Chapter Twenty-Seven – Sam

 

The smell of this place seemed to get into my nose, to cling to the pores of my skin and crawl inside. It was one part rot, one part horror, one part ancient history. Not just antebellum or post-Civil War history, either. There was something truly old here, something that was down in the dirt of the place. The kind of age that began to infect whatever was around it, like some sort of age virus that changed what it touched.

I stood there, plank of wood in hand, staring up at the window I was going to use to get in. All the doors I’d checked had heavy locks and serious reinforcement on them, but these windows all seemed to be easy pickings. I could use the loose board I’d found as a pry bar to force the other boards off. If worst came to worst, I’d just go to the Camaro’s trunk and pull out my gear for changing the tires.

I was sorry I’d doubted Faith in the slightest on her hunch, even for a moment. More than likely, this place had something to do with the strange goings-on next door on the farm, and back in Potterswell. I had my own hunch that the strange nighttime visitation that Faith had endured had made her more sensitive to the aura of this place, like a weird psychic compass. I couldn’t be sure—I didn’t know all that much about magic, or hoodoo, or any of that kind of thing.

All I knew was, I was glad I’d given her my Hand of Fatima necklace. Because, even though I hadn’t been touched by whatever had come to her, I could still feel the strangeness of this place, and the way it seemed to get inside you. The way it whispered in your ears in the silence, the way it tried to trick you to go inside.

Of course, in my case, I was more than happy to go along with the enchanting little Siren call of the spirits of this place, to even give it a helping hand. After all, I wanted in there. Even if it tried to push me away, rather than pull me along, I’d be fighting tooth and nail against it.

Now, though, Faith came bouncing around the corner just as I was using the board in my hand to pry the others off.

“Whoa,” she said, coming to a halt in her tracks, “what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I asked, just as the second of the five weathered boards that had originally been nailed over the window came off in a cloud of splinters. “I’m trying to get inside to see what we can find.”

“No, what it looks like you’re doing is vandalizing someone’s property.”

“It’s not vandalizing if you’re not breaking anything, Faith.”

She cocked a hip out to the side, resting her hand on it as she gave me a look. She didn’t say a word.

“Look,” I replied as I began to pry away at the third board, “I’m not going to spray paint the place up, or burn anything down, or do anything like that.” The plank I’d chosen as my lever was the strongest-looking of the set, but even this one had already begun to splinter and crack in my hands.

She seemed to give my words a moment’s consideration, then promptly came over as if I’d completely assuaged her fears. “All right,” she said. “I mean, I guess you’re right. We’re not going to hurt the place, right? I mean, it’d be a crime to burn down a piece of history, right?”

“Yeah,” I replied, grunting a little with the exertion as she and I yanked off the fourth board, more or less clearing the window. “I mean, we’re not going to do any more damage than necessary.”

Now that we’d cleared away four of the five boards, the path forward was almost clear.

I leaned in to the window, cupping my hands as I leaned against the glass and peered inside. Beside me, Faith did the same, her upper arm pressed against mine as we both looked into the haunted past.

The window was set in the wall of what had once been a library or den, really not much larger than a modern room of the same style. The room was unfurnished, giving it a naked feel, and making me feel oddly embarrassed, like we’d accidentally come upon the house when it was in an awkward state. Bookshelves, now bare and covered in dust and cobwebs, were built into the far wall, which had once been covered in floral-printed wallpaper. Now, the paper hung in strips, the colors faded and aged like the childhood memories of a senile old man, and the sparse light that shone in through the boarded-up windows lying across everything in bright slivers.

“Whoa,” she said, in an awe-filled whisper. “This place is so creepy. And so cool!”

I pulled back from the window. “Stand back. Maybe I can get this open.” I dug my fingers under the bottom of the window, one of those old double-hung styles. Storm windows really hadn’t been a thing back in the 1800s.

“Can you get it?” she asked as I fruitlessly tugged upwards.

No matter how much I tried to force the movement, the window wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t even get a mild creak or groan from the wood, it was so fully warped and wedged into place.

“What now?” she asked.

I reached behind my back, drew my sidearm from the holster, and flipped it around so I had a firm grip on its barrel.

“Goddamn it, Sam!”

After all, all we had were some pesky glass panes to deal with, and we’d be inside.

“You said no damage!”

She jumped a little as I began to smash out the glass with the butt of my sidearm. “I said no more than necessary,” I replied, stressing “necessary.” I kept going, the smell of dust and stale decrepitude growing heavier and heavier the more I opened the place up to fresh air.

There weren’t any notes in the air, though, of human life. Not that I could smell from out here, of course. I’d have to get inside if I wanted to do a more thorough investigation.

“Jesus Christ,” she groaned, looking back over her shoulder as if she were instinctively checking to see if anyone was around to see me breaking in.

“Don’t worry. Nearest neighbor is Eb Shook, remember?”

She sighed again, just repeated herself. “This is not what I was planning on doing when we got out here.”

“Now, come on,” I said as I smashed out the last pane and forcibly knocked away the wooden frame in the middle, wrenching it out of the window, “what did you think we were going to do? Knock on the front door and ring the doorbell like a Jehovah’s Witness? Besides, you said it yourself. If someone is here, hiding out, they aren’t here legally anyways. Right? We’re just investigating; we’re not taking anything.”

“But, Sam, this is breaking and entering.” In her voice were the clear notes of the tug-of-war going on behind the scenes. She wanted to get inside just as much as I did, and I knew her curiosity was piqued. If anything, it was even more intense than my own.

“Think of it as urban exploration,” I said, turning my attention back to the glass and clearing the last of it away with the butt of my sidearm. I turned back to her, a big grin on my face as I holstered it again. “You wanna go first? Or should I?”

She twisted her mouth from one side to the other, going back and forth like she was still fighting that battle. She clenched her teeth and sucked in a breath. “You should probably go first,” she said at first with some reluctance.

I shrugged and returned my attention to the window, went to vault inside. The window, now clear of glass, was just wide enough for me to fit comfortably through.

“You know what?” she asked, her voice a little antsy as she stepped up behind me and put a small hand on my back. “How about I go first?”

“You sure?” I asked, looking back at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah,” she said, pushing up beside me and nearly shoving me out of the way. “Of course.”

I blinked in disbelief as I stepped back in surprise and let her go past me. “Well, okay then. Go right ahead.”

“Here,” she said, getting in front of me and positioning her hands inside the window frame so she could support herself up, “can you help me up?”

I should have realized something was wrong. That not only was this display of Faith’s completely out of character with the woman I’d grown to know and care about over the last day or so, but it was also uncharacteristic of myself. But there was just something about this place that, despite its otherworldly creepiness and disrepair, just seemed so charming and intriguing. All those thoughts and worries that should have been there just couldn’t find a spot. Like they’d come to town for the emotion convention, but they were turned away for not buying tickets early enough. Especially since enthusiasm and disregard for personal safety had decided to buy up all the passes.

She looked back over her shoulder at me, a devilish grin on her upturned lips. “Well?” she asked. “Gonna help me or not?”

“Sorry,” I replied with a grin as I stepped up behind her. Without another thought, I grabbed her hips and went to lift her up and over the windowsill.

God, her hips felt amazing. The right amount of tone, but still with a little bit of healthy give. A perfect balance, and just the way I liked my women. Fit, but curvy.

As I reveled in the feel of my hands on her, she slipped over the windowsill like an experienced cat burglar, barely making a sound as she dropped to the hardwood floor on the other side. She turned back, flicked her hair out of her face, and gave me a wink.

I grinned, despite the fact that we were about to begin exploration of what basically amounted to a haunted mansion, and crawled in through the open window and landed right behind her. I straightened up and took a look around the room as Faith crossed the room to the old bookshelves, running her hand over their dusty surface.

Three doors led off from the main room, and immediately to our right was a fireplace that belonged to the half-dozen chimneys that sprouted from the roof of the building. Ash littered the brick bottom of the fireplace, but I couldn’t tell if it was recent or from the last time this house was occupied.

The smell of rot and age was even stronger in here. The kind of smell you’d expect in a damp tomb, or crypt, and more than just an underlying note, like there had been outside. Here there was no grass or smell of the distant pines to cut through the smell, and it allowed the decaying bouquet to fully bloom in your nose. But, mixed in with all that, I could smell something distinct, out of the ordinary.

Human. Someone was here, or had been here recently. Not long enough to leave necessarily a strong smell, like from cooking or showering or testing out the plumbing, but for enough time that they had left a slight impression in the air.

I sniffed loudly, trying to get a better sense of what kind of person had been here. All I managed to do, though, was draw a look from Faith, her eyebrow raised.

“Allergies,” I said. “Dust gets me every time.”

“Do you do this a lot?” Faith asked with a smile.

“Breaking and entering into abandoned properties in the middle of nowhere?”

“Yeah.”

“No. Only when there’s a, uh, story.”

She laughed, the sound tinkling and beautiful to my ears, especially in a place as drab and shadowy as this. Most importantly, though, it sounded alive and wonderful. As she finished, she tilted her head back a little, rolling her eyes until they stopped and looked up at the ceiling.

“What’s upstairs, you think?”

“I don’t know,” I said, smiling a little. “Want to find out?”

She nodded and licked her lips a little. “Yeah,” she said with a waggle of her eyebrows. “Let’s go!”

I flashed her a smile, turning left to a doorway that opened up into a short hallway, which led straight down to a closed door. On the left, though, I could see another central, larger hallway that went down the middle of the manor. I set off without a second thought. It was like my feet somehow knew the way to go, and, with Faith right behind me, I went out into the hall and past the handful of doors that flanked us on either side. The floorboards creaked beneath me with each heavy fall of my boots, but seemed sturdy enough as we kept moving.

I took the left and went straight for the entry, a set of heavy-looking double doors.

A set of curving stairs began in the entryway, and led up to a balcony that hovered over us. The banister looked in disrepair, with missing pieces here and there and one part of the rail completely snapped off, so we stuck to the wall and hugged the curve as we took the steps with less trepidation and fear than we should have.

“This is so exciting,” Faith said, her voice still hushed.

“I know,” I whispered back. “I love history. It was one of my big passions before I got into this. I love that old buildings like this are still standing.”

As we stalked up the stairs, though, a part of my brain seemed to scream at the rest of me as it looked on in horror at the way we were both acting. This isn’t right, it said. This isn’t the way you should be treating this. What the hell are you doing?

But, rather than letting it bring me down, I just ignored it. After all, I was here in this beautiful old mansion, this piece of century-old history, with the most beautiful woman I’d ever met in my life. Why would I let something like common sense and caution get in the way of that?

I swept my eyes over the little semicircle landing as we climbed the stairs. The walls here were covered in plain, flaking paint, not wallpaper like downstairs. Five paths led off from up here. Two closed doors to one side, two to the other, and a central hallway down the middle.

My phone began to buzz in my pocket as we set foot on the landing at the top of the stairs. I pulled it out and looked to see who was calling.

“Tabitha,” I said, peering down at my phone. “My, er, editor.”

I really didn’t want to answer. Mainly because I knew she’d be upset with me for wandering around in this place with a civilian, but also because she might try to get me to return to my hunt. After all, it was clear there was nothing here. Just some dust and cobwebs.

Faith gave me a look. “Just call her back later.”

The back part of my brain, the one that had urged caution and care just a few seconds earlier, screamed again that this wasn’t right. None of this was right.

This time, though, I listened.

“No,” I said. “I should probably answer. She was doing some research, remember?”

Faith rolled her eyes and shook her head as she turned away from me.

The look of disapproval was like a punch in the gut, a sinking feeling at my core. I looked down at the still-buzzing phone in my hand with Tabitha’s name scrolling across the bottom. My thumb reached up, almost hitting the red telephone icon so I could just hang up and rejoin Faith.

But, just as my thumb was about to press the button, that hind part of my brain seemed to kick in and remind me of what I was here for. I could practically hear Col. Harrington’s voice speaking to me from beyond time and space, his gruff, gravelly tones impressing on me the importance of the mission.

“Remember,” he’d said. “Remember who you are. And remember the mission. Your mission is what comes first, your mission and the lives of the civilians we’re working to protect. You forget that, and you’re no good to me, or anyone else you’re working with.”

I took a deep breath, swallowed hard at the indignation I felt from Faith dismissing me and walking away, and answered the phone.

“Tabitha?” I said. “You there?”

“I’m here,” she said. “I have what you’re asking for on this Mr. Ironside and his meatpacking plant.”

I licked my lips uncertainly as I watched Faith. She walked down the central hallway, her fingers trailing across the wallpaper as she walked, her hips swaying with each step.

“Talk to me.”

“Looks like he’s actually not the one who opened the facility. His father. Current owner’s Mr. Augustus Ironside, Jr., inherited it when his father passed away about forty years ago. His father, on the other hand, opened the facility back during the turn of the last century when an old rail spur finally made it to Garrison.”

“All right. So, family’s been a pillar of the community for over a century. Anything else?”

“Not much, really. Pretty low-key, really keeps to himself.”

I kept my eyes on Faith as she came to a stop in front of one of the doors down at the end of the hallway, putting the palm of her hand flat against the wood. “What about the mansion near Shook’s place?”

“Looks like it was originally owned by a Polish man who moved to the area back in the 1860s, just after the Civil War. Never owned slaves or anything like that, but this man Tanchovsky did purchase the land from a previous slaveholder who’d gone bust after the war.”

“Yeah, well, that kind of thing happens when your investments gain their God-given freedom.”

“Exactly. So, Tanchovsky comes in, buys up the place, and lives there for a while. No records after that, or anything. When he dies, his land goes up for auction at the county, and Mr. Ironside comes in and buys it up, moves in, goes on to raise his family and build his business in Garrison.”

Still down the hall, Faith took her hand from the door and slowly reached down to the brass doorknob. Slowly, she turned it and pushed the door open, the hinges creaking as it swung inward.

“Okay,” I said, my eye still on Faith. “Sounds normal enough.”

“Right. Now, I’m going to keep digging on this with my sources and through the reference books I have, but I can’t find much of anything on this place. No murders, no tragedies.”

Most of the time, urban legends do have some truth to them. And most haunted places, or weird thin spots in the world where things tend to bleed over from other places into our own, have an explanation for why they are that way. Very rarely do you find a place that’s just naturally evil or dark.

“So, nothing to explain why it has the reputation it does?”

“Other than that it’s really old and still standing?” Tabitha asked. “Not really. Are you there right now?”

“Yeah,” I replied, heading down the hallway after Faith. “We’re looking around right now.”

“Found anything?”

“Not anything in particular,” I replied as I came to a stop outside the door.

This room actually had some furniture in it, broken pieces that seemed to lie around the room like discarded and forgotten children’s toys. Faith was standing in front of a half-splintered dresser with a broken mirror atop it, stroking the dusty, cobwebbed sides. Most of the drawers were missing from its front, all except for the middle one.

“The place feels a little weird,” I continued as I watched her, “and smells like someone, maybe a transient, has been in here. But nothing particularly supernatural. Just spooky. It’s an old building, after all.”

“Faith in there with you?”

“Yeah, and she seems fine. Just interested in the place, that’s all. Not particularly freaked out or anything.”

“You gave her the talisman, right? The Hand?”

“Come on, Tabitha, of course I did.”

“Hmmm. Well, I’ll go ahead and keep looking through the records. Maybe there’s something I missed, or something that’s only been hinted at.”

Faith, seemingly no longer content to just stroke the wood of the furniture, reached down and, with a groan of protest as wood rubbed against wood, pulled it open, looking inside.

I turned away and stepped back out into the hallway. “Meantime, can you send over the information on Ironside and his businesses?” I asked. “Something about that whole town is setting off alarm bells, and I want to look over it tonight when I get back to my room.”

“Already on its way. Anything else?”

“Anything on Potterswell itself, too. Even if this house isn’t connected to anything, there’s still something going on that extends out there. I’m going to stick around here for a while longer and look the place over. See if we can’t find anything.”

“Got it,” Tabitha said. “Be safe, okay?”

“Of course,” I replied, smiling into the phone despite the fact that I knew she couldn’t see it, and hung up. I pulled up my email, saw the message from Tabitha with the information I’d requested, and started the download. Out here in the boonies like this, it was probably going to take a while.

“Ohhh,” Faith said from inside the room, her voice dripping with delight. “Sam? Hey, come in here and check this out!”

“What’d you find?” I asked as I went back into the room. I stopped in my tracks, though, not sure how to respond.

Faith was in the middle of the floor on her knees, an array of pictures and documents spread out in front of her. She was busy adding to the web, too, as she pulled more of the same from a large, old manila envelope that lay beside her. She looked up at me, with a big grin and a mischievous look in her eyes. “I found all these in that drawer back there. See?”

I know I should have been freaked out by her behavior. Should have been worried at the way she was acting.

But, somehow, a piece of me was just excited to see someone sharing my same passion for history.

So I went and joined her on the floor.

Meanwhile, in my back pocket, my phone continued its slow download.