All Those Who Came Before

by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  Coming downstairs on her way out, she observed Frank hard at work at his desk in his writer’s room. There was a mound of papers beneath his fingers and he was completely engrossed as he pored over them. Most likely it was the beginnings of or research for his new book, so she didn’t give it much thought. She was in a hurry.

  Frank peered up as she stood in the room’s doorway. He casually covered the papers with his hands so she wouldn’t see them. But she had. They didn’t appear to be manuscript pages. Then again, he often compiled hand-written research notes on a new book. So that was most likely what they were. “So you’re off to preserve on canvas that house you were gabbing about at breakfast, huh?”

  “I am. I just thought I’d let you know I was going.” She edged closer, offering him a smile, and laid a kiss on his cheek. She got a better look at the papers on his desk and, with a start, recognized what her husband was reading. Bracco’s report. So he hadn’t pitched it? Though she could have scolded him for not throwing the information away, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She purposely ignored what he was doing. She didn’t care. Let him dig into a dead man’s scribblings, she wanted nothing to do with them. Bracco, in the end, couldn’t find her first husband or if he’d been murdered or not, so how could Bracco’s useless information aid Frank in any way? It couldn’t. Some mysteries remained unsolved forever. Some should. Frank was welcome to it.

  “Well, as I said earlier, be careful. I know that particular abandoned property you’re referring to and it is definitely a death trap. It’s been falling apart for years, has got to be structurally unsound, and therefore it isn’t safe. Go ahead draw or paint the outside of it, but please don’t mess around inside. Promise me?”

  “Okay, worry-wart, I promise.” Abigail had been surprised to learn Frank was acquainted with the old Theiss house, which, after she pondered over it, made sense because he’d grown up in Spookie like Myrtle had. So he would know something of the house’s history.

  “It’s been empty now for decades,” he’d told her over their morning meal when she’d confessed she wanted to go out and do a series of paintings of the house and its estate.

  “Myrtle said it’s been empty about two decades.”

  “Ha, more like four decades, if I recollect the timeline correctly. You know Myrtle. She and time play loose and fast. I love the old woman dearly but she is really old. Her memory’s not as sharp as it used to be. Well, that and she likes to make up stories.”

  “That’s true. But Myrtle also didn’t know much more about the place, other than something horrendously bad, as she so colorfully put it, had happened there, yet suggested I could interrogate Claudia because she, or someone she knows, might remember more. You have anything to add to that?”

  “In fact, I might. You know, since you told me over breakfast about seeing that old Theiss house, described it and where it was, I’ve been racking my brain,” he tapped the side of his head, “trying to recall anything else about the place. Must be getting old. My memory’s not what it used to be, either. Then I remembered. A crime had been committed there. And just before you came back upstairs, I also remembered my dad telling me something else years ago about that house.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Yeah, my dad. When I was a young man my father and I drove by the place one summer night. That’s when Suncrest, the road it’s on, as Myrtle had mentioned to you yesterday, had been easier to traverse. My dad told me something that haunted me for a long time afterwards. Probably why I remember it now after all these years. To the best of my recollection, he said a family had once been murdered there. A whole family. In cold-blood. That’s why the townspeople, ever since, felt, and still feel, it is haunted. No one will go near it, then or now. Realtors couldn’t give it away. So it’s remained abandoned and has been disintegrating ever since.

  “By that time, as young as I was, I was already considering becoming a policeman, so the subject of crime got my attention. And serial murders in a nearby house in the town I lived in piqued my interest. That’s probably why my father’s words stuck with me. I asked him if the killer or killers had ever been caught and all my father would say was, yes, someone had been arrested and found guilty of it.”

  “Who?”

  “He wouldn’t or couldn’t say. Just that someone had been sentenced to prison for the killings. After that, though I asked more than once, my father refused to speak further about the place or the murders. My father was a passive peace loving sort of man who didn’t like to contemplate or talk about, or be reminded of, the darkness that sometimes resides in the human soul. He detested the whole concept of innate human cruelty, which included murders and those who had anything to do with perpetrating them. He detested guns. Detested violence. Ha, then I grew up and became a homicide cop. Go figure.”

  Abigail knew Frank’s father had died of a heart attack at fifty years old. The man hadn’t had a heart problem, or any history with any illnesses before that, so the death had been quite a shock. One of Frank’s uncles had also died of a heart attack at a fairly young age. It explained why Frank was careful about his own heart health. Heart conditions ran in his family. So he watched his diet, exercised, and tried to have a medical check-up every year or so.

  “I imagine your father hadn’t approved of you going into law enforcement for a career then, huh?”

  She couldn’t read the guarded expression on her husband’s face, but she pretty much guessed what his answer would be and she was right.

  “Not much. But years later he did tell me he was proud of me. I had moved to Chicago with Jolene by then and was working on the police department there; had just been promoted to detective and I was doing well. I cherished that compliment from my father and I always will. As different as we were, I knew he loved me. With parents, or with people you love, that’s all that matters really.”

  “Yeah,” Abigail agreed, “it is.”

  “You won’t be too late, will you, honey?”

  “I won’t be too late.”

  “Don’t forget your cell phone,” he reminded her.

  “I won’t. Got it in my purse.” She patted the bag hanging from her shoulder.

  “And if you need me, for anything, call me and I’ll be right there.”

  “Oh, do you expect I’ll be assaulted by ghosts or something at the murder house?” A chuckle.

  “You never can tell. There are more things in heaven and earth...and all that. But I’m more worried about the perils of rotting framework, termite-eaten walls and a roof falling in on your head. Or you stepping on a nail hidden in the yard grass. I can only imagine what condition the yard is in with no one having cut or trimmed it for forty years. Watch where you walk, okay?”

  “I will. And I told you, honey, I’m only wanting to memorialize the outside of the house. I can do that from the house’s sidewalk or the shoulder of the road. I don’t need to go inside.”

  “Yeah. That sounds like a plan. I don’t want to have to throw together a hasty rescue party to dig you out from beneath the rubble.” There was a sudden noise outside Frank’s window and he swung his head around to look. It was a bird with a red head squawking through the glass at him. Then it flew away. Frank shrugged his shoulders as if to say: what was that all about?

  “Maybe it wanted in, huh?” Abigail’s shrug was a duplication of Frank’s. “Maybe it’s hungry.”

  “Ah, ha, is that your way of saying we forgot to refill the bird feeders outside?”

  Abigail snapped her fingers. “Yep, that could be it. We didn’t forget, though, we’re out of bird seed so I’ll put it on the shopping list, along with all the other things we’re getting low on.”

  “Excellent idea. Oh, by the way,” he glanced at his watch, “in a bit I’ll be driving over to Silas’s house. He telephoned me, claims there is some problem with his air-conditioner and wants me to take a look at it. As hot as it is a busted air-conditioner isn’t something to ignore when it comes to old people like Silas. If you ask me
, I think he’s merely lonely. Wants to chat or wants another game of chess or something.”

  “Most likely he wants the companionship, and the air-conditioner checked out. But, that’s good timing. There’s a bag of stuff I picked up for him the other day at the store because they were on a flash sale. One day only. Toilet paper, cleaning supplies and canned food. They’re downstairs on the counter. Can you take those items over to him? Also, take the rest of that blueberry pie in the refrigerator with you. He loves my blueberry pie.”

  “He does. I’ll be sure to take it to him as well as the supplies.”

  Frank and Silas Smith had become fast friends since Silas’s father’s treasure had been unearthed on Glinda’s property two years before. In that time, Silas’s wife, Violet, had passed away of her cancer. Now Silas was alone. He felt as if he owed Frank, Myrtle, Glinda and her a lot because the money he’d obtained from the treasure had enabled him to get the best of medical care, home nurses and hospice, for Violet in her last months. The two old ones had desperately needed, and enjoyed, the new-found prosperity the treasure had given them. Silas had had daily flowers delivered to Violet, given her gifts he’d never been able to afford before, and said he’d been rewarded by her smiles. He’d hired a driver to get his wife, as well as himself, back and forth from the doctors and hospitals; hired a full time nurse to help take care of her. The money had changed their lives and made Violet’s last days so much better. The house had been fixed up, a new car bought, and the cabinets and fridge had always been full of food.

  Silas still had his cancer but it had miraculously gone into remission. For him, once his wife had passed, better medical treatment, undisturbed rest and less stress had made the difference. He wasn’t cured but some of his most painful symptoms had passed, or had lessened. The doctors now thought Silas might have another six months to a year to live, but they’d given the same prognosis the year before. The amazing thing was that after Violet had died, and he didn’t have watch her suffer every day with her pain, the old man’s desire to live had been revived. He’d confessed to them he would be seeing his beloved Violet soon enough, but she wouldn’t mind waiting a little longer. Time meant nothing in heaven.

  So, as much as his illness would let him, Silas was trying to enjoy what remained of his life. Lately, he’d even felt well enough to resume his daily walks around town, as long as he didn’t overdo it. Sometimes Frank joined him. They’d stop in at the Delicious Circle for coffee and donuts or visit with other townies at Stella’s Diner.

  For his part, Frank was elated Silas’s cancer was in remission, and that he was getting out and spending time with other people. He’d go over to the old man’s house at least once a week and play cards or chess with him, bring him groceries or specially cooked items from Abigail; he’d repair things around the house for him.

  “He’s like the grandpa I never had,” Frank had confided to Abigail. Frank’s paternal grandfather had died before he was born and his maternal grandfather had left the earth when Frank was only a baby. He had never known either of them.

  As soon as Abigail walked out of the room she heard the renewed rustle of papers. Frank had resumed examining whatever it was he had on his desk. Brushing off her uneasiness, she left the house. The thought occurred to her that if the papers really were Bracco’s files, what difference did it make? The notes were old, incomplete. If whatever was in them hadn’t helped Bracco solve the mystery of her first husband’s death, then what was in them still wouldn’t. There’d be no harm if Frank looked them over. Studied them. What more could he learn from them that Bracco hadn’t uncovered?

  Slipping out of the front door, she put everything else out of her mind but the property she was going to paint; hoping the house would look as intriguing a subject to paint as when she’d first seen it in the storm.

  UNLIKE THE DAY BEFORE, that morning the weather was as lovely as a summer day could be. Warm instead of oppressively sultry, not a cloud in the sky, but with a breeze. No sooty green clouds or tornadoes anywhere.

  Abigail slid into the car and maneuvered it out of the driveway. She was fairly sure how to get to the lost house in the woods, but keyed the address, 707 Suncrest, into her navigation system anyway. Her car got her there without too much trouble, though the road was as dreadful as she recalled it being when she’d traveled it during the storm. Very little gravel, mostly mud, ruts and bumps. But with the sun shining down on her, the trip was very different than the day before. The chorus of the wood’s tiny inhabitants were singing all around her. Summer tunes. The scent of wildflowers, grass and sunshine made her mood a great deal lighter.

  The solitary road, the minuscule ivory rocks spraying beneath the tires, the heat rising from the dusty surface like an undulating hazy wall, the scenery around her of lush woods–just the strange ambience of her surroundings–flooded her with sudden, and all but forgotten, childhood memories. Her late brother, Michael, and she used to live once on a road very similar to Suncrest. Their childhood home, a ramshackle two story sanctuary, was where their family had lived and, much like the old Theiss house, it had squatted along the side of a gravel road beneath a thicket of trees. Their home hadn’t been much, wooden floors, drafty hallways, windows that stuck half-way up; an old-fashioned furnace room in the basement next to a smelly coal bin, but it had been home. Abigail could still remember her and Michael stoking that furnace and dragging the clinkers, as they called the burnt hunks of coal, from the heart of it. But the upper floors still didn’t get enough heat. She’d shiver beneath the blankets up in her bed in the dead of winter.

  When she and her brother were very young, perhaps ten or so, they’d wander down their gravel road looking for empty soda bottles, which they’d then take to the store, John’s Confectionery, to exchange for the two cents apiece reward. They’d also search the road and its shoulders for what they whimsically called lost money. That was coins or bills that other children or people would drop from their pockets or purses on their way to the tiny store at the end of the street. One day they’d found a whole dollar and immediately scurried up to John’s store, bought a huge bag of penny candy, and ate every piece before they returned home. Abigail had felt so guilty later that day, at home, when she realized how selfish they’d been to have gobbled all of it up, not sharing with their other siblings. It was the last time she’d done that. The next found bottles and coins were spent on candy for her sisters, Mary and Carol, and her other brother, Jimmy. That had assuaged her guilt some.

  There were also the lazy summer days when she and Michael would trek into the woods, laughing and singing songs to the skies, two wild creatures, to hunt for wild strawberries or blackberries. Harvesting handfuls of them to fill their growling bellies. Seemed as if they were always hungry back then; lost money, empty bottles and wild fruit filled that hunger. In the summer, anyway. The winters were different. Winters had been hungrier times.

  Shaking her head, she tried to dislodge the old memories. With Michael long dead, most of them hurt too much to resurrect. It reminded her she needed to call her siblings and try to arrange a reunion. It had been years since they’d all been together at the same time. Where did the time go, she wondered? She determined to call, text or email her siblings that very night, catch up with them, and arrange a get together. Maybe she could give Thanksgiving dinner this year. With advance notice, hopefully, they’d have enough time to arrange coming for it. Even Jimmy all the way from California.

  Getting to her destination, she parked the car and switched off the engine. Her eyes found the house. 707 Suncrest and the land around it did appear different in the daylight. Yet, in her mind, she could still see what it had looked like in the storm with the wind whipping around it, and the skies that bizarre shroud of green. She’d create a canvas reflecting that; but others would be in the sunlight, some in snow, some in rain, some in twilight or in the dark with ghostly faint lights on in the house’s windows. A series. Her thoughts, as she huddled in the car and scrutinized t
he crumbling house, were envisioning all the different renderings she would draw and then paint of the house. She couldn’t wait to begin. Her fingers itched to pick up her brushes and create what she was seeing in her head and that would someday, she hoped, be showcased in an art gallery somewhere. It was going to be an eerily compelling collection. The art galleries she supplied her work to had been asking for more paintings for months, but she’d been too busy doing commissions to satisfy them. Now, with no present assignments, she’d been searching for something extraordinary to paint. Staring at the vacant house before her, she knew she had found it.

  Getting out of the car, she grabbed her sketch pad, pencils, collapsible chair and folding easel from the front seat, and hiked through the weeds along the road to the front of the house. Instantly breaking out in a sweat, she was glad she’d worn a sleeveless blouse and shorts, her hair pulled up in a ponytail. The breeze had vanished, so, in the direct sunlight, it was so much hotter than when she’d left the cabin. At least, it wasn’t raining. She missed the coolness of the rainstorm the day before, but not the tornado.

  As she cautiously moved through the opening of the broken gate, walked up the cracked sidewalk to the porch, she noticed half of the edifice was tipped at a thirty degree angle towards the ground. An old white wicker porch chair and table, now faded and filthy, were off the porch and upside down in the weeds. She lifted her head, shaded her eyes with her hand, and examined the building. Taking it all in, she almost felt sorry for the house. What a beauty it must have been in its day. No longer. Now it was an ugly duckling.

  The house was large, yet not as substantial as she’d first thought it was when she’d viewed it from the road during the height of the storm. Try as hard as she might, she couldn’t settle on its architectural style. It seemed to be a conglomeration of many designs–part Victorian, part American Colonial, part Cape Cod; total mutt. It was as if a person who couldn’t decide what they wanted had designed it. She’d never seen a house like it. Ever. It was two-storied, and the house’s original white paint was flaking off in patches as if it had a chronic disease, while other sections of the walls were darkened with age and weather. The copper gutters running along the roof were not all intact. A length of them, on the left side of the house, lay rusting on the ground among the weeds.