All Those Who Came Before Read online

  Then her voice sing-songed, “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts...or snakes, faces in the well or shadows.”

  Frank’s laugh was soft, but still it broke the tension. She knew she’d won.

  He reached over between the chairs and captured her hand. “I can’t change your mind, can I?”

  “Have you ever been able to when I really wanted to do something? Especially when it comes to my art?”

  “No.”

  She squeezed his hand. “A couple more days and I’ll be gone from that place. I promise.”

  “All right. I’m not going to order you to stop what you so obviously want to do. I don’t have that right. It’s your job. Just promise me you won’t go inside that house and you won’t wander around the grounds. Promise?”

  “I won’t.”

  She felt some doubt. The fact that Frank was so unsure about the Theiss house that he had to speak of it again, speak of his uneasy impressions of the place, did bother her. But it didn’t change her mind. She was more determined to paint those pictures and to find out more about the family that had once lived there. She’d talk to Irma at The Fabric Shop when she could. See what the long time businesswoman could add to what she already knew. Until then, she would be cautious when she went back to the Theiss house. She’d keep her eyes open, she thought a little amused, for roving shadows and glowing eyes in the well.

  Also, and this idea had just come to her. She could request Glinda accompany her tomorrow when she went out to the Theiss house. See what she thought of it, what she felt from it, if anything. Yes, that was what she would do. Ask Glinda to come with her.

  A short time later they abandoned the porch and went inside. As the fog crept in, churning around the cabin, they watched television before they went to bed.

  The same fog slipped around and over the old Theiss house miles away. The house, alone and sad, sat empty as it had the last four decades. Waiting.

  Chapter 4

  Glinda was in the kitchen the following morning, staring out at the dissipating fog, when Myrtle, in her nightgown and robe, stumbled in and plunked down at the table. The day was already warm for as early as it was, the sun seeming to fill the sky as it chased away the mist. She hoped it wouldn’t be as sweltering as the previous week. She liked warm weather well enough, but when she went out into town, or peddled around on her bicycle, she didn’t much care to be covered in sweat the whole time.

  “Good morning, Auntie.” Glinda presented Myrtle with a cup of coffee and planted a kiss on the old woman’s cheek. She’d grown very fond of her aunt in the time they’d been living together. Myrtle had become the grandmother she’d never had and a very dear friend. Now Glinda couldn’t imagine her life without her, as eccentric as Myrtle often was.

  “Ah, thanks, Niece. I need this coffee to wake me up. I didn’t sleep all that great last night so I’m not as bright eyed and bushy tailed as most mornings. Mayhap this cup of joe will kick start me. My arthritis is acting up something fierce, too.” Her wrinkled face brought out a smile, though her eyes were dull, her shoulders slumped. Her aunt had aged considerably since her accident two years before when she’d fallen–no slipped–into the creek and broke her arm. A lot of her everyday energy was diminished, yet none of her feistiness.

  “I’ll make you a batch of my special medicinal toddy later today and you can have it before you go to bed tonight. That’ll ease your arthritis pain and help you sleep better.”

  “Thanks. It always does help.” Then without taking a beat, she plunged on, “What are we having for breakfast?”

  Glinda’s lips formed a smile. “There’s that loaf of sourdough bread in the cabinet I baked yesterday; strawberry and blueberry preserves in the refrigerator. Help yourself. You know where the toaster is.”

  Myrtle had shuffled to the refrigerator before Glinda had finished her last sentence. The old woman had the preserves out, the bread, a spoon and a knife, and carried them to the table. She sliced off and popped four pieces of bread into the toaster. The room filled with the scent of toasting bread. Glinda loved that smell. Like the new day, it was familiar as well as comforting. A new morning meant a clean slate, a new start. Nothing was impossible when the sun was just waking up.

  While her aunt prepared breakfast Glinda walked into her fortune telling salon, retrieved her most intuitive deck of tarot cards from the top drawer of her antique cabinet and positioned herself at the lace-covered table. She began to leisurely shuffle the cards. She’d had them, her favorite deck, for many years. At least twenty. They were hand-painted, unique, and because of these things were extremely rare, and by now probably priceless. She’d never seen another deck like them. The individual characters on each one were painted in muted, evocative colors. The borders were laced with ghostly faces, demons and scary-looking cats. All illustrations quite whimsical. The cards were very old. Glinda, had from the beginning, suspected the deck had been created by a practicing witch. An artist witch. It made sense because of the way the deck reacted to her.

  Sometimes, when Glinda touched one of the cards an electrical current, a tingling shock, would jump into her fingers and she’d see things in her mind. Images she wanted to see and sometimes possibilities she didn’t want to see. But the deck, for many reasons, was precious to her so she treasured them. They always revealed the truth.

  A gypsy medium she’d once known on the carnival circuit–oh, what was her name?–had given them to her when Glinda was still very young and living with her mother. The medium had been the real thing. The truest mystic Glinda had ever known. Strange woman, though. She’d been around eighty years old, or so she said, but had looked fifty. She liked to wear these golden John Lennon glasses and had a thing for flamboyant hats. Dressed all in black all the time. Black silk clothes. Black eyeliner. Black eye shadow. Her hair had been the hue of a raven’s wing; even her knowing eyes had been dark. Only her hats and glasses had been any other color than black.

  Glinda, just a young girl, had thought the mystic had been exotic. Mysterious. The woman told intriguing, fanciful stories that young Glinda couldn’t get enough of, especially the ones about the mystic’s personal experiences. The tales she’d regaled Glinda with had never left her.

  The medium claimed she went home, when she wasn’t traveling the carnie circuit in her RV, to a possessed abode full of ghosts. Some weren’t so nice, either. The house had been over two hundred years old and had a bloodied history. Psychics and ghost chasers had been drawn to the place since it had been built. The medium was sure it was because the property itself had once been a cemetery. The original owner had been warned not to build there, but he hadn’t listened, and had erected his home there anyway. So the spirits that lived beneath the house were angry their resting place had been desecrated. One apparition, a child who’d died a hundred years before of scarlet fever, according to the gypsy medium, would often cry in the upper bedroom for hours until dawn. The child kept the medium from her sleep until a way was found to exorcise her.

  Then there’d been this adolescent woman specter who, in life, had been abducted and later slaughtered by Native Americans when she attempted to escape; and she haunted another small family graveyard behind the house, searching for her long dead family, singing a mournful song most evenings at dusk.

  One story her gypsy friend had often regaled her with was the one about the infamous midnight séance. A séance of thirteen seasoned, and some quite famous for their day, clairvoyants who’d all gathered on a rainy Halloween, when the spirit world was easiest to reach across and into, at midnight at her house was what it had taken to free the house’s imprisoned spirits.

  Glinda could still remember how she’d sat, spellbound in the medium’s cramped carnival RV with the dirty windows, and listened to the gypsy’s frightening account of that séance. The ghosts had risen up, in all their macabre glory, around the seated circle of mediums and had terrorized the participants; trying to scare them from the house. Oh, it had been an exciting evening, or it ha
d sounded like one the way the gypsy had entertained Glinda with the details of it and its aftermath. In the end, the living circle had triumphed and banished the specters back to beneath the earth, or wherever ghosts go when they were exorcised.

  Only about twelve years old at the time, Glinda had already known what she would become. A psychic who could see and hear the dead. Even at that tender age, she’d already been visited by dead people. So she’d had more than a passing curiosity in the doings at the gypsy’s haunted house or in anything else the gypsy had to say.

  Glinda snapped her fingers, her memory providing her with the elusive name of the gypsy. Imelda. That was the medium’s name. Imelda Graystone. She wondered if the gypsy clairvoyant was still on the living plane or if she’d joined her spectral roommates? A whisper floated in her ear, a recognizable laugh, and all of a sudden Imelda’s misty and pale face was in the air in front of her, smiling. Just for a moment, then the face dissipated. Yep, she’s in the afterlife all right, Glinda concluded.

  Hello there, my old friend, Glinda sent the thought out into the spectral sphere. So nice to see you. Is all well with you?

  All is well. I am at peace. In this other place, the place I am now in, there is no sadness, no want or need, no regrets. I am happy. And you? Are you happy?

  I am, Glinda responded wordlessly. I have a home at last, love and friends. I’m getting married soon.

  Good for you, Psychic. Enjoy your life. It will pass quicker than you even know. Welcome happiness. Give love and kindness to others always.

  Always, Glinda echoed silently. But by then Imelda’s ghost was gone. Back into the ether. She probably had more important afterlife things to do than jabber with a live person.

  Glinda eyes studied the cards she’d laid on the table in the traditional configuration. She wanted to read Abigail’s spread one more time. Perhaps the cards would disclose more than they had the day before.

  Still the cards divulged nothing, or nothing that made much sense. Again. She reshuffled and laid them down once more, one at a time, face up. Her frown slid on and then off. For some reason the tarot weren’t revealing what she wanted them to reveal. So she’d keep trying.

  Maybe, if she was open to it, she’d have a vision or would receive some sort of message concerning Abigail and whatever danger she was in. In time. Glinda was anxious for her friend and what might be threatening her or those she loved. She merely had to be patient. The answer she was seeking always came, sooner or later.

  As she left the room, the deck cradled in her hands, her eyes swept across the mural on the side wall. Abigail had painted it for her the year before. It was stunning, or Glinda thought it was, with its swirling brushstrokes and muted mystical images. In the center there was an anonymous, dreamlike fortune teller in full silken regalia huddled, face barely seen, over a crystal ball. A golden glow, which radiated into a soft rainbow of colors, surrounded her and the ball. There was an intricately recreated deck of tarot cards, the very ones Glinda now held in her hands and cherished most. Abigail had used them as models and painted them painstakingly in muted detail. On the mural, the cards were spread out on one side of the round lace-covered table, and on the other side glittered multi-colored crystalline rocks and flickering candles. Around the table, in the mural’s shadows, a smoky haze partially hid ethereal figures who almost appeared to move, floating, if a person looked at them out of the corner of their eyes quick enough.

  All in all the mural was hauntingly spooky. It was the perfect backdrop for a psychic’s reading room. Her customers never failed to comment on how eerie and beautiful it was. Glinda loved it. The wall painting, along with the emerald velvet curtains covering the windows, plush carpeting and other accoutrements of her trade, transformed the room into a surreal space. When Glinda was in that room, mood lights set low, giving a reading to someone, it felt as if she were in another world. Which, often, she was.

  She joined Myrtle in the kitchen and made herself toast to go with her tea. As Glinda finished her meal she brought the cards out one more time. Myrtle wandered out of the kitchen, for some reason or other, but Glinda was lost in the cards and hardly noticed her exit.

  Is Abigail in danger? Is the danger the Theiss house? she silently queried the cards as she dealt and spread them purposely out in the normal patterns on the kitchen table. Once. Twice. Three times. Gently biting her lip, she scrutinized the final spread. She was confused. The cards were still being so enigmatic, which wasn’t like them. There was danger, yes, for Abigail but Glinda couldn’t tell from whom or what. She was missing something, though she couldn’t decipher what it was. With a sigh of resignation, she collected the cards and put them away. She’d try again later.

  Her cell phone rang. She answered it. “Good morning, Glinda Whitestar here.”

  “Hi Glinda. Good morning to you, too.” It was, of all people, Abigail. Now that was an odd coincidence.

  “Abigail. What’s up?”

  Myrtle, who’d been bustling around the house doing this and that had reentered the kitchen when the phone rang. The old lady had sharp hearing when she needed it. All ears, she was openly and eagerly eavesdropping on Glinda’s side of the conversation. Nothing new there.

  “I wanted to ask you a favor.” Abigail’s manner on the other end of the line came across as restrained; her voice subdued. Glinda sensed more urgency than Abigail’s words reflected.

  “Anything. What do you need?”

  Abigail began speaking. “As you and Myrtle are, Frank is worried about me being alone at that abandoned Theiss house and, to be truthful, I have to say now...I am a little wary myself. I haven’t told anyone this, not even Frank, but a strange thing happened to me there yesterday. I heard a voice, or I thought I heard a voice, but there was no one there. It said: Don’t go. That was weird enough–heck, it could have just been my imagination–but then last night Frank told me about a series of strange incidences that happened to him, as well, when he stopped by the Theiss house yesterday, and how they had made him nervous. He saw a shadow, that’s how he described the thing, moving around the house, and he spied glowing eyes, or what he thought were eyes, deep in the well. Once a cop always a cop, you know? He couldn’t help but patrol the property. But together, what he saw and what I heard have given me pause.”

  “About the Theiss place, huh?”

  “Yes, about the Theiss place. I’d like someone else to go there in person with me and see if they feel or sense anything wrong with the place. So I was wondering if you, the local town psychic, and my very good friend, would humor me and take a quick ride over there with me this morning? Give me your take on the place? See if you sense firsthand, standing on its ground and looking right at it, anything wrong with it? That is if you have some free time?”

  “I’m free for a while. I don’t have anyone coming for a reading until after noon. What about now?” Glinda offered. There was a sense of relief she could perhaps at last get a true reading on Abigail’s future; what danger she was in. Perhaps the cards had known this little trip to the Theiss house was coming and that explained why they’d been so enigmatic with her. This excursion might give her the answers she sought.

  Myrtle was whispering, “What does she want? You going somewhere?”

  Glinda’s fingers were at her lips, then she whispered at her aunt, “Shh, Auntie. I’ll update you in a sec.”

  “Now is perfect,” Glinda said to Abigail.

  “I can pick you up in about fifteen minutes. Can you be ready by then?”

  Glinda peered down at the lounging gown she was wearing. She needed a shower. She’d have to change. “Make it a half hour. I have to get cleaned up and dressed.”

  “Half hour it is. See you then.” Abigail hung up.

  Myrtle was staring at her. “She wants you to go out to that murder house with her, doesn’t she? Take a direct reading on it? See if it is as evil, haunted, as I say it is, right?”

  “You’re right. She’s picking me up in thirty minutes. You wa
nt to come along?” Glinda grinned.

  Myrtle’s stare sharpened, her lips puckering. “I don’t think so. And if I were you I’d go there, get in and out quick, because that place is spooked for sure. I’d feel better if you didn’t go over there at all, but I know nothing I say will stop you. You’re as stubborn as Abigail. Stubborn as I am. It’s in the blood. Good thing is if you feel something evil is lurking around the place hopefully you can convince Abigail to leave and not go back there. Give up this crazy notion she has of painting that cursed house.”

  “We’ll see. No worries, Auntie. If I sense the house isn’t safe, I’ll tell her in very firm terms. Now I’m going to get dressed.”

  Glinda changed her clothes, yet the whole time she was aware of an inner angst taking root inside her she couldn’t shake. Was it the house reaching out to her already? She’d find out soon enough.

  TWENTY-SEVEN MINUTES later Abigail knocked on the door. Glinda let her in.

  Myrtle was lurking in the hallway. She was still in her nightgown and robe; nibbling on another piece of jam covered toast. Her snowy hair a wild halo around her small head.

  “Hi Myrtle,” Abigail greeted her. “You’re up early.”

  “I always get up early,” Myrtle retorted. “Makes the day last longer.”

  “If you say so.” Abigail smiled and swung around to Glinda.

  “I’m ready to go,” Glinda answered without being asked as she headed for the door.

  Abigail looked back over her shoulder at Myrtle. “Are you coming with us?”

  Myrtle chuckled. “Heck no. Been there, done that. That place is bad news. If you want my advice, neither one of you should be going there. Plumb crazy is what you two are if you do. Nothing you can see or feel there will change the truth. You should just stay away from that house. Plain and simple.”