House of Dark Shadows

by Robert Liparulo

  Around a mouthful of sandwich, David said, “We’re even looking in the closets and cupboards.”

  “Like anybody would hide in a cupboard,” Xander said, glaring at Dad.

  Dad shrugged. “Never know.”

  “Lots of gross stuff,” David said.

  Mom made a face. “Gross stuff ?”

  Dad said, “Just grime and trash. Stuff like that.”

  “Rat poop!” David said.

  “Eeewww!” Toria said. “I’m not hungry anymore.” Xander got an image of her as a mom.

  “Rats?” Mom said.

  “More like mice,” Dad said. “I’ll set some traps this afternoon.” “And spiders,” David said.

  “David, stop. You’re scaring Toria,” Dad said. To the King ladies he said, “There are not as many spiders as you’d think for a house abandoned so long and in the woods. We’ll bug-bomb tonight when we leave.”

  “Cool!” David said.

  “They’re not real bombs,” Xander told him.

  David frowned. “Oh.”

  “They’re still cool.” Dad raised his eyebrows at David. “Lots of smoke. You can help me.”

  David nodded. He was pushing an entire half sandwich into his mouth.

  Mom surveyed her family, sitting around the table in their new home. “Well, guys,” she said, smiling, “think we found our dream house?”

  “Yeah!” Toria chimed.

  Mouth full of sandwich, David said something indiscernible.

  Xander scowled at him. “What?”

  He held up a finger, swallowing painfully. “I said . . . we’re the Dreamhouse Kings!”

  Mom laughed. “I like it. The Dreamhouse Kings.” Her eyebrows shot up as she remembered something. Pointing to Dad, she said, “Honey, don’t forget your appointment.”

  Dad stopped chewing; his eyes went wide. He looked at his watch. He swallowed, said, “You boys continue without me.

  I’m meeting the district superintendent at the school. School starts next Monday, and I haven’t even toured the place.”

  Mom laughed. “Not to mention that you haven’t met the teachers, set up your office, reviewed the school calendar—”

  “I know, I know,” Dad said. He shrugged. “When they hired me I told them I didn’t have time to do everything. They said not to worry about it.” He smiled. “Getting someone of my caliber is worth a little disorganization. That’s what they said.”

  Mom aaahhh’ed. “How sweet.”

  “So what, you want us to look for intruders alone?” Xander asked.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said, glancing at his watch again. He stood. “I have to run by the motel, take a shower, and change.”

  He grabbed the rest of his sandwich and hurried out.

  9 The sun had crested in the sky and started its descent toward the horizon by the time Xander and David brought their inspection to the second floor.

  “This is great,” David said. “We wanted to search the house anyway. Now we got Dad’s help, and we don’t have to sneak around. I hope he’s back before we get to the attic. I don’t want to go up there alone.”

  “Hey! You’re not alone.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Let’s start with the far bedrooms and work our way back,” Xander suggested.

  As they walked the corridor, their heads swiveled back and forth to look into each room they passed. Toria’s bedroom had been swept and the windows washed. It was amazing how much light came in now that the filth was off the glass. It would be even better when they finally got to cleaning the outside.

  “Shaping up,” David said.

  They passed the pink room and the bedroom that was going to be theirs—the corner room with the tower. Duh. They hadn’t had a chance to do anything with it yet. It was as gloomy as ever.

  “Lot left to do,” Xander said.

  “Yeah, but we haven’t found any graves or coffins with vampires or anything like that. I was thinking the basement would be the place for those things.”

  They stopped outside the open door of the last room on the other side of the hall. Looking back, Xander was struck by how long the corridor really was. It continued beyond the foyer and grand staircase. All told, it was fifty feet, maybe longer. Even then, the far end of the hall bent into another corridor that led only to what Mom and Dad called “the servants’ quarters.”

  Xander would have called it a second master bedroom, because it had a walk-in closet and a private bathroom. He thought servants should also have their own kitchenette so they had privacy on their days off; that room didn’t have a kitchenette. Still, he hoped it was inhabitable by the time Dae was ready for his own room-Xander would love to claim the “servants’ quarters”

  for himself.

  He said, “I don’t know. I get the feeling there’s more to this house than it’s showing us.”

  They went into the bedroom and flipped on their flashlights.

  More of the same: dust, old furniture, peeling wallpaper.

  “Hey, look at this,” Xander said. His light had captured a framed picture on a nightstand. The photograph was faded, almost white, the faces indistinct. But Xander could tell it had once been a color portrait of a family: a man and woman, a little girl whose size would have made her three or four years old, and a blond-haired boy, a few years older.

  “Is that the family who was murdered?” David whispered almost reverently.

  “I bet.” He was thinking how the fading of the photo- graph made them look like ghosts. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, a painting of a man changed to reflect the ravages of his evil deeds instead of reflecting the person himself. It seemed to Xander this picture instead continued to show the reality of the family: faded from the earth, faded from memory. His heart ached for them, for the people they never became. Even the dad, who had done the dirty deed. If the house had gotten to him, was anything he did after that his fault? Wouldn’t it be like being hypnotized and forced to do something against your will? Xander resolved again to be alert against the house’s power. His family would not suffer the fate of that family. He would not let them fade away.

  “Weird they left so many personal things,” David said.

  “But not everything,” Xander said. “Like they left in a hurry.” “If the father murdered them, why would they take anything at all?”

  “Maybe they were trying to get away from the house. Maybe it was the police who took their clothes and stuff. Evidence.”

  David went to a closet. He opened the door and flashed his light inside. “Hey, what’s this?” he said.

  Leaning into one of the corners was a wood pole, similar to a broom handle. One end had a brass cap with a small hook coming off it.

  “I don’t know . . . wait a minute, yes, I do.” Xander swept the light over the ceiling. He stopped on a rectangular hatch. “The attic entrance. That pole hooks the door and pulls it down. I saw it in a movie.”

  “We should wait for Dad,” David said. “He’d want to come.”

  Xander smiled. “He’d want to, or you’d want him to?”

  David stared at the door for a long time. Finally, he said, “I’m all right.”

  “Okay, then. Come on.”

  CHAPTER

  sixteen

  THURSDAY, 2:29 P.M.

  It was a bust. The attic turned out to be nothing but dust, mouse poop, spiderwebs, some decomposing cardboard boxes of disintegrated clothes like in the basement, and a few pieces of furniture. They opened a wooden chest, big enough for a man to fit inside, but it was just full of papers—a child’s schoolwork, sheet music, stuff like that. They cautiously approached a large wardrobe—definitely where Xander would have hidden if he were a creepy guy hiding in someone else’s house. But it contained only a dress and some other clothes on wooden hangers. The space up there was smaller than the other floors, probably having to do with the way the roof canted inward, he figured.

  Xander was glad to have cleared the attic without relying on hi
s father. He was also relieved they hadn’t uncovered some crazy maniac living up there . . . relieved and a little disappointed. That would have been something to call his best friend, Dean, about. Danielle too.

  They clambered down the hatch’s built-in steps, then used the pole to shove the whole thing back into place. David reached up and slapped at Xander’s hair and shoulders. Clouds of dust billowed off him. Xander returned the favor, then said, “Let’s check our bedroom. Maybe we can clear the whole house before Dad gets home.”

  “That’d be cool,” David agreed.

  Heading to their room, Xander pointed his beam at a narrow door in the corridor wall.

  “Check the linen closet,” he told David and stepped into the bedroom. Corners, closet, tower: nothing, nothing, nothing. At least no intruders or hidey-holes. In the closet, he did find a garment draped over a wire hanger.

  “David,” he called over his shoulder, “check under the bed.”

  He stepped farther into the closet to examine the clothes.

  It appeared to be a man’s suit. Old-fashioned with wide lapels and pinstripes. He remembered something like it from the movie Bugsy. A zoot suit, it was called. He tapped it with the end of his flashlight, igniting a small explosion of dust from the fabric. He coughed and waved his hand in front of his face. He left the closet and shut the door. Scanning the room, his brother was nowhere in sight.

  “David! Where are you, dude?” He bent and flashed the light under the bed, but David wasn’t hiding there. Back in the hallway, he opened the linen closet door. It was narrow and deep. The shelves started a few feet in, leaving a space for maybe brooms or a mop bucket in front of them. His eyes went from the floor to the top shelf. Empty. He shut the door.

  “David!” he yelled again. His voice echoed, then cut short, as though whatever messed with the sounds had rippled past, snagging his call. A third time, he yelled for his brother. He flashed his light into the room they had checked first. Letting out a deep sigh, he entered and opened the closet door. Again, nothing. Back in the hallway, he yelled, “David, this isn’t funny. Remember how you felt when Dad scared us? Don’t mess around.”

  His voice came back to him: Don’t mess around. Oh, now the auditory tricks were getting outright scary. From up the hall, his own voice barked out again: Don’t mess around. His stomach was tightening. He didn’t know whether to stand still, look for David, or run like a madman to the front door.

  Twenty feet away, a figure stepped out of a bedroom.

  “David?” Xander whispered.

  “Don’t mess around,” the figure said in Xander’s voice and stepped closer.

  It was Toria, with that blasted bear in her arms. She squeezed its paw, and it said, “Don’t mess around.”

  “Victoria!” Xander yelled, stomping toward her. “Stop that!

  Where’s David?”

  “I haven’t seen him,” she said, frightened by his anger.

  “Go back in your room. Stop messing with that bear. I mean it.” He followed her into her room, checked the closet, and then he realized: one of the second floor’s three bathrooms was between here and the end of the hall. He hurried to it and knocked on the closed door. “David, are you in there? Didn’t you hear me calling?” He knocked again, then tried the handle.

  It was unlocked, the bathroom empty.

  Now, not only his stomach felt constricted, but his heart.

  “David!” he screamed with everything he had. He ran to the nearest door, the bedroom they would make their own.

  Let him be here. Let him be here. Just lost in imagining what our room would be like.

  But it was empty. And the closet was empty.

  His mom yelled up from below: “Xander, what is it? Is everything all right? Is Dae with you?”

  Xander surged into the hall, intent on getting Mom’s help.

  Whether she would blame him for losing his brother didn’t matter now.

  Movement in the corner of his vision. He looked. David was standing in the hall, back by the first rooms they had checked. A gash above his eyebrow trickled blood. He looked dazed.

  “Xander?” Mom called. Her footsteps clopped on the stairs. Xander called over his shoulder. “Got it, Mom! Everything’s okay!”

  “David’s okay?”

  “Yeah! Just . . . uh . . . bathroom.”

  Her footsteps descended, echoed in the foyer, and were gone. Xander rushed to David. “Where were you? What happened?” “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

  “Dae, what happened?”

  He prodded the cut on his brother’s forehead.

  David flinched away. He touched it himself, looked at the blood on his fingertips. “Whoa,” he said.

  Xander had David’s blood on his fingers as well. It frightened Xander more than a simple bonk on the head should have. “David—” he began.

  David grabbed Xander’s arms. “I mean it, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “You gotta—”

  “I’ll show you!”

  “Show me what?”

  “Come on.” David opened the linen closet door.

  “Were you hiding?” Xander said. “I checked in there.”

  “Shhh. Just go.” He pushed on Xander’s back, trying to get him in the closet.

  Xander resisted, sidestepped away. “What are you doing? I’m not going in there.”

  David let out an exasperated breath. “I was going to scare you. I went in there and closed the door.”

  “I told you I looked.”

  “Something happened. I went somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “Just go. Please?”

  Xander looked from his brother to the closet. He shook his head. “This is some kind of trick.”

  David’s eyes got big. “It is! But not like you’re thinking.

  Do it!” When he realized Xander wasn’t budging, he said, “Okay. Just do what I do. Promise?”

  Xander closed his eyes. “Okay, okay.”

  David stepped into the closet and turned around. He pulled the door partially shut, said, “Do what I’m doing exactly.” He shut the door.

  Xander waited. “Okay?” he said to the door. “David?” He opened the door. His brother was gone.

  CHAPTER

  seventeen

  THURSDAY, 2:36 P.M.

  The closet shelves were empty. The walls seemed intact. The ceiling and floor showed no sign of harboring a vent or door.

  David was just gone. There one second, not there the next.

  Xander stepped in and felt the shelves. They were solidly mounted. He poked at the walls, on the sides, and behind the shelves. They felt firm and unmoving. “David,” he called.

  He sighed. “All right, I’m doing exactly what you did.”

  He pulled the door completely closed. Blackness engulfed him. The floor seemed to move as though the closet were an elevator. But his stomach didn’t lurch the way it did on elevators. A wind swirled around him and was gone. He felt dizzy. Someone wrapped his arms around him and squeezed.

  “David?” he said.

  But then he realized it wasn’t a someone. The walls of the closet had squeezed in, becoming so narrow he had to turn sideways. Slits appeared in the closet door. Level with his eyes. Light poured in, blinding him.

  “David!” he yelled, panicked now. He pushed against a side wall. It flexed a little and made a metallic popping sound.

  He pushed his behind into the back wall. The same kind of flexing. The same sound. He pushed his palm into the front door. It felt like cold metal. “David!” he screamed again.

  A metallic click and thunk. The door opened, but its width was now no more than eighteen inches. David stood smiling, holding the door, a step below him. Beyond David, sunlight came in from huge windows. This was not the second-floor hallway. He peered around. He was standing in something like a metal coffin. A coat hook almost snagged a nostril.

  “What’s going on?” he said to David. “Where are we?” />
  “Step out and look.”

  Xander squeezed through the metal threshold and stepped down to a tiled floor. He was standing in a short corridor.

  To his right, the corridor met another, wider hallway, which

  disappeared around a corner. He walked to the corner. Windows lined one wall running the length of the hallway. What lay beyond seemed familiar to Xander, but he couldn’t immediately place it. He turned to see what he had just emerged from. It was a locker, one of a series that occupied the entire wall. They were all painted bright blue.

  He said, “What the—”

  “We’re in the school!” David said.

  “What school?”

  “Our school. The one we’re going to next week.”

  Xander recognized it now. Outside the windows was the school’s yard of lush grass and picnic tables. Beyond that, the parking lot. In fact, Xander realized, their 4Runner was in one of the slots. He pushed his face close to David’s and whispered, “Dad’s here.”

  “What do we do?” David asked.

  Xander smiled. “Let’s look around.” He walked back to the locker and shut the door. “Remember this number. One-nineteen.” That made him think of something. He asked David, “That is how you got back, right? Through the locker?”

  “Yeah, that’s how I got this.” He pointed to the gash above his eyebrow.

  The two of them rounded the corner and headed toward a set of double doors at the far end. Every forty feet or so, the lockers gave way to windowed classroom doors. The lights were off in each one. Soon, the place would be full of kids and teachers with hardly a moment of inactivity. Schools were not meant to be empty. At times like this they seemed lonely and forlorn. Almost sacred, like empty churches.

  Ooh, Xander thought. School . . . sacred . . . Two words that did not belong together.

  He felt like a trespasser. Which, he guessed, they were. He had not asked to come here. In fact, you could say, he came by force. Besides, his dad was the principal. What were they going to do to him? This was one of those times he’d rather not find out.

  David asked, “Why the school, do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”