I am frightened. Not of losing myself into the shadows of my mind. I am frightened by all that is unseen, and yet has now come to visit. We did our best to protect you. But we lived in a house of ghosts. Unspoken voices. The past and the present colliding with such force, we could only survive by ignoring it.
Please come.
Heidi, you are the reason the voices are never heard.
But they are finding their voice and soon will no longer be silent.
Come.
Come quickly.
It was signed simply Mom. The chills the letter had first given her still traveled through Heidi’s body even now. In spite of her gray yoga pants and fuzzy socks and bulky fisherman’s sweater she’d donned to ward off the early-morning chill of summer in Wisconsin’s Northwoods.
She set aside the letter and pulled the album toward her, opening it to the page marked with the note card that begged the question, Are you as mad as I? Heidi’s eyes met those of her look-alike in the sepia-tone photograph.
“I don’t know,” she whispered to an antique version of herself. “Am I?”
Thank God that Connie Crawford had seen the photograph the first day and affirmed its likeness, or Heidi would be afraid that if someone else saw it, they’d see something totally different. A different woman even from the one Heidi saw.
She avoided looking up, avoided the instinct to glance out the window for fear this same woman would be peering in at her again. Vanishing. Like the ghosts in her mother’s letter.
“Please don’t spill that.” Vicki’s voice broke Heidi’s intent silence.
She startled and grabbed for the Dr Pepper that wobbled on her knee.
“That’s a sure way to make it happen.” Heidi rolled her eyes at her older sister. “Scared the life out of me.”
“Sounds as though you’ve already done an excellent job of that yourself this week. Frightening others?” Vicki dropped onto a chair opposite Heidi, crossing her leg over her knee.
Heidi eyed her sister. Sometimes silence was the best answer rather than taking the bait.
Vicki shook her head and sighed. “I’d hoped things would be different. It’s been how many years since we’ve seen you? But you’re still impulsive and reckless. You’re lucky the Crawfords aren’t more upset with you. Emma needs routine and—”
Heidi pushed her feet off the couch and leaned forward. “She agreed to come with me.”
“Because she wanted to please you. Or maybe she didn’t understand your intent,” Vicki debated.
Heidi set the can of pop on the wooden coffee table. “Don’t discredit Emma and talk about her like she’s incapable of making her own decisions. She’s very intelligent and independent in many ways.”
“I don’t get this devotion you’ve developed toward her.” Vicki tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair, studying Heidi. “Not that it’s bad, really, I just—you haven’t shown your own family that much attention in forever. What about Mom? Why not invest in her?”
Heidi reached for the Dr Pepper and took a sip. It was easier than answering, because Vicki’s question had merit. As she predicted, Vicki continued.
“I understand wanting to make up for hitting Emma’s dog. I do.” She was trying to anyway, Heidi could tell. Extending some sort of peace offering in Vicki’s own backward way. “But—Heidi, I’m not even sure why you’re here. I thought it was Mom at first, then to help me at the lodge, but it’s like you’ve no purpose. No—direction.”
Bingo!
But Heidi wasn’t going to admit that her sister had pretty much nailed Heidi’s entire life in one sentence. Instead, she twisted in her seat and reached for her mother’s letter. What was there to lose really? She handed it to Vicki and watched her sister over the rim of the pop can.
For a moment, something flashed across Vicki’s face, but then she drew the paper away and looked at Heidi. Vicki’s eyes beneath her sideswept, dark blond hair were direct. “You realize Mom has no idea what she’s saying when she says it.”
Heidi mustered a casual shrug, even though part of her instantly fought the disappointment that coursed through her. She was hoping Vicki would at least empathize, if not try to unravel the contents.
“It sounded pretty sane to me,” Heidi argued. “It’s even well written.”
“Mom wrote how many articles for the church newsletter, Heidi? She could compose entire segments in her sleep. This?” Vicki tossed the letter onto the coffee table. “It’s nothing, Heidi. Just her mind going off into one of her many stories. Yesterday she was trying to convince me that Dad was out fishing on the lake and was bringing home an entire stringer of bass and bluegill to fillet and cook up for supper.”
“And this?” Heidi handed Vicki the note card.
Vicki’s confidence faltered. Heidi could see it in her body language, the way she seemed to tense up.
“Where’d you get this?”
“It was under my windshield wiper.”
Vicki frowned. “Did you show it to the police?”
“Why would I?” Heidi countered. “There’s no threat, no crime in leaving a note under someone’s wiper.”
“Yes, but it matches the break-in message on your mirror!” Vicki scooted to the edge of her chair. Her face was paler now, marked by worry.
Heidi gave a blithe smile. “And it matches what you used to call me. Other than Monkey. Or maybe that was why you called me Monkey? You thought I was ‘crazy as a monkey’?”
Vicki blew air through her lips, lifting loose strands of hair around her face. “Really, Heidi.”
“No. It’s all right. I get it. I’m overemotional. I have an anxiety disorder—which has been verified by medical professionals now.” Heidi waited to get satisfaction from seeing Vicki’s surprise. There was none. Maybe she’d already assumed as much and had grown past the immature taunts of their younger years.
“Heidi . . .” Vicki’s voice dropped. “I’m not sure what’s going on. Mom’s letter is nothing. But—the message on your mirror and that card? Your claiming you saw a woman looking at you in the window?”
“Oh, for all that’s holy, I’m not losing my mind, Vicki!” Flabbergasted, Heidi’s mouth dropped open. “You think I did that myself? Created some story just for the attention?”
Vicki leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Heidi blinked. They locked eyes, a silent standoff.
Okay. Fine. She’d tried to get others’ attention through various stunts in the past.
Heidi pursed her lips. “I wouldn’t insult myself if I were that desperate for you to take notice of me.”
Vicki nodded, doubtful. “You mean like the time you stole Dad’s car and went dancing with your high-school boyfriend? Wearing a bikini top and a miniskirt? I’d say that was a bit self-deprecating.” A tiny laugh followed.
Heidi bit back her own smile at the memory. She rolled her eyes. “Well, I was only sixteen. How was I to know you never wear a bikini top with a miniskirt?”
Vicki offered a chuckle, and then her smile disappeared.
Heidi smirked. “Look, I know I’ve done some dumb things. But this isn’t one of them! I’ve nothing to gain by staging a break-in and leaving myself notes.”
“Or claiming to see ghosts?” Vicki added.
“Exactly!” Heidi grinned for real this time. “What could I possibly gain from any of that?”
Vicki didn’t answer. Instead, she heaved a sigh and looked down at her fingernails, picking at a chip in the mauve polish. Finally she met Heidi’s gaze. “Attention, Heidi. You would gain attention. Even that letter from Mom. You like to have the world revolve around you. As if our family has ghosts!” She gave a derisive laugh. “And the messages, the woman in the window? All of that was with Rhett around. We all know how you like to . . .” She let her sentence hang.
A numbness washed over Heidi. Vicki didn’t deserve an answer, yet Heidi still felt the need to defend herself. To justify herself to th
e demure and staid sister who capped her in years by a solid fifteen and had, in many ways, been more of a mother to her than her biological one.
Heidi hoisted the photo album from the sofa and slipped the photograph from its paper frame. She handed it to Vicki, who still held the mysterious note card in her other hand.
“What’s this?” Vicki asked.
Heidi waved her hand. “Just look.”
Her sister stared down at it. There was no shift in her expression, no look of shock, no quick lifting of her eyes. She flipped the photo over and read the penciled script on the back.
“Misty Wayfair,” Heidi said, impatient for Vicki to say something—anything. To confirm to her sister that she wasn’t on a desperate bid for attention.
Vicki swallowed. She nodded. “The woman looks like you.”
Heidi scooted to the edge of her seat. “And she’s dead.”
“Of course she’s dead. This was taken over a hundred years ago.” Vicki shot her a weird look.
“No, look.” Heidi stood and moved to position herself next to Vicki on the arm of her chair. “The body is held upright by a clamp. It’s a metal frame of some sort. You can see it by her feet.”
“Oh my—” Finally, a reaction. Vicki pulled the picture closer to her. “That’s disgusting. Did they sew the body’s eyes open, or did they just paint her eyes in after?”
“It looks like paint to me.” Heidi leaned in closer as well.
Vicki’s expression said she was appalled. She glanced at Heidi. “So, they photographed a dead woman.”
“And she looks just like me,” Heidi asserted, wanting Vicki to focus on the main point of the picture.
“Where’d you get this?” Vicki twisted to look at Heidi.
“At Connie’s shop. The first day I came here. I found it, I bought the album, and the next morning”—Heidi tapped the face of the dead woman—“that woman was staring into my window.”
Vicki flipped it over again. “Misty Wayfair,” she murmured.
“Do I look like the Misty Wayfair they say haunts the woods and asylum?”
“Is that why you took Emma there?” Realization spread across Vicki’s face.
Heidi nodded. Finally. It seemed Vicki was moving beyond her critical attitude and into the same realm Heidi was existing in.
“This can’t be Misty Wayfair.” Vicki shook her head, handing the photo back to Heidi. “According to what I know of the legend, they say she was murdered sometime in the 1800s, maybe a few decades before this photo was taken.”
“Then why would someone write her name on the back?” Heidi insisted.
Vicki cleared her throat and pushed to her feet, leaving a whiff of lilac-vanilla perfume in her wake. “I don’t know. I get why you’ve been unnerved, Heidi, but there’s got to be an explanation. It’s not like there’s really a ghost, like some dead woman has come alive to target you specifically.”
Heidi sank into the chair Vicki had abandoned. “Then how do you explain my look-alike in a photo album in a town our family has no connections to? The name on the back? The strange notes and messages? Mom’s letter, for goodness’ sake?”
Vicki shrugged, reaching behind her head to tighten her ponytail. “I told you—I don’t know. But there are more important things to focus on right now. Real-life things. Like Mom. And not her letter full of fiction, but Mom as she is now. Today.”
That stung. Disregarding everything meant disregarding her. Heidi wasn’t even sure that Vicki knew she did it. It probably wasn’t intended to be a dismissal, but it was all the same. Mom was important. The lodge was important. Vicki’s life was important. Heidi was just chasing shadows and dreams like always.
Vicki walked off toward the kitchen, the conversation apparently over for her.
Heidi stopped her. “Vicki?”
Her older sister turned. She looked so much like Mom. “Yeah?”
Heidi couldn’t help it. She had to say it. “But all this—it proves I’m not nuts. It proves that something is happening here in Pleasant Valley. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not. Someone in the past looked exactly like me. Someone in the present wants to mess with my head. That’s not important to you? Not important enough to dig into and figure out what the connection is?”
Vicki pursed her lips, and her chest rose and fell in a silent sigh. For a brief moment, she seemed conflicted. Then she leveled Heidi with a sisterly look. “I love you. I do. But, Heidi . . . I just—can’t.”
It was the lamest, most hurtful excuse Heidi had ever heard.
Chapter 21
Heidi waited at the front counter of the repair shop. A girl barely out of high school had greeted her and then, per Heidi’s request, disappeared into the back to call for Brad. Vicki had asked Heidi to drop off his lunch on her way to see Mom. But, for Heidi, it was stop number one of three, not two. She was heading back to the asylum first. To explore more—without Emma this time—and see if she could uncover any clues. What she’d find in a run-down, abandoned hospital was yet to be seen. Probably nothing. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for.
The double doors to the shop opened, only it wasn’t Brad who emerged. Heidi tensed as she met Rhett’s uninterpretable expression. He wiped his hands on a blue cotton rag, his customary battered baseball cap rammed onto his head.
“Brad stepped out for lunch.”
“Oh.” Heidi set the insulated bag on the counter. “That’s what I brought for him.”
Rhett tossed the rag into a bucket by the door and crossed his arms. Waiting. For what?
Heidi offered him an impertinent grin. “Well, then, Dr. Banner, never mind.”
“Who?”
Heidi blinked. Really? He didn’t know? “Better brush up on your comic books, hero.”
She turned on her heel and hiked out of the shop. That type of attempt at banter could only go nowhere good and fast. Opening the door to her car, she slipped in, then shrieked as the door was yanked from her hand when she tried to close it.
Rhett leaned over and peered in. Really. All he needed was green skin.
“The Hulk?” was all he said, phone in hand. She caught a glimpse of a Google page. He’d had to Google it?
She stifled a wry chuckle. Ohhhh, the backwoodsman had a weakness. He wasn’t a comic fan. Heidi was willing to latch on to any chink in the man’s hulking façade.
She put her hands on the steering wheel and stared up at him. She raised an eyebrow, hoping she was leveling him with a look equal to the one he was giving her.
“If the shoe fits,” she shrugged. “Wait. The Hulk doesn’t wear shoes.” She gave him a mock look of empathy and glanced at his steel-toed boots.
Rhett’s expression didn’t change. He scanned her car. The photo album on the passenger seat. The blue note card from her windshield wiper. A paper map of the Pleasant Valley region, the river, and the side roads, because heaven knew GPS was worthless in the great up-north.
“Where’re you going?” he growled.
Heidi tipped her head, refusing to be intimidated. Emma wasn’t in her care.
“That’s for me to know.” She flipped the words at him like a rich man would blithely toss cash into the air. Heidi turned the key in the ignition.
Rhett didn’t move. Didn’t release the door.
Heidi reached for the door handle and gave a little tug. “Um, my door?”
“You’re going to the asylum.” It was a statement.
Heidi paused. “So?”
“I wouldn’t go there alone.” Again, a blink only. No smile, no raised brows, not even a change of inflection in his voice.
Heidi bit back a sigh. Irritation toward Rhett, and also annoyance that he’d somehow read her own internal hesitation. Going to the abandoned asylum alone posed no legitimate threat that she knew of, yet it still creeped her out. Especially after Emma’s declaration when they were there. As if she’d seen a ghost—a ghost that did not exist.
She looked up to respond to Rhett, but he was gone.
Oh. Okay then.
Heidi pulled her door shut and yelped again as the passenger door yanked open and Rhett reached in, picking up the photo album and note card before squeezing his frame onto the seat.
“Excuse me?” Heidi glared at him.
Rhett reached behind him and set the items on the back seat. He shut the door and gave a wave of two fingers. “Let’s go.”
Heidi eyed him incredulously.
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m going alone.”
“No, you’re not.”
Ooooh, he was going to play the alpha-male card? Fine. Heidi killed the engine and removed the key from the ignition. “Then I’m not going.” She was done trying to earn the man’s respect. Trying to loosen him up or figure him out. Now he was downright under-her-skin annoying.
Rhett took the keys from her hand. “Good. I’ll drive.”
He pushed open the car door, and before Heidi could react, her driver’s door was open and he was leaning in. “On second thought,” he said, “we’ll take my truck.”
She had no intention of admitting it, but bouncing along in the passenger seat of Rhett’s beater truck with Rüger the dog pressed against her leg and Archie the mangy cat doing an impressive balancing act on the dashboard was far more comforting than trying to maneuver this rutted road on her own. It had become a familiar jaunt, and since it was sunny out today, sunshine filtered through the leafy treetops. The woods were more inviting than when she’d been here with Emma.
The asylum hadn’t changed—why would it?—yet somehow it seemed different today. Less imposing, and less haunting. Heidi walked ahead of Rhett, who seemed content to let her be, to explore on her own. Rüger pranced beside her, nose to the ground, his one-eyed furry face sniffing at traces of rabbit or squirrel, maybe even deer.
“What do you know about the asylum?” Heidi tossed the question over her shoulder. She stood at the front door that hung on a single hinge and was ajar. She could see in. Filthy linoleum flooring greeted her, along with severely cracked plaster walls, some sections revealing the lath framework behind.
The Curse of Misty Wayfair Page 19