Fall of the House of Crain

by Cindy Winget

  Theo shrugged and then said, “He seems the type to sleep in.”

  Dr. Montague nodded and poured himself a cup of coffee, black. He stepped over to a sideboard loaded with pastries, donuts, and bagels and selected what looked like an apple turnover. Sitting down, he pulled forth a newspaper, opened it loudly, and began to read.

  Theo glanced at Eleanor and cleared her throat. “Dr. Montague?”

  “Yes?” the doctor glanced up from his newspaper, giving her a penetrating stare through his cheaters, seemingly wary of what she might have to say. Or perhaps he just didn’t like being interrupted when reading his morning paper.

  “Eleanor and I may have witnessed some paranormal activity last night.”

  Dr. Montague looked stunned. He set down his paper. “What, so soon?”

  Theo nodded. She went on to describe the scene, watching as Dr. Montague leaned closer to her with each sentence, his interest in what she was describing apparent in every plane of his face.

  When she finished, he took his glasses off and rubbed them clean with a napkin. Placing them back on the bridge of his nose, he said, “I never expected to yield results so quickly.”

  At that moment, Valdemar, followed by Luke, entered the dining room.

  “Valdemar! Luke! Theo and Eleanor have made contact!”

  “Contact? Contact with what?” asked Luke in confusion. He was wearing cream colored, wide-legged trousers and a blue V-neck sweater.

  “Contact with the other side,” stated Dr. Montague, pausing for effect before revealing the events of last night.

  “Oh, berries!” Luke cried when the story was finished. “I didn’t actually believe we would discover anything here.”

  Valdemar looked equally incredulous and amazed. “Truly?”

  “It was quite frightening,” Theo assured him.

  “Are you certain that you girls weren’t just feeding off each other’s hysteria?”

  “Hysteria?” growled Theo. “We weren’t hysterical. You would be frightened too if you had been there! And besides, we both heard the knocking before we were in the same room together, isn’t that right, Eleanor?”

  Eleanor nodded.

  “Let’s go check the bedrooms,” Dr. Montague stated, leaping up from his chair where it spun on one leg before toppling over with a crash. They all followed him out. Theo suppressed a grin as she noticed Eleanor glancing wistfully back at her half-eaten breakfast.

  Dr. Montague walked purposefully upstairs to the green room that Theo called hers for the duration of her stay. They all paused in the doorway, afraid to enter.

  “Where were you, Theo, when this event occurred?” Dr. Montague asked.

  “In bed. Asleep.”

  “And the knocking woke you up?”

  Theo nodded.

  Dr. Montague stepped into the room and took a look around, walking slowly from one end of the room to the next. “You say you then went over to Eleanor’s room and the knocking followed?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Let’s check Eleanor’s room then.”

  Dr. Montague skirted around them and entered the blue room. Once again, he walked about the room, as though he expected the apparition to still be there.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” asked a skeptical Valdemar.

  “I don’t know for sure. I just thought perhaps there would be some residual…” Dr. Montague petered out as he continued to look around, touching random surfaces in the room. “Nothing,” he said, disappointment in his voice.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Theo said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Dr. Montague,” he corrected. “It doesn’t matter. We’re here for the next three months, right. We’re bound to see something sooner or later. Let’s go finish breakfast.” He looked deep in thought, and Theo got the sense he was withholding something from the rest of the group.

  They followed Dr. Montague back down to the dining room where he returned to reading his newspaper. Valdemar excused himself to his room while Theo sipped at her tea, now cold. Luke grabbed a ceramic plate off the sideboard and loaded it up with baked goods while Eleanor tucked back into her food as though she hadn’t eaten in a year.

  “Hey pace yourself, Eleanor. Didn’t that mother of yours ever feed you?” Theo teased.

  Eleanor paused, a bite of scrambled eggs halfway to her mouth. She looked at Theo in alarm. Wondering at her reaction, Theo was quick to say, “I was only joking.”

  Eleanor flushed. “Money was always tight because of Mother’s medical bills. So some days I went without and gave my portion to her.”

  Theo felt awful. “Oh, Eleanor! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to—”

  Eleanor waved her off. “It’s alright.”

  Mortified at what she had said, Theo turned her attention to Luke as he sat down at the large table. “Are you honestly going to eat all that?”

  “Yeah. Why not?”

  “Your health, for one.”

  “Horsefeathers, it’s good for a man to have a healthy appetite,” he said, taking a bite out of a raspberry jelly-filled donut.

  Dr. Montague cleared his throat. “When you are all finished with your breakfast, I have asked Mr. Dudley to give us a tour of the premises.”

  * * *

  Eleanor returned to her room to grab her coat with the faux-fur collar before heading back down to the foyer to meet the others. She was still freezing. The air felt oppressive, despite the size of the mansion. She was apprehensive to explore more of the residence, the events of last night plaguing her mind.

  Looking around, she found that Valdemar was not present. Screwing up her courage, she asked, “Will Valdemar be joining us?”

  “No. He said that he was feeling tired and was going to take a nap,” said Dr. Montague. Turning his attention to Mr. Dudley he said, “Where should we begin?”

  Mr. Dudley inclined his head, indicating a narrow hallway off to the left.

  “Ah! The library. Splendid!”

  Mr. Dudley clomped off down the hallway, his work boots thumbing on the wooden floor while the rest followed closely behind. The hallway wrapped around the outside of the house, running parallel to the verandah outside. Many doors led out to the porch, popping up every six to nine yards.

  “Why are there so many doors leading outside?” Theo asked.

  “Mr. Crain was an eccentric man,” was all Mr. Dudley said.

  When he did not elaborate, Dr. Montague said, “Yes, he was. I did some research into the house, and Hugh Crain, being an odd man, wanted his dream house to be an oddity as well. He wanted a place that people would one day wish to visit. He had all the walls and stairs built slightly askew so that nothing lines up quite the way it should. The verandah wraps all the way around the house. I didn’t find anything in the course of my reading, however, that stated why there were so many doors leading to the outside. I would just chalk it up to more evidence of Hugh Crain’s eccentricities.”

  Perhaps he felt that this house needed a lot of ways to get out, thought Eleanor. Considering what had transpired last night, she would want a quick way out of the house as well. This was a somewhat comforting thought. If something should happen during the day, she liked the thought of having so many options of escape.

  As they entered the library, Eleanor’s mind was immediately drawn to the uniqueness of the space. It was unlike any library she had seen before. Books of every kind and on every subject, in no specific order that Eleanor could see, lined the walls in short, narrow shelves. She realized that she was standing in the tower she had noticed upon her arrival. The stacks rose up and out of sight, receding into the gloomy darkness of the turret. A narrow, cast-iron staircase spiraled up through the middle of the library, ending in a trapdoor that led onto a small balcony at the very top.

  “Holy Moly! This is swell!” exclaimed Luke. He spun in a circle, as though trying to take it all in with one glance.

  Normally, Eleanor was enthralled by libraries, books being her only
companion during the long nights that she had cared for her mother. But something about this one bothered her. She felt an almost overwhelming need to flee. Was this a result of the spirits knocking at her door last night? Was she more spooked than she thought? If so, why was it this room specifically that gave her such a sharp feeling of foreboding? She had felt nothing in the other rooms. Before she could dwell on this, Dr. Montague began talking.

  “Hugh Crain was quite fond of the written word,” explained Dr. Montague. “His daughters’ governess found them quite useful in the Crain girls’ education. Hugh procured as many books on various topics as he could. He wanted his girls to be well-educated and knowledgeable. Quite admirable for his time.”

  Eleanor sensed eyes upon her as they traveled past the tower library and entered the next room. With a shudder, she turned away and looked around the new space.

  It was a parlor, populated in finely crafted oak furniture with handsome throw pillows and cream-colored upholstered couches and chairs. A beautiful fireplace took up most of one wall.

  “Come along,” said Mr. Dudley when he sensed Eleanor might linger. She hurried to catch up with the group as they passed by yet another sitting room. They spent only a moment or two in each room, passing a gaming room with billiards and a round table used for poker and other card games, a music room, and many bedrooms.

  They then proceeded upstairs where Mr. Dudley showed them the ballroom that Eleanor and Theo had already discovered, a conservatory full of exotic plants, more drawing rooms, and an observatory with an enormous telescope, wall to wall windows, and a sunroof. There was a plethora of bedrooms, some of which were made up in varying color schemes like Eleanor’s own blue room.

  “This place goes on forever!” noted Theo.

  “It can comfortably house a hundred people,” said Mr. Dudley.

  Eleanor observed that Hill House, in addition to being enormous, had a weird circular pattern of inner rooms that were just that—inner—with no windows or doors to the outside. They stopped at one of these.

  “This is where our tour ends,” said Mr. Dudley. He stopped at a room with two porcelain heads affixed to the upper corners of the doorway. “This is the nursery.”

  “Ah, yes, the nursery. The heart of Hill House!” stated Dr. Montague.

  What a dismal place for a nursery. Children needed air and sunlight. Eleanor stared apprehensively at the cherubic heads that peered down on her. How she would hate to have to enter a room with those staring at her. She almost expected the small stone faces to start giggling, their childish mirth ringing out throughout the room as they had in her bedroom the night before. Had the girlish laughter belonged to one of Hugh Crain’s daughters?

  “Wait a minute!” exclaimed Dr. Montague in excitement. “I feel a cold spot! Come here, Theo, feel this. Doesn’t that feel colder to you than the air around it?”

  Theo walked over and stuck her arm in the doorway of the nursery, giving out an involuntary shiver as she did so. “Why, yes! It is cold!”

  “Luke. Eleanor. Come feel this,” Dr. Montague beckoned.

  Eleanor hung back as Luke sauntered up to the nursery door and stood in the doorway. “Yeah, maybe. I think so,” he said.

  It was her turn. She walked up and thrust her hand out as Theo had done. Gooseflesh coursed up her arm as the air turned frigid. She pulled back her arm, and the air thawed out noticeably.

  “Mr. Dudley, go fetch me a pad of paper and a pencil. I need to make a record of this.” Dr. Montague had already withdrawn a tape measure and a white piece of chalk from his pocket, an almost manic anticipation entering his expression.

  Chapter Eight

  After sending everyone else down to lunch, Dr. Montague used the measuring tape and piece of chalk to draw a circle, trying to pinpoint the exact dimensions of the cold spot. This was made difficult by the fact that his hands kept getting too cold to get a proper grip on the measuring tape.

  “Argh! Stupid thing!” he yelled.

  “What’s all the racket out here?” groused Valdemar as he stepped up behind Dr. Montague, maintaining a distance of a few yards.

  “I can’t get this confounded device to work!” He held up the measuring tape. “I can’t get a proper handle on how big this cold spot is. Will you go fetch my camera bag?”

  Valdemar dutifully left to retrieve the bag. Upon his return he said, “You know, when dealing with the supernatural, you shouldn’t be shocked if not everything goes according to your plans.” He set the bag next to Dr. Montague.

  “I believe there is a scientific explanation for everything, Valdemar, even when it comes to the supernatural. That is why I’m here. To prove scientifically once and for all that an afterlife exists.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t really here because of your son?” Valdemar asked quietly, casting his eyes down to the floor.

  Dr. Montague paused, then chose to act as though he hadn’t heard. “We missed you during the tour,” he said, continuing to fumble with the tape measure.

  “I was tired, and I didn’t think I really needed to see the entire house,” said Valdemar.

  “You’ve been tired a lot lately.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Only that you seemed fatigued upon your arrival and you appear quite thin.” Dr. Montague set down the tape measure and chalk and gave his friend his whole attention. “Are you sure that you’re alright? Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

  “I don’t have to tell you everything.” Valdemar crossed his arms and took a step back.

  “I know. But you obviously aren’t well.”

  “I’m fine.”

  What is going on with him? Dr. Montague thought. Why won’t he tell me if something in his life is causing him to lose his appetite and have restless nights? They had never kept secrets from each other before. Even when Dr. Montague had begun his quest to prove that an afterlife existed, he couldn’t withhold the information from his friend for long. Did Valdemar not feel the same?

  They had been through a lot together. Valdemar even going so far as to allow Dr. Montague to mesmerize him—once they had begun talking again, that is. But perhaps things had changed since they had had their falling out. As much as Dr. Montague wanted to believe things had gone right back to normal, perhaps he was deluding himself into thinking that they were still as close as they had once been.

  He shook his head and turned back to the doorway. He would ruminate on this mystery later. Right now, he had a cold spot to analyze. Stuffing the confounded measuring tape and chalk back into his pocket, he reached into his leather camera bag and pulled out his tripod and camera.

  “Set that up for me, will ya,” he told Valdemar, handing him the tripod. Valdemar did as requested while he got the magnesium powder ready. The light from the flash bulb wasn’t always enough, and the powder would give his picture extra light. Whatever entity was, or had been, in this room, he was determined to ferret it out.

  Valdemar finished with the tripod, and Dr. Montague felt his eyes upon him while he worked.

  “Are we really not going to talk about it?” Valdemar asked, leaning against the wall, his arms folded.

  “What? You being sick?”

  “No. Peter.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that. If you want to be up front and honest about your ‘cold’ then I would be happy to discuss it. If, however, you insist on talking about…” He couldn’t say the name. “…my son. Then you can just leave.”

  “Fine. I won’t badger you. I just don’t think it’s healthy to keep your feelings bottled up. When you’re ready to talk about what happened, you know where to find me.” Valdemar walked from the room, leaving Dr. Montague to finagle with the camera.

  Was it suddenly warm in here? With a frown, Dr. Montague walked to the entryway of the room and discovered the cold spot was gone, disappearing as though it had never been, drifting out of existence as easily as a cloud blown by a breeze.

  “Applesauce!” Dr. Monta
gue growled in frustration. He hadn’t detected anything else remarkable about the entryway to the nursery other than the drop in temperature. Should he take the picture anyway? Deciding that it couldn’t hurt, he finished setting up the camera and photographed the spot where the cold spot had formerly been.

  Then with a sigh, Dr. Montague gathered his equipment and headed downstairs to the dining room.

  On the way there he discovered the others—who had finished their meals—

  talking in the nearest sitting room. A crackling fire flickered merrily in the hearth, casting shadows around the room. Luke was in the middle of telling a story. He had Theo and Eleanor in stitches, while Valdemar merely smiled from the chair he reclined on. Valdemar sat a ways back from the others, all of whom had pulled their chairs close to the fire.

  Dr. Montague cleared his throat, making his presence known. “I am on my way to the dining room. I wish for the three of you to explore some more,” he said, looking at Luke, Theo, and Eleanor. “Poke into even the most unlikely of places and see if you can find any more cold spots. Take a pad of paper and pencil with you so that you can make note of anything strange or unusual you may encounter. Don’t go together in a group. You’ll cover more ground separately. I’ll meet you for dinner later.”

  “You got it, old sport,” said Luke.

  “What about me?” asked Valdemar.

  “I brought you here as more of a friend and observer, not an assistant like the rest. You may do as you please. There is an exquisite library here, as you would have known had you taken the tour with us earlier. I suggest you find a good book and settle in close to the fire.”

  He said this both because he wanted his friend to take it easy, but also as a slight dig, knowing that his friend detested feeling useless. A bit of payback for bringing up his son when he knew very well how sensitive a subject it was.

  * * *

  Theo watched as Eleanor walked to the antique secretary in the corner of the room and found each of them a pad of paper and a pencil.