The Box Set of Hauntings and Horrors

by Jeff DeGordick

  "I don't know how," he said, and tears came to his eyes.

  "Well we'll just have to think of something," she said. "Don't worry, I'll help you. I can't let you... well, become like the rest of us in here."

  "Why can't you leave?" he asked her. "What's stopping you? I mean, I've seen you out of the house, out in the woods..."

  "That's as far as you're going to see me," she said morosely. "I don't know how to explain it. We can only go so far and then there's, like, this pull. It feels like we're on a leash or something, like we can never really leave."

  Noel looked at her with sadness. He didn't know how to describe to her the feelings he was experiencing, both for himself and for her. The world around him was surreal, and he couldn't for the life of him remember how he'd gotten here. He remembered the move, sure, but not the series of events that transpired to bring him this fate. He just wasn't equipped to understand them.

  "Here," Emily said, fishing something out of her coat pocket. She produced a small, round object held between her thumb and forefinger. The light from the bulb above them shone through it and highlighted all of its pretty colors.

  "It's a marble," Noel said, mesmerized by it, but also confused. She put it in his hand and folded his fingers closed on it. "What's this for?" he asked.

  "It's so that no matter what happens, you'll always have something to remember me by," Emily said.

  Noel held the marble up to the light. Most of it was clear glass, but there was a spiral design in the middle that changed color as he twisted it, each one equally vibrant and exciting.

  "Even if it seems like you're trapped," she said, "you're always free."

  He twisted the marble and watched the spiral of colors trapped inside spin.

  "If I get out of here," Noel said, "I won't forget you. But I'll find a way to take you with me."

  Emily smiled, but it was forced.

  A loud moan came from somewhere outside the cubbyhole.

  "What was that?" Noel asked, fear flooding his eyes.

  Emily looked toward the wall where the noise had come through. "That's my mom," she said, uneasiness in her voice. "She's upset today."

  "Emily?" the miserable voice wailed. "Emily, get out here right now!"

  "I have to go," she said, turning to Noel with apologetic eyes.

  "No, don't!" he pleaded.

  "I have to, I'm sorry!" She shuffled on her knees in the small space, revealing a loose piece of particleboard that she was sitting on. "Here, I'll show you something first." She removed the small board, revealing a trapdoor beneath it. She twisted a small latch on it and the door popped down, leading to darkness below.

  "What's that for?" Noel asked.

  She tried not to spell it all out for his sake, and she simply said, "In case you ever need another way to get out of here."

  "Where does it go?" he asked, peering down into the black hole.

  "The pantry," she said from behind him.

  Noel's eyes went wide as he stared into the blackness. He twisted his head around to look at her, but she was already gone. The wall panel in his closet remained closed, but he was by himself. He lurched over to the hole in the floor and quickly pulled the door back up, twisting the latch and replacing the piece of particleboard over it. Until it was closed, it had felt like the airlock of a spaceship sitting open and trying to suck him out into the void. His heart settled a little, but then he heard something that agitated it again.

  Footsteps stretched across the floor somewhere beyond the wall. They were slow and measured, and they were heading directly for him.

  Noel held his breath as he heard the steps come right up to the closet. He heard wire hangers rustling around on the bar inside, and he tensed up, picturing the woman in white—Emily's mom—crazily tearing through the closet to get at him, and his eyes just once darted over to the trapdoor in the floor.

  "Noel?" Walter announced. "Are you in here?" His voice was gruffer than normal.

  The footsteps exited the closet and sounded like they went to the other side of his bed. His name was called one more time, then the footsteps left the room.

  Silence settled over the cubbyhole, and though the light was still on, Noel felt a dreadful sense of panic come over him. He quickly opened the sliding door and the panel in the wall, then he flicked off the light and crawled out. Leaving the cubby open, he made his way to his doorway and saw that the hall was empty.

  A scraping sound came from downstairs.

  Noel walked to the staircase, slowly creeping around the corner to see down into the kitchen. When he saw his father sitting on a stool at the island, facing the other way, his nerves calmed and he descended the stairs.

  Walter tried to twist his neck around when he heard him come down, but he winced in pain and grunted. "There you are," he said roughly. "I thought you really did run away for a second."

  "No," Noel said. "What happened to you?"

  "I had a little fall," Walter replied. "Nothing major; I'll be okay. Just... stick around where I can see you for the next little bit, okay? It hurts just to move. I don't want to go searching around for you."

  Noel nodded then slowly backed away down the hallway for the living room. He found he couldn't take his eyes off his father, and he watched him painfully get up from the stool, walk around the island and fish a bottle of aspirin from the drawer. He poured a handful of pills out of the bottle and dumped them in his mouth, washing them down with an amber drink in a stout glass. He groaned once more and settled back onto the stool, then he collapsed forward and stretched his arms out on the counter, resting his head on them.

  Thoughts of escape raced through Noel's head, and various ideas and possibilities vied for his attention, but he found that thoughts of his father overpowered them. As he crept nearer to the living room, he stared at the sad shape that was his father. And that was all he could think about: how sad he looked. As much as he hated him, as much as he didn't trust him, could he really leave him behind?

  Spooked

  Noel watched daylight fall into darkness as he stared out the window in his bedroom. He'd been there for so long resting his arms on the windowsill that his neck started to ache. He sighed and adjusted himself, but he didn't move. He peered out to the right, nearly pressing his face to the glass to see the back end of the station wagon parked at the front of the cottage through the blurring whiteness of the incoming storm.

  He felt bad for his father, but Emily was right: no matter what, he had to get out of here. The thought of him becoming trapped just like her and all the other ghosts terrified him. He wanted to find a way to save Emily, and if her plight really was forever, he didn't see how he could leave his father to that fate, either.

  But first thing was first. How was he going to get out of here?

  His eyes kept falling on the station wagon. When they first moved here, and when they went to and from town to get groceries, he'd noticed that it had taken a long drive from the house to see any other sign of civilization. So that meant walking through the snow, hoping to find something, was out of the question. If he wanted to get out of there, he would have to drive. But he was only six and he didn't have the faintest idea how to properly operate a car.

  Emily's words bounced around in his head about him forgiving his father. He may have needed his help after all, but he couldn't rely on him. He also contemplated whether he really had been too hard on him, but he quickly pushed the notion out of his mind; Noel hadn't done anything wrong, and he knew it.

  A sudden violent gust of wind whipped down the side of the cottage and pushed a volley of snow against the window.

  Noel recoiled from the force of it, and his heart lurched at the thought of them being buried under the storm. Whatever he was going to come up with, he had to think of it soon, otherwise they would be trapped here forever, one way or another.

  The storm outside was growing in strength, causing huge snow flurries and squalls to wash over the area. It was hard to see much of anything, and No
el could barely make out the woods from his bedroom window.

  His eyes darted back to the car. He knew there would be no way to convince his father to get in or to drive him away, so Noel would have to figure it out, and he would have to do it surreptitiously. But the guilt of leaving his father behind in these conditions kept him trapped more than his circumstances did.

  His stomach flipped with worry, and he felt a franticness claw his brain like some small and horrific creature was lodged in there trying to sabotage him.

  A loud, moaning scream came from downstairs, followed by glass breaking.

  Noel jumped and spun around, pulling himself out from under the blind.

  The scream had ended just as abruptly as it started, and then everything was quiet.

  He stared at his closed bedroom door, not able to breathe. After what seemed like ages, he slowly walked to it and placed his hand on the doorknob. Turning it as quietly as possible, he steeled himself against the fear in his heart and opened it. The hallway was empty and dark, and he slowly emerged from his room and looked around. Noel walked to the stairs and peered down through the banister rails toward the kitchen. The light was on, bathing the area in a murky yellow, but he didn't see anything.

  Afraid to venture any farther, he stayed and squinted his eyes, trying to spot any sign of a disturbance. The front door to the cottage was closed, and everything else was quiet, so what had happened?

  Just before he took another step toward the stairs, he spotted something on the floor in the kitchen. It looked like it was wet, covered in some kind of dark liquid. And there was something else scattered amongst it. It looked like broken glass.

  Noel felt faint.

  Silence held dominion over the house until finally some floorboards groaned somewhere out of sight downstairs.

  All the air that Noel had been holding in his lungs rushed out in a steady stream. He was relieved to hear movement; for a moment, he thought his father was dead.

  He descended the stairs and saw Walter standing at the end of the kitchen island near the dining room. He was staring down at the mess on the floor, his eyes wide, his hands shaking.

  "Are you okay?" Noel asked, worry tying his stomach in knots.

  It took a second for Walter to realize he was there, then he looked over at him. "Yeah... I'm fine," he said. But he was visibly shaken.

  "What happened?" Noel asked.

  "Nothing..." he said. His eyes shrunk and he started to move from the spot he was previously frozen in. "No, it's nothing. I'm okay. I just broke a bottle."

  Noel stood and watched him move around the kitchen, starting to clean up the mess. He swept up all the shards of glass on the floor, then he threw a glance over to Noel, warning him not to get any closer in case he stepped on something. When he was halfway through cleaning up, he put the rag on the countertop and rested his hand on it, and he looked at Noel, something like fear in his eyes.

  "Son, stay with me," he said.

  The suddenness of his plea took Noel by surprise. "Um..."

  "Don't leave me," Walter said. "Please, promise you'll stay." There was genuine fear in his eyes, unmistakable now, like he was afraid to be alone. Or afraid that he was about to lose his son.

  Noel was shocked. His father knew. He didn't know how, but somehow his father knew what he had been planning. Suddenly all thoughts of escape drained from his mind, like they were being pulled into a vortex. All his harsh feelings for his father softened in that instant out of guilt. Staring at the miserable form in front of him, he wasn't sure how he could get up the courage to escape anymore. So he simply, though grudgingly, said, "I will. I'll stay. It's okay."

  Walter cleaned up the rest of the mess and Noel spent some time in the living room for the rest of the night. They didn't talk much, and they didn't even spend the remainder of the evening in the same room much of the time, but they didn't stray too far from each other.

  Noel's mind raced, thinking about the anguish in his father's scream and how rattled he seemed. And then a thought entered his mind, so innocuous: had his father finally seen something?

  A Drink in Good Company

  "Do you think he saw something?"

  Emily frowned. "I don't know. Maybe he did. My mom couldn't see them. And your dad seems really distant. When most people move in, all the ghosts around here perk up and take an interest in them, but sometimes your dad seems more miserable than everyone else stuck here, like he belongs more than we do. I think most of the ghosts are interested in you."

  Noel trudged through the thick layer of snow that had already built up. The storm had taken a brief sabbatical—only a soft dusting of large flakes coming down now in the morning—before it was set to resume later in the evening.

  "But why?" Noel asked. "Why do they care about me?"

  Emily shrugged rather sheepishly. "Sometimes we just like company," she said. They walked near the end of the field by the lake where the ground started to slope down to the water and they sat down.

  "I'm worried that I'll never get out of here," Noel admitted.

  "You will," she said with a smile, sitting cross-legged in the snow.

  "What about my daddy?"

  Her smile faded. "I hope so," she said. "But you have to see when the time comes."

  "What about you?" he asked. "What would you do if you could get out of here?"

  "Noel... I already told you I can't leave."

  "But just imagine if you could for a second! Where would you go?"

  She thought for a moment. "I always wanted to go to Disney World." Noel's face lit up at the mention of it. "My mom talked about taking us someday when we were a little older. 'Course, that was before she got sick."

  "What about your daddy?" Noel asked. "What happened to him?"

  "He died in an accident when I was really young," she said glumly. "He was a welder and he made a mistake at work. I don't know much about it, but he just didn't come home one day." She stared off into the distance. "I was so young that I don't really remember him very much. My brother wasn't even a year old."

  "I guess we have a lot in common, huh?" Noel said.

  Emily couldn't help but laugh given her unique circumstance. "I guess you could say that... What about you? What was your mom like?"

  "She was really nice," Noel said, getting lost in reverie. "I remember her a lot. Whenever I was sad she always made me feel better. She was really nice and fun." He wiped the tears out of his eyes.

  "And your dad? What was he like back then?"

  "Better," Noel said. "He was always really busy with his work. I don't think he actually wrote any music much, but he was always in his room sitting at the piano. Things got really hard. My mommy and daddy were fighting a lot. I don't really know about what. And then after the car accident my daddy got way worse. Not different, really... just worse. He said he got a lot of money when mommy died and that we'd be okay. I think he was trying to get me to not be so sad. That was only a year ago, and now he says we're out of money so we had to move in here."

  Emily looked at him sympathetically. "Maybe he's still got to find his way."

  "Maybe."

  Noel gazed up at the sky and a large snowflake landed on the tip of his nose, melting and giving him a tickling sensation. He watched the flakes come down, falling out of the sky like God was shaking a big sieve.

  "What's got you smiling?"

  "What do you mean?" Noel asked.

  "I don't know," she said, "you just started smiling when you looked up. Maybe you're capable of having fun after all."

  He'd been taken by surprise by this, but when he paid attention to his face he found that the corners of his mouth were stretched up into a smile. Perhaps it had been something about the simple, joyful nature of the snowfall. Maybe it reminded him of a time long gone by with his mother. But for the first time in a while, sitting in the snow with Emily, he didn't feel like his normal gloomy, dismal self.

  Noel bunched up some snow into his fist next to him without Emily
seeing. When she leaned to the side, trying to figure out what he was doing, he twisted around and threw the snowball at her. It missed, and she leaned back out of surprise. Then a smile broke across her face, too.

  Before they knew it, they were both standing up and bending over, fashioning a line of snowballs to hurl at each other. They laughed and played and Noel tried his best to nail her with one, but his aim wasn't very good.

  A nicely packed snowball glanced off Noel's shoulder and exploded and Emily giggled like she hadn't in years. Both of them descended into uproarious laughter as they let their childlike natures take over. It was something that this place seemed to extinguish in children, but now they let it shine through.

  He bent down, narrowly ducking an attack from her, and he scooped up another snowball and tossed it at her. This one hit her square in the chest.

  Except it went through her chest and landed in the snow some feet behind her.

  Emily's joyous countenance dissolved immediately.

  "What's wrong?" Noel asked.

  "It's nothing," she said. "But I think I'm done for today."

  They put their playful attitudes behind them as quickly as they had picked them up, and the two of them headed back to the cottage, an uneasiness pressing against Noel's throat and making it hard to swallow. He was upset, but he didn't want to cry in front of her. They said a brief goodbye and Noel went inside.

  He sat at the kitchen island, glumly shoveling cereal into his mouth and chewing in a purely mechanical fashion. The grim reality of his plight and the hopelessness of it all weighed heavily on him. Maybe all of this—his grand dreams of escape and freedom—was nothing more than a pipe dream. He groaned in misery.

  A sound came from down the hall, somewhere around the corner in the living room. It sounded like voices.

  Curious, Noel got down from the stool and walked along the hallway. He turned the corner into the living room and peered through the archway to the den.