House of Many Shadows

by Barbara Michaels

  “There are other explanations.”

  “Such as?”

  “Mental telepathy. I got the picture from your mind; that’s why the details are the same, and why your picture was more distinct than mine. Your transmission, or my reception, was faulty. If we practiced—”

  “For God’s sake, who wants to practice? Even if I believed in ESP, I wouldn’t have it as a gift. I can’t imagine anything nastier than being able to read someone else’s mind.”

  “Especially mine, you mean. I wasn’t suggesting we practice. I only mentioned ESP as one possibility.” Andy leaned forward, his arms resting on the table, his eyes intent. “You’ve accepted your hallucinations as inevitable-just another of life’s dirty tricks. Maybe they were, at first But what we saw tonight is not in the same category as… as elephants on Fifth Avenue. Doesn’t it make sense to fight this tiling—study it, as you would any other unexplained phenomenon—-instead of sitting back with folded hands and waiting for it to hit you again? Who knows, we may be on the threshold of a great discovery.”

  “I don’t know, Andy. I’m too tired to think. I’m going to bed.”

  “Okay, we’ll talk about it in the morning. I’m going to sleep here tonight.” He sounded tentative, as if he expected her to object.

  Meg shrugged, “I don’t know what you think you’re protecting me from, but suit yourself.”

  “I’ll take the master bedroom. And I’ll leave the door open. Don’t be shy about yelling if anything bugs you.”

  “I won’t. And the same to you.”

  Andy grinned. “You can’t insult me that way, love. I’ll scream my head off if my nerves get out of hand.”

  For some time after she had gotten into bed Meg could hear Andy moving around the house. She didn’t know what he was doing, and she didn’t care. Maybe he was making the bed. It was his problem; sleeping in the house had been his idea.

  She was inclined to believe Andy’s statement that he would yell for help if he got nervous. In fact, she wasn’t at all sure who was protecting whom. Andy’s behavior had not been notably courageous. He was the first to run, and he had to be shamed into reentering the house.

  Meg wasn’t particularly vain, but she knew she was a reasonably attractive woman, and she was accustomed to fending off—or not fending off—interested males. She didn’t expect every man she met to make a pass, but Andy’s fraternal attitude was a little suspicious.

  Meg smiled wryly. It was really the height of conceit to assume that because a man wasn’t interested in her, he wasn’t interested in any woman. Besides, Andy’s habits were his own affair. What was more important was his intense reaction to her—their—hallucination. If he hadn’t been terrified, he had given a good imitation of it. Maybe he had won a place as one of Sylvia’s lame dogs not by virtue of his aspirations as a writer but because he had been temporarily crippled by mental illness. That was his affair too. Except, Meg added to herself, it was a little unfair of Andy to insinuate that the mental instability was hers alone. He could at least share the responsibility.

  It was another thought that kept Meg awake, however. Earlier in the evening she had started to say that Andy had no motive for wanting to trick her. And that wasn’t true. He might have a very solid motive for wanting her to leave the house.

  Andy hated Sylvia. He didn’t bother to hide his dislike, and he had ample cause for it. The house, and the entire valuable estate, ought to have been his. Meg couldn’t imagine how Sylvia had conned Andy’s father into leaving the estate to her, especially if it had come to him through his first wife, Andy’s mother. Sylvia had been amply endowed by her first husband; there was no excuse for her snatching all of Andy’s inheritance. But there was no use wondering how she had done it; whatever her methods, they were obviously effective. Andy had every reason to resent them.

  In their discussion that evening Andy had pretended to be dispassionate, but it was clear what he believed—what he was trying to make her believe. “Something is in there,” he had said. “Something is waiting.” By sharing Meg’s hallucination, or pretending to do so, he had changed its nature. He wanted her to think the house was haunted.

  But, Meg argued silently, what could Andy hope to gain by this maneuver? He might frighten her away from the house, but that wouldn’t affect Sylvia’s control of the property. Sylvia wouldn’t believe in ghosts if a regiment of them rattled chains at her nightly, and if her property contained anything undesirable she would simply unload it as fast as she could, to the highest bidder. And caveat emptor.

  II

  Meg overslept the next morning, lulled by the drip of rain at the windows. When she opened her eyes her room looked dreary in the gray light, and it felt chilly and damp. As she came down the stairs, wearing jeans and a red flannel shirt, she heard thumps and groans from the nether regions, and went to find out what they meant. The noises increased in volume when she opened the cellar door, and she followed them through dingy empty rooms to find Andy, grease encrusted, struggling with a behemoth of a furnace.

  “I’ve got it,” he announced, without so much as a “hello.” “Should have checked the thing before, but I didn’t get around to it. Let’s see.”

  He replaced a plate, tightened a few screws, and pressed a button. The furnace went on with a breathy roar.

  “I’m glad I didn’t have to do that,” Meg admitted. “Is there anything else of interest down here?”

  “Servants’ rooms. They didn’t store anything good down here; it’s too damp.”

  “Too damp for furniture, but not for servants,” Meg said.

  “What are you, some kind of radical hippy do-gooder?” Andy demanded, grinning.

  They went back upstairs. Andy said he had had breakfast, so Meg made herself toast and coffee while Andy continued to exude good cheer and feeble witticisms. He made no reference to their experience the night before, except to announce that he had moved into the master bedroom.

  “I’m going to start stripping the wallpaper,” he explained. “It’ll have to be done eventually, and Culver’s comments are beginning to grate on me already.”

  “Have fun,” Meg said cheerfully. She had decided on the line she meant to take: bland acceptance of anything Andy proposed. To express suspicion of his motives would be dangerous, if he was up to no good, and pointless if he was innocent. It was worth some effort to keep him in an affable mood; the monstrous old furnace had reminded her of what she would be up against if Andy walked out in a huff.

  “What are you going to do today?” Andy asked. “Today is D-day. I’m going to start inventorying the attic.”

  “Rather you than me. I’d just soon tackle the Augean stables.”

  “It’s not filthy, just dusty and jumbled.”

  “I commend your energy. Well, guess I’d better get moving.”

  But he continued to sit, watching her as she rinsed off her dishes and put them in the dishwasher.

  “Listen,” he said after a while, “don’t worry about extra work with me here. We’ll get our own meals, keep our own schedules.”

  “We could take turns getting dinner.”

  Andy brightened.

  “I did it last night.”

  “So it’s my turn tonight. The only thing is…”

  “What?”

  “Well, obviously I’m not worried about what the neighbors will say. But if Sylvia dislikes having an unmarried couple in her house—”

  “Sylvia is a pain, but she’s not stupid,” Andy said. “If you and I were engaged in what Sylvia would probably call hanky-panky, or something equally nauseous, a distance of a few hundred feet wouldn’t slow us down. She knew I was here when she sent you. She also knows that I know I’ll lose my soft job if you complain about me.”

  Meg retreated in some confusion. She had not expected such a direct answer to her doubts about Andy. His attitude wasn’t very flattering to her; he had made it clear that her questionable charms weren’t worth risking his job for. Well, she thought, cli
mbing the steep attic stairs, it was an acceptable explanation, whether it was true or not.

  On a wet, gloomy day the vast attic loft was an eerie place. Fortunately it had been electrified, and the upper regions of the house were warm, compared to the lower floors. Meg expected to work up a good healthy sweat. She would have to shift several tons of furniture before she finished the job. It would take weeks—possibly months.

  Expecting that an inventory would be needed, she had bought a loose-leaf notebook and a fat sheaf of lined paper By using a separate sheet for each object, she could I rearrange and classify them at a later time. Now she would [ have to list them as they came to light, more or less at random.The descriptions would have to be detailed, I amplified with sketches and measurements, for Meg was I uncomfortably aware of her inability to identify all the I objects by type and date. Filled with virtuous determination, she rolled up her flannel sleeves and began.

  It was slow, hard work, unbelievably complicated by the crowded state of the rooms. The only empty space was ill the narrow corridor at the top of the attic stairs. Before I long Meg realized she would need some system of labeling I the objects as she listed them—a number, corresponding I to the number in the inventory. She didn’t want to write on the furniture, not even in pencil. What she needed were gummed labels, the kind that stuck without water and I could be peeled right off. Why hadn’t she thought of that? I Maybe Andy had some. She would ask him later.

  Meanwhile, as she scrambled under tables and over I dressers, she noticed something that ought to have occurred to her before. The farther she penetrated into the I interior of the big room, the older was the furniture. The I occupants of the house who had carried their discards up j to be stored, had started at the back of the room and I gradually filled it up, generation by generation, layer by I layer. It was the older period that interested Meg; the I florid, heavy carved Victorian furniture attracted her less than the earlier, simpler styles. But there was no way of getting at such hypothetical treasures unless she moved a vanload of heavy furniture first.

  Frustrated and perspiring, she decided to postpone the furniture inventory until she could get some labels. A heavy glass-front bookcase was accessible; it was filled with leather-bound volumes. Meg sat down on the floor in front of the bookcase. She was quite ready to sit for a while, and anyway the books would have to be listed sooner or later—by author, title, date of publication. There might be a valuable first edition among them.

  The books were disappointing. Pretentiously bound, they were not as old as Meg had hoped. One of them caught her interest, though not for its antiquarian value. It was a genealogy of the Emig family, privately printed in 1933. Andy’s last name was Brenner; Meg wondered if the Emigs were his mother’s family. Surely the book wouldn’t interest anyone who wasn’t an Emig. It was written in a turgid, labored style, and the organization of the material was poor.

  The family had not been particularly distinguished, but if the author’s research was accurate, it was a very old one. Of course, Meg reflected, the same could be said of any family. Every human being has prehistoric ancestors. The Emigs had come to America not on the Mayflower but on the very next boat; they had fought bravely in the Revolution—on the Patriot side, of course—and had produced men of honor and women of integrity, with never a black sheep in the lot.

  Meg began to yawn. The Emigs couldn’t have been as dull as their biographer implied. She glanced at the title page. Her suspicion was correct; the author’s name was Emig. That would account not only for the pious bias of the entries but also for the awkward literary style. She skipped the earlier chapters and began searching for a reference to the house in which she was living. It was an impressive mansion and undoubtedly represented a period of relative prosperity for the family. Sure enough, the building of Trail’s End had inspired several pages of fulsome description. The builder, one Benjamin Emig, had invested in steel mills. His epitaph, quoted by his admiring descendant, was an excellent example of sanctimonious pomposity—and, Meg suspected, a tissue of lies from beginning to end. Men who built fortunes in those days often built them on the bodies of their workers. And the bearded, buttoned-up patriarch whose portrait was reproduced had the cold, unwinking stare of a snake and a mouth like a paper cut. Meg felt a stir of pity for the meek little wife who stood by him, her hand on his shoulder in proper wifely humility. Any man who would name his house Trail’s End had a negative attitude toward life.

  She read on, with growing interest. The text was fun if you interpreted it with a liberal quantity of salt and deduced the truth under the formal phrases. Benjamin Emig had left a large progeny—no doubt that fact accounted, in part, for his wife’s worn look. But the family had dwindled as the twentieth century succeeded the nineteenth. Alexander Emig, born in 1895, inherited his father’s money and Trail’s End, but by 1933, when the book was written, he had produced only two offspring, and one of them had not survived infancy. The other child—Beverly—must be Andy’s mother. The date was right…

  A hand touched her shoulder, startling her so that she dropped the book. She had been so absorbed in the fortunes of the obscure Emigs that she had not heard Andy’s approach.

  “It’s one o’clock,” he said. “What’s so fascinating about that book?”

  Meg handed him the volume.

  “I’m investigating your ghost theory,” she said maliciously. “I thought I’d see whether any of your ancestors had a reason to haunt the house.”

  Andy’s eyebrows shot up. He looked curiously at the book.

  “I don’t think I ever saw this.”

  “It is your mother’s family, I take it.”

  “Yes.” Andy turned to the back of the book. “Here she is—Beverly Emig. Anything in here I ought to know about?”

  “Your ancestors were a singularly virtuous crowd. Not that I believe a word of it.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. Wow.” Flipping through the pages, Andy stopped at the picture of Benjamin Emig. “Here’s a face that might haunt a house.”

  “He built it. But if anybody had a reason for revenge, it would be his wife. I bet he beat her.”

  “You said the man had a beard.” Andy’s eyes were fixed on the picture, but a muscle near his mouth was twitching oddly.

  “The man? Oh. That man. No, it wasn’t Benjamin.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “The beard was white,” Meg said positively. “Oh, I see; it could be Benjamin when he was older. But the other man’s clothes didn’t look like clothes of this period. Oh, blast it, I’m not sure. I don’t think so, though.”

  “I hope not. If we must be haunted, I’d prefer a more benevolent-looking ghost.”

  “So you admit it.” Meg straightened her bent knees and stretched. “You are trying to find a ghost.”

  “Why not? Think of the book I could write. I could make a fortune.”

  “We,” Meg corrected, matching his frivolous tone. “It would have to be a collaborative effort. Didn’t Bridey Murphy make a few bucks out of that book? Like me, she was the goat—or the guinea pig.”

  “You’re all mixed up. Bridey Murphy was the original personality reincarnated in the modern housewife, whose name I forget.”

  “So do I. And what’s more, I don’t believe in Bridey.” Meg rose stiffly to her feet. “I guess I could do with some lunch.”

  “And a bath,” Andy said critically.

  While Meg showered, Andy made sandwiches and opened a can of soup. They had almost finished the makeshift meal when Meg returned to the attack.

  “I didn’t hear you scream last night. Didn’t you see anything frightening?”

  “Obviously not, or I would have screamed. How about you? No visions up there in the gray solitude of the attic?” “Not a thing. But cheer up; the day isn’t over yet.” “Damn it,what makes you think I’m looking for trouble? I’d be delighted if you never had any more fits.” “Thanks for putting it so tactfully.” They glared at one another across the table. Th
en Andy’s scowl smoothed out.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “What’s the matter with us? Is it the house? The unholy aura of—”

  “Oh, stop it. It’s not the house, it’s us. We always fought. If there is an aura in the house, it’s…”

  “What?”

  “I wish you hadn’t quoted that damned poem,” Meg burst out. “I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  Andy leaned back in his chair.

  “But only a host of phantom listeners

  That dwell in the lone house then

  Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

  To that voice from the world of men:

  Stood thronging the faint moonbeams

  on the dark stair,

  That goes down to the empty hall…