No One's Home Read online

  Unfortunately, better choices had run out on Mrs. Rawlings.

  By the time Ella arrived at the back door, the unsavory man was waiting, his yellow grin an inch from the window.

  “You.” She pointed a fat finger in his face. “You must tell this ‘Big Ange’ that all these comings and goings will get noticed. You should have uniform for laundry service.”

  “I’ll pass along the message.” He pushed his way past her into the kitchen. A pot roast sizzled in the oven, filling the air with the welcoming smell of a proper home. He drew in a long breath and glanced longingly at the oven but kept walking. “Where should I put this?”

  From the awkward bulk of the sack on his back, she knew what he carried. “The sugars go up, up to the attic. Here, I show.” She led him up the back stairs, pausing in the second floor hallway long enough to make sure little Walter’s door was closed and Mrs. Rawlings was out of sight. When Ella had struck this bargain with Mr. Rawlings’s creditors, the accountant promised the boy and lady of the house wouldn’t be disturbed.

  Keep everything out of sight. Don’t draw any attention from the neighbors. Only accept deliveries in the back of the house. Everything must look as though a respectable family still lives here, understand? The boy mustn’t know a thing. The less Georgina knows, the better.

  She carefully unlocked the attic door. Halfway up the steps, the smell of burning sugar hit her face. The company man, Felix, poked his head out of the spare bedroom. “Ella? That you?”

  “Yes, Felix. We have visitor.” She didn’t dislike Felix as much as she’d feared she might, but his presence in the house was still utterly unacceptable. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be helped. Mr. Rawlings had left too many debts to pay. She lifted her eyes to the rafters at the memory of him. It hung over the house like a curse.

  Ella had found Walter in his office that frightful night. The smell of urine and vomit still lingered in the floorboards no matter how many times she scrubbed them. The police had ruled it a heart attack. Thank the angels, she thought, as she did most days. The insurance policy she’d found under his head made it clear that suicide would negate the contract.

  None of the policemen or the coroner found the vial of belladonna he’d taken from her cupboard; she’d made sure of that. His dead eyes had followed her when she crossed the room and picked it up from the desk blotter next to his empty teacup. From the feel of the bottle, he’d consumed the whole thing. Ella had tucked the brown vial into her apron and his pistol back into its drawer before calling the police. Her hands still shook with the memory. The tremor of it would be with her the rest of her days.

  Damn you, Walter, she cursed his ghost, standing in the attic. Even with the insurance money, Felix had shown up ten months later with the illegal still and instructions from a man known only as Big Ange.

  “You got any hooch ready?” The scoundrel plunked the sack of sugar down without a care for the mother and child a floor below.

  “Couple gallons.” Felix motioned to the bathroom, where brown jugs and mason jars sat on the tile floor in haphazard rows. “Ange want it today?”

  “Just a few for the boys. Truck is coming tomorrow for the full order. Twenty-five gallons. You’ll be ready?”

  Felix whistled through his teeth. “It’ll be close.” Behind him the makeshift still steamed and bubbled with the erratic ticking of a mad clock. The heat of the boiler steamed the windows. A black pipe stretched from the still through a hole in the bedroom wall to the chimney in the crawl space on the other side.

  Ella shifted uncomfortably in her worn shoes. They had taken over her former bedroom with sacks of sugar and glass tubing and empty jugs and apple crates. The two men continued discussing the orders and the latest news from the underworld. The distillery kettle in the next room sweated and belched wretched fumes as they chatted. Tick. Tick. Tick. It was only a matter of time until something blew up.

  When they had concluded business, the maid led the unsavory man back down the stairs with his three mason jars of liquor and locked the attic door behind him.

  Little Walter’s voice stopped them both in the hall. “Miss Ella?”

  She turned toward him, doing her best to block the intruder with her girth. “Yes, Walter?”

  “Who is your friend?”

  “He is a plumber. He come to check the pipes for us. But all is well, yes?” She turned to the man holding the jars.

  “Uh. Yes. No leaks here.” The man straightened himself into a modicum of respectability. “Thank you kindly, ma’am. I’ll just see myself out.”

  “Let us make sure we pay for your time. Walter? You stay. I be right back.” Ella smiled and nodded at the boy too vigorously to be believed.

  Still, Walter obeyed and stayed put in the hall, watching with his father’s dead eyes as they descended the back steps. Once they were out of sight, the boy’s gaze shifted up to the ceiling, where footsteps creaked from one end of the house to another. Slipping silently into the back hallway, the boy stopped and pressed his ear to the attic door.

  The sound of Felix singing an Italian folk song drifted down through the keyhole. The boy squinted into the lock, seeing nothing but stairs and the warm yellow glow of the attic lights. The smell of cigarette smoke mixed with something else, something darker.

  Down in the kitchen, Ella fumbled in the pantry until she found a burlap sack. “Here,” she hissed. “You put jars in there.” She handed him a bag of rubbish. “Take this too. You must look like serviceman.”

  He reluctantly grabbed the bag of trash and headed to the back door. “Big Ange’s got a friend coming. She needs a safe place to stay.”

  “A friend,” Ella repeated, her fists clenched by her sides.

  “Yeah. A friend. Carmen somethin’. I dunno. It ain’t like you folks don’t have the room, right?” He motioned to the seven bedrooms over their heads. “Just for a few days. That’s what I’m told.”

  The man’s eyes circled the kitchen once more, looking for things to steal, no doubt, and then he left. Ella locked the back door behind him and let out a long sigh.

  Upstairs, Georgina lay in her bed, reading an old book. The Divine Book of Holy and Eternal Wisdom was dated 1849 and had been written by the Shakers, by Ninny Boyd’s Believers. Inside, angels whispered of the end of days and the Rapture soon to come.

  The wood inside the walls whispered back.

  28

  The Spielman Family

  August 8, 2018

  “Mom?” Hunter called out as he opened the front door.

  There was no answer.

  The door swung into the vacant foyer without a sound. The hot buzz of the summer night followed him in as Hunter surveyed the front of the house for signs of life. An unkempt young man in a black T-shirt and ripped cargo pants pushed past him and inside.

  “Damn. You weren’t kidding!” His unfamiliar voice echoed in the two-story foyer. “This is the place. I can’t believe you actually live here. When’d you move in?”

  “Like three weeks ago,” Hunter answered as he closed the door behind him. The teenager slouching in front of him was nearly the same height and had the same scruffy chin—a member of the same awkward species.

  “Man. I used to come by this place all the time, you know, when it was empty. We called it the ‘murder house.’ Kids used to break in and stuff.” The kid spun around and stared up the monumental staircase toward the sound of a shower running. “I partied here once or twice. My older brother smoked his first joint right upstairs.”

  Hunter tried to keep his voice light. “Why’d they call it the murder house?”

  The kid turned with a devilish gleam in his eye. On closer inspection, he was not exactly the same species as Hunter. Better looking and a better liar, he had the swagger of a salesman. “A girl died here, brah. She wasn’t the only one either.”

  Hunter’s new friend sauntered into the kitchen and opened the fridge without asking. He pulled out two beers and offered one to Hunter, who took it quickl
y and directed his entitled guest up the back stairs. “We should take these to my room. You know. The folks.” Hunter had caught the glow of the television in the den and heard a rush of water through the pipes above him.

  “You the boss.” The kid shrugged and followed him up to his room. “I dig these servant stairs, man. My house has a whole apartment over the garage for maids and shit. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Some hot little maid living under your roof?”

  Hunter ushered the kid into his bedroom with a nervous glance at his mother’s closed door. Once safely out of the hallway, he popped the cap off his beer and took a long swig. “I don’t know. We have a maid that comes once a week, and she’s not hot.” Hunter shivered at the thought of fifty-year-old Louisa naked.

  The kid chugged half his beer as a show of dominance and nodded. “Yeah. But don’t you think about it sometimes? What it was like to live in this place when it was new with like butlers and shit?” The kid plopped down into the desk chair, relegating Hunter to the edge of the bed. “If I were the king of this castle, the maids would be hot.”

  Hunter let out a nervous laugh. “So, um . . . what did you mean? A girl died here?”

  “That’s the rumor. A buddy of mine swears you can see her face in the windows at night. He’s kind of an asshole, but that’s what he said.” The kid pulled a plastic baggie out of one of the pockets in his cargo pants. It was filled with clumps of dried herbs. He pulled a large bud out and breathed in the skunky smell as though sampling ambrosia. “Want some?”

  Hunter’s eyes shot to the door but tried to play it casual. “Like to buy?”

  The kid gave him a deadpan look. “Yeah, dummy. To buy.”

  “Uh, sure. An eighth, I guess?”

  The kid nodded as though he’d expected the answer and laid the tiny pine tree on Hunter’s mouse pad along with a second one. “You need a baggie?”

  Hunter studied the contraband a moment, uneasy, before the question registered. “Yeah. That’d be great.”

  The kid pulled out a roll of silvery plastic bags and tossed one to Hunter, not missing the slightly constricted look on the boy’s face. “Jesus, don’t worry. Cops don’t give a shit about weed anymore. Not in this part of town. Now, pills and powders are a different story. That there’s fifty.”

  Hunter nodded and pulled out his wallet.

  The kid in his chair jostled the computer to life. “Nice system, man. You game?”

  “Yeah. A bit.”

  The two went on to discuss their favorite video games for the next five minutes while Hunter tried desperately to relax. He squirreled his newly purchased weed into his pocket and watched apprehensively while his new buddy rolled up a joint on his desk.

  “You got a spot we can blaze this thing up?”

  “Well . . .” Hunter shifted his jaw in consternation. Would they get caught? Would his parents even notice? “The attic, I guess.”

  “Sweet. I cannot wait to tell Jamie I smoked up in the murder house! This is bonkers.” The kid tucked the joint behind his ear and bounded out into the hall. Hunter’s heavier feet followed him.

  Margot’s door was still shut. There was no sign of movement downstairs. Hunter quickly figured the risks. His father was probably working on his laptop somewhere, and his mother would’ve had a cocktail by now. An uncomfortable guilt weighed him down as his gaze lingered on her door. They didn’t trust him, and he was about to prove them right.

  “You comin’?” the kid chided from the attic doorway.

  It was an initiation of sorts, and Hunter knew it. If he and this kid were going to be friends, he’d have to prove himself worthy. And right then, Hunter needed a friend.

  “Yeah,” he said and closed the attic door.

  29

  “It’s hot as balls up here.” The kid sat down cross-legged on the attic floor and passed the lit joint over to Hunter.

  “Yeah. I guess my mom didn’t see the point in piping the AC in.” Thoughts paced back and forth through Hunter’s mind as he took the tightly rolled joint. Would his mother smell the smoke? Would she put him in rehab for one joint? The weight of the alpha male’s stare stiffened his back, and he took a shallow toke, holding more in his mouth than his lungs.

  “We could have some hellacious parties in this place, man. Do your parents go out of town much?”

  “No. Not really.” He took another hit of the joint and coughed out a cloud of smoke. “They don’t trust me enough to leave me alone for a whole weekend.”

  “They sound like assholes.”

  Hunter laughed dumbly and nodded. He was secretly glad they hadn’t left him there overnight, picturing himself wandering the big house alone with whatever or whoever had slipped into his room the other night. He closed his eyes to block out the unwanted thought of it.

  Are you awake?

  His lids flew back open, and a shudder jarred his head, now a lead balloon on his shoulders. This had been a bad idea, he realized as the Cheshire grin of his new friend widened to show more teeth, but he was trapped now. Staggering to his feet, he mumbled, “We should . . . open a window.”

  After a moment’s fumbling and tugging against a hundred years of paint, the dormer window slapped to the top of the frame, and a blast of air shot into the room. Hunter sucked it in like a drowning man and then opened the other one, praying the smoke would clear out before his parents noticed.

  The kid on the floor chuckled and handed him the warm, sticky roll of paper.

  Hunter waved him off. “Nah, dude. I’m good. Thanks.”

  He waved it at him again. He seemed like the sort of boy who would poke a dog in the eye with a stick for entertainment. “Don’t leave me hangin’, man.”

  “Dude. I’m baked.” But Hunter obeyed and took the joint. “This shit is kicking my ass.”

  Eyes burning red, the kid nodded his approval as Hunter hit it one more time. “My cousin brought this shit back from Colorado. Those dirty hippies know how to grow, man.”

  Hunter did his best to not inhale any more as he sucked the smoke into his mouth. He waited for what felt like a month before blowing it out and handing the thing back. The brown paper had burned his fingertips a bright red, but it took several seconds for the pain to register. Squinting one eyeball, Hunter examined the pads of his fingers. Swollen swirls and ridges and creases. It was the hand of an alien.

  “Hey!” The kid knocked him in the arm to snap him out of it. “Don’t you want to know about the rest?”

  “Huh?” Hunter looked up at him, blank as a newborn baby.

  “The murder house, man! The dead bodies.”

  Nausea bubbled from Hunter’s stomach to his slackened brain. Too high. Too high. Too high. His voice came from down a long tunnel, slow and foreign. “What dead bodies?”

  “So check it. Last summer, on a night kinda like tonight actually, these kids broke in here to party, right?” The kid gauged Hunter’s swaying expression before continuing. “Business as usual, whatever. But then the next morning there’s all these ambulances out front and police cars. Two of those kids turned up dead. The cops said they overdosed on something, probably fentanyl, who knows. Some junkies just can’t handle their shit . . . but I talked to one of the guys that was with ’em, and he had a totally different story.” The kid’s expression flickered from amusement to reverence.

  Hunter stopped swaying and gripped at the floor with his palms. “Wait. Wait. What? They died here. That’s . . . you’re bullshitting me, man.”

  “The fuck I am! Were you here, Boston? I don’t think so.”

  Hunter tried to blink moisture back into his gummed-up eyes and see straight. “No, but . . . there was nothing in the papers about it. I checked.”

  “You checked? That doesn’t mean shit. This is Shaker Heights, brah. Families here make sure certain shit doesn’t get in the papers. Google Niles Gorman and Natalie Cain. They each got tiny obituaries and their numbers quietly added to the opioid crisis.” The haunted expression on the kid’s face didn’t mat
ch his grin.

  “Sorry, man.” Hunter held up his hands in surrender. “That’s seriously fucked up. Did you like know them?”

  “Sort of. Not really. I knew one of the guys that was with them, and man . . .” The kid shook his head. “His parents had to send him off to Hopewell Farm for like six months.”

  “What the hell is that? Like a mental hospital?”

  “Yeah. Kinda. The poor bastard couldn’t stop going on and on about something they saw. Like a ghost or demon or some shit.” The kid wasn’t smiling anymore.

  Hunter’s face went slack. “What ghost?”

  The kid shrugged. “Fuck if I know. But the kids in the neighborhood all think this place is haunted.”

  White silk flickered in the corner of his mind’s eye. Hunter swatted at it and scanned the attic for a sign of it. Was it listening?

  “You ever see her?” The kid took another deep drag.

  “Her?” Hunter’s stomach dropped.

  “Yeah. The ghost. You ever see it?”

  Hunter blinked at the kid a moment before shaking his head. Did he say her or it?

  “I still can’t believe you live here, man! It was kinda dope you invited me in.” The kid stood up with what was left of the joint. “There a bathroom up here?”

  “Uh. Yeah. Over there.” Hunter pointed at the bathroom door, hanging open only an inch. A shadow loomed on the other side of the slab of wood, a gathering sense of dread. The light was off, he realized, gazing into the sliver of darkness. The light was never off.

  The kid swung the door open and turned the sink on, then off again. He came back to where Hunter sat dumbstruck and handed him the wet joint he’d just put out. “You want the roach?”

  Hunter slowly shook his head.

  “So.” The kid set the roach on a windowsill and turned a slow circle around the room. “Thanks for giving me the tour, man.”

  “Sure.” Hunter wobbled to his feet on scarecrow legs. The blood rushed from his head, and a kaleidoscope of dead teenagers flashed and blinked. “Shit.”