Straub, Peter - Mr. X by Straub Peter

Author:Straub, Peter [Straub, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307757630
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1999-07-21T04:00:00+00:00

67

Sixty years ago, the overgrown field had been a meadow, the stark remains at the edge of the wood a tall stone house with dormers and a portico. I was trying to control the disquiet brought on by the feeling that if I walked into the woods about thirty feet to the right of the ruined house, I would find a lightning-blasted oak.

“Has anyone ever told you about the old Dunstan place?”

“After his brother was killed, Sylvan imported the stones from England and had it rebuilt.”

Hatch raised his eyebrows. “England? It was Providence, Rhode Island. That’s why this street is named New Providence Road. I know more about your family than you do.”

“That wouldn’t be hard to do,” I said, thinking that there were things about the Dunstans Stewart Hatch would never know or guess.

“Do you know who originally built the place?”

“Who was Frank Lloyd Wright?” I said. “Sorry, Alex, I hit the buzzer by accident.” My ears were ringing, and my stomach was queasy.

“A man named Omar Dunstan. He turned up in Providence in the 1750s with a bunch of West Indian servants and a lot of money. Dunstan called himself an importer and shipowner, but none of his ships ever docked in Providence. He made frequent trips to South Carolina, Virginia, and New Orleans. What do you think he was importing?”

“What are the blues?”

“Human beings. His men bought or captured slaves in West Africa and the Caribbean and sold them in the Southern colonies. Dunstan wasn’t married, but he produced three or four children who almost never left the house. The neighbors heard strange noises and saw peculiar lights in the windows. There were rumors about witchcraft and black magic. Finally, a party of citizens raided the house with the intention of driving the family out of town. They were too late. The place was empty.”

I had to sit down, and I parked myself on the hood of the Mercedes.

“The place stood empty for decades. Its reputation was so bad that the city couldn’t find anyone willing to tear it down. People called it ‘the Shunned House.’ In the end, they built a fence around it and let it crumble for the next hundred years.”

The Shunned House? It rang a bell too distant to be identified. Stewart Hatch’s voice wavered like a bad radio signal before the emanations coming from the ruin.

“During the Civil War, two brothers named Dunstan escaped from the stockade, where they were being held for corpse robbing. In 1874, Omar and Sylvan Dunstan turned up in Edgerton and moved into the Brazen Head. Before long, they had enough money to set up in business, Omar as a pawnbroker and Sylvan as a moneylender. These were Reconstruction days, remember. Ten years later, they had taken over the bank and were living out in the boonies on Cherry Street. When floods bankrupted people, they foreclosed and Sylvan bought their properties for next to nothing. I always thought it was kind of strange that Omar was the one who got killed, because people here really hated Sylvan.

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