Keeper of the Keys

by Perri O'shaughnessy

Esmé waved her hands sideways. “Better than okay,” she said. She shut the door in Craig’s concerned face. “I’m good,” she told the door.

  She tried leaning against it to keep herself propped up but she was pretty dizzy and it felt better to slip down and feel the cool hardwood. She passed out in the entryway.

  20

  S itting beside him so close she could smell Ray’s Pi aftershave and touch his shoulder each time he shifted, Kat studied the map. Just outside San Bernardino, they were heading east and most of the way out of the L.A. Basin. The Porsche’s outside temperature gauge showed a hundred four Fahrenheit on this Saturday afternoon in August. Not a single car they passed had the windows rolled down. The air carried a distinctly orange tinge. Little could be seen along the freeway-sound walls covered with ice plant, roofs. Not exactly scenic, but it got you there.

  She said, “I went to Idyllwild on a field trip when I was in fourth grade. All I remember is bugs, dust, and manzanita. There’s no lake very close by. But one of the women in my office likes the place, and she told me it’s an artists’ town. A tourist town, prosperous these days.”

  “It’s the closest mountain to L.A.,” Ray said. “Of course they would plant a town there, to escape to in the summer. It’ll be packed this time of year. And there’s some real forest, too, in the Mount San Jacinto park.”

  “Did Leigh tell you about the ghost?”

  “What ghost?”

  “She claimed her parents’ cabin was haunted.”

  “Then maybe she didn’t go there.”

  “If there’s no sign of her, we’ll ask at the motels.”

  “She could have just been passing through.”

  “Going where?”

  “I have one other idea,” Ray said. “She bought supplies for her work from a man who lives on a reservation somewhere around there, a Native American.” The Porsche whizzed into the middle lane and passed a slower car in the fast lane.

  They did eighty on the uphill winding road, but Ray had his eyes fixed on the road and his hands squarely in the ten and two o’clock positions on the leather-covered steering wheel, so Kat just said, “What reservation?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Think!”

  “I told you, I can’t remember.”

  “This map doesn’t mark any Indian reservations.”

  “It’s a highway map. What do you expect? Tell me about the Hubbel ghost.”

  “He hovered in the air. He wore old-fashioned clothes.” She told him what she could remember, which wasn’t much. She did recall Tom relating a story or two. She guessed he had gone up there with Leigh, but this wasn’t information she thought Ray would appreciate, so kept those memories to herself.

  She thought about the ghost up there with Tom, how he had laughed at the stories but came home looking remarkably chastened at the encounter. She thought about Tom, a ghost himself now.

  The trip took nearly three hours, but the Porsche managed the twisty roads magnificently. Arid semi-desert turned to fir and pines, greener as they attained the higher elevations.

  Kat closed her eyes and let her head be cuddled by the headrest. She worked to recapture more about the time when Leigh first told her of the ghost. It must have been soon after she fell for Tom. It was this very cabin that she had taken Tom to when they ran away together, benighted lovers, hiding out at her parents’ spooky getaway.

  Leigh had claimed she and Tom had made love for the first time at the Idyllwild cabin in a room that turned out to be haunted. “I saw something, Kat, something creepy but I wanted him so bad I never said a word. I wonder if Tom saw it, too?”

  “What did you see?” Kat, on the floor in Leigh’s girlhood bedroom, remembering her brother’s story, sat close to the faint breeze coming through the upstairs window on Franklin Street. It felt just like sitting directly inside the pink oven in the downstairs kitchen. Kat wore a tank top and cutoffs, but even in these minimal clothes her moist legs stuck to the hardwood floors.

  At twenty-six, Leigh still lived at home. Her bedroom held the furniture she had grown up with that her grandparents had brought from Mississippi, heavy dark mahogany, probably modest in its time but rather admired these days, especially with the gaudy fabrics Leigh had draped over them. The walls, baby blue, were covered floor to ceiling with posters of-what else-furniture through the ages, William Morris designs in particular.

  “A guy in old-fashioned overalls appeared,” Leigh said, completely seriously. “He didn’t make a sound, except to moan. He hovered at the foot of the bed while we went at it.”

  “Overalls. Omigod, how horrifying!” Kat had reacted, and both young women found this hilarious.

  “I love Tom, you know.”

  “I can’t imagine why.” But she could. Everyone liked him. All the women fell for him.

  “Well, you’re his older sister. Where I see a charming and fun-loving man, you remember his snotty baby nose.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Kat, I hope you believe I would never hurt him.”

  Leigh’s mother came up and rapped on the door. Leigh called out, “Entrez at your own risk.”

  “Your father wants to talk to you,” Rebecca Hubbel said.

  Leigh slid off the bed, pushing her feet into a pair of flip-flops.

  “He’s upset,” her mother said.

  “Why?”

  “He’ll tell you.”

  “See you in an hour if I’m lucky,” Leigh said, handing Kat a magazine devoted to woodworking. Rebecca Hubbel gently closed the bedroom door behind herself and Leigh.

  Kat looked at the pictures, sometimes reading the captions. Twenty minutes later, Leigh reappeared.

  “What did your dad want?”

  Leigh pulled out a suitcase, threw open her bureau drawers, and started filling it. “Oh, the usual horseshit about Tom and me. They’re worried. They heard about us going up to Idyllwild together. Things are progressing too fast and seriously, according to my dad. I told him I’m moving out.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “Can I stay with you and figure that out for a bit?”

  At that time, Kat lived in a studio apartment in Manhattan Beach. “Of course,” she said, her heart sinking. Where would she put Leigh?

  “It’s been good, living here. No rent. Happy parents. I’ve saved some money. They wanted me to stay home until I’m married, I guess, but geez.”

  “Your folks were upset.” Kat hated to think of that.

  So did Leigh, who stopped packing for a moment to wipe her eyes. “They both practically cried.”

  “Our ma expected us to leave after high school. When it took longer, I think she held it against us.”

  “I don’t want them in my sex life anymore.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Whatever the hell I want.”

  She actually bypassed Kat’s studio and went straight to Tom’s Balboa place.

  Fifty-three hundred feet high in the San Jacinto Mountains, Idyllwild boasted hundreds of miles of hiking trails, horseback riding venues, shops, and an eclectic selection of restaurants, plus fishing and distant access to two flanking lakes, Lake Fulmor and Lake Hemet. So said the brochure they picked up at the Visitor Center, anyway. They cruised along a tree-dominated main street filled with chalet-style shops displaying paintings and gift items. Tourists wandered about.

  By the time Kat and Ray arrived at the Hubbels’ rustic cabin, they had between them drunk four waters, eaten three PowerBars, and squabbled twice rather bitterly, eventually descending into silence.

  Ray pulled the Porsche into the gravel driveway and slammed on the brakes. Kat lurched forward as they came to a halt. “Holy shit, Ray.”

  He stared at the cabin. They both did. Wooden shutters closed the front windows. The place looked deserted.

  “Maybe she’s in the village and she’ll be back,” Kat said. “She sure doesn’t seem to be here. Wait a minute. We may have just eradicated some tire tracks. Back up.” Ra
y backed into the street and left the motor idling as Kat jumped out to check. The gravel was compacted and she couldn’t see any tracks from either Leigh’s van or the Porsche.

  What they could see, once they pulled into the driveway again, encompassed less than a quarter of the large, heavily treed lot. The cabin had once been painted barn-red, but the paint had weathered and peeled. A shuttered, ramshackle porch kept sunlight from entering the place in front. Behind the cabin, the hill sloped precipitously down, and the pylon Kat could see didn’t look thick enough to keep the cabin from sliding down the hill in the first rain.

  And yet it had endured for sixty-five years. A For Sale sign had been placed by the driveway by the real estate agent, with a plastic container for holding sales brochures tacked to it, but any glowing descriptions that might once have filled it were long gone. Kat remembered Leigh telling her about feeding jays on the back porch. She wondered briefly about the Hubbels, their lives, whether they had enjoyed coming here with their little girl years before.

  The pines, brown and rustling in a late-afternoon wind, appeared close to death. They must have something strong in them, Kat decided as she mounted the wooden steps, because they were living on almost no water. Ray slammed the car door and followed.

  “Shoot,” Kat said. “I assumed the realtor would have a lockbox on the door. I have a master that will open just about any lockbox.” She showed it to him and he turned it over in his hands.

  “Nice,” he said enviously.

  “Now what?”

  “No problem,” Ray said. He turned and his eyes sought out the porch’s hiding places. Then he went down the stairs to a round granite stone to the right of the porch. He bent over and pushed it aside. And there sat a dirty house key.

  “How’d you know?” she said.

  “I like keys. This is where they would keep it.”

  “But you went straight to it.”

  “I have never been here before. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Kat knew, had known the minute they pulled up, that no living being resided inside that boarded-up cabin but that didn’t stop her from looking around hopefully as she entered.

  The cabin felt chilly. Ray, doing the guy thing, immediately went to locate a thermostat or heat source. Kat pulled her sleeping bag inside and shut the door behind herself.

  The entryway, meager, held a small closet which hid coats. She peered inside, noting coats for every season, light, dark, thin, thick. Musty smelling.

  The first room past the entry, presumably the living room, had a red leather couch, comfortably worn, two floral chenille chairs, and a coffee table with an undone puzzle on it. She reflected, casting a cold professional eye on it, that this look would not appeal to the desirable market, an affluent suburbanite. It looked to be exactly what it was, a moldy old cabin nobody had ever improved. No wonder the Hubbels had no nibbles. Instantly, turned on like a faucet, she imagined the possibilities. Paint the paneling a light taupe or soft apricot. Replace the moldy carpet. Replace the lighting fixtures, dated and dusty. Replace the appliances. Spend twenty grand and make fifty.

  Ray stood in the doorway. “I got the heat going.”

  “That’s a plus,” she said. “Shall we have a look around?” They went together, turning on lights and opening shutters, glancing into the tiny kitchen, the upstairs bedroom with its pink chenille-covered queen bed. The downstairs area was shut off from the rest of the house by a closed door that led off the living room. The staircase down, narrow and rickety, bothered Kat. Maybe it was the harsh, naked lightbulb that lit the stairwell, or the lack of windows. She followed Ray down and they found themselves in a large room with a fireplace at the far end, a den, perhaps, with a couple of couches and a window with a nice view of the nearby hillsides.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Kat said. They went into a narrow hallway. Way in the back was a small bedroom with a double bed complete with pillows but no overhead light, just a dim lamp which Ray snapped on. “The second bedroom,” Kat said. One window faced out from the hillside, covered with a cotton curtain. A closet took up one corner. Kat looked inside. No bodies.

  “She’s not here,” Ray said. He sat down on the bed, which creaked alarmingly, and put his head in his hands.

  “We haven’t looked everywhere yet.”

  “You mean, the cupboards, in case I stuffed her under the sink or something?”

  “Let’s make sure you didn’t,” Kat said. “You’ve surprised me before.”

  It didn’t take long. They found old clothing in the bureau drawers and a storage closet filled with things the family had left behind. They wandered around the property in the gathering darkness. A sliver of moon shone down as Kat held a flashlight under the house. Then they went inside and found an opening to the low attic in one of the closets, and took a look up there. A lot of insect droppings, signs of asbestos. Probable termite infestation, a sale-killer. But no sign of a body.

  Leigh was not there, and they found no sign that she had been.

  The two were defeated, even anxious. They came all this way, and now had nothing. Ray brought the second bottle of French wine from the car. Kat located small glasses in the kitchen, and wiped them well. They drank the wine warm in front of the rock fireplace, where Ray had built a small fire. He placed two more logs on the fire, and shifted the logs, sending sparks flying. “Y’know, we are trespassing or burglarizing or something.”

  “I’ll just say I’m doing a detailed appraisal. You remembered to open the flue?”

  He smiled. “Obviously. You sound just like Leigh, who never trusts me. Yes, I opened the flue before setting these logs on fire. I’m not suicidal anymore, in spite of what you might think.”

  “And I have plans,” she said, knowing she sounded haughty but unable to help herself. “Every single one of them involves me living past the age of forty.”

  “Kat,” he said, eyes lit with the reflection of fire.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m grateful to you, whatever happens.”

  She didn’t believe him but felt bad to be such a doubter.

  She slept in the basement bedroom paneled in a plastic wood veneer. In the middle of the night, she woke up. She pummeled her pillows, rearranging them, closed her eyes.

  Still no sleep.

  She checked out the clock. Three a.m.

  Too early to rise, too late to read.

  She punched her pillows again, putting one where a man would be, if a man were around.

  Closed her eyes. The air felt close and heavy and she wished she had opened the window.

  Thought about Ray and Leigh.

  Opened her eyes.

  Saw a shadow on the wall that didn’t belong there.

  Felt an aching hollow inside her as the shadow moved and grew larger. The curtain was closed. It was dark. How could there be a darker shadow? The illusion hovered off the ground.

  Now she saw that it wasn’t on the wall but stood out from the wall, a black mass shaped and sized like a floating door. But it was alive, she could feel it, aware of her, watching her.

  She froze; stopped breathing. Held her eyes in exactly the same place. Did not dare to widen them.

  “It’s me.” In the doorway, silhouetted by the hall light, a figure stood.

  And for a terrifying, emotional moment, she thought she saw Tom, and he was furious with her, madder than she remembered seeing him ever before. He moved closer. She found her voice. Her scream must have echoed for miles up and down the old Tahquitz valley.

  Where was Zak when she needed him?

  21

  A light came on in the hall and Ray materialized, stepping into her room, appearing quite sturdy. “What? What’s happened?” he asked, looking around confusedly as she flipped on the little lamp.

  “I saw it! I saw-”

  “What did you see?”

  She rubbed her eyes. “I screamed, didn’t I? Sorry.”

  “A bad dream?”

  “It must have been
.”

  “Okay, so you don’t need me here?”

  “I guess not. No.”

  But he lingered in the doorway. “Listen, Kat. There’s something you need to know. I got cold and went looking for a blanket in the upstairs bedroom closet. I found something.”

  “You did?”

  “Leigh’s purple shirt. The one she was wearing when she left.”

  Kat shivered and pulled the cover up to her shoulders, unable to care for the moment about some old shirt he found.

  “Kat, are you really okay?”

  “No, I’m not. I saw the damn ghost. At first I thought-then I realized it was a black door, floating by the doorway. I saw it and it saw me. I’m not staying down here! God, what if you hadn’t showed up? What would it have done to me? Stop laughing!”

  “You saw-a door?”

  She threw off the covers and jumped out of bed. Ray’s eyes widened and she realized she was wearing bikini underwear and nothing else. Ray wore boxers, cotton, and his skin had a warm glow from the light behind him. “Lovely girl, aren’t you?” he murmured.

  The air between them quivered like their breaths.

  She looked at him standing in that awful doorway, the hairy chest and legs, the loose boxer shorts, the goose bumps forming on his muscular arms.

  A mutual, accumulated longing soaked the room.

  Ray didn’t move, just stood there gathering up that frightening masculine power that usually slayed her on the spot.

  Under such heavy pressure, in the quiet she heard a tiny voice saying, “No, no.”

  Maybe he heard the same voice. He turned away.

  “Don’t leave, Ray, please? Wait for me,” she said, pulling on her jeans and T-shirt. “Okay, let’s go.” At the top of the stairs she closed the door firmly and tilted a chair back against the knob.

  “If we had done anything,” Ray said, as they walked toward the living room, where the embers of their earlier fire continued to flare, “we would have ruined everything.” He pulled a flannel shirt off the coatrack by the front door and put it on. The tails swung down nearly to his knees. Must have belonged to James Hubbel, a large man.