The Inn (22 page)

N
eville hung up the phone. Glancing around to make sure that neither Jack nor Zeke was around, he hurried from the kitchen.

In the foyer, his bag was packed and waiting by the door. A hush had settled over the house. Outside, giant snowflakes were floating down from the gray sky, blanketing everything in white. Neville realized he was going to have to brush off his car. He wished he had brought gloves.

“I'm
not
packing any gloves,” he'd announced to Priscilla with a smirk, as they'd left their flat for Heathrow—which now seemed an eternity ago. “I am packing as if we are not making any ridiculous ghost-hunting side trips and going straight to Florida.”

Florida. Neville had always wanted to go there. He'd been looking so very much forward to those sandy beaches, that warm water, that cool margarita in his hand.
Maybe another time
, Neville consoled himself with a sigh.

“Neville.”

His name came from the parlor in a whisper. He didn't recognize the voice. But it might have been Jack or Zeke, speaking very softly.

“Neville,” the whisper came again.

He stepped around the corner and peeked into the room. He saw no one. The house seemed so quiet, as if every sound ceased. No hum from the electricity, no ticking of any clock, no wind from the eaves.

“Hello?” Neville called.

He walked into the parlor and paused in front of the fireplace. Had he imagined what he'd heard? No, that hadn't been his imagination. He had heard someone whisper his name. Twice. And the only people in the house were Jack and Zeke.

“Neville.”

He spun around. “Who is there?”

Suddenly, Neville felt afraid. There was a killer loose, after all. Someone who had chopped off a man's hand, and who had surely killed Priscilla as well, if her ring was any indication. Was it the killer who called to Neville now?

He bolted for the door, planning to grab his suitcase and his coat and hurry off into the snowstorm outside.

He was almost to the door when he tripped. Just what he tripped over, he wasn't sure. But he went toppling over face-first to the floor.

He braced his fall with his elbows and forearms. The pain shot up through his shoulders. He might have broken something.

But he didn't have time to check. He looked around and saw what had caused him to fall.

A little man, no more than three feet tall, with a little blue face wearing rags for clothes.

“Can I get him?” the little man asked in a soft, whispery voice.

“Yes, you can get him,” came another voice, and before the startled Neville could react, another little man, looking nearly identical, came hurrying around the corner. And then another little man appeared, and another and another, until five of the loathsome creatures had piled on top of Neville, grabbing at the back of his shirt and up and down his arms with their very sharp hands.

“Get off me!” Neville managed to shout, trying to shake them off.

But the little men were incredibly strong. They kept him from standing by clamping their clawlike fingers into his calves, ripping through his pants and puncturing his skin. Neville screamed.

“Help me!” he shouted, hoping that Jack or Zeke would hear. “Help me!”

The little men began pulling him across the floor. As much as Neville tried to fight them, he found he was powerless to escape their clutches. Three of them were at his feet, clawing and biting his calves and shins. The two others were positioned at each shoulder, grabbing ahold painfully and dragging him back into the parlor.

Neville could see the creatures on either side of him. They were laughing, thoroughly enjoying their task.

Twisting from side to side, still unable to break free of them, Neville looked up ahead. What he saw was even more unbelievable.

Two more of the creatures had popped their heads up from the ash dump panel at the bottom of the fireplace. They were waving their sharp little fingers—they looked like squirrel claws—motioning to their comrades to bring Neville closer.

“Nooo!” Neville screamed.

But he couldn't fight back. All he could manage to do was writhe from side to side. The creatures seemed to have complete power over him. Neville began to whimper.

This was how he would die, he realized.

The little men thrust his head into the fireplace. The creatures waiting inside the ash dump suddenly clamped their claws into his neck and Neville shrieked out in pain. The others behind him were pushing his butt and legs now. With one final thrust, Neville's head and shoulders were crammed down through the trapdoor into the chimney.

The creatures behind him kept pushing and shoving, while the creatures ahead of him kept pulling him down. Neville's body was now wedged halfway down the chimney.

That's one really wide chimney
, Chad had said.
You could fit a body in there, sure.

Neville felt his feet pass through the opening in the fireplace and he fell about a foot, becoming lodged in the darkness of the chimney.

Below him came the sound of gnashing teeth.

I doubt it's squirrels and mice they're eating
, Neville had told Chad.

He was about to learn just how right he was.

T
he scream from inside the chimney echoed through the house. Suddenly it was cut short, and Zeke knew the man was dead.

The old caretaker stood in the parlor, staring at the fireplace. He was crying.

“How many more?” he asked the quiet house. “How long will this go on?”

No answer came, of course. There had never been an answer, for as long as he had lived at the Blue Boy Inn.

Damn that woman for opening up the fireplace. They had had it contained. They had had it under control.

He wiped his tears with the back of his hand. He knew what he needed to do.

He grabbed Neville's suitcase and headed outside. He'd hide the dead man's car in the woods. The police would think that he'd left for the airport in the midst of this blizzard in order to try to make it home.

But Zeke neglected to take Neville's coat. It remained hanging there on the hook.

C
had drove his truck back toward Woodfield, Annabel seated beside him. The snow was still light, but it was starting to stick to the roads. The state trucks were already out, spraying salt and sand from side to side.

“Could be a nor'easter,” Chad said. “You're in for quite the experience, if the storm turns out to be as big as they're predicting it might be.”

Annabel visibly shivered. “I've been worrying about being snowbound at the inn ever since we decided to move up here.”

Chad smiled over at her. “But you've had big snowstorms in the city, too. I remember reading about that big one a few years ago where days later they found people in cars that had been piled over by snowplows.”

“Oh, sure,” Annabel told him. “But you see, in New York, you have other people in your building. You can go next door, talk to someone. You're not isolated. You can go down to the sidewalk and you can crunch through the snow to a market that's managed to open. Even in the worst storms, some enterprising shopkeeper always manages to open his doors.”

Chad sighed. “Okay, I hear you. That's certainly not the case here. In Woodfield—in a lot of western Mass, in fact—things just shut down during a nor'easter. Power can go out and stay out for a week.”

Annabel groaned. “Oh, great.”

“You ought to maybe think about getting a generator as part of your renovations,” Chad suggested.

“Yes. That's a good idea. A very good idea.”

They were quiet for a few moments as they drove.

“You know, Annabel,” Chad said, breaking the silence, “whatever's going down back at the inn, if you need my help . . .”

She looked away, out the window. “Of course, I need your help, Chad. I can't rewire electricity and knock down walls myself.”

“No, what I mean is . . .” Chad struggled to find the words. “With everything that's happened, you know, with the police being there and conducting a search, well, if I can do anything . . .”

Annabel turned back and looked at him. She offered him a small smile.

“Thank you, Chad,” she said softly.

He liked her. He found himself really liking her a lot. Chad had never been attracted to a married woman before. He wasn't quite sure what to do with his feelings. Since the breakup with Claire, he hadn't had much interest in dating. He hadn't had much interest in women, period. A really gorgeous woman could walk right by him and Chad would barely notice. He remembered not so long ago, Paulie—poor old Paulie—looking at him as if he were crazy. Chad had been reading the newspaper, oblivious to anything around him. “Dude,” Paulie had said. “That was a major babe who just passed by and you couldn't even pull your nose away from the Patriots' score long enough to notice.”

But he sure noticed Annabel.

She was hot, no doubt about that. Her shiny auburn hair, her tiny waist, her perfect figure. And she was married to a major-league asshole, if Tammy's story was true—and Chad believed it was. What if Jack Devlin had something to do with Paulie's disappearance, and the disappearance of that English lady? Annabel could be in real trouble in that house.

“Listen,” Chad said, as he switched on the blinker to take the exit toward Woodfield, “I'm serious. You have no idea what you're dealing with up at that old house. Too much weird shit has gone down there over the years. I'd like to be around to take care of you if—”

“You are very sweet,” Annabel said, cutting him off, “and more than chivalric. I appreciate your offer, Chad. I really do.” She looked away again, back out the window. “But I think I've got to learn how to take care of myself.”

“Well, sure, but if things get rough . . .”

He could see that she was smiling, though she didn't look back at him.

“Oh,” Annabel said, “things have been rough for a while. Jack said they'd get easier here, but they haven't. I'm not surprised.” Finally, she looked back at him, giving him a smile and a flash of her pretty eyes. “So I'm used to things being rough.”

“As rough as all this?” Chad asked, as the truck rattled onto the main road leading into Woodfield. “A dead man's hand being found on your property? Two people going missing from your house? The cops searching the place? Can you handle all that?”

Annabel's smiled faded and she looked away again. “We shall see,” she said softly. “We shall see.”

F
rom his desk, Richard could hear the special weather bulletin on the television warning of an impending major winter storm. “Snowfalls possible of up to four to five feet,” the woman in the bright pink jacket was saying, doing her best to look suitably concerned.

Richard was worried, but not about snow. He turned another page in the collection of cold case files on his desk. His predecessor as chief of police, Thad Arnette, had been on the job when Jack Devlin's father had “gone mad,” as Millie described it. Arnette had left a fascinating note about the episode.

Richard ran his hand across his short-cropped hair.
Arnette suspected Devlin's father of something,
he realized. Perhaps some complicity in, or knowledge of his wife's death and daughter's disappearance.

But soon after that note came another.

And then that was it. Most likely, other cases took precedence and after a while, with Devlin gone, Arnette forgot about him. Out of sight, out of mind. Not the best way to run a police department, Richard acknowledged, but it happened. The questions Arnette had about the death of Mrs. Devlin and the disappearance of the little girl—Cindy, her name was—were filed away among the rest of the cold case files.

What had happened to Jack Devlin's mother if she didn't die of cancer?

Richard buzzed for his secretary. “Betty,” he said, “could you come here in a moment?”

She was promptly bustling through the door. Betty was a good scout. Utterly devoted to the department. She'd been there twenty-one years. She'd started right out of high school as a file clerk, working her way up to secretary to the chief. She was thirty-nine years old, a little plump, with short bronze-colored hair. She was always smiling, or smirking.

“You rang, master?” she quipped.

“Betty, tell me what you remember about Jack Devlin's parents.”

She was biting the end of a pencil. “The parents? Didn't really know them. They weren't here very long. The grandparents, of course, were here for decades. . . .”

“Yes, but do you remember when his parents came to Woodfield? His father was going to take over the inn, I believe, just as Jack is doing now.”

Betty was nodding. “Yes, that's right. I do remember when they came, but they were gone in a flash, it seemed, right after the little girl got eaten by a bear.”

“That was never proven.”

“It wasn't?”

Richard shook his head. “No, it wasn't. Do you remember that the mother died of breast cancer?”

“Oh, that's right, I do remember that. Poor thing. I saw her at the market a few times. Seemed very pretty, full of life. Then all of a sudden she was gone.”

Richard pursed his lips. “So,” he said, “she didn't ever appear sickly?”

“No. I remember being real surprised hearing that she'd died, especially of cancer. It surprised everyone. One day, she was just gone.”

Richard sat back in his chair. “According to the official story, she was taken to a hospital and died there.”

Betty grinned. “And you don't believe it.”

“I'm just questioning it.”

“What does that have to do with what's happening at the Blue Boy today?”

Richard shrugged. “Maybe nothing. I'm just trying to get a history of everything that's gone down there. It's had more than its share of tragedy and mystery.”

“That's for sure. You know who would know a lot about the Blue Boy?”

“No, who?”

“Agnes Daley. She's at the library. She's the town historian, but really she's the town gossip. Knows everything about everyone.” Betty shuddered. “Probably knows a few secrets of mine, too. I wouldn't get on Agnes's bad side.”

“How long has she lived in town?”

“All her life. And she's got to be seventy-five, at least. She can take you way back.”

“Thanks,” Richard said. “I think I'll give her a call.”

“I'll get you the number for the library,” Betty told him.

Within a few minutes, Richard was punching in buttons for the Woodfield Public Library. As the line rang, the chief's eyes glanced off toward the window. The snow was coming down lightly, little spirals of white. He hoped the accumulation wouldn't be too heavy. That always meant a nightmare for police work, with people snowed in on their streets, businesses unable to open, and fender benders all over town.

“Public library, Agnes Daley,” a raspy, efficient voice suddenly announced.

Richard introduced himself.

“Chief Carlson!” the town historian exclaimed. “It's not every day that the chief of police calls me. What can I do for you?” Her ragged voice bore the unmistakable sound of someone who had smoked cigarettes all her life.

“I'd like to talk to you about what you know about the history of the Blue Boy Inn,” Richard told her.

“The Blue Boy Inn?” Agnes snorted. “Oh, not you, too, chief.”

“What do you mean, not me, too?”

“At least once a week the library gets a call from some far-flung corner of the world—Arkansas or Oregon or New Zealand or East Timbukistan—asking about that place. Ghost hunters, you know. They want details and pictures and otherworldly accounts.”

Richard laughed. “Well, I'm interested in the history of this world, Ms. Daley.”

“Call me Agnes, or we'll never get along.”

“All right, Agnes.”

“Is this about the latest disappearances?” she rasped. “And Roger Askew's hand? Because if so, I don't have any idea how—”

“Well, that's what has prompted my investigation,” Richard said, interrupting her. “But I'm more interested at the moment in the inn's previous history. How well did you know Cordelia Devlin?”

Agnes chortled. “As well as anyone could know her. She was a recluse. Barely ever left that house since her husband died. She always sent that strange old man, Zeke, she had working for her on errands into town.”

“Was she more social when her husband was alive?”

“I suppose she was. Then the husband died, and the son came up to take over the place . . .” Agnes's voice faded off as she spoke.

“Did you know the son?” Richard asked. “That would be the current owner's father.”

“I met him a few times. Seemed a nice enough man. Until the tragedies with his wife and daughter.”

It appeared Agnes knew little more about Jack's father than Betty had. Richard tried a different tack.

“What about Cordelia's husband?” he asked. “What kind of man was he?”

“Well, he was kind of an ambitious sort, as I remember, when he first took over the place from
his
father. But after that little baby died up there, he, too, became a recluse.”

“The one whose arm was the only thing found?”

“Oh, yes,” Agnes said. “How sad that was. Poor little thing. They said the child must have been eaten by a bear, just like what was supposed to have happened to little Cindy Devlin years later, though they found nothing of her.”

“Sounds like you don't believe these were bear attacks.”

Agnes snorted again. “Well, they fit so well into the haunted house narrative—you know, the curse of the Blue Boy Inn. So many deaths up there.”

“Do you remember any others?”

“I remember that man McGurk. I was a little girl then. Freaked me out, as the kids say today. They found a body with no head. How outrageous is that? In the middle of the parlor yet! Never found the killer, either.”

“Yes,” Richard said. “I've been reading up on that case. The investigators eventually closed the case. Everyone in the house had an alibi, and the head was never found, so they never made an arrest.”

“There have been other deaths and disappearances, too,” said Agnes.

“I have them all here in my files,” Richard told her. “How far do the stories of a curse go back?”

“Well, right back to the beginning,” she replied.

“And when was the beginning?”

“Well,” Agnes said, thinking, “the Blue Boy was built around 1865, I think. Right after the Civil War. It's been extensively remodeled several times, and the integrity of its original architecture is gone, but I think you can still see some of the original structure. I haven't been up there in an awfully long time, so I can't say for sure.”

“Was it always an inn?”

“Oh, no. In the beginning it was a pastor's house. That's where the stories of the curse began.”

“Care to fill me in?” Richard asked.

“Its original owner was the Reverend John Fall. He was the head of a little church that once stood on the property as well. But in 1869, John Fall was hanged.”

“Hanged?” Richard asked. “For what?”

“Murder,” Agnes replied. “One of his pretty young parishioners was found with her throat slit from ear to ear. But word around town was that the deeper crime of Reverend Fall was witchcraft. According to the rumor, he'd killed the poor girl in some kind of satanic ritual. His church, these stories insisted, was merely a cover for his black arts.”

“Any proof of that?”

“Nope. Just the legends that persisted for decades after his death. The official line was that Fall had killed her because she was going to tell his wife they were having an affair.”

Richard sighed. “I can see why stories of a curse would begin, if the original owner had been suspected of witchcraft.”

“But there's no denying, chief, that ever since, lots of people have died or disappeared up there,” Agnes told him.

“No,” he agreed. “There's no denying that.”

“The church was torn down, and the house sat vacant for many years, until someone got the idea to open it up as an inn. Soon after the turn of the twentieth century, the Devlin family bought it, and they've owned it ever since.”

“The current owner is the fourth generation of the family then,” Richard said.

“Yes, sir. And he's already seeing the curse at work.”

Richard laughed. “Surely you don't believe in it, Agnes.”

“I'm a confirmed agnostic in all areas of my life. That doesn't mean I don't believe. It means that I neither believe nor disbelieve.” She laughed. “It's the only path for a historian, unless you want to bring your own biases to your study of history.”

“That sounds like the smart approach,” Richard told her.

“I hope I've been of some help to you, chief.”

Richard told her she had, and thanked her for her time.

“No problem,” Agnes replied. “If you want to show your appreciation, you can make sure my street is plowed first thing in the morning, before anyone else's when this blasted blizzard simmers down.”

Richard laughed. “I'll speak with public works,” he told her.

“Much obliged,” Agnes said.

After he had had hung up the phone, Richard thought he could hardly base an investigation on rumors of a nearly two-hundred-year-old charge of witchcraft. How foolish people were. Maybe they just couldn't believe a man of the cloth could succumb to the desires of the flesh and cheat on his wife, so they had concocted a tale about satanic rituals to account for it. He had learned little of use, it seemed, from town historian Agnes Daley.

Nope. There was no denying that.

Richard stared out the window. The snow was coming down heavier now. The snow made him think of Amy. But everything made him think of Amy.