Legacy of Lies (10 page)

“So I guess you don’t want my help.”

“I don’t.”

I stepped back into my room and closed the door. The distance he kept between us no longer made me mad; it made me hurt.

We were playing a game, Matt and 1.1 was tiptoeing around an abandoned house-or maybe it was a barn. The walls and floors were made of rough wood, and the simple wooden stairs looked more like tilted ladders. We were playing hide-and-seek.

It was twilight outside. Inside, it grew darker with each minute. I knew we should stop the game before it got too late, but I kept on. I could hear Matt walking on the floor above my head, searching for me. I quietly opened a trapdoor and descended the stairs that led to the basement.

The air was cold and damp down there; it held the darkness like a sponge. My eyes adjusted slowly to the bit of light that came from the doorway above. Suddenly I saw huge wheels, wheels with teeth, one wheel interlocking with the next, like the gears inside a clock. The largest was as tall as 1.

I heard a noise, a groan from the machinery. My
eyes focused on the biggest wheel. It started to turn slowly, very slowly at first. The smaller wheels rotated with it. I had to stop them. I knew if I didn’t, they’d turn faster and faster, shaking the old building till it flew apart.

I grasped the huge teeth of the main wheel and pulled back, dragging it in the opposite direction. But as soon as I stopped pulling, the wheel moved forward again, turning more quickly. I gripped harder, my hands slippery with sweat. Still, each time I pulled back, the gigantic wheel made up those inches and moved even farther ahead, pulling me with it.

I had to find another way to stop it. I tried to step back to study the wheel and discovered I couldn’t move. I yanked my arm, struggling to pull it away, but the edge of my sweater sleeve was caught between the teeth of the big wheel and a smaller one. The speed of the wheels was steadily increasing. I called for help, called for Matt. I writhed and pulled and bit the threads of my sweater. At the last moment I slipped free of it.

Run, I told myself. But I stood there, fascinated, watching the wheels consume my garment. Then I felt the pull. The powerful teeth had caught my hair. I was being dragged toward the center of the wheels. I screamed for Matt.

I heard his footsteps cross the floor above me. I shouted his name over and over. Then I heard his footsteps fading and the door upstairs shut. He had left me.

I struggled to free myself, fighting for each inch against the powerful wheels, dreading the teeth that would crush whatever came between them.

I couldn’t believe Matt had abandoned me. Then I thought, he knows what’s happening. He started these wheels moving. That instant I was pulled into the darkness.

ten
 

In the morning light last night’s dream had lost its terror but not its power to disturb. I recognized the exaggerations of a nightmare-huge wheels, like gears inside a gigantic clock, waiting to grind me up-it was surreal. Even so, I felt a sense of foreboding. What truth lay behind the images? In the dream I had been drawn into something I had no control over, something I couldn’t stop, and Matt had walked away.

I dressed slowly, then went down to the kitchen. Matt was there, finishing a bowl of cereal.

“How’s Grandmother?” I asked.
“Where’s
Grandmother?”

Her Bible lay open on the table next to a half-drained cup of coffee.

“In the music room,” he said wearily.

“Why?”

“Don’t you know?” he snapped.

I bit back a sharp response. “Something else has been moved.”

“How did you know it was moved, rather than missing?” he asked, as if trying to trap me in my words.

“Ease up, Matt. When we thought the Bible and clock were missing, it turned out they were moved.”

He rubbed his head. He looked as if he’d barely slept.

“So what was it this time?”

“Paintings. An old painting of the mill was moved from the parlor to the music room and hung above the Chinese chest. The watercolor that was there was left facedown on the floor.”

“When did this happen?”

“You tell me. You were here last night, alone in the house while she was up in bed.”

“Are you accusing me?” I asked.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he mumbled.

I intercepted him as he walked toward the refrigerator. “You have as much access to this house as I do, and know the place better. We can point fingers at each other and refuse to trust or we can try-”

The kitchen door opened.

Grandmother gazed at the two of us, her eyes narrowing. Matt and I stepped back from each other.

“I have put the watercolor where it belongs,” she informed us. “I need help with the landscape.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I said. “You’ll be late for school,
Matt. Leave me the phone number of Grandmother’s doctor,” I added, when she had exited.

I followed her through the door and down the hall to the front parlor, where I helped her set the large painting back on its hook.

“Is there anything else I can do?” I asked.

“Haven’t you done enough?” Grandmother replied sarcastically.

I stared after her as she left the room. If I didn’t get some answers soon, I was going to be as paranoid as she. I needed information, and there was only one person I knew who might have it.

I arrived at Tea Leaves an hour before work.

“I don’t want my fortune read,” I said to Jamie. “Tell your mother I have some questions about my grandmother’s house and the family. Strange things are happening, and I need her advice.”

A few minutes later the door opened at the top of the stairs, and the old woman beckoned to me. Before I reached the entrance to the second-floor apartment, Mrs. Riley had disappeared around the corner. I closed the door behind me and followed her down a narrow hall that ran toward the front of the building.

The room I entered had three windows, all of them facing High Street. Heavy drapes hung lopsided from their rods but were open enough to let in light. To the left were two sofas with faded print covers, and to the right an alcove, a square area between the front wall of the building and the wall of the stairwell. A round
table and several straight-back chairs filled that space. A silk lamp with fringe hung from the ceiling.

Mrs. Riley sat down at the table, facing into the room, and gestured to a seat across from her. I perched on it nervously, tucking my hands under my legs.

“You have questions,” she said.

I nodded. “I’m not sure where to begin.”

“Strange things have been happening at the house.” Her voice was low, almost soothing. “What kind of things?”

“Well, objects are being moved. The Bible, for instance. It was missing from its shelf in the kitchen, and Grandmother became convinced that someone had stolen it. Later, I spotted it in the library. Instead of being glad I found it, she was angry and kept staring at the spot it had occupied.”

“Which was on a library shelf,” Mrs. Riley said.

“Yes, just to the left of the fireplace.”

The psychic’s head lifted slightly. “Tell me more.”

Feeling a little more comfortable, I rested my hands on the table. “This morning we found that a picture had been moved from the front parlor to the music room. Grandmother started getting weird again-paranoid, as if someone were doing this to her, as if Z were doing it.

“A painting,” she repeated.

“A landscape,” I said. “A picture of a mill.”

Mrs. Riley didn’t make a sound, but I saw the buttons on her dress move and catch the light as if she had quickly sucked in a breath.

“Yesterday a clock was missing from Grandmother’s desk.”

“A small clock . . . an old one,” she murmured.

“Yes. It has a picture painted on its face, roses and-”

“Was it found on the hall table?”

I blinked. “How did you know?”

She sat back in her chair. “That is where it used to be kept. The Bible always sat on a shelf by the library’s hearth. The mill painting hung over the Chinese chest in the music room.”

“You mean things are being moved back to where they were years ago? To where they were when you worked there?”

She nodded her head slowly, rhythmically.

“But then why would Grandmother blame me? How would I know where those things were kept? I don’t see how Matt would know, either, unless Grandmother told him.”

Mrs. Riley’s eyes closed, then drifted open again. She looked past me as if she were looking into another world. She stared for so long I turned around to see what was there. Nothing extraordinary-a flowered sofa, a table piled with Baggies, her herbal stuff.

“The clock belonged to Avril,” Mrs. Riley said. “She insisted on placing it in the hall. She hated the big grandfather clock.”

“I don’t blame her,” I remarked. “It’s like a guard stationed on the landing, watching you come in and out. You can hear it tolling wherever you are in the house.”

“Avril called it the big bully. She would reset the small clock to whatever time she wanted it to be. Her parents played along, allowing her to come home long after she was supposed to. I’m surprised your grandmother didn’t throw out that wretched little clock.”

“It’s an antique.”

“What’s one more antique?” Mrs. Riley said. “Helen has money to burn.”

“Maybe she keeps it because it reminds her of Avril.”

“That’s precisely why she would throw it out.”

I was surprised by the bitterness in Mrs. Riley’s voice. “Did you work there when Avril was alive?” I asked.

“I was the personal maid of both girls.”

“But you must have been their age.”

“A year older than Avril,” she replied, “two years older than Helen.”

That couldn’t have been easy, I thought, especially if Avril acted like a princess. “What were they like, my grandmother and Avril?”

Mrs. Riley took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Avril was pretty, popular, and spoiled. She was always into something and got too much attention from her parents. Poor, serious Helen got almost nothing.

“That doesn’t sound fair.”

“Helen was a good girl. She read a lot and always kept her room neat. It was nothing for me to pick up
after her. But Avril! She didn’t care where she threw things, and her room was small and crowded. She insisted on sleeping in the back wing.”

“The back wing?” I sat up a little straighter.

“Oh, I knew what she was up to, even if her parents didn’t. She could get in and out of the house by way of the kitchen roof.”

I put my hand over my mouth. Avril had slept in the room where I’d awakened, where Alice had seen the ghost.

“What is it?” Mrs. Riley asked,

“Nothing.”

The pupils of her eyes were like dark pins tacking me to the wall; she wouldn’t let me go until I gave a better answer.

“I’ve been in that room,” I said at last. “It has roses on the wallpaper.”

“Avril adored roses. She wanted them in vases, in her hair, in bouquets brought by her boyfriends, and she always got what she wanted. Poor Helen grew terribly jealous and angry. I didn’t blame her, not after Avril stole Thomas.”

“But my grandfather was Thomas,” I said, puzzled.

Mrs. Riley nodded, her eyes long, dark slits, as if focusing on a distant memory. “He was Helen’s beau first-at least publicly. There were other girls, many others.
Money
is what made up Thomas’s mind.”

It wasn’t a flattering picture of my mother’s father, but I had come for the truth.

“He was a young cabinetmaker from Philadelphia,
an apprentice hired to do repair work at Scarborough House,” Mrs. Riley continued. “Thomas was talented but had no money. He switched his affections from Helen to Avril, who, as the oldest, was supposed to inherit Scarborough House. When Avril died, everything became Helen’s. Everything including Thomas.”

I sat back in my chair thinking about how Grandmother must have felt, dumped, then picked up again, second choice. Still, it happened so long ago. “I don’t understand why any of this would matter to her now, but something has set her off, and it seems connected to Avril.”

“Some wounds heal, others fester,” Mrs. Riley replied.

“Have you seen the ghost at Scarborough House?” I asked.

“No. Not long after Avril died, I married and left the house. I have never been invited back.”

“Is it possible that my grandmother thinks she is being haunted by the ghost of her dead sister?”

Mrs. Riley ran her gnarled hands over the table, touching it with just the tips of her fingers, as if she were using a Ouija board.

“Why do you say
thinks?” she
asked. “Because you don’t believe it’s possible?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. Can a ghost move things?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Can a ghost”-l hesitated-“lead a person somewhere, guide a person to a room or place?”

“Certainly you have heard accounts of ghosts revealing where they’ve hidden valuables,” she said.

“How did Avril die?”

Mrs. Riley studied me long and hard. “Do you want the real story, or the one the family told?”

“Both.”

“According to the family doctor, according to what Mr. and Mrs. Scarborough wanted him to say, it was an allergic reaction.”