by Brandi Reeds
Amid my confusion, details of the house begin to register: doilies draped over the backs of chairs, lace curtains, statuettes lining the shelves of the credenza. This is not the home of a bachelor.
“We’re at Ms. Malcolm’s house,” Cody says.
“Where’s Edison?” I reach for my daughter. “Is he all right?”
Cody places Sabrina in my arms. “He’s with Sophie. At your place.”
“The look in his eyes,” I say. “I swear he was going to—” I shut up. I can’t say it, even if it’s true. I can’t admit I think my husband is capable of killing me. “I wish someone would believe me.”
“I do.” He looks down at his hands for a moment, then meets my gaze. “That night, at the Depot . . . he was . . . different somehow. Different enough for me to be concerned, and after what you said, I’ve been checking on you every once in a while. I slept in my truck down the road a piece one night, and this afternoon, you looked so scared when you passed the Crescent Moon . . . I went to check on you again this afternoon.”
“You saw what happened?”
“I saw he was about to push you around a little, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.”
“You saved us.”
“No, ma’am. I just stepped between you, and you fainted. Your husband seemed to come to his senses then, and he agreed we should call Ms. Malcolm. It was she who suggested I bring you and the baby here until she had time to sort things out with Eddie.”
“I wish someone would tell me. What’s in that house? You dated one of the Churchill daughters. You must know something.”
“I know the town’s first lawyer disappeared,” he offers.
“Everybody knows that. That’s published, for God’s sake.”
“Everyone also thinks there’s more to the story. That he suspected his wife of having an affair and locked her in the attic.”
The journal Ms. Malcolm had slipped to me suggested the same. The chill whipping down from the attic stairs revisits me now, and I shudder with the thought of being a prisoner in my own home.
“Everyone assumes the old man didn’t really disappear, that once she managed to escape the attic, she took care of the problem.”
“Meaning she killed her husband?”
“No one knows.”
“But there’s evidence he left. His car was never recovered.”
“This was the early 1900s. How difficult would it be to unload a vehicle without keeping a record of it?”
If the energy in the house, as Sophie insists, is on repeat, and Edison is reenacting what once happened there, I wonder if whatever is in the house is retaliating, avenging the lawyer’s mysterious disappearance or death.
“But I asked you about the house, and you said nothing strange happened there,” I say. “Why wouldn’t you tell me all this then?”
“I told you I never experienced anything strange, and that’s true. I wasn’t about to fill your head with ghost stories. You live in an old, spooky house. Primarily alone, I might add. What kind of friend would I be if I scared you unnecessarily?”
“Friend?”
He nods. “Yes, Anastasia. I’d like to think we’re friends.” His phone buzzes, but he maintains eye contact with me.
“Ed says you stole his high school girlfriend.”
“Yeah.” He checks his phone. “That was a long time ago, and you ought to thank me for that. He might have married her otherwise.”
“I don’t know about that, but thank you,” I say. “For being there today.”
“That was Ms. Malcolm.” He holds up his phone. “She’s ready for you.”
13
BURIAL SITE
With Sophie Malcolm to my left, Edison to my right, and Sabrina asleep in my arms, I stare at the freshly dug-out rectangular patch of earth. “What do we do?”
“We could live with my parents,” Edison says. “Just for a while, until things settle down.”
“A bandage on a gunshot wound,” Sophie Malcolm says. “It’s already begun to influence you. Who knows how attached it might be to you already? We have to bury that entity, close the door on it.”
“I’ll be glad to put this to rest,” Edison says.
Bill’s crew lowers the door into the rectangular plot in the yard where the catalpa tree used to grow.
“This is just the beginning,” Sophie says. “Smudging the house with white sage, drawing out all the evil . . . What sins Churchill awakened in this place at the bicentennial even I can’t tell you. But I know for certain you awakened it again. And burying this door, and planting a fruit tree atop it, isn’t going to immediately fix the trouble. You’ll have to work very hard to appease the house, to bring enough good into it to overshadow the bad. If you leave, the bad leaves with you. If you stay, you—and the house—have a fighting chance.”
“We’ll make it work.” Edison closes a hand around mine. I drop my head to his shoulder and watch as the backhoe pushes the dirt over the beautiful door.
Sophie whispers prayers of banishment. “May the door that once imprisoned the Churchill family now hold whatever evil resides within the walls of this house. May all malicious creatures be restrained with the door now shut upon them.”
“If you leave, the bad leaves with you. If you stay, you—and the house—have a fighting chance.”
I breathe in the scent of the earth and imagine the house in its glorified, renovated state. The dream can be ours. All of it.
I imagine Sabrina running through the fields with baby brothers and sisters, laughing and playing . . .
Edison shooting baskets on the driveway once we install a hoop . . .
Tilt-out flour bins and glass-door cabinets in the kitchen, where we’ll cook together every Sunday . . .
Holiday mornings by the fireplace, sharing coffee and pastries . . .
I see the dream.
That’s the life I want.
It’s what we envisioned when we decided to take the plunge and purchase this place.
But then an eerie sensation creeps in, like a cold finger on the back of my neck, just as I’m about to settle into the safe and lackadaisical feeling, and another picture flashes in my mind.
A rectangular plot of earth.
My child, screaming with grief.
And a headstone.
With my name on it.
I pull away, but Edison only tightens his grip.
“We’ll make a life here. Won’t we, Ana?” He smiles the smile I’ve seen only since we moved to Parker’s Landing and squeezes my hand even more tightly. “I’m looking forward to it.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2017 Bella Vie Photography
Brandi Reeds is the author of the Amazon Charts bestselling novel Trespassing. Her debut thriller, Oblivion, written under the name Sasha Dawn, was chosen as one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books for Teens. Reeds lives in the Chicago area with her husband, daughters, and three puppies.