I needn’t have worried. I saw the face again—I saw the face and it was a face, unquestionably, and it pressed closer to the foot of the bed. Its expression had changed as well: there was cruel challenge in the boy’s eyes. The fear there had mouldered and spoiled, and defiance emerged from the dregs. His expression bespoke a horrid invitation to stay and ‘see him away’ again—and see what might come from that.
I did not. I gave in to my better judgment at last. I scrambled backwards and leapt to my feet on the landing. I glanced at the bed but saw no movement. I turned off the light and somehow retained the presence of mind to shut the door quietly, if no less firmly than I possibly could. There was, of course, no logic to hoping the closed door could protect me—yet hadn’t I seen it move before? If there are rules, I do not know them. But I was damn sure the door would not open on its own.
I went back downstairs. Rollo was still in front of the couch. He watched me cross the room with no more than mild concern—though watching that same turn of his head only strengthened my first appraisal of the motion. With the same useless logic of protection I applied to the door, I hid under my blanket on the couch. I am surprised my flopping about didn’t wake one of the others. Perhaps it did. I fell asleep quickly afterwards. That may seem unthinkable, but I was more drained now than ever. Another benefit of youth: being able to sleep no matter the circumstances given the right degree of exhaustion (a feat I cannot manage now). I even tried to stay awake. I watched the top of the stairs. I knew I was staring too long at the railing and that that was what caused me to see the straight line waver, as though something toyed at moving out from behind it. I knew that the flutter of my drooping eyelids made me see the shadows shift on the wall. I waited for Rollo to growl again but he did not. I remember thinking, He was hiding in the pantry, and then he went to hide under his bed. I don’t know the source of the unnatural surety I had of either the original function of the Dungeon or of the boy’s actions. I did not manage another coherent thought that night.
By the time I awoke in the morning Rollo had gone to his master’s bed. When I went up to use the bathroom I saw that the bedroom door was once again open.
On our return trip several days later, we pushed through to Columbus without stopping; I did not return to that house.
You may wonder that I did not relate the night’s events to the others. I confess I did not see the point. Steve had lived in the house for a time already, and I thought that if he had not witnessed the phenomena himself by then, alarming him served no purpose. Whoever slept in that bed was clearly not ‘sensitive’; it seemed best to leave the occupant ‘in the dark’. I expect Hayes might have raised every alternative explanation that I have already detailed. Finally, my own doubts fostered silence. No matter how sure I was of everything that happened, part of me didn’t want to believe, and I found myself reaffirming my excuses. If it weren’t for that face, my conviction may have wavered. It did not; it does not. I have wondered since if ghosts are able to avail themselves of those optical illusions wherein they seem to appear. This may seem an odd argument—to hold up the alternative explanation in support of the phenomena—but if we speak of phantoms as beings of psychic energy peeking out from the hidden angles in the shadows, it makes sense to me that they might be spied most often through the faults in our perception. The sceptic will quibble that I wilfully ignored opposing evidence. You’ll forgive me if I felt no sense of moral obligation that evening to persevere and attempt to ‘unsee’ that face. I do not feel my fear was ungrounded. I have never doubted that I was right to disengage when I did, and I have learned since that my conviction was correct.
At the time, the World Wide Web was in its infancy. None of my contemporaries had a home modem. Students wanting to use the internet went to a console at one of the university libraries. Only a few of my friends had begun to use email (I had not). The point being, I did not have the opportunity for casually browsing a gargantuan repository of useful and useless minutiae. There was no way to further research my encounter that did not include greater effort than I was willing to put forth. I have mentioned already that my lax attitude and devotion to other interests also allowed the matter to drift from my focus so that the mystery of that house faded quickly to the distance.
Recently, while sorting through some old boxes (and wondering how there were always more old boxes in my small house), I came across a cassette tape recorded by my friends (presumably in the Dungeon) and released on their cottage record label. I recognised immediately the address on North Congress scrawled on the paper tray card as being that of the house in which I spent one frightening evening. Having now both the address and the means to research the house at hand, I searched the internet for whatever answers it might provide.
At first I found nothing useful. Knowing the property value did me no good, and I soon discovered I lacked the savvy to identify prior owners; it seemed gaining that information would require the in-person rifling through of official records I had avoided twenty years ago, and though I am perhaps more responsible and motivated now, likewise am I busier and unlikely to find the extra time to follow that avenue. My search was not entirely without results, however. The house was mentioned in a forum on a website detailing various ‘hauntings’ in Ohio. I include the post from ‘bobcatgrrl6’ in its entirety:
One year when I was at OU I lived in a house at — N. Congress. Stuff used to turn on and off on its own and there was one room that never got warm. We used to joke we had a ghost but really we thought the wiring was bad. We were more afraid the house would burn down one night. We told the landlord but of course he didn’t do anything. Then one time a hippie chick friend of mine was hanging at the house. All of a sudden she gets this crazy look. We ask her what’s up and she says, ‘Did you see that?’ She gets up and creeps upstairs like she’s following someone. We all laugh because we figure she’s high, which wouldn’t have been that unusual for her. A couple minutes later we hear her screaming her head off. We all run upstairs and she’s halfway underneath my bed kicking like she’s stuck. We drag her out and she’s still screaming. We’re all freaking out because we don’t know what the hell is going on. My roommate even looks under the bed but there’s nothing there. We have to hold on to her for like ten minutes to get her to calm down. She finally is just about able to start talking to us when she turns her arm around and we can all see these marks on her wrist—teeth marks. No doubt. Someone said, ‘She bit herself!’ but I didn’t think so. The teeth marks looked like they came from little teeth. So she starts to freak again and we have to get her out of there. I took her home but she wouldn’t talk about it.
The next day I go to see her to see if she’s okay. At first I can’t find her but her roommate swears she saw her go in her room and that she hadn’t left. So I go back in to leave her a note. Then I hear something coming from the closet so I opened the door. She’s scrunched down on the floor, hiding under some coats. She has a crazy look in her eyes. I talk real soothingly to her, but when I try to get her to come out she looks like she’s mad and she’s going to attack me. So I went out in the common room and waited. When she finally came out she seemed embarrassed but it was like she wasn’t sure why.
She got weird and didn’t talk much to anyone after that. Next year she dropped out or transferred. I don’t know anyone who talked to her since then. I know whatever messed her up had something to do with what happened in that house. We all thought it was haunted after that. I moved out of that room and we left it empty. We kept the door closed but it would always open up again even though no one ever saw it happen. We never had any problems as crazy as that one time, but none of us wanted to renew the lease. I’d be curious to know if anyone else had any experiences there.
And so I think it’s time to share. There may be someone more ‘sensitive’ than I who needs to know they are not alone.
I was unable to learn anything more as to the identity of the boy or the cause of the haunting—why he was frightened and
against whom (and in what way) he might have rebelled. I think it likely just as well. My experience taught me not to go looking for monsters under the bed. If they choose to crouch there, leave them be—and hope they return the favour.
DETAILS
‘Imagine—him!—complain about the heat! Did you hear?’
The woman cackled as she turned from the door. The African appeared to hear, lingering to look back into the store before he slid into his car. I couldn’t guess what he thought.
The other woman ceased her fluffing of rows of snacks in cellophane bags in a far corner and asked, ‘What’s that, Billie?’ Shorter and less corpulent than her co-worker, she seemed determined to make up the difference with her hair, which was stacked high and stiff, an inverted egg of silver.
Billie crossed back to her counter. ‘That man—did you hear what he said?’
‘No,’ she said, already aghast at the forthcoming information. ‘Was he rude to you?’
‘No, no. He was very polite,’ Billie noted, as though the conduct could hardly be expected and was therefore to be commended, as one might an inordinately well-behaved child during a recessional. She cackled again. ‘Though I guess I don’t know half of what he said!’
‘Oh, now, why was that?’
‘He had an accent.’
The other woman looked out the window, as though the empty lot could help her guess the departed customer’s national origin. ‘What kind of accent was it, do you think?’
‘He was African, Cindy. Full-on African.’
‘Oh, wasn’t he black?’ Cindy searched the lot once more for her memory.
‘As black as I’ve ever seen!’
I began to hum as I dipped one ear to my shoulder, trying to blot out the explanation that followed. I despaired the ‘bit’ might go on interminably. I weighed whether to rush the counter in an effort to squash conversation, even though I hadn’t finished shopping, or whether to drift as far from the exchange as possible until it had consumed itself. Inevitably, I delayed my decision too long, and by the time I made it to the counter, Cindy was there as well.
‘Well, what did he say?’
‘He said, “It is very hot today. I did not know it would be so hot.” ’ Billie mangled the accent so that it sounded more Indian than anything else.
‘Can you imagine?’ Cindy gasped.
I didn’t clear my throat, but I pushed my wares forward on the counter. I’d heard far worse. The ladies were, in their antiquated way, regardless of their private convictions, being ‘courteous’ in company, and I didn’t care enough to be a rude Yankee in response. As enlightened as I might have considered myself, I had no taste for the fad of evangelising one’s politics.
Billie looked at me as she fanned herself in the beleaguered air conditioning. ‘I couldn’t live in a place that never cooled off,’ she said, demonstrating her knowledge of the whole of Africa. She shook her head. ‘No, I absolutely could not. I would lose my mind. I would.’
‘Can you imagine?’
And then I guess I was rude, anyway, despite my intention, because I couldn’t reply. I couldn’t reply with a polite generality any more than I could point out that the hurricane that brought me to Galveston to tell people their insurance wasn’t as good as they thought it was had been the only break in the heat for nearly five months, and that winters there only cooled to a Norwegian’s high summer. I couldn’t say anything at all, and so, between the African and me, likely left Billie and Cindy with enough material to chatter through ’til closing.
I couldn’t say anything then because that was my first experience, and I was unprepared and overwhelmed by the sensation. Just as Billie said, ‘I couldn’t live in a place that never cooled off’, an internal warmth that had nothing to do with the coastal Texas stupor billowed up from unknown recesses and suffused my body, not quite simmering to the surface of my skin. I felt distinctly that I levitated perhaps two inches in the air, though doubtless I did not, or the ladies would have noticed. These feelings were accompanied by a profound notion of knowing and not knowing. I felt intuitively certain that something important had occurred, just as I knew with equal certainty that I could not yet grasp its meaning. The feeling was the physiological equivalent of the universe stating: Here is a clue.
My second experience with the sensation also came during conversation, though, even as I harboured expectation it would one day return, since the first time felt oddly divested of context and, therefore, seemed to infer recurrence, I could not have predicted it would evolve from so prosaic a situation.
On those rare occasions when I and another field agent, Roger, were simultaneously in the home office for a full week, we would invariably find time for one lunch together, usually at an unremarkable if reliable chain restaurant with a bar—Roger always had beer with lunch, as did I when I was with him. Roger also enjoyed such places for the number of young female servers that he might surreptitiously ogle. He was never boorish to them (quite the contrary), nor did he brag of crass sexual exploits to me. He was merely appreciative of feminine beauty, almost wistfully so, though I couldn’t account for the forlornness of his longing, as he was still young-ish, gainfully employed, and could have easily orchestrated many clandestine interludes (I never knew what he thought of his marriage, as he never mentioned it). Perhaps he lacked that ‘killer’ instinct that licenses moral lassitude. Roger was as near to a friend as I had, I suppose.
As we waited for our entrees, Roger looked about the room. I noticed him purse his lips strangely as he brought his bottle to his lips. He noticed me noticing him and smiled with embarrassment.
‘I was just thinking of a woman I never met,’ he said.
‘She must have been very special,’ I deadpanned.
‘Unique.’
He finished his beer and pushed it to the side of the table. Our server noticed immediately—I think, to the practiced eye, good tippers are easy to recognise—and snatched up the empty. ‘Another?’ Roger nodded and she zipped towards the bar.
‘I was two days back from a California wildfire when I was sent out again for assessments on a late-season tornado outside of Tulsa. I didn’t have enough clean clothes—you know how the smell of smoke lingers in the ground and gets into everything. I looked to be busy for a while, so I stopped in at a clothing store. I was browsing aimlessly for something simple, you know, just a pair of slacks and a couple of polos to get me through. I look up and I see this young woman re-folding t-shirts. She was cute. Shoulder-length hair, dyed black. She wore these broad, red-rimmed glasses. They totally worked for her. As I was admiring her—thank you,’ Roger acknowledged the beer delivery.
‘Mm-hmm,’ the server said with a wink. I think she heard the ‘admiring her’ part. I suppose men drifting towards middle age are easy marks.
‘As I was watching her, one of her co-workers—another young woman—stepped up beside her and they began singing along to whatever was playing over the sound system, and shaking their shoulders and hips just a bit. I forget what song it was, but there was an “ooo, ooo” part. When the girl in the glasses sang “ooo, ooo” . . .’ He savoured the memory. ‘I was too far away to hear her voice, but her lips did the most amazing thing. Usually, when someone puckers up, their whole mouth pushes forward.’
My mouth quivered, but I resisted the impulse to test the theory.
‘But not her. The corners of her mouth stayed drawn to the side and just the very middle of her lips framed a tiny, perfect “o”. I’d never seen such a thing. It reminded me of a duck’s bill as he croons to his lady-duck-friend in an animated cartoon—that sort of unnatural prehensile-ness. It was absolutely hypnotic. Her friend saw me and stared me off. I was glad that she hadn’t seen me—I would hate for her to ever be self-conscious of that perfect “o”.’
Somehow I heard every word he said as the feeling trembled through me and lifted me up from my seat. Somehow—familiarity, I guess—I was able to say something satisfactory by way of reply, even as my mind st
rove vainly to connect this second occurrence with the first. Regardless, the arrival of our food could not have been timelier.
My next experience was more an intimation of the feeling, two degrees removed from the ‘real’ thing, but elucidating nonetheless.
I do not remember the man’s name, though I should; I believe I promised myself I would, as it was so unlikely. He was ethnically ambiguous, with dark hair (and moustache) somewhere between curly and fluffy, and skin toned ‘olive’, as they say, but blanched by a desk job in a northern clime. His surname fit him, and was equally impossible to trace; I remember something like two syllables from ten letters.
His comportment was contrastingly near-transparent. He was only too happy to meet me outside of the assisted-living facility he managed, with the clear intent to limit access to the building, as though his descriptions should suffice to process his claim. Normally, such a ruse implies the client’s desire to conceal a claim’s fallaciousness. In this instance, I thought it evidenced shame or fear of what could be seen as opposed to what couldn’t. As we conversed, residents were being unloaded from vans and ambulances and returned to their rooms—clearly before any repairs had been affected, and possibly before basic services had been restored. Likely mould spores were anchoring themselves beneath floodwater-soaked carpets as we spoke. The loss was real, but I doubted that those in the claimant’s care would benefit.
The Hidden Back Room Page 22