The Girl in the Attic

by Ed Gorman

  Only when you looked carefully could you see that everything was faded both by the passing of time and by the sun that shone steadily through the western window.

  This had been Anne Edmonds' room before the tragedy in which four people had been slaughtered in their sleep . . .

  Now Carlotta raised her eyes to Carleton, trying to determine the most effective way of stopping him.

  He was surprisingly strong for his slender body size, so she knew there was no way to physically slow him down.

  She glanced around for something she might strike him with, but could find nothing.

  "Carleton!" she shrieked.

  Her voice boomed off the narrow walls.

  For just a moment he paused, letting the red gasoline can rest.

  She'd never seen his face like this before. Occasionally when the memories of that terrible night ten years ago overcame him, she sometimes saw him acting sullen—but never anything like this.

  "You don't have any right to do this," she said. But he continued to splash gasoline everywhere, especially on the bed.

  Then he stood back, letting the empty can fall from his right hand, and wiped the sweat from his brow on his sleeve.

  He deliberately took a package of matches from his shirt collar.

  It was then that Carlotta grabbed the piggy bank.

  The big brass pig had been one of Anne's most prized possessions. When full, as now, it probably weighed 15 pounds. Anne always said it was going to "take her to Chicago to see a Backstreet Boys concert." But the Backstreet Boys were long gone.

  Carlotta got up behind Carleton just as he was about to strike the match.

  She didn't fling the brass piggy bank but rather kept it in her hands. She swung in a wide are so that it caught him clean across the back of the head.

  He crumpled to the floor as if he'd been shot.

  "She was here last night."

  "Maybe she was."

  "She was here. That's why Jamie killed that man."

  Carlotta shook her head. "Anne would not do such a thing."

  Carleton stared out the window at the blue sky.

  His eyes were still glazed from the blow Carlotta had inflicted. Afterward, she'd dragged him to his office and stretched him out on the leather couch.

  "I don't know any more, Carlotta." He sounded exhausted.

  "Don't know what?"

  "Don't know if she was really innocent. Maybe we think that because we're afraid to say the truth."

  Carlotta frowned. "I should've hit you harder. That's a terrible thing to say about your own daughter."

  He was silent a time and then he said, "Maybe she was possessed."

  "By the Bryce woman?" She referred to the woman who'd killed two people there in the late thirties.

  "Yes."

  "You know better than that."

  "I don't know better than that."

  "I don't know what I believe any more."

  "What about the pounding we hear. And the phone that rings sometimes?"

  He looked at her and shook his head. "Carlotta, I know she's here, Anne, I mean. I sincerely believe that she's the one doing the pounding. I'm not doubting that." His eyes became melancholy. "But maybe the assumption we make that her spirit can't be malevolent—is wrong."

  Once again Carlotta shook her head. "I'm going to prove otherwise."

  He reached over and patted her hand. "I know you mean well, but you've been saying that for ten years and—well, nothing's come of it."

  "Something will. I know."

  "I appreciate your faith. I really do."

  She stood up. "You should take two more aspirin."

  "My head's fine."

  "You should be careful."

  He smiled at her. "I'm glad you stopped me. It's just that I feel so sorry for Jamie and Sally—I thought maybe if I destroyed the room. . ." He touched the tender back of his head. "It was irrational, what I was trying to do."

  She said, "We need to find out what's going on . . . what's really going on."

  "I know."

  Carlotta looked at him fondly; she'd always felt maternal toward him. When he was ten, his mother had caused a scandal in Haversham by running away with the local bank vice-president. Carleton's father had been both humiliated and crushed. He'd died of a heart attack when Carleton was a junior in college. So Carleton had dropped out of school and assumed the responsibilities here at the hotel. He'd always seemed so vulnerable. Carlotta helped him all she could.

  "I'm almost afraid to know," he said.

  "Why?"

  "What if we find out her spirit really is corrupt?"

  "That's not what we're going to find out."

  He touched the back of his head again. "I hope you're right. I pray you're right."

  She smiled faintly. "You'll see —I am."

  3

  When Sally came out of the hospital, thunderheads roiled across the mid-morning sky. Trees blew gracefully in a chill wind that promised rain. The weather had gone from July to October almost overnight.

  Sally's plans were to walk to the police station, which she'd noticed on her way into town yesterday while a passenger in Cletus Olsen's van.

  But at the end of the walk she saw something that surprised her—her own car, apparently repaired. Sally, tired from the terrible events of last night and still somewhat weakened from the sedative, stared at the car as if it might be a mirage.

  But that wasn't the only thing that surprised her. Leaning against the car was somebody she recognized from television a few years ago—a CBS-TV reporter named David Hanratty. She remembered him not because he'd struck her as such a wonderful reporter, or even as such a good-looking man, but rather because his beat had included all the oddball stories, many including those of psychic phenomena, a subject that had always titillated her.

  The sight of Hanratty, a rather celebrated reporter, leaning against her newly repaired car here in the middle of Haversham only enhanced the dreamlike quality of the moment.

  Then Hanratty moved away from the car toward her, and the illusion was broken. Male TV reporters always seemed to try for one of two images—the suit-and-tie, clipped, professional look, or the jungle jacket "macho" style. At the moment Hanratty was offering a third style—derelict. He needed a shave, his bloodshot eyes seemed to plead for mercy, and sport shirt, blue windbreaker and wrinkled chinos looked as if he'd slept in them. A 35-mm camera was slung over his shoulder.

  "You're Mrs. Baines?" he asked, coming up to her.

  "Yes."

  "I. . ."

  "I know who you are, Mr. Hanratty. I haven't seen you on TV for some time."

  He smiled. There was no happiness in it. "Been doing other things."

  She said, levelly and wearily, "You want to ask me questions about my daughter, don't you?"

  The wind soughed, and first drops of rain, silver and fat, fell from the sky.

  Hanratty said, "No, those people are all on the other side of the hospital."

  "Those people?"

  "The rest of the press. There are a lot of them. That's why Dr. Gonzalez led you out this side."

  "I see." She stared at him. "So you're not like them."

  "No, I'm not. I want to help you."

  "And how could you do that?" She already found him transparent. Naturally, a good reporter would do exactly what a good policeman did: get on your good side, work up some trust.

  From inside his windbreaker he took a large black book, with red dye on the edges of the paper and a black rippled leather cover. It looked important; it was probably a journal of some kind.

  "I've been studying the events that have taken place in that hotel."

  "You mean Anne Edmonds?"

  "No . . . before that. Back in the thirties there was another murder there."

  "You'll excuse me for being a little cynical, Mr. Hanratty."

  "About what?"

  "About you."

  "Why?"

  "You're a reporter. You want a story." Te
ars filled her eyes and her voice. She brushed past him. "Just please leave me alone."

  She opened the car door and got inside. There was an envelope on the passenger seat. Inside were the keys and a repair bill. She put the key in the ignition and tried to start the car.

  She was so upset with everything—especially with Hanratty standing on the other side of the windshield, staring at her—that she flooded the car. Instantly she smelled gas.

  She waited a few moments.

  When she tried again, the engine was still flooded.

  Hanratty walked over and said, "Let it sit a few minutes."

  "I don't need any advice from you, Mr. Hanratty."

  "No, but you may need a friend."

  "I have one, thank you," she said, thinking of Carleton Edmonds.

  Hanratty leaned closer. "You know, I just had a cup of coffee with a man named Cletus Olsen. He told me something that could be very useful to your daughter—if the police chief decides to prosecute."

  But all she could hear in his voice was a man trying to befriend her so he could get a story.

  She turned the key in the ignition again, waiting a moment before she tried the gas pedal. This time the car started.

  "I'm really trying to help you," he said.

  But even before he'd finished talking, she'd put the car in gear and backed out of the parking space.

  4

  "You're going to charge her with murder?"

  Half an hour later, Sally sat in the office of Police Chief Stevens. The air conditioning, which nobody had adjusted to meet the sudden drop in temperature, gave the place the feel of a meat locker.

  "I didn't say that." Stevens resembled a farmer far more than he did a city official. Permanent worry lines angled along the sides of his mouth. "I just said I was going to ask her some questions."

  "Hold her, in other words."

  Stevens frowned. "Why don't we save each other some grief and just be honest with each other?"

  "Meaning what?"

  He sighed. "If that was my daughter in the hospital, I'd be just as upset as you are. I'd also be just as mystified over what happened last night. And I'd be asking myself the same questions you are.

  "You raise a sweet little girl who keeps right on being a very nice kid. Then she reaches her early teen years—and wham! Something happens. She does something totally out of character—something violent, perhaps." He put his eyes on his desk blotter. "Maybe even commits a murder."

  "Not my daughter."

  "And that's exactly what I'd say, too, if I were you.’Not my daughter.' I know her too well. I know everything there is to know about her." He glanced up at one of his prominent degrees. "But the sad fact is, Mrs. Baines, that we don't know."

  She stood up. Once, as a little girl, she'd gotten lost from her mother on a carnival midway. She still remembered the panic, the total sense of being helpless and alone. She felt this now.

  "As soon as my daughter is able to travel, I plan to take her home. To our home."

  Softly he said, "I don't know what happened in that attic last night. But I'm going to- find out, Mrs. Baines, because that's my job. And if that means I have to keep your daughter here for a month, then that's what I'll do."

  She said nothing, just turned and left. She must have been sending signals of the frenzy she felt; everybody in the police station looked at her as if she were some kind of sick animal who needed help—or to be put out of its mercy.

  When she got back outside, it was raining. She ran to her car and opened the door and started to get in.

  And then she saw him.

  Hanratty.

  She got in, already soaked, and said, "Just what do you think you're doing in my car?"

  He eyed her levelly. "I'm going to help you, Mrs. Baines, whether you want me to or not."

  5

  There was a place with yellow flowers.

  "What kind of yellow flowers," Jamie asked.

  I'm not sure what you call them. But they were beautiful.

  "Where is this place?"

  Out by the river. It's not far.

  "Oh, but they won't let me leave. I can see them on the other side of that window. They're always watching me.

  Tonight—tonight I'll help you get out of here.

  "You promise? You promise?"

  I promise, Jamie. I promise. Because you're my friend. You're my very best friend.

  Gonzalez stood on the other side of the glass watching Jamie.

  She just lay there in bed.

  Staring straight ahead.

  The poor kid.

  Probably absolutely nothing going on in her mind. A virtual vegetable.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  "Help you?"

  The way she said it, the snippy young bitch behind the counter of Ernie's Discount House, you could just tell she knew all about Bethel.

  "Here, honey, wrap this up," Bethel said, shoving an entire armload of clothes into the teenaged girl's arms.

  The girl glowered at her, obviously wanting to say something snotty.

  The women in the checkout line behind them, pushing grocery carts overflowing with everything from wiffle balls to giant-size boxes of Tampax, took quiet pleasure in what they were seeing.

  They, too, know who Bethel was—the only one of her kind in or around Haversham, a nuisance whom the local law enforcement folks hauled in every time there was an election on the horizon. Otherwise, they left her alone.

  Liquored up with 3.2 beer bought off their paychecks, the menfolk of these women had occasionally paid a call on Bethel.

  So the women hated her—which only made her feel all the more powerful.

  "May I see some identification?" the checkout girl asked Bethel. She said it as if she were addressing a highly questionable character who was wearing a prison uniform.

  "You mean you really don't know who I am, honey?" Bethel said. She took pleasure in seeing the girl flush.

  While Bethel waited for all of her clothes to be wrapped—and none too carefully, of course, she looked out the window, wondering what she was going to do with the other three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills that One Eye had left behind last night.

  Of course, this money was just the beginning. Bethel planned to sit down and think through all the things One Eye had confided to her.

  She was still daydreaming when she saw Bobby, the strange kid who worked at the hotel, in the parking lot. She knew for a fact that he, along with Cletus Olsen, were the nearest things One Eye had had to friends in the whole community,

  "You think you could hurry up?" Bethel snapped, pleased to be irritating the girl and the women behind her even more.

  She glanced behind her at the rest of the store. Somehow, the bright, cheap clothes arrayed here reminded her of how meaningless her life was. She was grubbing for 79-cent panties on sale just like everybody else.

  She'd had a vague notion that there was more to be had—she'd spent time on the street in the state capitol when she was just nineteen, and there she got her first sense that there was more, what with state senators who bought you champagne and drove around in big new Buicks. If you were very nice to them (one state senator liked you to do him while he was driving: it was dangerous, but it only added to his thrill), they'd reward you special, with flowers or perfume the next time. With what she'd learned from One Eye last night, she sensed she was going to prove there was more. And maybe Bobby could help her.

  "Hurry up!" she said to the girl.

  "You wouldn't think whores would be so brazen," said the woman behind her, a pious, white-haired lady with a cartload of generic beer for the husband, two big sale plastic bags of cheese-flavored popcorn for herself, and a bunch of magazines for both of them.

  "You certainly wouldn't," clucked her friend.

  Outside, Bobby was just climbing onto his rusty, Schwinn bike when Bethel caught up with him.

  "Hey," Bethel said, "don't you want to talk to me no more?"

  She said it coyly, the way she'
d learned from the movies of Jane Russell, her mother's favorite screen actress, a woman who had gone on to advertise bras big and strong enough to serve as straightjackets for breasts.

  Bethel saw Bobby gulp. "Sure I want to talk to you."

  "You remember the night I caught you at my window?"

  Pure fear crossed Bobby's stupid face: he froze.

  She chucked him under the chin. "Don't you worry none. I'm not goin' to tell nobody. Anyway, it was kinda fun. I mean, I knew you was out there. So I gave you a special show. 'Member what I did with that Dr. Pepper bottle?"

  He flushed again. "Yeah, I remember."

  "You want to see me do it again?"

  "I don't want to get in no trouble."

  "You won't; I promise."

  She almost shook her head. As usual his teeth had pieces of candy—she suspected licorice—stuck between them, and he wore enough hair gel to keep a 1968 Ford running for two years.

  "Anyways, you'd be doing me a favor."

  "How's that?" he asked.

  "I need to ask you some questions."

  "'Bout what?"

  "'Bout your friend One Eye."

  Once again, Bobby looked stricken. "I don't want to think about it no more. What that little girl did, I mean. I was up there when the police were there. . ." He shook his head. "My ma says it's gonna give me nightmares."

  "I won't make you talk about that. Just about other stuff."

  "What other stuff."

  She smiled her Jane Russell smile again. "You come out to my trailer tonight about eight and you'll find out."

  She could see by the way his gaze drifted that he might back out.

  She leaned up against him so that her breast touched his arm. She could feel her nipple harden. She pushed it against him.

  His eyes didn't seem to know what expression to use.

  He felt fear being seen this close to the town whore, right here in broad daylight in front of Ernie's Discount House and a profound lust that made him grip his handlebars so tight that his knuckles were white.

  "I'll be there," he said finally. He could barely speak.