Wild Orchids Part 9

"Stairs like these were air-conditioning," she said. "Hot air rises."

"Straight up to the servants' bedrooms?" I was kneeling to see where the gas line entered the newel post.

"The heat up here would keep them downstairs so they could work,"

Jackie called down, then her voice lowered. "My goodness, the old nursery has been converted to an office. I bet they stored that big old train set in the attic."

Train set? I quit looking at the dragon and decided to mosey on upstairs.

Jackie met me on the landing of the second floor, and dutifully, I looked at four bedrooms, three bathrooms straight out of a BBC set of Edwardian England, and a storage room so full of boxes we couldn't open the door all the way.

At the front of the house was a master and "mistress" suite. Two big bedrooms, each with a private bath, had a sitting room between them that opened onto the spiral staircase. The bedroom Jackie wanted so much that I could see her heart beating in her throat, had doors opening onto a deep, round porch that was filled with delicate white furniture. It was no hardship on my part to say she could have the room.

As with the downstairs, the second floor rooms were full of furniture and semi-antique junk. The wallpaper was enough to give a person nightmares.

The flowers on it could swallow a person whole. Jackie's bedroom had roses on the wallpaper-complete with needle-pointed serrated leaves and stems with thorns a quarter inch long. It was creepy.

The only room I truly liked was my bathroom. It had wallpaper of dark green leaves interspersed now and then with small oranges. ("William Morris," Jackie said.) All the original mahogany bathroom fixtures were in the room and they all worked. There was no shower but there was a bathtub)- "William Taft could get in that tub," Jackie said.

"With the first lady," I said, looking at her to see if she was going to accuse me of making a s.e.x joke. When she laughed, I was glad. None of my other a.s.sistants had laughed at my jokes.

I was getting hungry so I suggested we find a grocery before it got too late. Jackie gave a longing look upward and I knew she wanted to rummage around in the rooms on the top floor. Part of me said I should tell her to stay in the house and I'd go to the grocery alone, but I didn't want to do that.

The truth was, the long drive down together had been pleasant. I was glad to see that she wasn't one of those women who talks nonstop. And she seemed to already know something about me because at the first gas station she had instinctively chosen my favorite snacks.

I felt only relief after we got outside the house again. It would be dark in another hour, so I thought we should go. But Jackie got within three feet of the car door, then floated off toward the broken birdbath. I went to her, put my hands on both her elbows, ushered her into the car, and backed out of the driveway. Since we'd entered the little town from the east, I drove west, this time staying on a numbered highway.

Once we were out of the town, Jackie seemed to come to herself. "I know you bought a furnished house, but-"

"Yes?" I asked.

"The truth is, there are some things missing."

"Besides parts of the roof, the railings, and the windows?"

Jackie waved her hand in dismissal. "You didn't happen to see the pots and pans in the kitchen, did you? Or lift up the quilts on the beds? Or touch the pillows?"

The answer was no to all her questions so she filled me in. It seemed that in terms of livability, the house might as well have been vacant. There were probably sixty-one Statue of Liberty souvenirs in the living room, but no bed linens, and I could just imagine the pillows: hard, damp, and moldy.

About twenty miles out of town, around twisty mountain roads, was a Wal-Mart. I didn't say a word to Jackie, just turned into the parking lot. I must say that she was an efficient little thing. She grabbed a cart, I got another one, and thirty minutes later they were packed so full she couldn't see over the top of hers. I had to grab the front of her cart and lead it to the register.

"It's a good thing you're rich," she said, looking at our h.o.a.rd of kitchen paraphernalia-clean, new kitchen equipment-plus sheets, towels, and paper products.

The first few times she'd made these offhand remarks I'd wanted to tell her where to get off, but now I was beginning to get used to them. This time I smiled. "Yeah. It is good I'm rich. With a house like that one, I might as well paper the walls with twenties. How in the world will I be able to sell it?"

"Sell?" Jackie asked, her face falling, and looking like a kid who'd just been told her pet rabbit was going to be eaten. "How could you sell a house like that?"

"I doubt if I'll be able to. I'll probably die owning the place."

She started to say something, but it was our turn at the register so she started unloading.

After Wal-Mart, we went to a grocery store and again filled two carts. At the checkout counter I was selecting candy bars when she said, "Are you planning to eat those things before or after dinner?" The way she said it made me put half the candy back.

When we got back Jackie said that she'd cook dinner "this once" if I'd bring in the groceries. I agreed quickly. Cooking was not something I was good at. By the time the groceries were in and put away (one shelf of the pantry cleaned off, refrigerated food in the iced-down cooler we'd bought) she'd set the table with candles and plates that even to my untrained eye looked expensive.

She saw me looking at them. "Limoges," she said. "The cabinet in the dining room has three sets for twelve."

"Wonder why Belcher didn't take them with him?"

"And do what with them?" Jackie asked, stirring something on the old gas stove. There was a single bare bulb over the cooking surface and it was so low wattage it made a little spotlight around Jackie, highlighting her and the cooktop in the dark room. "You told me the realtor said he's over ninety, heirless, and an invalid. He probably eats off those suction plates made for babies. And if he sells the dishes, who does he leave the money to?

However..."

I ate a cracker she'd spread with cheese and put half an olive on top of, and waited for her to finish.

"He did take the silver."

We laughed together. So much for old age and no heirs. I ate four more of the cracker things. "You almost seem to know the man personally."

"True," she said, spatula paused in midair. "I feel like I almost know what he looks like. And I seem to know a lot about this house. I'm beginning to think my father told me a few little white lies." She paused a moment. "And maybe one or two whoppers."

I thought about what she was saying. Her father had said they'd lived in Cole Creek for only a short time when Jackie was "very young," but she seemed to remember too much for that to be true. And what "whoppers"

was she referring to? Yeow! Her mother? "You think your mother could be alive?" I asked, trying to sound causal.

She took a moment before answering, but I could tell that she was working hard to get her emotions under control. "I don't know. I do remember that they fought a lot. I think maybe he kidnapped me, and that maybe the reason we spent our lives moving from one town to another was so she and the law wouldn't find us. He didn't have a copy of my birth certificate and whenever I asked for facts, he became vague."

"Interesting," I said, trying to sound lighthearted. I had an idea she'd just told me more than she'd ever told anyone else. "Maybe my next book will be about a young woman who finds her origins."

"That's my book," she said quickly. "You're here to find the devil so you can talk to him about your wife."

d.a.m.n! but she could cut! I had a cracker at my lips when she said that, and it was as though my heart stopped beating. Not even in my own mind had I let myself think of the truth of what she'd just said.

She was standing absolutely still at the stove, her back to me, spatula paused. I couldn't see her face, but the back of her neck had become three shades darker than normal.

I knew that what I replied would set the tone for our future relationship.

About two-thirds of me wanted to tell her she was fired and to get the h.e.l.l out of my life. But I looked at that candlelit table and the last thing I wanted was yet another evening alone.

"Only G.o.d would know anything about Pat," I said at last. "The devil would say, 'Never heard of her.' "

Slowly, she turned to look at me, and there was such grat.i.tude on her face that I had to look away. "I'm sorry," she said. "Sometimes I say things that- ".

"Are the truth as you see it?" I asked, not wanting to hear her apology.

Truthfully, I think that my first idea about the project had been about Pat.

Maybe I'd thought that if I could find out how one became a ghost, I could figure out how to bring Pat back in spirit form. Or maybe a witch could cast a spell to bring her back.

But as I started reading, the project itself had begun to interest me. For one thing, several states claimed the same stories. Did that make them folklore rather than truth?

We were quiet for a while as Jackie served some kind of chicken ca.s.serole that was quite good. She seemed to be a vegetable fanatic because she put three kinds of vegetables on the table, plus potatoes, plus more vegetables in the ca.s.serole.

At first we ate in silence, then I started telling her how close she'd been in her a.s.sessment of why I'd started on the ghosts and witches, but that I'd changed.

"Maybe I'm being romantic, but I'd like to find out if there's any truth in those old stories. Or maybe I'd just like to give the readers a b.l.o.o.d.y good read."

"Better to want a good story than to ask the devil for anything," she said as she began to clear the table.

Since there was no dishwasher, I washed and she dried. After the kitchen was cleaned up (except for the mold growing over most surfaces) we went upstairs and started on the bedrooms. She laughed when I complained about the hideous wallpaper in my bedroom. It was dark green, magenta, and black. The bed was dark walnut, as were the other thirty or so pieces of furniture in the room. Between the wallpaper and the furniture, the room was as light as a tunnel at midnight.

"How about if tomorrow I call an auction house and get rid of the excess furniture?" she asked. "Actually, you could get rid of all of it, then buy new."

When I looked at that ugly old bed, the thought of buying something new made me smile. White maybe.

But then I caught myself. I was not going to be living in this tiny throwback of a town. I was going to do some research here then move on to -Well, I had no idea where I was going, but it would be far away from this horror-movie house.

Jackie and I put new, but unwashed sheets (an ancient washer and dryer were in the pantry, harvest gold, sixties vintage) on my bed, then we went to her room to do the same.

"You know," she said slowly, "I saw a Lowe's just down the hill from the grocery." She stopped tucking in her side of the sheet and looked at me as though I was supposed to read her mind. When I said nothing, she told me that if you buy new appliances at Lowe's, they take your old ones away.

When I realized what she was saying, we looked at each other and laughed.

Some poor, unsuspecting appliance movers would take away that refrigerator whose smell could pollute outer s.p.a.ce.

"What time do they open?" I asked, and we laughed some more.

An hour later, as I snuggled down in bed (and vowed to get a new mattress) I felt better than I had in a long time, and I finally allowed myself to think about the devil story that Jackie had told me in the car. I don't think she had any idea how unusual her story was. For the last couple of years I'd been reading regional ghost stories, and for the most part, they were quite mild-so mild that I couldn't remember any of them an hour after I'd finished the book. There was so little meat in the stories that the writers had had to embellish them with long phrases about the beauty of the people, or add some sinister aspect that had nothing to do with the real story. You could feel that the writer was just trying to fill up pages.

But Jackie's story was different. The first version, the so-called "factual"

story, the one she said her mother had told her, was interesting, but it sounded like several small town legends I'd read.

I didn't want Jackie to know it, but it was her second story that interested me. I'd already seen that she was a good storyteller, but her dramatic telling of the devil story had given me the creeps.

Jackie started by describing the woman who'd been murdered. She told of a woman who was kind to everyone, who loved children, and who always wore a smile.

Jackie said that the woman used to take long walks in the woods, and, one day, she came to a beautiful house made of stone and a man was there.

Jackie described him as "nice looking, like Santa Claus, without the beard." I wanted to ask her how she knew this, but there was something so odd about the way she was telling the story that I didn't interrupt her.

She said the woman had gone often to the house, and Jackie told about food the nice man and nice woman had shared, how they'd laughed and talked together. She told about the pretty flowers that grew all around the house and how the inside smelled like gingerbread.

After a few moments, I realized what was odd about her storytelling.

There were two things. One was that Jackie related it as though she'd been an eyewitness, and the second was that she told it in the manner of a very young child. When she came to the part where the townspeople saw the couple, she said, "You could see all the people through the bushes..."

"How many people?" I wanted to ask, but didn't, and as she spoke, it occurred to me that the child who saw this may have been too young to know how to count. If I'd asked Jackie how many people were there, I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd said, "Eleventy-seven."

She said some "grown-ups" had seen the woman but they couldn't see the man because he was invisible. Jackie said the townspeople had shouted at the woman but Jackie didn't seem to know what they'd said, just that they were "shouting." When the woman had backed up, she'd fallen, and her ankle had been caught between some rocks. "She couldn't get out," Jackie said in what seemed to me to be a child's voice. "So they piled more rocks on top of her."

When Jackie told the rest of the story, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It seemed that after the townspeople left, the woman hadn't died right away. Jackie said she'd "cried for a long time." What really got to me was when Jackie told of "someone trying to get her out" but "she" couldn't lift the stones.

I didn't say anything then and I tried not to think about it, but I couldn't help speculating. From the first I'd been told that this pressing happened many years ago. But after hearing what Jackie said was a "made-up version"

of the story I couldn't help but wonder if it had happened in recent times.

And was it possible that Jackie had seen this horrible thing? Had Jackie been a child and seen some adults put stones on a woman, then leave her to die a slow, agonizing death? Had Jackie the child crawled out of her hiding place and tried to get the rocks off the woman but failed?

Jackie told me that her father had taken her away from her mother on the night he'd found out that his wife had told the devil story. Looking at it from an adult point of view, I wondered if her father knew his young daughter had witnessed the murder, and when his wife told their daughter about the murder and said it was "right," the man had been driven over the edge.

When Jackie finished her story, I'd been quiet, thinking about it all. I wanted to ask questions, but at the same time, I didn't want to ask them. It was my guess that Jackie had been much more involved than she knew-or wanted to know.

As I settled myself more snugly under the sheets, I wondered if I really wanted to write about this story. If my theory was correct, maybe I should find something else to write about. Something that wasn't recent and didn't involve living people.

As I fell asleep, I knew I was being torn in half. I didn't want to hurt anyone, but at the same time, for the first time in years, I was excited by a story. A true story. What I was good at.

The next morning, I was awakened by sounds over my head. When I opened my eyes and saw that wallpaper, I jumped, but then I remembered where I was, and sighed. House of Horrors. I lay there for a while, listening.

My watch, on the heavy marble-topped table beside the bed, said it wasn't even six yet and I could see that it was barely daylight out. It could be robbers making the noise upstairs, I thought, hope buoying my spirits.

Maybe they were looking for hidden jewels in the attic. Maybe in their search they'd take away some of the trash in this house.

I heard a loud sneeze. No such luck. Little Miss High Energy was already upstairs moving boxes around.

Reluctantly getting out of bed, I shivered. The mountains of western North Carolina were quite cool in the morning. I took my time taking a bath (at least the hot water tank worked well) and getting dressed before I went upstairs to see what was going on.

Opening doors, I looked around before going to the room where I heard the noise. There were a couple of bedrooms and a bath that I was sure had been servants' quarters. The bleakness of the rooms was depressing; they were lightless, airless, and colorless.

At the front of the house was a fairly large room with a big window. I can write in here, I thought as I looked out the window. I could see over the shorter houses across the road to the mountains beyond. The mountains were in the distance, blue and misty, and so beautiful they made me draw in my breath and hold it.

I stayed that way for a while, then looked at the giant oak desk that set at an angle to the window. I could sit there and write and, when I needed to think, I could turn and look out at those mountains. In the far corner of the room, where there was now some hard little sofa that looked as though it was covered in horsehair, I could put a real couch, something soft, with wide arms that could hold papers.

A loud noise from down the corridor brought me out of my reverie, so I went to see what my industrious little a.s.sistant was doing.

She was in a big room that looked like the quintessential attic from every old movie ever made. I looked around for the discarded dressmaker's dummy. There was always a discarded dressmaker's dummy.

"So now you show up to help," Jackie said, sounding angry.

I started to snap back at her, but then I saw her face. She looked awful.

Her eyes were sunken, with dark circles beneath them. At my age I looked like that every morning, but at her age, she was supposed to look dewy-fresh. "So what's wrong with you?" I asked in the same tone she'd used with me. "Ghosts in your room?"

To my horror, she sat down on an old trunk, put her hands over her face, and began to cry.

My first impulse was to run away. Second was to rent an apartment in New York and stay away from females forever.

Instead, I sat down on the trunk next to her and said, "What's wrong?"