The Haunting of Abram Mansion
Alexandria Clarke
Copyright 2019 All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means without prior written permission, except for brief excerpts in reviews or analysis
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
About the Author
1
You’ll be late to your own funeral. That was the heartily original greeting people usually recited to me upon my tardy entrance to any event, rather than a friendly hello or a kiss on the cheek. After twenty-eight years of being late to literally everything, I’d have thought people would start expecting me to show up a good half hour after everyone else. Instead, that damned societal expectations fairy kept batting everyone on the nose, and the repetitive comments about my perpetually delayed arrivals continued on. Though I had to admit, if I was going to pick one event out of my entire life to actually show up on time to, it should have been the meeting to finalize my divorce.
It wasn’t my fault. I set my alarm for a good two hours before I was supposed to leave the house, and I only hit the snooze button six times. On the last snooze smash, I accidentally dismissed the alarm instead and slept for another forty-five minutes. Then the coffeemaker decided to pitch a hissy fit, spitting hot water everywhere but into the carafe, and I had to give it an attitude adjustment, which ended with the shattered glass pieces of the carafe scattered across the floor of our small kitchen. I learned my lesson not to mess with cantankerous kitchen appliances when time was already running short, but not soon enough. To keep me on my toes, my boots ran off as well, and it took me another ten minutes to unearth an alternate pair of shoes.
One of the worst parts about living in the small town you grew up in after the age of eighteen was that everyone—and I mean everyone—knew who you were as well as your entire personal history since the day you were born. It made getting around a nightmare because every person you passed in the streets wanted to ask you about your day. The blustery wind helped me out a little—I could pull my vivid purple scarf up over my nose and the hood of my jacket down over my eyes without looking like a serial killer—but there were one or two people who recognized the exposed bridges of my cheeks and stopped me to say hi.
“Peyton!” someone called with coffee-fueled positivity.
I almost didn’t turn around, but in this town, if you snubbed someone, you’d forever be remembered as rude. “Annie! Hi, it’s so good to see you.”
Annie Phillips—a round-faced, pink-cheeked high school teacher that I’d known since we were toddlers because our mothers were best friends until a high-stakes cupcake incident in fourth-grade homeroom estranged them—engulfed me in a hug. The fake fur collar of her pink plaid puffy jacket went straight up my nose, and I tried not to sneeze into her ginger ringlets.
“How have you been?” Annie asked. Her grip around my shoulders had the same power and sensation as wearing a straightjacket. “I haven’t seen you in so long. What have you been up to?”
I ripped myself out of Annie’s grasp and scratched my nose. The tickle of fake fur lingered. “Oh, you know. This and that. I would love to catch up, but I’m actually late—”
She swatted my shoulder. “Peyton Fletcher: always late. Didn't you win that superlative in high school? You haven’t changed a bit.”
My laugh came out with a poorly concealed nip of impatience. “Wasn’t your superlative most likely to stay in high school forever? Isn’t it wild how accurate those things turn out to be?”
“Wild!” Annie waved her arms like she was riding the tamest rollercoaster known to man. “Where are you heading?”
“The courthouse.”
Annie sobered, stepping closer to me and linking her arm through mine, then asked in a hushed voice, “It’s true then? The rumors?”
I didn’t enable her weird secret-keeping cone of silence and asked, “What rumors?” at full volume.
“That you and Ben are over,” Annie said. She burst into tears. “It’s terrible! The two of you make me believe in true love. You’re such a perfect couple, and you’ve been together for so long! Why would you ever get divorced?”
“Well, Annie,” I said, trying to keep my voice level as people began taking notice of Annie’s waterworks. “People grow and change. Ben and I got married at eighteen, when neither of us knew what we wanted. Now, we’re giving each other the opportunity to pursue the things we should have done ten years ago.”
“You mean like your photography?” Annie sniffled.
I searched my pockets and came up with a crumpled tissue. Whether it was clean or not was a mystery, but I handed it to Annie anyway. “Yes, my photography, but Ben has some things he wants to do as well.”
She trumpets into the tissue. “Like what?”
“Like…” I racked my mind for anything that might placate Annie. “Scuba diving.”
Annie scrunched her nose. “Scuba diving? Here?”
“Absolutely!” I clapped Annie on the back and guided her forward to get us both moving again. “Apparently, there are some really nice scuba diving places right off the coast. Who knew? Oh, look! Second street. School’s thataway, isn’t it?”
“It’s Sunday.”
“Education never sleeps,” I assured her. The crosswalk at the intersection turned in my favor, so I took giant strides across the painted stripes on the road, putting as much distance between me and Annie as possible. “See you later, Annie! It was great running into you.”
Once Annie had receded into the distance and I was safe on the opposite side of the intersection, I made a run for the courthouse at the top of the street. One quick, masochistic glimpse at my watch was enough to kick me into high gear, and by the time I plowed through the gilded front doors of the city building, sweat dripped down the line of my spine underneath my sweater. Inside, the historical radiators burned with the intensity of hellfire to combat the chilly wind creeping in. I shook my arms out of my winter coat as I pounded toward the front desk.
“Fletcher,” I gasped into the face of the man in charge of directing soon-to-be-divorcees like myself to their court dates. “Big day. Getting divorced.”
The man checked his computer. “Fletcher divorce. Second floor, Room 224 is reserved for you. You’ve got another ten minutes, ma’am.”
I galloped up the stairs and raced through the corridor on the second floor, bumping into professionally-dressed women and men who weren’t sweating puddles on the municipal carpet as I tried to find Room 224. I ran right past it then backtracked when I realized the numbers on the other room doors climbed too high.
“I’m here!” I announced, skidding into the room. “I made it.”
Two blank faces stared back at me: Ben’s, my almost ex-husband, and David’s, our divorce mediator. Both of them were dressed for the occasion. David wore his usual sports jacket and slac
ks, while Ben dug through our closet for the one and only button-up shirt he owned. I heard him shuffling hangers around this morning before he left.
“You’re late,” David said. “We only have the room for another ten minutes.”
“So I’ve been told.” The last chair available was right next to the radiator. I dragged it to the opposite side of the room, intentionally placing myself on David’s other side rather than next to Ben. “We can do this in ten minutes. No biggie.”
As of late, I was all-too-familiar with Ben’s disappointed face. Though I’d reached the end of my rope regarding our marriage, it was never my wish to hurt him, and his disappointed face packed all the wallop of sad puppy whimpers.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to him. Since David was sitting between us, the apology didn’t sound quite as private and sincere as I hoped. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I tried,” Ben said. “You smacked me with a pillow then rolled yourself up in a blanket burrito.”
Ever since I’d asked Ben for a divorce, he’d been sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room. I’d offered to take the couch, but he insisted. Apparently, this was enough to qualify for our six months of separation before we were able to file for divorce. Everything was amicable. Neither one of us had cheated on or abused the other. We had simply grown apart.
“Sorry,” I told Ben again. “It will get better, I promise.”
Ben nodded, and David opened our file, filled with the agreements we’d worked out prior to our court date. Since Ben and I weren’t at each other’s throats over who would get what in the divorce, splitting up our belongings wasn’t the nightmare it might have been in a worse scenario.
“Let’s get down to business,” David said, passing a summary of our divorce proceedings to each of us. “We’ve already sorted out most of the big stuff. The house will go to Benjamin, and the car will remain in Peyton’s name. You’ll be splitting your assets cleanly in half.”
Ben turned his summary over so the details were hidden against the table instead of staring him in the face. “We got the gist, David. Can we just sign the papers?”
“Agreed,” I said. “I’m ready to get this over with.”
Ben frowned.
“Not our marriage,” I added hastily. “Just the divorce, which I understand is almost the same thing, but you know what I mean.”
“Not really,” Ben said.
David jumped in, saving me from torturing Ben further. “I know the two of you intended on signing papers today, but something has come up. You have one more decision to make together.”
Ben’s eyebrows scrunched together the way they always did when he was confused or concentrating on something. No matter his mood, the expression usually made me laugh because the bridge of his round glasses morphed with his eyebrows and made it look like he had one long unibrow. Today, though, my giggles were trapped behind the wood panels of the stuffy courthouse room.
“You mean we can’t sign the papers today?” Ben asked.
“I’m afraid not.”
I clenched David’s printout. “What’s this last decision we have to make?”
David extracted a whole new file from his briefcase. “As it turns out, the two of you have inherited a house from Peyton’s grandfather.”
“Grandpa Emilio isn’t dead!”
“Your maternal grandfather,” David clarified. “Andrew Anderson. He passed away some time ago. You didn’t know?”
I thumbed through the file. “No. We don’t talk to him. He left my mom when she was a kid. I’ve never even met him. Why the hell would he leave me a house?”
“Us,” Ben reminded me. “He left us a house.”
“Which makes even less sense.” I closed the file and handed it back to David so he could return it to the suitcase. “It doesn’t matter anyway. This is an easy fix. We’ll do what we did with everything else. Sell the house and split the funds fifty-fifty. Right, Ben?”
“That’s fine with me,” Ben said.
“I’m afraid you can’t do that.” David took something out of the file that I skipped over: my grandfather’s will. “You see, Andrew’s will stipulates that the house cannot be sold until the two of you live there, together, for a minimum of six months.”
“What?” I grabbed the will from David and look over it. Sure enough, one last sentence regarding the house sat on the white page like a tiny, grammatically-correct nail in the coffin of all my dreams. “So you’re saying we can’t get divorced unless we live at this” —I checked the paperwork again— “Abram Mansion place for six months first?”
“That is correct.”
“This is ridiculous,” I said, tossing the will across the table. “You can’t force us to live together for another half a year. We’ve already done our six months of separation. There has to be some way to overturn this.”
David collected the will, now a little crumpled from my rage grip, and filed it away again. “I checked, but nothing can be done. If you want to sell the house before you get divorced, you have to live there, legally, for six months beforehand. Change of address and everything.”
“No way.” I looked to Ben for help. “Ben, come on. Aren’t you going to weigh in on this? It’s insane, right?”
Ben shrugged and straightened his glasses. “I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. What’s six more months?”
My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me?”
“You said yourself you’re not in a rush to ‘get this over with,’” Ben continued, using air quotes around my damning words. “Six months will be over before you know it. Then we can finish this up and move on with our lives. Where is this place anyway?”
David jumped on board with Ben’s cooperation since I wasn’t giving him much to work with. He showed Ben the paperwork on the house while I craned my neck over David’s shoulder to read a bunch of information I couldn’t make sense of.
“The house is in Falconwood, Connecticut,” David said. “It’s about a five-hour drive from here.”
“It’s in a different state?”
Ben and David ignored me.
“The main problem is the house has been empty for about forty years,” David continued. “I imagine it’s not in the best shape. My suggestion is to get an inspector out there as soon as possible to make sure it’s safe to live in. If it’s not, there’s a smaller cottage at the edge of the property. It was most likely meant for the caretakers of the house, but the two of you can hunker down there for a little bit while you get the house fixed up. The will says you must live in the actual mansion, but we can make an exception if the house isn’t up to living standards.”
“You can’t make that exception now?” I asked David. “That sounds like a great loophole to me.”
“Listen, Mrs. Fletcher,” David said dryly. “I’m not a lawyer, though people keep telling me to become one if I stay in this line of business. If you want, I can put you in contact with an actual attorney, and you can fight with them over your grandfather’s will.”
“We said no lawyers,” Ben reminded me.
“That was before my estranged grandpa dropped an entire mansion on us,” I said. “It could be worth looking into.”
Ben sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Fine. Do it your way. That’s what always happens anyway.”
David cleared his throat loudly, an obvious ploy to break up the tension in the air, but I duck around the mediator to get a better look at my husband’s enigmatic expression.
“You really want to do this?” I asked him. “We’re practically divorced, but you want to pack up and move to another state? Into a house that might be falling over?”
“What’s the big deal?” Ben said, balancing on the back two legs of his chair because he knew I hated when he did that. “It’s not like I’m selling the house here. I can have my mom check in on it while we’re gone, and it’ll be here for when our six months in Connecticut are up. We’ll still have a place to come home to.”
“I’m
moving,” I said. “I was going to make plans to get out of here and finally travel like I’ve always wanted to.”
Ben’s eyelids dipped, like he was going to roll his eyes but decided not to at the last second. “You’ve been talking about leaving for months, but you still haven’t booked a plane ticket. This isn’t going to put a wrench in any of your plans.”
“Yeah, but—”
“If we don’t suck it up and live at this place for a while, we have to hire a lawyer,” Ben pointed out. “When you told me you wanted a divorce, we both agreed to make it as amicable and as inexpensive as possible. It was the one thing I thought I could count on. A lawyer is going to cost a boatload of cash, and now that we’re splitting up our assets, I don’t have that kind of money to blow.”
“Splitting things evenly was your idea,” I told him. “I offered to take less.”
“And I promised to take care of you after your photography business failed,” he shot back. “That hasn’t changed because of this divorce. All I’m asking is for you to respect the agreement we made at the beginning of all this. No lawyers. No fighting.”
The shot at my failed attempt at professional photography was the best ammo Ben had to fire at me. He knew it was a sore spot, and he also knew it was the only thing that might get me to agree to all of this. I was lucky he offered to split our assets in half when he was technically the only one paying the bills.
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s do it. Let’s move to an entirely new town in a place we don’t know because of some crazy stipulation in my crazy grandfather’s will. That seems reasonable.”
Ben didn’t smile, but he did put all four of his chair legs flat on the floor again as David collected the paperwork and returned it to his briefcase. The mediator wiped his brow with his pocket handkerchief and tucked the moistened fabric away.
The Haunting of Abram Mansion Page 1
