With Strings Attached

by A. A. Vacco

  Inside the Valor home, the fireplace snapped and popped in the room just past the formal. Mr. Valor placed Kat directly in front of its warmth. Mrs. Valor brought out a teapot and started to boil some water as her husband layered blankets around Kat. Kat's shivering slowed. Mr. Valor sat next to her and started to ask some basic questions about what happened. Still without expression, he studied her as they spoke.

  Once the tea was ready, Elle tried to help Mrs. Valor carry it. However, her trembling hands wouldn't keep the tea in the cups. "Here, Dear. Go sit by Kat and Gregory," Mrs. Valor said as she took the tray and followed Elle to rejoin the others.

  The charred smell of wood and orange glow from the fireplace filled the room. Elle sat on the other side of Kat and stared into the blaze. The warmth embraced them and Elle felt herself calming down. Mr. Valor maintained his gaze toward both girls with a stern expression. Mrs. Valor passed around the cups and they all sipped their tea in silence for the next twenty minutes or so. Finally, Mr. Valor asked them how they felt.

  Kat nodded. She was still freaked out, but physically she warmed up enough to stop shaking. Elle gave a small smile and a head nod as well. She still kept replaying the incident in her mind and tried to rationalize, or at least fully interpret what happened. "Mr. Valor?” asked Elle, "the house's incidents were always, well, predictable and harmless. I mean, right?"

  Mr. Valor sucked in his cheeks and glanced at his wife, who looked down at her tea. Back at Elle, he said, "That, for the most part is accurate, Elle. But recently the activity seems more...aggressive. We lost a lot of staff from last season as a result. Once they were gone and the house wasn't occupied full time, the movements and more threatening behavior died down. Victoria and I went and checked the house daily. It seemed to go back to the normal antics."

  "Why didn't you tell us this?” Kat sputtered. "I could've been killed and I don't even know by what!" Her hair stuck out in all directions and rage illuminated her blue eyes. Kat twisted around to face Mrs. Valor.

  Mrs. Valor leaned back and met the daggers in her accuser’s eyes with a thin smile. How so much tenacity fit inside that small of a person, she'd never know. Elle scooted to the side, sensing the fury. She’s justifiably upset, thought Elle, but it was still terrifying. Mr. Valor remained silent and still.

  "Oh, Honey, I--,"

  "You what? We've been here for over a month! You've had plenty of time to warn us. What if that killed me? Us? That's on you!"

  "Well, actually," Mrs. Valor stared back into her tea, "those waivers you signed removed any liability from us in the event of anything happening to you on the property."

  Kat reddened. She remembered reading it, but assumed it was a standard work form. In a low, steady voice, she uttered, "Then effective immediately, I resign."

  Elle rolled her eyes. "Of course, we quit. Who in their right mind would return there? No one should go in that house! No one from the public, no workers; waivers or not, you really want people’s deaths on your consciences?"

  Mrs. Valor waved her hand. "Of course not, and we considered closing it off for good last year. If we thought things were still as active as they were then, we wouldn't have even considered reopening."

  "What happened last summer?” asked Elle.

  Mrs. Valor popped on a cheerful smile. "Oh, my, well I can't remember exactly. The workers wouldn't give specifics, but I know that something scared them more than it had in years past. Gregory went over there to check the place out and didn't notice anything we hadn't seen before. But the men we hired at the time were a little shaken and slightly banged up. I think they were overreacting a little, to tell you the truth. Probably drinking, too. But they made such a racket and left us empty staffed that same day."

  "I thought you said it was more threatening than usual," cut in Kat.

  "Well, according to the work group. They were with us for almost a decade, so it was unusual that they were so frightened...," her voice faded.

  Kat and Elle exchanged looks. It was a small town. Usually if something happened, within a few days everyone knew about it. They were a little concerned if something really did happen that the Valors were taking great care to hide it.

  They sat without saying much a few moments more. Mr. Valor finally stood up and announced that it was late. He offered to drive them home and talk with their parents, should they have any questions. He went on about taking full responsibility, but Elle lost interest. Her mind was back on the mansion again. "We rode our bikes here," she interrupted.

  "We can place them in the back of the truck, not to worry," said Mr. Valor.

  Elle always expected Mr. Valor to cruise around in some type of luxury sedan, but he took great pride in his silver pick-up truck. They loaded up the bikes and crossed the train tracks toward the girls' homes.

  14

  Over the next few weeks, the town learned that the Valors locked the doors to the Marionette Mansion for good. Initially, Kat and Elle were branded as the Girls that Cried Wolf. Since no one ever experienced anything more than the anticipated characteristics from the home, the locals assumed the teens were craving attention and fabricated their entire experience.

  Being familiar and unfazed by the small-town frame of mind, Elle took the liberty to do some research the weeks succeeding that nightmare of an evening. She went to the library in Uptown and started her investigation by looking back on newspaper articles regarding the mansion. Nothing unusual stemmed from the past five years, so she redirected her focus on the maintenance crew hired during the fall of 1983. Elle knew of two companies that serviced the small region. One was local, and all the employees lived in town. If it was this group, they did a phenomenal job keeping whatever happened a secret. The other was a larger company that operated on contract work based in Chicago. They’d send crews to the rural regions on a paid stint of time, usually a season, rotating workers to different locations over all of Illinois. Uptown has a hotel, recalled Elle, and that’s likely where anyone out of the area stayed if they weren’t there to visit family or friends.

  The company, Monte’s Maintenance & More, had a 1-800 number listed when Elle looked them up in the yellow pages. Worth a shot, she thought.

  The library had a payphone just before reaching the exit doors. Elle dropped two quarters in the slot and glanced at the number she had scribbled on her hand. She punched them into the dial pad and waited for an answer. The automated recording advised her to push ‘1’ to learn more about services offered, then ‘2’ to speak to a team member.

  “Good afternoon and thank you for calling Monte’s. This is Jackson, with whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” Jackson’s voice had a thick, northern accent. Elle figured Wisconsin or Minnesota were his likely places of origin. Canada, if he started throwing in ‘eh’ after his questions.

  “Uh, hi. I’m Elle. I’m calling with a couple of follow-up questions about a group of workers you sent to a town in central Illinois last winter.”

  She heard some papers shuffling on the other end. “Elle, hello, can you tell me how you are connected with this crew and area? We don’t give out personal information regarding our employees, unless they work directly for you or your company.”

  Elle paused. “Well, I work at the same place they worked at last year. There were some complaints filed, and I’m doing a follow-up to see how these complaints were handled. I’m, uh, from human resources. Trying to make sure the same events don’t repeat themselves with our new staff.”

  More shuffling. Elle worried he didn’t believe her. Why should he? If she kept muttering um, and uh, there’s no way he’d tell her much. Then, “Ms. Elle, please give me your location and the place of hire.”

  “Millerton, Illinois, at the Marionette Mansion.”

  The shuffling stopped and she heard Jackson take in a quick breath through his nose. Apparently, this was already a flagged issue.

  “Elle, how are you connected with the Marionette Mansion again? Human Resources?”

  Elle t
hought for a moment. She assumed if this was a situation under current investigation, she didn’t want her name attached to it. She also knew that they probably had more information about the place than she did. “Well, unofficially, yes. A few of my distant relatives own the property and I just began working there for them. We ran into some trouble with the place and a few other employees, and I’m looking back on past hires to see if there were other similar instances.”

  “Ok, Elle, and what is your full name?”

  “Elizabeth. Elizabeth Jones. I’m from, uh, Chicago and moved here over the, um, summer.”

  “Ok Ms. Jones. Relax, let me see what I can do to help.”

  You’re a terrible liar, Elle thought.

  She heard Jackson suck in his breath, then say, “Alrighty. Here’s what I have. Millerton, 1983. Looks like we sent a total of ten employees down there for ninety days, or three months if you’re bad at math like me. Five of the guys we sent were with Lawn and Exterior, three were women from our Interior Cleaning department, and two, a guy and a gal, were from Operations, meaning they’d help run the business with answering phones, taking payments, back office type stuff. Sounds like the place was short staffed at the time.”

  “Wow, you guys do everything, don’t you?”

  “Well, not really. We mostly maintain properties and clean the interior with a maid service we contract out for. But the woman that hired us seemed desperate to get anyone to help her run the business side, at least with some secretary type stuff, so we ended up sending two of the company’s interns. We said they were from Operations because technically that’s what they were training for here at the main hub.”

  Elle nodded and said, “Ok, so you sent ten people total, and three were cleaning ladies hired from a separate company through you?”

  “Correct. We use that group a lot, though, so they’re used to working with us. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Alright, and did any of them file any sort of complaint after their time working at the mansion?”

  Jackson paused. “Elle, did your relatives tell you anything about what happened last year?”

  “No. Well, they said that the workers felt threatened by the house," she paused, “Two, they said they lost two people.”

  “Um, Elle, you seem a little young, and I don’t want to frighten you, but that is true. We lost two people at that job site.”

  “Meaning they quit.”

  “No," Jackson lowered his voice, “Elle, they passed away. The whole thing was investigated inside and out.”

  “Who—which ones?” Elle’s voice started to shake.

  “Sadly, the interns. Both of them.”

  “How? How did they die? Didn’t anyone see or hear anything?” Elle’s voice echoed through the foyer and she felt her cheeks flushed. This wasn’t anything close to the diluted story the Valors fed to her.

  “Shhh, Elle I can hear you, you don’t need to yell. Let’s see. We received several reports off the record. The story most told is that the interns were closing up the house for the night. The cleaning crew left already, and the one man left taking care of the grounds had just finished mowing the lawn when he heard screaming from the inside of the house. He rushed inside. He had a rifle with him. He saw what looked like the pair fighting. The woman was sitting, strangling the man, who also had his hands around his own neck. The assumption is that he was trying to pry the woman’s fingers off his throat. When the guy with the gun saw this, he tried to help pull the woman’s hands off, but couldn’t, so he fired the rifle to try and scare her. Unfortunately, he shot her in the chest.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yes. Not pretty. But it doesn’t end there. Once the woman fell off the guy she was strangling, the man with the rifle noticed him still trying to rip something away from his throat. The guy with the gun looked behind the struggling man on the ground, down the room a bit, and saw a taut string. The string was attached to one of the marionette dolls, and this doll seemed to be pulling the strings with a fixed menacing grin.”

  As gruesome as it all was, Elle stifled a laugh at Jackson’s delivery of that final comment. “What the...," she managed to say with a giggle.

  “Yea, I didn’t say I think it’s all true but--,”

  “No, no, not that, it’s just, wow. That’s really messed up.” Elle regained her composure, suppressing another laugh.

  “The man with the rifle ran toward the doll pulling the string and kicked it toward the guy it was choking, giving some slack in the string. The intern loosened the noose around his neck and ran at the lawn care guy, assuming he was the culprit. The lawn guy didn’t want to hurt him, I guess, but they struggled and the guy with the rifle ended up shooting the other intern too, because he thought the intern would kill him if he didn’t do it first.”

  “This sounds like a really dark comedy sketch.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Elle fumbled over a few words, then said, “I’m sorry, I mean, the doll strangling the guy with its strings. That just seems so bizarre. And then some other guy comes in just shooting people? What’s up with that? If he didn’t have the gun at all, those two would still be alive, most likely.”

  “How do you know?” asked Jackson. “There was still something attacking the male intern, causing them all to panic in the first place.”

  “Yea, I guess. It’s just that the house was never violent before that winter.”

  Jackson flipped through some more paperwork. “It looks like we’ve been sending workers to that house every winter for at least five years. The lawn crew...all the same guys. No incidents prior to this one reported. They all do say the house does some weird things. Like, it is haunted and no one else seems to think that’s unusual.”

  “Well, it isn’t when things aren’t attacking you," said Elle. She thought a moment, then asked, “What happened to the guy doing the lawn work? Where is he?”

  “Long term care facility. They tried him for double homicide after everything panned out. But after a full investigation of the property, it was obvious things were active and the story he told was plausible. Mind you, this entire account came from him, since no one else was there. The owners of the property showed up after the second gunshot sounded. The man that pulled the trigger kept claiming he was in a trance when it all happened. They found him to be temporarily insane, and sent him to a mental health facility so nothing like this would happen again.”

  “But what if it wasn’t insanity? What if he was just so freaked out by what happened that he panicked?”

  “And shot two people? That’s one hell of a panic attack. In any event, he took the plea bargain, and currently undergoes treatment for psychosis.”

  “What is his name? Can I find him and talk to him?” asked Elle.

  “That I cannot tell you," said Jackson. “Since the incident, we aren’t allowed to give out personal information regarding anyone in that case unless it is court ordered or released to the family members of the deceased. Company policy.”

  “Alright," Elle conceded, “Thanks for all of your help. Hopefully the incident won’t repeat itself.”

  “For the sake of everyone that goes to that place, I hope so too.”

  Elle hung up and jotted a few things down in her notebook. She then went back into the library and thumbed through newspapers that weren’t local. Before she only focused on articles about Millerton. She didn’t consider looking at incidents in Chicago. The company was in Chicago, and if the Valors paid off the local press, that’s where the story might be printed.

  The papers weren’t as private as Monte’s. Jackson couldn’t release any personal information, but the article about the event sure did. Elle was certain she found one about Millerton, even though it only referenced an Illinois small town.

  Central, IL: 11/5/1983. Two people slain while working at a museum in a rural town just three hours southwest of Chicago, IL. Janice Cadwater, 23, and Marcus Wills, 22, were shot to death by armed gunman Byron East
on, 42. According to police, Easton claims the paranormal workings of the museum led to the strangling of Wills. In his confusion, he attempted to rescue the man and woman being attacked by one of the dolls in the museum, but accidentally shot both of them. Easton claims he was under extreme duress at the time, and his actions were unintentional. After being psychologically evaluated, Easton will be detained in an undisclosed medical facility for treatment.

  It was one of the most ridiculous sounding articles Elle had ever read. She made a copy and stuffed it in the notebook. She then packed up her things and headed out.

  She went straight to Alex’s house. Elle knew Alex believed her and Kat’s rendition of their traumatic night, despite popular opinion. “Ellbea forget the townies," he told her a few days after everyone else found out. “They have nothing better to focus on, so they make crap up to stay amused. Besides, they’ll forget about the whole thing in like, a week or two.”

  Elle knew he was right, but she hated being mocked. There was only one person who hated it more than Elle, and that person was snuggled up next to Alex with her head in his lap when Elle burst through the front door.

  “Geez, knock much?” said Kat, not bothering to look up.

  “Elle, what up home fry?” beamed Alex, arm still resting on Kat’s waist.

  Elle rolled her eyes. “Alex that’ll never catch on. Just stop.”

  “Oh, it might. You never know. I’m a pretty trendy guy.”

  “You’re not, but it’s cute that you try," smiled Kat, sitting up to give him a kiss on the cheek.

  Elle didn’t mind being a third wheel to them; they still included her in most of the stuff they did together, and Elle never felt unwanted. Unless of course, she showed up at an inopportune moment. If this was one of those times, Elle chose to ignore that it was. She plopped on the couch opposite from Kat and told them what she discovered at the library, including her phone conversation with Jackson. She handed Kat a copy of the news article. Kat unfolded it and she and Alex scanned over the contents.