Three True Tales of Terror: A True Hauntings' Collection

by Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  So, we called the number in the ad and within half an hour the caretaker arrived and was letting us in. He was the owner’s brother-in-law and apparently oversaw the house while the owner lived and worked out of state.

  “There’s not a chance he’ll come back within the next few months and want his house back is there?” I asked, a little worried. I don’t know why I cared. It’s not like we were actually thinking about renting it.

  “No,” George, an older gentleman with an easygoing manner laughed. “He’s been gone for almost fifteen years. He probably won’t come back until he retires and that’s a long time off!”

  If it was possible, the house looked even better on the inside. The kitchen was massive, nearly the size of the small farmhouse Pete and I had rented when we first got married. It had everything a couple on “House Hunters” would want: granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, new cabinets…There were two separate bars in the kitchen, one with stools to make it a dine-in, but there was also a formal dining room as well with a glass chandelier.

  Two small parlors, a master bedroom with ensuite bath, half bath, and a large living room with cathedral ceilings made up the downstairs. The upstairs had four bedrooms, two full baths, and a very large family room with a pool table. Two of the upstairs bedrooms had doors that opened out onto the balconies we’d seen from outside. The master bedroom downstairs also had its own private outside seating area.

  It was easily one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. Without realizing it, I mentally began placing our furniture throughout the rooms and started decorating it before we even made it back outside.

  “Which room do I get, Mommy?” Sam asked.

  “Shhh,” I hissed. “We’ll talk about it later. We’re NOT renting it! We’re just looking. Looking with Nana.”

  We thanked George and drove back to my house in silence. When Mom finally turned off the engine I looked at her and said, “Well, I liked it.”

  Before the night was over, one of us had made the suggestion that we all move in together and share the expenses. I don’t know who came up with the idea first, but it seemed like a good one at the time.

  “We could do it,” Mom said quite seriously. “We’d have plenty of room there for all of us…”

  My mother was also renting and wasn’t completely satisfied with her house. It was a nice place, but it was located on the river and its proximity to the dark, muddy water made her nervous. (With good reason, as it turned out. Months after she moved the whole downstairs of her former house flooded.)

  She made good money herself and could have afforded the Maple House on her own. There’s no way we could have, of course. If we moved in together, however, we could help her with the bills and take some of the strain off and it wouldn’t be that much more than what we were currently paying.

  “You all could take the upstairs and I’d have the downstairs,” she suggested. “And then we’d share the kitchen.”

  I knew that meant I’d still do most of the cooking, Mom’s idea of making dinner is to call for reservations, but it sounded like it could work.

  It took a little more to convince Pete.

  “Do we really want to move?” he asked. “Were we even talking about moving? Why would we do this?”

  “No,” I answered, “we weren’t talking about moving. But we felt like a change and this might be good for us. It’s a beautiful house and Sam would love it there. The whole upstairs, which we’d have, is bigger than what we’ve got right now. I’ve never lived in a place like that before. And it’d even be cheaper since we’d be sharing bills with Mom. Maybe I could quit my job and freelance fulltime. I could finish my book and supplement through copywriting.”

  Over the past few months I’d been taking on more and more freelancing jobs, mostly writing content for people’s blogs and newsletters. While they’d only supplied me with some extra spending money so far, with more time on my hands and real dedication to the work there was a possibility of it becoming more like an actual career. I’d been thinking about that a lot over the past few weeks.

  “The summer’s coming up and your job slows down. If we were going to move, this would be the best time to do it,” I added.

  It was May.

  Eventually, we all came to the decision to just do it. Sam was ecstatic. Pete wasn’t. “I hate moving,” he grumbled. “We ought to just throw everything away and start from scratch.”

  But we did it. The move was long and hard and it was more difficult saying goodbye to our little ranch house than I thought it was going to be. We’d had some good times there and it was a cozy place, warm and inviting. It wasn’t the mini mansion the Maple House was, but it was the place where Sam learned to walk, where I experimented with recipes, where Sam and I had danced in the kitchen every night to my old record player, and where we’d talked about our dreams.

  The first night at the Maple House, the three of us slept on a mattress in what would eventually be our office/guest room upstairs since that was the only room that had any furniture in it. It was a restless night since we were getting used to a new place, but we were excited.

  Getting Settled

  Over the course of the next few weeks, we did our best to get moved, unpack, and settle in. Pete wasn’t anyone to let grass grow under his feet once he got into a new place. He wanted to be settled right away. Within days he had most of our part of the house unpacked and organized. It already felt lived in and comfortable.

  I bought bulbs and flowers and seeds and got to work on the outside. I dug up old beds and turned things over and planted like the dickens. Sam drove his little cars around, chased the cats, and played on the jungle gym. The downstairs was so big that he took to putting toys in his little shopping cart and pushing it around so that he could easily transport them from one room to another.

  I, myself, would forget just how big the house really was until I wanted a drink in the middle of the night and was in the office and had to first walk down one hall, then down the long steep flight of stairs, and then down the other long hall on the bottom floor. It literally took almost three whole minutes. Sometimes, I’d get down to the kitchen and forget what I was there for.

  Sam did thrive in his new surroundings. He was a happy child anyway, always giggling and smiling and ready to tell his little jokes. He was the light of all our lives. Up there on the mountaintop, he seemed to come alive even more. There, he could run around in the yard without being watched as closely. He collected rocks and picked wildflowers for me, we went for walks in the woods and picked out places we might like to set up our tents and camp in, and at night we sat on our front porch swing and watched the stars as we rocked back and forth and talked about all the good times to come there.

  I quit my job as a family therapist and began freelancing fulltime as planned. Pete would take Sam to preschool in the mornings and I would work during the nights and sleep in until about noon. I worked better at night with everyone asleep and with Sam gone during the day I could sleep in. It was much easier finding work and clients when I didn’t have my other job limiting my time and I soon had my hands full.

  I noticed a difference in our family life almost immediately. I was more relaxed and happier. In the evenings we’d rent movies and watch them together on the couch in the living room or lounge on the sofa in the family room, playing board games. I started experimenting with new recipes and took my time cooking meals now that I didn’t feel as rushed. Sam would help me, dragging his little stool up to the counter and helping me stir batter and soups and season vegetables.

  We’d been in the house for about a month when Pete returned home one morning, upset. I heard him stomping around downstairs when he should have been at work and I went down to make sure everything was okay.

  “My car died,” he muttered. “Just stopped in the middle of our road. Your mom gave me a ride back.”

  “What do you think happened?” I asked. It was an old Dodge Dynasty, but it had served us well for
a long time as a second vehicle. Frankly, I was surprised it had lasted as long as it did.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I need to call a tow truck or get back over there and try to get it home. I pulled it over onto someone’s grass so I need to do something soon.”

  He went back about an hour later, but the car was gone. The property owners had called a wrecker themselves and our car was hauled to a salvage yard. “So much for people being friendlier in the country,” I grumbled.

  The salvage yard was so far out of town that it would have cost us nearly $100 to have it towed to a mechanic, not to mention the $100 it was going to take to get it out. In the end, the guy paid us $50 to let him scrap it. I cried a little, saying goodbye to it. I’m sentimental that way.

  Losing the Dodge put us down to one vehicle which meant I didn’t have one when he left for work every day. We couldn’t afford to buy another one, especially since I was still making payments on mine. I rarely left the house during the day anyway, but I liked having the option of being able to leave.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t need to get out and go anywhere. When we get our tax refund we’ll find something cheap and get another one.” I tried not to think about the fact that it was only June and that was almost seven months away.

  Two months later, my mother’s car also stalled on our road and this left her without a vehicle. She ended up taking Sam to preschool, Pete to work, and then herself to work. Organizing the schedules was a little bit like a brain teaser. It was not a good summer for our cars and we cursed our bad luck.

  “Oh well,” I sighed after Mom’s quit. “It could be worse, I guess.”

  We had no idea.

  The Music

  I can’t remember when the music started. I’ve tried and tried to piece it together in my mind, but those early weeks and months blend together. All in all, we only lived in the Maple House for two years. I should remember everything that happened right down to the week, or at least the month. But things get blurry after awhile. That’s especially true after people started dying.

  The music was the first real scare, though. That’s when I started paying attention. The cars were annoying; the music made me sit up and listen.

  I never played music at night. I never left the television on. I don’t like having too much distraction going while I’m writing. Occasionally, I’ll let music play during the daytime but I get really involved in the music and on more than one occasion I’ve actually started typing the lyrics instead of the sentence I’m meant to be writing. That’s generally not a good thing.

  So the first time I heard the soft, low melody I assumed it was my mother downstairs. Maybe she had the radio on or maybe she was underneath me, watching television. She got up to use the bathroom a lot during the night and she often had trouble going back to sleep so it wasn’t implausible to think she might have popped in a movie or something.

  I don’t know how many nights I listened to the sounds before they truly registered with me. They were just there, fading in with the rest of the noises one has to get used to when moving into a new place.

  One night, however, I realized that the voices floating in and out of my consciousness were not in English. They were low, rhythmic, almost chanting. The musicality was not something I would have called modern. A slow and steady drumbeat accompanied the voices and intermittently I’d hear a flute or a wind instrument I couldn’t put my finger on. Sometimes, it would be quick and up-tempo. Other times, it would be soft and sad, even melancholy, and I’d stop typing and sit back and listen, straining my ears to try and catch the words. They were always just a little bit out of my grasp, however–so close to me and yet just out of reach.

  It became a game to wrap my mind around what I was hearing. I’d patiently and wait and listen for the music, straining my ears and mind to latch onto the noises. When they’d begin I’d stop typing, hold my breath, and steady my heartbeat, feeling like the slightest movement on my end would make it all go away. I was becoming obsessed with the strange sounds, intent on determining their source and what they meant.

  One evening, I became so wrapped up in the gentle, somber tones that despite the chills that raced up my arms my eyes filled with tears and I cried as though I missed something I couldn’t even put my finger on. There was an aching in my heart that made it hurt, a gentle ache that wasn’t even that unwelcomed.

  It was at that point I got up and went down the stairs, fully expecting to see my mom sitting in front of the television set or listening to a recording I didn’t know we had.

  The living room was empty.

  As I lightly knocked on her bedroom door and then opened it, I saw that she was sitting up in bed, turned to her window. The moonlight fell across her figure and she wasn’t moving. She stayed as still as a stone, her head cocked at angle.

  She was listening as well.

  “You hear that?” she whispered without looking in my direction.

  I crept toward the middle of the room and gently climbed up on the bed with her.

  “The music?” I whispered back. “I thought that was you.”

  “And I thought it was you,” she said.

  “Is this the first time you’ve heard it?”

  “No, I’ve been hearing it a long time. I just assumed you were upstairs listening to the radio.”

  “I don’t have anything on up there,” I explained.

  “That’s not all I’ve heard,” my mom said, continuing to keep her voice soft. “One night I heard you and Pete upstairs on your balcony, talking. I could almost make out what you were saying.”

  Now this really startled me and I could feel the chills returning and popping up on the back of my neck. I had only been on our balcony once, and that was the day we moved in. On that particular occasion, we’d seen a rather large hornet’s nest. I had informed Pete that I would not be going back out there until he removed it. I didn’t do hornets.

  “Uh, that wasn’t us,” I said.

  “But I heard you,” she insisted.

  “Mom, I’ve been working. Pete goes to bed way before me. I don’t go until daylight.” I was frustrated that this didn’t seem to have an easy explanation and Mom was still convinced that it was us making the noise and not realizing it.

  Not ones to let anything go, we decided to investigate. She got up and the two of us took a little walk through the house. The music was weak, but still faintly audible. “Maybe it’s echoing down from the valley,” I said. “We are up on a mountain.”

  So, we opened the front door and stepped outside. It was quiet, save for a few crickets and frogs. We stood there for a moment, neither one of us speaking, and listened. It was peaceful there on the porch, what with the night symphony going on around us. It felt oddly comforting knowing that we were surrounded by the sounds nature made each night. But our song wasn’t there. It wasn’t outside.

  The minute we closed the door, however, and were back inside the house the music started up again. It was in the house.

  “I don’t know,” Mom sighed at last, dropping to the couch in frustration. “At least it’s pretty.”

  Having had experiences with the paranormal in the past, however, I was concerned. The music was pretty, but it was unsettling. I’d never heard anything so plainly before, at least not for such an extended period of time–at least something that wasn’t meant to be there.

  I’d heard fleeting sounds, sounds that rushed by quickly and were over with almost as soon as they started, but this lingered. It was different, intentional. I felt like it wanted to be heard.

  This unnerved me.

  At times I would sit in my office chair, pillows underneath me to raise me up to the desktop, and stare into the darkness off my balcony. I’d listen to the reverberations to try and expound them in some way.

  What did they mean? Why were we hearing them? Were they just leftover energy the house or land was remembering? Was there really a ghostly band somewhere, keeping up with a beat it couldn’
t forget?

  Pete, who was always asleep when the music played, was untouched by this phenomena. He’d never had a paranormal experience and while he believed us, he wasn’t helpful. I couldn’t talk to him about what was going on because he simply had no frame of reference for it. I tried to wake him up on many occasions to get him to listen but Pete was an incredibly sound sleeper. Even after waking up it took him at least half an hour to become lucid. By the time I roused him and got him awake enough to be coherent the music was always gone. On the occasions he tried to stay up and listen for it himself, it never came.

  Jim

  The house, with its isolation and decks and porches and large kitchen and dining areas was perfect for parties and entertaining. And entertain we did.

  It was possible to play our music at any level we wanted, sing, and carry on into the wee hours of the morning without any neighbors complaining because, well, there really weren’t any neighbors to complain. We had two big parties that summer and the second one that celebrated the end of the season was one many of us will never forget.

  The first party was all about the food and introducing people to the house. We were excited to have our friends, Ashley and Jim, over. Jim was particularly enamored of the house and the scenery at first and couldn’t say enough about how beautiful it was.

  “If you want another roommate, you know who to call,” he kidded as he walked through the rooms, opening doors and peeking into all the cabinets.

  “Seriously,” I agreed. “Can you believe we live in a place like this? And I don’t even feel like I have a real job half the time. This must be how rich people feel!”

  I was trying to spend more time working on my fiction. I was attempting to learn better time management skills, too. It was hard, because I would do anything to procrastinate, but I wanted to finish some of the novels I’d started years ago. Money was tight but we were happy and I was being more productive than I’d ever been as far as my writing was concerned. I truly felt like if I could see something through and really make a commitment then we might be on the right track to something great.