“What does he mean about the ‘occupants’ of this house?”
Ben’s face crinkled up the way it did when he was thinking too hard about something. It brought the slightest of smiles to my lips. I used to watch him make that face from across the room in geometry class many years ago. Something about that face made me realize it might finally be time to tell Ben the truth about the Abram Mansion. I could trust him.
“Ben, I think you should know,” I began, “there’s a reason my grandfather wanted us to come here, and it wasn’t so we could sell this old house. Percy Abram—” I stopped dead in the middle of my sentence when I caught sight of the date Andrew had written in the top right corner of the most recent letter. “Can you hand me that envelope?”
With a look of confusion, Ben fetched the envelope from my desk and gave it to me. I pulled Andrew’s death certificate out of it and compared it next to the letter.
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
“What is it?”
“Look at the dates,” I said, handing him the papers. “Andrew’s last letter is dated after his death.”
28
Theo, of course, was understanding about my inability to pick up Sammy from school that afternoon. The office allowed her to leave early like she used to in order to get Sammy herself. I made her call me when they were safely at home.
“That’s terrible,” Theo said over the phone after I’d recounted the afternoon’s events to her. “I can’t believe someone could be awful enough to hit an elderly woman over the head like that. Have you heard anything about Della’s condition?”
“Basil called us from the hospital,” I replied wearily. I was in bed again, drinking tomato soup from a cup. Ben had been checking on me all day. “Apparently, she was hit so hard she had a brain bleed. They had to do surgery to evacuate it. The doctor said it went okay, but she hasn’t woken up yet. I don’t think Basil’s going to leave the hospital until she does.”
“And what about you?” Theo asked. “How are you holding up?”
I suppressed a heavy sigh. “I’m fine, I guess. Exhausted. This is getting old. I want to move out of this place and go somewhere small. A one-bedroom apartment sounds like such a dream right now. At least I’d know whether the stalker was actually in my house or not.”
“Are the police still there?”
“For now,” I answered. “The department can only spare one officer at a time because they have everyone else searching Falconwood for this guy. Hillary’s pissed off.”
Theo scoffed into the phone. “I would be too. This creep has slipped through her fingers one too many times.”
“Well, she’s making it her personal crusade to catch him.” I set aside my empty soup cup and covered my head with the blankets. “Are you still going out of town this weekend?”
Theo hesitated, and I wondered if I wasn’t going to like the answer. “I tried to get out of it, but I can’t. I don’t have anyone else to watch Sammy…”
“Oh, I’m not backing out,” I assured her. “You know I don’t mind taking care of Sammy, but I am nervous about having him in the house.”
Static hit my ear, and I imagined Theo blowing air through her lips the way she did when she was trying to accommodate an unsolvable problem. “I’d tell you to stay at the apartment, but the landlord is having the roof fixed this weekend. It was perfect timing for Sammy to be out of there before all this stalker stuff started.”
“We have round-the-clock police watch here.” I peered out the window in time to catch one of Hillary’s coworkers shining his flashlight across the courtyard for his hourly search of the grounds. “I’m not anticipating any problems, but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any other solution.”
“I’m afraid not,” Theo said, her voice tight. “The only other person I trust to watch Sammy overnight is Della, and—well—”
“She’s unconscious in a hospital right now.”
“Exactly.”
“I won’t let Sammy out of my sight while he’s here,” I said. “I promise.”
“I’ll have him all packed up on Friday afternoon then.”
I didn’t see Theo before she left for her trip. It made my heart ache. I’d seen more of Sammy than my best friend ever since her job ladened her with more responsibility, and while I never minded Sammy’s company, it was nice to have someone my age to talk to and connect with every once in a while. As promised, I picked Sammy up from school on Friday, where he emerged from the art classroom with his backpack and a small duffel bag that managed to swamp his tiny figure. I got out of the car to help him with it so he didn’t drag it along behind him on the ground. In his other hand, he clutched a new drawing.
“Whatcha got there?” I asked as I tossed his duffel into the trunk.
He clambered into his booster seat and did up his seatbelt himself. “My entry for the art fair.”
I closed the trunk and went around to the driver’s seat. “Isn’t the art fair here at the school? Why are you bringing it home with you?”
“I stole it,” Sammy said. “I don’t want anyone to see it.”
I peeked at his forlorn face in the rearview mirror as I pulled out of the pickup loop. “Why don’t you want anyone to see it?”
“Because they don’t understand.”
“Am I allowed to see it?”
Sammy pinched his lips together. “Maybe.”
When we arrived at the house, Basil was outside working on the greenhouse. It was the first time I’d seen him all week since Della had been admitted to the hospital.
“Can you grab your bag, Sammy?” I said. “Wait here for a moment.”
“Why can’t I go inside?”
“Because I’m not taking my eye off you this weekend.” I got out of the car and jogged over to Basil. A light, misty rain coated my skin. “Basil! How’s Della?”
He kept working, not looking up from a blueprint of a greenhouse frame. He didn’t have any of the pieces yet. “Unconscious. Doctor said she should’ve woken up by now. If she doesn’t soon, she could have brain damage or amnesia.”
An invisible fist clenched around my heart and squeezed, but I knew Basil must be feeling a hundred times worse than me. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” he replied, pushing his hands beneath the soft ground. “I can’t think about it. Please.”
He was so hunched over the earth, he looked like he might become one with it. I left him to his work and returned to Sammy, who was struggling to pull his duffel bag out of the trunk.
“What’s wrong with Basil?” he asked.
“He’s sad about Della,” I said. “She’s hurt.”
“What happened to her?”
The memory I’d made up in my head flashed before my eyes. The man from the window—tall, shaggy, and violent—coming into my kitchen, Della at the table drinking tea. Did she spin around at the sound of his footsteps? Did she try to defend herself as he grabbed the rolling pin from the drawer and swung it at her head? I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and watched the lights dance behind my eyelids, focusing on the imaginary fireworks rather than the intrusive thoughts in my brain.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told Sammy, guiding him inside. “Let’s get you settled. I put a kid-sized bed in my room so you don’t have to sleep alone tonight. Is that okay?”
“Sure.”
I showed Sammy the room and put his stuff in the corner by his bed. He placed his drawing on top of the new comforter and smoothed the paper from corner to corner. I caught a glance of it over his shoulder and felt my courage disappear. He had drawn a self-portrait, but he had added Alyssa’s neck injury to it, resulting in a garish depiction of his own death. I picked up the drawing.
“Hey!” He made a jump for it as I held it out of reach. “That’s mine!”
“We should talk about this,” I told him. “I don’t want you to be thinking about stuff like this. You’re not going to end up like Alyssa.”
Sammy sank onto the bed and tucked his k
nees into his chest. “I can feel her inside me.”
“Now? At the mansion?”
“All the time,” he whispered, staring blankly at the wallpaper. “Like she’s a part of me.”
I knelt next to the bed and tugged on Sammy’s knees until he released them willingly. I rested my chin on his lap, and he put his tiny fingers in my hair. “What happened to Alyssa will not happen to you. I won’t let it.”
“But it already happened to her,” Sammy said. “That’s the problem.”
“I know, buddy. I’m trying to fix it.”
“Maybe it’s too late to fix it.”
He gently wormed away from me and left the room, but with my promise to Theo about not letting Sammy roam around, I had no choice but to follow him. He went right to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and found an apple on the bottom shelf. Then he poured himself a glass of water, climbed up into a chair at the table, and proceeded to enjoy his apple while quietly admiring the cleaned-up courtyard out back. I made myself a cup of tea and sat across from him with the shoebox of letters from my grandfather, slowly working my way through them as the afternoon passed.
In the early evening, I got a call from Ben. He’d gone to Hartford earlier that day to have lunch with a potential employer. It was the first job lead he’d gotten in a while, and I could tell he was excited about it. The lunch had gone well, and the man he’d met with wasn’t ready to let Ben go home yet. They had dinner and drinks planned as well.
“I’ll probably be home late,” he said. “Is that okay? I feel bad leaving you alone with Sammy. If you need help, I can ask Mike for a raincheck.”
“Don’t do that,” I told him, though my heart sank at the thought of not having Ben in the house as darkness fell. “You might not get a chance like this again. Have your dinner. Stay for drinks. We’ll be fine.”
“The cops are still there anyway,” Ben said. His confident tone sounded more like he wanted to assure himself than me and Sammy. “You won’t have any trouble.”
I didn’t want to tell him that the last officer to check the mansion’s property for intruders had informed me the department was understaffed that day and he had to go back to the precinct to address more pressing matters. He promised Hillary would drop by later when she had time, but I had yet to see her cruiser pull into the driveway.
“We’ll be fine,” I said.
“Great! I gotta go. Mike wants to show me this new project he’s working on before we get to our dinner reservations. Bye!”
He hung up before I had a chance to reply with a farewell of my own. I was sad and happy at the same time. Though working on Basil’s greenhouse book was a decent source of income, it wasn’t what Ben was truly interested in. Ben also didn’t share the details of the new job with me at all. Usually, he recounted every single thing to me a hundred times until I was sick of hearing about it. This job represented the first step of his actual separation from me. In less than a month, Ben and I would be officially divorced, and he wouldn’t be under any obligation to tell me anything. It was what I wanted, and yet it still felt like I was losing something.
“What’s that?”
I jumped out of my chair as Basil’s voice resonated over my shoulder. He was covered head to toe in dirt, as if he’d tried to bury himself under the greenhouse. He gestured to my shoe box.
“They’re letters from my grandfather,” I said, holding an envelope up for him to see. “My mother kept them from me until now.”
“Oh.”
He ambled to the sink to wash his hands and arms. Sammy watched Basil as he scrubbed away the dirt. Each of them reflected the mood of the other. Both were forlorn and at a loss for what to do with themselves. Did that make me tonight’s sole caretaker of the Abram Mansion’s broken occupants?
“Basil?” I said. “A few days ago, Della borrowed an old magazine clipping of mine. Do you happen to know what she did with it?”
Basil tapped his hands against the sink to shake off the excess water. “I don’t believe I’ve seen it, but I’ll have a look around. Are either of you hungry? I have some leftovers from yesterday that keep rather well.”
“I can take care of dinner,” I said, blocking Basil’s way to the fridge. “Why don’t you sit? You’ve been working all day. I hope you wore sunscreen.”
Basil gratefully drew out the chair next to Sammy’s, who unabashedly examined the older man. “How are you, son? Hanging in there?”
“You look different,” Sammy said instead of answering the question.
Basil shifted in his seat. “I haven’t changed.”
“Yes, you have.” Sammy leaned forward and pointed at the lines around Basil’s mouth. “These didn’t used to be here.”
“Sammy,” I said. “That’s not nice.”
“It’s not mean either.”
Basil chuckled, but it was more for Sammy’s sake than anyone else’s. “You’re sharp, aren’t you, Sammy? Is that why you have so much trouble at school?”
Sammy dropped his head onto his chest. I paused in setting the table to tap his chin, encouraging him to look up again. We exchanged a small smile.
“Sammy’s different than the other kids.” I took Basil’s leftovers—an exquisite kale and mushroom pasta—from the fridge and spooned it into a microwave-safe bowl. “And the other kids don’t understand him.”
Basil propped his elbow on the table as he turned to Sammy. “You listen here. There’s nothing wrong with being different, do you hear me? Being different—being smarter—means you’re better than the rest of those kids.”
“I’m not sure that’s the kind of lesson we want to teach him,” I said, patting Basil’s shoulder. “But I’m sure he appreciates the sentiment.”
Basil took Sammy’s shoulder, almost as if he hadn’t heard me. “Focus on you, boy. Don’t pay attention to anyone else. You want to be successful? Worry about yourself. Put yourself first. That’s important.”
Sammy stared back at Basil. A split-second later, his eyes filled with tears. His bottom lip trembled. The first tear dropped, followed shortly by a waterfall. His lips parted, and he let out an anguished howl.
Basil yanked his hand away from Sammy’s shoulder. “I—I didn’t mean to upset him. Peyton, I swear.”
I turned Sammy’s chair away from Basil and took his plump cheeks between my hands. “Sammy. Sammy! Look at me, buddy. Focus on me.”
His chest heaved spasmodically as he tried to catch his breath, but he looked me in the eyes as asked, even grasping my forearms in his tiny hands to steady himself.
“Breathe,” I said, remembering how Ben had instructed me in my moment of panic. I took Sammy into my arms and hugged him closely. “Just relax. Everything’s okay.”
It took Sammy several long minutes to calm down, but his breathing eventually slowed. Basil had left the kitchen without eating, and if his bowed head was any indication, he couldn’t take the emotional outburst he’d unintentionally inflicted on Sammy. Once Basil was gone, Sammy lifted his face from my tearstained shirt.
“You okay?”
He sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “I think so.”
“What was that all about?”
“I don’t know.”
To my surprise, Sammy fell asleep in a matter of minutes that night. He snoozed soundly on the opposite side of my bedroom, his tuft of hair the only part of him that was visible above the blanket. I’d plugged in a nightlight by his bed so I could keep an eye on him, but as the hours passed and the moon rose in the sky, my eyelids grew heavy. I propped my head on multiple pillows, hoping to stay away a little longer, but it didn’t do the trick. I dozed off.
A light knocking woke me from my slumber. I checked on Sammy first, but he hadn’t moved. Paranoid, I stepped out of bed and stood over him to make sure his chest was rising and falling with his breath. The gentle knock sounded again. I followed it out into the hallway. The cord dangled from a table lamp, swaying against the wall. The lamp was unplugged.
&
nbsp; “Alyssa?” I whispered warily. These days, I didn’t know if it was the ghosts or the stalker making noise in my house. “Is that you?”
“Afraid not,” came the answer.
I whirled around to see Penelope leaning against the door to my room.
“Come with me,” she said.
I followed her up the corridor and into the east wing of the house. I had never been on the first floor of the east wing because I had always gone upstairs to the mezzanine first. Not to mention, the door between the south and east wings was locked shut. Neither Ben nor I had ever found the key. Of course, Penelope made no issue of the door. With a simple wave of her ethereal hand, the door opened itself for her—or rather me—to pass through.
“What’s this about?” I asked her. “You never want to talk to me.”
“In here.”
She gestured me into the first room in the hallway. It was yet another sitting room. The mansion had dozens of them, each with different interior design patterns. This one was all palms and florals. The pink couch was accented by the green leafy curtains. Penelope went to the window to look out on the courtyard.
“You’re running out of time,” she said, gazing away from me. “A man has come to your house, a dangerous one.”
“Yeah, the local stalker,” I said. “The police are on it.”
“I’m talking about Percy Abram.”
I wrinkled my nose. “What?”
Penelope rolled her eyes. “Multiple people have made you aware that Percy is still alive, have they not?”
“Yes, but—”
“He’s back,” Penelope said. “He’s been in this house.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”
She stood quickly, and a vase on a nearby table toppled over as if a swift breeze had catapulted through the room. “Because I didn’t recognize him!”
The vase rolled off the table and shattered on the floor. I flinched as the ceramic showered my bare feet. Penelope rolled her shoulders back, reining in her frustration.
“It’s difficult to explain,” she went on. “When you exist like this” —she presented her own body— “your perspective on the mortal world is skewed. It’s why we appear and disappear at random. It’s impossible for us to exist in a place where we don’t belong, and yet we still do. Caught in between this world and the next one makes keeping your facts straight a bit difficult.”
The Haunting of Abram Mansion Page 38