Slattery Falls

by Brennan LaFaro

  We moved slowly and carefully to the back door, where Josh knelt down and rummaged in the bag for his lock pick set. Elsie stepped around him and tried the knob, which turned easily, and the door swung in.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The yard slanted up from back to front around the house, so the door at ground level led into the basement. As we stepped through the doorway, I thought about the basement of the Hale House, and I’m sure Josh did too. I told myself that almost all reports of activity had been benign, ran it through my head like a mantra, and crossed the threshold. Anyone or anything that lived here didn’t seem to interact with outsiders, but functioned more like a tape on a loop instead.

  Since the backyard sat blocked off from the street, we went in with flashlights already on and stopped just a step inside the door. In theory, our research had prepared us for the house to look like no one had been here in fifteen years, but the years of dust, stirred into the air by our arrival, created an ethereal scene. Boxes filled the room, stacked floor to ceiling, pervading the space. It made me even more curious why we couldn’t find a reason the last family had left so abruptly and why they abandoned all their earthly belongings.

  The heaps of boxes stretched throughout the basement and navigating through them was a bit like navigating through a labyrinth. If I’m being an optimist here, I did like that there wasn’t really room for anything to hide in the shadows. I really did fucking hate basements. We took a few extra twists and turns, and managed to get to the stairs leading up to the first floor. At the base of the steps, Josh began his customary routine of calling out to any present spirits. I half expected Elsie to laugh at how seriously he took it. I even surprised myself by being ready to get mad about it. To her credit, she remained stoic. That’s how it needed to be. This was the ritual—the rite, almost—for each room, and she was part of it now.

  Josh’s questions and commands drew no response. Not so much as a creak to suggest the old, empty house settling. Almost too quiet, like something holding its breath, ready to pounce.

  We walked up the stairs to where the door stood open and gazed into the living room. Samantha and Michael had sat right here while God knows what happened to Todd. The open floor plan, with the living room next to the kitchen and dining room, lent credence to the notion that Todd, or anyone else, could not have possibly come down the stairs unnoticed. Near the landing of the stairs were two armchairs. Not the same ones that would have been there in 1956, but possibly in the same location.

  We settled in the approximate middle of the room, opting for a spot on the floor rather than the ancient and filthy furniture. I nearly jumped out of my skin when lights appeared on the wall and started moving toward the kitchen. It took less than a second to get my head out of my ass and realize I was seeing the passing headlights from a car driving by on the main road.

  No one said anything, but I could tell it scared the shit out of Elsie too, and Josh made a concentrated effort not to let his face slip into a smirk.

  “If anyone is here with us, please make your presence known,” said Josh.

  A moment passed.

  “Michael Benson? Samantha Benson? Todd?” Elsie added. Unexpected, but it felt okay. “We’re not here to cause you any more pain, and if we can help you, we will. If we can share what happened here with anyone, with the world…” Her voice quivered. Not with fear, but emotion. Raw.

  Silence.

  I put a hand on her shoulder and nodded. This part of the routine came with lowered expectations, and I mentioned as much when Josh brought up the same ground rules he’d gone over with me during our first trip. This time he did it on the car ride to Waterbury instead of inside a pitch-black house. A bit more logical, if you ask me. She knew what to expect once we got inside, at least from our side of things. Elsie had taken everything in silently, tossed back a few solid follow-up questions I hadn’t thought to ask, and then started looking up local pizza places on her phone. A few days ago, she’d told us she needed something in her life, but I think we were both surprised at how invested she’d become in such a short time.

  “It’s like I told you,” I said. “It’s a good way to start these things off, but you—”

  “Shut up,” she shot back. A moment passed, the three of us listening for the house to give up any sign of life. “Do you hear that?”

  We sat stock still, straining our ears. It was faint, but she was on to something. A muffled sobbing sound. Intermittent, the cry creeped through the still air of the house every few seconds, followed by a heavy silence.

  “It’s coming from upstairs,” she whispered.

  We both looked to Josh for guidance. The goal remained the same—clear the ‘safe’ part of the house, which we hadn’t done yet, then move on to the more active regions. The unspoken question: Do we fuck up our routine, or do we stick to the plan and risk missing out? We sat in silence for a moment while Josh thought it out. Routine was law in his mind.

  “Okay, let’s go,” he said, “but I’m not comfortable with this and I’d like it on the record.”

  “Noted,” said Elsie, getting to her feet.

  Speaking later, he would tell us he had never deviated from his routine before. On his solo treks, he always went in order, even if it meant letting something pass him by. His reasoning? Sometimes you found activity and sometimes you didn’t. Time will not have a strict bearing on results. A mature thought if ever I heard one. Elsie and I didn’t ask why he made an exception this time, but we both knew. Even though it was hard for him, he sacrificed for us.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Elsie led us in the sobbing’s direction, and although the main floor had been relatively clean compared to the basement, more clutter greeted us on the top level of the house. Boxes touched the ceiling, filling all available space on the landing at the top of the stairs. The cardboard appeared weathered and faded, as though packed away significantly longer than the decade since the house last had occupants. The stairs opened to the head of a hallway, two rooms on either side; Todd’s room and a bathroom on the left, a guest room and master bedroom on the right.

  All the doors were closed, and there was something unnerving about it, the long closed-off hallway emitting a sense of claustrophobia. We directed our lights down the passage looking for anything out of the ordinary; a stray shadow, a figure, but nothing presented itself. Through unanimous, yet silent agreement, we stood still as statues waiting for the sobbing to resume.

  I didn’t want to be the first to make a move or a sound. Just when I didn’t think I could last one more second without giving into the tension, the cry returned—a requiem whose timbre flooded the top floor, not with its dynamic force, but its melismatic resonance.

  I don’t have children to this day, so I’m not an authority to speak on this, but it wasn’t a lament of pain, hunger, illness, or anything immediately rectifiable. This wail didn’t tell of a child separated from their parents, desperate for an attempt at reconciliation. Resigned and hopeless might not be the right words, but they’re the closest I can get.

  “What do you want to do?” I whispered. “Todd’s room should be the first one on the left, but it doesn’t sound like it’s coming from there. Doesn’t sound like it’s coming from any of the other doors either, though. More like it’s… everywhere.”

  “Unless it wants to be found, I’m not sure it’s going to get any more clear than this. I think we try each room, one by one. Elsie?”

  She nodded and crept toward the first door on the left, put her hand on the knob, and then looked back at us. Josh nodded and as she made to turn it, another cry came from the end of the hall. Elsie paused in her tracks and looked at us again.

  “Bathroom,” she said.

  A few steps took us to the end of the hall, this time without a sound, and Elsie opened the bathroom door. It couldn’t have been over eight feet deep and five feet wide. I tried to throw the light switch, thinking there were no windows to give us away, but t
he electricity had been off for some time. It didn’t take long to search everywhere, including behind the shower curtain. Let me tell you, pulling that back nearly sparked an arrhythmia, and the honor was all mine. Thankfully, the result didn’t end up like the bathroom scene in The Shining.

  With nothing of note in the bathroom, we opted to try Todd’s room again. Josh closed the door behind us. It felt like the thing to do, and something didn’t sit right about the idea of being on that floor with all those doors open, like eyes watching.

  This time, Elsie opened the one to Todd’s room before anything could cause a distraction. A man stood in the middle of the room, taller than either Josh or I, so at a guess six foot four inches, maybe five. Broad shoulders gave his silhouette the build of a lumberjack, but his features were obscured. Right off the bat, I considered this might be due to the darkness of the room, but I can see that moment in my memory still. The man’s face blurred like a smudged oil painting in shades of grays and black, as though he were not quite there, which very quickly he wasn’t. The figure appeared just long enough for us to register his presence, then vanished without pomp and circumstance. The interaction was so brief that I could have believed I imagined it if Elsie hadn’t screamed. She quickly shut it down before it could reach bloodcurdling decibels, more of a startle than a scream of abject terror.

  “Josh, did you…”

  “Yes.”

  We stood frozen in the doorway, no one wanting to go in, no one wanting to shut the door and leave. God knows how long we would have stayed in the doorway if we hadn’t heard the sob again. More clearly this time, but also not in the room. The acoustics made it difficult to pinpoint where it came from, almost like hearing it underwater. Since we had already entered Todd’s room, it felt like we should have a quick look around. Subconsciously, we avoided the area where the large man had appeared only moments ago, while also keeping an eye out for his potential return.

  “Todd?” said Elsie. “Are you in here?” For a skeptic, she was coming around pretty quickly. Twenty minutes in and just as engaged as Josh and me. Despite the gravity of the moment, I recall smiling just then.

  In short order, I had checked under the bed, in the closet, and in any other nook or cranny I could find. I noticed Josh sitting on the bed, eyes closed. As if he could feel my gaze, he said, “Not looking for a monster. Not much sense in checking under the bed.”

  “What are you up to then?”

  “Listening.”

  Elsie and I found a place to sit and joined him. We hadn’t been at it long when we heard the cry again. Still on the same level, but coming from multiple directions and feeling like a wild goose chase. Before we could react, Josh held a hand up to stop us. We waited. A minute or two would go by, then we’d hear it again. The first few times it sounded the same—that sense of being submerged underwater, then it cleared up. The volume didn’t change, but a direction was taking shape and it was… unhelpful.

  “That’s coming from outside,” Elsie said.

  “Agreed,” said Josh. “I think we should give the other rooms a cursory once over and then head out. Thoughts?”

  By agreement, we all stood up and headed for the door. This room felt empty now. It held a certain presence, a vibe, after we saw the figure in there, but that had dissipated over the last ten minutes.

  We set out to check each room. First, the bathroom again.

  Empty.

  Next, the master bedroom. A little more cautious this time, all of us likely expecting the reemergence of the dark figure.

  Empty. A palpable sense of relief spread.

  Finally, the guest bedroom.

  Also empty.

  We heard the cries twice while clearing the floor, and they still seemed to come from outside. The sense of being alone that had developed in Todd’s room now spread throughout the entire floor. Like something had shown up to welcome us, but then decided it had better things to do. We closed each door after us and started back toward the main floor. Another fleeting glance around some rooms we had not checked out the first time, and then down toward the basement. However impossible, it looked as though even more boxes had appeared, and since there was no real order to the chaos, navigating was difficult.

  “Guys, look at that,” Elsie said, motioning to the wall on our right, fifteen feet away, separated from us by a sea of abandoned belongings. “Was that there before?”

  Scrawled in two-foot-high letters was the word WEEKS.

  “I couldn’t swear to it,” said Josh, “but I don’t think so. It doesn’t fit with the decor, and it’s not exactly subtle. One of us would have noticed it.”

  I moved a few boxes to the side to get closer while Josh and Elsie held the path and gave me light. I hoped to hell that the writing wasn’t blood or shit or some other horror movie trope I was forgetting, so I was relieved to find out that it wasn’t. Well, sort of relieved.

  “It’s… scratched into the wall.”

  “Scratched? Like a cat?”

  “Not unless it’s a big-ass cat. More like a knife, but the cuts are too wide.”

  I ran my finger down the indent of the letter W, then WHACK! A hatchet sliced into the wall, not six inches from my hand.

  “Go!,” shouted Josh, ducking low and putting an arm around Elsie.

  I ran back to the path and the basement door we had come in through, but froze as soon as the scene outside became clear. The weather hadn’t changed since we’d come in less than an hour ago, hot and stagnant, not a draft to be had. Except now, the swings were moving. Not just a gentle sway in the breeze, but steady with the force of carrying a large child. You could feel the accompanying creak vibrate throughout your entire body.

  We had to go past the swings to get to the woods.

  We hugged the pool as much as possible and slowly made our way into the woods, refusing to let fear make us run away. Not an easy feat considering that something in the house manifested to throw a hatchet at my head. At the edge of the woods, we heard the cry again, coming from behind us. I cast my gaze back toward the Benson House. In the bay window on the ground floor stood a dark figure. Correction, stood the dark figure. We were farther away than our first glimpse, but it was him. A shadow come to life, with his features obscured, just like in Todd’s bedroom. The distance and darkness hid his features, but two pale bluish-green eyes watched us cover the last patch of open yard, following our every move long after we lost sight of them.

  We backed into the woods, traversing our way back to the car, flashlights ablaze. We didn’t really give a fuck if anyone saw us at that point.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Silence pervaded the trip back through the woods, nothing but the sound of our feet hitting the ground and our labored breathing. I’m almost positive nobody said a word until we were all the way back on I-84. The atmosphere had been significantly less creepy than at the Hale House, but even at the most nerve-wracking point of that trip, I’d never felt in danger. All reports led us to believe that anything living at the Benson House was not sentient, but more like a projector playing a movie on repeat. A residual haunting. The first sighting of the dark figure fit that neatly, but we should have realized something was up when the crying started. It manipulated us, and a residual haunting doesn’t have the consciousness to do that.

  “Elsie, you spent the most time with the research. Could that have been Michael Benson?” Josh asked.

  “No way,” she said. “That guy was well over six feet and broad. All the pictures I came across of Michael, he wasn’t a big guy. Skinny and under six feet.”

  “Sure as hell wasn’t Samantha or Todd,” I said. “So who was it?”

  “I don’t know. That house seemed like such a safe choice, and maybe that guy was just fucking with us, having some fun. Shit, guy. That was not a guy. We saw him disappear.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “I could write a lot of what happened off to a playful spirit taking us on a wild goose chase, and then freakin
g us out with the swing set action, but I don’t know. It felt… bad.”

  “It felt bad,” agreed Josh. “Elsie, you’ve only been on one of these trips. Travis, only two. Most of the experience lies outside your main five senses. It’s emotional. You learn to trust your gut. I’ve interacted with ghosts before, rolling a ball, something simple like that, never anything so physical as this. You can sense that in an active haunting, there’s a playfulness. This one exuded a feeling of cruelty. I’ve been in twenty-seven different places now, and I’ve never felt anything like that.”

  “The fact that it wrote on the wall with a fucking axe or something definitely doesn’t help its case,” I said. “Oh yeah, then threw it at my head!”

  “Hatchet. No, I suppose not,” said Josh. His eyes held a distant, troubled look. “Weeks. That could mean anything. Is it telling us it’s been there for weeks? That can’t be right. Do we have weeks? And what happens when that absurdly arbitrary time period is up?”

  The sound of the radio playing softly filled the car for the rest of the drive, each of us no doubt having an internal conversation similar to the one we’d just heard from Josh. I don’t think the spirit trying to communicate with us could have been more cryptic. Might as well have scrawled the word THE on the wall and told us to figure it out. We were all feeling scared and confused, and it was probably a good thing no one had anywhere to be the next day.

  I flexed my left hand, opening and closing the fingers, glad to have all five.