by K. J. Emrick
“Oh, Dell.” Rosie’s eyes were wide in her round face. There was flour in her light brown hair and streaked across both cheeks. Not an uncommon look for her but now, to me, it made her look pale as a ghost.
Or maybe that was just my uneasiness running wild.
“Rosie, what’s going on?”
My staff had the good sense to wander away when they realized I’d come back. We all had jobs to do, after all, even if the chimney was about to fall in on us. That made me grimace. “The chimney’s not about to fall in on us, is it?”
Rosie shrugged her shoulders, finally clasping her hands together over her rotund belly to keep them from fidgeting. She’s never been a tiny woman, and now that she was pregnant and eating for two she’d gotten a mite heavier still. “George will have to explain it to ya,” she told me. “All I know is he’s been at this all morning, grumbling and carrying on about the bricks coming loose in there. Have you ever heard the like of it? Even made us move old Governor Collins.”
That nearly brought a smile to my face. It was something of a running joke around the Inn that George insisted on keeping a framed portrait of Lieutenant Governor David Collins in the Inn. First administrator of our great country, I’ve heard George say any number of times. Deserves to be hung in the Pine Lake Inn.
Others might say that Collins just deserved to be hung, but George stuck to his guns on it, and I let him have his way. He tried for months to find a way to hang the painting on that wall to the left of the fireplace, but the Inn doesn’t want anything hung there. I’ve never known why, but absolutely nothing can stay on that wall. Not even Christmas decorations. They all fall off. So, we compromised and put the portrait of David Collins on a three-legged easel, off to the side, leaving the wall bare…
Oh.
The bricks are falling out from the fireplace on the side closest to that wall, where nothing will ever stay up. I took a breath, and let that sink in. There has to be a connection there.
But what?
George swore, loudly, and sat up in the fireplace. Only, he misjudged the gap and banged his head against the top edge, flopping over onto his back again, his hand up at his scalp.
“George?” I asked, leaning over to look in. “You okay?”
“Oh I’m just happy as a grouse, I am,” he growled. “Came in here to get the fireplace ready for winter and I found some of the bricks was loose. I figured I could patch ‘em up, but the more I tried the more they got loose, and now… well.”
He scooted out wiping soot on his overalls, careful of his head this time, and gestured with the hand not holding his bleeding scalp. “See for your own self.”
George is a dear old friend of mine, and he’s worked himself hard to keep my Inn tiptop. If he says there’s something seriously wrong then I believe him. Still, I know I’m going to have to see it for myself. It is my Inn, after all. Makes it my responsibility.
With a breath to steady myself I got down on all fours. The bricks were rough on my bare knees but I didn’t care to slide into the fireplace like George had done, on my backside. We keep it swept out during the summer months but it’s still black in there and dusty. Moving like a dog on my hands and knees, I braced myself to see what’s what.
“I wouldn’t go in there, if I were you.”
The voice was a gravelly rumble, like Darth Vader with a sore throat, and I knew immediately who would be standing over on the stairs at the back wall. The stairs lead up to the second floor guest rooms and he must have come down to see what all the commotion was about. Mister Brewster, our most permanent resident here at the Pine Lake Inn.
Sure enough. There he stood, in his usual black slacks and black shirt, his shaggy black hair falling just so as always. The stairs followed the back wall up to the next landing, which put them sideways to us over here at the fireplace, giving Mister Brewster a grand view of what we were doing. His hands were braced on the railing. Those piercing eyes of his watched me with silver-gray intensity.
And here I crouched on all fours, looking up at him. I felt more foolish than I can even say.
“Uh, hello, Mister Brewster.” I stood up again, clapping my hands together to free them of dust. “Um. It’s nothing to worry about. Nothing serious, anyway. Just usual repairs. Right George?”
If I’d been looking for George to back me up in front of one of our repeat tenants, I apparently hadn’t communicated that hope clearly enough. Our handyman shook his head, touching his cut gingerly with his fingertips. “This one’s gonna be beyond me, Dell. Might have to call in someone does this sort of thing for a living. Not the guy we used last time, either. Someone knows what they’re doing.”
Rosie thumped his arm. “Not helping,” she grumped.
“Whatever the case,” Mister Brewster said from his position on the stairs, “I wouldn’t go in there.”
“I appreciate that,” I told him, “but I need to see what I’m dealing with.”
He regarded me for a long moment. Over to the left of the stairs, behind the registration counter, I could see Jack Reese concentrating very intently through some papers on the desk. Our new hire looked nervous. Not that I blamed him. Mister Brewster had that effect on everyone. Then again, I happened to know the forms Jack was so engrossed with had been completed yesterday.
“You should leave such work for someone else,” Mister Brewster told me again, indicating the fireplace with a nod of his head. “Nothing good will come of this.”
Okay. This conversation was doing nothing to ease my nerves. “I’m sure it’s not that bad,” I said, even though I didn’t believe it for a moment. “I’ll let you know if we find anything that will affect your stay.”
I smiled, hoping he would take it for the polite goodbye I meant it to be.
To my good fortune, he did. Without another word he turned and walked up the stairs. Going back to his room, I suppose. I waited for him to be gone before getting back into my puppy dog stance so I could crawl into the low fireplace and take a look at the damage.
The breath caught in my throat when I saw the bricks. Damage, unfortunately, was the right word.
George had worked some of the bricks out entirely. Others were still loose. More than that, though. As I took hold of a brick to try carefully sliding it away from the broken section, it crumbled apart into chunks in my hand. Red grit covered my fingers. It was all unstable. This whole section of the fireplace, the part to the left, was going to have to be replaced.
Now the tears really did fall, although I tried to carefully wipe them away with the back of my hand. This fireplace wasn’t a necessary part of the Inn, to be sure. The kerosene furnace did most of the heating. Especially up in the rooms. Really, it was more decorative than anything. At the same time, I couldn’t leave it like this!
I could see behind the bricks now, and found I was actually looking into the space between the main walls of the building, with the foyer on this side and the outside of the Inn on the other. A gap nearly a meter wide between the two. Was there damage to the walls, too? Was this some kind of rot, or had the bricks been faulty to begin with, or…
Or, or, or. I needed to know more before I could proceed. Time to put on my big girl shoes and just do what needed to be done.
“Hey, George,” I called to him, reaching a hand back. “Did you look into the space here?”
“Hadn’t gotten that far,” he answered me, crouching down with me.
There was something back there. Couldn’t really see what. “Lend me your torch?”
I felt the heavy cylinder pressed into my palm, and turned it on inside the fireplace, shining it through the gap in the bricks. The space between the walls was revealed to me. I angled the torch’s beam up, as high as I could see. Insulation, four-by-four supports, dust, and cobwebs.
I didn’t see any damage to the wall itself, which was good, because if I was going to—
Wait. What’s that right there?
I squinted, changing the angle of the beam, catching the edg
e of something that looked like black tarp at the bottom of the space, just beyond the bricks, right in front of me. Now what could that be?
Squeezing myself in tighter, on my knees, allowed me to carefully reach an arm through the space beyond the bricks. Some more of them fell away as I did, giving me even more room to maneuver. My fingertips could just reach the edges of the tarp. It was rough and crinkly, and as I got a hold on it and pulled I could tell it was covering something.
Now what?
A gust of wind whistled down through the chimney above, cold against the back of my neck.
Swallowing back against a sudden dryness in my throat I got my fingers into one edge of the tarp and tugged it this way and that, until I figured out which way it unwrapped.
It was kind of like peeling away Christmas wrapping paper, or newspaper from knick knacks that have been stored away for ages. I still couldn’t figure what it was in there, or why anyone would lay something like this inside my wall, or how it had even gotten in here.
One more tug, and the torch went out.
After a moment to let my heart calm down, I banged the end of the torch against the floor until the beam came on again. Must be the batteries.
Shining the beam inside the wall space again, I pulled at the tarp.
Dark eye sockets stared at me from a desiccated face. The mouth hung open, lips and skin so dried up that the jaw had been pulled back in a perpetual, silent scream.
My scream was much, much louder.
I’ve mentioned that I’ve seen ghosts before, right? Sure I have. Even had a few… well I guess you’d say them visions of murder and death. Been shot at twice myself. Saw my best friend dead in her room in this Inn.
My life in Lakeshore hasn’t exactly been normal.
So, you might be wondering why a woman with all my experience with the darker side of life would be screaming her fool head off at the sight of a dead man in a tarp.
I’d like to say it was just because it surprised me. That it was such a shock that, for a moment, I lost my senses. I know they heard me all the way up on the third floor, because suddenly the foyer was full of guests, watching me shake on the little bricked section in front of the fireplace with my arms wrapped around my knees.
That’s not all it was, though. Maybe it was the way this dead body had decayed. Maybe it was knowing that somehow, this corpse had been in my wall for I don’t know how long.
The wall that never let anything stay on it. Not with tape, not with nails, not even with screws. Everything always fell away from that wall. I’m beginning to think I know why. Spirits have their own way of communicating with the living. Sometimes they can speak to people like me, even if we end up using a sort of sign language and playing charades half the time. Or, the ghosties have a way of moving things about to make themselves known.
This poor soul in my wall had been doing that for a long time. I just didn’t know enough to listen.
There was one thing more. I couldn’t recognize the face in there. It was just too far gone. Still, there seemed to be something… a connection… a feeling… I don’t know. It tugged at me as soon as I moved the tarp aside and saw the face, lying in there on its side in the space between the inside and outside walls. I can’t explain it. Couldn’t put it into words if I tried.
The best I could do, was scream.
Rosie handed me a cup of steaming black tea and I accepted it in shaky hands. Somebody’d had the good sense to move me out into the dining room and sit me in a proper chair. The police had been called, the guests had been assured that there was nothing for them to worry about, and the fireplace had been blocked off with a bunch of folded cardboard boxes that George had pulled out of the recycling. There was nothing left to do for now.
Except catch my breath.
“Lord above,” Rosie breathed. “Can ya believe this?”
She plopped her girth down in the chair next to me, careful of her belly and its precious cargo, fanning herself with one of the linen napkins from the table. My friend is a strong woman, and she’s been through a few things here at the Inn just like I have. She’s nearly as shook up by this as I am.
The tea is excellent, and sweet, and I took a few sips just to give myself something to do. My thoughts have been poor company, I can tell you that. This Inn was my dream. Mine and Rosie’s. We graduated Uni together and came here to buy this place. It seemed like everything we wanted. Maybe we’d never get rich, but the town was nice and the area was beautiful and the people made us feel welcome. For the most part.
Then, only recently, the secrets started to come out. The previous owners of the Inn had died right here on the premises under suspicious circumstances. I had murdered men buried in my back yard. Organized crime running rampant, and corruption in the police force.
Ghosts walked the halls of my Inn. I’d accepted that as part of my life. My good friend Jess’s spirit was a comfort to have around. Lachlan Halliburton was a nuisance, always changing his appearance to suit his mood. Even my dead husband’s ghost had started finding ways to reach through to me. Three ghosts, so far.
Was I going to have to add another to that list?
My thoughts naturally wandered to my husband. Ex-husband, in point of fact. An uncontested divorce isn’t that hard to get when your husband abandons you and goes missing for years. Then, sometime between when he left me and last year, he’d gotten himself dead and started to reach out for me from the other side. So, I suppose that makes him my dead ex-husband.
Richard. How I loved that man. Hated him, too, when he left me with no explanation. On my birthday, thank you very much. Hard to keep hating a man when he’s dead, I guess, so I’ve given him a little bit of forgiveness. One of these days, I’m going to have to get round to telling our son and daughter that their father is dead. Haven’t quite figured out how to do that, seeing as how they don’t know I can talk to ghosts. I’m not inclined to bring that topic up, either.
As if she could hear me thinking about such things, my ghostly friend Jess slid into a chair at the next table over. I smiled, to let her know her company was a welcome sight. Jess was always a looker, and her beauty transcended the veil of death in her ripped jeans and her t-shirt, her long black hair pulled up over one shoulder. She switched it up sometimes, appearing with her natural blonde, or in an elegant dress. She’d lived a double life, my friend had, and it reflected in how she appeared to me.
My free hand found the unicorn necklace I always wore around my neck. The intricate little wooden carving on its leather string had been Jess’s last gift to me. I wore it as a good luck charm now, although I was beginning to wonder if I’d be better off with a rabbit’s foot.
Jess pursed her lips, her eyes sad. Guess she heard about me finding the body behind the fireplace. Why didn’t she tell me about it? She must have known it was there, being dead herself and all. A heads-up would’ve been nice, or one of her messages in the steam on my bathroom mirror, even.
I’d like to talk to her about this, but Rosie is sitting right here and she doesn’t need to think that her business partner has gone nutters.
So I changed my smile to a glare sent over the rim of my teacup instead. She folded her arms across her chest, arching her head as if to say it wasn’t her fault.
Well, that was debatable. It was something I’d get into with her when we were alone and I could give her a piece of my mind.
“Dell?” Rosie said to me. “Sure you’re all right?”
“I will be,” I promised, “once the new senior sergeant gets here. What are the guests saying?”
She scoffed and tossed a hand through the air. “I swear to ya, Dell, people come here hoping to see something bad happen. Half of them out there were snapping pics with their mobiles and the other half was chatting away on theirs to rellies or friends or Lord knows who, telling them all about the excitement. Love a duck, but I can’t figure people out sometimes.”
“Rosie!”
“Sorry, sorry. Excuse my langu
age, but really Dell. What if it’d been one of their loved ones in there? Hmm? What would they have done then?”
That’s a good point. I don’t know what I would have done if that body had belonged to someone I knew. Probably be in a worse state than I am right now, anyways.
“Think we’ll have to shut down the Inn?” Rosie asked.
I could hear the hidden anxiety in that question. Rosie’s husband, Josh Ryan, worked his fingers to the bone to provide for them, and Rosie made herself a livable wage here to boot, but now they had a baby on the way and if this place shut down even for a few days it meant no pay for either of us. I’d be fine for a while, but then I wasn’t the one about to have a new mouth to feed in just four months.
“I wish I knew, Rosie. It will depend on what they have to do remove that poor man. If they have to open the wall up, then I don’t know what kind of structural damage we might be looking at. It just… depends, I guess.”
She frowned down at the table, fidgeting with the layout of the silverware. “It’s not right,” she muttered. “The way they’re gawking at a dead man’s grave out there. It just ain’t right.”
Across from us, Jess rolled her eyes. People staring had never been an issue for her, and that’s a fact. She’d never shied away from attention while she’d been alive.
I had to agree with Rosie, though. I suppose there was nothing we could do about it either way. Besides, all the excitement we had around here certainly did keep people coming to us and making reservations and spending their money in Rosie’s dining room.
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see one of those ghost hunter shows come to the Inn soon. Now, wouldn’t that be something?