The Curse of Misty Wayfair

by Jaime Jo Wright

  Was this emptiness, this questioning, because she didn’t know who she was? Because she had no belonging, no point of reference, no identity? Or was it deeper than that? Was it just a longing to know her Creator and the reason why she existed in the first place?

  Regardless, Thea pulled her hand toward herself, her fingers toying with the ribbon at the V in her chemise that dipped over her breasts and created a shadow. She was Thea Reed. She’d always believed she was capable, strong, and ached for her independence. Now that Mr. Mendelsohn was dead, she had found it. And she felt more imprisoned than ever . . .

  Shaking her head as if to awaken from a trance, Thea tightened the ribbon and reached for her blouse. She would head to the asylum this morning. If she found something about her mother, about P. A. Reed, perhaps it would put to rest her personal restlessness.

  Not long after, Thea left Pleasant Valley behind her. The quiet bustle of the early dawn beginning. A low fog settled around her ankles as the cool air from the night warred against the warmth of the spring morning. She cast a glance at the riverbank where she’d stood the night before with Simeon. But then she turned her attention to the bridge that crossed the waters. The woods loomed ahead, the road open yet dark beyond.

  She entered, the trees rising around her. Really, it was a peaceful place. The deep blueish hues of the woods’ shadows matching the evergreen depths of its biology. Valley Heights Asylum was not far, and Thea breathed deep of the air. It was rife with earth and moisture. That sort of perfume created by dirt and moss and leaves wet with dew.

  A stick cracked.

  The tiniest sound and yet, with that one snap, Thea’s tentative peace dissipated.

  She stopped in the middle of the road. Looking behind her, she saw no mode of transportation approaching her. Nor was Simeon or Rose following her, also on their way to work.

  A crow swooped in front of her, its black wings beating the air, calling a repetitive caw caw that echoed down the road.

  Thea collected her wits, adjusting the strap of the bag she’d slung over her shoulder, packed with a shawl, a handkerchief, and a small lunch Mrs. Brummel had provided.

  There was nothing.

  She was alone.

  A few more moments, and this time the crack of a stick was definite and loud. Thea turned toward the sound. It came from deep in the forest.

  She saw a flash of white.

  Then a small laugh echoed through the woods. A chuckle that started in someone’s throat and traveled into their chest. As if they knew something Thea didn’t.

  “Who’s there?” Thea gripped the strap of her bag until her knuckles were white.

  Another twig snapped. This time on the opposite side of the road from where Thea was looking. She spun around.

  Another chuckle floated through the air and the low-lying fog, carrying across the morning and wafting into the narrow shafts of sunlight that broke through the treetops.

  “Misssss-ty . . .” a woman’s voice called. Musical. Lilting. Taunting. “Misssss-ty.”

  “Come out!” Thea shouted. Yelling at whoever teased from the shadows. She turned a full circle in the road.

  The crow swooped over the lane again, turning its head as it flew and leveling its beady black eyes on Thea.

  The voice began to sing, a tremoring vibrato. The melody was both haunting and unfamiliar.

  Thea’s chin quivered as tears burned her eyes. She plowed forward, eyes fixed on the road ahead, wishing away whoever—whatever—mocked her from the darkness of the forest. The asylum was not far ahead. She would get there, then take refuge within its whitewashed walls.

  But as she hurried, the voice seemed to parallel her. Minor tones. Eerie notes.

  Thea began to run, her breath catching in small gasps.

  There. The iron fence. The gate. The roof of the asylum. Thea stumbled over a root that rose in the lane. She catapulted forward, but as the ground surged up to meet her, she was hauled upward by hands that gripped her forearms and a body taking the brunt of her weight.

  Simeon.

  Thea reached up, grasping his shoulders. She looked wildly about her, in the woods, toward the asylum, into the shadows. Where was it? Where was she?

  “Did you hear her?” Thea demanded, her eyes raking Simeon’s face with a frantic urgency.

  Simeon frowned. His face wasn’t twitching. His body was firm. Confident.

  He wasn’t afraid.

  Thea released him and stepped back, as if he were a stranger. Different. Somehow unaffected by the mockery that had followed her through the woods to the hospital.

  “Did you hear her?” she asked again, her voice watery, rising with insistence.

  “Who?” Simeon shook his head. “Hear who?”

  Thea stopped. She could hear herself breathing, heavy and upset. The singing had vanished. The voice calling for Misty had disappeared.

  The forest was still.

  Even the sunshine had broken through, with the asylum and grassy grounds bathed in a beautiful warmth. Like a refuge in a dark, venomous world beyond.

  “Misty. Misty Wayfair,” Thea breathed. Only it couldn’t have been her. Why would she call her own name? “She was singing,” Thea reasoned aloud, trying to come to terms with what she’d heard—what she thought she’d heard.

  “Singing?” Simeon responded.

  “Yes.” Thea nodded. Vehemently.

  Then she looked up.

  Looked into gray eyes. Saw his shoulder rise and fall, his head and mouth twitch repeatedly. Simeon backed away from her. His own chest rose and fell now. He turned, and with an uneasy sweep of his gaze through the woods, he gripped her hand and pulled her toward the hospital.

  The iron gate slammed shut behind them.

  He locked it, a ring of keys pulled from his belt hook.

  But even as the key resonated and grated the lock into place, Thea knew. No iron fence, or gate, or brick building filled with the mentally insane would keep Misty Wayfair at bay.

  Chapter 25

  Heidi

  She laid the photograph in front of Brad and Vicki, sliding it across the counter. Its old edges were yellowed, but the photograph still stared up at them with a poignancy captured in time. The early dawn’s light stretched through the window and onto the bar, where Brad poured his coffee and Vicki was already checking items off her to-do list for the lodge.

  Vicki paused and stared at the image she’d seen before. “This picture again?”

  Brad drew next to her and observed it, taking a sip of coffee. His dark brows rose up and under his damp mop of black curly hair. He shot Heidi a look. “Whoa. You’re dead.” He gave her a wink.

  Heidi wasn’t feeling humorous today.

  Vicki pushed the photograph back to Heidi. “I already told you, I don’t know anything about it.”

  “You gotta admit, that’s a bit creepy, Vick,” Brad inserted.

  Vicki frowned. “What do you want me to say?”

  Heidi tapped the face of the woman in the picture, then flipped it over. “It says ‘Misty Wayfair’—right here.” She showed the name to Brad and Vicki. “But this woman’s name is Mary Coyle. Are we related to the Coyles? Is that what explains the physical similarities? What do I have—what do we have—to do with Pleasant Valley?”

  “Nothing!” Vicki stepped back.

  Brad took another sip of his coffee. As if he knew it would be dangerous to get between the two warring Lane sisters.

  Vicki glowered and tugged her button-up plaid shirt down over her jeans. “I don’t even know who Mary Coyle is. It’s not like I have time to rummage through the town’s history.”

  “But it’s not chance I look identical to that woman in the picture.” Heidi tossed it onto the counter between them.

  Vicki rubbed her forehead with her palm and released a controlled sigh. “Heidi,” she began. Slowly. As though speaking to a child. “It is possible that you could look a lot like someone. Even a dead woman.”

  “Vick.” Brad’s v
oice held a hint of warning. Vicki was getting snippy.

  She slid off the barstool and stood, glaring up at Brad. “What? This is nonsense. It’s been nonsense since Heidi arrived.” Her voice clipped, and Heidi saw Vicki’s throat bob with frustrated tears. “You’ve hardly helped out the last few weeks. The lodge was broken into. Half of our guests have left. And you’ve spent more time with Emma Crawford and—and Rhett—than with us or Mom. The asylum ruins? Now the cops are looking into that graffiti. Every time you’re around, Heidi, every time, it’s like getting hit by a hurricane. I’m sick of it.”

  Vicki slapped the counter with her hand. “Now it’s some conspiracy theory that you’re related to a dead woman in a photograph?” She raked her fingers through her loose blond hair. “No one cares about an old photograph!”

  Vicki whirled and gripped the sink, her back to them. Heidi noticed her hand swipe at her face. A pang bit at Heidi. Her sister was crying. There was more to Vicki than she ever showed—ever shared. Heidi could see it, but she’d never bothered to try to open up her sister and see inside of her. They’d both allowed the wall to grow between them.

  Brad reached for Vicki, but she shrugged him off.

  “No. I’m not doing this.” She turned on her heel and marched from the room.

  Brad took another gulp of his coffee, probably nerves now rather than peaceful Monday-morning inspiration.

  Heidi reached for the photograph, debating whether to follow her older sister, to find some common ground. Or whether to just ignore things, like she always did.

  “It’s been tough for Vicki.” Brad’s words grated on Heidi’s raw hurt.

  She noticed her hands were quivering as she held the photograph. Her antianxiety meds were going to have to really do their job today, she could tell.

  “Yeah. Well, her and me both,” Heidi muttered.

  “Whatever happened between you two anyway?” Brad eased himself onto the barstool Vicki had vacated.

  Heidi ran her thumb over the photographed woman’s face. Mary Coyle, according to the paper clipping Emma had found, had died of melancholia. Depression. It was sort of ironic really, that she would have suffered from a form of anxiety just like Heidi. Of course, if in fact they were related . . . She tugged her attention back to Brad.

  “We never got along, Brad. You know that.”

  “But why?” he pressed. “Vicki won’t talk about much of anything. When she and your parents took over this place, I came along for the ride. To support her. To support them in their retirement from the church. But, Vicki and I had just married. It’s like the entire first pre-married half of her life, she won’t talk about.”

  “You dated her. You had to know our family is dysfunctional at best.”

  Brad gave her a wide-eyed, scrunched look over his mug. “But it’s like something traumatic happened, and none of you want to talk about it.”

  “Yeah. Me. I was born. There’s your trauma.” Heidi leaned on the bar and gave him a sideways smirk, attempting to hide the fact she needed to lean on the bar. Her stomach was in knots. She was seeing tiny flecks in her eyes, and a sense of impending doom had settled over her like a thunderstorm. “That and the fact there were all these rules and expectations. Vicki tried to comply—I never did. You thought we were the healthy, Bible-believing family Dad and Mom made it out to be?”

  Brad shrugged. “Sure. And you were. I mean, faith has been integral in your family.”

  “And legalism,” Heidi added. “Try growing up in a house where the Backstreet Boys are akin to Satanic music.”

  Brad eyed her. “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Maybe.” Heidi slid a stool closer with her sock-covered toe and rested her foot on it. Blessed relief. Her knees were shaking. When she spoke, her voice gave her away. “It’s tough having your faith measured. Jesus was supposed to be about grace when we fall short, but Mom and Dad twisted it so we had to reach some vague point of perfection before Jesus would have the time to look at us.”

  Brad studied her. So much so, Heidi knew he could see the anxiety she battled within—in the way her body had stiffened, in the way she swallowed repeatedly so she could digest the panic and make it go away.

  “Vicki gets your anxiety issues more than you know.” His tone was low. “You both handle it differently.”

  The frank honesty in his eyes told Heidi something about her sister she’d never realized. “No, I-I didn’t know.”

  Brad nodded. “She’s uptight, but I love her, Heidi. Vicki tries to be all things for all people.”

  “I gave up on that years ago,” Heidi admitted. But then, somehow she still felt like a failure, so maybe that wasn’t entirely true. Heidi looked down at the photograph. “So, what do you know about the Coyles of Pleasant Valley? The disowned heirs to Kramer Logging?”

  Brad waited a moment before taking her cue to redirect. “Not much.”

  “And you don’t think we could be related to them?” Heidi studied the face of the darker-haired woman. The one who appeared far more alive at the time of the photograph.

  Brad set his empty mug on the bar. “I don’t know. Maybe there are records somewhere that would help all this to make sense.”

  Heidi lifted her eyes to Brad’s, irritated that tears were certainly reflected in her own. “Do you think—do you think my parents came to Pleasant Valley for a different reason? Other than taking over a church?”

  Brad frowned. “What reason would that be?”

  Heidi sniffed and flipped the unsettling photograph over so she couldn’t see the woman’s face. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe there was something. Maybe they had secrets?”

  The question hung between them.

  Unanswerable.

  Heidi lugged a laundry basket filled with soiled white towels into the lodge’s laundry room. She started a load, hoping Vicki would take it as a white flag of peace when she returned home. The guests in Cabin 4 had left on Saturday, but for whatever reason, Vicki hadn’t had an opportunity to clean it. Pouring in laundry detergent, Heidi shut the drawer and pushed the buttons. The washer flooded with water.

  A good wipe down of the cabin’s kitchen and she’d be done. While the cleaning had served the additional purpose of helping Heidi work through her nerves, she also wanted to prove something to both herself and Vicki. They were family. Dysfunction aside, they needed to stick together. Maybe that was what Vicki had been harping on about all along. Maybe Heidi did have some maturing to do.

  She slipped her feet into a pair of ugly, beat-up blue Crocs and headed back toward Cabin 4. She stopped and answered a few questions from a guest about how long they could take the lodge-provided kayak out on the lake. But soon she was lost in her thoughts again, spraying Lysol on the kitchen counters, the stainless-steel sink, and the fronts of the nicked-and-scarred cupboards. Earbuds in her ears, she hummed to a classic hit by The Police. Nothing beat the classics.

  Moving into the bedroom, she sprayed the exposed mattress with cleaner and wiped it down, its plastic cover wrinkling as she rubbed it dry. Heidi sniffed. The campfire smell that often accompanied the cabins from the fire pits outside seemed stronger today. She tossed the rag into the cleaning pail and entered the adjacent bathroom. A good, thorough spray down of everything and she went to work.

  She wrinkled her nose. Strange that the campfire smell would be so strong in the bathroom, especially over the strong fumes of the cleaner. Heidi frowned as music belted in her ears, sung by Sting’s smooth and raspy voice.

  Setting down her cleaning rag, Heidi exited the bathroom. The smoke smell was enough now to cause her to tug an earbud from her ear. Nothing. No sound. Walking into the main living area, Heidi stopped.

  A thin film of smoke filtered over the floor. It took a split second for Heidi to process it, but as soon as the reality slammed into her senses, she bolted for the front door off the galley-style kitchen.

  Heidi yanked on the door while grabbing at her pocket for her phone. The other earbud
ripped from her ear and fell to the floor as her phone disconnected from the cable. She hurried outside, and out of the corner of her eye, Heidi saw orange flames licking the side of the log cabin.

  A guest of Cabin 2 across the gravel drive poked his head out the doorway and gaped at her.

  “Call 911!” Heidi yelled at the man. His face blanched, a quick nod, and then he disappeared back inside.

  Heidi sprinted for the lodge and burst into the foyer. She grappled for the fire extinguisher on the wall and yanked the pin from its mechanism. That there was already one inside the cabin was an afterthought as she raced back to the burning cabin. Her panic wasn’t helping. She needed to stay calm, to think clearly in facing the emergency.

  The fire had reached the roof, and she could see the curtains inside the cabin erupt into flame.

  “They’re on their way!” Cabin 2 man shouted at Heidi.

  Heidi could barely hear him over the roar of the fire. “Get everyone out of their cabins!” she hollered back.

  Seconds later, she saw the man knock wildly on the door of Cabin 1. Hopefully, everyone was gone for the day, out exploring the great outdoors.

  The fire was quickly getting out of hand. Heidi rushed to pull open the front door. But the door fought back and kept closing on its own. Dumb spring hinges! Heidi had no clue if she should target the outside of the cabin or the inside. Her mind was spinning, her breaths coming in short gasps. She was not the person you wanted in an emergency!

  She had to think, to remain calm.

  Heidi took a deep breath and opted for the inside.

  With the extinguisher held out in front of her, she ran into the cabin and squeezed its trigger, pointing the nozzle at the corner of the living area where the fire had devoured the curtains and was starting to consume the couch. She swept the extinguisher from side to side.

  A scream jerked her attention to the window where vintage Coke bottles once sat on the sill but now were scattered across the floor, crashed into smithereens. A hand pounded on the outside of the window.

  The heat was horrific, and Heidi backed away, even as her eyes took in the sight of a woman. Her face a blur as the ash and soot on the windowpane clouded her features. The woman slapped her palm on the window again, and Heidi tried to wave her away.