Carlton House

by B. Groves

  Carlton

  House

  B. Groves

  Carlton House

  Copyright © 2018 by B. Groves

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organiza- tions, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact :

  www.bgrovesauthor.com

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  ISBN: 1722018429

  ISBN-13: 978-1722018429

  First Edition: June 2018

  Book cover design by Broken Candle Book Designs

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  Contents

  Foreword

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 The Letter

  Chapter 2 Where Am I?

  Chapter 3 The interview

  Chapter 4 I’ll Take It

  Chapter 5 The Cottage

  Chapter 6 There’s something Out There

  Chapter 7 Exploring

  Chapter 8 Behind Closed Doors

  Chapter 9 Half-truths

  Chapter 10 late Night Stroll

  Chapter 11 Pictures

  Chapter 12 Bones

  Chapter 13 Michael’s Story

  Chapter 14 Four Months Later

  Chapter 15 Stalking

  Chapter 16 The Historian

  Chapter 17 Torn

  Chapter 18 Apologizing

  Chapter 19 Hannah

  Chapter 20 Broken

  Chapter 21 Fire

  Chapter 22 Six Months Later

  Chapter 23 Light Through The Darkness

  About The Author

  Other Works

  Shadow Town Excerpt

  Foreword

  Dear Reader,

  This is an update to a previous forward that I had written when I was ready to publish this book.

  The initial inspiration came when I was visiting my father last year when he had heart surgery. Although he pulled through fine, I knew deep down in my soul that his time on this Earth would be limited. Unfortunately, I was right.

  On August 8, 2018, my father decided that it was time to reunite with my mother. There is now a profound emptiness in my heart with the loss of my beloved father. My dad was a selfless man who loved his family unconditionally and a Korean War Vet who served his country without complaint. This book is dedicated to his memory that will live on in my family’s heart until we are ready to join both my parents on the other side of the veil.

  This book was inspired by that visit in 2017 with my dad. I will cherish that visit and hold onto writing it forever.

  Barbara Groves

  “A house with old furniture has no need of ghosts to be haunted” -Hope Mirrlees

  Dedication

  My inspiration and my hero… my father

  Chapter 1

  The Letter

  Lily buried herself deeper into her worn jacket as the wind howled through the hallway while she climbed the steps to her apartment.

  She dreaded coming home knowing what she’d find. Either Jordan was playing games alone, or he’d have some of his idiot friends there to play games with him. They’d be drunk, high, or both.

  Her shoe scuffed over the concrete and she looked down making a face. The heel was separating from the rest of the shoe, and she couldn’t afford to purchase a new pair. These had cost hundreds of dollars and they only lasted a year.

  She placed a hand on the creaky metal railing, pushing the heel back into place until she had a chance to buy super glue to fix the shoe.

  She struggled with finding work since the casino she worked for closed their doors a year ago. The only thing she found was a shitty part-time job at a motel in Brigantine. Mary kept promising her that as soon as Memorial Day came around, she would promote Lily to full-time. That’s what Lily hated about the bottom three counties—Atlantic, Cape May, and Cumberland counties— in this state. No one cared about the people who struggled here during the winter and didn’t realize that even though this was a seasonal resort, people still had to eat and pay the bills in the offseason.

  Lily hated living this way. She applied to every open casino in Atlantic City, but they were fully staffed from all the layoffs that happened after other casinos closed down and the open ones hired some laid-off workers.

  Atlantic City, New Jersey, was a dying town and Lily had few options outside the area.

  She lived with an ex-boyfriend she despised. Her father had disappeared again, and her mother was serving five years for assault. She never knew what happened to her baby brothers. She’d kept in touch with Angela—her foster mother—but Angela had ongoing health issues. Lily had nowhere to go and no one to turn to for help.

  Lily walked up to the door with the rusty combination of letters and numbers. 102A. She stopped in front of the door to listen to the sounds inside the apartment. She heard the faint rat-tat-tat of rapid gunfire and popping noises, but after listening for several moments, no other voices spoke up through the door.

  Relieved that Jordan didn’t have company today, she unlocked the door and walked inside.

  The stale smells of pot and beer greeted her. She hated those smells. They triggered her childhood memories and she told Jordan to stop smoking pot in the apartment because of what it did to her. He never listened, and it inevitably turned into an argument.

  Jordan sat in his usual spot on the floor between the scratched coffee table and threadbare sofa playing his games. His fingers pounding the buttons, talking to his online buddies through his headphones or making sexual suggestions to some female gamer living on the other side of the world.

  Lily often wondered what she ever saw in him. He swept her off her feet when they first met in the casino. He worked as a valet and she worked in housekeeping. They met in the employee cafeteria, started talking, and one thing led to another. They had so much in common, at first. They both came from broken homes and attended college through the generous employee program that paid for their classes.

  She thought she found her soulmate when she and Jordan started dating, but after two years and moving in together, she fell out of love with him. The realization hit her right when the casino they worked at shut down and Jordan buried himself in his games.

  Lily was stuck without a job and a man she didn’t love. Jordan obtained another job, but the money wasn’t enough for him to move out and Lily had no other options. They decided to live together until something broke. That was over a year ago, and she resented her terrible luck more with each passing day.

  She had to put college on hold to pay the bills and that barely covered food and gas.

  “Hey, babe,” Jordan said not looking up from his game.

  “I’m not your babe,” Lily answered. It was the same thing every day with them. Jordan wanted to get back together but Lily said no way.

  Jordan didn’t look up from his game, and the popping sounds started again. “How was your day? Did your boss take you on full-time yet?”

  Lily placed her handbag on the countertop in the kitchen. A big white envelope sitting on the other side of the counter caught her eye, but she ignored it to talk to Jordan.

  “I told you Mary said not until Memorial Day weekend,” Lily answered, shooting Jordan an exasperated look.

  Jordan knew this. She had been trying to find other work, but none of the other job prospects ever went past some phone calls or an initial interview.

&nbs
p; Jordan let out a deep breath. He ran his hand through his hair and said, “Well, babe, if you don’t find anything else, I’m going to invite Stephen to crash on our couch.”

  Lily grabbed a water bottle from the refrigerator. She winced at how little food they had inside the of it. She didn’t look forward to another boxed macaroni and cheese night.

  She turned and set the bottle on the counter when Jordan mentioned Stephen coming to live with them. She hated Stephen. He was a pervert, a jerk, and a drunk.

  “Stephen? Are you kidding me?”

  Jordan shrugged. “We need the money, babe. I doubt we can pay our electric bill this month. Don’t worry, Stephen won’t harass you.”

  “His girlfriend kicked him out, didn’t she?” Lily asked.

  Jordan nodded while he pushed some buttons to continue playing his game. “Yeah, and he doesn’t want to move back in with his parents.”

  “Can’t you find anyone else?”

  Jordan glanced over at her. “There is no one else. Do you want electric or not?”

  Lily’s shoulders slumped. She picked up her water bottle, wishing it was a harder drink to numb the news of Stephen moving in. She didn’t trust that disgusting perv and now she would have to spend money she didn’t have to install another lock on her bedroom door.

  Lily needed another plan. She had to find her way out of this situation. Angela was having a hard time with her health, but she thought about calling her and asking if she could move in until she got back on her feet. Angela had offered before, and Lily would cook, clean, or do anything Angela needed.

  Without another word, Lily headed to her room. She needed time alone to figure this out alone. She was about to walk through the doorway when Jordan spoke up. “Babe, there’s an envelope in the kitchen for you.”

  Lily turned and scoffed. “I’m not your babe, remember?”

  Jordan mumbled “whatever” as she turned around and re-entered the kitchen.

  Lily ignored the sounds of gunfire and yelling from the game as she picked up the envelope.

  She frowned while gazing at the elegant handwriting.

  Someone named Michael Carlton was on the return address. The address looked awfully strange. She knew Route 347 but didn’t realize anyone lived in the area. Route 347 wasn’t much more than thick forests sitting right on the edge of New Jersey’s famous Pinelands, a recreational park and a small farm.

  In fact, if you believed in ghost stories or folk stories that area had a ton of them from the famous Jersey Devil to the ghostly woman who wears a wedding dress along the road.

  Lily never believed any of those legends, but she found it odd about the address.

  She didn’t recall any neighborhoods popping up in that area recently, but she could be wrong since the southern New Jersey area had grown exponentially and that meant jobs were hard to find instead of plentiful. That may have sounded counterintuitive to an outsider, but one had to live in the area long enough to understand.

  “Do you know a Michael Carlton?” She asked Jordan.

  “Never heard of the guy. Do you?” Jordan asked.

  “When did this come in?”

  “It was in the mailbox when I got home,” he answered. “Is it a job offer?” He looked up from his game and stared at Lily expectantly.

  Lily didn’t know. She stared at the address for a long time not sure what to think of the pristine white envelope and the elegant handwriting.

  “There’s nothing out there and I didn’t apply to anything in the area,” Lily said.

  “Maybe it’s an ad or something,” Jordan said and cursed when his character lost another life on his game.

  Lily looked at her full name on the address. Who was this guy, and how did he know her?

  She decided to open the envelope alone. She walked over to her room again and shut the door without another word to Jordan.

  She tossed the envelope onto the bed and changed out of her clothes and into her sweats. She shook her head. Her favorite T-shirt was ripping at the arm, and she couldn’t afford a new one right now. Her sweatpants were fraying at the bottoms.

  She did not want to live with Stephen she thought as she brushed her sandy brown hair out of its bun. He would do nothing but hit on her whenever she was home. He attempted it before and even in front of his girlfriend.

  Lily plopped down on the side of her bed and put her head in her hands. But what could they do? They needed to pay the bills, and it looked like Stephen would be the one to bail them out for now.

  She was always upset at Jordan for caring more about his stupid video games than putting food on the table and making sure they had enough money for the bills.

  Lily reached over and grabbed her older laptop—a gift from Angela—and scanned her emails hoping that she would have gotten a response from someone about a better job.

  Nothing.

  She placed the laptop back on her nightstand and sat there staring at her bare wall trying to come up with a plan to escape this situation.

  Lily laid back and stared at the stained popcorn ceiling as she listened to Jordan curse at someone through the game. He was drinking excessively again and would be drunk by the time he started a new game.

  Lily decided to go to bed although it was still early.

  Her stomach growled, but she ignored it. The thought of eating macaroni and cheese again made her nauseous.

  Lily stood to pull back the covers when she remembered the white envelope sitting on her bed.

  She picked it up, dreading what she would read once she opened it. Was it another bill collector? She had plenty of those.

  Open it. How much worse can it get?

  She tore open the top, and she reached her hand inside and felt a thin piece of paper.

  She pulled out the letter and read it twice to make sure she wasn’t imagining what she was seeing on the paper.

  Her eyes widened and her breathing became shallow as she finished the letter. She turned over the paper, but it was one page. Short, but concise. It mentioned another item in the envelope.

  Lily reached inside and pulled out a copy of a check. She gasped when she saw the amount written on the check.

  No, she thought. It’s a joke. A prank. Jordan had one of his friends send it to her.

  She grabbed the letter and re-read it for the third time.

  No, this can’t be. This has to be a joke.

  The letterhead was embellished with gold letters with this Michael Carlton’s name at the top.

  Dear Ms. Lily Evans,

  I’m writing you today to offer you the position of housekeeper within my home. The address is on the envelope and my letterhead. This position starts immediately. You came highly recommended from a placement agency.

  To show you I am in serious need of a housekeeper, I’ve included a copy of a canceled check within this letter to give you an idea of what I will pay if accept this offer.

  I will give you one week to appear at my home for a formal interview. If you do not respond within a week after receiving this correspondence, I will seek help elsewhere.

  Please arrive formally dressed, between 8 AM and 5 PM any day.

  I look forward to your response.

  Sincerely,

  Michael Carlton

  Owner of Carlton House

  Lily glanced at her bedroom door, expecting Jordan to barge in and laugh at her from the joke, but that didn’t happen and all she heard was his slurred cursing when he lost on his video game.

  Lily grabbed her laptop and entered the address into the maps page. She zoomed in and was surprised to see the house was actually there, and the property was massive. She’d been right, it was in the middle of nowhere, but a small neighborhood wasn’t too far away.

  She contemplated what she should do. She had to work in the morning and could easily make it home and change to drive there by mid-afternoon. The drive wasn’t as far as she first thought.

  It was a strange letter, and kind of gave her the creeps, but s
he needed a new job and if she could prevent Stephen from moving in, then she had to jump on it.

  She picked up the copy of the check. So many possibilities coursed through her mind because of the amount of the check.

  She would take the chance. She would be cautious and on alert but she needed this interview.

  Her mood lightened from the decision and she felt her stomach growl. She stood and decided to heat up the macaroni and cheese since she was starving.

  Before she left the room, she decided she wouldn’t tell Jordan. This might be her chance at a new life, and she didn’t want to jinx it.