“Yeah, we’re in a bit of a pickle,” Ben answered for both of us. “Not sure what we’ll do about the house though.”
“The Abram Mansion is a fortress,” Basil said. “If you poke around a little, you’ll find a few nooks and crannies that haven’t been disturbed by the passage of time. It might feel more like winter camping than living in an actual house, but you should be able to get by.”
Della chuckled at my wrinkled nose. “You don’t look convinced. Did you have an alternate plan?”
“Check into the nearest bed and breakfast,” I replied, getting a laugh out of both her and her husband.
“Falconwood’s B and B is one of the coziest,” Della said. “But I think you should give Abram Mansion a chance. It’s about time that place got a little love and respect.”
“Watch out for squatters though,” Basil warned.
Alarmed, I asked, “Do you get a lot of that here?”
Della admonished Basil with a harmless tap to the back of his hand. “Not at all. Basil’s a worrywart.”
“That place is hidden in the woods,” Basil protested. “You don’t know who could be making their way through there. All I’m saying is you might want to sweep the property before you settle down for the night.”
“I’ll make sure to do that,” Ben promised.
“Get a dog,” Basil said. “Dogs are great alarm systems.”
Ben laughed as he brought his coffee cup up to his lips and accidentally dipped his nose into the cinnamon-dusted foam. “I’m more of a cat person, but I’ll keep the suggestion in mind. I think we’ve got bigger issues than squatters anyway.”
“Like what?” Della asked.
“No electricity,” I replied dryly.
Della gasped and Basil groaned with sympathy.
“Or running water at the moment,” Ben added.
My eyes widened. “There’s no water?”
The table laughed again, this time at my panicked reaction. Della reached across the table to pat my hand as Basil recovered from his belly-shaking chuckle.
“I hope you two know how to dig an outhouse,” he said.
Ben pulled me closer to his side. “We just have to make it through tonight. I can call the city tomorrow to get everything turned back on.”
“Well, I admire you,” Della said. “Taking care of a house that big is a huge challenge. I certainly wouldn’t want to do it.”
“Neither do I,” I grumbled. “This was all his idea.”
“You’ll work it out,” Basil assured me. He scribbled something on a napkin and slid it across the table. “Here’s our home number. We know a couple of DIY construction guys that might be able to help you out, and Della’s a wizard with interior design. Call us if you need anything.”
I folded the napkin in half and slipped it into the inside pocket of my winter jacket. “Is everyone in Falconwood this friendly?”
“Pretty much,” Della said. “We all like to help each other out. It may seem invasive at first, but you’ll get used to it after a while.”
Basil poured the rest of his coffee into a to-go cup and scooted Della toward the edge of the booth. “We’d stay and chat, but we’re hosting a forum tonight at the community center that we still have to get ready for.”
“What’s the forum about?” Ben asked.
“How to reduce your carbon footprint in a small town,” Della replied as Basil helped her into her coat. “Are you two interested in coming?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“For the record, the community center has both water and electricity,” Basil added. “In case that has a role in your decision-making process.”
We spent the rest of the day shopping in town for things that might make tonight’s stay at the Abram Mansion less terrible. Ben dragged me away from the Falconwood Bed and Breakfast and into a camping store instead, where we stocked up on battery-powered heaters, flashlights, insulated sleeping bags, two foldable cots, freeze-dried snacks, and a portable toilet that actually flushed. It was lucky Falconwood was surrounded by nature on all sides. Every employee in the store knew exactly the items we needed to survive the night.
Taking Basil’s advice, Ben and I swept the mansion for any unwanted visitors. It took us a good hour to make our way through the main sections of the house, and we still didn’t check every room. The mansion had at least a hundred doors, and when darkness fell, I was less inclined to discover the mystery behind each one. Though we didn’t find any squatters, we did happen upon evidence that we weren’t the first people to enter the house in forty years. Beer bottles and snack wrappers were scattered in one of the ballrooms, like the local teenagers held a party here once. In another hallway, we found a heap of dirty clothes and rags that formed a makeshift bed. A little farther on, we located the rest of the bat’s family, hanging upside down from the exposed rafters. We also found the part of the mansion where the roof had caved in. From the looks of it, the room had been an office of some sort. Now, it was covered in debris and snow.
“I’m done exploring,” I said, shivering as the moonlight streamed in from the hole in the roof. “Can we go back to the entryway now?”
We’d decided that the entryway was the best place to stay for our first night since it was well-protected by the rest of the house. I set up the cots as Ben lit a fire. He stacked fresh wood in the old fireplace and used old newspapers to get it going. In a few minutes, he had a perfectly contained blaze going.
“You made that look easy,” I said, nodding at the fire.
“My dad used to take me camping.” He rested the poker against the bricks and dusted off his hands. “You made the beds look homey.”
I’d layered the sleeping bags and pillows on the cots to make it look like we were sleeping in actual beds tonight. “I put a few of those heating pads in there too,” I told Ben. “To make sure it’s not too cold when you get in.”
“Good thinking.”
I went to bed wearing two sweaters, thermal long underwear, and three pairs of wool socks, but the sleeping bag’s insulated interior reflected my body heat and kept me warmer than I had expected it to. Ben fell asleep without issue, snoring lightly as the moon found its way through the boarded windows and cast eerie shadows. He could fall asleep on a building construction site with jackhammers and wrecking balls and still get a full eight hours. On the flip side, I was painfully aware of every little sound. The fire cracked and popped, burning down to mere embers. The wind howled outside, pushing the house around like a bully on a playground. The roof creaked with every little gust. Little feet skittered across the floorboards, and I squeezed my eyes shut to keep myself from identifying the creatures they belonged to.
But none of those sounds were quite as distracting as the whispers in the walls.
3
What was a restless, paranoid night for me was a perfectly uninterrupted eight hours of sleep for Ben. He woke up, rolled off his cot, and got the fire started again while I pretended that if I kept my face buried in the camping pillow for a few minutes longer, my dark circles might not match the intensity of a fat raccoon’s. I burrowed deeper into my sleeping bag and covered my ears, sinking into the white noise of my own internal body mechanics. However, Ben had already entered productivity mode, and he was more than ready to start his day. With the shriek of nails being ripped from old wood, he wrenched a board off one of the windows near the front door. Sunlight fell across the foot of my sleeping bag, warming my toes but searing my eyelids. I poked my head out of the flannel fabric.
“Why?” I grumbled at Ben.
His golden hair was askew from sleeping on the same side all night long, his thick curls pushed skyward to sit atop his head like a nesting squirrel. He paid my grumpiness no mind, grunting as he worked to remove the second board.
“Why what?” he asked after he’d freed it.
“Why are you starting renovations at seven in the morning?”
He tossed the broken board on top of the first one in the corner of the ro
om. “What renovations? I’m trying to get some light in here.”
Oblivious as ever, Ben kept working. With one final yank, he freed the first window from its wooden prison. The light it brought into the entryway changed everything. Though the dust didn’t magically disappear, the entryway looked cleaner with a bit of golden glow from the sunshine. Instead of unknown doom and gloom, I could see the beauty the house once bore. The textured wallpaper, intricate architecture, and what was left of the original owner’s artwork were all from an earlier time. Though the designs had aged, there was no denying the amount of work a slew of people once put in to the Abram Mansion to enable its grandeur. Still, the expired elegance wasn’t as invigorating as a cup of good coffee would be. I groaned and covered my head once again.
“Didn’t sleep?” Ben asked as he moved on to the next window. “Was it too cold after the fire died out?”
“The temperature was fine,” I said. “The voices were not.”
“What voices?”
“You didn’t hear them?”
More sunlight poured in. Ben tossed another board into the trash pile then planted his hands on his knees to take a breather. Manual labor wasn’t the type of exercise Ben was used to. He was more of a calisthenics guy. Unlike all of his friends who trained their enormous biceps but never bothered to restrain their beer guts or squat deep enough to thicken their chicken legs, Ben didn’t have a membership to the local gym back home. He tipped the coffee table on its side to do incline pushups, did pistol squats off the edge of a sturdy wooden box, and performed pull-ups on the archway that separated the kitchen from the living room. When he wanted to work in some cardio, he went swimming at the indoor pool. Earlier in our marriage, I would go with him and watch as his wiry body cut perfect laps from one end of the pool to the other. I usually brought my camera too, but I was too busy drooling to take many pictures.
A droplet of sweat glistened in the hollow of Ben’s throat, balancing on his collarbone. As he swept his hair out of his face, the droplet ran down the middle of his chest and disappeared into his shirt.
“I was out like a light for the entire night,” Ben said. “I didn’t hear anything.”
I shook my head, trying to remember what I was talking about. “I heard voices in the walls, like people were whispering to each other.”
“Babe, there’s no one in the walls. It was probably rats.”
The mention of rodents cooled me off in less than the time it took for Ben to start sweating. I definitely couldn’t go back to sleep now, not with Ben waging war against the house. As far as the whispering walls went, his explanation made more sense than my lack of one. As old as the mansion was, it was normal for things to occasionally go bump in the night.
“Ouch!” Ben huffed as he withdrew from another window board, this time unable to yank it off the wall. He studied his palm. “Got a splinter.”
“Let me see.”
He sat at the foot of my cot as I finally emerged from the sleeping bag. The chilly winter air took the opportunity to seep through the threads of my sweater and nestle next to my skin. Ben rested his hand in my lap. He’d downplayed the size of the “splinter.” A sharp chunk of wood was embedded in the soft tissue of his palm. I checked the angle of entry before giving it a clean jerk to get it out of Ben’s hand.
“Ow!” He pulled away, shaking his hand to redistribute the pain. “What did you do that for? Why didn’t you warn me?”
“If I had warned you, you would’ve been a big baby about it, and it would’ve been harder to pull out.” I carefully wrapped the splinter in one of the empty snack bags from last night. “This way, it doesn’t bleed as much. How’s it look? Do you need a bandage?”
“I think it’s fine.” He squeezed a tiny drop of blood from the wound and wiped it away. “Good as new. Thanks for doing that.”
I swung my legs out of my sleeping bag, slipped my feet into my boots, and put on my puffy winter coat. “No problem, but I’m not playing nurse every time you get hurt because you’re exercising your right to manhandle this house. If you’re going to start ripping this place apart, you need gloves. Let’s go into town.”
Ben switched his flannel pajama pants for a pair of black, fleece-lined trousers. “Do you really want to go to town out of concern for my soft writer hands? Or are you jonesing for a cup of coffee.”
“Coffee. Duh.”
“I told you we should’ve bought the instant coffee last night.”
“You know how I feel about instant coffee.”
“That it tastes like dirty water.” He pulled a crimson quarter-zip sweater over the top of his head and checked his reflection in the newly exposed window. With a few tweaks, he got his unruly curls to sit in perfect formation again. “I’m starving anyway. Are you ready?”
“Do I look ready?”
He checked me over. Puffy skin weighed heavily below my eyes. Cold, clammy sweat glued my inner thighs together. I wanted a hot shower and a real bed. A cup of coffee wasn’t going to fix the issue, but it would at least postpone my breaking point.
“No,” Ben said. “You certainly don’t.”
Since we were already familiar with Black Cat Café, we went back for breakfast. This time, Hayden wasn’t there to pester us with questions, but we drew just as much attention as the day before. As we stepped up to the counter, a petite man with no hair but a fabulous blond handlebar mustache waited to take our order. He wore a gray sweater with black stripes around the sleeves and a green scarf. The outfit combination along with his dark beady eyes made him look like a nosy pigeon.
“You must be Ben and Peyton,” he cooed before bothering to welcome us in. “Everyone in town is talking about you. I’m so happy to meet you in person!”
“We’re the talk of the town, huh?” I asked. “Super.”
“You know how it is,” the man said. “Falconwood is so tiny that whenever we get newbies, it’s like having a celebrity in town. I’m Mason, by the way. I own the fine establishment you see before you.” He beamed proudly, stretching his arms wide to showcase his assistant barista hard at work on the industrial espresso machine behind the counter as well as the many busy tables in the sit-down area of the café. “I heard you came in yesterday, but I had already left for the day. My husband caught that terrible virus going around, and he was dying for some chicken noodle soup.”
“I hope he feels better,” Ben said. “My wife turns into a tyrant when she’s sick.”
“Says the man who acts like he’s dying of the plague every time he gets a cough,” I shot back. “Don’t listen to a thing he says, Mason.”
Mason chuckled. “What can I get you today?”
After we ordered, Ben found a table in the middle of the shop and set paper napkins out for both of us. The café wasn’t as busy as it was yesterday afternoon since everyone was at work and school. As I sat across from Ben, I stared absently through the window. The ice skating rink was empty except for a single woman practicing pirouettes.
“What is it?” Ben asked.
“What’s what?”
“You went quiet,” he said, handing me a packet of raw sugar for when my black coffee arrived. “That means something’s wrong.”
“I was just enjoying the sights.”
“Peyton, just tell me.”
I folded my napkin into a paper airplane and chucked it across the table. It nosedived into Ben’s jacket. “You keep talking about us like we’re still married.”
“We are still married.”
“You’re giving people the wrong idea.”
Ben leaned across the table, lowering his voice. “What am I supposed to say? ‘Hi, this is my wife, but we’re getting a divorce soon, and the only reason we’re in this town is because of an obligation to sell the rotting mansion in the woods’?”
“That would be better than letting them think we’re a happily married couple ready to settle down here,” I whispered back.
“Would it?” he said. “We’re not going to be he
re long enough for it to matter anyway, so who cares?”
“I care,” I replied. “I don’t want you to get confused.”
He pulled away, like I was a bee that stung him on the nose. “Confused about what?”
“About us.”
Ben scoffed and looked out the window. “Believe me, Peyton. I’m not confused.”
“You called me babe this morning.”
Mason arrived with our breakfast order, balancing two large plates on his forearm and carrying both coffees in the other hand. He set everything down with practiced perfection. “French toast and freshly whipped cream for the lady, eggs and bacon for the gentleman, and coffee all around. Anything else I can get for you? Syrup for the French toast?”
“We’re good,” Ben answered. “Thanks, Mason.”
“No problem. Holler if you need something.”
After Mason walked away, I prodded the dry French toast with my fork. “Actually, Mason, I’d love some syrup. Thanks for asking.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You didn’t give me a chance.”
Ben went to the counter and waited patiently until Mason was finished with his next set of customers. Upon Ben’s return, he tossed a few pre-packaged packets of maple syrup onto the table. One tumbled into my lap.
“Gee, thanks.”
Ben unfolded the paper plane napkin and set it on his lap. “I was going to tell you something before you got all righteous.”
“Boy, do I really want to hear about it.”
“Fine then.”
He dug into his breakfast and pretended I wasn’t there. I drizzled syrup in an erratic zig-zag across the top of my French toast. Underneath Ben’s layer of nonchalance, his bottom lip jutted out, and the line in the middle of his chin that only appeared when he was upset came out to play.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” I said, setting the packet on the table. The extra syrup leaked out, leaving a sticky brown mess next to my plate. “This is hard for me too.”
“Doesn’t seem like it,” Ben muttered. “Ever since David told us about the house, you’ve been acting like it’s a prison sentence.”
The Haunting of Abram Mansion Page 4
