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| Sebastian’s empty grave |
On a blustery morning, the air seemed to freeze everything it touched. The wind off the sea sliced through the trees like a sharp knife cutting through the toughest stone and rolled over the emerald green hills of Saint Thomas’ Cemetery like waves to wet sand.
Staring into Sebastian’s open grave a cemetery caretaker was himself frozen in shock. He could not move and just looked into the black gaping hole of the empty plot and open casket. He gripped the shovel in his hand so tightly that his knuckles turned as white as the caps of the Atlantic sea crashing on the shore near by.
“Say nothing. Just fill it in.” A voice said as it approached from behind.
The cemetery caretaker turned to see the Parish Priest holding tightly to his Bible and tucking it into his coat.
“But someone…” the caretaker tried to explain.
“Say nothing and fill it in just as I told you. Whomever did this is a demented heathen and the Lord family will not take kindly that their kin was taken from his grave before his body could even turn cold.” The priest said.
“But sir, how can we do this and say nothing?” The caretaker asked, the wind still blowing over him almost freezing him down to his bones.
“Close this grave and speak nothing of it to no one. As far as you know Sebastian Lord still lays here, I want no dealings with the monster that took his body. This parish has enough ghosts in his past to add one more.”
The caretaker, shivered in his boots but nodded in agreement. He sniffled from air and wiped his nose on his sleeve turned to the grave and began filling the hole covering up the empty coffin.
****
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| Christian & Evie meet in the park |
In the center of the village, the people of Welshport went about their day while the newest resident of town left the secluded sanctuary of Tirymôr House for some much needed fresh air and exercise. Evie walked along the small sidewalks still dressed in her mourners dress and cloak and a veiled hat that obscured her face slightly from the glances of the curious villagers seeing the new tragic widow of the Lord family.
She had yet to see much of Welshport village aside from what she saw when she first docked on her arrival only a 5 weeks prior to her wedding.
The village was as busy as a small island town could be on a remote island in the middle of a bay that had several channels around it to the mainland. A lot of times those channels were busier with ships than the streets were with automobiles; constantly filled with the traffic of trawler after trawler and ocean liners that came in and out of the Atlantic's chopping waters.
Evie made her way alone to a small lush park still green with summer grass despite the late fall of the air. Evie smiled as she sat on a bench and watched a woman in a white dress and parasol walk a small dog along the tiny stone path. The woman smiled back at Evie but soon, a second woman in a green dress came to the park and noticed the widow in black. The green dressed woman's eyes bulged and she whispered to the dog walker just who was in there.
"Its the English girl, the one who married Sebastian Lord, who died."
The realization made the woman with the dog quickly change from friendly smile to shock. Evie noticed and felt horrible and quickly adjusted her vail to cover her face even more.
"Don't let that get to you." a voice said to Evie's right.
It was Christian, fresh off his return from Goode Island in search of Mary who had yet to be found.
"Constable Evans! How are you?" Evie asked, eagerly hoping to hear that Mary had been apprehended but just as happy to see a friendly face.
"Please call me Christian. And I'm Fine thank you. I saw you walking passed the police station just now and called out to you, I wanted to give you an update on Mary Goode. I guess you didn't hear me." Christian said.
"I'm a bit distracted, yes. I'm Sorry. So Mary--have you found her?" Evie asked, scooting over on the bench so that Christian could sit just as the two staring women passed them and glanced over with their noses up.
"Well there is good news and bad news. The good news is I'm sure she is going to show up. There hasn't been a ship that left the port to the mainland in the last week so Mary is for sure still on Welshport. Where on the island, is the question." Christian said.
"But you said that you were going to that smaller island where her mother lived to look for her. She wasn't there?" Evie asked
Christian thought for a second, he knew he had gone to Goode Island, he knew he had spoken with Mary's mother Eliza but something felt odd, he couldn't remember what they had talked about or what explanation Eliza had for Mary's absence. His face was deep in thought, he pushed his mind to go back to that memory of what Eliza had said, but the bewitching dust Eliza blew into Christian's face kept him from that. He was blocked, he was under a small spell that kept him where Eliza wanted him: away from Goode Island.
"Well She said....she, uhh..." Christian said struggling to say what had happened.
"She was obviously not there." Evie deduced. "Listen, I know you're trying and like you said she couldn't have gone far." She added.
"We'll find her. I promise. I wont let her get away with what she did." Christian said.
He looked deep into Evie's brown eyes. She smiled at him and felt how kind he was and how much he was truly trying to help her. After all, Sebastian was his friend too, they had known each other for years and Sebastian's death rocked him to his core. Seeing him dead on the floor, bleeding the way he was, cold and ashen was as traumatic for Christian as it was for Evie, together they shared in this tragedy in a way that they could have never imagined.
"You've truly been so kind. I know that there are a lot of things that you could be doing and being here for me and the family is something I will never forget." Evie said.
"Of course! It is my job after all." Christian said smirking.
"But you could have easily sent someone to Tirymôr and let us know that Mary wasn't found yet but you chose to find me and tell me personally. That shows very well on you." Evie said.
Christian blushed. He was enamored with her and at the same time he restrained himself from reaching for her hand and squeezing it like he really wanted to. He had to constantly remind himself that this was a woman who had just lost the man she was married to for a brief moment in time, and not to mention the man she married died in her arms and in front of Christian's face. His own friend. His own friend's widow.
"I just want to make sure my friend's murderer is brought to justice. For you, for his family and most of all for Sebastian himself." Christian said.
"Thank you Christian." Evie said as she reached over and did what Christian was only thinking of, she grabbed his hand and squeezed.
There was a sudden rush of energy that came over the pair when Christian put his hand on Evie's. His blue eyes put her at ease. She felt safe she felt happy she felt secure with him.
They looked each other in the eyes and it was like an electrical surge running from the top's of their heads and shooting down their arms and wrapping around their wrists, it was exhilarating and romantic there in the cool breezy park under the Beech trees that slowly dropped their yellow oval shaped leaves down on them like golden flower petals sprinkling down in geometric patterns all around them.
They sat there for only a few seconds hand in hand and suddenly realized how long they were interlinked and Evie quickly pulled her hand back feeling a bit embarrassed.
"I should get back to the house." Evie said.
"Of course, of course, can I get you a ride?" Christian asked.
"No, thank you. The driver is just up the way waiting for me. I asked him to park his auto a few blocks away in town so that I could have a look at the shops on my own. Celeste had the day off too so…its fine thank you Christian." Evie said, still feeling embarrassed about the hand holding.
She got up from the park bench and dusted off the front of her dress. He smiled and stood up she extended her hand and he kissed it kindly. She quickly, then, made her way back to the awaiting driver blushing all the way there but at the same time feeling confused about what she was feeling. Confused and guilty. She had butterflies in her stomach, but it felt like a betrayal to Sebastian.
How could she feel like this? Suddenly she felt ashamed of herself for letting her mind go to a romantic place with Christian so soon after becoming a widow. But she was only human and she was only a woman who wish and wanted to be loved and who found herself vulnerable and desperately lonely.
Later that evening back at home Evie walked into the main entrance and removed her hat with the black veil and carried it under her arm. She passed the main foyer with the two large portraits of Albert and Rebecca Lord, one on each side staring down at the entering guests, both framed in golden luxurious frames that symbolized their stature as the proverbial king and queen of the house of Tirymôr.
Evie kept her eyes forward and made her way into the side drawing room that was smaller than the main drawing room, this one used more for the members of the family instead of entertaining large groups. It was brightly lit and filled with books and black and white photo, and of course more portraits of Lord family members hanging from the walls.
Evie sat down and Georgina quickly entered with a silver tray of tea and plopped it down on the table in front of her then graciously took Evie's hat and coat and left the young widow alone to read and sip her tea.
As Evie relaxed alone, a book case in the far edge of the room behind her, slid silently open. Without a single word, Gaspar peeked out of the secretive passage way from behind the books and watched Evie sip her tea and read. He was there to begin the process of having Evie believe she was going insane, it was his job, it was his task and Jacob would not allow him to falter, now when he was so close to getting what he wanted.
Gaspar slowly walked into the room. With him he had a black bow tie stained with Sebastian's blood. It was the same tie that Sebastian was wearing the day of his wedding and the day he died, right in Evie's arms.
Gaspar slowly walked closer to Evie's back, she none the wiser she was no longer alone. He ties the bow tie around a crystal lamp that was on the bureau behind Evie and let it hang there as if it were a person's body on display tied with a noose around its neck.
Then, Gaspar pulled out a small tin flask from inside his jacket pocket, quiet as a mouse, and began to pour pig's blood onto the table dribbling it on to the floor and making a small tail of it around a chair and near the far book case where a photo of Sebastian was displayed in black and white of him on horseback on a beach France.
Then Gaspar returned to the book shelf and closed it in front slightly ajar so that he could continue his plot to drive Evie insane.
Using a trick he learned while preparing to be a great con-artist, Gaspar threw his voice in a way that made it seem as if it were coming from an unknown source, in reality it was coming from the slightly opened secret passage behind the bookcase.
"Eeeeeeeevie....................... Evie can you hear me???" He said through a muffled tone covering his mouth with a handkerchief to disguise it.
Evie turned to her left. Then turned to her right.
Gaspar repeated himself.
Evie stood up. She closed her book and stared forward trying to find where the voice was coming from. Then Gaspar spoke her name agian.
"Who's there? Who's there???" Evie asked again still searching for the voice from an unknown source.
"Evie....find me, Evie. I need you to find me -- quickly! Evie, find me!" Gaspar said, then he pulled a string that he had rigged near the crystal lamp behind her that tugged on the lamp pulling it down to the floor in a giant crash., shattering it into a million pieces in the long string of pig's blood. The string, pulled all the way into the bookcase, away from Evie's view.
Evie jumped in her skin. She went behind the sofa she was sitting on to find the shattered lamp and then, her eyes bulged. She looked down into the shards of glass that were now stained with blood and saw the bloody bow tie that her late husband wore on the day of their wedding day and the day he died.
She reached down, pulled it up from the ground and to be sure, then screamed when she saw the blood smeared on her fingers. Pig's blood she believed to be Sebastian's.
She fell to the floor as Gaspar, slowly closed the bookcase giggling to himself as Georgina barged into the study after hearing Evie's scream.
"What is is Miss? What's happened?" Georgina said knelling down with the collapsed Evie who was on her knees.
"Who did this? Who put this here?" Evie said with a tear stained face.
"I don't know what you mean miss, this wasn't here when I came in earlier with the tea." Georgina said.
Then like clockwork, perfectly timed, Sebastian's photo of him on horseback on the beach, fell and shattered as well.
"Oh miss, this...I don't know what this is, I do not know." Georgina said as she stood up and begin to walk backwards toward the exit.
"If this is a joke, if someone here is trying to tease or torment me I will make sure Mrs. Lord knows and she will be sure to have them removed from employment here. Georgina why would someone do this?" Evie said.
"Miss no one that I know of has done this that I can tell. I promise you on my heart and on my children's souls. I don't know what this is. But I can't be a part of this." Georgina said honestly.
The maid had seen enough. She was sure it wasn't a trick. Her fear, her paranoia played in perfectly with the scheme to drive Evie insane, and it was just beginning. Evie was shaking. She stared down at the photo that had fallen and broken and picked it up out of the glass and shattered bits of frame. She looked at Sebastian in the photo, smiling, happy, handsome and alive and she began to cry.
She dropped the photo back onto the floor and rushed out of the room devastated about the seemingly cruel trick someone was playing on her.
Then, from behind the bookcase, Gaspar returned with an exact copy of the broken lamp and broken picture frame and like a flash, as if he was made of the quickest human matter in the universe, cleaned up the mess he had made and replaced everything broken so that when Evie explained herself, nothing would be out of place. Nothing.
Thirty minutes later, after a hysterical and tear filled explanation to Rebecca, she and Evie returned to the study where everything had occurred.
When they entered, the room was exactly as it was the last time Rebecca saw it. No broken glass. Bo bloody bowtie, no distant voice from no where.
Evie's head darted back and forth in the room. She was shocked. She was sweating and panting and she couldn't believe what she was seeing.
"The photo was on the floor. Mrs. Lord I swear! This lamp was broken. I was gone for 20 minutes, someone must of come and cleaned it while I went to see you." Evie said,.
"Georgina?" Rebecca said to her maid who was cowering in the doorway still traumatized about what she had endured when Gaspar hypnotized her.
"Ma'am?" Georgina asked, pretending she had no idea what was going on.
"Did you clean this room?" Rebecca asked.
"She had to have cleaned it, Georgina you saw what I saw. tell her." Evie said.
"I don't know what the young Mrs. Lord is referring to, I did not clean anything in here but the small rings from the tea cup on the saucer that sits on that table ma'am. When I came in the room was the way it was as I left it when I brought tea." Georgina said nervously.
"But what about the second time you came in Georgina, when you heard me scream." Evie asked.
"I....I .... don't ...." Georgina replied, wanting nothing to do with the entire situation.
"Georgina!! TELL HER!" Evie demanded.
With Evie's voice raised, and her eyes frustrated and angry, Georgina began to cry unable to speak. Rebecca took a deep breath and went over and grabbed Georgina by the shoulders and squeezed them to comfort her.
"That's enough, there there. Go on, Georgina, go on let's get lunch ready in pink dining room. Go on." Rebecca said as the emotionally distraught Georgina quickly rushed off.
"You believe me don't you?" Evie asked now that she was alone with Rebecca.
"My darling I don't know what you saw and I don't know what you didn't see but what I can tell you is that we are open in this house to images and messages from the other side. Did you hear anything when you saw these images in your mind?" Rebecca asked.
"It wasn't in my mind, Mrs. Lord. It was real. There was real blood here, look at my hands!" Evie said showing her her stained finger tips.
"Manifestations." Rebecca replied.
"What? Mrs. Lord you cannot believe that I ... that I did this myself to myself." Evie said in disbelief.
"My child when we lose someone close to us, when we suffer a great trauma our minds begin to play tricks on us showing us things and telling us things we want to hear see and believe. You need to rest. Go up to your bed now and have a good sleep. Ill wake you for lunch. You should have enough time between now and then to get your mind clear of this." Rebeca said.
"I do not need a nap Mrs. Lord. What I need is to find out why someone would try and..." Evie began to say before Rebecca stomped her foot down on the hard wood floors of the small drawing room instantly silenceing Evie in mid-sentence.
"Go to your room and rest....now." Rebecca said in a soft but very stern voice.
Evie did not utter another word. She looked around the room again as if trying to find one more clue to what she had seen. She was certain, almost to the very detail that she saw what she saw and heard what she heard even though she did not tell Rebecca of the voice she heard, that would have only made Rebecca more sure it was all a mind game.
As Evie left the room, Rebecca stayed and walked over to Sebastian's photo in its new frame, a frame Rebecca did not recognize as new. She looked at Sebastian on the horse on the beach and tilted her head at it.
"What game is this?" She asked the photo, believing that perhaps her séance had worked after all.
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| The bloody lampshade |
****
Later that evening as Celeste settled in for the night by pouring herself a small cup of tea. She sat by the fire and watched as it burned hot in the hearth in her small cottage that she shared with her long time partner Filipe. The walls were like a cabin, wood paneled and withered with age. The flames of the fire flickered and flashed on the wooden panels like lightening in a storm, smoldering and ripping through the black logs with all the heat of the sun.
All Celeste could do was sit and wait, she had not heard from Filipe since he took off into the night to find Mary Goode himself.
Celeste didn't have a good feeling about anything that had happened in the last fews days for obvious reasons. A friend’s murder at his own wedding, a wedding she was maid of honor at. It was all a dreadful nightmare, and now Filipe was missing.
Her heart told her to keep faith, that things had been worse before and they got through it. She thought about one such time, the accident Filipe had in Jacob's automobile all those years ago that left his hand mangled and broken. Jacob’s drunk behavior cost her love his hand and his job. Filipe had suffered so much pain then and worried he'd never find work in Welshport again. Who would hire a man with a mangled right hand?
She remember how he worried about having a way to help and provide for Celeste. They were not married but had been together for so long, since they were teenagers, that it almost felt like they were married. The whole town saw them as a married couple, despite not being so, even their families treated them as married.
Naturally, her worry was deep, profound and it shook her. It didn't help matters that Celeste had no idea what Filipe would encounter once he made land on Goode Island. Everyone knew Eliza and Mary were not to be trusted. Their mysterious lives always shrouded in such secrecy that it was clear danger lurked on that tiny island anywhere you looked.
As Celeste got up from the floor with her tea she walked over and sat on a comfortable soft chair hoping her body would sink deep into its crevices caressing her tired bones and muscles allowing her to forget all the horror and sadness and worry that was in her heart even for a brief moment, but as she did so, a frantic knocking came to her door.
The sound startled her in her chair and she knocked over the cup of tea spilling it into the shape of a large warped letter B. She looked at the her mother’s wooden Grandfather clock standing directly across from her. It was eleven thirty at night. A shutter ran up Celeste's spine.
“Who’s there?!” Celeste asked as she put her ear to the door.
“Jacob Lord.” A voice from behind the door.
Celeste gasped, she has never any of the Lord family members over to yet own home. She fixed her dress and fluffed her hair and slowly opened the door allowing a cold wind blow into the house.
“Mr. Lord, what can I do for you?” She asked.
“I wanted to check on you. I know that the wedding was a bit of a shock for us all. How are you?” Jacob asked strangely.
Celeste paused unsure how to answer and unsure of what he wanted to hear but she was sure his appearance at her home wasn’t a coincidence. celeste kept herself firmly between the door and Jacob as she could tell her was peeking in, possibly searching for any notes of Mary.
“Losing a friend in the way that I did was traumatic, as you can imagine, but my concern is now more for Evie and to make sure she is taken care of.” Celeste said.
“And Filipe. How is he?” Jacob wondered of his old page, fishing for some sort of clue into Filipe’s life post the car accident Jacob caused years ago causing Filipe’s hand to become mangled.
Celeste then realized this visit was connected to Filipe and Jacob talking at the wedding, this was Jacob’s guilty conscience finally peeking through the veneer of his cold and calculating heart.
“He’s strong. He’s always been strong. Everything he’s been through in life he’s been able to pick himself up and become a better person. Nothing has ever stopped him.” Celeste said holding herself tightly from the cold wine blowing in.
“I see.” Jacob replied. “When he and I spoke at the wedding, before the tragedy of course, he mentioned he needed work.”
“He works with Christian. Christian has deputized Filipe and he often helps him, in fact he’s helping him find Mary Goode as I speak.”
Jacob’s eyes widened at this new revelation.
“Well, good then. Good. Celeste if he should ever want or need something more than being Christian’s second hand,” Jacob said not catching his pun on second hand, “please let me know. My offer will always stand for Filipe. Always.”
Celeste smiled nervously and said thank you then closed her door. Her discomfort with Jacob and Filipe working together made her skin crawl and outside, in the cold Welshport windswept night Jacob now knew he needed to watch out for his old page Filipe now more than ever.
****
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| Filipe, Mary, Eliza and Sebastian’s unconscious body |
It had been grueling and terrible and exhausting but she did it. She did what she needed to do to get Sebastian back to her mother as she asked, even if it had taken all day.
As the sun began to rise over the smaller island, Mary pulled the small wheelbarrow she had with her and his covered body onto dry land and began pushing it through the thick woods that made up the lush canopy that hid Eliza's home on Goode Island's. She pushed and pushed through thick grass and mud, her heart racing her blood pumping trying to get Sebastian home after the whole day of hiding in rocky grottos on the sea and beaches along the way to Goode Island. Her mind was set on making she did what her mother wanted and bring him back no matter what.
As Mary pushed, she saw her mother's home off in the gloomy distance. The chimney once again spewing the thick grey smoke of the fire place. Then as the wheelbarrow bumped over several large Beech three roots Sebastian's sleeping hand fell out from under the large tarp like cloth she had over him on her wheelbarrow. Mary looked down in horror as she saw the small glimmer of light from the day hit Sebastian's hand and begin to burn his flesh.
She screamed and fell backwards onto the ground as a perfectly carved circle of burnt flesh was created above Sebastian's left thumb. Mary jumped to her feet and pulled the tarp over his hand and ran all the way back to her mother's house.
She couldn't understand what had happened. He hadn't been dead all that long to be decomposing. In fact, he was breathing now. He was alive now. Her mother, somehow, made it so. He was alive. She knew it. She saw him breath. Unconscious, yes, but alive.
When she arrived at her mother's house at the back entrance, sweating, panicked and full of the most powerful feelings of dread and anxiety she had ever felt in her whole life she quickly pushed the door open and pulled the wheelbarrow in backwards.
She removed the tarp just as Eliza burst into the back mud-room. Eliza's eyes became large with shock.
"You did it." Eliza whispered. "You actually did it."
"We have to help him. Look!" Mary said lifting up Sebastian's hand to show her the burn.
"That will correct itself as soon as he eats." Eliza said.
"It burnt in the sun mother. Right in front of my eyes. His hand burnt in the ..." as Mary was about to finish her sentence her mother moved to the side and reflected a small metal cage with Filipe laying in it. "Mother????" Mary added, more terror spilled across her face.
Eliza turned back and saw Filipe's horror stricken face at seeing his friend Sebastian's seemingly dead body laying in a wheelbarrow. He shook the cage with his hands and screamed like a trapped animal. He began to cry, horror too now spilling across his face.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?" He screamed at the two Goode women.
Eliza turned back to the confused Mary and only said "We have company."
