It was high excitement. It was subterfuge. It was the biggest adventure of her life.
Sheila Anderson slipped through the darkness, armed with her flashlight. She could feel the note burning in her pocket. Meet me at the Flynn place. Midnight. I figured out the truth behind the legend.
She didn’t know who had sent the note, but she assumed it had to be a fellow member of the historical society—maybe even a secret admirer. With Amelia Flynn dead and the new owners of the Flynn plantation coming to town to claim their inheritance, the society had to find a way to purchase and preserve the house. Neither the state nor the federal government was proving helpful. There were a lot of old places in the New Orleans area, and money talked loudly. The area was coming back in a big way, and there were too many corporations trying to buy up land along the river. The historical society needed a break, some piece of information about the house’s past important enough to make sure that they, who loved history and all it stood for, could keep the place from going on the block before they had enough time to raise the money to buy it themselves.
So here she was, slipping through the darkness. Making her way through the old family cemetery, shielding the narrow beam of her flashlight so no one would spot her, looking for the truth behind the legends surrounding the plantation in the hope that it would be enough to ensure the house’s historical standing.
It was frightening, but it was also fabulous. Better than a movie, better than a roller coaster. The old Flynn plantation had always been surrounded by ghostly tales. The locals all claimed it was haunted. The Flynn family had all but exterminated itself here, and that was just the beginning of the story.
The truth behind the legend.
It was such a great legend, too. There had been one woman and two men. Cousins, fighting on opposite sides in the War of Northern Aggression, as they called it down here. The men had met back at the estate and killed one another over her. She had died, too, and it was said that her screams could still be heard, while a figure made of white light raced along the upstairs porch.
Sheila paused, letting the atmosphere of the place seep into her. Anxious, she was almost afraid to look through the trees toward the house, where it sat in lonely darkness. With Amelia Flynn dead, her friend Kendall Montgomery was no longer staying there as a companion to the woman who had lived through decade after decade in that house, then died in the very room where she had been born.
The heat of the day had faded, merging with the dampness off the river, and now the land was rolling in fog. The gravestones and the mausoleums rose against the mist and the darkness, and a sliver of moonlight danced across the marble.
There was no ghost to be seen that night, but even so, Sheila could feel her heart beating rapidly.
“Sheila, over here!”
She jumped, startled. But the voice—a man’s voice—was real, and she smiled, aware she was about to find out the identity of the person who had decided that she should be in on such a valuable discovery, historically speaking.
A rush swept through her. This was it! She was about to help make history.
“Where?” she called out, then started hurrying through the overgrown brush, dodging sarcophagi as she went. She tripped over a broken gravestone, and her flashlight went flying. She heard the lens break, and now all that was left to guide her was that sliver of moon, doing its best to pierce the rippling fog. Her heart thundered as she lay on the ground and thought of the woman in white who raced across the upper wraparound porch.
She got quickly to her feet, fear outweighing excitement for a moment.
“Sheila!”
She could hardly see her way, what with the fog and the darkness, but she knew the cemetery well, having walked it often enough in daylight. But now she was disoriented. She moved carefully in the direction from which she thought she had heard the voice. She stumbled again, but this time she caught herself against a crumbling mausoleum before she fell.
A cloud moved across the moon, and she was left in total darkness.
“Sheila?” It was a whisper this time, but close.
“Come on, help me out here,” she called. “I lost my flashlight.” She was surprised at how tremulous her voice sounded, and realized that she actually was afraid. In seconds, what had been minor trepidation rose to the level of sheer panic. Coming here had been stupid, she realized, and she had been an idiot. Running around a cemetery in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night after getting an unsigned note. What had she been thinking?
She was going to find her way back to her car, drive home, have a huge glass of wine and chastise herself severely for being such an idiot.
“I’m right here,” the voice said impatiently.