Lifelike

by Sheila A. Nielson

  A rumble of deeper tones, like a man’s voice seemed to call out gently in the distance—then—

  Slam!

  I came completely awake with a violent judder. Oppressive, dark silence lay over the room. The crack in the curtains let in a thin stream of pale light that fell across the floor in a bright strip. Had that noise come from somewhere down the hall?

  “Now what?” I demanded of the empty room.

  Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I turned and glanced at the glowing red numbers on my bedside clock.

  4:03 A.M.

  I kicked off my blankets. There was a loud thump as something slid off the foot of my bed onto the floor. I flipped on the bedside lamp. Blinking back the blinding light, I peered over the end of my comforter. What the…? There on the floor lay a paperback book, face down. I slowly picked it up and read the title.

  The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer.

  That was the book I’d been looking at when I discovered the bookcase could be opened. Hadn’t I dropped it on the floor in surprise? How did it get in my room?

  I glanced at the miniature version of Xavier Kensington sitting on the vanity. There was something gentle, but sadly sweet about his diminutive face that I found oddly appealing. Like an adorable little faerie. That’s when I noticed something odd. I could have sworn I’d propped the doll with his back against the mirror last night. He was now bent a little forward, like he’d been bumped from behind.

  “Look, Xavier,” I said to the doll with a tired sigh. “I’ve got leukemia. That means I need all the sleep I can get. If that was your ghost talking out there just now—could you please wait until morning to finish your conversation?”

  That’s when it hit me. If the ghost of Xavier Kensington was carrying on a conversation down the hall—who the heck was he talking to? Did I even want to know?

  I held my breath, listening for any hint of ghostly activity. Only heavy, unnatural silence met my ears.

  Had I dreamed the voice? As far as I knew, Aunt Victoria and I were the only ones up on the second floor of the house. Richard did all his night patrolling downstairs. I could have sworn the sound of the slamming door was close by. Like the study, maybe?

  I tossed The Reluctant Widow onto the vanity next to the doll. The book slid to a stop between him and the pack of gum. The groom doll now looked down at the novel as if it were the most fascinating object his thoughtful, little green eyes had ever seen.

  I got to my feet and tiptoed across my bedroom. The old wooden floorboards squeaked and groaned beneath my shifting weight. On a whim, I parted the curtains to check on the RV. I could still see its shadowy form sitting at the end of the parking lot. Had Aunt Victoria given the visitors permission to park there overnight?

  The RV was completely dark, with no hint of movement from within. If someone had been talking out in the parking lot, there was no sign of them now.

  Instinctively my eyes went to the message I’d written in the dust the night before. Just below that someone had sketched a crudely drawn butterfly with round bulbous wings and slender antennae. The kind of thing a bored child might doodle in the margins of a test.

  The picture had not been there when I fell asleep last night. At least, I didn’t think so. Had I been sleepwalking again? The picture looked like the childish sort of drawings my limited skills often produced. As I stared down at the drawing, I realized that the lines were too thin to have been drawn by my finger. It would have taken something more the size of a pencil eraser. Which left me with the very unpleasant possibility that the drawing might have been made by a dead person.

  I pressed a weary hand to my forehead, attempting to rub away the lines beginning to tighten along my brow. I’d only been in this house less than forty-eight hours and already my life resembled the plot of some overwrought horror flick.

  Thump.

  I whirled around in surprise, my breath catching in my throat. This time, the sound was solid and undeniably real. It came not from the parking lot, but from somewhere deep inside the belly of the museum—possibly downstairs.

  Unless I wanted to spend the rest of the night cowering in my room on the verge of having a heart attack, I was going to have to go outside and investigate. Not at all what I wanted to be doing alone at four o’clock in the morning.

  I drew open the bedroom door and peeked into the hall, looking in the direction of Aunt Victoria’s room. It was pitch back and deathly silent down there. I glanced back over my shoulder and jabbed a finger firmly in the direction of the groom doll.

  “If you aren’t sitting in that exact same position when I get back, you will so regret it.”

  Yeah—stupid—I know. But saying it made ME feel a whole lot better.

  I switched off my bedroom light and shut the door quietly behind me. My bare feet made hardly a sound as I padded down the dark hall. I held my breath and listened, straining my ears for any more sounds. A dim strip of light beckoned to me from under the West Wing door, but it wasn’t bright enough to be the regular house lights. It also had an eerie purplish tint. What was going on out there? I fidgeted beside the bolted door, pressing my ear up against it.

  The whisper of distant voices sighed through the vastness of the house, their calling echoes slithering and slipping along the ceiling and floors like unseen snakes.

  I carefully pulled back the bolt and opened the door. It gave a low but audible moan as it swung heavily on its hinges. I stepped hesitantly out into the hallway on the other side.

  At the far end of the upstairs landing, a lamp sat perched on a small table. The single, naked bulb bathed everything around it in a spooky, purple glow.

  A black light! But who put it there? I glanced along the landing in the direction of the grand staircase and froze.

  There at the edge of the darkness, a ghostly green light hovering in the air. Two green lights actually, long and thin, like a pair of slender lips, frowning at me from the shadows. The lips moved, speaking slowly in a chilling whisper.

  “What torment holds you within the prison of these halls?”

  That was it for me. I opened my mouth and let loose. The raw sound that roared out of my throat was meant to be a threatening offensive but came out sounding more like a terrified mongrel pressed tight into a corner with nowhere to turn.

  Either way, I made a big impression on the glowing lips. They flew open, rounding themselves into a horrified shape, and started screaming right back at me. It was the decidedly high and feminine scream of a woman in distress. A real woman, not a ghost.

  I stopped my roaring in surprise. The glowing lips fell into silence as well, panting heavily in fear.

  “Who’s there?” I demanded.

  “I only want to help you find peace and eternal rest, manifesting spirit,” the lips squeaked in a terrified voice.

  “Say what now?” I exploded, squinting at the dark space beyond the lips. Now that my eyes had adjusted, I could see the faint silhouette of someone standing amid the shadows. Someone very much alive.

  “W-wait a minute,” the woman’s voice faltered in surprise. “That’s not a ghost. Who is that?”

  “Mom?” a teenage girl’s anxious voice called from somewhere downstairs below. “Mom, are you okay?”

  A flashlight beam pierced the darkness, its light cutting a brilliant path across the area rug of the main entry hall on the first floor. It jerked abruptly upward as the person holding it pounded up the stairs toward us. Behind the flashlight beam was—a second pair of glowing lips.

  I started to seriously wonder if maybe I was still asleep having a nightmare.

  The flashlight—and its accompanying lips—stopped at the top of the stairs. The beam swung wide in my direction. I put up an arm to protect my eyes.

  “Who is that?” the girl’s voice asked. The flashlight swung drunkenly away from me over to the far right. Standing, in the center of its spotlight—where the first pair of glowing lips had been only a moment before—now stood a plump, middle-aged woman wit
h short, dark hair.

  “Mom? What happened?” the teenager demanded. “Did you see a manifestation? Are you all right?”

  There was a loud click and the chandelier above our heads burst into brilliant light, momentarily blinding us all. I blinked through the pins and needles prickling behind my eyes as I looked down at the first floor. Standing next to the switch panel, scowling up at me, was Richard, in all his hulking, night-watch glory. In front of him were three other people I hadn’t noticed in the darkness. One man and two women.

  The man was a grandfatherly gentleman with thick glasses and a well-groomed mustache. On his left was an anorexic looking, middle-aged woman in a black tank top. On his right stood an equally elderly woman with long, white hair pulled back in a simple ponytail. All three squinted up at us in stunned silence.

  “Hey!” the girl with the flashlight cried, squeezing her eyes shut in protest. “Cut the lights.” The girl and woman with glowing lips shared the same smooth Asian features. Only—unlike the woman—the girl had a light dusting of charming freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks. Mother and daughter, perhaps?

  “Richard? What’s all the screaming about?” Aunt Victoria’s worried voice crackled suddenly over Richard’s walkie-talkie.

  There was a long awkward pause as the mother and I exchanged sheepish looks across the full length of the upstairs’ landing.

  Shaking his head over us, Richard unclipped his walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke into it. “Victoria, you might want to come down here.”

  “Mom!” The teenage daughter hooted, pointing a finger in my direction. “Don’t tell me, you thought she was a ghost!”

  The girl’s mother pressed her lips primly together as her daughter burst into uncontrollable laughter. The older gentleman and the ponytail grandma smiled at each other. The skinny, tank-top woman put a hand over her mouth to hide a grin.

  The girl pulled a walkie-talkie from her belt and put it hastily to her mouth. “Penny! Did you get that all on film? Please tell me you got that.”

  The walkie-talkie gave a static buzz as a woman’s amused voice came back in reply. “Oh, I got it all right. In all its infrared, night-vision splendor.”

  “Sick!” The girl pumped her fist in the air. “Just wait till I post it online. It’s gonna go completely viral.”

  Richard shook his head slowly in disbelief. Considering he had a group of complete strangers sneaking around his museum at four in the morning, Richard seemed to be taking it all rather calmly. Which could only mean—as crazy as it seemed—that these people had permission to be in the museum at that unearthly hour.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you like that,” I said to the girl’s mother in a small voice. The woman’s lips had a very distracting greenish-yellow tint to them. Was she wearing glow-in-the-dark lipstick?

  Realizing I was staring, I forced myself to ignore the green lips. “I thought I heard voices, so I came out to see what was going on. I’m really sorry.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” The daughter laughed, grinning across the landing at me. “That’s the most excitement we’ve had the whole stinkin’ trip.”

  The girl had the same weird, green lips as her mother. I guess it made a peculiar kind of sense. People who spent their time running around inside haunted museums after dark probably needed all the light sources they could get.

  “I’m Darcy Flynn.” The mother moved across the landing toward me, offering her hand.

  Hesitantly, I reached out to shake it. What else could I do when caught in my pajamas by five strangers and one security guard at four in the morning? Especially when two of the unexpected visitors had glowing lips. I decided to pretend everything was perfectly normal, and that my ears were always a scorching red this early in the morning.

  “This is my daughter, Cassandra.” Darcy hugged the girl with the flashlight affectionately with one arm. “And this frightening pack is the rest of my team.”

  “Tom Dale, at your service,” the grandfatherly man in glasses said with a gentlemanly nod of his head. “And this is my wife, Judith.” He gestured to Ms. White-haired Ponytail at his side.

  At that moment another woman walked out of the Postmodern Doll Room to join the group. She was a perfect copy of the anorexic woman standing beside Mr. and Mrs. Dale—black tank top and all.

  “That’s Lynne and Penny,” Darcy said, pointing down at the tank-top twins who now stood side by side. The identical women grinned warmly at me, showing off brilliant white, perfectly straight teeth. Somebody’s dad must have been a dentist.

  We had the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Dale, the tank-top twins, Darcy Flynn and her daughter, Cassandra. Got it. I think.

  “Ms. Chasswell took us on a tour of the house earlier,” Darcy explained to me. “She most graciously offered to let us set up a ghost-hunting vigil during the night.”

  Ghost hunters? Of course! It was just like Matt said. This was one of those groups interested in studying the ghostly activities of Kensington House.

  “Forgive us for frightening you,” Mr. Dale called up to me. “Ms. Chasswell warned us she had a niece living here. We were attempting to be as quiet as possible.”

  “That was what made me wonder what was going on,” I said. “All that whispering.”

  I forced a grin to show there were no hard feelings. The daughter, Cassandra, gave me an amused, lopsided smile in return. I looked away in embarrassment, then realized, too late, how rude that would seem.

  The west wing door at the end of the hall behind me creaked open and Aunt Victoria materialized in the door frame. She quickly scanned the room until her concerned gaze fell on me. She placed one hand slowly against the left side of her chest, just over her heart. “Is everything all right in here?” Aunt Victoria asked slowly.”

  Aunt Victoria was better at hiding her worry than Mom, but I could still see it there, hiding underneath my aunt’s calm exterior. She’d thought the screaming had something to do with me.

  “I’m afraid your niece startled us a bit when she came to investigate all the noise we were making,” Darcy said with a gusty laugh.

  “I think we might have returned the favor,” grandfatherly Mr. Dale said, glancing in my direction. The weight of everyone’s stares settled on me.

  “It did startle me a little,” I admitted with a one-sided shrug.

  “Who could blame you, with Mom screaming her head off,” Cassandra laughed. “I’m surprised you didn’t yeet right over the railing.”

  Our eyes met again. I stared cautiously back at the irrepressible and grinning Cassandra. This time I did not look away. I must have had a pretty intense look on my face because she cocked her head slightly to one side and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  What did Cassandra think when she looked at me? What did she see? Someone bizarrely weird—or a regular kid acting withdrawn? I wished I knew. Cassandra may have been the same age, but she and I lived in two very different worlds. She even talked different. I was like a zoo animal caged behind a wall of glass. She could only look curiously from a distance and wonder what was going on inside me. She would never know how much I longed to trade places with her and stand on the other side. A normal, healthy kid.

  “I really thought she was a ghost,” Cassandra’s mom said, shaking her head. “It was those black sweats she’s wearing—all I could see was her face hovering in the darkness.

  “All I could see was glowing green lips,” I replied. Everyone burst into laughter.

  “The black light makes it so we can see better in the dark,” Cassandra spoke directly to me this time. “Ghosts are notoriously shy about manifesting if there’s too much light.”

  “We’ve bothered these people enough for tonight,” Cassandra’s mom announced to her ghost hunting group below. “Let’s pack it in for now.”

  “About time,” I heard Richard mutter to himself as he walked away.

  The party broke up after that, everyone heading off in different directions. Cassandra and her mom moved
to collect various items that lay strewn out about the upstairs landing—cameras, video tripods, and other mysterious little machines that they placed in the large, black bag I’d seen Cassandra carrying earlier. Ghost-catching stuff, I guess. Seeing they were preoccupied, I turned to Aunt Victoria and spoke in a low voice.

  “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” I said, thinking of the mysterious groom doll currently sitting on my vanity.

  Aunt Victoria raised an eyebrow and waited for me to go on.

  “Were you aware there’s a storage closet hidden in the study?” I began.

  “A hidden closet?” Aunt Victoria’s surprised voice was far too loud. Cassandra and her mother stopped packing. Their full attention was now riveted in our direction. So much for keeping the closet a secret. The news about the doll would have to wait until I could get Aunt Victoria alone.

  “It’s behind the bookcase,” I said, not bothering to lower my voice this time.

  Aunt Victoria’s eyes drew wide, a glow of intense interest burning within her gaze. “Show me,” she said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Xavier’s study looked like tornado came through it. Dusty boxes that once lined the shelves of the hidden closet, now had their contents scattered about the furniture and floor. There were hundreds of photographs and personal papers stacked about, all dated back to Margaret Kensington’s time.

  Once we’d realized how much was in the study, Aunt Victoria decided we all needed to eat something before tackling it. She ran down to the gift shop and brought up a few boxes of granola bars and fruit snacks. Mr. Dale had donated a six-pack of Sprite to the breakfast cause, but most of the cans were still sitting unopened on a shelf inside the secret closet. No one wanted to spill anything on the documents. Cassandra was the only one still actively eating. In between bites of granola, she languidly sat down on the sofa examining the painting of Xavier Kensington from top to bottom like he was an extra lean piece of meat.