The Myrtles Plantation

by Ghostly Enconter

“Tomorrow would be great,” I replied.

  Luckily there were guests that night, and although they were outside in the new wing, at least I was not all alone, especially now. I tossed and turned, trying to still the images in my head, unable to sleep. Finally, I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. As usual, Grinch followed right behind me, and he waited outside the bathroom door, as he always did. I expected him to be waiting when I came out, but he wasn’t there. I looked around, calling to him.

  I heard scratching at the back door. It sounded like an animal. Unable to find Grinch, I went to the door, where I had to unlock both the deadbolt and the chain. When I opened the door, Grinch was just sitting there.

  There was absolutely no way he could have gotten outside; there were no doors or passages he could have gone through. How was this possible? My mind was beginning to boggle. I called him, and he snarled at me. He had never snarled at me before. What was going on?

  I leaned down to talk to him. When he looked up at me, it was not Grinch’s sweet, trusting, eyes that glared back into mine. His eyes were glowing red, and he had an expression of pure evil. It was not Grinch.

  I fled to my bedroom, jumped into the bed, and pulled the covers over my head.

  The next morning, Grinch seemed, and looked, like his usual self—no red, glowing eyes and no mean temperament. I was beside myself with worry and horror. What had possessed him? I watched him carefully for any signs of abnormal behavior, but he seemed to be his old self again. I hated the fact that now I was forced to be afraid for, and maybe a little bit of, my beloved Grinch. He was all that was left now, my constant companion, my comforter.

  I walked out to the gift shop, and Grinch, as usual, was right beside me. I grabbed what I needed and turned to go back into the house. I didn’t notice that Grinch was not following close behind. I was in so much pain and confusion, I was unaware of any of the sounds around me—the cheerful chirping of the birds, Tom’s faint voice reciting the tour from somewhere in the house, an engine starting up in the parking area, the car wheeling down the drive.

  A Godawful screech broke into my consciousness, followed by the hugest silence I have ever experienced. It was Grinch. I knew in that instant that he was dead. I turned to look. The car didn’t even slow down.

  “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

  CHAPTER 61

  I was beside myself, sobbing hysterically. Not Grinch, too. Oh, my God. Not Grinch. Why was this happening to me? Damn the house. I felt nothing but hate and contempt for the entity that was once my joy and passion, the one place I thought I would never leave. And now, there was really only one option left—I knew I had to get out of there.

  Tom helped me bury Grinch. Tearfully, I said a prayer over his shallow grave, and then I kneeled and softly kissed the dirt that blanketed him for eternity. “Grinch, I love you.”

  Had it been his time? I needed to believe that. I was overwhelmed with a gripping fear that the house had possessed him, and that he had somehow sacrificed his life for me. I will forever be haunted by the eerie look in his eyes the night before.

  I didn’t bother to pack very many of my belongings. I didn’t even care. I had already lost everything that mattered. And I could send for my things later. Zombielike, I followed behind as Tom carried my bags to the car.

  “Miss Frances,” he asked, “when will you be coming back?”

  I had no answer. I just stared straight ahead as I got into the car.

  “Take care of things, Tom,” I replied in an emotionless monotone. “And take care of yourself,” I called out as I drove away. I doubt if he could even hear me. “The house will possess you if you don’t take care.”

  At the gates, I stopped and looked back at the place known as the Myrtles Plantation, a home I had once loved so intensely. Now I just felt a deep sense of loss. In the end, even the house betrayed me. Or had it?

  I was surprised that I still felt such a deep connection to it, such a deep, intense love affair with it. It was just a house, after all. And yet it had its own distinctive personality. People seemed to sense what the house itself was feeling, and I watched as they reacted to it.

  Looking back at the house, I was surprised that beyond all the grief, I felt a small sense of peace upon the realization that I had left my mark, as fleeting as it was, upon the Myrtles; that the echoes of my footsteps would remain in the halls, along with those of General David Bradford, Sarah Mathilda, Ruffin Gray Stirling, Mrs. Michaud, and the others who have owned the plantation along the path of its beleaguered history. As I looked back, I realized that I still loved the Myrtles!

  “No!” my voice of reason commanded of myself. “I will not get sucked back in by sentimentality. I have got to get away while I still can.” I stepped on the gas and drove through the gates and away from the Myrtles. Yet part of me wondered if I could ever escape completely.

  CHAPTER 62

  We were sitting around my parents’ dining-room table, joking and laughing. My dad had barbequed a juicy prime rib, and my cousins were joining us. Dad cracked another joke. Life was good. After all this time, I was still staying in their home, safe in the sanctuary of my childhood abode. I slept in the same room I had as a schoolgirl. I had no idea when, if ever, I would go back to Louisiana. I put it out of my mind.

  I could hear the voodoo drums faintly in the distance as I dozed off. The plantation was bustling with activity. The house servants were humming as they went about their daily tasks. I was in the French bedroom, writing in my journal. Thin and frail, I worried about the current plague of yellow fever and feared for the lives of my children. I, too, had been losing weight, and I couldn’t keep anything down. I sipped my tea, hoping it would keep up my strength.

  There were whisperings behind my back whenever I left a room. They didn’t think I could hear, but I did. My husband was carrying on with one of the slaves. Although they didn’t name her, I knew exactly who it was. I had caught her staring at me, her eyes meeting mine, before she quickly turned away.

  I took another sip of tea, and then spat it out, gagging. I had been so distracted of late that I really hadn’t noticed the bitter, foreign substance that even sugar couldn’t mask. Poison!

  “Here, have some more tea,” she taunted. Her long apron brushed up against me as she pressed the cup to my lips, forcing the foul liquid into my mouth.

  “No!” I protested, fighting now for my very life. I looked up at her face, and it was—Joanie!

  “No,” I screamed in my sleep, fighting hard to wake up.

  I bolted upright in the bed, my heart racing. “It was just a dream,” I told myself. The same dream that had haunted me since I got back to California. Or was it?

  Epilogue

  The pull was just too compelling, and I returned to the Myrtles and stayed another four years, until a series of circumstances conspired to get me out of there. I was happy there for most of that time. However, I still found myself looking over my shoulder for Joanie to show up.

  Jim and I were divorced one week after I caught him with Joanie. It would have been sooner, but I couldn’t get a court date. In Louisiana there are three grounds for immediate divorce: insanity, felony, and adultery. My lawyer worked it out so I sued him for adultery. He never answered, meaning I was granted the divorce, but he never had to admit to the betrayal. His buddy the judge spared me the humiliation by hearing the divorce in private chambers. My mother, who was with me, took me to Picadilly for lunch to “celebrate” but it didn’t feel like much of a celebration.

  After the divorce I put the house on the market once again, and Betty Jo found a buyer—a couple whose family owns one of the major hospitals in Baton Rouge. They offered a huge sum of money for the Myrtles, but wisely or not, I turned it down.

  Stories about the Myrtles and its ghosts seemed to spread around the entire country, like gossip spreads in St. Francisville only on a larger scale. I was still worried about how it might hurt the business, so we never spoke about the ghosts unless
we were asked.

  But then I noticed something interesting. There was a new type of visitor at the Myrtles—those who had lost a loved one and desperately wanted and needed to believe in something beyond our three-dimensional existence. I felt we provided an opportunity for those people, a chance to find that proof.

  I moved back to California and cherished the anonymity. For a while, I took care of my aged aunt, before moving back up to northern California to live by the ocean. Jim and I met a few times for lunch and our meetings were both poignant and emotionally draining. We had gone through so much together. Although we avoided the subject of the Myrtles, seeing him brought up a flood of emotions. Hugging him goodbye, the old feelings came rushing back and I didn’t want to let him go. But we acted very civilized, wished each other well, and went back to our own separate lives. Jim returned to his computer job in Silicon Valley, and he got married again several years after he left the Myrtles.

  Right after she left the Myrtles, I heard rumors that Joanie was selling flowers on the streets of New Orleans. Jim confirmed this, but said that shortly after he settled in Sunnyvale, California, she followed. She called him a few times, but he never saw her, and had lost touch with her.

  Although I have long since forgiven Jim, I don’t know how I feel about Joanie. Because we were once so close, I would have to say I wish her well, but it’s because we were like family that the betrayal seemed so contrived.

  I tried to find Charles, and he eventually resurfaced in San Jose. He shared Christmas with my family once, and then disappeared again. Maybe it’s because seeing me brought up so many unanswered questions about the unknown.

  Although I kept in touch with my friends in Louisiana and visited several times, it was three years after I left before I set foot upon the grounds of the Myrtles again. The house had changed hands four times in that short time. My dear friends Fran and Ozelle went with me.

  As we pulled through the gates and the house came into view, it felt as if I had never left, but I knew differently. I had not shed one tear when I left the plantation, but seeing the house now I started sobbing. I did not realize I still carried so much emotion about the place. Ozelle pulled the car over.

  “We don’t have to go in if it’s too much for you,” she offered.

  “No, that’s okay. I want to,” I replied.

  We sat in the car until I felt ready to go up to the house. The backyard had been bricked in, and the giant fig tree and the beautiful Monet-style weeping willow by the gazebo on the pond had both been removed, but other than those changes, outwardly the place looked the same. The energy had changed, however. The house felt empty, dead. The pull that had once been so compelling was gone. Fran and Ozelle noticed it, too.

  Maybe that’s because no one lives at the Myrtles anymore. Or maybe the spirits that were present during my occupancy had reached some kind of resolution and moved on, making way for other spirits. Or maybe the spirits from one particular era (Sarah Mathilda’s) dominated while I was there, and different spirits were now prevalent.

  Many of the people who showed up seemed to “belong” to that time: Jim, Charles, Hamp, Ozelle, Fran, my father. Fate had somehow drawn us to the Myrtles and each other, or maybe we all “returned” together to complete some kind of unfinished business at the plantation.

  We stopped in at the carriage house on our way out. A congenial man was talking to a small group of people.

  “That’s Mr. Moss, the newest owner,” Fran told us. “Do you want me to introduce you?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I replied, preferring to remain anonymous for now. It was much too private a journey, and I wasn’t up to a trip down memory lane with a stranger.

  Ozelle was in the carriage house admiring an old photograph of the Myrtles. Mr. Moss, observing her, approached.

  “We got that from Miss Lucile, whose family once lived here,” he told Ozelle. And then he went on to boast, “None of the other owners of the Myrtles ever cared about the history of the house.”

  Ozelle looked over at me, and I looked back at her, and we were both trying hard to not to bust out laughing. It would have remained our private joke, but Frannie, bless her heart, came into the carriage house and introduced us. I smiled cordially, but I knew there was nothing left at the Myrtles for me.

  Looking back, reliving it now as I write this book, the things that happened are still shocking to me, and I wonder how I ever lasted as long as I did, or survived with my sanity. After all this time, it’s very difficult for me to look at the last few chapters.

  Seasons pass at the magical, mystical place known as the Myrtles Plantation; owners come and go, people live, love, and die. I realized that no one ever truly owns the Myrtles, but rather it is passed from family to family to be cared for and held for a time, for all posterity.

  About the Author

  Born in Los Angeles, Frances Kermeen moved with her family to San Jose, California, where she studied computer science, music, and theater. She developed a passion for Victorian architecture and restored several grand homes. At the age of twenty-two she received the first award for historic preservation in the town of Los Gatos, California.

  It was during a family cruise down the Mississippi River to discover her Louisiana roots (her daddy grew up in Hammond, Louisiana) that Frances first toured the Myrtles Plantation. When she learned it was for sale, she gave up her high-tech job in Silicon Valley and fulfilled a lifelong dream of living in the South.

  After carefully restoring the upstairs and the carriage house, she converted the old cotton plantation into a ten-room guest inn, where she lived for nearly a decade. Fascinated by the rich history and culture of the area, she wrote and produced period murder mystery weekends, based on several of the unsolved murders at the Myrtles, which received national acclaim.

  Today Frances resides in Natchez, Mississippi, and Sunnyvale, California, with her puppy dog, Ms. B’havin.

  Time Line

  Note: This timeline is as accurate as the information available, some of which is very old. Exact dates may vary, but not by much.