“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind, even if she is busy.” Dickce knew her sister was as pleased about Benjy’s interest in reading as she was. They had high hopes for him when he started Athena College the coming spring semester.
“Awesome.” Benjy rose from his chair, his sang-froid seemingly restored. “Come on, Peanut, you know Miss An’gel always likes to see you.” The dog loped after the young man as Benjy headed out of the kitchen.
“Whereas you, Missy,” Dickce said to the cat still nestled in her arms, “are another story. An’gel can’t get over the fact that you prefer me.” She chuckled.
“Gracious, the way y’all talk to those animals.” Clementine laughed.
Dickce shot the housekeeper a pointed glance. “I’ve heard you talk to them both plenty of times yourself.”
“Well, I reckon so.” Clementine turned her attention back to the stove and picked the lid up from a pot of chicken and dumplings. “If y’all are going to treat ’em like people, I guess there’s no reason I shouldn’t do it, too.” She stirred the pot for a moment. “Lunch is just about ready. Ten more minutes.”
Dickce sniffed appreciatively. “The perfect thing for a cool fall day.”
Clementine looked up from the stove. “Miss Dickce, y’all ever told Benjy about the things that go on here sometimes?”
Dickce stiffened, and Endora squeaked a protest. Dickce forced herself to relax. “What do mean, the things that go on here?”
“You know what I mean,” Clementine said. “Doors closing all by themselves, things moving around after I’ve dusted, and you know I know to put things right back in the exact same place they’ve been the last hundred years.” She sniffed. “Unless you and Miss An’gel are going around behind my back, trying to play tricks on me, you know ain’t no earthly thing doing that.”
“An’gel and I would certainly never play that kind of trick on you, and you know it.” Dickce shook her head at the housekeeper. “I don’t have any better explanation for it than you do, and to answer your original question, no, I haven’t said anything to Benjy. I don’t imagine An’gel has either. Since he has his own quarters above the garage, he probably might not ever notice anything here in the house.”
“Maybe so.” Clementine focused her attention on the stove again. “Still, y’all might better tell that boy, ’specially before y’all go hunting spirits in Natchez.”
“You might be right. I’ll discuss it with An’gel.” Dickce set the cat on the floor. “Come on, Endora. After I wash my hands, we’re going to set the table.” To her amusement, the cat, after a yawn and a stretch, padded after her to the powder room under the stairs and waited until Dickce finished her ablutions.
While Dickce set the table, Endora sat in the doorway and watched. After a couple of minutes, apparently bored, she disappeared down the hall. Dickce figured she had gone in search of Peanut and Benjy.
Dickce performed her task without giving much thought to what she was doing. Her thoughts focused on the upcoming trip to Natchez, and their reason for going. She hated to admit it—and she doubted she would admit it to An’gel—but Clementine’s dire warning had spooked her a little. As had the housekeeper’s reminder about the occasional unsettling experience here at Riverhill. She and An’gel really should tell Benjy, she decided. He ought to know, because someday he would most likely be the owner of the house, since she and An’gel had no blood descendants to inherit from them.
The last piece of cutlery in place, Dickce gazed at the table. Had she forgotten anything?
“Looks fine to me,” she murmured.
As she continued to think about the housekeeper’s words, Dickce felt a prickle on the back of her neck.
What if Clementine is right? What if we stir up something in that house we can’t handle?
CHAPTER 2
Benjy braked the car gently to a halt, shifted into Park, and switched off the ignition. His shoulders ached lightly from the long drive, as did his head, but he figured a little pain was a small price to pay for having arrived at Cliffwood in one piece. Miss Dickce had pouted for a few minutes when Miss An’gel asked him to drive them all the way to Natchez. Miss An’gel refused to budge over her sister’s protests. Miss Dickce acted like a good sport and hadn’t sulked for long.
If Miss Dickce had driven them, Benjy reckoned, she would have received several tickets coming down the Natchez Trace. The speed limit was only fifty miles an hour, and Miss Dickce had trouble driving less than eighty no matter where she was going. He enjoyed the more leisurely pace because it afforded him the opportunity to appreciate the hues of the fall foliage—rich golds and yellows, vibrant reds, browns, and greens. Where he grew up in Southern California, there was nothing like this panoply of autumn colors.
The scenery during the drive distracted him from the concerns he had about their reason for going to Natchez. At first he had been excited about ghost-hunting with Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce, but during the early hours of the morning he awoke from a disturbing dream and had trouble going back to sleep. In the dream he found himself in his old home in California, pursued by ghosts with terrifying faces. They wanted something from him, but he was never able to discover what. As ghostly hands reached for him and brushed against his face, he awoke to find Peanut licking him and Endora sitting on his chest. Reassured by the presence of his four-legged friends, he had eventually thrown off the immediate effects of the dream and gone back to sleep.
In the early morning light, however, as he prepared for the drive to Natchez, he found it difficult to push away the memories of those horrible faces. The malevolence in them had terrified him in the dream, and he wondered what he and the sisters might find lurking in the atmosphere of Cliffwood. He found himself fretting over that same question now that they had arrived. Their stories of the weird things that happened at Riverhill hadn’t made him feel any better, though they assured him nothing really terrible ever happened. He was glad he didn’t sleep in the house, though. The ghosts at Riverhill—if that’s what they were—had so far not touched anything in his apartment.
“Thank you, Benjy,” Miss An’gel said from the seat beside him as she unbuckled her seat belt. “You really are an excellent driver. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip down. Didn’t you, Sister?” She turned to glance at Dickce in the backseat. “Especially since I could actually see individual trees, rather than a blur as we zoomed by.”
Benjy watched Miss Dickce’s expression in the rearview mirror. For a moment he thought she was going to stick her tongue out at her elder sister, and he had to suppress a laugh. He had seen her do it before.
Instead, Miss Dickce shrugged. “Yes, it would have been a shame to miss the scenery. The Trace is always beautiful.”
Peanut woofed in Benjy’s ear. Benjy knew the Labradoodle was eager to get out of the car and explore—and to do his business, as the sisters always referred to it. He slid out of the driver’s seat and prepared to open the rear door. First, however, he held up his hand, palm toward the window, to let Peanut know he had to stay. The dog whined but remained on the seat when Benjy opened the door. He quickly attached a leash and grabbed a plastic bag.
“I’d better let him explore a little before we go inside,” Benjy told the sisters. “Otherwise he might have an accident.”
“Excellent idea,” Miss Dickce said. “I’ll bring Endora while An’gel rings the doorbell to let them know we’re here.”
While he and Miss Dickce let the animals wander around the neatly clipped expanse of front lawn, Benjy gazed at the house. He had found several pictures of it in a book on antebellum houses Miss An’gel had.