“She wants wine?” Bodhi asked, cupping his hands to the glass to peek into the cellar. “Oh my God, this thing is still stocked.”
“I don’t think it’s the wine cellar she’s interested in.”
“And you know that how?”
I pointed. The bicycle rolled back and forth, repeatedly bumping into a small wooden cabinet adjacent to the door of the wine cellar.
“Damn,” sighed Bodhi. “I was hoping we could bond over a nice vintage red.”
I knelt down, unlatched the door to the cabinet, and swung it wide. I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting—after all, I’d never had the pleasure of interacting with the dead before—but a plethora of board games was not at the top of my list. The cabinet was chock full of them, from several collector’s versions of Monopoly to Battleship to Clue. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. I pulled my shirt up over my nose, willing myself not to sneeze.
“I could use another clue here,” I told the bicycle.
In the cabinet, a faded box rustled forward. I took hold of it, carefully maneuvering it out from underneath the mountain of other board games. Bodhi used the tail of his shirt to sweep the grime off the top. As the brand name printed on the cardboard became visible, we both moaned aloud. It was an original Ouija board.
“Seriously?” I asked, lifting the lid of the box. Inside, the shabby board smelled of must and mildew.
As if in apology, the locked door to the wine cellar sprang open. Without hesitation, Bodhi walked in to inspect the Winchesters’ stash.
“All right,” I said. “How should we do this?”
I shook the Ouija board out of its box. The pointer piece rocketed out and hit the floor, but before I could pick it up, it skidded away and settled in the only spot on the concrete floor that wasn’t obscured by moldy cardboard boxes. Nearby, a plastic package tore open and spilled out a handful of ivory pillar candles.
“Candles. Really?”
“Maybe she needs the energy,” suggested Bodhi, his voice echoing from the depths of the boundless cellar.
“Ask and you shall receive,” I muttered. I set the Ouija board in the middle of the floor, placed the pointer on top, then arranged the pillar candles in a loose circle around the board. “I don’t suppose you have a lighter?”
A packet of grill matches fell from a close shelf. At least our spirit was accommodating. I picked up the box, struck a match, and lit the candles one by one. They quivered inconsistently, as though our ghostly guest was in fact drawing strength from the flames. Bodhi emerged from the cellar, a bottle of scotch in one hand.
“I think this whiskey costs more than my life,” he said, surveying my handiwork.
“So we’re going to drink it?”
“The Winchesters certainly aren’t coming back for it.” Bodhi peeled the wax off the mouth of the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed the liquor. “Whoa, buddy.”
There, in the haunted basement of the Winchester house, I felt closer to Bodhi than I had in years. In the last few days, something had shifted between us. Before, we were cold and distant, walking on eggshells around each other to make sure we never said or did anything that might set the other person off. But the spirit of the Winchester house had made us a team again. It had been a long time since I’d seen this lighthearted, whimsical side of him, ready to respond to any instance with a joke. I missed it, even if it was inspired by the mystifying events that occurred inside the Winchester house.
The candles nearly extinguished themselves. It seemed the third party in the room was getting impatient.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said, taking Bodhi by the hand. We sat cross-legged on the ground, and I picked up the tattered instruction pamphlet for the Ouija board. I read the directions out loud. “Place the board upon the laps of two persons, lady and gentleman preferred, with the small table upon the board.”
Bodhi sipped from the scotch bottle, grimaced, and offered the handle to me. “I’m not sure we need the instructions when we know the spirit we’re trying to reach is already in the room.”
I pondered the bottle. “What the hell.” I took a swig, shuddering as the potent liquid smoldered down my throat.
Bodhi scooched toward me until our knees touched, settling the Ouija board on our laps. He picked up the pointer and held the clear bubble up to his eyes before placing it down on the board. “Here goes nothing, right?”
I consulted the instructions for good measure. “We’re supposed to assign one person to ask the questions. I guess that’s me.”
“Fine by me,” said Bodhi. He took another sip of scotch. “Are we ready to do this?”
I nodded resolutely. Together, we bent over the board and placed our fingers on the pointer piece. The candles flared, the flames darting higher.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “Um, let’s start with something easy. Are you male or female?”
Almost immediately, an icy touch glazed over the back of my hands. I yanked my fingers away from the board with a yelp. Bodhi tilted backward, knocking one of the candles over.
“What?” he demanded. His fingers remained courageously on the pointer.
“You didn’t feel that?” I asked, picking up the candle before it could light a box of linens on fire. “Something touched me.”
“I didn’t feel anything,” Bodhi said. “I told you that she likes you better. Let’s try again. And don’t panic this time. You probably scared her.”
“Oh, I scared her.” Nevertheless, I adopted my previous position, my fingers trembling. “I promise not to overreact this time. Are you male or female?”
Once more, the glacial fingers covered mine. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself not to jerk away. The pointer moved across the board, hovering over the printed “no.”
“I guess spirits don’t adhere to gender roles,” observed Bodhi with an inquisitive arch to his eyebrows.
“Or I didn’t ask the correct question,” I suggested. I tried again. “Are you a female?”
The invisible hands guided mine again, and the pointer crossed over to the “yes” side of the board.
“So you were right about that,” I told Bodhi. He nodded appreciatively. I chewed on my lip, wondering what to ask next. There was no good place to start. I wanted answers to so many questions. “Who are you?”
The board remained unmoving.
“Too much, too soon?” Bodhi murmured. “Maybe she doesn’t want us to know who she is yet. Ask what she wants.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. What is it that you want from us? How are we supposed to help you?”
“Don’t overwhelm her.”
“Since when did you become a ghost whisperer?” I asked him fiercely.
The pointer piece drifted, and we stopped bickering to glance down at the board. The eye settled over a letter.
“J.”
It moved again and paused. Then again, spelling out a single word.
“U-S-T-I-C-E.”
“Justice,” said Bodhi. “For what?”
“Or whom,” I added. I spoke to the board again. “Did you live in Black Bay?”
The pointer moved to the “yes” before drifting back to a neutral position.
“Did someone in Black Bay hurt you?”
Yes.
Bodhi shifted closer to me, and our foreheads touched over the board. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Who hurt you?” I asked.
The board was still.
“Okay then. How were you hurt?”
No answer.
I heaved a sigh. “Let’s try something else. Did you know the Winchesters?”
Yes.
“Are you aware that this is their house?”
Yes.
“Did one of the Winchesters hurt you?”
No.
A bead of sweat rolled into my eye. I blinked, trying to clear it from my vision. I hadn’t realized how hot the basement felt. Bodhi’s skin was slic
k too, but my hands were still freezing cold. The candle flames flickered again.
“There’s got to be a faster way to do this,” Bodhi murmured, wiping his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt. “I feel like I’m sitting in a sauna.”
I had plenty of questions, but there was no delicate way to ask them and the candles were burning low. Was there a time limit on how long you could use a Ouija board?
I dove into the deep end. “Are the Winchester children still alive?”
The pointer shifted. No.
My heart sank. There went my last shred of hope that the Winchester children had somehow escaped the tragedy that had befallen their parents. My throat tightened as I asked the next question. “Are you one of the Winchester children?”
There was a moment of stillness during which I thought the board wasn’t going to answer. The spirit seemed to be thinking about how much information she wanted to afford us.
“We aren’t going to hurt you,” I said quietly. “We’re trying to help. Tell us. Are you one of the Winchester children?”
After an agonizing pause, the frigid fingers guided my hands to the upper left hand corner of the board.
Yes.
“Caroline,” I breathed. The candlelight flashed. A confirmation of sorts. “Did you give me your journals?”
Yes.
“Are there clues to who hurt you in the journals?”
A pause. Yes.
Suddenly, the candles extinguished themselves and the cold caress vanished from the tops of my hands. The basement plunged into darkness. A weight lifted from my shoulders, as though something heavy had been sitting there unnoticed.
“What just happened?” I asked Bodhi. In the gloom, only the whites of his eyes were visible.
“Maybe she burned herself out.”
I felt his fingers leave the board. He fiddled with something, then the beam of his flashlight shone into my eyes. He swept the light around the room, but nothing stirred, not even the pink bicycle. Experimentally, I jiggled the pointer piece. Nothing happened.
“I guess you’re right.”
Bodhi held the flashlight between his teeth as he carefully packed up the Ouija board and put it back with the other games in the cabinet. “At least we found out one thing for sure. Our ghost is Caroline Winchester, and she has a bone to pick with someone in town.”
I pushed myself up from the concrete, groaning as my knees stretched and popped. “But who would hurt the Winchester kids? Everyone in Black Bay loved them.”
Bodhi linked my arm through his elbow, leading me to the stairs. “I guess we only got one side of the story. God, I’m exhausted. And starving. If Caroline really has retired for the night, do you think it’s safe to turn the burners back on?”
Upstairs, the smoke had finally cleared out of the kitchen, but the stove and the floor were still covered in charred chicken, blackened spinach, and burned oil. Bodhi deposited me on a chair at the folding card table at which we had been eating most of our meals, poured me a new glass of wine, and got to work tidying the kitchen. I wanted to help, but between my day researching the Winchesters in town and the impromptu séance downstairs, all I could do was rest my forehead in my hands and focus on not falling asleep right there at the card table.
“What do we do now?” I asked as Bodhi threw the ruined chicken in the garbage can.
“Have you read Caroline’s diaries?”
“Not all of them.”
“I’d work through those first.”
I massaged my temples with the tips of my fingers. “You know what this means, right? If we believe Caroline?”
“I’m not following.”
“It means that the Winchesters didn’t die accidentally,” I explained. “Or at least the kids didn’t. Don’t you realize what she was implying?”
Bodhi froze as the realization hit him, the frying pan poised beneath the running water of the kitchen sink. “You think that someone murdered them.”
Outside, a storm had rolled in while we were downstairs. The toiling skies opened up, and a torrential wave of rain enveloped the house. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the roar of the water below was so loud that we could hear it clearly from the kitchen.
“Yeah,” I said, gazing absentmindedly through the window above the sink, watching the world turn to gray. “I think someone murdered them. But you know what’s worse?”
“There’s worse?”
I looked at Bodhi. “According to Caroline, the murderer is alive and well.”
Bailey and Bodhi: Flipping Out
Hello, flippers! It’s a rainy morning here in Black Bay, but that won’t stop us from making progress on this house. Before I talk about how knocking the wall down between the kitchen and the living room really opens the place up, I have to fill you in on my expert levels of clumsiness. Would you all believe that I fractured my ankle falling down the basement stairs? Bodhi drew architecture designs all over my cast, which makes the neon yellow plaster and the accompanying walking boot slightly less garish, but be warned! DIY is not always friendly.
Much to my chagrin, my ankle has made it more or less impossible for me to help Bodhi with the renovations. I’ve now resigned myself to cleaning up the rooms we haven’t started work on yet. Believe it or not, we still haven’t gotten rid of all the Winchesters’ things. Normally, we would toss it all in the dumpster, but I feel like the Winchesters deserve better than that. As such, I’ve posted pictures of some of the cool things I’ve found in the last few weeks, so click here if you’re interested in that.
I’ve also begun writing articles for a small side blog entirely dedicated to the Winchesters. I know this is a little off brand, but quite a few of you have expressed interest in the finest family of Black Bay. I’ve been talking to the locals about what life was like when the Winchesters were around. Let me know if you like the articles, and I’ll do my best to fill you in on all things Winchester related.
Happy flipping!
Bailey
In the morning, though the thunderstorm had passed, the clouds loitered above the bay. I set aside my laptop after publishing my blog post. It was starting to feel more like a diary than an update for our renovations. Maybe that was a side effect of reading Caroline’s journals.
Bodhi slept soundly at my side. For a few minutes, I watched his back rise and fall with his breath as he lay on his stomach, a pillow propped beneath his chest. Delicately, I played with one of his dark curls, trying not to wake him. He stirred anyway. Once, it had been impossible to wake Bodhi with an atomic bomb. Now, he woke to the tiniest sound or slightest movement.
“What is it?” he slurred, rolling over. “What’s wrong?”
“Shh. Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
But the gray morning light had made its way in through the window. Bodhi pushed himself upright, rubbing his eyes with his fists. “I’m already up.”
He turned to look at me. In the small bed, there wasn’t much room to space out. We were only inches apart.
“Hi,” he murmured, his eyes flickering sleepily toward my lips.
“Hi.”
Torturously slow, Bodhi leaned in. My breath quickened as I met him halfway. We fit ourselves together, scarcely moving as our mouths met. We kissed sleepily. Bodhi touched my cheek as he pulled away, smiling gently.
“What are you up to today?” he asked.
I pushed his curls out of his eyes. “I thought I’d see if there was anything worth digging up in that mess of a basement.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes. It shouldn’t be a problem. But first, I was wondering if you’d be willing to do something with me.”
“What’s that?”
I hesitated, unsure of whether or not my request would upset him. “Will you come to the Winchesters’ graves with me?”
Bodhi ducked his head, hiding his face behind a pillow, and mumbled, “I don’t know about that.”
“Look, I know that it’s a sore subject,” I said. “But now that w
e know Caroline is still around, I feel like I have to go. To pay my respects.”
Bodhi’s voice was muffled in the sheets. “I haven’t been to a cemetery since—”
“I know.”
He lay silently. I didn’t know if he was pondering his decision or deciding on the best method of telling me no.
“You don’t have to go,” I said hurriedly. I slipped out from under the covers. “If you’re not ready, then that’s okay.”
“Hey.” Bodhi took me by the hand before I could escape from the small room and drew me closer to the bed. I stood between his knees, resting my hands on his broad shoulders. “I’ll go.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, but I’ll go.”
We were taking baby steps, but baby steps were better than not moving at all.
Before we left, I went out into the garden and plucked a handful of flowers from the plumeria tree. Then, since my ankle had swelled to twice its normal size due to my exploits the day before, Bodhi drove us down the hill and into town. The cemetery was tucked behind Black Bay’s small church. We parked on the curb and let ourselves into the short chain-link fence that bordered the yard. The headstones were small and modest, appropriately sized for the limited space behind the church. As we approached the first set of graves, Bodhi slipped his hand into mine.
“Henry and Maria Powell,” Bodhi read off as he inspected a headstone. “Ethan’s parents?”
I checked the dates. “Yup. His grandparents are here too. I guess the Powells have always lived in Black Bay.”
“It’s kind of sad though,” said Bodhi. “He’s the last one left.”
We moved along, taking our time through the yard instead of searching specifically for the Winchesters. Even so, when we finally happened upon their headstones, there was no mistaking who they belonged to. Whoever had made arrangements for the Winchesters had ordered the largest markers available. An opulent concrete cross indicated their plot of land and Christopher’s final resting place, beside which three slightly smaller crosses had been designated to Elizabeth, Patrick, and Caroline.
I knelt to place the bouquet of plumerias at the base of Caroline’s cross. Beside me, Bodhi’s hand shook as he reached out to trace the names carved into the stone.
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus Page 16