The Unseen

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

When she woke, she at first had no idea where she was. Even more unnerving, she had no idea what year it was and no sense whatsoever of who she was; her mind was a complete blank and she lay with her heart beating, in a blind panic, as awareness slowly returned.

I’m Laurel MacDonald. I was from California, and now I’m not. I was engaged and now I’m not. I’m a psychology professor at Duke and now I’m… looking for ghosts of mad heirs.

She felt a bubble of not entirely calm laughter rise in her chest. Well, it’s no wonder I’m disoriented—who wouldn’t be?

As she got out of bed, she noticed one of the blankets had slipped to the floor in the night and her robe had fallen off the hook on the door, as well. There was a chill in the air so she picked the robe up and shrugged it on. As she turned in the room she was caught again by the lithograph of the crow on the wall above the desk. Or is that a raven? she wondered. Is there a difference? In any case, it was a singularly odd bit of decorating.

And then suddenly it hit her, like someone speaking aloud in her head:

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

It’s a joke, isn’t it? From Alice in Wonderland. The Mad Hatter poses the riddle to Alice when they meet.

She looked at the desk, the raven.

But whose joke was it, I wonder?

She felt suddenly as if someone were playing with her, and she had a strong urge to leave the room. But she looked across the door to the balcony.

She crossed the room and opened the outside door to step out onto the iron balcony outside her room. The chill of the morning enveloped her. A fine trailing mist snaked through the gardens. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the strange white gazebo rising from the tangled growth, with its picture-window view of something she couldn’t quite see. The view from where she stood was gothically picturesque but the iron railing of the balcony was unnervingly low—knee-height at best, certainly not designed to any modern safety code. And the fall would be a sheer drop to the brick porch below. Brain damage, paralysis, death. Laurel took a step back and pressed her back against the wall of the building, with a sudden feeling of nausea.

From this height she was startled to see that the part of the gardens she overlooked was actually a formal labyrinth, a square one of boxwood hedges and taller camellias and brick walls, with worn gray statuary hidden coyly in its corners and angles. All through the gardens there were pale sprays of white flowers, almost glowing in their whiteness. She felt again the sense of a life she would never experience: a richer, decadent, opulent life. But there was the ghost of it here, a shadow of the sensation… to wake up and look out over acres of land, to feel the weight of the mansion around her.

A flicker of movement out toward the white gazebo suddenly caught her eye. She turned to look—and was stunned to see a figure dressed entirely in black: black coat, black pants, black hat, standing beside a white pillar, staring straight up at her. She swayed in shock.

Then something loomed in her peripheral vision and she whirled, losing her balance…

Hands grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back from the railing, against the brick wall.

“Okay? You okay?” Tyler demanded. “Jesus.” He held her firmly. Laurel stood for a moment, steadying herself in his grasp, her heart pounding as she realized how close she had just come to falling. She looked out toward the gazebo—but the black figure was gone. Was it ever there?

Tyler pushed open the door behind them and pulled her through. Inside her room he sat her on the bed and crouched on his haunches before her.

“Jesus,” he said again. “Are you okay?”

“I… thank you,” she said inadequately.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said sharply. He stood, stepped to the door and stared out the door at the balcony. “That’s fucking lethal. Can you imagine being out there after a couple of cocktails? They must have had people falling off that thing left and right. No wonder the house is haunted.”

She felt oddly like laughing—he was so right.

He looked back at her. “What happened out there? You looked like you’d seen—whatever it is we’re supposed to be seeing here.”

She glanced toward the open door. Had there been someone? But the clothing was so—not modern: the hat, the frocklike coat…

Which was one of the reasons the sight was so shocking to begin with. It had felt…

Impossible.

“I think coffee would help,” she said, and stood from the bed.

“Are you mad at me?” Tyler asked bluntly as the coffee dripped its way down into the pot and they stood in the small servants’ kitchen with the burnt-bean fragrance filling the air around them

“Of course not. Why?” she answered, though she knew very well.

“That story about the lab,” he said, looking straight at her. “It was a lame thing to do.”

“It points out the pitfalls of this kind of study, actually,” she said lightly, and reached for the pot. “People tend to believe what they want to believe.” Like that figure in the garden, she thought to herself. There was nothing there—I’m just hyped to see things.

He wouldn’t let it go. “I just wanted you to know I’m not going to fuck around while we’re here. Whatever happens, it’s for real.”

“I appreciate that, Tyler,” she said, and didn’t believe him for a minute.

She took her coffee and pretended she was going back to her room to write up some notes; actually, she didn’t want to be alone with him any more than she had to be.

As she walked down the endless hall, no one else was stirring and Laurel was appalled to experience a brief, irrational stab of jealousy, a sudden paranoia that Katrina had already found Brendan’s bedroom in the night.

Delusional, she chided herself.

She glanced toward a small window under the eaves, overlooking the garden.

And speaking of delusions, what about that—person—in the garden? What was that all about?

She stood at the window, looking down, then turned and headed for the stairs.

She stepped out the back door onto the back brick—patio? Veranda? Veranda. Where the stones fell, she thought, remembering the photos. But the brick surface was bare, now. Laurel crossed to the railing to look out over the jungle of gardens. At ground level it was impossible to pick out the labyrinth shape she’d seen from the balcony—it simply looked like a random maze of paths. The grounds seemed completely deserted, the only movement the rise and fall of the breeze.

Did I see anyone? Could there have been someone back here, someone real?

She swept her eyes over the gardens, looking for any hint of a black-clad figure. Not a sign of it, but her skin still prickled.

There was no one, she told herself firmly. But instead of stepping onto the stairs descending into the garden, she walked along the brick path beside the house. Circling the house to the front. With its long-deserted horse pastures and wide open spaces, it looked much more bleak than the back gardens, and the wind swept through the trees, unbarricaded by hedgerows. She shivered and pulled her sweater closer around her.

The unnervingly tall pines were all around her, with that slight and constant rush of wind, and the sense of isolation was almost overwhelming. No wonder I couldn’t remember where or who I was. I’m about as far out in the middle of nowhere as it gets.

And how must it have been for Caroline Folger, then, living in this huge place with just a brother who was not in his right mind? A spinster sister saddled for life with a brother who was not quite there…

She stopped short as the thought hit her.

Like Aunt Margaret and Uncle Morgan.

All those years in that house together…

“Trauma repeats inevitably…”

She didn’t know why the parallel felt so disturbing, but it did. She pulled her sweater up around her neck and walked faster.

By the time she rounded the servants’ quarters to the back garden, Laurel was breathing hard, and had warmed up considerably. No wonder there was no such thing as a gym in those days, she thought. You get enough exercise just moving around a house this size.

There was movement above her and she looked up. Katrina stood on the brick veranda outside the great room and dining room, leaning on the rail and looking out over the gardens.

Laurel moved up a short flight of stairs and stopped a few paces away from the blond girl. “Good morning.”

Katrina barely looked at her.

Laurel forced herself to take a calming breath. Don’t let this girl get to you. She looked out over the gardens from this new angle, marveling at the massive wall of elegantly drooped trees lining a long and weed-choked reflecting pond. The trees weren’t willow—no willow ever grew so tall. She was mystified.

“What are those trees?” Laurel murmured, mostly to herself.

“Weeping cherry,” Katrina answered automatically. Laurel turned to her, surprised; the girl never spoke to her unless absolutely necessary.

“They’re beautiful,” Laurel said tentatively. “So big. They must be ancient.”

“In the spring they’re pink,” the girl said dreamily. “So lovely…”

Encouraged, Laurel spoke again. “I’ve never seen garden trees grow anywhere near this tall in California. It doesn’t even seem possible.”

The girl’s face abruptly closed, and she was looking at Laurel with her usual hostility. “That’s one thing you don’t have in California, then.” She stalked off, back through the French doors of the dining room.

Laurel sighed. At this point she’d prefer the company of a poltergeist.