Household Demons

2. A-Haunting We Will Go-1

2

A-Haunting We Will Go

The Bigelow mansion stood on its own hill on the eastern edge of town, with spectacular mountain views on all sides. On the drive over — because Josie had insisted on bringing me in her Cadillac — she’d told me that the house had been built by the man who first found silver in these hills. His new wealth brought him a socialite wife from the East Coast, and she was the one who assisted in the design and decorating of their new home.

“It really is quite spectacular,” Josie said as she pulled into the long gravel driveway. The garage was detached from the house, and probably had been built many years after the original construction. Even so, I could tell the architect had taken care to make sure it harmonized with the main structure, and the mansion’s four-color paint scheme — dark brick red, forest and sage green, and pale gold — had been carried over there as well.

The mansion itself stood three stories tall and had a slate roof with a copper weathervane at its highest peak, along with a tower at the front and an expansive porch. No expense had been spared with the landscaping, either, as a broad green lawn with a flagstone path bordered in rosebushes swept you up to the front door, while the surrounding gardens were filled with flowers in full bloom as well as carefully groomed trees — willows and maples and sycamores. Off toward the rear of the property, I spied what I guessed was the apple orchard, its leaves glossy green in the August sun.

Even though I’d been expecting something impressive, I honestly hadn’t thought the Bigelow homestead would be quite such an oasis in Globe’s high desert. No wonder my mother had wanted the place — the gardens here would keep her busy for days.

“Definitely spectacular,” I agreed.

Josie put her Cadillac in park, and we both got out and headed up the front walk. The air itself felt lusher here than it did down in town, filled with the scent of roses and fresh grass. From one of the trees in the backyard came the distinctive trill of a cardinal.

Josie wore a faint smile on her pink-lipsticked mouth, as if she could tell I was beginning to fall under the spell of the place as well. We climbed the steps to the front porch, and she fished a key with a plastic fob from out of her oversized purse.

“I really shouldn’t be doing this,” she said, although she didn’t hesitate as she placed the key in the lock and turned it. “But since you’re family, I suppose I’ll let you and your mother work that out.”

“I really don’t think she’ll mind,” I replied, even as I mentally added, Much. “It makes sense to have someone check on the house before she gets here, after all.”

This self-serving argument didn’t appear to win me any points, since Josie only lifted an eyebrow. However, she went ahead and opened the door, and I stepped into the foyer.

Wow. The entry stood two stories high, and an enormous Tiffany-style chandelier hung from the coffered ceiling twenty feet above. Directly ahead was a huge sweeping staircase, while off to either side were what appeared to be parlors, both with oversized marble fireplaces and an impressive array of antiques of the same vintage of the house. All the original mahogany woodwork seemed to be intact, and the dark wood floor beneath my feet gleamed with the sort of gloss that could only be achieved with a whole lot of beeswax polish and elbow grease.

It all looked like something out of a movie. As impressive as the house was, though, I couldn’t help contrasting it with the airy, Spanish-style home my mother shared with Tom back in Southern California. This place felt heavy and dark, very unlike my bright and cheery mom.

But maybe she planned to spend a lot of time outside while she was here, or possibly she just wanted her vacation home to be a complete change of pace. And I had to admit that this place would make a spectacular Airbnb — I could see people coming to Globe just so they could stay in a real honest-to-goodness Victorian mansion.

And that wasn’t even including the ghosts.

Speaking of which….

I turned to Josie, who was standing a few paces away and watching me, clearly eager to see my reaction to the house. Since my mouth had dropped open a bit as we entered, I figured she already knew I was impressed by the place.

“Did you ever experience anything out of the ordinary while you were here?” I inquired.

She shook her head, looking almost regretful. “Not a thing. Hank and Nora — the previous owners — said it was probably because the ghosts were shy and didn’t like to do much of anything around people they considered strangers, but I was still hoping I might see or feel something. But I didn’t.” A pause, and she slanted a curious glance up at me. “You don’t feel anything, either?”

I hadn’t yet, but that could have been because I wasn’t actually trying. Since I wasn’t a true medium, communing with the dead wasn’t really my specialty. However, that didn’t mean I couldn’t give it the old college try.

“Let’s find out,” I said.

At random, I chose the parlor to the right and walked in that direction, making myself breathe quietly and rhythmically as I attempted to take in something of the mansion’s energies. I thought that staying in the foyer probably wasn’t a good idea, since most of the day-to-day activities in the house would have taken place somewhere other than the entry.

The walls here were papered with a pretty botanical print in muted shades of slate gray and burgundy. Normally, I wasn’t a fan of wallpaper, but it suited the house and the furniture.

“All the furnishings conveyed with the house,” Josie told me, maybe because she thought that information might help me with my ghost-hunting quest. “The previous owners wanted to make sure it would stay as it was while they lived here.”

That was probably a good thing. After all, the place would lose a lot of its charm if someone tried to put modern furnishings in here. Also, if the mansion truly was inhabited by a couple of ghosts, the less disruption, the better. Some of the more spectacular hauntings I’d read about had been instigated by remodeling projects, or even simply redecorating a room or two.

And while I guessed it must have cost Tom and my mother a decent chunk to purchase all these antiques as well, doing so would save them the trouble of having a bunch of brand-new furniture shipped to Arizona.

“I’m going to try to sense if anyone else is here,” I said. “I need to be quiet and focus.”

What I really needed was for Josie to hold her tongue so I could concentrate, but I figured framing the situation this way was much more polite…not to mention having a better chance of success.

I walked a few more paces so I stood in the exact center of the room, then closed my eyes. Once all visual stimulus had been removed, I was more aware of other, subtler inputs — the faint smell of beeswax furniture polish, an even fainter hint of smoke from the huge marble fireplace…a drift of Chloé perfume from Josie’s direction. A small creak from the floorboards as she shifted weight, another sharper creak that might have been the house settling.

Or maybe it was something else.

No, these all just felt like old house noises and nothing more. I didn’t get a sense of anything else here other than Josie and myself, unless you could include the faint sounds of birds chirping in the garden. But nothing of an otherworldly presence, nothing that made me think this place could possibly be haunted.

Of course, she’d said that the Bigelow mansion’s ghosts were shy and didn’t like strangers. Maybe they were used to Josie, but they’d never encountered me before. They could be hiding.

Even so, I should’ve been able to get a hint of something. More than once in the past, I’d entered a house and known immediately that it had its own otherworldly residents, even if they weren’t doing anything to manifest at the moment.

This place, though…it felt like a total blank.

“I’m not getting anything,” I said, knowing I frowned as I spoke.

Josie tilted her head at me. “You’re sure?”

I nodded. “Totally sure. I’m not saying that necessarily means anything, but it’s still kind of strange.”

“Well, I think we should take that as a good sign,” she said, sounding a bit too cheerful. Probably, she didn’t want anything to happen that had even the slightest chance of my mother and Tom backing out of the sale. Her commission on a sale like this must have been pretty hefty. “I think it means that even if we have ghosts here, they’re obviously the shy, retiring type. I doubt they’ll cause any trouble for your parents.”

It wasn’t worth the effort to point out that I really didn’t see Tom as a “parent” — I’d lost the battle years before, and just went with the flow whenever someone referred to him that way.

I settled for giving a noncommittal shrug, then said, “I’m sorry I dragged you out here for nothing.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble.” Once again, Josie tilted an inquisitive look up at me. “Are you sure you don’t want to check the other rooms, though, just in case?”

I doubted that would do any good. Even in the instances where a spirit tended to haunt a particular room or single location, I’d been able to feel their presence as soon as I stepped inside a building. It should have been the same situation here.

But I figured I might as well make the attempt, if for no other reason than to make it seem as if I’d put in an effort somewhat equal to the time spent driving out here. So I said, “Sure,” and made my way through the rest of the rooms on the ground floor — the enormous dining room with its table for twelve, a smaller parlor that had been fitted up as a family room, with a large TV mounted to the wall above the fireplace. That was about the only concession to modern technology I’d seen so far in the house…except for the electric lights, of course, and the shiny new-looking appliances in the kitchen.

The whole place felt quiet and serene, untroubled by any kind of wayward spirit. At the end, I circled back to the foyer and stood at the base of the staircase.

“I could go upstairs,” I told Josie. “But I don’t think there’s any reason to do that. If any spirits are lingering here, they don’t want to be seen or sensed. And if there was something dark in the house, I know I would have felt that.”

Her expression relaxed. “Well, I have to say that’s a relief. Although now I’m beginning to wonder whether Hank and Nora were pulling everyone’s leg about the whole haunted house thing. For all I know, they liked to spread those stories because it got them some attention.”

Including a segment on a cable show. Had they been playing some kind of long game, trying to stir up interest in their house in advance of putting it on the market?

I supposed that was a possibility. Since I’d never met the people in question, I couldn’t begin to guess whether they were the type to pull that kind of stunt.

“Were there any reports of hauntings here before they moved in?”

“Hmm.” Josie’s auburn penciled brows furrowed. “I’m honestly not sure. They lived in the house for almost forty years, so anyone who would have lived here before them is gone now.”

“Well, maybe there are records somewhere,” I said. “Does the library have a local history section?”

The Globe library occupied a quaint brick building at the far end of downtown, but so far I hadn’t visited it. No, it was a lot easier for my lazy self to just download the books I wanted from my favorite online store instead of lugging a bunch of hardbacks around.

But I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to get any Globe history books on my phone, so maybe a trip to the library was in order…if they would even have the sort of thing I was looking for.

“Oh, yes,” Josie replied immediately, relieving my fears on that score. “They have a whole shelf of books about the town and its history. That would definitely be the best place to look.”