“Maybe he wanted to be the best crazy Victorian occultist he could be.” Creely kept paging through the book.
“Give me a second.” I closed my eyes and focused on the book. I pictured it in my mind, I tried to feel the essence of the man who created it. I opened myself to its energies, its power.
Nothing.
I don’t know why I kept trying. Except that I refused to stop doing everything I could, merely because I was compromised.
Creely kept my light trained over the yellowing book as she paged through an array of sun and moon symbols, as well as nonsensical messages written in capital letters.
“
“You can read that?” She shook her head. “Of course you can.” Her light hovered over the words. “What language are they using?”
“I have no idea.”
“It looks to me like a code,” she said. “Different occult groups used to make up their own languages.”
It made sense.
Creely paused, thinking. “They’d get messages from an Ouija board and record them.”
“Why was he using a Ouija board?” He had markers. It was the difference between two cups and a string versus a cell phone.
“Maybe he didn’t have anybody to talk to,” she said, missing the point. “I think he was some kind of recluse.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yeah, there was this huge scandal. I forget the story. Then boom, he’s stuck here.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, warming to it. “What happened?” It may help me figure out this house.
Creely thought for a moment. “He may have been the one of the guys funneling money off the top in the Credit Mobilier scandal. No. Wait. Wrong railroad.” She rubbed a hand over her chin. “Lizzie Borden was the one with the axe.”
“These Victorians were a feisty bunch”
She slapped her hands together. “I got it. Russell was the one who killed his virgin bride on their wedding night.”
“What?” I demanded. For the first time in my life, I made a biker witch jump. “We have a dead bride in this house?” Of course we did. Hadn’t I seen her? She was certainly wearing white.
“Nobody ever figured out for sure if he killed her,” she said, backtracking. As if that made a difference. She was dead and I’d seen her.
I walked straight into the darkness, spun back around, and fought the urge to throttle Creely. “When was somebody going to tell me about this?”
“I just thought of it,” she said, defensively. “Now I’m sorry I did,” she added under her breath.
“This is lovely. An occult house with a dead bride.”
“Chill, Lizzie. We’re here for your wedding, not hers.”
Yes, well I didn’t know if the ghost realized that or not.
For all I knew, I had vengeful poltergeist bridezilla on my hands. She was there at the attack, watching me as I choked. “This is a dangerous place.”
Creely set the book aside. “Come on. You could get attacked in Chuck-E-Cheese, so don’t go blaming everything in this house.”
“Tell me about his wife.”
She sighed. “I don’t know. She was way younger than him. I think she lived on a farm north of here. I doubt she came from a hugely rich family because they didn’t do a ton of investigating after she was strangled on her wedding night.”
“Sure. Why would they?” I started to pace. I’d be willing to bet I’d stood on her grave when Grandma and I had visited that farmers market.
Hadn’t we seen the remains of an old farmhouse? Her headstone had been large, and expensive no doubt. Given by a guilty husband? Or perhaps bought by a family who could do nothing else but mourn.
I recalled the inscription on the stone. “Her name was Elizabeth, wasn’t it?”
Creely shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“Yes, well, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her ghost,” and cripes—I had her grave dirt in my locket. I had to get rid of it, but not here in the house. Somewhere away from the markers. “She wants me to help her.”
“Don’t.” Creely said, closing the book and stuffing it into the back of her jeans. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with in this house.”
Understatement of the year.
The kicker was, I couldn’t control that. I just had to be on my game, and hope for the best. How sad to reach a point where a gothic bridal ghost was the least of my problems.
I stood for a moment, hands on my hips, thinking. I couldn’t worry. Or wait. The only thing I could do to change any of this was to find that third marker.
“There’s something we’re not seeing,” I told the biker witch.
Creely grinned, like it was a challenge. “Then let’s hit this sucker.”
We attacked Russell’s office. We picked the locks on the main desk drawer and Creely cracked the combination on a safe hidden behind some books. We found a metal case with another magical diary of sorts. This one had an art nouveau type pentacle, which made Creely roll her eyes.
There were handmade talismans, a round altar cloth with the light and life cross and the six-pointed star on it. We came across a few wands that Creely declared ‘no better than twigs’ and a crystal ball with a crack down the middle.
“Amateurs,” the biker witch muttered.
“When did this guy ever have time to run a railroad?” I asked, as we laid out all the stuff on the desk.
“I don’t think he had many guests in here,” she said, eyeing the bookshelves.
I followed her gaze and saw that the ceiling was painted with a scene from revelation. Or at least I hoped it was biblical. I cringed inwardly. It sure wasn’t white magic.
Finally, I crawled under the desk and was rewarded with a handful of dust bunnies. And a few spiders. Ick. At least these were alive and of the normal variety. I rubbed my hands on my dress.
“Come, oh bride to be,” Creely said, as she started blowing out the candles. A chill ran though my veins and I stood as fast as I could. Then again, if Creely had wanted to kill me, why hadn’t she tried already?
The biker witch stood by the wall that opened to the hallway. “As much as I like insane nightmares, I think we’ve seen all there is in here.”
No. This couldn’t be the end of it. I tried to think, to imagine where else we could go.
I stood thinking for a moment. “Creely, do you need a couple of big stone walls to support a house like this?”
She shone the light at me, catching me in the face. “Care to be a bit more specific?”
“Stop,” I said, as she lowered the Maglite. I blinked back the dots in my line of vision while I tried to picture the U-shaped bend in the basement. “Would you need two parallel load bearing walls about fifteen feet apart?”
“No.” She began heading for the exit. “What’s going on?”
She had no idea how tired I was of that question.
“I think there’s a room directly below us.” There had to be. “It’s at the center of the house, walled in on all sides. I have to get down there.”
She sighed, checked her watch. “You know your mom’s throwing you a wedding shower in about a half hour.”
I’d totally forgotten. “What day is it?”
She gave me an exaggerated bug-eyed stare. “Call in the necromancers, hell’s heated up.”
Ha, ha. “The wedding shower can wait.”
The biker witch snarfed. “Have you met your mom?” She ran a thumb along the scrollwork on the wall,
