The Haunting
Caroline Street—formerly Main Street Fredericksburg, Virginia Present Day
"GODDAMNED, FUCKING PIECE of crap."
Like a cyclone riding the wave of an ill wind, the shouted cursing spiraled from the main floor upward to the attic rafters. Startled, American history professor Maggie Holliday knocked her head against the low-hanging eave, sending dust, cobwebs and dried lavender raining down like confetti on the just-discovered diary in her hands.
Blowing on the tooled leather, she got a whiff of the soothing scent of lavender. For whatever reason, the fragrance held the power to sweep her away to a kinder, gentler frame of mind. All her life, she'd been crazy about anything with lavender in it, from shampoos and perfumes to soaps and sachets. When her Realtor had first brought her up into the attic of the 1850s Victorian, the aroma had wrapped itself about her like welcoming arms. She'd taken it as a sign that the house and she were meant to be.
Finding the diary struck her as similarly symbolic. When she'd come up to nail a loose window shutter in place in preparation for the storm headed their way, she'd never expected to unearth a one-hundred-forty ... read full excerpt from The Haunting ebook
