The Seekers, page 13
The ghost stood still and smiled slowly. “You see me.”
“We see you, and now we hear you,” he said.
Her voice was weak. A bare whisper, like the movement of the air through leaves or a recording, distant and faded.
“It’s happening again,” she whispered. “My father didn’t do it... I must prove that he didn’t do it, I can’t bear that he be blamed.”
“I never believed that he did it,” Keri said. “I’m looking for who might have done this thing. Beatrice, your father didn’t slaughter people, but did Newby... Did Newby kill you?”
The ghost lowered her head, nodding sorrowfully. She raised her head and looked at them with pride and strength.
“It is happening again,” she said, and then, as if she had spent what talent she had for appearing as she had in life, she began to fade.
And then she was gone.
Joe felt Keri shaking beneath him.
“You did see her. You saw her, when you found Julie.”
“I thought I was just seeing her in my mind. There’s a picture of her in the museum, so I thought I’d just put her image in the basement, because I’d known she’d been there at one time... And then today, I wanted to work in the museum, but she’s haunted my dreams...and I need to sleep, really sleep. I thought that if I came out here... She’s buried in here somewhere. Newby just brought his corpses out of the basement and buried them right in this graveyard. The basement must have been...horrible. But people never knew... They never knew...”
She was still shaking; she didn’t try to throw off his touch. “You—you saw her, too,” she said.
“She’s trying to help.”
She swung around to stare at him, repeating, “You saw her.”
He nodded and suggested, “Let’s get back to the inn. We can talk.”
He thought that she would protest, and for a moment, she just stared out at the overgrown, sad little graveyard and the church.
Then, she started walking, and he followed. He waved to the cops watching over the place as they headed back in. Sitting her in the tavern, he asked, “Water, coffee, a soft drink?”
“A big shot of whiskey,” she said.
“Okay. Let’s see what they’ve got behind the bar—”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” she said, waving a hand in the air. “Right now, I certainly don’t want to be impaired in any way.”
“Okay.”
She stood, telling him, “I’m half asleep all the time now. Let’s brew some coffee.”
She walked past the bar and into the kitchen. He followed her, watching as she searched the cabinets for coffee. The pot was a one-cup instant maker and she drew down the collection of coffee, saying, “I’m going for a Hawaiian brew. Would you like Hawaiian, light, decaf, Brazilian, Sumatran, or let me see, there’s also—”
He walked over to her, setting his hand on hers where she was rifling through the little pods. “Sumatran is great. I’ll get some water for the pot.”
She nodded, lowering her head. He filled cups with water.
“Cream, sugar?” she asked.
“Black for me.”
“Do all cops drink black coffee?” she asked him.
“One of the guys I worked with in Savannah loved flavored creamers. He said that all cops made bad coffee and the creamers made it drinkable.”
She smiled at last, stepping back while the first cup brewed, looking at him.
“Have you seen dead people before?”
He nodded slowly. “I’ve been waiting for you to admit that you saw the dead. But this is new for me, too. I believe you heard about the case in Savannah. A politician was involved, and a house with incredible historic significance, and it was all over the news.”
“Yes, I heard about Savannah. That’s why Carl wanted you and Dallas on this so badly, but he didn’t say anything about ghosts.”
He took the first cup out of the little machine and put in the second.
“People don’t usually announce to the world that they see ghosts. But what I’ve been learning, working with the Krewe of Hunters and getting ready to go into the academy, is that it may well be like inheriting a rare trait from someone in your family history. It’s rare and yet a percentage of people have it, and sometimes it lies dormant until an occasion when the dead see it in someone they might need or like or see as a kindred spirit. I don’t think we’re so different when we’re dead than we are when we’re alive. No matter what it is we’re seeking, our triumphs and failures, ecstasies and tragedies, are all important because of the people in our lives. Parents, siblings, lovers, friends, children. Our relationships are often what’s most beautiful about us as human beings.
“I’m not that experienced myself, but I know that lives were saved in Savannah, and the truth was known because a ghost came to me. Dallas did the heavy work, but if it hadn’t been for a ghost—who I didn’t accept as a ghost at first, mind you—a number of other people might have died. Frankly? I was just about worthless myself, but because of that ghost, I called the Krewe for help.”
She watched him in silence. The second cup of coffee finished brewing; he handed one cup to her and kept one himself.
He smiled. “I’m trying to read your expression. I think you might have decided that I might be decent and almost likable?”
She took another little pause to answer, and then she shrugged. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. Almost okay and not entirely despicable,” she told him, but she had a half smile on her lips, and he couldn’t help but smile in return.
“Good,” he told her. “Because I don’t like leaving you alone. I was lurking in the corner when you left for the graveyard. Now, I’d like to help you with what you’re doing in the museum. I’m pretty good at reading.”
“Okay,” she said.
She stayed still, looking at him. “I’ve heard of...feelings. Like when you live in a house where a loved one died, and you kind of feel them at certain times. I’ve heard of people seeing soldiers marching at Gettysburg when the fog rolls in, but that’s so suggestive, of course you see soldiers. But she looked so real. As if she was standing right there.”
“She believes in you, I think.”
“That’s crazy. I’m the last person she should believe in.”
“Maybe she was there, all the while, watching. And she knows what you do, and believes that you can help her.”
“She also said, ‘It’s happening again.’ I—I don’t know how I can help her.”
“Maybe what you discover about the past will help with the present.”
“I really wish I could help. I saw Julie on that altar. I didn’t know her, but I know that the other two agents down here did, and she was very real, and what was done to her was so terrible and so very wrong. Are the answers in Philadelphia? Have they murdered the girl who was kidnapped?”
“Maybe we’ll go into Philadelphia ourselves at some point. Right now, Dallas and I believe that there’s a connection between everything. If we can find out what went on here, it could lead us all the way back to the kidnapping in New York.”
He followed her back to the museum. Keri took a seat behind the desk. Going through the drawers, she took out a set of old manila files and immediately began reading.
Joe took a minute to walk around the room. Most of the pictures on the walls had little signs beneath them, naming the people in them. Many of them were from around the Civil War.
“No picture of Washington up here—wait, sorry, found a sketch,” he said.
She ignored him. He winced. She was working; he was talking and being a distraction.
There were images of Newby. He looked so damned normal, but then, most of the time, the most dangerous men and women did. People were far more easily taken in by someone who was charming.
Newby didn’t appear to have been particularly charming. Just very normal.
On the other hand...
Joe studied a picture that included Beatrice Bergen. And her father, Hank.
Hank had been a tall and distinguished-looking man, beard and mustache nicely clipped, dark hair wavy and swept back from his head. His suit was probably not at all a good one; Hank had been a farmer.
The salt of ye olde earth.
“What about the rest of the Bergen family?” he asked, and then quickly added, “Sorry to interrupt.”
“It’s okay. I was ready to get into the next file,” Keri said. “What I’ve found in local records is that Beatrice’s mother died when she was four. Her father raised her. No siblings. With Beatrice nearly grown, Hank had started courting a widow down the road, Maya Bentley. I haven’t found anything more on that relationship. Obviously he didn’t marry again.”
“Thanks.” He’d seen the pictures; gotten what he’d asked. Except for...
“Sorry, quick interruption, and then no more. What about Newby?”
She gave him a grim smile. “Mildred Newby supposedly went to see relatives out west. She left one day and never came back. Newby would inform those who asked that she’d left him. She’d lied to him and gone off with a man and was living somewhere out west.”
“So, in other words, she might have been his first victim and might lie in an unmarked grave out by the church.”
“Quite possibly.”
He sat down quickly and pulled out his phone; Keri seemed to have some kind of method with what she was doing here. Grateful that Carl had seen to setting up the Wi-Fi—only way to get the video stream from the Truth Seekers out—Joe logged on to a bookseller account and downloaded something he found on the history of Satanism.
Of course, he knew what people in general knew—Satan, or Lucifer, was a fallen angel. While pagan religions flourished in early societies, Satan became a frightening entity as Christianity began its spread across Europe. Therefore, it was easy for settlers in areas of heavily forested, dark and mysterious New England to believe in the devil, especially beneath a religion as restricting as Puritanism. In the darkness of the forests and the dreariness of winter, it was easy to see how the imaginations of young people were stirred—and how easily their beliefs might be swayed to encompass the feelings, wants and needs of their elders.
The first witch, or devil worshipper, to be executed in the American colonies was Alse or Alice Young of Windsor, Connecticut, and she went to the gallows in Hartford in 1647. Many more were accused, tried and hanged throughout New England, but it was the infamous Salem Witch Trials that turned neighbor against neighbor in a frenzy during which nineteen were hanged and one pressed to death.
Much of the persecution of witchcraft in the American colonies had to do with the dogged determination of James I of England, who studied Satan and witchcraft and was convinced that it was all real; he believed that a witch had caused the storm that upset the ship bringing Anne of Denmark, his future wife, to his side, though she did survive to marry him and bear three children. Toward the end of his life, James determined that there were many counterfeit accusations, but a desperate fear of witchcraft and Satanism had been set in motion, along with the idea that Satan could provide a life filled with dancing, lewdness, drink, sex and more, without consequence.
Witchcraft was listed as a crime in the American colonies in 1715, but by 1750, it was no longer mentioned as anything illegal or legal. In the creation of the United States, the founding fathers, familiar with religious persecution, set forth an absolute separation of church and state. Of course, it was illegal to kill, if a religion called for killing, but otherwise, religious practices were not illegal.
The contemporary religious practice of Satanism officially began in 1966 when Anton LaVey founded the Church of Satan.
But many had been accused of being Satanists long before, back as far as the Middle Ages. The Knights Templar had been accused of Satanic practices, but that had most likely been a greedy king trying to get his hands on coveted Templar riches.
Aleister Crowley had been seen by many as a Satanist, but his mantra, do what thou wilt, was part of his own religion, Thelema. The religion was based on practices he had studied throughout his life, as a magician and a poet. He embraced the old gods of the Egyptians, as well as others during his travels in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Because of his drug use, bisexuality and hedonism, he’d often been thought of as a Satanist.
“Hungry?”
He looked up, startled that Keri was standing there in front of him, bending over with a smile, her hair almost touching him.
So much for being aware at the drop of a pin.
“Sure.”
“Do you cook as well as you make coffee?” she asked.
“Coffee is my forte,” he assured her. “Hey, I spent over a decade as a cop. I’m a wonderful stereotype, except I don’t like donuts. Can you cook?”
“Depending on what they have in there. What were you reading? Anything that was any help?”
“Not yet. A lot of history of witchcraft and Satanism, but I’ve not really gotten anything on the Pennsylvania Dutch beliefs yet or the possible practice of Satanism here.”
“Ah, but an understanding of the present often comes from an understanding of the past,” she said, walking away. “I’ll be in the kitchen. Maybe I should run up and get Carl and Dallas. They must be getting hungry now, too.”
He wasn’t sure why—some bodyguard; she’d been in front of him and startled him—but he didn’t want her away from him. “I’ll just give Dallas a buzz,” he told her.
She paused, looking back, and said, “I’m coming to terms with it, but do you think we could not mention the...ghost...we saw to anyone else yet? Carl believes in séances and such, from what he’s told me. I don’t really adhere to the belief that you can summon someone’s dead grandmother but—”
“Dallas is far more experienced than I am. You could ask him questions,” Joe suggested.
“What?”
“Dallas sees the dead. When they choose to be seen, of course. And when—when they have remained, for whatever reason.”
“Dallas...sees...”
“Yes. The whole Krewe, in fact. You should hear some of his stories.”
She took a deep breath. “Not yet, please. I’m not ready for that yet. Since we’ve been back... I’ve begun to wonder again. Maybe we’re sharing a hallucination.”
“We’re not, but we’ll move along as you wish.”
She went to the kitchen; he dialed Dallas as he followed her. Dallas said that he and Carl would come right down.
Joe didn’t know why he was worried about the safety of the inn. There were patrol cars outside, each bearing two officers, and the officers seemed competent. One of the four at the very least should have noticed if anyone had approached the inn. He was equally certain that Dallas would have checked out every room upstairs before settling down anywhere, just as he and Carl had gone down to see the basement after the cleaning crew had gone through.
Joe still felt that he needed to keep an eye on Keri. Maybe it was this rather bizarre kinship—the way they were both new to seeing ghosts.
In the kitchen, they both dug through the cabinets and refrigerator, keeping up a running dialogue about the various supplies they found. There was a beef stew and macaroni casserole, and they decided to put that in the oven and make a salad while they waited.
As they worked, Carl and Dallas came down to the kitchen. “Anything interesting up there?” Joe asked.
“We went through every room. Almost all of the Truth Seekers equipment is still here. I guess you all had to rush out, and then the police were here, right?” Dallas asked Keri.
“They didn’t let us back into the house. They went and got handbags for the women, and of course, checked them before they allowed us to have them back. Someone went back in for our luggage when we were sent to stay at the new hotel. I suppose Detective Billings ordered them to get what we might need, but nothing else. No wonder Brad wants back in so badly. I hadn’t realized that all his equipment was still here.” She hesitated. “So, were you playing with it?”
“Those EVP things seems to record all the time in this place,” Carl said. “EVP...means what?”
“Electronic voice phenomenon, or something like that,” Dallas said. “Carl thinks we heard a whisper. I’m pretty sure we heard an air-conditioner kicking on.”
“Skeptic,” Carl said.
Dallas smiled. “Smells good, whatever it was that the caterers left,” he said. “Salad looks great, too. Good call on dinner. I realized we hadn’t eaten as soon as you called.”
“We’re looking at five more minutes,” Keri said. She’d been chopping cucumbers and carrots; Joe had been slicing tomatoes. The scene was oddly domestic.
Joe found plates in a cupboard and set them around the table while Carl searched for flatware and napkins. The caterers had supplied beer and wine, but none of them wanted anything that dulled the senses, so bottles of ice tea were found and passed around the table.
For the first few minutes, they all just ate, noting that the caterers were very good.
“Wow, love this stew,” Carl said. “I felt badly... I know the caterers wanted to hang out. You know, to be invited to be a part of the investigation. But Brad is exacting on how he likes things done. He thinks that people who don’t understand his work method and are just in it for the thrills mess up a real investigation...” His voice trailed. “I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t stay, with what happened and all. They’re nice people. If we do get through this and I do keep the tavern... Well, I’ll have to reopen the restaurant and the bar, but you never know when you’re going to need a good caterer.”
“We met them,” Joe said.
“You did?” Carl asked, surprised.
“Of course,” Keri said. “The caterers were here that day, too. Naturally they were questioned as well. And I assume, you also went to see Spencer Atkins. He was here as well.”
