Lin made a face at her cousin. “Viv, you can’t see ghosts. You saw a human out there skulking around. A live human.”
The ghost turned and looked towards the shed. A scuffling sound could be heard. Lin craned her neck to see. A man, his face shrouded in shadow, emerged from the back of the shed, bent, and pushed through the bushes on the property line where he slipped into the next yard.
Lin made eye contact with the ghost as he faded away. She sat back on the floor. What was that all about?
The girls spent ten minutes speculating about the intruder. Lin was about to get up from the floor when the doorbell rang and both girls jumped.
“Who can this be so late at night?” Viv’s voice shook as she stood and hurried to where Lin sat on the floor.
Lin looked up at her cousin. “Can you see the front door from any of these upstairs windows?” She stood.
Viv shook her head. “You can’t see the front door from up here.”
Lin glanced out of the side window to see if the ghost might have reappeared. “Then let’s not answer.”
The bell rang again. The dog whined.
Viv clutched at her cousin’s arm with a trembling hand.
“We don’t need to answer.” Lin tried to calm Viv. “When we don’t respond, the person will leave.”
The whites of Viv’s eyes were bright in the darkness of the room. Her lip quivered. “What if they’re trying to see if anyone is at home and if no one answers, they’ll break in?”
Lin let out a long breath. “Then we’ll block the bedroom door and call the police.” She moved to the threshold of the room so that she could better hear if the front door was being forced open. “Go to the window and watch in case the person moves around to the back of the house.”
The girls waited for fifteen minutes. There were no more rings of the bell. They ventured down the staircase and Viv slowly opened the front door with Lin standing right behind her with the fireplace poker held like a baseball bat ready to strike. The dog and cat perched on the staircase ready to spring.
No one was there. The quartet went from room to room looking outside from the windows. They stepped onto the deck to check the rear yard.
Lin lowered the poker. “Maybe it was some drunk leaving town. He got disoriented and thought he knew who lived here. It was probably a mistake that he rang your bell, realized his error, and went on his way.”
Viv looked skeptical. “Was that a drunk messing around in the bushes near the shed, too?”
Lin didn’t have an answer. She hoped it was the same guy. Just someone who wandered into the yard, confused about where he was due to having too many drinks at a bar in town.
The girls stood quietly for a minute.
“You want to sleep here tonight?” Viv had a hopeful expression on her face.
“Yup.” Feeling too jumpy to go home, Lin was grateful for the invitation.
As the girls were about to walk upstairs to make up the bed for Lin, Queenie and Nicky turned around on the staircase and headed back up.
“Our helpers.” Lin looked at the animals and smiled.
Exhausted and worried, Lin followed Viv up the stairs, not believing for one second that the prowler was just a drunk from town who stumbled into the wrong yard.
Chapter 18
Lin tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep so she reached for one of her puzzle books. She tried to work on a crossword, but she couldn’t concentrate so she closed the book and returned it to the side table. Moonlight filtered in through the open window and pooled on the floorboards. The sheer curtain rode a puff of night air, floated away from the sill, fluttered, and then rested back against the edge of the window. Lin ran her hand over the sleeping dog’s fur. Nicky, stretched out on the double bed, snuggled comfortably next to his owner.
The simple furnishings and the peacefulness of the room soothed Lin’s frayed nerves. The events of the past weeks bubbled up in a disorganized and unrelated sequence as she tried to put order to the mess.
She pushed back the sheet, slipped her bare feet over the edge of the bed, and padded to the window. The yard was quiet and still, no one rustled through the bushes at the edge of the property or shuffled around the shed. Lin stared at the old structure at the end of the driveway. She wondered if it was built at the same time the house went up.
After staring at the shed for several minutes, Lin straightened and turned for the bedroom door. The dog lifted its head from its comfortable spot and watched his owner leave the bedroom. He stood up, stretched, and jumped off the bed. Nicky followed Lin down the stairs, through the dark house to the kitchen, and out the back door to the deck.
In her long T-shirt, Lin walked barefoot down the steps and around to the shed. She hopped on one foot when she stepped on a large stone and let out a mild curse. Nicky sniffed around the wooden outbuilding and then headed off to the edge of the lawn.
With just the light of the moon to brighten the backyard, Lin made a careful circle around the shed stopping at the locked door. She lifted the metal padlock and gave it a yank, but it remained in place, solid and strong. There was nothing to indicate that it had been tampered with by the nighttime intruder.
Lin stepped back and eyed the roofline and the construction of the walls. As the dog returned from the far end of the yard, Lin moved forward and placed her palm against the shed door.
A few seconds passed and the skin of her hand began to tingle, but instead of pulling away, she pressed harder on the rough wood. Zings of electricity danced through her hand and up inside her forearm. She dropped her arm just as a whoosh of cold air blew around her like a blast of winter wind.
Lin could see that the dog was looking behind her. His wagging tail pulsed against the worn grass causing puffs of dirt to rise in the air. Slowly, she turned around fully aware of what she would see.
The ghost stood about ten feet from her, the closest he had ever been. His face was solemn. Lin could see that his long bony nose had a bump near the bridge. “Hello, Sebastian.”
The translucent specter lifted his eyes to the young woman’s face. As little zaps of energy passed between them, Lin realized that she wasn’t uncomfortable anymore and she tried to open her mind to the message the ghost seemed to be trying to send her.
Images from the past danced in her brain, but they were wavy and unfocused. She kept her eyes linked with the ghost and just as things in her mind began to clear, Viv stepped from the back door of the house onto the deck. She flicked the light of a flashlight around the back garden and called for her cousin.
Lin heard the spirit say her name, Carolin Witchard Coffin. He raised his arm and pointed across the yard beyond the deck and then whatever the ghost was made of separated into a million silver particles that sparkled and disappeared like the tail end of a firework.
What had passed between them tugged at Lin’s heart and for the first time, she was sorry to see him go.
She shook herself and wrapped her arms around her shivering body. “I’m here, Viv. By the shed.”
“Are you okay?” Viv’s voice shook. “Why are you out here? Did you hear someone in the yard?”
Lin and Nicky climbed the steps to the deck. “I had the urge to come outside.”
Viv looked dumbfounded. “It couldn’t wait until morning?”
Lin sat on one of the deck chairs. “I was in bed. Ideas were running through my mind.” She glanced over her shoulder to the yard. “I got a feeling about the old shed.”
Viv sat down. “What kind of a feeling?”
“I thought that what Greg Hammond was looking for was inside that shed. But now, I’m not so sure.”
Viv’s jaw dropped. She looked wide-eyed at the structure through the darkness. “What could be in there?” Her voice trembled.