The Loveliest Dead

by Ray Garton

  When Winningham returned, he brought with him Lily Rourke and her redheaded friend. Lily saw Miles asleep on the cushion and whispered when she spoke.

  She introduced herself and Claudia again, and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Kellar, I’m sorry. I feel partly responsible for what happened here tonight because I didn’t put a stop to it. I should’ve been more insistent, I should’ve—”

  “It’s not your fault,” Jenna said. “I should have listened to you.”

  “It’s my fault,” David said. “I should’ve listened. What do we do now? How do we get rid of this?”

  Lily said nothing for a moment. She looked up at the ceiling, around at the cabinets and counters, but she did not seem to see them. She inhaled deeply and seemed to be breathing in the whole room, the house itself. “We’ll need help,” she said to Jenna. “I’m a psychic, not a medium. I’ve never dealt with anything like this before. We need someone who has. Kimberly said you talked to some mediums, is that right?”

  Jenna nodded. “One of them came here. Ada. But she won’t come back.”

  “Was there another? Someone who didn’t seem like a fraud?”

  “Mrs. Frangiapani. She claims to be a psychic medium. We were both pretty impressed with her, but I don’t know if she—”

  “We need her.”

  “Do you want me to call her?” Jenna said.

  “No. Take me to her.”

  Claudia drove Lily, Jenna, and Miles—Jenna did not want to leave him at home, and Lily agreed—through the rain to Mrs. Frangiapani’s house in nearby Ferndale. David and Martha had stayed behind.

  “If the slightest thing happens while we’re gone,” Lily had said, “get out of the house. Go out and sit in your car until we get back.”

  Lily felt Jenna Kellar’s fear and tension—it seemed to fill the cab of the Beetle. Miles remained silent throughout the drive to Ferndale.

  “Mrs. Frangiapani is old,” Jenna said, leaning forward in the backseat. “She says she’s retired, so I don’t know if she’ll be willing to help us.”

  “You say she claims to be psychic as well as a medium?” Lily asked.

  Jenna said, “Yes.”

  “Then let me talk to her,” Lily said.

  Claudia parked on the street in front of Mrs. Frangiapani’s white Victorian house. On the porch, Jenna pushed the doorbell. Several seconds later, the door opened and Mrs. Frangiapani smiled out at them.

  “Well, hello, angel,” she said to Jenna. She unlocked the screen door and pushed it open. “Come in and introduce me to your friends.”

  Inside, Lily stepped forward and smiled at the old woman. “I’m sorry for coming at such a late hour,” she said, holding out her hand. “My name is Lily Rourke, and I’ve come for your help.”

  Mrs. Frangiapani shook Lily’s hand.

  Lily opened up a little, reached out with her mind curiously. She flinched slightly when she realized Mrs. Frangiapani was doing the same thing. Their mouths opened in broad smiles.

  “A fellow seer,” Mrs. Frangiapani said. “It’s so nice to meet you, Lily. Would you like some fudge? I make it with cream cheese and just a little instant coffee, and it melts in your mouth.” She looked back and forth between Lily and Claudia and Jenna and Miles. “Or do we not have time for that?”

  Lily knew then that Mrs. Frangiapani was going to help them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Saturday, 10:38 p.m.

  It was a cold night, and rain fell steadily as Claudia turned the silver Beetle off Starfish Drive and down the long driveway that led to the Kellars’s house. The windows glowed brightly—every light in the house was on.

  Lily watched Mrs. Frangiapani closely as they entered the house and hung up their coats. The farther into the house they went, the more the old woman seemed to shrink into herself, like a child in anticipation of being struck.

  In the living room, Martha was on the couch watching television and David was dozing in the reeliner, his feet up. He awoke and sat up when they entered the living room. The smell of freshly baked cookies did little to cover the odor of burnt hair and flesh. Jenna introduced Mrs. Frangiapani to David and Martha.

  Mrs. Frangiapani looked frightened and concerned, but she smiled through it and said, “Someone’s been baking cookies.”

  Martha stood and smiled. “Chocolate-chip hazelnut cookies,” she said.

  “Sounds delicious,” Mrs. Frangiapani said.

  “I bake a lot. It makes me feel good to feed people happy food.”

  Mrs. Frangiapani seemed to recover somewhat as she nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes, I know exactly what you mean. I bake all the time. We should trade recipes.”

  As she led Mrs. Frangiapani out of the living room, Martha said, “I’ve got recipes up the ying-yang. Come to the kitchen and have some cookies. Would you like a glass of milk to go with them?” She stopped and turned back. “Could I interest you in some cookies, Lily? Claudia?”

  Mrs. Frangiapani turned to Lily. “I’d like to walk around a little, get a feel for the place.”

  “Sure,” Lily said. “And no cookies for me, thank you.” Her stomach still felt dubious. Claudia politely refused, too.

  “I want some,” Miles said as he followed Martha and Mrs. Frangiapani.

  As he passed Lily, she reached out and gently closed her hand on his upper arm. “Wait, Miles. I’d like to keep an eye on you. Why don’t you stay here for now.”

  “We’d all like to keep an eye on you, honey,” Jenna said.

  The two old women continued to chatter as they passed through the dining room on the way to the kitchen.

  Smiling at the boy, Lily released his arm.

  Jenna said, “Grandma can bring you some cookies. Why don’t you just sit down and watch TV for now, okay? Put in a movie, if you want. Something cheerful and funny.”

  “You mean something like Ghostbusters?” Miles said with a smile.

  Lily laughed as Jenna said, “That’s not funny, Miles.”

  He smiled up at Lily, happy that she had appreciated his little joke. He went to the couch, took the remote from the end table, and began flipping through channels.

  Lily stepped closer to Jenna and whispered, “There’s a dark presence in this house. Something malevolent.”

  David got up from the recliner and joined them.

  Lily continued: “I strongly suspect this presence is some remnant of Leonard Baines.”

  “My father,” Jenna said. “Biologically, anyway.”

  “Kimberly said you know nothing about him,” Lily said. “I don’t know how much your mother has told you, but I suspect she found him stranger than she’s led you to believe.”

  “She said he was as clumsy as a child in bed,” Jenna said.

  “That would make sense.” She glanced over at Miles on the couch, absorbed in a Daffy Duck cartoon, then looked at Jenna again and whispered, “He was a pedophile.”

  David asked Lily, “How do you know all this?”

  “Like I said, I’m psychic. I’ve been having visions about your family. Some involved a man I believe to be Leonard Baines. He was a sexual predator who preyed on little boys. In my visions, I saw him as a tall, fat man in a dirty T-shirt and a denim vest, and he wore a cowboy hat.”

  “Oh, God,” David breathed. “I’ve seen him. We’ve all seen him.”

  “I believe he kidnapped a lot of young boys between the ages of about five and ten, maybe eleven,” Lily said. “I don’t know how many, or how long he did it. He traveled to other towns, sometimes out of state, to find the boys, and he brought them back here, where he tortured and molested them. He starved them to death—some of them, anyway. Others—I don’t know how he disposed of them, I just know he used them up and killed them.”

  “We’ve seen the boys,” David said. “In the backyard. And in the house.”

  “At first, I saw only one, a little one,” Jenna said. “I thought it was our son, Josh. We lost him a few years ago, and I thought...” Jenna was surprised when her
voice broke and her throat burned. She sniffled, bent down, and took an unused paper napkin from the plate Willy had left on the floor, wiped her nose with it. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Lily said.

  Jenna bowed her head. “I guess I was so convinced it was Josh that finding out otherwise was... a disappointment. I finally saw his face. He looked nothing like Josh.”

  “What did he look like?” Lily said.

  “Red hair, freckles.” Jenna smiled slightly for a moment. “He was adorable. But he wasn’t Josh.”

  “He was a toddler?” Lily asked.

  “Yes.”

  Lily nodded. “I’ve seen him. He was tortured, as well. In one particular room of this house.” She turned and walked away from them slowly, into the entryway.

  Jenna and David followed.

  Lily walked past the staircase, stopped at the mirror on the wall, and briefly looked at her reflection. It was the same mirror in which she had seen the face of the fat man in the white cowboy hat.

  Lily could hear Martha and Mrs. Frangiapani talking down the hall in the kitchen.

  Jenna hurried down to the kitchen doorway, leaned in, and said, “Mom, could you go out and sit with Miles? I don’t want him to be alone.”

  “Sure,” Martha said.

  As Jenna came back up the hall, Lily walked past the mirror and stopped at the first door on the left.

  “In here,” she said.

  Jenna said, “This is my mother’s room. She sleeps on the sofa now because she kept seeing boys hanging from shackles on the wall and toddlers strapped into some kind of perverted high chair.”

  “I’ve seen the same thing,” Lily said with a nod. “He brought them in here to torture them, to punish them for being... bad puppies.”

  Jenna gasped again and exchanged a look with David.

  “Sometimes he’d whip them,” Lily said, “and ... do other things to them, horrible things. Something of those boys is still in this house, too, along with Leonard Baines. I suspect the reason they attacked the priest who was here earlier is that he was a pedophile, like your father. Somehow they recognized that and lashed out at him.”

  “Father Malcolm was a pedophile?” Jenna said.

  “I did some research,” Lily said. “He was defrocked years ago. He had no business calling himself a priest, just as the Binghams had no business calling themselves paranormal investigators.”

  Lily reached out, turned the old brass doorknob, and pushed the door open. Light spilled into the dark room, and Lily inhaled sharply through her nose. When she exhaled, she breathed the words “Oh, my God.”

  She saw them on the wall, in the chair. They were in the dark, but the light from the hall allowed her to see them clearly. They were as solid and real as she. Their wide eyes went to her, took a moment to realize she was not the person they’d expected, then narrowed and pleaded silently for help.

  Lily blinked her eyes, and the boys were gone. The walls were bare. They were gone, but they had been there once. How many? Lily wondered. And how long did it go on? Her visions seldom provided her with all the answers. She reached out with her right hand, swept it over the wall beside the door, and flipped a light switch.

  “The lights in here don’t work,” Jenna said. “We haven’t replaced them yet.”

  “We’ve been having trouble with our lights,” David said. “Bulbs keep blowing out.”

  Jenna said, “Usually accompanied by a sudden drop in temperature, and sometimes a little destruction.”

  The sound of conversation continued to come from the kitchen.

  “Just a second,” Jenna said as she turned and went back down the hall. She stopped in the kitchen doorway and didn’t move for a moment. Finally, she turned and beckoned for Lily and David to join her.

  Lily went down the hall, and Jenna stepped into the kitchen and out of the way. David went in and stood beside Jenna. Lily stood in the doorway.

  Mrs. Frangiapani stood in the middle of the kitchen with her back to them. Her hands were on her thighs and she was bent forward slightly.

  “But you’re not supposed to be here anymore,” Mrs. Frangiapani said to the air in front of her. “Your time here has ended.” She said nothing for several seconds, then: “No, angel, you don’t understand—you should ...” Mrs. Frangiapani’s head dropped forward for a moment, then she slowly stood up straight, pressed a hand over the base of her spine. She turned around and faced them, spread her arms wide, then let them slap to her sides. “They come, they go. They’re just children. They have short attention spans and a fondness for trickery and teasing. Someone kept them here in life, a man. A horrible man.”

  “Leonard Baines,” Lily said.

  “They never knew his name. To them, he was just the fat man. He kept them here and did awful things to them. He kept them in the basement. They’re so terrified of him, they don’t realize their lives have ended. They think they’re still under his control.”

  “Oh, God,” Jenna said, turning to David. “He was in Miles’s bedroom.”

  “He wants your son,” Lily said, and they turned around to face her. “He’s already tried to use you, Mr. Kellar, to get to Miles. That failed, but he’ll keep trying.” She turned to Mrs. Frangiapani. “Unless you can help us get rid of him.”

  Mrs. Frangiapani nodded once. “I’ll do my best.”

  As they all gathered in the living room, Jenna went to David and took his hand. He looked sleepy-eyed and moved slowly. She whispered, “How are you feeling?”

  “Not so good,” he whispered back. “Took another pill and it’s starting to kick in.”

  “Would you like to go upstairs and sleep? I can take care of this.”

  “No, no. I’ll be fine. I’m just a little groggy.”

  She kissed his cheek. “If you change your mind, I want you to go to bed, okay?”

  He nodded as Miles joined them. David put a hand on his shoulder and said, “How’s it going, Tiger?”

  “Okay, I guess,” Miles said. “Is this going to be scary?”

  “I don’t know, honey,” Jenna said. “But you have nothing to be afraid of—you’re going to be fine.”

  Jenna had put the lamps back on their end tables and cleaned up the broken Roseville vase, the shattered ceramic elves, and the pieces of glass from the framed photographs. The pile of broken elves and framed photos remained on the floor beside the black cabinet.

  Mrs. Frangiapani said, “I’m going to try to explain to the children in this house that it’s time for them to move on. It might take a while, because they aren’t very attentive. I suspect that once these children know they can go, they’ll leave, and then this terrible fat man will have no reason to stay. Is it all right if I turn off the television? It’s distracting.”

  Jenna quickly turned it off. “No problem,” she said.

  “I’m not familiar with your work, Mrs. Frangiapani,” Lily said, “so feel free to speak up if there’s anything else you need us to do.”

  The old woman smiled. “No, I need nothing else. Just make yourselves comfortable while I do this.”

  Lily, Martha, and Claudia sat down on the sofa. David lowered himself into the recliner heavily. Jenna sat beside him on the recliner’s armrest and Miles sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him. They watched Mrs. Frangiapani, who stood in the center of the room and clasped her hands together before her as if to pray.

  “Children,” she said. “Boys. I know you’re here. Please pay attention to me, boys, I have something important to tell you, something you’ll be very happy to hear.” She turned to Jenna. “Could you turn the lights down a little?”

  Jenna got up and turned off the overhead light and two of the lamps, leaving only the lamp beside the recliner on. She returned to her seat on the armrest.

  “Sometimes,” Mrs. Frangiapani said, “too much light keeps them away.” She turned away from them again and looked at nothing in particular as she said, “I want to help you, boys. Please come let Mrs. Frangiapan
i help you.”

  The room’s temperature dropped several degrees. Even with the crackling flames in the fireplace, the living room cooled.

  “Boys, you must listen carefully,” Mrs. Frangiapani said. “It’s time for you to leave this place, children. The fat man no longer has any power over you—you can leave anytime you want, just fly away. This is a bad place for you, a horrible place. There’s no reason for you to stay here—you should go now, boys, go away together, leave no one behind. There is nothing the fat man can do to you now, you’re completely free of—”

  The lamp went out. Every light in the house went out and left them in darkness. The soft, dancing orange glow of the fire was the only light in the room.

  “Dammit,” David said as he got up.

  Jenna quickly stood, too. “Where are you going?”

  “To get the flashlight,” he said as he went into the dining room.

  While he was gone, Mrs. Frangiapani continued: “You’re free to move on now. You’ve been here far too long. I understand—”

  Mrs. Frangiapani stopped speaking and stared at something in front of her. When Jenna saw it, she inhaled a gulp of air in a quiet gasp.

  A small figure stood before the old woman, a shadow in the darkness. Jenna looked closer and realized the boy was as transparent as a faint cloud of dust, the features of his face softly blurred.

  “I understand,” Mrs. Frangiapani said, “that you’ve had very bad experiences here and your spirits were broken. You’ve been confused and hurt by what happened here, so I understand, I really do.”

  Jenna saw another boy standing near the straight-back chair, another between the chair and the dining room doorway, all part of the dark, melting into it, mere suggestions of shapes. More boys appeared—two, three, four, two of them toddlers.

  Jenna hunkered down on the floor beside Miles and put an arm around him. She could feel him shiver as he gawked at the figures in the dark.

  “Are those ghosts, Mom?” Miles whispered tremulously.

  “Something like that, honey,” she said. “But don’t be afraid.”