He stopped speaking and gazed at Harley, searching her face. “Do you think there can be redemption for me, Harley Henrickson? Do you think there can be redemption for Briarcliffe?”
She leaned forward in the seat and placed her hand over his. “The things that are happening to you, they aren’t your fault. I know you may feel that way right now, but whoever is doing this, they aren’t doing it because of anything bad you did.” She squeezed his hand for emphasis. “You need to know that.”
And then they sat like amiable and quiet companions then, just as they had so many summers ago, the shade of their favorite trees replaced by darkness and firelight.
At last he asked, “How’s your writing going?”
Harley broke from her peaceful reverie and frowned, watching the smoke as it rose from the flames. “Well, that’s an easy answer. It’s not.”
Beau did not respond at first. He merely continued playing, his fingers hitting then sliding across the guitar strings. After a few more measures, he said, “How come?”
Harley thought of the unfinished manuscript languishing in her attic, surrounded by dusty journals filled with character sketches, notes on world-building, plot outlines. They were the products of a lonely childhood, her only friends having been the woodland creatures she had watched in her backyard. Their fantastical journeys had provided a much-needed entertainment for a little girl who had escaped her loneliness through vicarious adventure and the richness of imagination.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I’m just scared.”
“Scared of what?”
She considered. “Lots of things. Putting myself out there, being judged, worrying I don’t have anything of worth to give. I mean, who would want to listen to anything I have to say?”
He pondered this for a moment, and said, “I understand where you’re coming from, I do, and I felt pretty much the same way back in the day—before I released my first album … but the thing you’ve got to remember is that nobody sees the world the way you do, so nobody can write the stories you’ve got to tell.”
“That’s very wise.”
“You’ll never know, you know, unless you put yourself out there.”
Harley shrugged. “But that’s the thing. Maybe I don’t want to put myself out there, maybe I don’t want to know.”
“You’re too talented to hold yourself back.”
She gave a smile of gratitude, then shook her head.
“Just promise me you’ll send it to some agents.”
“Maybe. After I finish it. If I finish it. But I’m still not promising anything.”
“Okay. Good enough.”
The French doors opened and Marcus appeared on the veranda, clearing his throat. “I need a refill on my drink if you don’t mind.”
Beau lowered his guitar and gave Marcus a stern look. “She’s my guest, not a servant.”
“It’s okay,” Harley said, rising from her seat. “Really. I’m happy to do it.”
She turned to leave, and he said, “Are you staying again tonight?”
“I said I would.”
“Thank you.”
“Always.”
57
Haunted
The east wing was dark and quiet when Harley arrived there a half-hour later. The moonlight, after having provided a guiding path the night before, had been extinguished by cloud cover.
After the night’s drama, she embraced the quiet of the east wing like an old friend.
Her room was just as she had left it. The bed was neatly made, the drapes open, and snowflakes pelted against the windowpanes. She turned on the table lamp, filling the room with dim light, then lit a fire in the hearth and stood before it, warming her tired limbs. After she had washed her face, brushed her teeth, and changed into her pajamas—this time a pair of red and black flannels—she plopped before the fireplace and watched the flames.
The day’s troubles sagged her limbs, and fatigue drooped her eyelids. She was too tired even to read. But she had made a promise to herself, that she would move to the window soon and keep watch there for the remainder of the night.
I’ll get up in just a minute, she thought, just one more minute here by the fire. I’m so tired.
And the fire seemed to approve of her decision, its blue roots of flame curving, then rising like a tree trunk from the logs, flickering into orange limbs, popping and hissing in fits of yellow leaves.
The fire swelled, retracted, and her eyelids opened, then closed. A presence formed beneath her then, warm and caring, encompassing her with its arms, holding her with care. The aroma of lilacs rose from glowing flesh, and Harley realized where she was.
She sat nestled in her mother’s lap, and her mother held a book in her hands, reading it aloud to her. Her mother must’ve only just returned home from one of her deployments overseas, as she still wore her Army fatigues, her long, delicate fingers resting against the book’s pages.
“Once there was a tree,” her mother said, “and she loved a little boy. And every day the boy would come and he would gather her leaves and make them into crowns and play king of the forest. He would climb up her trunk and swing from her branches and eat apples. And they would play hide-and-go-seek. And when he was tired, he would sleep in her shade. And the boy loved the tree …”
Her mother wrapped her arms around Harley’s little body, squeezing her, then kissed the top of her head. But then Harley could feel her mother pulling away from her, and she buried herself into her chest, begging her not to go. “Mama, Mama, please don’t go. Please don’t leave me.”
“But I have to, angel, you know that.”
“No, Mama, please!” She pulled hard at the Army fatigues. “Please don’t leave me!” She was crying then, tears gliding down her cheeks and falling into her sobbing mouth.
“It’s time to wake up now, Harley,” her mother said.
“But you don’t understand. Mama, if you leave … you’re going, you’re going … to die.”
“It’s time to wake up, my sweet girl.”
“Mama, please!”
“Wake up, Harley. Wake up.”
The warmth surrounding her had turned cold, and she grasped once more at the Army fatigues, searching for the warm skin beneath, holding tight, only to find the cloth turning white, nearly disintegrating in her hands, as it yellowed and grayed, revealing cold, bony flesh beneath.
Harley jerked her body around and gasped. Two hollowed-out eyes stared back at her, set in a face of gray sinew, strings of dark hair hanging from its skull, tatters of a black dress draping the length of bone.
“But don’t you see,” Margaret Reed said, staring at her with those black, empty eyes. “I’m already dead.”
58
Ghosts
Harley fell from the wingback chair and crashed to the floor, her breaths heaving in her chest.
Her gaze shot to the chair.
Empty.
But the door.
Someone had shut the door.
Someone had been in her room.
She struggled to her feet, using the chair as a crutch. She staggered to the door and burst into the hallway, leaving the door agape behind her.
In the darkness, her gaze darted back and forth along the hallway’s length.
In her peripheral vision she detected a shadow. It lingered for a moment, then swept around the corner and disappeared. She raced along the hallway after it, her socks sliding across the marble tiles. She rounded the corner and froze, only to see a door open and close further down another corridor. She stopped before it and tried the knob.
The knob turned, and she flung the door open. She stepped inside, her breaths beating at her chest, her gaze darting about the room.
Ghosts.
A room full of ghosts.
Or at least it appeared that way. Gray-white mounds rose like apparitions from the floor, strategically placed throughout the room. Then she realized they weren’t apparitions at all. They were white sheets, covering s
everal pieces of furniture, the outlines of which spoke of a bed, a dresser, an armoire, a sofa, and two chairs. She ripped the sheet from the armoire, dust billowing from the fabric and settling into the gray light. Then she did the same to the bed, not stopping until all of the pieces were unveiled.
A bedroom. Not slept in for decades, but still a bedroom.
And nothing else.
She traveled to the window and parted the drapes. Gray moonlight permeated the darkness, and she searched the room, but found nothing.
After returning to her room, she closed the door behind her, and rested her back to it.
She considered the room she had just left. In years past it had belonged to someone of importance, but to whom? And where had the apparition gone? She was certain it had entered the bedroom and closed the door behind it. However, when she had gone inside, she had found nothing. It was as if it had disappeared into thin air.
She directed her gaze to the windows on the opposite wall. A faint light reflected against the panes. Something was outside. Moving closer, she could see it was the little light from the night before. It emerged from the woods and floated across the grounds toward the east wing.
But it would never reach the window.
For Harley planned to intercept it on the grounds.
She swung the bedroom door open, dashed down the hallway, and nearly tumbled down the stairs to the landing.
She threw open the veranda’s double doors, and stood on the terrace.
Cold air struck her face, then her chest, and stabbed into her lungs like icy daggers. She worked to steady her breaths, thankful the surge of adrenaline had partially numbed her skin. Only thin flannel fabric protected her from the bitter winds. She stood on the veranda as her gaze darted back and forth across the expanse of dark lawn and beyond to the tree line.
The creature had disappeared.
She surveyed the property once more. Moonlight and shadow had transformed the lawn to a sea of charcoal. The wind howled in her ears, whipped her hair behind her shoulders, and whistled through Briarcliffe’s eaves.
Then suddenly, about a hundred feet away, a light flashed behind a tree.
Harley raced across the veranda and jumped the steps, her feet flinching as her socks hit the cold, wet grass. She sprinted across the lawn to the tree and looked around the trunk.
Nothing.
Her breaths ragged, her lungs in pain, she peered past the tree, and along the lawn to a dark line of trees nestled along the creek. The creek was more like a river, and above the wind’s howls, its currents rushed over stones and dams, as a pale blanket of mist covered its banks.
Beside the creek sat a small building, and Harley recognized it as being the boat house. In years past it had housed the Sutcliffes’ many canoes, which were brought out for their annual summer parties. Now the boat house was deserted, its little windows dark, its roof in need of desperate repair.
Except it was not really deserted.
The light had appeared again. In one of the windows.
Harley swallowed her last breath of courage and approached the door.
The old wooden door creaked as it opened, and when Harley stepped inside, darkness engulfed her, and the odor of mildew crept up her nostrils. Her gaze darted about the building, dark except for a few traces of moonlight coming through the window. The creek trickled and burbled beneath the dock, and she searched her surroundings as a blind person might, her hands feeling along a shelf by the door.
She said a silent prayer of thanks when she felt what seemed to be a lantern. Uncle Tater kept a similar one at The Shed for power outages, and she was familiar with the design. She pulled up the metal handles, and the lantern came to life, illuminating the boat house in LED light.
The room was empty.
The shelf she had just touched was one of many stationed along the wall, and on the wall opposite were rows of mounted oars. Beneath them a series of canoes staggered against the sides.
And there were ropes, several hanging from nails on the wall.
In days past, the ropes were used to tie the canoes to the dock, but there was something familiar about their fibers, knots, and loops.
She had seen ones like them before—hanging from the necks of Meredith Roberts and Jennifer Williams.
Like a hangman’s noose.
She removed one rope from the wall and decided to return to the house with it. If she tried to stay longer, she would suffer the risk of frostbite or hypothermia.
She retreated along the grounds, her legs seeming to sink into the earth, the snow swallowing each of her steps. Back inside, she climbed the three flights of steps and returned to her room.
She stoked the smoldering fire in the hearth, and removed her wet socks.
A troubling realization had dawned. Something or someone was haunting Briarcliffe—and it had killed Meredith Roberts and Jennifer Williams.
59
The Cold Light of Day
“Whose room was this?” Harley asked Beau the next morning.
They stood before the fireplace in the room where the ghost had disappeared the previous night. She had told him of the night’s events, how the creature had disappeared into thin air in the room, and how she had seen the light go inside the boat house.
“This was my parents’ room,” he said, then rubbed his tired eyes.
His thick, dark hair fell in waves past his shoulders, and Harley realized this was one of the few times she’d seen him with his hair down. He wore red flannel house pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt with a skull decal on the chest. The skull wore a Santa hat and held a piece of holly in its teeth.
Harley smiled to herself.
“And nobody’s stayed in here since then?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.”
She felt along the fireplace mantel, then inside the hearth, along the andirons. She was not sure what she was searching for, and thought she might have seen too many old movies about mansions with secret passages. She returned to a stand.
Beau stared at her with a curious look on his face. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You don’t think ... ?”
Harley was not sure what she thought.
Two bookcases sat on either side of the fireplace, and she ran her hands along the books’ spines, pulling them out, one by one.
Nothing.
Then she tugged at the sconces that hung on each side of the fireplace.
Nothing.
“Oh, I’m just being ridiculous,” she said. “Grasping at straws. Living in books. Maybe I just imagined something came in here.”
“Seems like we’d know,” Beau said. “I mean I’ve seen the house’s blueprints—had to before we started the renovations. There’s nothing behind the walls.”
And that could indeed be true.
“But the rope I found in the boat house,” she said. “And I don’t know if it’s exactly like the ones I saw on Meredith and Jennifer, but I’m going to take it to Jed—see if the fibers match.”
“They’ll be coming here to search then?” he asked.
“Maybe. If they think the murder weapon was taken from there.”
He deflected his gaze to the floor. “Okay.” He gave a single nod of understanding, but she could tell he was saddened and worried. As a celebrity, so much of his privacy was breached, and now it was going to be breached again.
“Jed doesn’t care for me,” he said. “You know that.”
Harley understood his feelings in this regard, too. “It does seem like that, yeah,” she said. “But Jed—deep down Jed’s a good person. I know he may not seem like it, but I’ve known him since we were kids, and he’s got a good heart. He really does. His dad … his dad was so mean to him when we were growing up. Made Jed feel like of all of his worth was tied into how well he played football. And I think, well, I think over time, Jed came to measure his value based on that, too. So when the injury happened, when his career ended like it did … he felt his value ended there, too.”
&nbs
p; She paused for a moment, then continued. “But in the end, when it comes down to it, he can be fair. He can be objective. And he’ll be that way with you, too. I promise.”
Beau still seemed unconvinced, but said, “He was an incredible athlete.”
“He was. Is. I remember even when we were little—back when he was just playing peewee football—everybody knew there was something special about him, that he was going to go on and do great things.”
“I feel bad for him,” Beau said. And she could tell he really meant it.
“I do, too. Always have.” She motioned toward the door. “Hey, let’s go downstairs. Get some coffee.”
He gave a weary smile, and the two left the room, leaving behind the ghosts in James and Marianne Sutcliffes’ bedroom.
* * *
“Do you think Boonie or Marcus could be behind any of this?”
Harley and Beau sat at the small table in the kitchen, mugs in their hands.
Beau took a sip of coffee, then rested the mug on the table. “Boonie—definitely not. Marcus … uhh … now, there’s more of a possibility. I mean, I know he’s not been happy here—misses L.A— but I’d hope … well, I’d like to think he’s got some kind of loyalty to me—that he wouldn’t do something like this—even if he did think it was just a joke.”
But Marcus was jealous of Beau, Harley thought. Stevie had told her as much once. And while Marcus did love Beau in his own way, he could not help being envious of his talent and fame.
She directed her eyes to several large pieces of drafting paper stacked on the table. On the surface were what appeared to be architectural drawings of the Briarcliffe stables. “What’s this?”
“The drawings—for the studio.”
Harley peered closer. Beside the drawings, in the margins, were several handwritten notes. She recognized the handwriting.
The Ghosts of Notchey Creek Page 19