by Dian Cronan
“I dunno. It was alright I guess,” I say, trying to figure out a graceful way to bring up – of all things – the weather. I wonder if it’s as taboo as Wolfhowl Manor. “History was interesting though… I got a lesson on Port Braseham’s weather.”
“And the storm of the year no doubt.” Letta rolls her eyes.
“So it’s true?”
“A thunderstorm every yeeah on Christmas Eve?” Shane says. “Sixty-five degree weathah? Not a snowflake in sight? Tornado-force winds? All night power outage? Every yeeah? Yup. All true.”
“Bizarre.”
“So why the funk?” Letta asks. “Does weird weather make you a believer?”
“Not by a long shot,” I say, “but it does make me more curious. I’d like to play detective and find out what this town’s so afraid of, especially since it seems like no one’s scared for a real and tangible reason.”
“Not that they’ll say anyway,” Letta says.
“What’s the worst I can do?” I say. “Cure their fear?”
“No,” Shane says, shaking his head. “The worst you can do is confirm it.”
***
I part with Letta at the bottom of the hill as I had the day before, but this time with her phone number. Letta insisted she’d make a great Watson to my Sherlock if I want help, but I don’t expect to do much research tonight. I have calculus homework due tomorrow and since I’m terrible at math, I plan to work on it most of the evening.
I pick Liam up at the O’Dwyre’s. When I arrive, he’s playing in the yard with Lady and Beckan’s out on another errand. Derry’s exactly where I left him this morning, sitting in his rocking chair, smoking his pipe and humming to himself, eyes closed. I’m sure he hears my approach, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. Liam grabs his bookbag from the porch and we head up the hill.
“Mr. O’Dwyre isn’t as much fun as Beckan,” Liam whines.
“Oh yeah? Why not?”
“He’s too quiet. He didn’t say anythin’ the whole time!” Liam, constantly babbling about the most inane topics, finds silence unbelievable. “When I tried to tell him about SpongeBob – which he’s never heard of! – he said we were playing the Quiet Game.”
“Sorry, kiddo.” I unlock the door with the skeleton key, which still fills me with silent glee, and lead Liam into the kitchen because I’m sure he’s starving. Together we have a snack and then I follow Liam to his playroom. He putters around with his toys while I attempt my homework.
It takes an hour for Liam to get bored and for me to lose all patience with calculus. Liam goes downstairs to watch television and I retrieve the realtor’s file from beneath my mattress. I doubt Mother knows it’s missing yet. Before long, I’m sprawled out on my bed with the contents of the file spilled around me. I look back through the articles and weather reports, but find no new insights, just the same questions I had last night. I find myself wondering why that bothers me so much.
Chapter Thirteen
The House of Forgotten Sorrow
I spend the rest of September trying to bury my curiosity at the back of my brain. Between helping Liam with his homework, my own schoolwork and chores, and getting to know my new friends, I don’t have much time to think about a bunch silly superstition anyway. It’s only as I’m laying my head down to sleep that I remember this house is still a mystery to me, a puzzle waiting to be solved – Put me together, Rose. I fall asleep each night listening to the howls of the wolves in the woods and remembering the sensation of being watched, stalked, shadowed every time I’m alone in a room. I wake each morning with a vague sense of uneasiness and the feeling I haven’t really slept at all.
Liam and Mother, on the other hand, are full of energy and flourishing in Port Braseham. The history of the house is of no interest to the cartoon-addicted Liam, and even if Mother had the time to think about it she wouldn’t, because “history was your father’s thing.” She’s more interested in romance novels, Beckan’s rear end, and The Real Housewives of Wherever – not that she has time for those things either. She’s constantly at work, picking up extra shifts whenever she can to try to cover the cost of our move. Sometimes breakfast is the only time we see her, which is just fine with me.
Although my new friends are very different from the friends I’d left behind in Texas – or rather, they left me behind – I like Letta’s group a lot. They don’t go to wild parties four or five nights a week, or do anything terribly dramatic or exciting, but when they ask how I’m doing, they mean it. I never realized how selfish my old friends were – and how selfish I’d been – until I knew what it’s like to have people who genuinely care about my wellbeing. If this were a Hallmark movie, this is when my character would realize there’s more to the world and start growing and maturing. The evil bitch becomes the heroine, resolution, The End.
Shane’s always great for a good belly laugh. He’s silly and makes me think of what Liam might be like as a teenager. Letta’s funny too, but in a more sarcastic, burning way. Her quips are like small jabs in the ribs from your favorite uncle. Patty’s quieter, but she smiles a lot and likes asking me about growing up in Texas and what it’s like to go to such a big school, which I won’t lie, makes me feel important in a way I miss. She also has a flair for fashion and I eye her outfits with envy because she makes it seem so effortless. Eileen’s different than the others, a little more like me, or like the old Rose – Texas Rose. She can be mean and fake, or nice and genuine. She fits in with our group, but fits in equally as well with Mary and her minions. It all depends on what kind of mood she’s in, what kind of day it is. Altogether, my new friends make me feel like a flower being fertilized and cultivated. These are the people who will help me survive the seventh circle of hell, otherwise known as Port Braseham.
But there are still two people lurking in my periphery – Ronan Quinn and Beckan O’Dwyre. I see Beckan on an almost daily basis. If he doesn’t drive Liam and me to school or have a project in the house to work on, he’ll find a reason to stop by and check on us. He usually says he’s coming by to check on Liam and satisfy his long lost wish for a little “bruthah.” And although he does spend a lot of time with Liam, he also spends a lot of time with me, and we get to know each other a little bit more each day.
I haven’t actually spoken to Ronan since that first day, but I always feel his eyes on me. Just as surely as his arm is wrapped around Mary’s waist, or his fingers intertwined with Mary’s, his eyes are on me. It’s like he’s analyzing me every chance he gets, looking me up and down like a piece of meat. It isn’t only that he finds me attractive – and I know he does – it’s that he looks at me the way a dog looks at you when you whistle, head slightly tilted to the side and mouth partially open. What exactly is he looking for when he looks at me like that? And from the way Mary glares at me, I know she’s wondering the same thing.
***
October
On the first day of October I finally find myself with the time and curiosity to to look into Wolfhowl Manor’s history. I’m ignoring my calculus homework peeking out of my binder, waiting to infect my brain with frustration. I grab my laptop. It’s the one electronic device Mother let me keep after the cheerleading incident on the condition it’s for school use only. Before I open Google, I check my email. Plenty of spam, but not a peep from any of my friends back in Texas. I don’t even know why I’m still checking. I quickly tap out a message to my (former) best friend Jennifer. Maybe my old friends need me to start the line of communication since they’re really texters anyway. I throw in some details about the house and our new “servants”, trying to invite both jealousy and curiosity, baiting Jennifer to respond.
Then I spend an hour using different key words to see if I can find any information about Port Braseham or Wolfhowl Mountain. I don’t find much of interest. In a couple of cases, I bring up an article from the realtor’s file, but mostly I find advertisements for local businesses. Apparently, there’s a well-known furniture restoration business in town, Captain’
s Peg Leg, and I actually find a review for The Wharf Rat; I’m very glad I didn’t eat those fries.
It isn’t until I combine the search terms “Port Braseham”, “local history”, and “cursed” that I come across an enlightening article written for a travel magazine specializing in New England destinations called “The House of Forgotten Sorrow,” which I read with great interest.
If you allow yourself to get far enough off the map in eastern Maine, you might find yourself taking a cool dip in the Atlantic. But, swim far enough out and you’ll arrive in the small hamlet of Port Braseham. It looks a little bit like the town time forgot and a little bit like a town still recovering from The Great Depression. It’s a town ripe with old-fashioned values, simple living, and a heavy dose of Irish Catholicism.
The beautifully quaint coastline is covered in pebbled beach with sea foam waves lapping at the edges. Several fishing boats skirt across the horizon, but you won’t find many sightseers here to enjoy the postcard view, nor will you find them along the rotting and deserted boardwalk. Indeed, all you can find there besides aged fishermen smoking their fragrant pipes is a small diner known as The Wharf Rat with a very simple menyah – fish, burger, or chicken salad – and an indifferent proprietor by the name of Flo. A word of warning: all three dishes taste exactly the same, sit like a brick in your belly in the same way, and for the same uncomfortable amount of time.
The busier – I use that term loosely – downtown area of Port Braseham is quite lovely. Several mom n’ pop businesses line the main drag of town, resting inside converted Victorian homes the colors of an exploding kaleidoscope a la Monet. Picket fences, winding brick walks, and monstrous pine trees make this a great destination for anyone in search of rest and relaxation, especially if you enjoy having nearly nothing to do but meander and stare at birds.
But there’s another side to this seemingly peaceful town, a darker side the townspeople don’t want you to know. And it all centers around what I like to call The House of Forgotten Sorrow, a great monstrosity of a house built on the tallest hill in town.
Eamonn and Alva Callaghan were a pair of young first generation Irish immigrants in search of a better life in America. Maine was a logical place for them to settle, not only because it had the fertile farmland they were looking for, but because the wide rolling green hills reminded Alva of the Irish moors where she was raised. In fact, it was the seventeen-year-old Alva who convinced her thirty-two-year-old husband to settle on the piece of land, which would come to be known by the sinister moniker of Wolfhowl Mountain, in 1849.
It was a grand dream for a humble fisherman and preacher and his devout piano teacher wife. They struggled at first, but Eamonn’s fishing and farming business grew and before long, the couple had saved enough money to build a house in Alva’s perfect vision. It was Victorian by design, but Alva’s specific modifications turned it into a strange and ugly beast scowling down upon the town. A widow’s walk was pinned to the roof so Alva could keep an eye on Eamonn’s fishing boat and pray to St. Elmo for his safe return.
Slowly Eamonn toiled over the construction of the house, adding room after room and floor after floor to achieve Alva’s dream. And the bigger the house became, the more determined Alva was to fill it with their children. Eventually her wish came true and she became pregnant. While she was thrilled, Eamonn was secretly panicking. The summer of 1850 was a violent one for weather. Storm after storm whipped the coast of Maine and Port Braseham had been struggling with their crop and fishing industries ever since. Land seemed nearly barren and the sea swallowed up all of the fish. Eamonn’s business began to struggle, but he did not tell Alva. Of course she knew things had been hard, but Eamonn always told her they would be all right, and she believed him.
Their child, Emily Lenore, came sometime in late November 1851. The couple should have been beside themselves with joy, but this does not appear to be the case.
The Christmas Eve several weeks after Emily Lenore was born was a tough one marked by the strongest thunderstorm of the year and unseasonably warm weather. On Christmas Day, when the couple did not show up to church, a few of the townspeople went to check on them. Both Eamonn and Alva were found hanging from the rafters in an unfinished portion of the house. It was ruled a double suicide, but no note was found.
And what of Emily Lenore? Good question. After some of my own research, all I could find of the girl was a birth certificate. After birth, she disappears from civilization like a Mayan baby, as if someone went to great lengths to erase her entire existence from the planet. Was she raised by friends in town? There are no gravestones bearing her name behind the only church in Port Braseham. Was she sent to live with relatives in Ireland? There is no record of her leaving the country. Was she adopted under a new name? No paperwork exists to support this theory. No one really knows the true fate of Emily Lenore. Yet this is why the people of the town seem to think the house is cursed; Alva’s ghost wants her stolen child returned.
I’m not much of a believer in ghosts, but there is some pretty convincing evidence to this dark little tale. For example, the death toll of the house: nearly every owner since the Callaghan’s has died. The first couple died after the birth of their son; she during childbirth and he presumably from a broken heart if local legend is to be believe. And the child didn’t live much longer than his parents, dying mysteriously a few weeks later. The next childless owners died in a mysterious fire. A carpenter bought the house in the sixties to fix it up and resell, but he was shredded by his own saw after falling through the rotting floor. The last owners fled in the early eighties, leaving the house in foreclosure.
Then there’s that weird weather. Going back as far as records allow, Port Braseham has had a thunderstorm on Christmas Eve every year since 1850. Each storm leads to a period of barren land and empty fishnets for anywhere from several weeks to several months. At first, the townspeople seemed to think they had landed themselves in an odd little weather pocket and didn’t give the storms too much consideration. But after several years, the Irish Catholic town members sought a different answer, an explanation from God. It was Eamonn’s own eccentric successor as preacher who began steering the town toward the supernatural, based on a sermon I unearthed from 1859. He believed the town was being punished for the sins represented by Eamonn and Alva’s suicides.
And then there’s the part literally no one in town will discuss with an outsider like me – infertility and infant deaths. Since the deaths of the Callaghans and the disappearance of the child Emily Lenore, there has been a significantly high rate of infertility and infant death in Port Braseham. Through public records, I was able to confirm Port Braseham has the highest rate of miscarriages in the state – and it’s one of the smallest towns! The ancient overgrown graveyard of Saint Perpetua, Our Lady Martyr has several headstones per year for children less than a year old. Taking my own little tour, until I was kicked out by the locals, I noticed when these gravestones started popping up – in early 1852. Could it be a coincidence?
Several times the town council has voted to tear down Wolfhowl Manor in hopes of breaking the curse, but each time the Port Braseham Historical Society, now led by popular resident Seamus Quinn, intercedes and prevents it. Turns out the eyesore is a historical landmark. More than once the town council has been urged by outsiders to create a tourism campaign around the curse of Wolfhowl – Ghost Hunters anyone? – But they refuse. They do not believe in profiting off of a story so full of sorrow – but they don’t believe in going anywhere near it either. Aside from a locally assigned caretaker to handle the land, the house is off limits. However, the house is owned by the Historical Society and so long as you promise not to knock the house down or make any major structural changes, you could own Wolfhowl Manor. It’s up for sale. The cost? According to the locals... your life.
This is what the tight-knit community of Port Braseham doesn’t want you to know. They just want you to forget about it, and it isn’t in the interest of tourism. They’d like
you to forget all about them too. Just wipe Port Braseham off the map and let them live their lives simply, and in the shadowy burden of their house on the hill.
“Hey.”
I nearly fall off my bed when Beckan, who’s standing in my bedroom doorway, greets me, but I do manage not to scream this time. “You scared me!”
“Sorry.” He holds up his hands innocently. One holds a bulky plastic bag.
“What’s in the bag?”
“These are your safety mechanisms miss,” he says with a bow. “I have your deadbolt locks as requested.”
“Thanks,” I laugh. “It only took you a month!”
“Well, you know, the busy small town life,” he says sarcastically.
“I know it’s silly, because I’m sure no one around here even locks their doors, but it sure would make a city girl like myself feel better.” I play up the damsel in distress accent as I clasp my hands under my chin and bat my long eyelashes.
Beckan laughs and juts his chin toward the mess of papers on my bed. “What’re you up tah?”
“Doing some research on the house,” I say and motion to the pieces of the file around me. “I snagged the file the realtor gave Mother. I’ve been curious about the whole curse thing.”
“Oh?” Beckan sits next to me on the bed, close. The hair on my arm prickles with electricity. He smells like pine trees and fresh air. “No plans tonight?”
“Only avoiding my calculus homework.”
“Ah,” he nods knowingly as his eyes search the articles and zero in on the one about the woman who died here in the nineties.
“Oh yeah!” I scoot closer as he picks up the article. “I want to ask you about that one. It’s about a woman who died here in 1996, but it didn’t give any details. It wasn’t that long ago. I thought maybe you or your dad might know who she was and what happened.”