The Coldwater Haunting

by Michael Richan

  Great, he’ll be here tomorrow, he thought. Gotta get that guest room in order.

  He looked around the kitchen. Bright sunlight streaked in through eastern-facing windows, but despite the sun, the room still seemed dark. He walked to the switch and turned on the lights, but even with them on, the corners still seemed murky, the walls a little dingy.

  It’s the color of the paint. Going to have to brighten up this room somehow.

  Looking out the windows and into the yard, things looked quiet and peaceful. The giant trees beyond the bramble looked beautiful and calming – a world away from the terror he felt six hours earlier, in the dark of night.

  Gun. Gotta go into town and get one, along with thirty other things to pick up at the hardware store.

  At least Jake will be here tomorrow. Having someone else around will help.

  He realized he meant not only to help with the work, but with the loneliness, too; approaching nightfall had begun to come with a sense of terror, and Jake being in the house with him would help ease that. Then it occurred to him: Jake has an arsenal of firearms, and a rack on the window of his truck. Why buy one?

  He pulled out his phone and texted his friend, asking him to bring along a rifle and a shotgun.

  Little bubbles appeared as Jake formulated a reply, but Ron knew what it would be before it arrived:

  “Fuckin A.”

  - - -

  “I hate to be the grim reaper here,” the man said, looking at the thin metal bob he just reeled up from a six-inch-wide pipe in the ground. “This hill is notorious for it, though.”

  “I would have thought four hundred feet was plenty,” Ron replied.

  “You can never tell. I could drill over there and hit at two hundred, or over there and not hit at five. It’s not an exact science.”

  “What about making it deeper?”

  “Sure, we could try. Probably your best bet. Runs about forty a foot. Our driller could get you on the schedule in the spring.” He stopped to look around, eyeing the driveway. “Maneuvering that road might be tough, though. It’s a big rig.”

  “Is there anything else you could do to increase the flow? Some kind of fracking, maybe?”

  “There’s outfits that’ll try,” he replied, loading gear back onto his truck. “They’ll charge you thousands, but I’ve never known it to work. No, sorry, you’re producing a half-gallon a minute here, and in my book, that’s dry. A bank won’t loan on less than ten gallons a minute sustained over two hours.”

  “So, I’m screwed.”

  “Basically.”

  Shit, Ron thought. Selling the property – or getting a loan against it – just became much more problematic. Not that he had any plans to sell, or need for a loan, but still…it didn’t feel good to have options lopped off.

  The man handed him a card. “Here’s a water delivery guy. He does a lot of jobs this time of year, and usually needs a day or two lead time, but if you tell him you’re completely out of water, he may be able to speed things up. Have him fill these two reservoirs. The above ground tank looks a little nasty inside, I’d pour in some bleach while he’s filling it.” He got inside his truck and started it up. “I’ll have my driller call you.”

  “So, water deliveries until then?”

  “And maybe even after. There’s a reason this huge tank is here: this hill is mostly rock. Some drillers won’t even return your call when they hear you live on Mt. Soltis. We drilled this one sixteen years ago, that’s the only reason I’m out here today.”

  “Great.”

  “Sorry, buddy. Like I said, hate to be the grim reaper.” He started up his truck and backed out.

  Ron walked into the house. He’d been drinking bottled water since he moved in, as he didn’t trust the cleanliness of the reservoirs either, and hadn’t yet been able to schedule a water test. At least I can keep making coffee, he thought, digging out his phone to place a call to have water delivered.

  He was relieved to learn they would try to fit him in later that evening. So, I got a single flush in all the toilets until then, he thought, sinking into a chair in the living room.

  He looked around. The bare floor and walls still seemed foreign. Most of their furniture was in storage; his plan was to move it in about two weeks, after he finished a few projects. With Elenore out of town and Robbie still in school in Portland, he could push back the furniture move to get more things done with Jake.

  The half-empty room seemed even more spartan as he raised his head to look up; two stories open, it was massive. He could see cobwebs in the corners, twenty feet up, and higher still, recessed flood lights that were burned out. I need one of those long, extension things to change those bulbs, he thought.

  Suddenly the news of the well sunk in, demoralizing him. Forty dollars a foot to drill deeper, he thought. What is that, four thousand to go another hundred feet? And no guarantee it’ll improve anything?

  And now my options are limited. No one could get a bank loan to buy this place, even if I did want to sell it.

  Which I don’t, but still…

  For as demoralized as he felt, and as dark and in need of a cleaning as the giant space above him still demanded, he knew he didn’t want to bail. Two huge setbacks, the sewer and the well, were going to cost him…but it was all money he knew he would have spent to acquire the place, even if he’d known they were going to be so expensive.

  But I’ll never buy a bank repo again, he thought.

  He walked out onto the front porch, resuming the work that had been underway when the well guy arrived. He brushed at the dozens of spider webs, slowly removing them from corners as the deck wrapped around bay windows. Every now and again a large spider, upset by his cleaning, would drop from above in a mindless attempt to escape; he had to keep an eye out for ones directly overhead.

  And I’ve still got to deal with the furnace, he thought, feeling another wave of desperation and depression pass over him, making him feel like shit. He jabbed the broom deeper into the corners, taking his anger out on the arachnids.

  Elenore will rub this in my face, he thought. She was already pissed about the septic system. I promised her move-in ready, and she suspected it wasn’t, even though the inspection seemed to suggest most of the fixes were cosmetic.

  Goddamn it, he thought, stabbing the broom.

  He rounded the corner of the house, continuing to clean until the porch came to a stop ten feet down the side, where an opening lead to the crawlspace. I wonder if the raccoon is still down there? The inspector said it was in the farthest spot, where he saw two red eyes in the distance, cutting his crawlspace inspection short. Apparently house inspectors don’t deal with raccoons. Or inspect wells. Or septic systems.

  The hatch is still in place, he thought. If it’s still under there, the raccoon hasn’t been coming and going through here. Maybe it left already; I’ve made enough noise in the house that it probably moved on. That’s how websites said to get rid of one; light and noise.

  He looked up at the underside of the porch’s ceiling. It was in need of paint, as was most of the exterior. That’s something Jake can help with, he thought. He’s a great painter.

  Suddenly his feelings changed; he felt better. Knowing that help was on the way was part of it, but most of it was a turn of perspective, accepting the new, financially burdensome facts of the day, and not blaming an inanimate structure for them. I could have had the well inspected separately, he thought. But I didn’t. This is on me, not on the house. He swept at another corner, this time more gently. It’s been poorly treated for years; what do you expect? A house can’t keep itself maintained; it expects its owners to do that.

  He thought of the claw marks under each window sill inside, the smell of pet urine in the tile grout of the back bathroom and the carpeting of the stairs. Looking up, he saw the shell of the heat pump ten feet farther down the side of the house, inoperative, and knew they hadn’t maintained that, either.

  Of course. You abuse a house, it’s g
oing to be like this. I may not have known about the well or the septic, but I knew it was going to need some care.

  How long has it been neglected? Years? Probably. It’ll take some time to reverse that, for the house to realize it’s loved again, and to become warm and welcoming, not the cold, sterile money pit it seems to be at the moment. You knew that going in. It needed some work, even though you told Elenore it was move-in ready. Time to suck it up and deliver.

  He kept sweeping, knowing that with the news of the well, he had little choice.

  Chapter Four

  As the afternoon drifted toward evening, Ron broke out the box that contained his security system, intent upon setting it up.

  He intended to go into town earlier in the day, but various chores kept him from that goal. Now, as he mounted each of the system’s entry sensors on doors and windows, he talked himself out of the trip.

  Jake is bringing a gun, he thought. Hell, probably two, or maybe even an arsenal. You don’t need to buy one. They’ll be here tomorrow.

  Somehow the sunlight streaming through the windows bolstered his confidence in what he was telling himself, distancing his thinking from what he’d experienced the night before. If I can get all these sensors set up, that’ll help. That can get me through one night, at least.

  In the back of his mind he knew he was kidding himself; the best the alarm system could do was alert him to someone breaking in, and, if he didn’t respond to the alarm, call for police. All his rationale for not calling the cops the night before still applied. As he stuck the small sensor at the top of the kitchen door and aligned it to a magnet on the door frame, he tried to ignore all that, realizing he wasn’t going to make it into town before dark, anyway.

  He recalled walking past the gun counter at Walmart several days before. Various rifles and shotguns were inside a plastic display that you could rotate, allowing visual inspection of the firearm from all angles. He quickly felt overwhelmed by the choices and options, and decided not to buy anything until he could talk to someone with expertise about which one would be the right choice for his situation. Since they varied in price from ninety-nine to nearly five hundred dollars, he figured he needed to do some research before he plunked down the money.

  I’m not going to buy the nail gun and compressor until I do some research, too, he told himself, placing a motion sensor on the shelf of a bookcase. I need one to reattach all that molding, but there’s no sense spending the bucks until I know I’m buying the right one.

  He unspiraled the cord from the base of a small camera and looked for a spot to stick it. So far, he’d unpacked twenty or thirty boxes, but was quickly becoming sick of the process of trying to decide where to put things that came out of them. He had a sinking feeling Elenore would wind up moving half of what he’d already placed, so the entire thing felt like a waste of time. He selected the top of a set of Ikea shelves that had a wide view of the living room and kitchen, figuring that when the camera panned, it could capture the entry and stairs as well. As he threaded the cord behind the shelving unit, he grumbled to himself, irritated that she wasn’t there helping him, relieving him of some of the work. He plugged the camera in, watching as it reset itself and turned to center on his face.

  She’s gone to Europe, he thought. With Ira.

  He started an app on his phone and tested out the camera, moving it from side to side to confirm the coverage area.

  She says she’s up for this move, but she’s not being honest with me, he thought as he watched himself in the image on his phone. She said she’d find a way to work from home, so we could live out here. She says she agrees, but secretly she doesn’t, she wants to find a way to stay in the city. Ira will pressure her to not move. He’ll make it hard, and she won’t fight for it, she’ll cave to whatever he asks.

  He lowered the phone and stared at the camera, frustrated not only at the lack of Elenore, but his fatalistic thinking. You’re being a putz. She’s working, for Christ’s sake. Someone needs to bring in money while you pull off this house caper. Ease up.

  He sighed, his irritation still growing. There was so much to do, so many little tasks as well as huge projects, he knew he was making things worse by entertaining paranoid thoughts about Elenore. Don’t go down the rabbit hole, he thought. You’ll just get worse and worse, and spend the night drinking instead of working. Beyond here there be monsters.

  He turned, leaving the camera, and walked out to the garage to find another box to unpack.

  He always trusted Elenore, determined not to let the failures of his first marriage impact the second. It wasn’t easy. He never imagined it would happen to him, but betrayal became an infection that wasn’t isolated by the imaginary lines of a new relationship. Logically he reminded himself that just because he’d been abused and lied to and treated like a stupid, naïve boy scout by his first wife didn’t mean everyone on the planet would treat him the same way.

  Easier in principle than in practice, he thought as he carried in a new box, remembering what his therapist had told him.

  He placed it on the counter and opened it. At first he couldn’t tell what was inside; it was full of bundles of bubble wrap, multiple layers concealing small objects, sealed over with packing tape. It took several careful minutes with scissors to free one from its cocoon. A small ceramic replica of the Empire State Building emerged.

  Elenore’s souvenir collection, he thought, looking at the dozen other bundles in the box, all similarly ensconced in thick wrapping. Looking at the six-inch ceramic replica, his first thought was of An Affair to Remember, and he smiled.

  Then he remembered visiting the observation deck with Elenore several years ago, when she picked up the souvenir. Unlike the movie, all they had done during that excursion was fight. Their experience was the exact opposite of Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr’s.

  He knew what else was in the other bundles: more towers. The CN, Sears, Eiffel. The Chrysler Building. The Space Needle.

  Fuck no, he thought, closing the box. She can unwrap them herself.

  He thought of calling her, but knew it was the middle of the night in London. He wanted to call Robbie, but knew Elenore’s mother would bristle at the change of routine – the calls were always at night, just before bed – and decided against angering his in-law.

  Outside, the last of the day’s light was fading. He checked the time; it was 7:30. I’ll call in an hour, he thought. Soon enough, and it won’t piss off Henrietta.

  Henrietta wasn’t her real name; he just thought of her as the woman in the cellar from The Evil Dead.

  For a moment he felt another pang of irritation, upset that he couldn’t call his own son whenever he damn well pleased. She’s doing us a favor watching him, he reminded himself. It keeps him in the same school until we’re ready to finalize the move.

  I miss him, though.

  Ron walked to the kitchen windows that looked out over the back yard. Through the notch in the trees he could only see sky; the best view of the town was from upstairs, looking down. He listened, appreciating the lack of any sound. This is what you wanted, he thought. Isolation. Quiet. Now you’ve got it.

  As dusk turned to evening, the trees in the distance became darker, and he had a sense of things closing in, the darkness providing cover for whatever was out there, moving in the shadows: animals waking up, preparing for nocturnal hunting, or people with nefarious designs, wondering if the house up the hill in the woods was still vacant and worth prowling through, or…

  Or what else?

  He turned on the lights, which caused reflections in the windows. Now he couldn’t see out, but he knew whatever might be out there could see in.

  There’s no one there. That was the whole point of moving here. Maybe a raccoon, or a deer, but not a single human being. You don’t need curtains or blinds, because there’s nobody to see in. You could run around the house naked and it wouldn’t matter. You’re just used to the city, where there are plenty of people who could look through your wind
ows if you didn’t cover them at night, people who used telescopes and considered it a hobby to spy into other people’s homes.

  Here, there’s no one for at least twenty acres of dense woods. The nearest neighbor is down the twisty road at least a quarter mile.

  He stared out the window, not entirely convinced, wondering if, by standing there, he was daring whatever might be out in the woods to come take a closer look.

  I’m not afraid, he thought. Let them see that.

  - - -

  Thump.

  He sat up in bed, looking out the windows, even though the sound came from above him. Stars shone in the distance, no clouds. Light from the moon was minimal; things looked dark.

  He reached for the light on the bed stand, sliding the dimmer just enough to illuminate the room. Immediately the window was filled with the reflection, making it hard to see out.

  He sat still, listening. After a few moments, he heard another noise…

  Steps.

  Someone coming up the stairs?

  He listened hard, straining his ears. The steps continued. At first he felt frozen by panic, but then his subconscious opted for fight instead of flight and he bolted out of bed, grabbing his robe and throwing it on. He walked to the locked double doors at the other end of the room and cocked his head, listening.

  The sound stopped.

  Whoever it was heard me, he thought. They stopped when I began moving around inside the bedroom.

  He waited, expecting to hear the steps resume. When they didn’t, he reached for the doorknob and quickly pulled the doors open, exposing the long hallway that ran the length of the house.

  No one was there, and for a moment he wondered what exactly he would have done had someone been. You need something to protect yourself, he thought, feeling adrenaline surging. And now you’ll never get back to sleep unless you check the entire house.