Maple Dale (Maple Dale Series) Read online

  Christine glanced at her, then shrugged. "Maybe not. But I have to admit he scares me."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. He just does."

  "But aren't you g-g-glad he's g-g-going to be with D-Dad again tonight?"

  Of course she was. "That's different."

  "H-How?"

  Christine kept her eyes on the road. "I don't know." Why did he frighten her? "Maybe it's just his size."

  Or maybe perhaps it was because he was black.

  "I'm just not comfortable around him."

  * * *

  Richard and Bill were once again guarding Maple Dale, and in for a night.

  "Gin!"

  It was ten o'clock on a yet uneventful Halloween.

  "I give up!" Richard threw his cards on the table. "You obviously gambled for a living at some point in your life."

  Bill laughed. "Hey, some of us are just lucky and some of us aren't."

  Richard shook his head, smiling, and stood up and stretched. They'd been playing cards for over an hour, and he hadn't won a single hand. "I've never been lucky at anything."

  Bill leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "That doesn't say a whole hell of a lot for Christine, you know."

  Richard chuckled. "Oh, but it does. See, that was bad luck on her part."

  Bill laughed.

  A friendship was developing, one that could only happen sometimes by chance.

  "I mean, talk about getting dealt a bad hand."

  Bill's expression grew serious. "Awe come on, don't be so hard on yourself. Nobody's perfect, you know."

  Richard raised an eyebrow, and the two of them laughed. After all, this was Christine they were talking about. A woman as flawless as they came. "You have no idea."

  * * *

  A shiny red van pulled off the road and backed in behind a clump of trees to the one side of the Maple Dale entrance. Its occupants, four college freshmen couples, were filled with anticipation as they passed around a bottle of peach schnapps. This Halloween was going to be a memorable one for them. More memorable than their ghoulish costumes, and even more memorable than all their fondling.

  There was a witch and a warlock, who'd done it all before, and a devil and a temptress, who barely knew each other's names, a Frankenstein and his bride, who were fighting but about to make up, and a Dracula, who was telling lies to his chalky draculette, as she sat on his lap, rocking slowly back and forth.

  They'd come to Maple Dale from a boring party looking for some thrills, only with it lit up like a Christmas tree, they'd taken to thrilling each other right where they were.

  Richard thought he heard something, and as he and Bill stopped talking a moment to listen, Leah watched curiously from the corner.

  "Must be my imagination," Richard said, when he didn't hear it again.

  "Let's hope so."

  Richard smiled. "What do you make of Halloween, really? You know, all the talk about spirits and stuff."

  "You mean, do I believe it?"

  Richard nodded.

  "Yeah, I believe it." He believed it all. "All except for the bullshit," he said, which he didn't bother to distinguish. And that led to stories from when they were kids, and where they each grew up.

  "Swimming in the river."

  "The suburbs."

  "In trouble once."

  "Me...never."

  "Had it made, huh?"

  Richard nodded. "Yeah, I found trouble later."

  Bill studied him, a silver-spoon-in-the-mouth white boy if he'd ever seen one, and yet. "Where was it at?"

  Richard hesitated. "At the bottom of a bottle."

  Bill swallowed hard. His father was a drunk. Richard and he didn't look anything alike. "How'd you quit?"

  Richard was silent for a moment, thinking about Christine driving him to the hospital that day, and Bethann when she came to see him. "The hard way I guess."

  Bill smiled. "Shit! You mean there's an easy way?"

  Richard laughed, and then they both kind of sighed. It was getting close to midnight.

  "What about Christine?"

  "You mean growing up?"

  Bill nodded. "She have it made too?"

  Richard shook his head. "No."

  Bill stared at him. He'd expected to hear how she'd been even better off than him, and how he had to beg for her family's permission to marry her.

  Not so. "But she takes nothing from anybody," Richard said proudly. "I mean, nothing."

  Bill smiled, that he knew, and wondered now about Leah Oliver, how she'd grown up. She too had appeared as uppity as they came, always in that riding outfit and scowling at him. That hunt-club scowl. Richard told him otherwise.

  "She was an orphan. Didn't you know?"

  Bill shook his head, and they grew quiet, unaware of the cloud of dust that had stirred in the corner behind them.

  "Well," Richard said after a moment. "I guess if anything's going to happen, it'll be soon."

  Bill glanced at his watch, nodded, and stared out into the arena. Richard got up and poured them both a cup of coffee. "Did you ever hear anything about the uh..." He hesitated. What

  should he call them? "Spirits of the evil departed, coming to claim the lost ones? The ones in limbo."

  Bill nodded. Yes, he'd heard about it, and he'd heard it was true. He'd heard it from his momma. "I think if Leah Oliver's hanging around, she'd better find a place to hide."

  Leah gasped! It sounded like a shrieking cat. And sure enough, when Richard and Bill turned, there was Phoenix jumping from one rafter to another.

  "Oh Jesus!"

  A second later, he was with Leah out in the night. Hiding. She had to get into hiding. But where? She darted her eyes frantically, and fled, but her legs blended into the darkness and she couldn't see where she was going for watching where she'd been. Then she fell backwards, and found herself in a hole.

  Klaus's excavated basement. It crowded her from all sides. Phoenix was nowhere, and a hand started smothering her. A hand larger than her face. Then many hands, and voices. Voices moaning and crying out.

  "Come with us... Come with us now..."

  "No! Get away from me!" She could see the voices. She couldn't hear them, she could see them. It was all she could see. They were as dark as the night and touching her. Touching her all over.

  Some were riding horses. Horses with no heads, whose jugular veins pumped blood in spurts. And some dangled cats, cats as big as dogs who'd lost all color and whose lifeless limbs swayed back and forth like pendulums.

  "Get away from me!"

  "Come with us..."

  Leah tried to run from them, but the darkness overwhelmed her, and she kept bumping into walls. "Leave me alone!"

  "Help us! Help us!"

  "I can't! Get away from me!"

  They pawed at her, groping and tearing. The voices, the voices of death, and she fell deeper, deeper, and deeper, fighting them. And then everything went blank.

  Richard and Bill were talking and since the cat had left, hadn't heard a thing. "So even if I can get Klaus to agree to split the property and allow Bethann her third to remain undeveloped, the third we'd want would be the one he'd fight the hardest for."

  Bill crossed his arms, agreeing, and now they heard something. Voices. Distant voices, coming up the hill.

  Having been through this once, they moved swiftly into action. Richard hurried out and around to the side entrance of the arena while Bill poised himself to the right of the open window, ready to jump, when all of a sudden a bolt of lightning ripped through the sky, rendering the arena to complete darkness.

  They heard screaming.

  "Oh Lord!" Bill gasped.

  Then came the rain, pounding the roof and sounding like a stampede.

  "Richard?"

  "Yeah!"

  The screams coming up the hill grew shriller as Leah opened her eyes to the pelting rain. The voices were still around her. She couldn't see them, she could only hear them now.

  And laughter.


  Lightning lit the sky again, enabling her to see her way out, and she fled to where she thought Phoenix might be. The office.

  Bill's heart jumped when he heard a noise behind him. It was the cat, it had to be, that same scratching noise overhead. That same closeness. But the voices were growing closer now too.

  Leah hovered behind him, whispering. "Don't let them get me. Please don't let them get me."

  "Richard!"

  "Yeah!"

  The voices grew in force.

  Bill didn't know which way to turn.

  Leah hovered closer. "Please... They're coming."

  A bolt of lightning showed their faces. The witch and the warlock, Dracula and his blood-thirsty draculette. Frankenstein and his wife and the temptress. And leading the way, the devil himself.

  "What the hell?!" Bill's voice filled the arena.

  It was the kids from the van, wet, dripping, and covered with mud. They'd heard screaming, they said, screaming like you couldn't imagine. "It even rocked the van!"

  So they started screaming.

  "Then we got stuck!"

  "We tried to push it out, that's how we got muddy!"

  "But it's buried."

  "Buried to the axle."

  An hour later, after two of the young men's parents had arrived to take them home, Richard and Bill watched the tow truck pull the van out. It had stopped raining, the lights were back on, and everything was calm once again.

  They doubted if any of the parents would believe the story about voices rocking the van. They doubted they'd be listening to much of anything the kids had to say. It was too bizarre to be the truth.

  "Do you think they'll be back?" Richard asked, making himself comfortable again at Christine's desk.

  Bill laughed. "No, I don't think so."

  Neither did Richard. He was quiet for a moment. "What do you think they heard? Really, I mean."

  Bill shook his head, and then shrugged. They both dozed shortly after that, and it was Bill who woke first. "Oh my God..." he whispered. "Richard! Richard, wake up!"

  When Richard opened his eyes, Bill motioned for him to look out into the arena.

  It was Leah. It was her.

  She was arranging jumps for the day's lessons. The class had been doing so well, she felt it was time to challenge them further, and was making the course more difficult.

  Somewhat darker than life's air, transparent and yet visible, like the shimmering heat on a hot summer day, she moved gracefully, precisely, and took her time. When she was done, she stepped back to survey her work, satisfied, then went to look for the horses. And as Richard and Bill watched in amazement, she vanished right before their eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Bethann was awake most of the night, dozing only to float over everyone she knew, again and again, and thanked God for morning. She wanted to go to Maple Dale, and suggested she and her mother take her dad and Bill breakfast. Pancakes and sausage from McDonald's. To their surprise, Matt Campbell drove up the hill right behind them.

  "You know me," he said cheerfully as he got out. "Fingers on the pulse and all that."

  Christine smiled. Where would they be without Matt? "If I'd known you were going to be here."

  "No thanks." He wouldn't have wanted anything to eat anyway, not unless it was herbs, grains, and something freshly squeezed. Once inside, he took one look at what they'd brought, and bemoaned on behalf of Richard and Bill's arteries and pancreases "That stuff'll kill you for sure!"

  "So will starving," Bill said, smiling as he added lots of syrup. Richard introduced them, and soon they were recounting the night.

  "Well, that does it then," Matt said, stepping up and down on the bleacher. Up and down. Up and down. "Something's got to be done."

  Bethann stared into the arena.

  "Because as long as she keeps existing as if she's..."

  Bethann sighed. "I still d-d-don't see why we c-c-can't just l-leave her alone?"

  "I know you don't," Matt said, glancing around the room for some support. "But it's like I said the other day, your friend is lost."

  Oddly enough, given the conversation leading up to this, Leah's name hadn't yet been mentioned. All Bill and Richard had said was, "We saw her. We saw her right out there." And from the corner, where she hovered watching, Leah wondered who they were talking about.

  "She needs to make a transition," Matt explained further, apparently the only one convinced of this, since no one else was agreeing with him. "And the sooner the better."

  Bethann stared out into the arena again.

  "Maybe if the barns were gone," Matt suggested "Maybe if the arena were torn down."

  Bethann turned in a panic. "W-Wh-Why?"

  "Because she's going along as usual, and nothing's going to change unless something does change."

  Richard looked at Christine. She was gazing down at her hands. "It seems so cruel though," she said.

  Bill nodded. "And what if you change things and only make her mad?"

  Matt considered the possibility for a second or two, and ceased stepping up and down on the bleacher. He pulled a chair up close to Bill and sat down. "Why? Do you think she could be hostile?"

  Bill appeared a little taken aback, Matt was right in his face. "I don't know. I just mentioned it because, as mixed up as she is..." He hesitated, glancing at Bethann. "I mean, she's going around like she's still alive, and the place is empty."

  Leah looked around.

  Everyone looked around.

  "I mean, face it," Bill said. "She's dead, and she doesn't know it. Leah Oliver's dead, and she has no idea."

  Leah covered her mouth. Dead? Her? Why would he say such a thing? And just when for some godawful reason she was starting to trust him. Today, of all days. Tuesday.

  "So what are we supposed to do?"

  Leah fled. She didn't want to know. She'd heard enough.

  "We have to make her leave."

  Richard drew a breath and sighed. "Which brings us back to square one. How?"

  "Maybe if we brought in a medium?" Matt suggested.

  "No!" Richard said flatly. "No hocus-pocus!"

  Matt frowned at Richard's terminology and skepticism. "It is a viable option."

  "No, it's not," Richard said, rising slowly and walking across the room. "Not at all, because let's not forget who we're dealing with here. Leah was a loner."

  Matt nodded. "Good point." Her personality just might be the key. He turned to Bethann. She would know better than anyone."Talk to me," he said. "Tell me what you're thinking."

  Bethann hesitated. She always stuttered more when she was the center of attention, and everyone was looking at her. "I'm th-thinking that t-t-tearing the barns d-d-down, isn't g-g-going to make her l-l-leave at all. There's m-m-more to M-M-Maple Dale than j-j-just the barns."

  "Okay. Then what do you think's keeping her here?"

  "I d-d-don't know."

  "But you must, Bethann. You must. Think about her just before she died, a few days before. Was there a change in her?"

  Bethann shook her head, and answered with her voice quivering. "No, she was th-the s-s-same. Only m-maybe just s-s-sadder. And I d-d-don't think it's r-r-right talking about her l-like sh-she's crazy. Because s-sh-she wasn't. She was my f-f-friend."

  Matt smiled inside. "I wasn't insinuating she was crazy, Bethann. God forbid I even acknowledge the term in my profession. What I was getting at..."

  "It's th-the horses," Bethann said."I th-think it's the h-h-horses."

  Matt nodded thoughtfully. "All right. Why?"

  "Because." Bethann drew a deep breath. "Because if I w-w-were Leah, I w-w-would worry about them. She p-probably wonders where they're at. I've b-b-been t-trying to l-l-let her know that Shad and P-P-Phoenix are okay, but..."

  Bill shifted his weight, which caught Matt's eye, and he turned. "Yes?"

  Bill shrugged.

  "Come on, what are you thinking?" Matt persisted.

  He was thinking that Matt was a
real pain in the ass, even if he was trying to help. "I think I agree."

  "That it's the horses?"

  Bill nodded. "Yeah."

  "Why?"

  "Because of the barn doors. They're always closed in the morning. And gates are open certain times of the day. I got my men thinking I do it for one reason or another, but..."

  Christine thought about yesterday, how Bill had behaved when they'd asked his men about the cat, and then about the way he was when Bethann asked him where to put the sign. He didn't want his men to know. It wasn't that they were bothering them, or that he thought the sign was a dumb idea. He just didn't want them to know.

  She looked at him differently, and had to wonder how many other times she'd misinterpreted him.

  "All right," Matt said. "Let's say it is the horses. How can we assure her they're okay?"

  Bethann's eyes lit up. "We c-can bring th-th-them back."

  Richard shook his head. That was out of the question and she knew it.

  "Well, w-what about just Persian S-S-Son then? What about j-j-just him? Mom'll b-b-be there."

  Richard looked at Christine.

  "Honey," she said. "I don't see where bringing him back will..."

  "But s-s-she'll know he-he-he's fine then. She'll see that h-h-he's okay. Come on, Mom, we h-have t-t-to try something. We h-have to."

  Matt turned to Bill. "Would a horse be in the way?"

  Bill shook his head.

  "Then what do we have to lose?"

  Nothing. At least nothing anyone could think of at the moment, so it was settled. Persian Son was coming home, and Bethann was ecstatic. Richard said he would make arrangements

  to have him shipped tomorrow. "But what if it doesn't work? What'll we do then?"

  "Something else," Matt said matter-of-factly, and after a moment, "You know, I make my living off affairs of the heart. Attached to a brain in most cases, but affairs of the heart nonetheless. And yet I never cease to be amazed." What amazed him was how people could come together, for whatever the reason, some tragic and some just by circumstance. But coming together, pulling together. Together. "Here's a woman, who besides Bethann, you hardly knew. And yet..."

  Tears welled up in Christine's eyes. True, they had hardly known Leah, but Leah was a part of them now. A part of her. An important part.