Five years earlier
The Pink Rose Bed-and-Breakfast tried hard to live up to its name. From the wallpaper to the curtains to the heavy rugs, pink roses bloomed on every surface. Annalise and I unpacked our suitcases in our room, which featured a lacy pink canopy bed and rosebud wallpaper.
“It’s overkill, don’t you think?” I had just checked the minuscule bathroom, where even the toilet paper was pink.
“Absolutely.” Annnalise stretched out on the queen-size bed we would be sleeping in for the next three nights. “Especially since this place isn’t technically named after the flower. It’s named after the girl.”
“What girl?”
“This girl.” Mom stood in the doorway. She pointed to a framed portrait hanging above the nightstand. I walked closer to get a better look. The child in the painting looked to be about seven or eight. Light blond hair framed her soft face with big curls, and in her hands she held a bouquet of roses.
“Her name was Rose,” Mom said. “She was seven when she died here in 1888. And she’s the reason why we’re here.”
I only knew the basic facts behind our trip to Virginia. At thirteen, I wasn’t as interested in why we were going someplace as I was in where we were going and how close it was to a beach. But this was going to be a brief trip. In three days we had to be in Colorado to work on a new project.
“So this is the ghost girl,” I murmured, still staring at the portrait. Little Rose had bright blue eyes and very pink cheeks. She resembled a cherub more than a child. The artist had surrounded her head with strokes of white, giving the appearance of a faint halo.
Mom looked at the painting with me. “She died from pneumonia. Her family was devastated, and this house became a kind of shrine to their only child.”
“I wouldn’t really call this a house,” Annalise said from the bed. “It’s a Victorian mansion.”
“And people really think they hear her laughing in the hallways?” That part of the story I could remember. Normally, it wasn’t the kind of tale that my family would drive hundreds of miles out of the way to investigate. But one of Mom’s college friends had stayed at the B and B a month earlier, and the experience had rattled her so badly that she had immediately contacted Mom. Quick research had uncovered dozens of stories exactly like the one Mom’s friend had told: the spirit of a child roaming the hallways, giggling and calling out to the guests. No one had seen the girl, but the voice was perfectly clear, and more than one guest had awoken to a single rose placed just inside their locked door.
“Dad’s interviewing the owner right now,” Mom said. “Shane’s getting the equipment ready. We’ll start after dinner, okay?” She patted my back. “And if we finish early, I thought the three of us could do some shopping in town tomorrow.”
Annalise yawned. “Do you really think we’ll finish early? This place has, like, thirty eyewitness accounts. What if we find something?”
“We’ll see.” Mom rubbed at the back of her neck. “I believe there’s something behind those accounts, but I don’t know what we’ll find.”
Both my parents kept a cool, skeptical attitude toward every investigation, but I had overheard Mom say that she was actually excited about this one. Her college friend was a skeptic and would not have called Mom unless she thought it was worth the trip.
“Dad spoke with a local team,” Mom said. “They checked the wiring, structure, everything. The house is solid and was modernized within the past ten years.”
“And?”
“And the team heard a child’s voice several times. They excluded any structural causes. Dad trusts these guys, so maybe this could be something truly unexplained.”
“That would be a first, wouldn’t it?”
Mom smiled. “Yes, it would. And after twenty years of doing this, I would definitely like to be there when something big happens.” She began walking back to her room. “I’ll see you girls downstairs in an hour for dinner.”
Dinner was held in the very formal, very floral dining room. Annalise and I met the owner, Mrs. Hollings, who introduced herself as a direct descendant of the original owners—and the little ghost girl.
“We’re a proud family,” she said as we sipped our first course of lukewarm soup. I avoided looking across the table at Shane, who was trying hard not to gag on the strange mixture of pumpkin and potato purée.
Thankfully, Mrs. Hollings didn’t notice. “And a family such as ours must preserve certain traditions.” She dipped her spoon into the soup. “This recipe, for example, was passed down through four generations.”
“Is that so?” Mom feigned interest, but she was as tired of Mrs. Hollings’s endless stories as we were—and we still had the main course and dessert to get through. Mrs. Hollings had made a big point of telling us that she did not normally prepare an “evening meal” for guests, but we were special.
After the second course, which consisted of a piece of bony fish and rice that could only be described as crunchy, Mrs. Hollings began to discuss the property.
“My great-great grandfather built the place and it’s always been in our family,” she said. “I grew up tending the rosebushes in the garden.”
“It’s so generous of you to open the home to guests and visitors,” Mom said.
“Ah, well, I wasn’t left with much of a choice.” Mrs. Hollings smiled sadly. “A property this large brings with it many expenses, the least of which is the maintenance. I’ve had to invest nearly everything I have to keep the roof from collapsing.”
“Tell us about the repairs and modifications,” Dad urged. “Are there any original fixtures?”
It was a routine question when we conducted an investigation, but an important one, so Dad often asked it several times. People sometimes forgot work that had been done, and he needed to know as much as possible about the place. Too often, a shoddy electrical job resulted in occurrences that people interpreted as paranormal.
Mrs. Hollings didn’t need much prodding to begin listing all the work the property had required. There had been a new roof within the last twenty years and updated plumbing. “You know,” she said, “most of the rooms didn’t have their own bathrooms, which was a licensing requirement for opening a bed-and-breakfast. We converted closets into the bathrooms.”
She said this as if we would be surprised. Considering that the toilet, sink and shower all touched in our bathroom, I wasn’t.
“Anything else?” Dad asked. “Even minor repairs?”
“Let’s see. I had to replace a few pieces of ceiling in some of the rooms. And a few years ago several of the steps on the grand staircase needed to be replaced.” She looked at Mom. “Your friend mentioned her encounter there, I assume?”
“She did, yes.”
“What encounter?” Annalise asked. I noticed that she’d barely touched her dinner and wondered if, like both me and Shane, she’d simply buried her fish beneath the rice.
“Genna heard light footsteps on the staircase.” Mom sipped her water. “It was unusual because it happened while she was on the stairs. She said it sounded like there was a child following her up the steps.”
Mrs. Hollings nodded. “I hear that story often. Little Rose loves to follow the guests around. I think she wants to play, poor thing.”
Fortunately, dessert was edible. It was a white coconut cake purchased from a local bakery, and we wolfed down our thick slices before Mrs. Hollings had a chance to pour the coffee. “Goodness,” she remarked. “I’ll have to order from them more often.”
As the adults drank their coffee, Mrs. Hollings described her own experiences with Rose. “Having lived here my whole life, of course I’ve had many, many encounters.”
“Just sound or something else?” Dad asked.
“Oh, I’ve seen her.” Mrs. Hollings added more cream to her coffee. “She used to come into my bedroom late at night. More than once I woke up to find her kneeling by my bed, watching me with those big blue eyes of hers.”
“That must have been terrifying,” I said.
“At first, yes. But then I realized she was only curious. This was her home first, after all.”
The dessert course finally ended, and Mrs. Hollings excused herself for the night. “I’ll retire to the guesthouse so I don’t disturb your work,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here, and I look forward to hearing about your experiences tomorrow at breakfast.”
“Man, I hope she’s not the one cooking it,” Shane whispered.
I bit my lip so I wouldn’t giggle. Mrs. Hollings left, and we immediately got to work. It was already past eight and I was tired from the day of traveling, but setting up for an investigation always invigorated me. This was the work I knew so well. As my parents endlessly reminded us, we were a team, and every year I was becoming a more important component of that team. The year before, when I’d turned twelve, Shane had finally taught me how to operate his cameras, whereas before my job had been to make sure they’d been put away in the proper cases and to maintain the equipment log.
Our investigation of the Pink Rose would focus on several key areas: the second floor, the grand staircase and the great room, which were all places where activity had been reported more than once.
“Stay as quiet as you can,” Dad told us before we got started. “Nearly all of the reports have to do with sound. We won’t do an EVP session until later. For now, we wait and listen.”
Annalise smirked. “Another wild, late night for the Silvers.”
Mom put her arm around Annalise’s shoulder. “You can work with me this time. It’ll be fun.”
“Oh, yeah. Sitting quietly in the dark is always so much more fun when it’s with your mom.”
Annalise was going through a surly teenage phase. At least, that’s what Mom and Dad thought. As long as she helped out, they didn’t bug her too much about her sarcasm.
“Great. Charlotte, that means you’re with me,” Dad said. “We’ll take the second floor. Shane, we good to go?”
“Yep. Everything’s ready. You want me down here?”
Dad nodded. “The great room is close enough to the staircase. You should be able to keep an eye on both.”
I followed Dad up the creaky stairs to the second floor. We turned off all the lights, and then watched the downstairs lights flick off one by one as Mom and Shane went through the rooms. The investigation had officially begun.
For the first hour, Dad and I sat silently in the middle of the second-floor hallway. All of the guest doors were open, and we had a good view of the downstairs entryway, as well. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, especially not when Dad was so close by. Mom always said that there was nothing to fear at night that you shouldn’t also fear during the day. So if you weren’t scared of a place in the daytime, why should it terrify you a few hours later? It was the same place, and energy was energy. It didn’t keep a clock or set hours.
After the second hour, the dark silence began to get to me. “Do you think anything will happen tonight?” I whispered.
“Probably not,” Dad whispered back. “But your mom hopes so.”
I hoped so, too. Our investigations had a certain rhythm to them, a structure that had melted into a solid routine. We came, we taped, we debunked. Then my parents edited the footage into a neat, fifty-minute episode that aired on cable a month later. I worried that it had become too boring. My parents seemed restless, and when that happened, we ended up moving halfway across the world for a few months. If the Pink Rose produced something unexplainable, it might rejuvenate my parents. Maybe they would even stay in one place for a while.
The second hour blended into the third hour, then the fourth. I felt sleepy and bored. My legs were lead, and I wanted to jump up and run up and down the hall a few times to wake them up. A clock downstairs chimed once.
Nothing was going to happen, I decided. All those stories were wrong. Little Rose did not scamper on the staircase or knock on doors or leave flowers in the rooms. She was dust in a coffin.
Dad shifted. I looked over and saw him checking his cameras. He wouldn’t quit yet, but maybe he would let me go to bed. I was about to ask him if I could go to my room when we heard it.
“Hello?”
It was a child’s voice, high-pitched and clear, sounding almost like a note of music. Dad and I both sat up, alert and fully awake. I knew better than to say anything, but I wanted to ask where the voice had come from. Was she at the end of the hallway or the bottom of the stairs? I wasn’t sure.
Dad shattered the silence. “Hello?”
We waited. Less than a minute later, a little girl’s voice responded. “Rose.”
“Your name is Rose?” Dad stood up slowly. After hours of sitting down, his legs were shaky. Rose didn’t answer right away. A light flickered from somewhere downstairs. Then I heard footsteps. Small and fast, they came up the staircase, then stopped short of the hallway. There was a soft giggle, followed by one more footstep.
“Rose?” Dad asked.
But there was no other sound except for the pounding in my chest.
BREAKFAST WAS WAITING for us the next morning. To everyone’s relief, Mrs. Hollings had not been back to the kitchen since dinner. Instead, she had ordered croissants and coffee cake from the bakery. After a late night and nearly no sleep, we were happy with the buffet. I helped myself to three croissants and a glass of orange juice while Dad described our eventful evening to Mrs. Hollings.
“Everything lines up with the witness accounts,” he said. “The entire team heard her voice and the footsteps on the staircase.”
Mom, Shane and Annalise reported hearing the exact same things from their positions downstairs. I thought it was a little strange that Rose’s presence had been so loud. It was captured on both the digital recorder and the video cameras, something that had never happened before. How strong was this little girl? Could her energy be strong enough to reach out and touch us? Or worse, hurt us? The idea wouldn’t leave me, and even though I had gone to bed after four in the morning, I had barely slept.
“I thought you might meet Rose,” Mrs. Hollings said, pouring coffee.
“Yes.” Dad buttered a croissant. “The stories are nearly exact. Almost too exact.”
Mrs. Hollings set down her porcelain cup. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“We expected some activity,” Dad said. “None of us were prepared for every reported occurrence to happen all at once, within the same hour.”
“Well, it appears you were here on a good night.” Mrs. Hollings smiled, but it looked tense, as if she was forcing herself to do so. “Rose must like you.”
Dad continued to eat his breakfast. Shane was attacking half the coffee cake, and Annalise looked like she was still half-asleep. Only Mom and Dad were fully awake and alert.
“It is interesting,” Mom mused. “Usually there is some variation when people describe their paranormal experiences. But Patrick’s right. What we heard last night fit in perfectly with other accounts.”
Dad pretended to be absorbed with breakfast, but I knew he was paying close attention to everything that was being said. He didn’t believe the Pink Rose was haunted, I realized. He had already decided that it was a hoax. But he needed Mom to figure it out for herself, so he was planting the first seeds of doubt and gauging Mrs. Hollings’s reaction.
“I’m pleased that Rose made herself known to you,” Mrs. Hollings said. “She does have certain habits, which may explain why so many of our guests report similar incidents.”
“Yes, that may explain it.” Mom had a faraway look in her eyes. It was a look I knew well. She was in a thoughtful mode, her debunker skills on high alert. “We’d like to look around today, take some pictures. Would that be all right with you?”
Our schedule for the day had been planned a week ahead of time, but asking for permission from Mrs. Hollings was an important formality. Always show respect, my parents taught me. You are in someone else’s space, and your job is to make them comfortable with your presence. Something about the way Mrs. Hollings was eyeing us told me that we were on the verge of losing that respect. Dad had challenged her. It wasn’t a confrontation, but now Mrs. Hollings wasn’t happy. Her smile vanished, and she took her coffee to the guesthouse.
“If you found something that suggests a hoax, I’d love to be filled in,” Mom said to Dad.
“I haven’t found anything yet,” he replied. “It’s just a feeling.”
Mom laughed. “Well, if it’s a feeling, then case closed. We can go home now.”
Annalise, who hadn’t been paying attention, looked up. “We’re leaving? Thank God.”
“Your mother was being sarcastic.” Dad finished his croissant. “But I do think we’ll be leaving sooner than expected.”
It was another challenge, but this time, it was directed at Mom. Instead of being angry, though, she lit up, eager for the chance to prove something. We spent the rest of the morning inspecting the wiring and lights, but found nothing out of the ordinary.
“It all comes back to the sound,” Mom said. We were sitting on the bottom step together. Annalise had returned to bed and Shane was running tests in the basement with Dad.
“And the sounds always come from this area,” I added. “The staircase and the hallway.”
Mom nodded. Then she walked up the staircase slowly, pausing between each step. When she reached the top, she bounced on her heels a little, testing the floor.
“Do me a favor,” she called down. “Walk up here, but run your hands along the wallpaper as you go.”
I was used to odd requests, and I didn’t question this one. I put both hands on the wall and let my hands run over the antique-looking wallpaper as I climbed the stairs. I knew I looked silly, like I was trying to massage the house, but about halfway up, my fingers ran into a something, a place where the wall abruptly gave way. I stopped and looked over at Mom, who was carefully inspecting the banister.
“I think there’s a little hole here.”
Mom came over and ran her hands over the space. “You’re right. Someone covered up a hole with this wallpaper.” She looked down the stairs. “Stand in front of me,” she whispered. I pretended to admire the chandelier above us while Mom pulled back the wallpaper. There was a soft tearing sound, then Mom gasped. I worried that she had torn the paper too much.
“What is it?”
When I turned around, Mom was pressing the paper back into place. She sighed. “It’s time to leave.”
At first, Mrs. Hollings denied everything.
“There’s been a mistake,” she insisted. “I have nothing to do with any of this.”
But the evidence was overwhelming. The hole in the wall was filled with a tiny recorder set on a loop. Every twenty-four hours, it played a little girl’s voice, followed by the sound of footsteps. As the recorder required batteries, someone would have to peel back the carefully placed wallpaper to replace them every week or so. It was so simple.
Maybe that was why the scheme had worked: a few clear sounds, nothing too dramatic or obvious, and people fell for it. The sounds were especially powerful if you were on or near the staircase. And Mrs. Hollings could have easily left a single rose inside her guests’ rooms in the middle of the night. The Pink Rose was not haunted. It was simply maintained by a woman desperate to keep up business.
“You don’t understand!” she wailed when we began packing up our things. “I’ve put every cent into this place. I can’t lose it! I have nowhere to go!”
Mom busied herself with coiling the different wires we used, her jaw clenched. I didn’t know if she was more angry with Mrs. Hollings for the lies or with herself for wanting to believe them.
“Ever since the ghost stories began, I’ve been able to pay my bills,” Mrs. Hollings continued. “I was facing foreclosure! This was the only way.”
Surprisingly, Dad was sympathetic. I thought he would gloat or get mad, but instead, he listened to her.
“I understand why you did it,” Dad said. His voice was soft, a noticeable contrast to Mrs. Hollings’s loud protests. “But it wasn’t right. You could have told us before we came here, and saved everyone a lot of trouble.”
“Rose is real! I’ve seen her!” Mrs. Hollings clutched at the lace collar of her dress. “But she doesn’t always show up, and I needed something every night. You have to believe me!”
Dad said nothing. He finished his work and left the Pink Rose. Shane followed, shaking his head. Annalise was already in the van, probably napping in the backseat.
“Please don’t ruin me,” Mrs. Hollings begged. Mom and I stood in the foyer, ready to leave. “If people don’t think that this place is haunted, I’ll have to close in a few months.” Her eyes were shiny with tears. “Please. You don’t know what this means to me.”
Mom frowned. “Yes, I think I do.” She looked out the front door, where Dad was sitting behind the steering wheel of the car. She took my hand. “Goodbye, Mrs. Hollings. I wish you the best of luck.”
In the end, we didn’t do anything with the footage. We could have created an episode about the hoax, but no one had the heart to hurt an old woman trying to make a living. Mom said that if people wanted to believe it, that was their problem. She asked Mrs. Hollings not to advertise that the place was haunted in her brochures, and that was the end of it. I thought.
Mom remained quiet and sullen for weeks. At our investigation in Colorado, she was detached, leaving interviews and even the DVD commentary to Dad. On our last night in Colorado, I found her sitting in the library of our hotel, a closed book in her lap.
“Mom?” I tiptoed into the room. “Are you awake?”
“Yes. Just thinking.”
I sat on the floor in front of her chair and pulled my robe around me. “Thinking about what?”
She set her book on a small table. “Thinking about why people lie.”
“Because they think they need to,” I said. “They think a lie will protect them.”
Mom smiled. “That’s very well put, Charlotte. Very well put.”
I beamed at her praise, but knew the answer wasn’t enough to pull Mom out of her mood. I was confused, too. We had been tricked in the past, usually by people eager to prove that we weren’t the scientific debunkers we claimed to be. Mom always discovered the truth, and instead of feeling betrayed, she accepted the findings as a victory. So why was this time different?
“You were hoping that this time, it would be real. Is that why you’ve been so upset?”
Mom looked at me with a strange mixture of surprise and sadness. “We’ve spent so long searching. I suppose I thought that for once, it would be nice to find something exactly the way people described it.” She patted her chair and I went over to her. She hugged me. “Trust is a choice we make. And you can’t trust everyone,” she said. “But you can always trust your family.”
I believed her.