Part One

Trixie’s mind was pleasantly occupied as she sat in the clubhouse, sorting through her research materials from her last investigation on the large table there. So intent was she on her task, she heard or saw no clue that someone was approaching until the door was flung open. The breeze it caused ruffled some of the pages and she had to throw out a hand to stop some of them skittering over the edge. With a start, she looked up to see Diana Lynch standing in the doorway, a wild expression on her face.

“I just know what’s going to happen, so why don’t we just get it over with,” Diana announced, apropos of nothing.

Her friend frowned. “Okay, then. Let’s do that. Go right ahead, Di.”

Diana put her hands on her hips. “You’re the one who is going to do it, I just know you are.”

“How about if you tell me what it is that I’m supposed to be doing?” Trixie patted the seat next to her in invitation. “After I’ve heard what it is that I’m doing, I might find it a little easier to do it.”

With a sigh, the other girl sank into a chair and rested her chin on her hands, elbows on the table. “You’re going to investigate my family and find some horrible secret that we’ll all wish we’d never found out about.”

Trixie gave her a quizzical look. “I wasn’t planning on doing anything like that. I don’t have any reason to think your family has horrible secrets, so why should I be investigating them in the first place?”

“Because they’ve just found something that you won’t be able to help investigating,” Di wailed. “I just know it. My mother – my own mother, who supposedly loves me – heard about it and the first thing she said was that you’d be the best one to investigate it for us. You’ll hear about it and your eyes will light up and you’ll rush off to see what’s up there, and the next thing we know, all of the family skeletons are out of the closet.”

“Up where?” Trixie demanded, trying hard to suppress the thrill she was feeling.

Di’s chin sank a little, so that her hands partly covered her face. “The house where my mother lived with her parents, before they died – which was her grandparents’ house before they died, apparently. The new owners had to do some repairs to one of the upstairs ceilings and when they did, they found an attic, all full of old stuff and then boarded over and they managed to find Uncle Monty, who got in contact with us, of course, and they want to know if we want to see any of the things they’ve found up there.”

“But, isn’t that good?” Trixie asked, confused. “Don’t you want to know something about your heritage? Couldn’t there be things there that would be nice to see? I know there are lots of things in my parents’ attic that are really interesting and tell me lots about my family.”

“Trixie, you found a murderer in Honey’s family – an actual murderer! – and in Dan’s family, you found out his grandfather worked for a man who ran a speak-easy, and then in your family, you found that some relative of yours was engaged to a burglar and went around the place wearing the ring he stole for her. I just don’t want to know what you’ll find in my family!”

Trixie laughed, ruefully. “I guess I did do those things – but Honey would have found out about the murderer sooner or later anyway. And she’s not descended from him, which makes it a whole lot better.”

“If there are any murderers in my family, I don’t want to know about them,” Di insisted. “End of story.”

“I think you can relax about that,” Trixie answered. “I’m sure there aren’t any secrets like that hiding in your grandparents’ old attic – probably just the ordinary kind of thing that gets forgotten from one generation to the next. Nothing that you need to worry about. And, anyway, didn’t your whole family history get written up in a magazine when your father made it big? Wouldn’t you know already, if there was something to be found out?”

Di shook her head. “They got the information for that article from my parents, so there wasn’t very much on my mother’s family, because she just doesn’t know.”

At that, Trixie frowned. “Wait. I thought your mother’s parents were poor. I’m sure that we found that out when we were investigating your uncle’s impostor. It was an important point in the case; it was how we knew their portraits were recent and not painted from life.”

Her friend heaved a sigh. “They were poor the same way you think of your family as being poor – not anywhere near as poor as my parents were when I was younger. They had enough, but you have to be rich to have portraits painted and they certainly weren’t that.”

“I guess so.” Trixie considered the matter for a moment. “Neither of those things change the fact that there’s probably nothing scandalous to find.”

Diana groaned. “That means you’re going to investigate anyway, whether I want you to or not, doesn’t it? Well, fine, but don’t expect me to want to hear about it, okay?”

“If you don’t want me to, just say so, Di!” Trixie ran a hand through her curls. “I won’t investigate anything that you don’t want me to investigate.”

At this, Di became even more agitated. “But then, I’ll have to do it myself. And how can I, when I don’t want to know anything about it?”

Trixie stopped and observed her friend for a few moments. “Is this your way of asking me to look into it, but not tell you anything bad I find?”

“No! Yes! I don’t know,” Di answered, ending in a moan. “I mean, yes, I think. I can’t think straight for this. I don’t want to know about it.”

Her friend smiled. “Okay, how about if I go and take a look. I promise to only tell you good things, and only after I’ve run them past someone first – who would you like me to ask? Would Honey be okay?”

Di nodded. “I guess so. I just know that I’m going to find out about everything anyway, whether I like it or not. This just isn’t fair. Why did this have to happen to me?”

“Don’t worry so much,” Trixie advised. “I probably won’t turn up anything terrible.”

“That’s what you say now. When you’ve unearthed all of the horrible, nasty secrets, it will be different.”

Trixie patted Di’s hand in an awkward manner and tried to reassure her. “I promise not to tell you anything awful, okay? I doubt I’ll even find anything awful to tell you, so it’s going to be an easy promise to keep.”

After a long pause, Di nodded. “Okay. I’ll get all of the details for you. You can call the people and make arrangements.”

Trixie grinned. “Sounds great. I can’t wait.”

The next weekend, Trixie and Honey drove out to the house together, finding it to be a charming, but modest, old house in a quiet street of a town only about half-an-hour’s drive from Sleepyside. Though it was still early, the new owners of the place were already busy at work, as evidenced by the sound of hammering. Trixie knocked loudly at the door and it was answered almost at once.

“You’re here about the attic, right?” asked the man who had opened the door. “Come right in. My wife is upstairs and she’ll show you the way.” Turning away, he called, “Mandy!”

Her voice answered from somewhere near the top of the stairs and a slim, blonde woman soon came into view. She smiled at them and gestured for them to follow her. The pair thanked the man of the house and started up the stairs to join Mandy, who led the way into a room filled with the materials for repair and redecoration. In one corner, a ladder stood underneath a gaping hole in the ceiling.

“This is the only way in, for the moment,” she explained. “The original stairs were ripped out at some point, to make way for a closet. When we found all of the old photos and things, we asked around the family – the house belonged to my grandparents, before they died, you know – and everyone thought they must have belonged to the people before. My Mom had found some contact information on the previous owners when she cleaned out the house after my grandmother died, and so we called the man. We weren’t sure whether anyone would care enough to come and see, though.”

“I doubt Di’s uncle would come all the way from Arizona,” Trixie answered, “but we’re happy enough to come from Sleepyside to see what’s here. Is there anything up there you don’t want touched?”

“I’d prefer if you just hauled it all away, to be honest,” Mandy told them with a grin. “It’s all got to go before we can do any more work up there. Just let me know if you need anything.”

The two thanked her and climbed the ladder. The space above was almost pitch black, until Trixie turned on her flashlight. When she did so, the attic revealed itself to be small and crowded. Unlike her attic at home, this one contained no furniture and only a single, small trunk. Most of the goods stored were in small boxes, or ranged on shelves, as the shape of the roof allowed no room for anything bigger.

“This is going to be very uncomfortable work,” Honey noted. “I can’t even stand straight.”

“How about if I pass the things down to you and we stack them in the room below,” Trixie suggested, poking around to see what she could find of interest. “Then, when they’re out of here, we can carry them out to the station wagon and take them back to… where? The clubhouse?”

“That sounds like a good plan,” Honey replied, and climbed half-way down the ladder.

They had soon developed a rhythm in the work, but since Honey had the more strenuous task, it was not long before she needed a break. The pair descended the ladder and sat on the floor, poking into boxes as they rested and looking for items of interest. One of the boxes held dozens of old photographs. Honey pulled one out to examine it.

“Just look at this woman,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t she beautiful? She must be one of Di’s ancestors, don’t you think?”

Trixie screwed up her nose. “She looks like she’s been sucking on a lemon.”

Honey giggled. “She does, a little, but I think that’s how you had to look for photos in those days.”

“That’s not right. In really old photographs, you couldn’t smile because you needed to stay still for so long, but this one’s not that old. She’s just mean-tempered, or something.”

Honey replaced the photo and stretched her arms. “Well, I think I’m ready to get back to it. Should we swap places?”

They had soon emptied the attic room and had checked in every nook and cranny for stray items. Next came the task of taking it down to the Bob-White station wagon, which they were glad they had had the foresight to bring. Both girls were feeling hot and tired by the time they had hauled it all down and slammed the tailgate.

They took a moment to thank the home-owners and let them know they were leaving, before heading for the middle of town for refreshments. Before long, they were sitting on a bench in the park eating ice creams.

“So, do you really think we won’t find anything scandalous?” Honey asked, as they relaxed in the shade.

Trixie took the time to deal with a long drip that was running down her cone. “Not sure,” she answered. “I know that I’m not going to tell her, if I do. It’ll have to be our secret.”

Honey raised a sceptical eyebrow. “You think we’ll be able to do that?”

“We’ll have to. You should have heard her, Hon. She was really upset about the idea.” She shook her head. “I don’t think there’ll be any secrets in what we got today. There might be secrets that we can find after we’ve seen that stuff, though.”

“You’re not going to run an investigation behind Di’s back, are you?” Honey’s eyes were wide. “Trixie! That would be… awful!”

Her friend shrugged. “I might. We’ll see what turns up in that lot first, though. Maybe there’ll be something exciting in there after all.”

A couple of hours later, the two had covered the clubhouse in boxes and had begun sorting through their contents on the conference table. Their work was interrupted by Di’s entrance, in a state similar to that of her initial interview with Trixie.

“It’s happening, isn’t it?” Di asked, frowning at her friends. “You’ve already started finding terrible things.”

Trixie shook her head. “No, nothing terrible has turned up at all. We found some old family photographs and a few documents. They’re all perfectly respectable, by the way, though you’ve got at least one relative who seems to have had a sour disposition. A lot of the other stuff is ordinary household items which are completely non-scandalous. And so far there’s not the slightest hint of a skeleton in this closet.”

“You’re sure?” Di asked, her expression doubtful.

Trixie nodded. “We brought everything back with us. They wanted the whole lot out and so we brought it here. As soon as we’ve finished going through it, we’ll let you know, okay?”

“It’s fine, really,” Honey added. “We’ve already looked at the most promising boxes and none of them have revealed anything exciting. It’s just ordinary, old stuff, just like in any other attic.”

Diana let out a long, slow breath. “Okay. Thanks, both of you. I know I couldn’t have done this myself.”

“It’s our pleasure,” Honey answered, before Trixie could say anything. “We’re glad to be able to help.”

Di smiled at them and backed out through the door, as if afraid to look away from the piled-up belongings. The door closed and Trixie breathed a sigh of relief.

“I thought she was going to stay and talk,” she whispered, peeking through the window to make sure their friend had really gone. “What do you think of this?”

Honey took the photograph, which depicted a young man, and examined it. “He looks a little… odd,” she conceded. “Is there anything particular you wanted me to look at?”

Trixie pointed at the back. “It’s what it says that interests me – though, you’re right: he is odd-looking.”

On the reverse was written, in curly, feminine handwriting, the words, ‘To dear Dr. Wilson, with love and thanks from Jennifer and Lyle Greengage.’

“Wilson?” Honey asked. “Do you think it’s some kind of relative? But then, they’re called Greengage. What do you think it means?”

Trixie shrugged. “I’d guess that Dr. Wilson is the relative, but you’ve got me why someone would send him a photo like this. It doesn’t even seem to be of the people who sent it, since there’s two of them and only one man in the photo – or, boy, really. I’d guess he can’t be more than seventeen or eighteen. It’s weird.”

They set it aside and went back to their work. The next exciting object was unearthed by Honey.

“I think I might know who Dr. Wilson was,” she exclaimed. “Look at this newspaper cutting. I think it’s Di’s mother’s birth announcement and, in that case, it means that her father was Dr. Wilson.”

Trixie peered over her shoulder to read the cutting, then began poking through the other papers in front of Honey. Soon, she had found a few more things with Dr. Wilson, or Dr. and Mrs. Wilson, on them and the hypothesis seemed confirmed.

“I’ll call Di’s mother and check,” Trixie decided. “I wonder what kind of doctor he was?”

They returned to their task, but nothing further of much interest came to light. At the end of the day, they packed everything up and stacked it against the walls, out of the way. Honey heaved a weary sigh.

“It’s going to take a while to go through all this, I think.” She stepped out into the cool of evening and waited while Trixie locked the door. “I hope Di is happy with the result in the end, though. It will be worth it if we can give her some peace of mind.”

Trixie nodded, deep in thought. “There are a couple of things there that I’d like to follow up on. I’ll give you a call, Hon, when I’ve made some plans.”

Honey crinkled her nose. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that, but okay.”

Almost a week later, on Friday evening, the two young women packed overnight bags and drove to the same area where Di’s mother had once lived. Trixie had, as promised, spoken to Di’s mother and confirmed that her father was in fact a doctor. She had also found out the name and address of the hospital where he had practised, along with several other details of his life. They arrived in town as the light was fading and had soon located the site.

“This is the place.” Trixie pointed to a derelict building, surrounded by long grass and overgrown bushes. “It was a mental hospital, back then, and he was a psychiatrist.”

“It’s creepy,” Honey observed with a shiver. “What are we doing here?”

Trixie shrugged. “I was curious. I thought it would be interesting to see where the tragedy occurred.”

Her friend shivered once more. “Tragedy? What tragedy?”

With a slight look of guilt, Trixie pulled out a small sheaf of papers from the pocket in her door of the car. She handed it over. “One day, when he was working in this hospital, Di’s grandfather was attacked by a patient and suffered a head injury. He never worked again.” She paused. “Of course, he didn’t live all that long afterwards, only a couple of years. I guess he shouldn’t have been driving, after what had happened to him. He apparently had some kind of a fit at the wheel and ran into a brick wall. He and his wife both died in the accident, which left Di’s mother an orphan, of course.”

“And you know this, how?” Honey asked.

Trixie gave a wry smile. “You didn’t think I’d come back here without doing some preliminary investigation, did you? I needed to know what I might find.”

“You could have told me,” Honey complained, though without rancour.

Her friend shrugged. “I thought it might be good to have an unbiased witness, so I wouldn’t get too carried away with anything I found.”

“You just like being mysterious,” Honey countered.

Trixie grinned. “That, too.”

“So, we’ve seen the creepy building, now. Can we go?”

“For now. We’re going to come back here later, though.”

Honey shook her head. “No way am I coming back here in the dark. Not for anything you can offer me. I’ll be staying safely in our motel room.”

Trixie shook her head. “I didn’t mean in the dark. At least, not completely. It will be light when we go in.”

“Meaning?”

After a pause, Trixie bit her lip. “We’re coming back here at first light. I’ve got it all arranged. Someone who knows the place is going to show us around.”

“Illegally? Trixie! We can’t do that! I won’t do that.”

“I’m not sure it’s really illegal. It might be bending the law just a little, but it’s not really all that wrong, really. We don’t have to break and enter and we won’t do any damage. I’m sure it will be okay.”

Honey shook her head. “It’s still wrong, even if we don’t hurt anything. I’m not going.”

“Fine,” her friend answered. “I’ll go by myself.”

Honey looked long and hard at her friend, then glanced back at the old building. “Okay, Trixie. You win. I’m not about to let you go by yourself.”

Trixie grinned. “Thanks, Hon. I know you won’t regret this.”

Honey raised an eyebrow. “Really? I’m not so sure.”

Continue to part 2.

Author’s notes: A big thank you to Mary N. for editing. Your help and encouragement are very much appreciated!

From my research on the topic, I understand that buildings that once housed mental hospitals are popular targets for urban explorers. I have only ever been in one such building (legally, of course!) but if they all have such a creepy feel to them, I can see why they could become derelict.

The first part of this story was posted in celebration of my tenth (can you believe it? tenth) Jixaversary. I would like to thank the entire Jix community, both past and present, for making it such a great place to be!

Back to Dark Places