Chapter 21 #5
Stefan sighed. I get it. You want answers, and you want progress, and you want action, and you want it all right now.
“Damn right, I do,” he snapped in frustration. “And I want to know that little boy won’t be suffering for all of eternity. How long has he suffered now?”
Maybe that’s something you can sort out, he suggested. Get onto the internet, onto your databases, and do some research on that fire. You’ll also need to check in on Eden.
“Why? Is she in danger?” he asked, turning to look at her bedroom door. “She went to her room to lie down.”
Did she though? Stefan asked. Or did she leave because she felt as if you were judging her for it?
He froze at that. “Good God.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t judging her. I’m not in any shape to judge jack shit at the moment.”
What you were doing and how she perceived what you were doing could, in this instance, end up being a very different thing.
“Oh, Christ.” Eric bolted to his feet. “Do you think she’s taken off?”
I don’t know what she’s done or what she’s planning on doing, Stefan stated. I am just telling you that she’s pretty tortured over this whole thing.
“I can’t believe her grandmother would do that.”
And yet I understand it, Stefan said. Agree with it?
Absolutely not. But understand it? Maybe.
There is no pain like losing a child. And even though the child was an adult, I can see that, for the grandmother, it was completely unacceptable.
And to do anything she could to prevent it?
That wouldn’t be as out of line as it might seem in this moment.
“Christ,” Eric muttered. “The stupid webs we weave, huh?”
She apparently couldn’t face life without her daughter. She chose to put everything she had in her to manipulate Eden into saving her daughter.
“But that’s ridiculous. Eden was just a child.”
And obviously the grandmother must have had some abilities. She fought long and hard with her granddaughter and maybe her own daughter, Stefan surmised. We need to do more research on that. You need to find more information about the fire.
“Right. I will do that now,” he stated, as he got up. “But, before I dive into that, I’ll find Eden and just confirm she’s okay.”
She’s probably gone for a nap, as you mentioned. And tell her that you don’t hold her responsible for any of this.
“I don’t hold her responsible,” he declared, followed by a groan. “Christ, it didn’t even occur to me that she would really think that.”
Of course she would. She’s spent a lifetime believing it herself.
“And yet nothing was her fault,” he pointed out. “She was just a child.”
Nope, it wasn’t Eden’s fault. The responsibility is on the grandmother, but you’ll struggle to get Eden to believe that.
“That old witch really messed her up, didn’t she?”
And remember, all for love. And, with that, Stefan was gone.
Eric sent Eden a quick text, asking if she was okay. And then he would start researching. She sent back a thumbs-up, and he had to be satisfied with that for now.
Then he sat down with his laptop and started going through whatever he could, looking for the corresponding address to this location but one hundred or even two hundred years ago.
Who the hell knew what this space even looked like back then?
It wasn’t like he could check the online land records for ownership.
He shook his head. He checked to see if anything was in the archives online regarding this hotel that he could delve into.
When he found nothing, he got up and headed down to the front desk to speak to the receptionist to see if any information could be dredged up from there.
When Jane looked up and saw him, she smiled. “Hey, I hope you are having a blast while you’re here.”
“I was wondering about the history of this place.”
“Oh,” she muttered, her tone mild, “it’s long and bloodied.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“I can tell you some. Like so much of the area, Chattanooga was quite the revolutionary spot when the wars were being fought. Some say that it was a base of operations, so to speak. Others say it was a hospital, a sanctuary. So, a lot of people didn’t have a whole lot of good to say about anybody here. ”
“And was there ever some calamity that happened way back when?”
“Sure,” she replied. “Major fires, lots of deaths, lots of fights. I mean, all kinds of it. There was one in particular, of course, that everybody doesn’t really want to talk about.”
“Which one?”
“Way back when,” she began, “the owners, the family at the time, were losing the property. They had spent multiple lifetimes, generation upon generation, building up this property, but the war had brought on such hardship for everybody.”
“So, it was around the war time?”
“Hell no, the world wars hadn’t even begun yet. It was just one of so many fights arguing about territories. Anyway”—she shook her head—“apparently they were about to lose the property, all of it. So, as the story goes, there was a massive fire, and everybody perished.”
“So, someone set the place on fire?”
“Nah, they set it on fire themselves.”
“What? But why?”
“That is the mystery, isn’t it? But there is one popular theory.
” She leaned closer, licking her lips. “The ultimate reason could be the fact that nothing would be left to fight over. It was almost as if they were sending the message that someone might take the land, but there wouldn’t be a single thing left on it. ”
“Did anyone survive that fire?”
“Unfortunately the entire family living there died, … all in one fell swoop. Now some extended family is thought to have survived, simply by not residing onsite.” She gave him a sad smile, backing off a bit. “It was pretty catastrophic.”
“And there was literally nobody left in the family?”
She shrugged. “Not the immediate family, not that I know of. As the story goes, basically everybody lived in the same house. It was one of those huge multigenerational family homes. And, of course, back then, it’s not as if any firefighting systems were in place.”
“And they didn’t make it out.”
“Nobody made it out.”
“I don’t suppose you know the name of the family who lived here at the time, do you?” he asked and was met with a questioning gaze. “I’m just … curious.”
She laughed. “You wouldn’t be the first person to be interested in learning about it,” she noted. “I’m not sure that anything good ever comes from disturbing the dead though,” she muttered. “Anyway, the family name was Frankberg.”
“What happened to the place after they were gone?”
“It was in ruins after the fire, left as it was for a long time, a really long time. Not that anything was left of the original place, other than the land, but then finally somebody bought it.”
“You have any idea who that was?”
“Not a clue. I don’t even know who they could have bought it from because, at that point in time, who owned this place?
The city maybe? The government? There were a couple other disasters way back when,” she added.
“During the building of the place, a couple younger men got crushed during the process. Their bodies were never recovered. Because of that, it became a memorial for the two men who died, even though there’s no actual stones for them. ”
He stared at her. “You would think that those stones would have been left.”
She nodded. “You would think so. Or maybe the families just died away, and nobody was left to protest. I don’t know.” She shook her head and shrugged. “I just work here.”
“Understood,” he said, with a smile. “Thanks for that. It’s all very interesting, isn’t it?”
“It is and it isn’t,” she replied. “It’s kind of creepy in my world.”
He nodded. Who the hell wouldn’t be slightly creeped out by his interest in the gory details and the bloody history of the place? “Understood.” And, with that, he thanked her and started to walk away.
She added, “If you want to do any research, then you should see if the local library has something about it.”
He considered that and gave her a wave. “Maybe I’ll look at that.”
And as he turned again, she called out, “And will you be staying longer than planned? I currently have you leaving tomorrow.”
He frowned as he realized that this was literally the end of the conference, the retreat, where he was supposed to meditate and find out if a killer was here or not. He sighed. “Let me get back to you on that.”
“Checkout is at nine in the morning,” she pointed out.
“Do you have room if I want to stay a little bit longer?”
She nodded. “A few people will be staying. I guess Richard and Rinaldo will run a few private sessions for them, so they’ll be staying on a little bit longer too,” she added.
“They offered those as well, didn’t they?” he asked her. “That might have been a better answer for us.”
She laughed. “Lots of people come here thinking this retreat will be it for them, and then they end up, like you, not attending so much.” She flushed, half embarrassed that she’d brought it up.
He smiled and nodded. “At least we tried it.”
“And maybe you would do better with the one-on-ones,” she suggested generously.
“Maybe, we’ll see. Anyway, there’s a good chance that, if you have room, we will be staying for another day or two.”
“That’s for the two of you?” she asked, as she looked down at her books.
“Yes, unless you’re short on space.”
“Oh no, I think we’ve got enough room for the two of you to keep your rooms,” she noted. “However, the sooner you can let me know for sure, the better.”
He smiled, nodded, and headed over to the coffee shop, picked up two cups of coffee, then walked back up to their suite to see if Eden was awake.
When he knocked on her bedroom door, no answer came. He knocked again and again, with still no answer. That’s when he got a horrible feeling snaking across his shoulders and on the back of his neck, gripping him tightly and not letting him breathe.
He turned the knob, noting that she never seemed to lock her damn doors.
As he stepped in and looked around, he realized with certainty that she wasn’t there.
He immediately headed out, running back to the same space they had spent far too much time at, calling for Stefan through the ethers.
She’s not here. She’s not in her room. His phone rang, and he answered, “Find her, Stefan. And I mean now. Otherwise you know what she’s doing.
She’s going back in there to help those people.
But she can’t help them, not alone,” he yelled.
Stefan sighed. “I know that. But somewhere along the line, she has picked up skills that may well rival anything I have ever seen before. Plus, you basically told her to help them. And, in this case, it’s probably not a good thing.”
“What do you mean, not a good thing?” he asked, moving faster and faster as he thought about what he had said to Eden. “That doesn’t sound like anything I want to hear,” he muttered, as he raced along. “I just went up to her room after I’d gotten some of the history on this place.”
“What did you find out?”
“There was a massive fire way back when. Apparently the family that had been here for generations were about to lose the place entirely. And I suspect they set the building on fire, just so nobody could have it for themselves, and everybody perished.”
“Right,” Stefan muttered. “So that would follow.”
“Sure, maybe it follows. Or maybe,” he added, “it’s a completely different scenario.”
“And maybe it is,” he murmured. “All I can tell you is, you need to find Eden and fast.”