Drew came running back from the master bedroom, brandishing a large leather-bound Bible. “I got it!” he shouted, then faltered when he saw the woman. “Who—”
Before he could finish the question, the door imprisoning Marsha swung open. Inside, she lay huddled in a heap on the floor, sobbing.
“Oh, my poor, sweet girl,” said the old woman, rushing to her side. Marsha looked up and sobbed even harder at the sight of her. Her face and arms were covered in welts and scratches. She raised up and held her arms out to the woman as she knelt beside her and pulled her into a hug. “Hush now,” she murmured. “I’m here.”
Drew came over to join Chris and Derek as they huddled in the doorway, watching the spectacle inside. “Is she a friend of yours?”
Chris looked up at him and shook her head, as much in wonder as in denial. “I’m pretty sure we just met Granny.”
“So is that it?” asked Derek. “Is it over?”
“It’s not over,” said the old woman. She got to her feet and helped Marsha stand. “But he’ll be quiet for the time being.”
“Who is he?” asked Chris. When the woman didn’t answer right away, she said, “You called him by name. You know who he is.”
The old woman sighed. “Yes, I do, dear.” Eyes the same steely color as her hair met Chris’s gaze and held it. “The child is my brother.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ron found herself back inside the house on the second-floor landing. She was alone. “Joe!” she called, but before she even got his name out she knew he wouldn’t be able to answer. Things were all wrong. For one thing, daylight streamed in through a window set high in the wall over the landing, as well as through the open doors all along the hallway. And although the hall appeared to be empty, sounds of people bustling around could be heard downstairs, as well as in some of the rooms.
Besides all of that, although much of the furniture remained the same, a lot of the decor was different enough to tip Ron off to what should have been obvious.
She might be in the right place, but she was almost certainly in the wrong time.
Ron opened her mouth to swear loudly and emphatically but stopped herself when she realized she wasn’t alone in the hallway after all. A small girl had emerged from one of the rooms. She stood facing the room at the end of the hall, the door to which stood slightly ajar. Ron eyed the child warily.
She was a cute little thing, barely past toddlerhood, wearing a yellow dress with a full skirt that was short enough to show off chubby little knees above her ankle socks and white Mary Janes. A mop of brown ringlets made her look like Shirley Temple. But for all her adorableness, Ron kept her distance. Little girl ghosts were not to be trusted.
If this little girl were in fact a ghost, however, she remained oblivious to Ron’s presence, creeping away from her as she tried to tip-toe down the hall. She stopped in front of one of the open doors and peered in. Inside the room, a baby began to cry. It was the distinctive cry of a newborn infant. The girl seemed to hesitate a moment, gripping her skirt nervously in her tiny hands. Apparently making up her mind, she stepped inside the room.
Curiosity overcame her wariness of the kid. Ron followed, but she didn’t get far before the girl was ushered out of the room by a plump woman in a dark dress and sensible shoes. “Now, Violet,” she was saying to the girl, “leave the baby alone. He’s not a doll for you to play with. He’s your brother.”
“Can I see Mama?” the little girl asked.
Sympathy and sadness flitted over the woman’s features before she composed them into a stern look. “No. You know good and well that your mother isn’t well. She needs to rest.” She bent down and steered Violet back toward the room she’d first come out of. “Now you go play in your room. I’ll be in after I’ve fed and changed the baby, and then we’ll go downstairs for some milk and cookies. Would you like that?”
The little girl nodded and skipped away to her room. The woman returned to the nursery. Ron followed her inside where, tucked into a corner of the room, sat a wicker bassinet. It was identical to the one she and Joe had found in the attic, right down to the mobile that hung from the hood—the only difference being, this version looked brand new.
The crying baby the woman bent to pick up also looked brand new, or new enough to measure his age in days or weeks rather than in months. He was swaddled in a blue checked blanket and had a shock of thick, dark hair on his head. Cuddling him against her chest, the woman carried him to a wooden rocking chair, where a bottle sat waiting on a small side table. Ron got a bad feeling as she watched the woman settle in with the baby and begin feeding him. She didn’t like where this seemed to be going.
As if on cue, the door at the end of the hall opened wide enough for two men in suits to emerge. One was tall with the same dark hair as the baby, reasonably handsome and young enough to be the likely father of such young children. The other was shorter and stouter, his hair threaded with gray. He emerged second, pulling the door behind him.
“I don’t understand it,” the younger man said in a hushed voice once the door was closed. “She wasn’t like this with Violet.”
“Give her time. After such a difficult pregnancy, it’s not surprising that she’d develop a nervous condition.”
“But it’s been three weeks, Doc. She won’t get out of bed. She barely eats. She won’t even look at the boy.”
The older man, presumably a doctor and not one of Snow White’s seven dwarfs, made a sound of dismay in the back of his throat. He took off his glasses and cleaned them as he spoke. “There isn’t anything physically wrong with her. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Usually, with time and rest, the mother develops a normal attachment to the baby and everything is fine.”
“Usually? What about the rest of the time?”
Another sound of dismay. The doctor put his glasses back on and looked the young man square in the eyes. “I won’t mince words with you, Parker. If she doesn’t snap out of it soon, she’ll need to be admitted.”
“Admitted? You mean to a hospital?”
“I mean the state hospital.”
The young man took a step back. His hand went to his stomach and he grimaced as though he suddenly felt nauseated. Noticing his discomfort, the doctor added, “Although there are some excellent private institutions where she might—”
“You’re talking about having her committed.”
“Now, Parker. I’ve been doing some reading about this. Apparently, there has been a great deal of success at treating this disorder with electro-shock therapy.”
“Shock treatment?” If the young man looked vaguely nauseous before, now he looked positively ill. Ron couldn’t blame him. She had heard enough. She barged past the two men and through the closed door, into the mysterious room at the end of the hall. It was a large bedroom, mostly dark, with all but one curtain drawn shut. A high wing-backed chair sat facing the only uncovered window.
Ron approached the chair and was unsurprised to recognize the woman who sat in it. Dressed in a white nightgown and robe, she stared out the window. Ron could still hear the two men talking out in the hall. Their voices were muffled by the closed door, but she could make out what they were saying, and if she could, then so could this woman. Even so, she gave no indication that she could hear anything, her face remaining blank as she stared out the window.
“Okay, I get it,” said Ron. “You had postpartum depression and they didn’t have the first clue how to treat it, and they kept getting it wrong until you snapped. I can guess the rest. You don’t need to show me.” The woman in the chair didn’t respond. Ron didn’t really expect her to. She was simply a shade of things that had already happened. “I mean it,” she said, raising her voice so that the other version, the one who’d brought her there, could hear. “I don’t need to see this!”
Suddenly, the woman’s hand shot out and grabbed Ron’s arm, eliciting a startled scream. The woman looked directly at her. “You need to see,” she said, and then she w
as gone.
Ron staggered backwards, rubbing her arm where it had been grabbed. Swearing, she looked around. There was no sign of the woman, but the bedroom door stood open. The quality of light had changed, making it look like it was earlier in the day. Or maybe a different day altogether.
As Ron approached the door, she heard someone singing down the hall. It sounded like a lullaby. She followed the sound to the nursery, where the woman, still clad in her white gown, leaned over the bassinet. Both arms reached into it as she sang. Her hands were hidden from sight, but her song sounded so heartfelt, the look on her face so tender, that Ron could only imagine she was caressing the baby, finally showing him a mother’s love.
But then she got close enough to see.
She couldn’t have been more wrong. The woman’s hands were locked around the baby’s tiny throat, and his face had turned a deep purple. Instinctively, Ron tried to pry her hands loose, but her own hands passed through as though they were nothing but vapor or thought. Which was all they really were.
“Mama?”
At last the woman released the infant and spun toward the door, where the little girl had come into the room. She smiled joyfully, as if she hadn’t just murdered her own baby. Sickened, Ron stared helplessly at the strangled infant while his killer knelt down and held her arms out wide for the girl. Violet ran to her, and her mother embraced her and covered her with kisses.
“I missed you, Mama,” said the girl.
“Oh, I missed you too, my darling. But I promise you we’ll never be parted again.”
“Never?”
“Never ever.” She stood up and took Violet’s hand. “Come. We’re all going away together where nobody can ever hurt us.”
“Is Ezekiel coming with us?”
“He’s already there, waiting for us.” She led Violet out into the hall and toward her own room.
“What about Daddy?”
“Daddy can’t come.”
“Why not?”
“Daddy’s the one that wants to hurt us.”
“But Daddy wouldn’t hurt us. He loves us. I don’t want to leave Daddy!”
“Shh.” The woman picked her small daughter up and carried her to the bed. “We’re going to go to sleep. And when we wake up, we’ll be together and everything will be okay all the time, and we’ll never be sad again.”
“But I’ll be sad without Daddy!”
“Shh. Lie down and close your eyes.”
The little girl did as told. While Ron stood by, helpless to intervene, the woman took a pillow and held it over the girl’s face. Violet began to struggle, but of course, her mother was stronger. The child kicked and beat at her mother and clawed at the pillow, but she couldn’t pull it away.
A scream came from the nursery, followed by cries for help. Despite her horror at what she was being forced to witness, Ron had been so transfixed that she hadn’t seen the nanny go by in the hallway. At the sound of commotion, Violet’s mother released her and slipped out the door, leaving Violet coughing and gulping down air, but alive. Relieved for that much at least, Ron went after her.
She hurried toward the stairs but slipped into another room as footsteps pounded up them. Violet’s father reached the landing and raced toward the nursery. Upon arrival he let out an anguished cry. Wasting no time, his wife padded quietly out of her hiding place and made her way down the stairs and out the front door. Outside, she made a beeline for the pond, softly singing the lullaby as she went. She was already wading into the water when her husband appeared at the door. He didn’t see her at first. She was in it up to her waist when he finally spotted her.
“Rowena!” he shouted and ran after her, stripping off his jacket and vest as he ran. But he wasn’t fast enough. Rowena sank beneath the surface before he reached the pond. Still, he plunged in and swam to where she had gone under before taking a deep breath and diving after her.
He was under a long time. In the distance, sirens wailed, the kind that sounded like they belonged in an old movie. Rowena’s husband broke the surface, gasped for air, and dove back in.
An icy hand gripped Ron’s arm. Rowena stood there, soaking wet, bloated, her skin a mottled shade of blue. Ron suppressed the urge to scream. “I’ll tell them,” she said. “I’ll make them understand. We can help you. And Ezekiel.”
At the mention of the baby’s name, Rowena threw back her head and screamed. Then she threw her arms around Ron and plunged them both into the water. Ron should have felt nothing, but the sensation of ice-cold water enveloping her, pulling her down, filling her lungs, was undeniable. Panicked, she thrashed, struggling to free herself from Rowena’s embrace.
A pair of hands took hold of her and pulled, hauling her up out of the water. She continued to fight and struggle until she recognized the voice calling her name. “Ron! Ron, it’s me!”
She stopped fighting and opened her eyes. It was no longer daytime. Joe stood before her, gripping her shoulders, his face frozen in a mask of worry and fear. She collapsed against him. “Oh, thank God!”
He held her tightly. “What was that? Where did you go?”
“Rowena. She—”
“Who?”
“The white lady. She… she…” Ron couldn’t get the words out. What came out instead was a choked sob. She clung to him and he held her, rocking her back and forth.
“It’s all right. You’re here now. I’m here. I won’t let her take you again.”
He held her until she cried herself out. When she pulled herself together, he asked, “What did you see?”
She shook her head. “I can’t tell it twice, and I need to tell Chris.”
“She’s in the house. Her and the others.”
“Good.” Ron got to her feet. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
This time, Marsha’s grandmother made the tea while the rest of them gathered around the kitchen table. At her instruction, Derek found a first aid kit in the downstairs bathroom. Chris’s dad was busy using it to treat Marsha’s cuts and bruises. “I started for home as soon as I got your messages,” her grandmother said as she put the kettle on. “What I felt I needed to tell you wasn’t something I wanted to discuss over the phone.”
“You knew about them?” Marsha asked, a note of betrayal in her voice.
“I… suspected.” She seemed to choose her words carefully. “Living in this house all these long years, I’ve felt things. Seen and heard things. And, of course, the white lady was the stuff of family legend. But they’ve been so quiet for so long now, I thought… I hoped that they had moved on.” She came to the table and placed a hand on Marsha’s head, stroking her hair lovingly. “Of course, I never would have given you the house if I’d thought—” The kettle whistled, cutting her off. She gave a tight little shake of her head and went to pour the tea.
“Who are they?” asked Drew. “Who exactly are we talking about?”
“Her brother, Ezekiel,” Chris supplied when the old woman failed to answer. “And her mother.” She looked over at the woman. “Isn’t that right?”
She remained silent while she loaded the tea onto a tray and brought it to the table. As she set it down, she said, “My mother was not a well woman.”
“You can say that again.”
Chris turned in her chair to see Ron and Joe standing behind her. They both looked like… well, like a living, normal person would look if they’d seen a ghost. Which wasn’t a usual look for either of them. “Are you guys okay?”
Ignoring the question, Ron stared at the old woman. “Violet? That’s her name, right?”
Chris turned to the woman. “Are you Violet?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Call me Vi.” She sat down at the table and picked up a mug of tea. “Tell me, dear, did my granddaughter tell you my name, or did you hear it from your friend who joined us just now?” At the looks on all their faces, she winked. “A body doesn’t live in a house such as this one for as long as I have without developing certain sensitivities. Althou
gh my talents are nowhere near as developed as I suspect yours are, dear.”
“I guess a near-death experience as a small child might also do that to a body,” said Ron. At Chris’s questioning look, Ron explained what she’d seen. Chris felt queasy as she listened.
When Ron finished, Chris turned back to Vi. “Then it wasn’t an accident, what happened to the baby. Your mother murdered him. And she tried to murder you.”
Vi frowned. “Like I said, she wasn’t a well woman.”
Marsha stared at her in shock. “Granny, you never told me about any of this.”
“Of course not, dear. It was all so unseemly. We never spoke of it.” Chris detected an edge of bitterness in her voice. “Father liked to pretend that I was too young to remember what happened. And he did his best to drown his memories in gin and bourbon. As soon as I was old enough, he sent me away to boarding school, which gave him leeway to turn to more effective vices in order to forget. Which is why he was in his grave before my sixteenth birthday.”
“But what happened?” asked Marsha.
Vi sipped her tea. Then she set her mug down and leaned back in her chair. “My mother had a difficult pregnancy. She was put on bed rest for the final six weeks or so. I visited her every day and did my best to cheer her up, but she was growing despondent before the baby was even born. Everyone expected that the birth would cheer her up. Even she said so. But that’s not what happened.”
“She had postpartum depression,” said Chris.
Vi nodded. “Nowadays, everyone knows all about it. Celebrities write books about their battles with it. You even see commercials telling you which signs to look for and which drugs to take for it. But back then…” She shook her head. “In those days, they simply called it a nervous condition. All their ideas for how to treat it almost always made it worse. It could land a woman in an asylum. There was even talk of having my mother committed.” She seemed to think about this before adding, “Although, considering her actions, that might have been for the best.”
Bound Spirits Page 18
