Chapter 1 #3
“She’s the paranormal vlogger, right?” When the girl nodded Esme thought for a moment. “Yeah, sure. I watched her piece on the Loch Ness monster. She’s very good. Funny and spooky.”
“Isn’t she the best?” Her friend’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “She couldn’t do McKeran’s without video, though. I wonder what Mr. Beaumont’s real reason is for refusing to let us film in here.”
Esme suspected what Jake had surmised about Beaumont wanting to put the castle up for sale might be true; the front hall had been emptied of furniture and paintings she remembered from her childhood visits.
It now contained only some dead insects, tracked-in dirt and dusty cobwebs.
The latter made her shudder, as spiders were the bugs she hated and feared most. Some of that dread had been passed down to her from her grandmother, who had regarded them as bad omens.
Like many Mexicans she believed spiders brought the spirits of the dead from the underworld to warn the helpless of impending doom.
Esme knew that the old myth was irrational, and yet still couldn’t shake her dread of the creepy crawlies.
I’m not here for the spiders, she reminded herself as she followed the group to the first passage. I want to find out what happened to all those people.
Maybe she would even get to see the warrior again.
Carmen Martinez had always taken Esme with her on the nights she was sent by the maid service to work at McKeran’s Castle.
As long as her granddaughter behaved, her employer didn’t mind, and she knew Esme loved the castle.
Whenever they came, a security guard would escort Carmen inside, where she would vacuum and mop all the floors, and dust all the rooms that the public visited on the tour.
She would first warn Esme to stay close and not touch anything.
You don’t want the ghosts to take you away to their world, mija. They’re kind but lonely. You can see it in the warrior’s eyes.
The warrior Carmen referred to was a painting that had been hidden in a small storage room on the lower level where all the cleaning supplies were kept.
She’d found it on one of her shifts while she’d run out of bags for the vacuum.
The faded, chipped portrait, which had been painted on the back stone wall, had been covered by a long, wool plaid hung in front of it.
The material finally dry rotted off the hook that held it and dropped to the floor, revealing the warrior’s face.
Even as a little girl Esme had been mesmerized by his soft dark eyes, which seemed to follow her wherever she went in the room.
If there could ever be a man who seduced with a single look, it was this one.
He wore his light brown hair cropped short, and had a dent in his full lower lip that matched the one in his chin.
As a tween she had often imagined receiving her first kiss from him, and knew it would be perfect.
Judging by the span of his shoulders, the tops of which had been suggested by a few brushstrokes, he had been a big, strong guy, too.
The most fascinating thing about him was the look on his face, which seemed so filled with longing that it always made her throat go tight.
Whatever he had been looking at, he’d wanted it more than anything else.
Now that’s the kind of man you want, mija, Carmen would say with a sigh. One who only looks like that at you.
According to her grandmother, her son and Esme’s father, Juan Martinez, had been like that with her mother.
A mechanic who specialized in repairing farm equipment, her papi had cut himself while removing a rusty part from a tractor.
His employer told him the wound was just a scratch and not to worry about it.
Juan had been a strong, proud man, which made it all the more shocking for Inez when he suddenly collapsed and died from sepsis.
Esme had been only a month old at the time.
The poison from that part got in his blood, and killed him.
Hoping to avoid a lawsuit, Juan’s employer had offered a generous settlement to Esme’s mother.
Inez accepted it, but she had been too grief-stricken to recover from losing her husband, and passed away six months later in her sleep.
That made Esme an orphan before she could walk, but there had been no question of her going into foster care.
“That’s what family is for,” Carmen would always say. “We take care of each other no matter what happens.”
Her elderly grandparents had used the settlement from their son’s death to buy a small house where they could raise her.
Esme also had been blessed to be born into a big, tight-knit family, and her aunts and uncles had helped care for her throughout her infancy.
When she was old enough to go to school her grandfather would walk her there every day after he got off work as a nighttime security guard, and Carmen would pick her up after school and take her with her to her cleaning jobs.
From that point on her grandparents had been strict about grades and studying, promising Esme that education was her way out of poverty.
Use your brains, mija, Carmen would say, and you can do more than clean houses and guard warehouses.
An assignment to write an article for her high school’s newsletter had subsequently awakened Esme’s passion for writing.
Her grandfather, who had Esme read the newspaper to him every day to improve his English, had thought her natural curiosity would make her a fine reporter, and encouraged her.
He’d died of a heart attack during her senior year, which only fueled Esme’s determination to pursue journalism as a career, so she could make him proud.
She’d worked hard to earn a full ride scholarship to California Polytechnic State University, and her grandparents and the rest of the family had contributed to cover her living expenses, so she hadn’t been forced to take out a student loan.
Esme had graduated top of her class, and had interned for six months at the Los Angeles Times.
She might be working there now as a reporter if her grandmother hadn’t been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer near the end of her internship.
You should go back to the paper, mija, Carmen had tried to insist. The family will look after me, and I’ll be fine.
Esme had taken a copywriting job at Monterey Today that allowed her to work from home and set her own hours.
That had given her the time she needed to take Carmen back and forth to the hospital for her chemotherapy treatments, which slowed the cancer’s progress.
The oncologist made it clear that a cure was unlikely, however, and recommended that she spend as much quality time with her grandmother as she could.
It took two more years for the cancer to kill Carmen, but Esme made sure she spent every day doing something to make her happy.
They laughed and made wonderful meals together, and when the end came Esme took all the vacation she had saved up to be with her around the clock.
It had only taken a week in hospice for her grandmother to slip away in her sleep.
Her death had been peaceful for both of them, and Esme knew she would always remember the last thing Carmen had said to her.
Your mama and papi would be so proud of you, Esmerina. I will tell them everything when I meet them in heaven.
After the funeral Esme considered returning to LA, but when she’d come back to work Ron had become editor-in-chief, and asked if she was interested in becoming a full-time reporter to replace Jake, whom he had just fired.
Although she knew she’d have better opportunities for advancement down south, the love of her extended family and the tug of the familiar convinced Esme to accept his offer and stay in Monterey.
She had been tempted to give her notice a dozen times since then, but then she would think about all her research on McKeran’s Castle.
Then two years ago a doctor had gone missing while taking the tour, and Renard Beaumont had promptly closed the castle to the public, stalling her progress.
I know I can solve the mystery if I can just search the place.
Now walking through the castle Esme had the sense of moving back in time to her childhood, not the twelfth century.
It wouldn’t have surprised her to see her grandmother appear with a dust rag and her vacuum, her long silver-black hair covered by a pretty bandanna.
Her imagination aside, there was actually very little to see, just as Beaumont had said.
All the furnishings, paintings and curtains in the rooms on the tour had been removed, leaving only the empty fireplaces, cobwebbed walls and dusty stone floors.
Could he have erased the painting of the lonely warrior? The prospect made Esme’s stomach drop down to her heels.
“It looks like the door to the conference room is stuck,” the guard said, grabbing her attention. “If you’ll all please wait here, maintenance should get it fixed in a few minutes.”
The web writers began talking about the presentation while the guard went around the corner, leaving them alone.
Esme took the opportunity to silently retreat to the short flight of stairs that led to the lower level.
Quickly she ducked under the chain with the “Castle Employees Only” sign hanging from it and made her way down, going slowly so she wouldn’t lose her footing in the dark.
She had run around the halls of the first floor of the castle so often as a child she could navigate through them with her eyes closed, but Carmen had never let her do the same here.
You don’t want to get lost down here, mija. Bad things happen to people who do.