by John Bladek
I stopped, glancing back and forth between the both of them. Two minutes ago, I thought I was on the verge of being fired.
“The chain is quite clear that they are committed to buying old properties in downtowns, revival areas, and renovating them,” James said. “It would be all renovation work, which seems to be up your alley.”
“And each one unique,” Ted concluded. “A dozen hotels all over the country, and no two alike.” He waved his arms up and down. “Each would be a special project all its own, with different challenges and possibilities. You’d have multiple opportunities to come up with the visions like what you’ve done here.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Hopefully, I wasn’t hallucinating. They’d just described my dream job. I’d never done anything on that scale before. “What chain are we talking about?”
“Well,” Ted said, a sneaking look in his eyes, “we can’t say at this point. Their name may start with a giant ‘W’ though.”
I could think of several “Ws” out there, each richer than the one before. This was too good to be true.
“We can talk more about those projects later. Of course for now, we’ll want more detailed renderings, and we’ve got our own thoughts on the renovation here,” James said. He looked at Ted.
“But those are details you can work on for the next month while you’re here,” Ted said.
My stomach dropped.
“Month?” I asked. “I thought we were only going to be here for a week, and then I’d finish the project in Seattle.”
“Well,” James said, “we’re going to be here a while longer, and we prefer to work closely with the architect. Call me old-fashioned, but I hate this distance online thing. Don’t worry about expenses. We’ll pay for everything, including your wife if she wants to come out.”
“She’s actually here now. She decided to join me for the week, but I’m not sure if you know she’s pregnant. She needs her own doctor.” And maybe I did too.
Ted scratched his chin. “Hmm, you’ll need a better place to stay than a hotel. And of course we’ll make sure to have the best doctor here take care of her. We will also make sure both of you get back home when she needs to. She’s not due immediately, is she?”
I shook my head. “She’s four and a half months along.”
“Wonderful,” Ted said. “Then it’s agreed.”
I nodded and rubbed the back of my neck. Things were moving so fast.
“Uh. Of course,” I said, trying to sound as enthusiastic as possible.
“Great,” Ted and James said at the same time.
I forced a smile.
chapter twelve
Ted and James headed back to town, leaving me with promises of getting Emily and me a rental house and an appointment with Winterbay’s top obstetrician, if there even was such a person in a town this size. I wasn’t sure Emily would be up for staying so long, but she’d be beyond thrilled with the news.
Ted and James wanted to meet tomorrow over dinner and talk more in-depth about the plans. Given that time frame, I had to scope around the abbey to get the interior details as well as the mechanical systems. I would do my job quickly, leave fast, and spend a nice, quiet evening with Emily. Maybe I could find the nicest restaurant in Winterbay. There was considerable cause for celebration.
I headed back to the courtyard. The bell tower poked its head through a small patch of fog.
No sign of any pale-faced woman.
I’d imagined the whole thing.
The outside wall of the tower stood blank. No window, barely even room to fit one.
I must have been getting my ideas for the renovation confused with what I was actually seeing. That window was my idea, it had to be. I must have made those sketches, but forgotten about them while worrying over the girl and everything else.
Okay, enough.
I’d just been handed the biggest opportunity of my career. If it worked out, I wouldn’t have to worry about money. Put the mysteries aside, and get to work on some new drawings, Larson.
I went back inside and up the stairs to the top floor toward the bell tower. I needed to check out the possibility of adding a window and using the tower space for an observation room, and maybe prove to myself that I wasn’t crazy.
The hall was dark, unlit, empty.
I walked to the end, the sound of my footsteps echoing against the cold, peeling walls. I reached the door to the large room where I’d found the baby blanket. As I put my hand on the knob, I paused, waiting.
Something didn’t feel right.
I took my palm off the handle. Then back on. It’s just an entrance to a room. Get a grip.
I opened the door quickly.
A flash of white caught my eye a split second before a loud fluttering shook the air like a windstorm. I cried out, throwing my arm over my face as the roar of flapping wings passed over me. Birds flew in a frenzy down the hall, swirling about in a mad, panicked escape.
I lay flat on the floor, my breathing and pulse racing. The birds continued to beat their wings in a flurry, bouncing off the walls and battering the door frame. The sound was deafening. They returned, swooping over me, squawking. Their wings smacked my head as they passed.
Then they were gone. The flapping of wings was replaced by the gentle sound of a breeze flowing in through the broken window on the far side of the room. All that remained was a scattering of feathers on my jacket.
Where had they gone? The window had been broken since my last visit, but the fist-sized opening was hardly large enough to allow so many birds to exit in such a short time. In fact it didn’t look large enough to have let them in. Perhaps they had flown down the stairs and were now creating havoc throughout the rest of the building.
Great.
But how had they gotten inside?
I listened. If they were still in the building, they made no sound.
I caught my breath and sat up, leaning against the doorway, straining to hear.
Silence.
And I had worried about rats.
I took a deep breath and stood back up.
The floor was covered with a thick layer of dust, the residue of years of abandonment.
Apart from my footprints from the day before, the dust was undisturbed, and there were no droppings. Even if the birds had just been passing through, they’d have left far more nasty evidence of their presence.
I put my hand on my forehead as a sharp spike of pain settled in my temples. I popped two Tylenol from my pocket.
Okay, let it go. They were just birds, probably escaping the cold.
I took a deep breath and walked to the window. I’d seen this one from outside, but it was at a lower level than the tower. I pulled on the rusted metal latch. Red dust fell onto my hand as I forced the window open. It creaked as I pushed it out into the now dense and dripping fog. I leaned out. The fog shrouded the entire coast, like the inside of a cloud. I could hardly see the rocky beach below.
I craned my neck. The tower’s brick walls were rough and losing their mortar, but uninterrupted by any windows above me.
As I pulled my head back inside, the bell in the tower suddenly clanged. Once, twice, three times. My stomach knotted. There was no one there to ring it.
Or was there?
A deep cold settled into my chest.
I thought of those kids and their pranks. Could they be up to this after having pulled off a fake drowning? If that was true, they certainly went to great lengths for a joke. And what about Duncan? He was familiar with the nunnery and probably walked the grounds often. He didn’t like the idea of a hotel, and living here for so long, he would know all the stories, the ones the kids told. Maybe he was trying to scare me away and prevent the hotel from being built.
That or the abbey had its own hunchback manning the tower.
The idea of being run off by Duncan gave me a new sense of urgency. I wasn’t going to let some fossilized lighthouse keeper stop me from my project.
Turning on my flas
hlight, I walked back into the hall and looked for the doorway leading to the tower. I counted the doors: eight. All bedrooms with decrepit beds and chairs. I shook my head. There had to be a way up there. How else could you get to the bell?
I didn’t remember seeing a door inside the room I’d just left, but the tower was just above. A door should be there along with a staircase. I walked back inside. The temperature had dropped quickly from the open window, and my breath formed a fog nearly as thick as the mist outside.
The beam from my light flicked across the room. I scanned the walls looking for a door and checked the ceiling in case there was a trapdoor. Nothing. The walls, covered with cracked yellow wallpaper, showed no evidence of another entrance.
The bell rang again. Three peals. I could feel the reverberations coming through the ceiling and vibrating the floor beneath my feet. A small chip of paint fell from the ceiling, landing on my head. I shined the light up and for the first time noticed a crack in the plaster. Not the jagged break of an old stressed ceiling, but straight, like it had been drawn with an edge. Grabbing a chair, I climbed up and shone my light along the break. More plaster broke and fluttered down to the floor. Reaching up, I snagged the remainder and pulled it loose. I spotted the loop of a handle.
I grabbed the handle and pulled down. A trapdoor opened with a crack and spray of plaster dust. A ladder attached to the trapdoor slid to the floor. The sound of my pulse in my ears was deafening.
“Duncan!” I shouted.
He had to be in the tower, and there had to be another way up. This ladder hadn’t been lowered since it had been plastered over, decades ago.
After a moment’s hesitation, I stepped onto the ladder and climbed up onto a solid wooden floor, in better condition than the one below. The space was just large enough for the base of a set of wrought-iron winding stairs that ascended to another floor. These were covered with dust even thicker than in the bedrooms. Cobwebs hung dense from the walls and ceiling.
Where was the other entrance?
The bell rang again. One, two, three. Much louder here. The ringing sent shock waves undulating through the abandoned spider webs like strings of a harp.
Brushing them out of my way, I climbed the steps and pushed open another trapdoor. It banged onto the floor above with a crash, sending a torrent of dust swirling into the air, caught in my light like stars. I coughed and sputtered as the residue of decades of neglect tickled my lungs.
The heavy sense that someone, or something, waited for me sent chills through my whole body.
“Duncan?” I called. “Are you up here?”
There was no answer. I shined the beam upwards and spotted the bell rope hanging limp and unmoving. I followed the line of the rope until the light caught the dull surface of the cracked bell above.
Who had rung it?
To my right, a slight creak broke the silence. I spun and pointed the flashlight. There was another door a few feet away. It looked like the entrance to a broom closet, but had an old rusted padlock hanging from a latch. The door was ajar, the bottom tracing an arc through the dust.
“Duncan!” I shouted. “Damn you! Stop playing games and come out.”
Still no answer.
No light came from behind the door. If Duncan was there, he was hiding alone in the dark, waiting.
My pulse quickened again as I began to wonder if Duncan wasn’t just a prankster, but a dangerous nutjob. How far would he go to scare me away?
I should have left then, come back with the police, or at least Ted and James, but a curiosity I wished I’d left in childhood pushed me on. I walked up the final two steps and over to the door.
I pointed the light inside. The room was a rectangle about six feet by ten, tiny, hardly more than a closet. No one was there. On the far wall, my light caught the pane of a circular window, the glass dusty and dark.
So there had been a window here.
Through the dirt, I made out brickwork. I walked over, and pulling open the frame, gave the bricks a hard rap with the butt of my flashlight. The mortar disintegrated, and one of the bricks inched out from the wall. I scratched out the remaining mortar, nothing but dust now, and leaned in. Two bricks fell away and clattered onto the ground below.
Fog now filled the view. I could just make out the beach and sea beyond through the hole.
I took a deep breath. Perhaps I’d subconsciously noticed a mismatch in the brickwork outside after all, and it made me think of covered windows. That had to be it. My trained mind must have noticed the faint outline of a lintel, and I filled in the blanks without thinking about it. That and my “design mode” must have had me imagining future guests in this window. It was the only explanation.
I pulled the window closed and sighed.
As I stepped back, I noticed a small handprint on the glass, embedded in the dust. It looked as though someone had leaned against the pane many years ago to look out.
I swallowed. The crude imprint had a soft, delicate aspect that made me think of Emily, of how her hand had been so soft, so skilled, so fine. Until that night.
I turned away and studied the rest of the space. Sitting at the back was a rocking chair. A floorboard had been ripped up under the chair. I shined my flashlight into the hole. It was empty. Next to where the floorboard was, an iron bed, like those in the rooms below, stood near a tiny cradle. I inspected it more closely. The cradle had a thin dusty mattress, stained and threadbare. Above it hung a handmade paper mobile of tiny birds. The folded paper had been colored green and yellow, now dim with age, and each bird had an eye that seemed to stare directly at me as the mobile swung gently from the breeze caused by my movement. I could almost feel the beat of their wings and hear their squawks as the birds circled above the tiny bed.
What in the world was a cradle doing here?
I thought of the hand that had left that impression on the window, lovingly crafting these birds for the occupant of the cradle. An overwhelming sadness and sense of loss overcame me as I watched the birds. Had a child really been living in this hidden room? Was the handprint the mother’s? All behind a padlocked door of a room the size of a cell?
My mind raced to my unborn child. A wave of loneliness washed over me, a pain so extreme I was crushed by isolation. I gasped, my breathing shallow and halting. I leaned over to try to stop the swirling in my head.
After a moment of forced, deep breaths, I calmed myself enough to stand upright. The intense aloneness refused to leave. It was not a fear of dying, but of never being loved again, living a life without a single human contact. I floated in a sea of desolation and abandonment.
Please, Emily, forgive me.
Where was this coming from?
As I stood up, the beam of my flashlight passed over the rocking chair and the pathetic mobile. I hadn’t noticed it before, but lying on the seat was a small, round ball that topped a short blue-striped wooden handle. I gently picked it up. Tiny beads inside the ball rattled softly as my hands trembled. Starting at the top of the rattle, tiny teeth marks imprinted every inch of the soft wood. The indentations formed an odd pattern of wavy bites, resembling a puppy’s chew toy.
My hand squeezed on its own, locking in a tight grip. I had to force my fingers open. I threw what could only be my childhood rattle to the far side of the room. I nearly fell trying to get to the stairs.
Then I heard it.
I couldn’t stop myself from turning around. In the beam of my light, the tiny cradle rocked gently.
My body stood limp from terror. Then a strange noise filled the air. Almost like the sound of a tuning fork. On the other side of the room, I caught the outline of a dark figure standing near the wall. It moved, and I thought my heart would stop. “Who is that?!” I called out. The shadow stopped. I blinked, and pointed my flashlight at it.
There was nothing there. Only empty space. Whatever it was had gone, and the cradle had stopped rocking.
chapter thirteen
Adrenaline raced through me, provid
ing an almost inhuman speed to flee the building. I scrambled down the bell tower’s stairs and raced out of the abbey. I floored the rental car, sending up a spray of mud and gravel as I shot toward town.
My clothes, now damp with sweat, clung. Shivering, I blasted the heater as beads continued to dew on my forehead. Flash images of the cradle, the dark figure, and my rattle reeled through my mind while the toll of the abbey’s bell continued to ring in my head. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. You’re fine. It’s all okay. There’s an explanation. There has to be.
But what explanation could there be? First, how on Earth had my rattle gotten into that room? I had thrown it away on the other side of the country. Hadn’t I? I thought back to the night I came home and found my mother’s keepsakes on the couch. I’d taken my rattle out of the trash and handed it to Emily. What had she done with it?
It seemed impossible, but had I somehow brought the rattle I’d found to the abbey? No. That was absolute craziness. What was I even saying?
In almost no time, I reached the library’s tiny parking lot. I hurried up the steps flanked by two stone lions and barreled through the door.
I frantically scanned the room. A man sat behind a desk sorting books. He glanced up from his computer monitor. His frown made me wonder what I looked like.
“Will?” I spotted Emily sitting in an overstuffed chair, holding her knitting. She waved, and the librarian gave her a “Be quiet!” look with his index finger on his lips.