The Haunted

by Michaelbrent Collings

  He smiled. The grin was grotesque, a death-rictus called up from some netherworld. The ghost puckered his lips. He leaned toward her….

  Sarah jerked away. She almost fell out of bed.

  A bird chirped.

  The sound was so unexpected, so strange and out of place in the horror that had invaded her life, that she was drawn inexorably to it. She turned her head, and saw something that her terror-stricken mind could not process at first.

  Light. Streaming in through the window.

  It was daytime.

  The chirping continued, and Sarah realized that it was the distant sound of birds, singing as they flew from tree to tree in the nearby woods.

  She turned back to face the body in her bed. It was no longer the living corpse of the dead man with the slit throat. It was just her husband again. Just Cap, breathing deeply in the pale light of the early morning.

  She looked at the nightstand beside his bed.

  A clock. A lamp.

  No stovepipe hat.

  She sat up in the bed, and looked at her hands as though she might discover that they held an answer to what had just happened.

  A dream, she realized. She had been having a dream. More than just having it, she had been living it, living a dream within a dream.

  She looked out the window.

  It was day.

  She shuddered.

  She was cold.

  7

  The Second Day

  6:32 am

  ***

  Sarah shuffled quietly out of the master bedroom, trying not to make any noise. She didn’t want to wake Cap.

  A floorboard squeaked beneath her feet, as though the house had heard her unspoken wish for silence and acted immediately to thwart it. But Cap’s low breathing continued at the same steady pace.

  She closed the bedroom door behind her, but not all the way. She left it open a few inches. She wanted to hear Cap in the room behind her. She didn’t want to be completely alone right now.

  She looked around the hall. There were three doors in front of her. The first was the door to the attic, where Cap had been working when all the strangeness happened last night.

  But had it really happened? Or had it been just one more part of the dream she had suffered through? Was the voice in the closet under the stairs born of the same part of her mind that had given birth to the dream of a dead man with a throat cut wide open?

  She couldn’t answer that question. She looked back at the attic door. It was open. Darkness in the space beyond.

  Hadn’t it been closed last night?

  Sarah stared at it. Another question she couldn’t answer. But she didn’t like it this way, open like a giant black eye, staring balefully at her. She remembered the cataract eyes of the ghost. The hideous double smile, and the fact that neither of the grins made it to the ghost’s eyes, which remained dead, lit from within by a baleful half-light of hatred.

  Sarah flitted over in the half-darkness of the hallway and shut the door, then locked it. She watched it for a moment, more than half expecting it to open of its own accord, but the wood remained still, and the knob did not turn.

  Sarah walked past the door, to the second portal in the straight hallway. She opened it. She no longer felt like she was following a strange sound or a hidden presence as she had last night. She wasn’t under the strange compulsion that had grasped her then. But she wanted to see the rooms. To remind herself that she lived in a place that made sense, a reality where dead men did not walk with her, did not touch her throat with frozen fingers and try to kiss her with lips long dead.

  She opened the door to the first room.

  The home office. A desk, a computer station. An office chair, some file cabinets. Nothing strange at all.

  Like the rest of the house, this room had its share of boxes. Computer cords hung out of one of them like dark tangles of intestinal coils. There was nowhere to hide. And no one but her in the room.

  She closed the door.

  Back in the hall.

  She moved to the third door in her path. The last door.

  She reached for it. Paused as though afraid to open it. She knew what was in this room – or rather, what should be in it – and she didn’t know if she would be able to handle it if what was in the room did not match her expectation. She was traveling into what she thought of as the future heart of the house. And like all hearts, it was at once terribly important and all-too-easily harmed.

  Sarah opened the door. She didn’t wait, afraid that if she did so she would lose her nerve. She could feel the bedroom pulling at her, could feel the safety afforded by her husband calling, and wanted so badly to go back there. But then she wouldn’t know.

  And she had to know.

  The door swung open.

  This room, the final room, was unlike the others. No boxes sat on its floor. Everything in it was put away. As though she and Cap had done this room first. Which, of course, they had.

  The walls were a pleasant yellow, reminiscent of sunflowers, of fields of wheat sighing in a summer breeze, of light and of life. Sunlight poured through a large window on one side of the room, blanketing the walls in brightness and adding a golden edge to everything it touched.

  A crib sat in the center of the room. Light wood, appropriate for either a boy or a girl. A mobile hung motionless above the crib, small planes and rockets ready to fly in tight circles around a cooing infant. Round and round in an endless path that would last forever and never get anywhere at all. It was silent now, hanging limp above an empty crib.

  Sarah’s hand dropped to her belly. The baby was silent within her. She had a terrible moment during which her mind convinced her that the baby must be dead. She had to force the image out of her mind, had to push away the thought of a corpse within her. The baby wasn’t dead. It was alive, as alive as she was and as real as her love for Cap.

  The baby moved. Not much, but it reassured her in a moment that she desperately needed to be reassured. She smiled and moved into the room. It was charming, utterly perfect. She leaned over the crib, and could almost hear the gurgling sounds of the baby that would be there soon.

  She straightened and turned to the window.

  The woods beyond the clearing stood straight and tall and bright. Nothing to fear, no reason for concern. Sarah chided herself mentally for being so afraid, the dreams she had had already seeming to recede, to fall away from the reality they had displaced until just moments ago.

  She turned back to the crib. Caressed the sheets that were already there, tucked one end of the bedspread even tighter under the tiny mattress. She jostled against the mobile as she did so, and the plaything jittered, clattering quietly like a wind chime made of small bones.

  Sarah straightened as something changed. She could feel the air grow suddenly and inexplicably cold. She breathed out, half surprised that her breath did not plume in front of her like dragonsbreath. She shivered.

  She heard a squeak, and turned to see the door shutting behind her.

  No! she thought, and panic overwhelmed her instantly as the thought of being shut into the room – so pleasant and welcoming only a moment before – beat through her with the force of a tsunami. Her heart hammered in her breast, short shocks that slammed into her ribs like some kind of beast trapped in a cage.

  She ran to the door, her hand extended before her, reaching out to grab it. She had to stop it from closing. She couldn’t be alone.

  Her fingers curled around the edge of the door. She stopped it.

  She threw it open.

  And he was there! The ghost, the stovepipe hat atop his head, his Cheshire grin so foul and terrifying, his lips gray and dry and cracked, desiccated.

  She threw the door shut again. But something got in the way. A foot, pressing itself against the door, forcing it open. A sound overtook her at the same time. A voice.

  “Easy, champ, not before the morning coffee.”

  Sarah halted, her body rigid. She looked at the foot. It wasn�
��t the booted foot of a creature from a hundred years ago and more. It was bare. It was alive.

  She swung the door open. Cap was there, his hair sleep-mussed, his mouth turned up in that half-smile she loved so much.

  Sarah grabbed at her heart, and then laughed. The laugh was like scissors or a knife, shearing through the spell that had been cast over her. All was well. The sound of the mobile jostling against itself was not the sound of bones in the wind. It was the sound of a plastic rocket ship, a plastic planet. The light was bright and lively.

  There was no dead man before her. Only Cap.

  Cap stepped into the room and put his arms lightly around her. His grin became mischievous.

  “You know,” he said, “we never did break in the house like you promised.”

  Sarah smiled back and kissed him. Tentatively at first, then harder as fear was replaced by passion, as terror flew away and love took its place. Cap kissed her, and she let herself surrender to the kiss, allowed herself to melt into his embrace and become one with him. His heartbeat, strong and slow, became hers. His body, so warm and alive, was the only thing she was aware of.

  She barely noticed it when the door slowly swung shut behind him.

  8

  The Second Day

  9:02 am

  ***

  Sarah reached for another box. But before opening it, she looked over her shoulder. Cap was still there, working away in the living room with her. Which was perfect, exactly the way she needed it to be right now. Aside from a few minutes in the bathroom, she hadn’t been alone at all since Cap joined her in the baby’s room this morning. She felt fine – more than fine, in fact, she felt great, like the world had returned to normal. But she wasn’t ready to be alone. Not yet. As though Cap’s presence was some kind of mystical totem that would keep the nightmares at bay. She had followed him like a shadow from the baby’s room, watched him from the doorway of their bathroom as he shaved and prepared for the day. He had laughed about it, made a few jokes, but he didn’t seem to mind. She couldn’t tell if that was just because of his normal openness, or because he, too, hungered for company.

  She didn’t ask. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  Breakfast was a quiet affair. Cold cereal and orange juice, the official meal of the morning after a move. It seemed a bit spare, but neither of them had been able to find much more to eat in the contained chaos of the partially unpacked house.

  She had glanced out the kitchen window continually during breakfast. The window was on the same side as their bedroom window. She could vaguely see a shape in the distance, a hunched over bit of gray among the trees. The stump she had seen in the mist.

  It didn’t move. There was nothing maleficent about it in the bright of a new day. It was nothing more than some tree that had succumbed to the lightning strike of a storm.

  But she kept looking at it.

  Then the dishes were washed, and the unpacking resumed. Box after box after box, making an empty house into a home, one thing at a time.

  “Cool!”

  Sarah stopped moving, her hand on the next box in her current pile.

  “What?” she said. “You find the Ark of the Covenant somewhere in here?”

  Cap smiled at her and he pretended to adjust a tie he wasn’t wearing, the epitome of chic even though he was still wearing his pajama pants and a faded gray long-sleeved shirt. “Just call me Indiana,” he said. He turned around and dug inside an open box behind him, and then turned back to face her again, producing something with a flourish.

  It was another box, smaller than the one it had been hiding in. The picture on the new arrival showed a television with a black and white view of a baby on it. Sarah knew what it was immediately, and couldn’t help but laugh at Cap’s mode of presenting it. Just like him to pretend he had “found” it. As though he hadn’t been the one to get it and pack it away secretly in the first place.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she said.

  “Well,” he said, looking at the box closely, as though he needed to read it to figure out what the details of his gift were, “apparently this is a state of the art video baby monitor.” He glanced at her with a knowing look. “For the mother who isn’t going to be content just hearing the baby, but is going to need to see him –”

  “Or her!” she interjected.

  “– at every moment,” he finished. He shook his head. “What will people think of next?”

  Sarah felt like a kid who had just discovered that Christmas was coming early this year. “Set it up!” she said, and clapped excitedly. The malaise that had settled upon her during this move was absent. She felt good. More than good. Perfect.

  Life was, at this moment, exactly what she wanted it to be. Good husband. Baby on the way. Presents!

  Cap put the box under his arm and walked – almost skipped – out of the room. Sarah followed him closely. And it wasn’t because the dream still had her spooked. No, it wasn’t that or the fact that she was still afraid to be alone. None of that. She just loved her husband, that was all. Just wanted to see him set up the toy.

  That was all.

  She followed Cap up the stairs, down the hall to the baby’s room. There was a dresser next to the crib, and Cap went to it and started unpacking the components of the video monitor.

  But for a moment Sarah wasn’t watching him. She was looking at the dresser. Because in that instant, she had no clue what it was. She knew it was a dresser, of course, but she didn’t know where it had come from. Who gave it to them, or where they bought it, or even if it had been in the room this morning, when they had made love. She wondered for a moment if there was something wrong, not with the house, but with her. With her memory, with her mind.

  Was she going crazy?

  She rejected the thought almost in the same instant it entered her mind. Of course she wasn’t going crazy. How could someone who was so blessed go crazy? Besides, she had felt for a few moments like she wasn’t alone in her concern about the house. Like Cap was having his own problems, problems that he just didn’t want to talk about right yet, for whatever reason. And even if it were possible that she was going crazy, that insanity had somehow swallowed her up in its dark mouth, it was far less possible that both she and her husband had succumbed to mental problems at the same time.

  She forced herself to abandon that line of thinking. She wasn’t crazy, there was nothing wrong with the house, the dream she’d had the night before had been just that: a dream.

  She refocused on Cap. He had put a closed-circuit television camera on the dresser, its lens pointed at a slight downward angle so that its field of image capture would include the crib. He made a few minor adjustments to the camera’s position, then plugged it into the wall.

  A red light blinked on the front of the camera. It was meant to be comforting, she knew. To tell nervous daddies and frightened mommies that the camera was on, that their baby could be watched. Could be safe.

  But Sarah was not comforted. The red light seemed malevolent somehow. As though it was not there to reassure her that she could watch her child when it came, but as a sign. An omen. The unblinking eye of a demon come to call.

  “Sarah?”

  She looked at Cap. He was staring at her. “Yeah?” she managed.

  “You okay? I’ve been talking to you for like thirty seconds.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Feeling foolish, she discovered at that moment, could be a decent deterrent to fear. She looked at the camera again, and the light was just a light. “What did you say?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said with a chuckle. “Let’s go hook it up to the television.”

  He walked out of the room, and she followed him closely as they went back downstairs and into the living room. There was no cable or satellite service to the house – at least, they hadn’t yet signed up for any – but the TV was already set up on a small television stand next to one of the windows.

  Cap put the monitor box down beside the television stand.
He pulled out several cables and an instruction manual. One more thing Sarah loved about her husband: he not only knew how to follow written set-up directions, he actually preferred to use them. She hadn’t quite gotten him to the point where he could ask for directions when driving, but felt certain that it was only a matter of time.

  Cap read through the monitor instructions quickly, glancing at the cables he held in his hands periodically, then got to work. In only a moment, he had the cables plugged into various inputs in the back of the television. He hit the TV’s power button.

  The television came to life, the darkness of the screen slowly lighting and being replaced by an image.

  “Is this the baby in a snowstorm?” Sarah asked. Static was the only thing visible on the screen.

  “Easy there, woman,” Cap grunted, and she laughed. “Woman” was what Cap called her when he was trying to push her buttons, and he usually used the term when he was trying to cover up a moment when he didn’t know what he was doing.

  “Awww,” she cooed, making her voice high and silly as though addressing a mildly challenged toddler. “Is oo having twouble?”

  He waved at her in mock irritation. “I know exactly what I’m doing,” he growled. And then proceeded to prove that was not the case by reading the entirety of the short manual from beginning to end. And then again.

  “Does oo need help?” she burbled.

  “No,” he said in a fair approximation of anger. Then, “Ah-ha!” He picked up the television remote and pressed several buttons. “It’s just on the wrong channel,” he said.

  The number sixty-six appeared in the upper right corner of the television screen. There was a slight flicker, and then the baby’s room, the crib in the foreground, appeared on the television.

  Sarah clasped her hands together at her chest. The baby inside her did several somersaults at the same moment, as though it, too, was excited to see its new room.

  Then her brow furrowed a bit. “Is this the only place I can see it?” she asked. “Not much use if I can only keep an eye on the baby as long as I’m in the living room.”