The Haunting of Abram Mansion

by Alexandria Clarke

  “Because it was like getting to the end of a marathon and realizing they’d moved the finish line another twenty miles down the road,” I told him. “I had plans, Ben—”

  “What plans?” he asked. “You’ve been talking about all these things you’re going to do after we’re divorced like it’s my fault you never got to do them before. I didn’t stop you from traveling, Peyton. You were the one who never made plans.”

  “I couldn’t leave,” I argued. “What would everyone at home have said? What about the rumors that would’ve flown if I ditched my husband to pursue my career?”

  I’d never seen anyone wipe their mouth so furiously as Ben did. He set the napkin and his fork on the table with contained rage, but the impact still rattled our coffee mugs.

  “What do you think you’re doing now?” he hissed across the table. “Back then, we were partners. We supported each other’s decisions. When I said I wanted to go to the nearest university so I could stay close to my mom, you agreed. When you wanted to start up your photography business, I agreed. If you had told me you wanted to go to Argentina to photograph some rare species of monkey, I would have let you go and waited for you to come home. That’s what husbands and wives do, Peyton.” He took a sip of coffee in an attempt to do something that looked normal and calm. “Then, I wouldn’t have seen it as ditching your husband to pursue your career. Now, that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  My frazzled emotions, heightened by my lack of sleep, boiled hotter in the pit of my stomach than the coffee in Mason’s espresso machine. I pushed my plate into Ben’s, the clang of clashing porcelain echoing through the café, and left without another word.

  We kept arguing about the same crap. Ben was content to stay in the same place we had both grown up in, work the same old job, and do the same things we did every single day until we both died. Meanwhile, I was suffocating. The world waited for me to explore it—all I needed was a one-way plane ticket—but Ben was wrong about my lack of initiative. All these years, I’d stayed home for him. I’d said yes to everything he wanted, with the single exception of starting a family. Long ago, I promised we could have a baby when I turned thirty, but as time passed, I couldn’t envision myself being pregnant with Ben’s child. If there was a surefire way to permanently tie myself to home, it was by having a kid.

  Before I turned the corner, I paused to take one more look at Ben through the window of the café. His head was bowed toward the table, his hands tucked behind his neck. Our breakfasts were equally untouched. When the bell rang over the door as someone else entered, the coffee in Ben’s cup rippled. He shoved the mug as far from himself as possible. It clinked against my own abandoned cup, and the lip of his mug kissed mine.

  I walked off. Though the sky was clear of clouds and there was no more snow on its way for now, the crisp air stung my nose and dried out my lips. I stopped in at the corner store, bought a travel-sized Aquaphor, and smeared a heavy coat across the lower half of my face. With better skin protection, taking a walk through Falconwood’s main street to clear my head wasn’t quite so unbearable.

  From what I could tell, not one of the shops in the town square was owned by a corporation or larger business. Every boutique, market, and bakery was managed by one of the local families. There was one bank and one pharmacy, and all three levels of education—elementary, middle, and high—were combined into one school building. The people were just as friendly and inviting as their shop windows. I passed stranger after stranger on the sidewalks, but every single one of them acted like we were acquainted in some way. They nodded or smiled or waved as we crossed paths. As someone who avoided as much human contact as possible in my hometown, returning the polite gestures was somewhat out of character for me, but the simplicity of settling into an easy smile caused my mood to tick upward. After a few blocks, I actually enjoyed exchanging pleasantries with the locals.

  Hoping to avoid Ben wherever he might have gone after he left the café, I skipped the hardware store. I took a look in the furniture shop next door, where I spoke to the owner about a modular bed frame that could be assembled without any tools. The news had spread all over town about mine and Ben’s arrival, so when I bought a full-sized bed instead of a king-sized, the seller gave me a long, scrutinizing look. Thankfully, he didn’t bother to push the subject.

  After visiting a few other stores, a tiny shop window caught my eye. It was a small photography shop, squished between the barber and the pharmacy. If it weren’t for the display of antique lenses in the window, I never would have noticed it. When I went inside, a little bell over the door jingled to announce my entrance. As the owner glanced up, a raindrop of annoyance dropped onto my face and curled my lip upward. Couldn’t anyone in this town leave me alone for five seconds? But the shop owner waved and went back to whatever he was doing, leaving me to peruse in peace and a little bit of guilt.

  The photography shop had a little bit of everything, from used cameras dating years back to brand-new DSLRs. My own camera was a bit old. I’d bought it when digital cameras were just beginning to become more common than film, so it didn’t have all the bells and whistles of the newer models. For years, I had shopped around for a new one, but when it came time to cough up the cash, I always reneged. I hadn’t taken one picture since my business failed, and there was no point in calling myself a photographer anymore. Still, the familiarity of the shop cooled my head and calmed my pulse, which had been racing with anxiety ever since I left Ben at Black Cat. I wandered around, eventually making my way to the back of the store, where the shop owner tinkered with an old film camera. He was an older man, maybe Basil’s age, who wore pince-nez glasses and a garish orange knit hat to keep his head warm.

  “Need anything?” he asked without bothering to look up.

  “Not at the moment. Just looking.”

  “Enjoy your gander.”

  As I inspected an old Leica lens, the bell over the door chimed and in walked Della Gordon. She didn’t notice me as she beelined for the back of the shop. The shop owner set down his camera and beamed at her.

  “Miss Della,” he said. They kissed each other’s cheeks over the counter. “Are you here to pick up your photos?”

  “And to bring you these, Chester.” Della set a picnic basket on the counter and folded back the gingham to show Chester the dozen freshly-baked muffins inside. The sweet scent of chocolate wafted across the store. “For putting a rush job on the pictures.”

  “Oh, you know I don’t mind,” Chester said as he ogled the muffins. “It’s not like I have much to do here anyway. You two are the first visitors I’ve had all day, but I’ll never say no to your muffins, Della.”

  “Us two?” Della looked over her shoulder. I waved when she spotted me, and a huge smile crossed her face. “Peyton! Would you like a muffin?”

  “Like Chester here, I’ll never say no to a muffin.”

  Della beckoned me over and offered me the basket. “They’re vegan and gluten free. Basil and I like to eat as healthily as possible.”

  “It shows,” I said, choosing a blueberry muffin out of the mixed bag. “You’re both so fit. It’s incredible. I hope I’m still in shape when—”

  “When you’re old?” Della chuckled as my cheeks turned pink.

  The phone in the back room rang, and Chester excused himself from the muffin party to answer it. Della offered me a cloth napkin from her bag so I wouldn’t get crumbs all over the floor of the shop.

  “I admire you,” I said. “You seem to like your life. A lot of people don’t, you know?”

  “Are you including yourself amongst those people?” Della closed the muffin basket and set it aside. “I’m sensing a little restlessness within you.”

  A blueberry stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I performed a series of tongue acrobatics to free my voice from its sticky prison. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  “It all started when I was fourteen,” I began in a poor imitation of a movie vo
ice over.

  Della laughed and rolled her eyes. “I suppose that is a long story. We’ll have to get coffee sometime to talk about it. Just us girls.”

  While the thought of getting to know any other of Falconwood locals made me cringe, Della’s offer took some of the weight off my shoulders. It might be nice to get to know someone who wasn’t already familiar with the intimate details of my life.

  “I’d like that.”

  “You’ll have to tell me all about the Abram Mansion too,” she said. “That place has been empty for so long. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve snuck out there to photograph it a few times.”

  I waved a hand to dismiss her apology. “That’s totally fine. I probably would’ve done the same thing.”

  “It’s such an interesting house. Beautiful too, even in decay.”

  “What else do you know about it?” I asked. “It’s kind of a mystery why my grandfather left it to me. I don’t know much about the property. Who were the Abrams anyway?”

  Della leaned against the counter and picked up the camera Chester had been tinkering with. As she examined it, she said, “I don’t know the whole story. Basil and I moved here about ten years ago, and the drama had long since subsided by then. From what I understand, a young family once lived there: Percy Abram, his wife Penelope, and their daughter Alyssa. They were picture-perfect from the outside. Percy hosted all kinds of parties at the mansion, and the whole town would show up.”

  “Then something tragic happened,” I guessed.

  Della nodded solemnly. “Percy and his wife grew apart, and soon the whole town knew Penelope had had an affair. She left Percy for the other man, and she took Alyssa with her. Percy was in such distress—”

  She trailed off, her focus slipping to the camera between her deft fingers. I nudged her shoulder.

  “What happened to Percy?”

  “He died,” she answered. “He couldn’t take the grief of losing his wife to another man.”

  I let out a low whistle. “That’s rough.”

  “The town was in bits,” Della went on, now using one of Chester’s miniature screwdrivers to maneuver a piece of the camera into a different place. “Everyone adored the Abrams. I imagine it was a bit of a shock to see their family fall apart.”

  A tiny screw fell out of the camera, and I caught it in my palm before it rolled off the counter. “What about afterward? My grandfather Andrew Anderson came to own the mansion. Do you know anything about him?”

  She took the screw from me with a thankful tip of her chin. “I’ve heard the name a few times over the years, but just in passing. I’m afraid I’m not as familiar with him.”

  My phone chimed, and I checked the messages to find a text from Ben: Back at the house. See you whenever. I sighed heavily.

  “Everything all right?” Della asked.

  “Ben’s gone home,” I said. “Which means I don’t have a ride.”

  “I’ll drop you off,” she offered. When I grimaced, she added, “It doesn’t have to be right now. We can go for a stroll if you like. I’ll give you a quick rundown on the town.”

  “I’d like that.”

  By the time Della and I got back to the Abram Mansion, dusk had fallen. She’d helped me pick out a few things to make the place a little more homey—duvets, bath towels, and the like—but I didn’t have any intention of taking them out of the bags until we cleaned up the house. I thanked Della for the ride and sent her on her way with the excuse that the house was too dirty to invite her inside. She took a raincheck and headed out. The interaction was so simple and uncomplicated for a small town. At home, anyone else would have pushed the issue.

  A big white construction truck was parked next to mine and Ben’s SUV, and to my surprise, there was a light on inside the entryway. When I went in, Ben was deep in concentration with a broad-shouldered man wearing fleece-lined buffalo plaid and heavy brown boots.

  “Just keep an eye on it,” the buffalo man was saying. “In a place this big, you’re bound to get some leaks after forty years. I’ll be back tomorrow with my crew, and we’ll get things up and running in no time.”

  Ben shook the man’s beefy hand. “Thanks, Jim. I appreciate you coming out on such short notice.”

  “It’s no problem at all,” Jim replied. “I love jobs like this. We don’t see too much work in Falconwood. My boys and I usually travel elsewhere to keep busy, so this is the best commute I’ve had in years.”

  I cleared my throat. Jim and Ben turned to face me.

  “This must be the wife.” Jim beamed at me. With his rosy, plump cheeks and full brown beard, he looked like a younger version of Santa Claus. He shook my hand with both of his, which were surprisingly soft for a contractor. “Ben told me all about you. I can imagine you’re not too happy living here for the moment, but we’ll get everything nice and tight for you as quickly as possible. I’ve already got the power and the water back on for you, ma’am, so it won’t be as rough as last night for ya.”

  For such a large man, Jim came off as a giant teddy bear. Evidently, all of Falconwood locals possessed genuine small-town charm. I let Jim keep my hand for a moment longer.

  “Thank you,” I said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Pleasure’s all mine.” He extracted an earflap hat from his back pocket that matched the pattern of his coat and pulled it on over his tufty brown hair. “I should get going. My wife’s waiting for me at home. I’ll see the two of you bright and early tomorrow morning?”

  “You got it,” said Ben.

  Jim saw himself out. The rumble of his engine faded as he drove into the woods. Ben didn’t say a word to me, organizing a pile of tools and hardware Jim had presumably brought with him. The entryway looked both better and worse with the chandelier shedding actual light overhead. On one hand, the golden light warmed the room and gave it a cozier vibe than the chilling darkness of last night. On the other hand, it illuminated every flaw in the entryway. Each rip in the wallpaper, crack in the molding, and dent in the floorboards took center stage.

  “You didn’t tell me you were meeting with Jim today,” I said to Ben.

  “Meant it to be a surprise,” he huffed, keeping his back toward me as he continued working. “Got the water running in the kitchen and the bathroom next to it.”

  “Where’s the kitchen?”

  “Downstairs. Electricity’s only working in this section of the house, but I did clear out a room on this floor for you if you wanted to get some privacy tonight,” Ben said. “I moved your cot in there already.”

  “Where are you sleeping?”

  “Here,” he replied. “I only had time to clean the one room.”

  “Thanks for doing that.”

  “Mm-hmm. I had Jim hook up the fridge and the stove too. If we get the kitchen cleaned up, you can start using it tomorrow.”

  Guilt crawled like a parasite into my brain. While Ben had been busting his butt to make the Abram Mansion livable, I’d been shopping with Della and making absolutely no use of myself. The shopping bags weighed like concrete in my hands, especially when Ben caught sight of them but didn’t say anything.

  “Which room?” I asked.

  “First door on the left down the hall,” Ben said. “Looks like it used to be a drawing room.”

  He didn’t show me to it, a sign that things had definitely changed between us, and it wasn’t my imagination. When we first looked into buying our house back home, Ben had swept me into his arms, lifted me over the threshold, and carried me into the bedroom. All of that whimsical playfulness was missing now.

  Ben had cleansed the drawing room of every speck of dust and grime. Other than some general wear and tear, it was in pretty decent shape. Blank canvases were stacked in the corner, and an easel stood by the window. The window looked out on the snowy courtyard that Ben and I had yet to explore. The mansion was built in a large square with the courtyard in the center. Overgrown topiaries bordered a veiled pathway. Dead vines snaked around a huge trel
lis. In the center of everything, an empty pool lay cracked from disuse. In the moonlight, the courtyard was a magical land of mystery and snow. Years ago, it was probably a lovely place to spend hot summer days.

  I set my new duvet and pillows on top of the sleeping bag already on my cot. Ben had done his best to arrange the room to my liking. He put the cot by the window, right next to the hot radiator. He’d also placed one of the side tables nearby and added a small lamp. He’d even folded my clothes and put them away in a large storage cabinet that he’d also purged of dirt.

  “Got everything you need?” Ben’s voice floated from the doorway.

  “I think so,” I said. “Where are my toiletries?”

  “Already in the bathroom. Night.”

  He returned to the entryway and turned off the chandelier so the light spilling into the hallway extinguished itself. I coaxed the small lamp next to my bed on to combat the shadowy darkness, changed into pajamas, and went downstairs to brush my teeth. The lower levels were quite chilly, so I hurried back to my room as quickly as possible. Ben was already asleep in his own cot by the fire, his back rising and falling with the rhythm of his breath. A little pang hit my heart like a mallet on a steel drum. Though we’d been sleeping apart at home for a while now, it felt different in the big mansion. I almost missed him.

  I snuggled up under my new duvet and stared up at the sky through the window. Since the mansion was practically in the middle of nowhere, there wasn’t much light pollution, and the stars were more visible than anywhere else I’d seen. I traced constellations with an imaginary paintbrush until I dozed off.

  The whispers came back in the middle of the night, and there was no mistaking it for rats or mice scurrying through the walls. Children’s voices sang muddled songs in my head, pulling me out of sleep. In the hallway, a pair of footsteps scurried past my room. A high voice giggled.

  “Ben?” I called.

  No one answered. I put my slippers on, crept to the door, and peeked into the hallway. All was quiet and still until something rattled a few rooms away. As I snuck out, Ben was fast asleep in the entryway. I left him that way, sure he would call me paranoid if I woke him up for a few lousy noises, but I took a poker from beside the fireplace and followed the muted lullabies down the stairs.