The Haunting of Bechdel Mansion: A Haunted House Mystery- Book 0 Read online

  She pulled a mini flashlight from her pocket and shined it into the hole out of curiosity. She could barely see a thing beyond the light, but as she held her hand against the hole she felt faint, cool air against her palm. She took a knee and tried to get a better look, and then she heard something. She froze, just as a man with a noisy leaf blower passed by the window, distracting her. She pressed her ear against the hole, listening, as the sound of the leaf blower finally passed.

  Silence returned to the room. Mary remained still, eyes looking upward and trying to make out the faint noise inside the wall. It sounded like a groan. She pressed her ear closer, practically inside the hole. It was the long-winded groan of a man, fading but clear enough.

  The sound soon vanished just as quickly as it appeared. Mary backed away and clutched the side of the hole, trying to pry bits of the wall off to make the hole larger. Something came over her, a need or obsession, and she pulled and pulled until she tore a piece of hard plaster from the wall and fell back in surprise.

  “Whoa. What’s going on here?” Earl said, entering the room with his partner.

  Mary looked up, startled and clutching a piece of the wall in her hand. “Nothing. I thought I heard something.”

  “You leave the busy work to us, Mrs. Malone,” Earl said. “Pete and I have this.”

  His partner, Pete, set a small cage next to the wall as Earl set down his toolbox. He knelt by the hole and asked Mary politely if she could give him some room. She stood up and backed away, intending to watch them chip away at the hole, piece by piece.

  Earl held the crowbar in hand and then turned to Mary with uncertainty. “You sure your husband is okay with this?”

  She felt taken aback by the question and simply narrowed her eyes in response.

  Earl stuttered nervously. “I-It’s just. He’s the one who called us out here and all.”

  “Yeah, no offense,” Pete added.

  Mary crossed her arms. “It’s quite all right,” she said. “My husband doesn’t mind, nor do I.”

  Earl nodded with a gap-tooth grin and then turned back to the wall. He stuck the crowbar in the wall and pushed against it like taking off a hubcap. A big chunk flew out as Earl fell back, regaining his balance. The hole was nearly large enough for him to put his head through, but he kept chipping away. Mary heard the front door open and shut, and looked to the side, half expecting Curtis to walk in the room and flip out at what they were doing.

  Earl set the crowbar on the ground and held up his long steel flashlight. Mary walked closer as he turned the light on and scanned the inside of the wall.

  “Yep…” he said, nodding. “Just like I thought. She’s got babies.”

  “How do you know?” Mary said, hovering over his shoulder.

  Earl scratched his face. “There’re droppings everywhere.” He leaned over, head halfway in the wall, shining his flashlight inside and blocking Mary’s view. She imagined the raccoon spiraling out of the hole, attacking them, and kept a careful distance.

  “Hello, what’s this?” Earl said, reaching down. He backed out of the hole holding a dusty booklet of some kind. Mary moved closer. He shook the dust and bits of wall from the book and held it up for everyone to see. “Looks like someone lost their book in there.”

  Mary extended her arm to take the book as Earl reluctantly handed it to her. It was extremely dusty, despite his shaking it off. Mary carefully examined the leather-bound cover, which had a drawstring tying it shut. The pages looked warped and dry. It looked decades old.

  “Let’s see what else we got in here,” Earl said, looking back in the hole. He shined his flashlight around as Mary felt along the book’s rough edges.

  She was hesitant to open it, as it seemed so fragile, and didn’t want it to disintegrate, though her curiosity quickly got the best of her. She turned from the men and gently untied the tattered string binding the book together. She slowly opened it, finding pages with faded cursive handwriting, barely legible. Mary held it closer, trying to read the words.

  Tuesday, May 20, Today father said that we have to all put on a good face at lunch with the future in-laws. His words not mine. I’m so sick of putting on a good face around here when they keep me locked in my room half the time. I got a record player for my birthday, but they won’t even let me play it half the time. Mother says that my music is too loud and distracting.

  Mary lowered the book, a dozen questions leaping to mind. Earl had discovered a diary of some sort, and the raccoon had led them straight to it. What was it doing inside the wall, and how old was it? She ruminated over these questions, knowing that a delicate piece of history rested in her hands. She looked over to Earl as he continued scanning the inside of the wall with his flashlight.

  “See anything else?” she asked.

  Earl grunted and then spoke. “Nah. Just a bunch more raccoon droppings. Might even have some rats down here too.”

  “Wonderful,” Mary said with a sigh.

  Earl leaned back from the wall and turned toward her, face covered in dust. “I’ll leave a trail of pellets leading to the trap. Lure the mother out come feeding time.” He then paused, thinking to himself. “Course, we may have to put a fogger in there for the babies. Maybe as many as five kits.”

  “You mean kill them?” Mary asked.

  “Yep,” Earl said matter-of-factly. “But they might come out looking for mom.”

  She didn’t like the idea of a fogger, but Earl and Pete were the professionals. Raccoons had no place in their walls, regardless of age. She flipped to another page in the book, almost on instinct, and began reading.

  In trouble today. Mother found out I’ve been taking scraps of food and feeding raccoons in the backyard. She told Father, and he told Lawrence, our groundskeeper, to kill any ‘rodents’ he saw on sight. Those raccoons are the only friends I have left, and they won’t even let me have that. I need to get out of this house. I need to get away. Need to get away before it’s too late.

  Mary raised her head and nearly dropped the book. Her mind went right back to the night before, when she had encountered the raccoon. She remembered its yellow eyes, long, sharp canines, and wondered what connection it might have had, if any, to the girl’s writings.

  “That was no normal raccoon,” she said out loud.

  “What was that, Mrs. Malone?” Pete asked.

  She turned to see both Earl and Pete looking at her. “Nothing… You gentlemen do what you have to do. I have to make a phone call.” She excused herself from the room and went right toward the stairs, clutching the book and rushing up the steps to evade being seen, though she couldn’t understand why.

  She fled into the master bedroom, and closed the door. The diary would make a good addition to the books and newspapers she had already acquired, and beyond those references, she felt that the most definitive view into the family’s history could, in fact, be found in the words of a young girl.

  She went to the bed and sat, prepared to read the diary in one sitting. She turned the pages carefully and saw that some of them were so deteriorated that she couldn’t read the writing no matter how hard she tried.

  She then turned back to the very first page. The ink had smeared almost entirely, but she was able to read mid-sentence as it carried on to the next page.

  …said that we had to. They’re so demanding. They gave me a diary for my birthday just like I asked, but they also wouldn’t let me have any friends over. They’re so protective that it’s driving me crazy. Happy birthday to me, I guess.

  A knock came at the door, and Mary’s head jolted up.

  “Mary, you in there?” Curtis called.

  “It’s open,” she said, tucking the diary under the sheets.

  Curtis walked in, red from the sun and sweaty. “You all right?”

  “Yeah. Why do you ask?”

  “The pest-control guys said you took off in a hurry. I told them to go easy on the wall. I don’t think we have to tear this place apart to flush a couple rodents out
.”

  “I agree,” Mary said. She put on her best face with hope that Curtis would be satisfied and go back to whatever he was doing, but he persisted.

  “They said they found an old book. What’s with that?”

  Mary waved him off. “Oh, it’s nothing.”

  “Nothing?” he said, walking forward.

  “Well, we found a diary, but it’s nearly impossible to read,” Mary said.

  “Really? Wow,” Curtis said, waking to his dresser. He grabbed a pair of sunglasses. “You’ll never believe who stopped by.”

  “Who?” Mary asked.

  “Pastor Phil. He brought a welcome basket for us. Can you believe it?”

  “Wow, that’s nice,” she said.

  “I told him that you’d come down and say hello,” Curtis continued.

  Great, she thought.

  Curtis walked to the door, whistling, and told Mary to come down when she was ready. As he closed the door behind him, Mary pondered the arrival of their new guest. He seemed awfully interested in making their acquaintance. Maybe he was just a really nice guy. However, her instincts told her differently.

  She wondered if she should mention the diary to the pastor. He seemed familiar enough with the Bechdels, and she knew from the newspaper that he had been a pastor of their same church since before the family was slaughtered. There was something there, and the more time she spent in Redwood, the less she believed in coincidences.

  She walked down the hall to the stairwell, and below, saw the top of Pastor Phil’s white hair as he chatted with Curtis, his back turned toward her. He wasn’t wearing a suit this time but was dressed in a checkered short-sleeved button-down shirt and tan Dockers. He pivoted on his heels while laughing along with Curtis, and whatever Curtis was telling him. In his hands he still held a basket of fruit with plastic wrapping over it. The Redwood welcome wagon in the flesh.

  She slowly descended the stairs as Curtis looked up, causing Pastor Phil to turn and smile at her.

  “There she is,” Curtis said.

  Phil nodded as she reached the bottom, holding the basket out to her. “Good morning, Mrs. Malone. A pleasure to see you again.”

  “Hello,” she said, unsure how to address him. He hadn’t told her his last name, but he sure seemed to know theirs.

  “A welcoming gift from our church,” he said, thrusting the basket toward her.

  Mary smiled and took it with both hands. “You shouldn’t have,” she said, feeling the plastic crinkle in her hands. “That’s very thoughtful of your church. Thank you.”

  “When was the last time someone ever gave us a welcome basket?” Curtis asked with a laugh.

  Phil waved him off. “Ah. It’s nothing. We just like to make our neighbors feel at home.”

  Mary turned and set the basket on a nearby table at the foot of the staircase. She thanked him again, noticing his eyes wander around the grand foyer surrounding them, taking in the boxes, furniture, and work in progress.

  “Just a beautiful mansion,” he said.

  “Still have a ways to go,” Curtis said. His demeanor suddenly changed as he looked at his wristwatch. “Oh, and I gotta get back to work. Said I’d lend a hand. Sorry. Thanks again, Pastor.”

  They shook hands, and Curtis waved to Mary and hurried out the door. Phil looked at Mary while wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. There were several windows open and portable fans blowing throughout the house, but the outside heat was inescapable. “Air conditioner on the fritz?” he said with a smile.

  “It’s the air conditioner that never was,” Mary said with a sigh. “We should have a new unit here in a couple of days.”

  “One modern convenience at a time,” Phil said.

  “Indeed…”

  From the living room, Pete and Earl entered the foyer chatting and carrying a tool bag and two more cages. Their voices lowered as they tipped their hats to Mary and Phil.

  “The wall doesn’t look too bad, ma’am,” Pete said. “A little drywall, and you’ll never know we were in there.”

  “That’s fine,” she said as they walked by.

  “We’ll give your kitchen a good look,” Earl added.

  “Don’t forget about the attic,” Mary called out as they continued on.

  “Oh no,” Pete assured her, turning his head. “We’re saving the best for last.”

  Mary turned back to Pastor Phil, who stood patiently waiting with a polite smile. “Pest control,” she said.

  “Ah, I should have known,” he said.

  “Thank you again for the basket. It was very nice of you.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. “Your husband sounds pretty excited about the barbecue next Sunday. Can we count on your attendance?”

  Mary placed a finger against her lip and then pointed at him. “So that’s why you came out here.”

  Phil’s smile widened with a measured laugh. “You figured me out and uncovered my scheme.” He bowed his head like a royal subject. “Forgive me, madam.”

  “We’ll put it on our calendar,” Mary said.

  Phil looked up, pleased, as Mary leaned in closer, preparing to pursue her own agenda, which was filled with questions. “You’ve lived here for some time, haven’t you?”

  Phil’s smile straightened out as his blue eyes looked up in thought. “Well… darn near half my life has been spent in Redwood, yes.”

  Mary paused, trying to choose her next words wisely. “And did you know any former owners of this mansion?”

  “I did, actually,” he said. “Place has been vacant a long time, but I’ve known families who lived here at one time.”

  “Families?” Mary said. She didn’t know that anyone else had lived in the mansion, and this new information gave her another path to research. “So. You knew the Bechdels?”

  For the first time since she had met him, Pastor Phil’s face went completely blank. He seemed to have realized this, and quickly turned his expression into a smile. “Yes. The Bechdel family. A terrible tragedy back then. Worst thing to ever happen in our humble town.”

  Mary seized the moment and moved in closer, first glancing outside, where the hammering continued loudly. “Pastor Phil,” she said. “Is there something about this house we should know? I’ve heard things in the night, seen things I can’t ignore, and we’ve only been here a few days. Do we have anything to worry about?”

  Phil stared back at her, long and hard, in contemplation. He then took a step back, motioning toward the door. “To be honest with you, Mrs. Malone, it’s an old creaky mansion that needs a lot of work. I’ve seen families come and go, some of them even going broke, trying to make this place into something it was never meant to be.” He paused and scratched his chin, looking around. “In the end, I think you and your husband will be fine. I can see it in you.”

  Before she could say another word, Phil shuffled to the door, excusing himself. “It’s been a pleasure talking with you, Mrs. Malone. Have a wonderful day, and I hope to see you at the barbecue.”

  Mary stood still for a moment, surprised by his hasty exit. “Call me Mary,” she said as he neared the door.

  “Sure thing, Mary,” he said with a wave and a bright smile. She didn’t know what she had said that might have prompted him to leave so suddenly. Her question was one that any new homeowner might ask. One thing was clear; Pastor Phil was being evasive. After he closed the door, she walked toward the living room prepared to see what damage had been done to the wall at her behest.

  Was Pastor Phil right? Would they face a fate any different from the others who had tried to make a home there? The questions were mounting as Mary stood dazed with thoughts of a little girl who once lived within the same walls.

  Sunday Barbecue

  The new air conditioner was up and running, much to the collective relief of Mary, Craig, and the various work crews tasked with renovations. Painters, cleaners, pest control, and electricians had been busy throughout the week modernizing the old mansion, transf
orming its faded grimy, walls and dusty, spider-webbed interiors into something entirely different. Mary could hardly believe it herself. Their home was beginning to look downright livable and even elegant.

  The attic had been cleared out of resident rodents that for so long had made the space their own. The pipes running through the walls had been nearly repaired, the septic system replaced, and the electrical wiring brought up to standard.

  The downstairs study had been turned into her own art studio, where she could work in the sunlight from a large bay window. The room looked out onto their shaded backyard and its long, stone walkway that wound its way through the freshly cut grass and was lined with bushes trimmed to perfection. Her agent had lined up a new children’s book for her to illustrate. She had a three-week deadline and by mid-week she hadn’t even started.

  Mary was doing her best to adjust, even though normality had long since recused itself to a different time and place. Redwood seemed the perfect town to live in, their mansion, a dream come true, but it seemed there was something lurking beneath the surface, troubling and grim, that she couldn’t shake off.

  The week had rushed by, and by Sunday she couldn’t believe all the work that had been done on their home. Things were quieter, with fewer people parading through the house, and Mary knew that she and Curtis would soon be the only two people inside their vast dream home, living like royalty without the bank account or prestige to show for it.

  That morning, she had almost forgotten their Sunday engagement at the Redwood church. There had been no visitors to their house since Pastor Phil’s unexpected visit, and when she opened the drawer to the nightstand to get her cell phone, she was greeted once again by the sight of the child’s diary that had been captivating her attention the past week.

  Curtis was just coming out of the bathroom after a shower, when Mary quickly closed the drawer. She stood in a T-shirt and underwear as he greeted her with an optimistic smile on his face.