The Haunting of Abram Mansion

by Alexandria Clarke

  Alyssa stuck her tongue into the tea then sat back with a grouchy look on her face. She couldn’t taste it. “Daddy’s office, probably.”

  It always shocked me when Alyssa actually spoke. In the past several months, she’d uttered maybe a grand total of fifty words to me. We had only just started this part of our relationship—where I asked for help and she responded with real words.

  “Where’s his office?”

  She waved a brisk hand over the top of the tea cup as she got off the chair. Though she couldn’t touch the tea cup, she could move it with the force of her will. It knocked itself over and clattered to the floor. The mug cracked in half. Alyssa froze, like she hadn’t meant to break something.

  “Oops.”

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “I’ll clean it up later.”

  She led me into the foyer and up the stairs to the mezzanine. This part of the house was familiar to me even though we had yet to start renovations up here. I’d spent a lot of time tracking Alyssa and Penelope through these hallways. The second floor east wing, which included Alyssa’s bedroom, was where the Abrams spent most of their time, but Alyssa kept leading me upward. When we reached the third floor, she made her way to a door in the center of the corridor, then waited outside for me to open it.

  Percy’s office was a grand affair. It was one of the larger rooms in the house, spanning at least thirty feet across. The enormous window looked out onto the courtyard, but dusty curtains framed either side of it in case Percy needed a dark, cool place to think. An enormous desk took center stage, its dark wood hand carved into woodland creatures. The top of it was lined with green felt dotted with cigar ash. It was still stacked with paperwork and folders, which I assumed had to do with Percy’s work.

  “What did your father do for his job?” I murmured to Alyssa.

  “Art,” she said.

  That was all she gave me. Perhaps that was all she knew about her father’s career. I’d heard about Percy’s interest in art—he’d apparently commissioned a statue in a nearby garden for Penelope—but I never suspected that it was his job. Then again, as I looked around the office, it made more sense. Priceless paintings were displayed on one wall of the office, as if it were a gallery. A strange-looking storage unit decorated the other wall. When I examined it closer, I saw that it featured a temperature and humidity gauge that had long stopped functioning. I pried open the door to find at least fifty paintings stacked on their own individual shelves.

  “You’d think these would have been sold after Percy died,” I murmured. “Then again, if your dad’s still alive…”

  Alyssa sniffled, and I realized she hadn’t fully come into the room. She stood in the doorway, scuffing her toes against the old carpet.

  “Are you coming in?” I asked her.

  “Daddy didn’t like me in his study,” she said. “He said it was only for grown-ups.”

  “Let me guess,” I said, observing the guilt in her eyes. “You snuck in here a few times to see what all the grown-ups were talking about.”

  “And to look at the garden,” she insisted. “Daddy has the best view.”

  I wandered over to the huge window and looked down at the garden. It was overgrown, and at the present time, completely flooded from the storm last night. I imagined what it used to be like when the Abrams had gardeners to tend to it throughout the seasons and could understand why Alyssa liked it so much.

  “He sure does,” I said. “Where would the phone book be?”

  She pointed to a row of low cabinets lined up beneath the window. I opened the one closest to me and found a pile of paperwork that had never been filed. The next cabinet was stacked full of old books that looked like priceless first editions. Finally, I located the phone book. The only problem was that there were about thirty of them.

  “Are you kidding me?” I muttered to myself as I yanked out the ones piled on top. They looked like they were about to fall apart. “How am I supposed to look through all of these?” I realized I was half-asking Alyssa, but when I turned around, she had disappeared, leaving me on my own to figure out the phone book clue.

  With a sigh, I settled into Percy’s leather throne and pulled the first phone book into my lap. I did a cursory search of the businesses listed under the letter A but didn’t find anything. The second phone book did not yield any clues, neither did the third or the fourth. As frustration built up in my chest like a volcano ready to erupt, I grabbed the fifth phone book with too much ferocity, lost my grip, and accidentally flung it halfway across the room. It landed face down, the spine split down the middle, on the musty carpet. I had half a mind to leave it there and storm out of the room until I saw a small piece of paper sticking out from under the yellow pages.

  It was a business card for a company called Anderson & Associates. Other than the title of the company and a phone number, there was no information to indicate what kind of work the company did. However, it did have my grandfather’s last name on it, so I pocketed the card anyway and hoped it was what I was supposed to find in the phone book. I put everything back where I found it, lest Penelope resented me snooping in her killer husband’s office.

  It was still raining and dreary by the time I had to pick up Sammy from school, so I stopped by Theo’s apartment and got a spare outfit for him just in case. It came in handy: when Sammy emerged from his classroom, his entire front was splattered with mud. As I helped him into the car, the dirt fell off in chunks.

  “What happened, buddy?” I asked him. “Did you slip and fall at recess?”

  “No.” Sammy crossed his arms and hung his head. There were no dinosaur figurines to play with today. “Bradley pushed me over.”

  I froze with the key halfway to the ignition. “You were bullied again?”

  “Yeah.” He rested his forehead against the window. “I’m tired.”

  “This is ridiculous.” I got out of the car and opened Sammy’s door. “Come on. We’re going to the front office.”

  He stared up at me. “Why?”

  “Because clearly no one’s doing anything about this situation,” I said. “Your mom isn’t here to say anything, so I have to do it.”

  I reached to undo Sammy’s buckle, but he took my hand to stop me. “No! If the other kids know I ratted them out, they’ll never leave me alone.”

  His little cheeks puffed out. He was serious.

  “You really don’t want me to go in there?” I asked him.

  He thought about it for a second before he nodded.

  “Fine,” I said. “But if it happens again, you have my permission to stand up for yourself. You have to defend yourself, buddy. If they’re not getting caught, you won’t either.”

  It wasn’t the best lesson to teach a first grader, but I wasn’t sure what else to say to Sammy. He was such a timid kid, which was probably why the other kids kept using him as their punching bag. Maybe it was best if Theo did take Sammy to therapy. It was always the quiet ones that ended up shooting their classmates when they couldn’t take it anymore, and I didn’t want Sammy to be the next national news story. The thought made me cringe.

  As always, we ended up at the Black Cat. Normally, Mason left the televisions in the corners of the café off. He said they disrupted the aesthetic of interior design and distracted the people who came in here to work or study. Today, each television was tuned into a local news channel, and many patrons watched with narrowed eyes or opened mouths.

  “One regular coffee, a hot chocolate, and two grilled cheeses with tomato soup dippers,” I ordered, counting cash out over the counter. Mason, like everyone else, had his eyes glued to the TV. “Actually, make that three grilled cheeses. I’m starving. Mason— hellooooo?”

  He finally tore his eyes from the new story. “Yes, I’m sorry. That was a coffee, a hot chocolate, two grilled cheeses—”

  “Three.” I gestured to the woman chatting away on the TV. It was on mute, and the captions were too delayed for me to bother reading. “What’s going on? Ever
yone in here looks like a zombie.”

  “Didn’t you hear?” Mason whispered conspiratorially. He glanced over the counter at Sammy then lowered his voice. “Police are saying there’s a dangerous stalker in the area.”

  I handed over my cash. “Oh, please. That’s the big news?”

  “This isn’t something to be so blasé about, Peyton,” Mason scolded me firmly. “You should be worried. Stay on your toes. Apparently, this guy isn’t just a Facebook stalker. He’s got priors, and he likes abducting women and children.”

  “Hey,” I said sharply, jerking my chin toward Sammy. “I have a kid with me, remember? He’s got enough nightmare fuel, if you don’t mind.”

  Mason organized the cash in the old register and counted out my change. “Sammy’s a big boy. Besides, he should know it’s not safe to go running around without his mom like he’s made a habit of in the past.”

  Below Mason’s eyeline, Sammy rolled his eyes. I grinned. I felt like he had learned that from me. “Can I just have my change?”

  Mason let the coins clink into my palm and gave me a wink. “You be careful too, Peyton. I’m serious. You’re out in the woods all alone, and the Abram Mansion used to be the perfect place for squatters to crash before you and Ben moved in. I wouldn’t be surprised if the stalker paid you a visit.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out,” I assured him. As I led Sammy to a table, a sense of unease stole over me as an effect of Mason’s warning, and like the other people in the café, I turned my gaze up toward the TV for details on the stalker. The man’s name was Brandon Lee, and like Mason had said, he’d gone to prison for stalking and injuring women. How he escaped was apparently a mystery, and according to the news program, he had been spotted near Falconwood. I called Ben to let him know, but it went straight to voicemail. He was probably still trying to figure out how to fix Basil’s greenhouse problem. Worry began to build in the back of my head. I had too many things on my plate, and it was starting to feel like I was just waiting for something to explode.

  As Mason set our grilled cheeses in front of us, my phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes, hi. I’m looking for Peyton Fletcher,” a soothing, unfamiliar voice said.

  “This is she.”

  “This is Jennifer with the Falconwood emergency clinic,” the voice went on. “We have you listed as Theo Baker’s emergency contact. Is that correct?”

  My stomach dropped. “Yes. What’s wrong with Theo?”

  “Nothing major,” Jennifer replied. “She had a panic attack at work and was admitted to us about half an hour ago. We’ve given her some medication to help calm her down. She’ll be ready to go home soon, but our policy requires someone to pick her up.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said and hung up. “Sammy, wrap up your grilled cheese. We’ve gotta get out of here.”

  Ten minutes later, Sammy and I paced the waiting room of the emergency clinic together. The last time I’d been here was the first time I’d met Sammy, after he’d broken into the mansion through an old doggy door to talk to Alyssa. It was just a few months ago, but I felt like I’d known both Sammy and Theo for the majority of my life.

  “Is Mama okay?” Sammy asked me for the tenth time since we left the Black Cat.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” I told him. “She’s not hurt. She’s just scared.”

  “But why would she go to the hospital for being scared?”

  I sat down in one of the plastic waiting chairs and pulled Sammy into my lap. “Sometimes, it’s possible to get so scared that you can’t breathe. You know when you’re running around the playground and you can’t catch your breath? It feels like that, but worse.”

  “Mama can’t breathe?”

  “She can now,” I assured him. “The doctor helped her.”

  Jennifer, who was sitting behind the desk, cleared her throat. “Excuse me? Theo’s on her way out.”

  Sammy and I leapt to our feet as a nurse pushed Theo through the double doors in a wheelchair. Other than the heavy droop of her eyelids, Theo looked okay. As soon as she cleared the doors, she put her foot down to stop the nurse and stood up.

  “Apparently, the wheelchair is policy too,” Theo grumbled. “I can walk just fine.”

  Sammy hid behind me, peeking out around my waist. “Mama?”

  At the sight of Sammy, Theo’s expression went from annoyed to relieved. She squatted down and reached out for her son. “Hey, dude! I’m so glad to see you. How was school?”

  He ran into her arms and squeezed her around her neck. “I didn’t like it. Are you okay? Peyton said you got so scared you couldn’t breathe. What happened?”

  Theo lifted Sammy into the air with a groan. “I’ll tell you when you’re older. Let’s get out of here. Is that grilled cheese? It’s all smushed!”

  Theo didn’t want to go straight home, so I drove her and Sammy to the nearby park. As Sammy swung around like a monkey, Theo and I sat on the nearby bench. I’d offered her one of my sandwiches and we were sharing the coffee. I didn’t ask her about the panic attack. I figured she would tell me about it when she was ready. Sure enough, she opened up on her own.

  “I don’t know what happened,” she said as she ate the crust of the sandwich first. “Actually, I do. The office has a TV in the waiting room, and I caught part of the news this morning. Did you hear about that stalker?”

  “Yup. Mason wouldn’t shut up about it.”

  “Neither could anyone at work,” Theo said. “Something about it put me off. Maybe it’s because we just finished dealing with Dylan, and he was practically a stalker himself. Anyway, I kept thinking about what would happen if this stalker decided to focus on me. That’s just my luck, you know? Before I knew it, I was curled up in a ball behind the front desk and hyperventilating.” She blushed and shook her head, like she was embarrassed of her reaction. “I couldn’t make it stop, and it was so irrational. I mean, why would the stalker come after me of all people?”

  “Well, you are adorable,” I pointed out. “Plus you’re single. No man of the house for him to deal with—I’m not helping, am I?”

  “No, not really.”

  I moved our trash so I could scoot closer to Theo. “Look, if we could deal with Dylan, we can deal with some random guy who may or may not come through our neighborhood. Considering he’s on the run, I doubt he’ll be making a pit stop in Falconwood to dilly dally.”

  Theo leaned her head against my shoulder. “Thanks for picking me up today. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  “You don’t have to wonder.”

  “Yeah, except you’re leaving soon,” Theo said. “Did you think I’d forget? How long do you have left here? Two months?”

  “A little less,” I answered sheepishly. “But I don’t have plans to leave for now, okay? Don’t freak out just yet. We’ll figure something out.”

  She pinched me playfully. “You better.”

  24

  When I returned to the mansion later that evening, Basil and Della’s tiny electric car was parked in the driveway out front. The neon green vehicle looked like a little bug to me, something you wiped off your windshield instead of drove around the streets, but it fit the Gordons’ hippie vibes and eco-friendly lifestyle with weird specificity. I glanced into the window as I passed by and saw Basil’s printed notes for the book he was working on with Ben. The stack was about an inch high. Since Ben and Basil had been ensconced in the greenhouse for the time they'd been working together, I didn’t know how far along they’d gotten with the book. Ben wasn’t particularly into plants, so the current success of their partnership was surprising.

  “Hello?” I called through the foyer as I hung up my denim jacket on the coat rack. “Anyone home?”

  “In the kitchen!” Ben called.

  I followed his voice down the steps at the back of the house and into the basement. The mansion was so old that the underground level had originally been built as the servants’ quarters. The kitchen
staff wasn’t meant to be seen unless they were serving food to the blue bloods upstairs. At first, it was weird to cook and eat in the kitchen, but now the room felt weirdly cozy.

  Basil and Della sat across from each other at the table while Ben manned several pots and pans on the stove. He had a dish towel thrown casually over his shoulder, and his curls—which were in need of a trim—were pushed back and restrained with a pink workout headband he had borrowed from my bathroom. The scent of fresh herbs filled the air; Della and Basil must have saved some from the flooded greenhouse.

  “Hey, babe,” Ben said, glancing over his shoulder. The “babe” habit was hard to break for him. Despite our impending divorce—which should be happening in less than two months—he still referred to me with the terms of endearment we’d been using since our high school sweetheart days. Sometimes, it annoyed me. Other times, it didn’t feel like such a bad thing, like maybe we could actually be friends after all this was over. “I invited Basil and Della for dinner. Is that okay?”

  “Of course.” I patted Basil’s drooping shoulders. “How’s everything looking at the airstream?”

  “Terrible,” Basil said.

  “He’s exaggerating,” Della added. “But it’s not great. The airstream is fine, but the rain flooded everything. The greenhouse is completely ruined.”

  I checked on Ben’s expression, confirming the grim set of his lips. “What does that mean for you guys? Didn’t you rely on the sales from the greenhouse to pay your bills?”

  “No, no, no,” Della said. “We have enough money in savings to live comfortably without ever working or selling anything ever again.”

  Basil coughed. It would have been an innocent enough bodily function had it not been accompanied by an under-the-table nudge to Della’s knee. For whatever reason, Basil did not want Della to share the details of their finances with us. I partially understood. Though Della and I had grown close very quickly, we didn’t know each other that well. Basil’s discretion was a matter of safety. On the other hand, Ben and I weren’t exactly the type of people to take advantage of an older couple like the Gordons. Then again, Basil was already overpaying Ben for the work he was doing on the greenhouse book. Maybe I was milking the Gordons for their money more than I thought, but I also had to know how our income was going to be affected by the greenhouse flooding.