Harrison Investigations 1 Haunted (3 page)

She rose, feeling as agile and luxuriously sinuous as a cat,
naked in the coolness of the night. She stretched, thinking that
the strenuous exercise program she had put herself through before
the wedding had been well worth it-she didn't think that she could
be more than five percent body fat at the moment, and Roger had
been delighted. She was glad, too, because she liked to think
that she had talked Matt Stone into allowing them to use the
seldom-rented room for their wedding night because she had just
been cute and charming. Stone was known to be something of a
hard-ass.

Walking over to the open French doors that led to the balcony,
Jeannie almost pouted, then grinned instead. Roger had told her
that Matt Stone had given in just because he knew the only
way to keep Melody House as a private property had been to allow
the house itself to earn some of the upkeep money such an estate so
desperately needed. Roger had probably been right. But then again,
maybe it had been a combination of Stone's needs and
her
charm and persuasion. Whatever! It had all worked, and it had come
together so beautifully. She was a lover of history, and to
spend her wedding night in such an elegant and historic place was
like the most delicious icing in the world on the most wonderful
cake-her perfect wedding day. She parted the draperies, glad to
feel the breeze against her bare shin, and feeling sensual all over
again as it touched her. She was married now. She was Mrs. Thomas.
She could slink right on back over to the bed, wake up her slight
snoring
husband,
and live out her every fantasy.

Yet...

Suddenly, the delicious feeling wasn't quite so delicious
anymore. She felt a sudden, quick, bone-numbing chill. She spun
around, and saw nothing in the dim night-light pouring out from the
bathroom, or even from the faint glow of moonlight and property
lights that seeped in from the open French doors to the balcony,
just hemmed in by the drifting draperies where she stood.

She felt...

Fear. Deep and irrational. , She swallowed, stepping over to
close the French doors and lock them tightly. She glanced at Roger.
He kept snoring. She tried to calm herself. If she was
feeling a sudden and totally irrational fear, all she had to do was
run back to the bed, jump in beside him, and he would cuddle and
hold her and everything would be all right.

That was exactly what she was going to do.

But she didn't. She didn't move. Because she saw...

The silvery movement in the night.

She blinked, but it didn't go away. And it wasn't the darkness,
or the reflection of the lights, or a combination of the two. It
was something, vague in shape, silvery-white, hovering, moving. It
came from the side of the bed, where she should have been sleeping,
and it was coming toward her.

She panicked totally. Her vocal cords were frozen. She stared,
breathing out desperate little choking sounds, since she could find
no voice. It came closer and closer. She felt ice trickles into
blood and limbs and then...

It was almost touching her. She felt her hair move... pulled?
Cold seemed to slap her right across the face. And she could have
sworn that she heard a whisper, mocking, scornful. "Silly little
girl! He'll only kill you!"

Then again...her hair...lifting. On its own, in the grip of the
vague, silvery-white substance. A substance that whispered or
played havoc with the breeze. There was no breeze. She had closed
the doors.

At last, she found voice, movement, and energy. She let out an
hysterical, chilling scream, and ran.

She didn't run for the bed and Roger-she headed straight for the
door out of the Lee room. Jeannie wrenched at the knob so hard she
nearly ripped it from the wood. The door itself flew open, and
banged wickedly against the wall. This had no bearing on her. She
barely heard it. She kept screaming, tore along the landing, and
down the elegant, curving masterpiece of a stairway to the
ground level below.

Matt Stone had chosen to stay in the caretaker's cottage, fifty
yards to the left of the main house. It had been his home for years
before his grandfather had died, leaving Melody House-and the
responsibility for its upkeep-to him. He had only moved into the
main house recently because it had become easier on the
upkeep side, and, he had to admit, he had come to like it. The
grand master suite he had chosen afforded a lot of comfort. Big
bedroom, dressing room, office or entertainment space, and it
kept him right on top of whatever was going on with the
property.

He liked the caretaker's cottage, too. Since it had been falling
apart so badly due to years of neglect he had rebuilt and
refurbished it with every modern convenience. In contrast to
the painstaking care they had used in keeping the main house
historical, the caretaker's house was far more
state-of-the-art.

When he had given in to allowing the Lee room to be used as a
honeymoon suite, he had opted to spend the night in his old
haunts.

He had been sound asleep, however, when the scream brought him
bolting from bed.

Despite the quiet tone of their small town, as sheriff of
Stoneyville he was accustomed to being awakened in the dead of
night. Therefore, he was up, into his jeans, and streaking across
the patch of lawn that separated the caretaker's cottage from
the main house in a matter of seconds, the key to the huge oak
front door in his hands. He burst into the house less than two
minutes from the time he had heard the scream.

There was a light on in the foyer; there always was. Just as
soft lights eternally flooded the front porch. He was prepared for
anything when he burst through the door.

Or, at least, he had thought that he was.

Maybe not.

There was no apparent danger. Instead, there
she
was,
the blushing bride, standing at the foot of the stairway, shaking
and screaming in her altogether. Jeannie was a pretty girl,
perfectly toned from months industriously spent at the gym in order
to look perfect for her wedding day. Hard not to look, but he
forced his eyes to hers first, then cast his gaze anxiously around,
scanning the area for any hidden threat that might be the reason
for this scene. Seeing nothing, his mind working in
milliseconds, he wondered if the groom had somehow turned out
to be a homicidal maniac or a simple wife-beater. Either
choice seemed doubtful.

"Jeannie?" he said, his voice deep with calm and
authority. Normally, he would have walked to her, set an arm
around her shoulder, and patiently determined the cause of her
distress. But she was standing in his foyer stark naked and
screaming. "Jeannie, please, talk. What the hell...?"

By that time, her husband was rushing down the stairs as well.
He was still half-asleep, and Matt would have sworn in any court
that the young man appeared as bleary and stunned as anyone could
possibly be. Certainly not fresh from a fight with his new
bride.

"Jeannie!" Roger cried out in shock.

Matt crossed over one of the velvet cord barriers into the
parlor and swept an antique throw from the fragile old love seat,
striding across the room to cast it around Jeannie's
shoulders. She had stopped screaming, but she was still shaking
like a leaf, eyes wide, dilated.

Roger, still dazed, and definitely horrified, thanked him
briefly. Then he stared at his bride again, confusion once again
reigning in his eyes.

' 'Jeannie, what is it?''

At last, she turned to focus on him, her expression blank at
first, then filled with tension. "You didn't see it? You didn't
feel it?"

"Jeannie, I was sound asleep! What are you talking about?"

By then, Penny Sawyer, in a terry robe, her graying hair
frizzled around her handsomely constructed face, arrived. She stood
in the frame of the front door, left open when Matt had come
bursting in.

"What in the Lord's name...?" she queried.

Penny managed Melody House. She kept accounts, and ran the
tours. She loved the place, probably more so than Matt himself. She
had worked as an historian for Matt's grandfather, and slipped
right into the role of managing the place after his death. She was
like an aunt to Matt, as well as being incredibly efficient, and
all but married to the place.

There was only one area in which they disagreed. And Matt
silently grit his teeth then, certain that this episode was about
to lead in that direction.

"Apparently, our bride has had a nightmare," Matt said
quietly.

"Nightmare!" Jeannie shrieked. She must have heard the shrill
tone of her own voice because she fought to control it. "I
wasn't
sleeping."

"So what exactly was the problem?" Roger asked, an underlying
irritation rising beneath his concerned exterior.

"I think I should get some brandy," Penny said.

"I think Jeannie should get some clothes on!" Roger said, his
anger starting to crack through.

"Clothes?" Jeannie said. She stared down at herself and realized
that she was covered in nothing but the antique quilt.

"I'll make tea with brandy," Penny said decisively.

"While she's making the tea, Jeannie, you can run up and get
dressed. Then we can all sit down and you can explain just what
you're doing," Roger said, a thread of anger in his voice.

"What I'm doing?" Jeannie repeated, frowning. "Roger Thomas, I
was scared to death, don't you understand?"

"Scared enough to run around naked?"

Matt could have groaned aloud. He shouldn't have been swayed to
allow the Lee Room to become a honeymoon hangout. He glared at
Penny. She had talked him into it, reminding him that they needed
the money for Melody House.

Penny shrugged innocently, giving him one of her knowing
looks.

Melody House was reputed to be haunted. Matt always saw the
rumors as simply par for the course. The main house was well over
two hundred years old. It had survived the American Revolution, the
Civil War, and every manner of conflict in between. As he well
knew, nothing that old went without a certain kind of history. And
apparently, most of the world wanted to believe in things that went
bump in the night. People couldn't just look back on the personal
tragedies of the past with sorrow-they just had to make something
else out of them.

Matt simply didn't believe in ghosts. He'd worked in the D.C.
area long before he'd taken up working in his old home haunts, and
he knew that the things that living men and women did to one
another could be so violent, barbarous, and cruel, that there
was simply no reason to worry about those who were long dead and
buried.

"Go up and put clothes on!" Roger said, his voice almost a
roar.

Jeannie, blue eyes still huge, stared at him in rebellion and
defiance.

"I am
not
-get this straight!-
not
going back up
to that room.
Ever!
There is a ghost up there, and it-it
threatened me."

Matt shook his head, praying for patience. He looked up at the
bride and groom. Wow! How quickly there was trouble in
Paradise.

"Jeannie," he said patiently, "there are no such things as
ghosts. Hey, I've lived here most of my life. I've spent nights in
the place with no electricity, you know, in the pitch dark. I
swear, there are no ghosts. I would know."

He had tried to say the last lightly. He knew, however, that his
voice had an edge. He was sick to death of the whole ghost
thing.

"Look what you've done," Roger said to Jeannie. "Great. Really
good honeymoon we're going to have here-you've just really pissed
off Matt Stone."

"Sorry, I'm not angry," Matt said quickly. "I just don't believe
in ghosts. Jeannie, it was a big day for you. I'm sure for you
both...I'm not saying that anyone is totally inebriated, but come
on, now, you both had a hell of a lot to drink. You're wired,
Jeannie. Excited. Hey, it was the wedding of the century, huh? You
don't have to go back into the room. We'll get your things. And you
and Roger can finish out your honeymoon in the caretaker's cottage,
how's that? I can clear it out in a matter of minutes, while Penny
makes tea."

Jeannie spun around again. She looked as if she wanted to run
from Roger's side and come flying into his arms.

Don't do it, Jeannie, don't do it! He pleaded
silently.

"Not one of you has suggested coming up to see if there is
something in the room," Jeannie said indignantly.

Matt lifted his hands. "I'll go up to the room."

He strode past the newlywed couple on the stairs. As he neared
the upper landing, he could hear Roger whispering angrily to his
wife. "Ghost, hell! You're a little exhibitionist. You've had
a bit of a thing for Matt Stone your whole life, you know, Jeannie.
What, you just had to have an excuse for him to see you naked?"

"Roger Thomas! How dare you suggest such a thing, you bastard!"
she whispered back. Then her voice rose. "We don't need the
caretaker's house! I'm going home. Home-back to my family. They're
not a bunch of idiot jerks!"

"Hey, there!" Penny protested cheerfully. "You know, everyone is
really tired, but we'll get to the bottom of this. Matt, he's all
he-man practical and doesn't believe in ghosts, but I'm telling
you, Roger, don't you go being hard on your new missus! Lots of
folks believe that this house is more than a little haunted, I do
tell you!"

Matt walked on into the Lee Room. As he suspected, there was
nothing there. The French doors to the balcony were open, and the
drapes were drifting in. They must have been what scared the new
bride so badly. Either that, or she just wanted the place to be
haunted so badly that she had made it so.

He found Jeannie's peignoir robe, men discarded it as being far
too see-through for this situation. Her groom would not be happy
with it, he was certain. Striding to the closet, he found a pair of
robes with "Melody House" inscribed on the pockets-items Penny had
insisted they needed to provide a real luxury touch for those few
times when he decided to rent the room. He pulled one from the
hanger and headed back downstairs.