“It’s bizarre, isn’t it?” he asked. “The kids aren’t even really down there. The town had to bury empty boxes. What a mess.”
“I don’t think that would’ve made it any easier,” I said, swallowing hard. In my experience, it was harder to watch a miniature casket lower into the dirt than an empty one.
“I never said that.”
I stood up, slipping my hand into Bodhi’s again, and leaned my head against his shoulder.
“You had another nightmare last night,” he informed me. He stroked my hair, his calloused fingers catching in the short strands. “Did you know that?”
“No, I don’t remember. Did I wake you?”
“Yes, but that’s okay. Do you have plans to see Dr. Marx again?”
“Nothing definite,” I answered. “The first time I met her, she said we’d schedule an appointment in a few weeks to check up on how I’m doing with the anti-depressants.”
“Do you think—?”
Bodhi trailed off. When I glanced up at him, I noticed his focus had wandered. He stared up at the cloudy sky, watching a flock of birds chirp to each other as they flew in formation over the bell tower of the church.
“Do I think what?”
He looked down at me. “Do you think maybe we should go talk to her together?”
My heart swelled, flooding me with warmth, but I tapered off the flow of emotions, afraid to scare Bodhi off with any kind of exuberant reaction. “If you’d like to. Absolutely.”
He kissed my forehead, hugging me closer. “I think I’d like to.”
“Okay then.”
We stood at the Winchesters’ graves for a little while longer, even as a fine drizzle began to fill the air with a chilly mist. Then, when we were ready, we walked back to the truck.
16
Family Fun
Unwilling to break the peaceful spell between us, Bodhi and I stopped at Black Bay’s local coffeehouse, the Sanctuary, for a late breakfast. As usual, the café bustled with activity, but we managed to squeeze into a cozy table by the foggy front windows. The Sanctuary’s owner, a middle-aged woman named Ava, soon dropped by to greet us.
“Hello, you two!” she said brightly. “We haven’t seen the pair of you order anything but coffee to-go since your first day in town. Did you find a place with better hotcakes or something?”
“Of course not,” Bodhi assured her. I hid a smile. Though the Sanctuary’s hotcakes were heavenly, they didn’t hold a candle to Bodhi’s blueberry batter. “We’ve just been busy. Got a lot to do up at the house.”
“I imagine so,” she said. “How’s it coming?”
“Very slowly.”
“You make sure to invite me up once it starts coming together. Hell, the whole town will want to see how you manage to spruce up that old house. You might have to throw a party!”
Bodhi caught my eye, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. I doubted Caroline would stand for the entire town of Black Bay visiting her house, especially if one of the locals was the reason she ended up dead in the first place.
“We’ll see,” I said politely.
“I can’t wait.” Ava took an order pad and a pen from the front pocket of her forest green apron. “Now what can I get started for the lovely couple?”
“Coffee. In a vat.”
“And a blueberry muffin to share,” added Bodhi. “I’m feeling a bit peckish.”
“Coming up.”
As Ava strolled away to place our orders, I looked around the cramped café. It was a Sunday, and the early morning churchgoers who’d already been to mass took up most of the tables in the middle of the restaurant. At the countertop, rowdy teenagers flung sugar packets at one another, dodging misfires and spilling orange juice. A baby fussed in the corner as his restless mother tried to soothe him with a pacifier. Bodhi and I sat quietly, people-watching in comfortable silence.
Soon, the door to the Sanctuary opened again. A gaggle of small girls danced in, accompanied by a few smiling chaperones. The girls wore flower crowns of daisies, marigolds, and baby’s breath on their heads, which from the looks of the smushed petals, the elementary schoolers had weaved themselves. They skipped through the seated patrons, babbling brightly and handing out colorful flyers.
“Come to the summer festival,” one particularly blonde rugrat sang as she passed by our table. She dropped a flyer between us and waved to Bodhi. “Hi mister. Funnel cakes and cotton candy and snow cones. Do you like cotton candy?”
“I sure do,” replied Bodhi with a wink.
“Me too, but only if it’s pink. You know I’m going to be dancing around the maypole this year.”
“That’s lovely, but it’s August already.”
“So?”
And with that silly declaration, the little girl bounced off. “Come to the summer festival, but you can only eat the blue cotton candy!”
“Excellent advertising strategy,” Bodhi laughed as he watched her pirouette toward the other end of the café.
“Flawless,” I agreed.
I picked up the flyer. The summer festival was set for a Saturday afternoon the following weekend, and it did indeed promise a whole host of sugary treats. But in addition to the maypole dance, live music performances, and a flag football tournament, the flyer also advertised something called “The Winchester Celebration” which supposedly began at six pm.
Ava dodged a wild seven-year-old, balancing two massive mugs and a small plate in her hands, which she set down on our table. “Two large coffees and a blueberry muffin.”
“Ava, what’s this?” I asked, pointing toward the curious words toward the bottom of the flyer.
She squinted at the lettering. “Oh, the Winchester Celebration. We do that at every summer festival since they passed away.”
“What is it?” Bodhi asked. He tore the top of the muffin off and set it aside for me then munched on the bottom half.
“It’s just a nice way for us to remember what the Winchesters did for Black Bay,” explained Ava, licking her finger and flipping to a new page in her order pad. “We have a moment of silence. Usually, some people who were close to the Winchesters say a few words. Then they play Patrick’s favorite song for everyone to dance to. And then there’s a firework show in their honor. I think the festival committee has something extra special planned this year.”
I pulled the muffin top apart with my fingers. “Why?”
“It’s the twentieth anniversary of the Winchesters’ deaths,” Ava answered. “You two should come. The summer festival is always a blast. I promise the Winchester Celebration doesn’t drag the mood down. Besides, I’ll bet everyone will be glad to spend some time with the new owners of the house on the bluff. It’ll give us a chance to get to know you better.”
“Sounds fun,” Bodhi said to my surprise. Usually, he wasn’t so eager to jump into the local extravaganzas.
“Excellent,” Ava said with a warm smile. “Now what can I get you for breakfast, my dears?”
Bodhi propped a menu up on the table so that it shielded him from view like a mini fort and peeked over the top. “What do you think, Bailey? The works?”
“Let’s do it.”
We ordered enough food to feed a family of four. As we tucked into the sky-high stacks of hotcakes and French toast, scrambled eggs, sausage links, bacon, and fresh fruit, I momentarily forgot that a long dead teenaged girl waited for us at home. It was difficult to concentrate on the supernatural when I hadn’t seen the man who sat across from me in several years. Bodhi smiled and laughed throughout breakfast, his amber eyes sparkling with a lust for life that I thought might have gone extinct. It wasn’t as vibrant as it used to be, but it was there nonetheless. It made me wonder what about Black Bay had the ability to encourage such a shift. For five years, ever since we lost Kali, Bodhi had been empty and sad. There was no way to reach him. His communication avenues had shut off, and we drifted like two lifeboats in the middle of the doldrums. But two months in a rainy little town smack in t
he middle of the Pacific Northwest and somehow Bodhi seemed to be on the mend. I allowed my imagination to run away with itself. Could we settle in Black Bay? I could see myself eating breakfast at the Sanctuary every Sunday morning, chatting with the locals and enjoying the weather. However, I couldn’t see myself living at the Winchester house with a ghost for a roommate.
After breakfast, we reluctantly climbed into the truck for the ride up to the house. We rode with our fingers intertwined over the center console, Bodhi’s thumb tracing patterns in the smooth skin of the back of my hand. It was nearly lunchtime, and by the time the truck lumbered into the front yard, Bodhi’s construction crew had gotten started on today’s work without him. Their work ethic astounded me. We paid them extra to work over the weekends, desperate to speed up the renovation process. Still, I admired them for being so prompt on a lazy Sunday morning. As we stepped out of the truck, the guys playfully teased Bodhi for his tardiness.
“Slackin’ off,” John said, shaking his head. “Shame on you.”
Another guy clapped Bodhi on the shoulder. “Thanks for gracing us with your presence.”
Bodhi raised his hands in defeat. “Okay, okay. I surrender. What’s on the agenda, guys?”
“You tell us, Sleeping Beauty.”
I grinned, kissed Bodhi on the cheek, and abandoned him to the devilish remarks of his crew. Inside, the house still smelled faintly of charred chicken and smoke from the night before. I warmed up a cup of leftover coffee, collected a handful of Caroline’s journals, and carried my stash downstairs to the basement. It was strange that only a few days ago, the dusty storage area had felt so frightening. Now, it seemed relatively benign. Then again, we hadn’t seen or heard from Caroline since her burnout with the Ouija board the night before. The absence of her chilling presence made the basement more bearable. In any case, I was glad to have the space to myself. It would make it easier to concentrate on the task at hand.
There was no simple way to tackle the number of boxes in the basement. The Winchesters had stored their entire lives down here, and when Bodhi and I first started clearing out the house, we moved even more of the Winchesters’ possessions to the basement for safekeeping. With a sigh, I began sifting through the cardboard boxes. Though Caroline’s journals were an eyeglass to the past, I wanted to know more about the Winchesters’ personal lives. Who did they associate with the most? Who would want to murder Patrick and Caroline? Who had the ability to get close enough to the children to commit the murders in the first place?
After three hours of searching, countless run-ins with various spiders, one dead rat scare, and coaxing a small bat out through the busted storm window, I finally found a few things that might point me in the right direction. In a crushed box beneath a spare mattress, I’d found a collection of VHS tapes, labeled in faded permanent marker with titles like “Caroline’s first step” and “Patrick’s 16th birthday party” and “Labor Day sailing competition.” Close by, there was another box full of photo albums. I carried my haul upstairs. There was an old VHS player in the first floor office. Hopefully, it still worked.
The office was a wreck, a victim of one of Caroline’s recent outbursts. The grand piano lay on one ruined side, as did the demolished grandfather clock. I cautiously sidestepped broken glass and piano keys to reach the felt-covered desk. Gingerly, I tipped the VHS tapes out to rifle through them, eventually choosing one labeled “Summer Festival 1996.” According to the rough timeline I’d worked out, the festival that year would have occurred shortly before the Winchesters met their premature end. The VHS player was attached to a bulky TV. I plugged both into the wall socket, and they slowly booted to life.
Though the video footage was grainy, there was no mistaking the fair-haired grinning boy who held the camera facing toward himself as anyone other than Patrick Winchester. I could feel his energy through the screen as I watched the sunshine halo around him. He flipped the camera around, aiming at a green stretch of grass that I recognized as the large park near the town square. The rest of the Winchesters came into focus. They wore matching orange t-shirts with football flags strapped around their waists. Christopher and Elizabeth waved happily at the camera as Patrick trained it on them. Caroline, on the other hand, plopped down in the grass and opened a book.
“And here comes Black Bay’s most renowned wide receiver,” announced Patrick, zooming in on a family of three walking toward the Winchesters. “The one, the only, Alexander the Great!”
The only information I had on Patrick’s best friend Alex came from Caroline’s diaries, but as the boy faked left around the camera then dodged right to knock a football out of Patrick’s free hand, it became obvious why Caroline adored him so much. He was over six feet tall, tan, and wiry. With jet black hair, deep blue eyes, and dimples to frame his cheeky smile, Alex was the perfect opposite of Patrick’s fair complexion. The friends bumped fists as their parents greeted one another, then Alex gently nudged the bottom of Caroline’s tennis shoe.
“Hey, Caz,” he said, spinning the football in the palm of his hand. “Wanna throw some warm-up passes?”
Caroline, like her brother, was blonde and pretty, with flushed pink cheeks and a mordant tilt to her lips. She rose to her feet, lithe and light, and I noted that she was nearly as tall as her father. However, the top of her head barely reached Alex’s broad shoulders.
“Sure,” she said, tossing aside her book.
“Hey!” Patrick protested from behind the camera. “I asked you if you wanted to warm up ten minutes ago, and you said no!”
Alex cheerfully punched Patrick’s shoulder. “Don’t act like you can compare your looks to mine, Winchester.”
“Gross, that’s my sister.”
From off screen someone—Alex’s mother perhaps—said, “Alexander, behave.”
“Yeah, Alexander.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “Let’s go, Caz.”
He flicked the football to Caroline, who caught it effortlessly. As they jogged off, tossing the ball back and forth between them, the camera jostled as Patrick followed along behind them before the footage cut off entirely. The next scene was of the flag football game itself. I watched for a few minutes, grinning from ear to ear. Locals packed the sidelines, cheering every time Patrick made a pass to Alex. Patrick high-fived his dad after a particularly impressive play, kissed his mom on the cheek, then picked up Caroline and twirled her around. They were the superstars of Black Bay, but little did the Winchesters know that their time was running out.
I set aside the box of VHS tapes. As enjoyable as it was to see the family interacting with each other, it also hurt my heart. It wasn’t fair. The Winchesters were kind and caring people, and they should have lived full, lovely lives. With such a positive influence on their community, they deserved that much. Instead, they were lost to the world, enshrined forever in static tapes and old photographs.
I pulled the box of photo albums toward me. The first few were full of wedding, shower, and baby photos. I skipped over those. The Winchesters hadn’t moved to Black Bay until the summer before Patrick’s first year of high school, so I checked the dates in each album until I found a few closer to the Winchesters’ deaths. The last album had 1995-1996 written on the inside cover. It was incomplete.
The Winchesters documented every family outing in photographs. Christopher and Elizabeth enjoyed a candlelit dinner at a restaurant in town. Patrick, Alex, and a few other boys from the football team dove from the docks and swam in the bright blue water of the bay. Caroline smiled alongside a friend, both dressed in riding boots and helmets, as they led two beautiful horses out of a stable. But there was one picture that I couldn’t look away from.
All four of the Winchesters stood on the deck of a beautiful sailboat, waving happily at whoever was taking the photo. I stared at the photo, studying every aspect. The sailboat was well taken care of and bigger than any I’d seen in the marina. It was all white with a sky-blue stripe along the side, but the name painted in elegant script
on the front of the seacraft was what really caught my attention. This was Artemis, the boat that Christopher and Elizabeth had ridden into the rocks on that fateful night in early August so many years ago.
I flipped to the next page in the photo album and found another picture of interest. In this one, Christopher Winchester shook hands with a stout bearded man out front of Powell’s Lumber Mill. Beside them, a younger man smiled into the camera, his arm wrapped around a pretty brunette with brown eyes. I didn’t recognize the man as Ethan at first. His hair was auburn instead of gray, and his warm grin looked completely different on a clean-shaven face. I studied the woman in his grasp. This must’ve been Ethan’s fiancée. They were an attractive pair. It was a shame they didn’t end up working out.
Without warning, a book fell from a nearby shelf, landing on the desk in front of me with a loud bang. I jumped, startled by the abrupt noise, then leaned forward to get a better look. It was Black Bay’s high school yearbook. I reached for it, but before my fingers grazed the cover, the pages began to flip on their own.
“Hi, Caroline,” I murmured, watching the yearbook sort through itself. When the pages settled, I drew the yearbook toward me. “What am I looking at?”
It turned out that I didn’t need Caroline’s answer. The page was dedicated to some kind of spotlight on Alex. It boasted several pictures of him in his football gear, a clever interview by the yearbook staff, and the deserved superlative of “Best Smile.” I traced the name on the back of his football jersey.
“Alexander Lido,” I muttered under my breath. “Like the restaurant in town?”
Caroline made no effort to confirm or deny this.
I drew one of Caroline’s journals toward me and flipped it open, searching for Alex’s name. After all, Caroline had told us that her diary entries contained hints regarding who had harmed the Winchesters. Was Alex harboring some kind of grudge against the Winchesters? It seemed doubtful. Then again, the murderer had been hiding in plain sight for twenty years. Who better to fool an entire town into thinking him innocent than a charming, handsome, retired high school athlete? I paused to read one of Caroline’s entries.
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus Page 17
