The Family Plot (32 page)

Her fear and worry didn't magically go away, but she packed them away in a box, taped it up, and put it in the corner. It was just one more thing she could unpack and process when she got back home. It wouldn't do anyone any good right now. It was only in the way.

So remember the tiles, and stack them up neat. If you break them, set them aside, but don't toss 'em. Go for the built-ins if you think you can pull them out of the wall in only a piece or two. Leave them if they have Phillips-head screws. It means they're newer than the 1930s, and they won't be worth the trouble.

Forget the mirrors. Forget the broken glass. Forget the sounds of doors opening and closing when nobody's there.

Remember the cameras—the digital ones have movie mode. You can set them where people are working, like Brad suggested. He aimed one right at himself, like it was casting a spell that would protect him from all evil. For his sake, Dahlia hoped he was right.

If you don't catch anything, you work in peace. If you catch something, you're not crazy, and you're famous on cable TV.

*   *   *

Over the next few hours, they made a dent in the list, but didn't break through it.

Lunch was a hasty affair, cleaning up the last of the lunch meat and cheese, powering through cans of Chef Boyardee, and scarfing down Little Debbies. Better to eat it than to toss it all—or load it up and take it back to Nashville. Maybe if they were feeling especially celebratory or desperate, they'd go get supper someplace before they checked into a hotel.

As lunch wound down, Bobby opened the fridge to reveal a couple of six-packs. “Better finish these up, too.”

Dahlia put out her hands and made grabby fingers at the beer. “Ordinarily, I'd yell at you about drinking on the job, but if ever a job required a drink, this is it. Give me one. Hell, give me two—and I'll take one upstairs.”

The bottles clinked against each other as she climbed to the second floor. She'd already removed the three small stained glass windows and covered the exposed openings with plastic, though she'd need help with the large one downstairs. She'd gotten the cute pre-war medicine cabinet from the hallway bathroom, but she was leaving the claw-foot tub; it was a five-footer, and you could get those damn near anywhere. She'd toted all the light furniture downstairs and the keep-worthy heavier items, with Brad's help. There was nothing left up there but the big stuff in Hazel's room, which she'd been saving for last.

Brad finished the contents of his beer and set the empty bottle on the floor. “You want a hand with that vanity?”

“Not yet. Give me a few minutes to go through the contents. Could you bring me a box?”

“How big?”

“Big enough to hold a bunch of shit, but not too big for me to carry. Bring me a couple of them, actually. I'd appreciate it.”

Only a few of the flat-packed cardboard boxes had made it out of the trucks dry, but they'd have to do. She had a fat roll of packing tape on a handled dispenser to assemble them, and she didn't think Hazel had left so much behind that she'd need more than two boxes to hold it all.

Moths had gotten into the left set of vanity drawers. The grayish-brown fluff in the bottom one might've once been feathers from a fascinator, or wool gloves, or silk handkerchiefs … almost anything. Now it was moth shit. She dumped the drawers, one after another, into the plastic trash bag she'd brought for just such a purpose.

Brad soon returned with the flat-packed, corrugated cardboard boxes.

He assembled one for Dahlia while she worked her way through the other drawers, collecting the gloves and hats that remained. Why the moths hit one side and not the other, there was no telling. She picked up one of the dapper little hats and tried it on. It sat jauntily on her head, perched to the side. “I love your style,” she said to Hazel, in case the ghost was watching. “I hope you don't mind if I keep one of these. And a clutch or two. Like I ever have any reason to carry a clutch.”

Times were changing. Maybe she'd go out of her way to find a clutchworthy occasion.

“A night out,” Brad suggested, tugging out another strip of tape and pressing it flat. “Everybody needs one, now and again.”

“Sure. A night out.”

The wardrobe backing was made of cedar, so the clothes there were in somewhat better shape. Much was gone, but everything that'd been touching the wood was as intact as you could expect, given how long it'd been hanging there.

Brad gasped and dropped the tape dispenser. “Holy shit! What was that?”

“What?” Dahlia turned around. The pushed-aside box with all her fear and worry in it … the one she'd left in a corner of her head … shook, and rattled, and wobbled for attention. She refused to look at it.

Brad fumbled to retrieve his camera from his shirt pocket, where the lens peeked out for recording's sake. He aimed it at the mirror. He swept it around the room. He pointed it at the mirror again. “I saw something.”

“In here? It was probably just Hazel,” she said.

When nothing further happened, he sighed and put the camera phone back into his pocket. “Whatever it was, it's gone now. I told you: The cameras are magic for keeping these things away.”

“Maybe Hazel just doesn't like having her picture taken.”

“That's fine with me. I don't really want to see her. I don't want to see
any
of them.”

He went back to the tape, running a long strip down the bottom edge of the cardboard. It spooled out with a ripping sound, then a loud snip when he cut it off. “Even if I can't prove it, we're working in a real-life haunted house. I don't get why you aren't freaking out and running.”

“You don't think I'm freaking out?” She shook her head and tossed the contents of the last vanity drawer into the box. “If I
wasn't
freaking out, we'd be here through Saturday picking up every toothpick, doorknob, and nail. We'd be staying in the house tonight, like brave but stupid sitting ducks. No, sweetheart—I am well and truly freaking out.”

“But you could leave. We could all leave.”

“
You
could leave,” she said flatly. “Pick up your shit and go, if you want—all it'll cost you is your job. But if
I
pick up and leave, it's not just my job; it's the whole business out the window. We're all out on our asses: me and Gabe and Bobby, and my dad. James, and Barry, and everybody else. So, yeah, I'm freaking out. I'm packing up early, and I'm calling my daddy to come help because I'm scared, and then I'm making a run for it. But right now, when there's still daylight burning and work that needs doing … no. I'm not leaving.”

Brad fiddled with his tape dispenser, looking halfway sheepish and halfway hopeful. “I
could
go, couldn't I?”

“If you're that scared of a ghost in a bathroom, yes. Knock yourself out.”

For a minute, she thought he was going to leave a Brad-shaped hole in the door, especially when he said, “Maybe I
am
that scared.” But eventually he added, “You put it that way, it sounds like chickening out.” Before she could accuse him of exactly that, and demand that he cover up the soldier on his way home, he added, “But I'd have to get a cab, and rent a car, or something like that. And I like my job. Mostly. Except for the ghosts.”

“The first one's always the hardest.” She closed one of the wardrobe's doors and opened the other, to see if the moths had left anything good behind.

“What was your first worksite ghost?” he asked.

She paused, momentarily distracted by a long knit dress that was last worn circa 1960. She pulled it off the hanger and examined it. The fabric had stretched a little, but not too badly. She folded it gently and put it in the box.

“Dahlia?”

She cleared her throat. “It was a teenage boy. He'd killed himself in the basement of this old farmhouse, probably back in the 1950s. He was still down there, in spirit. He liked to unplug things, and short out the equipment when no one was looking.”

“Did you see him?”

“Only once. And once was enough.”

They worked together in silence for a few moments more. “Hey Dahlia? You don't think there's any chance that the … the thing up there, in the attic … the one that followed you into the hall … or the thing in the bathroom…”

“Same thing. It's Abigail.”

“Are you sure she can't hurt us?”

There were drawers inside the wardrobe, on the bottom level. She pulled one open, and thought about lying. “Just because she hasn't hurt anyone yet, doesn't mean she's not capable of it. That's why we're leaving at sundown.”

“That's the sanest thing I've ever heard you say.”

She nearly smiled, but didn't. “I'm not sure I can take that as a compliment, but you have to be practical about these things.”

“Practical about the undead?”

“What else would you suggest? When in trouble, when in doubt—run in circles, scream and shout? The fuck would that accomplish?”

“It beats pretending that everything's fine, and nothing's going on.”

Fast as lightning and twice as hot, she snapped, “I'm not pretending anything!” Her heart pounded and she clutched the fragile clothes, then unclenched her fists. It didn't do much to calm her. She hadn't packed up the fear quite well enough, and it was leaking back into her head, her hands, and her voice. “I'm just keeping my shit together, because someone has to! Jesus, Brad. You're a Georgia boy, ghosts shouldn't be news to you. All of us down here, we're not just living on battlefields. We're living on
graveyards.
Even the fake ones have bodies in them, don't you know?”

His voice shook when he said, “Only because I dug one up.”

She flung a capelet into the box and yanked out another dress, this one the color of ferns. She mostly left it folded, and hurled that in there, too. She collected everything she'd chosen so far and rose to her feet, wiping her hands on the seat of her jeans. “Goddammit, just
go,
if this is too much for you.”

But he rose to his feet, too—and dug in his heels. “I only have to make it until dark, right?”

Exhausted by this entire line of conversation, she sighed. “Yes.”

“Then how long is it, 'til dark?” He clutched at the shirt pocket with the camera phone, reassuring himself that it was still running.

“Another six or seven hours, so you might want to put the phone away for a while. It'll start
feeling
dark before that—when the sun falls behind the mountain, but the sun won't really set until eightish.”

“And come eight, we're out of here?”

“More like seven thirty,” she vowed. “Can you stick it out that long?”

“Without having a nervous breakdown? I make no promises.” The quiver in his eyes said he was halfway there already, so a promise wouldn't mean much anyway.

“Let's hold off on the nervous breakdowns. If you have a nervous breakdown, you might drop this vanity when we walk it down the stairs, and then I'd have to kill you, and then I'd go to jail, and no one would be very happy. I'd rather just get Bobby or Gabe to help me, if you're going to run around squeaking like a girl every time you hear a footstep you can't explain.”

“Footsteps, I can ignore. Dead soldiers who stand there and look sad … fine, that guy wasn't bothering anybody.”

“How about apparitions in mirrors?”

He thought about it. “You said Hazel was a nice lady.”

“She seems to be. I think she wants to help. Now, do me a favor, dear—put the last box together, and start going through the bureau drawers. Anything that's in one piece, add it to the stash.”

Downstairs, the sound of chisels and pry bars gave way to power tools and high fives, as the first fireplace was pulled free of the wall, and then packed up for shipping. Gabe and Bobby relocated the sleeping bags and duffel bags and messenger bags and the last of the personal items to the far side of the room in the main living area, up against the staircase, and got to work on the larger fireplace, a delicate mission in marble.

Meanwhile, Dahlia and Brad finished up the last of the upstairs furniture—grunting and swearing the big pieces down the stairs and stashing them in the parlor, which was filling up fast.

Then, on to the top-floor windows. Not everything was coming with them, but in Brad and Bobby's former rooms there were matching frames with leaded glass in traditional patterns, with a sprinkle of green and yellow squares for pop. They came out easy, in one piece. Only one crack, and that little part could be replaced.

Fuck the tragic pink bathroom tiles. Even Bobby had come to agree. The bathrooms were a waste.

Dahlia and Brad took the hardware off the doors next, wrapping each set in newspaper to keep it all together, then boxing it all up. Next came the doors themselves, along with what decorative hinges remained. Anything modern went into the scrap pile.

Pry bars and saws came out, and the heart-of-pine upstairs was extracted one plank at a time. What couldn't be saved was left behind, leaving islands of wood surrounded by subflooring and joists. The second floor was as stripped as it was going to get, right around the time Bobby and Gabe announced that they needed a hand with the big marble surround. There was one big crack, and a couple of small ones—no big deal, but it took a lot of love and duct tape and padding to get the massive thing ready for the truck and out into the parlor.

On to the rest of the first floor. Two more stained-glass panels, one in amazing shape, one in iffy condition. Bubble wrapped and set aside, with plastic tarp over the holes left behind, since the rain was still drumming, and they were still planning to take the floors. More gorgeous trim, with carved blocks and filigree. All of it oak. The pry bars picked it all down, and Dahlia stacked it all up.