House of Echoes: A Novel

by Brendan Duffy

  A noise tore Ben back to his own bedroom. A scream came from the attic.

  The wind played all sorts of tricks when it found a way in. He and Jake had worked hard to seal the upper floors, but they could locate the drafts only when the wind was brisk. It was an odd sound, a warbling whistle. He stared at his ceiling, listening to the rhythm of the noise. It tapered to almost nothing, and just when it had nearly disappeared, it came surging back.

  He closed his eyes again and searched his mind for the snowy village that burned in the valley, but the attic noise had pulled him too far out.

  “Okay, I’m up,” Ben said to himself. He swung his legs off the bed. Caroline turned over and muttered something. He remained motionless until her breathing settled.

  He grabbed a sweater off the back of a chair and eased himself into the hallway. Using small steps and memory’s projection, he felt his way down the hall, not flicking on the light until he got to the tower stairs. There were naked bulbs here, the cold light of corkscrew fluorescents. He shielded his eyes against the glare, knowing now that it would take him forever to fall asleep. On his way up the stairs to the attic, he caught his reflection in one of the windows. In the morgue lighting, he looked thin and startled.

  Tracking a phantom sound in a house as large and old as the Crofts was a frustrating exercise. The acoustics of the building were strange. At times he could hear a noise in his bedroom and be certain it came from upstairs, only to ascend the stairs to find the place deathly quiet. He assumed it had something to do with the air vents that ran through the walls, the fickle wind from the valley, and the fact that the house had been constructed in stages. So when he opened the door to the attic, he wasn’t surprised to find the room utterly silent. This was a game he’d played before.

  With the exception of the nook where he wrote, the lighting in the attic was poor. There were just a handful of bulbs to light the immense space. He flicked them on and grabbed a roll of duct tape, a candle, and some matches from where they sat on a table near his desk.

  The next room was in the center of the attic. He was sure this was where the noise had come from, but the way the scream ricocheted confused his senses. He rarely ventured beyond his writing nook and was struck by the emptiness of the space, which seemed to have grown in the dark.

  A draft raised the hairs on his arms and sent a whistling cry through his ears. He quickly lit the candle to track the sound. He’d hunted gaps in the ancient windows enough to know not to waste the evidence left by a strong gust. The flame blew east, so he headed to the windows on the western wall. One by one he traced the frames with the candle. While he checked the last window, the flame was blown out by the wind. Ben felt along the side of the window: The current was cold fire on his fingertips. He ripped off a measure of duct tape to mark the spot and unfastened the lock on the window. Sometimes fiddling with the window was enough to temporarily disrupt the wind’s noise.

  The window did not want to be opened, but Ben coaxed it halfway. The breeze from the valley tore through his hair and filled the room. The chill from the December wind was as complete as a plunge into the ocean. It was a bell-clear night, the sky an unfathomable blue, with only the boldest stars visible beyond the immensity of the waxing moon. It could still catch him off guard: how beautiful the world could be when no one was there to see it.

  The sound was gone now. The attic was still in the new silence of the night.

  As he reached up to close the window, a flash of movement pulled his gaze to the ground. Something ran through the dark.

  It was a person, he was sure. He caught flashes of pumping arms as the figure loped through the ghost-lit field.

  Ben was on the tower stairs before he realized he was running. He thought of poor lost Mrs. White and her son with his shotgun. He thought of the man in the smoke from Charlie’s drawing and of the mutilated deer and the pit in the north woods. Death and violence and blood. Ben thought of his boys asleep in their beds. He had an abstract thought that this was the point in the story when the man got his gun. But he had no gun. When he reached the kitchen, he crashed through the baby gate they kept on the stairs, sending it spiraling into the counter. On his way to the door, he pulled a knife from the rack.

  He burst out of the house.

  His heart thudded in his chest, but beyond the rustle of grass in the wind, the world was quiet. Walking quickly in front of the house, he ran his eyes over the Drop, searching for movement. He looked down at the knife. In the story, the knife would seize a malicious gleam from the moonlight; in his hand, it looked as dark as the sky.

  The fields had been tamed by the morning frosts, and the grass was half its summer height but still tall enough to hide a man who did not wish to be seen.

  “Hey!” he screamed. He screamed again before taking the time to consider whether this was a good idea.

  He turned to the south woods and saw someone running toward him. Announced by ripples of windswept grass, the figure ran with the beat of the land. Its footfalls punctuated the gusts from the valley and matched the cadence of the forest’s swaying trees. Ben dropped the knife.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” Ben shouted.

  Charlie slowed to a stop in front of Ben.

  “It was different in the dark,” Charlie said. His little chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath. “Everything was different.”

  Ben knelt down to grab the boy at the shoulders, to force his son to look him in the eyes. “You can’t be out here by yourself. It’s too dark; it’s too cold.”

  “Yes,” Charlie said. He turned to the valley. “It will get darker.”

  “You could trip and hurt yourself out here. And we wouldn’t know, because we’d assume you were in your bed, because that’s where you’re supposed to be. If you were out here alone all night, you’d die of hypothermia, except you wouldn’t be alone because of the goddamn coyote packs.” Ben realized he was screaming.

  The sound of barking made Ben turn around just in time to see Hudson speed by him, a blur. The dog moved so quickly that Ben could only watch as the beagle launched himself at Charlie, knocking the boy to the ground.

  “Hudson!” Ben shouted. The dog stood on Charlie’s chest, growling, inches from the boy’s face. Ben grabbed his collar to lead him away. “What’s wrong with you?” He tried to get the dog to shift his focus to him, but Hudson would not stop. “Are you all right?” Ben asked Charlie.

  “Yes,” Charlie said. He got to his feet slowly, rubbing his side.

  Spikes of grass lit up around them as light burst from the kitchen windows.

  “What are you two doing out here?” Caroline called from the kitchen door. Her voice was nearly lost over Hudson’s growling. She wore a red robe that turned a shade closer to black with every step she took from the house.

  “Did you see him?” Ben asked her. He still had a grip on Hudson’s collar.

  “I heard you,” Caroline said. “And Hudson. What’s going on? Are you okay, Charlie?”

  “I want to go inside,” Charlie said. He let Caroline press his head against her hip.

  “He’s been running,” Ben told her. “Running around. Out here. In the dark. I don’t even know for how long.” Ben could not remember ever being this angry. He didn’t know what to do with it. It was a river burning inside him with nowhere to go.

  “You can’t be outside at night by yourself,” Caroline told Charlie. “We need to know where you are, okay? You know this, honey. You’re shaking, so go warm up. You’re filthy, too. Wash your feet before going into bed.” They watched Charlie run back to the house.

  “What’s wrong with Hudson?” Caroline asked Ben. The dog was now barking at the forest. Ben still had a grip on the beagle’s collar, and it was hard to hear Caroline over the sound.

  “I don’t know. Charlie has everyone worked up. He’s unbelievable,” Ben said. “I’m up in the attic and see this…thing sprinting across the field. I don’t know whether to call the police or The X-File
s. But, no, it’s not a yeti, it’s my eight-year-old. He’s not even wearing shoes.”

  “Neither are you,” Caroline said. She was talking about his feet, but she was looking him in the eyes.

  Ben couldn’t read the expression on her face.

  “Can we go inside now?” She sounded tired.

  “This is really not normal. We have to do something.” Ben remembered the quirks of Caroline’s that he’d overlooked and knew all too well where ignoring them had gotten him. He could not live in a den of wolves.

  “You know how he is. He just needed to be specifically told that he’s not allowed to go out alone at night. We should keep better tabs on him, anyway. We’ve been too lenient about letting him play out here by himself.”

  After so many years of certainty, Ben was bewildered by what a puzzle Caroline had become. This was a woman who’d barely left her room for a day after he’d come home with a bucket of the wrong shade of ecru, so how was she not as upset about this as he was?

  “It’s not only that,” Ben said. “At school, he drew this picture of the shed burning down, and there was this big black man in the smoke. Hudson!” The beagle leapt toward the forest, and Ben nearly lost his balance. “Calm down, buddy.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “The smoke from the shed was made to look like a man. Arms, legs, a face. It was disturbing. I’ll show you the drawing.” They were nearly to the kitchen door. “I think he should talk to someone. A counselor. The school has someone they think might be able to get him to open up.” Ben knew this would be delicate territory for Caroline. She did not like therapists.

  “Because of a drawing?” Caroline asked.

  “It’s probably just his way of processing the fire, but they could help him work through it. One evaluation session.” Ben realized he was nearly pleading with her. “They’d pull him out of class for an hour. If everything’s fine, like we think it is, then that’ll be it.” Ben didn’t know if that was how it worked, but he needed her to agree to this.

  “I don’t know, Ben,” Caroline said. She opened the door and held it for him. In the kitchen light, Caroline looked as tired as her voice sounded. Worn through.

  “Please,” Ben said. “What harm could it do?”

  As Ben ascended the steps, Hudson twisted out of his grip and bolted for the moonlit fields.

  “Hudson!” Ben called after him. The beagle howled his hunting cry into the night. “Hudson!”

  “Ben, I’ve got to go to bed,” Caroline said.

  “I can’t leave him out here,” Ben said. “It’s too cold.” He had no idea how he was going to get the beagle back into the house. Hudson had never acted like this before.

  “It’s too cold for anyone to be out,” Caroline said.

  “I’ll get my coat and boots,” Ben said. He followed her inside. Maybe Hudson had sniffed out a coyote pack. This thought did not make him feel any better.

  Caroline had already made her way to the tower stairs. Ben caught his reflection again in the glass. He was still thin and startled-looking, but now he seemed weary, too. And it was not the kind of exhaustion that could be fixed by a full night’s sleep.

  26

  Charlie ran up the steps to his room. It was warm here, yet he trembled.

  He had to clean off the blood first, in case Mom checked on him. The blood had looked like mud in the dark, but Hudson knew the difference.

  While the Watcher had left Charlie the gifts of many arranged creatures in the forest throughout the summer and fall, it had rarely let itself be seen. But twice Charlie had spied it by the lake from the blind that he’d constructed in the branches above the faerie circle. Both times it had been trying to catch fish with its hands but had been doing it wrong. Charlie knew this because The Book of Secrets had a chapter on all kinds of fishing. He’d left the book by the lake, with a bright maple leaf to mark the page. The book was gone the next morning, but the day after that, Charlie had found it placed in the center of the faerie circle, ringed with the heads of five raccoons.

  The game he played with the Watcher had changed over the months. At first it had seemed like a kind of tag, or a treasure hunt, but now it was a game of hide-and-seek, in which they both hid and searched at the same time. Charlie thought the rules to their game had changed, but watching the blood slip down the bathtub drain, he wondered if there had been any rules in the first place.

  Charlie ventured into the night only when the moon lit the land. Caught in the wind and its cold light, the fields of the Drop ebbed and flowed like an ocean. Tonight was chillier than his other watches had been. He had worn a coat but no shoes so as to cross the land without a sound.

  A family of deer had been drinking at the south end of the lake. They had paid Charlie no mind as he slid into the faerie circle and up the rope ladder that led to the platform from which he watched. As he climbed, he heard coyotes in the distance. He’d heard them many nights, but they never ventured into this part of the forest. This part of the forest had already been claimed.

  Once up in his blind, Charlie searched the contours of the lake and saw that the deer were gone. The Drop was different at night. Sometimes he saw bats flutter against the stars and heard the mourning of owls from deep within the woods.

  Charlie had learned things about the dark during that long night in his old school’s furnace room. He knew that the dark was not one thing but many. Like layers of fabric stacked upon one another, each with its own texture. The longer he watched, the more these layers fell aside to reveal something more of the world beneath.

  A loud crack shattered the silence. Charlie sat up straight; this was new. The first sound was followed by three more. The noises seemed too loud for broken branches. There was a sickening quality to them that Charlie could not place. The sounds had to be the work of the Watcher, but still he could not see anything.

  While Charlie sat on his perch and wondered if he was supposed to follow the sounds, he heard more noise: a rustling followed by an urgent pattering. He could not imagine what made these sounds, but it was coming closer.

  It was then that the massive bulk of the Watcher became visible. Charlie had never been this close before. If he had draped his arm off the platform, he would have grazed the creature’s bristling head.

  The Watcher was entering Charlie’s faerie circle. And it wasn’t alone. It took Charlie a second to understand that it was dragging one of the deer, a full-grown doe. Charlie hadn’t realized it was a deer at first, because of the way it was crumpled against the ground. As the Watcher pulled the animal into the center of the circle, its legs dragged behind, splayed at terrible angles. Its useless feet pawed hopelessly at the frozen ground.

  “Soon,” the Watcher said. Its voice was deep as the mountains and broken from disuse. Charlie had never heard the Watcher speak; it had not occurred to him that it could. He knew it could write and read, but to hear the sound of its voice filled him with wonder and horror. The Watcher propped the deer against the stump in the center of the faerie circle, stretching its neck so that Charlie could see the profile of the doe’s face. Short puffs of panicked breath clouded the air around its blinking eyes.

  Though Charlie thought himself well hidden, the Watcher turned toward him. Without breaking their gaze, it plunged something into the deer’s neck. A gush of blood arced high into the air, followed by another and another.

  “Soon it will be you,” the Watcher said. The pale eye of the moon shone in the sheet of crimson that rippled across the ground. The doe’s breathing slowed. “In the cold, in the dark,” the Watcher said. The deer twitched, and became still. “All alone. That’s when you die.” The Watcher’s frozen face changed for a moment before turning away. It let the deer’s limp body slump against the ground.

  The Watcher disappeared into the woods, leaving Charlie with the dead deer. After a time Charlie realized he was shaking. He’d thought himself immune to the cold, but now it was all he felt.

  He staggered down the rop
e ladder and into the wide pool of congealing blood. Once through the tree line, he began to run. Past the lake, he darted back into the trees. He wanted to purge the cold from his bones and the drying blood from his feet. When he turned back for the Crofts, he saw the illuminated windows of the attic and his father’s silhouette against the light.

  Even now Charlie’s hands trembled in the heat of the faucet’s stream. He would have to hide these pajamas. They were splattered with blood. As he took them off, he tried to imagine what the Watcher wanted.

  The match between them was uneven; Charlie realized that now. Charlie could run and hide and search and watch, but if the Watcher in the forest decided to do something, Charlie knew that he could not hope to stop it.

  27

  Ben paced the edge of the forest for an hour, calling Hudson’s name. When he became too cold to continue, he sat in the kitchen, listening and hoping for the beagle’s scratch at the door.

  He woke just before five, his face smeared against the table, his spine a tangle of pain. Outside, the moon had set; the land lay under a thicket of total darkness.

  Ben returned to the forest, to walk along the trees and shout for Hudson. He shone a flashlight into the maw of the woods. Still no sign. The beagle might have found a quiet burrow in which to sleep through the night. This was possible, and this was what Ben made himself believe as he trudged back to the Crofts. After breakfast, Hudson would scratch on the kitchen door, 100 percent okay and in need of a bath.

  Since this was going to be just another normal day, he should begin it in the usual way, Ben thought. He made coffee and brought his laptop down from the attic. By the time he got settled, the eastern sky had begun to lighten. Along the Drop, the fields were glazed with frost that gleamed purple in the day’s nascent light.