Mumma's House

by Ike Hamill

  “So you took over the house?” Gus asked.

  “No,” June said. “We live here now, but I never really took over. This house has been passed down from mother to daughter for generations, and there’s a big responsibility that comes with that. As soon as I was old enough, I left. I didn’t want to have anything to do with this place. It only took a couple of years for everyone else to leave as well. This house was unoccupied for a little while. Except for New Year’s, nobody came in the place. There was no Mumma to keep it going.”

  “That’s when we lived on Crosby Street?” Gus asked.

  June smiled at the memory.

  “Yeah. That’s when we lived in the apartment on Crosby Street. Mrs. Montgomery did laundry all day and our rooms always smelled like fresh sheets and steam irons. We had that sunny window next to the refrigerator where I would nurse you until we both fell asleep.”

  “What happens now?” Gus asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” June said. “Your uncle is going to try to find the codicil, if it even exists. Remember when I asked you if you had ever seen a safe?”

  Gus nodded.

  “Supposedly, there’s a codicil to the will, and that would nullify the ceremony and probably even my claim. If he doesn’t find it, then we’re going to have to go to a different kind of ceremony, later tonight. The whole family will be there.”

  “To make you Mumma Jay?” Gus asked.

  June’s eyes went wide with surprise. “You’re too bright for your own good sometimes. Yes. That is the point of the other ceremony.”

  “And then we’ll stay here forever?”

  “Don’t say it like that.”

  June and Gus both looked up towards the ceiling at the same time.

  “What is it?” Gus asked.

  “Your Aunt Kate. Go fetch Uncle Auggie,” June said.

  While Gus ran for the door to the hall, June took a few steps towards the stairs. She paused with her hand on the wall and looked up towards where the staircase took its sharp turn. She was listening closely to something that wasn’t precisely a sound.

  Chapter 15 : Kate

  HER EYES WENT BACK to the handle of Tommy’s door at least five or six times. Yes, the door was closed. No, there was no key sticking from the lock. Auggie’s key was gone. The question was, had the person who took it remained in Tommy’s room, or were they across the hall, down a couple of doors in that room. For some reason, that door was now open. The sliver of black could be hiding someone, watching her from the shadows. Or, maybe the door hadn’t been fully shut and the breeze from closing Tommy’s door had forced it open.

  It probably didn’t matter. Kate had resolved to ignore her baseless fears and proceed back to the relative safety of the living room.

  As they approached Uncle Tommy’s door, Kate pointed at it, directing Henry’s attention to it so she could focus on the open door.

  This time, there were no shifting shadows in the darkness.

  She didn’t see any indication of the person who she feared might be inside.

  Behind her, Sam made a tiny whimper. The other kids were silent.

  A few steps away from the door, it started to move. It was opening wider, a hungry mouth getting ready to swallow them up.

  “That’s Dean’s room,” Isla whispered.

  “Shush,” Penny told her.

  Kate held her breath and shuffled closer. There was nobody there. It was only an imbalanced door, probably affected by their shifting weight.

  “He is mad that we used his ruler and his chair,” Isla said.

  She almost never made things up, but she was only six. Kate wouldn’t let the strange utterances of a six year old affect her.

  “Shush,” Penny said, putting a voice to the way that Kate felt about Isla’s contribution.

  Whether Isla had been making it up or not, Kate’s eyes suddenly saw the chair in the gloom of the dark room. Sitting in the chair, facing the wall, was the shape of a man. It wasn’t tall enough to be the man she had glimpsed earlier. Kate understood his disposition from his folded arms and the way that his shoulders were hunched. He was indeed mad about something.

  For a fraction of a second, Kate froze, looking at the man.

  Then, before he could move or turn around—she was desperate not to see him move—Kate hurried the group along, once again gathering them behind herself with her outstretched arms.

  “What is it?” Henry asked.

  Kate didn’t answer, she held her position between the group and the open door and waved them past. She shielded the kids from whatever was inside.

  # # # #

  They switched positions, Henry taking the lead.

  Once they were all by the door that Isla said belonged to Dean, Kate began to back up. She divided her attention rapidly between Dean’s open door and Tommy’s closed one. From inside Tommy’s door, a low conversation broke out. She didn’t want to hear what the voices were murmuring inside there.

  Kate’s heel banging into the single stair up to the level of the main house hall. She stumbled backwards and caught herself against the wall before she could tumble into the kids.

  “You okay?” Henry asked.

  “Sure,” Kate said.

  Henry yelled.

  Kate turned to see Auggie run up, out of breath.

  “What’s happening? Is everyone okay?” Auggie said, panting.

  “Yes,” Kate said.

  “Good,” Auggie said. He didn’t waste any time on interrogation. He seemed to sense that Kate’s priority was to get everyone downstairs. Auggie waved them ahead and then took up the rear with Kate. They were all rushing now—there was no more inching. The kids were startled by the sight of Great Uncle Travis, inching along with a cane and then disappearing into his room. Just beyond him, everyone pounded down the stairs, greeted by June below.

  June touched the kids as they moved past her. Auggie brushed by when June reached out to squeeze his arm. June had to settle for pulling Kate into a quick embrace.

  “I was worried about you. Did you… encounter anything?”

  “Sorry?” Kate asked. She knew what June meant, but the question had been unexpected and weird.

  “Whatever,” June said.

  Kate had been dismissed. Auggie took her hand and pulled her. With his other, he gathered the kids towards the far door.

  “Where are we going?” Kate asked.

  “Bedroom,” Auggie said. “The four of us are consolidating in one room. I have to talk to you.”

  She let him take the lead and followed along.

  # # # #

  Once he had gathered all their things, Auggie shut the bedroom door and pushed a chair against it. They were in the room with two twin beds. He pushed one against the wall and tucked the girls in with a tablet between them. They propped up the screen against a pillow and watched some show with drooping eyelids as Auggie beckoned Kate over near the closet.

  “What did you find?” he asked. His whisper was just audible over the music from the video that the girls were watching.

  “Nothing,” she whispered. “The door opened and someone was in there. I think they took your key.”

  “Who?”

  Kate shrugged. “A man? Very tall? That’s all I saw.”

  Auggie cupped his face in his hands and thought. His eyes moved back and forth rapidly as he considered this new information.

  “Uncle Tommy has a friend?” Auggie asked himself. “Who, though?”

  He looked to Kate for an answer. She could only shrug.

  “Were they looking for something in there? Did they know who you were?”

  “I don’t know, Auggie.”

  “I know. I’m just wondering aloud, I guess. Where did they go?”

  “I honestly don’t know. We went around the corner, met up with Henry after he tracked down Sam, and when we came back, the door to Tommy’s room was closed. The one across the hall was open though. I think there was someone sitting in a chair. It was hard to tell�
�the room was really dark.”

  “Across the hall? There’s no door directly across from Uncle Tommy’s.”

  “It was down a little, closer to the main house.”

  “Dean’s room.”

  “That’s what the girls said, too.”

  Auggie had a puzzled expression. He looked over towards the girls on the bed. Millie appeared to almost be asleep. Isla was looking in their direction.

  “Dean’s a ghost,” Isla said.

  “Hush,” Kate said. The damage was already done. Millie’s eyes were wide open now.

  “Ghost?”

  “There’s no such thing,” Kate said.

  “So the tall man moved to Dean’s room?” Auggie asked Kate.

  “Maybe,” Kate said. “It was hard to tell. Identifying whether it was the same person wasn’t my top priority.”

  “Of course,” Auggie said. “Of course. If he knows that one of us was up there snooping around, he’s probably going to try to move the codicil. I need to get up there and try to get my hands on it before he does.”

  “I thought you said that he would never let you into his room,” Kate said.

  Auggie shrugged. “He never has before. I’ll just try to catch him when he’s going to the second ceremony. You stay here with the girls and I’ll meet you at the ceremony. Everyone has to be there, but you and the girls should try to get some sleep until then.”

  Kate looked over at the bed and then back to Auggie. Nobody was going to get any real sleep. She wasn’t going to argue with him. He had enough to worry about.

  “He has another way in and out,” Auggie said to himself. “I wish I knew how. I hate to think that he could sneak that codicil out of the house before the ceremony.”

  Something about his statement tugged at the back of Kate’s brain. She supposed that it was probably irritation that Auggie didn’t fully know the house. How could he have grown up in the place his entire life and not know every way in and out? For that matter, how could he have gone nearly twenty years without being able to find Trudy’s nook?

  “I’ll find a way in,” Auggie said. He leaned forward and gave her a kiss. “See you at the ceremony.”

  “Wait,” she said, catching his arm before he could move the chair and leave here there. “How will we know when it’s time?”

  “You’ll know,” Auggie said. “Trust me.”

  Chapter 16 : Deidra

  “HONESTLY,” HENRY SAID, “I don’t know who was acting more strange—Sam or Kate.”

  Deidra pinched the pillow between her chin and chest as she aligned the pillowcase. With the end inserted, she shook it down. The motion jiggled her voice as she spoke.

  “Kate is pure pragmatism. Something must have happened for her to be rattled,” Deidra said.

  Henry shrugged. “Everyone is spooked today. I suppose I have no room to talk. I was legitimately freaked out by your Uncle Travis.”

  “He is legitimately freaky. You should have seen him in the ceremony. He tried to claim that he was Uncle Tommy’s real father. That would mean that he would have impregnated his sister who was ten years older than him.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Would I kid?”

  “And now you have a second ceremony to attend?” Henry asked.

  Deidra smoothed the spread on their bed. The room wasn’t as big as Travis’s, but it was plenty big enough and it was connected with a doorway to where Sam and Penny were sleeping. In a way, it made more sense for them to stay there anyway. Henry was over at the door now, peeking in on the kids. The bedside lamp was on in there. Both kids had insisted.

  “We all do,” Deidra said, “if I’m remembering correctly.”

  “Oh? You’ve done this before?”

  “Yes and no,” Deidra said. “I was here, but I was just a spectator. My father used to come every year, of course, and he would bring me along to play with the cousins. This was before I came here to live, obviously. Mumma Claire died in eighty-eight and then Allison made a claim on the title a few years after? I don’t remember the exact year. Dad came out of the ceremony and he was pissed. I guess that nobody anticipated Allison’s claim.”

  “What does that mean, exactly? Your Aunt Allison was petitioning to be the matriarch of the family?”

  Deidra sat down on the end of the bed and tossed the pillow at the head.

  “Yeah, that’s a pretty apt way of putting it. There is usually one leader of this house, and it has always been a woman. We call her Mumma—like Mumma Claire, or Mumma Peggy. This tradition goes back to before our family moved here.”

  “That’s interesting. You go back more than a few decades and women were treated almost like property,” Henry said.

  Deidra gave a low chuckle and then covered her mouth.

  “Not in our family. Bear in mind, these women didn’t come from the parts of Europe where democracy and the Magna Carta were dreamed up. If you keep heading east and north, until you run out of science and find yourself waist-deep in superstition, you’ll find families that are like ours.”

  Henry’s forehead wrinkled as he looked at his wife with new eyes.

  “Our blood has been watered down a bunch, but a lot of the superstition stuck with us. Even the men, like Uncle Tommy, know that the men in our family are not to be trusted. Women keep the property. Women keep the house.”

  “I thought your uncle was trying to inherit the place.”

  “Only because he doesn’t have kids to pass it along to,” Deidra said. “At least none that we know of. He has lived a hard life and he knows that one of these days he is going to crash-land into a nursing home. Tommy is trying to squeeze enough money out of this place so he can afford a soft landing.”

  “I thought he was military. Seems like he could find a place for veterans.”

  “Tommy doesn’t trust anyone, but he trusts the government less than everyone else combined. He was dead set against Allison becoming Mumma Allison, and he didn’t care who knew about it. Nobody was happier when she failed to take the title.”

  “In the second ceremony?”

  “That’s right. The last one that I attended was when I was a kid. I’m not looking for having Sam and Penny go through it.”

  “Who says they have to?” Henry said. “I’ll stay here with them. You can attend alone, right?”

  Deidra shook her head. “Unfortunately, there’s no way of getting around it. Everyone in the house has to go.”

  “Dee, I know how important your family traditions are to you, but we can draw the line. If you really think it will be a bad memory for the kids, they’re not going.”

  Deidra took a deep breath. She reached out for Henry’s hand.

  “It’s not our decision.”

  Chapter 17 : Jules

  JULES SPOTTED HIS BROTHER coming out of his bedroom of the main hall. He jogged and caught him before he disappeared through the door to the living room.

  “Hey. What’s the plan?” Jules asked.

  “I’m going to bang on Tommy’s door until he lets me in. Once I get in, I’m going to find that codicil so I can call off this second ceremony before it even starts.”

  “Did you know she was going to do that?” Jules asked.

  Auggie narrowed his eyes at his little brother.

  “You serious?”

  Jules was the first to look down. “You guys make plans sometimes. I feel like I can be the last to know.”

  Auggie put his hand flat against Jules’s chest. The gesture instantly took Jules back twenty-five years.

  “I’m being totally straight with you. June is under a lot of pressure and I’m not sure she’s thinking straight. She literally told me, not more than a couple of days ago, that she was done with this place. I have to get the codicil. When she gets to that second ceremony and fails, Tommy is going to be entrenched, and we’ll be locked into this mess forever.”

  “He can’t live forever.”

  “Take one look at Travis and tell me that you really belie
ve that,” Auggie said. “Sixteen more years will feel like forever, trust me. This place is an anchor and the rope is around our necks.”

  Jules thought about that for a moment. He didn’t share Auggie’s opinion, but that didn’t mean that their priorities weren’t aligned. Either way, it would be good if they could exercise the codicil, assuming that it really did say what they thought it did.

  “What can I do to help?” Jules asked.

  Auggie removed his hand from Jules’s chest and stuffed his hands into his pockets as he thought. The gesture meant something. Jules had read about it in one of Wendy’s pamphlets. He struggled to remember while he watched his brother consider the proposition.

  Auggie snapped his fingers. “You can’t go outside—we can’t risk it—but you can watch from one of the rooms on the north side. Get eyeballs on Tommy’s truck. If you see him outside, let me know immediately.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Jules said, nodding.

  Auggie clapped him on the shoulder and then left him standing there so he could head upstairs.

  Jules stood still for a minute until he finally remembered what the pamphlet had said—people put their hands in their pockets when they were feeling dissatisfied with themselves. That was it, right? Aside from a general inferiority complex, Jules had no idea what Auggie would be dissatisfied about.

  “Huh,” he said to himself. He headed for what they used to call the drawing room—that had two windows facing north and a chair that he could pull up to watch from.

  # # # #

  It took a trip to the pantry before Jules could see anything through the windows. The snow was falling hard. With the lights off in the drawing room and using the flashlight he found in the pantry, Jules was able to spot Uncle Tommy’s truck. At least he thought it was Uncle Tommy’s truck. He caught a reflection off of a chrome bumper. Only Uncle Tommy would drive around in a vehicle with a chrome bumper.