It was snowing that night, I remember. It was a faint snow, the kind that doesn't stick, but which falls in really fat, impressive flakes like something in an old Christmas-themed painting. I'd given her my gift, a poorly-wrapped bottle of her favorite perfume and a snowman-patterned scarf that'd caught her eye at a downtown boutique. She'd picked up a handful of vinyl records to go with the turntable I'd recently treated myself to—Sinatra's In The Wee Small Hours and others that were near and dear to me.
After a farewell romp in the sheets, the two of us sat up in my bedroom, relaxing, and she got that thoughtful look in her eyes like she wanted to launch into one of our long discussions. To my surprise, she kissed me on the lips and said, “Hey, I've been wondering about something. Those 'bad memories' you've got about Michigan. What are they? Did you teach up in Michigan or something?”
The question took me by surprise and I gave a very obvious deflection. “Ah, it was nothing. It's just not my kind of place, you know. Like you said... lots of trees. I'm a city boy, through and through. Never been much for nature.” I turned the tables. “How about you? Did you like living in Michigan?” I asked.
She shrugged, giving me a half-smile. “Well, it's funny, but I hardly remember it. My parents and I moved out of there when I was still very young. In fact, I don't know the full story behind it, but whenever my dad has talked about it in the past, I get the impression that we didn't leave—but were run out. Maybe it was a debt-related thing, I don't know. We even changed our last name. I think it must have been a legal problem, but my dad doesn't like to talk about it.”
“Oh?” I asked. “What was your last name before 'Dennings', then?”
“We used to be the Lancasters,” she replied.
The pre-bedroom wine I'd enjoyed crept up my throat and I felt a tightness in my chest. The look on my face must have been terrible, because Rose sat up and looked at me with concern.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
I ran a hand across my face, sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Of course. I'm just... kind of tired,” I said, cracking an unconvincing smile. If she'd still had her head on my chest, listened to my heart, she'd have called my bluff, because at that moment it was racing.
“OK,” she said. “I'll put out the lights.”
I stopped her. “No, no... just lay with me,” I said, pulling her back into bed. I held her close. My insistence on sleeping with at least one light on was one thing that always bothered her about staying at my place. Tonight, though, she didn't put up any fuss and as I held her close, I heard her drift off within minutes.
I wasn't afforded the luxury of an easy sleep, however. I was wide awake.
If Rose was to be believed—and I had no reason to doubt her—her father had been a Lancaster who had lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and who'd been run out under strange circumstances. I didn't know the full details, and neither did Rose, but I remembered something Paul Coleman had told me during my time in Milsbourne, when he'd regaled me with the story of the Lancaster curse. He'd claimed that certain of the Lancasters, not feeling safe in Milsbourne and often shunned by the other local families, had fled from the region. Some had even changed their names. That Rose's father checked all of those boxes was one hell of a coincidence.
At this point in my life, I knew a thing or two about coincidences.
A true coincidence is a lot rarer than people know. More often than not, things merely have the appearance of coincidence, when in fact there's someone silently pulling strings behind the scenes, arranging for a particular outcome. One spring day, not so very long ago, I'd watched a kid in downtown Moorlake die in a hit and run accident and had, shortly thereafter, gotten rolled up into Elizabeth Morrissey's ghost hunting club, which led us to Chaythe Asylum...
The Occupant had used me as a pawn in the past—a pawn that would deliver it a female in the Lancaster line—without my even realizing it. Was that what was happening now? Or was I simply reading too deeply into things, psyching myself out? I tried to sleep, told myself it was nothing, and repeated, again and again, that all of that supernatural business was in the past, that I needn't concern myself with it. I'd put a stop to the Occupant back in Michigan by committing an unspeakable sin. The entity, if it still existed in this world at all, had returned to its nightly wanderings of the unpeopled Michigan woods and was no longer a direct threat.
Eventually, I drifted into an uneasy sleep. The lights in the room didn't help beat back the specters leering from the borders of my memories, though.
27
Rose got dressed and set out around eight in the morning. She was hesitant to leave, but not wanting to keep her parents waiting, she prepared for her two hour drive and promised to call me once she got there safe and sound. I followed her to the door, gave her a kiss and watched her as she walked out to her Volvo. When she'd gone, I locked up and decided to catch up on my reading. I had a stack of novels a foot high that I'd been hurting to read and a bottle of decent scotch in the cabinet that I'd been saving for just such an occasion.
The next two days went by in a blur of booze, books and greasy delivery food. Since moving to Columbus, I'd given up my smoking habit. Affording packs of smokes—even the crappier brands—is hard to do when you're jobless, and all of the people I'd crashed with after my eviction had been pretty staunch anti-smokers. So, I'd quit cold turkey. I didn't even crave the cigarettes a whole lot anymore, but when the itch came, usually when I was drinking, I'd treat myself to the occasional smoke. A friend had introduced me to a cigar shop in town from which I'd purchased a couple of Nat Sherman cigars, and I lit up while paging through an excellent techno-thriller.
Something occurred to me towards the end of that second day, however. Rose had never called to let me know she'd made it safely to her parents' place. I didn't think much of it. It'd sounded like her parents intended to keep her busy over the break, with luncheons and shopping trips, and I was sure she'd simply forgotten. Picking up my phone, I tapped out a quick text, asking her how she was doing, and left it at that.
Or, at least, I'd intended to.
A phone chirped somewhere in my apartment, startling me. I looked down at my own, and when I was sure it wasn't the culprit, I got up and started searching. The chirp—the ringer Rose always used—sounded again a few minutes later. I shuffled from room to room and singled out the source of the chirping. It was coming from my bedroom. Specifically, from underneath my bed. I pulled away the bedskirt and discovered Rose's purse tucked neatly beneath the frame.
“Oh, crap,” I muttered. She'd forgotten her purse. No wonder she hadn't called.
I set it on top of the bed and wondered why she hadn't come back for it. It was likely she'd driven a long while before noticing she'd forgotten it, and she'd probably thought it safe in my care until she returned. I considered the possibility of my running it to her parents' place. If nothing else, it would make for a convenient excuse to see her again. The drive to Dayton wasn't so far that it would be a lot of trouble, and the weather was looking decent.
The only trouble was that I didn't know her parents' address. Carrying the purse over to my laptop, I pulled up a browser window and fed “Dennings Dayton Ohio” into Google. The first page was full of different hits featuring addresses, phone numbers and more.
But near the top of the page, hosted by what looked to be a Dayton news site, was something that caught my eye. I clicked on the link, which led to a news item less than a day old, entitled DAYTON COUPLE MISSING, FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.
The story, a brief writeup, detailed an ongoing investigation into the very recent disappearances of Bradley and Gloria Dennings, residents of Dayton, Ohio. Investigators were alerted to the scene by a neighbor who'd noted a disturbance the night before. Upon their arrival to the scene, authorities reportedly found traces of blood around the property, as well as a good deal of damage to the interior of the house. The couple, in their early 60's, were not found and were presumed missing.
I closed out of the ta
b and shut my laptop, my blood turning to ice. Were these two missing people in Dayton Rose's parents? Where had they gone? Surely this had simply been some kind of Christmastime break-in gone wrong? I told myself it was just a coincidence. Just another weird coincidence, nothing more.
But at the back of my mind, I began to suspect it was anything but a coincidence.
I considered the possibility that this was the most recent incarnation of the Lancaster curse. I pictured Rose, entering her parents' home the night before, her eyes black, her mouth unhinged. I imagined her tearing them apart, feasting on their blood. I thought I could hear the voices of the dead as my heater kicked on and my hands began to tremble. I sucked down two fingers' worth of scotch to get my head straight.
My curiosity getting the better of me, I dove into Rose's purse, wondering if I wouldn't be able to find something related to her parents inside. Maybe her parents weren't named Bradley and Gloria—maybe this incident in Dayton was completely unrelated to her, I told myself. Emptying the contents of the purse onto my desk, I was surprised at how little there was to sift through. Aside from the hair scrunchies and bobby pins that clattered out, I found a white clamshell of birth control pills, her cellphone, a pack of gum and a smattering of old receipts and movie ticket stubs. There was one other thing as well—a slip of folded paper that'd been lining the bottom.
I had a look at everything, starting with the birth control pills. The fact that the circle of pills, a month's supply, was completely intact did not escape my notice. She hadn't taken a single one in the past twenty-odd days. Why was that? She was over at my apartment every other night, would surely end up pregnant seeing as how we didn't use any other form of protection. Setting the pills aside, I picked up the folded sheet of paper and opened it.
It turned out to be a handwritten note, something, I wagered, she'd expected me to find. The message on it, written very neatly so as not to be misread, was comprised of only two lines.
Two lines I'd read before.
I stared at that note a long while. Before I knew it, a stray tear had fallen from my cheek and stained the page, blurring the ink. My hands shook, and I knew that the entire bottle of scotch would not steady them. Crushing the note within my palm, I slumped in my chair and wept.
In 1989, shortly before his death, W. R. Corvine had written a cryptic note, a sort of warning, and had left it behind in a box beneath the floorboards of his cabin in Michigan. The note, written in Rose's distinct hand, replicated the last two lines of the doctor's missive, forever burned in my memory, and solidified something I should have realized long ago.
The door has been opened.
It's already too late.
And of course, she was right.
Thank you for reading!
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About the Author
Once upon a time, a young Ambrose Ibsen discovered a collection of ghost stories on his father's bookshelf. He was never the same again.
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The Occupant: The Afterlife Investigations #3 Page 16