The Man from Shadow Valley Read online

  The Man from Shadow Valley

  Regan Forest

  Dear Reader,

  The idea for The Man from Shadow Valley began with my fascination over actual accounts of people who share identical dreams. Lovers meeting on the dreamscape? What a start for a romance novel!

  And where better to set the story than in a deserted mansion? As a child, I gazed up at such a house, picturing ghosts from the past and wondering who the people were that lived there….

  In grade school my friends found out I walked home with a classmate, Ethel, who lived on the poor side of town. I can still recall their stinging taunts today. What could that little girl have felt? She, too, must have gazed at mansions, weaving secret fantasies of her own. Ethel was my inspiration for Ellen, who conquers her past.

  Life has its strange twists. Recently I moved to the country, and on a road not far away—standing high on a hill—is an old abandoned house. It is surrounded only by silence as its white paint chips away. Every time I drive by, I become Ellen in Shadow Valley, dreaming. Except that she dreamed of fantasy gowns to draw and I dream of fantasy stories to write.

  As a writer, sharing wild and mysterious fantasies with readers is such a special privilege! What more could any dreamer ask for?

  Sincerely,

  Regan Forest

  For Kathy Burns

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  ELLEN WAS NINE when she first saw the ghost.

  It was twilight. Uneasy shadows prowled the gloom of Pebble Street. As always, the last hovering light of day stirred up discontent like dust before it settled under cover of night. Twilight—a time to run.

  A ball game was going on in the weed-grown vacant lot. Shouts of children carried on the summer breeze toward the weathered, unpainted porches where adults sat swatting at flies and drinking beer. None turned to look at the barefoot child who trotted past them down the length of the dirty street.

  There was a field beyond the last house, where carcasses of mining trucks lay rusting under thistle grass and gnarled weeds. Spiders lived in those steel corpses; Ellen wouldn’t go near them. She hurried by, and rushed even faster past the cemetery—a place of grim, battered headstones and haunted shadows. Forsaken souls lived there. Above rose the slope with violet-blue bruises and claw marks where mine buildings had once stood. Crickets hissed cheerless tunes and tree frogs snarled at the setting sun. Finally, she reached a lane overhung with giant cottonwoods. Excitement grew; her heart beat faster and she picked up speed until she reached a circle of chokecherry bushes and wild roses. Her secret place.

  Ellen stopped abruptly, out of breath. Just across the lane was a locked iron gate. Above it, against clear pink sky, stood a mansion on the hill. The late sun’s rays splashed a thin netting of gold over the mansion, a sheeny veil of magic. If she stood still and listened, she could hear the music of the breezes that sang around its chimneys and gables.

  When darkness began to fall and the sweet perfume of honeysuckle rose in the air, Ellen sat down on a mossy log to watch the lights come on.

  They came on in the sky first. Diamonds twinkling and laughing and teasing the high, high roof with magic sparkles. The house could touch the stars when it wished to. Then, soon, in the lower windows, lights began to glow, one by one.

  The topmost windows remained dark. People said the third floor was a ballroom, unused for decades. Ellen fixed her eyes on the dark windows, imagining a room lit by crystal spangles where couples waltzed to the music of violins, the women in flowing gowns and satin slippers, with diamonds sparkling at their throats....

  Then suddenly it was there! A frosty light moving through the tendrils of night, glowing in the third-story windows! Ellen shuddered with an ice-cold thrill. The ghost—luminous and floating across the dark and empty ballroom!

  After that night, she saw it often, but the ghost wasn’t why she came. It was the mansion itself that drew her. Each sight of it lit the flame of another of her dreams. Someday, she, too, would live in a house like this!

  * * *

  ALTHOUGH IT WAS CALLED the Whitfield mansion, Ellen knew it was inhabited by an elderly couple named Mr. and Mrs. Meullar. The summer she turned eleven, there was talk around Shadow Valley that their granddaughter had come to visit, and at a band concert in the park, Ellen saw her—a girl her own age wearing a yellow voile dress and matching yellow shoes and carrying a white purse. She looked like a princess. The barefoot girls from Pebble Street made fun of the frilly dress to hide their pangs of envy. For Ellen, the envy was agonizing. Not as much for the dress, as for the fact that this girl got to be inside the mansion. She actually slept there, and could climb the stairways and explore the magnificent rooms.

  That girl, Carolyn, never returned to Shadow Valley. Rumors spread that she had told stories of an evil spirit in the house, a terrifying ghost who never rested.

  I have seen it! Ellen thought. I have seen the ghost!

  During those endless childhood years of secondhand clothes and cruel glances, she went often to the gate to gaze up at the magnificent house, and escape into her daydreams. Someday she would live in a mansion. She would sit in exquisite rooms dressed in blue velvet, and serve guests from a silver tea service. She would light the ballroom with a thousand candles and dance in glimmering gowns of lace and satin. There would be parties. And there would always be music.

  Someday...

  1

  ONE EVENING IN THE summer of her twenty-fourth year, Ellen Montrose stood at the bottom of the hill, looking up at the Whitfield mansion that stood silent and dying against a lonely sky. A For Sale sign at the gate was rusted by rain and bent by wind, the name of its Denver real-estate firm now barely discernible. Carolyn Meullar, the owner, hadn’t been seen near the mansion for years; she only wanted to be rid of it.

  To be rid of it. The thought pulled at Ellen’s heart and caused her eyes to mist. The house on the hill was a living thing, with a soul hurt by secrets and horrors and dead dreams, and no one cared about its pain but her.

  Tears turned the sun’s glow to haze, like the mysterious mist from days past, when the mansion’s enchantment had lured her. Ellen still came, but not often. She still longed to see the inside, because in her imaginary pictures of its majestic interior, a million childhood dreams had sprouted, and her lifelong goals had taken root. The mansion had given purpose to her life. Even now, languishing in slow decay, it was still her inspiration.

  Why she chose to walk out to the hill this day, Ellen couldn’t say, unless somehow the lonely ghost of Whitfield had summoned her. Just to remind her of her dreams.

  That night, from the silent depths of the mansion, the ghost invaded her sleep.

  Ellen entered a pink-and-gold foyer with gilded mirrors and crystal vases filled with flowers. French doors opened on each side and a wide staircase rose, winding up into dusky sprays of light—moonlight from a high window. She stared up into the stairwell. Something was up there!

  The front door swung shut, trapping her inside. A sound of ghostly moaning moved through the darkness from some discarnate soul wandering lost. Ellen gasped in fear. Shivers coursed along her spine. She froze to the one spot on the marble landing.

  Shadows trembled under the frosty light from the high window over the twisting stairway and suddenly a figure stepped into the haze. Ellen drew another
startled breath, too frightened to run. But as her focus sharpened, the figure became a man, not a ghost. Moonlight illuminated his handsome face and beamed life into his gray eyes.

  A soft, unsure smile formed on his lips, as if her presence in the house was a surprise. She grasped the oak railing for support and took a step back. The man held out his hand, inviting her to come up the stairs.

  Up into the uncertain darkness where the ghost lurked. Forlorn, tremulous moaning began to echo from the top of the house. Ellen gazed in confusion at the muscular arm and extended open hand. She had seen the hand before, seen the face before...but where? Who was he? What did he want? What was he doing in her mansion?

  Behind her, from somewhere in the deep gloom, came the ghostly moans again. The young man advanced down a step, again extending his hand, as if to offer her an escape from the danger. Hesitantly, Ellen reached out.

  His strong grasp assuaged her fear. Yet he wanted to entice her up there to the high rooms where greater danger lurked. Surrounded by fear, even of him, Ellen resisted. When she did so, the grip of his hand loosened and the marble tiles began to sway and dissolve under her feet...and he disappeared as suddenly as he had come. She stood alone, caged in darkness.

  Ellen shook herself awake. Crazy dream. Served her right for walking out by the Whitfield mansion in the afternoon. That man, that severely handsome man... How had her imagination conjured him up?

  A full moon shone into her window. No wonder her sleep was restless tonight; the full moon always tugged at her like it pulled the tides. Her eyes fluttered open. It wasn’t the moon; sunshine was streaming through her east window. In the slow afterglow of the dream, she yawned, smiling. How beautiful the mansion was! Such a jolting contrast to the despairing reality of this—her waking world.

  Nine o’clock. Outside her open upstairs window, a dog was barking and neighborhood boys were playing noisily, shouting insults at each other. Tuning out the fight, she invited the songs of the summer birds into her consciousness. Overhanging branches of the oak tree beside the house were filled with chirping and warbling. Drawing back the thin lace curtains, Ellen looked out on the street of decaying homes—some boarded shut—and narrow lawns choked with weeds. In a yard directly across the street, dewdrops tried uselessly to brighten the rusted shells of old cars that had lain there for years.

  Pebble Street. Wincing at the sight of it, Ellen closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the sun to take in its warmth and its promise.

  Morning sunlight, golden beams,

  Show me riches, show me dreams.

  Sunlight, shine a path for me

  Toward the place I’m meant to be.

  Where the verse came from, she didn’t know. Its words had formed a ritual since her childhood, as much a part of the morning as brushing her hair. On the bleakest winter day, with dawn no more than a pale glow in the east, her recitation was the same—a plea, and a reminder that somewhere in the world the sun was bright and warm and welcoming. Somewhere far from Shadow Valley.

  Ellen slid into a pair of jeans and an oversize shirt and made her bed. On it she carefully spread out a square of fine white silk under a blouse pattern hand-cut from old Christmas tissue paper and began to work.

  The cutting-out was finished by ten-thirty, when she had to be downstairs to fix a late breakfast for her grandfather. Tonight, if she managed to get home before midnight, some of the seams could get basted. If the project turned out as she expected, the design would be added to her portfolio and the finished blouse included in a wardrobe Shadow Valley would never see.

  * * *

  AT THE BLUE SPRUCE Truck Stop, a twangy country song floated over the rattle of dishes, gruff laughter, and the roar of an eighteen-wheeler pulling in. In the ladies’ room, Ellen tied her starched organza apron over her black skirt, smoothed back her short blond hair with an antique herringbone clip, and straightened the strand of fake pearls at her neck.

  In the dining area, a trucker in red plaid raised a mug in the air as soon as he saw her enter from the kitchen door. “Hey,” he demanded with a grin. “More coffee!”

  Ellen picked up a coffeepot from the warmer and made her way to his table. When the customer made a grab for the tie of her apron, she stepped back abruptly, spilling hot coffee on his hand. He howled in pain and jerked away.

  A bearded trucker sitting nearby scolded, “Nobody touches the princess.” He winked at her affectionately.

  “Ah, our uppity Pebble Princess,” the first man chimed in.

  Ellen’s eyes narrowed in mild contempt. She was used to this, but it was a lousy way to start her shift. “Pour it yourself, Altman.” She set the pot on his table and walked away, head high, straightening the bow of her crisp white apron.

  Never would she let on how the words burned. She was labeled for the street where she was born, the street where she lived. The street that strangled her in its dust and shame. The truck driver, Harvey Altman, was one of many who had taunted her in school when they were kids—he and his sister Nan, who laughed at her clothes—and he was still at it. From across the room, she glared at Altman. Someday she’d show him. Someday she’d show them all.

  In her mind’s eye her next creation took form—an elegant beige silk-crepe gown. Narrow skirt and slim bodice fashioned from the once-exquisite resale dress she’d found at a little shop in Golden. Ellen saw herself wearing her own high-style gown, moving like a model through a tuxedo-clad crowd....

  But the vision was hard to preserve in the company of customers involved in racy dialogues of the road and a country singer on the radio loudly lamenting his last one-night stand. Maybe, she thought distractedly, she should have held more tightly to the hand of the stranger in the dream. Wherever he meant to lead her would have been an improvement on this. She could have seen all of the mansion, at last, even with the meddlesome ghost after them. What could a ghost do, anyway?

  By the time Millie Miller arrived for her late-night shift, the sun had sunk well behind the mountains. Reflections of the red neon light blinked in the truck-stop windows. Millie, in her tight jeans, rushed in as her boyfriend’s pickup roared away.

  “The sky is all lit up with a full moon rising,” Millie said, pushing up the sleeves of her sweatshirt and reaching for her short green-and-white-striped apron. “It’s quiet enough in here, though.”

  “So far,” Ellen answered. “Those drivers in the corner are loading up on coffee. They’ll be leaving soon. Harvey Altman’s in here for the second time tonight, probably got kicked out of the house by his wife. If he leaves a tip, you keep it. I’ll take nothing from the likes of him.”

  Millie was tying back her long brown hair with a ribbon. “What’d he do? Call you Pebble Princess? They all do, so what? You’re too damn sensitive.”

  “Maybe I am. But what gives these guys the right to talk to women like they do? How I choose to dress is none of their business.”

  “Ah, they’re just stupid. Just because you wear pearls instead of jeans and you talk proper and won’t accept any date offers, they assume you think you’re too good for them.”

  “I am too good for them. I’m tired of being made fun of. I’ve been tired of it since I was three.”

  Ellen poured pepper, stifling a sneeze. Because there were few customers, she had gathered the salt-and-pepper shakers and lined them up on the counter for refills. Millie went to wait on a young couple just entering.

  While the radio was playing a sad and bitter song, and Ellen was washing down the chipped orange countertop, the little bell on the door jingled to announce a customer. The man chose a booth in the corner. Because Millie had gone into the kitchen for a cigarette break, Ellen quickly dried her hands and picked up a plastic-covered menu.

  But when she looked toward the booth, a rush of cold followed by a shiver of intense heat charged her senses. That man! He looked just like—

  He was identical to the man in her dream; was even dressed the same, in jeans and a light-colored shirt with sleeves r
olled up past the elbows. Dark hair with a slight windblown look, the way he had first appeared on the winding stairs out of the clots of darkness, as if moments earlier he had been hurrying from somewhere. Yet there was nothing in his demeanor, then or now, that hinted of haste, turbulence, or even distraction.

  The heat that had begun vibrating through her body flamed in Ellen’s cheeks. Stiff as a robot, she walked across the room and handed him the menu. The man looked up and smiled—exactly the same smile she had seen in her sleep. The ceiling lights caught the gray of his eyes and turned them blue. Her heart began to beat so hard she was afraid he could see the pounding through her blouse, and she involuntarily held her breath because in the dream he had seemed to know her.

  But there was no sign of recognition in his eyes. Ellen smiled rigidly, trying unsuccessfully to release herself from anticipation of a drumroll or her name warbled from his lips. She scolded herself. What in the name of sanity did she expect?

  Her own voice came out as a self-conscious squeak. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” he answered casually, as if the planet were still in orbit and all the stars were still in the sky. “I don’t need a menu. I just want coffee and a turkey sandwich.”

  “Toasted?”

  “No, plain.”

  “French fries?

  He shrugged. “Are they pretty good?”

  “Yes, if the volume we sell is any indication.”

  Millie’s voice boomed from behind her, “Translated, that means we got the best fries in Colorado. Ask any driver on the road.”

  “Okay, I’m convinced.” He smiled again, his eyes fixed momentarily on Millie. “I didn’t need a translation.”

  Ellen glanced sideways at the other waitress, who had come up silently and startled her. Blast it, even Millie gave her a bad time about the way she talked. Well, let them have their fun. When she left Shadow Valley, she would take no residue of a “white trash” label with her. Years of study to learn proper speech also required years of practice until it became second nature. Others resented her high-flung ambitions. Let them.