The Uninvited

3

The hospital was cold. Outside, the late-summer heat was beginning to wane and the day was still beautiful, but inside the hospital, Allison shivered against the chill that seeped into her bones.

She didn’t want to be there; she wanted to run away. But Todd wanted to see her because for some reason he believed she could help.

And she wanted to help.

The two boys were seated in an otherwise empty waiting area. Todd’s mother was in with his father, and an attractive woman of about forty was sitting with the boys. Seeing Allison, Todd leaped to his feet and came running over to her. She was startled when he threw his arms around her but she comforted the boy, embracing him and stroking his hair.

“He followed us home! He followed us home. That awful man followed us home. The beast—Beast Bradley. He killed your friend and he made my father sick!” Todd said, his words muffled.

Allison looked helplessly at the woman in the room and then at Tyler Montague.

“Todd,” she said gently. “Ghosts can’t do that. Really. They’re just…inventions, something we make up in our own minds. Your father—” She paused, praying this wasn’t a lie. “Your father’s going to be fine. You’re in an exceptionally good hospital and the doctors will find out what’s wrong with him.”

The woman who was with the boys had risen and come toward her, a hand extended. “You must be Allison Leigh. I’m Rose Litton, Todd and Jimmy’s aunt. I’m sorry you’ve been asked down here. I know you’re dealing with your own loss. But Todd was nearly hysterical and insisted that he see you.”

“It’s all right. It’s quite all right,” Allison assured her. But it wasn’t. She didn’t know how to make this better for Todd.

She could only be glad that—as far as she knew—the ransacking of the attic’s office space had not been divulged to the media.

“What do the doctors say?” Tyler was asking.

“So far they can’t identify the physiological cause,” Rose Litton said. “Not yet, at any rate, but they’re doing a lot of tests. Early this morning, while he was still in bed at the hotel, Artie jerked up, screamed—and fell into a coma. It was as if he saw something in his sleep…or in his dreams. They believe he might have ingested some kind of hallucinogenic, which made him see something that terrified him, although they can’t tell what it is or how this might have happened. They just don’t know.”

Allison touched Todd’s chin to get him to look up at her. “The doctors here are the best. They’ll find out what’s wrong with your father,” she promised again.

“Who are you?” Rose Litton asked, frowning at Tyler. “Forgive me—that’s rude. I just knew the nurse had called the police station, asking about a way for Todd to see Ms. Leigh.”

“Not rude at all,” Tyler said, reaching into his jacket and producing his credentials.

“Special Agent?” Rose Litton read, her voice worried.

“I’m here to discover what went on at the house,” he told her. “Please, don’t be alarmed. We don’t suspect any kind of true toxin. Allison would be ill, too, if there had been, and so could a hundred-plus other people who were in the house yesterday. I’m not a doctor, but I do know there are many reasons for a coma, and the doctors here will get to the root of it.” He hunkered down. “Did you see what happened? Perhaps, earlier, your father knocked his head? Was he agitated, stressed out about anything?”

Todd shook his head. Jimmy stood and came over to join them. “No, my dad doesn’t get stressed,” Jimmy said. “He’s a good guy. He yells sometimes, but not much. We had fun after we left the house. We went to a tavern for supper and Dad was okay when we went to bed.”

Todd nodded vigorously. “Yeah, he was fine. He let us watch TV for a while in the hotel. Then we fell asleep and woke up because Dad screamed. He just screamed in the middle of the night. We were scared ’cause Dad never screams and suddenly he did.” He looked proud for a minute. “My dad is really brave. It had to be something awful, a monster like Beast Bradley, to make my dad scream like that.”

“Thank you,” Tyler said gravely. He stood again. “You know, sometimes we have monsters in our minds, in our imaginations. I’ll go speak with one of the docs,” he said. “In the meantime, you shouldn’t worry.” He smiled at Rose and set his hand on Todd’s head. “Excuse me. I’ll be back.”

He left them, and Allison felt more awkward than ever.

She tried to smile at Rose. “It’s great that you could be here.”

“I’m only over in Hershey,” Rose said. “Not far at all. And I’m glad to be with the boys.” Her expression was pained, her eyes on Allison. Her silence seemed to say a lot.

I don’t know what’s the matter with Todd. He’s convinced it’s something from the Tarleton-Dandridge House. I hope you can reassure him….

The realization that this might have been a bad time to bother Allison seemed to come back to her.

“I really am so sorry!” Rose said. “You lost someone last night. Tragically. It’s…it’s all over the news. And they’re making it sound—” she glanced at the boys “—like a…well, paranormal event.”

Allison nodded. “Of course. People love ghost stories.”

“There is a ghost,” Todd insisted.

Jimmy gasped. “We saw that a tour guide died at the house. It was on the TV news when we got back. My parents were worried. They hoped it wasn’t you!” he told Allison. “Dad turned the news off. He says we’ll get to know enough about the real world when we’re older.” He frowned. “I’m sorry. I mean, I’m glad it wasn’t you, but I’m sorry about your friend.”

Todd took her hand and squeezed it. They were sorry, but Julian was an abstraction to them, a news story, while their father was lying here in a no-man’s-land. “Yeah, we’re really sorry,” he said.

“Thank you. I’m the one who found him, and it was heartbreaking for me. I’m going to miss him very much. But, Todd, like I was telling you, bad things just happen sometimes, even to good people. Listen, you have to trust the doctors here, and you can’t get upset about the house or believe you have a ghost with you. Okay?”

He looked at her stubbornly. “The ghost likes you. You can talk to him. You can get him to leave my dad alone.”

As Allison struggled for speech, Rose Litton shrugged apologetically.

“All of us, every one of us, will do whatever we can for your dad, okay, Todd?” Allison finally said.

Todd whispered a solemn “Thank you.”

A moment later, Tyler returned. He offered Todd an encouraging smile. “They’ll keep at it, young man. Meanwhile, you stay calm and help your mom and little brother.”

Todd nodded. He studied Tyler, and then apparently decided to trust him.

“I will. I’m going to help my mom and my family,” Todd said. “Please, help her, though,” he said, glancing over at Allison. “The ghost likes her.”

Rose moved closer to Allison. “I am so sorry,” she said again. “He was just crying and going crazy, and the idea that you might talk to him was the only thing that worked.”

“We’ll do everything we can from our end, Todd,” Tyler said.

Allison noticed that the boy seemed to respond to him. He nodded. “I can reach you if I need to, right?”

“We’ll be here,” Tyler promised firmly. “I’ll even give you my personal cell number. You can call me anytime.”

Todd gestured at Allison. “She doesn’t understand,” he said. “But she can help us, and you can help her. Please?”

“I’ll do whatever I can, buddy.”

He wrote down his cell number and handed it to the boy, then took Allison’s arm to lead her from the hospital. She steeled herself not to wrench her arm out of his grasp.

When they exited, she moved away from him. “That was wrong,” she told him.

“What was?”

“You made that poor boy think we could help him by convincing a ghost to leave his dad alone!”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you believe they exist!”

They’d reached his car. He leaned against the roof, looking over at her as she waited by the passenger door.

“I went in and spoke with Mr. Dixon’s doctors. There is absolutely nothing physiological causing his problem—nothing they can discover. Of course, they’re still testing. And he may come out of it himself. One of the theories his primary physician has is that he put himself in the coma to avoid some horrible fact or illusion he’d seen in his own mind. Whether you want to believe I’m a quack or not, you have to admit that the power of the human mind can be incredible. Maybe if we look into this and find something to say to the kid, the family or even Mr. Dixon himself, we can reverse the situation.”

“If we can find something?”

“You know the history and the house better than anyone else.”

Allison lowered her eyes, remembering the way she’d felt when Todd was in the house yesterday, so convinced that something evil was still alive there.

She looked back at Tyler. “I’m an academic. I believe in the power of men and women to do good or evil. I don’t believe in spirits.”

“But you believe in history?”

“Of course. You can’t not believe in history,” she said.

“Ah, but what about the famous saying: History is written by the victors. And sometimes the victors might exaggerate or lie or leave things out. Sometimes history has to be rewritten. It isn’t an unchanging, monolithic entity. Attitudes change, and they change history. So do new facts as they emerge.”

Allison sighed, wondering how the granite Texan could be so ethereal in his statements.

“History didn’t kill Julian Mitchell,” she said. “Or put Mr. Dixon in a coma.”

“Belief is everything,” he countered. “And, Allison, I do believe it’s obvious that something is going on. Even if by some remarkable chance Julian accidentally killed himself or just decided, Hmm, let me think of a really gruesome way to kill myself, it still wouldn’t explain what happened in the attic.”

“Maybe Julian trashed the attic.”

“Why would he have done that?”

“I don’t know! Why would he have sat down with his rifle—and then leaned his head down on the blade?” she asked wearily.

“Those are things we have to know. Other people could die,” Tyler said.

“You mean Mr. Dixon. He wasn’t at the house when he went into a coma.”

“No. But he’d been at the house, and you found a friend dead there a matter of hours earlier. Dixon saw the news about Julian’s death before going to sleep.”

“So, he dreamed a ghost had followed him home and it was so real and frightening to his sleeping mind that he slipped into another realm,” Allison said. “I don’t know the answers to any of it. I just know that it’s real and horrible and I’m so tired I can’t think. Will you take me home, please?” she asked. “I’d just like to be alone.”

He looked over the top of the car at her and Allison saw that his gaze was filled with disappointment. Of course. He wasn’t going to get what he wanted. But it was more than that; it was disappointment in her, and somehow that was disturbing.

“Certainly. I’ll take you right home.”

Allison had no idea why his reaction bothered her. It just did.

“I really need some time!” she said, almost pleading. “Julian is dead. Not in a coma. There’s no coming back from that.”

“I completely understand. Really.”

She slid into the passenger seat. He was silent as they drove and she watched him, feeling a clash of emotions. Life had become so painful and intense overnight. It was still hard to fathom that Julian was dead. She was still tired from last night. She’d discovered the body of her friend. Then she’d dealt—for the first time in her life—with the police, and with crime scene techs trying to find out what she’d touched and what she hadn’t. Later Adam Harrison and this man had shown up… And today she’d spent time with a heartbroken child. She was mentally and physically exhausted, and dismayed because she was disappointing a stranger. And now, she was staring at that stranger, wondering how someone with such a strong jawline and intense eyes, such a tall, powerful build and compelling presence, could be part of a team of ghost busters.

Yesterday she’d been herself—a teacher who loved history and brought that love to costumed interpretation. She loved her life, and she had good friends, a great family. And this morning…

She looked straight ahead. She wasn’t being selfish. She needed to go home. To speak with her coworkers and friends from the board and— Good Lord! She had to call her parents and let them know she was all right.

He drove to her house and stopped the car. Turning to her, he said quietly, “I’m very sorry about your friend, and truly sorry that you were the one to find him.”

She nodded. “I just need some time,” she said again.

“Call me when you feel you want to get back into it.”

“Of course.”

He was watching her so intently she wondered if she had food on her face.

“You’ll need my number,” he reminded her.

“Oh. Yes.” She gave a deep sigh. “I do want to help the kids. I do want to help you, even though it did look like a horrible accident.” Allison took out her cell phone as she spoke.

“The trashing of the attic wasn’t an accident.” He removed his phone from his pocket. “I’ll dial you,” he said.

He already had her number. Of course. He was an FBI agent.

She clicked on the call and added his number to her phone. Then she realized she’d asked to be taken home and they’d arrived, but she was still sitting in his car.

“I’m not sure what I can do for you,” she told him. “You’re here, Mr. Harrison is here, the police have been through it all. I don’t know what I could contribute.”

“I doubt that anyone is as familiar with the house or its history as you are.” She caught herself studying the color of his eyes. They were a mixture of blue and green, a kind of aqua she’d never seen before. He was a very striking man.

She blinked, suddenly aware that she was staring and that she needed to reply.

“There have been some tragic and terrible incidents at the house, but I don’t think something that happened years ago could have any bearing on what happened yesterday.”

He shrugged, smiling wryly. “That’s what we’ll find out.” He exited the car and walked around to open her door.

She remembered that she was supposed to get out.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

“Are you sure you’ll be right alone?”

“Yes, thanks. We’ll, um, be in touch.”

“Thank you,” he said with a nod.

Awkwardly, she started up her front walk. She knew he was watching her, and when she fit her key into the door, she turned around to wave. He waved back, then got into his car and eased out onto the street.

Inside the house, she closed the door and leaned against it for a moment. She’d wanted to be alone.

Now she didn’t.

But she walked in and dug out her phone before tossing her purse on the sofa and sitting down next to it. She had to start returning calls.

But even as she decided that she had to call her mother first and then the board and her coworkers, the silence in the house seemed to weigh down on her. She got up and turned on the television. A news station was playing, with a reporter standing in front of the hospital. Mr. Dixon’s strange fall into a coma was being added to the tragic news about musician and tour guide Julian Mitchell.

She changed the channel. The speculation on the “evil” within the house on news stations struck her as overkill.

With a comedy repeat keeping her company, she looked at all the calls she’d ignored while she was with Tyler Montague. She called her parents, who’d gone to their home in Arizona for a few weeks, and made a point of being calm and sad and completely in control. As much as she adored her mom and dad, she didn’t want them coming back here because they were worried about her.

They’d met Julian a few times and offered their condolences, but when they questioned her safety, she made it sound as if the media were going wild—which they were—and described what had happened as a tragic accident. She assured her mother that as a Revolution-era woman or even as Lucy Tarleton, she didn’t carry a musket with a bayonet.

Next she spoke to Nathan Pierson. She told him she was fine, and he promised he’d be there for anything she needed with the police or the house. He’d talk to the rest of the board, too. She didn’t have to call anyone else, he said; she should just relax.

Nathan was the easiest member of board to deal with. He was a good-looking man who had never married. She wasn’t close enough to ask him if there was a long-lost love for whom he pined, but if so, it didn’t seem to affect his dating life. At various functions, she’d seen him with different women, all of them beautiful and elegant. He was unfailingly polite and courteous to her. Sometimes he teased her, claiming that he was waiting for her to notice him and ignore the age discrepancy; he teased a lot of people, though, and he had a way of making his words sound like a compliment rather than licentious.

He was the solid rock of the board, in Allison’s opinion. Ethan Oxford was like a distant grandfather, Sarah was like the family old-maid aunt—even though she’d been married. She was high-strung. And Cherry was…Cherry. She always considered herself a cut above the rest of the world.

Allison was grateful that Nathan was going to speak with the other board members, but she did have to call Jason Lawrence and Annette Fanning.

Jason still seemed stunned by the whole thing. She told him about the attic but said they were keeping that information from the media.

He, too, wanted to make sure she was okay.

After that she called Annette.

Annette was smart and fun and usually logical, so Allison was shocked by the tremor in her friend’s voice and the view she seemed to be taking of the situation.

“It’s not surprising, is it? Oh, Allison, I thank God for that root canal, and I never thought I’d say that. I wonder what happened. Did Julian freak out? One toke too many? But he’s never been out of it at work. That’s just the heavy-metal image he likes to portray. It’s the house, Allison. It terrifies me! I can always feel it when I’m there, like…like the house itself is breathing. I mean, when you’re out on the street, the windows seem like eyes, watching you. Maybe so much evil did happen there and it continues, on and on. Like something malevolent that waits and—”

“Annette! No! The house is a pile of brick and wood and stone. It’s a house. Horrible things take place everywhere. We go through life grateful when they don’t happen to us, and either sad or broken when they do.”

“Well, I for one am glad they’re closing it down. No, wait—do we get unemployment or anything? I’m out of a job! I don’t think they’ll be able to pay us—there won’t be any money coming into the house without the tours.”

“We’re not out of work, Annette. They’re closing it temporarily for an investigation. I’m sure they’ll provide us with some kind of compensation.”

“The house needs an exorcism!”

“No, Annette, it doesn’t. The house isn’t possessed. Or evil. And if the house could feel anything, it would be grateful to us for keeping it alive. Annette—”

“Ohhhhh,” Annette broke in. “You have another job. I don’t. In fact, you have a cool job, a real job. You’re a professor.”

“Annette, you do have a real job. The house will open again. It’ll just be closed for a few weeks. They’ll shore up the alarm system, and we’ll be bombarded when we reopen because people are ghoulish and they’ll want to stare at the place where Julian died. Besides, you work at the tavern as a singing waitress sometimes.”

“Yeah, thank God! I was there last night. I went for a drink after my root canal and to hang with some of my friends. I can ask for a few more nights.”

“The house won’t be closed that long.”