Huffing further up, Mariah realized where this was leading. She looked back to Olivia who seemed to have realized the same thing. The illustrious missing attic that no one believed existed. Except Olivia, she seemed to have known it was there all along. Mariah was not blind to that fact at all.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The climb felt way longer than it should have, probably because they were climbing up a staircase sealed in the wall with no air flow and little light. Claustrophobia was a real thing, and it was beginning to get to Mariah. She needed to get out of this space, and soon.
Climbing a little faster they finally came to a small door. It was strangely simple. You would think the door would have been spectacular given someone had taken so much time to bury it away inside the house and then remove it from any floor plans or history whatsoever. But it was just a simple wooden door, painted brown but most of the paint had chipped away with time.
Olivia reached out and pushed on the door. Mariah expected it to be locked, but, to her surprise, it slowly opened. Mariah stepped in first, followed closely by Olivia. This was too creepy to investigate alone. As annoyed as they had been with each other earlier, they clung closely together now.
The room was massive but had only one single window at the front. The window had been covered in some kind of translucent paper. The room itself was painted a pale pink color, a beautiful wallpaper of leaves and flowers covered one wall, and in front of it stood a wooden bed. Old white mesh material curtains hung around the entire thing, almost like a princess bedroom. This was obviously a child’s room. There were no toys anywhere to be found though. Just the bed. At the far side of the room near where the kitchen would be downstairs, Mariah saw the other end of the food elevator she had wondered about before. So, this is where that ends up, the bedroom in the attic, how weird, not to mention creepy, she thought.
Mariah turned to look at Olivia, who had wandered off to investigate the room. She was currently standing at the window, feeling the covering that was fixed to it.
“This looks like some kind of tissue paper, almost like what you would find in a gift bag at a child’s birthday,” Olivia said, and Mariah walked over to join her. “Should we take it off? We might be able to just pick it away,” Olivia suggested.
Mariah liked the idea of opening this room back up to the outside world, so she nodded okay, and they began picking at the window. Slowly the paper peeled away. Mariah turned back to the rest of the room prepared to poke around more now that a little light was coming in. She looked around wondering where to start. The room was so bare. As her eyes traveled the length of it, they landed on a girl standing in the far dark corner. Mariah’s heart stopped, and she let out a blood curdling scream which caused Olivia to spin around hastily.
“I swear, I swear there was a girl in here. She was standing there staring at us. She, she had blood coming from her eyes,” Mariah sputtered and then knelt over, gagging at the recollection of the girl standing in the corner bleeding profusely from her eye sockets. She let out several dry heaves before composing herself. Cleaning up puke was not what she wanted to add to her to-do list.
Olivia rubbed her back for a moment before walking to the corner of the room where Mariah had pointed. She found nothing.
It was hot. There didn’t seem to be any vents in the room. That would make sense, the room had been sealed off long before anyone would have added modern conveniences like air conditioning. Rubbing her head to rid it of the sweat that was beginning to bead down her cheeks, Mariah turned to look around the room again.
“It is really hot up here,” Olivia said. “Maybe you hallucinated. I’m feeling lightheaded too. We should head back down for now and come back with fans and water. I need to change out of these clothes and back into mine anyway.” Olivia motioned down at her outfit then walked to the stairs leaving Mariah standing in the room alone.
Mariah took one more look around before following Olivia down the stairs and back to the basement. She watched as Olivia picked up her pile of clothes she had left at the foot of the staircase and together, they headed to the kitchen.
Olivia went straight to the laundry room to change clothes and Mariah went to the sink where she took her water pitcher, filled a glass and gulped it down. She was filling the glass for a third time when Olivia came back into the room dressed in her own clothes again. Olivia walked over to the sink, and she too filled a glass with water and drank it quickly. She was obviously parched after sweating in the attic, and the hike. She told Mariah that she couldn’t recall when she had drunk water last.
After having her fill of water, Olivia bagged the clothes she had been wearing and handed them to Mariah. Mariah held the bagged clothes for a moment before deciding to toss them in the kitchen trash. She had little hope that they would stay there anyway. The mask was still on the counter where she had set it after taking it off Olivia’s face earlier. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands.
“I wonder if this belonged to the girl I saw,” Mariah said out loud, but to herself. The mask, the medical records in French, the pictures. “That’s right!” she spontaneously shouted, stunning Olivia who jumped at the sudden proclamation. Almost as if answering her silent question, Mariah finished her thought out loud, “There were some pictures, old ones but I have a picture of that girl, the one I saw in the attic. I know it’s her.”
Mariah rushed up to her room on the second floor of the house to find her little notebook. She had forgotten to grab it that morning. She flung the pages open to the photos of the girl, all dressed up looking beautiful, young and healthy. Returning to the kitchen where Olivia was waiting, she waved the picture at Olivia.
“This is her. Without the bloody eyes, and she’s older in the picture, obviously, but this is her.”
Olivia looked at the girl in the photo, obviously old, possibly one of the first photographs of a person taken. She looked back to Mariah, then over to the mask.
“She actually kind of looks like she could be related to you,” Mariah joked.
“I bet that mask was hers too. It looks like it would match what she’s wearing in this picture.” Olivia turned the mask over again and re-read the name carved into the base, “Olivette,” she said. “If this is Olivette and she was the girl in the attic, I wonder what she’s still doing here,” Olivia uttered more to herself than to Mariah.
“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts?” Mariah chimed in, only to see Olivia shrug.
“Well, if you saw one, then I guess I should. Do you still not?”
Mariah contemplated that question for a moment. She wasn’t sure what to believe. At this point she couldn’t deny that weird things kept happening, but maybe she was letting her imagination run away with her. After Johnny’s death and all the chaos that caused, she was probably suffering from PTSD or something. Shaking off the thought of the girl, she wondered why the girl had blood coming from her eyes.
Of all the ghosts she would want to see in her house, she would have preferred her dad. George Washington would have been cool too, not some sick kid. She must have been thinking out loud because Olivia let out a chuckle at the Washington part.
“Do you speak French?” Mariah blurted at Olivia, taking her off guard. She had completely forgotten to ask that the other night, but if Olivia could speak French, then hopefully she could read it too; then they could get more answers on this house from the records in the library.
“Nope. I speak some Spanish though,” Olivia said with a shrug.
“Dang, do you know anyone that speaks French? There’s all these records in the Library that are in French, and I think they might tell me more about this house’s history.” Mariah looked hopeful, but Olivia shook her head; she didn’t know anyone that spoke French.
“Maybe we should eat something, and I can text some friends to see if they know of any French speaking people we could talk to. I’m starving,” Olivia said, walked over to the fridge and began to shuffle things around looking for food.<
br />
She had really made herself at home over the last couple of days. Oddly, Mariah found that she was okay with that, for the moment anyway. Her anger from earlier was becoming a distant memory.
“Oh, can I use your phone?” she turned to Mariah with a smile, “I don’t have one, obviously.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They ate peanut butter and syrup sandwiches in silence, while Olivia texted away trying to find someone that spoke French to translate the papers. After roughly half an hour of sitting with only the sound of clicking phone keys and chewing, Mariah was ready to call it quits. Her original idea of foraging through the public library for help was looking like the better option right now. It was getting late and after the insanity of the day, she was tired and ready to get some sleep. Exhaustion was becoming a daily occurrence lately.
“You almost done?” Mariah inquired softly.
“Almost, promise doll, I’m going to find a translator.” Olivia stuffed some more food into her mouth and went back to texting.
Mariah waited until Olivia had finished eating, then she suggested that they call it a night. Olivia was clearly disappointed, but non-the-less she relented and prepared to leave. She looked tired as well, though she claimed she could stay up for days without getting sleepy. She asked Mariah if it would be okay if she came back over in a couple days to help some more. She explained her paramedic shifts were two days on, one day off and rotated throughout the month. Mariah was fine with that. She was all too happy to have some alone time and maybe a chance to visit with her mom.
After an awkward goodbye hug, something Mariah was not very good at, having not been a hugger growing up, to anyone except her mom and dad anyway; the two split ways. Olivia wandered into the night and Mariah closed the door, locking it behind her. If teenagers were pranking the new creepy house owner, she needed to make sure all the doors and windows were locked; for their safety and hers. No one else would fall from her roof to their death if she could help it.
Mariah walked room to room locking windows. She flipped the old-fashioned turn locks on each one and then she pulled up on the window to make sure it was sealed. There were a few windows that didn’t lock, even though she turned the lock every which way trying to latch it. For those windows, she went to the kitchen, got small glasses and set one on the top ledge of each unlockable window. If someone tried to open the window, at least she would be alerted to it by the sound of breaking glass.
After she felt sure the first floor was secure, she headed to the basement. There were a few windows down there and the servant’s door as well. The door was locked, that she was sure of. She had made sure as soon as she moved into the house to secure that creepy entrance. That would be the key place to sneak in if someone really wanted to. Now with the staircase exposed, Mariah wanted to be extra sure that the basement stayed secure.
The windows in the basement all locked without issue. Before heading back upstairs she stood and stared at the steps fitted up against the back wall of her basement. That would have been the only way she could think of for Johnny to get to the roof the other day, but it was still mostly covered at the time.
Mariah wandered around the room again, slowly feeling each wall and crevice. How did the young man end up on the roof when he was supposed to be looking at the basement? It made no sense.
The room in the attic was creepy, there was definitely a pull to go to it, but Johnny wouldn’t have been able to squeeze through a small opening and shuffle all the way up steps in complete darkness, much-less make it to the attic with no one noticing. Then there was him jumping, why jump? Did he see the girl too, with the bloody eyes and sad face? Sure, that scared her. She damn near puked at the site, but to kill himself? Mariah wasn’t sure what to think.
The walk around the basement turned up nothing new, no new doors or openings, no footprints, nothing that suggested that Johnny had been there at all. Mariah felt resolved that he must have used a ladder and kicked it over to make it look as though he had magically ended up on the roof. Maybe he was having relationship problems, or something else happened in his personal life that made him decide that it was time to end it. Suicide was running rampant through youth these days. If she was honest, she considered it for a short time after her father died. The thought of leaving her mom alone with no one to lean on was what helped her get over that hurdle. Maybe Johnny just didn’t have that kind of love for his own family.
Wiping some stray tears from her cheeks, Mariah headed back up the stairs. She was in need of some tea and a good night’s sleep. She heated her tea kettle as if on autopilot, poured some tea leaves into the bottom of her cup and let it set for a few moments before adding a little honey and walking to the stairs to bed. She made it up three steps before she remembered that she had left the mask on the counter. Hurrying back through the dark rooms to the kitchen, she snatched the mask into her arms and then headed to her room. Remembering on the way that her mattress had officially died, she went instead to the room with the daybed.
Resolving herself to do a window check before she called it a night, she circled the second floor just to make sure there was nothing out of place, and all the locks were secure. She went from room to room slowly checking. Even though Greg wouldn’t be out to do any work on the foundation didn’t mean other contractors wouldn’t still be out to work on other things and the house needed to be secure and picked up.
The pest control people should arrive tomorrow, and the asbestos inspector would be around as well this week, to see if the plaster on the walls could simply be repaired or if Mariah would be looking at completely redoing the walls with sheet rock. If that ended up being the case, she was looking at a small fortune in remediation alone much-less the installation of the new walls. Luckily, the ceilings were in decent enough shape that she should be able to paint over them and be okay.
With everything where it should be, Mariah headed into the bedroom stripping her clothes off as she went. A bath sounded amazing. She could relax and enjoy the rest of her tea while soaking. She also needed to invest in a good cleaning company to come in and give the whole house a good once over when it was more livable.
With the bath running and steam beginning to cover the mirror, Mariah pulled her thick curls into a messy clip on top her head so she wouldn’t get her hair too wet. She was not in the mood to deal with the mess of curls and knots that came with them. She climbed into the tub, closed her eyes and sank back into the hot water. The mirror, now completely covered in the remnants of the heat from her bath water was slowly dripping down into the sink. Unnoticed by Mariah, the word “HEL” was slowly disappearing as it began to fog over again.
Mariah bathed, finished her tea and padded back to the bedroom still slightly wet, but too tired to care. She flung a baggy shirt over her head, tied back her hair into a better position, climbed into the bed and fell right to sleep. Her phone lay beside the mask on the side table. It buzzed several times.
“Mariah, are you okay?”
“I have been trying to reach you all day.”
“Mariah, please call me back.”
All the messages were left unanswered because Mariah was sound asleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Morning came far too quickly. Mariah woke to a loud pounding coming from downstairs. She sat up trying to figure out what was happening, only to realize it was her front door, and someone was beating on it as though their life depended on it. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she stood and made her way down the staircase. Mariah flung the door open, but no one was there. The pounding sounded again, it was coming from the side door, in the kitchen.
“I’m coming, hang on!” Mariah yelled as she slowly drudged herself through to the kitchen. She could see now that it was her mother.
Oh boy, she thought, this should be interesting. Her mother never just shows up. She thought for a moment then she realized her phone was upstairs and she forgot to plug it in last night; it probably died. Her mom gets paranoid when she d
oesn’t answer calls right away. One of the unfortunate but understandable side effects of her father’s car crash.
“Hi momma,” Mariah said letting her mom in, and drudging over to the coffee pot to make a hot cup of mocha coffee. “You want some?” she asked behind her. She knew the answer but thought she should ask anyway.
“No ladybug, I had my smoothie already. Where have you been? I was trying to get ahold of you all day yesterday. The news has been reporting the death of that boy on your roof all day and night. It’s only a matter of time before you have press or creeps poking around. I want you to get some pepper spray, maybe a gun. You never know with people these days.” Her mom looked completely serious.
Mariah shut the pod into the coffee maker and walked to the fridge for some cream, trying to ignore her mother’s excessive paranoia.
“Mom, I’m fine. My house is locked up tight and I even made a new friend that has been helping me out on her days off. Not to mention there are going to be all kinds of contractors hanging around over the next few months. I can’t be carrying a gun around with me. I don’t even know how to shoot.” Mariah rolled her eyes as she stirred her coffee and walked over to sit at the table across from her mom.
A gun was a horrible idea. She might be able to get behind pepper spray, but even then, what good would that do? Oh, hello creepy person, hang on right there while I get out my pepper spray and get you with it. Can you hold still please so I can get this in your eyes? Mariah giggled at the thought, accidently snorting some coffee into her windpipe, and sending her into a fit of coughing. Her mother looked on in awe of her daughter’s weirdness. Mariah sat up, still coughing but laughing all the same.
The Secrets of Oakley House Page 7
