The Haunting of Abram Mansion

by Alexandria Clarke

  Theo clapped her hands together and beamed as if she hadn’t already invited me to share the massive amounts of mac and cheese. “Lovely! Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Sammy put away two bowls of pasta before taking a breath. Neither Theo or I could stomach more than half a serving of the cheese-laden macaroni, so Theo took a pre-made salad out of the fridge to share with me instead. As Sammy ate, he talked about the good parts of his day at school, which included P.E., English class, and Art.

  “Mrs. Sable says I should show my clay pot in the winter art fair,” he boasted, puffing his chest out proudly. “She says it’s one of the best pots in the class.”

  “That’s excellent, Sammy,” Theo said, kissing her son’s cheek. “But I thought you were going to submit some of your drawings for the art fair.”

  “Mrs. Sable says I’m better at clay than drawing,” Sammy replied, almost as if trying to convince himself it was true. “I don’t think she’s right. I really like drawing, and I think I’m really good at it. But I like clay too, so it’s okay, I guess.”

  “Speaking of your drawings,” I said, “I was wondering if you had any of your friend Alyssa.”

  Sammy’s entire face lit up. I guessed not many people encouraged his friendship with the invisible Alyssa.

  “I have a lot!” he exclaimed, bouncing up and down in his chair. “Do you want to see them?”

  “Sure, if you don’t mind showing me.”

  “I don’t mind.” He hopped off the chair, realized he had abandoned the remainder of his food, and looked over his shoulder at his mother. “Mom, it’s really cheesy. Can I finish it later?”

  Theo smiled at him. “Of course you can.”

  “Cool!” He jetted off into the bedroom, singing to the tune of I Love Rock and Roll. “I love mac and cheese, so put another bowl in front of me.”

  I grinned at Theo. “Glad to see you’re giving him an excellent music education.”

  “What can I say?” Theo shrugged. “I went through a Joan Jett phase. Lots of eyeliner. Had the girl mullet and everything in high school.”

  “Oh, I would love to see pictures of that. Did you learn to play the electric guitar?”

  “I was a drummer actually,” she answered. “Pretty good at it too.”

  “You amaze me.”

  Sammy came running out of the bedroom with a stack of construction paper. He clambered up to his chair again and laid the pictures out in front of me, one at a time so he could narrate each of them.

  “I drew this after the first time we met,” he explained, pointing to what looked like the most fragile drawing. Though the paper was water-damaged and the ink of the colored marker had run, I could see the rough outline of a little girl in a doorway. “She told me she was really lonely and that she didn’t have any friends. Her mom’s really strict, so Alyssa isn’t allowed to play outside.”

  Theo caught my eye over Sammy’s head. Alyssa’s mother had similar rules to Theo. Sammy wasn’t allowed outside or at a friend’s house without Theo’s strict supervision. I didn’t have a child, so I couldn’t judge Theo for the way she raised Sammy, but I definitely understood how rigid she was with his freedom.

  “I promised her I’d come back,” Sammy said, frowning as he flipped to the next page. “I haven’t been able to visit lately. She’s probably sad.”

  I cleared my throat and pointed at Sammy’s next drawing. “What’s happening in this one, Sammy?”

  “We explored the basement together.”

  The drawing was a little clearer than the last one. Sammy had put a lot of effort into two of Alyssa’s prominent features: her bright red hair and a pink polka dot scarf around her neck. He had also drawn the kitchen of the Abram Mansion before it had been renovated in exquisite detail, right down to the old chandelier and the small doggy door. Alyssa stood by the stove, her uneven fingers gripping something Sammy had struggled to draw.

  “What’s she holding?” I asked Sammy.

  “I don’t remember,” he said quickly. He hid the kitchen drawing beneath the others. “Here’s Alyssa in the attic. She likes to hide there.”

  My chest tightened as I examined the drawing. Once again, Sammy managed to capture a rather detailed image of the inside of the mansion, all of the junk in the attic drawn in boxy six-year-old scribbles. Behind a crudely-drawn file cabinet, Alyssa stands half-hidden with her face in shadow.

  “Sammy, did you go all the way up to the attic?” I asked him. “It’s dangerous up there.”

  Sammy hummed, rocking on his chair. “I draw things that Alyssa shows me.”

  “You didn’t answer the question, Sam,” Theo said. “Did you go up to the attic?”

  “No.”

  Theo took a deep breath. From the look of her expression, she didn’t know how often Sammy had visited the Abram Mansion. “Go put your drawings away, Sammy.”

  Sammy, sensing his mother’s distress, stacked his pieces of construction paper, retreated to the bedroom, and did not return. Theo rested her forehead in her hands.

  “I had no idea,” she murmured. “He has at least fifty drawings of that house. How many times has he walked up there alone?”

  I rubbed Theo’s shoulders. “Hey, at least you know now, right? Maybe you should install an alarm system so he can’t leave without setting it off.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  I gathered my coat and wallet. “I should get going. Thanks for having me for lunch and letting Sammy show me his drawings. Don’t go too hard on him.”

  She hugged me goodbye. “I won’t. Get home safe. Tell Ben to get well soon.”

  “I’ll pass it on. See you, Theo.”

  As I left, Theo tossed the pan of mac and cheese into the sink to soak. I made my way down the stairs to the bakery. My car was parked across the street, but as I stepped out on the curb, a small hand grabbed mine. It was Sammy, out of breath from running after me.

  “Here,” he said, shoving a piece of construction paper into my hand. It was folded into fourths. “That’s Alyssa too, but don’t open it until you get home. I don’t want my mom to see.”

  With Sammy’s drawing tucked into the pocket of my coat, I picked up my developed film rolls from Chester and headed home. Della’s car was still parked out front. She’d stayed the entire day to make sure Ben was okay. When I walked inside, the mansion was oddly quiet. I checked on Ben first. He was sound asleep in bed, his broken arm propped up on a pillow. I went down to the kitchen.

  “Della!” I called, taking off my gloves one finger at a time. I tossed the stack of photographs onto the kitchen table. “Della, I’m home. Oh—!”

  Basil stepped out from behind the refrigerator door, holding a knife between his teeth and a tomato in each hand. When he saw me, he carefully spat the knife out. “Whoops. Didn’t mean to scare you. Della’s in the bathroom. She left me in charge of the bruschetta.” He held up the tomatoes. “Fresh from our hydroponic garden. They have quite the bold taste. Are you interested?”

  I placed a calming hand over my rushing heart. “Yeah, that sounds great. How did you get here, Basil?”

  “I walked.”

  “All the way up that hill?”

  “Are you insinuating that I’m too old to hike?” he asked with a soft grin. He added one more tomato to his grip and began to juggle them, then nodded at the photographs on the table. “I see my wife has suckered you into her hobby.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Della said, shaking her hands dry as she joined us in the kitchen. “He’s such a spoilsport about photography. Just because you don’t like having your picture taken, my dear” —she snatched one of Basil’s tomatoes out of the air— “doesn’t mean everyone else has to suffer.”

  “Of course, my love,” Basil said. “Shall we cook dinner and get out of the Fletchers’ hair?”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “You two have done so much for us already. I can’t ask you to make dinner again. Go home. We’ll be fine. I promise.”

  Basil
checked with his wife. “Do we listen to the fine lady or do we proceed as planned? I have truffle oil that shouldn’t go to waste.”

  Della patted Basil’s arm. “Leave the truffle oil. I’m sure Peyton is eager to get to bed after such a long day. Let’s head out, dear.”

  I walked the older couple to the door. Basil helped Della into her coat then offered his arm to her so she wouldn’t slip on the ice outside. I waved from the doorway as they got in their tiny car and drove away. As soon as the car disappeared into the trees, I let my shoulders slump.

  Back in the kitchen, a chicken sandwich waited for me in the fridge, no doubt Della’s doing to make sure I had something to eat when I got home. Since Theo’s mac and cheese hadn’t been the best, I grabbed the sandwich and sat at the table to eat. As the sun lowered itself on the horizon, throwing the basement kitchen into darkness, I examined the photographs I’d had developed at Chester’s.

  The ones I’d taken in the woods weren’t bad, but you could tell which ones were Della’s and which ones were mine. Mine were clumsy, and the subjects were unclear, though the one of the sky and the single bird had come out as I wanted it to. At the bottom of the stack were the photographs from the roll of film I’d found in the old camera. Curious, I flipped through them as well.

  Each photo was a picture of a room in the Abram Mansion as they had been before we had done any renovations. However, instead of the decrepit house we had moved into, the pictures featured the mansion before it had fallen into ruin. The photos were meticulously taken, almost as if to preserve the integrity of the mansion. The very last picture in the stack was the one I had taken myself in the attic. I slid it out from underneath the others to have a look.

  My heart stopped beating. In the picture, half-hidden behind the file cabinet, was the fuzzy yet unmistakable outline of a little girl with red hair and a pink polka-dotted scarf. My hands shook as I took Sammy’s drawing from my pocket and unfolded it. The image upon it made my blood run cold.

  Sammy had drawn Alyssa lying in a puddle of blood.

  10

  Heart racing, I dialed Theo’s number. It went straight to voicemail, so I hung up and tried again. Once more, it didn’t ring, and I got Theo’s voicemail instead. I couldn’t stop staring at the photo and Sammy’s drawing. I remembered that day in the attic not too long ago, when I’d taken that picture and swore someone was standing in the corner of the room. Had Sammy been right all along? Was a little girl living in the mansion without us knowing? And if so, why had Sammy drawn her in a puddle of blood? Without Theo to talk to, I needed someone else to discuss it with. I went to Ben’s room and clambered onto his bed with the photo and drawing in hand.

  “Ben,” I whispered, poking his chest. “Ben, wake up. I have to show you something.”

  He murmured something incoherent, tried to roll over, and failed when his bulky cast got in the way. I patted his cheek impatiently.

  “Ben, remember when I said there was something in the house?” I hissed. “I think I was right. Sammy saw it too. There’s a little girl—”

  With his good hand, Ben pushed my face away from his. I almost smacked him for being so rude before realizing he was still dead asleep.

  “Ben!” I shouted.

  He woke with a start, struggling to open his eyes as if they were glued together. “Huh? Peyton? What’re you doing in here?”

  “Trying to tell you something,” I said. “If you would only listen. There’s a kid in the house—”

  He groaned and rolled over, this time completing the action by moving to his good side. He covered his head with the pillow then winced when he accidentally put too much pressure on his tender injury.

  “Why don’t you believe me?” I demanded. “I’ve been trying to get through to you practically since we moved in here. You brush me off or ignore me. Then you wonder why our marriage is falling apart. Oh, and by the way, that kiss at the hospital meant nothing. I was relieved you weren’t dead. That’s it. I’m sorry if you thought I was falling madly in love with you again just because you fell off a roof that you weren’t supposed to be standing on in the first place.”

  Ben was quiet for a moment. Then he let out a delicate snore. I slumped against the pillows. It was useless trying to talk to him. He was so hopped up on painkillers and antibiotics that he wasn’t a functioning human being right now. I tried calling Theo again, but for the third time, it went straight to voicemail. Was she already sleeping?

  Somehow, I fell asleep right there in Ben’s bed, clutching the photo and Sammy’s drawing to my chest. I had strange dreams of winding hallways and shadowy figures wearing pink polka dot scarves. When a chill crept over the bedroom, sinking into my limbs as if the heater had suddenly stopped working, I slowly woke. It was the middle of the night now. Ben slept soundly beside me, blissfully unaware of the chill. Goose bumps rose all over my skin, and the hair on the back of my neck prickled. Something was going on in the house. A child was crying.

  I slipped out of bed and made sure the blanket covered all of Ben. He looked impossibly peaceful with his cherub curls splayed across the pillowcase. Half of his hair was trapped beneath the bandage, but it didn’t take away from the angelic illusion. I wished I was still in love with him, but the Ben I loved wouldn’t have ignored me for six weeks every time I told him something was wrong about the Abram Mansion. As time went by and we spent more and more of our lives apart from one another, it seemed to be the right thing to do. After we finished our sentence at the mansion, I was more determined than ever to be on my own.

  But being on my own meant starting now, with the eerie cries floating into the corridor from somewhere above. Like the last time, it sounded like someone was in the house other than me and Ben. I followed the voice to the east wing on the second floor. The cries went on, growing louder as I snuck along. This time, I didn’t go all the way to the master bedroom at the end of the corridor. The cries seemed to be coming from another room closer to the middle of the hallway. I pressed my ear to the door.

  No mistake about it, a child wept on the other side. I knocked quietly. “Alyssa? Is that you?”

  The cries went quiet.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I promised. “Sammy told me about you.”

  With a deep breath, I reached for the handle and pushed the door open.

  The room was empty. There was no little red-haired girl or anything else that might imitate a child either. I had happened upon yet another anomaly in the Abram Mansion. Either that, or I was slowly going insane.

  The room had once belonged to a young girl. Everything was a shade of pink, from the wallpaper to the trim at the floor and ceiling. The four-poster twin bed supported a dusty pink canopy, a rosy duvet, and several stuffed animals ranging from teddy bears to unicorns. The closet door, which was already ajar, revealed a collection of pink outfits. Even the books on the shelves were pink, although on closer inspection, I saw that each one had been wrapped in a protective layer of pink paper. Everything was coated in dust. Clearly, the room hadn’t been touched in a number of years. For good measure, I got on my hands and knees to look under the bed. My heart pounded as I lifted the bed skirt…

  A rat scurried out from under the bed, its beady little eyes gleaming as it ran past me and out into the hallway. I hurriedly stood, lost my balance, and grabbed the closest piece of furniture to hold me upright. It was a dresser, the top of which was decorated with a few homemade art pieces. I leaned closer to a plaster imprint of two small hands. A name had been scrawled into the plaster with a paper clip or something else: Alyssa. I reached for the imprint, letting my fingers coast across the cool plaster.

  An invisible force ripped the artwork from my hands and flung it across the room. The plaster shattered, and a huge chunk of it flew at my head. I shrieked and ducked, but the sharp edge of the broken piece still caught the outside of my hand, ripping a huge gash in the skin.

  A scream that didn’t belong to me echoed through the room, so loud and piercing tha
t I slapped my hands over my ears. I ran for the door, but the nearby bookshelf tipped itself over, and I dove across the room to avoid being crushed by it. The hardbacks tumbled to the floor as the bookshelf landed with a mighty crash and the door to the room slammed itself shut. Porcelain unicorns lifted themselves from the windowsill and pelted themselves at me, as if someone were throwing them with all of their might. One hit my back at a horrible angle, right on a bone in my spine. I flattened myself out and scuttled under the bed, gasping and crying. The chaos continued. Glass shattered inches from my face. Books hammered at the four-poster bed in an attempt to bombard me. The bed itself rattled and shook like an earthquake, though its legs remained on the floor. I huddled in my safe spot—back throbbing, hand bleeding—and waited for the onslaught to end.

  At long last, the door to the bedroom swung open, and a pair of small feet stood on the threshold. Everything that had declared war on me fell to the ground as suddenly as the objects had taken up arms. Books landed splayed on the dusty carpet. Stuffed animals lay slumped on their sides. Broken glass and porcelain littered the floor. The small feet at the door picked their way across the debris, stepping carefully to avoid anything too big. My heartbeat quickened as the small sneakers paused near me and a small hand lifted the bed skirt. It was Sammy.

  “Hi Peyton,” he said, cool and collected. “We should probably get out of here.”

  I wiggled out from underneath the bed. Glass crunched underfoot as Sammy took my hand and led me from the pink bedroom. He looked sadly around at the destroyed room before closing the door.

  “She doesn’t like it when you go into her room,” he told me.

  “Who?” I gasped. “Alyssa?”

  He shook his head then noticed my hand. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Forget about that,” I said, kneeling so he and I were at the same eye level. “Sammy, what is going on in this house?”

  He scuffed the toe of his sneaker against the carpet. “Did you look at my drawing?”

  “Yes. Why would you draw your friend bleeding?”