Chapter 17
“Jennie. Hey. Jennie.” The gentle tapping of fingertips on her cheek were matched with the wetness of a dog’s tongue licking the other cheek. “Midas. Go!” The dog was pushed away as Jennie managed to open her eyes. Zane came into focus, concern creasing his face. “Hey,” he said again.
Jennie tried to collect her muddled thoughts. She’d never fainted before. Well, not that she could recall. But the stone-cold veranda floor she lay on told her that she had passed out.
Traeger Hall.
The opening.
The specter that had flown before their faces.
Jennie struggled to sit up, scooting herself farther away from Traeger Hall’s opening.
“Here, take my hand.” Zane helped her sit up enough so that she could lean back against the wall.
Midas sniffed her neck, her ear, his tongue lapping at her face.
“Midas, leave her alone,” Zane commanded.
But Jennie wrapped her arm around the dog’s shaggy neck, drawing him close despite his damp fur. There was comfort there, security. She’d always wanted a dog.
“What was that?” Jennie asked.
“What was what?” Zane looked confused.
“Didn’t you see it?” Jennie frowned. “The ghost?”
“Um . . . no,” Zane replied. “There was a tapestry or something that fell down when we opened the place. It wasn’t a ghost.”
Mortified, Jennie closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. She had passed out because of a falling tapestry? She leaned into Midas, who licked her across the nose.
“It’s okay. This is all very creepy.” Zane patted her shoulder. “The adrenaline rush is greater than when I rode the wildest roller coaster at a theme park down in Florida.”
“A roller coaster sounds tame compared to this,” Jennie muttered. She didn’t have a future career in tomb raiding, that was for certain. Everything in her screamed to close up the entrance again and pretend they’d never opened it.
“Yeah,” said Zane. “I’d go with you. But for now, how about we check it out?” He extended his hand once more.
Jennie eyed it. Part of her wanted to take his hand and continue. Another part didn’t want to touch him, to feel the warmth of his hand and then try to decipher why it made her feel a certain way. Yet another part of her wanted to run.
“For Hannah.” He kept his hand extended to her. “Let’s figure out why whoever left that note for my sister doesn’t want us to disturb this place.”
For Hannah.
Motivated by the teenage girl she’d yet to meet, who didn’t deserve to be caught up in some old ghost story and cold case, Jennie took Zane’s hand. And with the stabilizing presence of Midas, she pushed to her feet.
Sure enough, once she aimed her flashlight through the opening again, Jennie could see the pile of material lying on the floor. Gray and riddled with holes, probably from moths and mice.
“Can you slip through?” Zane asked.
“I think so.” Jennie turned her body so she could lift her foot and step over the remaining bricks that hadn’t been cleared.
She eased her way through the narrow opening, very aware that she was the first person to set foot in the mansion since 1890, mere days after Leopold Traeger had been murdered.
Not releasing Zane’s hand, Jennie managed to get her other leg inside, and then she was inside completely, her feet planted on the hardwood floor.
The entryway was pitch-black. With all the windows sealed, there was no light in the house but her flashlight.
The beam spread ahead of her like a tunnel, revealing dust motes in the air, shadows, and dark shapes and forms. Jennie half expected something or someone to jump out at her.
It was the perfect setting for a horror movie.
A ghoul crawling from behind an inanimate object.
Skin peeling away from its face. Rags hanging from its body as it slunk toward her, arms outstretched, a leering expression with a toothless mouth that gaped wide enough to be a pathway to the pit of—
“We’re in.” Zane’s announcement in Jennie’s ear caused her to yelp. She jumped sideways, and he steadied her. “Are you going to be okay?”
Jennie nodded. She would be if things stopped going bump in the dark! They stood, side by side, until Jennie shifted the beam of light to look up at Zane. “Where do we go from here?”
He held up an arm to shield his eyes from the beam of light, and Jennie quickly lowered it with an apology.
“Want me to take that?” he offered. She accepted, and Zane removed the flashlight from her grip.
He swept the beam slowly across the room.
“So this is Traeger Hall.” He gave a low whistle as their eyes adjusted, the light revealing a space no one had seen since before the Wright brothers had flown their airplane.
Jennie took in the dark wood floor and wall paneling. The floor was covered with layers of dust, cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and mice nests and droppings were piled in the corners. Aside from what one might expect to find in a closed-up house, there was also furniture.
Zane stepped forward, bouncing a little to check the stability of the floor.
It must have felt safe enough because he took a few more steps, and Jennie determined she wasn’t going to be left too far behind.
She followed him close, reaching forward and grasping his shirttail. A light woof sounded behind them.
“Stay, Midas.” Zane’s voice echoed in the large room. He leveled the flashlight on the main staircase and the long table beside it. The table, also covered in dust, had curved legs with hand-carved sides, indicating an elegance from a different time.
They walked toward the table, Jennie holding on to Zane’s shirt. He shone the light on the top of the table.
“There’s a pot of old dirt,” he observed.
“Maybe it held a plant at one time,” Jennie said.
He pointed the beam at a few other trinkets, one of which was a china bowl. Thick dust clinging to the bowl made it difficult to see any sort of pattern. Inside the bowl was a pair of cuff links.
“Cuff links,” Zane muttered, then lifted one into the light to see it more clearly. It was made of gold, the letter T engraved in it. “T for Traeger,” Zane guessed.
Jennie nodded, then reached out and touched it cautiously.
Zane put the cuff link back in the bowl and moved to a small pile of material. It was black, torn and chewed, and when he went to pick it up, the material crumbled beneath his touch.
“Gloves,” Jennie murmured. “Those were someone’s leather gloves.”
The fact they were touching articles of clothing and accessories from a hundred and thirty-five years ago, tossed onto a side table by someone, was surreal.
If these items belonged to Leopold Traeger, then they were remnants of the last time the man had returned to his home, removed his gloves and cuff links, and then walked further into his house only to be stabbed to death.
Jennie froze where she stood. She could almost feel, almost see Leopold Traeger just out of reach of the flashlight’s beam. An outline of a face, a shoulder, a torso . . . But no. It was only a coatrack she’d been staring at.
Zane moved the light as if he, too, had sensed a presence.
But instead of Leopold Traeger’s ghost finally being set free, it was the same wooden hall tree.
A wool coat hung from one of its arms and was in no better condition than the gloves.
And yet it was a coat! When a family vacated a house and had it sealed shut, one would think they’d take not only their keepsakes and furniture but their clothes.
Instead, this one tiny section of Traeger Hall exposed something about its last moments in the daylight.
Whoever had been behind the sealing of Traeger Hall hadn’t bothered to take with them these personal items. They had deserted the place quickly as though they were fleeing from danger.
Zane swung the light toward the staircase, and it shone on a portrait hanging on the far wall. A set of eyes peered through layers of dust. Eyes that watched them. Eyes that had witnessed Traeger Hall’s final days, and now greeted them with a dull expression. A hopeless expression.
Jennie took a step toward the portrait, then hesitated.
It appeared to be of a woman. She could make out a slender neck, bare arms and upper body, hair piled on the top of her head.
She was young, beautiful, and . . . Mesmerized, Jennie moved toward it, barely hearing Zane cautioning her to watch where she was walking.
When she reached it, Jennie lifted her hand to brush away the years that collected on its face.
“Jennie, maybe don’t—”
But Zane’s warning came too late. She swiped her hand lightly over the canvas.
She knew better than to do that. If this was to be the first of the rumored works of fine art, one mustn’t remove the dust from it with a bare hand.
And yet Jennie had done just that without thinking it through.
The swath cleared by her hand revealed more detail.
It opened the woman’s eyes even more, a deep azure, and her hair was a chestnut color.
“Who was this woman?” Jennie breathed.
Zane came up beside her and directed the flashlight squarely on the portrait. “No idea.”
“Well, she was beautiful.”
“She was,” Zane agreed.
They both stood there as if under the woman’s spell. Then Jennie was sure she heard a soft whisper just behind her ear. A voice that lifted the small hairs at the nape of her neck.
Come, know my secrets, the whisper taunted.
The moment dissipated.
Jennie realized Zane was eyeing her, and she swallowed back a sudden rush of nausea.
Come, know my secrets.
Jennie heard the words again, this time in her mind. But instead of heeding the woman’s plea, she turned and stumbled her way back toward the entryway and the daylight that promised they could still reenter the real world. That this time machine of sealed memories and curses could be left behind.