Chapter 5 #2
The thing was empty except for a few forlorn wire hangers at one end.
So what had made that thump?
Nothing at all, it seemed.
Well, in a haunted house, you often didn’t have a physical cause for the phenomena you might see…or hear.
Delia pulled her phone out of her purse and turned on the flashlight again, slanting the beam up toward the shelf that spanned the length of the closet. It was empty as well, but then something caught her eye.
The puffy cross shape that somehow reminded her of the petals of a flower, with the small circle superimposed at its center. This one appeared to have been written on the wall just above the shelf, right smack in the middle.
Just what the hell was that thing?
Her phone still said it had five bars, but she knew better than to trust it, not after what Aaron had told her about the reception here. No, she just took some snaps of the drawing — and this one did seem to be drawn on, rather than scratched into the paint — and then stepped away from the closet.
“Alba, what does that cross mean?”
Movement at the corner of her eye, although Delia realized it was only the curtains fluttering ever so slightly. More air currents from the swamp cooler…or something else?
Then the faintest of whispers.
Not…a cross.
It was impossible to say whether the person talking was male or female, and yet Delia still got the impression the speaker was a woman.
Alba?
“I’m here to help,” Delia said clearly.
Something that might have been a ghostly chuckle.
Can’t help.
“Yes, I can,” she replied, hoping she sounded confident and not at all worried that she might be dealing with something here she hadn’t been expecting. “I’ve helped many move on.”
Can’t.
That was all, and Delia frowned. Was the ghost trying to say she couldn’t help, or attempting to tell her that it couldn’t move on, for whatever reason?
“Why not?” she asked, willing herself not to get too frustrated.
Communicating with ghosts wasn’t like talking to another person — when they spoke at all, it was often in riddles or half-sentences, uttering statements that didn’t seem to make much sense on the surface.
She usually needed a good while to get to the heart of the matter and ascertain exactly what was keeping them on this plane.
And, as she’d pointed out to Aaron, it was still early in the afternoon. She had plenty of time to get this straightened out and still be on the road before nightfall.
Danger.
Cold once again trickled down her spine. Delia pulled in a breath and wished she’d brought her iced tea from In-N-Out inside the house with her — her mouth felt as dry as the desert that lay just a few hundred yards outside the oasis of the Sanchez homestead.
“Who’s in danger?” she said clearly. “Or are you talking about the house?”
House…stays.
That made no sense at all.
Unless….
Was Alba trying to say that the house needed to stay in the family, and that anyone else who tried to live there would be in some kind of danger?
Possibly. Delia didn’t want to think that Aaron’s grandmother might be the vengeful kind of spirit who played tricks on anyone who had the presumption to take up residence in her beloved home, but that sort of behavior was all too common among ghosts.
From what Pru had told her, though, it didn’t even sound as if Alba Sanchez had spent most of her life here. She and her husband had lived in the house for a while, but they’d moved out in the eighties, and she’d only returned after she was widowed some five years ago.
“You don’t want Aaron to sell the house?”
Dead silence.
For a second, anyway. From down the hall came a crash that made Delia jump…and then she realized that was probably the sound of the two bookcases getting knocked over.
Yes, it definitely seemed as if Alba wanted to keep the house in the family.
More than ever, Delia had to fight the urge to hurry down the stairs and get out of there, and let Aaron’s family deal with the problem. But she’d told them she’d do what she could, and that didn’t include running away at the first sign of trouble.
Also, while the spirit…who might or might not have been Alba…had expressed its displeasure in various ways, it hadn’t done anything to threaten her personally. That made her think the ghost was more frustrated than anything else.
Well, that made two of them.
“Why can’t he sell the house?” she pressed. “I know it’s been in the family for eighty years, but is there some reason beyond that for wanting to make sure strangers don’t buy it?”
Guard…. came a whisper from the spirit.
Something about the atmosphere in the room felt almost thundery, although Delia told herself that could have simply been the damp air from the swamp cooler.
Or was it that she might be getting to the heart of the problem?
“Guard against what?” she asked.
Guard.
Well, that cleared everything up.
She tightened her grip on the strap of her purse, even as she reminded herself that she had plenty of holy water inside and there was nothing to be worried about.
Yeah, right.
And then….
Delia wasn’t sure if she could have ever described what happened next, except that it felt as if someone had grabbed her by the arms and forced her eyes wider than they’d ever been, almost as if she’d been trapped in that awful scene from A Clockwork Orange where Alex’s eyes were kept open by those horrible metal gadgets.
In front of her was the symbol she’d seen scratched into the kitchen cabinet downstairs and written on the wall inside the closet, only instead of being an inch or so high, it appeared to be almost her same height, hanging in the air and surrounded by a golden glow that seemed to pulse like a heartbeat.
Guard…protect.
The symbol was some sort of sigil of protection?
But what had Alba been trying to protect against?
“Someone in the family needs to protect this place?” she asked.
The glowing symbol abruptly disappeared, and the curtains rustled again.
Protect…or else.
The thundery sensation in the room abruptly disappeared, and Delia pulled in a shocked breath. A glance around told her she was alone…and the heightened senses she still wasn’t entirely used to only reinforced that impression.
Whoever or whatever had taken hold of her, it seemed to be gone now.
A symbol of protection. A sigil to ensure the safety of those inside this place.
But why? What was so important that Alba had lingered after her death to make sure no one outside the Sanchez family ever lived in the house?
Delia had absolutely no idea, and with Aaron off at a job interview, she wasn’t going to get the answers she needed any time soon. As much as she wanted to dash right back to Las Vegas, she knew that wasn’t feasible, not until she got a chance to talk to him again.
However, that didn’t mean she couldn’t share what had just happened with Caleb and see if any of this made sense to him.
Not from here, though, not with the way the cell reception around the property was all kinds of screwed up.
She hitched her purse on her shoulder and resolutely made her way down the stairs, then went outside and locked the door behind her with the key Aaron had provided.
He’d said she could get a call out from Heritage Park…and that’s exactly where she was headed.