Molly Harper - Better Homes and Hauntings

Long before the Whitneys were a wealthy family, Gerald Whitney’s great-great-great-grandfather Loudon was a simple sailor who ferried people around the bays surrounding Rhode Island. Eventually, those little bays and inlets became very important to the Revolutionary War effort. Loudon volunteered his services and his growing fleet of boats to get the Colonial troops where they were most needed, all along the seaboard. His assistance was instrumental in winning some of those first early skirmishes. Loudon invested more and more into the boats as time went by and continued to allow the Colonials to use them. He was rewarded handsomely and made friends among the earliest politicians. He made a particular friend of the governor of Rhode Island when he managed to get the governor’s son to a doctor after he was wounded in battle. The governor showed his appreciation by rewarding him in the way of the old country, with land grants. Of course, at the time, the island was virtually useless. Who would want to live on a tiny spit of land twenty miles off the mainland? But old Mr. Whitney thanked the governor profusely and held on to it. Gerald Whitney was the first to make any use of it.

As for the house itself, the Crane’s Nest rose out of the water like a drowned debutante, her fine lines eroded and obscured, tangling into the overgrown green expanse of Whitney Island. Nina could see evidence of what had once been an exacting geometric landscaping plan leading up to a rounded porte cochere, hiding the massive front doors in its dark, cavernous maw. The gardens were long past feral, with dry, withered grass strangling the remains of statuary and rosebushes. The façade consisted of three levels, a loggia flanked by two-story wings leading into the main structure. Rows of windows stared back at her with the blank sheen of dolls’ eyes. A ring of tall chimneys crowned a flat slate roof, echoing the pattern of blunt cornices extending from the porte cochere.

Despite the warm, sunny afternoon, there was an air of melancholy to the house, and not just in the overall state of disrepair and decay. The patina of age and grime over the battered gray limestone seemed like a black mark on the house’s soul, a warning to passersby to move along. Contentment and happiness were not to be found in the Crane’s Nest.

The photos that had been provided for Nina’s bid hadn’t prepared her for the sheer size of the building. It felt as if the house could tumble down the sloping yard and swallow their little boat at any moment. All the more reason for Nina to want to disembark as quickly as possible.

As they drew near shore, Jake ducked behind the helm and started making adjustments to the boat’s trajectory, calling out an occasional request to Cindy to pull a line or tighten a sail. With Nina out of commission and no other sailors aboard, Cindy’s reluctant, untrained help was the best Jake could get. The boat jolted with a splash and made a slow turn, causing Nina to groan.

She couldn’t help but feel as if they were intruding, their arrival disrupting the house’s slumber. The Crane’s Nest had stood for nearly one hundred years, untouched and uninhabited. And now Nina felt as if she’d wandered into a church full of people to ask directions, only to realize she’d interrupted a wake.

Nina felt Cindy approach from her right, staring up at the decrepit mansion.

“Just a little cottage built for two,” Cindy mused, sliding her cat’s-eye sunglasses up through her thick mane of curls. “Complete with twelve bedrooms, a formal dining room, and an evil spirit in the basement that wants to eat your soul, if the urban-legend Web sites I read are to be believed. I mean, who wouldn’t want this gem for their weekend place?”

“I don’t think the Whitneys were known for their subtlety,” Nina said, trying to focus on anything but the quivering tumble of her stomach.

“You realize that as the blonde, I’m probably going to be picked off first,” Cindy muttered.

“Picked off?” Nina asked.

“Did you not hear me mention the soul-eating ghoul in the basement?” Cindy teased. “In the movies, the blonde always gets killed first, to establish the rules on Certain Death Island, such as ‘Don’t wander off on your own to go to the bathroom’ and ‘It’s not a great idea to wear a negligee to investigate spooky noises armed only with a flickering candle.’ ”

“But you could be a postmodern blonde,” Nina suggested. “You could be Buffy or Naomi Watts in The Ring . They were always the last girls standing.”

“Oh, we’re going to get along just fine, hon,” Cindy told her, patting her shoulder. “You get extra cool points for any Jossverse reference.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Squinting in the glaring afternoon light, Nina traced the line of the roof with her eyes, admiring the wrought-iron railing that enclosed the widow’s walk. There was potential for a terrace garden there, from what she’d seen in the pictures. She was trying to estimate the roof’s square footage when a dark feminine figure stepped up to the wrought-iron boundary. Nina gasped. A cold wave of nausea washed through her as the dark shape seemed to stare down at the approaching boat. For a moment, Nina thought she could make out the lines of an old-fashioned gown, a slim waist, dark twists of long hair blowing in the wind. But there was no detail to the face or form, only shadow. Nina shivered and braced herself against the bow, taking deep breaths. When she looked up at the roof again, the figure was gone.

“Is it always this quiet?” Cindy asked, surveying the island with a worried expression.

“Yes,” Jake called from behind the wheel. “The Crane’s Nest is the only home on the island. So, no crazy neighbors or barking dogs to keep you up at night. Don’t worry, though. We’ll make some noise soon enough,” he told her. Cindy’s delft-blue eyes narrowed at the suggestion, and Jake’s cheeks flushed. “I meant with construction equipment and workers! Hammering, nailing . . . oh, good God, there is no recovery from this, is there?”

He looked to Nina for help, but the sudden deceleration of the boat plus the possible hallucinations of shadowy figures had finally tipped the scales in her battle with nausea. She was currently bent over the rail, saying good-bye to her breakfast.

Cindy rushed over to Nina, whipped a blue bandanna from her pocket, soaked it with Nina’s water bottle, and held it to the back of the ailing redhead’s neck. She looked to Jake, who surveyed the scene with a horrified expression. “What did you do?” she hissed at him.

“I didn’t do that to her. Poor inner ear dynamics did that to her.”

“Well, you must have done something! I know I’ve wanted to throw up since boarding this boat with you.”

“Me? What did I do?”

Cindy exclaimed, “You’re you. That’s all it takes!”

Oddly hurt, Jake turned on his heel and devoted his attention to running the boat. “Well, it can only get better from here.”

EACH OF THEM handled the stress of officially landing on Whitney Island in a different way. Cindy was organizing the pile of luggage and boxes stacked near the defunct fountain just short of the sparsely graveled drive. Nina sat on a stone bench with her head between her knees. Jake was wandering around the lawn, trying to find cell-phone reception, although Nina suspected he was just trying to distract himself from staring up at the house. Every time he looked up at the huge structure, a What have I gotten myself into/I want my mommy expression fell across his boyishly handsome face.

Nina had no desire to look at the house, either. Had she imagined the dark figure on the roof? Had the atmosphere, combined with the house’s reputation, created some sort of surreal illusion? She wasn’t one for flights of fancy . . . but it had seemed so real. Mr. Whitney said that they would be the only people present on the island full-time, but maybe he’d hired cooking staff or had his own administrative staff from his office there to make way for the renovators. Did administrative personnel wear old-fashioned gowns with tiny wasp waists?