Bad Stacks Story Collection Box Set Read online

  The first read “Benjamin Elijah Johnson, 1826-1846.” Under that, in smaller script: “Taken By The Sea.” The one beside it, etched in alabaster, read “Mary Claire Dixon, 1828-1846.” Hers bore a subscript identical to the neighboring marker's.

  What was most striking about the stones were the engraved hands. The hand on Benjamin Johnson's marker, though well-worn by a century-and-a-half of exposure, was clearly reaching to the left, toward Mary Dixon's marker. Mary's hand, slimmer and more graceful in bas-relief, reached to the right, as if yearning for a final touch. The poignancy was plainly writ in that eternal arrangement.

  Mary's hand. I bent forward and placed my fingers on it, lightly explored it. I knew those curves and hollows, those slender fingers, the sculptor's skill too finely honed. I had held that hand before.

  I don't know how long I stood in the graveyard. The shadows eventually grew long, the breeze changed direction, and I knew that if I didn't move soon I might be forever rooted in that spot. I tore myself away from the twin graves and raced back to my room. I would not leave it, I decided. I would remain there, in the sleeping bag or rocking chair, until my boat arrived.

  That night the clouds massed from the southeast and the wind rattled the few remaining shutters of the ancient house. I hoped with all my might that the weather would hold clear, lest my boatman lose his nerve. But as I watched from my high window, the storm raged toward the island, the wind screaming as the rain began. Suddenly a bolt of lightning ripped across the charred sky, and I saw her in the yard below the house.

  My Mary.

  She looked up at me with those familiar, ravishing eyes, that long hair darkened by rain, her comely form encased in that grand dress. My heart beat faster and my pulse throbbed with equal parts dread and desire. On a second lightning strike that followed closely on the heels of the first, I saw that she was motioning for me. I tried to pull my eyes away, but I could not.

  Though I commanded my flesh to remain by the window, my legs found a will of their own and carried me to the stairs. I went down, a step at a time, my heart racing with dreadful anticipation. When I reached the first floor, the rain had increased, and the whole house shook on its flimsy pilings. She was waiting on the porch for me.

  “Will you come?” she asked.

  “Mary,” I said.

  She nodded, then, without a word, she turned and ran into the brunt of the storm.

  I jumped after her, dashing madly through the dead town of Portsmouth, shouting at the sky, my curses lost against the fury. The wind among the hollow houses sounded like the laughter of a great crowd. I ran on, toward the beach where I knew the longboat would be.

  She had already worked the boat into the water, and beckoned me with an oar. I fought through the turbulent sea, finally gaining the stern and climbing aboard. She had locked two of the oars and arched her back, dipping the oars into the churning sea. I found two more oars in the bottom and locked them into place, clumsily trying to match my strokes with hers.

  It was useless, I knew. We were two against the ocean's might, two against nature, two alone. But I didn't care. All that mattered was Mary, pleasing Mary, being with Mary.

  Lightning lashed again, and I saw the now-familiar tableau of sinking clipper and endangered rowboats. It may have been my imagination, but I thought I saw a man standing in the fore of one of the rowboats, waving his arms in our direction. Certainly I imagined it.

  “Benjamin!” she shouted, looking over her straining shoulders. A wave crested nearby and the salt stung my eyes and nose and throat.

  “Row faster,” Mary yelled to me. “We have to save Benjamin.”

  And if we did? If somehow we managed to beat the brutal sea and pull alongside his boat, if we then were blessed with the miracle of returning to shore, what then?

  Mary would have her Benjamin, and I would have nothing. I would lose Mary.

  I stopped rowing, and the longboat careened against the waves. Mary saw that I had stopped.

  “Help me,” she said, those beautiful eyes confused, her precious mouth moving in silent question.

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Benjamin's dead. You're mine, now.”

  I reversed direction with the oars, working one side until I turned the boat around. I expected her to fight, to thrash her own oars opposite mine. But she released them, and they slid into the waves.

  She stood in the rocking boat, all grace and glory and the deepest beauty ever crafted. Without a word, she dove into the sea.

  I shouted, “I love you,” but I don't know if she heard me.

  I waited several minutes that seemed hours, fighting the currents, watching for her to surface. The lightning struck again, and in its luminance, I saw that the clipper and rescue boats were gone, victims of the callous ocean. I imagined that each flash of foam, each breaking wave, was the lace of Mary's dress.

  But she didn't appear. I battled the oars and clawed my way toward shore, though I lost my sense of direction. All that remained was to row and row, to drag the foundering boat through the sea that desperately wanted to swallow it.

  The storm soon dwindled and died, and I found myself on the sand. As I coughed the salt water from my lungs, the east glowed with the pink of dawn. I struggled to my hands and knees and looked across the bay. No boat, no wreck, no Mary.

  I hauled myself back to the house where I was staying. It took me many minutes to navigate the stairs, then I finally made it to my room and my chair and my high window. I took up my post, a watcher, a lighthouse keeper for the dead.

  Three days, and still I keep my post.

  I hope the boatman has given up on me. As much fear as filled his eyes when he hinted at the island's secrets, I don't think he even came ashore. I wonder if he will report my absence, or if he has his own orders, his own obsessions. It may take a week or more before anyone finds me.

  Plenty of time for her to find me first, if she so desires.

  Desire is an odd thing, a destructive thing, a strangely beautiful thing. Perhaps that is the lesson of this tale, the one that has replaced the travel article on my laptop. Whoever finds this account can make of it what they will. For the story was written many decades before, the ending the only thing left in the balance.

  The ending.

  I hear her now, below me, her footsteps as graceful as the rhythm of the sea. She climbs a winding stair, closer now.

  Or perhaps it's only the wind creaking ancient wood.

  I don't know which I dread the most.

  Her arrival in lace and deceived rage?

  Or her never arriving, never again granting me a glimpse of her everlasting and non-existent beauty?

  I can almost hear her now.

  Almost.

  THE END

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  ###

  MUST SEE TO APPRECIATE

  This was the part that Reynolds hated the most.

  The deal was so close he could almost smell it. The fish was nibbling, practically had the worm between his nubby gums. Reynolds had wowed the mark with the double bay windows, the parquet flooring, the loft bedroom with skylight, and the view of the Appalachian Mountains stretching a blue hundred miles in the distance. Custom cabinets and a cherry stair railing hadn't hurt, either, and the deck was wide enough to field a baseball game. Surely that was enough to convince anybody that this twenty-acre piece of real estate and 7,200-square-foot floor plan was the steal of a lifetime, especially at the sacrificial price of four hundred grand.

  But the mark wanted to see the basement. They always wanted to see the basement. It figured. Reynolds was stuck handling the only haunted house on the local market, and these idiot buyers didn't make the job any easier.

  “The bulb's burned out in the basement, David,” Reynolds said. “Had the caretaker up here the other day, and said he'd get around to changing it. You'd think he'd carry one in his truck, you know it? Good help is hard to find around t
hese parts, David.”

  Maybe he shouldn't have said that last bit. This buyer was from Florida, and might think that poor work habits were an Appalachian trademark. Reynolds looked David in the eye and smiled. It was Reynolds' plastic smile, the closer smile, the glib smarmy hypertoothiness that he'd learned in salesman school.

  The man reached into his back pocket and pulled out a flashlight. “I used to be a builder,” David said. “You can tell a lot about how a house is put together by looking at the floor joists. A house needs a good foundation, especially when it's clinging to the side of a ridge.”

  Damn, Reynolds thought. “David, you're a man after my own heart. A real fixer-upper, I'll bet. Not that you'll need to do much work on this house.”

  Even though every corner is slightly out of square.

  Reynolds thought about slapping David gently on the back to punctuate the statement, then decided against it. David seemed more like the firm-handshake, no-nonsense type. A tough sell. A man that was hard to sucker. The kind of man who wore a little tape measure on his belt.

  Reynolds headed toward the door that led to the basement stairs. The chill crept over him as he palmed the door handle. He put an ear to the door, pretending to check the hinges when actually he was listening for the spook. Damned thing had cost him a commission three times already.

  Reynolds made a show of looking at his watch. “You said you had to meet your wife at the airport?”

  “Yeah,” David said, studying the blown gypsum ceiling for cracks. “But there's plenty of time.”

  “Traffic can be a bear around here. You may have noticed that all the roads are twisty, and you're bound to get behind some flatlander tourist—no offense, mind you.”

  David stepped to the basement door. “I'll manage.”

  “David, this is a whole lot of house for the money, David,” Reynolds blurted. Had he said David's name twice? In realtor finishing school, he'd learned that you used the name of the potential buyer as much as possible. But maybe he was overdoing it.

  He was losing his concentration. Sweat pooled in the armpits of his shirt and stained his serge jacket. He lightly bit his lip to bring himself under control. The bite turned into a disguising smile.

  David smiled back. The man was too patient, in Reynolds' opinion. One of those forty-somethings who had already finished his life's work, his bank account probably set for the downhill run. Had a kid at Duke and one in an academy somewhere, a tennis-playing wife who probably came from old textile money. Reynolds saw no troubles in that tan, placid face, and a flare of jealousy rocketed across his heart.

  But it wasn't David's fault that Reynolds dropped eighty grand in a sour time-share deal. No, not time-share. Interval ownership was the new gold-plated term for it. But by any name, Reynolds was in the hole and had a lot riding on this sale. Haunted house or not.

  David switched on the flashlight. Reynolds turned the knob and let the basement door swing fully open. The hinges creaked like an old woman's bones.

  “Going to need a little oil there,” David said, playing the light over the hinges.

  “Y—yeah,” Reynolds stammered, as the cold crypt air wafted up from the basement and bathed his skin.

  “You going first?”

  “You're the guest.”

  “But you know the territory better.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, David.”

  Careful, Reynolds chided himself. He was oh-so-close to nailing this one down. All he had to do was smile and walk down the stairs, let David have his little look, rap on a few floor joists, kick the support beams, and they'd be back in the office in no time, running some numbers and working up papers. And Reynolds would be rid of this house forever.

  All Reynolds had to do was finish the tour.

  He surreptitiously wiped the sweat from his brow and stepped past David into the murk. His feet found the steps and he laughed aloud, trying to hide his nervousness.

  “What's so funny?” David said.

  “I forgot to tell you, the basement's half-finished. The previous owner was converting it into a rec room. Talk about your amenities, David. Only a little bit of payout, and you can have the perfect little hideaway. From the wife and kids, know what I mean?”

  “I like my wife and kids,” David said. “What about the previous owners?”

  Damn, damn, damn. They always asked that question. Reynolds cleared his throat and continued down the roughed-in wooden stairs, following the flashlight's beam. The darkness swallowed the light ten feet ahead as hungrily as the crawl-space swallowed the sound of their footsteps.

  “Well, David, the previous owners were—” This was the real no-no. The one thing he'd learned was that you didn't talk about people who had died in a house, especially a house you were trying to sell. Buyers were superstitious.

  “The previous owners were old, and this was a little too much house for them. They bought into a sweet condo deal on the coast.” Reynolds found lying distasteful. Sometimes lying was difficult for a salesman to avoid. But he preferred the more sophisticated methods of distraction, bait-and-switching, and blinding the customer with useless but eye-catching extravagances.

  A nice window treatment kept them from noticing that the window was broken. A crystal chandelier hid stains caused by a leaky roof. A gilt-edged and wall-mounted mirror kept them so busy looking at themselves that they failed to see the odd shapes hovering in the alcove.

  David shined the light into the belly of the house as they reached the smooth concrete floor at the bottom of the stairs. “Going to need a few strip lights down here.”

  “Great place for a pool table and a big-screen TV,” Reynolds said, looking around warily.

  David studied the plain gray walls, the nails visible in the sheetrock. “Smells a little musty,” he said.

  “Yeah, been closed up too long. You get a little air in here, it'll clear up in no time.”

  It's just a little decay. And that odor that never seemed to go away completely. Nothing unusual.

  David sniffed again. “Sure there's no mice?”

  Mice? Everybody had mice. But maybe David didn't tolerate mice. Some buyers were like that, even a man's man like David.

  Everybody's got their own little quirks, don't they? You, for example. Acting like a big-shot wheeler-dealer, cool as a termite, like you could care less whether anybody ever takes this dump off your hands.

  “Look how solid this construction is, Dave,” Reynolds said, sneaking a peek to see if David minded the shortened form of his name.

  David pounded on the sheet rock partition wall and frowned. “Sounds hollow.”

  Reynolds licked his lips. The spook should be here by now.

  “So, why are the owners selling?” David asked. He shined the light into Reynolds' face, causing him to squint.

  “Uh...they wanted to move to a warmer climate. These Appalachian winters can be tough.”

  Oops. You need to sell them on the summers, when the air is fresh and the shade inviting and the cool creek bubbling beside the house is an asset, not an ice-coated hazard. Play up the investment angle, too.

  “They move to Florida?” David asked, investigating the galvanized ductwork that ran beneath the flooring. Yellow insulation filled the gaps between the floor joists.

  “Sure. Doesn't everybody?” Reynolds chuckled. He kept his eyes glued to the bouncing circle of the flashlight beam, though the thing he really wanted to see was probably hiding in the darkness, mere inches from the edge of light. His dread was nearly matched by his curiosity.

  “You wouldn't be lying to me, would you, Reynolds?” The light exploded in his eyes again. “About somebody living here?”

  He blinked rapidly. “I don't know what you're talking about, David. Now, we need to be getting back. Afraid I've got another appointment.”

  The light remained on his face. Reynolds could see nothing of the man behind the bright wash.

  “Haven't you seen enough?” Reynolds said, a little bit of the hey-ol
d-chum tone still working its way into his voice. He decided to give one last try at turning over this property. “You just can't find places like this anymore. More than a mile from the nearest house. You don't have to worry about the neighborhood brats bugging you.”

  “I like kids,” David said.

  “Sure, David. And your kids will love it here. Plenty of room to play, hike, or just scream at the top of your lungs if you feel like it. You can scream for days and no one will notice.”

  “And why would somebody need to scream? Is this place occupied or something?”

  David's words were eaten by the shadows. The stillness of the basement was broken only by Reynolds' ragged heartbeat and breath.

  “Occupied?” Reynolds said, not even having to pretend to sound startled. “This place isn't occupied.”

  “You wouldn't lie to me, would you, Reynolds?”

  He wasn't lying. The house wasn't haunted. Rather, it was...what was that catch-phrase? Oh yes, multi-dimensionally possessed.

  Still, beads of sweat erupted on the high bare plane of Reynolds' forehead. The light mercifully fell away and raced across the smooth white-gray of the cement.

  “David, David, David,” Reynolds tutted, recovering somewhat now that his face was hidden by the darkness again. “I'm not a high-pressure kind of guy. If you don't want the house, that's fine with me.”

  Well, not all THAT fine, because then I might have to drape a rope over the ductwork and twist a little noose and take myself a midnight swing.

  Not many buyers existed for a palace like this. While the layout was great, the house was a little too angled. You stepped inside and you felt uneasy. The walls listened and the electrical sockets were tiny black eyes and every single nail and screw and chunk of spackle whispered and every board groaned, even when the wind was still.

  Surely David had sensed it, too. That's why he'd asked the question. It's the kind of house you'd expect to be occupied.

  “I'll have to put some deadwood braces between those joists,” David said. “They're starting to bow a little.”