Chapter 23: Scare
"Shana?"
Shana forced herself to keep her voice light and pleasant over the phone. "Hello, Siobhan."
The lack of negative emotions in her voice must have taken Siobhan by surprise, because Siobhan sounded wary and puzzled when she said, "I wasn't expecting to hear from you."
"I know you weren't. I'm not going to discuss it, Siobhan. What's done is done. What I called you about is this property I own. I want to turn it into a little historic bed and breakfast and I need some legal advice on how to get it started to its best advantage." Shana crossed her fingers and hoped her sister would forget that Shana had a law degree and had practiced for a brief time before going into the military. "There's a caretaker's cottage at the lake in the northwest corner of the property, that's all I need as far as a place to stay while I'm here visiting family. The manor house is certainly large enough to turn into a bed and breakfast inn. I called to ask you if you'd like to come by and have a look, maybe give me some advice." She hoped she didn't sound too eager.
She didn't dare turn around. Behind her, the glasses on the table at the breakfast nook were rattling slightly as Snake Eyes, Cam, and Charlie tried desperately to stifle their laughter. If she looked at them, she'd start laughing too, and that would ruin her—their—plans. And Sarah's.
When she'd woken up that morning, eyes watery and a slight headache from the alcohol she'd drunk the night before (her tolerance had slipped in the last few months and she was going to have to put in some serious work into bringing it back up, not that she was complaining a bit) she'd immediately briefed Cam, Charlie, and Snake Eyes on what she'd learned from Sarah. She hadn't, however, mentioned anything to Snake Eyes or Charlie about hers and Cam's talk the night before, or what Cam had done—she wasn't sure either of them would understand, much less approve, and since Cam herself didn't broach the subject, Shana decided she wouldn't either.
She did tell them about her 'conversation' with Sarah, and although she saw skepticism in Snake Eyes' eyes, his only comment had been, We'll see what the coroner finds out about the way she died. That was, after all, not something that Shana would be able to know unless Sarah herself had told her, and Shana was certain the coroner would find out that this indeed was how Sarah had died. In the meantime, he was willing to go along with her assertion that she had spoken to the little girl, and even find some humor—and agree to Shana's plan—to bring Siobhan here so Sarah could scare Shana's snobby big sister. However, she didn't know what their Dad would think if he heard about this, so when he dropped in to say a quick 'hi' on his way to work, she'd said nothing about their plans, assured him they'd spent a peaceful night and the discovery of the body hadn't disturbed their sleep, and sent him off with a kiss and a cheerful wave.
And then had called Siobhan.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes," Siobhan said, and Shana barely hung the phone up before she started chuckling maliciously.
"She says she'll be here in twenty minutes. I'll bet she's going to be here in fifteen," she giggled as she took a sip of her coffee; the caffeine seemed to be having a good effect on her alcohol headache—she wasn't even going to call it a hangover because it wasn't strong enough for that.
Cam finished the last bite of her eggs and stood. Whether it was the fresh air, the fact that she was happy here, or that she was simply healing, she was doing much better; moving better, laughing more, had a much better appetite—she was on her second plate of breakfast—and seemed almost back to normal—as normal as she could be with her shoulder still warped, although even that seemed to be getting better; she'd ridden Sunshine with easy grace and assurance, and Shana knew the working of arm and shoulder muscles required to ride the horse would be good for her.
"Since we know she's on the way, Charlie and I will take Sunshine and Storm out to see how the work's coming on the caretaker's cabin." Shana nodded assent; she wanted to keep Cam and Siobhan as far apart as possible. After what Siobhan had said to Cam, her feelings about the half-Iroquois woman was obvious and Shana wanted to make sure Charlie didn't get his hands on her sister. The results would be…unpleasant.
Snake Eyes too got up, and Shana simply nodded. His tolerance for her sister had never been good; after that night at the dinner table a week ago it had become non-existent. As much as Snake Eyes wanted to see Siobhan get the pants scared off her by the little girl's ghost, his desire to witness it was overridden by the need to stay away from her, so Shana was just going to have to give them a blow-by-blow later. She had a feeling he would take a run through the woods while Cam and Charlie rode, and all three of them would eventually end up at the caretaker's cabin, then come back together.
So the house was empty when Siobhan drove up the curving front drive fifteen minutes later. Shana met her at the door with cheerful—albeit slightly mocking—politeness.
"I'm sorry about what happened the last time. The wind took the door out of my hand and slammed it." Siobhan looked skeptically at Shana, but Shana schooled her features into an expression of apparently convincing truthfulness and stepped back, allowing Siobhan to step in, then casually took her hand off the knob. The door swung shut lazily, slowly, the lock engaging with a quiet click.
She took her sister through the house; foyer to living room/sitting room; small bath, kitchen; She watched her sister run a hand over the material of the couches and chairs, testing the quality and silently cataloguing the value of the fabric and wood; watched her sister look for the designer's names or manufacturer's brands on the furniture, adding up dollars in her head for each couch, each chair, each desk and table and lamp. She did the same thing with the tasteful, if bland, paintings and murals hanging on the walls, the huge antique grandfather clock in the hallway (the one item of furniture here in this house that Shana actually liked), the lushly padded, upholstered seats on the breakfast nook and the thick, expensive Berber carpeting in the recreation room.
She carefully pretended not to notice when a picture that Siobhan reached out to touch (likely to ascertain whether the gilded frame was made of actual metal or just painted wood) tilted itself askew on the wall just before Siobhan's hand would have touched it; her sister's hand missed the paining entirely and touched plaster on the wall instead. Siobhan's eyes grew round and she snatched her hand away. The second painting she tried to touch started to pendulum right and left, gently, not quite moving away from Siobhan's hand but certainly threatening to do so.
A cushion that Siobhan touched went sailing to the floor just as she touched it; Shana pretended not to notice and Siobhan, looking uncertain, carefully picked up the cushion with her thumb and forefinger and hurriedly dropped it back onto the chair it had fallen from, as if afraid it would bite her but also unsure if she herself hadn't accidentally knocked it off the chair. Another chair made of a particularly smooth-grained fine cherrywood got a caressing pat from Siobhan—and promptly fell over. An open door that Shana walked through casually, leading Siobhan through, practically slammed shut just behind her sister, making Siobhan gasp in startlement.
"Oh, it's just the wind," Shana managed to say airily with a straight face. "It's an old house, and there are a lot of unexpected drafts, you know how that goes." She pretended not to see her sister's skeptical look, and led her back out into the foyer to the staircase.
She'd already noticed that the stairs were creaky, and as they paused on a landing so Shana could point out the gilded hardwood railing, Siobhan nearly screamed as they distinctly heard footsteps ascending the staircase behind them. "Shana!"
"It's just the steps settling, Siobhan. They do it all the time after we go up them. When we step they creak, and when we take our weight off them, they settle back into place." She leaned over the railing to point at the chandelier—just as the footsteps passed both of them, a chill breeze ruffling a lock of Siobhan's hair.
"Shana!" Shana really had to fight to keep a straight face this time—she was sure Siobhan's shriek could have been heard all over the four acre property.
"What? Don't yell like that when I'm leaning over the banister, Siobhan, I could have fallen!"
"Didn't you…didn't you just feel that really cold chill that went through here?" Siobhan's voice seemed slightly shaky.
"No, I didn't." But then, she'd been leaning forward and might not have felt the chill of Sarah's passing, but she felt no need to mention that to Siobhan. "Now, about the chandelier…" it was really a magnificent piece, triangular crystal prisms hanging in alternating rows with round faceted crystals and larger drops, each one throwing off light and sending dancing rainbows in different directions on the wall.
And as if on cue, the chandelier shook as if it had been tapped gently by an invisible hand. A few gentle swings, exactly as if someone had jumped from the top of the banister, tapped the chandelier with a hand in passing on its way to the floor below. Shana would have bet that if she could have seen Sarah, that was probably what the little girl ghost had done, jumped off the banister railing and hit the chandelier with one hand on her way to the floor below. Something Shana would have thought of to do when she was younger, scaring and scandalizing her mother and making her father laugh. Any moment now, and Sarah'd be climbing up the stairs to see if she could do it again.
Siobhan stared at the swinging chandelier. "Shana? Did the former owner say anything about a ghost here?"
Shana wanted to laugh. Normally her stoic, pragmatic sister would be the last one to even think about the possibility of a ghost, but apparently this time she was seeing enough to admit of the possibility. And Sarah was being clever with this too, timing her pranks for times when Shana could claim it was just Siobhan's imagination…
She gave Siobhan a tour of the upstairs, the master bathroom with its giant tub (Shana hadn't used it yet; it was shaped like the one Kennedy had in his bathroom and just looking at it made her shiver, remembering nearly being drowned in it) but Siobhan's eyes lit up at the sight of it and she forgot to look around behind her for the presence of the ghost. As Shana and Siobhan turned to leave, Siobhan took one last look behind her at the tub—just in time to see the shower curtain slide along its rail until it closed.
Siobhan's shriek made Shana wince. "What?" she said, feigning irritability as she turned and glared at Siobhan.
"I—the—that—didn't you see it?"
Shana rolled her eyes. "Stop being such a drama queen, Siobhan."
"The shower curtain closed by itself!" Siobhan's voice was a couple of octaves higher than normal. "This place is haunted!"
"Don't be silly, Siobhan. There's no such thing as ghosts. The wind just blew the shower curtain closed." Shana reached out and casually pushed the shower curtain open. "See? Nothing there. Come on, let me show you the rest of the house." The next two rooms passed without incident, despite (or maybe because) of Siobhan checking each room carefully before walking in, and never progressing past the first two feet beyond the doors of each room. The last room, the one that Cam and Charlie were in, Shana just opened the door, let Siobhan see the room was the same as the others, and shut it quickly; she didn't want Siobhan to invade Cam's privacy.
They went back downstairs—again, without incident—and Shana prepared for the coup de grace; taking Siobhan down to the wine cellar. Siobhan's eyes lit up, but even as she started to walk over to the racks, no doubt to see if there were any expensive wines and try inveigle one out of Shana if there were…
…and all hell broke loose.
Two wine bottles, one right after the other, shot out of the lower portion of the wine rack, hovered in midair at eye height on Siobhan, then as Shana's sister screamed, the bottles shattered on the floor, splashing red wine all over her white slacks. A second later, the door to the boarded-up closet opened, and Shana stumbled backward, as if she were being pulled. "Siobhan! Help me!" she screamed, stretching her arm toward her sister. It was a move she, Allie, and Court had practiced when they had taken Their Guys on a hiking trip a few years back for April Fools Day; it had worked then (at least on Wayne and Dash, though not Snake Eyes) and it was working now. Instead of grabbing for Shana's hand and keeping her from being 'taken' by the ghost, Siobhan turned and fled, screaming, running up the basement stairs. In the basement, Shana put her hands on her hips partly amused, partly irritated, as she heard the front door bang open and her sister flee the house.
"Look at that. No concern for her sister. Run out of here and save her skin and leave me behind. Didn't even make an attempt to save me." But she couldn't help the twitching of her lips.
When Charlie, Cam and Snake Eyes came home, Shana regaled them over dinner with the story of the day, and kept them all in stitches with imitations of her sister screaming and running. The merriment only increased when Mr. O'Hara called later. He sounded stern over the phone, but Shana, sensitive to nuances of tone and pattern, could tell that on the other end of the phone, her father was trying desperately hard not to laugh.
"I'm glad to hear you're all right. When Siobhan came home she was hysterically claiming that the Hounds of Hell had jumped out of the basement floor and grabbed you and dragged you down with them."
"I can't imagine what she's talking about, Dad, I just gave her a tour of the house since she's been wanting to see it so much and she just got hysterical. Really, I can't imagine for the life of me why she got hysterical."
A slight chuckle; that was all Mr. O'Hara allowed himself. "I see. But your mother informs me she's in shock and her physician has prescribed a sedative, and your mother, while also being concerned for you—"
"Then why hasn't Mom called me yet?" Shana demanded.
Her father's voice took on a stern note. "Shana. You will not talk to or about your mother in that tone of voice. Your mother, while also concerned for you, is convinced this was a deliberate trick constructed by all of you to scare Siobhan and is currently not disposed to look kindly on any of you."
"It was my fault, Dad." Shana was instantly contrite. "Tell Mom that I came up with the idea, Snake Eyes, Cam, and Charlie weren't even here most of the day. You can tell Mom it's my fault, and I'm sorry for scaring Siobhan…even if I might think she's exaggerating this a little bit."
"A little?" Mr. O'Hara snorted. "Siobhan insisted her husband come home from the office to care for her with her nervous breakdown. I have no doubt she'll have told her story to the news by now, and coupled with the discovery of the little girl's remains on your property, it's going to be one of the most sensational news stories of the week."
And when they went to the rec room and turned on the TV, they found Mr. O'Hara was right. The discovery of the missing Sarah Campbell's remains was the hottest story of the night; the discovery of where she was found, and the coroner confirming that she'd been tortured before her throat was cut, was sure to make national, if not international, news. Pictures of the manor were displayed on the news, along with aerial shots of where her body had been found on a plan of the plantation pulled from Atlanta's land records. And it also noted that the property had been own by the late, unlamented Damien Kennedy, and speculation was rife that he had been the one to abduct, torture, and murder a little girl. Even Siobhan was interviewed, sitting in a large easy chair at home, in clothes a couple sizes too big for her calculated to make her look small and frail and sick, whispering in a pained tone and with a face pale with makeup several shades lighter than her own skin (Shana could tell because Siobhan hadn't powdered her neck to match her face) to feign shock. Fortunately for Shana, Cam, Charlie and Snake Eyes, the reporter seemed content to get Siobhan's story of the ghost (with more elaborate detail added to each telling) and seemed disinclined to speak to Shana.
"You know, Shana, I could be wrong, but I don't think you're going to have to worry about marketing and PR to advertise this place as a haunted bed and breakfast," Cam said with a laugh as they turned off the TV and headed to bed. "I think Siobhan just did that rather nicely for you."