A Babe in Ghostland

by Lisa Cach

  Wasn’t it?

  She put her foot on the first step, and with that small commitment her courage returned. She climbed the stairs cautiously and stopped at the top, listening to the thumping. It was still above her.

  She jogged down the hall to the servant stairs.

  THUMP!

  The sound was coming from the attic.

  She yanked open the door to the attic stairs and flipped the switch for the lights.

  THUMP!

  The sound vibrated down the stairs, hitting her in the chest.

  With a whimper in her throat, she forced herself up the final flight of stairs. As the attic came into sight, she saw the large locked trunk she’d pulled from the pile.

  It was hovering a foot above the floor.

  Megan’s grip tightened on the handrail, her whole body tensing, certain in that moment that the trunk was about to be thrown at her.

  It dropped flat onto the floor.

  THUMP!

  Megan crouched where she was, heart thundering in her ears, the cold sweat of fear trickling down her skin.

  Long moments passed. The trunk remained where it sat. The thumping sounds had stopped.

  It was another minute before Megan rose from her crouch and cautiously climbed the rest of the stairs.

  There were shallow dents in the floor around the trunk, where it had been dropped repeatedly. Her hand shaking, Megan reached out and touched the trunk.

  A sense of wanting to be noticed passed faintly over Megan, too faint for her to know if it was her own assumption or the feeling of whoever had been thumping the trunk.

  She tried the latch on the trunk. It opened with a quiet snick.

  “So you want me to look inside,” she said to the empty attic. “Okay.”

  She knelt down on the floor and lifted the lid.

  The stench of mothballs lifted like a mushroom cloud from within. Megan coughed and fanned the air in front of her, sitting back until the worst of it had passed.

  Inside, a top layer of trays held baby shoes, school-work done in an old-fashioned childish hand, stacks of personal letters, and mementos of parties: dance cards, feathers, pressed flowers, scraps of lace, a white kid glove. Megan lifted the trays aside and found clothing beneath: a girl’s dresses from the 1880s and ’90s, a couple of pairs of shoes, broken hair combs, and odd bits of beading and faux pearls that had come loose from objects long since lost.

  At the very bottom of the trunk was a framed photo lying on top of a large, shallow box.

  The photo was of Mr. and Mrs. Smithson on their wedding day. Mrs. Smithson looked beautiful, radiantly happy in her stunningly small-waisted, corseted gown.

  Megan lifted the lid off the box and found the aged ivory silk wedding gown from the photo. It was stained in places, and the silk was tattered, but it was still beautiful enough to leave Megan staring for long minutes before she carefully settled the lid back onto the box.

  Was it the dress that she had been meant to find?

  The tray with the letters made a short grating sound against the floor, as if it had been bumped.

  Megan stared at it. Had her foot hit it?

  Probably not.

  She settled down cross-legged on the floor to go through the letters.

  Twenty minutes later, she’d formed a pretty good impression of the young and giggly Isabella Smithson, “Bella” to friends and family.

  Most of the letters were from girlfriends; a few were letters Bella had started to write and not finished. In the margins of those, Bella had often drawn small cartoons in illustration, some of them surprisingly sharp with humor.

  So Isabella was the artist who had drawn the picture of Zachariah.

  One letter beneath all the others was wrapped in a white velvet ribbon, a pressed flower tucked under its bands. Megan gently untied the ribbon and set the flower aside, then unfolded the letter.

  My dearest Bella,

  You have captured my heart, as surely you must have guessed by now. I cannot sleep for thoughts of you. You haunt my nights as the goddess Diana, and how willingly I would let you slay my heart.

  But say the word and I am yours, for now and forever.

  —Z.A.

  “Megan?” Case called from somewhere down below. “Are you here? Megan?” he called, his voice rising in concern.

  “I’m up here! I’ll be down in a second!” she hollered, and hurriedly packed everything back into the trunk except the letter.

  She was certain it was the beginning of everything.

  Carefully holding the letter, she hurried back down the stairs. Case was waiting on the servants’ floor. He visibly relaxed when he saw her appear.

  “I was worried. What happened downstairs?”

  “What do you mean, what happened?”

  “The mess in the kitchen.”

  “Mess?” She’d left her teacup and the photocopies, but surely that wasn’t enough to cause alarm.

  “Come see.”

  She followed him back down, neither of them talking until they reached the kitchen.

  It was covered with paper, her printouts from the library.

  In the sink, on top of the refrigerator, on every inch of floor, on the shelves. It looked as if a storm had blown through. Everything was covered in drifts of paper.

  Everything except the kitchen table.

  It was wiped clean except for one single piece of paper, centered exactly on the tabletop.

  Megan set down the letter she was holding and picked up the photocopy, a page from the July 20 classified ads. She scanned the columns, and at the top of the third one, she saw what she’d been looking for:

  Z.A.

  Where are you? Whatever has happened, all will be forgiven. Come back.

  B.

  She read it out loud to Case.

  “Zachariah Armstrong and…?” he asked.

  “Bella. Isabella Smithson.” Megan unfolded the letter and handed it to him.

  He met her eyes when he had finished. “So this is a tale of love gone awry.”

  “Yes. But if Zachariah abandoned Bella, how did his spirit end up trapped in her house?”

  Seventeen

  Case blew out his candle and climbed into bed, feeling strangely contented for a man in a haunted house. Eric had been gone all evening, returning just half an hour ago, so Case and Megan had spent a peaceful time in each other’s company. He’d failed to keep his mind off the feel of her breast under his hand, but he’d been a gentleman and refrained from making a second go at her.

  The lights had resumed their pattern of flickering, eventually going off completely and leaving Case and Megan to dine by the light of the oil lamp. She’d taken pity on his cooking, and together they made dinner on the propane-powered stove. Afterward, they settled in the library and pored through papers, writing up the solid facts they could find on large sheets of paper that they later tacked to the walls of the grand salon. Another sheet held unanswered questions, and a third held theories.

  The evening was peaceful, warm, and punctuated by pithy comments and bursts of laughter. Once he’d sworn to himself that he would keep his hands off her, Case found himself enjoying the fall of her hair across her cheek as she read, the curve of her lips when she smiled, the mischief in her voice when she asked him a teasing question. He enjoyed her periodic silences, which he began to appreciate. He didn’t need to entertain her, and she didn’t speak solely for the sake of making noise.

  Case punched his pillow and rolled over restlessly. Did they know each other well enough now to have sex? he wondered.

  He closed his eyes and listened to Megan’s movements next-door. He could imagine her clearly, in her prim white nightgown, lying alone in her bed. If he knocked on her door and leaned his head in, would she smile and welcome him? Would she say yes this time if he climbed in beside her and tossed that virginal gown to the floor?

  He felt a stirring in his loins and cursed. How was he going to get to sleep now?

  He forced
his mind from Megan and focused on one of the houses his company was flipping. Halfway through his mental revamping of the kitchen, he fell asleep.

  He woke to a hand sliding up his thigh. Groggy from dreaming, his half-sleeping brain thought it was Megan, that he was in her bed with her. He smiled as the hand slid higher, grazing his groin and continuing on up his torso. Soft lips kissed his jaw, and he felt a naked body pressing against his side.

  “You’re cold, darling,” he mumbled. “Did I steal the covers from you?”

  The lips dotted kisses along his cheek, landing on his mouth as a cold hand descended back to his groin, clasping his sex.

  “Careful, honey!” he said, flinching from the cold, and opened his eyes.

  A white face with hollow black eyes stared back at him.

  He let out a sound like a murdered cat. The face vanished. He leaped out of bed and crouched, eyes darting wildly around the moonlit room. He could see nothing, but seeing nothing didn’t mean there was nothing.

  He snatched his robe off the foot of the bed and pulled it on, then opened the connecting door to Megan’s room.

  “Megan!” he whispered. “Megan! Are you awake?”

  There was no answer. He pushed the door open wider and edged into the room.

  Moonlight showed him the covers thrown back on her bed. She wasn’t there.

  She’s in bed with Eric.

  He didn’t know where the thought came from, but he was out in the hallway in frantic pursuit before it occurred to him that she may simply have gone to the bathroom. Or to the kitchen for a snack or a glass of water.

  He was halfway down the stairs before the worst possibility of all struck him: Zachariah might have returned for her.

  Case froze, staring down into the shadows, looking for a crumpled form in white cotton.

  There was nothing.

  He closed his eyes and listened.

  Again, nothing.

  He descended the rest of the staircase and quietly moved through the house in search of Megan. The library and the grand salon were unoccupied, Eric’s electronics dark except for the few running on battery power.

  Case turned down the hall to the kitchen. There was no flickering candlelight from either the kitchen or the crack under Eric’s door. Case stood motionless in the center of the hall, straining his ears for a hint of sound.

  From behind Eric’s doors came the grunting, gravelly snores of a man with sleep apnea. The sound was as much a relief as a terror: if Megan wasn’t with Eric, then where was she?

  From below his feet came a heavy sound of metal dragging and scraping.

  The cellar.

  Cold washed over Case. Megan would never have gone down there on her own. And especially not in the middle of the night.

  On silent feet, he dashed through the kitchen and the small hallway beyond. The cellar stairs were open, and at their dark bottom he saw the moving glow of a flashlight.

  Caution held him back from calling her name. You weren’t supposed to startle sleepwalkers, were you? If she was not fully conscious, it could be disastrous to wake her down in the cellar, in the dark.

  He padded down the wooden stairs, coming out into a cellar gone dark. There was no flash of light in that room or the next.

  He inched forward, his feet cautiously feeling his way across the bricks.

  A flash of reflected light caught his eye, down at floor level. It came again, still faint but definitely there and in a half-moon shape.

  The darkness threw his sense of perspective out of whack, and he could make no sense of the light. Where the hell was it coming from?

  He remembered the sound of dragging metal.

  The drain.

  “Oh, Christ,” he said beneath his breath. He found the drain cover pushed to the side and dropped to all fours at the edge of the drain.

  The light wasn’t moving anymore, and when he peered over the edge of the drain, he saw why.

  The flashlight lay on rock and dirt eight feet below. The drain was not a drain: it was the entrance to a deeper space beneath the house. An iron ladder welded to a man-sized tube extended three feet down from the floor of the cellar. From somewhere in that rock-floored room, he heard Megan whimpering.

  He was down the ladder in an instant, leaping the last few feet and snatching the flashlight from the ground. “Megan!”

  “No, no, no,” she whimpered, tears in her voice.

  The beam of the light hit her back. She was standing, swaying, staring at something in front of her. Case shifted the beam of light, looking for something in the blackness, but only found it when he cast his light toward the ground.

  The ground in front of Megan opened into a chasm, five feet across and twice as wide. Black iron stubs that might once have belonged to a protective fence surrounded the hole, their ends bent back down into the earth.

  Megan’s bare feet were inches from the edge, and she was swaying.

  Case’s legs felt as if they had turned to lead, moving with the horrific slowness of a nightmare as he ran to her. A shout of denial rose in his throat.

  The sound of it pierced through her awareness, and she spun around, a look of utter surprise on her face. She stepped backward, and Case saw the error he’d made in distracting her. Her foot met air, and her mouth parted in horror as she began to lose her balance. With a final burst of speed, he reached out and snatched her arm, jerking her back from the brink.

  She fell into his arms, and he clasped her tight against his chest, shock at what had almost happened blocking all thought from his mind. All he knew was that she was in his arms, she was safe, he hadn’t lost her.

  He didn’t know how much time had gone by when he felt her begin to struggle against the confinement.

  “I can’t breathe, you’re squeezing me too tight!”

  He loosened his grip slightly, irrationally afraid that if he let her go, she might head straight back to that fissure.

  “Case, it’s okay, I’m all right.”

  “No, you’re not.” He put his hand on the back of her head and forced her to lay her cheek against his shoulder. “You’ve had a fright.”

  “Only caused by you,” she grumbled into his neck. But then he felt her arms come up around his waist, holding him in return. A moment later, she began to weep quietly, tucking her face more closely into the collar of his robe.

  “Shhh,” he whispered against her hair. “It’s okay.”

  She shook her head against his shoulder, then lifted it. “This is where he died. Zachariah.”

  “Down here?” Case asked in surprise, then shined the light up at her face for a moment.

  She nodded, squinting, and he lowered the beam. “He was beaten and then tossed into that hole.”

  Case shined the light at the fissure. “God, talk about convenient disposal of a body. I wonder how deep that thing is?”

  “I don’t know. But there are ledges, and Zachariah landed on one. He wasn’t dead yet. It took him hours to die, alone in the dark. He screamed for help as long as he could, but the drain hole had been covered up, and no one could hear him. His body was too broken for him to try to climb out on his own.”

  “Christ. Who did that to him?”

  “I think it was Jacob Smithson.”

  Eighteen

  “What does it all add up to?” Case asked, standing in front of the posters he and Megan had created, now with the circumstances of Zachariah’s death added.

  “Obviously, Daddy didn’t think Zachariah was good enough for his precious daughter,” Eric said. “Jacob is rich and above the law. He tosses the guy in the hole like a piece of garbage.”

  “But why not just forbid the marriage?” Megan pointed out. “Or even buy him off? It’s a huge risk to kill someone, even if you’re rich.”

  “Maybe he knew his daughter wouldn’t obey him, and Zachariah couldn’t be bought,” Case said. “If they were young and in love, there was probably no force that could stop them.”

  “I bet ol’ Zacha
riah was a gold digger,” Eric said. “I’ll bet he came out here when the news spread about gold in the Klondike. He gets here, starts buying gear and outfitting himself, but then begins to hear about what a lot of work it’s going to be. He starts hearing the horror stories. Frostbite, starvation, the long trek through the wilderness to reach gold fields that have all already been claimed. And he figures there are easier ways for a man to make himself a fortune. So he finds a rich man’s daughter to seduce. Only Daddy knows a thing or two and can smell a rat when it’s eating at his dinner table.”

  “Okay, I can buy that,” Case said. “It fits what you can see of the man in that picture Isabella drew. But then how did his spirit get trapped here? Or, if the white woman is to be believed, how did he trap others here?”

  “The white woman might be Isabella,” Megan said. “Only her actions seem contradictory. I was assuming she was the one who led me to the trunk in the attic and to the love letter from Zachariah. But why would she say bad things about him during the séance? And why would she keep trying to molest Case? That hardly seems the act of a faithful lover.”

  They were all silent, contemplating.

  “It seems that for each piece of information we discover, a half-dozen more questions are raised,” Megan said.

  “We need to know who’s lying,” Eric said. “Zachariah or Whitey. One of them’s full of crap.”

  “Maybe they both are,” Megan said. “Spirits can be as deceitful or deluded as the living.”

  “We’ve got to do another session with the helmet,” Eric said. “It’s the most controllable way we have of getting information.”

  “No,” Case said. “Absolutely not. If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that Zachariah is drawn to Megan, and he has twice now come close to causing her physical harm.” He turned to Megan. “I think it might be better if you abandoned the investigation. You should leave. Go home.”

  Megan’s jaw dropped, the air going out of her. “You’re firing me?” she squeaked.

  He shook his head. “It’s not a matter of firing. It’s a matter of ensuring your safety.”

  “You’re overreacting! Nothing bad has happened to me!”