The Haunted

by Bentley Little

  He sat down on the floor as his sister took out the cards, shuffled them, then dealt them. He was directly across from her, and before picking up his own pile, he watched her sort through her cards. Megan was not good at hiding her emotions, and he knew he’d be able to tell whether or not she’d gotten the Old Maid. Seeing her smile after she’d fanned out the cards in her hand, he knew that she hadn’t.

  And he had.

  He looked down at the flat blue backs of the cards on the floor before him, not wanting to pick them up, wishing he’d continued on to his own room, where, right now, he could be happily playing Star Wars on his DS, or LEGO Harry Potter. But he reached down, gathered up the cards from the floor and turned their faces toward him so Megan couldn’t see.

  There she was.

  Between Hungry Henry and Sleeping Sam was the wrinkled countenance of the Old Maid. He could see only the left half of her face, but that was enough. Divorced from its twin, her left eye had an even crueler cast, and the flat portion of wrinkled mouth that was visible seemed not merely angry but malevolent. He pushed Sleeping Sam over so that the dozing boy was covering the Old Maid, then sorted through the rest of his cards, looking for doubles. He found two sets and discarded them, then, holding the remaining cards in front of him, fanned them out in his right hand and told Megan to pick.

  Unfortunately, she did not pick the Old Maid. In fact, she never picked the Old Maid, and at the conclusion of a surprisingly short game, James ended up holding in his hand the one card he didn’t want. He turned it facedown, placing it atop his discards, then stood. “I don’t want to play anymore,” he said.

  Megan shrugged. “Fine. This is boring anyway.” She said it loud enough for their dad to hear, and once again James thought he was probably just a pawn in his sister’s bid for more freedom.

  He walked over to his room, automatically closing the door as he went in, and picked up his DS. Through the window, he saw an elderly couple walking down the sidewalk. The woman turned her head to look at their house, but James quickly looked away, not wanting to see her. In his mind, she looked like the Old Maid, and, feeling cold, he walked back across the room, opening the door wide before turning on his DS and hopping onto his bed.

  They ate that evening in the dining room. Ever since they’d moved, his mom had been on this kick, because she’d read somewhere or heard on the news that kids from families who ate dinner together every night turned out happier and more successful. In their old house, she’d been a lot more flexible. Sometimes he and Megan would eat in the living room and watch The Simpsons while his parents ate in the kitchen. Sometimes his dad would eat on the couch while watching the news or a basketball game. Sometimes James would play with his DS while he ate. Things weren’t so rigid then. But these days, they all ate together, and more often than not, James found himself wishing that they didn’t.

  Tonight, Megan kept kicking him under the table while maintaining an expression of calm interest on her face as their mom endlessly described a lawsuit she was working on. Finally, he’d had enough and kicked his sister back hard—but his foot missed and hit the leg of the table, causing his milk to spill and everyone’s chili beans to splash out of their bowls onto the tabletop. He got in trouble, despite his explanation, while across from him Megan smirked maddeningly.

  They didn’t speak to each other the rest of the evening, and James was happy when she went upstairs to her bedroom early. He remained with his parents, and the three of them watched TV together until his mom said, “It’s getting late, and you stayed up way past your bedtime last night. I think it’s time for you to go to bed.”

  He didn’t feel tired, and, truthfully, his mom seemed sleepier than he did, but he wanted to go to bed while they were still awake, so he said good night and headed up to his room. Megan was in the bathroom, so he changed into his pajamas first and, after she got out, went in to brush his teeth. Returning to his room, he pulled down the covers—

  And there, sitting on his pillow, was the Old Maid card.

  He cried out, startled, jumping back and practically tripping over the shoes he’d left in the middle of the floor. He knew it was just a joke, Megan’s doing, but his heart was pounding so hard that his chest hurt. He wasn’t sure how she knew he was afraid of the card, but obviously she did, and she’d put it here to scare him. Which it had.

  Breathing deeply, recovered from the initial shock, James took a step forward, intending to pick up the card, take it over to his sister’s room and throw it in her face.

  Only …

  Only it wasn’t the card from their deck. On his pillow, the creepy old woman wasn’t staring angrily out at him, the way she always had. She was smiling slyly, as though she knew something about James that no one else knew, something that she was going to use to hurt him.

  This grinning Old Maid was even creepier somehow, and looking at her hard eyes under arched eyebrows, he was almost afraid to pick the card up. But he did and turned it over, and the pattern on the back was exactly the same as on their deck. How was this possible? he wondered. Had his sister somehow altered the card? Had she secretly bought another deck with a different picture?

  Had Megan been involved at all?

  Logically, he didn’t see how she could be, but any alternative was too frightening to even contemplate.

  He still wanted to throw the card in her face, but instead he tore the card up, took it to the bathroom and flushed the pieces down the toilet, watching to make sure they all went down. Coming out, he saw that although Megan’s door was closed, the light was on in her room, and he felt like going over there and confronting her, demanding to know how that card had ended up on his pillow.

  But in the end, he went back into his bedroom without saying anything.

  Because he was afraid she didn’t know.

  Eight

  Saturday morning, Claire decided to sleep in. It had been a long week, and she’d stayed up late last night watching an old Audrey Hepburn movie after Julian had gone to bed. Sabrina. They didn’t make movies like that anymore. They didn’t make stars like that anymore. It was an old-lady thing to think, and she wondered idly whether she had been born in the wrong era, whether her taste in popular culture would have been more mainstream had she been born forty years earlier.

  There was noise from the kitchen, the exaggerated sounds of annoyed children forced to make their own breakfast, and Claire smiled, closed her eyes and promptly fell back asleep.

  When she finally woke up for good, the noises were gone and so, apparently, was her family. The house was quiet and felt empty, and when she called out, no one answered. She pushed off the covers, stood and picked up her bathrobe from the back of the chair next to the bed. She’d bought that chair at an antique store in Pasadena with money her parents had sent her for her twenty-fifth birthday, and she found herself wondering whether that antique store was still there. Back in California, on free Saturdays like this, she often used to go antiquing with her friends, not necessarily buying but looking, window-shopping, and that was something she genuinely missed. Although she had to admit that moving back to New Mexico had been the smartest move they’d ever made. Especially after …

  She didn’t even want to think about it.

  Staring out the window at an army of billowy clouds stretched across the endless deep blue sky, she realized how much she depended on this place—the land, the sky, the town—to keep her grounded and centered. She felt at home here, and if that meant that she had to give up some of the more sophisticated pleasures of the big city … well, it was a small price to pay.

  Although she was not sure Julian thought so. Oh, he claimed to like it here, and he never really complained, and he spent a lot of time with the kids, which seemed to make him happy. But even after all these years, he just didn’t seem to fit in here. Her family saw him as someone who was here only temporarily, who was enduring life in Jardine until he had the chance to move back to Los Angeles, and though they’d never really discussed it, C
laire thought that that was the way he saw himself, too.

  She walked out to the kitchen. According to the note he left, Julian had taken the kids to play miniature golf. They’d both earned free passes in the library’s summer reading program and had been begging him to take them for the past week. Claire was grateful for the time alone—there was a lot of housework she needed to catch up on—and she poured herself some orange juice, made herself some toast, and took her breakfast outside to eat on the picnic table in the backyard. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, the clouds were rolling across the sky. It was nice not having to listen to the noise of the television or the kids bickering or Julian commenting on whatever newspaper article he was reading.

  She ate slowly, leisurely, then brought her plate and glass back inside. As usual, everyone had piled their bowls and cups in the sink. She thought about putting them into the dishwasher, but it seemed like a waste to turn it on for such a small load, and she didn’t feel like letting them sit in the machine until she had enough for a full load, so she did what she usually did and washed the dishes by hand.

  Squeezing soap into the sink, Claire wondered whether Julian had bought refried beans yesterday when he’d gone to the store. She was planning on making tacos for lunch, and if he hadn’t, she needed to give him a call and tell him to pick up a few cans on his way home. She paused to check the cupboard, saw that they were set for dinner, and immediately started to plan out the meals for the rest of the week. She’d seen a story on the nightly news a few days ago that said more husbands were helping out with the cooking these days, that more couples were sharing household responsibilities, and she wondered on which planet that survey had been taken, because it certainly wasn’t true for her or anyone she knew. Even though Julian was home all day, he never lifted a finger to help around the house unless she yelled at him.

  Returning to the sink, Claire turned off the water, picked up a sponge and started to wash the dishes. She stared out of the window at the empty backyard. No one was out there, but it felt as though someone was watching her, and, involuntarily, she glanced over at the door that led to the basement.

  She didn’t like the basement.

  She knew how irrational that was, but it didn’t make it any less true. From the first day they’d moved into this house, she’d found the cellar creepy. Most of it was probably cultural accumulation: all those horror movies about monsters living in basements, all those news stories about old ladies who killed their tenants and buried the bodies in their cellars, or those insane men who impregnated their own daughters and kept them chained up for years under their houses. But there seemed something off about the room itself. As a lawyer, she was used to dealing with facts. And she was not by nature a touchy-feely kind of person. But she got a vibe off the basement, a feeling that the room had been used in the past for unsavory purposes.

  She hadn’t said a word about this to Julian, who would have laughed at her, or to the kids, who would have been spooked, but she’d considered speaking to the realtor shortly after they’d moved in, to find out whether anything untoward had occurred in that spot. In the end, however, she hadn’t made the effort. It would have been too embarrassing. Besides, what would she have done if something weird had happened in the basement? Insist to Julian that they sell the house immediately? Try to sue the realtor or the seller for lack of full disclosure? She’d have no grounds.

  No doubt this was all just a result of overactive imagination.

  She rinsed off a cup, glanced again at the closed door.

  Actually, earlier in the week, she’d had a dream about the basement, probably just a stress dream related to work and the unusually difficult Seaver divorce case she was handling, but no less unnerving for that. In the dream—nightmare, really—the basement had been used not for storage but as a pantry. This was where they kept their foodstuffs, and she was going down to get a package of spaghetti when the door slammed shut behind her. Startled, she nearly fell down the steps. “Hey!’ she called out, but there was no response. She suddenly felt scared, and almost turned around, but she was close to the bottom, and instead hurriedly stepped onto the cellar floor, intending to grab the spaghetti and head back up.

  The light went out.

  She let out a startled cry, stumbling and nearly falling.

  Within the basement, something moved. She felt it as much as heard it, but she heard it, too. A shifting, a rustling. She was about to yell for help when she saw a lightening in the darkness before her. Teeth. An eerie white smile.

  And then a hard hand grabbed her wrist.

  And then she woke up.

  For several seconds after she awoke, Claire had difficulty determining where she was. She could still feel that hard hand holding her, still smell in her nostrils that musty cellar odor. But though the bedroom was just as dark as the basement had been, she was lying down, in her nightshirt, in her bed. Julian was next to her. Gradually, her brain sorted through the details of the two competing realities, and she came to realize that she had been asleep and dreaming. She had not been in the basement at all. It had just been a nightmare.

  Ever since, however, the basement had made her even more nervous than before. She made an extra effort now to steer clear of the door that led to it.

  Claire finished washing the dishes, rinsing them and setting them to dry on the plastic rack. She wasn’t sure when Julian and the kids would be back, but thought she might sweep and mop the floors before they arrived, so she dried her hands on the dish towel hanging on the hook next to the stove and walked out into the hall—

  Where the laundry basket was sitting on the floor.

  She stopped, stared, her heart pounding. It had not been there earlier. She had walked down the hallway from the bedroom to the kitchen, and the floor had been clear. The basket had been in a cupboard in the laundry room, where she’d put it away after last washing a batch of clothes two days ago.

  Claire knew the house was empty. No one else was here. No one could have done this. Still, she checked the front and back doors, went from room to room, upstairs and down, even peeking into the basement, but she was alone. She ended up in the hallway again, in front of the laundry basket, staring at the empty rectangle of white plastic.

  A chill washed over her, a feeling she had not experienced since … since …

  She took a deep breath.

  “Miles?” she said softly.

  “Do you feel anything at our house?”

  “Not this again.”

  Claire and her sister were standing in their parents’ backyard, looking toward the mountains. Behind them, their father was weeding the garden. Their mother was in the house, preparing lunch. Claire had come over because she knew Diane would be here—it was her weekend to check in with the folks—and she hadn’t wanted to remain home by herself. She’d left a note for Julian telling him where she was, and her cell phone was on, but so far he hadn’t called.

  “I was alone in the house this morning,” Claire told her sister, keeping her voice low so their father couldn’t hear. “And I found the laundry basket in the middle of the hall. It wasn’t there ten minutes before. I was the only one in the house.”

  “Maybe—”

  “No!” Claire insisted. She lowered her voice. “It’s not the first time it’s happened.” She explained how she’d come home last week after they’d gone to lunch and found the laundry basket in the middle of the kitchen. Then she described how Julian’s record had played itself, though no one was upstairs and Julian was out of the house.

  “Every time you move, you do this. Look, your new house isn’t haunted, your old house wasn’t haunted, and I’m beginning to think there wasn’t anything at your place in California.” She shot Claire a quick apologetic look. “Sorry.”

  Claire sighed, shook her head. “That’s okay.”

  “You do this all the time.”

  “Maybe you’re right. It’s just—”

  “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t
even say it.”

  The two of them were silent, remembering. Behind them, they heard their father’s trowel digging into the dirt.

  “Hey,” Diane said, changing the subject, “did you hear about Mr. Otano at the library? He’s being laid off. Budget cuts.”

  “He’s been there since we were little.”

  “They’re only going to be open Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with one part-time librarian and the rest volunteers.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Remember when I was thinking of being a librarian?” Diane shook her head. “I’m glad I didn’t go into that field.”

  “I always thought it suited you better, though.”

  Diane shrugged. “People don’t read anymore. But the demand for electricity only goes up.”

  “Depressing but true.”

  The two of them walked back into the house to help their mother set the table for lunch. She’d told them she’d be making BLT sandwiches, but when they entered the kitchen, she was heating up barley soup on the stove. A flicker of worry crossed Claire’s mind. Both she and Diane were concerned that their mother had started to forget things lately, and she hoped this was just a result of not having the right ingredients for her original meal rather than a symptom of memory loss. She shot Diane a look, received and acknowledged, and, clearing her throat, said, “I thought we were having sandwiches, Mom.”

  Their mother looked up, startled to see them. “Oh!” She smiled. “You’re right. We were. But I found out that we were out of bacon. And tomatoes.”

  Relieved, Claire went over to the sink to wash her hands, and she and her sister started setting the table, Diane getting out the bowls and cups, Claire taking care of the silverware and napkins. Ten minutes later, their father was called in, and all four of them sat down.

  They discussed family matters as they ate, in-laws and grandkids, gossip, until her dad, sipping his soup, frowned at Claire. “You know,” he said, “I had a dream about your house the other night.”