In the first photo I come to, I make out a young Girvin and his wife at their wedding—her seated in a chair, dressed in a white gown and extra-long veil. Him dressed in a black suit with a collar buttoned half way up his neck, an old-fashioned bowtie perfectly knotted. He’s sporting a thick, handlebar mustache, pork chop sideburns, and neither one of them are smiling since it would take far too much effort.
Another photo shows the young couple seated out back, the yard far more groomed than it is now. Girvin is wearing a long-sleeved shirt, the sleeves rolled up. She’s wearing a long hoop skirt, a frilly blouse, and a hat covered with garden flowers. She’s also holding a parasol against the hot summer sun. There’s a third man in the photo. He’s old, hunch-backed, his scalp bald while a thick white beard covers his face. His eyes are wet, forlorn, and scream of a man not long for this life. My gut tells me he is Henry Riggs Rathbone, Jr.
Yet another photo shows the Girvins standing outside the front door of the house beside a horse-drawn carriage. He’s wearing a dark suit and she’s wearing a long dress and matching jacket. She’s also wearing long gloves. My guess is they’re taking a trip somewhere. Maybe downtown Albany, which, in that horse-powered contraption, should have taken most of the day to make the round trip.
I pull the flashlight away, point it at the living room. A long couch occupies the center of the extended space, a wood harvest table pressed up against its back while an old dark wood coffee table is set in front of it. Beyond the coffee table is a fireplace which, from where I’m standing, looks like it sports some fresh embers. I’m wondering who would have made a fire as recently as a few hours ago if the Girvins have been missing for more than a week.
Aiming the flashlight above the fireplace’s thick railroad tie mantle, I find a large painting hanging on the wall. It’s a portrait of a young woman. She’s attractive but sad, her lips frowning, her eyelids at half-mast. She’s looking forlornly off to the right, not like she’s eyeing anything in particular, but instead pondering the present condition of her life. Her hair is pinned up in the back, and she’s wearing a dress with a flowery collar.
Stepping around the couch, past the coffee table, I shine the white light onto the small placard located at the bottom of the painting on the lower slat of the wooden frame. Embossed into the metal panel is the name, Clara Harris.
Just then I make out a knock…Or a snap.
Something colliding with wood. A foot maybe. A booted foot.
I turn quickly, shine the light out towards the alcove and the kitchen.
“Who’s there?” I say aloud, my voice sounding strange and thin inside the seemingly empty space.
I wait, heart beating in my mouth. But I get nothing in response. Wait some more. But no more knocking sound.
“It’s an old as all hell house,” I whisper to myself. “Just a mouse.”
It’s as good an excuse as any, I guess. But I wish I had my .45 with me.
Exiting the living room, I enter into the vestibule which is covered in a throw rug that bears an American flag embroidered in its center. The states in the flag are represented by a circle of stars. Maybe twenty of them. As many states as might have existed during the Civil War. I guess I should know how many existed back then. But then, remember that C?
Directly above me hangs a chandelier powered by more candles, years and years of wax having melted and solidified on the wrought iron arms. Beyond that is a staircase that takes up the entirety of the far wall. I stand at the base of the stairs, looking up.
The hall at the top of the staircase is dark and foreboding. To my right is the dining room, a big empty table occupying its center, as are the ladder-backed chairs that surround it. Shining the LED light into the room, I make out yet another chandelier and more paintings hanging on the walls, including one that clearly depicts the Lincoln assassination at Ford’s Theater.
The large rectangular painting draws me into the room until I stop myself maybe three feet away from its surface. The image is one I’ve seen probably two or three thousand times since childhood. The kind of illustration you might find in a grade school textbook. Only now, for the first time, the picture takes on new significance.
In the frame, we see Lincoln unknowingly seated in the Presidential box directly beside his wife, Mary. Behind him, John Wilkes Booth is firing his Derringer. The painting has captured the exact moment in time that the bullet is escaping the hand cannon and entering into the back of the President’s cranial vault, the smoke from the exploded gunpowder billowing up from it. An American flag is draped over the right side of the box, its blue box of stars representing the “perfect union” providing a bitter backdrop for Booth while its opposite, striped end representing the thirteen original colonies, touches Lincoln’s outstretched hand. The flag looks weary, sad, and defeated as if weeping for the death of her greatest President.
Meanwhile, positioned at the opposite side of the box are two individuals who, up until now, never gave me a second thought. They are Major Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris, the original owners of the house I now occupy. Clara sits beside Mary on her red velvet covered chair. Mary has yet to register the shot, her right hand holding a fan which is pressed against her heart. The expression on Clara’s face clearly indicates some kind of confusion. That the shot has indeed registered with her, but only just slightly.
However, raising himself out of his chair directly beside her is her fiancé, Henry. Dressed in his uniform blues, he knows precisely what’s happening. True to form for a man of action, he has bounded up, his left arm fully extended, his hand trying desperately to reach out for the assassin as he murder’s the President.
For the first time ever, I feel myself more drawn into the drama of Clara and Henry than Abraham and Mary if only because of the drama and sadness they inherited just by becoming victims of tragic circumstances. While Clara is shocked and even disbelieving of the events happening before her eyes, Henry, a combat veteran, believes entirely in what he is witnessing and is doing his best to stop it.
As if to prove it, only a second or two after this moment captured in time, Henry will lunge after Booth and pay dearly for his selfless actions with a deep laceration on his arm from elbow to shoulder. But, as I peer at the illustration and the drama being played out before my eyes, I finally recognize the significance of the moment captured in time. It’s this severe wounding of Rathbone that will allow Booth to get away with murder. A situation that will cause far more scarring to Rathbone than a knife cut ever could. A situation that will haunt him for the rest of his days to the point of madness, murder, and suicide.
A curse? Nah, just bad luck…
“Poor, poor, bastard,” I whisper to myself inside the old, musty home.
Pulling my eyes from the painting, I head back into the vestibule and face the staircase. Heart pumping in my throat, I start to climb.
9
The stairs creak with my every footstep as if crying out in pain. The wood treads are so dry and old it wouldn’t take more than a fleeting spark to light them up. I glance over my shoulder at the chandelier and candles that are burned down to almost nothing and I can’t believe this place isn’t already a pile of charred embers.
Coming to the top of the stairs, I step out onto the landing and shine the flashlight down the short corridor. With the place having been shuttered, and minimal air circulating through the upper level, the dust that’s settled is upset with my every slow step along the narrow, wood plank floor. In the LED light, the dust looks like a miniature Milky Way of stars revolving around the sun.
There are only two doors. One to my right and one to my left.
I open the one to my right and step inside. I spot a metal-framed bed with metal end tables positioned on both sides, each of which support a kerosene lamp. A tall dresser of drawers is pushed up against the wall, and a night table with attached mirror, the glass old and warped, is set beside it. Placed before the mirror is a wash basin, a washcloth, an old fashioned toothbrush—possib
ly carved from ivory, tooth powder, and a comb. I also make out a straight razor, some cologne, and hair putty. Bill Girvin’s room, no doubt.
Stepping back out of the room, I cross the hall and enter into what I take to be Mrs. Girvin’s room…the bedroom that, in my mind anyway, formerly belonged to Clara Harris. It’s no secret that married couples of the nineteenth century practiced birth control by sleeping in separate bedrooms. In the twenty-first century, we have electronically adjustable king-sized beds and the morning after pill.
Slowly, almost tentatively, I push the door open, careful not to step inside right away, as if there’s somebody inside waiting for me. Waiting to pounce on me.
Paranoia?
Maybe.
Or maybe I’m just spooked. Truth is, the more time I spend in this place, the more spooked I feel. It’s not because of the noise I heard downstairs…a noise which could be explained by a thousand different things—mice being the least of them. It’s because the crap detector in my gut is nudging me, telling me to watch my back, that the sensation of being watched by either ghost or the real flesh and blood thing (or both) is not just paranoia, but an all too real possibility.
I step inside, spot Mrs. Girvin’s bed. It’s a sleigh bed, the frame a dark walnut. The mattress looks almost as old as the frame, the feather-stuffed mattress sunken down in the center from years of overuse. Maybe I’m not looking at Mrs. Girvin’s bed at all, but Clara’s. Whatever the case, I can only imagine the generations of bugs that have assumed squatters rights inside the thing.
There’s something else occupying the bed.
A blood stain.
In the light from the LED lantern, I can see that the circular stain is fresh and crimson colored. One, or both, Girvins lost blood here before disappearing. According to Miller, that is. It dawns on me then that if one or both Girvins were bleeding that badly, their blood would have stained the entire house. Drops and smears would be on the floorboards, the walls, the banister, on the staircase…everywhere. But it’s only on the bed.
I scan the bedroom with the flashlight.
Like her husband’s bedroom, the bed is bookended by kerosene lamps, the glass shells partially blackened from years of use. To my left is a dresser of drawers and set beside it, diagonally in the corner is a dressing table and mirror. There’s a porcelain wash basin and a towel, as well as a comb made of bone, and a brush.
To the right is the double-hung window, the heavy fabric drapes closed, the sun’s brilliant mid-day radiance entirely blocked. I find myself shaking my head. Who in their right mind willingly decides to give up all modern conveniences for a life of solitude and inconvenience? But then, who am I to judge? I’ve slept in some strange places myself. A two floor, concrete block hostel located in the middle of the Amazon Basin comes to mind. My second floor room contained a ceiling fan and mattress with a sweat stain on it that mimicked the shape of a human body. The wall behind the bed was covered in blood spatter as if someone had kicked the door in on some unsuspecting son of a bitch and sprayed him with lead where he lay.
I shift myself to the right and find the closet door.
My stomach jumps. Heart beats. The built-in crap detector is smelling something. Something hidden.
The curse…
“This must be the one,” I whisper.
I open the closet door, push aside the clothing that hangs on the metal bar. Shining the LED lantern onto the back wall, my heart sinks down to my feet. All that’s visible is an old plaster and lath wall. The brick wall isn’t here.
“What if it’s in old man Girvin’s room?” I whisper to myself, crossing the hall back into his bedroom.
I head to the closet, open the wood door. No brick wall there either.
There are two other bedrooms further down the hall. I head into each of them, examining the closets. No brick walls.
Out in the hallway, I have a one man huddle with myself.
“Okay,” I say aloud, my voice sounding hollow and odd inside the empty hall. “According to Balkis and Miller, legend has it that the dress was hidden behind a brick wall in Clara’s bedroom closet. That closet is now Mrs. Girvin’s closet and has been for decades and decades. So why then, no bricks?”
Then it comes to me that I’m simply looking in the wrong place. That maybe the legend isn’t quite right, as legends have a nasty habit of being. What if the wall exists, but it’s just not where it’s supposed to be?
That question clearly in mind, I head back into Clara’s bedroom.
10
I take another look around the room, shining the flashlight on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. I go to the opposite end of the room, begin rapping the wall with my knuckles, knowing that should a brick wall exist behind the plaster, my skin and bone will detect the more rigid material. I make my way around the room, and manage only to come up with hollow knocks.
Once more, I shine the light onto the ceiling.
“That’s way too impractical,” I whisper to myself.
That’s when, once more, I shine the light on the floor. My gut speaks to me then. Screams is more like it.
“Jesus,” I say. “I should have thought of this ages ago.”
Crouching, I press both hands against the big sleigh bed like it’s a blocking sled from my high school football days, and begin to push. It’s so heavy and cumbersome, the bed seems bolted to the floor. After three hard shoves, I manage to move it all the way to the opposite wall. Looking down at the floor, I see something that confirms my suspicions.
A piece of perfectly square flooring that’s looks to have been cut out and reinstalled at a later date. Taking a knee, I feel around the four by four foot square portion with my bare hands. The thin joint is filled with dirt and dust. I can hardly even jam my fingernails into the thin separation, much less shove my fingers inside.
A crowbar would be nice right about now. But I don’t have one.
“There’s always the kitchen,” I whisper.
Back up on my feet, I head back down to the kitchen in the hope of finding a knife that’s big enough to cut through Clara’s floor.
Moments later, I’m back upstairs in the bedroom a heavy meat cleaver in hand. The sucker must weigh five pounds it’s so big. By the looks of the steel blade, it couldn’t bring down a tree much less butcher a pig into a few dozen pork chops.
Taking a knee, I raise up the cutting edge and, aiming for the joint, swing it rapidly downwards and connect with the wood. I don’t hit the joint exactly, but the blade lands close enough to cause a chunk of the old dried wood to shatter. Pulling the knife out, I raise it and swing again, more of the wood disintegrating as I chop. After a few minutes of this, I’ve created an opening big enough for me to reach in with my hands. That’s when I begin to pull the pieces of floorboard up. In no time at all, I’ve removed almost the entirety of the square area.
Pulse pounding, I pull the flashlight from my pocket, shine it down into the opening. That’s when I see it—a wooden staircase covered in cobwebs and dust that contains maybe a half dozen risers. What’s located at the bottom of this staircase steals my breath away.
I don’t see plaster-covered lath. Instead, I see something else.
A brick wall.
My crap detector whispers something to me. My heart begins to beat in my temples. The hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention as I feel the eyes upon me. The eyes of a ghost. Lincoln’s spirit? His eyes? Clara and Henry’s eyes? The butcher knife in hand, I stand and scan the sleigh bed once more with the flashlight, eye the blood stain.
Nothing there.
Quickly, I make my way over to the sleigh bed, push myself between the frame and the exterior wall. Using all my strength, I shove the bed back over the opening in the floor. Then, coming around to the opposite side of the mattress, I shine the light directly into the mirror on the table in the corner. That’s when I see myself…
…and something else.
The bedroom door opening and a mustached man dressed i
n a white shirt stepping inside.
I turn quick…
11
The Presidential box is small, narrow, and barely fits four chairs and the adults who occupy them.
I’m seated in the chair furthest away from the man I most revere in the world. The man I would have taken a bullet for on the field of battle be it Manassas, Shiloh, Gettysburg…
…Gettysburg.
I was there that day when he spoke. I stood close to a cobbed wood podium that gave his already extraordinary height even more verticality. Add to that his tall top hat, and he appeared not like a mortal man at all but a giant born not of this earth. But then, the man is a giant among men. A sad giant at that. A man who doesn’t fit into this world in this day and age. A man who seems too big for his own pale skin and bones.
I try not to stare at him as he sits in his chair at the far end of the box by the wood door, his hands laid flat on his knees, the sleeves on his charcoal jacket too short so that his bony wrists are exposed, the backs of his hands crisscrossed with thick purple veins, fingers long, crooked, and painful looking. Like old dry twigs in the dead of winter.
It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the exhaustion in him. It’s never more apparent than on his face—long, cracked, and sunken like a piece of old fractured window glass that has drooped with time. His black beard is speckled with gray and it sings not of age, but instead of impending doom.
Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 4) Page 4