by Kit Reed
“When?”
“In the night.”
“Last night?”
She nods.
“Do you know where he went?”
“No. He just deserted us.” Yes, she is still bitter. In her heart, it’s as close as yesterday. “I don’t know where he went, but I can tell you who he is.”
“Ma’am?”
“His name is Stan Worzecka.” She adds— sadly, because the two nice young men are done with this interview and fixing to desert her. They’ll be gone before she can offer her special Russian tea biscuits, and that’s just sad. She calls after them. “If you’re looking for Stan Worzecka, he’s gone and he won’t be back, so don’t bother. He ran off into the wild blue with that Yankee trollop.”
CHAPTER 23
Theo
I don’t know what it is with this Mormama. She said her piece last night and I am damn well over her. After she bailed I thought OK, you’re a ghost, you have to do these things, but I don’t, lady, not just because you said to.
I thought we were done, but, holy crap.
Not again!
Child, it would behoove you to explore the attic.
You said that.
Then do it.
I already told you, no way!
That doesn’t mean you won’t.
Get off my back!
Don’t be rude.
You’re all up in my face.
I wouldn’t think of touching you.
That’s not what I mean!
I keep my distance.
I mean, go away.
I can’t.
Then for crap’s sake, stop looming!
Then, Theodore Upchurch Ellis, listen!
It’s Hale. Theo Hale.
You’re still an Ellis, and you can’t be here.
This pisses me off. You think I like it here? I hate it!
It isn’t safe.
That’s not why I hate it. They’re awful, and everything sucks.
Then go, idiot child. Leave this house and take your mother with you.
On what fortune?
It would behoove you to look in the attic.
Not again!
Look in the attic, or I’ll …
You’ll what? It’s not like you can do anything.
There’s something in it for you!
Like, there’s money up there?
That sigh gives me the cold shivers. No.
Then, what am I looking for?
Just look in the attic. Weary. She sounds so weary.
If it’s not money, what’s the point? They spent Mom’s bonds, and we can’t go anywhere.
I know, I know.
I go, So beat it, you’re just a ghost.
I’m not a ghost!
Then what are you, anyway?
The air shifts. I am a presence.
She’s bigger.
Now, do as I say. Go up there and arm yourself.
Stall. OK, why? Did they used to keep, like, shotguns up there? Buried treasure?
Never mind what they keep. Go up now and find out.
I do what I have to. I F-bomb her. Fuck no, lady. I’m fucking sick of you!
It’s your funeral.
Yeah I’m up all night over it, feeling shitty and guilty and a whole bunch of other things, like, you don’t diss a poor old lady or whatever the hell this calls-herself-a-presence is; it just makes you feel bad. She guilted me and I can’t let it go. Either that or it won’t let me go. Her with the, It would behoove you to look in the attic. In hell!
OK, I can’t because I’m scared of going up there in the dark. There’s Florida critters up there, roaches and scorpions and worse. Hell, I’m scared of going up there in the daytime, when you might get light coming in through the holes in the roof, and a guy could see what the dangers are in this giant, broken-down shack. Busted stairsteps that trip you up. Gaps in the slats that trap your foot so you starve to death standing there.
I keep turning it over in my mind, looking at it this way, looking at it that way, but me, go up into that creepy place all alone and unarmed, with rats running across my feet and bats or worse, dead babies and what else, a zombie village? No way. I wouldn’t go up there if I was Special Ops and I had my main man Dell Duval fully armed and walking point.
I don’t care what Mormana wants, you hear?
I am not going up there. Ever.
I hate that it’s 3 A.M. before I actually get the nerve to face up to her and say so, and now that I’m sending out thought waves, that fucking all-up-in-my-face lady isn’t anywhere.
Do you read me? Not going up there!
…
No way, not me. Not ever. Not so much. Not really. Think harder: OK?
…
Well, not yet, OK?
Louder, she didn’t hear you. OK?
CHAPTER 24
Dell
When Theo finally makes it— which won’t be until push comes to shove, he will bite the bullet and climb fourteen creaky back steps to the formidable Ellis attic— he won’t be the first.
Wild in his head and stupid with hope, the future of the sprawling house is already here, traveling on the only solid piece of information he had the day he got out of the hospital. The index card.
Poised at the top of the attic stairs, Dell is at a dead stop. The door opens on a dark, cavernous maw. He teeters on the sill, poleaxed. Can’t go in, won’t go back. So, what? Will his whole life flash before his eyes if he takes the plunge?
Stop thinking.
“OK.” He steps out on the raw pine planks and into the Ellis family past which, he is beginning to believe, is his past too. Why, he wonders. Why not?
He wasted Day Two and half of last night in procrastination and dithering, failed attempts and fits of nausea brought on by the flash drive. He used to stash it and forget it. Then he lost it, and guilt and responsibility kicked in. Now the thing is toxic. He doesn’t really want to know what’s on the drive or why he has it. Or why his body revolts every time he touches it.
He woke up today with his mind empty, but this scrap of dialog surfaced: Get in and get on with it. Get it over with and get out. Old movie, great scene.
Get it? Got it. Good.
Where is that thing? He picked it up. This time it didn’t burn his hand. Instead, dry heaves shook him. Bent double, he dropped it like a scorpion and scrambled outside. Nobody wants to puke where he sleeps. His mouth flooded, but the retching stopped. Something I ate. When was that, really? Eating.
Never mind.
It was closer to morning than not, definitely too late to go back in there and deal with his unwelcome responsibility, too late to do anything, really, but he was out in the open, flailing: do this, do that. Asshole, do something.
Run. Dell ran around the block several times before he came back to 553. He circled the house, running hard along the path he’d worn down over time. Again.
He made a third run, dodging bushes and neatly skirting ornamental urns because he’s done this so often that he knows the path by heart. On his fourth circuit, he hesitated under the porte cochère, then ran on. On the fifth, he crouched in the shadow of the jutting bay window, weighing it.
This, he told himself. I will do this.
He snaked up through the hatch into the family dining room and entered the body of the house, careless about where he walked, as though he was almost hoping to get caught. At least it would put an end to this. They’d impound the flash drive and he could sit in his cell over in Raiford and think about something else for a change.
Instead he advanced silently, going through their darkened rooms without hesitation, sneaking up the back stairs from the kitchen and on up the raw plank steps to the attic. The door opened on a dark, cavernous space too cluttered to navigate.
* * *
Not the belly of the whale, Dell thinks, but close. Strung tight and jittering, he runs his Maglite over the generations of discarded furniture and superfluous objects, wondering. There are secrets in their n
ot-a-basement, secrets in the house above, secrets in these people’s hearts. He’s in their attic looking for answers.
Massed foot lockers and steamer trunks and unopened cartons form the advance guard of the forgotten, flanked by busted furniture that looms like a herd of rotting mastodons— forerunners of legions to come. It would take years to go through all this stuff, so, what?
The beam of Dell’s Maglite zigzags; even his guts are quivering. He did whatever he did back there behind the wall of memory and fled the scene. Guilt, he supposes. Then his life got in a wreck. Whoever he used to be, that guy escaped the consequences when his head cracked open, and Dell is not sorry.
He’s in stasis. Why else would he have holed up in Jacksonville for months, prepping for this incursion? He just wants to know what’s wrong with him.
He is looking for himself in this attic.
Given the amount of Ellis family crap assembled here, where is he supposed to start? A man could spend the rest of his life sorting through the clothes stuffed in all their old wardrobes and jammed into every drawer of their abandoned dressers and chiffoniers. Here are generations of furniture Ellis descendents broke and discarded, portraits and statuary they got tired of, hideous gift items they thanked for and forgot, dozens of shapes massed like limestone blocks carefully lined up inside a pyramid, designed to fall on the first intruder and mash him flat or slide into the exit corridor and snap into place, sealing him in.
Fool, don’t do this. Not now. Not today. Get lost up here and they’ll hear you bumping into things and call the cops.
He’s backed into the wall, feeling his way to the door, when his hand collides with a switch. He flicks it and, son of a bitch!
Look!
No more dithering over what comes next. Up front and waiting for him like an unopened present is a sealed carton marked DAKIN’S THINGS.
It’s his To-Do list.
First, hump the box downstairs to his quarters and slit the tape with his knife. Naturally he’ll take his time. Open the laptop and list the contents like a good librarian, order them chronologically, whatever works. Get lost in the task. It will keep him busy. Too busy to scour his own past for details, or open the flash drive. Let it lie. He has things to do. Examine the old man’s papers, supporting documents, sorting and cataloging like an archivist gone mad.
He brightens. Hey, maybe that’s what I was. Skilled librarian.
Or not.
Dell flicks off the light and exits with the bulging carton, and if he thinks— don’t even think about it— if he thinks that at his back, an angry shout just rose, no problem. Nothing to see, nothing to worry about. Everything up here is already dead.
Weird. With no visible means of support, no recognizable trade, no credentials, for the first time, he’s OK. He has this to do. His future is stashed in this carton; he’s sure. He can spin out the days combing the old man’s papers, opening envelopes, unfolding and refolding letters like a trained preservationist. He’ll make meticulous notes. For as long as it takes to find a link, or establish a claim.
Wherever he is in the ether, the late Dakin Ellis will understand that this newcomer to 553 isn’t dredging for their old family secrets.
He’s looking for himself inside the box.
It may take weeks. Cheap at the price, he thinks, grinning.
Then he runs his knife through the tape, the flaps fly open and reality smacks him in the face. It’s a morocco-bound journal initialed in gold: D.A.E.
Forget the massed ledgers and documents and numbered shoeboxes stuffed with Dakin’s mail. It’s all right here. In case he was in any doubt, the owner’s name is inked on the first page in textbook-perfect handwriting— no, calligraphy:
Dakin Ellis, his book.
Given by his Loving Mother
December 20, 1890
And as if it’s preordained, the elegant journal falls open under Dell’s hands, exposing a page written long after the owner’s script had gone to hell, drafted and rewritten so many times that the spine cracked at this place. As though of the many closely filled pages, this is the important one. It’s scored with strike-throughs and filled with word balloons, suggesting that Dakin made dozens of stabs at reorganization, and the finished entry?
Short. Scary as fuck.
January 30, 1895
Our Brucie died inside her. Nobody can know. Not the girls, not my wife, although I wonder. Not Randolph, wherever he is. It was a swift transaction and simple enough. Dr. Woods knew it was a stillbirth, and he saw to it that when the time came, Manette was asleep. He took Brucie out and he kept her asleep for almost days, but when the puffed-up princess of procreation awoke and found my baby in her arms, she stiffened, and I could swear her irises turned black. We never spoke of it, but she refused to feed him. She demanded a wet nurse because, she said, he was tearing her apart.
In time she summoned me: the queen of Jacksonville society commanding her dressmaker to rush a new gown for the grand ball. “We need another baby soon.”
Dear God, I tried. “But we have a new baby.”
But the woman I thought I knew bared her teeth like a cornered wolf and snarled, “I want a better one,” and this time I did see her irises go dark.
Another man would have struck her. I shouted. “Enough!”
So cold, so contemptuous, my wife, the goddess of demand. Hideous, once she dropped the mask. “Nothing is ever enough.”
God help me, I gave Little Manette what she wanted. I gave her Everett, her pretty weakling and the only child she ever loved, although we had eight. Eight children, and of the eight, for better or worse, wherever he is tonight, Randolph is all mine.
* * *
“What!” Dell comes back into himself with a jerk. Blindsided by the possibilities.
OK, dude, get the fuck off your butt while you still can. Crawl over to that mattress and crash. No food, less sleep. Figure this out when you’re fresh. Then, whatever this is that you turn out to be, like a long-lost descendent? Deal with it.
He won’t wake up today. He’ll sleep through this day and tonight and most of tomorrow. Drowned in sleep, he will lose all track of time. When he crawls out of his sleeping bag it will be late tomorrow. Then he’ll shove the laptop aside and open the Dakin Ellis journal, which he will scour obsessively while life outside his hiding place goes on without him.
CHAPTER 25
Lane
“Mom, Mom.”
Oh, Theo, not now. “Two minutes, OK?”
“You promised!”
“OK.” Another day in the life of the Prisoners of 553, and I’m too burned out on waiting to send off one more miserable application for one more crap job that I don’t want but know I have to find, reentering the job market is a bitch. Whatever I get, I have to take it no matter how shitty it is because I have to get out of here; I’ve seen the aunts weaving their fingers with evil pirate grins, mwah ha ha haaa.
“Mom…”
As if it’s not their fault that their precious house sucked all my money out of the bank, effectively trapping us here, I hate my life.
“I said, Mom!”
I don’t mean to snarl, “Theo, stop lurking!”
“I just.”
I know, T., I really do. I hate what I’m doing, but I’m stuck to this keyboard, can’t move, can’t stop. “Hang on, sweetie, I’m almost done.”
Done in. Everything inside me groans as I unclench my teeth and try to separate myself from Sister’s bentwood chair, pretending that I don’t know how long he’s been waiting for the hour I promised him. We’ve been trapped in this house for so long that the kid’s run out of things to do. There’s nothing left to explore but the attic, which is definitely off limits: scorpions, rats, cockroaches, and for all I know, desiccated corpses of the aunts’ old flames, their remains gnawed to the bone and their decayed clothing riddled with silverfish. Awful things grow in Florida, and they feed on the contents of these old houses. Ugly things happen under this roof; don’t tell him, what wi
th imaginary ghost sightings, the poor kid’s already worried enough.
The Internet is a human swamp, but compared to the multiple pasts and bad feelings festering here? It’s probably safer. All he wants is something to do! Something harmless, I hope. He says he just needs links and images to post on his Instagram, don’t ask. I think he’s playing like we aren’t marooned, he wants his friends to think we went to Paris or Kathmandu or we’re at his dad’s penthouse in New York City until after New Year’s, and he’ll be back in his old school the next day, showing them screen shots of us freezing our asses off in Times Square with lights blazing behind us because as soon as the ball drops, we’re leaving for home.
Home? Honey, we don’t have one.
Either that or he wants to check out all those singles and divorced dads hookup sites in hopes of locating his father. Maybe he’s sneak-connecting to that MMORPG that swallowed him up before Barry bailed on us with, among other things, our electronics in his van. Oh, Theo, I’m sorry he ditched you, but thank God he walked away. Without you, I would die.
“Um, Mom?”
“Two seconds, I promise.”
“Are you OK?”
“Give me a minute, I’m fine!” In fact, I’m stuck to the chair, or it’s sticking to me, I’ve been planted here for so long. We separate with a pop but I can feel the cane seat fancywork imprint on my thighs.
“You don’t look fine.”
Shit, do I look that bad? “OK, dude. Your turn.”
I back away so he won’t see the cane pattern, but he’s already doubled over the keyboard, lost in the other world. “OK, bye. Anything you want me to get while I’m out?”
He’s not listening.
As it turns out, Rosemary is.
Before I can make it through the hall and down the five steps to the first landing, she pounces. “Going out? Little Elena, is that you?”
Who do you think it is? Sigh. There’s no pretending I don’t hear her. She’s clinging to the newel post like the last leaf. “Aunt Rosemary, it’s Lane.”
“Don’t call me aunt, dear.” Quartermaster, chef, whatever, this is not her usual tone of command. Her voice flutters. “It makes me feel old!”