She walked briskly through the house—her house—and closed all the blinds. The slick white plastic was thick enough to kill all the light from the street. The new double-glazed windows cut out the sounds of traffic. It was like the walls had been suddenly, silently, transported someplace else. Like it was a space capsule, a million miles from anything human, cut off from the world.
She turned on the water in the tub. It ran red for a moment, rust in the pipes, and then clear, and then scalding hot. She stripped as the steam rose. Naked in front of the full-length mirror, she watched the scars on her legs and elbows—the tiny circles no bigger than the tip of a lit cigarette; the longer, thinner ones where a blade had marred the skin—blur and fade and vanish. Her reflected body softened, and the glass began to weep. She turned off the water and eased herself into the bath slowly. The heat of it brought the blood to her skin like a slap. She laid her head against the iron tub’s sloping back, fidgeting to find the perfect angle. She had soap, a washcloth, shampoo, the almond-scented conditioner that her boyfriend, David, liked. She didn’t use any of them. After about ten minutes, she turned, leaning over the edge to reach for the puddle of blue cloth that was her jeans. A pack of cigarettes. A Zippo lighter with its worn Pink Martini logo. The click and hiss of the flame. The first long drag of smoke curling through the back of her throat. She tossed cigarette pack and lighter onto the floor, and lay back again. The tension in her back and legs and belly started to lose its grip.
Around her, the house made small sounds: the ticking of the walls as they cooled, the hum of her computer’s cooling fan, the soft clinking of the water that lapped her knees and breasts. Smoke rose from her cigarette, lost almost instantly in the steam. The first stirrings of hunger had just touched her belly when the screaming started, jet engines ramping up from nothing to an inhuman shriek between one breath and the next. Something fluttered in her peripheral vision, and she scrambled around, dropping her cigarette in the tub and soaking the floor with water.
Something moved in the mirror. Something that wasn’t her. The condensation made it impossible to see him clearly. He might have had pale hair or he might have been bald. He might have jeans or dark slacks. The shirt was white where it wasn’t red. The movement of balled fists was clearer than the hands themselves, and somewhere deep in the airplane’s roar, there were words. Angry ones. Corrie yelped, her feet slipping under her as she tried to jump clear.
The noise began to fade as suddenly as it had come. The rumbling echoes batting at the walls more and more weakly. The mirror was empty again, except for her. She took a towel, wrapping herself quickly. Her blood felt bright and quick, her heart fluttering like a bird, her breath fast and panic-shallow. Her mouth tasted like metal.
“Hello?” she said. “Is someone in here?”
The floor creaked under her weight. She stood still, waiting for an answering footstep. The water pooled around her feet, and she began to shiver. The house had grown viciously cold.
“Is anyone here?” she said again, her voice small and shaking.
Nothing answered her but the smell of her spent cigarette.
“All right, then,” she said, hugging her arms tight around herself. “Okay.”
“MOM. LISTEN TO me. Everything’s fine. We’re not breaking up,” she said, willing her voice to be more certain than she was.
“Well, you move out like this,” her mother said, voice pressed small and tinny by the cell connection. “And that house? I think it’s perfectly reasonable of me to be concerned.”
Corrie lay back on the couch, pressing the tips of her fingers to her eyes. Sleeplessness left her skin waxy and pale, her movements slow. She had taken the day off work, thinking she would finish unpacking, but the boxes were still where they had been the day before. Afternoon sun spilled in through the windows, making the small living room glow. The refrigerator had arrived an hour before and hummed to itself from the kitchen, still empty.
“It’s just something I need to do,” Corrie said.
“Is he beating you?”
“Who? David? My David?”
“People have habits,” her mother said. She raised her voice when she lectured. “They imprint. I did the same thing when I was young. All my husbands were alcoholics, just like my father was. I like David very much. He’s always been very pleasant. But you have a type.”
“I haven’t dated anyone seriously since Nash. I don’t have a type.”
“What about that Hebrew boy? Nathaniel?”
“I saw him a total of eight times. He got drunk, broke a window, and I never talked to him again.”
“Don’t turn into a lawyer with me. You know exactly what I mean. There’s a kind of man that excites you, and so of course you might find yourself involved with that kind of man. If David’s another one like Nash, I think I have a right to—”
Corrie sat up, pressing her hand at the empty air as if her mother could see the gesture for stop. The distant music of an ice-cream truck came from a different world, the jaunty electronic tune insincere and ominous.
“Mother. I don’t feel comfortable talking about the kind of man that does or doesn’t excite me, all right? David is absolutely unlike Nash in every possible way. He wouldn’t hurt me if I asked him to.”
“Did you?” her mother snapped.
“Did I what?”
“Did you ask him to hurt you?”
The pause hung in the air, equal parts storm and silence.
“Okay, we’re finished,” Corrie said. “I love you, Mom, and I really appreciate that you’re concerned, but I am not talking about—”
“You are!” her mother shouted. “You are talking about everything with me! I have spent too much time and money making sure that you are all right to pretend that there are boundaries. Maybe for other people, but not for us, mija. Never for us.”
Corrie groaned. The quiet on the end of her cell phone managed to be hurt and accusing.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I understand that you’re scared about this. And really, I understand why you’re scared. But you have to trust that I know what I’m doing. I’m not twenty anymore.”
“Did you or did you not ask David to hurt you?”
“My sex life with David has been very respectful and loving,” Corrie said through gritted teeth. “He is always a perfect gentleman. The few times that we’ve talked—just talked—about anything even a little kinky, he’s been very uncomfortable with including even simulated violence in our relationship. Okay? Now can we please drop—”
“Is that why you left him?”
“We’re not breaking up.”
“Because that’s the other side, isn’t it?” her mother said, talking fast. “You find someone who isn’t your type, and you put yourself with him because he’s good and clean and healthy, and then there you are being good and clean and healthy. Like eating wheat germ every meal when you really want a steak.”
“All right, I’m lost now,” she said, her voice taking on a dangerous buzz. “Are you saying that David’s an abusive shit, or that he’s too good for me? What’s your argument?”
She could hear her mother crying now. Not sobs. Nothing more than the little waver in tone that meant tears were in her eyes.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” her mother said. “Why you moved out of David’s apartment. Why you’re in that house. I’m afraid you’ve gone to a very dark place.” The last words were so thin and airless, Corrie had to take a deep breath.
“Maybe I have,” she said, drawing the words out. “But it’s all right. I’m not scared anymore.”
“Shouldn’t you be? Is there nothing to be frightened of?”
Corrie stood. It was only four steps to the bathroom door. With the lights off, the full-length mirror showed her in silhouette, the brightness of day behind her, and her features lost in shadow. There was no other shape, no man with balled fists or knives. No promises that the damage was a sign of love. No cigarette burns or dislocated fin
gers or weekends of sex she was afraid to refuse. It was just a mirror. She was the only thing in it.
Is there nothing to be frightened of?
“Don’t know,” Corrie said. “I’m finding out.”
“OH,” MR. KLEINFELD said, suddenly off his stride. “So you knew it was …”
“Haunted?” the new neighbor—Corrie, her name was—said. “Sure. I mean, just in general terms.”
Mr. Kleinfeld smiled, but his eyebrows were crawling up his forehead. Across the table, his wife poured out cups of tea for the three of them; her smile might have meant anything.
“Is that how you heard about it?” Mrs. Kleinfeld asked. “You’re one of those ‘ghost hunters’?”
Sunlight pressed through the still air along with the distant chop of a helicopter formation. The new neighbor took the proffered cup and sipped at it. His wife put two small silver spoonfuls of sugar into his, stirred it twice neatly, and handed him his cup.
“Not really,” the new neighbor said. “It was just one of those things you hear about, you know? In the air. I don’t even know where I stumbled onto it the first time, but the Realtor was pretty up-front.”
“Was he?” Mr. Kleinfeld said. That had never happened before either.
“Sure. I mean, there weren’t a lot of gory details. I asked about why the price was low, and he said something about ghost stories and the old tenants getting freaked out and leaving.”
“The women,” Mrs. Kleinfeld said. “It doesn’t seem to care about men, but it hates women.”
“It?” the new neighbor said, and Mr. Kleinfeld watched his wife settle back into her chair. The first part of the meeting might not have gone along its usual path, but they were back in familiar territory now.
“There is a restless spirit in that house,” Mrs. Kleinfeld said. “Has been since before we came. It never bothers the men. They never see it.”
“The girls, though,” Mr. Kleinfeld said, shaking his head the way he always did. “I could make a list of the young women we’ve had banging on our door in the middle of the night, scared out of their wits. It’s not a fit house for a girl to live in. Especially alone.”
He sipped his tea, but it was still scalding. He blew across its surface.
“Weird,” the new neighbor said. “Any particular reason anyone knows about? Ancient Indian burial ground?”
His wife nodded slowly, the steam rising from her teacup swirling around her face. The chop of the helicopters grew gradually louder. Mr. Kleinfeld shifted back a degree in his chair. His part was done for now, and just as well. The missus was better at getting through to people than he was. She always had been.
“There’s a story,” she said. “I don’t know how much of it’s true and how much of it’s fancied up, but I’ve never heard or seen anything to contradict it. Twenty years ago, there was a couple of young people moved into that house you’re in today. Young man and his wife. Well, it wasn’t long before the wife started showing up at the grocery store in big sunglasses. Wearing long sleeves in the middle of the summer. That sort of thing.”
“Lots of domestic abuse in the world,” the new neighbor said. “Doesn’t make for a million haunted houses.” Her tone was light, but Mr. Kleinfeld heard something strong under it. Maybe skepticism. Maybe something else.
“He was an evil man,” Mrs. Kleinfeld said. “People used to hear them fighting. They say he used to try to hide the worst of the screaming under the jet noise, but the whole neighborhood knew. One fellow who lived on the other side, where that nice Asian family is now, tried to make an issue of it, and the man threatened to cut his nose off. And then one night they were gone. Man and wife both, vanished from the face of the earth like they’d never been. A few months later, her people came and packed up all the furniture and put the place up for sale. Rumor was that the wife was in some sort of asylum out West, with her mind all gone to putty, talking about demons and Satan. She never did get out of that place.”
The new neighbor was caught now, her expression sharp as a pencil point. Mrs. Kleinfeld had to stop for a moment while the helicopters passed overhead, the blades cutting through the high air with enough violence to drown out their words. Or their screams, for that matter.
“Next people who moved in were an older couple with a girl just in high school,” she said, her voice loud enough to carry over the falling racket as the copters flew on. “Six months they were there. Not more. The mother said she’d have tried to stand it, but the spirit started coming after the daughter too, and that was that. Sold the place at a loss and moved across to the other side of the base. Only time the place has had the same owner for more than a year since then was five years back when there were four young men sharing the place, and even then, I saw their girlfriends leaving in the middle of the night, crying too hard to stop.”
“What does it do to them?” the new neighbor asked. The hardness was still there, but it wasn’t skepticism. Something more immediate, more demanding. Something like hunger.
“It comes for them,” Mrs. Kleinfeld said, “and thank God they can feel it. No one’s ever stayed long enough to know what it would do if it caught them, but there are nights I can feel it hating all the way over here. I’m in my bed at night saying my prayers, and it’s like someone put ice against the wall. You couldn’t pay me to stay a night in that place. Not for a million dollars. Something lives in that house, and it hates women.”
The new neighbor nodded, more, Mr. Kleinfeld thought, to herself than to him or his wife. There was a brightness in her eyes. Not fear. Maybe even pleasure. The new neighbor’s smile disturbed him more than his wife’s story ever did. He cleared his throat, and she seemed to wake up a little. Her smile widened and became less authentic.
“Have you seen anything yet?” he asked. “Anything out of the ordinary?”
“Me? No,” she said. “Not a thing.”
THE COLD FRONT came on Friday, almost a week later; vicious winds blasting down from a cloudless sky. Gritty air ripped at the trees, stripping off leaves that were still turning from green to yellow and red and gold; the glories of autumn cut short and shredded. The low Western sun turned bloody as it fell, and Corrie wheeled her car into the undersized garage like a child pulling up a blanket. The thin walls were less protection than the idea of them. Every new gust battering against the house made the garage creak. Dust settled from the frame roof. She scurried from car to kitchen, hunched against the sound of the wind.
Once she got into the house itself, she unfurled. The wind still threw handfuls of dirt against the windows, the thick plastic blinds shuffled and clicked in the drafts, but the masonry walls seemed beyond any violence nature could contrive, solid and sober as a prison. Corrie turned on every light as she walked through the house. She examined each room in turn: the broken-down boxes in the spare bedroom, the legal pads and laptop docking station in her makeshift office, the sheets and blankets in the linen closet. In the kitchen, she counted the knives on the magnetic rack and checked the oven. In her bedroom, she squatted, her eye on a level with the unmarked bedspread. She took her shotgun from its place under the bed, counting out the shells under her breath as she unloaded it and loaded it again. In the bathroom, she lingered in front of the mirror for over a minute, her fingertips on the glass, eyes unfocused and attention turned inward. Nothing had moved. Nothing was missing. Even the raging wind hadn’t so much as rolled a pencil.
She microwaved a plate of lasagna, poured herself a glass of wine, and sat down on the couch. A few bites, and she was up again, pacing. Restless. Frustrated. Outside, the sun slipped lower.
“I know you’re here,” she said to the empty air. “I know you can hear me.”
The wind shrieked and murmured. The window blinds shuddered. The air smelled of tomato sauce a little, but burned at the edges—acid with a touch of smoke. She stood in the middle of the room, jaw clenched. Silent.
The moment lasted years before the hint of a smile touched her mouth and a mad, reckles
s light came into her eyes. She walked back to the couch, picked up her plate, and took it to the kitchen. She ate two more bites standing at the sink, and then dropped the plate onto the brushed steel with a clatter. The faucet swung easily, cold water drowning the food. Reddened bits of meat and pale sheets of pasta swum in a cold, ugly soup and then settled, clogging the drain. She looked at the mess and deliberately stepped back, leaving it there. Her chin rose, daring the emptiness around her.
Something within the house shifted. Walls that had been only block and plaster and paint turned their attention to her. The windows hid behind their blinds like closed eyes. She kicked off her shoes, chuckling to herself. The floor felt colder than it should have. The glass of wine still rested on the coffee table; she scooped it up, taking her purse in the other hand. The furnace kicked on, blowers roaring a thousand miles away.
In the kitchen, she leaned against the counter beside the sink. Goose bumps covered her arms and thighs. Her breath was coming fast and shallow and shaking a little. She lit a cigarette and then sipped the cool, astringent wine, rolling it in her mouth, feeling the alcohol pressing through the soft, permeable membranes of her flesh. When she swallowed, her throat went a degree warmer. She set the cigarette between her lips and stretched out a hand, lifting the half-full glass. Red trembled for a moment, as she slowly, deliberately, poured it out, the wine spilling over the floor and staining the tiles. She dropped the glass into the sink with her ruined dinner and stepped forward, grinding the soles of her feet into the puddle.
The storm outside sounded like a warning. She shifted her hips, twisted at the waist, dancing in the mess. She rolled her weight back and forth, humming to herself, and raised her arms over her head. Her joints loosened, her belly grew warm and heavy. Her nipples hardened and her breath became visible and feather-white in the sudden arctic chill. Voices came from somewhere nearby, raised in anger, but distant.
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