“You knew them?” I had no idea what year all this happened in, but this guy didn’t look more than middle-aged.
He ignored my question and kept talking.
“When Zelda arrived home that day, the children were nowhere in sight. Once she checked the house, she started combing the neighborhood, checking at their friend’s houses, in the parks, in the schoolyard. Soon, the entire neighborhood was looking for them. Zelda was so distraught. She’d been gone a few hours, after only meaning to leave for a few moments, but she never thought anything bad would happen. Several days went by, and the entire town was now looking. The newspapers wrote a story about them, and dared to blame Zelda for their disappearance! It was scandalous, even then.”
“That’s terrible,” I said, my skin breaking out in goosebumps.
“It was, truly. After five days, it was the smell that finally gave us the answers we needed. The children were found trapped in one of the chimneys, after having climbed into the fireplace of one of the rarely-used rooms on the third floor. They died squeezed next to each other in the tiny space, unable to free themselves.”
“Oh, my god, that’s awful,” I said, my stomach turning just thinking about it.
“Zelda was beside herself, of course. She couldn’t understand why she didn’t hear them, or why she didn’t think to look there. But all of us just assumed they’d wandered out of the house and something happened to them outside. We never thought they were still inside the house.”
“But nobody heard them screaming?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “But they do now. Some guests hear their voices quite often, coming from high up in the attic.”
“That’s fucking creepy,” I said. “Poor Zelda.”
“Yes, indeed. Poor, poor Zelda.”
“So, what happened to her?”
He looked at me, quite startled. “You don’t know?”
“I didn’t know any of that. So, no.”
He shook his head, staring back at the house again, this time at one of the balconies off one of the rooms upstairs. He raised his arm slowly, pointing at the room.
“She was unconsolable. She’d already lost her husband. After losing her kids, she had nothing left. The night they pulled the children from the chimney, she retreated to her bedroom and went right out to the terrace. She looked up at the moon, said a prayer, and jumped.”
“Oh, shit!” I looked over at the house, thinking about the horrors that had happened there, and regretted ever having walked in. Fucking Riot! Jesus.
He pointed to a spot just under the balcony. “She landed right there. Her skull cracked like a watermelon.”
“My god, man!” I cried.
“After that, her sister sold the place and it went through several different families for a while, but nobody ever stayed too long. It was a funeral home for a while after that. Now, well — now you see it’s a lovely inn with a colored past.”
“Right,” I said, staring over at the place.
“I’m glad there’s life moving through there again. Before everything happened, it was a place of immense joy.”
I nodded, imagining it as he described it — with a lively family taking care of it, growing in it, loving in it. It was a beautiful vision, but there was definitely something quite sad about it now, despite its immense beauty shining as brightly as it must have when it was first built.
Now, I remembered seeing on a plaque near the door that it was built 1892. I started doing the math in my head, and realized quickly there was no way this guy could have been there. I turned back to question him.
“But wait, how did you—?”
I stopped, my jaw dropping open.
He was gone.
My head whipped around as I searched the park looking for him, but he’d disappeared completely.
“What the fuck?” I whispered to myself.
Reluctantly, I stumbled back across the street, the man’s words echoing in my head, the immense amount of tequila I’d consumed coursing through my veins.
All I could do was hope I’d drank enough to get me through the night alive.
I avoided the room where Zelda’s painting was hanging, slowly making my way up the stairs. I feel asleep with the man’s words repeating over and over.
‘Her skull cracked like a watermelon…’
Chapter 19
DEREK
“Doctor, do you think she’ll wake up soon?”
The night nurse asked a question I didn’t want to answer. If I was lucky, Cherry would never wake up. Her friends and sister had kept vigil by her bed damned near twenty-four seven and I needed to stay close by so I could get in when they left.
I’m not a fucking idiot. I’m covering my tracks, so they wouldn’t know what they were seeing if they spotted me doing what I needed to do anyway. The nurses had been oblivious so far. I just didn’t need anyone asking questions.
Nobody knew why Cherry wasn’t getting better, or waking up — except me.
To be honest, I felt like shit about it.
She was collateral damage and didn’t deserve to die.
But she’d seen way too much. If only she hadn’t been sniffing around…
So many ‘if only’s’ were running through my head these days and I was sick of it.
If only I’d not gotten wrapped up with Beddingham. He’d gotten me when I was young, when I was too fucking stupid to know what I was getting into. Once I was in bed with him, it was too late.
If only I didn’t have easy access to something he and his sick fucking friends wanted.
If only there was a way out…
But the only way out of this problem was to barrel straight through, whether I liked it or not. So, me feeling like shit about what I was doing to Cherry didn’t matter one fucking iota.
As if he could read my mind, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I sighed when I looked at it.
“Hello, Anson.”
“Meet me in an hour. We need
