Ghost Walk Read Free Page B

ass.”
    Grace
tuned out the snarking.  “Quite the ladies’ man, Captain Riordan wooed all the
pretty girls of the colony.  He made quite a good living and he was incredibly handsome. 
There were few who could resist his charm.”
    “Incredibly
handsome.”  The jackass repeated with a nod.  “ Finally, you begin to
make some sense.  …Although you do make it sound like a disease.  Are you a
Sunday school teacher, by chance?  You sound like a Sunday school teacher to
me.”  It wasn’t a compliment.
    Grace had taught Sunday school back in Richmond, as a matter of fact.  “Despite
his reputation, Captain Riordan was welcomed into many of Harrisonburg’s nicest
homes.”  She continued and then paused dramatically.  “But not all of them.  Some
of the finest young women in Harrisonburg refused his ill-gotten gifts and
dishonorable propositions.  Furious, he vowed to make them pay for the insult.”
    “That’s not what happened.”
    “Lucinda
Wentworth was the first to die.”  Grace went on, trying to stick to the facts
of the case.  Now that she was at this part of the tale, she was suddenly
remembering why she’d never added James Riordan to her tour before. 
Even discussing a crime that was two and a half centuries old, had her stress
level spiking.  She pictured peaceful green cornfields and kept going.  “Lucinda
sneaked out of her bedroom, just a few blocks away,” she gestured down the
street, “and was never seen again.”
    Everybody
turned to eagerly look in the direction she was pointing.
    Well,
not everybody .
    “Why
are you telling this story?”  The guy hopped off the top rail of the fence, no
longer smirking.  His eyes stayed fixed on her, glowering in annoyance.  “I
know you’re new here, but I take this tour every night.  No one ever tells this story on the Ghost Walk.”
    Grace
knew that she was off-script.  Harrisonburg’s Official Ghost Walk was supposed
to be G-rated.  The whole village made its profits by appealing to vacationing
families wanting to experience a weekend of Revolutionary life.  A place where
parents could tell themselves their kids were learning something about history
and the kids could buy rubber muskets.  The residents of Harrisonburg didn’t
like anything controversial sullying the carefully cultivated, plastic
perfection of their town.
    Which
was why the Riveras had always been a stone in their sensible shoes.
    For
generations, Grace’s relatives had been the fortunetellers in town.  Their
small shop had been housing tarot card readings and mixing potions since before
the Revolution.  Way longer than the cutesy antique dealers had been in town.
    Regardless
of their authentic provenance, though, the rest of Harrisonburg was embarrassed
to have their storefront anywhere near their white picket fences.  They wanted
to forget all the messy aspects of the past and focus on have fife-and-drum
parades every day at three o’clock.  The Riveras had never fit into that
gentrified ideal.  From the day her parents died and she moved in with her
aunt, until the day she went off to college, Grace had felt out of place.  Which
is why she’d left this stifling town and never looked back.
    Well,
until her breakdown had driven her from Richmond and she had nowhere else to go.
    Harrisonburg
hadn’t changed much since Grace left, just like it hadn’t changed much in the
two-and-a-half centuries before.  It was the most complete Colonial town in
America, filled with eighteenth century brick houses and cobblestone streets.  For
generations, it had been forgotten and passed by as America grew-up around it. 
In the 1940s, the Harrisonburg Preservation Association had successfully
lobbied to have the entire town set aside as a landmark.  Instantly, ruined
buildings turned into “historic” buildings and property values doubled.  The
small town now existed out of time.  Entering Harrisonburg was like stepping back
to days of John