“The world’s a funny place.” Della climbed up a steep ridge, surprising me with her agility. She offered me a hand to help me up. “Sometimes, you just need a change of perspective. Take a look.”
The trees opened up to a flat rock face on the side of the hill. Beyond it, the mountain dropped off at a sharp angle. I inched forward, scared to go any closer, but Della marched right up to the edge of the small cliff. From here, we had an eagle’s eye view of the mansion. It was miles below situated right on the frozen river. At this height, the house looked half as intimidating. One might even mistake it for a beautiful castle hidden in the magical forest of Falconwood.
“There’s Jim,” I said, pointing to one end of the huge terrace. We weren’t so far away that we couldn’t see the people down below. “Which means Ben can’t be too far behind. Aha!” I pointed my camera at the house and clicked a quick picture of Ben where he stood on the opposite end of the terrace. “Told ya he was nearby.”
“Good instinct,” Della said. She took a seat on the rock face, dangling her feet over the edge. When she saw my worried look, she added, “Don’t worry. There’s another level right below us. If I fall, it’s only about a ten-foot drop.”
“Oh, sure. Ten feet.”
Della patted the ground beside her. “Come on, live a little.”
I sat down before I reached the edge, and Della gave me a little nod of approval. After gathering my courage, I let my boots hang next to hers.
“There ya go,” she said, patting my thigh. “Don’t you feel like a bird?”
Though it was a bit of a stretch, I did feel a bit freer than usual. The air up here was crisper, and there was something about being so far above the people at the house that soothed my soul.
“Do you think the Abrams ever came up here?”
“Yes, indeed,” Della answered. “Percy was an avid hiker. These trails are actually named after him, but they were closed to the public for a while. Not many people come up here anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
Della pursed her lips. “Maybe some other time.”
“Della, just tell me.”
She threw a rock as far as she could. It soared through the air and disappeared into the trees below. “Do you remember what I told you about Percy? How he died?”
“You told me he died of grief,” I said. “But you didn’t tell me how.”
“He killed himself,” Della said. “He hiked up here and threw himself off the side of a cliff, into the rushing river below. If you ask the locals, they’ll tell you it was an accident.”
“But you don’t think that?”
“The police found a suicide note from Percy in the house,” Della said. “I think the town convinced themselves it was an accident to make it less painful. Everyone felt Percy’s death.”
I imagined falling from the rock face and bouncing all the way down to the river. Poor Percy Abrams must have been half out of his mind.
“How do you know so much about the Abrams?” I asked Della. “You said you didn’t move to Falconwood until after they were already long gone.”
Della tossed another rock. This one bounced off a tree with a hollow thunk. “Have you ever heard of micro-obsessions?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s common for people with depression or OCD to develop intense interest in one thing,” Della explained. “Introverts are particularly susceptible to it. When I find something I like, I don’t casually investigate it. I immerse myself in it. It used to be quite a problem when I was younger. I’d get obsessed over a TV show or a book and never come out of my room. My mother thought I was a recluse.”
“So the Abrams were a micro-obsession?”
“Of sorts.” Della snapped a few pictures of the horizon and the house below. “Once I got older, I learned to channel my obsessions into more productive avenues. That’s why I practice photography so often. When we first moved to Falconwood, I found the Abram Mansion by accident while hiking. As soon as I saw it, I had to know everything about it. I asked everyone in town, scoured old newspapers, and dug up the Abrams’s public records. All of the information was right there for me to absorb.”
Her eyes glazed over as she spoke, and I got the feeling that her interest in the Abrams Mansion was still alive and well. Taking a leaf out of her book, I tossed a rock over the edge, feeling weirdly powerful as I did it.
“Did the locals mind you digging up information about the Abrams?” I asked.
“Most of them were fine with it,” she answered. “But it was the first time I got too wrapped up in something for Basil to handle.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I was never present with him,” Della said. “I was too busy combing over every bit of information I could find on the Abrams. I spent hours locked in my study, reading and re-reading about Percy and his family. I researched the house too, but there was surprisingly little to find. Anyway, Basil worried about me. When he finally got through to me, I realized how much time I’d been spending alone, away from him. I decided to give my obsession with the Abram Mansion a break.”
“This is the first time you’ve been back since?”
“It sure is.”
I chugged quickly from the bottle we’d brought along with us, but the water was too cold to sip for long. “Feel free to explore the house again if you like. It’s a bit safer now that we’ve started renovations.”
She gazed absentmindedly into the distance. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
“Well, if you change your mind…”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the wind pick up as it whistled through the trees. The white sky was no longer still. Dark clouds roiled above us, no doubt waiting to dump a fresh load of snow on the town. If we didn’t get back to the house soon, it would be a much colder hike home.
“We don’t have much time,” Della said, noticing the sky. She slipped the strap of her camera off of her neck and over mine. “Here. Snap a few digital ones. It’s got an amazing zoom on it.”
I traded her for the old Canon and happily lifted her fancy DSLR up to my eye level. While Della aimed at the surrounding trees, I zoomed in on the house and focused the lens. Nature was fun for practice, but when it came down to it, I loved photographing people more than plants and animals. I snapped picture after picture of the construction workers in various stages of work. With a few adjustments to the camera, I could make the house and its current occupants look like toys.
After I finished with Jim’s crew, I turned the camera toward Ben, who was still inspecting the older part of the terrace. He peered upward, and I traced the line of his sight up to one of the attic windows that looked out on the terrace. My heart dropped.
A little girl stared out of the window, looking directly at Ben.
“Della?” I tapped her shoulder and handed her the camera. “Do you see someone in that left upper window, right above Ben?”
Della peered through the viewfinder and fiddled with the focus. “Nope. Nothing there. You worried one of the construction guys is trying to rip you off?”
I took the camera back and focused on the window again. The little girl had disappeared. I checked on Ben. He walked the perimeter of the terrace, pausing every now and then to scuff loose tiles with his foot. He reached the corner and braced himself against the railing to check something beneath him. The railing wobbled.
“No!” I cried.
As the rusty railing gave way, Ben fell two stories off the terrace and landed on the frozen river below. He didn’t get up.
8
The hike back to the house took an hour. It was the longest hour of my life, and no matter how many shortcuts Della knew to get us through the woods as quickly as possible, it didn’t ease my mind. With no cell tower nearby, I couldn’t call 911. When we finally arrived at the house, no one seemed concerned with Ben’s fall. The landscape around the mansion was so overgrown that I couldn’t tell where Ben had landed from the
ground.
“Jim!” I called up to the roof, cupping my hands around my mouth so the contractor could hear me.
He peered over the edge of the terrace. “Everything okay down there?”
“No! Ben fell off the terrace!”
“What? Where is he?”
“That’s what I need you for,” I called up. “I can’t see where he landed from down here, but I know he’s on the river. Can you see from up there?”
Jim jogged to the other side of the terrace where Ben had been patrolling an hour ago. He jiggled the faulty railing before glancing down. “I see him! He’s about twenty feet to your right. How long has he been down there?”
I raced through the dead trees and bushes, dialing 911. Della was close on my heels.
“911. What’s your emergency?”
“My husband fell off the roof of our house,” I said. “Ben!”
I handed the phone to Della when I caught sight of Ben. He was splayed across the frozen icy river, one of his arms bent at an odd angle. Blood stained the ice dark red. I almost ran to him, but Della held me back.
“Go slow,” she said. “You don’t want the ice to break.”
It took all of my willpower to take her advice. All I wanted was to get to Ben as soon as possible. He’d already been unconscious for an hour. Gingerly, I tested the ice at the edge of the river, stomping my boot down to see if it would hold. When it held firm, I slid across like I was ice skating and knelt beside Ben.
“Is he awake?” Della asked, no doubt repeating the question from the 911 operator. “Is he breathing?”
“He’s breathing,” I confirmed. “Ben? Can you hear me?”
Ben groaned, but each time he attempted to open his eyes, they fluttered shut again. “Peyton?”
“He’s awake!” I told Della. “Should I move him off the ice?”
Della repeated the question to the operator then replied, “They said to leave him be. If you move him, you could risk injuring him more. An ambulance is on its way.”
Jim jogged up from behind, breathing hard. “I didn’t know he was up on the terrace. I kept telling him to stay put. My guys haven’t gotten around to that side yet. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I told him. “You didn’t know.”
“I should have been paying more attention.” Jim shed his workman’s jacket and handed it to me across the ice. “Here. Drape that over him so he stays warm. It can’t be good that he’s on the ice like that.”
After five excruciating minutes, the ambulance ambled up the one-way road that led to the mansion, sirens screaming. They drove right up to the river, flattening the grass and bushes in their way. A team of paramedics filed out. The first one, a woman who had the same perfect bone structure as Officer Spaughton, gestured for me to get off the ice.
“Careful,” she said as the ice cracked beneath my boot. “We don’t want to trigger a worst-case scenario.”
As soon as I was clear of the ice, she traded places with me. The other paramedics were beefier men. If they took one step onto the river, the entire frozen surface might shatter. The Officer Spaughton lookalike weighed the least, so she took point on the rescue while the others readied a stretcher.
“When did he fall?” the paramedic asked.
“About an hour ago.” I wrung my hands, wanting to do something but afraid to get in the way. “We would have called sooner, but we saw him fall from up in the hills. Our phones weren’t working.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ben Fletcher.”
The paramedic waved her hand in front of Ben’s eyes. “Ben, can you hear me?”
Like before, Ben groaned and made an attempt to open his eyes. The paramedic held his shoulders still.
“Try not to move,” she said. “My name is Kate. I’m a paramedic. You’ve been in an accident, but we’re going to get you to the hospital, okay? I just need you to work with me and my team.”
Kate and her team got to work. They slid the stretcher across the ice, and Kate worked her magic to get Ben on it without compromising his injuries. His right arm was definitely broken, and he had an ugly bruise on the side of his head where he had hit the ice. Kate stabilized his neck, made sure Ben was strapped in tight, then pushed the stretcher across the ice all on her own. Once they could reach it, the other paramedics took hold of the stretcher to lift Ben off the ground and into the ambulance.
“You’re the wife, right?” Kate asked as she stepped gingerly off the ice. “Are you coming with us?”
“Yes,” I said. “Della, could you—?”
“I’ll hold down the fort,” Della promised, taking my hiking backpack from my shoulders. “I’ll lock up too. If you have time to update me later, give me a call.”
“Thank you so much.”
The paramedics helped me step up to the back of the ambulance, and I sat next to Kate as the driver fired up the rig. The paramedics checked Ben’s vitals and hooked him up to fluids. His eyes kept shooting open then fluttering shut again, like he was trying his hardest to stay awake. On the stretcher, with his head framed by the foam support, Ben looked smaller. His fluffy curls were wet and flat, pasted to his forehead with melted ice and sweat. I’d seen Ben like this once before. Over ten years ago, during the final football game of the regular season, Ben was tackled after a kick. The other player concussed him and took out his knee, ruining Ben’s chance to play college football. Somehow, I was seventeen again, watching my high school boyfriend get carted off to the hospital without knowing what was wrong.
“You can hold his hand,” Kate said. “The non-broken one obviously.”
Since she seemed to be waiting for me to do so, I took Ben’s cold fingers in mine. He didn’t squeeze me to let me know he was going to be okay or anything like that. His hand was limp and clammy.
When the ambulance jerked to a stop and the paramedics got out, I didn’t recognize our surroundings. We certainly weren’t at the emergency clinic in Falconwood. We had arrived at a bay door on the side of a huge hospital, where the paramedics shunted me aside to get Ben out of the rig.
“Where are we?” I asked Kate, hurrying behind her as she helped roll Ben’s stretcher through the bay doors. “This isn’t Falconwood.”
“This is Moorewood,” Kate answered. “Next town over. The Falconwood clinic doesn’t have the kind of resources the emergency team needs to help him. Out of the way!” People parted like the Red Sea as Kate and the other paramedics piloted the stretcher through the hallways of the hospital. At another set of double doors, Kate held me back with one hand. “You have to stay here. I’ll have someone give you an update as soon as possible.”
They wheeled Ben through the double doors, leaving me to sit in the waiting room with no company aside from my racing mind. I sat in a cold plastic chair farthest from the other mourning family members. My socks were wet from the hike and the collar of my coat was stained with cold sweat, but I was too numb to address either discomfort.
I took off my gloves and fished my phone out of my pocket. Now that we were closer to civilization, I had full bars. I dialed Ben’s mother, whose number wasn’t in my phone but I’d memorized nonetheless.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Mrs. Fletcher? It’s me, Peyton.”
“What’s wrong?”
I grimaced. Of course she automatically thought something was wrong. I never called her unless Ben asked me to. Ever since high school, Mrs. Fletcher thought I wasn’t good enough for Ben. When he injured his knee, she found a way to blame his ruined football chances on me.
“Ben’s in the hospital,” I said, plain and simply. “He was working on the terrace of our house and leaned against a part of the railing that wasn’t stable, and he fell.”
On the other end of the line, Mrs. Fletcher’s breath hitched. “What’s wrong with him? Did they say he was going to be okay? I want to speak to a doctor.”
“We just arrived. They took him back already,” I told her. “He defini
tely has a broken arm and probably a concussion. They said they would update me when they knew more. I’ll call you when they do.”
“Don’t you dare hang up on me!” Mrs. Fletcher said. “I know the only reason you called me was out of obligation, but as Benjamin’s mother, I deserve more in this situation. Do you understand me, Miss Baus?”
When she was particularly angry with me, Mrs. Fletcher reverted to calling me by my maiden name, as if I wasn’t worthy of the Fletcher surname.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“He wouldn’t have gone to that house if it weren’t for you,” she barreled on. “It belonged to your grandfather, not his, which means it’s your responsibility. I warned him not to go, especially with this divorce looming on the horizon, but he was determined to make you see sense. He thought—”
“He thought I wouldn’t divorce him if we lived in the mansion together,” I finished for her, my patience waning. “Yeah, I know. I heard him talking to you before we left.”
“Then you also know he loves you more than life itself, God forbid,” Mrs. Fletcher spat. “He’s always done right by you, and if he doesn’t make it out of that house alive at the end of six months, I will never stop haunting you. Is that clear, Miss Baus?”
“This wasn’t my fault—”
She hung up on me, and I found myself talking to my phone’s home screen instead. I stared at the picture of me and Ben, never having changed it despite our supposed separation. It was taken about a year ago, right before I’d decided to end things, at Ben’s favorite hometown bar. Behind us, Ben’s high school jersey hung on the wall, as if to remind me of all the things I’d apparently kept him from doing.
The hospital closed in on me. The cloying smell of disinfectant invaded my nose. Various noises—doctors and nurses shouting over one another, babies and children crying, the wheels of a stretcher squeaking across the tile floor—bombarded my ears. I felt dirty all of a sudden, like my skin was crawling with every germ that had ever passed through this waiting room. I had to get out of here.
I made a break for the main doors, moving as fast as I could without accidentally taking anyone out, and burst outside. The cold air hit me like a truck, but it was a blessed relief from the stifling heat indoors. I was so overwhelmed, I didn’t notice Theo walking up until I ran right into her.
The Haunting of Abram Mansion Page 11