Haunted

3

I took another look at my friend’s neck and said, “I was wrong about the Benadryl, it’s in my SUV,” then went down the porch steps, through the trees, limping a little because of my stubbed toe. A stone wall, a gate and No Trespassing signs hadn’t protected the old house from vandals, but a chain had forced me to park outside the gate.

That’s where I spotted the man. He was watching Birdy from the shadows: tall, swoop-shouldered in a hoodie, only his head and torso visible above the four-foot wall.

My breath caught. I stopped. The archaeologist? I wondered but wasn’t sure. He was focused on Birdy, who was pacing, waiting for me to return with the first-aid kit I’d thought was upstairs in my bag. Why the man hadn’t noticed me leave the porch, I could only guess. Maybe trees and hanging moss had absorbed my shadow. Maybe it was the way darkness shifted from milky blue to gray. It was a thick October night with wind, clouds drifting across a moon that would be full in two days and bright enough that I didn’t need my flashlight.

There was another possibility: That afternoon, the archaeologist had been smitten by Birdy, with her lean body and her minor in archaeology, but he had ignored me after a contentious exchange.

The assistant professor had insinuated that Florida’s role in Civil War history had more to do with profiteering than patriotism. When I objected, his coolness toward me had bloomed into dislike.

My feelings hadn’t suffered any. Kindergarten through high school, I was a gawky beanpole of a girl, so the inattention of men is nothing new. I have grown into my body, however, and my confidence has improved. Being ignored by an oddball archaeologist was no big deal, even though Theo was decent-looking in a dark, loose-jointed sort of way.

Birdy had enjoyed their flirting. Traded barbs and puns, with her sharp wit. Ivanhoff had obviously found her attractive. A fixation-was that a term that applied to Peeping Toms? I didn’t know. Nor was I certain it was the archaeologist. The shape was tall enough, but there was no Greek fisherman’s cap and no sign of a walking stick. Dr. Theo had carried one, carved cypress, which I considered a foppish affectation. Birdy, in her current frame of mind, had claimed it was a phallic symbol that hinted at the man’s availability. Which had seemed silly but humorous in a girlish, sleepover way, but wasn’t fun now, standing alone in darkness, separated from a stranger by fifty yards of weeds, trees, and a stone wall.

I stood, glancing from Birdy to the man, watching him watch her. Then he crouched, perhaps aware I had disappeared from the porch.

Finally he saw me. Straightened to his full height and turned his back. Did it in a nonchalant way to pretend I wasn’t there or that he wasn’t spying. In my hand was the key to my SUV. I pressed Unlock. The flashing lights startled him but weren’t bright enough to confirm his identity. The man stretched as if bored and ambled toward the river, which was down the road, through the trees and down a bank. His sneaky behavior irritated me. It also gave me courage. I angled toward the road, the stone wall between us, and shined the flashlight. When the light hit him, he was too far away to reveal details. And he walked faster. I hollered, “Who are you?”

He didn’t turn. Instead, he hunkered down low and jogged toward the trees with an odd limping stride as if he had a bad leg.

That spooked me. The archaeologist didn’t limp. There was an unhealthiness about this man’s behavior and his lack of body control. And I’d been right: he was wearing a hoodie or a cape on a night that was cool and dry, not cold.

From the porch, Birdy called, “Are you talking to me?”

I hollered back, “Go inside.”

“What?”

I said it again, my hand on the gate.

She yelled, “Are you kidding? Not without shoes and a blowtorch, I’m not.”

I had taken the time to put on jeans and a denim shirt of copper red but had yet to retrieve my friend’s clothes from her room.

When I get her clothes, I’ll pack her gun, too, I decided, then hurried to my SUV before remembering something else: hidden under the backseat was another gun-a stainless 9mm that Birdy had wanted to see because it was custom-made, a very rare model. It had been left to me by my Uncle Jake. I’d fired the weapon only once in my life and had no desire ever to use it again.

Take the pistol or leave it in the SUV?

I left it behind.

BIRDY SWALLOWED a Benadryl but refused to dress until I had searched every inch of her slacks, blouse, and shoes to prove there were no scorpions hiding there. I had done the same for myself but not as carefully.

She was cutting the timing close, although we didn’t know it. The archaeologist would soon surprise us by rapping on the door.

“Poison crabs,” Birdy said and made a guttural sound of disgust. “That’s what they remind me of. Crabs with stingers. And bristly legs. One of those bastards ran right up my forehead. Like tiny robots-they remind me of that, too.”

I didn’t see a connection between scorpions, crabs, and robots but let her talk while I rubbed Benadryl on her neck, the sting mark swollen but displaying no red lines to suggest she needed a doctor. No constricted breathing either. “Does it still hurt?”

“Son of a bitch, if I was a better shot, I’d go in there and shoot every one of them.”

Several boxes of shells would be required to complete the job, but I didn’t say it. I had returned to her room alone, scorpions on the floor and walls, too, not just the rafters. If they were in the walls, they were in the rest of the house, but I had closed the door as if that would keep us safe.

Something else I did: checked every window I passed to confirm it was nailed shut, no sign of the peeping man outside. And I had retrieved Birdy’s semiautomatic pistol from beneath her pillow. Her overnight bag, which lay open on the floor, was another matter. Examining clothing and extra shoes would take time. Her bag was the only reason she had agreed to return to the house.

We were by the fireplace in the parlor now, where I had been told not to build a fire but had anyway. The slow flames softened the hiss of a Coleman lantern in the middle of the floor. No furniture in a space with twelve-foot ceilings and marble-manteled windows and a chandelier too high for teenagers to steal. Cobwebs and dust, a cigarette pack crumpled in the corner with beer cans, in a house that had been built by a Virginia cattleman. Charles Langford Cadence, a man who had been murdered or had shot himself.

I had done some research since we’d met with the attorney, which is why I knew a lot more about the property. I also knew that John Ashley, the gangster, might have done the killing. An old newspaper clip I found rumored that he was guilty, but Ashley was legendary in the region by that time and legends are rumor magnets.

On the other hand, John Ashley was a proven killer. Between 1914 and 1924, he had terrorized Florida and the Bahamas. He and his gang-which included a girlfriend named Laura-had robbed trains and banks and murdered innocent people. They became international outlaws when they raided the Bahamas, killing several and hijacking shipments of rum.

After each heist, Ashley escaped into Florida’s interior. The TV show was right about that: he had grown up in the Everglades and could live off the land. The wild country between Palm Beach and Fort Myers was familiar to him. There was no evidence he had murdered cattlemen along the way, but Ashley had been charming and talkative. He was certainly aware that Charles Cadence had built a grand house on the Telegraph River-and had married a much younger woman, a beauty named Irene.

In 1928, during a hurricane, the Lake Okeechobee dam burst. The torrent swept over central Florida and killed nearly two thousand people-probably more. Many bodies were never recovered or identified, but the Cadence house survived. The same year, a Chicago developer bought the property but was left penniless after the stock market crash. The next two owners also went broke. The tax debt was satisfied by foreclosure and the house was converted into a school. Children of farmers and cowhands attended, but the school was closed abruptly after only six years.

Why?

The Internet didn’t offer an answer. My best guess was that around the same period, a disease called deer tick fever caused a panic in the Everglades. A bounty was placed on deer-animals that played no role in spreading the disease, as it turned out-but Florida’s deer population was decimated anyway.

I discovered two interesting journal entries from a lady who might have taught at the school. If true, it was my introduction to a ghost or apparition that was associated with the Cadence house in later years-the woman on the balcony, I came to think of her. Or young Mrs. Irene Cadence.

In January 1939, the teacher wrote: “I am much vexed by the tantrums in recent days of otherwise good children who are from good homes. Today, Mary, a subdued girl who earns fine marks, excited the class when she ran outside, pulling at her hair and screaming. She did so without cause and despite the frigid weather. This incited other children to follow, some who claimed to hear a woman crying on the balcony. I blame this on deer fever, not the tragedy said to have occurred in this house. Girls at a certain age are sensitive and such stories impress deeply. Mary’s temperature, however, was normal when we finally calmed her and warmed her near the fire…”

Another entry, dated February 1939: “Five children have now been sent [home] by a blistering of the skin, mostly of the hands and wrists but thrice in the appearance of blisters or carbuncles on their faces. A painful tenderness near my cheek warns that I, too, have been infected, as do recent nightmares. How wretched the screams of that poor woman on the balcony! We expect a visit from Dr. Hansen of Ft. Myers most any day now…”

The producers of Vortex Hunters had found these same lurid tidbits. I confirmed it by downloading an episode entitled “The Malediction of Cadence Place.” Most of it was sensational nonsense but did include some history that was useful-especially a few facts about Charles Cadence’s wife, Irene. That’s how I knew she’d been considered a woman of great beauty with skin the color of “parchment” and raven-black hair.

The house had remained empty until the 1960s, when it was remodeled by an artist-a member of New York’s avant-garde and a friend of LSD proponent Dr. Timothy Leary. One December night, he fell from the balcony and died. The coroner’s report listed alcohol and “other drugs” as contributing factors.

I had shared this information with Birdy. She had delighted in the stories because they were fun to hear, the two of us alone in the empty house, but she wasn’t frightened-until now. I lifted her chin and asked, “Does it still throb?”

“Like I got jabbed by a hot needle. The thing crawled from my cheek into my hair-I can still feel it. What I need is a mojito and a bath. How far’s the nearest hotel? I bet they have a bar.” She finished buttoning her blouse, the starched collar unusual for camping, but it looked good, the way it framed the angles of her face.

I said, “On the bright side, we don’t have to worry about palmetto bugs.”

“Enough with the palmetto bugs. They’re cockroaches, only bigger and they can fly,” she said. “Just a nicer name. I hate roaches, too. In college, there was a garbage strike and roaches took over our dorm. Middle of the night, a girl would scream, I didn’t even wake up, it got to be so common. That was before I switched to law and moved out of the liberal arts wing, which had a lot of flaky people to begin with.” Birdy paused. “Cockroaches, scorpions-I’m not sleeping in that room anymore, so forget it. Just wait until one bites you.”

I knew we needed another hammock and a box of bug bombs if we were going to spend a night or two in this place. Bunny Tupplemeyer’s attorney had said overnighting wasn’t a must but could be useful. He had decided that evidence the house was not haunted would help prove his claims were based on law, not superstition.

From the SUV, I’d brought canvas chairs and she sat-but not without first flipping the thing to check for visitors.

“They sting, not bite,” I said, while I filled a Ziploc with ice from a cooler that contained tea, bottled water, and a few yogurts. “When I was ten, maybe twelve, one nailed me on the thumb while I was stacking firewood. Then, a few years ago, I picked up a tarp and got it in the palm of my hand. Ice helps. Try this.” I handed her the bag.

“Did you cry?”

“I wanted to.”

She said, “Hardass. I should’ve known.”

“No, it’s the way things are on the islands.” I was referring to the house where I had grown up and where my mother, Loretta, still lives, in a little fishing village, Sulfur Wells, across the bay from Sanibel and Captiva Islands on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Birdy had been there often enough that I didn’t have to say the house was older than the house we were in. Or that it sat on an Indian pyramid built of shell. “Outside, mostly, we find little reddish scorpions, but no worse than ant bites. The big black scorpions, like those in there”-I tilted my head toward the hall-“they’re common on the shell mounds. Burns like fire, I know, but the pain goes away if you don’t have a reaction. I’ve heard they came from Cuba or Mexico on the Spaniards’ boats, but I don’t know that’s true. Loretta doesn’t like them, but she hates cockroaches worse, so you learn to get along. You never find cockroaches in a house that has a scorpion.”

“You’re telling me you grew up living with scorpions?”

“It’s not like I kept them as pets.”

“But they’re there. In your house, I mean. Right now, not just years ago.”

“Loretta’s house, yes.”

“Incredible. My mother, the queen of nonviolent hippiedom, would freak out. Call in the napalm or set the house on fire. That woman won’t even eat eggplant because it’s sliced like steak. Did she ever get bit?”

“Loretta? Once that I know of. It was hiding under the toilet seat. She came running out with her skirt around her ankles, mad as a hornet. First time I ever heard her use the F-word. Plus some other words I was too young to recognize. That woman has a mouth on her.”

Birdy laughed, her spirits improving.

I borrowed my Uncle Jake’s philosophy to counsel her. “Don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. Cockroaches are a different story.”

She nodded at that and stared into the fire. Finally said, “It snowed in Boston today, but here I am sitting with little Miss Hannah Sunshine and nursing a scorpion bite. I could sure use a mojito. If you ever talk me into camping again, I’ll bring a couple of pitchers.”

It wasn’t true that I’d had to convince her, but I conceded, “A mojito sounds pretty good right now.”

Birdy reached for her flashlight, which I’d found in a pile of glass. She used it to check the ceiling for the umpteenth time, the crystal chandelier frosted with cobwebs and dust, moonglow through the main window. Next, the walls, as if searching for enemy snipers. Then she switched the light off and placed it on the floor near her pistol-the pistol holstered, no belt-and refocused on the fire, finally relaxing a little as the Benadryl kicked in.

“How long you think before we can go through my suitcase?”

We? I almost asked, but guessed that half an hour was a reasonable period. I had dragged her bag into the hall and sprayed it with mosquito spray. Deep Woods Off! was the only thing I had to convince scorpions there were better places to hide.

Birdy muttered something while craning her neck, then said, “This must have been a beautiful house back in the day. Weird. Build a place like this out here in the middle of nowhere. Lonely as hell, too, especially for the guy’s wife. What was her name?”

“Irene. Irene Cadence. She was seventeen and he was forty when they married. Irene wasn’t quite thirty when he died. I couldn’t find what happened to her after that-nothing factual anyway. According to the TV show, she went insane, haunted by guilt or loneliness-that sort of stuff. But they made that up, had to. It was their way of explaining why a teacher and her students claimed they heard a woman crying up there.” I pointed up to what had once been a music room. It opened through French doors onto a balcony that faced east and a line of trees along the river’s bank.

Birdy said, “She probably went stark raving mad out of boredom. Wouldn’t you have hated to be a woman back then?”

I replied, “My aunts and grandmothers were-sons were a rarity among the Smiths. My two great-aunts, Sarah and Hannah, they had it rough, the way they lived-this was the early 1900s. About the same time this house was built. They raised their own food, chopped firewood and sold it. Not together. I don’t know why, but they went their separate ways.” After a moment, I smiled. “Sarah and Hannah didn’t have much luck when it came to finding men either.” I hadn’t mentioned the Peeping Tom. Talking about men was a way of working into the subject without causing a panic.

Birdy asked, “That old book you brought, it belonged to one of your aunts?”

I don’t know why I was surprised she had paid attention to what I was reading earlier. She was a trained sheriff’s deputy after all. “It’s a journal I found in Loretta’s attic,” I said. “Remember me mentioning my great-uncle to the attorney? I went through his papers.”

“Her attorney’s gay,” Birdy said, “but he still had the hots for you. You didn’t notice?”

I was flattered but stayed on topic. “The journal belonged to my Great-great-uncle Ben Summerlin. Maybe three greats back-from the late 1800s. It was in a box I found when I was about thirteen or fourteen, but I still haven’t managed to read it all. A lot of pages are stuck together like they got soaked. Or maybe just age. And he used abbreviations-old-timey sort of language. Code sometimes, too. He was a man who didn’t enjoy writing, you can tell. If one word would do, that’s what he wrote. ‘Captain Summerlin,’ people called him. He was a cattleman and a blockade-runner. He owned a forty-foot sharpie, Widow’s Son. And a dory named Sodbuster.”

“A what?”

“Sailboats. They weren’t big, but not so small either. They didn’t draw much water.”

“Why’d he name them that?”

“He didn’t say… or I haven’t gotten the right pages unstuck. There’s no telling how people name boats.”

Birdy said, “In cowboy movies, sodbuster is what the bad guys call farmers, isn’t it? Interesting name, I guess.”

I had found a journal entry a lot more interesting than that, which I had already shared with Birdy without naming the source. It mentioned a box of coins my long-dead uncle had lost after being chased by Union soldiers. He had run his dory aground and scuttled it.

100 silver dollars gawn, he’d written with an ink quill pen some months later. The date: December 1864. Jettisoned, hidden, or stolen, the journal had yet to reveal.

Birdy, remembering, asked, “What would a hundred silver dollars be worth now? Captain Summerlin, I like his name.”

“Two or three thousand dollars,” I said, “depending on their condition. I looked it up on the Internet. Silver dollars is how they paid cattlemen in those days, Union and Confederates both.”

“He sold to both sides?”

“Some did,” I said, and let my eyes move around the room. “This had to be a good area for cattle. That’s not much of a river out there, but I bet it was like a highway in those days. Captain Summerlin might have mentioned it in one of his later entries. Not by name, but the location seems about right.” Then I tried to get back to the subject of men by asking, “That archaeologist we met, Theo Ivanhoff, did he seem a little strange to you? In an odd, sneaky sort of way?”

Even when she is yawning from Benadryl, Birdy’s brain works faster than most. “I knew you didn’t like him. That’s why you bit his head off when he went on a talking jag-all because of your uncle the blockade-runner. There had to be a reason. You’re usually so polite.”

She was right about the professor. I didn’t like him.

“I wasn’t mean about it, I just corrected him,” I replied. “I’m glad to hear you say talking jag. I thought you were hanging on every word. That man doesn’t know when to shut up.”

“No,” Birdy said, giving her hair a flip. “I was picturing him in the shower. I bet you were, too.” Said it in a fun, devilish sort of way, her mood back to where it had been before a scorpion landed on her face. “I’ve got forty credit hours in archaeology. Might have majored if the guys were better-looking. Theo’s a five, ordinarily, but he is a solid twelve on the King Tut scale.”

The timing was right to discuss the man I had seen peeping. I started to say, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. When I went outside to get the first-aid kit-”

Three soft raps on the door interrupted me.

“Who the hell could that be?” Birdy said. “Probably teenagers getting a jump on Halloween.” She reached for her pistol. “Stay here. I’ll go.”