The Secret of Goldenrod

by Jane O'Reilly

  “Under the stairs,” he said. “And if I’m right, this room will be . . .” He paused to open a second door to another disappointingly empty room with another dusty chandelier. “The dining room. Just as I suspected.” Trina let go of his T-shirt.

  “Man, look at that buffet,” her dad said, pointing at a long cupboard with a big mirror above it. “And those French doors must lead outside,” he added, glancing at a wall of boards as he kept going, passing under a spindled archway into a room as big as a school gym, which had a huge fireplace and another elaborate chandelier. From there Trina could see the archway that led back to the foyer. Trina sensed that whoever, or whatever, had met her at the front door was still standing there. Waiting. Trina quickly turned her back on the foyer. “Is this the living room?”

  “Yup. But I think they were called parlors back then.”

  His voice was muffled again. This time he was reaching up inside the chimney. Metal clanked against metal as he forced open the flue. When he crawled back out, a look of deep concern crossed his face. “She’s got good bones, but . . .”

  Trina waited for his next word, wondering if he felt the presence of someone in the house the way she did. She held her breath as he looked from the boarded-up bay window to the curling wallpaper and the cracked plaster on the ceiling.

  “She has good bones, but what?”

  He kicked at a bit of fallen plaster. “She’s suffered from being empty.”

  The hair on Trina’s arms prickled. “What do you mean?”

  “A house goes downhill when no one lives in it. It needs people. People who love it.” He wiped his sooty hands on his pants. “I guess I’m saying she needs us.”

  Trina didn’t like thinking of the house as something that needed her. “I think it’s too much work, Poppo.”

  “Nah, nothing stops us,” he said with a big grin. And then he put his hand on her shoulder. “I bet some lunch will perk you up. The kitchen is back that way,” he said, pointing through the dining room. “I’ll get the cooler.”

  At the far end of the dining room was a swinging door that screeched as Trina pushed through it into what had to be the butler’s pantry because it was full of a million empty cabinets with leaded glass doors. She pushed through another swinging door and finally arrived at a kitchen big enough for ten cooks. The walls were covered in white tiles and the sink was nearly as big as a bathtub. Above the sink was a boarded-up window, and between the sink and a big black stove was a doorway to a small bathroom, a boarded-up back door and a plain, narrow staircase that led both up and down. The servants’ stairway.

  As Trina ran her hand along the long marble countertop, she found a bill:

  SPOT-RITE HOUSE CLEANING

  DAVENPORT, IA

  General $1500.00

  Travel $125.00

  Total $1625.00

  PAID IN FULL

  Knowing she wouldn’t have to do the cleaning was the first good thing about Goldenrod, and then she realized the kitchen floor was filthy, which meant the cleaners hadn’t done a very good job.

  A loud SCREECH made Trina jump, but she quickly recognized the sound of nails being ripped from wood. More screeches were followed by a bang as a board fell off the kitchen window and sunlight poured in over the sink. Standing outside was her dad, waving at Trina with his hammer, his sweaty face as red as the bandana he held in his other hand.

  Trina leaned across the sink and shouted at the closed window. “What about the cooler?”

  Her dad frowned, which meant he had forgotten all about lunch. He held up his finger and mouthed the words, “One minute.”

  One minute, right. One minute to Poppo was like an hour to everyone else. Whenever he started a project he’d lose track of time. Sometimes he even forgot what day it was.

  Sighing for at least the hundredth time that day, Trina turned on the cold water faucet and was promptly splashed with rusty brown water that smelled like a swamp. “Yuck!” she said out loud. She left the faucet on, just like her dad had taught her, hoping the dirty water would eventually run clear.

  CREAK!

  Trina jumped again, as annoyed by her jumpiness as she was by the noises.

  “Better oil this door,” her dad said, coming through the swinging door. He set the cooler, topped with two bags of groceries, on the kitchen counter. “How about I make you a peanut butter sandwich?”

  “I’m old enough to make lunch, Poppo.”

  “You bet,” he said. Then he spotted the bill on the counter. “Davenport! That’s a long way to drive to clean a house. I would have cleaned it myself for that much. How about you?”

  Trina shook her head. “No way.” Even if the cleaners hadn’t done a very good job, she had to give them credit for cleaning up the cobwebs and bugs and whatever else that must have been living in the house for a hundred years. And then she put two and two together. She imagined the cleaners washing and sweeping, working hard until they heard a noise and the hairs on their necks prickled and they felt sure someone was watching them. Scared to death, they raced out of the house before they finished—too frightened to put the key back under the mat.

  “Water looks pretty good,” her dad said as he turned off the faucet. Then he pulled out a little notepad and his contractor’s pencil. The pages were already filling with lists and calculations. “I need to trim that oak tree before it rips any more slate off the roof. Lucky it’s slate. Should last another hundred years.”

  As he talked and made notes, Trina unloaded paper plates, plastic cups, plastic silverware, and a big roll of paper towels—all the luxuries of living out of the truck—followed by the basics: peanut butter, grapes, spaghetti, pickles, milk, bread, butter, instant coffee, and dish soap.

  “First real order of business will be putting in the new septic system before the ground freezes,” her dad said.

  Trina’s hand stopped on the jar of dill pickles. “A new septic system? Does that mean we can’t use the bathroom?”

  He laughed. “We might get a few surprises, but yes, we can use the bathroom.”

  “What kinds of surprises?” Trina asked, slathering peanut butter on two pieces of bread and layering the pickles between them—just the way he liked it. And then she made her own sandwich—no pickles.

  “You never know what can happen with these old houses,” he said, just as the ceiling light flickered.

  Trina raised her eyebrows. “Was that one of the surprises?”

  “Nah,” he said without looking up. “That’s just a bulb that’s loose in its socket.”

  Trina poured milk into the plastic cups and set the peanut butter sandwiches on paper plates. Her dad slipped his pencil over his ear and grabbed half his sandwich, downing it in two bites. “I’m going into town to get lumber for the new porch. I’ll need every inch of room in the truck. You stay here, okay?” He grabbed the other half of his sandwich. “Maybe unpack the trailer.”

  “All by myself?” she squeaked.

  “Not everything,” he said as he crumpled his paper plate and stuffed it into an empty grocery bag. “I’ll help with the big stuff. Should be back in a couple hours.”

  Unpacking the trailer by herself was not what Trina had meant, but the last thing she wanted was for her dad to think she was afraid to be alone. There’s no such thing as a haunted house. There’s no such thing as a haunted house. If there was ever a chance to prove she was growing up, this was it. Trying to sound brave, she said, “I’ll pick out my room while you’re gone.”

  Chapter Two

  Trina finished her sandwich alone, leaning over the sink and looking out through the ancient rippled glass, beyond an overgrown field, to a grove of trees acres away. No neighbors, no roads, no nothing.

  Even when they lived on the outskirts of Santa Fe, they had neighbors. Neighbors she could wave at. Neighbors with friendly dogs. And when they lived up in the hills in Portland, she could see the city lights glimmering like stars when she walked outside at night.

  But from the
kitchen window at Goldenrod, all Trina could see was an endless ocean of yellow weeds. Not even flowers. Weeds. At least she could look forward to school. For the first time in her life she’d get to stay in one place long enough to make friends. “One friend. That’s all I ask,” Trina said to the window.

  The ceiling light flickered, and Trina whirled around and looked up. If Poppo were home he’d just tell her it was a loose bulb, but Trina wondered if the house was somehow listening to her. But now she was scaring herself. And she didn’t want to be scared if she was going to be alone in the biggest, darkest, creepiest house she’d ever set foot in. She wanted to be strong and grown-up. “There’s no such thing as a haunted house,” she said out loud to the kitchen.

  The light flickered again.

  Ignoring the light, she stomped straight through the house and outside. She found a branch beneath the oak tree, wedged open the front door with it, and fought through the goldenrod to get to the trailer.

  She set up the card table in the dining room, followed by the folding chairs. By the time she made the trip for the fourth chair, she had flattened the weeds into a thick, yellow-green path. Next was the laundry basket full of pillows, sheets, and towels, and then a box with their spaghetti pot, two saucepans, a frying pan, and a bunch of other cooking stuff. Everything fit into a single cupboard.

  She was down to their bags of clothes.

  The time had come to pick out her room.

  Trina slung her backpack over one shoulder and grabbed her duffel bag. She looked up at Goldenrod’s second-floor windows, convinced herself she had only imagined someone watching her, and trudged forward. With dull, heavy thuds, she dragged the duffel bag up the plank steps and slid it across the foyer to the bottom of the stairs. She turned on the light, hoping it would brighten the dark stairwell, but instead it cast elongated shadows of the railings and spindles like a scene in an old black-and-white horror movie.

  I can do this, she told herself. She was almost eleven. She was going into fifth grade. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. “I’m moving in,” she announced to the house. “Whether you like it or not.”

  She bumped her way up to the landing and forced herself to keep going up the mountain of stairs. The air got hotter and hotter and thicker and thicker. Panting by the time she got to the top, she let her backpack slide down her sweaty arm to the floor, sat on her duffel bag, and leaned against the railing, overwhelmed by the heat and the loneliness and the size of the house.

  She was sitting in a gloomy hallway surrounded by doors. A lot of doors. She decided to start at one end of the hall and work her way around the circle, but the first thing she did after she pushed herself up was to peer over the railing. She could see all the way down to the foyer. “Hello,” she said. “Hello, oh, oh, oh,” her distorted voice answered. She was glad to hear only her own voice come back to her, but when it seemed the echoes might never stop, she wished she hadn’t said anything at all.

  She opened the door nearest the stairs to a very large room with three boarded-up windows and a window seat that ran beneath them. When she turned on the light, a small crystal chandelier did its best to sparkle, and Trina could see that the woodwork was painted white. It was a pretty room, even if the paint was peeling, and it was perfect for the woman of the house. Perfect for her mother, maybe. Someday.

  The next room—a huge room with a fireplace—also had three boarded-up windows, but it was paneled with a very dark wood just like the smoking room. It was perfect for the man of the house. Perfect for her dad.

  Opposite the stairwell was an ordinary room that didn’t feel at all like a room she would want to live in for a whole year, so she crossed the hall and opened two doors right in a row to identical small square rooms. “They sure must have had a lot of kids,” she said, quietly enough to avoid an echo.

  Then the hall narrowed, leading to two boarded-up windows with another window seat. Trina walked softly toward the windows, listening carefully, making sure the only footsteps she heard were her own. To her relief she came upon the servants’ staircase again. She liked knowing there was another way out of the house, just in case.

  Next to the servants’ stairs was a door, but when Trina turned the doorknob, the door wouldn’t budge. She pushed and pulled and finally yanked it open, only to be met with a blast of hot dust that swirled around her, and another dark, narrow staircase. She knew attic stairs when she saw them. “I’m never going up there,” she said out loud. The door creaked when she slammed it shut. The next door opened to nothing but a big closet.

  But the door across from the closet opened to an enormous bathroom with a fancy white tub on a raised platform, a sink with curved legs, and a toilet with a tank that was mounted so high on the wall it nearly touched the ceiling. A chain hung from the tank. As soon as Trina pulled it she wished she hadn’t.

  The walls rattled as water squealed through the pipes, and Trina watched with dread as the water in the toilet churned with the force of an opened fire hydrant. She crossed her fingers that she hadn’t broken the plumbing, and closed the door, certain she had just encountered one of the surprises her dad was talking about.

  Now there was only one room left to go.

  Trina turned the knob and opened the door. In the faint light from the hall, she could tell this room was not too big and not too small. She eagerly stepped in, and immediately, from the corner of her eye, she saw something move. She froze in place and kept her breaths soft and shallow. Waiting. Listening.

  Nothing.

  Nothing except her own pulse pounding against her eardrums as her heart raced.

  Maybe she was seeing things.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she said to the silence.

  She took another step in, and it—whatever it was—moved again.

  Her heart beat harder and faster. She backed up slowly, only to bump into the door. Stumbling, she watched as the thing kept moving, faster now, frantically. Trina was frantic too, trying to get away until she realized that whatever it was moved when she did. She covered her mouth with her hand and watched herself cover her mouth. The scary creature was not a ghost or a monster; it was her own reflection in a mirror.

  When she finally found the light switch, and the sconce glowed, she discovered that the walls were covered with pale pink wallpaper and the woodwork was painted white. Even the fireplace was painted white. Toward the far end of the room, mounted on the wall, was the mirror. It rose from the floor to the ceiling and was wider than the window. Its white frame was carved with fine little animals—ducklings and kittens, birds and horses—linked together with the clusters of delicate flowers. Goldenrod, of course. And it was rimmed with at least a dozen tarnished curlicue hooks she could hang things on.

  Feeling a little like Goldilocks, she decided that this room felt just right, so she went out to the hall and grabbed her duffel bag and backpack.

  The first thing she unpacked was the stack of postcards from her mother. She piled them on the fireplace mantel, and then she set her snow globe of skiers in the Rocky Mountains next to them. In front of the snow globe, she lined up the pieces of sea glass she’d found on the shore of Lake Superior.

  Her softball glove was next, followed by her collection of baseball caps. She hung them one by one on the hooks around the big mirror—Minnesota Twins, Seattle Mariners, Milwaukee Brewers, Colorado Rockies—wondering who she’d be rooting for while she lived in New Royal.

  The last thing she took out was her new leather tool belt. Poppo had said he would fill it with tools as soon as they got to their next project. Trina buckled it around her waist and looked at herself in the mirror.

  Standing there in her jean shorts and blue T-shirt, with a bruise on her knee and her Diamondbacks baseball cap covering her short brown hair, she didn’t look like the princess who must have lived in this pretty room. Instead, she looked like the skinny tomboy she’d always been. She took off her tool belt and hung it on one of the hooks. With all the work to do at Goldenrod,
she would need to keep it handy.

  Ah-zuh-zah. Ah-zuh-zah.

  Trina stood still and listened. The noise had sounded like a sputter. Or like a saw. Or like someone sighing.

  “Poppo?” she hollered.

  No answer.

  Trina crept into the hall and leaned over the railing. “Poppo?” she called a second time. Only her echo answered, but then she heard the noise again.

  Ah-zuh-zah. Ah-zuh-zah.

  “Poppo!” she screamed as she raced down the stairs. When she got to the bottom step, she could see her dad’s truck coming to a stop in the yard. She dashed through the front door and down the plank steps into the sunshine, right up to her dad, who was climbing out of the truck.

  “Poppo!” she shouted.

  But he didn’t seem to notice she was so scared she could hardly breathe. “You won’t believe Hank’s Tool and Lumber,” he said. “Straight out of an old movie, with a tin ceiling and all these big, wooden barrels full of who-knows-what and buckets of nails and screws. It’s a mess, but Hank knows where everything is.” He put on his work gloves and started pulling out long boards from the back of the truck, stacking them on the ground. Cedar. Trina could smell the sweet wood from where she stood. “Hey . . .” He checked his pockets one by one. “I got you something from Hank’s.” Finally he fished out a sucker.

  Trina grimaced. The sucker had a loop on one end. “Poppo, this kind of sucker is for babies.” She pulled at the wrapper, but the plastic and the candy had melted together. “And it’s a million years old.”

  “Mine tasted okay,” he said.

  Trina did her best to smile, twirling the baby sucker between her fingers, and decided not to breathe a word about scaring herself silly—or about the noises. “I picked out our rooms. We both get fireplaces. We just need to bring in the mattresses.”

  “Fireplace, huh? Just what I need on a scorcher like today.” He ducked into the cargo trailer and pushed the mattresses to the door. “Grab an end,” he called. “I’m running out of energy in this heat.”