The Haunted

by Michaelbrent Collings

  “I… I don’t know.”

  Cap had been holding the poker at a forty-five degree angle from the floor since he had picked it up. A position where he wasn’t in much danger of inadvertently injuring someone with it, but still held in such a way that it could quickly be brought to bear – either to fend off attacks, or to instigate some of his own. Now he lowered the poker, letting the dull point of it sit on the floor at his feet.

  Neither of them spoke for a long time. Finally, Sarah felt Cap’s arm go around her shoulder. He pressed her to him and guided her away from the closet. She wanted to go, but part of her felt like she was turning her back on an open lion cage. She looked back over her shoulder as Cap turned her away.

  It was still there. Still empty. Still just a closet.

  “Come on, hon,” said Cap quietly. “No sense standing here staring at nothing.”

  He guided her gently across the hall, through the living room and into the kitchen.

  The kitchen was dark. Sarah couldn’t remember if she had turned the lights out behind her when she came in here or not. Everything seemed all turned around. Nothing was making sense.

  Regardless, she pulled herself out of Cap’s embrace and turned on the lights in the kitchen. All of them, even the small light over the oven. Cap watched her do it and then went to the cupboards. He opened several before finding what he was apparently looking for. He pulled out a steel teapot. He went to the sink and filled it with water. Sarah stared at him dully as he did it. Everything felt so confused right now. So wrong. That feeling of being an intruder had returned, stronger than before. She stared at the teapot as Cap put it on the stove and lit the burner under it. Even that ordinary thing seemed out of place.

  Cap seemed not to be feeling the same. Just worried about her, it looked like, judging from the way his eyes never left her for more than a second. Even when he poured the hot water into a pair of mugs and added tea bags to them, he still stared at her.

  He guided her to a chair beside the table and sat her down, then put a mug of tea before her.

  “You don’t believe me,” she mumbled, looking into the tea as though seeking to divine something that would return a hint of rationality to the night.

  Cap sighed. “I do believe you, honey. But I also know we got this place for so cheap because we knew it was going to take some care to get it into shape.”

  She glanced at him now. He seemed to believe what he was saying. Couldn’t he feel what was going on?

  What is going on?

  She had no answer for that.

  “What about the radio?” she said. “And the lights going on and off.”

  “Radio?” his face wrinkled in confusion.

  “The radio kept turning on and off, kept switching channels.” She looked at him. It was almost a glare. “And you didn’t come!”

  He recoiled a bit from her look. Guilt replaced the confusion on his features. “I didn’t know anything was wrong, sweetie. I was busy in the attic, and I didn’t hear anything unusual.”

  She could see that he was telling the truth – what else would he be telling; it wasn’t like Cap had ever hurt her or lied to her – and relented a bit. Still, the questions had to be asked. “What about the lights? On and off, blinking like….”

  “Like what?”

  “Like someone else was controlling them.”

  For a moment she thought she saw concern go through his eyes. Concern and familiarity, as though he knew exactly what she was talking about. Then the look disappeared, cloaked by a more mundane expression. “It happened to me, too. The lights kept going out upstairs. Probably bad fuses. I’ll replace them ASAP.”

  “And the voice?” That was the real question. That hadn’t been an electrical surge or faulty wiring. She had heard the voice as clearly as she now heard Cap’s and her own. More clearly, in fact, as though the voice had more reality behind it than theirs did.

  “LEAVE ME ALONE!” She heard it again in her mind, and the memory of it was more than enough to take control of her body and make her shudder convulsively.

  “I don’t know,” said Cap after a moment. He sipped at his own tea thoughtfully, perhaps seeking his own answers in the liquid. “But you said yourself: you’re tired, you’re overwrought. Hell, you’re pregnant.”

  “I heard it.”

  “I’m not saying you didn’t.” Cap’s voice was low. He wasn’t defensive. She could tell he was trying to find a way to help her. Even in the middle of her terror, she loved him. “What do you want me to do?” he finally asked.

  She laughed wryly. “Move?”

  Cap looked pained. More than pained, he suddenly looked helpless. She knew she wasn’t being fair to them. This was their dream house, wasn’t it? Their chance to start a life together that would last… what? Forever?

  Yes, she thought. I like the sound of forever with Cap.

  The baby kicked as if in agreement.

  Cap’s shoulders slumped. “If you’re really that worried, maybe I can have someone come over. Check things out….” His voice petered out. He looked at her.

  Sarah shook her head. “You know we can’t afford that. We could barely afford getting in this place, let alone getting out of it.”

  And now Cap’s face grew strong. Stern almost. “Doesn’t matter. If that’s what you need, that’s what we’ll do.”

  And for a moment she wanted to say, “Yes, let’s do that. Let’s leave now. Tonight. Leave and never come back.” She wanted to run from the house. Run as though it wasn’t a house at all, but a cage, a trap set specifically for her and Cap.

  Then reason won. Or perhaps lost. She couldn’t be sure. Either way, she heard herself saying, “No. No, it’s all right.” And as she did she felt the trap around her – whose door had been open, if only the merest crack, allowing her to escape – slam decisively shut. She suddenly felt very small. A mouse being toyed with by a monster. But she forced a smile. For Cap, because she couldn’t stand him looking so worried. “I’m sure it will be fine. I’m sure we’ll be okay.”

  She smiled. And felt like she was dying a little bit inside. Because that was the first time she had ever lied to Cap.

  Nothing would be fine.

  Nothing at all.

  6

  The First Night

  11:58 pm

  ***

  Cap was snoring, and Sarah hated him.

  Not much, not enough to go look for a carving knife and become one of those headlines you heard of from time to time. But some. Because he was asleep.

  They had come upstairs after the tea. No dinner. Love making was forgotten. They got dressed for bed. Cap held her in his strong arms. She knew he was trying his best to comfort her, to make her feel safe. And it worked. For the first five minutes or so. Until Cap began snoring. And though he still held her in his arms, having him with her but asleep just wasn’t the same.

  As for her, she couldn’t sleep. That wasn’t unusual. She often had trouble sleeping. Indeed, the only thing that ever drove a real wedge between her and Cap was the fact that she was an insomniac and he could – and usually did – fall asleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow. She knew it wasn’t his fault, but that didn’t change the fact that late at night, when she was wondering around like a warm-blooded ghost in the darkened halls of whatever house they were in, she did hate him. Nothing was as lonely as being awake in the middle of the night when the love of your life was within reach, but you couldn’t talk to him. Couldn’t share with him. Laugh or cry with him. You were alone.

  And so she hated him. For making her be alone.

  She knew it was silly, but that was the way it was. She didn’t love him any less for it, but nor could she change it. She just shouldered the hatred like a prickly burden, one she could put down as soon as she fell asleep herself or at worst as soon as Cap woke up and joined her in the land of the wakeful.

  She stared at the ceiling. It was blank and white and offered nothing. No consolation to be had there.
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  “LEAVE ME ALONE!”

  The words rang in her mind again, as she suspected they might for the rest of her life. And she had to move. She couldn’t just lay here anymore. Even though Cap’s arm stretched protectively over her chest, she still felt too much like a corpse, lying motionless in the bed. She didn’t want that.

  She gently moved Cap’s arm from across her body, guiding it to his side. He snuffled and rolled over, his back to her.

  Sarah rolled over as well, and put her feet on the floor. She could no longer just hop out of bed. The baby didn’t like that movement. Getting out of bed was now a three part process that involved rolling her girth over so she was facing the side of the bed, scooting her bottom half off the bed, and putting her feet down. Only then could she hope to lever herself upright.

  Her toes curled slightly as her feet touched the floor. It was cold.

  She looked around. Nothing strange was in the room. Just Cap, the bed, and half-unpacked boxes everywhere. The bed itself was in a patch of moonlight that streamed through the nearby window and a glass door that led to a small balcony outside. The light was strangely bright, but there was no warmth to it. Instead, it seemed almost to add to the cold she felt.

  She got out of bed and moved furtively to the window. She stood to the side of it. She felt silly, though not silly enough to ignore the voice in her mind that was telling her to stay out of sight.

  Out of sight of what? she wondered. But she had no answer for herself. Only a sense of caution. Careful, she thought. Careful.

  She leaned over. Not much. Just enough to have an oblique view through the window.

  Nothing there.

  The woods stood beyond the house, as they no doubt had for hundreds of years, and could continue to do for hundreds more. They stood silent and dark, and though there were leaves on the trees, still they looked gaunt and skeletal in the night, like survivors of a famine or a wasting plague.

  Sarah looked at them for a long time. She could feel the seconds ticking by. Then the minutes. And still she stayed, watching. Watching.

  Watching.

  Nothing. The trees remained upright; motionless. No beast emerged from the woods, slavering and hungry for human flesh. No specter slunk from the depths of the darkness to claim her soul.

  The baby flipped around, end over end. The feeling brought her back to reality.

  What am I doing? she wondered.

  Sarah laughed quietly. It felt good.

  “Get a grip, girl,” Sarah whispered. She didn’t want to wake Cap, but she wanted – needed – to hear a human voice. “What are you expecting to see?”

  Nothing. There was nothing there.

  She turned away from the window and padded across the bare floor to the bed. She grabbed a handful of the covers and flipped them back, then put one knee onto the bed, ready to maneuver herself back under the covers and try to go back to sleep next to her snoring husband.

  Then she stopped.

  She took her knee off the bed.

  She turned around and returned to the window. There was no hiding this time, no surreptitious watching from the protection of the shadows. She moved directly in front of the glass, feeling like a marionette with strings drawn taut. She had no choice in her movement. She had to see.

  She looked out. The woods were still lonely. Still isolated. The trees’ cadaverous fingers raised up high, wooden priests praying to dark night-gods.

  And then she saw something. There was someone there, in the woods! A huddled shape in the distance, cloaked by the mist that wove around the base of the trees… but clearly man-shaped. And staring at the house.

  Sarah took a step back. Opened her mouth to scream.

  Then the mist shifted. Eddies of fog reached into clear air, and clear air replaced fog. The mist shifted, and Sarah’s open mouth switched from scream to laugh. It wasn’t a person watching in the distance, it wasn’t a demon lurking in the dark.

  It was a stump. Burnt and torn by lightning, hunching harmlessly in the woods.

  Sarah kept laughing, as much to maintain a slippery grip on sanity as anything. What was happening to her? She didn’t remember being this jittery before. Was it just the pregnancy? Or something more malignant?

  She turned away from the window. Back to bed. Took half a step.

  Her foot froze in the air.

  She shrieked.

  Someone was standing in the doorway to the room! And it wasn’t a tree this time, there could be no confusing what she was seeing.

  The face was bloodless. Gray as a corpse. But a corpse that hadn’t the sense or the courtesy to lay down in the ground. No, this corpse was upright. Gray eyes, cataract-clouded with death, looked straight at her.

  It was smiling.

  The smile went far beyond normal limits, stretching across from ear to ear. And Sarah realized with another scream that it wasn’t a smile she was seeing. The thing’s throat had been cut: a thick dark line ran across its neck, disappearing behind the curve of the thing’s jaw.

  It was a man, and he was dressed as though he had come from another century. Brown tweed coat. Gray-white shirt with a high, stiff collar that pinched its way up to the very edges of his slit throat. Were it not for the frightening gash across his neck, he would have looked almost comical, a refugee from an amusement park or a Wild West show.

  He wore a stovepipe hat.

  He tipped it. Smiled. The grin drew the edges of his cut throat apart, the wound gaping in the night.

  Sarah kept screaming. Kept screaming and couldn’t stop.

  Cap snored. Didn’t move.

  The dead man stepped toward her. There was a box in his way, but he didn’t move around it. He stepped forward, and his feet dragged through the box as though the cardboard container had no more substance than early morning fog. He stepped through it.

  A ghost. It was a ghost.

  But that was impossible.

  Impossible was smiling at her. Walking toward her.

  Wake up, Cap! she screamed. But the scream didn’t make it past the confines of her own mind. Her shriek remained wordless. Cap slept on.

  She stepped back, and tripped against something. A box, perhaps, or a moving pad. She didn’t have the time or presence of mind to see what it was. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it tripped her. She fell back, her arms wheeling madly as she stumbled, her mind fractured as she tried to right herself while still devoting all her attention to the apparition that was now walking through – not around, through – Cap’s form as he slept on.

  She lost her battle to stay upright. Felt herself going back. Control gone. She hit something with her back. It was cold, biting. The window. She sagged against it, and it crackled, then sheared into pieces. She felt glass bite into her, tearing her flesh.

  Sarah fell through the glass. Falling. Falling.

  And then she sat up.

  What? she thought. Where am I? What’s happening?

  She looked beside her. Cap was there. His arm outstretched as though reaching for her. He was asleep.

  She was in bed. But how was that possible? What she had just felt, just seen had been too real, too close to be a dream. She looked at the bedroom door, certain she would see the dead man with the stovepipe hat there, smiling his bloodless smile at her.

  But there was nothing. The door was shut tight. The boxes and other evidence of the move were in the same places they had been before she laid down.

  Beside her, Cap snorted and rolled over, where he started to snore like a rutting hippo.

  Sarah smiled wanly. She had never been a huge fan of Cap’s snoring, which was thankfully rare, but at this moment she was glad to hear it. It was a real sound. A living sound. A sound that she could listen to and believe that everything was normal, that everything was fine.

  Even though she knew it wasn’t.

  She looked at the door again. Still closed. Still bereft of insanely smiling ghosts from the nineteenth century.

  She lay back down
. Cap grunted and scooted close to her as though trying to steal her body warmth. His feet were cold as ice. She didn’t mind at all. Like his snores, Cap’s cold feet were anchors holding her fast to reality, keeping her from dashing to pieces on hidden rocks of madness that lurked below the surface of her mind.

  Sarah put an arm over Cap’s shoulders. He was broad-shouldered enough that she actually had to reach up slightly to accomplish that, and knew that there was no way she was going to sleep like this. If she did manage to fall asleep in this position she’d surely wake with a numb arm. But it felt good right now. Good to be so near to him. She snuggled as close as she could. Which wasn’t close at all. The baby got in the way.

  Cap must have felt the bulge of her pregnant stomach pressing against his back, even in his sleep, for he snorted and rolled a bit so that there was some room on the bed between them.

  As he did, he shifted slightly, and Sarah was afforded a quick glimpse of something she hadn’t seen a moment before. His bedside table. Nothing fancy, just a boxy piece of furniture with a single drawer.

  A stovepipe hat sat on it.

  Sarah’s breath caught in her throat.

  She looked at the man she had her arm around.

  A hand slowly circled around hers. The hand was cold. It grasped her wrist tightly, an icy manacle that made her hand go numb. Then the hand made its way up to her wrist, her forearm. She could see it in the moonlight.

  It was bloodless; gray.

  The man beside her – the man she thought was her husband – rolled toward her.

  It was the ghost.

  Sarah screamed again. Or tried to. Before the sound got past her lips, a gray hand clapped itself over her mouth. The scream died within her. She felt her grasp of reality slipping away.

  The ghost’s hand pulled away from her mouth. It felt its way down her chin, caressing her throat lingeringly, then settling on a point just above her bosom. The touch was familiar. The touch of a friend, a lover. But it was cold. So cold.

  The ghost spoke. Its voice was airy. The voice of a man speaking around a slit throat.

  “You can’t just get rid of me once I’ve been called,” it wheezed.