Ghost House Revenge by Clare McNally

nothing more I can do.”
    “Sarah . . .”
    Sirens sounded in the distance just as Melanie returned with a blanket. Derek took
     it and laid it carefully over the woman. Marc watched all this, stunned and not believing.
     He hardly noticed the ambulance attendants when they lifted Sarah’s body and carried
     it out of the house.
    Marc rode in the back of the ambulance, biting his knuckles. He was so shocked that
     he did not notice the heirloom diamond missing from his wife’s finger.
    Melanie had another dream that night. She woke up with a start to feel a cold touch
     on her arm. But then she saw the woman with dark hair and somehow lost her fear. Without
     protest, she followed her downstairs. The woman turned to her. “It is beginning again.”
    “What is?”
    But there was no answer. Melanie felt her eyes closing, unable to stay awake. When
     she opened them again, she was back in bed with Gary snoring beside her.

9
    Sarah Kaufman was laid to rest in an ancient family plot two days later. On her death
     certificate, heart attack had been written under cause of death. Marc Kaufman, though
     deeply grieved, accepted that. It did not occur to him to ask if his wife’s death
     had truly been from natural causes.
    Melanie, feeling as great a loss as if Sarah had been a dear friend, walked slowly
     to her car from the graveside. She was sweating in the hot May sun, her dark brown
     suit making her uncomfortable. Underneath its bandage, her palm began to itch. Melanie
     tried to endure the pain, to make it dominate the memory of Sarah’s face. But that
     look of horror hovered in her mind like a dark cloud, menacing her.
    “Wait a minute,” Melanie said to herself as she took off herjacket and got into the car. “Sarah had a heart attack. That’s
all
. It has nothing to do with anything that ever happened in my house.”
    She turned on the radio to drown out her thoughts. But still her memory was overpowering.
     Vivid pictures came to her of the night of Gary’s accident. She could hear the screams
     of her children, echoing her own screams. She could see Gary flying out the window,
     glass sparkling in the moonlight.
    And she saw a blond-haired woman sitting in her kitchen, looking up at her with wide
     blue eyes. . . .
    “GO AWAY!” Melanie shouted at her memories.
    She gritted her teeth and concentrated on the road ahead, but still there were tears
     on her cheeks.
    “You’ve been crying,” Gary said when she got home. “Funeral upset you?”
    “No,” Melanie said. “I was thinking about the—well, remembering the look on Sarah’s
     face.”
    “Why?” Gary asked. “It was sad that she died, and a shock, too. But she did say she
     had a heart condition.”
    “She looked
terrified
, Gary,” Melanie said. “As if she had seen something.”
    Gary sighed very deeply and said with patience, “Melanie, she didn’t see anything.
     What would she see in an empty kitchen? She had a heart attack—maybe she’d rushed
     down the stairs too quickly when she left us.”
    “I don’t know, Gary,” Melanie said. “I wish I could believe it was that simple. But
     I had another one of those ‘dreams’ last night.”
    “What dreams?” Gary asked with concern.
    “Do you remember the night you found me in the kitchen? When you said I was sleepwalking?”
    “Yes?”
    “I had two more of those dreams,” Melanie said. “Once that night Alicen saw a face
     under her floor grating, and again when Sarah died.”
    “Both highly emotional incidents,” Gary pointed out.
    “Maybe,” Melanie said. “And maybe they
were
only dreams. But I heard once that recurring nightmares mean there’s something heavy
     on your mind. What could a girl in old-fashioned, ragged clothes mean? Or the kitchen?
     It’s always in the kitchen.”
    “Symbolism,” Gary said. “Is the girl so hard to figure out? She represents the olden
     days—Jacob Armand’s days. You’re thinking too much of him, Melanie. No wonder you