The Mansion Read online

  “You won’t be able to see Whiskey Run from the air. They approach head-on, so it’s just woods until we’re on the ground. And then you know the drill, another fifteen miles from town to the mansion,” Shawn said. “Want me to have them take a loop around so you can get the lay of the land from on high? Whiskey Run and Eagle Mansion both look pretty spectacular from the air.”

  Billy wanted to say yes. He wanted to ask Shawn to have the pilots pull up and gain air, to swing around in a wide circle so he could see the whole of the small town of Whiskey Run, so he could see the road that he knew led out of town and onto Shawn’s property, so he could see this rebuilt version of Eagle Mansion as it looked from thousands of feet above the ground. The urge was almost irresistible, because it wasn’t just an urge to survey the area from the air. No, the urge to stay in flight was something else, something greater. What Billy really wanted to do was get down on his knees and beg Shawn to order the pilots to turn around, to fly him back to Baltimore so he could get on another plane and head back to Seattle and Emily and his shitty job as a custodian at a health club. He’d do it. He’d go back to working the graveyard shift, wiping down exercise bikes and treadmills, mopping rubber mats with water and pine-scented disinfectant, cleaning mirrors with towels that squeaked against the glass. He wouldn’t complain about hustling to get home, dead tired but needing to get the car back to Emily so she could go to her job. They’d finally just bite the bullet and declare bankruptcy, walk away from the credit cards and give it a fresh start. Good lord, he’d do all that if only it meant not having to land in this plane and go down those steps, to get into a car and drive back to that place where he’d spent so much time in a cabin working on an idea that had been taken from him.

  He was shaken with a sudden, inexorable terror of what would come when he walked through the front door of this new, rebuilt Eagle Mansion. He didn’t know what it would be, but it was something he should be scared of. The earth blistering and opening. The dead rising from their graves and seeking vengeance. Foul sewers of blood and bile. Things that go bump in the night. Creepy, crawly claws and teeth that come out from under the bed. Oh, Jesus, Billy could feel himself starting to sweat. All those things were down there, just waiting for him, untold horrors seething and waiting, waiting, waiting.

  “They’ll circle around if I tell them to. One of the joys of a private jet,” Shawn said.

  The pants-pissing fear dissipated as quickly as it had come upon him, and Billy shook his head. “No,” he said. He didn’t need Shawn to do him any favors. “I’m good.”

  They were on the ground minutes later.

  “The airport is still kind of a work in progress,” Shawn said. “The buildings are coming next summer. We could have just used the Cortaca airport, but the extra drive would have been a pain in the ass. I built the airstrip long enough so that we can land pretty much any kind of jet, and we’ve used it to bring in things for construction that have been too time-sensitive to have trucked in, but once we’re done with the house and grounds, we’ll make the facilities here more permanent. More appropriate for the kinds of people who will be using it. The main building will have an espresso bar and a luxury lounge, as well as facilities for the pilots and aircrews.”

  The pilot had taxied to the end of the tarmac, close up to a single trailer. There was a small hangar that Shawn said could fit only one jet at a time, but that would be replaced by a larger, sturdier one that would be able to handle the snows with ease and could fit as many as ten planes at a time. “I’m going to use the main part of Eagle Mansion like an executive retreat, for invitation-only conferences. I’m going to host real brainstorming meetings. You know, the sort of open think that will help me develop the next hundred-billion-dollar idea. Like a TED conference, but smarter and smaller. Sixty guest rooms plus more rooms for support staff. Lock them in for a weekend and fire up the neurons. Totally handpicked: I don’t care what your net worth is; if you can blow my mind, you’re in.”

  Billy just nodded. He couldn’t help but notice that there seemed to be a lot of workers but not a lot of work. A dude on a riding mower, who resumed cutting grass as soon as the jet had rolled to a stop. A man standing outside the trailer. Two guys inside a fuel truck, which was next to an unmanned deicer. It was only September. Even this far north, they wouldn’t need the deicer for at least another month. In the parking lot, a woman stood by a huge, white SUV, waiting to open the door. Another SUV, this one smaller and black, was parked and running behind the white one. The parking lot itself held a couple of pickup trucks, a hatchback, and on the far end, a huge snowplow. Shawn saw him looking at the snowplow.

  “Winter here is a bitch.”

  Billy remembered. How bad had those two winters after college been? Snow drifting up high enough on the mansion to look like it was spilling out of the broken windows on the second floor. And when a cold spell came, it was something mean and burning in that cabin. The chill worming itself through any chinks, a constant presence in the lives of the men as they tried to work at their computers. He remembered, particularly during that second winter, the jealousy of sleeping alone while Shawn shared his blankets with Emily.

  “You always used to say the weather wasn’t so bad. That it was worse when you were a kid.”

  Shawn looked at him. “When I was little, there was one winter where it started snowing in the morning, and it was blowing so bad that instead of sending us home, they kept everybody at school. Three days. It was three days before the snow died down enough for parents to come and pick us up. Except there was one kid, Tiffany Bergen, and her dad didn’t come to pick her up once the snow stopped. He’d tried to come and get her that first day, at the end of school. They only lived a quarter mile from the school, and he walked, but in the blowing snow, he got lost. They didn’t find his body until spring.” He shook his head. “God, living in Syracuse was so much easier. You’re probably right. It would have made a lot more sense to build this by Cortaca. Or Baltimore. Or anywhere but here.”

  Shawn introduced him to the woman by the SUV, but Billy didn’t catch her name. He was surprised to see all four of the bodyguards get into the black SUV and Shawn get into the driver’s seat of the white SUV.

  “You’re driving?” Billy said, walking around to get in the front passenger seat. Shawn grinned at him.

  “Ah, I’m not that pampered. I’ve still got to wipe my own ass when I take a shit.”

  But as he said it, he rolled down the window so he could take a piece of fresh fruit from a white porcelain bowl the woman was holding up, and Billy noticed that Shawn didn’t have to adjust his seat or the rearview mirror, that the car was already running—waiting for them with the interior thermostat set at seventy degrees, just enough to cut the slight September stickiness of the air outside—and that there were water bottles in the cup holders, both of them just starting to show condensation, their labels wet from being taken out of a cooler of ice. Not that there was anything as unseemly as a cooler of ice anywhere in evidence. It was so seamless that if Shawn hadn’t said anything, Billy might not have thought twice. There was an entire hidden ecosystem here, Billy thought, existing entirely for the pleasure of Mr. Eagle.

  “I like driving while I’m up here. I don’t get a chance to drive very often and it’s nice to get behind the wheel. The board of directors doesn’t like me to drive myself. I may have sort of gotten a few speeding tickets,” he said, a grin quick to his face. “Anyway, we resurfaced the old road. I suppose we could have bulldozed a new one in a straight line, cut the drive to more like ten minutes, but at least for now, it’s still the same thirty minutes from here to Eagle Mansion. There’s something appealing about the rustic part of it. I mean, I thought about having the airstrip put in closer to the mansion, too, but I want it to feel really remote, for there to be that sense of nature and privacy that you just can’t get if you’re having jets flying in that close. Not like there’s exactly going to be a ton of air traffic into Whiskey Run, but this way th
ere’s a liminal zone, a way of adjusting to going from one world to another, so you can really be ready to enter this new space I’m creating. Really, how often can you have things exactly the way you want?”

  Billy looked out his window as they passed through the lone strip of town. A liminal zone. What a prick. And how often can you have things exactly the way you want? Was he serious? If you were Shawn Eagle, rich enough that your net worth jumped or dropped billions on any given day depending on the markets, you could have things exactly the way you wanted. Every. Single. Time.

  Whiskey Run was a chute of buildings running in a straight line. That was still the same, but otherwise, it was like landing in a different universe. Billy remembered splintered wood and empty storefronts, a few ugly brick buildings that were from the 1960s, but more buildings that looked like they’d been built just before or just after the First World War, the same time as Eagle Mansion, and left as much alone as Eagle Mansion had been. But now?

  “Jesus. What did you do? I mean, the town looks all ‘old-timey’ and shit, but it’s brand-new at the same time. It’s like Whiskey Run was built a hundred years ago and then stored in a hermetically sealed box. I don’t think this is the right word, but it’s like the town is pristine.”

  “Well, technically, it is almost brand-new. There are a few houses that we’re behind on, and several more buildings that we’re going to break ground on next spring. Basically, I sort of own the whole town now. Or, most of it. There are a couple of holdouts who won’t sell. One of the bar owners absolutely refuses to do business, even though I offered to pay for a new building flat out, no strings attached, no lease, no rent. Just a brand-new building for his bar. And there are a few homeowners who are just old and cranky. Like the airport, it’s on the punch list. You remember what it was like, though.”

  A statement, not a question, Billy thought. Shawn was used to people accepting what he said as the gospel truth.

  “What the hell was Whiskey Run? Three bars that were falling in on themselves and that was about it, right? Well, not much changed in the last decade. We had to demolish the school because it was in such bad shape. I mean, seriously, New York State closed it a couple of years before I came back because it was a safety hazard. Kids were being bussed out of the county.” He shook his head. “I have zero fond memories of that school, and that’s not even counting the three-day blizzard. The building was a dump back when I was a kid. So, yeah, this whole project has been an absolute money pit, of course, but it’s worth it. We were able to renovate maybe one out of every five of the standing buildings, but it was cheaper and easier just to bulldoze the shit out of most of the town and start fresh.”

  “How many people live here now?”

  “About seven hundred. More or less the same as when we were here.”

  “And nobody complained?”

  Shawn looked at him like he was crazy. “There’s always one or two, but are you kidding? Anybody who wants a job has one, and working for me is a hell of a lot better than whatever they were doing before. Full-time pay for mostly part-time work, subsidized housing, full benefits. And even if you aren’t an employee, just by living in Whiskey Run, your kids get full tuition at the college of their choice. If they don’t go to college, we’ll pay for job training. We had to build a medical clinic to provide benefits for employees, but it’s open to the whole community, free of charge, for basic health and dental. There are two registered nurses and a doctor; a dentist and dental hygienist come in twice a week, and an optometrist once a week. Whiskey Run is a paradise. Why would people complain? They lived in hell and I built them heaven.”

  And, Billy thought, did that make Shawn a god?

  Shawn pointed out the window at a row of shops and restaurants, talking as they drove by. There was a gas station on the end closest to the airport, a small grocery store, and a pizza place that Billy thought he remembered. Next to the pizza place was a Thai restaurant that was definitely new, a hardware store, two pubs, the medical clinic, a handful of boutique stores selling candy or clothes or art. There was a coffee shop, and an Eagle Technology Store with the newest phones and tablets on display in the window, incongruous in the vintage-looking building. At the far end, there was a small inn—“it gives me a place to send the bodyguards and other staff if I don’t want them hanging out at Eagle Mansion”—and then a large, modern building that was both the Whiskey Run Consolidated School and the Whiskey Run Community and Athletic Center.

  “The cook at the Thai place used to have a restaurant in New York City that I loved; his kids are in college and he liked the idea of not having to worry about making a profit, so I brought him here. He’s got a house and a salary and everything, and I’m paying tuition for his kids. Three kids, all of them at private colleges. I mean, he makes a killer pad see ew, but still . . . Actually, Blinker’s”—the pizza place—“does break even, and the brew pub might even make a profit if you don’t count construction costs. With everything else it would be quicker to just burn my money. But you know, whatever. I want Whiskey Run to be a kind of sanctuary. It should be a place I can come to without worrying. Can you imagine how dreary it would have been to hop off my jet and then drive past those run-down houses and shuttered buildings on the way to Eagle Mansion? The idea was to keep the feel of the old town, stay true to the architecture, but make it seem like the kind of cute resort town that my guests want to visit. Who is going to fly up here if you can’t get a decent cup of coffee in town, or replace your phone if you lose it? Plus, this is the first place you see, before you come out to Eagle Mansion. I wanted it to send a certain message.”

  And there it was, Billy thought. The message. Heaven and hell. Shawn wasn’t just a tech titan. He really did believe that he was the closest thing to a modern god. With enough money you could buy an entire town and turn it into whatever you wanted. In this case, what Shawn Eagle wanted was a fantasyland of what vacation should be.

  The road kept going, leaving the town behind and settling into the woods. “You remember how bad the road was when we lived out here? Well, it had gotten way, way worse. Barely drivable. To call it a service road would be like calling a hooker a girl with a little experience.”

  “Yeah. When Emily came here with Beth and Rothko they ended up busting one of their shocks,” Billy said, but it was hard to imagine with the way the road was now: the blacktop new and richly dark, the painted yellow line thick and vibrant, even if it followed the same path that it had followed for years. The trees on the side of the road were tall and needled, lush and green at the top, but even from the moving car, Billy could see bare rocks and deadfall on the ground, the undergrowth stalled by the way the trees blocked the sun. It wasn’t so hilly that it was particularly noticeable, but each rise was followed by a shorter dip, so the net effect was that by the time they’d gone a few miles, when they crested a hill and the road twisted just perfectly, Billy could turn around and see Whiskey Run in the open valley behind them. He’d forgotten how crazy and wonderful this drive was. The road coiled like two snakes mating in a paper sack on a roller coaster. No matter how many times he’d driven it during the time he was working at the cabin, he was always surprised by the way things could seem so close and still be miles of driving away. If you blazed the road in a straight line, it would be maybe five miles of quick driving instead of fifteen at the pace of a Sunday stroll.

  “Look,” Shawn said, startling Billy out of his contemplation, “I know I’m probably pushing some buttons for you, but I really want you to take this gig. If we can make Nellie into what she’s supposed to be? Shit. She could be amazing.” He turned so he could look right at Billy. His voice got serious. “Don’t you remember? There was a time when we would have done anything to make Nellie work. Anything. Everything.”

  Takata.

  Billy looked resolutely ahead. He couldn’t meet Shawn’s gaze. “Times change,” he said.

  “Not that much,” Shawn said. “Sure, a lot has changed since we were in that senior
seminar computing class, since we decamped from Cortaca to Whiskey Run to hole up in the old cabin, but a lot of things have stayed the same. We ended up settling on Eagle Logic because it’s what we could get to work, but you know as well as I do that Eagle Logic isn’t anything more than a personal assistant. Think about what it would mean in the marketplace to be offering Nellie with Eagle Technology hardware. All the things that people love about Eagle Logic, but way more advanced. On its own, that would be killer. But with Nellie, specifically? We’d be selling happiness. Buy Eagle Technology products and we’ll guarantee you won’t ever feel lonely again.”

  “Maybe it would help if you gave me a little more information about what the problem is with Nellie. Telling me there’s a ghost in the machine doesn’t actually give me any real information.”

  Shawn’s face twitched, a quick cycle of emotions that Billy couldn’t make out, before finally settling into something like a grimace. “She’s basically perfect in the lab. Back in Baltimore, the engineers have her humming like a race car, but out here, at the mansion? She’s buggy as all hell. That’s why you’re here, to figure out why the version of Nellie we’re running in Eagle Mansion is so screwed up. When I say there’s a ghost in the machine, that’s the best way I can think of to describe it. We can’t figure out what’s causing her to go haywire.”

  “Examples?”

  “You’ll see when you get there. Just wait,” Shawn said. “Just trust me, okay?”

  Billy turned on him. “Seriously? You’re going to say just trust you? Trust you? I’d like to rip your throat out. You know that, right? I’d piss in your skull if I could, you piece of crap. How about that? Because the last time you told me to ‘just trust me,’ you screwed me over in about every way that a guy can be screwed over.”