by James Hunt
“It won’t take long,” she said.
“All right.” Sarah reluctantly trudged along, following the woman toward the west-end staircase.
The air grew colder the higher she ascended, and she was shivering by the time she reached the fifth floor. “I didn’t think we’re allowed to be up here.”
“It’s okay if you’re with me,” she said.
At the top, Sarah peered out the small window in the stairwell. Below, she saw the woods that stretched to the horizon beyond the mansion’s perfectly landscaped property. She pressed her hand against the window, the glass freezing, and quickly pulled it away, leaving behind a handprint.
“This way,” the woman said.
Sarah wiped her print clean with her left sleeve, erasing any sign of her presence, and then faced the fifth-floor door, finding the woman gone. “Hello?” She glanced down the stairs, finding them empty. Had the woman already gone through?
Cobwebs dangled from the ceiling and covered the cracks of the door frame. The door itself was weathered, the wood grayed and cracked. The brass of the knob and the hinges had lost their shine and had rusted to the point of disintegration.
Confident that the door would be locked, Sarah reached for the knob. A light turn to the left, and it opened.
The hinges groaned, and dust drifted from the top of the door as it opened inward. Pushing it open, Sarah let go, letting it drift into the adjacent wall, where it thumped to a stop.
The wooden floors were in the same worn and tattered shape as the door, and they complained with Sarah’s every step. She checked behind her, making sure the noise hadn’t triggered any attention to herself upstairs. She knew that Iris’s room was somewhere on the fourth floor, and the last thing she needed was the old bag of bones finding her up here, despite what the night maid said.
The entire floor looked as if it hadn’t been inhabited since the house was built. Paintings in dirty golden frames hung from the walls, and Sarah took a closer look at the name etched at the bottom of the first one she passed.
Allister Bell – 1844
The man in the portrait wore no smile and sat on a gold-colored chair with a high back that was lined with red velvet cushions. While the painting had weathered over time, the focused expression of Allister Bell had not.
It was as if he was there in the wall, transported through time and staring Sarah directly in the face. He looked angry, as if her presence in the house he built offended him from the grave. But from her experiences with interacting with Bells, Sarah figured the expression was genetic.
Scattered between the paintings of the Bell family’s lineage were tables with small pictures and candlestick holders, dripping with long, hard strands of old wax. More dust, more cobwebs, more relics from a past that refused to die.
“Down here.”
Sarah looked toward the end of the hall, finding the woman at the window near the last door on the left, which was open.
Sarah left Allister to his brooding and continued her trek down the hall. Doors lined either side, the layout similar to that of her own floor.
The woman gestured inside the room, but Sarah hesitated. “What are we doing?”
The woman kept her head bowed and her face concealed behind the thick, straight strands of hair. “You must know why we’re here. It will help us.”
“You keep saying us,” Sarah said, her tone becoming acerbated. “Are we in some kind of danger working here?”
The woman barely tilted her head up and exposed her left eye. “Please. Just look in the room.”
Sarah remembered girls like her in the foster system. They were quiet and shy, beat down by the environment. She had always tried to help protect those girls, but she didn’t always succeed.
Finally, Sarah approached the door. Inside, the room was darker than the hallway. She crossed the door’s threshold and groped the wall for a light switch.
A chandelier that hung from the center of the room brightened, and Sarah arched her brows in confusion.
Unlike in the hall or even the rest of the house, everything inside the room was clean and new. From the floorboards beneath her feet to the paint on the walls and ceiling, there wasn’t a speck of dirt or dust.
The deeper Sarah penetrated the room, the colder it became. She rubbed her arms, shivering as she placed her hand on the bedsheets. When she turned around, the woman was in the doorway.
“The nightstand,” she said, pointing toward it. “Open it.”
Sarah reached for the drawer and pulled. At first glance, it looked empty, but the drawer was deep, and Sarah reached all the way toward the back. And while she didn’t find anything, the weight of her hand made the bottom of the drawer buckle. Sarah removed her hand from the drawer and then pressed down on the inside corner. It was a false bottom.
She wedged her fingernails into the side and lifted the bottom from the drawer, exposing clusters of old papers.
She removed the pages, the paper brittle and worn, and placed them on the table. She unfolded the top paper and discovered that it was a letter.
Much of the ink had faded, but the date was still legible. Still, Sarah had to read it twice before she was confident her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her. It had been written in 1882.
“The truth lies within those pages,” the woman said.
Sarah shuffled the papers in her hands. “What truth? What am I looking for—”
Before she could start on the first line, a door slammed down the hall. She looked back toward the door and found the woman gone, but heavy footsteps heading toward her.
Sarah quickly shut the drawer, keeping the letters in her hand, and then ducked under the bed, knowing it was too late to try and run.
The bottom of the mattress scraped against her back as she crawled, and she covered her mouth with her hand to quiet her breathing. She craned her head toward the door and watched a pair of dirty work boots enter the room. It was Dennis.
He walked all the way to the center of the room and then stopped. He said nothing and didn’t move. Finally, he walked to the closet and lingered there for a moment. Then he sat on the bed, the mattress buckling from his weight.
“I didn’t think you’d be awake already,” Dennis said.
A quick jolt of fear pumped through Sarah’s heart as it beat fast and hard against the floorboards. Unsure who he was talking to, she kept quiet and still.
“I’m almost done,” Dennis said, a pleading desperation to his voice. “But it’s hard.” His voice grew thick with phlegm.
Sarah looked around, scanning the room for other people, but it was just the two of them.
“Help me,” Dennis said. “Guide me.”
The lights flickered, and the door slammed shut.
“Yes,” Dennis said, his voice a breathless whisper. “Show me the way.”
The mattress buckled as Dennis lay down, his legs still dangling off the side.
The bed rattled, and the room darkened. The air grew so cold that it burned Sarah’s lungs with every breath. Vibrations hummed through her body, and she shut her eyes. Dennis wailed as the entire room trembled. The rumbling reached a crescendo until it sounded as if a freight train were tearing through the room.
And then it stopped.
Sarah opened her eyes, expecting to find the room destroyed, but nothing had changed.
The lights flicked on, and the mattress springs squeaked as Dennis climbed off the bed. He stood quiet and motionless for a minute and then whispered, “I will not fail you.”
Sarah followed his boots out of the room and then watched the door close behind him. She waited until the boot steps faded and she was positive that Dennis was gone before she shimmied out from beneath the bed.
She brushed the dust from her chest, stomach, and legs and carefully scanned the room. Whoever Dennis had been speaking to was gone. And whatever had happened when she was under the bed seemed to have had no effect on the rest of the room. Was he just crazy? Did he have some kind of seizur
e that made the bed shake like that?
“He’s one of them.”
Sarah jumped, the woman appearing out of nowhere in front of her, and backpedaled into the wall. “What the hell is going on? Who are you?” She glanced down at the letters in her hand and then tossed them back onto the nightstand. “I don’t want any part of this, understand? I don’t have time for this shit.”
Trembling, Sarah stormed forward, but the woman blocked her path.
“Move, or I will go through you.”
“It’s time to wake up, Sarah.” The woman kept her head down, her face still concealed behind her long black hair.
“What?”
“Time. To. Wake. Up!” The woman lunged for Sarah’s throat, and an icy burn accompanied her touch, freezing Sarah in place. The world turned black.
Sarah shot up and out of bed, clutching her neck as she gasped for breath. She patted the bed and sheets, her eyes frantically scanning the room.
Morning light spilled through the cracks in the curtains, and she saw her backpack on the floor near the foot of her bed. She was back in her room, still dressed in her clothes from the night before, complete with her jacket.
Sarah relaxed, but frowned, recounting the dream, though it had felt nothing like her usual ones.
She swung her legs off the side of the bed and hunched forward, glad to see that she had the good sense to at least take her boots off. Her stomach grumbled, and she checked the time.
“Shit!” Sarah flung off the covers, quickly dressed, and hurried downstairs. But instead of finding an angry Iris Bell, she found Kegan pacing near the front door.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” Kegan said.
“Where’s Iris?” Sarah asked.
Kegan approached the steps, going so far as to set his foot on the bottom stair as he gripped the newel post. “She’s not doing well this morning. She asked me to show you the next room. And while she didn’t explicitly say you did a good job with the drawing room on the third floor...” He paused, shrugging as he tilted his head to the side, the slightest inkling of charm leaking through. “When it comes to Iris Bell, no news is good news.”
Sarah kept the flight of stairs between them, refusing to come down to him. “So where am I working today?”
Kegan trudged up the stairs, and Sarah followed him back to the third floor. She noticed that he carried Iris’s silver key. It must have been the master key to the entire house, including Sarah’s room. The fact that he had access to her room and could enter anytime he wanted triggered a small eruption of bile into her mouth that she forced back down to her stomach.
“It’s small,” Kegan said, stepping into the bedroom. “Shouldn’t take you too long.”
Sarah waited until Kegan was out of the doorway before she entered, finding that he was right.
“Wish you would have stayed last night,” Kegan said. “We could have had some fun together.”
Sarah walked toward him, and placed her hand on the door. She tilted her head to the side and smiled. “I doubt it.” She shut the door, forcing Kegan to move before it slammed in his face.
Once Sarah was sure Kegan was gone, she returned downstairs to grab the cleaning supplies and then got to work. She followed the same method she had yesterday, starting from the top and working her way down, thankful to fall into the numbing rhythm of mundane manual labor.
Dust, dead insects, more dust, grime, cobwebs, and years of neglect layered over and over across the room. Moths had gotten into the curtains, eating big holes in the dusty red velvet. She tore them down, adding them to the trash pile of old clothes she had pulled from the closet.
Along the way, like she had done with the other rooms, Sarah scoured the drawers and nooks and crannies for anything that looked valuable, but again came up empty.
Lunchtime came and went, and when three o’clock rolled around, she used her last fifteen-minute break for a smoke. She avoided the garden and instead walked out to the front steps and watched the still town below.
The end of her cigarette glowed red, and she closed her eyes on her first deep inhalation, letting the smoke warm her innards.
Sarah smoked the stick all the way down to the nub and then snuffed it out on the concrete. It was her act of defiance for the day. She knew Iris would see it. She smiled, picturing the old woman snarling and huffing her way up the steps, angry about the world that had shoved that stick up her ass.
With the high from the nicotine, Sarah leapt up the stairs quickly, knowing that she’d be able to take her time with the rest of the room until five o’clock arrived.
Sarah grabbed the sponge from the bucket, dripping a trail of soapy water toward the headboard.
Sarah slowly worked her way down, unearthing the faded paint beneath the filth. The grime from the walls ran down in thick, watery streams, making the house look as if it was bleeding tar.
Once she reached the baseboard, she was forced to move the bed’s headboard away from the wall, which revealed an outline of the headboard’s edges, but then she stopped when she noticed something carved into the baseboard.
Sarah dropped to her knees and squinted. Some dust had collected over the engraving, but it looked recent. Sarah swiped at the writing with her sponge, erasing the dust that covered the carved letters, and then cleared away the soap with her apron. The letters were small, but the words were clear.
In the shed.
The letters were hurried, jagged and frantic. They had been written by someone who couldn’t keep their hand still, which meant that they were either angry or scared. Sarah was betting that it was the latter.
Then her thoughts turned to the conversation she overheard the night before between Dennis and Iris. If the groundskeeper were going to hide something, then the shed would make sense.
Maybe that other girl had found it. Maybe that’s the help she was talking about.
“Sarah.”
She dropped the sponge and then shimmied out of the tight space. Kegan was at the door, leaning his head inside. “Listen, I have to head out for the night. I need you to bring my grandmother some dinner. There’s some chicken noodle in the cabinets. She’ll eat that.”
“All right.”
“She eats early, so I’d go and get it ready now. You know where her room is?”
“Fourth floor.”
“Good, and don’t worry, she’s not contagious.” Kegan lightly knocked on the doorframe and then disappeared.
Sarah looked back down at the words scribbled on the baseboard. And she thought of the dream she had last night, and the woman that had been pestering her, and Dennis, and Iris, and the whole damn house.
“Just a few more weeks,” Sarah whispered to herself. “Just get the money, and then run.”
Sarah headed down to the kitchen, prepared the soup, and then located a tray to carry it up to Iris’s room. She was careful up the stairs, making sure not to spill, knowing that she’d get an earful for making a mess.
The fourth floor had the same setup and structure as the others, but the furniture had been polished, the vases filled with fresh flowers, and the runner down the hall was new.
Sarah walked along the runner in the hall and toward the third room on the left, which was cracked open. She knew it was Iris’s from the horrible coughing and hacking coming from inside.
Gripping the tray with both hands, she shouldered the door open and poked her head inside. Iris lay in a white gown, tucked beneath a pile of blankets, with a stack of pillows keeping her upright.
“What are you doing here?” Iris snarled, but the expression disappeared when she viciously hacked into a napkin.
“Kegan had to leave.” Sarah set the tray down on the nightstand next to Iris’s bed. “He asked me to bring you some soup.”
“What a chivalrous gesture.” Iris cleared her throat and shut her eyes.
Sarah took a moment to examine the room, which was surprisingly small considering the old woman’s ego. There was a vanity, the bed, a nightstand, and then
a side table which was lined with pictures.
All of them were old, most in black and white, and Sarah suspected that it was Iris’s family. But in three of the family pictures, she noticed that one of the faces had been scratched out. And it looked to be the same face every time.
“That’ll be all.”
Sarah turned back to Iris, who was staring at her, twisting the wooden sphere of jewelry that still hung from her neck. And while Iris tried to maintain her intimidating glare, the intensity was lost in the frailty of the body beneath the covers. She was just an old woman, and from the stained red cloth that Sarah had seen in the trash can, she was also dying.
Without another word, Sarah left the room, closing the door behind her and muffling Iris’s coughs as she returned to her work.
The sponge had leaked a puddle of soapy water onto the floor where she’d left it, right beneath the phrase that had been carved into the room.
A brief thought of heading to the police entered her mind, but she snuffed it out quickly. Talking to the cops would only expose her, and she didn’t need to cause any more trouble for herself.
Sarah grabbed the sponge and returned to work, doing her best to ignore the words on the baseboard and the woman’s request for help. She was an adult. If she needed help that bad, then she could do it herself.
7
Sarah stashed the cleaning supplies back in the kitchen and then made herself a ham sandwich on wheat, complete with lettuce, tomato, muenster cheese, and a generous helping of mayonnaise. She grabbed a bottle of water and then returned to her room.
Sarah opened the curtains, letting the evening light bathe the room in oranges and gold, and then sat cross-legged on the bed, where she ate her sandwich. She gazed out the window, finishing her meal, and wondered how far she’d have to run before she was finally safe.
Eventually he’d give up, right? She thought maybe a year from now she’d be able to relax.
With enough cash, she could buy a new identity. Time and distance were her best friends right now. She just had to ride it out.
Once she finished her sandwich, Sarah got the itch for a smoke. She reached for her backpack on the floor and stuck her arm inside, then froze.