Bohemia Chills

by Lucy Lakestone

  Weeds brushed at our jeans as we walked slowly up the drive to the front. I spotted a few empty beer cans and some trash amid the bushes, but it wasn’t as bad as it might’ve been. For instance, there weren’t any dead bodies.

  Yet.

  The porch wrapped around so far, I couldn’t see where it stopped. It crept around the west side of the house, ran straight along the front on the south side, then popped out in a big hexagon before continuing around to the east, where it faced the Indian River Lagoon. I could imagine folks a hundred years ago sitting out here on their wicker chairs, enjoying a pitcher of lemonade while sweating buckets under heavy skirts and suits and smacking at squadrons of mosquitoes.

  OK, maybe it wasn’t so romantic after all.

  Now it would be nigh impossible to relax on the porch, as we found when we climbed up the front steps. A few of the floorboards were rotten or nonexistent, like missing teeth, and the rest yowled underfoot like pissed-off cats.

  “Cha-ching.” Another line in the notebook.

  Avoiding the obvious holes, we made it to the door. It had been pretty once. It was carved and weathered, hinting at multiple layers of paint, and plywood was nailed over the middle of it, just like most of the lower-floor windows.

  “What do you make of that?” I asked Landon.

  “Covering up a hole?” he mused. “Maybe a window.”

  “A window? Broken, no doubt.”

  “Probably. Nice lock, though. Brass. Ready to try it?”

  “Why not?” I pulled out the key, already attached to my silver sugar-skull keychain. “It can’t get much worse.”

  I inserted the key in the lock, and after a little jiggling, it turned. I pushed the door. It creaked open.

  It got worse.

  “Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching,” Landon remarked idly.

  “Shut up,” I said, but he was right.

  Besides the dirt — grunge, cobwebs, bits of broken wood and tile in odd piles — there were countless indications of decay. The wood floors probably would be beautiful with tons of work, but the curving staircase that climbed up from the foyer in two flights was almost as gap-toothed as the porch. Chunks of plaster were missing from the walls, revealing slats of old wood beneath. Where there was paint, it was crackled like one of Gary’s raku vases. The prisms on the chandelier above the entry hall were so encrusted with dust, they looked gray, and it was hard to tell how much of the fixture was actually there under the cobwebs.

  The adjacent front parlor to the left had a fireplace with a pretty wooden mantel that badly needed a paint job. The front and interior of the fireplace were faced with tiles, though only a handful of them were left, and only one or two of those weren’t broken. The fireplace actually opened to the room beyond, so we went through the connecting door to check it out.

  “This is huge!” I said.

  “Ballroom?” Landon mused.

  Maybe it could hold fifty or sixty people. “A modest ballroom, but a much bigger room than I expected. Check out the double doors into the hallway.”

  “And the big windows and the designs on the parquet floors. At least these are in pretty good shape.”

  I peered at the ceiling. “Is that crown molding hand-carved? Wow.”

  “Too bad the light fixtures are missing.” He gestured to the hanging wires in two places on the ceiling. “They were probably chandeliers.”

  “Cha-ching,” I said resignedly, writing Ballroom lights in my notebook.

  In the kitchen, mint walls hinted at better times. The good news was that the cabinets and sink had gotten an update — in, say, 1955. Which would be cool if everything wasn’t so derelict.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” Landon said, breaking the dismal silence as we stared at the scruffy cabinets, chipped sink, peeling paint and the black and white hexagonal tiles on the floor. Actually, the tiles looked pretty good, or would after a day or two of scrubbing.

  “We haven’t finished the downstairs yet,” I said.

  “We’ll get there. I want to see if the floors look sound up there.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “By walking on them?”

  He shrugged and smiled. “Carefully, yes. Besides, you don’t want them falling on our head, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking up at the grubby tin ceiling. “Maybe it would be better if the whole thing just collapsed into a pile. We could have a bonfire and be done with it.”

  “That’s no way to talk about a historic treasure,” he said as we moved back to the foyer and began a trepidatious ascent of the staircase.

  “This is pretty.” I nodded at the round window on the landing, leaded in a floral design with clear, beveled panels that looked out over the porch roof and the yard. It was cruddy but miraculously intact. Buoyed, I took a few steps up the next flight with more confidence. Until I teetered on a last-minute correction to avoid putting my foot through a hole.

  “Watch it!” Landon clutched my elbow as I tried to recover.

  “I’m OK,” I said, yanking my elbow away. The move threw me off balance, and I fell against the railing, which groaned and shifted. “Shit!”

  And then I was falling.

  Landon grabbed me by the arm as the section of railing crashed to the floor below us. He yanked me close, holding me tight for a second, then lifted me by the waist to a more sound step as if I was no lighter than a feather.

  Trust me. I was as heavy as at least three or four feathers.

  “Damn it!” Landon scowled. “Why are you so stubborn?”

  “I’m not.” I totally was, and scared shitless to boot. I wasn’t sure what left me more breathless, near-death or the feel of Landon’s muscled arms pulling me to safety. His touch launched a bolt of lightning right to all my tingly bits. “Thanks,” I finally managed as I regained my cool and my breath at the top of the stairs, where the floor seemed solid enough.

  “Don’t mention it,” Landon said, though there was an edge to his voice.

  We’d reached an overlook with a limited view of the foyer. Hallways extended at forty-five-degree angles from here, each adorned with peeling wallpaper and dark sconces. As I took a few steps and peered down one of the dark corridors, there was a mighty creak behind me.

  “Heavy-footed much?” I teased Landon.

  “Uh, Kayla?”

  His odd tone prompted me to turn toward him.

  He hadn’t moved an inch. “That wasn’t me.”

  As if it were listening, the whole house seemed to sigh as the creak turned into more of a groan, underscored by a strange tinkling sound that brought to mind malevolent fairies. The maelstrom of eerie sounds shot shivers up my spine. And was that a flickering light that caught the corner of my eye as I whipped my head around, looking for the source?

  Shaken, I locked onto Landon’s puzzled gaze and tried not to look as creeped out as I felt. “What the fuck was that?”

  “If I were to guess, I’d say it’s a ghost. Or the house is about to fall down.” He might have been joking, but it was hard to tell. “Only way to be sure is to keep looking.”

  Chapter 5

  The bedrooms were as expected — kind of a mess, but at least with salvageable wooden floors. There were five on this corridor, mostly empty, but one still contained a small bed with a brass frame coated in scratched-up white paint. A child’s bed?

  Half a dozen horror movies leapt to mind. The door to this room had a hole in it. The bed held a tattered boxspring, and what looked like rodent droppings were on the floor under it. I tried not to think about them too hard as I mumbled “Cha-ching” and wrote down Exterminator in my notebook.

  There was one bathroom off this hall that probably last saw a renovation around the same time as the kitchen, with pink and black tiles everywhere and a broken mirror.

  “Kitschy,” Landon said. “I like it.”

  “Really? I figured you’d like it with glass tile, faux-bronze fixtures and a waterfall shower.”

  “Why, Kayla — are you thinking
about what I like in the shower?”

  “No!” My face grew warm as we headed toward the other hallway. But now that he’d planted the image of that tautly muscled body under a cascade of pounding water — holy shit. “It’s just that you guys build those Tuscan-tropical McMansions … ”

  “My father does. I mean, I help, but it’s not what I want to be doing.”

  “It’s not?” We stepped into the one large bedroom off the second hallway — the master, I guessed, since it was a princely size, with French doors to a neat little riverfront balcony — then we briefly glanced into the funky turquoise and white bathroom there. “If you’re not happy, then why are you building Hummer houses?” I asked.

  “I like what I do,” he said, “but I’d rather revive old homes or create retro homes in historic neighborhoods with a nod to the past. Energy-efficient and hurricane resistant. One-of-a-kind projects. Renovating really turns me on. Fixing up something like this would be a blast.”

  I eyed him skeptically. “You’re on drugs.” We exited the master bedroom suite and reached a closed wooden door at the end of the hall.

  “More of a whiskey guy, actually.” He grinned as he reached out and turned the knob. He had to give it a good yank before the door yawned open with a dusty sigh.

  The hinges expelled a shriek as the door swung toward us, and I jumped back. The unnerving sound reminded me of the house’s previous tantrum, and I looked around suspiciously before advancing toward the dimly lit space beyond. Lit by what, I wasn’t sure. An enclosed spiral staircase turned up and disappeared above.

  “The turret,” Landon said with interest. “After you?”

  “Yeah. Right.” I guess it was better if I went first. Maybe he’d catch me if I fell again. “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.”

  “I love that movie.” Landon produced a small, bright flashlight to light our way as I began the spiral climb. Maybe these dark wooden stairs were in better shape because they’d been secured behind the tight door, but they felt solid under my feet and looked decent enough. The curving white walls were a little claustrophobic, even though the stairs were wide.

  The light quickly grew brighter as we climbed, and in one turn of the screw, we’d reached the top — a faceted hexagonal room about twelve feet across with five large vertical rectangular windows, each with a top panel in patterned stained glass in pretty blues and greens, like the flash in a peacock’s tail.

  I turned slowly and took it all in. It needed paint, and the floor could use a refinish, but … “Good golly, this is beautiful.”

  “Then you’re going to love this,” said Landon, who’d moved to one of the windows and was looking out.

  I followed, then clutched Landon’s arm in excitement. “The river!”

  “Spectacular, isn’t it?”

  Beyond the weedy lawn and gnarly old oaks and palms, over the short cliff that edged the property, the Indian River Lagoon sparkled. Today the water was a steely blue-gray with glints of diamonds as it stretched north and south as far as the eye could see. And straight ahead, to the east, was the narrow green barrier island that held Bohemia Beach, dotted with seemingly tiny houses and docks on the far side of the river. The taller hotels and condos and a strip of blue ocean were just visible at the horizon beyond.

  “OK, this is pretty sweet.” I self-consciously released Landon’s arm, even though my hand was kind of enjoying itself. “This would make a great studio.”

  “A writer’s garret?”

  “Painter’s. Photographer’s. You could do definitely do photo shoots here.”

  “Or board meetings,” Landon said.

  I looked at him aghast to catch him grinning again. I shook my head. “Geez, I thought you were serious. Anyway, it’s not big enough. Unless you have a really small board.”

  “My board is plenty big,” he said, and I smacked his arm. He laughed, but he didn’t move away. His body was just touching mine as we stood side by side, taking in the small boats on the river and the clouds dotting the blue sky. All of a sudden the light and airy — OK, musty, but airy — space seemed a lot smaller.

  “Maybe it could be an observatory?” I asked softly, trying not to notice his heady cedar-lime soap scent and the way the hairs on his arm were igniting gooseflesh on mine. He was taking up all the air in the airy room.

  “Or a bedroom,” he whispered, and when I looked up, he was staring at me intently, with none of his usual glib humor. Those lips, usually smiling, were instead serious. Can lips be serious? They looked serious, and moist, and slightly open as if he were struggling for breath. And his dark eyes held mysteries and depths I had no idea he was capable of.

  I swallowed, tore myself from his magnetic pull and took a step back. “Yeah, well, it’s a long way down if you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.”

  Landon blinked, then a corner of his mouth turned up. “All you need is a chamber pot.”

  “Gross.”

  “Or a chute?”

  I groaned and laughed at the same time. Nothing like potty humor to make me forget — almost — that he was hotter than a lava flow in July. “Now that you mentioned a bathroom, maybe we should wrap this up. I’m remembering all that coffee I had this morning.”

  “Agreed. Let’s finish the tour. But at least you know you have one good room.”

  “If I can only get to it without falling on my ass.”

  “Right.” He gestured to the steps. “After you. And be careful.”

  We reached the second-floor hallway below without incident, and he peered around a rounded wall into a corner I hadn’t even noticed was there.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Another door?” He opened it. “Another staircase under the top one. Back stairs. Not uncommon in a house like this.”

  “If it’s better than the others, I’m all over it.”

  “It’s not a spiral, and it looks solid. But let me go first this time, just in case.” He brought out the small flashlight again, though a window on a landing halfway down made it mostly unnecessary.

  Two flights brought us down behind the kitchen. Better yet, the stairs were actually intact, though the one just above the landing sounded like a dying frog when we stepped on it. I might have jumped a little.

  We gave what appeared to be a very roomy dining room a quick glance — it had a great river view but was as dilapidated as everything else — and moved toward the other room at the back of the house.

  “This is the last one, right?” I asked.

  “Yep.” The ornate wooden door was closed. Landon tried the knob. “It’s locked.”

  My eyebrows popped up. “Why would it be locked?”

  “Monsters?” Landon suggested. “Meth lab? Did the lawyer give you any other keys?”

  “Just the one.”

  “Might as well try it.”

  I shook my head, doubting it would work. I jiggled the key and turned the knob. “I think something clicked, maybe? But it won’t open.”

  “Let me try.” Landon turned the key and knob as I had, but he also leaned heavily on the door.

  The seal popped and the door swung in so fast, it brought Landon with it. He landed hard on his side in the darkened room as a musty miasma surrounded us.

  “Are you OK?” I squealed, kneeling next to him, not sure whether to touch him. An angel and a demon had a rapid-fire argument inside my head about the pros and cons of touching Landon.

  “Fine. All in a day’s work.” He sounded grumpy, but he gave me a half smile and held out a hand. I grabbed it, stood, and made a show of pulling him to his feet.

  It was pretty nice touching Landon.

  Only then did I look around. I sucked in a breath. “Is this what I think it is?”

  Chapter 6

  Landon, still dusting himself off, moved to where speckles of light were shining through tall curtains on one side of the room. He tugged at the drapes, and in slow motion, they disintegrated off their curtain rods, leaving behind a t
ornado of dust motes swirling in a wash of sun. The sudden illumination revealed a time capsule: a dazzling library.

  A dusty dazzling library, to be sure. Still, it was just the sort of thing I’d always hoped a library would be when I escaped into books as a kid. For one thing, it had splendid light, and the top panels of the large windows were blue and green stained glass, like what we’d seen in the turret. At the back of the house, this room faced north into what was probably a lovely garden at one time. Now the view was mostly trees and scrubby bushes.

  I hugged myself at the discovery of this unexpected treasure. “This is incredible. Last night online I read that the original owner, Mrs. Fountain, started Bohemia’s first library.”

  “She must have loved books,” Landon said. “And no one else cared enough to take them out of here.”

  Floor-to-ceiling bookcases were stuffed with volumes, their spines a rainbow of muted colors, promising adventure and ancient knowledge. A rolling ladder allowed access to the top shelves. Resting in a round wooden stand was a globe that was probably outdated fifty times over. Big shapes in the middle of the room were covered with fabric that once was white.

  “I hope those books don’t disintegrate like the curtains did,” I said.

  “Valid concern.” Landon moved to the ladder, tested the bottom rung with one foot, then easily climbed up while I held my breath. He pulled a book gingerly from the top shelf and opened it. To my relief, it didn’t fall apart in his hands. He sniffed it. “It’s been here for a long time without air-conditioning, but I don’t think they’re ruined. They just smell kinda funny.”

  “You smell kinda funny.”

  “Ha ha.” He climbed down. “There’s even furniture in here.”

  I regarded the blocky, sheet-draped shapes in the middle of the room. “Might just be ghosts taking a nap.”

  “You’re a ghost taking a nap.”

  “Sometimes I feel that way.” Damn it. I didn’t want him to know how invisible I felt most of the time. “I — I’m pretty sure it’s not ghosts.”

  “Coffins?” His tone was light, but his brown eyes held a question. A question for me, not a question about ghosts or vampires.