In the Shadow of the Lilac: III: Sigh
Welcome to In the Shadow of the Lilac! This is projected to be a five-part wholesome spooky serial, concluding on October 31st. If you’d like to receive it in your inboxes, please be sure to subscribe to the section “It was a Dark and Stormy Night.”
Synopsis: When Melody and Zion Holcomb move to Lavender Vale ahead of their parents, they expect the peaceful Gilded Age town to be a breath of fresh air. They can’t begin to guess that a century-old mystery has been lying in wait for them to solve. . . and the answers lie buried in the halls of the Hotel Lilac.
Last seen: Melody encountered one of the Lilac’s resident ghosts, only to result in further fears concerning Grant. . .
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“Melody, you’ve hardly eaten anything,” her mother said tenderly, reaching across the table to brush a stray chestnut lock out of Melody’s eyes. “The bread and cake you baked are lovely, dear, and I thought chicken salad was your favorite? Aren’t you happy?”
“I’m glad you’re home,” Melody insisted, but her lips trembled a little like her hands, which was why she hesitated to pick up her fork, and equally the glass of lemonade.
“Don’t mind her,” Zion chuckled over his plate. “She just has a prospective boyfriend, that’s all. Isn’t that it, princess?”
Melody stared at them both as mother and father both paused and noted smilingly that it must be Grant.
“He seemed a nice young man,” her father observed.
“He is, when he isn’t pranking us,” Zion said lightly, with a look at Melody. “Is that what’s bothering you, Mel? I hope he didn’t prank you again?”
“No, no I never found him.” Melody stopped, not wanting that to seem the reason for her upset. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel okay. My heart is messed up,” she mumbled, stirring her salad distractedly and trying valiantly to appear like she was fine.
“Mel…why didn’t you say something? Maybe you should go upstairs and rest.”
She pushed her plate away. “Zion, can I talk to you?”
“Of course.” He followed her up the stairwell to the second floor, out of earshot of the family at table, particularly out of earshot of little Angeline.
“Melody, what’s wrong? Something frightened you, and if it isn’t Grant, I don’t know-“
“I didn’t say it wasn’t Grant, he just didn’t prank me,” Melody moaned, twisting her hands around the balustrade and finding the carved roses fascinating. Zion put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.
“What did he do this time? Tell me, and dad and I will take care of it. Honestly, I wish you wouldn’t fall for someone who’s upsetting you.”
“Zion,” Melody pleaded. “It’s not - not something he did. I saw one of the ghosts.”
“The ghosts?”
“You must have found out about them, didn’t I tell you?”
“I heard no stories about them, thankfully I stay away from all the silly marketing. Are you telling me they’re actually real, and not some figment of too little sleep by too many guests?”
“She was a bride, Zion, one of the five women who died here in 1908. That’s why the hotel closed for so long, people were afraid - and weird things keep happening to me, and it’s not Grant, and earlier the bride came and she made me follow her so she could show me a picture from 1904. Zion, somebody who looked like Grant was in that picture!”
“So…a ghost showed you an old photo with Grant’s doppelgänger in it. Sweetheart, she doesn’t sound like she was trying to scare you.”
“No,” Melody conceded, “but why?”
“Why don’t you ask Grant about his doppelgänger? I’m certain you’ll see him tomorrow. Gracious, why I’m letting you work at that place if ghosts are going to pop out - you can stop now, though, now that mom and dad are home and you won’t be alone. Anyway, Grant has stopped warning us about anything, so I think he’s calmed down. I promise everything will be cleared up in the morning. Your heart needs a rest, princess, so please go to bed. Goodnight.”
He kissed her brow and Melody slowly went up to the attic, mind still swirling with ghosts, spectres, and doppeläangers that somehow showed up in the same place.
Melody was dreaming.
A blue light wavered along the halls of an ancient tunnel, shimmering through bands of shadow and light, like the sun shining through deep water. There were no fish swimming there, no water, but far away came an echoey, melodically slowed drumroll of waves, rolling in upon stone.
Melody’s footsteps rang among the pattering of water droplets as she moved, dreamily down the corridor. It seemed to stretch endlessly, weaving this way and that, writhing at every step like a snake. The walls were roughly hewn, and as she came to a left turn, she found five women waiting for her. Each bent her head, each thickly veiled as in mourning, and one was a bride.
Jasmine raised her head and through the veil came the faintest smile of friendship. She lifted the jasmine and orange-blossom coronet from her hair and held it out to Melody. But as Melody reached out to take it, the blossoms began to fall, and a sound jerked her eyes aside, where a tidal pool was pearling in between stony pathways.
Just beyond came a distant light, sunlight, but silhouetted by it was the spectre, the black phantom with its violet eyes, and for the first time it gave a sound - a cackling laugh, not Grant’s laugh, but the most frightening one of insanity as it plunged towards her, robes streaming in tatters as Jasmine and the others pushed Melody with their icy hands, not even hands but only air, pushing her back up the path.
She ran, losing her breath, the flying footsteps forever gaining and she didn’t far turn back as her hand shoved desperately at the wall -
“Graaant! Ziooon!” Even her own voice seemed caught in a golden waft of resin, turning to amber before it passed down the walls.
She was giving up hope as she reached the dead end and tried to find the door she had come through, her nails splintering against the rock, only for Zion and Grant to shove it open and jump behind her, throwing the shadow back - but then everything began to twist and fade, as Zion turned around with a frown, and Grant shook his head at her and told her he was leaving.
“Grant- Zion-“ she tried to catch at their sleeves as they left her, but the room was fading to gray.
Then she was standing in the hall before the photograph, and Grant was with her, chase forgotten, morning having come; she heard herself telling him something about the photo, only now it was in color.
“I heard once of a soul who had to spend his purgatory working in a physical job,” she trembled to him. “I was so afraid - that you were a ghost.”
Grant seemed sad as he looked down at her hands, held in his, and as he pressed them, they grew cold and the voices down the corridor seemed to come from farther and farther away. Melody panicked at his silence and pulled at his hands, trying to force him to look back at her.
“Grant? Grant!”
But his hands slipped away from her and he didn’t promise, didn’t answer, didn’t stay.
Melody shot up in bed. “Grant!”
Her vision shivered as her breath came in gasps. Trying to quiet it, she made sure she was in her bedroom, turning to the window, only to find that she had left the curtains open. Down below, halfway through the garden, a violet light flickered from the depths of a black shroud.
“Melody?” The door swung open and Melody’s father slipped in, turning on the light. “What’s wrong?”
She jumped and turned to grab his arm and point to the window, only to realize that the shadow had melded with the night.
When Melody went downstairs the next morning, she felt little better than she had at dinner, but her fears seemed to dissipate in the morning light, leaving her thoughtful as to how, or why, the spectre was in the garden last night. Every time she saw the spectre, he was closer to the home. She dreaded that one evening, she, her mother, or Angeline would look up from the kitchen table and find the eyes at the door.
Despite what logic might have to say, Melody felt certain that it wasn’t Grant, and that Grant was the kind of man who would keep any promise he made to her. Clearly, it wasn’t he who had been in the garden.
She frowned as she dumped extra cinnamon into the French toast batter and gave sleepy Angeline and her parents a kiss.
She knew it wasn’t Grant, logically also knew that he wasn’t a ghost, because she figured that a ghost from purgatory would likely be even more passive about activities than Grant already was - no pranks, no cakes, no dogs in tow - even if ghosts might be solemn and have few interests. Such a soul would likely be focused on whatever work was given them to do, she thought, or what intercession they were allowed to request.
And yet she couldn’t shake the feeling, the certainty, that there was something off about Grant. She knew she could trust him, but why was he so reluctant and wrapped up in his own mind?
And if the spectre wasn’t Grant, who was it, and why did they dress identically? Melody shook her head, with half a mind to borrow her mother’s phone for an internet search. She didn’t have her own, because she never wanted one; but she considered that it may well be that Grant’s costume was not an uncommon one, as unique as the eyes might be-
She abruptly halted, staring at the wall and nearly pouring milk onto the burner instead of the bowl. Zion grabbed her hand just in time.
“What have I told you about not making meals when you haven’t been feeling well?” He scolded, taking the milk from her hands and promptly forbidding her to assist with the French-toast making.
“I saw the spectre last night,” Melody whispered to him.
“Forget about him,” Zion replied, but his eyes nearly scorched the bread better than the burner could.
“But Zion - I just realized.”
“Realized what?” He gave the toasts a violent flip with the spatula and faced her.
“When Grant wore the costume, the eyes were like ice. Every time since then, they’ve been violet.”
“They’re lights, right? He can change the color.” Zion turned back to the stove:
“But I’m sure it isn’t him!” Melody insisted. “And wouldn’t Bones, I mean Lys, have been with him with that glow-in-the-dark skeleton rig?”
“Maybe not,” Zion shrugged. “The only thing I know is, Grant is going to have serious regrets when I see him this morning!”
Zion was in a foul mood, silent as a shark on the drive to the Lilac, both due to the spectre and to Melody’s insistence that he not be the one to confront Grant, and that she wanted to work.
“Powered, no doubt, by Grant’s presence,” was Zion’s frustrated complaint to his father as they headed out the door. “He’s going to harm her heart more than she hopes he’ll heal it.”
“Don’t yell at him, please don’t,” Melody pleaded, when Zion left her in the lobby. “He promised, and I’m sure he keeps promises-”
“Then what do you call the spectre?”
“. . . not Grant.”
“. . . Then what do we call it?”
Melody didn’t have an answer, and Zion was afraid to offer one.
Melody waited a few minutes in the lobby, for she was early – normally, she clocked in at 8:15, but it was only 7:30. Grant didn’t appear, so she wandered the hotel, finding it much easier to avoid guests at such an early time.
She ran into him storming through the garden, soaked up to his knees by the clinging morning dew from the waist-high grasses beyond the shrubs bordering the garden.
“You’re early! Did you know,” he said to her, stamping the bits of grass from his boots with distaste, “how hard it is to convince some teenagers that they don’t own the world? One of them took his horse for a swim in the ocean, and one self-proclaimed princess decided to revamp the garden for a tea-party.” He paused and smiled at Melody. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even ‘good morning’ you. I need coffee. Shall we?”
Melody accepted the arm he offered her.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she began, once each had coffee in hand. “Can – I show you something, before we clock in?”
“Technically I already clocked in early, so I have time. Where are we going?”
Melody led the way to the hallway. There was no need to use the passages yet, for many guests were still asleep.
“I saw Jasmine yesterday.”
“The Bride?”
“She pointed me to this photograph. Grant, what are you doing in it?”
Grant blinked and choked as he started to laugh.
“Melody, you can’t actually think that I’m a hundred and fifty years old, do you?”
“I don’t know,” Melody retorted desperately. “I’ve been so confused – it’s just your doppelgänger, isn’t it? Why would a ghost show it to me? You were supposed to be on the ghost tour, not be the ghost tour!”
“Touche, dear,” Grant gave a little smile and stepped up to the photograph. “Allow me to give you a little history lesson, one I’m not too fond of retelling. This,” he explained, “is Avery Wilder. My thrice-great uncle, whose secret passageways you’re so fond of. He designed the entire property, minus the later Emporium.”
“Wait -” Melody followed him, slipping her hands around his elbow as the chill inside her eased. “You never told me your last name. Grant. . .Wilder?”
“You never told me your middle name.”
“He looks exactly like you!” Melody marveled, simultaneously certain that Wilder was the most beautiful last name she’d ever heard.
“Yeah, you’re not the first to point it out,” Grant muttered, giving the photograph a cold shoulder as he turned back to her.
“Colonel Steve Wilder was Avery’s brother. Avery himself was engaged to Delilah Grant, who you’ll remember was the Lilac’s inspiration and namesake. Avery designed everything here with Delilah’s loves in mind - colors, flowers, architecture, everything. He was quite an architect in his day, studying all the great buildings in Europe; he spoke eight languages. Any interest he had in living started to fade with Delilah’s death, or so my research tells me. At any rate, he faded from the scene when the Lilac first closed, probably finding it painful. My great-grandfather, Matt Wilder, was the one who reopened the Hotel Lilac in the 30’s. I guess our family has been so strongly tied to this place that we can’t seem to leave, even when we try.”
“Why didn’t you mention any of that before?”
“I told you it’s not a history I’m fond of. This place is magnetic.” Grant brushed a bit of dust off the wall with his sleeve. “Even the dust thinks so, it seems. I’d love to be somewhere else. Instead I’ve spent much of the last seven years researching family history and working here.”
“Well. . .maybe you’ll be able to leave someday,” Melody suggested. “Though if you weren’t working here, I’d never have met you.”
Grant’s demeanor lightened at her sweet smile.
“That’s a good point.”
“I still don’t understand why Jasmine would appear just to show me Avery’s photograph, and why did she appear to me?”
Grant shrugged. “Maybe she’s asking you to pray for him. Truly, Melody, very few have actually seen our resident ghostly ladies. Perhaps there’s something special about you. . . perhaps you’re the only one who has prayed for them, enough for them to be able to communicate with you in some way. There’s little point in appearing to anyone who doesn’t believe in Purgatory, though I haven’t seen any of the ladies myself. I feel them around, sometimes, but no more than that.”
He fixated on her rosary bracelet again.
“At any rate, perhaps you should pray for Avery the way you do for Jasmine and the others, that’s all. Now, why was it you were looking for me before that?”
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Melody took the ring out of her apron pocket and placed it in his hand. “I found this ring in the bridal suite just before I glimpsed Jasmine the first time.”
She offered it to him and he held it up to the light.
“It’s an old ring, lost a long time ago, judging by the wear,” he stated. “The style is easily Victorian.”
“I wonder if it might be hers, since I saw her just after I found it.”
“No. I can promise you that it’s not. You’d best let me take care of this ring, Melody.”
“You still haven’t explained why you want Zion and I to leave. Won’t you miss us? Is it just because of the ghosts? They don’t seem scary.”
“Says almost no one, ever. I told you there were six ghosts.” Grant’s eyes were averted, pressing the opal into his hand as he counted the guests strolling the seaside promenade and those out for a carriage ride.
“Who. . . is the sixth?”
For a moment, Grant seemed about to laugh once more.
“I thought it was Zion I had to convince,” he said sorrowfully. “You knew I wasn’t a ghost, Melody.”
“I know you’re not,” Melody corrected him. In an eerie moment of deja vu, she slipped her hands into his, shifting the opal from pressing into his palm.
“Ghosts don’t eat cake.” Her lips trembled a little, torn between a laugh and a sigh.
“Your hands are freezing.” Grant didn’t pull his hands away, only wrapped them around hers.
“Can you give me a hug?”
Grant shrugged a little. “If you want.”
He hugged her very carefully, and to Melody’s relief he felt very real, solid, and his shoulder was the best pillow she’d ever found as the last frustrating nag of doubt finally flitted away to bother someone else.
“Grant? Who is the other ghost?”
“That, Melody, I wish I -”
Laughter was coming down the corridor, startlingly close by. Grant snatched Melody’s hand and guided her ahead of him.
“Quick, down here!” He grasped the edge of the carpet at the alcove and lifted it, revealing it to be a trap doors.
“It’s so funny how we never see anyone,” one woman was loudly saying from behind as Melody dropped down, Grant nearly tripping down in their rush to carefully and swiftly close the door. No sooner had the darkness been sealed then they both burst out giggling as four pairs of feet stopped directly above them, and a man complained that the hotel must be run by ghosts.
“Ugh, I can hear laughing mice, at least,” a bored young woman groaned, likely face plastered to her phone.
Muffling their laughter, Grant and Melody ducked down the narrow passage until they made it to the staff’s laundry room, and from there, they popped out in the Emporium.
Melody hadn’t yet been there, and was quickly captivated by collections of painted porcelain and dainty crystal vials of perfume, and tins of the Lilac’s floral tea blends, particularly orange-blossom peach and lavender apple.
Grant stopped and Melody bumped into him, her eyes still focused on merchandise.
“Sorry!”
Grant steadied her without replying.
“Zion? What happened?”
Melody ducked her head around Grant and realized that the back of the Emporium was filled with shattered glass and three deputies, each toeing around through the multicolored shatters of violet, lilac, and milk-white, speaking in low voices to Zion, the hotel manager Marcus Lyle, the Emporium staff, and the other members of security.
Zion gave Grant a distracted nod in greeting and stepped away from the officers.
“Antoine and I came in to open with the managers, and glass was everywhere. As yet, nothing seems to be missing - just five smashed bottles of fragrances, as you can probably smell. We found a sixth teetering on the edge of the cabinet, clearly placed there since this isn’t where it was displayed.”
He gestured to the rose-pink vial that stood, barely balancing on the edge of the seascape-painted oak chest.
“What does the camera footage say?” Grant asked, holding Melody back from the glass-strewn floor.
“That’s just it. They say nothing,” Zion replied in disgust. “The footage is all fizzed out, beginning at 11:58 last night, right through to now. I’ve got to get them fixed. Seems like a possible kid’s dare, just coming in here and breaking a few things. Must have worn gloves, though, because there were zero prints on anything, especially that bottle.”
“Huh,” Grant muttered, sweeping the scene with a look. “It’s not the first time. I’m glad that’s all it seems to be. Daytime should be fine, at any rate. I’ll take Melody into work.”
“Fine, but remind me that we need to have a discussion.”
Grant gave a curt nod as he pulled Melody outside, leading her out across the colonnade and through the kitchen corridor they often took, swiping hot chocolate and marmalade muffins as they went.
“I have a job for you,” Grant announced. “The old library could use a bit of redecorating, before we reopen it. It’s been shut off since a flood last year required tearing out the floor and giving the books a red carpet treatment. How about adding some faux flowers to the room?”
Melody was always up for that, and burrowed into the studio’s stashes of seasonal silk greenery, coming up with a towering armful of sunflowers, autumn leaf and berry garlands, and grapevine wreaths to nestle cables within. Grant shouldered a few hoops and vines and led the way, cutting through the garden.
“Grant, did you know that you have a bad habit of leaving questions unanswered?” Melody ventured.
“I noticed. You wonder now whether I’m thinking the broken window and perfumes adds up to more than kids from the town. If it is what I fear it is,” Grant said darkly, breath shivering as mist on the cold air, “you aren’t safe here, Melody. I wish -” he ducked his head, thinking, then raised it again. “No. It is unlikely,” he mused to himself. “Perhaps it is nothing. . . I hope that it is. In here, Melody.”
Grant shouldered past an overgrown rosebush, uncovering a little door which led into unfamiliar corridors. The door creaked shut behind them.
“Hope that what is? I thought you weren’t warning us anymore?”
“I thought I wasn’t. You say you saw a spectre thrice now. That was never me, Melody. I promised you. But, you aren’t the only ones who have seen me in costume, and it’s certainly possible for any of the other prank-minded, halloween-loving fellows in Lavender Vale to put one together. I daresay I’ve made myself a popular ghost with some age-groups,” he snorted. “He hasn’t tried to harm you, so that’s something positive! Just let your brother and I look after you until creep season ends, Melody. Zion’s right that I shouldn’t be over-worrying you.”
“What about-”
Melody was cut off when there was a snap and the corridor was plunged into eerie darkness.
“Grant!”
Unable to see a thing, Melody reached for his hand in the darkness.
“Grant?”
There was no reply. Her fingers found nothing but the wood of the walls as the hotel creaked unsettlingly all around her.
Melody uncertainly hugged the greenery closer to her, listening for any sign of Grant or other workers, probing the darkness as she waited for her eyes to adjust and find something she could aim for. She didn’t know exactly where she was, and couldn’t hear any guests through the walls - perhaps Grant had exited through a nearby panel? She tentatively felt for one. Out of the corner of her eye, a violet and white glow grew, until she turned her face toward it. Chills ran through her skull.
The skeleton face stared silently from the end of the corridor, unmoving with its awful smile - the one that was meant to be natural in a man’s skeleton, but was so horribly twisted. Melody backed up, her heel scraping painfully against the wall as she bumped into it.
She hurled the greenery at him with all her might and ran, slamming into the wall at the turn she couldn’t see, calling desperately for Grant or Zion, surely somebody had to be somewhere nearby -
The lights snapped on. Melody skidded to a halt, vision swirling as she threw a nervous glance back. The passage was empty. Up ahead of her other hotel maids were exclaiming with relief at the return of power.
No one had seen the ghost – no one but Melody.
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