The Last to See Me

by M Dressler

  “Too many rooms on this side, Charlie. There’s no feng shui happening at all.”

  “I agree with you. Everything would have to be blown out here.”

  “But Mr. Dane, Mrs. Dane, you haven’t seen the back of the house yet. It’s a modern, open-concept addition. A conservatory. A sunroom. It could be whatever you like! With so much natural light. It’s right this way.” Ellen pushed aside the great pocket doors, opening the way to the back parlors. Her fingers seemed nervous, but she kept her voice steady.

  “Oh! Now that’s more like it. That view!”

  Mr. Dane put on his glasses again, and whistled. “Wow.”

  “This is Benito’s original harbor,” Ellen said and stepped forward, beaming. “Isn’t it gorgeous? You can see all the way across our cove from here. And the cove itself is always changing color, light, intensity. Sometimes it’s deep blue like this. Sometimes gray. Or green. And what do you think of this fabulous conservatory? The glass dome is stunning, isn’t it? Please, come in, take a look.”

  The Glass Room, our newest room, is the finest in the house now. Alice liked to paint here, sometimes, standing in the middle of all the wicker furniture and chintz covers and vases filled with flowers from the garden.

  “We’ve counted all the panes in here,” Ellen said, looking out across the water. “There are over three hundred of them. We call it the Glass Room. I think it feels just like dancing inside a dream on a perfect day,” she added, trying out one of the little phrases I’d seen her practicing in front of the mirrors.

  “Very nice. But please don’t tell me that’s the kitchen over there?” Mr. Dane pointed back into the house.

  “Charlie!” Mrs. Dane pleaded. “Use your imagination!”

  “It looks like a relic from the Stone Age.”

  “We’ll just gut what we don’t like. Keep the outside only.”

  “Yes. That could work …”

  “I am required to tell you, though”—and I could hear, plain as day, Ellen’s heart beating, her voice trying to be loud and bright to cover it—“that we do have a few historic guidelines here? Certain building codes. A house can’t generally be altered in any way that substantially changes the original structure. It’s one of the ways we here in Benito preserve our town’s character and charm. You have to go through an approval process to … But if I could just show you more of the beautiful, original woodwork upstairs—”

  Dane put up his hand. “Stop right there. We hate codes. They’re un-American. So given what you’ve just told us, you’d better give us a minute to think about if we even need to spend any more time with the property. Why don’t you just step outside and let us have a look around on our own, all right? Then we can decide if we want to talk to you about options. Or not.”

  Ellen twisted her hands behind her back, trying, I saw, to keep them under control. “Of course! Of course. I’ll just be out on the front porch, and you can call me in if you need anything or have any questions. Make yourself at home. It really is stunning, on every level. You’ll see.”

  “One question.” Mr. Dane jerked his chin toward the arched door of the butler’s pantry, beside the kitchen. “What does that door there lead to?”

  “A pantry.”

  “Not a wine cellar?”

  “No. Sorry.” Ellen looked back once, worried, and left them.

  And then it was just the three of us.

  “I think that scared her.” Dane took off his glasses and nudged his wife.

  “Charlie, come into the pantry. It smells like cinnamon.”

  They switched on the lights and stepped inside and leaned against the empty, burled shelves, leaving the narrow door open. The Lambry pantry is only big enough for three. The glass-covered shelves stack high and dark, and the wooden counters close in tightly on two sides. I sat on one of the counters, quiet as a pin.

  “So, Beth-y? What do you think? Codes?”

  “Schmodes. I love it here. The atmosphere. I’ve been waiting to feel the pull I feel here. That cove. It’s just what I wanted. Our very own little Xanadu. I thought we’d never find it.”

  “But no feng shui.” He ran his hand over the dust on the counter where Mrs. Broyle used to polish the silver.

  “We could torch the whole inside.”

  “Codes,” he whispered again, darkly, his arm circling her waist, just beside me.

  “Well. It’s probably just like Aspen. Find the right people to pay off. And we bring in all our own crew.”

  “The Napa contractor?” He stroked her.

  “I don’t mean just that. I mean, for help. I hate to say it, but you know it’s nothing but rubes out here for miles around. I get so tired of the inexperience, Charlie. There’s probably no help around here that can polish anything without streaking it. And did you see that poor little thing, in her factory seconds? Please. If I were her broker, I’d have to fire her and hire someone less … hick.”

  “Embarrassing. You’re so right. But only a bellhop. And only for today.”

  Coldness in their voices. Coldness, and looking down their noses at someone only wanting to do some work and to try to get ahead, if she could.

  Sometimes, when it’s a case like this, the anger comes to me and I don’t stop it. Some people don’t deserve my quiet and my patience. There are some who believe this earth was made for them and them alone. There are some who believe theirs are the only hearts, the only drums of blood that count. And so, when they hear the wooden floor of an old house creaking, giving underneath them, they can’t imagine it could be anything but their own weight.

  I shut the pantry door.

  3

  What the—?”

  “Great,” Mrs. Dane sighed.

  “The door is stuck. The knob’s not turning.”

  I blew the lights out.

  “Charlie?”

  “Bad wiring. I knew it. These old houses.” He tried the switch again.

  “Just open the door.”

  “It still won’t turn.”

  I know how to make a thing hard. Unforgiving. The knob, the more he tried it, stiffened, as though some heavy, cold pressure were fighting against him.

  “Okay, Charlie, let’s get out of here. It’s getting stuffy.”

  “Give me a second.”

  “There’s got to be another light in here somewhere.”

  “Then you find it.”

  “I’m trying. I can’t feel anything, except—”

  “What’s that? Is that you?”

  A breath. A whisper. A hissing sound at his side. But not his wife. She’s backed away, as far as she can in the small room.

  “Charlie?”

  “Beth-y, is that you?”

  “No.”

  “It sounds like—a leak. Is it a broken pipe?”

  “Charlie. Okay. Get us out of here. Please.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Just bang on the door. She’ll hear us, that silly waif outside.”

  He banged and cried out: “Hey! Hey! Hey!”

  In the dark, he strained to see. He reached out for his wife, his love. But she wasn’t there. Because a blackness, a blackness only a ghost can summon, was opening underneath them. His wife was near his feet, being pulled under. Pulling at him.

  “Charlie! Help me!”

  “Beth! Beth!”

  He fell to his knees with her. He felt her wet, sinking cheeks. He reached for her arms. But his hands fluttered, thrashing, in something else. Water, water rising all around them.

  He screamed.

  When the living are near death I can hear their thoughts. Poor Charles Dane. He’d gotten himself cornered, trapped, tricked, as he’d never been tricked in his whole life. He’d always known there were dangers, deep things in the world, but he’d always imagined he was in charge of them, in charge of the light and the dark. Now he could feel his wife sinking, being sucked away from him, down, down, down into the blackness. The feeling of her slippery, shredding skin under his nails. Was this dying,
sliding thing even his wife? What are we, who are we? What’s left of us in the end?

  Then he felt my hands, groping, coiling around his knees. It was his turn. He kicked and fought. He screamed, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go, as the water circled around his mouth, all his fear seeking a drain.

  And my whispering told him, go on, give in, give in.

  I kicked them both out, leaving them crumpled on the hallway floor.

  Poor Mrs. Dane had wet herself.

  I watched them from where I hung, under the winking pantry light. It took Dane a moment and then—I saw it in his bald, blank face—he understood what had just happened to them. Such things were still reported. Even though the hunters had been doing their work for twenty-five years, since the turn of the millennium, not every poor, dead thing in the world had been snuffed out the way some thought ghosts should be. Because there were still some of us left, in spite of all the work the hunters had done, over the years, to put us down. Because in an old house, you might still expect to find one of us, here or there. Even one who was willing to forget herself and what it would mean to show her anger, just for the treat of putting you in your place.

  Dane crawled to his feet and staggered and lashed out, waving his arms as though he could see me. “Scum! I know you’re there, and I know what you are, and it’s not going to stand! I’ll buy this son-of-a-bitching house and I will have it sucked clean and dry, you dead, you sick—Nobody gets between me and—I will destroy you, I—”

  Mrs. Dane wept and begged and said she wanted to go outside, please, now.

  Ellen said into her phone, afterward: “And then, believe it or not, I made the sale! I know! I told him. I told him the house had already been checked. I told him the whole village was cleaned out, we were certain of it, ages ago. But Mr. Dane insisted. He said he was going to get the best hunter in the business and have the house flushed, like—like a port-o-john … No, I don’t know if his wife is totally on board. But he certainly is. He told me no lowly scum was going to get the better of them or what they wanted. He told me he was going to buy the house and punish it. Yes. He was dead serious. He said if you give freeloaders an inch they’ll take—Right. He overbid. He’s already transferred twenty percent. He says we’ll get the rest, I mean the heirs will, when the house is certified clean. I think we need to talk to the heirs … Okay. I can handle it. Okay.”

  She stood in the garden that late afternoon, the sea breeze whipping through her soft, bobbed hair, the shingles of the Lambry House behind her turning slate-colored as the afternoon chilled, and she’d squeezed and hugged herself. She looked, from where I stood staring down at her from the tower, amazed and shaky and ready to jump for joy and cry all at the same time.

  4

  Now, three days later, Philip Pratt watches Ellen’s car pull up again to my house. He steps off the porch, in his workman’s coat, and licks his lips. A man with a job to do, who’s been called the best, it seems.

  She hurries up the path toward him. I know her by now. She doesn’t like being late. I let her pass by me in the arbor, without a scratch.

  “Mr. Pratt, did you get my text? I’m so sorry I’m late, you let yourself in through the gate, I see.”

  “Ellen?”

  “Yes. How are you? How was your trip? Okay?”

  “It was. I did let myself in. I hope you don’t mind. It’s a beautiful garden.”

  “Yes. Yes.” She’s breathless. “A full acre. Which is very rare on this peninsula, and—and—”

  “A real selling point in a village like this, I imagine. It’s all right, catch your breath.” He smiles down from his bulk, his height, at her. And I can see the smile makes her happy. Why is that? It needles me when someone small thinks someone large is closer to the sun.

  “Thank you. I’m so sorry again.” Ellen sets her satchel down at her feet. “It was—It’s my cat. I can’t find her.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Pets are so important.”

  “She’s just … tricky. I rent a place out in the woods, south of town? It’s a little wild out there, and I don’t want her to get into any trouble. So I prefer to get her safe in the house before I leave. Especially because she’s not a hundred percent well right now.”

  “I understand completely.”

  “So I’m a little frazzled. Anyway.” She tucks her hair behind her ears and looks around. “So. You can see how the property is situated here. A lot of privacy. Especially with the headland behind it. The Lambry House practically sits on its own. It’s an old and unique setting on the coast. Which is one reason I think the Danes are fighting for it. I have the keys. Let’s go right in. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have you here.”

  “I came as fast as the highway could carry me.”

  “Thanks so much again.”

  She’s still catching her breath. Her walk is an uneven march next to his calm, steady one. But she gets him to the porch. “Okay. Come up and let’s let you get going. Have you been filled in on all the details?”

  “Mr. Dane gave me some insight.”

  “I bet.”

  I linger behind them, on the stone path, in the sun. It’s funny how small Ellen and Pratt, from this bit of distance, look on the curved stage of the porch. Like actors in a scene that’s too grand for them. It’s something the living don’t know: how lost and childish they can seem.

  Ellen fits the key into the deep brass. “It all happened inside.”

  “The Danes told me you were present during the event.”

  “Well, not exactly. I was outside, right here. Texting. Giving them some privacy to discuss things. But I was here, yes, at the house with them, all the time. That’s the law.”

  “Ellen, I need to know if you’ll be frightened coming inside with me.”

  She shakes her head, certain. “I know this might sound strange, but I don’t get frightened by incidents that don’t happen to me personally. I know that sounds—selfish. I don’t mean it to. But I’ve been in the house alone so often, so …” She glances back at him, beckoning him inside with her head. “Getting it ready for sale, to show, there was never any sign of—anyway, it totally surprised me because Benito’s already been through some good, solid cleanings, really thorough ones. I just wasn’t expecting anything to happen. Or else my broker would never have listed this property as having a clean title.”

  “But you do understand the supposedly clean title accounts for the Danes’ … reaction.”

  “They must have still been pretty angry when you spoke with them?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Once I was able to get to them—I mean, after I heard them screaming in the hall—they looked just terrible. Especially poor Mrs. Dane. I thought it was all over for me, honestly. I thought I’d lost my job. Mrs. Dane wanted out but Mr. Dane started shouting that he was going to buy the place lock, stock, and barrel, and flush it, and I should get the contract out. And here we are.”

  She stands back. He walks around the foyer slowly, like someone who has plenty of time. It’s not the normal way, with his kind. Usually, hunters strut in, put their noses in the air, and get out their horrors, their weapons.

  At the turn of the millennium, when the hunts began, I was as scared as any ghost could be. But fear, in the end, does a body no good. If you let yourself be afraid of what can kill you, it weakens you. So you can’t let yourself be afraid. You have to believe there is something in you that was made to meet the fear. Something that was given to you at birth, your right as a human being. So many of the poor ones I’ve seen who got sent back down into the ground, it was all because they thought so little of their right, of their own light. I’ve watched the mirrors empty because the ghosts hiding inside them were so afraid. Worst of all have been the cries of the ghosts of little children, who like to cling and hover longingly around candles—birthday candles especially. And then they shriek and are, themselves, blown out.

  “So nothing about being inside this house frightens
you.”

  “Not unless you tell me it should, Mr. Pratt. I’ve been in and out three times since the Danes left and nothing’s happened. I’m not saying I don’t believe them, but …”

  “You don’t. This is a beautiful entry. The height of it.”

  “That’s the original chandelier. The whole house is just a jewel. The last owner took wonderful care of everything.”

  “Alice Marie Lambry?”

  “Yes. Let me turn on a few lights. It’s getting overcast.”

  The brightness makes it easier for me to move around, too. Thank you, helpful Ellen.

  She stashes her satchel next to the stairway’s carved newel post and straightens in her suit. “So, what I can tell you is Alice Lambry died—let’s see, a few months ago now. She died in one of the bedrooms, upstairs.”

  “So I’ve been given to understand. And also, to be clear, she never reported any trouble with the house.”

  “No, not that the constable knows of. I wanted to do my own research, so I checked with him. But he said no member of the Lambry family has ever reported any trouble here.”

  “The Lambrys were always a wealthy family, I assume. People of means.” He gestures with his heavy arm all around, at the paneling, at the art, at the angels in the corners. He looks as wrong as a bull in a china cabinet.

  “Obviously.” Ellen nods. “If they’d had any trouble, they could have paid whatever they needed to get it put down, especially around the time the whole village was being cleaned.”

  “Except that now it seems the whole village wasn’t cleaned.”

  “Unless you think it’s possible the Danes could have gotten themselves jammed in the pantry and—just—panicked?”

  “You really don’t believe them, do you?”

  “I’m just hoping they’re wrong—and you’ll tell me so.”

  “I’m curious.” He leans against the banister and folds his arms. “How old are you, Ellen?”

  She blinks. “Excuse me?”

  “I just like to know the age of anyone helping me out.”

  “I’m helping out? Twenty-six. You look older than your website. Does being around dead people”—she puts her chin up—“do that to you?”