Now Entering Silver Hollow

by Anne L. Hogue-Boucher

  Chet remembered the way she was dressed before she went to the séance, and this woman was wearing the outfit she wore that night. His jaw dropped. That burgundy dress, pure silk. Nylons. Kitten heels. The constable admired her with his five-year-old eyes once more, the way he once admired Yuletide presents under the tree.

  But it couldn't be his mother. His mother was dead, right?

  Now he stood there, expression twisted in bewilderment. No one ever recovered a body. He had checked into his father's story a while after his father had passed. The death records read presumed dead, and there had been no corpse at the memorial service. No funeral procession, no interment. Chet never gave it much thought, unwilling to question the circumstances surrounding his mother's death. It had been too painful, too strange, for him.

  He got himself together with a deep breath and kept his hand on his gun, taking a step toward the weeping woman who was now looking straight at him. There was a flash of recognition in her eyes.

  “Ma'am?” Chet said.

  “Chester? Is that you?” Her voice was familiar.

  Chet stepped back, unable to believe what he was seeing. He listened to his instincts, and his instincts told him to beware. Now they were screaming for him to get out.

  He drew his gun.

  “Chet? It's Mommy,” she said, extending her arms, “please, you have to help us. We're trapped here.”

  With a firm grip on his gun he kept it lowered, finger outside the trigger guard. He continued to stare at her, lips pulled into a tight line. His heart hammered in his ears.

  “What do you mean, and who are you?” the constable asked.

  The woman, or thing pretending to be his mother cringed, scarlet mouth round.

  “Chet, it's me, your mother.” Though she sounded the same, this was not the woman who read to him every night.

  “Not possible. My mother would be dead by now. She would be geriatric, so unless you're 110 years old, and the best looking 110-year-old I've ever seen, you're not her.” Callfield set his jaw.

  “Chet, please. I don't know why I look young and why you look so old. I know you're my Chet, though. Gretchen is here, too. We need your help. There are so many of us here, Chet. We need you!”

  “Enough!” Callfield said, raising his gun. Sweat broke out on his forehead in fat drops. “You stay where you are.”

  A loud set of footsteps behind him caused Chet to reel with his gun, coming face-to-face with George Postman.

  “What's the matter, sir?” Postman asked, raising his hands in synch with his eyebrows.

  He turned back around to make sure the woman wasn't moving against him or trying to get away.

  There was no one there.

  The surreal washed over him—walls seeming to bend and bow, the floor coming in closer and then further away—and for a moment, he reeled forward, legs buckling underneath him before he could right himself again.

  “Nothing. I—I thought I heard something,” he said to Postman. His voice sounded small to his own ears, and he cleared his throat.

  George nodded, face drawn and pale. Callfield holstered his piece and huffed a long sigh.

  “Something's not right with this place, is it, Constable?” George asked.

  Chet turned on his heel and pushed past Postman.

  “You're got-damned right, Deputy,” Callfield said under his breath. “God damn this place.”

  George took a quick glance around the room. Seeing nothing, he turned and followed the constable.

  Chet kept walking. His head hurt, his stomach turned, and everything had a twin. His vision blurred, but he kept walking. Down the stairs, and out the front door. He felt something push him. Push him out the door.

  (Mother?)

  He went behind the bushes and vomited.

  “Constable, you all right?” It was Postman, on his heels again, face pinched with worry.

  The fresh air helped Chet return to normal. He turned to Postman. “I'm fine. Must've been the smell of the house.”

  “Yes, sir.” George said with a huff.

  “Get that worried look off your face. What's going on with Hausmann?” Chet asked, using a handkerchief to wipe his mouth.

  “They said he's in shock and his spine might be broken,” Postman said, keeping his face neutral. “They’ve rushed him off to the hospital. No one can get in touch with his kin. I tried Linda's cell phone. It's off or she can't hear it. Left a voice mail to call the hospital.”

  “What about parents?” Chet asked.

  “They're dead, Constable.” Postman said with a shake of his head.

  “I hate to think of him wakin' up to that Linda—if he wakes up, that is.”

  “Same here, sir.”

  Chet put his handkerchief back in his pocket and headed toward the prowler. “Well, let's get there. If Phil survives—and I hope he does, we can ask him questions when he wakes up.”

  The crime scene crew arrived and Callfield told the detective what little info they had. The crew combed over the yard, starting at Phil’s van. Chet knew damn well they didn't know what they were doing. What in Perdition was there to look for in this little pissant town? Some drifter that was long gone into the woods by now.

  They got into the car and headed for the hospital. The only noise was the roar of the engine as they sped down the highway.

  George broke the silence. “That house. It doesn't seem to be anything but trouble.”

  Chet nodded.

  “When we were kids, there were all sorts of haunted stories about it. We used to dare each other to get in close,” the deputy said.

  Chet nodded again.

  “There's real creepy stuff there,” George said, trying again. “I don't know why the Silver Hollow history people don't just have it demolished.”

  “Yep.”

  George seemed pleased with himself for getting a word out of the constable.

  “I heard people go to the house and never come out again.” George said.

  “Uh-huh.” Chet’s lips drew into a thin line.

  “And I heard that the house is cursed, you know. Some people say that's just hocus-pocus but I think there might be something to it; something's weird in that house. I think—”

  “George?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Shut your fuckin' mouth.” Chet’s tone cut through the air between them.

  “Yes, sir.” An audible swallow clicked in George’s throat.

  The corners of the deputy’s mouth turned into a frown, and he looked at his trousers, picking the lint off them. He looked up and out the window, nodding to himself.

  Chet glanced over at him, a look of semi-satisfaction crossing his face as he looked back at the road once more. The deputy continued chewing on his lip, looking out the window and begging to be anywhere but in the prowler at that moment.

  The rest of the ride to the hospital was quiet.

  THE DIARY

  Silver Hollow Historical Society Archives

  Archive Number: 000312

  Date: circa 1942-1944

  Historian’s note: Found in the Sellers-Watson-Kellogg / Maxwell-Hunter House, formerly The Walker J. Dubbs House, during a cleaning of the property in preparation for asbestos removal crews. Dates not included or illegible due to water damage. Records show Maxwell-Hunter and Sellers-Watson-Kellogg owned the building from 1935-1945. -Francis Langelier, PhD

  Diary,

  It is with great dismay I write such words this evening. These forays of mine into the realm of the unseen have, as dear Mary had predicted, have come back to chew me apart like a feral dog.

  Since the incident, I haven’t written, because I’ve been under a sedative for the past three nights. Ever since the Halloween séance has resulted in a disappearance.

  It is this god-forsaken house.

  Here I, in my infinite hubris, believed that the fortunes would be in my favor. How wrong I was. But, as usual, I pushed. I always get my way. This time, I wish I hadn't. Now I wish I'd listened t
o Mary.

  “Elizabeth, I don't think it's a good idea to hold a séance in this place,” she said, “not ever since Mister Parker met with his accident.”

  Ah, I should start at the beginning. When we first moved into the renovated house, with the full intention of making it a popular bed-and-breakfast stop, we had never stayed at the house for more than a few hours at a time. But we both felt it was special.

  We set the workers to their tasks and received reports of accidents on occasion. A few times, a worker went mad and did something unfortunate—for either himself or others, or both. Once, one man set about another with a hammer to “kill the bugs.”

  Kill the bugs, he had not. Killed his fellow worker, well, he succeeded. One would suppose repeated hammer blows to the face would do such a thing. They told me the victim was no longer recognizable.

  Dear Mary found these reports horrid, a testament to the historical violence and memory surrounding the place. I, however, took it to mean something different—a spiritual energy in it that was too much for mere men to take. It was like a giant spiritual dustbin, collecting terrible energy in the center. Cleanings with incense and a spiritualist would make it right again.

  Once we moved into the house, though, it was blissful. As if it had been waiting for us. With fresh paint on the walls, flooring restored to its former mahogany glory, and custom furniture we brought in from Nottingham’s in Grace City, we had created our own paradise.

  Mary was familiar with most of the history of the place. The first fire claimed many, but they rebuilt and carried on. It was a hospital during a wave of illness—which reduced the town’s population by two-thirds. Walker J. Dubbs, a retired officer from the East Territory, and his lovely Western Territory defector of a wife who was also a nurse, took care to ensure people survived. Her dedication to saving lives during the war meant that she had aided Eastern soldiers against orders, and she'd paid for it by being called a traitor to her people.

  Ridiculous once one thinks we were all in the same country. That might be my modern, Northeast sensibilities talking.

  At any rate, the home, a symbol for the two of them uniting, and far from the Hansom-Warner Divide, had become their care center. They didn’t renovate it much for the transition.

  The nurse (her name escapes me at the moment) Dubbs had married could not have children, or perhaps Dubbs could not, instead. The couple adopted three children orphaned by the war. All of the children passed young, so the townspeople say, and the records of their deaths are lost or wherever they were, I couldn’t access them. The two of us never gave it much thought. Well, Mary didn't.

  It’s of no consequence, I guess. Jewel Grove Hospital purchased the house, and renovated into an asylum to take their overflow. They had little work to do because of the many rooms to house boarders—and it was ready with little changes to keep patients. The records are missing on most of these things. What kind of patients lived here? No one knows. Some speculate consumption, others speculate mental illnesses.

  Ah, I remember her name now. Constance Hayes Dubbs.

  Constance Hayes Dubbs. Yes. What an interesting couple. One can only speculate what their relationship was like, what with so many records missing after the Great Fire. The Great Arson was what they should’ve called it—records burned when a man from Silver Hollow went mad and tried to erase humanity by setting town and city halls on fire. This resulted in many towns burning to ash, and the death toll reached the hundreds before the marshals stopped him.

  But I have seen her. Seen the Dubbs woman, and others, now, in this place.

  I was bathing in the claw tub of my private bath, just off the master suite of what one would call the keep’s room. Surrounded by the hot water and stillness of the room, the scents of lavender and roses filling my nose, sleep washed over me in little waves. Forcing my eyes open, I went under a moment to wet my hair, and when I came up, I gasped in shock. There was a woman who wasn’t Mary, and she was looking at me. Her eyes were wide and jaw dropped in surprise.

  This was no transparent ghost, either. No, she was solid. She had her hair up, and wore a white dressing gown, unbuttoned with black lace trim, as though she was on her way to bed or on her way to get dressed. The lithe figure outlined through the sheer garment underneath showed me a woman who kept herself well.

  She had stopped to look right at me. As if I was interrupting her from her routine, rather than she from mine.

  I was not seeing a memory, but was seeing an actual being, whom I should not have been able to see—she was dead. Constance was just as surprised of me as I was of her.

  “Nurse Hayes?” I recognized her from the history books, but part of my mind had closed to rational thought. The room felt cold—colder even than it felt after a hot bath—and gooseflesh erupted over my body.

  She opened her mouth to speak. No sound emitted. Just a whisper of air. That made it worse.

  I sat forward, too shocked to be modest, and not thinking I was hallucinating or dreaming.

  She reached out toward me and I shrank back.

  “What are you doing?” my tone was shrill and echoed off the tiles.

  The woman stepped back, then looked as if she would say something again. She looked sad as if she had realized that something was wrong. I shivered—cold air hitting my exposed skin from the bathwater.

  Then she—well, she disappeared. Not as if she popped away, out of existence. She faded.

  I scrambled out of the tub, put on my gown, and found Mary.

  Yes, I was hysterical from what I had experienced, but I hadn’t been hysterical when it happened. Hysterics don’t come at the mere entering of a bath or during washing, or even when a person has an experience like that—for me, it comes afterward when I try to speak of what I’d seen. I suppose I was in shock, at first, and then so overwrought by her sudden appearance and disappearance. When I found Mary, it came out of me in sluices of gibberish.

  Mary, known for being calm in any situation, brought me a cup of tea and listened, bright eyes intent as I told her the ghost-who-wasn’t-a-ghost story. As I told her what I’d seen, and that it was no apparition. She kept me from flying into hysterics once more by placing her hand on my back. Her cool hands kept me grounded.

  Once I had calmed, she was silent for a time. I sipped my tea and waited.

  “Perhaps you imagined it,” she said. “It’s a soothing, quiet bath, meant for relaxation. You may have fallen asleep in the tub and had a vivid dream.”

  Mary is practical. Practicality is her greatest virtue and is likely the reason I love her so.

  I am not so practical. I am very much a woman of my passions, and I give in to flights of fancy. But Mary’s reassurance brought me comfort; so much so I went upstairs to bed.

  “I suppose you could be right,” I said, finishing the dregs of my tea. The bitter leaves give a scratch to my throat on their way down. I sighed. “This was just more real than any dream I’ve ever had.”

  “You’re a creative soul.” Mary gave my knee a gentle squeeze. “It doesn’t surprise me that the history of this house has sparked your imagination.”

  The corners of my mouth turned up, and I kissed her lips.

  “Thank you, love.”

  Mary didn’t convince me this was my imagination, and it showed in my faint smile and furrowed brow. Still, I went upstairs and fell into an uneasy sleep, waking a few times in the first hour. I started as if she would be there by my bedside, reaching out to me again. After the third or fourth time I woke, I fell into a hard slumber.

  Sleep has such a delightful way of repairing damage. Rest can conquer everything from parrot pox to hangovers. I didn’t dream that I could recall, and when Mary woke me up with breakfast, I was as calm as I had been when I first got into the bath and settled.

  With a few scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, toast, and freshly squeezed orange juice, I forgot about the previous night’s upset. There was far too much to occupy my time with preparations for guests, who would pass
through soon for the summer and staying for the leaf changing season. Silver Hollow in autumn is a feast for my senses. The weather is crisp and cool, and the leaves are brilliant in shades of gold, red, bright yellow, and rusty brown. The air is perfumed with wood smoke, fresh apples and pickling spices. People gravitate to the area.

  Three maids, two cooks, a groundskeeper, and a porter—that was enough to keep the place running.

  Mary managed the books, and I managed hostess duties and receiving of our guests. When I checked the reservations in the mail and placed them in our registry, we were booked solid for the entire season.

  This meant we were far too busy to pay attention to the strange goings on in the house, like the claims that belongings around the place were missing. A thorough search of everyone’s belongings showed that there was no thief among us. Pots and pans, linens, personal items such as watches and rings just disappeared. I lost a hair pin with an emerald scarab on it. It was on my dresser, and the next time I looked, it was gone. No one was with me.

  Another search proved fruitless, and some staff complained of other things happening in the house while they were working. One maid claimed to have been locked in the pantry for an hour (but there’s no lock on the pantry door). She fainted away and Mary sent her to the doctor.

  We assumed it was the employees raising a fuss so we would pay them more. But they stayed. Why wouldn’t they? The bed-and-breakfast brought in the work, and we pay well enough compared to other places in the area.

  Even though Mary had a logical explanation for everything, and I took comfort in that, there is nothing normal about this place, even with logical explanations. The groundskeeper couldn’t get the hedges to grow in spots. He insisted it was the ground—the ground was sour, he would say. I wrote it off to his poor gardening skills and a lack of knowledge with those species, and Mary wrote it off to a lack of education in general.