The Haunting of Quenby Mansion Omnibus: A Haunted House Mystery

by J. S. Donovan

  “Call me if you learn anything about my daughter or the man who did her in,” David said. “I’ll give you a shout if I think of anything else about Lily or Max.”

  “That’s all we ask,” Terrence said, always the peacemaker.

  Too lost in thought, Evelyn left David to his horses without saying another word.

  The ride back was somber. For everything Evelyn learned, it still felt as if she was stuck in swamp muck. Someone would have to know where Lily went, but Evelyn was drawing blanks as to who. If she knew Lily’s husband, that could help pinpoint Lily’s location, but the man could be any of the twenty thousand locals that lived in Adders.

  Evelyn pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes.

  She felt Terrence’s big hand squeeze her knee. “We’ll find her.”

  I wish I shared your confidence. Evelyn propped her head against the glass. On top of all this mom stuff, she was still trying to process last night’s shootout, the phantoms lurking in her halls, and countless other issues she’d faced. “I should’ve gone after him.”

  “Your dad?”

  Evelyn nodded. “He was right there. I should’ve stood up and just confronted him.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” Terrence replied.

  Evelyn turned to him.

  Terrence kept his eyes on the road. “A man’s head exploded in front of you. If you were able to play twenty questions with your pops after that, I would be seriously worried about your mental health. Personally, I would’ve been screaming and running the moment I saw Maxwell with my gun.”

  “I’m glad you don’t think I’m crazy all the time,” Evelyn replied. They drove a little farther up the road. “My father was--is--meticulous in his documentation. Remember the plane tickets to Hawaii and the Quenby’s first slave receipt?”

  “What are you getting at?” Terrence asked.

  “Maxwell might’ve saved Lily’s address somewhere.”

  “It’s worth looking into, but it’s a pretty big property for a little piece of paper.”

  The Quenby Plantation consisted of twenty to twenty-five acres with multiple cabins, sheds, cotton storehouses, and other buildings. Obviously, the address would be in the house, but Evelyn didn’t want to box herself in case she didn’t find it in one of the seventeen rooms of the two point five story mansion. Not included among those was the basement and the secret room behind it where Evelyn and Terrence had found the bone pit. For such an uneventful little town, a lot had happened to Evelyn in a few weeks.

  It was late in the morning when they got home. A line of birds lingered on the mansion’s truncated roof. The most curious aspect of the articular design was that the domed ceiling in the foyer was not visible on the exterior. It must’ve jutted out in the attic, behind a wall somewhere.

  While Terrence flipped grilled cheese on the stovetop, Evelyn drew a rough sketch of the house and labeled the rooms accordingly. Her doodle was painfully amateur, but readable. Somewhat.

  She started in the most obvious place: her father’s secret study. The hall leading outside of the kitchen had windows on one wall and a series of large oil paintings on the other. Apart from the first, which showed the beautiful blonde Scandinavian woman, the other dozen and half portraits displayed the various patriarchs of the Quenby family. There were men with dark hair, dark eyes, some with strong jaws and others with big noses. A few were gaunt and skeletal while others were pudgy and inclined to plumpness.

  One in particular had the cotton gin painted behind the subject's head. It was through that clue that Evelyn found the key to unlock her father’s secret study behind the painting itself a while back.

  Evelyn stopped before the gaping hole in the middle of the wall and cringed at the estimated repair cost. When Stephen Doyle had invaded the house on the night that changed Evelyn’s life, he took an axe to the portrait and wall before charging through the three-foot-wide wooden corridor to do the same to the door beyond whose lock was broken long before Evelyn showed up. To survive, Evelyn followed Mary’s instructions to dive into the trapdoor beneath the desk. That landed Evelyn and Terrence in a hidden bone pit where she met the other five phantoms.

  Evelyn slithered inside of the small, dusty room. There were piles of old books spilling out of a dusty bookcase, a big mahogany desk, an old globe with an orangish tint, a rusty bedframe and lived-in mattress, and dirty plates, cups, and silverware. There were antiques and Antebellum-era toys as well.

  Evelyn had searched inside the desk before where she found documents that had survived since the house’s inception in 1827. That was back when Adders was still a trading post. More significantly, Evelyn had discovered the drafts to Maxwell’s will. She had unballed them and put them in a neat stack inside the upper drawer. The top one started with, “To my beloved, in a less cruel world, we could’ve been together. It was never my desire to send you away, but sometimes sacrifices must be made for your safety and for mine. I write to you with my final breath. Come home...”

  Evelyn held the paper close to her chest. After a moment, she put it back on top of the stack and sifted through the rest of the old documents. No address for Lily. She searched under the bed, in the slit in the mattress, inside the small drawer in the lamp stand, and in every other nook and cranny in the room. Fruitless, she reminded herself of the palm-sized notebook she had discovered in a hidden compartment within the desk drawer. She flipped through pages of misspelled names, unsure if there were some sort of code or Maxwell was drunk when he wrote them. There was one blank page a third of the way through, but the page following it had a list of dates and locations. Six in all, and each coinciding with one of the victims found in the basement. Even Mary Sullivan, whose remains were ash somewhere on Quenby land. Evelyn didn’t know why her father had this. It would’ve been no surprise that he heard of the murders during his time, but to catalogue them was a little suspicious.

  Evelyn ventured upstairs to the main study: a room that was much larger and lined with tall bookshelves, chairs with cracked leather cushions, and a number of wilted flowers that decorated the windowsills and tabletops. She searched that desk too, but found more useless documents. Disappointed in the lack of results, Evelyn returned to the kitchen and ate her grilled cheese, which was cold now. She found Terrence hunched over in the pantry. The wooden slat covering the long crawlspace was open.

  “Hey,” Evelyn said.

  Terrence pulled his head out of the crawlspace and turned back to her.

  “What are you doing?” Evelyn asked.

  “I was thinking of a way to seal it up,” Terrence declared. “If Stephen Doyle could sneak in here, who else can?”

  Terrence had a good point. The serial killer who dumped the bodies in the basement either dropped them through one of the multiple hidden chutes or carried them through the secret dirt tunnel that connected the shed and the basement.

  “Whenever you’re finished, you’re invited to help me look for Lily’s address.”

  Terrence cracked a smile. “That sounds like it’s more than a suggestion.”

  Evelyn shrugged and continued her search in the master bedroom. She opened up every drawer on the jewelry dresser and, at the sight of their emptiness, ran her hand up her hair. It seemed like her father had nothing of Lily’s, and Evelyn wondered if their relationship was as shallow as a one-night stand. Romantic, Evelyn thought sarcastically.

  The grueling search grew tiresome. She followed the upstairs hall to a closed door and opened it. It was a small corridor with a stairway that folded in on itself. The top step entered directly into the attic. As she ascended, the hotter and darker the room became. Grabbing aimlessly, she snatched up the beaded light string and gave it a good tug.

  Flickering two or three times, the dim light illuminated the attic. The ceiling was much lower and crooked nails spiked out of the wood. Cardboard boxes had fallen in on themselves and naked, milk-skinned mannequins were standing around. There were at least seven or eight of them, all female.<
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  There were two upright posts connected at the top by a horizontal pole. Women’s dresses from different eras hung on the horizontal pole via metal coat hangers. Old rectangular suitcases from a bygone era sat at the base. Evelyn approached them, curious about any shared connection with her mother. The floor creaked beneath her feet. Dusty marbles hugged the wall, hinting at an uneven surface.

  Coat hangers screeched against metal pole as Evelyn slid them over one by one. The dresses they held were marvelously beautiful. From a flowing, golden-yellow empire-waist dress to a tight, dark-violet maxi, each of the twelve dresses boasted a different design and color. A small tag was clipped on the dress’s chest area, labeling each with a different month. September, October, November, etc. Tacked onto the rack itself was a small note that opened like a little folder. In fine cursive, it read “To Lily, a dress for every season.”

  Evelyn cracked a small smile. Perhaps Maxwell was a romantic. Then she remembered Stephen’s death and felt sick to her core. Evelyn glanced about the room and rubbed her damp forehead. The attic grew muggier by the minute. She wondered if all the items inside were gifts to her mother.

  With her fingers, she popped open the latches of an old travel trunk and found it stuffed full of wrinkled women’s shirts and pants from the seventies. Evelyn closed it and took a step back. She examined more suitcases and luggage bags, finding clothing from all different sizes and eras, the oldest being a flapper dress. These must be from all the Quenby ladies. Most of the articles were expensive and a few were custom-fitted. If this were a Goodwill, Evelyn would be having a field day. Then she remembered the estate and all its contents were hers now. Or were they? Now that Maxwell was proven alive, what did that mean for the inheritance?

  Evelyn felt conscientious about disturbing the various items. If Maxwell wanted the estate, why would he leave it to me? Nonetheless, Evelyn put the dresses back and hiked to the back of the attic. The farther she went, the darker and hotter the long room became. The light from the dim bulb struggled to reach this far and caused a long shadow to grow out of Evelyn and the surrounding coat stands.

  Evelyn blinked, feeling salty sweat stinging her eye. To clear up her vision, she wiped her eyes with her moist hands. It barely helped. A nearby hat stand wobbled.

  Evelyn froze. Her pulse quickened.

  “Hello?” she called out.

  No response.

  A shadow grew under her feet and stretched out beside her own.

  Raspy breathing filled her ear. Its rank stench violated Evelyn’s nose.

  Dreadfully, Evelyn clenched her fist and turned back.

  Only dresses, suitcases, and mannequins.

  Beneath the lightbulb, the beaded string swayed.

  Evelyn held her breath and scanned her surroundings.

  No one.

  Cautiously, she turned back around to the far end of the basement.

  With cold dead eyes, a naked fat man stared at her. He had a saggy chest, stretch marks, and what stood out more than his misshapen head and horrible underbite was the massive horizontal slash across his belly. Red organs and other disgusting gore slowly leaked out of the open flesh

  Evelyn took a step back.

  The man breathed heavily. The corner of his upper lip twitched.

  Staring down the fat man, Evelyn collected herself.

  “Winslow?” Evelyn asked.

  The man bared his big teeth into what could barely be considered a smile.

  “What are you doing up here?” Evelyn asked. Out of all the phantoms, Evelyn had communicated with him the least of all, but Evelyn remembered what he showed her when she asked to see how the phantoms had died. Winslow, in his 40s though looking much younger, was strung up by his wrists, stripped, and had his belly opened with a knife used to cut cattle meat. Evelyn felt wheezy thinking about it.

  Winslow turned around and waddled to the back corner of the room. Evelyn stayed where she was, unable to calm her heart. You’re here to help these people. There’s nothing to be scared of. Evelyn put on a hard face but couldn’t shake her uneasiness.

  Winslow returned with a turquoise necklace on a silver chain and presented it in his massive hand.

  “For me?” Evelyn asked.

  The naked man nodded.

  Gingerly, Evelyn accepted the gift.

  Winslow “smiled” again and waddled to another part of the attic.

  Evelyn studied the necklace and the three little gems dangling from it, unsure what to make of it. She pocketed it and wondered what other hidden treasures lay within. Evelyn traveled deeper into the attic.

  Surrounded by odd and end furnishings, a circular wooden pedestal sat against the far wall. An old leather-bound tome rested at its center. The lamp with a stained-glass shade sat at the pedestal’s base. Cautious, Evelyn approached. With her palm, she brushed away the sheen of dust on the book’s cover. Written in black ink, the title read, “Quenby.”

  Evelyn turned the fat book in her hand. A leather strap with a tiny rusty keyhole sealed the book’s pages. Evelyn gave a good pull. That didn’t get her anywhere. She glanced around the pedestal and surrounding floor for a key. Nothing.

  “Eve,” Terrence called out as he hiked up the stairs. “Sorry it took me so long. You up here?”

  “Yeah,” Evelyn shouted back.

  Terrence got to the top of the stairs.

  “Hey,” Evelyn said, still studying the book. “Can you get my lock-picking tools and the house key from the bedroom?”

  Terrence opened his mouth to say something. Instead, he slumped his shoulders and obeyed. He returned moments later and gave her the necessary items. Evelyn tried the key. It was just a little too big. She relied her on lock-picking tools instead. After a moment of fiddling with the lock, it gave way. Terrence leaned over Evelyn’s shoulder as she opened the front cover.

  That musty, old book smell wafted from the ancient pages. To Evelyn’s surprise, a yellow Post-It note was stuck to the front page. It began with the word “Evelyn.”

  Terrence and his wife exchanged looks. They started reading again. “I’m sure you’ve realized that there was no key to this book. In all honesty, I purposely hid it from you.”

  “Why would he do that?” Terrence interrupted.

  Evelyn shushed him. “Let’s keep reading.”

  “If you’re like me, a curious sort, you’ve found a way to access these pages anyway. Thusly, you’ve earned your reward. Since Cecilia, our greatest ancestor, arrived on the shores of America…”

  Evelyn turned the sticky note over.

  “She made clear documentation of our family's history. As per tradition, the following heads of Quenby were required to add their account as well. Your origin lies within these pages, Evelyn. Kill your ignorance. Read it and see what it means to be a Quenby. In doing so, you’ll see who I am and learn the truth about your mother.”

  “Whoa,” Terrence said. “Lucky find.”

  Evelyn glanced at the pedestal. “It wasn’t luck. Maxwell wanted me to find this.”

  They moved downstairs to read the book more. The pages had a yellow tint and were thin. Prone to tearing. The first page started with Cecilia Hagan and the murder of her family.

  Born into a wealthy Norwegian manor during the Napoleonic invasion of 1802, Cecilia spent her early years locked away and eating rationed food as the war had brought a great famine to Norway. With a sickly father and mentally unbalanced mother, Cecilia’s one hope was to marry another noble and share the wealth and food stores. At fourteen, after the war had ended but her family still suffered, she married Erik Eriksen, a handsome but abusive man. One night, before a great family feast, Cecilia went on a horse ride through the meadows beside her manor. However, a snake scared her steed and it bucked her off. Cecilia awoke where she fell during a great storm that night. Lost and cold, she staggered back home and found her mother, father, husband, and his relatives dead at the dinner table, their heads in pools of their own blood.

  Poisoned, the i
nvestigators believed.

  For two years, she lived alone as a widow and the only survivor of her family in those cursed halls until a stranger came to visit. He was a lowly Englishman from a small house that was destroyed during the war. He claimed that he was passing through the area and needed lodging for the night. Pitying him, Cecilia allowed him to stay. While they were together, Cecilia realized how lonely she had been. She could sense the man’s loneliness, too, and in what could only be described as love at first sight, Cecilia consummated their relationship on the night of their first meeting. The man stayed with her, teaching her English and speaking of prospects overseas. Cecilia, tired of living in halls stained with blood, grabbed her money and lover then headed to America. Under the man’s guidance, they bought a large plot of land away from the rest of the world. The man personally oversaw the building of the plantation. His name was Abel Quenby, and Cecilia never met his family.

  In her writing, Cecilia described Abel as a quiet and patient man who always seemed to show up at just the right moment. Feeling cursed by her family’s demise, Cecilia didn’t allow them to marry until she was gray and full of years, thus the Quenby name lived on and Hagan died away. Cecilia’s final account read as follows. “With his usual kind smile, Abel brought me a gift to celebrate our two year anniversary. A fine Norwegian wine coated in dust. I remembered its vintage as the same one my family drank during their final feast.”

  The next account began with their eldest son Alistair Quenby and his discovery of hidden passages in the walls. “My father built something here,” Alistair described. “Much grander than I could’ve imagined. The purposes of such tunnels, I know not, and when I confronted him about it, he took a switch to me as he did the slaves each morning. I will not confront him again.” Alistair proceeded by listing the locations of such tunnels.

  The pantry, all five bedrooms, two of the three bathrooms, the lounge, the billiard room, the study, dining room, living room, the foyer, the art room, and the nursery. In summary, fifteen out of seventeen rooms. The only ones that didn’t have passages was the downstairs bathroom, second extra living room, and the upstairs hallway.