by Hazel Holmes
Yet the family continued to glow brighter until there was a big pop of light. As the speeches wrapped up, four colorful butterflies flew over the mourners. Everyone looked up at the same time. No one said it out loud, but everyone felt the sense of peace that followed.
56
Ezra couldn’t sleep that night. It wasn’t too unusual. Trouble sleeping had become commonplace for the couple after that fight for their lives. Tonight was particularly difficult though. So much had changed, and the house felt emptier without the spirits. Even though they didn’t see them all the time before, they knew they were there. Now, it was too quiet. Everything felt off. It’d take some getting used to. It would take time.
He went into the kitchen and warmed up a couple of the chocolate chip cookies Nathaniel left for them, then made up a cup of lavender tea. It had become a frequent part of his nights, waking up to a snack and some sort of warm drink to ease his mind back to sleep. Slowly, they were healing. It simply took patience and the willingness to do what they could in the meantime to smooth out the rough edges.
He took his treats into the living room to sit by the fireplace. The flames were usually enough to scare the nightmares away. This night though, the nightmare came to life. Ezra paused as he stared at the figure leaning against the stones.
An old panic set in, but with one deep breath, he sent it away. He wasn’t a scared little kid anymore, nor was he an insecure young man. Ezra had grown since he’d seen his father last. He was no longer scared of him. He didn’t care what he had to say. His father pushed himself off the wall and stood before his son.
“If you’re here to gloat, don’t bother,” Ezra said. His tone was calm and confident, not bitter like he worried it might be. “I know I made a mistake in allowing us to come so close to our deaths, but Clara and I solved a murder mystery together. We helped free spirits much like your own, and we’ve made this place our own.
“I know this isn’t the path you wanted me to go down, but it is the right path for me. I love it here. I love my life now. I’m proud of the dream I created, even if you’ll never be proud of me.”
“No need to be so defensive,” his father scoffed. “You did make a mistake in risking yourself and your family like that. I warned you to be careful and you didn’t listen. You and Clara almost joined me in the afterlife far too soon. That would’ve been a shame because look how far you’ve come.”
That caught Ezra off-guard. It almost sounded like a compliment. He waited for his father to come back with something that would twist it into an insult.
“It’s not the kind of dream I would want for myself,” he continued. “It’s not the future I envisioned for you. But it’s a good future, I see that now. You’ve built a good life for yourself and you seem happy. Clara seems happy. You protected her when she needed it most. You protected each other. It’s not the roles I’m used to, but it worked out for you.
“I guess… I guess seeing you in your everyday life taught me something, when I didn’t realize I had something to learn. I don’t agree with many of the things you do, but I do see how you and Clara make a great team. I see how important her happiness is to you, and I admire the fact that you are able to make her so happy. That’s what life is all about. That’s what I always tried to do for your mother.”
He paused and Ezra saw the sadness in his father’s eyes. His walls were lower than Ezra had ever seen them. In that moment, he got a glimpse of his father’s vulnerability. In that moment, this man who had grown distant from him felt like his father again.
“I miss her so much,” his father said, an unmistakable pain in his words. “There’s nothing I want more than to be with her again. But I guess I have some things to do here first. I’m starting to see what those things are. I was angry at first, furious I didn’t leave this earth and join her right away. Now I’m glad I get the chance to tie up these loose ends. To make things right.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is…” he looked at Ezra with nothing but love in his eyes. “I’m proud of you, son and I… I love you.”
His father stepped forward and solidified for a moment. For just a moment his body was almost living again, held together by all the things he never said and all the things he shouldn’t have said.
Before Ezra could even begin to process what was happening, his father’s arms were around him. They hugged for the first time in forever. It was everything Ezra didn’t know he needed. Everything he ever wanted from his father. He felt loved, accepted, appreciated, and cared for in that moment.
That moment said all the words they could never say. It was every apology, every forgiveness, every moment lost under emotions they couldn’t deal with.
“I love you too, Dad,” Ezra said as his father burst into light. “Say hi to Mom for me.”
Ezra lit a fire in the fireplace, ate his cookies, and drank his tea. Then, he went upstairs and held Clara tight. Finally, they could truly move on with their lives.
The Haunting of Bell Mansion
57
Late-eighteenth-century paintings hung from sagging walls with chipped paint. The tarnished gold frames were a perfect match for the generations of stern, shrewd men and women they held.
Dusty shelves scattered among the pictures acted as mantels for old brass candlestick holders. Long strands of dried wax ran down each candle, all of them burned down to nubs, though none of them had been lit in years.
Moonlight drifted through the dirty glass windows at each end of the third-floor hallway, providing just enough illumination for the furniture to cast long shadows across the ceiling, floors, and walls.
The innards of the eighteenth-century estate groaned from nearly two centuries of shielding Allister Bell’s descendants from the brutal northeastern winters. But while the walls kept the weather out, they also made sure to keep evil locked inside.
A scream echoed from a room down the hall, and the door was flung open in a rush, interrupting the mansion’s practiced silence.
Maggie Wallace stumbled over her feet, the long black skirt tangling her legs that wobbled along a serpentine path toward the staircase. She burst into the stairwell, pausing for a moment in the doorway and turning back toward the room she’d just escaped, her figure silhouetted by moonlight.
Sweat clung to Maggie’s forehead, her bangs breaking free from the white lace of her mob cap. She was still dressed in her maid attire, but the white of her apron was stained with blood.
The darkened hall behind her was still, the only noise and movement coming from her quick, hysterical breaths. Her gaze fell upon one of the portraits, and a pair of dead, beady eyes returned an accusing glare.
Maggie broke eye contact and tiptoed down the tight spiral staircase, hands shaking as she grabbed the splintered railing. Each step down cast her further into darkness but also closer to freedom. She tilted her head up, the moonlight shining through the window at the top of the stairs fading with her descent.
When Maggie reached the second floor, she froze in mid-step after she heard the slow groan from a door on one of the upper floors. She held her breath and white-knuckled the railing, trembling as she waited for the inevitable footsteps to follow. But none came.
Maggie resumed her descent, hastening her pace as she neared the bottom, and then leapt the last few steps. She landed hard on the balls of her feet, and the momentum from the lunge tumbled her forward onto her hands and knees, breaking the stealth of her escape.
Heavy boot steps thundered above, and Maggie scrambled to her feet. The long skirt of her uniform tangled her legs as she attempted to get up and lunge toward the door.
Maggie turned the knob hard, throwing her weight behind the push as she continued her sprint toward freedom. The footsteps that chased her triggered panic, and an involuntary scream crawled out of her like the evil trying to escape this place—the same evil that was trying to kill her.
Intricate glass carvings of the family’s crest lined the windows framed in the large double doors, b
reaking up the moonlight. Unlike the rest of the windows in the house, those had been meticulously cleaned, and it had been Maggie who’d done it.
Maggie grabbed the polished brass handle, but the door remained locked.
“No.” The defeated whisper left Maggie’s lips, which were distorted into a frown. “No!” She pounded against the glass and then turned away from the door, searching for another way out.
The house itself was a maze. Maggie had lived here for the past month, and she still hadn’t seen all of the rooms. She tried to drown out the heavy footfalls growing louder and closer, thinking of another way out. She gasped and popped her eyes open. The drawing room, she remembered. It was in the east wing, and she’d seen that one of the windows had a broken latch.
Just before Maggie reached the drawing room, she glanced down the hall to find the darkened figure of her attacker. Her heart skipped a beat, and she burst into the room. With her eyes already locked on the window to freedom, she tripped over the edge of the rug in the room’s center. She caught her balance on the coffee table and wove around the vintage desks and chairs.
Maggie thumped against the glass, fumbling to keep her fingers still beneath the window’s sill. She pushed upward, but the window moved only an inch before the worn tracks stopped the motion.
“C’mon!” She pounded the window frame’s sides, trying to loosen the track’s hold, then managed to open it halfway, where she was greeted with a blast of frigid night air.
Maggie thrust her head outside, and a pair of hands grabbed at her waist.
“No!” Maggie screamed and latched onto the window’s frame, her grip weakening as the attacker pulled. One finger was plucked loose, then another, as her bloodcurdling cries echoed through the night air. “HELP ME!”
The muscles along her arms burned with fatigue as she clung to the last bit of hope that someone would hear her in the town below.
One last forceful tug sucked Maggie back into the room, where she landed hard on the floor, and the window was quickly slammed shut.
Maggie scooted backward along the dusty floor, crying on her retreat.
“I’m sorry. I know I broke the rules. I shouldn’t have been snooping around.” Her tears mixed with the sweat and dust on her cheeks, offering the illusion that she was crying black tar. “I won’t tell anyone what I found. I promise.”
The man turned, silhouetted in moonlight, his facial features indistinguishable. He stepped toward her, tracking dirt from his boots, the laces untied and dangling precariously to the sides.
Maggie shuddered when she backed into a chair, and she turned her face away, shutting her eyes as the man neared. The tickle of his hot breath against her neck transformed her skin into gooseflesh. He sniffed and then wrapped his rough, leather-gloved hands around her neck.
“Please,” Maggie said, choking as he squeezed.
The pressure eased, but then he quickly lifted Maggie off the floor and slung her over his shoulder.
“NO!” Maggie fought, impotently smacking her fists against his back, as she was carried swiftly to the fifth floor. “STOP!”
Blood rushed to her head, triggering a dull throb through her skull, her view limited to the floor and lower portions of the walls they passed.
The higher they ascended, the dirtier their surroundings became. Thick layers of dust covered the floors, walls, and furniture. Cobwebs filled the space between the paintings on the wall and the ceiling. Wide cracks separated the floorboards, the blackened empty spaces between them traveling like fault lines.
The attacker opened a door at the end of the fifth-floor hall and heaved Maggie through it. She thumped against the floor, triggering a plume of dust. She coughed and lifted her head in time to watch the door slam shut, followed by the heavy turn of a lock.
Maggie crawled to the door. “No.” Still on her knees, she wiggled the knob and then beat her fists against the door. “Let me out!”
But with her pleas ignored, Maggie spun around, sobbing, and pressed her back to the door.
The room was colder than the rest of the house, and Maggie rubbed her arms, her bare palms sliding quickly over the long sleeves of her uniform. She let the tears run their course then regained control of her breathing and pushed herself off the floor. Shivering, she walked to the room’s only window and pressed her nose against the dirty glass.
Five stories separated Maggie from freedom, and the ground below was nothing but concrete. She looked to the left and right, hoping to see a ledge that she might be able to climb onto, but found nothing.
Maggie turned away from the window, examining the rest of the room. There was a four-post king-sized bed, neatly made, though the sheets had been permanently greyed with dust and neglect.
Time had frozen the room upon the previous occupant’ death, their belongings trapped and forgotten. She was standing in a mausoleum.
Distracted by her own thoughts, she didn’t hear the groaning of the closet hinges, and when the doorknob knocked against the adjacent wall, Maggie jumped.
The open door exposed the sleeves of a few ratty jackets near the front, but the back of the closet was concealed in darkness.
Maggie stared into the void, and the hairs on her arms stood up, and little pins pricked the base of her skull, triggering a tingling sensation down her spine. She tried to avert her gaze, but she couldn’t.
The darkness in the closet crawled forward, spreading into the room. Maggie retreated, watching it cover the floor, the bed, the dresser, moving closer to her. She shuddered when her back pressed against the window.
Maggie shut her eyes, fists clenched, as a numbing cold soaked through her clothes and into her skin. Her heart rate slowed, and the blood in her veins transformed into a thick slush like the dirty ice found on the side of the road a few days after a snow storm.
It spread to her fingers and toes, her skin turning a light shade of blue as her nails frosted over. It numbed her tongue, silencing her screams of pain as it crept into her brain and shoved her consciousness into the corner of her own mind. She watched helplessly as it took control of her body and turned her to face the window.
Unprovoked, Maggie unlocked the window’s latch, pushed it open. She placed her palms against the windowsill and climbed on top of it. She pushed herself up and onto the window’s ledge, her toes dangling over the side. She stared into the quiet night of the sky, but never looked down.
Maggie closed her eyes and smiled as a falsetto voice whispered, “You’re one step away. One step from the freedom you seek.”
“Yes,” Maggie whispered to herself. “I want to be free.”
The cold that consumed her awoke memories of summers during high school, the wild nights with friends, boys, and the thrill of adventure. The cold connected those thoughts with the idea of falling, and the nostalgia offered the final push over the edge.
Maggie leaned forward, falling slowly at first, still smiling. But past the point of no return, she opened her eyes, the smile gone as the ground rushed at her. She screamed, the bloodcurdling elation of fear reaching a crescendo that ended with the heavy splat of her body against the concrete.
58
The inside of the semi truck’s cab was littered with fast-food wrappers and crushed beer cans. Any time Sarah moved her feet, the trash would shuffle and draw the attention of the truck driver who had picked her up outside of Springfield, Massachusetts. She didn’t like his stare. She’d seen it all her life from men like him.
It was the dead gaze of hunger, a longing to satisfy his sexual appetite by way of the cute little blonde. But despite the driver’s hungry eyes, he didn’t touch her. And for a girl in her position, it was the best that she could have hoped for.
Sarah had dressed for the cold, but her wardrobe was limited. She wore a grey beanie that concealed most of her short blond hair, and a matching colored scarf that swallowed her neck. Jeans, boots, and a thick Carhartt jacket that was two sizes too big rounded out the rest of her attire. She rarely found cloth
es that fit, her petite frame always swallowed up in even the smallest sizes.
The rest of her belongings were zipped up in her backpack, which she kept on her lap, both arms wrapped around it. When you barely had anything left, you made sure to keep it close.
The cab’s windows were dirty and frosted over from the cold, which offered her blue eyes a distorted view of the scenic country roads. Fall was nearly done, and those colorful leaves that so many flocked to watch change in the northern parts of Maine had fallen and turned black along the roadside as the country teetered on the cusp of winter.
However, Sarah hadn’t come all this way for the changing seasons. It wasn’t a luxury she could afford even if she wanted too. All she wanted was to keep moving, but when the truck started to slow down, she knew that she was running out of space.
The inside of the cab rumbled as the driver pulled off the road, and then the brakes on the eighteen-wheeler squealed all the way to a stop.
“Well, here ya go.” The trucker grunted as he shifted the big stick into neutral. His stomach pressed against the steering wheel even when he was leaned all the way back. He gestured to the welcome sign outside of Bell, Maine. Population: one hundred twelve. “This is the last stop before the Canadian border.”
Sarah leaned her face closer to the window until she felt the chill coming off the glass. She didn’t want to stop here. But with no passport, this was the end of the line.
“Do you have family here? Someone that you can stay with?” The trucker scratched his beard and then pushed his baseball cap higher on his head, exposing his receding hairline. He squinted at Sarah’s silence. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Thanks for the ride.” Sarah opened the door, slid off the seat, and landed onto the asphalt. She heaved the door closed without a goodbye, slid her arms through the straps of her backpack, and skirted the shoulder of the two-lane road into town.
