The Inn (18 page)

U
pstairs, Annabel was awake. She lay rock still, listening to Tommy Tricky and his twin whisper under her bed.

“Let's get her.”

“No, not yet.”

“But I want her.”

“Leave her!”

I'm going mad,
Annabel thought.
Stark raving mad.

There was no such thing as Tommy Tricky. But here she was, listening to his voice. And there were two of him.

Knowing that she had gone insane gave her a weird sense of peace. She just lay there, not moving, listening to the little men scuttle around under her bed.

“H
ello?”

A man's voice startled Neville awake. He had fallen asleep reading his book. His head was down on his chest. He leapt from his chair.

“Hello?” the man called again.

Two people had let themselves in and were now standing in the foyer. The man who'd been calling was Chad Appleby, the contractor. The other was a pretty, dark-haired woman Neville had never seen before.

“I'm sorry to just barge in on you,” Chad said, “but we knocked and no one answered the door.”

“Oh, it's quite all right,” Neville told him. “But I'm afraid Jack has gone up to Great Barrington and Annabel is . . . taking a nap. She wasn't feeling so well, you see.”

“No problem,” Chad replied. “I'm just here to take some measurements. This is my assistant, Tammy Morelli.”

“How do you do?” Neville asked, smiling over at the woman, who nodded hello.

“I'll need to go down into the basement,” Chad said. “I need to make sure the floorboards are going to be strong enough for when we take out that wall.”

“I'll walk down with you,” Neville offered. “I know where the string for the light is.”

“Thanks.” Chad turned to Tammy and tossed her a measuring tape. She caught it expertly. “In the meantime, start measuring the windows and moldings like I told you, okay? Not just the ones on the first floor, but on the second floor, too. We're going to order all the new windows at the same time.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” Tammy said.

The two men set off down the stairs into the basement.

“Here's the light, right here,” Neville said, when they reached the bottom. He pulled the string.

“Thanks,” Chad said. “I can find my way from here.” He switched on his flashlight. “I just want to inspect the floorboards.”

“Actually,” Neville went on, “I came down so I might ask you a question.”

“What's that?”

“Annabel was a bit concerned earlier when she found a dark, brownish-purplish substance inside the chimney down here. Apparently, when she opened the ash dump, it was full of the stuff.”

“Brownish and purplish?”

Neville nodded. “She thought it looked like blood.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Given everything that happened here, to your friend and my girlfriend, well, I thought you ought to know. And if there was any way you could take a look at it . . .”

Chad swung his flashlight over to the door to the ash dump. “Why the hell is it padlocked?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Neville said. “And the key has been missing ever since Annabel looked inside. Zeke said what she saw was wet soot.”

Chad made a face. “Who ever heard of purple wet soot?”

“Well, I guess that's right. I was going to mention it to the police . . .”

They had reached the base of the fireplace. “I'd say that would be a good idea,” Chad said. “I mean, if it's a clue to what happened—” He stopped speaking abruptly. “Hey,” he said. “Listen.”

They put their ears close to the ash dump door.

“Something's in there,” Chad said.

Neville listened. There was indeed something in there.

And it was eating!

The sound of chomping and chewing came from inside the old brick chimney.

T
ammy stretched the measuring tape across the windowsill on the second-floor landing. She noted the length and jotted it down in a little pad. Then she did the same for the height.

This place wasn't so creepy. All her life Tammy had heard stories about the Blue Boy Inn. There had been lots of deaths and disappearances up here. Kids in school called it a haunted house. Her mother used to say the place was “cursed.” She hadn't even liked to drive by on the road on the way to Millie's market.

But the English guy who'd greeted them had been pleasant enough. And once Chad was through with his renovation, the place was going to be real bright and sunny. It would be like a modern showplace, according to the plans Tammy had seen. She was excited to be in on it. This would be good for her. A real change, and Tammy needed a—

“I told you, no more!”

An old man's voice suddenly cut through the stillness of the upstairs corridor.

Tammy tried to ignore it, but the voice came again.

“Get back here!”

The voice was coming from the steep, narrow stairs at the end of the corridor. Tammy assumed they led to the attic. She took a few steps in that direction, pausing at the foot of the stairs to listen.

She could hear people moving about. There was some kind of struggle, it seemed. The old man spoke again, but softer this time.

“Stop this,” he urged. “There are people in the house.” And then he added, insistently, “Shhh!”

Now Tammy was distracted by a sound behind her. She turned away from the stairs and looked back down the hallway. A woman was emerging from one of the rooms. She was dressed in blue jeans and a wrinkled oversized T-shirt. She looked a wreck, as if she hadn't slept in days. Her long auburn hair was all mussed up. Her eyes caught Tammy's.

“Who are you?” the woman asked.

“Tammy Morelli. I'm working with Chad, the contractor.”

The woman's eyes softened. “Then you're real,” she said, a small smile fluttering across her face. “Good. That's good.”

She made her way down the stairs.

How very strange.

Tammy thought she might have to revise her earlier impression of the Blue Boy. It was indeed pretty creepy after all.

“A
nnabel!” Neville exclaimed. “You're up! Are you all right, my dear?”

“I need to take a walk,” she said. “Clear my head.”

He thought she looked terrible. “It's very cold out,” he told her.

She didn't reply, just yanked on her coat. Behind Neville, Chad now appeared, emerging from the basement stairwell.

“Hello, Annabel,” the contractor said.

She grunted a reply.

“Are we still on for tomorrow morning?” Chad asked. “To take a drive up to Great Barrington and pick out some tile and paint?”

Neville watched as Annabel turned to look at him. Her eyes seemed dull and gray. It seemed almost that she didn't recognize Chad. She stared at him for several seconds, as if she was trying to process what he was asking her.

“Yes,” she said at last. “Take a drive. Get away from here. Yes, we're still on.”

“Great,” Chad said. “You know, I should tell you that we were just down in the basement—”

Neville quickly and subtly moved his foot over to the other man, whacking his shin.

Chad stopped speaking. He exchanged a look with Neville.

“Do whatever you need to do,” Annabel said softly. “I need to take a walk. Get some air.”

“All right,” Chad said. “See you tomorrow then. I want to get an early start. The weather report says we might get a pretty big snowstorm tomorrow afternoon.”

Annabel didn't answer. She just headed outside.

Chad looked over at Neville once she was gone. “Why did you stop me from telling her about what we heard in the chimney?” he asked. “If she's got raccoons living in there, she's going to need an exterminator before we can finish repairing the fireplace.”

“She's had a rough day,” Neville replied. “She doesn't need to start worrying about raccoons.”

Chad wasn't satisfied with that answer. “But that might explain the blood she found in there. If those coons have been eating squirrels and mice . . .”

Neville gave him a cold look. “I doubt it's squirrels and mice they're eating.”

Chad shivered. “Wait. Are you . . . ?” His face blanched. “Are you thinking that the killer stuffed Paulie's and Priscilla's bodies inside the chimney, and that's what we heard the raccoons chomping on?”

“It did cross my mind.”

“That's just too freaky.” Chad looked back down the stairs. “But you just may be on to something. That's one really wide chimney. You could fit a body in there, sure.”

“Especially if the killer was adept with a butcher knife, as the hand in the wood box would seem to indicate,” Neville added.

“Jesus.” Chad shuddered. “We need to tell Annabel, or her husband.”

“I promised Annabel last night that I would tell the chief of police. She did not, for her own reasons, want her husband to know.”

“Why the hell not?”

“It doesn't matter.” Neville headed toward the door, grabbing his coat from the hook on the wall. “All I know is I need to fulfill the promise I made to Annabel. I'm going down to the chief's office now.”

“I'll go with you,” Chad said. “He'll want a statement from me, too, about what I heard.”

“All right.”

Tammy had come down the stairs. “What's going on?” she asked.

“Listen, Tam,” Chad said, “I'm going to run Neville here into town for a moment. I'll be back in two shakes. You almost done?”

“I've measured every window upstairs,” she said, “except for the attic. It's locked. There's somebody in there.”

“It's Zeke, the caretaker,” Neville told her.

“He seemed a little upset.”

“That's just Zeke,” Neville assured her.

“Okay, listen, Tam,” Chad said. “Get the windows in the kitchen and dining room measured. We might as well plan for everything now. We're going to be replacing all the windows eventually.”

“All right, boss.”

Chad turned to leave, and then looked back at Tammy. “You going to be okay by yourself? I'm just going to be gone a little bit.”

“Well,” Tammy said, “I've discovered there's some weird people in this house, but I haven't seen any ghosts yet.”

Neville saw the smile the two of them exchanged.

Operative word being
yet
,
he thought, as he and Chad left by the front door.

I
t was the thought of driving up to Great Barrington that revived Annabel. The thought of getting away from here, on the road, driving miles and miles away. The idea appealed to Annabel almost as much as a Caribbean vacation.

The cold afternoon air rushed into her nostrils. It functioned as she had hoped. Her mind felt clearer, more alive.

As she walked into the woods, leaves and twigs crunching under her feet, Annabel told herself she had allowed her imagination to run amok. It had happened before, when she was in the hospital, when sometimes she hadn't known where she was, when the orderlies had looked like deformed monsters and her room like a dungeon. Jack was right. Her doctors had warned her she might have flashbacks. The delirium that had set in as her body withdrew from the drugs had been intense. It was still there, buried deep down in her brain.

It had taken being raped by Jack to bring it out again.

He wouldn't call it that, of course. He'd say they had just made love. Annabel hadn't fought him. She hadn't resisted. But still she felt raped just the same.

He had just tried to do it as fast as possible, fearful he'd lose his erection again,
she argued with herself.
It wasn't rape. That's not fair to Jack.

But what about fair to her? She couldn't deny how she felt.

And that horrible feeling had led to some horrible hallucinations. Annabel had to find a way to deal with it, to get it all out of her head—the anger, the fear, the sense of violation. Otherwise, she wouldn't be able to go on. She would always feel unsafe here.

Annabel paused at the little white stone marker. She looked down at the words carved across its surface.

 

C
INDY
D
EVLIN

 

Poor little girl. How had she died? Her death must have been terrible, given how much blood was found.

Annabel wondered what kind of memorial Jack would want for his grandmother. They'd been notified that her body had been taken from the morgue to be cremated. Jack had told her that his grandfather's ashes had been scattered in these woods; Annabel assumed that was what he'd want to do with Cordelia's as well. They should have a little service, she thought. Maybe ask a minister to come in and say a prayer. Annabel could get some fresh flowers from Millie's store and carry them as the old woman's ashes were scattered. Afterward, they'd put the flowers on the mantel over the fireplace.

Annabel walked on into the woods.

How she wished she was walking down Fifth Avenue, or through busy Times Square, taxicabs honking, sirens wailing, lights flashing. She yearned to be surrounded by masses of people—thousands of them, all moving past her, rubbing shoulders—and away from this stark, gray, silent place. Some claustrophobics hated being in the city, and longed for the empty countryside. Annabel was different. The city made her blood race. It filled her up.

She missed New York like an old, comforting friend.

Above her, a crow cawed. She heard the flapping of its wings, but could not spot it through the network of interlacing, bare, blue limbs.

Annabel didn't want to get lost. She kept turning around, making sure she could still see the outline of the house.

What had she been thinking? Had she really been so angry at Jack that she believed him capable of murder? How crazy was that? What motive did Jack have to kill those two people? Even if something had happened between him and Priscilla that night, Jack had had absolutely no interaction with Paulie that mattered. It was just crazy. In her confused state of mind, subconsciously blaming Jack for hurting her—violating her—Annabel had seen sinister motivations behind every action Jack took, every statement that he made.

She'd been seeing other things as well.

Like blood in the chimney, when it was clearly just old soot and debris.

Like a pair of Tommy Trickies, whom she had stopped believing in a long time ago.

I've been decompensating
, as Dr. Adler would say. She still remembered the definition he'd given her of the term after he'd used it to describe what was happening to her.
The failure to generate effective psychological coping mechanisms in response to stress, resulting in personality disturbance or disintegration.

That was what she had felt. That she was disintegrating.

She had to get it together. She was stronger than this.

She stopped and sat down on a log, breathing in the cold air. She could see her breath in front of her.

Off in the woods, she heard the snap of a twig.

She wondered what kind of animals might be out here. Jack had said they'd feared little Cindy had been killed by a bear all those years ago. Were there still bears prowling these woods? There were also coyotes and foxes and bobcats, Zeke had told her. The bobcats could be particularly vicious.

And they'd seen that big, terrifying moose on the ride up, too.

She laughed a little then, remembering the moment. Annabel felt as if she had tumbled down the rabbit hole into a very strange, topsy-turvy world.

Another snap of another twig, closer this time.

Annabel stood. She shouldn't have come out this far. What if what she heard moving out there was a bear or a bobcat?

She looked around. She couldn't see the house.
Damn it!

But she could hear something approaching, crunching through the leaves.

“Okay, Annabel,” she whispered to herself. “It's time to go home.”

She started walking back in the direction she'd come. At least, she thought it was the same direction.

All at once she heard something.

The tweet of a bird?

But it sounded different than that....

She paused.

The sound came again.

Annabel's blood ran cold.

It was no bird.

It was also not a bear or a bobcat, either.

What Annabel heard was a short, two-note whistle, made, she was certain, by human lips.

It sounded again.

As did the crunching of the leaves, very close to her now.

So maybe it's a hiker,
Annabel thought.
Or a hunter.

A hunter with a gun. Who might mistake her movements among the trees for a deer, and shoot to kill.

Annabel began to walk faster. And as she did, the sound of whoever was crunching through the leaves toward her accelerated at the same pace.

This was no hunter, no hiker, she told herself. It was also not a wild animal.

She walked even faster. The sound behind her also sped up.

Annabel realized she was being pursued.

She started to run.