Although she covered the hole back up with the drywall and then hung a sheet over that, she couldn’t tear herself away from the room.
Stella spent the first night in bed, staring at the closet door, thinking about what lay beyond. That night she popped another Benadryl, despite the fact she’d told herself she wouldn’t, and fell asleep still ruminating on what she’d discovered. She’d slept like a baby that night.
The next morning Stella went down her checklist of chores. It was the day to sweep off the porch, clean the bedding, and vacuum the area rugs downstairs.
She was finished by noon.
With nothing but time on her hands she found herself marching back up to the bedroom, removing the barriers, and peering into the tiny room again. This time she’d brought a flashlight.
Now, with almost an entire day passing since the discovery, she’d had time to think about what she’d found. If the child had passed away then was it proper to leave the room as it was? Maybe so, and Stella certainly didn’t want to be the one to upset a tortured spirit, but it seemed awfully disrespectful for it to be so dirty.
Stella went to work then, lugging up buckets of water, sponges, newspapers, air freshener, and a mop. The first thing she did was remove all the toys from the shelves. The shelves she polished, digging deep into the dirt until the wood shone through. Then she attacked each childish toy, lovingly washing the little dolls’ faces with Windex and arranging their clothing as she set them back up in their rightful places. She dusted the small table, cleaned the tea party set, something someone had clearly taken time to decorate with paint, even though the edges were rough and crude, and then went to work on the bedding.
The handmade quilt was so old she was afraid it would disintegrate in her hands but it turned out to be sturdier than she’d thought. Folding it gently she carried it outside and hung it up on the clothesline to get some fresh air. She beat it tenderly with a broom to loosen up the dust and then sprayed it with air freshener.
She used soap and water to clean the floor. It took four buckets of fresh water; each bucket she took downstairs to empty out was black with filth. Then, she rolled up newspapers and stuffed them in the corners of the room and under the bed. That would hopefully help soak up some of the mildew and other unpleasant scents the room had accumulated over the years.
When Stella stood back and studied her handiwork she was pleased with herself. Her back ached, her feet hurt, and she was starving since she’d gone all day without eating but for the first time in a long time she felt like she’d accomplished something.
That night she slept even better, this time without any sleep aid.
Stella was sitting in the room Bill had always referred to as “the parlor” when she heard the footsteps upstairs. The old house was known to creak and groan, especially in the wind, but she’d become accustomed to its sounds. This one was new.
Placing her book on the footstool in front of her, Stella cocked her head a little, trying to find the noise again. There! It was weak, no more than a shuffle, but it was undeniably there, she thought.
The scuttle of noises continued for no more than a minute but Stella’s entire body was on alert. Even her fingernails and toenails seemed to be listening and waiting.
Whatever was up there was definitely human. She remembered the pitter patter of little feet from when her own daughter was a child– the fervor of the soles when they were excited; the hesitation when they were scared or nervous.
That was no possum or raccoon up there. It was a child.
Stella shot up from the chair when she realized the room directly above her had been the child’s playroom. Throwing all rational fear out the window, she bounded up the stairs two at a time, fearing not what might await her but eager in anticipation.
When she flew through her bedroom door she thought she could see a faint light coming from the room through her closet. The shuffling stopped then, and Stella did as well. Both she and whatever was there waited for the other to make the next move. She thought she heard a sigh, and maybe a moan, but she couldn’t be sure; her heart was pounding too hard.
Holding her breath, Stella quietly made her way across the floor. As she neared the door, however, the faint light on the other side dissipated and the room was flooded with darkness. She knew then that she was alone again.
Stella couldn’t understand why that made her feel both cheated and sad.
“Mother, I wish you’d come stay with us for a few days.” Her daughter’s voice, always pleasant yet somehow still condescending, grated on Stella’s nerves these days. She’d loved her daughter and being a mother had been wonderful, but only as long as her child had been an actual child. As an adult Millicent could be…insufferable was the nicest word Stella could come up with.
“I’m perfectly fine,” she replied with ease. “I have lots to keep me busy here.”
“I have no idea why you want to spend so much time alone in that big house,” her daughter complained. “It’s too much space for you. It’s too big! You don’t need to be living in something like that.”
Stella resented anyone telling her that she shouldn’t have something. The ornery side of her wanted to stay just for spite.
She did, however, miss her granddaughter terribly.
As a young woman Stella had thought that motherhood was the best possible gift. As a mature woman Stella realized that being a grandmother was a whole new ballgame. Taryn was special. It wasn’t just that she was a beautiful and thoughtful grandchild with a big imagination and gentle nature, there was something about her that spoke to people. She didn’t think Taryn was old enough to see that in herself yet, after all she was only four, but Stella saw it. People gravitated to her, sought her out, wanted to be near her. Yet Taryn was locked her in her head most of the time, content to play with her toys and draw her little pictures and tote around the old Polaroid camera that once belonged to her father. Stella would watch her for hours, lining up her toy horses or Barbies and arranging them just so and then snapping photos of them. She was always coordinating photo shoots for her inanimate objects.
Stella and Taryn had a deep connection that nobody could deny, not even Stella’s own daughter. They’d bonded before Taryn was even born. When her daughter was pregnant it had been Stella’s voice Taryn had kicked at, Stella’s singing that would calm her down when she was antsy and her mother couldn’t sleep. In the delivery room, Stella had been waiting for her and was the first to hold her. Taryn had looked up at her with big wide eyes and for a moment Stella could almost imagine her saying, “Hey, so you’re the one I’ve been waiting for!”
She really wanted to see her granddaughter right now, but she couldn’t tear herself away from the house. She wasn’t finished. She’d started something, although she didn’t know what that “something” was, and needed to finish it.
“I’ll come by in a day or two,” she promised her daughter. “I’m just busy.”
She hung up before an argument could ensue.
If the child had died in the house, then that would explain its presence. (She wished she didn’t have to keep referring to the child as “it.” She was almost certain it was a girl, but she needed to know for sure.) Stella had watched enough movies and read enough books to know that sometimes ghosts just needed some peace, some answers.
On a mission now, Stella aimed to find those.
She started with the small cemetery behind the house. After all, back in those days it wasn’t uncommon to bury the folks out in your backyard. Franklin had been a much smaller town back then and things were done differently. Maybe she’d get lucky.
Respectful of the dead, Stella always asked the yard man to cut the grass away from the gate and fence and weed eat around the cluster of headstones inside. As a result, she didn’t have to wade through knee-high weeds and grass to explore.
There were five headstones inside the small plot. The oldest was dated 1887. Stella wondered then if there had been another home on the site at one
time. That was highly likely. The last names were all the same: Howard. The latest headstone was dated 1940, however, and belonged to Thaddeus Howard (“loving father and man of God”). He’d apparently died just after the house was built. There was no child’s grave. She walked around a little more, examining the ground, just in case the stone had fallen over or didn’t have a proper marking.
Nothing.
Well, she thought in disappointment, at least I tried.
The next stop was the property records’ office.
Property records revealed very little. She did verify that Rose and Roderick Maguire had lived in the house from 1939 until 1976 and that it had sold in 1977 to the Lawson family, but these were things she’d already known.
As she was leaving the office, however, a clerk ran out to catch her. “Sorry Miss McKenzie,” the young man panted. “There’s two things I found in the back room. You might be interested in them.”
In his hands he held a large sheet of paper. It was thin and a little brittle and when he spread it out on a bench beside them she saw a detailed blueprint. “It’s the house, isn’t it?” he asked with pride. “We don’t usually have these on file, especially not for a house that old. Don’t know why we have this one.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Stella agreed. She wasn’t sure what she’d do with it yet, but didn’t want to turn it down. “Can you make me a copy?”
“Sure thing! Just wait right here.” The young man started back down the hall and then stopped again and spun around. “Oh! And I forgot. There’s a note in the record. Says the house was a wedding present, built by a Mr. Thaddeus Howard and gifted to his daughter Rose.”
One piece of the puzzle clicked.
It was only noon and Stella hadn’t been out of her house in such a long time. Why hurry back so soon? The office of vital statistics in Nashville wasn’t her favorite place in the world. One could spend hours there waiting for an underpaid clerk to bring you a copy of your birth certificate for $10. There was another place, though, that might be helpful.
Stella used to spend quite a bit of time in the library but, regrettably, hadn’t been there in years. She’d never used one of the big computer-looking screens (microfiche they called it) that they planted her in front of.
After a few minutes’ worth of instructions she was scrolling through the newspapers quickly, however, taking some delight in the old headlines and advertisements as they flashed in front of her. She started with 1938 and aimed to go up to 1970. If she hadn’t found anything by then she’d regroup and try something else. If the child had died a horrible death then it would have surely made the papers.
Oh, what a morbid thought.
The helpful reference librarian returned to her an hour later. Stella was up to 1948 and her eyes were starting to water. She was developing a headache and had learned absolutely nothing.
“I have some information for you ma’am,” the young woman in jeans and thick glasses before her said. “Those dates you wanted?”
“Yes, thank you,” Stella replied, thankful for a break.
The librarian pulled up a seat next to her and began shuffling through some papers. “Okay, first date. Rose Howard, later Maguire, was born in 1922. She married Roderick Maguire in 1939.”
“The year the house was built. So she was a young bride,” Stella mused aloud. “Just seventeen or eighteen. Sorry, do go on.”
“No problem. Roderick was born in 1901. I don’t have a month or date. I am just going on the marriage license,” she apologized.
“That’s okay,” Stella answered. “So that would’ve made him…” she quickly did the calculations in her mind, “Thirty eight?”
The librarian nodded.
“Well, not that unusual back then,” Stella shrugged. “And children?”
“No children I’m afraid,” she apologized again. “I went through at least fifteen years, all the way to 1961, and I can’t find a single child born under the name of Maguire to Rose or Roderick.”
A thought struck Rose. “If the child was born at home would they have still needed to file a birth certificate?”
The young woman nodded. “Around that time period it’s a little iffy but, generally, yes. You’re looking at men being drafted into the war, social security, things like that. Big Brother and Uncle Sam were starting to get nosy.”
“Huh.” Stella was feeling defeated again. “What about adoption?”
The librarian bit her lip and sighed. “Now THAT I don’t know anything about. It’s possible they could’ve taken in a family member’s child and raised him or her. If that’s so, the child might have kept their original name.”
“In which case we’d never know who they were,” Stella finished.
“I’ve got one more piece of news for you, though,” the librarian stated as she rose to her feet. “I also went through all the death certificates up until 1975. Not a single one registered to the name of Howard or at that address. So if a child did live there and die, then our county has no record of them.”
Stella let this development sink in a bit before commenting. “So that either means that they died somewhere else…”
“Or they’re not dead after all.”
After Stella’s long day out in Franklin she was exhausted. She couldn’t wait to get home, wrap herself up in her favorite fluffy bathrobe, and settle down in front of the television. She might even light herself a fire. Her daughter worried about her burning the house down, as though Stella hadn’t grown up using a woodstove and fireplace all her life.
She’d never taken a lot of care in her appearance, generally just throwing on whatever was handy. She shed the old work boots, fisherman’s sweater, and handmade colorful scarf as she walked through the door. They all landed neatly in the laundry room.
Now more comfortable in a pullover and her thick socks, she got comfortable. The answering machine her family made her install after Bill’s death was blinking in the kitchen when she walked through the door.
“Mother,” came the even-tempered voice of her daughter on the other end of the line. “We stopped by to visit but you weren’t there.”
The accusatory tone had Stella scoffing. As though she wasn’t an adult at all and had to tell anyone where she was going!
But the next part of the message had her melting. “Hi Nana!” Taryn’s sweet little voice filled the room. “Mommy says I can come spend the night with you soon. I love you!”
Stella smiled and saved the message. She always saved them when Taryn spoke. Sometimes, when she was extra lonely, she played them back and listened to them. There were times when Taryn would steal to the phone when her parents weren’t paying attention (a lot) and call her. She’d leave long rambling messages, talking about her cat, her imaginary friends, a television show she’d watched, or something she saw on the side of the road. Sometimes she even read to her from a book.
Those were the best moments Stella had left.
Her old flannel nightgown was sliding down over her arms when the scraping sound in the closet caught her off guard. It was a scratching noise, a pitiful rake of blunt fingernails across wood, and a whimper that had Stella turning around in a flurry. Her gown dropped to the floor, leaving her standing there in her underwear, unashamed of the fact that her soft belly protruded over “granny panties” and her once supple and firm breasts now hung softly in front of her like two pendulums. She’d earned her body, after all.
The noises came again–a cry and a scratch. It was both distinctly human and unearthly at the same time. There was a hollowness to the cry, a plea of desperation and despair that echoed all around Stella. The sadness gripped her heart like a vise, flooding her with anguish. A child’s cry of hurt was unforgettable.
Making no move to cover herself she tiptoed to the closet and stood outside the door, taking care with her breathing so that it was slow and even.
The entity on the other side sensed her again; she was sure of that. Together they shared the same air, breathed in an
d out collectively, almost as though they were the same person.
When Stella reached her hand out and touched the edge of the door to pull it open even further something small and cold gripped her fingers. She looked down and gasped, unable to help herself. A tiny hand was covering hers, the body hidden on the other side of the door. The pale fingers, so translucent they were almost blue, touched hers so lightly she wasn’t sure she could feel them at all–but she could certainly see them.
She yearned to reach inside, pull the rest of the child’s body out, and bring it close to her. To warm the cold skin against her own, to lay its little head against her bare breasts and cuddle it until it stopped crying, to rock it gently back and forth and stroke its hair until it was full of life again.
She could do nothing but cry until, at last, the fingers on hers disappeared in thin air, leaving nothing but a chill behind.
“When I get bigger can I put a horse in your barn?” Taryn chattered with enthusiasm, barely stopping to take a breath. “You’ve got stalls and I could come and feed and water it and ride it every day.”
Stella smiled and ripped more silk off the corn cob. They were sitting the kitchen, getting ready for dinner, and Taryn couldn’t stop pacing.
“What would you do about a fence? I don’t have one. Your horse would run away.”
Taryn’s face momentarily fell, her plan thwarted, but then perked back up again. “I’d tell him not to. He’d listen to me.”
“I’m sure he would,” Stella agreed.
“Can we go camping sometime soon? Just me and you?” Taryn had already moved on to another subject. Sometimes it was difficult for Stella to keep up.
“I believe it’s a little too cold to go camping. Our behinds would freeze,” Stella laughed.
Taryn's Camera: Beginnings: Four Haunting Novellas Page 8