The Haunting of Waverly Hall

by Michael Richan

  Inside was a small bedroom. Against one wall was a bed, and under a window was a small desk. A door led to a closet, which was closed. As the two of them entered the room, Eliza noticed male influences.

  “This was Marc’s room,” Rachel said. “I’ve been sleeping in it. There’s a room down the hall you can stay in.”

  Eliza walked to the desk and placed her hands on it; the source of the power she felt was nearby, and she could sense it moving from the wood of the desk into her arms. She left them there, trying to analyze the sensations.

  “That’s Marc,” Rachel said, pointing to a picture on the desk as she sat on the nearby bed. “Handsome.”

  Eliza glanced at the framed photograph. At first she didn’t want to remove her hands from the desk’s surface; the power she felt emanating from it was intriguing and she wanted to understand it. It didn’t take long, however, for the picture to capture her interest. Something was wrong with the image.

  She reluctantly slid her hand to it, lifting the frame from the desktop. When the man’s face in the photo suddenly shifted, it startled her, and she dropped the photo.

  She stepped back from the desk, surprised at her reaction.

  Rachel stood. “What’s wrong?”

  Eliza could still see the photo on the desk, the man’s face staring back at her. There was a clear second instance of the man, staring at her just like the first, but to the side. She thought it might be a double exposure, but then she felt the hairs go up on the back of her neck as she realized it wasn’t.

  “The photo,” she said. “Something’s wrong with it.”

  Rachel walked to the desk and lifted it up. “What?” she said, examining it. “Looks fine.” She turned it around to face Eliza.

  The skin on her arms began to crawl. There was the second face in the picture, staring back at her, as though it was a completely different person than the one it mirrored.

  “You don’t see that?” Eliza asked nervously, pointing at the photo.

  “See what?”

  “The second image? Of Marc?”

  Rachel’s face clouded. She turned the photo to look at it again. “No, I don’t. Do you?” She turned it back around for Eliza to see.

  “It looks like it was double-exposed,” Eliza said. “But that’s not it. He’s there twice.”

  “No, Rachel replied. “I don’t see it.”

  “Can I look at it more closely?” Eliza asked, reaching for the frame. Rachel released it. She tilted the picture, examining it from all angles. “Can I open it?”

  “Open the frame?” Rachel replied. “Sure, I guess.”

  Eliza removed the back of the frame and slipped the 4 by 6 photo from it. Free from the glass, the picture looked normal; one Marc. She took out the piece of glass and held it up to the light; it was clear. When she replaced the glass and photo in the frame, the second image of Marc reappeared, just as before.

  “It only shows up under the glass,” Eliza said. “It’s not on the original photo.”

  Eliza decided to drop into the River and examine the picture. She closed her eyes and allowed her mind to drift to the rushing flow of activity that surrounded them, quickly entering the altered state and feeling the slight disconnection from her body.

  She opened her eyes and looked at the photo again. The second image of Marc was more vivid, almost looking three-dimensional. She stared at it, marveling at how real it looked, trying to understand what it was.

  The image blinked.

  She dropped from the River, quickly returning to her former state.

  “What do you see when you look at it in the River?” she asked Rachel.

  Rachel dropped into the flow and quickly returned. “Nothing unusual. Looks exactly the same to me.”

  “You said he died?” Eliza asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? Did you see him die?”

  Rachel gave her a weak smile. “No, I didn’t see it. You’re right, I presume he died.”

  Eliza sat the frame down on the desk and walked to the bed, where she slowly lowered herself until she was comfortably sitting on it. “He’s alive, Rachel.”

  Eliza heard the air sucking into Rachel’s lungs as she took a huge breath. “Are you sure?”

  “You need to tell me everything that happened. Don’t leave anything out.”

  “Wow, OK,” Rachel said, and sat on the bed next to Eliza. “Well, I’ve told you bits and pieces, but I’ll go back to the beginning.” She took another deep breath.

  “You know that Marc wanted help figuring out what was wrong with the town, so they could sell this house and move out of Waverly,” Rachel began. “Marc was a friend of my sister. One night a bunch of us were out drinking, and Marc brought it up, because he’d heard from my sister than I could ‘see’ things. We got to talking about it, and he asked for my help. I said I’d think about it. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was cute. He had a bit of the gift himself, too. When I met his family, I decided I’d give it a go. He told me everything he knew about Waverly, which wasn’t much.”

  “Like what?” Eliza asked.

  “Well, the old town hall is the problem, really,” Rachel said. “That’s where all the bad mojo comes from. There’s not much left of the town except it and the houses that surround it. Most of them are abandoned. It was in one of those houses that Marc and I began to figure things out.”

  Rachel stood and walked to the desk, reaching into one of the drawers. “It’ll help if I can draw you a picture,” she said, returning with a notebook and a pencil. She sat next to Eliza and opened the notebook to a clean page, then drew a small circle in the middle of it.

  “That’s Waverly Hall,” she said. “If you go inside it normally, it seems quiet and abandoned; no sign of anything strange. The place is full of ghosts, but you’d never know it.”

  “What about if you drop into the River?” Eliza asked.

  “Yeah, that’s a problem,” Rachel replied. “Marc warned me not to try it. The stories he’d heard were that if you used the gift there, horrible things happened. Bear with me, I’ll explain more.” She drew a small square to the right of the first, about an inch away. “That’s us, directly east of it.”

  “This house?” Eliza asked. “The one we’re in now?”

  “Right, the Hocker house.” Rachel placed an ‘H’ next to the square.

  “How far away is Waverly Hall?” Eliza asked, looking at the inch space between the two marks of Rachel’s drawing.

  “Next property over,” Rachel replied. “The property ends about five hundred feet that way,” she pointed out the window over the desk, “and the hall is maybe another three hundred feet past that. Now that the leaves are off the trees, you’d be able to see its roof from that window if it was daylight.”

  Rachel returned to the notebook, drawing another square below the Hocker residence, an inch away. “This is an abandoned house next door,” Rachel said. “I call it the white dormer house. No one lives in it.”

  Rachel drew another small square, this one directly below the hall. “This is the old Alsteen place,” she said, writing the word Alsteen next to the square. “It’s also empty.”

  Rachel continued going around the hall, drawing squares that represented the houses that surrounded it. The next one was directly to the left of the circle. “This one is the VanLanen house. No one lives there anymore, either.”

  She drew another square above the last one. “This one’s the old red brick store.” She penciled the letters ‘RB’ next to it.

  Eliza stopped her. “Why are you showing me all this? If the hall is the problem, shouldn’t we just concentrate on that?”

  “There’s a reason,” Rachel replied. “Just bear with me until I give you the lay of the land.”

  Rachel drew another square, directly above the hall. “This house is the old Erdmann place. This one is occupied, rented out to a couple named Baumgart. They’ve lived there for five years and have a little boy named Stewart who’s
three or four years old. Very cute kid. I think they only stay there because the rent is incredibly cheap.”

  She drew another square, located between the one she’d just drawn, and the first house, completing the circle. It was set back a little bit, farther from the center than the others.

  “And this one is the old Grignon farm,” Rachel said, placing an exclamation point next to the square. “This is where we started to figure things out.”

  “Oh?” Eliza asked, intrigued.

  “One evening when Marc and I were talking, he mentioned Gloria Grignon, the old woman who had lived on the farm years ago. Marc always felt she was gifted in some way, too. We didn’t have any other leads at the time, so we explored her farmhouse and found a diary.”

  “Do you have it?” Eliza asked.

  “No,” Rachel replied. “It disappeared when Marc died.”

  “He’s not dead,” Eliza corrected her. “I’m almost sure of it.”

  “I’ve been thinking he was dead for so many years now, it’ll take me a little while to change my thinking,” Rachel replied. “So, anyway, the diary vanished, but I can tell you what we learned from it.”

  “What?”

  “She talked about how the hall was full of ghosts…and how they protected themselves from visitors. She didn’t explain how they did it, but it was obvious from reading her diary that she was able to interact with them; she had found some way of getting them to manifest to her when she went there.”

  “You said she was gifted?”

  “Yeah, she was, no doubt,” Rachel said. “At first I thought maybe she had some kind of special ability that went beyond a normal gift. I thought if we could find out how she did it, that might be a key to unlocking the hall to Marc and me.”

  “I suppose,” Eliza replied.

  “Her diary never explicitly explained it, but she did keep mentioning ‘gateways’ and ‘tokens’. She intimated that one of the houses that surround the hall was a gateway that issued a token. I thought that was odd, so I did some research on it.”

  “And?”

  “I think that, for whatever reason, the key to getting to the ghosts in the hall is by showing up with a token. It’s a kind of symbol to them that you’re OK, and they let down their defenses without attacking you.”

  “A token?” Eliza asked. “Like the kind at House on the Rock, that you drop into coin boxes?”

  “No, that’s a literal, physical token,” Rachel replied. “This is a non-physical thing. It’s bestowed upon you by something or someone, and you ‘hold’ it in a way, kind of like an electronic pass that you use later. Based on what we read in Gloria’s diary, we developed a theory.”

  “Yes?”

  “OK. It was just an idea, but we thought that crossing the threshold of a gateway while in the River was one way to receive a token. So, we guessed that one of these houses,” she pointed to the collection of square houses she’d drawn, “was likely the gateway. We thought Gloria set it up as a way to protect the ghosts in the hall. That way, only certain people could make it in.”

  “Why would she want to protect it?” Eliza asked.

  “Don’t know,” Rachel replied. “It was just a theory. We thought it might be a way in. I suggested we try crossing Gloria’s threshold while in the River, see if it gave us a token, and then visit the hall. Makes sense, right? She was the one visiting the hall, interacting with them. If she was going to establish this layer of protection, and the gateway was in one of the houses, I thought it would make sense that her house would be the gateway, for convenience sake. Marc wasn’t so sure, but I convinced him to give it a try.”

  Rachel paused.

  “And?” Eliza asked.

  “And, my idea killed him. Or whatever happened to him.”

  “Give me the details,” Eliza said.

  “We walked through Gloria’s threshold while in the River. I didn’t sense much; there was something, but it was small. We thought it might have worked, so we decided to give it a shot. We walked to the hall. He insisted on going first. We dropped into the River and stepped inside. It was as though an alarm went off. Within seconds he was levitating in front of me, and he flew away through the air, into the hall, beyond where I could see.”

  “What did you do?” Eliza asked.

  “Dropped from the River and ran,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “I was so scared, Eliza. I was petrified. And I felt so guilty, because it was my idea. I went back the next morning to look for him, but he wasn’t there. We never found out anything more about him. His disappearance fit right in with all the other disappearances this town has had over the years.”

  “That must have been hard to explain to his mother. And aunt.”

  “I didn’t,” Rachel replied. “I ran, just completely abandoned them with no explanation, just like I ran from you and Granger. It wasn’t until I was sitting in that hospital bed that I decided I had to come back here and face them.”

  “I’m proud of you,” Eliza said. “That must have been hard.”

  “They didn’t blame me at all,” Rachel said. “They were just glad to see me. I told them what happened — well, most of it anyway — and they took me at my word. They said they still were trying to get away from Waverly, and I told them I’d try to help again. That brings us to now.”

  “Wow,” Eliza said, looking down at the map Rachel had drawn. “Do you have a new theory?”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about things,” Rachel replied. “I think the theory was right, but we got the wrong house. I was hoping you’d be able to help me sense which house is the real gateway.”

  “And try again?”

  “In an effort to get Marc back,” Rachel replied. “Or at least find out what happened to him. Before I discard this theory entirely, I’m hoping you can sense the token. I apparently couldn’t, but maybe you can. I thought we could try each threshold, and see if you can pick up on it. If you think one of them has issued the token for real, we can try the hall.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Eliza replied. “But it all hinges on if I can sense it.”

  “Correct,” Rachel said, rising from the bed. “I thought we could go check out the hall. It’s completely safe if you don’t drop into the River.”

  “OK,” Eliza said, standing. “Maybe you can drive me past the houses, too.”

  “Sure,” Rachel replied, and they left the bedroom. “We’ll save trying the thresholds for tomorrow, during the day, but tonight I can get you oriented to the lay of the land.”

  Chapter Three

  The town was eerily dark, with only the headlights from the car to illuminate things. The exception was a lone streetlight on the road by the hall; it cast just enough light to faintly paint the building in a dim, dirty yellow.

  Rachel parked Pam’s car and they walked to the doors of the hall. Many years ago the door held a mechanism that would have locked it up; now, any care for its security was as abandoned as the town.

  Rachel pushed the door open and turned on a flashlight. They walked inside.

  A long hallway stretched out in front of them. “This is where you lost Marc?” Eliza asked.

  “Yes,” Rachel replied. “Just after we came through the door, he rose from the floor, about here.” She moved to a spot on the wooden floorboards. “When he was five feet off the ground, he flew forward into the darkness.” Rachel walked to the end of the hallway, where it turned to the left, opening into a giant room with high ceilings. “I chased after him to this point, but I couldn’t see him anywhere in the room. That’s when I left.”

  Eliza followed her into the large, open room, shining her flashlight around.

  “Sense anything?” Rachel asked. “And remember, don’t go into the River. That might trigger an attack.”

  Eliza kept walking, examining. The ceiling was still intact. Some of the windows were boarded over, but not all. Broken windows had allowed leaves inside.

  “No, I don’t feel anything,” Eliza repl
ied. She continued walking around the space. “Nothing at all.”

  “Huh,” Rachel said. “Well, that doesn’t surprise me, I guess. There are ghosts here, a lot of them. We’d never see them without the token.”

  “And we’d be attacked if we tried without it?” Eliza asked.

  “Please don’t try, Eliza,” Rachel replied. “I lost Marc to this place; I couldn’t bear it if you got lost here, too.”

  It is tempting, Eliza thought. Something about the hall begged to be investigated. She was a half-thought away from just slipping into the flow and having a quick look, like an impulsive death wish. She resisted.

  “Anything else to see here?” Eliza asked.

  “No, not yet,” Rachel replied. “If we can figure out the token, I expect there will be plenty to do here, lots of ghosts to talk to, lots of explanations to dig up. Hopefully something that solves the haunting of the town. But for now, no, that’s it for this place.”

  They walked out, Eliza resisting the urge to drop quickly into the River and see if she elicited the same response as Marc. She felt a sense of relief as they got back into the car and Rachel drove away from the building.

  “This won’t take long,” Rachel said, driving southeast. There were no streetlights, and everything was now very dark. “There’s the first house. I’ll park the car at an angle so you can see it.” Rachel stopped the car, her headlights illuminating the front of the house. It was two-story, with three large dormers on the roof. The front door was missing. All of the paint was gone from the house, except for the dormers. It looked long-abandoned.

  “You can see why I call it the ‘white dormer’ place,” Rachel replied. “No idea who used to live there. Lucy and Pam don’t remember.”

  Rachel turned the car away, driving over a small bridge and stopping at another house not more than sixty seconds from the first. “The Alsteen place,” Rachel said, letting her lights illuminate the front of the house. It was a simple one-story building. The left half was leaning precariously; Eliza imagined it would come down in the next good storm.

  “No one lives there, obviously,” Eliza said.