The Barrens House

by S. August Thalmann

  Danny’s mom gave him a hug. “Good,” she said. “We’re all in this together you know.”

  “I know,” Danny said. “Thanks for the pancakes. They’re great.” He picked up another and walked out of the kitchen. “I’m going up to my room for a while.”

  “Hey, Danny,” his mom called after him. Danny came back to the kitchen.

  “Yeah, mom?”

  “Did you say Brenna lived the next house over?”

  Danny nodded.

  “Huh,” his mom said, wiping down the counters with a wet rag. “That’s strange.”

  “Why’s that?” Danny asked, curious.

  “Because the next house over is ten miles away,” she said.

  “Huh,” Danny said. “That is strange. I’ll ask her about it next time I see her.”

  “You plan on seeing her a lot, Danny?” His mom stopped wiping down the counter and smiled at him knowingly.

  “What?” He could feel his cheeks turning red.

  “Oh, nothing,” his mom said, going back to her cleaning.

  Danny shook his head. “It’s not like that,” he said, leaving the room. Or was it?

  As Danny ascended the stairs to the second floor he thought of Brenna and their morning together. He knew they had only known each other for less than a day, but there was just something about her. Something … magical.

  When Danny reached the top of the stairs he saw that the door at the end of the hallway on the left was once again open. This time he wasn’t frightened. He entered the room and looked around. In the middle of the day it wasn’t nearly as spooky, he thought. He remembered his dream from the night before and went over to where the little girl had been standing.

  He leaned down and peered out of the window. From this angle he could see deep into the graveyard. He strained his eyes to see the wooden grave marker of the little girl, but because of the slope and the distance it remained out of view.

  Suddenly the light clicked on, and Danny jumped in surprise, hitting his head hard on the side of the window frame. He held his head as he collapsed to the floor. Sitting on the floor, his eyes nearly level with the bottom of the window pane, he noticed a single tiny word carved into the wood.

  It read “Corinna.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “You dropped your pancake.”

  Danny’s dad was standing over him, holding out a hand. “I saw you come in here and thought I’d show you I rewired the lighting.” He laughed. “You must be the jumpiest person I know.”

  “Tell me about it,” Danny groaned, taking his dad’s hand and standing up. He rubbed the side of his head.

  “You okay?” his dad asked. “It looked like you hit pretty hard.”

  “Yeah, I think I’m alright,” Danny said. He looked at the carving on the window pane. “That name, I saw it on a grave marker this morning.” He nodded toward the window.

  His dad bent down and studied the markings. “Hmm,” he said, running his hand over the word. “Corinna.” He stood up. “I bet she lived in this very room.”

  A chill went up Danny’s spine. Could she have been the girl in his dream? He remembered what Brenna had called the house before: the Barrens House. The last name on Corinna’s grave marker was Barrens.

  “Dad,” he said, “what do you know about the history of this house?”

  His dad looked surprised. “You, interested in history? I’m shocked.” He grinned playfully at Danny, then saw he was being serious. “Well, I only know a little. It was originally built in the 1850s, though it’s likely been renovated several times since. It was actually the first house built out here.” He began walking toward the hallway. “Danny?” he said.

  “Yeah, dad?”

  “Don’t forget your breakfast.”

  Danny smiled, looking down at the half eaten pancake. “Oh, yeah. Sorry dad.” He picked up the food and followed his dad into the hallway. “You were saying?”

  His dad continued. “It was the first house built out here. It was miles from any town. This was all woods back then.” He led the way past the staircase and entered into his office. “Then, slowly but surely, houses started sprouting up left and right. The area was actually quite populated.” He sat down on a box. “For a while.”

  Danny sat on a box opposite his father. “So what happened to all the other houses?” he asked. “Mom said there’s not another house for ten miles.”

  Danny’s dad shrugged. “Your guess is as good as anybody’s,” he said. “Maybe it was disease, maybe it had something to do with the first World War, but after the turn of the century people started leaving. Some of the houses were torn down to make way for crops, and others, well, it’s like they just disappeared. You’d be lucky to even find a foundation.”

  He stood and rummaged through some boxes stacked against the wall. “The house was in wretched condition before they started renovating last year. It’d been abandoned for decades.” He moved a stack of boxes aside, checked the contents of the boxes stacked behind them, then moved the first stack back.

  “The reason we got the place rent-free,” he went on, “is because the officials with the county saw the property – not only the house, but the graveyard as well – had fallen into disrepair. They figured the only way to get a caretaker to live in a place this out of the way would be to offer up the house.” He stood and wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve.

  “The property being so old, the bigwigs thought it’d be better to keep it up as a historical site than to let the weeds take over. And with the graveyard back there,” he nodded toward the back of the house, “they would’ve had a heck of a lot of trouble trying to tear it all up. There are restrictions on that kind of thing.” He stopped rummaging through the boxes and nodded. “I think they made the right choice.”

  He picked up a dusty, medium-sized box and handed it to Danny. “If you’re really interested in the history of the place,” he said, “you can go through this box of stuff the realtor gave me. They found all that in the guest room closet, actually.”

  Danny took the box. Inside he could see old papers and yellowed photographs. “Wow,” he said. “This stuff looks old.” His dad nodded.

  “Probably as old as the house,” he said. “Now unless you want to stay here and help me unload all these boxes for my office, you should probably go on and find something else to do. Apparently, I have quite a day ahead of me.” He surveyed the stacks of boxes strewn around the room.

  Danny backed toward the door, transfixed by the contents of the box. “That’s okay,” he said absentmindedly, no longer paying attention. “I think I’ll go up to my room.” He stumbled through the door, looking down into the box. “Thanks dad,” he called from the hallway.

  Up in his bedroom, Danny sat down on his bed and began going through the contents of the box. There were many old photos. Some were black and white, others were yellowed with age. Many were creased and had dirty, torn corners.

  Most of the subjects in the photos were unfamiliar. There were houses and shops, horses and horse carriages. There were also many photos of people. They looked strange in their fancy dresses and suspenders, the women always wearing gloves and hats, the men wearing what looked like dress clothes even in the fields. How come no one ever smiled in photos back then, Danny wondered.

  But there were a few photos Danny recognized, old photos of the house and the graveyard walls. This must be where his dad had gotten the photo he had shown him and his mom before the move, Danny thought.

  Even though the photos were in black and white, Danny could tell the green paint now faded, chipped and peeling off the siding made the house look much homier when it was newly painted. And in the photo of a man and woman dressed nicely and standing in front of the graveyard gates, the gates appeared shiny and new, the walls nicely polished and free of moss and weeds. And the gargoyle, stationed above them on the arch, looked new and more lifelike than ever.

  Danny stared at the photo of the gargoyle for a long time. It had looked even m
ore detailed back then, he thought. If it seemed slightly frightening now, the details of the musculature and the wrinkles once adorning its brow would have made it absolutely terrifying when new.

  Thinking of the gargoyle, he rose from his bed and looked out the window. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to make sure it was still there. It was. The mud had dried on its hands and feet, and now in the sunlight the lighter color of the mud was disguised from the distance Danny stood from the statue.

  He thought of the mud on his own shoes this morning, how he had taken the shoes off on the porch for fear of tracking any dirt in the house. That mud could be from the same place as the mud caked on the hands and feet of the gargoyle, he thought. He shook his head.

  “Listen to you,” he said to himself out loud. “You’re making yourself crazy.” He began to feel tired, and went back to his bed to lie down. He couldn’t believe how suddenly exhausted he felt. He could barely keep his eyes open. You’ve had a long couple of days, he thought. Moving can be stressful.

  As he closed his eyes, Danny thought about Brenna and their time together in the graveyard that morning. He had never had a girlfriend before, but now he began to wonder what it would be like. He was almost a teenager, after all, and teenagers had girlfriends. He thought of Brenna’s voice, her laughter. He thought of her big, blue, beautiful eyes. He thought of her long blonde hair. I wonder what it smells like, he thought. And he drifted off into a deep, deep sleep.

  Danny dreamt that he was walking down the hallway on the second floor toward the open door of the guest room. He could see from down the hall the dolls lining the walls, the curtains billowing out from the window opposite the door. As he got closer to the room, he could see that the window was open, and in front of it was the little girl from his previous dream.

  Once again she stood with her back to him, her long, light brown hair moving gently in the breeze, the pink bow fluttering. As he approached, she spoke, her voice light as the cool wind coming in through the window.

  “My name’s Corinna,” she said. And as she spoke she turned to face Danny, revealing not the face of a little girl, but a rotting skull, caked with dirt and crawling with maggots and worms. “What’s yours?”

  Danny woke with a start, screaming. He looked around quickly, trying to get his bearings. Everything was quiet. The clock on his nightstand read nearly eight o’clock. He couldn’t believe he had slept all day. There was a note on the nightstand next to the clock, and he stood and picked it up and read it quickly.

  “Hey sleepyhead,” it said in his mom’s narrow scrawl. “Your dad and I went to town for some groceries. We tried to wake you but you were out like a light. Be back soon. Love ya, Mom.”

  “Oh, great,” Danny groaned, looking out a window at the driveway. The car was gone. When had they left? Now I’m alone in a creepy house, and to make it worse it’ll be dark soon, he thought. What now?

  He wished the movers had brought a television, but all the TVs at their old house had been too big to bring out with everything else they had loaded in their trailer and his parents didn’t want to have to make more than one trip. They left all the biggest stuff, except for his bed and his dresser, for the movers. They should’ve left my bed and sent the TV, he thought. He had his computer, but as of yet they had no Internet access.

  Danny tried to shake the image of Corinna that the dream had left in his mind. He felt like it had burned on impression on his brain. Every time he closed his eyes he could see her decaying, rotted skull.

  He rubbed his eyes and sat back down. The box full of old photos had fallen on the floor, its contents scattered beneath his bed. I must have knocked the box off the bed when I woke up, he thought. Kicking and screaming like a little girl.

  He laughed at himself and how skittish he had become in the short time he had been at the new house. Picking up the photos and stacking them back in the box, he again resolved to make the most of his new situation and surroundings, and to begin acting his age.

  Teenagers don’t act scared like little kids, he thought, teenagers have girlfriends.

  As Danny finished picking up the photos, he placed the box back on his bed, then noticed one more stuck face down on the floor. “Gotcha,” he said, picking it up and flipping it over into the box. And as he picked up the box to move it onto his nightstand, his eyes grew wide.

  “Oh, geez,” he moaned. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  In the yellowed photo on top of the stack in the box was a picture of a little girl. And though the picture was black and white, Danny knew enough to know if it had been in color the girl’s long hair would have been light brown, and the bow tied in it would have been light pink.

  CHAPTER 6

  Danny dropped the box, but held onto the picture. It can’t be, he thought. How could this be the girl from my dreams? He rushed to a window looking out over the front yard, scanning the road left and right with hopes he’d see the headlights of his parents’ car.

  “Argh,” he said in frustration, seeing only empty streets in either direction. Visibility was growing worse as the twilight faded into darkness. He sighed and turned around, sticking the photo in a back pocket of his jeans.

  Suddenly the room grew cold. The hairs on his arms stood on end and he shivered with goose bumps. The room felt drafty, though Danny knew none of the windows in the room had been opened since he had moved in. Then, as if appearing from out of a fog, the little girl from his dreams, the little girl from the photo, materialized next to his bed, staring at Danny and reaching out with one hand.

  Danny blinked, too shocked to be frightened. This isn’t happening, he thought. I must still be dreaming. He pinched himself. No, he was wide awake.

  The girl’s face was no longer a rotted skull. Now it was simply that of a scared little girl, with big brown eyes and soft features. Her head was tilted on her shoulders, as if her neck were set at an odd angle. She took a silent step toward Danny, still reaching out.

  Danny stepped back involuntarily, bumping into the window. He looked at the hatch in the floor, his only escape. Not only was it closed, but she was standing right beside it. He turned frantically toward the window as the girl took another step, still reaching for him. Should he jump? It was too high, he thought. He would break his legs, if he survived at all. He looked back at the girl. She had taken another step closer.

  He looked frantically around the room for something to defend himself with. If he couldn’t escape, he thought, he could at least fight back. There was nothing. “What … what do you want?” he stammered weakly. She took another step forward.

  Danny suddenly remembered the dumbwaiter set in the wall by the bathroom. Hidden behind the wall panel, he hadn’t noticed it when scanning the room. He dashed to the other side of the room and tore open the panel. There was nothing behind but an empty shaft.

  “No,” Danny said. “No, no, no! This isn’t happening!” He flipped the switch to bring the dumbwaiter up to the third floor. As the shaft began to hum and the dumbwaiter rose, the girl was slowly getting closer and closer.

  As the girl approached, her skin became paler and paler, then started to dissolve completely. Small holes started forming in the flesh, exposing muscle and tissue underneath. She was still reaching out with one hand, slowly walking forward. Danny turned away. He knew what her face would look like momentarily: a decaying, rotted skull, just like in his dream.

  “Come on, come on,” he pleaded frantically with the elevator.

  Finally there was a click as the dumbwaiter stopped, and Danny quickly flipped the switch and dove inside. Just as the girl reached the shaft, the dumbwaiter began its descent to the first floor. Danny breathed a sigh of relief, but his heart was still pounding hard. He doubted if he had ever been so scared in his life.

  Soon the humming of the dumbwaiter stopped with a click, and Danny was on the first floor. He sat in the dumbwaiter for what felt like a long time, gathering his courage before opening the panel. What if she was waiting on the o
ther side? She was a ghost after all. She could appear wherever she wanted, couldn’t she?

  Danny took a deep breath. Whether she was out there or not, he thought, he couldn’t stay in there forever. He pushed open the panel and jumped out quickly, looking around the room like a frightened animal. There was no one there.

  A knock at the back door made him jump, and as he turned he saw a young girl silhouetted in the twilight past the glass. For a moment he didn’t move, then he raced toward the door as he recognized Brenna’s face pushed up against the window.

  “Brenna!” he cried, throwing open the door. “Am I glad to see you.”

  Brenna stepped back. “Eww,” she said. “You’re all sweaty. What’d you just do, go for a run?”

  “No Brenna, I saw her! The girl from my dream, I saw her!”

  “Whoa, now,” Brenna said. “What girl? What dream?”

  Danny tried to explain, but it was like he couldn’t get the words out. It was like he was trying to say everything at once. Finally he remembered the photo in his back pocket and he pulled it out, passing it with a shaky hand to Brenna.

  “This girl,” he said. “I’ve dreamt about her twice since we moved in, and then upstairs, just now, I …” Danny couldn’t finish. He was exhausted, and sat down on the porch. “I know it sounds crazy,” he said. “But I think you were right about my house being haunted.” He looked up at Brenna. “You think I’m insane, don’t you?”

  Brenna stood staring silently at the photo, her face expressionless. Finally she sat down next to Danny and sighed. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” They’d only known each other a day. Danny couldn’t understand how she could have been dishonest with him already.

  Brenna took a deep breath. “I said I didn’t know why your house is called the Barrens House,” she began. “But that’s not true.” Danny remained silent, waiting for her to explain.

  “All the kids around here know the legend,” she continued. “How Corinna Barrens’ family built this house. How Corinna was the favorite of her parents’ two daughters. How her jealous older sister pushed her out of a second story window one day while their parents were away.” Brenna sighed, staring off into the distance.