by James Hunt
The image of the woman from the painting appeared in her mind. It was quick and fleeting, but Lindsy was sure of it. She reached for the attic door handle that would lower the stairs she could use to take her up when she noticed the buzz of the saw blade ended. She turned to see Daniel staring at her.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
It was hard for Lindsy to see his expression because of the sunlight through the window behind him. “I’m going into the attic.”
“Why?” he asked.
Lindsy let the handle go. “Is there something you want to tell me?” She waited for a response, but he finally turned back around, returning to work. Lindsy waited until she heard the buzz saw again before she reached for the handle and ascended into the darkened space above.
Lindsy poked her head into the attic first, searching for a light switch, but found none. A window in the attic provided some light, but the light was muted by a sheet. She hoisted herself onto the old, groaning floorboards, and carefully walked to the window. She yanked the massive sheet down, and the attic was flooded with sunlight.
Dust rained over Lindsy as the blanket fell to the floor, and she turned away, coughing from the thick cloud that engulfed her. Once the dust settled, she was able to get a better look at the contents of the attic.
The space was large, and it was filled to the brim with boxes, clothes, furniture, rugs, paintings, and decorations, enough stuff to fill every single room in the house.
“I guess they didn’t want to have a yard sale,” Lindsy said, muttering to herself. She walked softly along with the piles of knickknacks and junk, searching for another vision. But as she traversed the massive space, she received nothing.
Lindsy continued to search through the boxes and junk, touching every surface she could reach, trying to find the next piece of the puzzle that was scattered about this house.
The image of the Maples daughter continued to permeate through Lindsy’s concentration. Angela looked to be a happy child, born to loving parents. But first impressions weren’t always accurate.
It had been a long time since Lindsy and Mike worked a case that involved children, and it was the first case involving a newborn. She knew Mike would be working to debunk the possibility that a ghost or spirit entity kidnapped the child, because if that were true, if there was a ghost that had managed to take a child from this world and into the next, then they were dealing with power more potent than anything they had come across before.
Lindsy continued a slow, methodical search of the attic, hoping to find her next clue, or if she was lucky, the ghost’s token.
In order to release a ghost from their haunting, Lindsy needed to discover the anchor that tethered the ghost to this realm, which was different for every paranormal entity. For some, it was a picture of a lost love, for another, a baseball that was given to them by their late father; for another, it could be a favorite dish that their grandmother used to make. The key to uncovering each ghost’s item was learning more about the ghost’s history from when they were still alive. And considering how long the person had been dead, it could be difficult.
Luckily, that’s where Lindsy’s clairvoyance came to the rescue, allowing her glimpses into the person’s past. Sometimes it was difficult to put the pieces together. Not everything fit together as nicely or as evenly as she hoped.
But as Lindsy worked her way through a series of boxes, she paused at the contents of one of them. She didn’t receive a vision, but she was intrigued by what she found.
Inside were children’s clothes, or more specifically, newborn clothes. The style and age of the clothing suggested that it was maybe from the 1930s, or perhaps even the 1920s. Booties, socks, bonnets, onesies, everything Lindsy pulled out of the box looked to be the size for a newborn baby.
The fabrics were old, and discolored, and when Lindsy touched the garment she was suddenly overwhelmed by feelings of fear and pain. She heard a child crying, she felt confusion from parents, but beneath all of that, there was an underlying pulse of vengeance.
Altogether, Lindsy found enough outfits for at least thirty infants. It was far too many for one woman to have birthed, even one hundred years ago. She sensed a connection between the clothes and Angela’s abduction. She made a note of it and would bring it up with Mike and the others later.
Lindsy continued her search through the attic, this time stopping to open up more boxes along the way, hoping to find something else that would help explain all of the children's clothes she had seen, but she found nothing else that might be connected.
Growing hot from the heat in the attic, Lindsy was about to head down for a break when another image of the woman from the painting flashed in her mind, this one brighter and more intense than the one before it that led her into the attic. And while the first one had an air of power to it, this one was all anger. She was close to something.
Lindsy hastened her speed, searching through the junk for the source of the vision. She shoved boxes aside and moved more sculptures and paintings out of the way until she came across a large trunk, and she paused.
Lindsy’s pulse slowed at the sight of it, and she was overcome with a very powerful stillness. She knew that this was what she had been looking for; the token that would grant her the power to cast the ghost back into the next realm.
Lindsy touched the trunk, and a pulse of power radiated through her, stronger than she had ever experienced before, and she immediately lifted her hand. “My god.” She circled the trunk, studying it, and found that it was locked. She tried to lift the lid on her own just to be sure, her arms straining with the effort, but still, there was nothing.
“Damn it.” Lindsy glanced around, wondering if the key was somewhere hidden in all of this junk. She knew she wouldn’t be able to go through all of it by herself, so she would need to enlist everyone else’s help.
Thinking of ways to search for the key, Lindsy jolted when she heard the piercing scream from downstairs. She immediately headed for the stairs, descending the attic in time to watch Daniel leap out of the bedroom he’d been working in and fly down the staircase.
By the time Lindsy reached the second floor, Carla’s screams had transformed into ramblings Lindsy couldn’t understand. When Lindsy reached the first floor where Daniel held Carla in his arms, she watched the young mother dissolve into a puddle of sobs.
“What happened?” Lindsy asked.
“She had a fright, that’s all,” Daniel answered, still holding his wife, but Carla separated herself from him, shaking her head.
“I was looking for her in the woods again,” Carla said, taking big breaths between her words as her voice trembled. “And I found…” She bunched up her face, unable to continue, and simply handed Lindsy what she found.
Lindsy studied the small bootie, and then brushed away some of the dirt and leaves to find the large A inscribed on the cloth. It had belonged to their daughter, Angela.
“She was wearing that the night she was taken,” Carla said, still sobbing. “My baby is still out there, and she needs me.” She buried her face into Daniel’s chest as Lindsy examined the bootie.
“Can you show me where you found this?” Lindsy asked.
Carla nodded, but it took a while for her to calm down before she managed to take them outside to the wooded area where she had found the bootie.
“I was calling her name like I normally do, and then I thought I saw movement over there.” Carla pointed between a pair of thick oak trees where there were several bushes. “When I walked over to see what it was, I looked at the ground and found it. Here.” She finally stopped in a small clearing. “This is where I picked it up.”
Lindsy stood in the center of the clearing, glancing around. She couldn’t see the house from where they had walked. “How far is the house from here?”
Carla shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“About half a mile,” Daniel said. “Maybe a little more, or a little less.”
Lindsy nodded. “H
ave you been out this far before?”
“Farther,” Carla answered. “I’ve searched at least five miles in every direction.”
“That’s a big search field,” Lindsy said. “What about sightings?”
“I have only seen the woman two other times since I’ve been out there looking,” Carla said.
“And were they farther away from the house than this?” Lindsy asked.
“Yeah,” Carla answered.
Lindsy grimaced, knowing that if the ghost had an extensive domain, it would make it harder to track her down. “We need to figure out the exact property lines of the house. See how far out it goes. Is that something you could get for me?”
Carla looked to Daniel, who nodded unenthusiastically.
“Thanks,” Lindsy said, and then she planted her hands on her hips as she glanced around again. She wasn’t picking up on anything. “You’re sure this was where you found the bootie?”
“Yes,” Carla answered. “Do you feel something? Is something wrong?”
Lindsy shook her head, then turned back to Carla. “Did the woman ever make any demands of you?”
“Demands?” Carla asked.
“Reach out to you and ask you to do something for her?”
“No, she never said a word to me,” Carla answered.
Lindsy turned toward the husband. “And you?”
Daniel shook his head. “No.”
Another dead end. “All right then. You try and find the property lines, and I need speak with Mike to see what he found.” Lindsy took a step back toward the house when Carla jumped in front of her.
“You still believe me, right?” Carla asked, her voice thick with desperation. “You believe me about the woman?”
“I believe you,” Lindsy answered.
“I just need her back,” Carla replied. “I need to hold my little girl again.” She clutched the bootie tight in her hand. “This has to be proof. Proof that she’s still alive!”
Lindsy knew she couldn’t speak with any certainty Carla’s hopes were true. The only thing she knew for sure was that she still had more questions than answers, and until it was the other way around, she wouldn’t be able to give Carla the relief, or closure, the mother needed.
5
Mike’s eyes were glued to his computer screen when Lindsy stepped back inside the RV. He was always so immersed in the research; it was like the rest of the world faded away. It always amazed her to see him work like that because it was hard for Lindsy to concentrate on anything for longer than an hour, but Mike could sit at their tiny kitchenette, laptop in front of him, and work from dusk until late at night, and never blink.
Well, maybe he blinked a little bit.
“Hey,” Lindsy said, announcing herself when he didn’t look up.
Mike grunted something she knew was supposed to be a hello, and she sat next to him, catching a glimpse of his screen, which had something on it about World War I.
“Find anything good?” Lindsy asked, unsure of what the house had to do with the Great War.
Mike leaned back from the computer, crossing his arms beneath his chest. “I don’t think ‘good’ is the right adjective for what I found. Helpful, maybe.”
Lindsy rolled her eyes. “Well, what did you find that was ‘helpful.’” She threw her hands up in air quotes to hammer her sarcasm home.
“The house was originally commissioned by a World War I officer who fought as a major in the South Pacific,” Mike said, not picking up on her air quotes at all. “Because of his dedicated service to his country, and as a retirement present from the Army, the government provided him a large patch of land in the Colorado wilderness. The major enjoyed camping.” He clicked out of the window and then opened up another tab, which showed a picture of the major in uniform. “Now, after his retirement, the major decided to commission a house built on the land gifted to him, and thus began the construction of the home we see before us. Nothing of interest happened during the construction, no weird curses or anything like that, but I did manage to find something that I wanted to show you.” He moved his mouse and opened another tab, revealing a picture of a young woman.
Lindsy studied the image, understanding the connection Mike had wanted her to see. “It’s her. The woman from the painting.”
“Meet Evelyn Carter,” Mike said. “Wife of Major Carter, whom he married upon his retirement from the Army.”
Lindsy noted the apparent age difference between the pair. “She has to be at least thirty years younger than he is.”
“Thirty-nine,” Mike said. “Evelyn Carter was the daughter of some politician in the state of Colorado, and the marriage was set up to further establish the family name. From what I read, Major Carter had built the massive home to start a family, but after the first two years of trying, they never had any children of their own.”
“So let me guess,” Lindsy said. “The Major divorced her, and then she killed him in a fit of rage and revenge.”
Mike smirked. “You always assume the worst.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Lindsy asked.
Mike scrolled down to a page of text that outlined a little bit more about the history of Carters’ marriage. “Once they determined that they couldn’t have children of their own, Evelyn Carter became a midwife and helped deliver hundreds of children here at the house, which also acted as a halfway home. Major Carter was also one of the founding members of the town of Roster and was elected as their first mayor.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” Lindsy asked.
“Well,” Mike said, shifting in his seat. “Major Carter died ten years after their marriage, and Evelyn continued her midwifery after he passed. But it’s at this point things started to get a little… strange.”
Lindsy pivoted the computer toward her, staring at another photograph of Evelyn Carter.
“Apparently, in the throes of the Great Depression, people were still having children, since contraception was still basically non-existent during the time, and a poor economy didn’t stop people from having sex, so she continued her work. But one year after the major’s death, a baby went missing from the town.” Mike opened a picture that showed a news article about the abduction. “Everyone in the town went into a panic, and a massive search party was formed to recover the child, but the infant was never found.”
Lindsy leaned back, a tightness forming in her chest. She knew where this story would lead.
“A few months later, another newborn was taken,” Mike said. “And then five more, and then ten, and twenty— in five years, over thirty babies born in the Roster area were abducted. It got to the point where no one even wanted to have children. And that’s when a sheriff made the connection that every newborn who was abducted had the same midwife deliver the baby: Evelyn Carter.
“Authorities confronted Evelyn about the abductions, and she denied the allegations profusely,” Mike said. “And when they searched the house and the property, they found nothing suspicious, so they didn’t take her in. But the sheriff didn’t give up, and the next child the midwife helped deliver, he watched like a hawk. And it paid off. The sheriff eventually caught the midwife trying to steal the child. When she was questioned on the matter, she confessed to the abduction of the thirty other children that disappeared, but she wouldn’t tell them where she buried the bodies.”
Lindsy’s eyes reddened. “I hope they put her away.”
“The authorities never got the chance,” Mike said. “Before the trial began, one of the fathers of the abducted children decided to take matters into his own hands. The father was friends with one of the deputies, and he let him inside the jail where Evelyn was being held. She was shot four times with a shotgun.”
Lindsy sank backward, taking a breath as she didn’t even realize she had been tensing throughout the story. “So she was killed violently after doing violent things to children.” She shook her head and looked to the house through the front windshield of the RV.
“But that wasn�
�t the end of our midwife,” Mike said, pulling Lindsy’s attention back to the computer. “Since she was killed, the surrounding area has lost over one hundred other children over the past eighty years. It’s the highest infant abduction rate per square mile in the country, and after the mining operations shut down here in the eighties, everything in the area dried up, and the town of Roster has been limping along ever since. And do you want to know the average age of the citizens in the town of Roster?” Mike didn’t wait for a reply. “Fifty-four. It’s the highest average age per citizen of any town in the country.”
Lindsy recalled seeing only older adults when they first drove through the town. “People stopped having children here because they were afraid.”
“Yeah, I think it’s safe to assume that,” Mike said.
Lindsy remained stoic as she brought her hand to her stomach. “So we’re dealing with a ghost that has been around for eighty years, and has somehow managed to abduct children from beyond the grave.”
“Yes,” Mike said. “But if there’s a silver lining, it’s that there hasn’t been a reported infant abduction in Roster since the early nineties, but that’s only because there haven’t been any new children born in the area since then.”
“And so the news cycle dies, and people forget, and then the pregnant couple happens to move into the house where Evelyn Carter used to live,” Lindsy said.
Sometimes Lindsy was convinced that there were powers and forces people couldn’t explain, pulling them toward a fate they couldn’t escape. She didn’t know if it was god and angels, or the devil and demons, or if there was something else at play, merely a connection among people who happened to live on the same planet, breathing the same air, warmed by the same sun in the sky.
“I was only able to find a handful of articles on the internet,” Mike said. “What limited information I was able to pull was mostly from amateur sites. I found a few news articles, but we might have better luck if we head to the local library. I’m sure they have some archives we can search to get a better understanding of what’s happening.”
