If you aren’t familiar with it, Twelfth Night is an old medieval celebration, popular in Europe, but perhaps best known to us because of Shakespeare’s play and therefore people tend to think of it as being Elizabethan. I tried to honor it by following the general outlines of the traditional celebration. Of course, the only thing authentically Elizabethan in the house was the menu I had cooked and the music I had downloaded. The costumes and decorations tended toward the Victorian and even Edwardian eras because that was what people had available in their attics. I thoroughly approved of the anachronism. Elizabethan fashions were uncomfortable and would have looked ridiculous on my guests—especially the ones who had traveled by boat in the sleet, though Everett and Bryson had likely changed when they got to the island. Everett was staying with Mary and Bryson was bunking with Ben. That was good because even through the thickness of the walls I could hear and feel the gale that was blowing. The brothers often went out in bad weather, but this sounded particularly nasty. And there is an old saying—The Ravenous sea, in winter takes three. Unless a Wendover is in residence, but the Wendover blood had to be getting pretty thin. I hadn’t even the cloak of the family name. If I were them, I wouldn’t be running any unnecessary risks on a night like that one.
This wasn’t a new idea of course, that my family could protect sailors and fishermen. It was why we had been all but marooned on the island. The natives, and later Europeans put wise by the local tribe, would stop at Little Goose and leave a coin or a fish or some other offering on the low side of the island as a bribe to the local water deity once winter came. Those who didn’t were said to have met with ill winds and violent seas. Sometimes phantom lights would lure ships onto the rocks of the islands, and on stormy nights, especially in December, voices could be heard screaming in the waves. All scary stuff if you were a fisherman. Or smuggler. I have wondered, since reading about this tradition, if my ancestors collected these gifts and used them to live on. It seems doubtful that anyone else would take the offerings because the penalties for abstraction from the island were great and my thrifty ancestors would hardly have let anything go to waste. Life back then was too hard.
Everyone’s life has barricades, of course. The trick is learning to detour around them. Darwin thought of it as adapt or die. My adaptation to island life was to have the house electrified.
We weren’t using the electric lights that night though. It would not have been appropriate given that we were gathered to talk about spirits and they do not care for artificial light. Firelight and candles were the order of the evening and Jack, being closest, didn’t mind refueling the fire from the cache of logs on the hearth. The flames danced merrily in the chimney currents, glowing intensely in the twilight of the room as the wind touched them. I think we were all grateful for the heat and cheery glow. Though I had lit thirty odd candles, they couldn’t push back the dark entirely. The corners remained shadowed, losing substance every time the fire died down. This gloom wasn’t unusual in January but by darkfall the clouds were as thick and tight as a shroud, winding tighter in the cyclonic current that went round and round the island. The weather might have been ordered up for a horror movie and I felt watched, as if the ghost were poised for some action.
Softly, in the background, there was the ticktock of the mantle clock. I don’t much care for the sound of ticking, the measured parsing of passing minutes, but I was fond of this clock because of its beauty and because that night I wanted to know when we reached the midnight hour. If the ghost was going to show herself, I thought it would be then.
It was probably no surprise that I was filled with foreboding as we waited, and it made the fire and the human company all the more welcome.
Jack lifted his glass to me when I glanced his way. He had won the honor of being the Lord of Misrule by finding the tiny crown baked in the king cake—a sort of egg bread that we had started the meal with. I smiled back, trying to look natural. He was probably wondering why I had chosen ghost stories over dancing—though how anyone could dance after eating that kind of meal I couldn’t even guess.
“… and his spirit still walks because the coffin was too short for the body and he can find no rest,” Ben finished.
We all clapped politely, though I had lost the gist of the tale of the coffin-maker’s apprentice.
There was a long silence at the table when Ben was done. No one seemed inclined to follow up. I glanced at the clock. It was still early but I decided that I could begin anyway. I was getting ready to speak up about my ghost when Harris cleared his throat.
Chapter 2
“Well, since we’re telling scary stories, I had an odd thing happen once. It was years ago, near Christmas, when I decided to forego a trip back home and instead drove to Boston to see my girlfriend. Partly I went because I missed my girl, but I also rebelled about coming home because I was letting my hair grow long and I knew my father would have a fit and insist my mother cut it. And frankly, I’d have sooner stuck my head under a buzz saw then my mother’s dull shears. Bless her for her many virtues, but barber was not one of them.”
All of us stared. If anyone had told me that Harris would be the next person to share a ghost story I would have bet against them. It isn’t because Harris doesn’t believe in ghosts—it’s that he doesn’t want anyone else to know he believes in them. I was also staring because I simply couldn’t imagine Harris with long hair, having a girlfriend, or being rebellious.
“The weather was as bad as you can imagine, and the weathermen warned that more was coming, but I was young, in love, and not to be deterred by a blizzard or two. Ayuh, I was once that numb.”
His smile was self-deprecating, but I knew he was feeling something strong because Harris only lapses into Maine-speak when he is distressed.
“It was fine in the daylight though the snow just kept falling, but night was different. Night is always different.” He glanced at the window and I wondered if he had noticed the darker patch of shadows growing out there in the wet evening. “I’d made good time, crossed into Massachusetts and was down the highway apiece, thinking I could make it to Clara’s by morning if I pressed on. People were hurrying, impatient trying to get where they were going with their fruitcakes and presents. There’d been some skids, some slides, and even minor fender-bending, but the worst was avoided for most of the day because the snowplows were there. But then I had to detour because of a dairy truck overturned on the road and it stopped the snowplows on the opposite side of the road with no way through.
“I could have waited for the wreck to be cleared, but I was impatient and cold. Soon I found myself on a rather lonely stretch of byway. It was dark and ill kempt, choked on either side with thick brush, and after a mile or two I couldn’t even see the freeway lights. I’m not a fanciful person, but it seemed like the whole world had just up and disappeared, like the Rapture had come and left me behind.
“My windscreen kept fogging so I had my window open a crack and was moving slow because of the snow. The wind was rattling around a bit but I think there may have been some kind of hungry crittahs in those woods too. I surely had the feeling that I was being watched by something unfriendly, and after a while it was getting to be all cold sweats and white knuckles. My body was one giant ache from all the clenching and staring, but there was nowhere to stop the cah.
“I really needed to eat. My last meal had been a large coffee at a gas station and that was hours ago. And, I’ll admit, I was feeling more guilty with every mile and it was preying on my mind. You are supposed to go home at Christmas, not out chasing girls.
“Finally, in the distance I could see some tiny lights and it seemed a sign that perhaps I should turn off for the night. But just then I noticed a woman sitting at the side of the road on a large, flat boulder that was covered in snow. She was wearing a white party dress and had only a small jacket, the kind.…” He made a gesture suggesting that it had only come part way down her ribs.
“A shrug,” I suggested. “Or bolero.”<
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“Well, it wasn’t warm enough, that’s for certain—just silk and beads. Nor were her satin slippers the least protection. Later I wondered about her wearing that corsage—gardenias. They’re summer flowers. The smell stuck with me for days even after I convinced myself that I was just tired that night and dreamed up the whole thing.”
Ben’s hand twitched and I knew that he was wishing for a pen and paper. This kind of story was meat and drink to him.
“Of course I stopped the car and leaned across to roll down the window. I asked her if she wanted a ride. She smiled quite sweetly but said nothing, and I found myself getting out of the car and opening the door for her. I know that sounds crazy—but she seemed to expect it so….”
Harris trailed off and then shrugged off his act of misplaced gallantry.
“She had no snow on her clothes, but I got out the car blanket and put it over her. She was as cold as the wind outside and I worried that she had frostbite or maybe hypothermia because she was so quiet and pale. The heater was already on high, so all that was left was to find her some shelter.
“The road was narrow, sloping, and dangerous because of the ice, and needed all my attention, but I found it hard to take my eyes away from her face. It was beautiful, but so white and so sad. I asked her name again. The heater was loud but I thought she said Candy.
“I asked where she was heading and she pointed at those lights I had seen in the woods, which was a relief. The snowplow hadn’t been out that way all day and even with snow tires it was getting hard to move. And the cold was thick by then, an invisible fog that began to leach the heat from my body in spite of my coat and gloves. My breath turned white and the heater began to wheeze as it labored. But if the girl breathed even once, I couldn’t see it.
“Finally there was a turnoff from the road and I was purely relieved to see that house with its lights. I was shaking real bad by then and feeling gawmy. I pulled close to the side door where there was a path through the snow. A porch light came on. I got out of the car and came round to the passenger side to help the girl out….” Harris swallowed. “But she was gone.”
There was a collective exhale though I think we had all seen it coming.
“I wasn’t in my right mind anymore. I tried to tell the old woman who came out to the stoop that there had been a girl with me, and she kept saying, I know, I know, and urging me to come inside. I wanted to look for Candy but there were no footprints to follow. No footprints at all. That unpleasant fact finally soaked into my frozen brain and I let the old woman guide me inside.
“The old woman was Stella Caine, and after she had wrapped me up and got some tea and soup in me she told me about Candy Happ. The people that owned the house before Mrs. Caine had had a daughter who liked to sneak out nights to go dancing down in Hoffman. One night she had been out, waiting by the side of the road for a friend to pick her up, when a drunk swerved too close and hit her. Killed her instantly. Turns out I wasn’t the first person who had seen Candy by the road and not the first to give her a lift either. There’s been a half dozen of us over the years trying—always in December—to bring the girl home.
“By then I wasn’t cold anymore, but Mrs. Caine insisted on giving me a bed for the night. I figured that I might as well since the freeway wouldn’t get plowed until morning and I was flat-out beat.
“I had some nerves climbing into bed that night, thinking that Candy might come back again, but she never did. I felt horrible about her dying so young, that death had given in to anticipation and steered that drunk her way when she was little more than a child. But I was also damned glad to get on the road the next morning and not see any girl sitting there by the side of the road, waiting for a ride.”
There was sighing, some throat clearing and slumping back in chairs as he had quit speaking. This story had gotten a little closer to home than Ben’s had and I was glad that he had spoken up.
“Well, if we’re going to get personal,” Ben said, “then I’ve another story for you. It’s nothing so sensational as a spectral hitchhiker, but it’s stuck with me through the years. This was a decade back. I’d been touring the battlefields of Scotland and giving myself a cauld gru with all the old bloody tales of battlefield ghosts. Culloden especially made me shivery, thinking of how many had died there. But I wrapped up my research and put all that behind me—I thought—and headed south for a small village called Little Brick Hill in England. I had a friend there who lived in an old rectory that abutted a cemetery with tombs going back to the reign of Henry VIII. The church was built by Catholics but had been spared the desecration and looting that happened under Henry when he broke with Rome. But though the building stood, many of the graves around it had victims of the religious purges under fat Henry and then a bunch more from the civil war that was part two of the religious mania that happened to that country. The church and cemetery are supposed to be haunted and especially active at the time of the full moon and in December—again December—when the innocent victims of the more murderous crimes are thought to walk within the church that should have offered them sanctuary but instead proved their prison.
“Maybe I was in a suggestive state—hell, I was definitely in a suggestive state after a month of investigating Scottish castles and battlefields and talking with people who absolutely believed in troubled spirits reliving the trials of their mortal state. In fact I wrote a book about it under a pen name, Infernall Apparitions and Noyses, which is popular overseas. But I think what happened in England was real enough and circumstantial evidence of some kind of survival, some lingering emotional imprint on the ground where someone lost their life. Not a ghost exactly, not an intact personality, just a last bit of something that lingered in the air. It wasn’t a cavalier or a roundhead that I ran into though. And it wasn’t in the churchyard where you’d expect to find a ghost. It was down in the rectory’s basement.”
It was Ben’s turn to pour out some wine. Telling stories seemed to bring on a thirst.
“My friend was elderly and had arthritic knees. Unfortunately, he had his best wine laid down in the basement and it fell to me to go down and get it. He gave me detailed directions, but I guess I went left when I should have gone right and got a little lost. The basement was a marvel though, built on old Roman ruins. It was a bit labyrinthine and the floor was covered with dirt and debris so I couldn’t see the paving stones that might have marked the way. Every room looked like every other. And because of the accumulation of dirt that had raised the floor level, the Roman arches were consequently very low, and I had to bend about double to pass from one room to another. I wanted to come back down there with my camera and photograph everything the next day.
“The light from the one electric bulb at the base of the stairs was hardly adequate, but I was depending on it because there were no external windows. The place was closer to a dungeon than any basement we have here. So it figures, doesn’t it, that the lights would go out when I was in the deepest, oldest part?”
Yes indeed.
“I was startled, but not panicked, when it went dark. I called up to my friend hoping he would hear me since I had left the door to the basement open. But almost at once the door closed. It was heavy, solid wood and the thunk was audible when it latched. I couldn’t help thinking that the air around me was dead, still, very grave-like.
“That was when I began to get frightened. There were matches in my pocket and I began to fumble for them when I had an overwhelming feeling that I was not alone. Something was watching me—something suspicious and hostile. I peered into the dark and let me tell you I have never looked at anything so hard. Eventually I saw a pale shape—an outline—of a man in Roman dress. I think he was a sentinel, maybe standing watch. I could only see him from the knees up, of course, since he stood at ground level in his time. He had a kind of pike and a sword and he was staring in my direction. I couldn’t see his face but his head kept turning and I was sure he knew I was there and was getting ready to challenge me.
“The door was a larger problem because it had gotten jammed, but my friend found a crowbar thing he called a spanner and eventually we got the damned thing open by popping the hinges. I made him stay at the top of the stairs while I gathered up as many bottles as I could carry. No way was I making a second trip down to get more wine. I never made it back down to take pictures either. Just couldn’t talk myself into it. I asked my friend about ghost stories but he denied any knowledge of ghosts in the basement.
“Anyhow, I can’t prove any of it happened—I heard nothing, no phantom footsteps, icy touches, or ghostly wailing. Really didn’t see much either. It was all just impressions. Sure it was terribly cold down there, but the basement was naturally cold. It was just a feeling and I could have hallucinated all of it because I was frightened and in a ripe state of mind. But whatever it was that happened, it scared the bejesus out of me and I’ve never written about it.”
“A hostile centurion would scare the hell out of me,” Bryson said.
Jack nodded.
There was a whining noise that I realized was coming from Brandy. I looked at her, startled. We all looked, at first puzzled and then alarmed by her pallor.
“I saw a ghost once and it wasn’t like in your stories. It wasn’t so normal, so safe. Ghosts can hurt you,” Brandy announced breathlessly. For once she sounded frightened and not like she was faking Marilyn Monroe to be sexy. Her eyes were big and owl-like and she didn’t blink for several seconds, making me think of the glass eyes used in taxidermy. I had a cupboard full of heads upstairs and hated looking at them—and them looking at me. The flickering candles heightened the effect and I had an impulse to turn on the electric lights.
Twelfth Night (A Wendover House Mystery Book 2) Page 3
