“She’s adapted well and can hold her own alongside any of us.”
Heidi nodded. It was the safest thing to do.
Rhett gave her a sideways look. “But routine and processes are important. So is not talking a mile a minute about random crap.”
Got it.
No talking.
Heidi bit the inside of her bottom lip and widened her eyes at Archie, who stared at her with yellow orbs as if trying to read her mind.
She decided to try another approach.
“I’m sorry.” The words came out in a whisper. Mostly because those pesky emotions crowded her throat and didn’t let her voice it louder.
Rhett steered the truck down a side street.
“I get that you feel bad, but . . .”
The word hung between them.
But.
But, we don’t know you.
But, you just had your room busted into and graffitied.
But, you’re irresponsible.
But, you’re reckless.
But, you have no life.
Heidi looked out the windshield as they pulled into the lot of the repair shop.
Rhett’s Auto Shop.
She shrank into her seat. And there was the rotten cherry on top of old, frosted ice cream. She thought Rhett worked for her brother-in-law, Brad. Apparently it was the other way around.
Heidi gave her head a subtle shake as she reached for the door handle. It would be best to get out of the truck now. Away from Rhett Crawford.
Heck. It would be best to get out of Pleasant Valley.
Heidi stopped at the local grocery store, Vicki’s list on an app in her phone. Basics like bananas, eggs, milk, and the main staple of all Wisconsin refrigerators, cheddar cheese. She eyed the front dented fender of her car as she rounded it and headed for the store. Apparently, Rhett hadn’t charged her labor for the repairs—which was odd considering he didn’t like her—and he’d allowed Brad to fix it at cost for parts. But he’d also made it clear that body work wasn’t going to be part of any deal. Not that she had the cash to pay for it. She’d tossed the invoice for the parts onto the front passenger seat. It stared up at her with its big, black numbers. A couple hundred dollars too much to begin with, and with the deductible on her insurance, that wasn’t going to be her saving grace.
Inside the store, she began piling the items into a grocery cart. Vicki might have given her a list, but she hadn’t given her cash or a credit card. Apparently, this was to be one of Heidi’s contributions for staying at Lane Lodge.
This and the texted reminder to: Stop and see Mom again today. I can’t make it, and we try to visit her daily.
Heidi reached for a group of organic bananas, then thought better of it and opted for the cheaper bananas that probably had been doused in pesticides.
No one will talk to me, Mom’s letter had read. It’s time. The thoughts are driving me mad.
This from a woman who, according to Vicki, received daily visits? Heidi’s breath quivered as she sucked it in and rolled her cart beyond the bananas.
Mad. The handwriting on her mirror was an ironic and disturbing follow-up to the letter from her mother, which had compelled her to come to Pleasant Valley in the first place. If the woman wasn’t kept in a memory-care facility with locked doors and around-the-clock surveillance, a strange part of Heidi would be suspicious that Mom had broken into the lodge and lipstick-wrote on her mirror.
But to what end? And why the recurring theme of madness—so not a politically correct term anymore, by any means—and, if Heidi were being honest, insulting.
She gripped the handle of the cart tighter to quell the tremble in her hands. She looked around for the self-checkout but only saw six aisles with three of them manned by cashiers. One of them was an older woman, with permed gray hair and wire-framed glasses. She smiled and waved Heidi over. Solid, small-town friendliness.
“Hello, dear!” she greeted, reaching for the dozen eggs Heidi put on the belt.
Heidi nodded and continued unloading her items.
“You’re new here. I’ve not met you before.”
Heidi mustered a smile. This was a good distraction. If only her family were half as welcoming. “Heidi Lane. My sister owns—”
“Lane Lodge! Yes! Brad and Vicki! Such lovely people. We go to church together. You’ll have to tell them Jean said hi.”
“I will,” Heidi nodded. Lovely people. The description didn’t match Vicki. Brad, sure—he’d always been nice. But Vicki?
“Mylanta.” Jean clucked her tongue as she bleeped the UPC printed on a loaf of bread. “It has sure been a rough one this past year. What with your mom, Loretta, and all? You never know how fast dementia is going to take one’s memories.” She bleeped a bottle of ketchup. “I know it’s just about eaten your sister alive. How are you handling things, dear?”
Heidi reached behind her head and pulled her hair back into a ponytail minus the hair band, then released it to fall in blond-and-blue strands. She wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Never mind.” Jean waved her off and hit a button on the register. “I’ve no filter. I’m sure it’s been just as hard for you.”
She quoted the total, and Heidi looked for the chip reader on the credit-card terminal.
“Just swipe it, honey. We don’t have those newfangled things yet.”
Heidi did so.
“Anyways,” Jean chattered on, “are you here for good or just short term?”
Heidi waited for her receipt to print. “I’m—not sure.”
“Makes sense.” Jean nodded, even though it really didn’t. She ripped the receipt from its feeder. “Well, you need to take some time and make sure you see the sights too. I know Pleasant Valley isn’t all that much, but Vicki will keep you occupied with stuff to do until the good Lord comes, if you’re not careful.”
Heidi laughed out loud this time. “That she will.”
Jean gave her a knowing smile. “Yes. So, you make sure you see our three sites of interest. There are the Copper Falls about forty minutes north of here. Beautiful waterfalls and a nice, easy hike along the trails. You’ll want to see Statue Park. An old resident of Pleasant Valley made metal statues with all sorts of recycled bits of things. Sort of artsy-fartsy, I guess you’d say. And then, Valley Heights Asylum.” Jean nodded and gave Heidi a mysterious grin. “That place is as haunted as they come. Have you heard the story of Misty Wayfair?”
“I’ve heard of her.” Heidi reached for the plastic handles on the grocery bags and lowered them into the cart. “But, I’m not real familiar with her, or the asylum.”
Even so, she was interested. Very interested. She hadn’t been in Pleasant Valley for more than three full days and Misty Wayfair’s name was popping up everywhere, and now the second mention of the asylum.
“Oh!” Jean gave Heidi a wave of her hand. “Well, then, before you go snooping around the asylum’s remains, you need to see if Connie Crawford—have you met the Crawfords yet?—will have you over to meet her daughter, Emma. That girl knows all things about the asylum and Misty Wayfair. She has a mind like a bear trap, that girl. Brilliant young woman. She’ll tell you all you need to know, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.”
Emma Crawford.
Heidi wheeled the cart out of the store. She was definitely interested, but going back to visit Emma would more than likely induce Rhett to charge her for the labor on her car.
She reached for her keys and hit the unlock button on the fob.
Heidi stopped.
Someone had slipped a small, white note card under her windshield wiper.
She looked around. There wasn’t anyone in the lot other than a young mother pushing two screaming toddlers in a grocery cart.
Heidi grabbed the note and flipped it over. Her keys slipped from her fingers and clattered to the asphalt. She stared at the handwriting. Shaky, almost like an elementary student just learning their letters had written it with a pencil.
Are you as mad as
I?
That wicked curling of weight around Heidi’s chest made her fall against her car. Her heart pounded in her ears, and she took two, three, four quick breaths. Heidi ran her palm across her cheek and raked agitated fingers through her hair. She rammed the note card into her purse.
She wasn’t mad. She never had been. Never.
But the furious pounding in her chest and the spots dancing in her eyes made Heidi question herself. It was why she was here, after all, wasn’t it? The anxiety, the debilitating sense of helpless panic that had spiraled her into losing job after job, leaving behind an unfinished college education, and bringing her to her sister’s to stand in the shadow of her critical eye?
No, she wasn’t crazy, or insane, or any other demeaning term.
She was just Heidi Lane. An anxiety-ridden woman who hid behind a façade of “You only have one life to live.” Her excuse for her failures.
Jean’s words echoed in her mind. The asylum. A place for people who had lost their minds and couldn’t function in the real world. For a moment, such a place actually sounded like a reprieve. An escape from having to pretend that some days, just functioning with a logical, coherent thought was an exercise of tenacity in and of itself.
Heidi stared at the note card that peeked up at her from her purse.
Was she mad?
Someone else seemed to think and imply she was. Someone unknown. As unknown but also as eerily familiar as the woman who’d stared through her window. Someone who looked like her. Heidi swallowed a knot in her throat. Someone who looked like the dead woman in the photograph.
Heidi’s thoughts twisted and turned in her head. They were chaotic and overwhelming as she pondered them.
Maybe the woman had never really been there after all.
Maybe if she were to look harder at the picture, the woman wouldn’t resemble her so much anymore.
Perhaps . . . whoever had left the note card knew something Heidi didn’t. That she was mad. That these panic attacks felt like a sheer loss of mental control, even though logically Heidi knew they weren’t.
So, she did what she did every other time it became too much to process, too suffocating to manage through, and too dark to see beyond. Heidi ran. She dropped her purse, left her keys, her car, and the groceries. And Heidi ran.
Chapter 14
Thea
Her room was cold. The chilling type of cold that seeped into her bones and her muscles. Damp aching that lingered long after she had snuffed out the lamp and settled beneath the sheet and light blanket provided by Mrs. Brummel in her boardinghouse bed. Thea tossed and turned, the bedding coming untucked and tangled around her body. She needed peace, even a precarious peace. For all her fascination and curiosity with the lives and stories of others, hers was one she often wished could be tossed on a pile of banned literature and begun again. The asylum loomed large in the back of her mind. The question of her mother and if she were in any way related to that dark place. And Mrs. Amos’s counsel had left her questioning. If she found herself, would she still be lost somehow? A conundrum that seemed spiritual and elusive at the same time. Was one’s purpose defined by knowing who they were, where they were from, or by something—Someone—greater?
Coming back to her room at night brought little peace and comfort. There was a darkness here, in Pleasant Valley. A spirit that lingered in the air, embracing its inhabitants, sinking into one’s soul like an uninvited guest entered a home and refused to leave. Something was out of place, and the people of Pleasant Valley seemed to know it. Keeping to themselves, smiling little, separated by a street, a history, and worst of all, a legend.
Misty Wayfair.
The name seemed to whisper into Thea’s dreams. She was awake, and yet Thea wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t dreaming at the same time. In the night’s stillness, she twisted herself free from the blankets, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and resting her bare feet on the wood floor. She lifted her face to the lone window. The moon shone through, patterns of shadows from the curtains dancing on the floor and across Thea’s skin. She watched them, mesmerized for a moment, reaching out to touch the shadow on the back of her hand. As if a ghost had entered her room, kissing her skin with a chilled touch, a shadowy spell, calling to her.
Misty Wayfair.
Thea rose, her white nightgown falling around her ankles. She moved to the window, reaching out to push the curtain aside. The street was silent, the buildings dark forms in the moonlight. Beyond the street and the deserted workplaces, the river flowed in the distance. Its waters glistened and called to Thea with a restless abandonment. Beyond lay the forest—the asylum’s forest.
She heard it again. So small, so soft that Thea blinked, trying to awaken herself fully. Trying to convince herself she wasn’t dreaming.
Misty Wayfair.
Her gaze drifted back to the river, to the stable, the blacksmith’s shop, down the empty street toward the portrait studio, and the whitewashed post office.
“Misty Wayfair.” The words were Thea’s own whisper this time.
For she saw her now.
Alone in the street, the lithe figure of a woman floated. Her feet touched the ground, but it seemed that, in the moonlight, she was transparent, glowing in white. Her gown fluttered around her legs as she gave a slow turn in the empty street, her arms stretched out as though attempting to fly away on the clouds of death. Hair the color of burnt embers floated around her shoulders, the strands thick and filmy.
Thea’s breath held in her chest, stopped by a heavy weight, unable to lift, to breathe around the pressure. The windowpane felt cool against her forehead as she strained to peer up the street where the woman twirled again, as if waltzing to an unknown sonata. Around and around she twirled, her head tipping back, her face lifting to the night sky like a bird set free.
Thea pressed the palm of her left hand against the glass. The vision was mesmerizing. Not only in her midnight beauty, but with the grace in which she traveled down the road. The rocks, the sticks, the animal droppings, and the rubble did not seem to affect her feet. Nighttime was her friend, embracing her with a welcome she received from no one else.
“Misty . . .” Thea whispered. Her breath fogged the windowpane.
Below the boardinghouse, Misty froze. Startled. Her dancing ceased and was traded instead for the stiffening of her shoulders. Her hands lowered to her sides. She stared up the street from where she’d come, afraid, as if someone were hunting her.
Thea watched, her throbbing heart louder than the tiny breaths that escaped her nose.
Misty clutched the front of her nightgown, pulling it into her chest and up her legs in a frantic, frightened gesture. Her legs were thin and pale, almost inhumanly so.
In that moment, Thea sensed it too. An imminent danger. The form of fear a prey might feel as an owl swooped from the branches, its claws fully extended to skewer through skin, lift the body, and carry it away. The deep horror a person could sense in their soul, when a foreboding came over them, oppressive and dark. The knowing it was coming. It being defined as the circumstance that would grasp hold of a being’s peace and squeeze it until it shattered into shards of irreparable glass.
“Run.” The word filtered through Thea’s lips, through the glass, and somehow . . . Misty Wayfair heard it.
She lifted her face, shadowed as the moon cowered behind a cloud as one would cover one’s face from the sight of something horrible. Misty’s eyes were deep and dark, though it was impossible to make out specific features in the night. Her cheeks were gaunt, as hollows in the face of one who rarely eats. But etched into every nuance of her form, every shadow on her face, was fear. A stiffening, immobilizing fear.
Thea’s gaze locked onto the phantom-like sight. Her throat tightened. It was time. Time to catapult this vision from her frigid state.
“Run,” Thea urged. Her voice was just above a whisper, but she palmed the glass, rattling the panes in its frame. “Run.”
A questioning look
from the shadowy being.
She lingered there, a moment of time positioned between peace and fear, a connection of souls, and then . . .
Misty Wayfair ran.
“We’ll need a fern.”
Thea startled and juggled a vase she’d lifted from a shelf. It tossed in the air and fell to its demise on the wood floor, shattering in shards of blue ceramic. Pip hissed, arched his back, and glared at her with judgmental eyes.
“For all that’s holy!” Mr. Amos blustered past her, snatching up a broom that leaned against the wall. “I asked for a fern. What’re you so jumpy for?”
“I’m sorry.” Thea stepped aside as he swept the shards into the corner. She couldn’t shake the darkness from the night before. The sight she’d seen, or thought she’d seen. So surreal she questioned if she had perhaps been dreaming.
Mr. Amos looked up at her, clouded blue eyes under bushy eyebrows of gray. A moment’s study and then he shook his head. “Never mind. I didn’t like that vase anyway.” He leaned the broom against the wall again, then skewered her with a look. “Your mind’s not with it today.”
Thea swallowed a nervous lump in her throat. If she told the old man about Misty Wayfair, he’d only mock her. A man of faith, he wouldn’t believe she’d seen the ghost—the legendary ghost—who haunted the Coyles in retribution for thwarted love.
A shaft of sunlight spread through the window and across the floor. Thea stepped into it. Anything light, anything pure was calming to her frayed nerves.
“Well?” Mr. Amos barked.
Thea blinked. “Pardon?”
“Never mind.” Mr. Amos turned his eyes to the ceiling. “I already live with a woman with her head in the clouds, what’s the difference if I work with one too?”
His words were cutting, but then Thea noticed the twitch of his mustache and quick wink as he brushed past her.
Thea offered him a weak smile. No. She couldn’t explain last night. Misty Wayfair, her shadowed features that Thea couldn’t even remember the details of, and the odd dance down the main street of town. She’d had a dream once as a child that Mrs. Mendelsohn had been angry with her. When Thea had asked Mrs. Mendelsohn, the older woman had told her she’d not been angry and they’d never argued. A dream. But so real of a dream.
The Curse of Misty Wayfair Page 12