by Ania Ahlborn
“Some breaking and entering here and there. Nothing serious.”
Those two words made her body tingle with alarm. Theft? Jeff sensed her dismay. She watched the muscles in his jaw tense.
“Being part of the family means you do what needs to be done without compromising our beliefs,” he said. “Most of the time, we don’t even have to break in. You’d be surprised by how many people leave their doors or windows unlocked. We go in and take some food—nothing they’ll miss. That was the way we kept ourselves fed for years, and it looks like that’s what we’re going to have to do again.”
“Did you ever get caught?”
“We had a few close calls, but we never got busted. Even if the home owners would get back earlier than expected and call the cops, there wasn’t much to report. We never really stole anything. I mean, one time Noah and Kenzie decided to take someone’s car for a joy ride. I couldn’t blame them. It was a Porsche.” Avis gaped at him. “But they returned it ten minutes later, not a scratch on it. The owner reported the thing stolen, but by the time the cops showed up the car was back in the driveway, keys in the ignition, an extra few miles on the odometer.” He gave her a boyish grin, like it had been the most innocent thing in the world. “It’s partly why we move around so much. People notice a big group like us, especially if we’re out on the streets or living in tents.”
But now they had a safe house. They even had a car. It was no Porsche, but at least Avis owned it. She certainly wouldn’t be reporting it stolen if someone decided to take it for a drive. As far as Pier Pointe was concerned, it was the polar opposite of paranoid. This was a laid-back coastal town, ripe for the picking. And they’d expect her to pick it with them. Another initiation. Another way to prove she was worth their time.
“Come on,” he said, his fingers squeezing her shoulders in encouragement. “You can hold your own, can’t you? You’re more than just some fancy congressman’s daughter. Or are you going to run back to Daddy every time the going gets tough?”
Avis squared her shoulders and steadied her gaze onto his. He was right.
It’s not you, it’s them.
She took a breath and gave him a slight nod.
“I know someone who doesn’t lock their doors,” she said. “And I know when she isn’t home.”
30
* * *
THE BOX OF photos that Echo brought over was like something out of a daydream, a time capsule that transported Lucas from the present to 1983.
The photographs made him feel like a Peeping Tom. It was as though he’d stumbled on a family’s most intimate artifacts, inspecting them with a voyeuristic pleasure.
There was twenty-five-year-old Nolan Wood with his startling blue eyes and childlike naïveté. Derrick Fink, with his disturbing intensity and eccentric style, tipping his cowboy hat toward the camera. Georgia Jansen, also known as Gypsy, was the dark-haired girl who didn’t seem to know how to smile; a striking contrast to a nineteen-year-old dewy-faced Laura Morgan with her red hair and wide-spaced eyes. Kenneth Kennedy didn’t look like much more than a class clown, pulling faces or striking poses whenever someone pointed the camera his way. There was Roxanna Margold, who accented her plainness behind stringy hair and homely clothes. The baby of the group, fifteen-year-old Shelly Riordan, fit her group-given nickname of Sunnie by brightening up every photo with a wide, sunshine smile. Chloe Sears, on the other hand, wore a dead-eyed, drugged-out stare.
And then there was Audra Snow, as ordinary as Roxanna and blond like Chloe and Shelly—an unremarkable girl who had stumbled headlong into notoriety. Someone’s Virginia.
He spent hours flipping through the sixty or so photos Echo had stuffed into that old envelope. A picture was worth a thousand words, and the images were telling him a novel’s worth of information. Certain members of the group were always clustered together. Others stood in certain ways when Halcomb was in the shots. Audra was always at Jeffrey’s elbow like an obedient dog. Foresight was a magical thing, having the ability to turn the most innocuous snapshot into a picture of imminent doom. Jeff’s arm around Audra’s shoulders was a dark promise of things to come. The hope Lucas saw in her eyes turned his stomach.
He grabbed for the coffeepot at the corner of his desk and tipped it to pour a cup, but found it was empty. It took him a minute to step away from his desk to get more water; when he finally did, he was struck by just how late it was. Yet another day had faded to a bruised purple. The house felt empty in the twilight. In the kitchen, a half-eaten pizza crust sat on an abandoned plate. Jeanie never did like crusts. Lucas smirked at the habit his daughter had yet to outgrow. He slid his coffeepot onto the island next to her plate and turned back to the living room, then headed up the stairs.
He poked his head in Jeanie’s room. She was in bed and, from the look of it, had been there for quite some time. She’d draped her favorite blouse over the back of her desk chair. He hadn’t even noticed she had been wearing it earlier. Ah, shit. That’s how miserable of a father he had become. He quietly closed the door behind him.
Downstairs, he ate cold pizza in silence, feeling like an asshole for having been so transfixed by the pictures Echo had brought. He’d made Jeanie an offer he had immediately retracted. Caroline had warned him about that—take her into town, don’t lock yourself up. She had been speaking from experience, having suffered through his bouts of nonstop work. When Lucas found himself in “the zone,” he may as well have been an astronaut traveling at the speed of light. He stayed the same while everyone around him aged a hundred years in a day.
Washing down his pizza with a swig of beer, he was just about to head back to his study—the driving impulse to continue staring at those photos and rereading old articles impossible to refuse—when the sound of the front door shutting roused him from his late-evening daze.
Lucas started at the sound of the latch strike clicking inside the frame.
His pulse quickened as he left his plate and half-drained beer on the kitchen table. Peering into the living room, he squinted to see better, his hands balled into nervous fists.
There were a few good reasons to leave this house behind. Jeanie knowing its history was first and foremost. But his nagging suspicion that there were people milling about in the darkness was another.
Lucas crossed the living room, paused beside the front door. It was shut tight, dead bolted in place. Pressing his hands flat against the wood, he looked out the peephole. Nothing.
Except for the sound of two girls laughing behind his back.
Lucas’s eyes widened. He veered around, his gaze immediately darting to the upstairs hall. It was dark. Jeanie’s door was closed. She’s asleep. You know she’s asleep. But before he could make a move toward the kitchen to investigate the laughter, it was gone. There one second, gone the next, as quick and disjointed as a momentary hallucination.
And what he was seeing had to be a hallucination, because he found himself standing at the top of the two brick foyer steps, his attention transfixed.
By some dark magic, the kitchen table was now dead center in the living room. Four chairs arranged perfectly around it. His pizza plate and beer bottle exactly where he had left it. Only, somehow, halfway across the house.
31
* * *
LUCAS SAT ON the stairs with his cell phone plastered to his ear and his thumbnail between his teeth, listening to the pause of unsure silence on Mark’s end of the line. Eventually, his friend spoke.
“So, it just . . . moved?”
“Yes, it just moved.”
“And you heard the door open and shut before this happened?”
Lucas closed his eyes, squeezed the bridge of his nose. He knew it was a hard story to swallow, but repeating the details wasn’t going to make it seem any saner. He decided to ride out Mark’s inquiry without a response.
“And Jeanie knows . . .” Mark said, sounding like he was
talking more to himself than to Lucas. “Then the neighbor chick brought you some stuff and somehow that means you can’t move?”
“It means that if we move, I might lose her as a lead.”
Another pause, this one a lot longer.
“Dude.” Mark sounded baffled. “You realize that if you don’t move you might lose your kid, right?”
“Jeanie doesn’t want to move.”
“Forget what Jeanie wants, what’s Caroline going to say if she finds out? Imagine how that’s going to look in court.”
“You mean it’ll be worse than it’s already going to be?” Lucas emitted a dry laugh. “So it’s either I stay, write the book, and make some cash so I have a shot at keeping my kid, or quit, spiral into abject poverty, and lose my kid for sure? Oh, the options, my friend.”
“Okay.” Mark relented. “I hear you. But . . . maybe you should at least get an alarm.”
“Yeah? With what money?”
“Lou, you saw someone wandering around outside and it wasn’t your neighbor.”
“I don’t know if it was or if it wasn’t. It was dark. I was inside. There was a glare on the kitchen window.”
“But there was definitely someone there?”
“Of course there was someone there,” Lucas hissed, trying to keep his voice down to not wake Jeanie. “Of course there was.”
Mark went quiet.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just—”
“You’re freaking out,” Mark said. “As you should be. But it still doesn’t make sense, Lou. You hear the door open, or close, or whatever. You walk out of the kitchen to the front door, check the lock, hear something—”
“Laughter. It was fucking laughter, like two girls yukking it up next to the refrigerator or something. The sound came from the kitchen. I know it did.”
“Okay, but even if there were two chicks in your house and they were able to miraculously sneak in without you seeing them, how the hell do they move a table and four chairs into the middle of the living room without making a goddamned sound? And how do they do that in, what, five seconds? I mean, they’d have to have been right behind you. You’d have to have gotten up out of your seat, turned your back, and they were lifting the damn thing off the floor before you ever set foot out of the kitchen.”
Lucas ran his hand across his mouth. It didn’t make sense. It was an impossible goddamn feat. And yet the kitchen table was still there, front and center in the living room. It was no figment of his imagination. He could dance on top of it if he wanted to.
“You don’t think it’s . . .” Mark hesitated, then cleared his throat. “You know, something else . . . ?”
“What, something else?”
“You know, like, the house.”
He knew it was coming. Of course. The house. The superstition. The fact that when people die in a place, that place may be haunted, if places could even be haunted.
“Is that a yes or a no? I mean, how else do you explain it?”
Lucas said nothing. There was no explanation. That was the problem.
“Lou?” Mark sounded wary. “Hey, listen, maybe you and Jeanie should come up to Seattle. We’ll go to Pike Place, watch fishmongers toss giant tunas back and forth at each other. Hell, I’ll even pay our way up to the top of the Space Needle. We’ll have a grand old time, man. Because if there is something to be worried about, better safe than sorry, right? Especially when there’s a kid involved. You don’t have to call it a move . . . just, you know, an extended visit.”
“Yeah.” Except Lucas couldn’t leave. He had work to do. He had a million questions he wanted to ask Echo, and he couldn’t do that from up north. He’d finally caught a break, and was determined to ride it out like a ball bearing in a Rube Goldberg machine.
But Mark was right—it would be good for Jeanie to get away. He wouldn’t have to worry about someone crawling through a window and getting to her while he was downstairs. That, and he could lock himself away 24-7 and work until he finished this book. A little less guilt. A little less of feeling like a worthless bastard.
“I can’t go, but if you guys wouldn’t mind taking Jeanie for a bit. At least that way I can figure out what the hell is going on around here.”
“Lou . . .” Mark didn’t sound happy. “If Michael Myers is wandering around Pier Pointe looking for Camp Crystal Lake, he’s not going to give a shit if you’re a dad or not. He’s going to chop your goddamn head off regardless. Besides, you can use my computer room. It has a door. You can close it. Nobody’s going to mind.”
“It’ll screw me up,” Lucas insisted. “Besides, if a serial killer comes knocking on the front door, it’ll give me more material.” Gallows humor. What else was there to do but to laugh?
Mark didn’t find it funny. There was a beat of silence, then a resolute sigh from his end of the line. “Fine. I’m at work until four tomorrow, but Selma will be here. I’ll tell her to expect you. But I still think it’s crazy for you to stay there if there’s a chance something weird is going on, be it an intruder or a fucking ghost.”
Except that if it was a ghost, it was the best reason in the world to stay.
If it really was a ghost, there was no doubt in his mind it was connected to Jeffrey Halcomb, to the kids who had taken their own lives in his name.
It’s not a ghost.
Yeah, probably not. But it was a damn good angle—one that would potentially sell a whole lot of books.
TWIN HARBORS METAPHYSICAL GROUP
CASE FILE: 091501
DATE: 09/15/01
ADDRESS: 101 Montlake Road, Pier Pointe, WA
CLASSIFICATION: Private Residence
REQUESTING PARTY: Giana Lodi
COMPLAINT: Resident complains of shadow people, seeing movement, misplaced items, rooms appearing “different,” disembodied voices, possible full-bodied apparitions, feelings of being touched.
TESTS PERFORMED: EVP, EMF, video surveillance, motion detection, thermal scan, traditional séance, night vision photography.
INVESTIGATORS: Mallory Leonard, Craig Erickson, Genevieve Lajounesse, Ella Hammond.
FINDINGS: Some static photographs show signs of orbs or orb-like figures. Consistent EMF spikes picked up in various parts of the house, which suggests possible wiring issues, not paranormal entities. Possible laughter on EVP recording (tape 5, 01:34:21), but faint and hard to make out. Nothing on video surveillance or motion detection. Temperature remained between 68–71 degrees Fahrenheit. Séance resulted in multiple instances of feeling a presence by both Genevieve and Ella, but EMF remained steady throughout the sitting. No evidence of items being moved.
CONCLUSION: While results are inconclusive, the house has a history of violence and multiple deaths (see note re: Montlake Massacre of ’83). Resident has been encouraged to reach out to us again if she experiences anything new. Resident has started using pine branches and needles to protect against dark spirits. When asked about this particular method, resident stated it made her “feel safer,” though she wasn’t sure as to why. THMG suspects possible haunting, but has no conclusive evidence at this time.
32
* * *
LUCAS EVENTUALLY MOVED the table and chairs back into the kitchen after hanging up with Mark. He then worked through the entire night scribbling questions he had for Echo and Josh Morales—if the guy ever called him back—rather than going to bed. He did this in the kitchen rather than his study, with lights burning bright above his head. The table had left him properly spooked, and he’d spent a good part of the evening checking the windows and doors for possible points of entry.
He hadn’t been able to find anything that even came close to explaining how a few girls could get inside without him knowing, but it didn’t change the fact that they had. He left himself a note on the kitchen table to call an alarm company first thing in the morning. Money be d
amned, he’d rather rack up more debt than end up dead.
His head hit the pillow at a little after five in the morning, his brain swimming with interview questions and worries about trespassers. He thought about Caroline and Italy, recalling memories of their less-than-perfect honeymoon—the way they had to stand at every café they came across because the place wanted to charge them to sit; how they had eaten gelato after gelato, unable to pick their favorite flavor; how they had almost lost each other in a mass of people while the pope puttered by in his bulletproof golf cart.
When sleep refused to come, he went back down to the kitchen and continued to work. By the time Jeanie came downstairs a little after nine a.m., Lucas felt as though he could have fallen asleep where he sat.
He watched her walk to the fridge without so much as a hello. There was something skittish about the way she moved, as if trying not to wake something that Lucas couldn’t see. When their eyes finally met, she gave him a bland look—annoyed, as though his mere presence put her off.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning,” she muttered, pulled open the refrigerator door, and slid a gallon of milk onto the kitchen island. Lucas remained silent as she retrieved a bowl from one of the cabinets and fished out a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch from the pantry. Wordlessly, she fixed herself a bowl of cereal. Rather than joining him at the kitchen table, she stood at the island to eat. Lucas frowned.
“What’s up, Jeanie?”
She glared at him and he immediately remembered her pretty blue blouse. He looked down at his coffee cup.
“I’m sorry about yesterday, kid,” he told her. “I got caught up.”
She replied by crunching a mouthful of cereal. Story of your life, Dad.
“We’re going to go up to Seattle today, okay? We can do whatever you want. I’m taking the day off.”
Jeanie arched an eyebrow upward, looking dubious. The bruise beneath her right eye was nearly gone, having shifted from a wounded purple to an odd shade of yellowish green.