by Kim Hornsby
“Perfecto,” Eve had said.
I didn’t know if she was lying to make me feel better but assumed she wouldn’t let me go on camera looking non-Moody. Strange and crazy was OK, but not plain and boring.
Today, might be a big day for me and I wanted to be ready. Even if I didn’t have another miraculous incident, as I’d come to think of getting sight at The Eatery and seeing a ghost, I was going to try as hard as I could here, say the same words, stand the same way, and try to summon a damned ghost until we left in six days.
I slipped out of the passenger seat and with Carlos on one arm and Eve on the other, we made our way up the stairs, laughing about the torrents of rain coming down.
Inside, we shut the door on the afternoon weather and I slipped off my coat. “Is there anywhere to . . .?”
“Right here on the right,” Eve said, breathless. “It is a four-hook thingie.” She guided my hand to hang up my coat.
I felt the wall and the thingie. “Good to know,” I said, thankful for Eve for the millionth time that day.
Then Eve screamed.
I listened for a clue to what happened but finally had to ask. “What is it?”
“The chandelier,” Eve said.
“I’ll be damned,” Carlos added. “You were right, Eve. That sucker is coming down.”
“It’s hanging by a wire,” Eve said. “Five feet from the ceiling now.” Eve’s words were whispered.
If that thing fell, not only would it break what I imagined to be a beautiful piece and damage the floor, but someone could get hurt. “Carlos, call someone, an electrician, I guess. See if they can come right now. In the meantime, try to figure out how to either cushion its fall or secure the thing. And don’t anyone walk under it.”
Carlos was probably on his phone looking for electricians before I finished my sentence.
“Let’s get a cup of tea and sit in front of a fire, Eve.” My jeans were damp from the walk up the stairs. “Maybe stick a mattress under the chandelier,” I called as Eve and I walked to the room on the left, the library.
I ran my hands over the wood pile, fumbling and feeling as Eve watched from a chair by the fireplace. I’d told her I would make the fire and she could light the match. I imagined her biting the inside of her lip as I worked. Being a good fire builder had been my joy on family camping trips even though my cousins would shout out their spot-on predictions as to how many matches my fire would take. It usually only took one if you prepared the fire correctly.
I crumpled some newspaper and made a teepee over the pile of paper with sticks, adding larger ones to make a bigger teepee over the smaller one. I’d toppled the thing once and had to rebuild by feeling around for the sticks. I was learning the hard way to be a lighter touch. And patient. Eve was probably learning to keep her trap shut, to not tell me where everything was located, like playing that game you’re getting hotter, colder, you’re freezing, you’re red hot!
“I’ll start the tea,” Eve finally said, leaving the room, probably taking the matches with her.
I worked on the placement of the sticks and kindling then settled back into the chair, waiting for the sighted person to come back and light the match.
My phone rang Creedence Clearwater’s “Bad Moon Rising.” Although I knew better, I took the call.
“The police are looking into the murder of Terry Giovanni,” my mother said. “So that ball got rolling, thanks to Eve.”
I took a deep breath.
“I still need to move in with you for two weeks.” She said the last part like it was no big deal.
“I inherited a house,” I said, mostly to throw her off.
“Yes, I sensed that.” This was one of my mother’s favorite lines and was often not true.
“Bull,” I said. “Where is it then?”
My mother took a moment, then answered. “I happen to love the Oregon coast.” She said this like a victory lap was in order. “Why didn’t you tell me you were moving, Bryndle?”
“I’m not moving. I now own a vacation house.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you inherited a house?”
I intended to ask Eve if she’d told Rachel about Cove House. And if so, how much she’d divulged under the duress of her evil aunt. Eve was often caught between me and my mother and I never blamed her for caving in and revealing everything she knew, not once Rachel got going. “Maybe I didn’t tell you because I’m still very upset with you,” I said. “Ever since you told me you’d foreseen the car accident.” I’d decided to use that zinger for the next few years when my mother acted hurt.
“You know we can’t interfere with premonitions.” My mother spoke like I was being ridiculous, not defending my right to know an accident would take my husband’s life.
I didn’t actually think Rachel had experienced a premonition where she’d seen my husband and I in a car accident in which a Hummer came around a corner without stopping, slammed into our Smart Car and almost crushed the driver’s side. Rachel often lied with bragging at the center of the lie but her insensitive proclamation of foreseeing the accident justified my ignoring her for months.
“I’d like the address for your Oregon house. I have to leave here for two weeks while they exterminate.”
“When?”
“On the eighth.”
It was the twenty-fifth. “Stay at Mary’s, why don’t you?” Aunt Mary lived on the same street only five houses away but would never allow her sister to bunk with her for even one night, let alone two weeks. And not because Mary was in a wheelchair from an explosion at the State Fair that she blamed my mother for. It was because growing up with Rachel had been a special kind of hell for her younger sisters, and Mary only took Rachel in very small doses.
“Mary’s busy. You have two residences and Eve says the house in Oregon is large. I’ll come there. It’ll be fun.”
I couldn’t imagine a world where a visit from my mother would be fun. I was sure my mother had already decided that the next Primrose family reunion would take place at Cove House, especially if Eve had let slip that the place was large with a big yard.
“Did Eve tell you she helped me last night?”
My mother sounded braggy and I felt gaggy. “She did.”
“She was very helpful, that girl.”
I imagined my mother wondering how she could capitalize on Eve’s talent now that she’d discovered her niece was fast-tracking her extra sensory perception skills.
“The police are looking into it. I had to tell Ron that it was you who felt Mrs. Giovanni was murdered.”
“What the hell?”
“You have street cred in the psychic world where Evelyn doesn’t.” My mother’s words sounded unfazed by my tone.
“Mother!” This was typical for my mom to twist things to her advantage.
“I’m looking forward to seeing your house and spending time with you. We’ve been off lately, you and I, and we need to get our mother/daughter vibe back and secured. I’m going to help you clear your chakras.”
I doubted my mother knew how to clear anything but a room with her thoughtless comments, so I needed to put an end to this visiting idea. “There’s no guest room. Just rooms with bloody ghosts and rats. I have to go,” I said hearing Eve come through the swinging door from the kitchen.
“Call me later with the address,” my mother said, obviously not concerned that I didn’t want her to fix my chakras. Or the possibility of rats.
Eve set down the tray of tea and I told her my mother had been on the phone. “The police are supposedly looking into Mrs. Giovanni’s death now that she’s assured them a credible source has confirmed her neighbor died mysteriously. And, Rachel has invited herself here. To Cove House.” I heard a slight intake of breath from Eve. “I can’t imagine how my mother knew I had inherited a house in Oregon.” I was a terrible actress but tried my best not to show Eve I knew she’d betrayed me to my nasty mother.
“Big regrets,” Eve said, handing me a warm mug of tea. “I’
d make a terrible spy. Me and singing canaries have a lot in common.”
I took the mug, which was not scalding hot, but barely tepid. Eve was trying so hard to do good by me, and her sweet efforts softened the edgy mood left over from my mother’s phone call.
“You know I have no defense against your mother,” Eve said. “She corners me, and I turn to Jell-O.”
I knew this about Eve and had once vowed never to leave my poor cousin in a room alone with my mother. Rachel is not for the faint of heart, or sweet-mannered people. I’d once come home from a free camp I sent myself to, only to find Rachel conducting her own kind of camp with my swimming teacher from the local Y. She’d convinced him to teach her to swim in my Aunt Mary’s above-ground pool even though he’d insisted he didn’t teach adults. Poor guy hadn’t wanted to teach someone who apparently did not own a bathing suit, nor did he want to get involved with her after the lesson concluded, but the young mom was just “too irresistible,” he’d said to the Y a week later when they fired him.
“Rachel needs a place to stay in two weeks and I don’t want her at Floatville. That place is too small, and her fangs and horns would get in our way.” I imagined my mother with devil’s horns and a smile crept across my lips. “I suppose we could deposit her here with the ghost and come back later,” I joked. Rachel’s talent was not ghosts. If we left her here for a week, I seriously doubted she’d even know there was a ghost.
“I’m surprised you’d let her stay here without you,” Eve said.
“What do you think she might do?” I was curious.
“I don’t know. Scare away the ghosts,” she chuckled.
Eve lit a match and soon got my fire started. When the wood was crackling and popping I sat forward to warm my damp jeans. The house was understandably cold with the thermostat kept at sixty-five.
“You did a great job building the fire,” Eve added. “Every day you get more independent. When your clairvoyance returns, you may not even need me, instead just sensing where everything is. Have you ever thought of that?”
I had. What was more likely? Gaining my clairvoyance or my sight? Even though it had been five months, I wondered if I still had a five percent chance or if it diminished every month my sight didn’t return. Was I at one percent now? “It would be nice if I could function that way, sensing everything around me with no need for sight,” I said, more for Eve than myself. “Then I might not even need my braille teacher.” I wasn’t fond of the woman who came to Floatville every week to teach me how to read braille.
Betty Sumar had admonished me for not practicing enough at her last visit and often spoke to me like I was a child. Consequently, I acted like a child around her and called her names when she left. Names like Stinky Sue, (I’d once detected faint body odor on her) or Betty Big Pants. After being treated like a sub-human it was rewarding to close the door on Mrs. Sumar and say, “I’ll practice my fingers off this week, Mrs. Colonel Ugly Big Nose.” I didn’t actually have any idea if her nose was big, little, or broken sideways, but all these little games I played with myself gave back tiny smithereens of power to someone who was feeling diminished. I’d persisted with the braille lessons, not because I needed braille for much of anything in this day and age of technology, but because a blind person without knowledge of braille was considered illiterate and I was not going to have that label put on me without a fierce fight. Not after losing so many other things in the last months.
Eve slurped her tea quietly from the other chair by the fire. “Joan Hightower, the Smuggler’s Cove Museum curator, called you just now and it was forwarded to the biz phone. She’ll stop by tomorrow morning.”
I nodded. I was anxious to hear all the details of Cove House and how the McMahons came to own this place. “Maybe she can shed some light on the bloody wall upstairs.”
Just then, Carlos entered the room to say that an electrician couldn’t come until tomorrow. “I dragged two mattresses downstairs to lay under the dangling chandelier, just in case.”
“How much do you think the chandelier is worth?”
“I bet that thing is at least a ten thousand dollar antique.” Carlos said, then went off to where he’d set up his equipment in the library.
Eve and I opened our laptops and set to work with her reading my emails and me dictating to her. It was so much easier than my turning on the screen-reading software and depending on Moneypenny reading line by line.
Luckily, I was proficient at tapping on the keyboard without sight, but I still had Eve proofread all my correspondence in case my hands got on the wrong line and it read like gibberish.
While we worked, an email came in from the lawyer, saying that another letter had arrived at his office today from Belinda McMahon, postmarked after her death. Who had sent that? The lawyer wrote that he’d either send it on or I could call his assistant for a read through.
We called right away, Cove House being the most important thing on my mind as I warmed myself at the drawing room fire.
Dear Mrs. Moody, I’m sure you’re wondering why an old lady you’ve never met would leave you this house and I’m sorry I didn’t explain more in the first letter. I had to be sure you would accept the house and if you’re reading this letter, I guess you did.
As stipulated in my first letter, I do not want the house sold. If you choose to abandon Cove House, and I seriously doubt you will do that, given the treasure you will find inside, it will revert back to the lawyer who has further instructions on what to do with my Grand Old Girl.
As someone with exceptional abilities, I’m counting on you to uncover the mystery of Cove House and investigate the offerings to the fullest. I’m thinking it will take some time, but I’m confident that you are the perfect person to do so.
Good luck, my dear, and I hope you have the time of your life inside the walls of this fascinating house.
Belinda McMahon
PS: By the way, there are stray cats living in the coach house. They are feral and won’t bother you.
I thought about what was said for two beats. “Send the letter on by snail mail,” I said. “And please email me a copy.”
We hung up with the lawyer’s office and I heard Eve’s fingers tapping on her laptop.
“I like cats. You do too, right Eve?”
“Yupper.” She was still tapping. “But Carlos . . .”
We both knew Carlos was terrified of felines. Unnaturally terrified.
“I’d have to guess the mystery in the house has to do with the blood against the wall in the bedroom. I wonder why Belinda said it would take some time,” I said.
“To hear Mrs. McMahon, it sounds like this house is Disneyland for mediums.”
Easy for Eve to say. She had most of the clairvoyance now, which unfortunately was a fraction of what I used to have. But, I hoped it was enough to lead us to set things right with this house.
As I listened to Eve’s fingers flying across her keyboard, I composed my questions for the museum curator tomorrow. I’d want to ask her not only about the house’s history but if she knew why Belinda had singled out me specifically when there were lots of psychics in the Pacific Northwest who would be delighted to take on this project. Psychics who didn’t have a following, a show, notoriety. And psychics who hadn’t lost the ability to speak to and summon ghosts.
But then, Belinda McMahon would’ve had no idea before she died that I was a dud. I’d been the rock star of ghost hunters.
Chapter 7
It’s a strange thing when you wake, open your eyes and see nothing—something I still was not used to. I woke feeling well-rested after going to bed early. The night before, we purposely did not try to summon any ghosts. I was exhausted, Eve had a headache, and Carlos was happily binge-watching a Netflix series.
I slipped out of bed and remembered I’d been dreaming of walking on a beach covered in seashells. Big conch shells and nautilus shells. At the far end of the beach a man in a sarong was blowing the conch, like he was summoning me to a luau. I
ran towards him. In my dreams, I can see, which makes me look forward to going to sleep every night. In this dream, the colors were vibrant and clear, and when I woke to blackness, I had to remind myself not to be disappointed but instead be grateful for the dream.
I had a good idea of what my bedroom looked like, where everything was, thanks to an hour of walking the floor with my hands out and feeling everything my fingers could reach before bed. I’d chosen the bedroom at the top of the stairs on the second floor, across the foyer from the bloody bedroom. We’d joked that maybe we should invest in a baby gate for the top of the stairs. It had been me who said that. Eve and Carlos hadn’t laughed. Someday, they might laugh at my self-deprecating humor about being blind, but not yet.
My room had a queen-sized bed and was furnished in a floral pattern, I’d been told. It wasn’t as large as the bloody bedroom but had a fireplace, and a sitting area and was plenty big enough for me. The dresser drawers were empty, and Eve had reported that all rooms had been cleaned and cleared of personal items leaving no reminders that Belinda McMahon lived here recently. Unlike the room with the blood, this bedroom was not old-fashioned but more modern in design, which suited me fine.
According to Eve, my bedroom had a window overlooking the side yard and the coniferous forest beyond. The grounds at the side of the house were wild looking, no lawn, no upkeep needed, and in her description, Eve had used the words “scrubby bushes and rocky terrain.”
I dressed in what I believed were my favorite faded jeans and a T-shirt that read, “Twirlin’ On Them Haters,” layering on a heavy sweater, and found my Frye boots I’d decided to wear in the house. This monstrosity of a house did not lend itself well to flip-flops, my usual footwear of choice inside. Although my room had a fireplace, I’d decided not to light it except in Eve’s presence.
