one thing she did share with Mr. Mendelsohn, it was the deep sensing that someone was trying to speak, to surface.
Perhaps, in an odd way, Misty Wayfair had tried to gain Thea’s attention last night. Before vanishing and making Thea half believe she was losing her mind.
Something did not match up.
Not Simeon Coyle. Most definitely not the death of his sister. Not for the last time did Thea frown at the idea that one simply did not die from being melancholy.
She froze in mid-step as she reached the bridge.
Melancholy. A strange memory assaulted her. One that hadn’t risen before. She’d been little, and her mother had seemed so large. Crawling onto her lap, her dress tangling around her feet, Thea recalled reaching for her mother’s face. Staring into empty eyes. Eyes that had lost their life. As a child, she didn’t know why. Melancholic eyes.
“Mama?”
No response.
“Mama, I’m hungry.”
Still nothing.
Thea reached for her mother’s face. Small hands cupping both cheeks, turning it, until her mother seemed to awaken for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” her mother had breathed. A fingertip touched Thea’s nose. “Your mama is sad. So very sad.”
“Why?” Thea asked.
Her mother shook her head. “I don’t know why. I never know why.”
Thea gripped the rail of the bridge. Simeon’s form moved farther ahead of her.
She should turn back. Back to the portrait studio and Mr. Amos. She’d told him she would assist a sitting later that morning. A family with three small children—and a dog, no less. But what did a soul do when its very core churned with the unsettled motion of the river that flowed beneath this very bridge?
Simeon’s long strides took him down the narrow dirt lane and into the woods. Bluish hues painted a thickly wooded picture ahead of her. A place that in fairy tales would hearken images of the gingerbread house and the witch that ate little children for dinner. She glanced over her shoulder, toward Pleasant Valley. The steeple of the Methodist church and the cross at its tip seemed to cry for her to go back, to retreat.
But she couldn’t.
It was as if the Pied Piper had begun to play his tune, and Thea could only follow.
Chapter 11
It rose from the middle of the forest like a solitary prison only a mile or so out of town. Three stories in a rectangular form, made of brick with no embellishments other than an iron-rail fence bordering its yard. Cut from the woods, the clearing was remarkable, and the trees butted up not far from the fence line as though they wanted to grow over and into the yard but dared not. Moss and mold had turned some of the brickwork dark green with age. Windows lined all three stories. Ten across and three down. They were glass-plated with four panes each, the grid a simple cross of dark lines. Behind them, inside, were bars. Horizontal lines that silently said if one were to enter, one would not leave by way of a window. The roof was shingled and dark. Everything about the building was dark.
Thea’s feet grew heavy, and she stopped her subtle trail of Simeon Coyle. She rested her left palm against the trunk of an oak tree that rose high above her. Old leaves blanketed the forest floor, along with pine needles. There was some underbrush, but mostly the carcasses of rotting logs long fallen from their woodsy sentinel. A pungent smell filled Thea’s senses, like the mixture of damp, fresh air and the mold of fallen autumn leaves. But she ignored the eerie beauty of the woods and the imposing simplicity of the building in front of her.
It was Simeon she watched.
He reached the gates, which rose at least a foot above his head. They opened to his touch, the sound of iron hinges groaning their protest. His steps were slow but not intimidated. He seemed neither anticipatory to enter nor frightened to leave. Rather, Thea saw the downward slope of his shoulders and it reminded her of resignation.
Simeon closed the gates behind him, latching them shut. There was no key turned into the gate lock, Thea noted. She could follow, if she wished.
So she did.
Tiptoeing forward, she strained to make out words painted on a green sign that hung over the double doors of the building’s front entrance. She noticed that Simeon turned right and away from them, his steps leading him across the lawn toward an outbuilding in the distance. When she arrived at the gates, Thea reached out. The instant her gloveless hand curled around the iron bar, something inside of her recoiled. She dropped her hand.
An invisible sort of weight settled on her chest and made it hard to breathe. Thea stared through the bars, narrowing her eyes to make out the sign’s thin script, written in dark brown lettering almost impossible to read against the green background.
Valley Heights Asylum.
She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them, only to read the words again. An asylum? In the woods outside of Pleasant Valley? But Mrs. Brummell had said nothing of it, and wouldn’t that have been of far more import than a street dividing the town into denominational sections?
Thea took a step back. She would not enter. No. She’d heard of sanatoriums. Places where—
“It’s a place for the mentally insane.”
Thea’s mouth dropped open in a silent scream. She spun on her heels at the voice behind her.
“Rose!” She snapped her mouth shut as she took in the woman who, it seemed, had followed her as she had Simeon. Only Rose wasn’t secretive in her approach. Her eyes were gentle, questioning, with a slight raise of her dark eyebrows. A lucid but sad glow in her sapphire eyes.
“Were you following my brother?” she asked. There wasn’t accusation in her voice, and, if she didn’t appear so pale and worn from grief, Thea would almost have wondered if a small laugh had tilted her lips.
“No!” Thea denied. Then she thought better of it. “Well, I—perhaps.”
Rose looked beyond her, at the asylum, her eyes taking in the breadth of it. “When family brings a relative here,” she m
urmured, “they don’t intend on returning for visits or pleasantries.”
She wanted to ask why Simeon was here, and even more so, why Rose. Instead, Thea turned and followed Rose’s line of sight. The building was a prison then. Of the worst sort perhaps. She glanced back at Rose.
Rose sniffed and adjusted her grip on the handbag she clutched. Her hands were gloved in black, and the black dress she wore was simple but made her features stand out so beautifully, so pale and etched, that Thea could hardly look away.
“Simeon is the groundskeeper,” Rose explained. “Among other things.” Then a tiny laugh did escape her, but not one that entertained any sort of humor. “It’s the only work he could find. Pleasant Valley is . . .”
“Yes,” Thea finished for Rose. There was no need for the woman to explain. She’d experienced enough of Pleasant Valley already to understand why the woman let her sentence hang.
Rose sucked in a deep breath. The determined sort that matched the squaring of her shoulders and the upward tilt of her chin. “This is where Dr. Ackerman works.”
The name sounded vaguely familiar.
Rose met Thea’s questioning eyes.
“You met him at—my sister’s funeral.”
Oh! Yes. Thea remembered now.
“Would you like to come in with me? The hospital doesn’t approve of random visitors, but they’ll let you in if you know me.” Rose invited her almost as if one would offer entrance into one’s home.
Thea didn’t miss a tiny flicker in Rose’s eyes. Hesitation perhaps, or shyness. She wasn’t sure. She certainly wasn’t going to ask why Rose had earned the right to enter.
While she had no innate desire to pass through those iron gates and walk the stone path to the front door of this place, another thought festered in the back of Thea’s mind. A memory of her dinner at the Amos house when Mrs. Amos had inquired of Thea’s mother and Mr. Amos had abruptly changed the subject just as his wife was about to offer a suggestion.
Perhaps this was it. Mrs. Amos’s suggestion. Her mother, not known by a longtime citizen of Pleasant Valley, was perhaps . . .
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