by Pat Esden
Gritting my teeth, I resisted the urge to argue with him and instead clicked the windshield wipers on and peered through the misted glass.
Just beyond the gate, the headlight beams trapped the outline of a stone cottage. The blue glow of a television throbbed in one window. Someone was obviously home, maybe a security guard or groundskeeper. They might not like coming out this late at night, but opening the gate was probably their job.
I honked the horn, then swiveled around to see why Dad was so quiet.
With his index finger, he was drawing jagged designs on the steamed-up window.
A loud creak made me turn back. Up ahead, a guy with the build and swagger of a Navy SEAL was shoving the gate open. As chilly as it was, I was surprised to see he had on a sleeveless T and no shoes. Maybe he’d been working out or something.
He waved for me to drive through and I eased on the gas.
As I approached him, he nodded. He didn’t look much older than me, twenty-three or four at the most. His dark hair was cropped short, his face clean-shaven. My first impression was that he came from some kind of Mediterranean heritage, Greek or maybe Turkish. But it was impossible to guess in the dark and fog.
I tapped on the brakes and put on a smile. “Thanks,” I said through my open window.
But the guy wasn’t listening to me or even admiring our classic car. He was glaring at the window Dad had drawn on.
Dad shook his fist. “Vermin!” he shouted at the guy.
Heat flooded my face and I tromped on the gas, not waiting for the guy to reply. As the car lurched forward, the headlight beams slashed through the darkness, throwing shadows all around us.
Once the cottage was out of sight, I glanced back at Dad. I wanted to yell at him for being so rude, but instead I gritted my teeth and swallowed my anger. It wasn’t right for me to lose my temper or be embarrassed by his behavior. He’d never lost his cool with me. Not even when I’d driven the Mercedes over a box of expensive porcelain at an auction—or when I’d thrown up during the private Vatican tour because I’d partied a bit too much the night before. It wasn’t his fault he was sick. Besides, it didn’t matter what people thought of him. We weren’t here to make friends.
Turning my attention back to the road, I noticed the driveway ahead was climbing steeply upward. On either side, stone walls and black-limbed trees flickered through the fog. As we reached the top of the rise, the fog and trees gave way to a moonlit vista. The view was so spectacular that I slowed the car to take it in.
Below, Moonhill’s main house shimmered in the silver-plated darkness. Its peaked roofs and shingled turrets blended into chains of glimmering windows and wide terraces. One wing jutted toward the west. A glowing solarium faced east. Behind it, the ocean and sky stretched like an ebony-and-pearl backdrop. The information about Moonhill that I’d found on the Internet didn’t do it justice.
Then again, I hadn’t uncovered any modern photos, only a couple of faded etchings and articles on how the Freemonts, my family, had lived on the property since the first settlers came to Maine, and made their fortune in the salt mining business. Even the satellite views I’d found hadn’t revealed anything unusual, just a sprawling house surrounded by solitude.
I rubbed the tingle of goose bumps from my arms. Actually, Moonhill looked exactly like how Dad described it in his crazy tales.
Dad leaned forward and gave a low whistle. “A man could get used to living in a place like this.” He glanced toward where the brass jar holding my mother’s ashes sat on the front seat, nestled in a blanket. “What the heck is that?” he asked.
“Ah—don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s nothing—just a vase.”
A lump clogged my throat. For as long as I could remember, Mother’s jar had sat on our living room mantel, except when we traveled and Dad brought it with us. Deep inside, I’d always hoped someday he’d be ready to let the ashes go. But for now, I’d make sure the jar was close by, easy for him to spot when he started to recover.
I pulled up to the mansion’s front steps. And, as Dad squinted out the side window and muttered something about the carvings over the door, I slid Mother’s jar into my oversize bag. Later, I’d take it to his room and make a special place for it. It wasn’t like the family would want it on their living room mantel, considering Mother’s cremation played a big part in the rift between them and us.
“Wait here,” I said to him. Then I shouldered the bag, hurried up the front steps, and rang the bell.
The heavy door muted the bell’s echoing tones. No footsteps followed.
I rang again.
An eerie sensation swept over my skin. Someone was watching us. I was certain of it.
Craning my neck, I looked upward, past the carved symbols of bees and triangles to a second-story window. Someone stared down at me through parted curtains. Then the curtains fell back in place and the small figure disappeared.
I hugged my bag against my chest and frowned as I quickly rang again. It seemed like they could hurry up and answer the door, instead of making me stand here while someone checked us out from a window. I doubted the watcher was either of my two cousins. The stare was too intense for a younger person or even a teenager, more like an art collector studying a painting to determine if it was real or a forgery.
Dad shuffled up beside me with his rumpled flight jacket draped over one arm. He reached for the enormous brass doorknob, but the door opened before he could touch it.
An aristocratic-looking woman in a white blouse and charcoal-gray slacks stood on the threshold.
My breath caught in my throat, and I squeezed my bag tighter. Her high cheekbones and waves of espresso-colored hair looked exactly like mine. Since I was little, Dad had told me I looked like my aunt Kate. I was expecting a resemblance, but holy freak show we were mirror images of each other, except she was about twenty-five years older.
“Welcome home, James,” she said to Dad in a cool and controlled voice. She inclined her head at me. “I’m Kate. I assume you’re Stephanie?”
“Yes. But everyone calls me, Annie—if you don’t mind.”
If she heard me or noticed the similarity between us, she gave no sign. She just waved us in. “We might as well get on with this,” she said.
“If you insist,” I answered, stepping inside.
My eyes widened in disbelief. I’d been in a ton of wealthy homes, heck, our home in Vermont had been packed with fine antiques, but stepping into Moonhill’s foyer was like beaming into the Metropolitan Museum, complete with a full-size polar bear in one corner and floor-to-ceiling oil paintings all around. Spotlights illuminated a cabinet, which held Middle Eastern artifacts and terra-cotta oil lamps. Dad had taught me quite a bit about spotting reproductions and fakes. These looked real. I also suspected a number of them were no longer legal to buy, unless you were a museum.
Dad grinned at Kate. “Impressive collection.”
“It is, isn’t it,” Kate said. She swiveled toward me and lowered her voice. “I’m a frank woman, Stephanie, and I intend to be frank now. I would appreciate a moment alone with your father. Perhaps you’d like to see your room and freshen up?”
My eyes went to Dad and back to her. No way was I leaving him alone without time to adjust. “It’s probably better if I go with you,” I said. “It’s been a long trip. He can be—” I didn’t want to say the word difficult out loud in front of him. It made him sound like a child.
Kate rested her hands on her hips. “I was not making a suggestion. Tibbs will be right in with your bags. He’ll show you to your room.” She turned from me and took Dad by the elbow. “Perhaps you’d like to come to my study for a nightcap?”
Dad’s voice lifted. “Brandy? That would be lovely, especially if that girl doesn’t follow us. She’s always trying to make me drink coffee.”
She patted his hand and they started across the foyer toward a hallway. “Don’t worry about her.”
My jaw clenched as I glared at the back of Kate’s head.
I hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but she was downright demeaning and rude. No wonder she wasn’t married. No man would want such a total bitch.
Something rock-solid and heavy thumped the back of my knee.
Pulse thundering, I wheeled around.
A short, dapper old man in a tweed jacket and a bowtie stood an inch behind me. He had one of my suitcases in each hand. “These yours?” he, undoubtedly Tibbs, asked.
I gulped a quick breath and nodded.
“Follow me,” he said, muscling the bags toward a flight of marble stairs, which curved upward, just to one side of the front door.
I glanced back to where Kate and Dad were vanishing down the hallway and scowled. I didn’t like this. Not one bit. What I should do is follow them, to hell with her commands. But that wouldn’t help our situation. Besides, it would only take me a minute to get settled in my room, then I’d come back and find the study. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why Kate had wanted custody of Dad to start with. What’s more, I had the sneaking suspicion Kate wasn’t in on this alone. I was willing to bet that Grandfather was waiting for them in the study, lurking behind the scenes while he got others to do his bidding, the way he used the old boy network during the custody battle. Well, I’d soon know for sure.
Tearing my gaze away from the now empty corridor, I followed after Tibbs, up the wide staircase to the second floor, then down a heavily carpeted hallway. Silence swallowed our footsteps as he ushered me past closed doors and draped windows.
“I imagine keeping this place clean is a hellish job,” I said to him.
He mumbled something about someone being worth her weight in macaroons.
We went around a corner and up a couple more wide steps, then into another hallway. This one was longer and had a glistening white marble floor, like the churches Dad and I had visited in Rome. A moment later, we passed through an archway and entered a dimly lit gallery full of oil paintings and sculptures of ferocious angels. The statue of a three-faced goddess glared down at me from a shadowy alcove. A Siamese cat dashed past us and vanished into a dark corner. The room was so creepy it raised the hair on my arms. I hugged my bag and hurried my pace, rushing to keep up with Tibbs. We zigged and zagged through the expansive room and into another series of gloomy corridors.
After we’d walked for what felt like an eternity, Tibbs set the bags on the floor and rubbed his shoulder.
“Does anyone else live on this side of the house?” I asked. The place wasn’t covered in spiderwebs and the carpet was fairly new, but I couldn’t see or hear any signs of life.
His watery blue eyes sparkled with delight. “Why? Are you afraid to be alone?”
“No,” I said sharply. It wasn’t as much a matter of loneliness that bugged me as the idea of being surrounded by endless rooms filled with nothing except darkness. I hiked the strap of my bag up higher on my shoulder. “I was mostly wondering who stayed in this wing, in case I needed to ask someone how to get back to the main staircase.”
“Something wrong with your sense of direction?”
“No, I just—” I snapped my mouth shut. Usually, when we visited places, I got along great with the employees. But this guy was strange—the Edgar Allan Poe of butlers, testing to see which torture chamber would work best on me: the hall of disorientation or perhaps the isolation tank.
He picked up my bags and grumbled. “Nowadays, most people have suitcases with wheels on them.”
“I’d be happy to carry one,” I offered. At least, this comment of his made sense. I loved my vintage Louis Vuittons, but lugging them was sometimes a pain in the ass.
He snatched them and strode off down a slightly brighter hallway with alcoves on each side, mumbling to himself.
Finally, he thumped the suitcases down and opened a door. “The Grecian Room,” he said, motioning for me go through first.
With dread knotting in my chest, I stepped past him and into what was most likely a dark, musty guestroom where my chances of getting any sleep were zero.
My mood flip-flopped. Soft light swirled down from a chandelier, giving the room an airy and sunlit feel. The walls were papered in pale shades of sapphire and green with faint images of Grecian columns. A wonderful upholstered chair and a writing desk sat beside a window. The window’s drapes matched the chair and were drawn tightly closed, blocking out any sign of the darkness beyond them.
But what took me back most about the room were the carvings of ribbons and cherubs that decorated the bed’s massive headboard. Definitely high-end Victorian, pristine and incredibly valuable. The room reminded me of the supposedly haunted bed and breakfast Dad and I’d stayed at when we’d gone picking in New Orleans and met the Santeria priest.
I smiled slightly as memories from those weeks drifted back to me: sheer curtains fluttering in front of a whirring fan, dappled light and the scent of gardenias flooding in from the yard. Once, while Dad and I were there, we’d gone to an auction. At the end of the day, the auctioneer had sold a pile of boxes without letting anyone look at what was inside them. We’d bought the so-called mystery lot, hauled it back to the bed and breakfast, and into the parlor. Then, we’d sat there on the carpet for hours, talking and laughing, sipping sweet tea and going through everything—Dad, me, the owner of the bed and breakfast, and her little twin daughters. We found tintype photos of weddings, old marbles, games, lace hankies and costume jewelry, feathered masks, and arm-length kid gloves. After that, the owner had invited Dad to put Mother’s jar on the parlor mantel instead of keeping it in his room. Perhaps it was because we let her have a diary we found in one of the boxes or because she was up for anything that might make her bed and breakfast come across as more haunted, maybe both. But it made us feel like a part of her family. I really wanted to go back there, someday.
Tibbs shuffled past me and thunked my suitcases down by the bedside stand. He nodded at a doorway on the other side of the room. “Bathroom’s in there. Breakfast’s at eight,” he said. Then he left and shut the door behind him. So much for Maine’s warm hospitality.
I set my bag and the suitcases on the bed and started for the bathroom. It would only take a second to wash up, then I’d find my way back to Dad. Maybe Kate and Grandfather thought they could manage him, but they didn’t know him like I did. Besides, he would never have deserted me or left me alone with someone I hated.
As I stepped into the marble-floored bathroom, I spotted, just beyond the toilet and shell-shaped sink, a small grotto with walls painted to resemble a Grecian temple. In the middle of the grotto was the most gigantic claw-footed tub I’d ever seen. My pulse jumped with excitement at the thought of lounging in sultry chin-deep water. But I didn’t have time to dream about relaxing and baths, not right now.
I turned on the sink’s faucet and splashed cool water on my face. It tingled against my skin and stole the heat from my eyelids.
A sudden realization slammed me in the chest.
Tibbs had said, “Breakfast’s at eight,” with finality, like I wasn’t expected to go back downstairs until then. But, Dad—at the very least, I had to make sure he’d settled in okay.
I turned off the faucet, went into the bedroom, and headed for the door. Opening it, I stepped out into the hallway—
Utter darkness crushed in around me. Darkness as black as the stone in the poison ring I’d sold for Dad last month.
I retreated into the doorway, struggling to catch my breath. Damn it.
The dark had terrified me for as long as I could remember. No matter what I did or how hard I tried, I couldn’t get over it, like most people did when they were still little. There was no justification for it either—except, perhaps, that I had an unusually hyperactive imagination or that Dad had let me watch too many horror movies when I was too young.
Taking a deep, shaky breath, I stepped forward and peered out. Except for where the light from my room brightened a narrow strip, I couldn’t see anything else.
I slid my hand down the hallway wall as far
as I dared, hoping to feel a light switch. Nothing. Not even a dimple in the wallpaper.
Inside my door, there was a single switch. I snapped it off and on. The overhead light responded, but the hallway remained completely black.
I scowled at the darkness. “You’re not going to win that easily,” I said.
Dashing to my bed, I opened my smallest suitcase and reached into the pocket where I kept my trusty flashlight. My fingers found my shampoo bottle, my cosmetic bag, and blow-dryer exactly where I’d put them, but no flashlight. I patted down my clothes. My mouth went dry as I checked my other suitcase. Still, no flashlight.
I’d never forgotten it before. Even at home, I slept with it my under my pillow, forever and always, like some kind of childish idiot.
A prickling sensation swept across my scalp. Tibbs had been alone when he retrieved my suitcases from the car. Though it didn’t make sense for him to steal an old pink flashlight, he’d had enough time to rummage through my stuff. He was odd, and undoubtedly knew where the light switches were.
But why turn them off—because he was a nut or simply not thinking before he did it? Or did someone else know about my fear and put him up to these things?
I shook that thought from my mind. I was starting to think like a crazy person myself. Besides, it wasn’t like I was trapped in my room.
Grabbing my bag, I slid my hand under Mother’s jar and retrieved my phone. I turned it on, went back to the doorway, and stepped into the hall.
The phone’s blurry light pushed against the darkness, transforming the first few yards of black into writhing gray shadows. But I could still see the darkness, daring me to step toward it, waiting to blind me, to smother me.
I shuddered and backed into my room, and shut the door. The light wasn’t enough. I’d have a full-fledged panic attack before I got halfway down the hallway. I turned on the desk lamp, then the bedside light, then paced back to the desk. I didn’t want to do it, but there was one painfully obvious solution to this.
With a sigh, I slumped into the chair and phoned Kate. Dad’s lawyer had given me her number in case the car broke down on our way to Maine. I’d ask her where the light switches were and the easiest route to the foyer. It wasn’t a big deal. My ego would live through it.
