The Haunting of Silver Creek Lodge Page 14

  “And you always work everything out?”

  I side-eyed Keith. “Are you asking about Simon and me or for future reference. Is there a girl you’ve got your eye on?”

  He blushed and ducked his head. The glow of the intersection lights cast red shadows across his ill-defined cheeks. “No. Definitely not.”

  “That sounds like a lie.” I nudged him with my elbow. “Who is she? Tell me. Tell me!”

  The light turned green, and Keith batted my hand away. “No distracting the driver!”

  I retreated, laughing, and Keith stepped on the gas pedal. We were almost to Silver Creek. The city lights were long gone, but the warm golden glow up ahead signified the small town was close by.

  As we drove through town, people waved to Keith, spotting his familiar truck. Before long, I realized they were waving to me, too. With a smile, I returned the greetings.

  “One of the locals now, huh?” Keith asked. “They like you.”

  “We’ve barely talked to anyone,” I said. “We haven’t had the time. Simon’s been working. I’ve been sick. I feel bad they don’t really know anything about us.”

  “Everyone here understands how busy you are,” Keith told me. “When you have time, you’ll get to know the town. Don’t worry.”

  We passed through the town square and came out on the other end. The turn toward the Lodge approached, and I released a heavy sigh.

  “You gonna be okay by yourself tonight?” Keith asked. “I can stick around if you want. Make sure nothing goes bump in the night.”

  I half-grinned, thinking Keith had no idea what he was in for if he did stay. “That’s okay, Keith. Thank you for offering.”

  “Sure thing. Here you go.”

  We pulled into the lot in front of the Lodge. He reached across me to manually unlock the door, and I caught a whiff of cologne. Who wore cologne to go skiing?

  “Should I come by tomorrow?” he asked. “Simon had a plan for the work that needs to be done, but I’m not sure what was next. I can work on some other projects if you like.”

  “Take the day off,” I said, sliding out of the truck. My boots crunched into the snow. “I’ll give you an update at the end of the day when I pick up Simon from the hospital.”

  Keith saluted me. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Like a gentleman, he waited until I had reached the front porch and unlocked the door before driving away. His mother must have taught him that trick.

  The Lodge didn’t seem half as terrifying as it did before. Now, it just felt empty. Without carpets, wallboards, fresh paint, or furniture, the Lodge was bare. More than ever, it seemed like the appropriate place for ghosts to linger.

  Lily, for once, did not appear on the steps. Where did she go when I wasn’t around? Did she exist without someone to interact with her?

  Something—or someone—caught my eye on the second-floor balcony. I didn’t look up right away, studying the apparition without moving my head. All I saw was a silvery figure of a stooped man. He seemed rather solid, except around the edges, where his outline blurred like traffic lights through the windshield on a rainy day. My gut told me this was the same man I’d seen walking through the Lodge as if he owned the place.

  I gathered my wits and looked up. As soon as my eyes reached the place where the man stood, he vanished. He could have been a trick of the light.

  I shed my boots, gloves, hat, and coat, casting off the weight of the day. A sense of peace settled in my chest. I was oddly calm, given the circumstances. In the bathroom that worked, I drew a warm bath and lit a few candles. While I bathed and relaxed, the plucking of classical guitar strings floated through the air. I didn’t notice the music right away, too entranced by the lavender bubbles and dancing candlelight. When it came to my attention, I sat up and listened closely.

  “Clair de Lune.” It was a piano piece, but whoever played it now had reworked it to fit the guitar. It was just as beautiful as the original, perhaps more so because the player’s talent shown through in every note.

  As quietly as possible, I lifted myself from the tub. Water dripped from my legs, pooling on the unfinished floor as I wrapped myself in a robe. I hurriedly dried off, stepped into a pair of waiting slippers, and peeked into the corridor.

  The music came from beyond the lobby, in one of the rooms we hadn’t spent much time in yet. I followed the lilting guitar medley through the dining area and recreation room. The last room at the back of the house was a quaint hall for hosting events. Like those in the presidential suite, the sweeping windows presented an unfiltered view of the woods and mountains behind the Lodge.

  I edged inside, rolling my feet from heels to toes to keep my footsteps as silent as possible. At the opposite end of the room, a woman sat in a rusty folding chair with her back to me. She was less solid than the man I’d seen on the stairs. If I squinted, I could see right through her body. The guitar on her lap had the same effect.

  In the reflection of the window, I watched her fingers fly over the fretboard. She was completely absorbed in the song, eyes closed and left ear tilted down to catch every sound from the instrument. I held my breath, amazed, as she expertly plucked the guitar. Not a single note wrong or wasted.

  When she finished, I resisted the urge to applaud. The woman remained in playing position as the last notes resonated through the hall as if she were savoring the sound of the final chord. Then she slowly opened her eyes and looked up, her gaze connecting with mine in the window’s reflection.

  “Sorry, I—” I began.

  With a startled gasp, she disappeared, guitar and all. The folding chair wobbled and fell over as if someone had hastily vacated it. The air warmed considerably. I hadn’t noticed how cold it was in the hall until the woman was gone.

  Tentatively, I walked across the hall and set the folding chair upright. The rusted metal was freezing to touch. I sat down and looked out on the Lodge’s backyard. From here, the ugly, dead tree loomed over the left side of the property. Something clicked in my head.

  Later, I snuggled beneath several layers of blankets and willed myself to go to sleep. It was different without Simon. I missed his warmth, smell, and general presence. Aside from the night he’d spent on the couch, we hadn’t slept apart in a number of years. I wasn’t used to reaching out and feeling a cold, empty space next to me. To make up for it, I rolled to the middle of the air mattress and stretched out as far as possible. It was freeing to have so much space, but I ultimately ended up curled in a tight ball. Some habits were hard to break.

  I thought of Simon, glaring at me from his hospital bed. He’d pushed that button for morphine without hesitation, almost as if he hadn’t considered fighting the pain. Like he wanted the drugs and knew his injury was the perfect excuse to use them. Despite my thicket of blankets, I shuddered. Ever since I’d met Simon, I feared one thing: that he would turn into his brother, Casey.

  I drifted off to sleep. When I woke again, it was because of that magnetic pull I’d felt a few times before. This time, it didn’t alarm me so much, though I cautioned myself before getting out of bed. The way Lily spoke of the “energy” in the house made it sound unpredictable and self-serving. The last time I’d let it led me wherever it wanted me to go, I ended up falling off the roof.

  Like last time, a curious mental fog separated me from the rest of the world. It was almost like I was looking at the Lodge through a thin veil, one that painted a different reality over what was actually in front of me. As I got to my feet, I turned on a flashlight and shone it around the room. The beam cut through some of the fog but didn’t dismiss the spell laid over the Lodge. I gasped aloud as the gutted room transform into a fully-furnished excerpt from the seventies’ version of the Lodge.

  Drapes covered the windows. Green and pink wallpaper clashed with the ornate, cherrywood furniture. A shag carpet coated the floor. When I stepped forward, the dusty fibers tickled between my toes. This was what the Lodge looked like many years ago.

  The “energy” didn�
�t let me stop and stare for long. It tugged at my legs and forced me into the hallway. I didn’t have time to put on my slippers. My bare feet grew cold as I went out into the lobby and stared, open-mouthed at the changed room. The reception area was completely different, with a front desk that blended in with the wood paneling on the walls. An immense book lay open. When I approached it, I saw it was handwritten records of everyone who stayed at the Lodge during that time. No computers for easy record-keeping.

  One name jumped out at me: Christine Higgins. Everything else on the list was blurry like those details weren’t important. The energy pulled on me again and led me toward the stairs. I kept my hand on the banister as I went up, not trusting myself to stay balanced against the invisible force.

  As I passed the balcony that looked over the lobby, I caught another glimpse of the same man from earlier. He looked younger now. His hands were folded neatly as he leaned on the railing and observed the lobby from above. I found I could only see him if I didn’t look straight at him. As soon as I tried, he became invisible.

  The energy wasn’t showing me this man, though. It kept pulling me down the hall toward the presidential suite. We stopped short of the biggest bedroom, and the door to my left swung open slowly.

  It was the same room as last time. I looked in from the doorway and recognized the shape of it, including the window that led out to the roof. Like the rest of the Lodge, it was decorated in a seventies style. Clearly, people had been here recently. The covers on the bed lay on the floor in a messy pile, like they’d been yanked off. Two suitcases lined the wall. One was neatly packed with a woman’s folded clothes. The other looked as if someone had dropped a live grenade in it.

  On the bedside table, a lit cigarette smoldered in an ashtray. A guitar lay face down on the orange carpet, the neck splintered from the body. Small circular burns decorated the body of the instrument like someone had taken the cigarette and intentionally held the hot end against the delicate wood.

  A draft entered the room from the open window and curled around my bare feet. I approached the window and looked out. This time, I saw something. The same woman from the hall, the one who’d been playing guitar, stood on the edge of the roof. She gazed longingly up at the dead white tree and fiddled with something in her grasp: a length of rope.

  As I did two nights ago, I ducked through the window and climbed out onto the roof. The woman shaped the rope into a rough noose and tossed one end over the sturdiest branch of the tree. Once it was secure, she looped the other end around her neck.

  “Wait!” I yelled, sliding across the icy roof as I tried to reach her. The cold pierced the bottom of my feet like sharp splinters. “Please, stop!”

  I expected her to disappear like she did before. I hoped she would, so I wouldn’t have to see what came next. But the woman remained where she was, her toes hanging off the edge of the roof as she contemplated whether or not to kill herself.

  “Christine?” I said in a soft voice, slowing my pace as I grew closer to her. “Are you Christine Higgins?”

  The woman turned toward me. Her face contorted with pain. Tear tracks stained her cheeks. Her eyes were swollen and red. A ring of bruises encircled her neck—ten small, finger-sized bruises. Someone had tried to strangle her long before she decided to strangle herself.

  “You can’t stop this,” she said in a voice as musically pleasing as her guitar playing. “No one can. It’s already happened.”

  “But you shouldn’t have to relive it,” I replied quietly. “It’s not right.”

  Was that a flash of hope in her sad eyes?

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m Max.”

  “You can see me,” she said pensively. “Not many people can.”

  “You wanted me to.” I took another step toward her.

  The more I focused on her, the more she seemed to solidify. She wasn’t like Lily, who could fool almost anyone into thinking she was alive, but it was a start.

  “You brought me out here before to show me how you died.”

  Christine’s lower lip trembled. “I just need someone to see me.”

  “I see you,” I assured her, reaching my hand out. “I see you, Christine.”

  When her skin touched mine, I expected to feel a human hand. Though I saw our hands touching, I felt nothing. It was like she wasn’t even there. Then again, I supposed she wasn’t.

  Difficult though it was to hang onto nothing, I led Christine a few steps away from the edge of the roof. The noose vanished from around her neck.

  “Thank you,” she said gratefully. “I’ve never walked away before.”

  “I heard you playing guitar earlier,” I told her. “My husband has wanted to learn ‘Clair de Lune’ on guitar for years, but he could never figure out how to transpose it properly. You did it beautifully.”

  Though she was dead, she blushed. “Goodness, you really think so?”

  “I know so.”

  Her joy faded quickly. “My husband ruined my guitar.”

  I pointed at the open window behind us. “That was your room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did something happen in there?”

  Christine’s chin wobbled as she struggled to keep her tears at bay. “No, no. Nothing else happened. It was an accident.”

  I gently cupped Christine’s elbow. Perhaps she could feel it, even if I couldn’t. “You can tell me. It’s already happened, remember?”

  “He was upset again,” she began wobbly. “He’s always upset about something. I do a lot of things wrong. He said I packed his suitcase incorrectly. He likes me to pack it by outfit rather than separating it into articles of clothing.” She sniffed heavily. “I told him I couldn’t fit everything in if I had to organize it that way, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “You packed it the way it would fit?”

  She nodded. “For the first two nights, he didn’t say anything. I thought he didn’t notice or mind. On the third night, he couldn’t find a shirt he was looking for. He took it out on me. I was napping in the bed, and he yanked the mattress out from under me. He threw my guitar—I was supposed to perform in the hall that night—and burned it with his cigarette. Then he—he grabbed me—”

  She motioned to her neck but was unable to put the action into words. Her eyes filled with tears again.

  “He hurt you,” I finished for her, leaving the unpleasant details out. “What happened next?”

  “Someone knocked on the door, so he stopped,” Christine said. “I couldn’t speak. He had damaged my vocal cords. I had to call the front desk and tell them I was too sick to perform. That night, I told him not to bother trying to kill me again. I said I’d do it myself. Then I marched out onto the roof, tied myself to that tree, and stepped off. I don’t think he expected me to go through with it.”

  “But why did you do it?” I asked. “There are other ways to get out of an unhappy marriage. Why didn’t you report him to the police?”

  “Honey, there are a million reasons why I didn’t leave him before,” Christine said, though she did not seem to be patronizing me. “Least of all because people frowned upon divorced women quite a bit back then. I killed myself because he finally took the last piece of me: my music. It was everything to me. Without it, I no longer felt human. I saw no point in remaining alive in a world that had no meaning.”

  I swallowed a large lump in my throat. Never once had I thought about committing suicide, but Christine talked about it with reverence. “I’m sorry you felt that way.”

  She looked across the roof at the moon. “It’s a lovely night. It would have been a shame to ruin it by repeating the past.”

  “Can you stop?” I asked. “Do you have to keep doing this?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I can’t seem to stop.”

  “What happened to your husband?” I said. “After you stepped off the roof? Do you know?”

  Christine hugged herself as if she could feel the chilly breeze drifting t
hrough the trees. My feet were practically frozen to the rooftop.

  “I thought it hadn’t worked.” Christine gazed blankly into the distance, lost in thought. “One moment, I was hanging from the tree. The next, I was back on the roof, watching him shouting and sobbing from the window. I looked over the edge and saw my body. The police came and found me. They saw the bruises on my neck and arrested my husband. I’m not sure what happened after that. All I know is I’ve been stuck at this lodge for over forty years, stepping off this roof over and over again.”

  “Go inside,” I ordered gently. I guided her toward the open window, but without a real body to maneuver, all I could do was fan her spirit away from the edge of the roof. “You don’t have to keep doing this to yourself.”

  Christine stepped through the window and into the room. I followed and found that the room was no longer destroyed. The bed was made, and only one suitcase—the neatly packed one—rested on the floor. Her guitar leaned against the wall in one piece. It was like Christine’s husband was never there.

  “Goodness,” she said, looking around. “This place is quite nice when it’s all cleaned up, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” I agreed. “You can switch rooms, too, if you’d like. And I plan on cutting that tree down eventually.”

  “Are you the new protector?” she asked out of the blue.

  I recalled what Lily had said earlier, something about the ghosts of the Silver Creek Lodge needing protection. Was that my responsibility?

  “Maybe,” I answered Christine. “We’ll see how it goes. Have a good night.”

  “Are you leaving?”

  “I’ll be right downstairs,” I assured her. “You can come to see me any time you like.”

  For the first time, she seemed happy. She sat on the bed and bounced to test the softness of the mattress. Then she flopped back, spread her arms wide, and let out a small squeak of joy. With a smile, I retreated from her room to let her enjoy her newfound freedom.

  At the end of the corridor, I ran into Lily. Though she looked to be in good spirits, she seemed weaker than usual.