CHAPTER 9. YESTERDAY’S PAPERS
Corridors. I swear, I got enough corridors in Callowleigh to last me a lifetime.
We wandered for what felt like days. In retrospect, it was probably just a couple hours, but at the time it felt unending. As I had seen from above, Callowleigh was a ramshackle architectural mess, buildings growing off of buildings like Frankenstein limbs. Over the years, it had grown continually and seemingly without any order, like the deep root system of a very old tree. Jane, Gil, and I learned this the hard way. We walked down one deserted corridor after another after another.
It was Jane who found it. I was tired and punch-drunk. I think Gil was just tired (and bored). He’d missed a large portion of his Hercules: The Legendary Journey marathon and was a little salty about it. Midnight had come and gone.
It was a door, nondescript and unmarked like all the others. You see, we’d checked each and every door–for a while. Most were offices, stripped and empty. The rest were patient examination rooms, also empty. Soon we began to only check doors at the ends of corridors, hoping for a stairwell. We found some. But the door Jane found, placed unassumingly midway down a particularly dark hall, was different.
Inside it looked like a teacher’s lounge from a high school. A few desks lined the walls, but the bulk of the space was open. There was a seating area and the hulking shadow of an old refrigerator, now silent. One recently installed bulb was strung from a cord and hung from the center of the room, lit a pale white.
A cot lay open beneath a window with reasonably crisp sheets. On the dust-free glass, fingerprint smudges were evident in the moonlight.
“Dawkins,” I said.
“You’re damn right, buddy,” Gil said, his mind re-engaging.
Jane followed us inside, although her support was less than full-throated. As Gil and I searched the room, she seated herself in an old desk chair and leaned back, crossing her legs with a sigh and closing her eyes.
Beside Dawkins’ cot lay his bag. I searched it briefly, finding nothing but dirty clothes and a half-empty shaving kit. I tried not to pause on the fact that it was well after midnight and the old man was not in bed.
“Maybe he got... you know, distracted?” Gil suggested optimistically. “Busy painting a bathroom wall or changing light bulbs?”
I wasn’t so sure. On the floor beside the cot was blood, fresh-looking spatters. The white sheets showed a speckling of red dots. I straightened the sheets and found a hole. “Shit,” I murmured, “It looks like he may have gotten into some trouble.”
Backtracking to the door, I saw blood spatters leading out into the hallway. I followed the trail, but it tapered off and eventually disappeared. It either meant that he’d stopped the bleeding or... Well, let’s just assume he stopped the bleeding.
Back in Dawkins’ room, Gil had pulled a thick leather-bound book off the shelf. He waved me over, laying the heavy volume down on a desk.
“It’s a big friggin’ scrapbook thing,” Gil said. He licked his finger and turned a page.
Inside were old adhesive pages with plastic covers, the kind of pages typical to photo albums my Mom used to have. There were pictures, but that was far from all.
“What is that?” Jane asked, suddenly standing behind us and struggling to see over my shoulder.
“A life’s work,” Gil muttered.
That was the only way to describe it, really. Photographs going back to Callowleigh’s early, early days. The mansion had opened as a hospital in ’45, but it had been standing for decades already. The photographs at the beginning of the album started well before then.
The black and white pictures showed the construction of the original structure, brick by brick, from a hole in the ground to the great Victorian mansion that stood at the heart of Callowleigh’s huge expanse. It was strange to see how the old place had evolved over the years. Sometime between now and then it had changed from a beautiful house to a horrible, brooding monstrosity of architecture gone wrong. Where the crooked branches struck off from the main structure today, originally a wide porch had circled the house, framed by tall maple trees and deep flower beds filled with what I could only imagine to be bright flowers. Someone who cared greatly for the family and the property had put great effort into maintaining the old album.
We followed the pictures forward through time. When the structure neared completion, people entered the photographs. Men, women, and children–smiles on their faces–began populating the grey images, moving about the grand structure and the grounds with expectant faces of joy. It was hard to fathom how Callowleigh had changed so much.
“Who is this?” Gil asked, tapping a dirty fingernail on the page. “I figure this family is the Callows, right? But who’s this joker?”
It was a shadowy figure who moved through the images consistently, unobtrusively even, but consistently nonetheless. Sometimes he appeared out of focus at the rear of a kitchen, behind a mother and child; sometimes he appeared seated on a porch swing, legs crossed, with two young children in the foreground, working in the garden. He was stooped with a slight hunch and a face shrouded by shaggy hair.
“He is in all of the pictures,” Jane said softly. “But out of focus or blurry in each. You can’t ever see his face.”
Gil continued turning pages. He stopped on the first news clipping, the paper yellow with age. Where I had come to expect USA TODAY or NEW YORK TIMES, the paper read THE PEACH BOTTOM PICAYUNE. The date was August 11, 1927. The headline read FIRE KILLS CALLOW FAMILY, ONLY MANSION’S LIBRARY SURVIVES. Gil skimmed down the page before pausing and reading aloud from the article. “‘Wednesday’s tragic fire seems to have begun on the porch outside the library and spread quickly, soon engulfing the second floor and taking Peach Bottom, Pennsylvania’s most prestigious family in their sleep. The remains of Edward, Aileen, Samuel, Sophia, and baby Edna Callow were found inside. Investigators do not suspect foul play. Funeral services will be private.’” Gil paused, chewing his lip. “‘Edward, Aileen, Samuel, Sophia, and baby Edna,’” he read again. “Five people.”
I shook my head. “Tragic.”
“That’s not the point, you ape,” Jane said, slipping an elbow between me and Gil and firmly wedging herself in front. “Five people,” she said. “Abercrombie saw it.”
She took over, flipping a few pages back. She stopped at an earlier family portrait taken in front of a pond–the same overgrown lily pond I recognized from earlier. Like the house, it had once been a sight to behold.
“Look,” she said, pointing.
“Five people,” I muttered, catching up. Five frowning faces stared back at me from the black and white photo.
Gil pointed, reading off the names. “Edward, Aileen, Samuel, Sophia...” he moved a finger back to the pregnant belly of Aileen. “...and baby Edna.”
“And our mystery man,” I said, adding my own finger to page. The shadowy, blurred figure of the same man was present in the rear of the picture. He was stooped over, apparently tending the garden.
“Staff?” Jane asked.
Gil shrugged. “He doesn’t look too old or well-off, so that’d be my guess. Not too tall, even though he is bent over, thin as a rake. Long, shaggy hair. I’d guess he’s a teenager. I mean, look at that hair. What a hoodlum.” I didn’t comment on Gil’s own long and shaggy hair.
“He’s in so many of the pictures,” I said. “If he’s not staff and he’s not family, what else could he be? A ghost?”
“I told you,” Gil said. “I don’t think there are any ghosts here. This is different.”
“I believe you’re right. He’s staff,” Jane said. After a minute, we continued turning pages.
The photographs continued, now documenting the slow repairs and remodeling that followed the death of the Callow family. The first addition to the mansion erupted off the west end of the house one day. Soon a second followed suit, moving to the east. Slowly, the building grew. Slowly, it lost what charm had remained.
Gil stopped on another news clipping. “
PEACH BOTTOM PICAYUNE again,” he said. “This one’s a little less surprising.”
It was a report documenting how the state had publicly announced its purchase of Callowleigh along with renovation plans, originally intending to make it a state hospital. The date was 1938.
Pages turned and the war came. More articles followed, most about beloved young local boys dying overseas. Gil slowed down. Sighing in frustration, Jane took over, flipping past pages of black and white pictures of smiling young men in military uniform. I tried to read the names and dates beneath each but Jane moved too quickly.
“Stop,” Gil said, catching her wrist. He flipped back a page. “Look.”
CALLOWLEIGH TO BECOME SANATORIUM, CALLOW MEMORIAL LIBRARY TO BE DEDICATED. The article outlined the state’s plans to convert the hospital, nearly ready to open, into a rehab ward in anticipation for the war’s end. It was 1944.
“It took six years to renovate this place?” I asked.
Gil shook his head. “Well, they were in a depression and all. A war, too. But that still doesn’t sound quite right,” he said. He traced a finger down the article. “Look,” he said. “‘Staff is grateful to see Callowleigh reopen after years of unfortunate setbacks.’” he turned the page, but the article was truncated. “Nothing else.”
“‘Setbacks’?” I asked. He shrugged.
Jane kept flipping pages, her speed increasing.
“This is a waste of time,” she muttered, skipping pages in larger sections, her face harsh.
“Wait, damnit,” Gil said, reaching to stop her.
“No,” she said, and pulled back.
The edge of the heavy leather volume slipped off the desk’s edge with a flutter of pages and fell to the floor with a heavy thud. The book lay face down on Gil’s foot.
“Let me do this, kid,” he said.
Jane said, “This is a waste–”
“You know, it’s really not,” Gil interrupted. “If you want to go look into what you can steal and how much you can sell it for, then go ahead. I’m not here for that. I’m here to find this guy Dawkins and try and save his life. That’s it.” He knelt and lifted the book with a grunt, laying it open spine-down on the desktop once more. Turning back to the book, he said, “You can do whatever...”
He stopped. After a moment, he leaned forward. Soon, all three of us were bent over the book.
It was a picture of Callowleigh’s staff taken on the main staircase of the sanatorium on the day the institution opened. Row after row of stern, impassive faces stared back at us from the black and white 8 x 10.
“This is 1940-something,” Gil said, “and this guy looks like...” he pointed. “Familiar, anyone?”
A shaggy-haired man stood at the back, frowning, his back crooked with an uncommon hunch. Noticeably older, but unmistakable nonetheless.
“That’s our man,” I said.
“He is young,” Jane said. “Are you sure it is the man from the older Callow family photograph?”
“Yeah,” Gil said. “It’s him, all right.”
At the bottom of the page were names listed by row. Gil tapped the page dramatically.
“Well, would ya lookit that,” he said.
It read: Deacons Fehr, physician.
I opened my mouth to speak and was interrupted by a rusty turn of the room’s doorknob.
We three turned as it opened and were met with the sight of the Galla standing, hunched in the doorway.
I know it must be impossible, but I could swear its bull head was smiling.