Rhayven House

by Frank Bittinger

  Ian got the drift. “So you think my house is haunted. Fantastic.”

  Spreading his hands out, Jeff said, “Hey, I'm not saying anything. I'm just telling you what I've seen and heard since I've been working here. You can believe me or not.” He spit and muttered, “Spukhaus.”

  “It's not a question of whether or not I believe you. Let me ask you something.”

  Jeff nodded.

  “Have you ever felt threatened or...” Ian searched for the words he wanted. Writing skills be damned, he couldn't come up with the word he wanted. “I don't want to describe it as dark energy. Does that make sense?”

  “You want to know if I've got a good or bad vibe. I honestly don't know. I'm sorry. I don't have any insight. I just wanted to talk with you and get your take on the situation.” Jeff took another drag of his smoke, turned his head, and blew out the smoke. “Mainly, I wanted to put my mind at ease.”

  “Yeah, I understand. I haven't experienced anything remotely like what you've described when I've been here.”

  “Keep it in mind because you'll be moving in before too long,” Jeff advised. “I couldn't in good conscience not tell you, when I know you'll be living here alone. What you do with it is up to you.” He held out his hand; Ian gripped it and shook.

  “I understand and I appreciate,” Ian said.

  “You want to do a walk-through since you're here, see what we've done since the last time you were out?” Jeff asked.

  “Sure. I'm always up to see the progress.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Ian was quiet on the drive back into town. He spent the time thinking.

  On one hand, living in a house with a ghost could be potentially dangerous. He'd watched a lot of allegedly-true TV shows on the subject and knew what could happen. Some of the claims were awful.

  On the other hand, sharing the house with a ghost could be pretty awesome, as long as it wasn't an annoying poltergeist or one of those spirits who would constantly terrorize him.

  As a writer, it would be a wicked cool subject to talk about during interviews. Ghosts were always a seminal favorite and were especially big this year. The best scenario would be he could write a book on his experiences in the house. A ghostly memoir, if you would. True life ghost stories were something the public always wanted to know more about.

  Maybe it would turn out to be a mystery, like in the 1944 film he liked so much, The Uninvited, he thought. But he knew he wouldn't be able to deal with all the midnight wailing. It would drive him nuts, not to mention scare the living hell out of him.

  Or a little funnier, like the film Curtain Call from 1998, except Ian didn't think he had a lot of talent in the comedic timing arena.

  Possibly a combination of the two—sinister with a twisted sense of humor.

  He liked that idea.

  But he wouldn't hold his breath because the whole thing seemed too good to be true. So what if the contractors had had a couple odd things happen in the house? That didn't necessarily mean there was a spirit in residence. He'd reserve judgment until he'd actually moved in and spent more time there. Not jump the gun.

  Embrace the ghost or run the other way.

  Patiently waiting for the time to arrive,

  Save your prayers, whispers of sympathy;

  As the maestro prepares

  To heal this broken melody;

  This is my symphony.

  Seven

  Blinking the blurry edges of sleep away, Ian sat up and looked around the bedroom. Something had awakened him, a strange sound penetrated his dreaming state, and it had been difficult enough getting to sleep the first night in the new place.

  It was odd. Like a dream not quite remembered.

  Couldn't have been anything alarming, just enough to wake him up—which meant it had to have been louder than the fan he kept on to blow air which provided him white noise to slumber by. Pitch blackness cloaked the room, the Stygian atmosphere not even broken by a nightlight or a stray beam of moonlight. For a fraction of a second, Ian wondered about the absence of the red LED lights of his alarm clock.

  His breathing and heartbeat seemed really loud for some reason—perhaps just amplified in the darkness—and he could hear them both above the sound of the fan. But that wasn't what had awakened him.

  What was it?

  A footstep or a squeak of a floor board? Ian listened, closing his eyes, like closing them would matter in the slightest, but it made him feel better; he strained to hear.

  Nothing.

  There could have been an entire jazz band burglarizing the house and he wouldn't be able to hear it. So he must have woken himself up; most likely he'd been dreaming and couldn't remember the dream that had startled him into waking.

  Goddamnit. He had to quit watching those shows before going to bed and he'd probably cease having dreams—nightmares—about the Grays coming to get him. Although the show about sleep paralysis had enraptured him due to the subject matter, it had also added to his fear of waking up to find himself frozen physically but still aware of beings in his room. The mind acted in weird ways when awake—but did it ever really sleep? The slumbering mind could conjure up the strangest imagery; add that to being paralyzed and you had one hell of a concoction.

  He shut his mind down before it could zip off on another tangent. He was wide awake.

  Finding the lamp didn't prove to be difficult and he managed to turn it on without knocking anything off the nightstand. Light soon lifted the darkness. Around him, the bedroom appeared to be absolutely the same as it had been when he'd crawled beneath the blankets and turned off the light a couple hours before. The alarm clock, in its regular place on the nightstand, proudly showed him its blank face. Scooting to the edge of the bed, Ian looked and discovered the clock had somehow been unplugged. Still, its internal battery was supposed to be powerful enough to keep the clock going for up to eight hours should the clock be unplugged or the power go out.

  Maybe it was defective.

  Great. Now he'd worry about a defective battery blowing up, starting a fire, or leaking corrosive acid.

  And maybe something else was afoot.

  Ian made himself laugh at the cliché: afoot. As a writer, he'd never used the word; as a reader, he'd seen it plenty.

  Throwing back the covers, Ian decided he might as well get up and look around or he'd never be able to get back to sleep. Tentatively, he put his bare feet down against the hardwood floor, anticipating the shock of the chill and wishing for the umpteenth time he'd bought a big rug. He'd put it down half-under then bed like in the picture he saw and liked in some magazine. The bedroom wasn't completely done yet. He had every intention of finishing—and so did Hitler, pointed out the voice in his head—but hadn't gotten around to it yet. He vowed to do it before winter.

  He stood.

  Sometimes, Ian questioned his sanity as well as his decision-making skills. What had possessed him to move out here in the valley? True, town was only a phone call away anyway, but would help really be able to arrive in time if something horrible happened?

  “Quit being so damned morose. Morbidity isn't soothing in the middle of the night,” he scolded himself aloud. “It might only be a mouse...if it's anything at all.”

  Moving across the floor to the window, Ian drew back the drapes and attempted to look outside. Thanks to the dark outside and the light inside, the glass was more like a mirror than a window. He moved closer, cupping his hands around his eyes to block out some of the light. The mirror effect faded and he had a nice but dim view of the yard. There was something out there walking around.

  Stiffening, Ian squinted his eyes. At first, he thought it was simply a weird shadow or a trick of what little light there was out there, but the more he concentrated the clearer it became—although nowhere clear enough to make out who or what it was. It moved wraith-like, but that didn't immediately mean it was something paranormal. Given the fact he basically lived in the woods, it could have been any type of nocturnal animal out on its usual
rounds, searching for food.

  Ethereal movement caught his eye, fluid motions an animal out searching for sustenance would not make.

  No, he'd swear it was more like pacing—back and forth across the yard.

  The shadow stopped. Ian instinctively stepped back from the window and allowed the drape to fall. He didn't know why he thought it, because he couldn't be sure, but he had the feeling whatever it was knew he was watching and had stopped pacing to look up at him.

  Convincing himself it had been nothing more than first-night jitters, Ian gently rubbed his tired eyes, yawned real wide, and crawled back under the blankets. Ian convinced himself, given enough time and concentration, his slamming heart would calm down and he'd be able to fall asleep again.

  But he knew that was a crock.

  No matter how long he laid there with his eyes firmly closed, his heart didn't slow down. His breathing had calmed but his heart still beat a mile a minute.

  Finally, he pushed back the covers and reached for the light, telling himself if he couldn't sleep, he might as well get some work done.

  ~ ~ ~

  Working on one of his books always soothed Ian's nerves. He knew writers who disliked the process, but to him it was both a process of necessity and divinity. He'd never admitted to anyone before how god-like writing made him feel. After all, he created the characters and controlled their destinies. If that didn't make him sound like a god, then he didn't know what would.

  He wasn't that full of hubris. Ian knew he didn't literally create worlds and people; he wrote stories. Yes, he considered himself talented and successful and he was grateful for both.

  Try as he might to focus on the printed out pages of his manuscript, Ian's mind kept returning to the image of the shadow pacing outside under the dim glow of the cloud-covered moon. It was the way it seemed to sense his presence and stopped to look up in his direction. He knew he couldn't be missed, not the way he stood silhouetted against the window with the light behind him, practically begging to be seen.

  Security was a high priority no matter where somebody lived; he needed to make sure he was safe and sound especially in the valley. That meant getting every window and outside door wired up and getting cameras and lights for outside. Nobody could get lost and accidentally end up inside the wall to wander around, especially not in the wee hours of the morning. It wasn't just those seeking his autograph. He had to take security seriously and call the company that wired his townhouse.

  And if Ian felt uneasy in the house, he could always stay in his townhouse until the security company had everything set up.

  No, he loved living in the old house, surrounded by the woods and the peace and quiet. It would take more than what could have been nothing more than an errant shadow or a trick of the eye to make him paranoid or to make him move out. Not after only one night.

  Now if the place turned out to be another Amityville, then he'd pack up his stuff and head for the hills. But on second thought, as far as Ian was concerned, Amityville was a big old fraud perpetuated by greed so he changed his mind about using that as an example. He tapped the eraser-end of the pencil against his teeth and tried to come up with a better scenario.

  The Borghese family mansion up in Meyersdale, PA, was a perfect example and it was only a forty-five minute drive away. That's a story Ian could use as a basis for a great haunted house books. The mystery claims the whole immediate family—father, mother, two sons, and a daughter— went missing way back in 1899 and no one knew anything about what had happened to them. They simply vanished one day. The ensuing investigation went nowhere. Nothing had been taken from the house—no furniture, clothes, or other personal items such as pictures—to indicate the family had suddenly packed up and moved away. Bank accounts weren't touched in the weeks that followed, not even in the following years. No secret graves were uncovered on the property or in the surrounding area.

  With no evidence to suspect any sort of foul play, law enforcement at the time had no choice but to list the family as missing and, as far as Ian knew, it remained an open case. A cold case.

  He thought about the old Borghese mansion and it's now-crumbling brick walls overgrown with climbing vines and ivy clinging to the house, shrouded by large trees and standing abandoned, bearing mute testimony to whatever happened to the family one night over a century ago. A strange mystery.

  No one ever moved in after the Borghese family vanished without a trace. Ian did a quick search online and couldn't find any listings for the property ever having been on the market after the family went missing. Personal items like pictures still hung on the walls, clothes still in closets and drawers. All silently disintegrating as time ticked on, until more than a century had passed.

  Looming as an omen, telling the world no one was safe, not even in their own home, the mansion wasted away quietly and matter-of-factly.

  People in town swear they still see the faces of Borghese family members staring out the windows from time to time, even in broad daylight. And a lovely singing voice has been known to come floating upon the air some days. Lights have been seen flickering in the house.

  Ian made a note to start researching the case and to take a drive up to Meyersdale, if only to take pictures for his own inspiration.

  The whole thing was not only strange, it was unsettling. Somebody, somewhere had to know something or be involved somehow.

  It made Ian wonder. If a disappearance like it happened today, an entire family mysteriously vanishing overnight, would the case remain unsolved for well over a century? Probably not in the day and age of such forensic technology. There most likely had been trace evidence in the case of the Borgheses, but the law enforcement officials of the time understandably lacked the necessary forensic technology to gather it.

  Unless the whole town had been in on it, like in Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby—a plot to get rid of the one family. But for what purpose? The evidence, if it was to be believed, stated none of the bank accounts were ever touched and money would have been one hell of a motive or incentive, depending upon how you looked at it.

  Yawning, he decided he needed caffeine. The lack of sleep, coupled with being awake at a time he normally never saw, made him feel heavy and fuzzy. He might break his steadfast rule of never napping and curl up on the sofa for an hour or maybe three. If he didn't tell anybody, nobody would know.

  He did lie down on the couch and cover up with a not-from-an-animal fleece throw.

  ~ ~ ~

  Ian fingered his ear in his sleep once, and then again, before jolting awake. The tickling sensation sure felt for all the world like someone had been gently blowing in his ear. Looking around as he sat up, he tossed the throw across the back of the sofa. Nobody was in the immediate vicinity. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and yawned wide. Nobody in the living room with him at all.

  Hell, there shouldn't be anybody in the damned house except for me, he thought as he got up and walked out of the living room.

  And there wasn't. Ian walked through the entire house to make sure—twice.

  Outside, the sun had begun to rise quietly over the horizon. Ian heard the birds singing their morning chorus and he briefly thought about lying back down for another couple hours, but the sensation of someone gently blowing into his ear hadn't left him. He was reticent about closing his eyes and being in a vulnerable state; he told himself he was overly dramatizing the situation, letting the stuff Jeff told him color his impression.

  “More a remnant of a weird dream than a phantom breath,” he muttered aloud as he tried to stifle another yawn. “Channel all the odd thoughts into a bestseller.”

  Apparently, the opening night jitters carried over into the day, but nature won out. Overdosing on caffeine wasn't the solution. Instead, Ian decided to take a dive—lay off the soda and spend the day on the sofa, vegging out to classic horror flicks and TV shows. There were a whole lot of worse ways to waste a day.

  ~ ~ ~

  He ended up fading in and out for the remai
nder of the morning and into the afternoon. Forcing himself off the sofa, he figured he'd run less risk of napping if he was up and mobile. Napping tended to ruin his chances of sleeping when it was bedtime and he didn't want to tempt Fate and run the risk of another sleepless night.

  A walk up the mountainside sounded good. He hadn't been walking since the day he discovered the house hiding down in the valley back in June; it was now the end of September. So he exchanged the boxer shorts that were his usual night wear and pulled on a pair of jeans, and then went in search of a pair of hiking boots. Adrenaline was the body's version of caffeine; releasing endorphins would wake him up and pull him out of the funk he felt like he was beginning to sink into. Fresh air usually cleared his head and aided him in sorting out the myriad story ideas always floating around in his mind.

  Fall foliage in its full glory spanned the whole mountainside and spread down into the valley. From his view, it was a wide and far reaching ocean of red, orange, and yellow.

  Hiking around the mountainside, even without his beloved dog Alex, soothed Ian's nerves much better than Xanax ever could. There was something to be said for the sense of serenity one achieved by simply getting outside and exploring nature.

  All the thinking about ghosts and the Borghese family from a century ago go might have freaked him out a little more than he'd care to admit out loud to anyone, but it also got his synapses firing and all kinds of ideas for his books came flooding into his brain. Initially an unholy maelstrom, they'd begun to separate and he started to make more sense of them and get the feeling for which idea might work for which story.