Haunted (13 page)

That was all before noon in a town where days could go by, totally uneventful.

He wondered why he had ever wanted to be elected sheriff in the first place. But he knew why. He was like one of the ancient oaks that filled the forested area, born and bred to Stoneyville. He felt the responsibility of his family's claim to the place, almost as if he was rooted there as well.

And still, though he was worn and weary, he knew how to be sheriff. He knew how to handle juveniles, gun-wielding thieves, and even the older populace who complained that their neighbors were playing rock music or rap too loud.

What he didn't know how to handle was what he couldn't see, touch, hear, or stand up against, face-to-face. The other night had disturbed him deeply.

Just as Darcy Tremayne disturbed him.

She could appear as unruffled as the most dignified queen, and yet last night, when he had first seen her after she'd fled the Lee Room, she had been terrified. She had conquered her bout of fear quickly, and with a steely resolve that truly brooked no argument. Last night he had known that he wanted her out, far away where no harm could come to her. And yet he had respected something about her determination as well; hell, he was afraid every time he faced a lethal weapon—he'd seen what they could do. Didn't alter the fact that he meant to be just what he was, and be first in line to face any situation that arose.

He didn't believe in ghosts. Didn't matter. Something had scared her badly.

He'd be damned if he could figure out just what was going on, or
who
was causing it. The seance could be chalked up to childish antics. As to the rest…

Pranks as well. Had to be. Or the imaginations of those who just wanted ghosts to exist so badly that they could create them. That worked with Penny and their streaking bride. But Clara? She was as down to earth as could be.

Why worry about it so much?
He taunted himself. Half of humanity wanted to believe in ghosts, in anything that gave credence to a life after death. Let Melody House be haunted.

Ah, but there was the rub. Clara had either slammed herself into a door, or been hurt somehow. But he still had to question how the hell someone was playing games in the house. He'd gone through the Lee Room endlessly, and had found nothing. No wires, no taps, nothing.

He'd spent plenty of time in the Lee Room himself. Once, when Lavinia had been in love with the place. She considered the room exciting, for reasons he'd never really fathomed. Clint, he knew, had taken a number of women to the house. Carter, too. Maybe for the thrill of being intimate with a woman when there was an element of fear. The point was, not one of them had ever been bothered by anything in the least amiss.

He realized he'd been sitting at his desk at the station, staring down at a form, pen in hand. He gave himself a mental shake and concentrated. The true reason police forces lost so many good cops. Paperwork.

He forced himself to finish up, then called out to his secretary that he was calling it quits. It was well after six and he'd been in for almost twelve hours.

He felt a sudden uneasiness.

It was too long to have been gone from Melody House.

 

Stoneyville might be a small town, but it had one of the most impressive and charming public libraries Darcy had ever seen.

Mrs. O'Hara, tiny as a wren, but sprightly and quick with beautiful dark brown eyes peeping out from behind her bifocals, evidently loved books, and apparently felt a need to create comfortable and aesthetic surroundings in which they might be enjoyed. Beautiful plants and flowers adorned the numerous tables, and she proudly told Darcy that she'd found the inviting, overstuffed chairs set about the library at various yard sales throughout the county. The library was entirely user-friendly, with signs to direct youngsters to their section, and adults to where they wanted to go as well. “A library should be educational, of course,” she told Darcy cheerfully. “But the point is that reading should always be a pleasure, and when one learns to read and love it, all kinds of knowledge just becomes available so easily. I do go on, but then, I do love books!” She wasn't obtrusive, however, and quickly brought Darcy to the section on local history.

Luckily, many local writers had been intrigued with chronicling events around them. In the 1870s, a woman named Murial Moore had written about the sisters Darcy and Matt had discussed on her first day at Melody House. The family had been the Claytons, and their home had been located just outside of town. A Barry Brewster had been engaged first to marry
Ophelia, the oldest of the brood, but had fallen in love with young Amy, the baby of the family. Amy had last been seen with her sister Ophelia as they walked through the east forest, ostensibly to visit neighbors on the far side. Amy had not been seen again alive. Barry had returned, and on the day that the majority of Amy's bones were discovered by a farmer walking through the woods with his dog, Barry had hanged himself from a tree near the brook. Ophelia had later gone insane, but lived out her life to the ripe old age of eighty-eight, prisoner of her family, kept in the barn. The barn, and family property, had burned to the ground.

“How are you doing, young lady?”

Darcy started and looked up. Mrs. O'Hara was standing by her side. “I was about to make a cup of tea. Would you like some?”

This was definitely a different kind of library.

Darcy smiled, then glanced at her watch. She hadn't gotten very deep into the history of the Stone family at all, but she felt as if she was carefully treading water between legends, truth, and experience as it was. And she was anxious to get back to the forest.

“I'll take a rain check on the tea, Mrs. O'Hara, if I may,” Darcy told her. “I'll be back tomorrow.”

She handed the book she'd been reading to the librarian. Such an old volume wasn't allowed out of the library.

Mrs. O'Hara assured her she was quite welcome, and told her that she'd go through some of their old books and see what she could show her that might be important regarding the history of Melody House. “I warn you—any difficulty on research regarding Melody House and the area is not because there hasn't been a lot written. There are many, many books on the subject.”

“Thanks so much for your help.”

“Absolutely. I'm quite convinced myself that the area is haunted. In fact, I have a friend you might want to talk to. Her
name is Marcia Cuomo. She started working at Melody House right after Matt's grandfather died. And she quit in one day. She was convinced that she was grabbed and rousted about and nearly killed when she was thrown down a stairway.”

“Oh?” Darcy said. She hadn't heard a word about Marcia Cuomo.

Mrs. O'Hara was smiling wryly. “At the time, I'm afraid, she had a reputation for having a nip or two while working. She didn't want Matt Stone thinking that she was drinking on the job, so she just told Penny she'd had a fall. Apparently, when she tried to explain to a few people that there was a very physical ghost in the house, they didn't think her a credible witness in the least.”

“I see. I'd love to talk to her.” At the counter, Darcy wrote down her cell phone number and gave it to Mrs. O'Hara. “Could you ask Marcia to call me at her convenience?”

Darcy left the library and searched for the little Volvo she had borrowed from Penny. Twenty minutes later, she was out at the stables. Sam, the old caretaker, was working there, and she assured him that she could manage saddling and bridling the horse herself.

Daylight still dappled through the trees, but with such a canopy of green, the forest trails and copses were dark and shadowy as early evening came to pass. Darcy rode to the point where she had dismounted on her last ride out, left Nellie having a lazy sip of water at the brook, and returned to her perch upon the log.

She hugged her knees to her chest, always a little afraid. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the sense of the past that had nearly come clear to her before.

First, the cold. It settled over the forest like a blanket. An inward voice, her own, called out in silent fear as the feeling wrapped around her. “Josh!”

“I'm here.”

It was the softest voice, or it was insanity. It was her own mind, working on different circuits, a mechanism to keep her from going mad.

She opened her eyes. The forest had darkened even further. She heard voices. One light, a girl's voice. She was laughing. Talking about the wedding, then apologizing. “Ophelia, you've been so wonderful. He was to have been yours, but then, really, you'd never met, and then we met, and Ophelia, I really do love him so very much! We'll find the right man for you, I know it. Maybe not in this little town, but you'll travel with Barry and me, and it will be wonderful.”

She could see the sisters. They had come into view. Two ghost horses had now joined Nellie at the brook. Nellie lifted her head, snorted, shied away uneasily, seemed to get ready to run.

Both girls had a wealth of brown hair, and were clad in simple cotton dresses, petticoats beneath, heavy boots on their feet.

Amy dismounted first.

“It will be wonderful,” Ophelia agreed softly from her saddle. Then she, too, dismounted.

“Why did we stop here?” Amy asked, cupping her hands to create a dipper so that she could draw a cool drink from the brook.

“Oh, I just wanted to show you something. It's in the water. You'll have to kneel down.”

“I'll get soaked.”

“It's summer, little goose. You'll dry.”

Amy hesitated.

And watching the past replay itself in her mind's eyes in the haunted glen, Darcy wanted to cry out, to warn Amy, to help her. And instead, she sat frozen, in something of a trance, seeing the time repeat itself in the images of what had been, aware that she could only
see
, that there was nothing she could do.

“Something in the water?” Amy repeated.

“Yes, get down, you'll see!”

It was a classic execution, carried out badly, brutally foiled.
Once Amy was down, Ophelia drew the heavy ax from the pouch at the back of her saddle. Her first blow merely dazed Amy, who screamed and fell sideways into the water. Ophelia instantly saw that she had botched a clean kill. She began to work arduously, swinging the hatchet again and again while Amy screamed. The thudding of the blade against flesh, bone, muscle, and sinew seemed as loud in the forest as a drumbeat.

The vision came to life far too vividly. And, watching from the log, Darcy could bear it no longer. She began to scream as well. She forgot herself, running forward to the spot, thinking that something had to stop the terror.

Neither the dying Amy nor the determined Ophelia noticed her in the least. Time had come, and time had gone, and all that vision could give was an echo of the past.

As Darcy burst upon the sisters, the images faded. Shaking, Darcy fell upon her knees in the water. Yet, as she knelt there, shaking, horrified at Ophelia's vicious cruelty to her own sister, she saw the ghost.

Amy, headless, thrashing through the brush by an old oak, not twenty feet away.

Slowly, Darcy rose.

 

When Matt reached the house, he saw that Clint and Carter were out by the stables, arguing over Riley, a big buckskin quarter horse. He strode over to the two of them.

“We have more horses,” he reminded his cousin and their friend.

“Ah, but only one glorious redheaded guest,” Clint said. He carried his usual joking tone, but there was a slight edge of steel to it.

“She's out riding again?” Matt asked.

“And I say I should be the one riding out just to make sure she's doing all right,” Carter said. He rubbed his beard and grinned. “You know, give her a real feel for the charm of the Old South.”

“Hell—a beard gives you Southern charm?” Clint scoffed.

“Hey, I'm a land baron, and you're…a relation,” Carter reminded him.

“Right. I belong at Melody House. You've got your own property. You just like to hang out here,” Clint returned.

Matt ignored the two of them and took Riley's reins, then quickly swung into the saddle. He looked down at the two of them. “I'll go.”

They frowned at each other. “That's just not fair,” Carter said.

“And why not?”

“You're rude to her,” Clint answered.

“And she doesn't really look a damned thing like Lavinia,” Carter said.

“Yeah, Lavinia is beautiful, but she's also got that pinched terrier look, you know? Like a woman who always wants more,” Clint agreed.

“While this one just seems to rise above it all,” Carter said.

“Look damned good in a nightgown,” Clint said.

“Too bad she doesn't sleep in the buff,” Carter said, shaking his head.

“Hey, the woman is working for me,” Matt said irritably. “Lay off—she's not a one-night conquest here for anyone's amusement.”