Chapter 8 Una #2
drawer labeled COD–CON, she flicked through the cards until she reached a listing for a book called Cold Harbor: A Timeline.
She closed the drawer and returned to the stacks. As she scanned the 900s in search of 974, she realized how little she knew
about the town she called home. She’d been too busy building a life to learn the story of Cold Harbor.
She knew it had started as a fishing village and that its most famous landmark was a mansion built by one of the Vanderbilts.
The yacht club was the social and recreational focal point of the area, and while there were a few stores and churches, all
the schools and major businesses were located in adjacent towns.
Una wanted to discover the history of Mrs. Smith’s house. It had stood on its lonely hill for a century before the rest of
the houses on Tidewater Terrace were built. As old as it was, Una hoped to find a record of its origin.
She plucked Cold Harbor: A Timeline from the shelf and, after placing her stack of mysteries on the floor, began to read.
The slim volume was mostly a pictorial history. Una flipped through pages of grainy photographs, mostly of grim-faced fishermen,
occasionally pausing to read captions about saltbox houses that no longer existed.
These flat-faced, unadorned structures were nothing like Mrs. Smith’s house.
“Not here,” Una muttered.
The other local history books devoted only a few pages to Cold Harbor. Most focused their attention on larger neighboring
towns like Northport or Huntington.
Una was on the verge of abandoning her search when she spied a book with a plain brown cover on the top shelf. The words on
the spine were faded, and a current of unease ran through her body as she opened to the title page.
“The Secret History of Cold Harbor by Jonathan Stapleton,” she murmured to herself.
She flipped to Chapter One and was quickly engrossed by what she read.
First established as a fishing hamlet in 1705, the area now known as Cold Harbor was originally called Bone Harbor. According
to local lore, the name stemmed from the vast number of whale skeletons found along the beaches. This was over a century before
the whaling industry became prevalent in the waters around Long Island, and there is no documentation to explain the presence
of hundreds of carcasses of varying species. The Matinecock Indians living in present-day Huntington warned the settlers away
from Bone Harbor, claiming the waters were haunted. Their people refused to fish in the area, and though they retrieved bones
to use as tools and ornamentation, they took care when collecting these treasures and would walk the beaches only during low
tide on a clear day.
A rush of cold air swept over Una’s skin, raising gooseflesh on her arms. She glanced up, expecting to see a vent in the ceiling,
but the ceiling tiles over her head were solid.
Returning her attention to the book, Una kept reading.
Bone Harbor was renamed Cold Harbor in 1836 following a particularly long and bitter winter. By the end of the nineteenth
century, the whaling trade was in full swing, and docks popped up around the harbor’s edge like rib bones. Fishermen built
huts around the new mill, while wealthy merchants and captains erected spacious homes with large tracts of land sweeping down
to the water.
As Una studied pen and ink drawings of these houses, another blast of icy air slammed into the back of her neck.
The cold sank deep into the vertebrae of her spine and spread across the wings of her pelvis.
Pivoting this way and that, she searched for the source of the phantom gust. There were no vents near the stacks, in the ceiling, or on the wall under the window.
She heard the buzz of an agitated insect and saw a massive horsefly battering against the window glass. Scuttling toward the
end of the bookshelf, Una looked in the direction of the checkout desk to see if Kristofer was ready to go. No one was waiting
in line, so she continued to study the drawings of nineteenth-century houses.
None were familiar to her, which was no surprise as more than a dozen had been destroyed by fire in 1873. Those untouched
by the flames had either been razed or renovated so many times that they bore little resemblance to their original structures.
Una turned the page and froze.
A photograph of Mrs. Smith’s house filled the entire page. Una took in every detail, comparing it in her mind to its current
state.
There was no electric gate, of course, but the fence with its spiked finials was there. In the photo, the fence gates were
closed, and the house looked just as hostile and unwelcoming as it did now. The windows were shuttered. Vines clung to the
walls. Ragged shrubs dotted with arrowhead-sized thorns grew in waves along the length of the fence. Banks of dark clouds
drifted behind the steep roof.
There was a figure on the porch. A woman in a long black dress and oversized black hat.
She must have been in motion when the camera shutter closed because she wasn’t quite in focus.
Her face was turned to the side, revealing a flash of pale cheek and a swoop of dark hair that covered her ear and rose upward until it vanished under her hat.
Her hands, shrouded in a pair of dark gloves, were knotted into fists.
The pointed toes of her black boots peered out from under the hem of her dress.
Her brow was lowered. Her mouth was set in a hard line.
“Didn’t want your picture taken, did you?” Una whispered.
Tearing her gaze away from the woman’s blurry profile, Una read the caption on the opposite page.
Eel’s Nest, home of Captain Josiah Smith. Photo taken in 1881 by the author’s grandfather, Edward Stapleton.
Una wondered if the Stapleton who’d written this book was related to Mrs. Stapleton, the librarian. She tried to remember
Mrs. Stapleton’s first name but couldn’t concentrate because the fly’s buzzing suddenly increased in volume. The small engine
whir of its wings became the throaty roar of a sports car.
The fly hurled its body around the window frame, torpedoing into the glass over and over again. Between each impact, its translucent
wings vibrated with anger or desperation; Una couldn’t tell which.
She was about to close the book splayed open in her hands when her gaze was abruptly snagged by the woman in the photo.
She was no longer looking off to the side. She now stared directly out at Una, and her face was no longer blurry.
“No!” Una cried, dropping the book as if it had burned her.
It landed on its spine, its pages spread to the photo of Eel’s Nest and the woman in black. Her mouth was a menacing slash.
Her eyes were two pinpricks of hatred.
Those eyes catapulted Una into the past.
She had seen them before.
Their soulless blackness. Their otherness.
She’d seen them staring up at her from beneath the waves. She’d seen them in her nightmares.
They were the eyes of a monster.
A killer.
“No, no, no. That can’t be,” Una whispered, backing away from the book.
She put a hand out to steady herself on the shelf, but instead of feeling the cool metal of the bookshelf under her fingers,
she felt a sting of pain.
The horsefly squatted on the back of her hand. It had stung her once and seemed poised to sting again. Its green eyes flashed.
Its hairy legs stroked her skin.
She swatted at the fly with her other hand, but it flew back to the window and pressed its body to the glass. It hung there,
unmoving, as if waiting for her to attack.
Una cradled her throbbing hand, surprised by how much it hurt.
As a gardener, she’d been stung by all kinds of insects. Ants. Mosquitoes. Wasps. Horseflies. No bite or sting had ever felt
like this. It felt like a hot needle was embedded just under the surface of her skin.
She turned away from the window and saw Kristofer standing at the end of the row.
“Did you get lost? This isn’t the mystery section,” he teased. Catching sight of her face, he stopped smiling. “Elskan mín. My love. Are you okay?”
Blinking back tears, Una pointed at the book. “I was looking at that when a horsefly bit me. It was a big one. It’s on the
window.”
Kristofer glanced from the raised bump on his wife’s hand to the window. “Well, it’s gone now.” He scooped up the book, and
his eyes went wide. “Look at this! The most famous house in Cold Harbor.” He shook his head. “It was ugly then, too.”
Una rubbed at her eyes. “The woman in the picture. Is she facing the camera?”
“No, she’s looking to her right. Her face is a little out of focus, but it looks like someone caught her in a bad mood.” He closed the book. “Are we taking this with us?”
Una wanted to say no. She wanted Kristofer to put the book back on the shelf. Or in an incinerator. She wanted to bring her
mystery novels to the car and then walk up the street to the bakery. She wanted to order a cookie with rainbow sprinkles—Justin’s
favorite—and take it home to have with a cup of tea later that afternoon. She wanted to be in her garden, to feel the sun
on her skin. She wanted to get out of this library—to run from the strange eddies of glacial air, the horsefly, and the woman
on the porch of a house called Eel’s Nest.
She thought of Justin eating a cookie with rainbow sprinkles, his little face crinkling with pleasure. Of Jill, scribbling
a story in one of her notebooks. Of J.J., singing ABBA behind the closed door of his bedroom. She thought of Charles and all
the other children who lived near the water, and she knew she couldn’t leave without the book.
Una had to know if Mrs. Smith could turn her blood to ice with the flick of her gaze. She had to know if she had the same
eyes as the woman in the photograph. The same eyes that had haunted Una for most of her life.
For the children’s sake, she had to know.
“Yes,” she said, rubbing the sore skin on the back of her hand. “We’ll take it.”
After piling all of Una’s books on top of his, Kristofer walked Una to the checkout desk.
Mrs. Stapleton chatted as she stamped Kristofer’s two biographies and Una’s novels. When it came time to stamp the slim history
book, she beamed with delight. “My father wrote this. He knew more about this town than anyone I’ve ever met. He always said
no one would care about its history until it was too late.”
The phrase echoed in Una’s head.
Too late, too late, too late.
“What did he mean?” she asked.
“I have no idea. Maybe he just didn’t know many people who collected bits of local history the way he did. Before he got sick,
he was working on his second book. I have all of his research at home. Boxes of letters and postcards and photos. Newspapers,
too. I keep meaning to sort everything, but whenever I have free time, I end up in a chair, reading. I can’t resist the lure
of a good novel. Hazard of the profession.”
Una waited for Mrs. Stapleton to finish stamping the card before turning to the photo of Mrs. Smith’s house. “Do you think
there’s more information about this house in your father’s boxes?”
A shadow crossed Mrs. Stapleton’s face. “Not that house, no.”
She wasn’t a very good liar, but before Una could question her further, Kristofer loaded the last book into their tote bag
and wished Mrs. Stapleton a good day. The librarian smiled weakly at him before glancing away.
She’s afraid, Una thought as she followed Kristofer to the exit.
As they approached the double doors, she heard laughter from the children’s area and the whir of the Xerox machine. There
was another noise, too. A faint, persistent sound coming from the stacks.
Una shouldn’t have been able to hear it because she was too far away. But she knew what it was and where it was coming from.
It was the thump of the horsefly, beating its body against the window, again and again and again.