Specter~Chapter 8
The next morning, Quinn awoke refreshed. She had had no problem falling asleep and staying asleep. In the bathroom, everything was exactly as she had left it the night before. She took a shower and dressed for the day, then went to the kitchen to disarm the security system. The basement door was still shut and locked, nothing out of place. She smiled. It was going to be a great day.
Breakfast was yummy; Will had brought bagels. The morning was lovely, so they decided to take their meals on the back patio. After breakfast, Quinn and Emma got to work. Emma led the way downstairs to the basement and Quinn followed. She turned the corner and stopped. The trunk she had seen before had been moved.
"Emma? Did you move this trunk?" Quinn asked her. Emma looked back at her and where she was pointing.
"Hmm…I moved things around a bit yesterday…I may have…" she replied, going back to the boxes she was looking at.
"Okay…" Quinn replied, pushing her cart to load up boxes.
All day long she thought of that trunk.
xxxxx
The trunk sat untouched all day. A storm was moving in that evening so Quinn stayed inside the house after Will and Emma left. Before retiring upstairs for the night, she ran down to the basement and quickly moved the trunk back to where it had been. She stood there staring at it, willing it to move on its own, and when it didn't she ran back upstairs, shut and locked the basement door.
Standing in the kitchen, a flash of lightning and crack of thunder sent her running upstairs to the suite. She shut and locked that door and leaned against it, catching her breath.
"Calm down, silly, it's just a storm," she said to herself and walked through the suite to the bedroom to flip on the TV and her laptop.
Her mom had emailed her, so she responded to that, and wrote Santana again. She was surprised to see a message from Noah.
Hey babe…been missin you…maybe I can come visit?
She sighed. She had to sleep on that request.
The storm was raging overhead; the lights and TV flickered. She turned off her laptop and unplugged it and her cell phone.
Did Will or Emma mention a generator? she thought. This is a fine time to wonder about that!
She got up off the bed and went to the windows to watch the storm over the ocean and stood there transfixed by the lightning. She wondered about the townfolk of Battenfield and decided to make it a priority to get there over the weekend. Another crash of thunder sent her scurrying back to the bed. The lights flickered again a few times but thankfully stayed on.
The storm finally passed over, and she fell into a fitful sleep.
xxxxx
Sam watched her during the storm. After she fell asleep, he floated to the basement and saw the trunk moved back to its original position. He again moved it, this time to a new place. He floated back to her room. She was tossing and turning. Another storm was on the horizon, moving over the estate, then out over the ocean.
In the sitting room of the suite, Sam sat down at a table with pen and paper. He figured what he was about to do would either pique her interest in the trunk further or send her packing.
On the paper, he scrawled out Lucindy and left it at that.
xxxxx
Quinn woke up feeling tired, not well rested at all. It had stormed through the night, and the morning was overcast still. She pulled herself from bed and took a shower, not even bothering to notice if things had been moved.
In the kitchen, she did notice the basement door still shut and locked. She went ahead and disarmed the security system, happy to see it was still armed after the power surges the night before.
Will and Emma arrived and asked about the storm and she told them about the lights flickering a bit. They said that that was common and that yes there was generator backup.
"How did you sleep, Quinn?" Emma asked, noticing the dark circles under Quinn's eyes though she had tried to cover them up.
"The storm kept me awake a bit but otherwise fine," Quinn said, forcing a smile.
They ate breakfast inside since it was too dreary outside and then headed for the basement.
The first thing Quinn noticed was the trunk, this time moved out into the path of where she and Emma moved their carts. She sighed and moved it back, noting the name again. She didn't even bother asking Emma if she had moved it; she knew Emma had not moved it in the middle of the night.
They worked hard that day, moving forward in time. What they were finding was fascinating, pieces of stories about the folks who had passed through the estate, history of Battenfield, and a story of the estate itself was emerging.
That was the day they found the box containing Rachel Berry's possessions, the rumored paramour of Arthur Abrams.
"This is the jackpot!" Emma said, holding up a small leatherbound book. "A diary!"
Quinn scooted over next to Emma so Quinn could enter the information into the database as Emma read it.
"The diary actually begins in 1851…the first entry reads: Saw Finn Hudson at market today," Emma read, beaming.
"Finn Hudson?" Quinn asked. "I thought there was a relationship with Mr. Abrams."
Emma carefully turned the fragile pages of the notebook.
"She lost her first love in a tragic shipwreck…let's see…" Emma said, reading out to herself. "She mentions him sailing on the…oh my gosh…the Lizzy Dean!"
Emma continued. "She says it was Finn's first time sailing and he was going with his friend Sam Evans, the beau of her friend Lucinda Fabbrae."
Quinn looked up sharply. "Wait…who was her friend?"
Emma looked at her quizzically. "I think it says Lucinda Fabbrae…" She turned the book to let Quinn read it. Quinn had training in reading old handwriting and the name jumped up off the page at her. It was the name she had seen on the trunk in the basement.
Emma read more from the diary…the details of the Lizzy Dean shipwreck and how eventually Rachel came to live at the Arthur Abrams estate. In the diary, she referred to him as 'Artie' and he had been a close friend of Finn Hudson and Sam Evans. After the shipwreck, it seemed she became closer to Lucinda and eventually they both wound up living at Artie's massive estate as both sets of their parents had passed away and Rachel and Lucinda were considered spinsters during those times, neither one ever marrying.
"Hmm…it seems something did start up between Rachel and Mr. Abrams in later years…maybe a very close companionship," Emma said.
"Does she mention Lucinda anymore?"
"I don't think so…maybe?" Emma flipped carefully to the end of the diary. "The last entry for the diary is 1918." She set the diary aside and pulled out other items from the box. "A Torah, some playbills from performances in Battenfield, oh! Pictures!"
She and Quinn studied the few pictures. In most of the pictures, there was a petite brunette, always smiling. In some pictures, it was the petite brunette alongside an equally petite man, Emma said that that was Artie, and in a few pictures the petite brunette was standing next to a taller slim light-haired lady.
"This one says Lucinda and me, 1888 on the back of it," Emma said, handing Quinn the picture.
Quinn looked at it, holding her breath. It was as if she had dressed up in period clothing and someone had taken her picture. It was like looking at herself.
"Such pretty ladies," she said, handing the picture back to Emma.
"Yes, very stylish…Lucinda's smile is so…haunting," Emma noted.
Quinn mhmm'd her agreement and noted what they had found on the database. She really just wanted to get through Rachel's items and move on.
"Looks like there is some jewelry, some costume and some possibly real," Emma said, holding up rings, necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. Carefully, she unfolded some dresses and also removed several pairs of fancy shoes. There were a couple hats there also.
"She was very stylish, I'd say," Emma remarked.
"Yes, very," Quinn agreed. She stared at one of the hats and for some reason the thought Artie bought that for her floated through her mind.
After photographing and documenting all the items, they were carefully stored back into the box from which they came. Going through Rachel Berry's possessions took up the rest of their day of research, and, after seeing and reading some of that stuff, Quinn was ready to take a break. She offered to take the boxes back to the basement before supper while Emma straightened up the office.
In the basement, Quinn unloaded the boxes they had gone through and again saw the trunk sitting in the same spot. Lucinda Q Fabbrae, she read. The trunk intrigued her but still she left it be.
After supper, Will and Emma left and as was becoming routine Quinn made sure the basement door was shut and locked. She set the alarm and decided to explore the ground floor a bit.
In the front salon, she took the time to examine Mr. Abrams' personal treasures sitting on the shelves. She saw small pictures showing him and different ladies and men who appeared to be dignitaries. In a number of the pictures, Quinn spied one Rachel Berry, either on Artie's arm or in the background.
In the back salon, she looked at the spines of the books in the reading nook and saw all the classics, which appeared well read by many hands over the years. She sat in an armchair and imagined what life was like for the residents of the Abrams estate and how many of them might've congregated in this parlor for companionship to combat the loneliness. As she sat there, the house was quiet. She wasn't alone though.
She stood to go upstairs and just as she got to the door of the salon she felt the chill again. She stopped herself where she felt the coolness and fought through the nauseous feeling.
She closed her eyes and let herself feel the presence. It was building, building, deep in her core…she finally stepped forward, her heart racing, her breathing deep. She grabbed the doorframe to brace herself. She had not had too many in her lifetime but she was pretty sure she was on the brink of an orgasm. One word kept pulsing through her brain: Sam.
She turned suddenly and said to the empty room, "I know I'm not alone. Who are you?"
He stood there, not moving. He had expected her to pass through him, not stop. They shared the same energy then, the longer she stayed within his presence, and the nausea he had been feeling soon turned to pleasure. He felt he was going to explode when she finally stepped away from him. He knew that feeling; it had happened the summer of 1852, the day she said he'd have to marry her before they did anything else in the meadow.
He heard her speak to him but he couldn't answer her, not in a way she would understand. So, he reached out to her and stroked her cheek.
She stared into the emptiness of the room, then felt the chill along her cheek. She bit back a scream and ran upstairs to the suite and locked herself in, trying to catch her breath at the door. She then walked swiftly to the bedroom but heard something flutter to the floor. She stopped and looked to the sitting room and walked slowly back that way.
A piece of paper caught her eye, now lying on the floor. She picked it up, not seeing anything on it, and turned it over. She gasped, dropped it, and ran to the bedroom.
Lucindy it read in scratchy old-fashioned handwriting.