Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror (9 page)

“No, that’s the strange part. After he killed Oelrich he vanished without a trace. Some people say he drowned himself in the lake. Some say he ran away to Mexico. The only person who ever knew what happened was Sarah Balfram, but she refused to say. She just went on living all alone in the house, and a couple years later she got some sort of illness and died. Some people say she died of heartbreak.”

A shiver ran up Lauren’s spine, and her dismay was so obvious the girl looked at her anxiously. “Gee, I’m sorry.

I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No, it’s okay. I wanted to know.” In order to get her mind off what she had just been told she glanced around for some sort of distraction. She saw a book entitled
Great Camps of the Adirondacks
and placed it on the counter beside the Deep Woods Off. She also placed a handful of candy bars on the counter, a copy of the latest issue of
Cosmopolitan,
and a book of hiking trails through the Adirondacks. Then she saw a revolving rack of postcards and remembered she wanted to write to some of her friends back in the city.

To her delight as she turned the rack she saw some of the postcards were photographs of famous people from the past who had visited the Adirondacks. There was one of Teddy Roosevelt hunting on Pharaoh Mountain and even one of Jack London standing in front of Clearwater Lodge. But what really caught her eye was a fabulous picture of the 1920s film star Mae Norman riding in an open sleigh through the snow. She turned the card over and saw that the caption read: “Miss Norman is never seen in anything but an open sleigh no matter how cold the weather; with her brilliant coloring and dark furs she always makes a most charming portrait.”

Lauren smiled at the bygone wording of the caption, but when she turned the card back around and looked at the gay and reckless Miss Norman she saw something she hadn’t noticed before. Behind the sleigh was a house, and although its features were partially obscured by a fairyland mantle of snow, Lauren realized with a start it was Lake House. “Why, this is Lake House!” she exclaimed.

“What?”

“In this picture of Mae Norman. This is Lake House behind her, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” said the girl.

Pleased that she had found something positive about the house, she brought the postcard over to the counter. “Mae Norman certainly was beautiful,” she said, continuing to admire the picture.

“Yes, she was,” the girl said, and then added idly, “That picture was taken just before the tragedy.”

Lauren looked up abruptly. “What tragedy?”

Again the girl blinked at her with surprise. “A man was murdered in the house during a party Mae Norman gave. Apparently the scandal it caused is what ended her career.” Lauren’s eyes widened as a look of horror spread across her face. “There there have been two murders in the house?” She tried to keep her voice down so Garrett wouldn’t hear.

“You mean you didn’t know any of this?” the girl asked cautiously.

“No!” Lauren snapped, and the girl jumped. Feeling foolish for losing her temper, she asked calmly, “How was the man killed?”

The girl hesitated, afraid to go on. “Stabbed,” she murmured falteringly.

“Did they catch the murderer this time?”

“They tried a man, but he was acquitted. No one ever really knew who did it. I guess that’s why it ruined Mae Norman’s career. There was no evidence she had committed the murder. But there was no evidence anyone else had done it either.”

Lauren thought about everything she had been told for a moment and then looked at the girl pleadingly. “Have there been any other murders in the house you haven’t told me about?”

“No, I don’t think so,” the girl said weakly, as she rang up Lauren’s things.

“Thanks. Come on, Garrett,” she said loudly. “Time to go.”

When they arrived back at the house, Lauren told Garrett to go upstairs to his bedroom and then went looking for Stephen. She found him in the drawing room. “Look,” he said jubilantly as he flicked a switch on the wall and all the lights in the room went on.

She was pleased by the display, but still too upset by what the shopgirl had told her about the house to show it.

“Stephen, did you know that two people were murdered in this house?”

Stephen’s smile evaporated. “Who told you that?”

“A salesgirl at the Clearwater Lodge.”

He stretched out his arm and bared the palm of his hand apologetically. “Listen, honey, it really doesn’t matter.” She looked at him incredulously. “You mean you already know about it? You knew about it and you took the house anyway?”

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to upset you. I knew it would probably bother you if you knew someone had been killed in the house. It all happened so long ago anyway I didn’t see what real difference it made. I thought by not telling you I was just saving you from having to worry about it.”

“Not just one,” she corrected. “Two people. Two people were murdered in this house, and in neither instance was the murderer ever really found.”

“So two people were murdered in the house!” he said, getting testy. “And so the murderers were never found. For God’s sake, the two crimes took place over thirty years apart and the last one was committed more than sixty years ago! You sound like you think they might be connected.” Although she was angry, she knew he was right. She had been told about the two murders in such rapid succession she somehow assumed they might be connected, that in some strange way they presaged danger for them as well. But now she realized how ridiculous that was.

“Listen, if I’d known it was going to upset you so, I never would have kept the information from you. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

His penitent air started to disperse her anger. “Well, for future reference, remember that I used to be an investigative reporter. I can’t stand it when people keep important parts of a story from me.”

“I’ll remember.”

She forced a smile. “Okay.” She thought of something else. “By the way, when you told us about the house you said Sarah Balfram went crazy because she was jilted. You said that’s why she built Lake House the way she did. But she wasn’t jilted. Her fiancé was murdered. And not only that, but the shopgirl told me Sarah Balfram finished building Lake House before she even met her fiancé.”

“So?”

“So, is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

He raised both of his hands. “Honest, honey, all I know is she was crazy. I was hardly listening when the real estate agent was telling me all these stupid old stories. I thought he was just making them up because he thought I’d think they were cool or something. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t know why she was crazy? The girl at Clearwater Lodge said something strange. She said Sarah Balfram was ‘clever crazy.’ The shopgirl said she used to give lectures or something. Do you know anything about that?”

“No,” he said firmly.

“Okay.” She sighed, then paused in thought for a moment. “Oh, just out of curiosity, who did you hire to run the generator?”

“An old guy. Mr. Foley. He’s lived in the area for forty years. He seemed the most dependable.”

“Well, now that you’ve taken care of hiring someone to run the generator, what do you say we all go on that picnic? I bought a book of hiking trails through the Adirondacks.” She withdrew the book from her bag.

Again Stephen became long-faced. “Gee, honey, this hiring stuff took longer than I thought. I’ve got a dozen phone calls I’ve gotta make. I know we came up here to get away from everything, but some guy’s just released a single that’s climbing the charts and
Rolling Stone
has called him the next Stephen Ransom. Apparently he looks and sounds just like me, even does the same sort of stuff I do. I’ve gotta have a major powwow with Marty to figure out what we’re going to do.”

She pursed her lips in a pout. “Okay.”

He smiled and kissed her.

She watched him as he vanished toward the kitchen, and then she turned and walked in the other direction. When she reached the entrance hall, Garrett was bounding in the front door excitedly. “I’ve got it,” he cried.

“Got what?” she asked as he ran up to her.

“I know why Sarah Balfram made her house the way she did.”

She looked at him with apprehension. Although she was still convinced there was nothing to figure out, she did not like the look in his eye. “Why?”

“Do you remember the sentence that’s written over the door?”

“Yes.”

“Look at it again.” He handed her a piece of paper on which he had copied down the words:

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.

She looked at it for a moment and then looked back at him. “Garrett, I don’t read Latin.”

“No, just look at the sentence again.”

She looked at it again, but it remained inscrutable to her. “Garrett, I’m sorry, but I don’t see anything.”

“The letters in the words,” he exclaimed. “They’re the same forward as they are backward. When a sentence is written like that it’s called a palindrome. It’s a kind of puzzle.” She looked back at the paper and saw that he was right. “How neat!” she exclaimed. “What did you just call it?”

“A palindrome.”

“Now, where on earth did you learn that?”

“In the puzzle section of one of my science magazines. There are lots of famous palindromes. ‘A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.’ That’s a real well-known one. ‘Tini saw drawer, a reward was in it,’ is another.”

She paused, nodding her head as she mentally spelled out each sentence in her mind. “You’re right!” she exclaimed, but her exuberance was short-lived. “But those are in English. Have you figured out what this one means yet?”

“I don’t know what the words mean, but I know
why
it’s over the door.” His eyes glowed with enthusiasm, but still she remained confused.

“Don’t you see?” he continued. “She put a palindrome over the door for a reason, as a sort of message. She’s trying to tell us something. She’s trying to tell us the house itself is some sort of giant puzzle.”

A flutter of excitement passed through Lauren. Could he possibly be right? But after pondering the idea for a moment, she started to think of reasons to dismiss it. “I don’t know, Garrett. I just asked Stephen whether there was anything else he hadn’t told us about the house and he said no. If the house were some kind of giant puzzle I’m sure the real estate agent who rented him the place would have mentioned something about it.”

“How do you know he would have mentioned it?”

“Because it would be pretty neat if the house was actually a puzzle or something, and he would have mentioned it to help rent the place.”

“But maybe he didn’t know,” Garrett protested. “Maybe that’s something Sarah Balfram, or whatever her name was, kept secret.”

“Maybe,” Lauren said, smiling. “But maybe not. Maybe instead you should start writing some of these wild ideas of yours down. With your imagination you could make a million.”

Despite his mother’s lack of interest, the idea that the house might be some kind of giant puzzle continued to fire Garrett’s imagination, and later that afternoon he went walking through the first-floor rooms to see if he could find anything else that might support his theory. However, when he reached the Moorish-style billiard room he ran headlong into Stephen busily playing a solitaire game of pool.

“Hi, sport,” Stephen said as he ran the pool cue through his crooked fingers and the balls broke explosively.

“Hi,” Garrett mumbled. He wanted to turn and run, but he realized it would be too obviously rude.

Stephen sized up a ball and made another shot. Then he turned toward Garrett. “Hey, you wanna play pool with me?”

Garrett stiffened. Because he was so excited over his new theory, he most certainly did not want to play. “I don’t know how to play,” he said, trying to get out of the situation gracefully.

“Then I’ll teach you,” Stephen chirped.

“Well, I did play pool once. But I didn’t like it.”

“Maybe the reason you didn’t like it is that you weren’t that good at it yet. I can still teach you.”

“No, I—” Garrett stammered. But then he noticed Stephen’s eyes narrowing and realized it was pushing his luck to keep turning down his offers.

“Well, okay.”

“Great! Then come over here and I’ll show you how to set up a shot.”

Garrett reluctantly approached the table, and Stephen handed him a cue. Then he stood behind Garrett and helped guide the cue into the proper position.

“Now, see that white ball? Try hitting it with the cue and getting it to knock that red ball into the pocket in the corner.”

Garrett moved the cue back and forth between the crook in his fingers in a fashion so wobbly and palsied that he heard Stephen exhale loudly behind him.

“No, hold it more level, like this.”

Stephen guided the cue into the correct position and then stepped back. Garrett rammed the cue forward and hit the white ball, but off center and with such force it went hopping wildly over the edge of the table and bounced onto the floor.

Stephen went and retrieved the ball from the floor. “Too hard. You don’t have to ram the cue into the white ball. Try doing it more gently.”

As Stephen walked back to the table Garrett looked at him beseechingly, hoping he would perceive how little he was enjoying himself, but Stephen seemed not to notice. He set the balls in exactly the same position and stepped back. “Try it again.”

Garrett returned his attention to the table and bit his lip with concentration. Under normal circumstances he hated such games. He saw no point in them. They didn’t develop the intellect as chess did, and you didn’t get anything out of them when they were over. There was no payoff, except to be able to say that someone won and someone lost. But to his astonishment, Stephen actually seemed to be trying for once, and he felt he had no choice but to reciprocate.

He slid the cue back and forth between his fingers, nervously trying to calculate just the right momentum. But once again, to his enormous chagrin, he hit the ball too hard and it bounced across the green baize of the table and onto the floor.

This time Stephen was less good-natured about it. “No, no, you used too much force. Pool is a game of precision and delicacy. You’re not trying to annihilate the ball. You’ve got to be more gentle.”