It’s a bad start to the day, but I can’t let this demotivate me. Remember why you’re here. He squeezed his eyes closed and thought of his mother and her helpless, anxious smile as she tried to help him brainstorm a way out of their financial problems, even though they both knew there was no easy fix. The way she tirelessly cooked his favourite meals in an effort to cheer him up. Her unwavering faith. And the friendships she’d lost because of him.
Heather had moved Guy back into her house after the incident with Savannah, and for a lot of people, that made her guilty by association. Heather pretended not to notice the pitying glances and judgemental sneers from their neighbours when they passed her in the street, but Guy didn’t think he could ever forgive them for it. No more than he could forgive himself. Heather had lost her friends because of him. She was the kindest woman he knew; she didn’t deserve to be shunned by anyone.
She won’t be for much longer. Once we sell Rookward, we can move somewhere no one knows us. I can make her proud again.
Guy dropped his head and let his shoulders slump. The pot boiled, but it took him a long time to take it off the stove.
Chapter Ten
Dawn was bitterly cold. Guy compensated by wearing two layers of clothes. He ate breakfast in the dining room, shivering and hunched over his bowl of dry cereal. Tendrils of mist swirled across the lawn, masking the forest. Something small had been etched into the corner of the glass. Squinting to make out the letters, he realised he already knew what it said.
PROMISE.
Odd. Did I see it yesterday and just forget it was there? He felt like it was somehow connected to his dream, but the memory was too blurred to recall. He shivered and spooned more flakes into his mouth. The extra clothing wasn’t doing much to remove the chill, so he decided some high-energy work might help. As soon as he’d finished breakfast and washed up, he unloaded the last of the equipment from the truck and tucked a roll of garbage bags into his pocket.
He went through the house, starting with the kitchen, and put anything organic or decayed into a bag. That included the threadbare rugs and the cloths and fabrics in the cupboards. When a bag was full, he tied it up and threw it into the back of the truck.
The large sofas in the guest room caused him some problems. After trying—and failing—to drag them outside, he settled on using a hatchet to cut them into pieces he could carry. It was easier than he’d expected; the fabric had absorbed moisture and weakened the wood, and the structures mostly broke apart with a few well-aimed hacks. They left a mess of splinters and scraps of fabric scattered across the floor, but the room’s carpet would need to be pulled up anyway.
Once the last sofa was out of the room, Guy returned to see if there was anything else he could remove. The ornate clock on the mantelpiece was silent, frozen at 12:15, the same time he’d discovered it at the day before.
Must be something there to catch it. I hope it can be fixed. I’d like to bring Mum a souvenir, and she could use a nice clock like this.
He opened its front and prodded the second hand. It didn’t move. Guy tried rewinding it and was rewarded by a steady tk-tk-tk. He decided to give it another chance and left it on the mantel.
Next, he went to tackle the upstairs rooms, starting in the master bedroom. The space made him uneasy after the nightmare, but it needed to be dealt with, and putting it off wouldn’t achieve anything. The very first thing he threw out was the baby monitor. A small bubble of satisfaction rose in his chest as the blue plastic thudded into the base of the garbage bag. Good riddance.
The dream still lingered in his mind, and when Guy dragged the quilt off the bed, he half expected to find traces of blood underneath. However, the bed sheets were an undisturbed off-white. He released a held breath then stripped the mattress and bundled the sheets into the bag. They were enough to fill it, so he tied it off and went to the window.
The frame was frozen in place. Guy applied his weight to it and was rewarded as the swollen wood shifted. After a moment of straining, the window opened in a rush. Guy grinned as he stuffed the bag through the opening and watched it drop to the ground. The window shortcut would save a lot of time and effort.
Sadly, the mattress was too big to fit through the window. Guy had to carry it down the hallway and stairs, knocking the eerie family portraits askew as he passed them. The fabric smelt horrific enough to make his eyes water. He put it on the back of the pickup truck and used bungee cords to keep it in place.
Lastly, he began emptying the master bedroom’s drawers and wardrobe. The drawers were easy—they didn’t hold much, mostly just undergarments, hairbrushes, and gloves—but a sense of surrealism washed over Guy as he opened the wardrobe.
Rows of dresses confronted him. Guy brushed a finger over the fabric of the first one, a tidy forest-green affair, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull it off the rusty hanger.
The clothes humanised the family in a way Guy hadn’t felt before. Even when he was examining the pictures in the stairwell, it was difficult to imagine them as real people with plans, worries, and dreams. But the clothes made them seem almost too real. A series of tiny stitches on the sleeve marked where the fabric had torn and been mended. A smudge of powder marred the collar. The style and weight of the fabric made Guy think the mother had sewn it herself in her workroom. How many hours of effort did she put in to get it just right?
Don’t get sentimental. Guy pulled the dress off the hanger, but he folded it before putting it in the bag. He reached for the dress behind it, but his fingers fell still before touching the fabric.
The sky-blue gown had a sweetheart neckline, and the outline dredged up a memory Guy had almost forgotten: Savannah, in the park, laughing as she tried to coax a duck onto their picnic blanket with the crust from her sandwich. Sunlight danced over her fine, long hair and pale skin. She never wore much makeup, but she loved dresses, and the red outfit with its sweetheart neckline made her look like something out of a dream. Guy remembered joining in her infectious laugh as the duck finally plucked the bread out of her fingers, and thinking he would be a lucky man if he could spend the rest of his life with her.
A keening moan bled out of Guy. He bent forward, fists gripping the dress’s fabric and his forehead resting against the sleeve as he fought for control over his emotions. That afternoon with Savannah had once been a happy memory but had become twisted until it held nothing but cutting pain.
“C’mon. C’mon. Stop it, you idiot.” Guy kicked the corner of the wardrobe, but he didn’t put much effort into the motion. He leaned back, sucking in ragged gasps, and pulled the dress off its hanger. He forced his fingers to release their grip on the fabric and drop it on top of the open bag at his feet, then he reached for the next outfit.
It was a light summery dress. A dark-brown stain smeared the torso. Guy frowned and blinked watering eyes as he pulled the dress out. He held it up to the light to examine the mark.
It almost looks like…
Images of the blood-soaked bed resurfaced, and Guy’s stomach clenched. He faced away from the dress, but his mind could still picture the stain, so much like dried blood, blooming across the dress’s chest and stomach sections.
It’s not blood. It can’t be. Why on earth would anyone keep a bloodied dress? She probably spilt wine or some kind of sauce over it and hung it up until she had time to clean it.
The fabric around the stain was stiff and made a disquieting crunching noise as Guy folded it into the bag. He knew it was so old that no stench could remain, but he still breathed through his mouth and held the bag at arm’s length as he reached into the wardrobe for the next dress.
It also had a stain across its front. The spot was smaller and more scuffed than the first dress’s, but it covered the same areas. Dark drips ran down the skirt.
Guy stared at it. One dress was easy to explain. Two was just strange.
The idea that the family might have been part of some fundamental religious organisation resurfaced. Maybe one of the cults th
at sacrificed small animals.
Guy stuffed the dress into the bag. His uneasiness morphed into discomfort as he drew out a blouse. Only a dozen drop-sized marks dotted the shirt, but they matched the dark liquid on the others and were scattered over the same area.
What the hell happened with this family?
He tried not to see any of the other clothes as he tore them out of the wardrobe, but he caught glimpses of the blood on most articles—and not just the wife’s, but also the husband’s. It took three bags to clear them all out. Guy didn’t breathe easily until the last one was thrown out of the window.
The bedframe was too badly stained by the mattress for anyone to want it, so he spent the following hour disassembling it and throwing it out the window a plank at a time. Cleansing the room was cathartic, and by the time he’d cleared out the last of the unwanted furniture and swept the space, it was unrecognisable.
Hunger gnawed at him, so he set out to make lunch. He put extra effort into it, warming up a tin of beans, taking the time to boil water for coffee, and badly burning a slice of bread over the portable stove, then he carried his meal outside, where he could relax in the clear air.
As he scraped the worst of the charring off the toast, he scanned the backyard and the woods surrounding him. The long, weedy grass shifted like an ocean as the wind tugged through it. Farther away, hints of movement drew his attention to the spaces between the trees. He wondered what types of animals lived in the area.
A dark, blocky shape protruded from one of the trees a few yards into the forest. Guy spent a moment squinting at it before he figured out what it was: a tree house. He put his half-eaten beans in the back of the truck and strode towards the trees.
Guy’s father had built him a tree house. Holding blocks of wood while his father sawed them were some of Guy’s earliest recollections—and part of a cherished collection of memories of his father. The man had passed away from undiagnosed cancer when Guy was four, but the tree house had remained, almost like a tangible part of his father and a space for him to decorate and spend hours inside.
The structure hadn’t been as solid as Guy’s father had intended. A storm swept through the area a few weeks before Guy’s sixth birthday and collapsed the house. In some ways, it felt like losing his father for a second time. Guy’s mother had bought him the swing set in an effort to console him. Guy had never told her, but he sometimes still dreamed about the tree house.
Dew clung to Guy’s jeans as he waded through the weeds to reach the forest. The tree the cubbyhouse had been built on was dying, and part of the trunk had split—possibly from the weight of the house. The blackened branches drooped until the house teetered at an angle, only six feet above the forest floor. It was a little larger than Guy’s childhood tree house but still smaller than his bedroom. The floor space would have comfortably held four or five children.
Guy stepped over the remnants of a rotten ladder and strained to see inside the house. Fabric had been tied to the walls, but Guy’s angle was too low to see in properly. Wishing he’d thought to bring his gloves, Guy braced his palms on the doorway, tested his body weight, then pulled himself up.
Chapter Eleven
The tree groaned under the additional pressure and sagged a few inches lower, but the trunk still refused to fully break. Guy carefully lifted himself until he could hang his arms inside the tree house’s opening and rest his weight on the cracked wood.
The tree house had been the boy’s domain, Guy guessed, based on the blue and red colours and the whittled spear in the corner. Wooden crates and cracked plates had tumbled against the wall when the house had tilted at an angle, but drawings were still stuck to the walls.
Guy squinted as he tried to figure out what the crude pencil art depicted. The same image repeated again and again—a small person wielded a sword against a taller figure with pointed, snarling teeth and outstretched arms.
Is it supposed to be a monster? It was unmistakably human—and female. Guy didn’t know if he was reading too much into a child’s scribbles, but the woman had been drawn with dark hair—a shade that matched the pictures in the house. Was he afraid of his mother?
The stains on the dresses, the disquieting photographs, the remoteness, abandoning their house—the more clues Guy found about Rookward’s previous family, the uneasier he felt.
Close to a dozen drawings had been taped around the tree house, each bearing a variation of the dark-haired woman. Sometimes the sword-wielding figure battled her alone; sometimes he stood beside a smaller figure, probably his sister. Guy skimmed the images, then his attention returned to the spear in the corner. It had been fashioned out of a branch with its end whittled into a point. A collection of small rocks had been tucked into a bag beside it, next to what looked like a slingshot.
Was he playing soldier… or preparing to defend himself against an enemy?
Guy’s arms were aching from the effort of holding his body weight, so he reluctantly slid back out of the tree house’s door and let the structure rebound to its normal position, once again hiding the child’s treasure.
Is he still alive? He’d have to be in his late fifties by now. I wonder if there’s any way to trace him, or his sister, and find out what really happened here?
Guy didn’t like the idea of dismantling the tree house. It would bring back too many memories of losing his own cubby. It was far enough from the yard that its presence probably wouldn’t bother the new occupants, so Guy decided it could stay standing for a while longer.
He turned back to Rookward. The dark windows watched him like cold eyes. He shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself.
There’s got to be some clues hidden in the house. Almost against his better judgement, Guy had let his curiosity grab hold, and he couldn’t shake it. Something to tell me why they left. Something to explain where they went. What sort of family they were. What happened to the children. Rookward must have the answers—I just need to recognise them when I find them.
He collected the last of his breakfast from the porch and threw it out before returning to the task of cleaning out the rooms. This time, he paid more attention to what he was throwing out. After de-cluttering old detergent bottles and sponges from the laundry, he uncovered a desk with drawers full of papers in one of the downstairs rooms. He pulled up a seat and spent two hours sifting through the sheets.
From what he could tell, the family’s father had worked as a financial advisor for a bank. A lot of the papers talked about investments, interest rates, and appointments. The same name cropped up repeatedly: Thomas Caudwell.
That’s weird. It’s the same name I dreamed I heard last night.
Guy tried not to let it unsettle him. Thomas was a common name. Besides, he argued, he might have seen the name in the house’s deeds or somewhere in the house. His subconscious might have remembered it even though his brain hadn’t.
The discovery gave him a new avenue to explore, though. If he could find out the children’s names, it might be possible to look them up online or in a phone book.
The papers also gave him the name of the bank Thomas worked at: Westmeyer & Rogers. Guy hadn’t heard of it before, but he made a mental note to research it when he went home the next day.
Guy went through the papers carefully, but he didn’t find any other details that could help. The most recent date he could find was in April 1965, which was a rejected application for an extended break from work. He packed the papers into a crate to throw out.
Once the study was clear, he reluctantly turned towards the family room.
It was the one part of the house that most needed his attention, and the one he’d been dreading. He donned a mask to protect against the mould and swapped his cloth gloves for heavy-duty plastic ones, then he pushed his way into the room.
For a moment, he stood in the doorway, surveying the wall of vines, the buckled floorboards, and the splotches of black growing across the walls. Then he squared his shoulders and started by clearing th
e window.
Sheltered inside the house, the vines hadn’t been washed by rainfall. Decades of decayed plant matter had built up behind the living vines, and Guy grimaced as he shovelled handfuls of the crusty, slimy substance into a bag.
He took more care around the window frame, where shards of glass poked out between the vegetation and threatened festering, infected cuts. It took nearly half an hour to wiggle all of the shards out of the casing and double-bag them, but once the window was completely empty, Guy was able to throw the bagged trash through it to deal with later.
Next, he went to dismantle the lounge chair. He picked up one of the cushions then stopped. Dark stains spread over its corner and made the fabric crusty and stiff.
Just like the clothes…
Guy prodded the stain, then, against his better judgement, he tugged the mask down to sniff it. The scent of organic, musty decay assaulted him, but the stain didn’t hold any odour. Guy supposed it wouldn’t, after fifty years.
He felt as though he’d found something important, but he couldn’t place it in the jigsaw puzzle in his mind. He moved to throw the cushion through the window then stopped again. If this is significant, I shouldn’t be throwing it out. Especially without documenting it. And I didn’t bring a camera, and my phone’s battery is flat…
He faced the chair. More stains dotted the other pillows. Indecision pulled at him for a second, then Guy chose to replace the cushion on the couch. Just in case. I can always clean it out later if it turns out that it’s not important.
Guy also left the blocky TV in the room’s corner; it was too heavy to carry, but once he had new flooring in, he could put it on wheels and roll it out of the room. He bagged the jacket hung on the back of the door. Scraping up the decayed rodent corpses made Guy’s skin crawl, but once they were gone, he turned his focus to the floorboards and walls. He only needed to worm up a couple of boards to see the mould hadn’t reached the structure, which was a big relief. It would need washing down with bleach, but it wouldn’t require rebuilding.
The Haunting of Rookward House Page 6
