Crooked House

by Joe McKinney

  Then he realized they were almost to the Sabine River Bridge. He glanced off to his right and saw the river shrouded in gray, no cargo vessels down there, no dappled molten sunlight. The land had a washed out December look to it, and the river was smoky with fog. He frowned in his disappointment. Good thing they hadn’t woken Angela up for this. There really wasn’t all that much to see.

  “You still mad at me?” he said.

  She let the shell casing drop between her breasts before turning around in her seat to look at him. “I’m not mad at you,” she said.

  “You’re not?”

  “No. I ought to be, but I’m not.”

  He nodded. “So, we’re okay?”

  She glanced back at Angela, and the worry showed in her face. “Yeah,” she finally said. “Yeah, we’re okay. I’m scared, Robert. But you and I are okay.”

  He almost told her that he loved her, but she had already turned back toward the window. He sighed. Robert felt like he was stewing in his own sweat, his clothes sticking to his back and his legs, but he refocused his attention on the road and they drove on into Texas without saying another word.

  *

  They got to Crook House at a little past ten. It was raining – pretty hard too – and between that and the darkness, Sarah and Angela didn’t really get to see how striking the house was.

  But in a flash of lightning they managed to catch a glimpse at just how huge the place really was, and Robert had heard a dutifully impressed “Whoa!” from the backseat that made him smile.

  Even Sarah had managed a little chuckle.

  “Wait till morning,” he said. He was feeling ridiculously proud of himself. “In the morning you’ll get a chance to see what I was telling you about, how it looks like two different houses cobbled together.”

  Sarah nodded. “Do you think the power’s out?”

  He studied the face of the house. Were they back in Florida his first thought would have been that those bastards from the electric company finally made good on their threat to shut off the power. But not here. Not after Thom’s assurances about Lightner footing the bills. So he scanned the house. The whole house was dark, and from where they’d parked, they couldn’t see any of the neighbors.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I guess we go find out.” He looked at Sarah, then back at Angela. “Everybody ready to brave the rain?”

  They threw open their doors and ran for the house. In just the few quick seconds it took them to reach the front stoop they got drenched. Robert inserted the key in the lock but couldn’t get it to turn.

  “Robert, come on,” Sarah said.

  “I’m trying.”

  It still wouldn’t go.

  “Daddy!”

  “There it is,” he said.

  He threw the door open and they poured inside.

  “The lights are over here,” he said. His shoes slipped and squished on the marble tile as he groped along the dark wall for the switch. He tried it but the lights didn’t come on. “Damn, Sarah, you got your phone?”

  “Yeah, hold on.”

  She used the flashlight app on her iPhone to light up the entryway, and in the glow, Robert saw her glance at Angela and a smile pass between them.

  “What do you think?” Robert said. “Nice, huh?”

  “Not bad,” Sarah said. She couldn’t stop smiling now.

  “I think it’s cool!” Angela said. “Come on, let’s go look around.”

  She was off before either of them could stop her, her own iPod out, the light bouncing as she ran toward the back of the house and disappeared around the corner that led to the breakfast room, conservatory and downstairs library.

  I have a downstairs library, Robert thought, and chuckled. Damn, this rocks.

  But in the light from her phone Robert could see that Sarah wasn’t smiling anymore. She was staring anxiously into the dark recesses of the house.

  “Angela,” she called out. “Sweetheart, let’s stick together.”

  She walked in the direction Angela had gone and Robert followed after her.

  They turned the corner and caught a glimpse of Angela’s light slipping through the doorway at the far end of the kitchen.

  “Angela, wait,” Sarah said.

  But the girl was gone again. Robert heard a hitch in Sarah’s breathing, and he realized she was getting scared. “It’s okay,” he started to say. But she broke into a trot, her flashlight casting a bluish pool of light in front of her, before he could get the rest of what he wanted to say out.

  What he was going to tell her was that the hall gave on to the conservatory and the breakfast room, and farther on to the library, where it stopped. There was nowhere to go from there but back the way she came. But Sarah wasn’t listening. She turned the corner out of the kitchen and stopped where the hall went off to the breakfast room on the left and the conservatory on the right.

  Angela wasn’t in either room.

  “Angela?” Sarah called out. “Sweetheart, answer me.”

  “She’s probably over – ”

  A flashlight beam bobbed against the glass windows on the far side of the conservatory. Sarah turned her own light in that direction. “Angela?”

  There was nothing there. Just dark glass and the sizzle of rain against it.

  “Where is she?” Sarah demanded.

  “I, uh...” Robert stammered helplessly. “The library’s over – ”

  Again he was cut off, this time by the squeak and slap of Angela’s wet sneakers as she ran from somewhere behind them. Then her tittering laughter echoing back to them through the darkness.

  “Angela!” Sarah pushed her way past him. “Get out of the way, Robert. Angela!”

  Robert took a step after her and had to catch himself. The floor felt like it was rolling. He put a hand out and steadied himself against a bank of cabinets. The sensation that he was about to pitch over faded, but he still had trouble focusing. It was like he was punch drunk. He touched his brow. His hair was still wet from the rain, but he knew it wasn’t rainwater he was feeling on his skin. His forehead felt clammy and damp. I’m sweating, he thought. It’s fifty degrees outside and I’m sweating.

  “Angela!”

  Sarah’s shrill and frightened call snapped him back into the moment, and he stumbled after her.

  He met up with her in the entryway, the huge staircases curling up the walls on either side of them. She looked genuinely frightened now.

  “Where is she?” Sarah said, turning her flashlight into his face.

  He flinched away from the light, but didn’t answer. He couldn’t quite get his mind to work. Why was she so upset?

  Then he heard footsteps running up the stairs, and more childish laughter.

  “Angela,” Sarah said.

  She turned her flashlight up to the top of the stairs and Robert caught a glimpse of his daughter as she rounded the corner above them, headed for the east wing of the house.

  Sarah ran after her and Robert followed as quickly as he could. They reached the top of the stairs and turned down the east wing. A flash of lightning lit the windows, and in its glow, Robert caught sight of Angela running at the far end of the long hall.

  “Angela, please wait!” Sarah called.

  And then Angela did stop. She stopped, lowered her hands to her side, turned to face an open doorway near the end of the hall, and walked inside.

  Sarah ran after her, and as Robert followed, he again had the feeling the floor was shifting under his feet. Though he was going at a trot to keep up with Sarah, he still felt like he was moving way too slowly, like he was pushing his way through water.

  But at last he caught up with them. Sarah was just inside the room, breathing hard. Angela was near the foot of an enormous bed, turning around in circles as she admired the room.

  “I love this room!” she said. “I want this room. Can I have it?”

  “Angela,” Sarah said. “God, you had me so worried.”

  “Worried?” Angela frowned
at her. “Why?”

  “Why didn’t you stop when I was calling to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t hear me calling to you?”

  Angela’s frown deepened, a gesture that caused her eyebrows to bunch together. She was, Robert realized, the spitting image of her mother when she did that. “Mom, I was right there with you.”

  Sarah didn’t respond. Instead, she turned to Robert, like she was looking for him to back her up that she had, in fact, been calling out. But when she saw Robert she evidently saw something that put Angela’s strange behavior out of her mind. She held the flashlight up to Robert’s face. “What’s wrong with you? You okay?”

  Robert shook himself. “Yeah,” he said. And he was feeling a little better. The floor had stopped moving on him.

  “Stop scratching your arm like that,” Sarah said. “You’ll tear up your skin that way.”

  Robert looked down, confused. His left arm was across his chest and he was scratching his right shoulder just under the sleeve of his T-shirt. He hadn’t even realized he was doing it.

  “Hey, Mom, can I have this room? Please.”

  Sarah turned back to her daughter. She seemed to study the huge cloth panels that affixed to the ceiling like a royal canopy. “Well, I don’t know. This is a boy’s room, isn’t it?”

  “Mom, I love it.”

  “It’s a big house, and it’s a long way from our bedroom. Don’t you want to look around at some of the other rooms?”

  “It isn’t far from your room. There are stairs right outside the door there, at the end of the hall. Remember the pictures we saw? Your room is right below us.”

  “Well, I...What do you think, Robert?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess – ”

  “Cool!” Angela said. “Thanks, you guys. Hey, Dad, I’m hungry. Can we get a pizza?”

  Robert smiled. Kids, they had the attention span of a gnat.

  To Sarah he said: “That’s probably a good idea. All our kitchen stuff’s out in the car, and we can’t really cook anything with the power out.”

  She nodded. “Okay, I’ll try to find a pizza place. You bring our stuff in from the car, okay?”

  He nodded.

  She put a hand on his arm. “Hey, you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said as his hand again found the itch under his shirtsleeve. “Yeah, I’m good.”

  *

  They ate the pizza right out of the box; the three of them seated on the floor in the downstairs library, laughing at the way the pizza delivery guy had gawked at the size of their new house. Outside, the rain had slacked off to a gentle patter on the windows. The power still hadn’t come on, but they had candles now – lemon verbena-scented ones, Sarah’s favorite – and the guttering yellow light went a long way toward brightening everybody’s mood. Listening to the girls talk, Robert started to drift. There was something so very pleasant about all this, the candlelight, and dinner on the floor, the rain outside.

  “What do you think, Dad?”

  Robert looked at Angela. She’d asked him something and he missed it. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “The tree, where are we gonna put it? I think we should put it in here.”

  He looked at the empty corner of the library where she was pointing. “Yeah,” he said. “I think – ” He stopped, looked at Sarah for confirmation, and shrugged. “ – yeah. That looks good to me. What do you think?”

  Sarah nodded. “Yeah. Robert, you’re scratching yourself again.”

  He looked down at where his hand was busy scratching. It was the other arm this time, though. Damn, that was weird, he thought. He didn’t even realize he was doing it.

  “You think you’re allergic to something in here?” she asked.

  “Maybe you’ve got the measles?” Angela said.

  “I don’t have the measles,” Robert said, smiling at her. “I doubt I’m allergic to anything, though. I’ve never had any allergies. I think I’m just tired.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. You drove all day.”

  Earlier, before the pizza guy got there, they’d agreed to spend their first night in their new house in sleeping bags on the library floor. It was Angela’s idea. Like a camp out, she said. So Robert unrolled his sleeping bag, pulled one of the pillows off the couch, and stretched out. “You guys mind if I hit the hay?” he asked. “You can stay up, I don’t care. I’m beat, though, and I’ve got that meeting with Thom in the morning.”

  He put his head down, certain that he would fall asleep without any trouble at all, but he couldn’t keep his eyes closed. He pulled the sleeping bag over his shoulder and tried to tune the girls out as they talked about what Angela’s new school was going to be like and how they wanted to do her room and a dozen other things, but he couldn’t get to sleep. Maybe there was something to him being allergic, he thought. It felt like he was itching all over.

  *

  Sometime later, he started awake.

  Angela was a few feet from him, whimpering in her sleep.

  Groggily, he sat up and wiped a hand across his face. He licked his teeth and groaned. He should have brushed his teeth before going to sleep. His mouth felt gross. But when had he fallen asleep? He had no memory of drifting off, only of not being able to sleep. He sat up and looked around. The candles were out, that was good, and evidently the power came back on as well, for there was a dim glow coming from the entryway and kitchen, where they must have left the switches in the on position.

  Beside him, Angela made another noise. She wasn’t whimpering, he realized, but moaning in her sleep.

  He crawled over to her. Back when she was four or five, he’d go to her room to check on her before he went to bed and he’d sometimes find her bolt upright, terror-stricken, but still asleep. She’d mutter unintelligibly. She’d throw the covers off her legs. Once she’d even gotten out of bed and walked all around the room, clearly in distress, muttering something about snakes before he and Sarah had awakened her and finally been able to calm her down.

  What she was doing now didn’t look like one of those episodes. It wasn’t quite that bad. But she was clearly upset about something in her sleep, and so he did what he had done for her when she was younger and whispered as soothingly as he could in her ear, stroking the hair out of her face.

  “Easy,” he said. “Shhh, you’re okay. Go to sleep, baby.”

  When at last she seemed to be through it, he sat back down on his sleeping bag, running his fingers through his hair and wishing he could go back to sleep. That wasn’t going to happen, though. He could feel that now. And he had an early meeting too.

  Then, from somewhere behind him, he heard a noise, like a woman whispering, the words indistinct, but clearly a voice.

  He looked at Sarah, who was sleeping soundly on her own pillow.

  He waited, and when nothing happened, he put his head down.

  But then he heard it again, and sat up, his skin prickling, his ears straining against the silence of the house. When it came again he jumped to his feet. Was somebody in the house? It had been empty for nearly three years, like Thom had said, the only visitors Lightner’s housekeeping staff. Maybe one of them had decided to crash here for the night, or was living here without anybody knowing, or...Oh hell, he thought. Just go figure this out.

  In the hallway outside the library he heard the sound again. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from, just that it was coming from somewhere inside the house, and not too far off. Robert checked the conservatory, the kitchen, the breakfast room. Nothing. He went into the entryway, which was brightly lit now, and waited.

  This time, when the sound came again, he was certain it was coming from upstairs.

  He started up, trying to be quiet, listening carefully, but when he smelled smoke he broke into a run.

  At the top of the stairs he sniffed. He’d never had a keen sense of smell – and certainly not since smoking a pack a day back in college and early grad school, which
had killed his sinuses – but he was certain the smell was coming from the east wing.

  Somebody smoking up here?

  That was it, wasn’t it? Not only had some maid decided to squat in his house, but she was smoking in it too. The bitch.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “If there’s somebody up here you need to show yourself right now.”

  The itching had returned, and he could feel it needling at his back, his arms, his belly. He waited, chasing the itch up and down his arms, and when the whispering came again, his anger and his resolve melted. The sound was the same, breathy and feminine, but his reaction to it was different up here. Robert suddenly felt cold. His hands were numb. The whispering seemed ominous and dreadful. It filled up the silence of the house and everything around him felt absolutely still. Even the rain hitting the windows to his left made no sound.

  “Hello?” he said.

  The smell seemed to be coming from a room just off the landing, where a door stood ajar. He thought back to several hours earlier, when he and Sarah had chased Angela down this hall. Robert thought he remembered that all the doors along the length of this passageway had been closed when he was here before, but he couldn’t be sure.

  He put his hand on the knob and swallowed. His throat felt tight and dry, and though it wasn’t cold up here, he was trembling. Somebody was in that room, he was certain of it. Holding his breath, he pushed the door open, groped the wall for the light switch, and turned it on.

  The room was empty.

  It looked like it had been empty for a long while, too. Not just years, but perhaps decades. And it wasn’t a bedroom either. There was no bed, no dresser, no sign of a closet. Only chairs in groups of twos and threes arranged around three different wooden card tables. The back wall was curved and he realized that this must have been the sitting room of the lady of the house. The curved windows along the far wall looked over a gazebo and a small rose garden. This room must have been on the edge of the fire damage, for the wall on the right side was different from its mate on his left. The difference was subtle, but easy enough to see.