You've Been Warned--Again Page 4

  Chapter 10

  When the power dies, I’m practically dragging Nate down the stairs. I’m determined to tell everyone that my fiancé and I will be married at midnight on New Year’s Eve, right in the middle of Times Square. I can’t wait to tell them that instead of a honeymoon, we’re going to sign on for a week of relief work in Haiti, because I’ve spent too much of my life in the protective bubble of privilege, and I want to give back. And so does Nate.

  Let them laugh at us. Let them call us pretentious millennials. We’ll get through it.

  But then, just as we reach the landing, the sudden hush comes over the house. The electric sconces on the wall go out. Somewhere, Mother squawks. There’s a series of thumps like she’s bashing her fists against a wall.

  I don’t think much of it at the moment.

  “Lights out,” the stranger says, nodding at the fire. “Better feed the flames.”

  He’s alone with my sister in the living room. The very sight of that man ices me over. He’s tying the belt of his overcoat back into place while Stella’s stretched out on the couch nearby.

  For a moment I worry he’s harmed her, but Stella’s just lounging with a goblet of wine balanced on her fingertips. She’s even changed into a high-rising cocktail dress. No more Uggs for her.

  “Well, that’s just great,” Stella gripes. “I could’ve done Thanksgiving in LA with Zooey Deschanel, but instead I’m going to freeze to death.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me Chloe was here?” I ask her.

  Stella shrugs. “Haven’t seen her since yesterday.”

  The stranger grabs the last log from the copper bucket beside the hearth. When he tosses it into the fireplace, the fresh wood flares up instantly.

  “It’ll get mighty chilly in here pretty soon,” Nate observes.

  The stranger breaks into a grin and wags his finger. “You, sir, are a bright bulb in a dim universe. This one’s a keeper.”

  Nate’s deaf to the stranger’s ironic tone, but I’m not. I’ve had enough of his sly insults and charades.

  “You know what?” I demand. “How is it you know so much about us? What are you really doing here?”

  “Why, Joanie, you invited me,” he says.

  “And how do you know my name?”

  “Quit being such a nag-hag,” Stella tells me.

  “You’re the one who thought he was a serial killer!”

  “Ladies, ladies, there’s no need to quarrel over me.” The stranger takes a step closer. That sinister way he tilts his chin, like a lion on the hunt, makes me feel like a wounded gazelle.

  I’ve still got Nate’s hand clutched in mine. He hardly budges when I try to yank him into position by my side. “Hey, whoa, chill out there,” is all he says to me.

  I turn back to the stranger. “Hey, Mr. Whoever-you-are? Why don’t you tell them about the car you have parked outside? The one that isn’t in a ditch? I saw it on the security camera.”

  “Touché,” the stranger says. It’s like we’ve been performing a skit, a game called the hysterical woman. My body shudders in the center of all this awkward calm.

  “Joan—” Stella begins.

  Before she can say another word I snatch the wine goblet from her hand. Half of it spills across the couch and her dress. She sits up gasping, fluttering her hands. “What the hell?”

  “How can you guzzle wine in your condition?” I ask her.

  She snaps her head back in disbelief. “My condition?”

  “Chloe told us all about it, just now.”

  Stella stitches her brow, darting her eyes between Nate and me. Then she starts to bray with laughter.

  I’m the butt of the joke. I can almost feel myself shrinking.

  “If I’m pregnant, it was an immaculate conception, considering I’m on a yearlong dry spell.” Stella shoots a glance at the stranger, no doubt gauging his reaction. Then it’s back to me. “What you need to know about your darling niece is she’s a pathological liar. The kid’s allergic to the truth. She couldn’t tell you it’s Thursday if her life depended on it.”

  I’m doubly mortified in front of this stranger. He has ripped open the walls of our house and exposed all its rotten contents. I turn my face away from all three of them, toward my father, lurking in the shadows of the dining room.

  I don’t know how long he’s been standing there. He has this chillingly vacant look about him, like the house has offered up another ghost.

  “Dad?” Stella asks. “What’s the matter?”

  “Your mother,” he says. “I have to find candles. Or a flashlight…”

  The atmosphere presses in on me again, suffocating.

  “What happened to her?” I ask.

  “She had a fall,” is all Father says.

  Chapter 11

  Dorothy Parker said cellar door was the most beautiful phrase in English. There’s no beauty here. I feel only dread as I stare down into the darkness.

  From this part of the house I can hear the waves crashing against the rocks outside. As I wait for the swash to quiet down, I try to pretend this day is salvageable. This family, this life. But another wave comes along to drown out my peace again.

  I have to go down there. No one else will.

  My phone is useless for calls, but it works fine as a flashlight. The beam cuts through cobwebs and lights the steps. It’s not strong enough to reach the bottom.

  I call out to my mother, but the sound just echoes back in hollow answer. I’m afraid she’s too hurt to even respond. She needs my help.

  Gripping the railing, I start my way down. My light catches the first thing out of place—a box of Thai basil chicken dinner propped between two steps.

  I hold my breath to hear other noises. The thrumming waves, the endless rushing wind, the wood under each of my footsteps. The deeper underground, the more the blizzard fades away. I’m blanketed in a thick and mildewy air.

  The cone of light from my phone trembles, and the shadows tremble in turn. I can’t help it. If Mother is injured, we can’t call for an ambulance in this weather. We’re on our own. I’m already certain nothing will ever be the same again.

  “Mother—please,” I beg into the silence.

  It’s like cold storage down here. My breath clouds my view as the cement floor spreads out before me. Disturbances in the dust, more dented boxes of frozen dinners strewn about. My heart doesn’t want to do this.

  But I’m pushed onward by my instinct as a daughter, my drive to be decent when others won’t. She could be unconscious, or in too much pain to answer.…

  Then I hear her voice. It comes to me faintly, as if from the other side of a shut door, a whisper through a keyhole.

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. She’s humming. Merrily humming, like this is all just a lark.

  As my body freezes in place, the light on my phone times out. Total blackness. I rush to press the light, and it all goes straight to hell. The phone slips from my sweaty palm and clatters on the floor.

  I drop to my knees, try to catch my breath, but full panic takes over. My fingers spider over the floor to grab the phone, but there’s nothing but grit, and a damp patch I don’t want to think about.

  The dark is so overpowering I want to curl up and cry all over again. Even through my blind terror, Mother’s voice still lingers faintly. It’s a jaunty melody, familiar, something from the Beatles.

  “I hear you.…” I whisper, and she stops, like a cricket when you’ve stepped too close.

  I catch hold of something rigid but smooth, something warm.

  I pull away, and my recoiling hand brushes her sharp fingernails.

  My hip smacks hard on the floor, but I still feel like I’m falling through nothing, deeper and deeper into the underworld.

  The phone is in my other hand. I’ve found it somehow, and now it’s the easiest thing to click the button, to bring light to this horror. I don’t want to see what I must see.

  Tiny white balls glimmer all around me. They look like
insect egg sacs until I realize what they are. My grandmother’s pearls, broken off from the necklace my mother was wearing.

  Mother’s dilated pupils have blotted out the blue of her irises. Her dead eyes stare into mine.

  My scream is primal, like it must’ve sounded the moment I was born.

  Chapter 12

  My throat is hoarse, but nobody has come to help me. I can’t think what to do. Mother should be on a gurney, surrounded by doctors with their injections and defibrillator paddles.…

  Except, she can’t be saved. I kneel uselessly beside her, sobbing and shivering. All I can think is she doesn’t deserve to be dumped in this place. I want to raise her up to somewhere better, but I can’t.

  Then comes piano music. Just a few feet away, a two-handed sprinkle of notes like you’d hear in a saloon or music hall. My phone light whips in the direction of the sound.

  A piano sits wrapped in cobwebs, yet somehow it just played the first few seconds of “Martha, My Dear.” The same song I thought I heard my mother humming.

  “Sorry, that was me,” the stranger says. His voice is so close, I skitter away from it like a frightened mouse.

  He’s standing at the bottom of the stairs, far away from the piano. There’s no way. I shine my light in his face, but he doesn’t wince at all.

  “What are you doing?” I demand.

  “You called for help, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Can you believe Charles Manson thought the White Album was apocalyptic prophecy? What a dunce. It’s nothing but silly songs for children.”

  I’m up on my feet now, aiming my phone at him like it’s a crucifix. I want to bolt up the stairs, but he’s blocking my way.

  My head crowds with crazy ideas. Like I’m sure this man has somehow caused my mother harm, even though I was with him when she fell, even though Father saw it happen. In my fragile state, almost any wild theory feels like it could be true.

  “She’s hurt. We need to get help,” I say.

  “Oh, Joanie,” the stranger says as he moves toward my mother. He takes a knee and presses his fingers against her jugular. After a moment he sighs and shakes his head.

  “I’m truly sorry,” he tells me. “I used to work in hospice care. It was my sad duty to usher souls to their places. One side or the other. You come to recognize the signs of death.”

  “We have to get her upstairs,” I tell the stranger. I don’t want to leave him alone with Mother, but I can’t spend another second down here, either. Halfway up the stairs, I scream for Nate.

  This time he comes running right away. Stella and Chloe crowd behind him at the head of the stairs, all of them squinting down into my light.

  “Come down here, please,” I beg.

  Nate glances back at my sister and niece like he needs their permission. Then he takes careful side steps down the stairs. When he’s close enough, I bury my face against his scruffy neck. I want to hide against him forever.

  “She—I think she broke her neck,” I say. “She’s dead.”

  “Oh, God, Joanie….”

  “You have to get her upstairs. She can’t be down here.”

  He holds me by my shoulders at arm’s length. “You want me to…carry her? Upstairs?”

  “We’ll get a sheet. We’ll wrap her up,” I say.

  I hear the gritty floor crunch under the stranger’s shoes.

  “Let me help you,” he says. “Nobody can hurt her now.”

  Chapter 13

  Carter Whitmore is dreaming. A foot-deep crust of snow buries the floor, glacial sheets of ice line the walls. His daughter’s frozen corpse sits propped against the dresser, still in her confirmation dress. His son is on the floor, and his wife—

  No, this is not his family. This is not his house.

  “Dad…Dad…come on, snap out of it,” Stella says. Her face is so close it’s like she’s sucking the air from his lungs.

  Here in the master bedroom the snow hisses as it smacks against the glass of the French doors. Carter has let himself get lost in that sound.

  “They’re bringing her up. They’ll put her on the bed,” Stella says. She talks with the condescending hush of a funeral director. Nobody’s making accusations because nobody understands what he did. Nobody knows he pushed his wife.

  Even Carter doesn’t quite believe it. He wants to think she stumbled and bumped her head, that she’ll wake up any minute.

  When Joanie steps into the room, all his half-awake senses sharpen. He remembers. It was Joanie who went into the cellar, and he let her go, knowing what she’d find.

  If somehow he could keep his girls in this house forever, if he could insulate them from the storm, if he could purify them and love them again like when they were kids—then maybe they could be saved.

  But things fall apart. Time corrupts. These women aren’t the daughters he remembers. They’re strangers.

  Two pallbearers carry Martha’s corpse into the room. She’s wrapped tightly in a white sheet, tucked away from view.

  Anger strikes with such force he almost bites through his tongue. He knows these men, these home invaders. Joanie’s boyfriend and the stranger, who’s gotten his hands on Martha’s body after all.

  He even winks at Carter as he lays her out on the bed. Like there’s a secret between them.

  The wind seeps through old seams and makes the curtains billow. On the dresser, a huge model merchant ship seems to rock on those pitched waves of air.

  Carter can feel it, too, a presence around them, a watchfulness. He could almost believe that it started when Joanie let the stranger inside, but the truth is, it’s been here all along. The stranger has visited this house before.

  In a way, he’s been at Carter’s side for the past thirty years at least, even if he couldn’t be seen. He even stayed at the Fálcon Hotel, on more than one occasion.

  It’s the same familiar air that Carter felt when he first stepped into this house. Time is a vicious circle, and now the house is having its way with the Whitmores, just like it did with the Thorpes.

  Chapter 14

  In the dining room, Stella and I are seated at the table, wrapped in heavy quilts and shocked silence. The stranger’s here with us, like a doorman stalling for his tip. “Please leave,” I tell him.

  Earlier, I would’ve chased him off with a hot fire poker, but now he’s helped to carry my mother’s body.

  And yet my suspicions are pricklier than ever. Even if he hasn’t wronged us exactly, he’s laying his hands all over our private grief. Quietly menacing us.

  “I wish I could go,” he says. “But I’m afraid the security gate won’t open when the power’s out.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of manual override?” I ask Stella. She just sniffles and dabs a tissue at the swollen red flesh under her eyes.

  We should’ve been eating dinner by now. Mother had set six places across the red silk tablecloth. Fine china, crystal wineglasses. The cloth napkins are origamied into swan shapes.

  My heart heaves. She couldn’t have known Nate would be coming, so she must’ve meant the sixth setting for Alan. In honor of him, maybe, or out of habit.

  Mother and I will never have a reconciliation. We’ll never come to understand each other.

  “There’s also another matter,” the stranger says. He’s yellowed by the light from the five tapered candles in the candelabra I found. “I hate to bring it up in this circumstance, but my pocket money seems to have gone missing.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.

  “Would that I were…” With a clownish frown, he pulls his coat pockets inside out to show us they’re empty.

  “How much?”

  “Ten thousand dollars,” he says.

  “Come on…” I want to grab that candelabra and hurl it at him, but I’m emotionally exhausted. I can hardly will myself to move.

  “Have I—angered you?” the stranger asks expectantly.

  “We had a tragedy, and you’re
just going to plow on ahead with your little con game? You made a point of showing us that money before, just so you could extort us now. We’re not stupid. Go get the police, break down the gate for all I care.”

  I stop myself from saying anything more. There’s a line I’m afraid to cross. We have no idea how dangerous this man could be.

  Where is my fiancé? Why isn’t he here to back me up?

  “You know what?” I say, throwing up my hands. “Just forget it. We’ll find your money, and then we’d like it very much if you’d be on your way.”

  “I’ll wait by the fire,” he says.

  I’ve never felt more relief to see someone leave a room.

  When the stranger is out of earshot, Stella says flatly, “It’s Chloe. It’s just the kind of thing she’d do, the little bitch, pick somebody’s pocket in the middle of a tragedy.”

  “You honestly believe him?”

  “I’m just saying, it’s her modus operandi.” The way she’s talking all of a sudden, it’s like she’s removed the grief-mask she’s been wearing.

  “Why don’t you ask her?” I say.

  “Because I don’t care. Our lives are turned upside down, and this is totally inconsequential. I’m going back upstairs to be with Dad.”

  “He said he wanted to be alone,” I remind her.

  She flips the quilt dramatically over her shoulder, just like Mother would’ve. “I just want to ask,” she says. “Why did you show up here?”

  “Because Father asked me.”

  “And here I thought you’d ditched us for good, but I guess you’ve reconsidered, now that there’s a fat and juicy inheritance dangling on the line.”

  “I didn’t come here for money,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “If you haven’t noticed, Dad has lost it. Look at this place. He’s moved into a tomb. And now, with Mom—” she pauses, “…somebody needs to be sure he’s making the best decisions for this family.”

  “Knock yourself out,” I tell her. “I’m sure you’ll be very convincing.”

  She straightens up, nostrils flaring. “There it is. You think you’re too good for us. Fine. But don’t forget, you’re a Whitmore, born and bred, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”