Bliss House: A Novel

by Laura Benedict

  “She didn’t take anything with her. Not her phone. Money. Nothing,” she said.

  They were searching the woods, oblivious to the swarms of gnats that descended wherever they stopped. Gerard was certain that they weren’t going to find Ariel anywhere outside the house. It didn’t feel right to him. He’d brought Rainey outside to calm her, to get her to stop running up and down the stairs, checking the same places over and over. She’d tried to tell him what had happened to her up on the third floor, but it hadn’t made any sense to him.

  He’d felt a palpable hesitation hanging in the air inside the house. It was waiting for something.

  “What if someone took her?” Rainey said, turning to face him.

  Did you take her? Do you hate her that much?

  Gerard understood what she was thinking. She didn’t know him. She had a right to ask.

  He touched her arm and she didn’t jerk away.

  “I think she’s still here.” He looked down into her tired, worried eyes. Because we found Karin here. He couldn’t, wouldn’t say it out loud. Instead, he said, “Tell me what happened after I left.”

  Rainey sank onto a fallen log and told him about Ariel’s need to be with her in her bed, like a little girl. How she’d fallen asleep listening to her daughter’s even breathing, as she had so many times before. “She even snored a little,” she said.

  Gerard smiled. “Sure.”

  “It wasn’t like she was happy. But not unhappy, either. She was just herself.”

  “Not like she was earlier? Down in the kitchen?”

  Rainey put her face in her hands. “That wasn’t her,” she said. “I swear to God, that wasn’t her.”

  Which led him also to wonder who it might have been that had animated Ariel, twisting her words, giving her the aspect of a suspicious, disturbed woman instead of a teenage girl.

  “What will the police say? They’ll think I’m insane,” Rainey said.

  “I’m sure she’s in the house or somewhere very close.”

  Rainey nodded.

  “I loved this place,” she said, staring past Gerard to the house. Then she turned to him, changing the subject. “Listen. There’s something else you need to know.”

  Chapter 66

  He’d called her Button again. Her father’s special name for her.

  But her father couldn’t really be here because he couldn’t be anywhere. Dead was dead.

  Only it isn’t, is it?

  “If you’re my father, then you wouldn’t be trying to scare me,” she called out. “Whatever you are, I’m not going to believe that you’re him anymore. Do you hear me?”

  This time the answer was a laugh that was more like a child’s laugh than a man’s. But the fact that the voice was young didn’t make her feel any better. She thought of the hands that had pushed her, chasing her from the ballroom. Her leg had been sore for days from the bruising she’d taken on the stairs.

  How much would she have given to know that the voice was real, that her father was in one of the rooms down the hallway, body, heart, and soul? Would she give her life? She was becoming more and more certain that they weren’t going to find her alive down here.

  What am I doing, looking for whatever is down here with me?

  Although she’d always been the first one to drag her friends into Halloween haunted houses, she could only do it because she hadn’t really believed that spirits or demons or whatever could hurt her in any way. Now she knew better. She thought of Gerard’s wife. If something had made Karin Powell fall to her death, couldn’t it kill her?

  “Button, button, where’s my button?”

  Now the voice was a vicious parody of her father’s, and it echoed in the hallway.

  “Stop it!” She almost flung the flashlight in the direction of the voice, but then clung to it. It was the only thing that her sleepwalking self had brought with her from the world above.

  “Button, button, found my button.”

  “You’re not him! You’re not!”

  Against every instinct, she moved down the hallway, toward the voice. There was nowhere else to go. She might have tried to hide in the room in which she awoke, but she knew it would be useless. At least there was a chance that she could find a way out that she didn’t yet know about. She imagined herself driving back whatever thing was in the darkness ahead of her.

  “If you’re stuck,” her father had said, “sometimes you don’t need to go back where you started and begin again. There’s always more than one answer.”

  As she approached the voice, the air around her became even more still. She thought of church and the peaceful sunrise masses her grandmother had made her attend when she slept over on Saturday nights. But there was no peace here. So focused was she on finding the source of the voice that it took her a long moment—a moment that she couldn’t think about later without being dragged into despair—to realize that the more significant, more earthly sound was behind her after all.

  The door to the tunnel had opened. She turned around.

  The light from her own flashlight and that from the light held by the person standing in the doorway made the space between them a bright river of black and white.

  “I knew you’d come!” Ariel said.

  Overwhelmed with relief, she dropped her flashlight where she stood and ran at Jefferson, ready to launch herself into his arms as she might have her father’s.

  But before she could reach the doorway, Jefferson pulled the door shut, plunging her back into semi-darkness.

  Ariel lay on the bed, staring up at the lace of brown cracks on the ceiling without seeing them. What she saw was Jefferson’s face: mouth open in shock, sudden recognition in his eyes. Fear.

  Why was he afraid? He’d teased her about getting inside, practically challenged her to do it. And now he’d shut her back in here, leaving her alone. Had she done something wrong? The last time she’d seen him, things had been awkward, but had she made him angry? It was her house to explore. Maybe he was jealous or angry that she’d found her own way in.

  The irony was that she hadn’t really found her own way in. Something had led her here and had shown her how to get inside. All she’d had was a wish. A desire to know what was behind the door. It was a part of what was going on in the house, and had everything to do with her. Now she understood Jefferson was a part of it too.

  It made her sick to think about it. He’d left her behind the door to die. He wasn’t her friend. No more than whatever was calling her from the hallway was her friend.

  “Button,” it said again. “Find me, baby.”

  Chapter 67

  In a quiet corner of the hospital cafeteria, Randolph Bliss, the judge who apparently scared the hell out of every prosecutor in several surrounding counties, looked like just another old man worried about his sick wife. The worn canvas jacket he wore over his white dress shirt looked like it spent most of its time in the cab of a farmer’s pickup truck, and he briefly chewed at a thumbnail—a new habit, given the pristine state of his other nails. The sagging skin beneath his eyes had a translucent, bluish tint. His shoulders hunched over his paper cup of tea as though it would offer warmth.

  “What have you found out?” the judge said. “I hope you’re here to tell me you’re about to make an arrest?”

  When Lucas had asked Randolph if he could speak to him away from his wife’s hospital room, it hadn’t occurred to him that the judge would assume he was there about his wife. They were about to get off on the very wrong foot.

  It was the son, Jefferson, about whom Lucas had questions. No one could find him: he wasn’t answering his phone, and wasn’t at the family home. Lucas’s quick call to Nick’s distressed former secretary had told him that the kid had no professional business that she knew of with her dead boss. She didn’t speculate on whether or not they had a private connection. Chances were that she had routinely endured that kind of prurient interest, and there was nothing telling Lucas that he needed to go there.

 
“The scene at your house was processed, sir. The sheriff’s deputies are working with your staff to explore the possibility that your wife was attacked to get your attention,” Lucas said.

  While this was technically the truth, Lucas wasn’t certain how quickly it was happening. Nick Cunetta was dead, and death was his first priority.

  “Next you’re going to tell me that there was no sign of forced entry and my wife’s dressing room and jewelry box were in disarray,” he said, his voice conversational. Low. “Did you even spend five minutes in my house? The sheriff has called me three times today already. Perhaps you would like to know that they believe they’ve found traces of blood on a copper tea kettle,” he said. “My wife is fond of copper tea kettles. She has seven or eight. Two are from Ireland. One is Spanish. One we picked up in London.”

  Lucas suddenly understood why the defense attorneys and prosecutors were afraid of Randolph Bliss: he was a sophisticated bully. But the old man didn’t bother him a bit.

  “Why are you here, wasting my time?” Randolph said. “There’s nothing you have to say that I can’t hear from more involved parties.”

  “I’m looking for your son.”

  Randolph leaned forward. “My son was assaulted.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you imagine my son assaulted his mother?”

  “Absolutely not, sir,” Lucas said. “No one is implying that.”

  He was trying not to pass judgment on the kid too quickly. He wanted to think he was able to look beyond Jefferson Bliss’s rich-boy looks and demeanor. God knew he’d had to deal with enough guys like him at college in North Carolina. Spoiled, but clever and arrogant. Especially when they were as embarrassed as Bliss had been after the contractor beat the crap out of him.

  “Then why am I down here?” Randolph said. He indicated the artificially bright room whose walls were absurdly painted with enormous orange flowers. “My wife just had a cardiac event related to an assault by God knows whom, and you’ve brought me down here for some kind of masturbatory exercise.”

  “I need to know if your son had any dealings with Nick Cunetta. Mr. Cunetta called him shortly after your wife left his house.”

  “What do you mean, ‘after my wife left his house’?”

  “Your wife was seen at his house the night before she was attacked.”

  Randolph gave him a wan smile. “You think my wife was spending evenings with Nick Cunetta. You know how ridiculous that is, don’t you, Detective?”

  “If you say so,” Lucas said, returning the smile. You old bastard.

  Randolph’s smile disappeared. “My son had nothing to do with Nick Cunetta’s death.”

  “We’re looking at all possibilities surrounding Mr. Cunetta’s murder. We’re taking his clients into consideration, just as we’re looking at people you’ve had issues with. All possibilities. It just happened that he called your son soon after your wife left his house.”

  “You know this how?” Randolph said.

  “Phone records.”

  “My wife was at a book club meeting that night. Who says she was at Nick’s house?”

  He was going to have to tell him about the video. He was going to find out sooner or later. Everyone would. Even the murderer.

  The pager the nurse had given Randolph vibrated, moving itself a few centimeters across the tabletop. They both stared at it a moment until Randolph grabbed it. He stood up.

  “If my wife went to Nick’s, she was probably looking for a shoulder to cry on. She’s been overly upset about the death of that young woman in my family’s former home. Roberta’s too kindhearted for her own good. It’s her greatest fault,” he said. “It makes sense that Nick would call one of us to let us know. I’ll talk to my son.”

  Lucas watched him leave the cafeteria looking less like a despairing old man than like a man with some kind of purpose.

  “Prick,” he said under his breath.

  Chapter 68

  Allison groaned as a contraction woke her. In the fog of waking, she thought at first that Michael had come in and done something to her belly, maybe wrapped something tightly around it. But when she opened her eyes, she knew she was alone except for the thing inside her.

  The thing inside her wanted out. She waited for the pain to subside, knowing that it would eventually. The squeezing pain had been happening on-and-off for a long time now.

  Stay! Stay! There’s nothing out here for you.

  It wouldn’t respond, and she knew the silence meant it wasn’t listening to her.

  Whatever Michael had told her to do when the thing (he kept calling it a baby, but she didn’t believe that it was) came out had escaped her memory. What would the thing be like? What would it want? She was going to have to share her food with it, she guessed. Michael would have to bring more.

  She lighted the candle on the bedside table. As she tried to get up, she found that the sheet and bedclothes around her were cold and wet, and she wondered if she’d urinated in her sleep. She sighed. It was so hard to wash the sheets in the tiny sink.

  But Michael had brought her a tall pile of new white towels (she’d read the attached tags hungrily: 100% Cotton/Coton, Machine wash in hot water, Tumble dry, Made in U.S.A, Carolina Mills, Inc.) and more of the lovely-smelling jasmine soap.

  Stripping off the gown, she got off of the bed to light the candle on the wall, but another contraction overtook her. She dropped to her knees.

  The thing’s silence was even deeper as it fought its way out.

  But Allison couldn’t be silent. She cried out, calling for her mother, whom she could only remember as love and warmth and laughter.

  After another wave of pain, she felt the urge to bear down on the thing as it tried to escape her.

  Allison groaned as her body seemed to split open. She felt the thing’s head and hands and claws and teeth as they rent her. It was so angry. So mean. But she knew she needed to help it get out. This needed to end!

  With one great, final grunt and push, the thing was out, a coated, silent mass of gore and pink flesh. When Allison regained her breath, she fell back on her bottom. On the floor in front of her, the thing opened its black eyes, and opened its tiny mouth as if to speak, but it couldn’t make any sound. She stared at it, marveling at its silence, and its lack of claws. Was this the thing at all?

  She picked it up, her hands uncertain as they tried to grasp the slick body. Without thinking about what she was doing, she used her fingers to sweep out its mouth. It began to make sounds. A choked whimper at first, then a full-throated, angry cry.

  “You’re so tiny,” she said. “And where are your teeth?”

  The thing didn’t respond but continued to cry, as though it had forgotten how to talk.

  Shifting the thing in her arms, she felt an unpleasant tug inside her, and noticed the cord coming out of the thing’s belly. She was exhausted, but she reached as far as she could up on the bed and felt for the scissors that Michael had given her. She almost dropped the thing, trying to hold it in one arm, but she kept it close to her body.

  When she got hold of the scissors, she laid them on the floor next to her, then gently rested the thing beside them. Its body shivered violently with its cries, and Allison felt a response deep, deep inside her, as though she might start crying as well.

  “Shhhhh. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

  Allison took one of the towels and laid it over the soiled, wet bedsheet. The rest of the towels were piled by the door, no longer white or new. She settled herself on the towel, her pillows pushed against the headboard so that she might recline but not lie down completely. The thing had stopped crying and lay sleeping in a nest she had made on the bed out of the blue crocheted blanket. It occurred to her how lucky they were that she hadn’t yet gotten to the end this time or it would’ve just been a pile of loose yarn.

  She picked up the thing and laid it on her stomach, then covered them both with the blanket. The thing was warm against her skin. Michael and
the other man were warm as well but they weren’t nearly as soft, and neither of them would ever lie still with her for long.

  Allison closed her eyes. Right then, there were no sounds coming from outside the room. No banging, no laughter, no running footsteps out in the hall. She felt calmer and less confused than she’d felt in a long time. After a while she slept, and woke only a little when the thing latched blindly onto her small pale breast and suckled.

  Chapter 69

  The other man tried to catch her sleeping, but the thing lying in its nest beside her woke her, crying, as he came in the door. She opened her eyes to the painfully bright beam of his flashlight and quickly squeezed them shut again. The thing cried louder, and she knew it was trying to get her to make the other man go away. But Allison’s mouth was so dry that when she tried to speak, nothing emerged.

  “It’s time to go,” he said, looking down at her and the screaming thing. He laid his hand on the thing’s forehead. “It’s so tiny. How is it even alive?”

  Turning away from the light, she shook her head “no.”

  “You both have to leave. I’ll help you, Allison.”

  He rested the flashlight on the bedclothes, and when the thing noticed the light shining on the wall, its cries subsided. He unscrewed the cap from a Thermos. Putting his fingers gently behind Allison’s shoulder, he brought her forward and raised the Thermos to her lips.

  She recognized the smell of chocolate, and with it came a merciless flood of feeling. She drank and drank.

  “Slow down,” the other man said. “It’s hot.”

  The drink comforted her throat. It dribbled onto her chin and her gown, but she didn’t care. When the man tried to take it away, Allison grabbed his forearm to keep him still.

  As she drank the last, the words hot chocolate finally came to her. They came to her with images of a fireplace, of a shining metal pan. Voices. Happy voices that didn’t frighten her. Her mother’s face!