The Haunting of Anna McAlister

by Jerome Harrison

  “For awhile?”

  “Yeah, until you fell asleep.”

  Anna laughed. It hurt a lot. “It’s a good thing I don’t grind my teeth in my sleep.”

  “A very good thing,” Tom quickly agreed. “But I did find your snoring to be unusually pleasurable.

  “Oh, God!” Anna tried to get up but fell back onto the bed.

  “Sorry,” Tom said.

  “No, no, no.” Anna waved her hand back and forth in front of her. “I have to get to work.”

  “It’s okay. I called in for you. Besides, it’s already afternoon.”

  “Tony’s going to kill me.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tom smiled. “I told him you had the stomach flu and your period.”

  “What did he say?”

  “What could he say?” Tom laughed. “I’m a client, remember?”

  Anna put her forehead on his knee. “Good boy.”

  “Well, if I’m such a good boy, how about finishing what you started last night in the car?”

  Anna pushed him off the bed and somehow made it up to her feet.

  From where he sat on the floor, Tom said. “Hey, I was only thinking of you. I know how you hate to leave a job half done.”

  “Ah huh,” Anna stumbled to the bathroom. “Thank you.”

  “No, really. I also read that sperm’s very good for a hangover. I think it was in Newsweek.”

  Anna slammed the bathroom door. “Ouch!” she said out loud as the sound reverberated through the jelly that she was sure now comprised most of her brain. Intentionally avoiding the mirror, and all other reflective surfaces, Anna stepped into the shower. She closed her eyes and let cold water run over her head and face. It was her own hangover treatment. One she knew would be somewhat more effective than Tom’s. After a few minutes, Anna was shivering.

  “Je taime. I love you.”

  “What?” Anna opened her eyes. “Tom? Is that you?” Anna poked her head out from the shower curtain. “Tom?”

  The bathroom was empty. Anna re-closed her eyes and returned to the water. “Well, I love you too,” she said to herself. If I’m starting to hear things, she thought, the least I can do is answer.

  The shower seemed to be helping. Anna was suddenly aware that she felt a little better. Surprisingly, by the time she turned off the water and got out of the tub, she actually felt good. . . no, great.

  “I don’t believe this,” Anna said. Her hangover shower had never worked this well before. When she looked in the mirror she was in for another shocker. Anna saw that her skin, hair and eyes looked almost radiant, and all of the bruises were gone.

  When Anna walked back into the bedroom, Tom was grinning from ear to ear. He had pulled out his old box of Newsweek magazines and was frantically going through the pile. “I know I read it somewhere. Maybe it was in Time.” Tom snapped his fingers. “The Economist!”

  Anna walked up to Tom and pushed him onto the bed. She knelt between his legs and pulled down his pants. “You’re right, she looked up at him and smiled. “I always finish what I start.”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Tom and Anna went to the last remaining Ihop restaurant in town. To Anna, The International House of Pancakes was tantamount to a batter-based heaven on earth. She ordered chocolate chip pancakes, bacon, sausage, toast (Rye) and juice (orange). She wolfed it all down with the same ferocity that Tom had just experienced at home.

  When Anna finished her feast, Tom drove her to her car, which she had left in the bar’s parking lot the night before.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to go back to your house with you?” Tom asked.

  “No, it’s all right,” Anna gave Tom a kiss and got out of his car. “You have a business to run, remember?”

  “And you’re sure you’re okay to drive?”

  “Positive,” Anna leaned in and gently ran her fingers over his crotch. “See you later,” Anna laughed. She wasn’t looking at Tom’s face when she spoke.

  * * *

  Anna turned up her car radio until it blasted so loudly that people in other cars had to close their windows to block the sound. But then, when she pulled up her house, the radio went dead.

  “Damn!” Anna banged the steering wheel and jiggled the dial and on-off switch. “When am I going to get this thing fixed?’

  Determined to let nothing spoil her new found mood, and wanting desperately to brush the syrup from her teeth, Anna got out of the car and walked quickly toward her house. About halfway there she slowed down. A few steps further, she stopped completely. Did she see the curtains in one of the upstairs window’s move just slightly? Did a shadow pass behind the small window in the door? The old house looked bigger than it ever had before. Anna felt a little dizzy.

  A final gift from Mr. Chivas, Anna thought and took another step forward before taking two steps back. The living room drapes moved. I know they did.

  “Oh please,” Anna said a bit more loudly than she intended to. “It’s the middle of the damn day. I’m not going to be afraid of my own house.”

  Anna marched quickly the rest of the way to the door, opened it, and stepped inside.

  The air in the house was perfectly still and completely quite. The floors didn’t creak, the faucet didn’t drip, and the sump pump, which mysteriously seemed to go on every 20 seconds when it wasn’t raining remained silent. Anna slammed the door behind her just to hear the noise.

  Something brushed against Anna’s face.

  “Only the wind from the door,” Anna said just before it brushed past her face once more.

  Instead of following her instinct to escape, Anna ran for the dining room. She didn’t know what she expected to see when she got there. Fear started to pump through her body, her mind. She turned the corner and looked at the dining room door. She stopped and collapsed to her knees . . . with relief. The door was closed and locked. The chairs were still wedged as firmly in place against it as they had been when she first barricaded the door the night before last.

  Anna rose to her feet, happy Tom hadn’t been there to see what had happened. “He already thinks you’re loony tunes,” Anna said as she walked upstairs to change. “And girl,” she admitted. “He may be right.”

  Anna walked briskly into her room before freezing in her tracks. “No,” she whispered. “No!” she screamed. Anna saw all 12 music boxes lined up neatly on her bed. The black one with the rose was open and started to play.

  Chapter 7

  Anna ran but she felt as though she was moving in slow motion. It was like the dreams she had as a child of being chased, but not being able to move her legs fast enough to escape. The dreams always started with her running on solid ground. Then, she would be moving through ankle deep sand, then shin deep dirt, and finally knee deep mud. She would always wake up just before whatever it was that was pursuing her caught up. But this was no dream. This was very, very real.

  Anna tried to force her legs to pump faster, but she still seemed to be moving ever so slowly out of her room and toward the stairs. She closed her bedroom door behind her. She heard it reopen before she was three steps away.

  Anna didn’t look back. It was behind her. She could feel it. Feel him. Feel them. She wasn’t sure. Anna finally made it to the stairs and started bounding down two steps at a time. She tripped with four stairs to go and tumbled the rest of the way to the hard floor below. From where she lay, Anna had a perfect view of the top of the stairs . . . and the man who stood there, smiling.

  “Come to me, Anna. Come to me.”

  The man was tall and thin. His hair was black and slicked straight back. He was wearing a long black coat and some sort of boots that looked wet and stained. He held his hands behind his back.

  Anna looked directly into his black eyes, which appeared to hold no soul. Still, his stare pierced her very being and she couldn’t look away.

  “Come to me now, my darling. Come.”

  Anna watched as his hands slowly appeared from behind his back. In his
right he held a large blade knife. In his left, she saw her own severed head. The man swung it back and forth by the hair. Blood splattered like holy water against the walls as he moved forward. Anna scrambled to her feet and ran for the door. Fear had become her best friend.

  “Come to me.”

  Anna heard the voice getting closer. As she opened the door, she felt the voice whispering in her ear.

  “Come to me.”

  Anna fell out of the house and down her three porch steps. She looked back to see her front door opening wider. The man stood in the doorway. In the outside light Anna could clearly see that the blade of the knife was bright red and the boots were covered with blood. The man drew his left arm back and then swung it forward, releasing the hair from his hand. Anna saw her own head flying toward her. She saw her own eyes open and fill with fear.

  Anna turned away. She ran for her car so fast that when she got there she couldn’t stop and ran directly into the right front fender. She rolled up onto, and then over and off of the hood, and, as if planned, in one movement opened the driver’s side door and slid inside.

  As Anna fumbled with her keys, which as usual she had left in the ignition, she glanced back at the door to her house. The man was gone, no head rolled on the pavement, and the door was now closed. Anna turned the key and the car roared to life. She remembered the lectures from first her dad, and then her boyfriends, about the dangers of leaving your keys in your car.

  “Hah! So there!” She pushed the accelerator to the floor and squealed down the driveway and into the street. It was then that she saw the face in her rear view mirror.

  The man leaned forward from the back seat.

  “Come to me now.”

  He grabbed her hair and pulled back. Anna felt the cold metal of the knife against her exposed throat.

  She screamed, and in her panic turned the steering wheel hard to the right. Anna’s eyes never left the rear view mirror until her speeding car hit the tree.

  The airbag in the steering column did its job and saved Anna’s life. She had forgotten all about her seat belt, and probably would have died on the spot without the bag.

  Anna was knocked momentarily unconscious. When she came to, her head was resting on a twisted steering wheel and in the remains of a now deflated airbag. The car had struck the tree in the center of the grill. The front end had wrapped around the trunk as if clutching it in a grotesque embrace. Steam rose from the smashed radiator and Anna could smell gasoline.

  The first thing Anna did was look in the now broken rear-view mirror. The man stared back at her without having moved an inch in the crash. He reached again for her hair.

  “No!” Anna tried to open the driver’s side door, but it was jammed shut. The window had shattered, so she frantically clawed and climbed her way out backwards until she was sitting on the door with only her legs in the car. An icy hand wrapped around each of her ankles and started to pull.

  Anna fell backward from the car, hearing once more in her mind the man’s hypnotic plea.

  “Come to me, my darling. Come to me.”

  Anna felt someone strong grab her as she fell and lower her softly to the ground. She screamed again and swung her fist. She hit her neighbor, Sam, squarely on the nose.

  “Ouch!” Sam fell back holding his now bleeding nose.

  “I’m so sorry, Sam,” Anna tried to get up but was too dizzy from the crash. She crawled to Sam. I didn’t know it was you. I thought it was him.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Anna kept repeating.

  Sam was one of those people who are just plain-old nice. If anyone in the neighborhood needed help, Sam was there. Today was no exception.

  “That’s okay,” Sam sniffled. “Are you hurt?”

  “I don’t think so,” Anna stumbled to her feet, and for the first time looked at the twisted wreck that was up until a moment ago her car. “Oh shit.”

  “What happened, Anna?” Sam asked. “I was sitting on my porch and you come running out of your house like it was on fire or something. Then you get into your car and peel off like a bat out of Buffalo. Then you just turn and run straight into the tree. It was almost like you did it on purpose.”

  “No, I didn’t do it on purpose.” Anna said.

  “Then what?” Sam asked. “Get a blow out or something?”

  Anna thought for a moment before answering. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Figured as much,” Sam said. He walked over to the car and peeked into the passenger side. “What a mess. You’re lucky to be alive, Anna. Really.”

  Anna wasn’t feeling too lucky at the moment, but she nodded her head anyway.

  “Yeah, that’s what I call a miracle.”

  Or a curse, Anna thought.

  Sam backed away from the car. “Huh,’ he said.

  “What is it?” Anna asked.

  “Nothing,” Sam said. “It’s funny though, I could have sworn that just before the crash I saw some guy sitting in your back seat. Nobody there though. Must of been the sun.”

  Sam thought Anna had started to tremble and cry because of the crash. He walked over and held her. “Hey, now. It’s okay. It’s only a car. You’re all right and that’s all that counts.”

  Anna was about to scream that she was nowhere close to all right when more neighbors and the police arrived.

  After assuring them that she didn’t need to go the hospital, the police officers, who had arrived minutes after the crash, started asking her questions about the accident. Anna said she needed to sit down and suggested they talk in her house. In truth, Anna wanted the police with her when she went back inside. As many police as possible. But, when Anna and two officers walked in, the house and everything inside appeared normal.

  “You might want to clean off those cuts before we continue,” one of the officers said.

  Anna hadn’t even noticed that she had a fairly deep cut just above her hairline from the crash and a lot of little gouges from the glass when she climbed and fell from the window. She went into her first floor bathroom where she kept the hydrogen peroxide and bandages. She quickly removed her top and shook the glass from her hair.

  Now she felt the full physical impact of the crash. Her arms ached, it hurt to move her neck and her ankles were scraped and sore. But worst of all, when she looked in the mirror she saw the line of small bruises from her neck on down was back, and more definite than ever. Also, a very thin cut had appeared near her left carotid artery, in the exact spot where she had felt the blade of the man’s knife.

  “Miss, why do you have this door barricaded?” an officer called to Anna from outside the bathroom. “We’re you afraid of something?”

  Anna quickly put on her shirt and walked from the bathroom to the dining room, where the officer stood looking at the chairs in front of the door. “Oh that,” she smiled. “I did think I heard someone at the window in there last night.”

  The officer nodded.

  “I know this is really stupid right now,” Anna said, trying to sound like a helpless, scared little girl. “But would you please check to make sure everything’s okay in there.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  The officer moved the chairs aside, opened the door and walked in.

  “No everything looks fine in here,” he said, emerging from the room a minute later.

  “Thanks,” Anna said. “I know I’m just being silly. Maybe I’m just upset from the accident.”

  “It’s all right, Miss. We’re here to help.” The officer smiled. “Oh, by the way. Those music boxes are beautiful. You might want to keep them locked up. There’s been a lot of break-ins lately.”

  * * *

  “Anna are you all right?” Tom came running into the house.

  All color had drained from Anna’s face and her cuts and scratches looked much worse than they were.

  “Sam called me and told me what happened.” Tom hugged Anna hard, as if to confirm that she was real, unbroken and al
ive. “He said you turned right into a tree. What the hell were you thinking?”

  Anna didn’t answer Tom’s question. Instead she moved away and took his hand.

  “What are you doing?” Tom asked.

  Anna’s action spoke louder than any answer she might have given. She pulled Tom along with her toward the dining room. Once inside, they both saw the music boxes lined up exactly where they had left them.

  “So, what’s wrong?” Tom asked.

  “They were on my bed when I came home. I didn’t move them back here.”

  “Oh please, Anna,” Tom scoffed. “You must have hit your head in the accident and forgot that you brought them down.”

  “Tom, when I saw them there on the bed, I just ran.”

  Anna didn’t tell him about the man, she just stared at the music boxes. For a moment she had an almost overwhelming desire to touch them, to open them and let them sing. Instead, she squeezed Tom’s hand and pulled him in the other direction, out of the dining room and back to the officers who were finishing their accident report.

  As they walked, Anna whispered, “I think we should stay at your place for a few nights.”

  Anna’s grip tightened to the point where Tom felt the bones in his hand compacting. He broke free, surprised at Anna’s strength and the pain racing through his hand. “Sure,” he said shaking his hand in the air in hopes of jump-starting normal circulation. “Whatever you say.

  Chapter 8

  A few nights turned into two weeks. Anna daily found a reason or an excuse to stay at Tom’s rather then spend the night at her house. Whenever Anna had to go back for clothing, or even to pick up the mail, she would insist that Tom, Stacy or Jeffrey accompany her. Even so, she would get in, and get out as quickly as possible. She didn’t want to see that man ever again.

  Every shadow, every trick of light, every movement seen from the corner of her eye would terrify her. Anna wouldn’t go near the dining room, and always made whoever was with her go into her bedroom first.

  Jeffrey understood, he too felt a little odd in Anna’s house. He said it was as if reality were just a little bit off. Tom tolerated Anna’s behavior out of love, and because of sex. And, Stacy would tell her that she was crazy, but that she was also a friend.