Heller's Regret

by JD Nixon

  We bickered lightly over his blunt assertion he would carry me down the stairs to his vehicle, but I flat out refused. As a result, he was forced to wait for me patiently as I made my very slow way down the stairs, exhausted by the effort, something I’d never admit to him. We sat in his vehicle waiting for the men he’d chosen to join us – Farrell and Bick.

  Bick made an off-hand quip about loony bins on the way over. It was the worst possible thing for anyone to say to me, especially when I was quietly proud of myself for making such great progress. I withdrew into silence, sinking down on the front seat, and hugging myself protectively. Heller and Farrell glared at him, angry at his thoughtlessness. Quickly realising his faux pas, his cheeks and ears blushing with embarrassment, he struggled to retrieve the situation with a series of tongue-tied, backpedalling statements that soon petered out to nothing. Nobody spoke for the rest of the drive, a pall of awkwardness hanging over all of us.

  It mortified me that so many men had seen me during my psychotic episode. I hadn’t understood before that it seemed to be widespread knowledge I’d been admitted to a mental health ward afterwards. It didn’t matter that I’d been drugged. All the men would remember (and tell each other) was my crazy and wild appearance and behaviour when they’d discovered me. I worried what that would mean for me working at Heller’s from now on. Surely it would be difficult to find anyone there who’d want to work with me.

  I was the first out of the vehicle when it stopped, heading up the path with stubborn determination. I would not let myself be dragged down by what had happened to me in this house, hoping that I could find some resolution there today so I could move on with my life.

  I allowed Heller to knock on the door, my hands and arms still bandaged. After an age, Miss Grimsley opened the door, and invited the four of us in with resigned acceptance.

  My skin instantly prickled at the oppressive heat inside the house, but I noted the elderly lady was wrapped warmly in a cardigan and long trousers. She took us to the parlour and offered us some tea, which we all pointedly refused, some of us with less manners than usual.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said sheepishly. “Of course you don’t want any tea.”

  Though incredibly angry with her, I wanted to remain calm so I could finish what I’d started all those days ago. Heller sat next to me, his fists clenching and relaxing, his face betraying his deep anger. It was fortunate for her that she was so elderly, as I truly believed that might have been the only thing keeping him from taking revenge on her.

  “Perhaps you would care to explain everything, Miss Grimsley?” I suggested coldly. Her eyes fell on my bandaged arms and hands, and she softly tutted to herself in self-reproach.

  “I’m so sorry, my dear. I never thought you would react in such a strong way. No one ever has before. You must have drunk a lot of the tea.” She paused and glanced at each of our four stony faces before continuing. “Samuel went missing in 1905, widely believed in the family to have been murdered by his mother, my own mother’s aunt.”

  “So Samuel was your mother’s cousin?” I clarified.

  “Yes. They grew up together in this house. Samuel’s mother was an unmarried woman who’d had Samuel out of wedlock. That was a huge disgrace back then, but the family shielded her from the world and its moral judgements on unmarried mothers.”

  She poured herself another cup of tea. I turned my head, repulsed by even the smell of it. “By all accounts, my mother’s aunt, Rose, became very religious and obsessed with sin. She began to hate Samuel because, to her, he was a daily reminder of her own great sin. My mother told me that he was a lovely boy, very sweet-natured, and a talented musician. But one day he went missing and no one ever knew what happened to him. Rose later died by throwing herself from her bedroom window. Some in the family believed it was done in shame at her filicide. You can see the portrait of her completed weeks before Samuel’s disappearance. It hangs in one of the bedrooms upstairs, the one which was hers and from which she suicided.”

  I knew which portrait she meant straight away – the demonic woman. No wonder Samuel had shown such dislike for it.

  Miss Grimsley continued, sipping on her tea with every sign of enjoyment. I wondered briefly if she was insane. “The reason the family generally believed Samuel was murdered was because not long after he disappeared, certain relatives started seeing him again in the house. My mother was one of them. He appeared as he had in life, wearing the same clothes, playing the piano or with his toys in his bedroom upstairs. Incidentally, nobody wanted to move into his bedroom because of his frequent appearances there. It’s remained unoccupied all this time, left exactly as it had been the day he disappeared.”

  She was contemplative for a while, her mind no longer focussed on us, but inwards, on her own memories of the past. “I often wonder how it felt for Rose to be confronted by Samuel’s empty bedroom every day. As far as I know she never confided to anyone that she saw him afterwards, but the family speculated on whether that drove her to suicide.”

  The ringing of the phone brought her to her feet, leaving us for a few minutes as she went to answer.

  “This isn’t too difficult for you, my sweet?” asked Heller.

  “No, I want to hear what she says,” I assured.

  Bick tried to open one of the windows of the parlour. “God, it’s so hot in this house. I’m melting. My shirt’s stuck to my back with sweat.”

  “Stop whining,” bit Farrell, wiping his brow on his shirtsleeve. “We’re all boiling. It’s not just you.”

  Miss Grimsley bustled back into the room, surprisingly spritely for someone fresh out of hospital.

  “Now, where was I?” she asked, settling herself back into the oversized chair she’d chosen, pouring herself another cup of tea. “Oh, yes. Samuel. Family members reported that glimpses of him were always accompanied by very cold temperatures and tremendously sad music that brought whoever heard it to tears. That led most to believe he was no longer in the physical world. Seeing him is a little quirk in our family. Other people, but not many, have been able to see him, but only after drinking a special tea which certain disreputable relatives imported for its hallucinatory qualities. We’ve been buying it ever since.” She turned to me. “That’s how you were able to see him, Miss Chalmers. By drinking the tea. That’s the only way I can see him too, not being blessed with the natural ability.

  “My mother looked after Samuel until her death, passing the job to my older sister. When she passed away about five years ago, I took over his guardianship.” She beseeched us with her eyes, her voice heartfelt. “He’s just a lonely, lost boy, and it would be cruel to leave him in this big house alone with no companionship. I’m very afraid of what will happen when I die. I’m eighty-six years old. I can’t go on forever. It breaks my heart to know that he’ll be left here alone because there’s no family surviving to look after him.”

  Daintily wiping away the moisture from her eyes, she fumbled around at her neck, drawing out a locket on a heavy gold chain from her blouse.

  “Though there are many things in this house, this is what I treasure most.”

  She pulled it over her head and passed it to me. I opened the locket and gasped in shock. It was a miniature portrait of the boy I thought I’d been looking after – Samuel.

  “That’s him! That’s the boy I spent the week with,” I insisted, looking again on his sweet face and enormous black eyes. I handed the locket to the three sceptical men. “How is it even possible that I would know what he looked like? I’ve never seen that miniature before.”

  “You saw Samuel, Miss Chalmers. Not a delusion, but a lost spirit.”

  I shook my head in denial. Though now forced to accept there was no living Samuel Grimsley, I wasn’t ready to handle what she was saying. Essentially, she thought I’d spent a week with a ghost.

  Heller spoke, his voice every bit as hard as his eyes, “You deceived Matilda, Miss Grimsley. She’s paid dearly for that.”

  “I’m so sorr
y, dear,” she said to me. “But would you have stayed had I been completely honest with you?”

  “Of course not.” I would have run for the hills without even stopping to close the front door after me. “Is that why you were so pleased when I drank the tea and then saw Samuel for the first time?”

  “Yes,” she said, and I detected a hint of defiance. She wasn’t that sorry at all – Samuel was more important to her than me. “I had to make sure you were the right person. He’s never been alone in this house without someone to talk to since he departed.”

  I didn’t think there was much more to say on the matter. She clearly wasn’t completely contrite, willing to sacrifice a living woman to protect a dead boy. So instead, I shifted the conversation to what I’d been doing when Heller’s men had turned up. Swallowing my anger, I asked politely for permission to finish the job. She nodded willingly, expressing her hope that it could be exactly what Samuel needed to find peace.

  “He’s over there, right now, listening in,” she said, pointing to the doorway where I’d first seen him. We all glanced over in different states of alarm.

  “I can’t see him anymore,” I said, a hint of sadness in my voice.

  We trooped down to the basement, and it appeared as if nothing had been cleaned up, the gun still lying askew on the ground where it had fallen from my hands.

  “I’m not digging, obviously. I’ve done my fair share already,” I said drily, holding up my bandaged hands. “Any volunteers?”

  Bick jumped to help, keen to atone for his hurtful comment earlier. It was impossible to ever stay angry with him, so I waved my hand at the shovel in invitation. He started enthusiastically digging in the spot I’d indicated. Farrell returned after a short absence, carrying another shovel.

  On the ground nearby, I found the small button Samuel had identified as belonging to him.

  “Can I have a look at that portrait of him again?” I walked up the stairs to ask Miss Grimsley, who watched anxiously from the doorway. I compared the dirty, rusted button with the shiny one on the black jacket in the portrait. “I think it’s the same button.” I handed the button and miniature to her. “What do you think?”

  Like Samuel, she took her time comparing the button against the miniature. “Yes, I believe you’re correct, dear. That’s the same button.”

  Bick and Farrell laboured in the heat without complaining, until Bick uncovered something interesting. He kneeled down to gently brush the dirt away from it. I clamped my hand to my mouth when I saw what it was. A small skull. Heller called the police and none of us were terribly surprised when Brian and Jed turned up, grumbling about the heat in the house. Brian stopped in surprise when he saw the four of us.

  “Not you people again? Is there a murder in this city you’re not involved in?” he asked, shooting Heller a hostile glance. There was no love lost between the two of them. He eyed me suspiciously, taking in my bandages, “What happened to you this time?”

  “You don’t want to know,” I answered.

  He shrugged, “Suit yourself.” He crouched down to examine our find. “Doesn’t look recent, thank God. We have enough hot cases as it is.”

  As they waited for the forensic team to arrive, I asked Heller to accompany me upstairs. I wanted to revisit the scenes of my madness. He tried to talk me out of it, to no avail. And seeing that I was determined to go up, with him or alone, he caved, helping me up the stairs.

  Nothing had been moved or altered since I’d left. The dreaded portrait still hung on the wall, smeared liberally with my dried blood, some of it having pooled and dripped on the floor at some stage. Almost afraid to look at it, but mustering my courage, I saw that the portrait itself was nothing as I remembered. Staring back at me was just a grim-faced, unhappy woman, as unremarkable and dreary as the other dusty portraits hanging in the house. Standing before it, unaffected by the tea and with sunlight playing across the room, it was impossible for me to resurrect the emotions I’d experienced and logic I’d applied to my demented actions in this room.

  “She’s probably the one who killed Samuel,” I told Heller, and while he regarded the portrait thoughtfully, he didn’t share those thoughts with me.

  The sheets on the bed hadn’t been changed, and I doubted that Miss Grimsley had even noticed their ruined state, not venturing upstairs anymore. It embarrassed me deeply to see how filthy they were, covered in dirt and sweat stains, soaked with my blood. I gathered them up in disgust, planning to take them home with me to discard.

  Samuel’s bedroom was musty, a thick layer of dust covering everything, and spider webs in every available vantage point. Seeing it with my fresh eyes, it was painfully obvious the room hadn’t been occupied for a hundred years.

  I spent a few poignant moments there, looking in the dilapidated and empty toy box, thinking of the wooden toys I’d imagined Samuel storing in there. The sheets on the bed were also covered in blood and dirt, presumably from when I’d envisioned myself reading to him. I angrily bunched up them up, adding them to my pile of soiled linen.

  “Do you believe what we were telling you about the boy now, Matilda?”

  “Yes. It’s not possible to believe anything else,” I said in a flat voice. “But he seemed so real to me.”

  “That was the tea, my sweet.”

  “It’s hard to accept that something so harmless as drinking tea could cause me such a disconnect from reality.”

  He took my hand. “It’s over now.”

  We went back down to the basement, Heller lugging a bag full of dirty sheets. The forensic team had arrived and it didn’t take them long to uncover the entire small skeleton, strands of dark blond hair still fanning around the skull. Miss Grimsley wept copiously and I joined in with her, not able to forget the sweet, little boy I’d known so briefly. Such a sad little life.

  “We’ll never solve this murder,” Brian admitted, touched by the little bones, though never likely to say so. He had children of his own. “If it’s the boy you think it is, it’s been well over one hundred years since he died. There’ll be no justice for him.”

  “But hopefully some peace now,” I said, gently holding Miss Grimsley’s hand in my own wounded hand. I no longer felt angry at her, understanding her motivations.

  Glad to escape the incredible heat in the house, we piled back into Heller’s 4WD. He turned the air con on full blast, the cold air chilling my sweaty skin.

  “So Tilly, you actually saw this boy?” Bick asked, awed.

  “I didn’t just see him, Bick. I spoke to him, kissed him goodnight, held his hand, read to him, listened while he played me the piano, dug where he told me to dig. How would I know all these things about him? I’d never even heard of him. He showed me where his body was buried. How could I possibly know that? I’m going to have nightmares about this shit for years.”

  “Perhaps you’re psychic,” Bick suggested.

  “I’m not psychic, but maybe houses, buildings, capture some of the events lived in them and I tapped into that. Or something,” my voice faded. There was no point discussing such things with this hardheaded group of men. They dealt in reality, in the here and now, not interested in anything so ‘otherworldly’.

  The skeleton was roughly initially identified as a young prepubescent male, approximately eight to eleven years old. The bones were carefully packed away at the scene to be examined further in the forensics lab.

  Some time later, Miss Grimsley called me to advise she’d had a report from the forensics team indicating that hair strands trapped in a small hairbrush still preserved in Samuel’s bedroom, matched the hairs found on the skeleton. Assuming the hairbrush had really belonged to Samuel, science was as sure as it could be, after more than a hundred years, that the skeleton was Samuel’s. That was enough evidence for Miss Grimsley and me.

  I ended up helping her make the funeral arrangements. On a hot, blustery day, a small group of us – Miss Grimsley, Heller, Farrell, Bick, Brian, Jed and I – stood around the Grimsley family plo
t in the cemetery while solemn but comforting words were pronounced by a priest. The small white coffin was lowered into the ground.

  As the ceremony finished, I looked up and almost jumped in fright, clutching Heller’s hand. “My hallucinations have returned, Heller. I can see him. Over past that tree.” And there stood Samuel in the distance, his sweet face laughing as he waved to us and ran up the grassy hill surrounding one side of the cemetery.

  He stiffened. “God help me, Matilda. I can see him too.”

  I glanced over to Miss Grimsley. She smiled through her tears, waving in Samuel’s direction. Farrell and Bick stared in the same direction, gaping in disbelief, their eyes nearly popping out of their heads. They had all seen Samuel’s miniature portrait at Miss Grimsley’s house, so they recognised him. Brian and Jed, who hadn’t, were puzzled by our reactions, regarding us all as if we had all gone mad.

  I freed myself from Heller’s hand and ran as fast as I could (which I’ll admit wasn’t very fast), up the hill, following Samuel. He laughed and skipped away from me, up and over the hill. When I reached the top, puffing with exertion, I swung my head wildly from side to side, but he had disappeared. Who knew where he’d gone? I only hoped it was a happy, peaceful place.

  I rang Miss Grimsley a few days later to tell me she hadn’t seen Samuel since his funeral. Though sad about that, she was ultimately glad he’d finally moved on. She died a few days afterwards, having fulfilled her promise to watch over him.

  Heller and I found ourselves back at the same family plot in the same cemetery a few days later, the same priest giving the same words of comfort. Farrell and Bick joined us again. I wiped a tear from my cheek, but didn’t feel overly sad. It all seemed fitting in the end.

  Back in the 4WD we looked at each other, nobody saying anything.

  “I have worked in this industry for a long time,” said Heller. “But I’ve never come across a stranger case than this one.”