‘Miss Hutchins?’ I said. Miss Hutchins, the owner, and I had corresponded through email about the reservation weeks ago.
There were rooms to the right and to the left of the foyer. The room on the right appeared to be a living room/parlor; the one on the left was outfitted as a library. Coming off the library was another room – a formal dining room. As we stepped toward that, we saw the staircase on the right, with a hall between it and the living room that led to more rooms. We heard steps on the staircase and looked up. That’s when we heard a tiny squeak come out of the mouth of the woman descending the stairs.
She was an older lady, probably in her seventies or eighties, with a halo of thinning white hair, fading blue eyes, thin, and with a handicapped right arm. ‘You startled me!’ she said, stopping on the landing, her left hand clutching the area around her heart. ‘Who are you?’
Her voice was thin and reedy, and a little trembly. I said, ‘Miss Hutchins? I’m E.J. Pugh. I emailed about reservations?’
She continued to stare at me for a full minute, then turned to stare at Willis for another minute. Then said: ‘Well.’ She continued to stand where she was – on the landing – still clutching the material of her blouse above her heart.
‘Is there a problem, Miss Hutchins?’ I asked.
‘Problem?’ she said. ‘Well, yes, I guess you might say that.’
‘May we do something to help?’ I asked.
Another minute of staring. Then she said, ‘Thank you, but I don’t really see how you could.’ Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘I don’t think anyone can help.’
I slowly walked up the stairs to the landing and took her by the arm. ‘Let’s go to the kitchen and make some tea, shall we?’ I asked.
We slowly descended the stairs and she replied, ‘I’d prefer a shot of whiskey, but I know you mean well.’
The kitchen was bright yellow with new appliances but old painted cabinets and bright white Formica counter tops. There was a large round claw-foot table in the middle of the room (I’d mention it was an antique, but I have a feeling that word’s going to be a description for almost everything in the house), and we sat down on old ladder-back chairs. She pointed at a cabinet in which I found a bottle of Tennessee sipping whiskey and three glasses, and brought it all to the table. I poured each of us two fingers, then the old lady took the bottle from me and added two more to her glass.
‘I’m not much of a drinker,’ she said and downed the glass. ‘But lately it seems like the best solution.’
I lifted my glass and smelled the whiskey. It made me want to throw up. I set it back down. Give me a nice daiquiri or a tequila sunrise, but straight whiskey? Not my poison of choice.
I touched the old lady’s hand. ‘What’s the problem, Miss Hutchins?’ I asked.
She squeezed my hand. ‘Call me Carrie Marie,’ she said, and tried a tentative smile. Her false teeth were an awesome white even against her pale skin. ‘Well, you see, my daddy has come back. Which is a hell of a problem.’
Willis and I looked at each other – both thinking the obvious, I’m sure. At her age, her ‘daddy’ had to be in his hundreds, right?
‘Your daddy?’ Willis said. ‘You mean your father or your husband?’
Carrie Marie gave him a horrified look. ‘My father, of course! That’s just sick!’
‘Oh, no, ma’am,’ Willis started, ‘I mean—’
‘Young man, I think you’ve said enough,’ the old woman said, and turned her face away from Willis.
‘He meant no disrespect,’ I said quietly. ‘It’s just that some women call their husbands daddy.’
She looked from me to Willis and back to me. ‘Why in the world would they do that?’ she asked, her faded blue eyes big and round.
I shrugged. ‘I have no idea, but some do.’
‘Well, I’ve never married,’ she said, and pointed at her disfigured arm. ‘Men don’t like girls who aren’t whole, you know.’
I started to open my mouth to confront her with the political incorrectness of her statement, then thought better of it. ‘So let’s get back to your daddy being back,’ I suggested.
‘Certainly,’ she said. ‘Well, first, you know, he killed Mama back in ’forty-five—’
‘Excuse me?’ Willis said.
Carrie Marie looked at my husband and proceeded to repeat herself slowly and succinctly. ‘He. Killed. My. Mother. In nineteen forty-five.’
‘I’m so sorry, Carrie Marie!’ I said. ‘That must have been awful!’
‘Oh, it was,’ she said, filling her glass yet again with the Tennessee sipping whiskey. ‘I found her body and him standing over her with a knife or something in his hand.’ She took a long sip and nodded her head. ‘Yep. Awful is a good word for it.’
‘Is he out of prison now?’ Willis asked.
‘Prison?’ she repeated. ‘Oh, no! He didn’t go to prison. Nobody believed me when I told ’em my daddy killed her.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
She drained her second glass (I was losing track of the finger amount) and said, ‘’Cause he got killed on D-Day. We were sent his dog tags and everything. Still got ’em. And they say there was no mistake.’
‘So he went to war after he killed your mother?’ Willis asked, a frown on his handsome face.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Mama died after we got the telegram from the War Office. Gosh, it had to have been close to eighteen months since D-Day.’
‘Then how—’ Willis started.
Carrie Marie looked around the room, as if to make sure we weren’t going to be overheard, and whispered, ‘’Cause it’s my daddy’s spirit, y’all! He’d come back from the dead. And now he’s back again!’
Not much later we were in a suite on the second floor. There was a sitting room with a camel-backed sofa and an easy chair, both covered in a blue willow-patterned brocade. Two paintings of blue bonnets graced one wall, while a second held large windows and a French door leading to a balcony overlooking the back garden. The bedroom held an antique four-poster bed that had been adjusted to queen-size, and covered with a blue willow-patterned comforter. A second wall of windows overlooked a side garden. The bathroom was one door down and contained the largest claw-footed bathtub I’d ever seen, with a toilet that had a chain one used to flush. Being early spring, Miss Bishop had opened the windows to air the room out before leaving us alone.
Before leaving, however, she’d said, ‘I’ve lost so many customers to daddy’s shenanigans that I had to let my helper go. I don’t climb these stairs often, so if you need something you might want to come downstairs to tell me.’
‘We’ll be fine,’ I assured her as I closed the door behind her. Leaning against it, I looked at my husband. ‘Well,’ I said.
‘So get your phone out and find us another place to stay,’ Willis said.
I pushed away from the door and shook my head. ‘Can’t. There’s a big bicycle ride going on this weekend and every room in three towns is in use.’
‘So you took the last room available?’ he said, giving me the evil eye. ‘Didn’t you wonder why nobody else wanted it?’
I sank down on the camel-backed sofa. ‘Honey, I didn’t know about the ride when I made the reservations three weeks ago! I wanted to make reservations for dinner and I tried calling the only restaurant in the area fancy enough to take reservations but the guy told me they were full up the entire weekend, and that all the hotels, B&Bs and motels were too. I just felt lucky that I got this reservation when I did.’
Willis sank down beside me. ‘Oh, yeah, boy are we lucky. In a haunted house with a crazy lady.’
I leaned my head against his shoulder. ‘Babe, you can’t have it both ways. Either she’s sane and the house is haunted, or it isn’t and she’s crazy.’
‘Point taken,’ he said. He was quiet for a minute, then asked: ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
‘No,’ I said emphatically. Then backed down a smidge. ‘Mostly no.’
‘Yeah, me, too,’ he said. ‘Mostly no.’
Then: ‘But …’
I looked up at him. ‘But what?’
‘When I was a kid, about twelve or thirteen, my grandfather was really sick and my parents took us to my grandparents’ place in Waxahatchie. They lived out in the country and had this big front porch. My grandmother loved wind chimes, so there were bunches of ’em lining the whole length of the porch. Grandma Pugh and Daddy were both at the hospital and Mama and me and Rusty were sitting on that front porch soaking up some sun. The place was real still. Not a leaf was stirring on the trees. Then all of a sudden, starting from the left and going all the way down the line, the wind chimes starting making their songs, one after the other. Mama looked at us boys and said, “Grandpa Pugh is saying goodbye, boys.”’
He stopped and I just looked at him. ‘I’ve never heard this story,’ I said, thinking fondly of Rusty, my deceased brother-in-law.
‘That’s because my mother denies it ever happened and I decided that was probably for the best. But I heard her that night telling Daddy about it and she told him what time it happened, and Daddy said that was exactly when Grandpa Pugh passed away.’
I shuddered. ‘Wow,’ was all I could say. Then, ‘So you do believe in ghosts?’
Willis shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. But either way you look at it, I don’t think Miss Hutchins’ daddy came back from the dead and killed her mother. If there are such things as spirits, I doubt they can wield a knife.’
1915–1934
Clayton Delaware Hutchins and his wife, Lydia Marie Hutchins, were blessed with three sons: Norris and Herbert, born within eighteen months of each other, and then the youngest, Edgar, at which point Lydia Marie died in childbirth. The three boys were raised by their father and a string of housekeepers/lovers that Clayton Hutchins would bring into the home. Young Edgar, the comeliest of the three, was barely thirteen when he was seduced by the then current housekeeper, a girl of nineteen, although she later claimed it wasn’t she who did the seducing. She was sent packing and Clayton refused to speak to his youngest son from that day forward.
Norris, the eldest, was a big, strapping young man and his father’s odds-on favorite. Since he no longer spoke to his youngest, and his middle son, Herbert, was a sickly, and therefore – in Clayton’s mind – inferior specimen, it was only natural – in Clayton’s mind – that Norris would shine. And he did. In the year 1928, Norris excelled at the newish game of football that had been bulldozing through small Texas towns and was revered in his hometown of Peaceful, Texas.
It was in 1932, at the age of seventeen, that young Edgar fell in love with the comely Helen Bishop, the daughter of the richest family in town. Being the daughter of the richest family in town had a lot to do with young Edgar falling in love. Had she been poor it may never have happened. That year in Peaceful was a hard one for most people. Well into the depression, many stores had closed on Main Street, including Clayton Hutchins’ haberdashery shop. Times were lean, and since Clayton still did not bear credence to his youngest son’s existence, Edgar’s pleas for certain food items would often go unanswered. This only made Edgar all the more determined to win the hand of the fair Helen and move into the grand old house on Post Oak Street, where he believed food to be abundant. There were also rumors of treasure within its four walls.
As Edgar set about wooing Helen, he found himself a job at the Rexhall Drugstore, one of the few remaining establishments on Main Street, as a soda jerk. Although his pay was a pittance, the occasional tip enabled him to eat more steadily than he did at home, and he even saved up enough to buy Helen a small bottle of Evening in Paris cologne and take her to an occasional picture show.
The summer he graduated high school, he was working behind the counter, while Helen sat in front of him, sipping on a Coca-Cola and smiling at him, when his brother, Norris, walked in. Helen was a pretty girl, which was immediately noticed by Norris. On her part, Helen also observed that big brother Norris was fetching in his own way. While all three brothers looked much alike in the face, Norris was bigger, with muscles, square shoulders and thin hips, while Edgar was slender and almost feminine in physique. Poor Herbert, on the other hand, was scrawny and slump shouldered, and the only one of the three with hypothyridic eyes.
Edgar continued to see Helen throughout that summer, but in the fall she was off to Mary-Hardin Baylor College in Waco, while his older brother Norris was off to fulfill his scholarship requirements at Baylor University, also in Waco. Edgar, who considered himself quite a catch, never thought of his clumsier big brother as a threat. Until, that is, that Christmas break.
It was then, at the tender age of nineteen, that Edgar Hutchins received the third and final blow that would color the rest of his life. The first being, of course, the death of his mother at his own birth, the second his father’s emotional abandonment, and the third the announcement on Christmas Eve that his brother Norris and his true love Helen were to be married in the spring.
In the wee hours of Christmas morning, Edgar went into his brother Norris’s room with intent to do bodily harm. Unfortunately Norris was awake.
‘Come to try to beat the shit out of me?’ Norris inquired, sitting up in his bed.
‘You son of a bitch!’ Edgar said in a harsh whisper.
‘Didn’t mean to step on your toes, but it just sorta happened,’ Norris said.
‘You just sorta happened to go to her all-girls school and just sorta happened to ask her out on a date? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Yeah, more or less,’ Norris agreed.
‘Bullshit!’ Edgar hissed. ‘You’re after the treasure! That’s all you want—’
Norris laughed. ‘Treasure? Jesus, Ed, are you still hung up on that old chestnut? There’s no treasure at the Bishop house! That’s just something kids tell each other!’
‘No, it’s not! I know for a fact there’s a treasure in that house!’
Norris smirked. ‘Yeah? So what is it?’
‘I’ll know when I find it!’
‘Guess you’re not going to find it now, huh? Since the only time you’ll be in that house is when I invite you in! Which may be never!’
Three days after Christmas, Edgar joined the Marines and left town – permanently, he hoped.
TWO
BACK HOME
There were different reactions to being left home on their own, each according to the particular sister’s views and personality. Alicia, the foster sister and newest member of the family, had been left alone on many occasions in her foster career and barely noticed; Bess was stoic about it. Being left alone meant responsibilities, but she was a responsible person and could totally handle it; but Megan … Megan was delighted, if not downright joyful. She could think of a million things to be done in the two days her parents would be gone that would otherwise never be accomplished. She even played with the thought of losing her virginity, but didn’t have a boy in mind for the honor, so nixed the idea. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t stay out late, find someone to buy them beer, or find an adult station on cable … like, there were so many temptations to choose from!
There aren’t a lot of rules in the Pugh household: don’t hit if you can help it; if you’re male, put the seat down in the bathroom; if you’re female, keep sanitary products out of sight; if it’s on the floor anybody can use it (like a sweater, scarf, pen, whatever); and the newest one (and mandatory to all), knock before entering a room with a closed door. Megan had that one half down. She knocked on her sister Bess’s door that Saturday as she opened it.
Bess had half a second to slam shut her newly acquired yearbook and shove it under her pillow before Megan was upon her.
‘You’re supposed to knock!’ Bess said.
‘I did!’ Megan answered, flopping on Bess’s bed.
‘Before you enter the room, stupid!’
‘Don’t call me stupid!’
‘Then don’t do stupid things!’
‘Whatever. Are you going to the dance?’ Megan asked.
‘What danc
e?’
Megan sighed. ‘The spring dance. Now who’s stupid?’
‘No,’ Bess said emphatically.
Megan turned from her stomach to her side so she could look her sister in the eye. ‘Why the hell not?’
Bess shrugged. ‘Don’t want to.’
‘Bullshit.’
Bess did not reply. She rolled off the bed and headed out the door of her room.
‘Where are you going?’ Megan demanded.
‘To the kitchen. I’m hungry.’
‘You’re never hungry between meals, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes!’ Megan said, following her sister out the door.
‘Whatever.’
‘You’re up to something!’
Bess sighed long and hard. ‘Get over yourself! You always think something’s up when nothing is! You’re an idiot!’
There was also a rule about name-calling, but it was widely ignored.
‘You’re the idiot!’ Megan shot back as they headed down the stairs.
‘Bite me,’ Bess said.
‘No way. Your skinny ass would taste awful!’
‘God, you are soooooo funny.’
They found their other sister in the large kitchen sitting at the table, eating a slice of cold pizza. ‘Breakfast,’ Alicia said with her mouth full.
‘Any left?’ Megan asked, beating Bess to the refrigerator.
‘Yeah. Couple of pieces. Should we put something out for dinner tonight?’ Alicia asked.
‘Naw. We’ve got plenty of money. Let’s go out!’ Megan said.
Bess snorted. ‘We do not have plenty of money! They’re gone for three days and Mom left us fifty dollars. We spent seventeen on the pizza and breadsticks last night. Going out for the three of us would be at least twenty to twenty-five dollars. And this is the first full day. Which would mean we’d only have like eight to ten dollars left for all day tomorrow!’
‘So we’re going to church with Grandma, right?’ Megan said. ‘She’ll take us out to dinner after church, right? So what’s the prob?’
‘Bess, I have to agree with Megs. And I don’t want to cook, and I certainly don’t want to eat anything Megan cooks—’
Dead to the World Page 2