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It had been Sandra who had handled the sell, but she wouldn’t touch the house again. Sandra’s imagination was a little too thorough to allow her to go back to the place where her clients were slaughtered.
Abbie had been given the job because she specialized in the hard-to-sell. Hadn’t she sold that monstrous rundown Victorian to that young couple who wanted to fix it up, and that awful filthy Peterson house? Why, she had spent her days off cleaning it out so it would sell, and it had sold, for more than they expected. And Abbie was determined that she would sell this house as well.
She admitted that mass murder was a very black mark against a house. And mass murder with an official cause of demon possession was about as black a mark as any.
The house had been exorcised, but even Abbie, who was no psychic, could feel it. Evil was here like a stain that wouldn’t come completely up. And if the second owners of this house fell to demons, then Abbie and her Realtor company would be liable. So Abbie would see that the house was cleansed correctly. It would be as pure and lily-white as a virgin at her wedding. It would have to be.
The real problem was that the newspapers had made a horrendous scandal of it all. There wasn’t a soul for miles around that didn’t know about it. And any prospective buyer would have to be told. No, Abbie would not try to keep it a secret from buyers, but at the same time she wouldn’t volunteer the full information too early in the sales pitch either.
She hesitated outside the door and said half aloud, “Come on, it’s just a house. There’s nothing in there to hurt you.” The words rang hollow somehow, but she put the key in the lock and the door swung inward.
It looked so much like all the other houses that it startled her. Somehow she had thought that there would be a difference. Something to mark it apart from any other house. But the living room was small with the extra vaulted ceiling and brick fireplace. The carpet had been a beige-tan color that went with almost any décor. She’d seen pictures of the room before. There was bare subflooring, stretching naked and unfinished.
The flooring was discolored, pale and faded, almost like a coffee stain, but it covered a huge area. Here was where they had found Marion Garner. The papers said she had been stabbed over twenty times with a butcher knife.
New carpeting would hide the stain.
The afternoon sunlight streamed in the west-facing window and illuminated a hole in the wall. It was about the size of a fist and stood like a gaping reminder in the center of the off-white wall. As she walked closer, Abbie could see splatters along the wall. The cleanup crew usually got up all the visible mess. This looked like they hadn’t even tried. Abbie would demand that they either finish the job, or give back some of the deposit.
The stains were pale brown shadows of their former selves, but no family would move in with such stains. New paint, new carpeting; the price of the house would need to go up. And Abbie wasn’t sure she could get anyone to pay the original price.
She spoke softly to herself, “Now what kind of defeatist talk is that? You will sell this house.” And she would, one way or another.
The kitchen/dining room area was cheerful with its skylight and back door. There was a smudge on the white door near the knob but not on it. Abbie stooped to examine it and quickly straightened. She wasn’t sure if the cleanup crew had missed it or just left it. Maybe it was time to hire a new cleaning crew. Nothing excused leaving this behind.
It was a tiny handprint made of dried blood. It had to belong to the little boy; he had been almost five. Had he come running in here to escape? Had he tried to open the door and failed?
Abbie leaned over the sink and opened the kitchen window. It seemed stuffy in here suddenly. The cool spring breeze riffled the white curtains. They were embroidered with autumn leaves in rusts and shades of gold. They went well with the brown and ivory floor tiles.
She had a choice now, about where to go next. The door leading to the adjoining garage was just to her right. And the stairs leading down to the basement next to that. The garage was fairly safe. She opened the door and stepped onto the single step. The garage was cooler than the house, like a cave. Another back door led from the garage to the backyard. The only stains here were oil stains.
She stepped back in and closed the door, leaning against it for a moment. Her eyes glanced down the stairs to the closed door of the basement. Little Brian Garner’s last trip had been down those stairs. Had he been chased? Had he hidden there and been discovered?
She would leave the basement until later.
The bedrooms and bath stretched down the long hallway to the left. The first bedroom had been the nursery. Someone had painted circus animals along the walls. They marched bright and cheerful round the empty walls. Jessica Garner had missed her second birthday by only two weeks. Or that’s what Sandra said.
The bathroom was across the hall. It was good-sized, done mostly in white with some browns here and there. The mirror over the sink was gone. The cleanup crew had carted away the broken glass and left the black emptiness in the silver frame. Why replace anything until they knew for sure the house wasn’t being torn down? Other houses had been torn down for less.
The wallpaper was pretty and looked undamaged. It was ivory with a pattern of pale pink stripes and brown flowers done small. Abbie ran her hand down it and found slash marks. There were at least six holes in the wall, as if a knife had been thrust into it. But there was no blood. There was no telling what Phillip Garner thought he was doing driving a knife into his bathroom wall.
The master bedroom was next with its half bath and ceiling fan. The wallpaper in here was beige with a brown oriental design done tasteful and small. There was a stain in the middle of the carpet, smaller than the living room’s blood. No one knew why the baby had been in here, but it was here that he killed her. The papers were vague about exactly how she had died, which meant it was too gruesome to print much of it. Which meant that Jessica Garner had glimpsed hell before she died. There was a pattern of small smudges low along one wall. It looked like tiny bloody handprints struggling. But at least here the cleanup crew had tried to wash them away. Why hadn’t they done the same in the kitchen area?
The more Abbie thought about it, the madder she got. With something this awful, why leave blatant reminders?
The little bathroom was in stainless white and silver, except for something dark between the tiles in front of the sink. Abbie started to bend down to look, but she knew what it was. It was blood. They had gotten most of it up, but it clung in the grooves between the tiles like dirt under a fingernail. She’d never seen the cleanup crew so careless.
The boy’s bedroom was in the front corner of the house. The wallpaper was a pale blue with racing cars streaking across it. Red, green, yellow, dark blue, the cars with their miniature drivers raced around the empty walls. This was the only carpeting in the house that had some real color to it; it was a rich blue. Perhaps it had been the boy’s favorite color. The sliding doors to the closet were torn, ripped. The white scars of naked wood showed under the varnish. One door had been ripped from its groove and leaned against the far wall. Had Brian Garner hidden here and been flushed out by his father?
Or had Phillip Garner only thought his son was in here? For it was certain the boy had not died here. There were no bloodstains, no helpless handprints.
Abbie walked out into the hallway. She had walked into hundreds of empty houses over the years, but she had never felt anything quite like this. The very walls seemed to be holding their breath, waiting, but waiting for what? It had not felt this way a moment before, of that Abbie was sure. She tried to shake the feeling but it would not leave. The best thing to do was finish the inspection quickly and get out of the house.
Unfortunately, all that was left was the basement.
She had been reluctant to go down there before, but with the air riding with expectation she didn’t want to go down. But if she couldn’t even stand to inspect the house, how could she possibly sell it?
She walked purposefully through the house, ignoring the bloodstained carpet and the handprinted door. But by ignoring them she became more aware of them. Death, especially violent death, was not easily dismissed.
Rust-brown carpet led down the steps to the closed door. And for some reason Abbie found the closed door menacing. But she went down.
She hesitated with her hand almost over the doorknob and then opened it quickly. The cool dampness of the basement was unchanged. It was like any other basement except this one had no windows. Mr. Garner had requested that, no one knew why.
