“You twooo,” Shelby said.
“Where’s y’all’s little radio when you need it?” I stepped back and let them in.
“I can’t wait for you to find out.” Shelby flopped back on the little bed.
“I’ll throw you over the cliff out there if you continue to tease me.” I resigned myself to lie back with her. I stared at the ceiling.
“Who’s giving the death threats now?” Kaitlyn said, taking a seat in the little chair near the bedside table.
“I’ll be glad to get back to the house, take this witch down, and try to get on with my life.”
“Approximately three days,” Kaitlyn said.
“I am going home after that. I can’t be around that man. He makes me crazy.”
“In a few days, you’ll find out why.” Shelby jerked from her lying position. “Time to sleep.”
The girls left me teased and flustered. Or was it Cole?
When the midnight hour tolled, the dreams started.
The spring breeze teased the green canopy of trees overhead, and where Annabeth’s memorial would one day be, stood a boy in brown britches held up by suspenders, a white shirt open against his chest.
The farmhand with green eyes.
Colby.
My dream guy. Sort of.
“You’re early,” I said as if someone had invaded my body. Someone happy, unblemished by life’s hardships.
“You’re late. Where have you been?” Colby’s presence enveloped me as his arms encircled my waist.
“The dress fitting.” I sighed, wriggling my arms into his shirt.
“I’m sure you outshined its beauty,” he said into my hair.
“Maybe I can meet you later.”
“Against tradition?”
“I don’t care about tradition.”
“We’ll make a few new ones of our own.” His fingers tugged at my dress buttons.
I wriggled from his arms.
“Then grant me one kiss to hold on to.”
“We should wait. If I kiss you, you know what will happen,” I whispered.
He pulled me back into his arms, and happiness I’d never experienced exploded inside me.
I woke to a tear soaked pillow. I stared into the darkness and let them flow. I was completely intoxicated with a past I could never have. It was the prequel to the dream I’d had all my life. Somehow I’d known of their story before I’d ever come to that house. And somebody had to know why.
The room was too small. My life was too big and empty. And nothing I did made anything better.
I needed air.
I pulled on a housecoat. Outside my door, there were no rapists or murderers. Although, a man stood shirtless, staring out at the wilderness beyond the hotel.
“In my heart, I know you can’t be as horrible as you want me to think you are.”
He may have taken some random girl to personal levels I could only sinfully dream about, but it was apparent it hadn’t worked. He ran from something inside himself he’d probably never let anyone in on. What could it have been?
I had to forgive him. I couldn’t stop myself.
He’d obviously been driven crazy by this ghost. And weren’t we all messed up in our own ways?
I set out across the parking lot.
The moon tattoo on Cole’s back shined so brightly it could have been in the sky. The tree wrapped around the moon was so detailed, the knobs of the branches stuck out. It reminded me of the night in the pool at the bottom of a waterfall.
“Can’t sleep?” My voice was too soft.
“Dreams come across as thoughts too.” He hung his head a little lower.
“Don’t you have some way to block those? It’d be nice to have some privacy.” I wasn’t mad.
“I can’t stop them, the same as you can’t stop thinking them. As great as hearing every whim you have is, I’m sort of stuck.”
“I’m that hard to be around, huh?” I leaned against a tree trunk.
“Yes.” A half-sigh, a half-laugh.
Uncomfortable silence. His hand started to near me, but he looped his thumb back into his belt loop. His shirt still hung on the tree limb nearby. Still dangerously half-naked.
“Please open up to me.” I hadn’t meant to let the thought through. “I won’t run. You can tell me everything.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t already. I don’t always think before I act or speak,” Cole said.
So was that a yes or no?
“I never would have gotten that.” I held back a smile.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let anyone else get hurt,” he said, genuine sorrow in his voice.
I stepped closer to look over the edge. Now I could see a little sliver of the moon over the mountains. “The crescent moon. I’m tied to it by birth. You’re tied to it by choice.”
He winced. “It’s not what drew me to you.”
“Since this has been the most pleasant talk we’ve had, and I don’t want you to do anything to ruin it, I’m going to leave on that note. I’m drained.”
Cole actually laughed. “I’ll keep my mouth shut till you’re in your room.”
“Good idea.” I walked back to the room and closed the door on the most beautiful scene I’d witnessed since the waterfall. Cole in the same spot, his long legs spread in a protective stance with a backdrop of the inky blue sky illuminated by the moon.
His heart belonged to a long dead memory, and if I couldn’t have him, I’d focus on giving closure to the two souls who’d suffered so much at the hand of the same woman who tortured Cole now.
* * * *
“Say the words!”
“Tell him!”
“Say it!”
I lay still, the dark enveloping me. I clenched my eyes closed and suddenly couldn’t breathe. Dead weight pressed on my chest. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn’t.
In the shadows, under a tree in the woods, a man crouched over an animal, a deer. When the man detected my presence, his head darted toward me. Blood covered his mouth, his shirt, and his hands.
The disemboweled animal in front of him was torn to shreds.
The man stood in rickety robotic motions. He was there, and then he was in front of me. He thrust his hands out and caught my arms in a vice grip. Inches from my face, his skin stretched over his teeth. Not human teeth. Razor-sharp animal teeth. Cole.
Haunted by the dream, the next morning I was quiet.
Cole gathered his things but wouldn’t make eye contact with me. He knew what I dreamed.
More than likely, watching Cole eat all that disgusting, red, uncooked meat had triggered my subconscious mind into a bizarre dream. That had to be it.
But Cole’s words ran through my mind. I want more than a few weeks for us to get to know each other. Before she finds out I’m not normal. She doesn’t remember, not like I do.
Chapter 18
Home sweet home was not my first sentiment when we reached Rolling Hills Manor. It was almost dark as Kaitlyn drove down the cobblestone drive. The slightest sliver of light winked from the moon before there would be a few moonless nights.
I almost nodded off, my head embarrassingly lolling onto Cole’s shoulder. I sat up as Kaitlyn finally pulled the car to a halt at the front steps.
“I’ll carry in your bag. You go on up and get some rest.” Cole shut the door behind me. “I’ll be gone tonight, so if you need anything call on one of the house staff members. I’ll be back at dawn.”
I nodded, used to him fleeing.
Once upstairs with my door locked, I took the Amiante from my suitcase and slid it inside my nightstand for safekeeping. It was supposed to keep my thoughts safe, but I kept my thoughts vague as a precautionary measure, anyway.
“So you’re going to protect me, huh? Well, I hope you are all everyone else says you are. If not, I’m chucking you in the pond with the dead chick.”
The unpacked suitcase ended up on my
dresser. It could wait until tomorrow.
I took a hot shower and lay in the comfortable bed until a warm coziness wrapped around me. I slept four hours according to the alarm clock. Amazingly, I had no dreams.
* * * *
Rested and ready for whatever the day had in store for me, I woke to a still dark sky.
The hallway was empty.
From the library window, Cole’s cottage appeared dark. The rose maze lights were off too.
A lantern I’d found in the hall lit my way as I trekked over the yard. He was always gone at night and didn’t show up until later morning. This was the perfect time to look deeper into Cole’s surroundings. Before I’d glanced, too worried with where he was to notice anything that might help me get deeper into his mind. He was privy to all my personal thoughts, so rifling around in his personal space didn’t bother me in the slightest.
Cole’s door was locked.
Now would have been a good time to have access to that little Jedi mind trick Shelby used to unlock doors. I went around back and found the back door standing open again.
A hint of leather and cologne whisked by me as I eased up the steps. The cabin was only semi-Cole-warm. He wasn’t here, though he hadn’t been gone long. Something tugged me to his room.
A few magazines were stacked neatly on his bookshelf. May 1968, June 1957, April 1975. An old collection.
His books were even older. The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre. Wow. That one was old. The inscription caused me to almost drop the book.
Annabeth Amber Rollins
1879
Inside a copy of Wuthering Heights was another inscription in the same girl’s handwriting. The ink was smeared as if someone had run their fingers over the writing multiple times.
An odd brown leather bound book caught my attention.
God, no one will believe this. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I have died and gone to hell for not listening to God in the first place.
Grace has cursed me. In her ghost form, she told me she killed her sister, my beloved, my Annabeth, and herself to seal a curse she laid upon us both. We are to be reincarnated for all time, over and over. My soul will carry the memories as Annabeth floats through existence, forgetting us a little more each life until one day there will be nothing left of us but a sense of déjà vu. When we meet, at first touch, the curse is activated. If Annabeth confesses her love, Grace enters her body, but if she doesn’t, I die slowly as Grace drains the life from my body. We have until the end of the crescent moon, its last sliver of light, to remain apart with her words of love left unspoken. If Annabeth admits her feelings for me, Grace will possess her and live out that life inside Annabeth’s body. Grace promised, “You’ll look into the eyes of the person you love most and see the person you hate staring out at you.”
I’d like to say a moment of insanity overtook me, but my next admissions were completely premeditated. In thoughtful deliberation and with great satisfaction, I took Grace’s coffin to the pond. There, in a fitful rage, I bludgeoned her body the way I would have had she been alive.
As I watched the coffin bob in the water and finally sink, Grace’s ghost taunted me with ludicrous additions to my already insufferable fate. My body will change to that of an animal, and nothing will satiate my hunger, but the real curse is living out this life without Annabeth. I no longer have reason to breathe.
Cole Kinsley
Thunder clapped. I jumped, almost dropping the book. It had to be Colby’s journal, but it was signed “Cole Kinsley.”
I slid it back into its place. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed across the sky. I had to get back to the house.
Well, I had my answer. Cole Kinsley had bought into an elaborate tale, eating raw meat, exhibiting signs of paranoia, and obviously having delusions. His weight loss was probably psychosomatic.
Grace’s psychotic acts of jealousy had probably driven him into a depression, but I had to stop the cycle. If I didn’t, Cole might do something to hurt himself or others in the process.
Lantern dangling in my hand, I rushed through wind and heavy rain toward the house. Once in, the wind blew the door shut on me. The heavy raindrops pelted the edges of the covered patio. I needed to sleep, but the remains of the farmhand drew me.
I hesitated on the third floor at the door of the room.
It was just a skeleton. It would be different and possibly scarier if it were a more recent dead body. Bones in old-fashioned clothing. That was all.
It would have probably helped if a gun hadn’t been inserted through the hole in his forehead.
Lightning flashed outside Annabeth’s window.
I had to know him. I had been Annabeth to Colby in the dream for a reason. But why?
It was easy to see how Cole had fallen for such a love story. Here I was, enthralled with it beyond reason.
Who needed to seek treatment now?
I was fine until I pressed the door open. Sadness filled me when the amber flames flickered over the old furnishings. It had been a safe haven for a girl who’d had hopes and dreams. They died with her.
Through the yellowed dusty glass of one of the picture frames, Annabeth didn’t smile, as it was inappropriate in those times, but her zeal for life showed through slightly upturned lips.
I’d have been happy, too, if I’d had Colby to look forward to everyday. I sighed as I used my thumb to clear years of dust from the picture.
Why couldn’t I have been you? To have him love me for a minute would have been worth dying for.
Frozen in time, Annabeth’s eyes sparkled.
I replaced the picture and picked up another. With cold resentment just as alive in her eyes then as it was today, Grace glared.
The lantern flickered and went out. I set it on the mantle.
Lightning flashes lit the room enough for me to find the trinket box with matches on the end of the mantle.
Wait.
How had I known there would be matches inside?
This box was white pearl covered on all sides. I couldn’t see in it.
My hands shook.
A good guess? Had to have been. I relit the lantern and shook it. Low on oil. Crap.
I put the trinket box back in its place, but before I could slide it back over the dust free rectangle, a smaller box came into view.
For fear of it crumbling in my hands, I gently slid the lid off. Nestled in black velvet holders, a blue diamond ring and a matching wedding band still sparkled. I almost dropped it when a flash of the very same ring on my finger came with the next crash of thunder.
Colby’s agony had to have been horrific. One of these rings had been on his beloved, his betrothed, when she fell to her death.
I went to the threshold of the closet and put the lantern on the floor beside my knees. The light from the lantern should have illuminated the ghastly scene, but nothing about the young man propped against the dress scared me anymore. Dried leathery skin had shrunken over his face.
I closed my eyes and delved back into the dream. Colby. Warm, alive, even heated during moments of passion. He had loved fully and unconditionally and would have died for that love.
Was there ever a nobler man?
A fierce loneliness tightened my chest. Tears flowed freely down my face, and I put the ring box in front of him. An offering.
I wouldn’t rest until he did. I’d stop the effects the curse had on Cole Kinsley, and I’d see Grace gone if it killed me.
The emptiness in my chest grew in size. I had never needed anything in my life, but I needed more than retribution for the wrongs done at this house. Just because I had never experienced such a deep connection with a human being didn’t mean it didn’t exist, and that it couldn’t be beautiful. At first, the bond I’d felt with the house had been about Cole, but now it ran much deeper. Even though it wasn’t mine, the love I’d discovered here was timeless. And try as she might, not even a demented ghost could hold it back.
Suddenly through my tears, and in danger of both sisters haunting me, I talked to the man I’d fallen in love with. A man who would forever belong to someone else.
Knives stabbed my chest as the first words left me. “I’m torn, Colby. Part of me wants the curse to be real so I can find you, even if all I ever got to do was watch you love someone else, but we all know fairy tales aren’t real, don’t we? I’ll lay your soul to rest. I can’t go on thinking it might be in torment somewhere. Please, show me what I should do.”
The sorrow in the room deepened. I was in danger of plummeting into it. I had to do something.
Maybe Colby heard me. Maybe if Grace was still here, it wasn’t too farfetched to believe that Colby’s presence was, too.
I stood and took the lantern with new resolve, leaving what was left of the only true love I had ever known in this room. I’d seal it shut tight.
The light fell on a bagged garment in the corner of the closet. Under the covering, a dress exactly matching the one behind Colby hung suspended in time. The one I’d worn in the dream. With all the dried blood and bone on the front of the other, I’d overlooked the design.
I dropped the covering and gingerly pulled the dress by Colby.
I couldn’t walk away without touching him once. I’d never touched a dead body before, but I as I stepped toward Colby, the fear left me.
His jawbone was warm. Not temperature warm. A different kind of warm. Just before I pulled away, a flash of a memory played in the backdrop of my mind. A young guy turning to me at the bottom of the stairs. The stairs in this house.
I understood.
I’d had the dreams so I could learn how to free the whole house from the curse.
Chapter 19
In my room, with the dress safe in the back of my closet, I fought tears of anger, sadness, and loneliness.
When this was all over, I’d probably never see the boy without a face again. The closest thing I’d had to an honest, real love affair in my life.
I slept.
A rustling in the bed woke me. Someone was beside me under my sheets and comforter.
Ever After Page 22
