Trifles and Folly

by Gail Z. Martin

  Kell gave him a good-natured punch in the arm. “You crossed that line years ago, bro.”

  A woman snickered behind me. “He’s got you dead to rights on that, Rennie,” she laughed. I turned to see a slim, brown-eyed woman with her dark hair caught up in a ponytail. She was wearing a t-shirt that read ‘I’m your Evil Neighbor’, advertising for the spook house.

  Rennie grinned and rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Briana,” he replied. She headed over to the lighting crew. “That’s Briana Foster, who heads up our special effects. This would be a pretty dull place without all the high tech stuff she and her crew make happen.”

  Rennie turned to me. “We make most of our own props, just like a theater company. Many of the people who work for me are theater majors—plus a bunch of computer geeks, electrical and robotic engineers, and some lighting and special effects folks who are probably going to leave me behind and go make it big in Hollywood.”

  I was taking in the half-finished tableaus in each of the downstairs rooms. “You like these?” Rennie said. “Let me give you the tour.” He pointed toward the kitchen. “On this side, you have a typical dinner scene—if your family were psychotic cannibals.” By daylight, the scene looked overly dramatic. A mannequin of a screaming man lay partially dismembered on the kitchen table. ‘Steam’ rose from stewpots on the kitchen stove with disquietingly realistic arms and legs partially protruding. On another table, a cook dressed like a mortician was ‘stuffing’ a corpse on an autopsy table. Except for all the blood and body parts, the kitchen looked like a set from a 1960s sit-com.

  “What do you think?” Rennie asked, clearly bursting with pride.

  “I’m not sure whether to be fascinated or sick to my stomach,” I replied honestly.

  Rennie clapped his hands. “Eureka! Just the reaction we’re working to get.” He led us across the hall. “And here’s the dining room.”

  A dozen ghouls and unbalanced-looking figures sat around a table heaped with platters that held arms, legs, fingers, and hands in various sauces or as ingredients in familiar holiday dishes. Some of the fingers were wiggling, and the figures were realistic enough that in dim light, they would have looked scarily real. I noticed there were two empty seats at the table. “Are those for the actors?”

  Rennie nodded. “We mix our people in with the figures and change it up every night, so even if you come back two or three times, it’s never the same.” We walked back into the hallway, and I glanced to the side and saw extra alcoves had been added, like small closets.

  “And those?”

  Rennie grinned. “We call them ‘scare pockets’. Our people can jump out and seem to appear from nowhere.”

  We passed rooms with names like the ‘Den of Despair’ and the ‘Library of Lucifer’. I couldn’t resist looking into the ‘Bathroom of Beelzebub’. A bloody shower splashed gore on the white tile and tub, and the ‘body’ of a man lay on the floor. Blood bubbled up from a toilet and a message was written in blood on the mirror over the sink. A crazy looking old woman with a butcher knife wheeled to face me and raised the knife as if to strike. Even though I knew it was fake, I gasped and jumped back.

  “Pretty good, huh?” Rennie asked. “We call her ‘Bathroom Bertha’. Some of the nights, that old lady will be one of our actors. I guarantee that’ll get a lot of screams.”

  With the lights on, the rooms looked like something out of a gory wax museum or the backstage of a theater. But with the lights out, good special effects and creepy background music, Rennie’s guests were going to get their money’s worth of scares.

  We thanked Rennie for the tour and Kell offered to drive me back to the store. “Can I bribe you with dinner?”

  “I’m hungry, and the company is good, so I’m pretty bribe-able,” I joked. “Want to pick me up after we close the store?”

  “Sure thing.”

  It was a beautiful day to drive anywhere, for any reason, one of those gorgeous Fall afternoons that draws so many tourists to Charleston. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the leaves hadn’t really started to turn yet. Still, the temperatures had cooled off, and there was a hint of autumn in the air.

  Secretly, I was relieved that we hadn’t found anything significant at the house. Kell hadn’t seen me do much with tainted objects. Things could go really wrong really quickly, especially if there was dark magic involved, or very strong negative emotions. More than once, a tainted supernatural object had knocked me flat on my ass. Teag was used to that, and had a lot of experience helping me recover, or protecting me if things got bad.

  It was early October, so Halloween was still a couple of weeks away. That meant the haunted house people still had time to set up their attraction. My problem was that I’d seen too much of the real thing to consider any funhouse amusing.

  But I couldn’t tell Kell that. “How did Rennie get into the haunted house business?” I asked.

  “Rennie was the kind of kid who started a lawn service in seventh grade and ended up running an afterschool business that paid for his college education,” Kell replied. “He’s got a knack for making money. One fall, a friend of a friend asked him to help out on a haunted attraction.” He shrugged. “That was it. Rennie was hooked.”

  “Really? I would have thought a guy like him would have headed for Wall Street,” I replied.

  “Cassidy, Rennie says haunted attractions are a five-hundred million dollar a year business,” Kell said, awe coloring his tone. “Rennie started out doing funhouses for charities—like this one—and eventually figured out a winning pattern and started his own company.”

  Kell dropped me off and I headed in to Trifles and Folly. Teag was working with a customer, but he waved as I came in. Maggie, our part-time assistant, gave me a big grin.

  “Hi, Boss! How was the spook house?” Maggie is a retired teacher who decided that bus tours and yoga just weren’t keeping her busy enough, so she decided to get a job doing something completely different. Except of course, she’s a history fiend who manages to teach customers more than they ever expected about a piece while making it all sound like juicy gossip. Her fashion sense is more hippy than hipster, and Teag and I both utterly love her.

  “It’s pretty interesting seeing the inside with the lights on,” I admitted, putting my purse in the office and grabbing a cup of coffee on the way back. “I know this particular site isn’t as big or elaborate as some of the haunted houses, but they sure go all out.”

  “They’re popular on date night,” Maggie replied. “Nothing like a good scare to make you grab your sweetie tight!”

  We were busy in the store for a fall afternoon, which was great for the month’s bottom line but didn’t make it easy for me to tell Teag what I had seen at the haunted house. Right before we were ready to close, it finally got quiet enough for Maggie to cover the front on her own while Teag and I went back to the office for a quick consultation.

  “I can look up the history on the house,” Teag said after I filled him in. “And see if I can find any matches on the furniture pictures you texted me. Sometimes, estate auctions post photos of items for sale.”

  “I’m not sure anything Rennie would buy would be valuable enough for that kind of thing,” I said.

  Teag shrugged. “You never know. Sometimes ‘valuable’ furnishings don’t sell because they’ve fallen out of style. It won’t hurt to check.” That meant Teag was on the hunt. He took it as a personal challenge to find details that no one should be able to find, even if that meant a little magical hacking.

  “Do you and Anthony have plans for dinner?” I asked. Teag and Anthony had been seeing each other for more than a year and had finally moved in together. “Kell’s picking me up to grab a bite after the store closes. He could tell you more about the spook house then.” Anthony had a little more knowledge about what Teag and I really did at the store, but even he didn’t know everything. Kell and Anthony had been friends for a long time, so it would be a fun group even if Teag and I couldn’t say everythin
g on our minds.

  “Wouldn’t you rather have some alone-time with Kell?” Teag asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Sure, but it won’t be tonight,” I replied. “After dinner, he’s going back to help Rennie on the spook house.” I paused. “Have you heard anything from Sorren? I wanted to see if he knew anything about the house, too. I texted him, but I haven’t heard back. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure he’s in town.”

  Yes, my business partner is a vampire who texts and uses both a cell phone and email. He says that immortals who don’t keep up with the times don’t survive. He must be planning to live forever, because he’s very up on everything, from technology to clothing styles.

  “I knew he was going up to the new Boston location for something,” Teag said. “And he mentioned Chicago and Philadelphia but I don’t know any details.”

  Sorren has partnered with my family for over three hundred years with Trifles and Folly, but we’re not the only store he has like this. There are other locations, and other long-time mortal partners. Sorren doesn’t give us a lot of details because it’s a dangerous business. He’s been working with the Alliance—a group of mortals and immortals who protect the world from dangerous magical objects—since the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, there are some bad guys who have been working the other side of the street for just as long, and they play rough. That means that Sorren comes and goes without telling us a lot about where he’s heading or when he’ll be back. It might be for our own protection, but sometimes it’s inconvenient as hell, and after some bad stuff happened not long ago, he’d been traveling more than ever.

  “I texted him a picture of the house and the address, just in case,” I said with a sigh. “He’s been in Charleston long enough, he might remember something about the original builders—if there’s anything worth remembering.”

  Dinner was fun and relaxing. We went to Forbidden City, our favorite Chinese restaurant. Teag and Anthony and I eat there often enough the staff know our usual orders. Kell seemed happy not to talk much about the spook house, so we chatted about other things and the time passed quickly.

  Around nine, Kell’s phone buzzed. “Oops,” he said, glancing at the screen. “That’s Rennie, asking if I’m coming back to work tonight.” He sighed. “I promised him I’d help out.”

  “Go ahead,” I encouraged him. “Halloween isn’t too far off, and there’s a lot more left to do.” I caught his gaze. “But let me know if anything else strange happens, okay?”

  Kell gave me a peck on the cheek. “Will do.”

  Anthony finished off his sweet tea and exchanged a glance with Teag. “Unfortunately, I have to head home early, too,” he said. “I’ve got to argue a big case tomorrow, and I need to prepare my notes.” Anthony’s a lawyer with his family’s firm, and he’s done well for himself. He looks the part of a Charleston scion—blond, tall, and well-dressed even when he’s casual. Teag, on the other hand, is more likely to be in a t-shirt and jeans. His dark hair usually hangs in his eyes with his skater-boy cut. He and Anthony make a great pair, but they look like complete opposites.

  Teag volunteered to drop me off back at the shop, where I had left my car. We headed to my house from there. I was disappointed that Sorren had not responded to my text, but sometimes we don’t hear from him for days at a time. Teag parked and followed me in through the piazza. I could already hear Baxter, my little Maltese, barking up a storm.

  I opened the door and Teag was ready to scoop Baxter up in his hands. Bax is six pounds of pure attitude, doomed to not be reckoned a great watch dog because he resembles a marshmallow. Baxter settled down quickly as soon as we properly greeted him, which involved nuzzling and treats. I put kibble in his dish for dinner, and Teag went to get the laptop from my office so we could do a little more research on the spook house.

  “You were right about the suicide,” Teag said after a little while. He turned the screen and showed me the scan of an old newspaper article. “Susan Mayfair, the daughter of one of the house’s owners, killed herself back in 1955. No one ever seemed to figure out why.”

  “That’s sad. I hate when I’m right about things like that,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “If you were hoping for old burying grounds beneath the cellar or an owner who was a serial killer, you’re out of luck,” Teag said. “At least, I haven’t found anything like that. And I figure if it the house had a really bad history, you’d have picked up on it right away.”

  I had poured us some wine, and I took a sip, then nodded. “Most of the time, yes. Except for that uneasiness I felt upstairs and knowing a death happened in that poor girl’s room, I didn’t feel much at all from the house—certainly nothing evil.” I paused. “Except—”

  Teag raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “I wouldn’t have said the dressing table was ‘evil’ exactly, but I didn’t like the way it made me feel. Go ahead, pull up the photo—let’s see if we can find anything out about it.”

  Teag brought up the photo of the dressing table and mirror. I gasped. We both just stared.

  There was a very clear image of a woman staring back at us—a woman who hadn’t been in the room when Kell and I took the picture.

  “Wow,” I said after a moment. “What is that?”

  “That,” Teag said, “is probably what was making you feel uncomfortable.” He glanced at me. “You didn’t actually touch the mirror or table, did you?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t touch anything. Kell wouldn’t know what to do if I had a full-blown reaction to one of the pieces. I figured that if I picked up bad vibes, you and I could go back out tomorrow and poke around, and let Maggie mind the store.”

  “I think that might be a good idea,” Teag said. “Because whoever she is, she doesn’t look very friendly.”

  Teag and I searched for more information for another hour or so, but found nothing more about the house. We hadn’t given up looking for details about the dressing table, but we seemed to strike out on that, too. Teag headed home, and I took Baxter out to the walled garden in my backyard for a little walk. My mind kept replaying what I had seen in the spook house, feeling as if I had missed something and not knowing what. Baxter was his insufferably cute self, and cuddling him always makes me feel better, but tonight even that only partly lifted my mood.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME I went to bed that night, I still hadn’t heard from Sorren, although I’d left him a voice message to catch him up on what was going on. Technically, he might not consider it to be Trifles and Folly business, since none of the objects had come through the store. But the Alliance was usually on the lookout for magically dangerous items no matter what the source, and I figured he would want to know.

  My dreams were dark. I was in a shadowy hallway that was lined with mirrors. Reflections flitted in the mirrors ahead of me, just enough for me to notice they were present, but gone by the time I reached them. It felt like a game of cat and mouse, and I was definitely the mouse. In my dreams, I didn’t know exactly what I was running from or what would happen if I got caught, only that it wouldn’t be good to find out.

  I ran down the hallway, and it seemed to stretch on forever. The doors to other rooms slammed shut as I passed them. I could hear footsteps behind me, and they were getting closer. My imagination showed me the spook house as it might have looked when someone lived in it—maybe something my magic had picked up without me realizing it. But it was an odd mish-mash of real life and the gory theatrical scenes. Some rooms were normal, others filled with monsters—but in my dream, the monsters were real.

  I rounded a corner and found myself in the suicide bedroom. All the furniture was covered with sheets and the windowsills and mantle were thick with dust. But there was one piece of furniture left uncovered, and oddly enough, it didn’t seem to have any dust on it at all. It was a large oval mirror on a stand. I was drawn to it, just like in the movies, when Sleeping Beauty can’t seem to wake from the trance that pulls her toward the poisoned spin
ning wheel.

  My dream self didn’t stop until I was in front of the mirror. Two faces looked back at me; neither was my own. One was the dead girl. I recognized her from her obituary. The other was a thin old woman I had seen in my cell phone photo. Her gaze was piercing and malicious. She had one hand around the throat of the dead girl. And the other bony hand reached out, protruding from the mirror’s surface, reaching for me—

  I woke up, shaking. It took a few deep breaths to calm down and realize that I was safe at home. Baxter was at the foot of the bed, looking at me quizzically. I got out of bed and picked up Baxter, then went to make myself a cup of hot chocolate. It was just after six in the morning. Earlier than I usually ate breakfast, but I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep after those dreams.

  Bax pranced and bounced as if he could read my mood and was trying to cheer me up. I fed him breakfast, then settled him into my lap as I drank a cup of coffee. On impulse, I reached for my computer.

  Teag had gotten me a software program that worked like a police sketch artist, to help me draw the faces I saw when I read objects. Since I’m not much of an artist, my attempts to show Teag and others what I saw was frustrating, because everything had come out looking like Charlie Brown. With the software, I could easily play with features, face shape and details until I got something close to being right.

  I fiddled with the program settings, taking time every few minutes to sit back and sip my coffee. I made the face a little thinner, a little longer. The eyes more deep set. She had good bone structure, high cheekbones. Probably a stunner when she was young. I wondered if she looked so haggard from an illness, or if she had just gotten mean in her old age. The choices we make catch up to us as we get older, and so does our world view. Believe the worst about everyone and everything, and that’s what you’ll find—and it’ll make you bitter and angry. I saw some of that in the mirror lady, and wondered what her story was.