2 Yule Be the Death of Me (11 page)

Vivienne
watched as Harriet pivoted on her flats and hurried away, powered by the lure
of chasing information. Seizing the moment, she crept over to the area where
she was certain she had seen the other patron. She walked quickly between rows,
looking left and right for any sign of the visitor or a fallen book that had
made such a racket.  She had nearly reached the far corner when another
crash erupted from the genealogy area.

Her heart
raced in her chest as she sprinted back hoping to catch the culprit. She nearly
collided at the top of the staircase with Harriet, who herself had raced
upstairs. “Vivienne, what are you doing up here?”

“It wasn’t
me.” Vivienne protested. “I was over at the other end of the room looking for
whatever made the sound the first time.”

Harriet folded
her arms across her chest. “Is this some kind of joke you’re playing?”

“Harriet, I’d
never do something like that to you.”

Harriet was
about to say something else when she pointed to the work stations and gasped.
“Look at this mess.” Vivienne’s purse, the medical encyclopedia, several discs,
and the chair were haphazardly strewn as if someone had just knocked everything
off the table with a sweep of an arm.

Vivienne
hurried over and began to pick up the items when her hand stopped over a book
with a green cover and the title ‘Mythology and folklore of early American
settlers.’ She quickly shoved it into her purse before Harriet could notice it
and raise more questions. “I think
it’s
some kids in
here playing a prank.”

“What is wrong
with kids today?” Harriet spoke softly as she surveyed the scene with a bit of
anger. She placed her hands upon her hips and shouted in her best annoyed
librarian voice, the kind she reserved for children’s story hour whenever their
attention spans waned.  “Whoever is doing this is going to get a free ride
to the Sheriff’s office tonight.”

“She’s not
joking.” Vivienne added to the threat.

Harriet
shivered suddenly. “Did you feel that? Is a window open up here?”

Vivienne
shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

Harriet turned
the chair back upright as Vivienne grabbed her purse and picked up the books
and discs from the floor. “I think I’ll close up early tonight.”

There was
another commotion from the lower level. A thud and the sound of paper
scattering on the floor. Vivienne sprinted over to the staircase, slightly out
of breath as she hit the middle landing.

“Do you see
them?” Harriet called out.

“No, but the
front door is open.” Vivienne called out as she ran down the steps and was
careful to avoid slipping on the papers blowing across the carpet as the winter
wind blasted into the building. She reached the front entrance and stuck her
head out the door. Other than a few cars passing by, not a soul was on the
sidewalks as far as she could see. She pulled the door closed as Harriet joined
her by the circulation desk. “I’m calling Sheriff
Rigsbee
about this.”

Vivienne shook
her head. “Whoever it was left in a hurry. We must have finally scared them.”

“So we should
just let these kids get away with it?” Harriet reached for the phone. “The need
to see we’ve done something.”

“We don’t know
who it was.” Vivienne spoke quickly. “Besides, what can we tell them? Neither
one of us saw anything to give a physical description.”

Harriet paused
for a moment and put her fingers on her temples. “I don’t know about you, but given
what’s happened with those Bad Santa letters going up around here I’m more than
a little nervous.”

“Harriet, it
was probably some young kids doing something foolish on a dare.”

“You think
so?” Harriet didn’t sound all to
convinced
.

“Now that I
think about it, the first time I thought I saw someone up here it looked about
kid-sized.” Vivienne lied again.

Harriet’s face
went from fear to anger in a few seconds. “They do like to pull stupid pranks
like that.”

“Exactly.”
Vivienne reasoned along with her. “They saw two women in here all alone and
decided to have some fun. Kids do stupid things all the time.”

“Oh, that just
burns me up.” Harriet bent over and started plucking the papers off the floor.
“They have no respect for anything these days.”

Vivienne helped
her grab the last of the papers. “Are these the records I printed from
upstairs?”

Harriet eyed
the ones in her hands quickly. “Yes, everything prints at the front desk. It’s
a nickel a copy, but given what’s happened they’re on the house.”

Vivienne smiled
back. “You don’t have to do that.”

Harriet handed
her the papers. “No, let’s just call it a night and close up. I’ll check the
encyclopedia out to your library card in the morning.”

“I’m fine with
that.” Vivienne agreed. “Let me get my purse from upstairs and we can go.”

“I just want
to get into my flannel nightgown, and curl up with a good book.” Harriet’s eyes
narrowed. “If anyone else is in here, it serves them right to get locked in for
the night.”

Vivienne
zipped upstairs, retrieved her purse, and returned slightly out of breath
again. “Who needs a gym membership when you work here?” She teased.

“You’re
telling me.” Harriet smiled.

“Thanks again
for all your help, Harriet.” Vivienne waited as she turned off the main light
switches, and plunged the library into the dim shadow of dusk. She held the
encyclopedia tight in her grip.

Harriet
unlocked a desk drawer with a set of keys from her pants pocket and pulled out
her small but sensible purse. “I’m glad you were here, actually. If I was by
myself, I would have been scared to death.” She retrieved her winter jacket
from a set of wall hooks and slipped it on.

“Same goes for
me.”

As they walked
out the front door, Harriet locked the doors with the keys and buttoned her
coat up in the cold wind. “Well, I’ll be keeping a sharp eye on any kids coming
into the library from now on I can tell you that.”

“Drive safe.”
Vivienne waved as they parted ways to walk to their cars in the parking lot.

“You too.”
Harriet slid into her little blue compact sedan and started the engine up.

Vivienne
plopped into her Toyota and tossed her purse on the passenger seat.
Impersonating a journalist, telling lies to avoid further police involvement,
and now book theft. She was certainly racking up the points to a Bad Santa
note. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if the next one had her name on it,
she thought as she turned the engine over and waited for the heat to blast from
the vents.

Vivienne
scraped the last bits of rice left on the plate from her chicken and broccoli
into the trash bin and rinsed it under a stream of warm water from the sink.
“So, I managed to convince her not to call you guys after all.” She confided to
Joshua who was seated at the kitchen table finishing his cashew chicken.

“That’s
probably a good thing.” He seemed tired and not quite there.

“Are you
feeling okay?” She loaded the plate into the dishwasher rack.

“Yeah. It’s
just all this extra work is taking a toll on everyone at the station.” He
brought his plate over to her and kissed her on the back of the neck. “All this
food doesn’t help matters.”

“We haven’t
done the fortune cookies yet.” Vivienne reminded him of the little ritual they
had started on their first date several months ago.

“I didn’t see
any in the bag.” Joshua leaned forward and nibbled on her left ear. “I thought
you pulled them out?”

“No.” Vivienne
pouted as she scraped his plate clean and rinsed it before loading it into the
washer and closing the door. “Well, that’s just great.”

“It’s just a
cookie.” He ran his hands along her hips. “No big deal.”

She whirled
around to face him. “We have no fortune.”

“We don’t need
a cookie to tell us what’s going to happen tonight.” He gave her a friendly
little growl.

She put her hands
up on his chest. “I’m so full right now and my stomach has been a little off
the past few days.”

“Come lay down
with me. I promise you’ll feel a whole lot better.” He reached up and pulled
her hands down.

She let out a
little sigh. “If I lay down on the bed I’m going to fall dead asleep.”

His steel-blue
eyes narrowed slightly. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.

“I was going
to go onto the internet and do some more research too. Whoever it was in the
library today sure seemed interested in what I was doing.”

Joshua put his
right hand over her lips. “I just want to relax with the one person in the
whole wide world I most want to be with.”

Vivienne
decided to put off her research until a little later. Joshua looked quite tired
and she was sure he’d fall asleep not too long after they had some quiet time
together. She nodded and kissed his hand.

He led her out
of the kitchen and up to the bedroom. Tommy danced around excitedly, clawing at
the wall register vent which Vivienne called ‘playing the harp’, a strange
habit he picked up recently. Joshua hurried him out into the hall and closed
the door.

“He’s going to
claw at the door the whole time now.” Vivienne warned.

“That cat
takes my whole side of the bed far too often.” Joshua said as he pulled his
shirt over his head and revealed his furry chest.

Vivienne
pulled off her wristwatch and set it on the bedside table. “He’s stubborn.”

“He’s
spoiled.” Joshua stepped out of his trousers and climbed into the flannel bed
sheets.

Vivienne
slipped out of her clothes, leaving only her undergarments on as she followed
him into the bed. “I take care of my men.” She cooed.

Joshua reached
over and with polished perfection unhooked her bra which he gracefully dropped
to the floor as he pulled her close to him. “For which the men in your life are
most grateful for.”

She kissed him
on the lips, loving the prickly sensation from his beard as it caressed her
cheeks. “You were right. I am feeling better now.”

He pulled her
closer into him, their noses barely an inch apart. “And you said we had no
fortune.” He kissed her once more.

*       
*  
 
      *

A little while
later, Vivienne slipped on her comfy white flannel robe and tied the belt at
the waist. She stepped into a pair of pink scuff slippers and padded silently
out of the bedroom, leaving Joshua to snooze with Tommy whom she allowed to
sneak in.

As she crept
into the living room, she stepped on the floor pedal that turned on the tree
lights. The soft glow was all she desired, just enough light for her to find
her way around the growing mound of wrapped presents that spread further out
from the tree skirt each day. She eased herself in front of the computer to
conduct a little more research since sleep was furthest from her mind. She was
grateful that her business had taken off, but she rarely had late evenings to
enjoy the blissful quiet anymore. There were no annoying calls from
telemarketers, no unexpected knocks at the door from friends or neighbors. She
could explore her curiosity freely without having to justify her reasons to
anyone.

As the
computer awaited her input, she pulled out the information that she had printed
at the library from the desk drawer. It was at that moment she discovered what
was missing. In her haste to leave, she had forgotten her yellow notepad back
at the circulation desk. “Damn.” She berated herself for leaving such sensitive
information behind. She would have to return on Monday to fetch it when the
library re-opened.

She began her
search with the medical encyclopedia for
hydroxybenzene
poisoning and discovered that another more common name for it was carbolic
acid. Upon further reading, she discovered it was quite a common item to be
found in homes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Carbolic
acid, as it turned out, was used in soaps more often than not. Still, she
couldn’t imagine a sudden outbreak of soap-ingestion amongst the population of
Cayuga Cove. There had to be another reason why so many had died.

As the minutes
turned into an hour, her eyes began to bother her staring at the bright LCD
screen. Despite her best efforts, she had made no further progress on finding a
clue to crack the mystery of the flare up in reported cases. Until, she came
across a name that rang a bell, Edgar
Rothwell
.

She was
surprised to see that his wife, Hazel had died on September 22nd 1872 with the
listed cause of death as ‘accidental carbolic acid poisoning’. She was
thirty-two years old and buried in the Cayuga Union Cemetery two days later.
Even more tragic, her children Jacob and Constance, both followed her to the
grave less than a week later from accidental carbolic acid poisoning.

Edgar
Rothwell
did not pass away until the following December
21st of accidental carbolic acid poisoning, at the age of forty-two, upon which
the
Rothwell
home fell into the hands of distant
relatives who stripped it of the most valuable furnishings and left the empty
shell to slowly crumble to a ghost of its former glory until the historical
society purchased the building at auction in 1973 and had it refurbished.

She nearly
jumped out of her chair when her purse tumbled off the end table, spilling the
mythology and folklore book from inside of it. She quickly walked over and
found it lying face down, about a quarter of the way open. She carefully lifted
it off the floor and turned it over. The top right page was dog-eared under the
entry ‘Female Spirits; Banshee’. Vivienne scanned the entry and read it quietly
aloud to herself. “A banshee is female spirit common in the mythology and
folklore of early Irish-American immigrants. Known to haunt graveyards and
battlefields, this fearsome specter often appeared to those about to face a
violent death such as murder. It was also common for a banshee to attach itself
to a family if a particularly tragic history unfolded.”

Her thoughts
drifted back to the
Rothwell
family and all the
tragedy that befell them. If there was such a creature in Cayuga Cove, it would
have certainly found the family a tempting target to latch onto. The question
was, who exactly left this book for her to find in the library? Or was it a
warning to stop poking her nose into what was going on? If it was that, she
certainly needed more to be scared away from investigating. She reached down,
retrieved her purse, and slipped the book back inside of it. She would hold
onto it for a little while just in case.

Exhausted as
the clock neared one in the morning, Vivienne finally put the computer into
standby mode and walked over to the tree. She stared at the miniature lights
and wished that life could be as idyllic as the little villages depicted on
some of the ornaments hanging from the branches. There were no murders or
poisonings happening inside the little homes that lined the cobblestone roads.
No parents burying their children in the cemetery behind the stained-glass glow
of the cathedral as a soft snow fell from the heavens. Nor were there invisible
portals opened to other dimensions where dark things could sneak through and
cause havoc. Each little scene on the ornaments depicted absolute peace on earth
and good will toward men. She lingered for a moment before stepping on the
pedal to turn off the tree.

As the lights
went out, she heard the wind rattle the windows of the house. Bits of snow flew
against the panes as the streetlight cast shadows of tree branches on the
darkened walls of her living room. She heard the moaning sound again and froze
in place. “Sally.” A sepulchral voice called out from the freezing darkness.
“Sally Rollins.” It called out again as the windows rattled a bit more.

Vivienne moved
to the window where she could get a better view of the moon. Sure enough, it
resembled a grinning half-skull as dark clouds swirled around it. Vivienne
turned to rouse Joshua from his sleep in the bedroom when she gasped. There
were four shadows cast against the wall near her. Her own, that of a woman a
bit shorter and heavier than herself, and the distinct shadows of two small
children holding hands.

Vivienne
watched in terror as each of the shadows, save her own, raised their arms
upwards, pointing toward the window behind her. She felt a blast of bitterly
cold air creep around her body as she slowly turned around. There, standing
outside her window was a tall man with skin as pale as snow. His facial
features were mostly hidden in the shadowy darkness, but as the moonlight faded
in and out, she could make out thin lips around a mouth of chipped and rotten
teeth. His arms were folded across his chest, as if he were lying repose inside
a casket.  His hands were lined with dark veins, fingers curled and
gnarled like tree branches. Where his eyes should be, there were only two dark
holes that seemed to pull the moonlight inside with some bizarre force.

She took a
step backwards, unable to turn away. “Joshua.” She called out, but her voice
sounded hollow and weak.  As if it were coming from across the street. She
coughed and cleared her throat, but it didn’t help.

The shadows of
the woman and children melted like hot wax down the wall, slithered like snakes
across the carpet, and climbed back up along the wall surrounding the window.
The arms of both figures twisted around into strange positions, the sounds of
bones snapping and popping out of joint as each one defied anatomical movement.
When they stopped, they were each pointing to the man in the window.

“Joshua.” She
tried to speak again, only her voice was the faintest of whispers. The moaning
outside grew louder as the man opened his mouth wide. His jaw continued to drop
lower and lower, far beyond the normal range until it was nearly level with his
chest. From inside his throat, she could see hands and arms reaching outwards
in a frantic effort to escape.

She felt
woozy, as the room began to slowly spin around her. The man moved closer toward
the window, pressing the end of his nose against the cold glass. Her knees went
weak and she struggled to remain standing. A line of frost shot across the
windowpane, then another. Each one began to move of its own accord, until a few
seconds later when the entire pane of glass was frozen solid.

Shielded from
the terrible sight, she found her voice and cried out in terror. Her scream
went higher and higher as
a the
shadows of the woman
and children on the wall changed to skeletal forms and then crumbled into
nothing.

“Vivienne.”
Joshua bolted out of the bedroom door.

She ran into
his arms, sobbing. “Something was outside. A man.”

He raced
forward to the window near the Christmas tree. “Out there right now?”

“He’s gone.”
She could see that the frost on the window had disappeared along with her
stalker. “I don’t think it was human.”

“What was it
then?” Joshua looked out the window and then pulled the curtains closed. “A
ghost?”

“I don’t know.
But it felt evil.” She took a deep breath.

“What makes
you say that?” He walked over to her and put his arms on her shoulders. “Wow,
you’re cold as ice.”

She shuddered,
crossing her arms across her chest to get warm. “There was so much hate inside
that thing. It was overwhelming.”

Joshua reached
over to the loveseat and pulled a fleece blanket off the end. He wrapped it
around her protectively. “It’s not going to hurt you with me around.”

She dropped
her head on his chest. “I’ve never felt anything like this. It was like it was
draining the life right out of me.”

“I’m here
now.” He tried to soothe her.

“I heard a
voice outside saying the name of Sally Rollins.” Vivienne spoke. “I think she
may be in trouble.”

“The woman who
lives out in the trailer park near Natalie?”

“Yes.”
Vivienne replied. “I have a bad feeling something’s happened to her.”

Joshua led her
over to the loveseat and gently helped her sit down. He then picked up the
phone and began to dial.

“Who are you
calling?”

“Bill Collins
is on the night shift tonight. I’m going to have him send a car out to check on
Sally Rollins.” Joshua explained.

Vivienne nodded.
“Good. I won’t be able to sleep until I know what’s going on.”