by Ron Ripley
“No. We didn’t.”
“Then it’s not possible,” Marie said angrily.
“Everything’s impossible until it isn’t,” Shane said, shrugging his shoulders. Downstairs, the grandfather clock struck the hour.
Noon, he thought. His stomach rumbled in agreement.
“So, Detective Lafontaine,” Shane said. “Do you feel like having lunch?”
Chapter 31: Shane, February 10th, 1988
Shane put the phone back in its cradle and for the first time in a long time, he looked at himself and realized he was afraid.
His parents weren’t going to be home. The car had broken down in Connecticut, and they couldn’t even find a car to rent.
Shane was going to be alone in the house, overnight.
They had called around to the neighbors, but no one had answered.
He felt panic well within him but he tried to ignore it.
Then again there wasn’t any place safe. Not at night.
He started to sweat, and he left the parlor. Shane quickly went upstairs and went into the library. He turned the light on and went to sit in the leather armchair behind the desk.
The house was silent.
Shane couldn’t hear anything. Not the old man, not the violinist. Not Thaddeus and not Eloise. Even Carl was absent.
The house didn’t settle, and the air was cold. He couldn’t hear the furnace or the wind which bent the tops of the trees in the pale light cast by the February moon.
The silence terrified him.
Shane swallowed nervously, got up from the chair and walked to a window. He looked down on the back yard. In the center of the pond, beneath the ice, he knew the dead girl waited. She wanted him, and he didn’t know why.
It doesn’t matter why, he told himself. You just can’t let her get you. You can’t.
As he stood in the window, something moved and caught his eye.
Someone walked into the yard from Chester Street. It was a man, from what Shane could see. He carried a backpack and was dressed in warm clothes. His winter coat was blue, and so was the knit cap he wore. It looked like he had on black pants and work boots.
And suddenly the man changed direction. He walked towards the house instead of away from it.
Is he going to try and break in? Shane wondered. Can’t he feel how wrong the house is?
The man stepped closer to the house, out of Shane’s sight.
With a sigh, Shane returned to the desk and the chair.
Something scratched in the walls.
The noise became louder, and soon it sounded as if dozens of people ran through the servants' passages. Within a moment, silence returned.
A scream raced through the house and exploded out of the iron heating vents set in the library’s floor. The scream ended abruptly, and laughter followed.
Shane sat stiffly in the chair while he listened.
The sound of footsteps returned, this time in the hallway.
Shane looked out the open door and waited. Soon the feet drew closer, laughter echoed off the walls, and something heavy was dragged along the floor.
The first shape that Shane saw, was nothing more than a shadow. Dark, far too dark for the hall. It crept into the doorway and was only two or three feet high. The vague semblance of a head turned towards him. Eyes the color of an electric blue spark looked at him, and then the head turned away. The shadowy creature moved forward and passed beyond the doorway.
Others followed, though, and they carried the man who Shane had seen in the back yard.
He was stripped naked and his limbs were bound together in rusted wire. When his head appeared Shane stifled a scream as he saw the man’s wild, terrified eyes. A black shadow had wrapped around the man’s mouth and kept it tightly closed.
“Are you dreaming, Shane?” a voice asked him. Cold, a terribly cold breath stung Shane’s ear and he couldn’t bring himself to turn and see who spoke to him.
He shivered uncontrollably and gagged at the smell of rot which filled the room.
“Where do you think he will end up?” the stranger asked. “Will you guess?”
Shane managed to shake his head.
A cruel laugh, filled with malice rang out, and Shane nearly wet himself with fear.
“He will go up and up and up,” the voice said. “Far and away. Alive and not dead. Dead and not alive. You’ll understand one day, Shane. Yes. I promise one day you will understand.”
Shane closed his eyes and fought the urge to run.
Warmth returned to the room, and the smell of rot faded. Shane could no longer hear footsteps, or the man being dragged down the floor.
Muffled laughter drifted down from the unused servants' quarters, and Shane desperately wished for his parents to return home.
Chapter 32: Alone
Marie Lafontaine had left and promised to return after her shift the following day.
Shane sat on his bed, a glass of whiskey in one hand and his father’s belt in the other. He took a small sip and examined the silver buckle.
It was his father’s. Shane was certain of it.
The leather was the same as well.
And neither of them was old.
Shane drank a little more.
How is this even possible? He wondered. My father can’t be alive. No matter what anyone says. Maybe trapped, spiritually. But they can’t be alive.
He put the belt down on the bed, finished his whiskey and poured himself another.
The phone in the library rang sharply.
Shane nearly spilled his liquor.
The phone rang again.
He looked out his doorway at the hall.
For a third time, the harsh sound of the telephone cut through the air.
Shane emptied his glass, put it on the table and got up from his bed. Silently, he walked out of his room and to the library.
The black phone on the desktop rang again, which was incredibly interesting.
The phone was an interior line only. No connection to the outside world, only to a phone in the kitchen, and one in the servants’ quarters.
And there was no power to the phone. There hadn’t been any since Shane had moved into the house as a boy.
Shane walked to the desk, sat down, and picked up the receiver.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello?” a woman asked frantically. “Oh my God, can you hear me?!”
Shane’s hands shook. “Yes. Yes, I can hear you.”
“Oh thank God,” she said, weeping. “Please, I don’t know where you are, but I need you to call the police. My husband and I are trapped in our house. We’ve been down here for days, and we can’t get out.”
“Mom?” Shane whispered.
The woman choked back a cry and said, “What? What did you say?”
“Mom,” Shane said a little louder. “It’s me, Shane.”
There was silence on the other end, but Shane could hear his mother breathe.
“Is… is this some kind of trick?” she asked, her tone unsure. “You can’t be my son.”
“You’re Fiona Ryan,” Shane said softly. “My father is Hank Ryan. His real name is Henry. He hates it. You only call him Henry when you’re mad at him, like when he didn’t believe us about the house.”
His mother let out a moan. “You can’t be Shane. You’re too old. You can’t be. I can hear how old you are.”
“I am old,” Shane said. “I’m over forty now, mom.”
“No!” She screamed. He jerked his head away from the phone. She spoke again, and he listened once more. “No. No, my Shane is in boot camp. He’s graduating in a week. We’re going down to South Carolina to see him.”
“Mom,” he said, his voice growing hoarse, “you’ve been gone for years. So many years.”
The line went dead. Shane sat in the chair and held the silent phone for a moment before he hung it up.
Yet as soon as his hand left the cold handle the phone rang again.
He looked at it cautiousl
y, but by the third ring he picked it up.
“Hello,” he said, trying to keep the hope out of his voice.
The harsh laughter which greeted him told him he had failed.
“Shane,” a girl said, her voice sounding as if she were speaking from beneath water. “Shane, your parents miss you. Do you miss them?”
Shane hung up the phone and left the library. He closed the door, but even through the thick wood he could hear the telephone ring.
Chapter 33: A Visitor
Someone knocked at the door, and Shane forced his eyes to open.
He was drunk.
Good and drunk. He wasn’t sure if it was early afternoon or early morning. Or maybe neither if the clock in the parlor was broken.
He chuckled at the idea of it and managed to get to his feet. He staggered out of the room and into the main hall. Someone knocked again, and the knock was followed by the doorbell.
Shane winced at both sounds, but he still found the image of a broken clock funny. He laughed as he opened the door and then he choked on the laughter.
Christopher Mercurio stood on his doorstep.
He wore the school uniform of Nashua Catholic Junior High School. He even had the trendy, bowl haircut the cooler kids had worn. Christopher Mercurio, the boy who had bullied him in school, even after having hidden in his house, was soaked through as he looked at Shane.
Thoroughly wet, just as he had been when the police had pulled his body out of the pond when Shane was fifteen.
Christopher looked terrified. Confused.
“Am I dead?” he asked Shane.
Shane quickly sobered up.
“Yes, Christopher,” Shane said. “You’re dead. You have been for a long time.”
“She told me I was,” Christopher said, and he began to cry. “She told me I can’t go home to my parents as they won’t want me because I’m dead.”
Shane couldn’t think of anything to say, so he didn’t.
“She killed me, Shane,” he said.
“I know.”
“You told me not to go near the water,” Christopher said, moaning. “You told me not to.”
“I know,” Shane said sadly.
“I didn’t listen to you,” the dead boy said, starting to weep. “I wish I’d listened.”
“I’m sorry,” Shane whispered.
Christopher nodded, wiped his tears away with a wet hand and then he sniffled loudly. “Shane.”
“Yes?”
“She’s angry,” Christopher whispered. “She didn’t like it when you hung up on her.”
“Did she make you come and tell me?” He asked.
The dead boy nodded.
“Will she let you go now?” Shane asked.
“No,” Christopher whimpered. “She never lets any of us go. She says she won’t ever let your parents go.”
“Are my parents alive, Christopher?” He asked.
“I don’t know,” the dead boy answered. “I can’t tell. I wasn’t sure I was dead until I saw you. You’re old, Shane. You’re bald, too.”
Shane nodded.
“I didn’t know I was dead. Not for certain. None of us do,” Christopher said.
“Are there a lot of you down there, with her?” He asked.
“Yes,” the dead boy said. “I’m not sure how many, but there are a lot of us.”
“Oh,” Shane said.
“She’s angry, Shane,” Christopher said. “She’s so angry. You need to leave, Shane. She’s going to hurt you.”
“I can’t leave. I need my parents,” Shane answered.
“She won’t let them go,” the dead boy sighed. “None of us can go.”
Christopher turned and walked away from the door. Shane watched as the dead bully turned to the right and continued on around the house. Back to the pond.
Shane closed the door and returned to his whiskey.
He needed to get drunk again.
Chapter 34: Shane and the Furnace, February 29th, 1988
Shane liked to be in the basement. The basement was safe.
Nothing, as far as he could tell, was in the basement.
Yes, it was dark. Yes, there were lots of spiders.
But there weren’t any ghosts, and Shane appreciated it tremendously.
The furnace was his favorite part of the basement. The old, oil-run machine was gigantic, a monstrosity which would have looked at home on an old battleship. Shane could picture it running the propeller of some ancient warship.
It was warm by the furnace too. Waves of heat rolled off the hot cast iron casing, and he could catch sight of the flickering red and orange flames as the oil burned.
Shane lay on his back on top of an old woolen army blanket. His book, something by a Chinese general named Sun Tzu, was beside him. He had a bookmark at a page where the general had declared, ‘All warfare is deception.’ And Shane had a feeling the man knew what he was writing about.
Shane yawned and looked up at rafters and noticed a small box tucked above one of the cross beams. He got to his feet and squinted to try to get a better look at it. He could just make out a single word.
Map.
“Shane!” his mother yelled down the stairs. “Time for lunch!”
“Okay, Mom!” he called back up. He turned towards the stairs.
“And don’t leave your book and blanket down there this time,” she said.
Shane groaned inwardly, turned around and picked up both of his things. He grumbled to himself and went upstairs.
I’ll have to look in the box later, he promised himself, and he turned off the light as he left.
Chapter 35: Remembering
Shane fell out of the chair and landed on the parlor floor with a thud.
Pain blossomed in his head, but he got to his feet.
“The box,” he said to the silent room. “The box!”
He hurried out of the room, legs unsteady as he approached the main stairs. He cut around to the left, found the hidden pocket door and slid it back. He flipped on the lights and walked quickly down the stairs into the basement.
The air was warm and dry, the furnace rumbled, and there were fewer spider webs than Shane remembered.
He went to stand in front of the furnace where he used to lay down his blanket and looked up.
There was the box. The one with the word map written on it.
The one he had never come back to look at.
Shane reached up and grabbed the box. It was an old cigar box. Hoeffler’s Havana’s. A buxom Cuban woman smiled at him and held out a glowing cigar. Shane ignored the advertisement’s offer and hoped there was more than old cigars in the box.
There was.
Folded into a neat square was a thick piece of paper.
Shane took it out, set the box on the floor at his feet and unfolded the map. Six-floor plans were sketched out in minute detail. The top left plan had the legend, Main Floor, written beneath it. The second, Second Floor. Then Servants' Quarters, followed by The Music Room, Where We Fear to Tread, and Her Room. In the far right corner was a small square labeled, The Root Cellar. A question mark was beside it.
Shane carried the map upstairs and into the kitchen. He laid it on the table, started a fresh pot of coffee and returned to the map. He held onto both edges of the table and looked down at the paper. He needed to see how to get to the fifth floor, and from there to the sixth.
Nowhere in the Servants' quarters did he see a door marked stairs.
He looked at the second floor and stopped.
The painting, he thought. Set in the wall was a door he had only seen once. The door behind the painting. The stairs which led to the fifth floor.
A quick examination of the fifth floor showed another set of stairs which led up to her rooms.
“Where did you find it?” Carl asked, and Shane nearly jumped.
He turned and saw his dead friend in the chair across from him.
“The basement,” Shane answered. He walked over to the coffee, resisted t
he natural urge to offer the man coffee, and poured himself a cup. He sat down at the table, had a drink and looked at Carl. “Did you know of it?”
“Of it? Yes. Where it was? No. I did not know where you might be able to find it if it even existed anymore.”
“Who made it?” Shane asked.
“A boy named Herman. A very smart boy. When he realized what was happening in the house, he mapped what he could and then he fled. Not before his mother killed his father, though.”
“When was this?”
“Nineteen fifty-two,” Carl answered. “His father was the chauffeur. His mother was a scullery maid. All of them lived together on the third floor.”
“How did he find about all of these?” Shane asked.
“He traveled them,” Carl said.
“Is he still alive?” He asked excitedly.
The dead German shrugged. “I do not know, my young friend.”
“What was his last name?” Shane asked.
“Mishal,” Carl answered. “Herman Mishal.”
Chapter 36: With the Benefit of Years
Herman Mishal took off his glasses, pinched his nose and sighed to no one in particular.
His wife, Bernadette, looked up from her book.
“Are you alright?” she asked in Hebrew.
“Yes,” he said with a smile. “I’m tired. And I do not feel especially well.”
The cordless phone rang, and both he and Bernadette looked at it, surprised.
It was well after ten and the phone never rang after eight. Not unless it was an emergency with one of their children.
Herman put his glasses back on and looked at the caller id.
It read ‘unavailable.’
He frowned and answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Hello,” a man said. “I hate to bother you this late, but I’m looking for a man named Herman Mishal. Do I have the right house?”
“You do,” Herman said. “But, it is terribly late. Perhaps you can call back tomorrow?”
“Sir,” the stranger said, a note of anxiety in his voice. “Could you spare me just a minute? Please? It’s about my parents?”