by Noel Hynd
The paint gurgled. Rebecca stopped. What else had she just heard? A noise somewhere in the house? Somewhere just beyond the door.
Then, for half a moment, Rebecca caught a whiff of that smell that had bothered her. Then it was gone. She looked toward the door and a feeling was upon her. A feeling that told her she was not alone. It was that instinct again. That sense of being watched.
She felt it again. She wasn’t sure whether she was imagining it or whether it was the real thing. Suddenly, she was cautious. She called. “Hello?”
No answer.
“Anyone there?” her own voice again, echoing. Still no response.
She was hoping that Bill had come home unexpectedly. Or that Melissa had let herself in. She went to the door. There was a creak somewhere in the hallway. She looked. Nothing. The floor creaked again, right before her eyes. She was looking right at the spot that had creaked and she could not see anything.
A shudder was upon her.
“No,” she said softly. “This isn’t happening. And I’m not scared.” She decided to prove it to herself. She would go back to work, ignore everything, and prove to herself what a brave woman she was.
Fear was in her mind, she told herself, and she was the mistress of her own mind. She would exorcise her own private demons and that would be the end of them. She started the music again. The Killers. Are We Human? She filled the room with it, poured fresh yellow paint in the tray, and went to work on the third wall.
Now this was really weird. There was another source of music somewhere. It was still faint and in the background of her mind. But she could hear it beneath the sound of the CD player.
“Bull!” she said. She turned so quickly that two big drops of paint hit the player. But she ignored the paint and turned the CD player off. And she still heard that subliminal noise. Now there was a pattern to the music, though it resembled no song that she had ever before known. She mumbled to herself. “What instrument is that? What am I hearing?”
Then she realized that there was no instrument at all. It was a human voice. A man’s voice humming some melody. And it was inside her head. Then, as mysteriously as it had appeared, it was gone. She couldn’t hear it anymore.
There was a stark stillness in the room and suddenly a loud bang. Right before Rebecca’s eyes, the screen collapsed from where it had held the window open. The screen flew into the room as if thrown. It skidded toward her, and Rebecca moved her feet fast to avoid it, though it stopped before it hit her.
The bang, however, had come from the window sash, which crashed down in the absence of the screen. It had slammed shut. Hard! Real hard.
Rebecca stepped back from the window and stared at it. Her heart kicked furiously. What she had seen was something that could not have happened. The window wouldn’t just slam shut like that! The screen had been secure. She knew because she had wedged the screen into the window herself. And yet, it had come down so fast that, had she not seen it herself, she would have sworn a strong man had shoved it.
Bravely, she approached the window. She placed a cautious hand on the top of the lower panes. She ran her fingers across it. Nothing unusual. She listened. Yes, she could hear the music again. Sounded like a man humming somewhere.
Somewhere.
“See, Dr. Einhorn?” she said aloud. “It’s all in my head. It’s all because someone tried to kill me in Fairfield, Connecticut.” Then it stopped again.
There was another old house creak in the floorboards. She turned. Nothing. This was the creepiest room she had ever encountered in her life.
The odor was back. It worsened. It smelled like… Like what?
Dead something. Dead what?
A thought came to her, as boldly as if someone had spoken.
A dead man, Rebecca? Is that what you smell?
“What?” she asked aloud, as if someone had addressed her. But no one had. No one she could find.
She turned back to the window. She raised it again letting in fresh air. A whole blast of it. She held the window open in the spot where it had been earlier. How on earth could it have fallen by itself? The sash was stubborn! There was no way it could have collapsed the way it had.
She fixed the screen in the window again, doing it in such a way that her hands were never at risk if the sash dropped again.
She stepped back. Still, she could hear the humming. Where was it corning from?
She looked at the window. Bright day outside. Autumn in Southern California. A shadow cloud passed over the sun.
“Maybe the kids won’t even be happy in this room,” she started to tell herself. “Maybe this room should be used as…”
…as what, Rebecca my darling?
A reading room. Or a sewing room. Something that Bill and she could use. Hell, she found herself thinking next. Bill could have the room. Pointless to put the kids at risk.
Risk? What risk?
She asked herself. What was she thinking about? What sort of risk? Deep down, what was she thinking about this room? What was in it that she couldn’t see? What was she feeling? What was the source of her moods involving this part of the house?
Another bang! A loud one! Deafening! Right behind her!
“Oh, Lord!” a voice filled the room. A woman’s voice. Her own. A scream in her throat. The door had slammed. Or someone had slammed it! She was terrified.
She turned and went to the door, half scared to death of what might be on the other side. “Bill?” she called. “Bill!” she screamed. No answer. She put her hand on the doorknob and tried to turn it. It wouldn’t turn! Not in the slightest.
She yelled for help. The knob. That stubborn doorknob again. It wouldn’t budge. She pounded on and yanked at the door. “Open the door! Who’s there? Bill, if that’s you, this isn’t funny!”
She pulled the knob again but it was the same way the knob had been when she had first come through the house with Essie Lewisohn. It wouldn’t give.
The knob was as firm and steady as if a strong male hand were holding it on the other side. Then her worst fears came true. She released the knob. She watched it.
The knob turned and settled slightly as if there had been a hand on the other side, a hand that had subsequently released it. She stepped back from it.
She stood in the partly painted room and tried to get her breath. She tried to summon a calm line of thought. She tried to think.
What to do? How could she escape?
Go to the window and jump? She would surely break a leg or an ankle in the fall. She was two flights up and these were high floors. The ground below was uneven.
Rebecca made a decision.
She walked back to the door and placed her hand again on the knob. She turned it slowly, her heart pounding in her chest.
She leaned to the door. She found words forming in her throat. In her eyes were close to tears.
“Whoever you are,” she said softly and emotionally, “please let me out of here. I’ve done nothing to you. I mean you no harm. But you’re terrifying me…”
She paused. She thought herself a fool, speaking like that in the empty house.
But she wondered next, was it so empty? “Whoever you are,” she said again, “I’ve done nothing to you. I am not your enemy.”
For a split second, in her mind, flashed an image of the horrible man from the shopping mall, the werewolf visaged killer in the wraparound sunglasses. Then that image dissipated, and she stepped back. She felt a wave of relaxation overtake the room. Like the drop in barometric pressure before a storm.
“Please…” she whispered again. “Do you just want me to admit that I know you’re there?” she asked. “You just want me to acknowledge you? Is that all?”
She reached to the doorknob again. She placed her hand on it and tried one more time to leave the turret room.
The knob held firmly, as if the strong hand was still on the other side. Then, it eased. Rebecca could feel pressure relent from the other side of the door.
Go ahead, som
ething told her. Try the knob again. She did. And it turned without hesitation.
Then the door began to move. She pulled it inward until it was wide open. She felt a breeze rush past her, ventilation from the window, and she stood on the landing in the hallway, looking in every direction.
“Bill?” she called. “Karen? Patrick?”
But she knew there would be no response from a family member. No one was home. She walked slowly through the second floor hallway of her home, convinced that someone was there, equally knowing that no one could be. She looked in each room.
The master bedroom where she and Bill slept was exactly the way she had left it. A glance into Karen’s room and Patrick’s room revealed the same. No movement. No sign of anyone since the kids had left for school. She stood at the top of the stairs, listened and thought.
She sighed. Dr. Einhorn and his stress. Dr. Einhorn told her things like this would happen. She had to reject fantasy and tenaciously hold reality. “Yes, Dr. Einhorn,” she whispered aloud, “I am listening to your good advice.”
She walked back to the turret room, entered it, and stopped short. Now she really was losing her mind! The pan and roller were not where she remembered leaving them. They were closer to the door. And the CD player, which she remembered turning off, was on. It was playing softly. And the discs had been switched!
Paul Simon was now singing softly about a girl with diamonds on the soles of her shoes. Rebecca raised her eyes and blinked. At first a surge of shock was upon her. Then things settled as she convinced herself that her memory was playing tricks again.
Especially short term, Dr. Einhorn had warned her. And especially short term was exactly what this would have to be called. How else could it be explained that the painting was complete on the third wall? Or that she had put the wrong disc into the CD player?
She stared at the room. She was certain that she had left the third wall unfinished. She was certain that she had been interrupted with less than half of it complete.
But there it was. All done. By a helping hand? A helping invisible hand?
‘No, no, no,” Rebecca told herself. Such things didn’t exist. Short-term memory loss, coupled with the distraction of the door blowing shut. She must have painted the third wall herself.
Must have.
She let the CD play. Paul Simon settled her, a mellow soothing voice that reminded her of being twenty years old and in love.
She drew a breath and set to work again. The wall that contained the doorway was easy. She had it done in another thirty minutes. Then she poured out some white paint, took a three inch brush in hand, and deftly did the trim and woodwork around the window and doorframe.
Then she stepped back. The room was done.
“That’s one small step for Becca, one giant leap for Becca’s sanity,” she said to herself. And a whiff of beautifully scented autumn air blew in the window from the coral tree.
A thought arrived with the scent. It was as if someone had thrown her an invisible bouquet.
So, “Thank you,” she said aloud.
There was a tap on the wall. One short tap. She felt goose bumps again and did everything possible to ignore it. She turned her attention to the cleanup. She wanted to be out of that room. She sealed the cans of paint and left them in the hallway, in case she needed to touch up later. She took the rollers and brushes to the basement and washed them. Then she went back upstairs, picked up the drop cloth, and admired her work.
No smell. No noise. No humming. The screen stayed in the window and, she told herself, she was as sane as anyone else on the block.
But slowly, from somewhere, like a cobra wrapping itself around her, the notion of a ghost occurred to her. She quickly rejected it.
She didn’t believe in such things.
Did she? She shuddered and quickly left the room.
Chapter 14
In the evening, after the children had gone to sleep, Rebecca sat in bed with her husband. Music played softly on a bedside radio. He was reading. She was thinking. It was past eleven.
“Why do I feel so strange in there?” she asked.
“What?”
“Bill?” She turned to him. “Please put down your book for a minute and listen to me.” Gently, she reached to the book he was reading and lifted it from his hands. “It’s important,” she said.
“Okay,” he said. “I can take a hint.” She told him about the events of the day, what had transpired in the turret room.
“I want to know,” she said. “First, why do I feel so strange in that room? It’s as if there’s something wrong with the room itself.” He gazed at her. For a moment she thought she saw something in his eyes that she didn’t like. Then it was gone.
“There’s nothing wrong with that room. And there is nothing wrong with this house, either, if that’s what you’re going to suggest next.”
“Then why do I feel so strange in that room?” She demanded.
“Your imagination. Rational thought, okay? Isn’t that what Dr. Miller and Dr. Einhorn have been asking you to limit yourself to?”
“Why did the screen blow out of the window?”
“It couldn’t have been lodged in the window properly.”
“I put it in myself. Carefully.”
“After the fact, you think you put it in carefully,” he corrected her. “The truth is you probably just kind of balanced it in. Admit it.”
“Why did the window close?”
“Gravity. These are old windows with lead counterweights within the frame. Very well constructed, by the way.”
“Come on, Bill…”
“This is an old house. Things like that happen all the time.”
“Why did the door slam shut?”
“A strong air current. You said yourself that you had just reopened the window.”
“Why did the door stick?”
“It stuck for Essie, too,” he reminded her. “Humidity. The wood expanded and then the door slammed hard. It is not surprising that it could get wedged.”
“I pulled and pulled and pulled. It wouldn’t move.”
“And the latch is old.”
“Bill, it felt like there was a hand on the latch!”
“Want me to phone Dr. Einhom right now?” It was a bluff and she knew it. But it meant that Bill was getting impatient with her, and weary of this line of conversation. She was unsatisfied with the conversation, but knew it was time to back off.
“Look,” he said, “I’ll change the latch tomorrow. Will that make you feel better?”
“It might.”
“Want me to change the knob, too?”
“Yes. I wish you would.” She folded her arms across her breasts. She let a few seconds pass. He tried to pick up his book again. “Bill,” she said. “If I had to testify in court, I’d swear that there was someone on the other side of the door.”
“Refer back to the answer to your first question,” he said with irritation. “Come on, Becca. We’ve been through this too many times now. You’re not doing yourself any favors by indulging your macabre imagination.”
She snuggled close to him, wanting to feel safe, wishing he would put an arm around her. He didn’t. She felt alone in the world. She felt like phoning her mother, but it was too late in the evening.
“You almost seem to want to drive me to Dr. Einhom,” she said. “You want me to think that I’m mentally unbalanced.”
“Becca,” he said, “tell me this: Why would I be taking you to a renowned doctor who can do nothing except help you? Answer me that if you think I’m your enemy.”
“I didn’t say you were my enemy,” she said.
“You’re treating me as if I’m your enemy,” he said. “And I really don’t like it.”
She leaned back into her pillow. She closed her eyes, and shook her head, taking solace within herself, the only place she could find it.
“I know,” she finally said in a small voice. “I know. I’m being silly. I’m being crazy.”
> “All I want is my wife back,” Bill said. “The fun girl that I married. Okay?”
“Not the one suffering from insanity,” she said.
“Correct.”
“Maybe I’m not ‘suffering’ from it,” she mused. “Maybe I’m enjoying it.”
“Not funny,” he said. He placed a hand on one of hers. She almost cringed at the gesture. It was a hand of obligation, not affection. Not support. It was an effort to shut her up. He didn’t believe a thing she was saying and had no interest in addressing her fears.
She thought about it and wasn’t happy.
A long moment passed. There was a noise in Patrick’s room. It startled Rebecca for a moment. But then she realized that it sounded suspiciously like a basketball rolling softly across the floor, a little up-past-bedtime boy putting it away carefully so that his parents couldn’t hear. She decided that she’d let it go for a few minutes.
“There’s another question,” she said. “Have you ever felt anything strange in the turret room?” she asked. A funny sensation went through his arm, as if he stiffened slightly. She felt it. It caused her to look him in the eye. “Well?” she asked when he didn’t answer promptly. “Have you?”
“What sort of thing?” he asked.
“Stop fending off the question and answer,” she demanded. “Anything strange or unusual? A feeling or an occurrence? Come on, Bill, you know what ‘anything’ means!”
He was silent for a second, then looked at her and shrugged. “No,” he said. “I haven’t felt anything in that room. Nothing at all.”
She turned away and looked back toward the window. She couldn’t shake the impression that he was lying. “Okay,” she finally said. “Thank you.”
Before turning out the lights for the night, she checked Patrick’s room. The basketball had indeed taken a roll on its own, or so it appeared. She picked it up and put it into a toy box. Patrick, she told herself, had probably gone to sleep with the basketball on his bed.
Rebecca glanced at the turret room as she returned to the master bedroom. The door was firmly closed. Warily, she even checked it. And that was just the way she wanted it. She left a light on in the hall and returned to her bed.