Chapter Six
HARMONY thought Paxton was beginning to seem human. But she wasn’t here to pick up men, or she didn’t think she was. Who knew?
Harmony turned back to the room. “Okay, Gussie. Vintage clothes; lead the way.”
A door on the far side of the room opened and Harmony stepped into a cedar dressing room containing sheet-covered racks of something that might very well be vintage clothes.
“Thanks, Gussie.” I think. Hmm, wha’d’ya know? Gussie liked her. Oh, oh. A friendly but negative ghost might be a ruse to get the ring, or whatever the heck had kept the poor thing wailing for a century.
When the air warmed, Harmony figured Gussie retired to replenish her energy, and she shed her layers. She wished she could read her dead hostess the way she read her bigger-than-life host. Then again, there was a lot about Paxton she couldn’t read. Hell, his walls had walls, which she was gonna pull down, brick by sexy brick.
In a dressing room lit by electrified dolphin gaslights, Harmony caught the faint aroma of herbs in addition to the cedar. An amazing dressing table called to her. The top wore a playful spray of red tulips, with stems growing up its legs and leaves flowing around its mirror. Once upon a time Gussie had had a playful side.
Harmony felt cold air on the back of her neck again, smelled the dead lilacs, and saw a woman in the mirror behind her—Gussie, forty years old, maybe, and expressionless, wearing a purple crepe gown, diamond necklace and earrings, and a dolphin brooch. She looked . . . lost, or she felt lost, or lonely, and angry, and she wanted . . . out? Then she was gone.
In Gussie’s day, purple had been the purgatory color between the black dress of mourning and the release from mourning colors. Was that what she meant by wanting out? Or did she want out of the castle?
Not a little jarred by the encounter, Harmony looked through the dressing table drawers for the other half of the ring with no luck. But she did find Gussie’s grimoire and leafed through it. Finding no spells of import, she lifted a couple of sheets from the clothes racks.
In recent years—well, maybe not terribly recent—someone had put the dresses and gowns on padded wooden hangers and covered them with linen sheets. The gowns were plentiful and awesome. Harmony wished time wasn’t an issue.
Several old trunks held accessories, nightclothes, and bed linens, and between the layers, dried sprigs of southernwood, or garderobe, kept the moths away while lavender kept the linens smelling fresh. Most were in decent shape because of the conservation attempts and low temperatures. But the place wasn’t air-conditioned.
Harmony followed the draft to a glass-fronted corner curio full of jewelry, trinkets, and scrimshaw, some with dolphins, but no Celtic rings. Feeling along the outer edges of the cupboard, she found a trip latch. The curio swung out as a whole, leaving a gaping entrance to a dank and chilly tunnel with a ray of natural light at the far end.
She followed it, ignoring the occasional squeal and clickety-click of teeny toenails, the owners of which she refused to identify. If she ever came this way again, she was bringing reinforcements.
The scent of brine told Harmony she was headed toward the sea. A red lacquer door opened to an overfurnished, overlarge, formal Victorian parlor, with Oriental rugs and enough treasures to make an antiques dealer salivate.
She cut through the musty parlor. She’d explore here later, but right now, she was called toward a door behind a small tapestry—as seduced toward it as she’d been by the gold linen yard sale gown.
The door opened to a tower room—octagon, with seven more doors inside, each a different bright color, the walls between painted with clown faces, all eerie and unique.
The sights, colors, and scents of . . . cotton candy and candy apples . . . fascinated her. But Gussie’s energy ran rampant here, despite the room’s masquerade as a toy room with sweet scents to seduce.
The toys stood abandoned, sad, silent, solitary, sinister. Harmony propped the door open with a heavy, cast-iron tricycle before she went inside.
A wooden box, about seven by seven feet square, centered the room, its painted sides showing a colorful sea floor, dolphins and a mermaid swimming above it. Harmony touched the mermaid’s face and could have sworn it was Lisette. She closed her eyes as she kept her hand on the depiction, and saw Lisette wearing the gold linen gown and kicking her way up from the depths of the sea.
Harmony coughed like when she’d undone the hem, as if the sea was trying to swallow her whole. Whisking her hand from the image, she caught her breath and calmed. Lisette had not drowned, or the dress would never have come into her possession.
Relieved and holding her chest, Harmony turned to the room at large. An antique wicker doll carriage, or perambulator, remained pristine, as did a regiment of life-sized windup toy soldiers, arranged in rows and standing at attention, bayonet rifles at the ready.
In a life-sized red mechanical fortune-telling box, a wooden marionette gypsy wore too much makeup.
Welcome to nightmare alley. Next stop: psychotherapy.
This place was neither for children nor for the faint of heart. Harmony knew it in her bones, and she’d better control her unease, or her sisters would come running.
Before she could calm, her left arm got cold, and the Celtic ring went icy again. Harmony closed her hand to keep the ring on and stepped away from the frigid source, until she backed into the giant mermaid box, accidentally elbowing a crank on its side. The nudge was all it took, and the crank began to turn, gain speed, and spin out of control.
Music filled the air, movie music, like when an ax murderer waits at the bottom of the dark stairs for the heroine to come down in her nightgown.
Harmony’s heart went into overdrive, and the box popped open.
She screamed, then the face of the giant jack-in-the-box lunged her way.
Something hit the back of her knees, and she turned, her arm raised in self-defense, but it was just the doll carriage . . . with a headless doll inside.
The sinister music slowed, and Jack went limp, bent over double, and stared into her eyes, his smile garish.
The dappled gray hobby horse started rocking, then the windup soldiers took to marching in place, and the fortune-teller dipped a wooden eyelid in a macabre wink.
Harmony ran . . . straight into Paxton’s arms. She screamed while he tried to hold her and didn’t stop until he kissed her.
She fell into the kiss to erase the horror and because it felt so blooming good to be safe. “Oh,” she said, coming up for air. “It’s you.”
“How many men do you kiss with that much passion?”
“I haven’t kissed a man in three years.”
“Liar. You kissed me an hour ago.”
“Yeah, well, I’m up to my ass in alligators, so forgive me if it slipped my mind. How long have you been standing there?”
He gazed furtively about the room. “Long enough to need a shrink?”
“That makes two of us. I have to go home now.”
Pulling her along, Paxton stepped into the room with the same morbid curiosity that had kept her glued to the floor in the midst of the nightmare, his arm so hard around her shoulder, she couldn’t tell who was protecting who. He looked down at her. “You’re not going anywhere. You’ve already proved you’re not easy to get rid of. I mean—”
She elbowed him. “You’re right. I don’t give up easily. My staying power has been tested and honed. And I’ve seen my share of ghostly activities, but this about blew—”
“Enough with the ghost, already. You probably tripped some old switch. Nicodemus Paxton, the old pirate who built this place, was into eerie midway horror house tricks. You should see the funhouse mirror room upstairs. I’m telling you, we don’t have a ghost.”
The tricycle she’d used to hold the door open rolled into her line of vision, and Harmony ran to catch the door, but it slammed shut and clicked, as if it locked. Around the room in turn, came one click after another. Eight doors. Eight clicks.
Harmony tried the door to be sure. “Locked.” She fell against it and watched Paxton, across the room, trying one of the others. “Don’t bother,” she said. “She locked them all.”
“She, who?”
“The ghost.”
“There . . . is . . . no . . . ghost.”
The lights went out, throwing the room into a pit as black as the one into which she’d fallen when she passed out at home.
Except this time, she was awake.