The police arrived moments later. They came in two cars, sirens wailing, tires screeching, but nothing scared the man off. He was still there when Julian ran out the front door to meet the officers and tell them where the intruder was, and although the man did not run away, he also did not comply when a policeman, gun drawn, ordered him to drop the knife. He was still holding the weapon and staring in the window as he was subdued and the knife taken from him.
Julian had never had a reason to call the police before, and his preconceptions came entirely from movies and television shows. Although he’d expected either arrogance or hostility, he encountered neither, and he was impressed by not only the officers’ levelheaded competence but the experienced efficiency with which they handled the situation.
The intruder, who refused to give his name, was handcuffed, arrested and driven away by two of the officers, while two others remained behind to take Julian’s statement.
“How long is he going to stay in jail?” Julian asked. “You’re not just going to book him and then let him out on bail, are you? Because I’m afraid he’d come right back here. And if my wife and kids were home …” He left the thought unfinished.
“He was captured during the commission of a crime,” said the lead officer, George Rodriguez, a stocky young man with a thick black mustache. “So no, that’s not going to happen. He might get bail, but by the looks of him, I doubt if he could make it. He also seems more than a little disturbed, so we’re going to recommend a psych evaluation, which will keep him locked up for a minimum of seventy-two hours.”
“Seventy-two hours? That’s all? And after that … ?”
“My guess is that he’ll fail the psych test,” Rodriguez said reassuringly. “And we have him dead to rights on trespassing and threatening an officer. He’s not getting out anytime soon. Don’t worry about that.”
Julian nodded, answering the rest of the questions he was asked. But he did worry, and after they were gone, after he was given a business card and a case number and told that he could pick up a copy of the report at the police station tomorrow, he stood in the front yard, looking at the house, trying to assess how secure it was against intruders, wondering whether he should keep some type of weapon handy. He wasn’t a gun guy, but having a baseball bat next to his bed or beside the front door couldn’t hurt.
Thank God Claire and the kids weren’t here.
Still, he wasn’t sure how he could keep this from them, or whether he should, and, instinctively, he glanced around. Had anyone else on the street noticed? If any of their neighbors were home, they certainly had. But it was the middle of the day and most people were at work, and the sirens and police cars hadn’t drawn any attention. He was most likely safe. Besides, after last night’s entertainment, the neighbors with whom they would have been likely to socialize were probably planning to keep a safe distance from his family and their house.
Julian walked back inside, his eyes drawn to the dining room window. Eventually, he decided, he would tell Claire. But not right away, not after what had happened last night. She needed some breathing room, some time to adjust. A one-two punch like this would just knock her flat.
He was too jittery and wound up to stay seated in front of a computer for the rest of the afternoon, and he scarfed down his sandwich, gulped down his Coke, then called Claire and told her he would be out for the next few hours, running errands. He wanted to tell her not to come home, to stay away, some primitive part of his brain believing that even with the would-be attacker arrested and in jail, their house was still not safe. But he said nothing to her about it, just said good-bye and hung up.
He actually had no errands to run, no place to go, nothing to do, so he drove over to Rick’s print shop. As he’d hoped, his friend was between jobs, sitting in the office watching TV and waiting for customers, and he looked up when the buzzer sounded over the door and Julian walked in. “Dude!”
“Hey,” Julian said, already wondering whether he’d made a mistake in coming here.
“Want me to print up some flyers for an exorcist? Friend’s discount.” He laughed, but there was an uneasiness in the laughter, and it was all Julian could do to force a smile.
Rick stood, shutting off the TV. “Seriously, is that why you’re here? Because of what happened last night?”
“No. Because of what happened today.”
Rick’s eyes widened. “Are you shittin’ me?”
Julian looked at him. “Yes. Yes, I am. I’m shitting you. You are emerging from my asshole even as we speak.”
“You know what I mean.”
“That’s such a stupid phrase.”
“Give me a break. I just wanted to know if you were bullshitting me. Is that better?”
“It is, actually.” Julian allowed himself a small smile, but it faded fast. He took a deep breath. “A guy with a knife tried to break into my house at lunch.”
“Holy fuck!”
Julian ran through the whole story. “They’ve arrested the guy. He’s in jail.”
“For how long? And what’ll he do when he gets out?” Rick leaned forward. “Do you think this is connected to the ghost?”
Julian sighed. “I don’t know. Everything’s just a big goddamn mess. I haven’t even told Claire about it yet. Not sure if I’m going to.”
“You want my advice? Don’t. She was genuinely freaked-out last night. Something like this …”
“I was thinking that, too. But she has to know. I mean, what if they release the guy and he comes back and tells her—I don’t know—that he’s a new neighbor or something. She needs to know enough to protect herself. And Megan and James.”
“You’re right, you’re right.”
“But maybe I should wait a few days. Maybe this isn’t the right time.”
“Your call, dude.”
It was irresponsible of him to be here. He had work to do and a deadline to meet. But he did not want to go home, and he was glad he’d come to the print shop. It felt good to be hanging with Rick, relaxing, and he ended up staying for most of the afternoon.
Claire and the kids were home when Julian returned, and somehow having them in the house made everything seem more normal, made the craziness of last night and earlier today seem like they had happened in some other place at some other time. Both Megan and James were in the living room when he walked in, Megan lounging on the couch watching an obnoxious sitcom, James on the floor, playing with his DS. Claire was in the kitchen, cooking something that smelled delicious and that turned out to be jambalaya. She still looked worried, but she smiled at him when he entered the kitchen, and he gave her a quick peck. “Everything all right?”
She looked around, her gaze indicating the entire house surrounding them. “So far.”
“How’re your parents?”
“Don’t even pretend to be interested,” she told him.
He laughed, though he didn’t really feel like laughing. In an hour or so, they would be eating dinner. In the dining room.
Where that lunatic with the knife had been staring in at him.
What would happen if the man did get out on bail, if the cops couldn’t hold him, if he was let out on the streets again?
Julian didn’t want to think about it. He got himself a beer from the refrigerator and walked back out to the living room, but the homey domesticity of a few moments before had disappeared, and now he saw his children as fish in a barrel, waiting to be shot. It was all he could do to pick up a section of the newspaper that he hadn’t yet read, sit down on the chair opposite the couch and scan today’s headlines.
It was almost a normal evening. Maybe it was normal for Megan and James, but he and Claire had to work hard to maintain that surface regularity, and while several times the routine unfolded naturally enough to feel organic, by the time the kids went to bed, his muscles were tense, and he had the beginnings of a headache.
When he went into the kitchen to take an Advil, he avoided looking at the basement door.
Stress was supposed to i
nhibit libido, but, inexplicably, he found himself aroused, and while Claire was in the shower, Julian took off his clothes and began masturbating, stroking himself until he was hard. He thought about finishing before she came out, but then had a better idea and forced himself on her while she was brushing her teeth. She’d already showered but had not yet put on her underwear or nightgown, and when he opened the bathroom door, he saw her standing naked before the sink, her beautiful pale ass shining out at him.
Within seconds, he was across the small room and behind her, adjusting himself and shoving into the first hole available.
“Nmmmn!” she grunted through the toothpaste, trying to swat him away, but already he was thrusting, and she dropped the toothbrush in the sink, crying out, though whether from pleasure or pain he could not tell.
And did not care.
She held on to the sides of the sink with both hands to steady herself, and he plunged deep, taking her hard and fast until, finally, he exploded inside her.
Without saying a word, Claire picked up her toothbrush and resumed brushing, while he pulled a length of toilet paper from the roll and used it to wipe himself off.
Julian walked back out to the bedroom.
That definitely wasn’t normal.
He lay down on the bed. What was wrong with them? He didn’t know, but he didn’t want to think about it. All roads led back to the house, to the man’s voice in Megan’s room, to James eating dirt, to that shambling horror from the party. Whatever was haunting this house—and he agreed that something was—it did not just rattle its chains and moan, like a specter in a movie. It affected them, their dreams, their thoughts, their actions. That made it more dangerous, but also more difficult to detect, and he wondered now whether he had done or said other things not of his own volition, things he might not have noticed or recognized at the time. Had he really wanted to stay here this afternoon instead of going with Claire to her parents’ house? Had he even wanted the pancakes he’d had for breakfast? Why had he chosen the room he had for his office?
Julian forced himself to drop this line of reasoning before it headed into craziness and obsession. This was not the time to go there. He would revisit it tomorrow, when his mind was clearer. Right now, he needed to get some rest.
He thought it would be hard to fall asleep, but it wasn’t. He dozed off immediately, and was dead to the world well before Claire came out of the bathroom.
He dreamed about the house.
Seventeen
The plants in the backyard were dead.
Every last one of them.
James was the first one to discover it. He saw it initially from the kitchen window while pouring himself a glass of orange juice, and if he had needed any proof that the thing in their house had the power to carry out its threats, the simultaneous expiration of every single living organism between the house, the garage and the alley was it. Stunned, still in pajamas and slippers, he stepped outside onto the patio, looking across the suddenly brown grass to the spiny, leafless twigs that had been the rosebushes, and the dead hedges that ringed the border of the property. It was impossible, but he could see that it had happened, and he felt a chill in his bones as he surveyed the lifeless yard.
His parents were still asleep, but Megan was up, and he went back inside, intending to show her what had happened, but at the last minute, he changed his mind. She was sitting on the floor of the living room, leaning over the coffee table as she ate her Honey Nut Cheerios, and the way she looked up at him when he walked in, the worry he saw on her face, made him decide against telling her anything.
He turned away, heading back into the kitchen, where he made his own breakfast of cocoa and toast, which he ate while staring out the window at the yard.
Both he and Megan had been walking on eggshells for the past week, spending as much time as possible at their friends’ homes, not using phones or computers, not saying anything within the walls of their house that could be overheard by … it.
He was living the most stressful existence imaginable, and if he didn’t have a heart attack, he was going to get an ulcer. He and Megan avoided each other, afraid to communicate by either speech or note, and for the first time in his life he was really looking forward to the beginning of school. The chance to be away from the house nearly all day, five days a week, sounded like heaven, and already he was considering joining after-school clubs, programs or teams in order to stay out even longer.
His dream was to move again—even returning to their old neighborhood would be better than this—but he could figure out no way to facilitate such an outcome. His parents seemed to like it here, and, after they’d invested so much money in the place, it was highly unlikely that they’d be willing to give it up.
He did tell his mom and dad when they woke up several minutes later, showing them through the window what had happened. Still afraid that he was being watched, that his every word and gesture were under scrutiny, James did not editorialize, did not indicate that he was frightened or that he thought anything out of the ordinary had occurred. He just stated the facts, letting them draw their own conclusions, hoping those conclusions would be the right ones. But his parents looked at each other as though they’d already known about this, or at least knew what had caused it, and instead of the shock and disbelief for which he’d been hoping, there was only a grim matter-of-factness as they talked about how much work it would be to replace the plants.
Megan came into the kitchen to rinse out her cereal bowl, heard what they were talking about and looked out the window for herself, but she said nothing, offered no opinion, simply shot James a quick frightened look and then moved on.
He had to talk to someone; he couldn’t keep everything bottled up like this forever, and later that morning, he finally told Robbie about all that had happened.
But he told Robbie at his house.
They were hanging out in Robbie’s room, and the conversation drifted around to the headquarters and their detective agency, which neither of them seemed to be very excited about anymore. James sensed some ambivalence in his friend, maybe even a trace of fear, and without preamble, he said, “My house is haunted,” and blurted everything out. The words tumbled from his mouth as though poured from a pitcher, events out of sequence, descriptions over thoughts over feelings. He received no ridicule, just nods of acknowledgment that told him his friend had some of the same misgivings and had experienced the same sorts of feelings he had.
James had started with the text threat on Megan’s phone, and he ended with it as well, explaining for probably the third or fourth time that he was afraid to even think bad thoughts in their house. “Like that Twilight Zone,” he said, although Robbie didn’t get the reference.
“I knew there was something wrong,” Robbie admitted. “All that stuff with the dirt. It’s why I didn’t want to do that anymore.”
James thought of their headquarters, of the displayed skeletons he had unearthed, and he shivered. “Yeah, but I have to live there.”
“What are you going to do?” Robbie asked seriously.
James shook his head. “I don’t know. What can I do?”
“I think you should tell your parents.”
“I’ll be dead. It said, ‘I’ll kill you both.’ There’s no room for interpretation of that.”
“But can it?”
“I was almost buried alive!”
Robbie leaned forward. “But you did that to yourself. Okay, maybe it somehow got into your mind and made you want to go into that hole, but it couldn’t come out and get you. No one in your family’s been harmed. I don’t think it can do it.”
James remembered the panicked, desperate feeling of having the dirt fall in on him and shook his head. “No.”
“Then tell them outside your house, like you’re telling me. When you’re at the store with your dad or something.”
For a brief second, there was a ray of hope. But it quickly faded. “Then my dad would try to do something. Or tell my mom. And i
t would know. And then it would get me. Me and Megan.”
“What do you think it is, anyway?” Robbie asked. “A ghost? Some sort of demon? What?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you must’ve thought about it.”
“Maybe it’s the house itself. Like in Monster House or something.”
“Maybe,” Robbie said thoughtfully.
“I just don’t know what we can do about it. Except move. And that’s not going to happen. Who knows? Maybe even if we did move, it would follow us.”
“We’ll think of something. Both of us are on the case now.” Robbie smiled. “The R.J. Detective Agency in our first and biggest mystery.”
James tried to smile back, but he didn’t feel like smiling. He wasn’t sure Robbie understood the scope of this thing. Sure, his friend believed him and was scared of the house, but this was big, this was deep, and there was no way two kids could stop something of this magnitude.
“I’m thirsty,” James said. “Do you have anything to drink?”
“Hawaiian Punch.”
They walked out to the kitchen, where Robbie’s mom was talking on the phone. After lunch, she was going to take them to go swimming, and if he played his cards right, James thought he might be able to finagle an invitation to dinner. He wanted to put off going home for as long as possible. Especially now. Spilling his guts to Robbie made him feel as though he’d broken the rules, and he couldn’t help thinking that he would be punished as soon as he got home. He dreaded the thought of returning.
He accepted a glass of Hawaiian Punch and took a big drink, then nearly choked as a terrible idea abruptly occurred to him.
What if he’d already been punished? What if Megan had just fallen down the stairs and broken her neck? What if he returned to find his parents dead? He was filled with a sudden need to call home and make sure everyone was all right. The compulsion was strong, but he resisted it. If he gave in, doubt and worry would rule him. He would never be able to leave the house without being certain that something awful was about to happen. He needed to relax, not think about it, enjoy the time he had away from home.
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