36
“W
ell,” Annabel asked, after she'd given the contractors a tour, “what do you think?”
Chad looked around the place. “To really fix everything up, to do the kinds of things you've drawn up in your plans, will cost a lot of money. We're looking at six figures. I can maybe keep it under two hundred grand, but I can't guarantee it.”
Annabel frowned. “That was what I was afraid you'd say.”
Chad shrugged. “I wish it could be less. But the house is really falling apart. All the electricity is going to need to be updated. And the plumbing . . . from what I can see, I'm surprised you haven't had a major episode yet. The pipes are all rusted out.”
“Well, we'll start slow,” Annabel said. “A bit at a time.”
Chad smiled at her. “That's what Dad and I usually tell our clients. Go room by room.”
Annabel returned his smile. “And this is the room where we will start. The parlor.”
Chad liked her. It helped, of course, that she was pretty damn hot, with that shapely body and shiny auburn hair. But she was also real smart, having drawn up some blueprints like a real pro, and had some really cool ideas about how to fix this old place up. It would be a hell of a lot of fun to help her do it.
But if he refused, the old gnome in the parking lot said Mrs. Devlin would pay him
double.
That was possibly three hundred thousand smackers for sitting on his ass!
“So we'll do this room first,” Annabel was saying, gesturing around at the walls. “Open it up. Bring in some more light.” She strode over to the fireplace. “What did you guys decide about the chimney? Is it salvageable?”
Paulie had been doing his own inspecting. His sleepy face brightened now that it was his turn to show off his expertise.
“Well,” he said, “from what I could see up on the roof and down in the basement, the chimney is in surprisingly good shape. Why did they brick it over?”
“I have no idea,” Annabel replied. “The caretaker told me the chimney was broken.”
“Why would he say that?” Paulie wanted to know.
Chad stepped forward. “Is the caretaker the little, hunched-over old man we met on the way in?”
Annabel nodded. “That's Zeke.”
Suddenly, he felt he needed to do the right thing. “Ma'am,” he said.
“Call me Annabel,” she told him.
That just made him more determined to tell her the truth. “Look,” Chad said, “I don't want to get anybody in trouble, but . . .” He hesitated. “That old guy told us Mrs. Devlin would pay us double whatever we quoted you
not
to do the renovation.”
“What?” Annabel seemed aghast.
“I just thought you should know. I mean, if we're going to work together . . .”
Her eyes were blazing. “Cordelia asked us here, my husband and I, to take over the place. But then she tries to control everything we do.”
Chad looked at her. “The old man said the paperwork hasn't been officially signed yet. He said the old lady still calls the shots.”
“She's already put my husband on the deed,” Annabel told him, “and my husband supports the renovation one hundred percent.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Besides, Mrs. Devlin doesn't have that kind of money. She just told Zeke to tell you that to get you to back off.”
“That's what I figured,” Chad said. “Well, I just thought you ought to know.”
“Indeed,” Annabel told him. “Thank you.”
“So, yeah,” Paulie said, looking down at the fireplace. “I'd say that I could get this baby smoking for you in no time.”
“Could you start right away?” Annabel asked.
“Sure,” Paulie said. “I could come by later this week and get going. . . .”
“No,” Annabel said. “I mean today. Could you start today? I'll pay you entirely upfront.”
Her eyes were filled with fire.
“Well,” Paulie told her, “I suppose I could.... I'd have to go back home and get some tools. . . .”
Annabel smiled. “I want Cordelia to come down those stairs and see the work has begun,” she said.
37
B
ut what puzzled Annabel was why Cordelia had not yet come down the stairs at all this morning.
As she watched the two men rattle off in Chad's truck, with Paulie promising to be back before noon, Annabel supposed that Cordelia might have gotten up earlier this morning and then gone back to her room. She did that sometimes. And Annabel had slept a little later this morning anyway, given her bad dreams all night long.
Everyone, in fact, was sleeping late this morning. Annabel tiptoed up the stairs and opened the door to her room. Jack was still sound asleep, flat on his back, still dressed in his clothes. Pausing outside the door of their English guests, Annabel could hear snoring from inside. Neville and Priscilla were apparently still sleeping off their drunks as well. They had a plane to catch later this afternoon, and the airport was at least an hour away. If they weren't awake soon, Annabel would have to wake them.
She headed back down the stairs.
Had something happened between Jack and Priscilla last night?
Settling down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, Annabel tried to make sense of what had happened last night. Jack had definitely been flirting with Priscilla. He'd been drinking too much. He hadn't had so much to drink in a long time, and apparently he'd lost his ability to handle his liquor. But had anything happened other than flirting?
Had Annabel caught them kissing? Fucking?
Why couldn't she remember?
It was all just an hallucination
, she told herself, rubbing her temples with her fingers. And that, in some ways, was even more distressing than the idea of Jack fooling around with another woman.
She'd had hallucinations during the worst of her addiction. At rehab, sometimes they'd been overpowering. Sometimes they had been so strong that Annabel couldn't distinguish between illusion and reality.
“You're safe,” Dr. Adler, her favorite therapist, had insisted to her, but Annabel hadn't bought it.
“I'm not safe!” she had screamed, as visions of demons walked through the walls. “I'm completely
unsafe!
”
How terrible those days had been.
Annabel prayed her hallucinations weren't coming back.
But ever since she'd come to this house, she'd had signs they were returning. She'd seen Tommy Tricky her first day here. And last night, after becoming upset with Jack, she'd thought the whole house was spinning. She'd thought she was a little girl again, put in the closet by Daddy Ron. Tommy Tricky had been in the closet with her. He had come at her. He had tried to eat her!
“Stop,” she told herself.
She stood and looked out the window. Where was Zeke? She was furious with him. How dare he try to bribe the contractors? When Annabel found him, she'd let him have it. And when Jack woke up, she'd tell him exactly what his grandmother had tried to do. They wouldn't put up with such nonsense anymore. They needed to lay down the law. They were in charge now.
Annabel had to feel that she was in charge. Otherwise, she thought she might crumble into a million pieces and her hallucinations would take over again. Down into a black hole she'd tumble, and she'd never be safe again.
38
P
aulie sat in his truck and lit his pipe. He inhaled the sweet, precious weed long and deep. He felt it fill his lungs. He'd parked far enough away from the house that nobody could spot him toking. In seconds, Paulie's mind was blissful and calm.
Bracing for the cold air outside, he opened the door of his truck and headed around to the back for his tools. Paulie slung them over his shoulder and then made his way back up to the Blue Boy Inn.
He didn't usually take jobs the same day. But Annabel had given him a check, payment in full, plus a fifty-dollar tip. How could he refuse?
He knocked on the door.
Annabel opened it quickly. She was very happy to see him. Welcoming him inside, she asked him if he wanted some coffee. Paulie declined.
“Thank you,” he said, “but I never drink on the job.”
They both laughed.
Paulie got down to work.
First, he covered all the furniture in the parlor with drop cloths. Then he pulled on a pair of leather gloves and slipped some eye protection over his face. Finally, he got down to work with his chisel and his hammer. He began chipping away at the mortar.
39
U
pstairs, Cordelia could hear him start to work.
Chip, chip, chip.
“No,” she moaned.
But she couldn't move.
She couldn't stop him.
“No,” she moaned again.
Behind her came the sound of soft laughter.
40
“I
'm running to the market quickly,” Annabel told Paulie. “We've run out of coffee, and our guests will be awake soon. I'll be back in a few minutes.”
He lifted his eye protection to look over at her. “Sure thing,” he said.
Annabel smiled. “Wow,” she said. “You've already made progress.”
Paulie stepped back from his work. He'd chiseled out a two-foot-by-three-foot opening so far. The removed bricks were stacked neatly off to the side. “I can feel the air from the flue,” Paulie told her. “I might have this baby blazing in a couple of hours.”
“Thank you so much,” Annabel said. She gave him a big smile before heading out the door.
Paulie watched her leave. As soon as her car disappeared down the driveway, he stepped over the bricks and headed to the restroom.
A little more weed would make the rest of the job go by very pleasantly.
Safe inside the restroom, he lit up his pipe, making sure to crack the window. Just a few puffs was all he needed to feel nice and happy.
He returned to the parlor.
And the first thing he noticed was that the bricks he had stacked so neatly were now knocked over. That was odd. He supposed he had disturbed them with his foot.
He got back to work. Another brick, and then another. The fireplace opening was gradually revealing itself. He chipped away at the bricks, stacking them up carefully at his side. Now the space was three feet by four feet. Once he'd removed all the bricks from the opening, he could see if any repairs were needed to the flue.
Paulie reached inside the opening, feeling for the chute to the ash dump in the basement.
His hand brushed against something warm and soft.
He yanked his hand out of the opening.
“Great,” he mumbled. “A mouse or a rat.”
He rummaged around in his tool bag for his flashlight. Switching it on, he shone the light into the opening.
A little face looked back at him.
A terrible little blue face, with a mouth full of fangs.
“Jesus!” Paulie shouted, stumbling backwards, the flashlight falling from his hands.
What was that?
It looked like a freaking little elf.
But maybe it was some kind of possum.
Calming his fluttering heart, Paulie grabbed ahold of the flashlight again and got down on his hands and knees in front of the fireplace. He got as close as he daredâhe didn't want some mean old possum jumping out at himâand peered once more into the fireplace.
Just blackness now. There was nothing there.
What was in that weed he'd been smoking?
Paulie moved the flashlight around to examine the inside the fireplace. It was difficult to see, so he slowly, tentatively, stuck his face into the opening he'd made, the beam of the flashlight at his cheek.
That was when everything went red.
Excruciating pain filled Paulie's eyes.
The flashlight dropped from his hand, clattering onto the floor.
Paulie could feel sharp claws gripping his eyeballs like acorns, and then yanking them right out of their sockets. At the same time, other claws were clamping down onto his shoulders, easily slicing through his flesh and grabbing onto his collarbone.
Paulie screamed.
With uncanny swiftness, his body was pulled through the opening in the fireplace and down into the darkness.
If someone had been standing in the parlor watching, the last they would have seen of Paulie were his sneakers disappearing down an extraordinarily large ash dump. His muffled screams could be heard for a fleeting few seconds.
Then everything was silent.
41
M
illie Westerbrook looked up as the little bell over the door tinkled. The woman who'd just moved into the Blue Boy Innâwhat was her name again?âstepped inside.
“Good day,” Millie called over to her.
“Good day,” the woman called back, giving Millie a smile.
Annabel. That was her name. Millie didn't think her last name was Devlin, though. She had said something else. Something short and simple. Wells? No, it was something more whimsical than that. Mille thought it was amusing how so many of these young girls today didn't take their husband's last names. That was a good thing, Mille thought.
If she had ever have gotten married, Millie told herself, she would have kept her own name, too. But Millie hadn't gotten married. She'd never been asked. She'd waited and hoped, and finally given up. And back in Millie's day, women didn't ask men to marry them. So here she was, sixty-one and single. Millie supposed there were worse fates.
She was putting away some stockâcanned vegetablesâbut she was also watching Annabel-from-the-Blue-Boy meander down the aisles. She was an awfully pretty girl. Nice figure. Lots of wavy, shiny auburn hair.
Millie sure felt sorry for her, living in such a place.
Millie had played cards with Agnes Daley a few nights ago. They'd gotten to talking about the Blue Boy, and all the terrible things that had taken place there. Agnes was the town historian, so she knew the inn's history. She told Millie that the first owner of the place had been a priestâno, not a priest, Millie, thought, trying to remember. It wouldn't have been a priest back then. The house was built around the time of the Civil War, and Millie didn't think there were all that many Catholics in Woodfield back then. She supposed Episcopalians had priests, too, but she didn't imagine a great big Episcopalian church out there in the middle of the woods. No, the first owner had to have been a minister, of some long-forgotten Protestant church.
But what Agnes told Millie about this ministerâwell, Millie just couldn't believe it.
Seems he was a very bad man. Not a man of God at all. This minister, Agnes said, was hanged for witchcraft!
“Now, that's just plain crazy,” Millie had said to Agnes.
“Read the history books,” Agnes had replied.
“I don't know much about history,” Millie had countered, “but I do know they weren't hanging men for witchcraft at the time of the Civil War.”
“They found other reasons to hang him,” Agnes had insisted. “But the whole town knew what kind of witchcraft he practiced.”
Millie had snorted. Agnes liked to act so superior, knowing everything about the town, all its past and its history. But maybe, in fact, there was something to the story, since a curse did seem to cling to the place.
All those murders. All those people seemingly swallowed up into nothingness up at that house.
“May I pay for this?”
Millie looked up as she heard Annabel calling to her. The pretty young woman was standing up by the cash register, holding a packet of coffee.
“Oh, yes, of course,” Millie said, hurrying over to assist her.
That poor girl,
she was thinking.
That poor girl up in that frightening house....
“Did you speak with Charlie Appleby?” Millie asked when she got behind the cash register, ringing up the coffee beans.
“Yes, indeed, he sent over his son Chad,” Annabel told her. “We've got a man there making renovations now.”
Millie raised an eyebrow. “And Cordelia's okay with that?”
The clerk remembered one of the few times old Cordelia Devlin had ever stepped into this market. She'd come in with that old handyman of hers, looking for duct tape to fix a leaking pipe. She had frowned deeply when Millie had asked if she ever thought about updating her plumbing. “It's got to be plenty old,” Millie had said.
“The house is fine as it is,” Cordelia had grumbled. “Nobody's touching it.”
Annabel smiled. “Well,” she admitted, “we did have to insist. She's very sentimental about the old place. My husband and I had to assure her that we plan to do nothing that will hurt the integrity of the house. We really respect the architecture. We just want to make it more modern, more inviting to guests.”
Millie dropped the coffee into a paper bag. “Have you had any inquiries about guests?”
“We have two guests right now!” Annabel said happily. “Please spread the word that we are open under new management and that soon the place will be a wonderful getaway, complete with all-modern luxuries and amenities.”
Millie smiled tightly. “I'll let people know,” she said.
“Thank you,” Annabel replied, and then, with a little smile and wave, left with her coffee, heading back to her car.
Millie returned to stocking her cans. Why did she feel so worried for that poor child? Surely the stories that the townspeople told about the place were just old wives' talesâmyths, legends, and rumors. There was nothing to them. Even if Agnes was right about the first owner being hangedâeven if he had done some terrible thingsâthat was a hundred and fifty years ago. Nothing that had happened up there since was in any way connected. It was just a series of unfortunate, random events.
Still, Millie worried for that poor, pretty girl.