Decoration Day (2 page)

“Please, call me David.”

“Yes, David. Are you sure that it wasn’t your own conscience that told you that, instead of the Almighty?”

David shook his head. “Have you ever had a calling from God?”

Marsh made a steeple with his fingers and smiled, showing small, square teeth. “I cannot say that I have.”

“I have twice before. This was exactly like those times. God wants me to preach there. He needs me to. I need to. I need meaning in my life, Alistair.”

“We are currently without a minister.” Marsh leaned forward. “You have to understand that we are a small community and an equally small congregation. We cannot pay you much.”

“I understand. I’ll work for enough to feed myself and pay rent, unless there is a parsonage.”

“The last minister lived in the church. There is a small apartment in the back. Just a sitting area with a bed, small kitchen and bathroom. Nothing refined.”

“Sounds good.”

Marsh nodded. “I will need to talk to a few of the elders, but I think we can arrange something.” He stood. “Get a few of your belongings from your car. You will sleep here tonight, and tomorrow, if the elders agree, we will go to the church.”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you. I can stay at a motel.”

Marsh laughed. It sounded like a hollow echo in a mountain cave. “We don’t have any inns or motels. Don’t let the name of the town fool you.”

“I suppose I will impose myself on your kindness then,” David said.

“No imposition at all. I’ll have Thomasine prepare a guest room for you.” Marsh turned to walk out of the room, stopped and said, “Let me give you some advice though. This is an old house. Don’t go poking around where you shouldn’t. You might not like what you find.”

Monday

An old-fashioned alarm clock ticked against the silence of the bedroom. The monotonous sound should have lulled him to sleep, but the noise the clock produced sounded less like the ticking of a metronome and more like the beating of heart. David put a pillow over his head to help muffle the ticking, but that only made the sound more like a heartbeat.

Bedsprings poked him in the back through a thin mattress on the single bed frame. He rolled onto his side. One of the coiled metal devils poked him right in the ribs. David sat up, planting his feet on the oiled wooden floor. The clock beat on. Enough moonlight filtered in through the windows for him to see the time: three o’clock. Apparently, he’d slept some without realizing it, because he’d gone to bed sometime after supper, around eleven o’clock.

Thomasine had left a crystal pitcher filled with water on the dresser across the room. David walked to it. The floorboards creaked as he did so. They moaned as if under extreme agony. He wondered how long it had been since someone slept in the room that was his for the night. Although the room was rather large, the bed was reminiscent of those he’d seen while touring a closed convent.

He poured some water in a cut-glass goblet beside the pitcher on the tray. The lukewarm water didn’t refresh him, but it did quench his thirst. The dust and stuffy air of the room messed with his sinuses.

I suppose Marsh doesn’t want me to be too comfortable.

David left the light off but looked around the room. It was strange how much light seeped in. The moon must be full, and the sky clear, although he remembered it had started raining before he’d gone to bed. An old sofa sat against the wall under a window. It looked more comfortable than the bed. David grabbed a quilt from the mattress and lay down on the plush sofa. His feet didn’t hang off the end. No springs poked him, and the cushions gave him just enough support.

As he tried to ignore the ceaseless beating of the Baby Ben clock, he lifted the gauzy curtain to stare at the night sky. Rain pattered on the windowpane.

“Where is the light coming from?” he wondered, lying back on the
 
arm of the sofa.

Purple light seeped from the cracks between the crown molding and the ceiling. David blinked hard and even rubbed his eyes, not believing what he saw. When he looked again, the light was there. That light—not the moon—lit the room. As the clock ticked, the light pulsed just enough to be visible. He blinked again, thinking that it was a trick of his eyes. But when he paid closer attention, he saw that the light indeed dimmed and brightened in sync with the clock.

David got up again and went to the door. The old brass handle felt cool in his hand as he turned it. Although Marsh had told him not to wander around the house after bedtime, he had to know what was going on. He stepped into the hallway lighted by an ornate electric sconce. Nothing seemed out of place. Old paintings of seascapes and rocky beaches hung on the wall. An elaborate piece of furniture like a buffet stood between two doors opposite his. David assumed they too led to unused bedrooms. He looked at the ceiling. No purple light filtered down. He peeked back into his own room. The light still pulsated softly. Something was happening above his room.

He walked down the hallway toward the staircase. A runner muffled his footfalls, but an occasional floorboard moaned as if tattle-telling on him. He thought about tiptoeing. The whole thing felt very childish—like he’d watched a scary movie that wouldn’t let him sleep. It felt like an Edgar Allen Poe story. He hoped that a raven didn’t accost him on the way to the third floor. David thought that a ghost might even cross his path.

Before his wife died, he never would have thought such things. People died, and their spirits either went to the paradise of Abraham’s bosom or the everlasting torment of the pit. Nothing lingered between worlds. But after his beloved—Anna—suffered for so long despite his fervent prayers, he didn’t know what he believed. His uncertainty about things, especially spiritual, drove him away from the church on his long soul-searching trip, if there was a soul.
 

Now he topped the last stair to the third floor of the old home. The third-floor hallway was lit in a soft, glowing violet light. The source of it seemed to come from behind a closed door midway down the hall. The thin light gave the whole scene a dim, tainted appearance. No furniture lined the hall. Only candle sconces hung from the walls. This part of the house seemed devoid of electricity. The carpet looked more worn than any in the rest of the house. Many feet had passed over it many times. David followed in the unseen footsteps as he made his way to the mysterious door.

The handle was not brass but glass. The beveling on it made it feel like a giant jewel. It turned, but the door would not budge. David looked at the handle. Amethyst light shone through a keyhole. He’d never peeked through one of these, but he had to know what was in the room.
 

Just like in every old, scary movie he’d ever seen, the keyhole revealed what was on the other side of the locked door. There seemed to be no source for the light, but he saw an empty room with a large portrait hanging on the opposite wall. The painting looked like Alistair Marsh, but the dress appeared much older, Civil War era perhaps. People or things seemed to be standing behind him. David couldn’t make it out through such a small peephole.

“I thought I told you not to wander around the halls at night,” Marsh said from behind him.

David jumped to his feet. His heart beat much faster than the alarm clock in his room could. He turned to his host, who was dressed in a red silk robe and holding a candle in a candlestick.

“I couldn’t sleep because a purple light shined into my room. It was coming from up here. I came to see if I could put it out.”

The flickering candlelight played on the angles of Marsh’s face. He looked sinister with deep shadows on his cheeks and eyes.

“I don’t see any light,” he said.

David looked down. No light seeped from the crack at the bottom of the door. “It was just there. I even saw a picture of one of your ancestors hanging on the wall.”

Marsh shook his head. “We don’t use this floor of the house. It’s never even been wired for electricity. I think maybe you were dreaming and perhaps sleepwalked up here. Let me take you back to your room.”

“I’ve never sleepwalked before,” David said. “Things seem so real.”

“Sometimes old houses can do strange things to people.” Marsh put his hand on David’s shoulder. “That is the reason I warned you to be careful of this place.”

“I really don’t think I was dreaming. I have no idea why I would concoct such a dream.”

“Tomorrow, when you are rested and the sun is up, I will show you that nothing is in that room and dispel your doubts that you were just dreaming.”

David nodded his agreement and followed Marsh back to his room. As he lay down on the sofa, no purple light seeped from the cracks in the ceiling. He heard Marsh lock his door and hoped his host only did it out of worry. He had had nightmares since Anna died, but never walked around the house in his sleep. The locked door scared him too. Marsh was a stranger, even if he had been hospitable. David decided to wait and see what happened.

He closed his eyes and listened to the tick-tock of the Baby Ben. It sounded like a clock again, not a heartbeat. Everything had been only a dream.
 

Just before he drifted off to sleep, David thought he heard footsteps on the floor above him. Had someone entered the empty room? He tried to rouse himself, but sleep had become too irresistibly strong.

The creaking of the bedroom door awakened David. He sat up to see Thomasine walking in with a tray. She walked across to him and started to lay it across his lap. The tray was wider than the sofa. She glared at him.

“Sorry,” he said, slinging his legs around and sitting properly on the sofa. “I could’ve come down for breakfast. There was no need for such formality.”

“No formality. The master always eats in bed. All the guests do as well.”

Before she could sit the tray on his lap, David caught the corner. “What is breakfast?”

She glowered at him. “Porridge, melba toast, marmalade, and kipper with coffee.”

“I think I’d rather not,” he said. The sound of the breakfast put a brick in his stomach. “I’ll just take the coffee.”

David took the china teacup from the tray. Thomasine looked disgusted and started out of the room. She stopped by the dresser and placed the water pitcher and glass on the tray. She slammed the door.

He felt a bit of relief that the unpleasant maid was gone and took a swig of coffee. The unexpected bitterness of chicory nearly made him spew it on the floor. Fortunately, the liquid was tepid enough for him to swallow it before making a mess or burning his gullet out.

David walked to the dresser and left the coffee there. Thomasine had said that Marsh took his breakfast in bed. This might be the best opportunity for David to sneak up to the third floor and look back into that room. Now that morning had broken, he knew he wasn’t dreaming or sleepwalking, despite what Marsh had said.

David went to the small carpet bag he’d brought up from his car the night before. He kept a change of clothes and pajamas in it so he didn’t have to unload his entire car when he’d stopped for the night during his wanderings. The toilet kit came in handy. A quick shave with his electric razor while looking in a small hand mirror cleaned him up enough as did hitting his hair a lick with his travel brush. David changed into a pair of black slacks and blue long-sleeved shirt. The top of his white undershirt peeked out from the open button at the neck. He felt he was ready to investigate what he’d dreamt last night.

The hallway was empty when he crept into it. In the morning light, the corridor looked a little livelier, but still felt heavy and sullen. He eased down the hall, back to the staircase. Everything was as he remembered it from the night before.

Pans clattered from the main floor. David paused midstep. He heard Thomasine cursing and could tell she was well beneath him. After a few more eternal seconds, he started up the stairs.
 

At the landing, things looked different than they had last night. Heavy tapestries draped the walls, covering where the candle sconces would have been. The fabrics lay flat against the wall with no sign of a bulge that would have denoted hidden fixtures. A large candle chandelier hung from the middle of the ceiling.

David looked at each tapestry as he walked down the hall. They all depicted ocean scenes. A schooner broke up on rocks on the first hanging. The next showed dark, bent figures emerging from the frothy waves. He stopped at where the door to the mysterious room was supposed to be. A tapestry hung there. David pressed his hand against it. Solid wall backed the hanging. He pushed the edge aside and found that a wall was indeed behind the hanging.

The tapestry dropped back in place as he let it go. The picture woven into the cloth was another maritime vignette. A schooner tossed up on fitful waves. The sky behind it glowed purple. It actually seemed to glow. David touched the stitching. It felt coarse like the rest of the thread used in the hanging.

“Trying to see if you were indeed dreaming?” Marsh said from behind David.

He started and turned around. His host stood with his arms crossed and a bemused expression on his face. David smiled.

“It seemed so real,” he said. “I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t.”

“I told you that this is an old house and many dreams and nightmares float around its halls.” Marsh flourished his hand toward the stairs. “My car is waiting to take us to the church. The other elders are meeting us there.”