It made sense to Michael, and April said, “Since you put it that way, why not?”
Marisol shrugged. “All right, but let’s speed it up. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.” Michael, the football player, vaulted the gate with ease, followed by Andy, who offered a hand to help April. When he did the same to Marisol, she said, “I don’t need any help from you, thanks,” and climbed the gate. Her jeans snagged on a piece of wire at the top, and she ripped a hole in her pants leg as she swung over. Andy smirked as she brushed herself off and followed the others down the narrow lane.
Once in sight of the old farmhouse, Andy said, “It’s all locked up. The other side has a porch like this one that looks out over Bayou Lafourche.”
Marisol walked around taking pictures with her phone. “It is in awful shape,” she commented, and Andy said the inside was just as bad.
She spun around. “You went inside? Dammit, you’re going to get us all in trouble, and you don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about it. Let’s go. We’re done here.”
“Since we came all this way, we might as well finish looking around,” he said, but she stalked off across the yard.
Marisol headed for the pickup, but before she got to the narrow lane, a woman walked into the yard. She was a little older than they were, and she didn’t look happy. After talking to Marisol for a moment, they walked to the house together.
“This is Cate Adams,” Marisol said as the others joined them. “She’s with the Louisiana Society for the Paranormal. I tried to explain…”
Cate interrupted. “You say this is some kind of college field trip. There’s a sign on the gate. Which one of you guys called the office?”
“That would be me,” Andy said, turning on his best bullshit smile.
“And by leaving a message, what right did that give you to trespass on private property? I’m calling the sheriff.”
April started crying, and Marisol said, “Miss Adams, I’ll apologize for the group. This isn’t a field trip. We’re a team working on a class project. We chose Proctor Hall because of its interesting history.”
“What class? Where do you go to school?”
“Tulane. It’s Dr. Girard’s class called Appreciation of Louisiana Culture.”
“Julien Girard?”
“Yes.” She knew him, and Marisol hoped that meant they weren’t going to jail.
Cate pulled out her phone, told them to stay put, and walked away. Moments later she returned.
“Your story checks out, but Julien says he instructed you to get permission before entering private property.”
Andy grinned. “My bad. I thought leaving a message was sufficient.”
“Bullshit, buddy. You figured you’d be in and out of Proctor Hall before anybody realized you came. By chance I stopped by the office early this morning, and after I heard your message, I drove straight here.”
April apologized, saying she wished they hadn’t done it, and at last Cate said, “Since you’re here, let’s go sit on the porch. I want to hear about this project of yours.”
Andy started talking, and Cate raised her hand to shush him. “Not you.” She looked at April. “I want to hear it from you.”
Unaccustomed to playing second fiddle and dying to interrupt and tell the story, Marisol fumed. April was a decent person, but she wasn’t eloquent, and it irritated Marisol no end that she wasn’t the one doing the talking.
April began with an apology and explained why they came. By the time she finished, Cate found herself liking them. April and Michael were followers, but even the narcissistic Andy was tolerable. Only Marisol rubbed her the wrong way somehow — she seemed to have this need to be in charge that annoyed Cate. She was a driven individual. Ruthless was another word that came to mind.
Maybe she irritates me because we’re a lot alike, Cate thought. Let it go.
She said, “Dr. Girard confirmed your story, although you broke the rules by not asking permission.” She shot a stern glance at Andy. “You know what I mean. I work for a man named Henri Duchamp, who’s a friend of your professor’s. He founded the Louisiana Society for the Paranormal, and he’s just begun a project here. You know the history of Proctor Hall, and you came here intending to poke around and see what might happen. You might even have gone inside on your own, and that could have been disastrous for you.
“The word haunted doesn’t do Proctor Hall justice. The awful murders within these walls — what people call the Massacre at Proctor Hall — are only part of what happened here. Over the years this property has had more documented paranormal activity than any other plantation home in Louisiana. I’ll take you inside. We’ll stay together and you’ll do everything I say. If anyone disobeys, all of you will leave.”
She unlocked the door and stepped through. When they joined her in the hallway, they saw tripods and stage lights stacked in an adjoining room.
“Is somebody filming a movie here?” Andy asked, and Cate said the society was filming a documentary about Proctor Hall.
“Look at the name stenciled on the stuff,” Michael said, pointing. “WCCY-TV. That’s the station Landry Drake works for.”
That opened a can of worms Cate had hoped to keep closed.
CHAPTER TEN
“He’s right. That is Landry Drake’s station,” Marisol said. “The ghost hunter. How exciting that he’s doing a show right in this very house!”
Cate hedged. “Not everything WCCY-TV does is his work.”
Marisol snorted. “You expect us to believe he’s not involved in a house you say is way more than just ‘haunted’? You have my attention. Tell us the truth. What’s going on here?”
Cate wouldn’t have let them in if she realized Landry’s crew had left behind the camera equipment after their last shoot. Angry at herself, she wondered how little she could get away with saying and still placate them.
“Landry Drake and Henri Duchamp, the president of our society, have worked together for years. I work for Henri, and the society is managing Proctor Hall for its owner. I heard a Channel Nine film crew did a shoot here — background video that may be aired someday. It appears they left some equipment behind.”
Andy said, “So you’re saying Landry himself wasn’t here? Only a crew from his station came?”
Be careful, Cate. “I wasn’t here when they were, so I can’t say who came.”
“Who owns the property now?” Marisol asked. “If Noel’s the only Proctor left, is he the owner?”
“The owner is a corporation.” Another answer that wasn’t an answer.
She pushed Cate for more. “You work for the paranormal society, so you know who owns the house, but you’re not telling. Why is that?”
Cate had had enough. “Because it’s none of your business. You need to learn when to ease off a little, my friend. Before you piss me off, do you all want to see more of the house, or are we done here?”
April said, “Yes, please. Let’s look at the house. Marisol, knock it off. This isn’t an interrogation.”
Cate exhaled and hoped Landry would have handled things as she did. She decided there wasn’t much else she could have done as she showed them the stair riser where Noah Proctor had sat covered in blood the day his family died.
If Marisol had further questions, she kept them to herself. April asked how much time Cate had spent in the house and learned this was only her third visit and she hadn’t experienced anything unusual.
She took them down the hall and into a sitting room. The moment they entered, April uttered a deep sigh and said, “This room is a place of tragedy and sorrow — and evil. The house is filled with evil.”
Cate said, “Why do you say that? Do you have psychic powers?”
Her eyes closed, April nodded. “They didn’t die in this room, though. The evil one brought them from…another place. Somewhere else. Their heads…”
A thunderous crash came from outside the room, startling them. “What the hell was that?” Andy shouted.
�
��Them. It was them,” April said. “I disturbed them.”
They left the room and found a large antique hall tree toppled over and blocking the hall. The piece was solid oak and very heavy, and it had tipped forward so its legs touched one wall while the top rested against the opposite one.
Michael tried to upend it, but couldn’t until Andy gave him a hand. “This thing must weigh three hundred pounds,” he said. “There’s no way it fell over by itself.”
“It didn’t,” April said. “They knocked it over.”
“They who?” Andy said. “Stop talking like you’re a fortune-teller or something. Nobody else is here. Who the hell are ‘they’?”
Without responding, April returned to the sitting room. Cate followed and said, “Are you sensing things, or are you also seeing them?”
“They told me what happened here.” She pointed to the mantel. “That’s where their heads were.”
Cate stepped out of the box and asked a bold question. “Did Noah Proctor kill his family?”
April walked to the mantel and touched it lightly. “So much tragedy.” Then she turned and joined the others in the hall.
Cate let it go. It might not have been smart to ask the question. Although April had never been to Proctor Hall, Cate believed what she said. She and Landry had experienced the supernatural countless times, and she had a healthy respect for things that defied explanation.
Upstairs was a long hallway wider than the one below, with two bedrooms on each side. Faded wall coverings, tattered curtains and dust-covered furniture gave the rooms a depressing air. Cate sensed abandonment as she glanced in each room. People had slept in these beds once, but one day long ago someone had murdered them one by one.
Maybe this was Noah’s room. Why did he leave, and where did he go? Is he still alive?
Cate realized April wasn’t with the group and found her at the far end of the hallway in the shadows.
“What are you feeling now?”
She pointed to a bedroom door. “I can’t go in there.”
“Why not?”
“It will smother me. I’ll die if I walk through that door.” She trembled.
“We should go,” Cate said, taking her hand. But April pulled away.
“I need to face this. So much is wrong about this house — so much that we have to uncover. Only then can they rest. Only then.” She walked to the door and looked inside.
She uttered a ghastly shriek — something feral and terrifying — and collapsed.
Cate knelt beside her. “What do you see?”
“In the bed. They’re…it’s all about the bed.”
Andy walked into the gloomy room. “Smells like something rotten in here,” he said with a grimace, “but the bed’s empty. The covers are all messed up like somebody forgot to make it, but nobody’s here. You thought you saw something…”
“Get me out of here!” April screamed, squeezing Cate’s hand. “It’s smothering me! I can’t breathe.”
As easily as lifting a book, Michael swept April up into his arms and carried her downstairs and out onto the porch. She gasped for each breath, but the moment they were outdoors, she breathed normally again, as though an oppressive weight on her chest was gone.
The group walked back to the car, and Cate asked April to describe what had happened.
“When I reached the bedroom door, I felt something drawing me in. Sucking, pulling, like a vacuum cleaner. The closer I came to going inside, the more I felt it wanting me.”
“What did you see in the bed?”
“I…I can’t describe it. Something horrible. Not a person — a thing. I don’t want to think about it. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
Cate moved her Jeep to allow them to leave, and returned to Proctor Hall. As she reached for the door to close and lock it, something inside the house caught her eye.
Something moved on the stairway. A dark shape — a person, maybe. More like a shadow, but what light filtered into the house wasn’t enough to create shadows.
Now she saw it. A boy.
Sitting on the staircase. Looking at her.
Noah Proctor.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In Andy’s opinion, Marisol was “holding court.” She’d convened the team to talk about yesterday’s trip to Proctor Hall, and her first order of business was to lash out at him.
“We might have been arrested! You lied to us and let us go when you had no permission at all. That’s the last time…”
“Lighten up, okay? Everything worked out fine. We got inside until April made a scene and screwed things up. We even know the great Landry Drake’s involved. That woman was lying when she told us he wasn’t.”
April was hurt. “I can see things sometimes, things other people can’t. I’m not proud of my power. I couldn’t help what happened. There are bad things in that house.”
Andy shook his head. “It’s a house like a million others. When somebody abandons an old house in south Louisiana, people make up stories about hauntings. They claim spooks ran off the family, or killed them and buried them in the backyard or something. This one’s cut and dried. A crazy kid murdered his entire family. That’s it.”
Marisol disagreed. She accepted that paranormal things could happen, and she asked April how long she’d had psychic abilities.
“A few years. Usually my experiences aren’t scary like yesterday. Sometimes I use a Ouija board.”
“Whoa!” Andy cried. “This is crazy. Not only can you see things that aren’t there, you also summon up ghosts and stuff? You’re making all this up.”
April said, “I don’t want to be on the team anymore. I don’t like this project, and I’m not safe at Proctor Hall. You all don’t seem to understand. Maybe you don’t care.”
Michael asked why she considered it unsafe. It had been empty for years. What harm was there in looking around in the daytime? She didn’t have to go upstairs if it made her uncomfortable.
He added, “Before yesterday I didn’t care about this project either, to be honest. I was just going to let Marisol run the show and coast along to an A. But if Landry Drake’s interested in this place, we need to see what’s up.”
Negative thoughts rushed through Marisol’s mind. What would Dr. Girard do if a team member resigned? Would it cost them a shot at the highest grade for the project? She couldn’t risk it; she had to keep the team together.
“Michael’s right, April. We respect that you have psychic powers. If we want the top grade, we must go back to Proctor Hall. I don’t know how we’ll get in, but I promise you we’ll stick together. We’ll protect you. Please don’t jump ship on us. We all need an A in this course, and I’ll make sure we get it.”
Uneasy but unwilling to rock the boat, April agreed to stay, which relieved Marisol. Once again she promised to keep her safe. That flippant, throwaway comment would haunt Marisol later.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On the way back to New Orleans, Cate called Landry to find out where he was.
He laughed. “It’s Sunday morning, so I’m either at the apartment or getting coffee in the Quarter. The question is where are you? You left three hours ago to run by your office for a minute. You must have lost track of time.”
She said, “I had to go to Proctor Hall. Something crazy happened. I’ll tell you when I get home.”
“I heard you were there, to tell the truth. Julien Girard just called me to apologize for his students’ behavior. What happened?”
“I’m too rattled to talk and drive. Let’s have brunch at Muriel’s. I’ll meet you at one.”
She walked from the garage on Governor Nicholls Street to Jackson Square. As she passed the artists who displayed their work on the fence around the square, she heard lively music through the front doors of the restaurant a half block away. Muriel’s occupied an eighteenth-century building and had what Landry considered the Quarter’s best Sunday jazz brunch.
Their favorite maître d’ Claude greeted her by name and escor
ted her to Landry’s table on the balcony. The day was perfect for outdoor dining, and the view was spectacular. There stood St. Louis Cathedral just steps away, and Jackson Square was teeming with people. A cold bottle of Chardonnay sat beside the table, but when she noticed Landry’s Bloody Mary, she ordered one too.
“So you ran off some kids.”
“That’s what I intended to do, but things changed. They were trespassing; one of them is a smart-ass kid who left me a voicemail saying they wanted to visit the house. If we didn’t respond, he’d take it as a yes.”
The Proctor Hall Horror Page 4
