I’m feeling confused and pretty annoyed with Wyatt, but I’m too worried to act mad. As we head up to the kitchen, I hold on tight to his hand because he’s still shaky and I’m afraid he’ll stumble and fall down the stairs.
“Any cookies left, Mrs. Blake?” Wyatt asks as soon as we walk into the kitchen. My mother gestures to the counter top behind her where a hill of delicious smelling chocolate chip cookies sits on a platter.
“Would you like some milk, Wyatt?” Mom doesn’t wait for an answer. She’s already pulling the gallon jug out of the fridge.
Sitting at the kitchen table, with a huge glass of cold milk and a plate of cookies in front of him, Wyatt perks up a little and begins to eat and drink. His episode, whatever it was, hasn’t affected his appetite; if anything he seems even hungrier than usual.
Rubbing my arms with both hands, I announce, “It’s freezing in here.”
My mother fills the tea kettle and puts it on the stove. As she turns on the burner we hear a car speed up the driveway and come to a screeching halt.
Mom looks out the window and announces, “Oliver’s here. Why is he in such a hurry?”
Wyatt doesn’t respond to her question, so I give him a sideways look, kick him in the shin under the table, and start a lie that I intend to pass to him after I run out of fake ideas. “Oliver’s expecting company for dinner and they’re due any minute now. He just called Wyatt to invite me and swung by to pick us up on his way home from the grocery store.”
Wyatt reaches down to rub his shin and glares at me, but continues my story as if he’s done it a million times before; tag team lying, our favorite sport. “Because Oliver’s a vegetarian, he has to have really fresh, organic vegetables every day. He goes out to buy them right before he starts cooking. We have to run. Thanks, Mrs. Blake.” He grabs my arm and pulls me out of my seat and toward the door in one rough motion.
“’Bye, Mom,” I yell as Wyatt yanks me out to the driveway. My mother follows us and stands on the threshold watching, as Wyatt shoves me into the back seat of his uncle’s car, whacks the door shut and then jumps into the shotgun seat.
Oliver rolls down his window on the driver’s side. “Thanks for the tea. I’ve been sleeping like a baby.”
“You’re welcome, Oliver, any time.”
Mom knows Wyatt’s uncle pretty well because she’s a member of the Eastfield Historical Society and he’s the president. She always sells her teas and homemade, scented candles at the historical society’s booth, during the annual Eastfield harvest fair. Also, my father’s side of the family has lived here for generations and my mother donated their family diaries and Bibles and other artifacts to the Eastfield Historical Society Museum. She smiles and waves goodbye to us as Oliver backs down the long, winding driveway.
Wyatt’s uncle drives pretty fast for an old guy. The scenery’s streaking by, making me a little dizzy. I’m sure that we’re traveling about twenty miles over the speed limit. Maybe cops don’t give tickets to teachers because then their kids might flunk a subject at school, kind of like a small town educational mafia.
Chapter 10
Revelations
Stepping out of Oliver’s car, onto his glistening driveway, I breathe in deep, hoping the extra oxygen will give me courage. The night air smells like wet rocks. Wyatt must’ve noticed my hesitation, because he reaches for my hand before leading me into the house.
In the main room, the flames of a huge fire celebrate wildly in Oliver’s fireplace. Close to the crackling heat, a man with a powerful upper body and a halo of brown curls stares up at us from his shimmering throne. Backlit by the holy light, he resembles a renaissance painting of an archangel.
Many artists have labored to immortalize faces like his, but being alive adds so much warmth to his features that he steals my breath like no painting ever could.
This living, breathing work of art smiles at me and then holds out his right hand. “Nathaniel Flyte. You must be Annabelle.”
Unruly curls frame his face, jaw and neck. The sleeves of a faded t-shirt stop right above his sculpted biceps. Beside his wheelchair sits a huge dog, with fur the color of an orangutan’s. His long floppy ears, sad eyes and drooping jowls look like a bloodhound’s. But he’s a full size bigger than that breed. Sitting upright and alert on his haunches, his head’s at the same height as Nathaniel’s. He stretches out his neck, points his muzzle at me and sniffs the air.
After grasping Nathaniel’s hand only long enough to seem polite, I sink to my knees at the feet of the handsome creature. It’s true; there’s such a thing as love at first sight. The dog begins licking the worried look off my face with kind of icky but very effective kisses.
“Meet Jeff, the best judge of character ever. I think you just passed the test. Annabelle.” Nathaniel introduces us.
“You two look pretty cozy together.” Oliver smiles, but then looks over at Wyatt and frowns.
Wyatt’s pale, expressionless face droops out over his neck as he stands near the doorway, staring blankly at the wall behind his uncle. Oliver places a gentle hand on his nephew’s back and nudges him over to a big, overstuffed chair, next to the fire.
“I’d just put dinner on the stove when you called, Annabelle. What happened? You seemed upset.”
Oliver’s voice sounds not quite sincere to me.
I relax into a cross-legged position on the worn oriental carpet beside Jeff, who lies down by my side. Like a furry guardian angel, the dog leans against me and lends me courage. I’m not used to standing up to adults, but I’m so pissed off that I let loose. For me anyway, it’s letting loose. “You tell me, Oliver. You came speeding over to my house like a NASCAR driver. Why? What did you think had happened?”
“You used Wyatt’s cell phone to call me. You said he wasn’t himself. I panicked.”
“Why?” I ask again.
“I thought he might be ill.”
“But he wasn’t, was he?”
“Maybe you should tell me, Annabelle. You were there.” Oliver’s voice remains infuriatingly calm.
I can see that he isn’t going to reveal anything he knows about Wyatt’s condition. It’s a stalemate, so I relent.
“While Wyatt and I were hugging, he stiffened and grew cold. His heart stopped beating but then a second later it started up again. Finally, when he recovered enough to speak, his voice sounded different. As if he was someone else. He said, ‘I have words.’ Like he was surprised that he could talk.”
“Tell me everything he said.”
“No. You tell me what you think happened. Because I have no idea. I need information and I think you know more than you’re letting on. So start explaining.”
Lifting my chin, I challenge Oliver by staring bravely up at him as I scratch the top of Jeff’s warm, furry head. The dog rolls onto his side so I can rub his belly. Then he moves his head into my lap and closes his eyes. I risk a sideways glance at Nathaniel and he’s sending a grin my way that’s the equivalent of a thumbs up. Someone else is on my side, not just the hound.
“Nathaniel’s a medium. He’s had a lot of experience with the supernatural. I think he might be able to help us. You and Wyatt are relatively new to this,” Oliver begins.
“New to what?” I ask.
“Channeling. It’s one way for the dead to communicate with the living. Wyatt told me about the ghost that followed you back from Wild Wood. He thinks this presence has been trying to communicate with you for almost a year now,” Oliver explains.
“So you know all about that?”
“Yes. I’ve watched your movie multiple times. I’m not one of the skeptics who thinks Clement helped you add special effects. I could tell the work was all your own by The Blair Witch Project style. Actually, it was even more amateurish than that awful film.” Evidently, despite the serious subject of our conversation, Oliver can’t resist making a joke about my unskilled cinematography.
“Thanks, Oliver. Get to the point, please.”
“Fair enough. I kn
ow you had a paranormal encounter at the hospital last fall. And I know it was real. Then Wyatt told me that whatever materialized in room 209 while you were filming has attached itself to you. Recently, it seems this ghost has connected itself to Wyatt, too. Because my nephew has experienced episodes like this before, I’m concerned. I’m worried about both of you.”
Wyatt had mentioned he could see ghosts, but he didn’t go into detail. “What kind of episodes did Wyatt experience?”
Oliver looks down at his feet then walks over to a chair and lowers his tall, lean frame into it. The firelight glimmers on his neatly-clipped silver hair.
Placing a forearm on each of his spread-apart knees and folding his hands together in between, Oliver leans forward and starts talking.
“It all began when Wyatt was about fifteen years old. I invited him to stay the weekend here in Eastfield because my friend Jackson Andrews had witnessed an unexplained phenomenon. He’s the pastor of the Unitarian church and on several occasions Jackson had heard whimpering in the hallway, near the back door of the church, late at night. Every time he went to check it out, no one was there.”
“Did Jackson think his church was haunted?”
“Yes. He thought it might be. He called me because he knew that Wyatt and I shared an interest in the paranormal And he knew I was familiar with the history of the church. He thought there might be a legend or a ghost story. I asked Wyatt to help me investigate and we went over there together. That night we experienced something unusual.”
“What?”
“At about ten o’clock, Jackson, Wyatt and I crept into the church hallway, using only a flashlight to guide us. Jackson heard again what he’d heard on several other occasions: a woman crying softly. I heard her too, but only Wyatt could see her. She was a young girl, a bride. Her long lace veil was folded back, revealing her beautiful face. As Wyatt watched, she wept into a white linen handkerchief embroidered with blue morning glories and the initials M. C. M. Before she faded away, she turned her face and looked directly at him.”
Goosebumps crawl across my scalp. “Then what happened?”
“As Wyatt stared, the girl’s quiet weeping turned to loud sobs. She covered her face. Her shoulders heaved. Soon she grew soaked through to the skin. The hem of her dress was dripping onto the stone floor of the church. Jackson and I couldn’t see the apparition, but we watched a puddle spread across the floor until it touched the tips of our shoes. Then the water receded and disappeared. And so did she.”
“What were you able to find out?”
“We did some research on wedding fashions and Wyatt’s description of the bride’s clothing helped us estimate a date. Then I looked through the archives of some local newspapers and read all of the engagement announcements from the most likely years. We found initials that matched those on the handkerchief and an engagement photograph of the young woman. Wyatt identified her as the ghost in the church. Further research revealed that she never married the young man to whom she was engaged.”
“Who was she?”
“Her name was Mariah Catherine Marshall. She was supposed to marry Colin Lynch III on June twenty-first in 1942, in the Unitarian Church here in Eastfield. The wedding never took place. We couldn’t find any record of the marriage in the church registers or at town hall, but I did find her obituary and a record of her death certificate. Two days after her scheduled wedding date Mariah’s body was found in a pond, in the woods behind the church, face down, wearing her bridal dress and veil.”
“Was her death accidental?”
“At first it was difficult to get any information about the drowning. There are direct descendants from the Lynch family still living in Eastfield, but no one would talk to us. Finally, we found Mariah’s sister, Serena, though, and she told us the whole story. Serena was twenty-one years old at the time of her sister’s death, a year younger than Mariah. She’s in her eighties now. According to her, about a week before the wedding, after a three-year engagement to his childhood sweetheart, Colin broke it off. He’d met someone else. And she wasn’t from a respected New England family. Colin Lynch’s new paramour was a professional dancer; from Paris.”
“Mariah was heartbroken.”
“Most definitely. It turns out that young Colin was quite a partier. He met a French beauty in a nightclub and married her a few days later, in Mexico. When Mariah heard the news, she put on her wedding dress and veil. She didn’t even leave a note. She simply took a long walk through the woods and never returned. A search party found her the next day, floating face down, in Langwater Pond, about a mile from the church.”
In spite of my annoyance at being kept in the dark about all this, I can’t keep the enthusiasm out of my voice because I can’t wait to hear more.
“Were there more incidents?”
“Yes, the most recent was just a few months ago. It happened in New Hampshire. This summer, when Wyatt was training for soccer, he was running through an old burial ground adjoining his mother’s property.”
“Go on.”
“One calm, sunny day, Wyatt was jogging through the graveyard, slowing down because he was almost home. Suddenly, a wind whipped up, propelling leaves and dirt into his face. Blowing in a circular pattern, all around him, the wind formed a small tornado called a dirt devil. He blinked the grit out of his eyes, spit it out of his mouth and sprinted for home. When he glanced back over his shoulder, he saw a five foot-tall funnel of swirling leaves and dirt a few feet behind him. As he peered at the rapidly moving debris, he saw two pale arms. And then above the arms, the transparent outline of a woman’s face. Gradually the dirt devil died down and collapsed into a pile of crumbled leaves and soil. The real problems began that night.”
“What kinds of problems?”
“Similar to your experience, Annabelle—the ghost followed him back to his house, which is highly unusual. However, unlike your ghost, she couldn’t get inside. We think she must have died near my sister Rowena’s house. Maybe in the street out front, in a car accident. People drive pretty fast down those back roads in New Hampshire. And she’s probably buried in the nearby graveyard, the one Wyatt was jogging through when he saw her. But your ghost is even more powerful than she is. He follows you everywhere, inside, outside, miles away from Wild Wood, where you found him, where he probably died.”
This pronouncement makes me shiver with fear, despite the blazing fire and the dog’s warm body beside me. But even though I’m scared, I want to know more. “What else happened?”
“After leaving the cemetery, Wyatt never saw the strange apparition again. However, he heard her. She wouldn’t leave him alone. Screaming and wailing outside his bedroom window, she begged to be invited inside. But he wouldn’t let her in.”
“Thank goodness.” I glance over to where Wyatt’s sprawled in the chair by the fire; pale and exhausted.
“Every night, when Wyatt went up to his room, that thing clawed and banged at his windows. Her piercing wails seemed like they might shatter the glass. She shook the house with her horrible shrieks. Wyatt couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t even think. The relentless demon gave him no peace.”
“I believe you.” Oliver’s story is so strange that it must be true. He couldn’t be making this up.
“Wyatt’s mother, my sister Rowena, didn’t believe him. She never heard any of the noises. She thought Wyatt was hallucinating. She had him tested for drugs. The tests, of course, came back negative. She brought him to a psychiatrist who wanted him to take antipsychotic medication. They wanted to hospitalize Wyatt in a residential facility, on a locked floor.”
“But she didn’t do that.” I keep looking over at Wyatt, who has dozed off in the middle of this incredible tale.
“No, because Wyatt called me and I jumped in the car and rushed to New Hampshire. The whole experience was causing a huge rift between him and Rowena. They were fighting and arguing constantly. I didn’t think I could solve the problem alone, so I brought Nathaniel along.”
�
��Who ya gonna call?” Nathaniel smiles.
Oliver ignores him and goes back to telling his story. “I thought maybe Nathaniel could help us banish the ghost. When we arrived, though, I realized that if I told Rowena about Nathaniel being a medium it would hurt our chances of helping Wyatt. She doesn’t believe in ghosts. She would close her mind and not listen. So Nathaniel played the role of a good friend who was merely offering support.”
“How did you two save Wyatt from getting locked up in the mental hospital?”
“That was tough. Rowena insisted that Wyatt needed psychiatric treatment. We had to get him away from her fast. We downplayed the whole ghost angle and went with a different strategy. Our paranormal situation had to take a back seat to rescuing Wyatt before his mother could lock him away.”
“What did you do?”
“Nathaniel and I convinced Rowena to let Wyatt move in with me. We talked her into believing that a change of location would do him good. I promised her that my friend Jackson Andrews would counsel him. Jackson’s not only a Unitarian minister; he’s also a practicing psychologist. She agreed.”
“What about the ghost?”
“We weren’t able to discover anything about her. My sister refuses to believe that Wyatt can communicate with spirits. So we had to be very careful. Maybe one day we can go back to New Hampshire and find out what was really going on, but solving the mystery had to come second to rescuing Wyatt.”
“So Wyatt’s mother agreed to let him go.”
“Yes, Rowena finally folded and let Wyatt come to Eastfield. She was dating someone new and I think she didn’t want him to find out about her ‘unusual’ son. She decided that a son who lives with his uncle sounds preferable to a son who’s locked up in a psychiatric hospital. Nathaniel and I helped Wyatt pack up his car and the three of us headed back to Eastfield. Fast.”
“Where he met me and my ghost.”
The expression on Oliver’s face grows even more serious. “Wyatt’s experience with you changes everything. This is the first time he’s seen a ghost that was able to follow a person everywhere. Usually, a spirit haunts the place where it’s buried or the scene of its death. On rare occasions, it can follow someone, but this can’t happen unless the spirit and the person he’s haunting had a close emotional connection when it was alive. Your ghost breaks all the rules. Annabelle, he attached himself to you, traveled miles away from the scene of his death and he’s still with you. He has no boundaries.”
Enter If You Dare Page 7
