The Ghost and Miss Demure (3 page)

A belated sense of concern that had been lacking for the last twenty miles, due mostly to her inability to give attention to anything beyond skiing down the slick road with her bald tires, now prompted her to think carefully about the air of
desertion along this path. She was pretty certain that this was the road to the plantation, but…

If you go into the woods today, better not go alone.

“Shut up,” she said to the taunting singsong voice in her head. Of all the times to think of that tune! But Karo still looked about cautiously to see if there was any proof that she was truly on the drive for Belle Ange. There were no conveniently placed signs. The urns and gate were suggestive, but she would have preferred a note from her employer, or a nice brass plaque announcing the plantation by name—unless these were hidden under the vines, which were pretending to be ivy but which were actually some parasitic plant whose roots were trying to tear the gates down.

“Well, hell.”

A moment’s examination showed that the dark shrubs were actually carefully maintained by human hands. The narrow tunnel of birch and quickthorn disappearing into the distance was deliberately trimmed from a living canopy that blotted out the sun. The path would be colorful in the spring when bursting with new leaves and blossoms, but just now it was rather rank, and she did not care for serpentine undulations moving through the foliage, especially those right near the soggy ground.

“Wild hares. Birds. The wind,” she told herself. But she didn’t believe it, not all the way down in her bones where she was still shaking. Could the rain have driven out snakes and forced them to search for higher ground?

Karo’s eyes moved higher in the gloom, searching for any bit of sky. She forced herself to be
reasonable in her reaction. The fear pinching her shoulders was not precognition; it was just shock and nerves. Anyone would be upset after such a close call as she had suffered, and there was no need to be hysterical. The sky was still there, even if she couldn’t see it.

“Everything is going to be fine.” But the ranks of whiplike saplings above and to the side, which danced so eerily in the blanched light of afternoon, were certainly an odd choice of roadside landscape for a tourist attraction—unless it was a Halloween haunted mansion.

There were probably plans to change this path before the plantation was opened to the public. The owner would have to do something, she thought with a flash of comforting common sense, because this was strictly a one-lane road and he couldn’t risk the sorts of accidents that could happen with gawking tourists who always end up driving the wrong way. So everything was okay, right?

Karo took a deep breath and made herself stop listening to the frightened voice in her head that was urging her to find some other way out of this predicament. No, there wasn’t any other option but walking this dark path. Ominous or not, she would have to trot up the road to the house and find someone with oven mitts or fireplace tongs and large shoulders to help her with the Honda. It would be stupid to risk a long drive back to the highway in the rain and growing twilight just because a pair of funeral urns and a close call with a freak lightning strike had shaken her nerves. The trees weren’t really shuffling closer together, lacing
their branches into a tight cocoon to prevent her escape. That was nonsense, freak optics and the result of reading too much of the wrong kind of fiction.

“Don’t be such a coward.” Karo shut off the car engine and thrust open her door. Water attacked her. The sticky dribble burned, perhaps having picked up some toxins from the local noxious plants as it passed through the trees.

If you go into the woods today…

She slammed her door resolutely and stepped around the smoking birch tree’s burly bulk, trying to blot out the sickening smell of charred honey that rose surprisingly from the exploded oyster and clam shells. Drizzle fell from the gold trees in a thin drooling veil.

Karo jogged quickly through the shadowed wood, looking neither right nor left in case there were indeed trolls or wolves hiding in the shrubbery; if they were there, she didn’t want to know about them. It was enough to watch for poison ivy and copperheads; thoughts of bigger beasties she couldn’t handle.

If you go into the woods today, better not go alone…

What gruesome tunes her brain was playing! What moron had ever sung that song to her as a child? Still, it had a good galloping rhythm and Karo used it to set her pace. Eventually the tunnel widened and she stepped onto a lawn riddled with tree roots from a giant oak that grew in its middle. Something moved overhead, and she dropped to her knees gasping in fear. For one horrible moment she thought she saw bodies swaying in the
ancient limbs, soldiers dressed in Yankee uniforms, but a second terror-stricken look showed her it was only Spanish moss being tossed about by the wind. Feeling foolish, she regained her feet and trotted double-time toward the clearing where the light was somewhat brighter.

At last the main house came into view. It grew and grew with every step. It was an enormous thing that defied the usual rule of symmetry that was the passion of the early American architects. It was almost Romanesque Revival, mated with Gothic and loco rococo. Arched windows, iron railings and flying buttresses were grafted on at random to the asymmetrical turrets and gables. The river stone walls faded into deep shadows as they disappeared into the restless, golden trees. Up and up the house went, like a Gothic Jack’s beanstalk.

“Holy spit.” Karo’s footsteps slowed. This hybrid mongrel was looking very familiar. A small Hearst’s Castle. Only, more sinister. This was not a gracious, sprawling mansion where Ashley Wilkes would live. Frankenstein’s monster, maybe, but not a southern gentleman.

Karo craned her neck further. The round rocks gleamed damply in a stray bit of light that had found its way through the haze and gold leaves, and pointed to the diamond panes of glass with a bright finger. She was pleasantly surprised by a lovely tangle of roses that were rampaging up the south side of the mansion in sprawling abandon. The storm had stripped it of many blooms and hurled them to the ground, but others still clung tenaciously.

No, there wasn’t a single sign of the expected early eighteenth or even seventeenth century architectural order here. No courteous Georgian windows lined up in neat rows, no symmetrical Greek Revival columns holding up an Athenian temple. It was plain to see that Belle Ange—if this was indeed the Vellacourt family plantation and not some other unknown mansion she had found while driving lost in the rain—was totally unexpected.

She failed to see any sign of life or light inside the strange house, or any vehicles in the drive. But, perhaps the power was out. That would be a comfortable reason for the place to be dark and silent. She liked that explanation much better than the idea that she was alone in an abandoned wood with a rather creepy house that wasn’t Belle Ange, because that would mean another walk down the wriggling green maw behind her. Not good. Her stores of courage were depleted.

Karo stood for a long minute absorbing the neo-Gothic splendor that sprawled before her. The disquieting feeling grew that it was, in spite of the scarlet roses and quaintly crazy roofline, a less-than-welcoming abode. Still, in the sunshine it would have a certain storybook appeal that tourists might like and that would make her job easier…

As if sensing her qualified praise and wishing to deter her from any comforting thoughts, all stray sunbeams were snuffed by roiling clouds, and the damp twilight and lonely silence settled back around her in a cheerless shade. Soon there was only the gentle drizzle of rain on stone, and the sly, sighing wind for company. The whole
scene put her in mind of some of the more sinister fairy tales in her mother’s antique books, the ones that hadn’t been cleaned up for children. Sleeping Beauty, perhaps. Or Cinderella. No, she had it now! It was the cover of every gothic horror novel she’d ever read! And wasn’t that a cheery thought with darkness coming on?

As she wrestled with her nerves, trying to work up the courage to actually walk up the flight of shallow stairs that led to the imposing front doors and use the knocker, Karo finally noticed that a faint light was burning high up in a north end gable, nearly hidden by the towering trees that leaned against the wall. It was steady, like a weak, guiding star, and was just as comforting to see, for it meant that someone was home after all besides the vampires she was imagining. She was not the only living being in this dangerous forest.

If you go into the woods today…watch out for ghosties and ghoulies, and long-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night
.

“What? Shut up.” The voice wasn’t even getting the lyrics right, and her consciousness chided her cowardice now that a light was plainly seen.

It’s just
one
light
.

“Yeah, but one is enough for me.” Her voice was barely audible over the droning buzz, the aural remnant of the lightning strike that continued to assault her ears.

Feeling foolish for talking to herself, Karo pushed forward. She arrived at the top of the stone steps and took a moment to smooth her blouse and finger comb her hair. It was a wasted effort at respectability,
but it had again occurred to her, now that her incipient panic had died, that filthy and hysterical and very late was not the best way to present herself to a new employer. Everyone knew that the British were neat and punctual. They probably appreciated those features in their staff.

The iron-studded door was an impressive specimen that some desecrater had stolen from a thirteenth-century Spanish fortress and then shaved down to fit this smaller doorway. The family was obviously not bothered by anachronisms or adaptation of historical artifacts.

She raised her hand to an inappropriate Victorian knocker affixed by a tarnished spike ala Martin Luther. Karo hesitated a moment. It seemed pretentious in the extreme to use this shiny klaxon that would undoubtedly sound like a Civil War cannonade inside the house, and yet there was no doorbell, and she had no desire to further damage her hands or shoes by pounding on the heavy wood with bare fists and poorly protected feet.

If you go into the woods today, better not go alone…

“Just shut up with the singing already.”

She picked up the gargoyle’s lolling tongue between finger and thumb. But, before she could let the heavy brass fall, the east wind, in another of its irregular fits and starts, snatched the knocker from her hand and hurled the entire door open—just like, she supposed, it had done with the Honda. Unlatched doors seemed to be the order of the day, and this one slammed against the interior wall with casual brutality. Karo winced as violent echoes receded into the darkness beyond the wide entry.

The crash should have brought someone running posthaste to see which army had invaded, but not a soul appeared to demand that she be more careful of the priceless, fine oak paneling that filled the dark and no doubt haunted hall beyond. She looked about uneasily and ventured a tentative hello.

“Please come in,” a voice replied from the hollow house. “Enter freely and of your own will.”

Karo gasped at the quiet whisper, which sounded rather a lot like Bella Lugosi in his most famous role, not sure that she had actually heard the voice through the continued ringing in her ears. She waited anxiously for some other sign of a person within, but as she hesitated on the polite side of the wide threshold, there was nothing more than the patter of renewed rain behind her and the strong wind pressing at her back.

“Come in, girl! Come in and know me better!” breathed the impatient voice, the bad Carpathian accent forgotten.

Karo looked about quickly, but no one was there. It was a fortunate circumstance that no one in her family—well, besides Mom—was given to nervous breakdowns, because if one was predisposed in that direction this situation would definitely send you there.

If you go into this house today, better not go alone…
.

Karo took what was left of her sniveling courage in hand and stepped over the threshold. The wind died abruptly as she walked down the hall, much as if she had closed the heavy door upon it.

But she hadn’t shut the portcullis yet, and had no plans to. Not until she knew who had called
her inside. After all, there hadn’t been a nice little sign on the door saying: B
ELLE
A
NGE—VISITORS WELCOME
.

She walked slowly over the gloomy stone floor, letting her eyes grow used to the dusk. Once past the inevitable suit of rusting armor standing at the entrance like a hostile sentinel ready to cleave and chop with its corroded battle ax, Karo could see a dim light coming from a short, arched passage to the right. A thin, stooped opening at the end seemed to lengthen and waver as if lit by firelight or a flaring torch.

“Oh, goody. A troll hole,” she muttered. “Let’s hope he’s not hungry.”

Karo walked forward cautiously, resisting the urge to duck under the low ceiling that pressed far too close overhead. She halted at the dwarf-sized door at the end of the corridor and rested a hand against it. Her breath echoed down the tiny tunnel behind her as she stood watching feathery shadows dance around the edge of the partially closed portal.

“Hello,” she said again, though this time it took more effort to force the words out. She breathed in hot air and felt like she was going under sedation, floating at the edge of consciousness. There still came no answer.

If you go into a house today, better not go alone…

Though she half expected the door to slam shut against her, Karo pushed it wide with tingling fingers and stared into a library. Her relief was immediate and out of all proportion. A small fire had been kindled in the hearth of an enormous fireplace constructed of the local river stone. The
tiny blaze gave off unbelievable heat and set her clothes to steaming like dry ice in coffee. It was only then that Karo realized how cold she still was. With her coating of shell dust dripping off her drenched coat, she must look like a snowman who had blundered indoors and was beginning to melt.