The Inn (6 page)

C
ordelia listened to her guests moving above her. They seemed like nice people. Strange, like all the ghost tourists were, but nice. She especially liked the man.

Nothing would happen while they were in the house. She would see to it.

She'd been seeing to it for a long time. Now she was old. She was giving the Blue Boy over to Jack and his wife. Could she sleep easy, knowing they would be the ones to take over from her in safeguarding the house?

Annabel was a wild card. Cordelia wasn't sure about her. She seemed obstinate. Defiant. Too independent.

That could prove problematic.

She wished once more that Jack hadn't brought a wife.

For a moment her thoughts wandered to Jack's father. Her son. He'd brought a wife to the Blue Boy Inn, too. And two little children.

But Cordelia pushed the thought out of her mind.

She heard the sound of her guests upstairs running water. They were washing up. They would be downstairs again soon.

The old woman made her way into the living room. It was a big, open space, furnished with just a few antique wingback chairs and a long table in front of large bay windows. The windows were cloudy. How many years had it been since Cordelia had washed them? But what did it matter, really? The bushes outside had grown up so thickly in front of the windows that they nearly obscured the sunlight anyway.

It was better that way, Cordelia thought. This house—and especially this room—needed no prying eyes looking in from the outside.

The living room was dominated by the old stone fireplace in the center. The hearth extended four feet out into the room, and the mantel was a good six feet. But the fireplace was devoid of any tools hanging at its side. There was no pot hanging inside, even for show. In fact, the opening was bricked over. No fire could be built there. The bricks enclosed the path down to the firebox and sealed off the flue. They had been installed with care and precision. Cordelia knew this. Because she had helped lay the bricks.

She heard the back door squeak open.

“Gran, we're back!” she heard Jack call.

With a final glance at the sealed-off fireplace, Cordelia headed toward the kitchen.

R
oger Askew was a mean son of a bitch.

He'd just told that busybody, dried-out old fruit Millie Westerbrook at the general store to stick it where the sun don't shine, and then added that since nothing had been stuck there in ages for her, she'd probably enjoy it.

Millie had been giving Roger a hard time because he smelled like whisky and dropped the F-bomb in front of some little kids. Why couldn't the bitch just mind her own business?

So Roger had just paid for his pack of smokes and slammed out of that goddamn place.

As he trudged through the path in the woods, he realized the reason he was in such a foul mood was all because of Tammy.

His girlfriend.

Rather, his ex-girlfriend. At least she would be, after today.

She was a lazy, good-for-nothing bitch. Roger had asked her to do one simple favor for him. Run down to the store and get him some cigarettes. And she'd said she had to pick up that brat of hers, Jessica, from school. Like the kid couldn't have waited five minutes? Tammy was just so goddamn selfish. She never did anything for Roger.

She hadn't even been putting out lately.

He stopped on the path, tore open the pack of cigarettes, shook one out, placed it between his lips, and lit it.

He sucked in the smoke. Ah, yes. He'd needed that.

Roger was going to be twenty-nine in a couple of weeks. It was time he made a clean break. He needed to give Tammy the old heave-ho. He deserved a girlfriend who appreciated him.

Not one who bitched at him all the time to find a job.

He'd had no choice but to quit the last one. The manager of the Jiffy Lube was a fucking prick. He'd had it out for Roger. Always on his case, making him take the worst of the freaking lemons that people drove into the place, the cars that were literally ready to die, and Roger was somehow supposed to get them purring smoothly again. Finally, he'd told his asshole manager to go fuck himself, and added that, since it had obviously been a long time since anyone had fucked his scaly self, he'd probably enjoy it.

That was one of Roger's favorite insults.

Up ahead on the path, he saw someone walking toward him.

Roger hoped it wasn't anyone he knew. He was in no mood to say hello to anyone. All he wanted to do, in fact, was punch someone. He had a temper. He knew that. He'd served time for beating up a few people, and Tammy had threatened to have him arrested the last time he'd hauled off and whacked her across the head. So far he had yet to smack that brat of hers, not that Jessica didn't have it coming. But Roger knew if he ever hit the kid, he'd have to deal with the freaking banshee her mother would become.

He hated kids. Even his own. His daughter was probably eight or nine years old by now. She lived with her mother up in Pittsfield. Roger hadn't seen her in three years, but still her bitch of a mother kept demanding he pay child support, and Roger was damned if he was going to fork over the little bit of cash he had to a kid he never saw and who he had doubts was really his, anyway. So now the mother-bitch had offered him a deal. Give up all parental rights for all time and she'd stop hounding him for money.

Roger figured that was a deal. Tomorrow morning he was heading up to Great Barrington to make that all legal.

He looked up the path again. Whoever he'd seen there was gone.

Where the fuck did they go? There was one straight path through these woods, from the store to the apartments along the river, where Roger lived. Must have been some goddamn nature explorer, heading off into the woods to scrounge for mushrooms or something freaky like that.

Above him, a crow in the bare tree branches suddenly screeched, making Roger jump a little.

He wished he could shoot the thing. Roger hated everyone and everything. Ever since he'd been born in this godforsaken little town, everyone had been against him. His parents. His teachers. The cops. That bitch who'd seduced him into getting her pregnant and then having his kid. Roger had told her to abort the thing, but she wouldn't.

Someday, really, he ought to just give in to his rage and get a gun and start shooting. Like those guys who finally snapped and mowed down theaters full of people or kindergarten classrooms. Roger could relate. They had just had enough of all the crap that they were dealt on a daily basis. If people only weren't so goddamn nosy—

Behind him, Roger heard a twig break.

He looked over his shoulder.

No, the sound hadn't come from behind him. It had come from off in the woods somewhere.

It was whoever had been on the path ahead of him, now moving among the trees.

The woods were a pale blue this time of day. The sun was low in the sky, hidden by clouds, and the cold, bare trees seemed to shiver before the coming darkness. The ground was hard. There wasn't a speck of green that Roger could make out anywhere.

Just blue. Deep blue shadows.

He took the last drag on his cigarette and dropped the butt to the ground. He picked up his pace a little.

From the other side of him, he heard another twig snap in two.

Why did his flesh crawl?

He'd been on this path hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. It was as familiar to him as his own living room. And Roger didn't scare easily. Rather, he scared other people. That had always been the way it was.

He was a big guy. Five-eleven, one-hundred-eighty-five. He was strong. He wore his hair long, down over his shoulders, and he brandished blue, red, and purple tattoos up and down his arms. Skulls and arrows and lightning bolts. When people saw Roger Askew coming, they didn't mess with him.

So why was he suddenly creeped out? Why did he want to get off this path as soon as he could?

The crow in the trees suddenly took off into flight, the sound of its giant wings flapping echoing down through the skeletal trees.

Roger began to walk even faster.

Up ahead, whoever he'd seen earlier stepped back onto the path from the woods.

“It's just a woman,” Roger whispered to himself, instantly relieved, and even a little embarrassed that he'd been afraid.

A woman dressed in white. With long gray hair.

Who could be afraid of some old lady?

She stood there in the middle of the path, waiting for him.

Roger felt the fear return, flooding his body like a shot of Novocain. His limbs froze. His heart began to echo in his ears.

He wanted to turn back and run the other way.

But this was just some old bitch! Why should he fear walking past her?

Roger forced his numb legs to continue walking.

As he drew closer to the woman, he noticed a few things about her. She was watching him intently. Her face was dirty, caked with something. And she wasn't really that old at all.

When he was just a couple of feet away from her, the woman spoke.

“Are you from around here?” she asked.

“Yes,” he told her.

“I seem to have lost my way,” the woman told him.

Roger was now standing directly opposite her. Not only wasn't she old, but she wasn't half bad-looking, either. Out here in the middle of the woods, Roger realized he could do anything he wanted to her. He began to get excited.

A smile started to make its way across his face, like a worm.

He never even saw the knife, but he felt it. And the warm cascade of blood that flowed from his gut down over his groin and legs. He felt that, too.

Roger looked up in disbelief at the woman.

But she was gone.

His legs crumpled beneath him. And then everything went dark.

“I
hope you slept well,” Annabel said to Priscilla and Neville when they shuffled into the dining room for breakfast the next morning.

“Well, I might have,” Neville replied, bleary-eyed, “but Prissy here was carrying on a conversation with somebody.”

Priscilla looked exhausted but exhilarated. “She came to me!” she told Annabel. “Sally Brown! She was sitting in my room talking to me all night!”

“Yeah, and keeping me awake,” Neville grumbled, pouring himself some coffee.

Priscilla held up her hand. “I wear an opal ring all the time that was given to me by a psychic. It's said to be able to attract ghosts!”

Annabel didn't want to encourage the woman's delusions. The sooner they ended this association with ghosts and weirdos the better.

“Well, what we hope for our guests is they get a good rest when staying here, so I hope tonight will be more peaceful,” she said, laying out a tray of blueberry and corn muffins that she and Cordelia had baked that morning. The old woman had shared her recipe and showed her where all the ingredients were kept in the pantry. Eventually, when she retired, Cordelia told Annabel this would be her job. Annabel thought a better idea would be to hire a chef who could whip up some nouvelle cuisine breakfasts for their guests.

As Neville slabbed butter all over a muffin, Priscilla sat down and gushed about her otherworldly encounter.

“I opened my eyes and there she was, as real as you are,” she said. “She told me that she had spent her life walking these hallways, trapped in these rooms. Oh, it was so thrilling!”

“Did you see her, too?” Annabel asked Neville.

He shook his head. He had butter on his chin. “I just heard Priscilla chattering away. A couple of times she prodded me to sit up and have a look, but each time I did, I saw nothing. She wouldn't turn on the light.”

“Sally asked me not to,” Priscilla said. “She doesn't like the light.”

“Yeah, well, whatever,” Neville said, returning to his muffin.

“I should tell you,” Annabel said, “that I don't believe the stories of the ghosts in this house. Once my husband and I take over running the inn completely, we aren't planning on marketing that particular element anymore. We're going to upgrade the house and make it a real first-class destination. No more tales of ghosts and murders.”

Priscilla looked horrified. “But you can't do that. The ghosts will still be here. Just because you don't want to promote them doesn't mean they'll just go away.”

“I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Annabel told her.

“Seriously! Sally Brown can't cross to the other side! She told me so! She's trapped. We sat and talked for nearly an hour!” Priscilla smiled, remembering. “She's really quite sweet, you know.”

Annabel smiled as well. “Well, I'm pleased that you got what you came here for.”

The Englishwoman's face suddenly changed. “You're patronizing me. Just like Neville.”

“No,” Annabel protested. “Really, I'm not. . . .”

“Yes, you are. If you don't believe in the ghosts, then you think that I'm either making up what I saw last night, or that I'm mad.”

“No, really, I just—”

“Of course, we believe you,” came a new voice.

They turned around. Jack stood in the doorway of the kitchen. He was wearing jeans and a white ribbed tank top. Annabel could tell he'd just come from the shower. His hair was still damp.

“I was a child in this house,” Jack said, coming into the kitchen and pouring himself some coffee. “My wife was not. So she doesn't know.”

Priscilla turned to look over at Neville. “You see?” she asked.

In the moment she was looking away, Jack took the opportunity to wink over at Annabel. She realized he was only trying to pacify the guests. She said nothing more.

“Did you see many ghosts here when you were a boy?” Priscilla asked him.

“Oh, many, many ghosts,” he said, sitting down at the table opposite her. “Some were pretty scary, but some were friendly ghosts, like Casper.”

“Did you ever meet Sally Brown?”

“Sure, I did. Sally and I got to be good friends.”

Annabel couldn't stand it. She walked out into the living room. She figured she'd start today with a good cleaning of the living room and dining room. She'd mentioned the idea to Cordelia this morning, who hadn't seemed to mind. Annabel wondered how long they'd have to tiptoe around Cordelia's feelings. She'd asked them to take over the place, so she couldn't very well stand in their way of modernizing it. Eventually, they'd have to just sit her down and explain that if the inn was ever to turn a profit again, they'd have to make some changes. Once the paperwork was complete, and the Blue Boy was in their names instead of Cordelia's, they could do what they wanted.

Annabel paused. It felt odd that the Blue Boy would be in her name. That she'd be an owner of a place that appeared from its sign to be the home of Tommy Tricky.

She was gripped by a memory.

Darkness. Stale air. The smell of mothballs.

She was trapped in a closet. She was banging on the door. She could hear her heart thudding in her ears.

“Help me! Mommy! Help me!”

“Your mommy isn't here, she can't help you,” came the voice of Daddy Ron. “She can't save you from Tommy Tricky!”

“No!” Annabel screamed.

“He's right behind you! Can you see hear him breathing?”

Annabel could. The imp was panting, like a dog.

“And how he loves to eat bad little girls!”

“Miz Wish?”

Annabel jumped. A voice behind her. A real voice. Not the terrible daydream.

She turned around. It was Zeke.

“Sorry,” the caretaker said. “I didn't mean to startle you.”

“Oh, it's all right,” she said. “I was . . . lost in thought.” She tried to smile. “Zeke, will you help me take down these curtains? I want to wash them and air them out. I'm going to be giving the living room a deep cleaning today.”

“Yes, sure, I can help you,” he said. “But I wonder, first, if you've seen Miz Cordelia.”

Annabel looked at the old man's face. He was clearly upset about something.

“Why, yes, I saw her earlier this morning. We baked some muffins for the guests. I told her about my cleaning plans, and she seemed fine with them.”

“Do you know where she went afterward?”

“No, I don't. Isn't she in her room?”

Zeke shook his head. “I've looked everywhere for her. And there's something I need to discuss with her right away.”

“Anything I can help you with?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Well, Jack's in the kitchen. Maybe he can help—”

“Nobody can help but Cordelia,” Zeke said. “If you see her, please tell her I'm looking for her.”

“Of course.”

The old man hurried off, as best as he could hurry, hobbling up the steep, narrow stairs.

That was odd. Where in this cramped old house could Cordelia possibly disappear?

Annabel stuck her head back into the kitchen. Neville had left. She could see him through the window out in the backyard, smoking a cigarette. Priscilla and Jack were still seated at the table, leaning in toward each other, discussing the ghosts of the house. Their faces were only inches apart. It made Annabel oddly uncomfortable.

“Another ghost I remember seeing was a little boy,” Jack was saying. “He'd come riding a tricycle down Gran's path and then just disappear!”

“Oh, that's brilliant,” Priscilla said, completely snookered and in awe.

She was pretty. Annabel hadn't really noticed before. Priscilla had just seemed too odd and eccentric to be pretty. But she was. Long blond hair and breasts much larger and fuller than Annabel's more modest pair. For a second she had a flash of Rachel Riley, and then pushed the thought away.

“Jack,” she said. “Zeke is looking for your grandmother.”

“Haven't seen her,” her husband replied, before resuming the story of the ghost boy on the tricycle. Priscilla continued to give him her rapt attention.

Annabel stewed. It was one thing to mollify the guests, to not offend them—but he was actively encouraging all this ghost talk, after he and Annabel had decided they'd put that all behind them. She turned on her heel and strode back out into the living room.

She heard something then.

The slightest sound.

Scratching.

She listened closely.

It was coming from the other side of the room.

Annabel approached the sound.

It seemed to be coming from the fireplace. From below it, to be exact. The sound seemed to rise from below the fireplace and from the floorboards surrounding it.

“Rats,” Annabel murmured to herself.

Or maybe just mice or squirrels or chipmunks.

Either way, she thought, they'd need to exterminate.