The Blackham Mansion Haunting (The Downwinders Book 4) (2 page)

“Deem?” he said again, more loudly, trying to rouse her.
“Deem!”

There was no reaction. He gave her shoulders a shake, and her
head bounced around on her neck in response.

“Deem! Wake up!” he yelled. Still no response.

Should I slap her?
he wondered.
She’ll be pissed. I don’t know what else to
do to revive her.

He raised his hand and brought his palm down on her cheek,
the crack of the slap echoing in the other rooms of the house.

She opened her eyes slowly, taking a moment to focus.

“Winn?”

“Deem! Are you alright?”

As consciousness slowly returned to her, her facial
expression shifted from confusion to anger.

“Goddamn it, Winn!” she cried, pushing herself up with her
elbow. “Why’d you do that?”

“I couldn’t get you to wake up!” he answered.

“Why are you even here?” she said, sounding irritated. “I’m
meeting you later. Goddamn it, Winn, I was right there, and you screwed it up!”

“You missed our appointment,” Winn replied. “I was worried
something had happened to you, because you didn’t answer your phone. I talked
to Carma, and she told me where you were. It’s after 8 PM.”

“What?” she asked. “8? It can’t be. I’ve only been here…” she
stopped, and reached into her pocket for her phone. Sure enough, the time was
8:14. “You’re right,” she mumbled. “I don’t have any messages. No missed
calls.”

“Where’s David?” Winn asked. “Carma said he came with you.”

“David is…” Deem said, sitting up and looking around the
room. “He was right here.” She stood. “Maybe he moved into one of the other
rooms?”

Winn walked from the living room to a second room that he
guessed might have been used for meals. An old tin ceiling was still attached
overhead, pieces of it curling down. More windows lined the walls here, though
they were letting in no light at this time of the day.

“David!” Deem called behind him. Her voice seemed to echo
forever, something Winn found odd.

The room after the dining area was the kitchen. Another old
wooden door was at the back of the room. “I’m guessing that leads outside,”
Winn said.

“He wouldn’t have gone outside,” Deem said. “He must be on
the other side of the house, or upstairs.”

They backtracked through the dark rooms to the entryway.
Another large room was positioned to its left. Winn stuck his head into the
room and found it empty. The entryway continued into a short hallway that ended
at a stairwell. From here, another hallway branched off to the left, leading to
more empty rooms in similar states of disrepair. They quickly checked them all,
calling for David as they went. Receiving no response, they left the hallway,
arriving back at the stairwell. A set of stairs was tucked at the very back of
the hallway, its base curved at the bottom, arching to the right as it rose.

Winn tried the first stair; it was rickety and looked
dangerous.

“I can’t believe he would have gone up there,” Deem said.
“David!” she called. They waited for a response, but none came.

“Well, shit, Deem,” Winn said. “He couldn’t have just
disappeared.”

“David!” she called again.

“I’ll try these stairs,” Winn said, “but only one of us. I
don’t know if they’ll take much weight. Would you call Carma and tell her I
found you? She was as worried as I was.”

Deem pulled out her phone again. “No reception,” she said.
“Let me try outside.” She left Winn’s side and walked back to the entryway. He
heard the front door creaking in the distance as she opened it.

Winn looked up the stairs. They hugged the left wall, and were
wide at the bottom, but became narrower as it rose, twisting to the right as
they reached the upper level. Some steps had rotted out entirely. A banister
made of solid wood still edged the right side. He grabbed it and pushed,
testing its strength. It seemed solid. Then he chose a first step to climb, and
slowly lowered his weight on it. It didn’t crack under him.
So far so good,
he thought, searching for the next step that wasn’t broken. Then the next.

There’s that feeling again,
he thought as the warning passed over him. He felt it
from all directions — ahead, above, where the staircase turned to become a
hallway he couldn’t yet see down, and from below, as though something might
follow him up the stairs.
This place isn’t just haunted,
he thought.
It’s
dangerous. Something that hasn’t shown itself yet.

He’d made it half way up when Deem returned.

“You can come back down,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

“I just talked to Carma. David is there, at the house. In
Leeds.”

“I thought you said he came with you?”

“He did. We were both here, trancing.”

“Well, your truck’s still outside,” Winn said, climbing down
the steps using the same stairs he’d selected to go up. “How’s that possible? It’s
more than an hour back to Leeds!”

“I have no idea,” she replied.

Winn followed Deem as she rushed into the house. David was
sitting in the back drawing room, wrapped up in several blankets and sipping at
a cup of something hot.

“David!” Deem said. “Are you alright?”

“Fine, I think,” David answered. “I feel fine. Carma insisted
I use these blankets.”

“Because he was stone cold, let me tell you!” Carma said,
arriving in the room with emphatic indignation. “He’s been arguing with me
about it, but I have insisted, as you can see.” She turned to Winn. “Arguing
with me about things is never a good idea.”

“No, I expect not,” Winn replied. Carma turned to leave the
room.

Deem sat next to David. “We were in the house. What
happened?”

“Honestly, I don’t remember any house,” David replied. “Carma
says we left together earlier, but I don’t remember that. I don’t remember
going anywhere with you today.”

Deem turned to look at Winn, confused.

“Memory loss?” Winn offered weakly.

She turned back to David. “You don’t remember driving up to
Paragonah? The Blackham mansion? We were trancing?”

David stared back at Deem, sharing her confused look. He
shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t.”

“Well, what
do
you remember?” she asked.

“I remember being here, earlier,” he replied. “I remember
Carma waking me up, forcing me to sit in all these blankets and drink
something.”

“I’ve brought some of it for all of you,” Carma said,
arriving in the room with a tray of mugs that had little wisps of steam rising
from each. “He was so cold it sent a chill over the entire house. Here, have
some.” She pressed a mug into Winn’s hands, and he took it.

“But what about before that?” Deem asked. “Before Carma woke
you?”

“I must have gone to sleep,” David said. “I remember being
here, in the house, earlier this morning. Doing homework.”

“You don’t remember me knocking on your door, asking if you
wanted to go with me to Paragonah?”

“No,” David said. “Honestly, Deem, I don’t!”

“Something dreadful has happened to him,” Carma said to Deem.
“His memory may return after a while. For now, you’re the only one who might be
able to shed some light on things. Can you tell us what happened? Why did you
go to Paragonah? I remember you mentioning the journal, but maybe you could explain
more and make sure we’re all on the same page. It might jog David’s memory.”

“Alright,” Deem said, leaning back into the sofa as Carma
handed her a mug. She took a sip. “Oh, that’s good!”

“It’s got a nice little zing, doesn’t it?” Carma said. “Now,
start at the beginning, dear.”

 Deem sighed. “I’ve been trying to read the journal I found
in the mine. Lorenzo Lyman’s journal. It’s been slow going, but I’ve found that
the more I try to read it, the more I understand. Re-reading it helps; coming
back to some parts after reading others kind of opened them up. So I’m able to
make out a lot of it that I couldn’t at first.

“Lorenzo’s mother was gifted, that’s how he inherited the
gift. She was one of eight wives of Amasa Lyman, his father, who was an apostle
in the church back in the 1800s. Because of his father’s high profile,
Lorenzo’s public use of his gift was limited to the kind of folk magic people
would accept, like dowsing.

“Then, his father was excommunicated for heresy. It split the
family, with some supporting Amasa, others siding with the church. One of his
sons, Francis, rejected him and went on to become an apostle himself. There’s a
town near Park City that’s named after him. Lorenzo, on the other hand,
supported his father.

“One of Amasa’s interests was Spiritualism. Lorenzo shared
his father’s interest in it, I think because it gave him an outlet for his
gift. They became dedicated practitioners.”

“What is Spiritualism?” Winn asked, sipping his mug. “I’ve
heard the name before, but what is it exactly?”

“Basically a belief in the ability to talk with the dead,”
Deem replied. “A loose religion sprung up around it. It’s still around today,
though it’s nowhere near as popular as it was a century ago, primarily due to
all the fakery and debunking that occurred.”

“Debunking?” Winn asked.

“Spiritualists would conduct elaborate séances to speak with
the dead,” Deem replied. “Mediums who could conduct compelling sessions became
celebrities. Most of them wound up being charlatans and were exposed by critics
as frauds. They’d fake rappings, levitations, ectoplasm. It fell out of favor
as a pastime, and only the hard-core believers stuck with it. Lorenzo was
hard-core.”

“He had cause to be,” Carma interjected. “He had the gift. He
knew it was possible, speaking with the dead. But most people who had the gift
kept Spiritualism at arm’s length. It seemed something normal people liked to
indulge in as a curiosity, and it became such a sideshow that any
self-respecting gifted wouldn’t participate. We would much rather indulge in
private, or with other gifteds, but not with a random group of strangers, a
couple of which might be debunkers set on exposing you and making an
uncomfortable, embarrassing scene!”

“Spoken like you had some experience with it, Carma,” Winn
said.

Carma laughed. “You amuse me, dear boy,” she replied. “I’m
nowhere near that old.”

“How old are you, exactly?” Winn asked. He could see Deem
react to the question in his peripheral vision, shrinking.

“Why, that’s impertinent!” Carma shot back, a look of
distaste on her face. “What happened to the boy who was raised to never ask a
woman her age? I’m thirty-nine, if you must know.” She demurely took another
sip.

“Lorenzo was an avid follower,” Deem continued. “Even when
his father lost interest in it, he kept up, organizing more and more intense
séances. He and a group of friends held routine sessions. One of their favorite
places to stage a séance was the Blackham mansion in Paragonah. The owner
shared their interest in the dead and had enough rooms to put up overnight
guests, which came in handy since their sessions would sometimes go all night.
It had an added bonus of being right next to a graveyard. Lorenzo and his
associates held dozens if not hundreds of séances there over the course of
several years.

“Then, something goes wrong. The journal ends. The final
entry is about going to find a friend of his, a man named Jacob. After that,
nothing, just some drawings.”

“So why did you go in?” Winn asked. “You were trying to
contact Lorenzo?”

“I thought it was worth a shot,” Deem replied. “After
spending so much time with his journal, I was interested in what happened to
him. There’s no record of a gravesite for him, so I thought maybe he was still
at the house, haunting it. After going there, I have a strong sense that he’s present
in the house, somewhere. And then there’s the mirror.”

“The mirror?” Carma asked.

Deem pulled the journal from her backpack and opened it to a
particular page. She turned the book around and showed it to the others.

“Oh, no!” Carma said.

It was a drawing of an oval mirror, the kind that sat on top
of antique sideboards or dressers. It had roughly-drawn ornamentation
surrounding the frame, giving it a gilded appearance.

“Why didn’t you tell me it had a mirror?” Carma moaned.

“I didn’t know it mattered,” Deem replied.

Carma lowered her head to her hand, rubbing the temples with
her long fingers as though she could massage a headache away. “So unaware of
treachery, so naive…” she muttered.

“What?” Deem asked.

“Something tried to contact you?” Carma said, still rubbing
the side of her forehead. “Through that drawing?”

“No,” Deem replied. “But this exact mirror is in the house.”
She pulled the book back so that she could see it too, while still showing it
to the others. “I recognized this mark,” she said, pointing to a nick in the
bottom of the carved frame. “When I…”

The book jumped in her hand, and the drawing of the mirror
suddenly shifted on the page, rising an inch until the top of the mirror had
become cut off.

Startled, Deem dropped the book on the floor and it closed.

“Fuck!” Winn said. “Did you see that, Carma?”

She was still rubbing her temples. “No,” she replied, then
looked up. “Let me guess, something strange happened. With the mirror.”

Deem looked up from the book, at Carma. “It shifted. On the
page.”

“Uh huh,” Carma said, lowering her head back to her hand,
where she resumed the massage. “Well, what’s done is done. I should have been
more careful when you first brought it here.”

“You were careful,” Deem said. “You wrapped it in a red scarf
and then burned the scarf in the BBQ pit, remember?”

“Might be the only thing saving us now,” Carma replied.

Deem looked at Winn, unsure of how to respond. Winn
interpreted it as a plea for help.

“I’m guessing the scarf was designed to absorb something from
the book?” Winn asked. “And by burning it, you took something out of the book
and destroyed it?”

“Hopefully,” Carma said, rising. “Maybe. Perhaps. No way to
know for sure.” She continued mumbling as she walked out of the room and down a
hallway deeper into the house.

“She seems really put out!” David whispered to Deem. “Maybe
you shouldn’t have brought the book into the house at all!”

“How’d I know?” Deem said. “She seemed fine about it after
she wrapped it in the scarf.”

“I think she’s being a little overly dramatic,” Winn
whispered back. “She’s good at that.”

Carma wandered back into the room. “I have a splitting
headache,” she said as she sat back down. “I took ten aspirin. I’m sure it’ll
be gone in a bit.”

“Ten!” Winn said. “Carma! That’s way too many!”

“Oh, did I say ten?” she replied. “I meant to say three.
That’s just me being overly dramatic, I guess.”

“You overheard me,” Winn said.

“There’s little that goes on in this house that I don’t know
about,” Carma replied, “but, I’m sad to say, that journal is one that I missed.
I should have reviewed it with you, Deem. My mistake.”

“It’s no big deal, Carma,” Deem said.

“Oh, dear,” Carma replied, “big problems arise from little
problems that aren’t properly dealt with. Missing the mirror in that book was a
little problem. Now we have a big problem.”

“What problem?” Deem asked. “I just won’t go back to that
house, if it’s as bad as all that. I can live with not knowing.”

“It’s not that simple,” Carma replied. “Look at him, he’s
nodding off. Help me get him to bed, will you, Winn?”

Carma rose from her seat and walked to David, pulling him up
from the blankets. Winn assisted, grabbing David by the other side, and Carma
lifted one of the blankets and wrapped it around him, ushering him upstairs.

Winn helped them both and watched as Carma tucked David in, treating
him as though he was a five-year-old. David was indeed sleepy, and didn’t
resist as Carma pulled the covers over him and added the extra blanket on top.
By the time they left the room, Winn could hear David softly snoring.

They joined Deem in the sitting room.

“Is he OK?” Deem asked Carma.

“I’m afraid not,” Carma replied. “I didn’t want to say it
while he was still in the room, but something’s very wrong with him. Seriously
wrong. And I’m not being overly dramatic.”

“Seriously wrong how?” Winn asked.

“I might be mistaken,” Carma said. “It could be a side effect
from having been blipped from Paragonah to here. But I’m afraid it might be
much worse.”

“Is that what you think happened?” Winn asked. “He was
blipped?”

“Like teleported?” Deem offered.

“Whatever,” Carma said, shaking her head. “One moment he was
in that house with you, and the next he was here. Call it whatever you want.”

“What happened to him in Paragonah, Deem?” Winn asked. “You
two were trancing, and you went exploring inside the house?”

“It was much stranger than that,” Deem replied. “Bizarre,
really.”

“Did you see him disappear?” Winn asked.

“No,” Deem replied. “The house wasn’t the same in the River.
Well, it was, but it was different. Bigger. Duplicated.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Winn replied.

Deem sighed. “I kind of lost track of him. There are three
doors that lead to the outside in that house on the ground level: the front
door, the one in the back in the kitchen, and one on the side, at the end of a hallway.
We didn’t see anything strange or unusual in the house, but when we went
through the front door, we found ourselves walking into the kitchen, through
the back door. When we walked through the kitchen door, the opposite happened —
we came through the front door, into the entryway by the living room. But it
wasn’t the same living room. It was a different one.”