Chapter One
Soft, brown clouds trail from the tires as you drive the SUV and the attached trailer down the dirt road through the woods. It's a sunny August afternoon, but thick leaves overhead cast a gloom broken by only sporadic peeks of day. Gnarled trees seem to lean in menacingly as you pass.
In the passenger seat beside you, your twin sister,
Helen, mugs for yet another selfie, though she won't be able to post it until you get back. There's no coverage out here in the sticks. You're cut off. A stray bit of gravel kicks into the vehicle's undercarriage and rattles unsettlingly as if there's something beneath clawing from the earth. You hope you don't have a breakdown here. It's a long walk back to the redneck town of Huckley.
"I hope the house is haunted!" says your little sister, Maribel, from the backseat. "I mean, it has to be, right? It's like a hundred years old. All the ghost are probably bored and waiting for someone with an Ouija board."
"
Ghosts," mutters Eddie, your little brother. He snorts. "None of that shit's real. After you die there's nothing. We're all just chemical meat puppets."
"'Meat Puppets,'" repeats Helen. "Isn't that a band?"
"My Chemical Meat Puppets," you whisper, and you both snicker.
"Ghosts
are real!" Maribel cries. "I've read like eight books on them. I'm going to record their voices on tape, and then I'm going to become a world famous parapsychologist!"
"Whatever," Eddie says. He puts in his earbuds and glowers out the window, his teeth idly clicking against his lip rings. He's become more of a dick than usual recently, but you know the last few weeks have hit him harder than he lets on.
"Bert, do you think I'll be able to contact mom and dad?" Maribel asks. "Or . . . or anyone? I know they didn't die here, but ghosts can fly place to place, right? Or I guess they can use telepathy."
"Somehow, I don't think Uncle Grubb's house is haunted," you say, "but if it is, I'm sure they'll stop by to say hi."
You exchange a sad look with Helen. You're all grieving in your own ways, but Maribel's new obsession with the paranormal has you worried. You don't have the heart to tell her it's all bunk.
Turning carefully down the winding path, you pass a half-collapsed stone cottage overgrown with weeds. It's picturesque, like something from an oil landscape. You recollect it vaguely.
The last time you were here was seven years ago, during your Great-great Uncle Grubb's final Christmas. His lifelong smoking habit had finally caught up with him; he never saw the New Year. The passing of his estate turned out to be a Gordian knot of legal issues because apparently he'd written your great-grandfather and his descendants out of his will . . . but then drafted a second will that contradicted the first. You're still not sure of all the lawyering ins and outs, but every branch of your family's been squabbling for his stuff ever since.
Or at least they were until five weeks ago. There was a family reunion. And a bus crash. Fortunately, you and your siblings were in a different car.
After a slew of wakes, funerals and meetings with attorneys, you found you've inherited, among other things, Uncle Grubb's estate--including this spooky mansion in the back woods of North Texas. For the weekend you plan on inventorying his effects, and you know this is going to be hard. It'll be like digging through a grave, and there'll be so many questions with no answers. No longer can you pick up an old photo and ask,
"Hey, grandpa, who's this?" And neither can you ask your dad nor your mom nor your uncles, aunts and cousins. You've lost so much it seems unreal. You feel alone.
But you're not, you remind yourself. Your family rides with you in this SUV. You four are the last of the Springwells.
Helen points at a shallow creek peeking through a grove of oak trees. "That leads to that lake I was telling you about, Maribel. Me and Pookie went swimming there last time." She laughs. "You remember that, right?"
"I remember, Goosie," you say, using her nickname back. "That place was . . . weird. You really want to kayak in that? I ended up covered with ticks and leeches."
"'Covered?' There were only like a couple. Okay, three, four tops. And besides, kayaking is not swimming. We'll be fine." Helen turns in her seat to look at Maribel. "Uncle Grubb once told me there's a cave in the bottom where the 'Deep Ones' live. They're ugly fish people from those Cuh-thul-hoo books."
"
Cthulhu," Eddie corrects without looking up.
"Is the cave real?" Maribel asks, suddenly interested.
"The cave might be real," you say, "but there's no such thing as 'Deep Ones.'"
Maribel is unconvinced. "If ghosts are real, then fish people can be real too."
You sigh. "Sure. I guess."
Another couple of turns, and you see the house, a gray, gloomy, three-story Victorian-Era mansion. It's always looked rundown, but the past seven years have been especially cruel. A few windows are cracked or smashed. The rotten wood siding peels like dead skin. Broken shutters hang like crooked teeth. A wayward tree branch invades through the west wall.
You pull into a gravel driveway all but reclaimed by weeds.
Maribel sits up and points beside the house. "Look, a graveyard! That means there
has to be ghosts!"
You forgot about the cemetery. It's not very big, and some of the tombstones are so old they're toppling. Could your first ancestors in Texas be buried there? 'Springwell' is an Anglicized form of the German '
Springenwelt,' though you don't know much about your family's history. Maybe Uncle Grubb left some records.
You all step out into a heat so humid it might as well be the jungle, though the low-hanging clouds cast the sky with an almost winter dreariness.
"We're spending three days
here?" Eddie sneers.
"Yeah, you'll love it," you say. "Come on, everyone grab a bag. Let's get inside."
Weighed down with luggage, you all amble up the stone steps to a pair of doors fitted with fogged glass panes. You insert the old fashioned key into the lock, and as you turn the metallic grinding echos unnaturally as though large unseen machines are waking from a long slumber. You hear the click. You open the doors.
Well, at least bats didn't fly into your face.
Eddie hums the first few bars of Bach's
Toccatta and Fugue. It fits. You're hit with the smell of must. Cobwebs drape like vines from the vaulted ceiling. Crossing the checkerboard floor, you pass from the vestibule into the great hall. White sheets cover the chairs and sofa and look like crouched ghosts in the weak sunlight filtering through the dirty French windows. An ornately carved staircase curves to the second story. Along the balcony you spot an black suit of medieval armor, flanked on either side by rows of old portrait paintings.
It's just like you remember, only a lot dustier.
[...]
Walking along the hall, the wood floor creaking under your feet, you come to an open door beside the entryway to the kitchen. On your previous visits, you're pretty sure this room's always been locked. You peek inside. It's a study. Piles of papers clutter an ancient mahogany desk, and some have spilled onto a cracked leather armchair. An overburdened bookcase takes up the back wall, its bowed shelves crammed with everything from paperbacks to manila folders to massive leather-bound tomes. The light from the window gives a sheen to the white dust that covers every surface.
Perched on the corner of the desk is a framed black and white photograph of a young woman in a dark Victorian dress. She's beautiful, but there's something strange about her you can't quite put your finger on. Nearby is a glass display case holding a variety of artifacts: a stone tablet etched with runes catches your attention, as well as the large skull of what you guess must be some great ape. A great ape with three eyes.
Helen taps you on the shoulder. She's taken off her backwards snapback, and her mess of long, blond hat hair makes her look as if she's just woken up.
"Pookie, we're going to explore the rest of the house; you want to come?"
That sounds fun: most of the house you've never seen, as Uncle Grubb was very restrictive about letting his guests wander. And it couldn't hurt to keep an eye on your siblings. Maribel tends to get into mischief, and Eddie sometimes lacks common sense. And Helen is . . . Helen.
But on the other hand, you want to spend some time in this study. It looks like it could have useful records, not to mention the various curios that warrant investigating. Your brothers and sisters should be fine: Helen isn't
stupid. And how dangerous can a spooky old house be?
Your twin raises an eyebrow, awaiting your answer.
[ ] Stay in the study and dig through Uncle Grubb's stuff. Tell Helen, Eddie and Maribel to stick together.
[ ] The study's not going anywhere. Explore the house with your family. But where should you explore first? The first floor? Or upstairs? You've never been up there. How about the basement?
[ ] Write in.