Mystery!

by Chantelle Aimée Osman

“Miz Rinda wouldn’t like it if I didn’t address you proper.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bessie. Bessie Legrasse.”

  Penny brightened. Bess Marvin was one of Nancy Drew’s best friends; perhaps this was a sign? “It’s good to meet you, Bessie.”

  The girl eyed her uncertainly, still smiling dutifully. “Uh…good to meet you too, Miss Penny.”

  “So, how did you hurt your arm?”

  Bessie’s smile abruptly faded. “I said something I shouldn’t have, and Miz Rinda didn’t like it.”

  “…What?” Penny goggled at her in shock.

  A sudden realization sparked in the girl’s eyes, and she smiled and shook her head as if she’d merely made a joke. “Oh, pay me no mind. Ain’t nothing. My mama’s setting the table right now, and Miz Rinda says she wanted me to make sure you join her for breakfast. I put some fresh towels out for you in the bathroom if you want to wash up. Please pull the cord by the door if you need anything; it’ll ring a bell downstairs and I’ll come up right quick.” The words spilled out of her, panic clear in her tone if not on her face. “I need to go help Mama with breakfast. Bye now.”

  The girl curtsied awkwardly and fairly ran from the room.

  Penny blinked after her. The room was suddenly oppressively quiet.

  Face and arms washed and changed into a fresh cotton dress, Penny went downstairs and found the dining room. The dark wood table was big enough to hold a dozen people, but the only person seated there was a thin, elderly woman with a regal bearing who—after the girl’s eye was able to move past her wild mane of white hair and sagging, spotted skin—Penny realized bore a striking resemblance to her dead mother.

  Even the dead part, she thought to herself. Though surely she was quite lovely when she was young.

  And then, a more alarming thought: Will I look like that when I’m old?

  “Ah, child, you’ve come down to join us.” The grand old lady speared her silver-topped cane on the floor and pushed herself to her feet. She stood an imposing head taller than Penny. “Come give Auntie Rinda a kiss hello.”

  Stomach tightening, Penny made herself smile, stepped forward, stood on tiptoes, and planted a light kiss on her aunt’s powdered cheek. Like Haughton, the old lady smelled of mothballs and mold, although the odor was nearly overwhelmed by her lavender perfume.

  Morinda held Penny at arms’ length. “You look so much like your dear mother. You have stars in your eyes, just like her! But, alas, you’re short like your father.”

  It was hard to keep herself from frowning; nobody had called Penny short before, and she didn’t care for it. And Morinda had pronounced “father” in the same tone as most people said “maggot” or “rat.”

  Bessie and an older, chubby woman—the girl’s mother—were bustling back and forth bringing dishes from the kitchen. It took Penny a moment to notice that the woman had a black eye. She was wondering where Bessie’s mother had gotten her bruise when she realized that there was a third place set at the table.

  “Is Mr. Haughton joining us?” she asked.

  “Well, bless your heart!” Morinda released her and sat back down in her chair. “No, Ezekias is attending to church business today. We always leave a place at the table for my brother the reverend; he’s long been afflicted with a sleeping sickness he caught on an expedition in Arabia, but we hope that the warmer weather will help his blood along and he’ll join us one of these days soon.”

  “An expedition?” Penny asked, still standing.

  Bessie hurried around the table and pulled Penny’s chair out; feeling uncomfortable again, she sat and the servant girl pushed her close to the table.

  “Yes; Eleazar is an expert in certain mysteries, and they needed him to identify relics in a ruined city amongst the dunes. The journey was a spiritual revelation to him, but sadly took a toll on his health. His rooms are on the third floor; it’s important to preserve his rest, so nobody is allowed up there unless I can supervise them myself. We have strict rules here at Haughton Manor to prevent noise that might disturb him. No horseplay, no raised voices, no hammering or sawing near the house, no music.”

  “What about television?”

  Morinda looked aghast. “My word. We would never allow an idiot box in this house!”

  Stunned, Penny stared down at her plate as Bessie opened a biscuit upon it and ladled gravy across the halves. No Lassie? No Walt Disney? No Bonanza? No Alfred Hitchcock? No Man from U.N.C.L.E? How would she survive the summer in such isolation?

  “I trust you’ll enjoy your breakfast, dear,” her aunt said, clearly oblivious to Penny’s dismay. “Georgia cooks it exactly according to Haughton family recipes. Don’t you, Georgia?”

  “Yes’m, I do,” the woman replied, her voice cautious rather than proud.

  Penny’s mother’s biscuits were light and flaky; these were thick and dense. The gravy was heavy, and even warm it had an unpleasant gelatinous feel in her mouth and left a strangely bitter aftertaste. She dutifully ate what was on her plate.

  “Have some cantaloupe, dear; it’s fresh from the garden. And try the peaches.”

  The cantaloupe, which was more beige than orange, had a grainy texture and was cloyingly sweet. The peaches certainly looked ripe enough, but were unpleasantly sour, and the cream had the same bitterness as the gravy. Even a spoonful of sugar didn’t help.

  After breakfast, a man with a black physician’s bag arrived at the house; he bore a striking resemblance to Mr. Haughton. After a hushed exchange in the foyer, Morinda took him upstairs, presumably to examine the reverend.

  Penny went into the kitchen, where Bessie was drying dishes with a white rag and her mother was putting pots and pans away in the cupboards.

  “Did you need something, child?” Georgia asked. Sweat beaded on her brow.

  “I was wondering if Bessie could play cards with me. Later, I mean, when she isn’t busy. You could play, too, if you wanted?”

  “Oh, bless your heart!” Georgia said. “We’ll be busy here right up until we need to walk into town to catch the last bus back to Bucktown.”

  “Walk?” Penny asked. It had to be at least three miles back to town! “It’s so hot out there; can’t Mr. Haughton give you a ride?”

  Bessie gave a bitter laugh, and her mother shot her a look.

  “Child, don’t you say a word; you want a cast on the other one, too?”

  “No’m.” Bessie went back to her drying.

  “I think if you stayed, and if I asked nicely, Mr. Haughton would give you a ride.”

  “Bless your heart.” Georgia shook her head and gave Penny an appraising look. “I reckon you really ain’t from around here, are you? You ever met a Negro before?”

  Penny thought hard, realized the brief interactions she’d had with porters and hotel maids didn’t really count, and shook her head. “No, ma’am.”

  “How you reckon my folk live ’round here?”

  “Like…folks?” she replied helplessly. At their expressions of disbelief, she added: “Am I…missing something?”

  “Miss Penny.” Georgia inhaled deeply through her nose, clearly trying to figure out how to properly phrase some harsh truth. “Our folks ain’t welcome in Fensmere ’cept as help, and only as help. Back when the slaves got freed, the town fathers declared that no Negroes could be about after dark. If we’re inside the town limits come sundown, we’re likely to be hanging by our necks from a roadside tree come sunup.”

  Penny stared at her in open-mouthed horror.

  “Miz Rinda says help from the two of us is worth five round dollars a day,” said Bessie, “And even that’s a cruel robbery of her family fortune. Getting ourselfs home is none of her concern.”

  Penny remembered the prices at the Oldsmobile dealership and realized that Bessie and her mother could probably never afford their own car. They’d have to walk forever. She felt sick at the injustice of it. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry yourself about it, child,” said G
eorgia. “We’re grateful for the work; we ain’t starvin’, and we ain’t in a field all day. And besides, even if we were welcome, I can’t imagine the money that would make me want to spend a night in Fensmere.”

  Bereft of television, records and card partners, Penny spent time unpacking and exploring her room. It was large and well appointed, but fairly dull. No books or old clothes to play dress-up in. The only oddity she discovered was a small, hinged hatch set into the bottom of the sturdy bedroom door, like for a cat, but it was wider and only half the height of the ones she’d seen.

  She couldn’t imagine Morinda would allow a small yappy dog, but maybe there was a cat in the house? She loved petting the neighbors’ kitties. So, as was her habit at home, she quietly made her way downstairs, testing for squeaky boards as she stepped. Penny froze when she overheard the physician and her aunt talking in the foyer.

  “So you think he’ll be awake by the new moon?” her aunt asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “Well before then, I’d say. He should be in fine fettle for church.”

  “Oh, thank the Great One.”

  “How is the girl?” the physician asked.

  “To my eye, far less fiery and strong-willed than her mother. Ezekias says she went with him without complaint. Polite and compliant the whole trip down. A perfect little lady.”

  “Good, good.”

  Morinda sighed heavily. “I don’t understand where we went wrong with Edna. Her blood was as pure as we could make it, and yet she resisted us at every turn. And she went and bred with a Jew, of all things, after all we taught her! I reckoned Penny would be an utter waste, and yet she seems perfect.”

  “There are some who extol the benefits of hybrid vigor,” the physician replied consolingly. “Perhaps the Haughton genes were most able to come to the fore when they had lesser genes to work against?”

  Lesser genes? Penny frowned. She couldn’t remember her biological father, but her mother told her stories and showed her photos. He’d been handsome, the captain of his college basketball team despite his stature—he enjoyed a challenge, apparently—and later a rising nuclear physicist who died from accidental radiation exposure. She’d seen a letter from the President himself declaring her father’s research to be that of a genius. What greater genes did these Haughtons have? She doubted any of them could shoot a single hoop or walk three miles to the bus stop in the summer heat, much less solve a complex equation.

  The doctor departed. Calling for Georgia, Morinda swept towards the kitchen. Penny let out her breath and continued down the stairs. A turn of the corner took her to a huge library with floor-to-ceiling shelves and a pair of red wing-backed chairs separated by a reading table.

  A large, quite old leather-bound book covered with odd symbols lay upon the table. Curious, Penny opened it, and began to read.

  At first she thought it was some variant of One Thousand and One Nights. But in its convoluted prose she found, not tales of princes and thieves, but a purported history of strange, unfathomably powerful beings beyond the stars. The narrative drew her in, and she felt the hairs on her arms rise and her heart begin to pound as she read words describing cosmic grotesqueries few humans could ever comprehend.

  Penny’s young mind floundered, drowning in the dark sea of this horrible ancient knowledge. She stumbled back from the book, her chest constricted, and fainted dead away upon the Oriental carpet.

  She awoke later in the guest bed. The physician and her aunt loomed over her.

  “Ah, she’s awake,” he declared. “No worse for wear, eh, child?”

  “What…what happened?” She sat up, feeling sick and dizzy and wondered how she had gotten into her nightgown.

  “Your blood is thick from living up north and your system isn’t accustomed to the heat and humidity,” the physician replied smoothly. “You just need to take it easy and not exert yourself.”

  Bessie came into the room with a bamboo bed tray. Her face was a neutral mask, and she seemed to avoid making eye contact with anyone in the room.

  “Drink some tea and eat some pudding,” the physician said as Bessie silently set the tray across her lap.

  She dutifully ate a few spoonfuls of the overly sweet rice pudding from a glass custard bowl and drank the tepid, bitterly herbal tea from its dainty bone china cup. Soon, her head began to swim, and no matter how hard she tried, her eyelids wouldn’t stay open.

  “There, that’s it, a young girl needs her rest,” she heard Morinda say just before she passed out.

  Penny’s dreams took her through the gallery of monstrosities she’d read about in the book. She tumbled helplessly through the cold void of outer space as huge malignant creatures lurking in the shadows twixt the burning stars eyed her as a scientist might gaze upon the tiniest itching mite. One barely brushed her with an enormous icy pseudopod and suddenly she was plummeting down, down through time and space, striking cold misted water and plunging to a crushing depth where she lay trapped in sucking mud, thinking she would drown there alone when the enormous clammy bulk of something dragged itself from a chasm nearby and reached out toward her with slimy suckered tentacles—

  She jerked awake in the guest bed, nightgown sodden with sweat, heart thudding in her chest, her throat aching as though she had been screaming. She was alone, the room silent, and in that moment she wished she were back home where her mother would always hold her and rock her back to sleep after a nightmare.

  And then she remembered that her mother was gone, nothing left of her but an urn of ashes buried out in Greenlawn Cemetery, and Penny’s heart broke again for the hundredth time that month. Why would the universe let someone so beautiful and kind as her mother die so senselessly? The girl wept into her pillow for what felt like an eternity, and still no one came to comfort her.

  Finally, she wiped her tears from her eyes, and stumbled into the bathroom to wash her face and brush the sour fuzz from her teeth. She dried herself and stared fiercely at her red-eyed reflection. Babies lay in bed and cried, and she wasn’t a baby, was she? Sherlock Holmes never cried. Her mother was gone, burned to almost nothing, and what now? What would Nancy Drew do? Why, she’d pick herself up and get on with solving the mystery, wouldn’t she?

  She inhaled deeply, trying to clear her foggy head, trying to push away the horrible images from her dreams, trying to stop remembering the smell of the funeral home. The Haughtons were not the kind of people who did something out of the goodness of their hearts. They’d brought Penny to their house for a reason. Why? And what was really going on in the third floor? Was the reverend really a sleep-sickened invalid, or were the physician and Morinda keeping him there against his will?

  Suddenly Penny was completely awake. Her whole body shivered with dread and the desire to go upstairs and see for herself. She put on her robe and slippers, and quietly left her room.

  Penny pressed her eye to the bedroom’s keyhole. There was an unmoving lump in the bed, barely visible in the moonlight coming through the window. A sleeping man, or just mounded bedclothes? The itch to know was unbearable.

  She turned the knob gently, expecting it to be locked, but the mechanism clicked open and the door swung inward, silent on oiled hinges. Breathing quietly, she took a cautious step forward into the room, dreading a squeaky floorboard, and then another.

  “Child…” the voice was deep and oratorical.

  She froze like a deer and turned her head. A gaunt figure sat in the shadowed chair in the corner of the room. It stood and came forward, entering the moonlight, and what she beheld would be burned into her memory forever.

  The reverend was tall and so thin she could see the lumps in his sternum beneath his taut skin. Her eye traveled down his naked torso to his belly, where…her mind reeled at what she saw. The skin of his abdomen had entirely eroded away, and instead of intestines and other vitals, a vile, crab-armed creature crouched in the basket of his hipbones. A gleaming black head on a long, snaky neck pushed past the tattered curtain of skin and
craned toward her. Five eyes faceted like a fly’s beheld her with cold curiosity. It chittered at her, a weird cricket chirp that felt like cold fingers scratching up her spine.

  “Has your mind been opened to the stars, child?” The revered intoned, and she realized the vile thing in his belly was controlling him as though he were some Mechanical Turk. “Do you bleed?”

  Penny had seen more than enough. She bolted from the room, raced back down the hall and half ran, half tumbled down the stairs. The huge front doors were locked, and she immediately became so focused on undoing the bolts and latches that she did not realize that someone had come up behind her until the ether-soaked rag was pressed tight to her face.

  “Now, child,” Morinda admonished as Penny tried to fight free. “Be a good girl and this will all be over soon…”

  Penny awoke some time later; her head pounded and she felt sicker than when she’d caught stomach flu. She staggered from the bed into the bathroom and dry-heaved into the toilet. The daylight streaming through the window made her eyes ache. She drank water from the tap, washed her face, and tottered back into the bedroom. At least someone had thought to pull the drapes closed, so the room was comfortably dim. She tried the bedroom door; it was locked from the outside.

  A sudden squeak and beam of light at her feet made her look down. Someone had pulled open the little hatch in the bottom of the door.

  “Miss Penny, are you awake?” asked Bessie. “I brought you some food.”

  Penny dropped to her knees, trying to peer out the hatch. All she could see was a tray bearing a teacup and a bowl of porridge and, beyond it, Bessie’s scuffed brown Mary Janes.

  “Please help me,” Penny whispered. “I need to get out of here.”

  “I…I can’t.”

  “Please! Please, just…call my stepfather and let him know what happened? I can give you the number.”

  “There ain’t no phones here. And if someone was to come looking for you or if you was to go missing, they’d know I had a hand in it. And then it’d be more than a broken arm for me and Mama, you understand? They might burn Bucktown.”