THE GROUNDSKEEPER
“Sandy, it sounds like someone is in the attic,” I said.
“It’s just a racoon,” Sandy said, eyeing the ceiling. “I think there’s a hole in the roof. I have to get it fixed.”
“Must be a big raccoon. I should have a look.”
“Really, you don’t have to, Cole. The attic is a mess.”
“It’s alright. Force of habit from working security. It’ll take a sec.”
I marched to the attic door and opened it. The wooden steps were dusty. Sandy followed me up the stairs and we stopped next to the wooden railing at the top. The attic met us with silence. It was a huge room filled with furniture covered with dusty white sheets. The only window was on the front wall facing Arkham Road. It was round with a cross frame at the center, sectioning four planes of glass. After searching through furniture and other items, I found no one.
“What about that door?” I said, pointing to the right of the window, on the adjacent wall.
“That’s a walk-in closet,” Sandy said as she went to the door and opened it revealing an empty space. “See, nothing up here but clutter.”
Maybe my imagination was toying with me because the old house was eerie. I didn’t want to be irrational, so I didn’t argue further. “Alright, if you say so.”
We headed down to the first floor, and Sandy offered to show the basement.
“I transformed a room downstairs into an art studio,” Sandy said. “I finally have time and space to work on my sculptures.”
Before she opened the basement door in the hall, across from the bathroom, my cell phone rang. It was work, so I took the call.
“I’m sorry, Sandy,” I said. “It’s an emergency. There’s been an attempt on a top client’s life. I hate to cut the visit short, but I’m needed in Detroit. I can come back this weekend to see your art studio. How about that?”
“Sure, I understand,” Sandy said with a look of disappointment. “Work is work. I hope your client is okay.”
“You’ve got a great place here. You deserve it. Promise me you’ll make your famous arroz con pollo when I come back?”
“It wouldn’t be famous if your mom hadn’t taught me how to make it. You’ve got a deal.”
Sandy accompanied me to the front door.
“I apologize,” I said while stepping onto the porch. “I have to take care of this issue. I’ll be back soon.”
“Alright. Be careful, Cole.”
Sandy sent me off with a hug, smiled, then closed the door. Pulling out of the driveway onto Arkham Road, I felt horrible about leaving so abruptly. Driving away, in the rearview mirror, an old worn-out white Lincoln came down the dirt road behind me. It pulled into Sandy’s driveway. Another visitor.
I was happy for Sandy and her new house. But the footsteps on the second floor and attic left me unsettled.
That weekend, I didn’t make it back for arroz con pollo. The emergency with work kept me busy, so I canceled. For a while I couldn’t keep up with anyone, much less Sandy. Eventually, I texted and called but received no contact from her for weeks. Almost two months later, in early August, I headed to Ravensblood to see what was going on.
After the long trip north, I parked into Sandy’s driveway. Her Beetle wasn’t there. I went up onto the porch, knocked on the door and received no answer. A gap in the curtain gave a glimpse of the living room through the picture window. Sandy’s antique furniture was there but the fireplace and the painting of the house above were barely visible. A shadow moved past my view, blocking my vision. Someone was inside.
Clatter came from the back of the house. To investigate, I strolled up the driveway alongside the Victorian. Embarking on the backyard, a tall man stood in front of the open garage, his back toward me. Unruly, greasy black hair stopped at the back of his neck. He wore old jeans and a red, long-sleeved button shirt.
“Excuse me,” I said, stepping further into the backyard.
The man, in his forties, glanced over his shoulder at me as he shut the garage door. Deep lines penetrated the sides of his eyes and mouth. His skin was worn.
“You’re on private property,” he said coldly.
I didn’t expect the attitude.
“I’m looking for Sandra Breyer. She lives here. Is she around?”
“No. She’s not here.”
“Where is she? Sandy’s a friend of mine.”
“Don’t know. She doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Doesn’t live here? I was just here a few months ago.”
“She went missing,” the man said visibly annoyed. “Haven’t you seen the news? The police said she up and left the place. ‘Abandonment,’ they said. The house was searched, and nobody’s inside.”
“Are you the owner?”
“Nope. Groundskeeper. It’s my job to keep an eye on this place and your friend ain’t here anymore. Now, you best be on your way.”
“Listen, I saw someone in the living room window. Maybe we can have a look inside for a quick second.”
“The cops already did the looking and you’re on private property,” the man said, raising his voice. “So, turn around and get off.”
I gave him a grim look but didn’t want an altercation or have local cops on me. Heading for the front yard, the groundskeeper trailed me. He stopped in the driveway in front of my Jeep as I hopped inside.
“Like I said, there’s nothing here for you anymore.”
I withheld my Scorpio nature and said nothing. Time and place for everything. On the way home, I stopped at the gas station on Main to fill up. Leaning against my Jeep, I searched the net for Sandra Breyer in Ravensblood on my phone. The asshole was right.
The Ravensblood Harbinger, the local paper, said it was a missing person’s case. When Sandy stopped making land contract payments, the owner came by, but no one answered. Fearing she had a medical emergency, he called the authorities.
Her disappearance was described as “odd”. She seemingly vanished from inside the house. The doors and windows were locked from the inside. Police gained access to the Victorian, finding no evidence of breaking and entering, or foul play. Nothing was stolen; her clothes, money, and jewelry were inside. Her purse sat on the dining room table containing credit cards and her driver’s license. The car was in the driveway, the TV and lights were on, and a plate of rotten spaghetti sat on the kitchen table.
Weeks had gone by, and she didn’t turn up. The house remained vacant, and her car was repossessed. The cops had no leads and concluded she voluntarily left, not wanting to be found. People purposely disappear all the time, but that wasn’t Sandy. The case was still open.
For days it weighed on me: Footsteps on the second floor, noises in the attic. Whose shadow was in the window? Why was the groundskeeper so eager to get rid of me? Was Sandy alive somewhere, held hostage?
There had to be something the authorities missed. I searched for the house’s owner via the net with no luck. Days later, I drove back to Ravensblood to check public courthouse records and found him: Dale Ortman, a local landlord. After a quick search, I contacted him showing interest in the house. We arranged a meeting at the Victorian the next day, so I spent the night at the Lamplighter motel.
In the morning, he waited on the porch leaning against a white column as I pulled up to the house. Dale was a thin African American in his sixties with a graying beard. He invited me inside and we sat in the living room. The house was the same as when I saw it last, except for a white marble bust of a woman on the fireplace mantel which wasn’t there before. After small talk, we got to the purpose of my visit, but I didn’t mention the groundskeeper.
“How did you acquire the property?” I asked.
“I bought the house from the bank when it went into foreclosure,” Dale said. “The previous owners, a married couple, stopped paying the mortgage.”
“Did anyone else bid on it?”
“Nope. Lucky for me the town clerk made an error with the public auction date. The house was auctioned the day before the date listed on the Ravensblood website. I won this lovely lady without competition. I sold it to the last tenant on a land contract, but she stopped making payments.”
“I’ll buy it if you’re interested. Cash.”
I offered a good price. Dale paused.
“You must really like this house.”
“That I do. I love fixer-uppers. But I’ll purchase it at said price on one condition.”
“And that is?”
“Leave everything in the entire house here, the furniture, the paintings, all of it.”
“This decor doesn’t seem like your style, Cole. But you’re in luck. It comes with the house anyway. By the way, some of the previous tenant’s stuff is still here. You can have that junk too.”
That was the plan.
Soon after, the purchase agreement was drawn up. We closed the deal a week later. A few days after signing the contract, I moved from Detroit to Ravensblood. The executive security business was good the previous year, enough to take a break and keep an eye on my company while away. I put Lester, one of my managers, in charge in my absence.
The first thing I did was change the locks, added an alarm system, and put cameras on the front and back door. A ragged puppy calendar hung on the refrigerator. I searched through it for any information Sandy might have left. It was blank so I tossed it in the trash and would get a newer one later.
The old-style home wasn’t what I was used to, but I wanted things in the Victorian to be as close to when Sandy lived there. It wasn’t easy to get comfortable in the large, brooding house. An air of unease permeated the place.
The first night I tried relaxing in the living room watching TV. Sitting against the low back of the antique sofa, a bumping and thumping came from within the walls near the fireplace. Rats. There had to be rats inside the walls and big ones.
The white bust of the woman on the fireplace mantel was a nice touch. There was a similar one on an end table in the dining room.
To finish the tour of the house where Sandy left off, I got up from the couch to check out her art studio in the cellar. I opened the basement door and headed down the wooden steps.
Spider webs hung from underneath the stairs and in corners near the ceiling. The furnace was at the center of the basement. Pottery and unfinished white busts like the ones upstairs sat on metal shelving against the left wall. When I was a kid, I would watch Sandy sculpt from clay and marble. She let me play with the clay and I’d make animals but could never produce anything like her.
In one corner, plastic totes were stacked atop one another, filled with Christmas and Halloween decorations. At the front of the house, on the far wall, was a wooden door. It led to a smaller room with a large wooden table in its center. More shelves lined the wall opposite the door, on which sat plastic bags of moist clay, and small sharp utensils. In the corner to the left was a circular kiln where clay was baked. Obviously, Sandy’s art studio.
I shut the door, then went up two flights of stairs to the second floor. In the center of the master bedroom was Sandy’s bed, its sheets neatly done, probably the work of the groundskeeper. Inside the closet, a few blouses hung on hangers and on the floor were two pairs of women’s shoes. It felt like I was invading Sandy’s privacy but checked in the dresser drawers anyway: all empty. I would not sleep in that room; it was still Sandy’s.
To the left of the master bedroom, the study would make a perfect home office. The drawers of the desk contained pens, sticky notes and other office supplies. Nothing of significance. A plethora of books filled the tall shelves. Much were about art. However, many were about the paranormal and occult. From what I knew, Sandy was never interested in that stuff.
The guest bedroom, where I would sleep, contained a twin bed against the far wall with a small night table next to it.
Finally, I jerked open the attic door, flipped the switch at the bottom of the stairs and the light turned on. Sandy changed the bulb. At the top of the steps, a large silver flashlight stood on its head next to the railing. Sandy probably left it there. The attic was still cluttered with random objects. One by one, I lifted the sheets revealing old items like an empty dresser, a rocking chair, and a vintage waist-high radio with a wooden frame. A shelf on the far-left wall was filled with small porcelain knickknacks.
The circular window on the front wall gave a view of the front yard, the driveway, the spruce, and of Arkham Road. To the left of the window in the far corner sat a large wooden trunk, locked shut with a padlock. Did the cops bother to check it? Something to investigate later.
On the adjacent wall to the right of the window, I opened the closet door. The large space inside was empty save for a naked, armless upper torso of a female mannequin. It sat on the floor on its waist. She had pink plastic skin and her bald head turned to the left. Her painted-on eyes complete with mascara and lashes stared into space. It wasn’t in the closet when I opened it last.
The temperature dropped. A draft maybe. I shut the closet door, leaving the mannequin shrouded in darkness, then headed downstairs to turn in for the night.
A few hours later, I lay in bed in the guest room in the dark, unable to sleep. The large brooding house took getting used to. A hefty creak came from the ceiling, like on the day when Sandy showed me the house. Another creak came from the floorboards above, then another. That was no raccoon. Someone was walking in the attic. I sprang from the bed and grabbed my pistol from the dresser drawer.
Ravensblood 