by Dian Cronan
Beckan stares at the porch for a solid minute, taking in every soot-covered beam, every compromised step. He pushes on a few places with a foot to see how weak it is, each time collapsing the blackened wood under the slightest pressure. He takes off his ball cap to scratch at the wad of bronze hat-head underneath. He replaces his hat and takes out a tape measure, writing measurements down as he takes them.
“So when was the fire?” I ask, trying to sound disinterested, like I’m only curious rather than finding an excuse to stare at him a little longer. I suppose I can see what Letta was talking about as he pinches his pencil between his teeth and takes another measurement along the bottom stair. He’s kinda hot, if you like the tough, blue-collar type.
He writes down a final measurement and slides the pencil behind his ear. “Which one?”
I’m startled by his reply. “Which one?”
“Yeah,” he says, putting his writing pad and tape measure into a back pocket. “The house has been on fire a couplah times.”
“Really? Why?”
He shrugs, coming closer to me, and I fight the urge to back away from him like he’s a leper. “Not sure about the first time. It was way back, early nineteen hundreds. The second fire was in the sixties.”
“Accidents?” I ask hopefully.
He shakes his head. “The fire in the sixties was set.” He looks into my eyes as he explains, and I think his are a beautiful shade of green. “This crazy lady, Enit O’Sullivan, set it. That’s what this damage is from.” He waves a hand at the porch. “It woulda taken the whole house down if the sky hadn’t opened up at the right moment.”
“Why’d she set her own house on fire?”
“Oh, she didn’t live heeah.” He shakes his head and chuckles.
“What? Then why’d she set it on fire?”
He shrugs again. “She’s loony? No one really knows, but I s’pose you could ask her. She still lives in town.”
I snort. “Is she a hero?”
Beckan smiles and I notice how white his teeth are against his tan skin, and how his eyes crease at the corners like Derry’s. He has a swath of soot on the side of his five o’clock shadow, and without thinking I reach up and swipe it away just like I’d do to Liam. It’s only as I’m rubbing my thumb down his cheek that I realize how awkward it is.
I pull my hand back and wipe it on my skirt. “Sorry. Habit.”
“S’okay,” he says, still smiling. “I don’t know if Enit’s considered a hero, but I don’t think she was jailed. She doesn’t deny it either.”
“Did she say why she did it?”
“Nope.”
“Oh come on,” I say, stepping so close to him I can feel his warm breath on my face. I poke him in the chest. “You’re holdin’ out.”
He spreads his arms wide and says innocently, “The house is evil.” He winks at me and turns to leave. He pulls out a rag and wipes at his face and neck as he heads down the hill. “Bettah get inside tah Liam,” he calls over his shoulder. “Don’t want tah leave him alone too long.”
I watch Beckan until he’s out of sight, mulling over what he said. I find Liam at the kitchen table gnawing on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with more jelly on his cherub-like face than in his mouth.
“Liam!” I shout, arms akimbo. “You’re gonna spoil your supper!”
Liam pauses mid-chew. “Then why’d you make me a sandwich?”
“Liam, don’t fib to me! I didn’t make you any sandwich.”
“It was on the table when I came outta the bathroom,” he says. “I swear! I thought it was my snack.”
“Liam, I’ve been outside with Beckan. I didn’t make you anything!”
Liam puts his sandwich down very slowly. He stares at it a few seconds before turning his glassy eyes to me. “Then where’d it come from?”
Chapter Eleven
The File
The sandwich episode doesn’t end well. Though Liam swears up and down he didn’t make the sandwich, I don’t believe him. It’s obviously freshly made, and unless the sandwich fairy made a trip to Wolfhowl Manor, nothing else makes sense. Cursed this house might be, but it is not making sandwiches out of thin air. But Liam’s so upset that I don’t punish him. I scold him often enough about his voracious appetite, I’m worried I’ll make him anorexic. Instead, I make him promise to get approval for any snack before he eats it, whether it appears out of thin air or not.
We sit down for dinner together. Between the divorce, the move, and our hectic lifestyle, it hasn’t happened much lately, and if it does, it’s usually a silent affair. The only sound between us is Liam’s loud smacking and Mother’s irritated voice reminding him to chew with his mouth closed.
Tonight is different. I help Mother in the kitchen while Liam plays in the drawing room. Mother and I talk about our days as we boil pasta and bake garlic bread. I’m used to keeping most things from Mother out of spite or rebellion, but this time my motives are different. This time I keep the episode at lunch to myself, not because I don’t want to get in trouble and get lectured about my temper, but because Mother’s in a good mood and I don’t want to ruin it. I ask about her first day at the hospital. Her day went well. She met a lot of nice people, and feels she’s really going to belong at Mount Desert Island Hospital. At her job back in Texas, things between Mother and the head nurse had always been tense, but the head nurse at the new job sounds pleasant and easy going.
“I’m actually looking forward to tomorrow,” Mother says as she tosses a salad together.
“I’m really glad to hear that, Mom.” Mother knows it isn’t easy for me to say anything nice, especially to her, so she merely smiles back and winks.
“Supper’s ready!”
I summon Liam and help Mother carry the pasta, a saucepan full of homemade meatballs, and the salad to the dinner table.
Liam talks animatedly about his first day of kindergarten. “Miss Colleen is a lot nicer than the scary monster! And she’s pretty too!”
The scary monster is Mrs. Abernathy, one of the women at Liam’s daycare back in Texas. Most of the employees were nice, but Mrs. Abernathy was a real hag. Our parents even had to go in and talk with the owner of the daycare. Liam’s interactions with her were limited from that point on.
“What about your classmates,” Mother asks. “What are they like?”
“Okay I guess,” Liam says, slurping a spaghetti noodle into his mouth. “Flynn let me play with his fire truck and Carin shared her brownie with me. And Kelly’s mom brought in chocolate chip cookies at snack time! They’re just like the ones Daddy used to make.”
I feel a pang in my stomach. Dad wasn’t a great cook, but the one thing he never messed up was a good batch of chocolate chip cookies. The batter was sweet, the chocolate chunks were huge, and he used the perfect amount of walnuts.
“Carin, Kelly, and Flynn. Well,” says Mother, “Do you know everyone’s name already?”
“Duh,” Liam says, “there’s only four of them.”
“Four?” I nearly spit out my soda. “Do you mean there are only four students in your group?”
“No, there are only four in the whole school. Miss Colleen says we’re special.”
“Four!” I repeat. The largest class I was in today had only nineteen students, so I expected Liam’s class would be equally small, but four... Only four kindergarteners in the whole town?
“Rose,” Mother says sternly, “close your mouth before you start catchin’ flies. We knew when we moved here that things would be... small.”
“Yeah, but Mother,” I say, “four? Four? That’s crazy!”
Mother’s face tells me to drop it. Clearly, she doesn’t think it’s an important discovery snf I let it go. We talk about the nice weather, about taking another trip to the park before the weather turns, and about the O’Dwyres and all the work that still needs to be done in and around the house. Mother winks at me at the mention of Beckan’s name. I almost throw up.
***
After din
ner, Liam takes his bath and Mother assists. I’m left alone with my swirling thoughts and curiosity. Unsure where else to look, and unwilling to walk through the house alone, I swipe the file Mrs. Carroll gave Mother the day we moved in, which is inconveniently hidden at the back of Mother’s closet under a pile of shoeboxes.
Lounging under the canopy of my bed, I leaf through the pages of the file, certain I’ll find something to satisfy my curiosity, if only because Mother was so determined to keep it from me. What I find doesn’t disappoint, but it raises more questions than it provides answers. I make a list of findings in a notebook:
Three police reports:
One police report details the discovery of Robert Olenev’s body on Thanksgiving Day, 1903. Robert Olenev, 34, died of starvation. His wife had died several months before, during childbirth. The child was found unharmed in another part of the house. It was believed at the time that Robert died of a broken heart.
One police report about the fire in 1934. The cause of the fire was unknown and the report is remarkably lacking in details. It simply states there had been a fire in an upper bedroom and the owners, Hagan Boyle, 29, and his wife Alison, 27, had died of smoke inhalation.
One police report about the fire in 1964. Enit O’Sullivan, 48, was dragged from the flames by a fireman. The officer’s account said the police department had been notified of the fire by the caretaker’s son, Derry O’Dwyre, then a sprightly 16. Enit was found in an upper bedroom and demanded the firefighter put her down because she intended to die in the fire. She’d admitted to starting the inferno with the intent of destroying both the house and herself. The police questioned Enit as she was being loaded into the ambulance, but rather than transcribe her actual words, the reporting officer stated she spoke in “spastic crazy talk about the devil and a cockamamie curse.”
The original deed to the property dated December 17, 1849, listing Eamonn and Alva Callaghan as the owners.
Several news articles from various incarnations of The Port Braseham Courier. These articles detail events surrounding the house and a few that appear unrelated. Several obituaries are included, many of them children. I’m surprised how far back they go. The earliest is dated in 1852. The causes of death are mostly undetermined. A few listed an illness I’ve never heard of called wasting disease. I notice many of the women who’d given birth to these children had also died, some during birth and others from infection several days after a difficult delivery. The town appears to have a tragic history of infertility and child deaths, but I don’t understand what these have to do with my house. None of these women or children lived here.
Several articles about strange weather events. Freak thunderstorms on Christmas Eve followed by months of failed fishing trips. Wind storms that carried crops away or droughts for months on end so nothing grew. When the crops died so did the grass, which lead to the death of cattle and other livestock.
I flip back through the pages of the file and my notes, more confused than before. Who put this file together? It’s filled with information a realtor would have no interest in giving to a client. The death toll of owners alone is enough to scare off prospective buyers. Looking at the front of the file, in a script nothing like the realtor’s neat and curly cursive, someone had shakily scrawled “Wolfhowl Mountain.” So someone prepared this and gave it to the realtor. Mrs. Caroll probably never even looked in it. Maybe it came from one of the previous owners – if any of them were even still living.
I shove the brittle, aged pages back into the file, one lone article falls out. The headline is “Woman’s mysterious death on Wolfhowl Mountain,” a brief article written in December 1996. All it includes is the date and time, Christmas Day around six in the morning, and a short description on a cut-out no larger than a post-it. A woman was found dead inside Wolfhowl, but details were not immediately available. The woman appeared to be in her mid to late forties and in good health. At the time, the woman’s identity was unknown, but she was believed to be a local wife and mother who had been reported missing the night before.
Information overload.
I leave the file and my notes on my bed and walk to the balcony doors. I peer out over the town, twinkling under the full moon. Although the evening is cool and I wear only a long t-shirt, I step out onto the balcony and look around. It’s clear enough to see all the way to the other side of town. Some windows are still lit, but most are dark. It’s a peaceful night and I hear the waves crashing below the cliff behind the house. A light wind prickles the pine needles and plays with my hair. Why can’t the townspeople be as nice and fair as the weather?
I catch movement at the edge of the trees near my balcony. I can hardly make out the dark shape, but I know it’s a wolf. Sensing my presence, it moves closer and turns a black head toward me. Suddenly, I hear its loud howl as it bays, not at the moon, but at me. My skin pimples and I shudder. I hug myself and back away from the railing. The howl sounds eerily like a warning.
Unnerved, I retreat into my room, shutting the doors and locking them. Somehow, the tiny little button on the knob doesn’t seem strong enough to keep what’s on the outside out. I make a mental note to ask Derry or Beckan to install a deadbolt. Unlikely as it is a wolf could scale the side of the house and find its way inside, I’m more concerned about what an angry town mob is capable of. The house is so old it barely keeps out a light wind, much less a crowd of angry people with burning pitchforks, screaming for the destruction of the house from hell.
As I lock out the noises of the night under the full moon, I’m uncomfortable in the sudden silence. Why?
Because it isn’t silent.
Turning an ear toward my closed bedroom door, I listen intently. I barely hear the whisper of a conversation. Opening my door with a slow crrreeeaaaak, I tiptoe down the hall.
I creep by the dark pit of the foyer below. My right side tingles with fear as if I’m creeping along the edge of a cliff. Standing outside Mother’s closed bedroom door, I hear the comfortable snore of a deep sleep. Then I see a tiny rectangle of light coming from underneath Liam’s closed door. I tiptoe further, until I’m right outside his door. “Liam?” When he doesn’t reply, I slowly turn the knob and ease the door open.
The bedside lamp highlighs Liam’s empty bed. Panic immediately wells up inside me, but then Liam’s tired voice floats in from the cracked door to the adjoining playroom, but who is he talking to? Mother’s asleep and I’m right here, so…? Could Beckan be in there telling Liam a bedtime story? At midnight? Not likely. There must be a stranger in the house! What other explanation can there be? What do they want with my brother? I’m not going to let them out of here without some bruises or a broken nose.
I search Liam’s room for a weapon, while my heart does its best to leap out of my chest. All I find is a plastic Wiffle Ball bat resting behind the door. I pick it up and, as quietly as I can, stalk across the room to the playroom door.
“My sister’s okay,” I hear Liam saying in his sleepy voice. “She takes good care of me... when she isn’t busy being mad at stuff.”
I can’t hear the other end of the conversation, only silence, but Liam replies as if someone else is there.
“She gets mad a lot, but she doesn’t mean it when she yells. She tells really good bedtime stories. Beckan’s are better. But don’t tell her I said that.”
I peer around the corner of the doorjamb into the dimly lit room. Unable to escape my rib cage, my heart is now in my throat, and hammers in my ears. I raise the bat high above my head, prepared to beat this stranger into submission. I should’ve grabbed the phone in the hall and dialed nine-one-one before I came in here like an idiot, carrying a plastic bat.
Easing the door open a little wider, Liam is revealed, sitting on a rug in the center of the room. His back is to me and he leans over, his pudgy little hands fiddling with a few of his beloved G.I. Joes. I’m shocked to discover he’s alone.
He shrugs his shoulders. “I dunno. I guess.”
“Liam?”
/>
He shoots up like he’s just been pinched, whirling around with a hand over his heart. His little blue eyes are frightened. “Rosie! You scared me!”
“Me?” I say, entering the room. “You scared me! Who’re you talking to? Why the hell aren’t you in bed?” My eyes search the dark corners beyond a couple of toy chests and shelves of board games.
“I wasn’t talking to anybody. I was just playing.” Liam scoots his pajama feet along the floor as he crosses the room, grabs my hand, and tries leading me back to his bedroom, but I resist. I continue analyzing the room, squinting into every corner and under every piece of furniture, wondering why Liam’s in such a hurry to leave.
“I heard you,” I say. “You were having a conversation.” I shiver suddenly, and goose bumps break out on my skin. “Why’s it so cold in here?”
“I was only playing, Rosie, I promise.”
I narrow my eyes, waiting for him to crack and end the fib. He doesn’t. Now I’m feeling a little guilty. Maybe he’s being honest and he was talking to himself. Maybe he was talking about me to his G.I. Joes because he isn’t getting better like I thought. Does he need someone to talk to so badly that he’s created an imaginary friend? Am I really that inaccessible to my own brother? I’ve tried to be better about listening to him and comforting him and being less selfish, but maybe that’s not enough. Maybe he needs to go back to counseling.
I let Liam to pull me into his room where we’re greeted by Mother, sleepy-eyed and disheveled.
“Mother, what are you doing?” I ask.
“Me? What are you doing?” She says, stifling a yawn. “It’s after midnight.”
“I heard Liam in here talking to someone.” I blurt the words out before thinking, like a tattle-tale desperate to save her own skin.