The Haunting of Ironwood

by Jeff DeGordick

  She looked at herself in the mirror and felt like an alien in someone else's house. She'd never house-sat for anyone before, and she already didn't like staying somewhere other than her own home, especially in such a peculiar abode. But it was only for a week and a couple of days, and she knew she would manage just fine.

  She turned off the bathroom light and started to head downstairs to see what kind of food was in the kitchen when she heard a noise upstairs. She paused and listened, knowing she was the only one in the house, and yet there was an eerie sound playing from the floor above her like old music.

  Settling In

  Katie stood at the base of the stairs leading up to the third floor. Her hand rested on the dusty banister.

  There was melody to the noise, yet also some kind of chattering. The rest of the house was quiet.

  She started up the stairs. The steps creaked under her weight, but only slightly; they felt more solid than she would expect floorboards in an old house to be, probably because of the harder wood they were made of, and she was reminded of the eccentricities of the house and of the man who had it built.

  "Ironwood," she muttered under her breath. "Who does that?" She shook her head as she reached the top of the stairs.

  The third-floor hallway stretched parallel to the stairs and Katie stepped into it from the landing, resting her hand on the sanded ball cap atop the corner of the banister as she looked left and right. The sound was coming from the end of the hallway to her left. Most of the doors were closed or partially closed, allowing only a dim light to settle over the area. An old carpet runner stretched the length of the hallway, which was worn down to the bare threads. Cobwebs lined the molding along the ceiling, suggesting this floor didn't get as much use as the others. The door at the end was closed and the eerie sound played behind it.

  Katie started for it, passing a short secondary hallway that stretched off the main one toward the side of the house. She was struck by something peculiar about the house. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something about its construction and layout seemed odd, like the house was too big and the rooms too small to account for it.

  She reached the door at the end of the hallway and her hand lingered on the doorknob. She pressed her ear against the door and listened.

  It was a melody indeed, though it sounded a bit warped. The accompanying chattering was incessant and repetitive, almost mechanical.

  Katie opened the door and found herself in a spare bedroom that was entirely empty. Two windows sat in the wall ahead of her looking out over the front of the property and letting in the morning light. She moved into the room and saw what was making the noise. A foot-tall dancing Santa figure gyrated his hips to a poor-quality rendition of "Deck the Halls" just inside the bedroom's closet. Aside from the mechanical gyration sounds, the figure repeated a tinny "Ho ho ho" on endless loop. A cord stretched from its base to a wall socket just outside the closet.

  "What's this doing here?" Katie crouched and picked it up and found that there was a dial on the back. It looked like a timer. She twisted it around until the figure stopped dancing and the music and noises ceased, then she unplugged it from the wall.

  "This could've started a fire," she muttered. "I wonder what other weird surprises are waiting for me in here." The way her voice echoed off the bare walls sounded hideous, like the house was mocking her. She moved to the window and looked out.

  The black cat was sitting in the wide driveway, staring at the house. He was several yards away, like he was curious but he didn't want to come any closer. The cat looked up at her.

  Something about this whole thing gave Katie the creeps, and she wasn't sure it was because of the cat.

  Feeling her stomach rumble, she decided to head down to the kitchen and see if there was anything good to eat; exploring the rest of the house could wait till later.

  Similar to the bathroom, the kitchen cupboards were stocked with unopened boxes of cereals, crackers, granola bars, and oatmeal. The refrigerator was half filled with meats, eggs, milk, cheeses, sauces, juice, and some produce. The produce didn't look entirely fresh; a head of lettuce sitting in the crisper at the bottom had started to wilt on the outside. Which would make sense, considering that Earl hadn't expected her to show up that morning for the job. Though as she thought about it now, Katie found it strange that he would go away on his business trip without securing a house-sitter that he seemed so deeply concerned about before. But Katie shrugged it off and pulled a box of oatmeal out of the cupboard.

  It was one of those easy-make things where all you have to do is add hot water. There was an old kettle on the stove and Katie filled it in the sink then turned the element on. The stove looked ancient, an old electric thing from the seventies with coiled elements. She found a bowl in a cupboard of dishes and put it on the counter, then grabbed a spoon from a drawer next to the sink. She leaned back with her hands on the counter and watched the element turn red under the kettle. She gazed around at the large kitchen. It was all empty space except for the counters and cupboards that wrapped around the outside with old, stained linoleum lining the floor that was peeling up on some of the edges. And just like the rest of the house, the walls were all wood, even behind the stove. No paint or wallpaper or anything.

  The kettle whistled and Katie turned off the element. She took a packet from the oatmeal box and dumped its contents into the bowl, then she poured in the boiling water. She brought her breakfast to the dining room table and sat down. The same table that Earl had given her the most bizarre interview of her life. But she put that out of her mind.

  Her feet mindlessly brushed back and forth against the finished ironwood floor as she ate her oatmeal. Apple and cinnamon flavored, too—her favorite. She thought about all the food in the kitchen and what she could make with it throughout her stay and realized she wouldn't be able to afford that much food in three months, and it was all just for her for a week.

  She closed her eyes as she munched on a mouthful of oatmeal. She took a deep breath and let all the negative thoughts slip out of her mind like water running down a rock. Despite all of her recent misfortunes, Katie knew she would be okay.

  But the wind picked up outside and rushed against the side of the house, making everything creak and groan. As Katie looked through the window in front of her at the serene nature blowing in that wind outside, she saw it through cold and iron bars.

  Lights Out

  Night fell over Ironwood and Katie found herself sitting on a couch in the living room. The room was cold for summer and she couldn't figure out the old baseboard heaters, so she pulled the dusty blanket laid over the back of the couch onto her lap. She flipped through the channels on the twenty-seven-inch tube TV in the corner via the remote's sticky buttons. The sounds of an infomercial filled the living room. The way it echoed off the walls made it sound weird, like the sounds were hollow and far away. The house shifted from the wind outside. Its groans filled the house like air sweeping into an accordion.

  Katie glanced at the darkness around her. She had turned on the living room light—a dusty and out of style fixture hanging down from the ceiling on a yellowed cord—but left the rest of the house in darkness; she didn't want to anger Earl by racking up a big electric bill, and so she thought she would keep her stay here conservative.

  She changed to a fishing show and immediately kept flipping. Next she went from a repeat of Storage Wars to the nightly news. Eventually she settled on a rerun of Friends.

  Even though she would be doing the exact same thing in her apartment right now if she didn't have this job, she found something so isolating and mind-numbingly boring about it. She was restless under the blanket and shifted around. The couch squeaked like it was ready to give up the ghost and fall apart.

  Katie picked up the remote again and flicked the channel. She found a movie, one she didn't recognize. Two young characters were in the middle of a fight in a kitchen. The girl had tears in her eyes. She walked up to the boy and tried to kiss h
im, but he turned away. He told her that he needed some time to think and walked out, leaving the girl to weep.

  Tears welled up in Katie's own eyes. She hadn't expected them and they hit her hard. Before long she was bawling and she was forced to change the channel back to the infomercial selling the sharpest set of knives this side of the Mississippi.

  Katie let the TV drone in the background as she buried her face in her hands. Her tears seeped through the cracks between her fingers and ran down her arms. Her face reddened and she found a tissue nearby to blow her nose with. Josh was back on her mind and she couldn't shake him. His scathing words stabbed at her again—a betrayal that she wasn't sure would ever go away. She'd been too needy, he said. Needy... what a strong word that was. How could he say that to her? Her brain became red-hot as it swirled with thoughts, and anger flushed through her. Sure she was needy; she needed him to love her. She needed him to take care of her and hold her and even just simply ask how her day was. He did none of that. He never had. It was all her putting in the effort for their entire on-again, off-again relationship. And if that was how he wanted to be, then why did she care? Why did she put herself through this over and over again?

  Katie stared at a very deep place through the TV, through the wall behind it, and through everything else beyond that for as far as the mind could comprehend. "You know what?" she uttered to the empty room. "To hell with him."

  As soon as she'd said the words, her mood lifted and she felt the anger inside dissolve like bubbles in a soda floating to the surface and popping.

  So that was it, then. To hell with him. That's how she was going to play it and she didn't regret it one damn bit. She gave herself a smug nod and turned her attention back to the television.

  As she picked up the remote to try her luck again, some fuzziness rolled across the TV screen. Black and white lines stretched across from one side of the screen to the other, flickering then slowly scrolling off the bottom. A moment later they returned, then the whole picture went fuzzy.

  "Oh come on," she said. "Don't do this to me on day one."

  She sighed and chucked the blanket off of her. She stood up and walked around the stained and chipped coffee table to the television sitting on a rickety wooden stand. She banged on the side of it, watching the screen to see if it made any difference. The flickering and fuzzy lines scrolled over the screen and she tried whacking the other side. The lines tightened then faded, and she waited a moment longer to make sure it had done the trick. Satisfied, she returned to the couch, hiking her feet up and pulling the blanket over her.

  Then the TV screen went black. So did the living room light above her.

  Katie sat in complete darkness, her skin prickling. Other than the wind brushing up against the house in volleys outside, there was a crushing silence that held dominion over the peculiar house. She had times when she'd been in a particularly quiet place, but this was far beyond anything she had experienced before. It felt like she was in a very deep and dark hole with no sense of the outside world above. She felt a pull from her solar plexus where all of her feelings of confidence and safety got sucked away.

  She stood up, clutching the blanket. "What's going on?" she asked aloud. She was going to add, "Did this guy not pay his bills either?" but the way her first sentence seemed to get sucked away and lost in the black silence scared her. Even the moonlight coming in through the windows didn't help.

  Okay, think, she told herself. What happened?

  The breaker. That was it. Assuming Earl was up-to-date on his bills, then it must have been a breaker that flipped off; a faulty wire, maybe. So where would the breaker box be?

  No sooner had she asked herself the question than all the skin on her body scrunched up, making her shiver.

  The basement. It had to be in the basement.

  She took her cell phone out of her pocket—the only possession she'd brought with her to the house other than the clothes on her back—and activated the flashlight feature. She swept the light across the living room and dining room and over to the hallway. Grotesque shapes popped up in the light, moving too quickly in her fear to determine what they were. The wind settled outside and the house became as silent as the grave.

  Katie moved toward the hallway, holding her phone's flashlight rigidly on it. Every step she took over the old and worn floor felt like ringing a dinner bell while standing in the middle of a lion's den. When she was in the hallway, her eyes crawled along the walls toward the front door of the house where the light faded.

  There was a door on the left in the hallway. She remembered seeing it before. She gripped the cold doorknob and twisted it. When she pulled the door open, a slow gush of air slithered over her. It was icy and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Stepping onto the landing beyond, she turned her phone's light downward and saw it wash down a set of rough wooden stairs leading into pure blackness.

  Now that Katie had found the basement, all she had to do was go down there and get the power back on—a task so easy that even a child could do it.

  And yet she found herself rooted to the spot, frozen with terror as the darkness invited her down.

  The Chained Door

  The dry wooden steps beneath her feet ached with every movement. An acrid scent stung her nostrils. The air was freezing the farther she descended. She wished she'd brought the blanket down with her. Actually, she wished she hadn't come at all. Katie wanted to glance back at the door above her, but for some reason she didn't feel comfortable spinning in the dark, like that would invite something very unpleasant to her. It was all childish stuff, but she couldn't tell herself otherwise in the frigid black.

  She reached the bottom of the stairs and her socks met cold cement. Her mind told her to raise her phone's light so she could see, and she did it reluctantly, afraid of what it might show.

  The light crept over twisted shapes hiding in the darkness. When they were in the shadows and the light's fringe they were ghastly, awful things. But in full illumination they were merely normal things like boxes and rolled up old carpets. Sometimes Katie jerked the light back to make sure an inanimate object was just that and not something that had moved in the periphery of the light.

  "Breaker box," she muttered to herself, trying to stay focused. Her words slipped away in the dark and melted.

  As she moved the light around, she saw cobwebbed rafters above. A few sheets of pink insulation pressed up against the cement walls, like someone never got around to actually doing it. Boxes, bags and other junk, all stuffed into corners yet still spilling out. And there was a hum coming from somewhere. In another circumstance it might have been soothing.

  Katie looked around. She hadn't let out the breath she'd stifled since she started down the stairs. It seemed to be a partial basement, extending to the left from the staircase; there was only a small area to the right that was either a cubbyhole or a closet with a few stacked boxes, and there was a thin path that traveled behind the stairs, but the area behind the stairs looked like it was thoroughly filled with junk. A short window sat in the wall near the ceiling ahead of her, letting in a bit of moonlight. And fixed to the outside of it, of course, were iron bars.

  The basement was open, but there was a wall partition extending out that seemed to break it up into two large rooms. Katie started through the doorway and yelped and jumped back as a sagging stack of boxes tipped over and spilled across the floor.

  "Crap," she said, bending to pick up the mess.

  But the darkness spooked her. It pressed down on her from every side and the light didn't calm her. Her temples pounded.

  "Breaker box, breaker box..."

  Another short window sat high in the wall in this section of the basement (what she figured must have been toward the side of the house). She swept the light across the wall beneath the window, and then she saw it.

  Large cables fastened to the wall ran to a metal box. Katie hurried to it and pulled the cover open. But she was greeted by something entirely unfa
miliar to her.

  "What is this?" she said. A cluster of wires sat inside, but instead of the familiar plastic switches of a breaker box, there were two tall columns of round fuses. She held the light close, eyeing them. "Oh, this must be a fuse box," she muttered at last. "I think my great-grandpa had one of these..."

  What was absent to her was an understanding of how they worked. After some inspection, she determined that one of them was discolored. The faded label next to it said "dining/living room". It must have burnt out, then, she decided; that sounded vaguely familiar to something fuses might do. The one below the living and dining rooms' fuse was labeled "basement", and it seemed in good shape. That meant the basement lights worked the whole time.

  "Oh for God's sake," she said, beating herself up for being so spooked. She turned and saw a light bulb fixed to the ceiling with a cord hanging from it. When she pulled it a gloomy yellow light washed over that corner of the basement, leaving everything beyond in shadows.

  Katie turned her attention back to the fuse box and tried to figure out how to fix the problem. She looked around and saw a small cardboard box sitting on top of the metal casing. Stretching on her toes, she pulled it down to find it was filled with spare fuses. When she realized they screwed in and out, she replaced the burnt one and discarded it in the box.

  "There, good as new."

  That humming sound she'd noticed before buzzed into her awareness again. That was because it was not only louder now, but it was coming from right beside her.

  A large steel door sat in the wall to her left. The hum was coming from behind it. But there was no way for her to tell what was causing it, because the door was crisscrossed with heavy chains and a huge padlock.