Alice looked down the front of her dress in horror. Oh no! She looked over to see Agnes’ frock to be even more stained.
“And I’ll be having to work me fingers to the bone to try to get those stains out!” Mother Bridget clucked her tongue. Suddenly, she stopped with a jerk of her head. She gave her hand a wave, and her anger dissipated. “Oh well, ‘tisn’t the end of the world. Ye’ll be too big for those dresses before long anyway, right?” She gave a strange smile to the girls.
Alice’s blood ran cold. She should run away! Something was wrong! She looked over to Agnes to see fright across her sister’s face too.
“Now come along down to the shore, then we’ll go home. Mrs. Dowd has ice cream for ye today!
“No she doesn’t,” said Agnes.
“Agnes Crawley, are ye tellin’ me I’m a liar?” Mother Bridget still had that terrible smile.
Agnes replied with a shrug.
“Well, never mind. Ye’ll be learning the truth soon enough!” She took each of the girls by the hand and they went through a break in the hedges and were at the shore of the lake. Bridey tugged at their hands, pulling them along. Alice almost tripped as she was led to the shore.
“Quite soon enough,” Bridey repeated in a low voice. She gazed down on each of them and said with a smile, “Of course.”
There was a rowboat beached on the lake. A man almost as big as Papa was sitting on the gunwale. Mother Bridget walked right up to him.
“Hello, Bridget,” he said quietly.
“Were you waiting long, Devlin?” She smiled.
“No, not at all.”
“Did anyone see you?”
The man shook his head ‘No’.
“Then we have a job to do.” Alice watched Mother Bridget’s face as she talked to the man. The skin had drawn tight to her teeth. She looked down at Agnes. Slowly, she turned her face to Alice’s. Her eyes! Her eyes were all shiny, like pieces of broken glass were stuck in them! She was crushing Alice’s hand in hers. Alice heard her sister squeal in pain as well.
The man gave a snorting grunt. “We have work to do? You mean me.” Quick as a snake, he whipped out a black thing from his back pocket about the length of one of Papa’s socks. He slapped it down on top of Agnes’ head, the sound like a book being dropped. Agnes immediately fell to the ground and Mother Bridey released her hand.
The man spun to Alice and she looked up at him, her mouth open in astonishment. The last thing she saw as he raised that black thing again was his eyes. They were just like Bridey’s! She started to let out a terrified scream.
He brought his truncheon down upon her head before a sound could escape her throat.
Chapter 17
THE KINGSTON WHIG STANDARD
“MISSING CHILDREN RECOVERED FROM LAKE ONTARIO, ABDUCTOR BELIEVED DROWNED AS WELL”
The twin girls abducted two days ago in the heinous attack along Lakeside park have been recovered in the most tragic way imaginable.
The bodies of Agnes and Alice Crawley, daughters of Colonel Kevin Crawley were found on Lake Ontario by searchers. They were tangled in ropes that were attached to a capsized rowboat halfway across the lake.
The police believe that the children must have attempted to escape their monstrous captor and their activity resulted in the boat tipping over.
“We believe that we will recover the body of the perpetrator of this horrible kidnapping in the near future,” said Chief Benjamin Hornsby of The Kingston Constabulary. The rowboat was discovered in the shipping lanes, a tremendous distance for someone to swim.
The children were reported missing two days ago by their mother, Bridget Crawley. They had been attacked by an unseen and unknown assailant as they picked the first ripened blackberries of the summer.
Mrs. Crawley was attacked from behind. The vile monster seized her, covered her eyes and bashed her head into a tree without warning, leaving her unconscious as he escaped with her children. She is still in hospital suffering the after effects of the brutal assault and the shock of the loss of her two daughters.
The police have notified towns all across the shore of Lake Ontario to be especially watchful for any suspicious persons lurking about.
Funeral arrangements have yet to be made, but a death notice will be published when they are finalized.
Chapter 18
For six months Kevin Crawley trudged through the endless trenches of his grief. He had only survived the deaths and funerals of Alice and Agnes because of shock. Had he been more in his right mind, he would have ended his own life, then and there.
What sort of animal would do such a thing as steal two babeens from their mother and let them die so? What sort of a world was it that such a monster could be allowed to exist by a loving God? Father O’Shea at St. Mary’s vainly tried to give him some comfort; but the stupid, stupid man could not so much as venture to give any sort of reason.
You couldn’t fault the man; he had made an attempt to bring comfort. But his weak and stupid clichés were lost on Kevin. All Kevin could do, during the entire two-day wake was stare at the two coffins.
Sweet Jesus, they were so small! White boxes of enameled hardwood, with brass handles and—oh sweet Mother—hinges. The girls rested within on beds of pure, white satin. It had been an open-casket wake, and he kept praying to God to wake his babeens up; call them from their slumber, oh Lord, as you had called Lazarus! For two days and nights he was on his knees with his rosary, beseeching an uncaring God. For two days.
He screamed. He screamed himself hoarse when they closed the caskets. Forever and ever his tiny little girls would be in darkness below the earth! He tried to stop them, he fought and wailed and cried and begged them all to let him just take his little girls back home!
Oh please… oh please, oh please…. They would be so cold below the earth! Winter was coming and how, oh how would they ever, ever be warm again below the earth?
They were so afraid of the dark! You couldn’t leave them in darkness forever!
‘Twas Bridey who called to him from the edge of madness.
“We’ll have a lamp for them, Kevin,” she said. “We’ll have a lamp made for them, and they’ll keep it filled with oil, and every night we’ll light the lamp beside them and they’ll have the light.” He had fallen to the floor before the coffins, Father O’Shea and Mr. Thompson shushing the rest of the guests and letting her talk him back to reason.
“A lamp…” he sat on the floor between the two white coffins, a hand on each. He was wild-eyed and his mouth hung slack for want of sleep. “A lamp…” he looked at Bridey, his eyes bleary.
“Aye, and they’ll be resting with their beloved mother, Kevin. Right beside her so she will watch over them forever and ever…”
His eyes flew wide, a new pain skewering his shattered heart. “Oh sweet Lord… Melanie…” he whispered. He hid his face in his hands.
On her knees beside him, Bridey cradled his shoulders. “Aye, Melanie will be with them forever, Kevin. Forever and ever in the arms of their mother in heaven.”
His voice was a groan, “Beside them… forever….”
He keened himself to exhaustion and endured the funeral and grave service. Bridey was relentless with the men at the cemetery. Both coffins would stay above ground until everyone had gone; then and only then would they lower them into the earth.
***
He was inside a bell jar for six months. He could see the world, and hear it, but everything was muffled. When people spoke to him, their words barely made sense. His sleep was constantly broken; he would awaken in the middle of the night in tears, with no memory of what dream had come. Everything about his life was as if it were draped in a veil. He could make things out, but not the details. Not that he cared much anyway.
He could barely let himself look at his son Eamon. It broke his heart to do so because he could see Alice and Agnes in the baby’s eyes and the timbre of his babbles when he’d try to speak. Each moment with the baby was a knife to his heart, twisti
ng in the grievous wounds.
He dared not take a drink; not a drop. Were he to, he would kill himself and be done with it all.
All he could do was soldier on. He let one day bleed into the next, putting his head down on the bed at night to rise in the morning, go through some foggy motions of living to put his head back down again at night.
He never spoke unless spoken to; and when he was, his response was as short as humanly possible. If a grunt would suffice, so it did. Bridey had taken the message well, and looked after the bills and running of the household in its entirety. When a workman needed to be hired, she did so. When the automobile needed repairs, she made arrangements with the garage for it to be picked up and returned.
On Sundays she would take Eamon to Mass, alone.
Through fall and winter, he would be found either in his bed asleep or sitting on the couch in the parlor, staring out the front window at nothing.
He didn’t think any thoughts, he merely waited to die.
It was the worst the following May, on the day of the anniversary of Melanie’s death. He had decided in a muddled manner, that were he to throw himself from the bridge which connected the military base with the city proper, he’d drown. There would be enough money for Bridey and the boy to start a new life for themselves. She could sell this cursed house and perhaps move out west. Or further east, should that be what she wanted.
The decision made, he poured a glass of sherry and toasted Melanie’s memory and went to bed.
And for the first time in months and months he dreamed.
It was a beautiful dream.
Melanie and he were walking by the lake. He had one of the girls’ hands in each of his and they were chattering like magpies. He couldn’t understand a word they said, but their happiness and joy of all of them finally being together was a warm shower to one who had spent the last months trudging through the roiling mud in the trenches of heartbreak.
He looked to Melanie and saw in her eyes eternal love. He looked down to his perfect, perfect daughters who returned his gaze with such love his heart would burst with happiness.
From behind him, Melanie placed a hand on his arm. “Now Kevin Crawley, you must put those foolish thoughts from your head.” He turned to her again, to see a smile of such love and woe together. “You will not open that circle, Kevin Crawley. You must live in the world for the sake of your son.”
“I want to be with you, Melanie… I’m sorry if I’m disloyal to Bridey, I truly am; but I want to be with you!” He felt her hand tighten on his arm.
“Bridey Walsh is the mother of your son, Kevin. You bedded and wedded her,” she tilted her head. “I was unable to warn you from her.” Her gaze dropped. “I should have though,” she said softly.
His heart was so light until those words. “What do you mean, love?”
She gave her head a small shake. “We’ll not speak of it, my dear… for Eamon’s sake if for nothing else.”
Agnes tugged on his hand. “We’re so happy to be here with you, Papa! We can’t come into the house though. We’d like to go back up to our room and play there, but we’re only able to get to the swing in the back.”
“Well then, my dears, I must spend more time in the backyard!” He began to spin in a circle, holding each of the girls’ hands until they lifted off the ground shrieking and laughing. As he spun he watched Melanie. Again, joy and sorrow competed for expression on her face.
As he slowed down, setting the girls back onto the ground, she gave him a small wave.
“You’ll know me by the roses, Kevin. By the roses…”
A pleasant golden glow, a warm late summer afternoon filled his senses…
The joy of his dream carried him awake. He opened his eyes to the new day.
Chapter 19
Those six months after the death of the twins passed quite differently for Bridget Crawley, thank you very much. Kevin had made an absolute fool of himself at the wake and funeral; she had lost all respect of the man for his weakness.
He was but their father after all! He hadn’t carried them for nine months, and then endured the fear and pain of bringing them into the world. He certainly didn’t bath them, or wipe their snotty noses. He didn’t wash their underwear nor cook for them nor clean up after them. What in the world was he losing by their deaths?
He was being cowardly.
She remembered when the influenza had struck just as the Great War was ending. It took her youngest brother and sister with it, along with Granny. In a flash, they had gone from sniffles and coughs to corpses laid out in the parlor; one after another. Yes, of course Ma was beside herself—two bairns gone as well as her own mother. But Da was made of stone through it all, a rock to be leaned upon. Yes, he was sad for a few days, but had gotten over it. There was work to be done and other mouths to feed and that was that.
She and Da were cut from the same cloth. She had felt badly, but life goes on. Leave the wailing and keening for others, and let the dead take care of the dead.
She had been forced to take over all of the household’s business affairs. Now it was she, not the great Colonel Crawley who sat at the desk in the parlor sorting bills and bank statements. Oh well, at least she had ‘found’ his will. He didn’t express a single word of remorse nor offer an explanation to her, his wife! Nevertheless, she made him draw up a new one to bestow what rightfully should have been hers in the first place. She kept a copy of the previous one as a reminder of what his actions had driven her to.
She had to look after hiring workmen when the roof needed repair. While the carpenters were doing the work, she had them close up the stairway to the twins’ bedroom. Kevin neither noticed nor cared.
Day in and out, week in and out, month after month the man was pitiful in his grief! He’d get up, go to work, come home and sit in the parlor on the couch, staring off into nothing for hours on end until she sent him to bed. Not a word of conversation, not a question after the health of his son. A bump on a log, day after day after bloody day!
In the mornings he would drag himself from bed, splash water from the sink and call that a bath. His face bore constant stubble from missed strokes of his razor. The only comb his hair would see was his wet fingers run through it. He would wear the same uniform day in and out, until it would be stained and stinking.
This was the great war hero? Bah. She was sick of him. Sick, sick, sick of him and his long face!
Was this to be her life now? Just two years ago she was going to go to Hollywood and become a famous actress. She was going to live in Hollywood Hills in a house with a pool and servants of her own. She was going to attend lavish parties, and give even grander ones. Handsome and powerful men would have vied for her attention. It was going to be such a magnificent life.
And now, here she was trapped with a man wallowing in self-pity. He was a shadow of what he had once been; less a man and more a ghost…
A ghost.
By God, then why not put the truth to it? She had her whole life before her—why should she spend it in a mausoleum? Why should her house, her home, her very life be spent in this shell? If Kevin missed his twins so much, he could very well join them!
It would be a mercy.
***
She found herself at the gate of Deirdre O’Toole’s home once again. Once again, the front door opened and the rail-thin woman stepped onto the porch.
“Bridey Walsh, as I live and breathe!” she said, smiling as she had before, her eyes glittering.
The Haunting of Crawley House (The Hauntings Of Kingston Book 1) Page 11