Page 14 of The Mare Rider of Cornwall Cove
“Not really. Maybe we’ll start a new trend. Pharch Haint Blue Waters Lip Paint. Available at all fine beauty salons in the greater New England area.”
Phil snorted. “Pharch. That’s so silly but kind of cool.” He glanced my way as we crossed the county line. “When I asked you to tutor me, I kind of hoped that someday we’d have a ship name.”
“Really? I never imagined being so out that people would ship me with anyone,” I confessed as we trundled along winding back roads, the heater blowing in our faces. “I guess I never thought I’d find a guy who was so popular.”
“I’m not all that. It’s you, and it’s me. It’s us as a pair. People see us and can feel how much we love each other, and that makes them all swoony.”
Oh shit. NowIwas swoony. I lifted his rough knuckles to my lips to kiss each one. “You’re giving me a boner.”
I snorted/wheezed all the way to the rusted gates of Cornwall Cove Lunatic Asylum. Idling in front of the tall gates, chained shut years ago but reopened by someone with bolt cutters, all the joy inside the cab seemed to shrivel and die. The night was a cold one, clear as a bell, as Monique was known to say, and the massive structure sat in the bold white moonlight. I swallowed my trepidation before looking at Phil. He seemed transfixed by the once glorious testament to treating the poor and misunderstood of yesteryear.
“Holy shit,” he whispered, arms dangling over the steering wheel. I could only nod. I’d seen images of the huge hospital during my research. I’d even dug up the architect’s floor plans as well as early daguerreotypes, tintypes, and paper prints spanning the grand opening in the 1840s through the early 1950s. Now it was a gray, despicable, rotting place that staredout at us through dozens of shattered windows. “That place makes my ass pucker.”
“Mine too, babe,” I replied as my sight skipped to the large oaks, bare now, long limbs stretching out to grab at the moon overhead. I hated this place already, and we’d not even crossed over onto private property. In the late ’90s, a rich real estate tycoon bought the land and building with the intent to refurbish it and turn it into a hotel. Anyone who has readThe Shiningcould have told them that was a really bad idea. Guess his advisors weren’t readers.
After a few visits to the newly purchased institute, the owner and his then fiancée threw themselves out of one of the third-floor windows of the asylum and died a few hours later at a nearby hospital. The families were too grief-stricken to even consider looking at the sanitarium, and so it has sat idle, fallow some would say, growing more decrepit with each passing year.
My phone pinged with an incoming text. Ripping my sight from the asylum, I looked down. “It’s Roxie wondering if we’re on site yet.”
“Tell her this place is scary as fuck,” he coughed out, then inched forward, using the dented bumper of his truck to shove the gates open. They ground and dragged on the fractured cement drive, making a sound like that of a tormented soul being tortured. Bracing myself, I held my phone to my chest as we eased onto the grounds. The moment we crossed the property line, a flash of pain exploded behind my eyes, causing me to groan. Phil hit the brakes. I motioned for him to drive on, the thudding in my head easing just a bit as we made a looping right. I dabbed at my nose but found no blood. The pain was duller now, still there, like a persistent ice cream headache, but not the blinding agony I’d felt when dealing with Aradia at the lake.
“You okay?” Phil asked, easing forward, top speed of maybe ten miles per hour. “You’re pale as a sheet.”
“Good, no, I’m good. I just got a psychic introduction to the grounds. There are restless spirits here, quite a few.” I slid my fingers under my glasses to wipe at my eyes. I could make out glowing forms in the overgrown gardens. They probably sensed me just as I had picked them up. The ghosts here were not chatting redcoats or milkmen or lonely poets. Those phantoms caused me no pain. FIAs didn’t require a warning bell. Unfriendly interactive apparitions—UFIs—now they needed a claxon loud enough to wake…well, you know. “It’s easing up already. As long as we keep our distance from the graveyard, we should be good.”
I forced a trembling smile that did not fool my boyfriend at all. “Okay, but the first time your eyeballs roll back or your nose starts to gush, we are out. I’m not risking you, Arch.”
I gently bobbed my head. I had no great urge to risk either of us. “Once more into the breach, dear friends,” I joked as I pointed a shaky finger at Cornwall Cove leering down at us.
“IwishI were at the beach.”
I truly did love this man of mine.
Chapter Five
If not for thesteady hum of texts from Roxie back at the K&K base of operations, aka the bookstore now, I’d have sat in that truck until morning.
There was something about Cornwall Cove. Something sly. Something hidden in that small part of your brain that makes the fine hairs on your arm rise for no apparent reason. Generally, that sensation was the tickling of psychic interactions that the majority of humans didn’t grasp. So if they didn’t understand it, they feared it, and rightfully so. Things that moved on the other side of a thin veil were to be feared at times.
“There’s something off about this place,” I murmured while still buckled, clasping my phone to the front of my thick coat as if it were a rosary and the asylum a rampaging vampire. Right now, a bloodsucker eyeballing my jugular would be a welcome sight. A vampire you could see and dispatch with relative ease ifyou had a stake. This creeping sensation of an intelligence you couldn’t see, hear, or touch was beyond eerie.
“You mean other than the dead people floating around?” Phil slid the truck into Park. The engine quieted, ticking softly as we sat there like two squids on a sandbar. I had no idea if squids sat on sandbars, probably not, but my head was not fully into clever comparisons. Every sense I had, as well as the extra paranormal one, was extended outward. And other than the sensation of those spirits moving about the grounds, I couldn’t pick up anything solid. And yet…
“Maybe I’m just pushing my powers out too far. Being oversensitive, you know.” I glanced his way. He shook his head. “Right, well, it’s probably my imagination. Let’s get things set up. We have an hour to find the game room.”
I shoved my tingling apprehension aside and pulled up the floor plans of the hospital I’d found online. Information about this place was plentiful if you knew where to look. There were several blogs out there that dealt with old mental hospitals. People were fascinated by them for some macabre reason. I’d dug deep into the old blog posts, sifting through rumors and suppositions, to find actual data to relay to our viewers as we meandered through the first floor.
“Arch, I think this is super scary, but I am kind of pumped,” Phil admitted, then flung his door open. A blast of cold air swirled into the cab, making me shiver. “I remember when I was a kid, and we’d go hang out in this haunted house—well, supposedly haunted. My buddies and I were scared totally shitless, but it was so much fun to be scared shitless. How dumb is that?”
“It’s not dumb. It’s really common.” I zipped my parka up to my chin, patted the gris-gris bag in my right pocket, and exited the safety of the truck. Glancing back at Phil hauling bags from behind the seat, I felt my pulse ticking up. “Don’t lock the truck,”I said and got a look of confusion. “Just in case we have to make a hasty exit.”
His eyes flared. He glanced over his shoulder and whipped his attention to me. “Good idea.” With that, he continued gathering equipment. We had more than just some cameras and tripods as well as a few ghost-sensing devices Phil had picked up online. Our budget didn’t allow for the really fancy paranormal investigating contraptions the more popular spirit hunters had. We were tiny little minnows in a large supernatural lake. “Do we want to set things up like we did at the lake?”
“No, I don’t think so.” I hoisted a duffel stuffed with glow party paraphernalia to my shoulder as the wind whistled through the trees, making the limbs moan and groan. “I’m planning on being more mobile this time. Giving the viewers a tour of the facility while telling them all about the past and what went on here. Also, this is private property, so there is a chance we might get busted for trespassing. But your dad can probably handle that for us.” He stared at me blankly. “The senator. He can probably get all charges against us dropped.”
“Oh! Yeah, sure, yeah, he could. I don’t really want to push him about that, though. He’s not really cool with me doing this, you know, so if we could not get arrested that would be awesome.”
I studied him in the moonlight. “Of course, yeah, I don’t plan on getting busted, but if it happens, a phone call should handle it.”
