Authors: Cassandra Gannon
Grace
didn’t know.
She didn’t know.
She had no frigging idea what had just
happened, except that her nice, normal life had just imploded. She looked down
at the fresh blood covering her palms and did what any nice, normal girl would
do in that situation.
She
started screaming.
June
20
,
1789- The Summer Ball was as dull as I expected. Nothing in
this town ever changes, so I’m not sure why I even bothered to attend. The
same ordinary people and ordinary conversations…
How
I long for something exciting to happen!
JMR provided the only distraction of the evening. He
no doubt came to see me, but --of course-- he had to dance with a few other
ladies, too, else Father and Mother have conniptions. They detest him merely
for being alive, when they’re dead inside. Still, it was good for a laugh to see
him flirting with those foolish girls. I declare, the Pirate charmed even the
unlikeliest of targets with his wicked smile. And Anabel Maxwell and Clara
Vance could not believe their luck to be singled out by such a handsome and
notorious man!
From
the Journal of Miss Lucinda Wentworth
“You
are --by far-- the worst tour guide I’ve ever seen.” The guy in the souvenir
tri-corner hat shook his head in irritation and hoisted himself up onto the top
slat of the split rail fence. “The Good Lord knows I’ve seen
a lot
of
them in my time, but you make even the bad ones seem grand. You’ve just no
talent for this job, a
t’all
.”
Grace
pretended not to hear that, just like she’d been pretending not to hear his
complaints for the past half hour.
…But
it was pretty darn hard.
“Where’s
your stage presence, lass?” He waved a hand like a frustrated director, trying
to film a hopeless actress in her big scene. “These are supposed to be
ghost
stories. Ya have to give them some
feeling
. Ya won’t scare anyone if
you sound like you’re reciting a dinner menu. Put some
pizzazz
into it,
for heaven’s sake.”
For
the entire tour, the heckler had been hovering at the back of the group, making
snide comments in a Scottish accent. He didn’t even bother to lower his
(admittedly beautiful) voice, although the rest of Harrisonburg’s Official
Ghost Walk had the decency to ignore his bitching. Grace couldn’t be so
composed. She took this job to avoid stress and this moron was definitely
beginning to stress her out. It was all she could do not to kick him right off
the tour.
He
wasn’t even looking her way, so he missed her angry glower. Instead, he was
staring up at the night sky, the angles of his striking face reflected in the
moonlight. The guy was incredibly, sickeningly handsome, which explained his
lousy attitude. Good looking men always thought they were exempt from
civilized conduct. He was probably used to acting like a dick and everyone
accepting it, because he was so frigging pretty.
Peaceful
green cornfields.
Think
about peaceful green cornfields.
Dragging
her attention away from him, Grace smiled determinedly at the un-irritating
portion of the group. There were fifteen other tourists who’d paid to walk
around the historic town by lantern light and hear spooky tales for an hour.
No wiseass, too handsome, big mouth was going to ruin this for them.
Not
that anybody
else
looked thrilled with the Ghost Walk, either.
That
was what pissed her off the most. The wiseass, too handsome, big mouth was
right. She sucked as a tour guide. Unlike the rest of her family, Grace refused
to live her life inside of a
Supernatural
episode. Consequently, she
talked about Harrisonburg’s significant places and noteworthy citizens, not
ghosts and goblins. She tended to go off on academic tangents, which, her boss
assured her, bored the tour groups senseless. They wanted to hear about
monsters and mayhem. She told them about architecture.
Perhaps
it was a different take on the Ghost Walk script, but --Darn it-- she
wasn’t
boring. No matter what her family, thought, she could be as exciting and fun
as anybody. Besides, why would tourists find some cheap campfire stories more
interesting than
actual
history? It didn’t make any sense.
History
books had gotten Grace through some of the darkest parts of her life. For the
past year, she’d lived inside of them. She’d always read about Virginia
history for fun and relaxation, but now she felt like it was keeping her
alive. Ever since she lost her mind in that alleyway, she’d been struggling to
rebuild her life. Without the refuge of her books, she’d be lost. If she
could just instill that feeling into others, surely they would understand why
they should care about her unflashy tours.
Grace
took a calming breath, before she started getting stressed, again. Stress was
the enemy, according to her shrink. It was what caused her hallucination. A
skeptical little voice (that sounded
a lot
like her aunt Serenity) asked
how she could’ve hallucinate the blood on her hands, when everybody else at the
scene had seen it too, but Grace didn’t like to listen to that voice. If she
did, all the nice normal walls she’d built would come toppling down again.
“You’re
standing in front of Virginia’s oldest tavern, The Raven.” She waved a hand at
the building behind her. “Built in 1768…”
“176
9
.”
Mr. Tri-Corner casually interrupted. Who the hell bought those stupid hats at
the gift shop and actually looked
good
in them, anyway? It was sooo unfair.
Worse,
he was right about the date.
“176
9
.”
She corrected, refusing to acknowledge him. “The Raven was the site of many
clandestine meetings during the Revolution.” See?
That
was
interesting. She tried to infuse her voice with excitement. “A favorite
tavern of luminaries such as Thomas Jefferson, George Wythe, Josiah Oliver, and
even Gregory Maxwell, the hero of Yorktown…”
“Hero
of Yorktown, my ass. The man was a bloody idiot.”
“…it
served as the unofficial headquarters for the patriots in Harrisonburg.”
“That’s
because it had the bawdiest wenches in town. Ach, Mistress Mary…” The jackass
in the back gave a dramatic sigh. “Josiah could hardly keep his hands off of
her long enough to lead his troops. Almost lost us the war.”
Grace’s
teeth ground together, but she kept going. “The Raven was owned by Edward
Hunnicutt, one of the Richmond Hunnicutts.”
“Watered
down his ale, the cheap bastard. Treated the serving girls quite badly, as
well.”
“He
also had a fascinating history as a cartographer of the region…”
“Maps?
Sweet bleeding Christ, you’ll really be talking of
maps
, now?”
“…Edward
charted portions of the James River,” she pointed towards the harbor, “helping
to make it navigable to larger ships. He imported goods like tea and cloth from
England, opening a shop. It did so well that he doubled his money by selling
the store to his sister-in-law, Aggie Northhander, making enough gold to invest
it in this tavern.”
The
tour critic gave an exaggerated groan at that entirely factual account. “Take
pity on these poor people, woman! Spin a ghost yarn. Do ya think they want to
be hearing of Ned’s dull life? The man was a wanker. I’ve always suspected he
was a Tory, at heart.”
Grace
shot him another glare. “Edward Hunnicutt led a
fascinating
life.” She
repeated firmly.
For
a second, the guy actually shut up, a strange expression flickering over his
face. He looked over his shoulder, like he suspected she might be talking to
someone else.
Meanwhile,
her group didn’t look fascinated, at all. A frat kid fiddled with his phone,
while his girlfriend examined her vampire-y nails. A man in Bermuda shorts
checked his watch for the sixth time in as many minutes. Several of the older
customers
looked
like they were listening, but they weren’t listening, at
all. They were tuning her out the way they would ignore a droning commercial,
waiting for some better show to start.
A
young teen tugged on her mother’s arm. “When are we going to hear about the
ghosts, Mom?” She asked in a loud whisper. They group might be politely
disregarding the troublemaker, but his comments were infecting all of them.
Drat,
what spooky story could she tell?
The
tour guide training had given Grace some background on the standard Harrisonburg
tales, but panic wiped them from her brain. Everyone was looking at her. What
the hell was she supposed to say?
Desperate,
she tried to make up some nightmarish tale of horror, but it was less Stephen
King and more Mad Libs. Unlike the other Riveras, Grace wasn’t the most
imaginative person, the occasional hallucination notwithstanding. “Uhhh… Some
people say a --um-- skeleton with a… hook? For a hand --um-- sometimes eats
here… sometimes.”
Eyes
rolled all over the tour.
The
gadfly sadly shook his head at that halfhearted campfire story, rallying from
his momentary confusion. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I hope you’re not depending
on this job to keep you fed. If ya are, you’ll surely be starving ta death, by
the end of the week.”
Grace
hesitated. He was right.
Again.
Skeletons were just not going to cut
it. Somehow she had to do better, before more customers wandered away. She’d
already lost three. Crap. She needed this job. What part of local history
might interest this group?
She
wracked her brain for a minute and then --for no reason at all-- seized on a
story that most people in this town wanted to forget. “And it was very near
this spot that Harrisonburg’s most notorious criminal was hanged for his
horrible crimes.” She announced. “Captain James Riordan. America’s first
serial killer.”
“Oh
bloody hell
.” The guy snapped in disgust, but everyone else perked up
at the promise of a grisly tale.
Grace
smiled, sensing the story would be a hit. This was going to work! She
should’ve thought of adding good old Jamie to the tour in the first place. “Captain
Riordan was the Jack the Ripper of Harrisonburg. A dashing and devious
criminal mastermind. He came from a good family, but he was disowned at a
young age for his disreputable behavior. He left Scotland in disgrace and fled
to America, where he gambled his way into a ship.”
Her
detractor scoffed at that. “Horse shit. No one ‘gambles their way’ into a
ship. You have to cheat and not get caught. T’is all
skill
.”
“During
the war, James Riordan smuggled luxury goods into the Colonies, using Mr.
Hunicutt’s maps to evade capture by either side.” She tacked that part on just
to piss off the heckler. Edward Hunicutt
was
fascinating, darn it.
“After the war, he became an out and out pirate.”
“Have
you ever
seen
Ned’s maps?” The guy demanded, because of
course
he arrogantly assumed he knew more about local history than Grace did. “They
mostly led to swamps and dead ends. No one with an ounce of sense used them
for anything more than wiping their ass.”
Grace
tuned out the snarking. “Quite the ladies’ man, Captain Riordan wooed all the
pretty girls of the colony. He made quite a good living and he was incredibly handsome.
There were few who could resist his charm.”
“Incredibly
handsome.” The jackass repeated with a nod. “
Finally,
you begin to
make some sense. …Although you do make it sound like a disease. Are you a
Sunday school teacher, by chance? You sound like a Sunday school teacher to
me.” It wasn’t a compliment.
Grace
had
taught Sunday school back in Richmond, as a matter of fact. “Despite
his reputation, Captain Riordan was welcomed into many of Harrisonburg’s nicest
homes.” She continued and then paused dramatically. “But not all of them. Some
of the finest young women in Harrisonburg refused his ill-gotten gifts and
dishonorable propositions. Furious, he vowed to make them pay for the insult.”
“That’s
not
what happened.”
“Lucinda
Wentworth was the first to die.” Grace went on, trying to stick to the facts
of the case. Now that she was at this part of the tale, she was suddenly
remembering
why
she’d never added James Riordan to her tour before.
Even discussing a crime that was two and a half centuries old, had her stress
level spiking. She pictured peaceful green cornfields and kept going. “Lucinda
sneaked out of her bedroom, just a few blocks away,” she gestured down the
street, “and was never seen again.”
Everybody
turned to eagerly look in the direction she was pointing.
Well,
not
everybody
.
“Why
are you telling this story?” The guy hopped off the top rail of the fence, no
longer smirking. His eyes stayed fixed on her, glowering in annoyance. “I
know you’re new here, but I take this tour every night. No one
ever
tells this story on the Ghost Walk.”
Grace
knew that she was off-script. Harrisonburg’s Official Ghost Walk was supposed
to be G-rated. The whole village made its profits by appealing to vacationing
families wanting to experience a weekend of Revolutionary life. A place where
parents could tell themselves their kids were learning something about history
and the kids could buy rubber muskets. The residents of Harrisonburg didn’t
like anything controversial sullying the carefully cultivated, plastic
perfection of their town.