Beauty Read online

  “Wait,” Edmund protested. “What’s going on here?”

  “None of your business,” she hissed. “If you have a problem, you can take it up with Dr. Geistig.”

  “Edmund.” I begged for him to stop them. Reaching out my hand to him, he touched me, giving my fingers a squeeze. “Edmund, where are they taking me?”

  He shook his head. “Tell me what it was.”

  “It’s a mirror into your soul, Edmund,” I whimpered, as the tears streamed down my face. “It’s your soul.”

  “Wait,” he cried as he picked up the canvas bag that held my mirror and drawings and shoved it into my empty hand.

  Softly, I called out to him as they carried me away. “Find me Edmund. You’re the one. You’re the one.”

  12

  ELIZA

  It had been two weeks since I’d been knocked around in the shower and Park Ave had been eerily quiet. Ray was sleeping like a log and I’d been able to go back into my manuscript and pick back up where I’d left off before going on a subconscious tangent into God knows where. Life was beginning to feel a little more normal.

  Hitting Save, I looked to my word count and was happy with how the story was turning out. I’d kept a few of the dark details I’d read in the first thousand words of my tirade, but cut and pasted the hundred and fifty thousand word diatribe into another document, aptly naming it The End. It sat on my desktop screen and I didn’t know what to do with it exactly—but I never threw anything out. Today’s garbage was tomorrow’s plot.

  Turning off the light to my office, I stood in the doorway and could hear music coming from Ray’s studio. We’d stopped renovating the house for a few days and he was finishing up some work projects, hoping to make a few sales during the holiday season. It would help to ease the burden of paying bills through the long winter when no one thought to purchase artwork.

  I paused for a moment, looking over my shoulder. Ray wouldn’t be done for a while based on the music coming from his studio. I knew his work habits and since I’d not seen him since eleven this morning, he was on a roll.

  I stared at the suitcase that sat at the end of my desk. I’d not opened it since placing it there, but something unknown called to me and I wanted—no, I needed to look inside. The desire to hold the items in my hands seemed extraordinary.

  Flipping the light on again, I sat at my desk and placed the suitcase across my lap. Clicking the buckles open, the smell of a peppermint candy wafted out and I recalled the smell from the third floor closet.

  I sat the doll, frame, and stack of penciled drawings on my desk. Surveying the goods, I wondered whose they might have been, once upon a time. The doll was the creepiest of the items and I only looked at it for a moment—feeling as though it was taking inventory of me with its one eye. A repulsive sensation crept over my skin and the hair on my arm stood on end. Spooked, I tossed it back on the desk like a hot potato.

  Leaning back in my chair to shake off the creepies, I spied the frame sitting upright, staring back at me. “Why are you so dark?” I spoke to it as if it had something to say and I flashed back to my childhood and fairy tales I vaguely remembered. “Mirror, mirror on the wall…” I whispered. I saw nothing that would indicate I was the fairest. It was, I thought an interesting piece and part of the history of Park Ave I would eventually place it in the house no doubt.

  As I quickly thumbed through the drawings I noticed a couple of detailed maps of someplace that wasn’t Park Avenue and numerous drawings of roses—perfect, beautiful roses.

  The music stopped in Ray’s studio, so I dropped everything on the desk and turned out the light before knocking gently on the connecting doors between our spaces. “Ray?”

  “Come in, sweetheart.”

  The sweetness of oil paint wafted out. “Smells like you’ve been productive today.”

  “Yes,” he said with a smile as he beckoned me to join him in front of his latest work. “Come see.”

  I stepped into the bright lights that illuminated his easel and felt my breath escape me. “It’s…” I stuttered, my mouth suddenly dry.

  “What? You don’t like it?”

  I shook my head and took his hand into mine, giving it a squeeze. The painting was awe-inspiring.

  “I couldn’t get that rose we found in the garden out of my head. So I thought this would do it.”

  I swallowed hard and found it even harder to catch my breath. I’d seen the rose before and it wasn’t in our garden. The pencil drawing lying on my desk had come to life in living color on Ray’s canvas. It glowed with self-satisfaction—the kind of piece everyone would immediately fall in love with.

  “I think I’m going to do a whole series like this. These old Baltimore families love this kind of artwork.” He squeezed my hand again and looked me in the face, all smiles. “Right?”

  I nodded. “It’s breathtaking.”

  “Thanks, beautiful.” The look on his face changed as if he’d suddenly remembered something. “I’m hungry. How about you?”

  I nodded again, not knowing if I should tell him of the rose on my desk.

  “I started some soup in the crockpot this morning. We have a chance of snow tonight. Can you believe that? But I guess it is almost December.”

  “N-no,” I said, stumbling through the word. “I can’t.”

  “Are you done for the night?” he asked as he walked me from his studio and into the hallway, closing the door behind us.

  “Yes.” I watched as he fingered the red cord at the bottom of my wrist.

  “What’s this? Some new fashion trend?”

  We walked together down the stairs to the first floor still hand in hand. “No. It was just something I found in the garden to add to my stack of kitschy bracelets. Not a big deal.”

  “I can’t wait to get to my crockpot. I know, I know, it’s not very manly to be excited about your crockpot dinner, but I’ve thought about this soup and that rose all day long,” Ray said with a smile. His joy was contagious and I found myself leaving behind the thought that his rose painting upstairs was a duplicate of one on my desk. A rose was a rose. Right?

  “I’m going to start a fire,” he said, as we made our way through the front of the house, cutting a path to the kitchen.

  “I think that’s a fine idea. Let’s eat by the fire.”

  I started to walk away when Ray pulled me back to him by my arm, kissing me as I met his body. Dropping our hands, he rubbed my back and held me tight. I felt all my anxiety slip away. “I needed that,” I said when he finally let me go.

  “Me too. Let’s do more of that later tonight. We’ll do part two, the extended cut. The unrated version.”

  I giggled as I walked away from his shouts in the distance and swung the door of the kitchen open, only to step straight into hell.

  “Ray!” I shouted. “Ray, come quick.”

  I could hear his footsteps behind me, but nothing was going to prepare him for what he was about to see.

  “What the hell?”

  Every cabinet, every drawer, anything and everything that could be turned out into the floor, had been. Plates were broken, cups and saucers demolished. All the forks and knives lay scattered across the floor and any and all drawers containing batteries, flashlights, kitchen appliances, or gadgets had been emptied from their resting places.

  “When was the last time you were in the kitchen?” Ray asked as he stepped over broken glass toward the back door that led to the garden.

  “This morning when I had coffee with you. I went into town to get some cleaning stuff at the hardware store and then had lunch with Jess. I—” I hesitated. I’ve not been in here all day.”

  “Well I threw everything in the crock pot at nine and I worked through lunch.”

  Picking up one of the kitchen chairs, I sat it upright and took a seat. “Ray, something…you know… freaky is going on here. You sleep walking, me seeing whatever it was I saw when we were making love, my attack in the shower. It’s all connected. I know it i
s.”

  “How do you know? This could just be a vandal,” Ray said as he turned the knob on the back door and found that it was locked.

  “Really?”

  “Fine, then,” he said as began to put empty drawers back into their rightful places. “What do you suggest? Calling in Jess or something?”

  I knew how Ray felt about Jess. I also knew how he felt about her ghost hunting activities. Like me, he believed most of it was hogwash, but now that we were faced with our own hog to wash, I knew she was the one I needed to call. “At least she’ll know what to do.”

  “I bet you’ve told her all kinds of shit about this place, haven’t you?”

  “No, I haven’t said anything. Frankly, I’ve been too afraid that I’m losing my mind to talk about this with anyone. But after today…”

  “Why? What’s happened today besides this?” Ray asked, as he looked around the kitchen again in disgust.

  “After the—well you know—the incident on the third floor.”

  “You mean the day you kicked me in the balls while we were making love?”

  His sarcasm wasn’t making this any easier. I needed to tell him about the closet and let him judge for himself. “Yes.” I paused a moment to allow the derision in the room to dissipate. “After you left, I began to clean up—shutting the window and stuff like that.”

  Ray motioned his hand into his body, urging me to get on with my story. Our kitchen was lying at our feet. He had no time for hedging.

  “I found a door. A closet.”

  I could see the wheels turning in Ray’s head. He’d not been up there in two weeks. “On the interior wall?”

  I shook my head no. “Exterior.”

  “There’s only the one wall, Liz.”

  I shook my head no once again.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The southwest corner of the third floor. I peeled back the wallpaper and found a door. There wasn’t a handle, but there was a keyhole.”

  “The skeleton keys,” Ray said picking up another chair and taking a seat. I could tell his patience was wearing thin as he refused to look me in the face.

  “Yes.”

  “Before we go up there and you show me. Why don’t you tell me what you found that makes you think this mess has anything to do with it?” Ray said as closed his arms tightly across his chest.

  “It wasn’t much. Three old dresses, a suitcase with a Virgin Mary figurine inside, a doll, a bag filled with some pencil drawings and a frame.”

  “Drawings?” Ray’s ears came to attention and he finally looked me in the eye. “What kind of drawings?”

  “I’m afraid to tell you.”

  “We’re in this together now, sweetheart. You better spit it out.”

  “Roses.”

  He slumped into the chair. “Shit.” He looked back to me.

  I knew he wanted me to tell him the painting in his studio looked nothing like the one I’d found. I couldn’t. “It’s an identical copy.”

  “It can’t be,” Ray said with a sigh as he rubbed his eyes in and out with his index finger and thumb. “It’s an original oil.”

  “Come see for yourself.”

  I stood and he followed me up the winding stairs into my office where I handed him the stack of drawings before I even turned on a light. “See?”

  He began to thumb through them, finally sitting on my sofa before happening upon the drawing that matched his latest work. “What the hell is going on around here?”

  “I don’t know. The house is—”

  “Don’t say it Liz. You know I don’t believe in that shit.”

  “Fine, I won’t say it. Now, tell me what happened in our kitchen today?”

  Ray shook his head. I could see by the look on his face that he was shaken to his very core. He now felt the way I did after the shower incident—after the sex episode.

  “I don’t know. But we can’t leave, Liz. Everything we have is tied up in this fucking house.”

  “Who says I want to leave? I’m not leaving. If anyone is going it’s gonna be them. I paid for this house in cold hard cash. Nothing from the past is going to stop me from turning it into exactly what we want it to be. You and me, Ray. Just us three.”

  “Damn straight,” he added with verve.

  We gave our shared moment of determination the silence it deserved, knowing that all that was left to do was to clean up the mess in the kitchen. It would take us the rest of the night to get it back together and some time to replace what was broken. I stared at Ray and gave him the tiniest of smiles. “Now that we’ve proclaimed our unflappable fortitude, I guess we should get started downstairs.”

  “I know,” he sighed. “So what else was in the closet again, because you said there was a doll?”

  I looked around my feet and on top of the desk. The doll was missing. “It’s gone.”

  “What’s gone? The doll?”

  “Yes,” I said, standing to get a better look at the floor.

  “And a picture frame?”

  Looking for the doll, I found the frame face down in the floor. I handed it to Ray who shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t either. But it must mean something, right?”

  “Yeah, like stop touching other people’s stuff. C’mon,” he said holding his hand out to me. “Let’s clean up the kitchen and then you can call Jess.”

  “And say what?”

  “I don’t know. Tell her we’re fucked.”

  “Please don’t say that.”

  I followed him down the stairwell and into the kitchen. “Pick a side,” he said, surveying the mess. “We’ll meet in the middle.”

  “You’re hungry and grumpy. Why don’t I find you something to eat?” I looked across the room and saw nothing but carrots and egg noodles plastered to the wall. “Chicken noodle, huh?”

  “Yeah, well, whatever.”

  Climbing over the piles, I slid into the pantry door, using the handle to right myself and gain my balance. “I’ll make you a sandwich.”

  Ray dropped his shoulders and sighed. He was tired. Tired of working, tired of the renovation and now tired of all the bizarre activities.

  He began in the corner opposite me, picking up the unbroken dishes and placing them on the counter.

  I clutched the pantry door handle and prayed. The last thing we needed tonight was to have all the canned and dry goods scattered everywhere. I caught my breath and turned the knob. A shock wave traveled through my body and the hair at the nape of my neck stood at attention.

  “Ray,” I whispered, as it swayed back and forth. “Ray,” I said turning to meet his face. Swinging from a noose inside the pantry door was the one-eyed missing doll.

  13

  ELIZA

  Jess had agreed to meet me at Starbucks so I could explain to her all that had been happening in the house over the past four months. To say she was unhappy that I’d kept everything to myself would be an understatement.

  Jess was beautiful and sassy and one of the strongest women I’d ever known. Losing both her parents at a young age, she’d been raised by her aunt and her grandmother—two more strong women who always wanted to cook for us when we were roommates in college.

  “Do you have a death wish? Why have you been keeping this from me?” Jess asked. She was more than worried. She was angry. “You’re dealing with some serious crap here, Liz. I hope you understand that.”

  “I guess I just didn’t feel scared enough to call you about it. I mean it’s almost as if the house wants us there, but something else doesn’t.”

  “That’s for damn sure.”

  I loved Jess like a sister. She was the one friend who didn’t pull any punches. If I was being a bitch, Jess let me know. If I was dating an ass, she’s let me know that too. When it came to Ray, she’d watched me cry over our relationship too many times to weigh in anymore, saying, “If you make that bed, you’re gonna have to lie in it.”

  Picking up her soym
ilk latte, she gave me a glare before opening her Day-Timer and checking dates. “You know, it would’ve been better if you’d told me all of this on so many levels. As it is, I’ll have to cancel two appointments to come to your place and save your sorry behind—and one of them is to get my hair done. And you know I never cancel that appointment. I hope you know how much I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  My best friend was fearless in so many ways. Always interested in the occult and paranormal, she’d drag me to every convention there was, filled with psychics and scary characters. We walked away from horror movies many times—her excited about the latest chilling tale we’d watched, and me ready to sleep with the lights on for two weeks. I’d always told her if I was ever in a real horror movie, there was no one I’d rather be running from the chainsaw with than her. Little did I know that someday I’d be living my own horror flick.

  “So what happens now?” I asked.

  “Now, I get my people together, we come to your house with a van full of equipment and high hopes. Then we wait for the entities to do more bad things in your house so we can capture them on tape.”

  “Who are your people?”

  “Other ghost hunting friends—a parapsychologist, a medium and a photographer who specializes in capturing images of—”

  “Of what?”

  “You know. Sprits, demons—stuff like that.”

  I took a bottomless breath and did my best to find a smile deep inside. I didn’t want Jess to know how afraid I was.

  “Don’t worry. I’m stronger than any monster under your bed. Anyway,” she said suddenly turning into the sassy friend I could always count on. “Ain’t nobody got time for you to be all, my house is possessed and shit. We just need to take care of it. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Besides, if this turns out to be a bust,” Jess said closing her Day-Timer with a slap. “I’ll haunt you myself until I get on the books with my stylist again.”

  I double-checked the items on the kitchen table with the list Jess had emailed me. I had extra batteries, a first aid kit, notepads and pencils, a fully charged cell phone with a back-up battery, and a compass. The team was bringing all the other equipment and would be at Park Ave by eight o’clock in the evening. Jess had given me a long list of instructions too. Some were pretty self explanatory, but others like, don’t talk too much were a little hard for me to follow. What did she expect? That I’d just watch everyone roam around my house without uttering a syllable?