“Well, let’s do it. It’ll be Mitchell’s Day before we get in there.” Sid tried to act nonchalant, but his knees were feeling weak, like the time he and Terry had snuck a pack of cigarettes from Tubbs Store and tried smoking one.
“Okay, here goes.” Terry took a deep breath and advanced up the stairs.
He knocked on the door.
“Harder!” Sid whispered. “She’ll never hear you.”
Terry knocked so hard his knuckles hurt.
There was silence for a moment, and then an ungodly shrieking noise sounded from inside.
“Oh jeez.” Sid took a step backwards.
Terry knocked again, trying to look confident.
The unearthly noises came again, and Terry found himself on the very edge of the steps with Sid halfway across the yard when the door swung open.
It was the blond lady, blinking in the vivid morning sunlight. Her hair was a mess of blond curls and she was dressed in orange and red and purple.
“It’s okay, Calvin,” she said in a soothing voice. “Don’t be scared.”
Terry and Sid looked at each other, and then craned their necks to see behind the woman. There was no one there. Sid gulped.
“Hi ma’am,” Terry said in an unnaturally high voice, and stopped, unable to continue.
“Hello, how are you two boys doing this beautiful Sunday morning?” Terry found himself relaxing when the woman smiled. Something about her smile was very nice.
“We’re fine,” Terry said.
“I’m Miss Sabrina Dunsweeney, but you may call me Miss Sabrina,” the woman said. “What are your names?”
Her voice was compelling, and Terry and Sid stood up straight, puffing out their chests and lifting their chins.
“I’m Sid Tittletott,” Sid blurted. “You can call me Sid.” He elbowed Terry, smirking.
“Sid Tittletott,” the woman said thoughtfully, putting her hand up to stroke the back of her neck. “Let’s see. Would you be Virginia and Gary’s son?”
Sid nodded. “Elizabeth Tittletott is my grandmother,” he said, and Terry knew he was trying to impress Miss Sabrina.
“I see.” She turned big blue eyes on Terry and he tried not to blush.
“I’m Terry Wrightly.” He looked at his feet.
“Ah,” Miss Sabrina said. “I’m guessing Roland Thierry Wrightly the Tenth, the owner of this house, is a relation?”
“Grandpa Dock.”
“I don’t suppose either of you have been clipping my roses, have you?”
They boys avoided looking at each other. She seemed so normal, and then she beamed over into Bonko Zone.
“Will you buy some cookies?” Sid was unable to hold back any longer.
“Please?”
“Would you buy some cookies, please?” Sid corrected himself. “We’re selling them to raise money for—” He broke off, looking at Terry.
“To raise money for a school play,” Terry finished, having practiced this line beforehand.
“Really? How nice. What play?”
“Uh—” Terry floundered, looking at Sid for help. This he hadn’t anticipated.
“Romeo and Jello!” Sid smiled broadly at Terry. See, he did remember something from Mrs. Piggy Perkin’s English class.
“Ah.” Miss Sabrina smiled her nice smile. “Do you have someone to help direct this play?”
“Well, no, not yet,” Sid said, and Terry kicked him, hard. “Ouch!”
“Well, you’re in luck. I happen to know Romeo and—uh, Jello pretty well. When do you begin rehearsing?”
Terry and Sid stared at each other.
“How about tomorrow? Would you like to rehearse here? Good. Three-thirty tomorrow afternoon, then, right after school.” Miss Sabrina beamed at the two of them. “Oh, and you needed me to buy some cookies? Let me get some money.”
She left the door open and went inside to find her purse. Terry and Sid were in shock, and didn’t even remember to peek inside the house which was the entire reason for their visit.
Miss Sabrina came back with her purse, took the clipboard from Terry, and signed her name on the top line. “Haven’t had much luck yet, have you?”
“You’re the first house we’ve been to,” Terry recovered enough to say.
“I’ll take a big bag, then,” she said. “Here’s five dollars.”
Sid opened the top of the big box and brought out a bag of cookies and handed them over.
“How nice.” She opened the top of the bag and peered inside. “Calvin, don’t these look yummy?”
This time Terry could have sworn he heard someone answer. Someone with a very high, chirpy voice.
“What kind of cookies are these?”
“They’re my grandma’s special, her Millionaire Cookies. She owns Nettie’s Cookie Shop down the road.” And he had better get this box of cookies back before Grandma Nettie returned to the shop or there would be heck to pay.
“Okay, gentlemen,” Miss Sabrina said, closing the top of the bag. “I expect to see you here at three-thirty sharp tomorrow afternoon.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Terry and Sid muttered and started inching their way backwards down the steps while Miss Sabrina smiled at them.
“Wonderful, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And boys?”
They looked up at her, not aware of the pure desperation written all over their faces.
“Don’t forget to bring the rest of the cast.”
***
Sabrina closed the door behind the two boys and smiled to herself. They seemed like nice young men.
“What do you think, Calvin?” She reached up and stroked his warm body cuddled behind her neck.
“Cheep, cheep, cheep,” the parakeet said, mimicking the sound of her voice. He imitated everything, from the sound of the telephone to the beeping of the microwave.
“Do you think they’ll show tomorrow?”
Before Calvin could answer, Sabrina tripped over something under the Oriental rug and Calvin screeched with indignation.
“Sorry, boy.”
Sabrina put the small yellow parakeet on the floor and went into the kitchen. She looked out the window and wasn’t surprised to see Apples grazing the back lawn. The shaggy brown pony seemed as much at home in her yard as the two cats curled up on the porch. She stood for a moment, watching as the sun poured through a chink in the clouds, spilling iridescent light over the sound. The splash of an osprey hitting the water generated an explosion of dancing diamonds that sparkled and glittered atop the waves even as the osprey flew away with the fish wriggling in its grasp.
“What do you think, Calvin?” She turned to find the small bird climbing the miniature palm tree to reach his favorite new perch on the windowsill. “Who’s trimming the roses?”
Sabrina picked up her cup of hot tea and dug into the white bag for a cookie. When she had left to go on her walk this morning, she noticed the roses around her rental cottage were freshly pruned. When she checked the small shed where she kept her bike, she found a large pair of lawn shears, neatly oiled and sharpened, with the remains of a rose bud in the hinge of the shears.
“Maybe it’s the person with the big feet who’s walking on the beach every morning.” The footprints were there again this morning, an unbroken string of very large footprints down the clean expanse of sand. She’d followed them until they veered off into the marsh.
She couldn’t help feeling a little spooked. After seeing that man last night just standing there in the dark woods, his eyes fixed on her, she ran home and closed the door, for the first time fervently wishing that the doors had locks.
In the bright light of day, she wondered if maybe she was overreacting. The man could very well have a good reason for standing in the woods. Maybe he was hunting, or looking for something.
“Maybe it’s that ghost—what’s his name? Walk-the-Plank Wrightly.”
She laughed, munching on the cookie—they were mouth-tingling good—
and went back into the living room.
“For heaven’s sake!” Sabrina said, as she tripped over the thing under the Oriental rug once again. She’d been meaning to see what was under there, but it never seemed worth the effort. As she hopped on one foot, rubbing her stubbed toe, she decided it was high time to see what was under that rug.
Calvin followed her into the living room and watched with interest as she took the corner of the somber rug, so out of place in the cheerful room. She pulled it back to reveal what looked like a hatch in the varnished wood floor.
Calvin chirped in delight and waddled over to peck at the door.
A metal ring for opening the hatch was what she had been tripping over. There was a large stain covering the hatch, almost as if someone had spilled grape juice on the wood floor.
“Why in the world would someone put a door in the floor?” Sabrina mused.
Calvin pecked at the metal ring.
Sabrina shrugged, grasped the metal ring, and gave it a hearty pull. The door hesitated, and then swung upward and stood upright. Sabrina peered down inside the hole, wrinkling her nose at the smell of old, dry dirt.
Calvin chattered in excitement, and Sabrina nudged him back from the opening.
The cottage sat on four foot high pilings to protect the house against sudden storm surges. The hatch simply opened on the empty space under the house. But why?
“What’s this?” Sabrina leaned forward, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. Something colorful lay on the ground under the hatch.
Sabrina reached inside the hole, but could not quite reach whatever it was.
Calvin cheeped impatiently, and Sabrina sighed. She lay down on her stomach, and reached down into the hole, very conscious of spiders and snakes and lizards, oh my, and grasped the edges of several pieces of paper. She sat up with difficulty and studied her prize.
Bright green, yellow and blue construction paper was scrawled with angry crayon pictures. Stick figures of people and dogs and houses, engulfed in brilliant orange, red and yellow flames.
More disturbing than the furious pictures were the red spots spattered all over the construction paper.
Red spots. Blood spots. Blood was spattered all over the childish, angry pictures.
Chapter Four
Sabrina turned the top picture over, and saw that someone, an adult, had written the date in the top right hand corner. The pictures were almost twenty-five years old.
“Calvin, what child would have drawn these?” Sabrina thumbed through the crayon pictures once again. They were angry, vivid pictures. A puppy hanging from a noose. A large house burning while a stick figure waved its hands from a top window. A person lying on the floor, bright red blood spreading in a pool around the body. A person dancing around with his clothes on fire. A half-wolf, half-human creature with a human arm in its jaws. A figure being burned at the stake. Six pictures, all depicting scenes of violence and hate.
Sabrina shook her head, upset. She believed she was looking at pictures drawn by a seriously disturbed child, most likely under the age of ten. Only one other time had she seen pictures this brutal and bloody. That child had tried to kill his baby sister when he was eight years old. Her heart still twinged when she thought of her inability to help that poor, abused child. She tried, goodness, she tried, but the mother resisted her efforts and the children’s services people were so overworked they barely even looked at the pictures.
“It’s too late now, Calvin. Whoever drew these pictures is all grown up. I wonder if anybody tried to help? I wonder if it was just the pictures, or if there was more?” She knew that disturbed children often act out in more than one way. He or she could very well go from drawing pictures of fires and torturing animals to arson and acts of cruelty against real animals.
Calvin pecked at the one of the blood spots speckling the top two pictures.
“I’m not sure where that came from.” Sabrina looked down in the hole, but the dirt looked dry and undisturbed except for a few dark spots. Sabrina laid the hatch door down flat and looked at the large grape juice stain on the cover of the door.
Sabrina traced the stain with her fingers.
“This must have been where old Lora Wrightly fell, and the blood from her cut head dripped though the edge of the hatch onto the pictures.” Sabrina studied the pictures. “But why were the pictures under there? They couldn’t have been in there for twenty-five years. They’re not dusty or dirty at all.”
Sabrina stood up. “Well, perhaps someone knows something about these pictures. Maybe there’s an innocent explanation.”
“Whhhr,” Calvin said doubtfully.
“I know, I know,” Sabrina said, because she couldn’t get rid of the gut feeling that something was very wrong. She just didn’t know what.
A half an hour later, she started down the sandy driveway, past her bright red convertible rental car. It hadn’t taken her long to discover that the only people who drove on the island were the tourists. In a town less than a mile square from sound to sea, who needed to drive?
The two cats, which she had named Gray and Grayer, were curled up together in a patch of sunlight on the lawn. They looked up, yawned at her, and closed their eyes.
“I’ll feed you when I get back,” she called to them.
It felt good to have purpose again. The first couple of days she wallowed in solitude. It was the first time she’d really spent time by herself for as long as she could remember. She slept a lot, and sat on the back porch and looked at the water. But the guilt was there, stinging the back of her mind. How could she enjoy being alone when the only reason she was alone was because her dear, sainted mother was gone?
If her best friend Sally hadn’t insisted, she never would have agreed to this trip, or vacation, or whatever it was. Sally called it a “recovery interlude,” but that was just Sally being Sally. The whole ugly incident with Mr. Phil had been the deciding factor. Sabrina had decided she needed a break, to get away. The rest had done her good, though she could not remember sitting still for such an extended length of time in all her life. The idea of finding out more about the pictures under the hatch was tantalizing. It seemed the perfect remedy for what ailed her.
Speaking of ailments, she needed to check her medical book to make sure the bug bites she found on her ankle this morning weren’t anything serious. You never knew, it could be the bite of a brown recluse spider and her flesh was slowly rotting away and she didn’t even know it.
Sabrina passed an apple orchard enclosed by an aging fence, and continued down the private dirt road that meandered along water as still and solid as a marble dance floor. A dilapidated dock was nestled among the oaks and loblollies, anchoring an equally dilapidated boat that looked as if each day it continued to float was a good day. Almost hidden in the woods were several out-of-plumb sheds and a menagerie of rusted old cars. Sabrina saw the two little boys she met this morning duck out of sight behind one of the old Ford trucks. The subsequent frantic rustling and muffled cries of “Get it off me! Get it off me!” seemed to indicate that their hiding place was already inhabited.
The “New Wrightly House,” as the sign over the front door proclaimed, was much bigger than the house she rented, the “Old Wrightly House.” It was painted a dull green and surrounded by a white porch, on which a chair was rocking madly, as if someone had been sitting in it just moments ago. It was the home of Sabrina’s landlord, Thierry Roland Wrightly the Tenth according to her rental papers, though she’d yet to meet him.
“Hello!” She knocked on the wooden edge of the screen door. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness inside, she could see an ancient living room and an old man huddled on the couch staring at her.
“Hello, Mr. Wrightly?”
The man looked at Sabrina for a moment, and then opened his toothless mouth and screamed.
Since Sabrina hadn’t looked in the mirror this morning—her eyes had been half closed when she brushed her teeth—she was a little concerned that maybe the old man’s scre
aming had something to do with her appearance. But she was wearing her pretty new pink dress, the emerald scarf with streaks of orange, and the just-out-the-box purple pumps. She had brushed her golden curls this morning—she remembered distinctly because the brush had gotten caught in her hair and it had taken her five minutes to get the tangle undone. She thought she looked pretty snazzy.
“I’ll have none of that, do you hear me, none of that!” The old man yelled, and jumped from his chair to slam the door in Sabrina’s face.
***
“Here she comes again,” Lima Lowry said, rocking his chair a little bit faster. His large feet, encased in white rubber boots up to his knees, were firmly planted on the front porch of Tubbs Community Store. After eighty years of tromping through the mud flats and marshes of the sound, he wasn’t about to get rid of his favorite boots just because he didn’t do much of that stuff any more.
“Yep.” Bicycle Bob took a liberal swig of his Rot Gut 20/20. He sat on the first step because the rocking chairs made him woozy and he liked to keep close to Trigger, his bright yellow beach bike.
“Always wearing them bright colors.” Lima leaned back in his chair and contemplated Sabrina Dunsweeney—no relation to Helen, apparently—who was striding briskly down the street. “If ‘n I close one eye and squint, she kinda looks like a psychedelic Easter egg, all painted up, just arollin’ down the street.” He sputtered with laughter, pleased with his observation. He prided himself on his keen eye and quick wit, even if Bicycle didn’t appreciate it much.
“Yep,” said Bicycle Bob, who rarely had anything else to say, except maybe “nope.”
“May’s been cleaning her house. Said the woman burns up more pots than anybody has a reason to. May also said she saw both Lora’s ghost and Walk-the-Plank Wrightly one day last week when she was cleaning. I shouldn’t wonder the two of them aren’t dancing a waltz somewhere. Lora always did like to dance,” Lima said wistfully, conscious of the passing years and how few of his friends remained in this world. Lora had been one of his favorites, and he preferred to think of her before she suffered her stroke and her graceful body became twisted and slow.
Island Intrigue Page 3