Slattery Falls

by Brennan LaFaro

  Chapter Sixteen

  I stayed a few more days in Coventry, spending a lot of time trying to dig deeper into the Benson House, to see if we could associate the word Weeks with the house in any way, shape, or form. Elsie all but moved into the library while Josh and I sat in front of laptops. There was talk of going back to Waterbury to see if any records might be attainable in person, but it seemed like a lot of work for a likely dead end. Ultimately, the additional information we cobbled together was pretty slim and none of it related to the word on the wall.

  When I went home I kept at it, albeit in a pretty half-hearted manner. I know Elsie and Josh did too. We would keep in touch, but eventually it fizzled out.

  I couldn’t get the word out of my head though. Weeks. Weeks. Weeks. What did it mean?

  I would try to sleep at night and there it would be—in bold, neon lights, just waiting to be deciphered. Weeks.

  Another visit later in August confirmed it hadn’t left the forefront of anyone else’s minds either. Because of the extreme lack of progress we’d made figuring out what happened that night, we decided to investigate a new location instead. Josh had a few places to choose from, so we selected an abandoned building at a business park in Bristol, Connecticut, and then dove into the research with our typical fervor.

  Look, I wrote out a detailed rundown of the Hale House because I think it’s important you know how Josh and I got started. I wrote about the Benson House because I think you need to know what started the beginning of the end and has occupied our minds all this time. We went to the building in Bristol together that August, then went through our senior year of college and took four more trips—a house in Springfield, Massachusetts, a house in Danbury, Connecticut, an abandoned hospital right in Storrs, and another house in West Hartford, Connecticut.

  Out of the collective five trips, only two were duds. Whether it be sounds, sightings, feelings, or what have you, we came out of the other three with a story. It wasn’t the same, though. Nothing else communicated in such a straightforward manner. The house in Waterbury felt like going fishing in a neighbor’s pond for koi and bringing in a white whale. We never talked about what would happen after college, going our separate ways mostly, but I think we knew our ghost hunting days were at an end.

  One unexpected side effect of our extracurricular activities was that Elsie and I got over our differences. We both came at each other wielding a child-like standoffish mentality. Pulling from that oh-so-useful psych degree, I’d say we were both mistrustful of each other for the same reason, protecting Josh. Once we realized the other person had his best interests at heart, we let down our guards.

  In December of our senior year, when we were in Coventry planning for our third trip after Waterbury, we realized having Josh in common might not be the extent of our feelings. Elsie and I were digging up material for our next trip out while Josh stepped out to get food. We were laughing about who knows what, and she leaned in and kissed me, quick on the lips, then backed away almost like she was planning to say she’d tripped. It wasn’t one of those profound moments because I think we’d seen it coming for a few months now. I kissed her back, and this time she didn’t jump away.

  We kept it on the down low for a few weeks, but I think Josh always knew. When we decided we wanted to give it a real go, we told him. In typical fashion, he just nodded and said okay. What some people might see as indifference, Elsie and I knew to be love and trust from a person who didn’t give up either easily.

  Her pink hair initially got my attention, but she was bright and tenacious, and I think that’s what made it so easy to fall in love with her. We’ve been together for almost ten years now, married for three. I’m not sure any of us planned on the house in West Hartford being our last trip together, at least for quite a while, but it ended without circumstance, and we simply didn’t plan another. Josh applied for, and received, an internship at a local emergency veterinary hospital and stayed with his parents for a couple of years until he found an apartment.

  Elsie and I moved to Southbridge, Mass, and rented an apartment together. She worked in retail and I landed a gig as a case manager with Harrington Hospital. We’ve been content, if a little boring, and we keep in touch with Josh. He’s family now. When we visit we never talk about the days of wandering through abandoned houses in the dead of night, or at least we didn’t. Not until recently, when the force that found us in the Benson House decided it wasn’t done with us. Not yet.

  Part Two

  Torches Together

  Chapter Seventeen

  It doesn’t take as much as you might think to flip your entire life upside down. At the ripe old age of thirty-two, Elsie and I settled into a nice little starter home. It needed some work, but it was ours. All it took was one word, and you already know what it is.

  Elsie and I had never really forgotten about the Benson House. It still came up in conversation every few months, but we no longer allowed it to occupy all our headspace. We believed we’d never know what any of it meant, and had come to terms with it.

  The night Josh called was a Friday, and we had settled in to watch a movie, have a few drinks, and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Elsie had stopped dying her hair years ago, but that had never been the sole feature drawing me to her. With her mousy brown hair, I thought she looked more beautiful than ever. I recall looking forward to the bed part of that night, but we never quite got there, at least not in the fashion I had hoped for.

  My phone rang around 9:15. We heard from Josh regularly, but usually during business hours. I picked up only to find him mid-sentence, talking a mile a minute.

  “... think I figured it out.”

  “Hello to you too, sir. Figured what out?”

  “Weeks.”

  A chill swept over me, and I felt the blood drain from my face. Elsie must have noticed because she sat up quickly and mouthed, what is it? I put the call on speakerphone.

  “I, uh, Josh. You’re on speakerphone. Elsie. Elsie’s here.” She looked at me like I was having a stroke. A mixture of confusion and concern. “Could, uh, could you say that again?”

  “I know what Weeks is,” he said. No confidence, arrogance, or satisfaction in his tone. Just a statement of fact.

  “Well, don’t keep us in suspense, Joshy. Do tell,” said Elsie. Despite the playfulness of her words, her tone matched mine.

  “It’s a house. In western Massachusetts, not very far from any of us. It’s also the person who built the house.”

  “How did you find that out?” I asked.

  “I’ve been looking for a long time. I haven’t been on any more excursions since the last time with you guys, but I still spend at least a few hours a week reading up on local attractions. It’s how we started doing it in the first place. Remember, Travis?”

  “Yeah, I guess I’m just glad you’re not going it alone.”

  “So am I,” Elsie agreed.

  “The really strange part is not that I found it,” continued Josh, “but that it took me so long. It’s a pretty well-known house locally, for activity and the like. It’s the type of place I should have discovered before I even met you, but here we are. I stumbled across it about twenty minutes ago for the first time, on a message board.”

  “I legitimately thought those were a relic from middle school.”

  “For the most part, they are. Obviously the name got my attention, so I followed up and there’s so much out there. If this is related, and I’m almost sure it is, it’s like it was being hidden from us. Especially odd considering the steps the Benson House took to get us to pay attention.”

  “I actually can’t believe you called us before you had a chance to dive down the research rabbit hole,” said Elsie.

  “Well, it wasn’t my intention,” said Josh, “but I came across something that made me rethink going this alone. Hold on, I’m going to send you a picture.”

  A photo came through on Elsie’s phone. An old black-and-white p
icture of a man and a woman, dressed up in their Sunday best, and looking deadly serious.

  “This is really old,” I said. “Like very early 1900s old.”

  “1870s, actually. Do you recognize the man?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s not surprising—it’s been a long time—but there was a portrait of him at the Hale House. On the wall in the main room where we started out.”

  “Oh shit, you’re right. Who is he?”

  “Robert Weeks, the guy who built the Weeks House.”

  “Okay, what was his portrait doing in the Hale House? He didn’t even live in the same time period as Hale.”

  “That I don’t know yet,” said Josh. “Like I said, I just discovered this place existed. I’ve got a lot of questions and a lot to figure out. I was hoping you guys might help me out on this one.”

  “Josh, man, I don’t know.” I paused a moment, catching Elsie’s eyes. “I mean, you know I’d love to but we can’t just drop everything to look into another haunted house.”

  “Travis, you know it’s not just another haunted house. There’s a connection here. I know there is. What if I come to you, just for the weekend? We see what we can dig up and go from there.”

  I could tell I wasn’t getting around this, as much as I didn’t want to dig any of that up. “I guess so.”

  “Fantastic,” said Josh. “I can be there at eight tomorrow morning.” And with that, he hung up.

  “Eight? It’s a Saturday,” but he was already off the line. I laid my head in my hands and let out an excessive sigh. After a moment, I realized Elsie hadn’t said a word in the last three or four minutes of our phone call. I picked up my head. She looked more terrified than I ever remembered seeing her before, her eyes big as saucers.

  “Hon, what’s wrong?” I asked. She still had her phone open with the picture Josh had sent.

  “It’s him,” she said. “That’s the man from the Benson House. The dark figure. I’m sure it is.”

  I took her phone and looked again. I’ll be damned if she wasn’t right. Obviously, the Robert Weeks in the picture was more than shadows, but the build was exactly right. Even his stature in the picture matched the specter we’d seen, as though the man from the portrait had stepped out into real life. The penetrating eyes, though black-and-white, weren’t difficult to imagine in a soft green hue.

  “Let’s go to bed,” I said, shutting off the television. No one slept particularly well that night.

  Chapter Eighteen

  As promised, Josh showed up within a couple minutes of 8 a.m. Knowing his affinity for punctuality, Elsie and I were up and dressed, and I had made coffee. When I opened the door, he headed straight for the kitchen table to set up shop. First, he pulled a laptop out of his bag, the same Misfits messenger bag he’d carried around with him in college. At least I assume it was the same one. The only thing more odd than a man in his thirties carrying around that bag would be a man the same age going shopping for a new one.

  “Make yourself at home,” I said, trying to find a place for my coffee mug. “Elsie, will be out in a few. Can I get you anything?”

  “Already ate, thanks,” said Josh, without looking up. “I, uh, didn’t get much of a chance to sleep last night, so I left early.”

  “I wonder why that could be,” I said, not expecting an answer. I let out a sigh. “We kind of had the same issue, although I’m thinking maybe for different reasons. You started looking into that house without us, didn’t you? Just couldn’t wait.”

  He still didn’t look up, but allowed a trace of a smile to creep onto his face. “If it makes you feel better, I didn’t get very far. A few biographical details on Robert Weeks, and some information about the town. There’s quite a bit more to dig into, that’s where I need Elsie, but…”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You know damn well I won’t coddle your ego, Travis. She’s always been better at the research portion. What I was saying is it seems like Weeks, and by extension the house, is pretty tied into the town it’s in.”

  “Which is…?”

  “Slattery Falls.”

  “Don’t know it, but that doesn’t mean much. Western Mass has a ton of podunk little towns.”

  “Yeah, it’s not huge. It’s right near Conway, Deerfield, and Hobson. You could actually follow Route 91 up from Hartford and get pretty close.”

  “Conway and Deerfield I know. What else did you find?”

  Before he answered, Josh’s eyes darted around the room. “Nothing much, really.” I knew he had more to tell me, and I also knew that he could lie better. He knew something and wanted me to drag it out of him. I crossed my arms, letting the silence hang. “Nothing much definitive,” he amended. “There’s a lot of speculation around both the house and the town—more message board stuff. I told you that was where I found out about it in the first place. I’m just curious to see what else we can come up with before we compare notes.”

  “Fair. There’s something I’ve got to ask you before Elsie comes in.” I waited until I was sure I had his complete attention. In other words, no more clacking keys. Josh didn’t look up, but I knew he was listening. “What are we going to do with all this information?”

  He chuckled, and then immediately stopped when he noticed that wasn’t the reaction I was looking for. “I mean, I thought we’d go, you know, like we used to. We’d check it out, see what there is to see. Maybe it needs something from us.”

  I shook my head. “We did it for fun, this doesn’t seem fun. This seems dangerous. This fucking thing crossed state lines to mess with us, terrified us, terrified Elsie, man. You didn’t see her face last night when she looked at that picture. Fun wasn’t the first word that crossed my mind. Now, after ten years, it’s back in our lives. Why? Why now? You said it yourself, the Weeks House is something you should have come across years ago, and now you just happen to stumble across it. You think that’s a mistake?”

  “I had thought of that,” he said, under his breath.

  “And what? Didn’t care? Wanted to go after this place like Captain fucking Ahab?”

  “I don’t know, Travis. It’s not like that. I need to know, though. Step one is to learn more. I don’t know anyone in the world who is a better fit to help me than the two of you. Can we start there and take it a step at a time?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said, feeling myself calm a little. It was easy to forget in the heat of the moment that Josh didn’t have a manipulative, malevolent bone in his body. “Yes. I just need to know that you have Elsie’s best interest at heart. She’s your cousin and Josh, she’s my world. We’re not dragging her into a position where she could get hurt. Please agree with that.”

  “Of course.”

  We ended up changing the subject to baseball while we waited. The Mets were getting ready to miss the playoffs again, and as a lifelong Massachusetts resident, despite my four-year stay in Storrs, I was ready for the roller coaster ride that is a Red Sox season. We were knee deep talking about starting pitchers, Sale versus deGrom when Elsie walked in, no inkling of the tension that had been present only a few minutes ago.

  “Morning, boys. We ready to get started?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hours passed, feeling like minutes. We immersed ourselves in as much information as we could get our greedy hands on. Around noon, Elsie and Josh deemed me non-essential personnel and sent me out to get lunch. Occasionally, one of us would stop to bounce something we had found off the others, but mainly we worked in silence. Falling back into old routines happened a little too easily. We knew later in the day we would shut down the computers and compare notes, then use that to discern what else we needed to be looking for. It was all very methodical and scientific-ish.

  Elsie ended up being the one to set that chain in motion somewhere around 7 p.m. With a dramatic groan, she closed her laptop and sat back, arms crossed in front of her chest, looking back and forth between Josh an
d I.

  “Everybody in a decent stopping place?”

  We nodded, and she returned the gesture. “Let’s make something to eat, pour some drinks, and see what we’ve got.”

  Elsie and I made chicken and rice, nothing fancy, while Josh ran to the liquor store to pick up some beer, also nothing fancy. We planned on getting something in our stomachs before we got to business, but everyone was visibly excited, and the conversation refused to wait until after dinner.

  “So, recap of what we knew going in,” said Josh between bites. “The house was built in Slattery Falls, Massachusetts in 1868, mostly in 1868 anyway. It looks like construction spilled into the next year and there were additions put on following that. Robert Weeks came to Slattery Falls from Bristol, England in 1869.”

  “So wait. Doesn’t that mean he didn’t build the house? That it was at least started before he came?” I asked.

  “Yes, and no.”

  “I’ve got that one,” said Elsie. “Slattery Falls is a pretty small town, which is probably one reason none of us knew the name when it first popped up. One day in 1868, construction sprung up. None of the workers would answer questions put to them by the townspeople, just kept to their job. They never came into town for food or drinks either, just brought everything they needed with them and packed up at the end of the day to leave. Well, supposedly. I found it noted in several places that no town residents ever saw them leave, and that worried the people of Slattery Falls. The construction workers were hard at work one minute and gone the next.”

  “One day in early 1869, the residents noticed a towering man with a big red beard present at the site. At first glance, they thought the job might finally have a foreman. Reports said even though the workers still wouldn’t interact with anyone, this man would come into town occasionally, buying items at random, and displaying a very cold disposition. A length of rope here, a set of empty jars there, never a lot. Just knick knacks.” Elsie paused a moment to catch our eyes. “This is speculation, but reading that part, the way they phrased it, almost reminded me of a shoplifter buying a pack of gum to avoid appearing guilty. The whole thing kind of has an urban legend vibe to it, especially the part about the workers.”