Shadows of the Past, page 3
“Who owns the place?”
“Family members. I deal most often with a niece who owns and rents out a number of properties in the area.” He gave me another serious look. “You should think hard before you decide you want to live in this house.”
“I’ll chance it. I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.”
He didn’t laugh. Maybe he didn’t get the reference. I wrote out a check for my first month’s rent, got a map, got a key, and set out for my new home.
I was met just inside the front door by an older woman with curly gray hair and a wide, hopeful smile. I’d always thought ghosts would be a misty white, floating from room to room like errant wisps of smoke. But this one was colorful in a pink-and-purple patterned blouse and navy blue trousers. Insubstantial, though—she looked like a watercolor painted on a sheet of gauze. I could see straight through her to the polished taupe of the walls.
Despite the rental agent’s warning, I was startled to see her, and I dropped my key. “Hello!” I said, feeling my heart beat suddenly harder. “Um—I’m the new tenant. Erica. I’m here for the summer. Hope that’s all right.”
She clapped her hands together, though they made no sound, and looked delighted. “You can see me!” she exclaimed. “Oh, I’m so glad. The couple who were here last—well—they clearly knew when one of us was in the room, but no matter how loud we were or how much we waved our arms, they just never seemed to be able to focus. They didn’t stay long,” she added sadly. “We didn’t mean to frighten them. I hope you won’t be afraid.”
Indeed, my heart had already settled down to a normal pace. She looked like somebody’s grandmother, just in from the kitchen after having made a batch of cookies. “Not afraid yet,” I said. “Which one are you?”
She smiled again. “Victoria. So pleased to meet you.”
I glanced around. “Maybe you can give me a tour of the house.”
It was a lovely place, probably eighty years old, two stories of hardwood floors and hard plaster walls and shabby chic furniture that someone had picked out with care. But my first walk-through was a little—unusual.
“Here’s the kitchen, where Martin died,” Victoria said, showing me the small but spotless black-and-white tiled room. The dining room hadn’t seen much action, but the living room was the place where “Charlotte and I were watching TV when we were overcome by carbon monoxide poisoning.” She sighed. “We only got to see the first couple seasons of The X-Files. I always wanted to know what happened.”
“There were a couple of movies, too,” I said.
“I know! Never got to see them, either.”
So they must have died before 1998. “Were you and Charlotte sisters?”
“Lifelong friends. Widows. We moved in together after her husband died.” She headed toward the stairs, gesturing at a pretty rug placed beneath the very bottom step. “That’s where Edison lay dying after he fell and broke his neck. He was alive for quite some time, but none of us could figure out how to use the phone and call for help. Very tragic.”
I stepped gingerly on the floral pattern of the rug. “He just fell?”
She glanced over her shoulder at me, an impish look in her eye. “Well. He says that Martin pushed him. Impossible, of course. Martin may have appeared suddenly and frightened him, causing him to take a misstep, but he doesn’t have any more strength than the rest of us.”
I swallowed. Martin was the only one of the ghosts who had violence associated with his past, at least as far as I knew. “Would he—is Martin the kind of person who would want to shove someone down the stairs? Did he frighten Edison on purpose?”
“Martin is very angry,” Victoria admitted. “It’s my theory that no one who dies in this house will ever be permitted to leave as long as Martin’s spirit is still tethered here. But did he try to kill Edison? I doubt it. He dislikes Edison even more than the rest of us do. I wouldn’t think Martin would have wanted to be stuck with him for—well, forever.”
I thought that over as Victoria showed me through the upstairs rooms. “Here’s the bedroom where Bradley and Suzanne were killed. Some people say you can still see the blood on the floor, but I’ve never been able to make it out … This is the bedroom where Lizzie died. Poor thing. She was so hot. Charlotte and I stayed with her all night because, you know, a ghost can bring a chill to the air and we hoped it would bring her fever down. But no such luck. Her body went still and then her spirit just sat up. She looked at us and said, ‘I guess I’m here with you two now.’”
Lizzie’s room was smaller, for Bradley and Suzanne had been killed in the master bedroom, but I liked it better. More light streamed in through the two tall windows, and the view showed the small green backyard. And, OK, I was less unnerved by the idea of sleeping alongside the ghost of a girl who had died of illness than the thought of sharing a bed with the spirits of two murder victims.
“I think I’ll make this my bedroom,” I said.
Victoria gestured down the hall. “The third bedroom is quite nice, and no one died there,” she said. Clearly I hadn’t fooled her at all.
So I followed her into a room about the size of Lizzie’s, and prettily furnished, but it was instantly clear to me that this would be my last choice. For one thing, the sun had a hard time making its way through the single side window. For another, the room was significantly colder than any other room in the house.
For another, it really was haunted.
A thin, bony-faced woman sat on the bed, apparently reciting a story to a small blonde girl who leaned against her, smiling sleepily. They had to be Charlotte and Lizzie. A dark-haired young woman stood at the window, looking out; I could only see her profile, but the twist of her mouth was bitter and dissatisfied. A few feet away from her stood a short, pudgy man who looked like he had once been ruddy and choleric. He was talking so loudly that I couldn’t hear the tale Charlotte was spinning for Lizzie.
“If you’d only ask him to be more thoughtful. He’ll listen to you. But, no, you’re too selfish to think about anyone but yourself or anything but your own misery.”
The woman at the window ignored him, but Charlotte gave him an icy stare. “For God’s sake, Edison, no one has ever had any success at getting Martin to behave in any but the most abominable fashion, and your incessant complaining is about to drive every single one of us stark raving mad. Will you just shut up?”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Instantly, they were all staring at me. I had the strange sensation that they hadn’t seen me when I walked through the door—as if whatever plane ghosts existed on really didn’t intersect with the ordinary world, at least all the time. I tried to smooth away my smile. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m Erica. Victoria’s showing me around.”
Charlotte looked at Victoria with her eyebrows raised. “She sees all of us?”
“I see you and the little girl—Lizzie?—and Edison,” I volunteered. “And someone at the window. Suzanne, I guess. I haven’t seen Martin or—” For a moment I blanked on his name. “Or Bradley yet.” I glanced at Victoria. “Did I miss them?”
She shook her head. “They must be in the yard. They can’t go past the property boundaries, but both of them like to be outside of the house.”
Charlotte stood up, urging Lizzie forward. I had the feeling that the older woman would have offered me her hand, except long experience had taught her it was a hard trick for a ghost. “How very nice to meet you,” she said, her voice more reserved than Victoria’s but her pleasure just as genuine. “We hope you’ll enjoy your stay.”
Lizzie jumped up and down. “Will you play with me? Will you read me stories? Charlotte tells me stories all the time, but she doesn’t know any new ones. Will you go to the library and check out new books for me? And read them to me? Every night?”
I was charmed. “I will. What kinds of books do you like?”
Edison made a huffing sound. “Oh, sure, the cute little girl gets all the attention! It doesn’t matter what anyone else wants. You could read me Tom Clancy books, but will you? I don’t think so!”
“Shut up, Edison,” Suzanne said. She had moved away from the window and was heading for the door. It seemed to me that she had less color than all the others—she was a closer approximation of my idea of a ghost—that her very manner and expression were drenched in sadness. She gave me one unfathomable look and slipped out the door.
“Well, nobody cares about me,” Edison muttered. “I’m the one everyone always forgets.”
“I don’t think I’ll forget you, Edison,” I said cheerfully. “I think we’ll all be friends.”
And oddly, we were. I mean, almost right away. As soon as I hauled all my stuff in from the car, I headed out to run errands. I picked up food at the grocery store, books at the library, and DVDs at Blockbuster. That very night, I set up entertainment zones in four separate rooms of the house. I’d rented a few seasons of The X-Files for Charlotte and Victoria, and I set up the first discs to play in the living room. Victoria told me that Bradley liked PBS shows, so I had the little TV in the kitchen tuned to the local public television station, even though Bradley still hadn’t made an appearance. For Edison, I’d rented a selection of Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Tom Clancy books on CD, and I had one of these running on my laptop up in the third bedroom where the ghosts seemed to like to congregate.
Lizzie and I settled into her room/my room and I read her half of a Baby-Sitter’s Club book. She leaned against me just as she had against Charlotte, listening happily. There was no weight to her body, but I felt a coolness against my skin, as if a curl of winter had blown through the window and come to rest companionably at my side.
Victoria had said there was no way to make Martin happy, so I didn’t bother trying to figure out what I might do for him. The rest of us passed a very enjoyable evening, and I could feel the contentment radiating throughout the entire house. Indeed, when I finally turned out the light and went to bed, I fell asleep almost instantly and I didn’t wake ’til dawn.
My first night in the haunted house was far more peaceful than my last hundred nights in the apartment I shared with my husband. Had my life held so many terrors lately that I had actually upgraded it by moving in with restless spirits? Had the world of the living proved so perilous that I was more at ease among the dead?
The following weeks quickly settled into a pattern. During the day, I worked on my novel, occasionally taking breaks to walk around the neighborhood, explore the town, or replenish supplies. In the evenings, I hung out with my new roommates. Now and then I was able to find a movie or program that everyone in the household could agree on—Buffy was a universal favorite, for instance, and even Edison enjoyed Pixar movies—but most of the time I activated the distinct entertainment zones that everyone preferred. Edison developed the habit of heading down to the kitchen to watch PBS with Bradley once the CD of the day had finished playing. I knew that, because he also developed the annoying habit of telling the rest of us the next day what he’d learned the night before about Mayan ruins or asteroid belts or creatures of the deep sea. This was preferable to his other favorite topic of conversation, however, which was to claim that Martin had murdered him by pushing him down the stairs.
I didn’t know what Bradley thought about sharing his TV viewing time with Edison. During those first two weeks, neither Bradley nor Martin made an appearance. I couldn’t decide if I should be sorry or glad.
I did meet a few of my neighbors, though. The young couple on the right usually just waved as they left for work in the mornings, and the older woman on my left never wanted to talk about anything but how late the paperboy was, but the woman who lived behind me was gregarious and cheerful. A low tangle of honeysuckle divided our yards and perfumed our conversations as we stood on either side to talk.
That first day, she introduced herself as Janet and waved at me with a trowel. She was a fiftyish brown-haired woman dressed in shapeless gardening clothes and a big straw hat that partially obscured her face. “You’re the new renter?” she asked. “How are you getting along with the ghosts?”
She said it in a playful way that made me think she was joking. So I gave a noncommittal answer and a big smile. “Very well, thank you. They don’t trouble me at all.”
She laughed. “Excellent! So perhaps you’ll stay longer than the last few tenants. I think one of them decamped within a week.”
“I’d like to stay,” I admitted. “I’m falling in love with the house.” I fanned myself with the magazine I’d been reading on the back porch before I spotted Janet. “How long have you lived here?”
“Oh, let’s see—goodness, I think I moved in twenty years ago.”
“So you must have been living here when the murders happened,” I said.
She nodded. “It was terrible. I was very close to Suzanne. I kept telling her to leave Martin. He was so unstable, it was so obvious he would turn violent if he ever found out about Bradley. I’d had an abusive husband of my own, and so I knew—” Janet paused and shook her head. “But she wouldn’t listen to me. And when that sweet girl was murdered, I wept for days.”
“Were you here when it happened?”
She nodded. “I saw the police cars and I ran over to see if I could help. I’m a nurse at the ER and—but they were all long dead.”
I thought she might be weeping now, all these years later, and I hastily changed the subject. “My other neighbors seem very nice,” I said. “I haven’t had very long conversations with them, though.”
“Oh, I like them all,” she said. “But I think Joan and Bruce might be moving soon. She wants a dog.”
“And? She can’t have a dog here?”
Janet shook her head. “It’s your house. Animals don’t like it. Last three or four times one of the near neighbors has tried to get a dog—any dog—the animal would just refuse to calm down. Would stand right there in the yard, facing your house, and bark its head off. Cats won’t stay either. They run off the first time they can get out the door.”
I was disappointed. I’d been thinking about getting a cat. “Maybe the house really is haunted,” I said softly.
Janet smiled sadly. “Oh, I’m convinced it is.”
I was working on my book one afternoon when a ghost I hadn’t seen before stalked in and settled in the chair across from my desk. “I suppose you’re not going to leave,” he said in a dark voice.
He startled me. I believe an undignified “eek!” actually passed my lips, but I wasn’t exactly afraid. I saved my file and closed my laptop so I could study him. A handsome man, I decided. I guessed Suzanne to be about thirty, and this man was maybe a year or two older. He had rumpled brown hair and an intense gaze that gave him a brooding air. Altogether, he cultivated a somewhat Byronic manner that suited my notions of ghosthood as much as Suzanne’s die-away despair. “Which one are you?” I inquired.
He sneered. “You mean, am I the wronged husband or the doomed lover? The murderer or the fool?”
“Yes,” I said calmly. “That’s what I meant.”
He didn’t answer for a moment. I made sure to take in details of his face and clothing so that I could ask Victoria later whom I had had the pleasure of meeting, in case he never told me. But he shrugged and said, “I’m the fool.”
I propped my chin on my hand. “For loving a married woman?” I said. “Lot of people make that mistake.”
He snorted. “For believing she was worth loving.”
My eyebrows rose. This was a new twist. “You and Suzanne had a falling out? Was this the night you were—were discovered?”
He looked away. “No. That night I loved her as much as I ever had. It was just—later—when I found out—” He shook his head. “How could I ever have loved someone like her?” he burst out.
My eyes went wide. “You discovered something—after you died? A secret about Suzanne?”
He watched me a moment with those dark eyes. Sexy. Just a little more corporeal mass, I found myself thinking, and I’d want to sleep with you, too. “Doesn’t everyone have secrets?” he asked at last. “Don’t you?”
I reviewed my own life. “Things I don’t like to talk about, maybe,” I allowed. “Not necessarily secrets.”
“I have to wonder about someone who seems to be perfectly happy when she’s living in a house that harbors seven ghosts and the memories of three murders.”
“Three? Oh, you mean Edison?” I said, a little amused. “I haven’t encountered Martin yet, but did he really push Edison down the steps?”
Bradley was sneering. Still attractive. “He talked about wanting to do it almost from the day the man moved in.”
I almost laughed. “I’m sure the rest of you tried to dissuade him. To be stuck with Edison forever!”
Bradley didn’t smile. Indeed, his gaze became even more intense as he hitched himself forward on the chair. “You must help me,” he said. “Help all of us. We’re trapped in this house together—for time everlasting—hating each other, unable to get away. For so long I wanted Martin dead, but once he died—he’s the one who keeps us all here. Put him at rest, and all of us will be at peace.”
“But how do I do that?” I asked, bewildered.
Bradley stood up. “Uncover the lie,” he said. “Once a living person knows the truth, we will all be free.” And, before my eyes, he vanished.
“I don’t know what truth he means,” Victoria said. She was helping me make dinner that night. I wasn’t much of a cook, and of course Victoria couldn’t eat, but apparently she’d been something of a chef in her day. We had gotten in the habit of meeting in the kitchen a couple nights a week so she could walk me through one of her favorite recipes. “The truth is that Martin killed Bradley and Suzanne, then killed himself. No, dear, not that much garlic.”
