The light peeked through the pines, then breached the tree line, entering the back lawn, like a fairy, floating across the grass, making its way toward the house, toward her.
Harley readjusted her eyes. There was something within the light, a figure, dark and pale, and it was gazing at her.
She was gazing at her.
A woman in a black dress, her dark hair flowing past her shoulders, her eyes hollowed out like two black holes. Her skin was pale, and a ring of blue circled her neck, leading to a length of rope tied like a noose down her chest.
The light surrounding her seemed to swell and contract as she moved, blurring at the edges as the room had only moments before.
Harley became more lightheaded, a dizziness assaulting her senses as her body seemed to sway back and forth before the window, as the woman beckoned for her to come outside.
Then like a blanket, a brood of clouds eclipsed the moon, and darkness swept over the grounds, blanketing the house, the lawn, the woods, extinguishing the little light, the figure within it. And as Harley readjusted her eyes, and the clouds drifted over, unveiling the moon, the light, painting the lawn once more in a muted gray, she found the spirit had disappeared.
The dizziness intensified, and the whole room swirled. Then Harley crashed to the floor, her face coming to rest on cold, hard tile.
All went black.
37
Angels Among us
There are certain moments in one’s life that cannot be forgotten, and Harley Henrickson woke to one such moment the following morning. Only remnants remained from the night before, her memory blurred, her head aching from the aftermath of whatever someone had put in the whiskey.
Now she lay in her bed in Briarcliffe, tucked beneath the comforter pulled to her chest, the pillows neatly arranged behind her head. Morning sun shone through the drapes, falling warm on her face, and she thought she could sleep there for days, tucked in that bed, protected by the safety of four posters, canopied by layers of upholstered fabric.
Her body sank back into the mattress, and as the pillows hugged her face, she realized she wasn’t alone.
Breathing, gentle and steady, came from a chair beside the bed, and in that chair sat Beau Arson, his robe tied at the waist, his eyes closed in a peaceful sleep.
He must have woken in the night, she thought, seen her lying on the floor, and carried her back to her room, before making his own uncomfortable bed in the chair.
She watched him as he slept, the boy of her childhood, just as she had so many times when they were children, he rested beneath a weeping willow with a book on his chest, and she tucked beneath the trunk of an oak tree. And though eighteen years had passed, and though a wealth of hair, scruff, and the hard curves of time angled his face, he was still that same boy, she realized, sad and vulnerable and tired, with no place like a home in which to lay his weary head.
Yet he had taken the time to care for her, and her heart swelled in that moment, then turned to empathy.
Beau had come to Briarcliffe for peace, for a home, and he had neither. For though he lived there at Briarcliffe, the reality was his home, his life, was ruled by the thing she had heard in the hallway the night before, the creature she had seen on the back lawn.
She rose from the bed, and approached him in the chair, placing her hand on his forearm. He stirred a bit, and his eyelids fluttered, and she knelt beside him, draping his arm over her shoulder, guiding him from the chair and back to his room.
She helped him under the bed covers, and he flipped onto his stomach, burrowing his face in the pillows and exposing the golden skin of his back. There in deep indigo, curving through slopes and valleys of muscle and sinew, extending from his shoulders to the small of his back, was a pair of angel’s wings.
“Sleep well, Beau,” she whispered.
She turned her back to him, and after taking the decanter of whiskey from the desk, she made her way from the bedroom, back to her own room next door.
The room was exactly as she’d left it, the table lamp still lit, her copy of A Christmas Carol on the nightstand. And though the room was washed in golden light from the morning sun, it felt empty and cold.
She changed back into her clothes—the overalls, flannel shirt, and boots—then braided her long, dark hair into pigtails, before tucking them into a camouflage hat. After perching her glasses on her nose, she placed the whiskey decanter in her bag, intending to give it to Jed for testing. She wrote Beau a note, promising to return that evening and to stay the night once more. Then she grabbed her bag and headed for the door.
38
Goody Goody Gumdrop
“Matilda!” Harley said. “Matilda, drop that!”
Matilda stood with a giant gumdrop in her mouth, having ripped it from the gingerbread house’s door. Opposite her, Alveda Hamilton had her hand clamped over her mouth as she watched in horror.
Harley had only come out to clean snow from the sidewalk, not realizing the pig had followed her. She was still tired from the night before. Even after the shower and cup of coffee she’d had, she still felt exhausted.
“Matilda, look at me!” she said.
After spending years with Matilda, she should have known the pig would treat her admonishment as an invitation to proceed.
Chomp! Chomp!
Alveda grabbed the green piece of candy and pulled backward with all of her weight, trying to force it from Matilda’s mouth.
“Let go!”
Alveda Hamilton had a slight build, and a tug-of-war game with a three-hundred-pound pig proved a futile endeavor.
Behind them Harley said, “Matilda, I have Little Debbies!”
The pig released her grip, and Alveda flew backward, rocketing the gumdrop down the sidewalk and crashing into the gingerbread house.
With the collision, the house began to sway to-and-fro, its candy pieces trembling. Then the walls gave in, one after another, and the roof collapsed on top of Alveda. A plume of gingerbread powder rose, then settled on her penny loafers as they peeked from the wreckage.
Harley approached, and through veils of brown dust, she lifted the roof, and searched among the rubble.
“Alveda?”
Alveda lay on her back, covered in crumbs, a peppermint resting on her chest.
“Alveda, are you okay?”
With an air of dignity, Alveda wiped the crumbs from her face, and refusing Harley’s assistance, lifted herself from the ground. Her tightly curled hair sprung out in all directions, and her glasses were tilted and fogged.
“Of course, I’m okay,” she said, glaring at Harley. “I’m not the one who’s ruined Christmas.”
A crowd of pedestrians had gathered around them, some pointing, others laughing.
Hearing their laughs, Alveda’s face turned white, and Harley thought she was about to cry. Recovering her dignity, she stepped from the rubble, and with her shoulders back, her head held high, she said, “And you’re the one who can clean it up, too.”
Alveda was even more high-strung than usual. The stress of the festival, of having lost the board election to Jennifer the evening before, and now this latest fiasco had caused her to unravel. It seemed like the gingerbread house was not the only thing in her life that had fallen apart.
With a huff, she commenced in a march down Main Street, not acknowledging the onlookers as she progressed down the sidewalk.
A deep male voice beside Harley said, “Harley Henrickson, what are you doin’?”
39
A Meeting of the Minds
Jed Turner stood above Harley, his boyish face eclipsed by the morning sun. His left eye was a bit pink, and he blinked as if it stung. He held the gumdrop in his right hand.
“Jed?”
“I considered askin’ why I just got whacked in the head with a gumdrop and why there’s a demolished gingerbread house on the sidewalk … but given it’s you and that pig, I’m afraid to.”
“We kinda sorta had a mishap.”
“Kinda sor
ta had a mishap, huh? Alveda looks like she just survived Chernobyl.”
“The whole thing was very dramatic.”
“I bet. I tried to tell her that thing was nothin’ but a liability but she wouldn’t listen to me.” He shook his head, surveying the rubble. “You got somewhere we can put these pieces?”
“Um … out back for now, I guess, then maybe I can drop them off at the farm later, see if Uncle Tater and Floyd can find some use for them.”
“I’d hate to think what that would be,” Jed said. “Well, at least the gingerbread man and woman made it.”
“At least.”
Matilda joined them and rooted at Jed’s pants.
“Matilda,” he said, reaching down to caress the pig’s ears. “You been terrorizin’ Main Street again?”
The pig snorted that she had indeed been terrorizing Main Street again, and Jed, after tucking the gumdrop under his arm, said, “I think I might just have somethin’ for you.” He pulled a Ziploc bag from his pocket, and removed a sticky bun from the plastic before giving it to Matilda. “Just a little somethin’ left over from the pancake breakfast this mornin’.”
After Matilda had eaten the sticky bun and snorted with approval, Jed said, “You got any coffee?”
“Always.”
“‘Cause I could really use a cup.”
They gathered up the broken pieces of gingerbread, and after several trips back and forth to the storage area, the sidewalk was clean and Main Street now free of Alveda’s gingerbread house.
When they were back inside the shop, Matilda returned to her bed and Jed followed Harley to the bar.
“What a crap hole of a day,” he said.
“You’re in a good mood,” she said. “Has Cheri done something?”
“No. Yeah. Well, maybe.” He sighed. “She’s in New York right now on a photo shoot. Didn’t answer any of my texts or calls last night. And, of course, given it’s her, I can only think one thing.”
“That she’s cheating again.”
“Probably.”
He followed behind Harley, and before he took a seat at the bar, he removed his leather jacket and rested it on the accompanying stool.
After placing a coffee mug in front of him, Harley filled it with steaming coffee. “Did you get my message?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
From beneath the bar, Harley removed the decanter of whiskey she had taken from Beau’s bedroom and set it before Jed. While she had promised Beau she would not tell anyone, she decided she had to tell Jed, for Beau’s safety.
“I think someone’s been drugging Beau,” she said, “so they can play a trick on him.”
Jed drew the coffee mug to his lips, mulling over the information. “What kind of trick?”
“Well, he’s been having bad dreams, terrible nightmares, but I don’t think they’re just dreams. I think they may be based in reality.”
“Explain.”
“Well, last night in his bedroom—”
Jed nearly spat his coffee across the bar. “Good grief! What is it with that guy and women? I mean really. You think it’d be like goin’ out with a Chia Pet—all that hair comin’ at you from all different directions.”
“It’s not like that.”
“I bet.” He paused in consideration. “Well, maybe not with you anyway. You don’t really strike me as his type. No offense or nothin’. But the man’s got a reputation. Everybody knows that.”
Jed was right. Beau did have a reputation, and while Harley did not approve of his treatment of women, she still loved him as a friend despite his faults. She had her own faults. They were just different ones. And Beau was not interested in her that way. To her, it seemed like he viewed her how he always had—as an innocent and vulnerable child to be cared for and protected from the world’s ugliness.
“He’s worried,” she said.
“He should be—especially if he’s been streakin’ in the woods at night.”
She gave him a look, and he waved her away with his right hand. “All right, go ahead. Tell me what you know.”
“So after we had our night caps, and after he’d fallen asleep, I saw a woman outside on the lawn. She came in from the woods and stood under the window. And she looked like a ghost, or at least what you’d imagine a ghost would look like. But I think it might’ve been the drugs making her look that way. If I’d been sober, I don’t think she would’ve seemed so … otherworldly.”
Jed lowered the coffee mug to the bar, his mind seeming to search for the best way to proceed. “Maybe it was just a hallucination. Like you said, you were drugged.”
“It wasn’t just a hallucination. And here’s the strangest part.” She paused, then continued. “She . . . she looked like the woman—the one I found in the park.”
Jed swallowed his coffee like it was a large, hard lump. “You’re kiddin’ me.”
“No, Jed, it really did look like her, I swear.”
“Well, maybe she ain’t really dead, like I said. Maybe she’s the one who’s been playin’ tricks on ’im. Or,” he said, “maybe your mind’s been playin’ tricks on you. You got spooked, and now you’re imaginin’ seein’ all this stuff.”
“But Beau’s been seeing her, too. That’s why his footprints were in the snow.”
“Told you so.”
Harley gave him a disapproving look. “Yes, but he wasn’t streaking or whatever you called it.”
“Okay, then, so who’d be doin’ this to him?”
“Well, first there’s the Margaret Reed legend.”
Jed rolled his eyes. “Oh no, not her again.”
“And people have been seeing and hearing strange things at Briarcliffe and in Briarwood Park.”
“And you think that’s who’s been comin’ to Beau’s window at night?”
“Or who they want us to think is coming. We have to consider Justin Wheeler on this.”
“The fruit-cake ghost hunter,” Jed said with panache. “Yeah, well, he’s the one who’s been hangin’ out back behind Briarcliffe at night, near the gate. Bringin’ his tour groups. And he’s also the one who’s been spreadin’ this Margaret Reed story all over town.”
“And just think of all of the money he and Heather could make from this.”
“But how would he be gettin’ in? Boonie keeps that place armed like a vault, and I know he wouldn’t be lettin’ them in.” His mind seemed to search for another culprit. “How about Marcus?”
“Could be. He does hate it here. Thinks if it weren’t for Briarcliffe, Beau would go back to L.A. Maybe he’s trying to help scare him off.” Harley’s voice grew with emphasis. “I’m convinced somebody doesn’t want Beau at Briarcliffe, and they’re not going to stop until they’ve gotten rid of him.”
Jed took a sip of his coffee and peered at Harley over the rim. “All right,” he said with finality. “I’ll take that whiskey. Have Eric run some tests on it.”
“Thanks. And what about the missing persons reports?” she asked. “Have you seen or heard anything about the woman I found in the park?”
He shook his head. “Nothin’. And if it is true, if she really did exist, maybe it just ain’t been long enough for anybody to have reported her missing.”
This could be, Harley thought.
She grabbed the carafe from the coffee maker, and topped off his coffee.
Just then the front door swung open and Jennifer Williams’s business partner and best friend, Samantha Jacobs, walked inside, a worried look on her face.
Her blond hair was tied in a messy ponytail, and a work apron covered her green sweater and jeans. Harley thought she must have been repairing and refinishing furniture prior to walking across the street to Smoky Mountain Spirits.
Like Jennifer, she was an attractive woman, but more petite and athletic in build, with more delicate facial features. As teenagers, the two girls had been quite the enticing pair, Harley remembered. Many a teenage boy had dreamed of a date with Jennifer Williams or Samantha Jacobs
.
“Have y’all seen Jen?” she asked.
Harley looked at Jed, then returned her attention to Samantha. “Um, no. Not this morning, anyway.”
Jed indicated he had not seen Jennifer either.
Samantha dropped her gaze to her feet, her features sinking into a forlorn expression. She appeared tired and worn, her blue eyes having lost their shine. Harley thought she must have been awake all night.
“She didn’t come to work this morning. Said she’d be there—to stock the stuff I picked up in Louisville.”
“Did you try her apartment?” Harley asked. “Maybe she forgot something, had to go back and get it.”
Samantha shook her head. “I haven’t looked there yet, no.”
“Here, we’ll go with you.” Harley motioned for Jed to join them, her expression conveying it was imperative.
With reluctance, Jed rose from the bar stool, visually lamenting his barely touched cup of coffee. “All right. Whatever. Just for a minute.”
40
Broken Windows
Harley, Jed, and Samantha navigated through patches of ice as they made their way down the alleyway and to the steps leading up to Jennifer’s apartment above Modern Vintage.
“Y’all be careful,” Jed said. He followed closely behind the two women up the steps, trying to act as a buffer in case one of them might slip.
With both hands gripped to the snowy railing, the three of them pulled themselves up step-by-step with care until they reached the landing and Jennifer’s door.
They paused. Shards of glass sprinkled the landing like ice crystals, having fallen from a broken pane.
Samantha peered over her shoulder, her wrought expression relaying their worst concerns had been realized.
“Wait,” Jed said. “Hold up.” He moved in front of them to the door and with a gloved hand, he tried the knob. Finding it unlocked, he pushed the front door open.
The Ghosts of Notchey Creek Page 12