“Redemption decides who it wants to live here and who it doesn’t,” Jonathan said, his eyes staring intently into mine and causing shivers to run up and down my arms. “I guess it wants you.”
I licked my dry lips. Focus, Charlie. “You keep saying, ‘Redemption.’ You can’t mean the town.”
“That’s exactly what we mean,” Lou said.
I kept waiting for the punchline. It had to be some elaborate hoax. But everyone looked deadly serious. “But that’s absurd.” I tried to laugh, but it fell flat. “A town can’t decide anything.”
“This town can,” Lou said.
“How?”
“Let me ask you this,” Jesse said, leaning forward and putting his arms on the polished wooden table. The sleeves of his blue shirt were pushed up, revealing tanned, muscular arms. “How did you end up here?”
“Easy. I got lost,” I said. “I have a terrible sense of direction and I can’t read a map.”
“Maybe you didn’t get lost,” he said mysteriously. “Maybe it was because you were supposed to come here.”
“I suppose Redemption sabotaged my car while it was at it,” I said.
“That’s probably exactly what happened,” Jesse confirmed.
“You do know how ridiculous this all sounds,” I said.
“That’s what a lot of people say,” Lou said. “Until it happens to them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s hard to explain,” Bill said. “You may want to talk to Doug. He wasn’t born here like the rest of us. His family moved here when he was a teenager.”
“She could talk to Felicity, too,” Lou said. “She wasn’t born here.” She nodded her head toward Jonathan. “She’s Jonathan’s wife.”
“Convenient that the two people you want me to talk to aren’t here,” I said drily. Never mind that the last person I wanted to talk to was Jonathan’s wife.
Bill smiled. “I’m not sure about Felicity, but Doug definitely wasn’t a believer. Until he tried to leave for college and couldn’t.”
“But that happens all the time,” I said. “People are always saying they’re going to move, but never do. That’s hardly proof of anything.”
“Yeah, but it happens here a lot,” Bill said. “If you’re supposed to be here, even if you hate it, you can’t leave. And if you’re trying to move here, but the town doesn’t want you, there’s nothing you can do to change it.”
“In that case, you disappear,” Lou said darkly.
I almost choked on my drink. “What?”
“That may or may not be true,” Jesse said. “We don’t know what happened.”
“But what does that even mean?” I asked.
“Over the years, people have simply, well, vanished,” Claire said. “One day they’re here, and the next, they’re not. And no one ever hears from them again.”
“Are you sure they didn’t just move without telling anyone?”
“No, something happens to them,” Lou said. “Like whatever happened to the Abbots. They were here, and then they were gone. That was when we were in elementary school.”
“Something happened to one of the twins, I thought,” Bill said. “And they had to move.”
“No, it was too abrupt,” Lou said. “And they weren’t the only ones.”
“Again, this isn’t uncommon,” I said. “People disappear. People appear. That’s life.”
Claire shook her head. “No, it’s different here. You’ll see. Especially if you really were summoned.” She smiled.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. There was something about her smile that made the skin on the back of my neck crawl.
And this idea of the town calling me ...
I shuddered, pushing the memory of my dream away.
“But, there’s more to the story,” Claire continued. “Something happened back in 1888. It was a terrible winter. Full of deadly blizzards. And then …” She paused dramatically, making sure all eyes were on her. “The adults disappeared.”
I blinked. “What did you say?”
“The adults. They all disappeared. All that was left were the children.”
My brain struggled to process. “But ... why wouldn’t I have heard about this?”
“That was almost 100 years ago,” Bill said. “Things were different back then.”
“Yeah, but wouldn’t there have been an investigation?”
“There probably was,” Jesse said. “But, again, this was 1888. And it is a pretty small town. Things happened, especially over the brutal Wisconsin winters. People did what they needed to do to survive, and not a lot of questions were asked.”
“It’s not the only crazy thing to have happened in Wisconsin during that time,” Lou said. “In Black River Falls, the whole town was gripped by madness for several years—suicides, murder, violence. It was crazy.”
“Plus, there have been other times when groups of people just vanished,” Claire added. “Like Roanoke. An entire colony disappeared.”
“This is nuts,” I said. “What did the kids say about all the adults disappearing?”
“They never did,” Lou said.
“What do you mean, ‘they never did’? How did they explain it?”
“They didn’t,” Lou said again. “All of them claimed to have no idea what happened. One night they went to bed and everything was fine, and the next morning, all the adults were gone.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “And that’s it?”
Lou shrugged. “It’s not a crime for an adult to disappear. It’s not even a crime when a whole bunch of adults disappear. What else can you do?”
“So, then what happened?”
“The town bounced back,” Jesse said. “It took a few years. But the children who were here continued living and working. In some cases, they had relatives move here to help. Other adults also showed up. Eventually, the town not only rebuilt, but it started to grow.”
“It was the children who started to call it ‘Redemption,’” Claire said. “No one really knows why, but it stuck. In some ways, I guess it felt like some sort of redemption. Why were the children spared when the adults weren’t?”
“Probably because the adults protected them,” Bill said.
“Yeah, but from what?” Claire asked.
“Or who,” Lou added.
Bill rolled his eyes. “Nothing more nefarious than the weather.”
“Is that what you think?” I asked Bill. “They froze to death?”
Bill picked up his almost-empty glass and signaled to a waitress to bring another round. “Most likely,” he said. “There were a lot of deaths that year from the blizzards.”
“Most of those deaths were children though,” Claire said. “Have you heard of the Children’s Blizzard?” she asked me. I shook my head. “One particularly bad blizzard rose up really fast in the middle of the day when the children were at school. Killed a lot of them. Mostly across Nebraska and Minnesota.”
“Doesn’t mean it didn’t hit Southern Wisconsin differently,” Bill said. “What if the adults got the children inside while trying to battle it themselves, and they couldn’t? Maybe they were trying to get their animals into barns, or something.”
“You would think there would be some evidence of that,” Claire argued. “Bodies, or something. And why wouldn’t the children say something?”
“Because they were traumatized,” Bill said. “And maybe it did happen overnight.”
“Don’t you think at least one adult would have survived?”
“Maybe a few did, but were so badly injured, they died later,” Bill said.
Claire shook her head. “You’re reaching.”
“Claire is our resident psychic,” Lou said, swigging down the remains of her drink. “She’s convinced there’s some supernatural reason.”
>
“It’s not just me,” Claire protested. “A lot of people think that.”
“What do you think happened?” I asked Claire.
Claire shook her head. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I ... there’s something here. Something evil. But there’s good here, too. It’s hard to explain.”
“What about the rest of you?” I asked, looking around the table.
Lou pursed her lips. “I really don’t know. Bill thinks it was a storm or maybe a disease that swept through that only afflicted the adults.”
“Or maybe multiple storms,” Bill said. “It’s also possible food stores were so low on supplies that the adults decided to prioritize the children. Or maybe they ran into some trouble with a local Native American tribe.”
“There are Native American burial grounds here as well,” Jesse interjected, wagging his eyebrows.
“Rumored,” Bill corrected. “We don’t know that for certain. And even if there were, this isn’t Poltergeist. There are actually quite a number of logical explanations for what happened.”
“But it’s also true that we do seem to have more than our share of supernatural events,” Jesse said. “Strange things have happened here. People disappearing and going mad. Animal mutilations. UFO sightings. And ghosts.”
“Lots of ghosts,” Claire said.
“Ghosts?” I asked. “Like, here?”
Lou chuckled. “Not here. This building is too new. But for a town this size, we seem to have a lot of haunted buildings.”
“Yeah, like the Witch House,” Claire said.
Something inside me twitched. Almost as if it had woken up.
A part of me wanted to get up right then and there. To slide out of the booth, throw a few bills on the table, and walk straight out the door, leaving behind all this crazy talk about a town that decides who stays and who goes, with a mysterious and probably bloody past, and any talk about a Witch House. Not to mention getting as far away as possible from the smoldering, sexy, and very married-with-children Jonathan sitting across from me. I refused to look at him, to even acknowledge his presence, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still feel his eyes on me, hot and hungry. Worse, I could also feel my treacherous body responding.
I shouldn’t be here. If I stay, something terrible will happen.
But, at the same time, another part of me was strongly aware that this was exactly where I needed to be.
This was what had been calling me.
This was where I belonged.
It was my destiny.
For a moment, I sat frozen while an internal battle waged inside me. It felt like two wolves clashing, all teeth and claws.
But, even in that moment, I knew. I knew what I had to do. I knew which side would win. I could feel the moment one of the wolves clamped down on the neck of the other, drawing blood, draining it of its strength and will. It still struggled, albeit weakly, as its movements grew more and more feeble.
I picked up my drink. “Witch House?”
Chapter 5
“It’s on the edge of town,” Claire explained. “Actually, pretty close to where I live.”
“It’s called that because a witch lives there,” Jesse said in a mock spooky way.
“She’s not a witch,” Claire started to say, but a waitress came by to deliver the drinks and collect the empties, and she cut herself short. I still had half a drink left and didn’t particularly want a second. I was never a big drinker, but I especially wanted to make sure I was sober enough to find my way back to my hotel in the dark.
“Of course she’s a witch,” Jesse said. “Why else would she still be living in the same house after what her mother did?”
“Things are not always as they seem,” Claire said hotly. “Maybe Helen hasn’t been able to sell it, and she doesn’t want it to fall apart. Or maybe she’s protecting us.”
Jesse’s eyebrow went up. “Protecting us? From what?”
“Not everything is simple and clear-cut,” Claire said. “Sometimes, things look one way but really, something very different is going on.”
Jesse snorted. “There you go with the riddles again,” he said scornfully. Claire gave him a murderous look.
“Oh my God, you two,” Lou said. “Give it a rest.” She glanced at me and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Don’t mind them. Just two exes having a spat.” Claire looked away, shaking her head while Jesse drained his beer. I eyed them both, really wanting to ask who Claire hadn’t dated from high school, but it didn’t seem the time nor place. Nor was it any of my business.
There was definitely something intense between Jesse and Claire—something that clearly went deeper than a simple argument about a homeowner. Could all of that tension really be left over from an old relationship? To me, it felt pretty current, but what did I know? I just met all of them. Still, looking at the red flush on Jesse’s neck and the two high spots of colors on Claire’s face, and how distinctly uncomfortable Bill and Jonathan were, I wondered if Lou was the one who was fooling herself.
“What did her mother do?” I asked.
Claire glanced at me, her hazel eyes very dark in the dim light of the bar. Her cheeks were still flushed an attractive pink, which made her eyes take on almost an emerald sheen. “Who? Oh, Helen’s mother. She killed her maid and then herself.”
My jaw dropped. “What?”
“Yeah, it was quite the scandal,” Lou said. “Apparently, the new maid was quite young and pretty, and Martha, that’s Helen’s mother, was convinced Nellie, the maid, was having an affair with her husband.”
“Was she?”
Lou shrugged. “Who knows? Lots of rumor and gossip floating around it. What’s important is Martha thought so, and one day, she just snapped. She stabbed Nellie and then hung herself.”
“That’s terrible,” I said.
“So, Martha’s ghost is still believed to be haunting the old house,” Jesse explained.
“Martha’s ghost IS haunting the house,” Claire corrected. “Has it occurred to you that Helen might not be scared living in a house with the ghost of her mother?”
Lou shivered. “After what her mother did? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“She’s still her mother,” Claire said. “No matter what she did.”
“I suppose,” Lou muttered into her drink.
“Does she live there by herself?” I asked. “Does she have any brothers or sisters? A husband?”
Lou glanced up. “You think anyone would choose to live in that spooky old house with her?”
“She has a brother,” Claire said. “Or, had. He died a few years back. But no, she’s lived there alone all these years.”
I thought about what that would be like … to know your mother did such an unspeakable thing, and to wonder if you carried the seeds of violence and madness inside you. Then to live in the same house she did it in, and be reminded of it day after day. Even worse, if Claire was right, to also contend with the ghost of your mother right there alongside you.
Why would someone choose such an existence? Such a life? Living alone with your only company the ghost of a murderer. Was it because she was terrified she might follow in her mother’s footsteps? Was she so ashamed of her existence that she didn’t think she deserved any other life? Or was it something else?
“I think we’ve shared enough dirty laundry about our little town,” Jesse said. “Let’s hear more about you. And New York.”
“I’m just amazed you’re on a road trip by yourself,” Lou said. “I would be worried something might happen, and then what would I do?”
“Well, something DID happen,” I said drily. “I managed to get lost and my car broke down. But, on the flip side, I’m sitting here with all of you learning about all sorts of scary stories.”
The rest of the table laughed. “Where are you headed?” Lou persisted. �
�Are you on vacation, or what?”
My side twinged painfully. I winced and ducked my head, hoping no one noticed.
Alas, Claire did.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just an injury that’s still healing.” I paused again to sip my drink, still trying to decide how to answer. How much should I reveal? Not the truth, of course. There was no way I was going to tell people I just met that I was running from an abusive fiancé and had no idea where I was going. I definitely wasn’t going to share the dreams that were beckoning me forward. They already seemed to believe they were living in a town that somehow chose who stayed and who left. They most certainly did not need to know that I might be suffering from my own form of madness.
But I had to answer Lou’s question somehow. So, how close to the truth did I want to go?
I opened my mouth to say something, I wasn’t even entirely sure what, but was leaning toward something along the lines of “finding myself.” Instead, something completely different came out, surprising me just as much as them. “Actually, I’m looking for a new place to live.”
Claire’s eyes widened. “Really?”
Jesse cocked his head. “Why would you want to leave New York?”
A dart of pain shot through my side again. Jesse looked concerned. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nodded as I moved my hand to rub my side. “I fell down the stairs a couple of weeks ago,” I said, not really sure why I thought I needed to explain myself, but finding myself unable to stop. “I really injured my side, but it’s healing.”
“You did what?” Claire asked. “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you want someone to look at it?”
I brushed her off. “No, I’m fine.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she studied me. “How did you fall down the stairs?”
You can’t leave me. You’re mine. I won’t allow it.
I shifted in my seat, that feeling rising up in me again that Claire could ‘see’ far more than I wanted—that she knew I was hiding the truth.
“It was an accident,” I said. “I slipped. Silly, really. But truly, I’m okay. The doctor gave me his blessing and told me I was fine to travel.” This wasn’t the complete truth. But he did tell me how lucky I was that I wasn’t injured more severely, and that I should completely heal just as long as I took it easy. I suspected driving cross country wasn’t what he considered “taking it easy,” but I also knew I would be far more stressed if I hadn’t left.
The Summoning: A gripping psychological thriller (Secrets of Redemption Book 4) Page 4
