by Deb Donahue
“Oh my God, Rufus,” she exclaimed. “Listen to this!” She read a passage out loud that talked about the fact that the farm had belonged to her grandfather’s family for three generations, and at one time used to be three times the acreage she now owned. “Three generations!” Goosebumps prickled on the back of her neck. Rufus whined and took a step or two away from her.
Her great-grandfather had required three full-time farmhands and several seasonal workers to plant, harvest and manage the livestock. Temporary bunks had been set up in the barn loft to accommodate the hired help.
That fact brought to mind once again the movement she’d seen in the high window, and the unease it caused her. At that very moment, a sudden blaze of light startled her so much she jerked and dropped all the letters to the floor. She’d been so engrossed in the stories the letters told that she hadn’t noticed the evening light fade to deep yellow. The flash of light had been one last ray of sunset striking one of the bay windows.
Immediately Miranda’s sense of wonder twisted into terror. Her heart pounded and sweat beaded her forehead. Breath, breathe, she told herself. There was still a little light outside and a lantern at her side. The calming exercise didn’t help however. She began to feel nauseated, her stomach churning. Shadows seemed to dart across the room and her nerves jumped just as erratically. The windows looked like square eyes looking in at her.
“Curtains. Oh my God, there’s no curtains.” Why hadn’t she thought of that earlier? Miranda scrambled to her feet
She had not come across any drapes as she unpacked, but she did have a pile of the dusty sheets that had been used to cover the furniture. Standing on the window seat, she managed to drape them over the curtain rods. She closed the doors to the hallway, front room and study, and lit so many candles on the kitchen counter their glow overflowed into the dining room as well.
When she covered the last kitchen window, she peeked outside. There was enough residual twilight that she could still see the white garage and red handled well spigot. There were no storm clouds tonight, however, and some stars already pierced the sky. Soon the moon would be up to make things even brighter. But every shadow looked like the shape of a man lurking, waiting.
Rufus began snuffling at the lintel, scratching and looking at her like he wanted to go out. She worried for a moment about the stray dog she’d seen earlier, but decided since he hadn’t posed a threat before, he probably would not harm Rufus now, so she opened the door to let him out.
While she waited at the open door for his return, she flicked the porch light switch on, off, on and off again over and over, as if doing so would make the electricity turn on. “Stupid power company,” she said viciously. Rufus ran back in the door, skirting sideways and looking at her warily.
Locking the door behind him, she made the rounds of the ground floor again, making sure all the interior doors and windows were locked. There was no lock on the door leading to the basement however, and she knew there was a way to get into it from the outside. They could get in that way, creep up the stairs while she was sleeping. Murder her in her sleep!
She could see the outside door at the bottom of the stairs by shining a flashlight, but couldn’t tell if the lock was snubbed shut or not. Taking one of the lanterns with her, she headed down, stopping at each stair tread to listen with her heart in her throat. Finally when she reached the bottom, she saw that the door to outside was firmly locked shut. Relief washed over her.
Holding the lantern up high, she looked around the main room at the bottom of the stairs. The walls and floor were cement and there were no windows here. An old wringer washer and tub sat in one corner by a floor drain. Next to the ancient furnace sat a fairly new water heater with a box of kitchen matches on top. Harlan must have left them there when he came down to check the pilot light.
Two rooms led off of the first. Just to make sure there was no other way to get into the basement from outside, Miranda knew she had to investigate. One was a workroom with a rudimentary work bench. The window in there was not only locked, but partly boarded. The tools on the workbench were covered in blood. No, not blood, she told herself, shaking her head. Rust, it was just rust. But she couldn’t bring herself to look too closely in case she was wrong.
The other room was a giant pantry of some sort, with empty glass jars upside down on shelves. On one shelf she could see jars of slimy pickles that looked like rotten slugs floating in black blood. The room’s two windows were locked. At the back, a wooden door was closed with an old fashioned latch.
The musty smell that permeated the basement seemed to be coming from behind the door. The nausea she’d felt earlier flooded back and intensified. She took two deep breaths before lifting the latch. With the lantern held high, she opened the door onto an inky blackness. The rotted smell made her cringe back. Heart pounding, she forced herself to step forward, shining the light around the room.
A stench emanated from bins on the dirt floor which were filled with rotten potatoes and squash. Beneath the odor lingered a more subtle smell, like sulfur. The depth of the darkness was due to having black paper tacked across the shallow windows high on the wall. The rest of the small room was lined from ceiling to floor with cupboards. Staggered on the floor were long wooden crates, like coffins for children.
Miranda started shaking. Not coffins, crates. That’s all they were, crates. Tomorrow, tomorrow she would come back and…
She shrieked as a moth flew into the light from her lamp. Its shadow wavered and danced against the opposite wall.
Miranda snapped the door shut and ran back to the stairway. Her spine prickled as she hurried up the steps. Closing the door behind her at the top, she leaned against it. Perspiration beaded her forehead and her breathing was labored as if she had just run a long way.
A tree branch swayed in the rising wind outside, scraping against the kitchen window with a sound like fingernails. The house itself seemed to be breathing and groaning as it shuddered with the wind. It’s just an empty basement, Miranda told herself. Just a room without light.
Yet somehow the thought only brought back a memory of playing with the knickknacks years ago and her grandmother’s unexpected, harsh words as she snatched the pieces from the child’s hands.
Chapter 6
For the first time in weeks Miranda took two of the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed for her. The wind continued to rattle the bones of the house. She pulled the couch as close to the hearth as was safe and curled up on it. Despite the warmth of the fire she’d started, she lay shivering and shaking. The flames twisted and flared like goblins in a frenzy and she alternated between closing her eyes to keep from looking at them and opening them again afraid she’d find herself surrounded by darkness. Rufus watched her for a while, as anxious as she was, then eventually snuggled up at her feet and went to sleep.
Despite the pills, lanterns, candlelight, and her father’s gun within easy reach, it took her a long time to fall asleep. The couch was narrow and lumpy. She tossed and turned, sweating and mumbling. The house still smelled musty with misuse. No matter how natural the creaks and groans and wind gusts were, they crept into her disturbed dreams like ghosts from her past.
She was a child again, running toward her grandmother’s house, looking over her shoulder at the barn, terrified by orange flashes from the loft that wavered like the flames of a fire. Eyes stared out the window at her, glowing with the light.
An old black and white car was headed straight toward her as if the driver did not see her in the way. She screamed and put her hands up as if that would stop it.
Then suddenly she was in the kitchen. Grandmother towered over her, frowning and shaking a finger at her. Little Miranda looked down at the figurines she held in her hand and the rosy cheeked cat she’d been playing with turned into a twisted, fire-blackened being with leering face and a black cape flapping like wings. It writhed in rhythm to a tinny tune that sounded like it came from the steel-comb teeth of a music box drum that
had warped. Miranda dropped the statue, screaming, and could finally hear her grandmother’s words.
“If you’re not careful, Miranda, the things you do in life will come back to haunt you.”
Miranda screamed and woke up, but the dream words still rang in her ears, as did the last few notes of the eerie music. Rufus stood close to her, shivering and whimpering as if he, too, had had a nightmare. Or perhaps he was simply feeding off of her fear. Miranda held her breath and listened. The only sounds now were the normal house sounds she’d already begun to recognize: the shift of logs in the dying fire, the branch scraping against the kitchen window, the rush of air whistling through a loose doorframe.
“It was only a dream.” She wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince Rufus or herself. She did know that it would be impossible to get to sleep right away. Not until she once again checked the doors and windows.
As she swung her legs to the floor and sat up, her head spun and her stomach gave a lurch. She paused, waiting for the feeling to subside. When she finally rose to her feet, she still felt weak, but not as strange as she had before.
Gun in hand, she made the rounds, finally stopping in the kitchen where she hesitated before edging the curtain away from the window. Dawn light spread fingers across the driveway. She took a deep breath as relief poured through her. She had made it through the night.
That was when she realized the light on the porch appeared to be lit. She stepped outside to confirm that the bulb she’d placed in the empty socket was indeed live. As she did so, the motion-sensitive light on the pole over the garage went on.
“Yay!” Miranda clapped her hands and gave a small hop. All was well again. No more boogey men or night terrors would be visiting her. The electricity had been switched on sometime while she slept.
Rufus barked and ran around her. Suddenly he ran to the edge of the porch and growled. The ruff of his neck stood straight up. Miranda turned to see what was disturbing him.
Far back at the line of timber behind the barn, the German Shepherd she’d seen before was running toward the trees. This time, however, the dog was not alone. This time, a man ran alongside the canine: tall, thin, dark haired. Wearing a brown jacket. A leather one, maybe? Just before the two reached the woods, they turned. The man was only a profile against the dawn-rimmed horizon, but it seemed like he was looking right at her. A moment later, both figures were gone. Miranda was left alone on the porch, gripping the door jamb with whitened fingers.
The whole scene was eerily reminiscent of the incident at the grocery store the day before. The man in the field had been about the same height as the one who watched her through the grocery store window. She even thought—maybe she was just fooling herself—that the man in town had been wearing a brown leather jacket.
Miranda hurried inside and locked the door, leaning against it as if that provided extra security. Every nerve felt on edge, every sense heightened.
The branch scraping the window sounded more like fingernails than ever before. A subtle whoosh! made her jump until she realized it was the sound of the furnace kicking in. Warm air blew against her bare feet from the vent in the floor. The refrigerator began humming.
Most of the candles she’d left lit on the kitchen counter had gone out, burned down to blackened wicks surrounded by melted wax. Those still burning she blew out. Returning to the dining room, she flicked on the switch. The chandelier over the table blazed with light, all but one bulb glowing bright. The cobwebs directly above it stirred from the movement of warm air from the heating ducts.
Miranda laughed as she took a deep sigh of relief. She would have to remember to clean that later. The electricity was on, a new day was starting. She was ready for it. Whatever strange spell she’d fallen under last night, whatever strange man might be trespassing on her property, she felt she could take it all on.
And all this just because she could now flick on a switch any time she wanted to and say, let there be light. Strange.
Miranda returned to her makeshift bed and threw another log on the fire. Was it just the fact that it was morning that made her feel this way? Surely she should be freaking out about seeing someone on her property, especially accompanied by the dog she knew had been in her barn just the day before. Somehow, though, the more she thought about it, the less disturbed she was. She was more curious than alarmed, just as she’d been yesterday when that other man had been staring at her.
It wasn’t like she knew the man she’d seen yesterday, but she felt like she should know him. There had certainly been nothing threatening about him. There had, in fact, been something about his face that drew her in. A strong jaw and serious expression yet there had been a vulnerability in his eyes, too.
She told herself that was silly and settled under her blanket once again. You couldn’t tell a person’s character from one glance through a plate glass window. And you certainly couldn’t identify him again in the distance hundreds of feet away. Still, the encounter at least kept her mind off the disturbing dream she’d had and the strange way she’d been behaving the evening before.
Without really intending to, she slowly fell asleep, exhausted from her tossing and turning during the preceding hours.
Chapter 7
She woke feeling refreshed with a bright morning sun leaking through a tear in the makeshift window coverings. “Curtains,” she told Rufus as she yawned and stretched. There had to be curtains packed somewhere in these boxes. She would make finding them a top priority for the day. In the meantime, she pulled all the dusty sheets down off the rods to let in the beautiful morning sunshine.
Yesterday, she’d purchased breakfast cereal, but the box of vanilla wafers sitting on the shelf tempted her. Was cookies for breakfast so much different than Frosted O cereal anyway? Probably just as much sugar in both. Leaning her elbows on the counter, she read the labels on both boxes while the water in the electric percolator she’d filled began to burble. Soon the smell of coffee filled the room and Miranda put the cereal back and poured herself a bowl of cookies. After all, she hadn’t been able to enjoy them as a bedtime snack like she’d intended.
She took her meal back to the window seat where the sun streaming in the bay windows looked the cheeriest. Dunking her first cookie into a glass of milk, she dropped the whole thing into her mouth and closed her eyes in bliss, letting the flavor permeate her taste buds with childish memories. She washed the bite down with a sip of coffee which was almost as pleasurable to her adult aesthetics.
Sitting there in the sunshine listening to birdsong outside and the clatter of Rufus scooting his dog dish across the kitchen floor as he licked up the last crumbs of dog food, she finally felt relaxed and at home. Whatever anxiety or illness had rattled her nerves the night before had disappeared. Thinking about how she’d been acting, and her strange, vivid dreams made no sense to her. Certainly her phobia had been part of it, but she’d never felt that terrified before. It had been as if something had magnified her old familiar fear by a thousand-fold and threw in night terrors as an added evil twist.
“Old ghosts,” she murmured, remembering the broken cat and the memory of the argument which caused a rift in her family. That must be it. She’d simply been overloaded with bad mojo.
When she finished eating Miranda stood up determined to make headway into the remainder of the downstairs at least. Once this place looked more like a home than a flea market, her insecurities would settle down. She was sure of it.
She moved the milk from the cooler to the newly cleaned and humming refrigerator. She even found some ice cube trays which she filled with water and placed into the small freezer section. She could make iced tea later to go with lunch.
The kitchen and dining room already looked fairly habitable, cleared of excess junk and dust. The bathroom also didn’t require much work, just a good scrubbing with soap and water. The study had been set up as a bedroom. She suspected that was where her grandmother had slept in her last years in order to avoid using the stairs.
The antique bedstead, dresser and bureau looked too worn and faded to be worth much, and all the drawers had been emptied out.
She stripped the bed linens and replaced them with ones she’d found in a box in the kitchen. She would have to find a laundromat in Riverside soon, because there was no way she was going to do laundry in the ancient wringer washer she’d seen in the basement yesterday.
After unpacking her suitcase into the dresser, she plugged a flowery lamp in and set it on the bedside table, then moved on to the front room which seemed to be a storage room for furniture of all kinds: chairs, two sofas, tables, dressers, even a wooden rocking horse. Miranda surveyed the room with her hands on her hips, at a loss for what to do. Where had all this furniture come from? And what on earth was she going to do with it? A few pieces she could move to the dining room or bedroom, but the rest looked like it needed to be hauled away or sold.
Daunted by the amount of work that would involve, she decided to investigate the second floor since there wasn’t much she could do in the front room until she made some decisions. The stairway to upstairs was barely passable. Piles of books lined the outside wall all the way up to the top landing. Some of the stacks had fallen over and Miranda had to move them out of her way to ascend.
Searching the bedrooms upstairs showed her why the front room was so crowded. All five rooms were completely empty except for dust and cobwebs. All the heating vents upstairs had been shut to avoid wasting fuel. She looked up a steep stairway to the attic. The depth of dust on the worn wooden treads was so thick it was clear no one had traversed them for months if not years. Miranda declined to be the first.