“Don’t know,” Corrie said. “I’m finding out.”
“OH,” MR. KLEINFELD said, suddenly off his stride. “So you knew it was…”
“Haunted?” the new neighbor—Corrie, her name was—said. “Sure. I mean, just in general terms.”
Mr. Kleinfeld smiled, but his eyebrows were crawling up his forehead. Across the table, his wife poured out cups of tea for the three of them; her smile might have meant anything.
“Is that how you heard about it?” Mrs. Kleinfeld asked. “You’re one of those ‘ghost hunters?’”
Sunlight pressed through the still air along with the distant chop of a helicopter formation. The new neighbor took the proffered cup and sipped at it. His wife put two small silver spoonfuls of sugar into his, stirred it twice neatly, and handed him his cup.
“Not really,” the new neighbor said. “It was just one of those things you hear about, you know? In the air. I don’t even know where I stumbled onto it the first time, but the Realtor was pretty up-front.”
“Was he?” Mr. Kleinfeld said. That had never happened before either.
“Sure. I mean, there weren’t a lot of gory details. I asked about why the price was low, and he said something about ghost stories and the old tenants getting freaked out and leaving.”
“The women,” Mrs. Kleinfeld said. “It doesn’t seem to care about men, but it hates women.”
“It?” the new neighbor said, and Mr. Kleinfeld watched his wife settle back into her chair. The first part of the meeting might not have gone along its usual path, but they were back in familiar territory now.
“There is a restless spirit in that house,” Mrs. Kleinfeld said. “Has been since before we came. It never bothers the men. They never see it.”
“The girls, though,” Mr. Kleinfeld said, shaking his head the way he always did. “I could make a list of the young women we’ve had banging on our door in the middle of the night, scared out of their wits. It’s not a fit house for a girl to live in. Especially alone.”
He sipped his tea, but it was still scalding. He blew across its surface.
“Weird,” the new neighbor said. “Any particular reason anyone knows about? Ancient Indian burial ground?”
His wife nodded slowly, the steam rising from her teacup swirling around her face. The chop of the helicopters grew gradually louder. Mr. Kleinfeld shifted back a degree in his chair. His part was done for now, and just as well. The missus was better at getting through to people than he was. She always had been.
“There’s a story,” she said. “I don’t know how much of it’s true and how much of it’s fancied up, but I’ve never heard or seen anything to contradict it. Twenty years ago, there was a couple of young people moved into that house you’re in today. Young man and his wife. Well, it wasn’t long before the wife started showing up at the grocery store in big sunglasses. Wearing long sleeves in the middle of the summer. That sort of thing.”
“Lots of domestic abuse in the world,” the new neighbor said. “Doesn’t make for a million haunted houses.” Her tone was light, but Mr. Kleinfeld heard something strong under it. Maybe skepticism. Maybe something else.
“He was an evil man,” Mrs. Kleinfeld said. “People used to hear them fighting. They say he used to try to hide the worst of the screaming under the jet noise, but the whole neighborhood knew. One fellow who lived on the other side, where that nice Asian family is now, tried to make an issue of it, and the man threatened to cut his nose off. And then one night they were gone. Man and wife both, vanished from the face of the earth like they’d never been. A few months later, her people came and packed up all the furniture and put the place up for sale. Rumor was that the wife was in some sort of asylum out West, with her mind all gone to putty, talking about demons and Satan. She never did get out of that place.”
The new neighbor was caught now, her expression sharp as a pencil point. Mrs. Kleinfeld had to stop for a moment while the helicopters passed overhead, the blades cutting through the high air with enough violence to drown out their words. Or their screams, for that matter.
“Next people who moved in were an older couple with a girl just in high school,” she said, her voice loud enough to carry over the falling racket as the copters flew on. “Six months they were there. Not more. The mother said she’d have tried to stand it, but the spirit started coming after the daughter too, and that was that. Sold the place at a loss and moved across to the other side of the base. Only time the place has had the same owner for more than a year since then was five years back when there were four young men sharing the place, and even then, I saw their girlfriends leaving in the middle of the night, crying too hard to stop.”
“What does it do to them?” the new neighbor asked. The hardness was still there, but it wasn’t skepticism. Something more immediate, more demanding. Something like hunger.
“It comes for them,” Mrs. Kleinfeld said, “and thank God they can feel it. No one’s ever stayed long enough to know what it would do if it caught them, but there are nights I can feel it hating all the way over here. I’m in my bed at night saying my prayers, and it’s like someone put ice against the wall. You couldn’t pay me to stay a night in that place. Not for a million dollars. Something lives in that house, and it hates women.”
The new neighbor nodded, more, Mr. Kleinfeld thought, to herself than to him or his wife. There was a brightness in her eyes. Not fear. Maybe even pleasure. The new neighbor’s smile disturbed him more than his wife’s story ever did. He cleared his throat, and she seemed to wake up a little. Her smile widened and became less authentic.
“Have you seen anything yet?” he asked. “Anything out of the ordinary?”
“Me? No,” she said. “Not a thing.”
THE COLD FRONT came on Friday, almost a week later; vicious winds blasting down from a cloudless sky. Gritty air ripped at the trees, stripping off leaves that were still turning from green to yellow and red and gold; the glories of autumn cut short and shredded. The low Western sun turned bloody as it fell, and Corrie wheeled her car into the undersized garage like a child pulling up a blanket. The thin walls were less protection than the idea of them. Every new gust battering against the house made the garage creak. Dust settled from the frame roof. She scurried from car to kitchen, hunched against the sound of the wind.
Once she got into the house itself, she unfurled. The wind still threw handfuls of dirt against the windows, the thick plastic blinds shuffled and clicked in the drafts, but the masonry walls seemed beyond any violence nature could contrive, solid and sober as a prison. Corrie turned on every light as she walked through the house. She examined each room in turn: the broken-down boxes in the spare bedroom, the legal pads and laptop docking station in her makeshift office, the sheets and blankets in the linen closet. In the kitchen, she counted the knives on the magnetic rack and checked the oven. In her bedroom, she squatted, her eye on a level with the unmarked bedspread. She took her shotgun from its place under the bed, counting out the shells under her breath as she unloaded it and loaded it again. In the bathroom, she lingered in front of the mirror for over a minute, her fingertips on the glass, eyes unfocused and attention turned inward. Nothing had moved. Nothing was missing. Even the raging wind hadn’t so much as rolled a pencil.
She microwaved a plate of lasagna, poured herself a glass of wine, and sat down on the couch. A few bites, and she was up again, pacing. Restless. Frustrated. Outside, the sun slipped lower.
“I know you’re here,” she said to the empty air. “I know you can hear me.”
The wind shrieked and murmured. The window blinds shuddered. The air smelled of tomato sauce a little, but burned at the edges—acid with a touch of smoke. She stood in the middle of the room, jaw clenched. Silent.
The moment lasted years before the hint of a smile touched her mouth and a mad, reckless light came into her eyes. She walked back to the couch, picked up her plate, and took it to the kitchen. She ate two more bites standing at the sink, and the
n dropped the plate onto the brushed steel with a clatter. The faucet swung easily, cold water drowning the food. Reddened bits of meat and pale sheets of pasta swum in a cold, ugly soup and then settled, clogging the drain. She looked at the mess and deliberately stepped back, leaving it there. Her chin rose, daring the emptiness around her.
Something within the house shifted. Walls that had been only block and plaster and paint turned their attention to her. The windows hid behind their blinds like closed eyes. She kicked off her shoes, chuckling to herself. The floor felt colder than it should have. The glass of wine still rested on the coffee table; she scooped it up, taking her purse in the other hand. The furnace kicked on, blowers roaring a thousand miles away.
In the kitchen, she leaned against the counter beside the sink. Goose bumps covered her arms and thighs. Her breath was coming fast and shallow and shaking a little. She lit a cigarette and then sipped the cool, astringent wine, rolling it in her mouth, feeling the alcohol pressing through the soft, permeable membranes of her flesh. When she swallowed, her throat went a degree warmer. She set the cigarette between her lips and stretched out a hand, lifting the half-full glass. Red trembled for a moment, as she slowly, deliberately, poured it out, the wine spilling over the floor and staining the tiles. She dropped the glass into the sink with her ruined dinner and stepped forward, grinding the soles of her feet into the puddle.
The storm outside sounded like a warning. She shifted her hips, twisted at the waist, dancing in the mess. She rolled her weight back and forth, humming to herself, and raised her arms over her head. Her joints loosened, her belly grew warm and heavy. Her nipples hardened and her breath became visible and feather-white in the sudden arctic chill. Voices came from somewhere nearby, raised in anger, but distant.
Still dancing, she pressed one hand to her belly, took the cigarette between her fingers, and drew the smoke back into her. The taste of it was like drinking fire. She flicked the ash, watching the soft gray fall down, down, down into the wide red puddle at her feet.
Not wine.
Blood.
He stood framed by the basement door. A young man, and ageless. His shoulders were broad as a bull, his pale hair cut close to the skull. The dark slacks she’d seen in the mirror were tight and strained across the hip, as if designed to point out the thing’s barely restrained erection. With every deep, heaving breath, blood sheeted down his body from the hole where his heart should have been. She had the impression of corrupted meat beneath that pale skin. His lips curled back in wordless rage, baring teeth too sharp to be human.
The warmth within her was gone. Her face was pale, and the electric shock of fear turned her dance to stillness. The man shook his head at her once, slowly back and forth. When he opened his mouth and howled, she retreated two quick involuntary steps, the countertop digging at the small of her back. Hatred radiated from him. Hatred and malice and the promise of violence. The tiles between them were the slick red of fresh slaughter.
When she spoke, her voice trembled. It sounded very small, even to her.
“Don’t like it, huh?”
The ghost shifted his head side to side, neither nod nor shake, but stretching. Like an athlete preparing for some terrible effort. A clearer threat than balled fists.
“W-what,” she tried to say, then crossed her arms and took a fast, nervous drag on the cigarette. She lifted her chin in defiance. “What’re you gonna do about it?”
His eyes moved across her body like she was something he owned. The hissing sound of his breath came from everywhere.
“So, what? You want to hurt me? Come on, then,” she said, her voice taking on a little strength. “If you’re gonna do it, do it!”
He stepped into the room, filling the doorway. The death-blood, slick on his belly, glittered. He bared his teeth, growling like a dog.
“You want to hurt me? Then hurt me,” she yelled. “Hurt me!”
The ghost screamed and rushed across the room toward her. She felt its rage and hatred surrounding her, swallowing her. She saw its hand rising to slap her down, and she flinched back, her eyes closed, and braced for the blow. Every scar on her skin tingled like someone had touched them with ice. Filthy water poured into her mouth, her nose, corrupted and sour with decay. She felt the spirit pressing against her, pushing into her skin. Its rage lifted her like a wave.
And then it was gone.
She stood in the kitchen, her body shaking and her ragged breath coming in sobs. She was terribly cold. The wine on her toes—only wine—was half-dried and sticky. Storm wind battered at the windows, the walls. The furnace rumbled, fighting against the frigid air. She sank slowly, her back against the cabinet, and hugged her knees. A stray tear fell down her cheek and she shuddered uncontrollably twice.
Then, between one breath and the next, her mouth relaxed. Her body released. The breaking tension was more than sexual.
She started laughing: a deep, satisfied sound, like the aftermath of orgasm.
SUNDAY MORNING BROUGHT the first snow of the season. The thick, wet flakes appeared just before dawn, dark against the bright city backsplash of the clouds, and transformed to a perfect white once they had fallen. After the morning’s toast and tea and sermon, Mr. Kleinfeld, wrapped in his good wool overcoat, lumbered out after breakfast, snow shovel over his shoulder. He cleared his walkway and his drive, then the stretch of sidewalk in front of his house. The trees all around were black-barked and frosted with snow, and very few cars passed, the tracks of their tires leaving white furrows and never digging so deep as the asphalt.
Finished with his own house, he made his way through the ankle-high snow to his neighbor’s. No lights glowed in the house, no tracks marked her walk. Her driveway hadn’t been used. He hesitated, not wanting to wake her, but it was almost midday. He rang the bell, and when no answer came, mittened manfully on the door. No one came. He shook his head and put himself to work. The clouds above were bright as the snow when he finished, the air not yet above the freezing point, but warmer all the same.
His wife met him at the door with a cup of hot cocoa, just as he’d known she would. He leaned the snow shovel by the door, took the warm mug, and kissed his wife’s dry cheek.
“I don’t think our new neighbor made it home last night,” he said. He sat in his chair. “I figure she’s seen it. Won’t be long now before she moves on.”
It was a conversation they’d had before, and he waited now for his wife’s agreement, her prediction: two more months, another month, a week. The missus was better at judging these things than he was. So he was surprised when she stood silent for a long moment, shaking her head.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just do not know…”
DAVID’S APARTMENT STILL showed the gaps where she had been. His clothes still hung in only half of the bedroom closet, the hangers moving into the emptiness she had left only slowly, as if hoping that her blouses and slacks and dresses might come back. The corner where her desk had once been was still vacant, the four hard circles that the legs had pressed into the carpet relaxed out a little, but not gone. The kid upstairs was practicing his guitar again, working on power chords that had driven her half-crazy when she’d lived there. They seemed sort of cute now.
“He’s getting better,” David said.
She rolled over, stuffing the pillow under her head and neck as she did. A thin line of snow ran along the windowsill—the first of the season. David, beside her, nodded toward the ceiling.
“He made it all the way through ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ last week,” he said.
“All five parts?”
“Yep.”
“Kid’s going places,” she said.
“Please God that it’s places out of earshot.”
She brushed her fingertips across his chest. His skin was several tones darker than hers, and the contrast made her hand seem paler than she was, and her scars as white as the snow. He had his first gray hair in among the black, just over his ear. His dark eyes shifted over
to her, his smile riding the line between postcoital exhaustion and melancholy. Quick as the impulse, she rolled the few more inches toward him and kissed his shoulder. He raised his eyebrows the way he always did when he knew that she was nervous.
“What’s your plan for the day?” he asked.
“Housework,” she said. “You?”
“Get up early and hit the Laundromat,” he said.
She nodded.
“And since that didn’t work?”
“Do an emergency load in the sink to get through work tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got to meet up with Gemma at three to get back my scanner.”
“You’ll need to get hopping. It’s past noon now.”
“Another few minutes won’t make a difference,” he said, putting his hand over hers. He wasn’t pretty—his face too wide, his nose bent where it had broken as a child and never been put right, his jaw touched by the presentiment of jowls. Handsome, maybe, in an off-putting way. “Is there something to talk about?”
“Is,” she said.
He took a long, slow breath and let it out slowly. Not a sigh so much as the preparatory breath of a high diver. Or a man steeling himself for bad news.
“I think you should come over tonight,” she said. “Take a look at the place. Bring your laundry, too.”
He sat up. The blankets dropped to his lap. She looked at him, unable to read his expression.
“You’re changing the rules?” he said. Each word was as gentle as picking up eggs.
“No, I’m not. I always said that the not coming over part was temporary. It’s just… time. That’s all.”
“So. You really aren’t breaking up with me?”
“Jesus,” she said. She took the pillow from under her head and hit him with it lightly. Then she did it again.
“It is traditional,” he said. “Girl gets a house without consulting her boyfriend, moves all her stuff out, tells him he can’t come over. Says she’s ‘working through something’ but won’t say what exactly it is? It’s hard not to connect those dots.”
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