The Inn (25 page)

C
had woke up, only gradually becoming aware of his surroundings.

He was in the basement of the Blue Boy Inn. And he'd been stabbed.

He looked down at his body. He was drenched in blood. He'd lost a great deal. But his shirt and heavy sweater had acted to stanch the flow, becoming wedged in the open wound in his abdomen almost like a bandage. Chad knew that if he pulled his shirt and sweater off, he'd release the dammed-up blood again. He couldn't let that happen. He had to keep pressing against the wound until he could get to a doctor.

Who was the woman who had stabbed him? He'd never seen her before. Another guest at the inn? Chad didn't think they'd taken in any other guests after all the trouble began. But who she was didn't matter right now. He had to get out of there.

How long he'd been out cold, Chad couldn't be sure. His head ached. From the throbbing he felt at his right temple, he guessed he'd hit his head after being stabbed. Probably when he'd fallen, he'd hit the bottom rung of the basement stairs. Yeah, that must have been what happened. Chad was lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.

Was the woman with the knife still around?

Carefully, Chad managed to sit up. He didn't know if he could walk. But he had to try. That woman might well have been the killer of Paulie and Priscilla, and she could come back to finish him off. Who knew if she had killed the others in the house? Last Chad knew, Annabel and Jack had been talking in the kitchen. Were they dead or alive?

He made it to his feet. His head began to spin, and he had to lean against the concrete basement wall to keep from falling down.

He had to get up those stairs and out of the house, but he couldn't do anything until his head stopped spinning.

Above him, he thought he heard laughter. A man's laughter, from far away. Probably from the second floor.

He recognized the voice as that of Jack Devlin.

“L
ook at you!” Jack guffawed. “New York fashionista! Style arbiter of
Orbit
magazine! Wearing a ratty old corduroy coat and my scuffed-up work boots!”

Annabel said nothing, just sat there staring up at her husband.

“Really, sweet baby angel, you could do better than that,” Jack said, laughing.

“My clothes are all gone,” Annabel said. “I didn't have much of a choice.”

“Yes, my darling, I took all your clothes.” Jack's smile faded and his voice fell into a paternal, scolding quality. “Because I wanted to discourage you from going outside. I just knew you'd want to go out and play in the snow. But it's too nasty outside for little girls.”

“I'm not a little girl,” Annabel said.

Jack ignored the comment. “Come on, now, pumpkin pie, take off that coat.”

“No,” she said.

Jack took hold of her hands and forced her up from the chair. He walked her over to the bed and sat her down. He took a seat next to her.

“Listen to me, Annabel. We're about to have something very wonderful happen here in our new home. You have to cooperate.”

She just looked at him. His eyes were wide, the pupils dilated. She thought Jack had gone certifiably mad.

“We are going to be so successful here at the Blue Boy,” he told her, still holding her hands in a tight grip. “And that's what we want, isn't it? That's what we came here to be, right? Successful? At long last? After all our disappointments?”

Annabel remained silent.

“You have no idea how hard it was for me, sweetie babe, when my novel tanked. I really thought I was a literary wunderkind.” He laughed out loud, a strange, unhinged sound that seemed to bounce up to the ceiling and ricochet through the house. “But I was a fool. I let myself get so depressed over that, but in fact, I just missed my calling.” He smiled, showing his straight, even teeth. “I've found it here, Annabel. Here I can really be a great, great success. The money is just going to come rolling in.”

“Why do you think that, Jack?” she asked.

Annabel thought if she could engage him, ask him questions, appear to be interested in what he was saying, she could prevent him from hurting her.

“When my grandmother died,” Jack said, “Zeke told me the secret of this house. I'd always known it, really. But I had blocked it out of my mind. But Zeke brought it all back. If we are good to the house, the house will be very, very good to us. It will make us rich.”

Annabel studied his crazy eyes. “But, Jack,” she said, softly, not wanting to upset him, “your grandmother wasn't rich. The inn had been losing money for years. She was one step from bankruptcy when we took over.”

Jack smiled, nodding his head. “That was because Gran stopped being good to the house.”

“What do you mean?”

Jack sighed. “A long time ago, my grandparents ran a very successful inn. They had learned the secret from those who had owned it before, and they carried on, doing what was right and good for the house. But then—”

His face darkened.

“But then what, Jack?”

“Then my father came. After that, they stopped being good to the house.”

“Your father?”

“Yes. You see, darling baby angel cakes, that was what I had forgotten. How my father changed things during that short period when we were here.”

“The period when your mother and your sister died?”

Jack frowned. “My father let his emotions overrule his better judgment. He gave in to his heart and didn't listen to his head.” He smiled. “Now, my
mother
had the right idea, only she never lived to see it.
You
had the right idea, too, my darling Annabel, but unlike my mother, you can live to enjoy the fruits of your labors.”

“I can . . . live?” Annabel asked.

“Of course, baby cakes. But not if you go out into that terrible storm.”

Annabel allowed him to slip his boots off her feet. “So you're saying,” she asked Jack, “that the house will make us successful because of some idea
I
had?”

“Yes, honey baby lover.” Jack tossed the boots, one by one, across the floor. “You wanted to do the place over!”

He gripped her by the shoulders and stared at her with his insane eyes.

“You removed the bricks!” he said triumphantly.

“The bricks,” Annabel repeated, “from the fireplace.”

“That's the secret of the house, baby. Where all its wondrous power comes from.”

“And . . . removing the bricks will make us rich?”

“Yes.” Jack beamed. “Annabel, my dearest love, I know what a terrible year you've had. You want success as much as I do. You want to be able to show those assholes back in New York that no one can keep Annabel Wish down for long. Annabel Wish is going to come back, better than ever! She's going to run the most popular, successful inn in New England! No—in America! Maybe even the world!”

“I don't understand, Jack.”

He laughed. “What don't you understand? Didn't we envision making this place a success? Didn't we see it as a first-class destination?”

“Yes,” Annabel said. “That was what we talked about. . . .”

“Well, it can be.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “So long as we are good to the house.”

“And how can we be good to the house?”

He smiled again. “We give it what it needs!”

“And what does it need?”

“I'll take care of that part, Annabel,” Jack said, standing now, apparently assured that he had gotten through to his wife, convinced her to do things his way. “You needn't worry yourself about that.”

“Jack,” Annabel asked, “did you kill Priscilla? Paulie? Your grandmother?”

He looked at her with a kooky grin on his face. “Me? Of course not, angel pie. Why would I kill them?”

“Who did, then?”

He sighed. “The house killed them.”

“The house?”

He nodded. “It had to. Because we weren't giving it what it needed. We could have handled it on our own. But now that I understand what we need to do, I'll take care of things. We won't have any more guests going missing.” He laughed again, that terrifying yelp that sounded like a fox caught in a trap in the woods. “That wouldn't do very well for business, would it?”

Annabel realized she was safer if she just went along with Jack for now. He saw some kind of life together in this crazy house. She needed to act as if she shared his hopes and dreams. She needed to patronize him, placate him, get him to trust her again. And then, when the storm subsided, maybe she could find a moment to make a run for it.

“So, I'll take care of the house,” Jack was saying, stepping over to the window to look outside at the still roiling storm, “but you'll have your own responsibilities, sweetheart.”

“Whatever I need to do, Jack, I'm willing,” she told him. “You know that.”

“I
do
know that, angel cake.” He smiled over at her before returning his gaze out the window. “You've had as bad a time as I have. We both need a new start.”

“That's why we came here,” she said.

“Yes, it is. But I had no idea the kind of success we could have here, if we were willing to do what was necessary.” He frowned, looking back over at her. “I'm not sure if we'll be able to trust Zeke for much longer, sweetheart. So you'll have to take over from him. Your job will be the attic.”

“The attic?” Annabel asked.

“Yes. Sweetheart, it's time you learned about the attic. You see—”

Suddenly a voice from downstairs interrupted him.

“Annabel!”

She recognized the voice. It was Chad.

“Annabel!” he was calling. “Are you here?”

Annabel saw Jack's eyes change. They had calmed, become almost sane. Now they were suddenly wide with rage. Her husband spun on her.

“You've been fooling around with him, too, haven't you?” he snarled.

“No, no, Jack, I—”

He leapt at her, clamping his hand over her mouth. Dragging her off the bed, he brought her back to his closet and shoved her inside.

“You stay in there, you bad girl,” he spat. “I'll deal with your lover!”

“No, Jack, no!” As the door closed against her, Annabel screamed, in a last desperate warning and call for help, “Chad!”

The closet door slammed shut, leaving her in darkness. She heard Jack turn the lock.

“No, Jack, no, please, don't lock me in here—”

“Turn around,” came the voice of Daddy Ron, seeping through the door. “Turn around and see who's behind you.”

Annabel screamed.

“A
nnabel!” Chad shouted.

She'd called his name. She was somewhere upstairs.

Perhaps he'd been a fool to call for her. But the house had been so deathly quiet when he'd finally made it up to the top of the basement stairs. Chad had assumed he was the only one here. Maybe they'd all left, not knowing he was wounded in the basement. He could have tried going out into the storm on his own, trudging to a spot where he might have better cell reception, and calling his father or Chief Carlson. But he couldn't have left without calling to Annabel, just in case she was still in the house.

And, it appeared, she was. She had called back to him. But now she was silent.

“Annabel!” Chad called again.

The trip up the basement stairs had disturbed the makeshift bandage his shirt and sweater had provided over his wound, and he was bleeding again, pretty profusely. Chad didn't think he'd make it up the stairs to the second floor, where Annabel's voice had appeared to come from. He should just take his chances going outside and making his way through the snow, calling the cops as soon as he could. He'd already seen that the phone was gone from the kitchen wall. The only hope to get help was to get out of the house.

But as he neared the front door, Chad clearly saw there was no way he could get out. The snow was packed solid against the door and all the windows.

The only way out would be through a second-floor window.

And he couldn't leave without checking on Annabel. Maybe she'd been wounded, too, and had passed out after trying to call to him.

He had no choice. He had to go upstairs, or he'd stay here on the first floor, bleed out, and die.

But first, he ripped off a tablecloth from a hall table and wrapped it around himself as best as could, making a tourniquet to stanch the bleeding once again. It wasn't going to last long, but it would have to do for now. Chad didn't have a lot of options.

He began making his way up the stairs.

“S
orry, chief,” Adam told him, hanging up the phone.

“The county has none of its largest plows to spare. They said they'll get down here as soon as they can, but that might be days. The storm has completely immobilized everyone.”

“This is crazy,” Richard grumbled. “When this is over, I'm demanding bigger plows at the town meeting. The selectmen better go along with it. I don't want to hear any noise about money. Winters are just going to keep getting worse around here, and we need to be prepared.”

“Hey, chief,” Betty called. “Were you expecting a fax from the town library?”

“No,” he said, barely hearing her.

“Well,” the secretary said, approaching him with a thick stack of papers, “they just sent you over twenty-seven pages of town history.”

“Just put it in my in-box,” Richard told her.

Betty complied.

Richard was trying to think of an excuse to convince state officials to send them one of the massive snowplows they kept up at Great Barrington. But even if he said somebody up at the Blue Boy had some major health issue and needed help right away, they'd no doubt insist there were people all over western Massachusetts in the same position. If only he could—

All of a sudden he remembered his conversation with Agnes Daley.

Richard reached over and grabbed hold of the stack of papers Betty had placed in his in-box. Sure enough, they were from Agnes Daley.

Making use of being snowbound here in the library,
Agnes had written in her careful penmanship on the cover sheet.
So glad the board of directors installed a generator. You were asking about the history of the Blue Boy the other day. You seemed dismissive of what I told you. Here's some newspaper coverage from back in the day, chief. Give it a read. A.D.

Richard glanced over what Agnes had sent. They were microfilm printouts of old newspaper pages. The date on the first was from 1869.

REV. FALL HANGED FOR MURDER
,
the headline read.

There was an illustration of a man dressed all in black dangling from the end of a noose.

Richard looked at the next page. It was from a year later.

 

The murders up at that place really
did
stretch back a long time.

Another headline:

 

 

The piece seemed like bad gothic horror fiction to Richard, but he read it anyway.

“Ridiculous,” Richard murmured.

The rest of the pages were more recent—coverage of the deaths of the various people at the Blue Boy Inn, including the reports of Jack Devlin's missing sister.

But at the very end of the pile was another piece, dated December 26, 1915. It was one of those humorous little items newspaper editors often used as fillers. Agnes's neat, precise handwriting ran across the top of it.

Richard looked down at the article.

 

 

Richard read the piece.

Somehow the image of those three blue faces looking out of the fireplace unnerved him even more than tales of opening portals to the netherworld. All of this talk of witchcraft and spells and demonic rituals was absurd, of course. But, nonetheless, Richard was even more disturbed and anxious after reading it.

“I've got to get over to the Blue Boy,” Richard said, banging his fist on his desk. “There's
got
to be a way!”

“I've got a pair of snowshoes,” Adam said, shrugging.

“I'd give it a try,” Richard said, “but I doubt I'd get very far.”

“What you need,” Betty said, poking her head around the corner from her outer office, “is a snowmobile.”

“Of course!” Richard said. “Where can I get one?”

“Well, my son has one, but it's at our house.”

Richard jumped to his feet. “Have him ride it over here!”

“In this storm?” the secretary asked.

“Betty, that's what snowmobiles are for!”

She scowled. “Maybe the kind the Navy uses in the Arctic, but Richard, my kid uses his just for fun.”

“Then find me a better one,” the chief barked. “Why doesn't the department have snowmobiles for our regular use anyway? We're living in the goddamn Berkshire mountains, aren't we?”

“I'll make some calls,” Betty said.

“You, too,” Richard ordered Adam.

“Yes, sir!” his deputy said, picking up his phone.

Richard looked out the window. It was becoming increasingly difficult to see outside. The snow had nearly walled them in. Only at the very top of the window could Richard see a bit of sky, and that was just a furious flurry of white.

I have to get over there.
He had never felt so sure about anything. His gut was telling him something terrible was taking place.
I've got to get over there or Annabel is going to die.

He couldn't get the image of those three little blue elves in the fireplace out of his head.