The same reason why I couldn’t refuse when she called me about Claire and insisted that I should stay up on the hill with her was also the reason I couldn’t say no to the ride with Tom she had set up. Refusing would be not only showing ungratefulness, but also creating a shadow of selfishness I didn’t want to carry on my shoulders. Who says no to a widow confined to a wheelchair who has lost her only child? Someone with no heart. Someone made of ice. And I was neither.
“Of course, Mrs. Appleton. It’s the least I can do. After all, it’s just for a few days,” I said, hoping at the same time to convince myself that I was making the right decision. Lena is going to kill me.
“Oh, yes. I’m sure she’ll be here sooner than you think.” Beatrix Appleton extended her hands towards me and took mine as she had done before. “I cannot thank you enough, my dear child. You are a gift from the heavens above.”
All I could do was smile.
“Are you hungry? I could warm up some food for you.”
I politely declined her offer―my stomach was twisted into a knot after all the struggle―but at that moment I realized something. Had she said, “warm up some food”? Weren’t the people attending the funeral supposed to gather afterward in the house of the deceased to share a meal? Maybe even a drink? God knew, I needed one myself.
“I’m sorry, but where is everybody? My mother and Officer Brookmeyer?” Given the lack of attendees, I believed the priest himself should have made a visit too.
“Oh.” Beatrix released me and made a hand movement, dismissing their absence as something silly. “They couldn’t come. They had things to do and I… I understand.” She forced a smile on her face.
“They had things to do?” I repeated, feeling rage taking over me, clearing away the exhaustion and the fear from climbing up the hill.
“You know, some people are scared of old houses. Let’s be honest, who wants to be around a sad woman who has lost all her family?” I was about to protest but Beatrix stopped me. “I do not blame them, Althea. And neither should you. This situation is hard enough without adding anger towards the few people around me. I am grateful they attended the service, and now I am grateful I have time to spend by myself to mourn my daughter. Right now, you are all I need.”
I was fighting back tears at this point; I had to bite my lip to force them down. I was not sure how Mrs. Appleton was able to carry on with our conversation without shedding some of her own. Maybe she was still in shock. I didn’t believe she had fully embraced the reality that Claire was gone.
“I’m going to lie down for a while―I’m terribly exhausted. You should do that too, Althea. You don’t look so good.”
She started to move away from me, and I noticed how much she struggled to maneuver the wheelchair. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that such a frail woman should have an electric wheelchair. This was not the first time I had seen her in this situation.
“Do you want me to help you?” I offered, rapidly realizing I had barely any strength left in my body, but I couldn’t stay back and do nothing.
Once Beatrix Appleton had agreed, I pushed her down the corridor where her bedroom was located. Unlike the passages on the top floor, this one had its walls covered with different portraits. Men, women, children, and some mixed groups that appeared to be families. There were all oil paintings, no photographs. All the names I read at the bottom of the frames ended with Appleton. Clearly, these people were her ancestors.
We finally arrived at the only open door in the entire corridor, one that gave way to her bedroom. Claire’s mother stopped me at the entrance and thanked me for my help. I was about to go back to my own bedroom when I remembered the commitment I had for that night.
“Oh, Mrs. Appleton, if you don’t need me here, Jo―Officer Brookmeyer—and I are going out tonight. We were schoolmates, and we are getting together to remember old times.”
“Of course, dear. I do not expect you to be beside me every minute of the day. Go on. Officer Brookmeyer is a fine woman. You can invite her to come over any time you want. Spending time with the ‘cast members’ of your past is not such a bad thing.” She smiled while making air quotes when she said “cast members.” “I know it doesn’t look like that right now, but I speak from experience. There will come a time in your life when all you have is your past, so it is best to cherish it.”
I stepped away from Mrs. Appleton’s bedroom, one that looked as worn-out and covered in grime as the rest of the house. I hastened my pace to get out of that hallway inundated with still eyes. The eyes of Beatrix’s past. That woman slept among dead people.
Chapter 9
“I can’t believe this place still exists. I guess some things never change in Ashwell,” I told Jo on the sidewalk after getting out of her car.
The Troll’s Den had a roundish appearance and a deep-green door with a golden knob in the center of it. A handful of locals were coming in and out, either to drink a beer after work, or because they had already drunk it and were heading back home. It was a weeknight, so human activity wasn’t high, but I did remember that on weekends―when I was a teenager―this place was packed.
“It’s not as popular as it used to be. It’s mostly us folks now, older people still hanging on to their lost youth.”
“God, Jo, can you make it sound even more depressing?” I asked her, and we shared a weak laugh.
It felt weird to do so. I certainly hadn’t done it since getting the news about Claire. I wasn’t sure I was at the point of laughing without remorse, but it was nice. It felt good to shake off some of the stagnated energy of death hanging above my head.
“Let’s go in,” Jo said. “Watch your head.”
At that moment, I remembered why the place was called The Troll’s Den. It wasn’t because the owner was a short man; it was because this hole-in-the-wall resembled a cave. The ceiling of the bar was unusually low to the point where the customers had to bow their heads and walk around with a hunched back until they found a free seat.
A troll is better than a goblin, I guess.
Jo led us to a table where four other people were already having a drink. Two of them I recognized instantly. Michaela and her high school sweetheart, Aidan. I spotted matching wedding bands, so I presumed they were married. They greeted me with a warmth I did not anticipate.
With the other two it wasn’t so easy, mostly because the hair color of one of them had changed. What had once been sandy was now hot red, and she now wore cat-eye glasses. She noticed the puzzled look on my face right away.
“You don’t remember me, do you, bonehead?” the redhead asked, lifting her glasses and exposing her face, banishing all my confusion.
“Liz! I didn’t recognize you! The hair and the glasses,” I excused myself as I went around the table to give her a hug.
Like me, Liz also had aspirations in the world of film. It was with her that I’d created my first homemade movies. It was with her help that I shot the short film that allowed me to get a partial scholarship. She had always been a little rough around the edges. A no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is type of person. I’d always liked that about her.
“Bull crap!” She called me out, reminding me that her mouth was a latrine with a mind of its own and a driver’s license. “Now that you’re a Hollywood darling, your head is so big it barely fits through the door. Don’t pretend to be better than us, loser.” She smiled, making everyone laugh and breaking the ice accumulated between us for the past fifteen years. I had no idea what happened to her filmmaking dreams, but she clearly hadn’t forgotten about mine.
After Liz, the only person left at the table was another woman around our age. And for the life of me, I couldn’t remember her. She was blonde with green eyes and freckles all over her face, which gave her delicate features and a youthful appearance.
“I’m sorry, I don’t―” I started to justify my faulty memory.
“This is Tess,” Jo intervened, stopping my excuses. “She’s my partner. We never went t
o school together.” She addressed Tess. “This is Althea, honey. She is Claire’s best friend―was Claire’s best friend.” Jo cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to talk about it.”
“Don’t worry, Jo. I don’t know how to talk about it either. Hello, nice to meet you.” I extended my hand to Tess.
After we had arranged ourselves around the table and ordered a few beers, the small talk began. What had everyone been up to? Who was married to whom, who had kids, who was divorced? Who had come out and who did they believe was still in the closet?
A bit of light conversation and some fresh air was helping me forget the real reason behind this trip to the past. Our informal high school reunion was moving along smoothly, until the moment the second round of beers arrived. Some took a sip of their new bottle, others ate some chips. Eventually, the elephant in the room became so large it was busting out windows with its legs, like Alice when she ate the cake.
We couldn’t contain our wild animal any longer.
I realized then that everyone else inside that place―except us―was drinking to celebrate, maybe to forget, and some to just pass time. We were the only ones drinking to remember. It was Liz who, as brave as she had always been, forced the reunion back on track. She lifted her bottle and said, “Dear Claire: I hope you are in a better place now than the one you had to endure here on earth. We will never forget you.”
We all mirrored Liz and lifted our beers, toasting Claire’s memory. I knew I was simply going through the motions. What did Liz mean with her words? Claire’s life had not been a good one? I knew having her only family confined to a wheelchair was probably rough on her everyday life, but was that the reason behind her suicide?
“Why don’t we go around the table and tell our favorite story about Claire?” Michaela proposed. “I’ll start.”
And thus, tales about Claire were told, exposing a shy girl who did her best to stay afloat in a small-town high school, like we all did when we were teenagers. Some stories were funny, some of them were sweet and some of them were odd, like Aidan’s. He had asked her to be his date for the spring dance and Claire said yes. When he went to the hill to pick her up, a simple date took a rather strange turn.
“I had borrowed my dad’s car, so I could pick Claire up. And I am sorry to say this, honey,”—Aidan looked at his wife with sheep’s eyes—“but I was excited about it. I had been asking her to go out with me for months, and she kept turning me down.”
“I’m okay with that. She was way out of your league,” Michaela retorted with a smile that became contagious around the table.
“Anyway, I went up the back entrance of the hill, where the driveway is, right? And when I got all the way to the top, they were already there.”
“They?” I asked.
“Claire and her mother. It wasn’t really a warm night to be outside waiting, so that caught me off guard. I killed the engine and got out of the car, you know, trying to make a good impression on Mrs. Appleton, and as I approached them, I heard Claire saying: ‘Mother, we won’t be back late.’ Then she took a step in my direction, but Mrs. Appleton grabbed her by the arm and stopped her. ‘Hold on a minute, dear. I want to know this young man first,’ she said with a smile. To this day, I remember Claire’s look as I introduced myself to her mother.”
“Why? Was she angry the old lady was holding her back from running away to freedom?” Liz asked with more than a hint of cynicism in her voice.
“Liz! Don’t talk about Mrs. Appleton like that,” Jo reprimanded her.
“What? The fact that she’s in a wheelchair doesn’t automatically make her a saint. We all know she isn’t.”
“No, you think she’s not a saint.”
Tess, Jo’s partner, intervened to put an end to the escalating discussion. This brought memories of my own. The interaction between Jo and Liz had always been like that. Liz said whatever popped into her mind and spat it out to the world. If you ever wanted to catch it, you risked being slapped by her words. Jo had always been the diplomat, the one with a deep respect for tradition and authority. She came from a family of cops, so in her adult life, she basically decided to embody those two things.
“Fear,” Aidan said, pulling me out of my memories and dragging me back into his. “Claire wasn’t angry that her mother was trying to protect her; she looked fearful. As if she didn’t want Mrs. Appleton talking to me. After I introduced myself, Mrs. Appleton invited me to go inside for a cup of tea, which I thought was truly bizarre. What sixteen-year-old would accept an invitation for a cup of tea before going on a date?”
“Did you do it?” I asked, the events of that particular spring dance resurfacing in my mind. “Did you go inside the house?”
Chapter 10
That night of the spring dance, I recalled, had seen Claire behaving strangely. I had not given it much thought at the time, but it now seemed to take on greater significance. I gazed intently at Aidan, barely breathing as I waited for him to answer.
“No, I didn’t. I looked at Claire awkwardly, trying to understand… Jesus, the entire scene was ridiculous.” Aidan rubbed his face with his free hand. “I didn’t know what to say, right? I didn’t want to upset her mother―I wanted to make a good impression. But before I was able to say anything, Claire intervened and said we were late and that we would have tea when we got back from the dance. She had to promise it to her mother. That’s how she managed to get away from her. So we went to the dance, and then―”
“She left,” I finished his story. “She left the dance early without you or me. I remember you came to me asking for her.”
“Yeah!” Aidan’s eyes lit up. “What was that about, Althea?” He leaned on the table, as though relieved to have someone corroborating his story. “I think she stayed for over an hour before running away, right? Did she tell you why she left? I tried to ask her over the following days, and all she said was that it wasn’t going to work out. That I should date Michaela instead.”
“What did you do when you couldn’t find her?” Tess asked.
“Michaela, Liz, Althea and I started walking around town trying to find her,” said Jo. “I think you went back to the house, right, Aidan?” It was as though Jo tried to fit her own memories into the bigger puzzle we were putting together.
Even as a teenager, Jo was already acting as a cop, I thought.
“I did.” Aidan nodded with heaviness. “I drove to her house, and I was about to go up the hill once more when I saw Claire standing in the middle of the driveway… downhill. She was waiting for me. I remember stopping the car and starting to get out of it when, out of nowhere, she slammed her body against my door to keep it shut. Claire was trying to prevent me from getting out.”
“Did she say something?” I asked.
“Yes; she shouted that I’d better get out of there before she called the police. That was it. What else could I do?”
I had some memories of the story Aidan was telling us, mostly because I knew Claire was crazy about him. When I found out he had asked her to go to the dance, I urged her to say yes. That’s why I knew it didn’t make any sense when she disappeared. The following Monday, at school, Claire told me she left because she was sick. What I did not know was that Aidan had been asking her out for months prior to this dance. Why had Claire never told me about this before?
The night of the spring dance ended with Aidan finding us ambling through Ashwell and informing us that Claire had walked home. We went back to the school, but the situation had developed in such a strange way that I don’t think it was possible for any of us to enjoy the dance.
“Anyway,” Aidan continued, “all I wanted to say was that, in reality, Claire was the sole person responsible for my wife and me finding each other. She told me to ask Michaela out because she was basically drooling over me every single day. And I’m such a humble human being, that I didn’t notice her obsession with my charming personality,” Aidan concluded, trying to give his story a cheerful end.
; “Yes, I remember drawing hearts. ‘Aidan and Michaela forever,’” his wife joked, contributing to lift up the spirits.
After some weak―and much-needed―laughter, it was my turn.
“I met Claire at drama club. I was the new kid in town. Being the only child of a single parent who was―at times―a recovering alcoholic, isn’t exactly a recipe for popularity, so…” I shrugged. “I joined the drama club because I had been at this new school for three weeks and I didn’t have a single friend. No one talked to me except for the teachers. During my first day, Claire approached me and introduced herself as ‘Head of the Wardrobe Department,’ if I recall correctly,” I said with a chuckle.
“Claire had a way with clothes, didn’t she?” Michaela traced the rim of the bottle with her finger. “She always knew how to turn some old piece of nothing into something fabulous that represented her personality.”
“Vintage,” Liz and I corrected her in unison.
Michaela was absolutely right. My mother could barely hold a job back in the day. Thus, Claire and I used to go to thrift shops to buy used clothes for a few bucks and then she turned them into something wonderful. She was a natural at it.
“Claire was the one who made all the costumes for our short films,” Liz said to me, and I nodded. The lump in my throat prevented me from voicing an affirmative answer. But I was not alone. In what seemed like a simple movement to adjust her glasses, my childhood friend concealed wiping away a tear.
“Let me ask all of you something,” I started again after swallowing the lump paralyzing my vocal cords. Behind all the beers, the chips, the laughter, and the memories, something had been bothering me from the moment I had set foot inside the bar. “If you all remember Claire so fondly, why didn’t you go to her funeral?” I questioned Aidan and Michaela. “Where were you this morning?” I turned to the other flank I was charging against. “Liz? Care to elaborate on your absence this morning?”
The Haunting of Appleton Hill Page 6