Who Lives In Whickham Manor?

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“Your grandmother left you the house and everything in it.” Mr. Madden, Grandma Sandy’s attorney, explained. “Along with $20,000 dollars in her savings.”

Jamie barely heard him, instead, she looked over his shoulder.

Wickham Manor.

A beast of wood and metal that called its liking from vintage playhouses in antique shops. Adorned with gilded awnings and detailed columns that speared up from the old wooden porch like sentinels that had fallen asleep at their post long ago. Now the grandeur of her family's home was slowly eroding with dirt and moss in the wet Maine climate.

Nothing like Grandma Sandy.

It was strange that her grandmother was dead. She was a sprightly and vivid person. The fact she was stabbed to death by a burglar was too gruesome. The only comfort was that the intruder was caught fleeing the house.

Jamie gingerly climbed the front steps and bent to the door. It was mostly glass with iron camellias trailing across its surface and crusted with dirt.

Her mother, Loren, was always excited to visit Maine from their sunny Tennessee.

She had never felt that excitement. There was always something.... odd. Stagnant and festering about Wickham Manor that she had often asked if Grandma could visit them instead.

What an odd wish of Grandma’s to leave the house to her instead of Loren.

Jamie walked into the house. A puff of stale air and the ripe decay of cotton hung heavy, making her and Mr. Madden cough.

"I can't stay but my contact info is in the email I sent you if you need anything. I hope your mother will be arriving soon."

Jamie followed Mr. Madden's appraising gaze. Two parlors, one with a new half bath fitted into one side of the room on their right. Also, a dining room larger than a gymnasium with a fully equipped kitchen attached on their left. And a tangle of bedrooms spanning two floors above them.

"Unfortunately, my mom is working in Quebec but," Jamie risked a quick breath. "I'm off from college for the summer. I have plenty of time to get Grandma's stuff sorted."

"Good," Mr. Madden nodded before awkwardly backing to his car. “Goodbye.”

As he pulled down the sea-shell gravel drive, Wickham Manor seemed silent, slumbering but not peaceful.

No, there was something about the humming in this stale air that made it seem on the verge of waking.

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She started with the bedrooms. Something about wading through vintage clothes best worn during the era of disco seemed less intimidating than the crystal antiques downstairs.

Entering Loren’s old room Jamie sighed. The wardrobe no longer had the mischievous wonder it had four rooms ago.

She inspected the room closely. Her Grandmother had more jewelry boxes than Jamie dare count.

"What goodies are you hiding?" Her fingers peeled over its top, opening it to a shallow pan used for rings.

All it held now was a crumpled note scribbled in familiar handwriting.

play stereo at 8pm.

Jamie dropped it with a shrug. Her grandmother had been getting old. Reminders weren't that strange.

Eagerly she popped open the lower drawers. The only item that wasn’t costume jewelry padded with lint was a photo.

It was of Loren and a man. Or at least Jamie assumed it was her mother. She had sunglasses on but...the smile. That smile was so similar to her mom’s that it must be her. Which made the man she had her arms slung around...perhaps, this was her father?

He was tall and blonde, a little weasel-like in the face but...Her father?

Jamie inspected him closely. She had never been permitted to discuss her father or see pictures of him.

She thought of using the $20,000 to hire someone to find her dad but if there was information about him in the house…

Jamie rushed down the spiral stairs closes to the back of the house, eager to start searching.

It led her to the library, but her family had never been readers. Instead, they had thrown down colorful rugs and bought toys to fill the room. It used to be Jamie's haven in Maine.

There were so many memories here. One being a cherrywood dollhouse. It was pressed into a corner and as Jamie squatted to brush the dust off, she noticed a doll in one of the rooms.

Gingerly pulling it into the weak lamplight, she saw its hair had been meticulously pulled out.

Odd.

The light made a deep shadow at the base of the doll's neck. She gingerly ran a finger over the spot and the plastic column caved in and its head fell off.

It bounced on the floor of the dollhouse and rolled by her feet.

Jamie stared at where its neck had been cracked.

She didn’t remember destroying her toys, but it was long ago, and she hadn't always been a happy kid.

As if Wickham Manor wanted to speak on her internal deprecation the house groaned as a roaring of coastal wind beat against the windows. The library’s shutters clanged but Jamie thought she heard the smooth click of a door being shut in the hall behind her.

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Jamie replaced clothes with dull crystal and grimy photos framed in fake gold.

It wasn’t until the main parlor grew dark and her back ached that Jamie found a portrait of her, Loren, and Grandma.

All three of them grinning with a marbling of pale skin and thick dark hair.

Fondly Jamie sat it on the mantle that capped a beast of a fireplace. Left in the center of the mantle was a brass clock that read five past eight.

“Hmm,” Jamie stepped over to the battery-powered stereo nestled next to the fireplace. “What were you listening to Grandma?”

As the play button clicked into place a familiar song started.

“Mary had a little lamb,”

Jamie’s eyebrows narrowed, casting a deep shadow over her eyes, and listened to the smooth falsetto until the CD stuck.

“Little lamb,”

The gentle wind from outside stilled.

“Little lamb,”

A distant shifting of wood echoed somewhere in the hallway.

“Lamb, lamb,”

The silence in the house thickened and it seemed like the walls itself were breathing.

Jamie smashed the pause button.

The dust in the air pillowed tight around her, pulling at the hairs attached to the nape of her neck and all but panting down her spine.

She nearly sprinted into the kitchen.

Dinner. She would focus on making dinner.

She wouldn’t think about why her seventy-nine-year-old grandmother was listening to children's songs every night at eight.

With determination to cling to ignorance, Jamie jammed a slice of bread into the toaster but it stopped short.

Replacing her fingers with the gluten good she found...paper?

Pulling the obstructing item free she found three crumpled sheets of paper filled with her grandmother's looping script.

Whickham Manor groaned or the floorboards in the living room did or…

Jamie sucked down a breath and stuffed the pages into her pocket. She would eat before reading them. Like a rational, civilized person that can handle spending one night by herself.

Jamie dug her hand inside a drawer for a butter knife but halted like water touching coals. The air steamed right out of her lungs.

Sitting in the drawer was a butcher knife covered from handle to tip with a dark brown crusted substance.

Jamie abandoned the kitchen and walked, as calmly as possible, to her room and bolted the door.

Had the police forgotten the knife when they found her grandmother's body? Had the burglar stashed it before running in the hopes no one would find it?

The curiosity of what the pages held caught her in a need for knowledge. For an understanding of what was going on in her grandmother's life.

Jamie sat on the bed. Oblivious to the slowly opening closet door nestled in the far corner of the room.

The results came today. She’s pregnant. My daughter! And with that man!

I can hardly stand it! How will she raise a child in her condition? She has made every wrong decision a person could.

In the moments today that she was lucid she said the baby was going to be named Jamie after that bastard who got her into this state. That is if the baby can survive my daughter's habits.

A blaring ringtone of her cellphone cracked the heavy quiet.

“Mom?”

“Jamie?” A high-pitched woman's voice bleated. “Tell me you are not in Maine! I told you I would go once I got back.”

“Who knows how long you’ll be gone. And you had Grandma cremated without a funeral.” Jamie sighed. “Plus, she left everything to me. I had to come.”

“What?” Loren’s aggravation drained from her voice, a hysterical edge whining into life. “You’re staying in the house?”

“Yeah-”

“Jamie, listen to me.” Loren cut in fiercely. “You need to go back to Tennessee. Tonight.”

“Why?” The knife flashed to her mind. For a moment Jamie wished Loren were with her.

“Jamie you must leave right now.” Loren panted. “Go to a hotel. I’ll leave Quebec tonight and meet you.”

“Mom, you gotta give me more.” The pages pulled her gaze.

“I will baby but please,” Loren’s voice quieted. “Leave the house and do it quietly.”

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She forwent her suitcase and eased into the hall.

It was like wading through a tunneling blackness that became thick the longer you were in it. Or perhaps that was her anxiety forcing adrenaline to pump too swiftly through her veins.

Jamie stepped onto the wide steps of the main stairs which led directly to the front door.

A hard shove dug into her back and she pitched forward. The dust-stained marble floor rushed upward.

The thick sound of flesh hitting stone echoed in the entryway hall.

Whickham Manor quieted its groaning and shifting with the wind and from the shadows of its darkened bowls emerged a figure.

Pale feet slid towards her blurring eyes before the house tore light and sound away.

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Thin light greeted her when Jamie came too.

She lay on a narrow bed. The room was small and spares with a small lamp. Against a wall that had a darkened hole at its base and parallel to a handle-less door was a dresser holding dolls. Some swaddled, some in cloth diapers but all were missing their hair.

“My God.”

She sucked down a breath and tasted musty sheets.

Someone...was being kept in this room.

The frayed edges of her nerves wore down until tears slowly slipped from her eyes.

Nestled beside the lamp was a black notebook. She lunged for it.

It’s a miracle the baby survived. Looking into her sweet face, I know what I must do.

I’ve told that man, Jamie Collindar, the baby died during delivery and I’ve talked to Loren. Thankfully, she decided to take the baby as her own.

Jamie’s fingers bit into the notebook, the tears streaming down her face running cold.

Loren insists on naming the baby Jamie. To honor her twin but Lana wouldn’t understand the sentiment. The drugs have rotted her brain, which is why I’ve told Jamie that Lana also died.

It makes it easier to take care of the baby if he isn’t interfering and Lana…She will need to be watched carefully. As her mother that responsibility falls on me.

There was nothing else but more ripped pages.

“No,”

Her mom was…Loren was her real mothers’ twin?

But Loren was her mom. She was!

Jamie looked at the dresser of dolls.

Her grandmother kept…her biological mother here all these years?

The darkness covering the hole slid silently away showing the green walls of the hall bath. Dark hair swung into view.

Her lungs seized, the figure crawling through the wall was between her and the only exit.

A pale face tipped toward her.

Jamie slowly closed the notebook.

The End