The Haunting of Appleton Hill

by Trinidad Giachino

  The Haunting of Appleton Hill

  Trinidad Giachino

  Contents

  Free Ebook

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  About the Author

  Connect with the author

  THE HAUNTING

  OF

  APPLETON HILL

  Copyright © by Trinidad Giachino, 2019

  1st Edition – April 2019

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Chapter 1

  “Some things you cannot fix, Althea.”

  Her last words resonated in my head. I couldn’t believe Claire was gone. Did I say head? I should have said heart. Her last words to me, right before she slammed the door in my face, still reverberated in my heart.

  Fifteen years. It happened fifteen years ago. Just let it go, Althea. I tried to talk myself into some mental peace while the airplane was getting ready to land. But what were those things? If Claire said I couldn’t fix them, then she believed them to be broken.

  “Please, place your seat upright, miss.”

  The stewardess appeared out of nowhere, removing me from my conjectures. I obeyed like a robot, not quite in my body yet. I even smiled at her as if I was looking for her approval. This entire experience felt surreal.

  I was going to my best friend’s funeral. A best friend I hadn’t seen in fifteen years because she had kicked me out of her house. That’s why this situation felt like it was happening to someone else. That and the fact I could bump into my mother. Oh, the joy of returning to my hometown.

  “There…” The flight attendant carried on as I continued to deal with a brain split into two different sections that refused to work together: the past and the present. The young woman had the whitest of smiles, and she flashed it at me while repositioning the back of my seat. “Now you’re ready for a safe landing,” she assured me before moving on to the next disheveled passenger.

  I clenched my hands together in apprehension as I recognized the white lie in the flight attendant’s statement. The woman had no idea what she was talking about. No safe landing was possible knowing that Claire had committed suicide.

  I retrieved my suitcase with an odd sensation crawling over my body. I shook it off by focusing on finding my way to the car rental office. Where was that damned office… two decades ago?

  I tried to remember, but the only time I had set foot in the airport close to my hometown of Ashwell was probably when I was a kid and my grandmother was still alive. I decided to walk up to a random stranger and ask. A woman in her mid-fifties was trying to retrieve something from her gigantic purse without having to empty its contents onto the floor.

  “Excuse me, do you―”

  “Althea Gardner?”

  A male voice behind me put an abrupt end to my half-formed question. It stopped me cold. It felt like a sudden snowstorm had fallen upon me while I was still inside the airport. I was not prepared to hear my own name. Not just yet.

  With the exception of Beatrix Appleton, Claire’s mother, nobody was expecting me. Who could this be? I had considered the airport to be a safe place. After all, it was in a city next to Ashwell, which was too small to have its own airport. No one was supposed to know me here.

  I turned around slowly, fearful of who I might find standing behind me.

  My findings were a bit of a head-scratcher. He had a deceptive voice, that was for sure; it was much too deep for him. He was a man not that much older than me, thirty-five years old at best. He had black hair and incredibly dark eyes rimmed by long, thick lashes. “Cow eyes,” my mother would have said. They were profound in an unsettling way. The man had a rugged beard and his entire appearance was a mess. He looked like someone who hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. Actually, he looked like he had tried to get some sleep while using the same mud-covered overalls for days on end.

  I’m sure it only lasted a few seconds, but his stare seemed to linger on me more than was necessary. Maybe it was the intensity of his entire posture. I could even distinguish a vein popping on his neck as if he was trying with all his might not to let the rage of the world run wild through him.

  Of course, he was also waiting for me to answer, so that might have had something to do with the heaviness of the situation.

  “And… who might you be?”

  “Are you or are you not Althea Gardner? I’m Tom.”

  He stretched out his hand, which I stupidly interpreted as if he was trying to shake mine. I released my handbag and mirrored him, only to find myself shaking hands with the empty air in front of me, because Tom bypassed my hand and grabbed the luggage I had let go.

  “Mrs. Beatrix Appleton sent me.”

  “What-What are you doing…?” I was able to mumble before he turned on his heels and walked away with my bag, which forced me to follow him whether I wanted to or not.

  I was only able to catch up with Tom when he stopped by his truck to dump my suitcase in it. I think I would have been able to match the car to its owner without any help. The truck was the vehicle version of its driver―rough around the edges and covered in mud blots. I was able to distinguish some gardening tools, shovels, and a toolbox at the back of his truck, where he tossed my bag. This was a man who worked with his hands, no question about it.

  “Hey, hold on a minute. Stop right there! Claiming Beatrix Appleton sent you is not enough, you lunatic! You haven’t even confirmed I am who you think I am.”

  “Mrs. Appleton sent me so you don’t have to rent a car, as a thank you for coming over to… the service.” Tom swallowed hard, suddenly seeming to realize he had a rock entangled in his vocal cords. “Everyone knows who you are. You’re ‘Ashwell’s Golden Girl’. I only asked to be polite.” He climbed inside the truck and slammed the door before I could articulate the answer that was already forming in my head.

  Well, I don’t want to know
you when you’re not being polite.

  He started the truck while I was still standing right next to it, uncertain of how to react to this absurd kidnapping. I really didn’t want to be left stranded there. I tossed my other suitcase in the back of the truck as fast as I could as he had stolen the smallest piece of my luggage, and then hurried to the front.

  “What do you mean by ‘Ashwell’s Golden Girl’?” I asked after twenty minutes of an excruciatingly silent road trip. He not only had cow eyes, he also had the verbal ability of one.

  “The award. Everyone says you’re the first woman to receive one.”

  “Right. Well, it’s a nomination; I haven’t actually won anything. The ceremony hasn’t been held yet. I’m positive I’m not the first one. However, it is true, being a woman and receiving a nomination for best film director is not exactly easy to achieve. Thank you.”

  “I wasn’t congratulating you,” Tom stated. “I was just telling you how I know who you are.”

  So, not only his appearance was rough. Shocker. After such a display of courtesy, the rest of the trip was wrapped in a sticky blanket of silence. It was a tense calm that embraced us with its heavy presence, because neither of us caved in and said a word about the real reason for my return to Ashwell.

  Thirty minutes later, we entered the town. I opened the window and took a deep breath. The damp air, heavy with the anticipation of a rain that never came down, was my most vivid memory after fifteen years of absence. And it was still there to greet me upon my less-than-graceful return. Fresh and humid air filled my lungs, trying to scare away with its looming presence all the sun and dried heat I had smuggled inside me from California.

  Tom no-last-name took a few turns, and suddenly I found myself on a street I knew all too well. Some blocks rolled past and the pressure in my chest grew to the point of becoming unbearable.

  “Stop. Please, stop,” I heard myself pleading with him before I could let my brain process my words.

  Tom pulled over, and I stared at the house where I had lived with my alcoholic mother during my teenage years. The house that I had run away from. Not a home, just a house. I gripped the old metal door handle of the truck with anxiety. Its coldness made me think twice before getting out of the vehicle.

  I had no plan. What was I supposed to do? Knock on her door after fifteen years and say what? Hello, Mother. How are you doing? Or should I ask how many bottles have you emptied before noon today? How is the cirrhosis coming along? Need a new kidney yet? That was cold. Even for me. I stopped myself before I fell down that familiar and obscure rabbit hole. I knew exactly where it ended up: spitting me out after chewing me to the bone.

  It was official. All the warmth inside me had died the moment I stepped back into my past.

  “I can wait here if you want to go in and say hello,” Tom offered, showing for the first time a true sign of courtesy.

  “I-I am not sure what I want to do… yet.”

  “She gave it up, you know? Four or five years ago, when you won that film festival stuff,” Tom persisted. “June kept walking around town telling everyone she had stopped drinking because she wanted to make her girl proud.”

  “The house doesn’t look too good. It’s falling apart.”

  “It could use a fresh coat of paint, for sure.” I felt Tom leaning towards me and studying the house over my shoulder. “But it’s not so bad, you know, considering…”

  “Considering what?” I could feel what was coming, and I knew I wasn’t going to like it. I had butted heads before with people who believed they could tell me how to deal with my mother.

  “Considering she works at a flower shop that mostly caters to funeral homes. She is a recovering alcoholic in her fifties. How many job opportunities do you think she has?”

  I felt the reproach in his voice, so I turned abruptly and faced him.

  “So I’m supposed to be responsible for her lack of financial stability because she’s an alcoholic? It’s not my fault she decided to drink her life away. It’s not my fault she chose to believe that the end of a bottle was far more interesting than developing a relationship with her only daughter.”

  Tom recoiled immediately. He went back to staring at the damp street ahead of us.

  “I’m not saying that.” He lifted his hands, giving up on a fight he must have known he couldn’t win. “Your relationship with your mother is none of my business. I just wanted to give you peace of mind… in case you needed it.” He ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to find the words that would guarantee him a softer backlash that the one he had just experienced. “All I wanted you to know is that I’ve been inside the house a couple of times to fix some things―you know, electrical stuff, nothing major―and it looks okay.”

  I lowered my eyes and stared at my right hand, still clamped to the door’s handle. It was hot and wet with my own perspiration.

  “Was it clean? I mean, was it… Did you see any…” I cleared my throat. “Was it clean?” I tried to form an intelligible question without saying the real one beating inside my chest.

  “I didn’t see any bottles lying around. It seemed she was keeping her act together,” he answered, appearing to understand my doubts more than I could manage to phrase them. “The garden looks nice,” he pointed out, turning his head again to take a look at it and diverting my attention at the same time. “I’m sure Alicia taught her a thing or two.”

  “Alicia?”

  “Her boss. Alicia is the owner of Winter’s Blooms.”

  I studied the garden with more attention. Tom was right. The lawn had been mowed and there were some nice-looking plants and pots. Nothing in bloom, of course, as it was January and winter would not allow it, but it was okay. It was excellent, compared to my recollections of the place. As I was appreciating the garden I never had, the front door opened, and I recognized her silhouette through the screen door. She stopped there and watched me.

  I could not encourage any sort of movement in my body even if I wanted it. We were separated by a door, a street, a sidewalk, another door, and fifteen years of silence woven with the strands created by a story of alcoholism and neglect.

  “I’m not ready yet.”

  My body still faced the door when Tom turned the ignition key and drove us away from the silhouette of my mother haunting me through that screen door.

  Chapter 2

  The truck stopped in front of the steps leading up to Appleton Manor. I hadn’t seen the house in over a decade, but at least this part looked just as I remembered it. Back when we were in high school, Claire told me her mother inherited the property nestled at the top of the hill. The estate had belonged to the Appleton family for three centuries.

  “It is our duty to care for it. That’s what my mother says, anyway. I don’t care much for it, but I understand that the history of her ancestors covers these walls and I respect that.”

  Claire’s words came flooding back to me. I had not yet recovered from the shock of seeing my mother for the first time in years, so the memory of Claire and the respect she always professed for her family felt like a kick in the stomach. I could say it came out of nowhere, but that was not true. I had always admired the pride she expressed for the blood running through her veins. Many times, over those years, I had wished I could be an Appleton.

  “You want to get out here? Or do you want to enter through the back?” Tom fished me out of my somewhat diluted memories.

  “Through the back? Why would I enter through the back?”

  “That’s where I park my truck. I was just saying, you know, in case you don’t want to climb up the hill with your luggage.”

  Clearly, he didn’t believe the courtesy Beatrix Appleton instructed him to extend to me included helping me up to the manor with my luggage.

  “You park in Mrs. Appleton’s driveway?”

  “Yeah, I work here. I do the gardening. The craziest job I’ve ever had, but it pays. So, in or out?”

  “Out?” Hesitation was evident in my vo
ice, but I couldn’t afford to linger in doubt.

  Two minutes later, I found myself ready to scale the first step of an incredibly steep climb that had no less than a hundred of them. With two suitcases and my purse to drag along with me, I knew I was in for a cardio session. But I needed to be alone. I needed the headspace to process what I had already experienced. Most importantly, the climb felt like a tridimensional metaphor of the situation upon which I was about to embark. It felt impossible, yet I was doing it anyway.

  I was about to be part of a funeral for someone who left us way too soon. I needed to get on with it. Stalling would not change the fact that Claire was gone. It was time to face the idea that she didn’t want to be a part of this world anymore. And I wished I knew why.

  I strapped on my handbag, grabbed my suitcases and climbed the first steps. I was grateful for the perennially clouded skies of Ashwell trying to touch the ground in the form of a thin mist. Climbing Appleton Hill would have been excruciating in any other type of weather.

  But my gratitude would not be eternal. Halfway up the hill, I had to take a break. I was an exhausted mess.

  “There are not enough barre workouts in this world to prepare me for this kind of exercise.”