by John Langan
The doorknob clicked. We hadn't locked it. I was forever telling Roger we should, especially with living in one of the biggest houses in town—but he insisted there was no reason to. Huguenot wasn't that kind of place. From time to time, I at least locked the doorknob, if not the deadbolt, but not today. I doubt it would have mattered anyway. Creaking faintly on its hinges, the front door swung open and Ted stepped into the house. He'd knocked not to request, but to announce.
This wasn't the first time he'd been inside Belvedere House since he'd died—I'd been aware of him on a couple of occasions. It was, however, the first time he'd entered this deliberately—this theatrically—and when the house was in however you'd describe this state—dissolution? Everything was quiet. Ted was there, no mistaking it. I couldn't see him—thankfully—but I could feel him so strongly, it was as if I could, this ruined shape orbited by shrapnel. He was taking a look around, surveying the front hallway as if assessing the way I'd redecorated it. Although I was certain he could see me where I was, I held my breath, trying not to make a sound while a fresh surge of extreme vertigo tried to push me off my feet and my palm sang with pain. I knew it wouldn't work, yet when I heard the floorboards shifting as he walked towards the second-floor stairs, and then the sharp moans of the stairs as he climbed them, I almost fainted with terror. He wasn't in a hurry, but he wasn't taking his time, either.
This is it, I thought. The words chased each other around my brain. This is it this is it this is it. Ted had returned as he'd been unable to previously. What had started with his first visit to us was going to be completed by his second.
He was almost at the top of the stairs. My nerves shrieked at the proximity. I had to move. There was no way I wanted to be standing here when he arrived. Move! I told myself, Move! My feet stayed where they were. Ted's presence had overloaded the channels that should have carried messages from my brain to the rest of my body. Move! I thought, while, This is it, continued to play like an idiot mantra. One more stair to go—
I grabbed the doorknob to my left, pulled the door open, threw myself into the room beyond, and hauled the door closed behind me so hard it bounced open again, sending me racing frantically after it. Ted's footsteps hurried up the hall as I caught the door, swung it closed, and fumbled with the lock. It was one of those push-in ones, that you have to press forward and twist in order to secure, and as Ted drew nearer, I couldn't get the thing to catch. He was right on the other side of the door, his presence loud as a thunderstorm. The lock took, and I clasped my hands to my head. Ted's feelings roared against me, pain like a mouthful of razor blades, rage like a sea full of icebergs heaving into one another, and underneath them, an eagerness that was maybe the most powerful of the three, an anticipation sharp and jagged as broken glass. I crouched down, hands pressed against my temples as if to keep my head from flying apart. Scratch the "as if": with Ted that near, it was like standing next to a jet engine. You aren't sure what's going to get you first, the noise or the flame, but there's no doubt something will.
The door—I had to back away from the door, put what space I could between myself and Ted. I was sitting on the floor. I kicked against the door, pushing myself across the floor like a kid playing a game. I continued to retreat that way until the foot of the guest room bed caught me in the back. All the time, my eyes did not leave that door. In a way, it was—on the level where Ted existed, there were no walls. Whatever might appear to be standing to either side of the guest room's door; however solid its pale-blue surface might seem, there was nothing. Where there should have been drywall and wood beams and insulation and wiring, there were openings to nowhere, one to the right of the door, one to the left. None of the other walls were any more substantial. All that was reasonably solid was the door. The whole thing was like some kind of avant-garde theatrical set, the freestanding door with the bed on one side to represent a room. As far as I could tell as I climbed up onto the bed and kept moving backwards, there was literally nothing to keep Ted from going around either side of the door.
He didn't, though. For I don't know how long, he stood in the hallway, the absolute-zero burn of what he was, raging into the room. I'd closed the shutters, so to speak, locked the doors and windows, but the paint blistered and sloughed off; the wood charred and started to smoke; the glass clouded and bubbled. I was trapped. The guestroom was cut off from Ted's childhood room to my right, and the bathroom to my left. There was a decent-sized closet in here, but I had no desire to trap myself in a smaller, more confined and therefore more vulnerable space.
Ted banged on the door. I jumped and tried to squeeze myself into the corner the bed abutted. Ted hammered on the door. The wood leapt under his assault. At this rate, the door would give way in a minute, maybe less. I looked around desperately for a weapon, which was a laugh. How was I going to hit someone whose very appearance would blast what remained of my mind into oblivion? There was nothing, anyway. Even if I'd wanted to throw a blanket over him and run past him into the hall, the bed was bare.
The noise was deafening. The door groaned, leaned in toward me. Not now, I thought, not now. I've learned so much! That's how it goes in these kinds of narratives, isn't it? You gather the information, digest it, and use it to resolve the situation, i.e. defeat the monster. This was too soon. I needed another day or two to sift through what I'd learned and come up with a plan. I guess Ted had watched enough horror movies to want to pre-empt that plot. Either that, or I'd already had my chance with Roger, and what was happening was the result of my failure to fulfill the requirements for a happy ending by now.
The knocking stopped. I stayed where I was, positive that Ted was preparing for a final attack on the door that would splinter it into kindling. It was probably as close as I'd ever been to death—the most serious circumstance in which I'd found myself—but none of the thoughts you'd expect to rush to the fore were anywhere to be found. I'd always assumed I'd make a deathbed conversion—or re-conversion—to Catholicism. Say a quick Act of Contrition: Sorry, God, hope there's no hard feelings. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd planned my repentance, but that isn't too far from the truth.
With Ted about to burst into the room and do who knew what to me, however, last-minute reconciliation with the Almighty was the least of my concerns. To be frank, it wasn't really a concern at all. I was caught—suspended where I was, all my energies focused on the conflagration on the other side of the door. I wasn't even that concerned about what was going to happen to me. I knew it would be unimaginably horrible, Ted's revenge for whatever he thought my role in all this had been. I was in a state of almost complete anticipation.
As I was poised, I heard something, a new sound—Roger's voice, sounding as far away as Ted's knocking on the front door had. He was calling my name, a question mark at the end of it. "Is that you?" he said. "I thought I heard knocking." He was at the top of the third-floor stairs, which sent up their own chorus of groans as he started down them, still saying my name.
At his approach, Ted—faded. He didn't disappear. It was more as if he stepped around one of the new corners the house contained and concealed himself. The effect on me, on my nerves—you know what it's like on a hot, sunny day, when a cloud slips in front of the sun? If the air cools at all, it's only by a degree, but you welcome the respite from that constant downpour of light and heat all the same.
Roger's footsteps carried him past my door, my name dopplering as he went. He paused at the top of the stairs, shouted down them for me, waited, then returned along the hallway. On his way, he noticed the guest room door closed and paused. He tried the handle. Despite myself, my stomach squeezed. "Is anyone in there?" he asked. "Veronica? Is that you?" He thumped on the door. "Hello?"
"It's me," I said.
"Veronica?"
"Yes."
"What's the matter? Is something wrong?"
I didn't know how to answer that.
"Is everything all right?"
"No."
"No? Well—can you open
the door?"
That was a good question. Maybe not the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, but good nonetheless. Ted was lurking nearby, much, much too close for any kind of comfort. On the other hand, so long as Roger was around, he appeared to need to keep his distance. The curse, for once working to my advantage. I didn't want to send Roger away any sooner than was absolutely necessary. "Hold on," I said.
"What is it?" Roger asked when he saw me.
"Ted."
Hope and suspicion flitted across his face. "What do you mean?"
"I mean Ted is here—in the house. He's very, very close."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Because he just spent the last five minutes trying to break the door down. That was the banging you heard."
Roger frowned. "Why would Ted do that?"
"You tell me."
"Is this—did you see him?"
"No."
"Then what makes you so sure it's Ted?"
"I can feel him," I said. "Trust me, Roger, it's Ted. Who else would it be?"
"I haven't the slightest idea. Since you didn't actually see Ted, however—"
"For God's sake—what do you think, that some new ghost is going to stroll in, now? 'Oh, hey, I hear the haunting's good here.' Will you listen to yourself?"
"All right. What does he want?"
"To scare the crap out of me. How should I know?"
"And you think he's near?"
"It's not a matter of thinking, Roger. I know it."
"Where is he?"
"Close. He's just out of sight."
"Where?" Roger asked, throwing his hands out right and left. "Is he here? Or here?" He turned around. "Is he lurking behind me?" He looked up, down. "Is he on the ceiling? Under the floor?"
"It isn't like that." How to explain everything to him? "The house is different. It's changed—I think Ted has changed it. Things aren't as—solid as they used to be. There are new spaces in it, places where Ted can remove himself and watch us."
"You're asking me to take a lot on faith, Veronica."
This was ridiculous. "How can you say that, after everything that's happened to us? I've never lied to you. I've always been straight with you. What do you think, that was me hammering on the door? And then what? When I heard you coming, I hurried and locked myself in the guest room? What's the sense in that?"
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do. You do know. You don't want to admit it, but you do. You're such a coward. I never realized that before, but you are. You're the biggest coward I've ever met."
"Now wait one minute," Roger said, but I lost the rest of his sentence because Ted chose that moment to reappear. From whatever oblique angle he'd chosen to conceal himself, he walked out into the open, looming over Roger's shoulder. I had barely enough warning—my awareness of him spiking—to cover my face and twist away. As it was, the little I'd glimpsed—less than in the diner: the edge of a cheek threaded with what might have been barbed wire—was enough to set a flock of screams loose from my throat.
"Veronica!" Roger said. "What is it? What's wrong? What are you seeing?"
"Ted!" I screamed, hands pressed as tightly over my eyes as those of any six-year-old trying not to see the monster in the closet. "It's Ted!"
"Ted?" he said, as if this were the first he'd heard of the idea. "But—how can that be?"
This close to Ted, my mind was a shack in an earthquake. "Make him go away! For God's sake, make him leave! Please!"
"Ted?" Roger said, turning. "Is that you? Ted? Son?"
"He's right there! Can't you see him? Can't you see anything?"
"No," Roger said. "I—wait—at the other end of the hall—what? Hold on, I'm—Ted? Is that you?" Before I could tell him not to, Roger was running for the stairs to the first floor, shouting, "Ted?" as he went.
"Roger!" I yelled, "Don't leave me!"
There was no reply, only the clatter of his feet on the stairs, the diminishing sound of his calls.
I backpedaled into the guest room. Ted's presence roared around me. I struck a wall, something that jabbed me in the kidney—the closet door. Ted's feet scuffed on the threshold as he stepped into the room. Eyes still closed and covered with one hand, I fumbled for the doorknob with the other, struggling to resist the temptation that had raised itself—more a compulsion to drop my hand from my eyes, open them, and meet my fate. There was no way I was coming out of this. The best I was doing was delaying the inevitable. My arm trembled. An awful fascination, to look at Ted directly, to see him as he truly was, despite the consequences—almost because of the consequences—joined the temptation. He was no more than five steps away, moving with the pace of a man who has all the time in the world. When the closet door popped open, I forced myself inside. So much for avoiding the smaller, more confined, and therefore more vulnerable space. I grabbed the doorknob with both hands and braced my feet against the frame. What would it be like? a little voice asked somewhere in my head. What would it be like to surrender, to stop trying to prop up your mind and just let it crumble?
The door shuddered as Ted smashed into it. Apparently, he'd decided it would be more fun to break the door down than it would be to tear it open, which he could have done easily. I wasn't exactly Sheena, queen of the jungle. For the instant that we were both in contact with the door, I—my body—it was like being plunged into a vat of liquid nitrogen. The jolt was enough that my mind stopped. There was a stutter in the film, and then Ted was crashing into it again. Another stutter, and the doorknob almost yanked itself out of my hands. Stutter, and the door banged so hard it flung me back, through a curtain of dresses I'd hung in here until I could sort through them and decide which were going to the Salvation Army. Several of them dropped onto me, and as Ted struck the door and I heard mixed in with the Wham! the creak of wood starting to part from itself, I struggled to pull the dresses off me. My dinner churned at the back of my mouth. When Ted hit the door this time, the wood moaned. I freed myself from the last dress, hung onto the heavy coat hanger that had supported it, and scrambled for the back of the closet. If ever there was a time to discover the house had secret passageways, this was it. At least the closet was deeper than I'd remembered.
On the other side of the line of dresses, there was a pause. The doorknob turned, clicked, and light spilled into the closet. He'd tricked me, the son of a bitch had convinced me he was intent on bursting through the door so I'd keep my distance and all he had to do was reach for the handle. His silhouette filled the doorway, and I swear, even obscured by the light and the clothes, there was something about Ted—about his shape—that was so wrong, so fundamentally off, that the dinner I was already struggling to keep down came bubbling up out of my mouth in one long stream.
There was no time for wiping my mouth. Ted's outline shifted and he entered the closet. Before he'd completed that move, I was on my feet and running as fast as my legs would carry me in the opposite direction. By all rights, that should have slammed me into the back of the closet immediately. I should have knocked the wind out of myself and fallen to the floor, pretty much at Ted's feet. Instead, the closet kept going—went on and on, its walls forming the sides of a corridor down which I sprinted. Yes, part of me was thinking, This is impossible. How can this be happening? But it was too far removed from my feet pounding on the floor, arms pistoning, to have any effect.
There was light ahead, a single bulb set in the ceiling. By its dull glow, I saw that the walls had gone from the unfinished wood of the closet's interior to something like sheetrock. They'd been painted creamy white a long time ago. Huge patches had since fallen off and lay crumbled across the wooden floor. What remained was mapped by cracks. Where the walls were bare—what was underneath was dark. There was no time to stop and examine it. Ted was behind me, a storm nipping at my heels. I ran under the bulb and saw what looked like a door ahead.
A second later, I was through it. Or—not through it so much as caught in it. It was as if—it was like running into a more su
bstantial version of the membrane that had coated me the day before—as if the air had turned to taffy. Everything slowed down. I was looking at a room I'd never seen before. It was a living room, but of a house substantially smaller than Belvedere House. Its walls were the same off-white as the stretch of corridor behind me, only slightly less riddled with cracks. To my left, sunlight streamed through a pair of dirty windows. Across from me, there was what looked like an old radio, a heavy brown box flanked by a pair of armchairs whose floral prints had seen better days, as had that on the loveseat under the windows. There was a sewing basket next to one of the chairs, and a bottle of amber liquid poorly concealed behind the other. To my right, an upright piano clustered with framed black-and-white photos stood on the near side of a doorway. The air was brown with unfiltered cigarette smoke. Through the doorway beside the piano, I heard voices—one voice, really, raised and shouting, "Don't you walk away from me, mister!"