Haunted Houses

by Robert D. San Souci

  Henry would not approve. Today I had old Mrs. Nabokov over for tea. She has Gypsy blood and has special gifts. She confirms what Henry refuses to believe: that Maddie’s spirit is lost, longing to come home. She tells me there is a way to call my darling back, so she can be with us in spirit. It means bringing together the person Maddie loved most—that would be her mother, me—and one thing Maddie loved above all others. That would be the dollhouse we had built for her for last Christmas. Oh! The way her eyes lit up when she uncovered it and found all the wonderful furniture and the painted figures of the three of us who inhabit it. It was too expensive, but to see her joy was to know that it was worth every cent. Since my girl is gone, I have put the house and figures in mourning. There is a secret ceremony Mrs. Nabokov will perform next week, when Henry is away on business. I cannot wait.

  There were more pages of hopes, fears, prayers that the old woman’s magic would work—that somehow Maddie’s spirit would come home. She didn’t understand: Shouldn’t Maddie be an angel in heaven? But then, Katie never could quite figure out why some dead people went to heaven and some had to hang around as ghosts.

  Then, on September 6, only a few lines:

  I felt my Maddie. Mrs. Nabokov sensed her, too. But I cannot see her. I searched the house. I stayed for two hours in her bedroom after the old woman left. But Maddie did not come to me. Sometimes I feel she is very close, but she doesn’t come. Why? Why?

  Another long break. Katie was almost at the end of the journal before she found a December 12 entry, the last one in the journal.

  The doctors assure me I will be fine. I do not trust them. They said my Maddie would recover, and we lost her. Henry has decided we will move. He has transferred to an office in another city. We have given away most of Maddie’s things. I am too tired these days to argue. But we have agreed that we won’t give away the dollhouse. Henry put it in storage in the basement when we sold the house. We will leave this bit of Maddie in the house. Perhaps it will bring joy to another child as it once brought joy to our darling. I leave this journal here, too, as a bit of my heart, which you will always hold, my darling, until we meet again. But I will take the painted figure of you with me and keep it close forever.

  Closing the journal after reading those words, Katie felt very sad. But the old lady’s magic did work, she thought. Somehow Maddie had come back—just not in the way her mother hoped. Her spirit had been caught in the dollhouse—maybe trapped forever, a tiny ghost endlessly wandering the four rooms of a toy world, imprisoned by wooden walls on three sides and the invisible fourth wall.

  Aloud, Katie said, “You can’t be happy in there. I wish there was a way to help you.”

  In the stillness of the basement, she was sure she heard a voice, no more than a whisper, beg, Let me come home. Then she blinked. The ghost was back in the pink bedroom where Katie had first seen her. And the shadow within the drop of light was clearly the shape of a girl in a flared party dress and a fancy hat. It drifted closer to the unseen wall, then stopped. To Katie, there came the image of a sad, tiny creature displayed in a glass-walled cage. But it was a person—or, at least, the soul of a person—held captive like a fish in an aquarium.

  It’s not fair, Katie thought. There must be something I can do. She was sure now that she was looking at the ghost of Maddie Cantwell. If she just could get out of the dollhouse, she might be able to go on to heaven or wherever her mother was waiting. Katie was sure the ghost couldn’t get out on its own, so she decided to help.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she assured the diminutive blob of shadow-in-light. “Maybe I can lift you out. But you can’t hurt me like you did before.”

  Let me come home, begged a tiny voice.

  “First show me that you won’t hurt me.” Katie pushed against the airy wall with her finger. As always, it resisted, then gave, so her finger poked through near the ghost. This time the ghost light stayed where it was. After a moment, it drew closer to Katie’s finger. “Show me you won’t give me a shock,” Katie insisted.

  The light brushed her finger. This time she felt only a mild pressure, like two tiny hands caressing the tip of her finger. It was soft as the brush of a butterfly’s wing when one had landed on the back of her hand. She tried to stroke the edge of the light just as gently, saying, “I must have scared you before. That’s why you hurt me.”

  Two tiny branches of light—Maddie’s arms—circled her finger. The ghost dipped closer to her skin. In a minute Katie planned to put through her whole hand, then wrap her fist protectively around the light, and (she hoped) pull it past the invisible prison wall.

  Suddenly she felt a sharp pain, like a needle jab, in her fingertip. With a cry, Katie pulled her finger away. At that moment the ghost winked out.

  The girl studied her finger. A tiny bead of blood had appeared; the whole of her fingertip felt like it was burning. She wiped the blood away and took a closer look at the little wound. It wasn’t a round puncture like a pin might make, but a funny half-moon shape. Almost like a tiny bite. Had Maddie bitten her? Katie wondered. It certainly seemed so.

  She wasted no time scrambling down off the plywood and hastily throwing the sheet over the dollhouse. She ran upstairs to show her mother, who asked, “Where did this happen?”

  “In the basement,” Katie answered. “I was reaching in somewhere, and it just happened.”

  “I told you not to play down there,” her mother said, peering more closely. “It almost looks like a spider bite, but I’ll bet you scraped it on something. I’m glad you had a tetanus shot a few weeks ago.” Then she marched Katie to the upstairs bathroom, washed the finger, and put some ointment on it. “Now, go and play outside, and stay out of the basement.”

  The warning was unnecessary. Katie had no intention of going back there on her own. The dollhouse could stay covered up; Maddie could be alone, since she’d only been mean. Sooner or later her dad would clean out the basement and find the dollhouse, and then she’d have to warn him about it. But, for now, she just wanted to forget the whole thing.

  But Katie couldn’t forget. Her finger continued to hurt, even though the redness went away. She swore she could feel a line of fire, like a red-hot wire under her skin, creeping down her finger, across her palm, and starting up her arm. It kept her up at night. Her mother, alarmed by Katie’s restlessness and complaints, took her to several doctors who could find nothing. The mark on her finger had vanished, but the hot wire kept moving farther up. When it reached her shoulder, it seemed to branch into two fiery lines, one moving toward her neck and head and one moving across her chest to her heart. Katie grew frantic. Her parents, convinced something was seriously wrong, though all the doctors and their tests assured them Katie was fine, finally arranged for her to stay in a hospital while endless tests were run.

  With her mother and father on either side of the bed, Katie lay feeling too weak even to talk. The scalding wires had reached to her brain and heart. Katie felt like she was burning up with fever, stiff and sore all over. She could hardly bear to have anyone touch her. At times it felt hard to breathe or swallow. And when she dozed off, she had awful dreams. She was tiny and trapped in a giant dollhouse, had been for as long as she could remember, and had no hope of escape. The door wouldn’t budge; the windows in the three walls wouldn’t open; when she shoved and beat against the invisible fourth wall, it did no good at all. She was scared at first, then angry, and finally realized she would do anything—anything—to escape this nightmare prison.

  More tests turned up nothing. “Let me come home,” she begged her parents. “Soon,” they promised. But Katie knew she wasn’t going home. Something was very wrong. She no longer felt completely herself or alone in her body. It was like someone else was taking shape inside her. When she stretched her arm or shifted her leg, she was sure she felt someone else’s arm or leg inside her own doing the same thing. When she tried to explain this, her parents and the doctors could make no sense of it. They just made soothing sounds and sighed an
d shook their heads.

  Then unexpectedly she woke up one morning, seemingly cured. The fever was gone; she was able to breathe easily. Eagerly, she swallowed the soup, pudding, and ice cream that were brought her. She felt whole again, fine again, ready to be free again.

  The doctors kept Katie two more days in the hospital before deciding there was no reason for her to stay any longer. She was wheeled out to the parking lot by a kind nurse, escorted by her mother and father. Her brother and sister waved eagerly to her from the back of the family van. In a short time, she was home again.

  Her mother insisted she take a nap at first, though she wasn’t tired at all. But she didn’t argue.

  When the house was quiet—her mother outside watering the garden, her father driving the older kids to a school soccer match—Katie slipped out of bed. She hurried to the basement, squeezed past the stacked boxes, and yanked the dust cover off the dollhouse. For a few minutes she just stared at it. Then she went behind it, poked her finger—the same one that had caused all the trouble—through the unseen wall. Next, using the fingers of her other hand, she pushed from the base of her finger down toward its tip, squeezing it like a toothpaste tube. When her tightening fingers had almost reached the nail, a little blob of light with a smear of shadow inside began to ooze from her fingertip. She squeezed with all her might. The blob became a glowing drop that suddenly dripped onto the floor of the miniature living room. Instantly, the girl pulled her finger free of the wall. In a minute, she had covered the dollhouse and was running upstairs.

  She slammed the basement door just minutes before her mother came inside.

  “Honey,” the woman said, “you’re supposed to be taking a nap.”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Oh, Mommy, it’s good to be home after so long.”

  “You were a long time in the hospital. But now you’ve come home.”

  “Yes!” said the girl, hugging her mother around her waist.

  In the faint gray light under the dust cover, the drop of light rose from the floor and drifted across the hall into the room where the stiff figure of a man read a book eternally open to the same page. In the hall above, the figure of a woman in black endlessly stared at the open door of a little girl’s room. From the wall, the image of a girl in an old-fashioned bonnet, her hair and hat ribbons forever blowing in a long-departed breeze, gazed back. None of the painted eyes noticed the tiny bit of brightness and shadow that now flashed hopelessly from room to room.

  Tea House

  Most of Larry Hamada’s friends found the deserted chashitsu, tea house, frightening—even in sunlight. But the boy only found it forlorn and sad. It stood in a corner of McClendon Park in the center of Harrisport, Oregon, on the coast between Newport and Union City. At one time, the building had been the heart of the Japanese-American community there. Modeled after a famous tea house in Tokyo, it was called, simply, Cherry Tree Tea House.

  Though it had been built to serve the Japanese-American population, it quickly became popular with the rest of the community and then with tourists. The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Jirohei, for years had owned a nursery and bulb farm in eastern Oregon, where they raised tulips, daffodils, and gladioli. When running the farm became too much, they sold the business and moved to Harrisport, where Mr. Jirohei had been born. There they achieved a special dream of theirs, building and running the tea house in the municipal park, with the blessing of the city government.

  Willows shaded the creek that flowed behind it. Stone lanterns along the water’s edge were lighted each night, inviting couples to stroll in the soft glow. In front was the cherry tree—now long since dead—that had given the tea house its name. Mr. Jirohei had imported the tree from Japan. It had been his pride and joy. He would sit playing his ancient bamboo flute under the lavish blossoms in spring or enjoying the shade it gave in summer.

  Larry, who was also born in Harrisport, knew that the sakura, cherry tree, was an important symbol in Japan. The tree represented good fortune, love, affection, and spring—many positive elements. But it had other ideas associated with it. Because of the tree’s short, intense blooming time, it was also seen as a reminder that life passes quickly. One bit of lore that an uncle of Larry’s shared was that the cherry tree was once associated with samurai warriors. Their life was often fierce and glorious, but they could be cut down in battle at the height of their accomplishments. He claimed that a fallen samurai was often buried with only a cherry tree as a grave marker. So a cherry tree, in many minds, represented new life growing even in a place of death.

  But something had happened in this peaceful setting eleven years before—by unfortunate chance, the year Larry was born. Mr. Jirohei had been killed in a holdup one night as the elderly couple was closing up shop for the day. By the time the police arrived, they found Mrs. Jirohei holding her husband’s body. She could tell them nothing about the crime (which was still unsolved). Half mad with grief, she actually fought the police and medical workers to keep them from taking her from her husband’s body.

  Then she locked herself in the tea house that had been their shared love for so long. When the police forced their way inside, not a trace of the woman could be found. An exhaustive search of the park grounds revealed nothing. It was as if Mrs. Jirohei had vanished into thin air, or into the fabric of the tea house. The surviving family posted a reward, and the search continued for months, but nothing more was ever learned. In fact, the case became a classic “unsolved mystery” that was often mentioned on television shows or Web sites devoted to the strange, the occult, and the unexplained. Such things fascinated Larry, even though he rarely discovered fresh information about events at the tea house.

  Yet the weirdness didn’t stop with the woman’s vanishing. A cousin of the Jiroheis, who lived in San Francisco, inherited the tea house and the nearby apartment the old couple owned. He and his wife planned to reopen the tea house after doing some remodeling.

  The venture was troubled from the start.

  Workers’ supplies vanished; a scaffold collapsed, badly injuring two men; a carpenter working late one night told of hearing strange sounds from inside the walls. He added that he was sure he glimpsed a human form crawling up the wall and across a ceiling “like a great big insect.” Unwilling to stay, he had fled and refused to return except to reclaim his tools the next morning.

  Word quickly got around that the place was haunted. It became harder for the new owners to find and keep new laborers, none of whom would stay after dark. But the work was finally completed.

  Two days before the opening, the cousin ran a few errands and left his wife alone to finish some work in the new kitchen. When he returned, he found the woman collapsed on the floor. Medics replying to his 9-1-1 call pronounced her dead. It was rumored—one of those awful tales kids love to share—that she had a look of such terror on her face that it scared even the doctors.

  After his wife’s funeral, the man sold the apartment and put the tea house on the market. But there were no takers. People shunned the place even in daylight. It was said it had somehow been cursed by the tragic loss of the original owners. People kept away from the place, as if the Jiroheis’ ill luck might rub off on them. The feeling seemed to be: Let it be swallowed by decay and weeds, taking whatever bad energies lingered with it.

  In time, the for sale signs were replaced with no trespassing warnings. To these were added danger signs. Shakes had fallen from the roof; much of the wooden decking was rotten and unsafe; weeds choked the gardens that Mrs. Jirohei had once lovingly tended. The old man’s beloved cherry tree withered and died. Many said it had died of sadness, just like a person. Some late-evening passersby claimed to hear ghostly flute music on the breeze. One or two said they glimpsed the form of the elderly flutist, sitting on the roots of the tree, in the twilight. Now the city had reclaimed the property, though there were no plans to do anything with it.

  Still, something drew Larry again and again to the old building. Part of it, he knew, was simply a young person’
s fascination with the mysterious and frightening—especially when such matters clearly unnerved his parents, who were visibly reluctant to answer his persistent questions about the tea house and what had (or might have) happened there.

  Other adults he asked were just as reluctant to talk—though one old neighbor woman, who had come from Japan when she was just a girl, told him that she was sure the place was haunted by the spirit of Mrs. Jirohei. “Surely she died there,” Mrs. Ozaki said. “And when people die troubled and grieving and angry, they become vengeful ghosts who will make all who encounter them suffer greatly. If the ghost is a woman, she is the most terrifying of all. Female ghosts are as relentless as the blade of a steel sword. Most horrible of all was the ghost of Oiwa. She never gave her faithless husband any peace. No matter where the man went, he would see her face in a paper lantern, her form in a folding screen, or her shape in a tangle of ivy vines. She finally drove him to madness and death.”

  Mrs. Ozaki’s words gave Larry a fresh mix of the wondrous and fearful to ponder. But he gradually came to realize that if he was to find out the truth about the tea house—or some part of it, at any rate–he was going to have to find out for himself. Yet, as much as the mystery drew him, the old stories of shadows, strange shapes, curious lights, and eerie sounds that were repeated (mostly by kids) kept him from going too close to the tea house. He never attempted to go closer than the tipsy remains of a bamboo fence that was barely visible in the choking mass of rangy rhododendrons marking what was left of the once-charming gardens.

  Even taunts and dares from his friends—with whom he had made the mistake of confiding his interest in the old place—couldn’t nudge him to go.

  It wasn’t till he met Katsumi Takka, a transfer student from Seattle, that seeking answers became a possibility.

  Kat and Larry complemented each other perfectly. He was overly cautious; she had a reckless streak. They liked the same Xbox games and scary movies; they disliked their seventh-grade English teacher, Mrs. Harper; edamame and sashimi; and Mimsy Lorimer and Tony Santucci—the class beauty and class bully.