The way her voice softens and trails off, the way her eyes look so sad, I realize the truth. Mama found Aunt Willa dead in the creek.
“I’m so sorry.” I give her hand another squeeze. “That must have been terrible for you.”
Tears wash down her face as she meets my eyes. “She was face down in the water. If I’d gotten there a little sooner…”
“There was probably nothing you could have done, Mama, even if you did get out there sooner.”
But I can see in Mama’s eyes that she’s thinking the same thing I’m wondering in the back of my head. “I told them about the arguing.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “What if she didn’t have a heart attack, Ava? What if…”
“Who did you tell?”
She gets up as if she can’t sit still a minute longer and paces to the sink. There, she begins washing out a dirty glass. “The police promised to look into it. But since I didn’t hear anyone else or see who it might have been, they’re not concerned about it. Everyone loved your aunt, so maybe they’re right. Who knows? Willa Rae often talked to herself. Maybe there wasn’t someone else there.”
Conflicting emotions war inside my heart. Snatches of the letter float through my brain.
Danger is afoot.
Oh, Aunt Willa. What happened?
It’s nearly sunrise before I get the reporters to leave and soothe Mama enough to get her to bed. Doc has prescribed some gentle sleep meds for her, and once those kick in, I know there’s not much else I can do.
I gather up the cats, and we head to Aunt Willa’s.
Chapter Three
A sticky gloom wraps Aunt Willa’s house like a blanket, as if the life of the three-thousand-square-foot mansion died when she did.
I park at the curb. The front porch and grounds showcase her flamboyant decorating skills, covered in pumpkins in all shapes and sizes. Mums in burgundy, orange, and white add pops of color, surrounded by gathered and tethered corn stalks.
The lawn, bleached by the hoar frost, is enclosed with a black wrought iron fence, a fleur de lis on the top of each waist-high spike. A miniature wagon sits in the front yard, kissed with frost, holding hay bales and gourds.
The wide, wrap-around front porch is decked in garlands of fall leaves, weaving around the white columns. The two large windows on the first floor are filled with a display of what appears to be a woodland wedding, complete with gnomes with red hats and a bridal Snow White. Over the door is The Wedding Chapel sign showcasing the business in white letters. The Sorry, we’re closed! notice hangs limply from its hanger inside the glass door.
Leaving Arthur and Lance in the car, I cringe when the ornate gate lets out a hair-raising squeak as I tug it open. The ground is damp and smells of wet leaves and fresh soil, the big magnolia tree near the sidewalk dripping water from a brief shower an hour ago.
Plop, plop, plop. Fat drops fall, a couple landing on my head, as I take the stone-paved walkway to the house. The eastern sky eases into a pink-tinged gray, and everything is veiled in a dull pallor of fog.
I don’t plan to stay long, just enough to check on Tabitha, my aunt’s cat, and make sure the place is locked up tight. I also have an urge to walk down to the creek, near the old homestead, in order to see if I can find any trace of Aunt Willa and her possible guest.
Did Mama imagine it? Was Aunt Willa simply chiding Tabitha or one of the dozens of wild animals she often fed? Was there actually someone with her when she died? If so, why didn’t they try to save her?
A sickening thought, and subsequent chill, ripple through me. No, I tell myself. No one in Thornhollow would ever do my aunt harm.
At the top of each porch railing sits a gargoyle-shaped black cat. Part of the original house, the twins suit it perfectly for this time of year. Growing up, my aunt always told trick-or-treaters to pet the cats’ heads for good luck. I stroke the top of one of them when I reach the top step, an old habit.
A fake apple has rolled off the cornucopia display on the nearby wicker table. Picking it up, I realize it’s real, a slight bruise blooming on its highly polished red skin where it smacked the wooden floor boards when it fell. Aunt Willa must have just created or freshened up the display in the past day or so.
My heart squeezes at the thought of her bustling around, creating the beautiful display and smiling over it. Fall was her favorite season, and she reveled in the decorations.
The emotions I’ve been holding back in order to be strong for my mother crash over me. “Oh, Aunt Wilhelmina, what happened to you?”
For a heartbeat, the air seems to shimmer. “She was murdered,” a raspy voice says on my left.
I jump, dropping the apple.
It rolls toward the steps, my pulse skidding with it. I whirl to face the sidewalk and street.
There’s no one there.
“Hello?” I scan the yard, the mass of woods on my right, Mr. Uphill’s place on the left. The last of the night has given up to the rising sun, but all I see is the murky fog covering trees, a few bushes, and the empty street.
Plop, plop, plop, the rain resumes, falling lazily and rolling off the porch roof. I scan the entire yard again, more slowly this time, and the well-manicured flower beds edging the porch. Mums, green ferns, trailing ivy, and jasmine plants covered with fake spiderwebs sit quietly, the murkiness of the morning making everything heavy.
“Over here,” the thin, raspy voice says, and I jump again, turning toward the sound.
It’s coming from the door.
I edge closer, narrowing my eyes. The antique knocker—a cat head that matches the gargoyles—licks its lips.
My feet scramble backward and I blink. Then shake my head as if I can clear my vision by doing so. The foggy gloom is playing tricks with my eyesight, that’s all. The voice?
Um, yeah. I’m hearing things, too.
While everything in me wants to run, I ignore the flight instinct, move closer once more and peer at the knocker. “Hello?”
The antique cat head, complete with pointy ears, doesn’t change this time. It doesn’t move at all, even though I sense it’s watching me back. When it doesn’t reply, I blow out a sigh of relief. Straightening, I chuckle at myself. “You’re losing it,” I reprimand myself. “Totally bonkers.”
And then the cat’s lips curve in a snarky smile. “You going to stand there all day and talk to yourself, or are you going to go in?”
I’m so freaked out, I leap like a jackrabbit, feet scrambling, arms flying, in an attempt to get off the porch.
Something rolls under my right foot and I fall, cartwheeling through the air. My feet fly up, the rest of me careening down. For a moment, I’m suspended, all three gargoyle cats watching with amused expressions, and my butt smacks the bottom step.
The wayward apple, also thrown into the air, lands on my stomach as my head whacks hard on the stone walk.
Pain like an ice pick ricochets through my skull. Above me, the last star blinks out in the sky as rain dampens my skin.
But the stars on the edges of my vision are bright and hot, until everything whites out in a brilliant flash, and I plunge into darkness.
Chapter Four
Lazy mist wraps around me, clouding my vision. I swear it’s thick enough to taste and sticks to my skin like cotton candy. My body feels light as a feather.
“Ava?”
I turn in a circle, the voice so familiar it hurts. “Aunt Willa?”
Heavy silence meets my ears. My mind must be playing tricks on me again. Aunt Willa is dead, I remind myself.
“Aaavaa…” The voice again, whispering as if it’s flying right past me. It’s definitely my aunt’s.
Just a dream.
The dream takes shape, though, and the mist parts. Her face appears. “The trunk in your bedroom—there’s a false bottom…”
She swims in and out of the soupy air, as if something is trying to pull her away. I step forward, lifting a hand to reach for her. “Come back!”
She does, her upper
body coming into a hazy focus. “All you need is inside, Ava.”
My hand goes through her. “Need for what?” My voice seems to echo against the mist in the air, bouncing back to me.
“My armoire…secret compartment…” Her voice drifts, her face begins to fade again. “Push the top left cor…”
My logical brain kicks in. “Aunt Willa, you know you’re…”
I can’t say it.
“Dead,” she supplies. “Yes, I know, dear. Don’t you cry for me, now, sweet girl. You’re not dead, and you have to…”
She fades again.
“Have to what?” I’m losing her. Grief floods me. “Oh please, Aunt Willa! Come back!”
“In the attic,” her voice drifts past me, incorporeal. “The book…”
I lose her again, but a few feet away I see the outline of her. Her head turns to her left to look at something. I squint in that direction as well but see nothing but the cotton candy fog.
“I have to go.” She looks over her shoulder at me. “It’s up to you, Ava. I love youuuu.”
She fades away.
“No!” I yell.
And then I hear her voice once more, “Now wake up!”
A heavy weight depresses my chest, hard and fast, shoving the air from my lungs. Once, twice—
It stops, and then out of nowhere, I feel the warmth of lips against mine. My mouth is open, breath rushing in. I taste mint and…
“Dead, is she?” a raspy voice asks.
“Not anymore,” another answers, and I recognize them.
I gasp, eyes flying open.
I’m still on the ground, wet and cold. The most beautiful cornflower blue eyes are looking down on me.
“Ava?”
The man’s face comes into sharp contrast. Tousled hair the color of toasted pecans, classic nose, tanned skin. He’s clean-shaven and the smell of his faint aftershave fills my nostrils as I inhale a huge gasp again. For half a second, I see the boy he used to be floating under the man he is now. “Logan?”
Relief is like a washcloth wiping the worry from his brow. He sits back, blows out a breath between his lips, and rakes his hand over his face. “You just took ten years off my life.”
I wonder if I’m still in the dream or whatever it was. Logan Cross. What is he doing here?
The sky above his head is golden now with the rising sun, pale strips of peach streaking across the sky between clouds. His face blurs, and I see two of him. My ears ring with a coarse blare that makes me flinch. “What happened?” I ask.
“You tell me.” He keeps a firm hand on my shoulder to stop my struggle to rise. I feel something warm and slippery drop onto my hand, and see a basset hound on my right. His sad eyes stare at me as another string of drool slides out of his mouth. “Mox and I were just coming back from our run. I saw you fall off the porch. By the time I got here, you weren’t breathing, and I thought you were dead.”
“Dead?” The memory of the fall sends fresh pain from my head down to the base of my spine.
The blare in my ears grows louder, but it’s not from the head injury. It’s a siren.
I draw a deep breath, reassuring myself I’m very much alive, and a new pain hits. I’m going to have a sore rib cage from the CPR he was administering.
The feel of his hands on my chest, his lips on my mouth, surfaces, causing my head to throb and my heart to kick. As a teen, I dreamed of Logan Cross’s attention. I would have died, figuratively, to have his lips on mine.
“Told you,” one of the voices I heard earlier says.
I tilt my chin to look toward the porch. The cat gargoyles at the top of the bannister stare back, the rising sun reflecting in their eyes and making them glow. One’s lips move ever so slightly. “She’s alive.”
The basset hound turns his head, as if he hears them as well, before he looks back to me.
I struggle to come up onto my elbows, ignoring all the various waves of pain, as an ambulance, siren blaring, careens to a stop at the curb.
“EMTs are here,” Logan says, as if it’s not obvious. “Stay put.”
Logan Cross is a lawyer these days. The only one in Thornhollow. A good one from what I’ve heard. His parents run the famous Cross Winery north of town, and his brother has a brewery two towns over. For whatever reason, Logan decided to go a different direction with his life, and his office is directly across the street from The Wedding Chapel.
People in Thornhollow either come from old money, like Logan, or they survive at the other end of the spectrum, like Reverend Stout. He rushes up to us with a plastic medic’s box and plunks down beside me.
Gray-haired and wrinkled, he’s wearing a white shirt and navy pants, a name tag pinned over a pocket of the shirt that has a protector filled with pens and a tiny flashlight. Today he’s an EMT, working on physical bodies rather than souls. “Second time I’ve been here in the last twelve hours,” he murmurs in his deep Southern voice. His gaze rests on my face and softens. “Ava Fantome, my goodness, young lady. What in the world happened? So sorry about your aunty.”
Logan tells him what he knows—he saw me trip, fall down the steps, and hit my head. When he reached me, I wasn’t breathing.
I interject a few details, trying not to sound like a scatterbrain or klutz. Neither man seems to listen.
“Thank the Good Lord you were here,” Stout says to Logan. “We might have lost her, too.”
“I wasn’t dead,” I insist, but the voice in my head casts doubt. Was I? “I did have a weird dream though.”
“Did you see a bright light? Go down a tunnel?” the pastor asks.
“No. I saw my…”
Logan and Stout stare at me.
“Never mind.” I wave it off. “I’m fine. I fainted, that’s all.”
Reverend Stout’s partner rolls a gurney through the yard, bumping over the limestone pavers. Stout flashes his light in both of my eyes, declares I might have a concussion, and they insist on carting me to the hospital.
A flurry of activity continues around me. A police officer arrives—in Thornhollow anytime the ambulance is called out the police are, too. Preston Uphill, the owner of the B&B next door, runs over in a tartan-colored robe and slippers. I sense others gathering on the sidewalk outside the gate, their voices a background hum.
“Avalon?” Uphill calls. “Oh my goodness, are you okay?”
“Just tripped.” I push up to sitting and Logan grabs me as my vision blurs and I nearly tip over. “I’m fine.”
“Sure you are,” Logan murmurs. “You just died, Fantome.”
I send him a glare to silence him. That’s all I need—all Mama needs—is for word to get out I died and Logan Cross brought me back to life.
“Is she okay?” a woman’s voice calls. I don’t look toward the fence, but recognize it all the same. Prissy Barnes, my nemesis.
“All I need is to check on Tabitha.” I ignore her and point toward the house for Logan’s benefit. “And take something for my pounding head.”
“I’ll take care of the cat,” Logan assures me. “She and Mox get along just fine, don’t you Mox?” He pats the dog’s head, and they move away to let Stout and his partner, a young kid named Wesley, wrestle me up onto the gurney. “You go to the clinic and let Doc check you out.”
Everyone is insisting on this, including the police officer—one who used to work under my father, before Mama insisted he quit the force and sent him off to pursue his dream of being a rock singer. If I weren’t still hearing the cats—including the door knocker—continuing to discuss my clumsiness and the fact Aunt Willa’s killer is near, I’d refuse.
Killer…?
I push Wesley out of the way and look at the gargoyle cats. Then at the gathering crowd. Most of the faces are familiar…I can’t believe any of them would hurt my aunt.
Since last night, I’ve felt, heard, and seen things that I haven’t since I was a girl. And the more I hear these voices in my head, the more fearful I become of the truth. Did Mama truly overhea
r Aunt Willa arguing with someone last night? Did that someone contribute to her death?
“Ava?” another woman’s voice calls. “Do you want me to call your mother?”
This one sounds familiar, but I can’t place her face when I meet her eyes. “No,” I call back. “I’m fine!”
A firm hand lands on my shoulder, and I glance at the owner, Reverend Stout, who stares me down with the righteousness only a preacher or Sunday school teacher can deliver adequately. “Ava, dear. You are going to the clinic.”
My eyes swim and the memory of Aunt Willa in the mist rushes over me.
If I’m seeing ghosts and hearing inanimate objects speak, maybe I do need my head examined.
“You’ll need a key, Logan. I’m sure Tabitha is safe and sound inside, but we need to check.”
He motions for me to lie down. “Got one. Don’t worry.”
How does he have a key to my aunt’s house? The pounding in my head is too much now, and the lightheadedness is returning with a vengeance. With Wesley and the Rev’s help, I ease down onto the gurney. “My cats…” I point in the direction of my car. “They’re inside.”
Logan pats my leg. “Ava, I’ve got it. I promise to take good care of them.”
All three gargoyles snort.
Chapter Five
Two hours later, I check myself out of the tiny, medicinal-smelling Sacred Heart clinic, against Dr. Abernathy’s advice.
The aging, but still handsome, physician in his white coat and round spectacles declared I have a concussion but could find no reason for my near-death experience. I’m breathing fine, all the equipment shows my heart rate and pulse are normal, and, in fact, I’m in good shape.
Doc is old school and wants to dig deeper into my brain, but he doesn’t possess the equipment for an MRI and I’m not driving twenty miles east for a scan at the nearest large hospital. I hit my head, blacked out, and maybe stopped breathing for a minute. No big deal.
Pumpkins & Poltergeists, Confessions of a Closet Medium, Book 1 Page 2
