Haunted Houses

by Robert D. San Souci

  Now, sitting on the patio, the childish idea came back to him, vivid and grotesque, coloring their trip (his father called it a “pilgrimage”) to the house. When the old woman had died more than six years ago, she left the house and most of her money to her companions. The rest of the family got a painting each, which was how Sunset at Taos Pueblo wound up in the Garcia living room.

  Jose’s mother, Esperanza, was less than happy with the side trip. She had enjoyed the vacation in Santa Fe, had had a great time at the hotel and restaurants and shops, but she wanted to continue on to Los Angeles to see friends. The visit to Martina Garcia’s hacienda was adding a day’s driving to the trip.

  But her husband was firm about it. “It’s something the kids should see,” he said stubbornly.

  “We don’t even know who owns the place. Your grandmother left it to her cousins, who had no children or other family that anyone knows of. They died less than a year after Martina, according to your brother, Hector. No one knows who inherited the place from them. What if it was sold? It may be private property we can’t get near.” She stopped, having used up all her protestations.

  “Then we’ll find out when we get there,” Diego persisted. “I’m not coming this far to turn back.” He folded the map. “I’ve got the route in my mind. ’Kay, kids—let’s hit the road,” he called to Jose and Isobel. “And if you need a bathroom break, now’s the time to take it.” Isobel rolled her eyes at this, causing Jose to say in a high-pitched voice, “Oh, I’m in high school now—I don’t go potty anymore.”

  “Shut up!” his sister yelled.

  “Knock it off, the both of you,” Esperanza snapped. The children had sense enough to realize she was not a happy camper. They shut up.

  The route, as Diego had plotted it, took them off the main highway onto a secondary road that wound through a couple of sun-splashed towns. These were all alike: little more than a few shops and homes of mostly adobe, glaring white-hot under the sun that blazed in a sky without a hint of cloud. Jose was getting bored with the unchanging desert scenery: endless stretches of sand dotted with tumbleweed, cacti, or the occasional creosote shrub, with a border of distant hazy, blue-purple mountains. Some of it reminded him of his grandmother’s paintings, but all of it was growing tiresome.

  He couldn’t imagine crossing the flat, broiling expanse in anything other than the family Explorer with the air-conditioning cranked to the max. The adults were in one of their silent spaces, his dad staring straight ahead through the windshield, as though afraid of missing a sign or landmark, his mom, her head leaning against the passenger window, listlessly watching the countryside roll by. Isobel had fallen asleep, iPod earbuds firmly in place. Jose gave up on the scenery and played his Xbox. He kept dozing off or spacing out so he never could get beyond the lowest level of Conquest.

  Jose was half awake when the car slowed and his father pulled into the gas station that seemed to be the hub of a town that was nothing more than a wide spot in the road. The gas station, a Circle K Mart, and a few houses were pretty much all there was to the place.

  Rubbing his eyes, Jose asked, “Are we there yet?”

  “Close,” said his dad.

  When they pulled up to a gas pump, a crusty old guy in grease-stained overalls and an equally grimy brown shirt hobbled toward the car. He wore a fisherman’s hat with flies hooked all around it. Where are the fish? wondered Jose, peering at the sun-baked desert. Or is it some kind of a wishing cap, ’cause he wishes he was somewhere, anywhere else, where he could fish?

  His dad lowered the driver’s side window. “Fill ’er up,” he said. The old guy started the pump, then came back to ask about checking water and oil. Diego agreed, but asked first, “This place called Sunset View? I didn’t see a sign.”

  The fellow nodded his head. “Yep, that’s us. The sign blew down last sandstorm. Nobody’s got around to puttin’ her back up.”

  “I’m looking for a house—La Casa de las Mujeres—it’s supposed to be off Comistas Road. It isn’t on the map, but I think it should be about here. . . .” He showed the attendant the unfolded map. “See where I’ve penciled in a line? Do you know?”

  “Yeah, looks about right—just go maybe seven miles down the road and look for the turnoff on your left. Lucky you’ve got a sturdy car. The road ain’t been repaired anytime recent. But why do you want to go there? The place is old and pretty run-down, from what I understand. Ain’t no one lived there for years, not since the last gal who worked for the painter lady died.”

  “The artist was my grandmother—the kids’ great-grandmother. I want to show them where she lived.”

  The man just shrugged and moved off to check the oil and water. Diego glanced a last time at his map, then refolded it and replaced it in the map pocket on his door.

  “Seven miles—not far now,” he announced, trying to sound enthusiastic. His wife continued to stare out the window. Isobel slept.

  “That’s great!” said Jose, feeling that someone owed his father at least a response. In truth, the only real enthusiasm he could muster was around the fact that the end of his immediate boredom was at hand. After this, the next stop was Los Angeles, with two days at Disneyland already planned.

  When they’d left Sunset View, Jose’s father kept a close watch on the odometer. The closer they got to the seven-mile mark, the more carefully he watched the left side of the road for a turn-off. But it was Jose who noticed what his father had missed—a hard-to-spot break in the tangle of brush and snarled tumbleweeds that lined both sides of the road.

  “Pop! I think I see the road,” he shouted.

  His father hung a U-turn on the deserted two-lane road and started back. When he saw it, he grinned and said, “Good work, scout!”

  Diego turned cautiously onto the road that was little more than a ribbon of gravel and dirt running deep into the waste of sand and weed.

  “Careful!” warned Esperanza as the Explorer jounced through one rut and then another. The jolting woke up Isobel, who demanded to know where they were, why her father was trying to kill them all, and how soon they’d get to a motel with a swimming pool. She pulled her earbuds free.

  “Almost there,” her father responded, dutifully slowing the car.

  “Where’s there?” Isobel whined.

  “Your great-grandmother’s home,” said her mother, keeping her voice deliberately neutral.

  “La Casa de las Mujeres,” said Jose. “The House of Women. I guess that was a good name, since there were just three women living there all the time.” He grinned. “When I gave my report, I said the name in Spanish, and then wrote it on the blackboard. Jim Tessler, who thinks he knows everything, said, ‘That means House of the Dead.’ He got mujeres and muertas totally mixed up.”

  “Who cares? Just so we get there soon,” Isobel grumbled. “I need some serious pool time.” She replaced her earbuds.

  “I need some serious pool time,” Jose echoed in a high-pitched trill, then added in his own voice, “What a pain!”

  “Don’t go there,” his father warned.

  Jose went back to his Xbox.

  The road seemed to go on forever. Their slow rate of speed, given the deterioration of the road, made the journey interminable.

  “My abuela sure valued her privacy,” Jose’s father muttered. It seemed that even Diego was starting to regret this silly “pilgrimage.” While his mother and sister didn’t seem to notice, Jose was aware that his father was pressing on the accelerator. They were really going fast, but Jose didn’t care.

  The Explorer jittered and bounced, tossing the passengers around in spite of the new set of shocks installed just for the trip. Jose watched for some sign of the place they were heading to, but the desert seemed endlessly empty in every direction. Jose was bored with Conquest and decided to pull one of the other games out of his backpack, which was resting right behind his seat in the luggage area. He unsnapped his seat belt and turned around, kneeling on the seat to reach into the pack. Unfortunatel
y, his hand holding the Xbox caught the cord of Isobel’s iPod, pulling her earbuds loose and waking her up.

  “What are you doing, brat?” she demanded, elbowing him in the side.

  He shoved back. “It was an accident, stupid!”

  “Don’t you hit me!” She tried to smack him on the side of the head, but he had turned toward her, and her hand struck a stinging blow on his nose, which promptly began to bleed.

  “I’m bleeding!” he bellowed, holding on to his nose with one hand, flailing at his sister with his other.

  “Knock it off!” their father roared, turning around to put an end to the argument.

  At that moment, Esperanza screamed, “Diego! Watch out! Slow down!”

  Jose had only a moment to lean forward and glance through the windshield past his parents’ heads to where a small coyote was frozen in place in the middle of the road—one paw raised, disbelief in its eyes. Jose was aware of his mother clutching his father’s arm in panic, his father jamming on the brakes, Isobel screaming as the car spun a full 360 degrees and then slammed into a huge rock. Jose, without his seat belt to anchor him, was launched out of the backseat into the windshield and unconsciousness.

  For a time, there was nothing. Then, gradually, sensation returned. Jose drifted in a strange, impenetrable darkness lit by occasional waves of red and yellow light. Gradually the blackness faded to dark purple, then to a rich blue, and finally to a white-hot radiance.

  To the boy’s astonishment, he realized he was floating weightlessly in the sky above the desert, which continued to broil under the afternoon sun. The ripples of red and yellow broke into flashing points of brilliance that he now saw were the lights of emergency vehicles: two highway patrol cars, an ambulance, and a tow truck. They were parked along the road edge near the Explorer, miraculously upright, its front end accordioned against an outcropping of gray stone. The engine had been driven back into the passenger seats. Jose tried to groan when he recognized the family car, but no sound emerged. There was only stillness; what he watched below unfolded like an old silent movie.

  Near the wrecked vehicle, several state troopers talked to a medic, while two other men in blue EMT uniforms were grimly loading three bulky, zippered bags of heavy black plastic into the back of the ambulance: smallest first, then the two bigger bundles. Body bags. Jose recognized them from TV crime shows like CSI. He began to tremble, realizing he was seeing the aftermath of the accident. Did that mean he was dead—a disembodied spirit floating in the air?

  No! he wanted to cry aloud at everything he was seeing and experiencing. But although denial filled his brain and being, he wasn’t able to force out a single sound. He continued to hover in a deadening silence that was syrup-thick around him and over everything.

  Below, the last of the body bags was loaded. The medics closed the back, and all three piled into the ambulance. Soon it began to back away from the wreck, angled around, then set off down the road. Though the vehicle’s warning lights continued to flash, the driver kept a modest pace: No need to rush if the only passengers were sealed in black plastic, headed for some hospital morgue.

  With quick efficiency, the tow truck driver hitched up the back of the Explorer, which was upright and could still be moved. Away he went down the road, with the two patrol cars following.

  Jose watched all of this as if he was watching some television show: It all seemed so unreal.

  Am I dead? he asked himself over and over. And always his inner voice screamed, No! Each time he reminded himself, I only saw three black bags, and there were four of us in the car. But, if I’m not dead, I must still be alive. So how can I be here, floating like dust on the breeze?

  And if there were only three body bags, had one been loaded in before he became aware of the ambulance? That had to be the case, because if someone was still alive, wouldn’t the ambulance have been racing off to a hospital instead of traveling at a normal rate of speed?

  He was still attempting to piece together an answer, when he suddenly felt heavy. Gravity began to tug him out of the sky. He was sinking more and more rapidly back toward the earth. Then everything became a blur of light and a sudden, deafening roar that seemed to split the heavens from horizon to horizon. He tried to cling to some shreds of consciousness, but in the last moment of his plunge earthward, he blacked out.

  It was very late in the afternoon when Jose came to. He was lying on his back, his head in the shadow of a barrel cactus, the rest of his body sprawled in the hot sunshine. He could feel stones and bristles under him, as if he’d been carelessly tossed like an old rag doll onto the desert.

  He sat up quickly and collapsed back down just as rapidly when his head blazed into agony and then began to spin like the car just before the accident. His memory of the accident triggered a flood of thoughts. Emergency response vehicles. Three body bags. Drifting in a sunlit, silent sky. Had he dreamed this troubling out-of-body vision? As he lay still, feeling stronger each minute, he recalled what he’d heard about near-death experiences, a subject that had intrigued him since his best friend, Arturo, had undergone serious heart surgery a year ago.

  “I died, man! I died on that operating table,” Arturo had told everyone. “I was floating up by those big old ceiling lights, and I saw all them doctors and nurses working on me on the operating table. And someone shouted, ‘We’re losing him!’ They all started doing emergency stuff to me, but I didn’t care: I was on my way up and out of there. It was like I was swallowed by that light and kept going higher. And, man, I really wanted to see what was up there.” He shrugged. “Suddenly I heard someone saying, ‘Stabilizing. He’ll be okay.’ Then I fell out of the light, down through the air, and right back into my own body.”

  After that, Jose learned everything he could about people who had come close to dying—or had really died for a minute when their hearts stopped, before they were brought back by medics—and what they had to report. He just never thought he would have such an experience firsthand.

  He stayed as he was for a few minutes, while the rocking and rolling world around him slowly calmed. Then, very cautiously, he sat up. His head still throbbed. He held his hand to his right temple; it felt sticky and gritty. When he pulled back his fingers, they came away pink, flecked with sparkles, like diamonds. Or windshield safety glass. But he was fully conscious; he could move. He guessed his injuries weren’t all that serious. He touched a finger to his nose and found there was just a crust of dried blood there; oddly enough, his nosebleed from Isobel’s smack had stopped.

  But where was he? Why wasn’t the ambulance rushing him to a hospital as the only survivor? He was on his feet, wobbling a little, but feeling stronger and surer with each passing minute. He looked around. He seemed to be about twenty feet from the road. He pulled off his 49ers cap, which, miraculously, was still in place. Maybe it had helped protect him when he hit the windshield.

  Why was he here? Where was here? And why was he alone, with no one helping? As far as he could see, the road was empty; there wasn’t a trace of people or cars. Slowly, a frightening answer emerged: After the accident, he had simply wandered away from the wreck in a shocked daze and then collapsed. While the emergency operation was going on, none of the medics or troopers could have guessed that he was passed out not far from them.

  In any event, Jose had to get away from the still-baking sun and find help soon. Every minute in the desert, he felt, left him at the mercy of coyotes or rattlesnakes or—creepiest of all—scorpions. Just the thought of these things made him hightail it for the safer road surface, where no critter could slither or pounce on him from under a shrub or rock.

  Jose was a good fifty yards from the horribly familiar outcropping of rock. He’d apparently wandered across the road from the accident site. Without going too close, he could clearly see traces of the crash in the litter of glass and metal that sparkled in the sunlight.

  With a heartfelt groan, he tried to accept, as much as his still-shocked condition would allow, the deaths o
f his parents and sister. He let the tears stream down his face, making little effort to wipe them away.

  Get hold of yourself, he was sure he heard the voice of his father telling him, though there was no one to see. If he lost it now, Jose realized, he’d just become a delayed casualty. He would force himself to be strong.

  For a moment, hope flared in his mind. Maybe I’m dreaming, he thought suddenly. I’m still unconscious in the Explorer or in an ambulance or already in a hospital bed. But his head ached. The dry, dusty air was scorching his eyes and throat; the late afternoon sun, while not as fierce as at noon, was still making him feel like one of his father’s shrimp sizzling on their backyard grill. He dismissed this image of home as wishful thinking.

  Everything boiled down to the urgent need to find people, shelter, and transportation. He didn’t fancy being alone in the wild after dark. Desert nights could be freezing, and dangerous things came out to hunt after sunset.

  He stood at the side of the road and tried to get his bearings. He still felt a little dizzy; it remained something of an effort to link one thought to another. Should he start hiking back to the main road? he wondered. Or did it make better sense to make his way toward La Casa de las Mujeres? The more he considered, the less certain he felt and the more his head ached. An empty road offered no clue to the best course of action; an indifferent desert equally provided no hint or guidepost, as it lay pale gold-brown in the thickening light of day, like a tawny ocean frozen in place.