Shallow Graves (The Haunted Book 1) Read online

  All right, interest piqued.

  “It sure is interesting,” he admitted. “Now to find a way in…”

  Robert glanced to his left and he saw an old, worn metal box with a single gray button and slats affixed to a metal pole.

  Intercom, he thought immediately.

  Maneuvering his car up next to the intercom, Robert rolled down his window. A strong gust of cool wind immediately hit him and drew a prolonged shiver. He glanced back to see if Amy was cold, but she didn’t seem to notice the change in temperature; the girl’s blue eyes appeared transfixed on the house in the distance.

  A storm is coming soon—a big’un, as they say.

  Robert decided to pick up the pace, not wanting to be stuck in the rainstorm given everything that had happened. He leaned out the window with the intention of pushing the gray button, but before he reached it, a high-pitched squeal cut through the heavy air.

  “Jesus!” he cried, instinctively covering his ears with both hands. “Cover your ears, Amy!”

  He glanced in the rearview and noticed that she was already covering one ear with her hand, and was using Mr. Gregorius to cover her other. She had also folded the bunny’s ears down, he noted.

  Movement in front of the car caught his eye, and Robert returned his attention to the gate. It had started to open, but the hinges were so rusty that they struggled against the whirring of an unseen motor.

  Another squeal cut through the air, and Robert pushed his hands even harder against the sides of his head. The noise was like a pickax strike to his brain. When the gate chuffed awkwardly and the high-pitched screech abated, Robert took his left hand off his ear and quickly rolled up the window.

  When the gate was halfway open, it appeared to get stuck. Robert waited for a moment to see if it would continue opening, but nothing happened. With a shrug, he glanced quickly on either side of the vehicle to try and gauge whether or not his car would fit though.

  It was going to be close.

  “What do you thi—?” The words came out like a shout, and he flexed his jaw to pop his ears. “Sorry. What do you think, Amy? Can we fit through?”

  Amy gave the opening her own cursory onceover.

  “I think so,” she surmised, and Robert smiled at her serious expression.

  He glanced up again and slowly eased his foot off the brake. For some reason, Sean Sommers’s face flashed in his mind, followed by the back of his navy pea coat as he headed from Robert’s stoop toward his Buick.

  Huh—where’s Sean? And how the hell did his car fit through this?

  Robert’s car, a more practical Mazda 3, was much narrower, and he wasn’t confident that he could get through without banging his side mirrors on the iron gates.

  The car inched forward at a snail’s pace, and when it passed through with less than an inch on either side, a sense of pride washing over Robert.

  “Just,” he told Amy in the backseat. “Just.”

  As the Mazda crept along the winding drive, Robert tried to take in more of the property; it was in worse shape than he had first thought. The driveway itself wasn’t made of gravel, but of interlocking brick that was in such poor shape that it crunched beneath his tires. When he reached the cherub statue, he slowed further still to take a better look. There was a layer of slime in the bottom of the basin, and even from the driver’s seat he caught a shudder of movement at the bottom. Lip curled in disgust, he averted his gaze.

  And yet this wasn’t the most disturbing part of the scene.

  The angel or cherub’s eyes were X’d out with what looked like white paint.

  Robert pressed the gas pedal, hoping that Amy hadn’t already noticed the creepy statue.

  “Look at the door!” he said quickly in a lame attempt to distract her.

  But as he followed his own instructions, he realized that the door was impressive for reasons other than its immense size. Made of solid, dark wood with thick knots and deep grooves moving vertically up its length, it was attached to the brick with massive metal hinges.

  It looked like a relic from the fifteen hundreds, an antique rescued from a dilapidated church, perhaps.

  Robert brought the car to a stop in front of the crumbling steps leading up to the entrance.

  “Adventure, Amy,” he said preemptively. “Think of this as an adventure.”

  Before she could respond, worried that she might complain, Robert put the car into park and opened the door, steeling himself against a wind that never came.

  Breathing the stale, musty-smelling air, he unclicked Amy from her booster seat and helped her out of the car.

  “Well?” he asked as they walked the short distance to the front steps and gazed up at the massive door. “What do you think?”

  When Amy didn’t immediately respond, Robert glanced down at his daughter. He was surprised to see that she still had Mr. Gregorius pressed to her ear.

  “Amy?”

  She turned her eyes to him.

  “Mr. Gregorius says he is going to have lots of friends here.”

  Robert chuckled, and with his daughter’s hand in his own, he made his way up the ten or so steps, avoiding the worst of the broken sections that looked all too eager to twist their ankles.

  “Don’t know about that, sweetie…doesn’t look like anyone has lived here in years.”

  When he reached the door, he was again struck by the sheer immensity of it. From a distance, he had thought the door was eight or maybe ten feet tall, but now that he was within a foot of the thing, he had to crank his neck to see the top.

  Don’t make ‘em like this anymore.

  He shrugged, then brought his knuckles up, poised to knock, when he heard the sound of a metal bolt sliding from somewhere inside the house.

  Instinctively, he shuffled backward, pulling Amy with him. His heel slipped on the well-worn brick step, and for a moment he teetered.

  Amy gave him a stiff yank and he regained his balance.

  “Thanks,” he said with a smirk.

  When he turned back to the double-doors, he was surprised to see that the left one had opened a crack. Unlike the gate behind them, these doors opened smoothly, silently.

  Robert strained to peer inside the two-inch opening. The interior was almost pitch black and he couldn’t make out much.

  “Hell—”

  But then a raw, scratchy voice drew his attention downward.

  Just a few inches above Amy’s head, a single eye encased in leathery lids stared out at them.

  Robert resisted the urge to recoil.

  “Robert Watts?” the woman—and it was a woman, judging by the thin strands of long white hair that fell over her one visible eye—demanded.

  Robert gaped, but said nothing. To the woman, however, this was as good as an affirmation, and she receded back into the shadows of the Harlop Estate.

  “Come in,” she instructed from the depths. “I can’t open the door any wider by myself.”

  Chapter 11

  The elderly woman with the liver-spotted skin and thin white hair collapsed into a rusted wheelchair the second Robert and Amy crossed the threshold of the Harlop Estate. Her body slumped, and then she reached behind the chair, grabbed an oxygen mask and put it to her face, breathing deeply. As he waited for her to catch her breath, Robert looked around to the soundtrack of the hissing dark green oxygen tank.

  The inside of the estate was in better condition than the outside, but only marginally so. As Robert’s eyes skipped across the sparse furniture—all old, antique wood covered in a thick layer of dust—he realized that this wasn’t a result of someone taking better care of the interior, but simply a lack of elements available to wreak havoc.

  Directly behind the woman in the wheelchair was a grandiose staircase, the kind that you see in movies, from which the prom queen descends to the cheers of her adoring fans. Only in this place, in the Harlop Estate, the staircase was dark, the old-fashioned pattern on the carpeting so worn that it had simply become a murky brown, and ther
e was no prom queen—only an old, sick, wheelchair-bound woman.

  To the right of the staircase was a closed door that Robert assumed led to a galley kitchen, while to the left, he could make out the dim outline of several couches covered in dust, a round wooden table, and a fireplace—a sitting room of sorts.

  “Robert,” Ruth said, drawing his attention back.

  “Yes?”

  “Close the door.”

  For some reason, despite the raw and hoarse quality of the woman’s voice, it had an insistent quality that was difficult to ignore. Robert turned and, with both hands flush against the backside of the open door, shoved.

  The door swung closed and immediately latched with moderate effort.

  “And what’s your name, little one?”

  Although he detected no malice in Ruth’s rough voice, Robert still felt uncomfortable when she held out a withered claw for Amy to shake. Obviously Amy felt the same revulsion, as although she stepped forward, she didn’t shake the woman’s hand. Instead, she shoved her stuffed bunny into her open palm.

  The woman smiled and gave the animal a weak squeeze.

  “Mr. Gregorius says he knows you,” Amy said.

  “Ah, yes, well there are many rabbits here, my love,” she wheezed, and then broke into a cough. Robert made a move to go to her, but she stopped him by holding up a leathery hand. “I’m fine.”

  Robert looked to Amy, whose attention was now focused on her stuffed rabbit.

  Mr. Gregorius…

  The name was strange and slightly embarrassing, and Robert felt his cheeks go warm.

  “Well, Robert, my name is—”

  Robert shook his head, cutting her off. All of this, from the statue with the X’d out eyes to the rusted wheelchair, were giving him a bad vibe.

  “I’m sorry, but there’s been some sort of mistake. I’m not your nephew.”

  The woman smiled even larger now, revealing a mouth filled with only a smattering of teeth. Her face was sallow, her skin heavily lined like elephant hide. If it weren’t for her small nose, as opposed to something long and pointed, he would have thought her witch-like.

  The thin white hair and blotchy scalp that peeked through weren’t helping her cause, however.

  “I’m afraid there has been a mistake,” she admitted, her green eyes that were barely visible in the sunken pits that housed them now glaring at him.

  Robert put a hand on Amy’s shoulders and slowly began to guide her backward.

  “I am sorry, then. We’ll just—”

  “There’s been a mistake, but it has nothing to do with how we are related, Robert. You are my nephew, of that I am sure.”

  Robert made a face.

  “You’re sure? How can you—?” But the woman was suddenly overcome with another coughing fit, and Robert was again inclined to go to her. This time she didn’t refuse his help.

  He quickly moved behind her, glancing briefly at the wheelchair that was rusted to next to nothing in some places, and then, with an open palm, began to gently tap her back.

  The feeling of the bones beneath Ruth’s thin black robe, the jutting of her spinal cord and her protruding ribs, was so awful that he almost quit after three taps. As it was, he was barely touching her, and yet he feared that even that was too aggressive as with every tap she rocked forward in the chair, dangerously close to falling out.

  Ruth snaked a hand behind her body, and Robert instinctively slunk away from it. The finger joints were so thick that he doubted she would have been able to either form a fist or straighten her hand; it was destined to remain a claw.

  A quick glance revealed that Amy was staring at him, and he felt a teachable moment coming on.

  She’s old and sick, not a freak. Have some compassion.

  Looking at her hand, he realized that the oxygen tube leading to the mask that she had put over her nose and mouth had snagged on a rusted screw and was cutting off the flow. He unhooked it and then stepped in front of her.

  The mask fogged and then defogged several times before she pulled it away again and finally finished her train of thought.

  “Robert, you are my nephew. I just didn’t know that your daughter would be joining us.”

  Robert patted Amy’s blonde head.

  “We felt that coming to Hainsey County would be an adventure.”

  The woman wiped spittle from her lips with the back of her hand and smirked.

  “Oh, it will be an adventure all right. Please, let me show you around.”

  ***

  The tour, if it could be described as such, took them first to the room with the fireplace, then through the closed door of what Robert had correctly assumed was a galley kitchen—Where you will cook my meals, he was told in so many words—to the large glass doors that led out to the back of the property.

  There was more to the house, much more, including a basement, and several great dining halls behind the regal staircase, but Aunt Ruth assured him that their usefulness had long since passed.

  It was getting upstairs that prove the biggest issue, and several times as he waited patiently for Ruth to make it to the next step, Robert wondered why the crooked woman even bothered—why she didn’t just take up permanent residence on the main floor. Lord knows it was more than large enough for the woman. Twice he almost said as much, but the woman’s determination, taking nearly a full minute on each of the steps she hobbled up, stayed his tongue.

  There was a second wheelchair on the top landing, which Ruth promptly collapsed into as if she had just completed a marathon.

  There were so many rooms upstairs that it was nearly dizzying. Thankfully, like on the main floor, Ruth decreed most of these off limits or unimportant, or both, and instead focused on only a handful. One of which was the bathroom, complete with a large clawfoot tub in the center. When Aunt Ruth decree that this was where Robert would bathe her, compassionate or not, he was helpless to prevent the shiver that shot up his spine. Still, despite his revulsion, he didn’t say anything to the contrary.

  Then she showed him her bedroom, and what was to be his, and a third, much smaller room that Ruth said Amy could have—if she wanted, of course.

  It was in Amy’s room that Robert chanced a look out the window. Behind the Harlop Estate was a massive overgrown lawn, punctuated by either tall sections of weeds or barren patches, that seemed to stretch for eons. In the distance, he could make out a gradual increase in a muddy slope, and towards what he assumed was the edge of the property, he noticed an outcropping of three or four large boulders. Even at this distance, the mud by the boulders looked softer than the surrounding areas, as if the torrential downpour of the last week had made some headway in eroding it.

  As he watched, several raindrops obscured his view. Then, as if it knew it had him as an observer, the sky suddenly went dark and the rain started to pour.

  “Rain’s coming.”

  The woman grunted an affirmation and wheeled around to face him. Robert pulled his gaze away from the window; it was impossible to see anything anymore anyway, what with the rain that was suddenly coming down in thick rivulets.

  “So?” Ruth suddenly asked. At first, Robert thought she was referring to his comment about the rain.

  So? So, my wife just died in a rainstorm just like this one. So I don’t much care for the rain right now.

  But when he opened his mouth to comment, she preemptively cut him off.

  “I assume Mr. Sommers explained the arrangement?”

  Robert contemplated this for a moment.

  As the last of my kin, and in return for your service, I will bequeath you my estate.

  His thoughts turned to the bills that Wendy had piled up and the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to make this month’s mortgage payment.

  Still, despite Cal’s assertion that getting out of the house would do him and Amy good, he was reluctant to accept such a strange, and quite frankly, unbelievable offer.

  Besides, even considering all of the woman in the whe
elchair’s certainty, he was positive he didn’t have an Aunt Ruth.

  He would have known if he had.

  Robert turned back to the window, and as if making his decision for him, the rain intensified. After what had happened to Wendy, he didn’t feel up to driving for two hours in the rain.

  “Yes, he made it clear. As did your letter.”

  “Good.”

  Robert reached over and pulled Amy into him.

  “I won’t promise anything, but it looks like we are going to be staying the night.”

  The woman’s green eyes narrowed until they completely disappeared into the dark circles that surrounded them.

  “If that’s okay by you, of course.”

  The woman grunted.

  “Well, then, I think it’s time you prepared dinner.”

  Robert had to give the woman credit; despite her failing body, she lacked nothing in terms of confidence.

  He rubbed Amy’s head, looking to her for reassurance, but she was busy entertaining herself with her bunny again.

  Mr. Gregorius.

  “It’s settled, then, I’ll prepare dinner.”

  But in the morning, we are out of here.

  Chapter 12

  Robert’s eyes snapped open and his breath caught in his throat. For a moment, he was completely disoriented and had no idea where he was. All he knew was that it was cold and dark where he lay, and that his body was covered in sweat.

  Where the hell am I?

  Then it all came flooding back. He was in the Harlop Estate, visiting his “Aunt” Ruth, when the sky had opened up. Robert sat up, kicking off the musty comforter that had slipped down in his sleep and was only covering his feet anyway. A quick glance at the window revealed that it was still pouring outside. With a sigh, he reached over and switched on the lamp beside the bed.

  Why did I wake?

  At first he thought it was a nightmare about the accident, but then he thought he remembered hearing voices…two girls whispering.

  I’m hungry…please, I’m so hungry.

  You need to hurry, they won’t be gone long.