The Lebrus Stone (5 page)

I couldn't sleep. My room was too big and modish, and everything felt exhumed from a long ago past. I think if I was able to sense time through touch alone, I would have been able to see how important my room was to somebody else before I was born. It was something that made me feel anxious sleeping in a room I had no right to.

It also seemed to transform in the dark, coating me like thick ink, like it turned evil and against me.

Besides, what Zella told me after my talk with Isobel wasn't helping. It kept replaying in my mind. She had shown me the attic on the third level. When we passed a green door she told me the room was once occupied by the one of the owners of Thorncrest; a man named Vander Asholme who came to a grim end. She didn't have much else to say about him, and snootily suggested I ask Isobel exactly who he was. She wasn't all that interested considering she brought him up.

A shiver crept up my spine.

Why was the house like some igloo?

A family like this could easily afford heating.

I was going to have to ask for a duvet.

After switching on the bedside lamp, I climbed out of bed and opened my closet to grab anything and everything that could warm me, including the turtleneck sweater Zella had borrowed me before showing the attic. I then added a house coat and two pairs of jog pants I'd brought along for any quick runs that might be needed to burn of any excess calories. So far, I needed a three-day long jog to make up for the heaps of food Syd was feeding me as if it was as healthy as eating carrot sticks.

Once layered, I hobbled back to my bed.

I must have slept, since a scream woke me some time later; a high pitched wail, female and close enough to have left her warm breath on my cheek.

Clenching the sheets, I scanned the moon-lit room and found nothing. Then again, I could just about make out my furniture tinged a violet gray. But then I heard it:  water pouring from faucets in the bathroom. Suddenly the light switched on inside and I hugged my sheets, telling myself it was just Zella playing a first night prank.

But how, if I had bolted my door?

I finally forced myself to get out of bed and crawled my way to the bathroom, my teeth chattering the whole time.

It wasn't long before my hands landed in water footprints that started from the bathroom and ended at the foot of my bed, as if someone had been watching me sleep.

I somehow kept breathing when that thought registered. It was downright creepy.

Just then my bedroom door creaked open, confirming it was no longer locked.

I froze, luckily finding nobody standing there. Not that I would have been able to see them with it being so pitch black.

Still, whoever had been in my room must have left by now. At least, that's what I'd convinced myself. It was too quiet. The light could have switched on due to a play up with a circuit, some kind of power trip.

But what about the running water?

In the end, I had no choice but to keep crawling to the bathroom. It wasn't like I could go back to bed knowing someone could be lurking.

Inside, the tiles were flooded with water and I slipped. My eyes flew open just as my house coat caught on a shelf and was yanked from my shoulders.

I hit the floor with a splashing thud.

There was no one in the bathroom. But my night shirt was soaked through. It was all I was wearing since I'd taken all the layers off during the night. The house seemed to grow warm in the early hours of the morning.

Struggling to a stand, I skidded over to the overflowing sink to pull the chain and turn the faucets off. I was there for a while, watching the water gurgle down the pipe, too exhausted to rush back to my room just yet.

When I looked into the medicine cabinet mirror, I saw something: a small shadow scuttling across the room.

I couldn't scream or move from the sink. I burned up a sweat as the mirror clouded over.

My eyelids drooped and my limbs no longer felt attached to me, they felt empty, boneless, but somehow I remained standing, watching my stomach balloon like I was becoming pregnant.

Losing my grip on the sink, I stumbled back.

"Get out!" a female voice cried.

Blood spurted from the sink and pounded into my chest, sending me crashing against the bathtub.

~ * ~

Something splashed on my face. I yelped and tried to sit up.

"Drink this," a voice drawled out.

I opened my eyes and a glass of water was placed to my lips. I gulped greedily and leaned back against the tub to close my eyes again.

"Can you speak?" asked the same voice: deep and husky, drowsy with perhaps disrupted sleep. With my heart thudding and climbing to my throat, I opened my eyes and found Cray Locke squatted in front me, barefoot and topless, with gray sweatpants soaked from the bottom. Even in my traumatized state, I couldn't help but admire his extraordinary, handsome face.

His slightly tanned skin looked as though it would probably be as white as snow in the winter. His jet black hair was longish, flicking out behind his ears and the nape of his neck. His jaw line had stubble that gave him a rugged kind of attractiveness. His lips, I could tell, would have been a nice full shape if they weren't pursed so tight. As for the rest of him, he was lean, yet muscular in the right places.

The photographs Isobel had shown me hadn't done him much justice, and seeing him shirtless wasn't helping me feel less startled by his appearance. I had to close my hanging mouth.

"I'm not sure." I stuttered, throwing my trembling hands to my chest. My lacy pink underwear was visible beneath my wet shirt. But that was the least of my worries at that moment. I felt my stomach. It was flat and unmoving.

Relaxing the painful judder of my shoulders, I peered around and saw just water on the tiles with no wandering shadow. I sighed, noticing Cray was holding up a piece of tissue, keeping his gaze on that alone. "You need to dry off your face."

However uncaring his tone, I took the tissue and wiped my face, suppressing the need to guess the underlying sound of his ragged voice, how I longed to keep hearing it. Sheepishly, I peered up and he did, too. Our eyes locked, sending a fluttering through me and up and down my spine. I tried not to gasp. If that wasn't enough, it looked as though a metallic green had formed around his pupils. He broke the hold before I could be sure of it.

"Can you stand?" he asked through clenched teeth.

Why was he angry at me?

I bit my lip, unable to respond.

"Now?" He rubbed his face.

"Give me five," I said, trying to stop myself from admiring every inch of him.

He stood and turned the faucet off at the sink, something I felt sure I did only minutes ago.

When he leaned back against it, he kept his gaze on the floor. I wasn't sure what he was waiting for.

"You can go now if you like," I said, my voice hoarse.

I didn't want to be left alone. Yet I didn't want to be monitored by him either. I didn't want to have to see his well-defined abs and the rim of his exposed boxer shorts. I especially didn't want to have to see him look pained to be near me.

"Did you hear me screaming?" I eventually asked.

Did everyone hear but choose not to see how I was?

"I heard mumbling."

"Mumbling?"

He shrugged. "You're lucky no one else heard you."

He was starting to lose his appeal. Even his voice was losing its hypnotic edge. He was a grouch, a jerk just like Gal.

"You could try moving rooms until I leave," I suggested, just as tight lipped. "There's plenty to choose from."

He didn't say anything, and was still trying to avoid looking at me. He turned abruptly to leave. I guessed he was a coward, a good looking one.

"I didn't wake you on purpose," I said, regretting it, unprepared for a verbal attack.

He stopped in his tracks and looked to the side of him. Even his profile was extremely handsome. It was a pity he seemed so unemotional.

His back muscles curved inwards between his shoulders, creating a masculine, but beautiful arch I had the stupid urge to touch.

He muttered something, but it was difficult to understand. I was about to ask him to repeat it, but he left, quietly closing my bedroom door behind him.

~ * ~

As soon as Cray had left, the memory of what happened returned just as fresh for me to recall it like a strange state of limbo, like I'd been in a dream, but somehow awake, running, but at the speed of a stroll.

I had quickly changed into a dry shirt and layered up again since the cold draft was returning, then sat up in bed and kept the bedside lamp switched on and my hands clutched to my cell phone with Jared's number flashing, ready to call if I plunged into another preternatural world where I was invaded by an invisible presence.

Although my stomach was bloated, it wasn't ballooning like it had a few minutes ago. It also churned, but due to indigestion, not the feeling that a livid organism was inside.

Thinking back, though, it had been a fictive feeling, as if it had been happening to someone else and I had been a spectator at close range. It didn't completely imbibe itself to my membrane. My brain had felt sabotaged, punctured by a forcible spirit.

The female who screamed had been different; her voice adamant and shrill, but also apprehensive, unable to make a choice between right and wrong. Her presence was weaker than the other presence in the room. She was unable to reach me at first. I sensed she couldn't fight the avenging pull of another. And when I hit the bathtub, I felt her hands on my feet, tugging as she screamed my name; screamed like she knew me, knew I was coming here all along.

I didn't know why my stomach swelled as if I was becoming pregnant.

Was it a premonition? A metaphor for something? Growth? Change? Something new to enter my life?

I had a feeling it was none of those things. I just wanted to devise another theory and consider it being something other than a bad omen.

I didn't want to have to think about any of it again. I didn't want to be reminded of a past that would always haunt me.

The next morning, I grabbed the mop and bucket I conveniently found in the bathroom to wipe up the water. Daylight made it easier to step back inside without fearing what could leap out at me.

Besides, the Lockes were waking and stepping out to wander the halls. It was comforting. I didn't feel so set apart from the rest of the household; destitute within the creepy old manor.

I contemplated moving rooms, but would it really have helped? If the place was haunted, did it matter where I slept? Whatever it was, it would probably follow me. And I still didn't know what I was dealing with. I could have been sleepwalking for the first time. I could have dreamed up last night. It could have been a trick of the mind or underlying stress. I might have been losing it on a trip to seemingly nowhere and with people I wasn't quite clicking with. Isobel included. It was the worst place I could have chosen to crack.

To distract myself, I tugged on a pair of skinny jeans and three cardigans over a thick turtleneck to keep me warm. I wasn't freezing, but I had to hold myself to tame the shivers.

When I arrived downstairs, Milton told me everyone had left for the day, which was fine by me, just inconvenient for my intended questions. I couldn't face any company, anyway, especially not Cray Locke's.

I left Milton to do some gardening most the day while I mooched around to get familiar with the place like Isobel had encouraged. I wanted to see what lurked in drawers and rooms that were mostly unlocked. It seemed rude, so I kept it minimal. Yet they barely contained anything inside.

Satisfied there was nothing major to write home about, I entered the study for the second time, gladly without Isobel waiting for me behind her wide girth of a desk, tapping her pen and eyeing me like she'd known me less than a week.

The rate she was changing was bothering me. It was like the woman I had shared so much with back home had been partly left behind.

It was time I had a talk with her when she got back, I thought. I couldn't let myself get side-tracked by Cray and the strange goings on of last night. But my bedroom door
had
been unlocked. Someone had been watching me from the foot of my bed.

I shuddered at the thought.

Could ghosts unlock doors and leave wet footprints?

No. It had to be a prank. Gal didn't seem to like me very much. He could have been trying to scare me back home. Zella could have been a prankster in her spare time, too. She did look the type. But the footprints had been too large.

I stopped the pointless chattering going on in my head. Unless I told someone what had happened, I wasn't going to get answers. Simple.

I had also acted out of character last night, idiotically...enamored by Cray. I wasn't, not when I was back to being rational. And I sure as hell didn't waste my time on superficial feelings, never mind let people treat me like I was an outsider. I'd had enough of that at the group home.

The study looked the same as yesterday. I wasn't sure why I'd expected it to be different, probably because in the afternoon it seemed plainer. In the evening it had a great eminence, similar to a room within a castle.

I opened a few drawers and found more books, opened glass cabinets and found nothing behind the soft-paste porcelain plates on display like beautified Frisbees.

When I became bored with the rummage, I took a seat at the large desk beside the pane glass window. The sunlight warmed my face. I held up my hands to warm them as well.

The desk must have been where Isobel keeps all her documents and paperwork.

Did she work? Live off her inheritance?

I tried a couple of the drawers, but they were all locked, all except one.

Inside lay a selection of multi-colored safety pins, a pair of scissors, various pens, pencils, and a tin of soft mints. I sat back, disappointed. If Isobel had anything to hide, she wouldn't have made it easy to find with bobby pins as an attempt to break in.

Milton whizzed into the room and gave me a start. He was carrying a tray with a glass of juice and a toasted buttered bagel on top, and had changed into an old flannel blue shirt and black shorts. I didn't know he also did housekeeper duties. "Breakfast is served," he said. "Found anything interesting?"

"Not yet. And thanks Milton."

I would have preferred a hot cup of coffee, but chose not to be ungrateful.

I was about to tell him about last night, but thought better of it. There was a chance I hadn't locked the door. Now that I thought in depth about it, I remembered going to the door to turn the lock then getting distracted by a mocking text message from T that read:
Goodnight
.
Don't let the Lockes bite
.

Maybe I had forgotten to turn the lock.

As for everything else that had happened, I couldn't start airing something spooky and irrational to anyone and everyone. I couldn't ruin my farce of a reputation of being stable on my second day.

"There's plenty to look through." Milton winked. "Shout if you need me."

Breezing out of the room, he closed the door behind him.

I got up and skimmed my finger across the row of books on the shelves. My eyes drifted along the volumes neatly kept together in alphabetical or numerical order. Most were pharmaceutical, dating from medieval times to the eighteenth century. One or two were poetry books, but by unknown authors and with no title. I selected one and sat in the small high-backed chair in front of the lit fireplace, reading as I sipped on my juice and bit into my bagel.

An hour or so later, Isobel appeared, clasping a pair of cream lace gloves in one hand and a large briefcase in the other. Today, she wore high-waisted beige slacks and a ruffled white shirt that made her look even younger than yesterday.

Sauntering into the room, she came to a standstill when she realized she had company.

"Oh, there you are, darling," she said, kissing my cheeks before she sat behind her huge desk. "What have you been doing today, reading? That is very wise of you." She unlocked one of her drawers with a key from her trouser pocket and placed the briefcase carefully inside before locking it.

"I thought it would be nice to sit and unwind," I replied, watching her every move. "How was your morning?"

I wanted to know why she was carrying such a large briefcase.

Isobel stopped banging her now unlocked drawers and looked up with a quick smile. "Yes, fine, thank you, darling. I was just handling some business regarding the house, discussing finance and expenditure and what not. Nothing of any particular interest." She dove back into the compartments of her desk.

I got up to sit in the small chair opposite. "If you're not too busy Isobel, can we talk about my family history? It's one of the reasons why I came here, after all."

She stopped what she was doing and peered at me from the top of the desk. "Of course. What would you like to know?" Wisps of hair had fallen in front of her face. She brushed them aside and sat perfectly straight, reminding me how much I slouched.

"Anything, just something you haven't told me. Maybe you could tell more about Vander Asholme."

She eyed me critically, leaning her arms slowly on the table. She began to grate her fingernail against the cuticle of her thumb. "I see. So you've been informed of him." I noted she said "him" like he was a traitorous leech and inhaled deeply through her nose.

Not another difficult subject.

"Zella told me about him last night," I explained to her confused pout.

"Well, as you are perhaps aware," she said, "he lived here with his parents in the 1800's. He had a child out of wedlock and never married. They found him hanging from his room for reasons that have remained unknown." The rubbing of her thumb continued, turning it red.

No, I hadn't known. "Which room had he hanged himself in?"

I hoped it wasn't going to be mine.

"Oh, do not worry." Isobel smiled, reading my expression. "It was the room at the top tier, darling. No one ever visits there."

The skin on her thumb peeled from all the scratching. It looked painful. I wanted it to stop.

"Is it the one with...the greenish door?"

"Yes." She looked at me like I'd sworn. "You've visited?"

She had asked casually, but her jaw had tensed. I wasn't sure why she was surprised. She said I could freely look around.

"Zella showed me. Anyway forget that for a minute Isobel, you're hurting yourself. Are you okay?"

Isobel looked at the blood coating the inside of her thumb nail. "Oh," she said with minor surprise. "How careless of me." She sucked on the end of it.

"Is there anything else?" I asked, afraid of insisting on more information in case it made her chew off her hand.

She sighed. "No, that is all. There is not much more I can explain to you, Crystal. To tell you the truth, I was told very little regarding the family's history—especially the kind dating back so far. Whenever I broached such a subject, it was made quite clear to be strictly forgotten." She looked at the watch. "My goodness. It will be time for dinner before we know it. I think I will take a long hot bath and then divulge in a read myself before we dine this evening. Do you mind, darling?" She had already risen, making the decision for me.

"Enjoy your bath." I smiled with a look that probably seemed too calculated.

"Thank you, my dear." For the first time, she flushed. I wondered why.

"I will see you at dinner." She disappeared before I had the chance to think up an excuse not to attend.

I didn't want to attend another one of their dinner's. It was already more like a trip to the dentist: a chore and bit of an aggravation. Gal's attitude, Isobel's erratic behavior, and now Cray's added over cool demeanor to my visit was making me want to hole up in my room. It was like eating with a group of escaped mental patients. The only sane person seemed to be Zella. It was no wonder the she looked so pleased to see me.

And something was definitely wrong at Thorncrest Manor. Goose bumps popped up all over me as I thought about last night. A part of me wanted to run like hell while I still had the chance. But something stronger, more stubborn made me want to stay.

Admittedly, I was becoming fond of Milton and Syd. For more than just their general politeness. They were becoming likeable. They allowed me to feel extra cared for, important. It was something I wasn't prepared to lose yet.

Most of all, I had to figure out what was going on at the house, why Isobel was changing, and why I was clearly disliked by two members of the Lockes.

~ * ~

Exploring the grounds of the manor felt like a good way to clear my head of negative thoughts, so I peeled off the many layers to leave myself in just my shirt and jeans. Outside it was warm and sunny. I was glad the weather had improved.

The cemetery I'd seen from my balcony should have been the last place I would want to visit after last night, but my feet itched to see it. I wanted to see who was buried there. It was only yards away. I even picked a few flowers to place on any graves I might have come across with familiar names.

When I reached the burial ground I searched for the gate, but it didn't have one. It turned out to have just a short, stone wall that travelled around to an opening at one end beside a wilted apple tree. I stepped inside and felt discouraged by the display of dedications to the dead, finding tombs broken and some a little pushed open, inviting mosquitoes and flying ants.

Sun burnt leaves scattered the ground like a bed of black roses; the head stones were just as abused, lapsing backwards or sideways into a demeaning droop. Most weren't even standing, let alone readable. They had to be lifted to see who the grave belonged to.

In the center of the cemetery was a headless statue knelt in prayer, mottled gray and crumbling. Beneath it was a faded inscription.

Beginning of one's end.

The fallen shall be caught.

Retrieved and blessed if not thrown back to the wicked.

It wasn't an uplifting or consoling message, so I carried on walking along the humps of graves in search of a name to brighten my mood and catch my attention. It took me while, but I found him. Vander Asholme. The tomb was protected by the growth of weeds that covered most of the cleaved surface. The rest of his resting place was fenced, yet I could still make out his name engraved on the rusted plate. There was nothing else. Not even a date of birth or death.

Placing the flowers on top, I wondered why neither were noted, and if any family members had even been alive to give such details to pallbearers. Maybe births and deaths weren't recorded.

Still, Vander was rich and had lived at the manor. Someone could have added something to describe him and his shortened life, someone like Isobel. I was surprised she hadn't.

Thorncrest Manor in all its sky-reaching righteousness, its granulated chimney tops, the beveling roof, and the way it looked as though it wanted to collapse, but stayed standing out of some historic duty, was a place that belonged to Vander. But to all who would pass by it, and who vaguely knew of his story, he would just be a name. People would never learn what he must have loved and what he had gained and lost within such an unfulfilled life. A life he ended prematurely.