Crooked House (17 page)

Never in the ten years she’d known Robert Andrew Bell had she ever even thought about hating him, but she despised the man who stood before her now.

“I’m done,” she said. “I’m going.”

He dismissed her with a flick of his hand.

She went into the library where Angela was still humming, still putting ornaments on the tree.

“Do you have your shoes on?”

“Huh?”

“Your shoes, put ‘em on
. We’re going shopping.”

“I’ve got ‘em on, Mommy.”

“Great, let’s go.”

She took Angela by the hand and led her into the kitchen, made a show of snatching her keys off the counter, and the two of them marched right out the front door
. Angela, to her credit, seemed to recognize her mother’s mood and said nothing, simply let herself be led. Sarah wanted nothing more than to get into the car and turn up the radio and put her head on the steering wheel and cry. And she was on the way to do just that when she and Angela stepped outside and got a look at the shrubs and the plants and the trees surrounding the house.

“Mommy?”

“I see it, baby.” Sarah put a hand to her mouth. “Oh God.”

Sarah
stepped into the middle of the drive and turned a slow circle, taking it all in. Everywhere she looked, every tree, every shrub, every plant around the perimeter of the house was dead and brown and shriveled up.

But only on the side that faced the house.

*

From the library window, Robert watched them go
. The itching was back, stronger than ever, and he scratched his belly absently, thinking of what Anthony Udoll had told him the night before, about how James Crook’s health had taken a steady downward slide in prison, and how it had gotten worse after rebuilding Crook House.

“It was ringworm,” Udoll said
. “That was what started it. The common cure for it back then was bleach, which is what the federal prison used on Crook, but it didn’t get rid of the fungus. Not completely anyway. He still had it when he moved back into the rebuilt Crook House and it led to other problems, infection and fever. I’m guessing the idea of being infected like that was a trigger for his depression. I don’t know that last part of it for a fact, but it seems reasonable to me.”

“Y
eah,” Robert had said. “Sounds reasonable.”

He lifted his shirt and saw the telltale raised white circles of scaly skin all over his belly
. They were on his shoulders and neck and back too. Buy some Lotrimin or something, he thought. Christ, this is disgusting.

Robert couldn’t look at it anymore
. The idea that he was infected with something like this was just too gross for him to wrap his mind around. He lowered his T-shirt and made his way to the upstairs library, where he planned to work on his courses for the upcoming semester. His syllabi were due January 3, but to date he hadn’t done much on them other than make a few margin notes to the American Short Story class he’d taught for six years straight back in Florida. He hadn’t even touched his general survey classes yet.

Fuck it, he thought, and went instead for the bat on his desk, giving it a few practice swings in the middle of the room
. It felt good in his hands, solid, even after all the years it’d sat there. He took it over to the old baseball pictures on the walls and looked for Crook’s picture. The pictures were yellow and blurry behind their old glass frames, but he could see Crook’s face well enough. The man looking back at him was young, strong, confident. He had wavy brown hair, a high, intelligent forehead, and a strong, rugged-looking jaw, an athlete, a man who knew what he was about. He was smiling, like all the other guys, but his eyes spoke of something else. A darkness within him, perhaps. The eyes certainly suggested that. They had an unsettling, piercing quality to them that made the picture uncomfortable to look at, as though he were passing judgment on him, or hating him for living in his house.

Robert’s gaze wandered up to the rafters above his desk
. Crook had hanged himself from those rafters. And eighty years later, Brian Hannett had taken one hundred and twenty-eight Motrin here in the same house. It was a strange coincidence, to be sure. But it was only that, a coincidence. Eighty years is a long time. Surely it’s long enough to build up some odd coincidences, right?

That was how he had started out his conversation with Udoll, before he was done pretending that he had seen nothing strange in the house, and Udoll had nodded and said, “True, eighty years is a long time.”

“Well then...”

“And two suicides in eighty years is not exactly a gripping statistic, especially when one of the statistics has such a well-documented history.”

“You mean Crook’s?”

“Yes, Crook’s.”

“Two suicides. That’s a mighty small hook to hang a haunted house story on, don’t you think?” Robert said with a smirk.

“Perhaps,” Udoll said, refusing to take the bait
. “But the suicides are not the whole of the story.”

“They’re not?”

“Not by a long shot. There have been, all told, fourteen deaths from natural causes in the house.”

“What
? Impossible.”

“I thought that might raise an eyebrow
. It’s true, though. Fourteen deaths, and I’ve seen each and every death certificate. That’s above and beyond the two suicides mind you. Strokes and seizures account for most of the deaths, but one woman – this was in 1949 – slipped in the upstairs bathroom, hit her head on the edge of the tub, and drowned. Another man, in June 1984, died of an allergic reaction to a brown recluse bite. Sixteen deaths in eighty years is a little more than a statistical blip, wouldn’t you say?”

Robert nodded.

“Of course, there’s no way of knowing just how many natural deaths we can pin on Crook House. The Millard family cycled quite a few relatives through the house before turning it over to Lightner. None of them stayed long. It’s possible that some died later, from cancers and whatnot, after leaving the house.”

“I don’t know if I’m really all that comfortable with this talk of Crook House giving my family cancer,” Robert said.

Udoll seemed surprised, and Robert recognized the look right away. Academics, like cops or paramedics, had a way of talking about unpleasant facts with an impersonal detachment that could be unsettling at parties, and they were often surprised when people reacted emotionally to what they had to say. It was the first time, though, that Robert had been on the receiving end of that reaction.

“I’m sorry,” Udoll said
. “I hadn’t intended to...I didn’t mean...”

“It’s okay,” Robert said
. “Really, it’s all right. I’m just a bit sensitive these days. Tell me. You’ve done a lot of research on the house. That’s obvious. What’s your theory?”

“About what?”

“About why, I mean. You said yourself the Millard family has cycled a lot of relatives through the house. Surely not every single one of them has died some nasty death. And Lightner has put a few professors through there, too. Brian Hannett wasn’t the first. But you don’t see ghost tours coming by Crook House, and not even the folks here at Lightner seem to know much about it. Thom Horner had only the vaguest sense of its history, and he appears to know more than most.”

“I think you’re right about that,” Udoll said
. “Not everybody who stays in Crook House seems to suffer as a result.”

“So why do a few
? What’s different about them?”

Udoll had looked at him strangely then, for they were done with the pretense that this was just a conversation about history and idle speculation about ghosts
. Udoll believed, that was obvious from the look in his eyes, and Robert was pretty sure that same belief was just as obvious in his own eyes.

“I think,” Udoll said slowly, “that certain people are like the light sockets in your walls, and whatever is in that house, is like a plug
. Certain people are just made to connect with it.”

“But why?”

“Who knows? A predisposition toward depression, maybe. There are plenty of documented instances of depression in the Millard family.”

“But none in Brian Hannett
. You told me that.”

“That’s true.”

“There is mine, though,” Robert said. Udoll waited for him to go on. “My mother.”

“I think that, maybe, Crook House is not good for you, Robert
. And if it’s not good for you, chances are it won’t be good for your family, either. Not from what I’ve seen.”

The phone rang, startling Robert out of his thoughts
. He was still holding the bat, and a glance at the clock told him he’d been thinking about his conversation with Udoll for the last two hours.

The phone rang again and he set the bat down
. He figured it was Sarah. He’d been an ass to her, he knew that, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. It was exactly like yesterday, down in the entranceway, right before they left for the party. He was aware of what was going on, but he couldn’t stop it, and he couldn’t control it either.

The phone rang again.

“I’m coming,” he said, and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Is
Sarah there?” A man’s voice, clipped and harsh.

“No
. Who’s this?”

“You that college professor she married?”

“Who is this?” Robert said again, though he thought he knew, even before Jay Carroll said his name. “How’d you get this number?” he said.

“Look, I’ll make this quick,” Jay said
. “I got a letter from my attorney here saying that I need to get a blood test from Angela to prove paternity. He said he sent you a copy of the letter, too.”

“We received the letter.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“So, when are you gonna do that blood test
? Take you ten minutes at a clinic.”

“We’re not going to comply with that request, Jay.”

“You’re not going to comply? Didn’t you hear me, it’s an order from my attorney?”

“I heard you fine, Jay
. And I read his letter. But an attorney is just that, an attorney. They don’t have the authority to order dinner, much less demand an unnecessary medical procedure be carried out on an eleven-year-old little girl. Only a judge can order that, and I don’t think there’s a judge – even a Florida one – irresponsible enough to grant your motion for a blood test on my daughter.”

“You’re
going to comply, mother fucker,” Jay said. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Robert turned the bat over so he could see the
Louisville Slugger label branded into the wood. He tightened his grip on its handle.

“Jay, what are you doing now?” he said
. “Are you threatening me?”

“You’re the English professor, you tell me
. You heard any specific threats come out of my mouth? What I’m doing now is telling you that you will comply. You will take that girl for a blood test, and you will make the results available to my attorney. That’s what you’re gonna do.”

Robert’s vision was threaded with little red lines
. His breathing had become raspy, his face flushed with heat. The anger was spreading through him, taking him over. His hands were cold, then hot. And he was sweating. He gripped the bat tighter.

“Jay,” he said, and his tone was oddly glassy, steady, “this is what’s going to happen now
. I’m going to hang up, and when I do, you are going to make damn sure that you and your attorney stay as far away from my family as you can get. You will not ever darken my door again.”

“Yeah, don’t be too sure, Doc
. I got something here that’s gonna change your mind, something you need to see.”

“Good
-bye, Jay.”

Jay said something else, but it was lost when Robert cut the connection.

He put the phone down on his desk and stared around the room, and as he stood there, his rage overwhelming him, he felt he could hear water moving in Crook House’s pipes. He could hear the hum of the air conditioner. He could hear a woman thrashing in the bathtub down the hall, and the echoes of the footsteps of long-dead suicides. Crook House was alive to him, open to him, and he could hear every part of it, feel every part.

He could feel the beating of its hideous heart.

December 23

Robert had two appointments the next morning, one with Thom Horner at 9:30 and the other with Rachel Dodson, the division chair, at 11:00. He missed them both. Didn’t even bother to call.

Thom called him around
ten o’clock. Robert saw his number come up on the caller ID, but he didn’t bother to pick it up. Instead, he sat in his office, thinking about everything Anthony Udoll had told him, and about Jay Carroll, and about how broke he was and all the bills he still had to pay and the misery of always being behind the eight ball.