The Killing Room

by John Manning

  “What does the baby have to do with all this?” Dean asked.

  Carolyn shuddered, then passed the photo to Douglas. “It was Beatrice’s baby. We don’t know what happened to it.”

  “Well, its spirit is in that room,” Dean said.

  “Yes,” Carolyn agreed. “Whatever happened that night, the baby lost a mother. And whatever force exists in that room apparently prevents the baby’s spirit from resting as well.”

  “Who is the controlling force?” Douglas asked, passing the photo around the table. “Who could be powerful enough and evil enough to keep these deaths going on for eighty years?”

  “Was the baby killed?” Chelsea asked, showing interest in the subject for the first time.

  “Who was its father? That’s what I’d like to know,” Paula said.

  “Enough,” Uncle Howard said in a raspy voice, refusing to look at the image when it was passed to him. “Tonight we will have no more such talk at this table.” He snapped his fingers, and the servants emerged from the kitchen to clear away their salad plates. The main course was served. A huge roast duck. Discussion faded away, and the family ate in relative silence. Every once in a while, Douglas grabbed Carolyn’s hand under the table.

  When they were finished, they all retired to the parlor for coffee. The others made small talk among themselves, but Paula took a seat beside Uncle Howard. Above them hung a pair of old rifles, still as shiny as the day they were made.

  “They were my father’s,” Uncle Howard said. “He carried them in the First World War. They saved his life many times. That’s why I keep them in such good condition.” His eyes twinkled. “And loaded.”

  “Would that we had such weapons to save our own lives,” Paula said.

  The old man nodded.

  “Uncle Howard, I need to ask you about Dr. Fifer.”

  “I said no more for tonight,” the old man said wearily.

  “Please, Uncle Howard. I won’t be able to sleep tonight if we don’t talk.”

  He made a face. “Why do you bring up Fifer’s name?”

  “He was the one who was here investigating when you first told me about the room and the lottery. I remember he was a very nice man. Rather eccentric, but nice.”

  “One of those professor types,” Uncle Howard said, raising his coffee cup to his lips, holding the saucer below with shaky hands.

  “He asked many questions of all of us,” Paula said.

  Uncle Howard’s eyes were far away. “Yes, indeed, he did.”

  “And then, right at the end, he said he’d found out something,” Paula said. “I remember that so clearly. He said he’d found out something, and that gave me hope. Hope that maybe we wouldn’t have to go through with the lottery after all.”

  Uncle Howard seemed uncomfortable with the conversation. “Well, obviously, whatever he found out didn’t amount to anything. Because the lottery still took place. It was the year your father died in that room.”

  Paula nodded. “That’s why I always wondered what Dr. Fifer had found out. He never told us.”

  “Who knows?” Uncle Howard said. “It was clearly nothing important.”

  “Why did you fire him before the lottery had even taken place?”

  The old man’s hands were shaking almost uncontrollably now. He had to set his cup and saucer down on the table beside him.

  “Because he upset Jeanette. I couldn’t have that.”

  “But he got a response from her,” Paula said. “For the first time in twenty years. That means he was on to something.”

  “He was not!” Uncle Howard was angry now. “Please, dear, let me be. This all takes so much out of me.”

  “Of course, Uncle Howard,” Paula said. “I’m sorry.”

  She stood. She noticed that just a couple of feet away, Carolyn and Douglas were watching her. She walked over to join them.

  “Did you hear?” she asked.

  Carolyn nodded. “Fifer actually said he’d found something important?”

  “Yes,” Paula said. “Then suddenly he was gone. If only we could find him now…”

  “He’s dead,” Carolyn said. “I found an obituary for him online. I wanted to speak to him, too, but it was too late. So I’ve been looking for his survivors. He left a son and two daughters. But so far, I’ve been unsuccessful.”

  “Do you think he may have left notes?” Douglas asked. “Notes that might reveal what he thought was so important?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping,” Carolyn said. “Because any notes he took are not among the papers that Mr. Young has kept. There are notes from every other investigator who has worked on the case, but not Fifer. He’s the only one.”

  Paula glanced back at the old man sitting in the chair. “He’s hiding something, isn’t he?” she asked. “He destroyed Fifer’s notes.”

  “Why would he do that?” Douglas asked, still not wanting to believe anything negative of Uncle Howie.

  “I think if we knew the answer to that,” Carolyn said, “we’d know how to end the curse of that room.”

  The three of them looked over at the old man in his chair, the flickering light of the fire making strange patterns across his face.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Carolyn knew she wasn’t alone the moment she turned off the light.

  The terror had returned. Since leaving New York, she’d managed to push David Cooke out of her mind, concentrating instead on horrors of a different sort. But now, lying awake in her bed, she had the uncanny sense that he was outside, looking up at her window, much the way he had been in New York.

  That’s absurd, she told herself. There is no way David knows where I am. She had told no one. Not Sid, not Andrea, not anyone she’d worked with. Only the police, and then only one detective she trusted completely. No one knew where she was going when she took off on the plane.

  What if he found the pilot and forced him to tell?

  What if he broke into Diana’s apartment and forced her or Huldah to tell?

  Carolyn sat up and switched on the light. Now she was really acting crazy. The pilot of Mr. Young’s private plane lived here in Youngsport. There was no way David could find him. And she had spoken with Diana on the phone just a few hours ago, and Diana was fine. There simply wasn’t enough time for David to learn Carolyn’s whereabouts from her and then make it all the way up here to Maine.

  Still, she had to give in to her curiosity. Switching off the light again, she stepped over to the window and pulled back the curtains. She saw no one standing below in the moonlight. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  But that sigh became a gasp as she turned around and looked back across her room.

  Beatrice stood there. The moonlight reflected against her long white dress.

  “Why have you come to me?” Carolyn whispered.

  Never before had Beatrice appeared to someone outside the Young family. If she was appearing to Carolyn now, it was because she wanted to tell her something.

  “I want to help you,” Carolyn whispered, “and I think you want to help me. You want to help all of us, don’t you?”

  Beatrice lifted her right arm from her side and pointed a finger at Carolyn.

  “What is it?” Carolyn asked. “What are you trying to say?”

  The apparition took a step forward, her finger pointing directly at Carolyn’s face.

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  She gently wagged her finger.

  “Me. You’re indicating me. What about me? What are you saying about me?”

  A book suddenly fell from a shelf. It slammed hard upon the floor, startling Carolyn. She stooped down to retrieve it, and in that fleeting second, Beatrice disappeared.

  “Wait!” Carolyn called. “I don’t understand your meaning.”

  But it was no use. Beatrice was gone.

  Carolyn lifted the book from the floor. It was a family photo album, and it had opened to one page. Carolyn looked down. It was a photograph of Jeanette Young, probably short
ly before she was chosen in the lottery to enter the room. She looked so young and so full of life, a far cry from the pale, shrunken woman Carolyn had met.

  “Why did you show me Jeanette?” Carolyn asked out loud. “And why did you point at me?”

  She sat there for nearly an hour on the edge of her bed, looking at Jeanette’s photo, hoping Beatrice would return, trying to make sense of her message. But all that happened was that Carolyn grew tired. Very, very tired.

  Finally she replaced the photo album on the shelf and crawled back into bed. Sleep was forcing itself upon her, even though her mind still struggled with the riddle of Beatrice’s appearance. What was she trying to tell her? And did it have anything to do with the feelings of terror Carolyn had experienced, the absurd conviction that David Cooke stood outside, looking up at her window?

  Before she knew it, she was dreaming. She was in the room downstairs, the door was locked, and there was someone else in there with her. She didn’t need to see him to know it was David Cooke. She could hear his breathing. He was coming at her. She banged on the door, screaming for help.

  “You don’t have to fear,” came a voice.

  A woman’s voice.

  Carolyn knew it was Beatrice.

  She turned around. David stood behind her, his eyes blazing.

  “Love,” Carolyn said.

  “Love,” came Beatrice’s voice.

  Carolyn woke up then. It was morning. She had no idea what the dream had meant, and still had no clue what the visitation the night before indicated. She showered and dressed, and headed downstairs for breakfast. Pouring herself a cup of coffee, she took a seat at the table. Already there were Paula and Chelsea. Seeing them gave Carolyn the answer. She understood then what Beatrice had been trying to tell her.

  “She won’t let him kill a woman,” Carolyn said out loud.

  Paula and Chelsea turned to look at her.

  “Beatrice appeared to me last night,” Carolyn told them. “I believe she was trying to tell us that she will do what she can to protect us. She’s probably been trying all along, but she was only successful once before. With Jeanette.”

  “Well, that’s crazy,” Chelsea said. “Because the way Jeanette came out of that room, I wouldn’t say she was protected very well.”

  “But still,” Carolyn said. “Jeanette didn’t die.”

  Paula set down her coffee and looked over at her gravely. “Then further discussion is pointless. Let’s just forget the lottery. I volunteer to spend the night myself.”

  “I’m not sure we can do that,” Carolyn said.

  “If a woman has a better chance of survival than a man, then I volunteer.”

  Carolyn looked from Paula over to Chelsea, who blanched.

  “No,” Carolyn said. “I think we’d risk another slaughter if we don’t follow the way the lottery has always been done.”

  “Who set these rules?” Paula wanted to know. “All these years, we’ve been like sheep. Herded along, never asking why.”

  “You’re right, Paula,” Carolyn agreed. “And it’s time we started asking why.”

  Paula smiled wryly. “And do you think Beatrice is going to tell you?”

  “I think she’s trying to. I think last night she was trying to give me a clue. About why this all happened. How it all began.”

  “And what did the clue tell you?” Chelsea asked.

  “I think it all goes back to the love of a woman,” Carolyn said. “All of this is about a woman’s love.” She paused. “Beatrice’s love.”

  “Her love for whom?” Paula asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Carolyn looked at each of them. “But that’s precisely what I have to find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Douglas watched as Carolyn flipped open her laptop and hit the power button. A deep bong inside the machine resonated. They were sitting in the study as rain cascaded against the walls of the house, great sweeping sheets of it. The sun hadn’t appeared all day, hidden by a scrim of dark gray haze.

  “It struck me last night that none of the previous investigators would have had access to these particular records,” Carolyn said as she inserted an Internet-connecting device into the back of her laptop. For all its elegance, Uncle Howie’s house had no wireless connection.

  “What records do you mean?” Douglas asked, taking a seat beside Carolyn at the long oaken table, peering around to look at her computer screen.

  “The United States census of 1930,” she told him. “The government releases census records every seventy-two years. The last time the lottery was held, these records weren’t yet available.”

  She was tapping furiously on her keypad. Douglas watched with a keen interest as she accessed a site, then typed in her password. A search screen appeared.

  “So,” she said, “we simply check for Desmond Young in Youngsport, Maine.”

  She keyed in the particulars.

  “And voilà!” she cried. “There they are!”

  On the screen was a digitized image of a census page, consisting of a list of handwritten names in the left column, each followed by various particulars: age, place of birth, occupation, whether married or single, whether they owned a radio…

  Carolyn zoomed in so they could easily read the entry for the Youngs.

  “Okay, here we can see exactly who was living in this house in 1930,” she said as Douglas read along.

  Outside the rain and wind continued to pound the house as Carolyn catalogued the Young family of eighty years earlier.

  “Head of household, Desmond Young,” she read. “He was fifty years old, and his occupation was listed as ‘financier.’ And after this is his wife Hannah, age forty-six.”

  “Look at all those children they had,” Douglas observed.

  They fell quiet. Douglas was quite sure Carolyn was thinking the same thing he was. That most of those children would be dead that same year, taken in the first of the family slaughters.

  “Douglas Young,” Carolyn read, pointing to a name on the screen.

  Douglas swallowed hard. “That’s my great-grandfather,” he said. “The first of the Douglas Youngs to die in that room.”

  He saw that he was listed with his wife and four children: Francis, David, Douglas, and Cynthia. The younger Douglas was this generation Douglas’s grandfather. He was two years old at the time of this census. Fifty years later, he, too, would die in that room.

  Carolyn was reading the names of the rest of Desmond Young’s children. “Samuel, Margaret, Howard…” She paused. “There’s your Uncle Howie right there. A strapping lad of eighteen years old, before tragedy struck.”

  Douglas nodded.

  “And finally there were the children, Jacob and Timothy.” Carolyn sighed. “A few months after this was taken, this family would be practically wiped out.”

  “But what are the rest of the names?” Douglas asked.

  Carolyn smiled. “That’s the real reason I wanted to see this record. Who else was living in this house in 1930?”

  They both peered in at the screen to make out the names.

  “Look!” Douglas shouted. “Clement Rittenhouse! That must be Clem!”

  “Yes,” Carolyn said excitedly. “‘Age: twenty-nine. Occupation: gardener.’ And look. It says here he couldn’t read or write.”

  “So he was just a dumb old brute,” Douglas said. “Probably easily manipulated.”

  “And look!” Carolyn exclaimed. “Beatrice! It’s Beatrice! Her last name was Swan!”

  “Beatrice Swan,” Douglas said.

  “‘Age: nineteen,’” Carolyn said, her voice becoming sad. “She was so young. ‘Occupation: servant.’ She was single, born in Maine. And unlike Clem, she was literate.”

  “There’s no baby listed with her,” Douglas observed.

  Carolyn shook her head. “No. The child wouldn’t have been born yet. The census was taken in April. Harry Noons said that Beatrice didn’t have her baby until the late spring. But she would certainly have bee
n pregnant at the time this was taken.”

  With her cursor she hit a link to take them to the next page of the census. After it had loaded, she said, “Damn.”

  “What?” Douglas asked.

  “That’s it. That’s the entire list of the household. There was no one else living here.”

  “Who were you hoping to find?” he asked.

  Carolyn sighed. “Whoever else may have been involved in the events of that night. Remember that Diana picked up on another presence-and she said that presence was the force that really controlled the room. It’s not Clem, and it’s not Beatrice. I was hoping to find a name of someone else living in the house at that time.”

  “So who could this other force be?”

  Carolyn stood, pacing a little bit. “It could be anyone. A day servant perhaps. Remember Harry Noons worked on the estate, but unlike Beatrice and Clem, he didn’t live here. Surely there were others like him, any one of whom might have been involved in what happened that night, and be the force that still holds this family in its power.”

  “What makes you think it’s a servant?”

  “I don’t think that necessarily,” Carolyn explained. “It’s just one possibility. It could be anyone. Someone who lived in the village.” A thought occurred to her. “It could be the father of Beatrice’s baby, whoever he was.”

  “Yeah,” Douglas said. “If only we knew who he was.”

  Carolyn’s eyes were sparkling. “Get your bike. We’re going into town.”

  Douglas stood. “Sure, but why? Where are we going?”

  “Back to the town clerk’s office.”

  Douglas made a face. “We’ve been there before. There’s no record of Beatrice’s death.”

  “I’m not looking for a death record this time,” said Carolyn. “Last time, we didn’t know Beatrice’s last name. We could only look up records by date. Now that we know her name was Swan, we can look up some birth records.”

  Douglas was nodding. “Beatrice’s birth record…”

  Carolyn smiled. “And more importantly, her baby’s…”

  In moments they were flying down the hill on Douglas’s bike, both of them wrapped in rubber raincoats. Despite the whipping rain and the chill wind, their spirits were high. And Douglas couldn’t deny how much he liked the feeling of Carolyn’s arms wrapped around him, her face resting against his shoulder. Suddenly he was filled with the urge just to keep driving, bypass the village, just get on the highway and head to Canada. Surely the forces that had ruled his family for eight decades wouldn’t follow them over the border. He laughed to himself at the absurdity of it all and turned the bike into the parking lot of the town hall.