Dark Inspiration Read online

  “I believe you,” Laura sighed. “Today was just so stressful. All the teachers were a bit standoffish to say the least. That put me on edge, then when that royal bitch Patrice dumped the ‘cursed history’ info on me, I went over the cliff. You were the first person I could vent to.”

  “Tomorrow, I’ll go downtown and do some research,” Doug said. “I’ll find out the Hutchington story in extreme detail.” He paused. “You don’t have problems with the house now, do you?”

  She hesitated.

  “No,” she said without conviction. “Patrice just brought out the worst in me.”

  “That’s good,” Doug said. He stole a shrimp from her plate and popped it into his mouth. “Because we have twenty-nine years and eleven months of payments to make, so we are going to need to live here.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “It’s kinda big.”

  The next morning the installer from Randolph’s Hardware stood on the front porch. The young man had a gift for understatement. Doug looked past the installation tech’s shoulder. A large fiberglass cylinder rose from the back of his pickup truck.

  True to his promise to Laura, Lon Randolph had sent his son Charlie out to install the water filtration system. He volunteered that he had installed over twenty of them when Doug gave him a disbelieving look at their introduction. The thin sandy-haired twenty-something seemed earnest, his blue jumpsuit was clean and his tools looked professional grade, so Doug gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Most folks put it in the basement,” Charlie said. “Y’all have a basement?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Well, how about a pump house? Where’s the well?”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” Doug said. “We just moved in.”

  Charlie gave his eyes a little “another city boy” roll. “Well, we’d best go find it. You don’t want me putting this thing in the house if you can help it.”

  Charlie found the main waterline entering the house. It angled out to the barn. They walked that way. Charlie pointed to a shallow metal box a hundred yards past the barn.

  “Now there’s your well head,” he said. “The line runs under the barn on the way to the house. I could tap in there and set the whole thing up for you if you don’t mind losing a little space in there.”

  Doug didn’t mind. He wasn’t planning on filling any of the horse stalls. He rolled open the heavy wooden barn door.

  Seven horse stalls lined one side of the barn. Old man Hutchington had spared no expense. The rich dark boards looked like some South American hardwood. The walls were all beautiful tongue-in-groove construction. In the center of the stalls, a circular stairway led to the barn’s cupola, a six-sided, well-windowed affair with room for two, or one if that person brought a chair. Doug imagined old Hutch watching his horses work out from there. The view of the estate was perfect.

  The open space at the end, formerly occupied by an eighth stall, had undergone some kind of conversion. The waterline entered here and fed a porcelain sink, vintage 1920, with cast iron legs. It looked like a prop from a movie set hospital with doctors treating the Spanish Flu. A covered wooden barrel stood next to the sink.

  On the other side sat a white cast iron bath tub, complete with leonine clawed feet. The feet rested on two-foot blocks that brought the edge of the tub up waist high. A homemade heavy-gauge mesh covered the top, as if someone had used the tub to rinse vegetables. But no water was piped to the tub. Severe brownish-yellow stains coated the tub’s bottom third. Hairline cracks spider webbed across the old fixture.

  “Looks like the wrong half of a half bath,” Charlie quipped.

  “What good is a bathtub with no water?” Doug said to himself.

  Charlie ran a bit of water from the sink into his cupped hand. He sniffed it, and then took a sip. He looked surprised. “Don’t mean to lose my Dad a sale, but you sure you need this system?”

  “My wife sure is.”

  Charlie nodded in understanding as if the two had just shared one of the truths only men know. He gave the exposed water pipes a quick inspection.

  “Here’s what I can do,” Charlie said. “If you want, I can drag that old pallet over there to this corner, route the water through the treatment system then to this here sink and the house. I can tap power from the lights in the stalls and we’ll be in business.”

  Doug agreed and Charlie went to work. Doug nosed around the barn. It looked like Vern had as much interest in horses as Doug had because the stalls were filled with crap. Old boards, rusting tools, a half-dozen bags of lime fertilizer, canvas tarps; all guarded by a billowing screen of spider webs.

  But in the corner of the last stall, he found something of interest. It was a full set of fireplace utensils. They looked old and custom forged, a project the Galaxy Farm blacksmith whipped up in his spare time. They were heavy black iron and the handles were globes emblazoned with the Galaxy Candy logo. Doug lifted the poker. It had to weigh at least ten pounds. The estate scavengers must have skipped searching the barn for anything of value.

  After lunch, Charlie showed Doug the complete system. There was a pump and two tanks and some kind of filter. Doug had no idea what he was looking at.

  But Charlie patiently explained how the bleach pumped into the holding tank and how the salt adjusted the PH. Laura had ordered several gallons of bleach and three fifty-pound bags of salt. Apparently she was taking no chances on sulfur-scented clothes.

  Charlie showed Doug how to refill both catalysts and how to test the water and adjust pump settings. Doug thought about how much fun it would be out here in the winter. He thanked Charlie for all his help and took out a credit card for payment.

  “Oh no, Mr. Locke,” Charlie said. “It’s on your account. Y’all just come on down and settle up sometime this week.”

  Doug smiled at the simple trust you could find in a small town. “I’ll be down this afternoon, Charlie.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Doug did pay that bill after lunch. But he owed it to himself and Laura to do his promised background research on their house and the five deceased residents. An internet search earlier in the day had yielded a few details on Rutherford Hutchington but nothing Doug didn’t already know. Self-made candy baron, dabbled in horseracing. Not even a mention of Moultrie. He cursed Wikipedia for its unfulfilled promise and dubious provenance. He was downtown now to do it the hard way.

  The county library sat one block off the town square. An anonymous rectangle of a building with narrow window slits around the roofline. Doug guessed it was some standard government building design, adapted to a library in this instance. Inside, rows of bookshelves carried mostly paperbacks. People of all ages surfed the internet at kiosks along one wall. A teenager sat at the checkout desk. Her long black hair was blonde halfway down where her last trip to the salon marked its passage. She was so thin Doug thought the weight of her nametag might be hard for her to bear. The tag said Monica—Volunteer.

  “Hi there,” Doug greeted her. “I’d like to look into some local history. Have you got a section for that?”

  Monica sized him up with the “outsider” look he’d grown to know so well. “The County Room is back there,” she said. “You down from Nashville?”

  Doug still hadn’t adjusted to the Moultrie residents’ uninhibited quest for personal information from strangers. It was one hundred and eighty degrees from the mode he learned in New York City where you avoided even eye contact with people on the street.

  “No,” he answered. “I’m looking into the history of some property I just bought.”

  Monica’s eyes lit up. “Don’t tell me. The Hutchington place.”

  Doug officially gave up hope of ever escaping Galaxy Farm’s legacy. “Yep, that’s it.”

  “We have lots on that place. It’s famous, you know.”

  “You don’t say.”

  The sarcasm sailed past Monica. She led Doug back to a small room labeled Archives. Inside, dusty leather-bound books filled the wal
ls. There was a single desk in the center.

  “There are all sorts of records and county history,” Monica said. “No one has ever converted all this to digital. Those there,” she pointed to one wall, “are bound copies of the Moultrie Appeal, the county newspaper. Have fun!”

  Doug remembered most of the dates from the gravestones but figured he would start with the house. He was certain it was built in 1926. He ran his finger along the rich leather bindings of the Moultrie Appeal until he found that year.

  He took the oversized volume to the table, sat down and cracked it open. A stale, dusty smell wafted out. He flipped through the pages. The dry newsprint had a fragile, brittle feel.

  He couldn’t miss the first big reference to Galaxy Farm; a front page article under the headline:

  TYCOON OPENS GALAXY FARM

  To the right was a picture of his house. Of course, in the whole town only he thought of it as his. An impressive collection of men in suits and women in long drop-waist dresses stood at attention on the porch, models of the reserved fun the Roaring Twenties were destroying. In the center stood Rutherford Hutchington in proper tails with his top hat cupped in the crook of his arm. A full handlebar moustache covered most of his rather grim smile.

  A doll-like woman caught his eye just to the right of Rutherford. Her dark hair was cut short to just below her ears. Behind a wall of broad shoulders, only the curve of a string of pearls across her delicate neck was visible. The grainy old photograph could not diminish her captivating eyes.

  Another man stood out far to the other side of Rutherford, dressed to the nines, with a shock of unruly black hair and a thick droopy moustache. While the rest of the group stared at the camera, face forward, his eyes cut left, fixed on the beautiful woman in white pearls.

  The photo caption carried the names of everyone on the porch, the local attendees proud to be documented at Moultrie’s event of the year. The woman was Sarah, a name familiar from the family graveyard. He assumed the man eyeing her was her husband William, but he was wrong. William was at her side, a taller strikingly handsome man with short-cropped hair and a razor-straight part. The other man was Mabron, second son and brother-in-law.

  An odd set of poses, Doug thought. Probably just one of those stray seconds the camera catches where someone has their eyes closed or their face in a bizarre contortion. He imagined how embarrassed Mabron had to be when the family saw the picture published the next day.

  The fawning article that followed described the party in excruciating detail. The writer, no doubt influenced by the society columns from the East Coast, thought the town waited breathlessly to find out who ate what hors de oeuvre.

  Hutchington had spared no expense in setting up his farm. The article mentioned the finest horses had been imported, Thoroughbred and Arabians. The Arabians had been brought in from Arabia itself, including a trainer from Egypt. Hutchington had cleared the land and sown it with rich Kentucky bluegrass. Apparently a practice course used to encircle the pond, though no trace of it remained now.

  Doug now had pictures for the graveyard names. He paged through the rest of the year, but there was no mention of the farm until the next year. The article was on the editorial page.

  Doug was certainly no stranger to the newspaper business and had even done some editorials for the New York Dispatch during his tenure. He had to follow all the rules of persuasive writing and heed the Dispatch’s dictates about not offending those readers who might disagree with his position. The Moultrie Appeal apparently had no such restrictions.

  STRANGERS GO HOME read the headline. Mincing words wasn’t on that editor’s agenda.

  The quarter page tirade that followed excoriated the Hutchingtons. Apparently the hospitality from the welcome party had dried up. The Hutchingtons were depicted as cold and clannish. They imported almost everything they needed from Nashville. Even local beef wasn’t good enough for these self-centered snobs. Visitors to the farm from town became fewer as the Hutchingtons had the rich and near-famous from out of state fill the guest rooms.

  But worst of all, the anticipated hiring of locals to work on the farm never materialized. Hutchington hadn’t promised as much, but the townspeople had just assumed the tycoon would be spreading some of his wealth via payroll. Instead, the groomsmen and jockeys were all from an upstate New York farm run by a board member of Galaxy Confectioners, Inc. But even worse than having those Yankee carpetbaggers the actual description, on the farm, was having a godless foreigner.

  The editor singled out the Egyptian trainer. With a rich history of equine husbandry in the county, the editor couldn’t fathom why lesser races, who weren’t even Christian, he added, needed to be imported. The editor alluded to rumors of strange rituals and sacrifices but stayed vague enough to avoid a libel lawsuit. Doug had observed that present day Moultrie accepted strangers about as well as a body accepted a cold virus. Things were no different in 1927. Once it became apparent that the Hutchingtons thought that they were a cut above the locals, (imagine that) the bloom was off the rose.

  Doug returned the volume to the shelf and pulled out 1928, the first date from the graveyard. Rutherford Hutchington’s death had to have made the paper. Doug assumed he died here since he was interred on the property.

  Sure enough, old man Hutchington’s obit was front page news. He spent the last six months of his life at Galaxy Farm, afflicted with a debilitating illness the reporter appeared to root for. From the description, it may have been a combination of high blood pressure and diabetes, but since the attending physicians were from New York (of course), no diagnosis was available. Morticians from Nashville prepared the body and as one parting slap to the town, no public service was held before burial. From the triumphant tone of the article, Doug doubted anyone would have attended anyway.

  A public notice a few pages later announced that Galaxy Farm ownership had passed on to the brothers Mabron and William and that all debtors and creditors should note the fact. Apparently old man Hutchington’s wife was not enamored of the country life and returned to their New York City home with their youngest son Alexander.

  Now that name rang a bell. That was Vernon Pugh’s father. The third son was at least thirty years younger than his older brothers. Doug caught scent of a second, younger wife in old man Hutchington’s life. His creative process imagined little Alexander being a surprise result from a dalliance that old Hutch had to legalize with an expensive divorce and a marriage. The older sons must have hated her. That scenario would also explain why Alexander would avoid claiming illegitimate Vernon until later in life. Who wanted to admit repeating the sins of his father?

  In the 1931 volume, tragedy continued to unfold for the Hutchingtons. One cold winter afternoon, William and Sarah’s twin girls Constance and Elizabeth went out to the pond to go ice skating. They broke through the ice. Between the weight of the skates and the crumbling ice, they couldn’t escape from the bone-numbing water. William rushed out to rescue them, but the ice closed in over them. He dove in and, after repeated attempts, pulled the two lifeless bodies ashore. A local doctor arrived, but all he could do was sign death certificates.

  In deference to the girls, no doubt, the gloating tone of Rutherford’s obituary was missing. The article treated this tragedy as just that, the accidental loss of two five-year-old girls. Whatever enmity the town had against the parents, the innocents were immune. Doug remembered the hollow ache he felt after Laura’s miscarriage and imagined the unbearable pain of the father’s failed rescue.

  But Doug knew the dates on the gravestones and, like a movie trailer that told too much, the inscriptions warned him that worse scenes were yet to unfold. The next issue had a short article that announced the death of William Hutchington. Pneumonia was the primary cause, caught during his extensive time in the frozen pond. Though he appeared to be recovering, his brother Mabron found him dead one morning. Heart failure, Mabron had told the reporter. Doug wondered if he meant failed or broken. William’s guilt must have bee
n agonizing.

  In twenty-four months, the grave of Rutherford Hutchington had become a family plot.

  The next Hutchington tragedy unfolded at the end of 1931. The compounded tragedies of losing her daughters and her husband were more than Sarah Hutchington could bear. One morning Mabron found her hanged in the barn. There was no note, but any written explanation would have been superfluous. She joined the rest of her family, buried in the space she had made sure to leave open between her husband and the twins.

  Doug sighed. This little history lesson wasn’t going to assuage Laura at all. Drowned children and a suicidal parent were horror movie material, not the backstory to a dream house. He couldn’t sugar coat this, not after her reaction to the graveyard’s existence. Maybe impulse purchases of real property weren’t such a good idea after all.

  Then again, what difference did it make? The house had some history. What eighty-five-year-old house wouldn’t? Sure it was more dramatic than most, but unless you believe in the spirits of the dead walking the night, so what? The locals probably had a collection of bogus ghost stories about the house, but that was the way small minds sifted through tragedy, especially if the victims could be rationalized to deserve it. What better punishment for old man Hutchington than to walk the house he built for all eternity?

  But there were no ghosts, no cold spots in the rooms, no full-torso apparitions floating in the halls. In fact, Doug felt nothing but comfortable everywhere in the house. Why tell Laura about something that would just put her on edge, add grist to her active imagination. Even knowing nothing about the history, she had given herself a serious case of the creeps the second night here.

  He resolved to tell his wife the minimum, slant the story a bit. Laura didn’t need to know all of it anyway. What harm could it do?

  Chapter Nineteen