88
“Look 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?”
He’s mad. Insane. No question about it. He killed them, and he’s blaming it on the house. I’ve got to get away from him.
But...
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.