1 The Bank of the River

by Michael Richan

“Your new house is a death house?” Roy said. “You moved into a goddamn death house?”

  “Please. Every house is a death house, people die in homes all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Roy replied, “but you don’t know about it. It’s the knowing that gets you. You knew about this one, how’d you know?”

  Steven told him about Ben and about his trip to the trailer park to speak with Debra.

  Roy looked stunned. “I just cannot figure out why a child of mine would want to move into a house where someone committed suicide.”

  “Dad, it’s done. It’s completely irrational to not buy a house for that reason.”

  “And now you’re here telling me you have a brain tumor. Look at you. You’re always two steps removed from what’s really happening. You have been your whole life. The only thing wrong with you is that you’re too goddamn stubborn to realize you’re living in a haunted house.”

  “Dad, you know how insane that sounds.”

  “Not as insane as you choosing to live in it.”

  Steven paused. This was going nowhere. He should just finalize the next of kin thing and go. But his dad’s immediate willingness to believe in the idea of a haunted house actually surprised him. He always assumed his dad would be skeptical of those kinds of things. His mother had been religious – extremely religious – but his dad had always stayed home from church, didn’t participate in the church activities that his mother insisted the rest of the family participate in, and Steven had always interpreted it as his father sharing his lack of belief in anything supernatural. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe he did believe.

  Or maybe he just hated going to church. God knows I did, Steven thought.

  Steven remembered something his brother Bernard had told him when they were kids, playing a game of Battleship. Bernie had just won a game and they were setting up for another. What Steven had always remembered was Bernie’s comment: “Don’t ever play with Dad. He knows where the ships are, no matter what you do.” He hadn’t asked Bernie what he meant by it, because he knew what it meant, but it made him uncomfortable and he changed the subject. He remembered thinking at the time that Bernie knew Roy had some kind of ability that they never discussed, and he had no interest in knowing more about it. Now Steven decided to open that door a little and see if it was true, if it was what he thought it was years ago.

  “I need another favor,” Steven asked. “I need someone to see what I’ve seen, or hear what I’ve heard. If someone else can see or hear it too, then I’ll know it’s not a brain tumor, that I’m not going crazy. And if that’s true, then you won’t have to have your name listed at my doctor’s office as next of kin.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Roy asked.

  “I want you to spend the night at my house, in the guest bedroom. If nothing happens, fine. But if the knocking comes back, at least I won’t be the only one who’s heard it. Maybe you can help me get a handle on what’s going on. I know…that you can do that.” Steven glanced at Roy to see if he had picked up on what he meant.

  Roy seemed to be mulling it over. “You want me to spend a night with you in your haunted house?”

  Steven smiled a little. “Yes, Dad. A night in the haunted house. Just like a grade school dare.”

  Roy looked down at his hands, then chuckled softly, almost to himself. “It was so goddamn boring around here the past few years since Claire died. There were times I’d stare at the wallpaper, trying to think of something interesting to do. A ghost hunt sounds like just the thing. I’m in.”

  Chapter Five

  Steven returned to pick up Roy at nine p.m. The ten minute trip back to Steven’s house was peppered with banal updates from Roy about the neighbor’s dog and a problem with the gas bill. Steven normally did not spend much time with Roy – they had never been close as father and son, even while he was growing up. Now they seemed to have a mutually acceptable arrangement of seeing each other twice a year, once during the holidays and once during a summer BBQ that Roy’s brother held each Fourth of July. But other than that, even though they lived only a few miles apart, they rarely communicated. Steven wasn’t used to talking with him for much more than a couple of minutes at a time. He was going to have to try harder if he wanted his help.

  He pulled the car into his driveway and he and Roy walked into the basement. The alarm had inexplicably started working again, and Steven disarmed it. He turned to his father and pointed overhead.

  “This is where I heard the footsteps last night when I got home. I came in the door and the alarm wasn’t working. I thought someone might be home, so to scare them I decided to slam the door closed, thinking they’d run.”

  “Damn fool idea.”

  Steven ignored him. “As soon as the door closed I heard the footsteps upstairs. They were unmistakable. So I called 911.”

  “Another damn fool idea.”

  Steven sighed, irritated. “If you think someone is in the house,” he said to Roy, “most people would call the cops.”

  “Nothing wrong with the cops,” Roy replied. “But it’s stupid to think they can do anything about ghosts.”

  Steven didn’t know how to reply to this.

  “Where do you keep your guns?” Roy asked.

  “I don’t have a gun.”

  Roy looked at Steven as though he was from outer space. “Well don’t you think that might be a good idea, with people breaking into your house?”

  “Well, you can’t shoot a ghost,” Steven shot back.

  It seemed like a stalemate, and neither of them spoke for a moment. The longer things were silent, the more Steven felt like he should apologize.

  “Dad, listen, I —”

  “It’s your story,” Roy cut him off, waving a hand. “Keep talking.”

  OK, back on track, Steven thought, then continued. “I never found anyone inside. The cops searched the place. No forcible entry, they don’t know how they got in. The front door and the kitchen door are the only ways out up there, and they were both bolted when I went up. If they went out a window, they bothered to lock the window from the inside on their way out. I think the cops thought I imagined it.”

  Roy contemplated this. Steven expected him to say something sarcastic but instead he just seemed to be thinking. “Then what?” Roy asked.

  “Well, I tried to go to bed. Took forever to get to sleep, I was too wired by the idea that someone had broken in. I woke up around 3 a.m. Heard the knocking.”

  “What did it sound like?”

  Steven walked to the wall and knocked on it four times. “Well, kind of like that. It sounds more muffled, like it’s coming from a room on the other side of the house. Then it happened again, a second time, maybe ten or fifteen seconds later – four more knocks. When it first started weeks ago I thought it was coming from the front door, but I ruled that out. It was coming from somewhere inside the house, one of the interior walls. That’s when I thought it might be the plumbing. But it’s still happening, every night – and it seems to move – it doesn’t come from the same place every night.”

  “Hmmff,” Roy snorted.

  “Then last night,” Steven continued, “it happened again. I got up during the pause between the knocks. It seemed to be coming from downstairs. When I looked down the stairwell, I thought I saw movement and I heard the sound of water running.”

  “That’s when you went into the bathroom?” Roy asked.

  “Yes,” Steven said, leading Roy around the hallway and into the downstairs bathroom so he could reference the layout there. “The tub had water in it but wasn’t running. The drain was open, but the water wouldn’t drain. I knelt over it to see if something was blocking it, and that’s when I felt the blood. Hit me on the back of the head. You know the rest.”

  Roy stepped over to the tub. “So there was a head floating,” he held his arm out, pointing into the space above the tub, under the shower head, “…right here?”

  “Well, no, it was more over here, in the middle, but yes, it was
there, floating. Staring down at me.”

  Roy yanked his hand away from where he was pointing, a look of pain on his face. He rubbed the hand with his other, wincing.

  “What?” Steven asked. “Did you feel something?”

  “Yeah, I think it bit me.”

  Steven rushed over to his dad, wanting to help but not knowing how. “Are you OK?” he asked.

  Roy dropped his arms. “Yeah, I’m just fucking with ya,” he said, and smiled.

  Steven dropped his head, relieved, but pissed. “Look, I’m trying to —”

  “Lighten up!” Roy said, and walked out of the room. Steven could hear him going upstairs.

  Between the ghosts and his father, it was going to be a long night.

  -

  Steven awoke in a panic, his heart racing. He had just woken from a familiar nightmare he had experienced several times since moving into the house. In the nightmare he had fallen into a lake, drowning. He would swim to the surface, but upon reaching it he would suddenly be five feet deeper and would have to swim to the surface again. It had gone on and on like this until he thought his lungs would burst and his arms give out. The dream was filled with despair and hopelessness; a sense that he would never reach the surface, that there was no point of trying to survive. He sat up in bed, his senses returning, and sucked in the bedroom’s air in large gasping breaths. After a moment he started to breathe normally, and checked the clock on the nightstand: 12:34. He could hear his father snoring in the bedroom next door.

  He rubbed his face with his hands. Get a grip, just a nightmare, he thought. Think about something else and try to go back to sleep. Like you’ve done a hundred times whenever you’ve had a nightmare.

  The light from the clock was very dim, but it lit his room just enough to be able to make out the dresser, some artwork on the walls, and the closet door. Most people have no idea what their bedrooms look like at night, in the dark, he thought. Maybe insomniacs, or the crazy, or the haunted. Most people have their eyes closed once they turn off the light, so they’re not aware of all the little lights and shadows that exist in a bedroom at night. All the ones he noticed in his bedroom now seemed new to him, and unnerving. He had just resigned himself to sliding back down into bed and giving sleep another chance when he saw it.

  It was very faint, in the corner of the room. He strained his eyes, pinching them closed a little in an attempt to focus.

  A pale, white face. Barely visible. Small, like a child, about the same height as the bed. Staring at him.

  A chill went up his spine. His first reaction was to freeze, an animal instinct to camouflage himself.

  It knows I’ve seen it, he thought.

  He strained his eyes and instead of pinching them to focus, widened them to let in as much light as possible. There was no question it was the face of a small boy. It wasn’t moving or reacting; it just stared at him. He thought he could just make out all of the facial features – eyes, nose, cheeks, chin – no ears. It was faint – it looked like a dimly lit painting, and when he stared at it too hard, it almost seemed to fade out.

  Maybe it’s a reflection of light from the window, he thought. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve scared myself with a shadow. He shifted his eyes to the bedroom window, trying to find something that would account for the image. Maybe I’m still dreaming? he thought. It didn’t feel like he was dreaming, but then, it never does in a dream. He was afraid to return his eyes to the face, but he forced himself to do it. It was still there, still staring. It had to be some kind of reflection that he was misinterpreting.

  Then it blinked.

  He gasped. Instantly his curiosity turned to fear. There’s someone in the room, he thought. Why is he just standing there? What is he going to do?

  Steven sat frozen, staring at the face in the corner. He didn’t dare remove his gaze from it, in fear it might move within the room and he lose track of it, which would be much worse. The longer he stared at it, the more he began to feel or sense the presence in the room and the more frightened he became.

  Then he became aware in his peripheral vision of something to the left. He let his gaze shift away from the face, and there, in the other corner of the room, another face. Just as dim and pale. This one was a little higher and the features looked like a girl. He looked back to the right and the first face was still there, lifeless and cold, not moving. But they were definitely staring right at him. They looked like death masks with open eyes, floating in the air.

  When the next face appeared at the foot of his bed, he involuntarily pulled up his legs, horrified. It was just above the height of the bed, not more than three feet off the ground. It was a different face than the others, rounder and smaller, and it stared directly at him with the same lifeless intensity. Now he felt cornered, under attack.

  When the fourth face appeared next to the nightstand, he’d had enough. He reached for the light on the nightstand, and switched it on.

  All of the faces were gone.

  Of course they’re gone, he thought. Ghosts don’t like light.

  He scanned the room for something that might explain the faces – something he’d changed recently? The curtain on the window was shut tight – no moonlight came in. Reflections from the clock light perhaps? Then why did they appear one after the other?

  And it blinked, he thought. It definitely blinked.

  Shaken, he got out of bed, threw on a robe, and quietly walked to the guest room. His father was still snoring. There was no way I could have shown him that, Steven thought, and they’re gone now anyway. He decided to let him sleep. Perhaps the knocking would return, like it had every night around three. He’d be able to rouse his dad for that, when it came.

  A cold breeze hit his left arm, and Steven turned to look down the dim hallway. There, at the end of it, a shadow against the wall. There was enough ambient light in the house to easily walk around between rooms if you knew the layout, and shadows were everywhere, just like they are in every house at night. This shadow, however, had the shape of a man, about Steven’s height, with a slightly distended head. Steven froze with the same reaction as the faces, again afraid that someone was in the house. If it’s just a shadow, it won’t move, he thought. Let’s just watch it until I’m sure...

  He remained frozen, staring at the shadow, trying not to blink, afraid he might miss a movement. It seemed motionless, and the longer Steven stared at it the more convinced he became that it must be caused by something innocent, something else he wasn’t registering. He remained frozen, continuing to stare. It had been at least a minute, no movement. That was long enough, wasn’t it? He would walk down to the end of the hall and see what was creating the shadow, and be done with it. It hadn’t moved, so it must be benign.

  Then things shifted a tiny amount. Almost imperceptible. It looked like the shadow was coming apart, holes growing in it. Two slits in the head that slowly enlarged. After a few seconds they stopped growing. Steven knew what they were even before the pupils appeared – eyes.

  Steven grabbed the door handle to Roy’s room. “Roy, wake up.” He walked into the room and shook his father. He grabbed his shoulders to practically lift him out of bed.

  Roy stumbled as Steven led him out the door, and pointed to the end of the hall. “Look,” he whispered.

  Roy rubbed his head, trying to wake up. It took him a moment to focus, but then he saw it.

  “Shit,” Roy said.

  “Can you believe that?” Steven whispered.

  Both of them observed the pupils in the eyes at the end of the hall shift to look at Roy.

  “Shit!” Roy said again.

  Then the shadow began to move down the hall towards them. The eyes remained fixed on Roy. As it approached, it slowly descended, disappearing into the floor as though it was walking down an invisible flight of stairs. Steven and Roy took a step back when it was still six feet away, but now no more than the top of the head still appeared. Another second and it was gone.

  The two stood
in the hallway, unsure of what to say or do next.

  “Every fucking hair on my neck is standing up,” Roy said.

  “It was looking at you,” Steven said.

  “Yeah,” Roy replied. “That’s the creepiest goddamn thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

  -

  Steven told Roy about the faces he’d seen earlier in his bedroom. They discussed having a cup of coffee, but it was still before 1 a.m. and opted instead to try and return to sleep, to see if more would occur. Steven mentioned that they still hadn’t heard the knocking that occurred every night, and that it usually happened around 3 a.m. Both Steven and Roy retired to their rooms and tried to get back to sleep.

  Steven looked at the bottle of sedatives that the doctor had prescribed for him, sitting on his nightstand. Not tonight, he thought. I’ll start them tomorrow, but tonight I need to make sure Dad hears the knocking, and I’m not sure how heavy he sleeps.

  After a half hour of replaying the occurrences of the evening in his mind, Steven’s eyes finally closed and he drifted off.

  -

  Old faithful, Steven thought, as he swung his feet to the floor and stood, preparing to walk into his father’s room, even before the final rap of the first series of four had ended. The clock read 3:09.

  He turned the corner into the hallway and approached the guest room. They had about fifteen seconds before the second series of knockings would come, and he wanted his dad to be fully awake to hear them.

  But as he opened the door to the guest bedroom he realized something was wrong. Something was in the room with Roy, he could feel it. He scanned the room quickly, still wanting to wake his father, but feeling he should identify what was wrong first. He took a step into the room and saw it – the shadow, and the eyes. They were staring down at Roy as he slept. The eyes were floating in mid-air, inside the shadow, which was in the middle of the room. It seemed to be pulsing, at times vivid and pronounced but then fading and becoming indistinct. It didn’t seem to care that he had entered the room, it just kept staring at Roy.