by J. M. Miller
He began with ex-employees, who looked the most confused about attending. As soon as he read what Janine had left to them, he directed them into the hall where they were met by Simone with their new belongings. Paintings and statuettes were among some of the common items given. There were some odd items, too, like kitchen spatulas and garden hoses, causing several people to break the respectful silence with bursts of involuntary laughter. I guessed the items linked to inside jokes shared between them and Janine, memories that she had unfortunately lost long before her death.
Pop and I waited silently. His hands fidgeted, my eyes wandered. The room slowly emptied, leaving a clear view of the family up front. Rina sat with her limbs indecently tangled with her intoxicated beau despite her ex-husband and children’s close proximity. The son showed little interest in his surroundings. He kept his clipped head down, staring into his lap with the glow from his hand-held game system beaming back into his eyes. The husband kept his slender face forward, though the side that faced Rina had a hardened edge. His mouth was pressed tight and his eyes neared a squint. The daughter’s face was much the same, though her eyes shifted nervously to her brother every so often, checking on him. A narrow strip of light peeked through one of the office’s curtained double windows and fell on her bleached hair, highlighting its perfection in the dim room. Her lips remained tensed, but they were still full, like some glammed-up magazine model.
Pop coughed beside me and she turned our way, catching my stare. Her eyes scrunched, evaluating me, then darted to her giggly mother with a gaze that spit both sadness and hatred. In the next second, her focus swept back to the front as Upton finished with one of the seasonal groundskeepers.
Upton walked the final person from the office before he spoke again. “Now, about the remaining assets.” His voice lengthened each word as his stubby legs returned him to the desk. His wire frames slipped down the bridge of his nose while he peered at the documents in his hands. “Even with custody changes, there shouldn’t be cause for concern. The entitlements are specific enough.”
For a moment, I wondered why Pop and I were still in the room when we clearly weren’t part of this conversation. No one else seemed worried about our presence, or even acknowledged it, except the girl. She threw me a head tilt and a quick glance that sliced through my fake monkey-suited appearance, straight to the dirtbag hiding beneath. It was a silent judgment that happened often enough to recognize. I went to school with the usual bunch of cliques, some more well-off than others. I didn’t care. In the same two seconds it took her eyes to tear me down, I couldn’t keep mine from sizing her up. Her skin looked soft, even with an unusual springtime tan, and I wondered how it would feel pressed against me. Damn. I was at Janine’s will reading and I was thinking about groping her niece’s uptight daughter. I guess that made her Janine’s great-niece, technically. Janine’s smoking hot, uptight great-niece.
Mr. Upton spread some papers around on the desk and cleared his throat. “To my niece Rina,” he began, looking up from beneath his frames as Rina’s minimal attention zeroed in on him for the first true time since he’d introduced himself. He continued, “I, Janine Stockton, leave my niece Rina Wayde the contents of my personal bank account and safety deposit box.” He motioned her to the desk, and she stood, pulling down her frilly skirt that curved high under her butt and left little to my─or any other man in the room’s─imagination. Rina squinted at the pages and her lax body swayed as she signed. Her daughter watched her; her ex-husband did not. She rushed back to her boyfriend with an excited smile and snatched his hand. They hurried out of the office without speaking a word to her kids. She seemed happy enough not to question the property at all, even though she was the closest surviving relative.
“Janine struggled over this last decision for months, years before her memory loss was incapacitating,” Upton spoke to all five of us remaining in the room. “She called the proper surveyors and had the land divided. Keep in mind that these first pages are preliminary paperwork. I’ll need the packets signed and returned to me as soon as possible. First, to Mr. Lloyd Shadows.” Pop stood in front of his chair, waiting for more. “I, Janine ‘Genie’ Stockton, wish you a long, memorable life in the house that will be forever yours.”
“Oh, Genie,” Pop sighed through his white mustache and let his bald head fall for a moment. He wiped a hand beneath his eyes before he moved to the desk. Upton slid paperwork in front of him to sign and handed him a stack to keep. When he returned to his chair, we both stared at each other. Pop’s heavy eyes were glassed with conflict. I saw the relief hanging in them, knowing the house that had become our home would remain ours. But there was more there. His eyes dropped to the paper outlining the small portion of property now declared his. It was not all of Stockton Estate. “The curse,” he said with a sigh.
Pop and Janine believed the property’s stone well was responsible for her Alzheimer’s. “It’s cursed,” he’d said years ago, shortly after I’d moved in. As a kid, it was easy enough to believe. I’d gone to the well several times with my own wishes, my own desperate cries. Wished my mother and father loved me enough to stop their addictions. Wished for Harper’s life the night she overdosed. But even though I was willing to take my chances with the curse, Pop told me later that the only person the well wanted was Janine and that somehow her blood was forever linked to it. “The Stockton curse runs deep and transcends time,” he’d said. The rumor was that it gave Janine the power to grant other people’s wishes. In return, the curse supposedly claimed her memories. That’s why Pop was worried now. Janine may be gone, but her blood was back. Family blood.
It was evident the people left in this room would get the remaining property, the business, and, in his eyes, the possibility of an alleged curse.
I patted his back, showing him that my heart was as heavy as his. Even if I didn’t believe the curse, I knew this day could lead to more concerns with our jobs on the property.
“Hold on a moment, Mr. Shadows,” Mr. Upton called as we turned to leave.
“Yes?” Pop croaked in response.
Mr. Upton shook his head. “I’m sorry. I suppose you should come back also, but I was referring to Mr. Benjamin Shadows.”
“Me?” I replied automatically. The girl was looking at me now. All of them were looking at me, actually, but I felt the intensity of her eyes more than anyone else’s as I willed mine to keep focused on Upton.
“You’re included here also.” He slid more papers around on the desk then proceeded to read from the sheet in front of him. “To Mr. Benjamin Shadows and Ms. Lila Janine Wayde, I, Janine Stockton, leave in trust the remainder of Stockton Estate’s land, divided accordingly, to be granted on their eighteenth birthdays, respectively.”
“Oh, no. Genie,” Pop whispered beside me, tenderly scolding Janine’s spirit.
I didn’t move until Pop shoved me toward the desk. Upton handed me a pen and pointed to the signature line on the page. Without reading, I scrawled a barely legible signature. Then he handed me a stack of paperwork with land surveyor notes and raised notarized seals, which I ran my coarse fingers over while I tried to understand what was happening.
“You can sign here,” Upton told Lila, pointing to another stack of papers.
The clicking of her heels echoed in the silent room as she closed the distance to the desk. The shoes set her at eye level with my six-foot frame, but her eyes remained focused on the papers Upton was pointing to. She stopped just shy of touching the desk with her thigh then leaned over to sign. Her thin legs remained propped straight and tall, creating a curve in her back and ass that kick-started my pulse. I inhaled, catching a soft hint of almond instead of some pungent designer perfume I’d expected to surround her. It was oddly appealing, reminding me of the almond muffins I’d loved as a kid. I kept my eyes down on my own paperwork, carefully stealing glances of her under my half-closed lids. It was almost impossible to tell she was under eighteen. Black liner encased her green eyes, aging her a few long y
ears past legality. Up close, she was too thin. She had no muscle tone to speak of, and the bones of her elbows jutted out so far they looked broken. She wore a tidy white blouse with the thin black skirt, like some professional business associate. I pictured her being class president or homecoming queen at whatever high-end high school she attended. Rich and popular.
Pop waved a hand from the back of the room and I walked back to him as Lila’s father joined her at the desk to look over the paperwork.
“This last bit is going to take some more time,” Upton said to them as Pop and I walked through the doors. “The business side of the Stockton Estate will still continue under the usual supervision of Ms. Simone Platt even though you will be owner after your birthday. You can discuss matters further with her─” We cut off Upton’s coarse voice when we closed the doors behind us.
No one met us in the hall. Simone and all of the other employees had already dispersed. Pop and I stepped through the carved oak door and into the cloudless afternoon. I loosened the tie immediately and unbuttoned the top buttons of my shirt, happy this ordeal was finished. As we walked across the lawn, I glanced down the sloped hill toward the event house. Simone’s petite body was dwarfed by the large stone archway as she greeted a rehearsal group who had rented the mansion for their wedding tomorrow.
“Do you think all of this will change without Janine?” I asked.
Pop released a slow sigh. “I think it will be much of the same.” He tilted his head toward the bright sky for a moment. “I fear that it will be all too much the same, in fact,” he whispered, his voice pained with all of the sorrow he’d endured over the last several years.
I watched a tear run from his eye before I turned toward the event house again, giving him a quiet moment as we continued to walk. The rehearsal group was already inside, somewhere behind the mansion’s rugged stone exterior or the enormous paneled windows of its ballroom. They were happy, at least. The rest of us had the chance to be happy again soon, though now all of our happiness depended on the intentions of an unfamiliar family. “Do you think they’ll come here to live?”
“That’s my greatest fear. I can’t believe Janine would do this. She should’ve just left it all to Simone instead of dragging her family back here. She was too good of a person to do this to them.” He paused with a soft breath. “We’ll have to talk to Simone and find out the family’s plans. They haven’t been here in ages so I don’t see them having any interest in this place, especially since Rina isn’t involved anymore. This was her family, not her ex-husband’s. Besides, the kids are of that age where they’d be hesitant to move. I’m sure they are established wherever they currently live. With any luck in the world, they’ll stay away and sell their portion to Simone when LJ turns eighteen.”
LJ? Even in Janine’s last years, when she was mostly incoherent, she often said those initials. I’d never asked Pop what they meant, and now I understood. LJ. Lila Janine. She was a partial namesake. “Let’s hope that’s what happens,” I muttered, agreeing with all of the excuses he’d come up with for them to stay away. I stared past the stone gazebo as we made our way back to our house. The well was hidden somewhere behind it, through yards of trees and tangles of brush left purposely unkempt. “I guess it would be in bad taste to wish for it,” I said, giving Pop a sideways look.
“Maybe,” he replied without looking back. “But the scary thing is, if I could, I most certainly would.”
“I wish you would just shut up about the paintings, Gav,” I screamed as I climbed the enormous wooden staircase. “I have eyes, too.” Perfect vision, in fact. Not that my vision needed to be perfect to see all of the paintings in this place, they were everywhere. I’d lived here for ten minutes and I already despised them. It might’ve been different if they were interesting abstracts, even if they were prints of interesting abstracts. Instead, they were nearly identical originals with varied shades of gray dried onto their canvases, scattered all around this freaking house. The main difference was the dark red numbers smeared onto the bottom corners. It was all so bizarre.
I looked at the painting at the top of the stairs, sliding my finger along the edge of the canvas─this one numbered fifty-six. Its gray hues muddled the same way as the other twenty I’d seen since I left the normalcy of the main hallway. The landscape was almost identical, though the trees’ branches were thin and bare, already past the fall transition, well into the dormant stages of winter. Nevertheless, they held the same position around the well, the focal point, which appeared the same in each painting. Its blurred stones and roof fell somewhere between reality and a dream. I stared at it, waiting for a revenge-seeking little girl to crawl out from its smudgy depths.
I should’ve taken a full tour of this house before agreeing to move, I thought, my eyes still trapped in the well.
I’d only visited this house a few times when I was younger. The first couple, I was a toddler. The last time was the only one I truly remembered. Mom needed to talk to Aunt Janine during our spontaneous trip back east, but Dad, Gavin, and I remained outside during the visit. The house was so beautiful. Vines sprawled up the sides of its unending walls, which spanned so high they seemed to end inside the clouds. I decided it couldn’t be a normal house; it had to be a castle. I begged to go in. I wanted to explore the stone castle and look down upon the grounds from its enchanted windows. But I was not permitted, so I contented myself by daydreaming about the castle’s history while we played outside. It was an hour before Mom returned and we said goodbye to Aunt Janine. Her teary eyes wet my cheeks when she squeezed my face to hers. She hugged me like she’d known me every day of my life. But I barely knew her.
The next trip was the will reading, where the main hallway and the office were the only areas I’d seen─not an accurate representation of the rest of the house. The hallway had less terrifying still-life paintings. They weren’t the quality I’d seen in the casinos and in some friends’ houses back in Summerlin, Nevada, but they also weren’t mentally disturbing or in duplicate, triplicate, or infinite forms. And the office where I’d signed the property paperwork was apparently the only room without any paintings. How deceiving.
“There’s more, Lila. There’s more in the kitchen!” Gavin’s yell traveled through the main hall and up the wooden staircase to me. “This is like the start of a cheap horror movie. It’s a freak show,” he said, a little quieter.
I heard the last part, even if he didn’t want me to. I knew exactly what he meant; this whole house was chilling, creepy, and old. If it weren’t for the upgraded interior─obviously required to meet regulation building codes after the dawn of the new millennium─I could probably reach my hand through some large cracks to the stone exterior. I could probably dump my chamber pot outside, too, after I lit a lantern to see where I was going. Yes, this place was ancient, and cold. Goosebumps pricked every inch of my flesh at the thought. It was September for crying out loud! Was this place immune to late summer heat?
If I had to live here, things would change, soon. Starting with the paintings.
I grabbed number fifty-six and placed it on the floor, leaning it against the wall. I did this to the other ten I passed while searching the rooms upstairs. I stuck my head into each doorway for a quick view, unsure of which space I wanted to call “mine.” When I got to the master suite, I wasn’t surprised to see a well painting hanging next to an antique four-poster bed. I glanced at the medical equipment crammed alongside the bed, remnants of her final days. I didn’t step inside. There was no reason to since there was no way I’d sleep in a dead woman’s bed. No way. I didn’t care if she left me this place or not. I hardly knew her. I wasn’t close to her. There was no way I’d stay in there.
The room I settled with was located at the back of the house, past the hallway to the master suite, another office, and a storage closet. It was a corner room, separated from all of the others, making it the best option. The afternoon sun streamed through two curtainless windows. Their pane divides cast twelve s
quares onto the bare queen bed and hardwood floor, pressing heat into the room that I welcomed greedily. I could only hope the tall windows would curb the vitamin D deficiency I’d likely endure after moving away from the desert. The first window faced Stockton Mansion, or what the employees here call the event house. The other faced the back of the property. It showed a decent view of the state park beyond the groundskeeper’s house and a barn, both built with brown and beige stones that matched all the buildings on the property. The forest stretched to the horizon. I wasn’t used to seeing so many trees around my house, so close together, so all-encompassing. The trees behind our old place were bundled in a small group, bordering the sand pit near the seventh green. They were sparse and failed to block stray balls clipped off course, costing Dad a few broken house windows and some blood-pressure-raising dents in his precious Audi.
Another bonus to my new room was the attached bathroom. The vintage footed tub was deep enough to fit five people, with a hand held shower head and a circular curtain rod attached overhead. The whole room was definitely upgraded, possibly for visitors, though I doubted Aunt Janine had many. Maybe she’d dabbled in interior decorating before she’d lost her mind. If so, it had to have been a while ago given the number of tasteless, scary well paintings that now littered the house.
“Dibs,” Gavin said, jumping into the room. For once, his hands were detached from his game. The delight of living in a new place was exciting to him. It blazed inside his crystal blue eyes. I wish I shared his enthusiasm. The whole ordeal was bound to be easier for him since he got to keep most of his stuff. Game systems, laptop, eReader, all of it packed nicely in the few boxes stuffed into the back of our new, pre-owned, Ford Escape. Most of my stuff, however, now belonged to a Super Pawn back in Las Vegas. The wad of cash it yielded would feed us for a month. At least, that’s what Dad and I were hoping. Other items Dad sold would add another month, as long as we conserved. Before the move, we’d agreed Gavin would keep his stuff no matter what. He needed the material comfort more than us.