Return to Seven Sisters

by M. L. Bullock

  Natalie came over to watch Baby Boy, and he was doubly excited because I dragged out the ball pit I usually kept hidden in the spare room. My son never met a ball he didn’t want to throw, but Natalie didn’t seem to mind. She liked playing with him, as she’d done many times when she’d come to help her aunt. AJ was rolling around in the ball pit now, and Natalie laughed as she pitched balls back in the mesh for him. I let her know that Ash was upstairs and asked her to keep the noise down, if Baby Boy would allow it.

  I glanced at my watch. It was 7:30 and time to head off to the house. I’d already tucked the dress in the car. I checked my phone and saw nothing from Austin. Well, it couldn’t be helped. I had to do this. Ashland needed me. I looked in on him one last time and snuck back out. He was sawing logs. Once that medication kicked in, it apparently knocked him out.

  I drove to the house, stepped inside and turned off the alarm. I waited around until a quarter after but still heard nothing from Austin. He wasn’t coming. Or was he just late? Should I wait for him? Maybe he was here but parked on the side? I checked but didn’t see his car anywhere. Well, it’s all you, Carrie Jo. You can handle this. First things first.

  I went to the hall bathroom and changed into the gown. It smelled dusty, but it fit me just fine, if a bit tight at the bosom. I cinched it up as best I could; this kind of outfit really required an extra pair of hands, but that also couldn’t be helped at the moment. I twisted my springy curls up into a messy bun at the back of my head and used a blue ponytail holder to keep it in place. It would do the trick, even though it wasn’t historically accurate.

  I glanced in the mirror and decided I looked okay. I wouldn’t pass muster at an actual reenactment, but maybe Christine would be curious about me. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be ticked off that I was wearing her dress.

  Leaving the restroom, I fluffed up my gown and hoped I’d see Austin, but I heard nothing at all. Okay, Miss Smarty Pants. Now what?

  Since the Blue Room had been active lately, I decided to go there first and try Austin’s dream walk technique. The house felt empty despite the polished wood furnishings, rich oil paintings and unique nicknacks displayed on tables and mantelpieces. Yes, it was oh so quiet.

  As I entered the room, I called out softly, “Christine? It’s Carrie Jo. I borrowed your dress…I hope you don’t mind.” I walked around for a few minutes hoping I’d hear something. Nothing.

  Okay, so now what?

  Fluffing the dress again, I stood in front of the porcelain dog and began talking about it, repeating many of the things I said the other day. “Such a nice dog. I love your sweet face and the way your tail wags.” I smiled at the tiny, lifeless artifact, feeling stupider by the second. After a few more awkward stops and starts, I gave up on the technique and decided to lie down on the fainting couch. If nothing else, I could just go to sleep—I was a dream catcher, after all. With the best of intentions, I closed my eyes and tried to still my mind, but sleep was impossible. I was too anxious about all this, and half my brain expected Austin to walk in at any moment. The brass clock on the mantelpiece whirred loudly, and some small animal foraged outside the window and shook the dried leaves. The air moved around me and felt heavy now, but still I heard nothing. I saw nothing. Completely aggravated, I got up and decided to tour the house. I walked through the ballroom and recalled the devilish events that cost Terrence Dale and Bette their lives. Sadness washed over me, and my heart felt heavy at the thought of my lost friends.

  “Christine? Can you hear me? It’s me, Carrie Jo. I’m here to help. I know you tried to warn Lafonda about Jonatan, or was it something else?” I waited a minute and detected nothing but kept going. “Are you trying to warn me too? Please tell me.”

  Leaving the ballroom behind, I toured the two parlors and then went upstairs. Surely in Calpurnia’s room—and Lafonda’s—I’d see Christine. I pushed open the door slowly, half expecting to see her standing near the window or tidying her daughter’s armoire. No such luck.

  “Christine? I’m here to listen. I want to help.” I sat on the bed and looked around the room until my eyes fell on an antique jewelry box. I stared at it and followed Austin’s instructions, or at least as much as I remembered. I thought about the history of the box, how it was made, who might have owned it. For a second, I felt the air shudder, but nothing else happened.

  I felt like such a failure. Evidently, nothing would make Christine speak to me tonight. The dream walking wasn’t working, and I was out of ideas. I walked to the window and looked out over the front yard and the street beyond. It all looked so different now, so very different from when Lafonda lived here. With a sigh, I turned away and decided to give up tonight. It had been a harebrained idea anyway. Why had Austin stood me up?

  “Christine, I really wish you’d talk to me. I need your help. I can help you reach Lafonda too, if that’s what you want. I can help you warn her about Jonatan.”

  With a heavy heart, I turned off the light and walked back out to the hallway. Turning off lights behind me, I navigated the staircase with my skirts and glanced back up. “I’m leaving now, Christine. This is your last chance!” Tears were in my eyes now. I walked through the lower floor and turned off all the lights. No sense in leaving the place lit up like a Christmas tree. I changed my clothes, folded the dress over my arm, grabbed my purse and headed to the front door.

  Checking my phone one last time, I saw a text message:

  I’m sorry I couldn’t make it. I’m with Bree, and I don’t know when we’ll be back. Please, CJ, be careful. Remember what I told you. Changing the past brings hidden dangers. I’ll be in touch when I can.

  I sent back three question marks, but he didn’t answer me. What the heck did that mean, “don’t know when we’ll be back”?

  Flinging my phone into my leather handbag, I opened the door and finally it happened. The fog gathered and the dream began…

  Chapter Fourteen—Lafonda

  I woke up in a sweat with my nightgown stuck to me in several places. I got up slowly, feeling tired, and decided to open a window. It was about an hour before sunrise, if I had to guess, and I was surprised it was so hot. It was usually cool this time of day. I poured water from the pitcher; it was warm, but at least it was something to drink.

  I patted a towel in the water and pressed it on my neck and chest to cool me down, but it didn’t help much. I pulled my covers back and lay on the bed, hoping sleep would take me again. My eyes got heavy, but then I heard someone calling my name.

  Lafonda…Lafonda…Are you there?

  “Who is it? Who’s there?”

  Lafonda…

  I watched in horror as the doorknob began to twist and turn. Then it stopped for a few seconds. It shook again, as if being shaken by some angry spirit. What if it was a spirit like the ones my grandmother used to tell me about when I was a small child?

  “Who’s there? Jonatan? This is no time to be pulling a prank on me!” I faked anger in a poor effort to mask my fear. With an unexpected fury, I shot across the floor and flung the door open.

  My brother was not there, and neither was Max. There was no one living, but there was a shadow. A slight woman’s figure, whispering my name. Slamming the door, I ran back to my bed and pulled the sticky covers up to my chest.

  My mind struggled to recall a prayer…I should know a prayer. A prayer against the dead! Why couldn’t I remember a single prayer? “Go away,” I whispered. “Go away!”

  Lafonda…

  That wasn’t Christine’s voice. What was happening? Had a fever taken me? How could I be hearing voices?

  Jonatan…danger…

  “Go away! Go away!” I began to cry. I was close to screaming at the top of my lungs now. Yes, I would scream for Mama!

  The doorknob turned once more, but then the spirit was gone. I was sitting on the bed, my knees hitched up to my chest; I was sweating now, and my heart pounded. Suddenly the room felt cool, as if it were no longer summer but winter. Cold, dead winter. As I shiver
ed, I could see my breath hovering around me. I waited as long as I could, but the cold was so intense that I felt the urge to shut the window.

  Scrambling across the floor in my bare feet, I shoved the window down. The wood was stiff and didn’t move as easily as it had before. I forced it closed and latched it, as if someone or something might enter if I did not. But who would bother me up here? I glanced at the doorway and heard nothing else. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe she was done for the night, whoever my visitor was.

  A movement in the hedge beneath me caught my attention. It was Jonatan! Jonatan in the trees below, with a dark figure beside him! It was a woman in a hood and cape. They were meeting, presumably in secret, but it seemed so impossible. So completely impossible!

  Jonatan…danger…

  The words came back to me, piercing my heart like a dagger. I banged on the glass and tried to fling the window up again, but it wouldn’t budge now. I called to Jonatan, but he was walking into the woods with the woman. Who was she? I had to know! The last traces of moonlight fell on the couple as they embraced. As she tilted her head up to kiss him, her dark velvet hood fell back and her slender arms slid around his neck. Jonatan kissed her deeply, and she hugged him once more before they disappeared.

  Memphis! Memphis Overstreet!

  Calling his name, I pounded on the window with my palms. They didn’t hear me—they couldn’t from this great height. As they stepped into the darkness of the woods, I turned back and ran to the door. I turned the knob as furiously as my shadowy visitor had earlier. “Mama! Mama!”

  I screamed and screamed as I tugged on the door. Not a minute later my mother was in the hall and scurrying toward me, her long dark braid cascading over her shoulder and her white nightgown clinging to her body. She held a hand out to shield the flame of her candle, then slid the candle onto the dresser and took my hands. “Hush now, Lafonda. What is it? You’ll wake the whole house.”

  She couldn’t convince me to go back to bed—not until I saw my brother. It would be dawn soon, and it was far too early to be comforting her hysterical daughter, but she was kind to me, kinder than she’d been in weeks. She comforted me as I cried and called me her dear girl, as she used to call me when I was younger and more pliable to her will. But I wouldn’t relent. I had to show her that he was gone.

  “Quietly, then. Come with me, and I will show you that your brother is sleeping, if you didn’t wake him up.”

  I followed her down the dark hallway to Jonatan’s room. She opened the door slightly, and I could see him in the bed, his arm flopped on the white pillowcase beside him. Mama waved her candle inside the room, and the candlelight flickered with the movement. It was warm in here, as warm as my room had been before the unearthly cold settled in.

  Then I heard Mama’s breath catch. She flung the door open and walked slowly into the room. It smelled wrong. No, this was not the scent of sunshine and leaves—it was a different smell, a sickening one. As if ready to reveal the hidden horror, sunlight began to inch the darkness away. I could see the gold fingers of dawn creeping across the tree-lined horizon from my brother’s window on the other side of his massive bed. Jonatan’s bed was full of blood, scarlet and dripping onto the floor. Mama’s candle fell from her hand and hit the floor with a thud. The light thumped out, and I fell to my knees as I took in the sight.

  It wasn’t my brother in the bed but Max. Max, his companion, watchdog and sometimes friend. Max, my unwanted admirer, lay dead, his light blue eyes staring up at the canopy above him. I didn’t know why, but I ran to his side, uncaring that I sat in his blood.

  And he wasn’t dead. Max’s eyes moved back and forth, and I could hear him trying to speak. Blood trickled out the side of his mouth, and his chest was covered in wounds. “Max? Who did this to you?”

  His eyes were riveted on mine. He squeezed my hand as Mama cried and screamed for Papa. I leaned close. “Max…tell me. Who did this to you?” I had to know! I must know!

  He gurgled once more, and then his pale lips stopped moving. His eyes widened and then froze in a death mask of pain. I held his sticky, wet hand and squeezed it, as if that would bring him back to life. “Max! Please!”

  The young man could not answer me. He would never speak again. And where was Jonatan? Where had Memphis taken him?

  I rose from the bed, covered in Max’s blood. Papa cursed, and Mama’s wide-eyed fear spoke volumes. My father’s dark eyes bored into my soul as he demanded, “Where is your brother? Where did you see him?”

  “From the window of my room. And he wasn’t alone. He was with Memphis Overstreet, Mama! I saw her kissing him.”

  Papa swore again and immediately stalked out of the room, Mama running after him begging, pleading with him to find her son.

  I couldn’t leave Max. Not like this. Didn’t anyone care that someone had died, obviously murdered in our home, in Jonatan’s bed? And why was he in here? Too many questions, too much sadness.

  In my mind, I heard the voice again.

  Lafonda…Jonatan…danger!

  Chapter Fifteen—Carrie Jo

  By the time I finally managed to drive home, I had stopped crying. What had I done? Why did I do it? I had interfered with the past, for the first time ever! I hadn’t intended to find Lafonda; it had been Christine I sought, but it was Lafonda’s door I stood in front of during the dream walking session.

  I’d ignored Austin’s warning, and now everything felt different. I felt changed somehow. And the world around me had changed too. I sped back home, leaving the wretched dress behind in the car. I raced inside, waved at the babysitter and ran upstairs to check on Ashland. He was fine, at least until I woke him up. He knew immediately I’d done something wrong.

  “Carrie Jo? You went, didn’t you? You went to Seven Sisters. You couldn’t wait for me?”

  “No, I couldn’t. I had to try,” I confessed in a whisper. “I had to try to talk to Christine. She didn’t show up. I couldn’t make contact.”

  He sat up in the bed and patted the spot beside him.

  Awash with guilt, I sat with him and leaned my head on his shoulder. “I saw Lafonda and spoke to her. I tried to warn her that something was going to happen to Jonatan, that he was in danger.”

  “That’s against the rules, isn’t it? Didn’t Austin say…”

  I covered my face with my hands and shook my head. “I know! And something happened. Something shifted, Ashland. I can feel it.”

  He held me as I shivered and recalled the details of the dream walking session. He said quietly, “So Max is dead, not Jonatan. But we have the newspaper clipping, right? The article about Jonatan’s death?”

  “We do, in the office.” We both looked at each other and then raced out of the room to find it. It was in the top drawer of my desk.

  “Here!” I scanned the article and could hardly believe what I was reading. The obituary had changed—instead of Jonatan’s death, the article reported the “heinous murder” of Max Davenport, employee of the Delarosa household. I sat in the chair, feeling like I would faint at any moment. “Oh my God, oh my God! I can’t believe this.”

  “I saw it. I know what it said before. It said Jonatan Delarosa! You’ve changed the past, babe. You might not have meant to, but you did!”

  “What am I going to do? How do I fix this?”

  “I’m not sure you can. Call Austin, see what he has to say.”

  “He’s gone with Bree.”

  “What? Gone where?”

  I shook my head, my mind spinning. What did this mean? Had I doomed Lafonda? Surely not. Surely it was a mistake. Maybe we’d imagined what we’d read before. Both of us.

  Sure. Right. Just like you imagined the dress that looked so much like Christine’s?

  No, there was something happening at Seven Sisters. I’d started a chain of events that would probably bring disaster to the Delarosas and maybe even us.

  Looking better than he had in a while, Ashland picked up the phone and called Austin. “Hey, budd
y, this is Ash. Listen, Carrie Jo…well, let’s just say there’s a problem. Would you call us, please? We need your advice. Call soon, please.”

  He turned back to me. “I had to leave a message. It’s going to be okay, I’m sure.”

  Despite my big screw-up, I had to smile at him. He was looking better by the minute. “No headache, huh?”

  “No. I haven’t felt this good in a while. In fact, I’m starving now. Let’s just calm down. I’ll send the babysitter home and cook us some supper. It’s going to be okay, babe. Trust me.” He gave me his best smile, and I took his hand and followed him to the living room.

  Yes, everything had changed. Even the feel of the house was different. I held my breath. What if Baby Boy had changed? I walked into the living room, nearly in tears. He was perfect, and exactly the same as when I left him. He was rolling around in his ball pit having the time of his life.

  “Momma!” he said when he spotted me.

  “Baby Boy!” I picked him up and kissed his chubby cheek.

  “I love you, Momma.”

  “Well, I love you too. Look who’s talking so good now.”

  “I’ve been practicing with him,” Natalie said proudly.

  I kissed him one last time, and he looked into my eyes. I smiled, but then the smile vanished.

  Baby Boy’s eyes weren’t blue any longer. They were hazel. The difference was subtle, but I could see it plain as day.

  “Ashland?” I said slowly.

  “Babe? What’s up?”

  “Do you notice anything different about our son?” I ignored Natalie’s quizzical look.

  He examined Baby Boy playfully but confessed he didn’t see what I saw.

  “His eyes…”

  “Yes, they are lovely, just like your mother’s were.” He looked at me questioningly, but I decided to drop it.

  Maybe I was seeing things. It wasn’t unheard of for a child’s eye color to change around his age. That was probably what happened.