13 Hauntings

by Clarice Black

  “Jennie,” he said, “I want you to meet my lovely wife,” he extended his arm towards the woman sitting in the wheelchair. Jennie looked at her and immediately felt unnerved. Mary was looking at her in a way which made her uncomfortable. There was a searing effect to her gaze and she looked in to Jennie’s eyes unforgivingly.

  “Hi, I’m Jennie,” she said and held out her hand. Mary shook it after waiting a full three seconds, sufficient time for both Jennie and Martin to decide that she was not going to accept the gesture, which caused an awkward scene.

  “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Dear,” Mary said through pursed lips. “Well, come on in and make yourself at home.”

  Jennie followed the couple in to the house. She said “whoa” under her breath as she looked around. It was spectacular to the point of being behoving. The walls were of polished wood, dark chestnut in colour, with a warm yellow light from the chandelier and lamps which cast a cosy shade. Shelves upon shelves of books lined the walls from top to bottom. Judging the two owners by their looks, Jennie had a notion that they had read all of them. The house was dim, it was musky, and it felt homely with all of its introverted charm. This was a place she could get used to, she thought as she put her bags down by the door. Beneath the giant chandelier was a dining table also made of mahogany. Two bedroom doors stood to the right with an elegant staircase carpeted in red curling its way to the floor above. Everything about the place spoke utter grandeur.

  “You have a lovely home,” she said.

  “Oh, thank you,” Martin said. Mary shot him a look from the corner of her eye, a look that said don’t you get too friendly with her! He did not catch the look.

  “Why don’t you make yourself at home and Martin will show you to your room? You can get ready for lunch in a while,” Mary said, without waiting for a response she headed to her bedroom while Martin followed hastily. He said to Jennie, “I’ll be with you in a bit.”

  Beside the dining table was a lounge to the left of the room. A giant television screen hung above the fireplace (Jennie did not understand the ergonomics behind this) and flanking the fireplace were leather sofas arranged in a semi-circle. There was no sign of a child living here, save for the scattering of toys in the middle of the sofas. Jennie went and sat there, while patting her thighs jittery. Not that it was any of her business, but she wondered what the couple were talking about. They had not bothered closing the door behind them, and hushed whispers that bordered on being offensive emanated from the room. She checked her phone and saw that the picture she uploaded had already attracted fifty likes. Someone had commented “me so jelly!” along with a smiley face that conveyed yearning. She giggled and put the phone back in her pocket. She looked around from the confines of her sofa, meanwhile Martin returned and sat in front of her.

  “So… There’s been a bit of a development,” he said with resentment. “My wife wants to take the room we had planned for you. It’s on the first floor. She says that it will be better for Abigail, our daughter, that you stay in the room beside hers. You’ll be taking our room. I hope that is fine.”

  “Oh, no worries. I am not picky at all. I’m here to make you guys comfortable in whatever way,” she replied.

  “Oh, that’s very good,” he smiled. She could swear she saw weariness and defeat beneath that smile, but being accustomed to seeing it on her father’s face, she knew better than to mention it to Martin. “Allow me to help you with that.”

  “Oh no, no. That’s my headache. Why not go ahead and meet Abigail? The sooner you two become friends the better,” he said. Then he stood up and took her to the left room beside the one Mary was in. This was Abigail’s room.

  Abigail, however, was not in it, she was with her mother. Jennie took a moment to admire the room. The walls were not at all like the others in the house. They were coated in pink and blue and wallpapered in Disney themes. A low shelf led toys by the dozens. It figured. When you have only one child to shower with love, you spare no expense. Jennie knew that at eighteen, Abigail’s parents would get her a car. One of her own choosing, if they could afford it. Abigail seemed to love her plush toys; five teddy bears of varying sizes occupied her bed, with many more, abstractly scattered amongst Barbie dolls and two doll houses, on the floor. The room was what it was: a mess courtesy of a seven-year-old. Everything about it dripped with cuteness.

  Jennie was waiting for Abigail in her room. Her job revolved around her caring for Abigail and tending to her needs. What if the little girl did not like her? She waited in her new room, taking in all it offered. Jennie had not got the chance to see the room she was intended to occupy, the room on the first floor. She wasn’t sure what the fuss was all about. Well, whatever it was, Mary wanted it for herself and was not willing to relinquish it to Jennie, despite her physical limitations. Her newly allocated room was not bad. The walls and the décor de interior was very similar to the rest of the house: mahogany finish walls, yellow lamps and dim lamplight, shelves stacked with seemingly generic books, which the couple had certainly not read all of. Perhaps they had come with the house? The room had only one window which looked out over a large expanse of fields and distant countryside. Jennie thought damn, I could get used to a view like this.

  Martin knocked on the door, making sure she was decent. She turned and said, “Is she ready?”

  “Yes. Can’t wait to meet you. I am preparing dinner for everyone. Normally that’d be part of your job, but we want to ease you into it, not force anything on you-” the way he said we easily depicted he was talking about only himself. His wife did not contribute her two cents worth. Jennie was getting a clear idea that Mrs. Walker was not very warm to the idea of having another person in the house. Jennie did not blame her. If anything, Jennie could relate. She was sure that down the road, once she’d broken into the successful world of journalism (if she ever did), she would prefer a life of solitude far from the madding crowd, away from most people. And to Mary, Jennie fell under the banner of most people. “-because we want to make sure you feel at home.” Martin was clearly overcompensating for his wife’s coldness. Jennie wanted to tell him that it was okay, that she was used to assholes and people’s overt rudeness, and that, within the hierarchy of discourteous people, Mrs Walker fell within the spectrum of cute kittens. She had displayed only a passive aggressiveness, at best.

  Jennie nodded and followed Martin to Abigail’s room. Abigail was sitting on her bed playing with cowgirl Barbie and cowboy Ken. She even had a ranch-styled dollhouse in the corner of the room which Jennie had missed at first.

  “Abbey, Honey, look who we’ve found for you,” Martin was speaking to his daughter the way one speaks to an infant. But Abigail had grown accustomed to this form of stifling love, and maybe she did not even know there was another manner of being talked to.

  Jennie approached the child with an unknowing awkwardness. The child was pretty, with her light blonde hair and her eyes like sweater buttons. She had a rosy complexion, dimples of each cheek, and her fair share of freckle sprinkles. She looked up at Jennie and smiled, “You know! Dad told me my school’s off!” she said with an excitement that Jennie could easily relate to.

  “Is that so?” Jennie smiled and asked. She came closer and sat beside the child on the bed, and as she did so, Martin hurriedly got up, wanting to keep things between the two of them as professional and platonic as he could. He left the room, leaving the two of them be.

  “Yes! And I can watch SpongeBob and I can play and I can draw all I want!” the child’s eyes were practically beaming with happiness. Whatever the politics of the home, she was not in the least concerned.

  “Ooh! I love SpongeBob! Who is your favourite?”

  “I love Patrick! But mom said that he is dumb!” Abigail said as if she was ashamed of loving Patrick. Well, maybe the kid had some notion of the unpleasantness in the house.

  “You want to play with me?” Jennie asked. She looked from the corner of her eye as Martin looked on pensively from the d
oor.

  “Yes please!” Abigail said and plopped off her bed to gather more toys from the shelf. Jennie turned her head and smiled at Martin to let him know that it was alright and that she was going to treat Abigail as if she was her own daughter. He headed for the kitchen, humming a ragtime tune to himself.

  *

  Night fell over the serene landscape in a quick dab of darkness. The house was simmering with the smell of hastily (or amateurly) prepared spaghetti bolognaise. Jennie had not realised how ravenous she as before the smell of food teased her nostrils. She had a sudden urge to head for the kitchen and devour all the food in one sitting. She’d only eaten a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwich earlier since that morning, over a cup of coffee before leaving the house. During their commute from the station to the house, Martin had asked whether she’d like something from Subway or the sushi place near their house, but she’s declined being that she was not hungry at that time.

  The dimly lit house seemed more arty and elegant at night. The long and warm shadows made the entire living room look like one big book nook, like those depicted in Facebook Reading groups where everyone uploaded pictures of their favourite books adorned in glossy covers and placed next to totally unrelated objects: A copy of Stephen King’s It beside a potted plant and a cup of cappuccino, a copy of Art of War placed next to a bayonet! People were so shallow in attempts at displaying their literacy. Jennie knew that she was being sceptical and cynical of them, but that was simply how she was wired.

  Abigail was sitting on a miniature chair around a table upon which tiny cups and kettles lay scattered, with dolls occupying the other chairs. Jennie was too big to sit on the chair, so she put the chair on her lap instead. They were playing tea-party with Barbie, Pooh and the entire cast of the Winx Club. Abigail was pouring “Earl Grey” and telling a story of the time she had met an elf in the woods. Jennie was enjoying her time with the kid and if this was as tough as it got in babysitting her for the day, she was sure that she could do it for as long as she was required. Abigail had looked at her once during their play and said innocently “You are pretty.” This surprised Jennie. Children were known to be brutally truthful. But then again, children were also known to be stupid, reckless and naïve. But there was a truth to Abigail’s voice that unnerved Jennie. No one had ever called her pretty like that before. No one, come to think of it, had ever called her hot. She did not have much in the way of a girly figure. She was slim, borderline anorexic, and her breasts jutted out like spear heads, unlike those of the girls one learnt to objectify from television, magazines and porn sites. She never admitted, not even to her mother, that at times she still wore her old training bras. So, when out of the blue Abigail called her pretty, it made her nervous.

  After the tea-party, Abigail insisted that she wanted to teach the toys.

  “Teach?”

  “Yes. Like Mrs Nesbitt at my school teaches me and the kids,” Abigail responded. She then got up from her chair and moved all her plush toys off the bed and onto the floor, in one abrupt movement.

  “Is Mrs Nesbitt your friend?” Jennie asked.

  “Sometimes she slaps the kids in class with a ruler because they are mean,” Abigail said in a hushed voice and then looked over her shoulder to see if Mrs Nesbitt was eavesdropping.

  “Has she ever slapped you?”

  “Nu-uh, I am a good girl. She gives me gold stars on my classwork and my homework and she says I am her favourite,” Abigail said with a content smile.

  “Please line the toys up,” Abigail asked Jennie. Jennie took all the plush bears and sat them in a horizontal manner such that they were all facing Abigail. Abigail came up to the toys and said, while standing in the posture of a stout headmistress, “Children! Where are your assignments?” Jennie watched amusedly as she went to the toys one by one and imitated checking their homework.

  “Pooh…good… You get a B+ and some honey. Tigger, where’s your homework? The donkey ate it?” Abigail’s commentary was hilarious and it made Jennie giggle. The kid had a sense of humour, but her facial expressions did not show Abigail to be enjoying her own play. She had a look of trepid horror on her face, as if she was afraid of what she was going to say.

  “You are a bad toy, Mr Tigger. I do not want to hear that the donkey ate your homework. Where is your homework?” she inquired again, this time forcefully, with the brat attitude that had earlier seemed absent.

  Jennie watched with apprehension as Abigail bent towards Tigger the tiger and pulled him up from the ground.

  “I am forgiving you for now! But if you don’t bring your homework tomorrow, I will lock you in a cage with the bird man and he will eat your eyes!” Abigail shouted at Tigger.

  Birdman? Thought Jennie. Was the kid referring to the Oscar acclaimed movie starring Edward Norton? There was no way she could have. That was adult stuff and Jennie had a notion that Abigail’s parents were not prone to subjecting her to PG movies. She might have meant Batman and Robin, but from what Jennie had gathered from the room, Abigail did not have a taste for boyish, disturbed heroes who wore their undies inside out and donned bat costumes.

  “Who is the birdman?” Jennie asked, giving in to the suspense of not knowing.

  Abigail shot Jennie a look of secrecy, the way best friends in elementary schools do when one tells the other that he found a copy of a magazine with naked ladies in his dad’s drawer. She did not immediately reply. The room went silent and only the sound to be heard was Martin setting the plates on the table outside. Abigail neared Jennie, forgetting all about Mr Tigger’s misdemeanour and said, “You have never seen the birdman? Is there no birdman in your house?”

  “No Abbey, I can’t say I have,” Jennie experimented with saying the girl’s nickname. Calling her Abigail again and again seemed awkward. It seemed regal and regency-like. Most folks did not name their kids Edward, or Charleston or Abigail. Abbey sounded better than Abigail.

  The kid took to the nickname well and sat beside Jennie in a yoga-pose. “He’s here. In the house all the time. The birdman.”

  “Is he here now?” she asked.

  Abigail looked around the room, squinting as she gazed at the windowpane and then shook her head.

  “Who is he?” Jennie decided to play along.

  “I don’t know. He only comes to see me sometimes.”

  “Uh,” Jennie thought this was perplexing. “Has he ever touched you?”

  “No!” said Abigail defensively, as if she knew what Jennie was getting at and how dare she.

  “Well. What does he look like?” Jennie asked.

  “He’s red. Very red. One time I grazed my knee on the walkway and lots of blood came out. He is red like my blood was red,” Abigail told her. Jennie found it odd that the kid would dig so deep in drawing an analogy between the colour red and her blood. Other things were redder and easier to imagine than blood. The evening sun, the colour of a clown’s nose, the heart shaped balloons on valentine’s day. Why did the child opt for such a macabre example?

  Jennie nodded and prodded Abigail to carry on. “He has big eyes. Very big and bright, like mirrors. And he has a beak. Like a big beak!”

  “Is he your friend, the birdman?” Jennie asked.

  “I guess. He comes to visit me and see me. But I think he is shy,” Abigail added with shame underlining her statement, as if she blamed herself for the birdman’s introverted attitude. “He never speaks to me.”

  “I am sure that the birdman and you will become good friends. He will talk to you, Honey, in good time,” Jennie said and patted Abigail on the head, remembering how she had been as a child. She had her fair share of imaginary friends, whose roots lay in real characters. There was a Mr Bimbo, he was a cat, inspired by Enid Blyton’s books. There was Rambi, he was like Bambi, but stronger and bigger. And lastly, there was Sindbad. He always took her on extraordinary voyages in her sleep and talked of Indian seas and dark coves under the belly of the earth. Man, I miss my childhood, Jennie thought to hers
elf. The feeling of relief and the happiness of not-knowing was the best thing about her childhood. She looked at Abigail with a musing envy, thinking that all she had to worry about these days was whether the latest episode of SpongeBob was coming on time and whether her toy teddy bears had done their homework. Adult life and responsibility in general was a bitch. The moment you turned eighteen, it was as if the world came after you with a sledgehammer and demanded that you surrender to its rules and its brute ways.

  “I don’t want to be friends with the birdman. He scares me,” Abigail whispered.

  Don’t watch movies too big for your age! Jennie was about to say. Instead she took pity and told her what her own father had told her a million years ago when she complained to him that she was having nightmares. “I will make a dreamcatcher for you. And it will trap all the bad dreams. Would you like that?”

  “Yes please,” Abigail said and nodded fervently.

  “Good,” Jennie tapped her on the nose. “Let’s go out and see what your daddy is up to.”

  They ditched the room and went to the living room, where Martin had just finished putting out the plates and the food. He was heading to the kitchen for wine and Abbey’s juice. “Let me get that for you, Martin,” Jennie said. It still felt weird calling him by his first name, as if he was her elder brother.