Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Stephen Graham Jones, Robert Marasco

the front door. “Once you’re all set up, there’ll be no need to leave the place; everything’s here.” They passed beside the staircase which now had a small metal platform with a folding chair at its foot. “Brother’s inclinator.” Brother himself was not in evidence. “Dining room,” Miss Allardyce continued, “library.” Her thumb arched over her left shoulder, pointing backwards. “Greenhouse through there. A mess, I’m afraid.” Marian remembered the photographs in the alcove, and of course there was no way she could mention them without admitting she had been snooping. Miss Allardyce led her directly ahead, without stopping to open any of the closed doors. There were six bedrooms on the second floor, two with sitting rooms. “Besides our mother’s suite in the west wing.”
    The phrases came back to her, and the incantatory sound of their voices: way at the end of the house . . . where you’ll never see her . . . never even know she’s there. . . .
    There were another four above that, if Miss Allardyce remembered correctly. “Half the rooms I haven’t been in for years; some of them never, would you believe it?” Heat was oil, tenants’ expense; not that they’d need it. There were individual heaters in the bedrooms for cool spells. She rattled off more details: linens, dishes, pots, all provided; the old fool would show them the pool house and the gardening shed when they took possession. Sorry, if .
    Ben and David were still walking ahead; Ben impatiently, Marian thought – and rudely so, which surprised her; not bothering to look back or show even token interest in Miss Allardyce’s booming inventory.
    “Did you hear all that, Ben?” Marian called.
    “I heard,” he said from the porch, and bent to check the bandage on David’s knee.
    Marian shrugged an apology to Miss Allardyce who dismissed him with a reassuring wave. “He just doesn’t want to seem too interested,” she said. “Brother spotted it.”
    “Let me work on it,” Marian said. “Can we call tomorrow?”
    “Noon the latest.” She stopped her just inside the front door. “We’d hate to lose you, but . . . Like I said, there are others.”
    “I don’t think you’ll lose us,” Marian assured her. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
    She smiled and Miss Allardyce smiled back. “I don’t think we’re going to lose you either.” She was giving Marian that close, discomforting look again. “You won’t be sorry, Marian,” she said. “Believe me.” It was her other sound, the voice underneath, and Marian heard rooms and rooms again, and basements and sub-basements, the words rolling inside her with the cadence of waves.
    Ben’s voice came at them from the edge of the porch. “It’s a beautiful house, Miss Allardyce,” he said, and the waves stopped inside her. He took a step down, supporting David who laughed when the wood creaked under them. “Thanks very much.” It was politic enough, and as far as he was concerned, final enough as well.
    She had looked back at the house just once as they drove through the field, then sat back and stared ahead silently. Ben was watching the twists in the road, glancing at her quickly once or twice. He had seen the same expression often enough in the past to realize that she was already rearranging the furniture; casters rolled in the silence and the smell of lemon oil blew in with the hot rush of air.
    The car tunnelled through the woods, stopped at the stone pillars, and turned right, onto the dirt road. Ben took his foot off the gas, said “Whew!” and shook his head. “So that’s what they mean by the Funny Farm.” Marian held the stare, straight ahead and, now that he noticed, somewhat stony. He shrugged, looked furtively left and right, and stepped on the gas pedal hard, spinning the rear wheels and raising a cloud of yellow dust. He released his foot immediately and waited for Marian’s reaction.
    “You know I don’t like games when