by Lisa Cach
“No. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some shoved into a desk or trunk somewhere.”
“Or maybe she gave up art,” Megan mused.
“You think one of the sisters drew it?”
Megan nodded. “I think all this art is hers. If these two rooms belonged to the Smithson sisters, then what an opposite pair they must have been. One with artistic talent, taste, and passion; the other tasteless but open to modern life, willing to buy a record player and put some wall-to-wall carpet on her cold floor.”
“So, what’s the story?” Eric asked. “Sister One is in love, gets jilted, goes insane, and refuses to admit that time is moving on. Sister Two sacrifices her own life to take care of nutball Sister One, and they live here miserably ever after. When Sister One finally bites it thirty years ago, her dead spirit still can’t bear to leave—after all, her lover might return—and thus the haunting.”
“It doesn’t explain that library full of paranormal how-to books,” Megan said. “Not unless they were trying to conjure the spirit of the lover, if he was dead. Besides, it’s just as possible that the haunting has to do with the sisters’ mother or father, or someone else entirely. There could also be more than one spirit.”
“You’re sure we’re dealing with a some one and not some thing?” Case asked.
Megan paused. “It feels human. I don’t have much to base that on, but yeah, I’d bet this was something human going on, whether in our own minds or a real ghost.” She looked around the room. “I really expected to encounter something more direct by now. Any other places we haven’t seen?”
“Just the cellars.”
“Oh, delightful.”
“Megan doesn’t like cellars and basements,” Eric clarified.
“I’d like to know who does.” Megan sniffed. “Low ceilings, dark, cold, damp, full of rodents and spiders—why would I like them? They’re like dungeons. Dank, miserable dungeons.” She cast a woeful look at Case.
He grinned. “These aren’t so bad.” He led them out of the bedroom and to the central staircase. “They’re rather pleasant for Victorian cellars. There was a lot of garbage down there when I bought the place, and raccoons had been living in it all—and God knows what else—but I had one of my crews clean it all out, and they’ve been largely wildlife-free ever since.”
“Largely?”
“Spiders can’t help liking cool, damp, dark places.”
Eric chimed in, “That’s why you’ve got to check under the toilet seat before you sit down.”
Megan groaned.
“Are you really afraid of spiders?” Case asked.
“It depends on whether they’re running toward me or away from me.”
“You ever find one in your sheets?” Eric asked. “I did once. One of those big fat blackish-brown ones. Now I check between my sheets before I put my feet down to the bottom of the bed. It is not nice to feel those quick little legs running over your belly in the middle of the night.”
“Will you stop it?” Megan cried.
“Look, it’s an old house, you know the place is crawling with them—”
“Eric, enough,” Case ordered, with the sternness of a grade-school teacher. “Megan, in the course of my work, I’ve stuck my head into more cobwebs and spider nests than you will ever see in your life, and I’ve never been bitten. You’ve got nothing to worry about here. All my tearing down of walls has driven them outside for the summer. The crows have probably eaten every last one of them.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind. And speaking of crows or whatever bird is on that arch over your gate,” she said as they reached the bottom of the stairs and made their way down the hall toward the kitchen, “I found out what that motto means.”
“Motto?” Eric asked.
“Above the gate,” Megan explained. “It’s part of the family crest.”
“What does it say?” Case asked, stopping.
Megan didn’t answer for a moment, her attention captivated by his mouth. Had she really been kissing him only a few minutes ago? Her body flushed in response to the thought, her loins feeling the pressure of his leg against her.
Megan blinked and shifted her gaze. “The librarian at the local branch called a friend who knew Latin to be sure, but as far as we could tell, it translates as ‘I experience the end worthy of my nature.’”
Case and Eric were silent, staring at her.
“Basically, it means ‘I get what I deserve’ or ‘I earn my final fate.’”
“That’s pretty dour,” Case said. “It sounds like Smithson was a puritanical sort.”
“Or he thought he deserved all his riches both on this plane and the next, because he was a good guy. It really could be read as either, though it’s hard to take the cheerful view when you’re standing in a haunted house.”
“He was probably a control freak,” Eric said. “Bet he read the Bible to his daughters every night, warning them of eternal damnation if they masturbated.”
Megan rolled her eyes. “You’ve got a seriously twisted mind, do you know that?”
Eric was unfazed. “Hey, the girls never left home. Bet he wouldn’t let them. Maybe he’s one of the ghosts.”
Megan hated to admit it, but the idea wasn’t without merit. “It might explain the library. Maybe they were trying to get his spirit out of the house. Although why they wouldn’t just sell the place after he died, I don’t know.”
“Maybe that would mean their father had won,” Case said. “It might have been a battle of wills.”
Megan looked at him, wondering what he might know of such battles, firsthand. Then she shook her head. “We don’t have enough information. I’ve got to get those keys from my shop and start opening up desks and trunks.”
They went through the kitchen to a small hallway with doors leading outside, to storage rooms, servant stairs, and the cellars. Case plugged in another string of construction lights, and the stairway lit up, the lights leading the way down.
Megan sighed silently and followed Case down the stairs. As they descended, a cold tingling began in Megan’s feet, rising slowly up her legs and into her torso. Puzzled, she traced its progress up her body. She wasn’t aware of being frightened, but was she? She staggered when she reached the bottom of the stairs, the cold tingling creeping up her neck and filling her head, disorienting her.
“Megan?” Case said, gently grabbing her arm and steadying her.
She blinked, the brick-walled room of the dim cellar swimming around her. The sensation began to frighten her. “I don’t feel so good.”
“Told you she was afraid of cellars,” Eric said, his voice sounding as if it came from the other end of a tin tunnel.
Megan felt her knees sag. Shadows moved in the corners of the room, her vision tilting the world sideways. She felt as if she were sliding off its edge into an abyss and grabbed Case for support. Fear shot up her spine.
“Megan!”
“Slipping…” she gurgled, and the edges of her vision began to go black.
She was vaguely aware of being scooped up into Case’s arms and carried quickly back up the stairs, Eric’s questioning voice following them upward.
Her vision began to clear and the racing of her heart to slow as they reached the kitchen and Case laid her on the floor. She was like a drowning person returned suddenly to land, the danger past. She blinked in surprise and started to sit up.
Case gently held her down. “No, you almost fainted. Keep down for a minute.”
She looked up into his worried eyes, and the last of her fear ebbed away, replaced by warmth and a feeling of safety. She smiled, hoping to soothe his worries. “It was a heart attack, I tell you.”
A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, the concern smoothing from his brow. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” She sat up, and he sat back on his heels.
“What happened down there?” he asked.
She frowned. “I don’t know. There was no feeling of a presence. It was
just…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Is Eric still down there?”
“Hasn’t come up.” He looked back over his shoulder, toward the doorway. “I’d better check on him.”
Megan waited while he went through the door. She heard him call out to Eric and receive an affirmative reply. A moment later, Case reappeared.
“He’s fine.”
“None of your work crews ever had a problem down there?”
He shook his head. “Not to my knowledge. They didn’t like it down there, but that’s normal when you have raccoon nests and rat droppings to deal with.”
With Case’s help, Megan got back up onto her feet. Curiosity plucked at her, overwhelming her uneasiness. “Let’s give it another look, shall we?”
His brows rose in surprise. “That’s not wise, is it?”
It probably wasn’t, but she wasn’t going to leave the mystery unexamined and Case thinking she was a fainting sissy. “It shouldn’t strike me so hard the second time. And you can always rush me to safety, right?”
“I don’t think—”
She moved past him, squaring her jaw. “This house has too many mysteries. I’m here to solve them, not to faint.”
Case made low grumbling noises but led the way back to the stairs. She followed him down, being careful to hold tight to the handrail. The tingling sensation started again but with less force, and she did her best to block it from her awareness, like deliberately ignoring an itch or an ache.
“You okay?” Case asked as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Never better.”
“Mm. That doesn’t say much for what qualifies as good in your book.”
“Megan, look at this!” Eric said before she could reply. He came over to join them, holding his EMF meter out so she could see it. “It’s going crazy!”
Megan saw the needle bouncing between the middle zone and its top limit.
“Something is definitely going on here!”
Case looked at the meter. “What’s it mean?”
“I don’t know what it means,” Eric said, breaking away from them to take photos of the empty cellar. “It could mean we’re surrounded by spirits at this moment.”
“I don’t feel them,” Megan said.
“Or it could mean that there’s something about this room that encourages their existence. That feeds them.”
“But what?” Megan said, looking around. Floors, walls, and ceiling were brick, and a wide archway in the far wall opened into another space. Massive wood beams spanned the low ceiling, small windows were set high in the walls, and a manhole-sized drain was set in the center of the floor, the bricks sloped toward it. Megan went to the arch and peered into the next room. It looked identical to the first one, only with no drain in the floor. The lights ended just past the doorway, but she could see another arch in the shadows, indicating yet another brick chamber beyond.
Eric joined her at the arch. “The readings aren’t half so strong in that room, or the one beyond.”
“Huh.” Megan turned back to the room and looked at the drain cover. “Is that a sump?”
Case went to the drain, bouncing the edge of it with his foot and making a metal-on-metal clanging. “Either a sump or a drain. I haven’t found the outlet to it yet, but it probably comes out somewhere down the slope of the backyard, in that mess of a garden.”
“Outdoors? It looks big enough that someone could get into the house that way.”
He shook his head. “The outlet drain is probably much smaller. You probably couldn’t get anything bigger than a dachshund through it.”
Megan came over to the drain and stood beside it, looking down. A cold, damp draft came up out it, smelling faintly of earth and rock. The lights dangling from the ceiling reflected off the metal, leaving the hole itself lost in blackness. Megan was about to dig her fingers into the grate and lift it out of its place, but then she remembered spiders and dark, damp places.
“What is it about this room?” she mused aloud.
Eric said, “There must be something about the surrounding rock, maybe a streak of magnetized iron. Or it could be specific stresses in the earth. I believe Queen Anne Hill sits on a fault line.”
“If all it took was a fault line to cause this type of thing, the entire West Coast would be haunted,” Case said.
“Whatever the reason for the high EMF readings, this is obviously a good place to set up some remote cameras to see what happens at night,” said Megan.
“Good place for a séance, too,” Eric said.
Megan’s stomach sank a few inches. “I’d really rather not…”
“Hey, you said it yourself. This is the place where something might happen.”
Megan felt Case’s hand on her shoulder. “She wouldn’t feel comfortable down here,” he said. “Would you, Megan?”
She shook her head, grateful for the support. Of course, Eric was right that this would be a terrific spot, ripe with the potential for contact with spirits, but her whole inner self revolted at the idea of making herself vulnerable in such a place as this. “I wouldn’t be able to relax.”
“Christ,” Eric swore. “We’ll be here five years if we have to wait for you to relax and feel comfortable before we can get anything done! There’s so much friggin’ potential all around here, but I’m being held back from it.”
“I thought you wanted me to trust you,” Megan said, her voice quiet. “I thought you were going to put people above your experiments.”
Eric glared at her, his nostrils flaring, then he puffed out a breath and let his shoulders sag. A smarmy smile stretched across his mouth. “Of course. Sorry. Thanks for the reminder.”
“Why don’t we have the séance in one of the bedrooms obviously used by the Smithson family?” she suggested. “Perhaps the master suite—go right to the head of the family and see what we can see.”
Eric pretended to fiddle with his equipment, not meeting her gaze. “Sure, whatever you want. You’re the medium.” His lower lip protruded.
Megan held her exasperation in check and turned to Case. “That sound all right to you?”
“Yup. Are we doing it now?”
Megan glanced at the high cellar windows, noting that the daylight was beginning to fade. “It’s better to wait until after dark. Maybe we should have dinner first.” She started for the stairs.
They emerged back into the kitchen. Realizing she was getting hungry, Megan headed for her stash of groceries and got out the ingredients for a taco salad.
Case pulled Tupperware containers of curry and rice out of the refrigerator. He popped the top off the curry, looked in at the glop, then looked at Megan’s fresh, crisp ingredients with longing.
Eric sulked into the room. Case offered him curry.
“Is it vegetarian?”
“No.”
“I’ll pick out the meat.” Eric plopped himself down in a chair.
“So, what is it about the dark that brings out the ghosts?” Case asked, getting out plates and sticking the curry and rice into the microwave.
Eric leaned back on the back legs of his chair, his hands folded behind his head. “It goes with my theories about electromagnetic energy, if you think about it,” he pontificated. “The sun emits EM radiation in a wide range of frequencies, and I think there are some of them that cause interference with ghosts, just like sunspot activity can cause interference with radio signals. Put the sun on the other side of the earth, like at night, and your EM interference goes way, way down. Now, if I just knew which frequencies caused interference and which boosted the signal, so to speak, we’d be in business with my EM blaster.”
Megan shrugged one shoulder. “I’m sure Eric’s theory is part of it, but I doubt it’s the whole story. As far as my own role as a medium, I think nighttime is better because there are fewer distractions. I can focus better. And circadian rhythms might help: when we’re falling asleep, our bodies stop sending as much information about our environment to our brains, and our br
ains themselves go into a theta brain-wave pattern before descending all the way to delta for sleep.” She rinsed lettuce and set it on paper towels to dry, then turned toward Case. “It’s the theta pattern that gives you active dreaming. You also get there when you’re doing something repetitious like driving on the freeway. There’s a noncritical free flow of ideas, a lot like what hypnosis does. And for me, it’s easier to intentionally get myself into that state at night.”
“So, you’re more or less dreaming during a séance.”
“More and less. I’m more self-aware, but my memory doesn’t function quite right. You know how you wake up in the morning with a dream crystal-clear in your mind, and then a few seconds later it’s totally gone? It’s like that for me when I go into a trance. That’s why I need other people to ask questions, take notes, and so on.”
“Or record it,” Eric said. “I’m just waiting for the day I get a video recording of Megan in a trance and see a ghost standing right beside her, whispering into her ear. Can you imagine?”
Megan shuddered. “I don’t think I’d like that.”
Case looked at her in surprise. “Why not?”
“If I see them, I want to see them while it’s happening. It’s too freaky to think of a ghost standing right beside you, and you never saw it, but the camera did.”
“Megan likes the lights on,” Eric said, a leer in his voice.
Megan ground her teeth.
“Yes, I’ve already established that,” Case said.
Megan raised a brow, but he just raised one back. She shook her head and smiled, not sure if he’d meant that as a double entendre.
Eric was scowling at Case, not sure himself what was going on.
Megan tucked her chin down and sliced a tomato, a smile on her lips.
Twelve
Had she really been so confident only two hours earlier? Megan wondered as she sat in the dark master suite, with Case and Eric somewhere off in the shadows. She could hear them breathing, could hear Eric fiddling with recording equipment, yet the dark space between her and any other living human was becoming a chasm in her mind, filled with nameless monsters.
