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Sylvia Nickels lives in Tennessee with her husband and a Chihuahua named Rosebud. Retired from the local telephone company, she is an officer in the local chapter of a national telephony retiree organization. Her fantasy and mystery stories have been published in print, Communities and Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine, and such ezines as Orchard Press Mysteries, Pine Tree Mysteries, Judas, and Writers Ezine. Her first mystery novel set in East Tennessee is under consideration by a publisher and she is working on a sequel. In her spare time, she creates and maintains websites, her own and one for her writing group, http://www.loststatewritersguild.bravehost.com, and edits a newsletter for another writing group.

I winced as I turned the door knob. I could have loved this exact quarter- scale replica of our log home. It would have been the perfect retreat for a few hours, to drink tea and read. I hadn’t cleaned and dusted the Little House for a while. Christmas was only a week away, and my husband, George, insisted that the Little House be decorated for the occasion.

He reached to pick up something from the floor and wrapped a fringed throw around me. Woven into its design was Christmas greenery and silver bells. “And this throw on the sofa.”

He ticked off what I needed to do. Candles on tables, poinsettias in the fireplace, stockings hung from the mantel and the Christmas tea set in the display cabinet. He’d laughed without mirth as he shoved me off the bed. My arm twisted as I fell and a sharp cry was forced from my lips when I landed on my right shoulder. “Now make my breakfast. I need to leave early for the conference.”

Pushing the door open, I picked up the bucket of water and a sharp stab of pain lanced through my bruised shoulder.

Bright sun shone through the pretty bow window and dust motes floated lazily in the air. In the fireplace the basket of pink silk geraniums were covered with black specks again, as I’d found them before. I couldn’t understand where these black specks came from. No fire had ever burned in the fireplace so George said. The white brick hearth was pristine the way I’d left it a few weeks ago. Was the place haunted by some spirit who thought chimneys should be used?

I moved the basket out of the fireplace and craned as best I could to see up the chimney. Just at the level of the mantel the back jutted out several inches and blocked my view. I reached my left arm up to feel along the rough stones. My fingers just brushed something that had the feel of paper. I couldn’t get hold of it. Looking around for something to extend my reach I saw the fireplace shovel in the stand with the poker and brush. I grabbed it and reached again. After a moment or two of scrabbling in vain, something slid over the edge and plopped into the fireplace. A package wrapped in heavy kraft paper and tied with black string. The whole thing was also blackened with soot. As were my hands, I noticed. Obviously at some point fires had burned in the fireplace.

Time was passing and I had to get my work done, but I untied the string and pulled the paper away from a small brown book, like a diary. On the inside of the front cover was a name - Joanna Clark. George’s first wife! First and perfect wife. He was constantly comparing me to her.

“You’re a clod, Ellie, falling over your own feet. You’ll never measure up to Joanna.” When he’d just hit me in the face with his fist, knocking me down.

If ever a woman walked on water, it must have been Joanna. But why had she hidden the book in the chimney throat? I looked at the first page. It and the following pages were covered with small, neat handwriting. I began to read.

“He beat me so bad today, I can hardly walk. He says women are weak, only good for cooking, cleaning, and meeting a man’s needs in the bedroom. I found this little book in some trash he was throwing out. I’m using it as a diary, hidden here in the Little House in hopes that someday I’ll find the courage to leave and go to the police. A diary will help to verify that I’m telling the truth, though I know they won’t want to believe me. He is a big supporter of ‘the boys in blue’ and always contributes to their causes.”

Astonished, I flipped through the pages. More of the same. I sat on the hearth and leaned against the smoothly mortared fieldstones. I wasn’t a bad wife. The weight of guilt for my shortcomings that I’d carried from the day I married George lifted from my shoulders. George lied. Joanna hadn’t been his ‘perfect wife.’ Maybe she wasn’t dead either, killed in a tragic accident. But where was she? Had she found the courage to leave and go to the police? George had worked as a financial consultant for years, with a big salary and bonuses. Surely if he’d been accused of spousal abuse the firm would have fired him.

I noticed something was sticking out from the back edge of the book. It felt like thin cardboard. No, photographs. The first one was a wide angle of the room I was in. A dark rectangle near the far corner looked like a hole in the floor. The area rug lay in an uneven pile beside it. The photographer had apparently been standing right above the hole when the next one was taken. I gasped, as bile rose in my throat and I almost vomited. A body lay in the hole, partly covered with some kind of material, long blonde hair, face partially decomposed. Joanna? No, she’d had beautiful auburn hair. I’d seen a picture of the two of them George kept in a dresser drawer. Who?

I flipped through the book. Two-thirds of the way through the writing ended. And some cash was tucked between the pages. Two fives and a one dollar bill, folded together. I went back a dozen or so pages.

“I came in to clean and to put up the flag and red, white, and blue bunting George insists on for the Little House. A loud creak sounded from one of the floor boards when I stepped it as I swept. I pulled the rug back and caught a whiff of something rotten. I thought maybe a rat had found a way underneath the house and died. When I stepped on one end of the creaking board the other end rose slightly. I pulled it all the way up and the odor was worse. A couple more boards came up the same way, and I very nearly passed out.

“A dead woman with long blonde hair lay in a hole about two feet deep. She was wrapped in a sheet and I could see a faint line of hearts running along its edge. A Valentine card was beside her head. She was covered in some white stuff and I noticed a chemical odor mixed with the rotten smell. Then it hit me. The beautiful, perfect wife. George was always telling me I could never be as good or lovely as Lydia. He’d lied to me. She hadn’t been killed on the street, an innocent bystander to a robbery.

“I should have called the police. But I was so overcome with fear I couldn’t think. George would be home any minute. He never entered the Little House, but if he came to the door, saw me and what I’d found, he’d kill me, too. I put the boards back down and the rug back over them.”

I dropped the book. My heart was in my throat as fear and panic crashed into my brain. What kind of monster had I married? Why didn’t I sense the evil in him? But he’d swept me off my feet, with flowers and gentle kisses, telling me I deserved only the best in life.

Had Joanna hidden the digital camera taped behind the china cabinet in our dining room? Where did it come from? I’d pushed the duster between the cabinet and wall as far as the handle would go when it hit something. I pushed harder and the thing fell. I coaxed it out into the open and found it was a camera, three or four inches square with a wide tape stuck on it. Did she mention it? I grabbed the diary and began reading again.

“George demanded sex that night and was more brutal than usual. I lay awake after he was snoring, both from the pain and the horror of what I’d found. I had to do something, but what? I needed some way to prove what I’d seen if I went to the police. Pictures? But I had no camera and no cash to get one. George gave me money for groceries and household expenses, but I had to account for every penny.

“Over dinner George had said he was taking me to Wal-Mart the next day. He needed a new cell phone. He wanted me to go so he could put on his act of devoted husband. Cell phones were near the camera department. I’d find a way to steal a camera. I’d send the store money to pay for it later.”

So that’s how she got it. But what had happened? I looked toward the corner of the room and my heart pounded in my chest. Slowly I stood up and walked to the edge of the rug. I pushed the rug to one side with my foot and stepped on the boards underneath it. I jumped at the loud creak and looked wildly toward the door. Of course, George was not there, he was in Asheville. He’d be there overnight. Unless he decided to come home tonight and drive back tomorrow. He’d said he might.

I pushed on the end of one board. The other end raised an inch or two. With some effort, I lifted it. They fitted closely together, but after the first, two other boards came easier. I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my fists. I couldn’t look. But I had to.

Slowly I opened my eyes and my bile rose again. Choking and gagging, I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Not just one body now. One only a skeleton with a few scraps of some material on it and a skull, with strands of dirty blonde hair around it. Flesh still covered the other, the head on a pillow of reddish hair. The fabric on that one had white and dark stripes. Both were coated with a whitish substance. Lime? Not enough apparently, the smell rose in sickening waves through the opening.

I fell back and heard whimpering. It was me. Two dead wives. Did George intend to lay me, a dark haired third, beside them? Why had no one raised questions about their disappearances? Then I realized. Probably, like me, they had no family. An only child, both my parents died when I was barely eighteen, just out of high school. I was lonely, introverted, and had few friends, but I found a job, tried to make a life. When I met George two years later, he treated me like a princess. I was so happy. Fool.

I had to do something. I didn’t want to join Lydia and Joanna. A glimmer of a plan came to me. I stood up and ran to the main house. With Joanna’s camera I took more pictures. I spread her photos beside the opening in one shot. Then took closeups of the most damning pages in her diary.

I replaced the boards and the rug. Rewrapped the diary, minus the money, and put it back inside the chimney. I took the memory disk out of the camera and wrapped the camera in a cleaning rag before placing it there, too. When I stepped outside again, the sun was high in the sky.

I grabbed my purse, put the disk and money in it, and called a taxi. Just as the taxi pulled in the driveway and honked, I looked at my hands. Soot still clung to them. I ran into the guest bath and washed them quickly. The taxi driver had begun to reverse down the driveway when I hurried out.

“Wal-green’s.” That store had a self-service photo machine. And it was next door to the bank I’d used when I was single. I’d put the five thousand dollars from my parents life insurance policy in a savings account. Most of it was still there, and for some reason I’d never told George about it. Intuition? I’d used two thousand for a down payment on the car I never drove now. George appropriated it after we married.

The fare was seven dollars when we got to Wal-green’s. I handed the driver Joanna’s two fives, asked for change and gave him back a one. He was pissed, which I’d counted on. I needed him to remember me.

As I hurried toward the bank, I noticed that the attorney’s office I’d thought I remembered was still in the middle of the block. After withdrawing my money, I returned to Wal-green’s and made two copies of all the pictures on the camera disk and bought a box of stationery.

As I’d expected the attorney’s secretary told me I needed to make an appointment and come back later. I kept insisting it was an emergency and I had to see him today. I’d wait as long as necessary.

“Sit down, then. I’ll check,” she snapped. She tapped down the short hall in her spike heels. She opened a door and talked for a minute. When she returned she glared at me and said it would be at least half an hour.

That was fine with me. By the time I’d covered several sheets of the stationery with a complete description of what I’d found under the floor of the Little House and sealed them in an envelope the receptionist informed me that the attorney could see me now.

“Where have you been, darling?” The honeyed voice George used to speak to me when anyone else was around came over the line. In the background I could hear voices and music. He must be in the hotel bar with other conference attendees, business finished for the day.

“I’m sorry, George. I just finished cleaning and decorating the little house.” I heard my usual cringing tone, desperately trying to placate a man who refused to be appeased.

“I’ll be home tomorrow. Lock the door tonight. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my lovely little wife.”

The veiled threat was not lost on me, but I knew anyone listening would only take it as a loving reminder for me to be careful.

Despite my sore hands and aching shoulder, I returned to the Little House to finish scrubbing, dusting, and decorating it. As I worked the thought came to me that maybe Joanna and Lydia had something to do with the black spots which always appeared on the flowers in the fireplace. Maybe they were trying to get my attention so that their deaths could be avenged. If my plan worked, it would happen.

For a week I tried to keep up the facade as the cowering, dutiful wife. It wasn’t difficult. In six months George had ground down almost all of what little confidence I’d possessed before I married him. If he suspected something was different, he gave no sign. Thursday when the soup was not hot enough he knocked me to the kitchen floor and poured it on me. Lucky for me, he was right. It wasn’t hot enough.

Christmas Eve was on Friday. George left the house in the morning, returning just before dinnertime. After dessert, he led the way into the living room where our big tree stood. Only gaily wrapped empty boxes lay under the tree, for George insisted that our gifts to each other be placed in stockings hanging from the mantel. He handed me a long, narrow box and stood waiting for me to open it. It was a lovely silver bracelet that I knew he would never allow me to wear.

“Now what did my little wifey give me?” He reached into his stocking and withdrew an irregular object wrapped in newspaper. His cold smile was replaced with anger. “What the hell?”

“Open it, dear.” I smiled, though my heart threatened to leap from my chest.

He tore the newspaper away, revealing two lumps of coal and a stack of photographs.

“You killed them. You should know that a lawyer is holding duplicates of the photos. If I disappear suddenly, as they did, and don’t confirm my well-being to him daily, he has instructions to hand the package of documents and pictures over to the police.”

My gift from George turned out to be more than the silver bracelet. I would have liked to have stayed and kept him in abject fear for a while, as he had Lydia, Joanna, and myself. But I worried that a sociopath like him would find a way to kill me with impunity in spite of my precautions. So I used the money he ‘gave’ me that Christmas to disappear on my own. And posing as my anxious sister, I called my attorney to tell him I couldn’t reach Ellie. Her husband couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me where she was and I was afraid something had happened to her.

I saw on the news that George tearfully told the court an intruder must have killed his first two wives. His third, Ellie, must have found their bodies and framed him. The jury didn’t buy it and he’s now serving two life terms at Riverbend Maximum Security near Nashville, Tennessee. I understand the authorities are still looking for his missing wife’s body.