Cally passed in and out of consciousness, watching in fleeting glimpses as Foster pulled back the drapes on the wall to find the drapery cord, which he yanked off and used to bind the hands of the old woman, and then her own. When she was finally able to focus through the pain and the fog in her head, she was sitting propped against one of the book cases. The edge of a shelf dug painfully into the back of her neck, and the drapery cord felt like wire cutting into her wrists. Beside her, the white lady wept softly. Ian still lay unconscious on the floor at their feet, and the room reeked of kerosene.

“What the hell!” Foster was repeating as he paced the room. “What the hell! This was just supposed to be a simple... Dammit!” He turned and looked at Cally. “The best laid plans of mice and men, eh?” He snapped his fingers under her nose. “You weren’t even supposed to be here. I specifically waited until you were out. I figured, based on the stuff you talk about on your computer with your friend, you’d be off somewhere teasing the hell out of that freak tonight. Why did you have to come back? I have nothing against you. I’m not some kind of monster.”

Cally’s head was throbbing, and she fought to keep down rising nausea; she didn’t bother to debate Foster about whether or not he was a monster. She did ask, “Where is Nell?”

“Nellie is fine.” He was busily brushing objects off the bookshelves in a frantic search for something he apparently hoped to find behind them. “I gave her some of Bethany’s painkillers so she’d stay asleep. I’ll get her out of the house before...”

“Foster, you shouldn’t have done that! She’s taking other medication. You never know what kind of reaction combining drugs could cause!”

He paused and laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ve done it lots of times before. She’s even building up a tolerance to it. She’ll be fine by morning. I just want her to sleep through ... all the excitement. She’s much easier to handle that way.”

“You are a monster!” Cally said, slowly beginning to understand what he was doing.

Foster ignored her and continued looking through drawers, opening and shutting curio doors, and swearing. Doctor Boojums sat atop a Queen Anne style curio cabinet, next to a tall brass statue of a winged Greek goddess, hissing down at him.

“If you’re looking for Ian’s will,” Cally guessed, “it won’t do you any good, even if you find it. A copy has been filed with his lawyer.”

“The will is right here,” said Foster. He picked up the papers he’d thrown on the bed and waved them at her before slapping them down again; they were the source of the smell of kerosene pervading the room. “It hasn’t been filed yet. I brought it back from the lawyer today so Ian could work on it some more. And believe me, it needed work! I’m just looking for a lighter. Why is there not one single lighter anywhere in this entire house? Doesn’t Bethany provide a flower-themed one in every room?” He slammed a drawer shut and squatted in front of Cally.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” he said earnestly. “Ian May is an old man. He’s led a full life, and now he’s in his declining years. He wouldn’t have lived much longer anyway. But then he had to go and change his will. Do you know, he’s leaving a small fortune to those women? To Bethany and Joan, and even to those foreigners! There’s hardly anything left for Nell! I tried to stop him, get him sent to a hospital at least, but he’s so addled, he never did sit down to sign those damn bills Bethany set out for him.”

“Then it was Ian you meant to have the accident, not Bethany?”

“Yes!” he said, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “See? Even you understand. And he only would have ended up in a nursing home. Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. I never meant for anyone to get hurt! I’ve given him plenty of Nell’s old tranquilizers,” he said, jerking his head toward Ian’s unconscious form, “so he wouldn’t feel anything. He would have slept right through everything, and gone peacefully. But now we have this interfering old biddy, wherever she came from. And you! It’s her fault you’re in this situation, not mine.” He stood up, paced a few steps, and returned to stand in front of her, staring beyond her into space as he went on. “You should have stayed in town. If you weren’t such an ice queen you could be rolling around in the sack with that freak right now, though I’m sure he’d disappoint you.” He snorted and pushed up his glasses, focusing on her face again. “Now I’m afraid you’re just going to have to go down with the house, and I can’t spare enough of the painkillers that are left to drug you both up. I’ve already wasted too many. I am truly sorry about that. I am.” He spread his hands before her; they were shaking.

Cally thought he sounded like a ranting villain in a bad spy movie, but it also seemed to her he was having cold feet about what he was intending to do. She wondered, if she could keep him talking, whether he might come to his senses. “Think about it, Foster,” she said. “It’s not too late. You can still work out your differences with Ian. But if you let yourself become a criminal, you won’t ever be able to come back from that.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“I am not the criminal here!” He resumed pacing the room, punctuating his words with wide gestures of his arms. “What’s criminal is how all this land is just sitting here, not making a profit for anyone. This crumbling old house and grounds, taking up space where dozens of houses could be built for people to live in. What’s criminal is how this seedy little town could be a hub of commerce if the stupid old farts who hold all the power around here would just bulldoze the whole damn thing and build something useful! From now on, things are going to be done my way. And Nellie will be rich.” He crouched down in front of Cally again. “Doesn’t that make you feel better?”

“For as long as you keep her around, anyway,” Cally thought, but did not say aloud. Her bound hands were beginning to grow cold and numb. In fact, her feet and legs were, too. She glanced at the old woman next to her and noticed her breath pluming from her mouth in thin wisps of vapor. She did not see Ian’s breath, and she tried not to think about that. Instead she looked to the top of the Queen Anne cabinet on which Doctor Boojums had now stood up beside the brass statue of the winged goddess. His gray coat was taking on a distinct brassy tint of its own.

“What I don’t understand,” Foster muttered, “is how someone would set up a nice room for a lady... I assume this is your room,” he said to the woman in white. “All the pretty books and figurines and things, but no candles. Females love candles. It would make a perfectly reasonable story, that a scented-candle loving female would knock one over on the duvet while reading Anne of Green Gables or some other good kindling like that.” He sat down on the bed and stacked the kerosene-soaked papers in a neat pile on the pillow.

“Think, Foster!” Cally tried not to sound desperate. “You wouldn’t get away with that. The first thing the fire department does when they investigate a fire is check for accelerants. They’d detect traces of kerosene, easily. They’d know it was started on purpose.”

He turned and looked at her, and Cally found his sudden, toothy grin truly disturbing. “Yes,” he said. “They will. And they will also find the kerosene can missing from Ignacio’s tool shed. And the remains of the fly bait that was on the toast that killed the chickens. Once Ignacio gets hauled off to jail, his wife will be deported. So that takes care of that problem!”

Cally tugged at the bonds on her wrists, but her hands had gone numb. “Foster, there are people sleeping upstairs! You are about to kill perfectly innocent strangers who have never done anything to you. I thought you said you weren’t a monster!”

“I’m not,” he assured her. “I’ll pull the fire alarm as I leave. I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Paying Guest will get out in time, and their little dog, too. Even you and Ms. Ghostface here could have got out if you hadn’t butted in and seen old Dad like this. As for the house, good riddance to the old heap. It’s been rebuilt too many times already. Time to put it out of its misery.

“I bet Ian has a lighter in his quarters,” he finally said. “He doesn’t smoke, but some of his cronies do, and he is a perfect host, after all.” Foster retrieved his flashlight and stepped over Ian’s prone form to open the door through which he had entered the room earlier. Through it, from her position propped against the book case, Cally could see up the narrow stairs; at the top of them she recognized the small fireplace and wing chairs of Ian’s study. Inside her aching head, another piece of her mental puzzle of Vale House clicked into place.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere,” Foster said, smirking to Cally, hefting the flashlight in his hand as he took aim again at her head.

He had begun to swing his arm back when the golden goddess statue fell from the top of the curio cabinet, striking him squarely on the top of his head. He fell to his knees, cursing and gripping his bleeding scalp, but he did not fall over. Cally looked up at the bright orange tom cat who stood, with a smug expression on his face, on the top of the cabinet. She made a mental note to be nicer to him in the future, if she had a future.

The cat leapt from the cabinet to the doorway and disappeared into the rooms above. The old woman beside Cally began to struggle as Foster slowly staggered to his feet. Throwing herself down on her side, Cally stretched her legs across the floor and hooked her foot around one of the curved legs of the curio cabinet. “Close your eyes,” she said to the old woman as she gave a hard yank with her leg. The cabinet toppled, spraying her and everything in the room with bits of glass and broken porcelain. Shaking her head to clear debris from her hair and face, Cally looked around behind her to see if she had hit her target.

Foster lay under the bulk of the broken cabinet, but he was still swearing loudly. Twisted wood heaved up as he rose to his knees and brushed debris from his bleeding head. “That,” he growled at Cally, “was going a bit too far!” He picked through the rubble and seized the brass goddess. “Now be quiet!”

“Wow!” Nell’s voice came from the top of the stairwell. They all looked to see her standing in the doorway above, and Cally saw Doctor Boojums rubbing luxuriously against Nell’s ankles. “What is this?” Nell asked. “A secret room! What a mess,” she added as she descended the stairs slowly, leaning against the wall with one shoulder to balance herself. She was wearing a lumpy, uncomfortable looking garment and as she arrived in the room, Cally realized with horror that it was a straitjacket.

“Oh, hello, dear,” said Foster, letting the statue slip from his fingers. “You should be sleeping. We have a long drive ahead of us tonight.” He stepped through the rubble and put a hand on the arm of the canvas jacket. “Just let us all finish cleaning up this mess, and then I’ll come get you. Wait in the parlor.”

“I can’t sleep anymore,” she explained, craning her head to try to look around him. “Boo told me someone needs help.”

“Cats can’t talk,” said the old woman.

“Cats can do whatever they...” Nell pushed past Foster and lowered herself carefully to her knees before the old woman. “Mama?” she asked.

The white lady smiled. “My little Helen,” she said, and began sobbing again.