The Haunting Of Bechdel Mansion (6 page)

She walked to her suitcase and placed it on
the bed, zipping it open. Assorted clothes were crammed inside. The
double closet in the room was a large enough to hit her entire
wardrobe and then some, but for the time being, she was living out
of a suitcase.

She grabbed a T-shirt and white shorts and
headed for the bathroom, where she would find out just how well the
plumbing worked. A small window illuminated the vast bathroom, and
as she walked toward the standing shower, loosening her nightgown,
she heard the bedroom door open.

She froze and pulled her nightgown back on.
“Curtis?” she said. The bathroom door was opened a crack and she
cursed herself for being so careless. The footsteps continued as
she walked to the door calling for Curtis again. As she pushed the
door open, she was taken aback to see a large bearded man, sweaty
and panting, wander through the room like a lost child.

“
Excuse me!” she shouted, backing into
the bathroom.

She heard the man halt. “I-I’m sorry ma’am.
I was just looking for a restroom.”

She clutched her chest and backed
against the wall. “Well, this is
our
room! Please talk to my husband and find
another.”

The man apologized and stumbled out of the
room, closing the door behind him. Mary remained against the wall
with an increased heartrate. She couldn’t believe it. She lowered
her arms, sighing in frustration and went to the shower. The orange
and white checkered tile inside looked old fashion, to say the
least, and there two knobs below the shower head. She turned the
left knob, assuming it was for hot water, and the pipes rumbled in
shook, spraying out water intermittently.

She held her hand into the spray and felt a
dash of warmth. After a moment, more water began to flow, but it
had an almost sulfuric smell to it. The last thing she wanted to do
was to have a strange odor on her. She stood there waiting for it
to get better still dressed in her nightgown. Beyond the unwelcomed
intruder from a moment ago, she had the strangest feeling that she
was being watched.

From outside the bedroom door opened and
shut again. Her head whipped around the bathroom door, but she
heard nothing else. She turned the water off, frustrated. “Damn it,
Curtis. That better be you.” She felt vulnerable even though her
door was locked.

“
What are you so afraid of?” a man’s
voice asked. It sounded almost like Curtis, but she couldn’t tell
for certain. Livid, she rushed to the bathroom door and swung it
open, prepared to give whomever it was a piece of her mind. Their
room was quiet and undisturbed. No one was there. She could feel
her heart thumping in her chest. The door was closed. Their
mattress was in the corner on top of a boxes-spring, her luggage,
Curtis’s carry bag, and a few boxes from downstairs were lay about,
but there was no man.

She darted to the open windows and looked
below into the lush, overgrown backyard. There was no sign of
anyone. She didn’t know what kind of game someone was playing with
her, but she didn’t like it. Her hands vaulted at the windows and
pulled them shut in anger. She scurried across the room and locked
the bedroom door. Taking a shower had never proved so cumbersome.
With all security measures in place, she walked back toward the
bathroom, stopping at her suitcase as a thought crossed her
mind.

She leaned down and tore through her clothes
in a frenzy. Her hands stopped as she slowly pulled a .38 caliber
pistol from the bottom. She wasn’t going to take any more chances.
Feeling frazzled, she went back to the bathroom, locked the door,
and set the pistol on the gray tiled countertop. The showerhead
dripped in slow intervals as she dropped her nightgown and tried
her hand at the knobs again. Water spurted and gushed for a moment
before flowing naturally in warm, steady stream. The strange smell
had managed to subside as well. She stepped inside, feeling
immediate and much needed relief. It was only morning, and already
she felt like she was being tested.

Showered and dressed, Mary walked
downstairs, apprehensive about running into any of the movers.
There were several men around, but Curtis wasn’t among them. She
politely gave them a “good morning” and continued her search,
walking outside to the bright light of the morning, shining down
onto the cement courtyard, where the heat felt at its apex.

There were dozens of people outside, many of
them still working on the massive lawn and overgrown trees and
hedges surrounding the mansion. There was a roofer team above,
walking along the top of the mansion and tossing rotted panels into
a pile below. That day, Mary imagined, would be much like the day
before with different maintenance teams and movers deep into their
work. Ahead, next to the moving truck, she saw Curtis. He stood in
the shade with a tall, skinny man who wore a red-netted hat. Mary
knew him as Skip, one of the two movers who had driven the truck.
The other five or six who had recently showed up, she hadn’t met
before, but she was certain that the man who came into her room was
among them.

She stormed over to Curtis, incensed. He
looked up and smiled at her, but when he saw the straight line of
her mouth and livid eyes, his smile dropped.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her, eyes brimming
with concern.

“Can I talk with you in private?” she asked
and glanced at Skip.

Curtis looked around, taken off guard.
“Yeah… Yeah, sure.” He excused himself and followed Mary around to
the other side of the truck. Once they were alone, she leaned
closer and spoke in a soft but forceful tone.

“One of the movers came into our room
earlier.”

Curtis’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. “I was
about to take a shower and he walked right in like he owned the
place.”

Curtis covered his mouth. “Oh my God…”

Realizing she was laying it on pretty thick,
Mary raised a hand up. “It was an honest mistake, I imagine. He
said he was looking for a bathroom, but I didn’t appreciate the
intrusion one bit.”

Curtis nodded, biting his lip. “I’ll talk to
them. I’m so sorry, honey. They should know better.”

“That’s not all,” she said, cutting in.

Curtis looked even more surprised as though
he couldn’t believe the story could get worse.

“After he left,
another
person came into the room.”

“
What?
” Curtis shouted.

“I was about to get into the shower, and
someone came in and said ‘what are you afraid of?’ That was their
exact words. I thought it was you at first, but when I opened the
door, no one was there.”

“Are you serious?” Curtis asked in
disbelief.

“I know what heard.”

Curtis looked around with his hands at his
sides and growing increasingly frustrated. “Well, that’s it.
Whoever that was, they’re gone. I’ll talk to Skip now. Fire the
whole damn team if I have to.”

He began to walk away when Mary clutched his
shoulder, holding him back. “That’s not it, Curtis. I don’t think
the second man was one of the movers.”

Mouth open, Curtis’s eyes darted around,
trying to make sense of it. He looked up to the roofers on top of
the mansion. “Then it probably was one of them,” he said pointing.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”

“I don’t think it was any of them,” she said
with conviction.

“What are you saying?” he demanded.

“I think it’s this house. There’s no way
someone could have snuck out of our room like that.”

Curtis held both his arms up in frustration.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. So was the first guy real or not?”

“Yes!” she said.

“But the second guy? He was the ghost?” he
asked.

She smacked him lightly on the shoulder,
taking offense. “This isn’t a joke. We need to find out more about
this house before we invest any more of our money into it.”

Curtis calmed down and pulled him closer,
hugging her. “I know you’re worried about the future. I am too, but
these things you’re seeing, I think it’s all stress.”

Mary backed away in his arms, unconvinced.
“Stress?”

“I’ll talk to the movers and roofers,
honey, and get to the bottom of this, but I want
you
to take it easy. You’re not
ready for all of this excitement. I can see it in your
face.”

“I’m lucid enough to know what I see and
hear,” she said.

He squeezed her hands, trying to make a case
for calm. As they stood there in front of their supposed dream
house, she found it harder and harder to deny him. “Why don’t we
get away from this place and go into town? I’m getting a headache
just standing here.”

She looked around in deep thought, trying to
reach a resolution. It sounded like a nice enough idea, and beyond
it all, she had a burning desire to find out more about the Bechdel
mansion. Perhaps there were people in town who could help her.

***

They drove into town on a blue sky day,
prepared to get the lay of the land and meet some people in the
process. The mansion was roughly three miles from any home, store,
or gas station, and it was nice to escape all the activity at home
and rejoin civilization. Mary tried to put all the recent
strangeness out of her mind and enjoy the scenic beauty of the town
before them, a stunning contrast to the traffic and noises of the
city. They had entered a different world.

It was a Sunday, and they passed a quaint
white church like something out of a story book. Amidst its fresh
green lawn and picket fence, a congregation flowed out of the
double-door entrance toward a side parking lot. A wooden sign sat
in front of the church with words professionally painted over
saying, First Christ Church of Redwood.

“Looks like we just missed it,” Curtis said
with a smile as they passed.

Mary turned and watched the church as
families in their dress clothes, men and women, old and young
alike, slowly walked along looking cheerful and vibrant. Mary was
raised by Baptists parents but couldn’t remember the last time she
had been to church. Mark identified as a Christian but went to
Church as much as she. Generally, he worked about seven days a week
at the law firm back in Chicago, where Mary worked from home as an
illustrator for children’s books. She never thought she’d ever
marry a lawyer, but something about them just clicked. She had felt
it since day one.

“It looks nice,” she said, her head turned
to the back window and watching the steeple as they continued on.
She sat down and touched Mark’s hand resting on the armrest. “Maybe
we should attend services next weekend and get to know some
people.”

“Whatever your heart desires,” Mark said
with a smirk. He then shook his head. “The things I do for
love.”

Mary turned to him, mouth agape. “As if it
would kill you to go to church.” She then leaned back against the
headrest and placed her sunglasses on. “I think it would be good
for us with everything that’s happened.”

“Church is boring,” Curtis said
matter-of-factly.

Mary laughed. “This coming from someone who
practices law.”

They passed a park where children climbed a
jungle gym and a corner store to their right where an older man was
fueling up his boat hitched to his truck at the gas pump. Downtown
was in sight, and its series of brick roads, light posts, and
buildings. “Historic Downtown,” they called it. There was a fire
station to their left, small like everything else, that had its bay
doors open revealing a shiny red fire truck. A sign on the at the
end of the driveway said, “Redwood Fire Department.”

A few blocks past the fire station, they saw
the police department again where two officers in beige uniforms
were talking outside the door. Their heads turned toward the
vehicle as Curtis passed and they waved. Curtis gave them a wave
back and smiled. “Isn’t this place something?” he asked Mary.

“It does seem like a safe, nice town,” she
said. She scanned the buildings ahead, hoping to see the library.
Then she wondered if it would even be open on a Sunday. They passed
a book store with carts of old books out front, but that wasn’t
what she was looking for.

“You could use this place in one of your
stories,” Curtis said. “Take your sketch pad out here and capture
it.”

“I plan to,” Mary said, “but it’ll be for
fun. I don’t write the stories.”

“I have you called your work yet and let
them know you’re settling in?” he asked.

The thought so far hadn’t crossed her mind.
She’d been on maternity leave for few weeks and was planning on
taking at least one more. “I’ll call them tomorrow,” she said.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Curtis said.
“Relax and put it off.” Curtis scanned the shops as they drove down
Main Street. Mary knew that he was looking for a potential spot to
set up his own practice, but their dwindling finances concerned
her. During the drive from Chicago, she had suggested that find a
partnership in Redwood. There had to be a law office out there
somewhere. He had originally balked at the idea, but they would
have to start somewhere.

They came to a parking lot near a pizza
place aptly titled “Redwood Pizza,” completely with an
old-fashioned hanging sign in front of the door. It was the same
place they had ordered from the night before.

“This looks like a good place to park and
walk around. Library’s just up the street,” he said, turning
in.

Mary was relieved to hear it. Her desire for
knowledge on the mansion’s history was inescapable despite the
nonchalant, amiable face she was wearing. Curtis parked between a
truck and jeep and turned off the ignition while glancing the
rear-view mirror.