by Lisa Unger
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2021 by Lisa Unger
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Original Stories are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
eISBN: 9781542027281
Cover design by Anna Laytham
1.
Ian liked to come at night, alone. The house had to be empty, its residents asked to take a break by staying with family or spending a night in a hotel.
Treat yourself. Relax, he advised. His clients were people of means and understood the concept of self-care—to a fault.
People who were struggling to pay their mortgages generally didn’t seek his services. And if they did, he’d like to think himself ethical enough that he’d turn them away. But he wasn’t so sure anymore. Liz would have done the work for free, all of it. But Liz was gone, and along with her, all the best parts of himself.
The owners had given him the lock code. In the chill evening air, he parked his van in the circular drive and unloaded his equipment from the back, rolled it to the door, and entered the code. The lock opened with a satisfying click, and he put his hand on the metal knob and pushed open the double-tall, glass-paned door.
He stepped into the ridiculously posh foyer with its glittering chandelier and marble floors. There was a tall round table in the center and, on it, a gigantic glass vase filled with fresh flowers—a riot of lilies, hydrangea, snapdragons, branches, sprigs of green—that he knew cost more than some folks made in a week. He’d seen the bill on the kitchen counter. He’d spent a lot of time at the home of Astrid and Chaz Lowe, models and Instagram “influencers”—whatever the hell that meant.
He set the dolly upright, the black boxes stacked neatly one on top of the other. The air was filled with the smell of sage. He’d asked Astrid to smudge the space, burning the bundles of sage he’d dropped off on his last visit. She needed to feel involved in the process, she’d said. She wanted to be a part of cleansing her home of the negative energy she perceived here. Chaz had barely hidden his eye roll, but he’d handed over his credit card, as heavy and black as a ninja star.
The charge was steep, out of reach for most. Of course, most people—people who actually earned their money—had more sense than to pay out a sum that would send a kid to college for a year to “space clear” their extravagant home. In this case, it was a six-thousand-square-foot modern nestled on twelve acres of wooded property in the middle of nowhere, more than three hours from the city. It was their weekend house. Our retreat, Astrid had enthused, from the madness and inauthenticity of city life. She was willowy thin, with a silken mane of golden-blonde hair. Astrid was nearly as tall as Ian, who was just under six feet, but she still managed to seem tiny, vulnerable.
Chaz, he was pretty sure, was gay. Truly, Ian had never seen a straight man more angelically featured—those lips, the cheekbones—and stylishly put together, always in some wild outfit, getting ready for an influencer shoot. Yesterday, he’d been wearing a kilt with leggings and a pair of Doc Martens lace-up boots, a white shirt open to reveal his enviable physique, and more jewelry than Ian’s rich grandmother wore—thick gold chains around his neck, and so many rings on his fingers that he’d had a hard time signing for the credit card charge. Liz would have loved them—how they were larger than life, sweet in spite of being utterly intellectually bankrupt, how they, especially Astrid, believed.
On the kitchen island, Astrid had left a care package for him. A big basket of health-conscious goodies—vegan energy bars, nuts and dried fruits, organic chocolate. A note: Good luck tonight!! There’s a green smoothie in the fridge, and some gluten-free sandwiches!! Call me if you need some support!!! Astrid xoxo
So many exclamation points! It was a punctuation mark that had lost its way with this younger generation, who seemed to think it was required to infuse enthusiasm and brightness into their hollow, stripped-down communications. Chaz and Astrid, by Ian’s calculations, were at most maybe ten years younger than he was and Liz would have been, but honestly, it was like they were from another planet. The world was changing so fast; Ian was barely keeping up. Barely wanted to.
He was hungry, so he ate one of Astrid’s sandwiches, which was actually delicious, washed it down with the smoothie, and then inhaled a vegan energy bar. The night ahead was long. When Liz was alive, it was like an adventure every time. Every time, they were looking for something, too, always hopeful that they were going to find it. Always having fun even when, night after night, in big houses and small, old houses and new, isolated properties and city dwellings, all they’d found was each other. It had been enough.
He set up the equipment in the rooms where Astrid felt the most unease: the living room, the master bedroom, and the basement studio, where she practiced her yoga and meditation. He carefully placed the EMF monitors, the night vision and thermographic cameras, and the digital audio recorders. He had bundles of sage; a Tibetan singing bowl and mallet; a set of chimes that were Liz’s personal favorite, given to her by a psychic she’d visited; Liz’s prayer book and journal. He had a basic camera with a flash, which Liz believed was best at capturing orbs; he kept that in his pocket, along with the infrared thermometer.
“You’ve stopped believing.” Liz. She was always with him. She’d been gone over a year, and he still heard her voice, still talked to her.
“You were always the believer,” he answered, though he probably shouldn’t speak to her out loud. It was crazy, wasn’t it? “I was just the willing assistant.”
“That’s not true,” she said, laughing. “You’ve seen it too. You know what’s possible.”
“Maybe I saw something, once, when I was a kid.”
“That’s when we’re the most open, the most accepting, when we’re children. As we get older, we close ourselves off to more and more possibilities.”
“I’m open. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You’re just going through the motions.”
She lounged on the couch, her feet up, wearing a flowy top over leggings, her wild, untamable curls up, wrapped in a colorful bandeau. Not a ghost. Just the painful longing of his own mind and heart. She wasn’t haunting him; he was haunting himself.
“They’re nice,” she said. “I like them. Especially her. She’s a sensitive, an empath. Maybe she is picking something up.”
“I really don’t think so.”
“Cynicism isn’t a good look in this line of work.”
“Ghost hunting.”
“Energy stabilizing.”
“Exorcism.”
“Space cleansing. Get with the program, Ian. Stay in step with the moment. This isn’t a your-mother-wears-combat-boots-in-hell kind of a thing.”
Her laughter was throaty and deep, seeming to echo in the high-ceilinged room.
The first time he’d made her laugh like that he’d fallen helplessly in love with her. They had been in college. He’d seen her in his class on the teachings of Carl Jung and dug up the nerve to follow her to the coffee shop where he knew she always studied on Thursday afternoons, asked to join her. What had he said that had made her laugh that day?
“It was your Carl Jung impersonat
ion, that horrible accent that you thought approximated Swiss. You were adorable.”
“I miss you.”
But she was gone. He stared at the empty couch, then continued setting up the equipment. He knew there were cameras in the house; everyone had them now. And the truth was that Astrid had caught something strange and managed to record it.
He flipped on the light and walked down the steps to the basement, where Astrid had her studio.
Unlike other basements he’d visited, creepy places, musty and dark, this was finished and brightly lit. High, wide windows let natural light in during the day. The solid white oak floors butted up against soothing eggshell walls—not too white, but not quite cream. A huge hand-carved wooden mandala dominated one wall. At the head of the room, a tall stone Buddha smiled peacefully behind a low wooden altar of candles, flowers, prayer books, and mala beads. Astrid’s mat and meditation cushion were neatly placed and waiting in the center of the room. A big camera sat atop a tripod, for recording her YouTube and Instagram videos.
For all its simple, peaceful beauty and brightness, the room did feel “off.” A tension settled into his shoulders as he set up the equipment. There was a tingle on the back of his neck.
The video Astrid showed him was one of her signature recordings, a yin yoga flow with affirmations—where she moved her lithe body into a number of seemingly impossible postures and said things like I surrender to the flow of the universe. Or I am exactly where I need to be.
For exactly a blip, in the middle of the recording, there seemed to be a shadow in the corner. And at the end, a strange gray fog appeared to surround her. Again, only for a second. They’d tried to frame through the video. Sitting at her kitchen table with the laptop in front of them, they’d inched through the recording but were never able to freeze-frame on either image.
“The whole time,” said Astrid, “I felt like someone was watching me. That’s why I rewatched the video, which I usually don’t do.”
“Why not?” He’d imagined a yoga instructor might watch her own videos to improve.
“No one likes to see themselves on camera, hear their own voice, do they?”
“I wouldn’t think you’d have a problem with it.”
Truly, she was luminous. Her skin seemed to glow, eyes shining with health and vitality, her movements hypnotically fluid, her voice mellifluous and soothing. He could see why she had a million followers on YouTube. He was willing to bet that more than a few of them were not yogis.
“What do you think?” she’d asked, looking at him. “About the video?”
He could tell she was scared.
“I really don’t know,” he’d admitted. “You caught something there. I just don’t know what.”
“So you’ll help us? My friend Elenie says you don’t take everyone.”
That was true. He didn’t. Not everyone needed a “space clearing.” Some people needed therapy, others needed marriage counseling, some just needed a good kick in the ass.
“Of course I’ll help you,” he’d told her.
Now he finished setting up the equipment in her studio and headed for the stairs. That was when he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He turned to look behind him, but there was no one there except the Buddha, impervious.
“See,” said Liz. “You do believe.”
“I believe I’ll have another one of those vegan energy bars.”
Her laughter followed him to the kitchen.
2.
The barn smelled of oil and hay. Matthew rested his hand on the red hood of the old Aston Martin. A beautiful car, evoking the image of a glamorous couple wending through the English countryside. The old man had let them all—the Mercedes, the BMW roadster, the old Karmann Ghia—rust and rot.
“I know an antique car dealer,” Avery March was saying. “I’ll have him come by. He’ll know what to do here.”
“That would be amazing,” said Samantha, peering in the window of an old Mustang.
Matthew was about to assert that these cars, though not running, were not junk and that he hoped for a good price when the sound of Jewel’s screaming carried into the barn. The vibration of that word on the air—Daaadddy—was like an electric shock. He didn’t even think. Just broke and ran. He’d never run so fast in his life, following the sound of his daughter’s terrified screams through the clearing, into the trees. And then the terrible silence.
“Jewel! Honey, where are you?”
He heard Avery March and Samantha coming up behind him as he stumbled, got up, kept running in the direction he thought her voice had come from. He ran faster, side twinging, breath ragged. He was so out of shape.
“Jewel!” Samantha called from behind him, panic pulling the syllables long and shrill.
There.
There she was.
He came to the clearing and saw her lying in front of the graveyard, curled up with her arms over her head. He dropped to his knees before her.
“Jewel.”
Her face, streaked with tears, was just as it was when he used to wake her from her childhood night terrors. Pale eyes wide with a terrified innocence. Her whole body used to shake, and it would sometimes take minutes—which seemed like hours—to wake her from wherever she’d gone in the universe, in her child’s mind, that was horrible enough to have her wailing and cowering in her unicorn bedsheets.
He gathered her from the ground, rocking her.
“Honey, Daddy’s here.”
“Daddy?”
“What happened, bunny?”
“There was a girl. I followed her,” she said. “She looked like—but she couldn’t be—”
Her voice trailed off, her eyes still staring at something only she could see. It had been a long time since she’d had night terrors, or sleepwalked. How long? Five years? Back when she was being bullied on social media and crying herself to sleep at night. The nightmares had come back then.
Her pediatrician had told them that these episodes would come back in times of extreme stress. Like now—when her mother had been sick, and her father had lost his job and moved her to his monstrous family home in the middle of nowhere. Guilt, the underpinning of parenthood. All your failings as a person were not just your problem anymore.
Samantha was beside them then, a hand on Jewel’s cheek. “Let’s get her inside. Can you carry her?”
With effort—she wasn’t a baby, and he wasn’t as strong as he used to be—he managed to get her back to the house, laying her on the couch.
“If you’ll allow me, I’ll make some tea?” suggested Avery March. “With honey. Sugar is good for a shock.”
“Thank you so much,” said Samantha. “It’s all over the stove, mugs to the right.”
Samantha covered Jewel with a blanket and sat beside her. After a few minutes, the teenager seemed to refocus, to snap back in, looked around, confused.
“What happened?” Jewel asked.
“You were screaming,” said Samantha. “We found you in the graveyard.”
She shook her head, frowned like she was trying to reorient herself. Just like when she was a little kid.
“Why did you go out there?” Samantha asked.
“I—” Jewel looked back and forth between them. “I don’t remember.”
“You said you saw a girl.”
She frowned. “I heard something. A slamming noise, then the ghost chair.” That was what they were calling it, the sound of something being dragged across wood floors. “I freaked out a little, so I followed you to the barn. That’s when I saw her.”
She sat up. “She walked through the trees and I followed.”
“There was no one there,” said Samantha.
Matthew’s shoulders tensed. “You were dreaming, kiddo. Sleepwalking.”
“No,” she said, frowning. “I saw her.”
“What did she look like?” Avery March had returned with a mug of tea. She leaned in to hand it to Jewel, who took it gratefully. “I put in a little honey. It will do you go
od.”
Jewel took a sip.
“The girl,” said Avery March. “What did she look like?”
“She was tall and super thin, leggy and gorgeous—like a supermodel. Long dark hair.”
“Someone from town?” suggested Samantha. “Pete said that people would sneak up here if we left the gate open.”
Matthew shrugged, feigning nonchalance. Something inside him had gone a little cold. Oh God. Please, no.
“What was she wearing?” March pressed, seeming tense.
Why did this woman have so many questions? Wait a minute. Matthew looked at her again, something dawning. Her name: March. It was a name he had buried deep, deep inside. But it clawed its way up into his consciousness now.
“She was wearing, like, a T-shirt with a faded four-leaf clover on it,” said Jewel, voice shaky. “With a white body and black sleeves, jean shorts, red Converse sneakers.”
“Sound like one of the kids from the area?” asked Samantha of March, leaning in to put a hand on Jewel’s head.
“There was a man too. I think,” Jewell went on. “Then a kind of fog fell.”
“Daddy might be right,” said Samantha, looking at Matthew with concern. “You must have been dreaming. One of your nightmares.”
“She was scared of him,” Jewel went on.
Avery March released a kind of noise—something between a groan and a gasp. She’d gone white, sinking into the tall wingback chair.
“Avery,” said Samantha. “What is it?”
“Amelia,” she whispered.
“Who?”
“Amelia March,” said Matthew, all the pieces clicking together. Avery March was the only Realtor in town who would work with him, who had an iota of interest in Merle House. Now he knew why. “Was she your sister?”
“Wait,” said Samantha, looking back and forth between Matthew and Avery March. “Hello? What are we talking about here?”
“She was my twin,” said March.
“Oh my God,” said Matthew, sitting on the matching chair. How could he not have made this connection? One of Samantha’s favorite criticisms: You only remember what you want to remember.