Jayne and I moved up behind him, peering into the room. The three girls sat on top of Nola’s tall four-poster bed, a Ouija board between them. They turned toward us, each face paler than the next. “It moved by itself,” Veronica said.
A new presence hovered around the periphery of the room, something dark and disturbing, like the soft ripples on the water’s surface signaling the approach of something big. And invisible. Just as before, I couldn’t see it, couldn’t speak to it or touch it. It was as if that same curtain had fallen between me and the spirit world, blocking my entrance. For someone who’d spent a lifetime resenting the fact that I could interact with spirits, I now found myself resentful that I couldn’t. Something was jamming my brain waves, and I think that scared me more than anything else.
Jayne bent down to pick up the triangle-shaped board piece, then dropped it immediately as if it had burned her. “You shouldn’t be playing with that,” she said, her voice low and in a tone I’d not heard yet. “It’s not a toy.”
We all turned to look at her in surprise. Feeling all gazes on her, she attempted to smile but failed. “A mother of a family I worked for told me that. She said it wasn’t a children’s game.” Her gaze traveled to a corner of the room. “She said that sometimes it can attract unwanted . . . visitors, and you have no control over whether they’re good or bad.”
“They’re not real,” Alston said. “All that ghost stuff isn’t real. I think Nola pushed it off the board to scare us.” She looked at Nola hopefully.
“Guilty,” Nola said with a sidelong glance at me to let me know she was lying. A frisson of fear shot down my neck. Our house was filled with spirits. Most old houses were. They were there in every creak of the floor and tick of the antique clocks. But we’d learned to live in harmony with them, knowing that when they were ready to move on they’d let me know. But even without seeing this new presence, I knew it didn’t want to go anywhere.
“Close it up, please, Nola. Jayne’s right—it’s not a game.” I caught a whiff then, of moist earth and dead leaves, and I immediately knew where it had come from. Turning to Jack, I said, “Please make the introductions. I need to step outside for a moment.”
He gave me a quizzical look, but I didn’t pause as I quickly walked out the door, then ran down the stairs and through the house to the back door. I threw it open and stifled a scream as I nearly ran into Meghan as she clawed desperately to open the back door.
She brushed past me, then closed the door, leaning her back against it. Her skin was unusually pale and her eyes were so wide that I could have sworn I saw the whites all around her irises.
“Are you all right?” I asked as I led her to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair.
She began to nod, then shook her head. When she eventually found her voice, she said, “It was the weirdest thing. . . .”
“What was?” I asked, although I was sure I knew what she was going to say.
“I was digging and I thought I’d found something, so I was really focusing on a small area, and then all of a sudden . . .” She wrinkled her nose and gave an involuntary shudder. “This smell. Like rotting . . . dead stuff. We once had a squirrel die in our chimney and that’s how we found it—from the smell. It was like that. And I swear the temperature dropped about thirty degrees, because I could actually see my breath.”
“Can I make you some tea? You seem a little shaken up.”
She shook her head. “I really just want to get home. Do you mind if I leave my stuff out? I don’t really want to go back right now. And I’ll leave by the front door if that’s all right with you.”
“Of course,” I said, nodding sympathetically. “Maybe you’re coming down with something. It is flu season, after all.”
She nodded gratefully as she shakily stood, holding on to the edge of the table. “I guess I should have listened to my mother and gotten that flu shot.”
“Probably,” I said, gently leading her toward the front door. “I’ll pack up your things and put them in the gardening shed in case it rains. They’ll be there whenever you’re ready to return.”
Meghan thanked me and then left. When I walked into the foyer, I saw Jayne and Jack walking down the stairs, a child asleep on each of them. I frowned. “Why do they never do that for me? They’re always wide-awake when I’m with them.”
“I think children are good at sensing a soothing presence,” Jack said with a grin.
Before I could retort, Jayne said, “Or they were just tired. Meeting new people can be exhausting to young children—there’s so much new information they have to process.”
I smiled at her, her approach to refereeing confirming my decision to hire her. I reached for Sarah and JJ, balancing each child in my arms, feeling them come awake and begin to squirm. So much for a soothing presence. “I’ll go feed the children while Jack brings your things up to your room so you can unpack and get settled.”
“Thank you,” Jayne said.
I began walking toward the kitchen.
“I think I’d like to restore the house on South Battery before I sell it.”