A Haunting Is Brewing: A Haunted Home Renovation and a Witchcraft Mystery Novella Read online

  “Very good.” Gaskin escorted me out of the small office, and when we were out of range of Mrs. Gutierrez, his voice dropped. “Mel, I want to emphasize that this fund-raiser is crucial to the survival of Spooner House. Absolutely crucial.”

  “It will be ready. How are the ticket sales?”

  His lips pressed together, and if possible, he looked even graver than before. “You worry about preparations; I’ll worry about making sure we have enough people here.”

  He turned and walked away, his tall frame blocking out the October sun.

  ***

  The next morning I arrived at the house to find Maya sitting on the garden bench, clutching a cardboard coffee cup and huddling in a puffy down jacket. San Francisco’s October weather was sunny and warm during the day, but the nights were cool with the crispness of fall.

  “You take volunteering seriously,” I said. “It’s not even eight o’clock.”

  Maya shrugged. “I work down the street and wanted to help out for a couple of hours before the store opens. We’re almost finished with that list—I hate leaving the last few things undone like that.”

  I smiled. I felt the same way—I had wanted to stay another hour to finish up last night, but Lurch insisted we close the place up at five. It was frustrating to be working for free yet still be subject to the unreasonable whims of clients.

  “And what about you?” said Maya. “You’re not getting paid for this, are you?”

  “Apparently I’ve forgotten how to say no.”

  She smiled as she stood and joined me. “I like old things, old places. One of my hobbies is recording oral histories. I was thinking of asking Mrs. Gutierrez, but I’m not sure she’d be willing to talk to me.”

  “She’d probably love it, if you could get her to relax. Maybe meet with her in her own house, ask to see old photos? That tends to loosen people up.”

  “I’ll try it. And if that doesn’t work, maybe I should spike her tea.”

  “That would definitely be quicker.”

  We laughed.

  One of the best things about volunteer activities, I thought as I slipped the key into the tarnished brass lock, was making new friends. Maya was younger than I by many years, but I had the feeling we were a good pair.

  I pushed in the massive oak door and waved Maya through.

  She froze, mid-step, in the threshold. I soon saw what had halted her in her tracks.

  Lying on the floor of the octagonal foyer, eyes fixed in a blank stare like a Spooner family mannequin, was a body.

  Chapter Four

  “Adam!” There was an anguished cry from behind us.

  I jumped at the sound, having been so focused on the macabre scene that I hadn’t heard the others approach us. Byron had tears in his eyes, and behind him were Tess and Riley, gasping. Duff was quiet but looked ashen. Next Tess let loose a keening wail.

  “Okay, everyone, listen,” I said, my heart pounding and a wave of nausea washing over me. “Let’s . . . not touch anything. Let’s go back outside and . . .”

  I realized Maya was already sitting on the porch steps, a phone to her ear, speaking to a police dispatcher.

  “Maya’s calling the police,” I said. “Come on, folks, let’s step outside.”

  I ushered the girls out, but Byron pushed past me and went to kneel beside his friend.

  “Don’t touch him!” I said.

  “There are marks on his throat,” said Byron. “Ligature marks.”

  He was right: Adam’s throat was black and blue, with an ugly red mark the shape of a rope or a strap.

  I looked up at the ceiling. There, hanging from the chandelier, was a green velvet sash from the parlor drapes.

  “Um . . . how do you know about ligature marks?” I asked.

  “Used to be pre-med,” he explained with a shrug. “My folks practically throttled me when I changed majors . . . no pun intended.”

  “I can’t believe this! Byron!” wailed Tess. “It’s our fault! We dared him to stay overnight! We dared him . . . and now he’s gone! Adam!”

  “It’s not your fault, Tess,” I said as gently as I could, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and leading her away from the house.

  Still with the phone at her ear, apparently on hold, Maya stood and started to urge the group to go out into the garden.

  I placed my own call to SFPD homicide inspector Annette Crawford. My life had become such that I now had her private cell number on my speed dial after coming across multiple bodies on house renovation projects. She said she would get here as soon as she could.

  “Wow,” said Duff, his voice quiet as he looked up at the Gothic square tower, topped by the imposing iron widow’s walk; it looked stark against the bright gray sky. “It really is a haunted house now, right? Not one suicide here, but two? Not to be insensitive or anything, but . . . if word of this gets out, I bet the Halloween ball will, like, totally sell out.”

  ***

  I gave an initial statement to Inspector Crawford, and then waited in the garden while she checked out the scene. The forensics team had arrived by that point and was combing Spooner House for evidence. They found signs of forced entry through a first-floor window. But given the ongoing repairs, not to mention the state of disrepair before my team got its hands on the building, it was going to be a challenge to decide what might be out of place and related to Adam’s death.

  The students stood in a knot, crying and holding each other. I overheard them repeating to Crawford their tale of a group dinner last night, where they feasted on tacos and tequila at El Toro restaurant on Haight Street, and then dared Adam to spend the night at the Spooner House.

  I paced the garden, trying to distract myself from the memory of Adam lying dead in the foyer. I didn’t know him well, but I had liked him, and he was so young and full of promise.

  Victorian gardens are charming: Typically small, they are built in a foursquare shape around a fountain, with cottage plantings such as hydrangeas and azaleas. Brick herringbone pathways encircled a stone fountain topped with a nymph playing a flute. The fountain water was brackish and the sides covered in green slime, but otherwise it was darling. I made a mental note to clean that out before realizing that, despite Duff’s rather macabre prediction, there would be no Halloween party at Spooner House this year. Not after something like this.

  Glancing up at the house, I saw Adam standing behind the wavy old glass of the main tower window.

  I sighed and sat on a wrought iron bench, trying to ignore him. It wasn’t actually Adam, of course; not his body. Rather, his . . . leftover energy. Or whatever it was; I had long since stopped trying to understand. Now I just accepted the presence of supernatural spirits.

  Adam’s wan, intense countenance continued to stare down at me. Finally I waved, and he lifted one pale hand in reply.

  Annette, the homicide inspector, joined me in the garden. She cast an eye toward the house’s tower, then back at me.

  “Who you waving at?”

  “No one.”

  “Uh-huh. Quite a way to start the day, isn’t it?”

  “You can say that again.”

  “The kids seem convinced this tragedy was caused by the house, somehow,” Annette said, fixing me with her patented one-eyebrow-raised, don’t-mess-with-me look.

  I nodded.

  “You think that’s possible?”

  “Could be.”

  A year ago I would have denied believing in ghosts, and mere months ago Annette would have called for a 5150 to have me held at the psych ward for observation at the very suggestion that spirits were involved in a homicide. But now we both knew better.

  I sighed inwardly. If Adam’s ghost was lingering . . . it meant he was tormented. Confused. In need of my help.

  “Could it have been a suicide?” I asked.

  “Looks like
it, but there’s no note, and his friends insist Adam had plans, was doing well in school, was basically happy. No history of depression, at least not that anyone’s aware of. I’ll keep checking. Suicide doesn’t seem to fit, but . . .” She shrugged. “Hard to know with kids his age. We’ll wait on the medical examiner to determine cause of death. So tell me, Mel, what do you think happened?”

  “All I know is what I’ve told you. The only folks I’ve seen here are the students, Mrs. Gutierrez, Ed Gaskin, my guy Jeremy. . . . I can’t think of anyone else who’s been hanging around. . . .”

  “Interesting choice of phrase.”

  “Sorry, no pun intended. That’s for sure. I’m . . . I really can’t believe this. Adam was . . . a really nice guy. So young.”

  She nodded. “The young ones are the toughest cases. All right, thanks. Let me know if you think of anything else. You know my number.”

  “Will do. Thanks.”

  After she left, I joined the group of students huddled on the porch.

  “This can’t be. It can’t,” said Tess, sniffling. Her eyes were red rimmed and swollen from tears, her voice hoarse and racked with pain. “Adam and I were . . . we had, like, plans. We were going to go away together.”

  “Away where?” I asked.

  “Away. Away from this town, away from my mom. She’s impossible. A real piece of work; just ask Byron, he’s met her. Maybe upstate New York; that’s where my dad was from. Adam and I were both born and raised here, and we wanted to check out someplace different, like, with snow. Have you ever shoveled snow?”

  “No, can’t say that I have. I’m a native Californian, too.” I couldn’t help but wonder whether the charm of snow would wear off with a little exposure. But even so, that was the point of youth, I thought: to try new and different things.

  “Do any of you think Adam would have done this to himself?”

  The girls shook their heads; the boys shrugged. “I don’t even know,” said Byron. “It’s just so . . . random. You want to know what I think? I think those creepy dolls really did come alive and—ow!”

  Tess hit Byron on the back of the head. “Shut up! Just shut up!”

  “Did he have any enemies you can think of? Anything at all?”

  More shakes of the head. I reminded myself that this wasn’t any of my concern: Adam had Inspector Annette Crawford on his side. If anyone could get to the bottom of this tragedy, it was Annette.

  I should mind my own business, literally. So after a round of good-byes to the students, I hopped in my Scion and went to check on a couple of my paying jobs. My crew was putting the finishing touches on an Italianate bed-and-breakfast remodel in the Castro—haunted, too, of course—and we were in the middle of demo on a kitchen remodel in an old Victorian in the Excelsior neighborhood.

  But I found myself driving past the Spooner Mansion before heading home that evening. It loomed above me, looking dark in the pale yellow beam of a streetlamp, illuminated only by a single porch light.

  I was surprised to see the forensics van was still out front. Inspector Crawford was speaking to two men, who were packing up their equipment. When she spotted me, she came over to talk to me through the car window.

  “What are you doing back?” Annette asked, raising one eyebrow.

  “I, um . . .” I said eloquently, looking up at the tower window. “I was wondering . . . if the forensics crew is done, could I take a quick walk-through?”

  “Why?”

  “You really want me to answer that question?”

  “Huh. Want me to come along?”

  “I’d better go by myself.”

  Annette glanced at the forensics team, the members of whom were slamming the doors of their van and waving good-bye.

  She nodded. “Make it quick.”

  ***

  I paused at the front door and rubbed my grandmother’s wedding ring, which I wear on a ribbon around my neck as a talisman. I wasn’t as freaked-out by ghosts as I once was, but it was still unnerving to have spirits approach me and try to communicate. Knowing what to say to them, how to react, did not come naturally to me. I wanted to find out what had happened to Adam, how the death of such a promising and kind young man could have occurred. But I wasn’t expecting much; in my experience, the dead didn’t remember their last moments.

  I walked slowly through the foyer, skirting the spot where Adam’s body had fallen. Climbing the broad sweep of the stairs, I headed for the tower window where his apparition had appeared to me as I sat in the garden.

  And there he was, wearing his costume, his hands pressed flat against the pane of glass.

  He looked over his shoulder at me, and his shoulders sagged in relief.

  “Oh, Mel, thank goodness. I can’t get out. Everything’s locked up. I don’t know what happened. Do you have the key?”

  Super. I wasn’t all that smooth when it came to normal social interaction, and now I had to tell a ghost he was dead? I needed a how-to book: how to make friends with, and influence, dead people.

  “Adam, I have something to tell you. Something . . . hard.”

  “Is the fund-raiser called off? I heard Mrs. Gutierrez was balking. We’re too much, aren’t we? A lot of people don’t love the performing arts; I know Byron can be a little over the top.”

  “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s . . . do you remember what you were doing here last night?”

  He shook his head. “I was . . . I mean, I had dinner with the gang, and I guess I might have had one too many margaritas. . . .” With an oddly rolling gait, he started down the stairs, then crossed the foyer toward the front door. I followed behind him. “We were sort of freaking each other out at the idea of spending the night here at the house, and then . . . it’s weird, after that I can’t really remember. Do you think I blacked out or something?”

  I nodded. Adam’s memory loss was par for the course, which made my life—and his death—a lot more difficult. If only I could ask him: Who did this to you? Seems to me we’d all be a lot happier.

  “I should stay away from tequila,” he said. He reached for the front door handle but was unable to grasp it. He tried again, a look of consternation on his face. “What the . . . ? Is it . . . locked?”

  “It’s not locked.”

  “Then what—?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, Adam. You came here last night, and you died.”

  “Huh?”

  “You died last night. Here, in the foyer.”

  Adam cocked his head, reminding me of the Spooner family mannequins in the attic. “Like when you go in front of an audience and totally die in front of them?”

  “No, for real.” I spoke slowly and calmly, pained by his look of incomprehension. “You passed away. And unless I miss my guess . . . you’re stuck here in the house for a while.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I took a deep breath. “Let me try to explain. . . .”

  Chapter Five

  Adam didn’t believe me.

  I talked for half an hour, but he kept shaking his head and trying to turn the brass doorknob, insisting it was broken. At last I opened the door and invited him to leave, but he couldn’t get past the threshold. He used all his strength, but his foot paused over the threshold in mid-air and he couldn’t go any further. It was as if an invisible wall blocked him.

  Still, he refused to believe me. Not that I blamed him; what could possibly prepare a person for something like this?

  It was heartbreaking to watch him try to leave Spooner House. I thought about how wrenching it must have been for Annette Crawford to inform Adam’s family; the grief and devastation they must be feeling right now. I have a stepson in high school, only a few years younger than Adam. . . . I couldn’t imagine the anguish of losing him. Adam’s circle of friends, too, would be forever marked by his loss.

  Had thi
s beautiful Victorian mansion, which already had witnessed the death of a family and a suicide, taken another life? And . . . could the dolls have been roused by a trespasser, as in the legend the students had mentioned?

  Ridiculous. Adam either killed himself in a bleak moment of despair, or someone—someone human—had done this to him.

  After watching him struggle, I felt compelled to figure out what had happened. Then maybe I could help Adam to walk toward the light, or into the stars, or to do whatever he needed to do to pass on to . . . wherever we went after this life on earth.

  One thing I knew for sure, I thought as I watched Adam banging fruitlessly on the window: I couldn’t leave the poor guy’s ghost trapped in the Spooner Mansion forever.

  ***

  Two days later the police department released the scene. The medical examiner had declared Adam’s death a presumed suicide. When I arrived on-site Maya was sitting on the bench outside Spooner House, coffee cup clutched in gloved hands with cutoff fingers.

  “Thank you for meeting me here,” I said to her as I approached the house.

  “You’re welcome. I was a little surprised to hear from you—I guess I assumed they’d call off the Halloween fund-raiser, given what happened.”

  “I thought so, too, but Lurch—sorry, Ed Gaskin—said Adam’s family asked the board to continue in Adam’s memory. He had been devoted to the Spooner House and the youth center. They’re even providing matching funds to whatever the event raises.”

  She looked thoughtful. “I guess that makes a certain kind of sense. But still . . . it seems sort of eerie. But then, I guess that suits Halloween, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Speaking of which . . . is that your costume, or just your normal dress?”

  Today I was wearing a sleeveless orange dress trimmed with fringe, topped with my dad’s old leather bomber jacket.

  “I have a strange fashion sense. I spent years dressing to please other people while I was married, and now that I don’t have to I dress to please myself,” I explained as I unlocked the front door, “My friend is a frustrated fashion designer, and I got in the habit of wearing his designs, even on jobsites. I always bring coveralls for the dirty work, and I wear my work boots, so I’m good to go.”