Authors: Kathryn Meyer Griffith
“Good luck,” Abigail encouraged her.
They paid their bills and went their separate ways down Main Street with the stuffed bunnies and Easter decorations behind shop windows observing them parade by.
*****
Frank was at her door twenty minutes before six that evening. She’d finished up the courthouse mural job, collected her pay and had spent the afternoon shopping for her and the kids. She’d purchased nothing extravagant, merely small gifts for both children and a new blouse for herself, rewards for a job well done. She sometimes did that when she got paid. It’d turned into a ritual.
For some reason Martha hadn’t made an appearance. She’d probably gotten caught up with another house showing or sale or something. Abigail hadn’t minded. She saw Martha all the time and would see her again soon enough somewhere.
“Reporting for ghost hunting duties.” Frank had a playful grin on his face and gave her a salute as she let him in. “Does Beatrice know we’re coming?”
“I telephoned her earlier and she’s expecting us. When I talked to her she was distraught. Apparently the ghost showed up again after Myrtle left this morning and, as she conveyed to me, tried to kill her this time. Imagine that? Not only a haunting but a killer ghost. My, my. Wait until you hear her story. It sounds like something someone would put in a book of fictional ghost tales. But I’ll let you hear it straight from her mouth. You might pick up on something I missed.”
“I’m already intrigued. Though I’ve never believed in apparitions and hauntings I’ve always been fascinated with them. Haunted houses are my favorite.
“You know, I’ve been playing with a new idea for my next novel. I’ve always wanted to write a classic haunted house story. It’d be a little different than my last three murder mysteries and the crime drama I’m working on now; more in the horror genre than mystery.”
“You want to write a straight horror novel? Now that’s interesting. I never would have thought you’d want to try that genre. Hmm. We have time for a cup of coffee if you’d like one?”
“Sure I would.” He shadowed her into the kitchen where he helped himself to a cup. “Where are the kids?”
“Nick is at school working on an afterschool science project with some classmates and Laura’s at her friend Jessica’s house, supposedly doing homework but I suspect they’re gossiping and gushing over their newest boyfriends. They won’t be home until nine. That’s curfew on school nights. It’ll give us plenty of time to visit Beatrice.”
“Laura has a boyfriend? When did that happen? Laura’s too young to have boyfriends.”
“She’s almost sixteen. Not too young. I think the current boyfriend is someone called Taylor. This month anyway. It’ll be someone else next month. He sounds like a nice boy. Well, or as nice as a sixteen year old boy can be. Don’t worry. I won’t allow her to date, except in a group, until she’s sixteen.”
“If you say so. But if Taylor sticks around longer than that I’ll have to do a background check on him. I’ll have to meet him and set down some rules.”
“You’re so protective. But I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“We’ll see.”
He set his empty cup down on the sink counter. “You ready to go?”
She nodded, slipping her jacket on. “Whose car do you want to take?”
“We’ll take my truck. You know I like to drive.”
“Typical man thing, right?”
“I don’t know. No reflection on your driving at all. You’re a competent driver.
I just like to drive.”
Abigail had driven past Beatrice Utley’s house many times but now she’d get to meet the person who lived there and see the inside. It was way out at the end of Myrtle’s road in a circle drive encompassing six houses surrounded by woods. All of them seemed to be from another time. They were antiquated, sprawling run-down monstrosities with tons of ginger-bread trim and lattice work, drive under carports leading to garages and numerous out buildings. Beatrice’s house sat on one end of the circle and its paint was a peeling dull ivory, its windows dirt glazed. The other houses around hers were in just as bad disrepair. Two were a beige color, one light and one dark, and the other three were pale yellow, green and blue. The six of them at one time, in their heyday, must have been a sight to behold. There was money here, but it was easy to see the money had died or left. The houses needed serious renovations.
They pulled into Beatrice’s driveway. It was one of those lengthy concrete ones that wound up to and behind the main structure.
“Yikes, this place has definitely seen better days and could really use a new paint job or siding,” Abigail declared as she got out of the truck and Frank came around to meet her. She gazed up at the mansion before her. “I’ve never been this close to it before. It’s huge. It looks like there are stables behind it. I don’t see any horses, though it must have once had them.” The stables were empty now, barely standing, and the buildings were rotten wood. There was a flourishing under and overgrowth of shrubs and weeds everywhere and it appeared as if the grass hadn’t been cut in years. “It must have once been a grand place. What a shame.”
“I imagine it was magnificent in its time,” Frank spoke as his eyes scanned across the house and grounds. “It is a shame. I feel so sorry for a home, any home, to be this neglected.”
“The owner is elderly and that’s what happens when time and money are gone.” Abigail was still gawking at what was around them as they walked up to the front door. Frank rang the bell. It didn’t work so he knocked. Then he knocked again, louder this time.
The old woman who answered wasn’t anything like Abigail had pictured her as being. A small woman, she had the whitest hair shaped into one of those old lady hairdos, like a cap on her head, but soft and feathery; a wizened face with alert eyes the color of peridot gems, a little tasteful makeup, and an emerald print dress that looked as if it had been bought in the nineteen fifties, but hadn’t been much worn. She had to be about eighty years old but had held on to her looks well.
Abigail thought:
She dressed up for us
.
The woman didn’t
look
crazy.
“Hi Beatrice. I’m Frank Lester, remember me? And this is Abigail.”
“Hello. I remember you, Frank. Of course I do.” The woman sent a delighted look Frank’s way and bobbed her head slightly at Abigail. She stood back and opened the door wide. “You’re Abigail Sutton, right? I know who you are. Myrtle has told me all about your…adventures. She said you can help me with my problem. You and Frank can, that is. Please, come in.”
The inside of the house was sparsely furnished. There was a damask sofa with matching chairs and oak end tables on an oval rug, but there were personal belongings setting, stacked and piled everywhere up to the ceiling. At first glance they looked like cardboard boxes and Tupperware storage containers full of stuff. Heaven only knew what. It was dark in the house’s interior because heavy burgundy drapes were drawn closed along the windows and kept the light out. With the dimness and the stacked containers it was hard to even get through to the sofa; the cleared paths were so narrow.
And as Myrtle had warned her, there were the dolls, of every kind and every size everywhere in normal doll clothes or fancy doll party gowns like the women once wore in the nineteen-forties and fifties. There were wife, nurse, and rich girl dolls; there were country, city and foreign dolls. Some were ceramic, porcelain, cloth or plastic. All female, though. They sat on the sofa and chairs, dressers, on the older television set, and wall shelves; and the dolls
stared
at them. The glints from their glassy eyes sent slivers of faint light in every direction.
Myrtle had been right. It was creepy. Who’d want these many dolls? Someone awfully lonely, Abigail supposed, or someone who was trying to fill up their life with inanimate objects because there were so few flesh-and-blood people in it. And dolls never talked back, never hurt or left someone. They were a captive audience, captive friends.
Beatrice led them into the living room and with a wave of her hand around them, said, “Sit anywhere you’d like.”
Yeah, sure, on a doll’s lap?
There wasn’t a place to walk through much less sit on.
“Just move some of them, shove them out of the way if you have to.” Beatrice was speaking of the dolls. “They won’t mind.” And the old lady gave the humans a timid smile.
She and Frank ended up squeezing in on the sofa beside each other and packed in between the dolls. Frank, sending Abigail a furtive look of amusement, simply picked some of the toys up and set them on top of other ones at the end of the couch. Three or four fell noiselessly to the carpeted floor. Beatrice didn’t seem to notice their plight. Or if she did she didn’t say anything.
“Can I get either of you something to drink? Coffee or tea?” Beatrice offered. “I have a pitcher of lemonade ready in the fridge, if you’d prefer that?”
Abigail had the feeling to turn down the woman’s hospitality would be hurtful to her. Beatrice was that sort of woman. The old rules of courtesy applied. She seemed delicate, overly-sensitive. “The lemonade sounds good. I’ll help you get it.” She got up and trailed Beatrice into the kitchen.
The hallway was so full of stuff Abigail almost tripped but caught herself at the last moment, her hands supporting her against the wall. How did the old woman manage living in such a place? It couldn’t be easy. She was aware lots of people hoarded things but every time she encountered one, like Beatrice, she never knew how to take it or them. All this stuff lying around everywhere would drive her insane. But that was her. She was a neat freak.
As they got out the glasses and put them on a tray, Abigail looked around. The kitchen appliances were extremely out of date. The sink was one of those old steel double basin varieties that had been so popular in the fifties. The refrigerator, too, was old. Its motor made a rumbling noise as it chugged along. One could probably hear it all through the house at night. There was a gray Formica table with matching chairs around it before a large window overlooking more weeds and lush trees. There were artificial flowers everywhere in pots and in baskets which looked so real Abigail had to actually touch a bloom, a leaf, to be sure they weren’t. So they must be expensive fakery.
And then, of course, there were more dolls, propped on the kitchen chairs and table; looking down at her from the top of the cabinets, counters and a crowded kitchen hutch. There were more dolls behind glass and stuffed in every nook and cranny. Abigail had never seen so many dolls in one place, unless it’d been in a doll museum. She had to force herself not to stare too openly, though it was hard. There were dolls in the sink. She wondered if they were also in the refrigerator. At least there was no rotting food setting out to lure the bugs. Or perhaps the dolls scared them away?
“You sure do have a lot of dolls, Beatrice,” she couldn’t help herself and blurted out.
The woman raised her eyes. “Thank you. I know. I’ve been collecting them for years and years. They keep me company. I have quite an assortment and I imagine some of them are rather valuable, especially the older ones. I don’t get many visitors these days. My son lives far away in Florida and I haven’t seen him and my grandkids in years. They’re so busy and you know how children are these days? Got their jobs, the children’s activities and all. They’re too busy to visit grandma.” Abigail heard a resigned and deep melancholy in the woman’s voice.
Abigail only lowered her head. She didn’t know what else to say. She kept waiting for the dolls to start chattering at her because some of them were so lifelike. She forced herself to look at anything else but them. It was hard. She could feel their blank eyes on her.
Beatrice saw her taking everything in. “My Arthur, he was my husband, helped build this house back in nineteen sixty-five or so. He fashioned it after this old mansion I once saw in a fancy home magazine. Nineteen sixty-five is when we got married, you know. Over fifty years ago. It’s been my home ever since. I love it. I’ll never leave it. Arthur died about three years back. But,” her gaze moved around the cluttered kitchen with fondness, “he’ll always be here. He never left. He loved this place almost as much as he loved me. When I get especially lonely, I speak to him sometimes. Or to his memory anyway. Then I don’t feel so lonely. I’ll never leave this place because how could I leave Arthur?”
The old lady seemed to expect an answer, so Abigail responded, “You can’t.” She understood exactly what Beatrice was saying. She’d used to talk to her dead husband sometimes, too. For a long while after Joel had disappeared, she’d sensed him with her, at her side, at times. Once he’d even saved her life with a phantom telephone call. For the first time, no matter what she’d thought about this whole ghost thing, Abigail was glad she’d come. It was heartbreaking to see how hungry for company the old woman was. If nothing else, this was her good deed for the week: visiting someone who needed visiting.
Beatrice removed the lemonade pitcher from the refrigerator. There were no dolls inside, yet it was crammed with unidentifiable food and moldy looking containers. The smell was pretty bad. Abigail hoped Beatrice didn’t offer her something to eat out of it. Discourteous or not, she’d have to decline. Even the lemonade was suspect and she probably wouldn’t drink too much of it. She’d have to find some way to warn Frank, as well.
Don’t drink the yellow stuff…the small things floating in it may not be lemon pieces.
They carried the drinks into the living room and Beatrice sat in the chair nearest them. Abigail noticed how she carefully scooted the dolls over to make room, except for one Raggedy Ann doll she put in her lap and held loosely.
Frank picked up his glass and took a swallow.
Oops, too late.
Abigail had to give it to him. His face didn’t change. The lemonade was barely drinkable. It had a bitter aftertaste to it.
Maybe the unidentified creatures in it?
“Tell me what’s been happening here, Beatrice,” he probed gently. “Everything. Don’t leave even the smallest detail out. You never know what might help us figure this all out.”