The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, 2010
Page 20
As the woman gushed, Tanya backed away slowly, then escaped.
The house was perfect—a six-bedroom, rambling Victorian perched on a hill three miles from a suitably quaint village. What more could she want in a bed-and-breakfast? Well, ghosts. Not that Tanya believed in such things, but haunted inns in Vermont were all the rage, and she was determined to own one.
When she saw the octagonal Victorian greenhouse, though, she decided that if it turned out there’d never been so much as a ghostly candle spotted on the property, she’d light one herself. She had to have this place.
She stepped inside and pictured it with lounge chairs, a bookshelf, maybe a little woodstove for winter. Not a greenhouse, but a sunroom. First, though, they’d need to do some serious weeding. The greenhouse conservatory, she amended—sat in a nest of thorny vines dotted with red. Raspberries? She cleaned a peephole in the grime and peered out.
A head popped up from the thicket. Tanya fell back with a yelp. Sunken brown eyes widened, and wizened lips parted in a matching shriek of surprise.
Tanya hurried out as the old woman made her way from the thicket, a basket of red berries in one hand.
“I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “We gave each other quite a fright.”
Tanya motioned at the basket. “Late for raspberries, isn’t it?”
The old woman smiled. “They’re double-blooming. At least there’s one good thing to come out of this place.” She looked over at the house. “You aren’t . . . looking to buy, are you?”
“I might be.”
The woman’s free hand gripped Tanya’s arm. “No, dear. You don’t want to do that.”
“I hear there’s some history.”
“History?” The old woman shivered. “Horrors. Blasphemies. Murders. Foul murders. No, dear, you don’t want this house, not at all.”
Foul murders? Tanya tried not to laugh. If they ever did a promotional video, she was hiring this woman.
“Whatever happened was a tragedy,” Tanya said. “But it’s long past, and it’s time—”
“Long past? Never. At night, I still hear the moans. The screams. The chanting. The chanting is the worst, as if they’re trying to call up the devil himself.”
“I see. “Tanya squinted out at the late-day sun, dropping beneath the horizon. “Do you live around here, then?”
“Just over there.”
The woman pointed, then shuffled around the conservatory; still pointing. When she didn’t come back, Tanya followed, wanting to make note of her name. But the yard was empty.
Tanya poked around a bit after that, but the sun dropped fast over the mountain ridge. As she picked her way through the brambles, she looked up at the house looming in the twilight—a hulking shadow against the night, the lights inside seeming to flicker like candles behind the old glass.
The wind sighed past and she swore she heard voices in it, sibilant whispers snaking around her. A shadow moved across an upper window. She’d blame a drape caught in a draft . . . only she couldn’t see any window coverings.
She smiled as she shivered. For someone who didn’t believe in ghosts, she was quite caught up in the fantasy. Imagine how guests who did believe would react.
She found Nathan still in the coach house, measuring tape extended. When she walked up, he grinned, his boyish face lighting up.
“It’s perfect,” he said. “Ten grand and we’d have ourselves a honeymoon suite.”
Tanya turned to the realtor. “How soon can we close?”
The owners were as anxious to sell as Tanya was to buy, and three weeks later, they were in the house, with the hired contractors hard at work. Tanya and Nathan were working, too, researching the house’s background, both history and legend.
The first part was giving them trouble. The only online mention Nathan found was a secondary reference. But it proved that a family had died in their house, so that morning he’d gone to the library in nearby Beamsville, hoping a search there would produce details.
Meanwhile, Tanya would try to dig up the less-tangible ghosts of the past.
She started in the gardening shop, and made the mistake of mentioning the house’s history. The girl at the counter shut right down, murmuring, “We don’t talk about that,” then bustled off to help the next customer. That was fine. If the town didn’t like to talk about the tragedy, she was free to tweak the facts and her guests would never hear anything different.
Next, she headed for the general store, complete with rocking chairs on the front porch and a tub of salty pickles beside the counter. She bought supplies, then struck up a conversation with the owner. She mentioned that she’d bought the Sullivan place, and worked the conversation around to, “Someone over in Beamsville told me the house is supposed to be haunted.”
“Can’t say I ever heard that,” he said, filling her bag. “This is a nice, quiet town.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” She laughed. “Not the quiet part but . . . ” She lowered her voice. “You wouldn’t believe the advertising value of ghosts.”
His wife poked her head in from the back room. “She’s right, Tom. Folks pay extra to stay in those places. I saw it on TV.”
“A full house for me means more customers for you,” Tanya said.
“Well, now that you mention it, when my boys were young, they said they saw lights . . . ”
And so it went. People might not want to talk about the true horrors of what had happened at the Sullivan place, but with a little prodding they spun tales of imagined ones. Most were secondhand accounts, but Tanya didn’t even care if they were true. Someone in town said it, and that was all that mattered. By the time she headed home, her notebook was filled with stories.
She was at the bottom of the road when she saw the postwoman putting along in her little car, driving from the passenger seat so she could stuff the mailboxes. Tanya got out to introduce herself. As they chatted, Tanya mentioned the raspberry-picking neighbor, hoping to get a name.
“No old ladies around here,” the postwoman said. “You’ve got Mr. McNally to the north. The Lee gang to the south. And to the back, it’s a couple of new women. Don’t recall the names—it isn’t my route—but they’re young.”
“Maybe a little farther? She didn’t exactly say she was a neighbor. Just pointed over there.”
The woman followed her finger. “That’s the Lee place.”
“Past that, then.”
“Past that?” The woman eyed her. “Only thing past that is the cemetery.”
Tanya made mental notes as she pulled into the darkening drive. She’d have to send Nathan to the clerk’s office, see if he could find a dead resident who resembled a description of the woman she’d seen.
Not that she thought she’d seen a ghost, of course. The woman probably lived farther down the hill. But if she found a similar deceased neighbor, she could add her own spooky tale to the collection.
She stepped out of the car. When a whisper snaked around her, she jumped. Then she stood there, holding the car door, peering into the night and listening. It definitely sounded like whispering. She could even pick up a word or two, like come and join. Well, at least the ghosts weren’t telling her to get lost, she thought, her laugh strained and harsh against the quiet night.
The whispers stopped. She glanced up at the trees. The dead leaves were still. No wind. Which explained why the sound had stopped. As she headed for the house, she glanced over her shoulder, checking for Nathan’s SUV. It was there, but the house was pitch black.
She opened the door. It creaked. Naturally. No oil for that baby, she thought with a smile. No fixing the loose boards on the steps, either. Someone was bound to hear another guest sneaking down for a midnight snack and blame ghosts. More stories to add to the guest book.
She tossed her keys onto the table. They hit with a jangle, the sound echoing through the silent hall. When she turned on the light switch, the hall stayed dark. She tried not to shiver as she peered around. That’s quite enough ghost stori
es for you, she told herself as she marched into the next room, heading for the lamp. She tripped over a throw rug and stopped.
“Nathan?”
No answer. She hoped he wasn’t poking around in the basement. He’d been curious about some boxes down there, but she didn’t want to get into that. There was too much else to be done.
She eased forward, feeling the way with her foot until she reached the lamp. When she hit the switch, light flooded the room. Not a power outage, then. Good; though it reminded her they had to pick up a generator. Blackouts would be a little more atmospheric than guests would appreciate.
“Nathan?”
She heard something in the back rooms. She walked through, hitting lights as she went—for safety, she told herself.
“Umm-hmm.” Nathan’s voice echoed down the hail. “Umm-hmm.
On the phone, she thought, too caught up in the call to realize how dark it had gotten and turn on a light. She hoped it wasn’t the licensing board. The inspector had been out to assess the ongoing work yesterday. He’d seemed happy with it, but you never knew.
She let her shoes click a little harder as she walked over the hardwood floor, so she wouldn’t startle Nathan. She followed his voice to the office. From the doorway, she could see his back in the desk chair.
“Umm-hmm.”
Her gaze went to the phone on the desk. Still in the cradle. Nathan’s hands were at his sides. He was sitting in the dark, looking straight ahead, at the wall.
Tanya rubbed down the hairs on her neck. He was using his cell phone earpiece, that was all. Guys and their gadgets. She stepped into the room and looked at his ear. No headset.
“Nathan?”
He jumped, wheeling so fast that the chair skidded across the floor. He caught it and gave a laugh, shaking his head sharply as he reached for the desk lamp.
“Must have dozed off. Not used to staring at a computer screen all day anymore.”
He rubbed his eyes, and blinked up at her.
“Everything okay, hon?” he asked.
She said it was and gave him a rundown of what she’d found, and they had a good laugh at that, all the shopkeepers rushing in with their stories once they realized the tourism potential.
“Did you find anything?”
“I did indeed.” He flourished a file folder stuffed with printouts. “The Rowe family. Nineteen seventy-eight. Parents, two children, and the housekeeper, all killed by the seventeen-year-old son.”
“Under the influence of Satan?”
“Rock music. Close enough.” Nathan grinned. “It was the seventies. Kid had long hair, played in a garage band, partial to Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. Clearly a Satanist.”
“Works for me.”
Tanya took the folder just as the phone started to ring. The caller ID showed the inspector’s name. She set the pages aside and answered as Nathan whispered that he’d start dinner.
There was a problem with the inspection—the guy had forgotten to check a few things, and he had to come back on the weekend, when they were supposed to be away scouring estate auctions and flea markets to furnish the house. The workmen would be there, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. And on Monday, the inspector would leave for two weeks in California with the wife and kids.
Not surprisingly, Nathan offered to stay. Jumped at the chance, actually. His enthusiasm for the project didn’t extend to bargain hunting for Victorian beds. He joked that he’d have enough work to do when she wanted her treasures refinished. So he’d stay home and supervise the workers, which was probably wise anyway.
It was an exhausting but fruitful weekend. Tanya crossed off all the necessities and even a few wish-list items, like a couple of old-fashioned washbasins.
When she called Nathan an hour before arriving home, he sounded exhausted and strained, and she hoped the workers hadn’t given him too much trouble. Sometimes they were like her grade-five pupils, needing a watchful eye and firm, clear commands. Nathan wasn’t good at either. When she pulled into the drive and found him waiting on the porch, she knew there was trouble.
She wasn’t even out of the car before the workmen filed out, toolboxes in hand.
“We quit,” the foreman said.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“The house. Everything about it is wrong.”
“Haunted,” an older man behind him muttered.
The younger two shifted behind their elders, clearly uncomfortable with this old-man talk, but not denying it, either.
“All right,” she said slowly. “What happened?”
They rhymed off a litany of haunted-house tropes—knocking inside the walls, footsteps in the attic, whispering voices, flickering lights, strains of music.
“Music?”
“Seventies rock music,” Nathan said, rolling his eyes behind their backs. “Andy found those papers in my office, about the Rowe family.
“You should have warned us,” the foreman said, scowling. ”Working where something like that happened? It isn’t right. The place should be burned to the ground.”
“It’s evil,” the older man said. “Evil soaked right into the walls. You can feel it.”
The only thing Tanya felt was the recurring sensation of being trapped in a B movie. Did people actually talk like this? First the old woman. Then the townspeople. Now the contractors.
They argued, of course, but the workmen were leaving. When Tanya started to threaten, Nathan pulled her aside. The work was almost done, he said. They could finish up themselves, save some money, and guilt these guys into cutting their bill even more.
Tanya hated to back down, but he had a point. She negotiated 20 percent off for the unfinished work and another 15 for the inconvenience—unless they wanted her spreading the word that grown men were afraid of ghosts. They grumbled, but agreed.
The human mind can be as impressionable as a child. Tanya might not believe in ghosts, but the more stories she heard, the more her mind began to believe, with or without her permission. Drafts became cold spots. Thumping pipes became the knocks of unseen hands. The hisses and sighs of the old furnace became the whispers and moans of those who could not rest. She knew better: that was the worst of it. She’d hear a pipe thump and she’d jump, heart pounding, even as she knew there was a logical explanation.
Nathan wasn’t helping. Every time she jumped, he’d laugh. He’d goof off and play ghost, sneaking into the bathroom while she was in the shower and writing dirty messages in the condensation on the mirror. She was spooked; he thought it was adorable.
The joking and teasing she could take. It was the other times, the ones when she’d walk into a room and he’d be standing or sitting, staring into nothing, confused, when he’d start out of his reverie, laughing about daydreaming, but nervously, like he didn’t exactly know what he’d been doing.
They were three weeks from opening when she returned from picking up the brochures and, once again, found the house in darkness. This time, the hall light worked—it’d been nothing more sinister than a burned-out bulb before. And this time she didn’t call Nathan’s name, but crept through the halls looking for him, feeling silly, and yet . . .
When she approached the kitchen, she heard a strange rasping sound. She followed it and found Nathan standing in the twilight, staring out the window, hands moving, a skritch-skritch filling the silence.
The fading light caught something in his hands—a flash of silver that became a knife, a huge butcher’s knife moving back and forth across a whetting stone.
“N-Nathan?”
He jumped, nearly dropping the knife, then stared down at it, frowning. A sharp shake of his head and he laid the knife and stone on the counter, then flipped on the kitchen light.
“Really not something I should be doing in the dark, huh?” He laughed and moved a carrot from the counter to the cutting board, picked up the knife, then stopped. “Little big for the job, isn’t it?”
She moved closer. “Where did it come from?”
Two nights later, Tanya was startled awake and bolted up, blinking hard, hearing music. She rubbed her ears, telling herself it was a dream, but she could definitely hear something. She turned to Nathan’s side of the bed. Empty.
Okay, he couldn’t sleep, so he’d gone downstairs. She could barely hear the music, so he was being considerate, keeping it low, probably doing paperwork in the office.
Even as she told herself this, though, she kept envisioning the knife. The big butcher’s knife that seemed to have come from nowhere.
Nonsense. Her sister had given them a new set, and Nathan did most of the cooking, so it wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t recognized it. But as hard as she tried to convince herself, she just kept seeing Nathan standing in the twilight, sharpening that knife, the skritch-skritch getting louder, the blade getting sharper.
Damn her sister. And not for the knives, either. Last time they’d been up, her sister and boyfriend had insisted on picking the night’s video. The Shining. New caretaker at inn is possessed by a murderous ghost and hacks up his wife. There was a reason Tanya didn’t watch horror movies, and now she remembered why.
She turned on the bedside lamp, then pushed out of bed and flicked on the overhead light. The hall one went on, too. So did the one leading downstairs. Just being careful, of course. You never knew where a stray hammer or board could be lying around.
As she descended the stairs, the music got louder, the thump of the bass and the wail of the singer. Seventies’ heavy-metal music. Hadn’t the Rowe kid—? She squeezed her eyes shut and forced the thought out. Like she’d know seventies heavy metal from modern stuff anyway. And hadn’t Nathan picked up that new AC/DC disk last month? Before they came to live here. He was probably listening to that, not realizing how loud it was.
When she got downstairs, though, she could feel the bass vibrating through the floorboards. Great. He couldn’t sleep, so he was poking through those boxes in the basement.