Deader Homes and Gardens

by Angie Fox

  Did I dare approach her?

  I had to.

  My palm slicked against the bannister, and I ignored the pounding in my veins. She might be trying to show me something. And she had the little girl with her.

  “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by,” I said breathlessly, taking the first step, braving the second as well.

  Yes, she creeped me out and I didn’t enjoy the peculiar way her bloodshot eyes bugged out at me. But she was a person, a sentient being, and she deserved my attention. Besides, I wasn’t going to discover anything in this house if I didn’t talk to the ghosts who resided here.

  I took another step up, then another, trying to pretend that I didn’t notice the way the air cooled with every step I climbed. I could be walking into a trap.

  “I was hoping we could get to know each other.” I tried to smile at the ghost and hoped it didn’t come off as a mangled grimace. “I won’t take up too much of your time.” I kept advancing and stumbling as my sweat-slicked hand skidded off the bannister. I was already halfway up.

  “What are you doing?” Frankie’s voice sounded in my ear.

  The governess stood watching, her mouth twisted into a sneer that showed off a horribly crooked front tooth and several missing along the bottom.

  I stumbled again, but didn’t dare take my eyes off the ghost. My legs had gone rigid, along with the rest of my body, and I couldn’t seem to focus on anything but her.

  I had to think of something, anything, to put us on better ground. “That little girl is cute as the dickens,” I offered. All children were, really. “A friend of mine has four boys.”

  “Stay away from her!” She rushed me and I screamed.

  I lost my footing, my knee coming down hard on the stairs. I fell down several, grasping at the bare wood.

  “Frankie!” I hollered, covering my head as a frigid presence swept over me. I tried to disappear into the stairs as I braced for her attack.

  I should have listened to him. I shouldn’t have come up here.

  Most of the ghosts I’d met before today would at least talk to me, unless they’d let their emotions consume them so much they’d gone poltergeist. That was a truly dangerous state. This ghost was clearly in possession of her mind. I just didn’t know what she was thinking, and it looked like she wasn’t willing to share.

  A child giggled and a door slammed on the floor above me.

  I risked raising my head. The air above me had stilled. I saw no sign of the ghost or child. It didn’t matter. I half-ran, half-stumbled down the rest of the stairs and nearly collided with Frankie on the landing.

  “Watch out,” I said, sidestepping him at the last second. “The governess might be right behind me.”

  “She’s gone.” He glanced toward the door as he dug around in his jacket pocket. “For now.” He pulled out a cigarette case. “What part of ‘don’t go up there’ stumped you?”

  I collected myself and kept one eye on the stairs I’d just exited while he selected a cigarette and stowed the case back in his pocket. “I was hoping she’d be friendlier.” I’d never been a fan of Frankie lighting up around me, but at that moment, if his smokes had been on my plane of existence, I think I would have asked him for one.

  My knee throbbed, my back ached, and I’d whacked my funny bone on the stairs.

  He rested the cigarette on his bottom lip. “Your trouble is you don’t know when to quit,” he said, digging for his lighter.

  I rubbed my aching elbow and tried to walk off the stiffness in my legs. “I was doing fine.” Ghosts liked me. And if I could get them to open up, if we could find common ground, I could help. I just had to be brave enough to try. “Maybe she was scared.”

  “Yeah, that’s your problem,” Frankie said, lighting up, “you’re too scary.”

  “You should have tried to talk to her.” It couldn’t hurt.

  “This is your gig, not mine,” he huffed.

  Didn’t I know it.

  I glanced over the landing rail. The floor below us appeared deserted. “Where’s Lee?”

  Frankie smirked. “Your buddy Lee is on the front porch.”

  I couldn’t say that I blamed him. I stretched out my legs. “Dang. What was wrong with that ghost? I didn’t do a thing to her and she just flew at me.”

  The gangster took a deep drag, followed by a long exhale of smoke. He rested an elbow on the railing, the cigarette dangling from his hand. “Are you kidding me? We walked into her place. You tried to go up onto the servants’ floor. That’s her territory.”

  “True. We’re the first living people in here since the governess’s body was removed. She’s probably not used to visitors.” I dusted myself off. “I saw the little girl at the top of the stairs,” I added, ignoring my aching back and legs “Is it safe up there now?”

  Frankie lowered his chin. “You still want to explore after what just happened?”

  Not especially, but it was my job. “You said yourself that the governess isn’t up there any longer. Maybe the little girl is. I heard a giggle up there. It’s probably her.” I owed it to Lee and to myself to at least check it out.

  Frankie blew smoke out his nose, which I took as agreement.

  At least he wasn’t shouting out warnings anymore as I steadied my nerves and opened the door. The staircase stood empty. “So far, so good.”

  Frankie gave me a pained look, but he didn’t say anything.

  We climbed the stairs up to where I’d been when the ghost attacked, then farther, to a narrow landing with a high, circular window. Weak light streamed down over the hard plank floor. There was only one hallway, straight ahead. “This narrows down our search area,” I said, looking at the bright side.

  A pair of doors on the right stood open.

  “The governess was in here when you started up the stairs,” Frankie said. “She got agitated real quick.”

  Interesting. “Do you sense the girl?”

  “No,” Frankie muttered, “she’s not as strong, which makes her harder to spot.”

  I walked inside and saw an abandoned playroom. Stuffed rabbits and bears with button eyes sat at a wooden table, ready for tea. The ceiling slanted down toward the front of the house, over a child-sized piano painted white with blue trim. A hobbyhorse stood next to it. Wooden block structures had been scattered about the room, creating pyramids of all different sizes.

  “Hello?” I called.

  The next door opened on a classroom, with three small wooden desks facing a chalkboard and a large hanging map of a world that hadn’t existed in a hundred years.

  “Ugh,” Frankie muttered. “Haunted houses give me the creeps.”

  “Right,” I said, moving on to a set of doors at the end of the hall. One led to a small bathroom, and the other, to a bedroom with three narrow beds. “This is cramped.”

  “Servants’ quarters, what did you expect?” Frankie said, moving on. “All right, you’ve seen it. Let’s go.” He glided down the hallway toward the landing. He was actually thinking about leaving.

  Not on my watch. “There’s still the other side of the hallway.”

  He snubbed out his cigarette on the floor and it disappeared. “I’m not going into that lady’s room.”

  “We have to.” Perhaps her room would help us learn more about her and why she was so upset.

  “You saw what she looked like just now,” Frankie insisted. “Trust me. She was even creepier when she was alive…staring out the window with that kid.”

  Poor woman. I knew what it was like to be judged. “There’s nothing creepy about looking out a window.”

  “She went after you,” Frankie pointed out. “You should have listened to me.”

  He would have to bring that up. “It had to be upsetting for her to have live people in the house after so long,” I said, trying the door. It was locked. Or just very stiff. I tried again.

  I’d seen time and time again how treating people with respect, giving them the freedom to be who and what they were,
could make all the difference.

  “You don’t get it,” Frankie said, planting his back on the wall next to me. “You’re not invited, not by her. Besides, there’s something off about her. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

  I struggled against the doorknob and felt it give a bit. “If I made it a policy not to speak to someone after an awkward first encounter,” I said, pitting all my strength against the knob, “I’d have about half the friends I do now.” It never paid to assume the worst. The knob gave and the door clicked open. “There!” I said, breathless and a bit triumphant. “All those years must have stiffened the lock.”

  “Or you’re not welcome,” Frankie mused.

  I hated to think that.

  In all honesty, I could understand the ghosts’ trepidation, if Frankie’s theory was correct. But at the same time, these spirits lingered here for a reason and it was up to me to make peace.

  I entered a simple bedroom done in pale mauve. The heady scent of jasmine hung in the air. This was definitely her space. I entered slowly.

  A wooden bed stood against the right wall, covered with a white blanket painstakingly embroidered with gnarled climbing vines. A hope chest hunkered at the end. The roof tilted toward a simple washstand poised between two attic windows, but the striking difference between this room and the rest was glaringly simple. And terrifying.

  “It’s clean,” I whispered. Not a speck of dust coated the stand-up dresser on the wall opposite the bed. When I was tuned in to the other side, I saw things as the dominant ghost did. The rest of the house had begun to deteriorate, but it seemed the governess held sway in this particular room.

  A woven bouquet of flowers, startling in its intricacy, lay on the dresser. I touched the silky strands, marveling at the texture and the varying shades of brown and gray.

  “That’s a human hair wreath,” Frankie said. The corner of his mouth quirked when I yanked my hand back. “Very popular in the day. For remembrance, you know.”

  “To each her own,” I said, more squicked out than I wanted to admit.

  “That’s not the scary part.” He leaned close. “The scary part is where the hair comes from. Do you realize that literally every family member in this house died? It wasn’t just Jack the archaeologist and his daughter. His wife died. His digging partner died. They were all dead within a week of each other. All except the governess.”

  “I got it,” I hissed. But I could have done without the artistic reminder.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Frankie said, ducking into the narrow servants’ hall.

  “Wait up,” I said, joining him.

  “You see how this place ain’t natural?” He gave an involuntary shudder. “None of the servants were allowed back in after the family died. Not that they wanted to go anywhere near this pile of bricks.”

  “Except for the governess,” I said, earning a glare from Frankie. “She was the one exception.”

  “And that lady had issues,” he said.

  I was starting to see his point. It didn’t feel right up here.

  We’d do this together, fast, and then we’d leave. “One more room,” I said, moving quickly down the hall, deeper into the servants’ quarters. We’d be smart about it. “I think we’ll be okay.”

  “That’s probably what the mistress of the house said before she died.”

  I pressed forward. “What happened to her?”

  Frankie shook his head, sticking close—for now. “She died in her bathroom. Horrifically, no doubt.” He glanced past me, as if the governess would appear at any minute. “After the family was dead and buried, the governess stayed. She drew a crazy Egyptian symbol on the front door. In blood.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s nuts,” he said under his breath. “They called it the Eye of Horus.”

  “Maybe it protected her from the curse.”

  Or maybe she’d killed them all.

  The last door opened easily and we stepped into an attic room with a low, sloped ceiling. Antique wooden crates were stacked in narrow rows in a (very) mini version of the warehouse scene in Indiana Jones. Stenciled in black, they were marked Treadwell Egypt Expedition 6.22.10.

  “Oh, wow. This is it,” I said, rushing for the nearest crate.

  “Careful,” Frankie cautioned as I slid the lid to the side.

  I wouldn’t touch the treasure. I wouldn’t disturb anything. I just wanted to see it.

  Only the crate lay empty. “Dang.” No packing material or anything. I could see straight to the knotted wood bottom. “No problem,” I said, moving to the next crate.

  “Yeah, there is,” Frankie said, his head buried in a crate in the next row. “There’s nothing in this one.” He shoved his head into the one stacked on top. “Or this one.” He turned to me. “Or the other two I checked.”

  “Well, keep looking.” Maybe they’d stashed the empty ones in the front.

  There would be no reason to store all of these shipping boxes from an historic expedition unless they were filled with something valuable…artifacts, treasure, mummies.

  I took the single boxes that I could peek into. Frankie handled the stacked boxes and the ones with the lids nailed shut, which was most of them, really. And as I slid the lid back on the very last box hidden in the back corner behind a mess of others, I found…nothing.

  Frankie rested his hands on his hips and surveyed the room, as if he could find an answer just by looking.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” I protested. “Where’s all the loot?”

  “Story of my life, babe,” he mused.

  I refused to believe this could be it. “Maybe the ghosts can tell us,” I said, taking one last walk down a row of boxes.

  “Yeah, they’ve been helpful so far,” Frankie mused, leaning up against the doorjamb.

  “Maybe if you try a bit of positive thinking, you’d realize we can do this,” I said, joining him, hoping I was right.

  A faint weeping carried up the stairs from one of the floors below.

  “Listen,” I said. Someone was definitely crying. She seemed so sad. “Let’s check it out.”

  Frankie rolled his eyes. “Sure. Curses, long-gone loot, and crying chicks. This is my perfect afternoon.”

  I closed the door on the attic room and stood facing the children’s playroom. “So sorry to inconvenience you,” I drawled. “But once we figure out what happened here, once we’ve examined the contents of the house, and we know we’ve done our job, then we can go home.”

  Frankie rolled his eyes. “We’re never getting out of here.”

  “Patience,” I urged. The weeping downstairs intensified. “What is wrong with this place?” I asked, hurrying for the stairs.

  “You want a list?” Frankie asked, gliding next to me. “Let’s see: take one cursed house, kill the family, let the schoolteacher go crazy. Add a creepy kid ghost and a do-gooder who works for vegetables. That about cover it, kid?”

  “Frankie, you’re not helping,” I said, speeding up a bit as I passed the place where the governess had appeared.

  “I’m just telling the truth,” he muttered as we made our way to the second-floor landing.

  Yes, well, that wasn’t helping, either.

  I stopped to listen. “The crying is coming from the first floor.” I crossed the landing.

  “Hold up,” Frankie said, placing a hand in front of me as I started down the steps. “You ever think somebody is trying to lead us into a trap?”

  I did now.

  “You need to get a grip,” I told him. We both did.

  I slipped past him, careful not to touch. “This is a house, not a mob shoot-out.” I couldn’t get worked up about every possible danger or I’d walk straight out that front door and never come back.

  Frankie dogged me as I hurried down the stairs. “This is a messed-up spot and it’s not even our problem.”

  That was where he got it wrong. “This is our job.”

  I found Lee at the bottom of the stair
case, visibly shaking. “I’m sorry I left. I got scared.”

  “It’s okay,” I assured him.

  That was why he’d hired me. I skirted the imprint of the body in the foyer and fought the urge to beat feet out the door with my client. But at this point, I’d have a tough time getting Frankie to come back. And besides, we hadn’t made true contact with any of the spirits yet.

  Too bad the crying had stopped. “Shh…” I said to the men, listening for any trace of the ghost we’d heard.

  Nothing.

  “Okay, let’s check out the first floor,” I said. When Lee didn’t appear too keen on the idea, I tried to reassure him. “You can stay here if you want.”

  He swallowed hard, his face pale. “No. I’ll go.”

  He looked ready to keel over, but I wasn’t going to tell him how much he could handle. “Follow me.”

  Chapter 7

  We passed through a short, wood-paneled seating area and into an ornate music room. I blamed my sore nerves, but I let out a small cry when I saw what waited inside. On a table in the center lay a rotting, half-wrapped human figure.

  “It’s just a mummy,” Frankie said.

  The legs had been unwrapped to expose paper-like skin with protruding bones. Three statues stood in silent vigil behind it, their backs rigid, their carved jewels and headdresses chipped and gray.

  “Sweet heaven,” I said, gathering my wits. “I know it’s a mummy. I’ve seen mummies. I’ve been to plenty of museums.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be spooked by a mummy,” Frankie said.

  Lee cleared his throat behind me. “What mummy? I don’t see anything.”

  I turned to him. “Nothing?”

  “Pink silk couches and chairs, heavily damaged,” he said, eyes wide as he scanned the room, “dents in the carpet where a nice piano used to be. I remember my dad sending for it and selling it. There’s a harp, but it’s rusted out. So are the bird cages in the corner.” He shook his head. “That’s it. Nothing of value. Not much light either with the curtains pulled over the windows.”