But despite the physical appearance, the house was still standing. And it was the only place Lance had to go. For now, at least. As far as he could tell, this was exactly where he was supposed to be.
The spook farm.
Luke and Susan continued to silently stare through the windshield, and Lance let them get their fill for another full minute before he cleared his throat from the backseat. “Thanks for the ride,” he said, grabbing his backpack and umbrella.
They both jumped, as if they’d forgotten Lance was in the car. Lost in their own thoughts as they stared at a place that they likely now only thought of as the site of horrific death.
But to Lance, for now, it was only a house. Though he was certain that would change soon enough.
He reached for the door handle, and Luke and Susan snapped out of their trances. “Wait!” Susan said. “Let me give you my phone number.”
“Damn, Suze, I’m sitting right here,” Luke quipped.
Susan ignored him. “Seriously,” she said to Lance. “You don’t have a car right now, and well…” She looked over her shoulder again, back to the house, “If you need something, or … I don’t know. Just take my number, okay?”
Lance smiled. “Sure,” he said, pulling his flip phone from his pocket. He ignored the incredulous stares from the two of them as he thumbed his way through his phone’s menus and was finally ready to enter Susan’s number. He typed it in as she recited it and then returned the phone to his pocket. So far, Susan had been fairly unreadable. Lance’s many senses hadn’t picked up anything overwhelmingly positive or negative. He paused for a moment, then asked, “Why are you being so nice to me? I’m a complete stranger.”
Even in the dim light of the Jeep’s interior, he could see Susan blush. She gave another shrug and said, “You seem like a nice guy.” She looked at Luke, who was watching her intently, and then back to Lance. “And while I don’t really know why you’re here, I also don’t think you fully know what you’re getting into. The town is funny about this place.”
Luke shifted at this. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Susan shook her head. “I don’t know. But just call me if you think you need to, okay?”
Lance assured her that he would, shook Luke’s hand and thanked them both again for the ride, and then opened the door and stepped outside into the rain.
He didn’t bother with the umbrella, figuring he only had a few feet to go before he’d be up the three front porch steps and beneath the protection of the overhang. This was a mistake. The wind rushed at him and the rain was relentless, and in the three short seconds it took him to get from Luke’s Jeep to the front door of the farmhouse, he was half-soaked. Water dripped into his eyes as he fumbled to pull the set of keys he’d been given from his pocket. Thankfully, Luke was kind enough to keep the Jeep parked in place, the headlights the only source of light to help Lance see what he was doing. There was a small exterior porch light mounted to the right of the front door, just about level with Lance’s head, but it was off. Lance looked at the single bulb beneath the cloudy glass enclosure and figured the odds of it working were slim to none.
He moved to insert one of the small brass keys into the deadbolt, adjusting his body so the Jeep’s headlights would shine onto the door, and that’s when he heard the voice. It was female, hushed, yet panicked.
“THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE! YOU’VE GOT TO HELP US!”
Lance spun around so quickly he dropped the keys, the soft jangling of the brass hitting the wooden boards below drowned out by the constant whoosh of the falling rain. His looked all around, his eyes darting across the porch, before staring like a deer, literally into the headlights of Luke’s Jeep. Because of the lights, he was unable to make out Luke and Susan. Could only imagine their perplexed expressions as they watched him become startled on the porch steps and then stare back at them.
But maybe they weren’t surprised. This was the spook farm, after all.
Lance stood still for another few seconds, listening. The voice had not come from inside the home. It had sounded as though it were right on the porch with him, circling his head loud and clear.
Now all he heard was the rain and the Jeep’s idling engine.
He sighed, bent and picked up the keys. Then he waved farewell to his new friends, signaling all was okay, unlocked the spook house’s front door, pushed it open, and stepped inside.
8
Once Lance had closed the door and relocked it behind him, it didn’t take long for the dim light coming through the filthy windows from the Jeep’s headlights to fade away and then vanish completely. Despite Susan and Luke’s kindness, it was as though they’d had all they could handle of the town’s infamous spook farm on this literal dark and stormy night. No sense in becoming a supporting cast member in an actual ghost story, if they could help it. They’d done their duty by delivering Lance here, and now it was time to hightail it back to the real world.
Lance didn’t blame them. They had a movie to catch.
He longed for a life so simple that his biggest worry would be whether he’d make it to a movie in time for the previews, and if he wanted popcorn or a box of Junior Mints from the snack bar.
It was a life he’d never have. Though he allowed himself a momentary flash of a daydream—him and Leah holding hands, side-by-side in squeaky theater chairs, laughing at something funny onscreen; her grabbing his arm and burying her face in his shoulder as the monster devoured a victim; him looking over and watching a tear slide down her perfect cheek when the guy finally got the girl.
“Who’s at the door? Is it him? Tell me!”
A thunderous male voice echoed all around Lance, his heart leaping into this throat as he was snapped out of his moment of fantasy and wishful thinking. His eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness of the home’s interior, and he spun around blindly by the door, eyes searching, body tense and poised to fend off an attacker.
He saw nothing, his eyes slowly focusing and turning the pitch black into a deep gray, his heart like a marching band drummer in his ears. Vague shapes began to take form: a set of stairs to his left, an entryway into what looked like a living room just past them. The amorphous blob of what was probably a sofa pushed against one wall. A smaller object to its right, perhaps an armchair. There was a hallway straight ahead, though the gray faded back into blackness halfway down, the little light from the front windows being swallowed whole.
Lance stayed perfectly still, straining his ears to hear what obviously wasn’t there. But even though there were no more voices, he did hear something else. It was as though the outside sounds—the rain and wind—were intensified, louder than they should be. Not coming from behind him, but ahead, from deeper in the house.
As his adrenaline faded and his heartbeat’s rhythm returned to normal, a wonderful thought came to him.
Turn on the lights, Lance.
It was true. Assuming the weather hadn’t caused some sort of damage to knock out a power pole somewhere, the house should, of course, very well have electricity. If it didn’t, Lance was going to have a chat with Mr. Richard Bellows about withholding information that could have very well affected Lance’s decision (Ha! Like he had a choice.) to rent the property. Like the inability to turn on a light, or, you know, charge a cell phone. Even if Lance’s phone had long ago been eligible for early retirement.
As Lance was turning around to look for some sort of light switch on the wall near the door, an angry gust of wind screamed through and rattled the walls and windows, and what sounded like a loud clap of thunder exploded from inside the house … from down the darkened hallway. The noise, like a starter pistol, propelled Lance into motion. He tossed his backpack to the floor and ran down the hallway, toward the source of the noise. He still clutched the umbrella tightly, supposing he could use it as a potential weapon if need be. If Annabelle Winters had been able to fight off a demon with a rolling pin in Westhaven, Lance would be disappointed in himself if he couldn’t inflict some d
amage with an umbrella. It had a pointy end, after all.
He half ran, half fumbled his way down the hall, the wooden floorboards beneath his feet creaking and groaning under his weight. He entered the darkness with a reckless abandon which he only had a moment to second-guess himself on before the tunnel of black faded back into a dimly lit gray as he spilled into the kitchen, where the faint moonlight that was poking through the storm clouds fell through more dirty windows.
Another howl of wind slammed into the house, and this time Lance saw for himself the source of the loud explosion, as the house’s back door was caught in the gust and slammed against the wall with enough force to nearly bounce itself back closed.
The back door was open.
This explained the intensified sounds of rain and wind Lance had heard from the front of the house.
But, and more importantly, when combined with the flicker of movement Lance had sworn he’d seen from behind one of the front windows as Luke’s Jeep had approached, it also fed into another theory Lance was forced to entertain.
Somebody had been in the house when Lance had arrived.
Lance stepped cautiously toward the open door. Rainwater had blown just inside the threshold, and Lance’s sneakers squeaked on the floor. He gripped his umbrella tightly and cocked it back over his head, ready to swing down should somebody try and rush him.
Nothing happened. Nobody was there.
Lance stood at the open door and stared out into the night, unable to see much further than a few feet out.
“Hello?” he said, almost too quietly to be heard over the rain and wind.
Of course, there was no answer. Just the continued onslaught of water and the purr of the wind.
Lance reached out, grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door shut. There was a deadbolt here as well, and Lance thumbed it locked and stared at it.
Did whoever was here have a key?
He made a mental note to make sure to stop by R.G. Homes the next time he was in town and ask Richard Bellows a few questions. “So, Rich … Anybody else living in the house you rented to me?”
Lance turned around in the darkened kitchen and leaned back against the door. He thought of Susan’s words earlier.
“I also don’t think you fully know what you’re getting into.”
Lance sighed. “Maybe I don’t,” he said to the house. “Maybe I never do.”
9
Lance slouched down in his bus seat and pressed his knees into the seat ahead of him, wedging himself into a comfortable position. There was nobody in the seat ahead of him, so he wasn’t worried about bothering someone. In fact, there was nobody on this bus at all. For some reason, this didn’t strike Lance as odd. He often felt he was heading places nobody else wanted to go.
Rain pelted the bus, the sound of the falling droplets rhythmic and soothing. His eyes were heavy, his hoodie warm, and he wanted nothing more than to rest his head back and take a nap until he reached…
Where was he headed? He couldn’t remember.
But before he could rest, there was something he had to do. Something he’d waited too long to do. He slid his cell phone from the front pocket of his hoodie and flipped it open. A gust of wind rushed in and shook the bus, water slamming into the side with a loud splattering of wet noise. Lance thumbed his way to his text messages and clicked the keys until he had composed a new message to Leah.
He stared at the screen for a long time. His words were few and simple, but they were the absolute truth. They were the feeling he could not shake, could not successfully repress for any extended period of time.
He moved his thumb to the button to send the message and—
A thunderous pounding rattled the window next to him. Deep, staccato knocks that sounded more like a hammer on wood than glass. Lance dropped his cell phone into his lap, startled, and looked to his right.
The bus was moving fast down a highway, the landscape blurring by in a rush of dark sky and rainwater. But despite the noise, the pounding, it wasn’t what was outside the bus that caught Lance off guard. It was what he saw inside.
Lance’s reflection in the bus window was not his own. It was the same shape, mirroring his body exactly, but it was not him. Lance raised his arm halfway from his lap, and the reflection in the window did the same. Only the arm in the reflection was bare, the body in the window wearing a short-sleeved white undershirt instead of Lance’s sweatshirt. The arm was blood-speckled, the chest of the once-white shirt now a dark crimson bib, streaks and splatters of blood all over.
The head of the body in the window was nearly blown completely off. A gaping hole where the face should have been. Lance could see through it, catching a glimpse of the bus seats behind him.
Susan’s words floated to Lance: “Mary’s dad killed himself in the recliner in the living room, half his head blown off.”
A strange fear rose in Lance’s chest and—
The pounding noise, rattling wood and glass from somewhere below him, woke Lance from his dream. He sat up quickly, eyes squinting against harsh sunlight coming in through the slats in the opened blinds. Shielded his eyes with one hand and tried to focus his vision. He looked around him, remembered where he was.
After the incident with the open back door the evening before, Lance had gone around the home and made sure all the doors and windows were locked, while also exploring the house’s layout. Verdict: it was small by today’s standards, old and in need of much work, but plenty big enough for Lance, and it would likely be charming once it had been cleaned and fixed up a bit. You know, assuming you could forget about the horrific murders that had taken place.
The ground floor consisted of the living room, kitchen, small bathroom, and an extra room that had apparently been used as a dining room, due to the large table that took up most of the tiny space. There was a door in the interior wall of the kitchen that Lance had assumed was a pantry or closet, until he had seen the sliding bolt used to keep it locked. When he’d opened it, he’d been presented with a set of wooden stairs leading down into darkness. A basement or cellar. Brave and rational as Lance was, he decided he’d wait until the sun was up to see what might lie beneath the surface of the farmhouse.
Upstairs was even simpler. Two bedrooms—a larger one to the right of the staircase, which Lance had assumed to be the master because of its size and larger bed, and a smaller room with a twin-sized bed pushed against one wall and a small white dresser and makeup mirror pressed against the opposite wall by the door. There was an empty closet next to the dresser, nothing but one empty wooden rod across the top. Not so much as a single clothes hanger left behind. There was a full bathroom in between the two bedrooms, directly above the kitchen below.
Whether the day of travel had truly exhausted him, or the dark evening hour, coupled with the secluded location and the noise of the rainstorm outside, had simply relaxed him in a way he’d not been able to achieve for quite some time, Lance had found himself ready to do nothing but sleep after his brief exploration of the farmhouse, resigned to push aside all sense of duty and desire to understand his new situation until he could rest his body and his mind.
He’d chosen the smaller bedroom—Mary’s bedroom, he was certain—and collapsed onto the bed, not moving until now.
Another barrage of pounding rattled the front of the house below, and Lance swung his legs off the side of the bed. He considered grabbing his umbrella, which lay next to his backpack on the floor next to the dresser, but decided the situation likely didn’t require melee weaponry and hurried out of the room and down the stairs.
With the thought that a likely criminal or murderer wouldn’t be keen on knocking first, Lance quickly unlocked the front deadbolt and opened the door.
The bright sunlight assaulted him, and Lance had to take a step back and shield his eyes again. On the front porch, half-silhouetted by the sun, was the man from Mama’s.
The sheriff.
The two men stood silently on opposite sides of the threshold,
a sense of appraisal heavy in the air between them. The air blowing in was cool and sweet, the aftermath of the heavy rains the night before, but along with it Lance could also feel the coldness coming from the sheriff. The same sense of loss and sadness he’d sensed in Mama’s.
“Good morning,” the sheriff said. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
Lance had no idea what the time was. No idea if it was early, or if he’d slept long past any time acceptable for a responsible adult. All he could do was smile and say, “What can I do for you, Sheriff?”
The man did not smile back. “How do you know I’m the sheriff?”
The man was wearing similar attire as the night before. Dark blue tactical pants with black work books, cream-colored sweater beneath that same black rain jacket. The man was maybe three or four inches shorter than Lance, but his body was thick, muscled and strong. But his body language, the way he stood, the way his shoulders slumped and his head hung down, was the opposite. There was a weakness, or maybe an unwillingness … a struggle, carried along with him.
“I was in Mama’s yesterday evening,” Lance said. “I heard the waitress call you Sheriff.”
The man nodded his head. “You’re more observant than most.”
Lance said nothing.
The sheriff looked as though he was searching for something to say but was coming up short.
Finally, Lance nudged the encounter along by asking, “Can I help you, Sheriff? Do you want to come inside? I’d offer you coffee, but I haven’t had a chance to go grocery shopping yet.”
The sheriff’s eyes looked over Lance’s shoulder, darting a quick glance deeper into the house. He shook his head. “No, that’s okay. Would you mind stepping out here for me? No sense in leaving the door open.”
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