Chapter Six
I convinced Tucker to distract Sam the whole afternoon, but after lunch my efforts were proven useless. Cole suddenly started feeling sick and he confessed he had eaten some candies he found inside his room. Tucker feared the Italian candies with extra sugar must have caused him some allergic reaction.
"Sam, could you take us to a hospital?" Tucker asked, already setting up the plan so I could spend some hours alone to phase through the whole castle. I did my best to look concerned about Cole and not give away my intentions.
"I can give you the directions and call Mr. Cavallera to give you a ride." She answered sweetly and I felt fear pooling in my stomach. Sam was no fool. She was suspicious already. She wouldn't make it easy for me to search through the forbidden doors. But at the same time it was like she just confirmed that she was hiding something big.
"I… alright." Tucker quickly glimpsed at me and slightly shrugged. If he protested her offer he would raise even more suspicion.
"It's easy to get lost in Venice." I said pretending I wasn't concerned about my lack of privacy. Suddenly a bright idea flashed in my mind. "I can go with you. We should get going soon." I said while I put a hand over Cole's sweaty forehead.
Tucker didn't say anything afraid to ruin whatever I was working on. Sam seemed to relax a bit and sit back on her chair to enjoy a sip of tea. I helped Cole to stand up and Tucker followed me off the room.
"What are you thinking?" Tucker whispered to me once we were out of Sam's hearing range.
"I say I'll go with you, but I'll simply go ghost and come back here. I'll be invisible the whole time so Sam won't be suspicious of anything." I whispered back. Tucker grinned at the ridiculously simple plan.
"Danny, can I have a word with you?" Sam's voice sounded too close to us and I froze. Had she heard what I had just said? I silently hoped she hadn't. It was worse than being caught spying inside the girl's locker room that one time in high school. She had acted as if she didn't mind, but I felt her cold stare on my back for months.
"Yeah. Sure." I answered as naturally as I could sound. "I'll be right there, Tuck." Tucker looked at me as if he was leaving with a hungry lion, but he nodded and left the room anyway.
"Danny…" Sam sighed and turned her back to me. She walked in small circles around the room, doing her best to keep her anxiousness to herself. I concentrated in listening to her, but the soft sound of her satin dress and the clinking of her shoes on the floor were a distraction. "I wanted to tell you that Mr. Cavallera is a very noble and religious man, completely incapable of thinking bad of someone." She said, looking at me in the eyes with a look that I mistook as watchful and sad. "I know you've been interrogating him."
"Of course." I smiled to myself. She knew everything after all she was controlling the investigation from the start, wasn't she? "I apologize, I should have asked your permission before going around questioning your employee." I decided to work on my best repented look and not give her anymore reasons to follow me around.
"Whatever you must ask; ask me. Everyone in Venice has their own fantasy about this case. They call it a 'giallo', just like they call the mystery books they read." She walked towards me again and I stared at her hands tightly closed around each other to keep herself from touching me.
Suddenly it clicked in why Sam was acting so coldly towards both Tucker and I. From what I had seen that morning, her husband's ghost would attack whoever touched her or whoever she touched. She was keeping herself from us, without hugs, slight touches or encouraging smiles because she was concerned that we would be attacked, too.
My heart weighted inside my chest. She was trapped in a web of constant threats. She was watching her every move to protect us. I felt like hugging her at that moment; I felt like hugging and kissing her hair and reassuring her everything would be fine. I wasn't scared of Mr. Schultz, but I couldn't risk having him on my tail and damaging my investigation; at least not that afternoon.
"I promise you I won't let you down and I will get rid of the ghost." I told her. Then, I turned around and left the room to follow Tucker and Cole to the gondola.
Sam watched us sail away from the front door. More than ever, she looked like a prisoner to me. There she was, standing on her castle's door, not being able to join her friends in the world outside. It was when a nostalgia feeling squeezed my chest, making me breath with difficulty. I wondered if she was ever going to be that girl I grew up with again. I wondered if she would ever smile and help me fight ghosts again. I wondered if the darkness of those years of her life would haunt her memories forever.
Tucker asked Mr. Cavallera to stop in a small port and I climbed off. They continued sailing and I watched them go until it was safe enough to go ghost. I turned invisible and flew back to the castle. I remembered when I was a kid and I imagined what people would do when I was not around. Well, I was ready to find out, with my sneaky abilities, thanks to years of ghost hunting.
Once I entered the castle, I was immediately worried of where Sam was. I had to check on her before I started flying everywhere. I had to make sure she was distracted enough to not even think about my plan.
When I found her, I was slightly relieved that my plan would work, but I was incredibly jealous of the picture she was holding. She was asleep in an armchair by the fire, holding a frame with the picture of her wedding day tightly to her chest.
I flew out of the room to the top floor with the terrible realization that she had loved Alexander. I was in denial, I knew that. I wanted him to be the cruel monster who forced their relationship from the start, but it looked like he had been really nice once. Nice and rich. While I barely had the fifty thousand that she had promised me in my bank account, Alexander had given her a castle in Venice! How could I ever compare to that?
And worse, was I selfish enough to take her from her castle and bring her back to the poor country town infested with ghosts?
I didn't have time to think of an answer, as I floated from one door to another, revealing maid rooms, guest rooms completely ruined and rooms with old furniture that wasn't thrown away and was left there to rot; I found a small drop of ectoplasm, invisible to human eyes, in the corridor leading to the forbidden doors.
I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach and gulped unconsciously. From under the door I saw even more drops of ectoplasm, as if there was a ghost bleeding.
I put a hand on the door just to have it pushed away severally by an electroshock. My fingers burned under my glove and I smirked at the sensation. I was familiar with ghost containment spells. The door was not just locked from humans.
Sam was too smart from her own good.
I wouldn't be able to get inside as ghost, so I became human again and used my freezing powers on the doorknob to fake an ice key and open it up. The room looked like an old bathroom, with a huge old bath in a corner, with mirrors for more than one person to bathe. It looked slightly dusty, but completely clean of any evidence… except from a wheel chair in a corner.
I felt faint and numbly walked towards it. It was the confirmation of what Mr. Cavallera had said. It wasn't a simple wheelchair. It was a modern one and it looked expensive. It obviously didn't belong to a maid, or any employee; I was damn sure it was Sam's.
A shiver ran down my spine, it was the sensation of a ghost nearby. I quickly looked around for the supporters of the spell. Usually a containment spell required four wooden crosses perfectly arranged in a square around the room to keep a ghost trapped inside. If the square was broken so was the spell.
The nearest cross was under the bath and so I removed it, allowing me to go ghost right away since I no longer would be electrocuted by the spell.
With my ghost eyes I looked around and was immediately shocked by the scene in there. Ectoplasm was everywhere, splattered on the walls and forming trails on the floor. When I looked up to a corner I saw three female ghosts, curled up together and watching me completely scared.
I closed the door so Sam wouldn't hear our voices echoing down the corridors.
"Who are you?" I asked them gently, so I could gain their trust and some straight answers.
The three old ladies looked at each other. The first one was dressed in nurse attire. She even had a white had with a red cross in it. The second looked like a maid, with an apron over her dark blue dress and a hat covering her hair. The last one was dressed like the second one, but she didn't have the hat on.
The second one looked determinate to give me my answer.
"We used to work here. Now we're prisoners." She said. Immediately I figured she was the cook, the first was the nurse and the third was the cleaner Mr. Cavallera had talked about.
The nurse had deep cuts on her wrists, making her hands fall off to the side, only kept in place by a small nerve that didn't come apart with the blow that had cut everything else off. The cook had a knife stuck on her heart and the cleaner had a broken foot and a cut on neck. So the three women had been furiously murdered. Their wounds still oozed ectoplasm as every ghost who had been murdered.
"Please, save Mrs. Schultz!" The nurse suddenly said, standing up. "He's crazy, he can't save her. He's only making her suffer!"
"What are you talking about?" I asked them. Had they any idea of how long it has been since they died?
"She needs treatment from a hospital." The cleaner said. "We've heard her crying in pain every night. She needs a team of doctors with her he can't operate her by himself."
"He killed us. He's insane. He lost it when he saw her lying there. We tried to move her to a hospital, but he murdered us." The nurse said and tears spilled down her eyes. She was desperate. She looked down at her hands hanging from her arms. "It still hurts."
I knew it did. Every blow I took while fighting ghosts hurt until they healed. Looking at her hands, I thought it would be better if she got used to the pain than waiting for it to heal completely. Ghost wounds didn't hurt as bad as human, but they still hurt. I felt very sorry for them.
"I'm here to save her, but it must be done quietly." I explained the three old ladies. They had told me everything I needed to know. I had to go and quick. "As soon as it's over I'll come back here and free you." I stood up with the cross in my hands. "For now, I must lock you up again. I promise you it'll be over soon."
"Before you go," The cook stopped me. "Tell us what her condition is."
"I'm not sure." Was all I could answer; It was the truth. I had no idea how Sam really was. Once she was sincere to me, I would have that answer, but at the moment I had no idea.
It took all my guts to lock those poor ladies in their confinement once again, but I couldn't let more ghosts loose at that time. I couldn't deal with the unpredictable. To take the final step and close the case, I would need to know every single move inside that castle.
I put the cross back in place and turned human. My mortal eyes no longer could see the murdered ladies, but I looked at the corner they were in before I left. I locked the door with the ice key from outside and quickly went invisible.
Did Sam know about the ghosts? I didn't think it was possible, after all human eyes can't see that type of ghost. Murdered ghosts who suffer in this world are invisible to everyone, but to others like them. If Sam ever saw that room everything that she would see would be an empty bathroom with a wheelchair inside.
My mind was working fast. I didn't know how to connect the information I had just heard. If Sam was as sick as the employees were telling me, than how did she become healthy again overnight? Either it was a miracle as Mr. Cavallera had put it, or Sam had faked her illness the entire time.
If she did fake it… then why? Why would she submit herself to her husband's painful treatment? The only reason I could think of was to build up the perfect alibi when she pushed him down the stairs. She was almost invalid at the time, so it couldn't have been her, the police would think.
If it was true, she had premeditated the murder for a while. If it was true, than she was acting right now, she was acting when she wrote that melodramatic Will and she was also acting in the drawing room, at that exact moment while she slept holding their picture.
My head started hurting as I flew through doors to go on with my investigation. My head was spinning. If I had just seen the ghosts where were their bodies? They must have been hidden somewhere close.
Suddenly I flew straight through a fake wall. It was a secret passage behind a huge mirror. When I thought of secret passages I thought of corridors that led outside the castles; the princes and princesses would be able to run safely far away from the castle in case there was a revolution;
But it wasn't the case of that place. It was a huge room with a sweet smell that made my stomach turn. A bluish light was barely illuminating the room through a small round window in the ceiling. There was a leaking in the corner and the sounds of the droplets were breaking my concentration.
The room was divided in two by a glass wall. It was so dusty I couldn't see through it. I stepped on the ground and decided to walk around the room a little. I had a feeling I was going to witness something dreadful. More ghosts, mutilated corpses and other horrible things crossed my mind at that moment.
I could barely think straight. I ran into a table with several bottles. One of them shattered on the ground. Something viscous was inside it and I knelled down to get a better look at it.
It was little remains of liquid glycerin, or so the handwritten sticker said. There were several other bottles like that one on the table along with a thin brownish tube.
"Who is there?" The door suddenly busted open to reveal a pale looking Sam, standing there. The sound of the busting glass probably led her to the room, but fortunately I was still invisible. My heart jumped to my throat when she opened the door. She looked determinate, but frightened. I could read her frown, ready to face whatever was in there, but I also could hear her heart racing in fear and anticipation.
How I didn't hear those high heels clinging I had no idea.
She held up a lamp to illuminate the room a bit better. I didn't move from where I was standing, afraid to break anything else right under her nose. She walked inside, right by me and marched straight to the glass wall, opening a small door on it.
I observed her as she held her breath as she looked around. Her eyes fixed on something, softening up. I was about to quietly float in her direction and see what exactly she was staring at when we heard doors slamming on the ground floor.
Tucker just arrived.
I had to be quick and join him before Sam saw him standing there by himself. I went intangible and quickly fell through the floors until I stood perfectly by Tucker's side in my human form.
Cole was asleep in Tucker's arms, his head resting on his dad's shower.
"How is he?" I asked quietly and Tucker smiled.
"Just a minor intoxication. He'll be alright tomorrow." Tucker said hurriedly. He heard the heels echoing through the castle and getting closer to the entrance.
Sam showed up in a beautiful dress that could have been designed in the fifties. It was red and a push up bra that made me want to steal glimpses when she wasn't paying attention. The diamond necklace was hanging in there looking like an innocent piece of jewelry. It made me wonder if she was going out dressed like that and a sudden urge to demand her to change into something proper got stuck on my throat.
If she was going out, I wouldn't say anything. I had to go back where I was. I had to find that room again and finish my investigation. I hopefully would take Tucker with me.
"Is Cole alright?" She asked, taking the asleep boy from Tucker's arms.
"Apparently he's allergic to bananas, " Tucker shrugged. "I didn't know that one."
"I'll have all banana candies thrown away, then." She said firmly, taking the kid to his room. I followed her and she gently laid him down, humming a song.
I could help but notice what a good of a mother she would have been. Maybe she was the mother Cole needed, I thought with some jealously growing on my stomach. If I had had the guts to stop her once she had decided to leave us several years ago, maybe we would have had one of our own.
Cole had taken medicine for the allergies and he would be out cold for hours.
"Is the portal ready?" She asked me, never taking her eyes from the kid. I shook my head. "No" I lied. "Can you work on a schedule for me? I think this might get more dangerous than I had anticipated. I don't want him to get hurt."
"I think it will be ready in a few days," I turned to Tucker, who immediately got into the lying game, although confusion was clear all over his face.
"I must end soon." She looked at me with those amethyst eyes and I could have jumped and hugged her until I would make her forget all the pain she had gone through. I had loved her for so long and I was dying inside to watch as she got trapped in whatever she was into. "I don't know if I can handle any more of this."
Then she walked past me, past Tucker and went straight for the gondola. Mr. Cavallera mentioned something about groceries and they left, simple as that.
She willingly went away to give me free access to the whole castle and she knew I would take the chance.
A/N: Guess what? Almost ten years went by! I want to finish this so badly! Life has taken the wrong course I think. I graduated (twice, film school and architecture, then went to an engineering post-graduation), got married, had a baby, got divorced and here I am. A single mom, trying to find out where my life turned the wrong direction. You know what? I don't know what the future will take me, but I know I will finish this fanfic.