“Hank, what is going on?” Jack said. He was holding tightly to the man who just convinced me he was Carter and once Kade knew I was far enough from the parapet to no longer be in danger, he let me go in order to help Jack keep the struggling man secure.
“She’s the dangerous one, Jack. She wanted to kill me. I was just protecting myself.”
“Jack, who is this man?” I was quite confused at this point and I really, really wanted to get this settled once and for all.
Jack glanced at me in surprise. “You know who this is, Tess. It’s Hank.”
“I’m sorry but I have no idea who this is. The man I know as Hank is …” but he was gone. “What …?” I swung about and then checked the turret room which was also empty. The secret door, however, stood open. Had he escaped through there? If so, why?
“Who are you looking for?” Kade asked.
“Hank.” And when he and Jack both looked at me as if I weren’t making any sense, I waved my hand impatiently. “Your grounds keeper, Jack. Hank Williams.”
Jack shook the man he was holding firmly by the arm. “This is Hank, Tess.”
And then behind us someone else spoke. “No it’s not.”
We all turned in surprise to see George standing in the balcony doorway. He looked at the man Jack and Kade held and whose struggles had suddenly stopped and shook his head in disgust. “His real name is Carter. He’s my twin brother.”
“Well then, who is Hank Williams?” I asked.
“Hank was our step-brother. He disappeared the night Abigail died,” George explained. He looked at Carter, his jaw working with suppressed emotion. “You just couldn’t stop, could you? You killed Nathan, you killed Abigail, you probably killed Willy and now you were ready to kill Tess.” George looked at Jack. “I’m glad you got here in time, Jack. When Carter let it slip that he was coming here, I knew he was up to no good and I just couldn’t let him cause any more trouble.”
Jack nodded his thanks, his face grim. “Thank you for calling me, George, and warning us.” He glanced at me, smiled briefly and then turned to Kade. “I’m just glad I had the foresight to call you, Kade because I couldn’t have handled this alone.”
Well that cleared up that mystery. I was just about to ask Jack and Kade how they knew I was up here. Thank God they showed up when they did. But how was it that Carter knew I was going to be in the turret room? To add to that question was another of equal importance. “Who is Willy?”
George looked as if the weight of the world had settled squarely on his shoulders. “Willy is short for Williams. Hardly anyone called Hank by his first name. When Carter came back to stay with me, we decided he shouldn’t use the nickname as we didn’t want to stir up any memories from the locals.”
I still didn’t understand something here. George said that Hank disappeared the night Abigail died, so where did he go? Then it dawned on me that Kade and Jack didn’t even know anything about the real Hank, the Hank that I had been talking to. The blood drained from my face and I grabbed Kade’s arm for support as I shook my head in denial. “But Hank can’t be dead.” Could he? I tried to think back to all the moments I interacted with him and I realized that most of those moments we were alone. The few times Hank had been around anyone else, they had not spoken directly to him. I had assumed they saw him and when I talked about Hank, they thought I was talking about Carter. Oh God. I’d been conversing with a ghost almost from the moment I got here?
“Have you been talking to Hank, Tess? The real one I mean?” Kade asked. Whatever he saw in my face must have concerned him because he let go of Carter and put a supportive arm around me.
“What in the world is going on?” Nancy appeared behind George and nudged her way around him.
Jack, holding firmly to Carter, waved toward Nancy, indicating he wanted her to turn around and head back inside. “Why don’t we go down to the office and straighten this all out?”
Though Carter came under protest he seemed to realize that his game was over and once we all crowded into the office, which was already occupied by Raymond, who was on the phone with the police, he sank down in a chair in resignation.
George seemed to age before our eyes. Once everyone was settled, he looked at me and sighed heavily. “If you’ve been seeing Willy then I’m going to make a guess that he’s dead?” He looked at his brother and repeated the question. “Did you kill him?”
Carter nodded but his eyes were earnest as his glance rested on each of us for a few persuasive seconds. “I didn’t want to kill him. But he was trying to take Abigail away.”
“Did you kill Nathan and Abigail as well?” Kade asked.
Carter closed his eyes, pressed his lips together for a moment as if he weren’t going to answer and then opened his eyes and looked at George, pleading with him silently to understand. “I didn’t mean for Abigail to die. I was trying to convince her that Willy was Nathan’s killer. I knew she had seen what happened and I knew she wasn’t sure who had done it. But she didn’t believe me. She said she knew that I killed Nathan and she attacked me. We were out on the balcony. I was only trying to protect myself. She was trying to scratch my eyes out! I pushed her away and she fell off the roof.”
“Where is Willy?” George asked him quietly.
“Under the fountain. Remember it was all dug up? The work crew came in the next morning to set the cement and then they built the fountain and I knew no one would ever find him.”
Nancy’s face went white. “Oh my God, someone is buried under my fountain?” She sank down on the sofa and grabbed at the air until Jack took her hands.
“Shh, Nancy. We’ll remove the fountain, find the body and put er … Willy ... to rest,” Jack told her.
“I still don’t understand why you were calling yourself Hank,” Jack said to Carter.
“We were worried that people would start questioning Carter if they knew he was back,” George said. “People didn’t like Carter all that much and there was one or two that suspected Carter had something to do with Willy’s disappearance. Everyone trusted Willy and since Carter and Willy looked a lot alike, despite the fact that he was my twin, we decided he should be Hank.” George gave a tired shrug. “Nearly twenty-five years had passed since Carter went away … he’d gone to stay with our mother down in New Jersey right after … well, afterwards. When our mother died, Carter came to live with me and we figured it best that he be Hank. We were afraid people would question us as to where Willy had gone and since I didn’t know,” here George flashed Carter a resentful look, “well, we just figured it would be best. No one knew the difference as far as we could tell.”
“It might have worked out, too, if she hadn’t come here,” Carter mumbled, jabbing his finger in my direction.
“How did you know I was going to be in the turret room?” The question nagged at me to no end and I had to know the answer.
Carter sent me a look that clearly indicated he thought I was the weird one. “I heard you talking to yourself in the turret room. I was just on the other side of the wall and for all your so-called psychic powers, you didn’t know I was there did you? You never knew when I was around.” His look turned derisive. “I saw you guys go in the cavern that morning and you didn’t even know I was watching you.”
Jack frowned. “What are you talking about? When did you guys go in the cavern? What cavern?” Jack glanced from me to Kade, his brow arched in query.
Kade shifted guiltily in his chair. “We wanted to explore the tunnel a little more and see if it led to the house.” He turned to Carter. “So you did try to kill me when you set those charges.”
Carter shrugged as if he had little concern for the admission. “I figured if I could knock you out of the running, that woman would leave.”
I was so shocked by this revelation that I slumped forward in my chair and covered my face. “Oh my God.” Kade could have been killed and it would have been all my fault. As if reading my mind, Kade shook his head.
“No, Tess. You
can’t take the blame for what this moron tried to do.”
“I knew something was wrong. I could feel him watching us. I thought it was Nathan.” I sent Kade an apologetic glance and he shook his head in return, telling me silently not to worry about it.
“You’re the one who destroyed the turret room, aren’t you?” Though Jack was asking Carter the question it was said more as a statement of fact.
Carter grinned as if he were pleased with his own cleverness. “Thought it might shake you all up. I figured you and Nancy would send everyone packing for their safety of course.” He cast me a resentful glare. “But you let her stay.”
Nancy had been quiet most of the time and I knew she was thinking hard. She narrowed her eyes at Carter and leaned forward to speak to him. “Was it you who locked our daughter up in the turret room and then out on the balcony?”
Carter’s grin made my skin crawl. “I thought to scare her a little. She always came to me when she was scared.”
Nancy’s face paled as she came up out of her seat looking as if she wanted to tear Carter to shreds. “You good for nothing low life worm!”
Although Jack’s face was tight with fury and he looked as if he too wanted to recreate Carter’s being, he grabbed his wife and held her still. “You are a sick man, Ha…Carter.” He looked at Raymond. “Are the police on their way?”
Raymond nodded. "They should be here any moment." He sat behind the desk looking somewhat overwhelmed by all the revelations. His face was pale, his eyes downcast. As if aware of my regard, he looked up and met my eyes. “So, are there ghosts here or was it all Carter?”
“There were ghosts here too. Abigail must have started appearing whenever Carter was up to no good. She was probably trying to protect the girls she knew Carter was eyeballing.”
Raymond’s handsome face looked troubled his eyes sad. “So now that we’ve got Carter and the danger is gone, do you think my parents will go away too? You said they were here to protect me and we’ve just eliminated the danger.”
I reached across to Raymond and patted his hands, which were twisted together on the desk. “They’ll always be with you, Raymond, when you need them. Parents never stop worrying about their children.”
Raymond gave me a relieved smile, his eyes lit with pleasure at the idea that his parents would always be with him. “Thanks, Tess, that’s good to know.”
Nancy’s eyes were shining with tears at the exchange, her loving gaze meeting Raymond’s with an approving nod. She sank down in her chair and finally looked like she was going to relax. “And what about Nathan?”
“He was trying to protect Abigail,” I told her softly. “But, I’m pretty sure they’ve moved on. You won’t be bothered by them anymore. Now that Carter is going to be put away, Abigail is not needed here. She is reunited with Nathan.”
Although I was happy that Abigail and Nathan had moved into the light, I was worried about Hank. All I could think about was the fact that that nice man was buried under a fountain with no one knowing he was even dead. I had a strong suspicion that Hank hadn’t known he was dead until those last few moments out on the balcony. Remembering all that happened, it suddenly occurred to me that Carter had acted as if he too had seen and heard Hank. “Did you see Hank out on the balcony?”
Carter threw me a disgusted look. “What? You think I’m a freak like you? I figured you was seeing Hank because you kept looking behind me. I’ve heard you talking to him enough. It was easy to figure out what he was saying to you.”
His insults didn’t bother me. He was a murderer. His opinions meant nothing. Not wanting to waste any more time on the man, I instead turned to my own thoughts and the fascinating fact that Hank appeared to me as a man in his sixties. He had been a teenager at the time of his death. I had no idea that those who have passed on could age over time–or that perhaps they had the ability to manipulate their appearance when manifesting. That was a new one to me. Tears for his loss filled my eyes and I brushed them away self-consciously as everyone turned to look at me.
“You’ve been talking to this Hank person, Tess, the whole time you’ve been here?” Nancy’s eyes were wide with fascination. “How often did you see him?”
“A few times. I had no idea he was dead.”
“He looked like a real person?” Kade asked, incredulous. “Are you kidding me?”
I nodded slowly, hardly believing it myself. I had no idea I was talking to a ghost all those times. How fascinating.
“Was he also haunting the resort?” Nancy asked.
“No. At least, I don’t think he was bothering anyone. I think he was here in a protective mode; and, of course, he’s buried here. Nathan and Abigail were not here to scare anyone. They were trapped in their own horrific drama but they are united now and I’m pretty sure they are gone. I’ll be willing to bet that Hank is gone as well.” I hoped that Jack would have his body exhumed real soon so I could be here when they gave him a proper burial.
“This is all quite amazing.” Raymond pushed up away from the desk. “The police should be here any moment. Do we tell them that Tess has been talking to the dead and that’s how we’ve come to learn what we know?”
“No,” Jack said. “Between George and Carter, they will know the whole story so we should be able to keep Tess out of it.” He glanced at Carter and frowned. “If this piece of crap tries to say anything, I doubt they’ll believe him, especially if we deny the allegations.”
George looked at Jack, his face sad and tired. “I’m sorry, Jack. I should have told you the truth about Carter being my brother and we should have used his real name.”
“You know this looks like you were an accessory to murder,” Kade told him.
Carter looked up at us then and shook his head. “No. George didn’t do anything. He wasn’t ever sure I’d killed anyone. If he’s guilty of anything, it’s that he didn’t tell anyone his suspicions.”
“We’ll let the police sort it all out,” Jack said.
“I’m still not happy that you went up to the turret room without telling any of us, Tess.” Nancy’s tone was only slightly accusing, though more out of concern than anger.
“I know, Nancy, and I’m sorry. I knew you wouldn’t let me go up there alone and I work best alone. I didn’t think I was going to be able to get any answers if anyone was with me.”
“You’re right about that. We wouldn’t have let you go up alone,” Kade said. He too looked at me with accusing eyes but I had a feeling he was more hurt than anything because I had left him out of my plan.
“I’m sorry. I realize now that I shouldn’t have done it and I can’t do anything but apologize.” I wanted to take Kade’s hand and hold it but he looked so stand-offish at that moment that I didn’t dare touch him. Would this damage our relationship?
“Well, we do have George to thank on one score,” Jack said. “He’s the one that called us and told us that Carter was headed to the turret room and that he was pretty sure you were going to be there as well.”
“So you really think the haunting is over?” Raymond asked.
I nodded. “Pretty sure, yes.”
A knock sounded at the door and Modesta opened it. Two uniformed police officers were standing behind her. It was time to get the whole sordid story out in the open and put this to rest once and for all.
It took nearly two hours for everyone to give statements. Carter was taken to jail and George’s fate would be determined at a hearing. For now he was free. After the police left, we all agreed that we’d talk later in the morning for it was nearing daybreak and I had been up all night. I did not want to sleep in the room upstairs; I wanted to go to the cottage. Kade walked with me and although I expected him to leave me at my door, he waited until I opened it and then followed me inside.
“I’m not leaving you.” He pulled me into his arms and I fell against him gratefully. That’s when it all hit me, the fear, the terror and I couldn’t stop the overwhelming outpour of emotion. He pulled me, sobbing, alon
g with him into the bedroom and lay down with me on the bed.
“Be still, Tess. It’s all over. You helped those restless spirits.”
“It’s just so sad, Kade.”
“I know.”
“Mike is gone too.”
He stopped caressing my back and slid his hand up into my hair, tilting my face up to his. “Really? Are you okay with that?”
“Yes. I want him to go on.”
“What about you?”
“I want to go on too.” And then I pulled him down for a kiss. Kade didn’t allow it to be anything but brief.
“You need to rest, Tess. You’ve been up for hours and it’s nearly dawn. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
“Okay. Tomorrow.” I couldn’t hold the sleep off any longer. As I drifted into slumber, I felt a smile bubble up within me. The cloak of anger and sorrow had lifted from my soul. I felt so free. I felt loved. And I didn’t feel alone anymore. My beloved was gone. He and Tootsie were off on new adventures and so was I.
DEBORAH J. HUGHES
Deborah Hughes was a normal kid living a normal life when she moved into a haunted house at the age of seven. Suddenly she was sharing space with dead people and experiencing the bizarre world of the unknown and the uncanny. An over-active imagination did not, at first, serve her well for she feared what she did not understand.
Learning to read opened her to the world of books and she read everything she could find about supernatural and paranormal phenomena. The more she read, the more she learned and the more she realized how little she knew. This has led to a lifelong search for knowledge, truth and enlightenment.
Constantly inspired to write, from the age of eight she began telling the stories streaming like movies through her mind. Although determined to grow up and become a writer, her sense of adventure led to a career in the United States Air Force. Despite a busy and demanding life, Deborah continued writing the stories that came to her in flashes of inspiration and her quest for knowledge continued. Her military career now behind her, she is focused on her lifelong dream of being an author and sharing the stories she’s been so compelled to write.
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