Ever After

by Odessa Gillespie Black

  Shelby followed my gaze. “Each stone has different protective qualities. Sapphire is symbolic of water, but water is symbolic for life.”

  “What can alchemy do to save Cole?”

  “Everything,” Kaitlyn said.

  I sat Indian style.

  Shelby and Kaitlyn looked at each other.

  “You’d have to care about someone an awful lot to die for them, wouldn’t you.” Butterflies tickled my stomach, but flew away. “Not that I’m going to let him do that.”

  The girls’ eyes narrowed. They both looked to the woods before the crackling of sticks and cursing interrupted us.

  “You know he does.” Shelby’s voice was strained.

  More rustling in the bushes came from behind the rock wall that separated the pool from the woods.

  “Hi, girls. Gossiping?” Cole wiped his hands on his pants and gave the girls a cold stare.

  I scooped my book up and flipped it open.

  “We’re going to get back to work. We’ll see you at dinner.” Kaitlyn stood.

  Shelby followed suit.

  “Thanks for nothing.” Just when I was close to some ultimate truth. Interruptions. Always interruptions.

  As they left, Cole stepped from the canopy of trees into the sunlight. He draped over the rock wall.

  When our gazes locked, my insides went into further turmoil.

  Cole’s cheekbones protruded and his eyes sank farther in. He looked me over. “I called Nancy to check in, and she said you weren’t feeling well, so I took a shortcut to come see about you.”

  “I’m not the one we need to be worried about.” I pretended to scan over a page of my school book. “You look like you’ve been run over by a truck.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about me. You’re the one we’re trying to save, and if you are sick, I need to know.”

  “Probably just nerves or something.” I kept my eyes on the book. “Don’t worry. I’ll be here to get this ghost off your back for the remainder of your life. I’m not going to desert you.”

  He nodded and stared at the electric blue water.

  I stared a hole in the middle my book.

  I hated this.

  “A good day to sit beside the pool.” Cole stepped back from the wall.

  “Yeah.”

  He lowered his gaze to the little white wicker table beside me.

  “A bell?” He actually laughed and stepped closer again.

  I’d miss that laugh if the girls were wrong.

  “Nancy’s idea.” How long would we go on talking about dumb stuff when there was so much more we both needed to say?

  “You wouldn’t ring that thing unless you were half dead,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know.” I sent him a half-hearted smile over my book.

  He could break right into the inside of me, as if he’d known me all his life. As if we were more than this.

  “Well, I hope you feel better. If you need anything, you know the drill.” Cole looked toward the house.

  “I know. Call someone else.”

  “That would probably be best, but it’s not what I really want.” Cole stalked to the house, his head down with his hands in his pockets. His T-shirt tail was torn and splashes of red streaked his back.

  * * * *

  Shelby, Kaitlyn, and I took our dinner in the dining room that evening.

  Cole sat at the end of the table.

  They took the seats right in front of him.

  He rose from his place setting and started from the room with his dishes. At least he spoke. “Some girl time might be good for you guys.”

  “You don’t have to leave.” My appetite turned to a rock in my stomach.

  “Yes, I do.” When Cole distanced himself from me, it left my soul frostbitten. From the conversation at the pool, I’d thought we’d made some progress.

  We ate quietly.

  For some reason, the twins were distant. The glances passed back and forth between them didn’t hold communication, either.

  To clear the awkwardness, I tried to make light conversation, but they barely answered me. The most we talked about was how it was darker sooner every day and that the weather had been nice.

  After clearing up our dishes and loading the dishwasher, an overwhelming ache churned in my stomach. Cole had to know how I felt. About everything.

  “Can you tell me where he is?” I asked, twisting my shirt in my hands.

  The girls both stared at the black and white tile.

  “Sleeping,” Kaitlyn answered.

  “How can you know that?” This would be interesting.

  Shelby put soap in the dishwasher. “I know he acts like an emotionless drone, but he is a man, and his dreams can be primal.”

  “Primal? Like you-know-what kind of primal?” I shot her a look. Even if he was complicated and on the semi-emotionally, unstable side, to be the object of one of his dreams…. Whew! It may have been a little crude to have a fantasy about a dying man, but to be his last request would have been quite an honor.

  “Well, I can tell you, the face alternates back and forth between you and another girl.” A smile spread across Shelby’s face.

  Kaitlyn glared at her sister. “Shelby.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” My little fantasy went up in a poof of smoke. How gross. So he was one of those types of guys.

  “Don’t listen to her. Her clues are only going to shove you further away from him. At this point we need you to at least want to help him. Both the girls in the dream are you. One’s just a little younger version of you.” Kaitlyn glared at her sister, then settled her more calm gaze back on me.

  “I don’t even want to know any more about that. Subject change. How is Cole related to the Colby Kinsley I found in the graveyard?”

  A kitchen chair could have fit in both of their mouths. “Yeah, I know about Colby and Annabeth. I know they were to be married, and that they also died the same year. I want to know why all three of them, the two sisters and the guy, died so close to the same time. And if we can do something to lay this whole thing to rest. Annabeth and Colby at least deserve that closure.”

  Shelby sang an old song. “So close, yet so far away.”

  Kaitlyn nudged her again with her pointy elbow.

  “Ouch.” Shelby massaged her arm.

  “We’ll tell you in a few days. Promise. On that note, we found something very interesting when we were doing a little investigation. It might answer a few of your questions. Or raise a few more,” Kaitlyn said.

  Chapter 14

  On the third floor, doors lined the hallway. There were so many bedrooms and sitting rooms no one could ever possibly use them at the same time.

  Shelby and Kaitlyn stopped at a door with the only old glass knob left intact. It wobbled but wouldn’t turn. The lock would only open with a skeleton key, unlike all the other modernized doors in the house.

  “I’m an excellent lock picker.” Shelby’s eyes sparkled. “It’s one of my many talents. But it won’t help here. This door is unlocked, and it still won’t open. Do you understand what that means?”

  “It had to have been secured from the inside?” My curiosity piqued.

  “Smart girl,” Kaitlyn said. “Probably with nails and two-by-fours.”

  Shelby nodded at the door with her hands on her hips. “On the other side of this door, a fairytale awaits. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “I bet there’s a pry bar or an axe in the barn.” I stared at the door thoughtfully.

  “An axe would be even more fun, but it’s time to come clean.” Shelby leaned closer to the door.

  “It’s about time you put your brain to good use,” Kaitlyn said to her sister.

  Wood creaked and one by one nails and screws plopped out on our side of the door. The door facing fell off.

  We stumbled back to miss being hit.

  “And now for the rest.” Shelby stared at the door, and
it fell forward onto a pile of old nails.

  “That’s impossible,” I blurted.

  Kaitlyn plopped a hand over my mouth but pulled back to watch my face. She smiled triumphantly. “Putting her brain to good use or what you saw?”

  “Keep her quiet. If Cole hears, he’ll draw and quarter us, then possibly feed us to some big, nasty animal.” Shelby couldn’t help but smile, entirely too pleased with herself.

  “I don’t know what to say.” I stared at both girls incredulously.

  “Then don’t say anything. Let’s go. There’s something in that room you need to see. I can feel it.” Kaitlyn took my hand.

  “So. What? She can move things, and you feel things?” I followed.

  “Something like that.” Kaitlyn squeezed my hand.

  A large puff of dust propelled into the air as we stepped on the door. The room was so stagnant I covered my nose with my shirt.

  “Whew.” Shelby did the same. She walked in using her hot pink T-shirt to cover everything but her eyes. She dropped it as soon as the room’s contents came into focus.

  Kaitlyn moved straight in, and when the dust settled, we all froze.

  The door hadn’t been opened in over a hundred years, or if it had, no one had moved any of the previous inhabitant’s belongings.

  “Holy crap,” Kaitlyn muttered.

  “You wanted answers. Here they are,” Shelby said.

  Both sisters looked at each other and then to me as I inched forward.

  I left footprints in the carpet of dust bunnies.

  No modern lighting.

  Kaitlyn and Shelby pulled out little pocket flashlights.

  To the right, against the wall, an old wooden bed with a canopy of moth-eaten ruffles was still intact. For a second, a flash of the old picture of the room played in my mind like a strange memory, and then it was gone. The once white bedding was elaborately laced but now yellowed. The antique feather pillows looked as though someone had let the air out of them.

  “This is amazing,” Shelby said, standing outside the closet, fanning the flashlight over bodices of nineteenth century dresses that hung in the closet. She stepped over to the antique vanity against the wall.

  As if it had just been used yesterday, an old perfume bottle with a little bulb sprayer sat off to the side. Hair accessories lay beside an old hairbrush with yellowed bristles, a comb, and a hand mirror. Decades of dust fogged the mirror on the vanity. The flashlight’s glow blurred in the reflection. An old yellowed towel hung from the rack of a washstand. Oil lamps sat all around the room, a big one beside the bed. Black soot and cobwebs covered a grate in the bottom of the fireplace. Pictures so covered in dust the faces were blurred hung over the fireplace. Black cat book ends held moth eaten books together on the mantle.

  “Why wouldn’t Ava have remodeled this room? She had electricity ran to the rest of the house?” I turned to the girls.

  “This was her room.” A vacant stare came over Kaitlyn’s expression.

  “What do you see?” Shelby said.

  This was the same room from the pictures. I stepped closer to the bed.

  Kaitlyn touched a dusty gray ruffle on the bedspread.

  “She was so full of joy. Overflowing.” Tears rimmed her eyes, but she lifted an eerie gaze past me toward the door. “It was so horrible. Her dreams were all coming true, and then something devastated her. She died, but her spirit moved on into another body.”

  With her gaze locked over my shoulder, I half-expected someone to be behind me. No one was there.

  “I also feel a male’s leftover agony. Losing the girl destroyed him.” Kaitlyn looked to the closet and then to the mantle.

  “She’s telling you the truth. Finally,” Shelby said with a sad sigh.

  “How dare you?” Cole said almost jarring me from my skin. He stood against the backdrop of light from the hall, his profile infiltrating the shadows of the room. He clenched and unclenched his fists, staring at us under a furious brow, a wild green glowing in his eyes.

  Shelby’s flashlight beam landed on his hollow face. Dark circles surrounded his eye sockets.

  I backed up a step.

  Cole pointed an angry finger at me. With every word, he moved closer to us. “How dare you bring her to this room? It has nothing to do with what you’re looking for.”

  I cowered.

  “Out.” His muscular arm stretched toward the door. “Take her with you.”

  Neither girl moved.

  “Not till she sees,” Kaitlyn said.

  Cole turned his wrath on her, his death glare more dangerous than it had been the night before.

  Shelby moved between Cole and her sister, stepping nose to nose with him. As if she was upset over some deception, she said, “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

  Cole started around Shelby toward me.

  My heart hammered.

  He took my arm and started to remove me from the room, but not before something white in the bottom of the closet caught my attention.

  I pulled against his grip.

  Cole turned toward me.

  “Please. There’s something in there.” I nodded toward the closet.

  For a second, he melted under my gaze. He looked down, his shoulders sagging.

  The girls nodded to me.

  Cautiously, I pulled free of Cole and stalked closer to the white thing poking from the shadows on the floor of the closet. I shoved back the dusty old dresses and gasped.

  Cole came to the closet and encircled my waist with his arms. He gently put his hands over my face. “Please, don’t.”

  Kaitlyn and Shelby rushed him from behind and detained him.

  “She needs to see.” Shelby held Cole back so I could investigate further.

  “In a few days, that’s all I’ll be, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?” Cole’s voice was filled with pain.

  All sound fell to dark silence.

  I was dangerously dizzy. The glow of my flashlight moved up the white bones of both sets of toes, the metatarsals that made up a former human’s feet, and both the tibias and fibulas—the lower legs—till I got to the person’s clothing. An old-fashioned pair of men’s trouser pants. I moved in closer, holding my breath. A long gun, a shotgun, I guessed, was propped between what had been the human’s legs. The tip of the gun’s long barrel was inserted in a hole in the skeleton’s skull. Behind the head of the skeleton was a wedding dress. The skeleton was sitting on the train of the dress and behind the man’s head was old browned splatters of matter.

  I jumped back from the closet.

  Colby Kinsley.

  He’d locked himself away in his beloved’s room and blown his brains out with her wedding dress as a backdrop. He’d committed suicide out of grief. Had anyone even known he had been in there?

  Stumbling back from the dark door, I collided with Cole as I left the confines of the corpse’s final resting place.

  His face was darker than I’d ever seen it. Not anger. Not rage. Not even low iron. This was different. All his features were twisted. Pain. Cole eased into a sitting position on the bed, the aged bedcovering ripping somewhere under his weight, dust puffing behind him. With his eyes locked on the closet, he said in an almost inaudible voice, “You’ve seen. Now, go.”

  I slowly walked out into the hallway, joining Shelby and Kaitlyn. My voice shook. “We have to report what we’ve found to the authorities.”

  “He’s been missing since 1879.” Kaitlyn stared at Cole. “I doubt there’s anyone to inform other than the man sitting on that bed.”

  “What will he do with him?” I looked past the girls.

  Cole stared blankly at the body.

  I shuddered, Colby’s final seconds playing on the backdrop of my mind. “He deserves a proper burial for God’s sake.

  “With all the unrest we have going on, it would probably be best if he’d shut the door back and forget we ever found him. I mean, the deceased obv
iously wanted to be there,” Kaitlyn said.

  We gave Cole a few minutes to mourn by leaving the floor.

  Kaitlyn was white as a snow. “That was definitely a first."

  “You’ve seen a dead body before?”

  “Not in such a weird setting,” she said with a hint of sarcasm instead of sorrow.

  “If someone had told me I would inherit a house with dead bodies and ghosts attached to it two weeks ago, I would have laughed them off the planet. This is crazy.”

  I rounded the bottom of the stairs, the girls in tow. “Something I’ve been meaning to ask. When I was eavesdropping on Cole and the both of you, I saw that you didn’t use a radio to block your conversation out from the ghost? Why?”

  The girls stopped.

  If they wouldn’t answer me willingly, I’d make them. “How mad would Cole be if he knew that you had told me the whole story.”

  “Could you shut up?” Kaitlyn whispered, her eyes wide.

  “Why? We’re a floor down from Cole now. There’s no way he could hear us.” I cocked my head and waited.

  Kaitlyn looked down her face twisted with guilt. “I can’t answer that.”

  He could hear us. Somehow he could hear what we said.

  Kaitlyn’s hands went to both sides of her head.

  Shelby glared up the stairs in the direction of Cole or God. At this point, he played the role in my life so it wasn’t an unfair analogy.

  “He can hear us can’t he? He has amplified hearing or something?” I gripped the railing to hold myself up.

  Kaitlyn and Shelby glanced at each other.

  “Stop trying to figure it out until we have a chance to talk to him. He’s very upset. I don’t want to anger him further.” Shelby stepped down closer to me.

  I stumbled back but held the rails for stability.

  “What’s he gonna do? Kill you, too? My God, it was just a corpse.” Just a corpse. Wow. Did I say that?

  Now both the twins held both sides of their heads.

  “Okay, okay, okay!” Shelby looked up in the direction Cole would have been.

  “Please, don’t. Let’s not talk about this anymore,” Kaitlyn pleaded.