Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story (61 page)

Dinesh frowned, a bit put out.

“Here? Why here?” asked Margot, unable to resist.

“Antiques. She wants—”

“No wait,” interrupted Margot, “a cauldron, scales, a familiar.”

“An engagement ring,” Dinesh divulged, a distinct tremor in his voice.

“Oh. She must have heard the radio this morning. My sympathies.”

Emily shot her a look. Margot seemed less than impressed by the unorthodox proposal but had the good grace to rise to the mandatory level of celebration.

Dwayne grumbled at the injustice this detour had caused. “We were all set to check out Belden Cemetery for a potential future meeting site of The California Astral Liberation Coalition before we met up with you at the winery. Seriously good ghost juju over there from what we’ve heard. And they’re even supposed to have a lot of slabs for sitting around and dining. It would have been awesome. But nooooo…the witches, man, you can’t say no to the witches.”

“You have parties in graveyards?” Zoey asked.

“We like to refer to them as meet and glides,” Egan corrected her.

“Jesus,” Margot muttered.

“We were at Placerville last year,” Dwayne informed her. “Then the year before in Georgetown doing karoke with the ghosts, and I’m still hoping to get to Disneyland at some point and get a glimpse of ‘Mr. One-Way.’ He’s this dude who died on Space Mountain back in the seventies. Bummer way to go, though. But we gotta stay focused on the task at hand, right? Dealing with The Lady in Red. That’s one gnarly mother. You know there’s a rumor that they keep her locked up in a room at the Noyo Inn, right?”

“Like Bertha Mason,” said Emily softly.

“I’m thinking more like Linda Blair, personally,” Egan reasoned. “But there’s been worse.”

He proceeded to enlighten them on the goriest episodes of hauntings he had come across in his illustrious career. Near the end of the lunch, he spoke in a hushed voice of Madame Lagree’s “torture chamber” in Savannah, an old house plagued by the spirits of twice-dead ghosts—ghosts which were known to have possessed people and driven them to suicide. “Truly the nastiest ghouls on this plane of existence. Ghosts ain’t the most happy campers to start with, but these dudes are really twisted, mean mothers. Thought they could get all ‘Resident Evil’ on folks and pull off high-level human possession. Dumb asses. It tears them apart, like literally. There’s only so much of that shit they can take, though.” He continued to describe an apparition whose limbs had been chewed away and another who looked like her arms and legs had been broken and set at odd angles, when Margot pushed back her chair in disgust.

“Well, gentlemen, meet you at the winery,” Margot told the table, with no regard as to whether Emily or Zoey had finished.

They headed back into the minivan in silence. The lunch, with its talk of malevolent ghosts, had left Emily anxious to call Andrew. But as she hunted for her cell phone in her purse, she couldn’t find it anywhere. “Zoey, is my phone up there?” she asked from the backseat.

“Maybe you left it in the restaurant.” Margot said.

“No, I had it out when we stopped. What if it fell out of the van? Hell.”

Emily rummaged through her purse and around the van, but her phone was nowhere to be found. With a strange sense of unease, she double-checked to see that the vinyl pouch she had transferred Nora into was still packed away safe and sound. She patted it with her hand and pushed it further into her clothes.

The bad luck continued, though; as Zoey started to back up the minivan, the car began to emit a lug-gug-gugged, lug-gug-gugged noise along the gravel.

“You got a flat,” they heard Dwayne shout, standing with his gang next to the sidewalk as they all stared at the useless tire.

“Shit! We’re never going to get to the winery now. We’re late already.” Zoey bashed the steering wheel with her hands.

Dinesh, in a fit of pharmaceutically-enhanced chivalry, offered to stay behind and change the flat, leaving them to take the Wiccan van instead.

Emily didn’t know what she was expecting from the Big Doobie, as Zoey had aptly christened it. But whatever it was, the end result was worse. The back of the van had floor-to-ceiling electric-blue, shag carpeting. Peace signs, along with every other conceivable religious talisman, hung around the windows, which were covered in crushed velvet drapes. Of course it had a bar, complete with what looked an awful lot like a hookah pipe, and in the corner stood an incongruous collection of gardening equipment, complete with shovel and pickaxe. The air stunk with the stench of patchouli and pot, and there was nothing to sit on except vinyl bean bag chairs.

“God save us,” muttered Margot as they slammed the doors shut on themselves.

“We’ll be at the winery in a few minutes,” yelled Dwayne from the front. The air conditioning started to fizzle out. At this point Emily realized why they had to stay stoned to travel in this thing, and that she was suddenly hungry again.

They eventually hit the main roads and were soon surrounded by the rolling hills and lush vineyards of the Anderson Valley. She took in a large lungful of air after forcing open a pentagram decorated window, and tasted the faraway hint of salt in the air. They passed into the small town of Philo, and in next to no time turned up the path to Dia Vineyards toward a large timbered house situated on the hill.

Margot was reading from the winery brochure.

“Renowned for its outstanding pinot gris and gewürztraminers, the family-owned vineyard stores a large amount of their wines in a vast series of underground caves.

“The caves were originally built in the eighteen hundreds and are said to be haunted
.” She stopped short and rolled her eyes to heaven dramatically. “Is anything not haunted around here? Maybe your ghosts from the Belden graveyard summer here. What do you think, Dwayne?”

“Righteous!”

Margot snorted and continued. “
The caves’ consistent cool temperatures coupled with constantly high humidity and low levels of light offer the perfect spot to produce the perfect wine. Tastings are provided within the vast subterranean serpentine structure. Visitors are required to have an escort, as it is quite easy to become lost along the labyrinthine rows of casks
.”

“Wait, the tasting rooms are in the caves? How far in the caves?” Emily pressed.

“It won’t be so bad. We’ll hold hands,” announced Zoey the moment they pulled up to stop.

Emily attempted to argue but was shoved out the back of the van into the parking lot.

A middle-aged man jumped off the porch and ran to meet them. He looked stricken, evidently having determined that he didn’t want that many weirdoes overtaking his tasting room.

“Miss Thomas?”

“Yes,” Emily said, surprised that he knew her name.

“A Mr. Hayes called, and he requested for you not to leave here until he meets up with you. He was very insistent.”

Margot rolled her eyes. “Can’t stand a moment away from you, can he?”

“Did he say when he might get here?”

“He didn’t say, but he was—um, very, very insistent.”

“Did he want to chain her to the fence?” asked Margot, putting on her sunglasses.

Emily glared at her.

“Why don’t we start the tour, and we’ll just be a few tastings ahead of them,” Zoey decided and rubbed her hands together. Apparently the effects of inhaling pot for ten miles had set in.

“Are these gentlemen in your party?” the proprietor asked in thinly concealed horror.

“Dude, we are the party!” crowed Dwayne. The three of them madly bobbed their heads in agreement.

“Wonderful…So a total of nine, then? Well, um, right this way. My name is Clarence. Welcome to Dia Vineyards.”

They followed his stout, tanned frame around the grand house and out into the vineyards. As they walked, they heard thrushes warbling in the trees and inhaled the perfume of the spray of roses against the endless rows of vines, and Emily felt herself relax a fraction. Soon the path narrowed and sloped gradually downhill until it came to rest in front of a large arched wooden door painted bright yellow.

“Like a hobbit hole,” Emily said with a smile.

Clarence nodded. “Our ghosts are partial to Tolkien.”

“Oh, that’s nothing. Ours are totally into Dashiell Hammett,” Zoey replied.

He raised his eyebrows, and Emily shrugged her shoulders in response before he heaved open the sizable door to what could only be the entrance to the caves. A blast of cool, damp air enveloped their faces; the beads of sweat on Emily’s forehead tingled. She steeled herself against the claustrophobia to come but reminded herself that the door would only be a few yards behind them and focused instead on her surroundings.

Candles would have been more appropriate along the honed, curved walls, she thought; the place appeared so old. Instead, electric sconces were set here and there, shooting columns of light to the ceiling. The hallways seemed endless.

Their footsteps echoed hollowly on the stone floor as Clarence led them along a few twists and turns, eventually guiding them into a long, dimly lit room filled with a refractory table and a credenza covered in wine bottles. From the far wall, the mouths of two darkened tunnels gaped toothlessly at them.

“What’s down there?”

“More tunnels—mostly storage now. They’re very old—and of course, that’s where the ghosts reside,” he told her with the relish of a seasoned story teller.

“Do you have a favorite?” Emily asked, intent to play along as she watched him begin to uncork a bottle.

He handed her a wine glass. “Oh, definitely The Lady in White.”

The glass nearly slipped from her fingers. “The Lady in White?”

Margot, Zoey, and Emily shared a look.

“She’s been here as long as we can remember. Quite famous in these parts, although she doesn’t come out as often now—a bit of a recluse, I suppose. But I guess that’s a good thing, as she’s usually full of warnings and the talk of death. Not the best for business. Although people always want to drink more after she’s done with them.”

“Wicked,” said Buck, lapping up the gewürztraminer. “This is incredible shit, man.”

Clarence cringed and poured the rest of the group a glass.

“So she lives in the caves, this ghost?” asked Margot skeptically.

“Haunts,” Clarence clarified, and cast a disparaging glance at Buck as he drained his glass and held it out for another round. “More like she inhabits the space between the casks, when she’s here at all, that is. She’s very mercurial.”

“So she has a summer home, as well? Marvelous,” Margot muttered.

“One never knows.”

Emily’s eyes glanced toward the tunnels. The Lady in White—here? She had spoken to Nick’s mother—warned her about something that set off the sequence of events leading up to their deaths.

“Are there any other rooms that have entrances to the caves like this, or is this it?” Emily asked, claustrophobia or no, the plan already forming in her mind.

“No, there are several different tasting rooms that open onto the caves. But rest assured, you have the best.” He smiled warmly, misinterpreting her question.

“Thank you.” By the time they had moved on to the Pinot Noir, Emily had her plan firmly in place. She hadn’t flirted in a long time, but Clarence was going to give her a tour and introduce her to the Lady in White whether he liked it or not.

“Oh, sorry Muse-lady, didn’t mean to step on your foot. How much longer do you think?” asked Dwayne anxiously from behind Emily.

She didn’t answer. Her teeth rattled as she peered at her watch. She regretted having schmoozed Clarence into taking the stoners and herself down here. Zoey and Margot had politely declined, having no desire to trudge through foul, moldy holes in the ground. She had misjudged how intensely her claustrophobia would affect her. They had been creeping through those tunnels for twenty minutes, and she was chilled to the bone, not to mention completely turned around. The tunnels were endless, stretching on and on and looping back around again like some giant earthen maze. She concentrated on her breathing and continued on.

A handful of fluorescent bulbs were scattered across the ceiling like old scratched Christmas lights, casting a fizzling glow down upon the rows of casks. She was thankful that Clarence had handed out a few flashlights or they would be completely blind, but even with them they were constantly bumping into each other. Between the dank earthiness of the caves and the even more pungent earthiness of her friends, her stomach began to turn.