The Room

Jack had won in the battle over which house to buy. Carly liked the Cape that needed a lot less work, but Jack was right. This one would fit all their needs in the years to come. It was a 150-year-old farmhouse with attached barn. There was room in the barn for both Jack’s carpentry business and the sewing supplies Carly needed for her fabric art studio.

But the house made her uneasy. It wasn’t even the whole house. Just a room off the kitchen. Like many old houses, rooms seemed to have sprouted up as the owners had a need. This room may have been used as some type of butler’s pantry or closet, but it didn’t have a window or shelving. In fact, Carly and Jack couldn’t find the room on the old set of plans that they gotten with the original deed to the house at the closing. Building departments and permits were lax in the old days so there was no way of knowing when this room was built.

    “Well, I just don’t like it,” Carly said.

“It’s just a room, Carly,” Jack said. “What should we do with it?”

   “Do whatever you want with it. I’m not using it,” she said.

Jack started putting unpacked boxes in there to get them out of the way.

Carly could not shake her weird feelings about the house and decided to do some research. One afternoon she went to the town library and brought back photocopies of newspaper articles she found, and an old town history.

   “Hey, Jack, take a look at this,” Carly said as she spread out her findings. “This is the Carroll House. It was built in 1860 by Denis Carroll. He had the house built for his bride who moved here from Ireland. He had come here earlier than that during the potato famine. But Mary came later … maybe as a mail order bride. This house was for her.”

     “Carly, I’ve got some work to do,” Jack was trying to edge out of the room.

     “Wait a minute. There’s something I want you hear. There was a murder here. And they never solved it.” Carly said.

     Jack turned around. “What?”

       “Yes, early 1919. One of Denis’s grandchildren owned the house then. The man, James Carroll, went to WWI and came home to find that his wife, Catherine, had been “carrying on” while he was away. He killed her, in this house. And then he disappeared. They never found a trace of him.”

    “No Facebook in those days,” Jack said.

      “Come on Jack.” But she was smiling too.

     “So then what happened?” Jack asked.

     “Well, the remaining family tried living here but no one felt right anymore. So, they tried to sell the house but couldn’t get a buyer because of the unsolved murder.”

     “This house hasn’t sat empty since for 100 years.”

    “No, but for a long time. During the depression some of the family came back and lived here and tried farming again. It sounds like it didn’t take. The house stayed in the family but there were long periods of time when it was empty. People would come back and make some improvements or sell off some of the property around the house, and then leave. It doesn’t really say why. The last of the family sold it off in the seventies. Then over the next twenty-five years or so there were other people living here on and off. No one stayed long. And finally, in the nineties the house was abandoned.”

     “That long ago? I’m sure the agent didn’t tell us that," Jack said.

      “No, she didn’t. And she didn’t say why people kept leaving.”

      “Are you sure that the house has been empty since the nineties? Jane, was that her name, who we bought the house from? She didn’t seem that old.”

      “Jane’s the owner’s daughter. Don’t you remember? She said that at the closing. She’d lived here for a short time, but her mom wanted to go back to where her people were from.”

      “Oh right. I had forgot that," said Jack.

     “I wonder if the house is haunted or cursed.”

       “Come on Carly.”

       “Now listen. I have never felt at home here. You know that. It seems like something is wrong here," Carly said.

        “Is this still because we didn’t buy the house you wanted? You know we would’ve had to rent somewhere for our businesses if we took that house. It just didn’t make sense.”

    “No, it’s not about that. There’s something weird here. A feeling. And the worst is in that room off the kitchen. “

    “Then stay out of there. I’m going back to work," he said.

      But Carly couldn’t get past it. What was that weird room? Why did her hair stand on end when she was near it? And what about the murder in the house? And why wouldn’t anyone live here?

      Carly went into the room. The door swung closed behind her with a soft swoosh. She turned slowly and tried the handle. It was stuck and there was no light in this room. She grabbed the handle again and gave the door a shove. It popped open. She hurried out into the kitchen but stopped.

This wasn’t her house. Where was she? She could hear an argument from somewhere nearby. She didn’t want to go back into the room, but everything scared her.

She could hear the argument coming closer. She didn’t want to be discovered, so she went back into the room and closed the door.

She waited until she couldn’t hear anything and tried the door again.

   She was home.

        She stood there for a long time. Had she dreamed the other house? Was there something wrong with her? She was completely shaken.

      Carly went to her fabric studio in the barn. Whenever she was afraid or confused, she always found comfort in the bright patterns and smooth feel of her work. She had been working on a quilt commissioned by the local humane society. It featured different animals that could be adopted at their site and was going to be auctioned at their next fundraiser. Carly tried to get into her work but was left gasping. How could she tell Jack what had happened? She couldn’t describe to herself.

       “Hey, Carly, what’s up? Should I go get us a pizza?” Jack was standing next to her.

     “What time is it?” she asked.

     “A little after seven. Did you lose track of time?” he smiled at her.

     She had come up to her studio in the afternoon. She must have been sitting here for hours.

      “Jack, I need to tell you something and you need to have an open mind.” He rolled his eyes. She told him what had happened that afternoon.

      “Let’s go,” he said.

       “What? Where?”

       "This is enough Carly. There is nothing wrong with that room.”

He grabbed her hand and they took off down the stairs and into the kitchen. He led her into the room and closed the door.

“And then what did you do?” he asked.

“The handle was stuck so I had to jiggle it, and then I went into the kitchen.”

Jack did just what she said and opened the door.

He stopped. Carly was still in the room. She knew it was the other kitchen out there. He would have had a smart-ass comment for her. But he was rooted to the spot just outside the door.

“Carly…” his whisper made it worse. What was he seeing?

“Carly…you have to come out here.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to. I need your help.”

She poked her head out of the room. Jack was only standing a couple of steps away. She couldn’t see around him, but she could tell he was looking at something on the floor.

Jack grabbed Carly’s arm and pulled her to him.

And then she saw it. There was a woman lying near the sink covered in blood.

The kitchen was the one she had seen when she had come through the door earlier in the day. The sink was an open, white, one-piece unit with two legs. No cabinet underneath like a modern sink. There was a bowl of vegetables sitting on one side of the sink.

The woman looked up at Jack and Carly. She was trying to say something that came out in a sickly gurgle. That was enough for Carly, she ran to the woman.

“Who did this? Where’s your phone so we can get help?” Carly saw wounds that she was guessing were stab wounds, they were too big for bullet holes. There was a dish towel on the sink, she grabbed it and tried to staunch the bleeding.

She looked around for Jack, but he wasn’t there.

“I’m Carly. What’s your name?” she was trying to keep the woman awake until she could get help. The stab wounds were terrible and there was so much blood.

“Catherine.”

“Okay, Catherine. I’m with you. We’ll get you a doctor.” Carly was holding the towel down on the largest of the wounds, but she didn’t know if it was helping.

“Jack!” Carly called.

She heard his footsteps.

“Where’d you go?”

“I was looking for a phone. This is our house,” he said, his eyes wild.

“Yes, we need to get some help for her,” Carly said.

“Carly, this is our house. But I don’t think … I don’t…”

“It’s another time,” Carly said.

Just then they could hear footsteps somewhere in the house.

“Jack, we have to hide.”

“What about her?”

“Catherine. She’s still alive," Carly whispered.

Jack grabbed Carly by the arm and yanked her back into the room as the footsteps got closer.

“Jack, I told you she was still alive. We have to help her.”

“No, we have to stay away from whoever did that to her.”

Carly couldn’t do it. She grabbed the handle and went into the kitchen.

They were back in their own kitchen.

“Should we try to go back and help her?” Carly asked.

“Not without a weapon,” Jack said. He ran out to the barn and came back with one of his shotguns.

“Really?” Carly asked.

“You saw that woman. I’m not going back there without a gun.”

“We’re going back?”

“You said she was still alive.”

They went back to the room and went in. Jack opened the door and listened. He could hear scuffling noises from the kitchen. He knew they were back.

He raised his gun and went back into the kitchen.

“Stop!” Jack yelled.

There was a man dragging Catherine towards the backdoor leading to the barn. He dropped Catherine and turned around. He saw the gun and raised his hands.

“Hey… hey now,” he said. “No call for that.”

“Get away from her!” Jack yelled.

The man backed up a couple of feet but didn’t seem like he was going to move much more.

“Move!” Jack yelled again. He pumped a shell into the chamber of the gun so that it was ready to shoot. The man scrambled back to the far wall of the kitchen.

Carly ran to Catherine. She looked up at Jack.

“We’re too late. She’s dead.” Tears rolled down her face.

“Who are you!” the man yelled.

“Who are you!” Jack yelled at the man.

“I’m her husband.”

“James,” Carly said.

The man looked at Carly. “How did you know?”

Carly and Jack just looked at each other. James used that indecision to charge at Jack. The gun went off. Jack didn’t even remember pulling the trigger.

The results of a shotgun blast in such close range is not a pretty sight. Blood and gore were everywhere.

Carly had the irrational thought that the gunshot was quieter than she would have expected. She had grown up on cowboy movies and assumed that the sound would have been deafening. How did she have time to think this? What was happening?

“Jack. Are you okay?” She was the first one to be able to talk.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely.

“What do we do?”

“We get the hell out of here!” Jack was already heading towards the room.

“We just leave them?”

“Yes.”

“Jack.”

“Carly. I just shot a man. We have to get out of here.” He reached for her.

“But the article says they never found the husband.”

Jack grabbed Carly’s hand and tried to pull her with him. But she wasn’t budging.

“Not my problem Carly. Let’s go.”

This time he did pull Carly back into the room.

They opened the door to their own home.

“We have to get rid of these clothes. They’re covered in.." Carly trailed off.

Jack took off his clothes. Carly went into the laundry room and brought back more.

“Do we just leave them there like that?”

“We don’t need to go back. They’re both dead,” Jack said.

Carly looked at the pile of clothes on the kitchen floor. She couldn’t think straight.

“I’ll burn those in the morning,” Jack said.

Carly nodded.

Jack took two bottles of beer out of the fridge. He handed one to Carly. “Come on. We need a shower.”

The combination of the beer, the horror of the evening, the steam in the shower… Carly could barely stay awake. She didn’t even take the time to dry off. She just went to bed. When she woke up in the morning Jack wasn’t with her. She made her way down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Jack was at the table with a cup of coffee.

“I burned the clothes,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“I’m going to tear that room off the house. No one is ever using that room again.” Jack didn’t look up.

“Have you slept yet?” Carly asked. His eyes were red, and his face seemed to be sliding down into his neck.

“I may never sleep again,” Jack said. He got up from the table and left.

Carly looked around the kitchen. She got up and started on some of her chores. She was unloading the dishwasher when she heard the first sounds of demolition coming from the room. She kept herself busy straightening and cleaning the house. She didn't want to think about what Jack was going through.

When she made it into the dining room, she noticed her research on the table. She still had the town history book. She opened the page to the Carroll House.

“Tragedy befell the Carroll family on the night of March 23, 1920. Both James and Catherine were brutally murdered in their home. James was shot, and Catherine was stabbed to death. No one was ever charged in their murder. Theories at the time suggest that it was done by at least two people due to the differences in the murder weapons.”

Carly had to stop reading. That was not what she had read the week before. She searched through the other clippings. All the articles said the same thing, that James had died with his wife, not that he had disappeared. But Carly knew what she knew. James had disappeared the first time she read these articles.

Jack came in later in the afternoon looking for something to eat.

“Carly, can you pack us a bag? I think we should go to a hotel tonight.” He took a bite of the sandwich that Carly had made for him. “Why don’t you call our agent and see if we can take another look at that cape you liked so much.”