by Zoey Kane
“I believe Lacey is in danger.”
That news startled them. “What do you mean?” asked Claire.
“She’s attracting plenty of attention with those fake fang marks on her neck. Word has been spreading around town, and with today’s news about Isobel returning, that heightens matters.”
“Mom and I just bumped into Frank down in the cemetery. He found some long black hair from a wig. We were just thinking … do you think…?”
“She’s impersonating Isobel? I highly suspect that. Someone needs to talk some sense into her, and it can’t be me. I already tried a couple times. She needs to knock off this nonsense as soon as possible. It makes her look bad, makes me look bad, makes this castle look bad. There are already those here who’d like to run me out of town. And to think she twisted the truth about the ghost lady being some sort of vampire … she’s out of control.”
“You would like us to talk to her?” Zo asked, and he nodded, leaning back against his armoire. “Why?” she said.
“Because you two are from out of town. She’s the community’s spoiled brat. No one can tell her what to do. She might listen to you, at least. She’s making a mockery out of all of us locals. The newspaper actually reported her email. It’s pure childishness. So, please…” He stepped closer, looking earnestly at them. “Have a talk with her tomorrow, before it’s too late…”
“Too late?” Zo and Claire both repeated.
“Trust me.” He returned to his chamber’s door, opened it with a loud creak, and lifted his arm beckoning for them to leave.
As Zo walked by, he whispered, “We shall dance again, my love.”
“Care to step in front of the mirror, for Zoey?”
He looked intently at her and with some huskiness said, “On our wedding night I will stand in front of that mirror in all my glory, for you. But you should know, mirrors are vampire folklore.”
Zo “eeped” out the door. “Not the marrying kind, Drac dear.”
*
“Let me try,” Claire said, and rapped a fist against the screen door’s metal frame, shaking it loudly. A black cat sprang out of a bush with a loud meow that made her nerves want to leap out of her skin.
Zo relaxed her clenched fingers from off the shoulder of her daughter’s tan, wool coat. “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea of mine to do this eleven-thirty at night.”
Claire pressed the broken doorbell, wishing it would light up and ding for once. “After what the Count said, I couldn’t sit back until morning either. I’m afraid for her life. I’m pretty sure he meant this was a life or death situation.”
“Oh, definitely! That’s the feeling I got as well. It’s just so cold out, and I don’t think Lacey is even home.” Zo tied the belt to her zebra-printed jacket tighter.
Claire paused her fist, which was ready for another banging. “Perhaps she thinks madmen are at her door, the way we are pounding.”
“I wouldn’t open the door to us.”
“Neither would I. What should we do?”
Zo shrugged. “Call out her name. Maybe she’ll hear us. It’s worth a shot.”
“Sure it is. Go ahead, Mom.”
“Lacey!” Zo called out, and her voice seemed to echo all the way off the ocean’s wind. “Hey…” She nudged her daughter. “You were supposed to yell with me.”
“I knew you’d be loud enough for the both of us.”
“Good point. Is she coming yet?”
Claire peeked through a window. She saw a dilapidated couch and a TV. “I don’t see any movement.”
“And I don’t hear anything. Do you think she’s at—”
“The graveyard!”
Moments later, the duo was walking through the cemetery again, following the circle of light on the ground from Claire’s flashlight. This time, Claire was wearing some comfy boots, giving her toes a vacation.
“I’m glad Jim went home,” Zo announced quietly, grass swishing underfoot.
“Trust me, if he knew what we were up to, he’d want to come along. He’s odd but strangely fun.”
“I love secrets. Although … I do wish I had the company of my gun. You can never be too safe.” Ironically, Zo stumbled to the ground with a yelp.
Claire helped pull her off the grave, where a crudely-made tombstone read, “The stranger who washed up from sea. RIP 1889.”
“Be careful,” Claire warned.
“Yeah, I don’t want to wind up like him.” Zo fluffed the black fur around her jacket’s hood. “How the beautiful things in life can wind up downright scary on a big-moon night. Even the willow tree’s branches there look like a thousand arms reaching for us in this chilly breeze.”
“Cawww!” a bird replied, just to prove her point.
“You see? Scary. Now, daughter, if a vampire ghost does in fact exist, and pops up from behind one of these tombstones with bloody, drippy bat teeth, what can we use to whack her over the head with?”
Claire crunched her boots along some dried leaves as she headed purposefully for the chapel, leading them. “Ghosts are incapable of getting whacked in the head, aren’t they? Doesn’t their make-up defy physical abuse?”
“Yes, which shows just how silly Lacey is for writing into the newspaper that there is a vampire ghost roaming around here. Vampires are supposed to be physically immortal, while ghosts are spiritually immortal. The two can’t coexist. Thank goodness.” Zo had some relief at the thought.
Claire was surprised she hadn’t thought of that herself. “That’s true,” she said.
As they approached the old chapel, Claire was certain she saw a shadow fly by one of the barred windows up high. This window wasn’t boarded up like most of the others, but neither was it cracked. A white sheet covered it from the inside.
Claire stepped closer, not taking her eyes off the window. “Hasn’t this church been closed for over a century?”
“That’s what I thought,” Zo said, following her daughter’s footsteps.
The shadow returned. They both saw it, hovering there, flapping its broad wings.
“Just a minute.” Claire trotted off to the front of the church. She took hold of the large handles and tried opening the doors, shaking them. They were locked, with no give or rattle.
“Of course it’s locked,” she said to herself, and jogged back to her mom, who was still watching the flapping shadow.
Claire said, “The belfry? Maybe it flew down there.”
Zo said, “That would make perfect sense, except Frank told me the entryway from the bell tower down to the chapel has been sealed up so tight not even the weather could intrude. I take it he’s been up there already.”
“Let’s check all the windows,” Claire said. “Maybe one is broken.”
They did find one window on the other side of the chapel, with a marble-sized crack spiderwebbing out a few inches.
Claire put her hands on her hips, then stared at the ground, her excitement deflated.
Her mother said, “Not even bored teenagers have a reason to try and break the windows here. Glass back then was so much thicker, so much stronger. Even if they did successfully break a window, they couldn’t enter because of all the bars.”
“Well then, how the heck would a live bird be inside?” Claire asked.
“You’re not thinking ‘bat-n-cats’ was right, are you?” Zo raised her brows, testing her daughter. “That Isobel haunts this graveyard as a vampire ghost?”
“What?” Claire’s eyes snapped up at her incredulously. “No. Why would you say that? I thought we already concluded that’s physically impossible.”
“The thought didn’t cross your mind for even a second? You’re not thinking that shadow is Isobel in her bat form?”
“No way!” Claire shook her head, narrowing her eyes. Her expression then softened a bit. “Okay, it crossed my mind for like two-point-five seconds, but that’s completely irrational. Completely irrational.”
“Hmm.” Zo didn’t look so convinced. “My mind is fighting wit
h my rational thinking. With only moonlight and that weak flashlight in this dark, I start remembering all the monster movies I’ve seen on TV.”
“Oh, there it is again!” Claire pointed. It was now flapping in front of the cracked window. “It’s like it knows we’re talking about it.”
Zo whispered, “Like Isobel can hearrrr us…”
Claire slapped her mother’s zebra-striped arm. “Stop it, Mother. You’re trying to creep me out.”
Zo feigned innocence. “How can you say such a thing about your mom?”
They looked back up at the window. The shadow had disappeared.
“Where’d it go?” Zo asked.
There was a sudden cawing of a crow nearby, perched on the dome roof of the marble-stone mausoleum. “CAAAAW. CAAAAAAW.”
The shadow suddenly reappeared in the cracked window, flapping fiercely against its pane. It cawed as if in response to the other crow, its call muffled by the glass.
“Ah!” Claire put a hand to her heart in surprise. “See, it’s not a bat. It’s just a bird. Maybe it can’t get out and is starving. How can we get it out?”
Zo glanced back at the nearby crow, still perched on the tomb. It suddenly took flight, swooping over to the window. Its crowing calls were reciprocated by the crow in the chapel.
Zo mused, “It knows its friend is stuck in there.”
“How sad. Makes me want to call animal rescue…”
“Somehow I doubt 911 will think this is an emergency,” Zo said.
The rapid conversation between the two birds continued until the shadow disappeared again, and the other returned to the mausoleum.
Claire walked toward the mausoleum, quietly stepping. She didn’t want to scare the silky black creature. The bird cawed a couple more times, standing there on the small dome roof. The gray sky and dark silhouettes of trees framed the structure, offsetting the white of its marble in such a way as if it were softly illuminated.
Zo followed behind, nearly tiptoeing. They paused their steps about ten feet away from the crypt, and watched in wait.
“What are we doing?” Zo finally whispered. The night was as still as the tombstone markers in the cemetery.
“Sh. I want to see something.”
The crow started pecking at the roof. It twitched its head around a few times, and pecked some more, before cawing.
A couple minutes later, another crow’s head suddenly popped up through a small opening in the roof. There were a couple caws until it came all the way through. Then one of them took off upwards into some trees, disappearing out of sight.
Claire relaxed out of her frozen position. She turned to her mom and said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yes, birds can get stuck not only in the church but in that tomb. Interesting.”
“I think there’s more than meets the eye here…”
“What do you mean?”
Claire pointed toward the chapel now behind them. “Do you think that the crow that was stuck in there is the same crow that popped out of here?”
“If that’s the case, it should be named Houdini!” Zo joked. “Huh.”
Claire pointed toward the mausoleum roof. “How else could a crow get into either one of these places, unless there was an opening to go through. The curious thing is the church doesn’t appear to have a visible opening that I could see.”
“You’re right.”
Claire buttoned the neck of her wool coat. The chill seemed to have dropped a couple more degrees. “Okay, well, the bird’s okay. I think we can go back to the castle and rest now. We can catch Lacey bright and early in the morning, since she’s not here. She most likely didn’t want to answer her door at night.”
Ignoring her daughter’s words, Zo said, “In a minute,” and went right over to the mausoleum. Claire followed. “I just wanted to read this plaque memorial set inside the niche here. “In Memory of Pastor Hall, a founding father of our town. 1809-1890. He leaves no family.”
“Boy, 1889-90 didn’t seem to be good years around here,” said Claire.
The duo moved back to take a better look at the tomb. A raven flew down in front of them and began pecking for bugs in the corner of the sill framing the memorial.
There was an unnerving stone grating against stone noise, and in utter shock to the Kanes the mausoleum door opened enough for the two to get through if they shouldered their way in.
“Dare we?” Zo asked, staring at the pitch black opening into unknown doom.
First, Claire inspected the memorial’s framing, where the bird had been pecking just moments ago. In a corner, covered in a film of old dirt and cobwebs, was a small, unremarkable stone. “Not one bug here,” she said. “I wonder…”
“The bird triggered it?” Zo asked. “There was some sort of spring lock it released?” She pushed on the heavy marble-stone door. “Help me,” she said.
Claire pressed her palms against the icy cold surface and pushed with all her might, using leg and shoulder strength to help. The door grated a bit against its framing, until it easily swung open and the two were inside the tomb, their backs against the door.
Their eyes went wide as they caught their breath.
A bit of moonlight reached inside. They could see a casket set up a few feet away on marble pedestals. But it wasn’t the casket which made them catch their breath. No, a casket was to be expected. It was the dark stairway down the center of the stone floor…
EIGHT
“Oh my goodness,” Zo said. “It’s better than an Indiana Jones movie.”
“What were you expecting?” Claire asked, staring at the ominous exit.
“Some dirty old tunnel. This is … not.”
Claire nodded, her back still pressed against the opened door. “No, this is very deliberate. Pastor Hall made this staircase before being entombed for some important reason.”
Zo darted her eyes to the ceiling. There was the tiny, broken opening the bird had escaped through, letting in a sliver more of moonlight. “It’s a good thing everything is stone in here, since a lot of rain must have gotten in.” Then her attention settled on the stairs down.
She stepped forward and placed a foot on the first step. “Let’s go.”
“Wait a minute, Mom!” Claire put up a hand. “That’s not safe. What if this door closes on us after we descend? Remember our booby-trap adventures at Matilda’s?”
Zo nodded, placing a finger to her lips in thought. “You’re right. No matter how much I love you, I don’t want us ending up sealed in a tomb together. Buuuut…” She eyed the interior wall beside the door. “It’s virtually impossible for the door to close up and seal us in, since a spring lock is involved.”
“Okay…” Claire pulled her phone out of her pocket, and turned on its bright light to lead the way. “Let’s go.”
Zo stepped down, Claire’s cell giving enough light for them to see their way. They soon entered a tunnel surrounded in stone, amazingly clean. It began an incline until they found steps waiting in front of a dusty white door, partially open. Claire stepped up, and pushed the door open all the way for them to enter a small room with a ladder up a wall.
“To the bell, no doubt,” said Claire. She pointed her phone toward it.
“Yep.”
There was a finger-painted message on the wall beside it: This bell should never joyfully chime until what I’ve lost is again mine. I.M.
“Oh, a sorrowful voice from the past,” said Zo.
Above them the hatch to the belfry was not only latched but nailed shut.
Claire beamed her light around the rest of the space, pausing on another aged door. The duo went through it, entering the chapel.
It was like trespassing into a time and place where living, modern people shouldn’t be allowed—a dimension of a secret past. As they carefully walked around, they could imagine the silent story of old-time people shuffling in, mingling with each other and the pastor, and sitting in the pews.
Everything was layered in
dust, insomuch that the Kanes left footprints between the chalky-looking pews. They spread out, looking things over in different directions.
Zo eyed a corner by the big front doors, and then leaned over to scan under the benches. “Do you see any footprints other than ours, dear?”
“No, but you better come over here,” said Claire, in a warning tone, standing at the head of the chapel.
Zo joined her daughter on the podium behind the lectern. Something was wrapped up in a white sheet, yellowed with age. She said, “I’d say it’s the shape and size of a body.”
Claire replied, “That’s what I was afraid of.”
They stared down upon their find, some chocolate-covered stains across it. Claire knelt down, not daring to touch. “Blood,” she said.
“Yep…” Zo, too, knelt. “You going to unroll it?”
“No.”
“Come on, you know we have to do this.”
“Yes. But, Mom, you know I never get used to this sort of stuff.”
They started to pull the sheet off, and got to a part where it gave resistance. Zo gave an energetic tug, flipping the form to its side, making a slight crackling sound.
“Careful!”
Claire recoiled, letting her mother take over. Zo rolled it some more, revealing a skeleton.
“Oh!” Claire lightly yelped in surprise.
Black hair framed hollow eyes and smiling teeth. It wore a sleek wedding dress, yellowed from age and splattered with blood stains. A knife was still between its ribs.
“Wow,” Zo said reverently.
“She was murdered?” Claire said, puzzled. “I thought one of the rumors was she hung herself. That is … if this is Isobel.”
Zo brushed away dust off a parchment tacked to the lectern.
“Here lies the body of Isobel Ann Myers,” Zo read.
The Kanes eyed each other.
Zo continued reading. “She hanged herself from the belfry tower, but not to death. Her grief of being jilted at the altar by Ted Miller of Fisher’s Landing would have brought her to a disgraceful public end, if we, the town’s pastor, mayor, and doctor, had not protected her.
