The Curse of Misty Wayfair

by Jaime Jo Wright

  The scarf.

  Heidi stopped. She lifted the light.

  Where was the scarf?

  It had been there just minutes before. There was no doubt.

  She searched the darkness frantically, but her phone’s flashlight was only so bright and didn’t cast a beam very far.

  “C’mon!” Heidi hissed in creeped-out exasperation. She needed to get out of here. Away from this place. But she couldn’t leave without Emma’s scarf.

  Or maybe she should.

  A heavy sense of danger settled over her. The kind that warned her no scarf was worth this. Emma would have to work through her anxiety. At this point—Heidi passed the fence and darted a look toward the far corner of the yard—at this point she needed to leave.

  She took another step, and without warning the scarf settled around her neck, yanking her back. Heidi choked out a scream, and her phone dropped to the ground, the light aiming away from her. Her hands flew up to grab at the scarf that dug against her windpipe.

  The body Heidi stumbled backward against was no ghost.

  It was very real. It was a woman. She could tell by the strands of long hair that wafted over Heidi’s face as she fought against the cold hands that clutched the scarf.

  “Don’t fight,” the woman’s voice crooned. It shook a bit. As if she were unsure of her own actions.

  Heidi tried to spin, but as she did, the scarf twisted and tightened around her throat. She tripped and fell, gagging as the Ducie scarf cut into her neck.

  “No!” The woman’s voice was urgent. Worried. Heidi felt the woman drop to her knees behind her. The scarf loosened, and the woman’s arms came around Heidi’s neck instead, dragging her back against her chest.

  A hand came up and stroked the side of Heidi’s face, flattening her hair.

  “Shhhhh,” the woman crooned. “It’s okay, baby. Momma’s here.”

  Thea

  She groaned, turning her head on the pillow, only to endure the throbbing pain that made the light from the windows feel like a thousand knives burrowing into her skull. A hand clamped over her forehead. It was cool and gentle. Thea heard the murmur of voices, first Rose’s, then Simeon’s. She opened her eyes in small slits, just enough to see Rose exit the bedroom and Simeon sitting vigil by her side.

  “Thea.” Simeon edged closer when he saw she’d awakened. His familiar features were blurry. Thea tried to open her eyes wider, but it hurt too much. Her stomach still rolled with nauseating persistence.

  “What happened?” Thea muttered.

  “You fell down the stairs at the asylum. You’re at our house. Rose has been tending you through the night. Mrs. Amos insisted we take you there, but they have no spare room for you.”

  Thea tried to journey through the fog of her mind. It was thick. But Effie’s face revived in her memory, and then her story. Thea struggled to sit, but she fell back against her pillow as Simeon’s hand pressed against her shoulder.

  “Don’t try to move.” His fingers smoothed back her hair.

  The weight of what she knew crashed in on her conscious mind.

  “Edward Fortune!” Thea gasped.

  “What?” Simeon leaned closer.

  She felt as though she were speaking so loudly she was screaming, but perhaps she was only whispering. Thea couldn’t tell.

  “He’s my grandfather.”

  Simeon’s eyes widened. His mouth twitched.

  Thea tried to push words past her dry mouth and thick tongue. “He fathered my mother with Misty Wayfair. He knew your grandmother Mathilda had killed Misty, and he—allowed it. Took the blame and put it on Fergus, so Edward would bear no shame.”

  Simeon’s face darkened. Thea watched his shoulders stiffen as the truth barreled into him.

  “The Fortunes took my mother in and raised her as a waif.” Thea’s words tumbled over each other, on a dash to escape before she forgot the details entirely. “She left them and must have birthed me. Before she returned to Pleasant Valley, she left me at the orphanage.”

  Simeon’s gray eyes were turbulent, and again his hand brushed her forehead. “Shhh, Thea. You must rest.”

  “No!” Thea blinked rapidly to avoid the feeling she might lose consciousness. “Mr. Fortune needs to answer for this. For my mother. She used to haunt your family, escaping the asylum at night to watch you. All of you.”

  Simeon didn’t respond. The implications were there, and yet Thea thought she saw him calculating by the way his lips moved silently.

  “She could not have been behind the deaths of my family,” he said, more to himself than to her. “At least not my mother or Mary. Penelope had already been dead herself. And, they died of melancholy.” Simeon dropped his gaze back to Thea. It was clear in his eyes that he no longer believed that. “Was it Effie?”

  “No,” Thea whispered. “Not Effie. She hasn’t the mind or a reason to—to be a cause of your family’s deaths.”

  “So, did . . . ?” The chair scraped on the floor as Simeon jolted to his feet, awareness flooding his features. “Edward Fortune. Did he kill my family? Did he allow the story of Misty Wayfair to propagate in order to drive away the Coyles from Pleasant Valley?”

  Simeon stalked to the door, a purpose in his stride Thea had never seen before. As if Simeon had been awakened from a stupor of aimless wandering and hopeless resignation and now wished for closure. Once and for all.

  “Simeon,” Thea begged. No. He didn’t understand. Mr. Fortune had no reason to make the Coyles his vendetta of death. He’d already had his purposes fulfilled. Mathilda Coyle had done so when she’d murdered Misty Wayfair in a misplaced jealous attack.

  But Simeon didn’t seem to hear Thea. He looked over his shoulder at her, their eyes locking. Hers, attempting to plead for him to stay, and his, resolute that the truth of his family’s deaths might finally be uncovered.

  “This will end. Today. The curse of Misty Wayfair will be over.”

  The door closed firmly behind him.

  Chapter 38

  Heidi

  Headlights illuminated the woods around the asylum. A squad car’s red-and-blue lights flashed. The woman gripping Heidi hissed with a worried expression into Heidi’s ear.

  “No. No more cops.”

  She released Heidi, who scrambled to her feet. The loosened grip also released the gag around Heidi’s throat. Emma’s Ducie scarf fell limp around her neck. She surged toward the woman, pulling her back to the ground with a grunt.

  “Let me go!” the woman shouted. She clawed at the earth, dragging herself toward the woods. Trying to escape. To the endless forest beyond and the graves that marked the very ghost Heidi had once considered might exist.

  Heidi grappled for the waistline of the woman’s jeans, wrapping her fingers around it and tugging her backward.

  A man shouted.

  Flashlights flooded the backyard.

  “Heidi!” Rhett’s voice broke through her frantic subconscious.

  But no. This was her fight. This was her story.

  Heidi straddled the woman’s legs, grabbing at her shoulders and forcing the woman to face her. In the darkness, aided by Detective Davidson’s light as he came upon them, Heidi stared into the eyes of the woman who had first peered into her room. A woman who, at first glance, was so like the dead Mary Coyle of the photo album. A woman who was the older version of Heidi.

  “Please, Heidi!” the woman cried in desperation. “Let me go. Let me run.”

  “Who are you?” Heidi half screamed into her face. She knew she was crying. She knew the truth even before the woman admitted it.

  Detective Davidson had his gun drawn.

  Officer Tate was behind Heidi, and she could vaguely hear him commanding her to back away.

  Rhett stood off to the side. She could almost feel his censure that she’d come here to the asylum alone in search of Emma’s scarf. Censure born from protection. It wouldn’t be safe. Not after the arson fire.

  “Who are you?” Heidi gave the woman a s
hake.

  Graying blond hair flopped over the woman’s face. There was fear in her eyes, and an emptiness Heidi couldn’t quite place.

  “Let me go!” she wailed again.

  Detective Davidson demanded something, but Heidi didn’t register it. She leaned down into her doppelgänger’s face and growled, “Tell me who you are!”

  A moment.

  A pause.

  “I’m your mother, Heidi. Your mother.”

  Heidi rolled off the woman whose claims seemed so asinine, they almost had to be true. The police moved in. Rhett helped her to her feet. She stared at her look-alike.

  Suddenly everything the dementia-riddled Loretta Lane said made sense. Ghosts in their family. Mistaking Heidi for the daughter who might as well have been dead to them. Worst of all, Heidi now understood why she had always been a misfit in her own family. She was their daily reminder of a daughter they wished to forget.

  Thea

  Thea watched Rose as she wrung out a cloth after helping Thea clean up. She didn’t feel much better. In fact, she was certain she was worse. Her mind seemed even more cloudy than before. She wondered if she had imagined Effie, the asylum, and the odd story of a ghost.

  “Here.” Rose’s gentle voice awakened Thea to the present. She observed the woman’s blue eyes, framed by dark brows, and her black hair swooped in its typical nursing roll on the back of her head. Rose ran the cool cloth down Thea’s neck and ears.

  “You’ll feel a bit better now that you’re clean.”

  She didn’t. Not really.

  Rose moved across the room to a bureau. Thea followed her with her eyes. Simeon had been upset when he’d left. She couldn’t recall exactly why. But Rose wasn’t upset. She was very calm.

  Thea watched Rose return, a cup in her hand. Another kind smile.

  “Can you sip this? It should help keep you hydrated.”

  Thea struggled to sit up in the bed. Rose held the teacup to her lips, and the lukewarm liquid trailed down Thea’s throat, a momentary comfort.

  She lay back against her pillows again.

  “Where is Simeon?” she asked.

  Rose shook her head, and her eyes shadowed. “He didn’t tell me.” She still held the cup as if she intended to ask Thea to sip again. But her voice was distant. Considering. “He always tells me where he’s going.”

  Thea nodded. A memory returned to her. Fortune.

  “Edward Fortune,” Thea breathed.

  Rose tilted her head. “What?”

  “He was going to Edward Fortune’s, I believe. My mother. Misty Wayfair.”

  Rose stared at her for a long moment. The ticking of a clock filled the silence, and then Rose offered another, smaller smile. “Sip?”

  Thea eyed the cup. She’d never been a fan of tea. What had ever made her start drinking it? She recalled the first day she set foot in the Coyle home. Mary. She was dead. Yes. Thea remembered now. She’d taken their picture, sisters, Rose and Mary, and then had tea.

  Effie had had tea.

  And Thea, at the asylum.

  “No, thank you.” Thea tried to put her thoughts into order. “How did your mother die?” she asked Rose abruptly.

  Rose’s hand stilled, a little bit of tea sloshing over the side of the cup. “She . . . passed of melancholia.”

  “Like Mary?” Thea frowned. She knew this. Her mind was so foggy.

  “Yes.” Rose nodded. “It runs in our family.”

  Thea struggled to maintain her focus. “Melancholy doesn’t kill. Has no one told you that?” She didn’t mean to sound rude, but she couldn’t formulate anything other than her blunt thought.

  “I know,” Rose nodded. She set the teacup on the nightstand.

  “Did you . . . give Mary tea?” Thea asked.

  Rose studied her for a moment and then nodded. “She liked tea. She liked lots of tea. It made her feel better.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Yes.” Rose offered a vague smile, her blue eyes looking out the window across the room. “Mother liked tea as well.”

  Thea’s breaths came a bit faster now. The intensity of the truth in that moment sent an awareness through her. “Your grandmother . . .”

  “No.” Rose shook her head. “She didn’t like tea. But she taught me how to make it. It helps people who are sad, Thea. Like my mother and like Mary. Dr. Ackerman wanted Mary to live at the asylum. It’s a horrible place. My sister didn’t deserve to live there. My mother didn’t deserve to suffer in her regrets. After Father died, she wallowed in her doubts. But she couldn’t help it—she couldn’t have stopped him if she’d tried. So, I gave Mama tea. It saved her. She isn’t sad anymore.”

  Thea tried to move her legs. They were heavy, and her arms were hard to lift too. The realization she’d been drinking Rose’s poisoned tea shot through her with the alarming awareness that Rose somehow saw herself as savior. To the ill, to the weak members of her family.

  “Your father?” Thea gasped, choking as nausea rose in her throat.

  Rose slowly lowered herself onto the chair Simeon had originally sat on. “I was simply trying to stop him. I was a child. We were in the loft, and he was angry. So, so angry. When he went to strike at me, I struck back, and he tripped and fell out the window. And then he was dead.” Rose gave Thea a wide-eyed stare. “My grandmother Mathilda said, ‘Sometimes to protect your family, a person must make grave decisions.’ She told me that she had done so once herself.” Rose’s eyes filled with a fierce loyalty, an obsessive protection. “I only do what’s best for the suffering.”

  Thea swallowed the nausea again. The room grew blurry. She closed her eyes as consciousness faded. Fighting against it, Thea opened her mouth, gasping out, “Did you know my mother . . . ?”

  Rose’s voice echoed in Thea’s ear, and her gentle hand brushed Thea’s cheek. “I knew only Misty Wayfair’s ghost. But when she came, when I would see her outside, staring up at our home, singing so softly, I knew it was time. She wanted them to come to her. So I helped them. I helped my mother and Mary, and now Effie and you. Effie speaks lies, and she is suffering because of them. I tried to warn you—to frighten you—in the woods that day outside the hospital. You needn’t concern yourself with these things. They’ll only make you unhappy. I just wanted you to be happy, Thea.” Rose reached out and stroked Thea’s hair away from her forehead. “But you’re so brave. Even after I pretended to be Misty’s ghost—to scare you—you still came to the hospital. So brave. But you needed to stop asking questions. They will make you sad. It’s too painful. So, I’m helping you.”

  “I don’t want any more tea,” Thea argued weakly, trying to push away Rose’s hand.

  But the woman’s soft voice filled the room. “Just a little more, and then everything will be all right.”

  Heidi

  She watched them lead her mother—Betsy Lane, they had identified her as—down the hall of the police station. The front door burst open, stealing Heidi’s attention from Betsy and transferring it to the pale, wild-eyed expression of Vicki. Brad followed her, and it was his look that collided with Heidi’s. Sheepish, sorry, and filled with a familiar expression of surprise. He hadn’t known.

  Rhett’s hand curled around hers. Heidi took it for what it was. A silent warning not to overreact. Not to launch into a tirade against her sister. Heidi didn’t agree. Every particle in her being wanted to cry and seethe at the same time.

  “Where is she?” Vicki demanded of Detective Davidson, who came down the hall toward them, his shoes clicking on the linoleum floor.

  He gave both Vicki and Heidi a quick glance. “She’s in holding for now. We’ll process her. She’ll need medical attention.”

  “She must be off her meds,” Vicki muttered.

  Detective Davidson nodded. “More than likely. We’ve got a call in to her probation officer in Minnesota. Why don’t you all come into the front room here? I’m guessing you need to talk.”

  He was right. They did.

  Heidi ref
used to release Rhett’s hand, even though he tugged it away, trying to give her family privacy. He followed, and in a few minutes, the four of them were seated around the table.

  A loaded silence filled the room after Detective Davidson closed the door.

  Brad sniffed.

  Rhett kept quiet.

  Vicki picked at a fingernail.

  Heidi had no intention of leaving the stillness alone. She’d waited too long to understand.

  “Why did you never tell me? After everything—especially now. The fire? You blamed me! The message on the mirror? Betsy admitted to it all! To get my attention! What is that about? I’d say trying to burn me alive and then saving me is a bit of an extreme way to do that! What’s wrong with her?” Heidi’s questions exploded like rapid-fire bullets in her sister’s direction.

  Vicki raked her hands through her hair and turned tired, sad eyes in her direction.

  “She’s my older sister. Your mother. She has schizophrenia. Half the time she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s supposed to be in Minnesota the last we heard, in a hospital there. She was sentenced to serve time, but she received an insanity plea.” Vicki’s eyes filled with tears.

  “An insanity plea?” Heidi shoved to her feet. “I’m thirty years old! How long has Betsy been locked up?”

  Vicki bit her bottom lip and shot a look at Brad. His hand moved to cover hers. She swallowed, drawing in a deep breath. When she met Heidi’s accusing glare, Vicki seemed to lose her last vestige of cold guardedness.

  “Betsy got messed up with a really bad crowd out of high school. She ended up—well, her boyfriend ended up dead. Maybe an overdose, but Betsy was pinned for it. For dealing. After she served her time at the institution, she went right back to drugs and went off her medications. So, she was brought up on random theft charges, more dealing, et cetera. She’s been doing time, Heidi. All her life.” Vicki blinked fast, but tears escaped anyway. “Mom and Dad wanted to protect you from her.”

  Heidi sagged in her chair. Her chest rose and fell with pent-up emotions that twisted between shock, panic, and outright betrayal. Her sister—no, her aunt—had kept the secret all these years, along with her parents!