Creep

by Eireann Corrigan

  Mr. Leonardo looked as if he could have been a few months older than Ben, but that’s all. He’d frosted the tips of his black hair and sported a sparse goatee, which accentuated the sharp angle of his pronounced chin. He wore green cargo pants and had made good use of the pockets, with a professional-looking camera, a hammer, and what looked like a taser, each tucked into a separate compartment in the pants.

  “Yeah, yeah. You know there is a tornado of passion and desperation swirling around here.” That sounded about right. As Mr. Leonardo, the Ghost Adjuster, spoke, I stared at Ben, wondering what kind of emotional weather he was experiencing. Mr. Leonardo nodded sagely. “Real distress.” He seemed to reach out his hands for Ben, Janie, and Lucy. Then his hands dropped down and sort of twitched by his sides.

  “Daylight does us a great service, you know, keeping us safe. You all have absolutely nothing to worry about.” Mr. Leonardo held up his hands again. “We are simply making ourselves known right now.” He pointed what looked like a universal remote at the house and pressed a series of numbers. “Just trying to get a read on temperature of supernatural anger.”

  “That’s probably just my mom,” Ben offered, and I could swear he winked at me.

  Mr. Donahue laughed nervously and clapped Mr. Leonardo on the back. “My wife remains unconvinced.”

  “None of you should be convinced yet. That’s actually quite helpful,” Mr. Leonardo said with the don’t-worry-I’m-a-cool-guy tone of a substitute teacher encouraging us to call him by his first name. “The brain waves of skeptics tempt spirits to prove their own presence. That’s when we witness and have the chance to document more paranormal activities.” Mr. Leonardo nodded to himself. “This is an awesome dialogue to open up between our world and the spirit world. Kudos to you, Mr. Donahue.”

  It occurred to me that we all might have a calmer existence in Glennon Heights if someone like Mr. Leonardo could follow Mr. Donahue around all the time, praising him for his accidental achievements. Lucy leapt in, “We don’t really want a dialogue, though.” Her voice sounded as sour as usual. “We want it to stop.”

  “Ah, of course you do.” Mr. Leonardo looked around and smiled indulgently. “But we don’t rule the spirit world. We can only make modest requests.” He dropped to his knees. Up and down the street, our neighbors craned their necks to see. We thought he might offer a prayer, but instead he opened a battered wooden box that looked as if it might contain treasure. Or ashes.

  Mr. Leonardo pulled out a clump of feathery green leaves. He shook it toward Ben, Janie, and Lucy, but really toward the news van and the nosy neighbors. “Sage,” he announced. Then he shook the bunch of leaves in the direction of the Donahues’ front door. He crossed the yard and pointed the leaves at each window. He knelt down on the cobblestones on the front walk, chanting a song I could not decipher. Janie and Ben watched intently. I silently willed either of them to turn around, to grin or giggle or roll their eyes. But they faced forward. Apparently, Mr. Leonardo had jammed up all the psychic channels with his own efforts.

  The guys standing against the news van appeared amused. One held up his camera sort of half-heartedly and I wondered where this latest episode would show up—nightly news, tabloid program, late-night bloopers? Mr. Leonardo spun around and declared, “This is the home of the Donahue family. All other essences must exit the premises!” Nothing moved on the breezeless street. Mr. Leonardo addressed Mr. Donahue: “Let’s please enter the domestic structure.”

  I stood up to see the resolute back of Mr. Leonardo, the Ghost Adjuster, swallowed up by the darkened front hall of the house. Mr. Donahue frantically beckoned his children to follow. As they filed past him, he looked out toward the news van. The two guys shrugged and slouched forward too.

  Janie’s dad held the door open, nodding gravely to them as they passed. He looked out to the street like he might invite us all inside as well. But he didn’t. He wanted to make sure we were all watching.

  We were. Miss Abbot pretended to water her flowers with a limp hose. The Hurliheys had set out a blanket and were stretched out, enjoying coffee and pastries. My dad had already turned to start the trip home, pushing the toothless mower and nudging me to join him.

  “Show’s over, Olivia,” he called. “Your mother and I would like you to steer clear of this mess.” Dad whistled and Toby strained at the leash.

  “Then I won’t tell Mom on you either,” I told him, following.

  “Your mother is a smart woman. We’d do well to listen to her on this one.”

  I barely heard him, half listening for the sounds of breaking glass and slamming doors. When I turned back, the Donahue house looked ordinarily extraordinary—too big for the street but otherwise boring. The rest of the neighborhood had resumed its own business.

  “How’s school?” Dad asked me.

  “Fine.” The lawn mower squeaked a bit as he pushed it.

  “Just fine? You’re in high school now. Don’t you feel empowered? Sophisticated?” I felt like my dad should have known that I had never, in the entirety of history, experienced those feelings. He cleared his throat and tried again. “You know, Liv, your mother and I have always encouraged you to stand up for what’s right.”

  “I know that.” The lawn mower squeaked in agreement.

  “Right.” We stood in front of our own house. “Sometimes it’s not easy to figure out what the right thing is. Long-term. We think we know.”

  “We usually know,” I said, unsure where he was headed but not expecting to like it.

  Dad sighed. “You’ve been a good friend to Janie. But no one expects you to sacrifice your entire high school career in defense of a family who has been fairly”—he grimaced, searching for the right word—“disruptive.”

  “You mean their father?” My voice needled, like the lawn mower. “Their father is the disruptive one.”

  “Right. Of course. No one’s blaming Janie—or any of the Donahue kids. But it might not hurt to just establish some distance. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I understand.” The ball in my throat felt thorny. “But I don’t think a kid should have to deal with the mistakes her father made.” I rolled back my shoulders and directly met his gaze.

  Dad nodded sadly, in such a way that made the thorny lump in my throat swell. “Right. I’m just asking you to take care, Olivia. It’s not always okay to be selfish—you clearly know that. Sometimes though, it’s not the end of the world either.”

  Whatever magic Mr. Leonardo made happen in the house, it didn’t take long. Within an hour, Janie texted me a single word: Dugout?

  “I’m going for a run.” I went downstairs and told my dad.

  “You want me to time you?”

  “Not today. I just want to run until I stop thinking.”

  Dad sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Good luck with that.”

  I ran down Olcott and past the Donahues’ because I knew that otherwise I would have just wondered. Nothing looked any different, though. No ghostly vapors trailing out of the chimney. No black slime seeping out from under the heavy front door.

  I refocused and kept running. I almost missed the little red car. Ned McGovern had parked it next to a hydrant and had some kind of song blaring—opera or something—and he pounded the steering wheel in time to the beat.

  I picked up my pace and had almost cleared the corner when he swung open the driver’s-side door. “You!” I pretended not to hear him. “You’re Jillian’s niece.”

  It made me mad that he didn’t even remember my name. I stopped and turned to face him. “I’m Jillian’s niece,” I confirmed. His face looked red and sweaty and I reassured myself that at least I could outrun him. “My name is Olivia.”

  “Olivia, right. How are you doing, honey?” I looked past him, measuring how fast I could sprint to my dad. “Who was that man, Olivia?”

  “What man?”

  “You know what man.” Ned nodded toward 16 Olcott. “He stood on the front lawn for a while. And then they let him
in. The Donahues.” He almost whispered the name.

  “He’s there to perform some ceremony. Like a séance or something. You know—to get rid of any bad spirits in the house.”

  I had expected the information to calm him down a little bit but Ned unleashed. “What? Unbelievable. They have no right.” He kicked at his own tire and slammed his arm against the red car’s roof. It seemed to me that Ned McGovern did not have a firm grasp on boundaries and the basic concept of possession. Of course the Donahues had a right. It was weird, but they had a right.

  “He’s not even supposed to be on our street,” Janie said once I found her in the dugout at the baseball diamond and told her what had happened. We sat on the bench, both kicking at the holes in the chain-link fence. “It’s not a restraining order, because the police said that would affect his livelihood, but they strongly advised him to stay away.”

  “I don’t think you’re fully appreciating how bizarre it was.”

  “He didn’t chase you, right?”

  “No, but he was blaring opera.”

  “Fair point.”

  “And speaking of bizarre … What did the Ghost Adjuster do anyway?” I asked Janie.

  “He shook his plants all around. There was a lot of chanting. Candles. Pretty much what you’d expect if you researched ghost hunting on Wikipedia. Which is perhaps where he learned ‘the ancient craft of his ancestors.’ ” Janie rolled her eyes. But then she cried out, “Oh! Sadly, the secret room no longer qualifies as secret.”

  “Why not?”

  “That was the one kind of creepy moment—the last ritual or whatever. Mr. Leonardo said that we needed to open every door in the house. Like basement, attic, kitchen cupboards, the medicine cabinet—he said that the spirit world needed to flow through unobstructed.”

  “That’s a lot of doors.”

  “I know, right?” Janie kicked at the chain link. “But that’s why it freaked me out a little. Really it was the only time I felt actually scared. Because Mr. Leonardo wouldn’t go forward with the ceremony. He kept repeating, A door remains closed. A door remains closed. Lucy ran around the whole house checking and then finally I opened up the bookshelf. Mostly because I just wanted the chanting to stop.”

  “What did he say? What did your parents say?”

  Janie grimaced. “He just nodded. My parents said we’d talk about it later. But that was it. That was holding the whole ceremony up. Somehow Mr. Leonardo knew about the hidden room. Or else the spirits did.”

  “No way,” I said firmly. “That guy earns his living with this routine. He must have noticed your eyes glancing at the bookshelf a bunch. Or he’s spent so much time in these old houses that he knows just what to look for.”

  “The house feels kind of different. Tranquil, kind of.”

  “Power of suggestion. Besides if I were a trapped spirit, I’d hang out in your room.”

  Janie laughed. “Shut up!”

  “I would. Or Lucy’s room. Seriously, we’re talking about ancient spirits. They deserve the best. If I were a poltergeist, I would demand Pottery Barn furniture. I’d stretch out on one of Lucy’s plush, white beanbags and pretend it was spirit spa day.”

  Janie’s laughter trailed off into a sigh. “When is life going to get less bizarre?”

  “I’m sorry your parents didn’t tell you. This is just what Michigan is like.” We stood up. “Let’s go back to my relatively modest and happily unhaunted house.”

  But Janie said, “I need to check on Ben. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not.” But I had hesitated a little bit too long before answering. Janie didn’t say anything but I saw her notice.

  We walked for a full block before she said anything else. “Things are better between my parents.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They just go through these cycles. Like one minute they’re falling all over each other and leaving for weekend getaways. And the next minute they’re barely speaking.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’ve been together for like twenty years. Clearly they’ve figured out something. I think my dad goes cold sometimes. He gets caught up in work. Then my mom acts up, like a little kid. She just wants attention.”

  “Right.”

  “That’s all Ned McGovern offered her—a little attention. I don’t think she actually went through with it. You know, cheating.”

  No question I considered Janie my best friend, but that didn’t mean I felt comfortable speculating on her mom’s love life. So we let the matter drop.

  Once we reached the Donahue house, we heard incessant tapping. Inside, we found Ben kneeling in the not-so-secret room, with a screwdriver in one hand and small hammer in the other. Every book on the shelves had been removed and sat in stacks beside the opened doors.

  “Hey, Ben,” Janie said.

  “Yup.” He kept tapping, listening carefully as if he waited for someone to tap back.

  “Morse code?” I asked.

  “Trying to find hollow spots.” Ben kept tapping.

  Janie ventured as carefully as I had. “Well, Liv and I did that. We searched through the entire house. That’s how we found the secret room.” Ben looked up blankly. Janie spelled it out. “The secret room is the hollow spot.”

  “You’re adorable.” Ben smiled up at both of us. “The two of you, with your Nancy Drew ponytails—you think this is the only hidden room in this house of halfway horrors.” Janie’s look of shock mirrored my own. “I’ve found compartments all over—closets behind closets, passages down to the basement. Wait until I show you the wine cellar.”

  “How long have you known about all this?” Janie demanded.

  “For a while,” I answered for Ben. Because I understood then why he let us keep the secret bookcase room to ourselves. He had plenty of other hidden places to explore. And besides, it kept us distracted. We wouldn’t snoop around the rest of the house anymore. We’d found one passage and thought we found everything.

  “Oh, come on. You cannot possibly be angry about this. You waited for the professional ghostbuster to demand access before you clued in the rest of the family about the trick bookcase.”

  Janie whirled her head around in disbelief. “But you didn’t. You just said there are other secret doors but you didn’t open them for Mr. Leonardo.”

  “I did not,” Ben admitted. “Mr. Leonardo was a flake.” He stood up and stashed the screwdriver and hammer in the pockets of his cargo shorts. “Let’s go. I’ll give you the tour the real estate agent should have given us. We’ll start at the attic and work our way down.”

  We climbed the narrow back staircase. At first, Janie dismissed him. “I know about the passage from my bedroom to the attic. That’s why I chose my bedroom.”

  “Well then, I regret to inform you that every single bedroom has access to the attic. But you just keep feeling special.” Ben moved expertly through the attic, unfastening latches and turning rusted knobs. All in all, he showed us six different doorways. It was like one of those calendars at Christmastime—a surprise behind each wooden door.

  Janie and I spent half the time grumbling at each other. We’d thought we’d searched the house so thoroughly.

  “Why would anyone build a house like this?” I wondered aloud, honestly hesitant to hear the answer.

  Ben shook his head. “I don’t know. None of the scenarios are particularly reassuring, right? You wanted to check up on your sleeping family. Maybe everybody snuck upstairs to participate in secret attic rituals?”

  Janie looked around the attic with new eyes. “Miss Abbot claims the Langsoms moved liquor during Prohibition, that they built the passages for smuggling. But I always thought bootlegging was more for mobsters than community pillars like the Langsoms. Maybe this was where they planned to hide when their covers were blown? Or when their enemies attacked the house?”

  Ben snapped his fingers and pointed at his sister. “And Lucy thinks she’s the smartest!” He crossed to a cupboard built into the northern wall. “G
et a load of this.” He unlatched the cupboard and twisted the handle clockwise. Violet satin fully lined the cupboard. Rows of leather bands dangled inside.

  “It’s empty?” Janie said.

  “It’s empty now, but look at the indentations.” Janie and I peered inside but Ben didn’t wait for us to identify them. “Guns. Knives. Someone kept his weapons cache here. We bought a house with a weapons cache.”

  Janie traced her finger along the gleaming satin. “We bought a house with an empty cupboard. Someone took his weapons with him.”

  “Okay, yes,” Ben conceded. “I just think it’s worth noting that this person is heavily armed.”

  “With antiques.”

  “Antique weapons are still weapons. Provided they still function.” Ben held up a finger. “There’s more.” He crouched down to show us a wooden box positioned beneath the round window at the back of the house. The box looked battered and scarred and was about the height of a small stool. You could rest your knee on it to peer out the window. Through the glass you could see the lush lawn of the Donahues’ backyard, the bramble hedges separating their property from the Redmonds’ behind it.

  “Check it out.” Ben swung open the chest’s lid and started reeling out a strand of weathered board and heavy metal chains. They clanked on the floor.

  “Shackles?” I felt queasy, imagining someone chained up in the attic, at the mercy of whoever owned those weapons.

  “Nope.” Ben spread out the wood and chains in order to display the full length of the ladder. It too was a built-in feature, bolted to the attic floor. “Escape plan!”

  “Does it reach all the way down?” Janie asked.

  “I guess it would get you near enough. I haven’t tried it out yet,” Ben admitted, like that counted as a failure on his part.

  “Well, don’t, okay? That’s an old chain.” Janie weighed one of the links in her hand. “Who were these people?”