The Supernatural Enhancements Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Edgar Cantero

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

  www.doubleday.com

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Music Sales Limited for permission to reprint an excerpt from “John, I Love You,” words and music by Sinéad O’Connor, copyright © 1994 by Nettwerk One Music Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by permission of Music Sales Limited.

  Selected art created by Ocabrita and Jordi March

  Book design by Pei Loi Koay

  Jacket art and design by Michael J. Windsor

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Cantero, Edgar, 1981–

  The supernatural enhancements : a novel / Edgar Cantero. —First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-385-53815-2 (alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-0-385-53816-9 (eBook)

  1. Heirs—Fiction. I. Title.

  PQ6653.A5775S97 2014

  863’.7—dc23

  2013027730

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part I

  November 4, 1995

  November 5

  November 6

  November 7

  November 8

  November 9

  November 10

  November 11

  November 19

  November 20

  November 20 (Evening)

  November 21

  November 22

  November 23

  November 24

  November 25

  Part II

  December 3

  December 4

  December 5

  December 6

  December 7

  December 8

  December 9

  Part III

  December 21

  The Morning After

  Epilogue

  January

  About the Author

  The following collection of documents details the events that occurred at Axton House, 1 Axton Road, Point Bless, Virginia, during the months of November and December of 1995.

  The footnotes are the editor’s only contribution. The first page is missing.

  […] Axton House and all of its contents.” I could hardly conceive a harsher interruption to my lifestyle than that of the Thomas Jefferson stamps, the news of my deceased relative, and his posthumous gift, which I finally accepted as an amendment for his failure to produce any Christmas presents for twenty-three years. Several long-distance calls and a few faxes contributed to knock down my incredulity, which gave way in the end only because the name of Wells was not completely unfamiliar to Aunt Liza, who in an exercise of reconstructive genealogy established that Wells was the surname of the family into which my great-great-grandmother’s sister had married before emigrating to the States in the 1890s. Therefore, my having a distant cousin in Virginia (until last September, that is) was fairly plausible. His being rich, though, I found unlikely. And his awareness of my existence was positively unreal. So much, indeed, that what little I collected about Ambrose Wells’ odd habits, his furtive behavior, and the rumors surrounding whatever he used to hide in his solitary manor in Virginia seemed hardly extraordinary in the context of this sudden turn toward the interesting that things had taken. I did not hesitate to quit my courses and leave my apartment, feeling as detached from everything as only at twenty-three one feels, when all is temporary and settling down means to stagnate, and flew to America with no big picture and no other company than a friend whose fondness of me seemed the only thing worth preserving. On November the second, we landed in Richmond. On the third, we met the lawyer, Glew. On the fourth, he’s driving us in his Mercedes to our new home.

  Niamh, sitting in front, snatches the notebook out of my hands, reads the paragraph above, represses a laugh, then contributes from her own pencil:

  Worst beginning ever written.

  And then she nives. This is a verb I made up to signify a facial expression she often summons—a tiny tight-lipped smile held through a long, amused stare. It will be a frequent word in these pages.

  She’s probably right. But I’ve noticed that all manuscripts are bad; any book randomly opened in a friend’s house is good; the same book in a bookstore is bad. When this story is completed, that beginning will turn better.

  November 4, 1995

  A.’S DIARY

  * * *

  Above us lies suspended a gold-trimmed cloud the size of one of the big states (say, Arizona), threatening to plummet over Virginia. The low sun beneath casts its rays along the dirt road we travel, exalting the yellows and oranges, turning aluminum into gold and the skin on Niamh’s arm into apricot. Crop fields dash across her irises as she feasts on the continent. She’s going to be difficult not to fall in love with.

  The road goes on from Point Bless in a westward direction for miles.

  “How are we supposed to come and go when we’re on our own?” I ask.

  “Just stay on the good road,” Glew replies. “Don’t worry; in your car it’s a ten-minute ride.”

  “We have a car?”

  “Two, actually. Your cousin’s—an Audi—and a Daewoo he bought for the butler.”

  “We have a butler!”

  “Strückner. He is closer to a housekeeper, actually. There used to be other servants, but reading your cousin’s will to the letter, ‘the house and all of its contents,’ it was interpreted that only Strückner came in the package, for he is the only one to live there. Anyway, I am not sure you should rely on his assistance.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He is missing. Left in mid-October without a word. I’ve been trying to contact him since.”

  Niamh scribbles on her notepad and shows me: The butler did it. I smirk. Glew hasn’t read it, but he guesses something.

  “I suppose he needed some vacation,” he says apologetically. “He seemed fairly upset. After all, he found the bodies.”

  “Bodies? I thought Ambrose Wells committed suicide all alone.”

  “He did. In the same fashion as his father, thirty years ago.”

  About three miles from the center of Point Bless, the car takes a right turn down the stem of a T; then we travel along a gravel driveway that shoves the house deep into the estate, hiding it from the main road. The roadside crop fields have been replaced by untamed woods that might once have been gardens. But then the trees halt well before the building, respecting the vast empty court at whose center sits Axton House.

  The house must have looked Georgian on the blueprint, three stories high, with a mansard roof. From the front yard, however, it shows none of the comforting Greek sense of proportion. It had a rather somber effect upon us, with its boasting grandeur and excessive verticality. Doors and windows and windowpanes consistently push the golden ratio a little further, stretching higher and narrower. The stone skin of the building seems able to adopt the hue that best fits the landscape. It looked dirty gold when we first saw it. Only the hedge maze beyond the conservatory dares to green the place. The estate teemed with the voices of birds and trees.

  Two sets of French
windows open on each side of the front door onto the November-carpeted platform. Three windows on the second floor stand on each side of the protruding spine that rises from the portico. On the third floor the front wall recedes, yielding room for two balconies. The attic has only two dormers, and the spine in the middle peaks in a mansard, then rises a little farther, then ends for good in a sort of belfry. Inside this stands what must be a weathercock, though it more closely resembles a sailor’s sextant. According to Glew, it is both a weathercock and a calendar: When its shadow licks the foot of a certain oak in the front line of the woods, it is signaling the winter solstice. The design was first patented by Benjamin Franklin.

  LETTER

  * * *

  Axton House

  1 Axton Rd.

  Point Bless, VA 26969

  Dear Aunt Liza,

  I’m aware that the occasion calls for filling several pages of this luxurious letter paper found in Mr. Ambrose Wells’ desk with a thorough description of Axton House.

  Unfortunately, I can’t give you that. I am indeed writing from Axton House, about to turn in for the very first night; Niamh and I share a bed big enough for each of us to throw an orgy without her guests disturbing mine. Glew gave us a tour around the house this evening, but we haven’t really seen it. Not in the way you meant that day, when you said that a passenger on a ship doesn’t see the ropes the way a sailor sees them. Having seen the house would mean to be able to go around it and predict which room awaits behind each double door. Having seen the house would mean to understand the use of each room and each piece of furniture. We haven’t seen the house. We have merely perceived a circular sequence of empty halls, large windows, fireplaces, chandeliers, spiderwebs, canopies, and a cluttered desk on every floor.

  I believe I have caught some patterns, though—such as that the whole house seems to revolve around the library on the second floor, its central and largest area. I mention this, perhaps, because it suits your notion of the Wells as people who lived and died for their studies.

  Other features (such as the great number of long galleries whose only purpose seems to be the exhibition of curtains) bewilder me.

  I don’t think I’d be able to find any of those rooms right now if my life depended on it. In fact, I wouldn’t dare go to sleep had Niamh not laid a trail of chickpeas to the nearest bathroom.

  No trace of ghosts so far, but we’ll stay alert.

  Tomorrow morning I plan to start socializing around. We also have to find the missing butler, Strückner. Niamh and I agree it’s not a good name for a butler.

  We wish you were here, but purely out of courtesy; truth is we’re managing quite well. Niamh says she’d like a dog. Can we?

  Kisses,

  A.

  NIAMH’S NOTEPAD

  * * *

  —What’s the most formal clothing you brought?

  —Green summer dress.

  —Good. We’re going to church tomorrow. I guess you have no problem with that.

  —I think they Baptists here, but I’ll live with it.1

  —Puritan.

  —I have a bad feeling about the butler.

  —Me too.

  —But he wasn’t in the will, so he free of suspicion?

  —I guess so, but something doesn’t fit. I don’t know what kind of bonds people have with their servants, but if you lived with somebody for fifty years and left him nothing, you probably didn’t like him that much, and sympathy tends to be reciprocal. So why is the butler so deeply affected?

  * * *

  1 Niamh often excludes the verb to be in writing. Also, she ends sentences with a question mark whenever she expects feedback. Consider it an abbreviated tag question.

  NOVEMBER 5

  A.’S DIARY

  * * *

  Despite my reluctance to borrow any clothes from Ambrose Wells’ wardrobe, which fell out of fashion together with pocket watches and airships, we succeeded in getting noticed in church. I was the guy disguised as a history professor from midcentury Oxford (with sneakers), and Niamh was the kid with her hair hoisted in a loose ponytail like an explosion of blue-violet ribbons, and a green dress too short for both the season and the occasion. I noticed some curious looks during the service, and on our way out, the human flow lingered in too small groups, gossiping in unnecessarily low voices. Niamh greeted them all with dazzling smiles and had even the most uptight judges eating out of her hand.

  Nobody tried an approach in church, but later in the day we received three visits.

  The first of them were the Brodies, at about five o’clock. Their farm is visible to the south from the higher windows. They’re our closest neighbors; in fact, their land used to belong to the Wells. Actually, from what I understood, Mrs. Brodie’s family worked that land before the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, but I didn’t dare to confirm that for fear of having misheard and sounding rude. Truth is I felt pretty lost during our introduction: She had a very tough accent. Anyway, whatever the relation between Brodies and Wells was in the past, I gather it was a pretty warm one in Ambrose’s times, and Mrs. Brodie meant to keep that friendship alive.

  Mr. Brodie was clearly not so keen on the welcome visit, but he did open up when, after my asking Niamh for drinks and her returning from the kitchen with half a bottle of 7UP, he pointed out that Ambrose used to keep some bourbon in his office.

  He meant the first-floor office, the one used for “public” business—one of the rooms I don’t like. The perfectly hexahedral anteroom, with its gondola chairs in every corner and double doors on every wall, is just too symmetrical, and the office’s dark paneling and grumpy-looking books remind me of a school principal’s den. Brodie didn’t seem intimidated, though; he just walked straight toward the American history volumes displayed on the back shelves to impress visitors and pulled out Champfrey’s Rise and Fall of the South. The panel on his left opened with a click, and from the secret compartment he produced a bottle of fourteen-year-old Wild Turkey. He said Ambrose revealed it to him the day they sealed the lease for the orange grove. I said I ought to invite him more often, just in case the house held any more secrets. He solemnly replied, “It does.”

  (Of course, he doesn’t know them, but his faith is a good enough hint. I know how deeply this man can believe in what he hasn’t seen. I saw him in church.)

  As he closed the panel, I noticed an envelope on Ambrose’s desk. I wonder how I failed to see it before, because then and there it so loudly announced itself that I would have banged my head on a wall for missing it, had someone else not found it and opened it already. I have the envelope in front of me now, empty. The outside reads “Aeschylus.”

  I just slipped it under a pile of papers then and postponed the thinking—it would have been discourteous to leave the women alone too long, even though Mrs. Brodie seemed the kind able to chat for hours before realizing that her interlocutor is mute.

  She had just found out when we joined them in the music room (long hall across the foyer with a piano, hi-fi, and TV). We arrived in time for her delivery of the well-known line, “But you do hear me, don’t you?” in a very loud voice, carefully shaping each phoneme (a considerate effort on her behalf—see accent issue), and I had a new chance to see Niamh’s nod and silent laugh before I covered the customary explanations—that she’s mute, not deaf-mute; that it’s an acquired condition; that her English is actually better than mine, for she’s from Dublin, whereas I only took it up in high school, reading classics; that she communicates through mime, mouthing, or writing, plus a whistle code and a knock code; that she carries a notepad and pencil with her at all times, and she spends the evenings filling the gaps between her own lines with the answers she got, thus recording long dialogues by doing just fifty percent extra work, and keeping a complete log of every significant conversation she’s had across every notepad she’s ever used, each page notated for where the conversation took place, when, and with whom; and that they would never have a quieter neighbor.


  That last thing I said on purpose, and it caused an awkward silence. Mrs. Brodie tiptoed around the subject. I chose to feed her some of the existing rumors: half lies in exchange for half truths. I listed Ambrose’s odd habits, the noises, the lights, the rites held in the house, and even mentioned the ghosts en passant. Mr. Brodie quickly said, “The noises bit is not true.”

  His wife made a heartfelt apology for Ambrose Wells, claiming that “people in town” might have considered him a bit of a hermit, but she would often stand up for him, pointing out that his door was always open and he had been very generous to them. In her words, “He had learned from his father’s mistakes.” She regretted this phrasing a second later, on remembering Ambrose’s end.

  I availed myself of the opportunity to ask about John, Ambrose’s father. Her words:

  “John was an even more obsessive scholar. He lived for his studies.”

  “And for his son,” Mr. Brodie added. “But that was a close second.”

  I asked about the nature of those studies. They hesitated. Then they mentioned some scattered disciplines: history, geography … anthropology? Mrs. Brodie remarked that Ambrose used to go on long trips. “He’s been to Asia and Africa. He quit traveling when his rheumatism got worse.”

  “The father was interested in math too,” said her husband, as if having spotted an incongruity. “He was a cryptographer in World War Two.”

  I brought up the odd habits and rites again. Again they looked embarrassed. Again Mrs. Brodie vindicated one’s right to do whatever they please at home, as long as it doesn’t disturb the peace of the community. Once she’d run out of fuel, I cued her: “But … ?”

  She gave way at last, much to her husband’s contrariety:

  “The Wells used to hold some reunions. In December. I guess there would be nothing weird about it, but it’s because they had so few visits during the year that suddenly so many cars parked out front called people’s attention. Some would lose their way and reach our farm, and we’d give them directions. They were always men, traveling alone. They used to stay for two or three days.”