"Lucien's Menagerie"
by David M. Fitzpatrick
“Thank you for coming, Mrs. Trafton,”
the smiling lawyer said to Julia from across a lavish mahogany desk
that gleamed in the sunlight. Jake immediately distrusted the man.
It was the smile, somehow fake and perhaps hiding regret. The fancy
brass nameplate on his desk read S.D. TULLIS, ESQ.
“You’re welcome, Mr. Tullis,” Julia
said. “But since my ex-husband left instructions for you to fly us
back here for this, it was pointless to refuse.”
“I admit the terms of Lucien Kane’s estate are strange,” Tullis
said, “but I assure you it has been far stranger than you might
expect.”
“Nothing about Lucien would ever
surprise me,” Julia said.
Jake adjusted himself in the soft
leather chair, trying to relax, but he’d rather have been just about
anywhere else. But coming here was important to Julia, no matter how
insane it was. And with his heart condition, he didn’t need to get
worked up over everything. He glanced around the room, at the
bookshelves full of legal tomes and the massive aquarium stocked
with a rainbow of tropical fish. Scott Tullis’ forty-year-old
Harvard law degree hung behind him, calligraphic and proud.
“I’ll be interested to find out why
Lucien is bothering with me, now that he’s dead,” Julia said,
smiling with perfect white teeth and conservative peach lipstick.
She’d just turned fifty, but was as beautiful as when Jake had met
her at thirty-two. She was older and wiser, with laugh lines in all
the right places on her pretty face, and a bit of dye in her auburn
hair hid a few invading gray wisps. “We divorced eighteen years ago,
after all.”
Jake knew better, of course. Lucien
Kane had been a millionaire many times over, but he’d also been a
psychopath who had delighted in making his wife’s life a living
hell. Julia didn’t need to deal with those memories, but she had
agreed to come, hoping he’d actually done a good deed from beyond
the grave, and left her the one thing he should have given back to
her long ago.
“Mr. Kane’s will indicates that
you’d know what this is about,” Tullis said.
“I have a hope. But given how he
treated me, I’d not be the least bit surprised to discover he’s
flown me here from California just to announce that he’d left me his
dirty socks, or something equally time-wasting and insulting.”
“I don’t know if it’s a waste of
your time,” Tullis said, his old face flushing a bit, “but you may
find it insulting.”
Julia sighed. “I’m not surprised. I
left that marriage with the clothes on my back, and wanted nothing
from him. But he’s never let me live in peace.”
“I’m familiar with your challenges
regarding Mr. Kane,” Tullis said, looking downright uncomfortable.
“One of my partners handled the criminal matters.”
“Yes. Lucien never left me alone,
not even after I met Jake in New Hampshire. Not even after we moved
to California and started our life together. He hired private
investigators to find me, no matter where we moved. Letters would
start showing up; I dreaded going to the mailbox every day.”
She was getting emotional, talking
faster, her voice shaking. Jake reached over to clasp her hand. “No
matter how many restraining orders I got, he always found legal
loopholes and kept annoying me,” she said. “He never let me go. It
was horrible.”
“Perhaps you should forget the bad
things and focus on the present, Mrs. Trafton.”
“Forget the bad things?” She was
incredulous, leaning forward in her chair and gripping the arms with
hydraulic fingers. “I lived a ten-year hell with Lucien. He was a
master at psychological warfare, and kept me a virtual prisoner in
my own marriage.”
Tullis held his hand up as if to
ward off a magical attack. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you—”
“He was the cruelest man alive,”
she continued, as if Tullis hadn’t spoken. “He killed my cat, you
know. Her name was Tamara, and she was the only thing in that house
that mattered to me. But he was angry one day, and he kicked my poor
baby across the room. What kind of man does that? The kind of man
who enjoyed traveling the world and shooting exotic animals as if
they were his personal playthings, that’s who. And while I bawled
over her broken little body, he just laughed at me.
“But even then I didn’t have the
strength to walk out. Not until the next day, when my sister Jeannie
died in a car accident. She’d been the only family I had left, and I
lost it. I couldn’t take his insanity any longer. I had to live for
myself.”
She sagged back in her chair, out
of energy and on the verge of tears. She never spoke of those final
days with Lucien—of him brutally killing Tamara and of Jeannie’s
death—and certainly not to strangers. For Tullis’ part, he’d sat
stone-still and silent, respectfully letting her say what she felt
needed to be said.
“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Trafton,” he
finally said, quiet and reserved. “I know the man Lucien Kane was.
My sympathies are honestly with you.”
She heaved a shuddering sigh and waved her hand. “Forget it. So what
horrible thing has he managed to do to me from beyond the grave?
What part will I play in Lucien achieving immortality?”
Tullis slid his glasses off and set
them down atop the filed and papers and looked meaningfully at her.
“Mr. Kane has left you your family home.”
And Jake felt her trembling hand seize like an oil-drained motor,
felt it go cold. He felt his heart do the same. It was what she had
hoped for, and what she was sure the man would never give her.
“My family home?” she echoed, weak
and half-whispered. “On Queen’s Mountain? In Tarrington?” When
Tullis nodded, she sagged in her chair, exhaling in rush. “I signed
it over to him when we’d married. I was young and stupid, and my
parents had just died. He taunted me with it, used it as leverage
when I left him, but I—I walked away and didn’t look back. But
you’re saying that, in death, he’s done the right thing?”
“Perhaps,” Tullis said, “but there
are conditions.”
Julia let out half a laugh. “I’d
expect nothing less.”
“They’re quite straightforward,”
Tullis said, his chiseled old face furrowing. “Tomorrow, you must
spend the night in the house. You must be inside the house from
sunset until sunrise and must not leave.”
“What the hell kind of condition is
that?” Jake said, sitting up in his chair and glaring at the
attorney.
“Jake, please,” Julia said. “What
else, Mr. Tullis?”
Tullis coughed nervously and
shuffled through his papers. He produced a rectangular orange card,
blank on both sides. “Fifty-two objects in the house have been
tagged with these. They must remain in their locations during your
stay. They can’t be moved, covered, or otherwise tampered with in
any way.”
“What are the fifty-two items?”
Julia asked.
“I’m instructed not to reveal that
information. But I’ve seen them, and they’re not dangerous or
anything like that.”
“But she’s not going to like them,
is she?” Jake said through clenched teeth.
Tullis loosened his tie. “No, I
don’t suppose she will. But if she stays from sunup to sunrise in
the master bedroom, the property is hers.”
“How will you know I’ve done it?” Julia asked.
“Webcams have been installed in
several locations inside and outside the house, and I’ll review the
videos the next day.”
“This is goddamned ridiculous!”
Jake said, coming out of his chair and to his feet, his heart
pounding angrily against his ribs. “Julia, you don’t need to do any
of this.”
“You’re correct, Mr. Trafton,”
Tullis said. “But if she doesn’t, the house isn’t hers.”
#
Julia hadn’t returned to Maine
since Jeannie had died and she’d left Kane, but she still knew her
way around. From Bangor, it was only a half-hour drive, across the
Penobscot River and winding through the back roads beyond Brewer,
before they were headed up the narrow Queen’s Mountain Road. It was
bordered on either side by walls of evergreens and birches, oaks and
elms, before giving way to mountainside homes as Queen’s Mountain
rose above rural Tarrington like a little Olympus.
There were a few scattered houses
on the way up—mostly nineteenth-century farmsteads that had housed
the same families for generations—but at the very top was the jewel
in the Queen’s crown. The former Tidwell family home stood at the
peak, a huge New England farmhouse that looked to have been made for
a family of fifteen, elegant and regal and built the way nobody
built them anymore, with slate shingles on its sprawling roof and
wide pine clapboards on its exterior walls. A narrow breezeway
stretched from the far end of the long, boxy structure, connecting
the house to a massive red barn. The barn sported a giant gambrel
roof that was topped with cedar shakes.
“That’s impressive,” Jake said.
“He maintained it well,” Julia
said, excitement in her voice. “It’s just like I remember.”
The road morphed into the driveway,
which became a sweeping cul-de-sac. Julia She pulled the rental
Toyota into the yard and was hardly stopped before she threw it into
park and leaped out. Jake followed and joined her as she stopped
before the stairway to the sprawling porch, looking up in awe.
“It’s the only thing I ever
regretted leaving behind,” she said. “I can’t believe it will mine
again.”
He put an arm around her shoulders
and squeezed. “It’s the least the bastard could do.”
“That’s for sure.”
“I wish I could have given you
more,” he said, wistful and weak.
She turned to him, smiling. “You’ve
given me a thousand things Lucien Kane never could have—starting
with a life of happiness.”
“And a carpenter’s salary. You
deserved better.”
“I never regretted giving up his
millions for your love,” she said, and she leaned in and kissed him.
“Jeannie and Tamara were the only things that kept me hanging on
with him. When he killed poor Tamara, I didn’t think I’d make it.
But when Jeannie died—I knew that had to be it. She’d been more than
a sister to me. She was my best friend in the world. I was sure I
couldn’t survive without her, on my own, and then I met you. You’ve
been the best friend Jeannie used to be, and that’s worth more to me
than anything. But you don’t have to rescue me from every evil in my
life.”
He smiled. “I just want to protect
you and keep you happy. And I don’t know how to do that now,
spending the night here at that man’s insane behest.”
“I’m sure you won’t have to. And
whether we stay here depends on what these fifty-two items are. I
expect nothing less than the bizarre things Lucien’s twisted mind
would dream up.”
The suspense was killing Jake, but
he tried to act nonchalant when he said, “Well, let’s go find out.”
They climbed the porch steps, Julia
fumbling for the single key on an oversized ring with a big green
tag. Jake pulled open the storm door as a pleasant breeze soared
over the mountaintop and through his hair. He could envision living
up here.
Her hand shook as she unlocked the
door and pushed it open. The inside held the musty smell of a house
that hadn’t been lived in for years. But as they entered the
expansive kitchen and Julia flicked the light on, Jake could tell
the place had been kept clean and heated. Whatever else he’d done,
Kane had taken care of it.
“It’s just like I remember,” she
said again.
“There’s a duck here,” Jake said,
pointing, and she turned to look.
It was in the corner, atop a small
table. It was stuffed and mounted, done so expertly and
realistically that it looked alive. It was mostly white and brown,
with a green head and neck and a bright yellow bill. It was posed as
if floating on water, its wings pulled slightly back and up, as if
preparing to take flight.
“A mallard,” Jake clarified. “Who
keeps a stuffed duck in the kitchen?”
But she was staring, glassy-eyed,
at the duck, her face pale and her jaw trembling. Jake touched her
arm. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head, a nervous smile
on her lips. “He was evil, all right. Jeannie loved ducks. She had
stuffed-animal ducks, ducks on her clothing, toy ducks, duck
trinkets. She had real ducks when we were kids. Loved Donald Duck
and Daffy Duck. And she especially loved mallards.”
Jake stared, trying to figure it
out, and then he realized. On the front of the ornate wooden
pedestal on which the mallard was mounted was a small brass plate.
He moved closer, squinted, and read the engraving: FOR JEANNIE.
“Oh, my,” Jake said. He didn’t know
what else to say.
“I’d expect nothing less from a
cruel man who enjoyed traveling around the world shooting helpless
animals,” Julia said. “He loved to hunt them and stuff them, and he
knew I hated everything about his creepy dead animals.” She shook
her head in disgust and pointed at the duck. “Is that an orange
tag?”
Jake moved in to inspect the duck.
Sure enough, on the back side of the pedestal was one of the orange
tags Tullis had shown them. This one wasn’t blank.
“Number fifteen,” he said. “Of
fifty-two, I suppose.”
Julia headed to a wide doorway,
beyond which was a big living room. He followed her in as she turned
on the light, and suddenly she yelped and staggered backward and
into Jake. “What is it?” he hollered.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” she cried
out, pointing.
There were a black bear and a
mountain lion in the living room. Jake recoiled in surprise, backing
into the door jamb, but he realized what they were. The animals were
stuffed like the duck, posed on hefty wooden pedestals in opposite
corners of the room. The black bear was up on two legs, in
mid-stride, clawed paws raised menacingly, his gaping maw a
ferocious snarl. The mountain lion was on all fours, posed as if
stalking its prey, its head low to the ground, an angry,
sharp-toothed snarl on its furry face. The room was all teeth and
claws, and the animals unsettled Jake like nothing ever had.
“You weren’t kidding about his
hobby,” Jake said.
“He had this world-famous
taxidermist he’d fly in from Arizona whenever he had some great new
kill,” she said. “I refused to stay in our house on Cape Cod with
them, so he kept them at the camp house on Moosehead Lake here in
Maine.”
She turned to him, breathing a sigh
of relief. “So this is how he’s reaching out from the grave. If I
want the house, I have to spend the night with fifty-two dead
animals I can’t bear to be around.”
Jake ventured over to the rearing
bear and inspected it. Sure enough, on the back side of the pedestal
was an orange tag: number thirty-one. “I don’t mean to be
insensitive, honey,” he said, “but one night with a bunch of dead
animals isn’t so bad.”
She sighed and nodded. “You’re
right. He could have specified that I had to live in the house for
the rest of my life with these things, but he didn’t. It really is
just one creepy night, and the reward is my family home. The
Tidwells settled in Maine just after the Revolution, and were in
this house since before the Civil War. It’s hard to ignore that.”
“You ignored it when you let him
have the place,” Jake said, choosing his tone carefully. “You left
him and never looked back.”
He could see the pain in her face.
“He was a perfect gentleman when I married him, and I was young and
blinded by his millions. But soon he let his cruelty show, and it
worsened with every passing day until he was so sadistic and
terrible that he could kick a helpless cat to death. And when
Jeannie died that next day, there was no sorrow for my loss. He
didn’t come to her funeral, and he told me I couldn’t bring the urn
with her ashes into our house. Even my family home wasn’t worth
that.”
Jake went wrapped his arms around
her. “I don’t know how to make this better for you. Just tell me
what I can do.”
Her upturned, heart-shaped face,
framed by her straight auburn hair, smiled ruefully at him. “You’re
too sweet, Jake. And I know this is difficult for you. After
eighteen years of handling one of Lucien’s messes—me—this is the
last thing you need to deal with.”
He smiled back. “You’re no mess,
darling. You’re stronger than what that man did to you. Do what you
must, claim your family homestead, and move on with no more fear of
him. He’ll find no immortality with you—just his bones turning to
dust. Now let’s tour this place, and see what other creepy surprises
await us.”
She hugged him back. “Are you doing okay? Your heart, I mean. You
got worked up back in Tullis’ office.”
“I’m fine. Just got a little
uptight.”
“Maybe you should take a nitro
pill.”
“Maybe you should show me the rest
of the house.”
They toured it together, and with
each room it became obvious that the place was a veritable zoo.
Every room displayed at least one stuffed-and-mounted animal. Some
were small: a gray squirrel on its hind legs, head tilted as if
listening for an approaching car; a raccoon, sniffing about the
ground; even a skunk, black-and-white tail fluffed up in the air as
if inviting a foolish adversary. Others were larger: a wolf, its
upturned nose testing the air for its prey; a wild boar, dark and
mean with menacing tusks; and a fourteen-foot python, fat and coiled
around a wooden post in the corner of one bedroom.
The second floor had eight
bedrooms, and each was a cage for various animals. There was a zebra
in one; a big stuffed macaw, wings extended, appeared to be lighting
on its back. A crocodile, toothy maw open as if attacking, seemed to
be coming out of invisible waters behind the striped animal,
sneaking up on its prey.
There was a kangaroo in one room, a
baby joey peeking out of its pouch. Both were labeled with orange
tags. Jake wondered further about the sanity of a man who could
slaughter a kangaroo jill and her baby, and then display them like
that.
One room was replete just with
heads: a rhino, a moose, a giraffe, and several more. And in all the
rooms, there were smaller stuffed animals: birds, a turtle, a
beaver, several monster fish, a shark, a wolverine, a Tasmanian
devil. Every door opened to another twisted menagerie.
At the end of the long hall on the
second floor was a door. “The master bedroom,” Julia said.
Jake went for it, opened it, and
waited like a gentleman for his wife to enter. He followed her in,
and stopped short when he realized she’d done so, almost bumping
into her.
He didn’t have to ask her what was
wrong, because he saw it just then.
The room was huge, probably
twenty-five feet long and fifteen wide. Trios of big windows lined
the short walls, facing east and west. A framed photo of Julia’s
parents, taken in the 1970s judging by the clothing styles, hung on
the wall near the door; another framed photo, this an external
black-and-white shot of the farmhouse from probably a hundred years
before, hung on the opposite wall. There was a dark-stained pine
four-post bed on the west end of the room that looked as if it had
been handmade a hundred years before. Matching nightstands and
dressers flanked the sides, and double folding doors on the wall
opposite the door concealed a walk-in closet. But it was the thing
displayed on the pedestal at the east end that nearly stopped Jake’s
heart.
He’d never even seen a photo of
Lucien Kane, but there was no doubting who it had to be. The man was
stuffed and mounted like all the other creatures in the house,
bedecked in a silver-gray Armani suit and shoes liked polished
obsidian. His weight was back on his right foot, his left somewhat
out before him, and his left hand was on his hip. His right hand
rested on the silver handle of an ebony cane.
And Kane’s face seemed to glow with
confidence. His dark eyes, topped by a slightly furrowed brow,
glimmered like deep-brown marbles in the sunlight. His angular old
face looked chiseled from a block of white marble, and his nostrils
were flared and his thin-lipped mouth was turned barely up at its
corners. A shock of gray-white hair capped his visage, the only wild
and unkempt thing about the man.
Jake realized his mouth was hanging
open, and knew his wife had to be ready to pass out. He grabbed for
her shoulders as if to hold her up—maybe to hold himself up.
She was trembling beneath his grip,
but saw her head shake quickly back and forth. “It can’t be real.
Nobody can do that legally, can they?” She wavered beneath him, then
spun about. Her face was ashen, her eyes wide, and she pushed past
him into the hallway. “You have to check, Jake.”
He regarded the bizarre statue of
the dead man. There was no way the old bastard had had himself
stuffed and mounted—that was just ridiculous. Jake started forward,
his legs shaking like the tines of a tuning fork. Every step was a
risk of toppling over. He nearly staggered across the room, and as
he moved, he was sure the statue’s eyes were following him.
All too quickly, he stood face to
face with the man. Or more like face to chest, as the statue was up
on the pedestal. He looked up into those dark eyes, and could tell
right away they were glass, just like the other animals in the
house. But the skin seemed so real.
His heart pounded, slow but
terribly heavy, like an underwater sledgehammer. He focused on
breathing steadily, trying to ignore the sound of blood rushing in
his ears, and looked down at Kane’s hand, resting on the silver top
of his elegant cane. Along with the skin, the fingernails looked
real: neatly trimmed and filed, with visible cuticles. The detail
about the knuckles was amazing, with myriad tiny wrinkles and
individual hairs sprinkled here and there. And on the back of the
hand was a three-inch-long scar. It looked terribly real.
“Is it him?” Julia’s warbling voice
came from out in the hall.
Jake reached out and touched the
back of the hand. The skin was cold and waxy, giving slightly under
the pressure. He yanked his hand back and watched as the slight
depression undid itself, like memory foam regaining its shape.
He looked up in sickened horror.
There was no doubt that the dead body of Lucien Kane was on display
in his wife’s family home. And she had to sleep in that room
tonight.
“Jake, answer me!” she cried.
“Go downstairs,” he said to her,
backing away from the macabre scene, ignoring the twinge he felt in
his chest. “Go now.”
#
They hurried out onto the big
porch, and Julia gasped maniacally at the fresh air as if she’d
escaped suffocation. She staggered forward, leaning on the wooden
railing and practically hyperventilating. Jake leaned against the
outer wall of the house, trying to calm his own nerves, which
sizzled like live wires.
“That bastard!” Julia hissed amidst
sobs. “Even in death he can’t let go—he still has to torture me!”
She broke down, head hanging, bent
over and looking like a hunchback, her shoulders hitching and
jerking as she cried. Jake stumbled across the porch, reaching for
her, and she spun about and dived into his arms, bawling like a
child. He held her in arms of steel, practically holding her entire
weight up as she got it out of her system. It took several minutes,
her wails echoing out from the mountaintop homestead like radio
waves broadcasting across Tarrington and Maine and the world.
She finally quieted, disentangling
herself from his embrace and digging for a handkerchief in her
purse. When she was done drying her eyes and tidying her makeup, she
had managed to make herself look beautiful and elegant again, a
picture of self-control—qualities that had enabled her to survive
her decade-long ordeal with Lucien Kane.
“I can only imagine the pleasure he
got,” she said, shaking her head. “I can picture him in his office,
atop his Boston skyscraper, laughing as he planned it all out.”
She turned away, looking back out
over Tarrington. “That bastard,” she said. “That fucking bastard.”
Jake’s eyes bulged, but he held his
tongue. Nearly two decades with her, and he’d never heard her use
that word before. Hell, he’d never heard her use “bastard,” either.
“Honey, let’s go,” he said in a gentle voice. “We’ll go back to
California and forget about everything.”
She spun back to him, eyes wide,
her face suddenly burning with a fire he’d never seen before. “I
didn’t come all the way back here just to run away. I’m not going to
turn down the chance to reclaim my family home. And I’m certainly
not going to let that bastard beat me again.”
She spun on her heel and stomped
down the stairs, heading for the car. “We’re going back to our
hotel. Tomorrow, we’re spending the night here.”
“You can’t be serious!” Jake cried, hustling down the steps behind
her. “That’s your dead ex-husband up there! You can’t say you mean
to stay in this house, sleeping in that bedroom, with his body on
display!”
He was hot on her heels, and when
she hit the brakes and whirled about, he almost bowled her over. “I
certainly am!” she cried. “This is about more than my pride—it’s
about the pride of generations of my family! I dishonored that by
letting him have the house, and not fighting for it when I ran away
like a scared little girl. I’m done running! I’ll get this house
back, and this land, and I’ll spit in Lucien’s dead face when I do,
before I haul him outside and burn him in the biggest bonfire
Queen’s Mountain has ever seen!” ...
* *
* * * * * *
*
But it won't be that easy. Julia and
Jake have no idea what the night has in store for them...
To read the whole story, order
Nemonymous
10: Null Immortalis.
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