Page 75 of Serenity Falls

Not that there’d be anyone there to welcome you because Wendy Molton died back in ’98. She worked part-time at the sheriff’s office. Filing, office work, and so on. A nice lady. Always seemed happy. Then one day, she left work, drove over to the Serenity Falls Hotel, paid for a room and hanged herself from a ceiling fan.

No one remembers the name Wendy Molton now, but most folk in Serenity Falls have heard the story of ‘Weeping Wendy’, who haunts Room 134 of the hotel. I guess the truth has got kind of twisted over the years. Wendy wasn’t a bride, or rather she was going to be, but she didn’t kill herself because she was jilted. No one really knows why she killed herself or why she did it at the hotel. But everyone likes a good ghost story.

I paused outside Wendy’s house and checked the log again. It struck me that Wendy died less than a year after Owen, who died not long after Davey Junior. All those nasty deaths so close together. I wasn’t sure whether that was important. Or maybe bad things really do come in threes. Still, I found myself circling the names and addresses.

After another couple of houses, I decided to take a break. The day was getting hot, and sweat was sticking my shirt to my back. I found a shady bench in the park, sat and sipped some water and ate the ham sandwich I’d packed. As I chewed, I looked back over the log.

I’d noted down as many names and causes of death as I could remember – heart attack, allergic reaction, brain tumour. Sad, but these things happen. There were several accidents – falling tree branch, fall downstairs (two), electric shock while repairing generator, chainsaw, gas explosion. And then there were the houses where people left for no reason.

There wasn’t anything immediately obvious to link them. Different ages, some had kids, some didn’t, some were married, some single. But I realized most of the deaths and disappearances happened after ’97, the year Davey Junior died. Sure, there were a few before then, but after that they really ramped up.

I let this settle while I finished my sandwich, staring out over the park and lake. It looked beautiful today. But then, it looked beautiful every day. Peaceful, safe. And suddenly I wondered what the heck I was doing. Why did I want to ruin this life? Twenty years, and I was going to throw it all away on some stupid hunch.

For a moment it felt like a cloud had coasted across the sun, causing my skin to prickle with goosebumps. I could leave this, I thought. I could go home and forget about the log and the ghost houses, and life would potter along like it always had. In fact, I could almost hear a voice telling me to let it go. And I came close. I packed up my sandwich wrappers, climbed back on my bike and turned in the direction of home.

That’s when I saw her. Carrie. Jogging along the path around the lake, dark hair bouncing, headphones clamped to her ears. I was about to raise a hand to wave when I realized it wasn’t Carrie. How could it be? It was another pretty lady whose name I couldn’t quite recall but I’d seen about. We smiled at each other and she jogged on past.

I watched her go and I thought about how Carrie should still be out jogging around, seeing the sun shimmer off the water, but instead she was lying on a cold mortuary slab, and the sun would never warm her skin again.

With a new-found determination, I turned away from home and headed back out on to the streets.

20

We get back from the restaurant around nine, stuffed full of pizza and pasta.

Sadie had seemed a little quiet over dinner, but I decided not to push it. She was probably just tired. If she wanted to talk, she would. Sometimes you need to let them ease it out on their own.

I crack open another beer, and we slump on the sofa to watch TV for a while. It’s the first time we’ve used the giant flatscreen and, annoyingly, half the channels seem to be missing. The remaining ones are only showing re-runs. I add ‘broadband’ to my mental list of things to call people about.

‘Oh, look.’ Sadie points at the screen. ‘Frasier. The one with the platinum door. This is a good one.’

We settle companionably to enjoy Niles and Frasier’s fruitless quest for greater exclusivity at the secret spa.

After it finishes Sadie heads up to bed. I flick through the available TV channels and think about opening another beer (my fourth). I decide against it. I don’t want it becoming a habit. Two beers creep to three. Four to five, and before you know it, you’re driving round four different shops every night to buy alcohol because you don’t want the cashier at your local corner shop to think you’re a lush.

I click off the TV, stand and stretch. Things click and creak. That happens once you pass forty. Your middle-age percussion section. I check the time: 10.15 p.m. I realize I feel a little tense. This was the time I saw Arnie before. I wander to the sliding doors, unlatch them and peer outside. The pool glows and outdoor lights illuminate the patio. It’s empty for now. Distantly, some unidentifiable bird or creature yowls. I jump. Everything here is strange, I think. Strange and unusual. I pull the doors closed.

I don’t feel quite ready for bed, but I need something to distract me from the lure of the beer in the fridge. I could make a coffee, I suppose, but more caffeine probably isn’t a good idea either. I wander out into the hall and stare around aimlessly. It occurs to me that there are two more rooms off this gigantic space we haven’t even used yet. Once again, I wonder how and why Mum bought this house.

I went through piles of her old documents before we moved. Mum kept everything. Bank statements going back two decades, council tax bills, piles of receipts, warranties and official letters, but nothing about a mansion in Florida. I understand that all the legal documents were kept by the solicitors, but surely there would be something?

My eyes fall on the unpacked boxes. There’s only one box of Mum’s stuff that I haven’t sorted through yet. Sealed with yellowing Sellotape and labelled: Photos and Memories. I didn’t have the heart to look through it after she died. But I brought it here in case there’s anything that can explain this.

Fuck it. No time like the present. Which is a stupid saying. There are plenty of times like the present, better than the present, even. Procrastination is an underrated skill. But right now, it’s this or beer. And I choose this.

I find the box right at the back of the pile. I pick it up and take it over to the dining table. It feels light, insubstantial. A whole life lived. Eighty-three years, and yet all the important stuff can be fitted into one small, battered box. The sum of our lives is always far smaller than we care to admit. But then, I guess the real important stuff isn’t what we save in boxes, it’s what we leave in the hearts of others; in love given and missed.

I feel a sudden stab of grief. One I haven’t felt since we arrived here. Mum. All those years, everything she did for me and Sadie, and yet, all those years she kept a secret. And I can’t ask her about it.

There are lots of stages of grieving, and some are predictable: the feeling of loss, the guilt, the confrontation with your own mortality, especially when you lose a parent. You’ve moved up the ladder. Your number is a little closer to being called. Time is a slippery little fucker. It passes you by and catches up with you all at once.

The other stages are more random. Grief is a long-term guest. It doesn’t magically go away. It just manifests in different ways. Several times a day I think of something I would like to tell Mum or ask her. Questions I never asked when she was alive and now will never know the answers to. Small things like how did I get the small scar on my head? Bigger ones like why did Dad leave? And then this one huge thing.

I rip off the Sellotape (which long ago lost it potency and seems to be holding the box together by sheer willpower) and pull back the flaps.

Inside, I find birthday and Christmas cards from me and Sadie, a key ring I must have made for Mum at school, a badly malformed pottery owl that I guess Sadie made in primary. There’s other stuff too – Mother’s Day cards, a few badly drawn pictures. A lump rises in my throat. Tears burn behind my eyes. I put the mementos to one side and rub at my face. Fuck.

I pick up a worn envelope and open it. Photographs. I hesitate, then tip them out. They’re old, some are black and white, some that yellow-tinged colour I instantly associate with childhood if, like me, you were born in the seventies.