by Bess McBride
“Well, that’s it for visitors today, Sass. I’m just going to take a quick walk. Up the road.”
At this, my black and orange speckled calico cat fixed me with a reproving stare. At least, that’s how I interpreted it.
“What?” I challenged the pint-sized dynamo with a matching glare. “What? So, I’ve got work to do...unpacking boxes. Is that your point?”
Holding her own, Sass continued to eye me with an unwavering gaze.
“Oh, I see. It’s because I’m thinking about going up to the cemetery. Well, what would you know about it, missie? By the way, Marmaduke is going to be coming in and out of the house, but you aren’t going to be going outside. I hope you’re okay with that!”
I turned my back on the silly cat and walked out the door. Marmaduke jumped down from the railing and followed me down the driveway to the road.
“Oh, no, pal. You’re not going with me. That’s all I need is to be seen wandering around a cemetery with my familiar. They’ll burn me at the stake for sure. You stay here. Besides, you don’t want to get hit by a car, do you?”
I interpreted the marmalade cat’s look to mean “What cars?” And he was right. Few cars seemed to use this country lane which led only to the cemetery.
“Okay, no cars. You’re right. It doesn’t matter. Stay here!”
I stepped out onto the road and turned left. A glance over my shoulder reassured me that Marmaduke did as he was told. I clasped my hands behind my back, and instead of briskly striding up the road, I found myself taking tense, hesitant steps—unsure of what I would find at the cemetery. At the base of the hill, the loud humming of cicadas in the nearby trees and bushes caught my attention, and I paused to listen with fascinated absorption. One might call the noise a “racket” if the buzzing sound didn’t have such a steady rhythm to it.
No swarm descended on me, and I was oddly comforted by the presence of the vibrating cicadas. Life pulsed all around me. The vivid green of the trees and bushes delighted the eye. Lush crops of corn across the road sprung from obviously fertile earth. I inhaled deeply—the sweet country air itself a celebration of life.
Feeling somewhat fortified, I pushed myself forward and marched up the hill. I reached the entrance with its iron arch all too soon and stopped one foot short of entering the cemetery.
My heart pounded as I scanned the grounds from my limited vantage point. The base of the majestic oak tree where I’d seen Darius several weeks ago appeared barren, the bench empty. Nothing moved except the graceful oak trees as they swayed in the stiff breeze, stronger now on the top of the hill. The late afternoon sun danced across those tombstones that weren’t directly in the shadow of the massive evergreen trees, warming them to a light golden hue.
I took several wary steps into the cemetery, stopping often to scan the area. The constant humming of the wind blowing through the pine needles of the trees provided a loud backdrop of noise, and I realized I wouldn’t be able to hear any approaching footsteps—a realization that gave me an uneasy vulnerability.
I swallowed hard and moved on through the cemetery, coming to a stop near the massive oak tree where the wind blew the hardest, half expecting to see Darius materialize, half hoping he wouldn’t. But he wasn’t there. He didn’t “appear.”
I turned to look at the wrought iron bench—the one we had shared. It was empty. Darius had never really been there, had he? And I’d never been fortunate enough to have another dream of him, try though I might. A heaviness descended on me, and the once bright and hopeful day seemed to grow dark, though the sun still shone. I dropped down onto the bench and crossed my arms over my chest.
I had imagined him. The handsome man of my dreams. What had I done? What insanity had I gotten myself into? I was dangerously close to admitting a humiliating truth—even to myself.
I had bought the house to be near Darius. I hadn’t wanted to admit it to anyone, least of all to myself, but I knew the moment I saw the cemetery in the distance from the bedroom window of the house, that I was destined to live in the Victorian.
And now, it seemed likely that Darius—a man I knew I loved with every fiber of my being, whom I’d always loved though I could not remember when or how—had been a fantasy lover...a romantic creation from my lonely subconscious.
I pulled my legs up to my chest and rested my face on my knees. I wanted to cry, but tears failed to come. I mourned the loss of a dream I’d lived with for two weeks—perhaps all my life. I grieved for the loss of all that was familiar in Seattle when I’d left the city to move to an out-of-the-way town in the Midwest. I worried that I had suffered a mental breakdown of some sort.
“Stupid ancestors,” I muttered. “This whole thing has put me over the edge. Living in the past like this. It’s nuts. Unhealthy. No one should do it.” I felt better for hearing a human voice—even if it was my own.
I thought I heard a sound. With a muffled gasp, I peeked over the edge of my hands. I held my breath and listened intently for a repeat of the sound.
Still...nothing moved. My imagination was running away with me. Again. I looked down at the rest of the empty and cold iron bench, wondering if I could just lie down and sleep there awhile. I hadn’t slept much in the last few weeks, and not at all last night in the generic motel as I anticipated my return to Lilium and the house...and Darius. The bench looked uncomfortable, but it was where I wanted to be. Perhaps if I waited long enough...perhaps if I dreamt...Darius might return.
I started to stretch out when the whimsical tune of my cell phone broke the empty silence. I cursed the intrusive sound of the foolish ring. It jarred me out of my reverie, my desire to sleep.
I dragged it from my jeans pocket.
“Yes!” I snapped.
“Oh, my dear, did we catch you at a bad time?”
“Laura? Cynthia?” My muddled brain couldn’t quite make out the voice.
“It’s Cynthia, dear. Are you all right? You sound so...”
“Oh, I’m fine. I’m sorry I answered so sharply.”
“Have the movers gone then?”
“Yes, they’re gone. Everything I own is in the house. Thanks for asking.”
“Well, I actually called because Laura and I are packing up our things as well, and we realized we’re missing some of our old family pictures—the ones of our family when we were growing up.”
I absentmindedly stared at the light playing on the stone that caught my attention on my last visit to the cemetery.
“So, I was wondering if you could run up to the attic and see if there are any boxes up there. Do you remember seeing any during the inspection, dear?”
I straightened. I couldn’t exactly run upstairs at the moment, but I already had the answer.
“Oh, shoot! I’m glad you said something. Yes, the inspector took me up there and showed me several cardboard boxes in the attic. I meant to tell you about those. I’m not at the house right now, but I can dash home, get them and drop them off at your place.”
“No, no, dear. Laura and I can stop by to pick them up ourselves. Is 6 p.m. okay with you? Will that give you enough time to return from where you are?”
“Oh, sure. I’m not far away.”
“Laura and I are on our way to the cemetery in about 30 minutes to visit our husbands and then we’ll stop by.”
“Oh!” I swallowed hard. I wasn’t quite sure why I was so reluctant to tell Cynthia where I was. All of a sudden, cemetery hunting had taken on a whole new meaning when one wasn’t looking for deceased ancestors but instead wandering around looking for some sort of undead.
“Sounds good, Cynthia. I’ll see you at six then.”
“See you later, dear.”
As if Cynthia and Laura were pulling into the gates of the cemetery at that very moment, I snapped the phone shut, jumped up and hurried across the cemetery to the arched entrance. I jogged back to the house, arriving at the driveway out of breath, clutching my aching ribs, and bemoaning my poor physical condition. The life of a sedentary co
mputer geek did nothing to promote good physical fitness. And I had been away from the gym for over a month.
Marmaduke waited for me at the entrance to the driveway—as if he’d never left his sentry post.
“Out of breath...can’t talk now,” I gasped as I bent over, bracing my hands on my knees. “Ladies coming... Box...”
He continued to regard me with an unblinking stare.
“Okay,” I wheezed. “Thanks for listening. Let’s go into the house.”
Marmaduke jumped into action and led the way back to the house, his tail jutting high like a rudder of a miniscule orange airplane. I followed at a slower pace, eyeing the lovely lines of the Victorian house in front of me and marveling once again that such an elegant house belonged to me—regardless of why I bought it. My spirits lifted.
I entered the house with Marmaduke at my heels. He and Sass, sprawled on the sofa in the living room, hissed a greeting toward one another and promptly ignored each other. He followed me as I climbed the stairs, past the second floor and up a narrow set of stairs to the tiny door leading to the small attic. The door opened with a creak, and I stepped into the low-ceiling room. Had I been any taller than 5 feet 3 inches, I might have had to bend. A small dusty window graced the end of the room and provided the only available light.
The boxes lay on the dusty unvarnished wooden floor just inside the door. As I lifted the first box with a handwritten “Photos” on it, I scanned the small room and wondered how I could best utilize it during future renovations. It was too intriguing a spot not to convert into a small reading room or something.
Huffing and puffing, I hauled both boxes of photos down to the second floor with absolutely no help from Marmaduke who imperiously led the way. I paused for a breath and then maneuvered my way down the stairs to the living room with the boxes. I dropped onto the couch with the boxes at my feet, heedless of the dust on the front of my jeans, and rested my head against the back of the couch while I caught my breath. A shower was definitely in order to wash off the dust from the attic, but a check of my watch showed I had only 15 minutes before Cynthia and Laura came. At any rate, I didn’t even have a shower yet. The only bathing would be done in the clawfoot tub in the single bathroom on the second floor.
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to remember when the plumbing guy was coming. Dates and tasks ran across my brain like the pages of a calendar lifting in a breeze. Tuesday?
A soft scratching sound near my feet caught my attention, and I opened my eyes and leaned forward. Sassy, the cat who had thus far managed to survive her curious nature, stood on her hind legs, poking and prodding the opening of the box with a delicate paw.
“Sassy! Stop! That’s not yours...or mine. Besides, you’re going to get dirty and dusty, and you’ll be miserable. I know you!”
The small cat gave me a look that some might describe as withering, and returned to her efforts of trying to lift a corner of the box with her tiny paws.
“Sassy! I’m warning you!” I slid off the couch and sat down on the floor next to Sassy who paused as if curiously awaiting her human’s next move.
“All right. So, what’s in there? I can see a picture already.”
Hoping Cynthia and Laura wouldn’t mind, I pulled open the first box and peered inside. Pictures of smiling people standing on the front steps of the porch looked out at me. Feeling not a little guilty for snooping into someone else’s property, I slid the photos around with a delicate finger to see as many as I could without having to confess that I’d actually taken them out of the box.
Some of the photos appeared to be older—the sort of photos one would wish were kept in some sort of proper preservation container. I had no idea what sorts of materials were available in that department.
One photo lay face down, and I peered closely at the date handwritten on the back. 1880. The age of the photo quite took my breath away.
I glanced up at the front door, half expecting Cynthia and Laura to ring the bell at the very moment that I decided to pick up their century-plus-old photograph with the tips of my unprotected fingers and turn it over to see the front.
I suppose I should have known.
How could I not have suspected? Did he not say that he’d donated some of his land to the town for a cemetery?
As I gazed at the photo, I stopped breathing, I was certain of that. The pounding in my ears warned me that I wasn’t breathing, but I couldn’t exhale for fear I might breathe on the old sepia-toned photograph—the photograph of the man of my dreams. Darius Ferguson looked up at me with a sparkle in his light-colored eyes and a half smile on his devastatingly handsome face.
Chapter Five
My head began to swim, and I forced myself to open my mouth mechanically and gasp for air. The hand holding the photo shook uncontrollably, and I steadied it with my other hand.
I had dreamed of Darius’s face exactly as it was in this picture, posed at a slight angle, but still looking directly at the camera. His gaze seemed so intimate that I involuntarily pulled back. I had seen that expression in his eyes when he looked at me, and it still made my toes curl with exhilaration.
He wasn’t a dream! He wasn’t a dream. I wanted to dance with joy. I almost jumped up to do just that until I remembered that I was looking at a photograph of a man taken in 1880. However, such was my insanity that I hardly let that small detail dampen my joy at “finding” Darius once again.
The photograph was in good condition for the historical period, the edges of the framed backing firm and crisp. I laid the picture down on the table with care and clasped my hands in my lap. Sassy meowed and surveyed the rest of the contents of the box. Finding little to interest her, she dropped to all fours and jumped onto the couch to attend to some much-needed grooming.
“How did I dream of a photograph I’ve never seen? Did I imagine the whole thing?” I raised my gaze to look out one of the two windows flanking the fireplace, which faced the direction of the cemetery, though only the shadows in the garden left by the late afternoon sun were visible from the first floor.
I forced myself to relax my aching jaw and take a deep breath. I reached for the photograph again with loving hands. I peered at it closely. Faded gray ink marked the bottom border in a delicate cursive script.
“Darius Blake Ferguson, 1880, age 28 yrs.” I mouthed his name once again. “Darius Blake Ferguson.”
I turned the picture over and studied his face once again—the dashing waves of hair that spread out from his forehead, the sparkle in his light-colored eyes which were blue in my dream, the soft lines of his lower lip visible below his dark mustache. A feeling of peace swept through me, warming the core of my being and spreading throughout my limbs. I pressed the photograph to my chest for a moment before compulsively staring at it once again. Whatever supernatural phenomenon led me to meet Darius in the cemetery, or whatever force had brought him into my dreams, I promised myself I would never run from him again...if only I had the chance to see him one more time, ghost or dream lover.
He existed. He had been real. He had lived...and died. I raised the photograph to my lips. And I loved him. I knew that as certainly as I knew I would return to the cemetery every day until I found him again...as certainly as I knew I would do everything in my power to see him again in my dreams.
The unmistakable sound of a car in the drive brought me to my feet. I set the photograph down on the high-gloss black coffee table and hurried to the door, anxious to ask Cynthia and Laura about Darius. Was he a relative of theirs?
“Hello, dear. Thank you,” Cynthia murmured as I rushed down the steps to help her from the car.
“Did you happen to find those boxes? Boy, I hope they’re here, or we’re in for it with the grandkids—when they get old enough to care.” Laura preceded us and threw a grin over her shoulder as she carried Cynthia’s walker up the porch stairs.
“I did. They were in the attic—right where you said. I brought them downstairs.”
“Thank you, Molly,�
� Laura murmured. She took Cynthia’s arm in one hand and held the walker in the other while I pushed open the door. “I could have brought them down. Were they heavy? I don’t even remember; it’s been so long since we saw them.”
“No, that’s fine. There they are.” I practically danced with an overwhelming sense of anticipation. “I hope you don’t mind, but I peeked in one of them.”
“Not at all, dear. In fact, I wonder if we shouldn’t leave a few of them here, Laura. Some of the ones of the house? I think there were some around the turn of the century, weren’t there?”
I caught my breath and did my best to keep my hopeful look toward Laura just short of begging.
“Sure, we can do that. Why not? It’s your house now, Molly, and all houses come with history.”
I grabbed the taller woman for an exuberant hug.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” I said with a broad smile. Laura’s eyebrows shot up at my enthusiasm, but she patted my arm kindly. Cynthia beamed in return.
“Well, of course, dear. We’re delighted to share the history of the house with you.”
“Please sit down,” I said with some shortness of breath as I wondered if I dared ask for the picture of Darius. It was a portrait, not a picture of the house, and I had no idea how they would react when I asked for it.
“The refrigerator is in place and humming away,” I rattled nervously, “but I still haven’t been to the store—not that I know where it is, so I can’t offer you anything.”
I winced as I watched the sisters pause to regard my out-of-place ultramodern sofa with raised eyebrows, before Laura lowered Cynthia onto the sofa.
“That’s perfectly understandable. We just finished dinner at any rate,” Laura said as she took a seat beside Cynthia who ran her left hand along the fabric of the angular armrest.
“My dear, this sofa is luxurious!” Cynthia cooed. “I’ve seen them in magazines, but I never imagined! Sister, we have to get one of these for our place in Florida. I could stretch out on it all day long.” Cynthia eyed the extensive length of the couch—one of only two pieces of seating furniture that would fit in my small Seattle apartment living room.
