Ghostlight (18 page)

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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Ghostlight
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There were any number of explanations for the sudden omission: marriage, unrecorded death, family scandal. Truth fretted at her lack of ability to
prove
, but she really didn't have the resources available to determine that each disappearance really was that mysterious. But disappear the Scheidow descendants did, and not children either: once every twenty-five years or so, an adult member of the family simply … vanished … from Shadow's Gate.
The family had become important in Dutchess County, both financially and politically; in those days a Scheidow's word was law and sensational scandal something to be avoided. There was no hint in any of the local papers or family histories Truth consulted of shocking disappearances and shameful flights.
But in contrast to the newspapers and the histories, the Scheidow genealogies had been kept with a scrupulous regard for the truth, and once you began looking for the pattern you were certain of finding it. One adult, each generation, gone without an obituary to record the
passing in a paper that scrupulously noted the births, deaths, and marriages of the descendants of the founder of the town.
The other things Truth uncovered, checking as far as she could the undocumented claims of
The River Where the Ghosts Walk
, seemed to fit the developing pattern—one might almost call it the Amityville Syndrome—that she had learned to look for when hauntings were inferred.
There were continuing reports of a black dog that walked through walls, of lights in odd places and times, a coldness that did not dissipate, the unexplained flight of houseguests. By the 1800s, so
The River Where the Ghosts Walk
assured her, it was commonly known as far away as New York City that the Scheidow house was haunted.
As for the crowning event the book related, it would take Truth years of research to confirm it—or deny it—in its entirety. It seemed to be the stuff of pulp fiction and supermarket press, even compiled, as it had been, some sixty years after the incident, the author claiming to have been a child living in Shadowkill at the time.
Briefly stated, the “facts,” if you could claim there were any, were these: In April 1872, Elijah Cheddow, formerly a captain of Union forces in the late Insurrection of the Southern States, took an axe to his wife, twin daughters, and infant son, as well as to all servants living in the house, and then set the house on fire, burning it to the ground.
Their death dates, recorded in the genealogy, matched. There had certainly been a fire, according to the newspaper, but the story was almost maddeningly tactful, confining itself to a bare-bones report that a fire had occurred but had not spread. It did not even mention any deaths, though when Truth cross-checked the Cheddow genealogy, the death dates for Sarah, Elizabeth, Amy, and Infant Cheddow matched.
There was no recorded death date for Elijah.
As for the rest of the grisly tale, it received a resounding “Not Proven,” that so-convenient verdict surviving only in Scots jurisprudence, and an entombment in local legend. A bang-up ending to what was probably a very unpleasant family, only it wasn't the end, as a distant cousin, Nathaniel Cheddow, came forward and, impelled by God alone knew what reason, built yet another house on that ill-starred site—
“Ms. Jourdemayne? It's six thirty. We're closing.”
Truth blinked up dazedly at Laurel, only now noticing the dimness of the room in which she worked. Then the librarian's words penetrated.
“Six
thirty
!” she groaned. She was late, she knew that much, even if just now she wasn't sure for what. Truth scooped up her notes and sketches and scrambled stiffly to her feet. Slinging her purse over her shoulder, she juggled the books in her arms possessively. “Can I borrow these?”
Laurel hesitated. “Well, we don't usually like to let them circulate, but you are on the faculty at Taghkanic … . I guess it's okay.”
Truth didn't correct Laurel's misapprehension, since she did want the books. And besides, she worked at Taghkanic, if not for it. She presented her library card, signed out the books in the local history ledger, and left the library just short of a dead run, blessing the impulse that had caused her to bring her car with her this morning. In moments she was on her way up the road to Shadow's Gate.
Which was a haunted house. A world-class, A-number-one, for-the-record-books haunted house, to rank right up there with any Irish castle you wanted to name.
And which explained everything Truth needed to know about Thorne Blackburn.
 
The gates up to the house were shut when she crossed the road and drove in under the gatehouse arch. She was
about to get out and try to open them herself when Gareth came out of one of the gatehouse rooms, blinking in the glare of her headlights. Standing behind the bars, he looked like some kind of wild thing in a cage.
When he saw who it was he did something at the lock plate that she couldn't see, then swung one wing of the ornate iron gate open, stepping through to talk to her.
“Good thing you showed up, Truth. I was about to bolt the gates for the night. You'd have had to phone the house then, or just leave your car here and walk up.”
Gareth indicated a phone box on the wall of the drive-through, which reminded Truth of the cell phone she'd bought just that morning. She felt a hidden surge of triumph: She had resources Shadow's Gate didn't know of.
Shadow's Gate? Or Julian?
“Thanks for being here. I hope nobody was worried; I got involved in a line of research and lost track of time.” She felt, obscurely, that Gareth deserved some sort of explanation. And Julian deserved an apology. She was treating Shadow's Gate as if it were an hotel!
Gareth grinned. “That's an explanation Julian can empathize with—sometimes he goes off to the library and gets lost for weeks. I'll phone him and let him know you're back so you can just go ahead and clean up. Dinner's at seven thirty.”
“Eating tonight?” Truth joked. She was instantly sorry she had at the expression that crossed Gareth's face; a slightly shuttered, slightly furtive look that did not go well with his open, generous features.
“Yeah. Um. Well—see you there.” He swung the other half of the gate open and stepped back, waving her on.
She drove past him slowly. Her car's headlights cut bright arcs through the woods growing up close on each side of the drive. In mid-October almost everything still on the branches was yellow or orange or red, and the drifts underfoot made the traction slippery.
She was forcibly reminded of this when the deer
suddenly appeared, standing transfixed in the headlights. It was huge; its coat was a ruddy fox color and its splendid rack of antlers gleamed like polished golden oak. It was the biggest deer she'd ever seen.
She tried to stop, but instantly realized she couldn't; the car began to skid, its back end edging forward until it seemed that rather than missing the deer, she was going to hit it broadside—killing it and probably totaling her car, if nothing worse.
Frantically Truth waged war against the laws of physics, twisting her wheel against the skid while feathering the brake. Finally the car slid to a stop.
She looked around. The deer that had caused all this fuss was nowhere to be seen.
Truth rolled her window down and scanned the horizon for it, although she knew it was probably miles away by now—
she
certainly hadn't hit it! She didn't see it, but while she was looking, a white blur off to the left caught her attention. White, and four-legged … She peered toward it, wondering if it were a white deer, but realized it was a white horse instead. Its eyes flashed red in the shine from her headlights as it turned and ran, becoming first a flicker in the woods, then a blur, then gone. Truth saw no rider. As she listened, the sound of its hoofbeats gradually diminished into silence, and the adrenaline rush that had sustained her passed, leaving her cold and sick.
You're lucky you weren't killed!
Truth told herself unsteadily. Now that it was over she realized how lucky she'd been; she hadn't been going that fast, but running into that deer—
Truth frowned, starting the car up the drive once more. The deer that came onto the campus each Fall to steal the apples looked nothing like that. It had been about twice their size, for one thing, and its red coat a far cry from the winter-dun color of the Taghkanic deer's autumnal coats.
Not a deer at all.
A stag.
What she had caught in her car's headlights had been the living image of that oft-copied Landseer painting,
Monarch of the Glen
—a great, redcoated stag; lord of Scotland and Ireland's high places.
And the white horse …
“The red stag and the white mare,” Truth said aloud, thinking of what she'd seen and remembering Light's words again. But they hadn't been conjured up by Light's visions. Far from it—they were probably the cause of them: In this area many people kept back-bred or exotic livestock, from ostriches to aurochs, and Shadowkill was only a few miles from the famous Millbrook Hunt Country with its world-famous horse farms. Easy enough to find a red stag and a white mare in all of that—they'd probably gotten used to roving the property while it had stood unoccupied. Maybe they even belonged to Julian.
Just as long as he doesn't turn up a gray wolf, the black dog I can handle
, Truth thought with a flash of saving humor.
And she was there.
 
The door to the house was, as it had been the night before, unlocked. Truth wondered if it was left unlocked all the time, or whether Gareth locked it each night on his way up from the gatehouse. Truth thought it was hardly fair that Gareth had such an exile forced on him, and wondered what he did there all day, but even she had to admit a gatekeeper was probably necessary. Even if Shadow's Gate were located out in the middle of the rural countryside, it was a truism of modern life that no place was safe.
When she came in Truth heard quiet conversation from the salon she'd been conducted to on her first night here. She checked her watch and frowned. Seven o'clock. It had taken her over fifteen minutes to cover the five-minute drive to the house!
Perfectly reasonable, under the circumstances. You're
starting to go on like a character in one of those Whitley Streiber books—you'll be seeing short big-eyed aliens next,
Truth scoffed at herself. At least she still had time to wash up before dinner.
It had been a day so full that events which would otherwise take center stage seemed to have paled into insignificance. Her “vision” of Thorne—the other children—her reconstruction of the history of Shadow's Gate, and the hints of its true nature—the red stag and the white mare—all battled one another for pride of place, and all were insensibly diminished by the fact that Caroline Jourdemayne was dead.
But even that was wiped out by what Truth found when she opened the door to her room.
Except when sick—or exhausted, as she had been last night—Truth Jourdemayne was meticulously neat about her person and in her belongings. This morning before she'd left the house, she had carefully tidied away everything she had brought with her into its appropriate shelves and drawers until the room was once more almost uninhabitedly neat.
But when she came into her room that was not what she found there.
The drawers of the antique bird's-eye maple dresser were ajar, their disheveled contents peeked up in puffs of fabric, and the cheval glass was knocked askew. The robe that Irene had loaned her was lying in a heap on the floor—while Truth had hung it carefully in the closet just this morning. The entire room bore the marks of a hasty—yet ruthlessly thorough—search.
The book!
Her heart raced sickeningly as she fell to her knees beside the bed and scrabbled between the mattress and the box spring, searching … . It was gone, she knew it was, and the loss of it was more than she could bear—
A whimper of relief escaped her as her fingers closed on the spine, and her hands shook as she pulled the book
out of its hiding place, undamaged. Truth closed her eyes tightly, tears of relief prickling at her eyes as she clutched
Venus Afflicted
to her chest, her body shuddering in the pure tension that seemed to be Shadow's Gate's gift to her.
This must never be allowed to happen again!
Truth thought vehemently. She needed to find a safer place to store Blackburn's priceless grimoire—a place that could not be broken into at whim.
This isn't like me
—Truth thought in a flash of despairing insight. Why did this house turn her into the next thing to a hysterical madwoman—and why did she keep coming back?
It isn't hysteria. It's reasonable,
that alien inner voice assured her.
There is work here for you to do.
She shook her head, trying to gain control of her haywire emotions. They all seemed to center on the book—maybe if she could put it somewhere safe these out-of-character panic attacks would stop. Recklessly, still clutching the book, Truth dumped the contents of her purse out on the bed. Tape recorder, extra cassettes, notebooks—the purse Truth carried was plenty big enough to hold
Venus Afflicted
and most of its original contents besides.

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