Although the general silhouette of Appleton Hill was still there, the image filling it was not the same. Then again, can vegetation stay the same over fifteen years? Probably not, especially without proper maintenance. The grass, trees, bushes, and climbing plants had grown wildly all over the hill, closing in on the house. Mother Earth’s untamed mane was fighting an always-progressive battle that no winter or gardener could stop.
Adjusting my jacket, I climbed down the stone steps. I looked up at the sky in its constant shade of gray, and the clouds refusing to stay up where they belong. Was there ever a day without fog in Ashwell?
I skirted the house, following a flagstone path while keeping an eye out for a specific familiar trail. One that Claire and I used to take to go down the hill where the shelter in the photo nestled among the trees. Unfortunately, the daunting vegetation in front of me did little to take my mind away from recent discoveries. How was it possible for Claire to inhabit that space? The bed? The plaster? And that rancid smell! I was still haunted by the image of that bedroom.
I made an effort to focus on the task at hand. I wanted to find the shed. I knew that was the place where Claire kept all the things important to her that she didn’t want her mother to find, such as her journal. Claire had caught her mother reading it one time, and from then on, she never trusted her again. I held the faint hope that, in the shelter, I would be able to find the reason behind the madness of her suicide.
I was trying to find something that would lead me back to that place, a tree or a plant that could spark up some memories. But at that moment, everything looked the same.
“What were you doing up there?”
His voice did not startle me this time. I’d heard footsteps trampling the dead leaves at a distance, so I presumed Tom was still working in the gardens. However, it was the anger still imprinted on his voice that I found unsettling the most. As I faced him, I noticed he was pushing a wheelbarrow overflowing with thorn-infested branches.
“I was visiting Claire’s bedroom. Wasn’t it obvious?” I retorted, fighting fire with fire. I was not going to be scared away so easily.
Who the hell does this guy think he is?
I didn’t care if Tom had been working at Appleton Hill for years, or if he knew my mother and kept an eye on her. He was way out of line. And there was something… something inside him that was restless, and he tried to hide it.
“That room― You should respect her.” Tom was flustered. He shook his head and I could tell he was struggling to find the right words. A kind of unsettling and obscure secret seemed to lurk inside him, inhabiting the dark corners of his being and keeping him on the edge of insane fury. “It’s not safe up there. Don’t go again.”
“Yeah, sure. No problem. I won’t,” I retorted, dismissing the absurd command.
I wasn’t about to take orders from someone who―abruptly and uninvitedly―had stepped into my life, pretending to be God knows who. However, I needed his knowledge of the hill, so I couldn’t actually give him a piece of my mind. The fighting fire with fire approach had to be toned down. If I had learned something about making movies, it was that directing is not just about dropping demands and handing out orders to every person at your disposal. Being a good director means that you use your resources wisely. And at that moment, Tom Scissorhands was a resource to me.
“Listen, I’m looking for a shelter down in the woods. There was a path, but the trails have vanished. I just can’t seem to—”
“The shed is gone,” he spat at me. “Claire asked me to tear it down a while back.” He bored holes into my face with his dark eyes.
“Claire?” I was dumbfounded.
I could not believe my friend had done so. She so dearly cherished that place. But to my surprise, that’s not what the gardener understood from my questioning.
“Um... Miss Appleton, I meant,” he corrected himself while lowering his eyes to focus on readjusting his gardening gloves. It had not been my intention to tell him how he should address his boss, but the fact that he checked himself was a little puzzling. “You’ll get lost with this fog if you go into the forest. You should go inside.”
He picked up the wheelbarrow and carried on in the same direction he had been heading in the first place.
“There is always fog in Ashwell,” I answered as I watched him march away.
A sad melody drifted through the walls, pouring itself into my ears. I knew I could hum to it… if I managed to figure out how to move my lips.
“Wake up, dummy.”
I felt a gentle tap between my eyebrows. I recognized what was happening. I had missed that tap for the past fifteen years.
“I’m awake,” I responded with a croaky voice.
The song continued but it seemed to be diluting around me and I could no longer grab it.
“No, you’re not. Your eyes are still closed.” By the way she was saying it, I could tell she was smiling. “Open your eyes, Althea. We have to go, and you need your eyes open for that.”
“Go where? To school?” I rubbed my eyes, trying to disentangle myself from the sweet claws of sleep.
“Well, yes, there is much learning to do. But you need to wake up first. How are you going to learn about things if your eyes are closed?”
“Okay, okay. I’m up. I’m up, Claire.”
I finally gave in, sitting up on the bed and focusing my eyes on her. The song must have been part of a dream because I could hear no trace of it now. Claire was sitting on the bed right next to me. She was wearing her flannel pajamas. As always, her blonde hair, flimsy as that of a baby, fell to the sides of her face down to her shoulders. She always looked like she had just combed it. Her eyes were as bright as ever, and she did not have the appearance of someone who had recently woken up, like me. Claire leaped out of the bed with a sudden burst of energy and a wide smile on her face that was incompatible with my own groggy expression.
“Come on, Althea. There’s no time to waste. You know how it is: if you snooze, you lose.”
I looked down at myself and gestured towards my blue pajamas that had little white sheep jumping over a fence.
“I can’t go like this-I have to change.”
“I know, dummy. That’s what we are going to do. Now drag your sorry behind out of that bed and get out of the room,” she ordered, waiting anxiously by the door.
I did end up dragging my sorry behind out of the bed and shuffled to the door. We found ourselves in the hallway, but I realized I had no idea where I needed to go to get out of my nightclothes.
“Come on, dummy!” Claire encouraged me with a wide smile, before passing me in the corridor to start running in front of me. “There’s so much to do! So many places to see! So much to learn! Come on, Althea!”
“Okay, now you’re sounding like a Dr. Seuss book.” I yawned, lazily jogging to catch up with her.
Eventually, the jog transformed itself into a run. I kept missing Claire every time she took a turn, in what seemed the most intricate maze-like hallway I had ever traveled along.
“We’re here!” Claire stated with that smile of hers never abandoning her face.
I don’t think I have ever seen her smile so much before. That thought warmed my heart.
We were standing in front of a door. A bedroom door, to be precise, that was more than familiar to me. It was Claire’s bedroom. But wasn’t this the place we had just left? Her bedroom was where we always held our slumber parties.
“Go on. Get inside, Althea.”
I opened the door and walked straight to her closet. Every clothing item was neatly hung and organized according to type and color. From dark to light, the entire color spectrum was stored in there. It was like a rainbow you could hug.
“These are all your clothes. Where is my stuff? I can’t wear your things.”
“Sure you can, dummy,” Claire encouraged me once again, now standing beside me. “All I have is yours now. Take it. Own it. Don’t be like me. You need to own all of this before it o
wns you.”
Unsure of what to pick, I sifted through the options that seemed endless, trying to find something.
“I don’t know what to wear.”
“The red one. The red one would look great on you, Althea.”
I took the hanger that had a red dress on it. It was a beautiful 1950s-inspired, A-line red dress with a full skirt. Simply gorgeous. It was, as all of Claire’s wardrobe suggestions had always been, perfect for me. I immediately fell in love with the dress. But a sudden realization hit me. I turned and faced my friend.
“I love it, but I can’t wear red.”
“Why not?” she asked, her smile quickly evaporating. Claire’s facial expressions began to disappear under a shadow of fear my negative response had cast on her.
“Because I am going to your funeral, Claire. I should be wearing black.”
Chapter 6
I opened my eyes suddenly. My body was sweaty and achy as if I had indeed run in that horrible nightmare. The instant realization that Claire was dead filled my eyes and throat with tears. This entire thing was really getting to me.
This house.
This death.
This absence.
I had no idea what time it was, so I turned on my side to grab my cell phone from the nightstand, but I couldn’t find anything. It wasn’t there because the nightstand wasn’t there either. I lowered my hand in the dark, trying to find the bedside lamp, when I touched what seemed to be a pile of paper. It had hard edges and was covered in grime.
I sprang up in shock. I wasn’t in the bedroom I had been assigned by Mrs. Appleton.
I searched on the other side of the bed, and this time I managed to find a lamp switch. I turned it on and confirmed my dreaded suspicions. Under that sick yellow light, I found myself in the moth-eaten, half-burned bed in Claire’s bedroom. In front of me, the closet doors were wide open, fighting the dim light with its own smelly darkness.
The black dress and the leggings were still hanging from one of the doors where I had left them the day before. The window to the balcony was still open.
There wasn’t enough water in the entire state to wash away the feeling of disgust from my body. It was like having a full-body gag reflex glued to the inside of my skin, and no amount of soap could scrape it away. The shower I took as soon as I leaped out of that bed had not been enough, although I stayed until there was no more hot water.
Great way to start a day I already know is going to be horrible.
I walked the ten blocks separating Appleton Hill from the cemetery. The sensation of having slept in a pile of never-ending decay was still with me. It curdled my blood. That’s why I refused Mrs. Appleton’s invitation, telling her I would rather walk to the funeral when she was getting ready for a car to pick her up.
I don’t believe I had ever sleepwalked before. I was still trying to make sense out of how my morning had started. I crossed my arms in front of me trying to generate a bit more heat. The mist had grown denser overnight, and I felt I was trying to find a way to the cemetery through a cloud. It reminded me of my failed excursion the previous day. Tom had been right. The woods were not what they once were, and the fog only created a bigger mess in my memory. I still found it odd that the shelter was gone. However, I had no choice but to call it quits on the search. With not much else to do, I ended up having an early night. Way too early. And a not-early enough morning.
With that, another question resurfaced. How was it possible for that bedroom to be the one Claire occupied until a month―at the very least―before her funeral? Even if those magazines had been tossed there only as a way of storage, and even if Claire used the space as a walk-in closet and she slept somewhere else.
How was it possible for a magazine to collect that much dirt in a month? How was it possible for her closet to acquire such a foul smell in the days since her death? It made no sense. To be honest, with the start this day had given me, it was exhausting trying to answer those questions. The most hurtful thing of all had been talking to Claire. It felt so real.
“Wake up, dummy.”
Her words gave me goosebumps. And the tapping between the eyebrows... That’s exactly how Claire used to wake me up when I stayed overnight on a school day. I was always the one who had trouble waking up. I was always the lazy one.
When did you lose all that strength and willingness to move forward, Claire? I asked her in silence. Since I had found out about her death, I began having a one-sided conversation with Claire in my mind. And it had only intensified after my return to Appleton Hill.
I was approaching the cemetery. Unfortunately, my head did not feel clearer than when I left the hill. I wiped a tear away before standing in front of the open gates of Ashwell Cemetery.
I stopped for a second to collect myself before entering. That’s when I saw an arrangement of beautiful pure-white flowers surrounding Claire’s photograph from the high school yearbook coming at me. Although the flowers were gorgeous, I could feel nothing but disgust at the sight of the arrangement. Having that macabre thing heading towards me created a chill through my spine that ran all the way down to my heels to pin me to the spot.
The person carrying this monstrous thing stopped beside me and placed their burden on the ground. And when she came out from behind the flowers, I realized that my day had actually grown worst at that very moment.
“Althea. Good morning. How-how are you holding up?” my mother greeted me.
“You are coming to the funeral?” was my response. Of course, I answered my own question in my head. She works at a flower shop. Lucky me.
“Yes. I’m here to deliver the flowers, but I am also attending the service to pay my respects. I’m supposed to meet Jo here so she can give me a hand with this. It’s really heavy.”
At that moment, I spotted a policewoman approaching us. My mother’s carefree attitude to our first conversation in fifteen years made me believe my head was going to explode. I needed to get out of there.
“Well, good for you, June. Enjoy the funeral,” I said before stepping through the cemetery gates. “Officer,” I mumbled with tight lips when I walked past the policewoman, who nodded at me.
About half an hour later, the most disjointed group of people had assembled around Claire’s coffin. The priest was giving a sermon to honor her memory, but it felt more like a mechanical action born out of tradition rather than an honest deed to comfort our spirits. I could not feel the embrace of his words, regardless of how warm and kind they were. I had never known the Appleton family to be religious. I sure didn’t remember Claire ever saying that she had to go to church on Sunday or anything of that sort. Not that it mattered, anyway. I guess we all start believing a bit more when a tragedy like this shakes the ground beneath our feet.
I stood next to Mrs. Appleton, who was holding my hand and timidly weeping. I don’t think she felt comfortable showing the true depth of her pain. For me, on the contrary, this entire situation felt like an out-of-body experience. I should have kept my head down as everyone else was doing, to meditate on the words the priest was sharing with us. But this entire setup felt off. There was an air of weirdness floating around us. I couldn’t be the only one feeling that, could I?
I looked at my mother, who was standing on the other side of the coffin. Her being part of the service had caught me off guard. At first, I thought she was trying to make herself noticeable in some way, to draw attention to her, as I had seen her do so many times in my early years. Now that we had gathered around Claire, I realized that perhaps what my mother was doing was an act of kindness. Yeah, she had never paid much attention to Claire or the deep bond we had, but seeing that only five people were part of this funeral, the priest included, I believe my mother realized there were not going to be many attendees. If she could make it look less depressing and reduce the solitude of four people assembled around a wooden box, then she would do it.
Good for you, June. You’re finally thinking about the people around you.
; Right next to my mother was the policewoman I had barely said hello to at the entrance. I later found out she was the one who had picked up Mrs. Appleton from the house and brought her to the cemetery. I had no idea what the bond between them was, but I estimated she was around my age. Perhaps she was Claire’s friend.
Where was everybody else? This couldn’t be it. Claire was such a kind soul. How could it be possible that only five people were at her funeral? The priest, a police officer, the flower shop employee, a friend she had not seen for fifteen years, and her widowed mother. This couldn’t be it.
Although the sadness still lingered among us, mixing itself with the mist that refused to leave us alone, the awkwardness was denser. There was an unavoidable eeriness about contemplating a box holding the body of a young person who should have lived a longer life. And the fact that she must have made a difference in more lives than just four―if I didn’t count the clergy member―made me feel stiffer than expected.
Or maybe five, I thought. Who is that?
I saw someone moving among the trees, about a hundred feet behind my mother and the policewoman. I tried to focus to make out if it was a man or a woman, but all I could see was a human silhouette leaning against a tree. Or were they hiding?
My mother passed around a small bouquet of the same flowers that were on the larger arrangement. We all took one or two flowers. In turns, we approached the coffin to say our goodbyes by placing the flower on the lid.
First, my mother.
The policewoman.
Then it was my turn. I’ve never been too keen on saying goodbye, and as I left the flowers, I ended up not doing it. Instead, I slipped back into my dream.
I promise I’ll fix it, Claire. I’ll figure out whatever is wrong, and I’ll own it. I’ll own it before it owns me.
I hadn’t planned on making a promise to Claire, other than to always have her in my heart, which was already a constant feeling in my life. Yet there I was, going on and on about who knows what, promising to fix whatever was broken. How did I know that was true? The situation was off, sure, but it was a funeral. I don’t think I had ever attended a funeral without some level of awareness spreading over the attendees. Despite this, I couldn’t lie to myself and say there wasn’t something else brewing there. Something that, for whatever reason, I felt should be fixed.
The Haunting of Appleton Hill Page 4