Bump in the Night

by Meredith Spies

  “Great,” I muttered. “Sounds...awesome.”

  Jacob looked at me shrewdly for a long moment. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Whoever was up here.”

  “Hmm. Mice maybe. Everyone else was downstairs.”

  I opened my mouth to snap at him, call him out for trying to be funny, but instead I just bit down on my tongue and smiled. “Probably. Might explain the smell,” I added. Which, to be fair, was likely true. The house was old, rural, and full of all kinds of things mice would love to nibble on.

  “Well, I have some good news for you,” he said, ducking out of the booth. I joined him in the hall. “Fellowes and Baxter have finally arrived. The sheriff had to bring them up the road in his SUV. Their little Honda didn’t make it past the first curve after the creek.” He made a sucking noise and gestured with a flat hand, supposed to be a car sinking in the mud. “Gonna have to wait till after the storm to see if it can be salvaged or if we’ll have to finagle the budget to cover the destruction of a rental car.”

  Jacob set himself up in a makeshift office in one corner of the ballroom while crew members lugged in bedrolls, battery operated lamps, and several portable chargers for their laptops and phones. Hendricks House had generators but given that gas was fairly limited, and the noise would make filming hell, they were to be used extremely judiciously. Especially as we didn’t know yet how Minerva was going to impact the area. It wasn’t like hurricanes back home where they’d hunker down over the city and just keep raining and raining until you were sure the entire world would be one giant lake. Bettina was far enough inland to be spared the worst of things but that still didn’t discount heavy wind damage or flooding. “If the weather reports are correct, then this should be the worst of it for the area and we’ll be good to go.”

  CeCe’s voice came out of the darkness somewhere past Jacob’s desk. “That usually means we should start building an ark. Remember Helen?”

  Hurricane Helen had been almost as bad as Harvey, dumping feet of water on the Houston area just when everyone finally, finally got out from under the damage of the last storm. Helen had been predicted to barely skin the area before heading back out to sea, but instead it set up camp over the city for a week. Cec and Jacob lost their house, and the only reason I hadn’t was I lived on the top floor of a building. People two floors below me lost everything. I looked around the ballroom, the puddles of light cast by fire-safe showing clusters of sleeping areas where crew members were gathering, peering at phones, playing cards, shooting the shit. No one seemed to be concerned about the house itself. There was no bustle to sandbag anything or tape up windows, move furniture to higher floors. “Isn’t the grounds keeper going to, I don’t know, batten down the hatches or anything?”

  “Er. He won’t be here till in the morning,” Jacob said, glancing at CeCe on the other side of the lamp’s glow. “He’ll be conducting a brief tour we’ll be filming for B-roll and to get some good reaction shots from you and the Dynamic Duo.”

  “Jacob,” CeCe quelled from her hiding spot. “Careful. Do that now and you’ll slip and do it when they get here.”

  He rolled his eyes, flashing me one of those women, right grins that, even if she wasn’t my sister, I still wouldn’t humor. “Well, we’re going to start at first light, if Ernest can get here with the weather, and then…” he trailed off, smiling wide and bright. “We’re officially underway.”

  “Mr. Grant? Where are we supposed to set up the rest of these bedrolls?”

  Jacob heaved a theatrical sigh, pushing away from his desk and disappearing into the inky shadows. CeCe shifted into the pool of light blazing from the camping lantern. “Hate me yet?”

  “I haven’t met Fellowes yet, so I can’t give a firm yes or no.”

  “Ass.” She poked me hard in the shoulder, her smile tired and, without her usual red lipstick, strange on her face. “I’m going to crash for a few hours. Grab a sleeping bag and try to get some Z’s, too. You look like shit.”

  “Flatterer.” I kissed her on top of her head, giving one of her curls a sharp tug before I pulled away. “I’m guessing Fellowes and Baxter haven’t arrived yet?”

  “Jacob’s waiting up for them. They’ll be here soon.” She yawned, wide and cracking. “Go, sleep. Matteo snores and Lydia talks so head’s up on that when you’re picking a spot.”

  I nodded as if I knew who Matteo and Lydia were, grabbing the camp lantern and heading into the untamed wilds of the makeshift slumber party. Most of the rolls were taken by crew members save for the two set aside for CeCe and Jacob and a row of three paltry looking things near the ballroom’s massive glass French doors overlooking a storm-battered knot garden. “This seems totally safe,” I muttered, grabbing the least objectionable looking sleeping bag and dragging it away from the glass and the flashing lightning illuminating the garden. I picked my way across the crowded floor (Did you know ballrooms, like legit historic ones, aren’t as big as they look in movies? True story.).

  “Dude! Watch it! You just stepped on my hair!”

  “Hey! Not cool, asshole!”

  “Sorry, sorry,” I muttered, reflexively going onto my toes as if tip-toeing in the dark would somehow be safer and more effective than shuffling.

  “Fuck! My hand!”

  I gave up and circled back around to the spot by the window, unrolling the pea-green sleeping back with my feet towards the window. At least if something hit the glass, I’d see it coming because there was no way I’d be able to sleep on a hard parquet floor while a hurricane crashed around us.

  “And then the murders began.”

  I jerked upright, startled out of my light doze.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t that light, judging by the glare CeCe was aiming my direction. When we’d first entered the drawing room at Hendricks House, it had been full of odd shadows cast by weak sunlight streaking through the Tiffany glass window overlooking the expansive front lawn. Now the room was dim as the thick storm clouds rolled back in with the next band of Minerva, and uncomfortably warm thanks to the lack of air conditioning or even an open window. There’d been a handful of us from Bump in the Night on the house tour, our ballroom slumber party cleared away just after dawn to make space for the very small tour group that persisted through the nasty weather. It was the last one of the season before the house closed down and turned us loose to film for two weeks, then started their off season maintenance and froufrou-ing as soon as we were gone. Other than Hendricks House, Bettina didn’t have much in the way of sights to see. Even the estate was a little thin on the interest unless you were a history buff or super into Gilded Age architecture, two very specific niches in the tourism industry.

  “You were starting to snore,” a soft voice next to my ear murmured. Oscar Fellowes, I realized. In the flesh. He looked exactly like the pictures I’d found online, right down to the cravat.

  He was wearing a cravat.

  Unironically. And god help me, I kind of liked it.

  Fellowes nudged me with his knee against mine. I startled again, this time getting a bared-teeth glare from my sister. I had a flashback to our twelfth birthday party, when I’d embarrassed her in front of Monica Jennings. My nipples still looked purple to me, years later. I tore my gaze away from CeCe's threatening visage and offered an apologetic smile to Fellowes. “Sorry,” I murmured as our tour guide moved to turn on the faux gas lamps over the hearth. The house might be true to period and restored to it’s former glory, but they had erred on the side of caution, replacing most of the gas fixtures with electrics some time in the eighties. “What time did you make it in last night?”

  “As I was saying,” the guide said in a voice pitched to be heard over our—okay, my—chatter. “The murders began in 1902. Lucinda Hendricks fell ill after dinner one evening and went to bed earlier than her usual habit. She was found dead the next morning, and it was considered a tragic outcome of a brief illness. Three months later, in March, her sister Gwendolyn was visiting the children. She, too,
fell ill after eating supper and was found dead the next morning. The kitchen staff was summarily fired, Mr. Hendricks believing their actions had led to the food poisoning deaths of his wife and sister in law.”

  Beside me, Fellowes made a sound of distaste. “That’s now how it happened.” He shifted, stretching out long legs and sighing, sinking back into the overstuffed settee we shared. Arms folded across his narrow middle, he looked bored and annoyed at the same time.

  The guide apparently heard him, despite how softly he’d spoken. “No more deaths occurred for several months,” he continued, voice just a smidge louder. He was nearly at a full shout, really, but showed no signs of slowing down. “Then, in May, Mr. Hendricks himself passed from the same illness that took his wife and her sister. He was found by his children, in the greenhouse at the western end of the garden.”

  Beside me, Fellowes snuffled. It sounded like he was trying not to laugh. I chanced a look and, yes, there were dimples happening, and, it was hard to tell in the poor lighting but he seemed to be flushed rosy pink. His teeth worried his lower lip, trying to hold back his laugh. I shifted uncomfortably. He was pretty as fuck but even my own dark sense of humor had it’s limits, and laughing about an entire family dying from some mystery illness was pretty much well across the line for me. “Dude,” I muttered. “What the Hell?”

  “Sorry, just... Someone said something funny and I usually try to ignore them, but...” He paused, collected himself, sitting up straight under the narrow eyed glare of the guide. “My apologies,” he said, bobbing his head in the guide’s direction. “Jet lag.”

  The guide sniffed so hard, I was surprised he didn’t sprain something. “It was believed the deaths, while tragic, were all due to food poisoning or something environmental. The children were removed, sent to live with their mother’s grandparents in Elmira, far from Bettina. The house was temporarily closed while the orchards remained functional. The only people who lived on the estate were the workers who kept the trees and greenhouses. For nearly a year, everything, while subdued, was fine.”

  “Here we go again,” Fellowes muttered to me, giving me a conspiratorial eye roll as if I should be in on the joke.

  The guide either didn’t hear him this time, or had decided to ignore him. “In June of 1904, James and Catherine returned to the estate with Charles and Mary Callum, their maternal grandparents. James was fourteen and his sister, Catherine, was twelve. Matthew Hendricks’ will had declared the James inheritor of the home, with Charles Callum as his legal proxy should James be a minor when the inheritance occurred. This part, we are very unclear on as the family either did not keep or they have destroyed any such records pertaining to most of the events of July 1904, but on the morning of July ninth, Charles Callum died suddenly over breakfast, in the company of his wife, grandchildren, two maidservants, and a visiting cousin up from Manhattan. Soon after, the James, Catherine, and Mary sent away all of the servants and closed the house to visitors. They remained locked away here until the first world war, when Catherine appeared in Manhattan. She claimed her brother had died the year before, at their grandmother’s hand.”

  “Right.”

  “Sir!”

  CeCe sat up straight, her expression avid. She snapped her fingers at one of the crew members who apparently had some sort of magic powers because he produced a small digital camera out of thin air and aimed it at Fellowes and me. The guide was fuming—I honestly expected him to have some sort of tantrum the way he was sputtering about rude guests and how dare we come into this historic home and—

  “And what?” Fellowes demanded, sitting up straight. He smoothed a hand over his wrinkled neck wear and I realized he must not have changed since getting to the house. His jeans were muddy at the cuffs and his shirt, cravat, and… Oh, lord, he had on a velvet jacket, and it was just as wrinkled as the rest of his clothes. “How dare I come in here and speak the truth about what happened? How long have you been spewing that macabre nonsense?” His wide-eyed glare swiveled to CeCe. “Tell me this isn’t what you brought us here to investigate!”

  She recoiled slightly, shooting me a panicked help look before her Cecily Grant, Professional Bad Ass mask dropped back into place. “It was in your contract and the subject of multiple discussions in advance of your arrival—”

  “No,” he drawled. “We discussed investigating the site of multiple hauntings incited by murder.”

  The guide, who was an unhealthy shade of puce, stumped forward. “You calling me a liar?”

  “No, I’m calling you misinformed.” Fellowes jerked back as if struck, though no one was close enough to strike him but me. “I’m trying,” he hissed.

  “Mr. Fellowes?”

  He waved CeCe off. “Sorry, they’re interrupting. It’s usually not this bad.”

  “Oh, lord.” I didn’t mean to mutter that aloud but there we were. Fellowes’ glare was sharp and hot. “Sorry, I just didn’t think we’d be jumping into the whole,” I waved one hand around my temple, “thing this early.”

  “This thing is always on,” he said flatly. “Mr. Ernest? Is that right?” The guide jerked a nod. “I’m not calling you a liar. I’m saying that the popularized story of this house is just that… a story.”

  “Here.” A lanky, bespectacled redhead that looked like he fell out of a book about a magical schoolboy and his slightly more competent friends, broke away from the knot of crew members by the door and handed Fellowes a sparkly tablet. “It’s just what I could dig up now.”

  Fellowes took it and read aloud, “James Hendricks passed away at the age of forty, surrounded by family and friends in his Montauk home. Definitely not a mysterious death at a young age.”

  “Wow, hey. Forty’s not old.”

  Fellowes smiled slightly at me. “Forgive me. He died well after his supposed mysterious demise in his twenties.”

  “Thank you.” I leaned in to look over his shoulder. “Bettina Historic Society Archives. Seriously? CeCe, this is easily researchable. What the Hell is going on?”

  Fellowes cocked his head to one side, listening to something. Or appearing to. “Oh. Oh, okay. I was wrong, then?”

  CeCe edged closer, her camera guy in tow. “Wrong about what?” I asked, taking his tablet and reading a bit more of the obituary.

  “Okay, definitely the first deaths in the early 1900s are on record but the rest is bullshit. There are also quite a few servants who died during the period of the family deaths,” he added, though I noticed he wasn’t reading that off his tablet. “And someone else… Someone who’s quite angry. But they were much later.” Somewhere in the house, a door slammed, making everyone jump just a little. Everyone but Oscar. “My mistake. Two people.”

  The guide sniffed. “Most tourists don’t bother to look that mess up,” he groused. “But I ain’t lying about there being ghosts! Why’d you think I didn’t come up here last night? Hell, I’m surprised you’re all alive this morning!” Ernest threw up his hands, making a disgusted noise. “I know what I seen up here, an’ I know it ain’t some fu—some flippin’ Casper bullsh— bull corn!” He slashed the air with one hand, face going a truly medically concerning shade of puce. “Bull. Corn.”

  CeCe was practically vibrating out of her skin, watching Fellowes with wide, shining eyes. “Mr. Fellowes?”

  Fellowes huffed a small, annoyed breath. “He’s not wrong. About the ghosts. There’s definitely ghosts here. And they are definitely not happy.” He narrowed his eyes and swayed slightly as he tensed all over before slowly turning his gaze to our guide. “Who is Anne?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Oscar

  Our day had been long, tedious, and, after the debacle in the study, full of what felt like an unending stream of filming what Jacob referred to as pick ups involving people looking thoughtfully into the distance, Ezra and I approaching the house while clutching our bags like Victorian orphans being taken into the grand house, and Weems frowning at various pieces of architecture and fondling knick-knacks. It wa
s all going to be edited into the shots from our hot mess of a tour and dubbed over with our individual narration about our previous experiences as ahem paranormal investigators (because say I was a medium was apparently off-brand for the network) and Weems’ background as a ‘man of science,’ a term that had made him roll his eyes so hard, I worried for his vision. The storm had picked back up before dark so instead of going into Bettina for food, we’d had a large, awkward picnic of sandwiches and emergency Pringles in the ball room before being shown to our individual rooms by Mr. Ernest while the ballroom was cleared out for filming the next day. The power had flickered to life some time after I’d been led to my room, a lavishly papered green and bronze homage to florals that had that slightly musty smell old houses acquired despite the best cleaning efforts. The lurking maid tried to surreptitiously dust but her spectral rag did little good.

  I should have been exhausted but I couldn’t sleep. Despite her best efforts, it had nothing to do with the ghost lingering in the wardrobe and everything to do with Julian Weems. Of course he had to be ridiculously beautiful on top of being a pain in the ass. Of course. All tall and dark and… ugh. I squinted at the old fashioned clock radio on the nightstand (look at me, being all Gen Z and calling something from the early 80’s ‘old fashioned). Ten p.m. Fairly early for Ezra to be asleep but jet lag was a bitch.“What the hell,” I muttered, mostly to myself but also to the ghost who’d drifted closer. “Ezra needs to be up anyway if we’re going to need to do late shoots this week.”

  Oscar: I can’t sleep.

  Ezra: Is it because someone is texting you while you’re in bed?

  Ezra: Because guess what...

  Oscar: This skeptic is fucking gorgeous.