Harrison Investigations 1 Haunted (9 page)

Across the field, Melody House stood on its little
hillock, bathed in a strange and eerie glow of crimson and
gold.

The brilliance of light lasted only a few seconds; the sun
dipped.

Night was coming in earnest, wrapped in shadow.

Despite Matt Stone, or maybe even because of him, dinner
at Melody House was an entertaining affair, and Darcy found herself
laughing a lot throughout the meal.

Matt and Penny didn't seem to agree on anything, but the
affection between them was visible and real. Penny wanted to tell
legends. Matt wanted to correct her when her legends became too
lurid, romantic, or
too
anything.

"It was as if the entire Southern army was taking refuge at
Melody House!" Penny said.

"The entire Southern army!" Matt snorted. "A company at
best. Twenty men, Penny."

Penny waved a hand in the air. "They were exquisite soldiers,"
she said, shaking her head and dismissing Matt's correction. "They
might as well have numbered thousands. They beat back the
Yankees-"

"What? The entire Northern force?" Matt queried, a sparkling
light in his eyes.

"There were at least one hundred!" Penny said, glaring back at
her employer. "The point is, our boys wouldn't give up, and they
saved the day, but their leader, a young captain, was killed. Shot
in the heart by a minnie ball that whizzed right through the parlor
windows. Now, he is said to be here, still guarding Melody
House."

Matt leaned low across the table, amusement in his eyes as they
met Darcy's. "And no one seems to have told him that the war is
over, that the South lost. He's not at all fond of Yankee
accents-so they say."

"Thank God, then, that I don't have one," Darcy told him
sweetly. "All those years watching late-night shows seems to have
paid off."

"But you trained to be an actress-of course you can get rid of
an accent!" Carter applauded her admiringly.

"An actress, hm," Matt said.

"I was
going
to study acting," she corrected. "I never
did. Not in college, anyway."

"That's right. She majored in everything else," Matt said.

"You can't major in ghosts these days, can you?" Clint
asked.

"Don't be silly!" Penny reprimanded.

Both Carter and Clint shrugged.

Dessert had been served. An exceptional baked Alaska. Darcy was
certain that at any moment, an immaculate butler was going to
walk in and suggest that the ladies retire to one room, the
gentlemen to another, for brandy and cigars.

But there was no butler-not tonight, anyway. They had all helped
to serve the meal.

"So?" Penny said excitedly, looking at Darcy expectantly.
She had a feeling that she was going to hear the word "so" from
Penny a lot.

"So?" Darcy repeated, smiling.

"Do you see him?"

"Who?"

"Our captain!"

"The captain who saved Melody House from the marauding
Yankees who were going to burn it down," Matt reminded her
dryly.

Darcy shrugged. "I try just to get accustomed to a house the
first few days I'm in it," she told Penny.

"Oh! Of course. Let all the vibrations get through to you,"
Penny said, nodding sagely.

"Something like that," Darcy agreed.

"So, are there vibrations?" Matt asked, seemingly
polite.

She stared straight at them. "The place just trembles," she
murmured.

"With?" he prompted.

She widened her eyes. "Hostility."

Clint burst into laughter. "The living give out vibes, too,
huh?"

Matt stared at Darcy, the flicker of a rueful smile
curving his lips. A remarkable transformation came over him.
He was almost devastatingly appealing, when he looked so.

"If I'm giving out hostile vibes, it's not with intent of
malice."

From him, Darcy decided, that was the best apology she was going
to get.

"Sometimes it's not easy to pinpoint just where vibes might be
centered," she said, surprised to realize that she was smiling as
well.

And that Penny, Clint, and Carter were all staring at them.

She rose, her movement not as fluid and easy as she would have
liked. "It was a wonderful dinner. Thank you all very much. I've
just realized how late it has gotten. If you'll forgive me, I think
I'll turn in for the night."

Matt, Carter, and Clint stood as one. A certain amount of
courtesy seemed to have been bred into these men; it was as natural
as breathing.

"You'll be fine," Carter told her. "I've slept in the Lee room.
And I'm still here."

"He didn't even run down the stairs naked," Clint said with a
wink.

"Thank the good Lord for that!" Penny breathed.

"Hey!" Carter protested. "I look good naked."

Darcy laughed softly. "Well, I imagine I'll be all right."

She was startled to see that Matt looked just a little
concerned. "I'm in the house tonight, if there is any
trouble, just scream."

"Ah, but you don't believe in ghosts!" Darcy reminded him.

He shrugged. "I believe in the power of men to do evil," he
murmured. For a moment, his strange deep gray eyes fell on hers.
"I'll be down the hall."

She nodded, bid them good-night, and headed out of the dining
room and for the stairs to the second floor. She walked slowly,
thinking it somewhat amazing that Matt Stone couldn't feel a thing
regarding his house. Penny had asked about vibes. The house
throbbed with them. Gentle, lost souls for the most part.

The only malice seemed to come from the Lee Room.

Upstairs, she decided on a quick shower, then brushed her teeth,
and prepared for bed.

The room was cool, cooler than it should have been in summer.
She ignored it, and the feeling of being watched.

She crawled into bed, somewhat exhausted. She fell asleep with
the television on, watching a program on the history of
Britain.

Deep into the night, she began to dream. She was herself,
sleeping upon the bed, and yet she was not, for she moved, and
moved within another persona. Fear clutched the heart of her
sleeping self for a moment, for from the moment she felt the coming
of the Other, she sensed the anger, a fury that was deep and
dangerous. And then...

She was the Other, seeing, feeling, knowing everything he
did.

A woman scorned... was a deadly one.

He came in deep thought and silence that evening,
an
gry, but not at all sure, in his conscious mind,
just what he intended. In the darkness, he stared at the house, and
reflected on all that had been, and all that might come to
pass.

The house...the majestic house sat as always. A place
with as rich and deep a character as any living person. So it
had been from the moment they had first broken ground. Time did.
nothing but add to the drama that must exist in such a place, as he
well knew.

She was there.

He knew that she was there.

And there were things that must be said. Things that must be
cleared, or ended, between them.

Still...

He stared at the house. And waited. He denied in his mind
that he had come with any malice as to his intent.

His heart felt like stone. Seeds of ideas played deep down
within his soul, truth and the physical essence of what must be
banned from thought. What happened must happen.

At his sides, his hands flexed, eased, and flexed
again,
as if already slipping around the throat of the
lover he knew to be inside.

Because a woman scorned...

Just might as well be dead.

* * *

Darcy awoke with a start, shaking. She had felt the past, as if
it had entered into her. Felt not so much a person, but the fury
and malevolence that had been part of a distant time.

She sat up in bed, and looked around the room, closed her eyes
again, and opened them.

Whatever had been with her, whatever remnant of emotion,
was gone.

And yet...

Something else was there.

Something, someone, quiet, stealthy.

Watching.

Waiting.

_______ 4____

"We all know why we've come." Elizabeth Holmes' voice, though
feminine, had a deep resonance. She wasn't exactly what Darcy had
been expecting when she had heard that a local novice-who had found
her dedication to the occult in the last year-had begged Matt Stone
to allow her to run a seance. She wasn't theatrical. There was no
turban wrapped around her head, and her eyes weren't dark and deep
set and heavily lined with makeup to add to a mystical image.
Rather, the woman was about fifty-five or sixty, slender, tall,
elegantly slim, with nicely styled silver-white hair and pleasant,
powder blue eyes. She looked like a typical businesswoman.

Only her voice might have fit the image of the eerie Gypsy
fortune teller.

It seemed to fill the dining room at Melody House with a strange
tenor, as if the walls themselves were part of a state-of-the-art
speaker system.

And thankfully, the woman hadn't opted to rename herself.
She wasn't going by Madame Zara, or anything like that. She was
Elizabeth Holmes, a native of the northern Virginia area, and a
real estate agent by day. Darcy had wondered at first if this
medium wouldn't prove to be a slightly crazy friend who was
convinced that she needed only to dress the part to have the
powers. She seemed to be a very nice woman, and committed to what
she was doing. Whether she really had any ESP or not remained to be
seen.

And her opening was intriguing.

"Melody House. She has stood upon this hill since the year of
our Lord seventeen-seventeen. And she has, in her years, hosted
both joy and tragedy. She is one of the few such surviving grand
old homes of our nation still owned by descendants of her original
builders. George Washington slept here!" Elizabeth paused,
smiling at the group gathered around the dining room table in the
muted candlelight. "George got around, it's a wonder Martha
wasn't a great deal more upset! But I digress. Washington wasn't
her only well-known guest. The likes of Patrick Henry, Thomas
Jefferson, and others of tremendous renown who lived in
Revolutionary times came here as well, and later, she was hostess
to many great statesmen and generals of another sad period of
war-Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, and then,
even Ulysses Grant and Abe Lincoln were thought to have taken rest
at this place. Bullets once riddled the walls, and many still
remain, from battles fought on the ground. Soldiers perished within
her walls. Naturally, there were other sad occurrences here, not
having to do with the specific pain of battle. There is the case of
the beautiful Melody herself, daughter of the builder, distraught
by her suitor's argument with her father. She is said to have been
rushing to his defense when she careened down the stairway, only to
die in her lover's arms on the foyer floor, just feet from where we
now sit. There was Eliza, the daughter of General Stone, who might
well have been poisoned by her rival, Sally Beauville, who was,
when accosted, shot dead by the girl's father, who then faced the
hangman's noose. Those are not all the stories. There are so many
more.

"Melody House has stood for nearly three hundred years, and in
that time, we can only imagine all the dramas that have been
lived-and the passions and dreams that have perished here as well.
They say that we are energy. and energy cannot be destroyed. Just
as they say that Melody House is haunted. If ghosts and
spirits are those who remained, their energy still fiercely alive
due to trauma or tragedy, then there would be nothing more natural
than fact that Melody House indeed be haunted! Throughout the
years, many have seen, or have believed they have seen, the ghosts
of those tragic souls. In the early eighteen-hundreds, the
courageous Andrew Jackson, later to be president of the United
States, once spent only half a night here, and mentioned to someone
later that he'd rather face the British army again than spend
another night at Melody House. Some swear there is a woman in
white, still walking the halls. Others have seen soldiers,
still, perhaps, fighting their long-lost battles." Elizabeth
paused, something of a rueful smile on her face. ' 'So. We
shall all join hands, in the circle here created, and see what
haunts or specters might wish to appear, to convey last words,
wishes, or needs."

Electricity had long ago come to Melody House, but tonight,
other than the lights attached to the cameras, there was no
illumination within the dining room except for a single candle
burning in the center of the table.

Darcy had already felt the cold. Whether Elizabeth was able to
communicate with any of the "energy'' remaining in the house or
not, Darcy again felt the sense of being watched. Whatever entity
or entities remained at Melody House, they were watching. Across
the table, she saw Penny shiver.

Darcy felt herself nudged. Hands, yes, hold hands. She set hers
upon the table. She was next to Jason Johnson, a local writer and
historian, and, naturally, another friend of Matt's, and Clint
Stone. Carter was on Clint's other side. Clint covered her hand
warmly with his own, and seemed both amused and curious, as if he
might have an open mind to the happenings. Matt was across the
table, seated next to Elizabeth. He wore a look of carefully
restrained impatience on his hard-sculpted features. Mae, the
woman who had been welcoming to her when she had first walked into
the Wayside Inn, was there, attractively dressed and groomed, her
round face split into a smile of excitement as she sat on Matt's
other side. To round out the group, a pretty young woman with the
improbable name of Delilah Dey, newly elected to the town council,
sat between Jason Johnson and Mae.