House of Royals Read online

  “Thank you,” I say to Rath. He nods, and just as he turns to leave, I call out to him. “What room is yours?”

  “I don’t live in the house,” Rath responds with a shake of his head. “The old servants quarters on the property was converted to a workers lodge long ago. I live there with everyone who works at the Estate.”

  I nod, my eyes starting to glaze over. “So it’s just me in the house?”

  “That’s the way your father preferred it,” Rath says.

  I nod, feeling something in my stomach sinking. Rath turns to leave again. “Would you mind staying in the house with me? Just for a little while?” I call. He turns back to look at me. “So I’m not alone?”

  He looks at me for a long moment. “If you wish, Miss Ryan,” he says with a bow.

  A bow.

  “I will be in the Wayne room,” Rath says, indicating the room across and down one from mine. “Should you need anything.”

  “Thank you, Rath,” I say. And I mean it.

  He bows one more time, turns, and leaves.

  I step in the room and close the door behind me.

  The furniture throughout the house has been a mix of extreme classic and modern. An ornate four-poster bed is accompanied by glass-faced nightstands. Across the room is a pink and gold leafed dresser with an ancient jewelry box atop it. The old and the new flow seamlessly.

  I open the doors that let out onto the veranda, the pool just feet before it. A soft breeze flutters through, rustling the curtains. I settle into a rocking chair.

  Two weeks ago, I got a phone call from an attorney here in Mississippi. The woman on the other line started going off about a Henry Conrath and his passing away. She explained his will, which was helpful. I’d gotten the official, large envelope just the day before and hadn’t understood why it had landed in my mailbox.

  I was the daughter of a wealthy man from Silent Bend, Mississippi. The daughter of a man I didn’t know the name of. And I had just inherited his Estate, his money, everything.

  My mother had lived here in Silent Bend for all of three months after getting her associate degree at some community college in Levan—where she’d grown up, an hour east of here. She’d gotten a job here. One night she went to a party where she met a charming man—and one thing led to another.

  It was the end of the summer, and she left for college two days later, heading to veterinary school in Colorado. Only three weeks later, she learned she was pregnant and barely remembered the name of the man. But she never said a word to him, and all my life she simply told me that we were strong women—we could do anything on our own.

  She was strong. Right up until she was killed by a distracted teenage driver playing on a cell phone three years ago.

  I was nineteen. Able to take care of myself, live on my own, but still miss her every day.

  And then there was the phone call.

  Apparently, my mother had told the man who made me that I existed, just a few months before she died, but asked him to not make himself a part of my life so late into my existence.

  I wasn’t sure if I appreciated that or not.

  So, here I am, fulfilling my unknown father’s will. I am his only child. So this plantation house is mine. His millions of dollars are mine. His workers and his cars are mine.

  I know nothing about him, though. Only that he made me and was rich. No idea how he’d made his money. Nothing of his personality.

  It leaves me feeling kind of empty.

  Like this house.

  I take another deep breath, reminding myself to take this one day at a time.

  I close my eyes and imagine myself back in Colorado. Leaving my tiny apartment, with it’s old, hand-me-down furniture, slightly off smell, heading to work at four in the morning to start the rolls. And the muffins. And the scones. And everything that smelled like comfort.

  I’d worked at the bakery for four years. I liked the job. I was good at it. But it could never pay me much, and I could never go anywhere with it.

  Well, I’m somewhere now. With more money than I’ll ever know what to do with. My entire life had changed.

  And there is this constant feeling on my shoulders that something extraordinary is about to happen.

  FOR A WEEK, I HID on the property. Katina cooked for Rath and I, and the grounds crew and the housekeepers. I made an extra effort to be nice to them, to be polite and sweet, but there was always fear in their eyes whenever they looked at me. I didn’t understand that.

  I wandered the gardens. Memorized the maze. Made use of the pool.

  And I moved into the master suite.

  It’s grander than me. A massive king-sized canopy bed dominates the room. Ornately carved furniture lines the walls. Beautiful drapes hang in the windows that look out over the river on one side of the room and over the front gardens on the other side.

  The space is immense.

  But I can feel my father here.

  And with every passing day, I feel the hollow hole inside of me growing bigger. I want to know him. I want to know what he was like.

  But there is a problem.

  Even though this was his house and, as far as I can tell, he’d lived here for a very long time, there is nothing personal around. No journals, no letters, no knickknacks. Nothing. The only traces of him I can find are his wardrobe in my closet, that portrait of him in the library, and the fear his staff felt—and has now transferred to me.

  Rath had said my father was a great man, so why was everyone else on the property afraid of Henry Conrath?

  I want answers.

  IT TAKES NINE DAYS FOR me to feel like a self-caged animal. I’ve been hiding in this mansion to avoid embracing my new Southern life, and I need to be brave.

  So on a Monday, at six in the evening, I take a walk down the driveway. It’s a long walk. I reach the gates. I climb them. And I keep walking down the road.

  This is something I am still getting used to: no mountains here. The land is so flat. Yes, there are small rolling hills dotted around. But I am used to the towering Rocky Mountains.

  I swat at a mosquito. They’re everywhere. All the time. I quickly learned that repellant is required when stepping one toe outside. I’m regretting not taking one of Henry’s vehicles. But it will be a while before I feel comfortable enough to drive them, like they actually belong to me.

  On the Conrath plantation, there is the false sense that we are out in the middle of our own world, when really, the minute you turn off the driveway, you pop out onto a road that leads right into town. It is only a quarter mile walk, maybe, before I connect onto Main Street.

  Beautiful, old houses line the road, many of them with signs out front marking them as historical sites. I pass a gas station. More houses. Eventually, there are the town’s schools. Elementary, middle, and high school all right together. There’s a church, a bakery, a few restaurants, a grocery store, two more churches, and finally, city hall, which is attached to the library.

  It’s a beautiful building. Huge, brick, with a great tower and a bell at the top. A marker with a plaque out front says it was built in 1731, just six years after Silent Bend was established.

  My walk into town has been quiet. People are friendly, giving me a tip of their hat as they said hello and offering pleasant smiles, but I didn’t really talk to anyone. Which is kind of a relief. I’m still not used to the oftentimes heavy Southern accents.

  But I quickly have to get over that when I walk up to the counter in the library.

  “Well, you must be new in town,” a woman with auburn hair and glasses perched on her nose says as I walk up. The glasses make her look older than I think she really is. “I don’t recognize you, and we don’t often get tourists wandering into the library.”

  I offer a little smile and stop at her desk. “Yeah, I just moved in a little over a week ago.”

  “Well, welcome to Silent Bend,” she says with a kind smile. Her accent is strong, but I can at least understand her. “What can I help you w
ith?”

  “Uh,” I stumble, trying to collect my thoughts. This is my first interaction in my new town—a very small one. I don’t want to come off as the wrong type and my request is a strange one. “I was wondering if you might have any information on the Conrath Plantation?”

  I was right in hesitating in asking. The woman’s face pales and her eyes grow wider.

  “The Conrath Plantation?” she questions me. “What interests you in that old place?”

  I hesitate in answering. The woman studies me, and I wonder if she’s recognizing features in me that my father had. I don’t know how well the people in town knew him. It would seem he should be known, since it’s a small town, but I get the impression he didn’t go out much.

  “It’s such a beautiful place. I was just curious about it’s history,” I lie.

  She looks at me for a long moment. And I already feel like an outsider in this tiny town. I am an alien here.

  “I’ll see what I can find for you,” she finally says. “But you won’t have long. We close in thirty minutes and we don’t allow the city record books to be checked out.”

  “Thank you,” I let out in a relieved breath. “I really appreciate it.”

  She looks over her shoulder back at me one more time as she shuffles off to a back room.

  I turn and observe the library.

  It’s small. Rows of bookshelves are divided in half, one side labeled fiction, the other non-fiction. A row of tables occupy the space between them. I settle myself into the closest one.

  A few minutes later, the librarian returns with a large, leather bound book and a copy of what appears to be a newspaper article.

  “This is what I could find,” she says as she sets them down in front of me. She turns to a marked page in the book.

  “Thank you,” I say again. “What’s your name?”

  The woman looks at me, and for the first time, I realize that she seems nervous. Anxious. Suspicious, even. “Bella,” she offers.

  “I’m Alivia,” I say, trying to smooth out the bumps in our meeting, even though I’m not quite sure as to the reason why they’re there.

  She just gives me a little nod and shuffles away.

  My eyes turn down to the page Bella opened for me. At the top of the page, it says clear as day: Conrath Plantation. But what is surprising about the page, are the blots of ink, blocking out large portions of the text.

  I turn a few pages back and forth. The book seems to be a record and history of all the old houses in Silent Bend, put together by the historical society. But the Conrath page is the only one that seems to have been tampered with.

  The two Conrath plantations were bought and purchased by brothers who had recently emigrated from England to the Americas. Bringing with them a large fortune, each brother bought a large parcel of land. They built their separate homes and began to establish cotton plantations.

  The plantation established by Henry Conrath is located on the north end of town, and the one established by Elijah Conrath is located on the south.

  Each plantation remained in operation until 1875, when Elijah Conrath was killed.

  There then are two entire paragraphs inked out.

  Little is known about the north plantation after that time. Production was ended and Henry Conrath is rumored to have died soon after his brother.

  More blotted out text in that same paragraph. And that brought me to the end of the page.

  My father must have been named after his great-something-grandfather. Rath told me the Conrath estate, mine, the north one, was built in 1799. Assuming the south one was built at the same time, Elijah would have been quite old when he was killed.

  I wonder who owns the south house now? Did Elijah have his own children he passed it down to? Or has it long since been sold and bought by some stranger?

  My fingers reach for the copy of the news article. The title reads “Double Fires.”

  “I’m sorry, Alivia.” I jump hard when the voice cuts through the absolute silence. I turn to see Bella standing behind me. “But we have to close now. You’re of course welcome to take the copy with you.”

  “Okay,” I say, swallowing hard, calming the adrenaline in me back. “Thanks again for your help.”

  She still looks at me with questions and uncertainty as I hand the book over to her. She watches me go as I fold the copy of the article and slide it into my back pocket.

  My phone dings when I step outside, and I pull it out to find a text from Rath.

  Where are you?

  I chuckle. I’ve never had a father my entire life. I’m twenty-two years old, and my father’s former helper man is checking in on me like I’m fifteen.

  In town, I reply. Be back soon.

  It’s strange. But kind of nice.

  Be back before dark.

  Even stranger. And frankly, it kind of annoys me.

  I’m a big girl. I can handle myself.

  I walk back up Main Street a little ways to the deli I saw earlier and grab myself a sandwich. Everyone is friendly and kind, but in the way that they know they’ll forget me in sixty seconds or less. And I realize—everyone in this town thinks I’m a tourist.

  On the corner, right next to the Baptist church, I see a sign for a historic walking trail. With little else to do, and not in a hurry to go back to my prison house, I take it and eat my dinner while I walk.

  Beautiful houses line the trail. It eventually cuts back toward the river, running right in front of it. Large, early-eighteen hundreds, late-seventeen hundreds houses are everywhere. Nothing compared to the Conrath Estate, but still beautiful.

  The trail keeps cutting south, before finally making a loop and heading me back in the direction I came. I wonder how much further south the other Conrath house is.

  It’s dark by the time I pop back out on Main Street. Lamps glow softly. The street is quiet now, completely empty, which seems weird. I check my phone for the time and find it’s just after ten o’clock. Just then, a text comes through.

  Rath: Where are you?

  I’m good and annoyed now. Like a spiteful teenager, I head back down the road, toward the river, the opposite way of home.

  As I walk past a house mixed amongst the churches and businesses, a door opens and light floods the sidewalk.

  “You got a death wish, girl?” a dark as night woman with a heavy accent shouts. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Excuse me?” I ask, my brows furrowing.

  “Get your skinny little rear end inside where it’s safe.” She looks side to side, her eyes shifty and filled with fear.

  And without another word, she slams the door, engulfing me in darkness again.

  Weird.

  My feet start walking forward again, but my eyes linger on the front door for a good ten steps.

  Yeah, it’s late. But not that late. Trying to rationalize the woman’s warning away, that nothing bad could ever happen in this sleepy little town, I continue my walk down Main Street.

  The street runs straight for the river, T-ing right up to it.

  And at the end of the road, just before the ground drops down to the river, there is a tree.

  Not a single blade of grass grows around it. Pure, uninterrupted dry dirt spreads from its base. A circle of stones, probably twenty feet across, wraps around it.

  A heavy, dark feeling creeps into my chest as I look up at the tree. It’s enormous, with branches that hang wide and tall, the same as the ones on the Conrath property. But where those trees bare massive leaves, green and brilliant, this one is barren. Not a single sign of greenery to it.

  It is completely dead.

  But it sits here, the focal point of Main Street, set like a prized sculpture for all to see.

  And there’s a feeling inside of me. Like bad things had happened here and are still coming. I swear I feel cold fingers working their way up my spine. Bumps flash across my skin.

  Because I remember where I’ve just seen this same tree.

  I p
ull the copy from my back pocket and unfold it. There’s the headline, “Double Fires.” Beneath that are two pictures. One of a house that looks similar to Henry’s. Flames lick out from the windows on one end. And the other picture is of this very same tree. It bears leaves, like it’s still alive. But hanging from its massive branches are four bodies.

  MY EYES SLIDE FROM THE pictures to the body of the article.

  Speculation has run wild following the fires at both Conrath plantations. One witness claims owner Elijah Conrath created an abomination that “had to be destroyed and him with it.” Reports show that John Jackson led an attack on the houses, setting fire to them, before dragging Elijah and three of his house members from their home and hanging them from the tree in town.

  What followed was a tragedy for the record books.

  A hand grabs me around the face, clamping over my mouth just as the scream tries to rip from my throat. The copy flies out of my hand, and as I try to twist away, I feel my phone fall from my pocket. And a fraction of a breath after, a searing pain explodes in my neck.

  My body reacts in ways I can’t explain. My arms fall limp to my sides. My feet stop trying to run. Worst of all is the way my mind goes numb.

  Strong arms hold me upright, holding tight to my upper arm and around my stomach.

  This.

  This.

  What is this?

  Logic frantically pounds through my brain, attempting to come up with an explanation that makes sense. But there isn’t one.

  Someone has bitten me.

  Someone is sucking something wet from my neck.

  And I can feel it with every passing second—I am going to die.

  Beneath a dead tree where four people were hanged. In a bizarre town who fears the night.

  I understand the woman’s warning now. And Rath’s insistence.

  I should have listened.

  Just as everything starts going fuzzy and my eyelids flutter, I hear something.

  A shout, a hiss. A wet thud, and a scream.

  The attacker lets go of my neck and I collapse to the ground.