Jennie marched resolutely into the downstairs bathroom. As she’d feared, the walls showed a slimy growth of fungus. They must have scrubbed that off just before she and Will visited. She’d scrub it again with bleach and water so she could bear to use the shower. Then she’d figure out where the leak was that caused the dampness.
She trudged up the front staircase which was a lovely curved sweep, but the railing wouldn’t hold anyone’s weight. That was another fairly urgent issue before they had any houseguests. From halfway down the hall, she could hear the faucet dripping. Maybe there was a simple explanation for the dampness in the downstairs bath after all.
This bathroom had a dormer built in. It didn’t have fungus. It was thick with dust, like everything else, but that was easily mended.
The tap wasn’t leaking. The faucet in the bathtub wasn’t leaking. So far as she could see, nothing was leaking at all. She could still hear the drip. Just behind her. She turned a hundred and eighty degrees. It was still just behind her.
Fifteen minutes later she was no wiser. She seemed to be hearing several drips at once, tap-tapping in an odd dragging rhythm that left her feeling vaguely queasy. She glared around her one more time, marched loudly down the hall and down the stairs. She vacuumed so loudly that the dripping was drowned out. At last, she was filthy, exhausted, and ready for a quick wash. She was looking forward to a sandwich and bed.
The air in the bedroom felt damp too. She wasn’t entirely certain if the dripping sound was there too or if she was imagining it because she was listening for it so hard. She pulled the blankets over her head and sank slowly, sluggishly, into sleep.
Chapter Two – Danger
The mold in the bathroom walls was getting worse. Jennie unwisely took a deep breath full of mold spores. She sneezed violently and tried to catch her breath. She couldn’t catch her breath and she choked. Her vision became fuzzy and she tried to run out into the fresher air of the hall. She couldn’t move. She was frozen with her breath coming in white puffy gasps. The temperature drop was quite severe and sudden.
Of course, she couldn’t move. The roots of the trumpet vine had grown into her ears, her eyes, her mouth, in through the little cracks in the skin on her hands left by too much bleach-water. It was in her mouth. They were growing rapidly down her throat. She tried to swallow, but couldn’t make her throat muscles move. She was drowning in her own spit. It was foul, foul, foul...
Jennie woke with a gasp, feeling extremely queasy. The sandwich meat must have been spoiled, and she must have been too tired and hungry to notice. No wonder she’d had a nasty dream. She grabbed her torch and ran down the hall to the bathroom. It was the un-moldy upstairs bathroom.
She managed not to be sick all over the floor. It was a very small victory, but Jennie was dejected enough to take anything she could get. She resolutely ignored the fact that she could hear dripping all around her again.
When her stomach was thoroughly empty she dragged herself back to bed, allowing herself only one look around the bathroom for drips. None were visible. She’d spent most of her life sleeping alone. She desperately wanted Will’s arms around her, his voice murmuring that it was just a bad dream. She was all right, he was with her. He’d be with her in the morning.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, Jennie told herself crossly.
The next thing she knew, she was riding a splendid black horse. Riding bareback, sure-seated in spite of the tremendous pace they were keeping up. They were pounding down the same streets she’d driven down to get to Abbott House, but there was no traffic. The empty pavement was gleaming wetly under the street lamps. When they came out into the country the lamps stopped. The pavement still reflected an odd blue glow that came from nowhere that she could see?
Jennie was riding the horse. It has its own light, she thought drowsily. That’s good. Then, less drowsily: But horses don’t glow like that. What is this horse? Where did I find it?
I called it, she answered herself, and it came to me.
They turned in the gate and pounded up the drive of Abbott House. The horse leaped lightly over walls, into and out of the garden, into the shrubbery beyond. Then the shrubbery gave way to overgrown woods. Branches lashed at Jennie’s head and arms as the horse crashed through. She called for it to stop, but she had no reins.
The trees ended. They were on a lawn overgrown with rhododendrons heavy with fragrant blossom.
Rhododendron, Jennie thought. A warning.
What was there to be warned about? The horse was a bit wild, maybe but; she hesitated as she took a more thorough look.
Not a horse, a choking voice said in the back of her mind. Not a horse.
Kelpie.
The word was vaguely familiar. One of the stories her cousin Marian had told to scare the little ones.
That was it. The Kelpie was a water-sprite that appeared as a beautiful black horse. Anyone who saw it would want to ride it. Anyone who climbed onto its back would never be able to dismount until the Kelpie willed it. The Kelpie generally preferred to drown people in the dark depths of its watery home.
Jennie tried to jump down. She couldn’t. The luxuriant black mane was all around her now. Tendrils coiling and uncoiling like a weed in the water. They had wrapped around her arms, her legs. She couldn’t move.
The horse was still moving, galloping between the rhododendrons. Now there was short grass under its feet. Ahead of them a black lake.
The water closed over Jennie’s head. The water poured into her throat, into her lungs and the air wouldn’t come to her.
Jennie woke again, gasping and soaked in cold sweat. Her stomach wasn’t bothering her this time, but her lungs ached.
I will never eat lunch meat again, Jennie told herself. I will get up and make the bed with dry sheets.
But she couldn’t get up. She was neck-deep in water and the weed had snagged her ankles. She couldn’t go back. Worse still, she couldn’t move ahead, couldn’t save the one...the most precious. He would drown and he would die. She couldn’t bear for him to be dead.
“Edward! Dear God, Edward!”
“Will!” was what she meant to shout; for who else would she miss so desperately? Why did she scream out Edward?
The weed unclasped her ankles. She threw herself forward and went to pull him to freedom. Will, surely it was Will who had somehow ended up in the dark water. Who was Edward and why did the name Henry flash before her eyes.
What came up in her arms was a skeleton, the bones of a man taller and broader-shouldered than her Will. The bones were bare gleaming white except for a gold ring on one finger. She recoiled, and as she did so the weeds clasped her again, pulling her down.
Jennie woke to the gray light of dawn. Her bed was sopping wet—not as it had been last time, from over sweating, but dripping wet as though someone had poured water over it. She blinked at the bedroom windows. They were closed. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t raining. She frowned at the ceiling. No drips and no sign of water damage.
She opened the sash, leaned out and frowned at the rhododendrons crawling like living hands under her window.
Chapter Three – Frugality
Jennie had rinsed and wrung the sheets out and hung them to dry. She set the mattress by the kitchen fire, mopped up the puddle on her bedroom floor and threw away the pack of lunch meat (which was well within date and looked and smelled fine). A new day had begun.
That fact gave her the courage to go back into the downstairs bathroom and scrub. She did tie a bandanna around her face to cover her mouth and nose. It was merely a precaution. She didn’t let herself think of what happened. The cleaning went briskly. She didn’t choke. She could move. There were no insane visions or the feeling of helplessness.
By early afternoon she’d done the emergency cleaning and sent a text to Will
“All is well. Miss you and not just your bathroom-cleaning skills, either! Still, I suppose I’d rather have my job than yours right now. Get it done soon and come hom
e.” She hit send.
She had no excuse to put off making a more thorough damage inventory. The prospect of doing that started a crawling in the pit of her stomach that had nothing to do with mold or nightmares.
Jennie had felt that way for the first time when she was eleven. It was when her father came in looking hangdog and muttered that he had to talk to her mother alone. Her mother came back down from their room white-knuckled and clench-jawed. She explained to Jennie that her father had had a spot of trouble in his business and they were going to have to be careful with money for a little while.
“A spot of trouble?” Jennie asked.
“The whole thing’s gone up in smoke,” her mother explained while staring out the window over Jennie’s shoulder.
“But he’s a good builder!” Jennie knew that very well. He’d built her a tree fort, none of your crude uneven platform jobs but a right little, tight little cottage in the tree. It had gables and gingerbread trim and a roof that never leaked. He’d built their splendid snug house. It was a rather more modest-looking affair than the tree house, but energy-efficient and full of light.
“Yes,” Jennie’s mother had said, looking at her daughter again. “He’s a good builder and a good man, but no good at budgeting. He was too stubborn to let me help him.”
Jennie’s mother grew grimmer and quieter. Jennie’s father was shamefaced and withdrawn. The extent of his business debt became clear, as they sold the house, yard, and tree house. They moved to a dingy little flat.
Jennie came home after school to an empty house because both her parents were out working to help pay down the debt that the land sale hadn’t covered.
Jennie had been careful with her money and everything else, after that. And then she met Will, with his wild curly hair and his infectious laugh and his buoyant certainty that everything would be well.
Jennie fell in love with him as she might have fallen off a cliff, leaving her worries and everything else behind. When he bought her the flamboyant engagement ring that he could hardly afford she had swallowed her reproaches, laughed and kissed him.
And now Will was an ocean away and Jennie was here dealing with dirt and likely expenses.
No good fretting, she told herself. Maybe it’s better than it looks. It was only the beginning of the headaches.
The light in the master bedroom upstairs would only come on if both the switch in the bedroom and the switch in the hall outside were on at the same time. It wasn’t supposed to do that. The lights in one of the guest bedrooms didn’t come on at all. The other flickered on and off oddly.
Jennie spent a couple of hours investigating and finally found a trapdoor under her bed which opened onto a snarl of wire. They were cloth-covered wire, definitely a fire hazard. That would have to come out and the whole thing would have to be redone.
The parlor chimney was completely blocked with soot. It was a chimney fire waiting to happen. The crack in the plaster in the parlor looked suspiciously like a sign of the chimney brick starting to crumble away inside the wall. The crack hadn’t been there in January. It was a quick cover-up job by the realtor to get the sale signed on the bottom line.
Only two of the downstairs windows opened. Only one of them stayed open without being propped with a board. They were lovely with their old-fashioned tiny panes, but they were anything but energy-efficient. Still, Will wanted to keep the period look. Window quilts would be needed before the chill of winter crept in. How much would that cost? She could only guess.
The basement floor was a foot deep in stagnant and stinking water. The sump pump lay inert. Jennie felt strangely apprehensive about wading across to try and turn it on. It didn’t come on. She heard dripping in the far corner. She swallowed, waded toward it with the torch held high.
There was no drip. There was no motion in the scummy water except the ripples caused by her movement. The sound was getting louder and coming from all around her. It was not a drip but a roar. The basement would fill and she would drown.
Jennie slogged back to the basement stairs as fast as she dared. She hauled herself up by the banister hand over hand and fled out into the blessed dryness of the garden.
I’ve been inside with the dirt and the worries too long, she thought. I just need some fresh air. I’ll work a little in the garden, and then I’ll feel better.
There were the remains of what must have been a rather lovely kitchen garden. The tougher herbs still grew there. There were lavender, mint, and rosemary.
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance,” she quoted softly to herself. “I pray you love and remember.” Who was she talking to other than herself?
Remember. The voice echoed wetly, unpleasantly. In her mind there was a voice that was not her own.
“Well then, don’t remember,” she said out loud and crossly. “These weeds!”
The lavender was mostly buried by the lanky stems and flat spread leaves of chicory. Jennie rooted a few up but then stopped.
Chicory. Thrift. The words were printed clearly behind her eyes.
“We’ll have to be thrifty,” she muttered. “Will, oh, Will.” She didn’t even know whether she was blaming him or calling him to her side.
Chapter Four – Remembrance
Jennie felt thoroughly mucky by the time she came in from the garden, but she didn’t want to face the elusive dripping sounds in the upstairs bathroom. Well, she’d made the downstairs one somewhat useful. She hummed loudly to herself, a little off-key, to cover any noises that this bathroom might decide to produce.
The cold water was fine, but the hot came out a rather unpleasant shade of green. It was a nasty weedy shade that made her turn away in disgust. Not the weeds again.
“I can’t believe this is happening to me. Where is Will? I need him more than anything.”
Jennie wrenched the handle back over and doused herself in cold water again. Pleasant was not the word for it. She tried to add a little warmth back in without getting too much of the green. She was squinting up at the showerhead praying that nothing grotesque would land on her porcelain skin.
The handle wouldn’t turn. No, her hand wouldn’t turn. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even lower her head. She couldn’t close her mouth or keep the shower water with its brackish taste from pouring down her throat.
She was choking. She was drowning. She was going to die and she’d barely lived. Married life had only begun. This foul water was washing everything away.
Many waters cannot quench love, a firm voice said in the back of Jennie’s mind. Nor can the waves drown it. Her mother’s voice was answering her prayers with words of wisdom that she hadn’t heard since her youth.
Jennie lowered her head as though praying again.
She could lower her head. She could move.
She turned the water off, got out of the shower and gave herself a hasty sponge-bath. The hot water from the tap seemed to be all right. She pulled on clean clothes and went shakily out into the parlor. She curled up in the bay window seat and looked out at the late light.
She wasn’t losing her mind, she told herself firmly. She couldn’t be. She hadn’t the money to take time off work and go poking around in her brain.
“I am fine,” she said aloud, smacking the heel of her hand on the window seat for emphasis.
The seat made a rather hollow sound. Jennie got up and lifted it. Yes, there was a shallow storage space underneath. A fairly empty storage space with its dusty wood floor decorated with a rough design of a horse. Only two flattish parcels in it.
One was a battered old portfolio. The other was harder-edged under the soft cloths that it was wrapped in.
Jennie had always liked buried treasure. She thought this horrible house owed her one pleasant surprise. She unwrapped the hard parcel first.
It was a picture with dismal yellowing to the paper. The photo itself was cheery and well executed. It was a family portrait. The poses were conventional, but the faces were individual.
The wom
an had high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, and a broad mouth. She was smiling irrepressibly in the portrait but looking capable of other moods. The girl who stood beside her had similar features, though set in a narrower face and she looked at her mother with a disconcerting intensity of affection.
The boy in his mother’s lap was laughing. His features were blunter than his mother’s; he looked more like his father, though he had his mother’s sandy hair and his father’s hair was dark.
The father smiled on his family warmly enough; perhaps it was only Jennie’s wayward imagination that made her fancy shadows under his eyes.
The setting was lovely too. They were outdoors. Behind them were luxuriant bushes with clusters of white flowers. Cape jasmine, Jennie thought, rendered by someone as good at botany as portraiture. The foreground was a bit unusual.
It looked as though the painter was sitting in a boat out in the lake whose waters lapped almost at the family’s feet. No, maybe there was a dock or something. Anyhow, it was a cheerful picture. Jennie stood it against the wall, facing north so the sun wouldn’t fade it the next day.
The portfolio was another story. It contained a number of pencil sketches done with considerable talent and feeling. It made her feel comfortable.
The subjects were and were not the same as those in the family portrait. The woman was the same. Nothing could change those lovely bones, but the skin was drawn tight over them. The eyes had a haunted look with the mouth thin-lipped and set hard as though against some pain.
The boy was mysteriously absent. It felt like a cold chill ran down her spine.
“Why do I feel this sense of overwhelming despair? I can feel the pain of losing a loved one.”
Haunting and Scares Collection Page 8
