Fic: Mr. & Mrs. John Moore (aka Miss Sara Howard Moore) VII: The Haunted House (8/8)
Title: Mr. & Mrs. John Moore (aka Sara Howard Moore) VII: The Haunted House (8/8)
Author: BradyGirl_12
Pairings/Characters (this chapter): John/Sara, ‘Andy’, Constable Kevin Milgrew
Fandom: The Alienist (2018)/The Alienist: Angel Of Darkness (2020)
Genres: Drama, Holiday, Horror, Mystery, Suspense
Rating (this chapter): PG-13
Warnings (this chapter): Mention of suicide
Spoilers: None
General Summary: Sara and John investigate a haunted house on Halloween.
Chapter Summary: Dreams or haunting?
Date Of Completion: June 10, 2020
Date Of Posting: November 19, 2020
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘em, TNT does, more’s the pity.
Word Count (this chapter): 1817
Feedback welcome and appreciated.
Author’s Note: All chapters of the this installment of the series can be found here.
VIII
DREAMS?
Dreams are wisps
Of reality,
Swirling like fog
In the mind.
Agnes Skolnar
“Dreams”
1889 C.E.
Sara awoke, a slow coming-to that was peaceful and benevolent until she sat up abruptly with John coming awake in the same moment. Sunlight streamed in through the window, dust motes dancing wildly in the beam of light.
“Wow,” Sara said. “I had quite a dream last night.”
“So did I.” John shook his head. “It was pretty weird.”
Sara climbed out of bed and went over to the window. “It’s like the world was swept clean.”
“It was a wild storm.”
Sara’s eyes strayed to the oak tree. It just looked like an ordinary tree.
“I’d better go out and water and feed Bert and Ernie.” John rolled out of bed and put on his shirt and cravat.
Sara picked up her dress from over a chair. John helped her put it on.
“Hmph, I usually help you off with your clothes, not on,” he said.
Sara pretended to adjust his cravat. “You can help me take it off tonight, I promise.”
He smiled and kissed her. “I’ll be right back.” He put on his pants and shirt and slipped on his shoes, using a buttonhook to button them. He left to see to the horses.
Sara took her time dressing. She went over the dream before it faded away, as dreams were apt to do.
I’d read from the journal about the séance, and combined with the storm and Halloween created a doozy of a dream. Or nightmare, in this case.
She buttoned her shoes with the buttonhook as John had done. She stood from the bed and went back to the window, roving her gaze around the outbuildings. She frowned. The smokehouse door was ajar.
Sara went downstairs and exited the house via the kitchen door. The tall grass glittered with heavy morning dew and she sidestepped puddles left from last night’s storm.
She entered the stables. John was finishing up with the horses and said, “We should be able to get back to the city bright and early.”
“We need to check out the smokehouse first.”
John lifted an eyebrow. “Sounds like my dream.”
“We can compare notes on nightmares when we get back home, but there’s something fishy about the smokehouse.”
“Fishy? More like porky. Or bacon-y.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “You ought to be in vaudeville.”
“I’d be a headliner.”
“You’re not one of the Four Cohans, you know.”
John did an impromptu dance. “I’d wow ‘em with my soft-shoe routine.”
“Oh, dear.”
John laughed. “C’mon, to the smokehouse!”
Birds were signing this morning after the storm. Every outbuilding looked a little shabbier in the daylight.
John put a finger to his lips, Sara nodding. Caution was the watchword. They opened the smokehouse door wider.
Sunlight filtered into the dark interior of the smokehouse, still faintly redolent of smoked meat. Shadows moved in the corner.
“Who’s in there?” Sara demanded.
Someone shuffled in the dark. John stepped inside. “It’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you.”
Sara was right behind John and saw a burly man huddled in the corner. Shaggy, dark hair and beard obscured most of his face and he wore rags.
He looks familiar.
Her dream was fading, but she was sure that she had seen him in it. But what role had he played?
John was staring at the frightened man. He shook it off and resumed talking to him again.
“I’ll get the constable from town,” Sara said. “You stay here with our friend. Looks like we found our ghost.”
“I’ve seen him before.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, keep thinking. I’ll be back.”
Sara hitched Bert and Ernie up to the carriage and went into town.
& & & & &
John talked quietly to the raggedy man. The feeling of familiarity persisted.
He remembered last night’s dream. The memory was somewhat disjointed, as memories of dreams can be, and he was sure this man had been in his nightmare.
Odd, that I would dream about him before I ever saw him.
He remembered the account of the séance in Abigail’s journal and shivered a little. The entire estate was spooky.
“Are you hungry?” The man whimpered. John took an apple out of his pocket, intended for the horses, but this man needed it more. He held out the apple.
The man hesitated but hunger won out. He grabbed the apple and devoured it like a starving man, which he may well have been.
John glanced back at the house. It looked like a sadly-neglected house but he could not help thinking about Poe’s House of Usher. Was it really decaying?
He thought he saw a flicker of light in the dining room. He dismissed it as a trick of the light and returned his attention to the raggedy man.
“Raggedy Andy,” he murmured. “Laszlo could help you. He’s a brilliant alienist.” He knew Laszlo’s compassion would help this poor soul.
A loud crack! startled them both. Andy shrank back while John went to the doorway. He scanned the yard and spotted a large branch under the oak tree.
That oak tree.
“Well, Andy, that’ tree’s always in the center of things around here.”
It had been chilling to hear Sara read about the suicide at the oak tree. He knew that people were shocked by suicide, but after all he had seen in Five Points and the Tenderloin in the city, he was surprised that more people did not take the plunge. The slums were places that bred despair.
But even the rich could despair. Mental illness did not care how much money was in your bank account.
He tried to relax but he had to stay alert guarding Andy. Though admittedly, there was not much to guard. Andy was not much of a threat, though that could change in an instant. A big man like Andy could be dangerous without meaning to be.
John remembered fragments of his dream. Mostly he remembered a sense of something sinister, and that feeling was still with him, clinging like fog to his rumpled clothes.
Like last night.
He remembered that part of the dream: fog showing up in the house, cold and wispy, and some weird chanting.
“Dreams can be strange, Andy. I have a friend who likes to interpret dreams. I bet he would have a field day with what I dreamed up last night. I bet Sara’s dream was crazy, too. I’ll have to ask her what she dreamed.”
He kept up the light chatter and Andy seemed calm. John felt sorry for the guy. Big, child-like men always seemed especially vulnerable.
Eventually, the sound of carriage wheels rumbled up the driveway. Andy whimpered and curled up into a ball.
“It’s okay, buddy, I won’t let them hurt you.”
Sara led three men to the smokehouse. A man dressed as a constable said, “Mr. Moore, we’ll take care of things now.” Two burly men dressed as orderlies were right behind him.
“You’re scaring him,” John protested. “Let me get him into the ambulance.”
Constable Milgrew’s handlebar mustache twitched, whether in annoyance or something else, John could not tell. “All right, give it a try.”
John crouched down in front of Andy. “These men are going to take you to a place where there’s plenty of food and a place to sleep.”
Andy looked up, fear and trust warring in his brown eyes.
John smiled. “It’s okay. My friend Dr. Laszlo Kriezler will be coming to see you.” He held out his hand.
Andy started at John for a minute, then slowly took his hand. John helped him stand up. He assisted the ragged man to the ambulance wagon and helped him in.
“Constable, Dr. Laszlo Kriezler will arrive soon to perform an evaluation of this man. He may just be mentally feeble and not a candidate for the asylum.”
“Never heard of ‘im.”
“Dr. Laszlo Kriezler heads the Kriezler Institute in the city and consults with the New York City Police Department. He worked closely with Colonel Theodore Roosevelt when he was Police Commissioner.” John was lucky that Laszlo was still in the country. He had been scheduled to leave with his lady, Dr. Karen Stratton, to go to Vienna at the end of September, but something had come up at the Institute. He would be leaving soon, however.
Sara hid her smile. John had pulled out all the stops, determined that the poor soul in the ambulance would be treated well while waiting for Laszlo to see him.
Constable Milgrew had gotten the message. “Yes, sir,” he said as he climbed up to sit next to the orderly taking up the reins. The other orderly had gone into the ambulance with Andy.
As the ambulance was driven away, Sara asked, “His name’s Andy, huh?”
“It’s my name for him. It seemed to fit with the description of raggedy.”
Sara shook her head. “A writer’s mind at work.” John grinned. “Well, I can make my report to Ellie.” She started walking toward the house, pausing as she saw the large branch lying under the oak tree.
“That was strange, that account of the hanging in the journal,” John said. “And Abigail and her family supposedly contacted Emily’s spirit.”
“Uh, yes.” Sara sounded uneasy. “Are you ready to leave?”
“Our brownstone never looked so good.” They turned away from the oak tree and went into the house, going upstairs and gathering their things from the bedroom.
“This room looks worse in the daylight,” Sara said.
“The dust motes agree,” said John as he observed a sunbeam.
“Ugh.” Sara sneezed.
They headed downstairs. As they passed the dining room, John glanced in. “Wonder how spooky this place looked during the séance.”
“With flickering candles? Probably very spooky.”
“Fog and all.”
“Fog?”
“Yeah, I dreamed about fog last night.”
“Huh, so did I.”
“Must have been the night for it.”
They left the mansion and Sara locked the door. John strapped the box holding the lanterns and guns to the back of the carriage and they were off to the city.
“You know, I’ve been remembering more of the dream,” Sara said. “What was yours about?”
As Bert and Ernie clopped down the driveway, a strong gust of wind blew, the oak tree swaying and creaking as a ghostly figure appeared in the window of the dining room holding a candle, which blew out when a strong wind gusted through the dining room. Tendrils of fog wound around the mansion, obscuring the house on a bright November day.
_______________________________________________
Was it a dream? Do two people ever dream the exact same dream? Or is Pine Grove really haunted? If so, was that reality too much for Sara and John, and they have convinced themselves it was just a dream?
I leave the decision to you, dear reader, but I know what I think! ;)
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