Rosecliff Manor Haunting (2 page)

“Addison? You there?”

Luke’s groggy voice vibrated down the hall. Addison switched the bathroom light off and walked back to the bedroom, stopping when she reached the doorway. Luke was propped up in bed, his back resting on a pillow he’d jammed in front of the headboard. The light from the nightstand cast a fluorescent shadow across his face, and she noticed he was eyeing her strangely.

She half-smiled, tried to pretend nothing was wrong. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I was just coming back to bed.”

“What time is it?”

“A little after one, I think.”

“When did you get up?”

“Five, maybe ten minutes ago.”

He tilted his head to the side. “I’ve been awake for at least twenty.”

“I … ahh … woke up with a headache and was looking for some ibuprofen in the bathroom.”

He tugged at his chin. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Your eyes are red. Really red. To be honest, when I first saw you, I thought you’d been crying.”

“I haven’t. I’m fine.”

He stared at her for a moment, didn’t speak. He knew something was wrong. He always knew. She walked over, sat down on the bed next to him. He reached out, entwined her hand in his, pulled it to his mouth, and kissed it. “Whatever it is, you know you can tell me.”

She smiled. “I know. Do you remember when Roxy first appeared to me?”

He nodded. She continued.

“I think it’s happening again.”

He leaned back, looked at her like she hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary. “I’m not surprised.”

“You’re not?”

“You knew there would be others. It was the last thing your grandmother told you before she left. Remember?”

“I remember,” Addison said. “I guess … well … it’s just … it’s been several months now, and since it hadn’t happened again—”

“You didn’t think it would?”

“I don’t know what I thought. One day I’m living a normal life, the next a spirit appears to me, and I have to figure out what they want and how to give it to them. It’s confusing. I mean, it’s not like there’s a handbook for dealing with dead people.”

“Roxy appeared to you because she couldn’t move on until her body was located. Do you think you’re dealing with a similar situation?”

“Maybe. I wish I knew how it all worked, how one spirit has the ability to appear to me while millions of others don’t. Who decides these things? Someone has to. Even in the afterlife, there has to be a system in place.

He laughed. “A
system
?”

“I’m serious. In my head I picture a giant bowl with all the names of the dead on it, those who haven’t crossed over. All the spirits are hovering around it, waiting for their names to be called, like some kind of lottery.”

“You can spend your entire life trying to make sense of it, and you never will. Why not focus on what you
can
control, who you can help, how
you
can make a difference?”

Helping Roxy had felt great. It elevated her confidence, gave her a purpose in life, a higher calling. Even so, it hadn’t kept the occasional feelings of inadequacy from seeping in, making her feel she wasn’t the right person for the job. “What happened tonight, I always assumed it would mimic my first experience. It didn’t though. It was different this time.”

“Different how?”

“I didn’t see anyone. No one appeared to me, I mean. I had a dream. I was standing outside a manor I didn’t recognize. There was a tall iron gate. On the right side, in a black metal rectangle, there was a word, or maybe two words partially covered by a tree branch. I made out the first word—Rose—and then the letter C. Nothing else. I assumed it was a family surname. Rosecrest or Rosecrans maybe.”  

“It’s a start. What else did you see?”

“Two young girls. Twins. They were playing together in front of the house. One walked over to me. Her name was Vivian. She said her sister, Grace, wouldn’t talk to me because she was afraid.”

“Of what?”

Addison shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“She wanted me to remember something.”

“Remember what?”

“No clue,” Addison said. “She didn’t tell me. Everything about the dream was unnatural. The girls were both wearing the same dress. But they were odd.”

“The girls?”

“The dresses.”

“In what way?”

“They were dated. Thick and plain. Nothing like the clothing girls wear today.”

Addison folded a pillow next to Luke’s and leaned back. In her dream, the colors were muted and drab, like she was viewing the scene through a filter. The one exception had been the vibrant yellow color of the girls’ dresses.

“I just thought of something that seemed insignificant until now,” Addison said. “Months ago when we visited Roxy’s gravesite, I saw two young girls at the cemetery. They were wearing matching yellow dresses and chasing each other around a headstone. I remember wondering why they weren’t with their parents, why they’d been left alone without supervision, and why they were dressed in short sleeves with no jackets during such a cold time of year.”

“Did you ever see their parents?”

Addison shook her head. “I watched them for a few minutes. They caught me staring and stopped. One of them waved.”

“What did you do?”

“The sun was in my eyes. It was so bright, I could hardly see anything. I closed my eyes. Not for long. A few seconds. When I reopened them, the girls were gone.”

Luke squeezed Addison’s hand. “I think you just figured out what you were supposed to remember.”

Months earlier when Roxy’s remains were discovered and she was finally laid to rest at the local cemetery, Addison thought she would visit Roxy’s grave on occasion, if for no other reason than to let Roxy know someone was still thinking of her after all these years. She’d never visited though, and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she no longer felt Roxy’s presence like she once did. Roxy never appeared to her again after the night Addison had set her free. She was gone now, and she wasn’t ever coming back.     

Addison often wondered if that was what happened to spirits after they crossed over. She also wondered whether or not a person could return. She doubted it. Most likely there were higher laws in place, laws governing the living, shielding the dead from the undead, except for the near-death experiences some people claimed to have on occasion.

Still, dead was dead for most people.

Except Addison.

Addison stood in front of Roxy’s grave and canvassed the area, trying to recall the exact spot where she’d first seen the twins.

“Anything?” Luke asked.

She shook her head. “It happened so fast, I’m not sure about the exact location now. I thought it would all come back to me once I got here. It isn’t.”

The truth was, she wasn’t sure how to make them reappear again, or if she even could. Twenty minutes passed. No sign of the children.  

“What about the general direction of the headstone when you saw the girls?” Luke asked. “Any ideas?”  

Addison lifted a finger and pointed, her eyes coming to rest on a tall, column-like monument mounted on four-sided, square pedestals. “I want to say it was somewhere by that obelisk.”

They walked together, pausing along the way to read the names on every tombstone they passed. Five rows later, still nothing. No Vivian. No Grace. And no surnames beginning with the word Rose. 

“We don’t even know if the girls are actually buried here,” Addison said. “What if we have it all wrong?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“What if the headstone they were running around belonged to one of their parents instead?”

“Let’s say you’re right and we should shift our focus, we still don’t know what names or dates we’re looking for. In your dream, did anything indicate what year it was?”

She considered the question and nodded. “The car.”

“What car?”

“Right before I saw the girls, a car drove by. It was an older model Ford. A two-door. If I had to ballpark when it was manufactured, I’d say the mid-seventies.”

“Okay, and how old would you say the girls were?”

“Ten or eleven.”

He pressed his thumb to his fingers, calculating the results. “I’m only estimating here, but if the girls were eleven in the mid-seventies, their parents might still be alive.” 

“Then we’re missing something. There has to be a connection to this cemetery, a reason they were drawn here.”

He frowned. “Wish I knew how to help you.”

“This is what Vivian wanted me to remember, Luke. It has to be. There isn’t anything else.”

Or was she simply wrong about the whole thing?

She was beginning to doubt herself, doubt the dream she had.

“We’ll keep looking until we find something.” He stepped in front of her, rubbing his hands up and down her arms. “Why don’t you try to relax? We’re not in a hurry. Close your eyes and let your mind wander. See what happens.”

He stepped away, crouching in front of a newer-looking tombstone in the next row.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Thought I saw something a second ago.”

“What?”

“Can’t say for sure. A shiny piece of metal in the grass. Don’t see it now though.”

He might not, but she did. “It’s there, about a foot to your left. See it?”  

He swished his fingers along the thick, jade blades of grass, until he clasped the object in his hand. “Huh.”

“What is it?”

“A belt buckle on a string. Looks like it slipped off of something, maybe a bouquet on the headstone. When the flowers wilted, it must have slid off.”

The buckle was gold plated and rectangular in shape. A brown, circular stone about the size of a quarter was inlaid in the middle. “It must have belonged to the man whose grave this is.”

Luke glanced at the headstone. “Cliff Clark. Born May 1945, died December 2014.”

“December. Right around the time we were here and I saw the twins.” Addison stuck her hand out. “Can I see it?”

Luke placed the buckle in her palm. The moment her fingers grazed its surface, the cemetery swirled around her and everything went black.

The darkness evaporated like a fine mist until the air was clear again. Addison looked around. She was no longer within the safe confines of the cemetery. No longer with Luke. She was in a room, and judging by the rancid combination of bleach and disease streaming through her nostrils, it was a hospital room. She clamped two fingers over her nose, opting to breathe through her mouth until her stomach settled.

It was cold.

Meat-locker cold.

Wherever she was, she wanted out.

The room was dimly lit, the only illumination coming from a dull light bulb screwed into the end of a silver lamp that coiled out several feet from the wall like a detachable hose on a shower faucet. Next to the lamp was a bed, and on top of the bed, a man. He looked old. Addison guessed somewhere in his upper seventies. His eyes were closed like he was sleeping, even though her instincts told her it wasn’t sleep he’d succumbed to.  

He was dead.

She didn’t know how she knew it.

She just did. 

An elderly woman hunched over the side of the bed, weeping, her bowed head twisting left to right. She clasped the deceased man’s hand, begging him not to go, not to leave, not yet. His lifeless hand slipped from hers, sagging onto his lap, and she cried out, “Open your eyes, Clifford! Look at me … please!”   

Her pleas had come too late.  

Several seconds passed. The woman faded from view like she’d been nothing more than a hologram. Addison’s attention was drawn to the other side of the bed, to Vivian and Grace standing side by side, both peering down at the man.

Vivian smoothed a hand across the man’s cheek and said, “It’s all right, Daddy. It’s all over now.”

The man’s eyes thrust open and he rose up, but his entire body didn’t rise with him. His physical body remained still and flat against the bed while his spirit body detached—something Addison had never witnessed before now. He lifted himself into a standing position and glanced back, gazing upon his mortal self for the last time. When he turned around again, he looked different. Younger. Like he’d aged in reverse, his spirit body becoming strong once more, free of the wrinkles that plagued him in his later years. And that wasn’t the only change. No longer was he dressed in a paper-thin, dingy, gray hospital gown. He was clothed in white. A shade of white so piercing Addison struggled to gaze upon him without holding out a hand to deflect the blinding rays. 

She took a step forward, her eyes fixed on the man who she now recognized. He was the man from her dream. The man behind the wheel of the vintage car.

A beam of light blazed through the open door into the room. The man hesitated for a moment. A look of peace spread across his face, and he smiled. He understood what was coming, what he needed to do next.   

Grace yelled, “Daddy!”

The man didn’t react, behaving like he didn’t notice she was there. She attempted to latch on to the end of his trousers, but Vivian grabbed her from behind, pulling her back.     

“No!” Grace yelled. “Daddy, please. Don’t leave me, Daddy, stay here! Stay with us! Please!”

He floated toward the light. A moment later, he was gone. Grace sagged to her knees, and Vivian bent down, wrapping her arms around her sister.

“Why did he have to go, Viv?” Grace whimpered. “I thought he was going to be with us now. You
said
he’d be with us.”

“He will be, Grace,” Vivian replied. “He will be soon. I promise.”

“I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t like this place.”

Vivian extended a hand. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

The image of the girls faded, and the room disappeared. In a split second Addison found herself back at the cemetery, the belt buckle no longer in her hands. Luke hovered over her.

“What is it?” he asked. “What did you see?”

She steadied her breathing and turned, looking once more at the name on the headstone next to her. “I saw the night Cliff Clark died.”