Chapter 29
It felt as though my blood circulation came to a sudden halt. I wanted to move my lips, but a pervasive cold invaded my body. Was she referring to Claire? The chess players fell silent. This time, it was Adelaide’s turn to declare checkmate.
I mumbled something, but I couldn’t form a sentence that had any specific meaning as I wanted to ask a million questions at once. The only action possible at that moment was to stretch out my hands to the coffee cup in front of me and take a long sip from it.
It was hot.
It burned.
Good.
It melted away the frosting around my veins while thickening the crust that kept my delusional feelings of devotion for Appleton Hill locked even further down. Suddenly, out of the corner of my memory, the dark silhouette lingering among the trees at Claire’s funeral cropped up and started to make sense. It had been Tom.
“What do you mean by ‘married’? Was Tom getting married to―?”
“Claire. Tom and Claire were going to get married. But, of course, you know nothing about that because they had to keep it a secret. They were going to elope. Claire was going to run away from Appleton Hill. She didn’t want to live there anymore. Tom confided in me that she made him promise he would never set foot inside that house.” I let Adelaide continue, reaffirming something the gardener had already said to me. “It was her aunt, Rose, who gave Claire the courage to elope with my son. Or at least try.”
Adelaide took a long sip from her coffee, using it to swallow the bitterness accumulating in her voice.
“What happened? Why didn’t they elope?”
“No one knows, Althea. Claire ended her life the day before they were to run away,” Nathaniel answered this time, as the librarian seemed lost in thought.
“Why would a young girl in love commit suicide the day before getting married? I can’t wrap my mind around it.” Adelaide sounded more like she was thinking out loud. It was evident this had been bothering her since Claire’s death. Perhaps she was not as cold as I pictured her to be. “The only reason I can think of is Beatrix Appleton. She did something, or said something, to her, and it broke her. It broke her spirit even more than the life at the hill had already done.”
“I have to agree with that.” Adelaide’s father spoke for the first time in a while. “When Tom introduced Claire to me, asking me not to tell anyone they were dating, the first thing I noticed was how sad her eyes were. Whatever life Claire was leading—I don’t know if it was the hill, her mother, or what—she was damaged. No question about it.”
“The only way to leave the hill is feetfirst,” Nathaniel declared.
We all fell silent. There were not enough words in the entire library to express the feeling of injustice nagging at us, like an undertow that kept pulling us back to the same place. I could hear my heart beating to the sad rhythm of Claire’s song as I heard yet again what a miserable life my dear friend had lived.
I should have tried harder to take her away with me. I should have fought more for our friendship. All these years I believed I had done enough and, therefore, I was free of all guilt. But I was wrong. I had failed to recognize I was looking at my reflection in a mirror that was not only broken but had missing pieces.
Something Adelaide had mentioned lingered in me, so I brought it up again, as it did seem to create a crack in her hypothesis.
“Not everyone was trapped in Appleton Hill. Some of them did leave.”
Adelaide intervened immediately, stating that all records showed anyone who lived at the manor had died at the manor.
“Rose Appleton left. She doesn’t live there,” I retorted.
“Rose Appleton is not a true Appleton, child,” Nathaniel stated. “She’s adopted. I believe she is the daughter of a maid who died on the hill and had no family left, so they took her in. Rose’s last name is―”
“Carter. Her name is Rose Carter,” I concluded.
Chapter 30
“Rose Appleton. The ID belonged to Rose Appleton… Carter.”
I was pedaling as fast as I could. Back at the library, before getting on my bike, I texted Jo asking her to meet me at Appleton Hill. Slowly, the pieces were falling into place with the simple―and chilling―fact that Rose Appleton no longer existed. I felt like I was playing a game of chess, and it was almost over. I was the last rook standing, trying to stop the enemy from capturing me and leaving my queen exposed. I had already―and inadvertently―made a castling move; I didn’t have many options left.
The only wind at that moment was the one created by my manic riding. Out in the open, and with a clearer head and nose, I was able to detect that the stench from Claire’s clothes was not gone. I reeked of mold and decay. The house had numbed my senses.
The fog was thicker than ever when I left my three new friends back at the library. Who would have guessed that I was going to run into Tom’s mother? And his grandfather?
“I can’t believe Claire was going to marry Tom.”
I cut through the mist with that statement. If I truly thought about it, the signs had always been there. He had helped Claire with her chores and maintained his promise to stay out of the house after she was gone.
“He kept his promise better than I did.”
The furious swings of the chandelier when I mentioned Tom had not been what I believed. At the same time, a new question popped into my head. Who had removed the one in my bedroom?
“And the salt? It was to keep spirits away. To keep Claire away. It was what Milton did.” I presumed the previous night the salt didn’t work because I had Claire’s radio with me, which left an open door for her. “What about the mold? Creeping around and extending itself over me. Was that why Claire never wanted Aidan or Tom inside the house?”
At that point, I couldn’t treat anything that had happened at Appleton Hill as a coincidence. As far as I knew, since I had set foot in that place, everything had been happening in accordance with a plan. Calculated.
I climbed the driveway and reached the manor’s back entrance, always looking over my shoulder, hoping to see Jo’s cruiser behind me. At the top, I took a moment to recapture my breath and prepare myself for what I was about to do.
“The problem is not just what I’m going to do. The problem is how I might react when I walk back into the house,” I reminded myself.
I could feel it. A pulse inside me growing stronger and stronger as I got closer to the hill, and now that I was only feet away from the manor, the throbbing was almost deafening. It was as if the house’s desire for my blood was echoing inside me, trying to numb my understanding. I had no choice but to wade through it; I needed that identity card along with anything else I could find to prove to Jo that Rose Appleton/Carter was dead.
I got off the bike and threw my satchel over my shoulder, adjusting the strap over my chest.
“Okay.” I inhaled deeply. “First things first.” I walked up to the storage room and once again dove into its darkness, using my cell phone as a guiding light. “No point in hesitation.”
I approached the furnace door. There was only one way to get it done. I opened it without allowing myself any time to fuss over it. If I did, I would probably back away in sheer terror of what I was about to do.
I used the phone’s beam to illuminate the dark pit of the furnace. Once again, I found myself in front of piles of debris in varying shades of gray. It appeared to be messier than the first time I had looked in there. I didn’t want to touch the ash and whatever was mixed with it. God only knew what those little chunks―that seemed more solid than the rest of the dust―could be.
“Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it,” I kept reciting as I searched the shelves, looking for something to remove the ash. Or should that be “ashes”, I wondered with a shudder.
The only thing I came across was the ax. Cautiously, I grabbed it by the blade and used the wooden handle to poke around in the little piles of gray dust. The more I stirred, the more they dissolved.
At last, there were many bits and pieces scattered around I could not identify. Only three small things I managed to distinguish―three melted buttons, probably from a blouse.
“Maybe they belonged to Rose.”
Unfortunately, there were no clear signs of bones. I was certain this was how they disposed of the bodies once the house had drained them. As disturbing as the thought was, I was hoping to find some dental pieces, at least. I was heartbroken when my initial plan didn’t pan out.
“The burned ID will have to be enough for Jo to open an investigation.” I sighed, stepping away from the furnace, already picking what words to use when addressing Jo. What I was about to tell her would throw all her conjectures overboard.
But an idea struck me like lightning, changing my plans and renewing my hopes once again. I approached the set of suitcases I had admired only days before and took hold of one of them. I tried to put it inside the furnace, but the door was too small.
“This is why they removed Rose’s belongings from the suitcases. Because they didn’t fit in the furnace.”
Another question burning inside me was more convoluted. Who exactly was orchestrating all of this? Who had been involved in the disappearance of Rose Carter/Appleton?
“Is it even a disappearance?” I asked out loud while I placed the ax back on the shelf.
There was a significant gray area in this revelation that I was reluctant to address. How much had Claire participated in all of this? She seemed to have protected certain people. Aidan, Tom…
“Me.”
I heard a murmur from the radio I had stashed there before leaving for the library. It seemed like it had happened a lifetime ago, but it had only been that morning. Claire was talking. With hesitant steps, I approached the radio and slowly turned the volume up. As soon as the melody entered my ears with clarity, I recognized it. I had to fight back tears; it was not the time to be weak. The lyrics had not started yet as the song had a long piano introduction, but it didn’t take long before a male voice started to sing to his mother, telling her he had murdered a man.
“No, Claire…”
I knew from the cuts on her body detected in the autopsy, and by Tom’s revelation, that Claire was a victim of the death by a thousand cuts, that hideous ritual running in the Appleton family since its genesis. I had to face the fact that my dear friend might have inflicted that same form of torture upon others. Imagining a person I loved as a victim was one type of excruciating pain, but picturing them as the perpetrator… that was a different ball game altogether. I wiped my tears and tried to refocus.
“Don’t stop, Althea,” I instructed myself. “Just don’t stall.”
The pulse inside me was getting hungrier and hungrier with each passing second. Wasting time would only bring me closer to my grave.
I stumbled in the dark to reach the steps that would take me back to the light, but the door I had left open suddenly closed by itself. I leaped towards it and violently tried the doorknob, but it was no use. It seemed someone had locked it from the outside, but I knew that wasn’t the case. Instinctively, I knew what was going on. The house was fighting back. Appleton Hill would not let go of me so easily. I kicked, hit, and punched the door in frustration, achieving absolutely nothing. But then I realized all I needed to get out was right in that room.
I jumped off the steps towards the shelf unit and grabbed the ax once again. I was forced to place the phone in my coat pocket, which eliminated the only beam of light available to me. In absolute darkness, the door turned into such a small target, and I was already shaking, that I feared I would miss it.
The first time the blade crashed against the door, taking a bite out of the wood, the entire place trembled. It surprised me, but I would not let it slow me down.
“Appleton Hill will not be my grave!”
I aimed at it a second time. Then a third time. The shaking became even more perceptible, as if the walls were ready to cave in on me. I needed to get out of there.
“Open up or I’ll keep going!” I shouted, before letting the ax’s blade bite once more.
Not even in my wildest dreams had I anticipated fighting against an inanimate house. I heard the click of the lock, then the hinges squealed until the entrance was wide open and daylight hurt my eyes. I was free to go.
“Maybe not so inanimate after all.”
I fled the storage room, heading straight to the back entrance. There was only one goal in my mind. I would sneak in through the kitchen, run up to my bedroom, grab Rose’s identity card and a few basic things of my own, and then wait for Jo out in the street. In and out in a heartbeat.
“Don’t stop. Don’t look back.”
I reached for the kitchen door, anticipating finding it locked. After the storage room, I thought the house wouldn’t welcome me back. To my surprise, the door opened freely. My stomach turned, and I knew I was walking into the wolf’s mouth, but I had no choice. Then the door shut itself with a loud bang behind my back. The wolf had closed its mouth, and I was heading into its stomach.
Chapter 31
Regardless, my mind was on moving forward. I ran upstairs, hearing every floorboard, every step of the staircase, every crease of the wallpaper groaning because of my presence. If I had just stepped into the wolf’s mouth, then all of these perverse sounds were the way this animal salivated.
As I moved down the corridor, armed with the ax, the lights started blinking. It wasn’t dark outside just yet, so it didn’t concern me. I knew it was merely a mechanism to intimidate me. Appleton Manor was bullying me into silence.
The pulse inside me was also trying to gain momentum. It joined the lights, and they sang to the rhythm of the same melody, blinking in unison. I launched myself into my bedroom and desperately searched for the few belongings I wanted to take with me. I knew it was impossible to escape with both suitcases. Maybe later, if Jo and some of her cop buddies helped me out, I could get back into the house. At that moment, clothes were not important.
The first thing I did was grab the book where I had stashed Rose’s identity card. After checking it was still in there, I placed it in my bag. After that, I took my passport, cell phone charger, my apartment keys…
“What else? What else?” I turned on my heels, scanning the bedroom and trying to figure out if there was anything else I needed to take with me.
“The only way to leave the hill is feetfirst.” Nathaniel’s assertion resurfaced in my memory.
I realized something I had not noticed that morning when I left. The room looked impeccable. Not a speck of dust or a cobweb. The bedding was brand-new. There was not a place on the walls where I could spot chipped paint or a tear in the wallpaper. The curtains were cleaner, and their color was brighter than ever. The floor appeared as if it had been polished in the past few hours. The bed’s wood gleamed, exposing the beautiful carving. Even the crystals from the window seemed clearer.
“This is what my blood does to the place. It makes it beautiful. The blood feeds the mansion, breathing new life into it. Appleton Manor was feeding off of me.”
I approached the place on the wall where both red lines had been that morning. My mouth was dry, but my hands were clammy. And the pounding. The pounding in my head was increasing its pace and taking my breath along for the ride. I was flustered, and all I wanted to do was touch the wall… And let the wall touch me.
I needed it. I craved it.
I was aching for it with every passing second, like one desires the touch of a lover who’s been away too long.
It was bizarre to battle the urge to put my back against the wall and let it drink my blood again. The red lines were not there. There was not a hint left of their existence. I stretched out my hand to where they had been and touched the wall. It was warm and had a surprisingly flexible texture. The wall was soft, cozy, and it made room for my hand when I came in contact with it, as if I was sinking into some form of jelly.
“I’ve missed you.”
The words emanated fr
om my dry lips and I recognized my voice, but they came from a place deep behind the throbbing, a place I couldn’t control. The jelly wall made more room for my fingers, allowing them to leave a mark, like I was playing with clay. I felt it moving, taking shape around my fingers.
“Only 997 cuts to go.”
Then the murmur of suction reached my ears, breaking the hypnotic spell I was under. I screamed and yanked my hand away, stumbling backward to get away from the wall.
Don’t stop. Don’t look back, I reminded myself. But at that moment, I realized there was one last thing I needed before I could leave that monstrous place for good.
I ran out of the room and headed for Claire’s bedroom. The last thing I wanted to do was to dive deeper into the maze of Appleton Manor, but I couldn’t leave without it. The lights kept acting up, turning on and off at will, and making the off moments longer than the on. The pulse became a ringing in my ears, making me dizzy. I felt like a demented person, running through the hallways of an old mansion while holding an ax.
As I reached Claire’s bedroom, I noticed the appearance of the corridors had also improved. They did not look as good as my bedroom, but it was evident that the more the house consumed human blood, the stronger it became.
I burst into Claire’s bedroom and approached the bed with long and quick steps. On top of the half-rotten, half-mice-eaten blanket lay the photo Claire and I had taken so many years ago.
I had to drop the ax onto the bed in order to stash the photograph inside the book in my satchel, along with the burned identity card. The bed shook, and it made me jump back. I had not anticipated that. Yes, the lights were blinking. Yes, somehow the improvement of the house refused to extend to Claire’s bedroom, but why was the bed trembling? I feared the furniture would manage to take my only form of defense away from me. Luckily, my reflexes were not completely numbed, and I retrieved the ax as the covers and sheets pooled around the wooden handle, trying to devour it.
The Haunting of Appleton Hill Page 17