And then it occurred to him that perhaps the expectation was actually on him. As if the mirror itself were waiting, urging him to take the next step.
If that was the case, the mirror was out of luck. Because Lance had no idea what he was supposed to do here. He took a step back and looked at the mirror in full, studying its shape and its position. Nothing looked out of the ordinary at first, except that it seemed to be hung a little high up on the wall. Lance himself was six-six, and most household bathroom mirrors only just managed to capture the bottom half of his face. Here, however, he almost appeared a normal height. Maybe close to a foot of mirror still visible above where his head’s reflection stopped.
But aside from this small anomaly, everything looked just as it should.
He stepped back toward the sink and leaned to the side, seeing the mirror had some depth to it, a good four of five inches off the wall. A medicine cabinet, he thought, feeling as though he’d finally gotten the clue. He reached out and grabbed the bottom of the mirror and tugged gently. It popped open with no trouble, swinging out wide on its hinges.
The inside was empty, two dead flies legs-up on one of the shallow shelves.
Frustrated, Lance closed the mirror again and stared once more, still feeling an unseen hand at his back, pushing him toward the mirror. And then another idea hit him, one that seemed ridiculous at first, but not all impossible when you’d seen some of the things that Lance had.
He reached his hand out, slowly, tentatively, fingers hesitant as though they might suddenly get burned, or chopped off. Or somebody might reach out from the other side and grab his hand and pull him into…
Into what?
He sucked in a deep breath and pushed his hand forward the last few inches, and when his hand hit the glass, nothing happened.
Nothing at all.
And all at once, the invisible hand nudging him along disappeared and he felt completely silly.
Another quick succession of knocks on the front door rattled from down the stairs. Lance whipped his head toward the sound.
Another visitor, and I still haven’t had breakfast.
11
So far, the entire situation had been strange and, as usual, completely unpredictable. Lance had stepped off a bus less than twenty-four hours ago, and since then he’d somehow rented a farmhouse for himself, made two new friends after dining on the best meatloaf he’d ever tasted, heard voices from unseen sources, probably had a home intruder, slept in a dead girl’s bed, and been woken from some sort of nightmare by the local sheriff, who suspected Lance was up to no good.
So naturally, with his curiosity piqued and his senses on the highest alert, desperately searching for anything that might be valuable information, when the knock came from the front door, he didn’t hesitate. He rushed from the bathroom, bounded down the creaking stairs two at a time, and pulled open the door so fast he nearly ripped off the handle.
“Oh! God bless America!”
A tall woman with blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, wearing slim-fitting blue jeans, sneakers, and a red-and-white long-sleeved flannel shirt with the cuffs rolled up to her forearms, jumped, shouted, and took two steps back. A plastic bucket full of various cleaning supplies swung wildly from one hand, a pair of yellow rubber gloves draped over the side.
She laughed, a nervous giggle, and then tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Then she stood, smiling. A relaxed posture. Friendly. “Sorry,” she said. “You startled me.”
Lance studied the woman on the porch, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the sun that was still rising further above the trees and hilltop in the distance. He glanced behind her and saw a Mercedes SUV in the driveway, parked in nearly the same spot where Sheriff Ray Kruger had parked less than fifteen minutes ago. Heck, the two of them might have passed each other on the road.
Lance looked from the Mercedes to the cleaning bucket, then back to the woman’s face. She was likely late thirties, early forties, slim build. Fit. Like somebody who probably did yoga and drank smoothies for breakfast. Attractive.
(I can’t get any cleaners there until tomorrow, I’m afraid.)
Lance remembered Richard Bellows’s words from yesterday afternoon. And then … it clicked. Lance took himself back to that backroom office. The cramped workspace. All the pictures of the man’s family on the wall. Remembered the faces.
“You’re Mr. Bellows’s wife,” Lance said.
The woman laughed, made a face of mock disgust. “Oh, please. That’s way too official.” She stuck out a hand. “Victoria. And, yes, Rich is my husband. You’re Lance, right?”
Lance shook her hand, bracing himself for another rush of memory, another download. He got nothing. Of course. Never did when he was ready for it. Her hand was cool and soft, but her grip was strong. She smelled faintly of strawberries. “Nice to meet you,” Lance said. “So you’re the ‘cleaners’ I was promised?” He pointed to the bucket full of supplies.
Victoria Bellows held the plastic bucket up to her face and grinned. “I’m afraid so. Hard to find good help around this town. So you’re stuck with me.” She laughed, and it sounded genuine and pleasant. She struck Lance as a woman who lived a very happy and comfortable life. And there was good in her. Somebody to whom the word self-importance did not apply; someone who didn’t hold herself above anyone, despite circumstance. She’d just driven a vehicle that Lance guessed could easily cost fifty grand to come clean an old farmhouse for a stranger. And she was doing it with a smile and a laugh.
“Uh … Lance?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Did I catch you in the middle of something?” She made a quick gesture at brushing her face with her index finger, and Lance felt the heat rise to his cheeks, suddenly very aware of the layer of shaving cream lathered onto his face. Right on time, a glob of the stuff fell from his chin and plopped onto the boards of the porch, splattering like a drop of bird shit.
The two of them stood and stared at the mess for what felt to Lance like half an hour. Then, to his horror, another glob fell and splattered next to the first one, the porch beginning to look like a crude Rorschach test.
Victoria Bellows let out a quick, explosive laugh when the second drop hit, falling into a fit of giggles and shooing Lance back inside the house. “Go,” she said. “Finish up. I’ll wipe this up and then start downstairs.”
“Sorry,” Lance said. “But thank you.” He turned on his heel and bounded up the stairs, marveling over just how much of a doofus he could make himself out to be with women. He wasn’t one to embarrass easily, but even he knew that the anorexic-Santa-Claus-in-comfy-clothes look wasn’t his best first impression.
He shaved quickly, but carefully. He’d like to avoid bloodshed today, especially his own, if he could at all help it. As he ran the razor over his face, he couldn’t keep his eyes from occasionally refocusing on the mirror itself instead of his reflection in it. Continued trying to look deeper at the object itself, reaching out again, cautiously, for that sense of expectancy that’d seemed to be calling out to him earlier. He looked past his reflection and into the background, at the wall and linen closet door behind him.
He got nothing. Saw nothing but what was supposed to be there.
A sound of running water from somewhere below him shoved the possibility of the mirror having more meaning to the back of his mind. He finished shaving, rinsed his face, and then stripped down and pulled fresh boxers, socks, and a t-shirt from his backpack, changing into them. He gave his hoodie a sniff, found it more than acceptable, and then tugged it back on. After the day on the bus yesterday, and then the walking in the rain, he wanted a shower badly, but that would have to wait until later. He shoved his dirty clothes into a plastic shopping bag at the bottom of his backpack, tossed in his toiletry bag, and then zipped the whole thing up and swung it over his shoulder. He didn’t like to leave anything behind when he left places he was staying. Mostly because he couldn’t quite trust the idea that he’d ever return to
retrieve them. Better to be prepared. At least, as prepared as he could be.
He found Victoria Bellows in the half bathroom downstairs, yellow rubber gloves nearly up to her elbows, bent over the sink, scrubbing hard on a green ring around the drain. Lance watched the muscles in her back and shoulders work beneath the fabric of her shirt and thought maybe yoga was only the tip of the iceberg.
Victoria caught sight of him behind her in the mirror above the sink, and instead of asking him why he was being creepy and just standing there staring, she used a yellow finger to point up toward the light fixture. Two of the four bulbs were burnt out. “I’ve got a pack of bulbs in the car, too,” she said, halting the scrubbing for a moment and turning on the hot water tap. Pipes gurgled and groaned somewhere in the wall before water spat from the faucet. It was murky at first but cleared quickly. “Rich said you might need a few. Been a while since anyone’s been here.”
She rinsed the sink out, scrubbed away another bit of grime, then rinsed again. Satisfied, she stood and turned to look at Lance, eyed the straps of his backpack. “Headed out?”
Lance nodded. “I am. Though if you want some help, I’m more than happy to stay.”
This wasn’t exactly true. Lance, though he tended to be well-organized and neat, hated the act of actually cleaning as much as the next guy. But, as a gentleman, he felt obligated to at least offer his assistance. Especially since Victoria Bellows seemed to be doing this work as a favor.
She waved him off, pulling off one of her gloves and wiping a small droplet of sweat from her brow. “Hot in here,” she said. “I might open the windows, if you don’t mind.”
“Be my guest.”
She nodded and slid past him in the hallway, pulling the cord to raise the blinds on one of the front windows and then unlatching the lock and throwing the window open. Immediately, the cool fall air found its way inside. She repeated the process for the remaining windows in the front of the house and then turned, saying, “Okay, that’s better.”
Lance stared at her, trying to work something out in his mind. Something that had at first seemed normal but now seemed out of place. She saw him looking her over and cocked her head, smiling. Not suspicious. Curious. “What?”
“I’ve got to ask,” Lance said. “Why are you here?”
She didn’t miss a beat. Held up her rubber gloves. “To clean.”
Lance nodded. “Right. But why you? Why not an actual cleaning company? Somebody who does this for a living, or a part-time job, or whatever. Surely you don’t clean all of Mr. Bellows’s rental properties. He’s got to have a company or business he uses, right?”
Victoria’s face fell, slightly. Not in a disappointed look, but more in a “So I guess we have to have to this conversation” look. She sighed. “He does usually have somebody else do it, yes. A local crew. They do great work. But…” She paused, as if contemplating whether she wanted to actually say it all out loud.
Lance finished for her. “They won’t come here because of what happened. Because of the murders.”
Victoria’s posture relaxed again and she winked at him. “Bingo.”
“They think it’s haunted?”
Victoria opened her mouth to speak, but paused again. Only shrugged and said, “Something like that.”
“Something like that?”
Victoria sighed again. “Look, I don’t want to fill your head with a bunch of nonsense. Scare you out of here over something so silly.”
“You won’t scare me. I promise.” Lance said it so matter-of-factly that Victoria gave him a hard, silent look. Lance didn’t elaborate.
Then she smiled big and bright and shrugged again, as if about to reveal the punchline of a joke. “Fine,” she said. “The cleaners won’t come because they think the place is haunted, but it’s a bit more than that. They believe the girl that lived here—Mary was her name—they think she was a witch.”
Lance said nothing.
“And they think her spirit is still here and is actually evil. Ready to dole out harm and misfortune to anyone who trespasses on her property.”
The way Victoria Bellows said it, all with an undertone of complete mockery and disbelief, as one might when discussing the latest Elvis sighting, or ridiculous tales of alien encounters whose only witnesses were backwoods hillbillies with barely enough teeth to chew gum, told Lance all he needed to know about her opinion on the subject.
He smiled at her, posing the question lightly. “And you don’t believe any of it?”
Victoria shook her head. “Not a word.” Then asked, “You?”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” And if anybody is going to see it, it’s me. “So the cleaners are afraid of a witch, and you decided you’d come clean instead?”
“What can I say?” Victoria said, making her way toward him, back to the bathroom. “I love my husband, and he needed some help. He said you seemed like a really great guy and he felt terrible renting the place to you, knowing it was likely filthy inside. He said he should have been more adamant about not letting you stay here until we could get it in order.”
“He said I was a great guy?”
Again, the shrug. “You must have made an impression.” Then: “Was he wrong?”
Lance smiled. “I like to think he wasn’t.”
“Good. Now it’s my turn to ask the question. Why are you here?”
Lance leaned against the wall, watching Victoria remove a spray bottle from the bucket and start spraying disinfectant on the bathroom counter. “You know you’re the second person today to ask me that question?”
“Oh, really? Who was first?”
“Sheriff Kruger.”
The spray bottle stopped spraying and she turned to look at him, seriousness in her eyes. “Ray was here?”
Lance nodded. “Maybe fifteen minutes before you.”
“Interesting.” She gave Lance a look, chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, thinking. “I didn’t think he actually came up here anymore. Rumor is he always sends somebody else. A deputy, or some lackey. Though I think most folks have sorta forgotten about this place.”
“Why doesn’t he come up here?” Lance asked, feeling close to something, some explanation as to why the sheriff was so suspicious of him, why he carried with him such a coldness.
Victoria looked down and shook her head. Spoke softly. “He just took it all so hard, and he’s never really completely gotten over it. But who would, really?”
Lance said nothing.
“The worst part—or maybe the saddest part—is that after it happened, he went on for days, mumbling how he knew nothing good would happen here. That too much evil had already happened in this house and it only made sense it would happen again. He said he should have never let her move here. But he thought he was doing the right thing. Thought he was helping her out.”
The comment about too much evil in the house completely derailed Lance’s train of thought. “Wait, are you saying that the sheriff thinks this place is haunted?” He thought back to the conversation he’d had with Ray Kruger less than an hour ago. Nothing the man had said really made it seem like he was pro-ghost, so to speak. Quite the opposite.
Victoria only turned and started spraying the countertop again. “Nobody really knows what Ray thinks anymore. He’s never been the same since it happened.” She pulled a cleaning rag from the bucket and started scrubbing the counter. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said, “he does a fine job as sheriff. But … well, I guess you’d just have to have known him before to see what I mean. It’s like the Ray we have now is only pretending to be Ray. Like outwardly he’s the same, but inside … it’s like he’s empty. Cold. Does that make sense?”
Lance saw the image of the man alone in Mama’s, tucked into a booth away from everyone, silently reading his Kindle. Remembered that coldness.
“It does.”
Lance’s stomach growled loudly, and he was quickly hit with just how hungry he’d grown. With nothing to eat or drink since his meal at Mama
’s, he was running on empty. Victoria heard the growl and shooed him away again.
“Go,” she said. “You’ve got things to do.”
Lance thanked her again for cleaning and turned to leave, deciding to head out the back door and attempt to find the trail that supposedly led down the side of the hill and into town. He’d made it as far as two steps into the kitchen when there was another rattle of knocking at the front door.
Lance stopped and turned back. What is this, a bed and breakfast all of a sudden?
Victoria Bellows stuck her head out of the bathroom. Looked at him and asked, “Expecting somebody?”
“No,” Lance said, walking toward the door. “But I hope they brought coffee.”
12
For a place that everybody he’d met so far had indicated was avoided and feared, there sure were a lot of visitors at the spook farm this morning. But Lance couldn’t honestly say he was that surprised. He had a tendency to accelerate otherwise dormant situations.
With Victoria Bellows still half out of the bathroom, looking toward the front door, Lance turned the knob and opened the door.
“Did you rent a Mercedes? What exactly is it you do again?”
Luke stood on the front porch, wearing basketball shorts and a baggy hoodie, a huge Nike swoosh emblazoned on the front. He had bedhead, and his face was peppered with stubble. He looked like he hadn’t been awake long. He looked at Lance, waiting for an answer.
Lance shook his head. “Not mine.” He looked over his shoulder, saw Victoria Bellows poking her head out from the bathroom. Apparently satisfied the person at the door did not require her attention, she disappeared back into the room and returned to her work, the squeaking of the cleaning rag on the counter faintly heard.
“Oh, right,” Luke said, “So you’ve got company, then? Sorry. I didn’t know. But I mean, how would I, right? This was Susan’s idea. I mean, not that I mind, but … you know.” He paused. Took a breath. “Shit, man, I need some coffee. Brain ain’t working right yet. I came to see if you wanted a lift into town. But if you’re busy…”
Lance Brody Omnibus Page 42