The Guests on South Battery

by Karen White

  “I think it’s about to get a lot colder.” Her gaze met mine. “Do you feel it?” Her voice was barely louder than a hush.

  I nodded. “I hear lots of voices, but I think that’s just because we’re both here and we’re acting as a portal for lost spirits. But there are two strong presences—although there might be more. It’s just that they’re overshadowed by these other two.”

  My mother nodded and stared at the staircase just as a flash of white disappeared around the corner of the landing, followed by the very faint sound of running feet. Very slowly and deliberately, Ginette began to remove her gloves finger by finger. “I feel them. One is gentle; almost sweet, I think.” She turned to me, her eyes wide. “She wants to show us something. She’s the one who wants our help.”

  I nodded. “I think I just saw her. Running up the stairs.”

  “You can see now?”

  “Yes,” I said with some relief. “Like I said, it comes and goes. But nothing’s blocking me now.”

  Her lips pressed together in a grim line. “Button loved this house. It’s so sad to see it this way.” She spun around, taking in the holes in the plaster and the warped wooden floor planks. “I guess it was more than she could handle as she got older.” Her forehead creased. “I wonder why she didn’t leave the lake house to Jayne instead of this one.”

  “The lake house? Amelia mentioned Button’s family had one, but I assumed it was sold or something, because it wasn’t part of the estate as far as I know.”

  She nodded, her head tilted back to see the gaping hole where a Baccarat chandelier had been removed and now sat in a corner covered with an oilcloth. “Well, the Pinckney family owned a house on a lake, not too far from Birmingham—that’s where Jayne’s from, right? Lake Jasper, I believe. In Alabama. I used to go up there for weeks at a time during the summers with Button and her family. The house had actually been designed and constructed by Anna’s father’s company. That’s how the families met, I believe.” She smiled to herself, her expression blurred with memories. “The Pinckneys must have let it go at some point. It’s a shame, really. It wasn’t as grand as this place, but it was cozy and beautiful, and right on the lake. We spent many happy times there. Jayne might have found it easier to be at home there instead of in a place like this.”

  “Unless it’s as old as this place,” I said, only half joking. “I’ll ask Jayne—maybe her lawyers mentioned it. If not, we’ll just have to assume that it was sold years ago.”

  I led the way upstairs, feeling someone watching us, someone waiting. For what, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that it knew we could sense it, could tell that we knew it was coiled and waiting to spring. Probably knew that I was petrified and on edge. And for a brief moment, I wondered why I’d thought that losing my psychic abilities would be such a bad thing.

  We paused in the upstairs hallway, my mother looking down the hall toward a closed door. “Can I go see Button’s room? I don’t think I’ve been in there since we graduated from Ashley Hall.”

  I nodded, saddened to think Button had spent the last years of her life in this bedroom, and her whole life in this house, unable to live a life beyond it. She had stayed behind to take care of her mother, and then her sister-in-law, and then had died here, alone.

  I pushed open the door, half expecting to see the doll sitting in the rocking chair, then let out a breath when I saw it was empty. The room had an almost tangible occupied air. Although it was vacant, it was almost as if someone had just made the bed, or brushed her hair, and then left, expecting to return shortly. And maybe she had.

  “Oh, look at this,” Ginette said. She stood by the dresser, where the tarnished silver frames held photos of loved ones who now stared out into the empty room.

  I moved to stand next to her. “You probably know a lot of these people.”

  She nodded, then pointed to the one of her with Amelia and Button in their Ashley Hall uniforms, careful not to touch it. “I can’t believe she kept this. I probably have the same photo somewhere—most likely in the bottom of a shoe box.”

  I looked at the photo of Button with the handsome young man beside her at her debut. “Is this Sumter?”

  A sad, almost painful expression crossed her face. “Yes. He was so good-looking, wasn’t he? And so funny, too. Not to mention charming. Jack reminds me a little of him, actually.” She sighed. “I never expected this house to be empty, without Button, or Sumter, or at least their children. We can’t always plan our lives, can we?”

  I shook my head. “No, we can’t.” I pointed at the photo of the young girl. “And that’s Hasell. The first time I saw it, I thought she looked a lot like Button. Now I’m not so sure. There’s something about her chin. . . .”

  My mother moved over to the nightstand, where a smaller frame sat, one I hadn’t noticed before. It was a photo of Sumter and Button, although only Button was smiling into the camera. Sumter was also smiling, but his face was turned toward the unseen person at his side. The siblings were both still young and handsome, but it was clear that this photo had been taken several years after the other photos. It wasn’t that the two of them were gray and wrinkled—they weren’t—but it was more that they wore the years in between on their faces. I wondered if it had been taken after Hasell’s death, and around the time of Sumter’s divorce from Anna. That would account for the looks of stress around their eyes and mouths.

  Sumter wore a dark suit and striped tie; Button had on a simple summer dress with a sweetheart neckline, a single strand of pearls at her neck, and a large, perfect pearl in each ear. There was another person on the other side of Sumter, a woman with a bare arm linked into the crook of his elbow. But she had been cut from the photograph, apparently to fit it into the frame, so only her arm and hand were visible in the picture.

  I thought Ginette was going to pick it up, forgetting that she’d already removed her gloves. Instead she stood looking at it for a long moment before quietly saying, “Rest in peace, dear friend.”

  After a moment, I said, “You ready to go up to the attic? It’s Hasell’s bedroom.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I know. I remember Amelia telling me that, and how I thought it was a horrible place to put a child. Amelia found the bed for her, you know. She didn’t own the shop back then, but she was working for another dealer and found a bed that could be broken apart and easily moved up the narrow attic stairs.”

  She followed me out of the room and I left the door open. “Amelia said that you never visited Hasell because Anna didn’t like you and didn’t want you in the house.”

  Her narrow shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I suppose that was one of the reasons. But I was also married by then, and had a little girl. Your father and I were having problems and I was too preoccupied to notice that Button might have needed my friendship regardless of whether or not Anna wanted me in her house. It was Button’s house, too, but she allowed people to take advantage of her.”

  I paused outside the door to the attic, as much to steel myself as to find out more about Button’s story. “Even after you retired and returned to Charleston and reconnected with Amelia and with me—and eventually Dad—you never called her?”

  She looked down, her lashes shielding her eyes from me. “No. I didn’t. I really regret that now. She’d been so kind to me. . . .” Looking up, she smiled. “Well, that’s all in the past. Let’s see about that ghost of yours.”

  As if conjured, an icy wind blew down the corridor toward us, making the door shake in its frame. My mother looked at me and I nodded to confirm that we weren’t alone. “This is where Anna hanged herself, so be prepared. It could get rough.”

  “I’m expecting it,” she said with a grim smile.

  Another cold breeze whooshed down the hallway toward us, the door vibrating so hard it felt as if someone was on the other side yanking on the doorknob. I grabbed hold of it with one hand, and my mother took my other
hand in her own. I twisted the brass knob, the door pulling from my grasp and slamming against the wall with a loud bang.

  A screech pierced the quiet, and then the black cat was leaping from the bottom step and scampering between our feet to run down the hallway and disappear into Button’s room. I turned to look back into the attic, willing my heart to stop its heavy thumping.

  The first thing I became aware of was the loud buzzing of flies, hundreds of winged black bodies hurtling themselves through the air, the short splatting sound as they hit the walls and window somehow amplified. My mother tightened her hand around mine as we both looked up the attic steps. And screamed.

  CHAPTER 21

  My mouth was open, but the scream wasn’t coming from me. Or my mother. The high-pitched ringing came from the doll that stood fully erect at the top of the steps. The window behind it cast it at an unnatural angle, creating a grotesquely swollen version of itself, and one much more terrifying.

  My mother squeezed my hand so tightly that I thought she might have broken one of my fingers, but it would take a lot more than that to get me to relinquish her grasp. The screaming went on and on and on as if the disc inside the doll had become stuck. But that noise wasn’t coming from a mechanical disc. It was coming from farther away, from a place where I had no desire to visit.

  I tried to back out of the doorway, but my mother blocked me. “We can’t leave now, Mellie. It’s asking for help.”

  The shrieking stopped as soon as she’d spoken, the silence now punctuated by the sporadic splats of a dwindling number of flies. My eardrums took a moment to adjust, the piercing scream continuing to echo in them, and the words “help me” buried somewhere in that cacophony.

  “I’m not going up there,” I said, meaning it.

  “Yes, you are. And I’m going with you.” She put her foot on the first step and dragged me up beside her.

  Immediately, I felt the cold rush of wind on my back, smelled the putrid scent of something rotting. I turned my head to the wall by the side of the stairwell, where the stench saturated the air. “Do you smell that?”

  She nodded once. “I think even the dead could smell that.”

  “Not funny,” I muttered. I looked up at the doll that still loomed ahead of us on the top step but had blessedly stopped making any noise at all. “If you want me to go up there, you’re going first.”

  “Fine.” Without letting go of my hand, she began leading me up the stairs one at a time, the air now frigid in the attic despite the warmth of the air outside. “Don’t let go of my hand, no matter what.”

  “Don’t worry. I have no intention of letting go.”

  We stopped in front of the doll, my mother face-to-face with it. “She’s here,” Ginette said. “The little girl. Can you feel her?”

  I nodded, aware now of a new sound behind me, a scratching sound like bone against bone. “I can’t see her, though, because she’s hiding. But I don’t think it’s from me.”

  One of the snow globes slid across the shelf, then splintered and shattered in the middle of the room, glitter and water staining the floor beneath the exposed rafter. The plastic smiley-faced orange lay facedown in the puddle like a victim in a crime scene. I looked above the mess and saw a bedsheet, knotted into what looked like a noose, swinging gently from the exposed rafter.

  “The two spirits are here now,” my mother said softly. “One of them wants me to touch the doll.” She stepped into the attic and reached for the doll, but I blocked her.

  “But which one, Mother? That might not be a good idea until you know for sure.”

  The sound of something heavy being slid across wood warned us to duck before the next snow globe was thrown across the room, smashing into the wall behind us.

  “Anna?” she called. “Is that you? We’re here to help you.”

  Her request was met with an almost deafening silence, like what I imagined would be at the eye of a tornado, broken only by the ceaseless scratching noise. And then a soft swishing noise, like the twisting of fabric, brought our attention back up to the ceiling, where the noose was unraveling by itself, then slowly slipping from the beam to land on my mother’s shoulders. She left it there, her eyes wary.

  “Hasell?” she said, her voice calm and quiet. “Are you here?”

  The whirring began inside the doll’s chest, the popping and grinding noise I now recognized. It went on for several long minutes, the doll’s mouth opening and closing but not saying anything until it finally wound down to a stop. I was left with the impression that it had tried but had been stopped by another force.

  “Hasell?” my mother tried again. “You’re trapped here. Tell us what you need so you can move on to the light. There is a better place for you, and we can help you get there.”

  I shivered from the cold, watching now as the entire shelf of snow globes bounced and vibrated; then I pushed my mother out of the way before another one shot across the room, hitting one of the posts of the bed and slithering to the floor.

  “I’m going to touch the doll now, Mellie.”

  Once again Ginette reached for it, but the doll tumbled backward as my mother was yanked back by the sheet that was now wound tightly around her neck by unseen hands. She let go of my hand to reach for the fabric at her throat, and I felt my strength diminish like a plug being wrenched out of an electric socket. She tugged on it with the desperation of a drowning man grasping at a watery wave.

  I leaped for her, digging my fingers into the taut fabric, aware suddenly of a new smell, faint yet spicy, like pipe tobacco. And just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, as was the tension on the sheet, allowing it to slip free. My mother fell to her knees, rubbing her neck, which wore red welts striped across it. It was again warm in the attic, and sweat beaded on my forehead, dripping into my eyes.

  I helped my mother to her feet, examining the marks on her neck more closely. “You’re going to have a fun time trying to explain that to Dad,” I said.

  “That’s what scarves are for,” she replied almost absentmindedly as she studied the doll, now on its back, staring at the place the sheet had been draped around the beam. “The doll was Hasell’s,” she said. “I do remember that. Button gave it to her, not as a toy to play with—it’s too fragile and valuable for that—but as a companion. Hasell wasn’t allowed any friends because they might have germs.”

  “Are you going to touch it now?”

  She shook her head. “Not today, I’m afraid. I’m a bit drained from that little episode. I don’t think I need to right now anyway. I’m fairly confident that Anna is still here—and just as unhappy as she was in life. And poor Hasell, still trapped up here and looking for a way out.” Her eyes met mine and I wondered if I looked as weary as she did. “We must help them, Mellie. We can’t leave them trapped up here forever. Especially if Jayne moves in.”

  I began picking up the shattered remains of the three snow globes, stacking their plastic bases in a single pile on a dresser, then piling the glass and larger chunks in another. “I’ll let Sophie know where to find the doll. You can have access to it at another time.”

  She didn’t seem to hear me. “Did you smell something while we were getting the sheet off my neck?”

  “Like pipe smoke?”

  “Yes.” A soft smile lifted her mouth. “I think it might have been Sumter.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  Ginette shrugged. “We wait for Jack to turn up something new, to help us understand why Hasell and Anna are still here. Sometimes, when a death is unexpected, the person is confused and doesn’t realize she’s dead. I don’t think that’s the case here. I think they’re both here for a reason, and I know for sure that at least one of them doesn’t want us to know what that reason is. And when we think we know what that is, we come back. At night.”

  She seemed unsteady on her feet, so I took hold of her elbow and led h
er to the stairs. We were halfway down before I saw what all that scratching had been. The stairwell wall had been covered from ceiling to floor with what looked like childish writing drawn in pencil. I had to look at it for a long time to realize that the words were written backward, as if from the other side of the wall. I jerked back when I realized what it said.

  “Help me,” my mother read out loud, meeting my gaze.

  We looked back at the marked wall, staring at it for a long moment before heading down the stairs. I was getting ready to close the door, locking in the doll and whatever else was up there, when I heard the unmistakable sound of a mewling cat, coming from inside the stairwell wall.

  I lay in bed next to Jack, listening to the steady sound of his breathing. I’d feigned exhaustion and had skipped dinner, then gone to bed early, pretending to be asleep when Jack crawled into the bed and kissed me gently on the cheek.

  I wouldn’t have been able to go to sleep even if the neon lights on the bedside clock hadn’t continued to flash the time of ten minutes after four. I’d reset it three times already, but it always reverted to four ten if I made the mistake of looking away or allowing my eyes to close. Not that they closed very often. I’d promised my mother that I would talk to Jack, bring my fears out into the open, be the new Melanie I was trying to be. But it was so much easier to promise something than to actually do it.

  A cell phone rang shrilly and it took me a moment to realize it was mine, the unfamiliar tone throwing me off as I struggled to sit up and reach for the phone at the same time. I might have fallen out of the bed if Jack’s strong arm hadn’t reached over to pull me back, nestling me into the curve of his body.

  “Hello?” I finally managed, holding the phone close to my ear. As before, there was nobody there, just the odd prying noise that seemed to echo from a long way away. I glanced at the number, knowing it was Button’s even before I registered all ten digits.

  “Hello?” I said again. I looked at the time on my phone. Four ten. I hit the end button and threw the phone back on the nightstand, then waited for Jack to go back to sleep before I moved.