Chapter 4 #2
There was something off about this place, though, an intangible quality she couldn’t begin to describe.
It didn’t feel exactly like the sometimes oppressive sensation she sensed when she was in the presence of a particularly troubled or stubborn entity, but it still seemed to press on her, making each breath a little more difficult to pull in than it should have.
Aaron must have noticed something was wrong, because he asked, “Is everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” she managed.
And oddly, as soon as the words left her mouth, she did feel fine. Or rather, while she didn’t like the sensation of the slightly damp air lying on her bare arms or the faint scent of mothballs that seemed to pervade the place, at least she could breathe properly.
As far as she could tell, no one seemed to have touched much of anything after Alba Sanchez died.
A fussy-looking table and matching chairs still occupied the dining room, while the sitting room was crowded with a sofa and two matching chairs, all upholstered in the same powder-blue velvet.
Matching velvet curtains hung at the windows.
“Are these all your grandmother’s things?” Delia asked.
Looking somber, Aaron replied, “Yes. Because we weren’t sure what to do with the house, we left all the furniture in place. Her personal items were given to people in the family according to her will, but everything else is still here.”
“So…she left the house to your parents?”
For a second, his gaze slipped away from hers, and she thought again of how the house seemed to have been passed among members of the family without much ceremony. “Basically,” he said. “My father was next in line to inherit. But then we decided to sell the place instead.”
Aaron sounded casual enough, but Delia guessed that his almost offhand tone was his way of trying to minimize what had probably been some heated debate among the family.
“Well, then,” she said, “I’ll do my best to help you with that. Is it okay if I walk through the place on my own? Having someone else around can sometimes disrupt the energy of a space.”
While this was true, she’d also conducted plenty of these walk-throughs with concerned clients nearby.
But because she didn’t know what she was dealing with here — and because the place had felt so odd to her when she first walked in, even though the strange, breathless sensation appeared to have subsided — she figured it was probably better to do this on her own.
Luckily, Aaron didn’t seem to have a problem with that, because he replied, “Oh, sure. Is it okay if I wait on the porch?”
“Absolutely.”
He flashed her a smile and went out the front door, then closed it gently behind him. For a second or two, she felt a little guilty about banishing him from the house, just because it was pretty hot outside, and even the damp relief provided by the whole-house swamp cooler was better than nothing.
But he’d be in the shade at least, and because it was plenty breezy outside, she thought the conditions wouldn’t be too bad. Anyway, he shouldn’t be out there for very long.
She hoped.
The question was, where to go first? Into the living room, with its overstuffed blue velvet furniture, or the dining room, which felt equally cramped thanks to the large buffet crammed with china that had been wedged up against a wall she guessed was shared with the kitchen?
She didn’t know for sure, but if Alba Sanchez had been anything like Delia’s high school friend Carmela’s grandmother, then she’d probably spent much more time feeding people than she had lounging in the living room.
A moment to pause in the dining room and sense its vibrations, but Delia couldn’t pick up on much of anything.
The realtor and designer in her immediately wanted to imagine what the house would feel like with some of the walls knocked down, thereby creating a sense of space and airiness, although she knew that wasn’t why she was here.
Aaron and his family weren’t remodeling the property to get top dollar, but only doing what they could to sell the place fast so they could get on with their lives.
All right, then.
Delia moved into the kitchen, which was actually larger than she’d expected.
It occupied a sort of “L” at the back of the house, with the shorter leg given over to a breakfast nook with a big window that overlooked the backyard.
From what she could see, the yard was mostly yellowed grass, just like the front, although it looked as if a vegetable garden of some sort had once occupied the long raised bed near one of the walls.
Whoever moved in here, they’d have a lot of work ahead of them.
Trying to keep up that much grass out here in the middle of the desert didn’t make much sense, so they’d have to either tear up the lawn and cover the dirt with gravel and drought-tolerant plants, or they’d need to invest in artificial turf.
Well, it wasn’t her problem.
Belatedly, she realized she was supposed to have checked in with Caleb. She’d already let him know she wouldn’t call while she was driving, but now that she was here in Laughlin, she needed to get in touch and at least assure him she’d arrived safely.
A text should be fine, though.
I’m in Laughlin. Aaron just let me into the house and is waiting outside while I check out the place. I’ll let you know if I find anything.
A second or two went by, and then Caleb messaged her back.
Thanks for the update. Just walked the first house. It’s a little smaller than I was looking for, but all the fixes are cosmetic & I think it’s a good candidate as long as no one bids it up too far.
That was good news. If nothing else, having him preoccupied with another flip sounded like a good way to keep him out of trouble.
Great! I’m interested to see what you think of the other houses.
I’ll let you know.
Okay. Gotta get back to work.
Good luck with the ghost.
She sent a tongue-out emoji in response to that comment, then slipped her phone back into her purse.
While she was texting with Caleb, she’d kept one ear open, thinking that maybe the ghost would want to sidle up when she was otherwise occupied.
For now, though, the space still felt entirely too neutral.
Maybe that was the point. It was always hard to say what a spirit knew or didn’t know about what was going on in the physical world, but Delia wondered if maybe Alba Sanchez had somehow sniffed out that she was there for more than just a simple walk-through of the property.
“Alba?” she ventured, then immediately felt like an idiot. After all, she had just assumed that Aaron’s grandmother was the person haunting the place, but she didn’t know that for sure.
Dead silence — well, except the omnipresent background rumble of the swamp cooler — and yet Delia couldn’t help feeling that something was still there, watching and listening.
Not exactly the most reassuring sensation in the world.
But she’d been in creepy spaces before, and she certainly wasn’t going to turn around and walk out because she had the heebie-jeebies. Besides, she knew that ghosts…with a few notable exceptions…couldn’t cause any real harm to the living.
She set her purse down on the counter and surveyed the space.
If the golden oak cabinets and laminate countertops were any indication, the kitchen had probably been updated in the early 1990s but hadn’t been touched since.
Now the room was ripe for another remodel, although she knew she shouldn’t be worrying about that.
At least no one had touched the original wood floors, which looked to be in surprisingly good shape. She hoped whoever bought the house would keep them, even if the new owners ended up making a lot of other changes.
Even though she had no real idea that Alba was listening, she knew she had to keep going.
“I just want to take a look around,” Delia continued. “But if you want to reach out and communicate in any way, I’m listening.”
Almost immediately, one of the cupboard doors swung open. She had been standing at least ten feet away, so she knew she couldn’t have had anything to do with the sudden activity on the other side of the room.
Was Alba trying to send a signal of some sort?
It wasn’t the first time Delia’s had seen a spirit interact with the physical plane, so rather than running out of the house screaming, she walked as calmly as she could over to the cupboard in question to take a look.
Unlike the buffet in the dining room, which was stuffed full of fancy china she guessed no one had wanted, the cupboard was empty, and she thought that Aaron’s parents or possibly someone else in the family had come through and cleared everything out.
Or at least, almost everything.
She almost overlooked the mark. It was small, not much more than an inch high, and at first she thought it was simply a scratch, a careless blemish left behind when someone was putting something inside the cupboard.
But then she realized the mark she’d found had an intentional design of some sort, although she had no idea what it was supposed to be.
While at first glance it looked something like a cross, all four arms were equal in length and had a sort of curved lozenge shape to them, and a small circle seemed to be superimposed where the arms connected in the middle.
Maybe it was some sort of Christian symbol. Delia hadn’t been brought up in any particular religion, so she’d be the first to admit that she didn’t know much about the different types of crosses that various denominations might use.
Then again, Pru had told her that Alba attended the local Catholic church. Delia didn’t know what this symbol was supposed to be, but it sure didn’t look like a crucifix to her.
Well, she’d take a photo and upload the image to Google search and see what it said.