Chapter 11

Eleven

B lake

I keep up with her running commentary throughout the tour. I don’t believe any of it to be true, but I have to admit, Dahlia is pretty convincing. Was there ever any doubt she would be?

I stay close behind her, considering whether I want to choose the perfect moment to make her jump. Would she throttle me? Probably.

Maybe I could pretend I see a ghost, just for a laugh.

None of it seems right though. She’s having too much fun, and she barely pauses to breathe while she’s throwing so much information at me.

“…and then as Esther’s health deteriorated, the sightings increased in frequency. She saw people at the windows at night…”

“Tricks of the light.”

“…strange objects left on her porch…”

“Neighborhood kids playing tricks on her.”

“…and odd sounds coming from the basement…”

“Foundation quirks. Squirrels. Mice. Birds stuck in the chimneys. Water leaks.”

Dahlia has no idea how beautiful she is in the lantern light as she guides me through the master bedroom and the guest bedrooms. She’s switched her topic from the home’s history to talking about her plans to restore the house to its original look, down to antique furnishings in all the rooms.

We stop at one of the guest rooms. Some branches of tall tree, wild looking in the moonlight, butt up against the window on the far wall. Leaning against the opposite wall is a huge ornate mirror that was never hung on the wall.

“Some people might agree with you that all the phenomena has a rational explanation. And there was a time where Mrs. Milton herself might have dismissed all these things. But after several years of incidents, she had gained a bit of notoriety and wanted to turn her house into a bed and breakfast. You know, to use the haunting to create a source of income. But the town council at the time refused to change the zoning to help her out. It’s sad, but she never got to see her dream materialize,” Dahlia says.

“Because she turned out to be completely nuts?”

“She wasn’t nuts, it was just nobody believed in her, and soon she stopped believing in herself. When I moved back here, I became interested in local history and I visited with her frequently. She really was a wealth of knowledge. I’m glad I got to know her as a person, too. She was so kind, and always had cookies waiting for me whenever I’d come to visit. By that time, she got a full-time nurse in the house and the unexplained phenomena quieted down. Some people said it was because the nurse got her medications straightened out. Or maybe the ghosts finally decided to leave her alone.”

“Is that why she gave the house to the tourism department? Because you went to visit her?”

Dahlia shrugs like it was not a big deal. “She was a lot of fun to talk to. It made me sad that I hadn’t gotten to know her sooner. If I hadn’t transferred away, maybe I could have helped her write a book about her memories. Who knows what could have happened if I’d stayed?”

Her question hangs in the air between us. She turns and looks up at me.

“Do you … have any other regrets?” I ask.

“I regret not being here for Gramps’s funeral. I regret not being there for you.”

I open my mouth to reply when she nearly jumps out of her skin and latches on to my arm.

“Oh my god! Did you see that?”

My heart thuds in my chest and I instinctively slide my arm around her. “What? Where?”

“Something moved, just beyond the light, at the end of the hallway!”

“Stop,” I say.

“I’m serious, Blake.”

She is serious; I can feel her trembling.

“Probably just a mouse, but let’s go check it out if it will make you feel better?”

Who knew she could be so jumpy on a tour that she orchestrated? Or maybe she’s acting. If that’s the case, hand her the Oscar, please.

I take the lantern out of her hand and lead the way, my arm fixed around her. We creep toward the end of the hall, and I keep the light trained on the master bedroom door.

We both startle when we see the rocking chair by the window move on its own.

“What the fuck!” I yell.

Dahlia grips me around the waist and yelps just seconds before we see a small, shadowy ball of fur dart out the open window.

“What was that?” she whispers.

“That was a squirrel. But the bigger question is, why is that window open? Did you leave it open?”

“No!” she says.

I go into the room to close the window, Dahlia melded to me.

“That’s just the kind of thing Mrs. Milton told me about. She said back in the day, she used to find random windows open.

“She probably forgot,” I reply, carefully shutting the window and closing the curtain. “You'd be surprised how easily we forget we leave windows, doors, drawers, cabinets open. In any case, that was a tree-climbing rodent and not a ghost. A ghost wouldn’t open a window anyway; they can walk through walls, can’t they?”

“Oh, sweet Blake,” she sighs, sounding like I should know better. “If they don’t know they’re a ghost, they may try to open doors and windows.”

“Except that they’re not real,” I remind her.

She looks at me like I’ve just kicked her dog. “That poor woman spent years telling everyone she knew that she was being visited by the ghost of her dead husband and nobody believed her. Who are we to say she was wrong?”

I wrap my arms around her and pull her close, her shoulders drooping.

“May I tell you what I think? I think you’ve gotten too invested in this ghost thing and you don’t want to let her memory down.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“You’re just trying to convince me. That’s not the same as proving ghosts don’t exist.”

I sigh and pull my phone out of my pocket. “Listen. It’s one a.m. and I think we’re both tired. Let’s go home and we’ll call it a draw.”

“No. I’m not leaving,” she says.

“Well, I’m not leaving you here, scared and alone in the dark.”

“I’m not scared.”

“I don’t know why.”

“Because he’s a friendly ghost.”

“Why would a friendly ghost do things like leave windows open and freak out his own wife with footsteps on the staircase?”

“Because he wanted his wife to feel like she wasn’t alone. And, maybe, when we die, our attempts to comfort the living don’t translate. Maybe some of our messages come through damaged. And that’s why it’s unsettling. Maybe her husband was just trying to say he loved her, but showed up as a creaking staircase. Just like when the living try to communicate, it doesn’t always go so well.”

The subtext is so obvious it punches me in the gut. Two years ago, she told me she loved me, and I freaked. Jesus. What the hell is wrong with me?

I swallow hard. “Dahlia…”

“Settle down, big guy. We haven’t finished the tour. We still have the most haunted part of the house to explore. The basement.”

“D, come on. Let’s skip it.”

Her eyes pop wide at me and she stands on tip toe. “You’re a big chicken!”

I huff. “No, I am not.”

“If we don’t go down to the basement, then you forfeit the bet and I win.”

I scrape my fingers through my hair and mutter, “This is ridiculous.”

“Well, then, you lose, is all I’m saying.”

“All right, fine.”

Dahlia opens the door under the staircase and begins her descent, me still holding the lantern. I put out a hand to stop her.

“I can’t let you go down there first.”

“What do you think is going to happen? Wow, you really are scared, aren’t you?”

“No, but what if there are snakes or spiders or bugs or who knows what else? What kind of a person would I be if you got a snake bite before I did?”

“OK, fine, I’ll let you hold on to your chivalry for now.”

“I appreciate that.”

Shining the lantern and her flashlight ahead of us, we make our way down the stairs.

The dark, dank, cool space feels even more like death and doom than the rest of the house. I don’t understand why, but something in the air makes my blood pressure rise and the hairs on the back of my neck tingle.

We shine our lights around to get a better look. It’s not what I was expecting. The space is divided into rooms like someone had begun to build an apartment down here. There are studs, but no actual walls.

“Esther Milton reported noises in the basement at least once a month to police during the height of the apparent haunting. At first they came to investigate but they never found anything. After a while, they stopped taking her seriously and then she simply stopped calling them. She told me she decided it was just the ghost of her husband looking after her.”

“Looking after her by making weird noises in a creepy basement? Might want to find a better service provider from the afterlife, dude, ‘cause you really got shit wrong.”

“Talking to a ghost now? That’s belief. You lose.”

“Nice try, Dahlia Jane.”

She laughs. “The last time you called me that…oh my god.”

She doesn’t respond but her eyes widen and I feel her full-body shiver next to me.

“What is it?”

“Did you feel that cold spot?”

“It’s a basement; it’s probably coming from the vents.”

“No,” she says. “It’s not the same as a draft.”

My nerves waver a little, though my mind tries to keep a hold on the most logical explanation. I study her face in the lantern light. If she’s acting, she’s definitely fooling me. “I feel it on my skin, even inside my coat. Under my skin.”

“This isn’t funny, D.”

We examine all the partitions for the source of the breeze but don’t find it.

What we do find, however, in the farthest corner of the basement is one small room, is an old wooden chair overturned, and above it, a rope hanging from a support beam in the shape of a noose. The rope is swinging ever so slightly, like it’s being pushed—or swayed—by a draft.

The image of this completely sucks all the air out of my lungs. Dahlia whimpers and I try to pull her back but she doesn’t move.

“This is it,” she says. “This is what Esther and John want us to see.”

I suddenly get the distinct impression she’s winding me up.

“So help me, D, if you’re pranking me right now.”

She shakes her head. “No. No, this is the room where her husband used to go. Esther told me he used to come down here to think and to mess around with his old train sets. She was never allowed down here.”

“D, I don’t like this. Let’s get out of here.”

She shakes her head. “No. She told me there was something down here, there was something down here he didn’t want her to see.”

An ice-cold wind rushes past my ears, blocking out all noise around me, and next thing I know the door at the top of the stairs has slammed shut.

Dahlia screams.

“Whoa!” I shout.

I throw one arm around Dahlia and pull her up the stairs with me. She trembles like a leaf in my arm. “It’s OK, baby. I’m getting you out of here.”

She’s not speaking, not making any noise at all, other than her teeth chattering uncontrollably like she’s standing in a meat locker. She’s either truly freezing, or frightened out of her mind.