“Is this the kitchen?” asked Marilyn, her dog shaking in her arms as though it was freezing. The house isn’t cold, Steven thought. The dog is scared. Or maybe it’s so small it can’t handle being outside.
“No, the kitchen is next door,” he said. “Come through.” He grabbed the bags off the butcher block and walked over to an open archway at the far end of the room.
The group followed, and the archway opened into the largest kitchen Steven had ever seen. It seemed to him that it was as large as his entire house. It was painted off-white. I’ve never seen a kitchen with crown molding before, he thought.
“Wow,” Eliza said. “Why so big?”
“Mr. Unser loved to host parties,” Percival said. “But the house was so remote, he had to throw extremely expensive and outrageous events in order to lure people to visit. People knew they could come here, spend a week, have plenty of room, food, and drink, and then make the long trip back to Seattle or wherever.”
“How did Mr. Unser make his fortune?” Kenneth asked.
“Tell you what,” Jonathan said. “Let’s have that discussion over dinner. Kent?”
“Yes,” Percival said. “I’ve brought box dinners for everyone. There’s no staff here at the moment. There used to be, when the house was open for tours, but it’s been empty and closed up for a while now. Please grab a box and follow me through to the dining hall.”
The boxes had been labeled with the type of meals that were inside. They sorted through them all, looking for what appealed to them.
“Is there a gluten free box?” Marilyn asked. “I can’t have any gluten.”
“Yes, Marilyn,” Jonathan said. “There’s one that’s for you. Everyone, check your box to make sure you don’t have Marilyn’s box.”
Russell handed the box he’d selected over to Marilyn, and took the last remaining box, rolling his eyes.
They passed through another anteroom and into the main dining hall. Steven guessed the ceiling was at least thirty feet high, and two large chandeliers hung over a long table that would easily seat two dozen people. Percival walked to the end of the table and sat, and the others joined him.
Steven unwrapped his box dinner and glanced around the room. Large paintings and sets of antlers filled the walls, still lit by late afternoon sunlight streaming in from the huge windows at the far end of the hall. It was winter, and it’d be dark soon. He noticed that things didn’t appear dusty or dirty; Percival must have had the place cleaned prior to this visit. There was a large fireplace at the end of the hall opposite the windows, but it was empty. It was tall enough to walk into.
“Thank you all for coming,” Jonathan said. “I know it’s a big sacrifice for all of you, and this place, as magnificent as it is, isn’t easy to get to. So you have my appreciation.”
“What are we dealing with, Jonathan?” asked the stout and serious woman as she plowed through her food.
“Well, Myrna, I think Kent here would be the best to explain it. He’s the one who approached me about a month ago, and then I put this all together with you. Kent, would you like to tell the story?”
“Sure,” Percival said, placing his fork down and taking a gulp of water from a small plastic bottle included in the box. “Well, as you know, this is the Unser estate. Harold Unser built it in 1915 with money he made in the lumber industry. Although Harold was a social man who loved meeting people and parties, his wife, Anita, was the opposite, and when he decided to build a house that would act as a monument to his life, it was Anita who convinced him to build it out here, in the middle of nowhere. For the first few years Harold enticed people out with lavish weekends, but as time went on Anita’s preference for solitude won out and Harold became as much of a recluse as she.
“They had a son who was named James. He fought in World War II, and is believed to have died in the war. I say ‘believed’ because his body was never recovered.
“Harold died soon after, leaving Anita alone in the house. She ran it for several years more, by all accounts never seeing anyone but the servants. She passed away in 1956. She was found dead in her room upstairs.
“Since then, the house sat empty. Harold’s estate kept an endowment to care for the house and the property, and it’s administered by the estate’s executor, a law firm in Tacoma. There’s enough money to keep the place going for another hundred years I’m afraid.”
“Afraid?” asked Myrna. “You’d rather this place be sold?”
“Well, yes,” Percival replied. “I’m a realtor, and I’d love to sell this property of course, but that’s not the real issue.”
“I’m sure this house would make you millions in commission,” Russell said, “if you could ever find a buyer.”
“Maybe,” Percival said, “but we’ll never know. Not as things stand right now. This house isn’t sellable, the executors won’t sell it. I’ve tried.”
“What’s the problem then?” Myrna asked impatiently. “Why are we here?”
“He’s getting to that,” Jonathan said, raising his hand. A toothpick was back in his mouth, dangling. “Let him finish.”
“It’s not this house I’d like to be able to sell,” Percival said. “It’s the rest of the town. I’m sure you saw it as you arrived.”
“Easy to miss,” Marilyn said, taking a small nibble from a piece of chicken stabbed on the end of her fork, and giving the rest of the piece to her dog.
“It makes no sense that the town doesn’t thrive,” Percival said. “We’ve got a major historical home as a tourist draw, you’d think the town could grow and survive off that. I’d be happy with just the commissions from normal house sales, but there isn’t enough activity. We tried to change that. We convinced the law firm to let us conduct tours of the house, open it up to the public. They were fine with the idea as long as it was revenue positive. We outfitted the place, dumped some money into it. You’ll notice plastic runners in some of the hallways where the tours went, for example. People from the town were hired as tour guides. We marketed it all over the state. But it didn’t work, we hardly got any visitors. The law firm forced us to stop.
“The town is dying. Most of the families have lived here their entire lives, but they’ll be gone soon too, if we don’t do something. I’m convinced this house is the reason the town is suffering. There’s something here, something that is sucking the life from the town. It’s the reason people didn’t want to visit here, and it’s the reason our town is nearly dead. Let me show you something.”
Percival rose from the table and walked over to the wall of the dining hall. “I’ve been convinced that this place is cursed for a long time now,” he said, taking a small bottle from his jacket pocket. He removed the cap, and began squirting the liquid on a wood panel of the wall. “I’ll ask you all to please keep what I’m about to tell you in confidence. One day, in desperation, I decided to burn the place down. I figured the place would go up like a matchstick, all this old wood. Then it’d be gone, and the town could begin to get back on its feet.”
Steven wondered if Percival was a little unhinged, and became even more concerned about being there. He resolved to not involve himself in things without a lot more info going in.
Percival stopped squirting the wall and showed the group the bottle. “Lighter fluid,” he said, placing it on the table. Myrna immediately grabbed the bottle and sniffed it. “It is,” she said.
Percival pulled a matchbox from his jacket pocket, stuck a match against it, and flung the match towards the wood panel. Eliza gasped, and Steven and Roy shot to their feet.
The match hit the wall and fell to the floor. It burned for a few seconds, then the flame shrunk and the match extinguished itself.
“Won’t burn,” Percival said. “I’ve tried it all over the house. I can burn up a drape, or a piece of paper, or whatever. But the house itself won’t burn, no matter what you try.”
“Incredible!” Kenneth said.
“Treated wood?” Roy asked.
“A hundred
years ago, maybe,” Percival replied, “but normally you wouldn’t use treated wood in the interior of a house, it would smell so bad you couldn’t live in it. This wood should be flammable. But it’s not the wood, really. I tried a bulldozer, too.”
Percival returned to the table. Roy kept an eye on the burnt match, still expecting it to burst into flames.
“Rented a bulldozer in Aberdeen,” Percival continued, “had it trucked to my home. One night I drove it up here. I was going to drive it right up the brick path and see what damage I could do. As soon as I drove it onto the path, it stalled and wouldn’t move. Could barely keep it running. If I turned it around and went the other direction it ran fine. I tried a dozen times before I gave up and drove it back to town.”
“So the house is protected somehow?” Eliza asked.
“Is that what it is?” Percival asked. “I don’t know. All I know is that the house is a malignancy that is ruining our town, our ability to make a go of things and live our lives. The longer you’re near it, the more you feel it. Can’t you feel it now?”
“I can,” said Russell. “Very evil.”
“Honestly, I don’t feel anything,” Eliza said. “Maybe we haven’t been here long enough.”
“I don’t feel anything either,” Roy said.
“You might not be as in tune as I am,” Russell said, turning away from Roy. “I felt if from the moment we entered.”
Steven watched Roy. It was clear Roy was developing a dislike of Russell.
“What is it you’ve brought us here to do?” Myrna asked.
“What Kent asked me,” Jonathan said, his toothpick bobbing as he spoke, “was if we could eradicate whatever’s here. Eliminate whatever is sucking the life from the town.”
“How can we do that if we don’t know what it is?” Steven asked.
“I’ve had mediums here before,” Percival said. “They all left mystified. When I was talking with Jonathan, he suggested there’s something else you might try, that involves several of you.”
“I was thinking of a focus,” Jonathan said. “Seven of us at once might be able to pierce through to whatever is happening here, figure it out, and solve the problem for the town.”
“A focus might work,” Myrna said. “It has before.”
“I told Kent I’d see if I could find a group of us who’d be willing to help – that’s why you’re here. If you’re all willing, I’d like us to try a focus after dinner and see what we can uncover.”
Myrna and Jonathan began talking about specifics, and Steven leaned over to Eliza.
“What’s a focus?” he whispered to her, not wanting to sound ignorant in front of the group.
“You know when Roy goes into a trance?” Eliza whispered back. “It’s like that, but several of us trance all at once, all focused on the same thing. It concentrates the effect.”
“Have you done this before?” Steven asked.
“A couple of times,” she replied. “Not often. Usually there are too many egos involved, and it doesn’t always work.”
Steven had seen his father go into a trance on several occasions. Both Steven and his father were able to jump into “the River” at will. He suspected the others in the room also had this ability – with perhaps the exception of Kent Percival. The River was a stream, constantly flowing through everything, filled with an alternative perspective. The ability to enter the River was what most people meant when they said that someone was “gifted.” Before Steven’s father had shown him how to enter the River, Steven had no idea how to do it, or even that he could do it. Steven had been a rational non-believer in all things supernatural, and to find that his father could do such things had seemed incredible to him. Not only could they enter the River, but Roy was able to enter a trance state where he could go deeper. Steven had been learning from Roy how to do this, but he had only tranced a few times, and not entirely successfully. He was still learning. Roy was passing down the skills he’d learned throughout his lifetime to him, but it was taking some time.
Apparently all of the others had the ability to trance as well, and that’s why Jonathan had invited them – so they could all trance at the same time – a “focus,” he’d called it. He let his mind return to the conversation around the table.
“…without knowing exactly what we’re trying to accomplish. A focus can be very powerful. By its nature it must be directed and very specific, or it can be dangerous,” Myrna said.
“The object of the focus,” Jonathan said, “will be to uncover what spirits haunt this house. We’ll start there. Once we learn what we’re dealing with, we’ll form a plan. This isn’t anything unusual; we’ve all done it before.”
“Usually we’ve uncovered those answers without a focus,” Eliza said. “Are you sure?”
“Based on what Kent has told me,” Jonathan said, “I think it’s the only way. And certainly the quickest way. The focus will get us to the heart of the matter much more rapidly than individually trying to piece it together.”
“I have superior control during focus sessions,” Russell said, “so I’m confident I can help the group keep it together.”
“What is it you do, exactly?” Roy asked Russell.
“He’s a hack,” Marilyn said.
Russell turned to her, angry. The dog in Marilyn’s arms lurched at Russell, snapping and yelping. Marilyn increased her hold on the dog and pulled him back towards her chest, silencing him.
“He’s a television medium who scams people,” Marilyn said.
“That’s a scurrilous lie,” Russell said. “I’ve never scammed anyone.”
“You give what we do a bad name!” Marilyn said, her voice rising with emotion.
“Just because I’m more successful than you doesn’t mean you need to lash out,” Russell said.
“So you go on the TV and, what, read people’s minds, that kind of thing?” Roy asked.
“Haven’t you ever seen ‘The Other Side with Russell Powers’?” asked Eliza. “That’s his show.”
“No, I haven’t,” Roy said. “Sounds like garbage.”
“Jonathan,” Russell said, “you asked me here. I don’t need these attacks from people I’m trying to help.”
“You’re not helping me,” Marilyn said, “or any of us.”
“Guys,” Jonathan said, “let’s lay off each other. We’re not here to snipe at each other’s credentials or personalities. We’re here to help Mr. Percival.”
“I like your show,” Eliza said, smiling at Russell. Steven watched as Russell melted and beamed back at Eliza. “It’s entertaining.”
“He has no credentials,” Marilyn said.
“That’s not true, either,” Russell said. “I attended East Maynard where I received a board certification.”
“How did you graduate from an all-girls school?” Roy asked dryly.
“Enough!” Steven said. “Let’s save our energy for the task at hand, shall we?”
“Thank you,” Jonathan said. “Everyone just take a breath and sit back down at the table. If we’re going to be successful with the focus, we’ll need everyone on the same page.”
Steven and Roy returned to their seats, and Marilyn dug in her purse for a treat she fed to the dog.
“I realize this was a long trip for some of you,” Percival said. “I’m very appreciative. Believe me, if you’re able to help remove whatever curse is on this house, you’ll change many lives for the better.”
“You keep saying curse,” Myrna said. “Why? Do you know of a specific curse?”
“No, not a specific one,” Percival said. “I guess I’m using the term generally. I consider this place a curse on the area. I believe whatever is here is killing the surroundings, the town. I don’t know why, I just know that it is.”
“If no one objects and you’re all finished with dinner, I propose we start the focus now,” Jonathan said.
Everyone glanced around the table, looking at each other’s face to see if there were concerns or objections. E
veryone seemed to shrug, as though proceeding would be fine. We have, after all, come all the way out here, Steven thought.
“We’ll need chairs arranged in a circle,” Jonathan said to Percival.
“No problem, come with me,” Percival said, rising from the table and walking out a door on the far end of the room.
The group left what remained of the meal and followed Percival. They passed through a long hallway, lined with dark green wallpaper that had raised designs. Steven stifled a desire to reach out and touch the wallpaper, which he imagined would have a feel of velvet or felt. They passed by several closed doors. Steven wondered what was behind them. Eventually they emerged into a large open room with a staircase. “Follow me,” Percival said as they ascended the steps into another hallway at the top.
Steven was now completely disoriented. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to follow the route back out to the kitchen if the need arose. He placed his trust in Roy and Eliza and followed the group forward.
They walked through another hallway and turned into a large, dimly lit room that had a billiard table at one end. There were padded chairs spread throughout, and plenty of space in the center of the room.
“Will this work?” Percival asked Jonathan.
“Oh, I should think so,” Jonathan said. “Everyone, please grab a chair that you like and let’s arrange them all in the center, here.”
The chairs were not ornate, but they were tall and nicely padded, and had some weight. After a few minutes of dragging and situating, the group was finally sitting in a circle. As Steven sat, he looked at the walls of the room. There were a couple of covered windows. A door led to another room on his right. There were more chairs against the far wall, and a small table with a lamp. Darkly colored wallpaper lined this room, with a fine pattern that Steven couldn’t make out without moving closer.
“Do you mind if I watch?” Percival asked.
“That’s fine,” Jonathan answered, “but if you wouldn’t mind, could you watch from over there, by the pool table? We’ll want to keep the circle from becoming distracted.”
Eximere (The River Book 4) Page 2