“I can’t believe you two came to help me out,” I said when Rebecca was gone.
Teag put his hands on his hips and cocked his head, giving me his best stern schoolteacher look.
“Really? After what’s been going on, you think I’m going to let you come to a whole house full of spookies by yourself? If the haints don’t scare Rebecca, seeing you go into a dead faint with one of your visions is sure to!”
I had to smile. ‘Haints’ was a local term for ghost, and it even had its own paint color, ‘haint blue’, named after the vivid shade some people painted their doors to keep away nasty spirits.
“I even brought an extra kit, just in case,” Teag said, and nodded toward the leather messenger bag he had placed next to the door. I knew it would contain everything that was in my own pack upstairs in my room.
Our kit for investigating questionable objects included several common, but supernaturally powerful items: salt, for protection; chalk, sometimes needed to mark an area to protect or avoid; charcoal; a small bundle of sage, and an abalone shell, to cleanse an area after a working. We usually carried several other useful items, including a wind-up flashlight (supernatural creatures tend to wreck havoc on batteries), and a pouch with dried fennel, hyssop, marigold, and rue, also useful for banishing negative energy. Just for good measure, we usually also threw in a couple of pieces of turquoise, agate, and onyx.
“I even made sure Anthony and I have our lucky agate stones with us,” Teag said with a grin, and held up a smooth polished small agate disk which he had hidden in his pocket. “We’re ready.”
“What can we do to help, Cassidy?” Practical as always, Anthony was the perfect foil to Teag’s unbridled enthusiasm. “Short of breaking and entering, I’m with you.”
I chuckled, knowing that with Anthony’s family and legal connections, he could probably get away with B&E in this town, but I wasn’t going to ask that of him. “Well,” I said. “We’re already inside, so no breaking necessary.
“I thought I’d start by trying to ‘read’ the objects room by room. After that, I figured on a stake-out to see some of this ghostly activity. Something changed these pieces. If we can figure out what made the difference, we should be able to make it stop.”
Anthony frowned. “Can’t we just remove the objects?”
I shook my head. “Now that it’s started, I don’t think just taking the pieces away is going to make it stop.” Briefly, I filled them in on what Rebecca had told me earlier in the day, and the sightings of the man with the broad-brimmed hat. Teag glanced out of the front windows, but no one was in sight.
“Let’s go,” Teag said, finishing his wine and setting the glass aside.
Touching the wood of the table and sideboard gave me a fleeting image of dinners and happy conversation. I reached out to touch the tea set, but got only a vague, pleasant aura and the distant scent of Earl Gray. “It’s got some resonance, but the energy is positive.”
I bent down and opened the doors below the sideboard. “Would you please pull out that tablecloth?”
Anthony carefully removed the folded tablecloth and set the bundle on the mahogany dining table.
“I recognize that,” Teag said. “I still don’t get any vibes of magic woven or embroidered into the piece.”
I moved to touch the tablecloth, but Anthony pulled out a chair for me. “Why don’t you sit down to handle the objects, Cassidy?” he said, in his best lawyer-advisory tone. First, I let my hand rest on the wood of the table itself. As with the sideboard, the fleeting images were of happy times, making me feel safe and reassured. I took a deep breath and laid my right hand on the tablecloth, then closed my eyes and waited for the show to start.
It didn’t take long. There were images of family gatherings, mostly happy, crammed together like a super-fast slide show.
I saw an elderly man sitting at the head of a table set for Thanksgiving dinner. Relatives of all ages were busily talking and laughing. At the other end of the table sat a tall, handsome woman with high cheekbones and intelligent, dark eyes. She was presiding over the meal with quiet pride. Judging from the clothing, the year was around 1940.
The images shifted so fast I grabbed at the table to steady myself. I saw the older man straighten suddenly, saw him clutch his chest in pain, trying to call out. Family members rushed from their places to help him out of his chair, easing him to the floor as the tall woman ran to his side and held his hand.
Another spasm of pain wracked the man’s body and he wheezed, then fell still. Dinner sat forgotten, and the celebration turned to mourning.
I sensed the passage of time in the vision as the images blurred like someone had hit fast-forward. The table with its holiday covering now hosted a funeral dinner for the mourners.
The next image was the strongest. The dining room was dark, the mourners had gone, and the tall woman sat in her seat at the table, looking down to the empty seat at the end. I could feel her heart breaking. And I knew what she was going to do next.
“No,” I whispered. “Don’t.” But the actions had been taken long before I was born, and nothing would change them now. I watched in horror as the woman left the room and returned with a stout length of rope. She slipped off her shoes and then climbed onto the table, looping one end of the rope over the heavy chandelier. She had already fashioned a noose. Eyes fixed on the empty seat at the end of the table, she took a breath, closed her eyes, and stepped into oblivion.
I came back to myself lying on the floor, the tablecloth clutched in my hands, gasping for breath. Teag was kneeling next to me, and Anthony was staring at both Teag and I as if we had lost our minds.
“This is what the two of you do for a living?” he asked, wide-eyed.
Teag had the good grace to give a nervous laugh. “Not always. But yeah, sometimes.”
He helped me sit up. It took me a moment before I could speak. “I think Mrs. Butler left out some of the story,” Teag and Anthony helped me up, and I took a deep breath. “The linens have a powerful psychic imprint,” I said, and recounted what I had seen. “I think the other woman is old Mrs. Harrison, the wife of the man who built this house,” I ended. “But we still don’t know what made the ghosts show up now.”
Teag sprinkled a few grains of salt onto the tablecloth. The salt wouldn’t damage the fabric, but it would put a damper on the negative energy. That should help us narrow down which piece or pieces were the real troublemakers.
Anthony watched as Teag sprinkled the salt. “Why don’t you do whatever you’re doing before Cassidy touches something? It would certainly spare her a lot of distress.”
“The problem is, if we dampen the energy, we don’t really know what we’re dealing with,” Teag explained. “The only time we put out the protective materials in advance is if the item has been known to actually harm someone.”
Nothing else in the dining room had any hint of supernatural power, so we headed to the entranceway. I touched paintings, doilies, the antique rug, and a set of candlesticks and got nothing, but when my fingers skimmed the funeral vase, images lit up in my mind.
I heard women weeping and men clearing their throats in grief. I saw the vase, and two small coffins in a sparse parlor. The weight of the onlookers’ sorrow fell heavy on my heart, and I began to sob. Teag gently reached over and separated my hand from the vase and the vision winked out.