Chapter 3
Begin Again
Fear made him loath to proceed up the lane. Isolated and alone, his legs encased in cement, he frowned up at the malevolent structure on the hill. Maybe, after all, he shouldn't intrude upon the ghost a second time. He didn't want to upset her.
It was a calm day, with little or no wind, but just as he touched the gate, a few fence slats flew out. His heart caught in his throat. It took a lot of will to put one foot in front of the other.
Just as he had left it, the massive front door stood open. In the lofty, soundless hall, he looked around for the wraith, including up the stairs. Not seeing her, he manfully put his fears aside and entered the parlor, moving over to stoke up the still-lit fire. It had all but died down in his absence.
Just then a voice called to him, a thin, piping voice, like a robin's in its nest. He jumped a foot, and then some, as the saying went. John Fleming, the eggs and milk lad, stuck his head in the parlor door.
Delighted to see Bret again, he exclaimed, "You're back!" He came all the way into the room and took a seat on the carpet in front of the fire. "See anything of 'er yet?"
"No, and I don't wish to." After his sudden start, Bret was a bit testy. "Are you just visiting?"
"No, ma wants to know if you need eggs for tomorrow. I told 'er I'd see."
Suddenly solemn, Bret asked, "Is it you? Are you and your ma scaring people off?"
"Why would we do that?"
"So you can take the things they leave behind."
"No, mister. We both heard cryin' that night, didn't we?"
Bret shook his head. "It could be your ma cryin'."
"And the tablecloth, was that her, too?"
Bret had to admit that there had been no 'human' agency moving the tablecloth. Just then, a low moan filled the hall. Bret went to the parlor door and ran his eyes up and down the foyer, seeing nothing. A door, upstairs, slammed. One of the bedroom doors.
Swallowing his heart again, he said, "I'd have taken jail over this."
Just as alarmed as he was, John ran up to him. "What're you goin' to do, mister?"
Looking at the boy's scared face, Bret felt a surge of courage thrill through him. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this," he said. "I'm goin' up there."
John looked eerily around himself. "Good luck, mister."
Bret took the steps two at a time, racing to 'catch' the ghost. All of the doors were open, and in the bedroom where he had slept that first night, he scanned the furniture and corners with narrowed eyes. He saw nothing amiss or out of the ordinary for a slightly off-kilter, 17th century house.
He returned to the hall below and threw an arm around John's shoulders. "Come on, at least we can have something to eat before that ghost decides to do something else."
"Yeah," John said, "I'm hungry. Bacon?"
"Beans. We'll fry a little bacon, too."
"Want to come by my place? Ma'll fix somethin'."
"Can't take a chance," Bret said. "Mr. Quimby might check up on me and find I'm gone. I hate ants."
"Ants, mister?"
"Right. Ants."
Their supper that late afternoon went without a hitch, and in fact, it was even relatively peaceful. Bret happily saw to that. He stacked old books on each corner of the dining room table, daring them to be pulled onto the floor.
"Good beans," said John. "You put sugar in them?"
"A little. And some of the bacon drippins'." Bret liked the company, but he said, "You better go after you eat, so your ma doesn't worry. I'll be alright."
John looked up from his plate of beans. He laughed, as if he was very doubtful about that!
Bret smiled back and got up from the table to take his plate and silverware into the kitchen, scraping the plate out back in the barrel, then, rolling up his sleeves, he set it in a basin of water and soap suds. John came in and handed him his plate, then went out again to fetch the glasses and a serving bowl.
"Good man, John!" Bret complimented him. He washed it all with the boy at his side, ready to dry.
Facing a window, they looked out on the tranquil old garden at the back of the house, with just a glimpse of the distant lights of the town beyond that.
After drying, John ran to the back door, cocked an ear, and then traipsed back in.
"No wind nowhere. None," he said.
"Been like that way for a while," Bret said, hoarsely. "I didn't hear any when I came up the lane."
"You still think I'm the ghost?"
Bret finished drying his hands and smiled down at the boy. "Well, if I did, I wouldn't have eaten supper with you!"
"Are you sleepin' inside tonight?"
"Yes," Bret said firmly. "I know there's a ghost, and you know there's a ghost, and the ghost knows there's a ghost, but we don't have to give into it."
"I guess that makes sense," said John, dubiously. "Best I'm goin' now."
Bret thanked him again as he went out the back door, giving him another quarter for all his help. "Remember the eggs in the morning! And a bit of milk for the coffee?"
"I will," John Fleming called merrily back over his shoulder. He was soon out of sight, racing around the house to the beach path again.
Alone, again. Bret had finished the dishes; John had dried them, so now he could put them away in the sideboard in the dining room. After that, he intended to stoke up the fire in the parlor, sit down, and smoke one of his havanas.
An admirable plan. But as he passed into the dining room with the dishes to put away, he spared a glance at the compass of books holding down the tablecloth. One of the books lay open about a thousand pages in. John could have done that, he thought. No need to make more of it than he had to. But as he watched, a page turned.
Now, John Fleming couldn't have done that! Was it the wind? It had to be, but how did it blow in the house?
He breathed in and out for a minute, willing his legs to move again. When they did, he dropped the dishes on the sideboard, rather clatteringly, and went out into the hall, proceeding to the parlor, where he stoked the fire, sat down, and lit a cigar, like he said he would.
Now he had the leisure to think through the last few days.
He could explain the banging shutter. As for the wraith at the sideboard, the moving tablecloth, the tap on the shoulder outside under the tree—all of it had to be the ghost, a ghost who didn't want him to be there, who wanted to drive him off.
Or maybe it had another purpose? He couldn't think of what that could be. Why did it haunt the house? Was it really Lily Belle Rolfe, who had drowned with her husband and unborn child in the surf?
At the far end of the parlor, there was a portrait of a lady in an Empire-style, high-waisted dress, looking very much like the wraith he had been seeing off and on at Breck's Point.
He walked over to take another look at it in its huge frame. Was it 'Napoleon Lady'? The face of Lily Belle Rolfe? Petite, roundish, hazel-eyed, with a slight curvature of the lips as if she were secretly laughing at him. Or at the artist, he guessed.
A glow from one of the parlor windows caught the face in its grip, and it shone, pale and rapturous. The eyes flickered in the last of the sun's rays. She seemed alive. And maybe in a way she was.
Taking note of the twilight, he raised the lamps' wicks, then scared up a bottle of brandy from a glass-fronted cabinet. In the armchair again, staring at the fire beside him, he drank it until it was gone. Twisting until he got settled in the chair, he nodded off to sleep, the empty bottle tilted against his leg.
Night came fully on, and the wind picked up again of its own accord—no ghostly dalliance this time.
About an hour into his nap, a soft rustling noise woke him up. He bolted upright and dropped the bottle, and then he saw it. Slippers, headband, curls, and high-waisted dress, just as in the portrait. "God, say something," he urged.
It blocked the parlor's door should he try to get out. Of course, he could run through it. He didn't think it would stop him, but that much courage he didn't have. So he sat, nervous as a tick, his heart thumping a singular beat, and watched it.
His voice husky with fear, his eyes mesmerized, he asked, "Who are you, really? That Rolfe lady?"
A murmuring of the wind answered him. In some kind of conspicuous cooperation, the trees in the front yard rustled all at once.
She was still there.
Why did it not move, but merely look down on him as he sat by the fire? Her large, doe-like eyes were clear, then hazy. They blurred and coalesced, off and on. How could it taunt him like that?
If he stood up, what would she do then? Feel threatened? Retreat all the way up the stairs? Or rush forward upon him?
In a seizure of hope that he could make it go away, he closed his eyes, shutting them tightly. He almost blacked out. When he prized them open again, seeing spots, it had gone.
Upon the strain of his concentration, his shoulders hurt. One at a time, he eased them up and down, then stood up and walked over to the door, putting his hand on it. There was a coldness in the wood, though the fire kept the room fairly warm and dry.
He had retrieved his satchel earlier from the bedroom upstairs. Now gathering it up, he quietly walked out of the house, pulling the door to behind him. He walked to the end of the lane, and was about to open the gate, when two shadows leaped up at him from beside the fence. He fell back, aghast.
"Where're you goin', Maverick?" asked one of the two men, a lighted cigarette in his hand.
Bret stumbled over his words. "Who are you? What d'you want?"
"Mr. Quimby sent us to make sure you don't leave yet."
Maverick laughed slightly. "Ah, Quimby. Tell him for me that this house is indeed haunted. It's too haunted to stay in, much less sell. I'm tired of seeing things move, and I don't like ghosts!"
He proceeded to open the gate and walk past the two men, but one reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling it up behind him. Not wanting to scuffle with the two men at this time of night, Bret tried talking to them in a firm way.
"Let go of my arm," he said. "I'm not stayin' here, no matter what!"
"Mr. Quimby thinks otherwise. He says you are."
"Let go of me!" First a ghost, and now these two.
He suddenly bent and tossed the man holding his arm over his shoulder and into the dirt. The other set on him and grabbed both of his arms, then the first man resurfaced and drove a fist into Bret's midsection, bending him in two. He coughed, struggling as they maneuvered him back up the lane, to the front door, and into the house again, throwing his satchel in after him.
Staggering a step or two, he called back as the door slammed shut, this time by Quimby's men, "You must be getting paid a lot!"
Feeling foolish, clenching his middle, he bent to retrieve his bag and set it on the hall tree. He'd try the kitchen door next. Wincing, he straightened up and moved down the hall to where the kitchen anchored the other end of the hall, opposite the main door.
When he looked out back, he saw a light in the grassy field just behind the house. It was the light of a lit cigarette. He raced to the parlor to look out at the front yard. Sure enough, on the bench under the old sycamore was the silhouette of a man. He was surrounded.