by Karine Green
"Overseer? Sorry, Lady I didn't realize anyone else was here? Have you been the one feeding my crew while we've been here? I'll say 'thank you' from them personally for them. They have carried on the whole time about what wonderful food there is here."
"That was meant for the field hands only," she said, crossing her arms, and giving him a hard look.
"Field hands?"
"Yes, Mistress wants a new kitchen so I must tolerate strangers in my house, but I will not tolerate people questioning me. Please leave, if you are finished." She motioned her right hand toward the kitchen door.
"I just have the secure this bottom cabinet, and then these last pieces of trim." Was she wearing a Belle gown and slave collar? And who in the world calls the homeowner Mistress?
"Get on with it then."
"No need to be rude. I'll knock it out and leave." Bitch.
"Fine, when you see Mistress again, let her know the next quilt is red. She must rush over to it."
He nodded, finished, and left without further comment from the woman, but she glared at him the entire time, and then glared at him out the front window as he left. What a psycho!
He was still pissed at his crew. They had let a snotty maid endanger a thirty-five thousand dollar job, not to mention the timing bonus! He would have a thing or two to say to them when he got back to the shop. The economy was still rough, and he couldn't allow a bad review from the owner of a house like that hurt his own economic recovery. However, he would also have something to say to Ms. Marconi when she returned. He did not appreciate being spoken to like that by her assistant.
Field hands, Mistresses, and overseers! Indeed!
****
Kathy had made up her mind. The slow, friendly pace of life was simply too alluring. As far as she was concerned, it was just what the doctor ordered. She was happy to be...she smiled...home. She pulled into the shopping center by the interstate. She needed to pick up a few things.
To help matters out, back in New York, her building superintendent knew of a couple who wanted to buy her apartment. Since her building was fully occupied and the couple knew at least half of the co-op board she was able to get top dollar for it right away. The money she made from the sale would take care of all of the renovations she wanted to do at the plantation, and leave a bit extra. The best part of the deal was that if she fully restored it to historical standards, and later found herself missing Manhattan she could sell the plantation for enough money to buy a bigger apartment back home. It was a win-win for Kathy.
The flight back had been smooth. She had packed up her apartment, and secured a moving company who should be here soon. Meanwhile the construction workers had installed the major components of the kitchen. According to a text she received only a few things, appliances included, remained. The painters had fixed the porch and prepped the outside of the house for painting while she was gone. They would be ready to start painting the front of the house tomorrow. The new roof had also been completed last week. Next week she would have to find some landscape guys to start on the landscaping. She had given the painters carte blanche to simply remove everything against the house. It was all overgrown anyway, and besides, their fee for removing it was far better than the landscape guys were sure to charge.
For the exterior color, she had chosen a Historical Society approved yellow. In fact, Lauren had been thrilled. Kathy was still leery of her, despite the fact that she was being nice. There was still something off about her. Perhaps it was just a lingering bad first impression? Still, every time Kathy turned around Lauren was there. It was getting annoying, almost like a stalker.
Although, Kathy had to admit, Lauren had really turned on the Southern Belle charm to get replacing the heating and cooling units moved up on the priority list of the other contractor. She had also been the driving force behind Kathy's decision to restore the old ceiling fans on the porches. The contractor was able to rig something in the attic to make them mechanical, but still look like the old 1810 fans. She couldn't wait to see how they turned out. Fireplace inspection was next on her list.
The other rooms would all be getting new stuff, but for now, they were all on the back burner. Only the wallpaper restoration had been moved up on the list of priorities. The teal peacock paper was special and she wanted to keep it, if possible. It wasn't even close to her style, but something was drawing her to it.
She went into the bookstore first. She was looking for any local history books. As she walked in she thought perhaps she would also check out the books in the home décor section.
She had decided that she wanted to stay in the South, even if she sold this house. She could get a Starbucks coffee at the Target that anchored the shopping center, so she wasn't entirely out of luck. She smiled, and got in line with her books. Then it was off to Target.
She checked out, and went to Target with her list in hand. Joy was slowly returning to her life.
****
Jack and Ramón were very happy to be a day early! This would qualify them for the bonus she had promised.
Yes!
Jack knew that having Ramón with him on the job would be an asset. Ramón was not afraid to drive long distances at night. That dude would drive pineapples to Hawaii, if there was a road.
Jack texted Ms. Marconi, of their arrival. She texted back that she was about twenty-five minutes from them, that the front door was unlocked, and to go in and help themselves to the cooler. Mike's wife had packed it for her, and he had dropped it off for her. But, the delivery guys wouldn't know all that. It would make them feel good to have something waiting for them. Delivery guys who felt good were very high on Kathy's list of people to please, especially if they had a truckload of her stuff.
Jack and Ramón entered the house and found a rough map of which boxes matched the rooms she wanted them in. The cooler was waiting on the staircase.
Jack looked at Ramón "Ever been on a real plantation?"
He shook his head. "No, we’re black, black men don't necessarily think about vacationing at southern sugar cane plantations."
'You aren't interested in the history?"
"No, let's just get started." Ramón picked up a water bottle and cheese stick. He stared at the ugly peacock wallpaper, making a face. "What a money pit!" he said, turning, and heading back out to the truck. "This place is unfinished at best!"
"Yeah, ugly, but it's cool that she left us snacks," Jack said, agreeing with Ramón's assessment of the interior of the house. Good thing the weather was nice here! There was no way Codes back home would let anyone live in a house like this in the middle of winter. Not that anyone in their right mind would want to.
Ramón nodded, taking a swig of his water. "It's so hot here!"
"Hey, I am not complaining, better this than the thirty degrees we had when we left home. And really, sixty-five degrees, isn't hot. You're just not used to it right now."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Come on, let's earn that bonus. I promised my wife a vacation, and this extra will put me over the top. Waikiki Beach, Baby! Crossing it off the bucket list in three months." He held up two fingers.
They loaded up their dolly with a bunch of boxes that were marked for the master bedroom, and then lumbered up the stairs as best they could without scratching anything. Not that anyone would have noticed if they did. Well, no one living would have noticed.
"Over here," Jack said, pointing to a sign taped to the wall that read Boxes here.
They carefully set the boxes down by the sign. When they turned to start out of the room they saw the hem of a white dress with pink rose buds on it. It draped around the door jamb, as whomever the dress belonged to left the room.
"Hey, Miss Lady," Ramón called. He jogged over, and looked out into the mezzanine, but no one was there. "It must be nice to be rich. This room here is the same size as my whole apartment."
"Miss Lady?" Jack called, pulling the dolly behind him. He walked out of the master bedroom, and into the second bedroom, but no one was ther
e either. "And, this room is bigger than your apartment too."
"Hello!" Ramón called again. There was no answer. "We did see someone, didn't we? Didn’t she say she was still about a half-hour out?"
“Probably twenty minutes now,” Jack paused, as he caught a glimpse of the draping of the dress as it rounded the staircase. Whoever she was, she was headed downstairs. "Yes, we did see something."
They headed back down the stairs, but again, saw no one. They both had previous experience with odd-shy clients before, so they shrugged it off, reloaded the dolly, and headed back up the stairs.
"Hey!" Jack said aloud, looking at the boxes they had brought up earlier. They were scattered, albeit neatly, all over the room. "You can't be moving stuff around yet! Our liability insurance won't cover it." Not to mention, it never went well with the boss when the evaluations came in with clients noting they had to help the movers. He wasn't the one going to Waikiki, but that didn't mean he had no plans for the bonus money, and he wanted every dime of it.
"Miss Lady!" Ramón called out. “What’s her name?”
"Kathy Marconi. There!" Jack said, pointing, her dress draping down the staircase, again. "She runs up and down the stairs all day?" He shrugged.
They both took off after her. Jack wasn't going to be docked, or sued, out of his bonus because some nightgown-wearing, old, retired lady wanted to move around some boxes that were too heavy for her.
"Ms. Marconi! Stop!" They said, in unison.
They left the dolly, and followed her downstairs, but she was gone.
"Oh! No way! Miss Marconi!" Jack called out, heading into the kitchen. He was getting annoyed with her.
"This is almost as bad, as that crazy dick, who wanted us to stack his boxes a ruler width apart, and then denied the bonus because we used a plastic ruler and not a wooden one." Ramón started to follow him, but as he turned the corner he saw an African American woman in the dining room. "Hold on." But Jack kept going.
She was wearing the white rose bud dress, and wore a silver slave collar around her neck.
"What the!" He knew things were different in the South for his race, but slave collars! It seemed to him that would have warranted an Al Sharpton march, at the minimum; or riots at the maximum.
"The next quilt is red!" she said. Blood red tears ran down her face, as she simultaneously charged at him while evaporating into a cold black fog just inches from his face.
All Ramón could see before she disappeared was a white cheek bone sticking out of an open wound. He ran, screaming from the house.
"Oh! Hell no! Voodoo!" He jumped over the porch steps, and hit the ground running. He locked himself in the truck, cursing at the fact that Jack had the keys which was good for Jack, because he would have drove off and left him with that ghost bitch. He could go to Waikiki next year.
Meanwhile, Jack found the open pantry door in the kitchen. "As soon as she gets the appliances in here at least one room will be livable." He made his way up the narrow staircase to the third floor. "Hey...New utilities! She really is going to live here."
A heavy sadness filled his heart as he looked down the rows of the empty slave quarters. He covered his mouth, squeezing his cheeks. He had never been to the South. His ancestors had come north with the Industrial Revolution, and stayed there. He was a fifth generation freight hauler, in the Northeast. He stared at the beds for a moment. He wondered if his ancestors had lived in quarters like this. Actually, he corrected his train of thought; this would have been the house slaves, so this would have been considered a serious upgrade from the field hands' living conditions.
He was startled as he realized a little African American boy was sitting on the ledge of the far dormer window. His simple pants were tied with what looked like twine.
"Hey, Little Mister. Have you seen Ms. Marconi?" he asked, stepping cautiously toward the little boy. Jack could only see his profile in this light. He was a weird little kid, just sitting there. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something was off about him.
The boy turned to face him. He squinted in the attic's dim light, holding up his cell phone to chase away a bit of the darkness that seemed to have surrounded him.
"There is no mo' time. The red quilt has been hung. It is too late," the boy said, staring at Jack with blank dead white eyes.
"Hey, what is going on here?" Was this kid blind? Those eyes!
"You'd betta get ba'k to the cane, b'fore the overseer catches you inna girls' room. He'll whip ya bloody for bein' here. Just warn Mistress, there is no mo' time! She'll hav' to look at it ba'kwords"
"Nobody's whipping me anything, without a fight. And, blacks don't...uhh...do whatever it was we...once did with sugar cane." He didn't have a clue what he was saying. He couldn't grow strawberries on a window ledge planter for his daughter, let alone a field of sugar cane. Then it occurred to him, had he just been threatened...by a little blind kid...with a whipping? "I don't know a darn thing about farming, kid." What was he saying? It sounded idiotic. It was the eyes, the eyes were distracting him. No. They were disturbing him. He couldn't take his own eyes off the boy's eyes.
The boy started crying blood red tears. "Massa has a razor whip, an' he's coming for Granny," he said as he faded, and then finally disappeared into a black fog.
Jack froze momentarily. His own blood turning to ice as the chill of fear ran through him like electricity. He screamed, and nearly fell down the narrow staircase trying to get out of the house.
****
When Kathy pulled up, in her new pickup truck she found Jack and Ramón locked in the cab of their delivery truck, refusing to get out. Jack lowered the window about an inch, and told her what happened.
"What does that mean? Too Late for what? The next quilt is red? What quilt?" Kathy asked. "What did you spike your water bottles with?" Then she remembered the YouTube video. First thing tomorrow morning she was calling Mike to see if he could help find out what this meant. It had a profound meaning to someone, and it was starting to sound like a life or death situation.
"We ain't drinking!" Ramón said, still wide-eyed. The real Ms. Marconi was much different than he thought. It was like talking to a cop! There was something about the tone of her voice, and the way she stood by the driver's window. He half expected her to ask Jack for his license and registration.
Jack shook his head. "Don't know what it means, and I don't care! Look Miss Marconi, We'll give up the bonus for being early. You can keep the dolly. We'll leave everything on the porch, but we ain't...goin'...back in there!" He used a surety in his voice that he had never used with a client before. He lowered the window another inch.
Ramón shook his head in disagreement. "Man, I don't wanna get out of the truck. Let's just go. We can ship it to her."
"Come on...It's only six hundred square feet of stuff, let's just knock it out!" Jack said, as he got out of the truck.
Reluctantly Ramón followed him, mumbling something about crazy dead bitches.
Forty-five minutes later, everything Kathy owned was on the porch, and she was watching the tail lights of the truck leave. She couldn't believe this had just happened! They nearly killed themselves getting here a day early, and then gave up the bonus without so much as a whimper, let alone a decent argument. It didn't make any sense to Kathy.
The only thing that stopped her from calling the company and giving them an earful was the genuine fear on the men's faces. She could also hear it in their voices when they told her what happened. She didn't believe their stories of course, but she did believe something had happened to them. Now she needed to find out what. Their story kind of matched Mike's story on Ethan, and the Dark Lady. And that YouTube video was starting to freak her out. What was the red quilt for? She held up her tablet and walked around the porch. Damn, no Wi-Fi. She had a cell signal though. Perhaps she would check it out later?
Then she remembered, the lawyer who had died of a heart attack had also mentioned a quilt, as had the former kitchen contractors.
She looked at the mess on the porch and let the thought of quilts drift from her mind. She spent the rest of the afternoon dragging everything into the house piece by piece, even breaking down some items, so she could get them into the house by herself. She was beginning to change her mind about complaining to the company. This was just too much work for one person, and she had paid to have the furniture actually put into the house. However, having the dolly at her disposal would be useful during the rest of the renovation, and it was an industrial-strength one, so it was high end, for a dolly.
She took a break, and texted Mike about the movers. "Maybe I'll find out what the red quilt means today, and not tomorrow,” She said, pressing send.
He texted her back, "I think I have an answer, but you're not going to like it. Trying to talk Jason into coming to talk to you about it."
"OK," she texted back.
Wasn't Jason the Chief of Police? What did he want with her? She supposed she would find out when he got there. That was if Mike could talk him into coming.
She went back to fiddling around with her boxes.
She had hoped to stay here tonight, because she had given up her motel room prior to returning to New York. Everything was in such disorder at her house. She figured it would be uncomfortable to stay here with things in this condition. This was such a small town, and she figured she could probably just show up at the motel without too much of an issue. She bet the room would still be available. It wasn't like people were making reservations at a major tourist attraction.
Tomorrow the appliances and cable were coming, so she had to be here all day. That would take care of the Wi-Fi issue. Perhaps she should drag her mattress into the living room, and sleep in there tonight? But first things first, that bathroom needed cleaning. She headed upstairs with her new cleaning supplies and scrubbed it as clean as it was going to get.