He really was. All…adorkable and repressed but in that I bet he’ll let me tie him down and ride him till he can’t remember his name sort of way.
Ezra: Um? Come again?
Oscar: Don’t make me repeat myself. It’s a text. Just re-read it if you don’t understand.
Oscar: And this ghost in here is driving me nuts. I swear she’s making the faucet leak on purpose.
The ghost in question made a face that, had I been able to hear her speak, no doubt would have been accompanied by a blistering critique of my mother’s parenting style and her marital status at the time of my birth. I rolled my eyes at her and turned onto my side. The power had come back on some time around mid-afternoon, but there were no assurances it would remain on. Grant had dithered about us all going to the rooms the housekeepers had set up for us to use in the more modern guest wing, which had been added on some time in the Eighties during Hendricks House’s conference center phase. Luckily, someone on the planning committee had the foresight to insist the wing match the rest of the house in terms of architecture and interior design so we were spared jarring color schemes or beige sadness so common in Eighties era design. My phone chimed softly, dragging my attention back to the moment.
Ezra: You’re just crushing on him because he was nice to you. And because he bitched at Grant.
Ugh. Maybe Ezra was right. After the tour, Grant had rushed to smooth things over with Ernest, who grudgingly agreed to continue the tour with the film crew so they could get some B-roll footage while Weems, Ezra, and I “had a chat” with Grant. The chat consisted primarily of Grant being extremely smug and excited (There really needs to be some sort of portmanteau for that. Smugcited? Exmug? Ugh. Those both sound like hipster selfie apps.) while Weems threatened to walk off before we even got started. Grant had assured us all was well, the whole thing was just a mix-up, that Ernest was used to the standard tourist tours through the place and hadn’t realized we’d wanted the legit history of the house. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” Grant swore. “As soon as the weather clears up, two of the ladies from the historical society are coming out to do an on-camera tour and a few pick-ups.” He shooed us off, ordering a bouncy ginger with a million freckles to show us to our rooms now that the ballroom had been turned into a staging area-slash-office space for the duration of the shoot. Weems had looked ready to fight Grant but grudgingly followed Jessica and I to the third floor, disappearing into his room and hiding out there for the rest of the evening.
A prolonged rail of thunder made me gasp (and totally not shriek like a scared mouse, I swear), the lights flickering as the next band of Minerva neared. The ghost drifted closer, head tilted a bit to one side. “Are you trying to read my screen?” I asked her archly.
She shrugged but didn’t move away or vanish. Being an intelligent haunt does get pretty boring, from what I understand, and reading over my shoulder had to be the most entertaining thing she’d dealt with in years.
Oscar: No, I just think he’s pretty. In that hot, Oh Professor I’ll Do Anything to Pass sort of way.
Ezra: I’m cutting off your subscription to that porn site.
Oscar: I like authoritative older men. Don’t yuck my yum.
Ezra: Didn’t we have this same convo when you were supposed to meet Mark Thomas on that talk show? Oh he’s so silver foxy, Ez. I can’t wait to have his skeptical crotch goblins.
Oscar: I want a divorce.
Ezra didn’t reply for several long minutes. I’d just about given up on him when a soft knock fell on the door to my room. He never could sleep well when we were out of the country so I should’ve been expecting his arrival. “It’s open,” I called. After a moment, it slowly scraped across the plush rug covering the floor on my side. “Come on, then. If you want to stay in here you can. I know you’re a shitty sleeper when we travel.”
“Um, I’m good.”
“Oh, shit!” I tossed my phone down the bed and sat up, quickly checking to make sure I was relatively decent. “Doctor Weems. Is there a problem?” I was glad I’d opted to throw on some pajama bottoms instead of flopping around in my pants, though that did sound like the start to a rather nice fantasy—Weems coming into the room, finding me in a state of dishabille… The rest of the fantasy was a bit fuzzy but it involved a lot of naughty words and sticky fingers.
“I couldn’t sleep and I saw your light on when I went down to grab a drink from the crew cooler so…” he trailed off, shrugging awkwardly. His hair, which had been so neatly tidy earlier in the day, stood up at all angles. His smooth face was now rough with dark stubble, and he looked exhausted.
“Of course. Have a seat.”
Weems padded to the overstuffed armchair that, despite the valiant attempt to fit in with the older parts of the house was just a standard issue hotel armchair with too-hard padding, and flopped sideways into it, draping his legs over the arm of the chair and resting his head against the back. “Sorry, I’m just bone-tired right now but I can’t make my brain shut off long enough to actually sleep.” He offered me a wan, sheepish smile and glanced away quickly when I smiled back. “So, I don’t want to keep you up too long here but I wanted to talk about earlier.”
“Ugh.” The entire experience with the tour had left a foul taste in my mouth. I sank back against my pillows, then felt awkward all tucked up in bed while he sprawled in a chair. It felt too intimate. I tried sitting up and scooting to the edge of the bed, letting my legs hang over and trying not to think about how far my feet were from the floor compared to his. The curse of being short—you never think about how short you are until you’re faced with the hot guy who’s like almost a foot taller than you.
Maybe that’s more of a me-specific curse.
“My brother in law,” he began carefully, “is…He’s a very focused man when it comes to his work.”
“That may be, but I’m not certain what he hoped to accomplish with this. I’d already proven my skills to him days ago.”
“Oh?” Weems opened one eye to peer at me. “Nice jammies by the way.”
“Thank you.” I felt my face heat but I didn’t dare look away from his amused scrutiny. I couldn’t let him know I was come over all shy. “It’s not entirely my story to tell, but after meeting with him in person just a few days ago, he was left with zero doubt as to the accuracy and veracity of my abilities.”
Weems nodded slowly, his lips parting on something unspoken before he pressed them back together and visibly shook himself. “Well,” he said, rolling to sit up properly, “I think the test was less about your, ah, abilities and more about us as a unit.” I must have made a face because he sighed and scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Look, no offense to you or anything, but I really didn’t want to take this gig.”
“That wasn’t difficult to figure out,” I muttered. “Ezra told me about the emails earlier in the week.” Ezra had been incensed, and practically murderous on my behalf. He raged over the idea someone could dare imply I’m some sort of con man. Even when I’d reminded him that Weems wasn’t the first, and he had at least been far more polite about it than others previously. Ezra hadn’t let it go. In fact, I’d been half worried that he’d call Grant and back us out at the last minute. Which, in and of itself, would not have been too horrible since the entire situation had gone from ‘wouldn’t this be a lark’ to ‘super serious television business with lawyers and contracts and public relations junkets’ in the span of just a few days. “Ez mentioned you didn’t want to be the ‘next Mark Thomas’.”
He rolled his eyes and, unless I was mistaken, blushed rather prettily. Interesting… “He started out strong but took a sharp turn into asshole territory. I’m not gonna be that guy for Jacob, no matter how much he thinks it’ll drag in viewers.”
“Did he say that to you?” I asked sharply, half-reaching for my phone to text Ezra. We’d been assured that we’d be spared the theatrics of so many other investigation shows but if he’d brought on Weems with an eye towards starting shit on camera…<
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“No, no,” Weems assured me, waving one hand airily as he scooted further down into the chair. “I just know Jacob. Really well. He’s…. Well. He’s good at the big picture. I don’t know the nitty-gritty of his business but I can safely say my sister—CeCe, his wife—usually has to rein him in on some of his more baroque plans and notions. He has a co-producer on most of his shows, Stella Sparks, but I don’t know her well at all. I have no idea if she’s feeding his ego or helping ride herd.”
I scrubbed my hands up and down on my thighs, needing to fidget and move as my nerves took an unexpected turn for the worse. “When we signed our contracts, Grant assured us that everything would remain as close to our original episodes as possible in terms of style and how we went about the actual investigation. At the risk of sounding like an absolute egoist, have you seen any of the episodes? Are you familiar with how Ezra and I work?”
“Jacob’s already had them pulled,” he admitted, and an odd little pang shot through me at that information. I’d known it was going to happen—part of what Grant called conserving the brand. He didn’t want to ‘give it away’ when he could get people to tune in, and in the case of fans or the curious who didn’t subscribe to UnReality already, sign up for the service and bring more money in to the coffers. “But about ten minutes of one you did at Boyd House in, er, was it Wales?”
“Cornwall,” I corrected. “Very different places.”
“Cornwall. Well, I saw some of that. It was included in the welcome packet.” He shifted again, leaning over his knees, looking up at me on the tall bed. “Did, um, you check out the dossier on me, then?”
My laugh startled us both. “Dossier? You make it sound like some spy mission. You mean your CV and the monograph on late eighteenth century gravestone styles?” It had been more interesting than I’d expected, really. Ezra’d given it a cursory glance but I’d read the entire thing during our flight up from New Orleans. “I didn’t see anything about being a professional skeptic though.”
“Ah, well, that’s fairly new,” he sighed. “And probably why Jacob wanted to see how I’d react to your shtick.” Okay, that stung a bit. “I was impressed,” he added. “I was kind of expecting some, you know…” He waved a hand between us, doing some sort of wiggly finger thing. “You know. Like on television. Or whipping out a crystal ball or something.”
“That would be more in the wheelhouse of a reader. I see, speak with, and experience ghosts. I don’t tell fortunes and wouldn’t know what to do with tarot cards even if someone held a gun to my head.”
He nodded, dark eyes pinning me to the spot. I felt itchy under my skin, like I needed to move but couldn’t. The maid’s ghost was a gray blur between Weems and the cold hearth, the brief flicker of the lamp making her pop in and out of sight. It distracted me, making me break eye contact with Weems. He followed the direction of my gaze, a cool mask dropping over his features. “So what are you seeing, then?”
“Not what. Who. And she’s gone now.” As he’d spoken, the maid had faded entirely. I couldn’t feel her presence in the room any longer. “A woman in a maid’s uniform. One of those old fashioned ones, with the long skirts and high necks.”
He clicked his tongue in disappointment. “Damn, for a moment I was hoping for one of those sexy French kind.”
“I thought women weren’t your thing.”
Weem’s expression froze for a moment, then relaxed. “Did my sister tell you?”
“Mmm.” I felt a spark of bravery that, later, I was sure could be blamed on my jet lag or maybe an overabundance of gas station cola on the drive from the airport. “Maybe I meant ‘hoped’ instead of ‘thought’.”
All praise the gods of timing because they chose that moment to plunge the house into darkness, a sparking crash of lightning and thunder rattling glass in the windows and causing someone to shriek from within the bowels of the house. And, blessedly, hid my flaming cheeks from the brief, startled gaze of Julian Weems.
“Shit,” he hissed. The glow of his phone bloomed between us, held in his outstretched hand. “I knew I should’ve charged this up earlier.”
“Oz!” Ezra shouted from the hallway. “Oz, you decent?” He didn’t wait—the hiss of the door across the carpeting was clear even as the sounds of muffled chaos drifted up the stairs. “You need to come downstairs.”
“What?” I blinked in the bright stinging glare of Ezra’s phone, the flashlight app aimed directly in my eyes. “Hey, arsehole! Watch it!”
“Sorry. Oh… Hello, Doctor Weems.”
I could practically hear Weems’ eye roll. “Baxter.” They stared each other down, reminding me of an old BBC special I once saw with angry weasels.
The mid Nineties were an odd time for nature documentaries.
“We’ll get the measuring tape out later. What’s going on?” Another shriek pierced the darkness, more doors slamming and something heavy crashing to the floor below us.
“Someone saw a ghost and… Fuck, it’s a mess,” Ezra breathed. “Grab your shoes. There’s glass all over.”
Weems detoured to his room for a pair of shoes, meeting Ezra and I at the top of the long, curving staircase that led to the ground floor. Already light from camping lanterns and a few battery operated lamps flooded the stairwell and foyer, a tangle of voices and crying swamping my senses and making it difficult to even think. “Come on,” Ezra murmured, grabbing my elbow. He knew how overwhelmed noise made me feel. The more voices, the more sounds involved, the worse it became. It wasn’t the volume so much as the quantity, something I didn’t figure out until university and the first mass haunting I’d encountered. A dozen children from a Victorian factory, all clamoring at once? The headache lasted for days. I let Ezra lead me down the steps, Weems close behind, reaching the bottom to find CeCe Grant sprawled on the floor, clutching at her calf while Jacob Grant knelt next to her, barking orders at people.
“Cec! What happened?” Weems shot past us and dropped next to his sister. “Fuck, you’re bleeding! Did anyone call an ambulance?”
“They can’t make it in this weather,” Grant snapped. “They said unless it’s life threatening, they’re not going to risk their helicopter, either.”
CeCe sniffed mightily, her words coming out in a choked gasp. “I saw someone in the doorway and went to ask why they were just standing there with the door open, letting the rain in. I thought it was you,” she added, looking up at her brother. “I was going to tease you about shoving you outside until your attitude got better.”
“Hey,” he said, his voice shaking just a little. Ezra and I moved back to let one of the crew members through, carrying a large first aid kit. “My attitude is just fine, thank you. I’ll have you know curmudgeonly asshole is my thing.”
She laughed weakly. “I made it halfway to the door when they just… weren’t there. I tried to stick my head outside to see where they’d gone. Where you’d gone. I still thought it was you. They were built a lot like you but it was so dark all I could see was their shape, you know? I got halfway there and I just…” she sobbed, the sound turning into another shriek as Jacob started to clean the bleeding wound on her leg. It was then I noticed what was all around on the ground.
“Is that china?”
CeCe nodded. “Someone threw the tea tray at me.” She nodded in the direction of the low table that had been set up for a snack station during filming. Ernest had brought out some mismatched tea cups and saucers as well as an ancient coffee urn from the house’s tenure as a conference center in the late Eighties. “Ow!” She jerked her leg back as Jacob dabbed gently at the bleeding gash. “Damn it!”
“Okay,” Weems soothed. “Jake, how bad is it?”
“Do I look like a doctor to you?”
“Oh, for… Let me see.” He gently held his sister’s leg and peered at the large gash with the light of one of the LED lanterns on the floor. “So, the good news is, it didn’t ruin your tattoo.”
“I need stitches,” she said flatly. “Fuck.”
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A new face joined the circle on the floor. The maid was back. She knelt beside CeCe, her hands moving ineffectually over her face and back, her phantom touch doing nothing to soothe. The maid glanced up at me, her eyes wide, lips moving soundlessly. “I can’t hear you,” I said softly. No one but Ezra heard me. Well. Ezra and my new friend. “Do you know what happened?”
She rolled her eyes at me again—it seemed to be a favorite expression of hers. Slowly, she drifted up until she was standing, then moved towards the wall where the mirror had hung. It was an easy eight to ten feet from where it seemed to have fallen. Her pale silvery fingers reached out and touched the bare spot on the wall, tracing the vine pattern on the paper, before she turned to glare at me again. I didn’t realize how quiet it had become until Ezra nudged my arm gently. “What is it?” he asked.
I looked away from the maid and realized all eyes in the foyer were on me. “Just trying to figure out how the tray got so far,” I said.
“I told you. Someone threw it at me,” CeCe insisted, hissing when Weems patted some antiseptic against her wound. “I heard something behind me and turned around just before the mirror hit the floor and,” she used her hands to mimic how the glass exploded on impact.
“Cec, it’s yards away. Maybe it fell when that thunder shook the house and the shards just scattered. You slipped and cut your leg,” Weems said with an air of finality. “That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
CeCe shook her head, her gaze drifting back to me. The maid had come to stand beside me, her glare most insistent but her voice absent. “No,” CeCe said slowly, her eyes never leaving mine. “It doesn’t. Not at all.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Julian
In the wee hours, we’d managed to get CeCe into her room with the help of one of the burlier crew members, getting her settled as best we could and making a call to her doctor’s after hours number back home. After taking pictures of the glass and the spot on the wall where it had fallen, as well as some video to show the distance between the blank space and where CeCe had been injured, I found a broom and dustpan in the kitchen and managed to get the worst of the glass up. I’d thought we were all done for the night but I’d returned to the foyer from putting things away to find Baxter, Fellowes, Jacob, and Charlie—one of the camera operators—crowded into the foyer. Fellowes and Baxter were sitting on the floor, Baxter looking none to thrilled with the situation, while Fellowes arranged a black disc emblazoned with a pentagram, a small bowl of what I hoped was salt and not some woo-woo weirdness, and a dull metal pendulum in the space between them. “Seriously?”
Bump in the Night Page 5
