by Cailyn Lloyd
Janice Foster hadn’t returned her calls. She couldn’t figure out who Sally was. As for the ghosts, they’d been here a month, and the house seemed fine. Clearly, the townspeople were weird and stuck in the nineteenth century.
On the other hand, Ted Summers, the resident old fogey and town historian, was home and had promised to mail some information this week. That information had come from Carol at Anson’s Store. Laura stopped there several times a week to shop and she and Carol had become friends. Carol was recently divorced, and their friends were ignoring her. Laura understood all too well how that happened.
The doorbell rang.
At the front door, the UPS lady handed her a package, return addressee: Ted Summers.
She slit the box open and plopped down onto the sofa, but her excitement was short-lived. The box was filled with photocopies of articles from some long-dead local weekly. Most of it was humdrum. Store openings. Store closings. Petty crime. An MD who came and went. Obits. Births. Marriages. A new road. A factory closing—
They had a factory here?
A story about the hotel going bust in the ‘60s. Local gossip. A few obits that might be related to the house. Even though this was what she’d asked for, nothing felt substantial—interesting stuff but not enlightening. Maybe the rumors of ghosts were just that, rumors.
Laura shoved the box under the sofa.
As she walked past the fireplace, the room seemed to cant sideways and spin. A sensation like lightning ran through her brain, followed by a fleeting, indistinct image. This episode was stronger than any of the others. She stumbled and dropped sideways onto the sofa, muttering insensibly, “Sally knows, Sally knows…”
She sat up a minute later and held her head in her hands.
Spat out a single word. “Shit!”
She couldn’t ignore these episodes anymore.
Laura winced at the word episode, a term weighted with considerable baggage.
As a child, Laura suffered with a seizure disorder, from momentary absence seizures to grand mal events. She was diagnosed with epilepsy and treated with the standard medication of the day, Dilantin. When Dilantin failed to control her symptoms, the doctors mixed in newer drugs. Several years passed before they found the right cocktail to manage her disorder and the seizures ended. Still, the damage was done. Her nickname was Spazz, and the other kids tormented her with exaggerated renditions of her attacks, flailing on the ground with comical expressions. They may have been funny were she not the target of said impressions. She had no friends, just a few fair-weather companions who scattered when the bullies appeared.
She learned to live with it and after a while became inured to the taunts, harassment, and teasing. Laura lived a quiet, solitary existence; read incessantly, studied hard, and routinely finished at the top of her class. This also made her a target of the bullies, but she learned to tune them out. Learned to be alone and, better still, to enjoy being alone.
As she grew older, the teasing and bullying faded. She matured from gawky child to attractive teenager, and boys took an interest. The teasing became flirtatious. The girls continued to taunt and dismiss her, but Laura decided they were jealous. By the time she finished high school her life seemed normal. The pain of her earlier childhood, though now tightly wrapped and buried deep, was something she never forgot. It helped shape her character, Laura developing a tough, flinty interior seldom visible but ever present. In a way, she learned to be mindful before being mindful was a thing.
There had been a darker side to her seizures, one that she refused to examine because it confused and frightened her. Occasionally, as she regained consciousness after a seizure, she would blurt things out. Often, it was nonsense or gibberish. Sometimes it was a sentence, and not just a sentence, but the answer to a mystery.
“Dad, your hammer is in the grass behind the oak.”
It was.
Or, “Mom, your credit cards are in the back pocket of your work pants.”
They were.
Most of it was trivial. A little creepy but trivial.
Once, when she was eight, she muttered, “Billy Mitchell is dead. They’ll find him today.”
They did.
Billy Mitchell had gone missing three days before. Twelve years old, he had ridden off on his bike on a warm summer day. When he didn’t return home by sunset, his parents grew frantic. Friends were called. Teams of anxious and frightened parents searched houses, tree houses, and garages. By day two, with a full-scale ground operation underway, police and volunteers combed the woods and fields around town. Rumors of a sexual pervert in the area, though baseless, spread through schools and restaurants and kitchens. When they found Billy that day, his demise was much more mundane than a predator. Billy had drowned in the local quarry.
Thereafter, Laura’s mother treated her like a leper. The awkward distance between them grew during her teenage years when hormones and the tendency to rebel turned minor arguments into raging battles. By the time she left for college, they were no longer speaking.
Her father, a gentler, more logical soul, had a ready explanation for everything. The hammer? She had seen it, and the episode—his word for her seizures—had knocked that memory loose. The credit cards? Laura had seen her mother put them into her pocket. Billy Mitchell? Easiest of all. He was missing, there was a lot of talk, and she was worried about him. No mystery there. Laura liked his logic, but she didn’t fully buy the story. A deep-seated fear, exacerbated by her seizures, that she was a—
freak
—never left her.
After five years without a seizure, they weaned her off the meds. She never talked about it after that and told no one, not Lucas, not Dana, not Ashley. It was ancient history. That wasn’t an entirely honest assessment. It still hurt to think about it. It hurt even more to talk about it. So she didn’t, and it remained her little secret.
These recent episodes would force her to face it all over again. She would deal with it, quietly, and she pondered how she might accomplish that. Lucas wouldn’t likely notice. He was often gone, hunting, fishing, or running endless errands. Keeping busy was his way to deal with things. She missed his companionship, and it was hurting their relationship. They weren’t talking enough; they weren’t spending enough time together. The space that opened between them after Jacob died had grown wider. Lucas became more and more aloof, almost inaccessible. She missed him and the move, once seen as a healing tonic, had done little to remedy the problem.
Discovering that she’d kept this secret all these years might widen the gap further.
Best to say nothing. Deal with it on her own.
Sixteen
Lucas woke at six, slammed a cup of coffee, and trekked out to the woods before the others woke. He climbed up to his tree stand and settled in, armed with a compound bow, enjoying the solitude and morning calm in the trees.
As usual, he spent much of his time dwelling on Jacob. Lucas talked to him while sitting or wandering in the woods, caught between anger and despair that Jacob had driven drunk. Sometimes the conversations evolved to bitch sessions, Lucas chiding him for such poor judgement. Jacob returned in vivid and painful flashbacks—this morning, it was the last time they skied Vail, Jacob emerging from a snowbank laughing, face covered in snow after a wild spill. It almost seemed he could reach out and touch him. Then he was gone. Again.
The clearing nearby was baited with apples, but the deer were having none of it today. He sighed. Enough of this.
Lucas walked to the house and spent an hour cutting and splitting wood to burn off his anger and despair. Under the guise of picking up hardware, bait, or supplies, he then hopped into the pickup and drove up the fire lane and down County B to Lost Arrow.
He parked behind the White Birch and walked in, spotting Murphy and Bruce by the pool table, two of a group of people who straggled in and out of the tavern during the day. Most were unemployed or marginally employed. Murphy appeared to be in her late thirties. Slim and attractive with long
blonde hair, dark eyes, and a sly smile, she looked tough in shabby jeans and a studded leather jacket, her speech littered with fuck this and fuck that. Bruce was her boyfriend but Murphy seemed minimally loyal. She had leaned against Lucas in a suggestive manner more than once. Lucas couldn’t imagine cheating on Laura; nevertheless, this vixen intrigued him. He felt a stirring in his loins and suspected she was aggressive in bed. Oh, to be single again.
Or not. He wasn’t, and had no plans to complicate his life.
Lucas put money on the pool table. “What’s up?”
Bruce gave him a two-finger salute and took an empty pitcher to the bar.
“Hey, Lucas.” Murphy gave him a sultry smile and set the dice cup on the table in front of him.
This afternoon habit started harmlessly. He had stopped here a month ago after a grueling day in the yard, cutting through a thick tangle of undergrowth. Lucas ordered a beer and watched three people playing pool. In college, he’d excelled at the game, so on a whim, he dropped three quarters on the table. One game became five. They were a friendly group and talkative. The beer was cold. He was having more fun than he’d had in years, harking back to his school days before the stresses and commitments of a career, marriage, and fatherhood dominated his life.
Lucas rarely thought about work now and realized he didn’t miss it, not yet anyway. Maybe he wouldn’t. He had hated work before he quit. After twenty years of dental practice, he had fallen into a serious funk and recognized the symptoms of career burnout overlapping with his chronic melancholy at the death of his son. His mother’s passing had been the final straw. He negotiated a quick exit with his partners, walked away and hadn’t looked back.
Still, he was avoiding certain realities, the gaping hole in his soul being one. Trying to grasp the reality that Jacob was gone and would never return. He was avoiding Laura and wasn’t sure why, though he still had the irrational feeling she was responsible for the bizarre incident in the bathroom. Right now, he simply felt better on his own—unless he was here, self-medicating with beer and escapism. He did have plans over the next few months. Pheasant hunting opened soon, followed by turkey season, then the November gun deer hunt.
As Murphy lined up her shot, she looked at Lucas, pursed her lips in an air kiss and sank the eight-ball. Bold.
Reminded him of Laura when they first met.
Seventeen
On the second Monday in October, Nate awoke at seven, washed a toasted bagel down with coffee, and organized his tools for the day. He spent the morning building drawers and shelves for the bedroom closets. He worked quickly, using reclaimed oak that matched the existing trim well. Just after noon, Ashley called up the stairs. “We’re leaving. Sure you don’t want to come?”
“Tempting, but no, I want to get this closet done today.” Nate stood at the window and watched the car pull away. Laura, Leah, and Ashley were off on a shopping expedition, and wouldn’t return until dinnertime.
Lucas left thirty minutes later. He thought he was being sneaky, but Nate knew what he was doing, spending his afternoons drinking at the White Birch. Nate secretly approved. Lucas had evolved from annoyingly responsible to day drinking. The man needed to loosen up. The upshot? He would be gone all afternoon.
Until now, he hadn’t had the opportunity to investigate the hidden room under the trapdoor further. Someone was always home. He imagined finding a stash of cash and coins within, though the money itself was immaterial. The excitement lay in the arcane nature of the room and the thrill of the hunt. For that reason, he hadn’t told Ashley because Ashley would tell Laura and Laura would tell Lucas and Lucas would take control. He always did.
Unable to find any access from the first floor, he trotted downstairs. Nate figured the hidden space lay over the far room in the basement, beyond the furnace and utility area.
The dirty, musty room was probably a root cellar once. Old wooden shelves lined the wall, some rotten, some missing. A wine rack draped with cobwebs covered the back wall from ceiling to floor. Overhead, the electricians had rigged a single LED shop light. He paused and imagined the room restored, two spaces, a smaller root cellar and a wine cellar with a tile floor, soft lights and a circular tasting table. He felt a momentary pang of guilt. He should be working on the house, not pursuing this wild goose chase. Oh well.
With a flashlight, Nate scanned the walls, looking for a foundation supporting the brick room above, but found nothing. The cylinder of light flashed across a picture frame in the corner behind the door.
Curious, he stepped closer. It was an oil painting, a portrait of an older woman dressed in vintage clothing. She wore a black gown with a white pleated collar that almost looked like a paper plate around her neck. Her face was pinched and pale, framed by grey hair, her expression grim. She looked vaguely familiar. Some long-dead grandmother, probably.
He shrugged and examined the spaces between the ceiling timbers for evidence of brick. Near the side wall, between two upright support timbers, the wooden underlay had rotted away, revealing mortared rows of brick. It wasn’t the ideal approach, but with care and luck, everything might fall right into his lap.
Grabbing a sledgehammer from the storage room next door, Nate planted his feet and swung upwards at the bricks in looping arcs. The angle was difficult, his blows ineffective. He paused to catch his breath and was startled by the scrape of wood on stone behind him.
The portrait had moved! What the hell? It had been propped in the corner; now it was staring at him full face.
Something hard struck a glancing blow off the back of his head and hit the floor with a thud. He felt a puff of wind across his neck. Nate froze, aware of a sudden chill in the room—more than a chill, a presence, behind him.
He swung around.
No one there; nothing amiss. He stared for a moment, shook his head, and laughed. Wow! He was freaking himself out. A creepy old root cellar, and now he was seeing and hearing things. Next, the old woman would pop out of the frame and come after him!
Nate was unsure he even believed in ghosts, but if they did exist, he felt certain this might be the place to see one—
A glimmer of metal on the floor caught his eye.
“Holy shit!”
A gold coin the size of a quarter lay at his feet near a chunk of brick. Nate scooped it up, flipping it in his fingers. It looked new, with a weird figure spearing a dragon on one side and a ship on the other. The writing was foreign. Probably Latin, though Nate just assumed all old writing was Latin. He grinned and slid it into a hip pocket.
A brick had fallen, opening a hole in the floor above. Nate grabbed the hammer and struck upwards, landing a solid blow. Bits of grit fell onto his face and another coin dropped to the floor. He swung the hammer open near the hole and caught an eyeful of dust over the top of his safety glasses. A third coin dropped.
As he reached for it, a brick fell and hit him on the head.
“Ooooow. Jesus!”
This was too dangerous. The brick layer wasn’t well supported. The whole lot could fall on him.
Time for a different approach.
* * *
Tom finished walking a circuit of the woods near the house, ever watchful for intruders. Did it matter? The trailer people had moved into the house and it looked like they planned to stay awhile. With them had come furniture, knickknacks, artwork, clothing, and a child. They had invaded his domain, and he felt powerless to stop them.
Though he had no idea who they were, one of them looked like his old friend, Alan MacKenzie. He tried to eavesdrop on conversations but heard little of it. Only rarely could he understand the living, their voices murky and distant as if under water.
He trudged to the house and into the basement to complete his loop of the property, a path he had walked since his arrival here and one he felt compelled to continue despite the people squatting in Elizabeth’s house. He stepped through the basement wall and stopped in shock.
Damn it!
One of them stood in the root c
ellar looking for a way into the brick chamber. The man hefted a sledgehammer and eyed the underside of the hidden room, then swung upwards several times, knocking a brick loose.
Opening that room was a very bad idea. He needed to do something, so he focused on the painting in the corner and gave it a shove, moving it with a satisfying scrape.
The guy stopped, startled.
Good.
He then reached for something and Tom watched him scoop up a gold coin.
Shit!
The man grabbed the hammer swung upward again and another coin fell. Tom panicked. What could he do? Nothing good would come of this.
Another swing, another coin. A brick then fell and hit the guy on the head. Ouch!
Yes!
The man stopped and seemed to reconsider.
Tom tried push him hard, like the shove that sent the roofer kid flying, hoping to knock him off balance, scare him, give him another reason to quit. Nothing happened. For some reason, even though the picture had moved, his moves were ineffective. No matter how hard he tried, he was unable to interfere in any way.
The man looked renewed in his determination to get inside, gathering more tools with a stubborn air about him.
Tom felt helpless and his shoulders slumped in defeat. Nothing he tried was working.
Exhausted and in need of rest, he sighed and slipped into the ether.
* * *
Nate peeked out the window and checked the driveway. All clear. Good!
He could be childish at times and realized he was being childish now. Sneaking around, hiding this from Lucas, was childish. Still, Lucas had this knack of swooping in and stealing his thunder. Even though he couldn’t prove it, Lucas had been Mom’s favorite. He skipped college because Lucas went to college, went into a trade because Lucas became a doctor. When they were younger, if Nate found something, Lucas would grab it and run home to show Mom. Nate learned to protect his finds and, all after these years, still guarded them.