Wolfhowl Mountain

by Dian Cronan

  The next portrait shows a much younger couple, again in black and white, but twenty or thirty years later. The woman is beautiful and wears a short, sparkling flapper era dress, and holds a long cigarette holder, a curl of smoke wafting from the tip. The man, wearing a black tuxedo, smiles with her, a glass of liquor in one hand, his wife’s shoulder in the other. They look like the kind of fun loving people Mother would like. Something’s off about their smiles though. They’re too tight, like two people who’ve been forced to say “Cheese!” in the middle of an argument. It reminds me of the months leading up to my parents’ split, when they put on fake smiles for everyone, but their false smiles always betrayed them.

  “These must be some of the old owners,” Letta says. “I wonder which one is A. C.?”

  “Hey,” I say, realizing something, “hold on a minute.” I use the flashlight to review all three photos again.

  “What?” Letta asks.

  “These were all taken in the drawing room,” I say. “I recognize the fireplace.”

  “So?”

  I hesitate. Something about these photos nags at me.

  At the end of the hall, we approach the open door with trepidation. Here, the howl of the wind and tatting drum of rain is so loud that having a conversation is nearly impossible.

  “Maybe we should leave the attic for another day, when it isn’t raining,” Letta says, nearly shouting. “It could be cold and leaky.”

  A shiver crawls up my spine. “Fine with me. Let’s check in with the others.”

  We find our way back to the staircase. The weather isn’t quite as loud here, but we still have to turn the volume on the radio all the way up to hear Patty.

  “Lonely Jew to Three Kings, over.”

  I laugh. “What?”

  Letta shrugs and calls over the radio again as I shake my head.“Three Kings to Lonely Jew,” Patty responds. “What’s up?”

  “You’ll never guess what we found up here,” Letta says, thinking of the photos and the diary.

  “We’ve found some interestin’ thins down heeah ourselves.”

  “Are you about done down there? You should join us in the kitchen for a nightcap,” Letta says.

  We’re just wondering what’s taking Patty so long to reply when Eileen’s scream comes over the walkie-talkie, loud and clear.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Doors Open

  Shane and Patty hear Eileen’s frantic footsteps race from the bathroom through the other door and they run after her.

  “Eileen!” Patty says. “Wait!”

  Eileen is already at the top of the stairs by the time Shane and Patty scramble to the bottom. Eileen’s sheer panic gives them the sensation of being pursued from behind, as if the darkness chases them. They run.

  Shane and Patty burst out of the basement door. Eileen is already tugging open one of the front doors, preparing to run into the wailing storm.

  “Eileen!” Shane shouts. “Stop!”

  Eileen ignores him. She opens the door, but freezes in her panicked tracks. There, on the other side of the doors, is the shadow of a monster backlit by lightning. She screams again.

  “What is all the screamin’ about?” I say as Letta and I run into the foyer. “What’s going on?” I see the shadowy figure on the porch, but recognize him immediately.

  Beckan rushes into the foyer, slamming the door and locking it behind him. “What the hell is goin’ on up heeah?” Rain drips from his soaked hair to his drenched coat and pants. He looks like a drowned cat.

  Eileen breaks into tears and throws herself at Beckan, burying her pretty face in his chest, her sobs muffled by his flannel jacket.

  “Get the lights,” Shane says.

  “The power’s out,” Beckan and Letta say in unison.

  “That’s why I’m up heeah,” Beckan says, looking at me. “I came tah check on you. Now, would someone mind tellin’ me why Eileen Patton, who hasn’t said two words tah me in her entire life, is clingin’ tah me like grim death?” Eileen grips Beckan with all her strength and quietly sobs into his armpit. He awkwardly holds his hands away from his body, as if he’s thinking of shaking her off like a wet dog.

  “We don’t know,” Patty says, sounding panicked herself and worrying her fingers along the edges of the diaries.

  “We were in the basement,” Shane says, turning to me. “Patty and I were in that weird room with the dirt floor and Eileen went into the bathroom next tah it. Next thin we know, she’s screamin’.”

  “What are those?” I ask, eyeing the diaries in Patty’s hand.

  “We found these buried in the basement,” she replies, holding them out to me. “We think they’re diaries.”

  “Buried?” Letta says, and Patty nods. “Weird.”

  I ask, “Were they in that weird corner, where there was nothing on top of the dirt?”

  “Yeah,” Shane says. “What ‘bout you? What’d you find?”

  I take the diaries from Patty and then pull the diary I found from a back pocket, setting it on top of the others, making a stack.

  “They’re identical!” Letta exclaims.

  Letta’s right. Aside from the dirt on the ones from the basement, the diaries are exactly the same in size, shape, and design. I read the initials on the cover of each and wonder what it means.

  “Um, hello?” Beckan says. “Crazy cryin’ girl still attached.”

  “Sorry.” I hand the diaries to Letta. “Here. Can you guys take Eileen into the kitchen? I set some mugs and hot cocoa packets out before you got here. Maybe that’ll calm her down. I’ll be there in a minute”

  “Sure.” Letta and Patty go into the kitchen while Shane pries Eileen off of Beckan with a gentle “Shh” and rubs her head. “Just relax. Let’s go sit.”

  Beckan waits until the others are out of earshot before he echoes his earlier question more firmly. “What the hell is goin’ on, Rose?”

  “Sleuthing,” I say as innocently as I can.

  “Sleuthin’?”

  “Yeah,” I shrug. “I wanted to know more about the house. They offered to come over and help. We were just lookin’ around. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothin’ good evah comes of that, that’s what.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Beckan cusses to himself. “Nothin’. It means nothin’. Have you satisfied your curiosity now?”

  “Actually,” I say carefully, “there was one more room I wanted to check out.”

  “Oh?” Beckan says unenthusiastically, hands on his hips. “Which one?”

  “The fire room,” I reply. “The one that hasn’t been restored up at the top of the steps.”

  He shakes his head, exasperated. “Why?”

  “It’s the only room left,” I shrug. The silence between us grows and we hear the clinking of spoons and susurrus of subdued voices from the kitchen.

  Beckan sighs. “I suppose you’re gonna go whethah I go with you or not?”

  I nod.

  “Fine. I’ll go up there with you. But let the record show it’s under duress.”

  “Noted.” I grab the flashlight Letta had set on the floor to make room for the diaries in her tiny hands, and we ascend the staircase.

  I hesitate at the door long enough for Beckan to ask if I’m sure I want to go in. I rally my strength with a nod, and push through the door.

  The same miserable feeling that had overtaken me that first day sweeps over me again. The sadness, anger, and desperation hit me like a tidal wave and I fall back into Beckan.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I lie, refusing to admit I’m suddenly light-headed.

  I shine the light on all four of the blackened and charred walls. The far wall is leaking from the force of the wind and rain, but I can barely hear the trickle above the din of the storm. There’s another loud crack of thunder and a flare of lightning on top of each other.

  “What is it you’re expectin’ tah find up heeah?” Beckan asks, sounding nervous.
>
  I focus the flashlight on the octagonal cutout identical to the one in my bedroom. Even in the scarred blackness, I can see the small square door. “I want to know what’s behind that door.” I look up at Beckan and his eyes meet mine in the dark, intense and irritated.

  “Alright,” he says reluctantly. “Let me see if I can get it open.” He follows the beam of light and I move so the door isn’t lost in Beckan’s shadow.

  Beckan crouches down and surveys the door. He puts his fingers around the edges. Just as he’s about to pull, the door crumbles into ash at his feet, and I gasp.

  “Well that was easy,” Beckan says.

  “What’s back there?”

  “Nothin’ that I can see.”

  “Look harder.”

  “Flashlight,” he demands with an open hand. I hand it over and he shines the light into the shadowy abyss of the turret. “I still don’t see –”

  “What?” Every hair stands at attention, and my patience disappears. “What is it?”

  Beckan’s body ices over on the spot. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

  “What?”

  Beckan reaches into the turret and pulls something out, something small in his bear paws. I take the flashlight back from him and point it at his hand. He blows on the object and ash flutters into the air like mini feathers. In his hands he holds a small, red diary.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Nothin’.” To prove it, he flips through the diary’s pages. They’re all white. Pristine. Blank.

  As I reach out a hand to take the diary, I feel the air pulsating around the small book. This diary is important, I know it. The house wanted me to find it, wants me to have it. My fingers are only millimeters from the red leather when –

  Boom. The sound rings through the house, loud and hollow.

  “What was that?” I say, alarmed.

  Beckan shrugs as the sound echoes again, louder. BOOM.

  We race into the hall.

  BOOM. The sound is loud and deafening in the cavernous foyer.

  “What is it?” I shout, covering my ears.

  Beckan puts an arm around me as Eileen, Shane, and Patty burst into view below.

  BOOM.

  Shane looks up at us and points, shouting. What’s he saying? I can’t hear him over the storm.

  BOOM.

  “What?” I keep my ears covered, but come closer to the banister, trying to read Shane’s lips as he gesticulates animatedly. It’s what?

  BOOM.

  “It’s the doors,” Shane is saying. “The doors!”

  I follow Shane’s finger and look at the blood red doors.

  BOOM.

  It’s as if something is outside in the storm, trying to get in. It’s more than the knock of a stranded stranger.

  BOOM.

  It’s more than the bang of a battering ram.

  BOOM.

  With each bang, the doors bulge inward and Letta yelps.

  BOOM.

  I’m coming in, Rose. I’m coming in.

  “No!” I back away from the banister. How’s this possible? I’m awake.

  Beckan grabs my arm to steady me.

  BOOM.

  “It’s not possible!” I look at Beckan for help, but see my own fear reflected back.

  I’M COMING IN, ROSE. YOU CAN’T STOP ME.

  “I’m awake!” I’m still covering my ears. I back up until I feel the wall behind me. “I’m awake!” I scream.

  BOOM.

  Suddenly, both blood red doors fly open and Eileen screams. They slam all the way back on their hinges as rain, wind, and debris whirls into the foyer. The storm roars into the house like a hungry lion, attacking our faces with the teeth of twigs and leaves and whatever else is picked up by the wind’s clutches.

  The world begins to darken and the floor starts to fall away from my feet. I scream again, tears streaming down my face, “I’m awake! I’m awake!”

  “Rose!” Beckan shouts over the snarl of the storm.

  I’m falling. The world gets dimmer and dimmer. Beckan’s face fades. I hear my own scream, as if from at the bottom of a well.

  “But I’m awake!”

  And then, nothing.

  PART TWO

  Jason McBride

  The Third Owner: 1961-1963

  Jason McBride, by all accounts, was a good man. He made his money and reputation early and young, and all without the help of a college degree. He went straight into the successful family construction business, McBride and Sons, the day after his high school graduation. He’d never wanted to do anything else. He’d never considered doing anything else, and even if he had, he would have ended up in the same place anyway. Jason was the youngest of four boys and all three of his elder brothers had joined the family business. It was a family tradition no one opposed.

  McBride and Sons’ specialty was restoration. They rebuilt dilapidated houses. They brought glory back to crumbling brownstones, strength back to bowing frames, warmth back to the cold coal-caked hearths. When business was slow or it was too cold to do some of the more intensive work, they got by restoring antiques and other aged wooden furniture. The McBrides were a family of artists when it came to wood and Jason greatly enjoyed working alongside his aging father and maturing brothers. Although he was often treated like the baby of the family that he was, and teased endlessly, he wouldn’t have traded his job for any other in the world.

  As far as Jason was concerned, his life was good and he was exceedingly happy. This lasted for five years. Living and working was fun and easy. He was learning from the University of Life. He learned math by building with his hands. He learned architecture through trial and error. He learned literature through conversation with others. What did he need college for?

  Then the unthinkable happened. Jason hereafter only referred to that day as The Incident, and The Incident was only referred to if absolutely necessary.

  The day of The Incident, Jason stayed home with a hangover. His oldest brother was getting married the next week and they had celebrated a little too hard the night before. His three brothers could hold their liquor fine, but Jason, always the baby of the family, was easily weakened by the wiles of alcohol. When he wasn’t vomiting, he was thinking about vomiting.

  Mrs. McBride, a lifetime stay at home mom who enjoyed spoiling all of her boys, did what she always did around lunchtime. She packed lunches for her husband and sons, always something homemade. She served Jason before she left for the construction site that was the Otto family home on the other side of town. Lunch, Jason would always remember, was a roast beef sandwich made from the leftover seasoned meat the night before and a piece of his mom’s famous blueberry cobbler. He was lying in his bed, letting the wafting smell of lunch churn his stomach, when his life, as far as he knew it, ended.

  Mrs. McBride arrived at the Otto home promptly at noon. The Otto family had recently welcomed their fifth child and needed to make some accommodations to their house in order for the family to be comfortable. While the family stayed at a nearby hotel, the McBride men were swinging sledgehammers and gutting the structure. After making some inquiries of the bricklayers lounging in the shade by the curb, Mrs. McBride found her husband and sons in what used to be a small kitchen nook, hungrily awaiting their lunch and telling dirty jokes. Jason’s brothers greeted their mother with a group hug and a loud “Ma!” That was the last thing anyone heard before the explosion.

  A leaking gas line. That’s how the fire marshal explained it to Jason a few days later. It was his father lighting his regular pre-lunch cigarette that set the blast off. How his father, brothers, or mother could have missed the telltale smell of the leaking gas, Jason would never be able to ask. Nor would he ever be able to ask how his experienced father or brothers could have let something so avoidable happen. How could they have let this happen? How could they so carelessly abandon him like that?

  There were no coffins at the McBride funeral. Five gold urns sat side by side at the front of the
funeral parlor, not that Jason would ever remember that. His days were dark and the many condolences were a blur. After the news truly hit him, and after he was done cursing God and the world for turning him into nothing better than a stray dog, all he would remember were the roast beef sandwich and the blueberry cobbler rotting on his bedside table.

  McBride and Sons was left to the only surviving son, but how could he continue his family’s work, his family’s art, all on his own? The old rocking chair in need of sanding and a new coat of stain made him think of his father’s hands, rough with years of experience. Swinging a sledgehammer to knock down drywall made him think of his eldest brother’s brawny form. A lunch pail, no matter what the contents, brought back the fragrant pastry smell of his mother’s apron. No, he couldn’t return to that life. That Jason was dead, separated into pieces, a little bit of him in each golden urn. The new Jason, the hollow-shelled orphan that remained, sold the business of McBride and Sons and left town a very rich, but very lost, twenty-five year old.

  Jason’s devastation couldn’t be understood by anyone. In an unexplainable instant, he became an orphan. Son to no one. Brother of no one. It seemed he was the last man on Earth, and that’s how he lived for a few years. He walked from city to city, listlessly wandering in search of a new life. He let the wind alter his course like a kite, camping outside as long as there was no risk of hypothermia. In the dead of late Decembers and Januarys, he found an abandoned hovel somewhere to curl up in, made a fire, and moved on the next day.

  How odd that this nomadic habit of his was exactly how he came to be in possession of Wolfhowl Manor. It was late on an icy January evening of 1961 when his eye caught sight of the looming dark shadow on the hill. A hard rain had been pelting him for miles. He was chilled to the bone and desperate to lie down and fall into a coma. The apparently deserted mansion would be perfect.

  Jason managed to spend a peaceful and warm night in the drawing room of Wolfhowl Manor, despite the creaks and groans of the aging wood under the weight of the storm. Many children had run screaming from the very same sounds, certain a ghost had breathed by them or a monster had brushed their ankle. But these sounds were familiar to Jason, comforting even. Just the lonely low cries of a house in need of a little love and a lot of work.