Sticks had already found a patch of sunshine and curled up for a snooze. It was stifling hot on the porch, and empty but for a single white, wicker chair.
“How lovely,” Micah murmured, looking out over the neighborhood. Just beside their walled backyard, a street bisected the square along a tidy city park teeming with afternoon patrons.
“May I go play, Momma?” Elliott pleaded.
Micah stared down into her daughter’s beautiful face. “Not today, baby. We’ve got a lot to do. I can’t go over with you.”
Elliott’s face darkened. “I can go by myself,” she said petulantly.
Fighting a smile, Micah responded, “In time, sunshine. This is a new and unfamiliar place. Let’s get settled first.”
Micah motioned for Elliott to precede her into the bedroom, and then slapped her own leg and whistled for Sticks, who promptly obeyed. As she reached to shut the door, she glanced at the wicker chair. A feeling of unease settled about her shoulders like a mantle.
The thin blue cushion that covered the seat was indented as if someone were sitting there, looking out over the park.
Micah clutched the door handle, fighting off a shiver. It’s just old and worn, she told herself, laughing out loud. Just old and worn, like the rest of the house.
*
Micah handed the Spongebob Squarepants roller suitcase to Elliott, making a face and groaning as if it were heavy. “What do you have in there, rocks?”
Elliott giggled, yanking the handle up from the top. “No, silly. Books.”
“Ah, well, that’s okay then.” Micah pulled her own rolling suitcase from the trunk, and then turned tired eyes on the U-Haul trailer. “I don’t have the energy for that. I barely have the energy for what’s in the Jeep.”
“One at a time,” Elliott said, once again proving herself way ahead of the bell curve for a child her age.
They trudged up the front steps, holding suitcases, pillows, and in Elliott’s case a gigantic plush polar bear. Micah pushed the door open and held it for her daughter to pass through. They left their belongings on the leaf-scattered floor and returned to the car for more.
On their third trip inside, Micah gingerly sat a box of breakables on the coffee table just as the sound of shattering glass broke the silence of the house. It came from upstairs, where Elliott had just carried a suitcase to pick out her room.
“Elliott?” Micah yelled, panicked. She burst into the foyer and took the narrow staircase at a run.
“I’m fine, Momma, it wasn’t me.” Elliott stood at the top of the stairs, staring towards the master bedroom. “It came from in there.”
“Go back downstairs and get in the car,” Micah told her in a low, urgent tone. “Wait for me there.”
Her daughter obeyed without argument, pale blue eyes wide as she skittered down the stairs.
Micah stared at the open bedroom door, heart pounding. Had someone gotten in the house? Worse still, could a homeless person be living there? She hefted an old, dusty two-by-four from a stack on the floor and held it at the ready as she took wide, quiet steps towards the bedroom.
Beyond the distant chirping of birds, there were no sounds from inside. Taking a deep breath, Micah stepped into the room.
Empty. Make-shift weapon still primed for action, Micah checked under the bed, in the closet, the bathroom, and out on the patio. That room clear, she did a sweep of the entire upstairs, and turned up nothing.
Not only was there no one in the house, but there was also no evidence of a newly-broken window.
*
“Mrs. Noble. It’s a pleasure to meet you in person.” Alfred Skinner offered a pudgy, well-manicured hand, a jovial grin on his sunburned face.
“Likewise.” She shook his warm, dry hand and stepped back to allow him entrance. If her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her, he seemed to brace himself before he walked inside.
“Oh, grand. I see you were able to get the electric hooked without issue?” He gestured to the chandelier hanging over the foyer. It was a black metal contraption of carved leaves. Garrett had replaced all the bulbs in the flower-like holders when he returned home from the drug store.
“Yes, and the water company is sending someone tomorrow. Thank you.” Micah shut the door and motioned for him to follow her to the living room. “Would you care for coffee? A bottle of water?”
“Coffee would be great,” Alfred boomed. His indoor voice needed work. “I’ve had a long day, and yet another long night ahead of me. This heat, you know. It just makes people crazy.”
She chuckled because she knew he was right.
“Have a seat.” Micah gestured to the couch, now rid of its plastic cover. “I’ll be right back.”
Before she turned her back, she saw fear race across his face, but it was gone almost as soon as she recognized it.
Her lawyer was scared of the house.
Micah took the stairs to the ground floor. They opened into a large, dim kitchen with boxes of silverware and dishes on the floor and the ancient green refrigerator whirring with life.
Earlier, when Garrett had returned from the drug store, the two of them had explored the semi-underground level while Elliott and Sticks unpacked in her room. It wasn’t quite a basement, but it wasn’t quite aboveground either. It was a maze of rooms, few of them furnished and most of them obviously disused for decades.
Small half-moon windows looked out upon street level. In the growing twilight, tires rolled past, stopping briefly at the “Stop” sign before continuing. Micah had wondered if they paid any attention to the monstrosity beside them.
“It’s nice down here,” Garrett had murmured as he popped his head out the servant’s entrance.
The walls were painted dark, earthy shades, and the windows were curtained in every room. “It’s dark,” she disagreed. “And dingy.”
“We’ll change that,” Garrett had said, his embrace and kiss sealing the deal.
It was almost sundown now. Even with the lights on, the kitchen was shadowed and dark. Lit by harsh artificial light, the cabinets of peeling burgundy paint and the scarred table and chairs looked unwanted. The linoleum floor, a dizzying pattern of black-and-white diamond shapes, needed an industrial-strength scrub.
Micah found she couldn’t muster any excitement over the spacious kitchen. As compared to their old apartment, it was the Taj Mahal. Yet, something about Bowridge didn’t sit well with her. First, the feeling of a presence in the chair on the covered porch, and then the phantom glass breakage. She sighed, swiping a hand over her face.
She snuck a peek out the window of the kitchen door. Elliott and Sticks were laying in the shade of a thick, gnarled Black Walnut. They watched Garrett as he attacked the overgrown yard with a weed-eater.
Micah threw some pre-ground grocery coffee into the stainless steel brewer they’d brought from home. She measured out water from the gallon jug and hit “brew,” then grabbed herself a diet soda from the fridge as the heady smell of coffee filled the kitchen.
The door to the yard banged open, and a burst of deathly hot Georgia summer filled the room. Micah hadn’t realized until then just how well the air conditioning worked in the house. Thank God for small favors, she thought as she turned to smile at her husband.
But no one was there.
She leaned a hip on the counter, steadying herself against a wave of confusion and terror. Her feet refused to move, and her palms grew clammy. How did the door open?
She heard rustling outside, and then Garrett appeared in the open doorway. He raised an eyebrow. “Why’s the door open? You’re letting all the air out.”
“The wind, I guess,” Micah tried to explain it away.
He crossed the threshold and shut the door. “It’s dead still outside, love.”
“Faulty latch?”
He jiggled the doorknob. “I don’t think so. You didn’t open it?”
Micah shook her head. “No. I didn’t open it.”
Beyond the door, Micah could see her dau
ghter. Elliott stood in the middle of the backyard, staring up at the house.
*
“It’s all very straightforward,” Alfred said, gently setting his mug on the stained coffee table. “Your grandmother didn’t pull any punches. Everything tied to Bowridge belongs to you. Furniture, appliances, property, even clothes still in the closets and books on the shelves.” He pointed to a separate sheet that carried a simple paragraph-long statement. “She only had two requirements—one, that the house remain your sole property, meaning nothing of it goes to control of your husband. If anything were to happen to you, she’s stipulated that the property will then go to your daughter, with your mother Jean as custodian. And two—you can’t sell it.”
Micah’s heart fell. “Any of it?”
“No. Just the house and the land. If you wanted to sell the furnishings, that is still an option.” He spread his hands over the documents and smiled. “Other than that, Mrs. Noble, Bowridge is yours for better or worse.”
Micah thought of the kitchen door, thrown open so hard it bounced off the wall. Definitely worse.
*
An evening storm rolled in just before bedtime. Micah tucked her daughter into bed in the room she’d picked—a white and pink ruffled affair at the back of the house. She wasn’t happy that Elliott would be so far from them—she and Garrett would be sleeping in the master bedroom in the front.
“Are you sure about this room?” Micah asked for the fifth time. “There are bigger ones closer to mine and Daddy’s.”
“Yes, Momma.” Elliott smiled, a little blonde angel framed by frilly pillows and stuffed animals. “It feels like mine.”
Micah kissed her forehead. “Alright. You know where we’ll be if you need us. I love you.” She double-checked the bulb on Elliott’s tropical fish nightlight, and then hit the lights on the way out.
The hallway was dark as pitch, and unfamiliar. Micah placed a hand to the wall and cautiously moved forward. She jumped as a flash of lightning illuminated the windowseat ahead, filling the space with blue-white light. For a brief moment, she thought she saw a shadow on the stairs, but a crack of thunder followed by another flash revealed an empty stairwell.
She hurried to the bedroom, her heart pounding in her ears. It was just my imagination, she argued with herself. New house. Unfamiliar. She was starting to sound like a broken record, even to herself. Unfamiliar. Unfamiliar.
Garrett was propped up in bed, a pool of soft, warm lamplight on him as he read. His bare chest was mostly softened muscle from years of campus food and sitting at a desk, but she still found him sexy. The sight of him chased away the shadow on the stairs; it chased away the atmospheric storm and patter of rain. Other parts of her, more primal and insatiable, came to the surface instead.
After brushing her teeth and slipping into a thin cotton nightgown, Micah crawled onto her side of the bed. She cuddled against her husband’s side, sliding a hand up the warmth of his thigh beneath his boxer shorts.
“Remember that kiss earlier?” she murmured in his ear before she took it between her teeth and gently nipped.
Garrett mmm’d low in his throat and slipped his bookmark into the book before he set it on the nightstand. Turning into her, he cradled her against his chest. “Remember? I’ve been fantasizing about it for hours.”
Micah wrapped her leg over his hips, giggling like a little girl as his hand moved to cup her breast. “Make love to me,” she whispered against his lips.
He didn’t argue.
*
Micah was startled awake by the touch of icy fingers.
She popped up in bed, gasping, one hand fluttering to the spot on her cheek that still felt cold and clammy. She glanced towards the side of the bed, expecting to see her daughter, but there was nothing but darkness.
The storm still rocked the house. A steady pounding of rain on the roof and windows let her know it hadn’t lost any of its fury in the hours she’d been out. Beside her, Garrett slept soundly, one arm still tossed listlessly over her lap.
On her nightstand, the digital clock read three am.
Micah fell back against the headboard, trying to catch her breath. It must have been a dream, she thought, trying to remember what she was dreaming. If she had been having a dream, the information was just out of reach and getting more insubstantial the longer she was awake.
A loud boom of thunder made her heart skip a beat, and in the stretch of emptiness that followed she heard the pitter-patter of small feet in the hallway, echoed by the familiar clicking of Sticks’s claws. A moment later, Elliott burst through the open door and launched her skinny body onto the bed.
Micah chuckled, scooting to the right so her daughter could squeeze beneath the covers between her and Garrett. “Did the storm scare you, baby?”
As Sticks made a few circles and settled on the rug next to the bed, Elliott turned her pale face up. There was fear in her eyes. “A little. Mostly it was the girl.”
“What girl?” Micah’s hand drifted once more to her own cheek as she remembered the cold phantom of a small child’s fingers.
With a wide-eyed nod, Elliott said, “She keeps whispering to me when I’m trying to sleep.”
Micah wanted to attribute the story to her daughter’s wicked imagination, but she couldn’t get past the sensation of fingers on her face. “What does this girl look like?”
Elliott shrugged, snuggling closer to Garrett, who rolled over and squeezed her in his sleep. “Dunno. Can’t see her.”
As soon as her daughter’s eyes closed and her breathing became regular, Micah laid awake the rest of the night facing the door.
*
“Momma, does that look weird to you?” Elliott asked.
They were on the front porch the next morning, Elliott armed with a bottle of glass cleaner and an old t-shirt, while Micah wielded a broom on the steps. Her daughter stood in front of the stained glass front doors, bubbles sliding down the glass as she pointed up.
Micah followed her gesture to the third floor. She hadn’t paid much attention to the exterior of the house, other than to note it was a mess. Above the front door, the windowseat jutted out, forming an overhang. To the right of it was the window of the master bedroom—her and Garrett’s room. The façade of the house was some kind of stone; without knowledge of architecture, Micah wasn’t sure if it was poured concrete or some kind of concrete sculpted over stone or wood. But the textured exterior had survived almost two centuries in the tropical weather of the area, and parts of the house were a bit worse for the wear.
Where her daughter pointed was one of the worst examples of the way time had made a mark on Bowridge. Micah said, “That water stain, you mean?”
“Is that what it is?” Elliott was silent for a moment. “It looks like a face.”
Micah looked closer, and then started as she realized it did look like a face. Hollow circles for eyes, sunken cheeks, and long, flowing hair around a pale face. A sideways slash made the face look like it was screaming. The effect was chilling.
“It does,” Micah agreed. She forced her eyes away from the sight and vowed to ignore it before her own imagination ran wild. “But it’s just our brains piecing together something familiar from the water patterns.”
Elliott giggled. “You sound like Daddy.”
“Heaven forbid!” Micah teased, turning back to the steps. But for the rest of the time they cleaned, she could feel eyes on her—as if the face were real.
*
Micah met her husband at the front door as soon as he got home, relieving him of his briefcase. “Take your shoes off,” she warned him. “Elliott and I did the floors.”
His brown eyes moved over the shiny hardwood. “No leaves.”
She nodded and smiled, proud of herself. “No leaves.”
“Where is Elliott?” he asked, yanking off his tie as he followed her to the living room. “Oh, love, it looks great in here.”
A thorough cleaning of Murphy’s Oil to the hardwood floors had reveale
d beautiful, shiny wooden slats. She and Elliott had taken scrub brushes to the ornately carved fireplace, cleaning it of debris and dirt, even managing to clean the soot off the concrete stoop. They’d unpacked several boxes, so the living room felt more like home.
Micah deposited Garret’s briefcase by the couch. “She’s upstairs taking a nap. I almost joined her.”
He kissed her forehead, one hand brushing across her neck. “Don’t blame you. You guys worked hard today.”
“Would you like something to drink?” Micah offered, dying to ask him how the interview went. She refrained.
“Do we have any beer?” Garrett sank to the couch with an oof! and kicked his stocking feet up on the coffee table. His suit had been perfectly pressed that morning, but now it looked wrinkled and worse for the wear.
Micah took the stairs down into the kitchen, quickly grabbing him a Bud Light and herself a bottled rum cocktail, and then ran back up the stairs, ignoring the rising feeling of suffocation she felt every time she stepped foot in the kitchen.
She settled beside him on the couch as he popped the tab on his beer, automatically reaching for her bottle to open it for her. They sat together listening to the faint tick-tock-tick-tock of the wall clock.
Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer. “So. How’d it go?” she asked offhand, crossing her fingers.
He paused for too long, and her heart began to sink. “Oh no.”
“I’m just kidding,” he said, his face lighting up as a white grin spread from ear to ear. “I got the job.”
Micah squealed and leapt forward to toss her arms around his neck. “That’s great news!”
“I’ll start next Monday.”
As she kissed her husband, Micah felt a rush of relief, as if the tables were turning. Maybe Bowridge and Savannah were just what they needed to get out from under the black cloud that had hung over them since the accident.
*
The second night was no different than the first. Micah woke up, shocked from sleep by the same touch of cold fingers. She gasped, jerking away from the edge of the bed. The clock switched over to three am.
Disturbed by her reaction, Garrett awoke beside her, sitting up with a groan.
“Wha—Micah?” He reached for her in the dark. “Love, what’s wrong?”