Page 12 of The Gallagher Place
Henry shook his head. “They’re just stirring up pointless grief.”
Marlowe leaned against the edge of the mantel, feeling the heat of the fire radiate through her shirt. She thought back to some of the outlandish theories she had heard about Nora. Most of that noise had died down, even if the crackpot blogs still found a reason to post occasionally. The twisted conspiracy theorists couldn’t resist a salacious cold case. As for Damen, if he had theories of his own, he never shared them with anyone, and he had grown even more silent with age. Marlowe had not told her family that Ariel and Ben had asked about Nora, and none of them had shared the details of their interviews with her.
“It must have been a dispute among hunters.” Marlowe brought herself back to the present. “Late at night.”
“That’s what I would guess.” Henry slid his finger between the pages of his book, a historical tome about the Vikings, but he did not open it.
“These hunters are not playing with toys,” Enzo said abruptly and then took in a deep breath, his sunken chest rising and falling. “Do not go looking for that bear.”
Henry’s shoulders slumped, and Marlowe bit her lip.
“Enzo,” Henry said. “That was a long time ago.”
“A hunter clipped that bear’s leg. I didn’t believe it the first time we heard the story. And then I saw for myself. After that I couldn’tkeep you kids out of the woods, looking for him. Only Marlowe knew nothing good would come of it.”
Enzo reached out and placed his hand on Marlowe’s knee. She kept her face turned toward the fire, unable to return the warm gesture. It unnerved her when Enzo slipped out of time. It was unclear how much he understood about what had taken place yesterday. His dementia was progressing steadily—some days he seemed acutely afflicted by it, but occasionally he appeared more lucid than ever.
Marlowe could remember all the afternoons she and her brothers spent huddled around Enzo as he told one of his famous yarns. Over the years, they became more adept at sensing his embellishments, but they still hung on his every word.
He seemed poised to begin another one at any moment, nodding slowly up and down. It was his signature way of conjuring a story from his boundless vault of memories.
“What did you say this hunter’s name was?” Enzo stared penetratingly until Marlowe met his gaze.
“Harmon,” she whispered. “Harmon Gallagher.”
Enzo hummed in recognition. “I remember when you moved down into that basement bedroom. Converted from that dreadful cellar just after your parents bought the place. And, of course, you remember that I was the first one who lived down there after the first renovation.”
“How could I forget?” Marlowe chuckled. The recollection seemed irrelevant but harmless enough.
“And many more improvements came after that. The master bedroom annex, front porch. A big, beautiful kitchen. But the bones of this old house …” Enzo trailed off, looking up at the patinaed trusses and then the slate mantel of the fireplace. “Those have stood here unchanged for over a century. Something to take great pride in, but also a reminder of those who came first.”
Marlowe froze. Not so irrelevant. Hearing the name of the deceased had drawn him back to the history of this place. After all, the Gray House had been a part of the original Gallagher farm. The land had been divided down the middle decades ago, separating the Gray House from the farm across the road. The Gallagher ancestors had dwelled in the house long before Marlowe or Enzo for that matter.
“Mysterious lot, all of them,” Enzo continued. “But that girl still gives me a chill.”
“Which girl?” Marlowe felt a shudder of anticipation.
“The Gallagher girl,” Enzo said.
She had expected her friend’s name to slip through Enzo’s cracked lips. But he meant another girl—a local myth Marlowe vaguely recalled her father talking about years ago. She wasn’t sure if the story was true or just part of the local lore bandied about by dubious real estate agents.
Marlowe and Henry remained quiet, allowing Enzo to continue his meandering story. “The Gallaghers who lived in this house, great-grandparents to those brothers, had a beautiful daughter. The prettiest farm girl in the county. But this daughter harbored a rebellious streak. Her mother tried to keep her tethered to her chores around the fields and in the house, but the Gallagher daughter was always running off. The house was too confining for her, or so it goes.”
Enzo raised his brows upward. He was beginning to take some liberties, add in his customary drama, but the reflections on the house as some sort of prison rattled Marlowe.
“And where would she go?” Marlowe asked, trying to keep Enzo engaged and cogent. His stories always made the listener desperate for answers, even if she knew he was lying.
“Her favorite spot was at the top of the North Field, where the land rises and the grass grows tall and green. And out of sight fromthe house, you know. From her perch, she could look out at the house and the barn and, beyond that, deep into the valley. The Gallagher daughter sat up there every season. In the summer, she was cushioned by the waving grasses, and in the winter, she sat on a snowbank like it was her throne. She weathered the rain in the spring and the cool wind of autumn. That was her favorite, which got her in even more trouble, as fall was the busiest time for a valley farmer. She left the cows unfed and the kitchen dishes unwashed and the bread burning at the hearth. And then one day, out in the hedgerow, she started to hear voices whispering from the woods behind her. She came back home that night with stories that turned her parents’ hearts to stone. They were convinced the poor girl was going insane or, worse, had been visited by a demon.”
Henry shifted in his chair, and Marlowe’s gaze dropped to the floor. Neither of them spoke, but the air between them tightened.
Enzo continued: “She was confined to her bedroom, where the visions and whispers got worse until she went completely mad. Everyone murmured stories about the crazy girl at the Gallagher house. They said that on certain nights, you could hear her screaming. After that—well, that kind of story casts a long shadow on a family.”
Enzo fell back against the cushion, eyes wide and glassy like some ancient soothsayer’s. It was an odd tale that didn’t really have an ending. He just seemed to run out of things to say, and the story petered out. A girl was locked in her room and went mad. She didn’t die, but everyone else had to live with it.
“Don’t tell the kids that story,” Henry said. “They’ll be too scared of ghosts to sleep.”
Enzo wrinkled his brow. “That story is not about hauntings,” he said. “There’s a different lesson: Never lock up a child. When a girl wants to run free, let her. If she encounters strange things, it is better that she is free.”
