Page 60 of My Road Trip with a Vampire: Season One
“Could be worth checking out,” Dennis says, but his eyes are on the name at the bottom of my list.
“Red lady? That sounds promising. Could it be a woman in white kind of deal?”
I sigh.
“That’s what I was thinking, but the more I read about Martha—”
“Who’s Martha?”
I frown.
“Did you do any research for this?”
“A tiny bit, but Huntingdon College’s campus is allegedly haunted as hell. I figured we could play it by ear and find something.”
“Isn’t it weird that the boss didn’t send us searching for something specific?”
Dennis’ shoulders go rigid. I wonder if I’m asking too many questions about the boss again, but he softens.
“I guess so, but there’s plenty of potential for saving lost souls in Alabama. Tell me more about Martha.”
The tense moment passes.
“It’s an important piece of Alabama lore. Kathryn Tucker Wyndham shone some light on it in her book:Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey. The way Wyndham told the story, Martha was a student in the early twentieth century, fulfilling her father’s wish for her to attend her grandmother’s alma mater. Huntingdon was a women's college back then. Her family was loaded, by the way, but she was a little strange, and it was hard for her to make friends.”
“What do you mean by strange?”
“Some of the young women misunderstood her shyness and thought she was a snob.”
“She was an heiress, so that makes sense.”
“And there was the fact that she was obsessed with the color red. One of her roommates said she brought her red drapes from home and turned them into blankets, and she only wore red clothes.”
“That’s a little strange, but nothing is setting off any alarms.”
“The story gets weirder though. She was having a hard time adjusting to school and would lock herself away for hours. Within a few months, she had withdrawn so much that her roommate requested a transfer. Every roommate she had moved out after a few weeks because her vibes were that bad. She refused to sit by anyone in the dining hall and walked alone to her classes, but she’d wander through the dorms at night and stare at her classmates in their beds. It got so bad that the dorm president decided to stay with her to keep an eye on her, but even she got tired of the despondency. Martha caught her packing her things, and that’s supposedly what sent her over the edge.”
I lick my lips because Dennis isn’t asking questions. He’s waiting for me to finish.
“She didn’t attend any of her classes that day, and when the dorm president went to check on her that night she found the door was locked, but the light glowed red around it. She finally broke her way in after calling for Martha for some time and found her with her wrists slashed. Now her ghost roams the halls of the dormitory dressed in red.”
“Damn.” He leans on his elbow, so he’s angled over me. “You don’t think that’s a compelling tale for a haunting?”
“I did until I found another story about a woman in red wandering through Huntingdon back when the campus was located in Tuskegee. It sounds like the original story morphed into something else over the years, and someone took the time to flesh it out.”
“That does happen sometimes,” he says. “It could be a red herring, but that means there might be an even bigger story buried beneath.”
“True, and if there’s not, we can party all night in Alabama and get back on the road a day early since Faith put us behind schedule.”
He looks away at the mention of Faith’s name.
“Should be fun.”
The grim smile on his face tells me he thinks it’s going to be anything but fun.
* * *
“No one is grabbing my ankles, so I think we’re good,” I shout to Dennis, who’s listening for any signs of wandering spirits.
