The House We Haunted and Other Stories

by Amy Cross

Wilbur stares at him.

  "What's -" Luke continues, but before he can finish there's a banging sound from elsewhere in the house.

  I follow him over to the window, and sure enough there are two police officers waiting in the yard. Turning to Luke, I see a look of shock in his eyes, and it's clear that he already knows what this must be about. He grabs his dressing gown and hurries downstairs, and I head to the landing and listen for a moment as he opens the door and starts talking to the officers. I guess this is the moment when his whole world is going to be shattered, but he'll heal eventually. Besides, a sudden shock like this must be better than having things dragged out for months or years.

  Everyone will be okay now. I gave the ghost what it wanted, and in return we've all been set free. I guess the sacrifice was worth it.

  Part Eight

  The Ghost

  Chapter One

  Ellen

  For the first time in my life, I feel alone.

  It's a bright morning and a small crowd has gathered at the cemetery for Kate's funeral. I keep seeing familiar faces, some of them just blurs that I vaguely recognize from family gatherings long ago, but right now I feel as if there's no way I can talk to anyone. I just have to shut down my thoughts and focus on trying to stay calm, because if I lose my concentration for even a fraction of a second, I think I'm going to scream.

  "I love you too."

  Those were the last words she said to me. It must have been just an hour or two before she killed herself. I was already alert and on edge when she called that night, and I so nearly went over to her apartment. I keep rerunning the events of those few hours over and over again; I went to bed and tried to sleep, but what if I'd decided to go and see her instead? Even though she explicitly told me over and over again that she wanted to be alone, I should have sensed the dark intent in her voice.

  I should have known.

  "We were wrong," Kate told me on the phone that night. "We got worked up over nothing, and we were just... idiots. We were childish idiots who strung out a pathetic game for way too long."

  Those are the words that are really seared into my mind. Right at the end, the house was able to make her doubt everything that had happened. When she died, she probably believed I was just an impressionable idiot who got carried away with talk of a haunted house. In a way, that's the part of this whole story that hurts the most. Kate was with me right until the end, and finally her loyalty was turned.

  Glancing along the line of people, I spot Luke and I realize that he, too, is staring at the coffin. For some reason, people seem to think that his suffering is as great as mine, but nothing could be further from the truth. He must have known that his relationship with Kate was coming to an end, so I guess he's crying crocodile tears, just like all the rest. It's the dishonesty of this whole situation that hurts me the most.

  "We are gathered here to celebrate the life of Kate Maynard," the priest says, with a carefully cadenced and very deliberate, mournful tone.

  He keeps talking, but I don't listen. My eyes are fixed on the coffin, and my mind is fixed on the thought of her body. I guess they must have cleaned her up for the occasion; they probably scrubbed off the blood and put her into that dress I took to the funeral home. There's a part of me that wants to see her again, to have an open coffin like they do in American, but I know that no-one else here would want the same thing. My parents would hate the idea of seeing her face in death. They just want to remember how she was in life.

  "At a time like this," the priest continues, "it is natural for us to question God's intentions. We look up and ask Him why he would take the life of a woman who seemed to have a full and happy life stretching out before her."

  It's not God. I want to shout out and tell everyone, but they'd just think I'm crazy. I guess I need to be smart here and focus on the real enemy.

  "The truth," the priest adds, "is that we cannot guess how God's plan for each of us will unfold, nor can we hope to gain answers after the fact. One of the hardest parts of faith is the need to accept that God, in His infinite wisdom and judgment, understands precisely where we each fit in the rich tapestry of life."

  It's not about tapestries. It's about that house. As the others stand around me, undoubtedly feeling comforted as they listen to the priest's words, I can feel a kind of darkness rising through my body. That house took Kate away from us, away from me, and now some fool wants us to believe that God was responsible. There's no way I'm going to give anyone the satisfaction of thinking that I'm crazy, but I know one thing: I'm going to make sure that the house can't hurt anyone else, and I'm going to make it suffer for what it did to Kate.

  Chapter Two

  Ellen

  The gathering at the house, a couple of hours after the funeral, is sedate and formal. I want to grab people by the throat and make them see the truth, but I know that they already think I'm fragile and crazy. Better to wait, let them do what they want, and take action after they've left.

  I used to hide from the house, but now it's the house that needs to hide. Maybe I'm crazy, but I swear I can already sense a change in the atmosphere, as if the house has begun to fear me.

  "She was a lovely girl," says one of my aunts, sitting on the sofa with a few other family members. "She was always so happy and cheerful, wasn't she? I remember watching her while she was playing in the garden one day, and she just seemed to have this tremendous sense of energy." She pauses, as if she's momentarily transported back to her memory; it's all a show, of course, and she's merely performing her grief for an audience. "I suppose it's the ones we least expect, really," she adds eventually, to a murmuring of agreement around her. "The ones who hide their pain are often the ones who keep it all inside until it breaks."

  Glancing across the room, I spot Luke talking to my father. For some reason, when Kate died it was Luke who was informed first. The police should have come to me, but they went to him and then they let him identify her. They also took him to the apartment and let him see the blood, whereas everything had been tidied up by the time I arrived. In some way, it's as if the police just didn't understand that Kate and I shared these horrors. Then again, how could they have known? It was Luke's responsibility to tell them, to get them to stand aside and let me take charge, but he decided to selfishly absorb everything himself.

  I never saw Kate's blood.

  I keep imagining what it must have looked like, but I never saw it.

  "Poor Luke," says a woman standing nearby, talking to a guy. "He loved her so much, and he put up with all the trouble in this family. I know it's not a competition, but he's the one I feel most sorry for. I can't imagine what it's like to love someone and then to have them snatched away, especially when you know it was a suicide. Do you think it's something he'll ever recover from?"

  Unable to listen to any more of this bullshit, I make my way through to the kitchen, but of course there are more vultures. I swear to God, these people seem to enjoy funerals. They like having opinions and they like being at an event where the topic of conversation has been laid out for them. No-one has to worry about what to discuss, or about the tone they should adopt; the whole goddamn event is like a big scripted afternoon filled with muffled, respectful discussions about life and death, mixed with anecdotes about someone that the vast majority of them never really knew.

  But she was my sister.

  I knew her.

  Hearing a faint bumping sound beneath my feet, I look down. Ever since we got back from the church, I've been hearing occasional noises that make me wonder if the house is trying to get my attention. I wouldn't be surprised if now that Kate has died, the house realizes it made a mistake. After toying with us for years, it finally managed to draw blood, but it must be able to sense my mood, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's now starting to feel that it went too far. If that's the case, I'm glad: I want the house to be scared, and I want it to know that there's absolutely nothing it can do to hold me back.

  Revenge.

  I'm go
ing to make the house suffer, and then I'm going to make it die. I swear to God, I'm going to find the ghost that lives here and I'm going to make it feel true pain.

  "Ellen," says a voice, suddenly arriving next to me, "how are you holding up?"

  Turning, I find that Carol, one of my aunts, has come over to bother me.

  "I didn't mean to intrude on your private thoughts," she continues with a cautious, sad smile, "but I saw you coming through here, and you looked so lost. I just felt that I had to come over and see if you're okay."

  "I was just going to make some more coffee," I reply, even though that wasn't my intention at all.

  "It was a beautiful funeral," she replies. "At least, as beautiful as a funeral can be, I suppose. Everyone said the right words, but nothing can take away..." She pauses. "I just wanted to tell you that I'm here if you need to talk. I'm sure there are plenty of people saying the same thing, but I figured I should at least offer. I know you and Kate supported one another emotionally, and it must be particularly hard for you to have that support suddenly wrenched away."

  I smile politely, but I don't know what to say. She's just another bullshit merchant.

  "Funerals can be so fake, can't they?" she continues, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Everyone sitting around, saying the right thing, doing the right thing... It's like they all go through on rails, filled with satisfaction at their own performance. Don't you sometimes want to just stand in the middle of the room and scream at them all? The whole damn thing is just so completely fake and ridiculous."

  "Maybe," I reply, hoping that she'll leave me alone. The last thing I want is to get drawn into a deep conversation.

  "Did Kate ever talk about this kind of thing?" she asks. "Did she ever say what kind of funeral she wanted? The kind of music, maybe, or the food she wanted served?"

  I shake my head.

  "Don't you think she'd have wanted something a bit more lively?" she continues. "Something with color and energy... A celebration of her life, rather than a mournful service followed by a bunch of people sitting around eating finger food. I mean, this doesn't seem like the kind of event Kate would enjoy at all, does it?" She pauses, as if she's waiting for me to agree with her. "I'm probably speaking out of turn," she adds finally. "I just feel that the Kate I knew would have -"

  "You didn't know her," I say suddenly.

  "Oh, well I -"

  "You didn't know her," I hiss, keeping my voice down even though I can no longer hide my anger. "She was my sister, and you probably only met her a few times. To you, she was just another niece, but to me she was everything. Don't even pretend that you know what her life was like, because there's no way you can possibly understand!"

  "Absolutely," she replies, clearly a little shocked. "I was just -"

  "Leave me alone," I whisper, turning and hurrying back through to the front room. I feel as if I'm on the verge of an act of violence, and if one more of these idiots comes over to me and starts sharing bland memories of my sister, I'm going to hurt them. Standing in the middle of the room, I look around at all the idiots, and finally I realize that I need to get my anger out right now. These people have no idea of the horror that lives in the house, and they all seem to think that the wound of Kate's death will heal over time.

  They'll learn, though. I'll make sure they understand everything that ever happened here.

  Chapter Three

  Ellen

  "If you've come to lecture me or drag me back downstairs," John says, sitting by the window, "I'd rather you didn't bother. I'm fine up here."

  "I wasn't looking for you," I reply, standing in the doorway of the room that Kate and I used to share as children. It's true: I came up here to get away from everyone, and it never occurred to me that John might have done the same. In fact, he's sitting in the exact spot where I was planning to sit, and I don't know whether to be glad that I've got him alone for a few minutes, or annoyed that I have to share this sacred space with someone else.

  "I hate funerals," he mutters, taking another sip of whiskey from the wine glass in his hand. "Fucking hate them. I've been to a few, too. Whenever one of my patients dies, I get invited, and it's a small town so... People always expect you to show up."

  "Sounds hard," I reply non-committally, even though I feel as if he's probably exaggerating things a little. I mean, how hard can it be to show up at the funeral of someone you don't really care about?

  "There was this one girl," he continues as he stares out the window. "She was troubled. Serious mental disturbances, you know? She was pretty too. Beautiful, even. To look at her and listen to her, you'd think she had her whole life ahead of her, full of potential. She used to come and see me once a week while I was trying to refer her to a psychiatric unit a few miles away, but they were dragging their feet because they didn't think she needed their help. She was cracking up, though, so I made her come and see me, just so I could keep an eye on her. Every week, the pain in her eyes seemed to become a little more obvious, and I started to think there was nothing I could do to help her. I tried everything, and eventually we..."

  I wait for him to finish.

  "Eventually you what?" I ask.

  "She went missing," he adds. "One day, she ran away from home, and this huge snowstorm arrived and just covered everything. It was bad timing, really. She'd run away before and always come back, but this time the weather was against her. There was a big search, but it wasn't until the snow began to melt a few days later that her body was found under a bench. She must have frozen to death, and I had to go out and confirm the death." He takes a big sip of whiskey, followed a moment later by another. "A little while later," he continues, "I was up at my cabin. It was late, and I was just picking up a few things, and then I heard this noise outside. At first I assumed it was just the weather, but it carried on for a while so I went and looked, and I saw..."

  Again, I want for him to finish.

  "What?" I ask.

  He doesn't reply.

  "Did you see her?" I continue.

  He turns to me, and for the first time I notice that there are dark shadows under his eyes.

  "No," he says after a moment, forcing a smile as he takes another swig of whiskey. "Of course not. It's just... Things like that, they make you think about how life works, and about what comes after death. There's so much bullshit talked, and I think that maybe it's easy for people to imagine things, you know?" He pauses. "The human mind is capable of creating things and hallucinations... Seeing things that aren't really there. If you put someone under enough pressure, of course they're going to crack and start imagining images and sounds. It doesn't mean they're weak or stupid, it just means they're affected by the world around them."

  "I guess," I reply.

  "It's true," he continues, taking another sip of whiskey. As he holds the glass, his hands seem to be trembling. "In the right circumstances, under the right amount of stress, a person - even an intelligent, perfectly sane person - can see a hallucination that seems absolutely real and vivid. He might even hear it speaking to him. Hell, it might follow him, taunting him, accusing him of things, but he has to try to ignore it. Even if it takes years, he has to focus his mind and make sure that he doesn't allow his mind to be dragged down."

  He takes another sip, but this time he loses his grip on the glass and it drops down, landing first on his knees and then smashing as it hits the floor.

  "Shit," he mutters, kicking the glass over into the corner.

  "Are you okay?" I ask.

  "Of course I'm not fucking okay," he replies. "We buried our sister today. Are you okay?"

  I pause, but I'm not really sure what to say. John has always been the calm, reserved member of our family, but I remember Kate saying that she thought he kept all his anger and fear deep inside. I guess she was right.

  "I saw something once," he continues after a moment. "It was when I was really young. We'd all gone to bed, and I heard someone outside my room, on the landing." He pauses,
as if the memory is a little too much. "I assumed it was Mum, so I went to the door and pulled it open." Another pause, and finally he looks over at the door. "It was this woman," he continues, almost as if he's in a trance. "Her clothes were old and faded, but the worst thing was that her skin was pale, almost gray. She just stood there with her back to me, as if she was going toward another room, and then slowly she turned and glanced back at me. I pushed the door shut and ran back to bed, but I could hear her coming closer to my door. Eventually, I grabbed the little toy drum that I used to have and I rattled it, hoping that it'd wake Mum up and she'd come and save me."

  I wait for him to continue.

  "The woman didn't come into my room. I heard her again some nights, but I thought that as long as I rattled the bell on the toy drum, she wouldn't come through the door.

  "The bell?" I ask, thinking back to the sound that Kate used to hear at night. "That was you..."

  "It was stupid," he continues, "but at the time, I really believe that the bell protected me from the ghost. It's strange how you can believe things like that when you're a kid. You don't really understand how the world works, but you keep trying and you start matching up different things... At least you grow out of it eventually. You start to see the world how it is, instead of how you want it to be."

  I look over at the two beds on the far side of the room, and for a moment I can't help but think of the way Kate used to tremble with fear whenever she heard the bell ringing. She used to wake me up sometimes by climbing into bed with me, seeking refuge from her fear, and it never occurred to me that the bell could be anything other than the ghost. There's a part of me that desperately wants to run back to the cemetery and tell her that it was John all along, but deep down I know that it's far too late for me to help her.

  "I have to get going soon," John says after a moment, checking his watch before getting up and heading to the door. He seems tired, and I was hoping that he might stay one more night, but clearly he has no intention of staying now that the funeral is over. "I've got a long drive."