How to Survive a Killer Seance by Penny Warner Read Free Book Online

mother who’s two inches shorter than my five ten and who once rode in limos to society events, things get crowded fast. If I continued to have chaperones, I was going to have to get a bigger boat, er, car.
    Or get rid of the extra baggage.
    “This is going to be so much fun!” my mother said from the tiny backseat. I was sure she wasn’t referring to the ride over to the Winchester Mystery House, located about forty to sixty minutes away—depending on traffic—in the nearby city of San Jose. But there was no way Brad could fit in the backseat, so my mother, being the good sport she is, climbed into the rear and curled up. She sat on the right side behind Brad, with her long legs extended into the area behind my seat. Her authentic designer bag filled the rest of the space, leaving barely enough room in the car for our three to-go coffees (mine a latte, Brad’s an espresso, and Mom’s a nonfat, decaf cap, extra dry, with whip).
    As was her habit when we visited a place together, Mother lectured about the history of the site, filling in with exaggeration and rumor when the facts grew scarce. Although I’d been to the foreboding Winchester mansion when I was a Girl Scout, Brad had never toured the place and ate up the tidbits of information that Mother fed us on the ride over. For me, the details reminded me of how much the place still haunted me since that initial visit.
    “You know, Bradley,” my mother said, tapping Brad on the shoulder to make sure he was listening, “the Winchester House is supposed to be haunted.”
    “Oh yeah?” Brad said, tossing the words over his shoulder. “Do you believe in ghosts, Ms. Parker?” Although my mother has been married a number of times, she’s kept the last name of her first husband.
    “Me? No. Not really. Well, sort of. You never know.”
    Brad glanced at me and raised a questioning eyebrow.
    “Don’t look at me. No way am I superstitious,” I told him. I hoped I was convincing . . .
    “Anyway,” Mother continued, “Sarah Winchester, the owner of the house, was told by a medium that she had to keep building the place to appease the spirits of Native Americans that had been killed by her husband’s rifles. So she did, for thirty-eight years.” If Brad had heard the stories, he didn’t let on, seemingly absorbed in my mother’s narration. “That must have cost a bundle,” he said.
    “Back then, about five and a half million,” Mother stated. “Today it would be more like seventy million.”
    Brad whistled.
    “She did most of the architecture planning herself, using the backs of napkins and scratch paper. The house is Victorian in style, but she added a lot of things that make no sense, plus a lot of psychic symbols everywhere. Can you imagine?”
    I marveled at my mother’s ability to recall so many specific details, when she had trouble remembering what she’d done the previous day or where she’d last put her purse. The more I learned about Alzheimer’s, the more puzzling it became.
    Brad grinned. “Like what?”
    “The number thirteen,” Mother said. “It was thought to ward off haunted souls.”
    “A lot of people are superstitious about the number thirteen. But it sounds like she was more than a little ‘off,’ ” Brad said.
    I saw Mother shake her head in the rearview mirror. “I think she was just overwhelmed by the deaths of her young daughter and then her husband. She went to the medium hoping to contact them, but the medium told her she was cursed, and that the spirits wanted vengeance—and a place to live. Sarah was told that if she kept building her house, she’d live forever.”
    And keep the medium in plenty of money, I thought. “Apparently that wasn’t true,” I added, “since she eventually died.”
    Ignoring me, my mother continued. “After all that construction, the house became a maze, with twists and turns, dead ends, and doors that lead nowhere. She figured the spirits would get lost in the house and never find