The Siren and the Specter Read online

  “You married, Mr. Caine?” Shelby drawled.

  “Never,” David murmured. He glanced at the little girl with her coloring book. She looked peaked. Her dark bangs were trimmed unevenly on her forehead. She had reddish Kool-Aid stains on the corners of her mouth. He wondered if she’d eaten lunch yet. Or breakfast, for that matter.

  “How about that drink?” Shelby asked, a hand on David’s triceps.

  “Like I said…” David began, then faltered when he noticed the trickle of blood wending its way down Shelby’s chin.

  Following David’s gaze, Shelby wiped the blood off with the back of his hand, glanced at it, and grinned at David a trifle sheepishly. “Honey likes to get physical.”

  David glanced at the little boy, who was watching the men raptly. “Mike Jr. said you and your wife were fighting.”

  Shelby smiled. There was blood on his teeth. “Did he now? Well, we’re an expressive family, Mr. Caine. What you see as fighting, we see as healthy communication.”

  On the television, the blond woman was taking the mohawked man’s oversized member into her mouth.

  Jesus Christ, David thought.

  “Can we turn that off?” he asked.

  Shelby nodded an apology, said, “Please pause it, dear.”

  “We’re getting to the good part,” Honey responded.

  David made the mistake of glancing at the television and discovered that a petite young woman had sauntered into the bedroom, was slithering between the blond woman’s legs.

  “You can finish it later,” Shelby answered. He shot a nervous glance at David. “Honey does enjoy her pay-per-view.”

  Grumbling, Honey turned off the television.

  Shelby took David by the arm, made to lead him into the kitchen, but David shook free, said, “I really need to finish my run.”

  “You can use our lane,” Honey said, standing and swaying a little. Though barefooted, she was tall. Well-built too. The dress drooped, revealing a great deal of cleavage.

  David turned back to Shelby. “Your lane connects with—”

  “Governor’s Road,” Shelby said, nodding.

  “How long you on the island?” Mike Jr. asked.

  “Peninsula,” Shelby corrected automatically. He smiled at David. “My son likes to think of this as an island.”

  “Might as well be,” Honey said, “for all the entertaining we do.”

  “I imagine,” Shelby went on as though his wife hadn’t spoken, “Mike Jr. envisions being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That’s the sort of game I used to play when I was his age. Did you, Mr. Caine?”

  “I fight terrorists,” Mike Jr. said. “I blow their heads off with my M-16.”

  “Well,” David said, “I really better get moving.”

  “You timid around pretty ladies?” Honey asked. Although she stood several feet away, David scented a puff of warm whiskey.

  He turned and moved away.

  “Mama hits Daddy,” Mike Jr. called.

  David stopped and studied the boy. The declaration had been made with the same casualness he’d used when talking about killing terrorists. He looked at Honey.

  “Does that bother you, Mr. Caine?” Honey asked with a lazy grin.

  Shelby blushed and adjusted his glasses. “I hardly think that’s any of Mr. Caine’s business, Michael.”

  “Name’s Mike,” the boy said.

  “Michael Junior,” Shelby corrected.

  The boy looked like he’d eaten something rotten. “If you say so.”

  For the first time Shelby’s affable demeanor slipped. “Get in your room right goddamned now.”

  Moving with no real urgency, Mike Jr. passed David, then climbed the stairs.

  “See you, Mr. Caine,” the boy mumbled.

  Shelby forced a smile. “Children are a trial, Mr. Caine. You’re blessed you never had any.”

  David considered telling him his fatherhood or lack thereof was none of his business but decided there was no point.

  He’d started toward the foyer when Honey said, “You know why they call it Governor’s Road?”

  “Now why,” Shelby snapped, “of all the topics you might broach with our new neighbor—”

  “He wasn’t really a governor,” Honey said.

  “Darn it, Honey….” Shelby said.

  David glanced behind him, saw Honey approaching with Shelby in tow. She said, “They gave him this territory to limit what he could do.”

  “Who?” David said, interested despite himself.

  “Let’s get your movie back on,” Shelby said, a hand on his wife’s shoulder.

  Honey flung his hand off, rounded on him. “It’s the only interesting thing about this island—”

  “Peninsula.”

  “Peninsula,” Honey mocked. “Jesus, you sound like a little girl.”

  Shelby poked a finger at Honey’s chin. “Don’t you dare—”

  David took a step forward but froze, stunned, as Honey smacked her husband on the cheek, the sound a sickening pop in the two-story foyer.

  Shelby put a hand to his face, but rather than being enraged, his features conveyed a wicked species of lust.

  David’s gaze was drawn to something down the hallway.

  The little girl. She was gazing up at her parents with huge eyes.

  “Go color,” Shelby said.

  The girl did as she was told.

  “Worried about her, Mr. Caine?” Honey asked. “Maybe you should come back tonight and give me a good, hard parenting lesson.”

  “Sure,” Shelby said, that wicked gleam on David now. “We’d love some instruction.”

  David left the Shelbys staring after him. He was shaking, queasy. It wasn’t until he’d escaped the yard that the midday heat penetrated his icy sweat.

  He dashed toward the woods and didn’t stop sprinting until the Shelbys’ house was a half mile behind him. He slowed, thinking of the little girl with the coloring book.

  She hadn’t spoken a word.

  Chapter Eight

  His run brought him back to Alexander Lane – not its real name, as far as he knew, but that was how he thought of it – twenty minutes later. He’d explored a couple paths off Governor’s Road, but both had led to wheat fields with no apparent means of exiting.

  He considered stopping by Ralph’s but decided against it. He needed a shower in the worst way, the sweat and the dust and – there was no denying it – the Shelbys conspiring to instill a deeply unclean feeling in him. He disrobed in the foyer, which was uncannily cool, and moved into the gloomy den.

  David showered, the sensation of hot water on his flesh the perfect balm for his discomfiture. Just what the hell was wrong with the Shelbys?

  Rinsing out the shampoo and soap, David considered his options.

  He’d witnessed physical abuse of the husband, and he strongly suspected Mr. Shelby sometimes reciprocated. But both of them seemed to like it. So where did that leave David?

  And the kids? My Lord, it was the kids to whom David’s mind kept returning. Mike Jr. growing up with such shitty role models. The little girl, whatever her name was, coloring her ponies while semen geysered over a woman’s face on the television a few feet away.

  Could Child Protective Services intervene? And if so, what would their legal basis be for removing the Shelby children? That their mother enjoyed watching pornography? That their parents engaged in consensual physical abuse?

  Was there such a thing as consensual abuse?

  David toweled off, went to the bedroom, and changed into a clean pair of cargo shorts and a light gray Stranger Things T-shirt that read ‘Hawkins AV Club.’

  He had to go upstairs.

  Silly, really, that he hadn’t explored the second story yet. He’d been here nineteen hours, and he hadn’t yet seen half the
house.

  The most important half.

  Absurd, he thought, smiling a little. Barefoot, he started up the stairs. Unsurprisingly, they creaked loudly. On the landing he paused, noticed how cool it was on the second floor.

  “Better grab the thermal scope,” he murmured. But he wouldn’t, of course. He always waited until the end of a stay to break out the accouterments of the paranormal-obsessed.

  He was studying the second-story hallway when Honey’s words echoed in his brain: They gave him this territory to limit what he could do.

  Now what the hell had that meant?

  David crossed to a walnut trestle table, found a collection of hoary leather books pinned between scrimshaw rowboats. He lifted a pale hunk of scrimshaw and jumped when a leather book toppled with a ridiculously loud boom. David glanced behind him at one of several closed doors, shook his head at his skittishness.

  He replaced the rowboat and set the book upright again.

  And wondered, to whom did they give this territory and why did he need to be limited?

  His toes were freezing. Like they’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen. Going shoeless had been a mistake.

  David glanced down the hallway and spotted what just about had to be the house’s second bathroom.

  You’re stalling.

  Am not, he argued. I’m taking my time.

  The bedrooms, David. They’re the whole ballgame.

  There is no ballgame. Just an old house with a scandalous reputation.

  He took a steadying breath, strode over, and grasped a dull brass knob. It was freezing.

  Doesn’t hot air rise?

  He pushed away the thought, opened the door.

  A bedroom. Just a bedroom.

  There was an old-fashioned walnut bedstead nestled under a crimson-and-ivory quilt. Though there were windows on the southern and eastern walls, the room received very little sunlight. David considered twisting on a lamp, but what was the point? There was nothing interesting about the room, save an aura of moroseness. He imagined a bedridden nonagenarian spending the last dispiriting years of her life under that quilt, opined how monotonous it would have been with only a nurse to spoon-feed her meager bowls of soup and to empty the bedpan. He fancied he could scent the undercurrents now, watery broth and sour black feces. Within this suffocating miasma the woman with the saggy crone’s neck and the papery yellow skin would turn, her tiny sable eyes like painted ball bearings rolling toward him, slowly focusing, her taloned hand unearthed from its tomb of blankets, the trembling fingers groping for him, beseeching, a gargling rattle sounding in her throat, a plea floundering in a cauldron of phlegm, and then—

  David gasped, backpedaled from the bed, his left shoulder blade ramming the doorframe. He stepped backward into the hall, stared at the bed that was just a bed, but somehow wasn’t. He swallowed, hesitated, then lunged forward, seized the knob, and yanked it shut.

  He stood panting, his arms and fingers numb, his feet useless hunks of ice. Perspiration trickled down his back; he wondered if it’d freeze before it reached the belt of his cargo shorts.

  There’s nothing to be afraid of, a voice soothed. But this irritated instead of calming him. He didn’t need coping mechanisms. This was merely a house. Old, yes, but a house like any of the others he’d debunked. And while a handful had given him a momentary case of the willies, none had engendered in him a reaction like the one he’d just experienced.

  But it was bound to happen sometime, wasn’t it? An occupational hazard?

  He attempted a smile, but it wouldn’t take.

  You’re building it up too much, David. You know what an important project this is, and you’re increasing the pressure on yourself to deliver.

  His pulse slackened a notch, his breathing easier. In his other jobs it had been the legend versus his logic, and that was a battle for which he was equipped.

  This, on the other hand, was complicated by the need to clear the man on whose shoulders David’s career was built.

  Sensation returned to his appendages. Yes, he thought, striding down the hallway to the next closed door. He was psyching himself out because of his desire for justice. What did you do to him, Mansfield? How did you murder him, Dr. Hartenstein?

  Yes, David thought. In his marrow he knew that Mansfield and Hartenstein – the owner of the Alexander House and the charlatan who penned the fictionalized account of John Weir’s death – had brought Weir to this place on false pretenses: We need you to disprove the legends, Mr. Weir.

  Weir, being the game academic that he was, would have relished the opportunity. Few places possessed the reputation of the Alexander House.

  But the invitation was a ruse. Mansfield and Hartenstein had conspired to break down Weir’s defenses, to cause a man of advancing years to doubt his own perceptions. There was no doubt Weir saw and heard peculiar things in the Alexander House, but the details chronicled in Weir’s journal – exploited and reprinted to hideous effect in The Last Haunting – were so fantastical as to defy explanation.

  Which, David supposed, was the point. Make Weir believe there were ghosts cavorting through the Alexander House, or at the very least, convince him he was losing his mind. Weir had been seventy-one by the time he journeyed here. Not old by today’s standards, but back then firmly in his twilight years. Once he’d begun to deteriorate from the strain, it wouldn’t have been difficult for them to consummate their sinister plot.

  To murder him.

  Yes, David realized. That’s what he believed. In the end, Mansfield and Hartenstein, having procured the needed histrionics from Weir’s journal, simply murdered the defenseless old man and then…what? Sank him in the Rappahannock? Perhaps, David thought, though there was a problem with that. For one, the river wasn’t deep, which made disposal of a corpse risky. Even riskier when one considered the current. On most days the Rappahannock rolled sedately along, as dark and innocuous as an ancient black bear slumbering in its cave. But during a tempest the river could roil and kick, the whitecaps like wraiths capering across the water. How thoroughly would one have to weight a body to make sure it would never surface?

  Burial seemed the likelier option.

  Musing about where Weir might have been entombed, David opened the door to the second upstairs bedroom.

  If the first bedroom had been dimly lit, this room was positively sepulchral. That made sense, David decided. It was directly above the den, which was equally dark. Like the den, this room was furnished in murky colors. Though he couldn’t be certain without turning on the lights, the walls appeared to be chocolate brown. The duvet was similarly brown with occasional light brown stripes. The floor and trim had been stained to such a degree that any grain was undetectable.

  He reached out, flipped on the light.

  The room remained as dark as pitch.

  Dammit.

  The nearest lamp was a mere six feet away, yet David found himself holding his breath as he advanced into the gloom and twisted it on.

  Though the light it produced was paltry, at least he could see now. There was a door in the far right corner, a small closet, no doubt. There was no door opposite, which meant the occupant of the room would have to enter the adjacent bathroom through the hallway. Inconvenient. But then, convenience hadn’t been a hallmark of homes constructed in 1664.

  Thinking of the house’s age, David whistled softly. Granted, this level of antiquity was commonplace in Europe, but for a nation as young as America, a structure so old seemed too fantastical to be real.

  He extinguished the lamp and went out. Turned right and entered the bathroom. Experienced a surge of happiness. So there was a bathtub. David rarely took baths, but when he did he always wondered why he didn’t more often. The tub was nothing special. On the short side, and not particularly deep. But he could take a bath if he wanted.

  He gave the rest of the room a c
ursory scan: toilet, sink, freestanding towel rack in the corner. The only notable characteristic was the northern dormer, which was curiously empty.

  David flipped the bathroom switch and advanced down the hall. Coming to the stairwell, he paused, compressed his lips. He chided himself for it, but he’d been about to descend the steps despite the obvious fact that there was another room to explore.

  The final bedroom, he decided, must be the biggest by far, for it appeared to occupy the entire western side of the house. Knowing he might lose his nerve if he delayed too long, David pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  And immediately realized something was wrong. It wasn’t just the dimness – why was every room save the master suite so light-deprived? – it was the frigidity. Christ, like a meat locker in here.

  The furnishings were antique but unremarkable. Four single beds facing west, aligned like a hospital ward. A brick fireplace. Maritime bric-a-brac lining every surface. David turned to the southern wall and studied the mahogany table that occupied the dormer. There he spied a ship in a bottle. A pair of carved mallards. Another hunk of scrimshaw.

  He plucked this last from the table with unsteady fingers and examined it. It was shaped like a canoe, but inside the pale object, where there should have been an empty bench, or perhaps a Native American with an oar, there were tiny severed heads lined up from end to end. Six of them, their eyes agape, their mouths open, as if they couldn’t believe it had come to this, set adrift on the Rappahannock without bodies or limbs to guide them. The carvings were executed with exquisite detail. David stared at them, nauseated.

  There was someone in the room with him.

  He whirled. Beyond the row of single beds, thirty-five feet away, he made out the window, and in that somber spill of light, a rocking chair. As David stared at it, limbs turned to stone, it leaned forward, tilted back, leaned forward, tilted back, the creak of its runners audible.

  David darted for the door, which was somehow closed. He scrabbled for the knob, realized there was something in his hand, glanced down stupidly, discovered the accursed canoe, and flung it away with a gasp. It hit the floor with a teeth-jarring clack. He was certain the door would be locked and he’d be imprisoned in this icy tomb, but then the knob turned and David burst through, nearly tumbled headlong down the stairs. He took them two at a time, slipping repeatedly, his heels thudding painfully on the risers, his groin damn near ripping from his graceless blundering. Somehow, he made it to the foyer, where he tore open the heavy front door, shouldered open the screen door, and dashed down the steps into the driveway.