Within These Walls

by Ania Ahlborn

  WHEN LUCAS ARRIVED back in Pier Pointe, Mark had parked his car in the driveway beside the U-Haul truck. The scent of freshly baked cherry pie hit him as soon as he stepped through the door. It should have been comforting, but it only made him feel more edgy. The fruity chemical scent of Selma’s air freshener still coated the back of his throat.

  Selma and Mark were in the kitchen. Jeanie, on the other hand, was nowhere in sight. Lucas stalked across the living room, trying to shake off the thwarting feeling of defeat, but it was tough. His foul mood was poisoning him from the inside out, tainting his blood, making him grit his teeth. All he wanted to do right then was throw himself into his desk chair and sit in a dark and quiet room. He didn’t want to talk, to deal with anyone. Why Mark felt the need to drive down to the house when Selma was already there was baffling. Like the guy had nothing to do but drive back and forth between Seattle and Pier Pointe. Like he had all the money in the world to burn on gas. Like Lucas really wanted to stare at Mark and his pretty girlfriend because it wasn’t a cruel reminder of the things he’d lost. Christ, he thought. I don’t need this right now. He wanted to tell them to go.

  But rather than kicking his best friend out, he forced a smile when Selma peeked out of the kitchen with a look of surprise.

  “You’re home early,” she said. “Everything go okay?”

  Lucas stepped over to the breakfast table, then slouched in his seat. Mark raised an inquisitive eyebrow at him from across the room. He was leaning against the counter, a plate full of cherry pie balanced in his left hand, a fork in his right. Lucas tossed his messenger bag onto the chair next to him and pushed his fingers through his hair.

  “Want a slice?” Selma asked.

  No, he didn’t. The mere scent of it was cloying.

  “Sure.” He ignored the knot in his stomach, tried to push the fact that he was totally screwed out of his mind. “Where’s Jeanie?”

  Selma handed him a plate. “Upstairs. We took the truck to the grocery store to pick up a few things, and she looked just about ready to fall asleep in the cereal aisle. I don’t think she slept.”

  Lucas slid his plate of pie onto the table, untouched. “She woke me up last night,” he murmured. “Thought she was dying.”

  “Dying?” Selma looked alarmed.

  “Obviously an overexaggeration on her part. She thought she had a brain aneurysm.”

  Mark snorted through his nose, then took another bite of his pie.

  “She’s got this . . . thing,” Lucas said, waving a hand over his head.

  “A WebMD thing,” Mark clarified.

  Selma’s expression only grew more concerned.

  “You guys should have taken her to the hospital,” she said, giving Mark a stern look. Mark blinked, suddenly caught in her crosshairs. “What if something had happened? She could have gone to sleep and never woken up.”

  “She’s fine,” Mark insisted. “Alive and well.”

  “Right.” Selma rolled her eyes. “And she’s not fine. I hardly even recognized her this morning. How long has she been dressing like that?”

  “A few months,” Lucas said. “Six at the most.”

  “Do you think that’s something to be concerned about?”

  “Oh my God.” Mark slid his plate onto the kitchen counter and pushed off.

  “What?” Selma frowned at them both.

  “You sound like my grandmother, that’s what—a stereotypical old-world Italian.”

  “I’m not trying to suggest that she’s into something she shouldn’t be into,” Selma said, focusing her attention on Lucas, trying her best to ignore Mark’s disparaging comparison. “But we saw you guys not that long ago. Last summer, right? It’s just such a drastic change and a little disconcerting. I just have this feeling.”

  “Of what?” Lucas asked.

  “I guess it’s just this sense of . . . almost fear?”

  “Fear. Huh.” He peered down at his pie. If Jeanie was afraid, they were in the same boat, because Lucas was terrified. This whole thing—the house, Washington—was supposed to make everything better. But then a guy sitting in a prison cell snapped his fingers and everything was worse. Snap. Here’s hope for the future. Snap. Never mind.

  “I heard about you and Caroline.”

  Selma’s voice suddenly grated on his nerves. His aggravation began to bubble again, threatening to spill over in an ugly, angry tirade that neither she nor Mark deserved. So what? he thought. You heard about me and Caroline. So fucking what? That was the thing with friends; the moment a major disaster struck, they didn’t know when to keep their mouths shut. They always wanted to help, always wanted to talk it out.

  “Great.” He continued to peer at the table, trying to keep his frustration in check.

  “I don’t mean to pry, Lou, you know that,” Selma said. “I just thought that maybe . . .”

  “Maybe it’s my fault, right?” His gaze darted up to her face. Selma blanched at the razor edge in his voice.

  “It’s not your fault,” Mark cut in. “She wasn’t saying that.” He gave his girlfriend a hard glance.

  “I wasn’t saying that,” Selma verified. “Lou, I swear.”

  “Hey, it’s fine.” Lucas lifted a single shoulder and let it slump a second later. “Why shouldn’t it be my fault, right? I screwed up my kid. I screwed up my marriage. I screwed up my fucking life. We don’t need to beat around the bush.” He smirked, shook his head. “After all, we’re all friends here.”

  The kitchen went silent.

  Lucas stared down at his hands, imagining that both Mark and Selma had vanished, leaving him to stew in his own pissed-off misery.

  No such luck.

  “What happened at Lambert?” Mark asked.

  The question set his teeth on edge. “The fucking guy stood me up.”

  “Why? What was his reason?”

  “He doesn’t need a reason.” Lucas felt his lip curl over his teeth. “You can talk a bunch of people into suicide by poisoning, but don’t worry: your right to privacy will stay intact.”

  “What bullshit,” Mark scoffed. “Leave it to the system. You going to try again?”

  “What choice do I have? I mean, other than digging my own grave around the back of the house.”

  “You’ve got nothing?”

  “Not anything a person with half a brain and an Internet connection can’t find on their own in old articles and reports. There are a couple of guards at Lambert Correctional that may be able to help, but the guy I talked to seemed kind of reluctant. I’m guessing they can only tell me so much before losing their jobs. What am I supposed to offer them in compensation? A thank-you in the acknowledgments, a sorry-I-got-you-fired?”

  Mark frowned at the floor. Selma chewed on her bottom lip, then gave both men a pained sort of smile. “I think I’m going to head back.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you at home,” Mark told her. She leaned into him and gave him a quick kiss before crossing the kitchen, stopping just shy of Lucas’s chair.

  “Everything is going to work out.” She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Come out to the city soon?”

  “We will,” Lucas said. “Thanks for the car.”

  “Of course.” She gave him a wink, gathered her things, and stepped across the living room to the front door.

  She left Lucas and Mark in silence. The clattering of Mark’s plate scraping against the bottom of the sink punctuated the quiet.

  Eventually, Mark cleared his throat and leaned against the counter again.

  “So, I’m going to ask you this once,” he said.

  Lucas glanced up, apprehensive. “Oh, here it comes,” he murmured.

  “Well, if you’d offer up some information now and again . . .” Mark countered.

  “Offer up what?”

  “This house. What’s the story? This isn’t
what I think it is, is it?”

  “Which is what?” Lucas was playing dumb, but he knew exactly what Mark was getting at.

  Mark sighed. “You know how you said that any idiot with an Internet connection could look this stuff up? Well, guess what.” He tapped his chest. “This idiot has an Internet connection and looked it up. I put in the address, found articles about a congressman and his kid, found out that kid was . . .” He paused, shot a look toward the living room, lowered his voice so that Jeanie wouldn’t hear. “. . . that some satanic cult slashed the kid up. In this very house, Lou. And, surprise surprise, the dude in charge is now sitting in Lambert, asking you, and only you, to take a meeting with him.”

  Lucas said nothing.

  “God, Lou. Is that what you meant when you said you had a deal out here? You agreed to live in his house of fucking horrors?”

  “It’s a house, Mark. It’s got walls and a floor. It’s just a place to live in.”

  “Right. Like Amityville was just a house.”

  “Amityville was a hoax.”

  “So you’re saying you don’t believe in any of that stuff?” Mark asked. “Not a single shred of belief in your whole entire body? Because you might want to mention that to Jeanie. I went upstairs to see what she was doing, and you know what I found?”

  “A girl with a black eye?”

  “Books,” Mark said flatly. “A lot of books about shit twelve-year-old girls don’t normally focus on. Parapsychology? Ghosts? She had them spread all over her bed.”

  “Lots of kids read about ghosts.”

  “She’s got things bookmarked—she’s in deeper than you think. If Jeanie finds out what this house is . . .”

  “But she isn’t going to find out, is she?”

  Mark held up his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying, you’ve gotten yourself into some crazy shit here. I love you like a brother, Lou. But I have to tell you, there’s something intrinsically fucked up about what you’re doing here. And now, with this guy standing you up the way he did. What was the deal—that you’d live here in exchange for him talking to you about what happened?”

  Lucas nodded.

  “Then why would he stand you up? It doesn’t make sense. I mean, something’s not right.”

  “You know what’s not right?” Lucas’s agitation breached the levy of self-control. He rose from his seat, pushed the chair away a little too hard. “Where my life has gone. Your life isn’t my life, okay? If I haven’t lost it yet, I’m in the process of losing it and everything I care about. Remember how that feels? I didn’t know what the fuck else to do.”

  “But how does this make sense?” Mark asked, his tone steady, undeterred by his best friend’s outburst.

  “Because it’s the only plan I have,” Lucas said. “I saw an opportunity and I took it, and now things have changed and I don’t know what any of it means. But I don’t have the cash to turn it around, and I’m all out of ideas for material. I’m going to lose my kid, Mark. Caroline, I mean, I wish I could fix that . . . I’m going to do everything I can. But at the end of the day, it isn’t Caroline I give a shit about—it’s the fact that if I lose Caroline, I lose Jeanie, too.”

  Mark pushed his fingers through his hair, then shook his head as if not sure what to say anymore. After a moment, he spoke. “Give me the truck keys.”

  “What?”

  “The keys to the moving truck. Give them to me.”

  Lucas grabbed the keys off the kitchen table and arced them through the air toward Mark’s awaiting hand.

  “I’m going to pick up your car for you. You keep mine.” He tossed his own keys back at Lucas. “We’ll trade when you come up for dinner. And maybe you should consider staying with us—if this place gets too heavy, I mean.”

  Lucas nodded.

  “I still think this whole thing is crazy,” Mark said.

  “Maybe it is,” Lucas replied. “But normal isn’t going to fix this.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Mark said. “I mean, normal never was your thing.”

  18

  * * *

  SURROUNDED BY OPEN and half-empty boxes, Vee heard the yelling all the way up in her room. She raised her head from the book in her lap and squinted at the muffled tones filtering through her open door. She hated the sound of arguing, but this was new. Her dad was battling it out with Uncle Mark—a person she’d never heard him fight with before. Her curiosity got the best of her. Rather than closing her door to block out the sound, she tiptoed into the upstairs hallway and peeked over the banister to the living room below.

  “You know how you said that any idiot with an Internet connection could look this stuff up? Well, guess what. This idiot has an Internet connection and looked it up. I put in the address, found articles about a congressman and his kid . . .”

  Uncle Mark’s voice dropped off then, as though he had said too much. She chewed on a nail, descending the stairs one after the other, careful not to make any noise.

  “It’s a house, Mark. It’s got walls and a floor. It’s just a place to live in.” Her dad, frustration punctuating his tone. The tension in his voice was familiar. He hadn’t sounded anything but stressed for what seemed like years, but these last few weeks had been particularly hard.

  “Right. Like Amityville was just a house.”

  Vee stalled at the reference.

  Amityville.

  She’d watched that movie with Tim and Heidi on Tim’s TV only a few months before. Tim had a whole collection of old horror movies he’d bought at some going-out-of-business sale for a few bucks a pop; Troll and Dolls and Critters. They were cheapie films that Vee laughed at while watching but spooked her when the lights went out. But The Amityville Horror had been no joke. Both she and Heidi had watched it wide-eyed the whole way through. Even Tim had kept quiet until the end, which was a feat in and of itself. Tim was notorious for mid-movie commentary; half the time, they couldn’t get him to shut up for more than five minutes.

  Was Uncle Mark comparing this house to the Amityville one? No way, she thought. Besides, the story about that house wasn’t real. She’d looked it up after she’d gotten home that night, after Tim had sworn up and down that the filmmaker based the movie on a true story. You’re full of crap, Tim! Heidi had yelled when Tim had warned his sister to sleep with one eye open. But that was Heidi’s way. She was a denier, while Vee was a seeker. Tell Heidi that there was a chance she’d get swallowed up by a demon and she’d scream for you to shut up. Tell Vee the same thing and she’d spend hours in front of her computer, researching the possibility. It was one of the undeniable traits she’d inherited from her dad.

  But now the Amityville comparison threw her for a loop. Uncle Mark had to have a reason for suggesting there was a correlation between this house and the one in her home state of New York. Maybe the story hadn’t been a hoax like it said on the Internet. Maybe people just didn’t understand because they were afraid of the unknown. People didn’t want to believe in ghosts because it meant heaven might not be real. But if ghosts didn’t exist, how had Vee seen the girl in the mirror the day before? If there wasn’t some similarity between the house in Pier Pointe and the one in Amityville, why would Uncle Mark suggest that there was?

  She did an about-face on the stairs and silently padded back to her room, unable to control the frenzied drumming of her heart. The Amityville haunting may have been a hoax—there was no concrete proof that any of the stuff the Lutz family had claimed actually happened—but the murders that had occurred there were real. Vee had read all about the DeFeos after watching the movie. She’d spent hours searching for family photographs on Google, unable to stanch her own morbid curiosity.

  The truth of it was, Vee understood why her father wrote about the things he did. Stories about murder and darkness had a definite pull; they were alluring in how forbidden they were. But she’d never outright admit that her
father’s influence reached further than her incessant research of the paranormal. She’d never tell a soul her thoughts regularly barreled toward worst-case scenarios. When she and Heidi had walked past a mangled bicycle surrounded by cops and paramedics one winter afternoon, Heidi had gasped and hoped that everyone was okay. But Vee couldn’t help imagining the moment of impact. The heavy thud of a body tumbling over a car hood. The whiplike crack of safety glass. Without so much as a shred of evidence, she convinced herself that the cyclist was dead.

  Her mind had wandered in the same way the night police lit up her Briarwood street with their whirling lights a few weeks later. Vee had woken to a woman wailing as she ran into the mid-December snow. The next day, news broke that a high school freshman had hanged himself with a belt from the wooden dowel in his bedroom closet. The news anchors announced that fourteen-year-old Shawn Johnson had been on the honor roll and had run cross-country track. Vee had said hi to him a couple of times while walking past his house on her way to Heidi’s place. He had always struck her as reserved and quiet, far more delicate than the other neighborhood boys. After Shawn died, everyone talked about how tragic it was, how hard it must have been for his mother. But all Vee could think about was how it must have felt to know that death was inevitable, how much effort it had taken not to simply stand up. The news anchors failed to mention that Shawn had been a tall boy. Vee doubted his feet ever left the closet floor.

  In November 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. had murdered his parents and four siblings at his home in Amityville, New York. That was an indisputable fact. There were bodies and autopsy reports and crime scene photos. Vee had found them online; pretty girls wearing bloody nightgowns, their faces crusted with gore. Whether the house they were killed in was haunted, however, was up for debate. But maybe . . .

  The possibility rattled around inside her head. Because maybe, here in this house, nobody had summoned the girl in the mirror, after all. Maybe she was here because this was her home. Could there be something wrong with this house the same way there were rumors of the Amityville house being broken? How else could Vee explain what she’d seen in the living room—the strange furniture, the rug that didn’t belong, the pictures that she’d never seen before, the tap-tap-tapping of wooden beads against the wall?