by D. M. Pulley
The stutter of a wooden window being opened rattled three stories up. A woman stuck her head out and hissed down to him. “Felix! Forget it. We have to go. Now!”
He stopped and turned to see Carmen toss a small object out of the window. He stared dumbly as a thin piece of metal fell with a flashing glint of steel, cutting through the snow, staining it red. The razor. Not daring to touch it, he trudged back into the house.
Two minutes later, Felix and Carmen appeared again but in coats, their arms loaded with apple crates full of cash. Felix pulled open the garage door, and the two of them climbed into his truck, dumping their spoils into the back.
“Why?” he barked at her as he revved up the engine. He slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “Why’d you have to go and do that? Big Ange is gonna kill us. He’s gonna find us and fix us for good.”
“He will if you just sit there, you idiot! Shut up and drive!” she barked back. A splatter of blood stained her skirt. She looked down at her hands and grabbed a rag off the floor to wipe the red from her fingernails.
“Sweet Jesus. That kid! That poor kid!” Felix stared blindly out the windshield into the backyard.
Georgina lay on the attic floor above them, locked in the bathroom with her dead son, her throat slit but not deeply enough, bleeding out but not fast enough. Little Walter’s lifeless face lay trapped in the glass of her eyes as her mind tore itself apart.
The prostitute bared her teeth and pressed the barrel of Felix’s own gun to his temple. “Felix. I swear to God, I’m gonna kill you myself if you don’t drive this damn car!”
The truck squealed out of the garage, taking the turn down the driveway so fast he almost hit a tree. With a screech of the brakes, the brown Ford swerved down the driveway and out into the empty street. They headed south away from the city.
The house shuddered in the cold. Its garage gaped, mouth open. The back door wailed hot air into the night sky as the biting wind rushed through the kitchen. The attic windows gazed out with an empty glow into the night. Not a single shadow moved.
Ten minutes later, a sheriff’s car glided its way silently up Lee Road. No sirens. No lights. Nothing to shatter the calm of Peaceful Shaker Village. A second car followed, and both vehicles stopped in front of Rawlingswood. The grand house cowered as Ella led the policemen up the driveway to the open back door.
“Let’s go through it again.”
The detective sat across from Ella in Mr. Rawlings’s office an hour later and took notes.
A terrible sun had come up over the trees. They’d carried Georgina out on a stretcher. Ella had glimpsed the scream in the woman’s eye, the shocked stare of an animal in a slaughterhouse, as they bundled her into the ambulance with bandages around her neck, her nightdress clinging to her bare legs, drenched in red. Even if they managed to save her body, the poor woman’s mind was gone.
They covered little Walter’s face before they carried him out.
“Miss Rady?”
Ella shuddered with revulsion, her own mind nearly broken. My baby. My sweet shavo. A hard tear slid down her cheek as she shook her head numbly, not believing, replaying it all over and over in her head, searching for a way to stop it. All the way back to the moment she’d found the boy lying on the bathroom floor. Back to the moment she’d heard the scream. The barrel of Felix’s gun pointed at her again and again, and the woman behind it snarled.
“Miss Rady? We really must continue.”
Her glazed expression fixed then on the man in the wool suit. The suit itself was telling. Tailored well. Custom cut. Far too expensive for an honest lawman. Two stories above them, a team of three deputies was busy collecting evidence. Loading the illegal still and empty crates into an unmarked truck parked behind the house. Ella followed them with the corner of her eye as they loaded the contraband out the back door and past the office windows. Out the back door, not the front.
“Mrs. Rawlings was living on her own, then?” he continued.
“Yes. Mr. Rawlings passed away. Eighteen months, I think.” She didn’t recognize her own voice. Dry as a husk. Lifeless as the rest of her.
“Did she mention any money trouble to you?”
“No. Not to me. But to the accountant. He came and explained. We had to pay back money to Mr. Rawlings’s investors, the people he swindled. A man named Big Ange. He brings these terrible people. He put that machine up there. If we don’t cooperate, the accountant said Missus Rawlings and . . .” She couldn’t say the boy’s name. She swallowed it. “He said they lose the house.”
The man had stopped writing. He studied the vacant expression on her face and the calluses on her working-class hands. “Did you ever meet this ‘Big Ange’?”
Ella shook her head.
“So as far as you know, this man may not even exist. Correct?”
Ella just stared at him. The twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth matched the glint of the gold pinkie ring on his finger. She looked down at his notepad and how little he’d written, and it was clear.
“I understand that Mrs. Rawlings had a friend staying with her?”
Ella lifted her eyebrows at this but said nothing.
“A Miss Eveline Prentice, I believe?” he continued. The name had been chosen by someone with a plan. “She says she’s been staying here for weeks. I can bring her in if you’d like me to refresh your memory.”
Ella squeezed her hands together until the knuckles turned white.
“Miss Prentice has given us a written statement as to Mrs. Rawlings’s erratic behavior as of late,” he continued. “Had you noticed Mrs. Rawlings acting strangely?”
Ella lowered her eyes. It was true. Georgina had not been herself in months. But it was becoming quite clear that the truth was irrelevant here. Whoever this Big Ange might be, he had the detective in his pocket, and the fix was in. She glanced up at another load of crates slipping out the back door and into the driveway.
“I also understand that Mrs. Rawlings left a note.” The detective pulled a piece of paper from a leather folio. “Her instructions to her brother state here that the house and all of its contents be auctioned and the proceeds given to charity. Do you recognize this handwriting?”
Ella nodded, not even bothering to look at the paper he brandished at her. He wasn’t collecting evidence anymore, and she knew it. He was just demonstrating his weapons and making clear the part she would play.
“Now, I don’t see any arrangements here for a severance package for you, her trusted housekeeper, for all your good service. But that hardly seems fair in my opinion. I’m sure that your dear employer would want to make sure you are well provided for as you recover from this tremendous . . . shock.”
She watched him lay out a stack of hundred-dollar bills, her heart a stone. Her gaze drifted through the open doors of the office to the foyer where they’d carried Georgina out on a stretcher. There was no saving her. Not now. No matter what she told the newspapers or the judge or the governor. None of it mattered anymore. None of it would bring the boy back. The only thing the truth would do was get Ella killed herself.
She gathered the money without looking her new owner in the eye. Instead, she contemplated the spot on the desk where she’d found Mr. Rawlings sprawled out in a puddle of his own urine. The coward.
She shifted her gaze back to the windows beyond it, and her breath caught as though she saw Ninny’s restless dead. As though the specters of two men, a young woman, and a baby stood there just outside the glass. The mother’s and baby’s throats had been slit open.
“When the mulo come,” she whispered, “I hope they come for you.”
“Pardon?” The man sat up a bit straighter.
She leveled her eyes at him. “You tell your Angelo to burn this house.”
With that, she stood up and left the detective in the office with his forged letters and incomplete notes. She plodded down the center hallway and up the back stairs to little Walter’s room.
Once inside, she ran
a hand over his bed, his books, saying a prayer in her own tongue, knowing they would never heed her advice. The house, built on lies and stolen money, was worth too much, even tainted with murder.
Closing her eyes, she imagined another boy in this room. Another Walter, but not hers. Above her, Walter’s blood soaked into the gaps in the bathroom tile, through the wood and the wool fibers of the insulation down to the dead space between the floor and the ceiling. She crossed herself and let her tears fall.
God protect the poor souls who come next.
Ella Rady left Rawlingswood with her small suitcase in her hand. The empty eyes of the house watched her shuffle slowly down Lee Road, heartbroken.
53
The Spielman Family
August 11, 2018
The next day, a bent old woman knocked on the front door.
Margot nodded at her through the side glass and unlocked it. “Good morning! You must be Nala. Thank you so much for agreeing to come back.”
“You have the money?” the woman asked.
“Of course!” Margot shuffled back into the kitchen and returned with two fifty-dollar bills. “Please, come in. Can I get you some coffee or tea?”
“No need.” The crone made the sign of the cross before stepping over the threshold. She eyed the ceiling high above her warily. “What is it you want?”
“Would you join me in the living room?” Margot motioned the woman into the impeccably decorated sitting room to the left of the staircase. Silk drapes, custom upholstery, imported rug—Margot had fussed over the room for months but had only sat in it twice. She chose a spot on the long sofa, hoping the woman would join her there.
Madame Nala took a seat at the edge of the chair closest to the door instead, clutching her large purse to her chest, hunched like a buzzard. The woman’s thick accent sounded eastern European, but Margot couldn’t quite place it.
“Are you sure I can’t get you anything?” Margot tried again.
“No.” The old woman let her eyes circle the elegant room and wander back through the cased opening into the foyer. She caught sight of Hunter peeking through the railing upstairs, the bulk of him hidden in the shadow of the hallway. The old woman gave him the slightest nod and turned back to Margot. “What is it I do for you, Mrs. Spielman?”
Margot’s smile faded ever so slightly, but she kept her voice light. “Our contractor, Max Tuttle, tells us you were of some assistance during the renovation.”
“Yes. I come. I try to help. It did not do much good, I see.”
Margot nodded as though this was what she’d expected to hear. “I understand there were some disturbing incidents.” She took a breath, searching for the right thing to say. “We’ve come to realize some pretty disturbing things about the house ourselves.”
The old woman said nothing in the pregnant pause that followed. She just stared at Margot with her dark eyes and withered face, waiting.
Shifting uncomfortably in the silence, Margot continued, “It seems as though the real estate agent left some things out about the history of the house. There was a murder here. In 1931, Georgina Rawlings murdered her son.”
This news didn’t seem to faze the old fortune-teller; she simply nodded. The attic. It happened in the attic. “And how do we know this?”
“We found some old newspapers. A mother killing her only son made some headlines, I guess.”
“Hmm.” The crone looked up at the ceiling. “You are a mother. Do you believe a mother would do this?”
“Do I . . . I don’t know.” Margot winced and tried to imagine holding a knife to Hunter’s throat. No. “The newspaper said she’d gone mad.”
“The stories people tell to newspapers, even the stories they tell to themselves, are not always the true stories. No matter. What is it I do for you?”
Margot held her palms open to the ceiling, feeling foolish. “I guess I was hoping you might be able to help us.”
The old woman narrowed her eyes. “Help us how?”
“Get rid of the bad luck, I guess. It just feels wrong here. It feels like someone is . . . I don’t know.” Watching us. Judging us. “It’s just not a good feeling. I can’t help but think the house needs an exorcism.”
“I have no magic for this house. I try smudging. I try coaxing the calm back into the wood. This house, it has a memory that goes back. Back to the earth it rests on.”
“What do you mean, the earth it rests on?”
“We Roma, we have stories. We pass them down. Some get lost. Some change. After I fail Yanni, I go back. I ask my Bibio. I ask Baba Natalia. We have stories of this place. An old drabarni lived here once, so the story goes.”
Margot drew in her chest at this revelation. “What story?”
“This place, it is mahrime, unclean. Haunted by many mulo.”
“Mu-lo?” Margot repeated.
“How you say? Ghosts?”
“Ah.” She fought not to roll her eyes at herself or the old woman. Hearing it out loud made her realize how ridiculous it sounded. But still, this was the reason she’d called the woman in the first place. “How do we get these mulo to leave? Can you do something? We’d pay, of course.”
Margot told herself the sheer lark of it would be worth the price. Perhaps she’d invite some would-be friends over to watch the old witch work. She’d turn it into a cocktail party with Ouija boards and dry ice.
“This is no bujo, no swindling trick. I have no cure for you. These mulo very old. Stories say there are bones here. Deep in the ground. From before house was built. Mahrime!”
“What?” Margot gaped at her. “What bones?”
“The dead were laid here. Beneath the stones.” The old woman pointed toward the back of the house.
“What dead?” Margot shifted in her seat to stare at the wall behind her.
“I cannot say. I do not know. The story is just a story, but I felt it. I saw the shadows moving. I felt them in the wood. This house . . .” The old woman reached out her gnarled hand toward Margot. “You must leave this house.”
54
“Who was that at the door, hon?” Myron asked. His hair was dripping from the shower. He kept his back to her as he fixed himself a coffee so she wouldn’t see the sickly pallor of his skin or the twitch of his hands. He hadn’t been able to find his gear that morning, even after an hour of searching his closet. He didn’t want to think where it might’ve ended up. Just hold it together. It will turn up, he told himself.
“That crazy witch Max hired. I called her.” Margot poured another cup of coffee and avoided looking at him. Is he high right now? she wondered. She’d hidden the drug kit she’d found the night before, but he could have more stashed around the house. What the hell am I going to do?
“Was she any help?”
“Hardly. You wouldn’t believe the crap she was peddling. She made it sound like this place is The Amityville Horror.” She retrieved the creamer from the fridge and took a sip of coffee long enough to change the subject. “Don’t forget we have the Zavodas and DeMarcos coming tonight.”
“That’s tonight?”
“Yeah, hon. I put it in your calendar over a week ago.” Margot rolled her eyes. Maybe you were too busy shooting up to remember. She shook the thought away. Myron would never use heroin; he’s too smart for that. Isn’t he? There has to be some sort of explanation. Is he injecting B vitamins or something? She couldn’t bring herself to ask. “I’m having the club do the catering. I’m just not up to cooking for six.”
“Six. What about Hunter?”
“What about Hunter? I’m sure the last thing he’d like to do is sit around with a bunch of middle-aged parents discussing tennis. I’ll fix him a plate. Don’t worry. Oh, and get this. Hunter has a girlfriend.”
“Really?” Myron brightened at this. “Who?”
“I don’t know. Some cute little blonde girl named Ava. I guess he’s been sneaking her into the house. Have you seen her?”
Cute little blonde girl. Myron’s face furro
wed with recognition. The girl in the closet. The girl at the top of the attic stairs. Oh, Jesus, what has she told Hunter? He cleared his throat to steady his voice. “Uh. No. I haven’t. Do we need to have a talk with him?”
“A talk? I thought you’d be happy he was socializing.”
“Of course I’m happy about that, but sneaking girls into the house? Are we okay with that?”
“I have no idea what the hell we’re okay with anymore. We’re living in a goddamn murder house, Myron! I would like to sit down and seriously discuss what we’re going to do about that. That gypsy woman thinks this place is going to kill us, for God’s sake!” A million things Margot wasn’t quite ready to say simmered at the edge of her voice. “I just really wish we never came here.”
“Jesus, Margot! Are we going to have to have this same goddamn fight every goddamn day?”
Neither one of them could sense the boy standing on the back stairs listening to them bicker. Hunter turned and crept back up the steps to his room. Once inside, he locked the door and pinged Caleb on the computer. It was only ten a.m., and when his friend appeared on the screen, he was bedraggled and yawning.
“What the fuck, man? It’s like the crack of dawn!”
“Sorry. But you are not going to believe this.” Hunter filled his friend in on the old Romany woman and the talk of bones buried somewhere in the yard.
“I told you, man! Did I tell you, or did I tell you? Fucking burial ground! Unbelievable. What are you gonna do?” Caleb’s pimpled face lit with perverse glee. “Are you gonna go like digging for them?”
“Why the fuck would I do that?” Hunter gaped at him. “Are you insane?”
“That’s how they lifted the curse, dude. In Poltergeist. Or one of those movies anyway. You have to like find the bones, and the spirits will rest. Or some shit. Aren’t you at least curious?”
“I dunno. The lady seemed totally off her head, and we found the ghost, remember? Girl in the attic?” Hunter glanced at his closed door, wondering if she was outside it, listening. He’d woken that morning to an empty room.
“Well, you found one of them anyway. I’ve been looking for more info on Ava Turner and can’t find her anywhere, man. Have you thought about asking around? Like at the schools and stuff? Or . . . what about that asshole? The guy with the weed?”