It was colder inside the house, too. My knobby knees shook, needing more than the thin layer of black stockings under my pleated shorts to keep me warm. But despite my body's reaction, the cold felt like home. I raised my hand behind me to blindly find the lock and slid it in place.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Sudden striking bells pierced the quiet, causing me to flinch. My eyes popped open, and my gaze fell upon a cherry-wood grandfather clock casting a monstrous shadow across the foyer. Over the deafening song ringing in my ears, I dropped my head back against the door once more and tucked my tangled hair behind my ear, laughing lightly at myself.
The bells died down, and the old house came to life.
With a few uneasy steps down the foyer, the old planks screeched under my shoes and up the inside of the walls until harsh, labored breathing slid through a cracked open bedroom door just beyond the foyer. I tip-toed across the wooden planks to peek inside the bedroom before pushing open the door.
There, sleeping with his mouth wide open, was the man I’d only known through the letters passed back and forth over the last twelve months. Before a year ago, I’d had no idea I had a living grandfather. When I received the first envelope postmarked from Weeping Hollow, I’d almost tossed it. But curiosity was my kryptonite, and once my eyes landed on the first word, Moonshine, everything changed.
Moonlight spilled from the window, casting a sliver of light over the old man and his bedroom. Gramps was lying on his back, slightly slanted upward against his headboard. His skin, like worn-out elastic bands, hung from his bones. Aged and wrinkled, he glowed in the dimmed room surrounded by antique furniture and deep-green damask wallpaper. Fedoras and newsboy hats decorated the wall facing his bed. Dentures floated inside a glass cup over the nightstand next to a pair of tortoise-rimmed bifocals, and I sank against the doorway to take him in.
His burly brows were a shade darker than the gray wisps randomly poking from his head. Gramps let out a loud snore, the kind to gurgle in your throat. After a full cough, he returned to the gravelly breathing, his gummy mouth wide open. I didn’t really know him all that well, but with every struggling breath he took—like it was the hardest thing he had to do—my jaw tightened, and my heart constricted.
It wasn’t until the sickness took a turn for the worst that he’d confessed his condition in his final letter, which led me here. He didn’t have to say it, but the last letter seemed off—like a cry for help.
Gramps was sick, and he didn’t want to do this alone.
What Gramps didn’t know was that I was alone, too.
“I’m here, Gramps,” I whispered into the darkness. “I’m finally home.”
Chapter 2
Fallon
A booming and ambitious deep tone bounced throughout the old house.
“And these are your Sunday morning Hollow Headlines. Happy August third. Keep safe out there, and remember, no one is safe after 3 AM.” Then the intro of Haunted Heart by Christina Aguilera followed, pulling me sluggishly from the squeaky iron bed.
Outside the French doors of my new bedroom, the clouds, dusty shades of gray, moved lazily across the dewy sky. I rubbed my eyes and took the stairs down at the same pace as the clouds, following Christina’s lusty voice as if her haunting was calling me.
Husky coughs moved fluently throughout the home and down the hallway before I turned the corner. Gramps was sitting at the small breakfast table nestled in the middle of the butter-yellow kitchen with a steaming cup of coffee at his side, a newspaper scattered across the table before him. He was already fully dressed, wearing a wrinkly ivory button-down shirt under suspenders and khaki slacks. Green and tan argyle socks covered his feet inside a pair of slippers.
The granddaughter thing to do would be to kiss his cheek, throw my arms around his softened muscles, and shed a few tears at finally meeting my grandfather for the first time. But I’d read the letters. Benny Grimaldi was moody and not the most affectionate.
“You shouldn’t be up and about. You should be resting,” I said casually, stepping into the semi-lit kitchen overlooking the sea. Scratchy tunes replaced Christina’s voice from the old radio sitting beside him on the table. It had the shape of a lunchbox with large silver dials.
Gramps flinched, snapped up his head, and dropped the tissue-holding-hand from his chapped lips as if I’d frightened him. He looked up at me from under the rim of his tan fedora for a long moment, surely finding pieces of my mother—his only daughter—in my appearance. His glassy brown eyes froze like he’d been transported back to twenty-four years ago. As if he’d seen a ghost.
Then they snapped back to what was in front of him. “Six lettah word for neithah dead nor alive?” he grumbled, readjusting his giant, round bifocals and going back to his crossword puzzle.
It was stupid to believe he would ask about my travels or thank me for coming. In his letters, he’d complained about the paperboy tossing the latest issue of The Daily Hollow beside the mailbox instead of by the front door, or the reckless teenagers leaving broken liquor bottles at the rocks behind his house, or Jasper Abbott falling into a rage during Bingo night at Town Hall. Gramps made fun of the absurd superstitions and traditions of the town and the people in it, and each week I’d looked forward to receiving his letters. Somehow, his prejudices fulfilled my mundane days.
I spun on my heel and faced the tiled countertop that stored homeless dishes, cookware, and vintage gadgets, and touched the side of the coffee pot nestled in the nook to see if it was still warm.
Six letter word for neither dead nor alive. “Undead.” I opened the yellow cabinets in search of a mug.
“Tha coffee’s shit,” he warned, following a few more coughs, the wet ones that come up from your chest. “Yah bettah off headin’ uptah town. Don’t go inta tha dinah though, they put somethin’ in tha coffee. Go to tha Bean. But bring yah own mug. They don’t like people from away. Ordah a few stacks while yah at it. No pukin’ it up eithah. Yah all bones.”
My head jerked in his direction. “I’m not—”
“What-ah-yah doing heyah, Moonshine? I didn’t ask yah to come!” he snapped, interrupting me with a bite in his words. A cough left him, and he brought the tissue back over his mouth before continuing, “I don’t want yah heyah.”
My brows raised—a punch to the gut.
The old man had told me he wasn’t doing well, left the instructions to Weeping Hollow, and put a key in the mailbox for me. If that wasn’t asking me to come, then why go through all the hassle? Maybe he’d forgotten about the last letter he’d sent. Maybe he regretted sending it in the first place. Maybe he was worse than I’d imagined, like going-senile worse.
“Well, I’m here now, and I’m not leaving you. It’s just us two. We’re the only family left, so let’s make the most of it, alright?”
Gramps mumbled through another coughing fit. “How long? I’ll call Jonah, get yah a job ovah theya at tha funeral home to keep yah outta my hair. I don’t know why yah inta dead bodies … Sick if yah ask me … Yah need to keep ya-self busy … Jonah will get yah tha job …” he rambled on.
The plan had always been cosmetology, but once Marietta died, the plan changed. Marietta’s funeral had been an open casket, and even though I was the only one who attended the intimate ceremony, she was there with me. Her spirit stood right next to me as we stared down at her corpse, which looked like someone else entirely. The makeup was all wrong. It was the first time I’d seen a dead body, and the only thing I wanted to do was wipe the bright-red lip color off with the pad of my thumb, retrieve the Mac matte lipstick from my snakeskin purse, and paint the Del Rio shade over her heart-shaped lips. It was then I knew what I should do with my life.