The Craghold Legacy

by Michael Avallone

  “—yes, I’m Anne Fenner—”

  “Katharine Cowles here. Kathy to you. But come on. You must meet my men. Two rascals if there ever were. You won’t like my brother first crack out of the box. But then Rome wasn’t built in a day, either, was it? So they tell me. Boston, eh? Funny, you don’t look Boston—you couldn’t have gotten that lovely figure and complexion on a diet of beans and fish—I’m Kathy with a k by the way.”

  The woman was so cordial and effusive, speaking to her as if she were an old college chum rather than a new-found acquaintance, that Anne Fenner had no time to decide whether or not she wanted to meet “my men.” Yet, the cordiality and the promise of something new had already done much to dispel her own rapidly deteriorating feelings about Craghold House. How bad could the place be if people like this Kathy Cowles and her brother and Guy Warmsby seemed to have no qualms about enduring it for a casual vacation? Day, rather than Night, had once again wrought its miracle.

  “—Hey, you two! Look sharp now. See what Kathy found on the doorstep. Can I pick them or can I pick them?”

  Blushing, feeling herself tremble, Anne Fenner, practically bustled into the big and cheerful room by Kathy Cowles—who was reminding her more and more of an old Katharine Hepburn movie—again found herself confronted. Guy Warmsby and Peter Cowles, though she could not tell them apart, had sprung like soldiers from the high-backed lounging chairs whose rears faced the entranceway, and turned to acknowledge Kathy’s enthusiastic introduction. Each of them smiled his own kind of smile, which she would possibly be able to understand much better at a later time, and each of them showed with their eyes their own individual reaction to Katherine Cowles’ claims for her.

  “Well, shut my poetic mouth—” Peter Cowles said flippantly, his eyes racing up and down her width and length as if he were measuring her for a dress. “Kathy, you scored. She walks in beauty like the night. To Peter Cowles’ intense delight.”

  “Hello,” said the other man, the taller of the two, his smile friendly, his eyes fixed on her face. “I’m Guy Warmsby. The plagiarist on my left isn’t all bad. He cried when Dylan Thomas died. Have a good trip down?”

  Anne Fenner nodded, stammering out some feeble clichés and platitudes, yet all the while studying the two men before her. Even as she did so, Katharine Cowles had circled behind them, smiling broadly, her eyes glinting, her fine polished appearance still radiating all the class she seemed to have by the bushel. But Anne’s attention was now focussed on the men; she wondered how two such contrasting males could ever have become the friends they seemed to be, if she was any judge of the college undergraduate gallows humor she had heard them both exchange while she eavesdropped from the outside hallway.

  Though she could see no facial resemblance at all between the Cowles, Peter Cowles had that same unstudied facade of royalty and the best upbringing that money can buy. The only difference was that he wore it all like a very spoiled young man. His expensive blue blazer, with its crested left front pocket, was wrinkled and rumpled as if it had never been to the cleaners. His grey slacks showed a cigarette bum close to the knee of the right trouser leg. For all of that, it was very obvious that both coat and pants had cost something in the neighborhood of a hundred dollars each. And from the ring finger of his left hand gleamed a signet ring that had all the earmarks of a family heirloom, rather than a fraternity or college ring. A diamond stickpin glowed from a thick blue foulard tie. The face of the man who wore such wealth so untidily was something else, too. He was blond, very blond, with a thatch of unruly hair worn long and curling and long side-burns which swept past his ears in the new, approved Hippie style. His eyes were a watery blue, with an oddly thin and hawkish nose set down amidst a wide-lipped, sullen mouth, which rode above a deeply-clefted chin. There was nothing of Sister Kathy in his appearance. The cleft, the wide mouth and the light eyes gave him the aspect of a surly Cupid who used his bows and arrows to hurt people with, not to make them fall in love.

  Anne Fenner instinctively did not like him.

  Guy Warmsby was different.

  The deep baritone voice had not betrayed her impressions. If anything, she couldn’t have imagined him ever having any other sort of voice. The voice and the man were one—a unit.

  He was tall, with a leanness that only made his handsomeness ever so much more becoming. There was an attractive gauntness about him that was not thin-ness. No, his shoulders were as wide as they ought to be, and his own outfit of leather-patched-elbows hunting jacket of Black Forest Green and whipcord riding breeches fit him the way such clothes should fit a man. His face held Anne Fenner almost hypnotically. There was a great deal of Carteret in Guy Warmsby’s countenance—a firm face, aristocratically keen and serious. And his eyes, for all their sinister shading which made you imagine he might be saying one thing and thinking something else, were warmly brown. And exciting.

  He wore his dark brown hair with a part on the left side, not quite as long as Peter Cowles’ but far more well-groomed and neat. He was like a trim, well-balanced fencing foil; whereas, bigger, heavier-muscled Peter Cowles was like a two-handed saber.

  The Count of Monte Cristo with a dancing foil. Light, deft. Fast.

  Cupid with a clumsy saber. Heavy, crude. Slower.

  The two images suddenly fixed in Anne Fenner’s vibrant mind.

  Yes, that was it.

  The descriptions fit both men perfectly.

  “Do you like hot oatmeal? And coffee? Very brown and very very strong coffee, Miss Fenner?” Guy Warmsby was saying in a mild voice.

  She pulled herself away from her mental daydreams and nodded very quickly. Almost too quickly for proper etiquette.

  “Is that the standard Craghold breakfast menu?” she laughed.

  “It is today,” Guy Warmsby smiled also. “There seems to be an egg crisis as of yesterday. Town’s a bit far, and until the hens do cooperate—well, perhaps we’ll see some bacon and eggs tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Anne,” Kathy Cowles chimed in with that springy vocal manner of hers. “Weirdest thing—every hen within miles of this place sat down on the job and didn’t produce nary an egg. Can you imagine? Carteret claims they were frightened by a sonic boom or something. I’ll be damned if I heard a jet pass this place though—”

  Peter Cowles erupted with a snort of sound. A veritable bray.

  “Jet, my foot. The Colonel’s ghost went walking, the hens got a gander—no puns, please—and couldn’t produce. What can you expect from a burg that still believes in hexes and goblins?”

  Guy Warmsby ignored him, nodded to his sister, and took Anne Fenner by the elbow. At his touch, she felt a thrill shoot all over her body. It was foolish, but—mention of Carteret and the Colonel’s ghost had magically catapulted her back to the terrors and horrors of last evening. Yet they were all treating the subject so lightly, so cavalierly, as if it were all so much nonsense and old Dutch wives’ tales. And even more foolishly, she found herself saying, “There are no such things as ghosts. Really. I’m surprised at all of you. Surely—”

  “Surely,” Peter Cowles laughed unkindly behind her—as Guy Warmsby steered her easily and assuredly across the hallway, past the Registration Desk, which was still empty, toward another Gothic archway which led to the Dining Room—“we have an infidel in our midst. An unbeliever. Lady, you want to belong to this scene, you have to dig witchcraft and ghosties and goblins, and all that jazz. That handsome devil hanging onto you will drop you like a hot potato if you aren’t interested in that which is meat and drink to him. Tell her, Guy. How you go soft in the head everytime you mess around old ruins and ancient tombs and all that.”

  Katharine Cowles’ laughter rose in a high trill of amusement. Evidently, every now and then, Brother Peter could make her laugh.

  Guy Warmsby, without turning around, quietly murmured his reply to the ungentlemanly tirade of his friend and colleague.

  “Never mind him, Miss Fenner. He’s never had to work a day in his life, and he’s never qui
te gotten over it. As for your beliefs, time enough for that later, eh? As for now, breakfast. I am starved. Literally. Peter’s a bluff, you know. Follows astrology, is a student of everything occult, and wouldn’t dare open an umbrella indoors or leave a hat on a bed. You see? He’s hooked—far more than any of us. Do yourself a favor and ignore him. He’s perfectly harmless, in spite of all his roars. And equally loud protests.”

  “I am not,” Peter Cowles pouted loudly from the rear, as he escorted his sister. “I believe everything I say.”

  “Up to a point,” Katharine Cowles agreed, laughing.

  Guy Warmsby chuckled, and if there had been a crisis, it was fully gone. In spite of everything, Anne Fenner was thoroughly enjoying herself. Intrigued and charmed with all three of them. It was so good to be in the company again of people of your own time and world. Both Cowles seemed to be along in their twenties, and as for Mr. Guy Warmsby—well—thirty-three or -four would be about the right age for him, if anybody had asked her.

  “By the way,” Guy Warmsby spoke softly as they gained the entranceway, which revealed a long table covered with a very white cloth, silverware, place settings and another harmonious design of Dutch cupboards, woodsiness and hearth-like pleasantness.

  “Yes?” Anne Fenner said.

  “May I call you Anne?”

  “Please do. I’d like that—Guy. And it’s spelled with an e.”

  His warm eyes, close to her own, glinted with pleasure. His hand squeezed her elbow, deftly, in a way that his sister and his friend could not have seen. His lean, handsome face tilted to her.

  “I shall make it my business to do everything that you might like, Anne Fenner. Anne with an e.”

  “I’ll just bet you can, Guy Warmsby.”

  “In that case,” he said, suddenly in a louder voice, “I shall be your guide. And your bulwark against the terrors of ancient lore. In time you will trust me so much that you will even accompany me to the Caves of Hex. No—don’t say anything now—don’t even have a thought on the subject. We’ll have breakfast first. All right?”

  “All right,” she said, in spite of herself, in spite of the sudden emotion of fear and uneasiness that his casual remark had set off in her heart and soul. Somehow, none of it seemed so very bad with such a tall, handsome and decisive male animal making all the decisions for her. Also, she had responded perhaps too rapidly to the apparent conspiracy he had asked her to take part in. It was as if they already had a secret. And, in her innocence and aloneness, Anne Fenner had not asked herself the simple question, or even considered the remote possibility, whether there was anything between Guy Warmsby and Katharine Cowles.

  As there certainly ought to be.

  He was so handsome; she was so beautiful. Neither of them seemed to be married or engaged. And yet—it all came suddenly home to her with a lightning-bolt thrust of Truth, as the woman behind her, the woman who had been completely her friend from the first moment of encounter, sang out in a very high voice that spoke volumes for wounded pride and jealousy: “—I like that! You’ve never even asked me once to go with you to those silly old caves. Fine thing! You’re slipping, Kathy girl. Gotta watch out for these fancy-looking sharpies from Boston!”

  It was meant to be funny. It was intended as humor.

  Peter Cowles guffawed. A laugh that ripped.

  Guy Warmsby had the grace to chuckle, smiling back at Katharine Cowles with sheepish good-will. And acknowledgment of a threat?

  Anne Fenner managed a faint murmur of amused protest.

  But she was a woman. And she was not deceived. No real woman, blessed with the condition of being female, would have been. Unless she was a starry-eyed idiot.

  For all her poise and superiority, Katharine Cowles had just staked out her claim, had shouted from the Craghold walls—not in so many words, of course, but the message was plain enough—about how she felt about Guy Warmsby, Archaeologist:

  Hands off! He’s mine!

  Maybe the men didn’t get the meaning, but Anne Fenner did.

  Even as Guy Warmsby led her to the table in the pleasant room, a newer and fresher kind of coldness had settled over her soul and spirit. As if ghosts and moon rooms and hens-who-didn’t-lay-eggs weren’t enough! Katharine Cowles was already very jealous of her.

  Craghold House was certainly a place where things happened.

  Just about everything you could imagine.

  Or think of.

  Up to and including things that went bump in the night.

  But there was no more time to think of that, as dishes clattered, plates were passed, Peter Cowles talked on, Guy Warmsby nodded and murmured replies, and Katharine Cowles gaily kept up a pretense of being the hostess in whose lovely mouth butter would not melt. The entire scene was like one of those drawing-room-comedy films that always had somebody like Cary Grant and Irene Dunne making with the clever and witty lines. Only this time, imaginatively speaking, it was Katharine Hepburn.

  Katharine Cowles could have played her in a movie.

  Really, dahling!

  It wasn’t funny, though. Not funny at all.

  For all her revivified spirits and change of heart about quitting Craghold House so soon, Anne Fenner was suddenly feeling cold. Very cold, indeed. Winter was blotting out Summer.

  As though someone was walking over her grave.

  God, what a ghastly thought to have at breakfast time!

  Dutifully, grimly, she dipped a spoon into her bowl of oatmeal and tried not to let her face reveal what she was thinking. And feeling. It wasn’t easy to do with all three of her new acquaintances rattling on, talking, eating, easy as you please. Oblivious of Evil.

  The oatmeal was hot, at least.

  Hotter than she felt.

  Which was just about zero degrees.

  Makes A Mistake

  Along the cragged shores of Craghold Lake, which was only about five hundred yards from the House itself, Anne Fenner found a new world—a universe of silence. Once you followed the circuitous, curving dirt pathway and walked beyond the low stone wall just below the southeastern corner of the property—past tall, old cypresses, gnarled and naked in October—a great new land beckoned. New, yet incomparably old, as if untouched by the changing hand of centuries gone by. Here endless clusters of gigantic elms and oaks seemed to blot out the sky, hiding the pale sunlight. Here the very earth itself—hardened, petrified seemingly—stood in cathedral-like silence and splendor, dwarfing all humanity. And far off, the smoky, barely visible tors and peaks of the Shanokin Range lay like a sleeping monster in the dull and leaden horizon of early morning.

  Out here, away from the Gothically buttressed and dormered House, it was not too far-fetched to believe in evil spirits, the mysteries of Hex, and all that sort of folderol resort places like to serve up for tourists. This was Headless Horseman country if she had ever seen it, with its hollows and niches and rock-lined mounds of hillocks and knolls. And its stark, wooden, silent sentinels, the trees. The Lake itself—a kidney-shaped pool of deathly, gray-green, placid, untroubled waters—was like something you see in a dream. Or in a book about unknown, faraway places in Scotland or Ireland, or perhaps Germany, where such things as trolls and poltergeists frolicked. Yes, Craghold Lake had come as advertised. No, more than that, even. It was ephemeral, ghostly, yet all too solidly real and vivid to the eye. Perhaps a hundred feet across and maybe three hundred feet long, it lay like a patina of some dim, murky liquid set down between a ragged and rugged shoreline on its northern and eastern sides, with a mass of stone and jagged, sawed stumps of trees piled up on its southern and western boundaries. All in all, it was an uncommonly designed lake—whether by natural formation or human intent, Anne Fenner could not say. The site of the lake, as close as it was to Craghold House, made all the nebulous and inexplicable terror of the night before more real to her than ever. Surely, if ghosts could walk, they could find no more fitting habitat than the boundaries of Craghold Lake.

  Yet, for all of that, breakfast had
been a solid success.

  A pleasant meal in good company. Both the Cowles, brother and sister, had been in fine conversational fettle, filling the cheery room with small talk of a no more serious nature than the latest books and films they had seen in the past few months. Guy Warmsby had made her feel thoroughly at home, so much so that she was hardly aware of who had prepared the meal. It just seemed to be ready, waiting for them all, steaming in tureens and iron pots. The coffee had been magnificent, even though she was a tea drinker habitually. Yes, a fine meal all in all (she had had an appetite), so that when Guy Warmsby suggested a constitutional stroll about the countryside, she was more than willing to go along. Katharine Cowles had somehow utterly masked her jealousy and had graciously offered Anne the use of a heavy corduroy Cardigan so that she wouldn’t have to pop upstairs to her room. Anxious to retain a friendship so well begun, Anne graciously accepted, so that within minutes, fortified with a stout breakfast, all four Craghold House residents were blithely walking down the stone pathway toward the winding dirt road which disappeared through the high wall of gnarled, ancient cypresses. Once again, Anne could not help but reflect how odd it was that just the four of them should have such a large resort hotel to themselves. Still, she reasoned, and not unreasonably, it was the time of year. The Labor Day weekend was long since gone, and it was practically November, wasn’t it? The off-season, surely.