The Family Plot (20 page)

“So … this style, these colors … they were pretty common?”

“Eh.” She settled back on her ass, crossing her legs beneath herself. It wasn't late, but she was bourbon warm and happy to talk about something safe, something easy. “Most of the time, for projects like this, there was somebody on site who whipped up a batch for each fireplace while it was being built. Or, I'm guessing by the style … these were probably added later. They aren't as old as the house itself, so there might've been a fire, or some kind of accident that destroyed the original setup. Maybe we'll find something older underneath—stone, or fired pottery tiles, or something like that. These are good colors, though. Somebody with a turn-of-the-century Craftsman will decide they're close enough, and feather them in for patch work.”

“That's cool.”

“Uh-huh. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than finding someone to manufacture a perfect match. Art is fucking expensive,” she concluded.

“Tell me about it. Hey, Dahl?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I see that photo album? The one we found in the trunk?”

“Man, that thing's popular, all of a sudden.”

“Huh?” he asked.

“Nothing. Sure, you can see it. It's upstairs, in my room. What do you want with it?”

He turned his head and belched, almost discreetly. “I told you … I saw a boy, up in the carriage-house loft. I want to see if he's in the album.”

She climbed to her feet, and he stretched back to a standing position. “What did he look like? This boy?”

Gabe rolled his shoulders and retrieved a can of beer he'd left on the mantel. Before she could tell him to wipe off the damp ring it left behind, he took care of it with his sleeve. “Well, if he's in that book, I'll show you.”

“All right, have it your way. Hey, speaking of your dad, where's he at?” she asked abruptly.

“Upstairs. He was poking around that extra bedroom, like maybe he wanted to take a pry bar to the door that's all closed up.”

A memory flared in the back of her head, cutting through the bourbon. There'd been a soldier downstairs. She'd been running to catch him. Out of the corner of her eye, she'd seen an open door that used to be shut. “It's still locked up?”

“I guess, if nobody opened it.”

She shivered. “Well then, I guess Bobby's welcome to knock it down if he likes. We have to get in there one of these days.”

“Why'd you ask? About my dad?”

“Because he wanted to see the album, too. I figured I'd just give it to the pair of you, and let you traipse down someone else's memory lane together.” That wasn't what she meant, but the alcohol was running interference between her brain and her mouth. It shouldn't have left her so foggy. She hadn't had very much. They hadn't even cracked the second bottle yet, and she'd even let Bobby have some of the Maker's before it was gone. Was she getting another headache? The cotton-candy feeling in her skull might be the start of one of her odder migraines, but she was too tipsy to panic about it. She barely had the concentration skills to even
hope
it was something else.

She strolled through the arched entryway into the main living area, kicked a mostly empty duffel bag out of the way, and hollered, “Bobby? Where'd you go?”

A muffled response suggested someplace on the second floor, as reported, so she went toward the sound of his voice, with Gabe following behind her like a big duckling. “Hey Bobby, remember you wanted a look at that photo album?” she shouted in his general direction. “Your boy does, too. It's in my room, if you care to join us.”

Up the stairs, past the ninety-degree turn at the landing, at the rail where the handprints and footprints had finally been smudged away by traffic coming and going … and onto the second floor, where there was almost a mezzanine, now that she thought about it, before you got to the hallway with the bedrooms—and the one door that was stuck, unless it was open.

The door was still firmly shut, but not for Bobby's lack of trying.

He'd pried the right side of the frame clean off, and it lay on the floor in pieces. He'd left the doorknob untouched, thank God. It was a beauty—oxidized metal with scrollwork and a tidy little spot for a key. Not an ounce of rust. Positively pristine, and likely original to the house. It would've pissed her off to no end if he'd broken it.

The man himself appeared with a Sawzall in hand, attached to an orange extension cord that disappeared around the corner, into the bedroom he'd chosen to squat in. “Sorry, come again?”

“The photo album. You wanted to … and Gabe wants to … wait. Were you going to cut the knob out of the door? That's a solid wood door, Bobby. It's in good shape.”

“I know, but it's either the door or the hardware,
boss.
That fucker is stuck but good.” He pointed at the frame. “I'm doing my best to keep from hurting it.”

Grudgingly, she agreed. “Okay, I get it. Between the two…” The door might go for more money, but she liked the hardware better. There were a dozen other doors. They could sacrifice this one. “You're making the right call, but don't tell Dad I said so. If he were here, he'd tell you to take the wood instead.”

Bobby grinned like he'd finally done something right, then the grin turned into a wrinkle of his lips. “Right on. I'll cut it down in a minute. You said something about the photo album?”

“Yup.”

Gabe stood behind her, doing a sheepish shift from foot to foot. “I want to look at it.”

“Why for?”

Gabe stood up straighter, and traded his sheepishness for defiance. “Because I saw a ghost, and I want to know who it was.”

Bobby didn't blink; just stood there holding the saw, staring at the both of them until he got his shit together enough to stammer, “You saw … you saw a what now? Where? Here?”

The kid bobbed his head. “Out in the carriage house, on the second floor. It's how I found the trunk. Some little boy
wanted
me to find it.”

“What'd the little boy look like?” Bobby demanded.

Gabe sighed with great drama. “Like I told Dahl, if I find him in the pictures, I'll point him out.” He turned around and headed toward her room, still talking, his voice trailing along behind him. “If I don't find him, well, he was a kid, all right? Maybe seven or eight. Dark hair. Wearing old-fashioned clothes.”

Dahlia and Bobby looked at each other, then at Gabe's retreating back. They fell into his wake.

“Can you be more specific?” Dahlia asked him. She jogged to catch up. “Old-fashioned … that can mean anything. If you can remember some details, it might help date him. I'm good with old clothes.”

“I don't remember.” Gabe had spotted the album on the window seat where Dahlia'd been sleeping. He sat down on the edge of her bedding and opened the cover with great care, but that didn't stop a small cloud of black paper dust from rising up like smoke, and falling down like ashes. “But let me look, let me see…”

Bobby plopped down beside him. “Let
me
see.”

“Why?”

“Because I saw a ghost, too.”

Gabe paused, holding one sheet aloft, mid-turn. “You saw the boy?”

“No, I saw a girl. A teenager.”

Gabe stared at his dad instead of the photos. “For real?”

Bobby kept his eyes on the book. “For real. So … keep flipping. I'll stop you if I see her. Dolly, did you find
your
ghost in here?” He lifted his eyes, winging her with a fast glance.

“I did. Turns out, her name's Abigail.”

“Great, just great,” Gabe said under his breath. “Everyone's seen something, and nobody's said anything, all this time.”

She rolled her eyes. “We've only been here a couple of days. We're saying something now.”

“You knew this place was haunted all along. You knew it was bullshit about the cemetery,” he answered, turning one sheet more. He collected a photo that'd slipped free, and placed it carefully upon its rightful page. It dropped down into the seam, and stuck there.

“No, that's not it at all. I believe Augusta Withrow. She was telling the truth, or she
thought
she was.”

Dahlia might've gone on being defensive, but Gabe smacked a finger down on the family photo with all three siblings together. “That's him.
That's
the kid I saw. That's what he was wearing, even.” He pressed a big fingerprint on Buddy's chest, and tapped it again for emphasis. “Or something like that. It's definitely him.”

“But, Gabe…,” she objected.

Bobby deciphered the pencil notes and declared, “‘Buddy,' that was his name. That's what it says.”

Dahlia shook her head. “Buddy was Augusta's father. He didn't die as a child; he grew up, got married, and was killed in a car crash when Augusta was fifteen,” she insisted. “You must've seen somebody else.”

“Maybe he was just messing with me. Or it could be that he didn't want to scare me. I was scared anyway,” Gabe admitted. His pupils were as big as drain stoppers even now. “But it would've been worse, if it'd been some old dead dude, instead of an old dead kid. Old dead kids are sad, more than scary, when you stop to think about it.”

Bobby didn't really agree. “If that's what you think, you should watch more horror movies. Turn the page.”

“Was the ghost you saw a scary one?” Gabe asked him, letting go of Buddy. The next page fell.

“She was scary as shit.”

“Why?”

“Old dead teenage girls are just as bad as old dead kids, that's why,” he informed his son, but he didn't say the rest, about her being covered with mud and blood and the miasma of having done something terrible.

Gabe went past the childhood photos and got to the one of Abigail in the yellow dress. He paused there, and asked, “Is that her?”

Bobby nodded slowly, then faster. “She's about the right age, and the right everything. That's her, but she looked … different.”

“Different how?”

“Dead. Really, really dead.”

But Dahlia wasn't sold. “No, you guys … I told you, I saw this girl, looking just like she was alive.
This
Abigail.” She tapped the photo. “She was even wearing this same dress, and it gave me a heart attack when I opened the album and saw the picture. This is who I saw in the cemetery.”

“I thought it wasn't a cemetery,” Gabe said, half teasing and half wondering, like they all were.

It was Dahlia's turn to sigh. “I never said there weren't any ghosts. I only said there weren't any bodies…” Something faint and sharp pinged at the edge of her hearing. She stopped what she was saying and listened.

“What?” Bobby wanted to know. “What's the matter?”

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear
what
?” he asked again.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

“That … it's like a chime, sort of. Not like a phone, not like a computer. Like hail on a metal roof—or, like … it sounds like…” She jerked up straight. She hadn't even realized she'd been hovering, bent-backed and too close while the guys were going through the album, but her neck cracked now, and she held up her index finger, signaling for their attention. “You guys, where's Brad?”

“Don't know.” Gabe shrugged.

Bobby added, “Haven't seen him in a while. He said he was taking a shower and settling in early.”

“Yeah, well. I think he lied.”

She darted to the hallway, to the broken window at the end where you could hear everything on the mountain, if you listened hard enough—and yes, it was louder there: the sound of metal on rocks. It was a shovel, and there was a light down in the cemetery that wasn't a cemetery.

One of the LED lanterns cast a brilliant white bubble against the shadowed side of the mountain, the clouds, and the faint haze of drizzle that had started up fresh and might get worse. A cool breeze spit past the broken pane and into Dahlia's eyes. She wiped them and leaned forward carefully, so she didn't cut herself on any silk-fine shards that might be left behind.

At the top of her lungs, she called out, “Goddammit, Brad—what the hell are you doing?”

He didn't answer. He didn't stop digging. Scoop by scoop he added to the pile he'd made, beside the tombstone of a veteran who surely wasn't buried there.

“What's going on?” Gabe asked from the bedroom.

She dashed down the stairs, stumbling a little, despite the fact that the bourbon had almost burned itself out of her blood by now, and she was thinking she could seriously use another drink, the sooner the better … maybe even before she went outside, except the bottle wasn't on the way and this was not the time. Unless it was the perfect time.

Were there new handprints on the railing? She didn't look.

Was that a yellow dress, at the very far edge of the living area? Did it flutter in wet gusts that filled the whole house, but shouldn't have? It was only one broken window. It was only that second-floor hallway. It was warm in there, a few minutes ago.

But Dahlia was running too fast to wonder too hard.

She skidded under the oversized pendant light and looked back in time to see the guys leaving her bedroom. She blinked, and they were on the upstairs landing, and there was a door open in the hallway to their left—one that needed to be cut open, but no one had cut it open yet.

But Brad was in the cemetery, so she ran to him, across wet grass that slapped around her ankles and left the hems of her jeans damp and sticky against her calves. She slipped in mud that'd been earth just an hour before, but now some maniac had scooped it up and flung it out, certain there must be a grave underneath it.

It only
looked
like a grave, that's what she told herself. Brad only
looked
like a grave digger, and the flash of pale motion behind him only looked like a yellow dress.