To start this novel at the beginning, here’s a link to Chapter 1, or you can visit the online tab which contains all the chapters so far!
“See, that worked great,” said Bob as they left Mrs Caswell's house. “She's our friend now, and what a lady! She probably has more energy than I have and I'm in my 30s. She must be in her 70s.”
As Bob crossed the street to the car, Franck hung farther and farther back. He kept gazing over to see what the front of the parsonage house looked like. He half heard what Bob was saying and for the first time noticed the old stone church across the street behind Bob's car. His eye drifted to those slanted old tombstones to the left of the church, and he thought of that dream he had invented for Zeke's benefit.
“Bob.”
“…from the Registry, she won't have any troubles on that end–”
“Bob!”
“–and then when that Robert McIver comes back I can show him about that sale back a hundred, a hundred and what? A hundred and sixty…”
Franck dashed across the road and whispered sharply into Bob's ear, “Bob! I'm staying.”
“–years ago–what?”
“I'm staying. I've got to look around the house again, I'm very curious about some things.”
“No, Franck. Leave well enough alone. I have it pretty much figured out. You won't have a problem. Come on, let's go.”
“See you later, Bob, I'll get home later. If I have to walk, that's okay. I just want to check something out.” He walked on back across the street.
“What? Wait! Well, okay, I guess. Okay,” he said more and more quietly, watching Franck walk down the road toward the old house. “Call if you need a ride!” he shouted, and he stood by his car watching his roommate slip off the sidewalk into the bushes that marked the edge of the parsonage house property. “Hoo, boy,” Bob muttered to himself as he fumbled with the car key. “I'm gonna hear more stories tonight.”
The bushes hadn't lost leaves, so they provided excellent cover from the street, and Franck crept up along the side of the house behind the hedges.
He looked into the nearest window and recognized the room with the banjo and guitar in it. He turned and leaned against the house, and then sank down to sit on the ground against the wall, hidden from street view by the bushes. He thought for a while.
He wanted to get inside and have another look, this time without someone else asking questions, without needing to pretend he knew everything when he really knew nothing.
Underground Railroad. So slaves really did come into the house basement before the Civil War. Was that picture of the black man one of them? Not if Zeke had been right about it being from the 30s or 40s. Unless he'd been a baby during the Civil War. He calculated. That could work.
He edged around the house toward the back, curious what the sick wing, that back room, looked like from the outside. Here, up on the second floor, he could see the window busted from what he had claimed was a microburst.
Franck noticed that the window on the first floor, directly below the broken bathroom window, was also broken. The center of the broken window was open; the sides had sharp shards of glass still in the frame. The screen in front of it was torn, and the base of the screen window dented.
No one could see him, and the untended growth outside the window included a stray maple sapling whose branches served quite well as steps up toward the window.
Curious, Franck tested the damaged screen window and found that the clip locks at the base had been damaged and no longer held. It gave way as he forced it up. Now, in front of him, gaped the broken window.
Almost as a game, he reached cautiously into the open center of the jagged glass. If he was careful to avoid the sharp edges, he could bend at the elbow and reach the window lock. He unlocked it and slowly pulled his arm back. The bulky sleeve of his suit caught on a shard of glass but he carefully freed it and withdrew his arm.
He had no plan. He caught his breath and listened to his heart beating.
Since the window was unlocked, he tried pushing it up, and it yielded. The window was wide open now, and nothing was stopping him from climbing in.
Franck pulled himself onto the window sill, and once there, the idea of slipping to the inside was far more tantalizing than staying outside.
He dropped to his feet inside the house. He had narrowly missed a toilet bowl and landed near a bathtub.
Silence was all around him. He let it sink in. No rustling, no rats or mice, no rat queen, no cowering tiny people in the corners. He chuckled at the bizarre dream of last night.
After a time, he stirred. Silently, he turned the knob of the bathroom door and peered into the hallway. No sounds. He stepped out and slowly, quietly, closed the door behind him. Dust scurried along the floor away from his feet. The banjo room was to his right, and the instruments were still lying on the table. He plucked a string and the sound filled the room with long reverberations.
In the corner was an old desk with the top folded open. The writing surface was covered with papers. Some were bills. He was not surprised by what he saw. Mortgage bills, red reminders, bills from a medical testing company, a bill with five digit figures owed, bills from a hospital, bills from a medical practice called “To Your Health Medical Services”, a bill from a health insurance company for $2000, dated May 25. The array of papers looked so grim to Franck that he shuddered and couldn't bear to read any more of them. Maybe Bob would be the type, he thought, to sit down and go through these papers and study them, not me.
Across the hall was another room, a library or study, it seemed. There were some modern bestsellers in paperback, but most impressive were the leather bound volumes lining the glass bookcases. Some were religious texts; others works of literature and history. There were three reading chairs and a couch in the room, outfitted with reading lamps. Lying on the table was a legal eagle thriller, a Bible, a book about minstrel shows, and an old pamphlet whose title filled the entire page. Large type interspersed with small. Some of the large type read: “Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles…A Preamble…Coloured Citizens of the World.” Franck leafed through the opening pages. It was very worn. There were markings in the margins in precise, filagreed handwriting.
Franck found himself creaking his way up the steep staircase. On the landing, he peered at the first photo, of the black man who had saved him in his sleep. He took the photo off the wall and looked at its back. Old handwriting appeared on the brown, faded paper. It said "Moses McIver, 1936." He carefully fitted the picture back on its nail. Other photos in a row showed children and adults in poses happy or somber. The most recent showed a couple of about 40 years old, maybe, and the man reminded him of the photo in the article Bob had brought home. He figured this was the current Robert McIver and his wife. Franck stared at the face of the wife. Dead now. What about Robert? Somewhere in North Carolina? Why and for how long? So much stuff was left in the house. He had to be planning to come back and get it, right?
Franck stepped into the bedroom at the front of the house, and as he had done when Zeke was there, he looked long and hard at the trees in front, the busy street, the slanted tombstones across the way. Here was the bed where he had claimed to have been visited by the ghost.
He lay down on the bed. Pretty comfortable. It felt great to lie down for a minute. Franck listened to the cars going by outside, and watched the sway of tree leaves outside the window. It was a pleasant room. He got up to open the window and let in fresh air. A breeze poured into the stale air of the room and brought new life to it.
Franck lay down again to enjoy the air and the comfort of lying down after a practically sleepless night and a nerve-wracking morning.
The cawing of a crow in the tree outside was answered by another farther off. A nightingale sang. The trees were spaced widely, some richly green with leaves, a few stark wood stumps. The ground was wet. It was very warm. A mosquito whined in his ear. He wanted to whack it but was scared by the sound of footsteps and held his breath. The footsteps grew closer; he wanted to run away. Now he could hear the sucking of mud from each step as it came closer to him. Someone knew he was there. Someone was seeking him. He wanted to escape but also felt unable to move. He wanted to meet this person. The steps were so loud and wet, they must be upon him now. Someone was willing him to turn and face them.
Franck woke up with a start. His heart was racing. The vivid image of a small wooden box with a dirty brass clasp remained before his eyes against the dim ceiling of the bedroom. He could not recognize this box; he could not place ever having seen it before, and yet it was crystal clear. He had a strong feeling the footsteps had brought him this image of the box. He did not feel threatened by it; he wasn't scared. He respected dreams but tried not to put too much stock in them. Yet he could still picture the wooden box clearly.
A wet breeze was blowing in the window. Franck got up and closed it. The light was dimmer from the now overcast sky. He wondered how late it was now.
His mind was fuzzy. He was thirsty. It was time to find his way out. Why had he even come in here? Was this a Class E crime? He didn't dare turn a light on. The hall by the stairs was dimmer than before.
There was the bathroom with the smashed window. And the hallway he had named the Tunnel of Pain. It had been just that for Catherine, and for Robert, who had had to go down that hallway to tend to his dying wife.
Franck ventured down the hallway. Through the window across the hall from the sickroom he saw the horse barn. Looked like a small house in and of itself, two stories, with barn doors, or maybe they were garage doors, and a normal, person-sized door was placed to the side.
Franck pushed open the sick room door for another look. The IV was there, the oxygen machine, the bed with rumpled sheets. The window on the other side of the room looked out toward Mrs Caswell's house. There was a row of trees between the houses, and down below, a large garden, with a trellis.
In the far corner was a post. Dark wood, thinner at the bottom and thicker at the top, just as Mrs Caswell had said. A dark wooden beam lay in a notch at the top of the post and stretched across the ceiling over the window to another post in the corner of the room near Franck. Next to the post was a closet door.
All the doors had old lever latches with a thumb hold. Franck played with the latch and released it; the door opened a bit. This closet had different levels. Actually, he realized, it wasn't a closet at all. It was a stairway to the attic. There was no window, so he risked pulling the string to turn on the light, and as his hand dropped from the string, it knocked something off a ledge, which clattered so loudly that it felt like it could wake the dead. He froze. It rolled to his feet. A flashlight. “Well there it is!” Frank said, as if he had actually been looking for a flashlight back when Zeke was still in the basement. He picked it up and slid the switch. It turned on.
Franck looked up the stairs. There was a little light up there, evidently from a nearby window. Franck couldn't resist taking a peek up in the attic. He promised himself he would just take a quick look from the top of the stairs and then head downstairs and outside and find his way away from the house and back home.
Near the top of the stairs, he crawled up the last steps on hands and knees and shined the flashlight cautiously at the dark bulky shapes above him. He didn’t want someone outside, like Nancy Caswell, to see a flashlight beam flickering around the attic windows. There was a fair amount of stuff up there. Very old stuff. The air was stale and dusty.
A large chest stood nearby. Next to it was a dark table. Franck crawled tentatively on the floor. It seemed solid.
Another table sat on his left; on top of it were some books. A heavy wooden divider blocked his view of the middle part of the attic. He crawled just beyond the divider, still on hands and knees, feeling breathless in the undisturbed, old air.
Papers on the floor near the divider caught the beam of the flashlight. They lay against the wall under a table. He crawled over to them and discovered the papers were a folded newspaper.
It crackled as he picked it up. A corner broke off. He slowed down and handled it very carefully. The flashlight lit up the name of the paper: The Port Haven Herald, October 6, 1858. Franck gasped.
The headline screamed about the burning of the New York Crystal Palace. He scanned down the text and found some want ads lower down the front page. “Protestant man wanted for grooming horses,” ran one of them. Another sought a Catholic caretaker.
“Whew,” Franck whispered. “1858. Wow.” He was afraid to open the paper. It seemed ready to break apart into dust.
All his attention had been riveted on this paper, but now, as he thought about putting it back, he realized with the help of his flashlight that the newspaper had not been lying on the floor.
He barely saw the shape out of the corner of his eye before his head began to whirl and he felt like swooning. He was glad he was already sitting on the floor so he couldn’t fall over. His mind told him this was all due to fatigue, thirst, stale air, overexcitement, or sheer nerves.
But then he knew this was all about what he saw on the floor before him. A small wooden box with a dirty brass clasp. Exactly as he had pictured it after his dream downstairs.
Franck heard nothing but his pounding heart. He sat motionless until his breath returned. He thought for a moment that he should be feeling spooked, but in fact he felt as if someone had asked him to find this box. His mind felt very clear all of a sudden, his heart was racing; everything felt very urgent. Without a further thought, Franck took hold of the box, and the newspaper, and stood up.
He felt steady on his feet. He strode to the stairs and climbed down, leaving the flashlight on its ledge and flicking off the light chain. Briskly, he walked through the sick room, down the hall, down the stairs. In front of him was the front house door. He opened it a crack. Outside, the light was fading. He slipped out with his treasures under his roomy suit jacket. The rain had stopped.
Franck edged between the wall and the bushes and followed them to the corner of the house. He stepped gingerly across the grass through the garden behind the hedges.
Once out on the sidewalk he began walking for home. He crossed the street so as not to walk in front of Mrs Caswell's.
He was giddy about being outside in the air just freshened from rain. He wanted to walk for a long time. When he reached the rotary, he tried a new route via the park. It was quite dark by the time he reached home.
Bob was apparently out. His car was gone. The apartment was dark. Franck stepped directly into his bedroom, placed the newspaper and wooden box on his dresser, and promptly fell asleep on his bed.