The Coldwater Haunting

by Michael Richan

  And now, if the electrical system is bad, too…another thing wrong, another thing to fix!

  But is it? What I saw isn’t there anymore. Maybe it never was there in the first place.

  It’s fucking with me. This house is fucking with me.

  He felt like crying, but he knew he wasn’t going to give in and actually let loose. The house had been a test of his determination, his ability to prove to himself and to Elenore that he wasn’t wrong about the place. It was really a great house. It was the perfect house. It just needed more care and attention than a normal one.

  He stood, walked to the garage, and threw the circuit breakers back on. Returning to the living room, he checked the outlets; they were still clean, bearing no evidence of a short.

  He walked to the front door and reactivated the alarm, then went upstairs and crawled back into bed.

  “You can fuck with me all you want,” he said out loud, staring up at the ceiling. “It won’t matter. I am going to live here, and my family is going to live here. So, fuck you.”

  He waited, wondering if the house would reply.

  - - -

  It was difficult for the sound of knocking at the front door to make its way through the large house and into the master bedroom upstairs, but Ron slowly came awake, unsure if he’d heard someone pounding on the door or if he had dreamt it. Now conscious and listening, things seemed quiet, and he was about to convince himself that he’d dreamt the sound when the pounding returned. He swung his legs out of bed.

  Christ, he thought, looking at the clock. 7 AM? What the fuck is Jake thinking?

  He donned his robe and went downstairs. Dawn had just settled in; it was cloudy outside, and weak, grey light was filtering in through the windows. As he approached the door, he could tell it wasn’t Jake on the other side, and he immediately became suspicious. Instead of opening the door, he called through it. “What?”

  “Just wanted to return this to you,” came the muffled reply.

  Ron punched in the alarm code and threw the deadbolt on the door. He opened it a crack.

  Standing on the porch was a man holding a sign. He extended it. “This blew into my yard. I think it’s yours.”

  Ron opened the door more. “It’s kinda early.”

  “Sorry, I’m on my way to work, and I thought I’d drop it off.”

  Ron took the sign; it was, indeed, the small sign that advertised his use of an alarm company. He looked out the door and to the left, where it was normally planted in the ground. Not there.

  “Blew into your yard?” Ron asked, finding it hard to believe.

  “Those winds last night,” the man replied. “Incredible. Hi, I’m Tom. Your neighbor past the ravine.” He nodded to the left and extended his hand.

  Ron studied him for a moment. The man was about his height and weight, with a pale complexion and glasses that seemed a size too small for his head. Not wanting to be rude, he shook the man’s hand and then opened the door, inviting him in. “You want some coffee?”

  “No, I gotta get to work,” Tom replied, stepping inside. “Just thought I’d drop it by. I wasn’t sure it belonged to you, but I saw the sticker on your window, and the name matched, so I figured it must be.”

  “Right,” Ron replied. “Well, thank you. I can’t believe it could travel that far.”

  “Not the first time. Crazy winds around here; I’ve had stuff from miles away land in my yard. The worst is when they get caught in the pines and you have to figure out how to get them down from thirty feet in the air.”

  “Yeah,” Ron replied, wanting coffee himself. “Well, I appreciate it.”

  Despite mentioning work, Tom didn’t seem in a hurry to leave. “So, all moved in?”

  “Not really. Fixing up a few things first.”

  “Oh, of course. You married?”

  “Yes. And we have a son who will be joining me when all the work gets done.”

  “Oh. Where you moving from?”

  “That’s a lot of questions for early in the morning,” Ron replied, wiping at his face with his hand.

  “Of course, I’m sorry, I’ve woken you up. I’ve been up for an hour, already caffeinated.”

  “So, you’re a neighbor?”

  “The parcel past the ravine,” Tom replied. “Little white house. Live there with my wife and daughter.”

  “To be honest with you, I hadn’t noticed it. Next time I keep driving up the main road, I’ll look for it.”

  “You have to take the Crestview branch at the top of the hill,” Tom replied. “Our property lines touch, but access is from the other direction.”

  “Oh, gotcha. I guess that explains the other road, the one that’s blocked off.”

  He wondered if Tom might shed some light on the abandoned road, but instead the man just walked into the living room.

  “You liking the house?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah, sure. It’s great.”

  “So crazy, this place. Such a lot of history for a new house.”

  “History?”

  Tom’s eyes danced around the room, as though he was inventorying the place. “You know, the renters. The deaths. All that.”

  “Deaths?”

  Tom looked at him, and Ron saw a wave of regret pass over his face. “The previous owner?”

  Ron stared back at him blankly. “No,” he replied.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “There were deaths here?”

  “Well, I don’t mean to say the wrong thing. Perhaps I have already.”

  “No, tell me, what?”

  “Well, I guess it’s a matter of public record, it’s not like I’m telling you anything you can’t read in the papers. The whole mountain knew Mr. Lucero. We were all kinda of shocked.”

  Ron closed his eyes for a moment, feeling impatient. “At what?”

  “The way he…well, his wife, Alice, had been sick for a long time. He was her caregiver, of course. He was old, too, so he was set in his ways, followed routines like we all do. Still…”

  “Yes?”

  “She passed away, and he kept caring for her, you know, like she hadn’t really died. Didn’t report it. Whenever we’d see him, we’d ask about her, and he’d say she was still fine, he was still looking after her. But, really, she had died. She’d been dead a long time when he finally passed and the police found them both. Four months, they estimated.”

  “Christ,” Ron muttered, feeling some of the anxiety from the middle of the previous night return.

  “I heard the bank had to hire a special company to get rid of the smell,” Tom said, taking a deep breath. “Seems like they got it, though. Can’t smell a thing.” He smiled.

  Ron remembered the odd smells in the house when he first moved in; he had assumed they were all from pets. The memory of the rank odors, in light of this new information, was making him feel nauseous.

  “You look a little white,” Tom said. “Shit, I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “How long have you lived next door?”

  Tom’s eyes looked up. “Let’s see, almost fifteen years. Maybe sixteen, seventeen. Something like that.”

  “So you were here when they built this house,” Ron replied. “It’s only twelve years old.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tom answered, then checked his watch. “Shit, I gotta run. Gonna be late. Sorry to have woken you up.” He turned, heading for the door.

  “Hey, listen,” Ron said, catching up with him, “I wouldn’t mind picking your brain sometime about the history of this place, as well as the mountain. Seems like there’s some kind of animosity between McLean and here. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but when people in town talk about it, they…”

  Tom cut him off. “You’re right about that. There’s plenty of bad blood around here. Lots of history, lots of entanglements, if you know what I mean. I’d be happy to fill you in, but I have to get to work. Already late.”

  “Of course,” Ron replied. “Maybe you know
something about that road, too. The one that…”

  “Tell you what,” Tom said, cutting him off again. “I can stop by later tonight if you’d like, after work. Bring some beers.”

  “Sure.”

  “Sometimes I work late, might be 8 or 9. That too late for you?”

  “No, should be fine.”

  “Alright,” Tom replied, extending his hand again. “See you then. I didn’t get your name?”

  “Ron,” he replied, shaking.

  “Ron,” Tom repeated. “Ron. Short for Ronald?”

  “Nope, just Ron.”

  “Ron. Right. Just committing it to memory! See you later then.” He opened the door.

  “Tonight.”

  “Right. 8 or 9.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  The door closed, and Ron looked at the alarm company sign in his hand. He placed it in the corner, intending to replant it later, more interested, at the moment, in the kitchen and coffee.

  - - -

  A couple of hours later, Jake arrived bearing a bag of fast food breakfast sandwiches. Ron poured him some coffee as the two ate.

  “Anything weird last night?” Jake asked.

  “What, like the devil manifesting at a demonic ritual?” Ron replied sarcastically. “Walking the halls, breathing fire, dragging a tail?”

  “You know what I mean, don’t pretend you don’t.”

  Anticipating that Jake would ask, Ron had resolved earlier to skip telling him about the electrical burns on the outlets, as well as the revelations from the neighbor; there would be nothing gained by feeding Jake’s paranoia, and plenty to lose.

  “Nope, nothing. Quiet night.”

  Jake chewed for a moment on his sandwich, then swallowed. “I don’t know if I believe you.”

  “Believe what you want, but nothing happened.”

  “You have that look when you’re lying. I think you’re telling me what I want to hear, so I don’t bug out on you.”

  “Really?” Ron replied, his hand over his heart. “Me? Do that?”

  Jake’s phone went off, and he pulled it out of his trousers. “Hello?...Oh, hi, Terrell…yeah…uh huh…wait, hold on, I wanna put you on speakerphone so Ron can hear you too, alright? OK? Hang on a second.” He lowered the phone from his ear, pushed a few buttons, and placed the phone on the counter. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Terrell’s voice crackled over the connection.

  “Morning, Terrell,” Ron said.

  “Hi, Ron,” Terrell replied.

  “So, start over, tell Ron what you were saying,” Jake instructed.

  “Alright,” Terrell sighed, taking a big breath. “I made contact with my friend, the one I was telling you about.”

  “The guy you were hoping would mentor you,” Jake added.

  “Yeah. His name is Abe. He’s old, really old, and he knows a lot. He’s a local authority on these kinds of things. He’s also totally paranoid, so it required some real work on my part to get him to see me, but last night he finally let me in and took a look at my traps.”

  Terrell paused.

  “And?” Jake urged.

  “Well, it’s not good news.”

  Jake looked up at him; he shrugged in response. “What do you mean?” Ron asked Terrell.

  “So, listen, some people have the gift, and some don’t. Some people have it in different quantities. I have some. Abe has a ton, he’s super gifted, so I have to trust him even though he incinerated my traps! He took a look at what was in them, and said it was…I don’t remember, it was some German word, started with a ‘v’. Verbatim?”

  “Verboten?” Ron offered.

  “Yeah, that was it. What does it mean?”

  “Forbidden,” Ron replied.

  “Oh, OK, that makes sense, that fits in with all the other things he said. Anyway, he completely fried my traps, they’re useless now. Said he had to kill it.”

  “Kill what?” Jake asked.

  “What was inside them,” Terrell replied. “What they had trapped.”

  “Which was what, exactly?” Ron asked.

  “He wasn’t very precise about that…” Terrell replied slowly. “He just went on and on about how I was not to have anything more to do with it. He’d be pissed I’m even calling you, but I figured you needed to know.”

  “Know what?” Ron asked, irritated. “You haven’t told us anything!”

  “Yeah, why does Abe feel this way?” Jake asked Terrell. “Did he say why you couldn’t contact us?”

  “He said verboten, he said it was dangerous, that I had to steer clear. He said there are some things that those of us with the gift can help a lot with, and other things that we can help a little. But he said this thing we can’t help at all, and that it was too dangerous to get involved with. He made me promise I wouldn’t go back.”

  “Dangerous? Ron asked. “How?”

  “So, I did a little reading about it after I met with Abe,” Terrell replied. “There’s a strain of phenomena that is highly toxic to those with the gift. It’s like something that has soured, or become infected. Instead of being a normal haunting that we can deal with, this strain contains things that can be lethal.”

  “Lethal?” Ron asked, looking at Jake, whose face had gone white.

  “Lethal to those with the gift,” Terrell added. “I’m not saying it’s lethal to you. Might not be; might seem like a normal haunting to you. But it’s potentially deadly to Abe and myself. I told him the things that occurred while I was there. He was especially freaked out about me floating on the ceiling, and that I couldn’t remember it happening. He said it was all an attack on me, personally, and that if I had stayed, I might have been killed.”

  There was a long pause. Ron wasn’t sure what to say, and Jake looked baffled as well.

  “So,” Terrell continued, “I guess what it comes down to, is, I’m sorry, I can’t really do much for you, at least, not in person, not there. I’m happy to research anything I can, but Abe made me promise I wouldn’t go back down to your place, and I kind of have to keep that promise if I ever want him to teach me more things. Which I do. Want him to teach me.”

  “Well, great,” Jake muttered. “That’s just great.”

  “So that’s it?” Ron asked. “Nothing more about what was in the traps?”

  “I’m gonna keep researching stuff for you guys from up here,” Terrell offered.

  Ron could hear the regret in Terrell’s voice, and it sounded sincere, as though he really wanted to help, but couldn’t.

  “I will try to get more from Abe about what was in the traps,” Terrell continued. “Of course, they’re fried now, useless, but I think he knows more about what was in them than he’s telling me. He just wants to protect me, I think, and that’s a good thing, of course. Maybe if I word it right, and he doesn’t think I’m becoming more involved, he’ll tell me. And I might discover something in my books. I have a big library, and I’ll go through it, look for anything I can find about verbatim…”

  “Verboten,” Ron corrected, rolling his eyes.

  “Right, verboten stuff. If I find out anything, I will call you. I promise.”

  “How much can you realistically do long distance?” Jake asked. “How are you gonna exorcise the place? Do I need to get my girlfriend involved, ask her to try and cleanse it again?”

  “No!” Terrell replied. “I don’t know if your girlfriend is really gifted or not, but if she is, and she interacts with the things in your house, it could kill her! I believe Abe’s warning. Don’t involve her.”

  “Well, fuck,” Jake muttered, turning from the phone. “How do we solve this, then?”

  “I don’t have answers for you just yet,” Terrell replied. “Like I said, if I find out anything more, I’ll call. Sorry, guys. That’s the best I’ve got at this moment. Just don’t involve any gifted people. You’ll be putting their lives at risk.”

  “We won’t,” Jake said. “Thanks, I guess.”

  “Bye
for now.”

  Jake tapped the phone, ending the call.

  “So, he can’t do anything,” Ron said dismissively, “which doesn’t surprise me. I wasn’t really expecting much from him, anyway. Or from Freedom, for that matter.”

  “Do you think this Abe guy is right? About it being lethal?”

  “Who knows? He might be some random old man who wants to keep Terrell close so he can bring him tea and do chores.”

  “I was gonna say it seemed like a little progress, at least, finding out about the traps, but you just negated all that.”

  “That’s my gift,” Ron replied, smiling.

  “Well, nothing happened last night, so maybe things will quiet down. You wanna move on to sealing up the siding today?”

  “Nothing would give me more pleasure.”

  - - -

  It was late afternoon. Clouds had begun to form, and Ron was worried it might start to rain. His fifth tube of caulk was nearly used up when his phone buzzed. He pulled the tube from the gun and tossed it into the trash, set down the gun, and retrieved the phone from his pocket.

  “Oh, got the bid.”

  “The bid?” Jake asked, midway up the side of the house on a ladder.

  “For the well,” Ron replied, scrolling. “Jesus Christ.”

  “That bad?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what I was expecting. Several thousand in flat fees, plus the per foot charges.”

  “What’s the total?”

  “To go another two hundred feet, almost fifteen thousand.”

  “Fuck me.”

  “Huh…he’s included a bid to reopen the first well.”

  “First well?”

  “If they go two hundred feet on the existing well but don’t hit anything, he’s proposing extending the first well. No extra fees, just the per foot charges.”

  “Why would you do that? Wouldn’t that cost more?”

  Ron put the phone away and went for another tube of caulk. “Hell, I don’t know. He doesn’t explain it. I’ll have to give him a call.”