The Haunting of Willow House

by Anthony M. Strong

  Caught between the lower limbs of a sprawling red oak was the rabbit’s body. It hung there like a limp, dead sack, the fur matted and slick with dark, crimson blood.

  He froze.

  A cold, hard dread settled in the pit of his stomach.

  He wanted to run, but could not will his legs to work. It was as if the fear had hijacked his body and was intent upon forcing him to stay there, eyes locked upon the mutilated animal.

  A tear forced its way from the corner of his eye and ran down his cheek. He lifted a hand to wipe it away.

  A twig snapped.

  Jake drew in a sharp breath, held it.

  There came a rustle, then another sharp snap of splintering wood.

  Jake felt the scream a moment before it erupted.

  More rustling.

  Jake’s legs decided to work.

  He turned and fled.

  He ran faster than he ever had before, salty tears streaming down his face.

  Branches clawed at his face and arms, tearing into him. He barreled forward, giving little heed to the thorns that snagged his clothing, not caring where he was running so long as it was away from that dreadful dead thing and whatever had killed it.

  His foot caught on a root.

  He tumbled forward, the impact with the ground knocking the air from him in a mighty whoosh.

  Something moved off to his left, pushing through the foliage, gaining on him.

  Jake struggled to his feet. Whatever killed the rabbit was coming after him.

  A branch gave way with a crack.

  Jake took off again, ignoring the pain from his fall.

  Behind him, getting closer, the unseen pursuer crashed along. It was right there now, by his side, yet still he saw nothing. He braced himself for whatever was about to come shooting out of the brush and rip into him.

  And then, by some miracle, the trees parted and thinned, and there was the house, as serene and quiet and normal as it had been before, when the rabbit was still alive.

  Jake’s lungs burned, and his legs felt like lead. Even so, he didn’t let up until he was at the back door. He flung it wide and sped through the house, wailing and sobbing as he went. He ran like a mad thing, driven by blind panic, consumed by the horrific sight in the woods. He didn’t stop until his father appeared, a worried look upon his face, and scooped him up, comforting him and making everything better.

  Chapter 12

  Andrew was finishing up in the living room when Jake came running in, tears running down his cheeks and a distressed look upon his face.

  “Whatever is going on?” He moved to meet his son, who fell into his arms, his body wracked with sobs. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “No.” Jake mumbled the words.

  “Then what?” Andrew gave Jake a quick once over anyway, just to make sure. When he saw the scratches on the boy’s face and arms, he pressed further. “I thought you said you didn’t hurt yourself? How did you get those marks?”

  “I was in the woods.” Jake sniffed and rubbed his eyes.

  “I told you not to stray too far from the house. You certainly shouldn’t have been wandering in the woods.”

  “I know.” Jake looked up, his face red and streaked. “I’m sorry.”

  “That still doesn’t explain the scratches or what you were doing out there in the first place.” Andrew should have been mad, but it was hard when his son was in such a state.

  “What’s going on?” Sarah appeared in the doorway. She clutched her phone in one hand. No doubt she had been texting instead of getting her belongings unpacked. Andrew could guess who she was texting: her best friend, Becca. “Is he okay?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Andrew could worry about Sarah’s slacking later. Right now he was more concerned with Jake. He looked down at his son. “Well?”

  “There was a rabbit. I followed it. It went into the woods. It looked like Mister Carrots.”

  “It did, huh?” Andrew knew Mister Carrots well. It was the class’ pet rabbit when Jake was in first grade. They had looked after it one summer, and for years afterward he pestered for one of his own.

  “Uh huh.” Jake had stopped crying now. “I just wanted to see where it lived, and I got lost.”

  “That’s why I didn’t want you going into the woods on your own.” Andrew knelt and met his son’s gaze. “But there’s no reason to be upset. You found your way back. You’re here now.”

  “Something killed the rabbit.”

  “What?” Andrew’s relief turned to concern.

  “I couldn’t find it, and then when I saw it again, it was dead. Something had killed it. Its head was in the water and its body in a tree.” Jake’s bottom lip trembled. For a moment, it looked like he might start to cry again, but then he composed himself. “There was lots of blood.”

  “Did you see any other animals?”

  “No.” Jake shook his head. “But something chased me. I could hear it in the woods behind me.”

  “It was probably a fox,” Sarah said.

  “It was?” Jake looked up at her.

  “Yep,” Andrew agreed. “We’re not in the big city now. There are all sorts of animals out there. These things happen.”

  “I don’t want them to.” Jake looked desperate. “Why did the bunny die?”

  “Everything dies,” Sarah said. “Even you.”

  “That’s not helping.” Andrew glared at her.

  “It’s the truth—”

  “Enough.” Andrew wished his daughter would go back to the way she was before the accident, before the black clothing and churlish attitude. He missed the bright happy kid she used to be.

  “I want the bunny to be alive again.” Jake sniffed.

  “I know you do.” Andrew wondered if he should have told Jake to stay indoors. But it was no use second guessing himself now. All he could do was distract his son from the situation, and he thought he knew how to do it. “I tell you what, why don’t we go and get ice cream?”

  “Really?” Jake perked up. “Ice cream?”

  “Sure. There’s a place I know that serves the biggest cones you’ve ever seen, as big as your head.” Andrew stood up. “How about it, sport?”

  “Can we go right now?”

  “I don’t see why not.” Andrew studied his son. “Change that shirt first though; you have dirt and leaves all over it.”

  Jake looked down, as if he was surprised at the state of his attire despite the frantic flight through the woods. “Do I have to?” He said the words with an exasperation that made it clear he viewed the endeavor of swapping shirts to be a pointless delay.

  “If you want ice cream,” Andrew said. “Now hurry up.”

  “Alright.” Jake took off in the direction of the stairs.

  Andrew watched him go. To Sarah, he said, “We’ll talk about this later.”

  Chapter 1 3

  Sarah sat on the bed, her phone in hand.

  It was dark outside, and the house was silent. Jake was already in bed. Her father had set up his office in the smallest of the three bedrooms on the second floor and retreated there earlier in the evening to catch up on his work. Not before he’d laid into her though, telling her to cut out the attitude, that they were all hurting, and she wasn’t helping things.

  Becca, the only person in the world who still understood her, was on speed dial.

  She lifted the phone to her ear, listening to it ring a few times, and then her friend’s chirpy voice came on the line.

  “I thought you’d forgotten about me.”

  “Sorry. I’ve been busy,” Sarah lied. They had been inseparable since the third grade, always hanging out at one house or the other. Recently, that had changed. After her mother’s accident, Sarah felt alone, isolated. Nothing mattered anymore. She withdrew into herself, finding it hard to enjoy the things she previously had. Then came the suicide attempt, a bottle of pills in a school bathroom. Becca found her, saved her life, but even so, the feeling that she was adrift in an en
dless sea of solitude persisted. They still talked, still saw each other, but it was not the same as before, and they both knew it. So Sarah lied when Becca asked where she’d been. “Dad’s had me working since we got here.”

  “That sucks,” Becca said. “How are things?”

  “Dreadful,” Sarah replied. This much was the truth. “The house is disgusting, I hate it here, Jake’s being a real pain. To top it off, Dad has been giving me a hard time again.”

  “Sorry. Want to tell me about it?”

  “God, yes. More than anything.” If there was one thing Becca was good at, it was listening. Sarah unloaded, telling her about the house, how she wished she were back in Boston, and Jake. When she recounted the strange incident with the nightlight, Becca listened in silence, her breath growing heavy as the story unfolded.

  When it was over, there was a moment’s silence before Becca spoke again.

  “Wow. Creepy. You must have been terrified,” Becca said. “Are you sure it was Jake?”

  “Of course it was. Who else could it be?”

  “You said he was sleeping.”

  “Or faking it.”

  “Unless there was someone else in the room with you, and it wasn’t Jake at all.”

  “Stop that. You’ll give me nightmares.”

  “Maybe it was a ghost,” Becca said. “That house is really old, and you’re just down the road from Salem. Practically haunting central.”

  “You know I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  “Then explain the closet door, the footsteps.”

  “I’ve told you, it was my little shit of a brother.”

  “You should do something to him. Get some revenge,” Becca said. “Sounds like he deserves it.”

  “Nah.” An image of Jake earlier in the day, his eyes puffy with tears, entered her head. “He already had the fright of his life this morning. He found a dead rabbit in the woods, with its head cut off or something.”

  “Gross.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Did you see it?”

  “Nope.” Sarah was thankful for that. “But I think that it really shook him up.”

  “That’s pretty messed up,” Becca said. “Are you sure there isn’t something wrong with your new house?”

  “Stop it.”

  “What?”

  “You know what,” Sarah said. “I won’t be able to sleep tonight if you keep this up.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”

  “I don’t,” Sarah replied. “But I still have an imagination.”

  “Fine.” Becca sounded disappointed. She paused, then said, “I saw Tyler today.”

  “Tyler?” Sarah echoed his name. It sounded foreign, like a distant memory, yet it had only been three months since she broke things off with him.

  “He asked about you.”

  “So?”

  “He misses you,” Becca said. “I don’t understand why you ended things with him.”

  “He reminded me of before.”

  “He’s hurting. You should talk to him.”

  “I’m hurting too.”

  “I know,” Becca said. “But he tried so hard. You shouldn’t push him away. He’s on your side.”

  “He doesn’t understand.” She remembered the way he treated her after the incident with the pills, like she was some fragile, broken thing that needed to be watched over. Their relationship hadn’t been the same since her mother’s death, but after the suicide attempt a chasm opened between them. She felt numb inside, and no matter how hard she tried, nothing could change that.

  “He wants to understand.”

  “Can we change the subject?”

  “Sarah—”

  “Please?”

  “Alright. No more talk of Tyler.” There was a beat of silence before Becca spoke again. “You know what? I should come up there.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on,” Becca said. “You can push me away all you want, but it won’t work.”

  “I’m not pushing you away.”

  “We both know that’s not true. You’ve pushed everyone away this past year. It’s not good for you.” Becca fell silent for a moment. “How about this weekend? I can be there Thursday.”

  “That soon?”

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe in a few weeks, when—”

  “Come on.” Becca pleaded. “What else are you going to do? Besides, your dad will be pleased to have me there.”

  “He will, huh?”

  “Sure. He likes me.” She laughed. “I’m like the daughter he never had.”

  “Hey—”

  “Alright. Fine. But if I’m there, I can help out with stuff. I’m sure he’s snowed under with work after the move.”

  “That’s true,” Sarah said.

  “And I’ll be keeping you busy so you don’t bug him.”

  “What are you, my babysitter?” She couldn’t help but smile. Sometimes Becca could still find a sliver of the old Sarah.

  “Something like that,” Becca said. “What do you say. Please?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “You’ll ask your dad?”

  “Sure.”

  “Promise?”

  “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  “Great.” Becca squealed with delight. “This is going to be so much fun. I can’t wait.”

  Chapter 14

  Andrew was in his newly outfitted office at the top of the stairs when he heard the thump from down below.

  He looked up from his laptop.

  There was a second, louder thump.

  Andrew felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It was past midnight, and the kids should be sleeping. Besides, his door was open, and he would have noticed if either of them had gone downstairs.

  That hadn’t happened.

  He sat still, listening.

  A minute passed.

  The house was peaceful, silent.

  He wondered if it might have been a branch hitting a window. He turned back to the computer screen, tapped out a few more lines, but then there came another noise from below.

  Andrew froze.

  It sounded like someone had entered the house.

  He rose and walked to the landing.

  Jake’s door was closed.

  The corridor was dark. No light spilled from the attic. Sarah must be sleeping too.

  He felt a tingle of fear.

  Had someone broken in?

  He had to investigate.

  He searched for something to take with him, a weapon of some sort. If there were an intruder, he didn’t want to run into them empty handed.

  His eyes settled on the baseball bat he’d owned since he was a kid. It was worn and battered, with a few chips taken out of it. But it held sentimental value. The bat was a link to his childhood. In the old house, it had held a place of pride on a stand in his study, but he hadn’t yet found a spot for it here.

  He made his way to the head of the stairs, the heft of the bat reassuring in his hand. He paused and listened, eyes examining the darkness below.

  And that was when he heard the voices.

  They were low and flat, like two people going back and forth at each other. He could not make out the words.

  His heart pounded.

  He wavered between going to investigate and calling the police.

  And then there was something else.

  Music.

  He stood and listened.

  There was a vague familiarity to the tune. At first he could not place it, and then he understood.

  This was the theme song to a show he’d watched as a kid. It was the TV.

  His thumping heart slowed.

  Jake must have snuck past his open door and was watching the television.

  Andrew took the stairs two at a time, bearing down upon the living room, expecting to find his son sitting there cross legged and wide eyed in front of the TV.

  Except that the room was empty.


  The television babbled away in solitude, the screen casting long, leaping shadows across the floor.

  Andrew stopped, alarmed.

  “What are you doing, old fellow?” the actor on the TV said, his voice bright and cheery. “Seems like this was all a wild goose chase.”

  There was a burst of canned laughter.

  The camera panned to show another man. “Wild goose chase? There’s something here, I tell you.” He turned and looked directly at the camera, giving Andrew the impression that the actor was talking right at him, which was impossible. “It’s with us now.”

  Andrew drew in a sharp breath.

  He’d had enough of this. He searched for the remote, snatched it up, and stabbed at the power button.

  The screen snapped off, silencing the voices.

  But why was the TV on in the first place?

  He’d used it right around the time that Jake came barreling in, but only for a few minutes to make sure the cable box was working.

  No one had been near the television since.

  That was at least nine hours ago.

  Had Sarah or Jake been messing with it?

  This was the most likely explanation. It must be one of the kids.

  He dropped the remote onto the coffee table and turned away. As he crossed the room he became aware of something else.

  It was freezing all of a sudden, as if he had stepped through an invisible wall into a pool of chilled air.

  He stepped back, toward the TV, alarmed. The air warmed up as he did so, but when he walked forward once more it grew ice cold again.

  He lifted his arm and could feel where the air grew cooler. He turned a full circle, mapping the edges of the cold spot. It extended about two feet in each direction, a funnel of frigid air sitting in the middle of his living room.

  It was weird and uncomfortable.

  He moved out of the cold air, suppressing a shudder, and glanced toward the ceiling. He expected to find an air vent there, but all he saw was smooth plaster. When he stepped forward again, the temperature was normal. It was like the cold spot had never been there.

  “Screw this.” Andrew turned and made his way to the corridor. He had better things to do than run around chasing cold air. Then he remembered the noises he’d heard. It had sounded like someone coming into the house. The front door was shut and locked. He could see that. But he hadn’t checked the back door.