Jennie Bentley - Spackled and Spooked

I admit it, it was a little freaky. The earring had probably belonged to one of the dead women, lost under the refrigerator, only to surface now, seventeen or eighteen years later. Long after the person who had worn it was dust. Shivering a little, I stuffed it in my pocket, intending to show it to Derek when he came back inside. Maybe we should give it to the lawyer in Portland to forward on to Patrick Murphy. He might appreciate having it.

From outside, I could hear a screeching noise as Derek pulled open the hatch, giving entry into the crawlspace. We’d have to buy some oil to lubricate the hinges on the doors. The auditory effects were enough to induce night-mares. I wrote “lubricant” on the bottom of a long list of materials Derek had already started, and waited for him to speak. From below, I could hear scuffling noises and then, finally, Derek’s voice, muffled and distant. “It’s a lot better down here than I expected.”

I raised my own voice. “Really? How so?”

“Not as low, for one thing. It’s not actually a crawlspace. More of a walk-bent-over-at-the-waist space. You might be able to walk upright, though.” He chuckled.

“Hey! I am five feet two,” I said, offended, and I could hear another chuckle float through the floorboards.

“The floor’s just dirt. Hardpacked, but at least it isn’t concrete. I can haul a shovel down here and make some progress.”

“Works for me,” I said, since I wasn’t the one who’d have to do it. “So what do you need to make the repairs? I’m ready.”

Derek started firing off items and measurements, and for a few minutes, I was busy writing. “See any wild-life?” I asked, when he had wound down.

“There are some ants and beetles crawling around. And cobwebs. Lots of cobwebs. I’ll need a shower when I get outta here.”

“Anything else? Was the hatch locked?”

The hatch had not been locked, only closed and bolted, and Derek reported a lot of junk sitting around. Ratty blankets, old cans, empty bottles, old insulation, and newspapers.

“It looks like someone might have been hanging out down there,” he said when he came back into the house again, brushing cobwebs and dirt from his hair. “Not for a while, I think, but we should get a padlock and make sure the space is locked up tight anyway.”

I nodded, scribbling it at the bottom of the now even-longer list. “We need a ton of other things, too. I added lubricant, for the hinges.”

“Good idea.” Derek nodded approvingly. “For a second there, I thought I’d stepped on a cat. Do you think the screaming Lionel said he heard was someone opening the hatch?”

I nodded. “Or the front door. But the hatch is more likely, especially if it wasn’t locked. And squatters make more sense than ghosts, anyway. They could have been arguing or something, and that’s what he heard.”

“Sure,” Derek agreed. “So do you want me to go to the hardware store and pick up some of this stuff, then? Or do you want to come, too?”

I hesitated. There was a part of me that wanted to go with him. Or not so much wanted to go as wanted to avoid being left behind, alone. Still, I’m a big girl-in everything but stature-and I know there is no such thing as ghosts.

“I’d love to, but Kate said she’d be stopping by this afternoon. I don’t want her to drive all the way out here and then find nobody home.”

Kate McGillicutty had been my first friend when I came to town. She lived a couple of blocks from Aunt Inga’s house, in the heart of Waterfield, and was the owner of a local B and B, and she was someone who disliked Melissa James as heartily as I did. She also knew and liked Derek and had given us tons of assistance while we were renovating Aunt Inga’s house. Kate had great taste in interior decorating and a way of jollying Derek along, by alternately flirting and big-sistering him, that had been very helpful when he and I weren’t getting along as well as we do now.

“You want me to wait for her?” Derek asked. “That way you won’t have to stay here alone?”

He looked serious, but a hint of amusement lurked in the corners of his mouth. I shook my head. “That’s OK.”

“You sure?”

I nodded bravely. “Positive.”

He chucked me under the chin. “Just stay in the bathroom and work on the wallpaper. If someone knocks on the door, make sure it’s Kate before you open it.”

I promised I would, and then I followed him to the front door. When he was gone, I locked and bolted it behind him and attached the security chain before I headed down the hallway to the back bathroom again.

The house was laid out very nicely. The front door opened into an L-shaped living room-dining room combination, with the eat-in kitchen behind the dining room and the den behind the living room. The hallway leading to the bedrooms and bathrooms was in the den; there was a full bath with a combo tub-shower on the left and a small bedroom on the right. At the end of the hall, there were two more bedrooms: the master with an attached three-quarter bath-shower only-on the left, and another biggish bedroom on the right. Although it was the last thing I wanted to dwell on, I couldn’t help thinking that the little boy must have slept in the small room across from the big bathroom, closest to the den, while his grandparents had shared the bigger room at the end of the hall. That would have allowed him to sneak out undetected while his father murdered his wife and in-laws.

I tried not to think too much about any of that, though. Instead, I focused on what I was doing, running my scorer up and down the walls, its tiny serrated wheel punching long lines of tiny holes in the wallpaper, making a soft scratching noise as it went. Tomorrow I’d bring a radio to keep me company while I worked. Without Derek here, the place was eerily quiet. I started humming but stopped when I realized I was singing the theme song from the Twilight Zone .

I’d been at it for maybe ten minutes when I heard a sound. And then another. Footsteps. I stopped, holding my breath. What the hell?

“Derek?” I tried. “Is that you?”

But no, how could it be? I’d put the security chain on the door; he couldn’t have gotten in. So who was coming down the hallway toward the bathroom?

Maybe he came through the back door , I thought, grabbing at the possibility like a drowning woman grabs at a life raft. Yeah, he could have come through the back door. I’d watched him lock it after he came in from investigating the crawlspace, but there was no security chain on that door, just a dead bolt. That must be it.

“Derek? If you don’t stop scaring me right now, I’ll kill you!”

A little ribbing is OK-I’d come to expect that from him-but this was going too far.

“Derek? Dammit, say something, OK?”

Nothing. And yet the steps kept coming closer. Soft, inexorable steps on the fluffy carpet in the long hallway. Any second now, whoever was outside would be visible through the open door. I turned to face the opening, my legs stiff. The last time this had happened to me, in Aunt Inga’s house, the footsteps belonged to a man who had come to kill me. He had done his best, and might even have succeeded if Inky hadn’t tripped him as we struggled at the top of the stairs. With that fairly recent memory in mind, I could be excused for expecting the worst. I gripped my wallpaper scorer so tightly that my fingers hurt, and prepared for battle.

The steps reached the door and kept going. I stared at the doorway, but didn’t see a thing. No shimmer in the air, no shadow on the opposite wall, nothing. Yet the steps continued, toward the back bedrooms. I held my breath. Goose bumps popped out all over my body. I wondered insanely if I’d hear shots. Phantom shots, from a gun fired seventeen years ago. And then the screams of the victims.