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I walked a few more paces so I stood in the exact center of the room, then closed my eyes. Once all visual stimulus had been removed, I was more aware of other, subtler inputs — the faint smell of beeswax furniture polish, an even fainter hint of smoke from the huge marble fireplace…a drift of Chloé perfume from Josie’s direction. A small creak from the floorboards as she shifted weight, another sharper creak that might have been the house settling.
Or maybe it was something else.
No, these all just felt like old house noises and nothing more. I didn’t get a sense of anything else here other than Josie and myself, unless you could include the faint sounds of birds chirping in the garden. But nothing of an otherworldly presence, nothing that made me think this place could possibly be haunted.
Of course, she’d said that the Bigelow mansion’s ghosts were shy and didn’t like strangers. Maybe they were used to Josie, but they’d never encountered me before. They could be hiding.
Even so, I should’ve been able to get a hint of something. More than once in the past, I’d entered a house and known immediately that it had its own otherworldly residents, even if they weren’t doing anything to manifest at the moment.
This place, though…it felt like a total blank.
“I’m not getting anything,” I said, knowing I frowned as I spoke.
Josie tilted her head at me. “You’re sure?”
I nodded. “Totally sure. I’m not saying that necessarily means anything, but it’s still kind of strange.”
“Well, I think we should take that as a good sign,” she said, sounding a bit too cheerful. Probably, she didn’t want anything to happen that had even the slightest chance of my mother and Tom backing out of the sale. Her commission on a sale like this must have been pretty hefty. “I think it means that even if we have ghosts here, they’re obviously the shy, retiring type. I doubt they’ll cause any trouble for your parents.”
It wasn’t worth the effort to point out that I really didn’t see Tom as a “parent” — I’d lost the battle years before, and just went with the flow whenever someone referred to him that way.
I settled for giving a noncommittal shrug, then said, “I’m sorry I dragged you out here for nothing.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble.” Once again, Josie tilted an inquisitive look up at me. “Are you sure you don’t want to check the other rooms, though, just in case?”
I doubted that would do any good. Even in the instances where a spirit tended to haunt a particular room or single location, I’d been able to feel their presence as soon as I stepped inside a building. It should have been the same situation here.
But I figured I might as well make the attempt, if for no other reason than to make it seem as if I’d put in an effort somewhat equal to the time spent driving out here. So I said, “Sure,” and made my way through the rest of the rooms on the ground floor — the enormous dining room with its table for twelve, a smaller parlor that had been fitted up as a family room, with a large TV mounted to the wall above the fireplace. That was about the only concession to modern technology I’d seen so far in the house…except for the electric lights, of course, and the shiny new-looking appliances in the kitchen.
The whole place felt quiet and serene, untroubled by any kind of wayward spirit. At the end, I circled back to the foyer and stood at the base of the staircase.
“I could go upstairs,” I told Josie. “But I don’t think there’s any reason to do that. If any spirits are lingering here, they don’t want to be seen or sensed. And if there was something dark in the house, I know I would have felt that.”
Her expression relaxed. “Well, I have to say that’s a relief. Although now I’m beginning to wonder whether Hank and Nora were pulling everyone’s leg about the whole haunted house thing. For all I know, they liked to spread those stories because it got them some attention.”
Including a segment on a cable show. Had they been playing some kind of long game, trying to stir up interest in their house in advance of putting it on the market?
I supposed that was a possibility. Since I’d never met the people in question, I couldn’t begin to guess whether they were the type to pull that kind of stunt.
“Were there any reports of hauntings here before they moved in?”
“Hmm.” Josie’s auburn penciled brows furrowed. “I’m honestly not sure. They lived in the house for almost forty years, so anyone who would have lived here before them is gone now.”
“Well, maybe there are records somewhere,” I said. “Does the library have a local history section?”
The Globe library occupied a quaint brick building at the far end of downtown, but so far I hadn’t visited it. No, it was a lot easier for my lazy self to just download the books I wanted from my favorite online store instead of lugging a bunch of hardbacks around.
But I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to get any Globe history books on my phone, so maybe a trip to the library was in order…if they would even have the sort of thing I was looking for.
“Oh, yes,” Josie replied immediately, relieving my fears on that score. “They have a whole shelf of books about the town and its history. That would definitely be the best place to look.”
“Then I’ll go see what I can find tomorrow,” I said. “They’re probably closed by now, and besides, I need to get out to Calvin’s place after you drop me off back home.”
Her expression turned almost sly. “Another date?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it a ‘date,’” I said, my tone too casual. “I’m making him dinner — I just love cooking in that kitchen of his.”
From the way her light blue eyes danced at that comment, I had a feeling Josie was trying to decide whether my words had a double meaning I hadn’t intended.
