She pulled open the door and stared down to where whatever had been scratching should have been.
The floor in front of her was empty.
She stuck her head out into the hall, but it too was empty.
Just to be safe, she wandered down the hall to check on Rachel and Laura. But they were tucked in their bed. A wall of pillows dividing the territory between them.
Marie ran a hand through her hair. Clearly she’d been imagining things. But had she? Eric had heard the noise. Could you be imagining things when someone else hears it? All of her years in psychology told her no.
She went back to the bedroom and closed the door firmly behind her. She wasn’t sure what had made the noise and at the moment she didn’t particularly care.
She called Sparky up onto the bed to cuddle with her, despite Eric’s adamant rule about no dogs on the bed. She didn’t care about that right now either. She needed something to cuddle and Eric was fast asleep.
And she needed to be sure, if the scratching came back, that Sparky was next to her and not at the door.
Chapter 4
Nightmares
* * *
By the time the weekend rolled around Marie had all but forgotten about the scratching on the door. It had been a fluke incident that hadn’t happened again in the days to follow. She’d gotten a full night’s sleep after she’d brought Sparky up on the bed and it had been well worth the complaints from Eric in the morning.
She’d done her grocery shopping, taking Shannon along with her because she was having a good day. They’d bought more food then they needed, but Shannon insisted that they could make and freeze a bunch of things.
Marie hoped so. She’d never been great in the kitchen herself. She’d always been more a quick and simple kind of cook. It was nice having someone who knew how to make meals from scratch and was willing to put in the time to do so.
She knew that her children would benefit form the home cooked meals. They would benefit from the fresh garden vegetables as well. Marie had finally made it out into Shannon’s garden and she was just as impressed with them as she was with the flowerbeds, and the rest of the house in general.
It was hard to believe that the woman was dying of cancer. Most days it was hard to believe that she was even ill at all. But Marie could catch glimpses of it every now and then. She would see the moments of weakness that Shannon was trying so hard to hide. And somehow that made her respect the woman even more.
Marie also got the bunk beds built. It took a great deal of effort. She’d had to deconstruct the large wood bed that was already in the girls’ room. That was moved into the hall to be stored in the basement. She would let Eric do that on the weekend when he had a day off. It had been hard enough to move it all into the hall.
The bunk beds had been a struggle and at one point she’d had to ask Shannon to assist her, but just with listing the top bed up to be attached. She felt terrible about it, but Shannon was more than willing to help out.
They got it done. They got the beds made and set up. And that night the girls got to sleep separately for the first time since they’d moved in.
They, of course, fought over who got top and who got bottom bunk. Laura, being oldest, pulled rank and took bottom. She made Rachel climb up to the top bunk, but she seemed happy with the outcome.
Marie spent a little extra time tucking them in that night. Sure it wasn’t their first night in the house but it was there first night in their new beds. She wanted to make sure that they were comfortable.
“If you need anything you just let me know.” She pressed a kiss to Laura’s forehead and then did the same to Rachel’s. “I’ll leave your door open a crack so I can hear you if you call for me.”
“We’re not little kids anymore, mum,” Laura whined, but there was a small smile on her lips that indicated she still appreciated the treatment.
“You’ll always be my little girls.” Marie grinned at the eye roll she received. It was such a predictable reaction.
“Goodnight.” Marie left them, the glow of their nightlight, more there for Rachel’s sake than Laura’s, illuminating the room.
It didn’t take them long to fall asleep. The new beds were comfier than the old one and closer in feeling to what they’d had at their old house. Rachel snuggled into her blankets and was asleep in seconds. Laura stared up at the bunk above her for close to a half hour before sleep overcame her.
It was close to midnight before either of them woke again. Rachel wasn’t certain at first what pulled her out of the deep sleep she was in, but her eyes fluttered open and she stared at the ceiling above her.
It took her a moment to place where she was. The bed felt so much like the one she’d had at her old house, but the ceiling was wrong. This ceiling was’nt white, there weren’t glow-in-the-dark stars on this ceiling. This ceiling was just a dull beige.
She squinted at it in the dull light of the night light and remembered they were in the new house. She still couldn’t decide if she liked this new house. It smelled funny at times and it looked like it was an old person’s house, which she supposed it was. She missed her house. She missed her friends. But she had no choice in the matter.
“You awake, Laura?” She whispered into the darkness. She wasn’t certain why she was fully awake but there was a chance that Laura might be as well. If she was awake then maybe they could play a game until they fell asleep again. Anything was better than staring at the ceiling.
“Go to sleep, Rachel,” Laura replied her voice tired. But she was clearly awake.
“Can’t sleep. Not sure why.” Rachel hung her head over the side of the bunk bed and looked down at her older sister. “How about you?”
“I could sleep if you would stop talking to me. You’re so annoying,” Laura complained. But it was clear from the state of her blankets that she’d been tossing and turning for some time.
“Yeah, because I’m the reason you’re awake,” Rachel grumbled lying back down on her back and crossing her arms.
She was about to ask another question when she felt the bed shake. At first she thought she’d imagined it, but then it shook again.
“Laura, quit that!” She ordered her voice filled with distain for her older sibling.
“I didn’t do anything,” Laura protested from her place on the lower bunk. She glared up at the bed above her and stuck out her tongue for good measure.
“You shook the bed!” Rachel countered as the bed shook again. “And you did it again!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Laura grumbled. She was about to say something else when she felt her own bed begin to move. It rumbled and then it began to life from the floor.
She glanced towards the floor and then towards the bed above her. The other bed wasn’t moving. She was being slowly sandwiched between the two.
“Rachel!” She screamed throwing her hands out to press against the bed above her in an attempt to stop the sandwiching process. “Get off the bed. Get off the bed now!”
Rachel’s bed was still shaking and when she leaned over the edge to see why Laura was protesting so much she saw her sister’s face very close to her own.
Rachel rushed down the ladder as quickly as her little feet would carry her. Once on the ground she assisted her sister out of the bottom bunk, which was doing it’s best to try and squish her.
They both tumbled to the floor as the two beds came together like the mouth of a large creature. With a scream the girls fled the bedroom and ran straight to their parents room.
Marie woke to the sounds of their screams and had barely processed the noise when the bodies of her two daughters landed on the bed with her. Eric let out a grumbled protest and came awake with a start.
“What the bloody hell is going on?” He demanded his eyes sleepy. He looked from one terrified child to the next. “Come on, speak up.”
“The bed is trying to eat us,” Rachel stated as if it was the most normal thing a person could say.
“The bed is trying to eat you?” Marie raised a brow and looked over at Eric whose face had gone a little pale. “How so?”
“The top bunk started shaking and then the bottom bunk tried to squish Laura between it and the top bunk.” Rachel’s face was dead serious as she explained this and Laura sat silently at her side.
“I think you’ve both had a little too much sugar and you had a nightmare,” Marie placated. She slid out of bed and pulled them both to their feet. “How about we go back to sleep?”
“But what if the bed tries to eat us again?” Rachel whined.
Marie glanced back at Eric who still hadn’t moved from his place on the bed. His face was pale and his eyes distant. He looked like he’d just seen a ghost. She decided it was best just to leave him there while she put the kids back to bed. She didn’t have the patience to deal with whatever he was going through at the moment alongside her daughters’ child eating bed nightmare.
“Well then you just come back and tell me,” she instructed as she led the girls back into the bedroom.
Marie found the girls room exactly as she’d left it with the exception of the unmade beds. The bunk bed stood sturdy and solid. It didn’t appear to be contracting in anyway that could look like it was trying to eat the children.
“See, everything is completely fine. You were just having a bad dream.”
The girls looked around the room skeptically as if trying to find the monster hiding in the corner.
“It does look fine,” Laura reasoned.
“Now go on to bed.” Marie gave them an encouraging nudge forward and watched Laura crawl into the bottom bunch and Rachel climb up into the top bunk. “You going to be fine now?”
“Yes, mum,” they chimed in unison.
Marie sent one last glance into the room before closing the door over and returning to her own bed. Morning would come soon enough and she wanted to get some sleep before it did.
Child eating beds, she thought with a chuckle. The things kids came up with.
Chapter 5
Apparitions
* * *
Over the next few days in the house Marie couldn’t help but notice the odd things that kept happening. She wondered it these were the “quirks” that Shannon had referred to. If they were then she wondered how anyone could have lived in the house as long as she had without going completely insane.
Marie was already getting a little twitching from being in the house the two weeks they’d been there. And things had barely happened. Even though they were minor things, after a while they started to get to her.
Like doors closing on their own. She still couldn’t figure that one out. Old houses were drafty she supposed. The doors in old houses were heavy and sometimes didn’t sit level on their hinges. They could swing on their own without too much provocation.
But it happened rather frequently, and in rooms that no one was in.
She would be in the kitchen with little Paul getting his food ready or doing dishes and doors would close on the other end of the house. The kids would be in the back yard. Shannon would be in bed resting. Eric would be at work. And doors would slam. They wouldn’t just close gently. They would slam shut as if someone was throwing a temper tantrum somewhere in the house.
She’d broken a plate the first time it had happened. She’d felt so foolish, but she’d dropped the plate and let out a rather girly shriek. The girls had come running in from the back yard to see what was the matter and she’d just been standing there with shards of glass at her feet and a confused expression on her face.
The other thing she had noticed was that objects would move around the house. She never saw them actually moving. It was nothing ghostly, like objects floating through the air or flying across the room. It was more like she would leave her laptop on the kitchen table and the next day it would be in the living room.
At first she thought it was the kids. After all, they used her things all the time and didn’t put them back. But then there were things that they would never touched that moved around the house.
Portraits on the wall would change their order. Knick-knacks on the shelves would rearrange themselves. It was never anything blatantly obvious. In fact, it took her some time to even notice that it was happening. But it was as though, during the night, a group of mischievous children went through the house and rearranged things just to mess with the homeowners. It was almost a fun idea if it didn’t make a chill run up her spine.
She could handle the doors and she could handle the randomly moving objects in the house. What was starting to get on her nerves was the whispering that she kept hearing drifting through the house. At first she’d thought the children were playing in the house but they were outside in the back garden.
The worst part about it was the fact that she couldn’t make out what the words were. She could tell that there were whispers, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. She couldn’t tell if they were talking about her or her family. She couldn’t tell if they were telling secrets from another time.
Her curiosity made her want to know even though her years in psychology told her that she might be slowly going insane.
The only time she heard the words clearly was when she was doing laundry one day. She was hanging it on the clothesline outside and the whispering began like a buzzing around her. She tuned it out as she had learned to do. They weren’t saying anything that she could understand so what was the point of listening?
Then the words came clearly to her ears. “GET OUT!”
She stumbled away from the clothesline and dropped the shirt that she was holding.
The voice sounded as though it had been right beside her. But she turned her head to the left and right and there was no one there. She could find no source to the voice. Her heart was racing and her hands were trembling.
Perhaps she was going crazy. Perhaps she was imagining things. Or maybe it was just this house. Maybe it was just the quirks of it that Shannon talked about.
She glanced towards the kitchen where Shannon was making lunch for the girls and keeping an eye on little Paul. How could anyone stay if these were the quirks? Marie was having trouble finding the benefits of the house at the moment. Sure it was lovely, but she was having a hard time determining what was real and what was just her imagination.
Marie looked up at the house, her eyes panning over the large paned windows that sparkled in the afternoon sun. Her gaze fell on her own bedroom window and she paused there for a moment.
There was something in her bedroom window, someone in her bedroom window. She squinted against the sun trying to get a better glimpse of what lingered behind the thick glass. She just made out the face of a little boy staring down at her before a cloud passed over the sun and it disappeared.
She clenched the shirt she’d been about to hang on the line to her chest and drew in a steadying breath.
“It was just a trick of the light, Marie,” she told herself. “You are not seeing things.”
God she hoped not. She’d always considered herself to be a rather stable woman, a rather competent woman. Now she was hearing voices and seeing things. This didn’t bode well if her schooling had taught her anything.
Still she forced herself to finish hanging the laundry before she went into the kitchen to rejoin her family. She forced herself to calm down before she returned to her family. And she said nothing about what had happened while she was outside.
She knew that Shannon would probably understand. Shannon might even be able to offer some kind of explanation, but she didn’t want to admit that she was seeing and hearing things. She wasn’t ready to take that step. She would continue to believe that she was going crazy for a while. That seemed more natural than believing that there was something wrong with the house, something “quirky” about it.
That night, as she lay in bed with Eric, she debated voicing her concerns to him. She debated telling him about the little boy she’d seen standing in their bedroom window looking dow
n at her in the yard.
She wondered what he would say about it. She wondered if he would say anything or if he would just go pale like he did when the girls had complained about their bunk bed.
She’d never seen him look like that before. He was the one solved problems. He was the one who was first to react. But it was as though, since coming home, he’d done whatever he could to be away from. And he’d been nothing but a deer in the headlights the minute something happened.
“Eric?” Her voice was quiet in the dark.
“Hmmm?” He mumbled. His eyes were closed but he was a far way from being asleep. His mind was still going over all of the things that had happened that day.
“What is wrong with this house?” She propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at him. She knew the he was intentionally keeping his eyes closed so that he wouldn’t have to look at her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he evaded and went to turn on his side but she placed a hand on his shoulder and held him in place.
“Don’t lie to me, Eric Hyatt. You said there was something about this house before we even showed up. Your mother says there is something about this house, but she seems quite fond of it. And apparently your brother was put off enough by it to move a whole ocean away. So what the devil is going on?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her. She had a determined set to eyes that he knew well and he knew that if he wanted to catch a wink of sleep he would have to answer her questions.
“If I told you it was haunted, would you believe me?” He asked, his voice tired.
She raised a brow and the skepticism was clear in her eyes. “You are going to blame this on ghosts?” She thought of the young boy she’d seen in the window. She didn’t believe in ghosts. There was no possible way she was going to start now.
Haunted Happenings Page 21