Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
My throat burned the entire walk to my car. When I sat in the front seat, I locked the doors. Perched the little envelope on my dashboard and dropped the key into the cupholder.
This might not be anything important. It might not be what I hoped for it to be.
It might just be a letter. And that was okay.
My eyes welled until everything swam. Short, choppy breaths came from my chest. The car was hot, like a toaster oven, and I knew I’d start sweating soon. But I needed the silence.
With jerky movements, I picked up the letter. Ran a finger over her penmanship. She’d always curled her y’s at the end in a little twirl so it looked like a flower sprouted from the bottom. I tore the flap with care and pulled out a single folded sheet of paper.
My lovely Lanny,
I know you may think me crazy, but I promise this has a purpose. I’m leaving the house to you. Then again, if you’ve got this, you probably already know that.
Don’t worry: right now, I’m not sick. I’m not dying, at least on my watch, anytime soon.
I just want to be prepared. I think Charlene next door having an aneurysm got me thinking.
Who knows, I might tell you I’ve stored this somewhere so you can find it if the time comes.
Maybe I won’t want to deal with this place and I’ll give it to you and just be done with it.
Get me an apartment, something I don’t own, and just die there when I’m wrinkled and ornery in twenty years.
But yes, the house. It’s yours. I’ll set it up in a trust, write a will, all the fun stuff. At least it’ll give me something to do.
One, then two tears plopped onto my lap. I wiped my eyes. Propped my elbow on the car door and covered my mouth. Willed myself to keep reading.
The point of this is to tell you something I know nothing about.
My Granny used to say never to play with things you don’t know.
But then Charlene died and I got to thinking about what would happen if I wasn’t here no more.
How I’d feel about leaving you this place and knowing what I know about it.
I can’t do that to you, Lanny. I know you loved this place, loved visiting, as a little girl.
But this place isn’t right. I know you think it was cute, that little rhyme I used to tell you and Sayer as kids, but I did it because I wanted you to be wary.
I wanted to scare you away a bit, and I’m sorry.
I’ve ignored it for a long while, thinking it would just go away.
It never did. So it’s time to try and figure out what’s going on instead of ignoring it more. I’ll start at the beginning for you:
You were about four or five when I realized you noticed things.
You said you’d seen someone in a window late one afternoon.
To be honest, you scared me. I ignored it—you talked about it for months, so I didn’t forget it—but I was hoping it’d go away.
And it wasn’t just that, but you’d bring up the oddest things: hearing knocks and creaks when your momma or daddy didn’t.
They thought you were playing, but I knew better. Because I’d heard things sometimes too.
It got worse the older you got, so the more I ignored it, the more I worried. By the time you were away at college, I tried to replace the beadboard in the hallway and busted a hole in the wall on accident. That was when I found the door. These were around it.
In the margins of the paper, she’d drawn a few of the same symbols I’d found.
For the longest time, I didn’t find much.
I always heard that sometimes energies were tied to items, so I figured it might very well be an untimely death that left someone lingering.
I tried to find remains in both the front and back yards, in the crawl spaces under the house, in the attic. But I never did.
Until I replaced the floorboards in the office.
My heart rocketed up my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut. The floorboards in the office?
Then it hit me: When Emma and I had been looking for batteries when the light turned on and off, one of the boards had been stained a different color.
I’d heard a little boy crying at night. Every hour, on the dot. It continued for weeks. So imagine my surprise when I get a contractor to replace the floorboards and he finds not one, but two different child’s shoes, a toy train, a couple wooden boxes, and a tiny bowler hat.
I thought I’d fixed it—I’d found the little boy’s remains. Maybe he was attached to the toys and the shoes since they’d been his, I don’t know. I burned them, thinking it’d stop whatever was going on. Salt and burn, incense and cleanse. For a while it worked.
But then it started again. I guess that old lore about shooing spirits away doesn’t work after all.
I read somewhere else that traumatic events can amplify energies, and sometimes I wonder if the house itself was a beacon for bad things.
That something was already there, besides the child, that made it worse.
So I don’t know what else to do, Lanny. The crying won’t stop.
I’ve read every article online, watched so many videos, pulled my hair out over this, and I’m starting to worry that whatever is going on will always be that way.
I even asked the library for records and had a girl come out to take a peek, but I’ll be honest, I gave up after that.
I don’t know if it’s worth trying to fix anymore, and to be honest, I’m tired.
I’m sorry, honey. But I couldn’t not tell you. I had to at least let you know. Who knows, maybe you can fix up the place and sell it one day.
Now—the safety deposit box key. I’ve gone ahead and put some of the jewelry I don’t wear in there for safe keeping, just in case.
I have the papers to the Beetle in there, too, with a couple of bonds that I never cashed.
They aren’t much, but the ring was your Granny’s, and the necklace was one of mine.
The earrings were supposed to be a wedding present for you one day, so if you’re reading this after you’re married, I hope you liked them.
I thought they were pretty. If you aren’t married, take Emma to Vegas and pawn them or something.
Make a memory out of them. Just please don’t give them to your momma.
I love you, dear. And I’m sorry for how life’s been so far. But you’ve got this. You’ve turned a corner, and if not yet, I know you will soon. I can feel it in these old bones like you can smell rain on the wind on a humid summer day.
I love you bunches,
Aunt Denny
I folded the page back up and stared at my steering wheel.
Like you can smell rain on the wind on a humid summer day.
She’d tried. She’d gotten no further than I had, not really, except I knew what some of the symbols meant. And I had the man from inside to prove that what she’d heard wasn’t a simple spirit haunting the halls.
There’s something about grief that ages a person.
One moment, you’re alive and breathing, and the world is colorful but quick.
The lines are blurred and you’re moving, you can feel the air on your skin and hear everything at once.
But then the grief slows you down. Latches you into a single place and makes you watch as everyone else passes you by.
I wanted to think. I wanted to get up and move, I wanted to put pieces together, I wanted to comb through the attic and try and find the things she’d mentioned, but my chest hurt. My chest hurt so bad, and I wanted to sit in my car and cry.
And then all I could think of was the two little shoes she said she found.
The bowler hat and the toy train. And I found that I was grieving not just for my aunt, right then, but the little boy that never had a chance to be a child, and how I never would have met that man if none of that horrid abuse hadn’t happened.
Whether I was ready to admit it or not, I didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. Whatever loop kept him here, whatever was changing with his appearance—something was going on whether we were ready or not. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what the end of it looked like.
Because for the first time in a long while, I felt a little alive. The barbs in my chest weren’t the prettiest, but I knew they were there. I’d stepped on the platform.
I didn’t need to step back off now. But the idea of telling Hadrian about the items Aunt Cadence found made my stomach churn.
Would he be excited about them? Try to find them? Should I be happy for him?
I didn’t know.
I sealed the envelope, tucked it into the center console, and drove home.