Peak of the Devil (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 2)

by Jen Rasmussen

  The woman from the front desk (Rosalie, I reminded myself, as if it mattered right then) hurried past us without glancing down the hall. She was on a cell phone. “I don’t know. It’s the most horrible screaming. I think it’s coming from my boss’s suite, but I can’t find the key…”

  I looked at Phineas, who grabbed my elbow and started walking back toward our rooms, but I stopped. The other guests were wandering closer to Madeline’s wing, still curious. But at the end of the east hall there was a figure who wasn’t moving. It was my little ghost, standing beside a white door with a gold sign that said Employees Only.

  “Wait.”

  Phineas looked back at the boy and hesitated. “Is Wulf hurt or scared by something?”

  I shook my head. Anyone who tells you dogs don’t have real voices has never known one all that well. I knew what each of Wulf’s various howls and bays meant. “He just wants to know what all this screaming and fuss are about.” I nodded toward the ghost. “I told him to give me a hint, if he could,” I said, and pulled out of Phineas’s grasp to go to the door instead.

  It was a supply room, full of paper products and cleaning supplies. Phineas came in after me and closed the door behind us. The boy moved to another door, this one between two tall shelves.

  “In there?” I asked.

  The boy nodded, but then there was a wail of sirens, and with a panicked look, he faded away again.

  The sirens weren’t lost on Phineas either. He smiled his crooked smile. “Well, this seems as good a place to lay low as any. If anyone asks, we weren’t even at the hotel. We were out, and that’s why our poor lonely dog was barking.”

  “Baying,” I corrected absently. “Bloodhounds do not bark.” I’d gone to the mystery door while he was outlining our alibi, but shook my head. “Locked.”

  Phineas frowned at it, then pulled the one key we hadn’t used yet out of his pocket. He tried it. It worked.

  “It seems we’ve found the attic,” he said. “Shall we?”

  I nodded, wishing I had his casual attitude toward everything, or at least the appearance of it. But the fact was, I was close to tears. I couldn’t stand that we’d just left that pitiful, abused man there, trapped, screaming. And then the little boy. It was just too much sadness to take in a ten-minute span. I swatted at the air, as if Helen Turner’s voice in my head was a physical thing I could slap away.

  You won’t be able to save any of them.

  Phineas squeezed my shoulder, but he didn’t say anything, just turned and walked up the stairs. I turned my phone flashlight back on and followed.

  The attic floor was creaky, and felt unstable in places. It was one gigantic room, cluttered with piles of boxes, trunks, stacks of old magazines (these had clearly been snacked on by mice), assorted furniture. We walked a slow circuit around and found that the staircase we’d come up was the only one. Then by unspoken agreement, we plopped down on the floor at one end of the room, and started rummaging through everything, as quietly as we could.

  We spent at least an hour, until my fingers were pink and numb with the cold, my throat clogged with dust, the smell of mildew so strong I could have sworn I could taste it. I was dying of thirst. All in all, it was not a very good time.

  Occasionally one of us would hold something up—a book, a dented pewter bowl, a pearl necklace—and raise an eyebrow in the dim light. Is this useful? The other would shrug. How should I know? Looks like junk.

  We weren’t even halfway through the room, maybe not even a third of the way, when the light began to fade. “My phone battery is dying,” I whispered. “We’re going to have to go.”

  “It’s been long enough now,” Phineas said. “The police are probably gone.”

  “Okay, then—”

  I was interrupted by a sound that came from somewhere to my left, in a part of the room we hadn’t gotten to yet. Too loud. I gasped and turned, searching for its source. Then I realized it was music, although it was very scratchy-sounding music. An old record player, maybe? Old time jazz, the kind of stuff my father loved to listen to, even though it was from well before his time. I knew the song, I thought, but I couldn’t quite place it.

  “What is that?” asked Phineas.

  “It’s our hint.”

  I was already moving toward the sound. There was no sign of my ghost, but there was the record player, on an old dresser. Beside it was a stack of what looked like photo albums.

  They turned out to be guest books. Phineas and I stood for a few minutes, almost cheek to cheek, squinting at first one, then another.

  “It’s no use, we’re losing the light,” I said. “We’ll have to take them. Judging by how much dust they’re covered in, they won’t be missed.”

  “Are you sure that’s what he wants us to look at?” Phineas asked.

  “I doubt he wants us to take the Duncan Sisters,” I said, remembering the name of the singers. I used some of the precious remains of my phone’s battery to type Duncan Sisters into a note, before I forgot it again. Then I went through the dresser drawers just in case, but there was nothing in them. “It’s got to be these.”

  When we got back downstairs, the third floor was quiet. Madeline’s wing looked deserted. I hesitated. “Should we go back? Check on Max?”

  Phineas shook his head. “She’ll be back by now. The police would have called her anyway.”

  And they’d have done nothing for him. I was as sure of that as if I’d witnessed it firsthand. We don’t know what upset him, Ms. Underwood, but he seems calm now. Of course, Ms. Underwood. We’ll have a look around. You just call us if there’s anything else you need.

  They wouldn’t have taken him out of there. And he wouldn’t have gone even if they offered. He certainly didn’t like the idea when we proposed it to him. If Madeline Underwood wanted to keep him—her brother?—in her closet, nobody was going to stop her.

  “It’s his punishment,” I said.

  Phineas was staring down the hall at Madeline’s door, and his face was as grave as I’d ever seen it. He nodded without looking at me.

  “His punishment for looking at the devil,” he said.

  “Your story doesn’t make sense.” I walked through the adjoining door and plopped the books we’d taken from the attic on the little coffee table in Phineas’s room.

  Phineas came from the direction of his bathroom, wearing a t-shirt and jeans and wiping a little leftover shaving cream from his face. It was odd to see him doing such a mundane thing, a thing I’d seen Charlie and Nat and Kevin do a thousand times.

  “You have to shave?” I asked.

  He bent to greet Wulf. “Sure. What did you think, we’d have a ritual for removing facial hair?”

  “No, but I figured your beard would grow really slow here.”

  “It does. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t grow at all.”

  “Well, your story doesn’t make sense,” I said again.

  “Which story is that?”

  “All your stories.” I’d been tossing and turning all night, trying to digest everything that had happened over the last few days, and everything I’d learned. It was no clearer when I got up, nor when I came back from walking Wulf. “You said you age according to your own time. That if you stayed here for the next fifty years you’d look pretty much the same.”

  “Right.”

  “But Jeffrey Litauer was here as a boy. He had a sister, and she had childhood memories of him, growing up here.”

  “So she was a phantasm, too, and they grew up together.”

  The thought that Greta Litauer was a fiend like her brother was not a new one for me, but it still didn’t make sense. “Fine, but surely the neighbors would have noticed two kids who never aged. It’s one thing to cover that kind of thing up in adults, makeup or whatever. But it’s kind of suspicious when a kid never grows, don’t you think?”

  Phineas shrugged. “Maybe they moved a lot, so the neighbors wouldn’t notice. Or she lied to you. Or he had her under a spell and planted f
alse memories.”

  “Oh, her memories were real, all right. I saw the teeth.”

  “Huh?”

  “A keepsake from their happy childhood. Someone’s teeth Jeffrey tore out.” I waved this away. “Is it normal for kids of your kind to grow up here, though?”

  He shook his head. “No. But I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t be possible. Is this important for some reason?”

  “I guess not.”

  With all the more immediate mysteries we had to solve, I could understand his being a little impatient with my questions. But it was just a lot to take in, his kind being among us everywhere, a fiend in the switchel ring, a devil in Bristol. And Phineas. Neither fiend nor devil, but certainly no angel.

  Phineas picked up one of the guest registries and started flipping through it. “This one is from 1923,” he said.

  I sighed, resigned to the larger workings of the universe being moved to the back burner while we tried to find a devil, a ghost, and a lost dog. I picked up the next book, and then the next. “They all are.” I frowned. “Do you remember what the plaque downstairs said? When Silas Underwood turned this place into a hotel?”

  “I believe it said 1912,” said Phineas.

  “So it might still have been Silas in charge, ten years later. I didn’t like the look of him.”

  “I don’t like the look of any Underwood, except maybe your friend Penny.”

  “Your friend Penny, maybe. I told you, I don’t trust her.”

  “Focus. What happened in 1923?”

  I pulled out my phone.

  “Don’t you ever use a real computer?” he asked.

  I shrugged and bent farther over the little screen, hoping he wouldn’t see if my face was turning red. “I do if I have to, for work and stuff. But it’s easier for me to type with my thumbs. Because of my finger. Lack of finger.”

  Because I bit it off. I left that part unsaid, and whether out of polite discretion or indifference, he didn’t ask. Either way, I was grateful not to have to go into it. I’d learned to make do, and at least it wasn’t my dominant hand. But some things—typing and, oddly, driving—were still a challenge.

  “So, 1923,” I said. “The Charleston. King Tut’s tomb. The first game ever played in Yankee stadium.” I had another thought, and did another search. “And yes, the Duncan sisters were at large.” I put the phone back in my pocket and looked up at Phineas. “And, I would guess, a little boy died at the Mount Phearson hotel, while looking for his dog.”

  We spent the whole morning looking through the registries, but none of the names in them meant anything to either of us.

  “We need some lunch,” Phineas said finally. He stood and stretched, and Wulf jumped up and went to him, wagging. “I’ll take Wulf with me and go get us some sandwiches.”

  “I’ll keep looking through these, I guess,” I said. “See if you can find some pie though, will you?”

  Phineas did a funny little bow and put on a deep voice, which I guess he thought sounded chivalrous. “Madam, I shall return with pie, or not at all.”

  “Don’t even joke about that. Crazy shit happens to people in Bristol.”

  He laughed. “Maybe, but I’ll bet that diner has good pie.”

  I didn’t get much farther into the books before my phone started buzzing. I hoped it was Phineas, calling to ask whether I wanted pecan or banana cream. But it was Charlie. Shit. He didn’t usually call when I was out of town working unless he had a real problem.

  “What’s up, Charlie?”

  “Any chance you’re coming home soon?” he asked.

  I looked down at the pile of registries. “Things are moving pretty slowly here. Why?”

  “What kind of project is it? Maybe the kind you can work on remotely?”

  “Why, Charlie?” I asked again.

  Charlie sighed. “Norbert’s mother died. I’d like to go with him to help.”

  “Oh, no, Charlie I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m really sorry to ask, I hate to put you in that position, but it’s only for a couple of days?”

  “Sure,” I said. Shit, did I just agree to leave Bristol? But what else could I do? It wasn’t like it was an aunt or something, it was the guy’s mother. Before I knew it, Charlie was thanking me and hanging up.

  I thought Phineas might be pissed, but he nodded agreeably when I filled him in. (While eating what did indeed turn out to be a very good slice of pecan pie.) “No harm in laying low for a couple of days after last night’s adventure.”

  “Do you think Max told her about us?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Phineas wiped his mouth with his sleeve and started gathering up the trash from our lunch. “She knows he had some kind of episode, and judging from the looks she gives us, if anything she doesn’t like happens within a ten mile radius of us, it’s probably our fault.”

  I sighed. “Fine. I’ll keep working on the victims’ family histories and the guest books from home, how’s that?”

  “Great,” Phineas said. “I’m going home too, to check on some things. I’ve got some people looking into the ritual to raise the dead. But I’ll stop by The Witch’s Brew for a chat with Wendy first.” He pulled something out of his coat pocket. “When we come back though, I think this is the first place we should go.”

  It was the map of Bristol Penny had given us. There was a border of advertisements around the edges. Phineas tapped one with his finger.

  Kerr House Museum and Botanical Garden

  Don’t miss Bristol’s biggest attraction!

  The fine print gave an address, and announced the sponsorship of the Bristol Garden Club and Preservation Society.

  “Madeline Underwood was at a garden club meeting last night, according to Nolan,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  I folded the map and put it in my own pocket. “I’ll look it up while I’m home. See if I can find out what’s so attractive about it.” I stood up to go back to my room and pack up.

  “I’ll call you when I get back,” Phineas said. “My cell number will only work if I’m in your world, obviously, but you can always send Wulf for me if you need me.”

  “And how do I tell him to do that? I’m pretty sure we don’t have a usual command for go fetch someone from another plane of existence.”

  Phineas went to his suitcase and plucked out a sock. He held it out to Wulf, who wagged vigorously and took it from him. “Just let him get a scent of this, then tell him to find me.”

  “Gross, is that dirty? And don’t they have to be trained for that?”

  “Usually. But this is different than normal searching or hunting.” He nodded down at Wulf, who was chewing happily on the sock. “He’s got a natural bond with my kind. Some hounds just do. I think he’ll know what to do.”

  So I agreed to call him—by cell phone or Wulf phone—if I needed him, and we went our separate ways.

  I still thought of Charlie’s house as home, the way you still think of your parents’ house as home even after you’ve grown up and moved away. I guess growing up and moving away was exactly what I’d done. I stayed there for five days, falling back into my old routine of working, cooking, and laundry, bookended by walking Warren to and from the bus stop. At night we stayed up and watched movies and generally pretended we were taking vacation days, even though neither of us was.

  I spent some of the time while Warren was at school working on my actual paying job, but not enough to stop me from falling behind on that front. I went through the guest books again, to no avail. And I looked up Kerr House, which did indeed turn out to be the biggest local attraction. Or at least, the biggest local oddity. (Which, in a town with a devil for a patron, was saying something.)

  It was built in the early nineteenth century, and remodeled several times over the years as the family got richer and richer. The result of all the adding on and tearing down and rebuilding was, according to their website, “a one-of-a-kind house with no clear architectural identity.” When I saw the photo, I decide
d that was putting it mildly.

  It was a shapeless mish-mash of stone and brick, mostly red, but sometimes gray, with wings added on apparently haphazardly over time. There was tower at one end, and gingerbread trim around the long porch at the other. The effect was of a child’s drawing, where they just put everything they associated with the word house in one picture. I tried to figure out what it might have looked like under there, once, when it was a normal building. But my eye couldn’t find the original lines.

  The last of the building and rebuilding came after a fire destroyed an entire wing of the house. After that, the Bristol Garden Club bought it, and it had been a combination botanical garden and museum ever since.

  The fire happened in 1923.

  From what I’d found in all my searching, the devil seemed to keep up his end of the bargain: nothing bad ever happened in Bristol, at least nothing that was recorded anywhere on the internet. Except that one fire. (The same year a little boy died while looking for his lost dog, but nobody was mentioning that.) And now, these mysterious deaths.

  We knew the deaths were for the devil’s own purposes, so I supposed that made them exceptions to the deal. What about the fire?

  This was all suspicious enough, but the name Kerr was nagging at me, too. I couldn’t find it in the files from my banishing days, but I knew it was somehow familiar. Trying to remember where I’d heard it before drove me crazy, until I washed the jeans I’d been wearing in Bristol and pulled a candy wrapper out of the front right pocket. It was from the caramel Penny gave me in the library, a white, still-sticky scrap of waxed paper with the word Kerr’s on one side in bold red print.

  No wonder the name had stuck in my head. That was a damn good piece of candy. Another search told me that Kerr Confectionery had indeed gotten its start in Bristol, but it had been sold in 1919 and relocated to the more cosmopolitan and convenient Asheville.

  So Kerr House, a fire, my boy ghost, candy. My little research break turned up a few answers, I guessed, but none that made any sense. I had no idea how any of it fit together.

  I heard back from the genealogy guys the day before Charlie and Norbert came home. They had a short list of ancestors common to the family trees of Carla Frank, Wes Landry, and Marianne Withers. There were only four names on it, and one of them was Colonel George Phearson, the founder of Bristol himself. The fourth local victim, Terry Fowler, had family ties to Colonel Phearson as well, but Terry himself was adopted.