House Haunted

by Al Sarrantonio

  The man threw a switch. Nothing happened. While Ray's father stood motionless, the man crouched down under his panel, studying a length of coiled wires. He climbed out and threw the switch again. Once more, nothing happened.

  The senator lowered his hands and laughed into the microphone.

  “So much for grand finales, folks—but I can promise you one hell of a grand finale to this campaign!”

  Again he threw his hands into the air, receiving applause.

  The senator stepped down from the podium, motioning curtly and angrily to the fireworks coordinator. The man immediately left his console, joining the senator for a heated exchange behind the podium.

  Ray moved down closer to the console. He was fascinated. There was a panel with a row of switches, numbered one to twenty-five, illuminated by dim red bulbs. All of the switches were thrown. All the lights were on except number twenty-five.

  Beneath the console, the tangle of wire separated and branched to the various firing platforms. Ray bent down and examined the wires trailing from switch number twenty-five. They led off to a huge, separate area, fenced off by garden string. DANGER! signs were taped to the string. Row upon row of huge thick rockets were mounted in firing cans.

  Tony was crawling under the garden string, under the DANGER! signs, into and among the rockets.

  Ray turned to see Anne watching the senator and the fireworks man. The senator was waving his arms excitedly, starting to attract attention. Anne bit her lip pensively.

  She took a step toward the two men, then looked down, missing Tony.

  Ray watched her search the area around her, then extend her search to nearby guests, all of whom shook their heads or shrugged. A few looked down at their feet as Anne moved on.

  Ray turned back to Tony, who was now in among the rockets. He sat with his bottle still clamped in his mouth, patting his hand tentatively against one of the firing cans.

  Ray turned back to the bottom of the console. There, standing out distinctly, was a loose black wire at one of the terminals on the back of switch number twenty-five.

  Tony was now holding the firing can with both hands on its rim, steadying himself to stand.

  “Tony!” Anne shouted, spotting him.

  An immediate hush came over the crowd.

  She ran toward him. She stepped over the garden string, into the middle of the rockets. She scooped Tony up in her arms, saying “Oh, Tony!”

  “Ray, we can do something about it.”

  Bridget stood next to him; she reached under the panel and touched the black wire to its terminal.

  The entire area where Anne stood was engulfed in fire, as the finale went off. Anne screamed. Ray watched her try to shield Tony from the incendiary flames. Fire and smoke blotted them out, but Ray could still hear Anne scream, could still hear Tony scream—

  “Are you sure you don't want the cocaine, Ray?” Bridget said mildly. She pointed to the thin dusting of powder on the floor.

  “Damn you! Oh, God, they're dead, they're all dead, my father and Tony and Anne, you killed them . . .”

  Bridget put her red-outlined hand on his shoulder. “Poor boy.”

  “I hate you! I'm going to kill you!” He hit her hand from his shoulder. “You KILLED MY FAMILY!”

  She sighed, her voice as tender as it had ever been. “My poor little Ray. You'll never know how much I did for you. It's true, I needed you, but you also needed me. Why didn't you tell the psychiatrists about me, Ray? Because they would have kept you there forever? Or because they would have found the truth?”

  “I'LL DESTROY YOU!”

  “Don't you think I realize that if you remembered the truth, you'd kill yourself?”

  She placed her hand back on his shoulder, squeezed tenderly. “Are you sure you don't want the cocaine, Ray? Believe me, I'm trying to be kind.”

  “I'LL DESTROY YOU!”

  “Remember the truth, Ray.”

  Memory. . .

  He was back in the car with his father. The exit ramp appeared, curving into snowy darkness. He felt Bridget behind him, laughing. “Go ahead, Ray, you want to,” she said. His father sat imperious, demanding, beside him, and suddenly he did want to. Deliberately, he put his foot to the accelerator. The car skidded sideways, the headlights pinning the bed truck parked on the ramp. He drove into the skid, recovered, hit the gas pedal, aiming straight into the dropped bulldozer shovel, ducking calmly as they hit—

  Memory . . .

  He was at his father's house, watching Tony try to stand in the midst of the fireworks, holding his hands up to Anne, smiling as she snatched him up. He saw the worried faces around him, his father's face frozen with real anxiety, the giant striped tent, the food, the remains of the huge birthday cake, the beautiful night that was not for him, the woman who was not his mother cradling the child that reaped all the love and concern from these people, the child that should have been him, the woman that should have been his mother. Hate welled up within him. He reached quickly under the console to touch the naked wire end to the switch—

  “OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD!!!” Ray pounded at his face, trying to drive the true memories from his head, to beat his brain until the memories were gone.

  In the house of screams, of pounding blood, of the heat of death, Ray screamed.

  “We needed each other,” Bridget said, opening the door for him.

  Ray's hand moved very fast on the wheels of the wheel-chair. He was filled with a power greater than cocaine. The wheelchair flew from the room and hit the second-floor railing.

  It broke through.

  Ray screamed. And then he was laughing. He suddenly felt his legs. He was running, running down the slope of the living green lawn over the hills to the hot sandy beach. He felt the warm grit of the sand between his toes as he leapt into the water, feet first. He felt cold water on the pads of his feet and then up his legs, and he was no longer screaming but laughing in happiness, the water covering his head.

  He kicked down and touched the white sandy bottom with the flat of his hand and then his face.

  He couldn't push himself back up

  26. BRIDGET

  “You ready, Brennan?”

  Ted Brennan stood smoking a cigarette, staring through light, cold rain at the glow emanating from the windows of the house. Little sparks of red crawled around the front of the house, along the gutters, around the front doorway and windows. The low, insistent pounding thrum was beginning to bother his ears. “You say that glow's coming from every window?”

  Falconi looked to Detective Guinty standing next to them for an answer. Guinty's red hair was plastered to his skull; his collar was up, his hands thrust into the pockets of his raincoat. He looked cold. “Every window, Lieutenant, even the ones without stained glass.”

  “Is it stronger anywhere?” Brennan asked.

  Guinty glanced at the house. “It looks stronger upstairs.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Ready now?” Falconi asked impatiently.

  “Soon as I get that equipment from my car.”

  As if by magic, another of Falconi's men appeared, holding a crowbar in one hand, Brennan's meter and a bulky handled box that looked like a slide projector case in the other. He grinned, looked at Falconi. “Keys weren't in the ignition. I did like you said.”

  “That's fine,” Brennan said, taking the equipment.

  The detective continued to look at Falconi. His grin turned tentative. “Sure you know what you're doing, Lieutenant? That local cop Carpenter's pretty steamed.” He looked at the house. “And to tell you the truth . . .”

  “Don't worry about it, Weaver.”

  Detective Weaver walked away, shaking his head, swinging the crowbar.

  “Before you ask,” Brennan said to Falconi, “the little box is just a meter. The big one I built myself, with the help of Radio Shack components.” He checked a compartment in the bottom; fumbled with two large, heavy-looking cells. There was a spark. He fumbled again. I hope to God the ba
tteries are okay. They're strong, but they're kind of dangerous.”

  “Have you ever used that thing?” Falconi asked.

  “No. But I think it works.”

  “You think?”

  Brennan sighed. “Look, Lieutenant, let's get something straight. I never said I knew what the fuck I was doing. I know more than anybody about this—but so what. Father Verges didn't exactly give instructions.” He stopped fumbling with the batteries, closed the case. “What this instrument does is deionize the air. There tend to be a lot of ions around so-called spirits. The meter measures ions. Hopefully, what it will do is stabilize the thing controlling the spirit of Bridget Fitzgerald, or even free her from it. If I can do that, it may give me a look at the other side.”

  Brennan threw his cigarette down. “But remember what I said, Lieutenant. The most important thing is to get any of the four left alive in there out of the house. Destroying the Compass Cross comes first, before you, before me, before anything.” Hefting his equipment, Brennan turned and began to walk toward the house. “If we don't do that, we'll all find out about life after death the hard way.”

  The local police chief was waiting for them with Detective Weaver near the broken cellar window at the side of the house. He was Falconi's height, with a hound dog's face; he wore a plastic rain-shield over his hat. He looked at Falconi grimly. “I don't really like what you're doing here, Lieutenant.”

  “Chief Carpenter,” Falconi said, putting his arm around the local cop's shoulder, “the last thing I want here is a territorial dispute. Do you realize all the media coverage this apprehension is going to get?”

  The chief looked surprised. “Well, no, I didn't realize ...”

  “I think you should handle that end of it completely. The way the TV boys have been sticking to this case, and with all this ruckus, I wouldn't doubt they're on their way up here from New York now.” He squeezed Carpenter's shoulder, motioning to Detective Weaver. “If you think it'll be too much, I'm sure Weaver can—”

  The chief s uncertainty had evaporated. “No, Lieutenant, I can handle it. I'd better be out by the street to face them when they get here.”

  Straightening his tie, smoothing the lapels on his raincoat, he marched off down the driveway.

  Weaver grinned. “Bastard is already watching himself on Channel Seven.”

  “No shit,” Falconi said. He moved closer to where Brennan waited for him by the broken cellar window, smoking another cigarette.

  “Remember what I said,” he told Weaver. “Nobody goes in, no matter what. If daylight comes before we come out, do whatever you want. A-bomb it if you want to. But not until then.”

  Weaver looked doubtfully up at the house; a red streak cut up the side, disappeared under the eaves. “It's your show, Lieutenant.”

  “Let's go, Brennan,” Falconi said.

  Brennan threw his cigarette away. “One more thing,” he said. “Once we get in there, we'll be on her turf and she'll try to make us hallucinate. She won't have the same power over us she has over her four victims, and if you're aware of it, you can fight it. But she'll do her damndest. I've got a thing with blindness, and she made me think I was blind in Ottawa. Is there anything she can get to you with?”

  Falconi shook his head. “No.”

  “Are you sure?” Brennan persisted. “Mark Minkowski told me about a little problem you have with a picture you keep on your desk—”

  Falconi's anger began to flare. “I said no.”

  “All right,” Brennan said. “But stay together. If she gets us alone, she'll be stronger, because we won't have a reference point of reality.”

  Falconi crouched to enter the window.

  Brennan stopped him. “Me first. I may not know much, but I know more than you do.”

  Falconi started to protest, then nodded. “Okay.”

  As Brennan entered the cellar, the dial on his meter flipped over to maximum and the faceplate shattered.

  “Holy shit,” he said. The cellar was rumbling like a steam turbine about to blow, veins of pulsing red fire crawling over the walls, ceiling, and floor.

  Falconi jumped down beside him. “Jesus.” He kneeled to study the two bodies on the floor, one barely recognizable, the other a torso in a suit, with a jelly-beaten head. In the pocket of the second corpse was a Russian handgun with a silencer. Falconi wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

  “Gaimes killed these two,” Falconi said. He took out the .44 Magnum in his shoulder holster.

  Putting the deionizer down, Brennan cried out suddenly, throwing his hands to his eyes.

  “What is it?” Falconi said.

  Brennan's breathing steadied. Slowly, he took his hands away from his eyes, blinking. “It's all right,” he said. “I told you she could get to me like this. I'd still be blind if I didn't know it wasn't real. Just stay together, like I told you.”

  They went over the rest of the cellar, searching in vain for the weapon that had been used on the two corpses.

  “Let's go upstairs,” Brennan said.

  Brennan bearing his equipment, they mounted the steps to the first floor. Falconi moved in front when they reached the top. “Now I go first,” he said.

  He eased the cellar door open. It hinged back, showing a kitchen with wildly pulsing walls. The hum was even louder. His .44 out, held up in front of him, Falconi stepped out into the kitchen, turning his gaze from side to side. He saw nothing.

  Then he did. On the kitchen counter was a pile of severed human fingers that twitched, squirting blood from their cut ends, jerking away from each other, dancing over the countertop.

  Falconi closed his eyes; opened then. The fingers were gone.

  “Shit,” he muttered, checking to see that there really was only a clean countertop where the fingers had been.

  “Another hallucination,” Brennan said, entering the kitchen behind Falconi.

  They heard rattling chains, the drag of metal across the floor, thumps, echoing moans.

  “Welcome to a real haunted house,” Brennan said. The sounds abruptly ceased.

  “Let's check the pantry,” Brennan said.

  Falconi heard a sound at the cellar door behind him. He wheeled, looked into the cellar opening.

  He was no longer in the house.

  He was on a roof on East Thirty-third Street, in New York City. A wind was blowing. It was 1973, the last week in March. He was a rookie and there was a tight knot of fear in his belly.

  The woman in the picture on his desk was standing not five feet from him.

  They had told him how to handle these things at the academy, but he had never done it for real. She looked less scared than he was. In fact, she looked calm. She was overweight, and she wore a housecoat, and her hair was in tangles, blown by the blustery wind.

  A windy March day. The sky was deep cold blue, warming toward spring. The day before, the temperature had risen to fifty-five degrees, but now it was back down in the forties. There were fat round clouds blowing through the blue sky.

  “Don't come any closer,” the woman said, matter-of-factly. Standing on the ledge of the brick wall, three feet above the roof, she looked like she could touch the clouds if she wanted to.

  He inched his foot closer, trying to keep a reasonable look on his face, and said, “Why don't you sit down on the wall and we'll talk about it?”

  She calmly turned away from him.

  He was supposed to keep talking, to wait while his partner got the jump team in place with its nets, but he was sure she was about to go.

  He lunged, catching the fabric of her housecoat at the shoulder as she stepped off. He dug his fingers into the housecoat. The top of the ledge hit painfully into his underarm, but he held on.

  She pried at his fingers, trying to make him let go.

  His arm was turning numb. He edged his face up and over the wall. She looked up at him.

  “Help me,” he said, breathing hard. “Hold on to my arm and help me. Please.”

&nbs
p; The calm look never left her face. “I told you not to come any closer.” She let go of his hand, shrugged herself out of the housecoat, her arm pulling past the shoulder he held tightly, and fell soundlessly to the pavement below.

  He stood up, gasping for breath, trying not to cry, shaking, holding the housecoat. He looked over the wall, saw her bent body in the street, the jump team looking up at him, their nets half out of their van, a crowd already forming around the body. . .

  He looked over the wall; the March air was so cold. He climbed up on the wall, looked down. He let go of the housecoat, watched it flutter down in the wind.

  You were wrong, a voice told him. You killed her . . .

  “Yes . . .”

  Jump. . .

  He stepped—

  “Lieutenant!”

  Falconi looked down the cellar steps, felt himself losing his balance. A hand was on him, steadying him.

  He turned around. Brennan pulled him back away from the cellar opening.

  “What the hell happened?” Brennan asked.

  Falconi looked into the cellar. “The woman in the picture. I killed her . . .”

  Brennan shook him. “Falconi!”

  Falconi's eyes, his mind, were elsewhere. “I killed her, it was my fault, I should have waited ...”

  Brennan shook him again. “Falconi!”

  Tears were streaming from Falconi's eyes; he stared into the black opening of the cellar. “My God, I didn't listen, was wrong, I killed her. . .

  Falconi blinked; he turned toward Brennan and his eyes seemed to refocus on his surroundings. “Jesus,” he said.

  “Listen to me,” Brennan said. “If she can get to you with this, she'll use it again.”

  Falconi had come back to himself. He shook Brennan off, took a shuddering breath. “I'm all right,” he said.

  Brennan looked at him levelly. “Are you sure?”