I gasped, pushed myself to my feet, and whirled around. Milo’s pale face looked into the office, his eyes wide and alarmed. As soon as he noticed me, he darted off, vanishing into the shadows of the overgrown garden in the backyard.
Heat burned in the pit of my stomach as I threw open the office door, sprinted down the hall, and burst out into the backyard. Breathing hard, I scanned the yard, but Milo was nowhere to be found. The wind whispered through the brambly branches of overgrown rose bushes and trip wire weeds. How had Milo gotten away so quickly? And why had he been spying on me in the first place? I heard footsteps behind me and whirled around.
Bodhi paused on the threshold between the kitchen and the wooden deck outside, looking me over. “Bailey, what are you doing out here? Is everything okay?”
“I just saw Milo looking in through the office window.”
Bodhi tensed, and he rested a hand on the kitchen counter as though it might keep him from making a fist. Deadly calm, he asked, “You saw Milo doing what?”
“I was in the office, and he had his face pressed up against the window as if he was watching me,” I explained, turning around to search the garden again. “He ran off when he realized I saw him.”
“Wait here,” Bodhi said as he stepped out on to the deck.
I took his arm. “Bodhi, don’t.”
His eyes roved the darkness, surveying each shadow for a glimpse of Milo. “Bailey, this isn’t right. In fact, it’s downright alarming. Milo specifically told us that he didn’t care about what we did with the house. If he’s suddenly changed his mind, he needs to speak to us in person, not spy on you through the windows. I’ll be right back.”
Bodhi stepped off the deck, disappearing into the garden. I watched nervously as he looked around. The plants rustled as he stepped through them, an easy indication of his path through the yard. His voice echoed back to the house.
“Milo! Come on out, man. We need to talk about this.”
There was no answering call. The garden was quiet except for Bodhi’s search. He emerged from the rose bushes, dusting pollen off of his shirt as he walked back to me.
“He’s definitely gone now,” said Bodhi. “Are you sure you saw him?”
“Without a doubt.”
He led me into the kitchen, closed the back door, and double-checked the lock. “I thought he was strange right from the moment we met him. He practically gave us this house. I should’ve known he was shady.”
“He wasn’t always,” I protested.
Together, we walked back to the office. The tape of Caroline, Patrick, and Alex still played on the television, but this time, they were not accompanied by Milo’s sallow features. Bodhi watched the video briefly. I stared out of the window, wondering how Milo had managed to vanish with some ease.
“He looked ill,” I noted. “He did yesterday too.”
“If he’s sick, it’s not our responsibility to take care of him,” replied Bodhi. He pressed the stop button on the tape player and ejected the VHS. “Where did you find these tapes?”
“Downstairs. I thought they might be a helpful addition to Caroline’s diaries.”
He flipped over the VHS to inspect the label. “I’m not so sure that watching these is the best idea.”
“Why not?” I asked. “We need to find out what happened to Patrick and Caroline. We have footage of their lives in Black Bay.”
“Yes, and I understand that this is important to you.” Bodhi rifled through the other tapes in the box. “But I’m also afraid that this might hit us harder than it would someone else.”
“Because of Kali?”
His shoulders tightened at the sound of her name, and though his back was turned toward me, I saw the tips of his ears redden. “Yes. Because of Kali.”
I perched myself on the edge of the desk, but Bodhi adamantly continued his search through the box of tapes. At this point, I didn’t think he was really reading the labels on the tapes. He simply did not want to look at me. I respected that decision, keeping my hands planted firmly on the desk rather than reaching out to him. Sure, we had made progress in the last several days with regard to the way we acted around each other, but I didn’t want Bodhi to harden and cast me out again.
“Do you ever think maybe we ended up here because of Kali?”
The tendons in his hands rippled like tidal waves as he balled his fingers into fists.
“Not in a bad way,” I went on, swinging my feet above the carpeted floor. “But maybe the universe knew that we needed something to push us to heal. Maybe we were meant to help Caroline in order to help ourselves.”
He pushed the box of tapes under the desk then lifted himself up to sit beside me. “Like fate?”
“I suppose.”
Bodhi sighed. “Can I be honest?”
“Of course.”
“If that’s true, I don’t think I’m ready to think about it yet.”
Our pinky fingers overlapped on the shiny wood surface.
“That’s okay,” I said softly. “You don’t have to watch these videos, Bodhi. Or read Caroline’s diaries. Or look at the photos. I don’t mind doing it on my own. As it is, I already spoke to Alex.”
“Who?”
“Alex, the boy in that video,” I clarified, pointing to the television where the two-dimensional versions of the Winchesters so recently played with one another. “He was Patrick’s best friend, and Caroline had a massive crush on him. At first, I thought he might have something to do with their deaths, but after talking to him, it sounds like he loved them most out of everyone in town.”
“Do you think it’s wise to ask so many questions about the Winchesters when their murderer might still be out there?” asked Bodhi.
“I told everyone I was working on something for my blog,” I explained. “That should divert attention long enough for us to figure this out.”
Bodhi nodded. He looked down at our hands then lifted his fingers to cover mine. “What about Milo?”
“What about him?”
“I know you like him, Bailey, but you have to admit that there’s something about him that doesn’t sit right.” As an afterthought, he leaned across the desk to pull the curtain closed over the window. “What if he had something to do with all of this?”
Before I could answer, I noticed that something was missing from the desktop. “Did you move Caroline’s journal?” I asked Bodhi.
He shook his head.
I scanned the floor, wondering if it had fallen in my haste to catch Milo outside, then hopped off the desk and knelt to check if it had somehow made its way into the box of VHS tapes. No luck. With a sinking feeling, I bolted out of the office. Bodhi followed along behind me as I chugged up the stairs as quickly as my ankle would allow me.
“Bailey, what’s wrong?”
“Give me a minute.”
I threw open the door of Caroline’s old bedroom. Novels, textbooks, notes, and other evidence of Caroline’s intellectual intelligence lay in a heap on the floor from the turbulent evening during which she had delivered her journals to me in the first place. I had only picked up a few, leaving the others on the top of the pile in the room. There were at least twenty of them, each one chock full of personal information about Caroline’s life. But now the diaries were notably missing, absent from the assortment of literature in the small bedroom.
“Caroline’s journals,” I breathed. “They’re all gone. Someone took them.”
18
Nothing to See
The Winchester Family: Spotlight on Caroline
Today, I’d like to introduce you all to the wondrous fifteen-year-old intellectual equestrian that I have come to know as Caroline Winchester. The majority of Black Bay recalls Caroline as distant, curt, or shy, but if you speak to the right people, Caroline (or Caz as she was known to her close friends) was the subtle heart of the Winchester family. Though she often dwelled in the shadow of her football-loving brother, Caroline had more to offer the town than anyone could’ve antic
ipated.
Caroline followed in both her parents’ footsteps. I found records of her father’s business in her own handwriting. She’d calculated the rate of growth for the company over the next several years. The business jargon disorients me, but Caroline immersed herself in it. She had a better understanding of what it meant to make a profit than most men on Wall Street. She tweaked numbers and performed equations until she found the best way to get Black Bay back on its feet. In fact, I wonder if she ever brought those equations to her father. Did Christopher Winchester save the town, or did the locals owe their livelihoods to a clever teenager?
In addition, Caroline cared deeply for the community. She worked with her mother to improve morale and boost the overall quality of life in town. Together, Caroline and Elizabeth implemented free school lunch programs for underprivileged youth, created an equestrian center that rescued and rehabilitated horses, and ran a book club that focused on analyzing literature at a college reading level. Caroline’s influence is still present in the community. To this day, the lunch program serves those less fortunate and the book club meets every week. The equestrian center has since morphed into an animal shelter with a ninety percent adoption rate each month.
So today, I want to remember Caroline Winchester for all of the positivity that she contributed to Black Bay. She poured everything she had into this town, and she should be recognized for that. Caroline may have been young, but she was not faint of heart.
Until next time,
Bailey
The next morning, I helped Bodhi whip up a breakfast of chicken and biscuits, something we had never considered eating until we flipped a house in North Carolina and discovered such fried, buttery goodness. Unfortunately, between last night’s theft and another nightmare, I was distracted, and I obliviously reached into the oven to retrieve the baking sheet of steaming biscuits without an oven mitt.
“Bailey!”
Bodhi caught my wrist, pulling me away from the heated surface just as the tip of my index finger touched the hot pan.
“Ow, ow, ow!”
Bodhi dragged me over to the sink and flipped on the faucet. As cool water soothed the small burn on my finger, he used a dish towel to take the baking sheet out of the oven.
“What were you thinking?” he asked, inspecting my finger. A tiny blister marred my skin. It could’ve been much worse.
“I wasn’t,” I grumbled. My finger throbbed, so I shoved it under the stream of water again. “I have a lot on my mind.”
Bodhi pried the biscuits from the pan with a spatula. “Baby, we’ll find the journals. I’m sure Caroline misplaced them or moved them.”
“Why would she do that?” I asked as I turned off the faucet. I opened the old freezer, pushing aside a bottle of tequila that Bodhi had brought up from the cellar. In the very back, an ancient bag of frozen peas hid behind the ice box. I took it out to soothe my finger. “She gave me her journals to read. I swear, Bodhi. Someone stole them. Who else was in the house yesterday?”
“Everyone,” he replied. “The entire crew was here yesterday, getting ready to demo the rest of the kitchen. Speaking of which, we’re getting rid of these appliances today. We’ll have to eat in town until the kitchen’s finished.”
I swiped a morsel of fried chicken. If this was our last home-cooked meal for a while, I wanted to savor it. “Do you think Milo took them?”
“I think that’s more likely,” Bodhi answered. “After all, he was the one peeking in our window last night. It supports my theory.”
“Your theory isn’t sound,” I pointed out. “Milo can’t be older than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He would’ve been a kid when the Winchesters died. There’s no way he had something to do with it.”
Bodhi sandwiched a piece of fried chicken between two halves of a biscuit and offered it to me. “We don’t know the whole story. What if Milo’s dad had a grudge against the Winchesters?”
I accepted the sandwich, took a bite, and hummed contently. “The locals barely know Milo and his dad. Don’t you think if they had problems with the Winchesters, the whole town would’ve heard about it?”
“Maybe,” said Bodhi, preparing his own breakfast. “But let’s not forget the fact that there are no records of Milo ever owning this house. If that’s true, then how is it possible for us to legally own it?”
“Milo said it was a clerical error.”
“Over Mrs. Poe’s dead body.”
“Oh, God. Don’t even joke.”
Bodhi chuckled through a mouthful of chicken. “I’m just saying. Everyone else in Black Bay is relatively transparent, but we don’t even know where Milo lives.”
I quietly munched on my breakfast, considering this information. Bodhi made a relevant point. The locals cherished the pleasant, familial feeling that came with living in Black Bay, but Milo had expressed his distaste for the town as soon as we met him. Stranger still, he claimed to live close by, but Black Bay was the only populated area for miles. Then there was the fact that he grew more and more idiosyncratic by the second. Milo knew intimate details about my personal life. Now, I wasn’t entirely comfortable knowing that he was armed with those details.
“Today’s your appointment with Doctor Marx, right?” asked Bodhi.
“Yes. It’s at three.”
He brushed crumbs from his hands as he finished his first sandwich. “Are you going to tell her that your nightmares are getting worse?”
My mouth felt dry. I swallowed hard. “How do you figure they’re getting worse?”
Bodhi poured a glass of cold water and handed it to me. “I know you, Bailey. Your face tells me everything. Besides, you kicked and screamed all last night. No matter how many times I woke you up, you just went to sleep and started screaming again.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
Gently, he brushed my hair away from my face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’ve never told you,” I admitted, turning away from him. His hand fell limply to his side. “I couldn’t. You didn’t want to hear about it.”
“I’m listening now.”
To his credit, Bodhi waited out my silence, even when the atmosphere in the kitchen grew uncomfortably still. This was new for us. Talking. Or maybe it was the listening that was new. Either way, I felt apprehensive with Bodhi’s golden eyes on me. Would he bolt as soon as I spoke about the content of my nightmares?
I tipped the rest of my chicken into the garbage can. “I can’t,” I said, backpedaling out of the room as quickly as possible. “I’m sorry, Bodhi. One day, I might be able to tell you the things I see at night, but for right now, it’s too much.”
I limped up the stairs before I had time to fully comprehend Bodhi’s hurt expression. In the bedroom, I flopped on to the bed, hugging Bodhi’s pillow. I had done him a favor. He just didn’t know it yet.
My eyes fluttered shut. I heard the front door open as Bodhi greeted the construction crew. As they got to work, the whir of drills and the shuffle of heavy equipment across the unfinished floors lulled me to sleep.
Later that day, I didn’t have the heart to ask Bodhi if I could borrow his truck, so I walked into town for my appointment with Doctor Marx. I hadn’t seen her since my first visit to her office. She’d diagnosed me with PTSD and prescribed anti-depressants to keep my horrors at bay. Caroline disapproved of the medication, and although I continued to take it, I was starting to side with the ghost of the Winchester house. So far, the small orange capsules had done nothing to ease my nightly dose of terror.
I arrived at her office ten minutes early, shivering in the chilly waiting room as the receptionist studied me over the top of the desk. I tried to ignore her. These were the times I disliked living in such a small town. Sometimes, gossip was the only source of entertainment, and my presence in the psychiatrist’s office was sure to warrant a conversation or two. It was a relief when Doctor Marx opened her door to invite me inside. For one, it was considerably warmer in her office. And two, I enjoyed the comforting
dribble of her desktop Zen waterfall a little too much.
“So, Bailey,” said Doctor Marx, offering me a seat on the expensive leather sofa. “How have you been?”
“All right in some areas. Less so in others. I’m still having nightmares.”
Doctor Marx flipped to a fresh page on her clipboard and began to scribble away. “Is that your biggest concern at the moment?”
I nodded, staring down at my hands. The gold band on my ring finger glinted beneath the fluorescent lights.
Doctor Marx noticed my gaze. “And what about Bodhi? The last time we talked, you mentioned that you thought your marriage was failing.”
“No,” I corrected. “You implied that my marriage was failing due to the fact that Bodhi and I never talk to one another which, by the way, we’re working on.”
“How’s that coming?”
I remembered that morning’s conversation. “Slowly.”
Doctor Marx leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “Why don’t you tell me about your dreams, Bailey. Did you have a nightmare last night?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember any of it?”
“I remember most of my nightmares,” I told her. “It’s the same thing every night. I dream that I’m drowning, or that Bodhi’s drowning, or that—”
My throat closed up. Doctor Marx raised an eyebrow, jotting a note down on her clipboard.
“Or that your daughter is drowning?” she asked.
I nodded again, unable to craft a verbal confirmation.
“Is that how Kali passed away?”
I folded over, covering my face with my hands. White noise roared in my ears. The image of that night was burned into my brain. I had spent five years trying to force it down, but it haunted me still. There was no way to escape the truth of what happened.
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus Page 19
