Page 14 of Spooked
Taking advantage of her lack of attention to detail, I open the door. After waving her through in front of me, I step into the hallway that’s lit by the golden glow of a sunset, the light casting a halo around Maeve’s head. It’s picturesque until…what the fuck?Ducking my head back around the doorway, I notice the bright sun of an Arizona autumn afternoon.
It must be the effect of the old glass in the windows,I rationalise.
Maeve’s just standing, looking around in amazement. Her face is relaxed as if she’s really feeling she’s coming home. She turns in a circle, holding her hands out, as if taking the atmosphere in. Then she turns and informs me, “There used to be a Georgian card table right there. It had an amazing walnut finish and looked just like a hall table until you swivelled it around, then it folded out showing the green felt. It always fascinated me. And there…” her hand touches mine briefly as she points to a corner. “There stood a grandfather clock. It had a sun and moon display on it, and I loved to just stand and watch it. The bong of the chimes could be heard all over the house.” Her face falls. “I guess my aunt sold anything of value.”
I suspect she’s right. To delay exploring the rest of the house with her, I buy some time by asking, “So how did you come to live with your gramma?”
She sighs as if the subject is painful. “My grandparents had two daughters, Siobhan and Sian.” I already know that her Aunt Siobhan was the one to inherit the house. “My aunt was trouble from the start, according to my mom. My mom was the younger sister. Siobhan had her nose put out of joint when Mom was born. She didn’t enjoy sharing her parents, and acted out, ironically proving to be the harder child to raise, meaning Sian,my mom, became the favourite. She excelled at everything a lady should do. Played piano, knew how to behave in polite society, and was the beauty the whole county admired. By contrast, Siobhan was a wild card, lost her virginity to the gardener, but all of that was hushed up. Thinking she might be pregnant, my gramma got her married to Thomas O’Reilly, a local, recently widowed, and childless farmer, just to save face.” She grimaces as she looks at me. “I feel sorry for her in some ways. Her life couldn’t have been easy. My grandad had died young, years earlier. She was only eighteen. Gramma was old-fashioned and thought there was a stigma to being a single mom. Gramma thought she was doing her best, but as it turned out, Siobhan wasn’t in the family way. She remained childless all her life and locked into a loveless marriage.”
“What happened to your mom?” I ask.
After breathing in deeply, she answers, “Turns out it wasn’t just Siobhan who Gramma needed to worry about. Mom was only twenty when she made her own mistake. She fell in love, not with one of my grandparents’ circle, but with a man born on the wrong side of the tracks. A tradesman.” Walking forward, she rests her hand on the banister of the stairs, caressing it lovingly. “Dad was a good man. His and my mom’s only fault was that they preempted their wedding vows. Then, before I was born, he died in a freak accident. They never had the chance to get married. The wedding bands had been bought, and Dad even had the licence. But those truths didn’t matter. Siobhan had a husband. When my mom birthed me six months after my dad died, my aunt had ammunition to use against my mother. She managed to persuade my grandmother that the sister, who had a child born out of wedlock was the black sheep and not her. She was now a respectable married woman. She also embellished the story with lies about drugs and my mom getting pregnant as aresult of going to wild parties. She intimated my mom whored herself out to drug dealers to fund a nonexistent habit.
“When Mom tried to bring me home, Siobhan’s poison turned Gramma against her, resulting in Gramma disowning my mother. Mom was distraught, but sucked it up when Gramma turned her back on her and made her own way in life.” Her face lightens. “Mom was resourceful. She’d let nothing beat her. And my dad’s parents did what they could to help out.” As if I have any doubts, she reassures me, “I was loved by my mother and grandparents. I couldn’t have wished for more growing up. But Gramps and Gran died from monoxide poisoning from a faulty gas boiler. Soon after that, Mom was diagnosed with cancer. In grief at the loss of her in-laws, she’d left it too long to get her symptoms checked out, and when they discovered the tumour, she didn’t have much time left.” I reach out my hand to touch hers, but she shrugs my comfort off. “Mom brought me back here. She and Gramma reconciled and Gramma took us in. Mom had hung on to the marriage licence. Belatedly, Gramma realised how good a man my father had been, and that Siobhan had filled her head with lies. As Siobhan had no children, I was the only grandchild. When my mom passed away, Gramma assured me I’d always be looked after. In her original will, she’d disowned my mother, but she emphatically told me she’d written a new one, which left everything to me.”
After listening to her for so long, it takes a moment for me to understand what she’s saying. “But the will Bullet’s working to, listed your aunt as the beneficiary.”
Maeve shrugs. “I can only assume she never actually got around to renewing her will.”
Or her aunt destroyed the new one,I think to myself.
“I don’t care about the money,” she states. “I’d have been happy with just something to remember my grandmother by. Inthe end, she was so good to me.” She gestures around her. “But it looks like everything’s gone.”
Something strikes me as strange. “Your gramma died fifteen years ago, yet now is the first time you’ve come back?”
“It was time,” she says, succinctly. “Let’s move on.” Knowing the house, it’s she who leads me first into the kitchen, then the dining room, and then the main reception room of the house. Any furniture remaining, she rests her hands on momentarily. “Nothing of significance is left.” She sighs as she returns to the hall and eyes the stairs.
While it should still be at its zenith, it’s as if the sun is disappearing beneath the horizon. It’s starting to get dark in this house that’s been abandoned for years. I already know no electricity is connected. It feels ominous, even worse than before, when she places her foot on the first step. Acknowledging my hesitancy but mistaking the reason, she gestures again toward my walking aids. “You don’t need to come with me.”
“I can make it,” I growl, not wanting to admit my reluctance is due to my apprehension, rather than my skill at climbing stairs.
She pauses at the top, then after eyeing cautiously, then stepping over a fallen bean, she indicates a room, and then proceeds toward it. “This was mine, where I stayed.” Opening the door, she’s surprised, but I’m resigned when we find the area is stripped of all furnishings and bare, just as it was before. Only a few teenage posters remain.
Stepping forward, she opens a closet built into a wall, one I’d ignored. Bending down, she picks something up off the floor. It’s a worn teddy bear with moth-eaten ears. She clutches it to her.
“Yours?” I ask, completely unnecessarily.
“Mine,” she confirms after a short pause.
I want to question her further, like ask her why she left it behind, but then realise how many memories there are in thishouse for her. No wonder she’s acting strange. She’s suffered so much pain, so much hurt, I don’t want to pry deeper.
We exit her old bedroom, and she hesitates before going to another door, with her hand on the doorknob. Her voice drops to a whisper. “This was my gramma’s room. The place where you took the photo that showed her shape.”
“It was a trick of the light,” I remind her. “I saw no one here. Maeve, I’m sorry, but your gramma’s gone, sweetheart.”
“I know,” she replies sadly. “Nevertheless, I want to see her room. When I was overwhelmed that my mom was dying, she used to sneak me in here, letting me sleep with her, reminding me I was loved and safe. If anything remains of her, I want to know.”
There are no ghosts in this house. Any fragment I might have imagined is a result of my TBI. Nevertheless, I’m more than reluctant for her to open that door. The image in the photo we saw in Bullet’s office must have been nothing more than dust disturbed after lying for a decade and a half, swirling up to resemble a shape.
However I try to rationalise it, I’m loath to investigate further. “We can leave now,” I tell her. “No shame, no foul. There won’t be anything in there that you want to remember. Everything will be decaying.”
Ignoring my warning, she twists the knob. “I need to see for myself.”
The light in the house has darkened while we’ve been talking. Although I know in reality it’s still a few hours from sunset, in here, it seems like a different time zone. I can barely see the hall behind me, and when she pushes open the door, it’s to see a room lit by flickering candles and oil lamps.
She freezes, and I immediately put my arms around her, pulling her in close to keep her safe.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she yells, jumping back so fast, for a second, I struggle to get my balance.
