Unhallowed Ground

There were two small eyebrow windows, and the pale pastel light of the early dawn was just beginning to seep in. The light fell over old trunks, broken chairs and several dressmakers’ dummies, headless sentinels guarding the attic realm. Motes of dust danced in the pastel light.

Cato MacTavish paused in the center of the room, surrounded by the past, and looked at Caleb with great sadness.

I have looked forever, he said. And finally I have found her.

He moved to stand by a huge wooden steamer trunk with tarnished metal strapping.

Brighter light flooded the room as the sun continued its inevitable rise, and Cato began to fade. Caleb realized he was standing naked and alone in the dusty attic in the coming light of day.

“Caleb!”

He started and turned, feeling the warmth of Sarah’s delicate touch on his arm. She was staring at him with deep concern shining from her enormous silver eyes.

She was so enticing, her hair a wild mane around her head, her skin so soft, the silk wrap she had grabbed to follow him seductively draping the curves of her body. The sight of her, the feel of her, triggered something within him.

“Caleb?” she repeated.

He looked at the trunk and gave himself a mental shake, pulling himself free from the mists of sleep and dreams.

“The trunk,” he said hoarsely, pointing.

He knew he was awake at last, but memory of the dream was vivid. He walked closer and saw that the trunk was padlocked, preventing him from opening it. He looked around and saw that someone had stowed a set of dumbbells in a corner—years ago, judging by the coating of dust, and yet not so many years as the trunk had been there. He strode across the room, oblivious to his own nakedness, and picked up one of the dumbbells.

“Caleb?” Sarah said, louder now, firmly. “What are you doing?”

Without answering, he smashed the lock and lifted the lid of the trunk, revealing a trove of loosely piled Victorian clothing. He drew out hose, capes, petticoats, stays, throwing things aside…until at last he found what he was seeking.

Bones.

Bones nestled in decaying silk and satin. Wisps of hair still clinging to a skull with leathery skin still covering the bone. Dried and mummified flesh adding substance to the bones. She was real, and yet she appeared to be nothing but a decorative prop for a macabre haunted house.

“Oh, my God…” Sarah breathed from behind him.

“It’s Eleanora,” Caleb said with grim certainty.

“How do you know?” she whispered.

“There’s a locket around her neck—with a likeness of Cato,” he said. “Cato didn’t do it. He loved her.”

“What?” Sarah asked, shaking her head in concern and stepping back, as if she were afraid to touch him. “I don’t understand.” She studied him for a moment, and then realization lit her eyes. “You saw him, didn’t you? I didn’t dream him. He’s a ghost,” she whispered.

“I had a dream,” he said, but even as he spoke, he wasn’t sure he believed his own words. And if not, what did he believe?

What had he seen, and how had he ended up in the attic?

“It was a dream,” he insisted. “We were talking about the past and what happened here, and I had a dream that led me here, that’s all,” he said. “Call Jamison. And then you might as well call that professor—Dr. Manning. I need to shower and dress—we both do. She’s been in that trunk for over a hundred and fifty years. Another hour isn’t going to make any difference. In fact, I don’t want to call anyone yet. I’m going to go see Floby anyway, and then I’ll bring him back here and we can figure out how to proceed and whether this has anything to do with everything else going on.”

“Caleb, it all has to be connected,” Sarah said. “Whatever you say, I know we both saw a ghost. And he’s not trying to haunt anyone or hurt them—he’s trying to help. People accused Cato of having killed Eleanora and the others, and he left because he couldn’t prove the truth.”

He set his hands on her shoulders and wondered why he of all people—a man who worked for Adam Harrison and spent his time investigating the incursions of the paranormal into the real world—couldn’t admit to having seen a ghost.

Sarah was still staring at him as if he had changed in some fundamental way. She looked wary. She looked…

Afraid.

He winced and tightened his grip on her shoulders. “All right, here’s what I think. Something terrible happened here years ago. Maybe that housekeeper, Martha Tyler, conned people into believing she had some kind of power, like the tricks Marie LeVeau used in New Orleans. She would listen. She would get people to tell her things they didn’t even know they were telling her. That way, she could tell one heartbroken woman that there was nothing she could do to help, then tell another that she could help her win the man of her dreams. She would have mixed her potions and convinced people of their efficacy, and maybe she even had a certain power of her own. But, she couldn’t have been working alone.”

“Brennan,” Sarah said. “Brennan was working with her. She worked for him, not Cato—he was the one who brought her here. He got here ahead of the Union occupation, and old Mr. MacTavish needed money, so he took him in as a boarder. And then Brennan talked MacTavish into using the house as a funeral parlor. MacTavish would have been willing to do anything to survive the war and save the house so his son could inherit the old mansion when he returned. But MacTavish died, and when Cato finally came back from the war, Brennan was already established in his house. There were all kinds of ways for the carpetbaggers to keep a man from reclaiming his property. And with Eleanora missing, and then the other women, the accusations would have started—fed by Brennan, no doubt—and eventually Cato MacTavish must have had enough, and he left. Brennan was a nasty man—his own daughter wrote about how much she hated him. She stopped writing, though, and I don’t know what happened to her, but a son inherited this place. I don’t know where he came from. Maybe he was born later, or maybe he was fighting with the Union army when his father and sister moved down here.” She paused, staring first at him, then sadly down at the trunk and its pathetic contents. “If this is Eleanora, how did the line go on? How can you be his descendent?” she asked.

“Either she had a child before she died and someone managed to hide the fact and get the child out of the city—or he went on to find a wife when he left St. Augustine,” Caleb said. “You were the one who discovered the connection—what did the records say?”

“They didn’t say anything. There was no mention of a wife, just the reference to his son being named Magnus. And then his son’s family and so on.”

“Where and when did Cato die?”

“In Virginia, in 1901.”

“So why is he back here?” Caleb asked.

“Aha!” Sarah said.

“Stop it. Please. If we tell Jamison that a ghost is leading us around—and I’m not admitting or denying that fact—I guarantee you, he and everyone else will call us crazy,” Caleb said.

They stared at one another for a long moment.

Then she smiled slowly. “You wear dust well,” she assured him.

He grinned and pulled her close, his expression grave as he said, “Thank you for the compliment, but I have to go see Floby and then bring him out here. Let’s get showered and dressed before we do anything else.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she told him.

A few minutes later they stepped into the shower together. Sarah looked at him and said, “You know, our world is going to go crazy again when the media finds out that we’ve discovered another corpse in this house.”

“I know,” he said.

“We might want to spend a little more time…just us, before everything goes to hell,” she said somberly.

He nodded and pulled her into a tight embrace.

Water. Heat. Steam. Slick bodies in close proximity, and a feeling that every second now was unique…precious.

Eventually they stepped out of the shower and got dressed.

Eleanora and Cato had been in love, their relationship cruelly ended, Caleb thought. And now, together, he and Sarah were going to exonerate Cato and put Eleanora to rest at last.

It wasn’t until Caleb called Will and asked him to come over to Sarah’s, then headed out of the house, that he realized he might have discovered the remains of his own great-great-great—however many greats—grandmother. It was a poignant thought, and surprisingly painful.

“I’ve gotten back some of the tissue samples,” Floby said from behind the desk in his office.

“Right. You said the victim had taken some kind of a hallucinogenic drug?”

“Nature’s own,” Floby said. “Yaupon holly—and poppy seeds.”

“Poppy seeds? You mean opium?”

“More or less. An extract from the seeds.”

“And yaupon holly?” Caleb was thoughtful for a minute. “Isn’t that one of the ingredients in the black drink a number of Native Americans—including the Seminoles—use in their rituals?”

“Exactly,” Floby told him.

“So was she high enough that she was hallucinating?” Caleb said.

“Given how she ended up, let’s hope she was very high and seeing beautiful sights,” Floby told him.

Caleb nodded. “Okay, now I need you to come with me back to Sarah’s place. I want you to see something before we call anyone else in.”

“Oh, God. You’ve found another body,” Floby said, staring at him.

“A woman. In a trunk in the attic,” Caleb admitted.

Floby shook his head. “What is it with you and corpses?” he asked. “I just wish you could find Winona Hart—alive.”

“I wish that, too,” Caleb assured him.

“Have you called Jamison?” Floby asked.

“Not yet. I will.” Caleb hesitated. “There’s some mummified tissue on this body. I’m hoping you can figure out if there were any drugs—like the black drink—in her system when she died…if you can figure out how she died, before we get the zoo back in. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">