Sam didn’t look up from his cereal bowl.
It was nearly eleven o’clock that morning when Becca drove back to Jacob Marley’s house. It no longer looked frightening and menacing. It looked bedraggled, very clean, and the hemlock with its branch sticking through her second-floor window no longer looked like a ghostly apparition, but like a tree that was dead now, nothing more. She smiled as she walked around the house, assessing damage. Not much, really, just the branch in the window. They’d have to haul the tree away.
She called the real estate agent, Mrs. Ryan, from a working public phone in front of Food Fort, who told Becca she would notify the insurance company and the tree-removal people and not to worry about a thing, everything was covered.
Becca went back to the house and toured for the next twenty minutes, not seeing any damage anywhere inside. The electricity flickered on, then off again. Finally, when it was nearly noon, the lights came on strong and bright. The refrigerator hummed loudly. Everything was back to normal. Then, with no warning, the hall and living room lights went off. The circuit breaker, she thought, and wondered where the devil the box would be. The basement, that was the most likely place. She had to check down there anyway. She lit one of her candles and unlatched the basement door, which was at the back of the kitchen. Steep wooden stairs disappeared into the darkness. Great, she thought, now to top it all off, maybe I can fall and break my neck on these rickety stairs. They were wide and felt sturdy and strong, not so dangerous after all, a relief. There were a dozen steps. The floor was uneven, cold and damp concrete. She raised the candle and looked around. There was a string hanging down and she gave it a pull. The bulb switch clicked but nothing happened. This light must be on the same circuit. She began at the right of the stairs, lifting the candle to light up the wall. It was dank down there, and she smelled mildew. Her toes sloshed in a bit of water. Yep, leaks from the storm. On the wall facing the stairs she finally found the circuit breaker box. Beside it were stacks of old boxes, everything dirty and damp. She flipped the downed circuit breaker switch and the bulb overhead blossomed into one-hundred-watt light. Stacks of old furniture, most of it from the forties, perhaps some even earlier, were piled against the far wall. So many boxes, all of them very large, labeled with faded and smeared spidery handwriting.
She started forward to look at the writing on one of the labels when there was a low rumbling noise. She stopped cold, fear spiking through her. Where was it coming from? Where? All the nightmares from the night before tore through her. Sam’s words-“haunted house.” Shadows, the damned basement was filled with shadows and damp and rot.
She whipped around at the crash not thirty feet away from her, in the far corner of the basement. She watched as the wall heaved and groaned and spewed brick outward onto the basement floor, leaving a jagged black hole.
She stood there a moment longer, staring at the hole in the wall. She was surprised. The house was very old, sturdy. Why, suddenly, would this happen? The storms over the years must have gradually weakened this particular wall and now, finally, the one last night was the final blow. Perhaps all the damp contributed, as well.
She walked to the corner, dodging crates and a huge steamer trunk that looked to be from the nineteen twenties. The light didn’t reach quite that far. She raised her candle high and looked into the black hole.
And screamed.
7
That black gash in the basement wall had vomited out a skeleton mixed with shards of cement, whole and broken bricks, and thick dust that flew through the air to settle slowly, thickly, on the basement floor.
The skeleton’s outstretched hand nearly touched her foot. She dropped the candle and jumped back, wrapping her arms around herself. She stared at that thing not more than three feet from her. A dead person, long dead. It-no, it wasn’t an it, it was a woman and she couldn’t hurt anybody. Not now.
White jeans and a skimpy pink tank top covered the bones, many of which would have been flung all over the basement floor were it not for the once-tight jeans holding them together. One sneaker was hanging off her left foot, the white sock damp and moldy. The left arm was still attached, but barely. The head had broken off and rolled about six inches from the neck.
Becca stood there, staring down at that thing, knowing that at one time, whoever she was, she’d breathed and laughed and wondered what the future would bring. She was young, Becca realized. Who was she? What was she doing inside a wall in Jacob Marley’s basement?
Someone had put her there, on purpose, to hide her forever. And now she was just shattered bones, some of them covered with moldy white jeans and a pink tank top.
Slowly Becca walked back upstairs, covered with dust, her heart still pounding. In her mind’s eye the skeleton’s skull was still vivid, would probably remain terrifyingly vivid for the rest of her life. Those eye sockets were so empty. Becca knew she had no choice. She phoned the sheriff’s office on West Hemlock and asked to speak with the sheriff.
“This is Mrs. Ella,” came a voice that was deep as a man’s, and harsh-a smoker’s voice. “Tell me who you are and what you want and I’ll tell you whether or not you need Edgar.”
Becca stared at the phone. It certainly wasn’t New York City.
She cleared her throat. “Actually, my name is Becca Powell and I moved into Jacob Marley’s house about a week ago.”
“I know all about you, Miss Powell. I saw you at the Pollyanna with Tyler McBride. What’d you do with little Sam while you two were gallivanting around, enjoying yourselves at one of Riptide’s finest restaurants?”
Becca laughed, she couldn’t help herself, but it soon dissolved into a hiccup. She felt tears pool in her eyes. This was crazy. Still, she said only, “We left him with Mrs. Ryan. He’s very fond of her.”
“Well, that’s all right, then. Rachel and Ann-she’s the dead Mrs. McBride-well, they were best friends, now weren’t they? And Sam dearly loves Rachel, and she him, thank God, since his mama is dead, now isn’t she?”
“I thought that Ann McBride disappeared, that she just walked away from her family and from Riptide.”
“So he says, but nobody believes that. What do you want, Miss Powell? Be alert now, and concise, no more going off on tangents or feeding me gossip. This is an official office of the law.”
“There’s a skeleton in my basement.”
For the first time in this very strange conversation, Mrs. Ella was silent, but not for long. “This skeleton you’re telling me is in your basement, how did it get there?”
“It fell out of the wall in the middle of a whole lot of rubble when the wall collapsed just a while ago, probably weakened by the big storm last night.”
“I believe I will transfer you to Edgar now. That’s Sheriff Gaffney to you. He’s been very busy, a lot of storm damage, you know, a lot of people demanding his time, but a skeleton can’t be put off until tomorrow, now can it?”
“You’re right about that,” Becca said, and had an insane desire to laugh her head off. She wiped the tears out of her eyes. She realized she was shaking. It was the oddest thing.
A man came on the line and said, “Ella tells me you’ve got a skeleton in the basement. This don’t happen every day. Are you sure it’s a skeleton?”
“Yes, quite sure, although, to be honest, I’ve never seen one before, at least lying at my feet on the basement floor.”
“I’ll be right there, then. You stay put, ma’am.”
Becca was staring down at the phone when Mrs. Ella came back. “Edgar said I was to keep talking to you, not let you go all hysterical. Edgar tends to get tetchy around women who are crying and wailing and carrying on. I’m surprised that you fell apart on him, given the way you were talking to me about this and that.”