Harrow: Three Novels (Nightmare House, Mischief, The Infinite)

by Douglas Clegg

  She felt fairly confident now; the caffeine had kicked in, and she had familiarized herself enough with the house and its rooms to feel as if she owned it, and not that crazy woman her dad wanted to get into bed. She had brushed her hair out and drawn it up in back, and put on a pure white shirt and oversized canvas pants—it was her version of dressing up.

  She looked at each of them.

  Losers. Complete and utter losers, but cool in some way she couldn’t identify. Chet was a total babe but looked a bit trashy. His hair was too long, which was cool, but he looked lean in the way guys looked when they never got much to eat. She knew that he had been working at gas stations, probably making minimum wage. And the baseball cap on his head looked completely dorky; at nineteen he was too old for that. She hated boys who tried to still look like boys even when they should be men.

  Cali, of course, looked hot and bizarre. She was leggy and steamy and dressed in the kind of clothes that Mira only dreamed about but would never wear in a million years. When I grow up, I’m going to be Cali Nytbird, Mira told herself. Then she saw the other one. The one she thought of as Mr. Wormy. He sat in the large high-backed, overstuffed chair and puffed on his stinky cigarette. Yuck. Mr. Wormy looked at her like she was some kind of... whore.

  She hated him. He had leered at her the entire time he’d stayed at the Foundation, and now he was back. She was convinced he had even tried to get in bed with her one night, only she had raised such a ruckus, and kicked him right between the balls hard enough, that he had stopped, claiming he must be sleepwalking, because “I thought I was back at my old house, and getting into bed with Maria.” Her father had bought the story, because it fit in with his theories about Mr. Wormy’s voices from Beyond or some such bullshit, and the old lecher got away with it.

  I’ll kick you again where it counts if you don’t watch out, Wormy Man.

  He was, of course, drinking the Chivas. Hogging it, more like. She was a little shocked at the beer in Cali s hand—a can of Bud, which was Mira’s father’s favorite, but Mira thought Cali would be into White Russians, or maybe white wine, more than Bud. She wears Kate Spades; why would she have a Budweiser? Miss Nytbird is just a mass of contradictions.

  Chet also had a Budweiser in his hand and from the look of the crunched-up can next to him, was already on his second or third.

  “You look very...” Cali began, but no further words came out.

  “I don’t wear jeans all the time. I like these pants. I can store my cell phone in them,” Mira said, drawing her small, sleek black phone from the third pocket down, near her knee. “My Palm Pilots in this one.” She dropped the phone back down into the pocket and reached into the second pocket down, drawing up the handheld device. “And my Swiss Army Knife here.” She reached into her left-hand lower pocket and brought out the knife her father had given her two years earlier. “Everything a millennium girl can use,” Mira said, and then pointedly added, “except for a gun, of course.”

  “Heh,” Frost Crane chortled.

  She shot him an evil look. / wish I had some kind of psychic powers to zap you, Mr. Wormy. She walked over to the long, sleek dining table that had all the bottles and cans. She picked up a can of Coke, popped the tab, took a swig. Lukewarm; lovely. She grabbed one of the dining room chairs, swiveling it around so she sat in it backwards, facing the three of them. “Dad’ll be down in a minute.”

  “Where’s Conan?” Cali asked.

  “I think he’s so happy to be away from the city that it’ll be about midnight before he comes in from the outside willingly. There are all kinds of holes waiting to be dug in the garden. And since the ground’s practically frozen, it’ll take Conan twice as long as normal.”

  “Conan?” Chet asked.

  “My dog,” Mira said. “He’s a mutt from a very good neighborhood. Half border collie, and a little bit of Labrador retriever somewhere in there, too.”

  “Oh, yeah, I think I met him already.” Chet nodded. “What about Ivy Martin?”

  “She’s around. It’s a big property,” Mira said. “I haven’t seen much of her myself. Not since the night before last.”

  “She must be whacked to buy this old place,” Frost said. “It looks like some of these walls could fall over at any minute.”

  “Structurally it’s sound,” Mira said, feeling smarter and more mature than the Worm. “She spent a lot of cash to get this place back into shape. When Dad bought the brownstone for PSI Vista, it took a year and a half to get the contractors to do their job. But Ivy, she got this done in less than five months. That seems like some kind of record to me. All this furniture, too. Reproductions from all over the country. Maybe even overseas, too. That sofa”—she pointed with her Coke can at the couch—”that piece of crap cost a fortune.”

  “So polite,” Frost whispered under his breath.

  “She must be a perfectionist,” Cab’ said. “This stuff is beautiful. I’m not a huge furniture buyer, but those bookshelves must’ve cost a fortune.”

  “I guess some people have it and spend it,” Mira said. “Someday, when I’m rich, I’ll do better things than buy an old house.”

  “Moneys the root of all evil,” Chet said, his voice barely audible.

  “Huh?” Mira asked.

  “It’s bad. The Bible says so,” Chet said.

  “And you believe that money is evil, but not the people who use the money?”

  “Maybe it leads them to do evil things.”

  Mira glanced at Cali. Christ, say something to this fundie dweeb. Please tell me we don’t have a Born Again in here.

  Cali gave her a blank stare.

  “I hear your talent is unusual,” Cali said, looking over at Chet.

  Okay, she’s up to something now, Mira thought.

  Chet shrugged. He nursed the beer. His left hand hung across his knee. He was uncomfortable. Even the chair seemed to intimidate him. “It’s not even a talent. It’s something bad. I can’t control it.”

  “Maybe you’ve never tried. What is it?”

  “Things happen. Around me. Sometimes. It’s like lightning coming down. It doesn’t always happen. But when it does, it’s a lot. My foster mother told me I was a sinner. She may have been right.”

  ‘There were times/’ Cali said, sipping her beer, “when people like us might’ve been tortured and murdered just because of these kinds of things. Imagine that.”

  “Like witches,” Mira said. “God, I love the idea of witchcraft. I’d like to put a few hexes on people I know.” Particularly in this room.

  “It’s bad stuff,” Chet said, looking down at his hands. “Although I guess it’s not all bad. Once I saved a baby because of it.”

  “Whiny baby, I bet,” Frost said, again under his breath, but just loud enough for Mira to hear.

  “That doesn’t sound like a sinner to me,” Cali said.

  “The baby still died, though. Later. I probably just made its pain last longer. Who knows?”

  “And the butterflies,” Mira said, her voice so sweet it felt like the onset of a toothache.

  Chet glanced up, a harsh look.

  “I work with Dad. I know this stuff. It’s not a secret.”

  “That’s private business,” Chet said. “And it was a long time ago. Nothing’s happened since. At all.”

  “Shit, then why’re you here?” Frost asked, slurring his words a bit. Ah, Mira thought, the Chivas is kicking in.

  Chet looked up at her, his eyes seeming like the saddest green eyes she had ever seen, and for a moment she wanted to actually mother the guy, hold him in her arms and just comfort him— whereas a few minutes before, she’d thought he was cute in a Brad Pitt kind of way, he now seemed like a little four-year-old who has a splinter in his finger. He glanced over at Frost. “I guess the money. I’m broke. Most of the time, anyway. And I’d like to give some to this woman I know of.”

  Frost shook his head slightly. “The root of all evil.”

  “Well,” Chet said, “I guess for me
it is. I shouldn’t really be here. You two have actual skills with your abilities. I’ve seen you on TV. I heard about your predictions,” he said to Frost, his formerly somber mood brightening a bit. “You’re famous. And you”—he turned to Cali—”you have a radio show and solve crimes and things. I’ve never really done anything ... that worked.”

  Okay, now you’re going from needy child to whiner, Mira thought. You’re getting paid a small fortune to sit in this house for a couple of days, and you’re now going to become the crybaby. I guess everybody has their group dynamic, just like Dad says. Change the subject, Mira. Change it, before we all sink into Chet’s clingy little world. “Dad’ll be back in another hour. He was down at the Foundation today for some presentation. Dinner arrives at seven, from the House of Hunan—yeah, I know, fancy for the first night, but there you have it. Dad’s arranged with the restaurants in town for each of you to have a tab, and the Foundation will cover the expense. You just call them up, and they’ll deliver. I don’t cook or clean, so basically, it’s a do-it-yourself kind of thing if you want to eat in. There’s a woman who comes in the mornings for basic cleaning downstairs, and she’ll also make breakfast and coffee. There are three big fridges in the kitchen, fully stocked. You can order from the local Safeway, and they’ll deliver. Charge it to the Foundation, too.”

  “We can’t just come and go?” Chet asked.

  “What, you think they pay us ten thousand each to get out every day?” Frost said, doing a bad job of hiding his contempt.

  “You only got ten thousand?” Cali asked archly. She winked at Mira, who laughed.

  “Yeah, you do what you want. But part of the deal is, you stay here.” Then Mira figured she’d have a little fun, particularly since Chet was looking at her with those soulful baby eyes. “No matter what. No matter what manifests itself, you remain on this property. No matter how frightening it becomes.”

  From behind her, her father said, “Oh, good grief, it’s not going to get frightening at all. Ghosts are harmless. Ready for supper?”

  2

  They were well into the sesame noodles and spring rolls when Cali asked what she thought was an obvious question. “So, where is she?”

  Jack Fleetwood leaned back in his chair, a bit of noodle in his chopstick. He seemed poised to say something, but instead got the noodle in his mouth.

  “She?” Chet asked. “You mean Ms. Martin?”

  Mira dropped her fork on her place and reached for one of the boxes of white rice. “That’s the million-dollar question tonight. Everyone wants to know, Dad. Didn’t you tell them?” She said it like it was the beginning of a punch line.

  “Not yet,” her father said. He quieted a bit as he said, “She’s taken to staying up all night. She told me that since she’s been here, she can’t sleep. She manages to sleep during the day.”

  “She’s a vampire,” Mira said, arching her eyebrows.

  Chet laughed. “I bet. I used to have trouble sleeping. She should try some melatonin. It always helps me.”

  It was Frost who finally said the obvious. “It’s after eight. What time is she usually up?”

  Mira and Fleetwood exchanged glances. Mira broke into a grin as she poured half the rice onto her plate. “She’s around. She’s sort of a ghost herself.”

  “What Mira means,” Fleetwood said, “is that Ivy has been spending a lot of time down in the cellars. There are a lot of interesting things down there, not the least of which are rooms that haven’t been opened since at least the 1920s, if not earlier.”

  “Cellars within cellars?” Cali asked.

  “A house within a house, basically,” Fleetwood said.

  “Who has the moo shu pork?” Mira asked, glancing around at the plates and the boxes. “Someone must have it.”

  “That’d be me,” Chet said, and lifted the box nearest him. He had to get out of his chair slightly and lean over the table to pass the box; his white shirt got some plum sauce on the sleeve as he did so, and he wiped it on his jeans after he sat back down.

  “Who read up on Harrow?” Fleetwood asked.

  “Me.” Cali said, and then looked around the table at the others. She took a sip of her beer and then set the empty can down. “Oh, come on, no one else here looked up anything about this place?”

  Frost Crane nodded. “I know something about it. Not very much. Just what you’ve written before.”

  “Good,” Fleetwood said. To Chet: “You know nothing about it?”

  Chet shrugged. “I looked it up on the Internet at the library. I only had about a half an hour online, but all I saw was stuff about the fire last year and the school.”

  “Well, on the one hand,” Fleetwood began, “I wanted you to know very little about Harrow before you arrived here. I didn’t want any preconceived knowledge of this house to influence you. On the other hand, it might not hurt to know a bit about its history.”

  “I heard it was the most haunted house in America,” Cali said.

  “No,” Fleetwood said. “That’s another house, I think. There are plenty of haunted houses in the world. Harrow has barely made a dent in recorded hauntings. However, it has had its share of disturbances over the years. Harrow has, in my opinion, a much more interesting focus than ghosts, Cali. I believe it is a portal of some sort, and I also believe it contains treasures that we have not yet found, but that are here in the house.”

  “So this is some big treasure hunt,” Chet said, his mouth still full. “And we’re like the metal detectors.”

  Mira snorted a laugh. “There ya go, Dad. Someone’s smart enough to be on to you.”

  “In your book, you had a whole chapter about Harrow,” Frost Crane said, his chin lightly speckled with food; Chet tried to point this out to him in some hand gestures, but Frost didn’t get it. Cali had to smile as she watched the guy she considered the Pompous and Annoying Grand Poobah speak. “But I read another book in your library. It was called Infinity.”

  “The Infinite Ones,” Jack Fleetwood corrected him, a warm undertone to his voice. He looked over at Cali, briefly, and she felt embarrassed. For just a lightning flash of a second, she had detected some interest from him. Strange man. Then she grinned at her own thought. Lots of strange men at this table.

  ‘That’s it. By a woman who had lived here. Around 1900,” Frost continued, although it looked as if Fleetwood wanted to jump in and say more about the book. “So, it seems that this house has had stances before.”

  “Are we going to have a stance?” Mira asked, sitting up in her chair, her face brightening. She shot a glance at Chet. “Séances can be fun, even if nothing happens.”

  “I’ve never been to one,” Chet said. “I guess where I’m from it’s considered ‘of the Devil,’ sort of.” Then he quickly added: “Not that I believe that. I’m not the rube you all think I am. I mean, I was raised Christian and all, but it’s not like I think there’s Satan everywhere or anything.”

  “Do you believe the world was made in six actual twenty-four-hour periods?” Frost asked.

  Chet squinted his eyes as if he didn’t understand the question. “I don’t believe everything everyone writes is literal. If that’s what you’re asking, anyway.”

  “I always say ‘Keep an open mind,’ “ Cali said. “In my world, creation happened the day before I was born.”

  Fleetwood chuckled.

  “Wait,” Mira said. “I don’t get it.”

  “I mean, the world couldn’t have existed before I was born. Maybe I created it all. Maybe . .. you’re a figment of my imagination,” Cali said. “Now, can you quit hogging the shrimp and broccoli and pass some of it over?”

  “Okay, but watch out, it’s hot.”

  “Hot as Hell,” Chet said, laughing, as he drew a small red pepper from his mouth and set it down on the edge of his plate. And then, “Sorry, I guess I take everything too seriously. I don’t really know what I believe God-wise, mainly because where I come from was so screwed up. You hear about Hellfire enough as a kid
, it’s tough to shake it.”

  “Early training.” Cali nodded. “Tell me about it. I’m still depressed because there’s no Santa Claus.”

  “I don’t believe in God,” Mira said matter-of-factly. “I think this is all a big mess we’ve been thrown into, and we make up gods and devils and reasons for why we all do these things, and then we just die at some point like any other animal or plant.” She bit down hard on a shrimp when she finished speaking.

  “And yet your father works with the idea that there’s something else out there,” Frost said. “Perhaps you’re just rebelling.”

  “Could be,” Mira said. “Or perhaps ... I’m just a bitch.”

  Her father laughed the hardest, although Cali was beginning to feel annoyed by Mira, as well as by Frost.

  “Mira, you could never be a bitch,” Fleetwood said.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Frost said, wadding up his napkin and dropping it on his plate.

  Cali glanced at Chet. What’s up with this?

  Silence reigned at the table for another few moments before Mira said. “I don’t mind being called a bitch.”

  Frost glared at her and took a sip from his tumbler of whiskey. “I didn’t mean to imply bitch. I don’t like language like that. Not at the dinner table. I just meant you’re your own person. A rebel. I didn’t mean that word.”

  “That’s right,” Fleetwood said. He reached over and said, “Frost, she meant it in good humor.”

  “No, she didn’t. She was dredging up muck, that’s what she was doing.” Frosts voice betrayed no real anger; he sounded as if he were a schoolmaster speaking of some naughty but adorable child.

  Chet piped up. “Anybody want to fill me in on this?”

  Mira obliged. “Frost stayed with us for a couple of months at the Foundation. One day I accidentally—”

  “Accidentally,” Frost said under his breath.

  “Accidentally,” Mira emphasized, “walked in on him in a, let’s say, private moment, wink-wink, nudge-nudge—”