Rosecliff Manor Haunting Read Free Page A

away, crouching in front of a newer-looking tombstone in the next row.
    “What are you doing?” she asked.
    “Thought I saw something a second ago.”
    “What?”
    “Can’t say for sure. A shiny piece of metal in the grass. Don’t see it now though.”
    He might not, but she did. “It’s there, about a foot to your left. See it?”  
    He swished his fingers along the thick, jade blades of grass, until he clasped the object in his hand. “Huh.”
    “What is it?”
    “A belt buckle on a string. Looks like it slipped off of something, maybe a bouquet on the headstone. When the flowers wilted, it must have slid off.”
    The buckle was gold plated and rectangular in shape. A brown, circular stone about the size of a quarter was inlaid in the middle. “It must have belonged to the man whose grave this is.”
    Luke glanced at the headstone. “Cliff Clark. Born May 1945, died December 2014.”
    “December. Right around the time we were here and I saw the twins.” Addison stuck her hand out. “Can I see it?”
    Luke placed the buckle in her palm. The moment her fingers grazed its surface, the cemetery swirled around her and everything went black.

CHAPTER 5
     
     
    The darkness evaporated like a fine mist until the air was clear again. Addison looked around. She was no longer within the safe confines of the cemetery. No longer with Luke. She was in a room, and judging by the rancid combination of bleach and disease streaming through her nostrils, it was a hospital room. She clamped two fingers over her nose, opting to breathe through her mouth until her stomach settled.
    It was cold.
    Meat-locker cold.
    Wherever she was, she wanted out.
    The room was dimly lit, the only illumination coming from a dull light bulb screwed into the end of a silver lamp that coiled out several feet from the wall like a detachable hose on a shower faucet. Next to the lamp was a bed, and on top of the bed, a man. He looked old. Addison guessed somewhere in his upper seventies. His eyes were closed like he was sleeping, even though her instincts told her it wasn’t sleep he’d succumbed to.  
    He was dead.
    She didn’t know how she knew it.
    She just did. 
    An elderly woman hunched over the side of the bed, weeping, her bowed head twisting left to right. She clasped the deceased man’s hand, begging him not to go, not to leave, not yet. His lifeless hand slipped from hers, sagging onto his lap, and she cried out, “Open your eyes, Clifford! Look at me … please!”   
    Her pleas had come too late.  
    Several seconds passed. The woman faded from view like she’d been nothing more than a hologram. Addison’s attention was drawn to the other side of the bed, to Vivian and Grace standing side by side, both peering down at the man.
    Vivian smoothed a hand across the man’s cheek and said, “It’s all right, Daddy. It’s all over now.”
    The man’s eyes thrust open and he rose up, but his entire body didn’t rise with him. His physical body remained still and flat against the bed while his spirit body detached—something Addison had never witnessed before now. He lifted himself into a standing position and glanced back, gazing upon his mortal self for the last time. When he turned around again, he looked different. Younger. Like he’d aged in reverse, his spirit body becoming strong once more, free of the wrinkles that plagued him in his later years. And that wasn’t the only change. No longer was he dressed in a paper-thin, dingy, gray hospital gown. He was clothed in white. A shade of white so piercing Addison struggled to gaze upon him without holding out a hand to deflect the blinding rays. 
    She took a step forward, her eyes fixed on the man who she now recognized. He was the man from her dream. The man behind the wheel of the vintage car.
    A beam of light blazed through the open door into the room. The man hesitated for a moment. A look of peace spread across his face, and he smiled. He understood what was coming,