Лорел Гамильтон - Strange Candy

Abbie leaned over the sink and opened the kitchen window. It seemed stuffy in here suddenly. The cool spring breeze riffled the white curtains. They were embroidered with autumn leaves in rusts and shades of gold. They went well with the brown and ivory floor tiles.

She had a choice now, about where to go next. The door leading to the adjoining garage was just to her right. And the stairs leading down to the basement next to that. The garage was fairly safe. She opened the door and stepped onto the single step. The garage was cooler than the house, like a cave. Another back door led from the garage to the backyard. The only stains here were oil stains.

She stepped back in and closed the door, leaning against it for a moment. Her eyes glanced down the stairs to the closed door of the basement. Little Brian Garner’s last trip had been down those stairs. Had he been chased? Had he hidden there and been discovered?

She would leave the basement until later.

The bedrooms and bath stretched down the long hallway to the lef t. The first bedroom had been the nursery. Someone had painted circus animals along the walls. They marched bright and cheerful round the empty walls. Jessica Garner had missed her second birthday by only two weeks. Or that’s what Sandra said.

The bathroom was across the hall. It was good-sized, done mostly in white with some browns here and there. The mirror over the sink was gone. The cleanup crew had carted away the broken glass and left the black emptiness in the silver frame. Why replace anything until they knew for sure the house wasn’t being torn down? Other houses had been torn down for less.

The wallpaper was pretty and looked undamaged. It was ivory with a pattern of pale pink stripes and brown flowers done small. Abbie ran her hand down it and found slash marks. There were at least six holes in the wall, as if a knife had been thrust into it. But there was no blood. There was no telling what Phillip Garner thought he was doing driving a knife into his bathroom wall.

The master bedroom was next with its half bath and ceiling fan. The wallpaper in here was beige with a brown oriental design done tasteful and small. There was a stain in the middle of the carpet, smaller than the living room’s blood. No one knew why the baby had been in here, but it was here that he killed her. The papers were vague about exactly how she had died, which meant it was too gruesome to print much of it. Which meant that Jessica Garner had glimpsed hell before she died. There was a pattern of small smudges low along one wall. It looked like tiny bloody handprints struggling. But at least here the cleanup crew had tried to wash them away. Why hadn’t they done the same in the kitchen area?

The more Abbie thought about it, the madder she got. With something this awful, why leave blatant reminders?

The little bathroom was in stainless white and silver, except for something dark between the tiles in front of the sink. Abbie started to bend down to look, but she knew what it was. It was blood. They had gotten most of it up, but it clung in the grooves between the tiles like dirt under a fingernail. She’d never seen the cleanup crew so careless.

The boy’s bedroom was in the front corner of the house. The wallpaper was a pale blue with racing cars streaking across it. Red, green, yellow, dark blue, the cars with their miniature drivers raced around the empty walls. This was the only carpeting in the house that had some real color to it; it was a rich blue. Perhaps it had been the boy’s favorite color. The sliding doors to the closet were torn, ripped. The white scars of naked wood showed under the varnish. One door had been ripped from its groove and leaned against the far wall. Had Brian Garner hidden here and been flushed out by his father?

Or had Phillip Garner only thought his son was in here? For it was certain the boy had not died here. There were no bloodstains, no helpless handprints.

Abbie walked out into the hallway. She had walked into hundreds of empty houses over the years, but she had never felt anything quite like this. The very walls seemed to be holding their breath, waiting, but waiting for what? It had not felt this way a moment before, of that Abbie was sure. She tried to shake the feeling but it would not leave. The best thing to do was finish the inspection quickly and get out of the house.

Unfortunately, all that was left was the basement.

She had been reluctant to go down there before, but with the air riding with expectation she didn’t want to go down. But if she couldn’t even stand to inspect the house, how could she possibly sell it?

She walked purposefully through the house, ignoring the bloodstained carpet and the handprinted door. But by ignoring them she became more aware of them. Death, especially violent death, was not easily dismissed.

Rust-brown carpet led down the steps to the closed door. And for some reason Abbie found the closed door menacing. But she went down.

She hesitated with her hand almost over the doorknob and then opened it quickly. The cool dampness of the basement was unchanged. It was like any other basement except this one had no windows. Mr. Garner had requested that, no one knew why.

The bare concrete floor stretched gray and unbroken to the gray concrete walls. Pipes from upstairs hung from the ceiling and plunged out of sight under the floor. The sump pump in one corner was still in working order. The water heater was cold and waiting for someone to light it.

Abbie pulled on all three of the hanging chains and illuminated all the shadows away. But the bare lightbulbs cast shadows of their own as they gently swung, disturbed by her passing. And there in the far corner was the first stain.

The stain was small, but considering it had been a five-year-old boy, it was big enough.

There was a trail of stains leading round the back of the staircase. They were smeared and oddly shaped as if he had bled and someone dragged him along.

The last stain was in the shape of a bloody pentagram, rough, but recognizable. A sacrifice then.

There was a spattering on one wall, high up without a lower source. Probably where Phillip Garner had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

Abbie turned off two of the lights and then stood there with her hand on the last cord, the one nearest the door. That air of expectation had lef t. She would have thought that the basement where the boy was brutalized would have felt worse, but it didn’t. It seemed emptier and more normal than upstairs. Abbie didn’t know why but made a note of it. She would tell the psychic that would be visiting the house.

She turned off the light and lef t, closing the door quietly behind her. The stairs were just stairs like so many other houses had. And the kitchen looked cheerful with its off-white walls. Abbie closed the window over the sink; it wouldn’t do to have rain come in.

She had actually stepped into the living room when she turned back. The handprint on the back door bothered her. It seemed such a mute appeal for help, safety, escape.

She whispered to the sun-warmed silence, “Oh, I can’t stand to leave it.” She fished Kleenex from her pocket and dampened them in the sink. She knelt by the door and wiped across the brownish stain.

It smeared fresh and bloody, crimson as new blood. Abbie gasped and half-fell away from the door. The Kleenex was soaked with blood. She dropped it to the floor.

The handprint bled, slowly, down the white door.

She whispered, “Brian.” There was a sound of small feet running. The sound hushed down the carpeted stairs to the basement. And Abbie heard the door swing open and close with a small click.

There was a silence so heavy that she couldn’t breathe. And then it was gone, whatever it was. She got to her feet and walked to the living room. So there’s a ghost, she told herself, you’ve sold houses with ghosts before. But she didn’t pick up the soggy Kleenex and she didn’t look back to see how far down the blood would go before it stopped.