“Stay here? Now? We don’t have proper bedrooms yet. Nothing is clean. I think we should wait.” She looked at Bam, who seemed just as doubtful, but her friend kept her mouth shut.
“Your aunt had to sleep somewhere. And what about her kids? I’m sure there are bedrooms somewhere.”
“They could be in the same state as everywhere else. I really think we should sort out the mess before we think about living here. What about that brown shit we saw yesterday? What if it’s some sort of toxic crap? Bam could be right.”
“We saw it wrong. Do you see any sign of it now?”
“All three of us saw it wrong? What do you think it was, mass hysteria?” Freya folded her arms and straightened her shoulders.
“We probably saw something else. For all I know, it was just a big slug or something. I never investigated it… did you?”
“No, but—”
“Freya, the house is fine. Honest. You need to stop finding excuses. I know you don’t like this place, but we’re going to have to live here eventually. Might as well be sooner rather than later.” He took a step towards her and gently grabbed her chin between his forefinger and thumb. “Face your demons, and all that lark.” His smouldering eyes looked in hers and, for a moment, Freya remembered the brief time they’d dated as teenagers. She didn’t want to stay in the house, especially not in this state. She didn’t trust it somehow, and she knew it was insane not to trust a building… but there was just something about this place. And yet… Oliver had always held a strange power over her. When she told Ollie and Bam she had inherited the house, it had been him who had convinced her not to sell. Freya struggled to deny him anything, and she knew Bam was the same.
“I just don’t know, Ollie. This is not what we planned.”
“Well, I’m going to stay here.” There was conviction in his voice. “I’d rather have you two stay with me, but if you won’t… well, that’s your choice. Bam? What say you?”
“I guess we can stay here.” Bam looked miserable, but Oliver clapped his hands together.
“Splendid.”
“Splendid? You sound like a villain from the old Batman series.” Freya shook her head and muttered “kapow” under her breath.
“Ladies… let’s go find the bedrooms and see if they’re habitable. Then we can get our stuff from the B&B tonight.”
He led the way and the two girls followed. Freya felt Bam’s cold, clammy hand slip in to hers.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I actually feel better.” Bam smiled brightly, but Freya wondered how genuine it was.
Chapter 3
Clearing the house was less arduous than Freya had feared, and by the time the contractor came, most of the debris in the entrance hall and the central room had been thrown into skips. There was no way in hell they could get Bam to touch anything with cobwebs on it, so they sent her to collect anything that looked valuable instead.
“I wonder if we can get an internet connection all the way up here.” Oliver grunted as he pulled a heavy bin-liner over his shoulder and made his way to the door. “That would be awesome.”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.” Freya wiped her arm across her moist forehead. “I can’t get mobile reception up here, or anywhere around here, really. Lucifer Falls seems to be a bit of a dead zone. I know my aunt did have a phone line, though I think it only worked half the time. Mostly, she just used the landlines in the nearby towns. Hooking up Internet seems like wishful thinking to me.”
Oliver smirked. “We could go retro, maybe get a modem?”
“Do they even make those anymore?”
“We’ll do some research. I’m sure there’s something that will work.” Oliver patted her cheek in a condescending manner. “There are plenty of rural homes that have Internet; I don’t see why this one would be any different. We just have to check it out.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Freya bit her lip and wrinkled her nose. “Though it would be easier to check it out if we had Internet. I need to get a UK mobile phone anyway. Mine is still Dutch, and it’s costing me a fortune to use 3G.”
Oliver didn’t seem to hear her. Freya thought about how isolated they were all the way here in Lucifer Falls.
“I wonder what it was like for your mom to grow up in this place. Was it as crazy as it is now?” Oliver sat down on the floor, his hands shovelling bits of debris into a bin-liner.
“It was nuts, but not this nuts. Not like living in cobweb paradise. The house wasn’t like this the last time I was here. I never met my grandparents. My mom made sure of that.”
“She didn’t like your grandparents?” He leaned his elbows on his knees and gazed at her.
“Mom hated them.” Freya waved her hands to emphasize her point. “She didn’t even go to their funerals. She told me stories from when she was a kid, and I don’t blame her. Her parents were pretty sadistic.”
Oliver stopped shovelling and looked at her with renewed interest. “What did they do?”
“When Mom was little, she and her sister were homeschooled by my grandmother. Mom told me that Gran would expect them to learn a part of the scripture each week, and if they got a single word wrong, Gran would whip them across the palm with a birch twig.” She held up her hands and ran her fingers across her palms. “My mom still has scars on her hands. There were weird rules too, like they had to get up in the middle of the night to see if all the locks were still in place.”
“Locks?”
“Yeah, Mom used to tell me the basement scared the crap out her and Aunt Miriam, and her parents would make them go and check if it was still locked. There was supposed to be a secret down there, but my mom never found out what it was. I guess Aunt Miriam did, because she walled the place up. Must have been pretty bad. I suspect my grandparents were into freaky stuff.”
“Like a sex dungeon?” Oliver stared at her with raised eyebrows.
“God only knows. They were pretty fanatic religious people so I doubt it was a sex thing.”
“Repression can do weird things to people.”
Freya cringed at the idea of her grandparents having sex. “Anyway, the basement was forbidden to the girls, but at the same time they were in charge of the lock. They weren’t allowed to go together either. Their mother would always make them check alone, and they weren’t allowed to turn on the light.” Freya shook her head and remembered the look in her mother’s eyes when she recounted her journeys down to the basement. “Scared the hell out of my mother who, to this day, is still afraid of the dark.” Her nails scratched at an itch on the side of her nose. “The darkness was another thing. My grandmother would blindfold them and tell them to go to a certain part of the house. They needed to be able to find their way at night without any lights, she used to say. They needed to know the whole house like the backs of their hands so that they could get away, no matter what.”
“Why?” Oliver did a bad job of concealing his grin. Freya shook her head and laughed without mirth.
“God only knows. Maybe to get out if there was ever a fire, with the smoke and all? Whatever it was, I can tell you that this was a weird place to grow up in. My Grandmother could have been over-cautious, or maybe she was just a loony. I don’t think it was healthy for two young girls to live in a place like this, so isolated from everybody. It’s bound to make you a little crazy. Look what happened to my aunt.” She waved her hand around and let the debris speak for itself.
“Mom ran away from home when she was fourteen. That’s when she met my dad. She married him when she was seventeen and he was nineteen. I think if she hadn’t run away, she’d probably be dead by now. Mom doesn’t talk about this place much anymore, but I know she still has nightmares about it.”
Oliver ran his hands through his hair. The muscles in his jaws were tight when he spoke. “That’s pretty intense.”
“Yeah, this place is. That’s why I was a bit nervous about coming here. Not because I believe in ghosts or anything, but because I believe in human misery. Th
is place, Lucifer Falls… a lot of people come here as an ‘end of the road’ kind of thing.”
Oliver’s eyes widened and he wrinkled his nose. “You mean…?”
“A lot of people have jumped off the cliff. It’s a beautiful but tragic place, and it attracts people with a death wish.” She tore off a new liner and shook it so that the plastic billowed, creating a parachute shape.
“That’s a cheerful thought.” Oliver inspected a piece of blackened wood between his fingers.
“It is, isn’t it? I’ve always associated this house with misery. When I first inherited it, I wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible. But you guys made me see that there is a way to change the past, and maybe bring light onto a very dark family history. I would like to be the one who changes the reputation of Angel Manor, the one who makes it a place of beauty and life.”
“Yeah, that’s what this place needs,” Oliver said with a dreamy look in his eyes. “Life.”
***
The bedrooms were in almost pristine condition, and with the exception of the creepy art which lined the walls, were not as cluttered as the family room, dining room and kitchen. There were four bedrooms in all downstairs, with Bam claiming the biggest one for herself. She didn’t get much resistance. The biggest bedroom had belonged to the aunt so Freya didn’t want it, and Oliver was content to take a room with doors leading outside. To her surprise, Bam found that she liked the decoration in the bedroom, aside from the sinister paintings of angels covering their faces with pale hands, but she took those down the first night and put them with the rest of the antiques to sell. The walls were lined with blue velvet wallpaper, and the floor was beautiful polished parquet. In the middle stood a four-poster bed with curtains in the same midnight blue as the walls. The big windows let in enough light to counter the gloomy dark colours. When she closed the curtains, the room was cast in utter darkness, and Bam found she slept well in her new bedroom without any further worry about ghosts. The past three days had been wonderful. That morning, she had spoken to an interested antique dealer who promised he would come and take a look at the possessions left behind by the previous owner, and Bam had a suspicion they would have a nice little nest egg to put towards building the hotel after she was done.
With a sigh, she lay back on her bed and wondered how she could have ever felt fear towards the place. True, the first day she had entered the house, it had looked menacing, and she hadn’t forgotten their bloody noses after they’d touched the stones, but it felt so friendly now. Welcoming… as if she had returned home after a long time away. Home was a new concept for Bam, who’d spent her life in boarding schools far away from her birth parents. That’s how she’d met Freya and Oliver, at age twelve. She and her brother Chuck had lived in the same boarding school, and the four had been inseparable for many years. Oliver was Bam’s secret crush, and she knew she would follow him anywhere. When Angel Manor had become an opportunity to stay rather than move back to California with her parents, Bam had grabbed it with both hands. The idea of starting a new life with Oliver excited her, and she hoped that when things settled down, she could lure him into her bedroom. They were meant to be together, Bam was sure of that.
For the first time since Chuck had died two years ago, Bam felt life could be sane again. She missed her brother, but a small part of her had to admit that she felt a little relieved she was free of his overbearing, and on occasion, abusive personality. She believed that it had been Chuck who had stood between her and Oliver, and because of him, she’d never dared tell anyone about her feelings. Not even her best friend. When Freya had dated Oliver for a brief summer, Bam had been emotionally crushed. Luckily, the two had about as much chemistry as two wet paper towels, and the relationship fizzled out before it had even begun. But Bam always thought it was her lips that belonged on him, not Freya’s. She had dated many guys, none of whom were good enough for her brother, and he’d sabotaged every single one of her relationships. If she’d dated Oliver, their friendship would have been ruined forever. But now Chuck was dead, and Oliver only slept one room away from hers in the middle of nowhere. Her parents were in California, and she was here on this glorious island. Bam wrapped her arms around her chest and felt the firm silicone of her breasts push against her soft skin. She imagined it was Oliver holding her. Behind closed eyelashes, she saw, could almost feel, his lips touch the nape of her neck and her shoulder. Gooseflesh prickled her back and arms, and she hugged herself tighter, only to break away from the thought seconds later and get to her feet. This was no time for fantasies. She’d leave those to the darkness of the night and the privacy of a heavily-curtained four poster bed. If she wanted to impress Oliver now, she would have to show she was worth her salt.
She flung her legs over the side of the mattress, adjusted her NIN t-shirt, and pulled her jeans over her hips.
“Let’s go sort out some antiques.” With swift fingers, she pulled her hair into a ponytail and walked out to the living room area. There were quite a few items that could be worth some money in here. The aunt had kitsch taste, especially when it came to her knick-knacks, but there were a few things that could be worth something. The big gold plates were the most valuable, of course, and Bam didn’t want to excite the others too much, but she had a suspicion they would fetch a lot more than a thousand pounds. She looked at the grandfather clock and wished she could sell that too. It would have made a pretty penny. The big hand landed on the angel representing the three, and soft, chiming music rang through the living area. It was pleasant, Bam decided, but she hated the clock when it struck the full hour; there was nothing dainty about those loud chimes.
The three friends had some money saved up. Bam, who was the child of rich parents, had the most to contribute. With the three years of her unfinished bachelor degree in design, and a natural flair for taste, she felt she had more than just cash to offer. Freya had a little saved up, and Oliver had the connections and the cooking skills. When the hotel was open, he would run the kitchens while Freya and Bam would manage the hotel. Every penny Bam could make from selling this stuff would be a blessing, and she intended to squeeze every last drop out of it all.
Bam climbed on a ladder and started to take down the plates one by one. She covered them carefully in bubble wrap, then slid them into cardboard boxes, after which she brought them to the conservatory.
Like the living room, the conservatory was in pretty good condition. A wicker table stood in the centre of the glass construction, surrounded by four matching chairs topped with white cushions. The glass trapped a lot of the late summer warmth so the room was stifling. Bam opened the doors to allow some fresh air in. The breeze brought the smell of wildflowers, intoxicating and almost noxiously sweet.
With care, Bam stacked the boxes in one of the corners of the conservatory, returning to the living room when she’d finished. The spaces where the plates had been were now large black spots. Bam blinked, sure that they hadn’t been there before. She climbed the ladder again to inspect one of the patches. When she ran her hand across, a charcoal residue appeared on her palm, and Bam realised the wallpaper had been cut out in a perfect circle with exposed brickwork lying underneath.
“What the hell?” She rubbed the black spot again, and this time when she looked at her hand, it was covered in a thick red liquid. The black spot was crying blood. Bam yelped. Her foot slipped, and she clung on to the rung with her hands. The ladder wobbled dangerously, but eventually steadied. She clamoured down, fighting the urge to jump. Standing on solid ground again, she looked at the spot, but this time she only saw soot. Her hand shook as she held it up to her face, and to her relief she saw there was just black on her palm and no blood. The experience left her shaken, and Bam decided she needed a break and a coffee. She wouldn’t tell the others what she’d seen; she didn’t want to anger Oliver again. This was just her imagination. It wouldn’t be the first time it had happened. If she gave into her moods again, it might ruin this opportunity, and she decided it wasn’t w
orth it.
Chapter 4
Every bone in Freya’s body protested when she got out of bed. They had worked throughout most of the night, clearing away the rubbish from the entrance hall and the central room until the skips were completely filled with broken furniture. The fear she’d felt had ebbed away over the past six days, and Freya believed that cleaning up the house had been very much like taming it. The work was arduous, and by the time she fell on her mattress at night, she’d be so tired that she would fall asleep instantly. Clearing out the house wasn’t the horrendous task she’d expected it to be, and the hours passed quickly.
“What time is your guy coming?” Freya wiped the sleep from her eyes and ran her fingers through her obstinate black locks. The dark blue t-shirt with a picture of Kermit saying ‘kiss the frog’ hung to her thighs, and she caught Oliver casting an appreciative glance at her long tanned legs. She pulled the fabric of her shirt down a little in a self-conscious motion, and Oliver turned back to his coffee.
“Between nine and five.” He glanced at the floor plans he’d spread out over the wooden kitchen table. Bam had done a great job cleaning the work area, and though the wallpaper and furniture were horribly outdated, the place was liveable.
“That’s nice and specific.” Freya pulled a face and poured herself a cup of the hot black liquid. The aroma filled her nostrils, and she realised she liked the smell of coffee more than she liked the taste. She poured in a generous helping of sugar and milk to mask the bitterness, sighed, and sat down at the table next to Oliver. “Why do they always need so much time? I mean, I can imagine that they don’t know exactly what time they’ll be here, but needing eight hours is a bit much.”
Angel Manor (Lucifer Falls Book 1) Page 5
