The Haunting at Grays Harbor (The River Book 8)
Read The Haunting at Grays Harbor (The River Book 8) Online
Authors: Michael Richan
The Haunting at Grays Harbor
By Michael Richan
By the author:
The River
series:
The Downwinders
series
:
The Dark River series:
All three series are part of
The
River Universe,
and there is crossover of some characters and plots. For a
suggested reading order, see the
Author’s Website
.
Copyright 2015 by Michael Richan
All Rights Reserved.
All
characters appearing in this work are fictitious.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A print
version of this book is available at most online retailers.
ASIN: B00R3EAQWI
Published by Dantull (148815127)
◊
Steven awoke and threw the covers from his bed. He thought he
heard violins playing in the distance, but as he strained his ears, he realized
it was just a trick of his mind. In the quiet of Eximere – a quiet not often
found in the city – he discovered that sometimes his brain liked to fill in the
silence with some kind of noise.
Three months after Jason’s death, things were starting to get
easier. Not better, just easier. It was easier to get up and face the morning
than it had been those first few weeks after they’d completed their deal with
Vohuman. Battling the demon had its own momentum that carried Steven forward in
spite of the loss of his son. As soon as it was resolved and Steven had time to
think, things became much worse. Many mornings he hadn’t made it out of bed at
all.
It seemed easier for Roy to manage the routines of life
during that time. Steven knew Roy was as devastated by Jason’s departure as he
was, but Roy kept saying things like: “You gotta keep going, Jason would be
pissed at you for spending all day in bed,” and “time will heal this, it heals
all things,” but Steven just found the words hollow and ignored him.
Now, months later, it was easier to get out of bed. They’d
spent a tremendous amount of time at Eximere, and it helped being so close to
Jason’s grave. Steven had not tried to contact Jason yet, and wasn’t sure he
ever would. Roy urged him to do it, but Steven still hadn’t figured out the
right thing to say.
I swung the axe,
he thought as he wrapped a robe around himself and walked
out to the hallway, already brightly lit with the strange light that passed for
sun at Eximere. It was still the first thought he had every morning, and it was
the thing that kept him from trying to reach Jason.
How do you explain to
your dead son that you’re the one who killed him? How do you say ‘sorry’ for
that?
He walked downstairs barefoot, marveling how the warm, bright light
was never so intense as to hurt his eyes, even first thing in the morning. Everything
at Eximere always seemed so perfectly managed – something, somewhere, keeping
James Unser’s vision going with unwaveringly consistent results.
Roy was seated on a stool in the kitchen. He had a large book
opened in front of him and a steaming cup of coffee next to it.
“Morning,” Steven said as he groggily walked past his father,
looking for an empty mug.
“Hilarious!” Roy said, not looking up.
“Morning is hilarious?” Steven asked sarcastically.
“I meant this book,” Roy replied, not looking up. “It’s
incredible. It’s entertaining as hell!”
“That’s saying something, considering how many books you’ve
gone through in that library,” Steven said, pouring himself a cup of coffee and
trying to gauge the number of volumes he’d seen his father peruse since they’d
discovered Eximere. The library was full of them, presumably stolen from other
gifteds and locked away down here where Unser thought they’d never benefit
other people with “the gift,” the ability to jump into the River and see things
others could not. Most of the books had been family volumes, just like Roy’s
book that went back four generations.
“This guy, he just cracks me up!” Roy said, laughing. “You
know how our book is pretty straightforward? I mean, there’s a personality to
each of the men who wrote in it, you can tell the differences, but for the most
part they just recorded things they thought we should know, without a lot of
embellishment. This guy, I think he thought he was writing for a magazine and
wanted to be remembered as a heroic figure. Like this part: ‘As the creature
approached, my mind raced with the many options I might employ.’ Who writes
like that?”
“Any idea who it might belong to?” Steven asked. They were trying
to return books to their rightful owners, usually the relatives of the person
the book had been stolen from.
“Haven’t figured that out yet,” Roy said. “Been laughing my
ass off reading it.”
Steven sat in a chair next to a small table. He looked at the
surface, marveling at how clean it looked.
I ate a bagel at this table
yesterday, and I know I didn’t clean it, yet it looks as though no one has ever
sat here. Maybe Dad wiped up after me? Or maybe it’s just the way things work
here at Eximere…
Roy laughed again. “Oh, this guy! He’s too much!” he said,
pointing to the pages of the book.
Steven wasn’t really in the mood for levity, but he wasn’t
about to quash his father’s good humor. There hadn’t been much laughter in
either of their lives over the past few months, and the more he listened to Roy
chuckling over his book, the more Steven softened, feeling himself let go of
melancholy and allowing himself a smile at Roy’s cheerfulness.
It’s OK to
smile,
he thought.
It’s not disrespectful to Jason to smile.
“Listen to this!” Roy said. “‘I mixed the elusive and delicate
ingredients with my prodigious talent…’” he read, then stopped to laugh and
slap the table next to him. “I mean, really! ‘Prodigious!’ Incredible!”
“Who wrote it?” Steven asked.
Roy flipped back to the beginning of the book. “Someone named
Murray Herveaux VanDernberg. Even his name is preposterous. Does that sound
like a real name to you?”
“Could be.”
“Sounds completely made up to me. We’ll never find this guy’s
descendants. None of them would have kept such a silly name.”
“You just want to keep the book for its entertainment value,”
Steven said.
“I was trying to read it in bed last night, but it kept
making me laugh, keeping me up. It’s not just his style of writing. He’s got
some ridiculous stories in here. Some real whoppers!”
“Can I borrow it after you’re done with it?” Steven asked,
intrigued.
“As long as you return it,” Roy said, leaning forward a
little and unconsciously wrapping an arm around the book to protect it from
Steven. “You’re horrible about returning things. I want this back.”
“You know, you don’t personally own all of the books in that
library,” Steven said, standing up and walking to the coffee maker for a warm
up. “Eliza and I are as entitled to look at them as you.”
“I feel a personal responsibility for these books,” Roy said.
“After what happened with June, you can see how each book might literally be a
bomb, waiting to go off. Tremendous care and precaution is required.”
“Be careful, or you’ll turn into Mr. VanDernberg,” Steven
said.
“Bah!” Roy exclaimed, returning to his book.
“Are we going back to Seattle today?” Steven asked, sitting
down at the table once again.
“Have to,” Roy said. “The utility bill is due. I have to pay
it.”
“You know, you can set things up so that those bills get paid
automatically,” Steven said. “You don’t have to drive a check into their office
anymore.”
“I’ve driven the check to their office for forty years,” Roy
said, an irritation entering his voice. “It always works. You don’t mess with
what works.”
“Unless it’s better to change,” Steven replied.
“Rarely is,” Roy grumbled.
“What time do you want to head back?”
“Couple of hours?” Roy said. “There’s a few more books I
still need to check.”
“Sounds fine,” Steven said. He got up and carried his mug
with him as he walked out of the kitchen, through the central hallway and into
the large open breezeway in the middle of the house. From there he walked to
the back, choosing a padded chair on the porch. It offered a view of the yard,
the large banyan tree in the distance, and the rows of graves that surrounded
it. He knew exactly which one held Jason, and it drew his attention
immediately, as it always did.
He sipped coffee while seated in the chair, watching the leaves
of the tree rustle.
Incredible,
he thought.
There can’t be real wind
down here. Whatever keeps this place going is nothing short of marvelous.
He thought of the many objects on tables downstairs in the
basement, some of them static, others active. Three projects in a side room
seemed to be the most important, including the one he, Roy, and Eliza shut down
many months ago, the one that made the Unser House above them such a dangerous
place to be. Another of the objects seemed to be related to the first, but the
third object was a complete mystery. He presumed it was keeping Eximere
running, but none of them had the faintest idea how.
The many books Unser stole from gifteds seemed innocuous, quietly
resting in the library inside. The objects he’d stolen from them were another
matter. By reading the books, Roy had been able to determine many of the
rightful heirs, but there was no way to figure out who the objects belonged to,
or how the objects worked. Many of them were dangerous. Roy had been insistent that
they not experiment with them unless they knew exactly what the object was and
how it functioned. He’d been especially worried about a wooden matchbox that he
said contained dangerous creatures, and he’d solicited promises from both
Steven and Eliza that if they found such a box, they’d not touch it. As a
result, Steven avoided the objects in general. He hoped they might find a
guide, some kind of ledger Unser might have created when he confiscated the
items that could help them determine what each object was, and whom it belonged
to. So far they’d not been able to find anything helpful.
Steven closed his eyes and let himself slip into the River
for a moment. It gave him the sensation of entering something that was moving –
a flowing “river” of things people with the gift could see, but most people
could not – and he found the sensation pleasant and distracting. In the River some
things became more clear, like ghosts. Some things invisible in the tangible
world became visible. Some things transformed. Some things and places didn’t
change at all.
Staring into the backyard, he could see the graves of the
gifteds that Unser had buried here – covered over with some kind of substance
that encased them in the ground in a thick, rubbery goo, like insects trapped
in amber. It was their books and objects that filled Eximere. One of those
graves belonged to Steven’s great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas. Roy
occasionally talked to Thomas, trancing next to the grave and using a material
that lightened the goo temporarily, just long enough for a conversation. Finding
Thomas had been the highlight of discovering Eximere many months ago, when they
were trapped in the Unser mansion above. Now it had become their home away from
home – a kind of personal resort, filled with countless mysteries and the
graves of people important to them.
Steven sipped his coffee and tried to soak in as much of the
peace and calm as he could. Soon they’d be back in rainy Seattle, with a
different view, and in houses that required cleaning when you dirtied them. The
tranquility of Eximere was a rarity in his life, and he relished it.
Unser
planned the perfect retirement,
he thought.
◊
Steven sped his Acura as fast as he dared westbound along
Highway 8. He and Roy were trying to make Cosmopolis before sundown. Huge
abandoned cooling towers from never completed nuclear power plants loomed above
the trees in the distance.
“You’d think a fancy car like this could go a little faster,”
Roy said.
“There’s cops all over this road,” Steven replied. “I’m not
going to get a ticket.”
“We need to get there before dark,” Roy said. “Dixon said the
priest wouldn’t be there after dark. Or had some issue with the dark. I forget
exactly.”
“A priest?” Steven said. “You didn’t tell me we’re helping a
priest!”
“We’re not helping a priest,” Roy replied, “he’s helping
them. We’re helping them.”
“Alright, now I’m confused,” Steven said, keeping an eye on
his speed. “Start from the top.”
“When I got home, there was a message from Dixon,” Roy said.
“There’s a family with house trouble out toward Westport. They’ve gone through
a couple of priests. The one they’re using now phoned Dixon.”
“Gone through?” Steven asked. “Gone through priests?”
“You know, they call them in, the priests try their mumbo
jumbo, and when it doesn’t work, the priest bails. Then they call in another
one, because the church is the only place they know to turn to. Apparently this
latest priest was aware of Dixon’s abilities.”
“Then why isn’t Dixon on his way out there, instead of us?”
“Dixon’s in Hawaii,” Roy said. “Referred the guy to me.”
“Hawaii? He sailed his boat to Hawaii?”
“I don’t know if he sailed or flew.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” Steven asked, a little
irritated. “Take care of Dixon’s work?”
“He asked if we’d meet with the priest,” Roy replied, “as a
favor. I told him I would. Dixon’s helped us out in many a pinch, don’t
forget.”
Steven sighed and watched the tall pines whiz by on either
side of the road. They were so dense he felt like a slot car driver — that he
could let go of the wheel, and the trees would keep him in line. He passed
other cars slowly, not wanting to draw attention to his new vehicle by blowing
their doors off. A brand new Acura would make a nice trophy for the speed traps
up and down Highway 8.