Haunted (20 page)

The woman cautiously rose to her feet, looked around again, laid down her needlepoint, and headed for the front hall.

“I swear she looked right at me a minute ago,” I said to Kristof.

I hurried after her, with Kristof at my heels. In the hall, the woman stopped and latched the inner bolt. Then she turned and climbed the stairs.

“You!” I called after her. “Hold on!”

She didn’t pause. At the top, she walked across the hall and through an open bedroom door where Abby was making the bed. A man’s trousers hung over a chair, and shaving implements littered the bureau, next to a wash-basin filled with scum-and-whisker-coated water. On the floor was an open suitcase.

“Make yourself useful and dump that water, Lizzie,” Abby said.

The younger woman—Lizzie—didn’t move. “I heard Uncle John talking to Father last night.”

“Eavesdropping?” Abby said.

“I hear Father is going to change his will.”

“That’s his business. Not yours.”

Lizzie circled the bed, staying across the room from Abby. “But it is my business, isn’t it? You don’t think Emma and I know what you’re doing? First persuading Father to let your sister stay in the house on Fourth Street, then persuading him to transfer ownership of that house to you, and now a new will.”

“I don’t know anything about a new will,” Abby said.

Lizzie crossed the room and looked out the front window, turning her back on the woman I assumed was her stepmother. “So there is no new will?”

“No, there isn’t. If your father has written one, he would have told me.”

Lizzie nodded. She walked to the bureau and picked up the water basin. A few moments later, she returned the empty basin to the guest room. Then, without a word to her stepmother, she headed for a bedroom farther down.

Downstairs, the side door banged again. I looked toward Lizzie’s bedroom, but whatever fire seemed to have been starting up here had sputtered out. Better check out the situation below.

We found Bridget back in the parlor, washing the side windows now. From upstairs came the sound of footsteps. Then a few muffled exchanges. Bridget paused her cleaning and looked toward the dining room, as if the voices came from in there.

“At least they’re talking again,” she murmured.

She hoisted the pail of wash water and headed through the sitting room and around to the side door. I trailed her outside and watched her dump the water over her puddle of vomit. Then she walked to a pump and refilled the bucket.

“Pumping your own water?” I said. “Thank God I was born in the twentieth century.”

Kristof shrugged. “A hundred years from now people will probably be amazed that we cooked our own meals.”

I jerked my chin at the house. “
They’d
be amazed that we cooked our own meals, too.”

When we got back inside, someone was banging at the front door. Bridget hurried to answer it. She grabbed the door to pull it open and nearly fell over backward when it didn’t budge. She grabbed it again and twisted.

“Bolted?” she murmured, reaching for the lock. “In the middle of the day?”

The banging grew louder. Bridget fumbled with the lock. The moment she got it undone, the door flew open and she toppled backward to the floor. A laugh floated down the stairs.

“That was quite a pratfall,” Lizzie called from the top.

Andrew strode inside and handed Bridget his hat. Clutching a white parcel beneath his arm, he marched into the sitting room and took a key from on top of the mantel. As Lizzie watched him, she fixed a hook that had come unfastened on her dress.

“Back so soon, Father?” she said.

He grunted something about not feeling well, then walked through the kitchen to the side foyer. Instead of heading out the door, he climbed the rear steps. I followed. At the top of the stairs was a landing with a single door, then more steps leading to the attic level. Andrew unlocked the door and went into what was obviously his bedroom. After dropping off the parcel, he locked the door behind him and headed downstairs.

“Where’s Abby?” he asked his daughter as he walked into the sitting room.

“She had a note from a sick friend and decided to pay a visit.”

Andrew harrumphed and, without so much as loosening his tie, stretched out on the sofa and closed his eyes.

Note? Sick friend? When had this happened? Oh, wait, I’d been out back with Bridget for a few minutes before Andrew got home. Still, Abby must have left awfully fast…

Bridget walked in, carrying her bucket. Her gaze slid to Andrew. Lizzie shooed her into the dining room and followed, as did I. While Bridget washed the windows, Lizzie set up a board and began ironing handkerchiefs. They chatted quietly about whether Bridget was going out later that day, but Bridget confessed she was still feeling poorly. I only caught snatches of the conversation. My attention kept wandering back to the “note” and the “sick friend.”

I left the two women, peeked in on Andrew, who was now snoring, and headed for the front stairs. The moment I got to the top of the stairs, I saw Abby. She was still in the guest room, and the door was still open. She was on the floor, facedown, as if she’d fallen to her knees, then slumped forward to the floor. A pool of blood surrounded her. Her head and shoulders had been…hacked. There was no other word for it. I’ve seen death before, and I’ve seen violent death, but this made even my gorge rise.

“Jesus,” I swore. “How—what—?”

Kristof strode past me, and surveyed the room with a prosecutor’s eye. As I walked inside, still struggling to understand what I was seeing, I nearly trampled a piece of Abby’s scalp. I stepped over it, then looked down at the body.

The first blow must have killed her. If it hadn’t, Abby would have cried out and Bridget or I would have heard her. But the killer hadn’t stopped with one blow. There were ten, twenty, maybe more cuts, deep cuts. The fury that had gone into this killing, the absolute rage…I stood there, and I stared at the body, and I couldn’t fathom the degree of hate that had done this.

“Who?” I said, wheeling on Kristof.

As his eyes met mine, I knew the answer was obvious. Dead obvious. But I thought of Lizzie, standing at the top of the stairs, laughing at Bridget’s struggle with the door lock, then calmly ironing handkerchiefs while her dead stepmother lay one floor above them. To switch from this kind of rage to that kind of calm within minutes, well, it made no sense. What kind of monster—

I looked back at Abby. As I did, in my head I heard a skipping song from childhood.

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother forty whacks;

When she saw what she had done—

“Oh shit!” I said, and raced for the steps.

I took them two at a time, turned at the bottom, and dove through the closed door.

Wearing her father’s overcoat, Lizzie stood behind her sleeping father’s head, with her back to me. She lifted a bloodied hatchet, then swung it down.

She gave her father forty-one.

19

WE STOOD THERE GAPING AS LIZZIE BORDEN HACKED
apart her father’s head. Then she laid down the hatchet. Her eyes closed, and her body went stiff as she rose onto her tiptoes.

Kristof nudged my arm.

“Look,” he whispered.

There, on the sofa, lay Andrew Borden, intact and un-bloodied, reading the morning paper. Lizzie had backed up to the doorway between the kitchen and the parlor. She blinked, then walked through, needlepoint appearing in her hand.

The doorbell rang.

“Who is it at this hour?” Andrew grouched, slamming his paper to the floor.

“I’ll get it, Father.”

“No. Go help your mother.”

Lizzie nodded, then laid down her needlework and disappeared into the kitchen. In the front foyer, Andrew threw open the door, and barked a greeting at the man there—the doctor who’d come to the door before.

“Just stopped by to see if you folks are feeling any better,” the doctor said.

“Feeling better?”

“Yes, your wife came over this morning, said you’d both been up all night with stomach complaints…”

The two continued, having the same conversation they’d had when we’d been watching from the front lawn.

“It’s looping back to the start,” I said. “Did we miss something? Are the Fates playing it again for me?”

“Someone is replaying it, but I don’t think it’s for you.”

Andrew stormed back into the parlor, sniping to his wife and daughter. A moment later, Bridget rushed past, hand over her mouth. I started going after her, but Lizzie stood in the door, peering through the kitchen toward the back window. I kept going—and bumped into her, hitting so hard, I bounced back.

“She’s real,” I said, looking over my shoulder at Kristof. “Solid.”

Without waiting for his reaction, I strode across the room, reaching out to both Abby and Andrew. My hand passed right through both. As with the doctor outside, I was the corporeal one here. They were the spirits.

“So Lizzie is real,” I said. “But only her.”

Kristof nodded, as if he’d reached this conclusion already.

“If she’s real, then I can talk to her. I saw something in her eyes earlier—”

“She looked at you.”

“Yes, but I think I also saw the Nix—or some leftover bit of her. Lizzie Borden must have been one of the Nix’s partners. This must be the one the Fates wanted me to speak to, so let’s—”

Kristof laid a hand on my arm.

“Don’t rush her,” he murmured. “Try it again when she’s sitting down.”

When Lizzie finally sat with her needlework, I plunked down beside her.

“I know you can hear me,” I said.

She kept stitching, the needle sliding through the fabric, dragging a blue stream of thread after it.

“Look—” I began.

“Wait,” she said.

She looked up at her father, who was adjusting his jacket, preparing to leave.

“Have a pleasant day at work, Father,” she said.

He responded with an abrupt nod, and another for his wife, then walked out the front door. Abby and Lizzie worked in silence, as they had before. When Abby headed upstairs, Lizzie’s eyes slanted toward me. My cue.

“Good,” I said. “Now stop sewing.”

“I cannot.”

I glanced at Kristof. He motioned for me to ignore the needlework and continue.

“I need to talk to you.”

She said nothing, just kept working with swift, determined strokes.

“Look, I am going to talk to you, whether you—”

“Hurry.”

“What for? You’re not going anywhere. Well, except to kill your parents again.”

Her cheek twitched, eyes filling with genuine guilt and remorse, the kind Amanda Sullivan couldn’t imagine, much less feel.

“So this is your punishment, then,” I said, my voice softer.

“Punishment?” A confused glance my way. “This is what I deserve.”

“A hell of her own making,” Kristof murmured.

I looked up at him.

“I think this is her doing,” he said. “She’s created her own hell, and trapped herself in it. No need for anyone to punish her. She does it herself.”

Lizzie had returned to her needlepoint, face expressionless. As much as I wanted to jump right in with direct questions, I knew I had to be careful. The Fates must have considered Lizzie Borden a credible witness, but that didn’t mean she might not try to trick me, or tell me what I wanted to hear.

“Before you…did it,” I said. “Did anything happen? Anything unusual. Maybe you…heard something.”

“The voice, yes. I heard it.”

“Telling you to kill them.”

She kept her gaze down. “She didn’t tell me to do anything.”

“Encouraged you,” I said, remembering Amanda Sullivan’s confession.

“Yes, she did embolden me. But I wielded the hatchet. These fingers—”

She clenched her hands, the needle stabbing into her palm. When she opened her fists, a single drop of blood fell on her needlework. She stared at it, transfixed, as it disappeared into the fabric.

“The blame is mine,” she said. “I’d thought of it, dreamed about it—killing them. No beau was ever good enough for my father. Those men weren’t perfect. I know that. But they would have been kind to me, taken me out of this place. Except he wouldn’t let me leave. And her—” She spit the word. “Always conniving. First she gave her half-sister the house that was supposed to be ours, Emma’s and mine—”

She stopped, head dropping again.

“No excuses. It cannot be excused.”

“Maybe, but I can see how—”

“No!” Her gaze shot to mine, filled with a vehemence approaching fanatical. “There is no excuse and no justification. Honor thy father and thy mother. Honor thy father and thy mother.” She repeated the phrase, voice dropping to a mumble.

“Excuse me,” she said, laying her needlework aside.

She headed into the foyer and up the stairs. I tried not to think about what was happening up there, but when I heard Abby’s body hit the floor, I couldn’t suppress a wince.

A few moments later, the scene with the locked front door replayed itself.

Lizzie and Andrew came into the parlor. Andrew took over the sofa, sprawling out and closing his eyes. Lizzie went into the dining room and set up an ironing board. The maid, Bridget, came in to begin cleaning.