House of Echoes: A Novel

by Brendan Duffy

“I don’t know wh—”

  “I have to get Bub dressed, Charlie.”

  “Do you still want me to go to bed?” he asked.

  Ben studied his son. He still looked like a little kid. A pale and sick-looking kid. But Ben saw someone older in those gray-blue eyes. In their reflection he could imagine the dead animals in the woods and the fire in the shed. They made him think of huge men lurking in the forest. They made him wonder about his dead dog. They made him think of secrets that no child should be keeping to himself. When he looked at Charlie, he felt more things than he could sort.

  “Do whatever you want to do,” Ben said. He maneuvered past him. When he turned in to Bub’s room, he could still feel Charlie’s gaze on his back.

  —

  Ben had just gotten Bub dressed when he heard Caroline call for him. There was something strange in her voice, but it wasn’t the Wolf.

  He slung Bub over his shoulder and headed downstairs. The chief was sitting in the kitchen, his shoulders powdered with snow. Caroline leaned against the counter, gray-faced.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “We found Mrs. White,” the chief said. “Not far from where you told us to look. Found her up in the cemetery. She passed, I’m sorry to say.”

  “She’s dead?”

  The chief nodded.

  “God,” Ben said. He sat in the chair next to the chief’s. “She didn’t look that bad when I saw her. I mean, she was disoriented, but she was also sprinting through the forest.”

  “The cold can catch up to you fast,” the chief said.

  “I don’t know what to say.” Ben felt sick, and he felt naked against the eyes that were on him. “I ran after her, but I lost her.” Saying it aloud only made Ben feel worse; how hapless would a man have to be to be outrun by an arthritic ninety-year-old?

  “She say anything to you when you saw her?”

  “No,” Ben said. “She was totally out of it. And she was so thin. I offered her that apple—I thought she must be hungry—but that’s when she took off.” He shook his head. “She was muttering something to herself, but she had almost no voice. It sounded like ‘Swann.’ She said it over and over again, but I didn’t know what she meant.”

  “She said ‘Swann’?” the chief asked. “You’re sure?”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me. I figured she was remembering that the Swanns used to live here. Could it mean anything else?”

  “Her mind was gone,” the chief said. He scribbled something in his notepad. “Coulda meant anything at all.”

  “She froze to death?”

  “Hypothermia’s our guess. Book says we gotta take her to North Hampstead for the autopsy.”

  “She was such a sweet lady,” Caroline said. “I really can’t believe it.” She looked down at the counter.

  “I don’t know what I could have done differently,” Ben said. “I searched for her and I couldn’t find her.”

  “No one’s blaming you, Ben,” the chief said. “She’s with God now.”

  “What about her son?”

  “You let me worry about Tommy.” The chief stood up to leave. “Sorry to give you this kinda news before your party.”

  “Don’t worry about us, Chief,” Caroline said.

  “Yes,” Ben said. “Our sympathies are with the family.”

  “In a village this small, we’re all family,” the chief said. He put on his gloves. “Now, you remember that. We all got to stick together up here. The winter’s too hard to do otherwise. I’ll see you tonight.” When he opened the door to leave, the room filled with icy air.

  “Are you all right?” Caroline asked.

  “Yeah, it’s just—yeah, I’m fine,” Ben said. “I’m sorry, I know you and she became close.”

  “Do you think we should cancel the party?”

  Ben would have liked nothing more. But one look at her face told Ben that wasn’t what Caroline wanted to hear.

  “You’ve already made so much food,” Ben said. “It’d go to waste.”

  Bub pounded against Ben’s chest with one tiny fist.

  “I’ll get the boys dressed then start the fires,” he said. Ben sensed that Caroline needed to hear something more from him in this moment—almost any bromide would do—but still, he couldn’t find the words she needed. He left her in the kitchen, staring at the granite counter.

  Ben got the boys ready, got himself dressed, then started the fireplaces in the lounge, library, and dining room. His hands smelled like charred wood when he assembled the smoked-trout appetizers.

  Caroline changed into a green velvet dress with a gold belt that matched her hair. She looked as if she’d stepped off the cover of a magazine, but she picked at her cuticles as she paced the halls. When she left the kitchen to light the candles in the lounge, Ben poured a measure of vodka into a water glass.

  Outside, the snow fell. Several inches covered the ground, and the wind had already built drifts against the walls of the Crofts. The monochromaticity of the storm turned the contours of the Drop into an alien landscape.

  Staring at the strange blankness of it, Ben decided he didn’t want to spend Christmas here after all. Not in this place where women froze to death, dogs vanished, and wives and sons turned into strangers. He’d tell Caroline tomorrow. They’d visit with Ted in the city instead of the other way around. Caroline would protest, but she thought only in time and money. Ben could no longer ignore the fact that every problem they’d come here to solve had gotten worse. Like the oblivious frog being boiled on a stovetop, Ben thought that maybe a week or two away from this place would give him perspective on just how hot the water around them had become.

  You got everything you ever wanted, didn’t you, Benj?

  Ben saw the flash of headlights pulling up the gravel drive. He finished his vodka and waited for the doorbell to ring. When it did, he listened to Caroline’s hurried steps to the front door.

  He heard Lisbeth’s voice before he set eyes on her. He was glad that she was the first to arrive. Caroline was anxious enough, and Ben thought that Lisbeth would be able to put her at ease.

  “…about the snow and everything,” he heard Caroline say.

  “Don’t be silly, sugar. Folks around here have been itching to slap the chains on their tires for weeks. There he is now,” she said, seeing Ben. She pressed her palms against his face.

  “No trouble finding the place, I hope?” he said. The cold of her hands brought the blood to his cheeks.

  “Hundred and one laughs, isn’t he?” Lisbeth’s smile lit the hallway.

  “Please let me take your coat,” Caroline said.

  “Look at these floors!” Lisbeth said, looking down. She took in the walls and the foyer’s chandelier. “Everything is so beautiful!” Her compliments seemed genuine, but her face was drawn and tired. Ben wondered if she’d already been over to Tommy White’s place to lend comfort to him, the same way she had to the family whose farm had been repossessed.

  Caroline started to leave with the coat, but Lisbeth stopped her.

  “Wait, just stand next to each other,” she said. She nudged Caroline into Ben. “Closer.”

  Ben put his arm around his wife. They posed like actors facing a photographer. An actor was exactly what he was, Ben realized as he donned his smile. When you came down to it, the language he spoke and the air he breathed was that of pretending.

  Lisbeth looked them over and shook her head. “What lucky and beautiful people you are.”

  Father Cal arrived next. When Caroline walked off with Lisbeth to get a bottle of wine, Ben lowered his voice to tell Cal about what happened to Mrs. White.

  “How perfectly horrible,” Father Cal said.

  “I hate to mention it at all, but when the others get here they might say something about it, so I wanted you to know.”

  “Are you all right?” the priest asked him.

  “She was a very nice lady. Caroline knew her better than I did, though,” Ben said. “But it’s still hard
to process, because—”

  “You were the last one to see her,” Cal said. He shook his head. “Another grim story for this old house.”

  The doorbell rang again. Ben opened the door to find both the Stantons and the Bishops standing on the veranda.

  The chief had shaved, and the skin of his face was tight against its bones.

  “Please come in, everyone,” Ben said. “And sorry about the snow.”

  “Don’t expect you to control the weather, Ben,” Mary Stanton said.

  “If only all wives were as reasonable as you, Mary,” he said.

  He introduced himself to Jake’s father, Henry. They’d spoken on the phone before but had never met. Other than their wide-set eyes, father and son looked nothing alike. Jake was tall and broad, while his father was short and wiry.

  Ben brought the Bishops and Stantons to the lounge, where Caroline was showing Lisbeth and Cal the room’s architectural details. He tracked back and forth from the kitchen with drink orders, and on his last trip he came upon Charlie and Bub holding hands in the lounge doorway. Charlie wore gray pants and a black sweater over a white collared shirt; except for Ben’s tie, they were dressed identically. Bub was dressed for bed, in red pajamas with feet.

  “Look who’s here,” Ben muttered to himself. He could hear Lisbeth cooing from down the hallway.

  Caroline left to check the dinner as Ben passed out the drinks. When he was finished, he found himself next to Cal, while the Bishops, Stantons, and Lisbeth stood in a group by the doorway with Charlie and Bub in the center. The villagers were craned over Charlie, asking him questions and patting his shoulders. Bub stood behind Charlie, somewhat ignored and becoming agitated because of it. Charlie nodded and smiled, but even across the room Ben saw something wild in his eyes.

  Looking at his son, he could not imagine a single thought that might be running through his mind. Perhaps this was what it meant for a child to grow up, but Ben didn’t think so. His own mother would have brutalized him at the slightest whiff of deception, but maybe Ben had erred too far in the other direction. As he watched Charlie wield his frozen smile, Ben decided that he’d been passive for too long. Since finding the bloody fingerprint in The Book of Secrets, Ben’s fears and suspicions had not coalesced into anything more than a profound sense of wrongness. There was something wrong with this place, and there was something wrong with his son. Tomorrow he’d find out what the boy knew about what was in the forest. He’d ask about the pit and find out what had happened on the day the shed went up in flames. Maybe he would find out what happened to Hudson. Then they’d all take a break from the Crofts over the holidays.

  “I think it’s just about bedtime for the boys,” Ben said. Charlie was still holding the baby’s hand. Ben pulled Bub away from him.

  “I can put him to bed,” Charlie said.

  “I got him. But it’s getting late for you, too,” Ben said.

  “I’m not tired,” Charlie said.

  “He had to come home sick from school,” Ben told the villagers.

  “Hope you feel better, sugar,” Lisbeth told Charlie.

  “Mom’s in the kitchen. Now, go say good night to her,” Ben said. He met Charlie’s stare until the boy did what he was told. “You say good night, too, Bub.” He waved the child’s hand for him while he watched Charlie make his way down the hall.

  “Good night, boys,” Mary Stanton said. “You have beautiful sons,” she told Ben.

  Bub lay heavily against him as Ben made his way up the stairs to his room.

  “They tired you out, didn’t they, buddy?” The baby had his eyes closed before he hit the cushion of his crib. Ben switched on the monitor and clipped the receiver to his pocket. “Would you dream a happy dream for me?”

  38

  It felt strange to be seated at the head of such a large table. The meal was perfect, and the room glistened with candles and Christmas trees and cascades of poinsettias. It was beautiful in the way a movie set would be. And sitting there smiling, laughing, telling stories, Ben felt it again: an actor. Everyone was gracious and said polite things, but the night felt like a performance.

  “Will anyone be able to come to the restaurant, or would you need to be a guest?” Mary Stanton asked. They had peppered Ben and Caroline with dozens of questions about the kind of inn the Crofts would become. Ben could not tell whether these were asked out of interest or simply to prevent the table from falling into silence.

  “Eventually we’d like to open it up to everyone,” Caroline said. “We have a space for a professional kitchen. The pipes and wires and gas lines are all there, but we don’t have the equipment yet.”

  “Well, I may need to make myself a regular,” Lisbeth said. “These beets are like a dream.”

  “You gonna run this place on your own?” Henry Bishop asked. It was clear that none of the guests had explored the full extent of the Crofts in a long time. The house cut an imperial silhouette against the mountains, but they’d forgotten the sprawling massiveness of the place. The tour Caroline gave had been limited to the first two floors, but Ben watched their eyes widen every time they turned a corner to reveal a different section of the mansion.

  “At first we’ll need at least a couple of people to clean the rooms,” Caroline said.

  “You’ll need some bodies for the kitchen, too,” Lisbeth said. “A cook and a prep, at least, I think. Then someone to run the tables.”

  “And eventually we want to grow most of our food,” Caroline said. “Turn the Crofts back into a working farm. Then there are the stables. And we’re talking about restoring one of the outbuildings, making it into a spa.” She glanced at Ben. This was the first he’d heard of it. “Then there’s all the landscaping and grounds maintenance.”

  “Thought I had that covered,” Jake said. Jake had barely said a word all night. He’d seemed fine the day before, but Ben wondered if he had whatever was going around. He didn’t look as if he’d been sleeping well.

  “You do, but you can’t do it all on your own. You’ll need help,” Caroline said.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll give you some fancy title so everyone knows you’re in charge,” Ben said. “Executive Groundskeeper. Living Resource Management Director. Estate Director. Unless that sounds too much like an undertaker.” He regretted the words as they left his mouth. Mrs. White had been the ghost in the room all along.

  “Ah, poor Tommy White,” Lisbeth said. She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. “God bless the boy.”

  “Hard season,” Henry said, nodding.

  “And it’s only beginning,” the chief said. He looked to the windows, but they’d been frosted by the storm’s onslaught. “Hope the road stays open.”

  “The county road?” Ben asked.

  “Enough snow and the south pass gets closed up tight. Probably won’t get enough for that tonight, but the ice on the turn before the pass can be murder, too.”

  Ben vaguely remembered Cal saying something about the county road closing for a few days after the fire in 1982. He tried to imagine what they would do if a time came when they needed to leave the valley, and couldn’t.

  “Told Simms to keep an eye on it.”

  “Ben, you look like someone ran over your cat,” Lisbeth said. “Even if the south pass closes, the north pass almost never does. Isn’t that right, Bill?”

  “You’ll get used to it up here,” Henry told them. “The winters are hard, but they make the rest of the year seem that much easier.”

  “I look at the calendar and I know we haven’t been here long, but some days it doesn’t feel that way,” Caroline said.

  “Just means you must feel at home,” Lisbeth said.

  “And you’ve been working so hard and pouring your heart into this house,” Mary Stanton said.

  “It’s been a busy time.” Caroline nodded. “And there’s a lot more to do.”

  “And you like it up here, too, Ben?” Henry asked. “You don’t miss the city?”

  “Sometimes.” H
e thought back to New York: drinking coffee on marble steps while reading the paper, lowering Charlie’s feet into fountains, drinking beer with friends on rooftops. His memory of the city was frozen in spring and sunlight. “That life seems like a long time gone.”

  “That’s ’cause this is where you belong,” Lisbeth said. “Place wasn’t right without any Lowells.” She turned to the chief. “Isn’t that right, Bill?”

  “Lisbeth has it right. The village is small and gets smaller all the time. We’ve lost a lot of good people, and it’s a nice change to have some of them come back. And it’s good to have a family at the Crofts again.”

  “And doing so right by it,” Mary said. “How you turned this old place into something like from out of a magazine, I’ll never know.”

  “We’re so pleased you like it,” Caroline said. “It means a lot to hear it from you. Ben’s been reading up on the history of the place, so we know it’s important to the village.”

  “Not writing a book on us, I hope,” Henry said.

  “From the moment I saw this place, I knew it had a story,” Ben said. This was a chance for him to change the subject, put his guests more at ease, and possibly even stop lying to them for a minute. “Actually, Chief, you were there. Remember? We were at the old Lowell farm, and Hank Seward called the station on us for the first time.”

  “That grass-eater,” Henry said.

  “Then you told me the place between the mountains was for sale.”

  “Did I?” the chief asked.

  “You did. You’re the reason we’re all here,” Ben said. He raised his glass.

  “Oh, you don’t need to.” The chief held up a hand. Ben toasted him anyway, and the rest of the table joined him.

  —

  After they’d finished their meal, Ben led the guests into the library. This wasn’t a room Ben had spent much time in, but the new couches made it a comfortable place. He had bottles of port, sambuca, and brandy waiting, and he offered glasses to everyone. The fire here had burned down to embers, and he threw another log on.

  “Do you think Caroline needs any help with the dishes?” Mary Stanton asked from the couch. “I feel like a heel, living it up in here while she’s in the kitchen.” She gave Ben a nervous smile that showed her incisors.