Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
“Achoo!”
As I sweep under the bed, I sneeze for the seven hundredth time that afternoon.
I’m making progress, but it will take a few days to make the cottage truly habitable.
There’s dust on everything, and where there isn’t dust, there are thick spider webs.
In the corner of the kitchen, I find what looks to be a graveyard of ants.
I sweep it all up and search for a trash can at the back of the house. A small veranda with two wooden chaise-lounges offers a view of the trees. The floorboards groan in complaint. It wouldn’t take much to put my foot through.
Beside the veranda, I find an outdoor shower. The head looks like it’s rusting away, and there’s no barrier to give any sort of privacy. Not that it matters, though. What do I need privacy against out here? Horny squirrels? Pervy deer?
I eventually find a trash can and dump the dust inside, then sneeze a few more times.
“Bless you!”
I jump in surprise and manage to drop the metal pan on my foot.
“Oh!” It’s Grace. I smother a curse. “Hi.”
I’m taken aback by how put-together she looks. The word shiny comes to mind. Subtle makeup, not a hair out of place. I notice that her black dress has vertical blue lines like pale veins, and I make a mental note to buy a knock-off online when I have the money.
“I’m heading out,” Grace says, a faint smile on her lips as she watches me wince. “There’s food in the kitchen.”
She immediately starts walking away, so I hobble after her. “Wait. Grace?”
“Hmm?” She doesn’t look at me or slow down.
“What do I do?”
“Do?” she responds, as if the question were the height of idiocy.
Yes, I think. How stupid to ask what you’re paying me for.
“The ad—”
“Didn’t Bradley tell you?” She looks at the sky as if searching the heavens for patience. “He’ll be home later this evening. This was his grand idea.”
I want to insist, but she picks up her pace, so I let her go.
Back in the cottage, I work for another hour until the cottage is mostly free of spider webs.
I’ve propped the front door open with my bag, and I can see a galaxy of dust in the air.
I can already tell I’ll be sneezing all night, but it’s a step in the right direction.
My phone buzzes from the table, and I check my texts.
Hope u are ok. Love u. Miss u.
Come home! Can offer a comfy bed. ??.
Are you ok? Not texting back. So worried about you! Love you so much. I feel like I’ve lost a piece of myself.
All an act to lure me back. I rehearse a few harsh replies but decide not to encourage him. He’ll taper off eventually. Or he won’t. Either way, I’m not going back.
I manhandle the mattress outside and spend a few minutes beating it senseless. When I’m done, I feel light-headed. I barely ate yesterday, and I haven’t had a proper sleep in two days.
I head towards the main house, and under the canopy of trees, it already feels like dusk. I’ll need to talk to Grace or Bradley about getting a flashlight, or I’m going to break my neck walking down here after dark.
I knock gently on the door before going inside, just in case she’s still here. The floorboards creak in complaint as I cross the living room to the hallway. There’s a curving staircase to the left, and the only open door leads to a dining room.
“This is crazy,” I whisper, counting the chairs around the enormous wooden table—twelve for just two people. I’ve never lived in a house with a dining room. I grew up eating at a cramped kitchen table, just me and Mom. In my first apartment with Neil, we didn’t even have that.
Above the table is a grand chandelier. It’s obviously expensive, though all I can think about is accumulated dust.
I check the time on my phone and see even more texts from Neil.
I’m worried about you. Please reply.
I’m the only person in the world who truly loves you. I’ll never stop loving you.
On the other side of the dining room is a saloon door, which opens into a large, modern kitchen. On the phone, the professor—assistant professor—had said they couldn’t handle this place on their own, but the kitchen is spotless. It’s as though the place had been scrubbed and swept before I arrived.
I go to the fridge, hoping Grace has already prepared something for me, but it’s full of raw vegetables, glass containers, and items wrapped in beeswax.
No brand names, no plastic. I make a sandwich and walk back out into the hallway, where I spot a black cat trotting through the living room.
I get down on my knees and hold out my hand.
“You look like you belong to a witch,” I say, but when I turn, I see that it has a bird in its mouth. “Hey, drop that!”
It gives me a disinterested glance, then trots up the stairs.
“Hey, come back here! Drop it, cat!”
Halfway up, it turns to look at me, as if to say, coming?
I sprint after it. At the landing, it darts through a strange door barely taller than my waist, on the other side of the stairs. I figure it’s a closet, but when I pull it completely open, I discover a dark staircase. It must lead up to the attic.
I remember the face I saw in the window. When I mentioned it, Grace looked annoyed. She said no one lived here, but I know I saw someone.
Who was it? Is he still here?
“Hello?” I call out as loudly as I can. “Is anybody there?
I know I’m crossing a line—but I tell myself that I need to save the life of the bird.
Another buzz from my pocket.
Stay safe, wherever you are. Don’t get murdered.
Jk.
Great timing, Neil. But I can’t help myself.
There’s not much space, so I’m forced to climb the stairs just like the cat.
When I reach the top, I push through a trapdoor to a long, dark room.
As I step inside, I lose my grip on the trapdoor, and it slams shut after me.
The cat leaps through an open window at the far end of the room—the only window in the entire attic—onto the roof, and in the movement, the bird miraculously gets free and flies away.
I feel a sense of relief for the bird, but when I turn back to the room, I remember where I am. I try to pull the trapdoor open again. There’s a metal ring I can use, but it’s stuck flat, and I can’t get my fingers around it.
I look around the room for something I can use to wedge it open, and I quickly see what a mistake I’ve made. There are piles of papers all over the floor. At the far end of the room, a desk is pressed up against a window overlooking the driveway.
This isn’t just the attic. This is Grace’s office. This is where she writes her murders.
If Grace catches me here, she’ll fire me—no question.
I turn away from the window and go into the dark end of the attic.
As my eyes adjust, I find more piles of papers and cardboard boxes.
I nearly trip over a dozen coffee cups, islands of mold forming in the black dregs.
I step past them, searching the floor, when I bump into something hard with my foot. I pick it up and stare—and then scream.
It’s a human skull.
It feels real, and I let out a scream and drop it on the floor.
Who the hell owns a human skull? I back away to the other side of the room.
As I get close, I see paintings on the walls.
Unlike the more respectable paintings downstairs, these are gruesome.
There’s a triptych of hell, with humans tortured in every conceivable way; a painting of a corpse in hyper-realistic detail; and then an old-fashioned anatomy chart .
I try to control my breathing as I move to the desk. This place is creepy as hell. Just spending a minute here is freaking me out. What would happen to my mind if I spent a day here, all alone?
Maybe that’s the point.
I find an expensive-looking penknife among her papers. I pick it up to see if it will work on the trapdoor, when I see a balled-up piece of paper on the ground.
I instinctively pick it up and smooth it out. It's covered in short paragraphs.
Caroline gasped for breath, blood pooling on the floor of the dilapidated cottage.
The bullet pierced her sternum. She didn’t die instantly, but she knew, as soon as she hit the floor, that this was the end.
“You asked me why,” the older woman says, standing over the body. “Why I’m doing this. Why I stay with him. But I can’t explain it. Most of what matters in life can’t be explained.”
I know these must be notes towards a murder scene, but the mention of a dilapidated cottage makes it feel personal, as if I’m Caroline in the scene, and Grace is my murderer.
I carefully ball the paper back up, and place it on the floor.
At the corner of the desk is a statuette of a pen dripping with blood—some kind of award for crime writing—and under it is a small pile of papers.
I quickly lift the statuette and take the top sheet.
It takes me a minute to figure out what I'm reading.
She wanted to take him all at once, but he was teasing her, holding off, letting the anticipation build to intolerable heights. He touched her breast with his rough hand, and even that was almost enough…
I feel myself blush. This isn’t a crime novel. It’s erotica. Is Grace writing romance now? It reads like one, but I see one strange detail at the top of the page.
5/10.
It’s a date. Why would Grace date a scene from a novel? The tenth of May was only a few weeks ago. I look at the page again and read it in full. It describes everything—how he feels and tastes, the scratch of his beard.
His beard. I remember the man I saw in the window.
I reach for my phone to take a picture when I hear a voice behind me.
“What are you doing here?