Cards in the Cloak

by Jeremy Bursey

  ***

  Norman spent the next year investigating the Warburn property’s value, its currently staked claims, and the possibility of another family member inheriting it. He hired a lawyer to help him sort out any issue that might’ve complicated his understanding of the facts. He also investigated the Warburn family line, any credit issues it might’ve had, and ultimately anything that would’ve determined its next owner. His plan was to win the respect of the property’s next resident before he or she moved in. Because the elderly Mrs. Warburn was clearly flirting with death, he didn’t think he had much time to figure out this side mystery. The lawyer helped him move the influx of information along at a clipped place.

  Matters got more complicated when he found out that the old woman had no immediate heirs. Most of her family consisted of nieces and nephews, not children. Records claimed that she had three children at one time, but all of them, including Douglas, or Maxie McWalter as Norman remembered him, had died of this or that, and her few grandchildren, who could’ve been in line to inherit the beach house, had already refused responsibility over it in the event of her death. All signs pointed to the house going under the county’s ownership once her payment of taxes began to lapse.

  So, Norman hired another attorney to keep an eye on the property’s state of ownership. Once Volusia County was primed to claim it, Norman wanted to be front and center before the auction took it out of his reach for good.

  That day came much later than he had anticipated. The old Mrs. Warburn, in spite of her physical state of being, held on far longer than anyone could expect of a woman in her condition. It wasn’t until 1977 that she had finally stubbed her toe on the proverbial bucket, and late in 1978 before her house would go on the market. He had also reached out to the woman’s grandchildren to allow him access to any box or piece of furniture once belonging to Douglas. Because none of them claimed ownership to anything that held zero sentimental or emotional value, the county would get much of her furniture in the acquisition. Norman tried to get ahead of the game by asking the Warburn clan for a key to the house. They told him he would have to buy it first, as they no longer had legal access to the property.

  By now, his own family was expanding. Jack was beginning a career as a water treatment engineer, Diana was studying psychotherapy while simultaneously failing her classes, thanks to a dating relationship taking up far too much of her time, and Randall, who was now happily married to a young woman he’d met at the University of Illinois and keeping his family financially afloat by running the Lincoln Park branch of the Hat Shoe, was spending his days biting his nails as he anticipated the arrival of his firstborn son, Jimmy. Nancy, who was beginning to wane physically from a growing list of health problems, was spending most of her days trying to speak wisdom over the many problems her children had brought to her.

  And though Nancy was vigilant to meddle in the affairs of her children, she was mostly checked out of the decisions Norman had made—all accept the biggest decision he had made since opening his failed store in Englewood.

  “You did what?” she asked, as her eyes widened in horror.

  “I bought this place,” Norman told her. “You like it?”

  He had brought her down to Daytona for a long-awaited vacation, and decided to spring his little surprise on her after she’d fallen in love with the town. Problem was, she wasn’t falling in love with the town; in fact, she had spent much of the week complaining about the heat. But Norman couldn’t keep a secret like this from her forever, so whether she liked Daytona or not, and whether she was ready to hear it or not, he’d have to tell her about the beach house eventually, so he told her as she stood in the driveway looking at it.

  “Have you lost your mind?” she asked. “We can’t take care of a beach house. I’m not sure we can even afford one.”

  “Sure we can. It’s ours. Bought it at auction last week. Still waiting for them to send us the key.” He looked at her and rubbed her shoulder. “Come on, Nance. We’re old. We need a place to retire.”

  “Yes. But Florida?”

  “Don’t be afraid of the sun. All of our people end up here eventually. It’s traditionally the last stop before death.”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t like it. It isn’t home.”

  Norman’s heart sank.

  “But it can be our home.”

  She walked back to the car.

  “I’m ready to go home.”

  Norman stared at the grass under his feet. He still hadn’t gotten the chance to explore the relics belonging to the old Warburn family. Until he received the key in the mail, he wouldn’t have that chance. But he was confident that his search was finally over. There really was nowhere else to go from here. If he couldn’t find Douglas’s notes, journal, or whatever he might’ve used to record his findings for the creation of Dafodil here, then he wasn’t going to find it, and Dafodil would be lost for decades to come. But if Nancy didn’t want to come back here, then there was a chance he wouldn’t get to explore the place anyway.

  He leaned into the driver side window, but he didn’t open the door. Nancy was buckling herself into the passenger seat.

  “Can we give it to Randall then?” he asked.

  She looked at him with her usual do-what-you-want-if-you-don’t-mind-sleeping-on-the-couch-tonight expression.

  “That’s up to him.” She held her gaze for a moment. “I wish you’d at least consulted with me about this first. It’s the one thing you seem to never get right. And you get so much right.”

  Norman smiled at her, but he didn’t feel happy. Moving to Florida was his dream for the last seventeen years, and his own wife was not willing to support him on it. And it was possible that he was forsaking the cure for the flu in the process.

  “Just give me a moment,” he said.

  Then he walked about fifty feet to the beach. As he sat down, he felt a headache coming on. He’d gotten a few wimpy headaches over the years, thanks to problems with his neck and back, but he hadn’t had one come on so strongly since the war. But he could feel it now. And it was pounding. It nearly distracted him from the fact that he was getting short of breath. It wasn’t until he felt his left arm go numb that he realized something was happening to him that shouldn’t have been happening.

  The figure emerging from the surface of the Atlantic was the other indicator that things were going wrong. The figure, a man he’d seen several times in his life before, was gliding toward him without so much as a bounce in his step. The familiar dark cloak he wore flowed wildly behind him. The scythe he carried in his bony left hand glistened in the sunlight.

  Norman shook his head at the man.

  “No, no, go away,” he said. “I won’t deal with you today.”

  The man passed over a shallow dune and floated effortlessly over a pair of tire tracks.

  “Stay the hell away from me.”

  Norman struggled to roll over onto his knees. As his hands dug into the hard-packed sand, he pulled up a fistful of it and lobbed it at the ghostly creature.

  “I said get away from me!”

  Then he collapsed face-forward and felt the plaster-like sand push up hard against the side of his face. The pain was now fully in his chest.

  The last thing he remembered that day was feeling Nancy’s hand clutching the top of his head and her cracking voice screaming as loudly as possible for someone to help her.