Ancestral

Hunted

Ben was stunned.

“From what I can piece together, Josiah felt compassion for D. and bought him. Not wanting to own him as a slave, he gave him his freedom and helped him become established in Massachusetts. He then moved there himself and they became fast friends and perhaps even lovers. The journal says nothing about sex, but the letters might. We’ll have to ask Mr. P. in the morning. When he moved here, he was already connected to the underground railroad and deliberately chose this location because it was a small port town that allowed him to run and export trade with Canada without questions.”

“Wow, why isn’t this place a recognized historical site or something?” Ben asked.

“Because nobody knew. He kept it a secret. And even now, all we have is conjecture. I’m filling in the blanks. It will take a lot more real research to be able to prove anything.” I thought for a moment. “Heather has already found quite a bit, and she said there were boxes of materials about this house at the museum, maybe I’ll go in for a bit tomorrow, do a half day. It’ll be a nice gentle way to get back to work.” Ben thought that was a good idea and said goodnight.

I slept fitfully, fading in and out of sleep every hour or so. I never woke up fully, but just enough to be aware that something was wrong. I finally fell into a deep enough sleep that I was able to dream and that was even worse. I dreamed I was being chased by a giant bird. It had the head and torso of a woman, but it also had giant razor-sharp talons. Her cries were piercing and painful, and she drove me into a dark place with no cover. Again and again she would swoop down on me, barely missing me as I dove out of the way, but I knew it was only a matter of time. I was growing tired and beginning to falter. The next time she came at me she managed to rake her claws across my back and the pain was excruciating. As she came in for the kill, I heard a voice calling my name and felt myself fall into a pool of cold water.

I awoke on the floor of the kitchen, surrounded by the entire household. I was soaking wet, and Ben still held the pitcher he had used to soak me. Andi was kneeling beside me chanting, and everyone had a look of panic on their faces. I winced at the pain in my back as I asked, “What happened?”

I could still hear the echoes of the giant bird’s screams. The others looked anxiously at the open basement door. “Can you hear that too?” I asked.

Andi drew her chanting to a close as the echoes faded to silence and she opened her eyes. “It is no longer safe here for you, for either of you,” she added looking at Ben. “Joey was the main target tonight, but make no mistake, she will come for you eventually.”

Ben’s eyes got big. “What have I done?”

“It’s not what you’ve done, it’s what you know.” She turned to me and asked. “You discovered something important tonight, didn’t you?”

“How did you…? I found out that Captain Foster…”

She stopped me. “Don’t tell us anything. It seems that even knowing is enough to anger the spirit. Whatever it was you discovered is part of what she’s protecting.”

I moved to pick myself up off the floor and the pain in my back returned. When I winced Mr. P. and Ben reached to help me up, and Mr. P. let out a gasp. “Oh my God, what did you do to your back?” Turning to Helmut he ordered, “Get the disinfectant, now.”

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

Mr. P. looked at Andi and repeated my question, “What do you think it is?”

She looked at my back and said simply, “There are three long scratches running across you r back. They look fairly deep, but still just scratches.” At this point Helmut returned with a full first aid kit, and Mr. P. began cleaning up my wounds. “What did you see?” Andi asked. “Be specific.”

“Wait, I was asleep in my bed. How did I get down here?” I was still a little foggy and couldn’t remember anything other than the dream.

“Your screams woke everybody up,” Helmut volunteered. “After what happened this afternoon, I was sitting in the living room debating if I really wanted to visit the boys today, and you came flying down the stairs like a bat out of Hell. I tried to stop you, but I couldn’t. Then you fell on the floor in the dining room and those scratches just appeared right in front of my eyes. Damndest thing I ever saw. You started heading for the kitchen and I was able to tackle you just as you reached the basement door. By then the others were here. Andi took charge, telling Ben to shock you awake with cold water, then she pulled out this little bag and started chanting.”

“It’s a good thing he caught you,” Andi said. She repeated, “What did you see?”

I described my dream to her, and all the details of the bird that I could remember. “it may have been a nightmare, but it was just a dream, right?”

She rose and closed the basement door. “You need towels, could somebody run and get some?” The twins sped up the stairs while the rest of us moved to the living room. It was still dark out and I was beginning to shiver from the unexpected bath. When the towels arrived, Ben took charge of drying me off and wrapping me up to stay warm. “It was just a dream,” she finally answered. “But dreams have power. It was a dream that was as real as those scratches on your back. I believe you were accosted by the fourth spirit, the one in the basement that wanted to attack you the other night. I think she was trying to drive you to the basement where her power is strongest. If she can cause physical wounds up here, who knows what she could do to you down there.”

I took a deep breath. “So, what do we do to keep her away?”

“Nothing,” Andi stated flatly. “What you described is a harpy. They are elementals, known for stealing souls and taking them to the underworld. I’ve never heard of one being attached to a specific building,though, and I’ve certainly never heard of one guarding something, that’s the job of a sphynx. Plus, she feels like a ghost, a human spirit, not an elemental.”

“You’re saying that some sort of supernatural monster is trying to get me and there’s nothing we can do about it?” I looked at her in disbelief. “Great!”

“Well, a true harpy, yeah, nothing to do about it. But a ghost harpy, I’ve got to look that one up. They may have a weakness. We need more information. For one thing, we need to know who this ghost was when she was alive.”

“How do we find that out?” I asked. “She could be anybody.”

“No,” Andi insisted. “She is based in this house and she is somehow connected to the information you discovered tonight. That’s our starting point. I would suggest you continue your lines of research and see who might be a likely candidate. My guess is you have already run across her.”

The scratches were beginning to throb and I realized I was going to need a pain killer. Mr. P. pulled some analgesic cream from the first aid kit and handed me a couple of packets of aspirin. Then Andi suggested we all head back to bed. “I’ll keep watch in the hallway,” she said, “So you can sleep.” Then to Mr. P., “Perhaps we should lock the basement door, just in case?”

I overslept the next morning and woke up with a wicked headache. When I emerged, Helmut was sitting on a kitchen chair in the hall outside my bedroom. I must have looked pretty bad, because he didn’t make a dirty joke or snide remark, but quietly asked how I was feeling. I had missed breakfast, but Mr. P. always had a variety of cereals on hand, so I sat down to a bowl of raisin bran and considered what to do with the day. It seemed I had two options. I could continue searching through the journal and hope I could find something there, or I could head into the museum and look through those boxes Heather had told me about. I decided to do both. I would spend the rest of the morning working on the journal here, and then I would try to get a start on the boxes in the afternoon.

I focused on the last few years of Captain Foster’s life, reading about his life as an elderly man being cared for by his spinster daughter. I already knew his opinion of her, but now I began to understand his thinking. When he became dependent on her everything changed. She no longer treated him with respect or even common courtesy, but bullied him, sometimes refusing to provide food or assistance unless she got whatever it was she wanted that day. Sometimes she was just cruel, seeming to take pleasure in his humiliation. At one point he noted that he was going to have to start hiding his journal because he suspected she was reading it.

Going through just this much tired me out. I guess I wasn’t as fully recovered as I thought I was. I took a brief nap after lunch and woke up refreshed enough to give the museum a try. It was within easy walking distance, but, considering the events of last night and my current state of fatigue, I decided to drive. I met briefly with my boss. She took one look at me, told me to take the rest of the week asking if there was anything she could do for me.

“Well, there is one thing,” I said. “I hear there are three boxes of papers from the foster Inn when it closed. You know what I’m thinking about for the expansion of the architecture exhibit, I thought it might be fun to start with that one. If I could take some of that stuff home with me, I could get a good head start on the project while I’m recovering.”

She loved the idea and approved whole-heartedly and I Headed to the archives to pick them up. Heather was sitting at a worktable with one of the boxes and was looking at a small book. She brightened when she saw me come in and asked How I was. I chatted with her for a moment and told her of my plan to take the boxes home so I could start going through them too.

“I’ve just started on this one,” she said apologetically, “But look at this. It’s Mariah Foster’s personal diary. It’s not really about ‘chamber maids’ or ‘bell-hops’ but it’s fascinating, kind of like a train wreck. It’s awful but you can’t turn away.”

“What have you discovered so far?” I smiled, thinking to myself that this diary was exactly the kind of thing I needed to see.

“Not much, at least nothing specific, just that she seems to have been a real bitch.” She handed me the book and I looked at it quickly. “The way she talked about everyone was nasty. She hated her father and looked down on the staff, treating them like dirt.”

“Have you found anything on Marcus yet?”

“Not really, but I’ve been distracted by the diary”

“Well, since you’re so interested in it, I think you should continue researching it. Perhaps entries just a year or two before the Foster closed might hold some promise.” I gave the book back to her and suggested, “Why don’t you work on the box you’ve already started. If you find any floor plans or blueprints, bring them home, I want to see them. I’ll take the other two with me.” She agreed and dove back into the diary while I went off to chat with the archivist.