“Why can’t you go inside the house?”
Tom looked down at the bags and hesitated. He shook his head and exhaled loudly, apparently giving up any resistance to my questioning.
“It’s a promise I made to Claire, okay?” He refocused his eyes on me. “Can you help me keep it?”
Tom knew he was hitting a weak spot and he muffled his brute ways to win my sympathy. I wasn’t quite sure what he was saying was true; it sounded ridiculous. At the same time, if it was true, I would have never forgiven myself for refusing.
Get it together, Althea. If he wanted to hurt you, he would’ve done it by now, I encouraged myself while trying to control my agitated breathing. I gave in and took a step down, just enough to be able to grab the grocery bags.
“Let me help you with the door.” He passed by me, and his closeness gave me goosebumps.
Tom opened the door by pushing it instead of pulling the doorknob, as I had done. I couldn’t believe how stupidly scared out of my mind I had been to not realize what I was doing. I climbed the step to enter the house while Tom remained by the door, holding it ajar. Instead of letting go of the doorknob to let me in, he held it tighter, creating a barrier with his arm and impeding me from going any farther.
“She was a cutter, you know? Did Jo tell you that? Claire had cuts all over her body. Her suicide was not the first time she had tried to hurt herself.” Tom spoke in a hushed voice, as if sharing a secret with me.
I kept looking ahead while he said it. His close proximity shattered the last thread of security I harbored. I didn’t want him to see in my eyes that he was right―Claire’s vicious habit was a secret no one had shared with me.
“I’ll get your money,” I spat out and pushed the door with my body, forcing him to let go of the doorknob.
With a brisk walk, I reached the kitchen in no time. I dropped the bags on the counter and grabbed the money Tom said would be there. It came along with a note―another grocery list—so I took both. I was about to head out again, but I took a moment to settle myself. It was confusing dealing with this man. He seemed menacing but, at the same time, he did things that appeared to be selfless. Things that a good Samaritan would do, such as buying groceries for a woman confined to a wheelchair.
He was right about Jo, too. She never told me about the cuts, and she did mention the forensic report. Jo must’ve known what her body looked like. Why would she choose to say only half the truth?
I held on to the counter, trying to stop my legs from turning into butter sticks and melt all over the kitchen floor.
“Althea? Did you find the money?” Tom called from the garden.
“Coming!”
I took one last breath to steady myself and headed for the door. Claire’s cutting habit was not the only question in my head. Why couldn’t Tom go inside the house? If it was a lie, it was a ridiculous one. I kept playing with my mismatched thoughts while approaching the gardener with wariness. My arm was extended in front of me, holding out the money along with the grocery list, while maintaining a safe distance.
“Are you okay? You look a little pale,” he said with a concerned look, placing the money in his pocket without even bothering to count it. I nodded, but he didn’t seem convinced.
“It’s very thoughtful of you to do the grocery shopping for her, now that the nurse is gone.”
“It’s not a big deal. I started doing it with Claire about a year ago, when Marguerite left, so she wouldn’t have to carry all those groceries on her bicycle.” Tom carelessly read the new grocery list. “Do you like chicken?” he asked out of the blue. It caught me off guard; I was still considering his last statement. Had Mrs. Appleton said her nurse’s name was Marguerite?
“Yeah, I do. How do you know that?”
“It’s on the list,” he said with a timid smile while waving the piece of paper in the air. “They never bought chicken―Claire… Mrs. Appleton and her daughter don’t like it.”
Tom said goodbye and climbed down the steps where he had been waiting for me, not without untangling some ivy branches from his shoelaces first.
“Stupid weeds,” I heard him mutter while an idea formed in my head.
“Hey, Tom!” I shouted as he reached his truck. “Do you know where Claire’s bicycle might be?”
“She always kept it in the storage room. Right there.”
He pointed to a place not too distant from where I was standing. I quickly stepped down to the driveway and followed his finger, finding a door six feet away from the back entrance. I hadn’t paid attention to it before, probably because it was much smaller and more discreet than the heavily embellished oak doors that gave way into the manor. Tom got into his truck, and I realized that my fear of him had given up its place to all the questions our encounter had prompted in me.
Didn’t Mrs. Appleton say her nurse left a week ago? I asked myself while the truck disappeared downhill. How did she know I was going to be there next week? Maybe she had spoken to Rose at last. A stiff smile formed on my face as I scratched the back of my neck. I knew when I was heading back home. That was good… despite the bitter taste the thought awakened in me.
Chapter 17
I looked up and saw them. Hanging above my head, carelessly stretching their copper and plastic arms toward me. The cables that Claire used to hang herself―or that someone else used to end her life―were coming out through a hole in the ceiling.
The lamp wasn’t missing, which made the entire thing even more bizarre. Although it was covered in rust and some crystal drops were absent, it was still possible to appreciate the magnificence of the piece in its skeletal form. It looked like someone had pushed aside the chandelier just enough to expose part of the hole from where the cables were stemming.
Jo had been right about the strangeness of this bedroom as a murder scene. I turned around and studied the door with more care. I could see now, even from a distance, that the area around the lock looked battered. Someone had wrestled with it.
“Which also confirms this is Claire’s bedroom, despite its deterioration.”
I had taken the time to go through every single unlocked door on that floor to check if I could find any other place with wires hanging out like that. None of the other rooms had this characteristic. In fact, Claire’s bedroom was the worst when it came to lack of maintenance. The decay in here was like no other room I had seen. There was a special kind of neglect lingering about the place.
I checked my phone. It was almost 5:00 p.m. A little too late to be out in the cold, riding a bike through Ashwell. Nonetheless, that was what I was going to do. I needed to know. I needed to unveil the reasons behind Claire’s death. Everyone seemed to have a piece of information they refused to share with others, and that needed to stop.
“This is the reason, isn’t it, Claire?” I asked out loud, quite unsure of why I was doing it. “This is the reason why I feel this suffocating sensation around me, why the air feels so dense and polluted when I try to mention you. Because your own life was polluted with secrets.”
The crystal drops from the chandelier swung delicately, as if a breeze was making them rock from side to side. Except there was no breeze because the window was locked, and the structure itself remained in place. Only the dust-covered prisms moved.
“I knew it. All of this can’t be my imagination. It wasn’t just a stress-induced dream. You were here the other night, right? In my dreams? You led me to this room.”
A nonexistent gust of air shook the drops again and dust rained upon me.
“I’m gonna take that as a yes.”
I was surprised at how easily I accepted that the ghost of Claire was still lingering among those walls. But in a way, I felt relieved. Relieved that I wasn’t slowly losing my mind. Relieved that the initial sensation of weirdness I felt creeping up under my skin and taking shape was not just me. I wasn’t creating impossible storylines for a movie I was directing in my head.
“How do I know I am speaking to Claire? How do I
know you are not someone else who inhabited this house? Tell me how old you were when you died.”
The crystals’ rocking came to a stop. In a more delicate manner than before, the drops began to move separately. One prism shook first, then another, then another. She was counting. And I began counting with her. One, two, three, four…
“Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two.”
The last teardrop moved. After reaching number thirty-two, all of them became immobile.
“Th-that’s right. You were thirty-two years old.”
I felt a growing lump in my throat pressuring tears to come out of me, but I knew I couldn’t afford them. If I started crying now―despite how happy and sad it made me knowing I could have a conversation with someone I believed I’d lost forever―then I would never stop. I needed to keep my initial idea in mind.
“Do you think I should talk to Jo?”
Once again, the crystal teardrops hanging above my head danced with ease.
“How about Tom? Do I need to talk to him?”
What initially had been an easy-breezy swing now became a violent shake. The delicate music I had enjoyed with the previous answers created by the soft touch of the drops, was now a frenetic cacophony of clashing crystals. Instinctively, I covered my head with my arms and jumped to the side, moving away from under the chandelier. I feared that, given the state of decay the lamp was in, some teardrops would fall on me.
“Okay, okay. You don’t want me to talk to Tom, is that it?” The chandelier was now overtaken by this incessant trembling, like an earthquake affecting only that part of the ceiling. This frenzy made me shiver. I thought the whole chandelier would come down on me, creating a big Phantom of the Opera mess.
“I won’t talk to him! I promise! I’ll leave him out of this!” I yelled at the ceiling, believing I needed to surpass in volume the disturbing noise to get to Claire.
It worked. The skeleton of the chandelier stopped its convulsive movements, and all the teardrops followed suit a few seconds later. Eventually, the silence returned to the room as I witnessed the lamp going back to being an inanimate object once again.
“I won’t say a thing to Tom, Claire. Don’t worry about that.”
A screeching sound followed by white noise filled the room and I could swear my heart stopped beating for a few seconds. I had grown used to listening to my own voice, and only my voice. Soon after that, a soul song from the 70s inundated the place. It was coming from the radio I had seen previously next to the stack of moldy magazines. This was a new way of communication for Claire. If I listened carefully, the song told the story of a man leaving his unfulfilled dreams of fame and fortune to go back to Georgia. Just like vintage clothes, Claire loved old classics when it came to music. As for myself, among the reigning chaos, all I could piece together out of this was that Tom was leaving Ashwell. What dreams was he leaving behind?
“You don’t want him to be a part of this, I get it. He’s leaving town, I get it!”
I rushed to the radio as the volume was increasing; I didn’t want Mrs. Appleton’s attention turned on me. That poor woman already had enough without knowing that the spirit of her deceased daughter was running amok. I practically launched myself at the ancient appliance and pulled the plug, but the music wouldn’t stop. The female voice kept singing to me about following her man, with a volume that was growing louder by the second.
“I get it! I won’t talk to him! Claire, make it stop! Your mother will hear us!”
I grabbed the radio with the intention of placing it under the covers and throwing some pillows on it to muffle the sound, and the room became mute once again. This silence was like ice emanating from the radio, creeping up my arms, permeating through the layers of my clothes without mercy. It was invading my body like a chilling gangrene. The air seemed solid; I could reach out and touch it.
For a moment, the lights dimmed and every object in the room turned darker as if a new layer of grime had been applied all over when I blinked. Then I heard it.
Wood cracking. Outside. In the hallway.
The floor grumbled under some sort of weight. And it was fading away with each passing second. Someone was walking away from Claire’s bedroom. All of Jo’s recommendations about staying clear of Tom came flooding back to me. Perhaps the conversation we had in the kitchen had encouraged him to follow me.
He saw the terror in my eyes. He knows I’m onto him.
It could also be there was another type of presence on the other side of the door. I knew it wasn’t Claire; she didn’t give me that sense of dread I was experiencing at that moment. But it didn’t mean there couldn’t be more spirits in the house, even evil ones. I needed to find out what was going on outside the bedroom before it was too late. I had remained among the darkness for years, quiet and accepting of the cobweb of ignorance Claire had spun around me to prevent me from finding out why she had pushed me out of her life. Now I needed to know.
I dropped the radio on the bed and ran to the door. I had to wrestle with the battered lock to open it. By the time I was able to step into the corridor, the footsteps had evaporated into silence and shadows. With careful steps, I moved farther into the hallway, always staring intently to my right, the direction the footsteps had taken.
I walked down the hallway, following the invisible sound―crumbs the footsteps had left behind―until I reached the end.
Everything remained the same.
I tried to stay as silent as possible to hear if the footsteps were going downstairs―as this corridor led to the staircase―but I couldn’t catch a thing. Yet, I knew what I’d heard. Someone had been there. It wasn’t my imagination.
I’m not crazy.
As if my own thoughts were Claire’s cue, a nasal female vocalist began singing on the radio I had left behind on the bed about how crazy she and I were for feeling alone. It was a new song, but this time I recognized it instantly. Not only because it was another classic, but because it was the melody I heard intertwined with my nightmares.
Being mocked by a ghost was the last thing I needed. I retraced my steps to the bedroom and found myself facing the radio once again.
“Shut up, Claire. You’re the one who’s crazy.”
Chapter 18
I ran up to my bedroom and hid the radio/walkie-talkie-from-beyond in my suitcase. I snatched my coat and satchel and headed to the back entrance of the manor, aiming for the storage room where Tom said Claire kept her bicycle.
As soon as I opened the door, a chill ran down my spine.
Tom’s truck. Parked in the driveway. Again.
I swallowed hard, trying to ignore the gritty feeling invading my throat. The mere sight of his vehicle made all the fluids in my body come to a sudden halt.
Dammit… Maybe those footsteps were not some spirit presence. Maybe it was the murderer returning to the scene of the crime.
“What are you doing out here again?” Tom showed up suddenly and blasted this question at me.
“What are you doing here again?” I retorted, trying to put my poker face on.
I hated that every time we met I looked like a deer in headlights. Maybe Tom didn’t notice it, but I certainly felt it. Ever since I had set foot in Ashwell―and even before that, at the airport―I had the undeniable sensation of being a helpless creature when he was around.
“I thought you were done for the day,” I stated, focusing on smoothing away the trembling in my voice.
Tom had come through some lost spot among the gardens, carrying a rope and a shovel that he tossed in the back of his truck.
“I forgot a few things. I need them for work first thing in the morning, so―”
“You use a rope to trim a garden?” The moment the question flew out of my mouth, I mentally kicked myself. Why was I trying to have a face-off with a potential killer?
“I don’t use it to trim the grass, Althea. I’m working tomorrow at a property where I’m taking down a few trees. Sometimes you can wrap a rope around the branches t
o pull them down if you’re working in an unconventional place for a tree.”
“Oh, I thought all you needed for that was an ax. I guess that’s why I’m not a gardener,” was what my stupid mouth managed to say. Sure, go ahead, you idiot. Encourage him to bring an ax as well; that sounds like a swell idea.
“Yeah, that too.”
Tom searched his pockets and, once he’d found his car keys, reached for the truck’s door. But something from the unorthodox conversation I had held with Claire popped back up in my head. If I had already done so much talking, doing some more wouldn’t hurt.
“Tom, what…” The gardener watched me as my mind scrambled, trying to find the right words to ask a question that would tell me something I already knew. “What are you going to do when Mrs. Appleton sells the property? I mean, she’s worried about you.” I started to weave a lie that wouldn’t make me look like a snoop. “She doesn’t want to leave you without a job. Since you mentioned this other gig you have, I thought maybe I could set her mind at ease.”
“Tell her not to worry about me.” He shook his head. “I’m planning on leaving Ashwell.”
I don’t know if it happened literally, but figuratively I felt my jaw hit the floor. I didn’t ask him if he was changing Ashwell for Georgia; I was too paralyzed to articulate any coherent thought.
“I need to get away from here. It’s time. It’s time for a fresh start.” Tom lowered his head and fiddled with the keys. “Tell Mrs. Appleton I’ll be back in a couple of days,” he said curtly, getting in his truck and slamming the door shut. Tom never looked back, and I felt there was something in his eyes he was trying to hide from me.
I waited for the truck to―once again―disappear downhill before heading for the storage room. I opened the door without difficulty, as it was unlocked, like everything else here in Appleton Hill. The place was pitch-black, and I couldn’t find a light switch. I was careful to look for a rock first to use as a doorstop, then I descended the three steps leading into the room, using my cell phone to illuminate the way.
The Haunting of Appleton Hill Page 10