The Guests on South Battery

by Karen White

  General Lee gave me a look of apprehension as I began moving my legs at a pace that was slightly faster than a walk, but much slower than what others would refer to as a run unless one was a turtle. He soon caught hold of the idea and kicked up his speed, his short furry legs practically prancing. He actually appeared to be smiling. I had no idea how old General Lee was, since I’d inherited him with the house, but he was way too old to be outpacing me as I struggled to keep up. A couple of coeds with College of Charleston shirts darted past us, ponytails flying, making me feel like another reptile entirely—one that was related to the turtle but now extinct.

  By the time I reached South Battery, I was convinced I would drop dead of a heart attack, and stopped, planning to turn around and go back home, feeling I’d done enough exercising for the day. But when I started walking in the direction from which we’d just come, General Lee yanked suddenly on the leash, yapping frantically. I turned to see what he was barking at and spotted a large, fat cat perched on the garden wall of the house opposite. Without my glasses, it was hard to tell, but as I approached, General Lee now in full attack mode, I could see the flap of skin that covered the empty eye socket, and the one green eye staring at us intently, the tail teasing us with its long, leisurely sway.

  Just as we reached the curb in front of it, it jumped to the ground and ran down the sidewalk away from us. General Lee yanked on his leash so hard that it slipped from my hand, and he began chasing the cat. It was still early enough that there wasn’t a lot of traffic on the street, but my dog couldn’t be trusted off-leash. If it were diagnosable in dogs, I was pretty sure he had ADD; his ability to be distracted by pretty much anything that moved or made a noise was enough proof for me.

  “General Lee, stop!” I shouted to no effect. “Come,” I tried, as if in his entire life he’d ever actually heard and listened to that word. “Treat!” I said instead, knowing that was the one word that might actually register. It didn’t. I had a sharp pain in my side before I realized we were heading to the Pinckney mansion.

  I watched the cat run up the outside steps and disappear through the open front door, General Lee close on its heels. I stopped at the foot of the driveway, bent over double, and dug my fingers into my side in a futile attempt to get the pain to stop.

  “Melanie?”

  I opened my eyes at the sound of Sophie’s voice, but I lacked the energy and the oxygen required to straighten. I saw Birkenstocks and the bottom of a purple gauzy skirt with rainbow-colored elephant heads splattered like vomit all over the fabric. I let my gaze slide behind her to the Dumpster, where I spotted the backside of a man leaning over to lift something, his jeans slipping far past where they should be. I clenched my eyes shut again. “Is that Rich Kobylt?”

  “He’s helping me remove the cast-iron tubs from all the bathrooms. What are you doing here?”

  I straightened slowly, the pain gradually lessening. “I was running after General Lee, who just ran inside the house chasing that black cat.”

  She looked confused. “I didn’t see a cat, but I did see General Lee, who was running a lot faster than I’ve ever seen him move.”

  “Yes, well, the cat is apparently a lot faster than he is.” I looked behind her to where I saw Rich and another man lifting a claw-foot tub up a ramp that led into the back of his pickup truck, another three tubs waiting next to it. “Why aren’t those going into the Dumpster?”

  Sophie looked as if I’d struck her. “Because these can be refinished. They’re solid cast iron! Do you know how much those would cost today? Besides, you’re the first one to admit that all the buyers these days are looking for old stuff that looks new—and with the modern bathrooms we’re putting in this house, these will be perfect.”

  I looked at the tubs, with so much of their porcelain paint chipped off that they looked like brown-and-white cows. “I’ll have to trust you on that one.”

  Rich noticed me and walked over, pulling up his pants as he approached. I wondered if I left an anonymous gift of a belt on his driver’s seat, whether he’d wear it. “Good morning, Rich.”

  “Mornin’, Miz Trenholm.” He jerked his chin toward the house. “Your dog’s gonna have some trouble catching that cat. I’ve tried a bunch of times, but he’s a fast ’un. None of my team can, either. Course, they claim they didn’t see him, but that’s only because they don’t want to be bothered. They’ll be bothered all right when that cat dies somewhere in the walls and starts to stink. Ever smelled that before?”

  I almost said that I had, and worse, too, but chose instead to focus on his bumper sticker, which had the numbers 0.0 in a white oval. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m more sensible than my wife and value my knees more than she does. She’s a marathon runner and has a sticker that says 26.2. So I had to get my own.”

  I had a vision of him running, his pants falling down to his ankles and making him trip, and I figured it was a good thing he wasn’t a runner.

  I also wanted to high-five him and ask where I could get a sticker, but I caught Sophie frowning. “I guess I should go find my dog,” I said.

  We left Rich to deal with the tubs and I followed Sophie inside. If possible, the interior was an even bigger mess than it had been when I was last inside. Crumbled plaster and strips of moldy wallpaper lay in piles along the walls, the furniture moved to the centers of the rooms and covered in tarps, the paintings removed from the walls.

  Sophie’s eyes became moist as she looked around. “Sadly, even with a nice restoration budget, we’ve had to get rid of more interior elements than we’d like.” She brightened. “Happily, that article Yvonne found regarding the renovations in 1930 was extremely helpful. The architectural firm that was used and mentioned in the article still had the files that contained all the wallpaper and fabric patterns, as well as pen and pencil drawings of many of the ceiling medallions and other architectural elements in the house. It was like a gold mine, really. It’s certainly going to take away a lot of the guesswork as well as save time. Although . . .”

  “Although what?” I prompted.

  “I feel sort of guilty making all these decisions. I mean, I bring stuff to Jayne for her approval and she just agrees to everything. She refuses to come see any of the work we’re doing. She says she has dust allergies, and I get that, but I could give her a mask.”

  I shrugged. “She really doesn’t care. I don’t think she plans on living here, so her goal is to make it as appealing to buyers as possible, in as short a period of time as possible.”

  Sophie shook her head. “It’s sad, really. Most people would give their left arm to be in her position. Myself included. If I didn’t know about her background, I’d say some people have all the luck.”

  “Yeah, well, not everybody thinks inheriting an old home is a gift. Some might even view it as a punishment.” Before she could argue, I said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you—what’s going on with the cistern in my backyard?”

  “Oh, yes. That. Well, there’s been a bit of a delay.”

  I wanted to scare her with my narrowed-eye stare, but she busied herself picking through the piles of debris in front of us. “Yes, well, Meghan Black—my research assistant who’s been doing much of the work while I’ve been focusing my efforts here—had a little accident with the XRF machine.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s an X-ray machine we use to analyze bricks to determine what rivers they came from, which allows us to figure out the origins of the bricks. Since cisterns were usually made from old bricks from various places, this could be fascinating.”

  “Fascinating.” I repeated the word, but I made my inflection different from Sophie’s, hoping she’d take the hint. She didn’t.

  “Sadly, Meghan dropped it on her foot and broke it. I hate to say it, but at least her foot broke the fall, so the machine is okay. But she’s in no shape to crawl in and out of a cist
ern for a while. And my other grad students are too busy working on their theses or helping me here. We’ll just have to wait until she’s up and about for the excavation to continue.” She said this last with her nose practically pressed against the wall, studying something I couldn’t and didn’t care to see.

  “That’s lovely. Hopefully it will all be done before the children graduate from high school. I’d hate for one of them to fall in.”

  She was relieved from saying anything by her phone ringing out “Imagine” by John Lennon. I couldn’t hear the other person, but from the horrified look on her face and furtive glances in my direction, I knew two things: It was something that involved me, and it wasn’t good news.

  “I’ll call you back,” she said before hanging up the phone and looking at me with wide eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not sure. Remember my friend John Nolan—the antique toy expert who knows a lot about the Edison dolls?”

  “Yes. He came and picked up the doll last week. Does he have good news?”

  She clamped her lips shut and shook her head. “I’m afraid not. The doll appears to be missing.”

  “Missing? As in he misplaced it?”

  “He’s not sure. He’s positive he brought it to his office and locked it in the safe he has there for valuable items like that. He remembers very clearly doing it. But it’s gone.”

  “Maybe a coworker took it. Or he put it somewhere else and doesn’t remember.”

  She shook her head again. “He told me that he noticed it missing yesterday and has spent the last twenty-four hours looking for it and asking people who might have seen it. Apparently, he’s the only one who knows the combination to the safe, and it was still locked when he went to go check on the doll.”

  Our gazes met for a long moment, as if each of us was daring the other person to speak first.

  A man’s shout followed by a loud thump, as if something heavy had been dropped on the floor above us, jerked our heads toward the stairs. A flash of white flitted past my field of vision, disappearing around the corner by the landing.

  “Did you see that?” I asked quietly.

  “See what?”

  I felt what I could only call relief. I had seen an apparition, and it hadn’t been blocked—but neither had the dark, oppressive feeling that weighed down my shoulders now, pressing my feet into the floor and making them hard to move.

  “Everything all right up there?” Sophie called.

  When there was no answer, she headed up the stairs and I followed, not because I wanted to but because I didn’t want to be left alone. We paused near the top of the stairs, trying to gauge the situation.

  A workman wearing a white Hard Rock Foundations T-shirt stood in the hallway, his back pressed against the wall, a hammer lying in the middle of the floor. The color of his face matched his shirt. As if afraid to lift his hand from the wall, he pointed to the end of the hallway with his chin. “It wasn’t there ten minutes ago when I went down to the kitchen to get my hammer. But I know the door was closed, because it was locked and I figured I’d have to jimmy it with my hammer.”

  I knew what I’d see even before I turned my head and caught sight of what had alarmed the workman. The Edison doll, its face blank and its eyes as wide and staring as before, stood inside the door on the bottom step that led to the attic, its head facing us with unblinking creepiness.

  The high trills of a little girl’s laughter echoed around the hallway, its origins unclear. The dark presence I’d felt downstairs was behind us now, passing through us toward the open door. We all shivered, but only I knew why. “I’ll get the doll,” I said, my voice cracked and dry.

  General Lee barked and then came bounding down the attic stairs without the cat, and sat at my feet watching the progression of the cold mass of air moving toward the door and the steps. He stayed where he was, the little coward, when I moved forward. I strained to make out the shape of the dark stain of air that seemed to stretch and shrink in front of me. The stench was unbearable, like the smell of rotting meat, reminding me of my conversation with Rich Kobylt about the cat.

  It surged ahead of me, up the attic stairs, hovering halfway up. Without taking my eyes off it, I took another step forward within grabbing distance of the doll. I reached out my hand, ready to snatch the hair and yank it toward me regardless of how valuable and rare it was. The doll didn’t belong on those stairs, and I resented it thinking that it did. My fingers brushed only air, falling short of the doll’s head, and before I could try again, the door slammed in front of me, narrowly missing my hand.

  Sophie uttered a small expletive completely out of character for her, and I was sure the workman would have said even worse if he’d not already run downstairs, leaving his hammer behind and a promise that he would never come back.

  Without taking my eyes off the door, I reached down and picked up General Lee, feeling his little body quivering in my arms. A loud meow came from the other side of the door, making the three of us jump.

  A vigorous scratching began in earnest, causing General Lee to whimper and struggle in my arms. “We can’t leave it in there,” Sophie said.

  “We can’t?”

  Sophie frowned at me. “No. It could damage the doll. And it would be inhumane,” she added hastily. She was horribly allergic to animal hair and had never been a pet person—which was why my dogs liked to sit on her lap when she visited. “One of us has to open the door and let it out.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You’re volunteering the one of us who’s had more experience with unexplained things like doors slamming with nobody there.”

  Her eyes widened innocently. “You said it, not me.”

  I unceremoniously dumped the dog in her arms, then faced the door again. “Is there anything up there?”

  She sneezed, and I felt partially gratified. “It’s the little girl’s bedroom, I think—although why one would put a child in a hot attic is beyond me. I don’t think it’s been touched since she died. Well, except for water damage from the leaking roof. Didn’t you show it to Jayne?”

  I shook my head. “We assumed it was just the attic with the usual collection of attic junk.”

  “Jayne needs to come take a look, decide what to do with it. The girl’s nightgown is still at the foot of the bed.”

  I was sure my look of horror matched her own. The sound of vigorous scratching was louder now, but that was not what propelled me forward. I felt the other presence, too, the one I associated with the flash of white that I’d seen several times on my visits to the house, a presence that was light and without malice. I could almost feel gentle hands moving me toward the door. It opened as I neared, revealing a bright ray of sunlight streaming down the stairs from the attic window, illuminating the doll and the cat sitting next to it. The other presence was mercifully gone.

  With a loud screech, the cat leaped past me and then down the stairs, General Lee barking his annoyance at being held back.

  “Did you get it?” Sophie asked.

  I turned to her with the doll in my arms. “Yeah, I have it.”

  “No. I meant the cat. Did you find it or did it run back up the stairs?”

  “It ran past you—didn’t you see it?”

  She shook her head. “I must have been too busy trying to restrain Cujo here when it slipped by. As long as it’s not trapped in the attic.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What a relief.”

  She put down the dog and handed me the leash and I happily relinquished the doll. “I have no idea how this got here, but I suggest you plant it in your friend’s office so that he thinks he’s merely going insane instead of giving him proof.”

  We walked quietly down the stairs and were surprised to find Rich Kobylt standing in the middle of the foyer, his Clemson hat off as he scratched the back of his head.

  “Anything
wrong?” I asked, trying to pretend I hadn’t seen one of his workers run from the house like a bat out of hell.

  “Can I be honest with you?”

  Both Sophie and I nodded.

  With a lowered voice, he said, “I don’t want to scare you or nothin’, but I think this house might be haunted.”

  We stared back at him with carefully neutral expressions.

  “But don’t you worry. I’m a little sensitive to this stuff, and I’ll let you know if I think there’s any danger.” His eyes drifted to the doll and I saw him shudder violently. “Good Lord, what is that?”

  “Not to worry—we’re taking it out of the house. One less thing to haunt it.”

  “Thanks, Miz Trenholm. Back to those tubs now. I’ll keep you posted.”

  As soon as he was outside, a door slammed upstairs just as a whirring and popping began deep inside the doll’s chest, and then subsided. We held our breaths for a long minute, waiting to see if it would speak. With a sigh of relief, Sophie carried it across the foyer and had almost reached the door when the high tinny voice that brought to mind raw fingernails scratching at the inside lid of a coffin screeched out at us. Help. Me.

  CHAPTER 17

  Isat on one of the gliders in the nursery with Sarah on my lap as I dried her chubby little toes and smelled her sweet fresh-from-the-bath baby scent. I needed to find a way to bottle that so I could whip it out and sniff it to calm me down when I was feeling stressed. Like now. I had yet to grow used to the furniture rearrangement, and now, adding to the chaos, there were upended bins of primary-colored plastic toys that didn’t match the décor at all. The carefully stacked and labeled bins of blocks and educational toys that I’d spent hours creating and organizing were untouched in their spots on the shelves against the walls.

  I had to turn my head away from the mismatched outfits Jayne had laid out on the changing tables. It was too much for me. Instead I closed my eyes and inhaled the sweet scent of my baby. Even JJ’s cries of protest about being removed from the bathtub didn’t faze me.