The Coldwater Haunting

by Michael Richan

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, clean this shit out, have the place exorcised or something, so we can actually work here.”

  “Exorcised? Don’t be crazy.”

  “Freedom was gonna clean it out before she got scared and ran off. Something is here, and it needs to go. If you want my help, it’s gotta happen. I can’t stay here and take this shit. We clean out the weirdness, then I’ll stay and we do the rest. But fuck, we’re not getting any sleep, we’re starting to go crazy ourselves.”

  Ron felt that Jake’s demand was ridiculous, but there was no question he needed the help, and if indulging Jake’s idea bought him more time with his friend, he decided the best thing was to go along with it. “OK, so say I agree…then what? Freedom ran out. She’s the only person I know who’s into this type of stuff.”

  “There’s someone else,” Jake replied. “I can try calling him in the morning.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy in Port Angeles.”

  “Christ, way up there?”

  “I’m sure Freedom could refer me to people, but there’s no way she would; she’s pissed enough at me as it is. This guy might be able to help. I’ll call him and see.”

  Ron sighed. “What’s he gonna do?” he muttered.

  “I don’t know, sage the place? Banish stuff? I mean, Freedom didn’t even finish sageing, so we know the house still hasn’t been cleaned.”

  “Do you hear yourself?” Ron asked. “Cleaned…it sounds ridiculous.”

  “I am trying to be upfront with you. Do you seriously think you can live in this house, like this? How about Elenore? Robbie? What happens when you wake up one morning, holding a knife to Robbie’s throat? What then?”

  Suddenly things switched in Ron’s thinking. Jake was right; if weird stuff kept happening after Elenore or Robbie arrived, it would be terrible. It was already hard enough to win Elenore over to the idea of the place; she had a long list of legitimate, physical problems that needed to be addressed – that he had agreed to address – and adding ghosts and night terrors and paranoia to that list would topple any chance he had of convincing her that the house was really where they belonged.

  And he couldn’t imagine subjecting his son to any of it; the idea of his boy waking suddenly to find his life in danger was unacceptable. Despair washed over him in waves, making him feel ill. Now he wanted to throw in the towel, put the place up for sale, and never let Robbie anywhere near it, despite the way he’d played it up to his son, all the wonderful aspects of the house that he’d described to Robbie in detail, hoping to win him over, too.

  You can’t sell, he thought. The well. No water. No one will be able to get a loan to buy the place. You’re stuck.

  You need Jake not only to fix the place up to a point where it could go on the market, but to get it clean of all this weird shit as well. You need his help on both fronts.

  “Alright,” Ron replied, feeling as though he was betraying common sense, but at a loss for alternatives. “I agree. We’ll try whatever; this Port Angeles guy, anything else you think we need.” He looked at the clock on the bed stand. “It’s almost 5. I’m not going back to sleep, are you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll start some coffee, then.”

  - - -

  Jake had been gone about an hour. Ron continued to work on the exterior, replacing worn trim, cutting each piece to fit, using tricks he’d picked up from his friend. He saved the pieces for Jake to nail up when he got back, knowing he would do a better job of it.

  He was about to take a break when he heard Jake’s truck in the distance; soon it appeared on the road. He watched as it pulled in, and Jake got out.

  Ron was momentarily confused when a kid emerged from the passenger side; the boy looked like a teenager. This is who Jake thought could help?

  “Ron, this is Terrell,” Jake said, as the kid pulled a backpack out of the truck and slung it over his shoulder.

  Ron extended a hand and they shook. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Same here,” Terrell replied, and turned to look at the house. “This it?”

  “Yeah. Want a tour?”

  “Do you mind if I just explore a little on my own?”

  Ron looked at Jake. “Did my friend here tell you what happened to the last person who worked alone in there?”

  “Yeah,” Terrell answered, “she passed out or something?”

  “Might have lit the house on fire with that burning sage she dropped,” Ron replied.

  “No sage here,” Terrell said, slapping his backpack.

  “Yeah, sure,” Ron replied. “Go ahead, explore. Door’s open. We’ll be checking on you in a bit, though, just to be safe.”

  Terrell nodded and walked to the house, disappearing inside.

  “What is he, twelve?” Ron asked.

  “Older than that. He owns a business. He’s gotta be eighteen at least.”

  “And why him? What did you say his qualifications were?” As though this type of thing has qualifications.

  “He owns a ghost tour business in Port Angeles. Freedom and I went on it last summer when we were up there for one of her gigs. She thought he was impressive.”

  “Impressive? In what way?”

  “She said he has the gift.”

  Ron rolled his eyes. “That just sounds so…stupid, like a flattering word these people made up for themselves. ‘The gift’…what the hell does that even mean?”

  “Freedom thinks she has the gift, too. But she said this guy had more.”

  “More, like it’s something you can quantify? Like they all have little gas gauges?

  “She seemed to think so. Not the gas gauges, of course.”

  “And this is gonna cost me two hundred bucks?”

  “Plus room and board, for at least a couple of nights.”

  “Well, it’s not like there aren’t enough bedrooms. I can unfold that futon thing, I guess.” He walked back to the saw.

  “Oh, hey, look at that!” Jake said. “You cut some trim!”

  “I can’t guarantee they’re all correct. You’ll just have to see.”

  “I’ll let you know how many I have to redo.”

  After giving Terrell some time in the house, Ron decided to check on him. He found him at the top of the stairs. “Things OK?” he asked.

  “If by OK you mean dead, yeah.”

  “Dead?”

  “Oh, sorry, I don’t mean dead-dead, just, ‘dead’… it’s what I say when I mean there’s nothing here.”

  “Nothing…weird? Is that the right word for it?”

  “It’s as good as any. I’ll keep looking.” Terrell turned and continued down a hallway, while Ron walked into the kitchen to find something to drink. He removed a bottle of water from the fridge and sat in a chair in the living room, relishing the chance to get off his feet for a few minutes. He heard the thumping of Jake’s nail gun as pieces of trim were attached to the side of the house.

  After a couple of minutes had gone by, he heard Terrell coming down the stairs.

  “Nice house!” Terrell said, walking into the living room.

  “Thank you.”

  “Mind if I sit?”

  “Sure. Want some water?”

  “That’d be great.”

  As Terrell walked to a chair, Ron rose and retrieved a bottle from the kitchen. “So?”

  “So, I don’t sense a lot.”

  “Really?” Ron asked, handing the bottle to Terrell.

  “Not really.”

  “How about under the stairs?”

  “No, didn’t notice anything special there.”

  Ron sat in his chair. “How do you sense these things, exactly?”

  Terrell smiled. “Jake said you were skeptical. It certainly comes through in your voice.”

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to be condescending or disrespectful.”

  “It’s all good. I’m used to it. Lots of skeptics on my ghost tour. I take it in stride, doesn’t bother m
e.”

  “So, your ghost tour is in Port Angeles?”

  “Yup. Been doing real well ever since I got new flyers. The old ones I had were so lame, people didn’t take it seriously. The new flyers are really slick, very professional looking.”

  “And that made you more serious?”

  “Ah, more cynicism! Like I said, doesn’t bother me.”

  “I’m just trying to understand what you do. Did Jake tell you about the things we’ve seen here?”

  “He did.”

  “Did he tell you everything? Mind repeating what he said?”

  “He said you’ve seen some ghosts – or, what he thought might be ghosts – at night. That you were having weird dreams. That his girlfriend tried to clean the house but it went badly.”

  Hmm…no mention of the gun incident, Ron thought. Probably didn’t want to scare the kid away. “Anything else?”

  “No. Maybe you could tell me exactly what you saw?”

  For a moment Ron considered playing things down, but then figured, I’m paying this putz two hundred dollars. Might as well go for broke. “There were figures on the back lawn, looking into the house. At first I thought it might be real people; there was a break-in when the house was on the market. It didn’t take long to realize they weren’t normal people, the way they moved over the ground...I guess ‘drifted’ is a better word. One of them saw me looking at them from the upstairs window, and floated up to me.”

  Ron took a look at Terrell. The kid seemed calm but fidgety, as though he was secretly terrified and trying to hide it with a veneer of professionalism – or what he considered to be professionalism.

  “When I turned on the light in my room,” Ron continued, “they were gone. Well, that’s not true. I turned the light off again, and most of them had gone.”

  “Light banished them?”

  “Banished? I suppose. There were less of them.”

  “Hmm.”

  Ron could see Terrell’s eyes going back and forth as he thought, mulling something. “What?”

  “Well, that’s interesting. The light thing isn’t uncommon.”

  There was something about the way the kid replied, his tone, how he adjusted himself in the chair, which sent up a red flag in Ron’s mind. It wasn’t that he was dislikable; Terrell seemed personable and friendly, not overly dramatic like Freedom, much more down to earth. It was Ron’s sense that the veneer was still there, that the kid was trying to cover over something, maybe some secret, or inadequacy. Might be nerves, he might just be uncomfortable with meeting new people. Lack of confidence. “What’s next? Do you have a game plan?”

  “Sounds like night is when the action will be,” Terrell replied. “It’s a few hours until sunset. I’d like to get ready by placing a few things around the house and out in the yard. If you don’t mind.”

  “No, go ahead, whatever you need to do. Jake’s staying in that room, over there. I’ll put you in a room upstairs, the one to the right at the top of the stairs. It’s just a futon, sorry. Don’t have a lot of the furniture here yet.”

  Terrell smiled and rose from his chair. “A futon is great. That’s what I have at home.” He walked out of the room, into the kitchen, and opened a door that led to the back yard.

  Ron went to one of the windows and watched as Terrell inspected the area. The kid walked up to the blackberry bramble and looked carefully into it, as though he was searching for something. After making his way around the entire thing, he came back to the center, walking carefully over the grass until he reached a spot where the grass thinned, exposing bare dirt. He stopped for a moment, then swung his bag from his shoulder and removed something. Kneeling, he placed a small object on the spot, then went back to the bramble and repeated the process, removing items from his pack and placing them on the ground in carefully selected locations.

  Wonder what that is, Ron thought. I’ll ask him later.

  Eventually Terrell wandered around the side of the house, and Ron lost sight of him. He decided to go back to the garage and work with Jake.

  - - -

  As dusk approached, Ron and Jake called it a day and put away the tools. When they came inside, Ron found Terrell in the living room, his ear against a wall.

  “We’re gonna make some dinner,” Ron said. “I presume you’re hungry.”

  “Shhh,” Terrell replied, raising his hand. He listened intently, then whispered to Ron, “Do you have mice? Rats?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Ron whispered back. “Haven’t seen any, but the inspector said there were a lot of mouse turds in the attic. Which is a little weird, since this house obviously had cats.”

  Terrell removed his head from the wall. “I swear I heard something in there.”

  “It makes a lot of different noises,” Ron replied, returning to the kitchen, where Jake had already removed beers from the fridge. “I’m slowly getting used to them.”

  “How about a scratching?” Terrell asked, following him. “Like something with claws, inside the walls, wanting out?”

  “Christ, that sounds sinister,” Jake said.

  “No,” Ron replied to Terrell, “but there was a face in my bedroom window one night. He scratched at the glass with a fingernail. Does that count?”

  “Really?” Terrell asked, as Jake handed him a beer. “It made a sound, like it was really there?”

  Jake shivered. “Gives me the willies just thinking about it.”

  Ron continued, “He’d scratch at the window a couple of times, then pull back, disappearing into the night.”

  “It was a man?” Terrell asked.

  “Take that back,” Ron answered. “Just saw the finger the first couple of times. The man part came later.”

  “That’s like a creepy fucking campfire story,” Jake said. “Gives me the willies. Was this before I arrived?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you conveniently didn’t mention it when you asked me to come help?”

  “No.”

  Jake handed him the other beer. “Some friend you are.”

  Ron started making dinner. “To be honest, I thought there was a good chance it was all a dream, or that I was hallucinating. I wasn’t going to bring it up and sound like a total crackpot. It wasn’t until you saw stuff here, too, Jake, that I realized it wasn’t just me.”

  “Some entities can move things,” Terrell said, “but it’s rare. Tapping or scratching on glass is unusual. They tend to pass through the physical.”

  “That would make sense,” Jake offered, “being ghosts and all. Just like the movies, right? They’re translucent and shit, right?”

  “Yes,” Terrell answered. “So normally they can’t interact with physical things. But sometimes they expend energy that traverses the veil and interacts with a real, physical thing, like knocking over a vase, or tossing a book. It’s something they build up, kind of like a really intense exhale. You see it with entities that are a nine or ten on the trauma scale, filled with emotions so strong that instead of dissipating upon death, the emotion spins them up into a non-dead state, making them worse than in real life.”

  “Like Poltergeist?” Jake asked.

  “Well, that was Hollywood,” Terrell answered, “but yes, kind of like that. I’ve never heard of them doing anything as elaborate as stacking chairs, but I do know of a case where knives were animated. They slid out of a block, one by one, and flew across the room.”

  Jake looked as though he was about to comment, but raised the beer to his lips instead, glancing down at the ground after he swallowed.

  “Christ!” Ron replied to Terrell. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “No. The knives landed against a wall and fell to the floor. Someone could have been seriously injured, though, obviously, had they been in the way.”

  “Where did this happen?” Ron asked, skepticism in his voice as he stuck a foil-covered pan into the oven.

  “Freeville, New York, to the daughter of a professor who taught at Ithaca.” Terrell replied, looking ple
ased with his answer. “From March 1981 to July of the same year. It’s referred to as the Cassavant Incident.”

  Ron nodded in acknowledgement, impressed that the kid had all the details at the ready. “OK.”

  “Imagine how much effort it took a non-corporeal entity to perform such an act; removing each knife, positioning it, and hurtling it through the air.”

  “I guess you could ask, what was the point?” Ron replied. “If it’s that demanding upon the entity, why expend the energy?”

  “Well, in the Cassavant case,” Terrell said, “the entity seemed to be intent upon terrorizing an old man who came to live with the family at the house. There had been no activity while the family lived there from 1976 to 1981, but in March of that year, the eighty-year-old father of the woman of the household became ill, and rather than put him in a care facility in Rochester, they invited him to live with them. Shortly after he moved in, the incidents began. They ended when he died in July.”

  “So people assumed he was the cause of whatever happened?” Ron asked, setting a timer.

  “They did,” Terrell replied. “Somehow, he was the focal point of the manifestations.”

  “So…” Ron continued, “instead of believing the old man performed those actions himself – he threw the knives and whatever else – the family turned it into a ghost thing?”

  “He wasn’t in the room when the knives flew, or the other incidents happened.”

  “Who was?”

  “Usually the woman’s daughter, age ten.”

  “Let me guess, it was the girl who discovered all the weird shit that happened, reported it to the family.”

  “You’re suggesting the girl made it up, that she was upset about her grandfather coming to live with them.”

  “Seems logical.”

  “That’s what the father suspected. He went so far as to accuse the grandfather of molestation, thinking that his daughter was acting out in response to trauma. Authorities became involved. The old man claimed innocence. The girl was interviewed by police and examined by doctors. There was no evidence of abuse; the girl said she loved her grandfather, and that nothing inappropriate had ever happened between them.”