Craven Manor(20)

“Yeah. Check this out.” Daniel retrieved the coin from his pocket and passed it to Kyle. “That’s what my wage looks like. How weird is that?”

Kyle’s face scrunched up as he turned the coin over. “Is this gold? What is he, a pirate?”

“I know, right?” Daniel put his bottle back onto the bench. A quiet voice in the back of his mind said he was being careless, but he was too giddy to pay it much attention. “As far as I can guess, they were minted back when the house was occupied. Late Georgian era or maybe Regency era.”

“When’s that?”

“Late seventeen hundreds or early eighteen hundreds.” Daniel bent forward to point to the seal on the coin. “That same emblem is on the tomb in the yard and worn by people in the house’s paintings. It’s probably the family crest.”

“Hey, I know that.” The bartender had approached unseen to place two fresh beers at their sides. He was squinting at the coin. “My grandfather had one of those.”

“No way!” Kyle’s voice had risen in volume, and he seemed to be barely containing his laughter. “Did your grandpa get hired as a ground-person too?”

The bartender’s high coif and stringy beard reminded Daniel of a yak. He glanced down his bar, but all of the patrons were engaged in chatter and still had full drinks. The bartender leaned far over the thick wooden bench, his eyes narrowed, and spoke in a tone so soft that Daniel could barely understand him. “Nah. My great-grandfather’s grandfather was a physician. He was employed by the Myricks family.”

The name sparked the coal of curiosity in Daniel. He scooted nearer. “Physician? Did he treat Annalise Myricks? Do you know why she died?”

The bartender snickered at Daniel’s eagerness. “I never met him. He died, like, an eternity ago. But my grandfather was a historian and collected his great-grandpa’s journals and trinkets. My parents would take me to visit him as a kid, and he’d always talk forever, telling story after story about our forefathers. He was half senile, and everything he said sounded like a wheeze, but he loved talking about his physician great-grandfather and the crazy family on the hill. The mother was bonkers, apparently. Paranoid and obsessive-compulsive. He used to read passages from the physician’s journal, and it was the kind of stuff that would give you nightmares.”

The barkeep scrunched his face up and squinted at an invisible book as he imitated his grandfather. “I would have loved to give her some electroshock treatment. Any other woman would have been put in an asylum for the ravings she spouted, but she was rich up to her eyeballs, and rich people were untouchable.”

Daniel could picture the old patriarch clearly, with a worn, haggard face, spittle escaping his chapped lips as he recited memorised passages from the book. A fireplace would cast deep shadows in the crevices of his creased face, and his eyes, half-blind with cataracts, would rove across the room.

“She didn’t want treatment herself, afraid I might curse her with my medicine. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her. But she did let me treat her child, the poor mite.”

“Annalise?” Daniel pressed.

The barkeep broke his pantomime to shrug. “Like I said, I haven’t heard the stories since I was a kid, but that name sounds about right.”

“Do you know what was wrong with her?”

“Yeah.” The barkeep rubbed a tattooed hand over his beard. “That was Pawpaw’s favourite part of the story. She had this condition that made her skin blister in the sun. He called her a ‘moon child.’ Of course, these days they have a proper name for the disease, something complex beginning with an X. Point was, she couldn’t be allowed near any kind of sunlight. She spent her days locked up in their mansion, thick curtains covering all of the windows, and was only allowed out at night.”

Daniel blinked and saw the portrait in his mind’s eye. She’d been impossibly pale, the kind of paleness that came from never seeing the sun. “How did she die?”

“No clue, bud.” The barkeep shrugged. “Pawpaw’s journals said he tried things to help her, all kinds of crazy experimental treatments, but nothing worked. After a few years, the mother sent him away in a fit of fury and told him to never return.”

Kyle squinted up at the bearded man. “You seriously called him Pawpaw? What, did he die of embarrassment?”

“Shut up! I loved my Pawpaw.” The barkeep glowered at Kyle then flipped a cloth over his shoulder and marched to the other end of the bar.

“Why’d you have to say that?” Daniel hissed.

“Come on, he’s a pretentious twit. Enjoy your beer.”

Daniel picked up his bottle but didn’t drink any. His mind was swirling. He tried to imagine what it might feel like to be trapped inside during the day, closeted behind heavy blackout curtains, never allowed to see the sun or to feel its rays on his skin for fear it would blister into agonizing scabs. Would prolonged exposure have killed Annalise? He didn’t like to think about the girl’s end. Daniel ran a hand over his face.

“Hey, what? The douche didn’t upset you, did he?” Kyle snickered and tapped Daniel’s knee with his bottle. “You should tell his pawpaw to stop repeating those ghoulish stories.”

“It’s not that,” Daniel lied. “I just… I need to be heading back. I didn’t mean to stay out this late.”