Colin and The Rise of The House of Horwood

by M. E. Eadie

  ***

  Ofelia was in the kitchen listening to a small painting of a man singing a solo from Die Fledermaus. Melissa was beside her chopping carrots.

  “Ofelia,” began Colin tentatively.

  “Yes?” she smiled, flicking a finger towards the portrait that continued to sing in slightly diminished tones.

  “Our aunt, is she coming back for dinner?”

  “No, she’s not. She gave me instructions that I was to stay the night.”

  Melissa looked as though she couldn’t be happier.

  “After supper, if you and Spike were to go to your rooms and turn in because you were feeling a bit sick, I would understand.” She punctuated the word understand with her riveting brown eyes.

  “Melissa, could you pass me the pepper?”

  Supper came and went uneventfully. After they inhaled it, they feigned having upset stomachs and went promptly to bed, as they had been instructed. Then they climbed into the fireplace, up the stairs, down the roof, and paused only when they were outside the stone wall.

  “Do you think she knows?” asked Spike.

  Colin nodded. He wasn’t sure how much she knew, but he suspected Melissa had told Ofelia about the meeting they had planned with Rhea, why else would she suggest they could leave.

  It wasn’t far to the library. They negotiated the traffic on the road, crossed a high bridge spanning the river and after cutting through a parking lot and passing Town Hall, they arrived at the library, a modest, old building with a flat roof. On either side of the doors, just above the wide lintel and narrow, stained-glass windows were two bas-relief figures in limestone--two cloaked women, hands pressed together in prayer, looking down at them out of their blind, limestone eyes. Unlike the big marble slab outside Horwood House, the figures were tender and meditative entirely swaddled in cloth. Colin wondered what solemn, angelic sounds they would make if they were to sing.

  Rhea burst out of the doors her mop of red hair falling wildly about her face. She waved them in.

  “Come on! Come on! My mom thinks I’m at band practice. I have to be in front of the school at 9, waiting for her to pick me up.”

  She stopped in mid sentence and stepped aside to let a surly, old man with a wary face hobble by. He grunted his begrudged gratitude at the girl holding the door open.

  “What’s the matter with him?” asked Colin.

  Rhea shrugged and led the boys to the front desk where she presented her card and requested the use of one of the microfiche readers along with the Occasional Observer film rolls for the 20th Century.

  The librarian, whose waxen face was regarding the back of a book, slowly tilted it up, eyelids blinking over her large, bulbous eyes. Everything about the woman seemed bland. Her dress was the same color as her parchment-like skin, and had she not moved, she would have continued to blend in with the drab walls. It was as though something sour was about to escape her lips, but instead her eyes rested on the two boys and she swallowed hard. She forced an unnatural smile.

  “Yes, of course. You can have reader one. I’ll get the films,” she said.

  As they followed Rhea away from the desk, Colin glanced back and the other librarian, who seemed to be cloned from the first, was also staring at them. It unnerved him.

  “What’s wrong with them?” asked Colin as he shivered, in an attempt to shake the eyes from his back.

  “Must be your clothes,” whispered Rhea. “Ms. Donlevy and Miss Pepperidge haven’t seen that much color around here in a long time. Be careful to whisper, or you’ll get us thrown out.”

  “My clothes? What’s wrong with my clothes?” Colin stared down at his multi-colored sleeve and removed his vibrant blue knitted cap.

  “Well, you have to admit they’re pretty colorful,” she said, taking the stairs up to the second level. The microfiche films were kept far away from the machines, because the librarians were picky about who was looking at what.

  “Sure, but they’re only colorful because everybody in this town dresses like they’re just back from a funeral,” said Colin defending himself.

  Rhea gave a low, suppressed laugh, and stopped at reader number one. The same elderly gentleman, who had pushed by them at the entrance, was hunched over the reader giving them the impression of a vulture waiting for its prey to stop moving. The noisy whirl of the machine punctuated the silence of the library, sending ghostly images of news copy and pictures across the screen. As they sat down, the man stopped pressing the forward button, and the sound came to an abrupt stop.

  “Ssssh,” he hissed wetly through his pursed lips. He had been licking them in anticipation of some delectable morsel from the past.

  Rhea sat down smiling apologetically. Colin and Spike pulled up chairs to her right, away from the number two reader. Then Ms. Pepperidge’s knobby hand appeared and deposited three small boxes in front of them. Colin turned around, but the books had already absorbed the woman; she was like some strange phantom. Rhea threaded the first film into the machine, pressed the power button, and it whirled to life. Images and print blurred past them at incredible speed, days, weeks, months, years passing incomprehensibly before their eyes, or so it seemed to Rhea and Colin. But for Spike, he could actually see the pictures and the print. He was able to compensate for the speed, by mentally slowing the spinning reels down.

  “Wait!” said Spike abruptly. “Back it up! No, really, back it up. There’s something about Horwood House being built.”

  Rhea cast a dubious glance at Colin, who responded with a shrug, but she pressed the rewind.

  “Stop.”

  Sure enough, there, heading the page was a picture of Horwood House three quarters built, looking much as it did today. Above it the caption read: CASTLE CONSTRUCTION DESPAIR. Beside the main picture was a headshot of the same man in the portrait that hung in the parlor at Horwood House, except the photo was taken a few years later on in his life. In the photo, he wasn’t alone; beside him was a luminous woman – the same woman whose bust was singing in the library! Where he glowered out from the darkness, she shone forth like the moon.

  “Look at that,” whispered Rhea gently, “the construction of Horwood House was halted because of the death of Charlotte Horwood, born 1880, died 1916. It says she died of a mysterious, wasting disease. Poor woman. I never knew that. It says he was building the house for her.” Rhea’s fingers followed the text down the table- screen, “It says she was survived by two children, Peary, aged 2, and Emily, aged 1

  “Scan ahead,” said Spike, looking out for further possibilities. “Let’s find out more.” He was sitting on the edge of his seat leaning in intensely.

  Colin, too, was sitting on the edge of his seat; however, something was bothering him, something he had read, but its relevance eluded him. Whatever it was, it made him feel very ill at ease.

  Rhea pressed the fast-forward; Spike raised his hand signaling for her to stop. In this manner, they were able to proceed rapidly through the years, finding more about Horwood House than they had thought possible. They learned of the growing eccentricity of Zuhayer Horwood. It seemed that the death of his wife had launched him into a career of odd behavior. He had a statue commissioned, but refused to let the artist work on it. He held sumptuous banquets and invited no one, with the food being unceremoniously dumped outside the next day. He took up parading about in black armor draped with a blood red sash. It all seemed fairly harmless until he bought vicious guard dogs to patrol the property night and day. Just where the two young Horwood children fit into the context of this, they hadn’t a clue. They were into the third reel when Spike said “Stop!” a bit too loudly, alerting the disapproving eye of Ms. Pepperidge who was now shuffling the books on the shelves behind them.

  Rhea read the headline: “WAR HERO KILLED IN ACTION. Sergeant Peary Horwood, a member of the Queen’s Own Rifles, was killed in combat during the final offensive into…”

  “Sergeant Peary?” said the
boys in unison.

  Rhea stopped reading, acknowledging their outburst. “Sergeant Peary, that’s what it says.”

  “What’s the date on that?” asked Colin.

  “1945,” answered Rhea.

  “That would make him about 31 years old.”

  Colin and Spike looked at each other in knowing silence, and felt as though the Sergeant was looking over their shoulder, encouraging them to go on. For a moment they thought about telling Rhea about the ghost, but hesitated too long; the reader was spinning again.

  “Stop,” said Spike, his mouth going dry.

  Rhea read the screen, “1955, Emily Horwood dies of a mysterious wasting illness.” She paused and looked at Colin, “Just like her mother. How tragic. Listen to this. ‘The year before she died, she gave birth to twin girls.’ It doesn’t mention their names.”

  The reader whirred again, taking them into darker directions, places where the sadness was as palpable as the librarian still lurking behind them was, bulbous eyes watching them meticulously.

  Spike was also feeling the weight of the eyes pressing down on him, but when he saw the death notice, he had to stop Rhea, even though he didn’t want to. They were getting closer to digging up the past that revealed why Horwood House had remained empty all those years.

  “Oh, no, look here one of the sisters dies in a drowning accident in 1972. That’s odd,” she said staring harder. “Their names are blacked out. The film made a flapping sound as it ran out. “Hand me another roll.”

  “We’re out,” said Colin. “Maybe we have to get more from the librarian.”

  “There are no more,” the waspish voice of Ms. Pepperidge jutted sharply into their ears as she stuck her nose in over their shoulders, peering, with a keen interest, at what they were viewing.

  A hacking cough from Reader #2 reminded them that the man there had likely been eavesdropping, too. “Burned to the ground!” he said, making no attempt to suppress his gloom. “We wrote about the Horwood curse, and that miscreant burned the entire newspaper building to the ground. I remember the names of his granddaughters--most people in the town remember, but they won’t tell you, none of them will tell you. Nothing but a bunch of cowards!”

  The librarian struck, her hand flashing in over Rhea’s shoulder pulling the unwound reel off the reader. “I think it’s time you children went home,” she said acerbically, flashing the old man a warning glance. “You wrote lies, and you know it! Those names are best forgotten!” Scooping up the other reels she trundled away and down the stairs.

  “What was that all about?” asked Spike.

  “Don’t pay any attention to her,” wheezed the old man. “She’s just afraid of the curse. Most people are. They think if they talk about Zuhayer, or his granddaughters, he might come back. He was a mean one, even meaner than me,” he gave a hacking cough in appreciation of his own joke.

  “My mom told me about some of it, but not this,” said Rhea. “I didn’t know there was so much tragedy.”

  The old man, his eyes milky with age, glanced at the vacant stairs, making sure the librarian was truly gone. “You’re lucky. That witch never lets anybody see those films. I’ve been trying to get a peek for years. The way you were moving through those microfilms, it was as though you knew where to look. Impressive. You would make good newsmen.” He leaned in, rubbing the end of his wet nose. “I’ll tell you something else you probably don’t know. The one surviving Horwood girl just disappeared after the drowning. Some say the girl that drowned had been pregnant, and that the drowning wasn’t an accident, that it was murder. Don’t know if that’s true or not because the old man died soon after the drowning. I wouldn’t put it past Horwood. He was so overstuffed with ideas of honor and loyalty that he couldn’t see the end of his own nose. Some say he died of a broken heart, but personally, I don’t believe he had a heart.”

  The old man suddenly shot out his blue-veined, gnarled hand and shook theirs. His grip was surprisingly strong for such a frail-looking person. “Name is Hugh Dundas.”

  “Is your son…” started Colin.

  “The real-estate agent? Yep, the boy has been a disappointment ever since he was born.”

  Colin felt as though a carefully laid trap was closing about them. Had Dundas been there, waiting for them to come to the library, waiting for them to use the readers? He shifted uneasily in his chair.

  “I have to thank you. Those reels, I’ve been trying to see those for years. I’ve wanted to find the reason why Zuhayer would burn down the newspaper and ruin my father’s life. You see, the paper he burned, The Occasional Observer, was my father’s and mine.”

  “What were the names of the granddaughters, the twins?” asked Colin. “If you don’t mind me asking?”

  He shook his head sadly, “One of the girl’s names was Millicent; the other, the one that drowned, was…” The old man knew, but held back.

  “You know!” accused Colin, a surprising gush of anger welling up inside him from some unknown source, “but you’re too scared to say it!” Colin was connected to that unknown name; he knew it, and he was desperate to know it!

  “I’m not afraid of Horwood,” said Hugh vehemently, fire burning behind the opaque milky color out of his eyes, and then the flame extinguished as quickly as it was lit. “Listen,” he whispered cryptically, leaning in toward them in confidence, “Horwood is still with us.”

  “You just said he was dead,” said Rhea, looking at him aghast.

  “Look, he was buried in a crypt beneath that cursed house of his but he’s no longer there. And the girl’s name . . . the girl who drowned . . . her name was, Sarah.”