The Curse of Misty Wayfair

by Jaime Jo Wright

  “Please.” Rose’s voice had lessened to just above a whisper. “Do come in.”

  Thea forced herself to remember why she’d come to Pleasant Valley in the first place. To bring closure to the remembrance of a woman she wanted to forget. A mother who had shirked not only her responsibility but, more importantly, turned a stiff back to love.

  She swept a searching look over the rectangular windows on the third floor. Like a row of tombs that, when one was granted entrance, all memory of them in the live world faded. A place where minds were stirred by uncontrolled thoughts, where actions were spurred by irrational behaviors that could be described in no other way than—insane.

  No. No, she didn’t want to enter. She didn’t want to consider or even suggest that her mother might have once crossed the threshold of this place. If she did, it changed all of Thea’s already turbulent emotions about the woman. It wasn’t clean, nor was it a firmly closed matter like it would be if Thea found her mother’s name engraved on a tombstone.

  Sometimes death was more welcoming an ending to a story. It was final, and the lives left behind could grieve, if needed, but then move on.

  But a home for the mentally insane?

  Thea saw the faces of the photographs in Simeon’s albums. The suspension between life and death. Eyes neither alive nor dead. Minds neither aware nor empty.

  It was a horrible, terrifying trail to follow, and Thea would need more answers before she was willing to walk it.

  She left Rose there, alone, at the gates of Valley Heights Asylum, shrouded in its canopy of towering trees. She hadn’t even said farewell, nor had she turned at the sound of Rose’s concerned cry.

  Instead, Thea had run.

  When Mrs. Amos opened the door, a surprised look on her round, wrinkled face, Thea wasted no time with pleasantries.

  “Last evening,” she began, breathing heavily. Catching her breath after her harried pace back to town would have been a clever idea if she’d stopped to think first. “You were going to mention something—an idea—about my mother. Mr. Amos stopped you. Why?”

  Mrs. Amos opened the door further. “Oh dear. Do come in.”

  Thea nodded. The warmth of the home, coupled with the smell of freshly baked bread, covered her with an unexpected sense of calm as she entered. Her spirit grappled for it. Like a lifeline.

  Mrs. Amos motioned Thea into a small parlor. Two stuffed chairs, arms covered with doilies and the seat cushions worn, bordered a fireplace. There were coals in it.

  “Please sit,” Mrs. Amos instructed.

  Without argument, Thea relaxed into one. Mrs. Amos took the opposite seat, sank onto it, and adjusted the folds of her dark blue skirt. Her blouse was full over her broad bosom, and her waist was almost indiscernible as it met her hips. The roundness of Mrs. Amos reminded Thea of the perfect grandmother. Soft, cozy, and safe.

  “Now . . .” Mrs. Amos smiled gently. “Mr. Amos was expecting you at work, wasn’t he?”

  Oh yes. Thea bit her lip. She’d been foolhardy.

  “Posh.” The old woman waved her hand. “He’ll live to see another day regardless. It seems you have far more depths to explore than a portrait.”

  Thea winced. The woman read her well.

  “To answer your question”—Mrs. Amos straightened the doily that had been brushed askew on the arm of her chair—“as we chatted last evening, I was reminded of a hospital we have just outside of town.”

  “The asylum?” Thea interrupted.

  “You know of it, then?” Mrs. Amos appeared surprised.

  “I just recently found out.”

  “Yes. Well, it was uncalled for. I must apologize. Sometimes this old mind of mine goes to places where proper manners don’t follow. My father used to call me a curious cat when I was a little girl. Regardless, Mr. Amos stopped me before I finished. Forgive me for the implication your mother may have been, or might be, a patient there. I meant absolutely no insult!”

  Thea was anything but offended. In fact, to a degree she related even more to Mrs. Amos. She told Mrs. Amos so and watched relief fill the old woman’s faded eyes.

  “I have vague memories,” Thea admitted, and the kindly look on Mrs. Amos’s face was all the coercion Thea needed. “Most of them leave me bereft and not endeared to my mother at all.”

  Mrs. Amos nodded, her lips rolling together in an empathetic frown.

  “I’ve no reason—no reason at all—to believe your mere suggestion has any merit. Yet, now that I am here in Pleasant Valley, there are so many . . .”

  “Oddities?” Mrs. Amos supplied.

  “Yes!” Thea gave her the sort of exasperated sigh she more than likely would have squelched in front of anyone else. “Mrs. Brummel has told me stories and—”

  “Mrs. Brummel has a wagging tongue, and it bodes no good for anyone. Especially for Christian charity.” Mrs. Amos tapped her finger on the chair. Her blue eyes sharpened. “I suppose she went on about how the town is split, Catholic and Protestant?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how it all started when Mathilda Kramer married Fergus Coyle?”

  “Precisely.” Thea sagged into the chair, a bit relieved that Mrs. Amos didn’t appear as intense or disturbed by the stories as Mrs. Brummel had made them out to be.

  Mrs. Amos gave her fingers a little wave. The lace at her sleeve was haphazardly tucked into the bottom of her cuff, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Mr. Amos and I knew Mathilda Coyle. The stories have haunted that poor family for years, and all because she wished to wed the one she loved. My goodness! I would have done quite the same as she did.”

  “So, Mrs. Brummel’s story is true?”

  “Which one?” Mrs. Amos shrugged. “All of them have merit to one degree or another. Mathilda’s father did disown her because she converted to the Catholic Church.”

  “And that’s a mortal sin?” Thea didn’t know, and she truly wondered.

  Mrs. Amos’s lips tightened. She toyed with the lace at her cuff and pulled it out from where it’d been tucked. “All I’ll say is, the Christian church has been divided on many grounds and for many reasons and for many years. The heart of the matter, I believe, isn’t to do with the name on the door but the God within.”

  Thea blinked. It made some sense. She wished to ask more but didn’t want to sidetrack away from the main topic of conversation. “And Misty Wayfair?”

  “Misty Wayfair.” Mrs. Amos shook her head sadly, her white cap well attached in place over her white hair. “She is a story. That is all. A rumor.”

  “You don’t believe in ghosts? In curses?” Thea surmised.

  Mrs. Amos smiled wanly. “Well, if I let my imagination go wild, I’m quite adept at being taken in by it all. The Coyles have had a sad and tragic series of passings. But because Misty caused them? Oh, so doubtful. For what could a wandering spirit really do, if it truly existed? They don’t hold the power of God over life and death, do they?”

  Thea wasn’t sure if she was supposed to answer that. And if she was, she didn’t know the answer.

  Mrs. Amos continued, her wobbly and aged voice musing aloud. “I thought when Mr. Kramer’s nephew, Mr. Fortune, inherited the logging company, things might be set to rights. But I’m afraid Mr. Fortune has turned a blind eye toward his cousins the Coyles. Regardless, it is what is.”

  Thea leaned forward. “What type of passings?”

  “Hmm?” Mrs. Amos tilted her head as if she didn’t understand.

  “You mentioned the Coyles had a series of unfortunate deaths . . .”

  “Oh yes. They did. They have. When Simeon and Rose were in adolescence, they lost their father. A most horrific accident. He fell from the loft onto his pitchfork, no less. It was then the rumor began that someone had seen the ghost of Misty Wayfair the night before. She’d been singing and dancing through the woods.”

  A chill riddled through Thea. The memory of the vision the night before was ripe in her mind.

  “Then their mother
passed not long after. She passed away . . .” Mrs. Amos hesitated, as if warring with herself. “She died due to melancholia. She was never the same after her husband’s death.”

  “Melancholia,” Thea repeated.

  Mrs. Amos gave her a knowing glance. She lifted her index finger. “This is where Mr. Amos would tell me to bite my tongue. But I see in your eyes you think as I do.”

  “How does one die of sadness?”

  “Yes!” Mrs. Amos leaned back, a bit satisfied. “How does one? Wasting away, I understand. Becoming reclusive, failing to get proper nourishment, yes. But then, if one does die, isn’t that because one contracts an illness because of a poor state of mind? So then wouldn’t she have died of pneumonia? Or perhaps the fever? But to call it melancholia . . .”

  As Mrs. Amos let her sentence drift away, her eyes met Thea’s.

  Thea nodded. “And that is why people believe in Misty Wayfair’s curse.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Amos nodded. “Mr. Coyle falls on a pitchfork. Mrs. Coyle dies of sadness? And then Mathilda herself? She passed away in her sleep. Poor Mary, of most recent times, just like her mother? It is all very unexplained. Especially in the wake of the fact that Misty Wayfair died such a violent death. Strangulation, so the story goes.”

  Mrs. Amos didn’t appear mortified. For an elderly woman, she seemed a bit too intrigued. Had Thea unwittingly opened the door to Mrs. Amos’s age-long curiosity?

  “The story goes that on the night of Mathilda and Fergus Coyle’s wedding, Misty Wayfair was strangled and thrown into a well. The rumors state she was—involved with Fergus.” Mrs. Amos touched her lips with her fingertips as though by doing so it would lessen the shock of her story.

  Thea waited. She’d already heard something similar from Mrs. Brummel, but perhaps Mrs. Amos would add more detail.

  Mrs. Amos busied herself by picking at a wayward thread on her sleeve. “Mathilda would never speak of it. Only to defend Fergus’s honor and that he was never involved with the woman.”

  “Who was Misty Wayfair?” Thea breathed.

  Mrs. Amos’s eyes flew up to meet hers. “She was—a woman. Who kept guests from the camp.”

  Thea blushed.

  Mrs. Amos nodded. “The entirety of the story is sad. On all accounts. But, not more than twenty years ago, Mr. Kramer—who was very old by then and on his way out of this world shortly after—built the asylum. Valley Heights, they called it. With room for a handful of patients.”

  Thea collected her thoughts. The story of Misty Wayfair, the origins of the asylum, it all had nothing to do with her mother. And yet the story of the Coyles and the logging company so permeated every facet of Pleasant Valley, it seemed hard to disassociate them.

  “And you think maybe my mother was one of the patients there?”

  Mrs. Amos’s eyes grew tender. She leaned forward, reaching for Thea’s hand. Thea gave it to her and welcomed the warmth of the old woman’s grasp.

  “Many strange things happen here. Mrs. Brummel will blame it on superstitious lore. I contend, if someone would merely speak the truth, it would all make sense. But as for your mother, I can only surmise. If you’ve been told she was from Pleasant Valley, I would have known of her. So, to not know of her means only that she must have been there. At the hospital. So much of life is a mystery, and so often it is left unsolved.”

  Thea swallowed back a sudden rush of tears. Ones that demanded she be honest and ones that surprised her with their poignancy.

  “I wished my mother to be dead,” Thea admitted.

  Mrs. Amos’s hand tightened in understanding.

  Thea swiped at a tear. “Now, hearing the story of the Coyles, Kramer Logging, of Misty Wayfair and whatever it was she suffered . . . now I wish my mother were alive. That she wasn’t touched by this cursed place.”

  “Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Amos breathed. “This place isn’t cursed. No more than any other. It is a wilderness of people wanting to understand where they belong. To build a life, to live it, and to one day pass on to glory should they be firm in their faith and knowledge of their Creator’s saving grace.”

  Her words left Thea empty.

  “I have none of that.” Thea swallowed again as the lump in her throat grew tighter. “No family. No life. No . . . eternity. I don’t even know who I am.”

  Mrs. Amos reached forward with her other hand and took both of Thea’s in hers. Her firm grasp and steady gaze captured Thea in a way no one ever had.

  “You are created to be an image of your Creator, my dear. That is a great honor. To be designed as Thea Reed, and signed by the mark of the Artist himself. You are a work of genius. But until you know that, your name, your roots, your past, and your future will be what you chase after. Like a leaf that blows in the wind. I would bid you all the best in catching it, only, if you do, it won’t satisfy. You will still wonder who Thea Reed is, long after your primary questions have been answered.”

  Chapter 12

  Heidi

  When she was a kid, she’d had a pet frog. Heidi remembered her father bringing home crickets from the pet store, and she’d dropped a few into the aquarium only to flinch as the long, sticky tongue of the amphibian shot out and snatched the insect. Legs kicked as it lodged in the frog’s mouth. The worst part, besides the gruesome sight, was the small container of crickets beside the tank. Unsuspecting little creatures, rubbing their hind legs together in a spring chorus of conversation as a vicious predator loomed beside them, separated by a plate of glass—and Heidi’s mercy. She’d released the crickets the next day and insisted her father take the frog to a nearby pond and release it too. Circle of life aside, Heidi had no intention of committing such offenses against living creatures.

  It was how she felt all too often.

  Not that her parents had intentions of eating her, but more so, that they were always there, and Heidi never knew when they would pounce if she spoke, or sang, or danced just wrong. There were legalities of the faith to follow. To them, the lines were clearly drawn. To Heidi, they’d been the plastic container she was trapped in. A container she’d escaped shortly after high school. College had been her playground, but even there, Heidi felt as if she had a tiny parent perched on each shoulder, both censuring her actions. So, for the most part, she’d been a good girl. But along with that came the very real drifting away from her family, until her career took over, life became easier alone, and distance made family more tolerable.

  Heidi jerked her head up as Vicki accidentally dropped a stainless-steel pan into the sink. Her sister’s face almost reflected how Heidi felt. For a moment, she wondered if Vicki had ever felt trapped too? She always assumed Vicki aligned herself with their parents out of personal choice. But what if—?

  “The dishwasher is broken,” Vicki muttered. Maybe to her, but Heidi didn’t respond. Vicki retrieved the pan, turned on the water, and grabbed a scouring pad.

  Heidi sat on a stool at the kitchen bar, her elbows propped on the granite countertop, hands splayed on both sides of her head. She hadn’t slept last night—at all. The couch was hard, and she certainly wasn’t going to sleep in her bedroom. Vicki might have scoured the mirror and removed the lipstick message with Windex, but she couldn’t scour the vision of the dead doppelgänger, or worse, the resurrected doppelgänger staring at her through her bedroom window.

  Legend, ghost, or real, Heidi was not a fan of this Misty Wayfair woman. Or people who broke into houses and didn’t bother to do anything but completely scare the occupants.

  She studied Vicki, who applied as much elbow grease to cleaning the pan as she had to cleaning the mirror last night.

  “Thanks for getting that message off the glass,” Heidi ventured.

  Vicki paused, her head coming up to give her sister a surprised look. A slight smile touched her lips. Heidi realized she probably hadn’t offered much in the way of gratitude to her sister. That was something she did need to take personal responsibility for. As people said, when you point your finger, there’s stil
l three pointing back at you. Heidi preferred not to dwell on what she may have contributed to the family dysfunction.

  Vicki returned to scrubbing. “Well, I just think it’s ridiculous the police can’t do anything.” Her words were a mix of irritation and worry.

  “Yeah.” Heidi’s response was absent. She ran a finger over a marble pattern on the counter. “So . . . this asylum . . .”

  “What?” Vicki put the pot on the drainboard and submerged her hand to unplug the drain for the dishwater.

  Heidi infused more assertiveness into her voice. Images of the photo album with the dead woman replaying in her mind. “This asylum the police mentioned last night? The Misty Wayfair character. What do you know about it?”

  Vicki wiped down the sink. “As Mom would say, it’s ‘stuff and nonsense.’ You know there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  One of the few things Heidi was prone to agree with her sister on. And still . . .

  “But, there was a woman looking in my window. Was it a guest maybe? Of the lodge?”

  Vicki dried her hands on a towel. Her blond hair was pulled back in its typically low ponytail, a few strands framing her face. Her eyes weren’t as hard and bitter this morning. Heidi wished she looked like this more often. She was more approachable, more—human.

  “Doubtful. It’s only May, so school hasn’t ended in most places. Our guests right now are all older, not young enough to match your description.”

  Heidi nodded. So much for that idea. She debated showing the photo album to Vicki, but then Vicki continued.

  “As for the asylum, it’s abandoned. It’s out in the woods down Briar Road about a half mile after you cross the bridge over the river. I don’t think it’s even safe to explore, from what I’ve heard. The foundation is a mess. But, I’ve never actually been out there.”

  “When did it shut down?” Heidi folded her hands in front of her, and her gaze trailed the green of her tattoos. Fly Free.

  She’d been trying to her entire life.