The Fire and the Earth: Glenncailty Castle, Book 2 Page 9

  Lip curled at the feel of the old, dusty fabric, she gathered it up and set it aside, exposing the wood floor. Frowning, she crouched and looked closer. Dark brown dots stained the wood. She touched one and a rush of anger and pain overwhelmed her.

  She jerked her hand back, gasping. Taking a wad of the fabric she’d just bundled up, she wiped the floor, cleaning away a layer of dust. Drops and smears of dark brown littered the wood, as if someone had carelessly dripped wood stain.

  But it wasn’t wood stain.

  “This is blood,” she whispered.

  Following the path she moved toward the center of the room, cleaning as she went. Her cloth uncovered a massive stain and beside it a perfect handprint, rendered in blood. She looked over her shoulder at Séan but didn’t call him over.

  That hadn’t been a dream, but some sort of memory. It made as much sense as anything that a soul so tortured that it would remain on Earth as a ghost might leave memories or feelings embedded in the place where they died.

  And looking at the stain and the bloody handprint, she had no doubt that the redheaded woman in the green dress had died here.

  Considering that Séan had already been possessed once, she didn’t want him anywhere near this. Careful not to touch the blood again, Sorcha cleared the area, pushing aside a broken porcelain doll, the dried and broken pages of an alphabet book, and some unidentifiable wood bits. There was a thick trail leading away from the main pool of blood.

  Sorcha cleared more and saw another hand print, the lines smudged as if the hand—her hand—had slid sideways.

  Or if she’d dragged herself across the floor.

  Sorcha gagged, pressing her face into her elbow until the feeling subsided.

  Surely she was wrong. The idea of the beaten, broken woman bleeding badly enough to leave a pool of blood dragging herself across the floor was almost too much to bear. Sorcha knew there was suffering in the world and had suffered more in her own life than she’d ever dreamed she would, but this terrible physical record brought tears to her eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She kept going, inching along, clearing a path and revealing the grisly final moments of this woman’s life. The trail ended at a mounded blanket.

  Sorcha stood and fell back a step. She shook her head, telling herself that the woman was surely buried in one of the glen’s graveyards, and that the lumpy blanket was too large to hide the body of one slender woman.

  And yet she knew, knew with a certainty that made her lightheaded, that the woman whose memories she’d seen had never left this room.

  She opened her mouth to call Séan and Seamus over, but the words didn’t come. Instead, she reached down, grabbing the corner of what she now saw was a stained and dirty quilt.

  She was frozen like that, unable to muster the courage to pull the blanket back but equally unwilling to turn away and leave her here.

  The hair on the back of her neck prickled and Sorcha looked up, still bent at the waist. The silvery translucent figure of a woman wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved dress stared at her from the shadows of the corner.

  Gasping in surprise, Sorcha stood, still holding the quilt. She looked down, peering in the shadows of the tented blanket. There was something under there, something pearly gray.

  She threw the blanket to the side and slapped her hand over her face to hold back her cry. A pile of bones wrapped in stained green satin lay on the floor. The skull was facing her, some hair still piled around it.

  And on the floor beside the woman’s skeleton lay two others. Clad in white night dresses, all that was visible were their little skulls and the tiny bones that had once been hands and feet. One was no larger than a baby.

  Sorcha screamed, and kept screaming as Séan dragged her from the room.

  Chapter Seven

  A Man of the Land

  Séan took her home. He didn’t know what else to do.

  He’d pulled Sorcha from the room out into the hall, where he hugged her tight until her screams died to whimpers. A gray-faced Seamus had soon joined them in the hall, closing and locking the door.

  The look on Seamus’s face told him that the owner had been shocked at what they’d found. That was the only thing that saved him from a beating. If Seamus had even suspected what they’d find in that room, he should have warned them.

  Séan led Sorcha out of the castle, using an exit on the first floor of the west wing rather than taking her back through the castle. They skirted around the building until they reached the parking area where Séan’s battered vehicle waited. He threw the items on the passenger seat into the back and helped her in.

  Sorcha didn’t say anything. She buckled her seatbelt and leaned against the window, arms wrapped around her belly.

  Gravel spat up under his tires as he sped away. They climbed out of the glen, the road away from the castle twisting and turning as it climbed the small rise. Glenncailty Castle sat at the higher, narrower end of Glenncailty. The wider end, which was not so shielded by shoulders of earth, blended into the land beyond, with only a small rise denoting where the glen ended. If there was a road down the seam of the glen, it would have taken only moments to get from Glenncailty Castle to Séan’s own home. As it was, the fifteen-minute drive felt like hours.

  He slowed as he passed through the small village of Cailtytown. Half the streets had been tarmacked over, while others were still cobblestone, and all were too narrow for two cars to pass by each other without jamming tires against the elevated sidewalks. He waved to a few people he knew, though it was habit more than friendliness. He was focused on Sorcha and getting her someplace safe. At the edge of town, he honked to say hello to James, who he could see through the big glass window of the butcher’s shop.

  James looked up and raised his hand, then did a double take as he saw Sorcha.

  Seamus cursed under his breath. He’d been a fool not to realize that everyone would see Sorcha with him. They hadn’t been there, didn’t know what she’d been through, and would assume…

  Séan had no idea what they’d assume, but he was sure it would result in talk.

  That was a pale worry compared to what they’d both been through today. Right now he was more worried about Sorcha, but at some point he knew he’d need to sit down and think about what had happened to him and what he’d need to do to stop it from ever happening again.

  He turned out of the village, following the one-lane road that led to his house. It was an old road, and trees and brambles hugged the edges, turning it into almost a tunnel. The afternoon sunlight made the canopy of trees glow with green-gold light. The trees thinned as they reached a set of turn-offs. Once this land had all belonged to Séan’s family, but it had been sold off in the hard times, and now there were little clusters of houses in what had once been grazing fields.

  He smiled as caught sight of his home. It sat atop a slight rise in the land, the stone house as much a piece of the landscape as the trees around it or the forested valley wall behind it. The house disappeared from sight as the twisting lane dipped and turned. At the end of the road were two stone gateposts. A plaque on the one gateposts said “Gleann Cuillean”—glen of the holy. His home had once been the parochial house, and after the priest moved into a home in the village which was more accessible to the people of the parish, the house had been named in honor of its beginning.

  The drive was paved and lined with a fence of tall hedges. Séan rolled down the window, listening for his girls. He heard a low moo and smiled again. This week the milk cows were in the front fields. Though the hedges hid them from view, it was good to hear them. The air coming in the window smelled like sun-warmed grass and earth. It smelled like home.

  They rounded a curve in the drive and the house came into view once more.

  It was large and square, made of stone, with evenly spaced windows on both floors. The front door was red and the window trim white. The drive passed by the side of the house, while at the front there was a square of green lawn and
pretty flowerbeds. He parked at the back of the house. There’d been a few additions to the building over the years, the largest of which added on to the back to expand the first floor. A detached garage marked the end of the drive, and he stopped, ashamed that he was grateful his mother’s car wasn’t there.

  Sorcha, who’d been quiet and still throughout the drive, straightened and unfastened her seatbelt. “This is your house.”

  “I didn’t want you anywhere near that place.” Séan climbed out and went around to the other side, opening her door.

  “I’m not the only one who needed to get away from there,” she said as she climbed down. She examined his face.

  Séan didn’t reply. There wasn’t anything to say.

  “This used to be the old parochial house, correct?” She examined the back of the house, including the addition of the back, which was whitewashed instead of stone.

  “Yes. My family bought it after the new parochial house in the village was built.” Séan always came in through the back door, which led into a mudroom where he could take off his dirty things before entering the kitchen. Sorcha was a guest and shouldn’t enter through a dirty room full of rubber boots and stained jackets.

  He led her back along the driveway to the front of the house. Following a flagstone path, he took her to the red front door. It was locked, and after an embarrassed look at Sorcha, he rooted in a flowerbed for the little box that contained the spare key. He only carried keys for the back door, and even that was rarely locked.

  Sorcha laughed as he brushed dirt from the small tin before taking out the key.

  “I don’t come in this door often,” he said, but it was good to hear her laugh.

  “I would have been fine with the back door.”

  “My mother tells me it’s filthy back there, and I wouldn’t want you to get dirty.”

  “We’re not exactly clean.” She brushed his shoulder and a puff of dust and plaster wafted off him.

  There was dirt and dust on her knees and hands, and her dress and jacket were speckled with debris.

  “We need to shower,” he said as he unlocked the door.

  “Is that an invitation?”

  Séan fumbled as he opened the door, only then realizing what he’d said. “Sorcha, I didn’t mean… I hope you don’t think that’s why I brought you here.”

  Her smile held a hint of mischief. “No, I know it’s not, and I would like a shower.”

  He led her into the front hall, with its antique coat tree and pale peach paint.

  “Your home is lovely.”

  “Thank you.”

  He led her past the doors to the formal front rooms to the stairs. The addition on the back had been built for his grandmother who’d come to live with them when he was a boy but who couldn’t climb the stairs. Now his mother used it and had redone the space so she had a nice bedroom, bathroom and TV area all to herself. She liked to say that it was her granny flat, but in truth she ruled the whole first floor.

  Séan still lived in the room he’d used as a boy. Though his father had been dead for year, he hadn’t moved into the large bedroom that had once been his parents’. The other rooms were all closed up, used when his sister came home or when the extended family came to visit.

  He opened the door to the good guest room and motioned Sorcha in. “I’ll get some towels and put them in the bathroom, which is just there.” He pointed to the door across the hall.

  She looked around, taking in the lace curtains, cream walls and dark furniture, which wasn’t quite old enough to be antique, but would be in another few years.

  “Thank you, but I don’t want to get anything dirty.”

  He shrugged. “Things wash. It’s you I care for.” Her eyebrows drew together, and he realized that despite the way they’d stayed together when facing the horrors of this afternoon, for her nothing had changed. He bit down on his disappointment and said, “I mean, you I want to care for. Ah, I mean that you are the one who needs to be clean.”

  For the love of God and his saints, stop talking.

  Séan pressed his lips together and rubbed his beard. He was making a right fool of himself.

  “I know what you meant. I hate to ask, but do you have something I could wear after my shower? I don’t want to put these on again.”

  “I don’t think my clothes would fit you,” he said doubtfully.

  “Probably not, but didn’t you say you’ve a sister? Maybe she had something here. I’d wash and return it, of course.”

  For the millionth time in twenty minutes, Séan felt like a fool.

  “Of course, that makes much more sense. I’ll get you something.”

  He turned away, but she said his name and he turned back. There was a small smile playing around her lips, and her hair looked like rubies in the muted light.

  “Is this the first time you’ve brought a woman to your house?”

  He sighed. “That obvious, am I?”

  “Just a little.”

  “And now you know what a great patsy I am.”

  “Hardly. I think it’s sweet.”

  “I’m going now, before this gets any more embarrassing.”

  “I have a question, though.” Sorcha shrugged off her jacket, folding it to contain the dust and set it on a chest of drawers. She came to the door, leaning against the frame and pulling it partway closed. “If I’m the first woman you’ve brought home, how did you learn to make love so well?”

  With a smile, she closed the door.

  Sorcha stood under the hot water until her skin was pink and her scalp prickled. Arriving at Séan’s had given her a much-needed distraction from what she’d seen.

  The children, those poor children.

  As horrifying as the memories of the mother’s beating had been, that wasn’t what haunted her thoughts. She couldn’t think of anything more horrifying that then sight of those little bones.

  One of which had been a baby.

  Sorcha pressed a hand to her belly, tears mingling with the water on her cheeks. With effort, she forced her thoughts back to the present. Turning off the shower, she took one of the towels that Séan had left her on the sink and started drying off.

  The bathroom was large for a house this old and must have been renovated. It had both a tub and a shower, and there was a long vanity next to the sink. The walls were pale blue, the guest towels white with lace. In many ways, this house reminded her of where she’d grown up, though in her childhood home the farmhouse feel had been manufactured, not the result of generations of living.

  The only discordant note was the jumble of men’s toiletries to one side of the sink and two brown towels hung on hooks on the inside of the door. If these were Séan’s things, then his room couldn’t be far away.

  He’d left the dress he’d found her in the bathroom, but she didn’t put it on. Wearing nothing but a towel, she stepped out into the hall. One by one, she opened the doors, hoping to catch him sans clothes.

  She found his room, but he wasn’t in it.

  His bedroom was small, with the double bed taking up most of the space. Clothes lay over a chair and books and magazines were in haphazard stacks on the bedside locker and floor. The sheets and duvet cover were solid blue, and the only thing on the wall was a framed picture. In it there was a younger Séan standing with an older couple who must have been his parents, and a pretty young woman with his same dark hair she assumed was a sister.

  She looked at the books, holding the towel closed over her chest. There were books of poetry by Joyce and Yeats, Gulliver’s Travels by Swift, several books by James Herriot and even some by fantasy authors like Feist and Gaiman.

  She touched the cover of Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic, which lay open, face down, on the corner of the rumpled bed. The reading material both surprised and intrigued her. There was no doubt that Séan was a smart man, but she hadn’t figured him as someone who would read poetry or fantasy, both of which were so often full of ghosts.

  Then again, he w
as the one person she knew who had never questioned that Glenncailty was haunted.

  Wherever he was, he wasn’t on this floor. Feeling a bit foolish, she went back to the bathroom. Her plan hadn’t been a good one anyway.

  Sorcha knew that it wasn’t fair, either to herself or to the men she chose, to use sex and physical pleasure to bury the pain of her past, but it was the one thing she always knew worked. She wanted Séan again, and being with him would have pushed away the memories and sadness that were clawing at her. She had little doubt that despite what she’d said and done this morning, he would have welcomed her into his arms, especially if she’d gone to him wearing nothing but the towel. He wasn’t cooperating with her plan, and it was probably a good thing. Grabbing the clothes from the bathroom, she returned to the bedroom he’d showed her to.

  Being clean made a world of difference—she no longer felt as if her skin were crawling. She put her knickers and bra back on, then pulled on the dress he’d found for her. It was a pretty pink and white thing with elbow-length sleeves and panels of lace darted into the skirt. It was a bit snug across the chest, and it took her a few minutes to get the zip at the back to go up. It was probably a dress his sister kept here for attending Mass in the summer.

  Her shoes were dirty, so she left them off. Barefoot, she went in search of Séan.

  He’d showered in the mudroom. In an effort to keep him and his father from tracking mud and worse into the house, his mother had a small bathroom added there. With just a shower stall and toilet, it was Spartan, but usually where he ended up showering. The room also held the washer and dryer, so most days his clothes went right into the washer. He’d cleaned the cuts on his hands and put a few Band-Aids over the worst of them. It looked bad, but he was sure it would feel fine by morning. He shook some aspirin into his mouth to get rid of the thrumming pain.