Hatchlings: fantasy and sci fi tales

Skeleton Key: contemporary

Sarah read the letter and gasped. "No!" she cried. "Not that! Why me?"

"What's the matter?" Abe asked as he thumbed through his stack of mail.

"She's left me the house. My crazy great-aunt left me Lion Manor!"

"Aha! Skeletons emerge from the closet. You've never before admitted to any eccentric relatives."

"Only have one. We don't talk about her, my cousins and me, in hopes of avoiding this very catastrophe."

"What's so catastrophic about inheriting a house?" Abe tossed his junk mail. "We could sell this dinky place and move up--"

"A haunted house. A dilapidated mansion with a curse." Sarah shook the manila envelope postmarked Old Lyme, Connecticut, and something thudded to the table.

They both stared at the large, rusty wrought-iron key.

"Wow," Abe said. "Must be a hundred years old."

"Three hundred. As old as the house. The place has never been remodeled except to add a water closet and plumbing, but that was back in the fifties."

"Wait. What? Three hundred years?" Abe's jaw gaped.

"I told you we were old-timers around here. My eight-greats grampa built the place in 1700, the year he got married. He had three wives, one after the other, and not one of them gave him a son. Thirteen daughters."

"Huh. A man of that day would consider that a curse, all right."

Sarah shook her head. "He was the curse. He beat every wife and every daughter, and one of them, we don't know which, has haunted the place ever since. She's quiet around women, but she won't let a man stay through the night. I could live there but not you, and I'm not giving you up."

Abe took the letter and skimmed the wording. "Address in Old Sayebrook. On the coast. Half an hour away. I'll go give this ghost a talking to. Time she crossed into the light, or whatever." He picked up the skeleton key.

Sarah laid a hand on his. "Don't make fun. This is serious!"

Abe grinned. "You know I like a challenge. I'll be back in time for breakfast."

* * *

Sarah paced their small cottage for half an hour, thoughts racing, then dove into research and phone calls.

Abe texted he'd had dinner at a deli on the cove where the locals repeated the legend of Lion Manor. He texted again to say GPS couldn't find the place and to ask for directions. Then once more to say he'd arrived.

Then nothing.

After dark, Sarah channel-surfed, skipping horror movies and crime shows, dipping into comedies and infomercials until Abe returned not long after midnight, eyes wide, skin pale.

"Sell the place," he said.

Sarah clicked off the TV, shaking her head. "The will prohibits that. In the family for perpetuity."

"Then demolish the house!"

"I've got a better plan, and it's already in motion. I'm going to lease the property to Old Sayebrook to use as a women's shelter. What better way to give peace to the ghost of a battered woman?"

Part 2

Abe looked around the door jamb. "What set you off?" he asked.

Sarah gasped for breath, caught in the midst of a gale of laughter. "It was the Human Services department at Old Sayebrook," she blurted as she set her phone down.

"The ones who want your great-aunt's haunted mansion for a women's shelter?"

Sarah grinned and nodded and wiped away a tear. "The city council prefers a different site in town for the shelter, closer to transit and shops and churches. Lion Manor sits too far from conveniences, they say, out there at the end of the road."

"It was a spooky place all on its own," Abe said with a shudder. "Bleak, windy headland, pines scraping at the windows, all my electronics falling dark." He huddled into himself. "Then she swooped in. Brrr! Don't wanna talk about it!"

"Poor baby." Sarah batted her eyes at him. "I'm glad you bailed out when you did. Well, Human Services referred my donation offer to another department, which is in need of temporary housing for certain other -- persons." She snickered. "They want me to come in to sign the lease and the contract allowing them to make modifications to the house. Eight foot fencing around the property. Reinforced doors. Bars on the windows--" She burst into laughter again.

"Bars?" Abe asked, wrinkling his nose. "Are they trying to keep your banshee inside?"

She shook her head, stifling a giggle.

"What's so funny?" he persisted.

"I never told them about the ghost," she managed to squeak out. "Poor old skeleton in my family closet, traipsing around in her gauzy, torn dress, terrorizing any fool of the male persuasion who sets foot inside." She choked on another laugh.

"Fool, am I?"

"Yes, fool. I told you not to go."

Abe rolled up a sleeve. "Still got the bruises to show for it. You're a sadist to think of putting it to any public use. What else besides a women's shelter would ensure no man steps inside?"

"They want to use my haunted house as a jail annex. For certain convicts. Domestic violence perpetrators."

Abe let out a long whistling breath. "Of the male persuasion," he said.

"Vengeance!" Sarah cried and pumped her hand in the general direction of Lion Manor. "You go, girl!"