Dreams of Fire (Maple Hill Chronicles Book 1) (13 page)

He adjusted his ball cap over his sweaty hair and said, “It sure didn’t sound like a radio. It sounded like it was coming from over here.” He shrugged and slid off the steps, leaving his water glass behind. “I was going to finish the back and then go home, okay?”

“Sure. Let me know when you go, and I’ll pay you before you leave,” Marianne said distractedly. She didn’t think she’d be able to get over having ghostly roommates.

She finished outlining the front garden bed and then hauled the cuttings to the growing pile by the front fence. Oscar sat like a statue watching her work from the windowsill inside. His crooked tail bobbed up and down gently. She paid Michael in cash, and he headed home, pushing the mower ahead of him.

Marianne ate dinner early and then got online to see what she could learn about 25 Violet Lane. After all the upset of moving and the weird, unsettling occurrences, it was such a relief to dive into the familiar zone of research. It reminded her how much she loved the thrill of discovery, chasing down side avenues, and building a picture of past events in her mind. She’d been hooked on history ever since ninth grade when her favorite teacher, Mrs. Driscoll, revealed the complexities of world history. Granted, it had been a survey course, but Marianne loved every minute of it. It helped that Mrs. Driscoll had been smart, beautiful, and no nonsense. She had high expectations of her students and told wonderful stories, making history come alive. Marianne had stayed in touch over the years, letting her old teacher know when she’d graduated from college as a history major and then again when she got her PhD.

It took some digging, but she found the public records of properties in Maple Hill and learned that Mrs. Thomas had owned 25 Violet Lane for about thirty years. Prior to that there had been only a couple of owners. Maybe some of Mrs. Thomas’ renters had issues? She jotted down a short list of names and questions she wanted to pursue and then made a list of phone calls she could make tomorrow. She learned there was a Maple Hill Historical Society with a collection of volumes in the local library and planned to hit them up as well.

Basic research done, Marianne searched for websites on haunted houses and came up with lots of sites advertising famous places, Halloween entertainment, and places in the Hudson Valley that were said to be haunted. Finally she typed, “I have a ghost in my house” and turned up more than a dozen helpful sites. She had no way to vet them for authenticity so, instead, she jotted down their advice to see how consistent they were. They all agreed that ghosts and hauntings were rare and that many weird events had ordinary explanations that might be made spookier by fear.

She had to agree with them there. The sense that someone had been in her house during the thunderstorm might have been an overactive imagination made worse by the dramatic weather outside. The sense of being watched was one of the signs of possible haunting but could also be her subconscious worries of being stalked. It was somewhat comforting that the Internet “experts” seemed to concur most ghosts didn’t want to hurt anyone. Instead, they were either trying to communicate with the living or stuck in some kind of time loop where significant events played out over and over, like footsteps or shadowy figures passing by. All the same, she was torn between skepticism and apprehension. It was one thing to read about haunted places and another thing to live in one.

There were even a few sites that discussed ghostly communication via dreams. The signs for visitation dreams included vividness, a sense of reality, a message being conveyed, physical touch, intense emotion and focus. The fire dreams she’d had certainly fell into this category as did the one where the Angry Man grabbed her and shouted.
 

Finally, she watched a bunch of YouTube videos that claimed to catch ghostly activity on camera. Some of it seemed a little too polished, which made her suspect it had been fabricated, but there was a series of videos based out of one house, haunted by a woman who’d died in a fire that began to wig her out. Shivering, she shut her computer down and went to bed with Oscar firmly in her arms.

She dreamt that a man was shouting at her. His face was turned away as he gesticulated emphatically at a room piled high with garbage. Marianne kept trying to apologize, thinking Geoffrey was angry at her for some reason. Then he turned toward her, and it looked like her ex but with a bristling dark beard instead, his features contorted in rage. Startled, she stepped back but was caught short as the man reached out and grabbed her arm, squeezing her painfully. Her own anger flared, and she wrenched her arm out of his grasp and shouted back, “You’re not Geoffrey! Let go of me!”

She woke with a start to the nighttime silence of the house. The faint smell of fresh paint and grass cuttings helped clear her head, and she lay in bed listening to the crickets chirp outside, and the bedside clock tick the seconds. Oscar was not next to her, but she thought she could hear him down the hall using the litter box. After a little while, he padded back into the room and leapt lightly onto the bed and settled down beside her again.
 

Angry Man was still upset with her. He seemed to have no problem grabbing her, and Marianne wondered who he’d been in life—someone accustomed to control and power. For all of Geoffrey’s faults, he’d never struck her or yanked her around. He had sometimes yelled, but mostly he’d used words and tones that made her feel stupid or small. Really, when she thought about it, it was a wonder she’d stayed with him for so long. But, sometimes, he’d looked at her with a trace of the love they’d shared, and she had longed for those moments so much, the rest seemed worth enduring. In comparison, she didn’t think Angry Man had ever loved another person.

She woke again later to the sound of her phone playing the ominous theme song from
Jaws
. Groping for the device, she saw that Geoffrey had left her a text message, reading, “I’ll find you.” Waking completely, she sat up in bed, feeling scared in the pit of her stomach. He was still looking for her. His words implied that he hadn’t found her yet, and there was always the chance he wouldn’t ever find her. She hadn’t told anyone of her current location other than her mother and grandmother. None of her new acquaintances knew Geoffrey as far as she was aware. It was a horrible idea that one them could somehow betray her, one that she put firmly out of her mind. It would be just like Geoffrey to undermine her confidence that way, and she refused to play that game.

Flopping back on the sheets she thought, I really should change my phone number. That might be enough to keep him away. I just haven’t wanted to admit that he’s systematically stalking me and isn’t going to leave me alone without a fight. She sighed. All the anxiety and fear made her feel exhausted. If he didn’t stop, she’d get a new number, she promised herself.

She rose, showered, and ate, trying to get over her jangled nerves. It was a library day, and she gathered her usual research materials together in a backpack and got ready to go out. Following up on her dream and Sarah’s advice, she went to the office and said firmly into the silence, “I’m sorry you don’t like the new colors, and the boxes upstairs seem to be in your way, but I live here now, and you don’t. You had your colors in your time, and I get to paint the house in the colors I want. I promise to clean up the boxes eventually.” There was no answer, and she couldn’t tell if Angry Man had heard her or how he felt about it.

She was finishing sweeping up the scattered kitty litter in the bathroom before she went out for the day when the doorbell rang. She had a little spike of adrenaline, wondering momentarily if Geoffrey was standing out there. She pushed that thought away.

Maybe she’d forgotten that Michael was coming? She opened the door to tell him she was going out and instead saw a stranger standing on the stoop. It was that guy from the other day at Gloria’s. Marianne had been wrong about him being good looking. He was absolutely gorgeous. Up close she could see his pale gray eyes inset in a lightly tanned face with a sprinkle of freckles across the cheeks and nose. Straight, reddish-brown hair flopped endearingly over his broad forehead. He looked like he worked with his hands for a living and took things patiently in stride. The dark green polo shirt he wore set off his outdoor tan perfectly. Her heart skipped a beat, and she stood with her mouth open for entirely too long.
 

His smile lit up his grey eyes. “Hi, I’m here about the dishwasher?” He had a pleasant tenor voice that seemed a little rusty. He cleared his throat.

“The dishwasher?” She said stupidly. He was a handyman not a salesman?

“Yeah. I’m from Gloria’s property management, and you left a message about the dishwasher not working. Didn’t they call you?” He hefted a large metal toolbox in one hand. She finally saw the logo on the breast pocket.

She shook her head. “No. Please come in. Sorry. I forgot I’d called. Yes, it still isn’t working, but I haven’t tried again. I’ve just been washing things by hand.” She realized she was babbling and stopped. He stepped past her into the living room, and she was aware of how tall he was, at least six foot, and a faint scent of soap, Ivory, she thought. She shut the front door, feeling her heart pounding unexpectedly in her chest. “The kitchen is through this way.”

“Did you just move in?” He asked politely, indicating the box-filled living room.

“Yes, last week. I’m repainting, so everything is still in boxes until I’m done.”

He nodded and set the box down on the floor next to the appliance. “What is it doing?” He indicated the dishwasher.

She described what she’d done, and the noises it had and hadn’t made, and he opened the door, knelt down, and began peering at things.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. Duh, it was his job, she thought with a mental face-palm. Tanned, muscular arms and broad shoulders stretched the dark green polo he wore in a pleasant manner. She remembered Kelly’s muscular back for a moment and thought fleetingly, I seriously need to work out or something.

“I work for Gloria’s part-time,” he was saying. “I’m really a carpenter. I make furniture. I’m trying to get my own business off the ground, but I don’t make enough to live on yet, so I do handyman stuff to pay the bills.” Deftly, he took the dish racks out and, leaning inside, began fiddling with the central mechanism. “Would you mind holding this?” He handed her a large flashlight.

“What kind of furniture do you make?” She asked as she aimed the beam inside over his shoulder. Oscar strolled through the kitchen, sniffed at the unfamiliar toolbox and peered at the dishwasher. Marianne smiled and shooed him away gently.

“All kinds really.” His voice sounded a bit muffled from inside the insulated box. “I’ve made chairs and tables; lots of built-in bookcases like the ones you have; a few dressers and things with drawers. They take a lot of time to make so mostly I do work on commission.”

“That’s really neat. Most of my furniture is second hand or came from a do-it-yourself kit.”

“There is an awful lot of kit furniture these days. That’s why I think there’s a market for handmade stuff.”

“It’s probably pretty expensive right?” She said ruefully, imagining a house full of beautiful handmade furniture. She leaned closer and tried to angle the beam of light better.

“Yeah. It always involves more time than most people are willing to pay for,” he said honestly. “But there are buyers out there. I just have to find them. I think you’re going to need some parts for this. It’s an old model, but I think I can find them on the Internet.”
 

He backed out of the dishwasher without warning, shoving her hand holding the flashlight into her face painfully. “Ow!” she said, massaging her mouth where the metal had hit.

He turned, and his eyes widened. “I’m so sorry! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. My own fault for leaning too close and not paying attention,” she said hastily, her face burning with embarrassment.

“I should have said something. Are you sure you’re okay?” His look of concern hit her with the force of a blow. It was so nice to have someone care if she was okay or not. She felt her throat choke up a bit and hastily cleared it.

She smiled, feeling her lips swelling slightly. “Really, I’m fine. Here,” she handed him the flashlight. “When do you think the parts will be in?”

He put his tools back and shut the lid, flipping the clasps with unconscious ease. “I’ll look for them today and with any luck can get them shipped in a couple of days. So, next week, I hope?” He got out a small battered pad of paper and wrote down the model and serial number.

She followed him to the door, watching his big frame from behind and found herself wondering what he looked like without the shirt. Blushing furiously, she ducked her head as she opened the front door for him.

“Oh, here’s my card, if something else goes wrong.” He handed her a slightly bent tan-colored card. “You don’t have to call the office first. You can call me directly.”

She took it carefully and glanced at it. “Roo-ari Allen?”

“It’s pronounced ‘Rory’,” he said with a smile.

“Nice to meet you,” she replied, feeling fresh heat in her face. “I’m Marianne Singleton.” Automatically she put out her hand to shake his and felt his hand envelop hers in a warm, strong grasp. An electric tingle seemed to run up her arm and, surprised, she gasped and let go as soon as she could.

He looked startled too but said, “Welcome to Maple Hill.” Climbing into a battered white pickup, he stuck his hand out the window and waved as he completed the turn around the cul-de-sac and rumbled up the street.

She shut the door and leaned against it, grinning furiously. She looked at the card in her hand again and saw that it was from his carpentry business. “Ruari Allen Cabinet Maker Fine Furniture on Commission.”

Too bad she didn’t have a ton of money to blow on a whole set of handmade furniture. One piece at a time, she thought with a smile. He’d have to be here a lot. It could take months. She sighed and pocketed the card, realizing it would be foolish to blow her settlement on finely crafted furniture. She’d have to wait for things to break instead.