Black Creek Crossing

Epilogue

HY CAN’T IT JUST BURN DOWN?

Joni Fletcher wondered how many times she’d asked herself that question during the year that had passed since the night Angel Sullivan and Seth Baker had killed their parents and then hung themselves from the old oak tree in the Congregational cemetery. Nor was she the only person in town who had asked the question; someone had asked it just last night at the town council meeting, suggesting that the town buy the property, donate the building to the Volunteer Fire Department as fuel for a practice fire, then sell off the land after the house was gone. It had fallen to Ed to explain — for at least the hundredth time — that the house couldn’t be burned down, or torn down, or even moved. It was an historical building, and thus protected by law. Unless it caught fire by accident, it would stand until it finally rotted away.

In fact, someone had tried to burn it down at least three times over the last year, and strangely, all three times the fires went out of their own accord. The two in the basement had done little more than leave the smell of smoke in the cellar — and throughout the rest of the house, whenever it rained — and the one in Angel’s room only succeeded in ruining the paint, which Joni and Ed themselves had paid to have replaced. Each time a fire had been set, the police chief and his deputy had gone out to the old house to take a look, and most of the people in town, including Joni, were sure that the police were more interested in trying to figure out why the fires had burned out than in finding out who had set them. Certainly no one had been charged with the three acts of arson, nor had the chief ever mentioned a suspect.

The bank had slashed the price again, and though Joni had done her best to talk the woman in the passenger seat next to her out of even looking at the house, in the end she’d decided that at least she would be honest about the place. She’d been in the business long enough to know that any other real estate agent — or at least the ones from the surrounding towns, who were also showing the property — would say no more than they were legally obligated to. Now that she was here, though, Joni wasn’t sure she could bring herself to go through with the showing.

“Well, it certainly looks solid enough,” the woman said.

Joni gazed bleakly at the house. “Oh, it’s solid enough, Mrs. — ” For the first time in her career, Joni Fletcher completely blanked on her customer’s name, and finally had to glance down at the information sheet she’d filled in only two hours ago. “—Flint,” she finished. Then: “May I call you…?” She left the question open, like a space in a form waiting to be filled in.

“Margie,” the woman said automatically, her eyes still fixed on the house. “If there’s nothing wrong with it, why is it so cheap?”

“Because everyone who lives in it dies,” Joni replied, her voice flat.

Margie Flint turned to stare at her. “Excuse me?” she said, thinking she could not possibly have heard the other woman correctly.

“The last people who lived here were my own sister and her husband and daughter. And I sold them the house myself.” Then, in as much detail as she could bear to recount, she told Margie Flint what had taken place almost exactly a year ago. “They weren’t even in it for two weeks,” she finished, her voice sounding as drained as she felt after repeating the story of how Myra, Marty, and Angel had died. “Which is why I don’t want to sell the house to you. Not to you, or to anybody else.”

“You sound like you think there’s some kind of curse on it,” Margie said, turning away from Joni to gaze once more at the little house that sat far back from the road, almost as if it were trying to disappear into the surrounding forest.

Now Joni’s eyes also shifted back to the old house, which seemed so utterly harmless under the clear blue sky and bright sunlight of the perfect fall day. “I don’t know if it’s a curse, but—” Her words died abruptly as Margie Flint turned back to her.

“Can I see it?” Margie asked, opening the car door before Joni could respond.

“See it?” Joni echoed blankly. After what she’d just told the woman, she still wanted to see the house? “I–I don’t know—” she floundered. “I thought—”

Margie Flint’s demeanor instantly changed, the eager light in her eyes fading into an expression of sympathy. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course you wouldn’t even want to set foot inside it, would you?” She hesitated, glancing back toward the house once more. “But what if — well, would it be all right if I just went in?” At the stricken look on Joni Fletcher’s face, she spoke again, her words tumbling out. “It’s just that I came all this way, and the price is so low, and I know terrible things happened in it, but—” She fell silent, then shrugged. “I don’t know — it’s just a feeling I have. Can’t I just go in for a minute and take a look? Please?”

Joni’s expression hardened. “We’ve had dozens of people wanting to see it,” she began. “Maybe even hundreds. Frankly, I think it’s morbid the way—”

Margie Flint’s eyes widened in shock as she realized what Joni Fletcher was saying. “Oh, no!” she said. “That’s not it at all. It’s just — I don’t know.” She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t want to know any more about what happened in the house, and I don’t want to know where—” She was about to say “where the bodies were found,” but thought better of it. “I just feel like I have to see it,” she said. “We’ve been looking so long, and nothing’s been right, and—” Her voice faltered again as she turned back to gaze at the house. “There’s just something about it,” she said finally.

When she turned back to face Joni, her eyes were practically pleading, and Joni could see that the woman didn’t have so much as a trace of the morbid curiosity that the dozens of other people who had asked to see the house over the last year exhibited.

Reaching into her purse, Joni found the key and handed it to Margie Flint. “I’ll wait here,” she said.

Mrs. Flint got out of Joni’s Volvo, closed the door behind her, and started toward the house. As she drew closer she found herself gazing up at one of the windows on the second floor. Pausing, she wondered what had drawn her attention, but could see nothing that distinguished that window from the other two that looked out over the weed-choked lawn to the road. Yet, though she saw nothing different about the window, she still felt as if she were being drawn to the room behind it.

At the front door, she hesitated. Maybe she shouldn’t go into the house after all — maybe she should just go back to the car, get in, and have Joni Fletcher show her something else.

Even as she entertained the thought, however, she slid the key into the lock, turned it, and opened the front door.

And stepped inside.

Though the room was devoid of furniture, Margie Flint felt none of the emptiness she’d experienced in the other unoccupied houses she’d looked at over the last few months. In the rest of them, she’d shared the feelings of her family — what her daughter had started calling “the empty house creeps.” But this house had none of that, and as she moved through it, Margie could see perfect places for every piece of furniture she and her husband had collected over the years, scrimping to save up the money and restoring the pieces themselves.

And this house — no matter what had happened in it before — was the perfect place not only for their furniture, but for them. She and Alex could do all the restoration work themselves, and by the time they were done, the house would provide the ideal backdrop for everything they had.

Her excitement grew as she mounted the stairs and went through the bathroom and the master bedroom.

Then, at last, she came to the door of the room whose window had caught her attention a few minutes ago. Opening the door, she stepped inside the little bedroom at the front of the house. Like the rest of the house, it was empty of furniture, but it didn’t matter.

In her mind’s eye she already saw how it would look with all of Gina’s things in it. And with some curtains on the windows—

She jumped as something brushed her leg, and she looked down.

A black cat was sitting on the floor, gazing up at her.

“Well, who are you?” Margie asked, bending down to scratch the cat’s ears. As the cat began to purr and rolled over to have its belly rubbed, she saw the single white blaze in the center of its chest. “What a pretty kitty — we’ll have to think of a wonderful name for you.” Margie gave the cat another scratch, then straightened up. “The question is,” she said, smiling down at the cat, who was now weaving back and forth around her legs, rubbing first one side, then the other, “how did you get in here? And how will you like having to share the house?”

The cat mewed softly.

Margie went through the house one more time, but knew she’d already made up her mind. Yet as she started back to the car, she paused to look back at the house once again.

Her eyes came to rest on the window of the small bedroom on the second floor. And for an instant — a moment so brief she wasn’t sure it had happened at all — she thought she saw two faces looking back at her.

A girl and a boy, in their mid-teens.

The images vanished so quickly that Margie assumed she’d imagined them. Squinting in the bright sunlight, she peered once more up at the window.

The cat was looking back at her.

Nothing else — just the cat.

And it was a cat that seemed to like her, and had mewed happily at the suggestion that it was going to have to share the house. So that was all she’d seen — not two barely visible faces, but just a cat that was not only completely visible, but very real, and wanted her there as much as she wanted to be there. Her fleeting doubt dispelled, Margie Flint pulled out her checkbook as soon as she was back in the car. “How much earnest money will you need?” she asked.

Joni Fletcher stared at her in disbelief. “You’re not seriously going to—” she began, but Margie Flint didn’t let her finish.

“I am very serious. The house is perfect, and I have no interest whatever in what might have happened here in the past. Just tell me how much the bank wants to hold it until we can get the deal settled.”

“I–I’m sure a thousand dollars will be fine,” she began. “But—”

But Marge Flint was already writing the check, and finally Joni Fletcher started her car and headed back to the office.

“This is so wonderful,” Margie said as they drove back into the heart of the little town a few minutes later. “It’s almost like I’m coming home again!”

Joni Fletcher glanced at her as she pulled into a spot in front of her office. “Are you from around here?”

Margie Flint shook her head. “Not me — I grew up in Colorado. But my father said his family used to live around here.”

“Really?” Joni asked. “What was their name?”

“Wynton,” Margie said. “That was my maiden name. Margaret Wynton.”

Joni Fletcher felt an icy chill close around her soul. The house at Black Creek Crossing, she knew, would never burn.

It would, in fact, be there forever…