Oleander House: Bay City Paranormal Investigations, Book 1

bag on the double bed and gazed around the room. The walls were painted a soft, pale yellow. Sheer white curtains covered a set of French doors that opened onto the upstairs porch. It gave him a wonderfully peaceful feeling. “This room’s great.”
“Glad you like it. Go on and get settled, then come down to the library. It’s to your left as you come down the stairs, you can’t miss it.” Bo stared at him with a curiously heavy look that turned Sam’s knees to jelly. “See you in a few minutes.”
Bo left the room, closing the door behind him. Sam sat on the bed until his legs stopped shaking, then got up to unpack.
Chapter Two
    Twenty minutes later, Sam headed down the stairs to the library. He followed the sound of voices through an archway and into a large room lined floor to ceiling with deep shelves overflowing with books. Rugs patterned in red and gold lay scattered on the dark wood floor. A round table that looked like mahogany sat in the middle of the room. It was covered with equipment, some familiar and some not. The room felt vaguely oppressive.
    David caught his eye and waved him over. “Hey! I was just wondering if I ought to come get you.”
    “Sorry to keep you waiting.” Sam took a seat next to David on a small sofa upholstered in deep red leather.
“No problem.” Bo smiled. “Before we do anything else, I’m going to tell y’all about the history of this house.”
“I’m sure we all know it already,” Cecile said in a bored tone. “Carl told me all about it.”
Amy’s eyes narrowed. Andre laid a hand on her arm, as if to stop an impending outburst. David rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything.
“You mean Carl Gentry, the owner of the house?” Sam asked, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice.
“I’m sure he gave you the basics,” Bo jumped in before Cecile could reply. “But I doubt you’ve heard the full history. I doubt Mr. Gentry even knows it all. And I know that the rest of the group still needs to hear it.” Cecile pursed her lips, but didn’t say anything else.
“This house was built in 1840,” Bo began without further comment, “by a man named Claude Devereux. He and his wife, Esmeralda, named it Maison de Oléandre, Oleander House, after the oleander bushes lining the driveway. They raised their children here, and lived out their lives here. They lost a daughter in the yellow fever epidemic of 1853 and two sons in the Civil War, but never experienced anything out of the ordinary in their home, at least not that anyone knows of. Claude and Esmeralda are both buried in the family plot out back. Their oldest son, Gaston, inherited the house when they died, and he moved his family from New Orleans back to Oleander House.
“In 1890, the local preacher came to visit one afternoon and found the entire family slaughtered, all except the oldest daughter, Cerise. The sheriff found her upstairs in her room when he came to investigate the killings. She was covered in blood, none of which was hers. She was completely unharmed, physically anyway. She died thirteen years later in an insane asylum at the age of twenty-eight. She never spoke another word from the time of the killings until the day she died.”
“Did they think Cerise did it?” Sam wondered. “It seems unlikely that one teenage girl could slaughter an entire family in the pre-automatic weapons age.”
“They were pretty sure she didn’t,” Amy said. “There were no weapons anywhere on the property that could’ve done the things that were done to the bodies that they found. They were literally torn apart, and it didn’t look like it was done by any sort of blade. There was no way Cerise could’ve done it, but she never told them who did.”
“Wow.” David grinned nervously. “Creepy.”
“The house stood empty for a while,” Bo continued. “The bank held the title, since Cerise was declared mentally incompetent. In 1902, another family, the Wards, bought it and renovated it. They lived there without incident for over forty years. The kids grew up and moved away. A place this size was a little too much for an aging couple to keep up with on their own, and the husband and wife moved out in 1945. They sold it to a middle-aged couple, George and Sarah James.
“Five years later, in 1950, Sarah’s sister came for a pre-arranged visit and found Sarah dead, hacked into pieces. George was curled up in the corner, covered in blood. Like Cerise, he himself wasn’t harmed. He wouldn’t