The Siren and the Specter

by Jonathan Janz

  And could finally breathe again.

  The master bedroom was light and airy, with tallow-colored walls, muslin curtains, the king-sized bed overlaid with a blue-and-ivory quilt. The room was maybe sixteen by twenty-two, large enough for a sitting area, but the excess space was left empty, making the room seem larger than it was.

  David moved through the master suite, noting French doors to the east. He crossed to the southern door and was pleased to note it opened onto the screened-in porch.

  David reached out, grasped the old brass knob.

  Why are you avoiding the upstairs?

  David froze. Now where in the holy hell had that come from? He wasn’t avoiding anything. Funny how being alone could twist one’s thoughts, send them careening down shadowy tunnels.

  He checked his iPhone: 7:42 and he was ravenous. Skipping supper had been foolhardy. When he got like this – what had Anna used to call it? Hangry? – his judgment got addled. Everyone, he supposed, needed food, but David more than the average man. Fed, he was as patient as anyone he knew. Hungry, he exhibited all the sweetness of a rabid wolverine.

  Maybe, he thought as he returned to the foyer, Chris and Katherine had stocked the fridge with a few items. They knew he was traveling a long way.

  He opened the old Frigidaire.

  A half-empty ketchup bottle and a butter container brimming with baking soda.

  Well, shit. He supposed he’d have to go into town.

  Why are you avoiding the upstairs?

  He flung shut the refrigerator door. Goddammit, he wasn’t avoiding anything. He was merely trying to avoid his body digesting itself.

  Dimly, he heard Anna’s teasing voice: You’re hangry, David. Get some food.

  It brought a smile. He imagined her with her baseball cap on backward, her flappy flannel shirt open enough at the chest he could see hints of her bra when she moved. Hard to tell what color her shorts were; the flannel shirt drooped so low she looked naked from the waist down. Her neon-pink flip-flops.

  She doggedly defended her outfits, declared herself a fashionista, but what David always knew was that anyone else would have looked ridiculous in Anna’s getups. Yet on her, somehow, they worked.

  Anna, he decided, would have loved this place. An ardent fan of horror novels and creepy movies, she’d believed in all the things he did not. Where he was contemptuous, she was hopeful. Where he was skeptical, she was trusting. God, what a wondrous person she’d been.

  There was a tightness in his chest.

  “What happened to you?” he asked aloud.

  To escape the answering silence, he strode into the foyer. To the right lay the long climb to the upstairs. To the left, the front door and the Camry and, if he didn’t die of malnutrition on the winding road to town, food. It didn’t matter where. He’d eat McDonald’s. Gas station burritos. When a man was this hungry, it was about survival. Hell, he’d strip some bark off a tree and suck the juices if he had to.

  He was halfway to the Camry when the question tickled again, an unmistakable note of mockery in it now: Why are you avoiding the upstairs?

  David turned and faced the house.

  Seven dormers jutted forth, three each on the first two stories, one from the attic. With the shadows settling around him and night creeping inexorably nearer, here, in this place of antiquity, it wasn’t at all difficult to imagine a writer like Hawthorne being inspired, penning a novel like House of the Seven Gables, or a story like ‘Young Goodman Brown,’ which David had taught this spring semester.

  What would Hawthorne, David wondered, make of the Alexander House and its body of Baroque legendry? Would he credit any of it? Or was he really, as David suspected, an atheist who veiled his disbelief in allegory and—

  “Meet any ghosts?” a voice called.

  David gasped, spun. A man nearly David’s height ambled down the lane, a longish silver instrument in one hand. The man appeared to be somewhere between sixty and seventy, athletic-looking, a white growth of beard framing a mouth that grinned with mischief. He wore an ill-fitting white apron with a bloody smear across the belly.

  Taking in David’s scrutiny, the man said, “Guess bachelors get sloppy, huh?” He extended a hand. “Name’s Ralph Hooper.”

  David shook. “A name like that, you ought to be a baseball player.”

  “I was,” Ralph said. “Played a decent right field.”

  David studied the breadth of the man’s shoulders. “Bet you could hit a little too.”

  “I could at that,” Ralph allowed. “Always had too much swing-and-miss in my game, but when I got ahold of one….”

  “Bet it sailed,” David said, his eyes returning to the Alexander House.

  “Capricious girl, ain’t she?” Ralph asked.

  David glanced at him. “Why would you say that?”

  Ralph shrugged. “Homes have personalities, don’t they? Some are sullen, some are cheerful. This one—” he nodded, “—is less predictable. There’ll be days when you feel like she’s your best friend, like she’s smiling at you and wishing she could give you the world. But then she’ll turn brooding. Enigmatic.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got a fetish for old homes.”

  Ralph let out a gust of laughter. “Hell, I probably sound like a nut, don’t I? Too much time alone, I suppose. And looking at the house every day, I guess I have begun to project onto it.”

  David grinned. “You’re the guy I saw staring through the screen door.”

  “We’re neighbors,” Ralph said. “I mean, if you’re planning to stay.” His bushy eyebrows rose infinitesimally.

  “A month,” David allowed.

  Ralph gave a noncommittal nod. “Don’t suppose they stocked you up, did they?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “You wanna eat?”

  David took in the blood-smeared frock.

  Ralph chuckled. “I promise the burgers aren’t raw. Got ’em from the farmers’ market in town. Grass-fed.”

  David’s mouth watered. “I should probably get groceries.”

  “You probably should,” Ralph said. “Then again, maybe you shouldn’t rest on ceremony and pass up burgers and free beer.”

  “You’ve got beer?”

  “Yup.”

  “What brand?”

  “The cheap ones. Budweiser. MGD. Coors.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Yeah?” Ralph said. “I figured you for a snob.”

  “That’s okay,” David said, falling in beside him. “With that bloody apron, I figured you for a serial killer.”

  Ralph laughed, and they set off in companionable silence down the dusty lane. It wasn’t until night had fallen and a ghostly rind of moon had materialized over the Rappahannock that David remembered he hadn’t yet ventured to the second story of the Alexander House.

  Chapter Four

  David devoured three thick burgers, not worrying that his lips were glistening with juice and beer, not noticing anything at all save the satisfying fullness in his belly. He and Ralph reclined in cedar rocking chairs, the screened-in porch much smaller than the one in the Alexander House and with a much less panoramic view. With the woods encroaching on both sides and a strip of dock scrolling out before them, David felt nestled in, pleasantly anonymous. Ralph had drunk half a six-pack already, David two cans.

  “The Bud’s nearly gone,” Ralph said, cracking open another. “Let’s start on the Coors.”

  “I better not. Too many and I’ll be foggy all morning.”

  “Work to do, huh?”

  David studied the man’s profile. Largish nose. Slightly protuberant forehead. But instead of dumbing Ralph down, the rough features conveyed a sage virility.

  “I’m settling a bet for an old friend,” David said and found himself explaining the entire situation.

  When he’d finished
, Ralph said, “So the wife wants you to write a book, make the house even more famous.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “But your buddy doesn’t?”

  “Chris has never been the imaginative sort.”

  “Neither are you, from the sound of it.”

  David stared at Ralph, whose expression remained as amiable as before. “I guess that depends on your definition of imaginative.”

  “You always come out on the same side.”

  David sat up in his rocking chair. “You’ve read my books?”

  “A couple.”

  “Let me guess – you hated them.”

  “Not at all.” Ralph sipped his Bud. “You’re a mighty fine writer.”

  “Thank you,” David answered, unaccountably touched. Into the silence, he said, “But….”

  Ralph scowled. “Hell, I don’t know. Who am I to judge?”

  “You’re as qualified as anybody else. Now tell me what bothers you.”

  “It’s like you watch a movie from the beginning, and it’s damned good. Engrossing plot, sharply drawn characters. Really sinks its teeth into you. You can’t help but go along for the ride.”

  “And then….” David said, knowing what was coming.

  “It was all a dream,” Ralph said. “Or the police swoop in and save the day. Either way, the audience gets cheated. It’s an anti-climax.”

  “I can’t ignore the truth, Ralph. I’d be the laughing stock of the academic community.”

  “Ah, the academic community,” Ralph said, mock-primly. “They about as tight-assed as they sound?”

  “More so,” David said. “You’ve never seen people take themselves so seriously.”

  “You ever spent time with a bunch of town selectmen?”

  “Never had the pleasure.”

  “Be thankful. They’ve got the temperament of bull sharks.”

  “Huh.” David gazed out on the river. “So you believe in the supernatural.”

  Peripherally, he saw Ralph shift in his rocking chair, the first time he’d sensed any discord in his host. Good, he thought. Let the mask slip so we can see what’s underneath.

  “I need another beer,” Ralph said. “You?”

  David shook his head.

  When Ralph returned with a six-pack of Coors, David said, “You were telling me about your belief in ghosts.”

  Ralph threw back his head and laughed. “You’re a ballbuster, you know that? No wonder you’re still single.”

  “I wouldn’t wish me on anyone.”

  Ralph cracked the tab on a new can. “I never said I believed in things that go bump in the night.”

  “You’re disappointed when I debunk a haunting.”

  “That’s too strong a word.” He shook his head. “Okay, maybe ‘disappointed’ fits, but not in the way you mean.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The disappointment of a reader, not a believer. You wanna know the ride’s been worthwhile. You want there to be a payoff.”

  “So I should make one up?” He was aware of the edge in his voice but made no effort to soften it. Ralph’s criticism was too familiar. Why did people crave dishonesty?

  Ralph was staring into his beer can. At length, he said, “I don’t know what I believe.”

  David kept quiet, waiting.

  “I keep an open mind,” Ralph said.

  Which means mine is closed, David thought. Hell. It was like his critics were sitting here drinking beer with him.

  “You’ve never seen anything that makes you wonder?” Ralph asked.

  David settled in his chair. The cedar armrests felt good under his forearms. “I’ve spent time in nine – now ten – supposedly haunted places. Written books about all of them. At no time did I feel the presence of anything unnatural.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  When David could only frown, Ralph went on. “I didn’t ask if you ever felt something unnatural. I asked if you ever wondered.”

  David glanced out at the pine trees. “I’ve got a receptive nature. Always have. I feel all sorts of things. Emotions, sensory details, memories. If anything, I’ve got an overactive imagination.”

  “What I wonder,” Ralph said, “is why you rely on all that silly ghost-hunting bullshit. Thermal cameras, voice recorders….”

  David was smiling and nodding. “…infrared lights, grid scopes. I know, it’s all a bunch of stage tricks. I blame Ghostbusters.”

  “Bill Murray’s funny as shit, though.”

  “That he is.”

  Ralph’s eyes narrowed. “But he’s a Cubs fan.”

  “Thank God,” David said. “You like the Yankees, I suppose.”

  “Hell’s bells, man, what kind of a person you think I am? I hate the Evil Empire.”

  “Red Sox fan?”

  “Through and through.”

  “I don’t suppose we get cable out here?”

  Ralph shook his head ruefully. “On a clear night you might get one snowy network without audio.”

  “Damn. And here the Cubs are in first place.”

  Ralph reached out, patted an old radio David hadn’t noticed on the porch ledge. “I listen to the Sox on this thing. If you get bored.”

  “I don’t get bored,” David said, “but I’ll come anyway.”

  A few minutes later they toted their empty cans and soggy paper plates inside. As David was making his way through the murk of the front yard, Ralph called to him.

  “Yeah?” David asked.

  Standing in the half-open doorway, Ralph seemed to debate with himself. “Promise me one thing.”

  David shrugged. “If I can.”

  “If something happens, don’t ignore it.”

  David stared at him, but Ralph’s face was indistinguishable in the gloom. When it became apparent that Ralph was awaiting some sort of answer, David said, “I’ll grill the burgers tomorrow night.”

  “Hellfire, boy. You think I trust you to cook for me?”

  Smiling, David turned away. Ralph said something else, but whatever he muttered, David couldn’t make it out.

  It wasn’t until he was halfway home that the words began to crystallize.

  He was pretty sure Ralph had been praying for him.

  Chapter Five

  At just past 11:00 that night, he showered, brushed his teeth, downed two tall glasses of water with a couple Tylenol to combat the ghost of a hangover. He wanted to be sharp in the morning. He’d write until noon, then spend the rest of the day poring through his least favorite book, The Last Haunting: The Curious Disappearance of John Weir. Sensationalized, puerile, and so crammed with fabrications it made David’s head throb, the novel – for that’s what it was; David refused to think of it any other way – had been published in 1932 and had become an instant bestseller. Unfortunately, the book’s audience had only grown since then and it was still shelved in the non-fiction section.

  Yet it was all horseshit. The author, Dr. Isaiah Hartenstein – perhaps the most dubious use of ‘doctor’ David had ever encountered – had been scratching out a paltry living as a lecturer on the subject of the paranormal when The Last Haunting hit. And though Hartenstein’s subsequent works never rivaled the success of his first book, he remained a celebrity until his death decades later.

  Naked, David ambled into the master bedroom and stared at the stack of books he’d lugged in and arranged on the birch dresser. A couple of them were about this house. He liked to learn about a place on the fly, gleaning the site’s history while he resided within its walls.

  With a ripple of disgust, he selected The Last Haunting and studied the cover. On it, unforgivably, was a photograph of John Weir. David gripped the book harder, the stark truth resounding in his brain: Hartenstein, a bona fide charlatan, made his career by de
stroying the reputation of a legitimately brilliant man.

  David slapped the book onto the dresser, hastily buried it under a trio of superior books. The truth was, David had only read the first forty pages of Hartenstein’s hatchet job, and that had been a decade ago. He supposed he was obligated to read the rest of it now.

  The beads of shower water had all but dried, leaving David a shade too warm. It wasn’t muggy enough to run the air conditioning, but maybe a touch of night breeze would do the trick. He crossed to the southern window and muscled it up a few inches.

  There. A pleasing current whispered over his stomach, provided just the right counterpoint to the musty heat. He went to his travel bag, fished out a pair of loose boxer shorts, slid them on, then selected one of his favorite collections from the dresser: M.R. James’s Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Book in hand, he cozied into bed and began a re-read of one of his favorites, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book.”

  Why are you avoiding the upstairs?

  “Son of a bitch,” he growled.

  He flung the book aside. Pushing the covers off, he strode around the bed, moved through the impossible blackness of the den, and into the main hallway.

  It was cooler in here. Centrally located as it was, the main hall should have been warmer than the windowed rooms, particularly with the doors locked tight. Yet it was perceptibly chillier here than it had been in the bedroom, with the crisp night air circulating.

  Go upstairs.

  Yes, he thought, grasping the banister. He needed to go upstairs.

  He’d climbed to the third step when another thought sounded in his head: Why do you need to go upstairs? Because you need to prove something to yourself?

  He scowled in the darkness. I don’t need to prove a damned—

  Then why go up? It’s pushing midnight, you have a book to begin in the morning. You need sleep. The only motivation to search the upstairs is to prove to yourself you’re not frightened of it. Aren’t you a little beyond such absurd displays? At your age?