Roses Manor, Weston Chapter 9
Since the original plan had been for her to leave work at two, Gabriella had been looking forward to having time to do anything other than sleep. Or at least having long amounts of time to sleep in. She’d left at six, which wasn’t unreasonable. But after working nearly the entire previous twenty-four hours, she ended up not doing anything but eating the crockpot meal she’d made the other day, then collapsing onto the couch. She fell asleep there for three hours, then woke up and moved the four feet to her bed before passing out again.
When her alarm sounded seven hours later, it still wasn’t enough time. But it had to be. So she got up, showered, then made her way back through the quiet early morning streets of Leominster until she reached headquarters.
Graham was alone when she got there, sitting on the couch with his own pile of forms in front of him. “Amelia’s wrapping up a call,” he said as she sat down across from him. “She’ll be out in a few.”
He looked awful. “Are you alright?” Gabriella asked.
She waited for him to brush her off, but he just shook his head. “It’s… I know Ezekiel died almost a year ago, but I didn’t know until now. So I lost a student this week to the kinds of things we deal with here, then I thought I lost another one yesterday. And I’m not sure what’s the right way to handle any of this.”
She was confused for a second, then it clicked before she opened her enormous mouth and made a fool of herself.
“Bradley would probably be pissed, I know,” Graham said. “But I knew him as my student first. And… I’m sorry, this is stupid.”
“No, it’s not,” Gabriella said.
“I mean… I had hundreds of students and I still care so much about all of them, even if I’m not teaching anymore,” Graham said. “Maybe it’s me being silly, I know I’m sensitive. No one has to tell me. But they’re still my students. When James said Ezekiel’s name the other day, I was so shocked. And I know it isn’t fair, because everybody that’s impacted by every case is someone’s person. It’s someone’s family, or their student. But it’s never been mine before. And now it is, and it’s like it just got a lot scarier. And I feel like an asshole for not considering this before.”
“My first one like that was when we were at my mom’s house,” Gabriella said. “It felt the same way. I was so scared for her and I felt weird about how it was so different from our other cases, but also not at all.”
“It’s not like I was flippant about it,” Graham said. “I care about the work. I’ve cared this whole time. But it’s exciting and I feel so bad now about being excited. And I worry if Ezekiel was scared when it happened. What was he thinking? Or feeling?”
They sat quietly for a moment, then the back bedroom door opened and Amelia came out. “Good morning,” she said, clearly picking up on the mood of the room.
She sent Graham home a few minutes later, then scanned the papers Madelyn had redirected to come out of the printer in James’s office. “Market Basket has another problem,” she said. “James called that. And there’s a hotel nearby that’s got some phenomena. James is coming in today, right?”
“He said so,” Gabriella said.
Amelia nodded, still reading the printout. “I think they’re going to come after us for some more historical cases soon,” she said. “It’s been about three days since we sent in the last one. So, want to do the honors?”
“Not really,” Gabriella said.
Amelia laughed and motioned for her to go into James’s office. “Wear gloves if you’re grabbing anything that isn’t right on top,” she said. “No, wait, on second thought, wear gloves anyway.”
Gabriella grabbed a pair of gloves, then went into the dim office. Even from the doorway, she could see the groove on James’s desk where something in these boxes had eaten a path into the wood. She made sure the gloves were secure, then picked a folder from the top of the nearest box and brought it out without looking.
“Lancaster,” Amelia read from the case file. “1982. Things in the woods. There’s always things in the woods. It’ll either be a Graham special or it’ll wrap up pretty quick. Good choice.”
She set it aside then went to her email. Gabriella did the same, noting the two additional updates on the Market Basket email. She had a feeling she’d be the one going there today. And dammit, these were two separate locations, weren’t they?
Amelia’s phone buzzed, and she picked it up. Gabriella watched her read the message, smile in that familiar way she kept seeing from James, and write something back.
“Who’s that?” she asked, feeling brave.
Even six months ago, Amelia might have blocked her out. But now she just smiled again with a slight laugh. “Oh, a woman I’m seeing.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Don’t mention it to anyone. It’s pretty new, I’m trying to keep it a little quiet.”
Gabriella’s record for secrets wasn’t great here, but this was one she could keep. “Of course,” she said. “So…?”
“So what?”
“What’s she like?”
Amelia shrugged. “She’s good with ghosts.”
“That’s… hot?”
“She’s also really cute and fun and yeah, good with ghosts.”
Gabriella’s eyes widened. “She’s Foundation!”
“Yes. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Who? Do I know her?”
She remembered accidentally eavesdropping on Amelia’s conversation with James last summer about Rosa, the captain of the nearby Hampden County branch. But based on that conversation, this probably wasn’t her.
“I doubt it,” Amelia said. “Her name is Riley, she works for the Newport County, Rhode Island branch.”
“The one who was on call last night? With you?”
“We needed someone and everyone here was either on overtime already or injured. She helped out.”
Gabriella made a skeptical little noise at that, and Amelia glared at her. “I’m happy for you,” Gabriella said.
The glare melted. “Thanks,” Amelia said. “It’s been a little while. And like, she’s our age, you know? I know my whole thing with Rosa was pretty obvious. But I think maybe I was too young to be someone she could seriously consider? Riley’s twenty-four, I’m twenty-five. It’s… It’s just nice.”
She looked at the Market Basket printout in Gabriella’s hand. “But for real,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on there.”
That discussion took up the next fifteen minutes, with Gabriella being assigned both locations like she’d predicted. Before they could move on to any other plans, the front door opened.
“Good morning!” James called, making his way up the stairs as he pulled off his hat and coat.
“Morning,” Gabriella said. “How’s Bradley?”
“Did you know he speaks French?” James asked.
“Yeah,” Amelia said. “You didn’t?”
“Now I do. They put him on every drug at CVS for a couple days and it’s been nonstop French since we got home last night. I’ve been using fucking translator apps. Not that any of it made much sense in French either.”
“Madelyn speaks some,” Amelia said. “If you need help.”
“I’ve been watching beginner videos,” James said. “So I’m solid if he needs bread or an apple. But thanks.”
He picked up the historical file Gabriella had brought out and scanned it quickly. “Oh, Graham’s going to love this one,” he said. “He’s been over there twice this month, so this might actually connect with a cryptid case currently going in the area. I’ll set this aside for his next shift, unless there’s a reason you chose it?”
“Because I saw what happened to your desk and didn’t want to dig around in the boxes,” Gabriella replied.
“Smart,” James said. “Alright, how’s the day looking?”
Gabriella wasn’t going to Market Basket until this afternoon, which gave her some time to glare at that final Sixteen Roses screen for a little while longer. So once they’d hashed out the day, she was back in the back bedroom with her coffee and laptop, looking at the numbers she’d written down yesterday. The ones that appeared on an end screen after ten minutes of watching. So what was the significance here?
It was clearly a code of some kind. But what? And more importantly, where did she have to put it? She wasn’t just whispering the numbers one, three, seven into the wind, which would then reveal the game’s secrets.
The energy reader was still babysitting her and she glared over at it on the desk beside her. Should she start the game levels over again? The idea of going back and playing through the entire game again made her want to cry, but maybe there was something she’d see with new eyes this time around.
Her instinct was spot on. She reached level two about fifteen minutes later and as she slowly walked her way down the path, she noticed a stack of red bricks she’d missed entirely last time when she’d been so focused on the roses. She thought about the Star Roads in Super Mario World, her father whooping in triumph as he found another little key in the game. Five-year-old Gabriella would always dance as the music changed, sometimes between her dad and the TV. But he never yelled at her for it, he just danced too.
She stood her little figure underneath the red bricks. Three of them, stacked so that the lowest was just above her head. It was similar to Mario. She wanted to jump and get it. But the up arrow didn’t do anything. Neither did A, which she remembered her father using to jump back then.
She started hitting keys at random. Her avatar tapped his little foot, then did a dance, then turned into a bunny, then back into a human as she hit that button again quickly. Too many problems to deal with right now to have a bunny avatar as she did so.
Then she hit J and he jumped. Okay, but he didn’t grab anything. So there had to be another part to this. She jumped and hit the other keys at the same time, trying them all again in rapid succession. But now, instead of turning into a bunny when she hit the semicolon along with J, the avatar gripped the bricks and crawled up them, disappearing into a new level above this one.
Gabriella’s heart was pounding now, and she pulled out her phone with shaking hands to text Madelyn. She sent the message, then turned back to the screen as Amelia came in.
“Hey, would you rather do Market Basket this morning?”
“I just figured this out,” Gabriella said.
Amelia leaned over her shoulder to watch the screen as Gabriella explained what was going on. As she did so, she walked her figure through the new room, which appeared to be an abandoned classroom. Bats flew across the ornate arched windows as she walked through another side-scroller that appeared to line up with the level underneath. Almost fifteen minutes passed and, when she got to where she’d found the rose below, Amelia was still watching from right behind her. There was a large chalkboard with three lines across it. Gabriella plugged in the numbers from yesterday. They appeared on the lines and the chalkboard glowed as a door beside it opened to another level. Another deserted classroom. And for the first time in the game, there was music, an almost tuneless hum that Gabriella could feel in her back molars.
Beside her, a red light flashed on the energy reader before returning to its familiar green glow. Gabriella and Amelia looked at each other. “I think maybe it’s time for a video game break?” Amelia said. “Maybe you can play more after your homework is done.”
“Yeah,” Gabriella said, though all she wanted to do was keep moving now that she knew the next steps. “I think I’ll go to Market Basket now.”
***
That feeling of triumph faded when she got to the end of the next level near the end of her shift and realized there was another code to put in. There was no indication that this code had appeared in the new level and of course the old code didn’t work here. So Gabriella was left once again glaring at the screen as James walked into the room.
“Hey, when are you out?” he asked.
“Now,” Gabriella replied. “But I can stay.”
“Nah, you’re good,” James said. “Amelia’s on tonight. But do you mind if you’re on call? I realize it’s last minute, but-”
“No, that’s fine.”
“I can do it,” James said. “If you have plans.”
“Not if you’re busy smothering Bradley in his sleep.”
“No, Graham’s got that covered tonight. I’m staying over Meredith’s since I canceled on her yesterday. But if-”
“I’m fine with it,” Gabriella said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll leave now. Good night. Tell her hi for me. There, now you have to go.”
James laughed, but finally relented. As he left the room, she looked back to the game. The three lines on this new chalkboard taunted her, but she wasn’t going to find an answer in the remaining thirty seconds of her shift. So she logged out of the game and tried to put it out of her mind as much as possible as she walked out of the room.
