“Dad, Dad...” Veronica whispered. “Are you OK now?”
He stopped her hand and looked around the room. His palms wiped the water from his eyes as he shook his head. “Bad dream. Even grown-ups get them. Go to sleep.” He caressed his soft cheek. “It was a bad dream, Roni. I’m fine. Go to sleep.”
Reluctantly, she left the room. Paul stumbled to the bathroom, turned on the light, and prepared to wash his face. He dropped the washcloth and stared at red lines bruising his neck. “What the fuck...” He touched the tender skin. “What the fuck is going on?”
chapter 4
Wednesday
The next day, he dressed with care covering up the bruises with his high-necked button-down shirt. Some of Allison’s makeup covered the parts that peeked above his collar. He fed the kids and got everyone off to school. Jesse was solemn, almost standing in the shadow of his twin. Veronica watched both Jesse and her father, her silver eyes big in her white face. He had to do something; the grief was making them all crazy. They’d end up locking them all up. Stella hung back, her brown eyes wide and staring at him.
“Daddy...” She came up close.
He bent down and came face to face with her. “Do you think I can go to dance again? I had to stop when Mommy got sick, because no one could take me. I really want to dance again.”
He touched her soft cheek. “Of course, Stella Luna. I’ll set it up. If I can’t take you, I’ll get Nonni to do it.” He realized that Allison’s illness had robbed them all of a normal life. When she first got sick, they mobilized to get all the treatments going. Both sets of parents helped, as well as his sister; her nursing skills proved to be a lifesaver for him. But the kids became casualties of the cancer too. Keeping them in school was all he could do; every ounce of time, strength, and money, every resource went to Allison. Reiki, special food to tempt the invalid, massages, therapies, you name it—they all pitched in and no one, as well as no expense was spared. None of it mattered in the end. All the special diets, medicine, and then the more advanced medicine made each day a living hell as she was tortured into living. Sores covered her body, her hair fell out, light hurt her eyes, but they kept trying more and more things, knowing she was terminal, but doing everything to prolong her life until finally the empty husk that was his wife, faded and slipped away.
He pressed both his palms against his eyes and tried to blot out the final images of her parchment-like yellowed skin and her eyes sunken into their sockets until she resembled the living corpse she had become. Why did they do it, he wondered. It had reached a point where she didn’t even know they were in her room, but there was always one more thing they could try, and they did. Until finally, she held up her hand and whispered, “Enough, let me go,” and he did. Tears pricked his eyes and he swallowed the lump in his throat. “I can’t,” he told her. “Please...” she whispered back, her lips dry and cracked.
He would set up dancing for the girls and basketball for his son, today, for sure. It was time for the kids to live again.
====
“Dreams. Dreams.” He convinced himself but still refused to turn on the radio. They were influencing each other. How else could both he and his son have the same dream? Veronica was holding onto it, to keep close to her mother, and little Stella always had an active imagination. His mother-in-law’s startling revelation explained so much, he reasoned. It couldn’t be anything else. They had to get out more. Today he would turn over a new leaf. Today he would try to get his head out of his ass.
He stopped for Starbucks and took the time to buy a piece of lemon pound cake and remembered to savor the tart sweetness on his newly awakened taste buds. He found himself actually enjoying something. It was the first time in a long time he desired something and he noticed it didn’t taste like ashes.
He got to work, pulled in, and Molly joined him at his desk. She looked over his shoulder to his notes. She became aware of an exposed scratch on his neck. “What this?” She touched his neck with a pointy red fingernail.
He ducked his head. “I cut myself shaving.”
“That don’t look like a shaving cut to me.” She rolled her eyes. “The photos of Stillwell Manor came in. I emailed them to you today. Let’s have a look.”
He opened the file and sat back to look at the artistry of the photographer. He told him he wanted to make sure they got in the fall foliage of the surrounding trees. It would look like a painting out of the Hudson Valley school. They both leaned forward as the pictures came onto the screen.
“What the hell is that?” Paul pointed his finger at the screen. “He must have had a dirty lens. This is inexcusable.”
“Oh shit!” Molly exclaimed. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit.”
“You better believe it. That fancy photographer you picked cost a small fortune and we have to pick up the whole bill. It was in the contract with the Andrewses.”
“That’s not dirt,” Molly whispered. “Look at the wishing well. That’s not dirt.” Her shocked eyes looked at him. He peered closer to the picture. A white haze surrounded the well. “Spooky” was the word that came to mind. It was thicker at the bottom and wispy toward the top. It had the image of person, but a skeptic would have thought it was a smudge on the lens. From the group of pictures that were taken of the facade, one had a caption put there by the photographer, next to the bedroom window: “I thought you said the house was empty.” It was written underscored with lines.
“Oh my God, Paul, look at that window.” Molly pointed to the last bedroom, the one overlooking the well.
He held his breath. No, no, no. It couldn’t be, he thought, but he turned to Molly and said, “Don’t say it, just don’t say it.”
“But it’s Allison,” Molly whispered into the shocked silence.
“It’s a double exposure. It can’t be real. These things are not real.”
“Look at the picture, Paul. You can’t imagine that away.”
“Wait a minute.” He started loading pictures he had taken with his phone. He had about twenty. They started combing through them and when they got to the last bedroom, standing beside the bed was a faint outline of a woman with Allison’s blonde hair dressed in a colonial-era gown.
“This is unbelievable. Do you see this?” Molly demanded. “You have to get the house cleaned.”
“Melissa had it cleaned. She hired two crews.”
“I don’t mean that kind of clean. We need a psychic cleaner.”
“Oh come on, that’s a crock. We don’t need to pay some crackpot to burn incense,“ he shot back, disgusted.
“It has to be a reflection or something.”
“A reflection of what? Your imagination. How did it get there? You see it plain as me,” Molly whispered fiercely.
“This can’t be real, Molly. You know this can’t be real. There has to be a reasonable explanation. I’ll be back later.” He threw on his jacket and went to his car. He was going to see for himself what was going on in Stillwell Manor.
“Wait, Paul. I have a friend I can call.” She yelled out to him as he left the building.
====
The house had some activity, a few box trucks were parked outside, and he realized furniture was being taken out of the house. Melissa stood next to her car, a dark blue Bentley, smoking a cigarette. He noted uneasily that she had a way of sucking on a cigarette that made him sure he knew the one thing Craig loved about her. In fact, he had a hazy memory from his youth that she gave the best blow job in high school. He shook his head and shifted where he sat, uncomfortable with the mental image. Where did that come from, he wondered. She was taller than Allison, with a wealth of luxurious mahogany hair. She threw a notebook into the car as he pulled up, her smile wide.
“Hi.” She had a deep voice, her eyes sparkling, and Paul recognized that she was flirting with him.
“Hi Melissa, where is Craig?”
She frowned while tossing her head. “Left for LA. He’s got a girlfriend, you know.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
She shrugged. “He can’t divorce me. It’ll cost too much.” She laughed. “Did you know that I am the one with the money?” She walked over to his car and leaned in, her breath grazing his cheek. She smelled of wine, and it made him faintly nauseous.
“Actually, no,” he responded, pulling back. He wanted to add that he really didn’t care. “What’s going on?”
“Some of the pieces are very old. I want them in my own house.” She moved away as he exited the car. “I want to make sure I get them before Anthony grabs them. They are expensive as well as original.” She picked a piece of tobacco off the tip of her tongue with two elegantly French manicured nails. Her eyes lazily searched his face.
Paul rested his gaze somewhere far from her, refusing to make eye contact. She leaned against his car, jutting her hip out to him suggestively.
He knew her house; he had sold it to them four years ago. They bought it before the crash and had overpaid by at least a million. It was a huge postmodern colonial, the ones that sprung up all over the North Shore of Long Island in the late nineties. They were all getting dated, too old to move, since the current trend was for sleek, utilitarian modern homes with Zen-like grace. Opulence was out, and they were going to be stuck with their home for some time. Unless they chose to take a bath on it.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him, her green eyes glittering.
“The photographer took shots and I’m not happy with them. I wanted to inspect the rooms again.”
“Was Hannah in them?”
“Excuse me?” he asked, stunned.
“She shows up at the most awkward times, ruining everything. You should see our wedding pictures. I should have known then, it was going to be no good.” She reached out to fondle his tie.
“What are you talking about?” He smoothed his tie from her hands; she had his attention now. She moved closer and spoke in a sultry whisper. Her lush lips grazed his ear. She was in his personal space and made him uncomfortable.
“The whole family is cursed.” Her voice was husky. “When Hannah died, it’s like the house became possessed. Nothing good ever came out of it, including Craig.”
“You don’t believe that, Melissa. Do you?” This time he looked her full in the face, challenging her. She backed off a bit, subdued, perhaps a bit angry.
She stared at him without expression then ground out her cigarette on the gravel driveway. “Sure, of course not.” She paused. “I know a place if you want to go,” she added, looking at him slyly.
“Nah. I don’t cheat, Melissa.”
“I do,” she shot back. “You can’t be cheating. You’re not married anymore.”
“Just a formality. I’m not interested.”
“Pity.”
“Not to me,” he responded. He was not new to this. Many times bored housewives had come on to him. He really wasn’t interested, not now, not ever.
“Do you mind if I have a look?”
Her eyes opened wide with pleasure followed by surprise. “Oh, you mean there.” She gestured to the open doorway. “The house. Be my guest. I don’t care.” She walked toward her car. “You have my number, Paul. If you change your mind.”
He shook his head.
He turned and bounded into the open hall. “Watch the steps.” She laughed and took off in her car, spewing rocks and gravel in her wake.
Paul entered the house as the last worker left; the door closed with a resounding slam.
He turned, noticing the chandeliers dimmed then brightened. He wore shoes today, and the heels clicked hollowly on the floor, seeming to echo in the empty house. Wind whistled down the chimney, and for once, he said to himself his next house would be brand new, without a history.
He walked into the library then stood in the center, drinking in the comforting smells of books, cigar smoke, and peace. This room drew him, like a moth to a flame, but instead of warmth, he felt safe. Though it was quiet, it was nonthreatening, peaceful. He rested in an oversized chair, closing his eyes, letting his fatigue wash over him. No ghosts, no hairy apes. He walked to the overstocked shelves and pulled out a book. Allison would have loved this, and he wondered if the greedy Melissa knew she had an original signed copy of Thomas Pain's "Common Sense" in the library. He considered what other gems were hidden here. If he were a less honest man, he’d have pocketed the book. It had to be worth a small fortune. An atlas lay opened on a huge desk. It was at least two hundred years old. Troop movements were outlined. Squinting, he realized it was the plans for the Battle of Brooklyn, the very first battle of the Revolutionary War and a defeat for Washington. He recalled from his store of school trivia information that it was one of the biggest conflicts of the war. This stuff should be in a museum, he thought, feeling privileged just to be looking at it. His eyes scanned the tall shelves, noticing one book not aligned with the rest. It was as if someone had pulled it out but not returned it all the way to be flush with the others. Its spine came just over the edge of the bookcase calling to him to come and get it.
He reached up and couldn’t grasp it; it was so high. He ran to the billiards room two doors down. They hadn’t taken the pool sticks, so he took one and brought it back to the library. Reaching up with the stick, he pushed the book and gingerly moved it, until it flew off the shelf to land like a wounded bird on the floor. It was an account book, written with spidery handwriting from centuries past. Leafing through it, he saw modern stationery, white against the parchment-colored pages of the book in the rear. He glanced around and opened it, his breath whooshing out of him.
It was a note from Craig’s father. Paul scanned the letter. He addressed it to his children apologizing for what he was about to do. It wasn’t right, he knew, but life had left him no choice. He loved their mother, he wrote, but she had Alzheimer’s, and they had been able to hide it for only so long. Craig’s father was not feeling so well either, but his wife was in the home stretch. It was undignified, ugly, and the medicines were not working. If something happened to him, she would have no one to take care of her. She was afraid to be alone, and so it seemed was he. She had asked him, insisted that he help her. She didn’t want to live anymore. Well, it seemed Craig Andrews’s father didn’t want to live without her either. All his life he worried about scandal and had punished anyone in the family when he or she brought unwanted attention. He was very sorry, but there was no easy way out for them. He would try to be as neat as he could. To shoot his wife, it took some guts. Taking his own life would be easy. He was sorry, he loved them all, but life just wasn’t worth it without their mother to share it with him.
Paul fell into the chair, his heart heavy for the older man. He knew exactly how he felt. Man, he was lucky; he went with her. He pulled out his chain and rolled the band between his fingers. It was warm and comforting, like holding onto his wife’s hand.
He took out his phone to call Craig but found his voice wouldn’t work. He folded the letter and placed it in his shirt pocket and sat in stunned silence.
Was that love, he pondered. Killing his wife so that she wouldn’t suffer then choosing to join her rather than stay alone. How often in the darkest hours of Allison’s illness, did he find himself thinking the same thing. Only the kids kept him here. His kids.
He got up and approached the staircase. Carefully he climbed the steps, keeping close to the wall. The house had a presence; he knew it, felt it deep in his bones, but he refused to admit it to himself. He went straight for Hannah’s room. It was cold, so cold. He swore he saw his breath in the air. The door opened more easily, its hinges screaming in the silence. If this wasn’t spooky, he didn’t know what was. He walked to the center of the room and turned around.
“I know you’re here,” he heard himself say. It felt surreal; he didn’t believe in ghosts.
“Did he?” he asked himself.
There was nothing, just the aching cold of loneliness. He missed Allison with his heart and soul. He walked over to the window and leane
d his head against the glass, watching the wishing well in the garden. Sighing, he looked up at his reflection. A gentle breeze drifted down his neck, making goose bumps ripple his flesh. The curtains were moving gently, swaying as if disturbed. He refocused and saw behind him, a ghostly reflection. He stood frozen. It was Hannah.
He spun and turned only to find an empty room. Chills ran up his spine. “Where are you? Come out,” he shouted to the bare room. “I’m losing my mind.”
====
He raced out of the house, slamming the door so that it locked behind him. Driving faster than he usually did, his mind replaying the ghostly specter. He couldn’t get a grip. Was it Allison, or was it Hannah? Was it real? He couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
He punched in Molly’s number on his cell and her voice filled the car. “Where are you? I have to get ready for an agent’s open house. You’re supposed to be there with me. I don’t like the house; she has a big dog.”
Stillwell: A Haunting on Long Island Page 8
