The Inn

by William Patterson

  “Thanks,” Annabel said, returning the woman’s smile. “Even frozen is fine.”

  “I’m Millie,” the woman said.

  “Annabel.”

  “Pleased to meet you. Where did you move here from?”

  She was pointing Annabel to an aisle filled with canned vegetables and fruits. Most of it was local stuff, preserved right here in western Massachusetts. Lifting a handbasket, Annabel began filling it up with various cans and jars. She tossed in a few boxes of whole wheat pasta as well.

  “New York,” she said, replying to Millie’s question.

  “The city?”

  Annabel nodded.

  Millie laughed again. It was a small, tinkly sound for such a big woman. “Well, you’re going to be in for some culture shock up here. How long you staying?”

  Annabel sighed. “For good,” she said.

  Millie raised her eyebrows.

  “My grandmother-in-law is rather frail. She can’t keep up the place by herself anymore, so she’s asked my husband and me to take over the house.”

  Millie folded her masculine arms across her chest. “So you’re really okay moving out of cosmopolitan Manhattan for this little hole in the woods in the middle of nowhere?”

  Annabel gave her the most convincing smile she could manage. “So long as I can find other things to eat than Gran’s rabbit stew.”

  Something in Millie’s eyes changed. Her brows furrowed as she studied Annabel.

  “Something wrong?” Annabel asked.

  “What’s your grandmother-in-law’s name?”

  Annabel returned her odd stare. “Cordelia Devlin,” she said.

  Millie opened her mouth to say something, and then stopped. She tried again. “And the house you’ve taken over,” she said slowly, “is the Blue Boy Inn.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, well,” Millie said, hugging herself tighter. “So the old place is going to be given a new lease on life.”

  Annabel smiled widely. “That’s what my husband and I are hoping. We’re going to fix it up, modernize it, get some new technology in there. . . .”

  “Technology?”

  Annabel placed a jar of peanut butter and some breadsticks into her basket. “Well, the place doesn’t even have any flat-screen TVs, let alone any Internet. I think a guesthouse needs some amenities, even if it’s out in the woods.” She thought about it. “Actually, especially if it’s out in the woods.”

  “Well, most of the people who still come to the Blue Boy aren’t coming for cable television and Facebook.” Millie unfolded her arms. “As I’m sure you’re aware.”

  Annabel looked over at her. “You mean they come to get away from all that?”

  “Maybe, but not necessarily,” the storekeeper replied. “They come to the Blue Boy because they’re looking for ghosts.”

  Just then, the bell over the door jangled. Annabel was still struck by what Millie had just said, so she didn’t turn to look, but Millie did.

  “Hello, chief,” she sang out.

  Annabel moved her eyes over to observe the newcomer. He was a tall, dark-haired man with a craggy, handsome face, maybe about forty, dressed in dark dungarees and a brown corduroy jacket. He gave Millie a little salute.

  “What can I help you with today, chief?”

  “Just a quart of milk, Mil,” he said. “Ran out last night and had to eat my Cheerios dry.”

  Millie turned to look back at Annabel. “That’s what he eats for breakfast and for dinner. Cheerios. The man needs a good woman who will cook for him.”

  The man laughed. “I’ve asked you a million times to marry me, darlin’, but you always turn me down.”

  “And take a look at him!” Millie said, still talking to Annabel. “Movie star handsome. But still unattached.”

  “I’m married to my badge,” he said, placing the milk down on the counter.

  Millie moved around to ring him up. “And isn’t Woodfield fortunate to have such a dedicated chief of police.” She dropped the milk into a small paper bag. “Hey, chief, meet the new girl in town. Just arrived.” Millie fixed him with a look. “She and her husband are taking over the Blue Boy Inn.”

  The chief looked around at Annabel for the first time. For some odd, unexplainable reason, she blushed.

  “Is that right?” he asked. “Cordelia’s giving the place up?”

  “She’s my husband’s grandmother,” Annabel explained. “And she’s asked us to come run the place. She can’t do it on her own anymore.”

  “Doesn’t she still have Zeke around to help her?”

  “Yes, he’s still there. But he’s rather old as well.”

  The chief smiled. “Older than the earth, it seems.” He moved closer to Annabel and extended his hand. “Well, welcome to town. I’m Richard Carlson. If there’s anything I can do for you or your husband, do let me know.”

  She shook his hand. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m Annabel Wish.” She was struck by how dark the chief’s eyes were. Almost black.

  “Enjoy the rest of your day, Millie babe,” the chief said, heading out of the store.

  The little bell over the door rang again.

  Annabel watched him go through the large windows. He slid into a plain black car, probably a Ford. No cruiser. Annabel imagined he must have been off duty, since he hadn’t been wearing a uniform.

  She brought her basket of provisions up the counter.

  “Oh, you’ll like these,” Millie said, lifting a couple jars of raspberry preserves. “I know the lady who cans these. Grows all her own berries on her farm. In the summer you can go up there and pick your own. Raspberries, strawberries, blueberries . . .”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Annabel said. “But I’m not much of a berry picker, except from the display at Whole Foods.”

  Millie frowned. “You’re going to have a lot of adjustments living here, sweetie.”

  “I know.” Annabel paused. “Millie, what did you mean when you said people come to the Blue Boy to see ghosts?”

  The storekeeper stopped what she was doing and fixed her with her blue eyes.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “It can’t be that your husband never told you about the murders.”

  Annabel’s blood went cold.

  “Murders?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, if he hasn’t told you, then it’s probably best that you ask him.”

  Annabel suddenly felt frantic. “No, please, tell me what you know.”

  Millie shrugged. “It’s not like I’m telling tales out of school. Everybody up here knows the history of the Blue Boy Inn. The only reason it stays in business is because of the ghost tourists. People think it’s haunted because of all the deaths that have taken place there over the years.”

  “And these deaths were . . . murders?”

  Millie was placing Annabel’s groceries in a paper bag, one much larger than the one she’d just given to Richard Carlson. “Well,” she said, “not all, probably, but some of them definitely were. Like, for example, you don’t accidentally get your head cut off.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Annabel said.

  “Look, honey, I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you. I can’t believe you could move up here and not know. You should go right back up there and get your husband to tell you everything.” Millie’s eyes were kind, but also serious. “Because there’s no way he doesn’t know. One of the deaths up there, a long time ago, was Cordelia’s young granddaughter. And if I’m figuring correctly, that would have been your husband’s sister.”

  9

  “It’s up here, turn here!” Priscilla shouted at Neville. I“That little lane, there!”

  “Never would have spotted the bloody road,” Neville grumbled, turning the car up the rutted passageway through the trees.

  “Yes, very easy to miss,” Priscilla agreed. “Hidden away in the woods. The way all haunted houses should be.”

&n
bsp; Her boyfriend smirked over at her. “Have I told you how excited I am to get to Florida?”

  “Yes, six thousand times. Pull in over there. Next to the sign.”

  The Blue Boy stared down at him with his faded-paint eyes.

  “Creepy, isn’t he?” Priscilla said.

  “I’d say the place is what’s creepy,” Neville replied, shutting off the car. “Looks like it hasn’t been updated in decades.”

  “Perfect,” Priscilla chirped, hopping out of the passenger seat. She stood gazing up at the old inn. “I can feel the vibrations, can’t you?”

  “All I can feel are hunger pains. You wouldn’t let me stop at that McDonald’s back on the highway. Hope this place has something to eat.”

  Neville withdrew their two bags from the trunk, and then clicked the remote to lock the car. A series of two quick, high-pitched beeps followed.

  “I smell something cooking,” Priscilla said, lifting her nose in the air.

  “Probably human flesh,” Neville muttered.

  They headed up the walk to the front door. There were no other cars in the gravel driveway.

  “Oh, there’s somebody,” Priscilla said. “Over there, coming out of the woods.”

  The trees had grown thick around the house. Only a few patches of sunlight shone through here and there. The deciduous trees might have been bare of leaves, but their gnarled limbs had all tangled together so tightly that they blocked out the sun in many places. And there were lots of tall pine trees as well, leaving the Blue Boy Inn mostly shrouded in shade and shadows.

  So it was hard to see the person emerging from the woods about thirty or so yards away, but Priscilla was trying to wave whoever it was down. It was possibly the proprietor.

  “Hello!” Priscilla called, taking a couple of steps in the direction of the figure. “Hello, we have a reservation to stay here!”

  “Maybe it’s just another guest,” Neville said. “Let’s just go up and ring the doorbell.”

  Priscilla frowned. “There are no other cars here. It can’t be a guest! Hello!”

  She waved her hand to catch the person’s attention.

  It was a woman, she could see now. The hair was long and possibly blond or gray. She was wearing some kind of white, diaphanous dress....

  “Hello!” Priscilla called again.

  The woman finally turned in her direction.

  And Priscilla let out a gasp.

  The woman’s face was covered in some kind of dark substance.

  It could only be blood.

  Priscilla screamed.

  10

  Annabel heard the woman scream as she steered the SUV back up the driveway. There was a small red car parked at the inn now, and a man standing near it holding two suitcases, and a woman a few feet away, screaming and pointing toward the woods.

  Annabel hopped out of the car.

  “What’s wrong?” she called.

  “She’s covered in blood!” the woman was shrieking

  The man was trying to calm her down. “Priscilla, come back here!”

  Annabel looked in the direction the woman was pointing. She saw nothing.

  She approached the woman. “Can I help you? What did you think you saw?”

  The woman turned a pair of frantic but obviously exhilarated eyes to her. “Was she a ghost? Does she walk the property?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Annabel told her.

  The man had joined them. “We saw someone coming out of the woods. . . .”

  “A woman,” his companion added. “She’s gone now. When I screamed, she bolted back into the woods.” She frowned. “I shouldn’t have screamed. I know better than that. We can sometimes scare ghosts as much as they can scare us.”

  Annabel looked at the couple standing in front of her. They were obviously guests arriving at the inn—“ghost tourists,” as Millie had called them. They had English accents. They’d apparently come a long way to experience the Blue Boy’s ghosts.

  “Well,” Annabel said, “I can’t tell you anything. It’s my first day here. My husband and I just moved here.” Her gaze moved up to the front porch of the inn. “But I’m sure my grandmother-in-law can tell you whatever you need to know.”

  Cordelia was standing there, her face set like stone. She must have heard the woman’s scream.

  The couple hurried up to her, jabbering about ghosts. Annabel heard the old woman start to reply, but she didn’t care to listen to what she had to say at the moment.

  She decided she wanted to do a little exploring herself.

  Her groceries would keep in the car for the moment. It was cold enough out. She started off across the grass in the direction the English woman had been pointing. If she had been alone in her claim of seeing something, Annabel would have dismissed her as a fanatic. When you come to a place wanting to see something, chances are you would. The human mind was susceptible to suggestion. Hadn’t Annabel thought she’d seen Tommy Tricky earlier?

  But the man said he’d seen somebody as well. So chances were they really did see somebody. Chances were it was a real person, and the woman’s hysterical scream had indeed frightened the visitor away. Annabel hoped she found someone out there, so she could bring her back and introduce her to the English couple, and to Cordelia.

  She wanted an end to ghost stories. She had no desire to be part of a place that depended on crazies coming to stay there. Annabel had been in a crazy house. She did not want to surround herself with lunatics and delusional people.

  She’d had enough of that.

  She pushed her way into the trees. A broken, brittle branch on the ground snapped as she stepped on it.

  Jack was wrong not to tell her about the inn’s reputation. Very wrong.

  But if he had, she would likely have refused to come. It would have been too much for her. So he’d kept the knowledge from her, understanding how it would freak her out.

  Annabel was going to tell him that he was wrong, and she was going to add that they were going to put a stop to the stories immediately.

  Perhaps some terrible things had happened at the inn. But she and Jack were not going to make their livings from exploiting those tragedies.

  Annabel stopped. There was something sticking out of a clump of dead leaves in a little clearing up ahead.

  Something white.

  As Annabel approached, she saw it was a stone.

  A stone marker.

  On which was inscribed a name.

  CINDY DEVLIN

  It must be Jack’s sister.

  This was her grave!

  In that second of realization, a hand reached out from behind her and clutched Annabel by the shoulder.

  11

  “Welcome to the Blue Boy Inn,” old Mrs. Devlin said, as she escorted them into the old house.

  Priscilla was peeved. Mrs. Devlin had insisted they must have just seen a hiker. The Blue Boy Inn had no ghosts outside the house, she said, and certainly none that walked around with blood on their faces. Priscilla was deeply disappointed. She hoped this place, unlike so many of the others, wouldn’t be a rip-off.

  “Leave your bags there, by the door,” the old woman said to Neville. “I’ll have Zeke or my grandson, Jack, carry them up to your room.”

  “We’d like Sally Brown’s room,” Priscilla said.

  Mrs. Devlin gave her a wan smile. “And you shall have it.”

  Neville returned the smile. “I suppose you get a lot of crazy ghost hunter types staying here.”

  Mrs. Devlin was nodding as she led them into the kitchen. “We’re listed in all the guidebooks as a ‘haunted inn.’ It keeps people coming.”

  “And how often do guests see apparitions?” Priscilla wanted to know.

  The old woman stopped at the roughhewn kitchen table, steadying herself against it with her hands. “Some of them report a sighting or two. I make no guarantees.”

  Priscilla snorted. “Well, there have been so many killings in this house. I’d imagin
e the spirits are very restless here.”

  Neville sighed. “She’s a true believer, I’m afraid,” he told Mrs. Devlin.

  “A cup of tea?” the old woman asked.

  Both accepted, and she gestured for them to sit at the table.

  “I take it you’re not a believer then, sir,” Mrs. Devlin said, looking over at Neville as she poured steaming hot tea into two delicate china cups, balanced on saucers.

  “Not really. I’m here for the fun of it, and because Priscilla would only go with me to Florida after a week of ghost hunting in New England.”

  Mrs. Devlin pushed the cups of tea toward them with her bony, spotted hands.

  “Thank you,” Priscilla said, taking hers and lifting it to her lips.

  “Well,” Mrs. Devlin said, sitting down at the table opposite them, “I suppose there must be restless spirits here. You’re right, young lady. There have been an awful lot of deaths in this house. More than our share.”

  “So you’ve never seen any ghosts?” Priscilla asked, setting down her cup into the saucer and leaning slightly toward the old woman.

  “I don’t think I’d recognize them if I did. I’ve been here a very, very long time. Sometimes it takes someone unaccustomed to the place to pick up on things.”

  Priscilla nodded. “That’s true. I’ve read about that phenomenon. You live here with the spirits and so you’re on the same vibration. You don’t see them. But those who come in from the outside can pick up more easily on things.”

  Neville laughed out loud. “What a bloody rationalization! Fanatics like you, my dear, can come in and claim they see things simply because you’re on a different vibration!”

  Priscilla shot him an angry look.

  Neville grinned, reaching over to pat her hand. On her pinky she wore an opal ring. It was supposed to attract spirits. “I use the word fanatic with great affection, my dear.”

  “Zeke has seen some ghosts,” Mrs. Devlin told them.