The Piper

by Lynn Hightower

  ‘And after that she started worrying about Annette. She could not sleep, she had to do certain things, or something awful would happen to her little sister. She was frantic some nights sitting up in her bed, rocking back and forth, trying to stay awake.’

  Olivia put a hand on Charlotte’s arm. ‘Don’t you think it might have been some kind of aftershock, from being so sick, having to go to the hospital for all those tests? From being afraid she was really sick, that she was going to die?’

  Charlotte nodded. ‘I did think that. For a while. I wanted to take her in for counseling, but Chris said it wouldn’t do any good. He stopped talking to me, he just kept losing weight, then . . . then one night, we were all asleep, and the attic fan came on. It was so weird. It switched on all by itself in the middle of the night.

  ‘We were all creeped out, but Janet was hysterical. She said it was some kind of a warning, and something was going to happen that was really bad. That there were voices that told her horrible things when she was alone. Chris sat up with her all night, she didn’t want me, just her dad. Janet said that only her father understood. And he held her, and told her over and over that it was just a glitch in the electrical switch of the attic fan, that she was not to worry, that he would take care of things, that everything would be okay. The next day he went out and found us this house. And he made us move.’

  ‘Did he explain at all?’ Olivia said.

  ‘He said he was a danger to us. Which was crazy, it didn’t make any sense. And when I tried to push him on it he . . . he cried.’

  ‘Chris never cried,’ Olivia said flatly. ‘Not even when he was ten years old and dropped a manhole cover on his foot.’

  ‘He cried, Livie. So I said fine, we’ll all go together. But he wouldn’t come with us. He said he had to deal with things. That afterwards, we could all live together again.’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘He never would say.’ Charlotte ran a hand through her hair.

  ‘And Janet? Is she okay now?’

  ‘She’s fine. Perfect health, no more nightmares. The only thing is when we were at the visitation, right before Chris’s funeral. I found her in a corner, by herself, crying, and she told me it should have been her who died.’

  Olivia put her arms around Charlotte and gave her a long hard hug. ‘Charlotte, what a terrible terrible thing for all of you to go through. No wonder you’re upset. No wonder you can’t bear to go inside that house.’

  Charlotte pulled away. ‘Chris was so happy when he found out you were coming home to Knoxville. He was so upset when you and Hugh got divorced, so worried about you on your own, and losing your job. I know you were worried about him, I know you were coming home to look after Chris, but he wanted to look out for you. He’d want me to look out for you too.’

  ‘Which you’re doing, Charlotte. By letting us stay with you till we get moved in. By offering to pick Teddy up after school when you get your girls, and letting her stay till I get off work. You have no idea what a relief it is for me, to have family here, and not be so alone.’

  ‘It’s a relief for me too. I’m so glad you came home, Olivia. It helps to have someone here who misses Chris like the girls and I do.’

  Olivia nodded and smiled and thought about the phone call. She had always planned to tell Charlotte about it, thinking it would be a comfort, but that would have to wait. Her sister-in-law was too emotional, too frayed, too raw. Charlotte might look okay on the outside, but clearly, she was still a mess.

  ‘Listen to me, now, Charlotte. Before Janet got sick, were you and Chris okay? Were you happy in that house?’

  Charlotte looked very tired. ‘Yes, we were, and I get what you’re telling me.’

  ‘You had a rough year. Your daughter got sick. Your husband died. It isn’t the house, it’s just . . . life. Don’t forget I grew up there. That for me, it’s my childhood home.’

  Charlotte cocked her head to one side. ‘Were you never afraid there, when you were a little girl?’

  ‘Never. Not once.’

  SIX

  Olivia spent the next week moving into the house, getting acclimated to the new office, and, in the little spare time she had, roaming the city like a ghost, haunting her past life. In the evenings, just before dinner, after she picked Teddy up from Charlotte’s house, they would take small detours into the past on their way back home. Standing on the sidewalk in front of the Bearden Kroger’s with a little half smile, telling Teddy how her family had done the weekly shopping there every Friday night, buying sausages in the deli, and each of them picking out their favorite box of cookies. Chris, invariably, Pecan Sandies, Emily, the powdery white wedding cookies, Olivia always dithering between Oreos and Devil’s Food.

  She took Teddy down to the river and showed her the tree where she’d gotten stuck when she was four, the hood of her little blue jacket caught on a branch while she dangled what seemed an enormous distance over the ground. Olivia had loved trees then and she loved trees now, and she had always been better at climbing up, and bad at climbing down. She had driven her siblings crazy on walks in the park, insisting on hugging her favorite trees.

  Chris had pushed at the bottom of her little red Keds – even then she had loved red best – threatening to dislodge her hood from the branch and catch her when she fell, but she had not cried. Nor had she threatened to tell, the usual power base of the youngest child. She was not above such things, but she was not stupid, and crying or telling would mean that the next time something interesting happened, she might get left behind. Her mother swore her first word had been mine, the second move, and her first sentence wait for me.

  With the carefully honed wisdom of the baby child, Olivia had simply said she was fine where she was, thank you very much, and clasped her hands, and sung quietly to herself, until Chris had finally climbed the tree, grabbed her roughly around the waist, and passed her down to Emily. They kept it to themselves, the three of them. Even in those days, when children were left to themselves in cars while their mothers shopped and allowed to roam the neighborhood, they were not supposed to be in the park.

  There were strangers in the park. The Mister Man. The childhood bogey who had come true one day and taken Emily away.

  Far from being bored with these mundane nostalgic trips, Teddy egged Olivia on, so that each night they arrived home later and later. Almost as if Teddy dreaded going home.

  At night, after Teddy went to bed, and sometimes, quite honestly, at the office when she was supposed to be doing her work, Olivia roamed the Internet, haunting the paranormal websites. She found a wealth of phone call incidents, personal accounts of relatives calling after they were dead, some of it linked to electronic voice phenomena, most stories more comforting than anything else. Whether you believed them or not, the calls seemed to be about telling people that death was not the end, that their loved ones were somehow still close.

  Olivia knew that she was one of legions of people roaming the Internet late at night, paying psychics for readings, talking to priests, haunting bookstores and libraries, all of them wanting the same thing – relief from a pain that stretched on forever, some alternative to the brutal severing of someone you loved from your life, an unwillingness to accept how bad it could all feel. The research was dangerously seductive. It felt more important than the drudgery of day in and day out things. Olivia had spent more hours than she liked to tally up, reading story after story, crying a little over the grandmothers who reached out from beyond the grave to troubled teenage grandchildren, the aged parents who sent comfort from the afterlife to grown children in stress. The children who had died but wanted their parents to know that it had been their time and their plan, and they would all be together some day. Those were the stories Olivia liked reading. She hadn’t run across any stories about a warning call from the dead, though she had not tried all that hard. Having that call from Chris, knowing he was somehow and some way okay, had given her a peace she had not thought possible. Peace was all she wanted
right now, she craved comfort and nothing else.

  Olivia found the holy water after they’d been in the house for a week, when she was down in the basement, changing over the laundry.

  The basement was the only part of the house she hated. Footsteps echoed on the backless, dirt encrusted steps. The light switch was weirdly located halfway down the wall, the traditional horror story naked bulb hanging from a wire in the center of the room. Orange rust stains on the floor let you know where the water trailed in during heavy rain, and the heating and air unit was older than God, with a metal filter she would have to take out and wash by hand.

  The layout was a maze of half walls put up by Chris and her dad many years ago, when the foundation started to sag, creating crawl spaces and dark corners. Chris and Charlotte had left a variety of junk, including an old washer and dryer that weren’t hooked up to anything, but created a nice ambience along the back section of the wall.

  Olivia had her back turned when a stack of boxes toppled and fell with a crash, three of them splitting open and spewing her collection of old tax records onto the damp concrete floor. Something had broken, Olivia heard the shatter of glass.

  She stared at the boxes, and set her laundry basket of dirty towels on top of the washing machine.

  ‘Mommy, are you okay?’

  Olivia jumped and looked up. ‘Teddy? What are you doing down here? I thought you were in the backyard, with Winston.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘I didn’t even hear you come down.’ Olivia looked at her daughter, who pushed her glasses back up on her nose and clasped her arms behind her back. ‘Why were you rooting in those boxes? Those are old financial records, you don’t need to be getting into those, and now look at this godawful mess. And I am sick and damn tired of packing and unpacking boxes.’

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ Teddy said.

  Olivia put her hands on her hips. Closed her eyes and counted to ten.

  ‘I think something broke,’ Teddy said in a soft little voice, bunching the hem of her shirt in a fist.

  ‘I heard it,’ Olivia said.

  She headed for the mess, looking for the shine of broken glass. The movers had stacked the boxes neatly on wood pallets, in the only corner of the basement that was swept clean. Olivia saw the wet spot near the water heater, and saw the glint of a thick shard of glass. She crouched down to take a look.

  The boxes had knocked over a jam jar of clear water someone had set behind the stairs. The front of the jar had a label on the front where someone had handwritten Holy Water.

  Olivia sat back on her heels. She was not a Catholic, and as far as she knew, neither were Charlotte or Chris. It was a nervous thing, finding this jar of holy water hidden away in her basement. Who would put it there, and why?

  ‘What broke, Mommy?’

  ‘Nothing. Have you finished your homework, Teddy?’

  ‘Everything but math.’

  ‘Then go and do the math.’

  Teddy trudged away, then sat down heavily on the bottom step and put her head on her knees.

  ‘What’s the matter, Teddy? It’s okay, I’m not mad at you about the boxes.’

  ‘It’s scary here, without a daddy in the house.’

  ‘Why don’t you get your homework finished, and then call your dad?’

  ‘Janet says this house is haunted. Janet says it’s not safe.’

  Olivia gritted her teeth. ‘Janet is telling you stories to scare you, which is mean, but it’s something big kids do. I’ll talk to Charlotte and make her stop.’

  ‘I didn’t touch those boxes, Mommy. There was no reason for them to fall down. Are you scared here, Mommy?’

  ‘No, I am not.’

  SEVEN

  When Olivia tried to kiss Teddy good night, Teddy pushed her away.

  ‘No good night kiss?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘You think I knocked those boxes over, don’t you? You think I tell lies.’

  ‘And do you?’ Olivia heard her phone ringing downstairs. ‘We’ll talk about this later,’ she said, running down the steps. Since the mysterious call from Chris, she had been frantic not to miss a call. Her phone was on the table in the sunroom, Amelia’s number on the caller ID.

  ‘Amelia,’ Olivia said.

  ‘You sound out of breath.’

  ‘I had to run for the phone. Is everything okay with you? How’s Marianne holding up?’

  ‘She’s losing ground inch but inch, but they’re still keeping her propped up. How is it going for you?’

  ‘Bad day. Teddy told me a lie about knocking over some boxes, and she’s upset anyway – her cousins are telling her creepy stories about the house.’

  ‘That’s mean.’ Amelia sounded distracted.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ Olivia said.

  ‘The thing is, I’ve been doing more research. On phone calls. Like you got from your brother.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. Are you as obsessed with this as I am? I’m spending way too much time on the Internet with this.’

  ‘Did you find the one about the Metro link crash?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, listen. Do you remember when that Metro link commuter train in LA collided with the freight train? It was 2008, September, I think.’

  ‘Oh, God yes, the Chatsworth crash. Didn’t you go into the ER that night?’

  ‘Yeah, everyone did who could. There are only two trauma centers in the San Fernando Valley, and they were swamped. Twenty-five people were killed in the crash, something like a hundred thirty injured.’

  ‘I remember that. The engineer missed a signal, right, because he was texting?’

  ‘Who knows what really caused it. The thing is – there was this passenger on the train – he worked for Delta in Salt Lake City, and was in Los Angeles for a job interview, because his fiancée lived in California and he wanted a transfer. She was actually on her way to pick him up at the Moorpark Station when she heard about the crash.’

  ‘God. How terrible.’

  ‘He called her, Livie. It’s all documented. He had two grown sons, and his family was together waiting to find out if he survived the crash. We’re talking about a fiancée, two sons, a brother and sister, stepmom. The first call was to the fiancée, I think.’

  ‘The first call?’

  ‘The caller ID showed this guy’s number. And when his fiancée answered, all she could hear was static. And then one of the sons gets a call. Then all their cell phones start ringing and eventually all of them get calls. They try to call him back, because all they get is static on the line, but when they call back, the calls just go to voice mail.’

  Olivia shivered. Please tell me this ends well, she thought. ‘So he was injured then? Calling for help?’

  ‘That’s what his family thought. So they get with the rescue workers, who start tracing the signal from his phone, trying to locate him in the wreckage. It’s carnage there, remember. The emergency services are overwhelmed. But for a period of eleven hours, this family keeps getting his calls. Thirty-five calls in all, Livie, all documented. Then at three twenty-eight a.m., all the calls stop.’

  ‘Did they save him?’ Olivia said.

  ‘They found him one hour after the calls stopped, twelve hours after the crash. According to the coroner, he died instantly, on impact – the Metro link engine car got shoved back into the first passenger car, he never had a chance.’

  ‘Are you telling me he was dead when he made the calls? Because maybe he was hurt and called till he died, or somebody else was using his phone.’

  ‘Nope. They traced the phone signal to where his body was, in the first car, so nobody else had the phone. And the autopsy confirmed that he wasn’t alive after the crash. All of the calls came in after he died.’

  Olivia paced the living room. ‘I don’t know, Amelia. It sort of has that urban legend flavor.’

  ‘Look it up yourself. I found stories in the LA Times, and the whole incident has a true and authenticated status on SNOPES.’

 
; ‘SNOPES?’

  ‘That website, Livie. You know, the one that checks out urban legends and those dumb-ass warning emails people forward. But they authenticate this story. And I think this guy was trying to tell his family goodbye, that he loved them and all that jazz.’

  Olivia sat down. ‘Yeah, I hear you. And I do think you’re right – I’ve been doing my own research and I can believe he was telling his family that he was somehow okay, trying to comfort them and give them peace. Don’t you think that’s why Chris called? To comfort me, and let me know he’s okay?’

  ‘Partly. But he was warning you too, Liv.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, you told me, and I wish you’d just let it go.’

  ‘Let it go? Don’t go into that southern denial thing, Livie. Think about what he said – The Mister Man. That was your nickname for whoever took your sister, twenty-five years ago. Maybe he’s around.’

  ‘After twenty-five years? You know what, Amelia, I don’t tell people about Emily, and this is the main reason why. To you, it’s a scary story, to me it’s real life and real hell.’

  ‘That’s not fair. I do understand. And I’m a good enough friend to tell you what you need to hear instead of what you want to hear.’

  ‘The Queen of Tough Love. If you want to be a good friend, Amelia, don’t bring Emily up again. It’s private and it’s painful and unless you’ve been through it you can’t know anything about what it’s like.’