For centuries, ritual smudging has been used to banish ghosts and other negative energies. In churches, priests burned myrrh and frankincense, for instance, to produce a purifying and protective smoke. Shamans often burned tightly wrapped and bound bundles of herbs, such as lavender, rosemary, white sage, yarrow, and rue. Twigs and leaves of certain trees can be used, as well, such as juniper, cedar, eucalyptus, and hemlock. If you feel the need of a little special protection, these may work for you.
Ruby Wilcox
“Using Herbs in Your Personal Rituals”
As it turned out, our sleepover wasn’t much of a party, either.
We gave it the old college try. I made hot chocolate and popped some popcorn in the microwave. Jenna—who laughingly called us “ghostbusters” and said that we needed some special protection against intruders from the spirit world—had made a couple of smudge bundles with rosemary, yarrow, and lavender from Sunny’s garden and juniper and hemlock from the nearby trees. She lit the bundles in a copper bowl, let them burn for fifteen or twenty seconds, and then gently blew out the flame, allowing the orange embers to produce a fragrant smoke.
We settled on Jenna’s bed with the popcorn and hot chocolate—Jenna in flannel PJs, I in McQuaid’s old black T-shirt—and talked about ourselves. I told her about Thyme and Seasons and Ruby and our tea room and catering service, and about McQuaid and the kids. She told me about her plan to finish her master’s degree by the end of the fall term and look for a library job with an emphasis on book conservation.
“I’d rather spend my time writing but I know I’ll need a day job,” she added.
“You don’t want to stay here?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I love working with Dorothea and I’m learning a lot about organizing a library and cataloging and conserving old books. And of course, living and working here is giving me time to finish the novel and complete my thesis. But this place is too isolated. I need people.”
“I can understand that,” I said. “Do you think Dorothea will stay?”
“I think she might, but only if the board becomes more supportive. She thinks Sunny’s library has great potential. And I’m sure she’s right.”
I scooped out the last handful of popcorn. “Well, whatever happens, I hope you’ll let me know when your novel is published. I want to see how you’ve answered our questions about Elizabeth. Did she kick Alexander out? Did she become a midwife? What did she do with the rest of her life?”
Jenna laughed. “You’ll get one of the very first copies, I promise.” She rubbed her eyes. “The Hemlock ghost made sure I didn’t get much sleep last night and I’m about pooped out. I’ll get your sheet and some blankets and a pillow and we can make up your bed.”
“Speaking of the ghost,” I said as we pulled out the sofa bed, “what’s our plan? If it shows up, I mean?”
“Maybe we won’t need a plan,” Jenna said. “Maybe, since the truth about Sunny’s death is out in the open, her ghost can rest in peace.”
I tucked in the sheet. “But what if the ghost isn’t Sunny’s ghost? I mean, not Sunny’s spirit. What if it’s somebody—something—else?”
“Not Sunny’s ghost?” She spread out a blanket.
“Claudia Roth told me that the ghost was here before Sunny died. In fact, Sunny herself seems to have been on good terms with it. According to Claudia, she enjoyed using it to scare visitors—to keep them from coming back.” I eyed Jenna. “It sounded sort of like a . . . well, like Sunny having a pet ghost.”
“Pet ghost?” Liking the sound of that, Jenna pursed her lips. “Actually, that makes me feel a little better. The idea that it was the ghost of Sunny really spooked me.” She shuddered. “Rose said that after they took Sunny’s body away, there were gallons of blood on the floor upstairs.”
“Gallons?” I frowned. “But there are only five or six quarts in the average human body.”
“Well, okay, not gallons.” Jenna plumped up the pillow and handed it to me. “But she said they had to rip up the carpet, and when they did, they found it had already soaked into the floorboards. If this was Sunny’s ghost banging around upstairs, I couldn’t help imagining it dripping with blood.” She shuddered. “And I’m the sort of person who passes out cold when she has to get blood drawn.”
I put the pillow on the bed. “And if it isn’t Sunny?”
She straightened up, thought for a moment, and added, “If it’s only a dusty old Carswell ghost who’s been hanging around this place for a century or so, I suppose I might learn to live with it.” She put her hand on my arm. “But I’m glad you’re here just the same, China. You give me courage.”
“For the sake of argument, let’s say it’s a dusty old Hemlock House ghost who likes to move things around and make a little noise,” I said. “What’s the game plan?”
Jenna produced a couple of flashlights and a broom. “I guess if we hear anything upstairs, we’ll go up by the back staircase and . . . well, take a look. See what’s happening. Chase a ghost.”
She gave a deprecating little laugh. “Just listen to me. When I heard those noises in the dark last night, I got so scared I started hyperventilating and I . . . I couldn’t stop. I had to put my head down and hold my breath to keep from fainting. Now you’re here, and the lights are on and I’m sooo brave.”
“I understand the flashlights. Good idea.” I frowned at the broom in her hand. “But this?”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with a gun. A knife seemed awfully . . . well, primitive, not to mention bloody.” Another shudder. “I thought of holy water, but I didn’t know where to get it.”
“A broom isn’t primitive?”
“It was handy. I saw it in the kitchen when I went to get the flashlights, and I just grabbed it.” She laughed, then sobered. “Really, China, I hope you don’t think I was hallucinating last night. Or just being silly.”
I patted her hand. “My friend Ruby thinks that houses can soak up some of the strong human emotions that are spilled in them. That they’re like . . . well, like batteries. They take a charge and hold it. Then a certain kind of personality comes along and plugs into that charge and brings it to life. Not to physical life, necessarily, but to . . . well, to psychic life. If that makes any sense,” I added. “Ruby tells it better than I do.”
Jenna was watching me closely. “What kind of personality?”
“Intuitive people, like Ruby. Empathic people. People who relate to other people easily—who get in touch with the way others are feeling, especially if the feelings are strong.” As I spoke, I thought that Jenna was a lot like Ruby—intuitive, empathic, relatable. Elizabeth Blackwell had been dead for two-and-a-half centuries, but Jenna understood her deeply and intuitively, as if she could slip into Elizabeth’s skin.
“I . . . see,” Jenna said, into the pause. “So I’m sort of like an . . . an energizer? An activator? An agent? I come along and plug into Hemlock’s psychic circuits and bring them to life?”
“Something like that, maybe. Ruby really does explain it better.”
“Well, it describes a lot of what I’ve been through in my life,” Jenna said. “Someday I’ll come to Texas and ask Ruby to explain it to me.” She yawned. “But for now, I’m dead on my feet. I think it’s time for bed.”
My eyelids were drooping too, so we crawled into bed. Jenna left a nightlight burning and there was a clock with a bright digital face on the table beside her bed. But the room was mostly dark and comfortably warm and I fell asleep as soon as I pulled the blankets over me.
I didn’t get to sleep for more than a couple of hours, though. I was awakened from an especially nice dream of McQuaid by Jenna, crouching beside the sofa, grasping my arm in the dark. She was wearing a fluffy red shawl over her purple flannel PJs, and pink bunny slippers with floppy ears on her feet. Over her shoulder, the digital clock showed that it was 2:45.
“Wake up, China,” she whispered. “I heard a door closing upstairs. Footsteps. And a thump—a couple of thumps. Something . . .” She swallowed, clutching. “Something’s up there. Moving around. Listen.”
If Jenna had been determinedly brave before we went to sleep, she was definitely frightened now. Her fingers on my bare arm were trembling and her breath was ragged. Her face was shadowed, but there was enough light to see that her eyes were huge, the pupils dilated.
I sat bolt upright, listening. For a moment, I heard nothing but the surrounding silence and her uneven breathing.
Then I heard it, a series of irregular thumps. Thump-thump-kathump-thump. It sounded as if it could be in the room overhead, or maybe in the wall. Jenna’s fingers dug into my arm.
“Is that your ghost?” I thought of Annie, who doesn’t thump. She occasionally rings a bell, but most of the time she just likes to make herself felt. She’s a presence with an attitude.
“It’s a coffin, China.” Jenna’s whisper was edged with hysteria. “Something is dragging a coffin across the floor upstairs.” Her breathing was getting faster and more uneven.
I remembered that Dorothea had said that Jenna could be something of a drama queen and that she liked to play at being frightened. Was that what was happening here?
“It doesn’t sound like a coffin to me,” I said crisply. “It’s not heavy enough. And stop hyperventilating. You don’t want to pass out.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” she said fervently. “I would love to pass out. If I did, I’d have an excuse for missing whatever happens next.” She took another couple of deep, fast breaths and closed her eyes as if inviting herself to collapse. After a moment, still upright, she opened her eyes. In a small voice, she asked, “What happens next?”
I swung my legs off the sofa and slipped my bare feet into my sneakers. “Well, you can stay here and faint if you want.” I reached for the white terry bathrobe I’d brought from my room. “I’m going to see what’s making that noise.” I slipped my cell phone into my bathrobe pocket and grabbed my flashlight and the broom that was leaning against the wall.
“But you can’t go up there by yourself,” Jenna wailed dramatically. “And you can’t leave me here all alone. I’m scared.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to come with me.” I shrugged into my bathrobe and knotted the belt around my waist. “Bring your flashlight.”
She made a woozy little moan, but after a moment she did what I asked, and the two of us made our way to the door. Cautiously, I pulled at it. It didn’t seem to want to open, almost as if something were out there in the hall, holding it. Something that didn’t want us to leave this room.
Taking a breath, I tugged at the door even harder. It gave just a little, then opened so quickly that I flung out an arm and took a step backward to keep from falling.
The darkness in the hallway was as thick as molasses and the air had an odd, heavy quality, as though it were compressed. It smelled of stale dust and musty carpeting. It was cold, too. Icy cold. It must be twenty degrees colder than Jenna’s room, I thought, remembering something Ruby had told me about researchers finding measurable temperature drops where psychic activity was going on.
I paused in the doorway to get my bearings, Jenna close behind me. I looked left, toward the staircase, where I could see the tall window at the end of the hall, a mysterious gray rectangle of moonlight in the utter darkness. Somewhere close by, I heard the skitter and patter of little feet. Rats, maybe.
But there was something else. Something that rustled. Or whispered, like the sound of many distant voices. Or just . . . waited, its breath fading in and out of the darkness, barely audible but darkly menacing.
Jenna heard it too, and whimpered. “There’s something out here, China.” She put an urgent hand on my arm. “Please. Let’s not—”
But we had come this far and I wasn’t going back. “You stay,” I said. I stepped out into the hall and glanced to the right—and my breath froze in my throat.
Coming toward us in the darkness was a shimmering figure. Cloaked in luminous white gossamer, sheer, fluid, shape-shifting, it seemed to float above the floor.
Behind me, Jenna saw it too. She gave a small shriek. “No! Oh, no! Please, no. I . . .” Her knees gave way. Holding onto the door jamb, she slid to the floor.
I couldn’t breathe. My heart seemed to have stopped and I could taste the acrid terror at the back of my throat. The whispers grew louder as I turned toward the apparition. Brandishing my broom, I aimed my flashlight full on the place where its face would be, if it had a face.
It did, although its owner had flung up an arm to shield her eyes from the bright light.
“Dorothea!” I exclaimed, feeling weak-kneed myself.
“Oh, good. You have a flashlight,” Dorothea said in her usual voice. “The batteries went out on mine.” She caught sight of Jenna. “Jenna, dear, why in the world are you sitting on the floor?”
Jenna’s eyelids fluttered. “I . . . think I fainted,” she said unsteadily. “I thought you were the ghost.”
“Ridiculous,” Dorothea said. “I am not a ghost.”
Obviously. But she had certainly looked like one.
“You heard what we heard?” I asked.
“I heard something,” Dorothea said in a sensible, all-business tone. “I didn’t know what it was, so I decided I’d better go have a look, in case the wind broke a window somewhere.” She shivered and pulled her white negligee around her. “I didn’t realize it would be so cold, though. I should have put on something warmer.” She frowned at me. “What are you doing with that broom?”
“It was handy,” I said, feeling a little silly.
“I see,” she said. She held out a hand to Jenna. “Get up, Jenna. That floor is cold.”
Jenna took her hand and got slowly to her feet, but her face was the color of pale cheese and she swayed. Any pretense to being brave about the ghost had vanished. Drama queen or not, she was clearly terrified, and I could hardly blame her. The sight of the figure in that white negligee floating down the hall had knocked the breath out of me.
“Jenna, you are white as a sheet,” Dorothea said with motherly concern. She put her arms around her and said, “You’re trembling. You should be in bed, my dear.”
Jenna leaned into Dorothea’s embrace. “I’m afraid . . . to stay by myself,” she murmured incoherently. “Please don’t leave me.”
“We were on our way to have a look, too,” I said, trying to make my voice sound normal. And if we didn’t go soon, we were likely to miss whatever it was.
On second thought, that might actually be a good idea. Who were we, to imagine we could face this . . . this thing? If it had been haunting this place for decades, the three of us weren’t going to make it leave. Not with a broom and a couple of flashlights.
At that moment, we all heard it again. The oddly irregular thumping noise.
“Yes,” Dorothea said, very quietly, “That’s what I heard.”
It still seemed to be coming from overhead, or from the walls. But I knew that wasn’t the force that was out here in the hallway. No, this was something else, more of a sensation than a sound, hovering over us, brushing against us, raising the hair on the back of my neck and goosebumps on my arms. A dark something. Ominous. Full of menace.
And then, from somewhere in the depths of the house, we heard the slow, hollow reverberation of a distant gong: one two three. As its last dull note eerily shivered and dissolved, Jenna swallowed a frightened moan and her face seemed to grow even more pale. She was trembling visibly. Her terror was palpable.
“There, there, dear,” Dorothea said soothingly, tightening her arms around Jenna. “It’s just that old brass clock in the sitting room—the one that came from India. Nothing to be frightened of.”
But her voice cracked. Around us, the blackness grew heavier and blacker, seeming to pulse with echoes of the gong. My heart was rattling around inside me as if it had come loose from its moorings. I could feel myself being infected by Jenna’s fear.
I cleared my throat, tried to speak, then tried again. “If we’re going, I guess we should go.”
Dorothea gave me an encouraging smile. “You go first, with the flashlight. And the broom. Jenna and I will be right behind you.”
I could have argued, but I didn’t. I turned and started down the hall toward the faintly luminous window. Jenna was close behind me, shuffling along in her bunny slippers, clutching my bathrobe belt as if she were afraid that if she let go of me, I would disappear—or she would. Dorothea was beside her, a firm arm around her waist, as if she thought Jenna might faint again.
A fine team of stalwart ghostbusters we were, I thought, and was swept by a half-hysterical impulse to giggle.
But none of this was the slightest bit funny. Something—some sort of corporeal creature and quite substantial, by the sound of it—was making that noise upstairs. But something else—something that whispered, something inexplicably dark and terrifying—had hovered over us. There was no telling what we might find on the third floor, where two suicides and a murder had taken place. It was no laughing matter.
“I think we should all go back,” Jenna whispered faintly. “Sorry to be such a wuss, but can we please . . . go back?”
“We’ll just go as far as the staircase,” Dorothea said, in her reassuringly normal tone. “And then we’ll decide.”
It seemed to take forever, but when we got to the door that opened onto the circular staircase, I took a deep breath, grasped the knob, and pulled it open, reaching for the light switch, on the wall to the right of the door. I flicked the switch but nothing happened. I flicked it again. Nothing.
“Damn,” I muttered. In front of me, the stairway was a giant black well. Somewhere down the stairs I thought I heard an odd bumping sound and I stepped forward onto the landing, directing my flashlight beam downward. But the utter darkness swallowed up the thin thread of trembling light.
Behind me, Dorothea made an impatient noise. “The electricity must be off again. If it isn’t back on by morning, Joe will have to—”
But whatever she was about to say was blanketed by the sudden wild cry that echoed up the stairs, followed immediately by a series of soft thuds and louder bangs. And then a moan, and another, and then silence. This was no ghost. Something—and someone—had fallen down those narrow steps.
I didn’t stop to think. Flashlight in one hand, the other on the iron railing, I clattered down the stairs. Above me, Dorothea cried out, “Oh, China, please be careful! That stair, it’s dangerous!”
And then there it was, at the foot of the staircase, silent and unmoving. A sprawled figure wearing a black parka and black ski mask, arms flung out, jeans-clad legs at odd angles. I knelt down. I could barely see the face, but enough to recognize her. It was Claudia Roth.
And off to one side, on the floor, lay one of those rolling luggage bags, wheels up, one wheel broken. The suitcase had tumbled down the stairs and split open along the zipper, and I could see what was still fitted snugly inside.
It was a large brown leather book with silver corners and a pair of ornate silver clasps.