Twice: A Novel

by Lisa Unger

  Marilyn had told the tale as though it were a ghost story, something that was heinous and terrifying but not real. And she spoke with a kind of alacrity that Lydia found a tad inappropriate. Lore was like that; the years drained the horror from it, leaving just an echo over time. But in Marilyn’s telling, Lydia had been transported and was left with a cavity of sadness in her chest at the cruelty and harshness of the story. She could imagine vividly the scene that night, see the bloated full moon, hear Annabelle screaming for the lives of her children, hear Elizabeth lying again and again as the children were slain, see their small bodies fall lifeless to the ground, smell the gunpowder in the air as the shots rang out. It was one of the worst stories she’d ever heard. And she’d heard some bad ones.

  “That’s an interesting piece of folklore, Marilyn. But I’m not sure what it has to do with—”

  “There’s more. Annabelle lived to be a very old woman. It’s said that the only thing that kept her alive was her hatred for the Ross family. Some people believed that in Haiti Annabelle had been a voodoo priestess. And on the night her children died, she created a curse against the Ross bloodline. A curse that could only be kept alive by herself and her daughters, and her daughters’ daughters—a kind of legacy of hatred.”

  “And what was the curse?” asked Lydia.

  “That none of the women descended from Hiram would know a natural love. That if they fell in love and married, a horrible fate would befall their husbands.”

  “What about the children? Hiram killed her children. Wouldn’t she want revenge for that?”

  “No, supposedly she would not wish harm to children, no matter what the crimes of their ancestors.”

  “So I take it Annabelle’s bloodline is still alive and well.”

  “And residing in Haunted. Annabelle remarried and had more children some years after the tragedy. She was just nineteen when her children by Austin were murdered.”

  “Really,” said Lydia, less a question than an exclamation. “And how did you come by all of this information?”

  “In addition to being the librarian, I’m also the town historian,” she said with pride. “And Annabelle’s descendant is the woman I mentioned whose trust funds this library. It’s Maura Hodge. A descendant of Thomas Hodge, Benjamin Hodge, married a descendant of Annabelle Taylor, Marjorie Meyers … a very controversial marriage in its day, since Marjorie had Haitian blood in her veins. Maura was their only child. Her ancestors settled and worked as slaves on this soil. She knows everything there is to know about the history of this town, the Ross family, and especially the curse.”

  “So when Eleanor’s husband, Jack Proctor, was murdered, people believed that it had to do with the curse?”

  Marilyn lowered her eyes for a second, then raised them to meet Lydia’s gaze.

  “I suppose it seems silly to someone who’s … not from here.”

  “No one other than Eleanor was ever suspected? No rumors?”

  Marilyn looked thoughtful, but shook her head. “In a place like this where so little goes on and so little ever changes, the past just seems closer. Superstitions, ghost stories, they seem more real, I guess. When Eleanor was acquitted and no one else was ever charged, it almost seemed like proof that the curse was alive and well.”

  Lydia looked at Marilyn and she seemed suddenly strange and innocent. Haunted was only a couple of hours from New York City, but it might as well have been on the moon, it was so removed.

  “Anyway, like I said,” Marilyn went on, “Maura knows a lot more about the curse and the Ross family than I do. But I’ll warn you that she’s not overly friendly. And she’s suspicious of outsiders. Since her ancestors settled this town, she kind of thinks of it as hers. There’s not much left to it, but she’ll protect it with her life.”

  Lydia thought of the roads riven with potholes and the crumbling neglected Main Street. She thought of a land wrested from the Native Americans and tilled by slaves who worked and bled and died on it. She thought of Annabelle Taylor and the souls of her dead children. She thought maybe there was never a more fitting name for a town.

  “There’s a lot of blood in the ground,” said Lydia, half thinking aloud.

  “Indeed there is.”

  • • •

  “Frankly, Detective, I don’t see what my mess, from nearly forty years ago, has to do with your present situation.” Police Chief Henry Clay was a fat, sour man with a big belly and a face that was as wrinkled and dirty as an old potato. He was bald except for a few determined silver strands that were currently being blown every which way by the heat coming from the vent above his head. His hands were thick and pink, reminding Jeffrey of nothing so much as wads of Silly Putty.

  “Well, sir,” said Ford, trying his level best to use honey instead of vinegar, “it might have nothing to do with it; it might have everything to do with it. But we would sure be interested in your thoughts on the ’65 case.”

  The old man made a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a belch as he pushed himself up from the chair behind his desk. He walked past them and opened the wood and opaque glass door that bore his name and said to his secretary, who was seated outside his office, “Can you go down to the archives, Miss Jean, and see if you can’t find the Ross file?”

  There was a moment of silence, and the woman, who was at least as old as the police chief, sounded incredulous as she repeated, “The Ross file, Henry? Eleanor Ross?”

  “Well, goddammit, woman, you heard me,” he answered, and closed the door.

  “The case was never solved, is that right, Chief Clay?” asked Jeff.

  “That’s right,” he said with a sigh as he sat back in his chair, which groaned in protest of his tremendous girth.

  “Who were the other suspects?” asked Ford.

  “Well, there were no other suspects, officially. No one we could ever charge.”

  “But you had someone in mind,” led Ford.

  “There had always been bad blood between Eleanor Ross and another longtime resident, a crazy old woman named Maura Hodge. It was something ancestral, some kind of family feud that went way back to when their people settled this town. But that was just a lot of gossip. Maura’s always been an angry woman, very bitter. And she had a well-known hatred for Eleanor. Jealousy, I always thought. You know how women are.”

  Jeff said a silent thank-you that Lydia was not with them. She really had a distaste for misogyny and could not be counted on to hold her temper when faced with men like Henry Clay.

  “Oh, yeah.” Ford laughed in a complicit man-to-man kind of way.

  “She’s still alive?” asked Jeff.

  “Yeah, that old bitch is too mean to ever die,” he said with a laugh that ended in a rasping cough. “She lives just up the road a piece in a big old house. Gorgeous old mansion from her husband’s estate. Heard it’s gone to disrepair over the years, though. She doesn’t keep it up the way she used to. Doesn’t let anyone on her property to help her. Like the Ross estate. Now, there’s a piece of property that’s gone to shit.”

  “The house where Eleanor’s husband was murdered?”

  “The same. The Rosses still own it, but it’s sat empty some fifteen years. They still pay taxes on it, though, so it stands as they left it. Furnished and everything. We have lots of trouble with kids up there, breaking in. They claim it’s haunted, course.”

  The chief was loose and talking now, so Ford kept pumping. “Anyone else you thought at the time might be a suspect?”

  The old man leaned back even farther in his chair and lifted his arms, folding his hands behind his head. He looked above them with his small blue eyes and squinted as if he were looking off into the past.

  “Well, Eleanor’s brother was always trouble when they were growing up. Something wrong with him … you know, in the head. He was never right. There were always rumors about him and Eleanor. That their relationship was …” He stopped before finishing his thought and looked at them. He seemed angry suddenly, as if th
ey had tricked him into talking about things he hadn’t wanted to discuss. “But that’s all ancient history.”

  “Where’s Eleanor’s brother now?

  “Paul? He disappeared more than thirty years ago. Most people think he’s dead,” he said, looking at his watch. Just then there was a knock at the door and Miss Jean pushed in before waiting for an answer.

  “Sir, I just can’t find those files for the life of me,” she said, looking at them apologetically. Ford didn’t believe her for a second. “I’ll keep looking, though, and let you know if they turn up.”

  “All right, then, Miss Jean,” the chief said with a nod. “Well, gentlemen, if you leave your card, I’ll give you a call if those files turn up.”

  Ford handed him a card and the chief regarded it suspiciously before stuffing it in his breast pocket and standing. “If there’s nothing else …”

  “Actually, Chief Clay, I’m just curious,” said Ford, leaning in and lowering his voice to a low, just-between-us-cops tone. “Do you think that Eleanor Ross killed her husband? Did she get away with murder?”

  He looked at Ford and an ugly smile split his face. “Tell you what. You were thinking of marrying one of those Ross women? I’d tell you to think again.”

  chapter fifteen

  Word was that he wasn’t welcome in the tunnels any longer. But that was just too damn bad. Word was that Rain, the omniscient, omnipresent Rain whom the bottom-feeders had deified into their lord and savior, was angry over Violet’s murder and was planning to make him pay. Jed couldn’t give a shit less. He didn’t fear the wrath of Rain the way Horatio the Dwarf seemed to when he’d found Jed and delivered the news.

  “You better leave, and leave soon,” he’d said, shifting nervously from foot to foot and wringing his hands. Jed handed him a black-and-white cookie for his warning. Horatio was funny that way. He didn’t care about money or drugs; he didn’t even drink. But he had a sweet tooth and kept Jed in the loop for fresh cookies and pastries from some of the fine food purveyors in the city. Horatio didn’t like packaged foods; only freshly baked would do.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Horatio,” he’d said, patting the little man on the head.

  “That’s what you said before. Where would you be now if you hadn’t listened?” he asked, his mouth full of cookie.

  It was true. When Horatio had pounded on his door yesterday to warn Jed about the approach of intruders, he’d had only twenty minutes to pack his belongings and disappear deeper into the tunnels. He’d loaded Horatio up like a pack mule and sent him off while he waited in the darkness. When Jeffrey Mark and Dax Chicago burst into his hovel, he quickly and easily killed their guide, so they would have no choice but to turn around and go back. He’d thought about going after them, too, when they were trapped with no exit in his space. But Dax Chicago stood at the door, never turning his back. And he had the biggest handgun Jed had ever seen. That one couldn’t be trusted to go down easily; he was crazy. Not to mention incredibly strong. So Jed slung Violet’s body over his shoulder—she was surprisingly heavy for such a short woman—and disappeared. He dumped her where she would be found. He wanted the twisted corpse to be a warning to those who might think about trying to lead anyone to him again.

  Now Horatio was the only one who was aware of his new location. The sudden move had been inconvenient at the time, but in the end he found himself a much better spot, closer to an exit. Closer to Lydia. The map he’d begun was lost, but he’d committed it to memory, had started to draw it in a notebook that he carried with him.

  Horatio, who was not very bright and resembled nothing so much as a shabbily dressed, down-on-his-luck Umpa Lumpa, was the closest thing Jed had had to a friend since he was in grade school. With scraggly long black hair, a long, wide face covered with patches of hair that should have been a beard but didn’t really seem to grow in right, and bright blue eyes, he seemed more like a creature from Grimm’s than he did a man. He wasn’t much, but he’d proven useful and loyal.

  “You’re the only one who knows where I am, right?” said Jed, turning his gaze from his notebook to Horatio, who seemed to jump a bit.

  “Of course,” he said eagerly.

  “Then we don’t have anything to worry about. Do we?”

  “Rain knows these tunnels better than anyone. If he wants to find you, he will,” Horatio said, his brows knit, the rest of the cookie forgotten in his hand.

  “You’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “How?”

  “I have every confidence that you’ll find a way to lead them away from me.”

  “I don’t know”

  “Find a way, Horatio. You wouldn’t want Rain to know that you’ve betrayed him. Then it will be back up topside for you, doing little dances on the subway to make money.”

  Horatio had made the mistake of telling Jed how frightened he was of the streets, how much abuse he’d taken as a homeless dwarf, how he’d almost been killed more than once. Rain had given him a home and community where he felt safe. Now Jed used the information to control him. The dwarf looked sadly at his cookie as if it were the reason for the predicament he found himself in and nodded.

  “Good,” said Jed. “I have to keep a low profile for a few days. I’m going to need some help with a few things.”

  chapter sixteen

  The food was worse than the coffee at the Rusty Penny, where Ford, Lydia, and Jeffrey sat at a booth toward the back. New Yorkers never realized how spoiled they were when it came to eating out until they left the city. Even the worst greasy spoon in Manhattan usually had something to offer, a personality, a history, something. But the Rusty Penny was like a boil on the buttocks of Haunted, nothing you’d want to look at too closely and certainly producing nothing you’d put in your mouth.

  Lydia picked at the sesame bun on her chewy and grizzled hamburger. Ford, however, hadn’t seemed to notice and was eating as if he hadn’t had a meal in a week. Jeffrey had pushed away his turkey club and ate potato chips from a small bag.

  “I think it’s better if we’re not there when Ford interviews the twins,” said Jeffrey, taking a swig from a bottle of mineral water. “After all, we’re supposed to be on Eleanor’s team. It wouldn’t look good to show up with the cops, especially given her opinion of them.”

  “Not that you should be showing up with me anyway. As far as I’m concerned, you guys don’t even exist,” said Ford, looking at his watch.

  Lydia nodded. She had been curious to hear the interview, but she was more interested in meeting Maura Hodge.

  “How are you guys going to get back?” asked Ford.

  “Dax is on his way,” said Jeffrey. “He’s meeting us with the Range Rover.” Dax had been tied up that morning with one of his other “clients.”

  “What does that guy do exactly?” asked Ford. Then he held up a hand. “You know what? Don’t tell me.”

  They were quiet for a second. Lydia couldn’t stop thinking about what Marilyn Wood had told her.

  “What do you think about the librarian’s story?” she asked Ford.

  “What,” said Ford, with a laugh. “You mean the curse.”

  “You think it’s funny?” asked Lydia, leaning in to him.

  “I wouldn’t say funny, exactly,” answered Ford with a smile, his amused skepticism wrinkling his eyes and turning up the corners of his mouth.

  “It’s possible, isn’t it, that this Maura Hodge is making sure her ancestor’s curse is fulfilled … one way or another?”

  “What do you mean … like she’s killing the husbands?”

  “Or paying someone to do it. Or she has some kind of accomplice.”

  Ford shrugged, looked up, and seemed to be considering the possibilities. “Seems a little far-fetched,” he said finally.

  “What’s so far-fetched about it?”

  “How old is this woman?”

  “In her sixties, according to the librarian.”

  “So that would make her in her late twen
ties around the time of Eleanor’s husband’s murder.”

  “About that. What’s your point?”

  “Nothing. Just that all these murders have been overkill. You know, rage killings. A killer for hire isn’t going to rip someone to pieces. And as for Maura Hodge, how much anger could she muster up for someone else’s two-hundred-year-old gripe?”

  “Gripe? A woman watched her five children murdered before her eyes and then her husband was hanged. All because Elizabeth Ross didn’t have the courage to tell the truth. I’d say that’s a little more than a gripe.”

  “Whatever you call it, it’s Annabelle’s gripe. Not Maura Hodge’s gripe. See what I’m saying? Whoever killed those men was filled with rage right now,” he said, tapping his finger hard on the table in time with his last two syllables. “Not a hundred and fifty-some years ago.”

  She was there again on that night, inside Annabelle’s skin. She could feel the rage, the pain, the immense sadness that must have threatened to burst out of her chest, turn her mind toward insanity. She could imagine her powerless fury, hear her screams that must have sounded like an animal’s howl in the night, carrying all the panic and terror into the air. What if rage like that, pain like that, left an imprint on your DNA? What if over generations it became like a congenital disease that was passed down from one soul to the next? And what if, over time, that rage grew stronger instead of weaker? But these were things she wouldn’t say aloud to people like Ford McKirdy. He was so grounded, so flat to the earth; he would think she was insane. She couldn’t tell him that the buzz was louder than it had ever been. That she sensed an evil in this broken-down town and she couldn’t be sure whether it lived and breathed or whether it was just a part of the ground on which the town sat, that it had sunk into the water and poisoned the whole damned place.

  She moved her hand to her belly. It was an unconscious gesture, but when she’d done it, felt the denim beneath her hand, she acknowledged a feeling that had been growing, fluttering in the periphery of her consciousness since she’d discovered she was pregnant. It was the sense that she was no longer alone in her skin. That everything she felt and thought, everything she ate, even the air that she breathed was being shared by another being. All of this, of course, she knew intellectually. Sitting there in the Rusty Penny, she experienced a palpable moment when the information reached her heart. And in that moment, she just felt so real.