House Haunted

by Al Sarrantonio

  He pulled the door back. He was confronted with the white enameled back of a clothes drier, installed with its two brothers when the courtyard had been closed. He pulled himself up over the back of the drier onto its top. Before jumping down he pulled the door closed behind him.

  As expected, the laundry room was empty. The old people in the building rarely used it before noon, coming down in packs.

  It was well lit, as was the corridor outside. Gary went to the doorway of the laundry room and peered into the corridor. Empty. He made his way to the stairs and climbed to the lobby.

  He heard voices before he eased the door open. Cops, talking football. One of them laughed and said, “Shit, yeah.”

  Gary left the door closed. Forgoing the elevator, he pushed open the stairwell behind him. The door made a grinding sound when it opened. Gary froze, listening. After a moment, he heard the same laughter coming from the lobby. Again he heard, “Shit, yeah.”

  He eased the door closed behind him and climbed. At each landing he paused, listening.

  When he got to the third floor, his heart began to pound. He waited a long time, listening for the slightest sound. His door was only fifteen feet away from where he stood.

  Nothing.

  He was just about to push the stairwell door open when he heard a cough.

  He pulled his hand from 'the door. Outside in the hallway, someone snorted, shuffled his feet.

  Gary edged away from the door. Noiselessly, he ascended the stairs to the fourth floor. Once again he waited by the stairwell door, listening.

  Nothing.

  He waited a full count of sixty. Still nothing. Then he heard a door open, close. The rattle of a key chain. A hacking cough.

  He edged open the door far enough to see into the hallway. Mr. Grumell shuffled to the elevator, stood before it, hacked again, muttered “Goddammit” under his breath.

  Gary waited; the elevator came. Mr. Grumell got on; the elevator went down.

  The hallway was silent.

  Gary eased the door open and slipped into the hallway. There was no one.

  Gary moved down the hallway to apartment 4J. Empty, he knew. Mrs. Chapin would be working, a clerk at Alexander's on Thirty-fourth Street, until six o'clock.

  Gary retrieved his key chain from his pocket and searched it. 4J. He and his mother had lived here before his father died. A two-bedroom apartment. After his father's death, his mother had moved them downstairs to the smaller apartment. “To get away from the memories,” his mother had sighed. He'd known she was lying. She had been cheating on his father for years. It was to save money. The one bedroom was fifteen dollars cheaper in rent. “You may sleep on the couch, Gary,” she had said to him.

  He was filled with sudden rage at the memory. His hand began to shake when he tried to put the key in the door of 4J.

  Bitch, he thought, finally getting the key in and opening the door.

  The apartment smelled like it had. It smelled like his father. No. It smelled like cabbage and potatoes; his father had smelled like ... aftershave. A spicy, outdoors scent. Being in here made him remember it. He had only smelled it once anywhere else, the first time he had gone to the house upstate. It was in the air there: a sharp, piney odor.

  Bitch. He had only been five years old when his father died, before his mother laundered Gary's mind and eyes and nose and ears clean of him.

  The apartment smelled like cabbage and potatoes. Beer. There was a half-empty case of Bud on a chair next to the front door. Mrs. Chapin wasn't the neatest of housekeepers. Dust balls in the corners. A sheen of dust along the ridge of the china cabinet in the dining room.

  Gary made his way past the kitchen to the back moms, pushed open the door to the second bedroom.

  His room.

  It was a mess; boxes and newspapers stacked, Daily Newses yellowing to brittleness. Hatboxes. Unreturned beer cases. A fading blue dress laid carefully over the arm of a frayed club chair.

  Gary stared at the window. He vaguely remembered the view, remembered the cowboy wallpaper his father had put on the walls: the large rodeo lassos with a buckaroo’s ten-gallon-hatted, smiling face in the center. There was faded red wallpaper on the walls now. It looked like old Christmas wrap. Gary looked at the edge curling near the doorjamb; he pushed the curl back with his finger. There, underneath, was the glue-encrusted, time-worn hint of a lasso rope.

  Bitch.

  He went to the other bedroom. An old unmade bed, the smell of unwashed panty hose. Dark. Too many curtains. Foot powder, Dr. Scholl's footpads, unopened, on the dresser.

  Gary pulled back the curtains, tried to open the window. It was painted shut. Gary hit the window at the edge with the flat of his hand.

  He pushed the window and it hesitated, then slid up. The storm window was still in place. He pushed that up, too.

  A chilling breeze struck him. Fresh air for the foot smell impregnating the room. He put his head cautiously out the window and looked.

  Below, through the alley to the back street, the young cops stood near their car. They had gotten out, leaned against it.

  They would have to consciously study the back of his building, where he stood, to see him.

  No one below in the courtyard. No one on the other fire escapes on his building or the one behind. He studied the roofline of the building facing the back street and saw nothing.

  One leg out the window, then the other. He was out on the fire escape.

  He climbed nimbly down to the third floor. If there was a tricky part, this was it. Two apartments, two fire escapes, over. He climbed over the outside of the railing, measured the distance. He would not have to jump but would have to be sure with his footing to grab across and carry himself over.

  He accomplished the first vault with no problem. His foot just snugged into the railing, his hands quickly following. He pulled himself over onto the landing and waited.

  The cops on the back street were looking at each other; no one in his vision anywhere.

  He crossed the landing, climbed the other side of the railing, prepared to repeat his vault, tipped his balance forward, and grabbed the railing bordering the landing out-side his apartment with his hands.

  When he brought his feet over, the bottom part of the railing gave way.

  Gary held with all his strength as an entire section of the landing, rusted through, fell away to the courtyard below him. He closed his eyes, waited for the sound. None came. He opened his eyes and looked down. The rusted rails and metal bridgework had landed flush in the middle of an old mattress.

  Invincible.

  Gary gingerly pulled himself up and over the railing.

  He stood away from the corroded section of the landing, near the window to his apartment. He put his head close to the window and listened.

  Nothing.

  He studied the rooflines, the other landings, checked the courtyard, the alleyway.

  He put his hand on the window to raise it. A shout went up behind him. His heart froze. He turned, looking down the alleyway to the back street. The cops had stopped chatting. One of them shouted, “Hey!” The cop was pointing up the street, away from him. Gary heard young laughter fading, running footsteps. The cop pursued, up the back street, out of Gary's line of sight.

  Gary put his hand back on the window and edged it up. Six inches, then he paused. He tipped his head to listen into the apartment.

  Nothing. Only the electrical tock-tock of the digital school clock in the hallway.

  He edged the window up another foot.

  Tock-tock.

  Using the middle and index fingers on both his hands, he slid the window up all the way.

  Tock-tock. Tock-tock.

  He entered the apartment.

  He slid the window down behind him. The apartment became stuffy and close.

  Tock-tock.

  He went to the hallway, edged down it. The sound of the clock became louder until he passed it.

  He edged his ears and then his eyes into t
he kitchen. He heard voices.

  A shuffle of tired feet, a clearing throat, a cough into a hand. The beginnings of a hummed tune, fading to boredom.

  They were outside the apartment door, in the hallway.

  Quietly, he entered the kitchen. Two things from here. A knife he had used and had kept, a bloody dishrag. He found and carried them into the living room.

  He watched the knob of the front door. It didn't move. Silently, he went to the front door, picked up his duffle bag from the floor. He brought the duffle bag to the couch (watch the knob, watch the duffle bag), opened it, checked to make sure everything else was in there, put the two objects from the kitchen in and zipped it quietly closed.

  He got up, walking over a photograph that had not been pushed under the couch (he looked at it, crinkled, black and white, 1964, the New York World's Fair, his mother in the front seat of a futuristic Ford heading to Tomorrowland, he in the backseat staring blankly at the camera, wearing a short-sleeve shirt that made him look like Wally Cleaver—which one of them had taken the picture?) and kept walking. He hesitated. The photo album was on the coffee table, open. The clippings inside, Post headlines, Times stories. A picture of Detective Falconi bending over a body. He picked it up, carried it under his arm, went to the bedroom.

  Tock-tock.

  He went to the window, looked out, saw nothing. The cops on the back street had regained their position next to their cruiser. They were looking at each other; he noticed that one of them was a woman. He put his fingers on the window, began to raise it slowly.

  “Hello, Gary.”

  His heart stopped, began beating again. For the merest fraction of a second it had sounded like Bridget.

  “Don't move, Gary,” the voice said reasonably. That was why he had thought of her: the tone was the same reasonable calm. Controlled.

  “Lower the bag,” the voice said.

  He lay the bag gently on the floor. The photo album was pulled from under his arm.

  “Your hands on your head, Gary. Spread your legs.” Efficient hands moved up and down his legs, around his upper torso, over his arms.

  “Place your hands behind your back.”

  He felt the cold circlets of handcuffs lock into place above his wrist bones.

  “Turn around, please.”

  He turned. He saw nothing for a moment. A shadow. Then a man in the shadow. The man was back away from the window light. The light refracted around him, giving only a shape in the shadow.

  Gary knew him. He knew his face even as the man stepped out of the shadow into the light; the man's small, stocky frame, perfect, fussy clothes. The exact part in his thinning black hair. Piercing, serious eyes. As if he was his own father.

  “Hello, Gary,” Detective Falconi said. He stepped fully into light. Sunlight produced shadows on his face. Sharp, straight nose. Deep-set eyes. His voice was calm. He smiled, a self-satisfied gesture that managed to be free of sarcasm. “Let me read you your rights.”

  18. SOUTH

  A dream.

  Ricky came out of the shadows into day.

  The parlor was filled with clearing sun from the departing rainstorm. But the light was filtering through tall stained-glass windows, making everything dreamlike.

  It was in his dark metal closet in the belly of the S.S. Eiderhorn, during his two-day trip without food or water, that he had decided that he must be dreaming. Spook had said (he remembered what had happened to Spook—had that been a dream?) that dreams were a place where you went to do all the crazy things you couldn't do in real life. You could fly in your dreams; could be famous; you could fight battles with monsters. You owned your dreams, Spook had said.

  So Ricky had decided that he was dreaming. It had all been a dream, the initial contact in Chambers House the day Mr. Harvey had been away, the shivering in his bed, the return with Spook to the house, Spook's death (yes, it had been a dream, hadn't it?), the ride on the ship to New York, the ride with the madman in his van down Broadway. What a nightmarish place Broadway had been in his dream! Not at all like it had been in the earlier dream with Ben Vereen—this Broadway was dirty, with pornographic movie houses and people who looked like they were crazy staggering about or sleeping over heating vents in the sidewalk as other people walked right by them. This Broadway was dirty, with too many cars and taxis, women who looked like prostitutes, people who looked drunk or on drugs. The lights were too bright, there were too many of them, and most of the lights had nothing to do with theater, selling Ninja costumes, hocked musical instruments, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. This horrible cartoon nightmare he had dreamed up was nothing like the real Broadway.

  The ride up here away from the lights and over the endless highway had been a dream, with the moon rising over more trees than he had ever seen, the smell of the ocean vanished from his nostrils, the land flat and waterless. He had gone over a dream bridge, over something called the Croton Reservoir, had passed big shopping centers bigger than Trimingham's in Bermuda, but ugly, with bright lights flaring against their flat fronts, all the stores looking the same. In this horrible dream the van had stopped at a small booth, and the madman who drove the van, tapping his hand on the wheel to the jazz coming from the radio, had paid a toll and gone on. The night was so dark, the moon so sickle bright, the land so strange. They began to rise up out of the flat land, into mountains. The dream mountains had looked huge to Ricky. There were trees all around them, dropping leaves like orange and yellow snow in the stabbing lights of the van. The roads got narrow, there were trees all around, half-nude branches throwing leaves down at them. They passed houses, turned, passed more houses.

  They turned onto a long, curving driveway, trees pressing close, and then the trees arched back, revealing a dream house: a looming rise of shadows—a deeper shadow against the dark night. It seemed to refuse moonlight, or reflect it back as darkness.

  A dream house.

  In the backseat of the van, he had begged for the dream to end, pinched himself, screamed at himself for the nightmare to end.

  But it hadn't. The madman in the front seat had dragged him out and driven away. And then Ricky lay in the driveway with the dream house, her house, rising over him, and then the shadows had parted at the bottom of the house, and the door had opened. Moonlight had brightened to guide him in until the moonlight snapped off like a light and the door closed with finality and darkness came upon him again.

  And now, in the day, somehow, his dream continued. Sunlight pushed into the house, dream-tinged through the long stained-glass windows, a red stained-glass circle above each like a halo.

  Ricky walked into the parlor. The furniture that had looked frightening in the night, and ominous and sharp-edged in the early morning light, now looked old. Chairs with dusty coverings, rubbed frays on the arms. A pull of stuffing from one cushion on the damask sofa. A chipped corner on a side table. A maroon oriental rug worn through in trafficked spots.

  Behind the railing that enwrapped the second floor up-stairs, Ricky heard a sound.

  Rabbit-like, he retreated to the hallway.

  He waited for the cursing, rolling ferocity of the man in the wheelchair. But it was not his door that opened. It was one on the opposite end of the house. A man came out, closing the door behind him.

  He was young, short, thin, with long brown hair in need of trimming. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and red tie. As he descended the stairs his shoes made a loud, singular clopping sound.

  Ricky backed further into the hallway.

  The young brown-haired man hesitated at the bottom of the steps.

  Suddenly he turned and stared at Ricky.

  His eyes had a glassy, dreamlike flatness.

  He began to speak in a foreign language.

  Ricky searched desperately for a way out. At the end of the hallway was a door. He ran for it. It swung in when he pushed at it, swung closed behind him.

  Ricky was in a kitchen, spotless white, trimmed in chrome. There was a long butcher-block tab
le under a window at one end, Breuer chairs around it. A lengthy counter flanked the table; behind the counter, against the wall and under another window—clear glass with a thin strip of ruby stained-glass at the top—ran a chrome sink. More counter space next to that; under the counter, a dishwasher, more drawers.

  Ricky heard the clop-clop of the foreigner's shoes negotiating the hallway. He ran behind the long counter next to the table, hid down behind it.

  The stranger entered the room. Ricky heard the swish of the opening door, a returning whoosh as it closed. He heard one clop, another.

  A dream. A horrible, bloody dream.

  There was silence. The heavy shoes were walking his way.

  Clop. Clop.

  Go away, dream.

  The shoes stopped. Ricky opened his eyes. The shoes were planted in front of him, shiny black. He could see himself in them.

  Go away!

  Ricky looked up.

  The foreigner's face smiled; his mouth said, “Hello?” in English.

  Ricky fainted dead away.

  He awoke on the dusty sofa, in the living room. He turned his head, into the fabric, and sneezed.

  He sat up.

  The brown-haired foreigner was sitting in a frayed chair on the other side of the coffee table. On the coffee table was a tray with a teapot on it. There were biscuits and a bowl of fruit.

  The foreigner lowered his cup of tea to its saucer.

  “I'm sorry I startled you,” he said earnestly, in careful, excellent English. “I only wanted to say hello.”

  Ricky stared at the foreigner, at the food on the tray. He was suddenly ravenously hungry.

  “Please eat,” the foreigner said. He put his own teacup down and poured one for Ricky. “I hope you don't mind tea. I'm afraid I don't know how to brew coffee.”

  Ricky took the saucer, relishing the warmth of the cup. He sipped at the tea.

  It was as good as Brook Bond tea, at home.

  “My name is Jan,” the foreigner said. He bowed his head awkwardly.

  “I'm Ricky.”

  Such a strange dream.

  The stranger reached out, took another biscuit.