The New One, Part 3

Not a ton more today, but here it is!

Janey turned out to be a remarkable beauty. Rory knew this from the way Sara would size her up when Janey’s attention was turned to Rory or David. She doted on her fiancee, and David clearly adored her in kind. Despite the fact that David was a giant of a man, and might have looked more at home in a log cabin far removed from the ways of man, Janey’s eyes lingered on him as he spoke, fascinated by more stories of the childhood antics of Rory and David. 

With long, straight blonde hair and a wide smile filled with very white teeth, Rory thought she could have been one of those models who turned letter son television game shows, or maybe opened briefcases with money in them. Add to her fine features and fair skin a shapely body that she knew how to accentuate with just the right style of dress, and she might have been at home anywhere civilized. And would always be a woman who demanded attention, as Sara’s passing scowls suggested.

Dinner was a success, a three-course meal of soup, steaks fresh from Ray’s (which were surprisingly good) accompanied by asparagus and red potatoes, all grilled on the back patio of the mansion. 

Feeling elegant, the quartet retired to the lounge, where Rory played bartender. David, a man of simple tastes, had his whiskey neat, but David’s collegiate work experience paid off in making cosmopolitans for the ladies.

They had just settled into their seats when Janey spoke up.

“Be honest with me, you two. Is it haunted?”

“What?” Rory asked, and Sara looked to him, puzzled.

“Is it haunted?” Jany had a slight Southern drawl to her voice that made the question feel like the beginning of a story, which, as it happened, it was. “You mean tot ell me you didn’t know about this house?”

“I know some of the kids used to say it was way back when.”

“I never said anything,” David said, hands raised in defense, one of which held onto his glass.

“Rory?”

He turned to Sara and shrugged. “Not that I ever heard. I think Aunt Cindy might have told a story or two, but nothing specific. More like, ‘And on a certain night, when the moon is full, you could hear Nora laughing…’”

“Are you serious?” Sara looked more upset than Rory would have thought.

“It’s just a story, babe. And in the months I was hear, I never saw or heard a thing that made me think this place was haunted. Have you seen any spooks in the halls?”

“No,” Sara admitted.

“The way I heard it,” Janey continued, ignoring a dark look from Rory, “Nora Klein wasn’t just a recluse. She was a witch. Not like the kind with cauldrons and eyes of newt - or maybe it’s eye of newts… anyway - not like that. The kind that worshipped the Devil.”

Sara huddled onto the couch, easing against Rory, who draped an arm around her. If it was time for a parlor ghost story, so be it. 

“What I heard, and this all came from my grandmother, who said she knew Nora personally, she said that Nora was not only hot, but she was incredibly vain, too. Like Kardassian vain.”

David chuckled and swallowed a great gulp of his whiskey.

“So, when her husband, Reuben, got himself a wandering eye, Nora decided that she as never going to let someone make her feel like she was second best. More than that, she didn’t care for the notion she wasn’t the prettiest woman in town, either. When it comes to eternal beauty, God’s checked out. But the Devil, now that’s someone who’ll grant a wish. In exchange for other things.”

“Her soul,” Sara offered.

Janey tapped her nose and nodded. “She ordered books on the subject from every rare book store in the country, and started practicing all these rituals right here in the house so she could stay beautiful forever.”

“I’ve never seen any of these books,” Rory said. “And we have been all over this house the past couple of weeks. Pretty sure Aunt Cindy would have mentioned the satanic books, too.”

“That’s the thing,” Janey countered, “she did it in secret. Somewhere in this house, according to my grandma, is a hidden room.”

Rory felt Sara tense beside him, leaning toward the storyteller in anticipation. He rubbed her back as she listened.

“And, when she’d finally done the deed, her first act was to sacrifice poor old Reuben. She killed him, wrapped him up in a rug and tossed him into the Yank. And then the fun really started. She enlisted the help of some of the other women in town, the ones who felt ignored by their husbands, too, and they ran a brothel right out of this house.”

“They had the room,” Rory laughed.

Ignoring him, Janey rushed toward the end of her tale. “And when the time came, Nora Klein disappeared. She never grew old, never lost one whit of her looks or sex appeal.”

“That’s where I have to call bullshit,” Rory interrupted. “No offense, Janey, but I know for a fact that Nora Klein was buried here at Harmony Hill.”

“A coffin was buried,” she agreed, “but what was in that coffin?”

“It’s a good story, honey,” David said, using a finger to draw his fiancee’s lips to his. 

“No argument there,” Rory said, rising for another drink. “It is, pardon the pun, a hell of a story.”

The drinking went on well into the night, and old friends became new friends again. Even Janey and Sara were getting along as the clock slid past midnight, helped along by copious amounts of wine. 

When the grandfather clock in the entry struck one, it took little convincing to put David and Janey up in one of the guest rooms.

“Honestly, it’ll be nice to have someone else in this big-ass place,” Rory joked, but the story of Nora Klein and her diabolical dealings had festered and he was feeling less sure that she was buried up at harmony Hill. He could laugh it off as the scotch fueling his willingness to entertain ghosts and goblins, or maybe the way the wind screamed around the eaves on the second floor ahead of an oncoming storm. Regardless, the couple was staying, and that was just fine by both the house’s residents.

A scratching outside woke him. David was still riding high on the buzz from the very fine whiskey Rory offered, but somehow couldn’t get his eyes to remain shut. Janey slept soundly beside him, and didn’t stir when he groaned his way out of bed and staggered to the door of the guest room. 

He eased the door closed behind him, feeling along the wall for a light switch. All he found was the corner of a picture frame that threatened to spill off the wall, but he caught it before it could come fully off. 

David wove down the hall in the direction of what he presumed to be he bathroom. Outside, it was really coming down. Rain hit the thick windows, the sound dulled until it became a constant drone, highlighted by the higher-pitched ticking as rainwater fell onto the sills and down the spouts. Occasionally, lightning would flash, giving him a snapshot of the hall before plunging him back into a deeper darkness, his eyes flaring from the sudden light. 

He liked thunderstorms, especially the low rumble that followed those flashes, the sound of a giant farting, he thought, and laughed drunkenly to himself. 

Trying a door opposite his room, he found only more darkness. At least here there was a light switch. He flipped it up and down, then both ways again to be sure. The storm must have taken out the power, he decided, and grumbled something unintelligible before feeling his way into the room. 

Lightning lit the room for an instant, and he discovered that his navigation was perfect. A long sink extended along the wall on his right and the great throne lay just past. He closed the door behind him, reconsidered, and left a crack there to light the bathroom as much as he dared in the house of a stranger.

Well, not a stranger, he corrected, tugging his dick free and aiming by sound to find the center of the bowl. Rory, the prodigal son, was returned. He imagined tonight wouldn’t be the last time they fell into drunken merriment and chased the sun down. As for his pal’s sudden enrichment, David didn’t mind. He didn’t fault others for their good fortune, nor did he savor the misfortune of the few people in town who might be on the other list he kept. Live and let live and all that. Besides, having a rich friend never hurt anybody.

He washed his face in the sink, braced by the cool water, and made his way back into the shadow-drenched hall. When the lightning came again, he saw a woman at the end of the hall, stopping him dead in his tracks. A lip curled as he tried to recall exactly what he’d seen, but it looked for all the world like a dark-haired woman in a very sheer gown, her voluptuous body easily seen beneath the breezy fabric. Not Janey. Maybe Sara?

FLASH!