The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus

by Clarke, Alexandria

  “I heard you screaming in your sleep again last night.”

  I closed my eyes. “You did?”

  “Yeah. And I’ll make you a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  He leaned across the window seat, gently tipping my chin up so that I would look him in the eye. “When you stop screaming in your sleep, we’ll try again.”

  I jerked out of his grasp.

  He picked up his plate, cleaning up the rest of our meal. “Otherwise, I don’t want to hear about it. We’ve been in Black Bay for a grand total of two days. It’s probably not as perfect as you think it is. Not to mention, even if I did want to think about what you’re thinking about, this house is far too big for us. We couldn’t afford the upkeep…”

  I stopped listening as he disappeared into the kitchen. We avoided each other for the rest of the evening. I perused the small library, collecting a few books to read before bed, but I ran into Bodhi in the hallway outside the bathroom. He had just showered, and the sharp scent of his lemon-coconut bar soap lingered in the steam around his body. Without thinking, I reached out and trailed the tips of my fingers across his damp forearm and over his bicep.

  He pressed me to the peeling wallpaper. The chair rail molding dug into my lower back as he kissed me once on the lips. The old books dropped to the floor. I slid my hands up to his shoulders. Then, before I even opened my eyes, he vanished into the guest room. Cold and empty, I picked up the books and slipped into the master bedroom, but when I made to stack the titles in alphabetical order on the bedside table, I paused.

  A tall cup of water sat centered on a marble coaster. Beads of condensation pooled on the glass, dancing in the low light of the table lamp.

  5

  Priorities

  Bailey and Bodhi: Flipping Out

  The day has come! It’s been a few weeks since we arrived in Black Bay, Washington, but we are almost ready to start Demo and Reno. It’s taken us a little longer than usual to start clearing out this house, but if you checked out my pictures from a few days ago, you’ll understand why. This place is basically the Winchester Family Museum. No one’s touched it for twenty years, and in some ways, it feels like we’re committing some kind of sin against nature by disrupting it. It’s borderline macabre.

  Anyway, we still don’t know what to do with all of the Winchesters’ stuff. Some of it couldn’t be saved. We threw out an entire rat-infested bedroom set, and don’t even get me started on the rotting pool table we found in the office. It practically disintegrated when we tried to move it. On the upside, there are a lot of beautiful things in this house that were relatively well-preserved. Bodhi and I have decided to list whatever’s in decent shape. If you’re interested, click the link below for our eBay page. I’m talking a top-of-the-line cappuccino machine, several boxes of cigars that smell damn good, and a bunch of sporting equipment too. We really need to get rid of it, so everything is priced rather reasonably. Please help us!

  Tomorrow, we tackle the beast that is the attic. It looks like the Winchesters used it for storage, so I can’t wait to find out what we’ll unearth up there. I’m still keeping an eye out for the pesky and elusive family of rats that lives in the walls. Stay tuned, flippers. It’s bound to get crazy.

  With love,

  Bailey

  The Winchesters’ attic was hot, stuffy, and without openable windows. To make matters worse, it was jam-packed with whatever the Winchesters had deemed unnecessary for everyday use, from cardboard boxes full of old photo albums to file cabinets to Christmas decorations. There was hardly room to walk, let alone work, and the steep, narrow staircase from the attic down to the second floor was a hospital trip waiting to happen. I had already stumbled twice, but it was near impossible to watch your footing when your vision was obscured by boxes of place settings and doilies. Bodhi, who was usually the level head in scenarios like this, lost it around mid-morning. He stormed down the stairs, drenched in sweat from head to toe, brandishing a hammer and threatening to light the entire house on fire. Thankfully, his case of the vapors was likely a result of dehydration because as soon as I cajoled him into drinking a full bottle of water, he returned to himself. We took a quick break—I had bought homemade ice cream sandwiches in town which were the perfect remedies for our woes—then headed back up to the infernal attic.

  “Business papers?”

  “Trash.”

  “A box of deflated footballs?”

  “Trash.”

  “Oh, God. This one’s full of sock puppets.”

  “Definitely trash. What kind of kinky shit were the Winchesters into?”

  “They had kids, Bodhi.”

  Little by little, we made headway. By late afternoon, when the sun had sunk low enough to stop baking us like sticky hotcakes through the roof of the house, we could almost see the attic floor. I opened up yet another cardboard box. It was full of Styrofoam peanuts. I sifted through them, my fingers connecting with some kind of circular ring. I hooked my pinky around it and gently tugged upward.

  Out came a baby mobile. It rotated serenely as I shook it free of the peanuts. The ornaments were tiny whales, hand-blown from different shades of blue glass. The sun refracted off of them, and they twinkled in the light, winking at me as they swam in their infinite circle. I smiled, wondering what lucky baby got to sleep under such a beautiful piece of artwork every night.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Bodhi stood at the top of the stairs, wound up like a spring. He stared at the baby mobile, but his eyes were blank. Dead. Or furious.

  “It’s a baby mobile.”

  “Throw it away.”

  “No, it’s handmade!”

  “I don’t care,” he said. He remained rooted in place, as if the sight of the mobile had paralyzed him. “Throw it out, Bailey.”

  I lowered the whales back into the box of peanuts. “That’s such a waste. We should add it to the eBay page.”

  “I said throw it out!”

  His voice boomed through the attic, rattling the window panes. My mouth dropped open. In all the time that I had known Bodhi, he had only raised his voice at me three times. Four, now.

  “Fine. Fine. I’ll throw it out, Bodhi.”

  I made sure the glass whales were securely nestled in the peanuts before folding the top in and popping one corner beneath the other. Then I carried the box to the pile of junk we had labeled as our trash pile and delicately set it next to a cracked laundry basket full of hand-me-down clothes.

  “There,” I said. “Are you satisfied now?”

  He said nothing but finally moved, shuffling toward the opposite end of the attic to resume his task. I kept an eye on the box of peanuts, and that night, when I was sure that Bodhi was asleep and oblivious in the guest room, I snuck up to the attic, rescued the mobile, and hid it in the closet of the master bedroom.

  When Bodhi finally deemed the kitchen and living room fit for demolition, Ethan Powell’s crew of construction workers showed up in full force. The low roar of voices and the buzz of machines punctuated the walls of the master bedroom one morning before the sun had crested over the horizon. I lay in bed, listening to the machinery overpower the natural hum that usually accompanied my mornings and examining a scar that encircled my right thumb. Years ago, Bodhi had rushed me to the hospital after a run-in with a circular saw. Everything had turned out all right, but after that, Bodhi was hesitant to let me within five feet of anything with a blade. Once the heavy-duty construction work began, I steered clear of the site. I had plenty to do—there was more than enough of the Winchesters’ possessions left to keep me busy—but the barrage of noise outside was already giving me a headache.

  The town itself had gone vastly unexplored for the past few weeks. We had spent the majority of our time in Black Bay laboring in the house. It was easy to throw myself into the dirty work of it all. Ripping up carpets, scraping wallpaper off, and digging through drywall was cathartic in a way. Destruction was simple; rebuilding was hard.
We were so caught up in the demolition that we only ventured into town if we needed to. Nevertheless, we were still the hot topic of Black Bay. Whether I was picking up materials at the hardware store or swinging by the Sanctuary for lunch, the locals stopped me to chat. Everyone wanted to know what was going on up at the Winchester house. Usually, I slipped out of the conversation by jotting down the URL of Flipping Out.

  I used the morning to catch up on the blog. Ever since the first night I’d contacted Milo, my followers had been more active than usual. Direct messages and e-mails overflowed my inbox every night, and I was finding it hard to keep up with it all. It was a double-edged sword. On one hand, the blog was one of our best sources of revenue. Not only did we profit off the advertisements in the sidebars, but Flipping Out’s followers were keen to buy up the items from the house that we had listed on our eBay page. On the other hand, it was getting more and more difficult with the number of eager fans to please. They weren’t just interested in the house; they were interested in me and Bodhi. I did my best and posted a myriad of photos, but there were only so many times I could sneak a candid picture of Bodhi sweating through his T-shirt as he pried up loose boards in the backyard deck before he realized what I was doing.

  “Take pictures of yourself,” he’d say, pushing his damp curls away from his forehead.

  “Our entire website operates on our happy couple vibe,” I’d argue back.

  Whatever the circumstance, working on the blog was slowly beginning to eat away at me. At this point, it felt like I was running mine and Bodhi’s ad campaign rather than actively participating in the renovations for the house. Bodhi’s attitude continued to spiral downwards. Ever since the baby mobile incident, we rarely spoke unless it had to do with joists or sliding glass doors or electrical wiring. At night, I held my breath when I heard his footsteps in the hallway and let out a sigh of relief when they faded toward his own room.

  Shortly before noon, I waved goodbye to Bodhi and the rest of the construction crew and walked into town. For once, I had no errands to run, and the white tips of the waves in the bay below coaxed me down from the tension at the house. I wandered into one of the cute boutiques, bought a scoop of mint chocolate chip at the ice cream shop, and steered a mini remote-controlled sailboat around the fountain in the square, laughing as a devious seven-year-old crashed his boat into mine.

  I walked south. Ethan Powell’s lumber mill loomed in the distance. I considered stopping by to ask Ethan if he’d give me a tour—at least it would fill a few hours of my day—but the sign of a nearby restaurant caught my eye. The name, Lido’s, sounded familiar to me, and my stomach was grumbling in protest, so I headed inside and slid into an empty booth. A waitress, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with Lido’s stamped across the front in white font, strolled over with her order pad.

  “Bailey, right?” she asked. “What’ll it be?”

  “Just a soda, please.”

  “Eating lunch? Got a fried fish special.”

  I perused the menu for a brief moment. “Fried fish sounds great.”

  “Back in a mo’.”

  As she ambled off, I looked around Lido’s. It was a bar and grill of sorts, with big windows in the back that opened up to the bay and even bigger television screens to display whatever football or baseball game was being broadcasted in that moment. Along the wall, there were dozens of group photos. Apparently, Lido’s was in the business of sponsoring Black Bay’s high school football team as well as the Little League. A trophy case at the far end of the bar displayed an oversized MVP award, along with a framed photo and a plaque too far away for me to read.

  The door to Lido’s swung open, and as soon as Ethan Powell walked in, he noticed me sitting alone in my booth. I waved jovially.

  “Hey there, darlin’,” he said with a grin. “Mind if I join?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Where’s that husband of yours?”

  “Working on the house,” I said. I lifted my disfigured thumb. “I was banned from the heavy-duty stuff a few years ago.”

  Ethan winced appropriately at the odd angle of my finger. “Can’t see why.”

  The waitress reappeared and set a glass of soda in front of me. “Hi, Ethan. Wanna order something?”

  “An iced tea and a burger, my dear.”

  “Coming up.”

  I sipped my soda through a straw, rotating the glass around until I realized why the Lido’s logo had looked so familiar to me. The water glass that had appeared on my nightstand that first night—the one that I’d made a habit of refilling before I went to bed—was identical to the one that sat in front of me now.

  “Hey, Ethan.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Did the Winchesters ever come to this restaurant?”

  “Every Friday night, after the big game. Why?”

  I held up the glass. “We have one of these up at the house.”

  Ethan’s eyes crinkled as he chuckled, as though he had remembered a fond memory. “That would’ve been Patrick’s doing. He and his buddies were always nicking stuff from businesses in town. Bit of harmless fun.”

  I thought of the room full of football paraphernalia at the house. “Patrick. He was their son, right?”

  “Yes ma’am. Black Bay’s true MVP. That trophy over there is his. Wanna take a look?”

  Together, we slid out of the booth to approach the trophy case. The plaque read: In Loving Memory of Patrick Winchester, 1979-1996. Below, there was a quote from Thomas Campbell.

  “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die,” I read aloud.

  “Seventeen years old,” said Ethan, shaking his head. “He was the town’s golden boy. Good grades, good manners, and a hero on the football field.”

  I leaned in to get a closer look at the framed photo. It was a group picture—similar to the ones that hung on Lido’s walls—of Black Bay High School’s Golden Eagle football team, each of the athletes smiling ear to ear.

  “Which one is Patrick?” I asked.

  But before Ethan pointed, I knew that Patrick Winchester was the grinning towhead of a boy kneeling between his teammates at the exact center of the faded photograph. His hair was a mess, as though Patrick had removed his helmet and tucked it beneath his arm just prior to the photo, and sweat smeared eye black across both of his plump cheeks. He looked familiar in that way all notable quarterbacks of high school football teams looked familiar. Patrick was the epitome of the all-American boy, and from the looks of Lido’s shrine, all of Black Bay missed his boyish buoyancy.

  “They lost the championship the following year,” Ethan said. “It would’ve been Patrick’s senior year. I think his death traumatized every boy on that team. A collectively broken heart. They just didn’t have it in them after that.”

  “You said he died in a boating accident?”

  Beneath Ethan’s bushy beard, a noticeable frown appeared. “Yes ma’am. I know you’re not too keen on the subject though. I don’t mean to upset you.”

  It was then I realized that a silent tear had tracked down my cheek. I wiped it away with the back of my hand. “I’m all right. Just curious. Do you mind telling me what happened?”

  Back at our booth, the waitress had delivered my fried fish and Ethan’s sky-high burger. As we dove in, Ethan explained about the Winchesters between bites.

  “The Winchesters loved sailing,” he said, offering me an onion ring. “They had a beautiful boat, the biggest one in the marina. They were out on the bay every weekend. Christopher and Elizabeth were gracious people. They liked to take the locals out for a spin every once in a while. Patrick and Caroline used to compete in the races with their own boats. They were all very well-acquainted with the water.”

  I dipped a fork full of fish into a ramekin of tartar sauce. “Then how did everything go so wrong?”

  “No one really knows,” Ethan answered. “No bad weather. No rough waves. The Winchesters took their boat out on their usual weekend family trip. Next thing we knew
, they’d crashed against the rocks right beneath their house.”

  My stomach lurched as I remembered the ethereal feeling of nothingness near the plumeria tree. “Against the bluff?”

  “Yes ma’am. It was suspicious to say the least. Everyone knows it’s not safe to sail around there. We never quite figured out why they went up that way.”

  I sipped my soda, letting the carbonation distract me from the nervous churning in my gut. “Who found them?”

  “Retired member of the Coast Guard,” said Ethan. “Sam Williams. He works in the lumber mill now. But he didn’t find everyone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Christopher and Elizabeth were still aboard the wrecked boat, in a manner of speaking, but the kids’ bodies were never recovered.”

  “Oh.”

  He paused in lifting the last bite of his burger to his mouth. “I’ve upset you again.”

  “No, it’s just… rough, you know? To bury a child to begin with is tragic. To bury two? And in empty caskets?”

  “You can’t imagine.” Ethan wiped mustard from his fingers with a paper napkin. “The town was in pieces. Took a while to put everyone back together again.”

  I pushed the remnants of my half-eaten meal around my plate. A familiar weightlessness lifted my mind from my body as thoughts of how the Winchesters’ last moments together as a family had gone. Did they see the crash coming? Or did they die happy and oblivious to the inevitable calamity?

  Despite my protests, Ethan picked up the check again. As we exited Lido’s, he patted me on the back. “Can I walk you back to the house, darlin’?”

  I looked up, squinting in the sunlight to see the kindness in his eyes. “No, I’ll be fine. Thanks, Ethan.”

  But as we parted ways, Ethan to his lumber mill and me toward the center of town, I found myself dreading the walk back up the bluff. Bodhi would still be working, and therefore, he would still be stoically ignoring me. The day was young, and it begged to be filled with plans that involved something other than silently arguing with my husband. Making up my mind, I dialed a number on my phone and waited for the other end to pick up.