Beyond the Grave (12 page)

He hung up before I could say goodbye. I sat in my car, drumming my fingertips on the steering wheel. Something in Noah's voice bothered me. I watched other students cross the parking lot. My windows were up, but I could still hear the muffled cadence of their voices. It occurred to me that I hadn't heard any background noise when I'd spoken with Noah. It had been absolutely quiet. If I'd caught him at lunch, I should have heard something. The basic chaos of the cafeteria. People passing by his table. Something.

I drove home, still trying to dissect my brief call. I walked Dante, texted Avery and started a load of laundry. When I
checked the kitchen clock, it was nearly time for school to end. I decided that I needed to see Noah, even if it was only for a moment. Mr. Morley would understand if Noah took a few minutes to see me. I just wanted to check on him. We could discuss Michael when we had more time.

The parking lot of Lincoln High was filling up with students when I pulled in. The back doors were wide open, so I slipped inside and went immediately to the AV room.

“Hi, Mr. Morley.”

My former teacher smiled from behind his desk. “Charlotte! What a nice surprise. What brings one of my favorite alumni back to these hallowed halls?”

“I just stopped by to see Noah. Does he have a minute?”

“Noah's not here.”

“Oh. I really need to talk to him. Will he be back soon?”

“I wish. He was the best editor I had.” Mr. Morley shuffled some papers on his desk. “But Noah dropped the class a few weeks ago.”

“He what?”

“No idea why,” Morley continued. “It was an easy A for him, and it would have been nice for his college applications. When you see him, tell him that I'd love to have him back, even if it's not until next semester.”

“I'll tell him,” I said as I backed out of the room. “The next time I see him, I'll definitely tell him.”

I was stunned. Why would Noah lie to me? I returned to my car, struggling to figure out how I would confront him. I sat in the driver's seat, trying not to cry. Then I opened my phone and dialed Annalise. When she answered, I had only one question for her.

“Do you remember the Pink Rose?”

Five years earlier

The Pink Rose Bed-and-Breakfast tried hard to live up to its name. From the wallpaper to the curtains to the heavy rugs, pink roses bloomed on every surface. Annalise and I unpacked our suitcases in our room, which featured a lacy pink canopy bed and rosebud wallpaper.

“It's overkill, don't you think?” I had just checked the minuscule bathroom, where even the toilet paper was pink.

“Absolutely.” Annnalise stretched out on the queen-size bed we would be sleeping in for the next three nights. “Especially since this place isn't technically named after the flower. It's named after the girl.”

“What girl?”

“This girl.” Mom stood in the doorway. She pointed to a framed portrait hanging above the nightstand. I walked closer to get a better look. The child in the painting looked to be about seven or eight. Light blond hair framed her soft face with big curls, and in her hands she held a bouquet of roses.

“Her name was Rose,” Mom said. “She was seven when she died here in 1888. And she's the reason why we're here.”

I only knew the basic facts behind our trip to Virginia. At thirteen, I wasn't as interested in why we were going someplace as I was in where we were going and how close it was to a beach. But this was going to be a brief trip. In three days we had to be in Colorado to work on a new project.

“So this is the ghost girl,” I murmured, still staring at the portrait. Little Rose had bright blue eyes and very pink cheeks. She resembled a cherub more than a child. The artist had surrounded her head with strokes of white, giving the appearance of a faint halo.

Mom looked at the painting with me. “She died from pneumonia. Her family was devastated, and this house became a kind of shrine to their only child.”

“I wouldn't really call this a house,” Annalise said from the bed. “It's a Victorian mansion.”

“And people really think they hear her laughing in the hallways?” That part of the story I could remember. Normally, it wasn't the kind of tale that my family would drive hundreds of miles out of the way to investigate. But one of Mom's college friends had stayed at the B and B a month earlier, and the experience had rattled her so badly that she had immediately contacted Mom. Quick research had uncovered dozens of stories exactly like the one Mom's friend had told: the spirit of a child roaming the hallways, giggling and calling out to the guests. No one had seen the girl, but the voice was perfectly clear, and more than one guest had awoken to a single rose placed just inside their locked door.

“Dad's interviewing the owner right now,” Mom said. “Shane's getting the equipment ready. We'll start after dinner, okay?” She patted my back. “And if we finish early, I thought the three of us could do some shopping in town tomorrow.”

Annalise yawned. “Do you really think we'll finish early? This place has, like, thirty eyewitness accounts. What if we find something?”

“We'll see.” Mom rubbed at the back of her neck. “I believe there's something behind those accounts, but I don't know what we'll find.”

Both my parents kept a cool, skeptical attitude toward every investigation, but I had overheard Mom say that she was actually excited about this one. Her college friend was a skeptic and would not have called Mom unless she thought it was worth the trip.

“Dad spoke with a local team,” Mom said. “They checked the wiring, structure, everything. The house is solid and was modernized within the past ten years.”

“And?”

“And the team heard a child's voice several times. They excluded any structural causes. Dad trusts these guys, so maybe this could be something truly unexplained.”

“That would be a first, wouldn't it?”

Mom smiled. “Yes, it would. And after twenty years of doing this, I would definitely like to be there when something big happens.” She began walking back to her room. “I'll see you girls downstairs in an hour for dinner.”

Dinner was held in the very formal, very floral dining room. Annalise and I met the owner, Mrs. Hollings, who introduced herself as a direct descendant of the original owners—and the little ghost girl.

“We're a proud family,” she said as we sipped our first course of lukewarm soup. I avoided looking across the table at Shane, who was trying hard not to gag on the strange mixture of pumpkin and potato purée.

Thankfully, Mrs. Hollings didn't notice. “And a family such as ours must preserve certain traditions.” She dipped her
spoon into the soup. “This recipe, for example, was passed down through four generations.”

“Is that so?” Mom feigned interest, but she was as tired of Mrs. Hollings's endless stories as we were—and we still had the main course and dessert to get through. Mrs. Hollings had made a big point of telling us that she did not normally prepare an “evening meal” for guests, but we were special.

After the second course, which consisted of a piece of bony fish and rice that could only be described as crunchy, Mrs. Hollings began to discuss the property.

“My great-great grandfather built the place and it's always been in our family,” she said. “I grew up tending the rosebushes in the garden.”

“It's so generous of you to open the home to guests and visitors,” Mom said.

“Ah, well, I wasn't left with much of a choice.” Mrs. Hollings smiled sadly. “A property this large brings with it many expenses, the least of which is the maintenance. I've had to invest nearly everything I have to keep the roof from collapsing.”

“Tell us about the repairs and modifications,” Dad urged. “Are there any original fixtures?”

It was a routine question when we conducted an investigation, but an important one, so Dad often asked it several times. People sometimes forgot work that had been done, and he needed to know as much as possible about the place. Too often, a shoddy electrical job resulted in occurrences that people interpreted as paranormal.

Mrs. Hollings didn't need much prodding to begin listing all the work the property had required. There had been a new roof within the last twenty years and updated plumbing. “You know,” she said, “most of the rooms didn't have their own bathrooms, which was a licensing requirement for
opening a bed-and-breakfast. We converted closets into the bathrooms.”

She said this as if we would be surprised. Considering that the toilet, sink and shower all touched in our bathroom, I wasn't.

“Anything else?” Dad asked. “Even minor repairs?”

“Let's see. I had to replace a few pieces of ceiling in some of the rooms. And a few years ago several of the steps on the grand staircase needed to be replaced.” She looked at Mom. “Your friend mentioned her encounter there, I assume?”

“She did, yes.”

“What encounter?” Annalise asked. I noticed that she'd barely touched her dinner and wondered if, like both me and Shane, she'd simply buried her fish beneath the rice.

“Genna heard light footsteps on the staircase.” Mom sipped her water. “It was unusual because it happened while she was on the stairs. She said it sounded like there was a child following her up the steps.”

Mrs. Hollings nodded. “I hear that story often. Little Rose loves to follow the guests around. I think she wants to play, poor thing.”

Fortunately, dessert was edible. It was a white coconut cake purchased from a local bakery, and we wolfed down our thick slices before Mrs. Hollings had a chance to pour the coffee. “Goodness,” she remarked. “I'll have to order from them more often.”

As the adults drank their coffee, Mrs. Hollings described her own experiences with Rose. “Having lived here my whole life, of course I've had many, many encounters.”

“Just sound or something else?” Dad asked.

“Oh, I've seen her.” Mrs. Hollings added more cream to her coffee. “She used to come into my bedroom late at night.
More than once I woke up to find her kneeling by my bed, watching me with those big blue eyes of hers.”

“That must have been terrifying,” I said.

“At first, yes. But then I realized she was only curious. This was her home first, after all.”

The dessert course finally ended, and Mrs. Hollings excused herself for the night. “I'll retire to the guesthouse so I don't disturb your work,” she said. “I'm so glad you're here, and I look forward to hearing about your experiences tomorrow at breakfast.”

“Man, I hope she's not the one cooking it,” Shane whispered.

I bit my lip so I wouldn't giggle. Mrs. Hollings left, and we immediately got to work. It was already past eight and I was tired from the day of traveling, but setting up for an investigation always invigorated me. This was the work I knew so well. As my parents endlessly reminded us, we were a team, and every year I was becoming a more important component of that team. The year before, when I'd turned twelve, Shane had finally taught me how to operate his cameras, whereas before my job had been to make sure they'd been put away in the proper cases and to maintain the equipment log.

Our investigation of the Pink Rose would focus on several key areas: the second floor, the grand staircase and the great room, which were all places where activity had been reported more than once.

“Stay as quiet as you can,” Dad told us before we got started. “Nearly all of the reports have to do with sound. We won't do an EVP session until later. For now, we wait and listen.”

Annalise smirked. “Another wild, late night for the Silvers.”

Mom put her arm around Annalise's shoulder. “You can work with me this time. It'll be fun.”

“Oh, yeah. Sitting quietly in the dark is always so much more fun when it's with your mom.”

Annalise was going through a surly teenage phase. At least, that's what Mom and Dad thought. As long as she helped out, they didn't bug her too much about her sarcasm.

“Great. Charlotte, that means you're with me,” Dad said. “We'll take the second floor. Shane, we good to go?”

“Yep. Everything's ready. You want me down here?”

Dad nodded. “The great room is close enough to the staircase. You should be able to keep an eye on both.”

I followed Dad up the creaky stairs to the second floor. We turned off all the lights, and then watched the downstairs lights flick off one by one as Mom and Shane went through the rooms. The investigation had officially begun.

For the first hour, Dad and I sat silently in the middle of the second-floor hallway. All of the guest doors were open, and we had a good view of the downstairs entryway, as well. I wasn't afraid of the dark, especially not when Dad was so close by. Mom always said that there was nothing to fear at night that you shouldn't also fear during the day. So if you weren't scared of a place in the daytime, why should it terrify you a few hours later? It was the same place, and energy was energy. It didn't keep a clock or set hours.

After the second hour, the dark silence began to get to me. “Do you think anything will happen tonight?” I whispered.

“Probably not,” Dad whispered back. “But your mom hopes so.”

I hoped so, too. Our investigations had a certain rhythm to them, a structure that had melted into a solid routine. We came, we taped, we debunked. Then my parents edited the footage into a neat, fifty-minute episode that aired on cable a month later. I worried that it had become too boring. My
parents seemed restless, and when that happened, we ended up moving halfway across the world for a few months. If the Pink Rose produced something unexplainable, it might rejuvenate my parents. Maybe they would even stay in one place for a while.

The second hour blended into the third hour, then the fourth. I felt sleepy and bored. My legs were lead, and I wanted to jump up and run up and down the hall a few times to wake them up. A clock downstairs chimed once.

Nothing was going to happen, I decided. All those stories were wrong. Little Rose did not scamper on the staircase or knock on doors or leave flowers in the rooms. She was dust in a coffin.

Dad shifted. I looked over and saw him checking his cameras. He wouldn't quit yet, but maybe he would let me go to bed. I was about to ask him if I could go to my room when we heard it.

“Hello?”

It was a child's voice, high-pitched and clear, sounding almost like a note of music. Dad and I both sat up, alert and fully awake. I knew better than to say anything, but I wanted to ask where the voice had come from. Was she at the end of the hallway or the bottom of the stairs? I wasn't sure.

Dad shattered the silence. “Hello?”

We waited. Less than a minute later, a little girl's voice responded. “Rose.”

“Your name is Rose?” Dad stood up slowly. After hours of sitting down, his legs were shaky. Rose didn't answer right away. A light flickered from somewhere downstairs. Then I heard footsteps. Small and fast, they came up the staircase, then stopped short of the hallway. There was a soft giggle, followed by one more footstep.

“Rose?” Dad asked.

But there was no other sound except for the pounding in my chest.

 

B
REAKFAST WAS WAITING
for us the next morning. To everyone's relief, Mrs. Hollings had not been back to the kitchen since dinner. Instead, she had ordered croissants and coffee cake from the bakery. After a late night and nearly no sleep, we were happy with the buffet. I helped myself to three croissants and a glass of orange juice while Dad described our eventful evening to Mrs. Hollings.

“Everything lines up with the witness accounts,” he said. “The entire team heard her voice and the footsteps on the staircase.”

Mom, Shane and Annalise reported hearing the exact same things from their positions downstairs. I thought it was a little strange that Rose's presence had been so loud. It was captured on both the digital recorder and the video cameras, something that had never happened before. How strong was this little girl? Could her energy be strong enough to reach out and touch us? Or worse, hurt us? The idea wouldn't leave me, and even though I had gone to bed after four in the morning, I had barely slept.