The guy was clearly crazy. What if he did return and try to attack Claire? Or Megan? Or James?
Julian should have told Claire everything that day, as soon as she came home. What the hell was wrong with him? Now it was too late to tell her about it. He’d made a huge mistake in not coming clean right away, and there was no way he could possibly explain what had happened and why he’d kept it a secret. Probably the best thing to do at this point was maintain his silence. He seldom went anywhere, was almost always home when Claire and the kids were there. He could keep an open eye out, watch for any sign of Lynch, and if the man showed up, he’d call the police and then tell Claire, maybe even make it seem like it was the first time it had happened.
It was a chickenshit plan, the coward’s way out, but Julian justified it by telling himself that it would be wrong to stress out Claire even more. She was already freaked about the house and practically jumping at her own shadow. She was also troubled by the fact that, despite all of the modern research options at their disposal, neither of them had been able to dig up any significant information about their home or property. Her mental and emotional plates were full to overflowing. He didn’t want to add to her burden.
The garage was clear, as was the yard, and Julian closed all windows, locked the back door and walked out to the sidewalk in front of the house, scanning the neighborhood for a sign of anything unusual.
Nothing.
He went back into the house. He hadn’t found a baseball bat, as he’d originally planned, although he knew there was one somewhere in the basement or garage amid the surplus clutter of their storage items, but he did go to his tool chest and take out a hammer, just in case he needed a weapon. He doubted that he would have to use it, even if Lynch came back, but it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.
Julian still had that deadline and had been planning to spend the morning catching up on all the work he’d let slide lately, but the news about Lynch had thrown him off, and once upstairs in his office, he found himself staring dumbly at the screen, not an idea in his head. He reviewed the last changes he’d made to the page, thinking that a walk-through of recent work might help get his thoughts on track, and it seemed to help. He found a mistake he’d made, corrected it, and was suddenly back in the game. He knew what he needed to do next, and he knew how to get the result he wanted.
Then he heard a voice from the hallway.
A man’s voice.
Julian stood, heart pounding, and grabbed his hammer, clutching the handle tightly. His first thought was that John Lynch had somehow gotten into the house, although he had no idea how that was possible. But as he cautiously approached the doorway, he could hear the voice talking—it had not stopped talking—and though he could not make out individual words, he recognized the tone and cadence.
It was the voice he had heard talking to Megan while she was asleep.
A chill crept up Julian’s back all the way to his neck. He entered the hallway, half expecting the murmuring to be silenced, but instead it grew louder, and once again it was coming from Megan’s room. He looked toward her doorway. It was daytime, but the hall was in shadow, and the hint of cool sunlight that emerged from the open doorway of his daughter’s bedroom made the surrounding corridor seem that much darker.
His hand hurt, but Julian refused to loosen his grip on the hammer. He continued moving forward slowly, not wanting to alert whatever it was to his presence. He could discern every third or fourth word now, but they made no sense.
“. . . comforter … canyons … cinnabar … sleep …”
Reaching Megan’s door, he peeked his head around the corner. There was movement in her mirror, a whitish blur that moved too fast for him to see, and then the voice was gone. From the opposite side of the house, not from his office but from farther out, the backyard, perhaps, came faint high laughter.
Hammer in hand, Julian explored Megan’s bedroom, then James’s room, then the bathroom, then his own office. But he found nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing.
Maybe they needed to find some sort of exorcist.
A month ago, a week ago even, he would have laughed at the absurdity of such a thought. But then was then and now was now, and Claire was right. Something was wrong with their house and they needed to do something about it.
If there was a ghost in Megan’s room, a male ghost, did it … he … spy on her at night while she slept?
The thought was untenable, and Julian decided then and there that he and his daughter were going to exchange rooms. It might not help, it might be a complete waste of time, but this was the second instance when he had heard a man’s voice in Megan’s room, and this time he had also seen something in her mirror. There was no way he was going to allow her to spend another night in there.
In the back of his mind was the idea that, as Claire had said, they should sell the house. No room was probably safe. But that thought was muted, and did not possess the urgency it should have.
Claire.
For some reason, the image in his brain was one of her naked and spread wide, shaved in the way she had not been since having kids. Suddenly, he was erect and aroused, and before doing anything else, he went into the bathroom, pulled down his pants, knelt on the floor in front of the toilet and masturbated. He finished quickly, spurting into the bowl and flushing it, and after buckling his pants, he called Rick and Patrick and asked whether they could come over to help him move some furniture.
Rick was always up for playing hooky—besides, the print shop was his own business; he could do whatever he wanted—and Patrick was planning to take an early lunch anyway, so his two friends came over, and within an hour, they had the furniture of the two rooms switched. Claire and Megan returned just as they were finishing, and though Megan reacted with shock and dismay—at least until Julian pointed out that her new room would be bigger—Claire merely looked at him with an expression indicating that, while she might not know the specifics, she did know why he was making this change.
Claire offered to feed Rick and Patrick, but Patrick said he needed to get back to work, and Rick said he was just going to grab a burger on his way to the print shop. The two men left, with Julian’s heartfelt thanks, and Megan went upstairs to hang up her posters and redecorate, leaving Julian and Claire alone in the kitchen. She started making sandwiches while he explained about the voice he’d heard. He made no mention of John Lynch, but he didn’t need to—this new news was frightening enough as it was.
“Maybe the kids should sleep in our room,” Claire said.
“Then where would we sleep?”
“Maybe we should all sleep in our room.”
Julian shook his head. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? We’re living in a haunted house. We should get out of here, leave and never come back. But if we don’t, we need to start making some accommodations to the situation.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
“I don’t like their being upstairs, that far away from us.”
The truth was, he didn’t, either. But there was little they could do about it—that was how the house was built—and while he intended to take every precaution, he said nothing to Claire, not wanting to frighten her even more.
The whole embrace of secrecy, this willingness—no, desire—to keep Claire out of the loop was not like him. He had never acted this way before in his life, and this line of thought seemed foreign to him, not his own. A dull pounding in his temple suddenly flared up into full-fledged pain. Thinking about this subject was giving him a headache. He squinted against the throbbing, trying at first to ignore it, then told Claire that his head hurt and he needed to take something for it. She nodded. She was grimacing herself, and they both went into the kitchen, where they found a bottle of Tylenol behind the vitamins in the spice cupboard.
The two of them made lunch together the way they used to, an assembly line of turkey sandwiches, before calling Megan to come down and eat. Now over the initial shock, Megan was excited by th
e possibilities of her new room, and she chatted happily through lunch, describing how she was thinking of putting a plant by the window so the bedroom would be more “green.”
Lunch was nice, and his headache had subsided, but immediately afterward, Claire started opening windows around the house to let in fresh air. “This place is stuffy,” she told him. “Don’t you think it’s stuffy?” She opened the back door so air could come in through the screen, and Julian found himself going out to the patio to scan the yard for any sign of John Lynch.
The new plants Claire had bought and planted the other day, he noticed, were all dead.
He needed to go to the hardware store and buy a lock for the gate that opened onto the alley. He should have done so after they first moved in, but it hadn’t seemed very important at the time. Now anything he could do to make entry into their yard more difficult was top priority.
It occurred to Julian that a neighborhood watch might be a good idea. If he could get other people on the street to keep an eye out for Lynch, act as a sort of early warning signal, they might be able to avoid another incident. The only person he felt comfortable approaching was Cole Hubbard, and he walked through the side yard, past the dining room window where Lynch had been spying on him, and out to the front sidewalk. Cole’s car was in the driveway, which meant he was home, and Julian strode past the Ribieros’ house and up to Cole’s front porch, where he rang the doorbell. He heard the chimes sound within the house and thought he heard movement, but though he waited for well over a minute, no one came to the door.
He rang again, waited. Knocked, waited. But there was still no answer.
That was strange.
He knew Cole was in there, and he rang again, knocked again and called out, “Hey, Cole! Open up! It’s Julian!”
“Go away!”
His neighbor’s voice sounded high and frightened, almost unrecognizable, and Julian was shocked as much by the tone as by the words themselves. “Cole? Are you all right?”
“I said go away!” There was an edge of anger now, mixed in with the fear.
He backed up a step, confused. He’d thought the two of them had a rapport; he’d thought they were starting to be friends. What the hell had happened?
This seemed totally out of character. Was it because of what had happened at the party? No. Cole couldn’t have been so freaked-out by the ghost that he’d cut off all contact. After all, he’d stayed behind when the other neighbors had fled and had even offered them some sober, nonpanicky advice.
It could be something that had happened in Cole’s personal life, although Julian didn’t think so. If that were the case, Cole would have been polite but distant, perhaps begging off after a brief, generic discussion and saying he was busy. He wouldn’t have been this hostile.
Or scared.
Julian was starting to get scared, too, and against his better judgment, he knocked on the door again. “What’s wrong? I’m not leaving until you tell me!”
There was a short pause, and the door opened a crack. He saw unkempt hair and two days’ stubble. “Go. Now.”
“Why? I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” The door opened a fraction of an inch wider. Cole was angry, Julian saw. But then that anger faded. It was as if he’d been mad at Julian and blamed him for something but had realized after setting eyes on him that Julian was not really at fault. “Go home,” he said tiredly.
“Cole—”
“Your house is calling to me. And I don’t know how much longer I can resist it.”
Your house is calling to me? What did that even mean? Before he could ask, Cole had closed the door again, and this time it stayed closed. Julian shouted out to his neighbor, knocked on the door and rang the bell, hoping to goad him into a response, but this time Cole remained silent.
Frustrated and confused, Julian headed home, walking slowly, looking around at the other houses on both sides of the street, wondering what his other neighbors were thinking, wondering what they were doing.
The next day, Cole was gone.
The day after that, a For Sale sign went up on his lawn.
Twenty-one
At least, Claire thought, she could lose herself in her work.
And her work on the Cortinez case was turning out to be far more compelling than she’d expected. It was not just the legal issues themselves, which were stimulating enough, but the supporting facts in the background, the alternate history that Mr. Cortinez had taught his students. These were accounts she had not heard before, a story with which she was not familiar, and she agreed with the teacher that it was something the students of Jardine, of all of New Mexico, should be taught.
At home, things might be confusing and complicated and weird and frightening, but seeking refuge in her job and in the labyrinthine logic of the law brought her calmness and a kind of peace, helped her cope with the craziness of the rest of her life. A small voice in the back of her head said that she shouldn’t run away from reality like this, that her real duty was to her family, not her clients, but that voice was overridden by what appeared to be a reasonable practicality, an echo of Julian’s position. She was not quite sure what had caused her to adopt such an attitude, but even at home, her fear seemed to be tempered somewhat, although she knew that if she dwelled on that anomaly, she would probably become even more frightened than she was already.
Which was why she didn’t dwell on it.
Although that in itself was atypical behavior.
Claire still thought they should sell the house and move—it was the impetus behind her fierce dedication to this case—but it was not quite the urgent priority it had been. She was braver now than she had been even a few days ago.
Human beings could adapt to anything.
She was also starting to wonder whether Oscar Cortinez’s version of history had some bearing on her own situation. Which was another reason she was so keen to research the particulars of this case. It might end up being nothing, but it seemed to her that the history of New Mexico and Tomasito County, Jardine in particular, provided clues as to the reasons behind the problems that were afflicting her family.
She might be able to win this case and figure out why their house was haunted.
And she had no doubt that she would win the case, no matter how good the lawyers turned out to be on the opposing side. The legal issues were clear. Oscar Cortinez had been singled out, and the layoff process had not been administered fairly. Beyond that, the teacher’s contention that his curriculum incorporated district standards even as it exceeded those standards seemed unimpeachable.
The more Claire read, the more she talked to Oscar, the more convinced she was that his curriculum should supersede that of the district. She still had a lot of studying to do, but what she’d learned so far was fascinating.
She’d read all of his lecture notes and had gone to the Web sites he’d listed for her—although, in the usual way of Web sites, the information she found there was sketchy and generic, basically what a person would find in an encyclopedia entry—but the crux of his argument for a revised look at local history rested on three books that he’d provided her.
The first book, meticulously researched and heavily corroborated, was published by a small press based in Albuquerque. That did not inspire her with confidence, but when she looked up information about the publisher, she learned that it was well respected within academic circles and even had a Pulitzer prize winner on its roster (which would definitely help their case).
The second book was older and much more informal, a casual narrative written in the early 1900s by a former farmer who was also an amateur historian. He’d put together anecdotal stories from longtime residents as well as written accounts from the diaries of relatives and local law enforcement officers. Surprisingly believable and engagingly written, the self-published book not only provided an unofficial look at the history of Tomasito County and the town of Jardine, but shed light on interesting details of everyda
y life at the turn of the last century.
The third volume was from a different perspective altogether. A chronicle of Spain’s and Mexico’s adventures in the Southwest, the land’s early exploration and colonization, it was based on eyewitness accounts recorded in official reports. Written by a respected Mexican historian and told from the point of view of those colonizing nations, the book had been published in Mexico in the early 1990s and recently translated by a noted professor from ASU.
All three books approached the same subject from different angles, giving, in toto, a complete picture of the area’s previously unrevealed past. Oscar Cortinez had not only done a lot of research and investigation, all of which informed his teaching, but he was providing the students and future citizens of Jardine a valuable look at their own history. He deserved to be commended for his efforts, not fired, and Claire was going to make sure that this injustice did not go unpunished—as soon as she finished delving into all of the background material the teacher had provided.
Locking the door to her office and pulling down the shades so she wouldn’t be disturbed—
so she couldn’t see Pam
—Claire got a bottle of cold water out of the refrigerator and settled into her desk chair.
She read.
Twenty-two
1598
At night, the horses screamed.
The natives had warned them not to go beyond the hills, but Miguel Huerta and his men were not about to allow the primitive fears of savages to deter them from their mission, so they’d continued on, and were sleeping tonight in a wide, riverless valley that remained completely uninhabited, despite the profusion of tribes in the region. A great massacre had once occurred at this location, according to Tsictnako, their guide, and since that day, generations before, people had shunned this place, afraid of the spirit that lived here, the unseen force that had led brother to slaughter brother, that had caused madness to descend upon all survivors, be they victor or victim.
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