Chapter one from The Caine Plantation
Returning October 29th, 2021 on Amazon (Kindle, paperback, and hardcover)
By Karine Green
Kathy Marconi leaned her slim, fit body over the table to examine the closing paperwork. She tucked a lock of her dark red hair behind her ear, so she could read without it hanging in her face. She had traveled from New York City to this tiny town in southern Louisiana to investigate a freak investment opportunity that had come her way.
Somehow, she had won the bid for a plantation on ten acres. She looked carefully over the closing papers. She was sure there was some sort of catch, but the only thing that raised concern was a historical deed restriction clause, half of which she couldn’t read because of the font size. As far as she was concerned, anything under a six-point should be declared illegal for a binding contract. Everything else looked fine.
So far, the plantation was being bought sight unseen. She had viewed the photos online. The place was dilapidated, but according to the ad, it “had good bones and was on a solid foundation.” From what she could tell, it was enormous, and dilapidated or not, it was still beautiful. She couldn’t wait to go see it up close. In its heyday, the entirety of the property had been over 700 acres. The primary crop had been sugar cane, but they had also grown a fair amount of cotton, and of course, crops to eat.
She was in no way any sort of real estate guru. She had found out about this property nearly two months ago on eBay by chance. She had seen the poor state of the residence in the photos, but flippantly put in a bid for twenty-five dollars, figuring there would be a minimum bid cut-off, or at the least, be easily out bid, but that hadn’t happened. She was still stunned at the thought of having won the bid for a mere twenty-five bucks.
She wondered who accidentally buys a house, and in another state, so far from home. This was crazier than crazy. She had never even visited the South before, and here she was, showing up as a homeowner, so to speak.
Lauren Grayson, of the local historical society, sat across from her. Kathy thought she was a skinny, extraordinarily ordinary looking woman, complete with the traditional stringy, flat, brown hair. She was the one handling the transaction for the bank and the town. Apparently, the town wasn’t big enough to employ a proper city attorney. It wasn’t as if Lauren was not legally an attorney, but she did not care to practice unless it suited her. She preferred to concentrate on something that really mattered to her, such as her cause to preserve the history of the Old South.
Kathy was glad when she finally shut up. It was very distracting to try to read over the paperwork with Lauren yammering on. It was almost like Lauren didn’t want her to read the papers. She seemed offended that she had wanted to read them instead of blindly signing them. She continued to read over the papers, wondering if perhaps a pair of reading glasses should be next on her list of scary, impulsive purchases.
After a few minutes, Kathy set the paperwork down. “Well, it all looks too good to be true. That is the part that scares me.” She managed a genuine smile.
“Don’t worry about any surprise charges, it’s all legit. Here is the total bill, including closing costs and transfer fees.” Ms. Grayson laid a bill for $48.13 on the table in front of Kathy. “The property taxes have been paid for the year. We, at the local Historical Society opted to have their property tax refund placed back onto the property. Normally, the taxes are about $1500 a year, which, of course, will go up once improvements are done. The tax assessor estimates they will be about $5400 a year when it’s all said and done. We really are more interested in preserving the history of the place, and we hoped to inspire the new owner, you, to preserve it.”
Lauren seemed timid in stating the tax information, but Kathy didn’t bat an eye at it. Her co-op fee was three times that on her little apartment in Manhattan, so even when the taxes did reset, it would still be a fifty percent savings compared to what she was used to.
Although her first impression of Ms. Grayson seemed nice, Kathy immediately didn’t like her, as something about her seemed fake and disingenuous. Additionally, the ad on eBay had said nothing about any sort of oppressive historical restoration restrictions. However, she was not surprised to have found them in the city records. She had supposed the house would have them, since the ad had included that the house had been built in 1810. It was a lucky assumption for her, but a suspicious omission that gave her reason for immediate distrust.
“May I have a copy of the historical restoration restrictions?” Kathy asked, smiling. She could play the fake pleasantry game too. She had deliberately left off the fact that she already had the plantation’s history, and was well aware of its historical restrictions, including its haunted past. She knew if she could restore the house and get it on the National Historical Registry… She stopped herself. No, Kathy, just flip the property, and go home! She scolded. To her, this house had one purpose only, and it wasn’t for this to become a new place to call home.
“Of course, I’ll get them now.” Lauren got up and walked over to a file cabinet. The drawer creaked loudly as she pulled hard to open it. “Sorry, it needs replacing.”
Kathy nodded, and turned her gaze toward the window that opened to a picture-perfect small-town square. The main reason she had been hoping to fix-and-flip the plantation was to use the experience to begin repairing her relationship with her parents. Once she had the main repairs underway, she was looking forward to having her mother come down and help with the decorating. It was her hope that this would create an open dialog with her mother, which would in turn lead to one with her father. They had strongly disapproved of her career choice. The tension was so thick regarding it, that they had skipped getting together for the last few Christmases to avoid arguing over it. Hopefully, this experience would open old doors that had been slammed shut in anger.
The house’s haunted past didn’t scare her, for that matter neither did dead bodies. She was a retired homicide detective from the New York City Police Department. She had retired about six months ago, which was four years earlier than planned. She had grown too weary to hold out, drained to the core with the politics that surrounded her job. To make matters worse, there had been a scandal with her partner, Randy. She had been drawn into the drama of it as a witness. She was tired of fighting the so-called good fight. It was someone else’s turn. When the city had offered a buy-out to anyone with more than fifteen years, she had jumped on the chance to escape. It ended up working out very well for her, financially speaking, but emotionally, she was still reeling from what had happened with Randy.
The only problem now was that she was fully retired at the age of thirty-seven. She was no spring chicken, but she was nowhere near old enough to retire for real. Even after this short time, boredom had already begun to set in. That would explain why she had been surfing eBay for ridiculous out-of-state deals on mansions. She could have refused to come, forcing them to re-list the house, but Kathy liked several things about the idea of going ahead with the deal. Both the price and history were phenomenal. And the best part was that it was away from Manhattan. As a bonus, she was looking forward to staying here for a bit; she had never visited such a small town. In fact, Hoboken, New Jersey was the smallest place she had been to, and Hoboken was a city unto itself; there was nothing small about it at all.
She had flown into New Orleans, and then drove nearly two hours to the middle of nowhere to check out the ridiculously low cost of living compared to home. The pleasant weather here, versus the cold winter temperatures at home, made the decision to come and check it out an easy one. If nothing else, she could warm up in the nearly 70 degrees, and forget the snowy 30 degrees at home.
So far, this place reminded her of photos and movies she had seen about typical rural small towns. Everything was still “mom-and-pop” here. The “Big Box” stores had not yet intruded, although there was a shopping center about twenty-five minutes outside of town near the interstate.
If she decided to sell her apartment and move here, she knew she would still be ahead financially. Even with the high cost of historical renovations, the annual savings to her budget would be worth it in the long run. However, could she live someplace so small? She was a city-girl, raised by city parents, who were also raised by city people. Not only that, it was so far away from those whom she was trying desperately to mend fences with. There was no way she could even think about living in this beautiful, perfect place.
She scolded herself again, why not? What could be wrong with just moving away and working a bit harder to forget Randy? Mom will come and visit here, probably more often than she had when she lived only ten blocks away from me. She smiled at her internal waffling and gave herself permission to put off making any more rash decisions this week.
Lauren returned with the papers, “Here we go.” She laid them on the table in front of Kathy.
She smiled, staring at the size-two font on the contract. For the first time in a long time, she felt like everything was going to finally heal in her life; her parents’ relationship, her job, her nightmares, and her future. She couldn’t wait to discover what it was like to be normal. Moreover, she couldn’t wait to use her house template app for her tablet, to sketch and create new home design ideas, versus gut-wrenching crime scenes. She smiled; it would be the first time she used it for a diagram that did not feature a body as the focal point of the room.
Ms. Grayson sifted through another folder and pulled out another document. She laid it next to the copy of the historical restrictions. “This is an addendum releasing some of the restrictions, but not all. We recognize that some things may not be able to be restored completely. You’ll find all the appropriate signatures on the last page. We hope that you would consider working to put it on the National Historical Register by fully restoring it. If you have a mind for it, it would make an excellent Bed and Breakfast. There is a significant history there, and people would like to visit. The original stables are still there, but they would need some restoration as well. People would love to board their horses there and then ride them on the property.”
“Historical restrictions released? Really,” she asked, ignoring all the business plans Lauren just suggested, but was pleasantly surprised by the release. That would indeed make it easier to restore and flip the property. And that must be what that size-two font paragraph was about.
Kathy had been in city government for a long time. Releasing such restrictions would have been almost an act of congress where she was from, if it could even be done. She had seen the city, and the people who live there, spend outrageous amounts of money trying to save a ratty old place. It would have been cheaper to demolish it and then build two exact replicas, using the original plans and building techniques, while paying extra to find and employ descendants of the original builders. It was one thing to preserve history, but it was another thing to be hysterical about it. The good thing about the standard restrictions on historical homes was that the interior was normally excluded.
One thing was for sure, the kitchen would have to be modern. She would not have anything to do with restoring it to 1810 standards. She loved to cook, so an ultra-modern, gourmet kitchen was high on the priority list. And the best part was that the purchase price was more than good enough to do a complete historical restoration on the exterior without breaking her financial will to live. She was sure Ms. Grayson could be talked into reinstating the old historical restrictions very easily, if necessary.
“Yes, Kathy, we were more concerned that the house wasn’t left to rot into the ground.” She noticed that Ms. Grayson’s pleasant tone of voice did not match her tight-fake smile.
It was all she could do to not return the fake smile shown her. Lauren was definitely hiding something! After years and years of dealing with lying murderers, Kathy knew a liar when she saw one, but she was also accustomed to reviewing the evidence, and so far, everything Lauren had told her checked out. This meant that if she was lying, then her lies were lies of omission. Kathy supposed she would figure it out sooner or later. Hopefully, whatever it was wouldn’t be too terrible to deal with.
“I know you don’t normally take cash, but I am hoping you can make an exception in this case,” Kathy said, handing over a fifty-dollar bill. She flipped the pages to the signature page, and then signed them.
Lauren smiled, “I think in this case a check would only increase the cost.” She gave Kathy a receipt, copies of all the closing papers, the keys and alarm codes, and then displayed the unmistakable body language of someone who had just been cleared of a crime they had actually committed.
Kathy wondered what it could be that had everyone on edge with the house. This morning, the man at the hardware store had told her how sorry he was for her for “getting stuck” with “that” house.
Kathy said good-bye, and Lauren thanked her for buying the house in what seemed to be the only genuine-sounding statement she had said to Kathy since she got the first phone call from her reminding her of the bid. Knowing that the bid was ridiculously low, she had forgotten all about it shortly after making it.
After she left, she stopped at a diner for lunch, since she couldn’t find a Starbucks. To her, that fact alone was reason enough to not live here on a permanent basis. She ate while reviewing the local newspaper. It looked as if nothing went on here, but that wasn’t a bad thing. After sixteen years in police work, she was ready for some boredom. It was nice to be in a place where the front-page news was the winning pie recipe at the town’s winter festival, and not some hideous crime spree, awful wreck on the highway, or the robbery and shooting of an innocent victim.
She pulled out her new GPS, typed in the address, and then followed it to her new house.
About fifteen minutes later, she arrived to find a rusty iron gate and matching fence that ran the entire length of the front of the property. Across the street was the beginning edge of a wooded area. The map showed the woods to be the leading edge of a large bayou. The Spanish moss hung low in the trees, and a bird sang a lazy tune on a nearby limb.
She looked back and took a hard long look at her new purchase. The fence was thick with overgrown weeds, vines, and trees. It was obvious that the property hadn’t been trimmed in probably twenty years. She took out her phone and snapped several pictures, uploading to her Facebook page. Overgrown or not, this seemed like a peaceful place upon her first glance. She was pleased at the prospect of giving things a fresh start.
She got out of the car and unlocked the gate. The driveway alone was impressive. It was lined with enormous, Spanish moss-covered magnolia trees. Even in its rundown condition, the plantation was an impressive and beautiful place. It spoke of its once-great splendor. Kathy immediately loved the house, and now understood Lauren’s actions to try to save it. She hopped back in the car and drove slowly toward her reward.
She smiled, “You’ll be the perfect distraction,” she told the house.
The roof of the stable, located behind the house, was visible from the street. At first thought she wondered if it would make a great garage. There would be plenty of time to reflect on the best use of the space later, since there were more important matters to consider.
The main house had two stories, with high dormer windows along the roof line. Dual upper and lower wraparound porches hugged the house like a warm blanket. The once-welcoming yellow paint was now faded and mostly peeled away. All of the windows on the main floor were actually doorways that opened out onto the porches. As she looked around, she realized that there were no proper windows, as one would think of them, except in the upper attic dormers. Essentially, the house had twenty doors to the outside, at least.
She parked by the front steps, and gingerly stepped around the holes that had rotted through the front porch. Like a child, she plastered her face against the old windows to capture a first view of the prize inside. She was disappointed though, that she couldn’t see much. The windows were extremely old and dirty. She was impressed to see the condition they were in; she couldn’t believe they were still intact.
Back home, the windows were the first things to be broken in an abandoned house, followed quickly by the copper pipes being ripped out. She wondered if she could replace them with stained glass and still be within the historical limitations. She wasn’t at all comfortable with the prospect of all this clear glass on a home. If the windows were clean, someone could see directly into the house. Long, isolated driveway or not, she didn’t like the idea of people being able to look in.
She took out the lone skeleton key that, according to Lauren, fit every door in the house. The stable had a modern key. The previous owners had found it necessary to secure it better in order to keep wandering ghost-hunting trespassers out. As she entered through the grand double front door, she was quick to notice that the foyer alone was bigger than her entire apartment. In fact, her whole home could fit right inside this room.
The room itself was in need of some serious help. The wallpaper that had been applied by some former owner was lying in heaps on the floor. Apparently, it had peeled off in some bygone day, exposing the original teal peacock wallpaper underneath. It was incredible; there must have been at least four or five layers of it lying around the room. It was almost like the house was rejecting the modern wallpaper in favor of the old stuff. She ran her hand over the wall and was surprised that it felt slightly metallic. The most surprising thing was that, overall, it seemed to be in good shape for being two hundred years old.
“Can you be saved?” she said, out loud to no one in particular, having no idea that single question would set her on the mystery of a lifetime as the challenge to be saved was accepted.
She turned to look at the staircase and frowned. She had hoped for a grand staircase, something along the lines of the one in Gone with the Wind, but this one reminded her of the one in her grandmother’s old house. It was disappointingly normal, especially given the grandeur of the house.
To her left was a grand dining room and adjoining ballroom. The tattered furniture of the former owner was still in the dining room. An ornate built-in china cabinet, in dire need of refurbishing, stretched the entire length of the back wall. The dining room table stretched from end to end and would serve twelve easily. It was also in dire need of refinishing, but like the house, it was solid and would one day be a beautiful piece of furniture again. On the other hand, she wasn’t so sure about the chairs. It appeared to her untrained eye that they might be done for. The dining set was the only furniture in the house.
To her right was the living room. Against the far wall of the room was a fireplace with a period mantle still in place. She could stand inside the fireplace. A small, but once-elegant parlor was located at the rear of the room, with a set of grand oak sliding doors that, much to Kathy’s shock, still worked. She noticed that the wallpaper was also off the walls in here, exposing a once-delicate paint job of what reminded Kathy of a bayou scene. It was terribly faded.
“How strange. It seems like they could just sit upstairs and look out the front to get the bayou scene?” she said to herself. She was referring to the edge of the bayou across the street. If she went to all the trouble of painting something on the wall, she would think that it would be different from the one that could be viewed out the window.
She strolled slowly back out into the foyer. At the back was a set of double pocket doors that opened into what should have been an enormous kitchen. It was strange to look at since there was nothing in there. Even the plaster had been stripped from the walls. Compared to all of the other rooms she’d seen so far, this was just a big, brown money-pit of a room.
“Well, at least I know for sure now that the kitchen is the first thing that needs to be bought,” she said, closing the doors. She smiled as her eyes took in the bones of what this room could be, with all these gorgeous door-windows at the backside of the house, it would be the perfect place to have breakfast in the mornings.
She smirked at herself, “Marconi, you’re already living here.” People looking to flip a house didn’t daydream about sitting in the kitchen while eating breakfast in the morning. They planned for other people to be able to do so.
This was a bittersweet find. Kitchens are expensive, but right now she still had a large budget for it, and with the room being a large blank slate, she could make it any way she wanted it. She was aware she was still smiling: any way she wanted it.She shook her head, the idea of simply flipping the house was getting further and further from her mind.
She thought she heard steps behind her. Startled, she turned to face— nothing. She looked around, and back in the kitchen, but nothing was there. She dismissed it as normal old house noises and headed back into the foyer.
She had no idea that she couldn’t see the gruesome sight of the Dark Lady’s image in front of her, screaming. The next quilt is red! You must leave. But the warning would go unheeded.
The stairway of disappointment, as Kathy couldn’t help but call it, was to the immediate right of the pocket doors. As she got a better glance at them, she was thankful to see that they were in good shape and only needed resurfacing.
Kathy went up the stairs, stopping on the landing, and looked up the remaining six steps. The upstairs mezzanine was a mirror-image of the foyer downstairs, including the only set of double doors that opened to the upstairs wraparound balcony. The other door-windows were just single doors, and not double. She couldn’t wait to enjoy a coffee out there!
To the right was the smallest guest bedroom Kathy had seen in a house this size. It was obvious the room size had been changed at some point. To her, it appeared it had some footage cut off to incorporate a full-size modern bathroom. The original house plans had included a traditional water-closet and then a separate room for the tub. It was the tub-room that now acted as the bathroom, with about three feet of what used to be the guest room. The water-closet was now a linen closet.
She quickly looked over the rest of the rooms that were upstairs. The library would be a perfect office once the old, dusty law books of the former owners were removed. There were three normal mansion-sized bedrooms on this level. The master bedroom, on the other hand, took the entire south side of the house and had its own sitting room and large linen closet that could easily be converted into a walk-in closet.
She looked at the two smaller rooms toward the rear of the house and smiled. They would be the perfect gateway to inviting her mother down for a visit. Kathy didn’t like her mother’s historical-Victorian taste, but in the grand scheme of things, who cared what the guest rooms looked like? She could giveher mother these two rooms to restore, and she would have a field day. And as a bonus, she would probably do the time period justice.
“I hereby dub you the rooms of Restored Hope,” she said, crossing herself, again unaware that “restored hope” meant something else to the spirits here.
The one toward the front of the house was more like a mini-master bedroom that Kathy thought of it as the “real” second bedroom. She found herself smirking as she gazed into it. It was just a bit smaller than her entire apartment. Again, the wallpaper had suffered the same fate as the rest of the modern wallpaper throughout the house. She opened the door-windows, smiling as the warm air bathed her face.
She closed her eyes, still smiling. A black fog filled the room behind her.
“I could really get used to this,” she thought out loud. There was something unreal about the calm of the place. She never wanted to leave here.
She opened her eyes slowly and went out on the porch, never seeing the fog behind her as she stepped away from it. She walked back toward the master bedroom and looked in the windows. She glanced around, noting that the wrap-around balcony was wider than it had looked from below. She was sure she could fit an entire patio set out here and still have enough room for her to take a morning run around the “upper track,” as she renamed it in her mind. She gingerly leaned on the railing, glad to see that it was still very solid. The view of the trees lining the drive to the gate would be enough to tempt her away from her Starbucks! Perhaps she could buy some coffee online and make it here? She decided she needed to buy a lawn chair this afternoon, so she could have dinner this evening, right here on this spot.
She took out her skeleton key and went in the porch door that led to the master bedroom.
She figured that the small sitting room in the master bedroom would make an excellent master bath, especially since the sitting room also connected to the library. One wall had a built-in bookcase along the entire length of the room, with a fireplace dividing it in the center. It was the only room that still had the 1970s office decor intact.
“Yuck!” She walked out the single-pane door in the sitting room and looked out at the backyard. It seemed to stretch on for a long way. The rooftops of the subdivision at the back could be seen toward the rear of the property.
Beyond the missing kitchen, the ad was dead-on. It was true that the house had good bones. She was certain it wouldn’t be long before she could actually stay here, of course, if she decided to.
“Hello! Police!” a male voice came from downstairs.
“Oh my! The alarm! I am so sorry. I completely forgot to shut it off,” Kathy said, startled.
She raced down the stairs, feeling really stupid. How many false alarms had she answered and then cursed the owner under her breath! A dark-haired, very young officer stood at the bottom of the stairs, smiling.
“I have the codes right here.” She punched in the codes, and the alarm reset. “Gosh! Again, I am so sorry, officer. I must have let the beauty and potential of this old place go to my head.” She pointed to her head, and then fanned her arms out.
“They said someone bought this ol’ spook house,” the officer said, extending a hand. “I am Mike Rose. Did anyone tell you about the deaths and ghosts in this place?”
“Kathy Marconi,” she smiled, shaking his hand. He had a firm, but polite grip. “And I am a retired homicide detective. If the spirits I’ve crossed paths with on the job haven’t spooked or spoken to me yet, they aren’t going to start now,” she said, still smiling.
She tried to remember all the times she had stood in the middle of a homicide scene and tried to spiritually contact the victim to ask what had happened. She knew it seemed like a stupid thing to do, but when a person is stretched out dead in front of you, and you have no idea what happened, it didn’t seem so odd to ask the only person in the room who was there. If she had been able to actually see beyond this worldly realm, she would have been astounded to know how many spirits had, literally, screamed answers in her face, only to be unheard.
“You don’t look old enough to be retired,” he said, looking her up and down. She was a fit, pretty woman, and didn’t look a day over thirty-five. Her dark red hair and dark green eyes still suggested there was a lot of youth left in them..
“It’s one of the benefits of starting young in a twenty-and-out profession. You are still young enough to have the luxury of a whole second career when you retire.” She maintained a pleasant tone, but the whole point of moving here was to start over. Maybe she shouldn’t have introduced herself as a retired detective. She would have to work on that. If she was going to move on, then she needed to move on.
He smiled and nodded, all the while looking around. “I haven’t been in here, properly, since I was sixteen. My brother dared me to sleep overnight in the slave’s quarters up on the third floor.” He pointed up.
“Really?” Kathy was shocked to hear the words “slaves’ quarters,” but she was not sure why. It had been a sugar cane plantation that was two hundred years old, and in the Deep South. “What did you see that night? Perhaps the ghosts you mentioned earlier are just pissed-off slaves.”
“Probably. Lord knows I would have been one pissed-off puppy. The Caine family has a mixed history of heroes and villains. Modern day soap-opera writers would have a field day with their family history.”
She hadn’t thought about the windows along the roof line being a third floor. She turned and looked up the stairs to the second floor. She hadn’t remembered even seeing a staircase that led to the third floor.
“If it’s alright, I can show you the way,” he said, pointing to the kitchen.” “You can’t get to the third floor that way,” He pointed toward the normal stairs.
“Lead the way,” she said smiling. She was quickly realizing that she would have to find out more about what the locals believed about this place. Beat officers were the best sources of useful local information about a neighborhood. He would know all the local legends of this place, including who started them, which ones were most likely true, and which ones were just meant to scare people.
He went through the double slider doors and into the kitchen, rounded the corner, and proceeded directly to a tiny pantry closet. At the back of the closet was a steep, narrow staircase.
“This is the only way to the third floor,” he said, starting up the narrow steps, having to walk up them sideways in order to avoid bumping his gun belt along the wall.
“Yes, heaven forbid the slaves were able to use the main staircase and free up the square footage,” she said, thinking this staircase was really constricted. She was a size six and still had to turn sideways to avoid the cobwebs. It was funny; she could work horrific crime scenes, but if a simple cobweb touched her, she wasn’t sure she could keep herself from climbing over Mike’s shoulders, screaming the whole way.
He smiled. “That’s middle-class Yankee talk. Think about it, even the houses of the ultra-rich in modern times have their own servant’s entrances, in both the northern and the southern states. Race has a lot to do with a lot of things, but certainly not that. That’s a class issue. The staff, black or white, uses the staff staircase.”
She wanted to huff, but didn’t. She knew he was right. Her parents had a maid, and she didn’t enter through the front door either. She wasn’t sure why it was giving her a “feeling,” maybe she hadn’t given much thought to the Old South, but now it was staring her in the face.
The stairs finally opened up to the third floor. The attic was an open expanse of rafters. In-between the rafters were rows of built-in beds and foot lockers. The mattresses and personal belongings were long gone, of course. By the condition of the place, it was clear that no one had been up here in a long while, probably since Officer Rose had stayed here as a kid. Still, even without the impact of a human touch, the attic was impressive. It would be easy to turn it into living space, perhaps even an apartment.
“This is where the women slaves, the ones who ran the house, lived. The kitchen had six, the downstairs had three, and the upstairs had five,” he said, making a presenting motion. “The Caine history was part of the local history class in elementary school.”
Kathy smiled and nodded. Perhaps Mike would tell her what Lauren had left off in her assessment of the property. “Were there any ghosts on your over-nighter?”
“Yup, I call him Ethan. I don’t know what his name is. He just looks like an Ethan to me.” Mike shrugged. He had no way to know the boy’s name was Stable Boy.
“Ethan?”
He nodded and walked to the other end of the attic, looking out the tall, narrow dormer window. “He was standing right here, staring out the window, looking at the stable. He said, ‘Massa bought a razor whip, and he’s coming for Granny.’ He was really creepy-looking too. He had these white, dead-looking eyes.” His eyes widened as he recalled the scene from his memory.
“What did you do?” Kathy had to smile. She bet Mike could accidentally talk secret information out of priests. He was easy to talk to and listen to with his pleasant Southern accent.
He laughed, “Got beat up by my brother after I ran home screaming.”
“It doesn’t bother you to be here now?”
He shook his head no. “I don’t mind. I have been back many times since then, but I have never seen Ethan again. The local teens do the same thing I did… sneak in from time to time.” He shrugged. “Of course, now it’s my job to run them off. There is even a weird YouTube video. Ethan isn’t in the picture frame, but I am sure that is who the boys in the video are referencing. It was strange though; they were carrying on about quilts.”
“Probably, he was offended you made up a name for him?” Kathy said, smiling.
He shrugged, also smiling. “Probably, but when I saw him, he wouldn’t tell me his name or even talk directly to me. It was like he was stuck in a moment of time. So, I figured, I can’t very well call him ghost-slave-kid. Something about Hey-Little-Anonymous-Ghost-Slave-Dude,seemed more disrespectful than making up my own name for him. The name Ethan actually acknowledges his presence as a being, or at the least having once been a being.”
She smiled and nodded, “Any other stories I should know about?”
“None of mine,” he gazed out the window, “but I do know several other stories. The one that I have the most reports on is the Dark Lady.”
“Dark Lady?” What sort of name was that?
“A slave name? Rumor has it that she picked the name herself.” He shrugged, again. “Based on the description of her, I would guess she was a house slave here, possibly something like a house manager, or governess. You know, the only blacks that could get away with kicking the white kid’s ass at the time.” He snapped his fingers, like he was trying to remember something. “The Mammy. I think, most folks called them Mammies. I have only had reports on her in the surrounding subdivision, though, and the only ones on Ethan are from in the house.” He pointed at the subdivision and then the floor of the house.
Kathy smiled. If Mike was ever handcuffed, he would be speechless.
“That whole neighborhood over there was part of the sugar cane fields back in the day.” He pointed and wagged his finger back and forth to indicate the entire area in the distance. “There is only ten acres of the original property left, with a small patch of cane over there. It’s strange too; sometimes, it actually comes up wild over there.” He shifted to point at the other end of the property. “The rumor is that Ridely, a murdered field hand, plants it because cane isn’t known to grow wild. Well, not very well anyway. It is truly a cultivated crop if you want the best results, but once it’s in the ground the way you want it, it’s practically effortless to grow. Still, working on a sugar cane plantation was a real threat to the life and limb for the slaves, especially this one. The biggest threats here were poisonous snakes and spiders. Well, that takes into consideration the biggest non-human threats. Of course, it could be argued that the humans who owned the plantation were worse than hungry gators.”
“How was he murdered?”
Mike shrugged. “Left to die was more to the point, if I remember correctly.”
“Aside from the poor slaves, were there any other deaths?”
He nodded, “The four lawyer fellas that used the house for an office all died on the property back in the 1980s. Some say the Dark Lady scared them to death because they reminded her too much of the original Caine family,” he frowned like something didn’t make sense to him. “Although, it is said the Underground Railroad had a rest stop here. The Caines were instrumental in running it, so they couldn’t have been too bad.”
He smiled, shrugged, and continued, “According to Lauren at the Historical Society, the runaway slaves were moved at least twenty miles upstate every day. It took a bit over a month and a half to walk from here to north of the Mason-Dixon line. Lauren and some of the local activists walked it once. Most folks believe the Caine family would hide the runaway slaves in the caves at the back of the property before sneaking them out at night in freight wagons headed north. Sometimes, they even used to hide the slaves in whiskey barrels.” He made a face. She wondered if he didn’t like Lauren and hated to recommend her.
“Really?” Kathy was intrigued by the way the Underground Railroad would have operated. It seemed awfully dangerous to just start walking. A network would be needed to make things safer, but networks had their own problems. She would have to go check out the caves he mentioned later. However, the area seemed a bit swampy for caves, and with a bayou so close, wouldn’t it just fill up during a heavy rainstorm? Perhaps her definition of a cave was different than his.
He nodded, “Yes, I am not sure of the whole history. Lauren Grayson would be able to tell you more. I think some of the runaways were killed by hunters back in the day, and that is why the subdivision gets reports of ghosts. It’s the area that is haunted, not the houses. You know, like that movie Poltergeist, where the houses were built on the graveyard.”
Kathy nodded. “Do you happen to know if there any old reports on the runaways being murdered; you know, some official reports, not ghost stories?”
“I am sure there are some on file at the library or in the police archives. My brother is Chief of Police here, so I could introduce you to him. I am sure he could help you find what you are looking for,” he said, smiling. “I think you would like Jason. Your mannerisms remind me very much of my brother. “See that house with the gray roof?” He pointed, and Kathy nodded, “My wife and I looked at that house when it was up for sale a couple of years ago, but it smelled like a homicide inside, so I wouldn’t buy it.”
“Really?” She knew the smell well, that salty, iron-rich smell that was signature of copious amounts of blood everywhere.
She looked out the window at the house he was pointing to and something red flashed in the distance. It looked like a blanket was hanging on a line in the backyard. Her curiosity was piqued. She would have to find a way to go and visit them, just to see if she could smell it. She stopped herself— that would be creepy and weird! She was retired, and she needed to be retired, and let it go.
“Hey, you were a homicide detective; maybe you could come and check it out?”
Being the workaholic Kathy was, she jumped on the chance. “Oh yes! I would be honored.” Okay, so, not so creepy and weird.
“Excellent,” he said, smiling. “Well ma’am, I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Oh, call me Kathy, please, and I am sorry about the alarm.” As she looked at him, she thought back to her first years on the job. She wondered if she ever looked that young, because Mike looked like he could still be in high school, let alone out of the academy.
Kathy stifled a sigh and thought about her age and situation. I am getting old, despite the fact that everyone insists 37 isn’t old. She saw Mike to the door and then headed back upstairs.
She took notes during the rest of her time at the house, making a sketch of the floorplan before retiring to her motel room. She ordered a dumpster, started looking for house painters, and then spent the rest of the afternoon devoted to getting her new kitchen on a functional timeline for installation.
The ghost stories drifted further into the back of her mind, while the idea of actually moving into a completely renovated home was becoming more viable in her imagination.
Both of her parents would love to visit here, especially in the winter. She could hardly wait to get her life back on track. It was time to stop crying and move forward.
Karine-Green 