Crossroads

by Alexie Aaron [Aaron, Alexie]

  Crossroads

  A Haunted Series novel

  by Alexie Aaron

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ~

  Copyright 2019 – Diane L. Fitch writing as Alexie Aaron

  ALSO BY ALEXIE AARON

  HAUNTED SERIES

  in order

  The Hauntings of Cold Creek Hollow

  Ghostly Attachments

  Sand Trap

  PEEPs Lite: Eternal Maze 3.1

  PEEPs Lite: Homecoming 3.2

  Darker than Dark

  The Garden

  Puzzle

  Old Bones

  Things that Go Bump in the Night

  Something Old

  PEEPs Lite: Checking Out 9.1

  PEEPs Lite: Ice and Steel 9.2

  The Middle House: Return to Cold Creek Hollow

  Renovation

  Mind Fray

  The Siege

  NOLA

  Never Forget

  The Old House

  Restitution

  A Rose by Any Other Name

  The Long Game

  Given Enough Rope

  The Return

  Risen

  The Candle

  Book of Souls

  A Daughter of Nyx

  Sideshow

  Crossroads

  Coming soon: Sticks and Stones

  CID GARRETT P.I. SERIES

  Cid

  High Court

  Tiny Houses

  The Promise

  STANDALONE PARANORMAL NOVELS

  The Knight of Pages

  SHORT STORIES

  Evil

  CIN FIN-LATHEN MYSTERIES

  Decomposing

  Death by Saxophone

  Discord

  The Wages of Cin

  Unforgivable Cin: An Opera in Three Acts

  I dedicate this book to everyone who is at a crossroads in their lives. To my children, who have taken many a wild ride with hubby and me as we have chosen new roads in which to travel.

  Also, to my readers, who make my journey a pleasurable and exciting one.

  Table of Contents

  Someone in the House

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Glossary

  Alexie Aaron

  Someone in the House

  The robin song woke Paula from her sleep. She didn’t need to look at the time. The robins always sang between five-ten and five-thirty in the morning. She didn’t know why exactly. Was it to warn the worms? Mating season was long over, yet they still sang. Their shrill tweets were irritating because until she was able to identify their song, it sounded a lot like a smoke alarm’s low-battery warning.

  The former Miss New Jersey 2001 slid out of bed, ignoring the slippers she never could get used to using. They were a gift from her late husband. She never used them while he was alive, but somehow, having them there was like having Derek there with her. Her life had become a lonely one except for her one saving grace, her son Noah.

  Noah wouldn’t be waking for a while. She needed an oversized mug of coffee in order to keep up with her five-year-old.

  Paula looked in at her child to make sure he was in bed, sleeping, and no adventurous art vision had woken him. One morning, when he was three and a half, she came in to find he had crawled over his guardrail and had gotten into her cosmetics. He had outlined areas of his body with her lipstick and filled them in with the powder eye shadow. Fearing the pearlized cosmetic could do her son harm, she took him to the emergency room, much to the amusement of the staff on hand. The pediatrician had informed her, other than a slight rash from dusting sky-blue on his private parts, her son would survive.

  Noah’s chest rose and fell with regularity. He wasn’t faking sleep, and judging by his rapid eye movement, he was dreaming.

  Paula ran into an open drawer in the dark bathroom. She flipped on the light to see not only a drawer open, but the under-sink cabinet door was open too. She examined her hip and decided she needed a bandage as she had broken skin. “Of all the stupid things.”

  She rummaged around and found an antibiotic cream and fought the war with the now slick skin and the undersized bandage. Frustrated, she just crossed the sliding bandage with another one and pulled her underpants back up.

  “What was he doing in here?” she asked herself. Paula had put her medications in a lockbox after Noah thought that it was more aesthetically pleasing to mix all the colorful pills together. After that, she didn’t believe in childproof tops on anything. She took the key from around her neck and unlocked the box. She took her anti-anxiety medication and turned on the tap. Steam rose. She quickly flipped the handle to cold. It could have scalded her or Noah. It had to be recently run to build up all that heat.

  “I hope he’s not sleepwalking again,” Paula worried. She took the time to check out the toilet seat before she sat down. Ever since Noah had been playing with Brian Martin, he had mimicked some of the pranks the overly intelligent Brian had played on his siblings. It only took one urine-soaked morning - compliments of the cling-film wrapping the toilet bowl - to convince Paula that she’d better look before she sat down.

  She laughed with the memory. It was the first time her son had acted like a normal boy. Brian was scary smart, but he liked Noah, and Noah loved playing with him. Her neighbor Susan Braverman had suggested the pairing. Susan had been babysitting Brian since birth and could vouch that the boy didn’t have a mean bone in him. Brian’s parents were liberal thinkers and didn’t think twice about some of the antics Noah got Brian into.

  “If I’m lucky, they will be friends for life,” Paula said, crossing herself.

  Paula walked to the front door and smiled as there was a newspaper sitting there on her front porch. Big Bear Lake was one of the last communities with a self-supporting newspaper. She flipped it open and walked into the kitchen, focused on the paper. When she looked up, she only just suppressed a scream.

  All h
er cupboard doors and kitchen drawers were open. The contents were still secure, so it could have been Noah looking for something in the night. The floor still shone from the wash she gave it the night before. She walked to the sink and noticed that it too was set on the hot setting. She flipped it around and ran it until it ran cold. Paula closed all the doors, extracting her coffee during the process. She started the machine and walked over to the refrigerator to find the melon she had purchased yesterday.

  Noah would eat melon but only if it were cut in different shapes. It took a little extra effort, but the mom in her felt good going the extra mile to get some nutrition in her wiry boy. She set the melon on the cutting board. She reached for the knife drawer and found it already open.

  “I closed you,” she said and slammed it shut. The cupboard doors slammed open one by one in front of her. The drawers opened as if yanked. The only thing keeping them from spilling out onto the floor were the stops Don Braverman had put in for her.

  Paula backed out of the kitchen and sunk to her knees. She prayed for protection.

  Noah, awakened by the noise, walked out to see his mother in prayer. It wasn’t unusual to see his mother praying, but she had never chosen to pray in the doorway of the kitchen before.

  He put a comforting hand on her back.

  Paula jumped to her feet and spun around, her hands fisted, almost knocking Noah over in the process.

  “I’m sorry, darling, I didn’t know who touched me.”

  “What’s going on, Mama?” Noah asked.

  “Remember why we moved from the last house?”

  “There was a see-through man in the kitchen.”

  “I’m afraid he’s found us again.”

  “I don’t want to move, Mama.”

  “I don’t want to move either.”

  “Brian has a see-through man, and he doesn’t mess up the kitchen.”

  “He’s a lucky boy,” Paula said, picking up her son.

  “His uncle Burt can make these things go away,” Noah said confidently. “I’ll go and talk with him today.”

  “Brian?”

  “No, Uncle Burt.”

  “I think maybe both of us should go and talk to Brian’s uncle together,” Paula said. “Stay here.” She walked into the kitchen and closed the cupboards and drawers again. This time, they stayed shut.

  Paula returned to her melon project. She searched through the cutlery drawer in frustration. “I can’t find it.”

  “What, Mama?” Noah asked, staring up at the wall behind his chair.

  She turned around and barely got out, “The big knife.”

  “You mean that one,” Noah said, pointing to the wall three inches over his head.

  Paula moved on unsteady feet, but she pulled the knife out of the drywall and managed to get back to the sink to wash off the chalk. She screamed as the water which poured from the faucet was unexpectedly scalding hot.

  She dropped the knife.

  Noah ran to the freezer and got the frozen peas. As he turned around, he saw the see-through man. He said something that Noah couldn’t hear, but he understood it all too well.

  Chapter One

  Woodlands

  Ted grasped both of Mia’s hands before he spoke. “Close your eyes.”

  Mia did so.

  “Before you open your eyes, I want you to pretend that you’ve never been in this house before, that you’ve not used parts of it as it was ready. I want you to pretend that you’re seeing it for the first time. Cid is going to show us around. Jake is listening in to take any notes. The reason I kept us living in the aerie until all the walls were painted and the wood stained is because I didn’t want this to be a phoenix rising from the ashes of our old home. I want the house to have its own identity.”

  “I understand,” Mia said, her eyes watering. “You’ve all worked so hard.”

  “Open your eyes,” Ted said.

  Mia opened them and looked. Cid was standing in front of the couple. He stepped aside displaying a three-story brick and clapboard home. The deep front porch connected to a covered outdoor area designed to be used for entertaining and linked the house to the carriage house which contained Ted’s two-story laboratory, the PEEPs office, and garaged the smaller vehicles.

  Murphy stood on the front porch. He leaned against a support pillar, running his hand along the sharp edge of his axe.

  “I have to warn you,” Cid said. “I think the house is haunted.”

  Mia laughed.

  “We may have banged heads a few times, but between Ted, Murphy, and me, I think we’ve created a house that should be not only Martin friendly - which means comfortable and high tech - but also blend into the hillside as if it grew out of the ground like one of Murphy’s trees.”

  Mia looked up at the house and liked the way that, from the first glance, it just looked like a modest country home. The windows on the second story were adorned with green shutters. Small windows indicating a third story were tucked under the eaves. The house was designed to be deceptive. Only the people who worked on it knew just how big the house truly was.

  “It’s beautiful,” Mia said, hugging onto Ted’s offered arm as he guided his very pregnant wife across the newly sodded lawn to the porch.

  Stephen Murphy tipped his hat and opened the front door. “Welcome home, Mr. and Mrs. Martin.”

  Mia stepped into the foyer. The room danced with colorful light. Mia followed the stairs upwards with her eyes to the ceiling where the afternoon sun was illuminating the large stained-glass windows that were gifted to them from Father Santos. Hidden from the front of the house, the windows warmed the center staircase.

  “When Paolo first spoke about the windows, I thought for sure they were going to depict angels in heavenly battles, and that’s that last thing I wanted to be reminded of,” Mia said.

  Ted looked at the panels of vibrant blues and greens and smiled. “Reminds me of looking up through a canopy of trees.”

  “Me too,” Mia said.

  Cid cleared his voice. “Do you want to start at the top and go down or…”

  “Let’s start on the main floor and go up. If we have time, we’ll tour the basement,” Ted said.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Mia said.

  “This way,” Cid said. He turned and nodded to Murphy who opened the large sliding doors and displayed a beautiful living room. The hand-hewn beams gave the large space a warm feeling. The ceiling was high enough to allow for some of the taller guests to feel comfortable but not so high that Mia felt dwarfed. A large fireplace dominated the far wall. The mantel held the photos that Murphy had rescued while the house was burning. Above the mantel was the painting from New Orleans that Ralph had bought, insisting that Mia needed to expose her children to a little culture.

  “I still think that Boba Fett on velvet would look better up there,” Ted said.

  “But then what would we hang in the dining room?” Mia asked.

  “Good point. Speaking of, look at that table. Cid, you’ve outdone yourself,” Ted complimented.

  Cid blushed. Murphy patted him on the back.

  “It will seat eight as is, and with the extra leaves, another six.”

  “As I promised,” Ted said, “there will be no kids’ table in the Ted Martin dining room.”

  Mia knew he was referring to where he had to sit when his parents entertained.

  “Dude, I think you had to sit there to protect the walls and carpet,” Cid said.

  “That’s why everything here is washable,” Mia said, running her hand along the wainscoting. “This is a beautiful chair rail.”

  “I made it,” Murphy said proudly.

  “I think, Cid, you might want to take on a partner,” Ted said, impressed with the workmanship.

  “I can’t afford him,” Cid said honestly. “Plus, where is he going to put all those trees he’s earned already?”

  “Along the hill overlooking Big Bear Lake so Mia
doesn’t have to look at the graveyard.”

  Mia felt uncomfortable. All this fuss so she wouldn’t have to revisit childhood traumas was appreciated, but still she felt foolish at times.

  “I can’t see it from here,” she pointed out.

  “But when you take your walks with the babies, wouldn’t it be nice not to feel the Countess’s stare as you walk along the ridge?”

  “I never thought of it that way,” Mia said. “Thank you.”

  Cid led them through the butler’s pantry into the kitchen. It was basically designed like the old kitchen but had a bit more room. There still was a large island with stools on one side. The refrigerator was much larger, and there was a sunny little area housing a more intimate, round dining table for the Martins. The kitchen had many unique touches, such as pull-out steps so the boys could help with dishes and Mia could reach some of the higher shelves when Lazar or Cid weren’t around. The kitchen sparkled with a lot of natural light coming through the windows. There was a small laundry room still off the kitchen by the back door. The major laundry room had been moved upstairs to the second floor where it made more sense to be near the bedrooms.

  Off the kitchen was also the entrance to what some would consider a housekeeper’s suite. It was being used by Nanny Berta who had arrived to see Mia through her last month of pregnancy and through the months of adjusting Mia to feeding and caring for twin girls. Being caretaker for Brian and Varden was split between Nanny Berta and Lazar Popov. Lazar recently had moved into his own home just down the street from the Martins.

  Mia didn’t need to see Nanny Berta’s rooms because any problems with them the birdwoman had already addressed with Cid.

  Outside, there was a tiered herb garden leading down to the entrance of the wooded area behind the Martin home. At the bottom of the garden was a shielded doorway to the basement. If you weren’t shown where it was, odds are, you would never know it was there.

  Cid led them back through the kitchen, down the hall, to where the elevator had been tucked securely into a wall not used by the staircase. Mia had vetoed the idea of an open cage design. She saw little fingers getting smashed when the occupants weren’t careful. Instead, the paneling moved away slowly. The elevator wasn’t built for speed. It was for the movement of people when the stairs were just too much for them to physically handle. The boys were schooled to use the stairs whenever possible. Mia only started using the elevator when the climb to check on the furnishing of the rooms became too much for her in her final months of pregnancy.