“Alright. Fine. But you’d better work this out, missy. Jeff’s a fine man. Maybe better than you deserve. Buying a place without even going to look at it first. That’s just asking for a whole heap of trouble.”
It might have been foolish to purchase the little cottage without visiting it first. They had been told this by everyone, not just Chloe’s know-it-all mother. Technically, though, they had seen it. There were some lovely, if not professional photographs on the Internet. The cottage was a tiny thing. As quaint and inviting as any fairytale home, it was surrounded by large, vibrant trees. The place looked a bit unloved and neglected in the photograph, and the photographer had evidently not cleared the shot because there was the shadow of a figure staring back from the front window, but the agent they were dealing with (Donna Tharp, “a trusted name in realty,” according to the ads) told them everything could be easily fixed or sewn up.
“You’ll love it! Just love it!
Hand to God
.” Chloe didn’t like that last bit of Donna Tharp’s statement. It came very close to blasphemy.
They had yet to speak to the previous owner of the cottage. She still lived on the hill above them in a large house that overlooked the cliff, threatening to throw itself—every last splinter—over the edge. Donna Tharp had told Chloe that the previous owner had never actually lived in the cottage, and Chloe saw why from her seat in the Jeep. She could see the big house on the cliff before she had even gotten the first true glance at the cottage in the woods. The sad foreboding structure sent a chill through her. She hoped the same despondency was not prevalent at the cottage.
They were on a bumpy gravel drive once they finally got off the main highway. It led them under large trees and through deep puddles, and all the while it was up, up, up. Chloe hoped they would get to the cottage before too much longer. Images of horror films and cannibalistic families living in the woods ran through her mind. She knew not to look out her passenger side window. She knew to keep her eyes locked straight ahead when her ‘feelings’ came on as strong as this, especially in wooded areas. She might sense something she would rather not. Chloe had a feeling for things. She felt more deeply than others the things that the world would call supernatural. She turned to God to help her in dealing with this gift. There were all sorts of sins out there. All manner of sinners. Her senses were always very keen. She had ‘feelings’ often. But for the most part, she had trained herself not to
see
. That was the key. Just don’t
see
it.
They drove through a creek bed that ran shallow. No Hope Creek was the overwrought name Donna Tharp had given her for the place. The rocks knocked against the tires of the Jeep. It wasn’t a huge creek, but in the winter it might be trouble with the wrong vehicle. Chloe noticed the density of trees grew thicker as they crossed No Hope Creek. Crossed it right on up to Bad Luck Hill. The trees across the creek seemed more interested in the Jeep now. They clawed at it as the vehicle climbed. Chloe almost said something about them to take her mind off the silence. (The radio had become a storm of fuzz some ways back.) When she looked to Jeff, however, a smile was creeping across his handsome face.
“What’s funny?” Chloe asked.
“I think this was a great idea,” Jeff said. “I think I’ll like it here.”
That was all it took to dispel any doubts she had harbored about the move or certainly about the nosy trees and cannibalistic families. Jeff’s smile meant that everything was going to be okay after all. He smiled so rarely these days.
The trees on Chloe’s side disappeared once more as the Jeep made the ascent. They fell away to reveal a sharp drop to the sea. The cottage was tucked into the woods on the driver’s side a good ways up the hill, and it faced the cliff. As she got out of the Jeep, Chloe noticed first the descending rocks to the sea below before she saw anything of the cottage. These were big rocks, every one of them a brain smasher. The cottage, in juxtaposition, was a harmless and fragile thing.
The place was in desperate need of some color or at least a new coat of white. Weeds grew around it like tiny bullies, but there was evidence of wildflowers too. The big house could be seen up the hill from the cottage’s small porch. Jeff was already looking around the back of the cottage. Chloe, though, was halted there on the porch. There was a sense of something. Something in the window. Like the figure in the first photograph that had brought the cottage to her attention. A wave of chills ran down her back and she hugged herself. She chose not to look any farther than the porch until Jeff came back around to meet her. She’d enter the cottage when he did.
“It’s just the moving-day jitters,” she whispered. The lines between sea and sky blurred in the distance.
“There’s a barn out back,” Jeff said as he rounded the corner of the cottage. He spoke with an excitement Chloe had not heard since their first trips as adventure tour guides together. “There’s a bunch of slabs and timber stacked in it, but nothing else that I could see. There looks to be something in front of the barn too. It’s covered by a big stone. Maybe a well.”
Jeff let himself into the cottage. Chloe still held tight to herself. The front door was unlocked as Miss Donna Tharp had told them it would be. As promised, the place came fully furnished. Neither Chloe nor Jeff knew much about antiques—they were adventure sports recreationists, after all—but they knew “old” when they saw it.
As they lifted the thick plastic protective sheets, Chloe looked at Jeff. “Call the
Antiques Roadshow
. We’ll make a mint.”
The cottage was small and cozy. A large mantel and fireplace were the focal point of the living area. A small, ancient TV sat insignificantly on a stand. A scratched coffee table, a rocking chair, and a worn but comfortable couch rounded out the room’s furnishings. A kitchen connected directly to the living area just past the couch. Deeper in the cottage, down a narrow hallway, was a bedroom. There were no trinkets or personal knickknacks left behind from the last inhabitants of the cottage. And it was strange, but Chloe had half expected there to be some evidence that someone was still living there. It was just a feeling she had, one she couldn’t shake, and one brought on by the feeling she had encountered on the porch.
Chloe drifted from room to room, carefully pulling away the plastic sheeting to reveal the old treasures or junk beneath them. The sound of the stiff plastic was similar to that of an ocean wave, though stirring dust instead of dirty seagulls. Chloe found her way to the bedroom. Jeff had gone to the kitchen, stripping, ripping, and tearing the old furnishings of their plastic shielding as he went. The force with which he tore the sheeting away reverberated through the cottage, putting Chloe on edge.
She found a bureau in the bedroom and uncovered it as delicately as she could to combat her husband’s violence. The dark wood was warped in areas and could have used a new finish. Two brass knobs were missing and the bottom drawer looked to be crooked. All the same, it would serve its purpose. So much of the furniture would keep her and Jeff busy fixing and sanding and readjusting. She sighed in relief at this thought. They wouldn’t have time to think about other things.
The drawers were cranky and stubborn, but Chloe managed to eventually open and inspect them one by one. Decades-old scent of staleness and moths overcame her to the point that she backed away for a moment. They were all empty but for the crooked bottom one. Therein lay a small assemblage of photographs. Chloe gathered them up and shuffled them neatly. They were old black and whites, some torn and bug-eaten, all stained by time and neglect. They looked like photographs from a movie magazine. These were scenes of the adored glitterati at fabulous parties by large pools. Scenes of excess given respectability by black and white. Chloe recognized some of those in the photographs. They were movie stars, most of them still living, but way past their prime now. She didn’t know many of their names, but she knew their faces. Everyone did. She had seen a film or two every now and then. The world was all about entertainment these days. About selling one’s business and selling out one’s past.
“Look at this,” she said to Jeff, thinking he had come into the room with her. There was that discernible dimming of light by shadow, as if someone was behind her in the doorway. She didn’t bother to look up from the photographs, mesmerized by their glamour. Then there was a whisper, a breeze, like a door had been left ajar and an uncomfortable cool wind had been let into the room.
Only when Jeff answered from the other side of the small house (“Did you say something?”), did Chloe look up, startled. Jeff was not in the room with her at all. There was no one in the doorway as she had thought. She swallowed back a prickling fear and caught the wisp of a ‘feeling.’ The chills ran through her again, and she closed the drawer and left the bedroom, photographs in hand. Strangely enough, thoughts of burrowing beetles filled her mind. The creepy crawling nightmares of childhood.
She found Jeff standing in the kitchen, staring out the back door toward the little red barn. She approached and touched him on the shoulder. The wood floor creaked below her. He didn’t move.
“Are you okay?” Jeff asked. If his voice held any true concern, Chloe couldn’t hear it. He was detached. Mentally, he was somewhere outside by the barn.
“I’m fine,” she said. In his arms, if he would ever hold her again, she could shake off the nightmares the ‘feelings’ gave her. “Why don’t we go introduce ourselves to the woman on the hill before we unpack? We’re to be neighbors. It’s best to get off on good footing.”
Jeff at last turned his attention to her and nodded at the photographs she held to her chest. “Pictures?”
“Yes. I found them in a drawer. They’re interesting. Whoever lived here before seems to have had an interesting life.”
Jeff examined them. “Or maybe they were just fans. You can find memorabilia at any swap shop these days.”
“Maybe…”
Jeff shrugged. Chloe saw the look of utter disinterest on his face. He might as well have turned to stone. She wanted to scream at him. “Pay attention to me! See me again!” She felt the urge to grab him and shake him. To bait an argument if only to have him look at her with some sort of passion in his eyes. Yes, that was it. That was what she had to do. She was going to do it.
This moment
. It had been an awful day. A very uncomfortable awful day and she needed some kind of release. A good sparring match might be just the thing. She breathed in deep and—
Pop pop pop!
Three shots came from up on the hill. Jeff and Chloe stared at one another for a brief second.
“Gunshots?” Chloe asked.
“A rifle,” he said.
He quickly walked out the front door, obviously expecting her to follow. Chloe stood for a moment, reining in the anger she had let boil. How could this be a home for them? Already she had planted a seed of resentment. She tried to convince herself everything would turn out right in the end. Yet something within her sounded the creeping crawling again. The burrowing. Jeff called to her from the Jeep, and she jumped and looked out the door. He was at the wheel, ready to go.
The drive to the top of the hill wasn’t a long one, easily climbable, if steep. The big house could be seen the whole way. Chloe was already feeling a wariness toward the intrusive structure. Every morning when they woke up, the big house would be watching over them at the cottage. Like it was waiting for something.
“It’s going to be a big project, fixing that place up,” Jeff said as they wound the curves of the gravel road along the cliff. “But I’m up for it.”
“It’s falling apart,” Chloe said, somewhat less enthused.
“I’m up for it,” he reiterated in a tone of voice that told her to push no further. “The little place has been hit by decades of storms. All she needs is a bit of repair and someone to look after her.”
“So you’ve got a new gal in your life?” She regretted the statement the moment she said it. Jeff was silent.
As they neared the big house, a thin figure stood at the bottom of the broad porch steps. She was dressed in black, her hands clasped in one another. The house, rising self-importantly behind and above her, echoed her form. There might have been life there in the big house once, but no more. At least, none present on the outside. It lumbered in its aged regality.
They had been told that the lady in the house never went down past the cottage. Not even to head into Wicker. She had her groceries and anything she needed brought up from town and left on the porch, where she would retrieve them. They had been told this by Donna Tharp.
“She’s a strange woman,” Donna Tharp had said. “You probably won’t want to know her. I wouldn’t.”
Cautiously, Chloe and Jeff looked at one another, then got out of the car and walked up the hill toward the woman. She had not moved. She was pale, but still held an aging beauty. Chloe recognized the woman from the photographs she had found. She would have recognized her without them. While Chloe did not love cinema, she knew enough people who did, and Lana Pruitt was one of the great modern recluses, having retired years ago in her prime. Donna Tharp had not said Lana Pruitt was the cottage’s previous owner.
The breeze played with Lana’s blonde and silver curls as if on cue. A film effect.
“I saw you from the telescope on the widow’s walk,” the woman said. Her voice was a recognizable shade of its former glory, deepened by age.