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And old Charles, while still breathing, was getting a little ripe.
Unconscious now for over twenty-four hours, he had a certain… Well, honestly, there was a stink about him. The man was still dressed in wool, for God’s sake, and since he’d never had a chance to regain consciousness, he hadn’t managed to handle personal hygiene, and, well…
But that was all right. He didn’t blame poor old Charles for the way he smelled.
With any luck, no one would see him. He’d sail through this, and it would be easy, as easy as luring the man to his car, as easy as that first solid blow against his head, as easy as the injection of the needle into his flesh. Not long now…
He anticipated the horror when others found the body.
Of course, when they found the body, he’d be as horrified, stunned and confused as all the others.
He grunted, picking him up. Damned Charles—the man was no lightweight.
He didn’t go through the gate, and crawling over the wall with his victim’s dead weight was no easy feat.
“You should have laid off the andouille, fried chicken and Cajun rice, buddy!” he whispered aloud, struggling. He was careful, of course. His shoes were encased in plastic shower caps, and he wore thin latex hospital gloves. Now, well, hell, if someone caught him now…
“I was by the water, searching for a buckle I lost, and I couldn’t just stick my hands in the muck…. ”
That one didn’t fly. Not at all. Not even to him. Didn’t matter. He was near the end.
He found the right place. Now he needed all his strength and the aid of the broken stone marker he’d made note of earlier. He heard himself grunting with exertion and paused, making sure that he wasn’t sweating—it was all no good if someone could pull sweat off of old Charles. God, he hated contemporary forensics, though he was sure he had studied enough manuals on the subject to make sure that he was doing it all the right way. After all, he had planned this for years.
Finally, he had Charles where he wanted him. And it was time; Charles was still heavily sedated. He’d never know exactly how he reached the pearly gates.
He loved his weapon of choice.
For a moment, he admired his handiwork. And then he struck.
His victim never uttered so much as a whimper.
4
Ashley opened her eyes. Pale and surreal moonlight flowed through the gauze curtains and into her room, soft and evocative in the night. The white curtains shifted in the breeze. She had awakened in the middle of the night, not at all sure why. There should have been something, a loud noise, a gust of wind, a scream in the darkness, something.
She hadn’t even been dreaming.
Thank God!
She was sure that there hadn’t been any kind of commotion or noise. It was disturbing that she was so suddenly wide-awake, with no clue as to why.
She stood, curious, and walked to French doors that opened out to the wraparound porch, slipped by the hauntingly sheer curtains and out to the balcony, where she held the rail, as she had as a child, and looked over the beauty of the grounds. The moon was a crescent in the sky, and stars sparkled beautifully if opaquely. Rain might be coming, she thought. The ethereal light of the stars and moon—and the large lanterns at the front and rear doors of the grand old house—created a scene of misted and mysterious beauty.
So what had wakened her so swiftly and completely?
“Worry!” she whispered aloud. “‘Hmm, Sherlock,’ said Watson, ‘there shouldn’t be any werewolves out tonight. Werewolves need a full moon, so I believe!’ Oh, God, I’m talking to myself again!” she moaned.
But—what?
Charles Osgood was still missing.
Jake was coming. That was certainly something that had to be haunting her mind—and maybe the mere thought of Jake, in the flesh, had never really allowed her sleep.
She began to wonder if Charles Osgood was really alive and well, and had returned tonight, wanting to play some kind of demented joke on everyone to prove that he really had been the right choice to play Marshall Donegal. The thought of Charles Osgood running around the property in the perpetuation of some kind of a hoax was irritating—but left her hopeful as well.
She found herself looking out to the graveyard.
She thought she saw a light flickering there.
“Damn it!” she whispered.
From her vantage point on the second-floor porch, she could see the ghostly white tombs and vaults, the weeping angels, mournful cherubs, praying saints and all the exquisite mortuary art to be found here.
She needed to put the nonsense regarding Charles out of her head and start remembering that she ran a business, a bed-and-breakfast and living museum. And, yes, Charles was on her mind, but there were still other problems that could arise.
Ah, yes, Jake always kept her grounded, and he always had that half smile on his face, the charming light in his eyes, and when he was there, she was whole.
Somehow, knowing that Jake was coming gave her that strength!
Brilliant woman! So, push the man away!
Still, just thinking about him…
Something was going on out there. It was her property, and it was going to stop. She was sick of wondering what had happened and what was going on. She was going out to discover just what the hell that flicker of light might be.
Indignant, she turned back and put on the pair of sandals by her bedside, found her white robe and hurried out of her room. She could hear the horses whinnying and neighing, as if something in the night had disturbed them as well. But she didn’t head for the stables—they’d had problems before with local teens thinking it would be great to get high and play in the old Donegal graveyard. And although guests were always asked not to tramp around the grounds after eleven, every once in while they had a ghost hunter who just had to be in the cemetery at midnight or beyond.
She crossed the stretch of lawn that led toward the old cast-iron graveyard gate. The gate, of course, meant nothing, since the stone wall surrounding the family “city of the dead” was only four feet tall.
The gate was open.
Kids would be kids. When she had been young, she had held some great slumber parties, and her guests had gone into the family cemetery at night, and they’d told ghost stories with flashlights aimed at their faces. But it was her home; her family graveyard. They had never been destructive.
Perhaps such an old, private cemetery on a property now run as an inn was just too big a temptation for people.
A few years ago, some young people from the local high school had broken one of the cherubs that had graced the walk near the gate. That might have been an accident; they’d caught the culprits, and the boys had said that they’d been terrified—chased by the ghost of a Confederate soldier. Their imaginations at work, Ashley was certain, and she hadn’t particularly wanted that group severely punished—she was angrier with the teens who had left beer cans, cigarette butts, the tail ends of joints lying around…and had written a bunch of voodoo symbols on the tombs. Once caught, they, too, had claimed that ghosts had chased them out, but in that instance, Ashley was damned sure that the only ghosts had been the spirits they’d imbibed, and the weed.
She realized how ridiculous she must look, wandering toward a cemetery in a white nightgown and robe; if there were kids there, she’d probably scare them to death herself. The gate was open wide enough to let a body slip through. She did so, careful not to touch it as the old iron creaked.
Even she, who had lived here all her life, imagined that a cherub ever-so-slightly turned its head to watch her walk by.
She paused, listening, and realized that she heard only the rustling of the trees, the grand old oaks that stood sentinel along the walls, shrouded in moss. And yet, there seemed to be soft voices in the night. The sound possibly created by movement of the air, the natural settling of the earth and manmade structu
res as well. Still, it was almost as if she could hear her name spoken softly, urging her on, calling to her.
But then she heard something that wasn’t the whisper of branches moving or the moan of the soft breeze. It was like a thump or a rhythmic tapping sound, and it was coming from just down the path and to the right, from the large and beautiful vault where her ancestors had been laid to rest. She hurried silently along, wanting to catch the prankster red-handed.
“Charles? Charles Osgood? Is that you? Show yourself. The reenactments are not a joke! Don’t ruin it all by being a jerk!” Ashley called out.
She turned the corner and stopped dead, a scream rising in her throat. As if on cue, a drifting cloud un-curtained the moon, and the Donegal family vault glowed in opalescent majesty. Mist swirled at the base. An angel rose high atop the chapel-like roof, hands folded, eyes lifted to heaven.
The body of a man dangled from the base of the angel, the straps of his backpack caught upon the marble structure, his feet just brushing the ground. His cavalry hat covered his face, and blood, from a series of wounds to his abdomen and chest, streaked down his torso and limbs and pooled at his feet.
Terror filled her; she stared, blinking. Too afraid to run, too afraid to allow her trapped scream to escape, a confusion of thoughts tearing through her mind.
For a moment, it was as if her mind hit Pause on the horrible image before her.
Her home was haunted. This was the ghost of Marshall Donegal, the valiant man who had died there defending his property in 1861.
If she stepped forward, his head might rise with the hollow, skeletal grin of a man dead more than a century and a half….
She heard the rapping sound again. It was the dead man’s sword, rapping, tapping, against the tomb.
And it snapped her out of her paralysis.
At last, she screamed.
This man wasn’t a ghost.
He was never going to grin at her, or anyone else.
He was real, and he was certainly dead, murdered and in the cemetery, where she now stood alone with nothing at all to defend herself. She closed her mouth quickly, cutting off the sound of her scream.
She had been right to worry, and to search. She had felt even last night that they had to find Charles Osgood. And now, she had found him.
But the prank had been pulled not by him, but on him.