Page 10 of The Shape of Night

“How big a space, do you think?”

“I looked in with a flashlight and I can’t see the opposite wall. Arthur told us to open it up and find out what’s back there.”

“Arthur?”

“The owner, Arthur Sherbrooke. I’ve been keeping him up to date on our progress, and this has got him real curious. He had no idea there was anything behind that wall.”

“Maybe it’s a secret stash of gold,” Billy says.

“Just as long as it isn’t a dead body,” grunts Ned, clapping crumbs from his hands. “Well, we’d better get back to work. Thanks for the cake, ma’am.”

“Please, call me Ava.”

Ned politely tips his head. “Ava.”

They’re both heading back to the widow’s walk when I call out: “Did either of you happen to come by the house Sunday morning?”

Ned shakes his head. “We don’t work here on weekends.”

“I was walking on the cliff path when I looked up and saw someone on the widow’s walk.”

“Yeah, Donna mentioned you’d seen someone, but we can’t get into the house if you’re not here. Unless you’d like to leave us a key like the last tenant did.”

I stare out at the widow’s walk. “It’s so strange. I can swear he was standing rightthere.” I point to the edge of the deck.

“That’d be mighty foolhardy of him,” says Ned. “The deck’s just about rotted through. Wouldn’t support anyone.” He grabs a crowbar, ventures out on the new boards they’ve nailed into place, and pokes the crowbar into one of the old planks. The metal sinks in, punching straight through rotted wood. “If anyone stepped out here, the boards would’ve collapsed right under him. Truth is, it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. The owner should’ve had this deck repaired years ago. He’s just lucky there hasn’t been another accident.”

I have been staring down at the disintegrating wood, and his words take a minute to sink in. I look up at him. “Another accident?”

“I didn’t know about any accident,” says Billy.

“ ’Cause you would’ve been in diapers. It happened twenty-something years ago.”

“What happened?”

“The house was already in rough shape when Miss Sherbrooke died. I used to do odd jobs for her, but the last few years she was alive, she didn’t like folks coming around to fix things, so everything sorta fell apart. After she died, the house sat empty for years and became a magnet for the local kids, especially on Halloween. Kind of a rite of passage to spend a night in the haunted house, drinking and making out.”

My hands suddenly feel cold. “Haunted?” I ask.

Ned snorts. “Empty old houses like this, people always think they’re haunted. Every Halloween, kids’d break in and get themselves plastered. That year, one fool girl climbed over the railing, got onto the roof. Those tiles are slate, so they’re wicked slippery when they’re wet, and it was drizzling.” He points to the ground far below. “Her body would’ve landed down there, on the granite. You can see no one would survive the fall.”

“Jesus, Ned. I never heard that story,” says Billy.

“No one likes to talk about it. Jessie was a pretty little thing too, and only fifteen years old. What a shame she was hanging out with a bad crowd. The police called it an accident, so that was the end of it.”

I stare out at the widow’s walk and imagine a misty Halloween night and a booze-fueled teenager named Jessie, clambering over the railing and dangling there, high on the thrill. Was she startled by something she saw, something that made her lose her grip? Was that how it happened? I think of what I experienced last night in my bedroom. And I think of Charlotte, packing in haste, fleeing this house.

“They’re sure the girl’s death was just an accident?” I ask Ned.

“That’s what everyone said, but I wondered about it at the time. I still wonder about it.” He pulls his hammer from his tool belt and turns his attention back to his job. “But no one cares what I think.”

Six

Hannibal has vanished.

Only as I finish eating supper do I realize I haven’t seen my cat since Ned and Billy packed up and left for the day. Now it’s dark outside, and if there’s anything reliable about Hannibal, it’s the fact he will always be sitting by his bowl at dinnertime.

I pull on a sweater and step outside, where an evening chill has swept in from the sea. Calling his name, I circle the house toward the cliff’s edge. On the granite ledge I pause, thinking about the girl whose body would have landed here. In the light that shines from the window, I can almost see the girl’s blood still spattered across the rock, but of course it’s just dark patches of lichen on the stone. I glance up at the widow’s walk, where the girl had dangled from the railing, and I imagine her plummeting through the darkness to land on this unforgiving granite. I don’t want to think about what such a fall does to a human body, but I can’t shut out the image of a shattered spine and a skull cracking open like an egg. Suddenly the sea is so loud it sounds like a wave is roaring straight toward me and I retreat from the cliff’s edge, my heart pounding. It’s too dark to search any further; Hannibal will have to fend for himself. Isn’t that what tomcats do, prowl around all night on the hunt? At twenty-six pounds, he can afford to skip a meal or two.

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