The Haunted Heart: Winter (19 page)

“Why the hell not?” I threw back. “If I was
terminally ill, I guarantee most people would understand wanting to
stop the pain.”

“You’re
not
terminally ill!” he
shouted. “It’s not the same thing and you know it. For Christ’s
sake! We wouldn’t last as a species if we all killed ourselves
every time we lost someone we loved.”

I sucked in a sharp breath, but made myself
speak calmly. “Look, Kirk, I like you,” I said. “I don’t want to
fight with you. You don’t get to have an opinion on this.”

“The hell I don’t!”

I shook my head, determined not to continue
the conversation. I had enough on my mind without arguing this out
with Kirk. Why hadn’t I kept my mouth shut? Now we had this between
us, and I wanted his friendship. It was sort of unsettling to
realize how much I’d come to rely on it.

He faced forward again, staring out the
windshield, and I hoped that perhaps the conversation was over. But
no. He said, “So if you had died, are you saying you’d have wanted
Alan to kill himself?”

“Of course not!” I glared at him. “This
isn’t about what Alan would want or what Alan would do.”

Alan would never have considered taking his
own life. Had our positions been reversed, he’d have been
devastated, but he’d have plowed through all the regular stages of
grief and finally managed to accept. In time he’d have moved on.
I’d have
wanted
that for him. I’d have wanted Alan to be
happy again.

I wished it
had
been me and not Alan.
Not least because Alan would have been so much better at living
without me than I was at living without him.

“What do you think Alan would say if he
could hear you now?”

“Shut the hell up, Kirk!” I yelled,
forgetting about my intention to refuse to engage him on this.
“Have the brains not to argue with me when I’m driving! That’s what
he’d say.”

He didn’t reply.

I waited. Risked a look his way. He was
staring out the side window, but he must have felt my gaze because
he turned his head and gave me a long, dark look.

“Grow the fuck up, Flynn,” Kirk said.

Somehow the wintry disappointment in his
eyes hurt a lot worse than the words.

O
n the flight home
Kirk resorted to in-flight service and I stared numbly out the
windows at the miles and miles of white clouds, the snowfields of
heaven.

Back in Connecticut the snowfields were
grayer and starting to melt around the edges.

We reached the house a little after eleven
o’clock at night. Kirk parked in the shed on his half of the house,
and we got our bags and trudged around to the front, letting
ourselves inside.

The hall light was still burning, just as
we’d left it. There was no sign of any intruder, human or
otherwise. But it felt…wrong. I could feel that familiar pall. That
chill sense of depression, anxiety, loss. It wasn’t me. It was a
relief to recognize that. For once I was a sufferer, not a
carrier.

I looked at Kirk, really looked at him for
the first time since we’d left Louisiana. He looked back at me.
There were lines of fatigue in his face. He looked like he’d aged
years during the past hours.

I put down my carryall on the bottom step of
the staircase. “Well. I guess I should, er, get out there and have
a word with Ines,” I said, and as usual, when worried, I sounded
too flippant, too off-hand. The fact was, I was scared to
death.

Kirk stood in the center of the hall
watching me. “Leave it, Flynn. At least leave it for tomorrow.
Don’t try anything tonight.”

“I wish I could.” I wished, too, that I had
spent less time on our flight brooding over everything Kirk had
said to me, and more time thinking about what I was going to do
once we got home and I had to face the mirror. And Ines.

“Of course you can,” Kirk said impatiently.
“You said it yourself, this may all be resolved tomorrow
anyway.”

“What if it isn’t? What if I miss the window
on this? What if it has to be tonight?” Kirk was looking at me like
I wasn’t making sense, and anxiety goaded me into snapping, “I
don’t think Ines is cycling through her manic phase, Kirk. I don’t
think this is a mood swing or hormones or the pull of the moon. I
think she’s here to stay unless we figure this out. And I don’t
think leaving the mirror bundled up in a shed is going to stop her
from appearing tonight. Tonight of all nights?”

“Then go to a hotel.”

I couldn’t believe he’d said it. “
You
go to a hotel, Kirk.”

Anger lit his eyes. “You don’t know what the
hell you’re doing. You don’t know what you’re tampering with,
Flynn. You don’t have a goddamned plan.”

“Sure I do. I’ll tell her you’re going to
write a news article and set the record straight.” I was half
joking. Half not.

Kirk didn’t see any part of the joke.
“Goddamn it, Flynn,” he yelled. His voice sounded hoarse as though
he’d been shouting at me for hours. And maybe in his thoughts, he
had. “You keep saying you’re not crazy, but
this
is
crazy.”

I yelled back, “The situation is crazy. What
do you want from me? I didn’t ask for this. I
don’t
know
what I’m doing. But I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that we’re
back here tonight on the anniversary of Ines’s death. This
is
the night, Kirk. I can feel it.”

He was right though. I didn’t know what I
was doing. I didn’t have a plan. And I
was
every bit as
afraid as him. More. What if Ines took me over again? What if Ines
did something to me that got me locked up in Silver Springs
permanently? Could she kill me? Could ghosts kill?

What if Ines did something that kept me from
ever seeing Alan again?

“Listen to me.” Kirk reached out as though
to put his hand on my shoulder, but he stopped himself. “I’ve been
thinking about this. We’ll send the mirror back.”

“Send it back where?”

“To Bellehaven. Donate it to the
museum.”

“You’re going to leave Daphne and Maryann to
deal with Ines? Seriously?”

“They won’t have to deal with anything. The
museum is closed at night. Besides, you said it yourself, neither
of them would notice a ghost unless it was standing in front of
them waving its arms.”

I considered this. Bellehaven was Ines’s
home. Maybe that
was
what she wanted? She was buried there.
Her baby was buried there. Maybe the trouble had started by taking
the mirror away from Bellehaven? Maybe Kirk was also right about
the supernatural not manifesting itself to people who weren’t open
to it? Maybe Daphne and Maryann would be happily oblivious of
Ines’s presence. It was true that Ines’s manifestations would take
place after hours.

Or maybe, once she was home, Ines would
never appear again.

I chewed my lip, thinking. Yes. Maybe this
was the solution. Send Ines home.

A temporary solution anyway.

And what was time to someone who had been
waiting a century?

Waiting a century for what?

“What are you thinking?” Kirk asked,
frowning.

What did a ghost want?

Once upon a time Ines hadn’t been a ghost.
She had been a woman, the victim of a great injustice. So what did
a woman like that want?

Justice? Vengeance? Reparation?

What did someone who had suffered a wrong
that could never be put right, want?

Ines must want something or she wouldn’t
still be lingering between worlds.

“Flynn?”

I looked up out of the jumble of my
thoughts. “Let’s ask Ines what she wants,” I said. “Let’s just get
it over with. Do you have a flashlight?”

“Have you heard
anything
I’ve said to
you?”

I considered him for a moment. His hair was
standing on end again. I took in his dark, hollowed gaze, the
compressed line of his mouth. I remembered suddenly how soft and
tender his mouth had been on mine only the night before. I said, “I
think I’ve heard every single thing you’ve said to me, Kirk.”

His eyes flickered and just for an instant
there was something unguarded in his hard, fierce face. After a
tense pause he muttered, “I must be crazier than you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” I sat down
on the step next to my bag and waited while Kirk disappeared into
his rooms. He returned a short while later with one of those big,
heavy duty flashlights.

I raised my brows. “Wow. Do you mine for
coal in your spare time?”

He merely looked pained, leading the way
outside. My heart was galloping as we stepped onto the porch. Our
footsteps on the wooden slats sounded as loud as a crack. The cold,
clear night air felt refreshing after the stale, unhealthy
atmosphere of the house. It helped calm me down a little. I drew a
couple of deep breaths.

Kirk probably thought I was
hyperventilating, but he didn’t say anything.

“Thanks for coming with me,” I said to him
as we went down the steps.

He gave a curt shake of his head, which
could have been any variation on the theme of
don’t mention
it
. I was glad Kirk was with me, though. Glad he hadn’t tried
harder to discourage me or make this any more difficult than it
already was.

We tramped through what was left of the snow
around the house to the shed on the east wing of the house.

“Have you thought about what you’ll do if
she comes out of the mirror again?”

I shook my head. “Run like hell?”

I heard everything he didn’t say, and I
replied, “All I know is, I’m not going to bed to wake up with Ines
standing over me. I’d rather confront her while I’m awake.”

“Yeah, well, good morning Vietnam,” Kirk
muttered. He unfastened the padlock and opened the tall, wooden
door. The hinges screeched so loudly they probably startled
Ines.

The beam of the flashlight played over
broken furniture, a row of tarnished and badly dented milk
canisters, a wheelbarrow with a flat tire…and came at last to rest
on the tarped-and-roped outline of the mirror.

I swallowed and hoped the noise wasn’t
audible.

Kirk set the flashlight on a battered trunk.
He moved past me and began to undo the ropes bundling the tarp. I
went to join him. My hands felt cold and stiff.

Finally the ropes fell away, and Kirk
dragged the tarp off the mirror. The glass surface winked and shone
in the glare of the flashlight like a big jewel. Whether it was its
angle or the poor lighting, none of the items in the shed were
reflected in its bright, blank eye.

I looked at Kirk. His features looked
chiseled from stone, his eyes shining like jet in the eerie
light.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. Why the hell was I
whispering? I said more strongly, “I’m okay now. You don’t have to
stay.”

He actually laughed. “If you think I’m
leaving you, think again.”

That was a huge relief, though I didn’t
think there was a lot Kirk could do against a ghost. Unless he was
carrying one of his trusty salt shakers. I had to swallow a nervous
and inappropriate titter. I took a deep breath and knelt in front
of the mirror, feeling a little silly and a lot self-conscious.
There was no flooring and the ground was damp and hard beneath the
dirty and sketchy covering of hay.

“Turn out the light,” I said after a
moment.

The flashlight clicked off leaving us in
instant and complete darkness.

I stared at the mirror. The minutes passed.
Kirk stood soldier still, a shadowy outline behind me.

I could hear his watch ticking.

Seconds.

Minutes.

Maybe we should have tried to hire a
psychic? Or at least brought a Ouija board with us.

I could feel Kirk behind me though he was so
quiet I couldn’t even hear him breathing.

I began to hope I was wrong. Maybe Ines
wouldn’t show. Maybe she had other plans. Maybe time was irrelevant
to a ghost and tonight wasn’t any more important to Ines than any
other night. I wanted nothing more than to get up, lock the shed,
and go into the house with Kirk.

Maybe he could share some of that whisky.
Maybe after a drink or two I could explain to him. Explain that
even I wasn’t so stupid and selfish that I didn’t understand that
it was different now. In November I hadn’t understood what I was
doing. Nobody could blame me for that because, let’s face it, I had
been totally and clinically
wack
. But it was different now.
I was different. And I did understand that. And I didn’t want to
hurt anybody. It was just…

Behind us, the shed door creaked in the
still night air. The moonlight flickered on the blind eye of the
mirror.

No, the flicker was within the mirror. I
heard Kirk’s quiet intake of breath. My heart jumped. My palms were
instantly sweaty.

Game time.

I closed my eyes and concentrated as I had
the first night when I had believed, hoped, that spark of light was
Alan.

I let my mind go blank, let go of my fear,
opened myself to…

She was there
. Right there. It was
hard not to recoil from that black miasma. My heart felt tight in
my chest, my lungs too small for the amount of air I needed.

I opened my eyes.

Ines filled the mirror just as I had seen
her the first time, beautiful, mocking, malevolent.

“Ines?” My voice sounded too loud. I leaned
forward, staring in at her, staring until she saw me too. She did
see me. Her eyes widened. We gazed at each other. I licked my lips.
My voice cracked as I said, “You have to go to the light.”

She seemed to fade a little, dissolve into
the swirling mist around her. Or was she the mist? I couldn’t tell.
At moments her features were as clear as if she stood in front of
me, and then they seemed to melt away, her eyes and mouth becoming
no more real than smoke in water.

“You’re dead, Ines,” I said. “You have to go
into the light.”