A Haunting at Land’s End
By
Barbara E Pleasant
Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Co.
E-book edition © 2013
All rights reserved – Barbara E Pleasant
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, from the publisher.
Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.
12620 FM 1960, Suite A4-507
Houston, TX 77065
www.sbpra.com
ISBN: 978-1-62212-062-8
This book is a work of fiction and is drawn completely from the writer’s imagination. Names, characters, incidents, and places, are imaginary, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, persons, living or dead is coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1-Am I dead?
Chapter 2-Land’s End
Chapter 3-Voices from the floor
Chapter 4-Maybe she doesn’t know she’s dead
Chapter 5-A doll for a ghost
Chapter 6-I’m in Hell
Chapter 7-The new dock
Chapter 8-Searching for treasure
Chapter 9-Susan’s new home
Chapter 10-X marks the spot
Chapter 11-Ghost busters
Chapter 1
Am I dead?
The story begins in the year 1866 right after the Civil War ended.
In a rage, Charlotte’s face contorted into a mask of hate. She shouted, “You want my share of Land’s End too? My home? You’ve taken everything away from me, everything!” She screamed at Anna while reaching behind her for the heavy poker standing beside the fireplace. “But no more. You won’t take Land’s End! I won’t let you.”
Fumbling for a reply, Anna backed away, frightened by the fury on Charlotte’s face. “Charlotte you know you need to be in town at Doctor Anderson’s Infirmary where he can take care of you. Not out here in this damp mosquito infested marsh. Listen to yourself, you’re getting worse! This violent coughing is bringing up blood. That’s not a good sign and you know it. I don’t want to take your share of Land’s End. However, you may die soon and you need to sign the papers turning your share over to me before it happens. I’m your only legal heir. This is my home too you know. What if some distant relative shows up and tries to claim it, tries to take it away from me. Charlotte, I love you; you’re my sister. But face it, you’re dying. Doctor Anderson says consumption has eaten away at your lungs until there’s barely enough left to keep you alive. We have to be practical. Please Charlotte, be reasonable.”
Charlotte shook her head in denial causing the bun on the top of her head to loosen allowing her hair to fall down around her shoulders. “I’m not going to die. I won’t die. I’ll outlive you,” she screamed, her voice was hoarse from coughing. She raised her hand ready to bring the poker down on Anna’s head. “I’ll never let you have my share of Land’s End. Father left it to me, me.” She poked herself in the chest with her index finger for emphasis. “My half of this house is the only thing he’s ever given me.” Charlotte lunged with the poker and Anna raised her arms in an effort to fend off the blows. Charlotte savagely raised the heavy poker and brought it down repeatedly on Anna’s upraised hands and arms. When Anna, screaming, dropped her arms unable to stand the pain any longer, the blows landed on her head until Anna collapsed on the floor bleeding and unconscious.
Finally, Charlotte’s rage was spent and she dropped to her knees completely drained of strength. She glared with hate-filled eyes at Anna’s body lying on the floor in front of her. Charlotte’s heart was pounding and her chest heaved with coughing, as she struggled to draw a breath of air into her tortured lungs. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand leaving a red streak of blood behind.
Her condition was getting worse, much worse. Doctor Anderson had warned her she had to take it easy and rest as much as she could. If she didn’t she wouldn’t live to see Christmas. Now the slightest physical effort sent her into fits of violent coughing that Doctor Anderson said had weakened her heart.
All was silent now. Charlotte’s fit of rage was spent and her eyes darted frantically around the room. Blood was forming a pool around Anna’s head, and had begun to form a rivulet running across the floor. Charlotte grabbed the afghan from the sofa and wrapped it around Anna’s bleeding head. “There,” she said, “That will keep the blood off the floor while I get Anna’s body out of here.” That small effort brought on another fit of coughing and Charlotte collapsed on the sofa to rest until the spell was over.
Charlotte looked through the lace curtains to make sure Jeffery and the servants weren’t returning early from the auction in Charleston. So many farm families had to sell everything they owned to pay the outrageous amount of taxes the North imposed on the defeated South after the war was over. However, after the Union soldiers finished ransacking the farms and stole everything they wanted from the crippled South, there wasn’t much left to sell. Anna’s husband Jeffery had gone to the auction hoping to find a new plow to help with the planting of cottonseed in the northern ten acres of land.
Finally, Charlotte’s coughing subsided for a few minutes. She pushed Anna’s legs apart with her foot and stepped between them. Lifting one leg on each side of her body, she dragged Anna’s limp form through the hall, out onto the front porch, down the steps and across the yard to the boat dock. Charlotte collapsed to her knees gasping for breath with blood dripping from the corners of her mouth. “I’m not dying, I’m not,” she insisted. Tears ran down her cheeks. Charlotte knew she was lying to herself. She was dying, and death was coming soon. Anna didn’t know it and Charlotte wasn’t about to tell her, but she had already signed the papers with a lawyer in town, turning her share of Land’s End over to Anna. She wouldn’t get it now. Charlotte laughed to herself.
As Charlotte dragged Anna across the yard, past the rose garden Jeffery had planted in honor of Rosemary’s birth, the afghan wrapped around Anna’s head began to unwind and trailed behind her head. Anna raised her head and the blood soaked afghan fell away. She gazed at the rose garden knowing it was the last beautiful thing she would ever see.
Blood stained Anna’s golden hair a deep crimson. Her head pounded with pain, her eyesight blurred, and her fingers throbbed from the beating they took. She realized she was being moved and jostled across the rough weather-beaten boards of the boat-dock. Anna raised her head again to see Charlotte dragging her by her feet, her long nails digging into Anna’s ankles. “Charlotte please… You’re hurting me… Please Charlotte… Stop! Why are you doing this?”
“Because, sister dear,” Charlotte continued after another coughing fit, her voice now barely audible, “I’ve hated you ever since the day you were born.” She muttered feebly at Anna. In a mocking singsong voice she said, “You were always Father’s darling little golden-haired child with a beautiful cherub face, and a peaches and cream complexion. Father called you his little yellow buttercup. All he ever called me was, Charlotte, do this; Charlotte, do that; Charlotte, get my tea. Put the afghan around my shoulders, Charlotte, I feel a draft. Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte. Never any terms of endearment like he always gave to you.” Charlotte had another coughing fit, spraying droplets of blood on Anna’s pale blue dress. Then she continued, “Father always gave you everything you wanted. Me? I was the ugly, unlovable child. I was too tall, too skinny, with mousey-brown hair that would never hold a curl, and dark brown eyes and a sharp nose. Father couldn’t see me for looking at you. What Father failed to see was that I looked like him. I was his mirror image.” She dropped down to her knees with another coughing spell. Blood rattled in her chest with each labored breath.
“Then, while I was doing the weekly shopping I met Jeffery in Charleston. I dropped a package and he like the gentleman he is, stooped and picked it up. For once, a man looked at me; he invited me for refreshments at the Ella’s Tea Room. We talked for what seemed like hours, and he hung on my every word. For months I made any excuse I could think of, to take the buggy into town to see Jeffery. Finally, I dredged up the courage and invited him to come for Sunday dinner at Land’s End to meet Father. He’s was the man I hoped to marry, the man with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life. My Jeffery, the man I loved. I thought my loneliness was over and happiness was finally within my reach.
However, as soon as Jeffery’s carriage came down the drive and stopped out front he saw you in the doorway—you, with your golden hair, sparkling blue eyes, and perfect body. He couldn’t see me any longer; he was blinded by you. I thought he was going to ask me to marry him that afternoon. He didn’t, he sat in the parlor staring at you all afternoon, and hanging on to your every word. He never did ask for my hand in marriage. That was the last time I went into town to meet Jeffery because the next time I went, I saw you and Jeffery through Ella’s Tea Room window. You were gazing at each other across the table, lost in each other’s eyes. He was holding your hand, and when he raised it to his lips, I knew then I’d lost him. My Jeffery, my hope for a husband and a home of my own, my hope for a child of my own was gone. My Jeffery was now your Jeffery.”
Charlotte didn’t care if Anna heard her or not. She was talking more to herself than Anna because Anna was drifting in and out of consciousness. Convincing herself that killing Anna was the only way out of her poor excuse of a life. Charlotte coughed violently spraying blood droplets across the dock. During a lull while she sucked air into her lungs, she continued her explanation, not to Anna but telling it to the sea wind, explaining it to the marsh grass, and shouting it to the ever-present seagulls flying about overhead.
“Then my Jeffery married you and right away you became pregnant. I could hear you both in your bedroom moaning and crying out in the throes of passion. I hated you for making me hear your lovemaking. Then you gave birth to Jeffery’s baby. The baby I always wanted, the baby that would have loved me no matter how plain or unlovable I was. My baby would have been a beautiful golden-haired angel like little Rosemary. You, you even took the name I planned to give my baby with Jeffery. Well sister dear, with Father dead and buried in the cemetery, with Jeffery and the servants gone to the auction in Charleston, and with no one in the house to see or hear, I’m taking this opportunity to rid my life of you. I have to do it now; I may never get another chance. I haven’t thought about what I’ll tell Jeffery about your disappearance, but I’ll think of something.”
Charlotte rolled Anna’s limp body off the dock and into father’s small fishing boat, and then dropped down in beside her.
Anna regained consciousness for a few moments. “Please Charlotte,” she begged. “Don’t do this terrible thing. I never meant to hurt you. Jeffery never told me he was supposed to marry you. I just thought he was a friend you had met and invited home to Land’s End for dinner. You never said you loved him. You never told me anything about him or your relationship with him.”
“I don’t want to hear any of your excuses Anna. It’s too late now.” Charlotte picked up the paddle and pushed the boat away from the dock, then paddled out to the channel where the quick moving water would pick up speed with the outgoing tide. Soon it would join the Atlantic Ocean. After what seemed an eternity in her weakened state, Charlotte saw this was the perfect spot to dump Anna’s body. The current would carry her body out to sea, and Anna would never be seen again. She would just disappear and no one would ever know what happened to her. Charlotte laughed insanely at the thought. The ugly sound of it surprised even her. Then, trying to suck air into her blood-filled lungs, she suffered another coughing fit, spewing blood across the deck.
Anna drifted in and out of consciousness. In one lucid moment, her head throbbing with pain,
again she begged Charlotte not to do this unspeakable thing. “Please Charlotte, my baby needs me. My breasts are full, and it’s time to feed Rosemary. Don’t kill me Charlotte please; I hear Rosemary crying for me.” Anna raised her head and looked back toward the house. “She’s hungry. Let me go to her, Charlotte. Please.”
“Too late. I’m taking back what’s mine. Jeffery and baby Rosemary are mine now. I’m taking that cameo pin too, that Jeffery gave you when Rosemary was born.” She reached out and snatched the delicate cameo from the throat of Anna’s blood-soaked dress. “With you out of the way, Jeffery will turn to me. He’ll need me to help him with the baby. I’ll raise baby Rosemary, I’ll be her mother as I should have been all along, had it not been for you getting in the way. Good bye, Anna.” Charlotte pushed Anna’s limp body over the side of the boat and let her drop into the cold seawater. At the last moment Anna tried to save herself and grabbed a handful of Charlotte’s dress front pulling her over the side of the boat and into the water. Charlotte dropped the cameo while trying to grab the side of the boat to save herself from going over. She suffered another coughing spell and, not able to help herself, she fell over the side, and trying to find a breath of air, she began to suck the salty seawater into her lungs. In just moments, she lost consciousness and sank below the surface. The current grabbed her, taking her along with it to the ocean.
Anna struggled to keep her head above water but she was too weak from loss of blood to fight the current, and she too sank below the water’s surface leaving nothing but bloody water to tell the tale of what happened here. Her body followed Charlotte’s out to the ocean.
Time passed: days, weeks, months, years, eons of time. Anna’s ghost slowly began to become aware of her watery surroundings and she thought she was dead, yet was she? She opened her eyes and found herself floating deep underwater yet she could breathe the water in and out of her lungs. “How is this possible,” she wondered. “Am I dead? I must be. Where am I? How long have I been drifting around down here with the tide?” Long tendrils of her blond hair swayed first this way and then that with the current. A curious fish swam up to her and they looked each other in the eyes. You’re too close and Anna reached out to push the fish away however her hand went right through the fish. Frightened, the fish swam away. She looked up to see the sun shining down through the water, and, strangely, the shafts of light bent and moved with the current. “Funny how everything looks so different from down here.” She looked up again and knew she wasn’t supposed to be down here with the fish, and she began to fight her way to the surface. Her head broke through and she sucked in a breath of air. Water poured out of her mouth. She looked around trying to get her bearings. “Where am I?” More water poured out of her mouth and she coughed up the last of it.
There’s land over there, and she began to move unhindered through the water toward it, as if she was walking on air.
She could see trees, yellow marsh grass, and a weather-beaten house sat forlornly with its tall windows staring vacantly across the marsh out to sea. There was an open window upstairs and a ragged curtain had been sucked out. It was now flapping like a flag in the breeze. The house looked old and uncared for, and the wooden siding was in much need of paint. Is someone living there now? Maybe they can help me.
Moving closer to the house, she thought it looked familiar, yet different. Its structure looked like Land’s End but how could that be. “This house looks as if it hasn’t been lived in for a very long time; even the grounds are uncared for and overgrown with weeds.” The beautiful rose garden was dead that Jeffery planted in honor of Rosemary’s birth. All that was left was the border rocks and dried up woody stems that at one time had put forth the most beautiful roses in all colors. Her favorite was the first rose Jeffery had planted. A blood red rose whose blossom was bigger than her open palm. She had stood watching the planting with newborn baby Rosemary in her arms. “Look Rosemary, your Daddy is planting this rose just for you in honor of your birth.” Jeffery smiling down at his family took off his gardening gloves and walked Anna and the baby out to the end of the dock. The sun was just about ready to sink below the horizon, and the sea birds were flying in to roost for the night in the marshes.
Remembering the dock, Anna looked back behind her. “The dock, where is the dock that used to be here?” There was nothing left of it but a few pylons and even those were nearly rotted away. How strange everything looks. Nothing like I remembered. How long have I been dead, and where have I been all this time? Did my soul lay unconscious and not know anything? Was it just floating around the sea bottom with the tide? It had to have been a very long time for Land’s End to deteriorate into the ruin she now saw before her.
Anna waded through ankle deep water to shore through the yellow marsh grass. Her passage scared the mosquitoes into flight, and caused the hermit crabs to crawl deeper into their shells. She stepped up on the dry bank and stood still looking at this unfamiliar, yet familiar, house. “It must be summer now judging by the green grass and the heat shimmering off the rotting wood-plank walk.” She could actually feel the heat. She remembered when Charlotte had dragged her out to Father’s boat the weather was cold, and the water had felt icy when Charlotte pushed her over the side. She remembered sucking in her breath in shock when the icy water closed over her. “How long have I been dead? Where have I been for so long that Land’s End has become just a shadow of its former self? How long has it been? Where is Jeffery? Where are the servants?”
“Rosemary!” Anna screamed, remembering. “My baby. She must be very hungry by now.” Anna felt her breasts but they didn’t feel heavy and full of milk. She rushed up the porch steps leaving wet footprints behind on the weather-beaten porch floor. She tried to turn the doorknob. Her hand went through it. She jerked her hand back in shock and tried again but she couldn’t grip the knob. Anna pounded on the closed door, and then backed away. How strange she thought, her fists went right through to the inside. She stood and studied the situation for a few moments. Maybe she wouldn’t need to open the door. If her fists went through the wooden door maybe, she could push her body through the closed door too. “I’m a ghost. I can walk through doors as easily as walking through an open room.” She laughed aloud and the sound echoed throughout the nearly empty house. Inside she stood looking around for something familiar. There was some furniture here; however, this furniture didn’t belong to her family. “Whose furniture is this?” she wondered. This was strange. It all looked dusty and dirty, like it had been here unused and abandoned for a long time. If someone had loved it they would have covered it with sheets to protect it from dust when they went away.
There was a full-length mirror on the wall. Anna walked over to check her reflection. She needed to see what she looked like now after being in the water for so long, if indeed that’s where she’d been. She moved back and forth, side to side in front of the mirror and fear rolled over her when she saw she cast no reflection. She could see what was in the room behind her where her image should have blocked it. She laughed. She could look down at herself and see her bleached-out, white dress; the hem was in tatters and hanging in strings that dripped water onto the dry, wood floor. This is certainly not me. I would never have let myself become this… this. She didn’t even have words to describe the way she looked now.
Her feet were bare. Where are my shoes? She wiggled her toes; she was sure she had shoes on when Charlotte dragged her out to the boat. She remembered she had on black high top pointy-toed shoes with hooks on the side that she had to wrap laces around and tie in a bow at the top. Well those shoes were no great loss with the way they pinched her toes together, by the end of the day she was glad to get them off her feet and spread out her toes.
She looked in the mirror again. Where was her reflection? She could look down and see her hands and arms. However, nothing about her showed up in the mirror. She laughed again at her predicament. She thought this was funny, yet terrifying.
She remembered Rosemary again: “My baby, where is she? I have to find her.” Then she wondered, what’s wrong with me? It’s strange, but she couldn’t seem to keep her mind on any one thing for more than a minute. Her mind wandered, flitting from one thing to another, one memory to another.
Anna searched the downstairs part of the house still dripping water as she went. There was no furniture in the parlor only thick carpet nailed down around the edges. There was a fireplace set but missing the poker. In the dinning room, there was no table and chairs. Just an ugly portrait over the fireplace of some stone faced matronly woman that Anna didn’t know. She moved on to the two bedrooms on the north side of the house. They too were bare of furniture. Cobwebs decorated the upper corners of the rooms. Anna thought she would have to tell one of the servants to get a broom and sweep them down. Then she wondered, why bother. It didn’t look as though anyone bothered about anything here in a long time.
She reached the kitchen and found the cook’s old wood cooking stove was still there. The old black servant complained daily about that stove. Either it was getting too hot and burned the bacon, or she couldn’t get the heat up high enough to brown the biscuits. That delayed dinner bringing complaints from the dining room down on her head. Everyone waited while sitting around the dinner table listening to the cook’s African profanity coming through the crack in the kitchen door. No one had any idea what she was saying and that was a good thing too. Father would probably have punished her if he knew. Several times, I had asked cook to teach me her African language, but she kept making excuses saying she didn’t have time. She had to pluck the chickens for dinner, or wash the sand off the collard greens.
Gone too was the china cabinet with mother’s every day blue and white dishes. Gone, everything I remembered before Charlotte killed me is gone.
Where was Charlotte anyway? I know she died first in the water before me. I saw her go under coughing and choking with the salty water turning red around her head, while I was still trying to keep my head up above water to save myself. Then the end came for me too when I lost consciousness again and went under.
Then she remembered Rosemary again. There wasn’t any sign anywhere of her baby, not even one of her pink ribbons were laying on the floor. The ribbons were satin and so slick they just slid off from wherever they were tossed. She started upstairs and, strangely, her feet wanted to sink into the steps. She had to concentrate to keep her feet on the surface. She tested each step before placing her weight on it. Finally reaching the top, she searched the second floor. There was furniture upstairs but in only a couple of rooms. It looked as if those two rooms were used for storage, and nothing there belonged to anyone in her family. Her feet began to sink again and she screamed. Every time she lost concentration, she would begin to sink into the floor. If she did sink, where would she end up? On the ground under the house? This was like fighting quick sand.
She was tempted to try it then fear set in. She tried gripping the banister for safety. However, her hand went right through the wood to the other side. I have to keep my mind from wondering away, she warned herself. When I do, I sink.
She didn’t recognize anything here as having belonged to her family. There was no sign that a baby had ever lived here either in this forlorn, abandoned house.
What had happened to Jeffery and baby Rosemary? Where were they? Where was her baby? Rosemary should be hungry and wet, screaming for attention. Anna felt her breasts again; they were soft and empty of milk. What would she do, she had no milk to feed Rosemary. She remembered when Charlotte was dragging her out to the boat her breasts had been hard, full of milk. It had been time to feed baby Rosemary. Anna wondered who fed her when I couldn’t be found to nurse her?
Anna’s mind drifted again. Then the attic popped in her mind. Maybe there was some sign of her life in the attic. That’s usually where people shoved unwanted and forgotten things. That’s me now she said, describing herself, unwanted and forgotten.” Anna carefully climbed the stairs leading to the attic. Her feet began to find solid wood and didn’t sink into these steps. She wondered why. Nothing in this ghost world, made any sense. Why could she walk on one set of steps and not another? Maybe she was learning how a ghost should walk. Maybe she should not really touch the steps but glide along just above them. She tried it. Yes, that worked. She would glide just an inch above the wood and she wouldn’t sink. She could certainly have used this trick when she was alive.
She searched the attic. Old picture frames hung from nails in the rafters. Some still had oil paintings in them of landscapes and sour, disapproving faces. No faces there that she recognized as belonging to her family. Some had faded watercolors that barely showed through behind the dirty dust covered glass.
There was trunks piled one on top of another. She recognized one of them and rushed forward. Pushed into the corner under the eaves was Anna’s trunk. It had always sat at the foot of her bed. It had her name, birth date, and roses painted on the sides and top. “Maybe some of my clothes are still in there so I can change out of this wet dress.” She tried to lift the lid of the trunk and found she couldn’t. No. Noooo. She tried again, but her hands just went right through as they did with the front door. She could stick her hands through the lid but she couldn’t grasp anything inside.
Her fingers! That’s it. She remembered Charlotte had beaten her fingers with the heavy poker when she held her hands up over her head trying to protect it. Some of her fingers had been broken, crushed. Maybe that was why she couldn’t grasp anything. Anna looked at her hands holding them up for inspection in the sunlight. They looked all right. She made fists, and opened and closed her hands. Her fingers didn’t look as if they were broken now. She looked at her arms and saw no bruises. She felt her head where most of the blows had landed. Her head felt all right now too. She couldn’t feel any open gashes and nothing felt sore. Her injuries had clearly healed during the time her soul had spent floating around in the bottom of the sea.
Anna tried again to grasp a mound of material in her trunk. She couldn’t. Her shoulders sank in defeat, and she moaned. “Am I doomed to wear this wet, ragged dress from now on?” Anna began to wail with grief. The sound of her voice rose and fell throughout the house. A moaning. A cry of grief. “I’m alone; everyone’s gone. Father, Jeffery, my baby.” Even always-angry Charlotte. But she was glad Charlotte was gone. Anna slid down to the floor next to the window and curled up into a fetal position. Her mind drifted as she watched dust float in the sunbeams coming through the dirty attic window. In the silence, she laid that way for days, weeks, months, and years, dormant, not knowing anything or caring. Occasionally she dreamed about her life at Land’s End. She dreamed of the happy summers as a child spent swinging in the double-seated swing hanging from the big oak tree in the backyard. She had begged her father to push her higher and higher. She remembered reading dime-novel love stories—without her father’s approval—in the fragrant shade of the huge lilac bush next to the back porch. She remembered the sounds of the crickets chirping, and the call of the seagulls. Her dreams turned to Jeffery and baby Rosemary. Beautiful, pink, baby Rosemary with her sweet smile. How beautiful she looked when she held her arms out wanting to be picked up. She wondered where everyone had gone. How long had it been since anyone lived in this old derelict of a house. Then she looked again at the sour, unsmiling faces staring back at her from the old, oil portraits and didn’t feel so alone. In the silence, she floated away again into nothingness.