Aftertaste

by Kevin J. Anderson

  There were mannequins in the basement, just as there were in the house. When they opened the hatch and hurried down the stairs, one greeted them at the landing. She was dressed in an apron and a day dress; the apron was covered in a red stain. Blood. The owner of the now-bed-and-breakfast that the Cantrell house had become, Lacy Shore, had told them that when she’d bought the house from the previous owner, she’d bought the mannequins as well. The previous owner had claimed that the mannequin’s apron was really that of Sarah Cantrell—Angus’s second wife, the one who had hacked him to death in his bed in the murder room.

  “Alexi!” Andrew cried.

  She flew across the basement floor and into his arms.

  “Who’s down here?” Janet demanded. “Who made you scream?”

  “What were you doing down here alone?” Andrew asked her, smoothing back her hair.

  “I thought that Lacy was calling me—I heard voices down here,” Alexi said.

  “Lacy scared you?” Andrew asked. He was doubtful. Lacy thought a few unusual things had happened in the house. She greeted visitors, and she worked on maintenance, but she didn’t live in it. He had a really hard time believing that she would purposely try to scare her visitors.

  Alexi looked up at Andrew with her huge blue eyes. He had to admit, his wife looked the type of little blond snow queen to be scared at the drop of a hat.

  “Alexi?” he asked.

  “She moved,” Alexi said.

  “Who moved?” Andrew asked.

  “She—she moved!”

  Alexi turned and pointed a finger at the mannequin that stood by the hundred-and-fifty-year-old defunct incinerator.

  Andrew assumed that the mannequin was supposed to be Sarah Cantrell, the second wife of Angus. She stood near the old incinerator, a poker in her hand. Andrew wasn’t sure what she was doing there—perhaps discovering a few of the bodies her husband had chopped up to burn.

  The basement, of course, was supposed to be haunted. Many “ghost hunters” had come to the house over the years to do “expeditions,” and they had all claimed that the specter of Angus Cantrell often haunted the basement. The basement was where he had honed his weapons. After the Civil War, he’d gone berserk—and he’d become very adept with a knife. The story had it that he’d used it first on his first wife and then on those who came to accept his hospitality when he ran the home as a tavern. Undetected in his life of grisly crime, Angus Cantrell had married again. His wife had found his stash of weapons and corpses in the basement.

  She, in turn, had hacked to death Angus Cantrell, as he slept, in the room upstairs, now known, of course, as the “murder room.” It had all happened in the late 1860s, and though remnants of bodies had been found, the tale had come out through Sarah Cantrell, the second wife who had killed him and had been the only one to come close to him and survive.

  “It’s easy to imagine that they move,” Janet said.

  “They’re very real looking,” Keith said, agreeing.

  “But, Alexi, she didn’t really move,” Andrew said.

  “I saw her! And she . . . she made me come down here!” Alexi protested.

  Andrew disentangled himself to move over by the mannequin. He tapped her on the chin. The dull glass eyes stared at him, and for a moment, he felt a little shiver along his spine. The damned thing did look real. “Behave!” he said aloud, trying to get Alexi to laugh. “I mean . . . just behave, young woman! What’s that? Ah!” He looked over at Alexi. “She’s going to be good.”

  Alexi didn’t look assured.

  Andrew popped behind the mannequin and slipped his arms around it, pretending that his arms were the mannequin’s. “Alexi, I do declare, there are those nasty open bulbs up there and all kinds of creepy shadows down here, and that’s all!”

  Keith and Janet laughed, especially when he placed his hand against the mannequin’s cheek in mock horror.

  “Andrew, get away from that thing!” Alexi said.

  He’d touched the damn thing just to try to make her laugh; however, he had to admit there was something about it that didn’t feel right. It should have been cold and hard. It seemed to have a strange warmth, to hum with an inner energy.

  They heard footsteps on the stairs; even Andrew’s heart leapt a little. The basement was . . . dark, dank, and creepy. The floor was mostly dirt over old bricks. The only light came from a few naked bulbs overhead, and they cast a strange glow over the room, falling on the mannequin and the old boxes and trunks that were here and there and causing them to create shadows, eerie contortions that almost seemed alive as they moved against the walls.

  “What’s going on down here?” someone called.

  They all started at the sudden sound of the voice echoing in the basement.

  But it was only Lacy, the owner. She was just a few years older than their group, probably in her early thirties. Andrew had struck up a conversation with her when he had called months ago to find a night on which he could book the entire bed-and-breakfast for their little crew. He’d later found rumors on the Internet that Lacy had indulged in an affair with a rich rock star; the bed-and-breakfast had been her compensation.

  “Alexi got spooked,” Janet explained.

  Lacy laughed. “Okay, that happens a lot.” She walked across the length of the floor to the mannequin. “Sarah, behave!” she said, grinning.

  “Yes, I just suggested that she do so,” Andrew said.

  “Well, I was checking in with you. The medium is on her way. She takes cash—you remember I told you, right?”

  “Yes, thanks. We have cash,” Andrew said. Alexi was still pressed to his chest. “Hey,” he said gently. “We’re going upstairs, huh? The medium is coming.”

  Alexi nodded, still pressed against him.

  The mannequin of a man in an old-fashioned frock coat was in the kitchen by the woodpile and the stove. Ironically, there was an axe in the pile of wood. The mannequin might have reached down and picked it up. It was tall with whiskers and a beard and brown glass eyes that seemed to be looking at you, wherever you stood. He knew that it was supposed to represent Angus Cantrell.

  “Don’t these things creep you out?” Andrew asked Lacy.

  She shrugged, walking past the stove—it wasn’t from the mid-eighteen hundreds, but it was an antique, probably from the turn of the century—and went to the sink. She turned on water to fill a kettle. “I’ve gotten used to them. When I bought the place a few years ago, they were all already here, and they were dressed, and they were creepy, yeah, but . . . hey, I rent this place all the time in the middle of nowhere outside of Richmond because it is creepy! You all booked here to be creepy, right?”

  “True,” Andrew admitted.

  “You don’t live here,” Alexi said.

  Lacy set the kettle on the old stove. “No, I live in a condo,” she admitted. “But I’ve stayed here before. All night. Alone.”

  “And did anything . . . happen?” Alexi asked.

  Lacy shook her head. “I thought I heard noises, but the house is nearly two hundred years old—old houses creak and groan.”

  “Where did you sleep?” Andrew asked her. “In the murder room?”

  “No,” Lacy admitted. “I slept on the sofa.”

  “That’s no better,” Alexi pointed out. “There’s a lady in the front entry hallway, too, between the stairs and the door to the living room.”

  “Oh, that’s Catherine Cantrell—the first wife,” Lacy said mischievously. “They believe he made her disappear in the incinerator. He got married again, to Sarah, because she had so much money. He didn’t think that Sarah would get him before he got Sarah! Okay, I admit, I was freaked out. So, I sat up and said, ‘Oh, please! Don’t haunt me. I’m trying to keep history alive here, please be kind—another owner might get rid of you all!’”

  Even Alexi uttered a nervous laugh.

  “Honestly, I’m not as easily spooked as Alexi,” Janet said, “but I have to admit—I don’t think that I could stay here alone. T
he house is bad enough with all the negative karma, but those mannequins . . . ugh!”

  “They’re actually rather cool,” Keith said. “So lifelike!”

  They heard a tap on the door and a cheerful “Hello!”

  Alexi jumped.

  “It’s the medium,” Andrew said, trying to reassure her.

  It was the medium. She was a slim woman with huge brown eyes and long dark hair that fell down her back beneath the wrap she wore around her head. She was in a skirt and Gypsy blouse, striking and dramatic. Her skin was the gold that came with the mix of many races; she was exactly the woman he would have expected to meet in a carnival tent.

  “Hello. I’m Natasha Jennings, your guide through the spirit world,” she said. “Hello, Lacy. Thank you for calling me,” she added gravely. “You know how I feel connected with this house.”

  “Hey, Natasha,” Lacy said. “Meet your group, Andrew and Alexi, and Janet and Keith.

  “The perfect medium!” Keith whispered.

  Natasha heard him. She spun around to stare at him gravely. She looked him up and down, and then smiled.

  “Oh, yes. I am perfect. I’m a vessel. I’m a vessel for the spirits of the house. You see, they no longer have substance; they need a conduit. I just happen to be a conduit; I didn’t choose my role in life. I’ve just been chosen.”

  “Right,” Andrew murmured. “Of course.” He tried to be serious, but Keith was standing behind the woman as she turned back to the group. Keith looked at Andrew, trying to contain a laugh. But he rolled his eyes and made the circle in the air next to his head that indicated the word crazy and even Alexi grinned.

  “This is very serious business,” Natasha warned them, as if she could see Keith.

  “Of course!” Andrew said in agreement. When Natasha turned, he winked at Alexi. She looked back at him, frowning in warning.

  “Just a vessel,” Keith said dryly.

  Janet elbowed him.

  “Ow!”

  “Careful of your vessel,” she warned him.

  Natasha spun around to stare at them.

  They all four smiled.

  “Well, then!” Natasha said. “Come on, I’m going to set up in the living room.”

  Natasha pulled one of the little doily-covered occasional tables into the middle of the room, and, as they followed her, she instructed them to bring chairs around the table. “You can grab some from the dining room!” she told them.

  They did so.

  “Now . . . Lacy, get the main lights, will you? Now, everyone, sit around, your hands on the table, your fingertips just touching.”

  The group did as instructed. Lacy turned off the lights but didn’t come to the table. She watched, leaning against the wall.

  Alexi was to the left of the medium; Andrew sat next to her, and then Keith and Janet.

  “First of all, just concentrate on clearing your minds. Think about the house and those who came through it. Think about Angus Cantrell, and his wives, and the others. Close your eyes, and let it all flow.”

  Andrew didn’t close his eyes. He could see Lacy, and she had closed her eyes.

  Suggestible! he thought.

  He looked around the table; even the medium had closed her eyes. He was the only holdout.

  But his gaze fell on the mannequin just outside the door frame in the main entry to the house—Angus Cantrell’s first wife, Catherine Cantrell. The mannequin wasn’t facing him; she was turned to the doorway, as if she waited to greet guests and direct them up the stairs to the bedrooms.

  The murder room was the first room on the left, although, God knew, Angus Cantrell had reportedly killed ten to twenty “guests” when he had opened his home as an inn and tavern in the late 1860s.

  “Now,” Natasha said, “open up your hearts and minds, and let the spirits in the house speak to us. Ah . . . Angus Cantrell! You’re with us now, aren’t you?”

  Andrew felt the table wiggle slightly. He saw Natasha’s hands. They were flat on the table. It was a lightweight table. She could have moved it with a shift of her hand or even her leg.

  Alexi let out a little gasp.

  “Does anyone have a question for Angus?” Natasha asked.

  “Why?” Janet asked softly. “Why did you kill all those people?”

  The table seemed to leap in the air; Alexi let out a loud gasp.

  “He says that you’re rude and that you should understand. They taught him in the war to kill the enemy, and he only killed his enemies,” Natasha said.

  Andrew had the feeling that Angus Cantrell was saying no such thing. He managed to keep quiet; Alexi respected ghosts.

  “Why did he kill his wife—his first wife?” Janet asked.

  “Angus?” Natasha said, scrunching her eyes tightly closed. “Angus, come on, talk to your guests now. Why did you kill Catherine?”

  The table began to sway.

  “She was the enemy, too—that’s what he says,” Natasha said.

  “Did he think that she’d betrayed him when he was off fighting in the war?” Alexi asked, her voice a little squeaky.

  It seemed that the table really bucked on its own. The medium was pretty good at what she did, Andrew thought. But, then again, he couldn’t wait until she was gone to test his theories.

  “She was a whore! Like the whore of Babylon!” Natasha said. Her jaw suddenly went slack. Her voice actually took on a different sound, and she began speaking, not as Angus, but as someone else.

  “I was innocent! I was innocent, and he killed me because of Sarah—he wanted her and her money, and so he made up a story about me betraying him with a Yankee captain! She was already in our lives; he knew her, and she was willing . . .”

  The table began to wildly spin and gyrate. Alexi screamed and pulled back.

  The table went still. Natasha opened her eyes and stared at them all.

  “What the hell?” Keith yelped.

  “Natasha!” Lacy breathed from the archway.

  “What, what?” Natasha asked, ashen, her own hands pulled back from the table.

  “You were speaking as Catherine Cantrell,” Lacy told her.

  “I’ve never had anything like that happen before!” Natasha said.

  “Really?” Andrew said dryly. He had misjudged the carnival quality of the woman. She was really quite an accomplished actress.

  “I speak with Angus all the time. He knows that I’m not his enemy,” Natasha said. “He’s the entity who comes to me—not Catherine.” She appeared to be sincerely disturbed. Shaken. Even distressed by what had happened. She looked around their group. “Ah! There’s another vessel in the room, a natural medium who doesn’t know it yet. The added surge of power in the room brought it all home to me!”

  “Oh, no, not me! I’m not a vessel,” Janet said.

  Natasha stared around the table at them, one by one. Her eyes lit on Alexi, who let out a little squeak of protest. “No, nope, no vessel here!” she said. Alexi was white. Andrew rose, shaking his head. They were all supposed to be laughing, and he had to get her laughing again.

  “I’ll get you your money,” Andrew said. He rose; his coat was in the entry on a hook; he had the twenty bucks apiece they all owed her.

  As he started out of the room and into the entry, he froze.

  The mannequin of Catherine Cantrell was now facing him. She seemed to be smiling.

  He gave himself a shake; it was Alexi. She was so spooked that she was spooking them all, putting things into their minds, and they were starting to believe what they saw.

  He walked past the mannequin. To his irritation, he felt a chill as he passed by the thing. She was dressed in a light blue flowered day dress. She had been created with a brown wig and hazel eyes, and those eyes seemed very natural and real. They were glass.

  He got the money. As he reached into his coat pocket, he felt as if she was watching him. Impossible. She had somehow been turned to look into the parlor. He spun around, almost expecting the mannequin to have turned again.
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  Or to be standing right behind him!

  She was not behind him, nor had she turned. He almost laughed aloud at himself.

  He went back into the parlor and paid Natasha. She was speaking quietly with the others. “I’ve never even heard a suggestion that Angus killed his first wife in order to marry his second wife! Can you imagine the scandal back then?”

  “So, was he crazy? Murdered his wife and all those people because of insanity, because the South had lost the war, or because he was smart, cold, cool, and calculating?” Keith asked.

  “Who knows?” Natasha said.

  “But wait,” Alexi said. “Sarah finally killed Angus. What happened to her?”

  “She inherited the inn and the tavern and lived happily to the ripe old age of ninetysomething. Her grave is in Hollywood Cemetery. She lived from 1848 to 1945,” Lacy told them from the doorway. “She left the house to a niece, who sold it immediately to the people who owned it right before the woman I bought it from. I guess, really, it was her house way more than it was Angus’s house.”

  “Well, I have to go. Thank you!” Natasha said. She walked to the door and turned around and stared at them all. “Don’t laugh at what lies beyond,” she said gravely. “There’s a vessel among you!”

  Dramatically, she disappeared around the doorway.

  When they heard the door out to the driveway close, Keith burst out in laughter.

  “Stop it! She could still hear you,” Janet protested.

  “Oh, my love, I was just thinking that I’m going to vessel you pretty damned soon tonight!” Keith said, rolling his eyes.

  Andrew looked at Lacy; she was still looking after Natasha. He glanced over at his wife, and she still looked disturbed.

  He turned back to Lacy. “Okay, Lacy, please, I just have to check this out!”

  “What’s that?” Lacy asked.

  “I know what he’s doing!” Janet said. “Come on, Lacy, take Natasha’s position.”

  “Please!” Andrew said.

  Lacy joined them.

  Alexi stared at Andrew. “Don’t do this!” she whispered.

  He gave her an encouraging smile. She returned it with a fierce frown. Well, one thing he knew: although he and Keith had decided they’d have great sex here at night with their women scared and spooked, he knew he wasn’t going to get lucky in any fashion.