There was a definite groan and a slight bowing in the middle as Andrew stepped up, but the ladder held under his weight. He cautiously brought his other foot up and placed it on the next rung, which stayed in place as well. Gaining confidence in the old ladder’s durability, Andrew began to pick up the pace. He reached the top quickly and couldn’t believe what he saw.
Deer mounts and skulls littered the floor of the loft, forming grotesque piles of haphazardly stacked heads. Andrew pulled himself up onto the platform and stared slack-jawed at the scene before him. There was no blood to be seen. All of the mounts and skulls were expertly cleaned and prepared, and even the taxidermy was well done on the would-be trophies.
After the initial shock of the find faded, one detail sprung forward that somehow unsettled Andrew even more: The antlers were missing. Not a single head in the entire cranial menagerie belonged to a female deer, yet not a single one had antlers either. He picked up a skull to get a closer look and found that they had been sawed off with clean, precise cuts.
A flurry of questions swirled around Andrew’s mind as he tried to make sense of what he had found. Had Corvus started selling deer antlers on the side? But why would he keep the heads if he was? Was his condition more serious than Andrew had thought? Did Corvus have dementia that no one knew about?
He started back down the ladder in a tizzy. He didn’t know what to do or think. It was becoming clearer by the hour that he knew nothing about his grandfather, and that he may have never really known him.
Andrew was so lost in his thoughts as he climbed down that he missed a step.
His heart flew into his throat as he started to fall, and his hand shot out to grab hold of the rung in front of him. Pain seared through his shoulder when he jerked to a stop, and he hung there for a moment. A loud crack rang out in the silent barn as the rung he held on to snapped, and Andrew fell fifteen feet down to the earth below, landing on his right arm.
A second crack could be heard within Andrew’s forearm when he landed, and he cried out, scattering a small flock of crows that had landed outside. His vision blurred from the pain, and Andrew choked out a small sob before his eyes shut and his head slumped to the ground.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bright white light pulled Andrew back to consciousness. He had been in the deepest sleep having the strangest dream. Skeletal deer paraded around him in the barn, trotting jauntily as they went. The circle tightened around him with each passing rotation, and the deer began to move faster and faster. Their bodies blurred together as they gained speed until they were a blazing white halo around him.
Opening his eyes, Andrew saw that the halo of light was a literal fluorescent light on the ceiling. He blinked slowly and squinted as he lifted his head. He was laying in a hospital bed, clothed in one of those gowns that let your butt hang out. Even though his back was completely covered, Andrew immediately felt naked.
Why was he in the hospital?
A familiar weight landed on his left hand and Andrew turned his head to see his wife sitting in a chair by the bed, her arm outstretched to take his hand. A smile spread across his face, supplanting the look of confusion that had previously been there.
Andrew tried to sit up, but a jolt of pain shot through his right shoulder, making his vision go blurry for a moment.
“Oh babe, no!” Celeste stood up and helped ease Andrew back down, his head ringing from the pain.
“What happened?” He asked as his head dropped back to rest on the pillow.
“You fell off the loft in the barn,” she explained, running her fingers through his hair and looking worried. “I had to drive the car through the field to get you because you were too heavy for me to carry back to the house.”
The memory of the incident flooded back into Andrew’s mind, souring his stomach. He remembered the piles upon piles of those skulls and mounts, which explained his strange dream. Trying to parse through the images in his head to figure out what was real and what was a dream was proving to be exceptionally difficult with how fuzzy the pain had made everything.
Thankfully, the doctor came in and interrupted his wondering. The old man had to be at least in his 70s. Bifocal glasses sat low on the bridge of his nose and liver spots dotted his bald head, but the man carried himself like a professional, which eased Andrew’s age-related concerns. He had kind eyes and a soft smile as he addressed Andrew.
“Good evening, mister Wilson,” The old doctor said as he sat his clipboard down on the counter by the wall and approached the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I got hit by a bus,” Andrew replied.
“Well, you’re not too far off there, son. A fall like that can do an awful lot of damage.” He gestured to Celeste. “It’s a good thing your girl found you so fast.”
Andrew could feel his wife rolling her eyes without having to even look in her direction. Having grown up in the South, Celeste had had her fill of being “someone’s girl” from a very young age. People often mistook her quiet nature to mean that she was an obedient southern belle, but they couldn’t be further from the truth. Andrew just hoped she wouldn’t let the old man have it while he still had the power to give him painkillers.
“Doctor,” she said in her best, most acquiescent voice. “Would you please tell my husband what happened to him?”
Next, it was Andrew’s turn to roll his eyes. Celeste may not have been the shrinking violet everyone assumed her to be, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know how to play the part.
“Absolutely ma’am,” he said cheerfully, her sarcasm flying right over his bald head. He turned his attention back to Andrew. “You got banged up pretty good out there. You tore your rotator cuff and broke your ulna in the fall, along with getting a mild concussion. You’re looking at six weeks for the bone to heal, and four to six months for the rotator cuff to get back up to snuff.”
Andrew looked down in awe at his sling. That was a lot of damage. An off-white cast wrapped around his forearm, going from thumb to elbow, and his whole arm was cradled in a light blue sling that held it to his stomach.
He tried to say something witty in response, but all that came out was, “Wow.”
“Wow indeed, young man. You’re lucky that’s all there is. But if you take the time to let everything heal, you’ll be back to normal by next summer.” After pausing a moment for questions, the doctor walked back to the counter and picked up his clipboard. “I’m going to go get you ready for discharge. You can pick up some over-the-counter pain meds at the pharmacy in town, but I don’t think you’ll need anything stronger. You kids have a good night now.”
Andrew and Celeste made eyes at each other as the man left, both holding their tongues until the door shut. As soon as it clicked and they heard his footsteps walking away, they were off to the races.
“Can you believe that guy?” Celeste asked, slumping over as she let her dainty facade drop.
“I know!” Andrew replied with glee. “Who does he think he is, calling us kids? I’m forty years old.”
Celeste fluttered her eyelashes and struck a delicate pose. “Maybe he was talking about how youthful and lovely I am.”
“Give it a few years, pumpkin. You’ll be old and decrepit like me soon enough.”
The two of them laughed together for a few more minutes, mocking the doctor more than he deserved. A nurse, confused by their laughter, came in and helped Andrew get out of bed and put on his clothes while Celeste jokingly looked him up and down and fanned herself. He winked at her and thought about how she could make him smile through the worst of times.
After the two of them were officially checked out, they walked out to the car together. Celeste helped Andrew get in and get his seatbelt on before going around and getting in the driver’s seat. The two of them chatted as they drove the few minutes it took to get to the pharmacy.
“So what should we do now that I’m out of commission?” Andrew asked.
Celeste let out a sigh and shrugged. “I don’t know.
Taking care of you is more important than the house, so maybe we should sort through what still we can and just sell the rest with the estate.”
Andrew mulled that over for a minute while quietly cursing his clumsiness. If he hadn’t gotten spooked and lost his grip, then the two of them wouldn’t need to cut their losses and give up on the house so soon. But maybe that was for the better. He doubted that any of Corvus’s stuff was worth very much, and he didn’t have a sentimental connection to any of it either. At that point, Andrew was far more driven by his desire to understand his grandfather than he was by any concern for profits or property values.
“I think that’s a good idea,” he said after a moment. “Let’s just focus on the smaller things and let the auction people figure out what to do with all of the big junk.”
She flashed him a smile. “That sounds good to me.”
They pulled into the pharmacy parking lot and went inside, the bell above the door tinkling with glee. Celeste bowed as she opened the door for Andrew, and Jax, who was sweeping the floor, looked up at the two of them as they walked in. His normal grin morphed into a scowl when he noticed Andrew’s arm. Jax had always been a mother bear type of friend, and Andrew could already tell that he had drawn some ire due to his injury.
“Now what did you go and do to yourself?” Jax scolded him.
Andrew raised his good arm and bowed his head in a gesture of sheepish surrender. “I fell off the ladder in the barn.”
Jax turned his attention to Celeste and said, “And why did you let him do that?”
Now it was her turn to raise her arms. “I wasn’t there. He did it all by himself.”
Jax stepped forward and met Andrew with a hug, carefully avoiding his shoulder. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay. I take it you want some drugs?”
“Absolutely.”
The three of them went over to the register and Jax rang them up for a bottle of acetaminophen, talking as he did.
“So is this going to impact your time frame for being here?” He asked. “Maybe convince you to stay a little longer?”
“As much as I’d like to get some more time with you, I’m afraid we’re probably gonna leave earlier than we thought. There’s not much of value on the property as far as we can tell, and this injury means that there’s even less we can do around the place anyway.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
Jax looked crestfallen as he handed Celeste the small bag with the medicine in it. She took it and the receipt, on which he had drawn a small smiley face. Even getting bad news, Jax was being friendly.
Andrew felt bad for the guy. It couldn’t have been easy on him to still live in Dry Creek. He had never been the most well-known or well-liked guy in school, and most of the people he knew from back in the day had either skipped town or were complete burnouts. Andrew could remember how often his friend had lamented feeling stuck during their late-night talks when they were teens, and that made this moment so much worse. He could only imagine how lonely Jax must have felt for all those years, and it killed him to thrust his friend back into that loneliness so soon.
“Hey, don’t worry though,” Andrew tried to sound upbeat. “We’ll just have you come over Friday night so we can all hang out and you can see the house one last time before we sell it. And then you can always make a trip up to Massachusetts to visit us.”
Jax perked up at that. “You know, I think I’d like a trip up to New England. I’ve never been before.”
“Then we’ll make it happen!” Celeste chimed in.
With their plans made for that Friday, Andrew and Celeste left the pharmacy together.
“Hey pumpkin,” Andrew broke the silence of their walk to the car.
“Yeah?”
“Since we’re in town, do you think we could make a quick stop before we head back?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Celeste walked into the kitchen and set the brand new bolt cutters down on the table before opening up the pain pills for Andrew. He had convinced her to swing by the local hardware store on their way back to the house. The two of them swooped in right before it closed like Bonnie and an injured Clyde, buying the best pair of bolt cutters they had.
Her partner in crime had already made his way up the stairs to get ready for bed while she got him a glass of water to take his medicine with. She felt horrible about what had happened, but thinking back over the events of the day, Celeste was impressed with her intuition. After getting back to the farmhouse from her walk and finding it empty, she felt in her gut that something was wrong and hopped in the car.
Thankfully, her gut was right in that instance, because she had found Andrew laying unconscious on the ground in the barn. It had taken all of her might to lift his dead weight into the passenger seat. Andrew was not a small man, and the exertion had left her drained after the adrenaline wore off.
Making her way up the stairs with the water in one hand and the pill bottle in the other, Celeste found herself smiling as she heard Andrew softly humming to himself while he brushed his teeth in the bathroom. Even through her exhaustion, she felt her heart swell a little bit with love and admiration for the man she had married. After all that he had been through that day, Andrew still had it in him to hum a little tune as he got ready for bed.
She snuck up behind him in the bathroom and watched him smile in the mirror as she wrapped her arms around his waist. Bliss came at the strangest of times.
“You about ready for bed?” She asked as they swayed back and forth slightly.
“Absolutely,” he replied with a mouth full of toothpaste, grinning at her reaction as it spilled down his chin.
“You’re a man-child,” she said through her laughter.
He spat in the sink before saying, “But I’m your man-child.”
She rolled her eyes and handed him the pill and the glass. “Then come on, man-child of mine, let’s get you tucked into bed.”
Celeste helped Andrew get out of his clothes, which was no small task with his injuries. After a few painful minutes of wrestling with the sling and his shirt, the two of them finally managed to undress him.
“You know,” she said after triumphantly throwing his shirt across the room into the dirty clothes pile and slumping onto the bed. “I’ve never had to work that hard to get your clothes off before.”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “They normally just find their way to the floor on their own.”
They kissed goodnight and Celeste turned off the lamp before walking back to the bathroom to get herself ready for bed. She got the new inhaler out of its packaging and took a long puff of it, marveling at the difference it was already making. Her asthma was never all that bad, so she found it easy to forget what it felt like to breathe normally if she couldn’t have her inhaler.
With clear lungs and heavy eyes, Celeste brushed her teeth and washed her face to clean the day off. It had been long and strange and stressful all at once. Starting with finding that creepy journal and ending with a trip to the emergency room, Celeste found herself praying that the rest of their time in the farmhouse would be less eventful.
By the time she had turned off the lights and returned to the bedroom, Andrew was fast asleep. She openly envied his ability to fall asleep and stay asleep at the drop of a hat. The man had slept through every storm and every nightmare that had kept her awake. If Celeste had to make a list of things she didn’t like about her husband, his aptitude for sleeping whenever and wherever he wanted would be at the top of the list.
She pulled back the sheet before crawling into bed, happy to finally be laying down. She smiled softly as she waited for sleep to come.
And she waited. And kept waiting.
After several minutes of tossing and turning, begging for sleep to show itself, Celeste felt a strange sort of lightheadedness overtake her. It was as if the air in the house had shifted. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she laid there in silence.
Then the rattling started.
Soft and
slow at first, a strange sort of jangling could be heard in the hall. Celeste’s breath caught in her throat. What was making that sound?
The woozy feeling in her head got worse as she reached an arm back behind her to grab hold of Andrew’s hip. She shook him quietly and was met with a snore. The darkness in the room seemed to intensify, threatening to blot out the moonlight shining in through the window as the rattling quietly continued outside the bedroom.
After a few more failed attempts to rouse her husband, Celeste took a deep breath and slowly slipped out of bed. The cowardly half of her mind that never forgot horror movies screamed at her to stop and to lay back down, but the scientific half of her mind needed an answer, and curiosity won the day.
The jangling sound grew louder as Celeste crept toward the bedroom door, certain that she was making a mistake. She stopped and leaned against the wall to steady herself, the static in her brain making it harder and harder to think straight.
Celeste steeled herself and slowly poked her head around the corner to find the hallway empty. A look of confusion spread across her face as the rattling carried on, coming from somewhere near the end of the hall. Using the light from the window to guide her, Celeste slowly approached the back wall, her heart beating in her head as she did. As she neared the end of the hallway, she finally realized where the sound was coming from.
Through the dim light, Celeste could see the attic door on the ceiling shaking softly against the padlock, as if something on the inside wanted to get out. Her body moving against her better judgment, Celeste found herself walking forward until she stood directly under the entrance to the attic. When she got there, the door fell still.
Celeste gazed up at the padlock as it swayed quietly and felt strangely detached from reality as if she were watching a movie rather than experiencing that moment herself. All of the fear and dizziness seemed to leave her at once as she watched the lock come to a stop. It was with that same odd detachment that she noticed movement outside the window.
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