House Haunted

by Al Sarrantonio

  October 26. First night in my aunt's apartment, and already an audible manifestation. She began to write faster. Dr. Brennan was wrong. Sound of knives and forks scraping together, being thrown about. Someone looking for something.

  She stopped, almost jumping. Dropped utensil. Loud. Maybe thrown down. Angry?

  The pencil froze over the notebook, and suddenly she was completely awake, realizing that this was her first night in a new apartment in a strange city, and she didn't even know if the lock had been changed before she moved in.

  Suddenly she thought, almost writing it down, maybe that's not an audible manifestation after all. Maybe there's someone in the apartment.

  The rattling sounds had ceased. She sat listening for footsteps, the bang of a leg or foot against an unfamiliar object, a human cough or breathing. She heard two utensils scrape lightly together, followed by continued silence.

  She counted to twenty, then turned off the lamp on the nightstand. She rose, wincing slightly at the ever-present pain in her leg. Stifling an “Ouch,” she hobbled to the open door of the bedroom, her notebook and pencil brandished as ineffective weapons.

  Down the hall, an eerie glow emanated from the kitchen. Beyond it, through the living, room, the tenth floor picture windows showed an, ironically tranquil view of Ottawa at night: a scattering of overhead stars blessing the silver glint of the Rideau Canal, straddled by the Parliament buildings and the majestic turrets of the Chateau Laurier.

  The coldness that had crept down her spine at the sight of the otherworldly glare in the kitchen evaporated when she remembered that there was a digital timer with fluorescent green numerals set into the range hood over the stove.

  She stood still in the doorway, waiting for something to happen. Minutes passed. Then suddenly the weak green glow from the kitchen was vaguely shadowed and there was the sound of something sliding over the floor. She saw the blade end of a steak knife slide out into the hallway and stop.

  Visible manifestation, she scribbled in her notebook, in the dark, hoping the words would be recognizable later.

  A step at a time, with pauses for held breath, brought her, after what seemed an hour, to the doorway of the kitchen. She glanced in. The dim green light revealed an empty room with the kitchen utensils she had put away earlier that day scattered on the counter and floor. Some were bunched into patterns.

  There was a curious triangle of interlocking forks that abruptly fell apart.

  She jumped involuntarily, but then remembered the notebook and began to write.

  Open utensil drawer, she noted, studying the room. Positive it was closed. Forks and spoons—

  The pencil froze in her fingers. In the center of the counter, above the utensil drawer, was what appeared to be a deliberately cleared spot. She felt along the wall past the telephone and flicked on the overhead light, giving a little gasp to see a single knife, the sharpest paring instrument she owned, standing straight up in the countertop. The blade was sunk deeply into the wood. Something had been done to the countertop around it—

  The telephone rang. Startled, she dropped her notebook and pencil. By the third ring she was calm enough to pick up the receiver.

  “Laura?” Peter's voice said.

  She stifled the urge to yell at him.

  “Laura, are you there?”

  “I'm here.”

  A few beats went by. She had the feeling, from the tone of his voice, that he was fighting to swallow his pride. And that he had been drinking.

  “I want to apologize. I—”

  “It's not the right time, Peter,” she said.

  “If we have another fight like the last one, it might be the last.”

  “I thought it was.”

  He paused before answering. “We both said a lot of things we didn't want to.” Another pause. “At least I did.”

  Despite her resolve, her voice softened. “So did I.”

  He took a deep breath. Relief? “Thank you,” he said, adding quickly, “for not hanging up on me.”

  She laughed a little, knowing the way he was, what it must have taken for him to call her like this. “You sound tired, Peter.”

  “I haven't been sleeping very well.”

  “You should go to bed.”

  “I sleep better with you there.”

  She yielded to affection. “I didn't have to give you the number here.”

  “I know. If you hadn't, I think I would have known I'd fucked things up for good. I know it's late, but I sat by the phone since seven o'clock, trying to work up the balls to call you.”

  You said you were sorry we fought, but you still haven't said I've done the right thing. She was suddenly angry, but she held it at bay, realizing that the very fact that he had called her was a victory against his stubbornness and need to be right. “You didn't wake me.”

  She moved the receiver to her other ear, shifting her weight to a more comfortable position. Her foot kicked a spoon, and suddenly she remembered why she was up at this hour.

  “Jesus,” she said.

  Peter's voice became wary. “What is it, Laura?”

  She battled with herself whether to tell him or not. She knew it would probably only restart their fight. But if she didn't talk to him about it, make him see that if he wanted to be part of her he had to understand what all this meant to her, then she might as well hang up now and forget about any future victories over his obstinacy.

  “The apartment is active,” she told him. “The same kinds of things Dr. Brennan said had happened elsewhere.”

  She heard his sharp intake of breath. “But he told you not to go up there.”

  “He was wrong. It woke me up. Utensils were scattered all over the kitchen.”

  She felt him trying to control himself; when he spoke, his voice was low and reasonable.

  “You could have left the drawer out too far when you put all those things away, and they fell out.”

  “The drawer was shut before I went to bed.”

  “Maybe—”

  “I heard it, Peter. With my own ears.”

  “Laura—”

  “Goddamnit, Peter, I heard it!” She nearly hung up on him, stopping her hand before it drove the receiver into its cradle. When she spoke again, her voice came from between clenched teeth.

  “I'm here and it happened. My own ears heard it. The drawer was closed before I went to bed. Something opened it and pulled all that stuff out. That's it. That's all there is.”

  There was dead silence on the other end. She thought that Peter had hung up on her. Then, when his voice came, it was filled with pain.

  “Oh, God, Laura, don't you know what this is doing to you?”

  She heard him from a growing distance. She knew what he was going to say; he had said it before and only the tone of his words had changed. But she listened to him anyway, from that faraway place.

  “Laura, how long can you keep doing this?” And then suddenly he was crying. “I love you! Can't you see they're gone? I'm here for you now.” His sobs consumed him. “They're dead, Laura!”

  She looked at the countertop, at the paring knife jammed into the center of it. She head Peter, but his voice had suddenly become very distant. She wondered if something was wrong with the phone lines. Peter's voice grew thinner and higher, like a mouse's. She held the phone receiver away from her ear, but it wasn't a phone receiver anymore. It was a boomerang, a smooth polished curve of hardwood. She was about to throw it. It seemed the right thing to do. She threw the boomerang and it made a long, graceful half circle into the bright sunlight. She was standing in a field that had just been mowed. It smelled like cut dry grass. There was a single apple tree off to her left, growing fat with apples that she would soon pick. She knew her father had had this field mowed just for her, because she wanted to play in it. It was her favorite place.

  There was only one cloud—a fat, lazy white one, hovering high above the apple tree. Behind her, partly visible over the lip of a sloping hill, stood their house, wit
h open windows in the kitchen. There was a blueberry pie on the sill.

  She laughed, and her father laughed, still dressed in his long pants from the office and his suspenders, his white shirt open at the collar, his tie thrown down at his feet, his white thinning hair framing his full face, his mouth laughing under his white mustache. He reached up for the ball he thought she was throwing to him, the one she had tossed behind her as she pulled the hidden boomerang from under her sweatshirt. He watched the boomerang spinning a curving circle up and over him, curling back in a neat helicoptering sweep to land at his daughter's feet. And he stood there with his hands still up for the feinted catch, laughing at her joke, jumping up to make the grab that would never be.

  “Oh, Laura,” he shouted to her, “you make me laugh so.”

  Her mother appeared on the hill behind her, shouting, “Supper, you two!”

  “Coming, M!” she shouted, beginning to run. She called her parents M and P, short for Mom and Pop because of their age, a term of affection they cherished. “Coming, M!”

  Her mother's smile turned to pained concern. “Oh, Laura, don't run! You know you're not supposed to run!”

  Laura stopped, gasping at the shooting pain in her right foot, and slowly hobbled back to the boomerang. Tears of pain filled her eyes. She wanted to throw the boomerang again, wipe the anxious looks from M's and P's faces, stop them from running to her, make them laugh, make them forget that she had run, had disobeyed them, disappointed them, wanted to make the pain in her foot go away, the blue day with the mown grass and single beautiful high white cloud come back, the happiness come back.

  She bent over and picked up the boomerang. There was a mouse's voice coming from it. She put it to her ear and the voice grew loud into Peter's voice. Her eyes stared at the knife standing straight up in the countertop. She heard Peter, but she didn't listen to him. There were lines etched in the wood around the paring knife. She moved closer to the counter. She heard Peter very loud in her ear. “For God's sake, Laura!” he screamed.

  Laura's hand dropped the phone. The receiver hit the floor, springing up and then tapping the floor again before settling into a slow, bobbing swing. Peter's voice was far away, a mouse's voice again.

  She stood over the countertop, staring at the deep gashes that had been carved in shadowed relief by the paring knife. She put her hand on the knife, feeling as she yanked it out like the boy who drew the sword from the stone. The knife resisted, then pulled free.

  She stood back, the knife limp in her hand. Thawed hope welled up into tears in her eyes. Reaching out a single, trembling finger, she lightly traced the words of the message etched deep into the countertop:

  SOON

  LOVE, M&P

  7. EAST

  Today, Jan didn't faint when the door opened onto the room of pain. The woman with hair on her chin helped to strap him to the table, tenderly, almost, and put the needle into him, searching for an unused vain, trying to spare him some of the hurt. There was no unused place on his arm, and she ended up utilizing a raw, swollen spot anyway. “There, there,” she said, her dark eyes below her dark hair looking truly sad. She patted his arm below the vein bulge, which only added to the sharp, tearing agony spreading through his body and mind.

  “Tell me about the day they took you,” she whispered. She was a mother soothing a troubled, sleepless child. He began to hear his own screams then and went to the place the drugs took him, where he told them everything they asked of him . . .

  The day they took him was like any other day. The sky over the Vistula was fat with billowy gray clouds, “thick puffs from God's pipe,” as Tadeusz had once said of such clouds. He stood on the bank of the river with Tadeusz and with Karol, leaning on the thin rope bridge, the three of them sharing one cigarette. Jozef did not smoke, and did not approve of it, so they took the opportunity to smoke while they waited for him. It was late September, cool but muggy. Tadeusz had his cap pushed back on his head, which always forecast the weather, because Tadeusz would pull it down tight over his ears in cold or wet weather. He did not like the cold and complained bitterly when it rained, calling it a punishment from God for some great sinner in the city. “In Warsaw,” he once told Jan, as they sat hunched over the smallest table by the smallest window in their tavern, so close together their pints of beer were pressed into their coats. The noise in the cafe was nearly unbearable. They looked out at the rain pelting the tiny window, at the thick wash it sent across the four panes intermittently, because it was either look at that or into each other's close faces, or into the coats of the standing patrons surrounding them—damp wool that would suffocate their conversation. “In Warsaw, when a great man, some member of the Party, commits a great sin, there is rejoicing in heaven. They laugh loud and long, because another Communist has proved himself weak and human, not equal in purity and character with God himself. You know,” Tadeusz continued, poking Jan's nose lightly with his thick finger, an annoying habit, “that this is the great fault of Communism. In seeking to abolish God, it merely replaces him with man. That is why it's doomed to failure. And God knows this. So, when a party official commits a great sin, one of greed or lust, God and his angels laugh until they can no longer contain themselves, and God allows his angels to relieve themselves on the city of Warsaw. It is a just and mighty retribution—as well as a great relief for the angels. Unfortunately,” he said shivering at the rain outside, “it's a pain in the ass for those of us who live in Warsaw.”

  “What about God?” Jan asked him, gently warding off Tadeusz's finger, heading toward his nose to make another point. “Doesn't God ever piss?”

  “Of course he does,” Tadeusz answered, offended. “But he is God, and his bladder is vast. It's as large as the Milky Way Galaxy. And if you're going to ask me if he'll ever use it, the answer is yes. He's saving it, though, for a very special occasion.” Tadeusz leaned close, pushing Jan's head around so that only his ear would hear his next words. Jan smelled the sourness of Tadeusz's breath, the odor of sausage and beer and stale tobacco before he felt the rough stubble of Tadeusz's mustache at his ear. “God is waiting until the biggest man of all, the Big Man himself, the one in Moscow, commits the biggest of all sins.” He turned Jan's face around, moving his own back. He smiled. “And then—BOOM! The big rain, right on you-know-where, and then you-know-where won't exist anymore.”

  “And then?” Jan asked, smiling in a friendly way.

  Tadeusz held his hands out in his confined spot, palms upward, indicating what surrounded them. “And then this is ours again.”

  They looked out through the small window silently, before Tadeusz added, slyly, “There's only one catch. I have it on very good authority that you-know-who in Moscow has already fucked a chicken, and,” he sighed, “nothing happened.”

  They turned to their own thoughts, watching the sliding wet sheets of rain on their tiny window, in their tiny space surrounded by heat and the smell of damp shorn sheep, until Tadeusz added, “And why do you ask about God, Jan? I thought you knew all about him. It's you who was going to be a priest.”

  At the bridge, leaning lightly on the rope railing, smoking and waiting for Jozef, who now approached them sullenly, the words of disapproval of their smoking probably already forming on his never-smiling mouth, Jan thought of the priesthood and wanted to laugh.

  “And what do you find so funny?” Karol said, nudging him to look at Jozef. “Now there's something worthy of laughter. Our friend Jozef was born with a frown on his face.” Karol, who almost never frowned, laughed heartily.

  “He doesn't even smile when he gets off a good fart,” Tadeusz said, throwing the remains of the cigarette that had been passed to him into the river and turning to meet Jozef, who had now reached them.

  “Save your breath,” Tadeusz said, slapping Jozef on the shoulder. “We've heard all your lectures on smoking. And we're late for work as it is.”

  The look on Jozef's face made him stop his joking. “What's wrong?” Karol asked, a cloud of
seriousness descending.

  “They're looking for Jan,” Jozef said.

  “What do you mean?” Tadeusz nearly shouted, and then he barked a laugh. He laid the back of his hand on Jozef's brow. “Are you ill? Have you been drinking? Who is looking for Jan?”

  “The police.”

  “A mistake,” Karol spat.

  “No,” Jozef replied. His dour face was pinched tight. He turned to Jan. “I saw them come out of your mother's house as I passed. They must have just missed you. I waited until they were gone, and then I went in. Your mother was at the kitchen table, weeping. I asked her if they had hurt her. She said no—but there was a pot of oatmeal broken on the floor, by the stove.”

  “Bastards,” Jan said.

  “She might have dropped it herself, when they came in,” Jozef continued. “She was very upset, Jan. She said they wanted to speak with you, but she could tell by the way they came in, knocking once and then nearly throwing open the door, that they were there not to talk but to take you away.”

  “Why?” Karol shouted, indignantly. “What could they possibly want Jan for?”

  Jozef shrugged. They saw now how frightened he was, his big-knuckled hands working one over the other, his thick coat pulled tight around him, the collar up as if protecting him from a chill wind.

  Jan said quietly, as much to himself as to the others, who now faced him as if waiting for an explanation, “I've done nothing.”

  “Of course you've done nothing,” Tadeusz said, scratching the black stubble on his chin. “But we have to hide you. We can't let them take you. When the storm passes over, it will be like nothing ever happened.”

  “There is no place to hide,” Jozef said, his eyes on the ground.

  Karol, in anger, grabbed Jozef by the front of his lapels. “Of course there is.”

  “I've done nothing,” Jan repeated, as if in shock.