The Chosen

^{CHAPTER SIX}

“Carriage House, here we come!” Dan B. rejoiced.

“Hey, Vera?” Lee asked. “You think this Feldspar guy’ll let me have beer on the house?”

“I can’t wait to see this place!” Donna excitedly joined in. “I’ve seen pictures of it. It’s like a big Gothic mansion!”

Vera smiled.

Dan B. drove—the big Plymouth wagon he and Donna owned—and Lee rode next to him, tracing the upstate maps. Vera sat in the back with Donna. They were all the essentials Vera would need right off; secondary help she could hire from Waynesville. A large move-it! truck, which Vera had contracted for them, followed the wagon up the narrow winding roads of the northernmost edge of the county.

None of them had hesitated at Vera’s offer; Feldspar’s perks, cash supplements, increased salaries, and guaranteed employment contracts were irresistible. “Why not?” Dan B. had remarked. “This city’s getting old anyway. Besides, it’d be selfish for a chef of my extraordinary skills to deprive the rest of the world of his delights.” “Free room and board in a renovated suite!” Donna had exclaimed. “I’m there already!” And Lee: “Did I hear you right, Vera? You’re asking me if I’ll wash dishes for twelve bucks an hour instead of six? What do you think?”

The four of them quitting The Emerald Room without notice did not exactly elate the general manager, but there was no love lost there. He was an uncouth slob who frequently harassed the younger waitresses and had a propensity for leaving boogers on his office wall. Good riddance to him. The next day Vera had rented the truck and hired the movers. “What about your stuff?” Dan B. had asked when they were finished loading up. Vera hadn’t answered; she wasn’t ready to even talk about it much less actually return to the apartment and face Paul. He probably wouldn’t care anyway, she suspected. He’ll probably be happy when he finds out I’m gone. Instead, she’d bought some clothes and sundries with some of the money Feldspar had given her for coming on. She’d get her things from the apartment some other time, if at all. What did she really need, anyway? Her room would be furnished; the company was providing a car. Everything else she needed she could buy. Not ever seeing Paul again was fine with her; the few appliances they’d bought mutually he could have. And the old Tercel could sit in the Mr. Donut parking lot forever as far as Vera was concerned.

Talk about starting with a clean slate, she reflected.

The countryside was beautiful, plush, even in the grip of winter. Its openness seemed unreal, like a long-forgotten dream. The northern ridge rose as an endless expanse of pines, oaks, and firs. South, for miles and miles along State Route 154, farmland denuded of its fall harvest stretched on to an equal degree of endlessness. City life had smothered her; its smog and rush hour and asphalt and cement had veiled her memory of the countryside’s spacious beauty and peace. R.M. at The Emerald Room had been a good job but, she realized now, it had entombed her. There is life after the city, she amused herself with the thought. A better life.

“Come on, man, get with the map,” Dan B. complained at the wheel. “We almost there yet or what?”

“How about eating my shorts?” Lee returned, his lap full of a clutter of maps. “This thing says—”

“We’re about an hour away, Dan B.,” Vera verified. “It’s pretty much a straight shot up the route. Would you relax?”

“I’m excited, I can’t help it. I can’t wait to see the place.”

Neither can I, Vera wondered. If Feldspar was exaggerating, she’d know soon enough. A complete renovation of Wroxton Hall would cost millions. If Feldspar’s company had that kind of money to pump into refurbishments, she couldn’t imagine what kind of money he’d be able to sink into advertising and promotion.

“I don’t quite understand it all,” Dan B. queried. “This place is going to be like—”

”A country-styled bed and breakfast type of place,” Vera answered. “With a separate restaurant to cater to locals. Feldspar wants to target upper-market businessmen and rich people—a weekend get-away-from-it-all sort of thing. But he also wants a full-time restaurant to cater to the better-off people in the area. That’s where we come in. Feldspar says it’s cost-no-object; we’ll get to do pretty much what we want. He’s more concerned with the hotel operations himself. He’s entrusting the entire restaurant to me, or to us, I should say. The whole thing sounds really great, but what we have to remember is the only reason he’s paying us all this money is because he doesn’t want the headache. What he wants is a state-of-the-art dining room without having to worry about it himself.’’

“So if we fuck up,” Lee remarked, “our shit’s in the wind.”

“I’d put it a little more eloquently than that, but yeah. Feldspar seems like a real nice guy, but you can bet he didn’t get to where he is today by passing out second chances. If we don’t turn The Carriage House into something that meets all of his expectations, he won’t think twice about giving us our walking papers and finding someone else.”

“What are we all worried about?” Donna proposed. “We did it at The Emerald Room. We’ll do it here.”

“Damn right,” Vera said. “The Carriage House is going to blow Feldspar right out of his Guccis. I figure we’ll run with a menu close to what we had at The Emerald, but with a lot more exotic specials—”

“Just show me the kitchen,” Dan B. said.

“Feldspar’s talking anything and everything good. He doesn’t even care what the food invoices are. He just wants excellent food every night.”

“I’ll give him that,” Dan B. promised. “I’ll show him.”

“And excellent service.”

“I’ll give him that,” Donna said.

“And clean dishes, right?” Lee mocked.

“That’s right, Lee. Clean dishes. And I don’t want to see you sneaking carafes of beer into the back. This isn’t going to be like The Emerald Room—it’s going to be better. So I don’t want any fooling around back there. And no drinking during your shift, okay?”

Lee shrugged, smirking. “For twelve bucks an hour, I can even do that.”

Yeah, Vera thought. She felt proud. They were a team on their way to something new. This just might work.

She lounged back. Donna was reading. Dan B. and Lee continued to bicker back and forth over directions and exchange less than complimentary regards for one another, which was normal for a chef and a dishwasher. Vera took some time to just look around, let the vast countryside speed past her eyes. It was almost tranquilizing, the long open road, the encroaching ridge, and the fact that they hadn’t passed another car for miles. She felt free now, released from the cement confines of the city and from a relationship that had been false for God knew how long.

“Only one thing bothers me,” Donna suddenly said.

“What’s that?” Lee inquired. “Dan B.’s crane won’t rise anymore?”

“It rose just fine last night when I was at your mother’s house,” Dan B. informed him.

“Yeah, but what about your sister?”

“Would you two idiots shut up,” Vera snapped. She couldn’t imagine how Donna could put up with Dan B.’s profane sense of humor. “What were you saying, Donna?”

“The rep. It bothers me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who’s going to want to spend big money staying at a country inn with such a reputation?”

Vera knew what she meant; she’d thought about that herself, and quickly came to the conclusion that they needn’t worry. “Forget it, Donna. It’s all a bunch of crap, and even if it isn’t, that stuff supposedly went on fifty years ago.”

“What stuff?” Lee turned around and asked.

Donna seemed enthused. “The Inn used to be a place called Wroxton Hall. It was a sanitarium.”

“What’s a sanitarium?”

“It’s a place where you study sanitation, you dick-brain,” Dan B. laughed. “Didn’t they teach you anything in reform school?”

“They taught me how to lay pipe with your mom,” Lee came back.

“Please, please, stop,” Vera pleaded. ”A sanitarium, for your information, Lee, at least in this case, is an insane asylum. Not like the mental hospitals of today. Back then they pretty much just locked the mentally ill away instead of treating them. That’s where they sent people who were schizophrenics and psychotics.”

“And male virgins, too,” Dan B. added. “So you better be careful.”

“Oh, that’s real funny,” Lee said. “Almost as funny as your last special. Remember? We ran out of veal for the medallion soup, so you used pork.”

“That’s right, skillethead, and you didn’t even know the difference, so blow me.”

“I’d need tweezers and a magnifying glass to bl—”

“And what Donna is just itching to say,” Vera interrupted, “is that this particular asylum ran into a few problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Well,” Vera hesitated. “Evidently, some people died there.”

“They didn’t just die,” Donna augmented. “They were murdered.”

Vera shook her head. “Donna, even if it’s true, no one will remember it. It happened too long ago.”

“Someone must remember it.” Donna held up the book in her lap. The Complete Compendium of Haunted American Mansions, the title read in silly, dripping letters. “This book just came out a few weeks ago. And there’s a whole chapter on Wroxton Hall.”

“Wait a minute,” Dan B. testily jumped in. “What’s the big deal? Some people got murdered in an insane asylum—so what?”

“They were tortured to death,” Donna said. “By the staff. And a lot of the local residents say they’ve seen ghosts walking around in the building at night.”

“Ghosts?” Lee said. “You mean the place is haunted?”

“Aw, relax,” Dan B. chuckled. “There’s no ghosts.

It’s just your mom with a sheet over her head, looking for some free peter.”

Vera rolled her eyes. What am I going to do with these three nuts? she wondered.

««—»»

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Vera,” Dan B. complained. “How much longer?”

“We’re almost there. It’s right up the ridge.” At least she thought it was. The access road wound upward; cracks spiderwebbed the old asphalt. Skeletal branches seemed to reach out, trying to touch them. The tall forest blocked out the light.

They’d passed through Waynesville twenty minutes ago, a sleepy, rustic little town. It looked poor, rundown. A simple turn off, the route brought them into the face of the northern ridge. A haphazard sign signalled them: wroxton hall in hand-painted blue letters, and an arrow. Get a new sign, Vera thought, nearly groaning. And all this brush would need to be cut back, and the access road would have to be patched, and…

That was all Feldspar’s problem. Again, she wondered about these “restorations”; The Inn would have to be more than merely impressive in order to attract patrons through this mess. Surely, Feldspar knew this.

“This can’t be right.” Dan B. whipped his head toward Lee. “If you’d get your hand out of your pants and watch the map, then maybe we’d know where we were going.”

“Relax, Dumbo,” Lee came back. “This is the right road. It says right here on the map, Wroxton Estates.”

The moving truck rumbled behind them up the incline. Farther up, Vera felt some relief. A contractor’s sign, RANDOLPH CARTER EXCAVATORS, INC., had been posted. They were fixing the road and cutting back the overgrowth. Soon, construction vehicles came into view, refuse trucks, chipping machines, tree-trimming crews. At last, the winding, dark road opened into crisp winter daylight.

“Jesus Christ,” Dan B. muttered.

Lee’s face flattened in astonishment. “I don’t believe what I’m seeing.”

The car slowed around a vast, paved court. Vera and Donna gazed over the men’s shoulders. Center of the court was a huge, heated fountain; Sappho in white marble poured twin gushes of water from her elegant hands. Great hedges had been trimmed to the meticulousness of sculpture. And just beyond loomed the immense edifice of Wroxton Hall.

“Somebody pinch me so I wake up,” Donna said in wide-eyed wonder.

“Jesus Christ,” Dan B. repeated.

Lee’s rowdy voice hushed in awe. “This place is gonna kick…butt.”

Vera could only stare. A single glance quelled all her doubts at once. It’s beautiful, she thought.

Huge, high as a castle, Wroxton Hall had been restored to a Gothic masterpiece. Its old bricks had been sandblasted to a new earth-red luster. Sheets of ivy had actually been replanted in the new grout. The first-floor windows stood ten-feet tall, each opening to smooth, granite-edged verandas. The building rose in canted sections. Awninged balconies protruded from the second-and third-floor rooms; garret-suites, like ramparts against the sun, extended along the top floor. The roofs of each story had been laid in genuine slate, with polished stone friezes running the entire length of each. The building, in whole, looked nearly a hundred yards long.

Words occurred to Vera. Magnificent. Gorgeous. Awesome. But none seemed quite good enough to be applied to what stood before her. Palatial. There, that was it.

Wroxton Hall was far more than a restored mansion. It was a palace. Feldspar had retained the beauty of its age while rebuilding the place at the same time. Extraordinary, Vera thought. Feldspar’s a genius.

The four of them got out but could only remain standing speechless in the court. Birds looked down on them from the roof’s fine iron cresting. Each frieze bracket sported a gargoyle’s face, and the corner boards shined in polished granite against the plush red brick outer walls. The new glass of each high, narrow window reflected back at them like mirrors.

Behind them the move-it! truck rumbled up and stopped, discharging two loutish hired hands. “Fuckin’ Dark Shadows, man,” the driver commented through a high gaze. “Some joint, huh?” the other one remarked. “Where’s Trump and Maria?”

This was better than Vera could ever even have conceived. Feldspar was quite right; Wroxton Hall provided a resort of the utmost exclusivity. The remote locale meant nothing now. Once word got around in the trade magazines, people from all over the country would be coming here. People from all over the world.

Her excitement surged so intensely it seemed to arrest her will to move. She attempted to step forward, toward the front steps, but found she could only remain where she stood, her gaze scanning the building’s incomparable exterior. When the reality of what she was seeing set in, her breath grew light, and she actually felt subtly dizzied.

Slate-topped red brick steps led to the double entry doors, sided by great polished-granite blocks which gave perch to lazing stone lions. More articulate friezework underlined the transom’s gray-marble ledge and stained-glass fanlight. Wedged directly center was a small keystone of pure onyx in which was mounted a round, cut amethyst as big around as a silver dollar.

Great brass knockers decorated the high, walnut doors. More gorgeous stained glass filled the sidelights, set into ornate, carved sashes.

“We live here?” Lee mouthed in astonishment.

“Yes,” Vera nearly croaked.

“Jesus Christ,” Dan B. remarked yet again.

“Are we going to stand here all day like four dopes,” Donna proposed, “or are we going to go in?’

A click resounded. Behind them, the heated fountain gushed. A black line formed in the elegant veneered walnut trim. Then the great front doors pulled slowly apart.

Feldspar stubbily stepped onto the wide stone stoop. He wore a fine heather-gray Italian suit, black shirt, and black silk tie. He let his eyes rove across their upturned faces, pausing. Then he smiled within the fastidiously trimmed goatee.

His voice loomed like the building: expansive, vast. “Welcome to Wroxton Hall,” he greeted. His broad, short hands opened at his sides, as a minister’s might, during the sermon. ‘Or I should say, welcome, my friends…to The Inn.”

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