by A. J. Aalto
“Not to spaz out like a du--llard?”
Mr. Merritt stuttered in an attempt not to chuckle. “No, madam.”
“Right, how silly of me. What’s the most archaic, highfalutin word in the English language for goober?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” he said.
“Okay, what’s French for spazola?”
“I’m certain Master Dreppenstedt meant for you not to worry, is all,” he said, buttering a scone on the tea cart with important strokes of his knife, like it was imperative that he got it just right. I wondered if, to Harry, it was important that the butter was just right, which lead me to wonder how much Harry had to train this guy before he was so precise and excellent at each task… which, of course gave me insight into why Harry was so constantly frustrated with my refusal to accept any sort of training. He probably expected me to snap-to like Mr. Merritt; on the other hand, he chose me based on my sass-mouth and poor cooking skills, so I guess he got what he asked for. Mr. Merritt probably had pretty awesome scone-buttering skills to begin with, which is why Harry would have hired him in the first place. In fact, I'd have bet every dollar I owed the Combat Butler that Harry bought North House on the condition that Mr. Merritt remain with it, and would have kept house hunting until he'd found someone of equal caliber if Mr. Merritt hadn't been cool with revenants, or whatever the classy way of saying cool happened to be back in his day.
I parted the curtains to look out at the snow lashing across the window, and imagined my companion out in the miserable weather, then dropped them.
“He’s a very competent driver, madam,” Mr. Merritt said, but the Blue Sense reported a thread of fatherly worry that I found endearing, considering Harry was centuries older than his butler. “I’m sure Master Dreppenstedt will be fine.”
It wasn’t his driving skills I was worried about; my Cold Company had been driving since the invention of the car. He’d mounted and tamed wild horses, buzzed dangerous mountain roads on motorcycles, flown just about every type of airplane and helicopter in existence. If it moved, Harry had piloted it at unreasonable speeds. I wasn’t even worried about the weather, really, though the snow showed no signs of letting up; in Virgil, he faced a problem frostier than any blizzard on record, and while my nerves were raw with the urge to shield him from it, the thought of fetching him from my parents' doorstep made me cringe.
“He’s crazy,” I sighed. “You know where he’s gone, right? To have a door slammed in his face. Maybe repeatedly, because he’s a persistent bugger.” Picturing him on the porch, hat in his hands, out in the cold, while my family, Grandma Vi’s family, rejected him over and over, gave me a cramp of sadness in my chest. I didn’t even want to think of what words they’d use; in typical, cutting, Baranuik fashion, they'd try to hurt him enough to make him leave the doorstep. Oh, Harry, just come home. “They’ll never talk with him; they’ll hurl words in his face. They’re not going to invite him in. I don’t even know why he wants them to.”
“Begging your pardon, madam, but I believe he’s doing it for your sake,” Mr. Merritt said gently, turning down the covers on my bed. I watched him do it, uncomfortable as he fussed around turning off the overhead light, fetching my My Little Pony “Derpy Hooves” nightshirt, putting it on the bed under the warm glow of the bedside lamp.
“I can do all this myself, you know,” I said.
“There’s clearly nothing wrong with your arms,” Mr. Merritt agreed, unfazed, “but isn’t it nice, madam, to have someone to do it for you? This is the reason Master Dreppenstedt keeps me on.”
Begging your pardon, Mr. Merritt, but I believe he’s doing it for your sake, I thought, but carefully did not say aloud. “It makes me feel more lazy than fancy. I feel guilty.” I tried not to make a face as he put my bunny slippers beside the bed near my nightshirt. They looked super clean, but the memory of Wesley in bat form humping the left one while the fluffy ears rocked madly made me squirm. “Did those get washed again?”
“If I’m not mistaken, they’ve been replaced.” His lips clamped down on a smile that might have dimpled that elderly cheek had he let it out, and I knew Harry had shared the joke. “Shall I draw your bath now, madam?”
I frowned at the slippers and reconsidered my stance on immersion. “Uh, sure. Thanks.” I followed his light, quick steps into the en suite bathroom. There was a television mounted in the far corner of the room, opposite the bathtub. I turned it on and flipped channels until I settled on one of the more popular paranormal shows, the one with the ghost-hunting plumbers.
When Mr. Merritt bent over the tub to turn the water on, the sink faucet squeaked on behind me, and I whirled around.
I squinted suspiciously at it as it began to dribble. Mr. Merritt straightened immediately to frown at it. “That was odd.”
“I take it that doesn’t usually happen?”
“No, madam.”
“If the threads were loose the street pressure could turn a faucet on,” I reasoned, reaching one gloved hand toward it. I hesitated only a second before berating myself with a huff and turning it off. “Whew. Debunked.” The bathroom window rattled in its pane. “There’s no ghost in this house, right?”
“Of course not, madam.”
The window thumped hard enough to startle both of us, and we smiled nervously at one another. “Except that one?”
“Just the wind,” Mr. Merritt said with a nod. I nodded back.
“Hey, remember when my brain wasn't broken?” I asked. “A few days ago, I never would have imagined that it was anything other than wind. I’m still way too jumpy because of the grabby-grabby skeleton hand… which wasn’t a hand, it was a branch, but still, it was in the dead people water.” And it was scary, and now I’m babbling. I didn’t have to add that last bit; Combat Butler read it on my face and gave me an understanding nod.
The wind moaned.
Mr. Merritt smiled. “It’s a terrible night. I can’t believe that officer had you out in the cold for so long.”
His tone was accusatory, and I felt the need to defend Schenk. “To be fair, he probably didn’t want me there. And I doubt I’ll be invited back after flailing in the water and wailing like a banshee.”
“Your joints must be aching.”
“My knuckles feel like they’ve been squeezed in a vice. And I'm pretty sure my ladybits are never going to un-pucker.”
He looked nonplussed but still somehow sympathetic. “I’ll warm a heating pad for you and slip it into your bed, madam. There’s sports rub in the medicine cabinet. Will you be needing me further?”
“For what?” I took my suede gloves off and put them on the bathroom counter. “Gonna wash my back?”
Mr. Merritt looked alarmed for a moment until he saw the smirk I gave him in the mirror, and then the look of relief on his face was partly insulting, partly charming. “Good night, madam. If you do need me, the bell is on the wall by the bed.”
The bell. Lord and Lady. “I won’t ring for you, Mr. Merritt, trust me. I’m not harboring any Downton Abbey fantasies here.”
“But you may ring at any hour. Even if you just need someone to sit with you.”
“What about if I need someone to have a pillow fight with?”
He just blinked at me.
“When’s the last time you had a pillow fight, Mr. Merritt?”
“I may have been seven years old, perhaps eight.”
“So, like, ninety-five years ago, give or take?”
He did not confirm or deny my mischievous estimation of his age, but his labored inhale expressed impatience. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right, madam? Sometimes, when one has had a bad shock, one’s mouth does run on and on.”
Touché, Combat Butler. “Thanks, but I’m really okay. I’m not afraid. I’m super-pro, like them,” I said, pointing at the ghost hunters of TV, one of whom was running away from a spider. “You won’t find me stalking the halls tonight talking to dead air.” Dead air, Marnie? my brain taunted. Poor choice of words.
Mr. Merritt did not look overly convinced, but he had the grace not to disagree with me out loud. I waited for him to exit before untying the bathrobe. I closed the door most of the way, leaving a little slit so I could listen for Harry’s return. I found my iPhone and put it on the floor within arm’s reach of the tub. Steam rose as the water gurgled and drummed. I could feel my shoulders starting to release and relax a bit. Kind of. I wouldn’t truly relax until my Cold Company returned. Or maybe when we got back to Ten Springs.
I found some fancy, peach-scented bath bombs and dumped two in. The window rattled again, once. Hard. Then it said, “Leeeeeeeeavehim.”
I froze, and only my eyes shifted, cutting toward the window.
Leave him? Who, Mr. Merritt? Harry? I shook my head. Get a grip, Marnie, you didn’t really hear words.
The wind begged to differ, and repeated, “Leeeeeave.”
I found my voice. “Okay, since when does wind make consonants?”
A faint and fleshy sound, like fingertips on a foggy mirror, filled the room.
“Did someone follow me home?” I asked, forcing my voice to sound firm and not waver. “It was a stick, not a skeleton. I didn’t fall on you.” I thought about the dead people water. “In you. I didn’t fall in you. Through you? Did I? If I did, it was totally an accident. I don’t dive knee first into people on purpose, I swear.” My smacking Rob Hood right in the junk during one of our sparring sessions was more of a lucky shot. I'd never been able to duplicate it, and I'd really been trying, because only a sadist is as perky as he is at six in the morning.
The window rattled twice, but softly. Definitely wind. Or is it?
“I invite you to show yourself,” a lady on TV said, and I repeated it quietly to the empty bathroom, no longer a hundred percent sure I was alone.
Vaporous rings, like those from a cigar, puffed across the mirror. Steam, I told myself, watching it drift in irregular circles. Of course it’s steam. What the hell else would it be? Downshift, Marnie, pull it together.
There was a horrible, wavering squeal. A long streak appeared in the steam on the mirror. With a sharp intake of breath, I grabbed my phone and rang de Cabrera. When he picked up, I said, “Need some positivity, dude.”
Despite the late hour, he answered, “Rumi said, ‘When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray.’”
“I’m pretty sure when the world has me on my knees, it’s about to blow its load in my face.”
“Well, then you’ll be right at home,” he said with a chuckle.
I managed half a smile. “You’re not helping.”
“Positivity,” he warned. “The best way to become more at ease with your fears is to spend time with them.”
Dude, they're fucking with my bathroom mirror right now. I thought about what de Cabrera had said. “Do what I’m afraid to do,” I paraphrased.
“Exactly,” he said. “Am I helping now?”
“Not really,” I admitted. The skin at the nape of my neck prickled unpleasantly. “I should have called Golden. She would have advised me to drink whiskey and soak in the tub.”
“There’s still time if you’d prefer her over me.”
“Nobody’s that crazy,” I assured him. I looked over my shoulder at the mirror, but nothing was written there now. The ghost was politely holding until my other call was finished. Nifty. It’s nice to have Caul Waiting.
I told de Cabrera good night and put my phone back on the floor next to the tub. It twitched a bit against the tiles and I frowned at it.
“You cannot affect the physical realm,” I whispered. “You might be here, but you can’t.“
The phone skittered away behind the toilet. There was a groan in the pipes. I cut my eyes to the claw foot tub, and reached out to touch the side of it.
Cold. No, I thought-corrected. Not just cold. Frigid. All that heat from the water, gone. I shuffled to the rear of the tub and felt the two exposed pipes, new and modern but designed to fit with the antique feel of the bath ensemble.
Warm, but not hot. I’d have to ask Mr. Merritt later if they had hot water on demand, or an old hot water tank that could run empty.
The phone was shoved again, this time halfway back to me.
“Neat trick,” I said breathlessly, truly impressed. I stayed in a crouch in my robe on the floor, but stretched out to retrieve my phone. I turned it over in my hand, looking for MUCE; it was clean and dry, with no trace of ectoplasm.
“Who are you?” I asked, and listened closely, but all I could hear was the water thumping into the half-filled tub and the fizz of the bath bombs dissolving. On the vanity something started ticking like a broken watch springing to life, but I had piled a bunch of oversized towels there and couldn’t see anything underneath. Furthermore, I was embarrassed to admit, I was afraid to move the towels and search for the source of the noise, since I was pretty sure there wasn’t a logical, mundane cause.
“Okay,” I barely breathed. “You have my attention. What do you want?”
I got up to turn off the tub and mute the TV, and listened again. I held my breath and strained to hear anything. There was a shushing noise, and the lights overhead flickered. My eyes skimmed from the vanity lights to the light switch, and I realized I really didn’t want the lights to go out while I was in this room alone. Senses on high alert, I was acutely aware of every creak and groan of the old house, each rustle of wind against the window, soft noises out in the bedroom. I jerked the ties on the robe tightly closed and put the phone on the tile counter, peering into the shadowy bedroom. From where I stood I could see most of the space, except the corner between the bed and the window. The tea trolley was still near the bed, but it seemed to have shifted. There was a scuff mark in the carpet by my slippers, and now one bunny head was under the bed, like it had been kicked. The closet door was closed, but as I watched, I was sure it would swing open and some eldritch horror would spiral out at my face. The bedroom door made a clicking noise, and my breath caught.
“Mr. Merritt? Is that you?” I said, and listened, wide-eyed, for someone to answer. Nobody did.
The water in the bathtub plipped and I spun around to stare at it. A drop from the faucet, surely nothing more than that. It burbled again, from the bottom of the tub this time, while I watched, and unless I was prepared to call my eyes liars, I couldn’t deny that there was something there. I inched closer to peer at it. The mostly-dissolved salts at the bottom of the tub began to stir counter-clockwise, like someone was playing in them with lazy fingers.
Just then, my phone went off loudly, rattling against the tile; Meredith Brooks cheerfully proclaiming her bitchitudinousness.
“Thunder-fucking cockrocket!” I muttered, answering with a swift thumb swipe. “This better be important, because I might've just met a ghost and you cost me two thousand bucks, Carrie.”
My sister, the only one who hadn’t disowned me. She wasted no time with pleasantries or small talk, either; that wasn’t Carrie’s way. “Speaking of dead stuff, Harry left Mom and Dad’s place about ten minutes ago.”
I leaned against the wall and tried to will my heart to stop pounding like a ninny in my chest. “I know. I wish he hadn’t bothered. Wait… Did they actually let him in?”
“Yeah, Margot said he talked at Dad for a while.”
Margot, my second youngest sister, was the one who sometimes stopped hating me long enough to paint things for me. “That wily old bugger got past the front door? How?”
“Dad invited him in,” she said.
“You’re kidding me,” I said, looking in the mirror to check my own facial expression. As I suspected, my jaw was hanging open. I blinked rapidly at my reflection. I was alone, which was a good start. No ghost. Also, no steam anymore. In fact, the room was gaining a chill. I tied my robe tighter and seriously considered skipping baths forever. “Well, I knew Harry was smooth, but damn. Hey, did you happen to give my business card to a girl named Britney Wyatt?”
“
You have business cards?”
“So, that’s a no?”
“I want people to know we’re related?” She snorted. “Please.”
“So it must have been Ellie.”
“Ellie keeps everything. Ellie’s a hoarder. She’s got a thousand things in her house that she should get rid of, including her husband.”
I didn't agree, and it bothered me to hear her say that. We’d both known Fred long before he got sick. “That's pretty cold, Carrie.”
“Forget I said that. Let’s talk about this lawyer,” she said, emphasizing lawyer as if it was a problem I was having with a cockroach infestation.
“Richard,” I said. “And it’s not going to work out.”
“Why not? I’m sure you two make a cute couple. Wait, is he alive?” Carrie’s voice was roguish down the line. “So what’s going on with that Batten dude? You still doing him? I liked the sound of him. He seemed like a ‘spit on his dick and stick it in’ kinda guy.”
I felt one corner of my lips tug into a reluctant smile. “Am I supposed to disabuse you of that notion by filling in details?”
“I wish you would; I’ve only been asking for months,” she grumbled.
“I’m on a coitus hiatus,” I lied, glancing over my shoulder to look for eavesdropping, ninja-quiet butlers. “I can’t help you.”
“That’s depressing. Well, I'm dating a curvy. It's a nice size, but it's giving me vagina farts.”
“What the—“
“You know, gassing up the beaver boat. The ol' coughing canoe.”
“I don’t even know what you're talking about.”
“Queefing, for Chrissake. You aren't kidding about never getting laid.”
“I do so!” Once in a blue moon. “Is this the part where I point out that you’re not dating a penis, you’re dating an entire man?”
“Ugh, no. An entire man? That sounds like a lot of work.” She smacked her lips, working around crumbs in my ear. “These white chocolate chip cookies taste the way horses smell.”
I had no idea what to say to that. “Is this why you called me?”