Kill Creek
Page 29
“Yes,” the strange little man said, “I know who all of you are.” He locked eyes with each of the writers as he spoke their names:
“Sam McGarver. T.C. Moore. Daniel Slaughter.”
He kept his grip on Sam’s hand, refusing to let go. The man’s fingers twitched with excitement.
“I am in awe of every one of you. The respect you command, the power your words hold over your readers. It must be a thrill to know you possess such talent, yes? I have become somewhat of an expert on you these past few months. I have read everything each of you has ever written.”
“Bullshit.”
Sam turned to Daniel, surprised that the curse had come from him and not Moore.
Adudel’s crooked smile stretched wider. “Oh no, Mr. Slaughter, I certainly have. Even by you, and that is, what? Over forty books? Slim volumes, but an impressive body of work nonetheless.
“And, Mr. Wainwright, well, I am a big fan of WrightWire. The power you wield, the way you turn people on to even the most obscure works of art. It’s very, very impressive.”
Have they met before? Sam wondered. The way Adudel was looking at Wainwright gave the impression that they had. There was a familiarity there that gave Sam pause.
Wainwright’s expression betrayed nothing. In the harsh light of the white room, his face looked even more artificial, a man-made machine passing as human.
“Then you saw our project last fall,” he said. “And you know why we’re here.”
Adudel’s jagged smile began to twitch, much like the fingers still held in Sam’s hand. Adudel did not want the idle chitchat to end. He was thoroughly enjoying this moment.
“You’re here . . . Well, you’re here because you believe I know things about that house that others do not, yes?”
Yes, Sam thought. Yes. Holy hell, yes, I hope so.
Grasping Sam’s hand tighter, Adudel grunted softly and pulled himself up from his chair. His face was only inches from Sam’s.
“I believe I can bring some clarity to this situation,” he said. “But first, tea.”
Adudel poured them each a steaming cup of oolong tea in ornate hand-painted teacups. He stared at them with those unblinking pinprick eyes, not bothering to glance once at the teapot in his hand or the cup into which he poured.
Sam sipped the amber liquid, earthy hints of roasted wood rolling over his tongue. “So?” he asked, intentionally letting the word hang in the air.
Grasping his own cup in both hands, Adudel blew a couple cool breaths over the surface of his tea before taking a hesitant sip. Steam rose from the cup and curled around his face like smoke.
“The house,” he began, “was nothing more than that. A house. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
Is he serious? Sam thought. Did we come all this way for nothing?
He looked around at the group, all exchanging confused glances.
Sam spoke for the others. “Then how do you explain—”
“The experiences?” Adudel grinned into his tea. “Perhaps I should elaborate, yes?”
“Fucking yes, yes, elaborate,” Moore spat, reddish irritation rising to her cheeks.
Adudel’s beady eyes shrank behind his saucer-like glasses. Holding the teacup in one hand, he reached out for his cane and shifted his weight to it. “In the beginning. That’s how all great stories start, yes? The first line of the Gospel of John reads, ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ In our case, the word came second, for our tale starts, ‘In the beginning, there was the house.’ May I ask . . . have you read my book?”
All in attendance nodded.
“Then you know the general history.” He drank his tea. “Joshua Goodman settled the land in the mid-eighteen hundreds, built his dream home a stone’s throw from the thriving town of Lawrence, and he and his secret love, Alma Reed, settled in to live out the rest of their lives in peace. Only one problem: Alma was black. A former slave. Not the best time in history to be a woman of color, not that there’s ever been a best time in our nation’s history. So while Quantrill’s men stormed and burned Lawrence, a band of five rode out to the Goodman estate, shot Goodman in the gut, and dragged Alma from the house. Now, if you’ve read up on your pulp crime novels, you’ll know that a shot to the gut is not an instant kill. It’s a slow and miserable death. Buoyed by the need to protect his love, Goodman probably could have hobbled into the yard and put up a fight, which is why his attackers made sure to put a bullet into each of his knees. So there lies Joshua Goodman, staring through his open front door as that rogue band of William Quantrill’s men first raped his beloved Alma, then strung her from a branch in that twisted old beech tree. You can imagine his view—her legs kicking beneath her, desperately trying to plant themselves into open air as the sweaty brutes stood around her, laughing their horse laughs and patting one another on their hairy backs. ‘Good job, Enis. Good job, Clyde. We done killed ourselves another slave. Long live Lee and the South’ and all that pickled horseshit.”
“I thought she was already dead when they hung her.” The voice belonged to Daniel.
“Yes, well, that’s one story. But it’s not the truth.”
Adudel paused to take another sip of tea. No one spoke a word. They waited patiently until he continued. The rhythm of the old man’s voice was intoxicating, the pinpoints of his eyes captivating. For the moment, he owned them all.
“As you may remember, days went by before the bodies of Joshua Goodman and Alma Reed were found. A solid week, in fact. You can imagine the horror as that lone rider trotted down Kill Creek Road to find the dark, bloated body of Alma Reed swinging in the breeze, that horrible mixture of honeysuckle and rotting flesh blowing on the wind.
“Even in those days, word traveled fast, and soon every neighbor within ten miles descended upon that house. There was Alma, cut down from the branch, the noose still tight around her swollen neck. There was Goodman, knees a shattered, bloody mess, gut a sopping hole, facedown in a pool of his own blood.
“There are two kinds of ghost stories, as those in your line of work must know: tales of revenge and tales of love cut short. In a way, this was both. So it was destined to become a local legend. The Goodman house, the site of that senseless massacre, where those two poor souls had died gruesome deaths. The details were told in whispers by firelight, first to concerned adults, then to trembling children. The reality of the murders quickly became the stuff of tall tales.
“In the beginning, there was the house. But next, like our good friends in the latter Testament, we encounter . . . the word. Gossip, my friends. Goodman’s sad fate became the talk of the countryside as the word spread. It wasn’t long before the word became sinister. As that house sat alone and abandoned on the banks of Kill Creek, passersby with overactive imaginations began to tell stories of eerie lights in the windows and wails in the night, of specters skulking the grounds and a woman swinging by her neck from a limb in the old beech tree—”
“So they were only stories,” interrupted Wainwright. The illumination from the skylight above made his smooth flesh seem to glow.
“At first.” Adudel leaned harder on his cane. The wooden rod croaked beneath him, a minor threat. “Though gossip has a funny way of becoming fact. Everyone, it seems, had their ghost story to tell. And pretty soon, people started to believe. Lawrence rebuilt itself, but the Goodman estate did not. It fell into disrepair, an abandoned patch of land, an oft-avoided detour on the way to Kansas City.
“Of course, the house did not remain empty forever. Eventually some rube was tricked into buying the place. But it just didn’t feel right. It was cold within those walls. Not the way a home should feel. And then the true sightings began. Apparitions in the night. Wisps of white wandering the halls.”
Sam cocked his head, his brow furrowed as he tried to guess where the strange little man was going. “So the place was haunted after all?”
With a sharp laugh, Adudel set his empty teacup down on the kitchen counter. He tapped his cane against the edge of a low
er cabinet, knocking out a perfect, steady beat. “Allow me to digress,” he said, collecting his thoughts.
Behind him, Sam heard Moore let out a long sigh. The irritable writer was losing patience. Sam held up a finger, signaling her to hang on for just a little while longer.
After a solid minute, the rhythmic tap of his cane ceased and Adudel spoke. “Years ago, a good friend of mine, my lawyer, in fact, was happily married and enjoying a thriving career with a well-respected firm in Manhattan. One day his paralegal retired, and my friend went about the business of hiring someone new to assist him. After weeks of interviews, he settled on a pretty, young girl, fresh out of law school. I’m not saying that her looks didn’t factor into his decision; he was only human, yes?”
Moore arched an eyebrow. “You mean he was a man, yes?”
“A good man,” Adudel insisted, “and I believe his intentions were pure. But that didn’t stop his colleagues from running off at the mouth, especially after he and his pretty, young paralegal spent several weeks working alone, after hours. Word around the firm was that they were sleeping together. He vehemently denied it. He was telling the truth; nothing salacious was occurring. But then his wife began to voice her concern, hounding him when he came home thirty minutes late, interrogating him, scrutinizing his every move. And you know what happened? He ended up sleeping with his pretty, young paralegal. ‘To hell with it,’ he told me. ‘They all said I was doing it, so I figured, why not?’ He got divorced, his pretty, young paralegal moved on to another job, and that was that.”
Adudel took off his glasses and pulled his shirtsleeve over his hand and gave the monstrous lenses a good wiping. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Not a word,” Moore snapped.
“You’re saying that the house on Kill Creek wasn’t haunted until people believed it was haunted.” This was from Daniel, his words flat and distant, an obligatory answer.
Adudel slipped his glasses back on and pointed a bony finger at him. “Precisely.”
“Okay, look,” Sam interrupted. He knew his friends were growing annoyed with the good doctor. But Adudel had been in that house. He had spent time with Rachel Finch. He had written a best-selling book about it. He was perhaps the only person on the planet who could offer them some shred of assistance. “Let’s cut the shit. Something is happening to us.”
Adudel did not respond, only offering Sam a curious smile.
“I get it,” Sam said. “You live for this type of thing. It’s your line of work. But for us . . . we’ve only written around it. It’s never been real. It’s always been fiction. Until now.”
Moore capped this with an “Amen.”
Dr. Adudel gave another throaty chuckle, his amusement with the group boundless.
“Something funny?” These two words from Daniel sent a shiver through Sam. There was menace in them, dull and metallic. It sounded nothing like the man Sam had known last October.
Adudel shook his head, retaining his aloof grin. “It’s just that . . . my book? Phantoms of the Prairie?” His playful smile widened. “It, too, is fiction.”
At first the statement meant nothing. And then the razor-thin blade of its profound simplicity tore them wide open.
I knew it. I can’t believe I thought for one second this little freak could help us, Moore thought.
“I told you all that it was bullshit,” she said loudly. “He’s just jerking us off. He’s wasting our time.”
“Moore—” Sam began.
She cut him off. “No. No, we’re done here. We’re leaving.” She looked at Adudel, not bothering to hide her disgust. “This might be a game to you, but it’s real. For us, it’s real.”
Moore marched toward the hallway, but no one else moved.
“Let’s go,” she ordered. The others were still staring in confusion at Adudel.
Daniel leaned closer to the doctor. “How can it be fiction? You wrote it. You experienced these things. It says it right on the cover: ‘a true story.’ Why would you lie about that? How could you lie?”
Wainwright was slowly shaking his head. Watching him refuse to process what Adudel had said, Moore realized this was how she had felt since the day she’d returned from Kill Creek. No matter how much the inspiration of a fresh story had blinded her, somewhere deep within her, she was shaking her head, thinking, This cannot be. This should not be.
“Why would I lie?” Adudel repeated Daniel’s question. “That may be the most important thing you’ve asked since you arrived. It is, in fact, what your colleague asked me when I first admitted the truth to him.”
Moore frowned. Colleague? What the hell is this crazy bastard talking about?
Behind her, there was the sound of footsteps entering the room.
Moore heard Sam gasp.
Her first thought was, It’s Adudel. He’s messing with us again. It’s another one of his tricks.
She spun around.
This was no trick. This was not an apparition or a delusion.
Sebastian Cole smiled warmly at the group.
“Hello, my friends,” he said.
The moment of silent shock seemed to last forever.
“What . . .” Sam began, unable to make sense of what he was seeing.
He’s okay, he thought, and an overwhelming feeling of relief rushed through him.
Sam hurried over and embraced the old man. Sebastian tentatively returned Sam’s hug, and then pulled away without a word.
“What is it?” Sam asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.
Sebastian opened his mouth to speak, but Adudel cut him off.
“He contacted me several weeks ago, asking if I could discuss the house on Kill Creek. It’s suddenly become a hot topic.” He rolled up onto the balls of his feet, bouncing slightly with excitement. He was staring at Wainwright again with that same expectant look, those river pebble eyes seeking some acknowledgment that Wainwright had yet to give.
He turned to Sebastian. “Mr. Cole has been coming down from upstate to see me,” Adudel explained. He seemed to underline the word me with unmistakable pride.
Sam looked at Sebastian—really looked at him. The old man’s once deathly pale skin was vibrant and alive. He was dressed in a three-piece suit, his face cleanly shaven, his white hair swept back. His eyes were alert and bright. He looked twenty years younger than when Sam had last seen him.
Has he been here this whole time? Sam wondered. Why wouldn’t he come out when he first heard us?
Unless he was waiting to find out why we were here, his mind suggested. The thought did not sit well with him.
Wainwright was staring at Sebastian as if he thought the man were some sort of illusion. “Why have you been coming here, mate?”
“Research,” Sebastian said, the single word meant to explain everything.
“Research?” Sam asked. “For what?”
Sebastian hesitated, unsure of exactly how much information he should share.
Once again, Adudel chimed in before Sebastian could speak. “About the house, of course, same as all of you.”
“And what has he told you?” Moore asked Sebastian. The suspicion in her voice was loud and clear.
“Not enough.” Sebastian blushed, as if he were embarrassed to admit it.
Adudel tapped the bottom of his cane hard against the floor. “But now you’re all here. Together. No reason to keep you waiting any longer.”
Off the kitchen was a short hallway with three doors—the first to a bathroom, the second to a small bedroom, and the third to a minis-cule study, no bigger than a walk-in closet. It was a cluttered mess, towers of books threatening to topple, mounds of yellow legal pads covered in chicken-scratch notes, an ancient IBM computer at the center of the storm. Adudel led them into this room—Moore at the front of the line, followed by Wainwright, then Sam and Sebastian, and finally Daniel. The six of them cramming awkwardly into the tight quarters.
Wedged behind one particular stack of papers on the top of a battered m
etal file cabinet was a photograph housed in a dusty wooden frame. Adudel pulled this out from its hiding place and held it up for the others to see. Like the others in the living room, it was black and white, yet this one featured two elderly women, both at least in their sixties, the woman on the right tall and slender, her straight black hair hanging like a curtain around her shoulders; the other confined to a wheelchair, her body slightly bent, her jet-black hair pulled into a painfully tight bun. Both had nearly translucent skin, as if the sun rarely touched them. Their eyes were wormholes, dark and winding. Their faces were as set as stone, expressionless, yet those eyes hinted at something more, some secret knowledge purposely kept from the photographer.
“The Finch sisters,” Adudel announced. He tapped an overgrown, yellowing fingernail on the woman standing. “Rachel.” He tapped the crooked body in the wheelchair. “Rebecca.”
“You met them both?” Wainwright asked, confused. “I thought . . .”
“Rachel gave me this picture. By the time I was granted access to the house, Rebecca was . . . dead.”
Something about that pause troubled Sam, although he could not say why.
Shuffling uncomfortably on his feet, Daniel inadvertently sent a ripple through the closely huddled group. He took a step back, into the doorway, leaning on the frame for support. He appeared tired, drained.
Wainwright took the picture frame from Adudel, inspecting the women more closely. From the wallpaper behind them, it appeared they were standing in the house’s living room, the very same place where they had all gathered around a roaring fire so many months ago. “So you made it all up.” His tone was bitter, as if he had been betrayed. “Nothing happened while you were there.”
“Oh, now, I wouldn’t say that,” Adudel said.
Adudel put a finger to his dry, cracked lips and glanced around the room in an attempt to remember the location of some long-lost item. After pulling out several file drawers, he found what he was seeking: a battered memo book, its cover half-torn from its black spine. He held it out to Wainwright, a peace offering of sorts. “Read it.”