The Family Plot (23 page)

Dahlia whispered, “If I turn around, you won't be there, will you?”

I'm not behind you.

She checked anyway. She saw nothing, so she watched the reflection instead. “Should I be afraid?”

You
are
afraid.

“Of Abigail? Was that her? The devil took her, that's what Augusta said.”

The devil did take her, but it took him awhile. She was sent away, first.

Dahlia felt a flash of memory that belonged to someone else. It flickered across the glass, lit up by the light she'd left on the nightstand. She saw walls covered in tile, but not pink tile. There were showers and sponges, and straps. Tubs full of water and ice.

“She was sent to a sanitarium?” she guessed.

She's taken a liking to you. She thinks you understand.

“This is how she treats the people she
likes
?”

A loud knock on the door. Too loud.

So much louder than the woman with the vintage jacket.

Dahlia jumped. Her heart leaped into her throat again, and trembled there. She looked back at the door, and then back to the window—but the older woman was gone. The steam was gone. The creature was gone. And Bobby was at the door, hollering for her to answer him.

“What's going on in there? Who are you talking to? Dolly, you okay? Open the door, would you?”

“It's open,” she barked. Her voice was raw. Her throat grated every word into dust.

“Nope.” He wiggled the knob back and forth. “You locked yourself inside.”

She stepped away from the wall, swayed, and steadied herself. Deep breath. Another one. More of them. They seemed to help. She went to the door and turned the knob herself. It spun the ordinary way and the door swung open on hinges that weren't happy about it, squeaking to let her know.

She poked her face around the side, and hoped she didn't look too crazy. “I don't think it
does
lock. This thing's been broken longer than I've been alive.” She drew the door back all the way, so he could see for himself.

He eyed her, up and down—wild wet hair, pajamas, sneakers half untied. He looked past her, into the room that looked like it'd always looked. “What's going on in here?”

She leaned against the door, but it was shit for balance, so she changed her mind and leaned against the frame instead. Exhausted from fear, but still afraid, she told him, “Goddamn, Bobby. I don't even know. I saw something, and it didn't like me. And I fell…,” she oversimplified.

“Is that what happened to your forehead?”

She gently touched the place where she'd struck the bathroom floor. “Bathrooms are slippery when wet. It's not bleeding. It's not even swelling. Hardly,” she amended, feeling the start of a lump.

He shook his head, then gave the wall an openhanded smack that was heavy nonetheless. “This place is
fucked up,
Dolly. We should pack up what we've got, and leave tonight.”

“You know we can't do that, and you know
why.
” She walked away from him, and didn't chase him out when he followed her into the bedroom.

Bobby sat down on the window seat, next to Dahlia's sleeping bag. He rubbed his eyes. He'd been drinking again, but that was all right. Dahlia was the one who'd told him where the bottle was. “I stand by my assessment. You swear you're not really hurt?”

“I swear I'm not really hurt. Ghosts can't hurt you; everybody knows that. All they can do is scare you, and we only need to hold out for another couple of days.” She sat down over by her stuff, on the window seat. “We can suck it up for a couple of days. Tomorrow, though … if it stops raining, we really
do
have to get that body squared away before anybody wanders by and sees it. We'll look like crooks, and Dad will go broke, and we'll all be out on the streets.”

Bobby sat down on the ledge beside her. His voice got quiet. “Tomorrow, yeah. We'll cover him back up again, don't worry. But listen, I've got an idea.”

“God help us,” she said, but she didn't stop him.

“Yeah, yeah. I know, but hear me out before you shut me down.” Then he got all earnest on her, which almost worried her. Bobby didn't do “earnest” very often. “While I was out there, I got a look at the stones—and I believe what Withrow told you. None of them matched, and none of them were for any family members. But we found somebody
anyway
 … so what do you think that means? What if he's not the only one buried there?”

She thought of the bathroom, the fog, and the ghost who climbed walls. She considered the woman in the seventies lapels, reflected in the glass but never standing behind her.

Bobby continued. “I'm saying: What a great place to hide bodies—in a cemetery that everyone knows is just pretend. What if someone's been stashing murder victims there for years and years? Could be, Grandpa Withrow had a secret and a long game.”

“Or,” she stopped him right there, “it could've been an honest mistake. He could've been put there by someone who believed it was a real cemetery.”

“That's just crazy talk.”

“I
do
feel pretty crazy right now…”

Bobby patted her on the knee. “It's been a crazy night. But maybe, on our way out the door come Friday, we should mention to someone that we
accidentally
found a body in that fake cemetery—maybe say we ran over it. Truck got stuck in the mud, spun a wheel, and we saw something poking out of the dirt. I don't know. Something like that.”

“Plausible deniability. One of my favorite kinds of denial.” She turned to him with something like optimism. “Hey, you think if they find more bodies, they won't tear down the house for a while?”

“No idea,” he said with a shake of his head. “But all I'm saying is, if we've just tripped over a hundred-year-old murder conspiracy, that'd be cool as shit. We might make the papers. Free advertising!”

She laughed in spite of herself, and in spite of him, too. “Sure, Bobby. Free advertising. Way to polish this turd of a week.”

“I'm here to help!”

For a minute, they sat there in silence—staring straight ahead instead of at each other, like they used to do on their grandmother's porch swing, come holidays when the cousins were all together. The kids always ran around outside, while the adults drank and smoked inside, and someone had to keep an eye on the little ones. Dahlia and Bobby were oldest of the seven, so that was their job when all the grown-ups were lit.

For old time's sake, or maybe just because there wasn't anybody else to tell it to, she confessed to Bobby: “I don't know what to do. It's not safe here, and I couldn't live with myself if something happened to … to Gabe, or Brad.”

“And me?”

“You? I've worried about you for so long, I haven't got the energy for it anymore.”

He took it in stride, or at least had the decency to pretend he did. “I don't need anyone worrying after me. Anyhow, salvage is a risky gig for everybody, especially new guys like them two downstairs. Every job is different, right? Every job is dangerous in its own way, that's what Uncle Chuck says. So this one has ghosts.”

“Don't act like you're some kind of expert; you're new here, too. Kind of.”

“And you're only half my size—so all God's children got problems, when it comes to power tools and crowbars. I won't lie to you,” he said—and that might've been a lie itself, but she didn't interrupt him. “I hate this place. It scares the shit out of me, and that's not something you'll hear me say twice. I'll deny it with my last breath, if you tell a living soul.”

“Then I'll keep it to myself.”

With that assured, he told her, “I don't want to stay here. In the daytime it's not so bad; but at night, I'd rather sleep in a doghouse by the interstate than close my eyes up here and act like everything's all right. If you asked Brad and Gabe, they'd say the same—I promise you.”

“At first I thought Augusta was crazy, when I heard she wasn't even
trying
to save it. Now it makes more sense. Did you know that poor woman used to live here?”

“When?”

“After her parents died, she said. And not for very long, but she hung around long enough to hate the place.”

“What about Uncle Chuck? Have you talked to him yet? Did you tell him about…?”

“About the body? No. He's got enough to worry about back in Nashville, running the shop on money fumes. He thinks I've got all this under control; and is counting on us to put the business back in the black this year.” She leaned forward and put her face in her hands, on top of her knees. “Fuck, Bobby. We can't leave yet, just for being scared.”

“Okay, okay. Fine, nobody's leaving. We're just none too happy about staying. Let's get this gig wrapped, packed, and shipped—fast as we can swing it. And then let's get the hell out of here.”

Her voice was muffled, because she spoke into her closed-up fingers. “Deal.”

 

10

D
AHLIA AND BOBBY
headed downstairs together. Dahlia stopped at the landing turn; Bobby kept going, all the way down to the big living area where Brad was sprawled out on the bags, lacquered in dry mud and holding a drink. Gabe emerged from the kitchen with a stray piece of sandwich turkey rolled up like a cigar. He took a big bite out of one end and played with the rest of it, trying to hide how badly his hands were shaking.

Dahlia planted her hands on the rail, right where the prints used to be. “All right, everybody. Family meeting time. Or … company meeting, Brad. You're in on this, too.”

“Because everything's all my fault?” he asked. Every square inch of him was still covered in graveyard muck. He looked like a fugitive from a hillbilly zombie flick.

“No, only
some
of this is your fault. Me and Bobby have been talking—”

“Seriously?” Gabe interjected.

His father got cranky on him. “Yes,
seriously.
Now shut up and hear her out.” He went for the bourbon and helped himself. Brad held up his drink. Bobby gave him a long-distance clink for a toast. “You want one, Dahl?”

“Yes, for the love of God. Now, I want to make sure we're all in agreement: Nobody's calling the cops about that body in the cemetery, at least not while we're still working the job.”

Brad and Gabe offered mumbles of assent, while Bobby called back like he was in church. “Preach it.”

“Because if we do, we're likely to get shut down, and Brad might go to jail.”

“What about after the job?” Brad asked, warily sensing some odd loophole.

“After the job, or at the very end, we should give a heads-up to Augusta Withrow, so she can warn the contractors about the dead soldier. We can rebury him, but it'll still be obvious that someone went digging there. Someone's going to notice,” she said, making up some details as she went along—but feeling pretty good about her logic. “We can claim we turned him up by accident … a truck slid in the mud, or whatever. But obviously we're salvage artists, not archeologists. It's none of our business, and not our problem.”

Brad's jaw fell open, and the wrist holding up his glass went a little slack. “Do you think we'll get away with it?”

“Why not? Augusta knows we found the cemetery, and she told us there was nobody there to disturb. We took her at her word, and we drove right through it. Our bad.”

“You think she'll vouch for us?” Gabe wondered.

“I don't see why not.”

Brad wasn't sold yet. “So I have to lie to the police?”

Dahlia rolled her eyes. “Oh, for fuck's sake. No one's asking you to lie to the police. I'm telling you that
I'll
lie to the woman who sold us the estate, and she can tell them whatever she wants. The dead guy's on her family's land, isn't he?” She tossed her hands up, almost spilling her drink. “Or, you can go ahead and open yourself up to grave-robbing charges, if you're that hell-bent for honesty. I don't give a damn. But until we're done, we keep that corpse to ourselves. Or…” She took a swallow too big to call a sip. “We're all out of a job.”

“No pressure…” Brad stared anxiously down into his glass.

Bobby refilled it, and put the bottle back on the fireplace mantel.

“And now for item of business number
two,
” Dahlia continued. “First, we keep our mouths shut about the soldier in the cemetery until we're halfway back to Nashville. Second, we quit pretending this house isn't haunted as
fuck
.”

Brad and Gabe lowered their eyes, and generally acted like guilty children.

“We've all seen things, and some of those things have been pretty freaky. But we only have two more days on this gig before Daddy shows up, and we're going to make the best of that time like sane, reasonable people who don't want to go bankrupt because we ran away from a job. This may be a shitty work environment, but OSHA doesn't have any guidelines when it comes to ghosts. We'll have to make up our own as we go.”

Brad gulped his drink like he was mad at it. “Are you even
listening
to yourself?”

“Says the grave robber who saw the dead soldier's ghost before anyone
else
did,” she accused, not specifying that she'd seen him too. “The soldier is spooky, but I don't think that he's dangerous. His friend, on the other hand … she's a real bitch…” She slowed. A possibility occurred to her, but she filed it away. “So we need to talk about tonight, and tomorrow night.”

“What's the plan, boss?” Bobby asked gamely.

“Tonight we're all sleeping down in this central living room, and if everything goes all right with that arrangement, then great, we'll do it tomorrow night, too. If things get scary or outright dangerous, then I'll tell my dad we ran into trouble and I'll get us a couple of hotel rooms on the company card.”