“Hello?”
“Milo? It’s Bailey.”
Immediately, his voice brightened. “It’s nice to hear from you! How have you been?”
“Good, good,” I insisted. “Listen, I was wondering. Would you like to meet for coffee at the Sanctuary?”
“Is there something wrong with the house?”
“Not at all. But Bodhi’s busy, and I don’t really know many people in Black Bay. I just wouldn’t mind the company.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “I’d love to meet you, but I don’t care to walk into town unless I have to.”
“Do you have somewhere else in mind?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
6
Uphill, Downstairs
I waited for Milo at the top of the southeast pass, keeping to the shadows of the ever-thickening forest. Beyond the trees, the ruckus of construction continued, but the pops and bangs of work were dulled by the woods’ natural soundproofing. I spotted Bodhi standing on the roof of the Winchester house, prying shingles off and inspecting whatever was underneath. His white T-shirt clung to his broad shoulders as he chucked garbage into the dumpster below. From this distance, it was easy to pretend that Bodhi was ten years younger. We were naïve and carefree then. I’d barely met Bodhi, but he so enraptured me with his nomadic bohemian lifestyle that I’d foregone my senior year of college to backpack through Nepal with him on a quest to trace his ancestry. Life was simpler then. It had to be when you carried all of your possessions on your own back. Maybe it was the effect of getting lost on a foreign continent or maybe it was because I’d never connected with anyone before Bodhi, but it was in Nepal that I realized love was a falcon. It dove headfirst, furiously and without caution, but no one ever warned me about what would happen when it finally hit the ground.
“Bailey?”
Milo’s mellow tone roused me from my reminiscence. His shock of sun-bleached hair played in stark contrast against the dark trees. His usual deck shoes were absent, replaced by a sturdy pair of hiking boots.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes. No.”
He scanned me from head to toe. “Well, which is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I thought of Bodhi, the silent sufferer. He did not talk, so neither did I. “Not particularly. Just forget it. Where’s this place you told me about?”
Milo pointed above us, where the rock careened skyward at a declivitous angle. “Onward and upward.”
“You’re kidding.”
His daredevil grin assured me that he was not. For half an hour, Milo led me from the path, boosted me over obstacles in the terrain, and clambered through shrubbery to carve an unencumbered route for me until we sat in a crevice chiseled out of the highest part of the bluff. The little grotto lorded over the ocean and the house. From this height, Bodhi and the other workmen were faceless pawns on a chessboard, and the house itself looked like a model. I pressed myself against the rock, simultaneously riveted and horrified by the steep drop, and ignored the chill of damp dew against my shoulder blades through the thin cotton of my T-shirt.
“Don’t worry,” Milo said, tucking his knees into his chest. “There’s an overhang just below us. I’ve fallen off here before.”
“You have?”
“Yup.” He peeked over the ledge, precariously close to the edge. “The trees caught me on the way down. Other than a few scrapes and a fractured wrist, I made it out okay.”
“How did you find this place?”
“I have a bad habit of exploring without thinking of the consequences.”
The construction equipment in the yard looked like toys that a child had forgotten to put away after playtime, bright yellow sunshine spots amidst a gloomy green background. On the roof, Bodhi ran the show, shouting orders and wiping his brow as I reclined lazily above.
“So what’s bothering you?” Milo asked.
“What makes you think something’s bothering me?”
“Just a hunch. Also, it’s pretty obvious. You get a crinkle between your eyebrows when you’re upset.”
“You’re annoyingly perceptive.”
“It’s a gift.”
I sighed, rubbing my arms to warm myself up. Our hideaway was sheltered from the sun, and in the shade of the rock, the breeze flirted coolly with my skin. “Did you know about the Winchesters?”
“Everyone knows about the Winchesters,” Milo replied matter-of-factly. “What about them?”
I chewed on my bottom lip, thinking. “This is going to sound insane.”
“I’ve probably heard worse.”
I glanced at Milo. He watched me attentively. There was no expectation in his expression, no obligation for me to speak. Maybe that was why I admitted my morbid thought so easily to him.
“I think I’m jealous of them.”
There was a note of surprise in his voice. “Jealous? Of dead people?”
“I mean, I don’t envy their current state or anything,” I added hastily. The kink in Milo’s eyebrow spoke of judgment, even if his voice didn’t. “I just think that, if they had to die, at least they died all together. Other than the rest of the people in town, there was no one to mourn them. No family at least. To be left over—to be the survivor—hurts worse than being the person that leaves everyone else behind.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I closed my eyes, letting the rush of wind fill my ears like the calming static of white noise. It drowned out Milo’s even breaths, but I felt him beside me all the same. He was quiet and pensive, and as the time stretched out between us, he remained blessedly silent.
“Truth or dare.”
“Dare.”
“I dare you to go into Patrick’s room and steal a pair of his boxer shorts.”
“Ew, gross. I’m not stealing my brother’s underwear.”
I turned over without opening my eyes, plumping the pillow beneath me. The whispered conversation carried on, punctuated by occasional outbursts of giggling.
“You said dare!”
“That’s because if I said truth, you’d ask me about who I like at school again.”
“Just admit you’re crushing on Alex.”
“I said dare!”
“Fine, I dare you to admit you’re crushing on Alex.”
The voices flitted in and out of my dreams, floating hazily along like smoke in a summer breeze. I fixed the pillow over my head. My kingdom for a dreamless sleep.
The tropical scent of plumerias washed over me, so overwhelming that it was as if the tree from the backyard had inexplicably relocated to the master bedroom. In reality, the French doors had probably swung open again. Blearily, I opened my eyes.
Blue glass whales revolved above my head, twinkling like shooting stars in the dimly lit room.
I stared at the baby mobile suspended in midair. I had not taken it out of the box. I had not even taken the box out of the closet. Yet here it was, dangling just a few feet above me with no visible means of support.
Suddenly, whatever was holding the mobile in place snapped. The whales nosedived, careening toward my face. I shrieked and wrenched the duvet up over my head.
The mobile never landed.
I woke with a start to the sharp rap of knocking on my bedroom door.
“Bailey?” Bodhi called out. “Are you all right? It’s eleven o’clock. You’ve been asleep for ages.”
Sunlight touched every corner of the room. I squeezed my eyes shut, watching red and orange flashbulbs dance behind my eyelids. It had all been a dream, from the murmured conversation to the smell of the flowers to the whales in the air, but when I swung my feet out of bed, my heart stopped.
The baby mobile lay in a heap on the floor, unbroken but tangled.
“Bailey?” Bodhi called again. “I’m coming in.”
“No!” I gathered up the fallen mobile and carried
it to the closet. The box of peanuts had tipped over, spilling Styrofoam across the floor. Hastily, I swept the peanuts up with my hands, replaced the mobile in its box, and closed the closet. Not a second later, Bodhi inched the door open, peeking in through the small gap.
“What’s going on in here?”
I stood guard in front of the closet, pulling my long T-shirt down to cover my bare thighs. Bodhi’s eyes flickered downward, noting my discomfort, but he didn’t comment on it.
“Nothing,” I said.
“It’s eleven o’clock.”
“I heard you the first time.”
Bodhi opened the door fully. He was already sticky with sweat. As he surveyed the bedroom, he asked, “Have you been moving the construction equipment around?”
“Yeah, I took the forklift for a joyride actually.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I dragged a pair of running shorts out of my suitcase and tugged them on. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “I’ve tried to stay out of the way. Do you need help with something?”
“Not yet. We were going to start taking the tiling up in the kitchen, but we can’t find the jackhammer. And all the shovels have gone missing.”
“I didn’t touch them, but I’ll help you look.”
After pulling on a pair of dirty sneakers, Bodhi and I swept the house from top to bottom for the missing equipment. The construction crew had been working since dawn, preparing the first floor for renovations. I nodded politely to each of the men Ethan Powell had provided to us. In the past few weeks, I had grown more familiar with their sunburnt, weathered faces than that of my own husband. Unfortunately, none of them had any idea as to where the jackhammer and shovels had gone either.
“Do you think someone stole them?” I asked Bodhi, out of earshot of the other workers.
“Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know. They could sell the jackhammer. Make a quick buck.”
Bodhi looked over my head to study the crewmen. “I can’t see any of them doing that. Ethan pays them well, both here and at the lumber mill.”
“The only place we haven’t looked is the basement,” I said. “And I haven’t been down there since we relocated all of that junk from the attic.”
“Neither have I. I suppose we should check it out just in case.”
Armed with a pair of flashlights to combat the murky depths of the basement, Bodhi and I tentatively crept down the creaky stairs and into the labyrinth below. I felt for each step with my toes before placing my weight down. The basement had gone untouched. After our struggles in the attic, Bodhi and I had decided to leave the worst for last. Maybe it was the lack of light, or the stacked relics of the Winchesters’ past fortune, or the musty scent of the stagnant air, but neither one of us trusted the basement’s eerie vibes enough to work alone down here.
“There,” I said, sweeping the beam of my flashlight across the only part of the basement floor that wasn’t obscured by filing cabinets or ancient sailboat accessories.
“What the—?”
Five shovels and the jackhammer had been laid out in a neatly organized line, one right next to the other, across a wide patch of concrete a few shades lighter than the rest of the house’s foundation.
“Really, Bailey?” Bodhi wedged his flashlight beneath his armpit so that he could haul the jackhammer upright.
“What?”
He shouldered past me, grunting as he lifted the jackhammer up the first couple of steps. “You seriously need to get your sleepwalking habit under control.”
My lips parted in awe. “Do you actually think I got up in the middle of the night, pilfered a bunch of shovels and a jackhammer from the yard, and lugged them down to the basement all while I was dead asleep? Bodhi, I can barely lift the jackhammer on my own.”
“No one else would’ve done something this weird,” Bodhi countered. “Get some help, Bailey. And bring those shovels with you.”
I did as asked. Outside, I arranged the five shovels in the front yard end to end, carefully recreating the pattern from the basement. But when I stood back to admire my handiwork, the blatant pettiness was so overwhelming that I kicked each shovel out of line before going back inside.
Around lunchtime, I sat in the window seat of the master bedroom with my laptop perched on my knees. The screen had gone to sleep. For a while, I’d been researching the area in and around Black Bay. Though it would be several months before we finished renovating the Winchester house, it couldn’t hurt to get to know the market for when we finally put it up for sale. It would be my biggest challenge yet. Black Bay drew the attention of modest families with modest incomes, and those were not the type of people that would be interested in buying a miniature mansion. Then I’d gotten distracted and searched the common symptoms of sleepwalking, but when I pulled up a web page detailing the link between sleepwalking and post-traumatic stress disorder, I quickly clicked out of it. I had been staring out of the window at the plumeria tree in the distance ever since.
Footsteps passed by in the hallway outside the bedroom, but I ignored them. I hadn’t spoken to Bodhi since hauling the shovels up from the basement, and I strongly suspected that he had no interest in speaking to me either. However, when a loud banging noise reverberated through the wall from the room next to mine, I wondered what the hell Bodhi was doing upstairs. The renovation plans were only finalized for a certain section of the first floor. He had no business working on one of the bedrooms without consulting me first. The banging paused for a moment then continued in full force. I closed my laptop, set it aside, and stormed from the bedroom.
“Bodhi, what the hell—?”
I threw the door to the adjacent bedroom open. It ricocheted off the wall with a disruptive smack. Bodhi was nowhere to be seen, and the banging noise ceased as soon as I set foot in the bedroom. This was one of the rooms that we hadn’t had the chance to comb through yet. The canopy bed, full closet, pale pink wallpaper, and stacked books remained as a reminder that this house did not and probably would not ever feel like it belonged to us.
The banging returned in full force, emanating from the seat in the bay window, directly above an air vent that I knew the rats were so fond of traveling throughout. With bated breath, I crossed the room. The drumming quickened and crescendoed with every step that I took, but when I lifted the cushioned seat below the window and immediately jumped back in anticipation of whatever lay trapped inside trying to get out—
All was quiet. The storage area was free and clear of anything alive. There was no explanation as to what had been banging on the underside of the seat. When I gathered my courage and peeked inside, half-expecting to see a rabies-crazed raccoon, I instead found an assortment of leather bound journals arranged in neat stacks. I reached in, my fingers grazing the cover of the topmost notebook.
A shrill scream pierced the air, resonating from somewhere outside. The window seat slammed back into place, nearly trapping my hand as I drew the diary out. I spun on my heel, dashed out of the room, and down the stairs to the first floor. My heart hammered against my rib cage as I raced through the reasons for a scream like that. Someone was injured—there was no doubt in my mind about that—but what had happened? Was it Bodhi’s vocal chords stretching to make that awful sound?
Except on the first floor, the construction crew was nowhere to be seen. The jackhammer lay abandoned near a pile of jagged tile pieces and on a sticky note on the dusty countertop, Bodhi’s handwriting told me that they had gone into town to get lunch.
Another scream tore into me like a shard of glass, this time echoing from beyond the basement door. I sprinted down the hallway, wrenched the door open, and stumbled into the darkness, fumbling with my cell phone. I dialed 911 as I blindly took the stairs, but the line never rang. I should’ve known that the service in the basement was spotty.
The next scream chilled my blood. I clapped my hands over my ears. So close. As if the victim was standing beside me. In the murky
gloom, a hunched figure lurked near the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m here!” I called. The splintered stairs bit at the soles of my bare feet, but I didn’t slow my pace. On the last step, something caught around my ankle. I yelled as I fell forward, my own voice mingling with the prolonged, terrified wail. I threw my hands out to break my fall, but my knees hit the concrete foundation first, sending a shock wave of pain through my bones.
All at once, the screaming stopped. The overhead light—a dirty fluorescent tube that had stoically refused to cooperate with me and Bodhi in the recent past—flickered on. The basement quivered beneath its oscillating gleam, still and silent.
I pushed myself to my feet with a groan. Blood ran down both of my knees, dripping onto the concrete in desultory patterns. I scanned the room carefully for movement of any kind. “Hello? Who’s down here?”
Not even a rustle.
During the fall, the leather-bound journal had escaped my grasp. It waited with its pale pages spread and exposed until I knelt to scoop it up again. I sat down on the bottom step, resting my forehead on the glossy leather cover.
No one was screaming. No one ever had been. I shook my head, wondering how much sleep deprivation could interfere with day-to-day life. Maybe Bodhi was right. Maybe I did need help.
Apparently, my auditory hallucinations were far from finished. Overhead, the doorbell chimed. Three low, long, gong-like tones, muffled but discernible, echoed through the house and down to the basement. My eyelids fluttered shut. The doorbell didn’t work. I was sure of that. Bodhi had moaned about replacing it. I had suggested that we install an intercom instead.
That conversation happened. I swore to myself it did. I swore to myself that both Bodhi and I had tried the dingy doorbell button, only to be met with silence.
Above, the sepulchral tones knelled again.
7
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion Omnibus Page 6