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I always wondered where all that energy came from and why I didn’t seem to have that trait in my DNA. I did my best to keep him away from my so-called entrepreneurial attempts. He always wanted to be around me, though I did not always let him. There was never anything bad or negative about him. Despite all the puberty nonsense teenagers usually go through, I think I was proud to have such a brother, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.
When he disappeared, it felt as though a black void opened inside me, one that has been slowly growing ever since.
I blamed my negligence for his disappearance. For years, I had the same nightmare where Charlie was calling my name, and I couldn’t find him. I would be running around our house looking for him. I could hear his voice, but I just couldn’t find him. I would wake up screaming and it would take a minute or two before I’d realize that it was a dream. The countless hours of therapy gradually changed the dream to the one where I’d just watch Charlie running through the park. Well, the therapy and the “exciting” combination of drugs, alcohol and quite a bit of casual sex. Theoretically, one could’ve called it a breakthrough, but I had tried to forget the day it’d happened and had been avoiding the topic with everyone, including my parents. Today, however, it seemed that there was no way around it. So, there it was.
“You might remember that Maple Grove House isn’t the biggest manor around but quite spacious,” I began.
“Indeed,” Jared said. “Ten bedrooms, isn’t it?”
“Yes, plus five or six other rooms for different activities so to speak.”
Another round of beer magically appeared on our table. This time it was accompanied by a bowl with walnuts.
Walnuts in a pub? It’s his place.
Jared took a sip from his fresh glass, started cracking the nuts and throwing them in his mouth rather skillfully.
“Anyway,” I said after admiring his cracking-and-throwing technique for a second. “Charlie loved to play hide-and-seek for hours with me because there was so much space that we could use. Our parents were often too preoccupied with their guests to spend any time with us. So, we were left to our own devices when we were there. That was of course only during summer and winter breaks. Then we sort of played it less and less.”
“I do remember that,” Jared said. “I also remember wanting to play with you so much, but the house was off limits to the servants’ kids. We could use the playground though, which was quite generous of your parents.”
That was true. At one point we kept quite a few people as staff in the house. My parents liked to hire married couples with children. They were stable employees, I suppose. Being a single parent, Jared’s mother was an exception, but she was a good employee. In any case, we always had some kids playing in the playground that my great grandfather had built.
“Well, we were playing the game on that day as well,” I said, dreading to get closer to the moment when my brother disappeared. “We hadn’t played in a while and Charlie sort of begged me to do it for old times’ sake, so to speak.”
If only I’d said no.
“He told me that he’d found a place to hide and that I wasn’t going to find him this time,” I said. “I knew all the possible hiding spots in the house, of course, but that was our ritual. He would boast of a new place, and I would find him within minutes.”
I suddenly got thirsty and finished my glass. Judging by numb gums, my magic powder was still working, and I needed more alcohol to reduce the unexpected anxiety. Jared followed suit without saying anything and gave the bartender a sign for another round.
“So off he ran to hide. I decided to give him a few extra minutes and went to get a cold drink,” I said, wishing the new round would come sooner.
“We could take a break,” Jared suggested, looking at me.
“I’m all right. I’ve worked through all this with my therapist and drank through it many times over.”
The new round came with a fresh bowl of walnuts. Jared started to work on those nuts, and I joined the cracking action as well. We ate the nuts in silence like two buddies who didn’t need to fill pauses with unnecessary chat. After I’d finished a couple, I felt I was ready to continue.
“Well, when I went upstairs looking for him, I couldn’t find him in all the usual spots. And just when I thought that, perhaps, he had finally found a new one, I saw him from the window running through the garden. I figured he’d changed his mind and didn’t want to play anymore, so I went to my room.”
“You saw him running away?”
“Well, I was on the third floor and was considering checking the attic, which Charlie was a bit afraid of, when I saw him running fast towards the main gates. I screamed, ‘That’s not fair!’ or something to that effect, thinking it was odd for him to break our rule about hiding only in the house.”
Jared stopped eating the nuts and gazed at me.
“When exactly was that?”
“Thirteenth of July.”
There was a moment of silence. “Was that the last time you saw him?”
“Yes, it was.”
“When did you realize that he was missing?”
“It was much later in the evening. I felt strange that he hadn’t shown up for dinner, which we usually had by ourselves when our parents were preoccupied with their guests. I asked the staff. No one had seen him. Then I thought perhaps he’d gone to see our parents. It was a bit unusual but at that point I was running out of options.”
If only I had started looking earlier instead of sitting in my room, checking out my secret stash of adult magazines.
“I remember the summer parties your parents organized,” Jared said. “They were amazing. So many people in nice outfits walking around the park, carrying tall champagne glasses, and chatting with each other.”
“Some of those events were nice, I suppose,” I said, remembering myself being bored at them.
“But you couldn’t find Charlie there.”
“Right,” I said and took a sip from my glass. “It was getting dark, and we started to get really nervous. Everyone, even some of the guests if I remember correctly, was out looking for him. I told everyone where I’d seen him running to and we all went to comb the park. My parents called the police and then the whole thing became this massive search operation that lasted for a month and then some.”
“Yes, I heard everyone was looking for Charlie. My mom was there as well.”
I didn’t remember the last bit but nodded anyway.
“After six months, my mother was emotionally drained. It was decided that my father would take her to France to recuperate. It was a temporary arrangement. Not sure if you know this, but my grandparents had a château which they had bequeathed to my mother and her sister. After some time, though, my mother developed this notion that Maple Grove House was cursed and persuaded my father to stay in France for a while longer. Each time my father brought up the idea of returning, my mother would ask for ‘a bit longer’, which eventually turned into ‘never.’
At that time, we still had a pig farm that was generating some income. It had been profitable until a few years ago when the tenant died, and his kids didn’t want to be pig farmers. Well, my father went back from time to time to take care of some things, but my mother was adamant she didn’t want to set foot in the house again. Gradually, my father stopped coming back as well and things were getting done through our lawyer.”
Jared nodded. “What about you?”
“I spent some time in France, came back to go to university, graduated and have been in the City ever since. Never went back to the house either,” I said and felt that it was a bit too much. The beer wasn’t working in my favor.
Jared pondered his next thought. “He was running towards the main gates, and he was wearing a white shirt?”
“Yes. Why?”
“You know, you might have seen me, not Charlie.”
“What?”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about today. I think we’ll need something stronger than beer, though.”
When our “stronger” single malt drink arrived, Jared took his phone and speed dialed a number.
“Freddy, bring it in,” he said and put the phone down. He took his glass, lifted it up and looked through it as if admiring the rich, medium dark shade of orange color of the drink. He gave it a sniff. “Ah, this stuff is the best.”
A tall man with wide shoulders and a square jaw dressed in a black suit walked in the bar with a white paper shopping bag. He approached the table, placed the bag on it and looked at Jared.
“That’ll be all, Freddy. Thanks.” Jared said.
Freddy nodded and left without saying a word.
I wasn’t going to reveal my anxiety by asking questions about the stupid bag, so I took my whiskey and emptied it with one gulp. It was nice and smooth. The Irish knew how to make the good stuff.
“Well,” Jared finally broke the silence, “there’s something I want to give you back.”
“Give me back? I can’t remember giving you anything, to be honest.”
Jared pushed the bag closer to me.
“Open it. It belongs to your family.”
I slowly took the bag and looked inside. There was a little size white shirt, neatly folded and wrapped with a long blue string inside. I looked at Jared.
“Take it out,” he said.
So I did. Before seeing it, somehow, I already knew what I was going to see on that shirt. Slowly, I untied the string and revealed the embroidered anagram CJM on it.
“Charles John Montague,” Jared said. “I noticed you have a similar one on your cuff. You still customize all your shirts, don’t you?”
I did have a similar style anagram on my cuff, except it was my name, AJM II for Alexander James Montague II, and I’d been wearing dress shirts, polo shirts, and even underwear with my name on them all my life.
I was trying to gather my thoughts. “How… Why do you have this?”
“Well, Charlie gave me this shirt the day before I left the estate. I didn’t own anything that nice, as you might imagine. He gave it to me as a goodbye present.”
I shook my head, trying to digest the information. I didn’t remember Charlie giving away any of his stuff.
“He gave it to you the day before you left? When was it again?”
“It was on the day when he disappeared.”
Chapter 5
“Could you please step on it?” I asked the taxi driver. “I need to get on the last train.”
The man didn’t dignify me with an answer, but he did make the cab go faster. Shamefacedly, I took another dosage of Ching at the next traffic light in order not to spill the stuff.
This is insane. I'll make a complete fool of myself.
My phone rang. It was our former butler who turned de facto estate manager.
“Mr. Montague, this is Harry Schulenburg,” he said.
“Yes, Harry. I need you to open the house first thing tomorrow morning,” I said wiping my nose.
“It can be arranged, Mr. Montague. May I ask if you’ll be traveling alone?”
“Yes.”
“Will you be requiring any assistance?”
Good old Schulenburg. He’d started working for my father when they were both young men in their twenties. He’d come from South Africa to see the land of his predecessors and decided to stay. He’d married a local lady, but she’d fallen ill and passed away after only ten years. He never remarried. He volunteered to stay behind and look after the house. He said that he was “tied to this land until the day he was no longer needed,” and we couldn’t imagine the house without him. Nothing could rattle his professional calm, which had helped him manage the house without its owners and deal with the tenants for the past twenty-three years.
“I think I’ll be fine. I may need a flashlight and the keys to the basement, though.”
“I’ll have them and a guest room ready for you tomorrow morning.”
“Could you do it tonight, just in case, if it’s possible?”
“Certainly, sir,” he said without a hint of surprise.
“Thank you, Harry,” I said and rang off.
I placed my head on the back of the seat, not worrying too much about the cleanliness of it, and closed my eyes. I needed a few moments to understand what had just happened back in the pub and the possible ramifications of whatever was going to happen tomorrow.
What was Jared saying back there again?
“My mom told me what happened when we were on the way to the States,” he said, nurturing the glass in his hand. “Later, she told me that you guys had left the house. I know it might sound strange to ask this now, but was it properly searched?”
It did sound a bit odd, but I kept my poker face. “Well, we and the police searched everywhere the next day. A hundred people were looking for him in the park and nearby villages night and day for a month.”
“I see. I don’t know why, but I just thought of something Charlie told me about.”
I noticed Jared’s phone–that he had put down on the table–was blinking with incoming messages, but he did not check it. I was sure that he was going to tell me whatever it was, so I just looked at him, waiting for another flashback to surface.
“He told me about this eerie chest your family kept in the attic,” he said. “If I remember correctly, it was a pirate's chest filled with cursed treasure, and if you took anything from it, the pirates' ghosts would hunt you forever.”
“Yes, there were actually two. One was in the attic and ‘his identical brother’ was in my dad’s study. The one in the attic was ‘cursed,’ and I was the one who told him that story. It’s kind of a thing that gets passed from one generation to the next to scare the bejesus out of the younger kids in the house so that the older kids can hide their stuff in it. A family tradition, as it were.”
I didn’t need to tell Jared that this was the place where I kept my product. I had to reinvent a few scary stories to make sure Charlie never got closer to that chest. There was some powerful weed, and it smelled so strong that I had to double bag it and keep it inside so that no one knew.
“Were they really pirate chests?” Jared sounded intrigued.
“Well, the legend has it that the first Montague, Ezekiel, wasn’t a savory character. He travelled a lot and was involved in some shady trading business somewhere close to the end or right after “the golden age of piracy”.
“When was that?”
“I imagine it was in the early or mid-1800s. In any case, for some reason, he got to keep what he ‘traded,’ I think he was pardoned, and invested it in railways. Later, he was smart enough to pull his money plus interest out before the railway mania and the revolution in France… the last one, I think. Anyway, he bought the land and built the house in 1862. The chests were among his possessions when he moved in. It was said that he got them from some Chinese sailors in Asia. My grandfather used to say that the chests were filled with gold coins that helped the family through some challenging times, but I haven’t seen any of that alleged pirate loot.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah,” I said, twisting the glass in my hand and looking at my drink.
As a little boy, I had been fascinated by the story myself and kept asking my father to tell it to me again and again. Unfortunately, it had been a rare treat because my father had usually been too busy for this sort of things.
“All the kids in the family, including Charlie and I, were trying to find those coins. Alas, the chests were filled with everything but.” I shrugged.
Jared smiled. “I remember wanting to look at that thing and being scared at the same time. I also remember Charlie thought that it was an ideal place to hide from everyone.”
“He was a bit afraid of the attic and the chest. Plus, the lid was too heavy for him to open anyway,” I said, massaging my belly which had started to feel strange. It wasn’t a “nature call” type of strange, but a feeling as if my mind was trying to tell me something and it chose my gut to send me the message.
I recalled the events of that day in more detail, which wasn’t difficult. When I found out that my parents had called the police, I had the chest moved down to the cellar the next day. I didn’t want the police and their dog anywhere near it. I had no desire to be questioned about where I’d got the money to buy that batch.
“Why did you mention the chest?” I asked.
“I don’t know. As a kid, every time I watched a pirate movie I would think about that chest,” Jared said and had another sip from his glass. “In any case, I’m sure you did everything you could to find him.”
Chapter 6
Back in the taxi, I was thinking about that chest. Did we check it before it was moved down to the cellar? Of course, we didn’t. I was too worried about the police, and it never occurred to me that someone could’ve been hiding in it. Besides, I was not actually there when a couple of our footmen carried it down upon my request. No, it was crazy, but it’s driving me off the wall now. I had to be sure.
I arrived at the train station on time and gave a generous tip to my indifferent taxi driver. I got on the train and threw myself into the seat. Now I could think a bit.
“Alex?”
I turned my head and saw my old university friend James Harding. His family were our neighbors.
The Hardings had lived in the area where our estate was situated long before Ezekiel Montague arrived, but they had lost most of their land piece by piece over the years. They had been land-rich but cash-poor and had to make many compromises to stay afloat. They still owned their Baroque-style manor house, Wintersmith Hall, which was built in the late 1600s, but it was mostly uninhabitable due to a lack of proper maintenance and funding. James’s family had been occupying one wing and using the former stables for their needs for as long as I could remember.
Our fathers had been friends until James’s dad passed away seven years ago, but our great-grandfathers had not been. I remembered my father telling me that when I became the head of the family, I would have to ensure the Hardings were always welcome in the house.
I used to see James and his family at the parties my parents organized, but we had never been especially close. Perhaps the closeness of our fathers was the reason James and I attended the same boarding school and later the same university, which technically made us close enough to call each other friends. He studied history while I took business courses. After graduation, we didn’t stay in touch much, though we occasionally saw each other at various events in town.
I had always thought of him as a sloppy nerd with his head perpetually in the clouds. He was a bit shorter than me and paid little attention to either the cleanliness or tidiness of his wardrobe and hair. I remembered once, when I went to his dorm room to pick him up for some event during our university days, marveling at the chaos that cluttered his living space. He pulled a white dress shirt from beneath a pile of shoes, put it on, and declared himself ready to go.
James had started hiding his weak chin beneath a dark beard long before it became fashionable, though food crumbs often got stuck in it like little hostages. His lean body, which rarely saw the inside of a gym, was never particularly attractive to women. After his father passed away, James returned home to help his formidable mother with what remained of their estate, which, as far as I could remember, had never made them much money. After that, I hadn’t seen him much—until today.
“It’s been years,” he said. “How the heck have you been?”
It felt unexpectedly good to see him. I could see a few greasy spots, sauce from burgers no doubt, on his jacket.
“James” I said, “I haven’t seen you since …” I squinted my eyes, trying to remember when it was the last time we’d seen each other.
“Since forever would be the right estimation.” I laughed.
“Come, man,” I said pointing to the seat next to me.
He sat down.
“How’s your back?” he asked.
I’d had a nasty car accident a few years ago when my car’s brakes malfunctioned, and I crashed into a brick wall. I hurt my back, spent some time in hospital and went through an unpleasant recovery therapy after that. I had my car, a Firenze red Range Rover, fixed because it was new at the time and a real chick magnet but had been driving it rarely ever since.
“It’s all right as long as I don’t need to stand for a long time,” I said.
“So, what brings you to this neck of the woods anyway?” he asked.
I didn’t know if I should tell him the reason why I was on the train, but I had a feeling that I needed to share what was on my mind to feel better. Well, at least sharing some of it couldn’t hurt.
“I had a business meeting with Jared Shannon.”
“As in Jared Shannon, the founder of QC Solutions?”
“That’s the one. Trying to get some investors for this project that I have.”
I was trying to be as vague as possible yet attempting to make it important at the same time. It was futile because James didn’t have that much money nor did he have any good connections that could’ve been useful to me, but I couldn’t help it.
James widened his eyes and nodded. Suddenly he looked as if he just remembered something important.
“Hey, didn’t his mother work for your family?” he asked. As a frequent guest at Maple Grove House, he knew most of our staff. When we were kids, we would sneak into the kitchen to steal something that had been “forbidden before dinner.” James would always tag along and enjoy the fruits of our raids, which we would happily devour, hiding somewhere in the park.
“Yeah, he sort of reminded me about that,” I said.
“He did? That’s strange.”
“Why?”
“Well, I would think he’d try to avoid the subject, but it’s been years, and I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“What subject?”
“Oh, that incident with his mother. Don’t you remember? She was fired. She was accused of something. Stealing, was it?”
“What? I don’t remember her being fired.”
“Well, it was just before… you know, Charlie’s disappearance,” James said, scratching his beard and releasing some questionable particles from its depths. “So it wasn’t that important to remember I imagine.”
“Still, it’s interesting why he never mentioned that,” I said mostly to myself, thinking out loud.
“Anyway, how have you been? Do you still date that girl I saw you with last time?” James asked, changing the subject for which I was thankful.
We talked all the way to my stop, reminiscing about our university days, discussing our families, James’s tense relationship with his mother—who kept him around but refused to give him control of the estate—and dissecting my poor choices in women. Although I couldn’t stop thinking about Jared, I made a deliberate effort to keep him out of our conversation. James, never a particularly inquisitive person, didn’t ask me any more questions about my meeting.
When it was time for me to get off the train—James’s stop was the next one—we agreed to catch up in the City the following week. I promptly forgot about that promise as soon as I stepped off the train.
Chapter 7
Our former footman-turned-maintenance person, Benjamin “Benny” Hudson, was waiting for me on the platform ready to drive me to the house. He was a short, heavy-set, spectacled man in his sixties with a very friendly wrinkled face. It was almost midnight when I saw the dark silhouette of our family nest with only two lit windows on the second floor – the guest room I was going to stay in.
Maple Grove House was a red brick Georgian style stately country house that had three floors. It was of simple rectangular form, with harmonious symmetry, sash windows and a central doorway. There were some smaller buildings behind the house – former stables, a carriage room, and a few cottages where the servants used to live. The house was set in grounds of almost five hundred acres, which also included a stream and a closed pig farm, but most of which was covered by the park with old fields of maples and oaks. There was a big old maple tree in a round clearing, right in front of the house that Charlie and I used to call The Giant. Its girth was more than two meters, and it was a great spot for hiding. When I was about five, my grandmother Anna told me that there was a large talking cat living in the tree that could tell fairy tales. I tried to find it on numerous occasions, hiding in various locations in order not to spook him. Later I learned that it had been a hoax created by Anna to make sure I’d spend more time in the fresh air.