Chris stirred first on Thursday morning. He stumbled out of bed wearing just boxers and made his way to the bathroom, absently combing his fingers through his sandy-colored hair. Hunny lifted her head and watched him for a moment before jumping off the bed and following him to the bathroom. She sat patiently outside the closed door, waiting. A few minutes later he came out of the bathroom and found her sitting by the door, staring at him, her tail wagging.
“Come on, girl,” Chris said before taking her outside.
Twenty minutes later, Chris, coffee cup in hand, stepped out onto his front porch. Just as he was about to bend down to pick up his morning newspaper, he noticed a car sitting in the driveway next door. Both the passenger and driver doors were wide open and the car appeared to be empty. But next to the vehicle stood a man and woman, and with them a young girl who looked to be about Evan MacDonald’s age.
The child stood quietly by the woman as the two adults engaged in a heated discussion. The man seemed angry and pointed to the street. Chris glanced in the direction the man pointed and spied a moving van driving in their direction.
For a brief moment Chris had considered walking next door and introducing himself to who he assumed were his new neighbors, but he didn’t think barging in while they were clearly arguing would be a terrific first meeting. Instead he bent down to pick up the newspaper just as the moving van pulled up in front of what had been Pete Rogers’s house and parked in the street. Before going back inside his house, Chris glanced over to his new neighbors and watched as the woman marched into her house, the little girl following her. In turn, the man slammed the passenger door shut on his car and then stomped around to the driver’s side of the vehicle. The next moment he backed the car out of the driveway and parked along the street, while the moving van pulled into the now empty driveway.
“I’ll meet them later,” Chris muttered to himself as he went inside his house.
Thirty minutes later a knock came at his front door. Chris wondered briefly if it might be his new neighbors coming to introduce themselves. But once he opened the door, he found Adam Nichols standing on his doorstep.
“Morning, Chris,” Adam said cheerfully, holding up an Old Salts Bakery sack. Hunny, who stood between the men, wagged her tail at Adam and tried to nose the bag, but Adam held it out of her reach.
Chris looked at Adam’s offering. “Cinnamon rolls?” He gave Hunny a silent hand command to get back. She obeyed.
Adam nodded and said, “You mentioned you weren’t going to the office today.”
Chris opened the door wider. “No, I’m helping set up the haunted house.”
Adam stepped inside.
“So what did I do to deserve cinnamon rolls?” Chris asked, closing the door behind them.
“Trying to put you in a good mood,” Adam said, walking into the kitchen and tossing the sack on the counter. He helped himself to a cup of coffee.
“I use these sometimes to coax Heather out of one of her surly moods.” Chris picked up the sack, pulled out a cinnamon roll, and took a bite.
“Does it work?” Adam asked. He helped himself to a roll and then took it and his now full coffee cup to the breakfast bar and sat down. Chris joined him.
Chris shrugged. “Old Salts cinnamon rolls are pretty good, but they aren’t magic. So what do you need?”
“It’s not what I need, it is what you need,” Adam said, pulling his cinnamon roll in half.
“When have I heard that before?” Chris chuckled and took another bite of his roll.
“You told me last week you might be interested in buying some more oceanfront property?”
“I might have been interested in Pete Rogers’s house had I known it was on the market.”
Adam shrugged. “I didn’t know it was for sale either. The courts are handling Rogers’s estate. The house never showed up on MLS.”
Chris shrugged. “No problem. So where are these properties?”
The two discussed real estate for almost thirty minutes when the conversation turned to local gossip.
“So have you met your new neighbor?” Adam asked. He now sat on the sofa across from Chris, their empty coffee cups abandoned on the breakfast bar.
“No. But I saw them this morning. At least I assume it was them.”
“I noticed the moving van when I drove up,” Adam said. “But there was nobody outside. So what are they like? Young? Old?”
“Family.” Chris shrugged. “Looked to be in their early forties, I guess. There was a little girl with them. Don’t know if they have any other kids. I considered going over and introducing myself, but when I saw them, they appeared to be having a fight. Didn’t think it would be a good time to barge in.”
Adam chuckled. “Yeah, moving can be stressful for some people. More than once I’ve had to calm down a buyer when something didn’t go as they expected.”
“I wonder what Rogers is going to do with the proceeds from the house. See if he can find a lawyer that can get his sentence reduced?” Chris suggested.
“You know, Rogers already had money—most inherited from his wife. But between you and me, a good portion of his estate has already gone to Mel, settling a wrongful death claim against him for her mother, along with damages for his attempt to kidnap her. When the court is done distributing the funds from the Beach Drive sale, Rogers won’t be seeing any of it,” Adam explained.
“I heard the house next door belonged to his wife.”
“The original house did,” Adam said. “Actually it belonged to his wife’s parents. But that house—well, most of it—burned down not long after she died. He rebuilt it, only keeping that corner section.”
“You mean the brick section?” Chris asked. The southwest corner of what had been Pete Rogers’s house—about four feet on the south wall and four feet on the west wall—was made of brick.
Adam nodded. “From what my grandmother once told me, the fire didn’t take the house down to the ground, but it destroyed much of it. Rogers had the debris hauled away and kept the foundation and rebuilt on it, adding a garage. But he left that section. It was the only part of the original house he didn’t have torn down. I used to think it had once been a fireplace and they had removed the chimney after the fire.”
“It wasn’t?” Chris asked.
“No. The original house was wood frame, but it had that brick corner. I always assumed it had been a fireplace, but Pete said it hadn’t been.”
“I always figured it was an abandoned fireplace.”
“Have you ever been inside Pete’s house?” Adam asked.
“A couple of times.”
“So you saw the brick section from the inside and the copper panel?”
Chris frowned. “I guess I’ve never been to that part of the house. What is it?”
“That brick section is built like a four-foot square, from floor to ceiling, and on one of the brick walls inside the house it’s covered with a copper panel. The panel is engraved with the name of the builder.”
“That’s different.”
“I think the original house was built the same year as Marlow House.”
Chris arched his brow. “Really?”
“Yeah. I suspect that’s why Pete left the section up. Not that he was ever that interested in local history, but I think he figured if he went to sell the house someday, it might add value to the property.”
“Interesting,” Chris muttered.
“You know what I recently discovered?” Adam asked.
“What?”
“After I heard the house had sold, I did a little digging into old titles. That property was originally owned by the Marlows. Which isn’t all that surprising, considering Frederick Marlow once owned a ton of land in this area. But he was the one who originally had the house built, the one that burned down. And it was Walt Marlow who sold the property to Pete’s in-laws. Not to his in-laws exactly. To his father-in-law’s parents.”
“Really? Did Marie know that?” Chris asked.
&nb
sp; Adam shrugged. “If she did, she never mentioned it to me.”
When Chris walked Adam to his car later that morning, the moving van was still in the neighbor’s driveway and the movers were in the process of taking a mattress up the walkway. Chris stood in his driveway for a moment, watching as Adam drove off, giving him a final goodbye wave. Just as he turned to his house, he heard someone calling, “Hello!”
Looking in the direction of the new neighbors, Chris spied the man walking toward him. He was smiling, no longer looking angry, as he had the first time Chris had seen him.
“Hello!” the man called again when he reached Chris, extending his hand in greeting.
Chris accepted the handshake. “Welcome to the neighborhood. I assume you are my new neighbor?”
“Yes, my name is Austin Crawford.”
“Chris Johnson here, nice to meet you.”
When the handshake ended, Austin placed his balled fists on his hips and glanced briefly at his house and then back to Chris. The woman Chris had seen Austin arguing with earlier was walking toward them. She flashed them a smile.
“This is my wife, Mia. Honey, this is Chris Johnson, our neighbor.” Austin introduced them after his wife reached them.
“So nice to meet you,” she beamed.
Austin wrapped his right arm around his wife and pulled her closer to his side. He smiled at Chris. “So tell me, is it true what our real estate agent told us? No kids in this neighborhood?”
“I’m afraid not,” Chris said, thinking of the little girl he had seen earlier. There wouldn’t be any neighborhood kids for her to play with. “Just Connor, but he’s only a month old.”
“Yes!” Austin said gleefully, giving his free hand a fist pump.
“Oh hush.” His wife laughed, nudging him with one hip. She smiled up at Chris. “You have to excuse my husband. He isn’t fond of children.”
“It’s not like I hate them.” Austin shrugged. “But I don’t want to live on a street with a bunch of noisy kids hanging around.” He looked at Chris and asked, “Am I right?”
Chris smiled dully and looked past the man at Pete Rogers’s old house. The young girl stood inside, looking out the window at them. Chris’s cellphone began to ring.
Pulling the cellphone from his pocket, he looked at it briefly and then said, “Excuse me, I have to take this call. It was nice meeting you both.”
The couple said a brief goodbye and watched as Chris walked away, his back to them and his cellphone at his ear. They turned toward their house. When Chris was out of earshot, the woman said, “Oh my god, he is gorgeous!”
“Shut up,” her husband muttered, dropping his arm from her shoulder.
“Oh, come on, he is. Is he an actor or something? A model? Dang, and I thought the only thing I would have to look at here was a great ocean view.”
Five
On Thursday afternoon Walt stood in his living room, holding a plastic bag filled with what looked like cotton. He read its label: Spiderwebs.
“I guess you can buy about anything these days,” Walt said as he tossed the bag to Chris. Also with them in the living room were Heather and Danielle, each woman busy sorting through large paper sacks filled with Halloween decorations.
Holding the plastic bag filled with faux spiderwebs, Chris paused a moment and said, “You know what I need to finish decorating? I know it would really help.”
Heather glanced up from the bag she was sorting through. “What?”
“A big slice of Danielle’s double fudge chocolate cake,” Chris said.
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Walt chimed in.
Danielle chuckled. “Decorate first; cake later.”
“Slave driver,” Chris said as he ripped the plastic bag open. “I hope you have more than this.”
“More than enough,” Danielle said, taking another bag of spiderwebs out of her sack and throwing it at Chris.
“Hey, wait a minute.” Chris used his wrist to dodge the incoming missile. It fell to the floor. “One at a time.”
“I got some great spiders,” Heather said as she pulled a handful of plastic spiders out of her bag.
“Perpetuating another myth,” Walt said.
“What myth is that?” Danielle asked as she checked her to-do list.
“That haunted houses are covered in spiderwebs. Marlow House was haunted for almost a hundred years, and I am proud to say we were virtually spiderweb-free,” Walt boasted.
“That’s only because its previous living owner had the presence of mind to hire people like Joanne to keep it clean,” Danielle reminded him.
“Here it is!” Heather shouted as she pulled a small tube out of her bag.
“What’s that for?” Walt asked, eyeing the tube.
“It’s for Max,” Heather explained.
“But first Walt needs to explain it to him,” Danielle said.
“Explain what exactly?” Walt asked, taking the tube from Heather and reading its label.
“It’s fairly obvious,” Heather said impatiently. “A haunted house needs a black cat. Max is almost a black cat—almost.”
“Aww,” Walt said, handing the tube back to Heather. “You intend to blacken his white-tipped ears?”
“They said this is nontoxic, will cover the white fur, and will easily wash off,” Danielle said. “But I don’t want Max going around trying to rub it off and getting black dye all over the place. I thought you could explain it to him.”
Walt took back the tube of black dye and said, “Let’s see how this works.” He glanced around, looking for Max.
Pearl Huckabee stared out her bedroom window at the morbid sight below. Headstones lined her neighbor’s backyard, transforming it into what looked like a cemetery. When stopping at the hardware store earlier that day, she had overheard two women discussing the unsightly decorations. Although, it seemed as if no one shared Pearl’s opinion that the decorations were in fact unsightly.
“I heard they’ve fixed the backyard to look like a cemetery. They’ve added headstones,” one young woman told her much older companion, discussing the haunted house decorations going up at Marlow House.
“I don’t know why they needed to go to all that trouble, considering the house next door is practically a real cemetery!” the older woman joked, referring to the bodies recently discovered in Pearl’s backyard.
“You mean Beach Drive Cemetery?” the younger woman said with a laugh.
The two women had no idea Pearl, who stood behind them in the checkout line, listening to their conversation, owned the property where the bodies had been found.
After taking a final look at the sight below, Pearl closed her curtains so she wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. Hopefully they would remove the headstones as soon as this haunted house nonsense was over.
She then headed downstairs. A few minutes later she walked outside to get her mail. Making her way toward her front gate, she noticed the traffic had already increased on Beach Drive. A moment later she took several envelopes from her mailbox and glowered at the passing vehicles. They slowed down when reaching Marlow House to read the makeshift sign that had been posted on the front fence. It listed the hours of operation for the upcoming haunted house. Actually, it listed when the haunted house tour would begin each day, but it didn’t state when it would close. Pearl had read the sign earlier and had even called the city office complaining. According to them, Danielle had taken out a permit for the sign, and it would be removed by November second. Once again, there was nothing she could do. She just hoped they would be closing early each evening.
Just as she closed the door on her mailbox, she noticed a large truck coming up the street. As it passed her house, she read the sign on the side of the vehicle: Bellemore Construction, Frederickport, OR. Pearl frowned and craned her neck toward the street, watching as the truck parked at Marlow House. Unlike the other vehicles, it wasn’t just passing by.
Pearl thought about how she had looked for a contractor to do some repai
rs after moving into her house. She couldn’t recall a Bellemore Construction company in the area. She wondered if they were new in town—and she wondered what they were doing next door. What kind of work were the Marlows planning now?
“They’d just better get a permit,” Pearl grumbled, turning back toward her house and starting up the walk. Just before she reached her front porch, she heard a meow. Looking north, to the fence separating her property from the Marlows’, she spied a large black cat sitting in the tree, looking at her.
At first glance she thought it was the Marlows’ cat. But then she noticed something different. It was all black. The cat did not have white-tipped ears.
Pearl glared at the feline, mentally daring it to jump into her yard. “Mr. Stray, how about a quick trip down to the pound? I don’t need any feral cats hanging around here.”
The next moment the black cat jumped down off the tree, disappearing into the Marlows’ backyard.
The Bellemore brothers stood on the sidewalk at the front gate leading up to Marlow House and stared up at the Second Empire Victorian with its mansard roofline.
“We’re really here,” the elder brother, Cecil, said in awe, taking in the sight.
“It’s gorgeous,” the younger brother, Chester, muttered. “But it looks pretty good. Not sure they’re going to need us.”
“The house is old,” Cecil reminded him. “It may look good on the outside, but I can’t believe it doesn’t need some work. And it would be easier for us if we had access to the house.”
Chester nodded to the haunted house sign hanging on the fence. “Looks like they plan to turn the place into a haunted house for Halloween. I suppose that would be one way for us to get inside.”
Cecil shook his head at the suggestion. “With all those other people hanging around? I don’t think so.”
Chester let out a sigh and said, “Let’s go introduce ourselves.”
The Ghost and the Halloween Haunt Page 3
