Heart of Evil

Page 20

“I’m sure it’s full of legends,” Angela said.
“You bet.”
“Want to share a few?”
“Oh, Lord, well…there are supposedly several soldiers wandering around. We had an actor die of a heart attack, in the 1940s, I believe, in the barn. Members of the Donegal family have died of old age. So, let’s see, we’re supposedly haunted by Unionists, rebels, actors—oh, a World War I cavalryman who died in France but made his way back here. The house was built in the early eighteen hundreds, so we’ve decades of ghosts running around,” Ashley said lightly. “Then, of course, we have the rumored ghosts who really can’t possibly exist—not here. Every plantation is supposed to have the beautiful slave girl who poisoned the mistress and was then hanged from one of the oaks. But it didn’t happen here. Not that way, anyway. I’ve had guests, however, who swear they’ve seen her.”
“Well, sometimes people see what they want to see, don’t they?” Angela asked her.
“And sometimes, what they don’t want to,” Ashley replied.
“Really?”
“Finding Charles,” Ashley said, looking away. It wasn’t what she had meant at all. She had just met this woman.
And maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to remain with her.
“Well,” she said awkwardly, “thank you for being here.”
“It’s what we do,” Angela said.
Ashley inclined her head. “Thank you anyway. I’ll let you get back to—to whatever you’re doing. Excuse me.”
“Ashley!” Angela called when she would have walked away.
Ashley paused.
“I’m not sure what Jake told you, but we were banded together because we learned how to blend our intuitions with logic, and even to analyze our dreams. Don’t let any of that scare you. If you let yourself turn fear into careful thought, you’ll discover just how much you may know yourself.”
“I don’t know who killed Charles, and I don’t have a logical—or even illogical—thought on what might have happened. I wish I did,” Ashley said. She gave Angela a forced smile.
“I’m here if you need me,” Angela said.
“Thanks,” Ashley told her and waved, walking away. She wasn’t sure where to go, and she found herself returning to her own room. She lay down on the bed, remembering that she’d slept no more than two or three hours. If she tried closing her eyes, maybe she would sleep.
What now?
The world was strange; they were waiting. Waiting for what, she wasn’t certain. The police seldom captured a murderer immediately, and they were in a very bad position here, since they depended on tourism and their guests to keep the place afloat.
“Ashley.”
The whisper of her name brushed her ears, and she didn’t trust the sound was real, or if it was all in her mind.
She kept her eyes closed.
“What?” she demanded crossly.
“You hear me. I know you hear me. It’s so difficult to find someone who actually does.”
“You’re the illusion of a tormented mind,” Ashley said.
She swallowed hard as something settled at the foot of her bed.
Don’t do it, don’t do it—don’t open your eyes! she commanded herself.
“Look, I’m trying to help you. I swear. You’re my great-great-great—I don’t know how many greats—granddaughter, and I’d never hurt you, not for the world, but I’m afraid for you.”
“If you’re afraid for me, go away. You’ll give me a heart attack. Or the police will have to collect me and put me in a straitjacket if you don’t,” Ashley said, still keeping her eyes tightly closed.
“Donegal women are not cowards!” he said.
“I’m not a coward. I’m trying to stay sane!”
“Open your eyes, young woman!”
She did so. She blinked. She wanted to scream, but, of course, she couldn’t. Her throat was locked.
And he looked so damned comfortable. He sat on the edge of the bed, a handsome man. His hair was a darker blond than hers, long and actually curling around his neck. A large-brimmed, plumed hat sat atop his head, and he had brilliant blue Donegal eyes. His uniform appeared to be new, and in pristine shape, and bore Louisiana militia insignia. A scabbard held his sword in place around his hip, even as he sat, the sheathed sword at an angle.
He stared at her.
She stared at him.
Eventually, the lump went down in her throat. She wondered if she was dreaming again. She didn’t think that she was. She could feel the pillows beneath her head, and the fabric of the sheets she lay upon. Daylight was streaming through from the balcony. She could see the sky beyond. She was awake, and she pinched herself to prove it, feeling a bit ridiculous as she did so.
“You really see me!” he whispered with pleasure.
“You’re in my mind,” she told him.
“Maybe, but you see me.” She hated to deny a man such evident pleasure at so simple a thing.
“You’re a ghost, haunting Donegal Plantation,” she said flatly. She groaned. “No, haunting me. Why me?”
“Because it’s in you—it’s always been in you to reach me. And I’ve tried to reach you forever.”
She didn’t know that you could startle a ghost, but apparently you could, because he jumped when she suddenly sat up. She stood then and walked around, turning away and turning back.
He didn’t disappear.
“You’ve been in my dreams,” she whispered.
“Easiest contact,” he told her.
She shook her head and then approached him, angry. “Then—you knew. You knew someone was going to kill Charles. Who is it? Damn it, tell me, tell me what’s going on, and we can solve this. What did you see? What do you know?”
He rose to meet her. He was really quite the swash-buckling figure, and she could see where he had been an impressive man—until he’d gotten himself killed.
“Nothing,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing. I know nothing. Look, a ghost can’t be everywhere at the same time. I’ve had this odd feeling for a long time that something was going to happen. Something bad. I’ve tried to reach you, to make your see me and be careful.”
“You had a feeling?” she demanded incredulously. “You’re a ghost!”
“I’m the ghost of the man I was, and the essence of what I was is still what I am,” he said flatly.
She blinked, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “Explain that!”
“What remains is the soul,” he said. “And the essence of our being. The body is fragile—it ages and it dies. But the soul, the energy of what we are, is what we always were.” He searched out her eyes and tried again. “We learn through the ages, through everyone we watch. I’ve seen generations come and go, and I’ve shed tears that no one sees through many a tragedy. I touched your father once, but he does not remain—he went with your mother when the call came.”
Her parents had gone on. She missed them, so much, still. The beginnings of tears tightened her throat.
She steeled herself, wondering if she could possibly be speaking to the ghost of a long-dead ancestor, or if the events had just become too much for her.
“You watched all that—but you didn’t see who killed Charles?” she asked.
“No! I was with you and Frazier on the porch. I love the reenactments. Now, that is. But the first few years of my—ghosthood?—I was a bitter fool. I really was. I owned slaves, yes—it was a way of life, and we didn’t really know any better. Really. I was bitter when we lost the war. I was bitter when the carpetbaggers came down. Then I began to learn. I began to watch the world as the years went by. I could see that I’d been—not a fool—but utterly ignorant to many truths in life. Now I’ve watched many young people go off to war, and I’ve seen the fallacy of our ways, and I’m glad we lost the war—we never should have fought it.”
He was really there. Or, in her mind, he was real, and he was just like a reasoning, functioning human being.
Except that he was dead.
She shook her head again and realized she was doing so enough to give herself brain damage. She forced herself to stop.
“This is great,” she whispered. “I’m seeing a ghost—and you can’t even help me.”
“I can help you,” Marshall Donegal said.
“How?”
“I can do my best to watch the behavior of those around us now even more closely, and I can do my best to stay near you and look after you. If you know I’m here and accept that I can be here, and you’ll let me in, you’ll hear me now when I know that there is danger.”
“How did you know there was danger?”
“I could feel it,” he said again, exasperated. “I tried to warn your great-grandfather when the old fellow was about to keel over in the barn. No one saw me—no one came to help when I screamed. Now that poor old bastard is spending his afterlife pacing out there in the stables, and he won’t move on. I talk to him, and he doesn’t hear me. He just waits for his opportunity to act out a long-gone and lamented war, and there’s nothing I can do.”
“You can’t speak to other ghosts?” she asked him.
“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s as if we never quite touch,” he said sadly.
“It’s not just one big old ghostly community out there?” she demanded.
“Some don’t accept that they’re dead,” he told her.
“And others?”
“Others know, and they’re not sure why they linger. Some just can’t go on. And sometimes we can reach one another.”
“What about Emma?” she asked him.
He turned away from her. “No,” he said, his back to her. “Perhaps she has gone on. Perhaps we are being punished. But, no, I can’t see or reach Emma.”