“I know this isn’t the path you wanted me to go down, but it is the right path for me. I love it here. I love my life now. I’m proud of the dream I created, even if you’ll never be proud of me.”
“No need to be so defensive,” his father scoffed. “You did make a mistake in risking yourself and your family like that. I warned you to be careful and you didn’t listen. You and Clara almost joined me in the afterlife far too soon. That would’ve been a shame because look how far you’ve come.”
That caught Ezra off-guard. It almost sounded like a compliment. He waited for his father to come back with something that would twist it into an insult.
“It’s not the kind of dream I would want for myself,” he continued. “It’s not the future I envisioned for you. But it’s a good future, I see that now. You’ve built a good life for yourself and you seem happy. Clara seems happy. You protected her when she needed it most. You protected each other. It’s not the roles I’m used to, but it worked out for you.
“I guess… I guess seeing you in your everyday life taught me something, when I didn’t realize I had something to learn. I don’t agree with many of the things you do, but I do see how you and Clara make a great team. I see how important her happiness is to you, and I admire the fact that you are able to make her so happy. That’s what life is all about. That’s what I always tried to do for your mother.”
He paused and Ezra saw the sadness in his father’s eyes. His walls were lower than Ezra had ever seen them. In that moment, he got a glimpse of his father’s vulnerability. In that moment, this man who had grown distant from him felt like his father again.
“I miss her so much,” his father said, an unmistakable pain in his words. “There’s nothing I want more than to be with her again. But I guess I have some things to do here first. I’m starting to see what those things are. I was angry at first, furious I didn’t leave this earth and join her right away. Now I’m glad I get the chance to tie up these loose ends. To make things right.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is…” he looked at Ezra with nothing but love in his eyes. “I’m proud of you, son and I… I love you.”
His father stepped forward and solidified for a moment. For just a moment his body was almost living again, held together by all the things he never said and all the things he shouldn’t have said.
Before Ezra could even begin to process what was happening, his father’s arms were around him. They hugged for the first time in forever. It was everything Ezra didn’t know he needed. Everything he ever wanted from his father. He felt loved, accepted, appreciated, and cared for in that moment.
That moment said all the words they could never say. It was every apology, every forgiveness, every moment lost under emotions they couldn’t deal with.
“I love you too, Dad,” Ezra said as his father burst into light. “Say hi to Mom for me.”
Ezra lit a fire in the fireplace, ate his cookies, and drank his tea. Then, he went upstairs and held Clara tight. Finally, they could truly move on with their lives.
The Haunting of Bell Mansion
57
Late-eighteenth-century paintings hung from sagging walls with chipped paint. The tarnished gold frames were a perfect match for the generations of stern, shrewd men and women they held.
Dusty shelves scattered among the pictures acted as mantels for old brass candlestick holders. Long strands of dried wax ran down each candle, all of them burned down to nubs, though none of them had been lit in years.
Moonlight drifted through the dirty glass windows at each end of the third-floor hallway, providing just enough illumination for the furniture to cast long shadows across the ceiling, floors, and walls.
The innards of the eighteenth-century estate groaned from nearly two centuries of shielding Allister Bell’s descendants from the brutal northeastern winters. But while the walls kept the weather out, they also made sure to keep evil locked inside.
A scream echoed from a room down the hall, and the door was flung open in a rush, interrupting the mansion’s practiced silence.
Maggie Wallace stumbled over her feet, the long black skirt tangling her legs that wobbled along a serpentine path toward the staircase. She burst into the stairwell, pausing for a moment in the doorway and turning back toward the room she’d just escaped, her figure silhouetted by moonlight.
Sweat clung to Maggie’s forehead, her bangs breaking free from the white lace of her mob cap. She was still dressed in her maid attire, but the white of her apron was stained with blood.
The darkened hall behind her was still, the only noise and movement coming from her quick, hysterical breaths. Her gaze fell upon one of the portraits, and a pair of dead, beady eyes returned an accusing glare.
Maggie broke eye contact and tiptoed down the tight spiral staircase, hands shaking as she grabbed the splintered railing. Each step down cast her further into darkness but also closer to freedom. She tilted her head up, the moonlight shining through the window at the top of the stairs fading with her descent.
When Maggie reached the second floor, she froze in mid-step after she heard the slow groan from a door on one of the upper floors. She held her breath and white-knuckled the railing, trembling as she waited for the inevitable footsteps to follow. But none came.
Maggie resumed her descent, hastening her pace as she neared the bottom, and then leapt the last few steps. She landed hard on
