The Haunted Heart: Winter (11 page)

“Flynn, wait a minute.” Kirk’s hand closed
on my shoulder. I tried to throw him off, but he hung on. “Stop.
I’m not saying that to — it’s not a criticism. Exactly. We’ve got
to figure this out. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You figure it out. You’ve got all the
answers.” I tried to free myself again, but his grip tightened on
my shoulders, his large, warm, capable hands holding me in
place.

“Hear me out.”

“I’ve heard plenty already. You’re right. I
am depressed. I am grieving. I am scared —” I stopped before I had
to add “humiliated” to the list. One thing I was not, was in the
mood for grappling with a mostly naked guy. True, it was a little
warmer downstairs, but why the hell did he have to keep parading
around without clothes on? And why the hell did he have to keep
standing there, holding me in a grip that was both hard and kind,
gazing down at me so solemnly. Warm, male, alive.

“You coming to warn me just now? That took
guts. I know that. And I know you’re not afraid of dying. So what
is it you
are
afraid of? What is it you think this ghost,
this specter can do to you? That’s what we have to figure out. Once
we work that out —”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking
about!” This time I did free myself. Or maybe Kirk let me go before
we got into a wrestling match.

He didn’t say anything, just continued to
frown at me, black brows in a straight line, but I was beginning to
know his frowns and his scowls, and although I didn’t want to see
it, didn’t want to recognize it, there was concern there. Concern
for me.

It brought the tears back to my eyes, closed
my throat, made my sinuses burn. I didn’t want to feel this, didn’t
want to feel anything. Not even anger. It had been an exhausting
evening. Harrowing. Made worse by the reminder that people were
worried about me, cared about me, refused to let go of me.

Refused to let me let go.

I shook my head. Kirk said quietly,
“Whatever you think, I am your friend. Let me help you, Flynn.”

“You can’t help me.” I drew a deep, shaky
breath. “See, that’s the thing. I don’t need anyone’s help. And as
far as what I’m afraid of? I don’t know. I don’t know how to —”
Tears spilled from my eyes, running into my mouth. I had to stop
and wipe my face on my jacket sleeve. “I didn’t believe…there was
anything after. I didn’t believe in heaven or…I sure as hell didn’t
believe in ghosts or anything like that. I didn’t believe. But now
I know…there is something. And Alan is out there, part of that…and
I don’t know if I’m going to see him again or not. If she can stop
me…if she can change what happens for me and Alan.” My voice
cracked on Alan’s name.

I hadn’t cried when Alan died. It wasn’t
shock or numbness. People had that wrong and kept making a big
point of my lack of tears, trying to say it was denial or refusal
to accept. It wasn’t that at all. There was too much feeling to get
out. Too much feeling to leak out through my eyes or nose, let
alone form coherent words. It was a tidal wave building and
building and building. There was no way to funnel that. Release
meant annihilation. I knew that, even if they didn’t, and now there
was no holding it back.

It broke out of me in a coughed sob. I
struggled to get breath, lungs expanding, but another of those sobs
wrenched out, half strangling me. And then another. It felt like my
chest was convulsing, ripping apart. I didn’t remember how to cry.
The more I fought it, the more it hurt.

I didn’t even know what I was crying for.
Alan? Me? Uncle Winston and his little shop of horrors? Kirk
emptying boxes of salt on hardwood floors?

There wasn’t any stopping it, it was coming
like a flash flood of rocks and boulders and sand, knocking me to
my knees. Somehow Kirk was there, holding me in powerful, warm
arms, keeping my head above water while those sounds tore from me,
rending the silence of the room, the house, the night.

He didn’t say anything. Or if he did, it was
drowned out by the roar in my head.

I don’t know how long it went on, but
finally there was nothing left, not a drop, not a hiccup, nothing
left but the occasional exhausted shudder. Kirk was still crouched,
still supporting me, cradling my head on his shoulder. All at once
I was so tired I could have closed my eyes and gone right to sleep.
I felt wrung out, unsubstantial. And yet somehow not empty, not
hollow in the same way I had been before.

Peace? I wasn’t sure what that was. But
something inside me had changed, relaxed, slipped free.

Kirk got me to my feet, and it was a relief
that he didn’t try to talk to me, didn’t say a word, just guided me
to the sofa, helped me out of my jacket, out of my boots, helped me
lie back against the cushions. He piled those mothball scented
blankets on me — they were starting to smell familiar, even
comforting. The only light came from the open bedroom door and the
darkness was soothing and restful.

I closed my eyes.

* * * * *

I woke to a sound like the Crack of
Doom.

I tried to pry my eyes open.

Earthquake? Tornado? Demolition Derby?

No.

Snoring.

The kind of snoring probably not heard since
the last woolly mammoth entered the deep freeze.

I sat up, dislodging what appeared to be a
couple of small silver balls, which jingled merrily down the sweep
of olive brown blankets till they hit the floor and, still tinkling
with holiday cheer, rolled away under the coffee table.

Kirk, sprawled uncomfortably in a
tangerine-hued “easy chair” that looked anything but easy, sat up
with a snort. He peered at me through the gloom.

“Er, sorry. I think I was sleeping on your
jingle bells,” I said.

He cleared his throat a couple of times and
got out a scratchy, “You okay?”

“Disappointed Santa didn’t bring me a fire
engine. Otherwise fine.”

Kirk didn’t say anything, and some quality
in his silence, raised prickles of unease on the back of my
neck.

“And how are you?” I asked politely.

“Fine.”

“What time is it?” I shoved the blankets
back and another silver ball rolled down the slide of bedding, it’s
jingle muffled by the folds. “What the heck?” I found my cell
phone. 11:57.

“It’s practically noon!” I told Kirk. “I
slept twelve hours.”

“Monday.”

“Sorry?” I began to think the trouble I was
having reading Kirk’s expression had nothing to do with the poor
light.

“It’s noon on Monday. You’ve been sleeping —
mostly — for thirty-six hours.”

“
What
?”

“Check the date on your phone.”

After a moment, I looked down at the screen
on my phone. Monday, February 13, 11:58. “That’s weird. I haven’t
been sleeping more than a couple of hours at a time.”

Yeah. It was a lot weirder than
oversleeping. That was more like a coma. Or catatonia. Or the first
day of summer vacation.

Kirk tossed aside the blanket he’d been
using, and rose. I saw that he was dressed in jeans and a corduroy
shirt.

“I don’t understand.” I knew from the way he
was acting there was something more at work here than me
oversleeping. Mostly I was grateful that whatever had happened, he
hadn’t phoned my parents.

“Let’s go get something to eat.”

“Go out?”

“Yeah. Let’s go get breakfast.”

“Well…but wait a minute. I have to shower. I
have to brush my teeth.” My mouth felt like a moldy carpet and I
urgently had to pee. “Is the mirror — where’s the mirror?”

“The mirror’s in the shed on the east wing,
wrapped in a tarp. Not that it makes any difference.”

I was getting more confused by the moment.
“How did you move it by yourself?”

“Using the tarp and a rope tied to my
truck.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Just let me wash up
and change my clothes.”

“You can wash up down here.”

“Now you’re starting to weird me out.”

“I think it’s better if we stick
together.”

A cold sinking feeling washed through me.
“Look, I know I was — I know I lost it last — Saturday night. But
I’m okay. I’m not going to jump out a window or anything. Really.”
Now I was worried that maybe he
had
reported my breakdown to
my parents. Were they on their way to Connecticut? Was Dr. Kirsch
going to show up any second with his trusty hypodermic needle?

Kirk was shaking his head. “This isn’t
anything to do with that. At least, not directly. I hope. Either
way, I think we need to get off the premises where we can talk
freely.”

I opened my mouth, closed it. Opened it
again to say, “All at once I feel better. You sound crazier than
me.”

“If you’re going to wash, go wash. We don’t
have a lot of time.”

I wasn’t in the shower long enough for the
water to heat, and I made do with rubbing toothpaste over my teeth
with my finger. Kirk was tossing his keys impatiently when I left
the bathroom.

I followed him out to his truck. When we
were on our way, I said, “I guess I need to let Trooper Dunne know
the mirror has been returned.”

Kirk gave one of those uncommunicative
grunts.

“Will you still help me take that mirror
over to Mystic Barne this afternoon?”

“I’m not sure it’s going to be that
easy.”

“Because whoever stole it brought it
back?”

He said grimly, “That’s got to factor into
our plans.”

I was glad he said “our.” “Plans” didn’t
come amiss either.

I said, “We were fine all the time the
mirror was gone. That must mean it has a limited range.”

“It looks that way, but we could be wrong
about that. We don’t know anything for sure. Except that it seems
to be getting stronger.”

“It,” I said thoughtfully, watching the
pretty shop windows of Chester slide by.

“I don’t know what you want to call it.
Entity? Apparition? Whatever it is that uses that mirror as its
home base.”

“I’ve always read these descriptions of
haunted inns and castles, and they always made them sound sort of
cute and cozy. Like it would be no problem to coexist with a lost
spirit. But this thing is nothing like that. It’s angry and…”

“Dangerous,” Kirk agreed. He looked away
from the road. “You feel that too?”

I nodded. “Antique or no antique, maybe
destroying the mirror
is
the only answer.”

“I don’t think the physical destruction of
the mirror is going to get us anywhere. And at least this way we
have a focal point for her. If she’s just free floating out there,
that might make everything worse.”

“She can get out of the mirror now.”

“She may not be able to move far from it,
though.”

“She can move from mirror to mirror. We know
that for sure. Of course if we destroy the mirror she might take up
residence in the bathroom cabinet.”

He snorted. “When the mirror was gone we
didn’t have any problem.”

“True. But the mirror didn’t stay gone. If
we knew who she was, maybe we could figure out what she wants.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want anything anyone
could give her. Maybe the only thing she wants is to cause
harm.”

“So what are you thinking? An exorcism?”

“In ghost hunting circles it’s called a
cleansing.”

I tried to laugh, but it wasn’t very
funny.

We had breakfast sandwiches at The Villager
on Main Street. I was surprised to find I was actually hungry.
Starving in fact. The coffee was hot and strong, and the egg and
cheese and tomato on fresh baked bread tasted like the best thing
I’d ever had. I ate every bite. Kirk ate two sandwiches.

Sitting in the cozy, charming café
surrounded by antique signs, historic black and white photos, faded
wooden crates, it seemed crazy to be talking about ghosts and,
well, evil. But evil was what we were really faced with, wasn’t
it?

I stared at the large sepia-toned mural of
woods and a giant castle. I said, “I’m no expert on this stuff,
obviously, but in the movies the only way to get rid of a ghost is
to figure out why it’s still hanging around. Maybe I need to go
back to the beginning.”

Kirk’s dark brows drew together in that
stern line. “Go back to the beginning how?”

“I know where my uncle purchased the mirror.
A plantation called Bellehaven somewhere in Baton Rouge. Maybe I
need to…I don’t know? Maybe I should go down there. See what I can
learn.”

He stared intently at me. “No. In fact, this
is what I was going to tell you. You have to leave. You have to go
home to Virginia.”

“Huh?”

“You have to leave. When we get back to the
house, you have to pack your stuff and go.”

He didn’t seem to be kidding. In fact, he
was about as sincere as I’d seen him. He actually looked sort of
regretful.

I said kindly, “Kirk, I’m technically the
landlord. So if anyone has to leave, it would be you. Not that I
want you to leave, unless you want to take the mirror with you, in
which case you have my blessing.”

He got out his cell phone and began pressing
buttons. “You can’t stay, Flynn. It’s not safe for you.”

“That’s so sweet,” I said shortly. “But I’m
sta —” I broke off as Kirk held his phone up to show me a grainy
video on the small screen. I leaned forward for a better look,
trying to hear the blurred video.

I felt an unnerving shift, as though the air
pressure had changed, as though a trap door had opened. The bottom
had just dropped out of the only reality I knew. The lighting was
terrible, but even so, I could see the video was of me. I was
sitting on Kirk’s sofa and I was speaking quietly, venomously.
Quietly, venomously in French.

“T
hat was you last
night,” Kirk said. In case I missed the point.

It took me a second or two, but I got out,
“It turns out I don’t like having my sleep disturbed either.”
Neither of us laughed.