The Urban Fantasy Anthology

by Peter S. Beagle

  Nathan wasn’t helping. Every time she jumped, he’d laugh. He’d goof off and play ghost, sneaking into the bathroom while she was in the shower and writing dirty messages in the condensation on the mirror. She was spooked; he thought it was adorable.

  The joking and teasing she could take. It was the other times, the ones when she’d walk into a room and he’d be standing or sitting, staring into nothing, confused, when he’d start out of his reverie, laughing about daydreaming, but nervously, like he didn’t exactly know what he’d been doing.

  They were three weeks from opening when she returned from picking up the brochures and, once again, found the house in darkness. This time, the hall light worked—it’d been nothing more sinister than a burned-out bulb before. And this time she didn’t call Nathan’s name, but crept through the halls looking for him, feeling silly, and yet…

  When she approached the kitchen, she heard a strange rasping sound. She followed it and found Nathan standing in the twilight, staring out the window, hands moving, a skritch-skritch filling the silence.

  The fading light caught something in his hands—a flash of silver that became a knife, a huge butcher’s knife moving back and forth across a whetting stone.

  “N-Nathan?”

  He jumped, nearly dropping the knife, then stared down at it, frowning. A sharp shake of his head and he laid the knife and stone on the counter, then flipped on the kitchen light.

  “Really not something I should be doing in the dark, huh?” He laughed and moved a carrot from the counter to the cutting board, picked up the knife, then stopped. “Little big for the job, isn’t it?”

  She moved closer. “Where did it come from?”

  “Hmm?” He followed her gaze to the unfamiliar knife. “Ours, isn’t it? Part of the set your sister gave us for our anniversary? It was in the drawer.” He grabbed a smaller knife from the wooden block. “So, how did the brochures turn out?”

  Two nights later, Tanya was startled awake and bolted up, blinking hard, hearing music. She rubbed her ears, telling herself it was a dream, but she could definitely hear something. She turned to Nathan’s side of the bed. Empty.

  Okay, he couldn’t sleep, so he’d gone downstairs. She could barely hear the music, so he was being considerate, keeping it low, probably doing paperwork in the office.

  Even as she told herself this, though, she kept envisioning the knife. The big butcher’s knife that seemed to have come from nowhere.

  Nonsense. Her sister had given them a new set, and Nathan did most of the cooking, so it wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t recognized it. But as hard as she tried to convince herself, she just kept seeing Nathan standing in the twilight, sharpening that knife, the skritch-skritch getting louder, the blade getting sharper.

  Damn her sister. And not for the knives, either. Last time they’d been up, her sister and boyfriend had insisted on picking the night’s video. The Shining. New caretaker at inn is possessed by a murderous ghost and hacks up his wife. There was a reason Tanya didn’t watch horror movies, and now she remembered why.

  She turned on the bedside lamp, then pushed out of bed and flicked on the overhead light. The hall one went on, too. So did the one leading downstairs. Just being careful, of course. You never knew where a stray hammer or board could be lying around.

  As she descended the stairs, the music got louder, the thump of the bass and the wail of the singer. Seventies’ heavy-metal music. Hadn’t the Rowe kid—? She squeezed her eyes shut and forced the thought out. Like she’d know seventies heavy metal from modern stuff anyway. And hadn’t Nathan picked up that new AC/DC disk last month? Before they came to live here. He was probably listening to that, not realizing how loud it was.

  When she got downstairs, though, she could feel the bass vibrating through the floorboards. Great. He couldn’t sleep, so he was poking through those boxes in the basement.

  Boxes belonging to the Rowe family. To the Rowe kid.

  Oh, please. The Rowes had been gone for almost thirty years. Anything in the basement would belong to the Sullivans, a lovely old couple now living in Florida.

  On the way to the basement, Tanya passed the kitchen. She stopped. She looked at the drawer where Nathan kept the knife, then walked over and opened it. Just taking a look, seeing if she remembered her sister giving it to them, not making sure it was still there. It was. And it still didn’t look familiar.

  She started to leave, then went back, took out the knife, wrapped it in a dishtowel, and stuck it under the sink. And, yes, she felt like an idiot. But she felt relief even more.

  She slipped down to the basement, praying she wouldn’t find Nathan sitting on the floor, staring into nothing, nodding to voices she couldn’t hear. Again, she felt foolish for thinking it, and again she felt relief when she heard him digging through boxes, and more relief yet when she walked in and he looked up, grinning sheepishly like a kid caught sneaking into his Christmas presents.

  “Caught me,” he said. “Was it the music? I thought I had it low enough.”

  She followed his gaze and a chill ran through her. Across the room was a record player, an album spinning on the turntable, more stacked on the floor.

  “Found it down here with the albums. Been a while since you’ve seen one of those, I bet.”

  “Was it…his? The Rowe boy?”

  Nathan frowned, as if it hadn’t occurred to him. “Could be, I guess. I didn’t think of that.”

  He walked over and shut the player off. Tanya picked up an album. Initials had been scrawled in black marker in the corner. T. R. What was the Rowe boy’s name? She didn’t know and couldn’t bring herself to ask Nathan, would rather believe he didn’t know, either.

  She glanced at him. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure. I think I napped this afternoon, while you were out. Couldn’t get to sleep.”

  “And otherwise…?”

  He looked at her, trying to figure out what she meant, but what could she say? Have you had the feeling of being not yourself lately? Hearing voices telling you to murder your family?

  She had to laugh at that. Yes, it was a ragged laugh, a little unsure of itself; but a laugh nonetheless. No more horror movies for her, however much her sister pleaded.

  “Are you okay?” Nathan asked.

  She nodded. “Just tired.”

  “I don’t doubt it, the way you’ve been going. Come on. Let’s get up to bed.” He grinned. “See if I can’t help us both get to sleep.”

  The next day, she was in the office, adding her first bookings to the ledger when she saw the folder pushed off to the side, the one Nathan had compiled on the Rowe murders. She’d set it down that day and never picked it up again. She could tell herself she’d simply forgotten, but she was never that careless. She hadn’t read it because her newly traitorous imagination didn’t need any more grist for its mill.

  But now she thought of that album cover in the basement. Those initials. If it didn’t belong to the Rowe boy, then this was an easy way to confirm that and set her mind at ease.

  The first report was right there on top, the names listed, the family first, then the housekeeper, Madelyn Levy, and finally, the supposed killer, seventeen-year-old Timothy Rowe.

  Tanya sucked in a deep breath, then chastised herself. What did that prove? She’d known he listened to that kind of music, and that’s all Nathan had been doing—listening to it, not sharpening a knife, laughing maniacally.

  Was it so surprising that the Rowes’ things were still down there? Who else would claim them? The Sullivans had been over fifty when they moved in—maybe they’d never ventured down into the basement. There had certainly been enough room to store things upstairs.

  And speaking of the Sullivans, they’d lived in this house for twenty-five years. If it was haunted, would they have stayed so long?

  If it was haunted? Was she really considering the possibility? She squeezed her eyes shut. She was not that kind of person. She would not become that kind of person. She w
as rational and logical, and until she saw something that couldn’t be explained by simple common sense, she was sending her imagination to the corner for a time-out.

  The image made her smile a little, enough to settle back and read the article, determined now to prove her fancies wrong. She found her proof in the next paragraph, where it said that Timothy Rowe shot his father. Shot. No big, scary butcher—

  Her gaze stuttered on the rest of the line. She went back to the beginning, rereading. Timothy Rowe had apparently started his rampage by shooting his father, then continued on to brutally murder the rest of his family with a ten-inch kitchen carving knife.

  And what did that prove? Did she think Nathan had dug up the murder weapon with those old LPs? Of course not. A few lines down, it said that both the gun and knife had been recovered.

  What if Nathan bought a matching one? Compelled to reenact—

  She pressed her fists against her eyes. Nathan possessed by a killer teen, plotting to kill her? Was she losing her mind? It was Nathan—the same good-natured, carefree guy she’d lived with for ten years. Other than a few bouts of confusion, he was his usual self, and those bouts were cause for a doctor’s appointment, not paranoia.

  She skimmed through the rest of the articles. Nothing new there, just the tale retold again and again, until—the suspect dead—the story died a natural death, relegated to being a skeleton in the town’s closet.

  The last page was a memorial published on the first anniversary of the killings, with all the photos of the victims. Tanya glanced at the family photo and was about to close the folder when her gaze lit on the picture of the housekeeper: Madelyn Levy.

  When Nathan came in a few minutes later, she was still staring at the picture.

  “Hey, hon. What’s wrong?”

  “I—” She pointed at the housekeeper’s photo. “I’ve seen this woman. She—she was outside, when we were looking at the house. She was picking raspberries.”

  The corners of Nathan’s mouth twitched, as if he was expecting—hoping—that she was making a bad joke. When her gaze met his, the smile vanished and he took the folder from her hands, then sat on the edge of the desk.

  “I think we should consider selling,” he said.

  “Wh-what? No. I—”

  “This place is getting to you. Maybe—I don’t know. Maybe there is something. Those workers certainly thought so. Some people could be more susceptible—”

  She jerked up straight. “I am not susceptible—”

  “You lost a job you loved. You left your home, your family, gave up everything to start over, and now it’s not going the way you dreamed. You’re under a lot of stress and it’s only going to get worse when we open.”

  He took her hands and tugged her up, his arms going around her. “The guy who owns the Beamsville bed-and-breakfast has been asking about this place. He’d been eyeing it before, but with all the work it needed, it was too much for him. Now he’s seen what we’ve done and, well, he’s interested. Very interested. You wouldn’t be giving up; you’d be renovating an old place and flipping it for a profit. Nothing wrong with that.”

  She stood. “No. I’m being silly, and I’m not giving in. We have two weeks until opening, and there’s a lot of work to be done.”

  She turned back to her paperwork. He sighed and left the room.

  It got worse after that, as if in refusing to leave, she’d issued a challenge to whatever lived there. She’d now stopped laughing when she caught herself referring to the spirits as if they were real. They were. She’d come to accept that. Seeing the housekeeper’s picture had exploded the last obstacle. She’d wanted a haunted house and she’d gotten it.

  For the last two nights, she’d woken to find herself alone in bed. Both times, Nathan had been downstairs listening to that damned music. The first time, he’d been digging through the boxes, wide awake, blaming insomnia. But last night…

  Last night, she’d gone down to find him talking to someone. She’d tried to listen, but he was doing more listening than talking himself, and she caught only a few um-hmms and okays before he’d apparently woken up, startled and confused. They’d made an appointment to see the doctor after that. An appointment that was still a week away, which didn’t do Tanya any good now, sitting awake in bed alone on the third night, listening to the strains of distant music.

  She forced herself to lie back down. Just ignore it. Call the doctor in the morning, tell him Nathan would take any cancellation.

  But lying down didn’t mean falling asleep. As she lay there, staring at the ceiling, she made a decision. Nathan was right. There was no shame in flipping the house for a profit. Tell their friends and family they’d decided small-town life wasn’t for them. Smile coyly when asked how much they’d made on the deal.

  No shame in that. None at all. No one ever needed to know what had driven her from this house.

  She closed her eyes and was actually on the verge of drifting off when she heard Nathan’s footsteps climbing the basement stairs. Coming to bed? She hoped so, but she could still hear the boom and wail of the music. Nathan’s steps creaked across the first level. A door opened. Then the squeak of a cupboard door. A kitchen cupboard door.

  Grabbing something to eat before going back downstairs.

  Only he didn’t go downstairs. His footsteps headed upstairs.

  He’s coming up to bed—just forgot to turn off the music.

  All very logical, but logical explanations didn’t work for Tanya anymore. She got out of bed and went into the dark hall. She reached for the light switch, but stopped. She didn’t dare announce herself like that.

  Clinging to the shadows, she crept along the wall until she could make out the top of Nathan’s blond head as he slowly climbed the stairs. Her gaze dropped, waiting for his hands to come into view.

  A flash of silver winked in the pale glow of a nightlight. Her breath caught. She forced herself to stay still just a moment longer, to be sure, and then she saw it, the knife gripped in his hand, the angry set of his expression, the emptiness in his eyes, and she turned and fled.

  A room. Any room. Just get into one, lock the door, and climb over the balcony.

  The first one she tried was locked. She wrenched on the doorknob, certain she was wrong.

  “Mom?” Nathan said, his voice gruff, unrecognizable. “Are you up here, Mom?”

  Tanya turned. She looked down the row of doors. All closed. Only theirs was open, at the end. She ran for it as Nathan’s footsteps thumped behind her.

  She dashed into the room, slammed the door, and locked it. As she raced for the balcony, she heard the knob turn behind her. Then the creak of the door opening. But that couldn’t be. She’d locked—

  Tanya glanced over her shoulder and saw Nathan, his face twisted with rage.

  “Hello, Mom. I have something for you.”

  Tanya grabbed the balcony door. It was already cracked open, since Nathan always insisted on fresh air. She ran out onto the balcony and looked down to the concrete patio twenty feet below. No way she could jump that, not without breaking both legs, and then she’d be trapped. Maybe if she could hang from it, then drop—

  Nathan stepped onto the balcony. Tanya backed up. She called his name, begged him to snap out of it, but he just kept coming, kept smiling, knife raised. She backed up, leaning against the railing.

  “Nathan. Plea—”

  There was a tremendous crack, and the railing gave way. She felt herself falling, dropping backward so fast that she didn’t have time to twist, to scream, and then—

  Nothing.

  Nathan escorted the innkeeper from Beamsville to the door.

  “You folks did an incredible job,” the man said. “But I really do hate to take advantage of a tragedy…”

  Nathan managed a wan smile. “You’d be doing me a favor. The sooner I can get away, the happier I’ll be. Every time I drive in, I see that balcony, and I—” His voice hitched. “I keep asking myself why she went out there. I know she
loved the view; she must have woken up and seen the moon and wanted a better look.” He shook his head. “I meant to fix that balcony. We did the others, but she said ours could wait, and now…”

  The man laid a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “Let me talk to my real estate agent and I’ll get an offer drawn up, see if I can’t take this place off your hands.”

  “Thank you.”

  Nathan closed the door and took a deep breath. He was making good use of those community-theater skills, but he really hoped he didn’t have to keep this up much longer.

  He headed into the office, giving it yet another once-over, making sure he’d gotten rid of all the evidence. He’d already checked, twice, but he couldn’t be too careful.

  There wasn’t much to hide. The old woman had been an actor friend of one of his theater buddies, and even if she came forward, what of it? Tanya had wanted a haunted house and he’d hired her to indulge his wife’s fancy.

  Adding the woman’s photo to the article had been simple Photoshop work, the files—paper and electronic—long gone now. The workmen really had been scared off by the haunting, which he’d orchestrated. The only person who knew about his “bouts” was Tanya. And he’d been very careful with the balcony, loosening the nails just enough that her weight would rip them from the rotting wood.

  Killing Tanya hadn’t been his original intention. But when she’d refused to leave, he’d been almost relieved. As if he didn’t mind having to fall back on the more permanent solution, get the insurance money as well as the inheritance, go back home, hook up with Denise again—if she’d still have him—and open the kind of business he wanted. There’d been no chance of that while Tanya was alive. Her money. Her rules. Always.

  He opened the basement door, stepped down, and almost went flying, his foot sending a hammer clunking down a few stairs. He retrieved it, wondering how it got there, then shoved it into his back pocket and—

  The ring of the phone stopped his descent. He headed back up to answer it. “Restrictions?” Nathan bellowed into the phone. “What do you mean restrictions? How long—?”