I don’t believe in ghosts.
So when I found the corpse I didn’t fall apart. Not then, anyway. Maybe later, after some other stuff had happened—but that’s getting ahead of myself.
I’ve seen dead bodies before. But not dead like this, with all the flesh eaten away and only pale brittle bones left behind, the fragile framework of what had once been a human being. I confess that a chill settled on my spine: clammy fingers of fear and dread that were only natural, given the circumstances. But ghosts? I don’t think so.
I suppose every house is haunted in its own way. Those in my profession like to toss around the term “ambience,” a ten-dollar word that to most agents means a two-dollar spray can of air freshener judiciously applied to musty corners. But what is it really? Memories—joy, sorrow, terror, love—boiled down to their essences and absorbed into the very woodwork, lingering in the air like a whiff of long-forgotten perfume.
My name is Sam Turner, and I’m a single mom and struggling real estate agent in the seaside town of Arlinda, California, where I’ve been licensed for all of five months now. A few weeks ago my ex-husband showed up at my door after an absence of nearly fourteen years. See, that’s exactly my point: we’re never as free from our past as we might choose to believe. Once in a blue moon, our ghosts, long imagined to be laid to rest, come back to haunt us.
When it was all over, I could have kicked myself for missing the obvious. But that’s hindsight for you. By the time I’d made sense of things, people were dead, and I was…changed. Like I said, though, there’s no going back.
Some stories have roots that go down deep into the soil, through the layers of what was and what had been. But I can only tell this story from where I came into it, which was a foggy morning late in May, on my way to look at an old, broken house.
A vintage—for that, read ancient—Volkswagen camper held together with duct tape and prayer is hardly the ideal vehicle for navigating a rough country backroad. Jolted from my seat, I clung to the steering wheel in an attempt to keep my cranium from cracking like a soft-boiled egg against the roof of the van. The oiled-dirt surface seemed to alternate between patches of rocky scree and gaping potholes large enough to be classified as ponds and stocked with fingerling trout. For the umpteenth time, I found myself wishing I’d parked on the street, or, better yet, caught a ride with Biddie McCracken, my dour colleague at Home Sweet Home Realty. No doubt Biddie’s sleek Lexus had cushioned the bumps and bounces that were even now traveling from my sagging shocks up my spine to the base of my skull. I could feel a beaut of a headache coming on.
An explosion of shrubbery crowded the primitive track known as Aster Lane: willow, box elder, and holly, woven together with English ivy and deep pink clusters of climbing roses, a verdant tangle that served to filter out most of the midmorning light. Poplars lining the lane bowed under their spring burden of pale green leaves, creating a long, dim tunnel fading into gloomy gray.
Suddenly a gate loomed in front of my windshield. I stomped on the brakes and stalled the engine. Just my luck: I’d arrived ahead of Biddie and the place was locked up tight. A real estate lockbox was threaded through one of the pales of the gate.
Sliding off the driver’s seat, I landed feetfirst in mud as thick and sticky as roofing tar. “Hell,” I muttered.
I scraped each shoe in turn against the sidewall of the van’s front tire, trying not to notice the fibers poking through the worn tread. A cloud of mosquitoes rose up around me, zeroing in on any carelessly exposed flesh. I swatted them away and dug my agent’s key card out of my bag. The gate, a somber assembly of twisted wrought iron topped by vicious-looking spikes, was supported by two massive stone pillars. Next to each pillar grew a towering shrub covered with dark needles.
I inserted the card and tapped in my code. The box popped open, revealing a ring of keys. After a few trials, I found the one that fit an oversized padlock threaded through the two halves of the gate. The lock was an old-fashioned type I’d never run into before, a chunk of heart-shaped brass dotted with studs.
Intent on forcing the tumbler around, I was oblivious at first to the creeping quiet that muted the backdrop of birds, leaving a chilly silence in its wake. Even the soft rustle of furry critters in the underbrush faded to nothing. Suddenly gooseflesh, pale and mottled, broke out on my arms.
Someone—or something—was watching me.
Slowly I raised my head. The bustling city street I’d entered from was hidden from view. I stared into the undergrowth, looking for—what? A dog was my first thought, one of my profession’s occupational hazards. Real estate agents, along with postal carriers and Seventh-day Adventists, had a better than average shot of finding a pit bull hanging off their backsides at some point in their career. My luck with dogs was about as good as my luck with men.
When a bird issued a few tentative chirps from a nearby thicket, I realized I was holding my breath. I exhaled slowly, then scanned the area one more time. A whisper of wind seemed to have sprung from nowhere. The slightest flicker of movement caught my eye: down the lane, a curtain of ivy swayed to and fro. “Pushed by the breeze,” I told myself sternly. No sense letting nerves get the best of me. I squared my shoulders and returned to my task.
At last the lock snapped and I pushed the gate open, cussing under my breath as a shower of droplets rolled down my neck. Dropping the keys in my pocket, I swung myself back into the driver’s seat and rolled on. Above the rumble of the engine I could feel the jackhammer beat of my heart against my ribs, and told myself to get a grip.
But when I rounded the last turn and the once grand old house loomed into view I almost stalled the engine again. It was a three-story tumbledown structure smothered by thick vines that climbed right up to the eaves. Weathered redwood boards covered the exterior, any paint long since pulled off by relentless fingers of ivy. A square tower protruded from the roofline like a rude digit. Its steeply sloped roof had caved in, and I caught a glimpse of a gaping hole stuffed with blue tarps. A single arched window was set in the front of the tower; the little glass panes were broken out, leaving shards like jagged teeth. Two windows peered blindly from upper rooms. They’d been boarded over.
Against the dark bulk of the structure, a hunched figure caught my eye. It was a gargoyle, perched to the left of the tower near the corner where the steep roof met the upper story of the house. I could just make out bulging eyes set atop a squat muscular body and the arc of wings that trailed behind it. Its twin squatted on the other side of the tower.
For a moment, I sat and gawped. Thirteen Aster Lane wasn’t just a house; it was an estate, more than a century old, ravaged by time and neglect. A FOR SALE sign from Hartshorne & Associates was stabbed into the lawn to the left of a weed-infested brick walk.
Finally I pulled the bus onto a patch of gravel just off the lane and climbed out, picking my way through tall grass to a sagging front porch missing most of its railings. The wide planks of the stairs groaned under my weight, and I pictured myself nursing a broken leg at the hospital, running up a couple of Ben Franklins on my bill every time I asked for an aspirin.
I didn’t bother unlocking the front door, as it was secured with a pair of two-by- fours nailed in an X across the frame. Instead, I moved over to one of the big front windows and pressed my face against the glass, trying to see past thick folds of tattered velvet curtains, possibly a rich maroon once but bleached by sunlight to a brassy orange. No sounds or signs of life inside.
A little antsy feeling started in my gut. Where was Biddie? We’d arranged to meet this morning to preview the old estate, in case its “two point six acres with large house in disrepair” was a perfect fit for one of our clients. I couldn’t speak as to the breadth of Biddie’s client list, but, as mine currently numbered zero, safe to say I was driven more by curiosity than anything else.
I pulled out my phone to check the time. Suddenly a dog barked, followed by the sound of crashing in the underbrush. Adrenaline coursed through my system and the phone slipped from my fingers, bounced once off the spongy boards, and disappeared into the tall grass. Great, just great. Search for my phone or risk being torn to shreds by a slavering Great Dane? Just another happy choice in the life of a real estate agent.
I began to feel around in the grass. Nothing. I probed a little deeper. Something skittered across my arm and I yanked my hand back with a squawk, just in time to see a big black spider, the hairy kind with bulging compound eyes, disappear up the sleeve of my jacket. Oh, shit! I whipped off the jacket and tossed it on the stairs, slapping at my arm. Not that I’m afraid of spiders or other creepy-crawlies, of course. I just like things where I can see them.
As I attempted a couple of deep calming breaths, the grass began to ring. I traced the noise to my phone and glanced at the number. Max. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey. No practice tonight. What’s for dinner?” My son, now fifteen, had shot up six inches in the last year and had the metabolism of a rabid hummingbird.
“Not sure what’s on the menu. I’ll just throw something together.”
“I’ll cook tonight.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Actually, I do. School assignment. You want French? Italian? Comfort food?”
I smiled a little. “Surprise me. There’s cash in the cookie jar if you need supplies.” I realized I was shivering in the clammy mist. Leaving my jacket to the spider, I made my way back to the bus and climbed in.
“I suppose you haven’t heard anything about the house,” he said.
Glory be, we were on the brink of moving out of our crummy apartment into a home of our own. “Everything’s on track the last I heard,” I said, trying not to hyperventilate even more.
“Sweet.” He paused. “You been jogging or something?”
The surprise in his voice was an affront. “Listen, I could jog any time I wanted to,” I said huffily. “I’m just, you know, busy.”
“Sure.”
“I mean it. Anyway, no. Just hanging out. At the old Harrington estate.”
“Oh, wow,” he said. “You know the place is haunted, right?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Seriously. Some scary s—um, stuff went down there. Years ago. All the kids know about it. You don’t wanna be there at night. Or alone.”
The hair on my neck stood up a bit. “Gee, thanks. Shouldn’t you be in class conjugating a verb or something? Besides, I’m not alone.” At least, not now. I could see Biddie’s silver Lexus inching up the lane.
“That’s good,” he said. “Catch you later.”
“Wait—” But he had hung up.
I stared moodily at the dark screen. Hard to believe I was the mother of a teenager. I’d never learned why Wayne, my ex, left us when Max was just a baby, and even as I shouldered the responsibility of raising my son alone, I suppose on some level I’d always figured it was due to some shortcoming on my part. Or because men were dickheads in general. Probably both. Lesson learned: over the last thirteen years I’d kept my heart as tightly gated as Aster Lane. Until…well, I’m getting to that.
Wonder of wonders, Max—bright, serious, hardworking, funny—had turned out okay. Maybe even great. That he was starting high school and not reform school in the fall was surely a testament to the adequacy of my parenting.
Suddenly Biddie rapped on the window. “You gonna sit there and daydream or should we walk through this scrap heap?” she said. Even through the tempered glass, her corncrake voice set my teeth on edge.
“Sorry,” I said, then kicked myself for apologizing. So what if she had decades of real estate experience and a client list as big as her frowsy head of red curls? I might be a rookie, but I was learning fast. To tell the truth, I’d been a little surprised Biddie invited me along, since we were hardly bosom buddies. For a moment I toyed with the idea that the home’s eerie reputation had reached her ears. Then I shook my head. Confronted with spirits of the dearly departed, Biddie, no doubt, would have pressed a business card into their ectoplasm and converted them to clients.
She was regarding me without enthusiasm through pale blue, watery eyes. In contrast to her coquettish locks, her cheeks were broad and fleshy, as if a couple of veal cutlets had been inserted under the skin. She’d brushed an arc of magenta blusher on either side of her nose to suggest cheekbones where none existed, a little beauty tip she’d gleaned from magazines. Her schnoz sported a network of broken capillaries that hinted at generous doses of alcohol and/or allergic rhinitis.
With a snort of impatience, she turned on her heel and strode off through the grass. I scrambled after her, resisting the urge to clutch at her sleeve. “I have the keys,” I said. “But the door’s nailed shut.”
“There’s another door off the kitchen around back. Most of the main house has been closed up for years.” She marched on, following the brick path around the corner of the house. Judging by her pace, she’d breakfasted on pure adrenaline. A lot of agents I knew were like that, continually operating on overdrive, always accessible by mobile phone, fax, text, or two Dixie cups connected by string. I couldn’t see that lifestyle working for me. Most of the time I just wanted people to leave me the hell alone.
I retrieved my jacket and trailed after her, wincing at the window frames riddled with rot, the cracked glass, and damaged shingles. The house defined the words “money pit.” No doubt a new owner would waste no time knocking down the old place and erecting some homage to excess wealth and bad taste. Or carve the land into postage stamp–size parcels, each with its own three-car garage and modest ranch house tucked in almost as an afterthought.
Biddie was waiting for me at the foot of a small porch, snapping her fingers with irritation. She snatched the keys from my hand, selected one, and unlocked a weathered door. The old door creaked open, a plaintive sound like the howl of a dog over a corpse. For the second time today, an uncomfortable feeling assailed me, comprised of the deep solitude, the decay of the old mansion and…something else. “Is—is anyone home, you think?”
“Shouldn’t be. There’s a tenant. The old man’s live-in nurse, as a matter of fact. She stayed on after he passed, with the permission of the probate attorney. But Lois Hartshorne, the listing agent, told her to make herself scarce today and tomorrow.”
“I hope she didn’t put it like that.”
“You don’t know Lois.”
“She a friend of yours?”
Biddie snorted. “Sure, we go way back. She worked for Everett Sweet, as a matter of fact, before they had a falling-out. Now she runs her own agency over in North Arlinda.”
“A falling-out? Over what?” Everett Sweet was our persnickety boss, the broker of Home Sweet Home Realty.
She shrugged and didn’t respond, clearly tired of exercising her lips. We stepped into a kitchen that surprised me by being both light-filled and cheerful. Flowered curtains hung at the windows. An old wooden table with four square-backed chairs sat in the middle of the floor. The table was worn but clean, as was the old-fashioned sheet linoleum underneath it. The sink was a single well of cracked white porcelain set under a small window and surrounded by scarred butcher-block counters. A splash of color caught my eye: it was a drawing of flowers, done in exuberant crayon and taped to the round-shouldered refrigerator. The words “TO MAMA” were written across the bottom in staggering caps. I felt a flicker of surprise. Somehow it was hard to picture a child living here.
I poked my head into a tiny room off the kitchen, crowded with two cots and a worn oak dresser, then backed out. “Seems a little harsh to be selling the place out from under the tenant,” I said. “Where will she go?”
Biddie pinched her lips together. “Here’s some advice, honey. It doesn’t pay to be soft in this business.”
“I’m not soft.”
“Righty-ho. Real estate is dog-eat-dog. You have to disconnect your emotions if you want to make it. Everett should have told you that.”
“Maybe a hundred times. Still—”
“For a miserly horse’s ass, the man’s spot on. Toughen up. Case in point. This morning I found an old bum sleeping on the deck behind the office. Told him to beat it or I’d call the cops. I’m thinking you’d’ve brought him a cup of coffee and a pillow for his head.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it again. There was no winning an argument with Biddie.
My colleague disappeared down the hall. I moved more slowly, glancing into a tall-ceilinged room that might once have been a study, now converted to an invalid’s bedroom. I took in the medical-supply adjustable bed and the three-footed aluminum cane that was propped against the wall next to it. The top of an antique oak dresser was covered with bottles of prescription medicines. The air was fusty, scented with the perfume of age and illness: stale aftershave, menthol, dried urine. The windows were closed, with a nail driven through each sash to keep them that way. Maybe the old man had had an aversion to fresh air.
Back in the hall, I paused to examine a doorframe that didn’t appear to be original to the house, separating the front from the back.
“Sam!”
Biddie’s voice rang in my ears like tinnitus. I hurried after her and found her tapping her foot at the bottom of a flight of stairs. It was wide, even majestic, with an ornately carved mahogany rail. I barely got an impression of the two big rooms at the front of the house—darkly varnished wainscoting, heavy Victorian furniture shrouded in cotton sheets, tall windows blocked by moth-eaten velvet that let in only a glimmer of daylight—before she started up the stairs.
The air seemed to grow heavier as we ascended. We reached a small landing where the staircase took a ninety-degree turn, then climbed the last ten steps and arrived in another narrow hallway. The walls were covered in sprigged floral paper, curled at the seams and dotted with stains around the baseboards. A tattered strip of Oriental carpeting sent up little clouds of dust and spores with every step we took.
The thick air caught at my throat and I coughed. “This is terrible. Six hundred grand for a house that’s falling down? What a waste.”
“Nonsense. Just needs a lick o’ paint.”
“You really believe that?”
“My clients will.” She opened a door and we looked in silence at a bedroom coated in dust. There were two more rooms just like it, devoid of life.
The hall ended at another boarded-up window and another flight of stairs, this one leading up to the tower. Yellow tape stretched across the newel posts to block access. Water had pummeled the stairs, warping the treads and pulling at the risers as if intent on taking them apart piece by piece. The ruined woodwork and its accompanying smell of decay swept over me in a wave that almost knocked me off balance. Like I said, I’m not a believer in things I can’t see. But there was something dark, almost menacing, in the air, an oppressiveness that was nearly unbearable.
“The old man,” I said abruptly. “He died from natural causes, right?”
Biddie stared at me.
“I mean, he wasn’t, uh, murdered or anything, was he?”
“Saints preserve us,” she crowed. “Lassie’s got the second sight.” She threw back her head and enjoyed some Biddie-style mirth, shoulders twitching, making a noise in her throat that was not unlike a cat bringing up a hair ball.
“He died of a heart attack,” she said when she’d finished. “He’d had a dicky heart for years, which is why the second story was shut off. Doctor forbade him the stairs.” Her bosom heaved with another paroxysm of amusement.
I reddened. What on earth had prompted me to blurt out something so foolish?
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
I was only too glad to comply. We’d started down the stairs and were a few steps shy of the middle landing when Biddie stopped dead in her tracks so abruptly that I almost plowed into her. She stood stock-still, frozen in place.
“What is it?” I said, a trifle impatiently.
She turned toward me, lips moving, her voice just a breath of sound. I leaned closer.
“Blood,” she whispered.
A chill traveled down my spine. I looked around the stairwell, trying to see what she’d seen. Biddie’s eyes were unfocused and her hands clenched and unclenched themselves, as if controlled by unseen strings. More words tumbled out in a flat, eerie monotone.
“Death. Red roses. Too much red, dripping down the stems, ruining the pretty petals…”
Without warning, her eyes rolled back in her head and she sagged like a balloon from which all the air had been suddenly let out. I caught her by the shoulders just before her head smacked into the stairs. Her face was dead white against the halo of auburn curls. I tugged her toward the landing like a sack of potatoes, groaning with effort. Shifting my grip to her ankles, I tugged hard. Between gravity and my efforts, she slithered to the landing, the back of her head beating a rhythmic tattoo on the treads as she descended. Her breasts rose and fell like twin buoys rocked by the ocean swell. The whites of her eyes gleamed. Shit! What was I supposed to do now?
Memories of old black-and-white movies, where the heroine swoons gently, frequently, and with far more grace than my colleague, flashed though my head. Water—that’s what I needed. I thundered down the stairs two at a time and galloped across the hall to the kitchen. There was a coffee mug in the sink half filled with dark fluid. I dumped the contents and filled the mug with cold water from the tap.
I raised my eyes and found myself staring at a face through the window, almost close enough to touch. With a shriek, I dropped the cup and reeled back a pace. The face vanished, leaving the window empty.
My heart was doing calisthenics in my chest. How many shocks could my ticker sustain in one day? I reached for the doorknob, willing my reluctant legs to give chase, then thought of Biddie sprawled on the stairs. I couldn’t just leave her.
The mug lay in the sink, mercifully unbroken. I filled it again, checked to make sure the door was locked, and raced back to where Biddie lay, still as a stone. Dipping three fingers into the water, I flicked a few droplets on her pallid cheek.
“Biddie! Are you okay?”
No response.
At a loss, I gripped the mug by the handle and dashed the contents into her face. “Biddie!”
Unexpectedly her right arm shot out, catching me in the chest and knocking me back a pace. Biddie snorted and sat up, shaking her head. Water dripped off her chin and flowed into her cleavage. She looked down and spotted the wet stain spreading on her blouse.
“Geroff me!” she snapped, shoving at me again. “What the hell are you playing at?”
She rooted around for her handbag, found it, and reached inside, pulling out a tissue with which to mop her face. It was still ashen, with a sheen of perspiration on her brow.
“You were having some sort of fit.”
“Balls. Look what you’ve done to my blouse. This is goddamn imported silk.” She dabbed at her boobs with the tissue. Grasping the railing, she pulled herself to her feet.
I stood by, muscles taut with nervous strain. “Really, you should sit a minute,” I said uneasily.
“I’m fine.” Then she swayed and clutched my shoulder, running the other hand across her forehead. “Maybe I do feel a bit peculiar. Hypoglycemia, that’s all it is. I’m subject to it.”
She released me and extended a cautious foot. I didn’t dare take her arm as she made her way down the stairs, but I watched for another sudden collapse and breathed a sigh of relief when we arrived at the first floor.
“Well,” she said, seeming confused as to the next move.
“Listen—we’ve seen enough, right? I’ll lock up. You head back and get something to eat.”
She looked at me doubtfully. “I can lock up.”
“I got it. Just take it easy. Have some juice.”
“I might at that.” She moved through the hall to the kitchen before turning back to me. I thought she was going to thank me for my concern.
Instead, she said, “Don’t forget to leave your card.” The door slammed shut behind her.
Huh. No sense overdoing the gratitude. I returned the mug to the sink and dropped my business card on the kitchen table after penciling in the date, time, and my initials in an artistic scrawl. I checked all the doors, then twisted the button on the knob of the back door and made my exit.