Then it hit me. “Wait, your doll? What’s your doll doing in this horrible place?”
She said sadly, “I used to live here,” and turned to me. “This was my mama’s house.” Tears began to fill her eyes. “We lived here ’til I was three. Then she...”
Jessica broke down in tears, and fell into my arms. The doll watched.
“She went missing in the big storm of 1935. I never saw her again.” She cried more.
“Shhh, ok baby, calm down.”
“After she died, my grandparents took me in. They had some money to take care of me. But we couldn’t stay here long. We just couldn’t!” She was getting hysterical, and I didn’t know why.
“Dollface, it’s ok, come on, calm down. You want to get out of here?”
She calmed a little, but the tears still came. “No, not yet. One more room.” She hesitated. Then she looked back at the doll and spoke. “At first everything was fine. Granny and Pop Pop treated me so well. I never knew my father, and Pop Pop was the best dad a girl could hope for. Everything was just great until I was around eight years old. It was then I started hearing the noises.”
“You started hearing the noises? You mean you’re the one who was haunted, when you were a kid?”
“I didn’t think so then. I didn’t know what was going on. At first, it was just footsteps in the night. Footsteps coming up the steps, down the hall. Then on some nights, as I lay on my bed trying to sleep, I’d hear the footsteps, then my door would crack open, but no one would be there.”
“Just your imagination, don’t you think?”
“No Bill. Not that at all. It only happened now and then. But when I was ten, there was someone at the door.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, for certain,” she said to the doll, then turned to me “But I saw her again last night.”
“You mean…on the beach?”
“Yeah, Bill. And you saw her too.” She was crying again. “So I ain’t crazy. I ain’t!” I held her again. She cried into my chest, and didn’t let up for a couple of minutes. I kissed her forehead.
“Nobody thinks you’re crazy, Jessica. We’ll figure this thing out.”
She looked up at me, then slowly looked toward the window. “Ok, detective, can you figure that out?”
I froze. I saw what she saw. There was no mistaking it, and no explanation. Sirens went off in my head and my heart beat red and hard. I’d been a cop for years, I’d seen death and cruelty and the strangest things from the streets of Manhattan to the jungles of Korea and I’d never seen anything like this. It was beyond reason, and that’s what scared the hell out of me.
The doll was on the desk.
“Jesus H. Christ, Jessica! What’s going on?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Bill. Something’s haunting me. Has been for years! First the noises, the footsteps. Then the woman with the black eyes. Then…then Rebecca…my little doll…she, she comes alive!” She said and buried her face in my chest again. I looked down at her, and looked back at the doll…it moved again, its head turning to stare directly at me. I saw it move. It was Gaddamned impossible but I saw it!
“Fuck! I said, not being able to control my tongue.
“Don’t tell me...”
“That sonuvabitch moved again!”
“She will, Bill. She’ll keep moving until she’s on top of you, her eyes staring straight into yours. She did it to me when I was a kid, more than once. I couldn’t stand it anymore. When I was ten, I chopped her head off and buried her in the back yard.”
“Buried?”
“She came back, Bill. She came back. I don’t know how, or what’s possessed her, or why. Thank God it seems she can’t leave this house.”
“That’s why you moved out?”
“Yes. I kept pleading with my grandparents, but they didn’t believe me. Finally, one night during a storm they heard me screaming and came in to find Rebecca on top of me. She was…she was holding me, I can’t even explain it. That’s when I broke off her fingers, to get her off of me. I threw her against the wall, and with my Granny and Pop Pop watching, she began…she began to crawl back to me, across the damned floor! They saw her, Bill! We buried her that night, in the rain. But two days later…Oh God, she came back, I don’t even know how, but covered in black mud and wet and with her head barely on she crawled back in here and got in bed with me. That was it. We put the house up for sale, and left.”
“Sonuvabitch,” was all I could say. I looked over at the doll; it hadn’t moved, but I swear it looked…sad.
“And it’s still here,” she continued, “after what, fourteen years and two other owners. No one was able to live in this house after we sold it. It wouldn’t let them. They all said the same thing…noises in the night, footsteps, the door to this room opening and slamming shut, screaming, moaning…except no vision of a woman, just a shriek and nothing after that.”
“You said there was one more room.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Just give me a sec.” She walked over to the desk where the doll was. “Hello Rebecca. I think you’ve scared me enough for one day.” The doll seemed completely inanimate now, just an old, broken doll. Jessica picked up the dirty thing and lovingly laid it in the baby carriage. “Goodbye.”
I stood there looking confused. “I don’t get it Jess.”
“I guess I don’t either. Rebecca was never…never mean to me, or evil or anything. She was just scary. She never hurt me. In fact, I think…this will sound screwy as hell…I think whatever’s going on, she just wants to be, well, near me.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I know. That’s why we had to move. I couldn’t take it anymore. Come on, there’s that one last room.”
She led me out of her bedroom and shut the door. Behind it we heard a thump; Jessica closed her eyes and melted a little, a grimace on her face. The doll had thrown itself out of the stroller and onto the floor. It was scratching at the door. “Oh god!” Jessica whined, and the crying began again but she held back the tears and pressed ahead of me to the last door on the right.
“This was my mother’s room. When she died, my grandparents, they left it as it was. They slept in one of the smaller rooms. After we sold the place I guess no one came in here because even now, it’s still the same as it was in 1935.”
“That’s pretty unusual,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“No more unusual than a possessed doll,” she answered, and taking a skeleton key from above the doorsill, opened the rusty lock on the door. The door wouldn’t open. “Seems to be stuck. You try it, Bill.”
I cautiously put my hand on the white ceramic knob. The gray light that streamed in through the hall window seemed to get brighter, making everything glow with a strange whiteness over the gray. Details I hadn’t noticed came out of the house, layers of different colored peeling paint on the door trim, remnants of a wool rug on the floor, exposed wires dangling from holes in the walls. I turned the knob.
The knob shook hard, as if someone on the other side were trying to open it too. I jumped back. “What the Sam-hell?”
“It shook, didn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“It always does, been like that since my mom died. As if something’s on the other side, trying to get out…or keep us out.”
“You ever get in there?”
“Yes. And I can now. But I don’t think you’ll like what you see.”
“Sure, play it up kid. What can be worse than that creepy doll?”
She stepped in front of me, and with a hard thrust turned the shaking knob and punched the door open. Then she screamed, and kept screaming as she stood in the doorway, shaking and twitching and screaming her head off. I looked passed her, and saw what she saw. I didn’t really know what I was looking at, but she did. I came behind her and held her, pulled her out of the room and into the hallway shutting the door behind me. Her breaths were coming fast and hard and her heart was beating so hard I cou
ld feel the blood pumping through her veins.
“Oh God, oh my God, help me, help me dear lord,” she kept saying over and over again as she gasped for air.
“Jess! JESS! Calm down, baby, calm down, I’m here, it’s all right.” She finally began to settle down, and breathe a little easier. “Jessica, listen, Jessica…who is that in there?”
“It’s my mother,” she said in a voice so foreign I almost dropped her.
What Jessica saw and what I saw were two different things, yet the same. She saw a vision, I saw what was real. When she opened the door, the acrid stench of death and decay hit us with both barrels. As she began to scream, I gave the room a once-over. The walls were covered with moss, mold, mildew, you name it, black and slimy and green and yellow. The floor was heaped with some kind of growth, vines or God knows what, and the ceiling had caved in exposing the rafters. In the center of the room was a four-poster bed, the posts festooned with cobwebs and more vines, dead brown things that strangled the wood. The mattress was rotted and black. But the worst was in the center of the bed; there lay a body on its back, wretched and decayed, the bedclothes blackened with mold like everything else, the feet mummified and gray, the hands skeletal and the face obliterated with time. I saw it for just a second before pulling her out. That is what Jessica saw, and what I could have sworn I saw.
“Why Jessica, why is she still here? Why did you come here? I don’t understand.”
“Look..look again Bill,” she said through heaving sobs. “You saw her body, now look…again.”
I didn’t want to let go of her, but my curiosity got the better of me. I put my hand on the knob. Noises, banging, popping came from behind me. I turned; Jessica was standing perfectly still.
“The noises, you hear them now too.”
“Yeah,” I said, “What is it?”
“I don’t know. But they’re always here. Look at her Bill, tell me what you see.”
I braced myself and turned the knob. I just couldn’t understand why or how a dead woman’s body could be kept in an abandoned house all these years. I opened the door, and had my answer.
“What do you see?”
I hesitated. The light was bright enough to see clearly. The room looked the same, black and moldy, but the smell was gone.
“Sheets,” I said.
“Sheets,” she agreed. She walked in behind me. “You saw her too Riggins, don’t deny it. You saw a corpse on that bed not three minutes ago.”
“I did,” I said softly. I was truly shocked. “I did. And now –“
“Just sheets, see?” she said and walked over to the bed. Sheets balled up in the middle of the bed, moldy and black, in the vague shape of a person. She picked them up and threw them against the wall where they landed with a dull thud. “Just sheets.”
“What is it about this place, Jessica? What happened here to cause this?”
“I don’t know. At first I thought it was my mother’s spirit, trying to reach me. But these things didn’t start happening until around 1940, years after she went missing. But I know that was her body we saw just now, I know because I’ve seen it before, and it was wearing the same clothes she wears in the only photo of her I have.”
I found myself in a strange way; I found myself not only believing in the paranormal, but trying to understand it. “We should get out of here,” I said, “Unless there’s more.”
“Nope. That’s the ten-cent tour. That’s why the house has been abandoned.”
“Where are your grandparents now?”
“They moved up to Tallahassee when I was sixteen.” Jessica lied. “I stayed here in Key West.”
“Who did you stay with when you were only sixteen?”
“A friend,” she said, then quickly added, “You know, I tried to burn this place down when I was twelve. It won’t burn.”
“What do you mean it won’t burn?”
“Try it. Go ahead, I could use a smoke anyway.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Do it, trust me.”
Fine I thought, I’d set a little fire in a piece of wood and stamp it back out just to make her happy. I lit two Camels and gave her one, then held the Zippo to a piece of wood on the doorjamb. I held it there for about thirty seconds. Nothing.
“See?”
“Hold on.” I grabbed a piece of newspaper from the hall and lit that. It didn’t catch. “Ok this is kookie. Maybe it’s the mold or something.”
“Yes, or something.” Her emotions overwhelmed her and she broke down in heavy sobs, muttering indiscernible things of which I caught “…my whole life…”, “…no wonder I’m so screwed up…”, and “…should have stayed out when I had the chance.” I held her close again, but it didn’t help. The waterworks kept coming, for a good ten minutes.
Finally she cried herself out and got herself together.
“I’m sorry, baby. I don’t know why I brought you here. I hate this place. But I just can’t stay away. It’s almost as if…as if my mother is still here, and this is the only way I can have anything to do with her, even if it’s…it’s…
“Ok, kid, I understand. Look, can we scram now? I think I’ve had enough of Spooksville for one day.”
“Yeah, let’s get out of here. I don’t think I’ll ever be coming back.” She wiped the last of her tears away. “I just wanted you to know I’m not a total nut case, Bill. I wanted you to believe me.”
“I believe you sugar. I can’t believe what I saw with my own eyes, but I believe you.”
+++
I dropped Jessica off at her place and drove the Chevy back to the dock where I parked it and handed the keys to the old man.
“Heard about ya’ll and old Lem,” he said, “Mighty fine police work, Detective. Law’s been trying to nail that boy for years. But he’s slippery like an eel, that one.”
“I didn’t really do anything except shoot him in the hand. The Navy boys got him.”
“Thanks just the same. Was getting so a man couldn’t make a decent buck without handin’ over ten percent to that fat bastard.”
“Tell me something, did he own a burlesque club? Someplace private?”
“You mean the whorehouse? Sure, he owns that one and one up in Marathon Key.”
“Owns? As in still does?”
“Well, yeah, I reckon till yesterday. City’ll probably shut them down now.”
“Yeah. Hey, when you say whorehouse…you mean an actual whorehouse, or is that just what you call it because of the shows?”
He looked at me funny. “The place has rooms where you pay pretty girls for favors. What else would you call it?”
“Isn’t there a stage with girly shows?”
“Sure, that’s how the men decide which women they want to take upstairs.”
Click.
1935
Eliot Hawthorn had never been to a brothel in his life. The thought of paying for sex seemed both ridiculous and foreign to him. With his money and his youthful good looks, he’d managed to get pretty much any woman he ever wanted. Then he met Vivian, and decided she was the only one he’d ever need.
Roberts drove him down the island in the Ford Model A police car. The bumpy dirt road jiggled the car like a ragdoll, but Hawthorn wasn’t concerned. He was on a mission and was focused on his goal. They pulled up at the Victorian manor, the place done up complete with heavy red velveteen curtains in the windows and two gas lamps burning out front, even though it was mid-day.
“This is it, Mistuh Hawthorn. Come on in, I’ll show ya’ll around.”
“Stop calling me that, Roberts. Introduce me as Mr. Smith.”
“Yessuh, Mistuh Smith.”
Roberts led Hawthorn into the brothel, taking care to make sure no one who could spot Hawthorn was on the street. The inside of the house was dark and plush. Expensive but well-worn sofas and loveseats lined the wall, draped with over-stuffed pillows and velveteen throws. The colors were a mix of deep reds, purples and royal blues with gold accents, just the sort of s
ordid color scheme Hawthorn expected. The floors were carpeted thickly in deep red patterns. Low-lit electric lamps gave the place an atmosphere of constant night.
A tall, voluptuous woman met Roberts at the front desk. She was dressed in a corset and feather boa, just like in the movies, Hawthorn thought. Roberts said something to her and she smiled. She waved him up the stairs and said, “Room three.”
Hawthorn followed Roberts up the stairs. The wall leading up was decorated with paintings of nude women, on the beach, on the sofas, on horseback. Hawthorn cringed as he recognized the setting for one of the paintings: The back porch of his own house in Key West.
“Roberts, who painted these?”
“Don’t right know, suhr, they been up there for damn-near forty years, I’m sure.”
“I want this one taken down and burned, today.”
“But suhr, it’s a part of the house’s history!”
“Like you give a good damn about history. Take it down. I’ll pay to replace it.”
“Yessuh.” Roberts wanted to ask why, but didn’t care enough to get Hawthorn mad at him.
At the top of the steps they turned right and came to room three. Roberts knocked twice and the door came open.
“Yes?” A young woman opened the door. She fit Hawthorn’s description to a ‘T’. “Oh, Hello Officer Roberts,” she said with fake enthusiasm. “What brings ya’ll up here today?”
“I have a special customer for you. His name is…”
Hawthorn nearly smacked Roberts.
“…Mr. Smith, from Miami, down on business. He’d like some company.”
“Well hello, Mr. Smith. Why don’t ya’ll come in?” She took Hawthorn by the hand, and led him into the room. “I’ll take good care of him for you, Officer.”
“You do that Miss Rose. I’ll be seein’ ya’ll.” Roberts left and Rose shut the door. Before she could say a word, Hawthorn spoke.
Murder on Tiki Island: A Noir Paranormal Mystery In The Florida Keys (Detective Bill Riggins Mysteries) Page 21