Beauty Read online

  “Who is?”

  “Madam.”

  The door flew open again and Zara came rushing in with a shove. “You can tell that little bitch if she does it again, I’ll kill her myself!” Zara shouted.

  “Zara.” The word came out as I lost my breath.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, sauntering to where we sat only to throw herself on a bed. “They got you too, huh? Well, it was only a matter of time.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I hate to break it to you Beauty, but Mr. Lupus is going to love having you around and frankly, it takes some of the—well, the burden off me and Christine.”

  “Tell me what we’re doing here, Zara,” I begged.

  “Doing?” she asked with a smirk as she sat up. “We’re doing whatever they tell us to do. At least at Rosewood, I had a chance to do what I wanted to do. Here, it’s just follow orders and spread ’em”

  Christine winced at Zara’s harsh words, folding herself into a ball.

  “What do you mean?” I asked the question and feared the answer.

  “You better get dressed, Beauty. They’re not going to waste any time putting you to work.”

  “Work?”

  Christine lifted her soggy face from her arms and nodded. Zara joined in in unison.

  “But why?”

  “Because if we don’t, we’ll be punished. And I can promise you—look, I heard what happened to the girl that was here when Christine and I arrived,” she said gesturing with her head to the fourth and empty bed. “Don’t ask. You don’t want to know, really, you don’t.”

  15

  ELIZA

  A faint buzz filled the candlelit room and we looked at one another as if to say, who’s is it?

  “Before we begin,” Magda said. “I need you to turn off your phones. Don’t silence them don’t put them in airplane mode. Off.”

  Surveying the circle around the table, the culprit, Ray, pulled his glowing phone from his pocket and powered it down. “Anyone else?” Jess asked, as she shot Ray a glare from across the table. We sat silent.

  With a nod, Magda took a deep cleansing breath. “Everyone, clear your mind. There’s something evil in this house and the more we fear it, the more energy we give to it, we allow it to gain strength—power. So don’t.”

  Magda glanced around the table as if she was linking each of us to the other like a chain. With a final nod to me she began. “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.”

  I wasn’t a regular churchgoer, but I certainly believed in God, so I said exactly what I felt, “Amen.”

  The silence in the room felt heavy, like a false ceiling hanging over our heads, muting any sound. Magda sat with her eyes shut and I wondered if I should do the same. Closing them for only a moment, I felt a cold chill in the air around me and thought it better to keep my eyes wide open for anything that might happen.

  “There are many spirits in this house,” Magda said opening her eyes and looking into the distance. Over our heads, the banging of something rapped three times. “There are human spirits that are at unrest and…”

  “And what?” Ray asked as Jess shot him another look across the table.

  “And one inhuman spirit. It is drawn to this house. To the evil.”

  “The evil?” Ray asked, breaking the silence again before Jess tugged at his hand, silently begging him to be quiet.

  “There is the spirit of a young girl here. Are you the one doing the knocking? Are you here against your will? Knock one time for yes, and two times for no.”

  We sat in silence as we all looked at each other, waiting for something dramatic to happen. The needle on the EMF meter suddenly moved, lighting it up like a Christmas tree. And then it happened—a single knock. I watched Ray take a deep breath.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Magda continued. “This is a welcoming place. We come to you in unity and love. We can sense you are not at peace. We sense that you are restless. Will you come through to us? We are here to help you. Are you the one who’s been moving things around in the house?”

  Two loud bangs came from over our heads as if someone was stomping on the floor above the dining room. I flinched at the sound. Ray squeezed my fingers and let go.

  As my hand dropped to my side, a peculiar feeling overtook me. My vision blurred and I felt my body free falling as if I were in a dream, yet I was aware of everything around me. On a spinning ride at the amusement park that wouldn’t end, I tried to focus my eyes on anything to gain a sense of where I was—to make it stop.

  Squeezing my eyes shut as tightly as I could, the spinning left me, but the falling sensation did not. In front of me I saw white and I grabbed the blank tablet from the table. My other hand reached for the pencil. As if I was merely a puppet, my hand began drawing a circle over and over. A voice called to me from inside my chest as if each breath was a word.

  “What is your name?”

  Almost a sensation of vomiting, the word came up through my body and out of my hand. No.

  “Did you die in this house?”

  Still following the circle pattern I wrote again, No.

  “What is it that you want to communicate?”

  The circle was becoming faster and I felt the warmth of the friction under my fingers. Liz.

  “Will you speak with Liz?”

  Liz.

  “Will you tell us why you are not at rest? Liz is with us. Tell us what you need us to know.”

  Liz.

  Liz.

  Help me.

  I could hear gasps in the room, but I was unaware of anything going on around me except for the knot in my gut and the incessant movement of my hand against the paper.

  Help me.

  Liz.

  Help me.

  Gold.

  Help me.

  The feeling of falling began to dissipate and I focused on the faces of everyone at the table. Taking a deep breath, I smelled the familiar peppermint and suddenly found it hard to breathe—as if there were hands around my throat, cutting off my airway.

  Dropping the pencil, I reached for my neck as I felt the heavy drumbeat of my heart in my temples. Closing my eyes, I said the words in my head. No. This isn’t how my story goes. And then it stopped. I inhaled quickly, suddenly feeling as if eyes were boring through my head and steam was rising in my body, I was filled with an uncontrollable presence of nothing but hatred. Standing, I slammed my hand on the table. “Get out! You don’t belong here!” I felt the words come out of my mouth, but they weren’t mine—it wasn’t my thought—it wasn’t my voice.

  Without warning, I found myself pushing the table across the room as everyone scattered. Magda stared me in the face as I forced her body along with the table to the other side of the room, pinning her to the old mirror that hung on the wall.

  “Nooo!” I screamed, finally finding my voice.

  Collapsing on the top of the table, I opened my eyes and tried to catch my breath. My throat was dry, filled with pins and needles. I swallowed, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth and I focused my eyes. Candle wax covered the table, and paper and equipment were strewn about. Pulling my head up, I righted my body and stood. Across from me, Magda was pinned to the wall by the table—the mirror behind her cracked into two pieces.

  “Help me!” I screamed as I did my best to pull the heavy oak table away from her. Jess, Ray, and the others rushed to my side and together we moved it inches—just enough for Magda to collapse under the table.

  Martin rushed to Magda’s side, picking her up in his arms and setting her on the couch in the parlor. “Get the lights,” he shouted.

  Still foggy in my head, I turned and looked to Jess, Ray and Craig. “What just happened?” I asked, stumbling forward a
nd into Ray’s arms.

  Ray led me by the hand to the parlor where I sat opposite Magda, still trying to catch her breath. I asked the question again through the desert that was my mouth. “Tell me what happened.”

  Ray looked at me. “You don’t remember any of it?”

  “Magda, are you okay?”

  She stared at me. The standoffish woman was showing a frazzled side and I was at once surprised. For someone who was well acquainted with ghosts, she seemed spooked. “I’ll be fine.”

  I scanned the room once more. “Is someone going to tell me what happened?”

  Ray knelt at my feet. “Tell me what you remember. I’ll fill in the gaps for you.”

  Shaking my head, I searched my mind. “I remember writing. I remember drawing a circle. Then I couldn’t breathe and then…” I paused. “Nothing.”

  “Sweetheart, you were answering the questions Magda was asking and then, I don’t know. You stood and pushed the table across the room, trapping Magda against the wall.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the table and back to Ray. “That weighs seven hundred pounds. There’s no way—the construction crew couldn’t even move it.”

  Ray nodded, “I know…I know…but you did.”

  “Oh, Magda. I’m so sorry.” I felt my eyes well up with tears. They were tears of frustration, of fear and guilt. I had every human emotion I’d ever known pulsing through my body. I could no longer put on a brave face.

  “It wasn’t you. It was something bigger than all of us.”

  “What do you mean?” Jess asked, handing us both a glass of water.

  “We’ll need to go back and check the EVPs, the video and photographic evidence the boys gathered upstairs, but I can already tell you—” she paused to take a drink and smooth the gray streak from her face. “I don’t know what happened in this house, but it’s so horrible that at least three human souls are trapped here and a dark presence is feeding on all the negativity, all the pain, all the suffering. It’s…demonic.”

  I looked to Ray and back to Magda. “Now what?”

  “Liz, whatever is here wants your help,” Jess said as she handed me the several white sheets with the words help me along with my name over and over. The last page had a single word on it. Gold.

  “What does Gold mean?”

  Martin rushed into the circle that had formed in the parlor in front of the fire with headphones and his computer. “I think you better listen to this.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to pull myself together. My hands were shaking so hard, I couldn’t get the headphones over my ears. Martin took pity on me and helped me get situated before patting the top of my trembling fingers.

  “What is your name?” It was Magda’s voice and I recalled hearing the question as I listened.

  “Did you die in this house?”

  A faint whisper rang out in my ears. “No.”

  “No,” Jess repeated. I didn’t remember hearing my best friend’s voice, but there it was plain as day.

  “What is it that you want to communicate?”

  As Magda spoke, I could hear the pencil furiously circling the paper. “Will you speak with Liz?”

  “Eliza,” the childlike voice whispered.

  “Liz,” Jess said.

  I gasped and cupped my mouth in horror.

  “Will you tell us why you are not at rest? Liz is with us. Tell us what you need us to know.”

  “Help, Eliza.”

  “Liz,” Jess repeated. “Help me.”

  “Help me. Help me, Eliza.” The whisper rang out in my ears and I felt my body collapse into the cushions of the chair.

  “Liz. Help me,” Jess repeated, fear lacing her usual stoic voice.

  “Edmund Gold.” The whisper was sad, afraid—and I suddenly felt an emptiness in my heart—a longing like I’d never felt before.

  Suddenly, Martin turned off the recording. Slipping the headphones from my ears I whispered, “Wait, isn’t there more?”

  Martin turned to Craig as if they knew something the rest of us didn’t. “I don’t think you want to hear it, Liz” Craig said, staring at his shoes.

  “I think I should,” I said putting the earphones back on my head. Martin pushed the button once more. It was quiet for a moment and then I heard it—like an animal, the guttural scream was deep and vacillated between moaning in pain and hysterical laughter.

  “Get out!” a deep voice bellowed. “You don’t belong here!”

  The screams came and I could hear the table grind against the old floorboards as Martin turned it off once again.

  Taking the headphones off, I stared at Ray and began to cry. The room was silent and Ray knelt at my feet, leaning into me to hold me in his arms. Sobbing, I was afraid and empty on the inside and my stomach ached as if I’d been punched in the gut.

  We all sat in our own stupor trying to process the events. “I’m afraid there’s more,” Craig said holding his computer in his arms. “But perhaps now isn’t the time.”

  “I want to know,” Ray said, leaving me and walking to Craig. “What is it?”

  “We picked up several apparitions upstairs. The highest level of activity was, as you probably suspected, on the third floor and in the closet area you showed us. And there’s this.”

  Unable to curb my curiosity, I stood to get a good look at what Ray was seeing. The closet door was open and the items hung and sat on the floor close to where I’d found them. A white mist filled the space and two solid orbs hung in the air in the first photo. The second was much more revealing.

  “Is that a body?” I asked. “It looks like a person.”

  “It looks like a girl in a long dress,” Ray added.

  Craig stared back at both of us and nodded. “There’s more.”

  Flipping rapidly through the photos, he stopped when he’d found exactly what he was looking for.

  “That’s my studio,” Ray said, as he looked at the photo. “That’s me in the studio.”

  “I snapped a few photos of each room as you showed us around.”

  “What is that?” I asked, moving in closer to the computer screen.

  The picture was Ray standing in his studio, his arms open wide as if he was explaining something. In front of him stood the large oil painting of the rose and I noticed for the first time the brilliance of the colors he’d used. Behind the easel, it looked as if someone was peeking around the corner admiring the painting—a white apparition—a girl. The problem was, the white figure wasn’t what was most disturbing about the photo. Over Ray’s shoulder lurked a dark shadow. Menacing, and directly behind him, the darkness enveloped him like the arms of a defensive end ready to tackle.

  Ray stood silent and then said three words. “What the hell?”

  16

  BEAUTY

  I sat among the roses. I’d stolen away for a moment by myself in the garden. Madam was gone for the morning and Miss Elizabeth, whom I’d tried my best to like, was out for the day as well. Lunch was a quick bite of bread and some warm stew. I ate quickly and hurried into the crisp autumn breeze hoping to see the flowers one more time before they wilted in the cold.

  I thought of Edmund and our kiss. It was what kept me going. His musky smell, his soft lips and the words he whispered in my ear. “We will be together someday. Someday, happily ever after.”

  “Girl!”

  I turned knowing there wasn’t anyone else in the garden and the comment was no doubt meant for me.

  “Yes?” I replied, standing up from the grass where I’d tried to hide.

  “Get to work.” It was the cook. She didn’t like me much, but I did my best to be nice to her. I’d watched her spit in Madam’s soup bowl before Zara took it to the dining room. The last thing I wanted was to eat her saliva for dinner.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  I hurried inside and rushed up the stairs to find a full bucket of water and a dry mop in the corner. It was waiting for me. Starting in one corner and working my way down the hall of the
second floor, I began the task of repeatedly wringing the mop with my hands and washing the floor.

  I was finished without too much fuss and smiled at my accomplishment as I stood in the doorway of Sir and Madam’s bedroom.

  Without warning, the door opened and Sir stood behind me.

  “Well hello there, beautiful.”

  I smelled the peppermint on his breath as he whispered the words into my neck. “Are you settling in?”

  I nodded, not wanting to say a word. Zara had warned me of speaking to Sir, especially in front of Madam.

  “We will need to take some time to get to know one another,” he said softly as he walked around me, deliberately brushing his body against mine. “You’ll fit in just fine in no time at all.”

  “Father.”

  I turned around to find Miss Elizabeth staring me down. She was not much younger than me—maybe fifteen—and had the kind of elegant grace only known to those who had exceptional dignity in their life. It was something I once possessed and now clung to like a lifeboat on a turbulent sea.

  “Yes, Elizabeth dear. What is it? Daddy is very busy.”

  Elizabeth rushed to her father’s side across my newly washed floor. Her silk dress swished with each step and I closed my eyes and dreamed of a day when I too would wear beautiful dresses again.

  “I need you to come downstairs with me right now. I want to play for you.”

  Lupus stared at his daughter and forced a smile. “Maybe later darling. As I said, I’m very busy. Your mother has everyone bustling around here for her party tomorrow night. Let’s just all try to cooperate, okay?”

  Sir hurried down the stairs and I moved the mop and bucket away from Elizabeth and to the edge of the steps without making a sound. In the few days I’d been here, I’d learned to think invisible thoughts. It was the best way to actually be invisible.

  Waltzing past me, I kept my eyes on the floor. “Clean up this mess, you whore.”

  I lifted my gaze as she kicked my bucket of dirty water back onto the clean floor. Rushing to catch the water, I slipped and fell.

  “And stay away from my father,” Elizabeth hissed, as she descended the stairs.