by Lori Avocato
I walked across the floor and looked out the window. Seeing the sun shining on the front yard and reflecting off the pond relaxed me. It was just an attic. An old, musty attic filled with old artifacts. Nothing to be scared about. Nothing at all.
Then why wouldn’t my heart slow down and why wouldn’t the feeling of dread leave my stomach?
5
After almost two hours, William and I were sweaty and hot and had barely made a dent in looking at the items up there. We’d decided to use our time wisely and divide things into three piles—keep, throw away, and check with historians for authenticity. Maybe we would find some goodies to donate to the historical society. Right now, though, it seemed our trash pile was the biggest.
The anxiety left me and I didn’t freak when William offered to get us some iced tea. I continued sifting through old clothes, papers, things family members who’d once lived here had probably tossed up here to get out of the way and then forgot. I did find a box of costume jewelry. Huge pieces with large, multi-colored gaudy stones. Bracelets and rings and hair clips. I put those aside for Emma-Kate. She’d love them to play dress-up.
I got up off the floor, stiff from sitting cross-legged for so long. I stretched my legs and twisted my upper body from side to side to work out the kinks.
Stopping mid-twist, I noticed something I had never seen before. While I was going through boxes on the floor, William had moved large items around to inspect them—old rocking horses and baby carriages and such. I saw what looked like a wooden panel in one of the walls. It blended in with the darkly painted wall, but I definitely saw an outline.
I walked over to it and crouched down. I ran a fingernail over the outline and there was a ridge. The section was about three feet high and it wasn’t surprising it was never noticed before with all the taller items that had been in front of it all these years.
Returning to the room, William knelt beside me with a glass of iced tea in each hand. I gratefully took one and ran the cold glass over my forehead, letting the condensation from the ice cool me down.
“What have you found, Maggie?”
I took a long sip of the tea before answering. “Looks like some kind of secret panel. It blends in so well with the wall, if I hadn’t seen the thin outline around it, I would’ve missed it. There’s definitely something behind here. Maybe it’s just a crawl space or something.”
William knocked on the wood. The sound in response was hollow.
“You know how these old houses are, lots of hidden places. Maybe this was used for storage years ago and forgotten. I don’t think our father ever knew about it and he knew every inch of this house.” He inhaled deeply of his tea. “Shall we see what’s behind door number one?”
We were on a mission to clean up this attic so we might as well do it all the way.
I got up and found the flashlight Zeke always kept up here when he had to find something and sat back down next to William.
“On the count of three,” I said.
We put our hands on the paneling and it easily fell to the other side. We peered in with the flashlight and could see there was room to stand.
“Let’s go.” William started to crawl through the opening, but I grabbed his arm.
“Let’s leave whatever is in there alone.” Anxiety rushed over me without warning. “Obviously, whatever is in there was hidden for a reason. Let’s leave well enough alone.”
William looked at me like I’d sprouted snakes for hair.
“Maggie, what in the world has gotten into you today? Since when have you shied away from an adventure?”
Going into a hidden space in a centuries old home that housed who knew what was not my idea of an adventure. Not after all that had transpired the past two nights. None of this bode well for my sanity.
“Want me to go in and bring whatever is in there out here?”
“Thanks, William, that would be great.”
“Sure…chicken.” He flapped his arms and made chicken noises. Worked when we were kids, but wouldn’t work now.
“Nice, William, really nice. I’ll hold the flashlight for you.”
He crawled through and stood up. His head more than cleared the vaulted ceiling. I shone the flashlight in his direction and the first thing we saw was a lot of dust and cobwebs. If whatever was in here was really old, it would probably be rotted by now.
The thick dust had William sneezing as he walked around the space. It wasn’t very big, but there were a number of things in there. From the light’s beam, I could tell they were placed neatly, as if someone took great care.
“There’s a lot of pictures in here—I can’t tell yet if they’re framed photographs or paintings. Shine the light over here and let’s see.”
Following the direction of his finger, I shone the flashlight where he was pointing. He turned a couple of the pictures around and we could tell they were indeed old paintings.
The first was of the plantation, maybe when it was first built in the 1700s. Definitely no electrical lampposts, but there was a horse and carriage in the circular drive in front of the house. The drive was dirt and not concrete. The second painting was an older man in a uniform. Maybe American Revolution. I made a mental note to find a historian to come out and take a look at whatever else we found.
“Maggie, look at this one.”
I looked up at the painting in his hands and screamed.
~ * ~
Startled, William dropped the painting and was by my side in an instance.
“I’m sorry. I thought I saw a mouse,” I lied.
Now he really looked worried. Growing up on a plantation with horses and all sorts of animals, one is never afraid of a mouse. But William didn’t push it and for that I was grateful.
The painting was the man from my dreams. The one asking me for help one night and making love to his wife the next night. Even the clothing he wore in the painting was the same as what he wore in my dream.” Against my will I entered the secret room and picked up the painting and dusted it with my hand. It was old, but relatively well preserved. William followed right on my heels.
“How long do you think these things have been in this hidden room?”
William shrugged. “I have no idea, but, in all the times we explored up here as kids, I can’t believe we never found it.”
Maybe we weren’t meant to find it until now, until after my dreams started up again the past couple of nights. I had no clue as to what any of it meant, but now I was more determined than ever to find out.
“It’s almost time for dinner. Bitsy and Zeke should be back at any minute with Emma-Kate.” I stood and brushed dust from my jeans. “Want to stay? Invite your family?”
He looked at me thoughtfully and I tried my best to keep eye contact. William always could see right through me when I was nervous or upset.
“No, I promised Leanne dinner out tonight. Rain check?”
An inner breath of relief whooshed through me. I wanted to closely examine this painting and I wanted to do it immediately. Patience never had been one of my virtues.
We walked to the door, but I had to take one last glance over my shoulder at the painting, now propped up against the wall outside the hidden space we’d discovered.
I would come back up here as soon as I could and retrieve it. Finding this painting brought more questions than it answered, but I had to know what it all meant.
Nothing could stop me when on a quest.
6
Dinner felt like lead in my stomach. I wanted to get back to the painting and begin my research. It felt as though I was in the middle of a giant jigsaw puzzle, trying to make all the pieces fit, yet some of the pieces seemed to be hidden. Emma-Kate chattered away about her day with Bitsy and Zeke in Awendaw and I barely heard anything she said.
The kitchen television was tuned to i-Carly, so my darling daughter didn’t realize I wasn’t paying attention to her. Bitsy, did, however. From the corner of my eye, I could see her checking me out as she ate.
She had that same blank look on her face that she had when I questioned her about my dreams. The look in her eyes was something she could never fake.
“Emma-Kate, why don’t you take your ice cream to the den and finish watching television there?”
She scurried out of the kitchen as fast as she could. Eating and watching television in the den on the leather sofa was a treat and she loved it when she got permission.
Concentrating on my chicken tender as though it were the most interesting thing on the planet, I casually said, “Bits, what do you know about a secret room in the attic?”
Her lengthy pause made me look up. For one split second, fear flashed across her face.
“Maggie, some things should be left alone.”
Her family came from a long line of Gullah-Geechee with all their traditions and superstitions.
“Bitsy, this isn’t like the legend of the ‘Boo Hag’ you told us about as children. A spirit isn’t going to suck the life out of me through my mouth.”
“Shh!! Don’t talk of such things.” Nervously she looked around the room.
Damn, but I’d never seen Bitsy’s composure rock and roll. She was my rock, the woman I went to when I skinned my knee, when my boyfriends broke up with me, when I had to get a divorce. She was more mother to me than my own mother. Yet, she turned to Jell-O when I talked about an old Gullah superstition.
“Bitsy...” Now I was exasperated and my voice didn’t hide it. “What is going on in this house? What has been happening to me since I was a child? Please, if you know what these dreams are about, if you know why I get them, tell me. I often feel like I’m losing my mind.” At that, all the exhaustion of the past few days, dealing with my father’s estate, the dreams returning, finding the secret room with the painting of the man in my dreams was too much. I put head in my hands and cried.
Bitsy grabbed my hand from across the table and squeezed. She started to let go, but I held tight. I wiped my eyes with the back of my free hand and looked at her. This time, her gaze was centered on me.
“Ever since you were a little girl, you’ve been…special.”
“Special? Like, I was your favorite?”
Her lips formed a half smile. It wasn’t what she meant and we both knew it.
She pushed her plate aside and wiped imaginary crumbs from the table into her hand. I let her have her time to collect her thoughts. It gave me the time to decide if I really wanted to know or if I wanted to grab a bottle of wine, go watch TV with my daughter and pretend none of this was happening.
“You could…sense…things most people couldn’t.”
“Daddy always said I was the most sensitive of all us kids.”
“I’m not talking about how easily you got your feelings hurt.” She looked me straight in the eyes.
“So, am I some kind of psychic?” I wondered why the sudden pit in my stomach felt bottomless. I always thought such things were foolish, superstitious nonsense. Yet, when I add it all together—the dreams of my childhood, my dreams the past evenings, suddenly finding the hidden room with the portrait of the man in my dreams—I wasn’t so sure there weren’t things that happened with no practical explanation.
“Psychic? You are definitely…sensitive. “
“Sensitive to what?” This was all so new to me. I was a lawyer, used to dealing with fact-finding and guilty or innocent. Not ‘what if’...
Bitsy chewed her lower lip for minute, clearly straightening out in her mind what to say. “The dreams started when you was a little girl. Not much older than your Emma-Kate.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. She was finally going to talk about the dreams I had when a child.
“I would wake you in the morning to get you dressed and fed. You would tell me all about your dreams from the night before. Even as a little child, you were so clear in how you told them to me. I didn’t think anything of it at first, because you always had such an imagination.”
Try as I might, my memories of my childhood dreams remained vague. I just know I had them and they made me feel…different. The kids at school had dreams of carnivals and cotton candy while I had dreams about people in my house.
My spine stiffened as realization dawned. The dreams were similar from my childhood to the ones I’d had since being back in the mansion. The man in the painting and the woman in the dream with him. His wife.
“They left me as I got older. Either that or I buried them deeply in my subconscious because they frightened me so much and all I wanted to feel was normal.” I brushed down the hairs on my arm that were standing on edge.
“You did stop talking about them as you got older and I never pushed it. I knew you’d come back to them when you were ready.”
“Who are these people, Bitsy? More to the point, what the hell do they want from me?”
She grabbed my hands again and held tight. “They need your help, Maggie.”
“Help? Doing what?” If she said “cross-over” I was going to call a reality show and ask to audition.
“Child, his spirit isn’t settled. He has no peace. You need to do something for him to help him on his next journey.”
Next journey? The man had been dead hundreds of years.
“Death is only final on this plane, Maggie. But, it’s never the end of our journeys.”
I really, really hated it when Bitsy read my mind.
~ * ~
Bitsy agreed to put Emma-Kate to bed in the room originally made up for her. I needed to be alone tonight in my old room to figure this all out. If that was even possible. The portrait leaned against the fireplace where Zeke’d placed it. My heart still skipped a beat when I saw the subject was the man in my dreams, but this time I didn’t scream.
I sat in front of it and simply stared. Who was he? Running my hands over the worn gold gilt frame, I smiled at the lack of dust. Zeke must’ve cleaned it before bringing it upstairs. I reached tentative fingers and lightly touched the man’s face. I shut my eyes, allowing my fingers to stay barely brushing it. Nothing. I really don’t know what I expected to happen. Some cosmic energy zinging its way from his painted face to my fingertips, up my arm and to my brain? Giving me all the information I needed? Laughter bubbled up from my throat and escaped into the room. Maybe I needed to see if that psychic hot-line number was still being advertised on television during late-night shows.
Picking up the wine I’d set on the floor, I sipped it slowly while I thought of my next plan.
Nothing like this had ever been taught in law school and I was way out of my depth. I knew nothing about magic or psychic or anything supernatural. The next day I would go to the College of Charleston and see if anyone there knew anything about this kind of thing. Charleston was full of mystical lore and maybe I could find some help.
Exhaustion set in and I got into my bed. I finished the wine and placed the glass on my nightstand. I left on the small lamp and looked at the painting. The low wattage cast a glow that centered on the man’s face, making it look almost three dimensional, as though he were staring directly at me. I clutched the covers tightly to my chest, but couldn’t look away. His gaze captivated me and wouldn’t let me go.
~ * ~
“Miss, please. Will you help me?”
“What is it you want me to do?”
He sat on the small sofa near the fireplace and buried his head in his hands. I sat upright in my bed, but made no move to get closer.
A few long seconds passed before he raised his head and looked at me. His eyes were a rich brown under dark full lashes. They held so much sadness.
“I…” he began. His shoulders seemed to slump in defeat. “I don’t remember.”
“Are you lost?”
“I don’t think so.” He looked around the room. “I know this is my home…was…my home. Yet it’s all so different now.” He took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “I don’t think I belong here anymore.”
“Where should you be?” I was flying blindly here. But then
what did I expect…I’d never spoken with a ghost before. I should probably be terrified, but I sensed he would do me no harm. The poor man was lost. “Where do you belong?”
He ran long fingers through dark hair that hung loosely around the collar of his white shirt. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, frustration etching his face.
Maybe I needed to try a different line of questioning.
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Miss, please, I beg of you. Just help me find my way.”
“If you tell me your name that would go a long way in my helping you.”
He was gone. I had all the information I was going to get and it wasn’t much. I don’t know how long I’d slept, but no more dreams came to me this night.
7
It was a beautiful day to walk around the College of Charleston. The sun shone through the trees and dappled the sidewalks of the old school. Even though it was in the middle of downtown Charleston, which bustled with tourists this time of year, walking the campus made me feel as if I was in this contained world of academics in one of the most beautiful campuses on the planet.
Students moved around the streets on their bicycles with ease despite the heavy backpacks they wore and all the people they wove between. I entered the building that housed the history department and looked for the department chair. I’d decided to look first into the time period the man might be from based on his clothing before I looked into the supernatural elements. Truth be told, I wasn’t quite sure I was really ready to admit that train of thought yet. This was so much more than anything that had happened to me as a child.
Approaching this situation like a lawyer as opposed to someone with some kind of psychic gift made more sense and helped me process this a lot more clearly.
The department secretary, an older woman with short cropped graying hair, shot me a disapproving look. “You should have called before you came here. The department chair, Dr. Samuel Winston, is in class right now. He might possibly have time this afternoon should you wish to make an appointment.” She seemed rather annoyed I walked in without one, expecting to be seen. She was right. It was rude of me, but this was urgent. Making an appointment wasn’t high on my priorities.
