The Haunted

by Bentley Little

  “Did you text me earlier? About an hour ago?”

  “No. How could I? My mom took my phone away because my stupid sister caught me talking to Kate when I was supposed to be pulling weeds. I can’t get it back until Monday!”

  “Well, someone texted me, but I can’t tell who, and it doesn’t make sense. It’s like those exclamation points and question marks and apostrophes that they use instead of swear words.”

  “You always know if it’s from me. I don’t block anything.”

  “Yeah.” She almost told Zoe about the other messages she’d received, but her friend started complaining about her sister and her mom, and it didn’t seem like the right time to bring it up. Zoe went on to tell her that Kate had seen Jenny Sanchez at Dairy Queen yesterday and she had really short hair and it was blond!

  “Why would she do that?” Megan wondered.

  “God knows.”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Megan said. “I saw Brad at Radicchio.”

  “When?”

  “Just now. We got back, like, five minutes ago.”

  “No one’s seen him since school got out! I heard he moved.”

  “Obviously not.”

  “Who was he with?”

  “His dad.”

  “His parents got divorced, you know. At the end of last year.”

  “I know. And his dad got custody. Which means that his mom must be really …”

  “Yeah.” There was a pause. “Did you talk to him?”

  “No!”

  “I would’ve,” Zoe insisted.

  From the hallway outside Megan’s door came the sound of running footsteps as James hurried back downstairs.

  She wished he were staying up here.

  “Are you still there?” Zoe said. “Hel-lo?”

  “I’m here.”

  “You should’ve at least waved to him or said hi. This was your chance.”

  Megan reddened, glad that her friend couldn’t see her.

  From somewhere in the background came the sound of Zoe’s mom’s voice: “Time’s up.”

  “I have to go.” Zoe’s tone was formal and subdued. “She times me,” she whispered into the receiver. “I can’t use my phone and I can’t talk for more than five minutes on any phone.”

  “Zoe,” her mom said loudly.

  “Gotta go. Bye.”

  Megan was left holding a silent phone to her ear as the connection was terminated, and she quickly shut the phone off, feeling nervous.

  IL C U 2NITE

  Even with all of the lights on, the room did not seem as safe as it should have, as it usually did. Looking around, she saw a poorly cleaned section on the drawn front shade, more off-white than the surrounding area, that resembled the shadow of a man’s head. A seeping coolness made her wonder whether the window behind that shade was open. Atop her desk, two books were out that she could not remember leaving there. Had someone moved them to that spot while rifling through her room?

  She was being stupid. She was in her own bedroom, in her own house, and it was probably the safest place on earth she could be.

  Ordinarily, she would have gone online and browsed for a while, but Megan realized as she looked at her laptop that she was afraid to turn it on. She thought once more of that message she’d received this afternoon—

  IL C U 2NITE

  —and shivered. Her shades were all closed, but she checked them again anyway, making sure all cracks were sealed and no one could see in. The room seemed quiet, too quiet, and she turned on her iPod.

  She knew that other sounds could hide under music, however, and rather than reassuring her, the iPod made her feel even more anxious. She was all alone up here, Megan realized, and immediately she turned off the music, dropped the iPod on her bed and sped downstairs to watch a TV show she didn’t like with her surprised but happy parents. And James.

  Two hours of comedies and karaoke contests later, her nerves were calmed, her sense of normalcy restored, and her earlier anxiety seemed like a horrendous overreaction. It was time for bed, and both she and James said good night to their parents and headed upstairs to their bedrooms. For once, she was glad to have her brother with her, and though they didn’t speak as they trod up the steps, she was grateful for his presence and actually bade him good night before entering her bedroom and closing the door.

  Often, Megan stayed up later than she was supposed to—that was the advantage of having a two-story house and a bedroom on a floor different from her parents’. She’d read or listen to music or even text her friends if they were still up. But tonight she was tired. It might have been only ten o’clock, but it felt like midnight to her. So she changed into her pajamas, walked down the hall to the bathroom, where she washed her face and brushed her teeth, then crawled into bed. Usually, she liked to sleep with the lights off, but this time she left the desk lamp on. She could hear James moving around down the hall, though he was supposed to be in bed, too. Under normal circumstances, she’d yell at him to go to sleep, threaten to tell their parents, but tonight she was grateful for the noise, and she closed her eyes and within minutes had drifted off.

  She awoke in darkness.

  She’d been lured out of sleep by the soft sound of an electronic beep, although she heard nothing now. Somehow her lamp had been turned off, and she chose to believe that one of her parents had come in to check on her and switched it off. The thought was comforting.

  There was another beep, and Megan rolled over onto her side. She’d turned off her iPhone before going to bed, as she always did, but on the nightstand next to her she could see the light from the screen in the darkness. She sat up, leaning on her elbow, and looked over to see what was going on.

  There was a message, white letters against a blue background. Bleary eyed, she read it, her heart pounding.

  , it said. I C U!

  Six

  Julian had the Dream again, the first time in over a year, and he awoke sweaty and disoriented, not sure for a moment where he was. Then the shadowed features of the room resolved themselves into recognizable shapes—dresser, lamp, picture, chair—and he realized that he was in their bedroom, in their new house, and Claire was lying next to him. He quickly glanced over at her, and was relieved to see that she hadn’t awakened. Last time she had, and when she’d questioned him, he’d been forced to invent a fake nightmare to describe.

  He had never told her about the Dream.

  Julian carefully pulled the covers from on top of him and slid out of bed, padding over to the bathroom. Closing the door, he turned on the light, staring at himself in the mirror. He looked as wrecked as he felt, and he took a still-damp washcloth from the towel rack and used it to wipe the sweat from his face. His heart was thumping wildly, and he was grateful that this time the fear had overpowered the sadness. For the sadness generated by the Dream was almost more than he could bear, a deep despair that negated everything good that had happened in his life, that wiped out the joy of his wife and his children and brought him back emotionally to that dark, dark day.

  The fear was bad, but it was far preferable.

  He experienced that fear now, an emotional vestige of the Dream even more lasting than the nightmare images that remained in his head. It was terror and panic and impotence and frustration, all knotted together in a single overwhelming feeling that would not go away. It was the way he’d actually felt on that day, and though it was something he’d never forgotten, something that was never very far from his mind, the Dream always brought it into crystal-clear focus and made him relive it all over again.

  His mouth was dry, and he picked up the plastic tumbler next to his electric toothbrush and got a drink of water from the faucet. He didn’t like drinking bathroom water, which always seemed suspect to him, but he was grateful for it now.

  Switching off the light and poking his head back into the bedroom, he saw that Claire was still asleep. He would not be able to sleep for a while, maybe not for the rest of the night, and, not wanting to disturb her,
he crept through the bedroom and walked out to the living room, where he turned on the television, hoping for something to distract him. News was good, and he switched the channel to CNN. But there was no real news, only an in-depth update on a fame-seeking woman who had gained notoriety for having a lot of children. He flipped through other channels and ended up watching a documentary about ice fishing for twenty minutes or so before shutting off the TV.

  Still wide-awake, he decided to go upstairs and check on the kids: a habit left over from their early childhood that still gave him comfort. At the top of the steps, he heard murmuring from Megan’s room and smiled. She often talked in her sleep, one-sided conversations of several sentences, and while more often than not the words were gibberish, the sentences nonsense, occasionally he or Claire had been able to make out individual phrases that, when repeated to their daughter in the morning, jogged her memory and helped her recall her dreams. He moved quietly down the hall, careful not to wake either her or her brother.

  The talking continued, and Julian frowned as he drew closer. That didn’t sound like Megan’s voice. It didn’t even sound like a girl’s voice.

  It sounded like a man’s voice.

  He sprinted the last few feet to his daughter’s bedroom and, frantic, panicked, pushed open the door.

  She was asleep, in bed, alone. Enough light shone in from the hallway for him to see that there was no one else in the room, but just to make sure, he walked around to the other side of her bed and even crouched down on the floor to look under it. The talking had stopped, and he wondered whether he had imagined it. Probably not. Megan was a sleep talker. But some fearful part of his brain, stimulated perhaps by the Dream, had no doubt lowered her voice a few registers in his mind and given him the impression that a man was in her room.

  Moving quietly, he opened her closet and moved his hands through her clothes, feeling along the wall to make sure no one was hiding there. No one was. And the windows, when he checked them, were closed.

  Megan was safe and sound.

  He bent over her sleeping form and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. If she’d awakened at that moment, she would have recoiled and told him to go away, frowning in disgust. He felt a small twinge of sadness as he recalled how she used to like him to kiss her, especially before she went to sleep at night. He missed that younger Megan and wished, not for the first time, that she never had to grow up and would remain his little girl forever.

  He patted her back, then went over to James’s room to check on his son. The boy had kicked off his blanket and was sprawled out on his bed in what looked like a very uncomfortable position. Julian drew the blanket back up and kissed his son on the forehead. James wasn’t big on kissing, either, although right now he didn’t mind hugs. It was going to be sad when that changed.

  Just in case, he searched James’s room for an intruder, too. And though there was no way anyone could have passed by in the hall without his seeing it, he looked through his office and the bathroom as well.

  The upstairs was clear, all was safe, and Julian went back down the steps, returned to his bedroom, crawled in bed next to Claire and, though he expected to remain awake for at least another hour, promptly fell asleep.

  In the morning, he woke late, although it was a summer Saturday and so didn’t much matter. Claire was already up, her side of the bed cold, and the aroma of toasted blueberry bagel permeated the house. Julian pushed off the covers, put on his bathrobe and headed out to the kitchen, where he was greeted by empty plates in an empty breakfast nook. Through the windows, he could see Claire, still in her robe and slippers, checking out her herb garden. The kids, he assumed, were in their bedrooms getting dressed or in the family room watching TV.

  The package of precut bagels was still open on the counter, and he pulled two apart and popped them into the toaster oven, pouring himself some orange juice from a carton he took out of the refrigerator. As he waited for the bagels, he glanced over at the Nature Conservancy calendar Claire had tacked up on the wall next to the door. Beneath the July photo of a mother and baby coyote was a red X marking the date on which they’d moved into the house. It had been more than three weeks already, and he realized that they had yet to meet a single one of their neighbors. There’d been no welcome wagon when they’d arrived, no one had come over to say hello, and though Claire had made an effort to stop by the houses on both sides that first week, no one had been home. Things had been so hectic ever since, what with the unpacking and settling in, that they’d kind of forgotten about introducing themselves to the neighbors.

  Julian thought about the Willet boy and his skate-punk friends in their old neighborhood and decided that they really should try to get off on the right foot here. Today was as good a day as any, since they had no plans and would all be home. The toaster rang; he took out his bagels, buttered them, put them on a plate and walked barefoot into the backyard to discuss his thoughts with Claire. She, too, thought it would be a good idea to meet the neighbors, and they decided to visit the houses to either side of them around ten o’clock. It was a civilized hour, not too early, not too late.

  Before taking a shower, Julian told both kids the plan, warning them not to go anywhere, and though they each moaned and complained in their own unique ways, there was no real resistance, and he could tell that they were curious about the neighbors as well. There didn’t seem to be any kids on the street—a good thing, as far as he was concerned—but these days who could tell? The surrounding houses might be filled with boys and girls who spent their days bent over their DSs or playing with their Wiis or Xboxes, never seeing sunlight. In a way, he hoped that was the case. Especially for James’s sake. It would be nice for the boy to have a friend next door.

  Shortly after ten, all four of them walked over to the house on the north side of theirs, a single-story structure with an unimaginative but well-maintained lawn and an impressive picture window in the front. There was no vehicle in the driveway, but that didn’t mean the neighbors weren’t home. Maybe they parked their car in the garage. Or maybe the husband or the wife had gone to the store, and the remaining spouse was still at home. Or maybe they had a teenage son or daughter who had borrowed the family car to go somewhere with his or her friends.

  Thinking over the possibilities, Julian was struck not just by how little he knew about their neighbors but by how pathetically unobservant he was. They could be living next to a ninety-year-old widow, or a twenty-five-year-old bachelor, or a gay couple or an extended family of Chinese immigrants, and he wouldn’t know—even though he worked at home and was there almost all the time. It was embarrassing, really, and he vowed in the future to be a little more aware and try to pay attention to his surroundings.

  He let James ring the doorbell, and as they waited for someone to answer, Julian tried to peek through the picture window. The drapes were open, but it was dark inside the house and hard to see. He could make out a pale couch and a generic-looking lamp atop an unseen table.

  “I don’t think anyone’s home,” Claire said.

  Megan turned away. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait a minute.” Julian knocked on the door—loudly, in case the bell didn’t work and the residents were in the back of the house—then knocked again, but after several moments it became obvious that Claire was right. There was no one home.

  “Other neighbors,” Julian announced, and led the way back up the footpath to the sidewalk. The house on the other side of theirs did have a car in the driveway, he saw as they approached. A silver Toyota sedan that told him virtually nothing about the owners. He looked over the house. It was two stories and similar in style to theirs, the only other home on this eclectic block that appeared to have been built by the same contractor.

  Claire and the kids followed Julian as he strode up to the front door. Before he could even knock or ring the bell, the door was opened by a smiling bearded man his age or a little younger who was standing slightly in front of a short, chubby woman who was obviously his wife. T
he two must have seen them coming up the walk.

  “Hello,” the man said, extending a hand. “Nice to finally meet you. I’m Bob Ribiero and this is my wife, Elise. I know you moved in next door, and we’ve seen you around, but we didn’t want to bother you, wanted to give you a chance to settle in first.”

  Julian was slightly thrown off by the man’s earnestness, but he shook the proffered hand. “I’m Julian Perry. This is my wife, Claire, my daughter, Megan, and my son, James.”

  Bob remained where he was, and though he smiled and said hello to each member of the family, repeating their names as he did so, he made no effort to invite them in. His wife moved forward next to him, said hello as well, but it seemed to Julian that she had stepped up not to meet them but to block the doorway. Maybe it was nothing; maybe the house was just messy and they didn’t want visitors to see, but Julian felt awkward, and it was a struggle to keep a conversation going. He told them that he was a Web designer and Claire was a lawyer, found out that Bob ran a nonemergency medical transport service (“Basically, I drive old people to and from the doctor”) and that Elise did not work but volunteered a lot at their church. He also learned that the Ribieros had lived here for the past ten years, ever since they’d moved to Jardine from Alamogordo.

  Megan and James were getting fidgety, and Julian used them as an excuse to leave. Everyone said good-bye, promising that they’d get together soon, and Julian and Claire headed back home, the kids running ahead, grateful to be free.

  “They seem nice,” Claire said finally.

  Julian nodded. They did seem nice.

  But …

  But blocking the doorway was strange. And there was a reserve about everything Bob and Elise had said. It was almost as if they were hiding something, and he couldn’t help wondering what that something might be.

  Julian sat in his office, shades pulled against the setting sun, although orange light continued to seep between the cracks, striping the furniture and the opposite wall of the room with cinematically noirish bars. He was supposed to be working on a new project for an upscale retailer in Santa Fe, but for the past twenty minutes he’d been staring at the screen saver on his computer—twisting, multicolored, geometric designs—and zoning out. He sometimes got good ideas when allowing his mind to wander or go blank, but not today, and as the angle of the sun shifted, causing one of the orange light bars to cut across his field of vision, he thought that he might as well just call it a day. Claire’s parents were coming over tonight, along with her sister’s family, and he should probably head downstairs anyway.