“I don’t suppose you have a lighter, or matches, do you?” she asked, shining the light on my face.
I looked into the rectangular device she held, squinting. “No.”
The drawer in the table that held the lamp beckoned to me. In my head, I saw a small box with the words Parlor Matches written on it. Desiree opened the drawer and pulled out the exact box I envisioned. The unpleasant vibe—as Melba would call it—was nothing compared to the downright dread I felt after Desiree lit the lamp and turned up the flame, creating a familiar glow in the center of the room, while an eerie gloom fell around its edges.
“I better call my aunt. She’s probably having a heart attack about now, wondering where we’d run off to.”
A moment later, a loud voice came on the other end of her phone. “Auntie Mel, I know. Didn’t you know there was a tour today?”
After a moment, Desiree put her hand over the phone and turned her attention to me. “She didn’t know. Says it wasn’t on the schedule.” Then she turned her attention back to her phone and the frantic voice inside. “We’re in Solomon’s Den.”
Her description of the room sent a chill up my back. As if realizing what she’d said, she looked up from the phone and gave me an apologetic look.
“Okay,” she shook her head to the phone. “Well, we’re stuck here for now. Right. Okay, we’ll meet you later.”
“She says the tour should take about an hour, and not to let anyone see… us.”
I got the feeling she meant—me; specifically, my resemblance to the infamous Solomon Brandt.
After glancing around the room, my gaze came back to Desiree. The glow of the oil lamp haloed her hair, making some strands appear golden, like her skin. She was the most beautiful thing in my memories, and just looking at her quelled any anxiety welling inside me.
“It’s kinda creepy in here in the dark,” she said, her voice suddenly low.
“There must be a light switch somewhere,” I said.
“No, we’d better not. It’ll be too bright. They might see it in the hall.”
No sooner did Desiree speak than a noise coming from behind her, by the far wall, made her jump. She scooted beside me, close enough that I felt her arm brush against mine. I wasn’t sure if instinct or desire made me wrap an arm around her, nestling her into my side. She snuggled her frightened self against me, her hands clasped in front of her mouth, against my chest.
“What was that?” she whispered.
I didn’t know what the scraping noise was, but I knew I had to reassure her everything was okay. “Something probably loosened when we closed the drapes, and decided to fall at this time.”
Her short laugh moved her warm body against mine. The small bit of comfort I gave heightened my desire for her. Protecting this girl felt beyond right.
She unlatched one of her hands from its grip on the other and grabbed a fistful of the front of my T-shirt. “Solomon?”
Hearing my name whispered from between her lips made the next breath catch in my throat.
“This room is freaking me out. There’s quite a history locked up here, you know? Yesterday at the library, while I was researching for you, I read stuff that gave me nightmares last night.”
When she shuddered, I loosened the fingers of my left hand from the fist they were in and flattened them out on her arm, tightening my hold on her.
“Don’t worry, Desiree, I won’t let anything happen to you. It’s just a room.”
But as I reassured her, I wasn’t assured myself. Feelings of déjà vu toyed with my sanity, and I suppressed my own shudder.
“Just a room.” I barely recognized my own voice, softer, lower, but the urge to protect Desiree was too strong to ignore, whether from a trinket that had fallen off a table somewhere across the room, or ghosts from the past. She needed me, and I would not desert her in her moment of need.
Voices, carried down the hall, grew closer. The doorknob jiggled, once, twice, then silence. As I held my breath, I felt Desiree hold hers. She lowered her hand from its grip on my T-shirt, but stayed next to me, a silent gesture of contentment.
Strands of silken hair covered my hand on her arm. I lifted my fingers; the curls fell around them. A compulsion beyond my control made me turn my head to the left, until my chin grazed her forehead, but barely. Except for my chest rising and falling from breathing, I held perfectly still, wondering how long we would stay like that. Who would make the next move? And what would that move be?
Then Desiree spoke. “Your heartbeat just slowed.”
She’s listening to my heart.
“It was pumping pretty fast before, but it’s calm now,” she said.
She lifted her head and looked up. I couldn’t resist the urge to touch her cheek, then her chin. It seemed the natural thing to do. She turned farther, facing me, until she was in my arms completely, and I didn’t know what to do next.
“Are you all right now?” I asked, smoothing her hair over her back.
“Yeah. As long as you don’t leave my side.” Her gaze roamed the room. “I never liked this place.”
“Have you been here before?”
“Lots of times, but not in this room. Auntie Mel would never let me wander off alone. So much crazy talk about ghosts and evil spirits.” Desiree shuddered. “She always kept me by her side. Sometimes, when I was younger, she would let me play outside as long as I was near Wally.”
The loose grip I had on her tightened. “Will my side do, in this case?”
A smile lifted her cheeks. She nodded, scanning both my eyes, then my nose, mouth, then back to my eyes.
“You know, you really don’t look like him at all. You’re a complete gentleman, and your eyes are way kinder.” She ran a hand over the muscles in my arm; they twitched beneath her touch. “And you’re not menacing at all.”
None of the differences she mentioned meant anything. They weren’t actual features—those were nearly identical. The things Desiree mentioned were things she saw, or wanted to see. I did look like Solomon Brandt, the plantation owner, ruthless slave driver. And although I longed to feel like someone else, anyone else, I had felt him inside me, on two accounts now. Was he my past? My future?
The movement of Desiree’s arms circling my waist brought me back to the moment at hand. The intensity of her gaze and the feel of her body against mine drove my urge. I slid a hand under her hair, over the thin fabric of the shirt she wore, and worked my way upward. When I reached her hairline, I closed my fingers around the back of her neck, squeezing gently, possibly pushing her closer.
Like two magnets, our faces inched toward each other. Did she want to be kissed as much as I wanted to kiss her? I was seconds away from finding out when another unexpected noise spoiled the moment. This time, the noise sounded distinctly like a chair leg scraping across a wooden floor, followed by a woman’s cry.
A muffled gasp expelled from Desiree, before she buried her face in my chest. This girl I barely knew, yet felt such passion for, already had my heart racing; now it beat on overload. The new disturbance shocked my emotions, and I struggled to put them in check. Changing focus to the far wall where the noise had come from, I patted Desiree on the back in a soothing manner, and then took a step back, holding her at arm’s length.
She lifted her head, her eyes wide.
“Can you turn on your cell phone? I need the light.”
“Wh-what for?” Her words were quick and fear-filled.
“I want to see what the noise was. Stop it from bothering us again.”
As if I knew exactly what to do, I reached for the switch on the oil lamp’s handle and turned up the flame, swelling our circle of light, almost reaching the edges of the room.
Desiree turned on her phone, gripped my hand tightly, and let me lead the way. We walked toward the gaping black hole of a stone fireplace. My gaze followed the light as Desiree passed the beam over the stones. A china bowl sat at one corner of the dark wood mantel.
“Over here,” I said.<
br />
She shone the light on the bowl filled with chandelier crystals. Then she screamed and dropped the phone, startling me. She jumped around behind me, gripping the sides of my T-shirt, pulling the neckline across my throat.
“There it is. Over there.”
She pointed to the far end of the mantel. A mouse jumped off the wood and onto the heavy draperies that hung at a window beside the fireplace. I picked up the phone and added light to the mouse as it scurried down the drape, disappearing along the floor molding.
“It’s just a mouse,” I said, grinning. “It probably ran through the bowl with the crystals in it, causing the tinkling noise.”
I passed her the phone and turned around to face her. Frantically, she searched the floor around us. That was my cue. I slipped my arms around her, pulling her close.
“It’s gone, ran over there somewhere.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
She let out a big sigh and gave me a flustered grin. “I’m not usually such a damsel, you know.”
The discovery didn’t explain the scraping noise, but I didn’t bring it up. As long as Desiree felt safe.
Gazing into the glossy green pools of her eyes, my emotions found the path they were on before, until Desiree lifted her gaze above my head, and the desire in her eyes change to distress.
When I turned and saw the cause of her concern, the overheated blood in my veins cooled considerably. A portrait of the man I was growing to hate hung, perhaps too proudly, over the fireplace. Desiree lowered the light and turned to me. But I took the phone from her hand, stepped closer, and examined the portrait more closely. The picture Desiree brought with her had been taken from this image.
Solomon’s chiseled features must have been touched up over the years, to look as life-like as they did. His slicked-back hair, hanging past his shoulders, gleamed black, contrasting against the black suit jacket and bow tie he wore, with a white shirt. There was more color in his blue eyes than anything else in the painting; even my own eyes weren’t as deeply shaded.
“Creepy,” Desiree said. “Those soulless eyes kinda follow you wherever you go.”
She was right. Whichever way I moved, he stared back at me.
Her phone rang, distracting us. She had a quick conversation, then hung up. “Auntie Mel says the tourists are upstairs, and we can sneak out now. She’ll meet us in the parking lot.”
As much as I wanted to bolt from this room, I was disappointed that our time together was over.
“Let’s put the room back in order,” I said.
As I started to walk toward the windows, Desiree stopped me with a hand on my wrist.
“Um, despite the creepiness, I’m glad we got locked in here together.” A smile turned up the corners of her mouth.
To say I was glad to be in here for any reason would be a lie. But I smiled and said, “Maybe sometime we can continue this in more pleasant surroundings.” The river came to mind.
“We should definitely do something together sometime,” she said. “I’d love to get to know the man behind the mystery.”
In a rush, we put the room back as it was, all but the scent of oil smoke hanging in the air. I unlocked the door, then put the key back in its place, wondering if Melba even knew it was there. Then we raced through the mansion and out into the parking lot where Melba stood by her car, waiting for us. After casting a suspicious glare over each of us, she said, “Des, have a safe drive back to school. Let’s go, Solomon.”
“So I’m not invited for supper?” Desiree said in a teasing tone. When Melba didn’t answer, she said, “Thanks, but maybe another time.”
A warm breeze blew strands of red curls across her face; she tossed them behind her shoulder and smiled cordially at me, but I detected something in her eyes that wasn’t there when she’d first arrived. Something she hid from her aunt. “I have evening classes tonight. I’ll come by soon.”
“Thanks for coming by with the information.” Trying to look and sound unsmitten wasn’t easy. My heart reached out to her as she got into her little black car and drove off to some other part of the world.
“Can we go now?”
When I heard Melba’s sarcastic tone, I turned away from Desiree’s dust cloud and got into the car. In a way, I was glad the tour bus had come and kept us from the window-cleaning task.
The drive back was a quiet one. Melba didn’t even turn on the radio. In fact, she seemed to be in deep concentration, but not on the road in front of her. I even thought, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her lips move once or twice.
houghts of Desiree floated in my head the rest of the day, so much so that I couldn’t concentrate on other things. The world around me seemed brighter, colors clearer. In fact, everything seemed clearer, except my past. That was more of a mystery than ever.
Melba seemed distracted, too. She didn’t have much to say during supper, and complained that she was tired immediately after. I’d even caught her mumbling to herself again, or maybe she was conversing with the spirit world, or maybe she was just crazy. She had refused to talk to me about what had happened at the estate before Desiree arrived.
After supper, I abandoned the yard work and took Excalibur for a walk to the river. I told him everything that had happened that day—the accounts of Harold the slave, and the closeness of me and Desiree in Solomon’s den. I couldn’t tell if he cared or not, but he seemed to listen, pricking his ears toward me now and then.
When I got into bed that night, the girl I’d almost kissed seemed permanently etched into my mind. Our lips had been so close to touching. I wondered what it felt like to kiss, and to be kissed. I wondered how she tasted; I could only imagine every bit as sweet as she looked. I longed for that moment again, to feel her against me; the rise and fall of her chest against mine as she breathed, her warm breath on the front of my neck when she laughed, or squealed from fright. But the moment was lost. Desire to be near her again burned deep inside me, in places I didn’t know existed, until today.
My eyes grew heavy as my body warmed on the inside. Then Desiree’s image faded into green, the same shade as her eyes. The heat intensified, sparking its way through my bones, veins, and organs. The green area behind my eyelids turned to persimmon, like her hair, and then red. The fever inside me burned though to my skin, becoming uncomfortable. Flames erupted behind my eyelids, blazing, and through the flames burst the evil Solomon Brandt.
His hair was long, slicked back with natural grease, his features sharp. But it was his eyes that choked the breath out of me. Hot flames of hell burned in their sockets. More flames danced wildly on his hulking shoulders. In a smooth motion, his image came toward me. The fire in his eyes burned out, replaced with depthless black holes, then eyeballs with pupils rimmed in electric blue, then normal—my eyes. I felt my head pressing into the pillow, then a room came into view around the demon Solomon, the same room in the Brandt plantation house that I’d been locked in with Desiree—Solomon’s den. Only now, the den was in bad need of repair. The same furniture I’d seen when I was there earlier now looked even older and darkened with stains. The draperies hung from the windows in tatters, as if sharp, giant claws had raked them to pieces. Over the blazing fireplace, the same portrait of the slave owner hung. I sniffed the air, and for a moment the heavy scent of burning oil brought me back to earlier that day, but not for long.
“Welcome home, Solomon,” the demon said.
The pure evilness of his tone prickled the hair on the back of my neck. The rest of his hulking body materialized. He turned his back to me and walked to the center of the room, stopping at a gilded throne that I hadn’t noticed earlier. He sat down, his back straight, like a king looking over his land. In his hand, he held a bullwhip.
As well as evil, a great power exuded from him. I felt it seep under my skin and mix with my blood. I tried not to let the power take me over, for I knew if it did, I would be the one sitting in that chair holding the whip. He and I would be one and t
he same.
Thinking of Desiree, I fought the pull and was able to lower my gaze from his.
“Take it.” The evil Solomon stretched out his arm, thrusting the whip at me. “Whip that slave bitch out of your heart. She doesn’t belong there.”
A sharp pain cut through my chest at the thought. Desiree—she was in my heart, and I would keep her safe there.
“No!” Rage welled inside me, hardening the muscles in my neck and arms, curling my fingers into fists at my sides. “Who are you and what do you want?”
As I spoke, my tongue tasted the vile fear that consumed me.
An evil laugh echoed throughout the room. Amusement heightened his frightening features. “I am a man scorned—sent to live in this purgatory hell by my own slaves. They struck me down with their sickness. Poisoned me with their mumbo-jumbo. Violated my mind and body with their curses. Rendered me helpless against their black magic.”
As my evil twin ranted, a vision formed between us. My spirit hovered amongst treetops, deep inside a forest. In the gloom of dusk, a gathering of slaves came into view. They circled a man who looked like me. Their voices grew strong and steady as they chanted in a different language. Scented smoke from four fires, one blazing at each corner of a small clearing, wafted through the air, burning my invisible lungs. Directly below me, in the middle of the clearing, the evil Solomon lay on a bed of mud; his wrists and ankles bound by rope to four trees. Handfuls of dirt were thrown on his naked body at intervals; and with every assault, a curse was cast.
The chant ended, and the crowd receded to the fringes of the surrounding forest, creating a circular human wall, all except three women dressed in black tattered clothing, the cloth slightly darker than their skin. Each one wore a thin strand of spun cotton rope around her neck with a red pouch tied to it—a ward against evil.
One woman lifted Solomon’s head from the ground and shoved the rim of a wooden vessel between his lips. Cloudy liquid poured into his mouth and down his throat, forcing him to swallow, choking him with every gulp. I tasted every drop of the pungent, spicy mixture burning its way down our throat. Nausea tore through me, but vomiting wasn’t an option in my spirit form.
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