Haunted Gracefield Read online

  Haunted Gracefield

  The Gracefield Hauntings Series

  Book One

  By M.L. Bullock

  Text copyright © 2019 Monica L. Bullock

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Four—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Five—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Six—Lily

  Chapter Seven—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Eight—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Nine—Kendal

  Chapter Ten—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Eleven—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Twelve—Kendal

  Chapter Thirteen—Lily

  Chapter Fourteen—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Fifteen—Kendal

  Chapter Sixteen—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Seventeen—Kendal

  Chapter Eighteen—Kendal

  Chapter Nineteen—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Twenty—Carrie Jo

  Epilogue—Carrie Jo

  Chapter One

  Amara watched the yellow school bus pause and deposit its weary treasure on the corner of Blackberry Lane and Depot Road. As the vehicle sluggishly moved down the road, she looked for other signs of life. Despite having keen eyesight and training in observation, Amara didn’t see so much as a bird or a squirrel. Strange.

  No parents waited for the two girls who stepped off the rusty vehicle. No car horn and no car. No indication that anyone knew that the girls were leaving the safety of the school bus. Amara assumed by their similar facial features and hand-me-down clothing that they must be sisters. Saggy brown ponytails and even saggier identical and worn backpacks gave further clues to their shared family connection. Not a very well-to-do family, either. The girls’ slumped shoulders and long faces made Amara feel somewhat sorry for them.

  At least it was Friday. They had the weekend to recuperate before going back to school. Or hell, as she liked to call it.

  Amara couldn’t help but frown at the thought of the public school system. Her school did not offer the 90210 experience—not for her. She had never gained access to the cute cliques of friends some girls enjoyed. And everyone knew her father. Nobody wanted to be the friend of the principal’s daughter.

  Why in the world was she thinking about all this today? She’d never wanted to belong to any of the mean girl packs. Amara liked being alone. And as it turned out, in her line of work, that was a good thing. Naturally suspicious and incredibly competitive, she had never mastered the art of friendship, although she was as true and loyal as anyone could hope for. Nope. She had no best friend/confidante she could rely on. Not even today. Amara had been the odd duck, the strange girl with jet black eyes and a weird name and questionable heritage. Yes, she thought as she sipped her lukewarm coffee from the white foam cup, she had made a meaningful connection with only one other human being in recent years, and that had not worked out. She closed her eyes briefly and held the cup in her hands to warm herself. Amara took another sip from the cup and blocked out romantic memories of Jack.

  Nope. Not going to go there. He’s last year’s news and he wasn’t loyal at all. He couldn’t stand by me for one minute. Not one hour. Left me to the wolves, the bastard.

  Amara had awkwardly moved on, leaving behind their taupe apartment—his choice, not hers. She’d also left the boring furniture. Come to think of it, she mused with an even deeper frown as she watched the children, everything about Jack was taupe. He liked vanilla ice cream while she liked chocolate and cherry. He just wasn’t the one for her, and if Amara were honest with herself, she would have admitted that she’d known that all along. She’d tried to salvage their friendship. She’d opened up to him about her plans. Big mistake. Huge mistake. Naturally, he thought it all was a horrible idea. Why did she care what Jack thought about anything concerning her? He’d lost the right to have any kind of access to her personal life.

  Yep. No doubt about it. Telling Jack about the house and how she’d always wanted to own it had been a mistake. Jack didn’t understand her or why she needed to go back to Selma. He didn’t know about her terrifying yet compelling dreams, dreams of loving and living at Gracefield. She never told him about any of it, but those dreams got worse after the shooting. They just got worse. And then the man in the hat appeared.

  Widowmaker!

  Why she thought that, she wasn’t sure, but that was his name. Hell no, she couldn’t tell Jack. Her ex-husband only saw the world in black and white. Was it a good shooting or a bad shooting, Amara? Be honest with me!

  To this day, she did not know how to answer that question. How could any shooting be classified as good? She’d shot the kid. That was the end of it. But Jack didn’t understand her or why she wouldn’t move on. Brown-eyed, brown-haired, taupe Jack only appreciated structured order. He didn’t even like to vary things in their intimate life. How he hated it when she bucked his expectations, but it thrilled her. No vanilla ice cream for her, please.

  Jack had been right about one thing, though—she’d worked so hard and was so focused for so long that she had burned out. And then the shooting happened, and she had undeniable proof that she’d hit the wall. She’d climbed the ladder of success quickly. Made detective on her first go. No one ever did that.

  Burned out.

  That’s a good way of putting it, she thought as she continued her unofficial surveillance and finished the bad coffee. Burned out. Done. She’d quietly taken the package the department offered her and left town. Jack didn’t agree with her plan, though. He didn’t agree at all. In fact, three months in, he wanted a divorce. And as calmly as one talks about the weather or the rising price of milk, he confessed he had been having an affair and that he was leaving her for the mail lady. The chick with the two kids and the ratty German Shepherd. She wasn’t surprised at all. Not really. Nothing humanity could do surprised her. Not anymore. She couldn’t even surprise herself.

  None of that mattered now. Amara’s dreams had led her here, and this was where she wanted to be. She didn’t have Jack, but she had Gracefield. Beautiful, sprawling, forgotten Gracefield. The grand old home was hers now, and she believed with all her heart that Marnie would have approved.

  That’s right, Amara thought. I am not going to ruin my return by thinking about Jack or his starter family.

  She would be happy here. And maybe she would figure out after all these years why she dreamed about this place so obsessively.

  And why the Widowmaker wanted to scare the hell out of her. Amara watched the girls continue their lazy meandering and hoped they would head down the road, but they didn’t do that. Oh dear. They’re definitely going to the house. She wanted them to leave her property without a confrontation. She couldn’t say why, but she didn’t want to engage in a conversation with them. Amara wasn’t a mean person; she just had no experience with children beyond her recent painful encounter. That hadn’t turned out too well for her. Not that it was the kid’s fault. The older of the two girls glanced in her direction, but Amara hunkered down in her car hoping she couldn’t see her.

  What are you doing, Amara? Hiding from two preteens like a criminal? You’re a damn detective, for God’s sake. Or ex-detective.

  The girl with the saggy ponytail didn’t see Amara. Instead, she focused on her sister. The older child was berating the younger one for some reason. She was telling her something important, or at least important to her.

  And then they began walking further down the road again, and she sat up to get a good look at them. Poor kids. It really was going to rain; those dark distant skies were getting closer.

  This really sucks that no one is coming to pick them up!

  The school was bad eno
ugh, but walking home in the rain in wet socks and shoes was the pits. Her father often stayed late for school duties, and she never wanted to hang around. Unfortunately for her, Amara’s home was not part of the bus route, so she had to walk home if she wanted to go early. No one came to pick her up when Marnie died. In the classroom, Amara frequently got into trouble when she’d been staring out the window looking at the clouds or a bird or butterfly. She was one to daydream whenever given the chance.

  Her daydreaming had gotten so bad in the ninth grade that her father, an educator in the truest sense of the word, took her to multiple doctors. Marnie had intervened for her and finally put a stop to her father’s “hysterical nonsense,” but not before the damage was done. It wasn’t that other people believed her a dull daydreamer. It was that Drew Cannon, her idol and father, believed it. She’d never forget their argument, the most heated argument she’d ever witnessed between the two of them. Marnie thought Amara’s distant attitude had something to do with the fact that her mother was mentally ill and that she had left her and her father just as easily as one drops off an unwanted kitten on a dirt road. Drew believed Amara was using her disadvantages as a cop-out. “I won’t let my daughter use that for an excuse to skip out on life.”

  Frankly, Amara never believed anything was wrong. Sure, she had her issues, but it hadn’t been anything that a tattoo or a nose piercing couldn’t cure. At least that’s what fifteen-year-old Amara believed. She felt perfectly fine, as she told anyone who’d listen, but enjoyed the release of worry that came with daydreaming, the absolute belief that life was better outside of school and beyond the shriveling stare of her father. Amara adored daydreaming; it was like a superpower that carried her away to strange and exotic places. Sometimes Amara managed to imagine things in great detail, like faraway places, people she’d never met. In her mind, she could see new towns and streets that she promised herself she’d explore one day.

  Many teachers during those awkward years were half-smitten with her dad, who was the principal of Blackberry Middle School. Women his age thought him handsome, and more than one schoolmate openly crushed on him. Yuck. Principal Cannon had been proverbial catnip until he finally married Marnie. Amara liked her well enough at first. Okay, not much, really. But at least Marnie didn’t try to be a replacement mom. She’d easily and expertly become Amara’s friend, her best friend, until she died just four years later. Her father never recovered from the loss. Neither of them did. In fact, he left for California not long after Marnie’s death. Amara and her father rarely spoke nowadays, but that had been her fault, right? According to him, she’d left a good job, lost a good man, given up a good life, and for what? To possess this disturbing, abandoned mansion? But that’s not what happened. That’s not an accurate chain of events, Detective. Her desire to own this property didn’t have anything to do with Jack or the “bad” shooting that crushed her soul and her career. When it was all over, it was like she had to do this. And she tried more than once to explain it to her father.

  “How will you ever afford the upkeep? What are you going to do with that place, Amara?”

  “Dad, I have a business plan. I sent it to you. Do you ever check your email? Selma is being reborn, you know that. The work at Cahawba, all the restoration in Dallas County. This is the perfect time and the ideal location for a bed-and-breakfast. There is so much history here and lots of people that want to restore what’s left. It should never be forgotten.”

  Her father sighed and sounded tired. “The place you want, Marnie’s old family place, it’s not the right kind of history, Amara. Not the right kind at all.”

  There he goes, she thought angrily. Getting political with me again. “I can’t believe you don’t think this is a good idea. Marnie loved Gracefield.”

  “It’s haunted, Amara. It’s a haunted place. Did you listen to any of the stories she told us? She didn’t love that place, not like you seem to think. Your mother—” he began, but she cut him off.

  “You can’t tell me you know what my mother would say. We’re talking about Marnie—not your first wife. I have to go, Dad. The movers are here, and I have to pay them by the hour.” And so the conversation ended. Clearly, reasoning with Principal Cannon would avail her nothing, and she’d already decided that she would take possession of the place. For better or for worse.

  She watched with some interest as the girls shared a bottle of water and began making the trek deep down Blackberry Lane, probably to the subdivision that was about a half-mile south. She rolled the car up further to watch them as well as she could from the road.

  Geesh, that’s a long walk for two kids. Who lets their kids walk home nowadays? Don’t they know that every six seconds in the United States, a child disappears and is never heard from again?

  Selma might seem like a sleepy town, but that hadn’t always been the case. Every small town and big city had danger. It was everywhere you went—she knew that well enough from her years as an investigator. Or at least everywhere she had ever been—maybe because she was aware of it. Danger lived here in Selma. Danger lived in Pensacola. Yeah, danger was everywhere. The world was not a nice place for children or adults or even pets.

  Surely a family member would come to pick the girls up soon—it looked like it was about to storm. Amara waited in place another minute, but no vehicle was on the road. No one was coming for the girls.

  Oh yeah, it’s going to pour like nobody’s business. A big fat raindrop splashed right on her windshield. The girls were going to get drenched for sure. Well, there wasn’t anything she could do about it. She couldn’t very well invite them to get into the car with her. To Amara’s surprise, they didn’t appear too concerned about the impending storm or the heavy black clouds on the horizon. Surely they saw them. You couldn’t miss them.

  It ain’t your problem, Amara. You’ve got enough problems of your own. Why are you even here? Ladybird, ladybird—fly away…

  Strange that she would think of that song now. Nobody ever called her Ladybird anymore. Her father detested pet names and nicknames, but that never bothered Marnie. She did what she wanted to, and everyone loved her anyway. Amara loved the nickname Ladybird so much she’d gotten a tattoo of it on her arm, in Marnie’s memory.

  Amara was surprised to see that the girls didn’t cut through the woods to go investigate some secret hideout. They were clearly headed for Gracefield. She could see the old house and its gray peeling paint in glimpses through the overgrown shrubs and thick collection of saplings that shielded the place from modern eyes. Nope. They were not going down Depot Road at all. She wished she’d brought her binoculars with her, but who would have imagined she would ever use them?

  No, instead of heading for the distant subdivision, the girls disappeared completely down Blackberry Lane. She couldn’t see them from her vantage point now because of the overgrown honeysuckle vines and stunted pine trees that blocked a clear view. Sitting in her car, Amara could smell cedar trees on the cool afternoon air. It was a beautiful day for a walk; she’d planned to take one, but she hadn’t planned on chasing trespassers off her property.

  Okay, well, I have to do this. She wouldn’t scare them, but they would have to leave. What reason could those girls have for going to the house except for getting into mischief? They didn’t look like your average criminals, but then again, not all vandals had tattoos. There was nothing out here, nothing at all except for the house. What else could they be doing except going inside to explore? She understood why they might be curious, but it wasn’t safe and this was her property now.

  Amara couldn’t just let them wander in there and get hurt. Gracefield was a death trap with broken floors and God knew what else. For reasons unknown to her, she brought her gun on this first venture back to Gracefield. She didn’t question the instinct. In most everything, Amara trusted her instincts. They rarely let her down. She opened the glove box and grabbed the tiny piece. As she got out, she slid it expertly into her shoulder holster, grabbed the car keys and t
ossed her purse into the trunk before locking it. With a quick glance up and down the street, she checked for oncoming traffic. Nothing. Not a single car. The rain began to fall, but fortunately it wasn’t heavy. It was a fine mist for now, but that wouldn’t last. She raced across the road and looked for an opening in the woods. She didn’t want to come up the path after them, not directly; she’d scare them if she did. Amara pushed at a vine but not before it slapped her across the face, and she flinched in pain. No, they shouldn’t be out here, but this was a bad idea. How had all this grown so thick? It hadn’t been that long since she’d been here. No, that’s not right. It’s been almost eight years.

  “Hello?”

  The children had to know that Gracefield was not open for business. Not open for investigation. No one had lived here for a long time. Before Amara owned the house, it had been left to rot for decades, and the overgrown acres were really a hazard to a child. She wasn’t going to let some kids burn it down or get lost.

  Amara had gathered everything she had, every penny of savings, every dollar from the divorce, tapped every funding source she could get her hands on to drop every dollar into her checking account so she could buy this place.

  “Hello? Girls? I saw you walk this way. I’d like to speak to you a moment,” she said as the rain cast an invisible veil over her sunglasses. She slid them up to the top of her head. At least she’d had the good sense to wear her hair in a ponytail and opted for sensible shoes.

  She meant to revisit Gracefield today, just to survey the interior damage. She’d bought the place without walking through it again because she wanted to remember it just how it had been during the purchase process. No, she should not have to chase two mini-intruders through the woods.

  She heard whispering, two voices, young and excited, but they were at a distance. Wow, how could they move so quickly in this tangled mess? They must know this place better than she did. I have to find what path they took. Oh yeah, I see it now. Off to the right, there’s a rough dirt path. She pushed her way through the thick greenery and the clusters of stickers that clung to the ground.