The Haunting of Pitmon House

by Michael Richan

  Rachel stopped in front of the scene; a winter hill with skiers. Eliza watched as Rachel dropped into the River and examined it.

  It is glowing, Rachel said. She held the plastic card case up to the glass front, just like she’d done with Shane. Eliza saw the pattern Shane had produced on the opposite side, and waited for the card next to the glass to register a pattern. It went blank, but no black lines appeared.

  Hmm, Rachel said. It’s glowing, so we know it’s River, but no pattern. Do you have any tokens?

  Eliza dropped from the River and checked her pockets. “No, but there’s a token machine over there,” she said, pointing.

  “Go get a few,” Rachel replied. “Let’s crank this baby up.”

  Eliza walked to the token machine, removing a couple of singles from her wallet and inserting them into it, a little irritated that she was having to pay for something she could get for free from the ticket booth, but knowing she didn’t want to take the time to walk all the way back there. She returned to Rachel with a handful.

  “Go ahead,” Rachel said. “Give it a try.”

  Eliza dropped a token into the slot, and they watched as the winter scene slowly animated. A boat on a fake lake drifted back and forth, and skiers coming down the hill disappeared into a snowbank, returning to the top of the hill on a loop.

  Eliza dropped into the River and watched as Rachel took the reading. Sure enough, black lines began to form on the blank card, twisting and swirling just as she’d seen in the hospital with Shane. She found herself holding her breath, hoping that they’d match. Once the pattern solidified, Rachel pulled it away and examined it.

  Nope, she said, turning the cards to Eliza. The patterns aren’t even close.

  They moved to the next window. One item appeared promising, and Rachel held the Tapura to the glass; three feet separated the device from the object, but Rachel was able to pick up a pattern nonetheless. It, too, didn’t match.

  “Can it be too far away to read?” Eliza asked as they walked to the next display.

  “Definitely,” Rachel said. “If we run into that, we’ll find a way to access the display from the back.”

  “Randy will be pissed.”

  “Randy won’t know,” Rachel replied. “Although it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s watching us on the cameras right now, working himself up. Try to act casual.”

  Eliza suddenly felt spied upon, wanting to look up to the dark ceiling where she assumed the cameras were located, but resisting the urge. Instead she looked down the street, the riverboat now closer. Everything was beginning to creep her out.

  “This one,” Eliza said, walking to another small animated display, tucked between the cinema and the statuary. Inside, three men sat in chairs. Two of them had fishing poles, with lines of thread dangling into a fake lake; the third had his hand outstretched, pointing forward as though he was trying to catch the attention of the other two.

  “Drop a token,” Rachel said, walking up to the glass and positioning the plastic case. Eliza let a token fall into the slot, and within seconds the scene began to move. The lines on the two fishing poles tightened, and the little men holding them reared back in their chairs as though they’d caught a whale. The other man on the end began to turn, his outstretched arm passing to the right until it was positioned over a glowing lantern.

  As the hand paused over the lantern before returning to its earlier pose, Eliza felt something inside her body, an intense rush of emotion that wanted to settle in the back of her brain and nest there, but couldn’t take root.

  Did you feel that? Rachel asked.

  I did, Eliza replied.

  Rachel kept the Tapura positioned next to the glass until the black lines appeared and began to form. The man’s hand moved back from the lantern, and Eliza saw the lines on the card freeze.

  That’s not a match, Rachel said. But it doesn’t look right, does it?

  No, it doesn’t, Eliza replied. It looks incomplete. Let’s wait.

  The scene inside the mechanism continued, with the fishermen struggling with their poles, and the third man reaching the end of his routine, preparing to move his hand back over the lantern. As it came into position, the little lantern underneath glowed brighter, as though the man’s hand was activating it, and Eliza saw the lines on the card resume their motion, shifting into new positions.

  It only emits the pattern when his hand is over the lantern, Eliza observed.

  You’re right, Rachel replied.

  Once again the automaton moved, his little arm leaving the lantern. The black lines on the card stopped moving.

  Still incomplete, Rachel said, but it’s getting there.

  Eliza looked at the blank expression on the figurine’s face, his features simple and innocuous, not betraying the hidden malevolence she could sense behind the scene. As his hand returned to the lantern once again, she thought she could see his simply painted mouth smile ever so slightly. The lantern flared again, and this time Eliza felt a much stronger attack, something that desperately wanted inside her head, but was rebuffed by the protection she’d drank earlier.

  The lines on the card resumed their motion, twisting and splitting until they settled on a pattern. Eliza could tell it was a match well before it slowed and came to a stop.

  Rachel looked up at her as the mechanical display ground to a halt, the lights inside extinguishing. That’s it! she said, holding the Tapura for Eliza to see. It’s exact.

  Eliza looked into the dark display. So this is what hurt my little brother, she thought, anger quickly rising. She wanted to reach out and knock it off its stand; to send it to the ground and smash it into hundreds of pieces.

  Destroying it won’t change anything for Shane, Rachel said. I’d help you do it if I thought it would.

  The thing that tried to enter my head, Eliza said. That’s what happened to him?

  Most likely, Rachel replied. He didn’t have any protection, so he had no defense.

  Eliza dropped from the River, the faint glow of the object disappearing. “What now? We know this is what caused it, but what do we do about it?”

  “We have to figure out more about it,” Rachel replied, slipping the Tapura into her purse.

  “And how do we do that?”

  “There’s a fax machine in the admin office, right?” Rachel asked. “You work in admin sometimes. Do you have a key?”

  “I do.”

  “Great, let’s go there. We’re gonna send this pattern to someone.”

  They left the Streets of Yesterday and made their way through the employee-only sections of the exhibit, eventually winding up on the path that led back to the main building. The front doors were locked up for the evening, but Eliza used her key to enter a side door, and they walked across the large, open lobby until they reached the small administration office. They had the place to themselves; Alice normally left moments after the doors were locked at 5:30.

  “We should call him first,” Rachel said, digging through her purse for a small address book. She opened it and flipped through the tiny pages until she located the number she wanted, then she read it to Eliza, who punched it into an office phone.

  Eliza turned on the phone’s speaker, and they listened while it rang. After six rings a message kicked in.

  “You’ve reached Dixon,” a pleasant, older man’s voice said. “You can leave me a message but I won’t get it for a while, since I’m on the boat. If you want, you can try my new cellular phone…” and the message rattled off a number that Rachel jotted down.

  Eliza hung up, and they tried the new number. Dixon picked up.

  “Hello?” he said, his voice loud.

  “Dixon?” Rachel said. “It’s Rachel. Rachel from Wisconsin.”

  There was a pause on the end of the line before Dixon spoke up. “Well, Rachel from Wisconsin! How nice to hear your voice! You sound good!”

  “So do you, Dixon!” Rachel replied.

  “Why, thank you! You’re one of the sweetest peopl
e I know. What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve got a pattern,” Rachel replied. “Was hoping you could help me out with it.”

  “Of course, of course I can!” Dixon said. “But I gotta admit I’m a little surprised to hear from you. I thought you hung up your hat!”

  “I did,” Rachel said, smiling at Eliza. “At least, I did for a while. Something’s come up, and I put the hat back on.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Dixon said. “Glad to hear you’re back in the saddle. Do you have a picture of the pattern you can send me?”

  “It’s a Tapura image,” Rachel replied. “I can fax it if you like.”

  “Listen,” Dixon replied, “I’m on the boat near San Diego right now, so don’t send it to my Seattle number. Send it to Shirley; she’s down here, and I’ll be seeing her tomorrow. I’ll give you her number.”

  Eliza reached for a pen. “Go ahead,” she said.

  “Now, who’s that with you?” Dixon asked. “Lovely voice.”

  Eliza could feel her cheeks blush.

  “That’s Eliza,” Rachel said. “She’s who I’m helping.”

  “Well, nice to meet you, Eliza!” Dixon said. “Any friend of Rachel’s is a friend of mine!”

  “Thank you,” Eliza said. “Nice to meet you too.”

  “Eliza’s brother is in a jam,” Rachel said. “It’s pretty serious. We’re trying to bust him loose.”

  “Alright,” Dixon replied. “You send that pattern to me, and I’ll get right on it. Make sure you include how I can reach you back, OK? Here’s that number…”

  Eliza wrote as he dictated. “We’ll send it right now,” she said.

  “Good, good,” Dixon answered. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Anything else?”

  “Nope, that’s it, Dixon,” Rachel said. “We really appreciate it.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he replied. “It was good to hear from you!”

  “You too!” Rachel said. “Bye!”

  “Bye!”

  Eliza hung up. “Sounds like a nice guy.”

  “He’s the single cutest guy I’ve ever met,” Rachel said. “Old enough to be my dad, though.”

  “Still, sounds like a great friend to have.”

  “For sure,” Rachel replied. “Well, I guess now we wait.”

  “Tell me again what Dixon is going to do, exactly?”

  “He’s an expert on patterns,” Rachel replied. “On his boat he has dozens of huge three-ring binders, filled with pictures of them, and his notes. He’s got thousands and thousands.”

  “Won’t that take him a long time to search though?”

  “Not him!” Rachel smiled. “Somehow he’s got a little database in his brain, and he’s got them all organized so he knows right where to look. People all over the country use him to figure out shit.”

  “And he’s going to tell us how that device infected Shane?”

  “Well,” Rachel replied, “maybe not exactly that. But he can usually shed some light on things, like who created the pattern, that kind of thing.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “If we know who made it, we can track them down and find out why they made it, and how it works exactly. There’s all kinds of dangerous antidotes out there, but we have to know what we’re dealing with first. Once we do, it might be as simple as a potion.”

  “Could we give Shane some of your protection, now? Wouldn’t it help him?”

  “Not at this stage,” Rachel replied. “You remember how you felt when it was trying to get in?”

  Eliza thought back to the animatronic display. “Every time that man’s hand passed over the lantern, it felt like something was pushing, wanting to enter my mind.”

  “The protection was what it was pushing against,” Rachel replied. “If we hadn’t taken it, we might be in the same boat Shane’s in now.”

  “It can’t help Shane somehow?” Eliza asked. “Drive it out?”

  “No, it only protects you from things trying to get in,” Rachel replied. “It’s already in Shane.”

  “If that machine can do that to people,” Eliza said, “why just Shane? Why now? You’d think there would be lots of people infected by it.”

  “Well, gifted people,” Rachel said. “Remember, there was nothing to feel when you weren’t in the River. I suspect Shane dropped while he was watching it.”

  “Still, wouldn’t it have happened before? Sometime?”

  “For all we know, it has. We don’t know how old that contraption is, or where it was before Alex Jordan collected it and it wound up here. It might have been a proximity thing, too…Shane might have been standing in exactly the right place. It’s hard to say. I do know several gifted friends from the old days who said they never visit this place without protection, though. All you have to do is look at some of the displays to know something’s off.”

  Eliza thought of the riverboat…yes, Rachel was right. The riverboat had always creeped her out. So had The Mikado, and the carousel. The Organ Room, too.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Eliza said. “I didn’t realize it was so dangerous, though.”

  “Dangerous if you open yourself up to it,” Rachel replied. “Most gifteds know better. Shane didn’t know better.”

  Eliza suddenly felt anger toward her father. His secrecy and reluctance to discuss the gift might be the reason Shane was now in that Madison hospital, tied to the bed. She wanted to let her anger show and get pissed, but she knew there was no point. Her father was in a grave in Spring Green, not somewhere where she could sit him down and tell him how angry she was. Even when he was alive, communicating with him had been difficult.

  She sensed that Rachel could pick up on her confusion and dismay.

  “Come on,” Rachel said. “I’ll buy you a drink in town. You could use one, and there’s nothing we can do until Dixon gets back to us.”

  “No bars,” Eliza said. “Not in the mood for that.”

  “No bars,” Rachel said, smiling.

  ●

  Eliza woke in the middle of the night. She’d been dreaming about living in a tent under a freeway overpass, trying to keep the rain and the cold from getting in, but unable to. She could hear inebriated panhandlers walking past her tent, wailing and rattling on nonsensically, making it impossible to sleep. This is what happens when you’re homeless, she dreamt, and when she woke, feeling the mattress under her and the fresh sheets against her skin, she allowed her body to relax, muscle by muscle.

  It was as horrible a nightmare as any she’d ever had. Monsters, death, falling — none of the classics scared her more than the fear of being on the street without a roof over her head, penniless.

  The moonlight was streaming in her upstairs bedroom window, and she felt the urge to slide out of bed for a moment and look down into the yard. The house was so quiet without Shane. Staring down at the driveway that led beyond the trees to the main road, she felt a sense of responsibility to make sure the homestead stayed safe and protected. It was her job now; her father was gone. Shane was too young. It fell to her.

  A slight wind moved the large trees outside, and she wondered if another storm was coming. It was too dark to make out the nature of any clouds, but there weren’t enough to obscure the bright moonlight that lit up the yard, casting faint shadows.

  Something looked odd in the windows of the barn; it was an unusual pattern of reflected moonlight. She stared at it, watching as it resolved in her mind. When she realized what it was, she felt the hair stand up on her arms and neck. It was a face! Someone was in the barn, staring up at her through the window.

  The face pulled out of the moonlight and disappeared into shadow as she felt more anxiety and fear pump through her system. She continued to stare at the barn window, waiting to see if it would return. Should I go down again? she wondered. Confront whoever it is? Whatever it is? I have a duty to protect the place. It could be a trespasser, robbing the barn.

  No, she told herself. It isn’t. It’s the same thi
ng you saw the night before, the thing that scared you. It’s down there, still in the barn. It’s not robbing the place. It’s waiting.

  She kept staring at the window, wondering if it would come back. After what felt like an hour, she gave up, her feet beginning to get cold. As she crawled back into bed, she noticed the clock on her nightstand. 3:30 — way too early to get up. She tried to close her eyes and go back to sleep, trying not to worry about Shane, or what Dixon might have to say, or the face in the barn window.

  ●

  “What number did you give him?” Eliza asked as she passed Rachel on her way to lunch. Lois always staggered their lunches, so they didn’t have much time to talk.

  “My number at home,” Rachel said. “He’ll probably leave a message on my machine. Why don’t you come over after work and we’ll see.”

  “Call me when you get home if he did,” Eliza said. “If not, I’m going back into Madison to see Shane.”

  “Alright,” Rachel replied. “I better get back.”

  Rachel turned to walk back to the gift shop, and Eliza continued on to the break room. She removed a frozen dinner from the freezer and popped it into the microwave. Her dreams of the previous night were weighing on her, and she was anxious to hear from Dixon. Waiting made her feel powerless, and she hated that.

  She also wasn’t happy with how she’d reacted in her bedroom. She felt a little ashamed that she hadn’t marched downstairs and out to the barn like any property-owning Midwesterner would do. Even though she knew that she’d find the barn empty, she still felt she’d let her family down by not being sure, by not going down and seeing for herself that no one was really there.

  I could have drifted down in the River, she thought, sitting at a table to wait for the microwave. I could have stayed upstairs in my bedroom, and just travelled down to the barn in the River and poked around. Why didn’t I?

  She knew the answer to that question, but didn’t want to admit it: the barn had always scared her. Even as a little child she hated being in it, with all of its strange smells and dark corners.