Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Oscar gratefully downed the soup Ethan heated up for him after the seance. Though the weather was warm, the spirit had left a chill in his blood that was slow to dissipate.
Inviting Gloria to speak through him had been an unsettling experience, to say the least. He hadn’t been pushed completely from control as he had the time he’d been possessed.
It was more as if he’d shifted to the passenger seat of a driver’s ed car.
Someone else was steering, but he still had a brake on his side if he needed it.
And he had. Though if Ullman hadn’t come, maybe they could have gotten more from her.
Then again, probably not. It had been a mistake, letting Ms. Montague sit in on the seance. Not that he blamed her for her reaction after having her worst suspicions confirmed. But her attempts to argue had been stoking Gloria’s anger even before Ullman showed up.
They’d all retreated to the trailer, no one wanting to be in the house at the moment. Ethan served everyone else a cold pasta salad, which would have been refreshing at any other time. Dr. Lawrence and Ms. Montague only picked at theirs.
“So I was right all along,” Montague said after a while. “Gloria is the dangerous one. I knew it.”
“They’re both dangerous,” Lawson started to argue. Then her shoulders slumped. “But yes. When she admitted to killing Robin. I…” Her words trailed off, and she wiped angrily at her eyes, seeming determined not to cry in front of them.
“She said it was because Robin hid this ‘treasure’ she’s so obsessed with,” Nigel said, his voice low, as if he worried speaking too loudly would upset his old advisor even more. “Oscar, did you get any insight?”
“Even if he did, could we trust it?” Montague cut in. “Gloria is evil. She’s just trying to torment us, the same way she did decades ago.”
While Gloria was in him, Oscar hadn’t been able to read her thoughts, exactly, but her feelings were clear. “I couldn’t tell what this treasure is, but she wants it found. She was very focused on that, at least until her father showed up.”
“Back at the asylum, the nurse ghost was scaring us to get us to leave, because she was trying to protect us from that crazy doctor haunting the place,” Chris said, fork with a piece of penne speared on it halfway to their mouth. “Maybe that’s what Ullman is doing? Trying to save us from Gloria?”
“I don’t think so. Ullman just feels angry to me. Possessive of the house, the island.” Oscar wrapped his hands around his coffee cup; his fingers still held a chill, though the soup had warmed his insides appreciably.
“And Gloria hates him,” Tina said.
“Very, very much.”
A troubled look crossed over Nigel’s face. “I don’t like that. She was supposed to be the apple of his eye. And what young child hates her father, unless…well.”
“Children seldom hate their parents at that age, no matter how abusive they are.” Dr. Lawrence passed her mostly untouched plate to Ethan. “Wrap that up, if you would—no need to let it go to waste.”
“But we don’t know Ullman was abusive,” Ms. Montague objected. “If he was, why spend so much time and effort to summon her spirit? And why would she return to him, if she’d passed on?”
“Maybe she didn’t want to come here.” Oscar turned to Dr. Lawrence, since she had the most experience. “Is it possible to force a spirit back through the veil once it’s passed on?”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing.” Lawrence’s brow furrowed as she considered possibilities.
“As you’ve experienced for yourself with your grandmother’s ghost, some who are at peace will return briefly to contact their loved ones.
So we have to ask ourselves, would it be possible for Ullman to trap her here on one such visit? ”
“Even if it was, would she hate him so vehemently?” Nigel asked.
“What if he killed her?” Tina asked. “She died from a fall, didn’t she? Maybe she was pushed.”
“The Ullman family was very respectable,” Montague said, a chill in her voice.
“I can’t speak to their current status, as they ultimately sold the business and moved to California, but Noah would never have associated with him if there had been the slightest indication he was anything other than a loving father. ”
Tina looked taken aback. Old southern families didn’t take kindly to anyone impugning their relatives, no matter how far back—well, the rich ones, anyway, who had to worry about their standing in so-called society.
“We shouldn’t let our imaginations run away from us, but we also shouldn’t reject any possibilities out of hand,” he said, hoping to thread the needle between the two. “Unfortunately, we still don’t know if Robin is here.”
“You’ll have to remove Ullman first,” Lawrence said. “Then maybe we’ll be able to move Gloria on as well. If her hatred is as strong as Fox says, that might be what’s keeping her here.”
Tina glanced warily at Montague before asking, “Are we absolutely sure there isn’t really buried treasure on the island?”
“We looked for it.” Montague’s voice was calm once again.
“This was before we sent the Vanderwalls to a hotel over on Hatteras. We held a seance, just the three of us, and Gloria gave us very specific instructions. The Vanderwalls were against us looking for it, since they’d already done so and thought it would be a waste of time, when all they wanted was to get their renovations back on track. ”
“Understandably so, since they’d sunk all of their money into the place,” Lawson chimed in.
“Indeed. Ruthie distracted them one evening, while Robin and I snuck out. We took shovels from Mr. Vanderwall’s equipment shed—long fallen to pieces now, of course. We dug and dug, but there was nothing there.” She shrugged.
Nigel adjusted his glasses. “Very few pirates actually buried any loot, and in every known instance it was recovered quickly afterward. Otherwise, they spent what they stole as soon as they were back in port. The odds of there being actual buried treasure here are astronomical.”
“But not zero,” Chris said.
“Unless you brought an excavator in your backpack, I don’t think it matters.” Oscar finished off his coffee. “Why did Gloria accuse Robin of hiding the treasure if y’all didn’t find anything to begin with?”
“Because she wants to sow discord, obviously.” Montague’s mouth tightened into a harsh line. “Negative spirits feed on negative energy, do they not?”
“And the promise of riches is the easiest way to get people to turn on each other,” Tina said ruefully. “So what next?”
Oscar considered a moment. “We need to check out the cupola, in case Robin is up there. Assuming Ullman won’t pitch a fit and interrupt.”
“I’d advise against it.” Dr. Lawson exchanged a look with Montague, got a nod in return.
“The lantern room itself might be sound, but the gallery surrounding it definitely isn’t.
The Vanderwalls were talking about repairing the steel struts holding it up, but of course they never got around to it. I’m sure it’s in even worse shape now.”
“I see.” Oscar didn’t care for the idea of Ullman—or Gloria, it seemed—shoving him onto the gallery deck so it could collapse under his weight. “In that case, let’s try to come up with a plan to get rid of Ullman. Suggestions?”
“Let’s try the…” Nigel stopped, as if just saying the next words was hard for him. “The Devil’s Toy Box.”