Disclaimer: No ownership! Not a penny for my effort, just a labor of love.
Haunted House
by tallsunshine12
Chapter 1
Getting Acquainted
A/N: This is a rewrite of an older story of mine, by the same title. I've polished the dialogue and the description, so I hope the reader likes it!
Maverick was having a bad run of cards one blowy night in New Orleans. With his two pairs, kings and jacks, he had lost a sizable amount of money to three of a kind, all deuces. Even his thousand dollar bill, which he always kept pinned inside his coat, was not enough to cover his loss.
"There's a way you can pay me," said his opponent, Harlan Guyot, a French Creole gentleman of a long and honorable Acadian lineage, "plus earn a handsome reward in the bargain."
Shuffling the cards absent-mindedly, the itinerant gambler said, "I'm listenin'."
"I want you to stay at a house I own in Maine for one month, as a kind of caretaker. It's called Breck's Point."
"Caretaker?" asked Bret, stopping his shuffle. "I'm no good at that."
"Granted," said Guyot. "I don't expect you to be. But for the discharge of this debt, you can do it. I'll excuse the debt, and even reward you for your time. If you don't help me, there'll be consequences."
"Consequences?" asked Bret, swallowing something.
Harlan Guyot smiled. "We won't go into that. All I ask is one month of your time, thirty-one days."
No one wanted to stay that long at Breck's Point. Rumor had it that the house, on a cliff overlooking the sea, was haunted. And rumors, once afire, die hard.
Mrs. Harrison Rolfe, née Lily Belle Tucker, of New Orleans, had married in 1810, and had moved with Mr. Rolfe to the blustery cliff at Breck's Point, dwelling in the large old house that was built before either of them was born.
Then tragedy struck. On a boating excursion, their skiff overturned in the windy surf and both of the Rolfes had drowned. Their bodies washed ashore and were later identified by a local man, the Rev. Isaac J. Cooper. He had them interred at the cliff's edge, side by side, overlooking the sea they had once been so fond of.
That was in 1812, and now in 1874, Bret's time, caretaker after caretaker, hired by a trust set up ages ago by a then-relative to take care of the house, had failed to live in it for more than two weeks, due to its haunted nature.
Lily Belle, now a haunt, seemed to have her own ideas about who lived there, using 'tricks' to send any and all of these intruders packing.
A man might be forgiven his panic if a flowered tea cup lifts off the table, floats in midair, and then drops down to the saucer again, all without breaking.
Or he might be excused for his fright if he sees 'Napoleon Lady'—Lily Belle herself in a long, flowing gown with a broad satin sash and tiny slippers, her curls reined in by a small band around her forehead, the garb of Jane Austen's day, gracing the hilltop.
Bret didn't believe in ghosts, but he did believe that there were unquiet spirits out there. Men who had had an extra ace up their sleeve might haunt a table where they had been shot, proving that not everyone died in the bosom of family and in the fullness of their years. Certainly, Lily Belle hadn't.
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By steamer, Bret traveled up the coast from New Orleans to a town in Maine, barely a dot on the map. Stepping ashore with his satchel, he had luck enough to find a room in the only hotel in town. Later, over a fish supper, he made inquiries about the house at Breck's Point. The waiter gave him a look of pure fear. Bret caught the look.
"What's wrong? Did I say something to scare you?" he asked.
"With all that happened the last time," said the waiter, positively trembling, "why would Mr. Quimby send another man out there?"
Moses P. Quimby, Esq., a lawyer in town who represented the now-faraway Harlan Guyot, had hired the most recent of the house's multiple caretakers to try to disprove its ghost rumors.
Bret had little time to think about that. He met Quimby at his office, and was told to report to Breck's Point the next day. As he laid out a fresh shirt before going to bed, he glanced over at the hotel room's billowing curtains.
He could almost see her, her small, round face and large French eyes, a woman in a long, diaphanous dress, like the ones of almost a century ago. Ringlets adorned with combs. It was a ballroom, her tiny silken slippers softly stepping down a stair.
Was this Napoleon Lady? What was she like, he wondered. If he had to share so many nights with her, a whole month's worth, he hoped that she'd be pretty at least.
The following morning, whistling a tune, he picked up his satchel and exited the room. Dropping like a bullet down the stairs, he popped up at the desk where the clerk, yawning, looked up from his paper, the Gazette.
Bret thrust the key across the desk and the semi-conscious clerk stowed it in a cubbyhole behind him, then he turned and let his eyes drop back to the paper.
"One dollar," he said. "Put it on the book."
Bret tossed a dollar onto the sign-in book and smiled, picked up his satchel again and, going towards the door, passed a sleeping local in a once-ornate chair. He too was 'reading' the Gazette, only with his eyes closed.
Its bones full of the sea, sand in its marrow, the whole town, Bret thought, was slow to rouse. But he had known worse places.
Pulling open one of the two, lace-curtained doors, he walked out into the bright sun of nine o'clock. There was a tangy smell in the air, of fish, boats, and sea wrack. He knew that smell well, having been born on the Texas coast.
In a nearby café, he had a meal of eggs, bacon, and toast, and once refreshed he then felt ready to conquer his formidable task. Which was to outlast a ghost, if there was one, for a month.
A farmer delivered him to the end of the road leading up to Breck's Point, the name not only of the house, but also of the cliff on which it sat. He waved the wagon on, then opened the gate, strode in, and began the uphill walk to the dwelling.
At the wide main door of the house, he twisted the big, old-fashioned key in the lock, and, due to some recent painting that made it stick, he had to push hard against it to open it. It had been a slapdash job. The painters must have been in a hurry not to meet the resident ghost.
Satchel in hand, he slipped into a large, mahogany-paneled foyer, with its portraits and objets d'arts, such as a Delft figurine of a milkmaid, chipped and abandoned. A blue-flowered Chinese export vase, sans flowers, stood tall on a marble-topped stand. Dust moats floated in the air.
He ran his hand over the smooth banister of the stairs and thought how it must have been a fine place at one time, full of voices and laughter. Now he realized that even with the portraits on the walls, he was the only one alive in the house.
Reflecting his dark top hat and frock coat, a wavy looking glass on the hall tree brought him out of his amazement. He was here on a mission. What to do first?
Intending to explore a bit, he brushed his hat with his sleeve and tossed it on the hall tree. There was ample food in the larder, he'd been informed, but he'd look into it later. Now he had a pressing question to answer. Where was he going to sleep? Upstairs? Rumor had it that the haunt also used the stairs.
Still if he was reluctant now, what would he be like three or four days hence when the house really got on his nerves?
Turning to the stairs, he proceeded up with caution, one slow step at a time, and once at the top, he looked back into the hall below. It was soundless, but he could hear—distantly—the sea as if pounded against the shore.
Then he heard a thud, as of a cabinet door slamming shut. He jumped and backed away from the rail, as if it might give way. No other sound occurred, so he turned and entered a bedroom on his right. Dust seethed around him, untouched by human hand in an age. Nothing over the past year had been done to the house, except a bit of painting, mostly trim.
He started to unpack and put his things away in a massive, old bureau, but stopped when he heard a mournful wail. He got down on one knee and peeked under the bed; the closet too was empty of ghosts.
"Must be the wind in the eaves," he said to himself.
Then there was a thud again.
"Probably just a loose shutter."
He had no ladder or tools to fix it with, but before supper, he'd go scout around and see if he could find it. For now, the house was quiet again, and he let its absolute silence permeate him, let himself become one with it, even closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. He didn't want to feel hostile to the house. He didn't want to make the house hostile to him.
First Hours
It was still daylight, so he started at the front, looking for the loose shutter, and then wended his way around back. To his surprise, he found what had once been a well-kept garden. Located out of the incessant wind of the headland, this pocket-sized patch was by then a rough sight.
Moldy-green statues and urns, a dried-up fountain, beds without flowers, and trees without fruit, along with hordes of weeds, graced this petite jardin now. Ivy grew unabated, covering the tulip trees and the weird shapes of the once-sculpted boxwood.
He continued his lonely walk, but had no luck finding the loose shutter over any of the tall windows. Sighing, he emerged in the front yard again and sat down on a bench under an old sycamore, a breeze shaking its serrated leaves. Directly facing the untamed sea, it seemed to him like an ancient sailing bark.
Time hung heavy on Bret's hands. Ah, he thought, I should have brought a book to read, a dime novel with gunfights and saloon girls, or the local rag, the Gazette. He hadn't brought anything. In coming here to Breck's Point, he had hoped that the sea would prove to be his chief amusement.
Reduced to counting the dandelions in the grass, he felt a light tap on his shoulder. He whirled, but there was no one there.
"Who's that?" he called rather loudly, looking around every which way. "Is that you, Quimby?"
Bret thought he heard someone answer, "Nooooo," in a long, drawn-out way.
"It's like solitary," he muttered, thinking of the month he had agreed to spend at Breck's Point. "I can't get out of it."
'Solitary' had a special meaning for him. It referred to the territorial prison at Laramie, and his hard, half-winter there. Cold in every wall, wind in every nook, snow blowing in through a window high above his head. Ice in the shaving basin. It was like that.
He shuddered, remembering. When his time was up, he had walked out into a blizzard, blinding white, and could only make it as far as the next town or two. But in spring, as soon as the first crocuses bloomed, he skedaddled to the Gulf again, its sun and sea both very far indeed from wintry Wyoming.
Startled by the tap, in the day's fading light, he saw a billowy cloud descend from the sky to the edge of the cliff. It swirled about, quickly, to and fro, like a silken dress at a dance, captivating him and carrying his spirit along as if to music.
"Is it the ghost?" he asked himself. Or was it only his imagination, stirred up by ghost rumors? Was he embroidering truth with fancy?
Fear draining the color out of his face, he stood up and walked towards the cloud, putting himself right inside it. Like a cloak, it enveloped him, and moved with him to the edge of the cliff, so close that he had to hold onto to the cliff's brambles not to fall off.
Then the cloud faded off, moving out over the water far below him. Suddenly woozy, he gazed down at the stony shore below. Another step would have been his last. With an effort, he pulled himself up by the weeds to the yard again.
How had he been led so far down the side of the cliff?
Back at the house, hungry, he was determined to eat and forget all about what he had just seen. One of Quimby's men had laid wood in the old black stove, and matches lay on a shelf above it. He got a fire going, then mixed flour and water, added some milk, and made biscuits. There was ham, too.
In the larder next to the kitchen, peaches, tomatoes and beans, all in cans, sat on the shelves. Not the greatest variety, but adequate to last him through the month. Luckily, he found an old can opener in one of the kitchen drawers. Supper was soon ready.
Next Day
The banging shutter again marred the night, otherwise fairly quiet. Next day, Bret was staring up at a likely candidate for the shutter when a boy of ten or eleven appeared out of nowhere and landed at his side. Bret jumped a foot.
Carrying a basket of fresh eggs, he handed it to Bret, and said, "I'm John Fleming. Ma sent these over."
Somewhat distracted by the boy's being there at all, Bret acknowledged him with a nod. "That was thoughtful of her."
"Ma needs the money ol' man Quimby gives 'er. She'll kill a chicken for you tonight."
A bit amused, Bret smiled. "Thank her for me. I hope I'm not putting her out any."
"She makes the best stew," John Fleming said, then he changed topics, recklessly as boys do. "Did you sleep okay last night?"
"Except for a loose shutter, I did. It's very quiet around here."
John looked around, as if expecting to see the ghost pop up and contradict Bret's statement. "Too right it is. You've been lucky, mate," the wise youngster told him. His dark skin and curly hair gleamed from a recent dip in the sea. He slapped at a mosquito. "I guess you'll be stayin' then."
A comment, not a question. He took to his heels as suddenly as he had come. Whistling, he ran off to a path leading down to the beach. Bret shook his head and went back inside the kitchen. He'd make an omelet for lunch. As he was beating the eggs, a wailing started up, like a sad voice, long and low.
"Just the wind," he murmured. He was hungry so it didn't distract him for long. Greasing a cast iron skillet with butter, he mixed some leftover pieces of ham into the eggs, cooking it all over a low fire. He even started humming.
This kind of living was almost too easy.
Then the low wind began to rise. Shrieking, it was almost spirit-rending. He had never heard it that way, even in a hurricane on the Coast. That wasn't all.
On his way into the dining room with his omelet, he saw something and dropped his plate. It hit the floor and broke into twenty flowery pieces. Gliding by the sideboard was a figure. Very white, very slim, it didn't seem to want to stay, but by the room's other door, it exited into the hall.
He stared at it for quite a while, then bent down and picked up the pieces of the broken plate, taking them—and his shredded omelet—out to a barrel beside the back door, regretfully dumping it all in.
Sighing, he said, "God, it's only been one day and night."
That night he made his bed on the couch in the parlor. Downstairs, the shutter wasn't so loud, but its place had been taken by moans and groans throughout the house. When John Fleming knocked the next morning, Bret's hand was shaking as he sipped his coffee.
In a covered tin pail, John had brought his ma's chicken stew for Bret's supper, but he stopped short as he got a good look at him. He saw a changed man. Rings under his eyes, tousled hair, a slightly hunched look, plus he hadn't shaven yet, and the sun had been up a while.
Knowing the signs from the previous 'caretakers,' John asked, "That ghost show up?"
"It had to be the wind—that wind!" Bret said, with a tiny shudder. "A shutter kept banging outside, so I slept on the couch in the parlor." He ran a hand through his dark hair, thinking how weary he felt. "You bring any milk?"
The boy lifted the other pail he carried. "You couldn't see this?"
Bret took both tin containers, flipped John a coin, and then went to set the stew in the larder. Pouring a bit of the milk into his coffee, he and John shot the breeze for an hour or so, then John remarked he had chores to do at home.
He got up to leave, then put out a hand on Bret's arm. "I hope you sleep okay," he said, earnestly.
That night, Bret had supper early, heating the Mrs. Fleming's delicious stew, eating it with a milk chaser. To boost his spirits, he fancied up the table, even laid a cloth he had scrounged up. Along with a crystal drinking glass, he used another of the china plates like the one he had broken.
He was content at last. But things changed quickly at Breck's Point. Just as a forkful of stew was making its way home, the tablecloth began to move. Slightly wrinkling, it was being pulled at the far end of the table by an unseen hand. Bret's plate, glass, and silverware began inching away from him as he stared in horror.
"Whoever it is, stop!" he cried, lifting the glass of milk before it tilted over and spilled. "Stop that!"
Yet cry as he would, the ghost didn't heed him. It continued to tug on the cloth, creasing and bunching it and drawing his supper things nearer and nearer the opposite edge. He jumped up, set the glass on the sideboard, and then gave the cloth a healthy tug in his own direction.
He felt a certain hesitation, then the other's hold on it gave way. It sprang towards him and he lurched back. He stood there, a corner of the tablecloth in his hands, his plate and utensils caught up at the edge of the table and barely holding on.
That night, he eschewed both his bed and the couch in the parlor, preferring to sleep outside in the grass, where the wind blew and blew and unquiet spirits roamed. Wrapping himself warmly in a blanket, he didn't find the ground as hard as he thought it'd be.