Della pursed her lips. “Panic attack?”
“It must be going around,” I said. “Theo had one yesterday, and Alyssa decided to give me a heart attack this morning.”
Della’s shoulders tensed up like they always did when I mentioned the undead inside the Abram Mansion. “What do you mean?”
“Basil was there when it happened,” I told her, wiping mustard from my chin. “She knocked something over then started screaming her head off. I got Basil out of the house before he saw anything, but I couldn’t get Alyssa to calm down.”
“So what happened?”
“I got the call about Sammy,” I said. “I couldn’t do anything. She wouldn’t let me help her, so I left.”
Della bowed over her half of the sandwich, almost as if in prayer. “It’s getting worse. Something’s happening.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The more time I spent at the mansion, the more frequently Alyssa showed up in person.” She wrapped the rest of her sandwich up and placed it back in the bag. She’d hardly taken two bites. “It was like she fed off of my living energy, growing stronger the longer she had access to me.”
“I feel fine,” I assured her. “She’s not draining me or whatever—”
“She’s affecting someone,” Della insisted. “Her outburst today is enough for me to know that. These connections are unhealthy for both participants. Take it from someone who knows.”
“What am I supposed to do about it?”
Della turned her face to the wind. “Watch. Wait. Be ready for anything.”
25
There was a man standing outside my bedroom window.
It happened quickly. I opened my eyes and saw his tall silhouette, the shadow of a beard, the gleam in his eye. Lightning flashed, illuminating his face for half a second. We looked at each other. He smiled…or was it more of a grimace on his face? Was he real? In the next moment, after darkness had fallen again, he was gone
I hurled myself out of bed, pulled on my robe, and ran from window to window in the hallways for a glimpse of him. For no reason at all, I was compelled to find him again, to see him, to know who he was. When I exhausted my search on the first floor, I went up to the mezzanine and ran to the largest window, the one that looked out on the front yard and the vast woods around the mansion. I scanned the grounds for some hint of the man, staring for hours until the moon moved sleepily toward the horizon to make room for the sun. Finally, I saw movement, but it was only Basil Gordon.
He emerged from the airstream wearing thick gloves and carrying a massive shovel. About fifty feet from their portable home, near the edge of the woods, Basil pierced the wet grass with the shovel and used his boot to shove it deeper into the land. Yesterday, Ben had given him the go ahead to start working on his new greenhouse, the one I’d told the Gordons they could build on our land. I didn’t realize he’d be building it right in front of the mansion.
I watched Basil work. His shoulders rolled and lifted as he lithely maneuvered the shovel. He was a diligent worker, and the digging came easy to him, as if he’d done this for a hundred greenhouses before. Within several minutes, he’d turned over a large patch of earth, readying it for whatever he wanted to plant there, but he kept going all the way to the tree line.
“Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?” Ben asked me.
The four of us sat at the kitchen table to have breakfast together. Thankfully, Basil had showered in the tiny airstream bathroom before joining the rest of us inside the house. When he was through with his project outside, he was covered in mud. Even now, a slight earthy smell radiated off of him as he tried our regular coffee pot brew. He wrinkled his nose and passed his cup to Della. Apparently, it was pour over or nothing for Basil. Della took the cup without argument and drank deeply from it.
“I wasn’t dreaming,” I said. “It felt too real. It had to be this stalker guy, right? But how did he end up at my window? This place is enormous. I don’t get how he found my bedroom out of all the windows on the first floor.”
“You should put some curtains up,” Della said. “I can help you pick some out at the store if you like. Ooh, or better yet, we could make our own.”
“I like to look at the sky when I sleep.”
“Is no one going to take Peyton’s claim seriously?” Basil’s voice was oddly rough, as though the moist air had clogged his nasal passages. “A strange man showed up at her window. We have to do something about this. We should inform the police at least.”
Ben hopped up from his seat to flip the pancakes on the stove. “I already have. Officer Spaughton is on her way up to take a look around the property.”
“Officer Spaughton,” Basil murmured. “Nice girl, is she?”
“I don’t think her niceness makes her any less capable as a police officer,” Ben said. His grip tightened on the spatula, and I noticed his weirdly defensive tone even if no one else did. “She’s come up to the mansion for a few similar issues we’ve had in the past.”
“And what, may I ask, did she do about these issues?”
“She patrolled the property,” Ben answered. “All night. When we thought we had an intruder in the house, she refused to leave. She was the one who helped Peyton and Theo after what happened in the foyer too.”
“All right,” Basil said. “I get it. She’s competent.”
Della poured hot water into her coffee mug before returning it to Basil. “Please forgive my husband. He likes to make everyone think he’s a happy-go-lucky guy, but I’ve never met anyone more paranoid about personal safety.”
“I am simply concerned,” Basil said. “These days, all this technology makes it so easy for someone to get ahold of your information. Automatic locks on your front door, keyless entry for your cars, sheesh! With the right tools, anyone could break into your home and take over your life. You can’t trust anyone until you know them as well as you know yourself.”
Ben cursed as he flipped a burnt pancake. “How can you tell if you know anyone that well?”
Basil turned to Ben. “Because a true friend will trust you with all of their secrets.”
The two men locked eyes, as if each of them were telepathically arguing their position in a silent debate. Ben looked away first, if only to flip another ruined pancake.
“You know, some of that newfangled technology could be incorporated into your greenhouse plans,” Ben said. “You could use it to monitor the health of your plants and keep organized records on your tablet. In the long run, it would be the ultimate way to collect data.”
Basil sipped his watered-down coffee in pensive silence. Ben turned toward the wall to display his triumphant grin, but I saw it anyway. Della cleared her throat, ready for a new conversation that didn’t involve pitting our generations against each other.
“So, Peyton,” she said. “What’s on your agenda for today?”
“The usual,” I replied. “I’ll probably use the morning to work on editing some stuff for my photography portfolio. Then I have to go pick up Sammy from school. Hopefully he makes it through the day this time.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ben said, setting the stack of blackened pancakes in the middle of the table. “What did Theo say about all of that?”
After my lunch with Della in the park, I’d returned Sammy to his apartment, tucked him into bed, and let him sleep for the rest of the day. When Theo got home, I filled her in on what had happened at school. Initially, she was upset I hadn’t notified her at work right away, but I convinced her that Sammy was okay, and it was better that she wasn’t distracted while at the office. I didn’t mention that Sammy happened to be freaking out in tandem with the ghost of a dead little girl who lived at my house. That was science or magic I couldn’t explain.
“She’s worried,” I answered. “I am too, to be honest. Sammy’s always been kind of a weird kid, but he’s never had issues like this before. Theo says this is the first time he’s had an episode like this.”
“But it’s not,�
�� Ben said.
“It’s not?”
“No. Remember that day you brought him here?” Since no one reached for the burnt pancakes, Ben loaded them on his own plate and covered them with enough maple syrup to mask the charred taste. “It was the same day Della—”
He cut himself off when Basil looked sharply at him. Della gazed absentmindedly over Basil’s shoulder, almost as if she hadn’t heard Ben’s sentence. Perhaps it was better for Ben not to mention the strange incident that had happened that day, when we found Della in the empty pool in the courtyard, screaming for no reason like Alyssa had done yesterday.
“Anyway,” Ben hastened on, “Sammy started crying out of nowhere. He totally freaked out. No reason that I can remember. It’s probably worse now because he watched his dad shoot himself. That’s traumatic for any kid.”
“Herbal supplements,” Basil chimed in. “That’s what the kid needs. A good dose of calming herbs. Chamomile, lavender, lemongrass. I could make him a tea.”
“I’m not sure a tea is going to kick the PTSD out of his system,” Ben commented.
“Helping Sammy is up to Theo,” I reminded everyone. “We shouldn’t be talking about their business like this. You know how this town is. If anyone else catches wind of what’s happening with Sammy, it’ll be printed on the front page of the local newspaper this Sunday. Can we respect their privacy please?”
Della rested her hand on top of mine and rubbed my arm until I’d calmed down a bit. “I agree with Peyton. We shouldn’t be airing the Bakers’ issues all over like it’s ours to talk about. I only hope Theo knows what’s best for Sammy.”
“She’s his mother,” Ben said with a shrug. “Why wouldn’t she?”
“Not everyone’s mother know what’s best for her kid,” Della said.
I clinked my coffee mug against Della’s. “I’ll drink to that.”
When it came to disappearing, my grandfather was a professional. I spent hours combing the internet for information on Andrew Anderson, but it was almost as if the man had never existed. I couldn’t even find the record for his birth until I bit the bullet and called my mother. It turned out she had been born in the same hospital as my grandfather, but when I reached out to the hospital, they claimed not to keep records from so many years ago. They did, however, recommend a paid service to track down Andrew’s birth certificate, so I shelled out $19.95 and was rewarded with the date and time of my grandfather’s birth. It didn’t turn out to be much good though. I knew Andrew existed. What I didn’t know was what had happened to him in those years after he left my grandmother and Mom to fend for themselves. Despite his friendship with Percy Abrams, no one in town was as familiar with Andrew as they were with Percy. I asked practically every local I met in the streets whether they recalled Percy’s supposed best friend, but every interaction felt similar.
“Andrew Anderson? Sure, he was that shy fellow that followed Percy around like a puppy. Odd-looking man. Had glasses like owl eyes, and he never went anywhere without his cane.”
As far as my mother knew, Andrew had never used a cane in his life, which made me doubt the credibility of the townspeople’s recollections. Of course, the people who remembered Andrew were all nearing the age of seventy. I couldn’t count on their memories to be super sharp anyway.
The most beguiling thing of all was that there was no record of Andrew’s death. I even called David, the man who was mediating mine and Ben’s divorce, since he had been the one to inform us of our obligation to the Abram Mansion. According to David, he only had access to the information regarding Andrew’s will. He had never seen Andrew’s death certificate, though he did offer me the number of the lawyer that had contacted him about Andrew’s will in the first place. When I called the lawyer’s number, it was no longer in service. Every road was a dead end.
Days later, the rain still hadn’t let up, but the musty weather didn’t stop Basil and Ben from throwing themselves into the construction of the new greenhouse. They had brought in bags upon bags of fresh soil to build upon, but the monsoons washed it away in one night. The yard looked less like fertile land and more like the perfect place to host a mud-wrestling event. Basil had to move the airstream farther away from the greenhouse site due to how much the ground was moving. He was afraid the watery earth would wash the airstream into the trees. To avoid the same mistake, they built the foundation of the greenhouse first then filled it with additional soil. I hated to think how much money they had spent on dirt.
Wearing my bright yellow rain slicker, I watched Ben and Basil work from the balcony. It was good to see Ben working in the mud, not because of the filth, but because just a few months ago, it was a challenge for him to stand up. His fall from the balcony put new life in him. Before, he never would have considered taking a job that involved building greenhouses. He was a writer, not a construction worker, but spending so much time with Basil had somehow changed that. I liked the new aspects of Ben’s personality. It was as if he were taking on some of Basil’s hippie meditation vibes. I leaned against the balcony railing, enjoying the soft tickle of rain against my face. Unfortunately, the peaceful feeling didn’t last long.
The window in the door leading to the balcony shattered. I ducked at the sound, pulling the hood of my rain jacket across my face as broken glass flew through the air. Ben hollered up to the balcony from the ground:
“Peyton? Everything okay up there?”
I checked behind me. The wispy trails of a ghostly body scurried away from the window. One of the dead members of the Abram Mansion intentionally wanted to scare me, and I had a good bet on which one it was.
“I’m fine!” I called down to Ben. “A piece of hail hit the window up here at exactly the right angle. We’re going to have to replace it.”
Ben turned his face upward and squinted toward the sky. “It’s hailing?”
“Only a bit.”
He shrugged and started shoveling again. “I’ll tarp it later!”
“Don’t worry. I can do it.”
Under the pretense of fetching a tarp from the window, I receded from the balcony. Stepping carefully over the broken glass, I made my way inside. This was the main hallway that led to the balcony, the one Percy Abrams would have used to shepherd his guests to an exclusive outdoor party underneath the stars. The balcony was huge, and there were other ways to get to it, but this corridor was the most extravagant. It also had a few doors branching off from it, which made it easy to track where my temperamental ghost had gone. Penelope, unlike Alyssa, left wispy trails of what looked like smoke in her wake that I could only see from the corners of my eyes. I wondered why her essence was easier to spot than Alyssa’s. Did it have something to do with their age difference or was this a fact of the ghostly world I didn’t understand?
The trail led down a servants’ staircase and into a familiar room. It was once Penelope’s craft room, where she presumably sewed or painted or did whatever else she needed to do in order to escape Percy’s fists. At first glance, Penelope’s ghost was nowhere to be seen, so I pretended like I’d wandered into the room by accident. I let my fingers drift over one of Penelope’s unfinished projects, a lily-white lace dress draped over a mannequin in the corner of the room.
“Don’t touch that!”
The voice was low and sharp, emanating from the closet that housed all of Penelope’s former projects. I had never heard her speak before. Carefully, I lifted my hand from the lace, but I didn’t turn around, giving Penelope the illusion of privacy.
“What was it for?” I asked her.
“What do you think?” came the abrupt reply. “It’s my wedding dress.”
I studied the unfinished train. “But you were already married. Why would you be making another wedding dress? Unless… oh.”
Penelope huffed. “Yes, that’s right. You’ve been through all of my business. You know I had an affair with another man, but I refuse to let you judge me for it. If you knew what was actually happening under this roof, you would have
told me to run to Charles in a heartbeat—”
“I wish you had.”
Penelope halted her rant, and I finally turned around to face her. She was as beautiful in death as she had been in life, with long hair that flowed all the way to to her waist, an elegantly pointed face, and eyes that were both kind and stern at the same time. I held my breath as I examined her ghostly figure. Alyssa wore the method of her murder around her neck and covered it up with that atrocious pink scarf. How had Penelope been killed?
“What did you say?” she asked me.
“I wish you had gone to Charles,” I told her. “Then you and Alyssa would have been safe, and I wouldn’t have to be doing this with you right now.”
“You know what happened?”
“I got the gist. Don’t you know what happened?”
“I got the gist,” Penelope repeated back to me in a poor imitation of my voice. “What are you doing here anyway? I’ve been trying to get rid of you ever since you invaded my home.”
I crossed my arms and stood my ground. “I know. You’re annoying. By the way, it’s my house now. Percy left it to my grandfather, who left it to me when he died. Guess I’m your new landlord. It would be great if you could pass over and leave me alone.”
“If I knew how, I would!” Penelope snapped. She vanished from the closet and reappeared close enough to my face to make me stumble backward. “You think I want to be here? You think I want my child to be stuck in this hellhole for all eternity? We have been damned, and all I want is to be left in peace. Don’t you hear her?”
“Hear her what?”
Penelope cupped her hand to my ear, and though I couldn’t feel her skin, the cold chill of being so close to a ghost permeated my entire body. “She’s crying again.”
She went quiet and forced me to listen. Sure enough, from another room in the house came Alyssa’s wailing sobs. She sounded as if she was in deep, bone-burning pain. Penelope flinched as she listened to her daughter cry and withdrew from my side.
The Haunting of Abram Mansion Page 34