Harmony House (4 page)

“All right,” he says. “Just stop for a second. I'll try.”

I stop walking and turn toward him.

“Okay,” he continues, squinting his eyes and reaching his hands up to me like a carnival fortune-teller getting messages straight from the goddamn cosmos.

He starts mumbling some different vowels and consonants, stretching out the sound and watching me closely as though I might tip him off when he's getting close. “Mmmm, Nnnn, Geeeeeee, Aaaaa, Beeeeee, Kaaaaay, Llll, Eeeee, Jaaaaaay . . . Jen?”

“What?” I say, genuinely surprised.

“Jen? Is it Jen?”

Now it's my turn to squint at him.

“Someone must've told you,” I say.

“No, I guessed.”

“Well, I am dubious,” I tell him. “But I guess a deal's a deal.”

“Here,” he says, handing me the cigarette I'd forgotten I'd asked for.

“Oh, thanks.”

I take it and do the whole lighting-a-cigarette thing. I breathe in and out.

“Listen,” I say. “You can walk me to the gate, but you really can't come any farther. My dad . . . he's kind of old-fashioned. If he sees me walking with a boy, he really might kill you and me both. That's no joke.”

Alex seems to puff up slightly.

“I ain't scared of nobody.”

“Yeah, well, you might wanna rethink that.”

I start walking again and he follows right up next to me.

“Are you a senior, too?” I ask. “I just met that girl Christy whose aunt works at the diner. I guess you must know her.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I've lived here my whole life. Me 'n Christy been in school together since kindergarten. Same with Matt and Charlie, my two friends back there. What about you? What grade are you in?”

I tell him.

“So you're seventeen?” he asks—saying it like he's disappointed I'm not, you know,
legal
, yet. It creeps me
out. Especially because we're already through town and on the winding road back to Harmony House—walking under the canopy of low-hanging trees and moss.

“What do you think about living in a haunted house?” he asks—the question startling me a little.

“A haunted house?” I say. “What do you mean?”

He laughs. “You didn't know it was haunted?”

I try to laugh, too, but it doesn't come out right.

“Uh, no,” I say, sounding as casual as I can. “I didn't.”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “No one in town will go up there.”

“What was Harmony House?” I ask. “Do you know? Before it was a hotel?”

I drag on my cigarette and exhale and listen to the night noises from the forest around us.

“There are a lot of different stories. Some say the family that built it, their daughter, who was like our age, actually . . . she committed suicide in the house.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah. Then I heard it was like a home for unwed mothers—run by the Catholic church. Supposedly there's a graveyard out back with all the dead babies and mothers who died in childbirth.”

“Jesus.”

“I've never seen it, though.”

“You looked?”

He smiles.

“Sure, yeah. When I was a kid, me 'n my friends would come 'round here on dares and stuff. It wasn't a hotel then—just a big . . . you know . . . abandoned house.”

He stares off for a moment before adding quickly, “But we never found anything. No graves. No ghosts.”

“Great,” I say. “You really know how to welcome a girl to the neighborhood.”

He laughs.

We've reached the wrought iron gate now and I turn to say good-bye to him.

“Aw, come on,” he says. “I'll walk you a little farther. Your dad won't find out.”

“No, I can't. Seriously.”

I step in front of him, kind of, to block his path, but he keeps on walking around me, through the gate, looking around and saying, “Wow, I haven't been up here in a long time.”

“Look,” I tell him. “I really have to go.”

He smiles. The trees along the driveway cast his face in shadows.

“Which room are you staying in?” he asks. “I could come climb up and see you later?”

“Uh, yeah, not gonna happen,” I say.

He laughs.

“I'm serious.”

“I'm serious, too.”

“Don't you like me?”

“I just met you.”

“We could have some fun,” he says.

He leans in close to me in the dim light, like he's trying to kiss me and for the first time I realize that he must actually be kind of drunk, or something, because his breath smells like some kind of hard alcohol. I take a step back.

“Come on, man, be cool,” I say.

His look isn't really the nicest look I've ever seen.

In fact, it's a look that makes me chilled all over.

“Anyway, I gotta go,” I say again.

I turn and start to run off down the trail.

But then he catches me by the wrist and pulls me back toward him. A sick feeling forms at the base of my stomach. My heart races. I contemplate kicking him in the balls but hesitate for some reason.

“You don't go until I tell you to go,” he says.

His eyes are wide and crazy-looking in the darkness. I pivot and swing my boot up with all the force I can gather under it, connecting with the side of his leg so he doubles over and yells, “You bitch!” but then is up fast and running after me as I sprint down the driveway.

We round the bend, him close up behind me, when I give a little shriek and stop because a new boy has just stepped out onto the road. Me and Alex must see him at the same time, because we both stop running and I can feel his hot breath on me and my heart really does feel like it's about to crawl up out of my throat and go running off screaming into the woods.

The new boy steps past me, wordlessly, and punches Alex straight in the face—sending blood shooting out of both nostrils and making him sit down hard on the cracked concrete.

“Leave, now,” I hear the new boy say and I turn to see Alex push himself up and go running off down the driveway.

The new boy comes over to me, a little out of breath.

“Hey,” he says. “You all right?”

I shake my head.

“No,” I say. “No, I'm not.”

I blink my eyes and try to focus on him. He's heavily
built with big, broad features and dark skin.

“But thank you.”

He nods slowly and then I notice the red kind-of rugby shirt with a white stripe he's wearing.

“Hey, were you in the woods back here earlier?” I ask.

He laughs.

“Yeah, there's a path that goes through there from the beach into town. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sneak up on you.”

“It's all right,” I say. “I just moved in today . . . so, uh . . . I don't know the area.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says.

He smiles more and I can see a dimple in his cheek that's pretty goddamn cute.

“Everyone's been talking about you coming into town. There's not much else going on 'round here.”

“So I gathered.”

“I'm Colin, by the way,” he says.

I tell him my name and we shake hands and I feel the heat from his body.

“I'm sorry about Alex,” he says. “His dad owns like ninety percent of the real estate in Beach Haven . . . and Staffordshire Township. He's used to getting what he
wants. The whole Winter family is like that.”

“Winter?”

“Yeah, Alex Winter. He's got three brothers and they're all as bad as he is. Worse, maybe.”

“Isn't that the name of the actor in
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
? I mean, the one who's not Keanu Reeves?”

Colin laughs again.

“I never saw it.”

“Well, thank you, again,” I say. “Are you gonna have trouble with him later?”

He shrugs.

“Twenty bucks says he won't even remember this. We were on the football team together a couple of years ago. I can handle him fine.”

“There was something not right about him,” I say. “I felt that right off.”

“Everyone's goin' a little crazy with the winter coming in. Town like this, there's nothin' to do 'til spring. You'll see. It'll probably get worse before it gets better.”

“Great,” I say.

We both stay silent for a minute.

“How long have you lived here?” I ask him, starting back toward the house, letting him walk along with me.

“Couple years,” he says. “I was in Vermont before
this. My uncle's a contractor. Did some work on the Harmony House remodel, actually.”

“Oh,” I say. “So you know it, then?”

“Yeah, a little. My uncle only lasted a couple days on the job. You know there are no right angles in the entire building? Every corner is off center. And a room that seems like it should be directly on top of another room is to the left or right. It's like a carnival fun house. The original owner built it that way intentionally, so the hotel developers wanted to preserve that same . . . uh . . . lack of symmetry.” He pauses. “Which, when you're in construction, is a real pain in the ass.”

I laugh. “Is that why your uncle quit?”

“No, not just that. You meet him? The developer guy?”

“No.”

“People here wanted to run him out of town. They were pretty unhappy with the house being turned into a tourist attraction. There're a lotta stories about what went on up there. They think the place should have been . . . left alone.”

I glance down the drive toward the house. “Thanks for your help,” I say. “But I better go on alone from here. I was trying to explain this to our mutual pal Alex, there, but my dad is a bit of a Puritan. Meaning if he
sees me walking with a boy, he's gonna come kill me and then kill said boy, and then we're both gonna be dead.”

He laughs. “You sure you're all right?”

I nod.

“Well, it's a small town,” he says. “So I know I'll see you again.”

“I hope so. I really can't thank you enough.”

I stand on my tiptoes and kiss his rough-feeling cheek—quickly.

I run off then without saying anything else.

I run down the dark, winding driveway, the trees like a canopy overhead. There is a crashing through the underbrush. Rats and night birds, screeching owls, the high-pitched cries of bats in the night.

A car engine sounds behind me and there are headlights rounding the bend. It must be my dad returning from the store. I cut off the road into the tangle of branches and ivy. I crouch in the bramble, waiting, holding my injured wrist tightly.

My dad's car drives slowly by.

I bide my time.

My eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness again after the lights pass.

I creep back toward the house.

I climb up the trellis again and in through my open window.

The room is just as pink and terrible as when I left it.

I take off my contraband clothes and hide them under the bed.

Then I put on a pair of flannel pajamas and get out my cosmetics bag with my toothbrush and makeup.

I open the heavy door to my room and step out into the strange, curving hallway lined with grotesque, mismatching wallpaper. The closest bathroom is down the hall and so I walk clumsily.

From behind me I hear the faintest of whispering.

It's like a breath, a sigh from somewhere just out of sight.

My heart beats painfully fast, though I can't say why.

“Hello?” I say, my voice cracking.

The whispering comes again—words I can't quite make out.

“Who's there?” I ask.

The sound again—too faint and mumbled.

My hands shake.

And, finally, I recognize the voice.

My vision blurs with tears.

The voice . . .

It is my mother's.

I feel the plush blue carpet from our house in Johnstown under my feet as I walk down the staircase. The front door is open, letting in the damp summer heat. Two uniformed police officers stand, arms crossed, heads bowed, talking to my father. The lights from the cruiser outside blink red then blue then red again. The officer speaks softly, but not so softly that I can't hear.

“I'm sorry. She didn't make it.”

And now, in Harmony House, I hear my mother again.

“Anselm,”
she whispers.

But it can't be true.

It can't.

I follow the sound down the hallway. It seems to be coming from the room just in front of me.

I try the doorknob, but for some reason it's locked.

I try it again.

And then something grabs me from behind.

“W
hat are you doing?”

It's my father, his eyes narrowed at me.

“Dad, what the h . . . heck? You scared me.”

“Where are you going?” he asks, his jaw set.

“Nowhere,” I say. “I just—I thought I heard something in here.”

“Heard what?”

My mind goes blank, searching for an answer. The whispering has stopped now. And it obviously wasn't my mother. It can't have been. I don't know what the
hell is wrong with me.

“Why's this door locked?” I ask, trying to change the subject.

He tries the knob himself, as if he doesn't believe me.

“Huh? Well, maybe they put some of the valuables in here. Let's see . . .”

He rummages around in his pocket and pulls out an antique-looking skeleton key.

“This should do it,” he says.

He fits the key in the lock and turns the bolt.

The door is heavy, but I force it open. The smell from inside comes wafting out and my dad and I both recoil.

“Did something die in here?” I say stupidly.

“Yeah, maybe.”

I step through the door. A shiver runs through me. The temperature has dropped like twenty degrees just in this room—even though the windows are closed.

The dust and cobwebs are thick on the white sheets draped over the furniture. Otherwise, the room is like some kind of antiques store. Old, valuable-looking lamps and paintings stand on every surface. There are stacks of books and fine china and silver. A large Oriental rug is rolled up in the corner.

A small leather-bound book sits by itself on an antique dressing table. I stare, somehow unable to take my eyes from it.

“See? The valuables,” my dad says. “At least we don't have to clean in here.”

He laughs, the noise sounding strangely hollow—forced.

My dad goes to the windows and checks the locks. I go to the book and pick it up quickly. It drops neatly into the pocket of my robe.

I'm not sure why I do it, exactly, except I'm curious. There seems to be something about it—I don't know what.

“Well, come on,” he says. “I made some dinner—it's our first night, so it's just grilled cheese sandwiches. Tomorrow I'll make something better.”

“Sure,” I say. “Thanks, that'd be great.”

“And we'll lock this back up.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

I look at my dad in this cold, shivering room. He is trying. I can see that. He may be a backward, judgmental religious asshole—but he is my dad.

I laugh then.

“What's funny?” he asks, smiling.

“Nothing,” I say. “Thanks for making dinner.”

He shuts the door behind us and we step back out into the hallway—away from that rotting smell and the icy cold.

Downstairs we sit in the brightly painted kitchen eating grilled cheese sandwiches and half-burnt zucchini. The simple food is good on my stomach after the pie and ice cream earlier. I drink a ginger ale and my dad drinks a bottle of Budweiser.

“I got donuts for the morning, too,” he says.

I thank him, though the thought of anything sweet right now makes my stomach turn.

“I really want this to be a fresh start for you,” he says. “I want it to be a fresh start for both of us.”

“Yeah,” I say lamely.

“I'm sorry things have been so hard.”

I sip the ginger ale—then, awkwardly, put my hand on his.

“They've been hard for you, too, Dad. I know that. We both miss her.”

“But it's not just that,” he says, clasping both his hands around mine. “I need you to understand.”

He looks into my eyes and I look away.

“Your mother and I,” he says. “We weren't on the righteous path. She was a sinner. She squandered the many gifts God gave her. She brought us down. She would have pulled us both into the pit of hell. Now we have this chance and . . . I need to take advantage of it. I need you to take advantage of it, too. We're so fortunate to have it—”

I pull my hand free of his.

My jaw sets tight and I speak through gritted teeth.

“Fortunate. We're
fortunate
.”

“Yes, don't you see? God's given us this opportunity to repent.”

I stare hard at him.

We are fortunate,
he says, that my mother is dead.

We are fortunate,
he says, and he means it.

I want to scream. I want to scream at him and hit him. I want to wake him the fuck up.

The sickness is back in my stomach. The heat rises inside of me.

The yellow kitchen walls and framed black-and-white photographs of lighthouses spin around me.

“We have a responsibility,” he says. “To practice His principles day in and day out. Your mother wouldn't listen to me. She wouldn't listen to anybody. But I won't let
that happen to you. Your soul's salvation is my responsibility.”

I stand, clenching my fists, and breathe in. The heat flushes my cheeks and for just a moment my whole body seems as though it's on fire.

A loud crash sounds just behind me.

My father gasps and shields his face.

The heat drains as quickly as it came. I turn, startled.

“What was that?”

“Careful,” my dad says. “You're not wearing any shoes.”

A glass bowl has broken into tiny pieces all across the linoleum. It is so thoroughly shattered, it looks like spilled granules of sugar.

“Careful,” my dad says again.

The wave of anger is gone, replaced by a deep weariness. I am so tired I just want to curl up in a corner somewhere and disappear.

“I'm not feeling well,” I tell him. “I'm going to bed.”

He looks distractedly at me and then back at the puzzle of broken glass.

“What? Yeah, okay.”

I walk out into the hallway. The smell of mold is dank and cloying beneath the shadowed stairwell. A
cold shiver runs through me and I wrap my arms tightly around myself.

Then a sharp pain cuts into the center of my forehead.

I squeeze my eyes shut against it.

When I open my eyes again, a flash of movement makes me turn.

In the very corner of my vision there is a figure in white. A girl in a flowing dress.

She glides across the floor as though floating back and forth, back and forth, to a gentle rhythm.

Her long black hair hangs down, contrasted starkly with the white of her dress and her pale skin.

I move my lips to call for help.

But the words won't come.

And then I see a rope, caked with dirt and blood, around her throat. It extends up, to a railing above us.

Her eyes are bloodshot and bulging—her tongue protruding blue. Her neck elongated.

I blink and stumble backward. When I turn to look again, the girl's body is gone. There is nothing in front of me but empty space.

I shiver all over, wondering—was I asleep?

Was I dreaming?

I start up the many flights of stairs, back to the
upstairs bathroom—trying to forget whatever the hell
that
just was.

Inside the bathroom there is a separate walk-in shower and a deep claw-foot tub. I scrub my face at the sink and pick at a couple zits on my forehead and brush my teeth.

Behind me, I can see in the mirror's reflection, a framed woodblock print of a sperm whale—like from the cover of
Moby Dick
. There's also a horizontal, rectangular triptych of different sailboats and another frame with mounted pieces of rope tied in various sailing knots—each knot with its own handwritten label beneath it. I study them absently—the bolan, the double half hitch, the hangman's knot.

Tomorrow, I tell myself, I will go down to the beach.

I spit the foaming toothpaste in the sink and drink some water straight from the faucet—cool and clean-tasting.

I put on some lip gloss.

And then I remember the little hardbound book in my pocket. I take it out and squint to read the faded markings engraved in the cover.
Devotions of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Inside, the first pages contain the prayer my father has drilled into my head a million times:

               
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace

               
Where there is hatred, let me sow love

               
Where there is injury, pardon

               
Where there is discord, harmony

               
Where there is error, truth

               
Where there is doubt, faith

               
Where there is despair, hope

               
Where there is darkness, light

               
And where there is sadness, joy.

               
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

               
To be consoled as to console

               
To be understood as to understand

               
To be loved as to love.

               
For it is in giving that we receive

               
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned

               
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Many other, less familiar prayers follow, along with illustrations of Saint Francis himself surrounded by woodland creatures—the animals gathered around him, birds perched on his fingers and shoulders like he's some kind of goddamn Disney princess.

I flip quickly through and land on the inside back cover.

A name has been penciled in on the thick, rough-textured endpaper. I read the inscription—

Margaret.

I snap the book shut and throw it on the floor.

Margaret. My mother's name.

My mother's name is written in the cover of the book. It is written in the same kind of perfect, feminine handwriting she always had.

I sink down onto the bathroom rug.

The house sounds fade out.

Everything blurs around me.

Images are projected on the backs of my eyelids.

Gray morning light seeping in around the edges of plush, red velvet curtains. A small boy, dark-haired, with shining blue eyes and pale white skin, sits on the frayed Oriental rug looking up at a young woman in a black tunic with her long blond hair hanging down her back. She holds a nun's habit in her hands and stares down, lovingly, at the boy.

The images flash and stutter like film running through an old-fashioned movie projector—jumping from frame to frame, skipping and tearing in places.

But I recognize the room.

It's where I found the book—here, in Harmony House. Only it is different. Crosses are nailed to the bare white walls. The boy plays absently with a string of rosary beads. A fire burns, flickering in the hearth.

The woman—a nun, I realize—retrieves a brush from the antique bureau and begins to sweep it through her long, shining hair. She sings softly to herself—and to the boy.

“You're beautiful,” the boy tells her.

She turns and smiles.

“What a nice thing to say.”

The boy reaches out his hand to her.

“Are you my mother?” he asks.

The woman presses her lips together.

“You don't remember?”

The boy shakes his head.

She takes his hand in hers.

“Your mother is with the angels in Heaven,” she says. “But I love you just as much as if you were my own child. And I will always love you. And I will always care for you. And I will never let you go.”

“I love you, too,” says the boy.

The woman ties her hair back now and secures the habit over her head.

“The babies will need to be fed and changed,” she says. “Will you come with me to heat the bottles?”

The boy nods.

“Is that girl still here?” he asks.

The woman stops adjusting the buttons on her habit and stares at him.

“Which girl?”

“The one who was screaming last night?”

The woman gets down low next to the boy and whispers, “Hush, now. Hush. Don't let the monsignor or the other sisters hear you talk about that.”

“But . . . she was screaming and . . .”

The woman shakes her head.

“She's gone up to Heaven, baby.”

“With my mommy?”

“Yes.”

The boy gets to his feet and then bends to tie his shoe. The woman takes the laces from him and ties them herself.

From down the hall, heavy footsteps sound, creaking the floorboards, growing rapidly closer.

“Quick,” says the woman. “Under the bed. Go. Hide!”

The boy's eyes go wide with something like terror. He stumbles quickly beneath the wooden bed frame and threadbare mattress, peering out from underneath. He watches as
the woman, now fully dressed in her habit, goes to tend the fire. The door swings open. Another nun, older, with rimless glasses and deep furrows around her mouth, steps into the room.

“What are you still doing here?” the older nun demands. “The babies need tending.”

“Yes, Sister,” the woman says. “I was worried about sparks from the fire. But I've fixed it now. I'll start making up the bottles.”

“See that you do,” the older nun says.

She slams the door.