Meddling by Mackenzie Draper

I saw them first on the old Kingsbridge Road that leads to Huntsmouth manor. An unpaved path pitted with stones and heavily furrowed gulleys from hard rain, the road was ill maintained. It was said among the village people that in the ‘70s secret government experiments went on in the manor, strange studies on the human psyche, with unmarked cars coming and going from the big house on the hill down Kingsbridge Road at odd hours. Having just moved to the hamlet of Huntsmouth, I was newly employed at the manor, which was transformed into a bed and breakfast sometime in the early aughts. I had been hired as a property manager, but really my job was to keep the estate reasonably tidy. That day my duties included skirting the old forest and cleaning up the largest branches felled in the squall that blew past the sea’s chalky cliffs and over the rock-strewn moors the night before. I was leaning against my sturdy little truck, the only thing my father left me in his will, when I saw them. Four people, roughly college aged, loping down the muddy trail with a large dog in tow. ‘Large’ isn’t quite the apt descriptor: mammoth, perhaps? Gargantuan? Its shoulders came up to the tallest man’s waist, and its head was bigger than any other dog’s I’d ever seen. For some reason the sight of them coming up the old Kingsbridge Road startled me. Under a still-bruised looking sky casting sickly yellow light on the hills, their presence seemed sinister to me. I climbed into my truck and puttered back to the maintenance shed.

Naturally I knew about the rumors swirling around Huntsmouth manor. It was the first topic of conversation between me and Bart, resident historian and barman at the B & B. “But don’t let creepy stories keep you from enjoying your time with us,” he grinned, slicing limes behind the counter. I laughed politely. So what if the government had used the manor to test extrasensory perception in humans? They might as well have been doing magic tricks up here, I thought, lugging a toolbox to the basement to do something about the leaky pipes. 

Of course, when I blinked awake God knows how many minutes later with the four young people and their enormous dog staring down at me, I realized I might have miscalculated.

“Like, are you okay?” the tallest of them asked, chin whiskers trembling. 

I stood with the help of one of the girls, a stocky thing with thick glasses, and the other young man. He had an athletic build and a Hollywood-perfect smile and I didn’t trust him one bit. 

Like typical Americans they pestered me with questions – what had I seen? What did I know about the manor’s mysteries? Did I believe the ghosts of tormented subjects of experimentation remained on the grounds, haunting those who disturbed their final resting places? I could only stare at the last question. What bunk. I shuffled away, feeling the weight of the hound’s abnormally expressive eyes on my back. 

Another downpour the next morning kept what few guests the manor held inside. I overheard the Americans badger Bart in the lounge, crowding around him to ask about secret tunnels and a mysterious Dr. Benton. I listened without much interest, tinkering with the internet router in the main entrance as Bart, more cagey than usual, spun a yarn about supposed underground experiments of psychokinetic capabilities and the head scientist who lorded over them and may or may not have existed. “I don’t put much stock in it myself,” the old fellow said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the monstrous dog sniffing around the kitchen entrance. 

I was taking a call from my sister a few hours later when the four young people ran past me. Startled, I dropped the old Nokia to my shoulder as the redhead glanced behind her. She said something I didn’t hear over my sister’s complaining. I looked back. The two lads slipped into a broom closet with the dog. The girls rushed up the attic stairs. I began to protest when they reappeared from an unused guest room next to me and the young men emerged from the elevator. I blinked, watching them rush to and fro as if I wasn’t even there. Back and forth they hurried, ducking behind a door in one pair and springing up again from another with new partners. The dog ran behind them, in front of them, around them. I stared, said into the phone, “I’ll call you back,” and slunk downstairs.

The next day saw a foul wind blowing through the purple-headed heather of the moors. I slipped on my overlarge jacket, adjusted my gloves, and clambered into my father’s truck. Jumbling and jolting over the pitted old Kingsbridge Road, I pondered those strange American visitors. Uncanny, they were. I’d only been at the Hunstmouth B & B a short time, as I said, but I had the feeling these kids were unlike normal tourists. I was forced to quit my ruminations and stomp on the truck’s squealing brakes when the colossal mutt that had been formerly running through my mind scrambled across the road. A curse died on my tongue as I saw a figure, garbed in banana-yellow hazmat gear with a ghostly gas mask fixed to its face, give chase to the frightened beast. I gaped at the scene, transfixed and horrified as the pair disappeared over the hillock that concealed the maintenance shed. 

With only a thought to the sanctity of my workplace being defiled by the shenanigans of the oversized brute, I punched the gas. I saw as I arrived the most peculiar sight: above the roof of the shed, affixed to the boughs of my favorite old pine tree, a wriggling, writhing net. A too-long brown tail extended from the trap, and the familiar orange vestments of one of the American youths were visible through the netting. A tangle of rope and electrical cords lay across the grounds, trapping the redheaded young woman and the too-handsome blonde boy, and my oaken rain barrel was overturned atop the mysterious figure that had chased the hound here. Only the gas mask and its yellow-gloved hands were visible under the great barrel. 

“Why, I never,” I spluttered as I slammed the nearly-rusted door to my father’s truck closed. 

“Like, it’s the mysterious maintenance guy!” the shaggy American cried from inside the shed. His arm trembled, from cold or fear I couldn’t say, as he pointed at me. 

“Don’t worry, gang,” grunted Mr. Hollywood as he disentangled himself. “I knew all along it couldn’t be the mysterious maintenance guy haunting the halls of Hunstmouth Manor.”

My protestations petered out when the net containing the last two of their group was brought none too gently down from my dear old pine tree. The dog shook itself. The young woman smoothed her pleated skirt. 

“With the ghost’s interest in keeping people out of the secretive and historical halls of the basement, the suspect could only be one person,” she declared, and bent double to jimmy the gas mask off the defeated figure under my rain barrel.

It was as if I couldn’t help my own vocal chords joining in the chorus of American voices that rose then. “Bart the barman?” we said, our tones lyrical, our throats opened in surprise and a secret thrill of delight. 

“This isn’t just any old bartender,” the girl in orange said, adjusting the thick plastic frame of her glasses on the bridge of her nose. “This is Dr. Barton Benton himself, the head scientist in charge of those spooky experiments all those decades ago.” 

In the proceeding days, I had plenty of time to consider the strange unfolding of events: the police capture of Bart, the news vans that sped down Kingsbridge Road, the surge in bookings at the B & B. I had feared for my job when Bart was taken away, slumped defeated and tired, so fragile and elderly looking in the shadowed recess of the cops’ back seat. And I felt a pang of regret, the loss of a colleague, a friend whose banter had eased me into a new job in a new place. My eyes followed the strange flock of young people and their hulking dog as they traced their steps back up the old Kingsbridge Road and into the forest, wondering who I would be if not for these kids’ meddling.