While Tess and Wyatt were chatting about real-world matters like blood samples and DNA, what they weren’t talking about hung in the air around them, just as a ghost would, filling up the room with unseen dread.
Tess held Wyatt’s gaze for a long time. “What was that, in the studio, Wyatt?” she said, her voice not much louder than a whisper. Tears were pricking at her eyes.
He leaned back into the sofa cushions and took a deep breath, considering his answer. “I can’t tell you what it was,” he said, finally. “But I can tell you what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a person. It wasn’t an animal. It wasn’t any type of sound that could be made by water running through pipes or old houses creaking or anything like ancient wood splintering from the cold. Nothing like that.”
“It was not of this world, is what you’re saying,” Tess said.
“Yeah, like Jane said before,” Wyatt said. “It’s a pretty safe bet your house is haunted.”
“But I’ve been coming here my whole life,” Tess protested. “I’ve never seen or heard anything like this at La Belle Vie.”
Wyatt nodded. “I know,” he said. “But what Jane said is really true. Renovations sometimes disturb things.”
Tess took a deep breath and scratched her head. “You’re talking like you believe all of this stuff—ghosts, spirits. Do you?”
“I guess I do,” he said, propping his feet up onto the chaise. “It’s not something I go around spouting off about, but—”
“Has anything like this happened to you before?”
“I’ve seen some things,” he said. “Experienced some things I can’t quite explain. Jane’s right about the fact that this whole town seems to be haunted. Or enchanted. Or something. It’s like the veil that everyone talks about, the separation between this world and the next, seems very thin here. Like a person could pass right through without even knowing it.”
This sent a chill up Tess’s spine. She had always felt Wharton was a magical place. Not a malevolent one. “Why is that?”
Wyatt took a sip of his wine. “It’s hard to coalesce it into one reasonable explanation, but look at the strange things that have happened here. You know that, a few years ago, the Cliffside Manor, a Retreat for Artists and Writers, burned down, just outside of town.”
“I had heard about that,” Tess said. “It was on that stretch of road . . .”
“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “That stretch of road where so many people have gone off the cliff. Rumors have been circulating for years about the strange circumstances around that place burning down. People say it was haunted. And not by your dearly departed aunt, so to speak. Something more sinister than that. It doesn’t surprise me, what with the building starting its life as a tuberculosis sanatorium. All of those people dying there . . .”
Tess shivered. She had indeed heard the rumors.
“And then there’s the story of my family and the origins of this town,” Wyatt went on. “A whole village disappearing, John Wharton awakening as though he was in some sort of old Irish folktale and finding all of the people he had been living with, and loving, maybe weren’t people at all. Maybe he had somehow inadvertently stepped through that thin veil into—I don’t know—another time. An ancient time. And somehow, during the night, he crossed back over into his own.”
“Do you think that’s what happened?”
“I don’t know,” Wyatt said. “Like I said before, it might just be an old tale. But what if it wasn’t? What does it say about this place?”
Tess let that sink in. What, indeed?
“And then,” he said, leaning forward, his eyes widening, “there are stories from almost every old place in town about resident ghosts, strange happenings. Harrison’s House—I’m surprised Simon hasn’t told you about it—and LuAnn’s boarding house top the list. Her cook—and husband—Gary, calls the ghosts in their place ‘passers-through.’”
“Passers-through?”
“Yeah, like they’re traveling, on their way to somewhere else,” Wyatt said. “And to get there, they pass through LuAnn’s.”
“That’s crazy,” Tess said. “Maybe not so crazy in Wharton. My family has gone to LuAnn’s for the fish boil on Friday nights in the summer. I’ve been there a few times, actually. It’s quite the production.”