The Three Graces

  The Three Graces

  The Gracefield Hauntings Series

  Book Two

  By M.L. Bullock

  Text copyright © 2019 Monica L. Bullock

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One—Marnie

  Chapter Two—Amara

  Chapter Three—Lily

  Chapter Four—Sissy Grace

  Chapter Five—Amara

  Chapter Six—Marnie

  Chapter Seven—Amara

  Chapter Eight—Lily

  Chapter Nine—Lily

  Chapter Ten—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Eleven—Amara

  Chapter Twelve—Sissy Grace

  Chapter Thirteen—Lily

  Chapter Fourteen—Sissy Grace

  Chapter Fifteen—Sissy Grace

  Chapter Sixteen—Amara

  Chapter Seventeen—Carrie Jo

  Chapter Eighteen—Gray Cloud

  Chapter Nineteen—Amara

  Epilogue

  Chapter One—Marnie

  1972

  Grandmothers were strange creatures, I decided. Which was probably very shortsighted of me. I did not know my other grandmother. But Grandmother Faye had all the hallmarks of a…well, I couldn’t be sure. She wasn’t normal, that was for sure. She liked dressing like a pioneer and often went without shoes. Faye liked to bake bread filled with weird things like grass or bits of pinecones. I only tasted her bread once. Never again. And yet for all her craziness, my family behaved like this was normal.

  “Oh, let her be. She’s not harming anyone,” my father would tell my mother. She and I would lock eyes, and Mother’s eyes would widen slightly at me as if to say, Don’t believe that.

  Yes, Grandmother Faye was unique in many ways, and kind of scary. But despite her strangeness and my nominal fear of her, I could not resist the stories she told me on occasion. Once in a while, when my parents decided to leave me alone with her, we would venture into the backyard and she would fill the fire pit with pieces of wood and set it ablaze. Despite her love for all things pioneer, she would pop the tops on two bottles of Coca-Cola, and we would sit beside the fire in rocking chairs and watch the wood burn. I don’t know why, but it was so peaceful. And to be honest, there wasn’t much else to do at Gracefield. Grandmother Faye had no television and only one radio, which had an unreliable antenna. I had to use aluminum foil just to tune into Casey Kasem’s American Top 40. I was a huge music lover.

  After sitting in silence for a while, I began to hum If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon what’s his name. It was folksy, and I liked folk even more than disco. I mean, I liked disco. Who didn’t like the Bee Gees? The whole planet was disco crazy, but I liked the old stuff too. I wondered who would be the number one hit tonight. Well, I had an hour, I thought as I glanced at my Snoopy watch. Yep, it was only 7 o’clock.

  The smell of baking bread wafted toward me. How could Faye’s bread smell so good but be full of weird ingredients? I had often been tempted to ask her, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Grandmother Faye was kind of fragile, or so I perceived with my preteen brain.

  “Have you seen the girls yet?” the calico-clad woman asked me as she sucked down the rest of the soda. “Have you seen anyone else?”

  “Girls? You mean at school?”

  “No, I mean the little girls here.”

  “There are no girls here. It’s just me, Faye. I haven’t seen anyone, but Mom says the new neighbors are communists, whatever that means. Are you talking about them?” I asked hopefully. I wanted it to be that. Surely she just got confused. She wasn’t crazy. I loved her, and I didn’t want her to be crazy.

  “I was just wondering. I was about your age when I saw them for the first time.”

  The skin on my face and arms felt odd, not merely hot from the fire. It took on a strange rubbery feeling like it wasn’t my own. The sensation crept up my neck and to my face. I rubbed my face to shake off the unwanted sensation. My grandmother eyed me curiously. I was eager to take her mind off her unseen companions, so I asked the question I’d sworn to avoid earlier.

  “Why do you dress like that, Faye?” It might seem weird to others, me calling my own grandmother by her first name, but that’s how she liked to be addressed. I didn’t mind. “You look like Laura Ingalls.”

  “Who is Laura Ingalls? I don’t know any Laura Ingalls.” She put the bottle on the ground between us and added another small log to the fire. Her joints popped as she moved. Exactly how old was Grandmother Faye? Another question I should not ask.

  “She’s on…oh, that’s right. You don’t watch television. She’s a pioneer girl. She wrote some books about her pioneer life. Pretty good books, and they even made them into a television show. I think you would like it.”

  In the distance, somewhere down Blackberry Lane, I heard coyotes howling. Not just one or two of them either. There had to be a half a dozen. “They won’t come this close to the fire. They always sound closer than they truly are, Marnie. That’s one of their gifts, to project their fierceness. Makes their prey extra cautious, doesn’t it?”

  I stared at the fire wondering what to say. I didn’t know the first thing about coyotes except that they liked to eat small things like cats, dogs and children. Although to be fair, I never heard anything about them eating children. But that Little Red Riding Hood story sprung to mind for some reason. Wasn’t there a grandmother in that story too?

  “I guess.”

  She glanced up at the stars above us for a full minute and then said, “I dress like this because they leave me alone. It tricks them, you see. They think I’m just like them, but I’m not. Not yet.”

  “Your dress keeps the coyotes away?” I asked suspiciously.

  “No. It keeps the ghosts away, child. If you see them, you tell me and I’ll make you a special dress too.”

  “Are you saying there are ghosts in this house, Grandma?” Oops. I hadn’t meant to call her that, but I was scared now. I didn’t go in for such things as ghosts. They weren’t real, not like the Loch Ness Monster, which was clearly a dinosaur.

  She poked at the fire with her stick. “But things aren’t what they seem, Marnie. The girls aren’t always girls. Sometimes they just look like girls. Sometimes they are other things with girls’ faces. But the man is worse than all of them.”

  That weird rubbery feeling returned, but this time it affected my arms worse. I arched my neck. I had my legs drawn up in the rocking chair with my arm encircling my knees. As the unsettling feeling crept over my body, I stretched out my legs and listened to the sounds of the forest. I was on edge and half expecting terrifying wraiths to emerge from the house or the woods at any moment. But the coyotes had stopped howling. At least it sounded like they were moving on their way.

  “I don’t understand, Faye. What girls? What man? Is he a communist? What are you talking about? Real, surefire ghosts?”

  The long-abandoned tire swing on the other side of the fire pit began to creak as a low breeze scattered fallen oak leaves on the ground. Just beyond the firelight, I imagined I saw shadows shifting, but it had to be a trick of the light. Had to be. Your eyes could wig out if you stared at the fire too long as I tended to do. But it was so relaxing.

  Normally.

  She began to rock back and forth and took her time answering me. “As I said, I first saw them when I was your age growing up here in Gracefield. I thought I was seeing things that first time. I was hiding in my closet from Uncle Doug. I had the door open ever so slightly just to get a peek at him. I couldn’t stand the tension of playing hide-and-seek, but I was always the one to ask him to play. He was much older than my father, but he was a loving uncle. He was a kind soul. My sisters were quilting with our mother. I hate
d that kind of work and talked my uncle into playing hide-and-seek. We weren’t that good at it. I always hid in the same places and so did he, but I guess in truth, I wanted to be found. I wanted someone to find me, but that’s a story for another day. As I waited for Uncle Doug to step into the room, I saw the bedroom door open slightly. I remember that moment—it was always the same. I practically squealed. Only this time, it wasn’t my uncle at all but a little girl. Younger than me. A pretty girl with limp blond hair and a tattered dress. She was kind of grayish, but I could see her features quite well. And she walked toward the closet like she knew I hid inside.”

  “A ghost? Are you talking about ghosts, Faye?”

  “Yes, that’s what I am talking about. Ghosts. Ghost girls. Just the one at first. She came into the closet and squatted down beside me. She was hiding from someone, just like me, only whoever she was hiding from shouldn’t find her and he wasn’t as nice as Uncle Doug. I don’t know how, but I could feel that. I cried, Marnie. I mean, I was nearly twelve and crying like a baby. But being close to her scared me.”

  “And then what happened, Faye?”

  “She put her finger to her lips and said, ‘Be quiet or he will find us.’”

  The fire before us blazed, and the coyotes sent up another collective howl. My skin crawled at the sound, and I lifted my head to glance down Blackberry Lane. I wanted nothing more than to go inside and hide out until my parents came to pick me up. It was going to be time to listen to my radio program soon, and I had a book report to finish.

  “Are you serious, Faye? There really are ghosts here?” I had never heard such a confession from a grown-up before. Much less my own grandmother, who didn’t usually talk about spirits and such.

  “Yes. She was there, and I screamed until she vanished. Uncle Doug found me, and everyone in the house came up to see what the fuss was all about. Nobody believed me, or so I thought until later. It was then that my mother told me the story about the three Graces. I’m guessing your father never told you about them?”

  “No. I’ve never heard anything like that. I think we should go inside, Faye.”

  She acted as if she didn’t hear me. “Those poor girls. After that first episode, she came all the time. Mostly at night. I didn’t dare open my closet door for fear that she would be hiding there. And when I did have to go in there, I would see her brown boots and her legs. Eventually, I moved everything out of the closet so I wouldn’t have to be surprised again.”

  “What did she want? Who was she hiding from?”

  “At first I didn’t know, but it didn’t take long for me to figure that out. The Man in Black. That’s what I call him, but he has another name.”

  “What is it?” I asked as my stomach lurched.

  “Oh, I’m not going to tell you. I don’t want you to think it or speak it because if you do, he’ll know, and he wants you to fear him. But always remember, he’s coming for the girls, not you, so you can keep him away.”

  I sobbed, “Who is coming for me? A ghost? Please stop, Faye.”

  She held my hand and spoke in whispers, “One night, about a month after I saw the first child, I happened to look out my window and there they were. The three Graces running through the yard, running to the springhouse.” Faye stopped talking as the coyotes howled again, only this time she was out of her chair and staring at the wood line beyond the fire. “Come on, Marnie. Time to go inside. They are too close. They’ve come too close to the house. We need to go inside.” Faye practically dragged me into the house.

  “Are they ghosts? It’s a coyote, not a ghost. Right? Do ghosts howl? Let’s go listen to the radio.” And do something normal! Then there was a growl. Long and low and not the growl of a coyote. She snatched my hand, and we picked up the bottles and went inside. I watched from the back door until the howl happened again. Not a coyote! Not a coyote!

  After a few minutes, we settled at the kitchen table and Grandmother Faye pulled a pack of worn playing cards from her calico-print skirt pocket. She removed the stack of cards from the box and began to shuffle them like a pro.

  “I didn’t know you played cards, Faye. You continue to surprise me.”

  “Good. That makes me happy. I have never liked being predictable. But we have to talk about the three Graces, Marnie. You have to know. Let’s play some rummy. Do you know how to play rummy?”

  I shuddered at her words and slumped in my chair. Maybe I should call my parents. At least there was a phone here. I glanced at the dingy yellow phone but decided against it. “Yes, I know how to play rummy.”

  She shuffled the cards again and dealt them out. “Why don’t you put some music on?”

  That suggestion summoned a smile to my face. “Are you sure? I know you don’t like my music.”

  “I never said I didn’t like your music, Marnie. I like all music. But I like quiet more.”

  “Thank you, Faye,” I said as I walked to the counter and flipped on the radio. After fiddling with the aluminum-covered antenna, I turned the dial until I got a clear signal. Oh good. I hadn’t missed much. I locked the back door and peeked out the window, but there was nothing to see except the fading fire in the pit. It always made me chuckle to hear Shaggy’s voice coming from the radio. Everyone knew that Casey Kasem was the voice of Shaggy from the Scooby-Doo gang. A familiar tune began to play, and Faye slid some cards toward me.

  “As I was saying, I wear these clothes because it confuses them. I know that sounds absolutely silly, but it works most of the time. Not always, but for now it brings me peace.”

  I arranged the puppy toes together and noticed that I had no hearts at all. “So those clothes are like a disguise? Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “How can that work? I don’t understand. Are you saying you make yourself invisible by dressing like a pioneer woman? That seems odd.”

  “They don’t know I’m alive when I’m dressed like this. They think I’m dead. Like them. I want you to know about this trick. I am sure your parents would not appreciate me telling you all this, but I feel that I must. I want you to be prepared, Marnie. When I die, I am leaving this house to you. Unfortunately, the ghosts live here too. But I can’t give you one without the other.”

  I had a great hand. Three eights already. Eight was my lucky number. “Don’t talk about dying, Faye. It’s bad luck; everyone knows that. And I don’t want the house. I like coming here to see you.”

  “Unfortunately, I will not live forever, Marnie. I won’t, and neither will you. Listen and judge for yourself when this place is in your hands. I have one piece of advice, Marnie, one thing I want you to remember.” Even as she spoke, I heard footsteps in the hallway behind me. “You can’t save them. The three Graces belong to him, and he won’t let them go. All you can do is protect yourself. Keep yourself safe, promise me.”

  I half turned, thinking maybe a stray dog had come inside. That had happened before, but it wasn’t a dog’s toenails clicking on the floor this time. That was a person’s footsteps. Not a dog. Not a coyote, thankfully. But who could it be? I slowly turned back to see my grandmother staring at the empty space beside me.

  “If they know you can see them, they’ll never leave you alone. Never.” That’s when the neat stack of cards between us slid off the table one by one. Oh no! The cards were being flicked one at a time and landed in a messy pile on the floor.

  “Faye?”

  That’s when we heard a knock on the back door. Not the knock of a friendly neighbor either. The rapping was loud and repetitive.

  One…two…three…four…five.

  Five sharp knocks so loud that the dishes in the cabinet shook slightly. The radio went scratchy, and it sounded as if the volume grew louder. And that wasn’t Casey Kasem’s voice coming from the radio. That voice belonged to a child. I couldn’t make out the words, but she sounded desperate for help. Desperate for our help.

  I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

  Chapter Two—Amara
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  Waiting passively for the other shoe to drop wasn’t my cup of tea, and last night’s dream about Marnie didn’t put my mind at ease either. It was like I was her, listening to Faye terrify her with stories about ghosts and the man. Even back then, Marnie’s family knew the truth about the Widowmaker and did nothing about it.

  And the three little girls, the three Graces, those poor girls. Nobody cared that they were hopelessly stuck at Gracefield? Nope. To be fair, there was no one left to care. Marnie was gone, and the place had gone to the bank after her death. But I had rescued it. Like I was going to rescue the Graces. Yes, I’d made up my mind about that.

  I couldn’t just wait around for Carrie Jo to call me. Never had been a patient person, and I had always been a woman of action. I preferred to think of myself as being proactive. Back when I was a young girl, I was dubbed a go-getter, and I had the 4-H and Girl Scout badges to prove it. Funny how people liked that kind of tenacity in children but not so much when you got older. After three phone calls and a half a dozen emails to Carrie Jo Stuart, I gave up on garnering her help. As always, I had to take matters into my own hands.

  I couldn’t wait any longer. The dreams became more intense, the experiences terrifying. I would fix this problem myself.

  At least I kind of had a plan—I’d spent endless hours researching the house and the activity I experienced. I had nothing better to do while I sat by Dad’s hospital bed these past few weeks. Nothing to do but think and read and research. I wasn’t giving up Gracefield, not for all the money in the world. Not in a million years. The Widowmaker wasn’t going to drive me out of what was mine. Except for Gracefield, Dad and I didn’t have anything left.

  Mantius Wade, aka the Widowmaker, remained elusive. How was it such a man hadn’t been caught? There should be something about him in the old newspapers and journals from the time. I mistakenly believed finding something about him in the local historical record would be fairly simple with such an unusual name, but so far I had nothing to go on.