The Blackham Mansion Haunting (The Downwinders Book 4) Read online

  “Well, shit, Deem,” Winn said. “He couldn’t have just disappeared.”

  “David!” she called again.

  “I’ll try these stairs,” Winn said, “but only one of us. I don’t know if they’ll take much weight. Would you call Carma and tell her I found you? She was as worried as I was.”

  Deem pulled out her phone again. “No reception,” she said. “Let me try outside.” She left Winn’s side and walked back to the entryway. He heard the front door creaking in the distance as she opened it.

  Winn looked up the stairs. They hugged the left wall, and were wide at the bottom, but became narrower as it rose, twisting to the right as they reached the upper level. Some steps had rotted out entirely. A banister made of solid wood still edged the right side. He grabbed it and pushed, testing its strength. It seemed solid. Then he chose a first step to climb, and slowly lowered his weight on it. It didn’t crack under him. So far so good, he thought, searching for the next step that wasn’t broken. Then the next.

  There’s that feeling again, he thought as the warning passed over him. He felt it from all directions — ahead, above, where the staircase turned to become a hallway he couldn’t yet see down, and from below, as though something might follow him up the stairs. This place isn’t just haunted, he thought. It’s dangerous. Something that hasn’t shown itself yet.

  He’d made it half way up when Deem returned.

  “You can come back down,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I just talked to Carma. David is there, at the house. In Leeds.”

  “I thought you said he came with you?”

  “He did. We were both here, trancing.”

  “Well, your truck’s still outside,” Winn said, climbing down the steps using the same stairs he’d selected to go up. “How’s that possible? It’s more than an hour back to Leeds!”

  “I have no idea,” she replied.

  Chapter Two

  Winn followed Deem as she rushed into the house. David was sitting in the back drawing room, wrapped up in several blankets and sipping at a cup of something hot.

  “David!” Deem said. “Are you alright?”

  “Fine, I think,” David answered. “I feel fine. Carma insisted I use these blankets.”

  “Because he was stone cold, let me tell you!” Carma said, arriving in the room with emphatic indignation. “He’s been arguing with me about it, but I have insisted, as you can see.” She turned to Winn. “Arguing with me about things is never a good idea.”

  “No, I expect not,” Winn replied. Carma turned to leave the room.

  Deem sat next to David. “We were in the house. What happened?”

  “Honestly, I don’t remember any house,” David replied. “Carma says we left together earlier, but I don’t remember that. I don’t remember going anywhere with you today.”

  Deem turned to look at Winn, confused.

  “Memory loss?” Winn offered weakly.

  She turned back to David. “You don’t remember driving up to Paragonah? The Blackham mansion? We were trancing?”

  David stared back at Deem, sharing her confused look. He shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, what do you remember?” she asked.

  “I remember being here, earlier,” he replied. “I remember Carma waking me up, forcing me to sit in all these blankets and drink something.”

  “I’ve brought some of it for all of you,” Carma said, arriving in the room with a tray of mugs that had little wisps of steam rising from each. “He was so cold it sent a chill over the entire house. Here, have some.” She pressed a mug into Winn’s hands, and he took it.

  “But what about before that?” Deem asked. “Before Carma woke you?”

  “I must have gone to sleep,” David said. “I remember being here, in the house, earlier this morning. Doing homework.”

  “You don’t remember me knocking on your door, asking if you wanted to go with me to Paragonah?”

  “No,” David said. “Honestly, Deem, I don’t!”

  “Something dreadful has happened to him,” Carma said to Deem. “His memory may return after a while. For now, you’re the only one who might be able to shed some light on things. Can you tell us what happened? Why did you go to Paragonah? I remember you mentioning the journal, but maybe you could explain more and make sure we’re all on the same page. It might jog David’s memory.”

  “Alright,” Deem said, leaning back into the sofa as Carma handed her a mug. She took a sip. “Oh, that’s good!”

  “It’s got a nice little zing, doesn’t it?” Carma said. “Now, start at the beginning, dear.”

  Deem sighed. “I’ve been trying to read the journal I found in the mine. Lorenzo Lyman’s journal. It’s been slow going, but I’ve found that the more I try to read it, the more I understand. Re-reading it helps; coming back to some parts after reading others kind of opened them up. So I’m able to make out a lot of it that I couldn’t at first.

  “Lorenzo’s mother was gifted, that’s how he inherited the gift. She was one of eight wives of Amasa Lyman, his father, who was an apostle in the church back in the 1800s. Because of his father’s high profile, Lorenzo’s public use of his gift was limited to the kind of folk magic people would accept, like dowsing.

  “Then, his father was excommunicated for heresy. It split the family, with some supporting Amasa, others siding with the church. One of his sons, Francis, rejected him and went on to become an apostle himself. There’s a town near Park City that’s named after him. Lorenzo, on the other hand, supported his father.

  “One of Amasa’s interests was Spiritualism. Lorenzo shared his father’s interest in it, I think because it gave him an outlet for his gift. They became dedicated practitioners.”

  “What is Spiritualism?” Winn asked, sipping his mug. “I’ve heard the name before, but what is it exactly?”

  “Basically a belief in the ability to talk with the dead,” Deem replied. “A loose religion sprung up around it. It’s still around today, though it’s nowhere near as popular as it was a century ago, primarily due to all the fakery and debunking that occurred.”

  “Debunking?” Winn asked.

  “Spiritualists would conduct elaborate séances to speak with the dead,” Deem replied. “Mediums who could conduct compelling sessions became celebrities. Most of them wound up being charlatans and were exposed by critics as frauds. They’d fake rappings, levitations, ectoplasm. It fell out of favor as a pastime, and only the hard-core believers stuck with it. Lorenzo was hard-core.”

  “He had cause to be,” Carma interjected. “He had the gift. He knew it was possible, speaking with the dead. But most people who had the gift kept Spiritualism at arm’s length. It seemed something normal people liked to indulge in as a curiosity, and it became such a sideshow that any self-respecting gifted wouldn’t participate. We would much rather indulge in private, or with other gifteds, but not with a random group of strangers, a couple of which might be debunkers set on exposing you and making an uncomfortable, embarrassing scene!”

  “Spoken like you had some experience with it, Carma,” Winn said.

  Carma laughed. “You amuse me, dear boy,” she replied. “I’m nowhere near that old.”

  “How old are you, exactly?” Winn asked. He could see Deem react to the question in his peripheral vision, shrinking.

  “Why, that’s impertinent!” Carma shot back, a look of distaste on her face. “What happened to the boy who was raised to never ask a woman her age? I’m thirty-nine, if you must know.” She demurely took another sip.

  “Lorenzo was an avid follower,” Deem continued. “Even when his father lost interest in it, he kept up, organizing more and more intense séances. He and a group of friends held routine sessions. One of their favorite places to stage a séance was the Blackham mansion in Paragonah. The owner shared their interest in the dead and had enough rooms to put up overnight guests, which came in handy since their sessions would som
etimes go all night. It had an added bonus of being right next to a graveyard. Lorenzo and his associates held dozens if not hundreds of séances there over the course of several years.

  “Then, something goes wrong. The journal ends. The final entry is about going to find a friend of his, a man named Jacob. After that, nothing, just some drawings.”

  “So why did you go in?” Winn asked. “You were trying to contact Lorenzo?”

  “I thought it was worth a shot,” Deem replied. “After spending so much time with his journal, I was interested in what happened to him. There’s no record of a gravesite for him, so I thought maybe he was still at the house, haunting it. After going there, I have a strong sense that he’s present in the house, somewhere. And then there’s the mirror.”

  “The mirror?” Carma asked.

  Deem pulled the journal from her backpack and opened it to a particular page. She turned the book around and showed it to the others.

  “Oh, no!” Carma said.

  It was a drawing of an oval mirror, the kind that sat on top of antique sideboards or dressers. It had roughly-drawn ornamentation surrounding the frame, giving it a gilded appearance.

  “Why didn’t you tell me it had a mirror?” Carma moaned.

  “I didn’t know it mattered,” Deem replied.

  Carma lowered her head to her hand, rubbing the temples with her long fingers as though she could massage a headache away. “So unaware of treachery, so naive…” she muttered.

  “What?” Deem asked.

  “Something tried to contact you?” Carma said, still rubbing the side of her forehead. “Through that drawing?”

  “No,” Deem replied. “But this exact mirror is in the house.” She pulled the book back so that she could see it too, while still showing it to the others. “I recognized this mark,” she said, pointing to a nick in the bottom of the carved frame. “When I…”

  The book jumped in her hand, and the drawing of the mirror suddenly shifted on the page, rising an inch until the top of the mirror had become cut off.

  Startled, Deem dropped the book on the floor and it closed.

  “Fuck!” Winn said. “Did you see that, Carma?”

  She was still rubbing her temples. “No,” she replied, then looked up. “Let me guess, something strange happened. With the mirror.”

  Deem looked up from the book, at Carma. “It shifted. On the page.”

  “Uh huh,” Carma said, lowering her head back to her hand, where she resumed the massage. “Well, what’s done is done. I should have been more careful when you first brought it here.”

  “You were careful,” Deem said. “You wrapped it in a red scarf and then burned the scarf in the BBQ pit, remember?”

  “Might be the only thing saving us now,” Carma replied.

  Deem looked at Winn, unsure of how to respond. Winn interpreted it as a plea for help.

  “I’m guessing the scarf was designed to absorb something from the book?” Winn asked. “And by burning it, you took something out of the book and destroyed it?”

  “Hopefully,” Carma said, rising. “Maybe. Perhaps. No way to know for sure.” She continued mumbling as she walked out of the room and down a hallway deeper into the house.

  “She seems really put out!” David whispered to Deem. “Maybe you shouldn’t have brought the book into the house at all!”

  “How’d I know?” Deem said. “She seemed fine about it after she wrapped it in the scarf.”

  “I think she’s being a little overly dramatic,” Winn whispered back. “She’s good at that.”

  Carma wandered back into the room. “I have a splitting headache,” she said as she sat back down. “I took ten aspirin. I’m sure it’ll be gone in a bit.”

  “Ten!” Winn said. “Carma! That’s way too many!”

  “Oh, did I say ten?” she replied. “I meant to say three. That’s just me being overly dramatic, I guess.”

  “You overheard me,” Winn said.

  “There’s little that goes on in this house that I don’t know about,” Carma replied, “but, I’m sad to say, that journal is one that I missed. I should have reviewed it with you, Deem. My mistake.”

  “It’s no big deal, Carma,” Deem said.

  “Oh, dear,” Carma replied, “big problems arise from little problems that aren’t properly dealt with. Missing the mirror in that book was a little problem. Now we have a big problem.”

  “What problem?” Deem asked. “I just won’t go back to that house, if it’s as bad as all that. I can live with not knowing.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Carma replied. “Look at him, he’s nodding off. Help me get him to bed, will you, Winn?”

  Carma rose from her seat and walked to David, pulling him up from the blankets. Winn assisted, grabbing David by the other side, and Carma lifted one of the blankets and wrapped it around him, ushering him upstairs.

  Winn helped them both and watched as Carma tucked David in, treating him as though he was a five-year-old. David was indeed sleepy, and didn’t resist as Carma pulled the covers over him and added the extra blanket on top. By the time they left the room, Winn could hear David softly snoring.

  They joined Deem in the sitting room.

  “Is he OK?” Deem asked Carma.

  “I’m afraid not,” Carma replied. “I didn’t want to say it while he was still in the room, but something’s very wrong with him. Seriously wrong. And I’m not being overly dramatic.”

  “Seriously wrong how?” Winn asked.

  “I might be mistaken,” Carma said. “It could be a side effect from having been blipped from Paragonah to here. But I’m afraid it might be much worse.”

  “Is that what you think happened?” Winn asked. “He was blipped?”

  “Like teleported?” Deem offered.

  “Whatever,” Carma said, shaking her head. “One moment he was in that house with you, and the next he was here. Call it whatever you want.”

  “What happened to him in Paragonah, Deem?” Winn asked. “You two were trancing, and you went exploring inside the house?”

  “It was much stranger than that,” Deem replied. “Bizarre, really.”

  “Did you see him disappear?” Winn asked.

  “No,” Deem replied. “The house wasn’t the same in the River. Well, it was, but it was different. Bigger. Duplicated.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” Winn replied.

  Deem sighed. “I kind of lost track of him. There are three doors that lead to the outside in that house on the ground level: the front door, the one in the back in the kitchen, and one on the side, at the end of a hallway. We didn’t see anything strange or unusual in the house, but when we went through the front door, we found ourselves walking into the kitchen, through the back door. When we walked through the kitchen door, the opposite happened — we came through the front door, into the entryway by the living room. But it wasn’t the same living room. It was a different one.”

  “What do you mean, different?” Carma asked.

  “It was still run down, but in different ways,” Deem answered. “Slightly different. A chunk of plaster that was on the ground in a particular place had been moved. Holes in the wall were a little smaller. Stains on peeling wallpaper were in different places, and were different in color.”

  “What happened if you walked out the hallway door?” Winn asked.

  “You came back into the kitchen,” Deem answered.

  “And the kitchen was different each time, too?” Carma asked.

  “Yes,” Deem replied. “Sometimes it was less messy. The walls looked in better shape.”

  “So these were new rooms, not just the original room?” Winn asked. “You weren’t looping back into the same house?”

  “It seemed that way,” Deem replied. “It felt like you were stepping into a whole new instance of the house each time. We tried backtracking and were able to go back to the original house just fine. Once we realized the hallway door led to the kitchen entrance, same as
the front door, we wondered if it was the same instance of the new house regardless of which exit you took. It wasn’t. The hallway door and the front door led to completely different kitchens.”

  “Christ!” Winn muttered.

  “That’s when I got nervous, realizing it would be really easy to get lost,” Deem continued. “So we tried dropping out, just to make sure we could get back to our bodies. We left the River, found ourselves back in the original house, sitting on the floor in the living room, just as we were when we started. When we jumped back in, it’s like we were starting from scratch in the original house.”

  “And when you went back through the duplicate houses, were they the same as the first time you went through them?” Carma asked.

  “The exact same,” Deem replied. “We went maybe six or seven deep. Who knows, it might go on forever.”

  “And what happened to David?” Winn asked.

  “We would separate in each house,” Deem replied. “I was intrigued with the mirror, and I wanted to check how it appeared in each new house. The mirror is on a vanity in a room upstairs, and David was tired of following me up each time, so we got into a routine where I’d look through the upstairs, and he’d look through the downstairs. We’d meet up at the base of the stairs, and pick which door we wanted to leave through.

  “All the mirrors I was finding were just frames; the glass had long ago been broken out and was missing. But I had just found a mirror that still had a piece of glass in it when you pulled me back. Most of its mirror backing was gone, but there was something there, some kind of power within it. I don’t know how long I’d been looking at it when I felt the slap, you hitting my face. Pulled me right out.”

  “David’s body wasn’t in the room when I got there,” Winn said. “If he was pulled back here somehow, it happened before I arrived.”

  “How long did it seem you were in there?” Carma asked.

  “A couple of hours at most,” Deem replied. “But that couldn’t be…we got there around one-thirty or two. And it was eight when you pulled me out, Winn?”

  “Just after,” Winn answered.

  “So time is a little odd there, too,” Carma replied.