by Lisa Unger
He put his head on one and wept like a baby.
“You can have her back.”
He looked up from the pillows to find that a kind of fog had filled the room—gray and thick as smoke, obscuring shapes. In the corner of the room was the slim, faceless form of a man. Ian’s heart seized.
“You can have her back,” the shadow said again. “You just have to do something for me.”
Ian had no words; they were lodged in his throat. He could only gasp for air in the smoke. All the time he’d spent looking for this, he’d never once believed he’d find it, not really. He thought that whatever they’d experienced the summer he turned sixteen was available only to a child’s mind. It was another dimension not available to adult sensibilities, so dulled by reality, by responsibilities, by the message of a culture that despised the unexplainable. He thought the doorway, briefly open, had slammed shut.
Finally, he managed to croak, “What do you want me to do?”
A kind of laughter filled his head. “I thought you’d never ask.”
There was whispering inside his brain, a hissing, the sound of snakes and wind. He listened, and the more he listened, the less himself he was, feeling himself lift from his body. The smoke swirled and surrounded him, a great cocoon.
“Dude, what are you doing?”
The voice was hard and powerful. Ian became aware of himself again, crashing back into his body with a jolt. The shadow was gone, and Josh was standing in the doorway. The younger man paused, seemed to assess the situation, then moved in quickly.
“Ian, man, the smudge stick.”
It wasn’t on the hearth but smoldering on the bed, filling the room with smoke. Josh grabbed a throw blanket and smothered the flames that had started leaping up from the covers. Almost immediately the smoke began to dissipate, and the air filled with the acrid scent of sage and burned cotton.
“What the fuck, Ian?” They locked eyes, and Josh’s expression morphed quickly from confusion, fear, and that little flush of anger that comes from fear to concern.
“What did you see?” Josh asked. He pulled away the blanket, and the smudge stick was out. There was a big circular burn mark on the bed. Ian pushed himself up to sitting.
“I—” He almost couldn’t say it.
“What?” pressed Josh.
“I saw the Dark Man.”
7.
They all followed Mason into the woods, deeper and deeper. The sky was bruising above them, shadowing from the bright, crystalline blue of the day turning to the late afternoon. They all had to be in by dinner, which was officially at seven. At Merle House, Penny, the eternal housekeeper and cook, would have supper waiting for them. If they didn’t come back for it, she’d call all the parents. Old Man Merle didn’t know if they were alive or dead. Ian’s parents were working, wouldn’t notice he was not home until about eight or nine. Claire’s mom and stepdad wouldn’t notice until later either. But Penny was keeping watch.
It seemed like they’d been walking for hours, Mason and Matthew up ahead, Claire trailing. Ian kept stopping to make sure Claire didn’t get left behind. He didn’t want her to give up and go home. She’d been reluctant to begin with, and now must be growing tired. Truth was, things could get a little edgy when it was just Mason, Matthew, and Ian. Claire was a calming influence; everyone secretly had a crush on her, so they were all the best version of themselves when she was around.
When she was gone, they bickered. There was an escalation of dangerous activities—climbing the taller, older trees; jumping into the quarry lake—not the lake behind the house with the swinging rope, known to be safe. There was a new development being built, one that had been abandoned due to loss of financing. So there were big, empty, partially built houses to explore, the fence around the aborted neighborhood down in at least three places. When Claire wasn’t with them, they usually wound up there.
Ian heard the hooting of a barred owl and stopped to look up in the trees, but couldn’t catch sight of it. Claire caught up with him while he stood looking. He heard owls all the time, but he’d never seen one in the wild.
“This is stupid,” she said, a little breathless. “I want to go home.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Okay.”
He was about to head back with her. Then, “It’s over here,” yelled Mason, making a big gesture with his arm.
Matthew had also stopped, halfway between where Mason stood on the rise and where Claire and Ian were about to turn around. Matthew was the unofficial leader. Even Claire usually did what he did. Ian suspected that she might have a crush on Matthew. Who could blame her? Ian was awkward, big, kind of a brainiac. Mason was just—weird. But Matthew was one of those kids—just cool, good-looking, fun. The kind of boy that boys liked, and girls crushed on—athletic, smart, funny. He was a chameleon, fit in with any group—the brains, the jocks, the goths. Matthew gave a shrug, then kept going.
“Five more minutes,” said Claire. “Then I’m gone.”
Ian nodded and they kept walking. The slope of the hill increased, and they were slipping in the detritus on the forest floor. Claire grabbed for Ian’s arm and he steadied her. She leaned on his strength to make it up the rest of the rise. That alone, no matter what they found, made it worth it. Girls. If they only knew how much power they had. His heart swelled, and he practically floated up the rest of the hill.
At the top, they saw it. Ian almost couldn’t believe his eyes. Had it always been here? There were rumors about a place out in the woods where people went on dares, to get high, to get laid. But Ian never really paid much attention.
It was a big, burned-out old structure, a house not dissimilar from Merle House in scope and scale. But bigger, a nightmare version of the house that was essentially a summer playground to all of them. Merle House was old, too, but clean and well managed by Penny. It was filled with antiques and rooms of books, a movie and game room with real arcade machines. Some of the rooms upstairs at Merle House were locked, but the keys hung in the kitchen, and Penny didn’t mind if they explored. Don’t touch anything! One room had a piano and nothing else. One had a mural on the wall—a fairy-tale landscape featuring princesses, castles and unicorns, elf cottages, birds, flowers.
Here, at this strange place, the building seemed to sag. Foliage grew wild, grass tall and shrubbery untended. Vines snaked over the door and through broken windows, lush and green. The chimney was partially collapsed, and the roof had so many gaping holes that it looked like it had been in a meteor shower.
Was this still Merle property? Ian calculated that the nearest road might be two miles. He looked to determine if there was a drive that connected the house to a main thoroughfare; he saw only trees. It was surrounded on all sides by forest. How was that possible?
“Oh my God,” said Claire. Her voice was a breathless whisper.
Mason and Matthew were already running down into the clearing around the house. Now the sky was growing dimmer. He could even see the ghost of the moon rising. There was still plenty of light, though, the sun long from setting. If they turned back now, they would get home in more than enough time to avoid Penny’s wrath.
Claire took his hand, started tugging him away. “This . . . isn’t safe. Let’s get out of here.”
She tugged at his arm, pulling back toward home. But he resisted, instead pulling her gently in the direction of the broken-down old house.
“We came all this way,” he said. “Let’s just check it out. Then we’ll go. I promise. Five minutes, that’s it.”
She was curious too. He could tell by the way she kept watching Matthew and Mason, listening to their whooping calls of excitement. Claire was sensible, but she had an explorer’s spirit to match any boy’s. If there was something amazing out there, she wouldn’t want to be left out.
She gave an uncertain nod, then followed him down the hill.
8.
Merle House was quiet. Sometimes Matthew got the feeling that it slept, or at least dozed. When he had that feeli
ng, he made his movements very slow and quiet, not wanting to disturb. He looked in on Jewel, who was, as usual, staring at her tablet.
Her room was dark; she lay on her bed with the glow of the screen lighting her face. He wondered if her neck was at a healthy angle but stopped short of saying anything. If she noticed her father standing at the door, she didn’t bother to acknowledge him. She’d clung to him today. He hadn’t even realized how much he missed the feel of his daughter in his arms. But her need for Daddy had been short lived. She was back to hating him.
“You bungled it,” Samantha had said earlier. “You made it seem like you didn’t believe her.”
“I didn’t.”
“Okay, but she believes she saw something. She was afraid. No one likes to feel dismissed, Matt.”
He wasn’t stupid. There was a load to that last sentence. Samantha had gone cool since the afternoon, like the chill before a storm.
“Good night,” he ventured from the doorframe. But Jewel had her AirPods in. Even if she had heard him, she might have just ignored him.
Apparently she had some new friend named Eldon, whom she’d met on that game she played nonstop. He knew this because, unknown to Jewel, he had an app that mirrored her phone, showing him all her texts. Samantha was not especially supportive of this kind of parent spy behavior, but neither did she make a move to stop him. He also suspected that Samantha tracked Jewel’s location—or had when she’d still had any place to go. Their daughter was unpredictable, had a wild streak, could be talked into doing things she knew were wrong. Once he’d had to drive out to some field in the middle of nowhere in Florida when she’d called and asked him to pick her and her friends up from a rave. He’d thought she was sleeping at her best friend’s house. Eve’s parents had thought they were at Jewel’s. He’d found the girls walking on the side of the road, dressed like—it must be said—total sluts in cut-off shorts and too-tight glittery shirts, platform heels. What were you thinking, girls? Samantha didn’t even know about that. That was back when he was still the FP—the favorite parent, the cool one.
“Um, good night,” she said finally, with an edge. Like, good night, go away. How long had he been standing there, lost in thought?
He thought about trying to apologize, to talk about earlier, but the truth was he just wanted to forget it ever happened.
Back in the bedroom, Samantha was sitting by the fireplace. It was a nicely appointed room, had been the master suite. Old Man Merle pretty much lived in his study, mainly slept on the couch in there. Samantha had ordered all new bedding, new drapes. (Again, they really didn’t have the money for that. But Samantha seemed to be willfully ignoring their dwindling savings account.)
“So when are you going to start talking to me?” she asked when he came in and sat on the edge of the bed.
“What do you mean?”
“Matt, how many more secrets are there?”
“My past is not a secret,” he said. “It’s just—the past. I don’t think about it. It’s gone.”
She frowned, then looked down to pick at a thread on her sleeve. “I had a call today, from the detective back home.”
Matthew felt his body stiffen, a limbic freezing, waiting.
“They still haven’t found her. Sylvia. The detective said you hadn’t returned his calls.”
Sylvia was missing. Sylvia’s longtime lover and partner in crime (a woman, by the way) had hired a private detective when the police case went cold. Now this detective was on his case—calling, emailing. No, he hadn’t returned calls. He didn’t have anything to say. Sylvia, the police determined in their investigation, was a con artist, had blackmailed a handful of men, other college professors, doctors, a lawyer. She’d made false claims of sexual harassment, taken money to withdraw the charges, then disappeared. No reason for anyone to think she hadn’t done the same here, this time leaving her lover, as well.
“I’ve told that detective everything I know about Sylvia,” said Matthew. “We never had an affair. Her claims were all lies. I have no idea why she did what she did, or where she went.”
“Have you heard from her?”
“No.”
“Who’s been calling late at night?”
Last night’s conversation was still ringing in his ears.
I never stop thinking about you. About us.
Sylvia’s voice was like smoke, twisting and curling over the line. He inhaled it.
You were different from the others, Matthew. I fell in love with you.
“You know,” he said to Samantha now. “The usual spam and telemarketing calls.”
Samantha shook her head, did not believe him.
Where are you, Sylvia? You have to tell the police you’re okay. I’m still a suspect.
Sorry. I’m not going to jail. Let me know if you want to meet me. Leave it all behind.
Leave it all behind: the accusations, the judgments, the shame, the debt, the shrinking savings account, Merle House, the past, the angry teenager who hated him. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted.
But then there was Samantha, his first love, his redeemer, the brightest star he’d ever seen. Without her love, he was just a mark, a fool, a failure.
“What’s going on with you?” Samantha asked. “I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me. Now this missing girl from your childhood, that Realtor, the incident with Jewel. The energy here—it’s bizarre.”
“I don’t know what you mean. It’s just a house we’re trying to fix and get rid of. When it sells there will be enough to start over.”
“You were always a terrible liar. It’s one of the things I used to love best about you. I figured, whatever your failings, you’d always be honest with me. Talk to me.”
“What?” he asked with a smile, rubbing at his temples. He’d had a persistent low-grade headache for days. “You think it’s haunted or something? That there was a ghost in the woods?”
Samantha was the most practical person he knew. But she didn’t return his grin tonight.
“Maybe we should call your friend,” she suggested. Who did she mean? Oh—really?
“Ian?” he asked, incredulous.
They’d made fun of Ian and Liz, their whole energy-cleansing, space-clearing, ghost-hunting, exorcist thing. On the way back from their last get-together with his old friend, Matthew and Samantha had laughed their asses off. Of course, they did look like they were doing pretty well. Dressed to the nines, expensive car, picked up the pricey dinner tab.
“Have you been in touch since Liz passed?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I called. Sent an email a few weeks later.”
“How was he?”
Matthew shrugged. Ian was broken, devastated, cored out; he’d lost the only person he’d ever truly loved. Matthew had stared down that particular barrel himself when Samantha was sick. Who was he without her? No one. He knew that Ian felt that way about Liz. And now that she was gone, he was just—less.
He didn’t have to say any of this to Samantha.
“Yeah,” said Samantha, as if he had spoken the words. She looked off into the fire, which was dwindling to embers. “He’s not far from here, is he?”
“No,” said Matthew. “Not very.”
“And what about Claire?”
“Claire?”
Where the hell is this coming from?
Oh.
This place. Sometimes when you thought it was sleeping, it was wide awake, playing its little games.
“She wrote that article for the New York Times Magazine—about possession. Serial criminals who believe they are doing the bidding of a spirit or demon within them.”
He felt his throat go a little dry. Why was she bringing that up? “Something like that. Where are you going with this?”
“I’m just wondering if we need a little help, Matthew. With Merle House.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said again.
But she had him pinned in that gaze, her X-ray vision that saw right thro
ugh all his self-delusions, all the walls he erected, all the things he didn’t want to face.
“Don’t you, Matthew?”
9.
Mason disappeared into the house with Matthew close behind. By the time Claire and Ian had made it down the hill, the other boys could no longer be heard. It was as if the place had swallowed them whole.
Claire hung back at the edge of the clearing, the big house looming like a thunderhead. Closer now, they could see that it wasn’t a house, exactly, but maybe something more institutional, like a school. There was a circular drive, a sweeping staircase that led up to a landing and wraparound porch. There was a faded, nearly illegible sign hanging askew over the tall double doors: HAVENWOOD. It rang a bell for Ian, distant and eerie.
“I’m not going in there,” said Claire. She’d reached her limit. Ian could tell by the set of her mouth, the furrow in her brow. She was flushed from exertion, eyes a little red, too, like she might cry. “I’ll wait here until one of you falls through a rotten floor and breaks his leg—or worse. Then I’ll go get help.”
She sat then, cross-legged, against the slim trunk of a birch tree.
Ian felt the tug of the boy energy inside the structure. He was briefly torn between whatever adventure they’d discover inside and Claire, who seemed wise and sensible, and whose flushed cheeks were so pretty. His father would tell him to stay with Claire, to take her home—that was what a gentleman would do. But now, hearing Matthew’s and Mason’s delighted shouts, muffled by distance, he answered the call, leaving Claire alone to wait for them.
“I’ll be right back out.”
He saw her disappointment; it pushed down the corners of her mouth. And he knew in that moment that he’d blown what might have been his only chance with the prettiest girl who would associate with him. But the wild call of boy fun—it was just too powerful. What if something amazing happened—and he missed it? The ridicule would be unbearable. You waited outside with the girl!
“I’m sorry. Five minutes. I promise.”
She didn’t even answer him, glancing back the way they’d come as if wondering whether she should brave the darkening woods alone and go home.