I rolled my eyes at him. “Good grief, Ashland. Get a hold of yourself. I swear, you act like we never…you know. I think I know why all this happened. But I don’t want to talk about it here. Hey! Are you listening to me, Ashland? Yoo-hoo?” I snapped my fingers at him. “Why are you staring off into space?”
“That girl? The one with the blue hospital gown. That one,” he said, pointing toward the long empty hallway outside the waiting room. “She needs to talk to me.” The skin on my arms crept up, and my eyes widened as I continued to stare at nothing. Oh, God.
“Um, I don’t see anyone, Ashland,” Detra Ann said. Then she whispered to me, “But he’s not lying. He does see someone, or he thinks he does. Maybe he has a clot after all.”
“I see her, and she can see me. That’s rare. I need to talk to her. I think she needs me.” Ashland left his trash on the side table and wandered across the room.
“What? Where are you going?” I called after him, but he put his hand behind him to signal me to stay put.
Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen. “You guys see anything?”
“Surprisingly, yes. I see a faint outline of someone small and probably female. You don’t?” Henri stared hard at the doorway, and we all watched as Ashland paused and nodded to someone who was not there. To say the sight gave me goose pimples was an understatement. As Bette would have said, “Seeing that gives my creepy crawlies the creepy crawlies.” How I missed my friend!
I confessed, “Uh, no. I can see ghosts occasionally, when the stars are right or if the ghosts are really ticked at me or if I’m dreaming, but not like Ashland. I wonder what’s going on…if the doctor walks in here and finds Ash talking to the air, he’s going to want to do another test. Where’s he going now?” My husband disappeared down the hallway, and the three of us followed at an unobtrusive distance.
“I miss being normal,” I whined to Detra Ann.
She rolled her eyes as if to say, When were you ever normal? “It’s overrated, Carrie Jo. Who needs normal when you have all of us?” At least she smiled at me. Henri smiled too, but he wasn’t ready to let Ashland out of his sight. Ashland disappeared into a room with the invisible girl; he even opened the door for her first, as if she couldn’t walk right through it.
We waited silently, none of us willing to go inside and interrupt whatever ghostly things Ashland was tending to. Mixing with ghosts when you weren’t wanted was highly unadvisable. Southern ghosts could be downright cranky, too. Looking at one another quizzically, we waited. Fortunately, Ash popped back out almost as soon as he went in.
“We can go now,” he said.
“What the heck just happened? How about telling us that to start with?” Detra Ann quizzed him.
“Her name is Heidi. She had a baby here a few years ago and never got to see her. She wanted me to help her find the baby.”
“How sad. I guess she died here. And did you help her? That was awful fast, babe.”
Shaking his head, he confessed, “I didn’t have to do much. Her mother showed up and told her she knew where to find the baby. They left together, but she thanked me for trying.”
Ashland broke off his explanation and peered down the hall behind us. Did he see another ghost? This one I could see…he looked like a shadow and lingered for only a few seconds. What the heck? I got the impression he was a maintenance man, dressed in a black and gray jumpsuit. No, that wasn’t a maintenance man—he was a prisoner. When had prisoners worked at the hospital? How old was this place?
Ashland warned, “Keep walking, and don’t make eye contact. Dark energy. Not someone I want to connect with.” We scurried down the hall, none of us willing to look back at the man we were all sure was staring at our backs. Except Ashland.
“Yes, he’s still there. He’s following me. Maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt.”
I couldn’t see the man anymore but my skin crawled up and down. “I’d say no, that’s not a good idea, babe. Trust your intuition. Let’s go. Some people you can’t help. Not in death or in life.”
We left the stale-smelling hospital, and I was happy to leave the ghosts behind. I sensed by Ashland’s wide-eyed stares that he was seeing much more than he told me, but he didn’t say anything else. And the truth was, I didn’t want to know what he saw.
Ashland said, “Let’s go home. Detra Ann, Henri, you guys come with us. I think Carrie Jo is right…we have to talk. Things have changed.”
Detra Ann replied, “We will follow y’all, but I might need to stop and pick up some donuts from Ladd’s. I have this horrible craving for lemon-filled donuts. Too bad they don’t serve beignets and chicory coffee there. If I had a bag of beignets, I’d be as happy as a pig in slop.”
“Ew.” I laughed and added, “Hey, pick up one for Baby Boy too, please. He loves donuts.” Another memory twinged at my heart. Momma loved taking Baby Boy to Ladd’s to show him off to the other women who worked there. I missed her so bad.
Ashland was apparently in no mood to chit-chat. He sat in the car waiting for me to climb in with him. We rode in silence as he sped down the tangled Mobile streets, occasionally craning his neck to see something I couldn’t.
“You’re seeing them again, aren’t you? You said you weren’t seeing them anymore!”
“I guess the blood clot in my brain was blocking me somehow. Now that it’s gone, I can see everything, the ghosts of the past walking amongst the living. And that’s not all. Other things too. In some ways, I can see much more clearly now, and I can hear better too. It’s pretty amazing.” He smiled a goofy, half-drunk smile at me. I didn’t detect any fear at all.
“I’m going to tell Henri and Detra Ann what I did, Ashland. I have to! What if things changed for them too?”
He didn’t answer but suddenly pulled off the road in front of our house. We never parked here…I had no idea what he was doing, but then I saw the ghastly sight. “Look at that! Can you see him, Carrie Jo? There’s a man hanging from that tree there! Right in front of Seven Sisters. Someone hanged him and left him there.”
“Oh my God! That’s Austin! Oh my God! Is he dead? We have to call someone. Wait! Where did he go?” Suddenly the image of Austin, in his typical dress pants and neat dress shirt, faded like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. I blinked, wondering if maybe it had been a trick of the light. But how? I’d clearly seen his silky black hair, his face that looked so much like David Garrett’s and his pale hands.
“I think that was a warning, Carrie Jo. That was not a true ghost—it’s something I don’t understand at all. Let’s go inside. I don’t see anything else, but it doesn’t feel safe out here.”
Without another word, he drove our car up the driveway to the great big house we now called home. Seven Sisters, a place where dreams were born—and sometimes died.
No matter how many times I pulled in this driveway, I couldn’t get used to the idea that I lived here now.
This was home again. Yes, again. What would Muncie say, and why hadn’t I seen him? I really needed to hear from my protector now, if that’s what he was—that’s what Henri had told me after the Moonlight Garden incident.
My hands were still shaking as I got out of the car, and they didn’t stop once I was inside. Why had we seen Austin like that, and who would threaten us with those images?
Henri and Detra Ann arrived about thirty minutes later, which had given us just enough time to turn on every light in the house and do a sweep. As we made the rounds to check the doors, I thought for a second I heard crying. But as quickly as I heard it, the sound vanished. I didn’t mention it to Ashland, who said he didn’t see or hear anything else.
Gathering in the Blue Room, we settled down on our out-of-place sectional sofa and Detra Ann munched on donuts and chocolate milk. This seating arrangement wasn’t permanent, but we hadn’t yet figured out what rooms we’d be staying in and who and what was going where. At this point, I wanted us to stay together. Baby Boy stayed with us in Uncle Louis’ old room, and
we spent most of our downstairs time in the Blue Room. I handed out paper towels and bottles of water and stood in front of them as if I were making some sort of presentation.
“What’s up, Carrie Jo? You look positively pale.” Detra Ann smacked on her donut, and Henri rubbed the frosting off her cheek with a paper towel.
“I can’t believe I’m confessing this to y’all. I hope you know that I did not mean to do what I did. I really didn’t mean for any of this to happen. It all started when I went back to Seven Sisters…”
“Babe, are you sure you want to do this?” Whoever this incarnation of Ashland was, he wasn’t being too helpful at the moment.
“Yes, Ashland. No secrets from our friends. You see, Lafonda Delarosa, the ghost we’ve seen recently, the young woman who lived here in the 1880s, after the Cottonwoods and before the Stuarts purchased it, well, she—”
Someone began knocking hard on the front door. What if that negative energy had followed us home from the hospital?
I smiled awkwardly as Ashland went to play host to our unexpected guest. He wasn’t gone a minute. “Look who I found, Carrie Jo. It’s Austin.” Ashland raised his eyebrows at me. What did he want me to do? Not tell the guy we saw him hanging from a tree a few minutes ago? “You want something to drink?” he asked him.
“No, I am afraid there is no time for that. I came to talk to Carrie Jo. I need to ask her a question.” Austin looked like he’d been caught in a windstorm. I could hear the concern in his voice, along with a tinge of anger, but at least he kept it in check.
“Hey, she’s my wife. Can’t you talk to all of us?”
I hated hearing Ashland sound so jealous, but I was beginning to realize that he couldn’t help it. The real Ashland wouldn’t act like this, but I’d changed the past. And by doing so, I’d changed everything. If Baby Boy’s eye color could be changed, why not Ashland’s personality?
“Calm down, Ashland. And we need to talk to you too, Austin. We saw something just a while ago. We saw a man hanging from a tree, the big one by the road. You know the live oak I’m talking about. And…that man looked a lot like you.”
Detra Ann gasped. “What? I didn’t see that. Someone should call the police.”
Ashland intervened and explained, “Um, we didn’t call the police, Detra Ann. It just happened. What we saw wasn’t a ghost but a forewarning. Someone is warning us about you, Austin. I can’t tell you what it means because I don’t have a clue.”
“This is what I was talking about, Detra Ann. I dream walked here at Seven Sisters. I went to find Christine because she was trying to warn Lafonda, but I made contact. I ended up talking to Lafonda—I warned her that Jonatan was going to die. It was only a few seconds, but I shouldn’t have done it. I interfered, even though Austin warned me not to, and I changed things. Jonatan didn’t die, Max did, and now we’re all twisted up in this alternate reality. And I don’t know how to make it right.” I collapsed on the couch and put my head in my hands, ashamed that my friends now knew the truth.
For a full minute, nobody said anything. Nobody questioned me or tried to convince me that I was wrong. They knew too much to do that. We’d all seen too much. We knew the supernatural world was as real as the one we currently occupied.
Detra Ann was the first to speak. “Why would this affect us? Henri and I were only here for the welcome home party. Was that when it happened?”
“No, Detra Ann. It was after that. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not about proximity, guys. It’s because you are all tied together. Not just in this life, but in your past lives too,” Austin explained in a sad voice.
“That’s just great, Carrie Jo!” Detra Ann stomped her foot.
“I’m sorry, Detra Ann! Really, I am.”
Austin put his hands up to settle us down. “I know that the idea of past lives doesn’t jive with our current culture. But whether you believe it or not, the truth is you are a unique group of people, and this isn’t the first time you all have met. There’s a greater mystery here, a greater piece of the puzzle, but that’s for another day. What’s happened, what Carrie Jo did, it’s partially my fault. I got so carried away catching up with Calpurnia—I mean, Bree—that I lost track of time. I should have shown up; I should have helped you.”
“I don’t think I want you helping my wife,” Ashland smarted off.
“I am going to let that go, Ashland, because we have bigger fish to fry. When we get this mess untangled, I expect an apology. I have not treated Carrie Jo inappropriately at any time, and she has not acted inappropriately toward me. So no more snide remarks, if you please.” His words shocked Ashland into silence. “The only way we can fix this for you and your friends is to go back,” he said to me now. “We have to go back to Lafonda.”
“Go back and reverse what I did? How?” I asked hopefully as I chewed on a fingernail. That bad habit hadn’t changed. “I’m not even sure how I did it.”
“No, it’s not going to be that simple. You can’t just go back and reverse everything. It’s not likely that we’ll travel back to the exact moment and relive it. What we have to do is find a trigger object. Find the thing that you touched or moved, something you may have used to communicate with Lafonda. Do you remember what that was?”
Detra Ann gasped and clutched her belly. “You mean like a Ouija board? Carrie Jo, you know you can’t fool with those things! Those are portals to the dark side!” She Ann was on her feet and ready to run out of the house, but Henri grabbed her hand and wouldn’t let her leave.
Henri’s even voice broke the craziness of the moment. Did my friends really understand that they weren’t themselves? “Detra Ann, we have to hear this. I have to know if this is why I feel so…weird. She’s right! Something is wrong with me—and you too, honey. I’ve never known you to stomp around so much as you have tonight.”
Austin’s face took on a thoughtful expression, and he said softly, “There’s a full moon tonight. The full moon casts light upon hidden things and reveals the truth. It’s actually the perfect time to go back and see what happened.”
His confident answer didn’t fill me with any peace. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Austin. Ash is seeing ghosts again, and I can feel the dream walking vibe hitting me now. What if something worse happens?” I couldn’t hide my fear.
He smiled at me patiently. “Worse than this?” He nodded toward Ashland, who was sullen and quiet. Thank goodness Baby Boy was with his new favorite babysitter, Natalie, this evening.
Hmm…maybe I should call to check on him first.
Austin shook his dark head. “No, if you do that, you’ll only get him involved, and you don’t need him here. This place is a hotbed of activity. On second thought, if we wait for tonight, it might be too much for you. I think we need to start dream walking now.”
Gape-mouthed, I froze in my tracks. Everyone stared at Austin. No doubt wondering what the heck he was talking about. They couldn’t hear him, but I could. Austin had answered me—in my head! I had only been thinking about calling Baby Boy; I hadn’t spoken those words aloud. Did that mean he could read my mind all the time?
“No, only during the full moon,” he whispered. “And we’re both dream walkers. I don’t think it works on others.”
“What? What are y’all talking about?” Ashland asked suspiciously.
I smiled and said, “Nothing, babe. It’s not important. Kiss me goodbye. I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back soon. And when I come back, hopefully everything will be right again.”
“Kiss for luck, then.” He kissed me sweetly and gave Austin a warning eye. “Bring her back safe, Austin, or you’ll have me to deal with, in this life or the next.”
“Roger that.”
I could see that answer surprised Ashland, but I had no idea why. Suddenly the air began to shimmer a bit, like we were standing in a pool of water. I looked at Austin and swallowed the lump in my throat.
“You ready?” the man with David Garrett’s face asked me.
“I think so,” I answered weakly.
The next thing I knew, Austin’s arms were around me. He held me as the world around us changed. We were walking now, walking into the darkness through some moist leaves. I had expected to remain in the house, but we were standing outside for some reason. The gas lamps on the wide porch of Seven Sisters glowed in the night. Yes, it was night here, and it had been raining. It was funny to think that time moved differently in the past.
Oh, but it does, Austin answered without speaking.
Stop that. You’re weirding me out, I thought with a frown. “Are they going to see us?”
“No, but be quiet.”
By the look of the ground, it had been raining for hours. Then I looked up and saw a black horse and rider blowing past us, as if the devil himself were chasing him.
I hoped we weren’t too late. But I suspected we were.
Chapter Three—Lafonda Delarosa
Sweating in my stiff lace dress, I slumped down in the unbearably hard wooden chair as Mr. Trufant droned on about his latest achievements in the shipbuilding world. He had even taken the trouble to bring a painting that illustrated his and Papa’s latest shipbuilding project, a project that bored me to tears even at my most alert moments. This afternoon my mind ran as slowly as molasses, but my emotions—that was another story. When I dared to, when I knew she wouldn’t catch me, I continued to shower Mama with a barrage of disapproving glances. I blamed her for this fiasco.
How dare she ask us to entertain the boring Mr. Trufant while Jonatan remained missing, gone from home with no word of his whereabouts? All while Max’s blood remained in the crevices of the wooden floor above us! How dare we all pretend that the worst hadn’t happened? And I knew the truth…we were ruined by all this. We would surely be ruined! Who could survive this?
My brother had been gone a week now, and to my surprise, Mama had not taken to her rooms to cry herself silly or drink herself stupefied as she did on occasion. And that I could not understand.
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