Aware of disapproving looks shot my way, I sternly instructed Lizzie and Darcy to stop their barking and behave. They ignored me. I wasn’t even sure they’d heard me, given the racket coming from both the canine and avian factions. I dragged the dogs away from the park, and pausing at most of the trees along the way so the dogs could sniff and anoint trunks, we made our way through the chill afternoon air down the hill in the direction of the gatehouse.
I paused outside the old Beaumont house. Five weeks ago, I’d come back to attend the funeral of Cassie Beaumont, the younger sister of my high-school boyfriend, Colby. The service was unspeakably sad. Mrs. Beaumont was so crushed by the grief of losing another child that it hurt to look at her. Vanessa, her only surviving offspring, had delivered the eulogy with tears streaming down her cheeks. When she spoke of Colby and Cassie now being together on the other side, it took all my self-restraint not to bolt from the church and keep running.
It hadn’t been easy, coming face to face with the Beaumont family again. Back in December, I’d unearthed the truth about Colby’s murder ten years previously, when we’d both been high school seniors and desperately in love with each other. But my investigation had set in motion a chain of events which brought more grief, and legal woes aplenty, to the Beaumont family. Mrs. Beaumont had once been closer to me than my own mother, so it cut deep when, at the funeral, she was merely polite. Vanessa had glared at me coldly, then pulled me into a fierce hug and sobbed on my shoulder for long minutes before glaring at me again and storming off without a word.
A realtor sign stuck out front proclaimed the house for sale. No doubt Mrs. Beaumont had no desire to rattle around alone inside its vast interior. According to my father, she was now living at the family’s old vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard and in the process of getting a divorce. She was probably learning, as I had, that when you leave town, the past doesn’t stay behind. It goes right along with you.
“Come on, let’s go get those keys,” I said to the dogs.
The guard on duty at the gatehouse was a muscle-bound guy with no neck and a loose-lipped smile.
When I enquired about the keys, he said, “Sure, here you go,” and handed me a full bunch.
“Why didn’t you give them to me when I signed in?”
His face crinkled as he thought about that for a long minute. Then he said, “You didn’t ask.”
“Slower than molasses on a cold day,” I muttered.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. Thanks for these. C’mon, Darcy, Lizzie, let’s go.” I tugged on their leads, but both dogs were wantonly begging the guard for attention. Darcy licked the guy’s fingers, and Lizzie lay on her back, exposing her belly for a rub.
“You staying here long? Can I come over and visit sometime?” the guard said, crouching down to tickle the dogs on the silky white fur of their chests. “The Andersens have ESPN, don’t they? We could hang out and watch a few hockey games.”
“I already have a boyfriend.”
Kind of. If I counted the presence that I sometimes thought I sensed by my side.
“Hey, I don’t mind sharing,” the guard said.
I yanked Lizzie and Darcy away and we walked back to the house where I unpacked my car and lugged my suitcase upstairs, tripping over the dogs on every other step. The guest bedroom’s décor had me sighing so hard that Lizzie tilted her head at me in concerned curiosity. The double bed was trimmed with a scalloped night frill, covered with a pink check comforter, and topped with white lace cushions. A vase of dried lavender flowers stood on the doily-topped bedside table, and three porcelain butterflies took flight across wallpaper patterned with tiny pink rosebuds.
It was enough to induce a seizure in people with healthier brains than my own.
There was nothing to be done about the floral drapes, but I grabbed the cushions, coverlet, doily and flowers, and stashed them in the main bedroom, which was decorated in the same fussy style, but in shades of baby blue.
Downstairs, I checked the contents of the refrigerator and immediately forgave the Andersens their stylistic excesses because, judging by the bottle of pinot grigio sitting on the top shelf beside a covered plate of spaghetti and meat sauce, they clearly had good hearts. Filling a glass with ice cubes, I topped it up with wine and then sat down to read the list of instructions I’d found lying on the dining room table, weighted down by an ugly porcelain clown.
The directions told me what — and when — to feed the dogs; listed emergency numbers; explained where I’d find the breaker box and extra blankets; gave detailed instructions about trash collection and thermostat operation; urged me to eat anything from the refrigerator or cupboards and, I was relieved to see, supplied the password for the wi-fi. Attached to the list was a copy of their itinerary with their contact information, plus a twelve-page-long list of rules and regulations for the Estate. I shoved it all into the mail tray on the hall dresser and stuck the clown into a neat row of figurines on a shelf in the living room.
The dogs vacuumed up the kibble I poured into their bowls in less time than it took me to reheat my meal in the microwave, then they sat at my feet, staring up at me while I ate. Their pleading eyes followed every movement of my fork, and their pitiful whines finally induced me to feed each a few saucy strands of spaghetti, in clear violation of item seventeen on Mrs. Andersen’s list.
After supper, I set my laptop on the desk in the study and tried to dredge up a smidgeon of motivation to put in some work on my thesis, but was saved from doing more than looking up the precise definition of “proximity maintenance” by an incoming call on my cell phone.
“Hi, Mom,” I said and, before she could ask, added, “Yes, I arrived safely.”
“Well, thank St. Christopher for travel mercies!” my mother said, then yelled into the background, “She’s safe, Bob!” To me, she said, “Your father was beginning to worry.”
“I was just about to call you,” I lied.
“We were hoping to see you tonight.”
“Oh. Tomorrow, maybe? I’m beat.”
That was true. I was kidding myself about getting any work done that night. Besides, I had weeks and weeks to finish it — it could wait until the morning. At that moment, the lightbulb in the desktop lamp flickered and then went out. It seemed like a sign, so I switched off my computer.
“Are you all settled in? What’s the place like?” my mother asked.
I strolled to the living room, glancing around. “It’s very neat and very … nice.” From the shelf beside the TV screen, the porcelain clown leered at me, its red grin reminding me unpleasantly of the guard at the gatehouse. “Too nice actually.” I pushed the figurine further back on the shelf and turned it around to face the wall. “So nice, it’s kind of creepy.”
“Gracious, Garnet, what nonsense you talk.”
“That’s rich, coming from you!” I protested.
My mother was the mistress of malapropisms and mangled language, and the undisputed queen of far-fetched beliefs and silly superstitions.
“How can anything be too nice?” Without waiting for an answer, she began rattling on about all the things we were going to do now that I was in town. “Jessica Armstrong’s gallery has a new show, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to take your two fur-babies to the Dog Chapel in St. Johnsbury and have them blessed? St. Francis, you know! We could do the tour and tasting at Sweet ‘n Smoky Maple Syrups, and did you ever do the Windsor cheese trail?”
I tested the couch and found it amazingly comfortable.
“Mom, I’m here to work on my thesis. We’re not going to be spending that much time together.”
Whenever my mother and I were in each other’s company for more than half an hour, she rubbed my nerves raw with her linguistic and metaphysical meanderings.
“Yes, dear, but you will need to take a break sometimes.”
“I’ll swing by tomorrow,” I promised.
“Come for dinner. I’ll make Mexican.”
“The real
kind? With meat?” According to my father’s weekly calls, my mother was going through a phase of cooking with tofu and chickpeas. And “Quorn,” whatever the heck that was.
“If you insist,” she said. “Sweet dreams, and may the goddess grant you restful sleep.”
I wouldn’t need any divine assistance to sleep — my eyes were already drooping. Lizzie was curled up fast asleep at the other end of the couch, in violation of another of Mrs. Andersen’s rules, and Darcy snored on the carpeted floor beside my feet.
The dogs were behaving normally around me. That was a huge relief because after the weird reactions I’d received from cats and dogs during December, I’d worried that this dog-sitting gig might not be a cakewalk. But the beagles hadn’t whimpered or growled at me, or stared off to my left side as if seeing something that wasn’t there.
My brain seemed to be behaving normally, too. In December, I’d been haunted by strange symptoms — being overwhelmed by intense feelings that weren’t my own, hearing words inside my head, and having visions and seeing memories of things I’d never witnessed in person — but I’d experienced nothing weird since then.
Almost nothing.
There’d been a few odd things, but I’d chalked them up to coincidence, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a fertile imagination. True, at Cassie’s funeral I’d felt swamped by soul-crushing sadness, but surely that was just grief, and a reaction to being in the very church where, ten years before, I’d sat through the funeral of her brother, Colby, who’d been the love of my life. Yes, my mind had teemed with unfamiliar images of Cassie as a little girl, but maybe I’d just recollected long-forgotten memories.
The one thing that did still baffle me was that wherever I sat — at the counter of my favorite bar in Beacon Hill, on a crowded subway car, in the waiting room at the dentist — the seat to the left of me invariably remained unoccupied. I had yet to find an explanation or rationalization that accounted for that particular peculiarity.
“Time for bed,” I told the dogs.
I let them out into the yard for a last pee before tucking them into their baskets in the laundry room. They peered out from beneath their blankets, but the moment I turned to leave, they jumped out and followed me to the kitchen door. Hardening my heart against the guilt-inducing entreaty in their liquid brown eyes, I shut the door firmly behind me. Mrs. Andersen’s instruction on this had been underlined for emphasis — no dogs on the beds!
I took a long shower, letting the hot water soothe my elbow and shoulder, which ached from where I’d banged them on the toilet and bathroom floor. Before getting into bed, I stood at my bedroom window, nibbling a nail and staring out into the darkness for long minutes. Somebody was taking their own dog for a late walk up the road. The park across the way was deserted, lit by the yellow glow of streetlights. Wind whipped at the flag on the pole in my neighbor’s front yard. Ned was out on his porch, swinging the tube of a large telescope up toward the sky. It was a clear night and the viewing would be good, but he must be a dedicated stargazer to be out in this cold.
Downstairs, the dogs whined and scratched at the door, pleading to be let out of their kitchen prison. I closed my drapes, burrowed under my duvet and, yawning, stared at the rosebud wallpaper on the wall beside the bed. Up close, by the faint light filtering through the drapes into the room, I could make out forms and faces in the patterns.
I remembered doing this as a child, finding images in the pattern of the paint or wallpaper and making up stories about them. Pareidolia — my sleepy mind dredged up the term for the psychological phenomenon of finding meaningful patterns, especially human figures and faces, in random data. If I remembered correctly, it had something to do with the activation of the fusiform brain region.
My own fusiform neurons must have been firing energetically just then because I could see smiling baby faces in some of the petals, and extended hands in the shapes of the leaves. My gaze kept being pulled back to the gap between the buds where the shape and shading exactly resembled the creepy face of a stern old man. In my imagination, he looked like a devil — the serrated edges of the surrounding rose leaves formed sharp horns, the thorns made slanted eyes, and the wedge of white between adjacent stalks and stems was his pointed beard.
The shape was repeated about every five inches in the pattern. I tried to estimate how many of them — hundreds? thousands? — must be on the walls of this room, watching me. At some point in my calculations, under the gaze of countless fiends, I fell asleep.
The story continues in The First Time I Fell.
The First Time I Died Page 33