“Sorry?” said Lovie, “found who?”
“Well…” Nidhi took a shaky breath. “Sorry. It’s still a little hard to talk about.”
My mouth went dry. I struggled to swallow. “Graves,” I finished for her.
“Yeah,” she said lowering her head.
“How many were there?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Eight,” said Nidhi somberly. “All women. All were pregnant.”
I shuddered and nodded. “This house was once a kind of hospital. A doctor performed illegal abortions here, and some of the young women met their tragic ends in the rooms upstairs.”
Nidhi looked both horrified but undeniably intrigued, and seemed happy to finally have some answers surrounding the strange events that kept happening in her new home.
“Have you had any contact with other spirits in the house? Or just the dreams?” asked Lovie.
“Oh, yes! Lots of things have happened. I don’t know which are caused by the spirits and which come from my overactive imagination. Sometimes, I think there could be more than one… but only one is actively hostile, the one who screams I stole her baby. Still, my husband and I both had buyer’s remorse. All of our money is currently tied up in other investments so we can’t move. Mark agreed to let me bring in some professionals from the ghost world, although he says he doesn’t believe any of it. I’ve talked to a few people from shows about the paranormal and I’ve been doing a lot of research! I read everything I could find about the occult. You three are the second group to come through. For all their fancy gadgets and gizmos, the folks from the show didn’t find much. Where did y’all say you were from again?” She smiled up at us.
“New Orleans,” said Lovie proudly.
“Well, you probably need to get to work. Let me show you upstairs. I just made some iced tea, can I offer you some?”
“Yes, ma’am, that would be lovely,” Ryan piped up.
“Great, follow me!”
She walked toward the steps that led up to the second landing hallway. I marveled at how familiar some of the property was. The house was in even better condition today than it was in 1910. We followed her up the stairs, and this time, they didn’t creak at all under our weight. I was still struggling to get my heart rate to slow down, and my anxiety mounted as we made it to the second floor. I half expected to see the doctor’s lifeless body lying there. Thankfully, it was all freshly painted and covered with pale green carpet. We followed her down the hallway. Too late, I realized we were heading for Dorothy’s room.
“The man from the show said this is where he felt the most energy, but he also said there was something wrong with the spirit. He couldn’t communicate with it. Hopefully, you’ll have more luck?”
“Thank you,” said Lovie kindly. She stepped toward the door and nodded, “I can certainly feel it more strongly here than I did on the main floor.”
“I’ll go get the tea!” chirped Nidhi like we were about to have a Tupperware party. She ambled off toward the stairs. I started to feel dizzy. It was getting hard to breathe. The last time I entered through that door, I saw one of the most horrifying sights of my life. Nothing could erase that ghastly image from my memory.
Lovie turned to me, “Is this where it happened, Peyton?”
I couldn’t speak. So I just nodded. “I thought you said we needed the help of a more active spirit. Won’t we have to find one that’s already interacting with the physical world before I can cross the boundary between the two?”
“Can’t you feel it?” asked Lovie.
“Feel what?” Just as I said it, the temperature of the room dropped and I felt pressure on my chest. We experienced a pretty severe shift in the energy when we came up to the landing. I thought it was just my own anxiety about returning to the horrible scene. But it was more than that, like a draft swept through the room. I nodded, realizing that Dorothy’s spirit wasn’t the only one that lingered here.
“Well, I don’t feel a thing,” said Ryan unhelpfully. “But it is a beautiful building.”
He reached up and felt the doorframe of Dorothy’s room. The ornate wood siding was indeed beautiful, but I couldn’t calm my uneasy thoughts long enough to appreciate it. Lovie cast him a dark look. She slid her large bag over her shoulder and started to unpack the candles and supplies right there in the hallway. She handed me a small, drawstring, black bag. The tight space was quickly filled with the scents of candles and aromatic herbs.
Nidhi reappeared at the top of the stairs with a pitcher and a tray holding three glasses. She set the tray down and peered at the candles and supplies on her floor curiously.
“Wow, the people from the show never used any of those,” she said. “Do you have more equipment?”
Lovie looked deeply offended. “Contacting another realm is a deeply spiritual act, one that cannot be subverted by gleaming screens and recording devices,” she huffed.
Nidhi smiled apologetically and watched Lovie shake a green glass bottle, causing droplets of liquid to fall on the floor. She lit three candles and set them in a triangle in front of her.
“Peyton,” said Lovie, ignoring Nidhi, “Lie down please.”
I followed her instructions and lay down on the floor. Lovie took a book from her bag and started to recite from its pages. She paused occasionally to sprinkle more water over me before she plodded on. I started to feel dazed, like a fog had slipped over the room. Ryan stopped feeling the doorway and came over to sit beside me. I could feel him next to me but I could no longer see him; the corners of my vision were black.
“Okay, Peyton, I need you to focus on your breathing.”
I did as she said and pulled my attention toward the slow rise and fall of my chest. I started to feel the way I did in my dreamscapes with Drake. I’d gotten so used to closing my eyes to speak to him, I didn’t even realize I could speak to someone else and not him. I always assumed he created the space, not I. But as my eyes fluttered closed, I sensed that my surroundings had changed.
I heard whispering but it wasn’t anyone I recognized. I could still hear Lovie but her voice assumed a new quality. The sound was distorted and muffled, like she was at the other end of a tunnel. The whispering got louder and I opened my eyes. Lovie and Ryan were no longer by my sides. Instead, the hallway was back to the way it was when I first saw it. My throat constricted with fear, and Lovie’s voice got louder. I was terrified, but I knew this was the only way to help Dorothy’s spirit. I focused on my breathing again and Lovie’s voice moved farther and farther away. The scene around me came in clearer and I could make out the source of the whispering now. It was coming from behind a door I never entered. There were four doors along the hallway. The first was my examination room and the fourth was Dorothy’s bedroom. Now, the door to the third room was open, and from behind it I could hear a woman’s voice.
I sat up, shivering with the change in temperature.
I looked out the hallway window. Out on the grounds were spectral images of people, men and women, roaming aimlessly by the forest’s edge. I made it! Scanning the hallway, I first felt surprised. I thought there would be more spirits living in the house than outside it.
As if in response to my thoughts, the ghost of a girl in a knee-length, yellow dress appeared.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said to me.
“Sorry, but what?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” she repeated emphatically.
“I need your help,” I said, unsure of where her warning was coming from.
The girl stepped a little farther away from her door and looked up and down both ends of the hallway. She was young, maybe seventeen at most.
“Can you help me?” I asked. She motioned me toward her, still looking up and down the hallway anxiously.
I stood up, my head suddenly very light. I walked over to her door and followed her inside the cold, drafty room. This one was larger than the others. I saw the same furniture I’d seen in the other rooms but the bed was position
ed under the window and it had a pink blanket draped over it. The effect was decidedly less chilling and cold than the examination room and Dorothy’s bedroom.
“I’m looking for Dorothy,” I tried again when the girl remained silent. Her long hair fell in pretty, golden ringlets away from her face and her big, blue eyes snapped to mine when she heard the name. She raised a finger to her lips.
“Shhhh! She’ll hear you!” said the young girl.
“Who will hear me?” I asked but my question was interrupted by a shrill shriek. From next door I heard a scream so bloodcurdling, my whole body shivered. I locked my eyes on the girl whose face was frozen in an expression of terror.
“MY BAAAABY!” came the spooky wail from the next room over. It was followed by another wail. I knew the scream well, having heard it only twenty-four hours previously. It was the cry of Dorothy Arnold.
TWENTY-SIX
The golden-haired girl and I stared at each other, listening in abject horror to the cries next door. Suddenly, I realized why all the other ghosts were outside. Nidhi’s words came back to me, “only one of the ghosts is hostile.”
“She’s deranged,” the girl whispered.
“Her spirit is trapped then?” I asked, crestfallen. If Dorothy were continuously reliving the scene of her death on an endless loop, there wasn’t much I could do for her. As Christopher explained, those ghosts existed on a different plane entirely. I couldn’t make contact with Dorothy even if I wanted to.
“Trapped?” asked the girl, her eyes flicking nervously to the door of her room.
“Her spirit. I mean, I won’t be able to talk to her like I’m talking to you. She’s blocked, isn’t she?”
The girl shook her head. “I already told you,” she said, her whisper even lower and more intense. “She’s not trapped. She’s just deranged.”
Her eyes left mine as her head snapped in the direction of the door. Her already wide eyes grew even larger. I followed the line of her gaze until I saw what was making her back away slowly.
Dorothy was standing in the doorway, but she wasn’t the Dorothy I’d seen in life. Her hair was a disheveled heap piled on top of her head. Her eyes were wide and glazed. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth in a snarl. She was a ghostly white and her skin glistened with moisture. Her nightgown was stained with blood.
“You!” she screamed when she saw me. Her nostrils flared and I looked back at the girl for an explanation. She was pressed up against the corner of the room.
“You took my baby!” screamed Dorothy in the same bloodcurdling screech from before.
“What? No!” My mind flashed to taking Alice from the hospital. Then it occurred to me that she wasn’t really seeing me, and her eyes were unfocused. Nidhi said she heard those same screams.
“She can’t hear you,” said the girl. “She won’t listen to anyone. Not even me.”
Dorothy nearly growled, her eyes now deadly. I didn’t need to be told the woman was dangerous. She looked nothing like her former self. She rushed me and before I had time to step aside, her hands found my shoulders and the whole weight of her crashed into me, causing both of us to fall to the ground. If Ada’s contact with Dorothy during the moments when she died at the hospital weren’t enough to extract her from her deranged state, what could I possibly say to make her listen?
Dorothy’s hands found my neck. I wrapped my hands around hers, trying to pry her off. She was surprisingly strong for a ghost.
“My baby!” she wailed, pressing her fingers tightly around my throat.
With all of my strength, I bucked my hips forward and Dorothy tumbled off me.
“Help me!” I yelled to the girl. She came over and looked at me apprehensively. I had Dorothy pinned beneath me now and was trying to hold down one of her hands. The other was still flailing wildly, groping to find my throat. The girl knelt down beside Dorothy. She was clearly terrified but she managed to take hold of Dorothy’s wildly swinging arm and pin it down on the floor.
Dorothy’s eyes were inhuman. I couldn’t even see a spark of the woman she’d been before in life. I had no idea how to get through to her. She stared back at me without really seeing me, and just grunted and moaned, struggling to get free. Her head rocked back and forth tirelessly. She was feral, animalistic. I looked at the girl who seemed just as terrified as me.
Dorothy started spluttering now, “My baby, my baby, my baby,” she cried over and over.
I continued to hold her down, wracking my brain for a way to get through to her.
“Dorothy,” I said calmly. Her eyes stayed unfixed but she quieted slightly and looked up at me. “Dorothy,” I repeated slowly. “I have your baby.”
She screamed and her whole body lurched forward and contorted so violently, I almost lost my grip on her. We clung to her tightly, until my arms and legs began to ache with the strain of holding her. Slowly, her writhing slowed. Her chest rose and fell in large, shuddering gasps. She stared up at me, tears in her eyes.
“You took my baby?” she said. Her voice was lower now. Her eyes still weren’t seeing me but at least, her body had calmed down somewhat. She still struggled, but her arms were not moving in all directions; now they just reached for my throat.
“She’s safe, Dorothy. Your baby is safe.”
“They want to kill her! He’s going to kill her!”
“No one killed her, Dorothy. Junior is gone. No one can hurt your baby.”
At the sound of Junior’s name, something shifted in her expression. Her watery eyes began to focus. Her body began to still. The blond girl looked up at me, and her eyes were wide with amazement.
“She… she… Keep talking!” said the girl, her facial expression instantly morphing from fear to hope.
“Dorothy, your baby is safe and she’s looking for you.”
Dorothy’s head was moving from side-to-side across the hard wooden floor. Her dark hair was tossing in both directions and a few strands clung to her face, moist from the exertion.
“My baby?” asked Dorothy again.
“Alice. And your granddaughter, Ada. They need you, Dorothy.”
Dorothy’s head stopped and her closed eyes opened. For the first time, I recognized a semblance of the beautiful woman that once occupied the space behind them. Finally, I was talking to Dorothy. I didn’t know how long she’d remain sane, but I was sure one hundred years of searching desperately for your lost child wouldn’t work any wonders in regard to your mental health.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Dorothy?”
Dorothy nodded. The girl gasped.
“She’s never talked to me before,” said the girl. “She’s never even seen me. She just screams at me that I stole her baby. She won’t listen to me, even though I’ve been trying to tell her the truth.”
“The truth?” I asked her.
“I’m Alice,” said the girl.
I had to catch myself before I released Dorothy’s still restless body. “You’re? What? How?” I spluttered, unable to form a coherent question.
“Well, I came to find her but I haven’t been able to communicate with her because she doesn’t see me.”
“But you’re, you’re…” I looked at the blond hair, the young complexion. She was not how I imagined “Memaw Alice.”
“Young?” Alice asked with a smile. “Blond?”
I nodded, struggling to swallow.
“I guess Dorothy’s looks skipped a generation. Ada was my mother’s spitting image. I suppose I look more like my father, but I never knew who he was. As for my age, I didn’t exactly want to spend all of my ghostly existence looking like an old woman who died of kidney disease.”
I thought of Drake in the dreamscapes, his cologne and different clothes, the thickness of his facial hair. I guess it never occurred to me that ghosts could alter their appearances. I stared in wonderment at Alice. Then the shuddering frame of Dorothy beneath me snapped me back to reality.
Alice shifted her grip on Dorothy’s body and her han
d brushed against mine. I gasped as my body felt like it was immersed in an icy pool of water. I saw a flash of a vision. Alice was lying on a hospital bed with a younger Jill and Ada standing beside her. I felt the love and the sadness of that moment, along with Alice’s sadness at not being able to communicate with her bereft mother’s spirit.
“Dorothy, it’s time for you to find your family.” Cautiously, I loosened my grip on Dorothy’s arm and unstraddled her thin body. She drew her limbs into her chest and heaved a great sob. “Alice is looking for her mother, Dorothy.”
Dorothy’s whole body shook. The young girl got up and crouched down next to her sobbing mother. She rubbed her back.
“Mommy?” she tried and Dorothy raised her miserable head to meet the eyes of her daughter. As if seeing her for the first time, her eyes opened wider as she took Alice in.
“My baby?” she asked. I heaved a long sigh of relief.
Alice nodded, tears in her eyes. “It’s me!” she said with a wet laugh. Dorothy wrapped her arms around Alice. Alice turned to me and smiled in an expression of heartfelt thanks. I wasn’t sure what I’d done exactly, but whatever it was, I was glad to see the reunion of the two women. Their souls could finally be at peace.
I walked back to the hallway and rested my back against the wall. I suddenly felt exhausted, but also more than a little proud. I wished for a moment I could walk outside into 1910 New York again and find Drake rather than returning to the present, and my real life. That thought was followed by a flood of guilt. I took a deep breath and looked around the hallway.
Sitting down on the floor, I shut my eyes tightly, trying not to hear the low murmurs in the next room. I remembered what Lovie said and focused as much as I could on the rising and falling of my chest. I listened to my breath and concentrated on doing slow inhales and exhales, as the voice from the tunnel returned slowly. My vision started to fade and I listened as hard as I could to the voice. Slowly but surely, it got louder and louder, until I could make out the clear, velvety timber of Lovie’s recitations. I let my eyes close, and my head grew heavy. I clung to Lovie’s words, letting them pull me back to the hallway. I could feel people around me, and I also sensed the two ghosts in the room next door, but I knew somehow that I’d returned. I opened my eyes. The lighting in the room had changed and it was dark outside. Ryan’s hand was wrapped protectively around mine.