by Roger Hayden
Anabelle held her reddened face, glaring at the gunmen with contempt. She bravely approached George and placed a hand his should as lay on his stomach twisting and grunting.
"He'll be okay," the gunman continued. He then looked to the rest of the crowd to address them. "Is everyone here?" He glanced at Anabelle as she stroked George's head, pearls dangling at her neck. "Is this all of your guests? Is there anyone in the can?"
Anabelle looked away without response. She then flinched as the gunman stepped closer. "Come on, Mrs. Bechdel. My men don't have the time to search every room." He took a knee, inches from her face. "Be honest with me, and no one gets hurt. Fair enough?"
Tears trickled down her cheeks as she nodded and looked around the room. "Everyone is here."
Pleased, the gunman stood up. "Where’s the Drake family?"
After a brief hesitation the two parents rose their hands from within the huddle group. "Great,” the gunman said. “Come out here and join your friends."
Fearing for her family and herself, Julie knew that she needed to run and call the police before it was too late. The nearest phone was in her parent’s room down the hall. A door they always kept locked. She turned from the staircase and could see that the door was closed.
The lead gunman continued with demands for wallets and purses. "Everything you have, just put it in the bag," he said as one of his men held out a burlap sack, approaching the crowd.
Kate's father, Victor, tossed his thick bill fold into his bag with creeping fury in his eyes. "Just take it and get the hell out of here. Damn, punks."
"In time, Mr. Drake," the gunman said. He then shifted toward George and kicked him lightly in the side. "Get up, Georgy Boy."
George grunted in pain as Anabelle glared at the masked man. "You don't have to kick him, you monster!"
The gunman stared down indifferent. "You too. Both of you on your feet."
Anabelle helped George up, holding him as he looked to their remorseless assailant and spoke. "We're willing to cooperate with you. Please stop pointing your guns at us. You're scaring people with this nonsense."
The gunman nodded, seeming to consider it. He then rose a gloved finger with further instructions. "Everyone get closer. Huddle together tight." As he spoke, two other gunman took sides at both sides of the group. "My man are going on a little pillage mission, and we can't have any of you running off. Got it?"
The terrified guests looked at each other in confusion. They were hesitant, and no one seemed to understand the seriousness of their situation as the gunmen boxed them in like cattle.
"Come on, people," the gunman continued. "Don't make me have to ask again."
The guests reluctantly inched closer to each other, forming a tight huddle. "Great!" the gunman continued. "Now we can wrap this up."
Julie carefully ascended the stairs, but no matter how light her movements, the steps creaked. She ducked down immediately as the gunman went silent. She could feel him listening as her heart beat wildly.
"Go upstairs and check it out," she heard the gunman say to one of his men. "The rest of you, prepare to fire."
An ocean of screams followed. Julie jumped up and looked over the side to see the masked men aim their rifles into the huddle as another one moved toward the stairs, closing in on her. She turned and ran the moment she heard her father's voice scream out, begging the men not to shoot.
Gunfire erupted in a cacophony of deafening blasts. Julie stormed to her bedroom not looking back. She closed the door, locking it. Her hands were shaking and she could barely breathe. The shooting continued amidst the screams, initially rapid, but then more spaced out to one final shot. Julie couldn't fathom any of it.
She heard footsteps outside the door, nearing her room slow and methodical. She turned off her bedside lamp and looked to her window. It was her only chance to escape. She ran over and unlocked it, without concern of anything she was leaving behind. Though her diary had crossed her mind. It was sitting on a nightstand in view, but there was no time. Her doorknob moved. She pulled the window open, feeling the night breeze hit her face. She looked down over the ledge to the thick grass below.
She could climb down the terrace on the side, but doubted she had the time. The doorknob jiggled, followed by a bang at her door. Her best bet was to run. She climbed out the window, legs, dangling in the air, and said a quick prayer.
She leapt out just has her door kicked open and hit the moist grass like a lead weight. A pain shivered up her leg as she looked around in panic. Her adrenaline was on overdrive, but she couldn't shake off the confusion and disorientation.
She turned to run and collided with the waist of a man, smacking her face into his thick belt buckle. She flew back, feeling dazed. She covered her face in pain, blocking the man from sight. She couldn't tell whether he was friend or foe. However, she learned quickly as soon as he spoke.
"Where you off to, little darlin'?"
It was the same man as before. The one whose voice had sent shivers down her spine. She looked up and could him towering over her, no longer wearing a mask but face nearly concealed by darkness. She shuttered as he held his rifle up and pressed against her forehead.
"I have to give it to you, you almost got away."
Her legs locked as she shook in fear, tears streaming from her eyes. She felt cold. Sheer terror tore her stomach into knots. "No..." she said with a trembling voice.
The man paused with the barrel still pressed against her head. She could see his long jaw and thick stubble on his cheeks. Shaggy hair hung to the side over his forehead. His eyes appeared as two black holes as though there was nothing underneath.
"Don't worry. It'll be quick. You won't feel a thing."
"Why?" she cried out.
After a heavy sigh, the man spoke. "Nothing personal, sweetheart. Just business. Now close your eyes and go to sleep."
She clenched her watering eyes as a white burst of light pummeled her being followed by silent darkness that consumed everything around her.
Chapter Four
Welcome to Redwood
For the longest time, the Bechdel Mansion had remained an old, dusty, and vacant shadow of itself. There was always some morbid fascination with the place in the decades that followed. The town of Redwood had grown wary of the association and tried to distance itself from the mansion and the family’s supposed curse. The Redwood city council tried several times to have the house demolished and leveled, but were met with resistance every time.
George Bechdel’s will rescinded all his financial assets and properties to his bank to be invested accordingly. The estate, he contended, must always remain. He explicitly forbid the destruction of the mansion and/or liquidation of the property. This, Bechdel’s lawyers explained, was non-binding. What was the bank going to do with a one hundred year mansion with such a history? Apparently they had several offers.
Boris Sokolov, a wealthy Ukrainian business man, moved his large family into the mansion one summer day in June 1992. He had high hopes of remodeling the mansion and suiting it to his families’ elegant needs. Two weeks after moving in, the Sokolov’s were out with little explanation to their hasty departure. All of their furniture hadn’t even been moved in yet.
In 1996, Christopher Taylor, a famous Hollywood director leased the mansion to shoot his latest horror movie. It only took a week for the trouble production to immediately shutdown and Taylor was on his way back to California with his demoralized cast and crew. Nobody ever said the reason why as though they had been sworn to secrecy. Taylor never made a movie again.
Five years later, the Bechdel estate found another purchaser—a wealthy Manhattan land developer who had big plans for the mansion. Eugene Garland moved his wife and four children into the mansion. His family was largely oblivious to the lore surrounding the mansion. Garland, himself, didn’t believe in that kind of stuff. He died in his sleep from a heart attack three weeks after moving in.
Then for a while, there were no buyers. No ten
ants. No renters. No one wanted to go near the house, and to prevent future financial liability, the bank constructed a six foot high perimeter fence around the premises, complete with pointed metal spikes at the top. It is there to this day, that the house remains.
***
October 9, 2016
Mary woke up upon bumping her head against the passenger window. It was daylight out and her fair-skinned face felt hot from the flashing rays of sunlight beaming through the oak tree branches along the leaf strewn road. Her husband, Curtis, was at the wheel of their Ford Expedition SUV as a twenty-six foot moving truck followed behind them. Soft rock played from the stereo as Mary tilted her head up and squinted against the blinding sun. Her neck ached and she didn’t know how long she had been out for. She reached for her glasses on the dashboard as Curtis glanced over from behind his own shades.
“Hey. You’re awake,” he asked.
Mary felt her neck and shook her head. “How long was I out for?”
“’Bout three hours,” he answered.
Her eyes widened. “Really? You’ve been driving the entire time?”
“I’m good for it. We crossed the state border about an hour ago.”
Mary looked around. A forest of trees, nearly bare of all their leaves, aligned both sides of rural two-lane State Road they were on.
“We’re in Indiana?” she asked.
“Sure are,” Curtis said as they continued down the road, blowing leaves to the side.
A fresh, familiar vision entered Mary’s head. She could see a large boarded up door with two vine-covered pillars on both sides. Beyond the entrance sat an empty fountain in the center of a cracked courtyard, weeds sprouted all around it. “I saw it,” she said. “In my dream, I saw our new house.”
Curtis pulled at the collar of of white polo shirt. His black hair was slicked back and face was clean-shaven with the lingering musk of after shave still there. They had been married for two and a half years. They had a happy marriage and good jobs and lives back in Chicago. Recently, however, all of that had changed, and they were looking to start over.
They had fled the city for a reason: to reach a new beginning under new and better circumstances. The town of Redwood afforded them that opportunity as Curtis had explained to her. He was the primary force in their sudden relocation, and Mary had felt like a simple bystander as of late.
She continued describing her dream and its unsettling visions.
Curtis was less than convinced that the dream meant anything significant. “You’ve the place before. So what’s the big deal?”
“Only in pictures, Curtis. I wasn’t looking at pictures in my dream. I was there and I could see everything. It was dilapidated. Lifeless, like a dead oak.”
“They’ve been renovating all week,” Curtis says. “It’s going to look a lot better now.”
“But people were murdered in that mansion,” Mary said with her hands out. “You should have told me that from the get go. Now, it’s like there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Curtis waved her off. “Mary, please. Those murders took place a long time ago in the seventies. We’ve been through this before. The mortgage alone is to die for.”
Mary turned to him, unamused. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
Curtis gripped the wheel with both hands. “I mean, they offered us a killer deal. What was I supposed to say?”
“Enough,” Mary said. She brushed back one side of her long blonde and turned away, looking out the window.
Curtis took her hand in his with an apologetic tone. “Listen. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make jokes…” he leaned closer. “It’s a ten acre mansion, Mary, for nearly the same price we were paying for a two bedroom apartment in Chicago. This is a miracle.”
“Gee, I wonder why it’s priced so low,” Mary said, turning away. “Maybe because a bunch of people were murdered there!”
Curtis ignored her sarcasm and squeezed her hand. “I don’t care. I feel good about this. After all we’ve been through we deserve it. A small town with a clean slate. It’s perfect.”
Mary turned to him half convinced. Before their marriage she had never went into great detail about her visions. Half the time she didn’t understand them herself. Her visions of the past and future came in spurts from as far back as childhood. Then again, she was an artist working as a freelance illustrator for children’s books. Having “visions” was part of the job.
Curtis began to speak of their future with sheer optimism. “I’m looking into setting up my own practice out here. You’ll have all the room you need to work on your drawings. We’ll have everything we need. He stroked the surface of her jeans above her knee. “We’re going to be okay.”
She looked up at him with a faint smile, struggling to find the right words. “I know. We’ve been through this all before. It’s a great deal. It’s just… something feels off now. I should have went out here with you first.”
“You were in the hospital then,” Curtis said, looking into her blue-green eyes. There was nothing we can do about that. I’m sorry. I had to make the decision, and I still think it’s the right one.”
Mary simply nodded in response, holding her emotions in. It was hard to believe how quickly things had fallen apart over the past year, but she did love him and felt committed to their future together.
Curtis slowed to a halt at an empty intersection. The moving truck following them stopped, headlights filling the rear-view mirror. Curtis looked both ways at the stop sign and continued on as the moving truck shifted and followed.
Mary looked ahead and saw a traffic sign ahead: Redwood 5 Miles. They were close. Curtis held her hand with his other hand steering. She wondered if there was still time to turn back, to return to their former lives before it was too late.
The moving truck behind was packed with everything they owned packed and loaded in haste. One day, they were in their apartment eating dinner, the next day movers were loading up their things. Would they ever return to the city or would Redwood be their home for the rest of their lives?
The passed over bumpy railroad tracks, when a long semi-truck, the first vehicle they had seen in miles, roared past them from the opposite direction. As they neared Redwood, Mary still had questions, she should have asked from the get-go but didn’t.
“How did you find out about this place?” she asked him as they passed a small gas station and country store. There were a few people in the parking lot and one car at one of the two pumps available.
“I told you this, remember?” Curtis said. She didn’t so her continued. “Tony Searle. My buddy in real estate. He put me in touch with a realtor in Redwood, Bob Deckers. Bob told me all about it. Mansion has been sitting dormant for over a decade.” Curtis laughed to himself then continued. “Lots of superstitious people out there I imagine.”
“Can you blame them?”
Curtis turned to her, seemingly exhausted of the subject. “We got lucky, Mary,” he said. “And we should be grateful for that.”
Rolling prairie fields and lush forest encompassed the surrounding area. The rural isolation was disquieting but comforting at the same time. They had truly escaped. Up ahead on their right, there was a large wooden sign half the size of a billboard. It overlooked a deep, watery canal. Etched on the sign were giant letters, clear as day: Welcome to Redwood Est. 1826. A small wooden sign hung below the big one on small links of chain: Population: 1,600. Mary wondered how accurate the numbers were. Perhaps she could adjust to life in the country after all. She would have to see the mansion first. Not in some kind of dream or vision, but right in front of her. She would make up her mind from there.
***
Curtis turned onto Main Street, an old-style brick road along the so-called “historic” district. He slowed as Mary took in all the quaint shops and buildings around them. There was an old theater a box office and marquee that read, “Autumn Celebration VC Fairgrounds OCT 15 & 16.”
Next to the theater was a green building, t
hree stories high with two American flags flapping from its midsection. A red canopy hung over the first floor of a furniture store that was open for business. As they continued, Julie took notice of a grand mural sprawled across the side of the building detailing a herd of frontiersmen journeying up a hill of bare pine trees.
There were other historical markers along the way, including some statues among trim bushes and benches. They passed a deli and crafts store—all resembling mom and pop shops. They weren’t in Chicago anymore.
The police station was a small brick building with a sloping teal roof-top. To the left was the town square where a large fountain sprayed water, mushrooming out on all sides. Across from the fountain was a domed stage with several rows of empty benches. Past the dome, Julie could see a park with fading grass and fall leaves strewn across the ground. People walked about wearing sun hats and shades, pushing baby strollers or walking their dogs. There was serene quality to the town unlike anything Mary had felt in some time.
Heads glanced in their direction, young and old. Their mini-convoy did not go unnoticed. It was a Saturday afternoon, and there were plenty of people visiting shops, having lunch, or just out for a stroll. There was an old village vibe to the town, slightly modernized, but still steeped in the history of old buildings and roads. The brightness of the town resembled nothing in Mary’s own visions, and for the time being, she felt at peace.
“Nice little town,” Curtis said.
Mary nodded along observing shops on her side among bike racks and newspaper stands. Aside from its humble and welcoming aura, the town so far looked like something out of an amusement park. Though Mary kept such thoughts to herself. The intersections ahead had old fashioned traffic lights on each side of the street, attached to poles. Their light was green, but a child on a bike rode across right in front of them, not even looking.
“Look out!” Mary shouted.
Curtis slammed the brakes as the car screeched to a halt. Mary flew forward and was thrust back as her seatbelt locked. Her hair whipped up. Bags catapulted from the back seat. Mary’s purse hit the dashboard. The moving truck behind them slammed their brakes as Mary glanced into the rear-view mirror, terrified at the prospect of a collision.
