A Murder at Alcott Manor

by Alyssa Richards

  As it turned out, Jayne Ella had been wrong on all counts.

  She felt ten years’ worth of rejection and anger fall away like chunks of rock from her heart.

  Layla slipped her bra out through her still-buttoned dress and found her girls and their new dog sprawled across her inflated bed, arms and legs in every which direction with no room left for their mother. She chuckled. So typical. But no matter, she didn’t think she could sleep anyway. She was blissfully-can’t-feel-her-feet-on-the-ground-happy. Even though she knew it couldn’t last, like the schoolgirl she once was, she pretended that it would. That it could.

  She opened an old sheet on the couch, laid down, and stared at the bright moon that shone through the window. Though all she could see was Mason, his face close to hers. She closed her eyes and remembered his kiss and the feel of his tongue against hers. A blinding sense of hope surged within her as if it were on a rescue mission.

  In prompt response to such foolish hope, maybe to save her from harsh and inevitable disappointment, they came back to her: The parade of reasons why, even now, she and Mason could never be together. They would never have that date they both wanted.

  Like following the groove of an old scar, her memory touched the events that led to that horrible night:

  There weren’t any tents at the campout, just sleeping bags and pillows under the stars. Jayne Ella had insisted upon that so everyone could lie on their backs and study the various constellations and the Milky Way. But that meant that Layla had been able to see Brooke and Jordan and their friends looking at something on Brooke’s phone, making faces with puffy cheeks and laughing themselves silly.

  Brooke had taunted her in the school locker room that day, as she so often did. That was the day Brooke said she had accidentally taken pictures of Layla when she was changing. It was a brand new camera phone, and she was so sorry—all an innocent mistake. But not to worry, she said with a shoulder pat. She had deleted them. Brooke smiled, an evil tip of the lip smirk that told Layla nothing had been accidental, nothing had been deleted, and the worst was yet to come.

  Once everyone settled into the quiet on that fateful night, Layla started her breathing. She planned to talk to her mother the next day about Brooke and the picture, and Mason as well, since both had been too busy to listen to her sooner. She also planned to talk to the school counselor on Monday.

  That night, she did what she needed to do to deal with the stress and the worry and to keep herself from sleepwalking, because that, too, would have been humiliating. Not to mention that she probably would have ended up a mile or two down the darkened beach before she woke up. Not safe.

  In with the sparkling white light. Out with the dark smoke. It hadn't taken long before she woke up in her dream, since she was well practiced with the process by that point. She had planned to dream about that day in the locker room, that would have been an exact recreation of the setting. And she was in that locker room for a minute. Though only a minute. Then a mysterious yank to her midsection landed her in the music room of Alcott Manor.

  Not in bodily form, since the manor had been locked up tight and no one could have gotten inside. Plus, she was still dreaming. She waved her hand in front of her and noticed the image trails the movement created. The air was thick and still, as if she had been dropped into a glass jar and the lid sealed tight. No breeze, no movement, the environment had a strangely artificial feeling.

  At that time, boards covered the lower half of the antebellum windows and vines of ivy crawled along the walls. Moonlight poured in above the boards and highlighted a fat snake slithering across the dirty floor. Dead leaves and trash crackled under its shifting belly.

  The relative quiet was interrupted by a shock of piano music. Layla spun around to find a young girl with long dark curls playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on a square grand piano. The girl was dressed for a concert performance with her bright blue smock and crisp white shirt with the frilled collar. A golden chandelier burned bright above her head with tiny gas-lit flames. Tuxedoed men and taffeta silk-clad women sat on furniture upholstered in robin’s egg blue and nodded along to the beat of the music.

  Layla walked toward them, unbelieving. She knew it was a dream, yes. One of her lucid dreams, but this dream seemed to have its own agenda. Before she reached them, the concert goers faded.

  In their place were the four girls Layla had intended to appear in her dream, and every muscle in her body tightened at the sight of them. Brooke looked exactly as she did that day at school—shoulder-length chestnut hair with highlights and a perky flip at the ends, brown eyes framed by dark liner and heavy mascara.

  Jordan, Brooke’s younger sister by a year, was taller and thinner and far more blonde. Prettier, too. Staci’s too-short overly highlighted style was hair sprayed into its usual helmet that topped her perfect tan. Carmen was the shortest and most muscular and had the loudest laugh, which she used when Brooke showed everyone a photo on her phone.

  All of the girls looked like variations of Brooke with their black cheerleader spirit uniforms—a cap-sleeved top and a very short straight skirt.

  Her dream had gotten back on track, or so she assumed. She didn’t know why the setting switched from the locker room to the interior of Alcott Manor and she didn’t care.

  “Did you really take pictures of me?” Layla asked. “When I was dressing?”

  The girls ignored her.

  “That’s fat. Just plain fat,” Jordan said to the other girls with a finger on the phone screen.

  “It’s diet,” Brooke said and clicked to a new photo.

  “Holy cow!” Carmen said and laughed so hard that she snorted.

  Staci’s expression bloomed slowly into an open mouthed I-can’t-believe-she-looks-like-that type.

  “Excuse me,” Layla said firmly. “Did you take pictures of me while I was undressed? Brooke?”

  Brooke lifted only her gaze, and she nodded slightly. The slightest of smiles curved on her lips.

  Layla marched toward her with hellfire and fury and with the never-back-down attitude she had wished she had when Brooke had confronted her the first time that day.

  “And you took those pictures on purpose, didn’t you?” Layla shoved Brooke against her shoulders. “Didn’t you?” she pushed Brooke again, and that time Brooke stumbled. Jordan stepped away and guided the other girls to do the same, leaving Brooke to face Layla alone.

  Layla stood there, breathing hard, the anger inside of her boiling over at the unfairness of it all.

  “Yes!” Brooke hissed and shoved her in return, her hands cold on Layla’s shoulders. “Yes. I took the pictures of you on purpose.” She leaned close to Layla with her demon-red face and her stale breath that reeked of beer. “If you don’t stay away from Mason, those pictures will go public.” Brooke shoved her again, this time with her foot hooked behind Layla’s left heel. She tumbled and landed flat on her back.

  Layla resolutely got to her feet. In fact, she stood taller than she ever could in her waking life. She was tired of looking up at Brooke and the other girls, and she decided that she wouldn’t. At least not tonight. She made herself several inches taller than Brooke.

  Then she told Brooke what she had wanted to say for a very long time. Something she knew she would need to say to Brooke in her waking life. “You have messed with me for the very last time. Enough is enough.” For added emphasis, she stormed toward her, her arms outstretched at the last moment, and she shoved Brooke. Hard. When Brooke fell, it was through the rotted floor and head first onto the concrete floor several feet below.

  Layla could still see Brooke’s eyes, wide open with horror as a red circle of blood poured outward from beneath her head. Carmen, Staci, and Jordan screamed at the sight.

  “You killed her!” Jordan yelled. She reached for Layla’s neck, and Layla grabbed her hands. Layla shoved her as hard as she could and Jordan fell through the same open hole. Her sister broke most of her fall. The next thing Layla knew, they were all waking
up in their sleeping bags at the campsite on the great lawn. All except for Brooke, that is. She was dead with her head on her red-stained pillow, the same expression on her face as she had in the dream.

  Jordan screamed. The back of her head was bloody, too.

  Old guilt trailed Layla’s recollection of that horrible night, as it always did. Like a mythical monster, her guilt could be medicated with cake and other sweet treats, giving her at most a brief freedom. Though it always came back and with a vengeance, gnawing and nagging at her.

  The swift happiness she’d felt earlier had ground to a full stop. What had happened ten years ago in her lucid dream at the manor was improbable, in fact, it was not at all possible. But when Jordan accused Layla of killing her sister, Layla knew, horrifyingly so, that Jordan had been right.

  Somehow, lucid dreaming at the manor made things happen in Layla’s waking world. Somehow, the manor had actually pulled Brooke into Layla’s lucid dream, not a representation of her as it had always been before that night. All the girls had both been pulled into that space in Alcott Manor that was neither here nor there. It was neither present nor past, but rather it was some place in between. Some magical place that made her dreams real.

  Had Layla pushed Brooke in her waking world, she would have owned up to it, confessed to what she had done and paid the price. As it was, she couldn’t confess to anything. Because there was no way it could have happened in reality. The police had proven that. There was no way into the manor. There were no weapons at the campsite. And so Layla’s guilt raged on.

  Now there were too many obstacles between her and Mason—Asher’s leftover financial mess, her lucid dreaming that edged too close to his hatred of the paranormal, and the emotionally vulnerable place her dead husband had left her. But the biggest of all was the secret that she had been the one to kill Brooke.

  If she told Mason, he would either turn tail and run, think she was crazy, or condemn her for what she had done. Maybe all three.

  If she tried to forge a relationship while keeping the secret from him, the weight of her guilt, or maybe the weight of the secret itself, would destroy them. Relationships didn’t survive secrets. Not big secrets like murder. Regardless, they could never again have the once-innocent, hope-filled relationship of their adolescence.

  She felt like that kitchen table that Mason rescued from the attic—deeply scarred, a little broken, and warped from years of too many hard times. He had said he could restore it to perfect, but that wasn’t possible. For her or the table.

  A soft knock at the stairwell door made her wonder if she were dreaming. Then she remembered that Mason was upstairs. Maybe he was checking on them? She also remembered she was in Alcott Manor, where strange things happened and so she called out, “Mason?”

  He said, “Yeah, it’s me.”

  She opened the door and found him standing there with his hands casually in his pockets.

  She ushered him in, suddenly aware that she had taken off her bra and her dress fabric was thin. She crossed her arms in front of her.

  “Everything alright?” she asked.

  “Yes, fine. I just noticed that the evening security wasn’t here tonight. Usually they park their patrol car out front as a deterrent and a cop walks the property. I don’t know if they’re running late or if there was some kind of screw up at the department. I wanted to make sure you had locked the doors and windows.”

  That was when she noticed it—the shadow of image trails that followed his arm when he waved toward the front of the manor. There was also a slight out of body sensation, a gentle otherworldly feeling. Her first instinct had been correct.

  This was a dream.

  “I see.” She studied him carefully and wondered if some part of him was really in her dream as Brooke had been. Or was this just her creative imagination?

  He tilted his head slightly. “Did I wake you?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “Oh, good.” He half-waved and turned to go. “Well, I guess I’ll get back upstairs. Just check those windows before you go to sleep. The crew had them open while they were cleaning this area, and I doubt they locked them again.”

  Her heart cracked at the sight of him walking away. Tomorrow she would have to refuse his invitation to their long overdue date, she would have to tell him that it just wouldn’t work out between the two of them. She wouldn’t be able to tell him why, she would just have to leave him with the impression that she wasn’t interested.

  He took the first step and the old wood creaked, the second one did, too. She forced herself not to reach for him. He was a dream she would have to let go of. When he reached the third stair, the weight of her disappointment and her need to share just one last kiss with him reminded her—this was a dream.

  “Mason—”

  He stopped. Slowly, he turned to face her.

  She thought she might have caught a glimmer of hopefulness in his expression and so she whispered, “Don’t go.”

  He held her gaze for a long moment, as though he were mesmerized and as if those next few steps toward her would mean everything to him. Never had anyone looked at her that way before.

  When he met her at the bottom of the stairs she noticed the stillness in the air, as though the house observed their every move. Then she saw the maid in a white apron that came down the stairs behind him with a tiny baby in her arms. She disappeared and Mason turned around. He shook his head. “Could have sworn I heard footsteps.” He laughed at what he thought was his imagination.

  She smiled with a shrug. With people from the past appearing and disappearing, and the terrarium-like quietude, she knew the manor had pulled her and Mason into its dead zone. For what purpose, she couldn’t figure.

  “Layla, I’ve missed you so much,” he said. “You just don’t know.”

  He lifted her fingers to his mouth and kissed them one at a time. She noticed a tingly, electric feeling with each press to his lips and her heart pounded hard, leaving her breathless.

  He wouldn’t have done that in their waking world, she didn’t think. He had been cautious around her, respectful, almost proper. Maybe this dead zone brought all kinds of dreams to life? His as well as hers?

  Just one last kiss with him, that’s all she wanted. His hand trailed down her long hair and he did finally kiss her, gently at first, and then with easy exploration. She told herself she would make him stop in just a moment, after just a little more. When he finally ended the kiss, a long moment hung between them like the thick, wet heat of a Charleston summer. She tried to find the right words that would send him on his way. She had no intent to hurt him, however the dead zone was a dangerous place. At the very least, an unpredictable place.

  But his lips were on her again, and his hypnotic kisses against her skin made her think only of how happy she was to finally be with him, how he wanted to be with her, and how this would be their only chance to be together.

  If she let this go much further, she thought maybe their memories tomorrow might prove confusing and out of sync with reality. She wasn’t sure. Her internal compass suggested she usher him out the door, just to be safe.

  The feel of his lips put her words at a distant reach. And when he placed a line of kisses on the inside of her wrist, her words became even more elusive, almost forgotten. This was just a dream, she reminded herself. Just a dream. She wouldn’t do this in her waking life. But here, in a dream, maybe she could live out this…fantasy. This one last chance to live what might have been, what she had wanted for so long, and what would never happen in her real life.

  He lowered his lips to hers in another kiss, this one so gentle, so loving, so perfect that it swept her right out of her gut-level guidance system and into a world where everything she had always wanted had finally come true.

  When he lifted and gathered her to him, she wrapped her legs around him, pouring herself into his kiss and moving with him in a soundless dance. For the first time in recent memory, maybe for the first time of her life
, she decided not to play it safe. Wrapped in the pleasure of Mason’s strong arms, she felt every hard-weighted pound of her past with Asher dissolving into dust.

  The financial landmines her ex had left for her floated away, and the sadness that long dragged heavy on her heart melted into light. Every loss, every broken dream and every unsatisfied need pushed her forward to what she really wanted—something bright and brilliant and beautiful with Mason. It was the something good with him that always should have been.

  Without a word, he unbuttoned her dress and let it fall to the floor, the light from the full moon highlighting her figure more brightly than she was comfortable. When Mason removed her hands from her breasts, it occurred to her that no man had ever looked at her body like this before. She knew she wasn’t magazine-perfect. She’d had two children, had lost a lot of weight, and she never photo-shopped herself in her dreams. But Mason’s focus didn’t lack desire or admiration and his touch didn’t lack passion.

  “Gorgeous,” he said when she stood bare beneath his gaze.

  A dream, Layla. Don’t get carried away.

  He pulled off his T-shirt.

  Too late, too late. So too late.

  He was built as she’d remembered, athletic and muscular, with ripples and curves and firm definition.

  Lucky, lucky girl.

  He smelled like men’s soap mixed with an ocean breeze. Sort of a fresh, boozy, citrusy scent, and she drank it in. When he kissed her temples and her cheeks, her neck and her breasts, all in slow progression, she found that she didn’t think lusty thoughts about the brawn beneath her caress. Instead, it was the intimacy between them that dissolved her sense of control. What they ignited together was so new, so fragile. It was like Christmas morning between them, that unexplainable spirit of love that arrived uninvited and with perfect timing, like a blessing, one that would vanish into a cherished memory the following day.

  Though his hands had never before skimmed her body like this, crossing this line together was familiar to her heart. Wanted, even. Her heart raced and pulled her soul closer to him, as though it knew on some cosmic level that being with Mason was where they should have been so long ago.