by Edie Claire
“Are you from around here? Do you know who bought the building? What they’re gonna to do with it?” Merle questioned as she lowered herself into another chair opposite. Leigh judged the woman to be in her late seventies, skinny and weathered looking but a shrewd intelligence behind her dark brown eyes. Her clothes were worn and surroundings modest, but all were kept scrupulously tidy, in contrast to the porch on the opposite side of the house, which was liberally cluttered with plastic toys, broken furniture, and dead houseplants.
Leigh attempted to sort through the relevant questions. “I grew up in West View, but I live in McCandless now. The building was bought by a philanthropist, and it’s being rented to the North Boros Thespian Society. They want to turn it into a theater.”
Merle’s eyes widened to saucers. “A theater?”
“A theater?” Earl repeated, scratching his bald, age-spotted head. He was a short man, round in the middle but with arms and legs like sticks, and he sunk into his plastic Adirondack chair as if he’d been poured there. Leigh wondered how he managed to get out of it.
“That’s right,” she responded. She hadn’t thought to wonder whether the immediate neighbors would take kindly to Bess’s wild idea. She knew that despite her own mother’s complaints, all the locals in her family were supportive of community theater in general and the idea of a new “cultural attraction” in West View in particular. Surely most of the local citizens would be happy just to see the building taken care of again.
“I was kind of hoping they’d just tear the damn thing down,” Merle said bitterly.
Leigh sat up. “You were? Why is that?”
Merle’s pale lips puckered. Her head shook. “We’ve never seen nothing good come out of that place, and we’ve lived here over thirty years.”
“Thirty years?” Earl echoed uncertainly.
“Yes, thirty!” Merle replied, then turned back to Leigh. “Always been an eyesore. Bunch of drunken men dressing up like animals and playing like idiots — who wants that outside their front door? Then they rented it out for receptions and that, and we still had drunks puking on the sidewalks. And those god-awful haunted houses! Good Lord. Earl and me would go over and stay at my sister’s whenever that happened.”
“I thought it was twenty years,” Earl mumbled.
“You know we moved here in 1979!” Merle insisted. She turned to Leigh once more, her expression troubled. “What kind of theater are we talking about? You don’t mean somebody else is trying to open up one of them girlie peep shows—”
“Oh, no,” Leigh interrupted quickly. “Not a strip club. Nothing like it. A community theater that puts on plays.” Her mind searched for some agreeable titles. “Like The Mousetrap or Arsenic and Old Lace.”
Merle’s frown lifted a bit. “Well now. That sounds all right, I guess.”
Leigh smiled. Bess’s group had actually done both those plays, so she wasn’t being dishonest. There was no need to tell Merle what considerably more risqué shows Bess would produce if she actually got the chance, because there had always been enough reasonably sane individuals in the troupe to overrule her. Leigh could only hope there always would be, as she was pretty sure that any family member’s participation in a nude version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream would drive Frances Koslow to apoplexy.
“But I still wish they’d just tear the damn thing down,” Merle repeated sulkily. “At least then we could stop worrying about what was going on over there. All night long, lights moving, strange noises… you know anybody could move into that place — drifters, whoever. We never know who’s over there. But damned if there isn’t always something going on.”
“We moved in ’87, didn’t we?” Earl protested.
“No!” Merle argued. “That was when Jimmy moved to Texas. We came here in ’79. The year after your mother died, remember?”
“That was your mother.”
“No! My mother died in ’76. You’re thinking of Jimmy’s mother-in-law having that heart attack right before he and Lori Ann went to Texas…”
Leigh’s mind drifted. It was some time before the couple remembered her existence, and Earl never did concede on the year in which they had moved. But as soon as Leigh had her hostess’s attention, she asked the obvious question. “You said something was always going on in the building. Something like what? You mean when it was abandoned?”
Merle’s shrewd eyes held hers. “I mean always. Can’t tell you how many times Earl or myself looked out our bedroom window and saw lights over there. Could be the middle of the night. Most of the time things were quiet, though, and as long as whoever it was didn’t bother us, we didn’t bother them, you know.”
“You didn’t call the police?”
Merle gave a shrug. “We never knew the owners — could have been them over there for all we knew. There was only one time we were sure it was vagrants — partiers, you know — what with the loud music and the voices and all. Earl was just about ready to call the police on them when they come running out the front doors like the devil himself was chasing them. Burst out in a big cloud of cigarette smoke, screaming and carrying on. Said the building was haunted and they could have been killed.”
“Damn hippies,” Earl said with grunt.
Merle nodded. “Earl and I heard every word of it — they were all right out in the street. Talking about how a man got murdered there once, and now the same murderer was chasing them. Or the ghost of the guy who got murdered — they didn’t seem real clear. Of course, they were most likely drunk or stoned or something. But they scattered, the lot of them, and they didn’t come back. And nobody else ever partied there after them, neither.”
Leigh was beginning to wish she had accepted the offer of hot coffee. When had the spring air turned so chilly?
“How long ago was all this?” she asked, not sure she wanted an answer.
Merle gave another shrug. “Oh, long time ago. Before the Young Businessmen’s Chamber started all that nonsense at Halloween. Back when it was rented out for receptions and that. Like I said, though, it doesn’t seem to matter much who owns it. Funny stuff happens irregardless.”
“There’s somebody over there,” Earl agreed with a nod.
Leigh didn’t really want to know the answers to her next questions, but her traitorous mouth asked them anyway. “Somebody like who? What kind of funny stuff?”
Merle pulled her worn cardigan more tightly across her chest. “Well now, that depends on who you ask. What with that church custodian being murdered way back when, a lot of people around here say the building’s just plain haunted. But Earl and me, we don’t believe in none of that nonsense.”
“No, we do not,” Earl added with emphasis.
“We were still living over in Bellevue when it happened,” Merle continued, “but we heard about it. Everybody did.” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “All that talk of devil worship and human sacrifice! Nothing but rubbish, if you ask me, but no church wanted the place after that, and it’s gone downhill ever since. We tell people what we see… with the lights bobbing around at night, and even vandals afraid to stay there — and they all say it’s haunted. But me and Earl, we just think it’s somebody messing with people. Who knows why. People are hard to figure sometimes.”
“Lori Ann’s a little overweight,” Earl interjected.
Leigh waited a moment. Merle made no response, and Leigh couldn’t think of an appropriate one, either. “The murder of the custodian,” she asked instead. “The case was solved eventually, right? They found out why it happened like it did?”
Merle shook her head. “Never did figure that out. Not that I heard, anyway. Of course, the custodian was no prince himself, you know. Mean guy, nasty temper. They say the police were already watching him, ever since a buddy of his had gone missing a couple weeks before, right after the two of them got into a fistfight over a woman. So of course when the custodian got killed, everyone thought the buddy had come back and done him in. But the police never could find that other guy,
dead or alive, and they couldn’t prove a darn thing one way or the other, so that was the end of it.”
“What church did that woman go to?” Earl asked loudly.
“What woman?” Merle asked louder.
“Lori Ann’s mother!”
“Seventh-day Adventist.”
Earl squirmed slightly more upright in his chair, leaned over toward Leigh, and pointed his finger at her meaningfully. “She was a Seventh-day Adventist.”
Leigh nodded silently back.
“Haunted or not,” Merle continued, “we’d both be a whole lot happier if the damn place was just torn down. It’d make such a nice park, you know. Plant some trees and set up a few benches and swing sets for the kids — now that’s a sight I’d like to see out my windows. Wouldn’t you, Earl?”
Earl was still looking at Leigh. “They have their services on Saturdays, you know.”
“I’ve heard that,” Leigh replied, just as a spot of strawberry blond drifted into her peripheral vision. She looked across the street and recognized her cousin Cara walking around the rear of the building and down the side street with a camera in her hands. Cara caught sight of her at the same time and waved.
Leigh rose with a smile. Her cousin always did have excellent timing. “It’s been nice chatting with you,” she told her hosts, “but I’m afraid I need to get back. I’ll send my Aunt Bess over sometime to talk to you about the theater. I’m sure she can answer any questions you may have.”
The couple smiled and expressed their thanks, and Leigh darted back across the highway.
“That looked interesting,” Cara commented as she snapped a quick picture of the front windows. “Were the neighbors pumping you for information, or vice versa?”
“Both,” Leigh answered. Assuming that Cara was planning to go inside, Leigh stepped in between her cousin and the door. “Look,” she began, embarrassed by her inexplicable wussiness. “I don’t mean to sound paranoid or anything, but with the Pack working here, I’m just a little… I mean… did you know there was a murder here once?”
Cara’s attractive blue-green eyes blinked. “You mean that church custodian?”
Leigh blew out a breath. “Aunt Bess told you, then?”
Cara’s forehead furrowed. Leigh’s cousin was only two years younger than she was, but unlike Leigh, Cara’s still-gorgeous face only showed wrinkles when she laughed. Or when she was confused. “Aunt Bess didn’t need to tell me. Everyone knows that story.”
“Well, I didn’t!” Leigh protested. “But I knew something was wrong with the place the moment I walked in, just the same. I could feel it, Cara. I could sense where it happened, even!”
Cara’s expression grew even more incredulous. “Don’t be ridiculous, Leigh! Of course you knew about the murder. Everyone did. That story fascinated us when we were kids!”
Now it was Leigh’s turn to blink. “It did?”
Cara smiled. “Of course. We weren’t supposed to know anything, and we couldn’t say anything in front of our mothers, but it was common knowledge. Classic spooky story material for all the West View kids. Don’t you remember — one time you told a younger neighbor girl about it, in dripping detail, and she got so upset she cried. Her mother walked over and complained to my mother, and then my mother went over and told your mother—”
Leigh groaned and held up a hand. “Spare me the rest, please.”
“You remember now?”
“No,” Leigh replied, “but I’m sure that living through it once was enough.” How could she possibly forget such a thing? She had always prided herself on being able to remember more detail from her childhood than most people could, including Cara. Her memory of the first few sleep-deprived years after the twins were born would always be vague, true. But she had thought her earlier memories were still solid.
Traitorous gray matter, she thought with chagrin. Being over forty was hell. What other information was getting wiped out of her brain by the minute?
“That story always did capture your imagination,” Cara continued, rubbing it in. “I’m not surprised you felt a little unsettled walking into the sanctuary.” She smiled, then had the gall to laugh. “Did you really think you were psychic or something?”
“Of course not,” Leigh lied. She stepped out of her cousin’s way. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought I was supposed to bring the Pack home.”
“You are,” Cara answered, stepping not toward the entrance, but on across the front steps. “I’m only here to get a few quick pictures. Aunt Bess wants me to do a sketch of the outside to use on some promotional materials for the Society.” She frowned at the missing crenelations on top of the mouth-like tower. “Hmm. This will take some fudging.”
Leigh followed as her cousin walked slowly around the front corner and up the parking lot side of the building, snapping pictures as she went. “Honestly,” Cara said, frowning at the aluminum and acrylic housing that stuck out of the building’s side to enclose the monstrous wheelchair ramp, “with all that added on and without the steeple and the stained glass the original church was designed to have, it’ll be tough to make this building look anything less than hideous.”
“Quite,” Leigh agreed.
Both women were startled by a sudden movement from above. They looked up to see Ned, the man Leigh had met at the dumpster earlier, standing on the flat roof of the annex and leaning a ladder up against the back wall of the old sanctuary. With a roll of screen wire and a hammer tucked under one arm, he began to ascend the ladder.
“Oh, be careful!” Cara cried. “It’s been raining.”
Ned looked down at them both dubiously, his shaggy gray hair tousling in the breeze. “Ms. Frances says we gotta keep the bats out.”
Right above where Ned had placed the top of the ladder was an attic vent boasting holes the size of fists. “I’m sure neither Frances nor Bess want you to do anything dangerous,” Cara called back. “Maybe you should wait until the roof is dry?”
“Won’t make any difference,” came a husky voice from behind them. “He could fall through just as easily in the sunshine.”
Leigh and Cara turned to see a woman barely five feet tall — and that while wearing four-inch heels — standing behind them in a crisp business suit. She carried a professional camera similar to Cara’s and was wearing a hands-free earpiece so large in comparison to her tiny ear that it dominated the entire left side of her face.
“Excuse me?” Cara remarked. Her tone was superficially polite, but Leigh knew her cousin well enough to know that she had taken an instant dislike to the stranger.
“Sonia Crane, attorney at law,” the woman rasped. Her voice sounded like something one might expect from a retired miner with emphysema, not a woman the size of a fourth grader. “Crane and Associates,” she finished, extending a rigid, perfectly straight hand first to Cara, then to Leigh.
Leigh attempted to shake, but might as well have attempted to engage a slab of granite. The woman was probably around their own age, but her overzealously tanned skin was leathery and her perfectly tailored clothes reeked of cigarette smoke.
Leigh started to introduce herself, but Sonia cut her off. “It’s only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured on these premises,” the attorney pronounced. “And I can assure you that the lawsuits will be crippling.”
Leigh’s eyes traveled upward again. Ned had reached the top of the ladder and was placidly tacking the screened wire over the attic vent, ignoring all three women.
“Were you planning to injure someone?” Cara asked sweetly.
Leigh fought back a grin. Cara didn’t dislike very many people, particularly on first sight. Leigh knew it was petty, but she had always secretly enjoyed watching her nearly perfect cousin act less than perfectly; and for whatever reason, this tiny woman had Cara’s rarely used claws just itching to be unsheathed.
Sonia’s expression remained bland. “Crane and Associates doesn’t deal with personal injury law,” she stated, as if this answere
d the question. “We do real estate and property law. And I can assure you, with my over twenty years of experience in the field, that this building as it stands is an accident waiting to happen, ergo, an investor’s worst nightmare.”
Aha, Leigh thought. No doubt this was the attorney Bess had mentioned earlier — the one who wanted the property herself and who was, even now, trying to buy it back from Gordon Applegate.
“If you’re here because you’ve been hired to do some promotional work for the Thespian Society,” Sonia continued authoritatively, “I would suggest you rethink. This building will never open to the public. It won’t pass inspection.” She snapped a quick picture of Ned on the roof. “You there!” she called. “I wouldn’t trust that ceiling if I were you! It could be rotted clean through!”
Ned granted her only the briefest of glances, frowned, and returned to his work.
Sonia harrumphed, then snapped another picture.
Cara started to say something, but Leigh cut her off. “We were told that the building was declared sound by two building inspectors,” she said, intentionally sounding uncertain. “Is that not true?”
Sonia drew herself up to her full, pixie-like height and leaned closer to Leigh. “Private inspectors can be paid off,” she said heavily. “But the borough has final authority in granting the necessary permit… or not. This place is clearly a firetrap, if nothing else. Regardless, if people don’t feel safe coming here, the venture will fail. And people won’t feel safe. Not with this building’s history of… well, you know. Black magic.”
Leigh resisted an urge to smile. Though she would be the last one to deny the building’s macabre atmosphere, Sonia’s blatant attempts at undermining Bess’s plans — by any means possible — were really too amusing. “Black magic?” she repeated, trying to sound frightened, even as she tapped her cousin’s foot to warn her to play along.
Sonia’s dark, perfectly plucked eyebrows waggled ominously. “It’s common knowledge,” she said in a low, conspiratorial whisper. “Human sacrifice. Practiced Right. In. There.” She cocked her head over their shoulders toward the building. “It doesn’t get any darker than that. Not even that Marconi fellow could overcome this building’s reputation. Ran him off to Timbuktu it did, and lost him a boatload of money besides. But Gordon Applegate is sharper than that. As soon as he gets a load of the file I’m constructing, he’ll sell off this dump quicker than—”
