Zero Tolerance Policy In Effect

Copying this material in any way, shape, or form, without the express consent of the author will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, including via civil suit.  The author has had enough.

Chapter One

In the time it took Kiley Brigham to submerge her head, rinse out the shampoo and sit up again, the temperature in the bathroom had plummeted from “steamy-sauna” to somewhere around “clutch-your-arms-and-shiver.”  Sitting up straighter, with rivulets fleeing her skin for warmer climes, Kiley frowned.  Her skin sprouted goosebumps.  She muttered, “Well, what the hell is this?” and then frowned harder because she could see her breath when she spoke. 

Had late Halloween week in Burnt Hills, New York turned suddenly, bitterly cold?  There hadn’t been any warning on the weather report.  And even if there had been a sudden cold snap, the furnace would have kicked on.  According to the overall-wearing, toolbox-carrying guy she’d hired to inspect the hundred year old house before agreeing to buy it, the heating system was in great shape.  True, she hadn’t needed to run it much in the three days since she’d moved in to her dream house; once or twice during the late October nights when the mercury dipped outside.   It had been working fine. 

She tilted her head, listening for the telltale rattle of hot water being forced through aging radiators, but she heard nothing.  The furnace wasn’t running. 

Sighing, she rose from the water, stepped over the side of the tub onto the plush powder blue bath mat and reached for the matching towel.  Her new shell pink and white ceramic tiles might look great, but they definitely added to the chill, she decided, frowning at the completely fogged up mirror and then scurrying quickly through the door and into her bedroom for the biggest, warmest robe she could find. 

As soon as she stepped into the bedroom, the chill was gone.  She stood there, frowning, wondering what the hell to make of that.  Leaning backward, through the bathroom door, she felt that iciness hanging in the air.  It was like stepping into a meat cooler, she thought.  Leaning back out, into the bedroom, she felt the same cozy warmth she always felt there. 

Kiley shrugged, pulled the bathroom door closed, and battled a delayed-reaction shiver.  She closed her eyes briefly, just to tamp down the notion that the shiver was caused by something beyond the temperature, then turned to face her bedroom with its  hardwood wainscoting so dark it looked like ebony, its crown molding the same, with freshly applied antique ivory paint in between.  Her bedroom suite came close to matching; deep black cherry wood that bore a hint of blood-red.  The tall narrow windows had creamy lace curtains.  The bedding matched, and the dark hardwood floor bore a cream colored throw rugs in various sizes and shapes.  Ebony and ivory had been her notion for this room, and it worked.

“I love my new house,” she said aloud, even as she sent a troubled glance back toward the bathroom.  “And I’m going to stop looking for deep, dark secrets to explain the bargain basement asking price.  So my bathroom has a draft.  So what?” 

Nodding in resolve, she moved to the closet, opened the door, and then paused, still, staring.  One of the dresses was moving, just slightly, the hanger rocking back and forth mere millimeters, as if someone had jostled it. 

Only, no one had.

She could have kicked herself for the little shiver that ran up her spine.  She didn’t even believe in the sorts of things that were whispering through her brain right now.  And had been ever since she’d moved in.

I jerked open the door, it caused a breeze, the dress moved a little.  Big deal.

In spite of her internal scolding, her eyes felt wider than she would have liked as she perused the closet’s interior.  Her handy-man-slash-house-inspector had asked if she’d like a light installed in there.  She’d said no.  Now she was thinking about calling him tomorrow morning to change her answer.  Meanwhile, she spotted her robe and snatched it off its hanger with the speed of a cobra snatching a fieldmouse.  She back-stepped, slammed the closet door, and felt her heart start to pound in her chest. 

B-r-e-a-t-h-e, she thought.  And then she did it, a long, deep, slow inhale that filled her lungs to bursting, a brief delay while she counted to four, and a thorough, cleansing exhale that emptied her lungs entirely.  She repeated it several times, got a grip on herself, and then she felt stupid.

She did not believe in closet dwelling boogie men.  Hell, she’d made her career debunking nonsense like that.  More precisely, putting phony psychics, gurus and ghost busters out of business in this spooky little tourist town.  And no one liked it.  Not the town supervisor, the town council, the tourism bureau, and least of all, the phony psychics, gurus and ghost busters.

But thanks to the Constitution, freedom of the press couldn’t be banned on the grounds that it was bad for tourism.  

She pulled her bathrobe on, relishing the soft plush fabric on her skin, and then drew a breath of courage and turned to face the bathroom again.  Her hairbrush was in there, along with her skin lotions, cuticle trimmer, and toothbrush.  And she still had to tug the plug and let the water run out of the bathtub.  She was going back in.  A cold draft was nothing to be afraid of.

Crossing the room, one foot in front of the other, she moved firmly to the door, closed her hand on its oval, antique porcelain doorknob, and opened it.  The air that greeted her was no longer icy.  In fact it was as warm as the air in the bedroom. 

She sighed in relief as she stepped into the room.  But her relief died, and the chill returned to her soul when she saw the mirror, no longer coated in fog, but something else.  Something far, far worse. 

Written across the damp glass surface, in something scarlet that trickled in streams from the bottom of each letter, were the words, “House of Death.”

Someone screamed.  It wasn’t until she was down the stairs, out the door, and about fifteen yards up the heaving, cracked sidewalk, that Kiley realized the scream had been her own.

She stood there in the dead of night, barefoot, clutching her robe against the whipping October wind, and staring back at her dream house with its turrets and gables and its widow’s walk at the top.  Such a beautiful place, old, and solid.  And framed right now by the scarlet and shimmering yellow of the sugar maples and poplar trees at the peak of their fall color.

Swallowing hard, she lowered her gaze, focusing on her car in the driveway beside the house.  Leaping Lana was an ‘87 Buick Regal–a four door sedan in rust brown that ate gas like M&Ms and sounded like a tank.   

Drawing herself up to her full height, Kiley forced herself to march over there-- even though it meant moving toward her house when every cell in her body was itching to move away from it instead.  She did it.  Then opened Lana’s door and climb in.  She couldn’t quite keep herself from checking the back seat first, though, the second the interior light came on.  It was clear.  The keys were in the switch, because if someone were brave enough to steal Kiley Brigham’s car, she had always thought she would enjoy the vengeance she’d be forced to wreak on their pathetic asses, and besides, who would steal an ‘87 Buick anyway? 

She turned the key.  Lana growled in protest at being bothered at such an ungodly hour, but finally came around, and cooperatively backed her boat-sized backside out into the street.  As Kiley shifted into Drive, she glanced up at her house again. 

There was someone standing in her bedroom window looking back at her.

And then, there wasn’t.  She squinted, rubbed her eyes.  They hadn’t moved, hadn’t turned away.  The dark silhouette she knew she had seen, simply vanished.  Faded.  Like mist.

“Fuck this,” she muttered, and she stomped on Lana’s pedal, and didn’t let off until they’d reached the offices of the Burnt Hills Gazette, which held three things Kiley dearly needed just then; her own office, a change of clothes, and a telephone.

#

She was so together by the time the police arrived, that they actually seemed skeptical.  At least, until they headed back to her recently acquired house, and saw the message on the mirror for themselves.  Kiley preferred to stay out in the bedroom, and even that gave her the creeps, while the cops clustered around her bathroom sink debating whether the substance on her mirror was blood.  One opined that it looked like barbecue sauce, and another said it was cherry syrup.  At that point the conversation turned to previous cases where what was thought to be blood turned out to be something else entirely, like corn syrup with red food coloring added–a tale that the officers found laugh-worthy. 

She interrupted their fun by standing as close to her bathroom door as she wanted to get, and clearing her throat.  The laughter stopped, the cops looked up.

“Excuse me, but shouldn’t one of you be taking a sample of that?  And maybe checking my house for signs of forced entry?”

“Did that, ma’am,” one cop said, sending a longsuffering look toward another.  “No signs of a break in.  You sure the place was locked?”

“Of course I’m sure the place was . . . . ” She stopped, pursed her lips, thought it over with brutal honesty.  “Actually, I forget to lock up as often as I remember.”

“Mmm-hmm.  Well at least you’re aware this was the work of an intruder.”

She frowned at him.  “Well of course it was an intruder.  What else could it have been?”

“You know how folks get around here.  Half the time we get a call like this, the homeowner insists some kind of ghost was responsible.” 

“Especially at this time of year,” another cop said, and they all nodded, or shook their heads or rolled their eyes with “isn’t that ridiculous” looks at one another.

“Well, I don’t believe in ghosts,” she managed to say, rubbing her arms against the chill that came from within.  “As to how the intruder got in, I’m not even sure it’s all that important.  The fact is that he did get in.  And I know that because I saw him.”

“You saw him?  Excellent.”  Cop number one–his nameplate said “Hanlon”-- pulled out a notepad and pen.  “Okay, where and when did you see the intruder?”

“He was standing right there, in that window, looking down at me when I backed the car out.”

“So you didn’t see anyone while you were inside. Only after you’d left?”

“Right.”

“And can you describe him?”

She licked her lips, recalling the misty silhouette behind the veil of her curtains.  “Uh, no.”

“But you’re sure it was a male,” Hanlon said.

She narrowed her eyes and searched her memory.  “No.  No, I can’t even be sure of that much.  It was dark.  It was just a shadow, a dark silhouette in the window.”  She sighed in frustration.  “Has there been a rash of break-ins that I should know about, anything like this at all?” she asked, almost hoping the answer would be yes.

Hanlon shook his head.  “We’ve got hardly any crime around here, Ms. Brigham.  Little enough so you’d be reading about it, or writing about it in that paper of yours if there had been anything like that.”

She nodded.  “We’re so hungry for stories we’ve been covering the missing prostitutes from Albany.”

He nodded.  More people came in.  Suits, instead of uniforms.  They carried cases and headed for her bathroom.  She watched them, her gaze unfocused.  One swabbed a sample of the stuff from the mirror, dropped it into a vial and capped it.  Another snapped photos.  A third started coating her pretty shell pink and white bathroom in what looked like fireplace soot in search of fingerprints.

The guy with the swabs took out an aerosol can of something–the label read “Luminol”--and sprayed it at the mirror, then he turned off the lights. 

Kiley sucked in a breath when the grisly message glowed in the darkness.

“It’s blood, all right,” the guy said, flipping the light back on. 

The Officer Hanlon moved up beside Kiley and put a hand on her shoulder, almost as if he thought she might be close to losing it.  “We’d probably better start thinking about who your enemies are, Ms. Brigham.”

She swallowed hard.  “It would be easier to tell you who they aren’t, and it would make a far shorter list.”

The cop frowned.  Another one nodded, coming out of the bathroom.  “That’s probably true.”

Hanlon sent him a questioning look and he went on.  “Don’t you recognize the name?  She’s the chick who writes those columns discrediting all the mumbo-jumbo types in town.”

“Ahh, right.  Kiley Brigham.  It didn’t click at first.”  Hanlon eyed her.  “Is this the first death threat you’ve received Ms. Brigham?”

“You think that’s what it is?  A threat?”

He shrugged.  “Reads that way to me.”

Kiley sighed.  “Yeah, it would be my first.” 

“Wow.”  His brows arched high, as if he were surprised she didn’t get threatened on a daily basis. 

“Look, I’m not a demon here, I don’t eat babies or kick puppies.  I just tell the truth.”  She shrugged.  “Can I help it if that makes the liars of the world angry?”

“Can you think of anyone in particular who may have taken their anger this far?”

“Yeah, I can think of several.  Most of them hold public office though.”

Hanlon looked alarmed by that.    “I hope you’re kidding.”

“Maybe.  Half.  So what should I do?”

“Get yourself a security system,” the officer said.  “Something that’s not going to let you get away with forgetting to lock up.  In the meantime, is there someone who could stay with you tonight?  A friend, relative, something like that?”

The question made her stomach ache, though she didn’t know why.  It wasn’t as if she gave a damn that she didn’t have any friends or family, was, in fact, utterly alone in the world.  She could care less.  Hell, if friends were what she wanted, she’d be out making them, instead of pissing off as many people as possible on a weekly basis.  Screw friends. 

“Ma’am?”

She shrugged.  “I’ll spend the night at my office.  There’s security there.  Tomorrow I’ll see about that system.  Thanks for coming out.”

He nodded.  “We’ll be another hour here,” he told her.  “You can go, if you want.  We’ll lock up when we leave.”

“Yeah, like that’s gonna do any good,” she muttered as she headed out of the room.  And then she stopped in the hallway, and wondered just what the hell she had meant by that.  She shook it off, told herself it didn’t matter. 

She had a major day tomorrow.  Major. 

Tomorrow she was going to bust the one new age fraud who had eluded her ever since she’d begun her weekly series of exposés.   She’d planned for this, prepared for it, set up an elaborate scheme to make it happen.  And nothing as mundane as a death threat written in blood on her bathroom mirror while she was standing a few feet away wearing nothing but a towel, was going to stop her from seeing it through.

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