Cash
My next day off was a Wednesday. I decided to dress in my Serenity Falls postal uniform like always. That way if folk saw me cycling up to people’s houses, they’d think I was supposed to be there, not just snooping around.
Not that I was doing anything wrong. Just looking around.
But the nervy, slightly sick feeling in my gut remained.
I climbed on my bike, a small picnic packed in the satchel on the back along with a copy of the log I’d printed off from the office, then I pushed off and cycled down the street in the direction of the first house on the list.
I stared at it. Like most of the ghost houses, it didn’t look empty except for the lack of a car on the driveway, but during the day that’s not unusual. Most folk are at work. I wheeled my bike up to the front door, as if I was delivering mail.
The blinds weren’t pulled, and I could see there was still furniture in there, which was kind of odd. Most folk take their furniture when they leave, unless of course they’re moving somewhere furnished, which was always possible.
I tried to remember if Garth had said anything about the house when it slipped off the list, but I couldn’t recall. I made a tick beside the house and then wrote: Mr and Mrs Farrow (Mr Farrow – maintenance). Moved.
It was a similar story at the next three houses I visited. Neat and tidy, furnished, but no one home. At each house I marked the name of the former occupants. I couldn’t recall them all in the office but, out and about, looking at the houses, they came right back to me.
I might not be the brightest, I’m not good with words or math, but I’ve always had a good memory for names and faces.
Everyone has their thing, I guess. Of course, I didn’t recall the occupations of all of them, nor the reasons why the houses ended up empty.
Some had been unoccupied almost as long as I’d lived here.
I pulled up outside one of those houses now.
Number 3 Camelia Drive. A large, fancy mansion tucked away behind high gates, complete with stone lions on the top.
The mailbox was set into the wall, so you couldn’t get any closer to the main house.
‘And that’s how the owners like it,’ Garth always said. ‘Keeping the commoners out.’
I knew a fair bit about this house. A Conservator lived here – Johnson Green – and he wasn’t a well-liked man. Swaggered around like he owned the town. Made sure you knew how important he was and how small you were. The sort of man my dad would have called ‘a puffed-up blowhard prick’.
Johnson and his wife had one son, Owen. He took after his dad, maybe too much. Same looks, same attitude. But it wasn’t just that. There was something creepy about the kid. Just not right. Still, I wouldn’t have wished what happened to him on anyone.
One night at the fairground Owen had climbed on the Ghost Train ride, probably looking forward to some cheap scares and laughs. He never came out. Somehow, he fell out of the carriage and got trapped in the mechanism. Crushed beneath the wheels, in the dark, among the monsters.
Only fifteen. And this was just a month or so after little Davey Junior. Bad time for the town. Two tragedies like that so close.
I stared up at the house and thought about that awhile before I hopped back on my bike and cycled away towards the next long-term-vacant property, which just happened to be a couple of streets away.
Number 15 Syracuse Street, Wendy Molton’s house. It was much smaller than Green’s. A neat semi, bright and clean-looking, with rows of flowers swaying cheerily in the front garden. If Green’s mansion scowled, Go away, this house said, Well, come right in.
Not that there’d be anyone there to welcome you because Wendy Molton died back in ’98.
She worked part-time at the sheriff’s office.
Filing, office work, and so on. A nice lady.
Always seemed happy. Then one day, she left work, drove over to the Serenity Falls Hotel, paid for a room and hanged herself from a ceiling fan.
No one remembers the name Wendy Molton now, but most folk in Serenity Falls have heard the story of ‘Weeping Wendy’, who haunts Room 134 of the hotel.
I guess the truth has got kind of twisted over the years.
Wendy wasn’t a bride, or rather she was going to be, but she didn’t kill herself because she was jilted.
No one really knows why she killed herself or why she did it at the hotel. But everyone likes a good ghost story.
I paused outside Wendy’s house and checked the log again.
It struck me that Wendy died less than a year after Owen, who died not long after Davey Junior.
All those nasty deaths so close together.
I wasn’t sure whether that was important.
Or maybe bad things really do come in threes.
Still, I found myself circling the names and addresses.
After another couple of houses, I decided to take a break. The day was getting hot, and sweat was sticking my shirt to my back. I found a shady bench in the park, sat and sipped some water and ate the ham sandwich I’d packed. As I chewed, I looked back over the log.
I’d noted down as many names and causes of death as I could remember – heart attack, allergic reaction, brain tumour.
Sad, but these things happen. There were several accidents – falling tree branch, fall downstairs (two), electric shock while repairing generator, chainsaw, gas explosion.
And then there were the houses where people left for no reason.
There wasn’t anything immediately obvious to link them.
Different ages, some had kids, some didn’t, some were married, some single.
But I realized most of the deaths and disappearances happened after ’97, the year Davey Junior died.
Sure, there were a few before then, but after that they really ramped up.
I let this settle while I finished my sandwich, staring out over the park and lake.
It looked beautiful today. But then, it looked beautiful every day.
Peaceful, safe. And suddenly I wondered what the heck I was doing.
Why did I want to ruin this life? Twenty years, and I was going to throw it all away on some stupid hunch.
For a moment it felt like a cloud had coasted across the sun, causing my skin to prickle with goosebumps.
I could leave this, I thought. I could go home and forget about the log and the ghost houses, and life would potter along like it always had.
In fact, I could almost hear a voice telling me to let it go.
And I came close. I packed up my sandwich wrappers, climbed back on my bike and turned in the direction of home.
That’s when I saw her. Carrie. Jogging along the path around the lake, dark hair bouncing, headphones clamped to her ears.
I was about to raise a hand to wave when I realized it wasn’t Carrie.
How could it be? It was another pretty lady whose name I couldn’t quite recall but I’d seen about.
We smiled at each other and she jogged on past.
I watched her go and I thought about how Carrie should still be out jogging around, seeing the sun shimmer off the water, but instead she was lying on a cold mortuary slab, and the sun would never warm her skin again.
With a new-found determination, I turned away from home and headed back out on to the streets.