Edward Lee - The Chosen

“The rep. It bothers me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who’s going to want to spend big money staying at a country inn with such a reputation?”

Vera knew what she meant; she’d thought about that herself, and quickly came to the conclusion that they needn’t worry. “Forget it, Donna. It’s all a bunch of crap, and even if it isn’t, that stuff supposedly went on fifty years ago.”

“What stuff?” Lee turned around and asked.

Donna seemed enthused. “The Inn used to be a place called Wroxton Hall. It was a sanitarium.”

“What’s a sanitarium?”

“It’s a place where you study sanitation, you dick-brain,” Dan B. laughed. “Didn’t they teach you anything in reform school?”

“They taught me how to lay pipe with your mom,” Lee came back.

“Please, please, stop,” Vera pleaded. ”A sanitarium, for your information, Lee, at least in this case, is an insane asylum. Not like the mental hospitals of today. Back then they pretty much just locked the mentally ill away instead of treating them. That’s where they sent people who were schizophrenics and psychotics.”

“And male virgins, too,” Dan B. added. “So you better be careful.”

“Oh, that’s real funny,” Lee said. “Almost as funny as your last special. Remember? We ran out of veal for the medallion soup, so you used pork.”

“That’s right, skillethead, and you didn’t even know the difference, so blow me.”

“I’d need tweezers and a magnifying glass to bl—”

“And what Donna is just itching to say,” Vera interrupted, “is that this particular asylum ran into a few problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Well,” Vera hesitated. “Evidently, some people died there.”

“They didn’t just die,” Donna augmented. “They were murdered.”

Vera shook her head. “Donna, even if it’s true, no one will remember it. It happened too long ago.”

“Someone must remember it.” Donna held up the book in her lap. The Complete Compendium of Haunted American Mansions, the title read in silly, dripping letters. “This book just came out a few weeks ago. And there’s a whole chapter on Wroxton Hall.”

“Wait a minute,” Dan B. testily jumped in. “What’s the big deal? Some people got murdered in an insane asylum—so what?”

“They were tortured to death,” Donna said. “By the staff. And a lot of the local residents say they’ve seen ghosts walking around in the building at night.”

“Ghosts?” Lee said. “You mean the place is haunted?”

“Aw, relax,” Dan B. chuckled. “There’s no ghosts.

It’s just your mom with a sheet over her head, looking for some free peter.”

Vera rolled her eyes. What am I going to do with these three nuts? she wondered.

««—»»

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Vera,” Dan B. complained. “How much longer?”

“We’re almost there. It’s right up the ridge.” At least she thought it was. The access road wound upward; cracks spiderwebbed the old asphalt. Skeletal branches seemed to reach out, trying to touch them. The tall forest blocked out the light.

They’d passed through Waynesville twenty minutes ago, a sleepy, rustic little town. It looked poor, rundown. A simple turn off, the route brought them into the face of the northern ridge. A haphazard sign signalled them: wroxton hall in hand-painted blue letters, and an arrow. Get a new sign, Vera thought, nearly groaning. And all this brush would need to be cut back, and the access road would have to be patched, and…

That was all Feldspar’s problem. Again, she wondered about these “restorations”; The Inn would have to be more than merely impressive in order to attract patrons through this mess. Surely, Feldspar knew this.

“This can’t be right.” Dan B. whipped his head toward Lee. “If you’d get your hand out of your pants and watch the map, then maybe we’d know where we were going.”

“Relax, Dumbo,” Lee came back. “This is the right road. It says right here on the map, Wroxton Estates.”

The moving truck rumbled behind them up the incline. Farther up, Vera felt some relief. A contractor’s sign, RANDOLPH CARTER EXCAVATORS, INC., had been posted. They were fixing the road and cutting back the overgrowth. Soon, construction vehicles came into view, refuse trucks, chipping machines, tree-trimming crews. At last, the winding, dark road opened into crisp winter daylight.

“Jesus Christ,” Dan B. muttered.

Lee’s face flattened in astonishment. “I don’t believe what I’m seeing.”

The car slowed around a vast, paved court. Vera and Donna gazed over the men’s shoulders. Center of the court was a huge, heated fountain; Sappho in white marble poured twin gushes of water from her elegant hands. Great hedges had been trimmed to the meticulousness of sculpture. And just beyond loomed the immense edifice of Wroxton Hall.

“Somebody pinch me so I wake up,” Donna said in wide-eyed wonder.

“Jesus Christ,” Dan B. repeated.

Lee’s rowdy voice hushed in awe. “This place is gonna kick…butt.”

Vera could only stare. A single glance quelled all her doubts at once. It’s beautiful, she thought.

Huge, high as a castle, Wroxton Hall had been restored to a Gothic masterpiece. Its old bricks had been sandblasted to a new earth-red luster. Sheets of ivy had actually been replanted in the new grout. The first-floor windows stood ten-feet tall, each opening to smooth, granite-edged verandas. The building rose in canted sections. Awninged balconies protruded from the second-and third-floor rooms; garret-suites, like ramparts against the sun, extended along the top floor. The roofs of each story had been laid in genuine slate, with polished stone friezes running the entire length of each. The building, in whole, looked nearly a hundred yards long.

Words occurred to Vera. Magnificent. Gorgeous. Awe some. But none seemed quite good enough to be applied to what stood before her. Palatial. There, that was it.

Wroxton Hall was far more than a restored mansion. It was a palace. Feldspar had retained the beauty of its age while rebuilding the place at the same time. Extraordi nary, Vera thought. Feldspar’s a genius.

The four of them got out but could only remain standing speechless in the court. Birds looked down on them from the roof’s fine iron cresting. Each frieze bracket sported a gargoyle’s face, and the corner boards shined in polished granite against the plush red brick outer walls. The new glass of each high, narrow window reflected back at them like mirrors.

Behind them the move-it! truck rumbled up and stopped, discharging two loutish hired hands. “Fuckin’ Dark Shadows, man,” the driver commented through a high gaze. “Some joint, huh?” the other one remarked. “Where’s Trump and Maria?”

This was better than Vera could ever even have conceived. Feldspar was quite right; Wroxton Hall provided a resort of the utmost exclusivity. The remote locale meant nothing now. Once word got around in the trade magazines, people from all over the country would be coming here. People from all over the world.

Her excitement surged so intensely it seemed to arrest her will to move. She attempted to step forward, toward the front steps, but found she could only remain where she stood, her gaze scanning the building’s incomparable exterior. When the reality of what she was seeing set in, her breath grew light, and she actually felt subtly dizzied.

Slate-topped red brick steps led to the double entry doors, sided by great polished-granite blocks which gave perch to lazing stone lions. More articulate friezework underlined the transom’s gray-marble ledge and stained-glass fanlight. Wedged directly center was a small keystone of pure onyx in which was mounted a round, cut amethyst as big around as a silver dollar.