Cultivated box set, p.30
Cultivated Box Set, page 30
part #1 of Cultivated Series
“I want to see our old room, but I don’t want to go alone.” River stepped over to Nathan. The two of them had shared a room when we lived here. He gave a short nod before moving to the staircase. We all followed.
“My heart is beating so fast right now,” River whispered when we got to the second floor and began walking down the long corridor.
Mine was too, but I’d always been the leader of our group, and even though Lumi was technically older than me, I took on the same role as I had back then. “It’s going to be fine. It’s just an empty old house.”
“With lots of memories,” Nathan added. “My heart is trying to climb out of my throat. I fucking hate this.”
“It wasn’t my idea to come back here,” Lumi muttered.
Letting out a deep sigh, I spoke: “I never said it would be fun, but we need to face our fears of this place. When we leave here, this place will no longer matter to us. We’ve been here, seen it, and we can move on.”
“Speaking of moving on, am I the only one who feels like we’re not alone? It’s like someone is watching us.”
“No, I feel it too.” River reached for Lumi’s hand and looked scared.
“Now you’re just riling each other up. There’s no one here but us,” I scolded my sisters.
We had reached the end of the hallway when my brother challenged me, “How would you know? Twenty-eight people were killed because of a crazy man. If ever there was a haunted house, wouldn’t this be it?”
“No!” I shot him a you’re not helping look, but he persisted:
“I’m with Lumi and River. I feel it too. There’s something in this house. What if it’s Dad and he’s still crazy? What if he tries to trip us up, so we fall down the stairs and break our necks? He was a cold-blooded killer when he lived, and if he’s the one haunting this place, I don’t think we should be here.”
“Enough!” I opened the door and walked into what had once been River’s and Nathan’s room.
“What happened to the furniture?” River asked.
“It was sold in the estate sale,” I mumbled.
River walked further into the almost empty room and touched a dresser that had been left behind. “How come you and Maximum never sold the house?”
I snorted. “And have it turned into a tourist attraction as a haunted bed and breakfast? I don’t think so.”
“But leaving it to rot like this…” Lumi didn’t finish her sentence. The way her right hand scraped at the water-damaged wallpaper said it all.
The sound of a creaking door made me look over to see Maximum opening the one leading to what had once been our father’s room.
With hesitation, Lumi and River followed and entered while Nathan stayed in the doorway.
“It’s not in there,” I told him.
“I know.” Perspiration formed on his forehead and his upper lip.
“Snakes don’t live that long, and someone would have removed it back then.”
“It’s not like I’m scared of a snake anymore.” Nathan’s words contradicted his wide eyes and shallow breathing.
“You want to see this,” Lumi called from the other room.
Giving my adoptive brother a reassuring look, I nudged Nathan into the room.
“The closet is still here.” Lumi was standing in front of the closet we had opened eleven years ago when we all decided to snoop in Conor O’Brien’s room.
We’d been shocked to find a terrarium inside with a giant yellow snake. For years, Nathan had suffered from nightmares of a yellow snake in his bed, and it turned out my sick father had been behind it.
“Is that the dead snake?” Lumi pointed but didn’t walk closer.
Maximum lifted a long gray snakeskin. “No, this is just skin that it shed. I wonder what happened to the snake and what kind it was.”
“It was a yellow corn snake.”
They all turned to me and stared.
“Charles told us. You just don’t remember.”
“When did he tell us what kind of snake it was?” Nathan asked.
“A few days after. The question came up, and he looked into it. Don’t stare at me like that. It’s not my fault you’re all trying to block out what happened.”
“Why would you remember a detail like that?” River walked over to look closer at the snakeskin. “I remember it as a large python in size.”
“No, it was a corn snake. I found it interesting because it’s one thing to place a snake in a boy’s bed, but it’s another as to whether or not Nathan was in actual danger from the snake. A corn snake isn’t venomous. It’s a common pet snake because of its docile nature and reluctance to bite. It does look similar to venomous snakes like the copperhead, but it’s harmless.”
“There’s nothing harmless about what Conor did to Nathan.” Lumi straightened up. “He placed that snake in his bed to control him through fear, and then he had the nerve to pretend he couldn’t see it when Nathan screamed for help. He made Nathan think he was crazy.”
I sighed. “True. I was merely pointing out that it wasn’t Conor’s goal to kill Nathan and that he used a harmless snake rather than a deadly one.”
“Don’t defend the man.” Maximum moved to the exit.
“I’m not defending him. You were the one who asked what kind of snake it was, and I happened to know.”
The others left the room, and I made sure to turn off the light before I followed. We walked through bedrooms, bathrooms, and the kitchen before we ended up in Conor’s office.
“I’m done with this house. Can we leave now?” Nathan was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.
The office no longer had a desk, but the reading chair was still in the corner, and there were books scattered on the built-in bookshelves on two of the walls.
Lumi and I both walked over to scan the titles and pulled out a book each.
“What’s wrong?”
I turned my head to Maximum, who had asked.
“Nothing. Why?”
“I was talking to River.”
Instant worry filled me when I saw how pale and frightened she looked. “River, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what it is, but that book makes me want to run away.”
“What, this one?” I reached for the red book to pull it down from the shelf. It was stuck, so I pulled harder.
Click. A narrow opening appeared at the end of the shelves.
Lumi, Maximum, and even Nathan moved closer, while River took a step back.
“Don’t open it,” she whispered and hugged herself, making her shoulders hunch over.
I frowned. “Why not? Aren’t you curious?”
“I have a bad feeling. What if he had someone chained up in there, and the person was never found?”
With a snort, I pushed the door open and watched dust fall. My hands searched for a light and found it to my right.
“Holy Christ!” We all stared into a room that was about the same size as the office.
“I don’t want to go in there.” River’s voice was brittle.
“How did you know about the book? Have you been in here before?” I asked her with some confusion.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I can’t remember.”
Maximum pushed past me and walked in, with Nathan and me right behind him. A day bed and two leather chairs were on the floor, but it was the walls that made my blood freeze to ice.
“What the fuck is this?” Nathan scanned the walls with his face scrunched up. “Do you recognize any of them?”
I studied the photos pinned to the wall. Everything in Conor’s life had been well organized, but these photos were placed in random order, some on top of each other. “Maybe Conor didn’t know this room existed. Maybe these are from a previous owner.”
“No, I recognize this girl.” Maximum reached for a photo and took it down. “Remember Heather? She was my age and lived here with her mom for about a year.” He handed me the picture of a girl who sat naked against a wall, looking away. She couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve.
“Hmmm.” I gave him the photo back and walked around, looking at the girls and young women on the walls. Several I recognized, but in most of the images, the girls had their back to the camera, making it impossible to identify them.
On a low shelf, a combined TV and video stood, and underneath it, at least fifty videotapes were lined up.
My hands tore through my hair. “Conor was a psychopathic killer who lied and deceived people, but he wasn’t a sexual child molester. We would know if he was. We were children living in his house.”
Maximum looked around. “I don’t know. It’s all females. Just because he never touched you and me doesn’t mean he didn’t touch others.”
I spun around to face Lumi. “Did Conor ever touch you?”
She shook her head. “Not that I remember.”
“River, did Conor ever touch you inappropriately?”
River had never entered the room and still stood in the office looking in. “Do you see any photos of me?”
“I can’t tell.” Using my phone, I documented what we’d found while Maximum began taking down the photos.
“Stop, what are you doing?”
He kept going. “We need to find the children. This isn’t right, and they need to know about it.”
“Maximum, stop!” I raised my voice.
He already had five of the pictures in his hands when he stopped and listened to me.
“None of these girls are children anymore. It’s been eleven years, which means every girl in those pictures is an adult now. Why would you tell them? What if they blocked it from their memory and are now living healthy lives? We don’t know what really happened, but even if there are worse things on those videos, we can’t just show up with proof that they were molested. It might start a chain reaction, and they could end up worse than before we told them.”
“What can be worse than not knowing?” Maximum argued.
I shifted my balance. “Taking an overdose or drinking yourself to death to forget is worse. Look, it's not like we can put our dad in jail. The man is already dead.”
“But what if they have all sorts of issues but don’t remember why? This is a piece of a puzzle. They deserve to know.”
My hands were shaking. “Do any of you want to go through another round of publicity? You know the press would be all over this, and then what?” I gave Maximum a direct stare. “You and I are the sons of a mass murderer, and now you want to tell the world that he was a pedophile too?”
Pain crossed Maximum’s face before he looked away.
“With dad gone, who do you think the press is going to come for?”
My brother didn’t answer. While I’d been shipped to the US after it happened and few at college had known about my background, Maximum had been younger and stayed here in Ireland. For him, school had been a nightmare with all the bullying and exclusion from people who judged him as the son of Conor O’Brien.
Lumi’s voice sounded from behind us. “I say we burn it all. This room is a shrine to misery and evil, and nothing in here deserves to be spread or seen by anyone.”
“Yes. Let’s take all the photos down and burn them. The tapes too,” Nathan agreed.
“No, I need to document this and see what’s on the tapes,” I objected and stuffed four flash drives from the pile of videotapes into my pockets.
Maximum, Lumi, and River were now all taking down the hundreds of photos in the room while I snapped pictures with my phone. What they didn’t understand was that I’d been searching for answers for eleven years, and those photos could hold information that I needed.
Once they were done taking down pictures, they took the videotapes, and if it hadn’t been that River’s pile was too high and she dropped two of them on the floor, I would have never gotten to see what was on them. While the others left the room to burn everything in the garden, I took the videotapes and closed the door.
I tried to distance myself from what I might see and turned on the TV as I pushed in the tape.
Please let it be a Hollywood movie.
The sound of my father’s voice made the hair on my arms stand up. I only had to see a few minutes of my father’s gift of persuasion to be sweating like I’d run a marathon. Not even the young girl’s giggles and assurances that she wanted him to touch her made the bile in my throat lessen.
I had come here to prove to myself that Conor O’Brien held no power over any of us any longer, but as I stopped the tape, I stood with a feeling that he was right behind me, hissing low into my ear. “You can never outrun me, son. You’re my blood, and I live on inside you.”
As if I’d felt a physical touch to my neck, I shivered and rubbed my skin, and then I hurried to the others in the garden.
“There was still split wood in the shed and lighter fluid,” Maximum told me when he stepped back from the fire he had made.
“Cover your noses. Burning plastic isn’t healthy,” Lumi warned and threw the first tape on the fire.
I didn’t like the smoke. “What if the neighbors notice the smell?”
“This is Howth. Nothing happens after midnight.”
“Nathan is right,” Lumi said. “It’s December. They’re all sleeping inside with their doors and windows closed.
We stood for a while, throwing tapes onto the fire and watching them melt. I had been one of the first to throw my two tapes, and there was a sense of relief when the flames engulfed them.
“I’m sure we’re breaking all sorts of environmental rules right now.” River was just about to throw another tape on to the fire when she hesitated, and her eyebrows drew close together.
“What is it?” I was terrified she had read her own or Lumi’s name on a tape, but she looked to Nathan.
“Wasn’t your last name Hamilton before we all got adopted?”
“Yeah?”
“And wasn’t your mom’s name, Sandra?”
I swallowed hard as all our eyes were on Nathan. His hands folded into fists. “Is it from the night he killed my mom?”
River held it out to him. “It could be.”
Nathan took the tape and looked utterly lost.
“Do you want me to look at it first?” I offered, although I had zero desire to see what was on that tape.
“No, I’ll do it when I’m ready.”
Maximum, Lumi, River, and I all moved over to stand around Nathan, our hands resting on him to offer our support.
“Don’t watch it alone,” Lumi whispered. “At least let us be there for you.”
Nathan was looking down with tears making his eyes wet, but he nodded as a silent promise that he wouldn’t watch it alone.
Without words, we gathered closer around Nathan and gave him a group hug. When we moved back, he squatted down in front of the fire and used a stick to stir up the flames.
"We should burn down this whole house. No one will ever want to live here anyway."
When none of us answered him, he turned his head, “No, actually, we should blow it up, once and for all. One giant explosion to get it out of our lives.” He lifted the burning stick in his hand, and it made me take a step forward.
"Don't. Arson is a crime, and you don't want to go to jail.”
River frowned. “How can it be arson if you and Maximum own the house? It’s not as if you’d press charges against him, would you?”
“No, but what if the fire spreads? Burning down the house isn’t going to solve anything.”
Nathan had been small for his age back when we were children, but he’d grown into a large man with a well-muscled body from his obsession with sports. It saddened me to see the proud man he’d become, dry his nose, and scrunch his face up. “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t feel a sense of satisfaction from seeing this place burn to the ground. We all hate this house and him."
I raised both palms. “You’re right, but we aren’t mindless teenagers, and setting the manor on fire would be reckless. If you need to see it burn down, then I’m fine with it, but we’re doing it the right way.”
“And what way is that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the local fire department can do it for practice.”
“No! I want to set the torch.”
“I’m sure we can arrange that, Nathan. But not tonight.”
He threw the stick back onto the fire and took a step back.
Lumi was right there to give him another hug. “Atlas is right. We don’t know if there’s something that could explode inside, and the neighbors are sleeping in their houses. It’s not safe.”
Nathan stabbed his index finger at me. “I want to see our childhood and this fucking haunted house in ashes.” He stormed off in the direction of the car, and River ran after him.
"Are you happy now?” Maximum tucked his hands in his pockets next to me and rocked back and forth on his feet. “That speech you gave us about proving to ourselves that Dad doesn't hold any power over us…” He scoffed. “The man planted so many phobias and traumas in us that he’ll continue to hold power for as long as we live. We’re cursed people."
“No!” I refused to believe that. “We can get past it. ”
“How? We’re all fucked up in one way or the other, and you know it.”
My tone was defensive. “That’s why I’m searching for answers. We need to understand what he did to you, and then we’ll know how to fix it.”
Maximum stared at me and gave an incredulous chuckle. “What he did to us? Don’t you know that you’re as fucked up as the rest of us? You’re the one obsessing about needing to understand what happened, but you never will. Dad was crazy, Atlas. Crazy and evil!” He nodded to the melted videotapes on the fire. “I wish we hadn’t come here tonight, and I wish you wouldn’t insist on digging for answers. All you find is more dirt and depravity.”
“Maximum, I…”
He cut me off. “That research project you’re running; who is it for?”
“It’s for us and anyone else who is broken by someone like Dad.”
Maximum shook his head. “I know you’re trying to fix the situation, but you can’t. No one can.”
“Give me time.” I took a step forward, but that only made him back away.
