The Haunted

by Bentley Little

  They all grew quiet.

  The man was dressed in heavy clothing, inappropriate for the weather, and he moved slowly, as though his legs did not work properly. Claire tried desperately to figure out who he was, but it was hard to see his face because the hallway was so dark. Too dark, she thought, and she realized that once again something was wrong with the lights, although this time they were merely dim, not flickering.

  The shambling figure moved slowly toward the living room.

  Claire squinted into the gloom, but his features grew no clearer to her. It was as though she needed glasses, and while he continued to come nearer, his face never emerged fully enough from the shadows for him to become recognizable. His clothes were sharply defined, however, and she thought there was something familiar about them, although she could not immediately say what.

  Gasps greeted his appearance as the man shuffled into the living room.

  Now he could be seen. People were moving away, backing up. It was a face that should have remained in darkness. Dark, sunken eyes revealed no whites. A flattened nose seemed lost amid the swollen folds of mottled flesh that made up the forehead, cheeks and chin. The mouth, too large, was grinning, teeth inappropriately bright. Behind her, the front door opened, then closed as someone left.

  Escaped.

  The man stopped. She recognized him now. She still had no idea where she had seen those clothes before, but that grinning mouth was unmistakable. This was the man from her nightmare, the man from the basement.

  Someone else left the house.

  Claire stared in horror. That grinning mouth was opening impossibly wide, wider than the muscles of his face should have been able to stretch. From it issued that horrifying roar, only, this close, the volume was practically unbearable.

  The lights went out, and the house was thrown into darkness. Someone screamed. Seconds later, the lights came on again and the figure was gone. Everyone was looking around frantically, afraid he might suddenly pop up right behind them, but there was no sign of the man.

  Cole was the first one to speak. He was close by, and he turned to Julian. “That’s the man who died in your house.”

  Claire had no idea what he was referring to, but she knew he was saying that the man was a ghost, and she looked at Julian. “See?” she said. “What did I tell you?” She was breathing heavily, as though she’d just run up several flights of stairs. She could hear the amplified sound of her crazy-pumping heart in her ears.

  The party was breaking up. People were leaving without saying good-bye, and the few who did stop to speak with them made no mention of what had happened, simply offered perfunctory congratulations before they quickly departed, like guests ashamed of a drunken host’s behavior. In moments, the house was all but empty.

  Rick, surprisingly, was the only one with an honest reaction. He was the last to leave, and he shook his head as he looked back toward the hall. “What the hell was that?” he said.

  Claire and Julian shrugged helplessly.

  “That was a fuckin’ ghost, man. We all saw it.”

  It felt good to hear the word spoken, even if it was by Rick.

  “Shit! Did anyone get a picture? I didn’t even think about it. I shoulda whipped out my phone. Did anybody else take one?”

  “I don’t know,” Julian admitted.

  “People always wonder why those UFO photos are always grainy and shit, why no one ever gets a good picture of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or whatever. It’s because when it’s happening, when it’s going down, you don’t think of stuff like that. You’re too scared to even move.”

  “You’re right,” Claire told him.

  “But we were here,” Rick said. “We saw it. All of us. So don’t go second-guessing yourself tomorrow, telling yourself you imagined it or it didn’t really happen. It happened. I’m a witness. That was no figment of your imagination. That was a ghost. And there were a good dozen or so people who stood here and watched the whole thing.”

  “He’s right.”

  Surprised, Rick turned to see who had spoken. Cole Hubbard was standing on the stoop behind him, and Claire wondered whether he had gone and come back or had been there the entire time. She could not recall seeing him leave.

  “That was a ghost,” Cole said. “And we all saw it.” He looked from Julian to Claire. “I can’t say I’m all that surprised, and probably most of the other neighbors aren’t, either. In fact, that might even be the reason some of them came.” He motioned toward the two houses on either side of theirs. “Or didn’t come.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rick said.

  “A lot of old neighborhoods have a ‘haunted’ house. Well, this is ours.”

  “I told you.” Claire faced Julian. “I told you.”

  “You want my advice?” Cole said. “Sell the house. Sell it now before the word spreads. Get out while you can.”

  Sixteen

  They weren’t saying anything to Megan or James. Julian was adamant about that. They didn’t know what was really going on here, he argued, and he didn’t want to frighten the kids needlessly.

  Though initially reluctant, Claire finally agreed. “But we do know what’s going on here,” she told him pointedly. “Our house is haunted. We saw a ghost. We all saw a ghost.”

  “Not necessarily,” he argued. “There were a lot of people, some of them who weren’t invited. You caught that man in James’s room. This guy might’ve been a party crasher, too. Everyone had had a little too much to drink; those lights were flickering. We might not’ve seen what we thought we saw. And when the lights went out, he might’ve just gone out the back door.”

  “Come on! This wasn’t some teenage keg party. Guys from other neighborhoods weren’t sneaking into our house to meet chicks and score free booze. This was a housewarming party with a countable number of people attending. And just because I didn’t recognize that man in James’s room doesn’t mean you didn’t invite him. I’m pretty sure he’s a neighbor. But that ghost …” She glared at him. “Cole said it was a man who died in our house. You didn’t even tell me about that.”

  “I didn’t know,” he lied.

  “Right.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I don’t care right now. But I do think Cole’s right. I think we should sell the house.”

  Julian sighed. “We just bought it. We can’t—”

  “We can’t what? Sell it? Of course we can. We’ll find another house.”

  “We can’t afford it.”

  “Our house is haunted! What part of that don’t you understand?”

  “Even if it is haunted,” he told her, “and I’m not saying it is, a ghost can’t hurt anyone. They might frighten people, but they can’t physically harm a person.”

  “Fear can cause heart attacks. And ghosts can make people trip and fall if they startle them. If they can also play records and move laundry baskets …” She exhaled heavily, disgusted. “I’m not going to argue with you about the physical properties of ghosts. What I’m saying is, I’m not going to live in a haunted house.”

  “You’re going to have to. Look, I don’t have any jobs lined up after this one. And the town of Jardine is not exactly a hotbed of legal activity, so your phone’s not ringing off the hook, either. We have to be realistic. If we were in California, we might both have enough business that we could afford a do-over. But right now, that’s not an option. We have enough money coming in, and in the bank, to make our house payments and pay our monthly bills, with a little bit left over. But that’s it. The down payment for this place pretty much cleaned us out. We can’t afford to do it again. Or pay all those points and fees. Even if we did qualify for another loan. So we can’t just pull up stakes and move. It’s financially impossible.”

  He could tell from the expression on her face that he’d gotten through to her, but she wasn’t going to simply give up. “Contracts are made to be broken,” she said. “I should know. I’m a lawyer.”

  “And you can someh
ow weasel us out of those hundreds of pages of rules and obligations that we signed? That you signed? Face it, unless we win the lottery, or Bill Gates hires you as his personal attorney and hires me to completely revamp Microsoft’s Web presence, we’re stuck here. At least for now.”

  “Fine,” she said. “But we need to come up with a plan. I don’t feel safe here. And even if we don’t tell the kids anything—yet—they need to be protected.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So … ?”

  “So we keep our eyes open. We try to find out ourselves exactly what’s going on, research the house, the neighborhood, whatever, and we make sure that Megan and James are never in the house alone, especially at night.”

  “That’s about the lamest plan I ever heard,” Claire said. But she didn’t have anything better, and, for the moment at least, they seemed to have called a truce.

  It was daytime, though. Morning. Tonight would be a different story, and he had no doubt that, mentally and psychologically, they would each end up facing once again what had happened. Megan and James would be home as well, and as he thought about it now, it seemed to him that their bedrooms upstairs were much too far away from the master bedroom.

  He wasn’t about to mention that, however. He might be just as frightened as Claire, but it was his job to be strong, not only for her but for the whole family, and he needed to put a good face on everything, needed to pretend this was no big deal.

  He had expected Claire to get up from the couch and leave, to get a drink or go to the bathroom or start doing the breakfast dishes or do whatever it was she would usually do when a conversation was over. But she remained in place, and there was a look on her face that he didn’t trust. He knew even before she spoke that he was not going to like what she was about to say, a feeling that intensified when she met his gaze, then immediately looked away. “You know,” she said, “I thought for a while that it might be Miles. Obviously, it’s not,” she added quickly. “But …” She let the thought dangle.

  Julian didn’t trust himself to speak.

  “I’ve thought I’ve felt him before. Not just here and not just on Farris Street, but back in California, in our old house.” She spoke rapidly, as though afraid he might cut her off. “I’ve never seen him, but there’ve been signs. Little indications that he was around, watching over us. I know you’ve seen them, too. Or heard them. Or felt them. And that last time? I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I just … I just wanted to tell you. I guess I wanted to know if you were thinking the same thing.”

  She looked at him hopefully, but he turned away, unable to face her. Of course he’d thought the same thing, but he’d never allowed himself to dwell on it, and he would never admit it to her. Even now, the tears were close, and he forced his mind to change the subject, think about something else, before his eyes overflowed and he started to cry and he found himself unable to stop.

  He stood.

  Claire reached for his hand. “Julian? It’s all right. We can talk about it.”

  He shook his head, unable to speak for fear that emotion might overwhelm him, and she let go of his hand, nodded. “Okay,” she said.

  He was the one who went into the kitchen to get a drink, and he picked up his orange juice glass from the counter, rinsed it out in the sink, filled it with water and drank it down as he stared out at the backyard.

  Some feelings never went away.

  Claire came in to do the dishes, and he went back out to the living room to read the newspaper, both of them pretending this was an ordinary morning and nothing unusual had happened.

  He finished the paper while she was still working in the kitchen, and he called out that he was going upstairs to work, could she answer the phone if it rang. He had always been able to lose himself in a project, and today was no exception. Nearly two hours passed before Claire came upstairs and he finally looked up from his computer monitor.

  He stood, stretching, and glanced down at the lower right corner of his screen. It was almost time to pick up the kids. The phone must have rung without his hearing it, because Claire said her parents had invited them over for a barbecue lunch. Luckily, Julian was behind in his work and nearing another deadline, so he had a legitimate reason not to go.

  “I’ll give them your regrets,” Claire said dryly.

  “Do that. Let them know I wish I could be there; I really do.”

  “You don’t have to be such a jerk about it.”

  “Okay,” he apologized, but inside he was smiling.

  She walked over to his desk and gave him a kiss, a real kiss, and he understood that there was no lingering resentment from their earlier discussion; everything was all right between them. It made him feel good, and he realized how lucky he was to have Claire. He vowed to spend the afternoon researching the history of the house, as he said he would. He should have done so already, but he really did have an impending deadline, and, as usual, he’d been laser-focused on his work to the exclusion of everything else.

  Claire said good-bye and was getting ready to leave when she paused in the doorway. “Do you really feel safe staying here?” she asked. “All alone?”

  He didn’t, but he wasn’t about to admit that, so he lied, nodding. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  As soon as she was gone, however, he became acutely aware of the fact that he was the only one home. The house seemed unnaturally quiet, and he could not help thinking of that shambling figure from the night before, imagining it shuffling slowly up the stairs, moving inexorably down the short hall to his office.

  A car honked outside, and Julian jumped in his seat.

  He wanted to laugh at himself for being so jittery but couldn’t. He had legitimate reason to be nervous, and he saved what was on his screen and went through the house room by room, checking to make sure he really was alone here. He even inspected the basement, not going into it but standing at the top of the stairs, turning on the lights and looking down, although just being this close to the room made him uneasy.

  As far as he could tell, the house was clean (as the psychic in Poltergeist so confidently and incorrectly stated), and back upstairs, he put on a record, something happy—Beat Crazy by Joe Jackson—cranking it up to drown out any creaking or settling sounds the building might make. Sinking into his seat, he stared for several moments at his computer screen, wondering how he should start his research. Gillette, the realtor, sure didn’t want to talk to him again, and the previous owners had done everything in their power to make themselves untraceable. But if he could get a list of previous owners, maybe he could wrangle some information out of them.

  Accessing the county recorder’s Web site, he found several names and addresses, going all the way back to 1979, but when he tried to follow up, the addresses were revealed to be out-of-date, and the individuals proved impossible to track, except for one—who happened to have died.

  It was after noon, and Julian was getting hungry. So he took a break and went downstairs to make himself a sandwich. Once again, the house seemed too quiet, and he turned on the television in the living room, switching the channel to CNN and boosting the volume so he could hear it in the kitchen. He’d intended to eat at the breakfast table, the way he usually did, but the closed door of the basement was in his peripheral vision, and he felt more comfortable going into the dining room. He could see the TV here as well, and watching opposing pundits, framed by red, white and blue graphics as they discussed the president’s current approval ratings, made him feel relaxed and reassured.

  Biting into his sandwich, Julian pondered what his next move should be. He thought he might—

  A knock on the dining room window made him jump.

  Looking up, he saw a man with a knife standing in the side yard and peering into the house.

  Julian jerked back from his chair as though he’d been sitting on hot coals. The man staring in at him was dressed in torn jeans and a faded Willie Nelson T-shirt, wearing a yellow baseball cap with the brim anachronistically pointed in the wrong d
irection. He was frowning, and under his furrowed brow, his eyes were darting back and forth, taking in everything. The long knife in his hand glinted in the midday sun.

  The windows were all closed to keep the coolness in, luckily, and Julian ran to the kitchen door to make sure it was locked, then ran to the front door to do the same. He grabbed the phone to call 911.

  The crazy man was still at the window. The look on his face was one of dumb fascination, like Frankenstein watching a domestic scene that he didn’t understand, but at least he wasn’t trying to break into the house.

  “I’m calling the police!” Julian announced loudly, and just at that moment, a dispatcher came on the line. Julian quickly gave his name and address, and before the woman could ask what was wrong, he told her that there was a lunatic with a knife standing in his yard and spying on him through a window. The dispatcher asked him to stay on the line, but Julian ignored her. He put the phone faceup on a table so she could hear what was going on, then ran back into the kitchen, where he opened the knife drawer, trying to find his own weapon, just in case. None of their knives were big enough to ensure victory in a fight, however, and he changed his mind, hurrying over to the broom closet, where he took out both a broom and a mop. Each of them had a long handle, and while he doubted that either of them would be able to deal any lethal blows, he could use them to bat the knife out of the man’s hand, hit his head or even spear into his stomach.

  Broom in his left hand, mop in his right, both of them held backward, sticks out, he hurried back into the dining room, where the man was—

  Gone!

  No. He had merely moved over to the other pane. He was still standing at the window. “Let me in!” he called, and his voice was neither as demanding as the request would seem to require nor as flat as the expression on his face would indicate. Indeed, the voice did not seem to match the person, and that dichotomy made the situation seem even more threatening and unnerving.

  Julian remained in place, both makeshift weapons held tight.