by Cat Winters
“About fifteen minutes, but we can delay if these two need me to press any clothing before dinner. I can heat up the iron on the stove.”
“That reminds me,” added her husband, “I should warn that we have no electricity . . . and no indoor plumbing. I’m afraid you’ll need to brave the elements to reach the outhouse or else use a chamber pot.”
I forced myself not to grimace at those unappealing options, and out of the corner of my eye I caught Michael clenching his jaw.
“Bring down any garments that you might need pressed.” Mrs. Harkey bustled down the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll go heat up the iron right now.”
Mr. Harkey lumbered toward the stairs with my bags. “Come along with me. I’ll show you to your room.”
Michael grabbed up his suitcase, and we followed our host up the staircase. Because it was an older house, the steps naturally creaked and bellowed below our feet and added to the drama of the establishment. Mr. Harkey plodded up with slow and deliberate steps, as though drawing gasping moans from the wood on purpose. I disapproved of him a little more because of it.
In the landing up above, the dim afternoon light bled into the shadows of evening. Our host led us to a room to our immediate right.
“Here you are.” He opened an anemic wooden door and carried my suitcases to a space on the floor at the base of a four-post bed. A quilt the pale green of lime rickeys covered the mattress.
I entered the room ahead of Michael and again found bare walls and very little in the way of decoration. A bouquet of scarlet geraniums filled a thick vase made of crystal on a table next to the left side of the bed. Against the wall to my right stood an unassuming pine wardrobe, as well as a single chair. I smelled the venison from downstairs, but another odor—a dankness, a sourness—pervaded the air up there. It seemed to be a combination of mothballs and mildew, spoiled meat and stale perfume.
Mr. Harkey’s lips edged into a grin, and his cheeks warmed with color. “You two get settled now. We’ll see you back downstairs for drinks in about fifteen minutes.”
“All right,” said Michael. “Thank you.”
Our host closed the door behind himself.
Michael turned the key in the lock, removing it thereafter, leaving a tiny lock-shaped hole in its place.
I sank down on the bed and released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “This is all a bit exhausting.”
“Agreed.”
I unbuckled my galoshes and yanked them off of the regular shoes hiding within the rubber casings, and then I slipped the second pair off of my feet as well. Michael sat on the bed behind me and removed his boots.
My eyes locked upon the closed bedroom door—upon that keyhole.
Something moved beyond the darkness of the slot; a flash of white. I sat up straight with a jerk of the bed.
“What is it?” asked Michael.
“I just saw something move on the other side of the keyhole. Do . . . do you think Mr. Harkey is still standing out there?”
“I heard his footsteps return downstairs.”
“Are you certain?”
“I think this place might simply have you spooked, and I don’t blame you one bit. It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies, too.” He lay down on his back across the mattress, which whined like a dying accordion. “Do you recognize the hotel from the inside? Does it seem familiar?”
I rubbed my hands across the tops of my thighs and kept my attention focused upon that door.
“Alice? Did you hear what I—”
“No, I don’t quite know what to think of the house just yet. I wish I felt more certain.”
He patted the mattress beside him. “Come here. Let’s take a little reprieve from the topic of reincarnation. Settle our nerves.”
I swung my knees onto the bed and crawled over to him with a swiftness spurred on by a sudden fear of someone grabbing my ankles.
Michael pulled me against his side and kissed the top of my head. “If you want . . .” Another kiss, one that spilled chills across my skull. “I could do something to help put you more at ease.”
I chewed my lower lip and stared again at the keyhole. “Mrs. Harkey is waiting for us to bring her the garments that need ironing.”
“I don’t think there will be enough candlelight to expose any wrinkles in the fabrics.” He rolled onto his side and kissed me, and I knew—I knew for absolute certain—I heard a rustling outside the door.
Michael didn’t flinch, however, so I closed my eyes and willed my fear of Peeping Toms to die a harrowing and brutal death.
Michael coaxed my mouth open with his lips and ran his smooth tongue along mine.
“We must be careful,” I said when we came up for a breath. “Please be careful.”
“I will.” He cupped a warm hand around my left breast, over my three layers of clothing—the sweater, a slip, and a bosom-binding brassiere that squeezed my figure into the boyish shape of a flapper. His mouth moved down to my neck.
“They’ll be back at the door in a few minutes,” I said, my voice nothing more than a weak and tipsy-sounding whisper.
“I locked the door.” He drew my skirt up and over my hips. “They’ll have to knock.”
“Michael . . .”
He scooted down on the bed and kissed my right thigh in the small slip of space between the bottom of my girdle and the top of my stockings, amid the jungle of cream-colored garter straps.
“Michael, please . . .” I sat partway up, but he ran his right hand up the length of my stomach and eased me back down to the mattress, where I closed my eyes and begged myself to draw a calming breath. I clenched my fists by my sides and told myself that no one was watching.
Michael’s lips tasted my inner thigh, teasing with a touch so gentle, it soothed me, yet so enticing, I allowed my knees to fall open. He inched his mouth farther and farther up the length of my leg, and when my breathing heightened, he kissed me through the thin satin layer of my panties. Without fussing with all of the other trappings of my underclothing, he pulled the panties down far enough to expose my mound of curly brown hair. Cool air brushed between my legs, but in a moment warm breath and a soft tongue replaced the sensation, and I found myself soon holding onto the back of his head and lifting my hips to better place myself in his mouth. He squeezed my outer thighs and moved his tongue faster.
Without any warning, a knock came at the door.
Michael’s head shot up. “Who is it?”
“It’s Mrs. Harkey.”
I froze, my knees still hanging open, Michael still clutching my thighs.
“Did you have any clothing for me to iron?” she asked.
Michael scrambled to his feet, and I adjusted my underwear, pushed down my skirt, and sat up. Spots of gold buzzed in front of my eyes, but through the disorienting fog of my dizziness, I spied that gaping keyhole, just sitting there beneath the brass knob, observing everything. I envisioned Mrs. Harkey on her knees, pushing her eyeball against the hole, catching Michael’s head between my legs.
Michael dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief and clicked open his suitcase. “I might have a coat that needs ironing.”
“There’s no need to dress too formally,” called our hostess. “Just make sure you choose something warm.”
He tugged his charcoal-gray dress coat out of his suitcase and strode to the door on his sock-covered feet. He fumbled with the lock, and, after what felt like an hour, he managed to open the door to the awaiting Mrs. Harkey.
She smiled with dimpled cheeks and folded Michael’s coat over her arm. “I’ll have this done in a jiffy. Anything for you, Mrs. Lind?”
I couldn’t even look her in the eye. “No, thank you. I travel so often, I pack clothing designed to withstand suitcase journeys.”
“I’ll give this back to you when you come downstairs, Mr. Lind.”
“Thank you.”
She turned and left, and Michael closed the door.
I shot off the bed and opened the
largest of my two trunks to locate a dress proper enough for a Christmas Eve dinner—one that truly didn’t need any ironing.
Michael sauntered toward me, smoothing down his hair. “Do you want to—?”
“No!”
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”
“I told you I heard someone out there. I knew we weren’t alone.”
“I don’t think she was standing there the whole time.”
I tugged out a long-sleeved gown made of emerald crepe.
“Do you, um . . .” He stuffed his hands inside his pockets. “Do you want me to leave while you change?”
“Yes, please. Mrs. Harkey is apt to knock again.”
“I’ll put on my dress shoes and then give you some privacy.”
“Thank you.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him again dab his mouth with a handkerchief, which made me both blush in embarrassment and crave a finish to our moment of intimacy.
I stood up with the dress spilling over my left arm and wondered if the next time we entered that bedroom alone—after dinner, after the Christmas Eve ghost tales that Mr. Harkey spoke of at the depot—my connection to the hotel would be blatantly apparent, which might further alter our relationship. Michael might view me differently. I might view myself differently.
He sat down on the other side of the bed and tied the laces of his black dress shoes.
“Michael?”
He peeked over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised.
“I’m going to show you something.” I laid the dress on the bed and walked over to him with footsteps that made mere murmurs against the unvarnished floorboards. “I want you to witness a detail about me that might have something to do with my other life . . . if, in fact, another life is at work.”
He continued tying the laces, his right leg propped over the left.
I closed the maroon drapes of the window beside me. Between the darkening sky and the snow blowing in the wind, I doubted that any brave souls would be wandering about enough to catch a glimpse of me up there on the second floor, but one couldn’t be sure.
I pulled my sweater up and over my head, exposing the cream-colored slip that covered my breasts.
Michael’s eyes hovered at the same level as my chest. He swallowed. “What am I looking at?”
“This.” I stepped forward and put my fingers to a brown birthmark that marred the skin above my heart. “What does it look like?”
“I don’t know.” He swallowed again, this time with a discernible ripple of his Adam’s apple. “A freckle?”
“Does it look like a bullet hole?”
He blinked as though startled. “Were you shot?”
“No, but I’ve often dreamt that I was.”
He reached up and brushed a thumb across the marking, his movements cautious.
“Sometimes,” I said, “I dream of a man kicking open a door and shooting me with a rifle. I’ve experienced the nightmare ever since I was a child.” I sat beside him and took hold of his right hand between my palms. “I want you to know this information in case anything like it comes up when we learn the stories of this house. Just as I did with my investigation into Janie’s claims, I want to lay all evidence out in the open before comparing notes with the residents.”
“Are you going to speak to the Harkeys about your suspicions?”
I pursed my lips and debated his question. “I don’t know,” I said with a sigh. “I can’t yet tell how responsive they’d be to the concept of reincarnation. I’m also worried they’ll patronize me and go along with whatever I say just to give me a good show.”
“Do they really strike you as that sort?”
“I don’t know what sort they are, but the house seems so bland and unsettling. I can’t imagine guests typically coming here for any reason other than hunting down gruesome details about murders and ghosts.”
The door rattled behind us. We both jumped.
“What was that?” I asked.
Michael detached my fingernails from his arm. “Just the wind.”
“I’m not so sure . . .”
“Listen to it howling outside. It’s bound to slip through all the cracks in this drafty old place.”
I stared down that thin wooden door and couldn’t stop imagining an eye blinking on the other side of the keyhole, watching us, wondering when we’d strip down naked and finish the deed.
“I’ll leave so you can dress.” Michael got to his feet. “I think we both ought to have some food and a drink.”
“Stand in front of the door while I change, will you?”
“How’s that?”
“Block the view from outside.”
Michael looked to the door and then back at me.
“Please, Michael. I really do feel as though someone is out there. I know it makes me sound like a paranoid ninny, but I can’t shake the fear that someone wants to watch us.”
His face paled at those words. He rubbed the side of his neck, and despite previously blaming the wind for the noises, he did as I asked with his own eyes locked upon the keyhole.
CHAPTER 29
Another door in the house perturbed me even more than the one in the bedroom.
The front door.
Michael had gone downstairs to fetch his coat while I remained upstairs to arrange my hair, and on my way down the wooden steps, the air in front of me blurred like rippling waves of heat. I saw the door’s black wood and oval glass pane through the ethereal haze of a dream. The music of a nearby piano muted into a distant hum, and I imagined a man kicking the door down and blasting me in the chest with a bullet that burned through my flesh.
“Oh, good,” said Michael, ducking out of the front parlor in his freshly pressed coat. “I thought I heard you coming downstairs.”
“Yes,” I said—a sound that escaped my lips as a flutter of air.
He joined me at the bottom of the stairs and took my hand. “Mr. Harkey has been serenading me with a depressing private concert in there. All I’ve wanted to do is run back upstairs and be with you.”
I pulled my attention away from the door. “Are you all right? Are you feeling depressed?”
His eyes moistened, but he mustered a smile. “I don’t want to talk about any of that right now.”
“Are you certain?”
“Come along. I’ve heard drinks are on the way.”
Inside the parlor, upon an upright piano, Mr. Harkey was playing “The Coventry Carol”—a song that inevitably set my skin awash in chills, no matter where I heard the somber melody or whatever frame of mind in which I happened to be listening to it. Thick green drapes sealed off our view of the outside world, and candles and kerosene wall lamps provided scant light. Shadows darted to and fro across the plaster ceiling—monstrous movements. Playful demons.
“Hot toddies are coming soon,” called Mr. Harkey from over his music.
“Yes, so I heard; thank you,” I called back, and I joined Michael in front of the fire, where we warmed our hands, our fingers rigid, our breathing shallow.
Footsteps rounded the corner. I glanced behind us and found Mrs. Harkey traipsing our way with two glass mugs of a golden beverage that, indeed, smelled like hot apple toddies, minus the kick of whiskey.
“Your drinks,” she said, handing us the mugs, for which we thanked her.
“I hope you’re not going to too much trouble over us,” I said, and I forced myself to meet her eyes, still petrified she had viewed me with my legs spread wide open.
“No, it’s no trouble at all.” She wiped her palms on the apron tied around her waist. “Is Al’s music too much for you? It’s a little grim for Christmas Eve, isn’t it?”
“A little,” admitted Michael.
“Al!” she called over the piano.
Her husband ceased playing and raised his face. “What is it?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Lind aren’t here for the ghosts, remember? Stop filling the parlor with atmosphere.”
“Oh, come n
ow,” he said, and the lowest keys rumbled beneath his fingers. “They seem like good sports.” He winked and embarked upon Beethoven’s melancholy “Moonlight Sonata.”
Mrs. Harkey tightened her apron strings. “I’m sorry. He gets a little carried away for my tastes sometimes. I hope it doesn’t spoil your stay.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t worry about us.”
“I’ll be back straightaway with the appetizers.”
Before we could thank her, she dashed out of the room.
Michael and I blew on our steaming toddies, and a potpourri of nutmeg and sweet apples flooded my nose. Once again, homesickness for Mother’s holiday cooking assailed me. The entire family must have been wondering where I’d gone by that point. It wasn’t like me to disappear.
“Shall we sit down?” asked Michael.
I opened my mouth to agree but became distracted by the sight of a peculiar object to my right: a lone photograph, mounted on the yellow-brown wall directly across from the fireplace. It was a studio portrait of an imposing woman with blond hair pulled back from a stern face that glowered. She wore a high-collar dress with a cascade of white ruffles gushing from her throat, and she sat in a dining room-style chair, her thick hands clasped in her lap, her feet planted against the floor in high-buttoned boots. She looked as though she wanted to spring off that chair and batter a person with a rolling pin. Her eyes conveyed the message, I do not want to be here.
I knew that picture.
Oh, Christ.
“Who is that?” I asked Mr. Harkey, nodding in the direction of the image.
“That is the grande dame,” he called over his sonata. “Mrs. Cornelia Gunderson, former owner of this hotel.”
I approached the photograph, parked myself in front of it, and, yes, recognized it—just as Janie had reacted to the picture of Nelson Jessen standing with an arm around his bride. Without a doubt, that pose, that scowl, that lusterless fair hair yanked back from a severe forehead—everything about the woman struck me as familiar, even though I couldn’t put my finger on the precise date and time that I’d viewed the portrait in the past. My gaze dropped down to a small metal sign, mounted below the wooden picture frame. CORNELIA OGREN GUNDERSON, AGE 24, it said, and my eyes latched onto another name that stood within those block letters.
