The Haunted

by Bentley Little

  Megan and James were in the two small guest rooms at the back of the house, which meant that she would have her old bedroom back. It was her mom’s sewing room now, but there was still a twin bed against one wall, maintained for emergencies, and Claire brought her own luggage in and closed the door. She sat down hard on the bed, taking a deep breath, thankful, for the moment at least, to be alone. She had never been even remotely religious, but this entire situation had caused her to examine her core beliefs in a way that she hadn’t since …

  Since Miles died.

  Claire looked out the window at the gradually lightening sky. What did happen to people after they passed away? It seemed pretty obvious that lives were not merely extinguished, that some of them, at least, lived on in another form. But nothing about that implied a coordinating higher power, though she wished it did, and the idea of an anarchic afterlife filled with ghosts trying to return to the order and comfort of this world left her feeling low. She thought of Miles, wondering, for what was probably the millionth time, what had happened to him after death. She had always liked to think that he was still with them, hanging around. The idea had been consoling to her, but it was no longer, and when she considered everything going on at their house, she thought that maybe she preferred for him to have simply stopped living. The idea made her depressed, and she was grateful when Megan and James pushed open her door and came into the room.

  “Are you going to work today?” Megan wanted to know.

  “I have to,” Claire said.

  “Can we stay here at Grandma and Grandpa’s?” James asked.

  “Of course,” she told them. “You can even invite your cousins if—”

  “No!” they both said in unison.

  “Okay. But I don’t understand why—”

  “No!” they repeated.

  “Fine.”

  She moved her suitcase to the floor by the foot of the bed, and together they went into the kitchen, where her mother had already started making French toast for breakfast.

  Julian met her for lunch at her office, and the meeting was surprisingly awkward. It was as though they were actually separated, and though, after the fight they’d had this morning, such a feeling was understandable, it still made the encounter stilted and odd.

  He brought Chinese takeout, which they ate at her desk, and of course they talked about the kids. She told him that both Megan and James were upset, but that being at their grandparents’ house rather than home seemed to make them feel more secure. He was glad of that and seemed relieved, as though it was something that had been weighing heavily on his mind, but when she broached the idea that he should sleep tonight at her parents’ house as well, he quickly changed the subject.

  As it turned out, the police would not clean up the loft, but they recommended a cleaning service in town that would wash floors, scour walls and remove all traces of blood from the site of a murder, suicide or accident. Julian had contacted them earlier this morning, and they were scheduled to come by in an hour. He had no idea how long such a process would take, but he’d been assured that with the steam cleaning and chemical solvents they employed, the loft would be spotless.

  “And after that, you’ll come to my parents’,” she said.

  There was a long pause. “I’m going to stay.”

  “Still?” The anger was audible in her voice. “Why?”

  He shrugged, as though it was something he could not explain and perhaps didn’t understand himself. Claire felt chilled, and she looked into his eyes, searching for a trace of anything unfamiliar, wondering once again whether he had been contaminated or corrupted by whatever was in that house.

  “Julian—” she began.

  “I don’t know why.”

  “Doesn’t that scare you?”

  He shrugged again, and what frightened her more than anything was the realization that she knew of no way to get through to him.

  Shortly after he left, she received a call from one of the school district’s attorneys, wanting to talk settlement in the Cortinez case. She switched easily to lawyer mode, grateful for the distraction. She’d done a pretty good job of laying out her case for them at the hearing, if she did say so herself. She’d kept a few big guns in reserve, just in case, but she’d always thought this could be settled without a trial, and she’d purposely spelled out her best and strongest arguments in the hopes that they would see that if they took this all the way to trial they would lose. Apparently they had seen it, and after hanging up, she called Oscar and set up a meeting with the district and its lawyers for tomorrow at ten.

  It seemed weird, doing such prosaic work when everything at home was so crazy, but it was also calming, in a way, and it kept her from dwelling on the events of the previous night and the impossible situation in which she now found herself.

  On her desk was the stack of books and monographs Oscar had given her, the raw material of his curriculum. She was convinced there was a connection between those atrocities of the past and the violence that had happened at her house, though the exact linkage remained elusive.

  Soon she wouldn’t need to worry about it anymore. Soon the house would no longer be theirs, and someone else would inherit all of the responsibilities.

  But could she do that, in good conscience? Could she fob off the house on some unsuspecting sucker when she knew the horrors it contained?

  She began sorting through Oscar’s materials, finding several monographs and one book that she had not yet read. There was work still to be done on her few pending cases, and she knew that should be her priority, but it wouldn’t hurt to take a short break and … look. Glancing over at the clock, she decided to give herself a half hour, and she picked up the book, flipped to the back and started scanning through the index, thinking that there were probably a lot of details that even the most exhaustive historical accounts left out.

  Twenty-six

  1855

  Kit Carson dismounted from his horse, filled with a satisfying sense of accomplishment. He looked around at the cluster of adobe buildings, wooden corrals and barns. He had heard of this village but had not thought he would find it, as, to his knowledge, it existed on no map. Both as a scout and an Indian agent, he had come across rumors of a community built where the land was cursed, where murder and death were the consequences of occupation and where, over the years, countless massacres had taken place. It had seemed to him that such a location would be of invaluable strategic importance. If it was charted and known, enemy combatants could be led to this site, assured of imminent destruction. But he had come to believe that this place was merely a myth, a folktale created to frighten travelers in the territory, and it was only last week, when he ran into Utah Pete by the Rio Grande, that he discovered that San Jardine did indeed exist. Pete gave directions, even drew him a map, and, along with the other Utes camping along the river, insisted that the Mexicans who populated the village needed to be exterminated.

  Kit’s own wife was Mexican, so he wasn’t necessarily disposed to agree with such a sentiment, but in order to obtain the directions to this place, he gave his word as a government agent that he would assess the situation, and he had brought with him a couple of Ute soldiers and a raft of volunteers. It was a small concession to make if the rumors about the location turned out to be true.

  The volunteers had remained behind at the camp this afternoon, but the Utes were with him, and when he glanced over at their faces, he could see they were scared. He, too, felt an uneasiness here, but it was more than made up for by the feeling of triumph he experienced. That very uneasiness, in fact, was behind the triumph, for it indicated to him that the stories he had heard over the years were most likely accurate.

  The three of them tied their horses to a post and walked down the single street. San Jardine looked like one of a dozen other villages he had come across in his travels, rather typical for this area, in fact, with its single store and bar, its collection of small, poor homes and its outlying farms.

 
The only feature that made it different was what stood at the far end of town, the one building he had avoided looking at, and the reason he had come.

  A man carrying a rifle stopped to question him, obviously the person in charge of whatever passed for law hereabouts. The man spoke no English, but Kit’s Spanish was good, and he explained who he was and why he was here. At first, the man denied that there was anything unusual about the village and told Kit that his information was mistaken. If there was such a place as he described, San Jardine was not it. But when Kit asked what the building was that lay at the end of the street, and why no homes or farms or other buildings stood anywhere near it, the man broke down, admitting that that land was malo, bad. His reticence turned into effusiveness, and he explained that everyone in the village shunned that area, neither went there nor spoke of it, and that avoidance of the site came naturally to even children and animals.

  Word had it that, fifty years ago, there’d been a church on the spot, and that it had been destroyed by a band of marauders, one of a historical procession that had decimated the population of what had at one time been a thriving community.

  Kit looked to the end of the street. Even a church couldn’t change the nature of that land, and this to him was a powerful realization.

  Why had people remained here? Kit asked. Why hadn’t all of the families left and moved elsewhere?

  The man had no answer, and somehow that seemed the most disturbing thing of all.

  There had been no one on the street when he’d arrived, but behind the man to whom he’d been talking, other men with guns had gathered. Kit had the impression that they’d heard the topic of discussion and come out to make sure that he did not try to walk to the end of the street. They seemed fearful of the small building there, as of a primitive god, and bent on keeping people away so as not to rile the forces within.

  Kit spoke to the Ute soldiers to either side of him in their own language, and they pulled out their guns and got a bead on the head honcho before them.

  “Now I am going to inspect that location,” Kit announced to the villagers, “and I do not wish to be impeded. Do I make myself clear? If any attempt is made to stop me, my men will immediately start firing. They are expert soldiers and will be able to kill several of you before you are able to kill them.”

  The man who’d been talking to him looked angry and frightened at the same time. But he lowered his weapon and lowered his head, allowing Kit and the Utes to pass. The other men dispersed, leaving the street, going back into their homes. In moments, the street was clear. The village might as well have been abandoned.

  Kit looked over at the Utes. Once again, he saw the fear on their faces. He felt it, too, and the air grew colder as the sun hid behind a cloud. A shadow fell over the land.

  They walked past the store. The village, he saw now, was bigger than he had originally thought. Its size was deceptive, because it was shaped like a horseshoe, spread out and back, leaving a short center, everything built away from and around that small structure at the end of the street. He still was not sure what that building could be, but as he approached, as he grew close, he saw that it was a ramshackle cabin, windowless, with a tattered cloth hung over its rough doorway. Smoke seeped out from around the cloth’s edges, smelling of lives, smelling of death, and behind the smoke was an eerie light, a colorless glow that was unlike anything he had ever seen.

  He stopped several lengths in front of it. The street had ended, and he was standing before an overgrown patch of brush-covered ground. A narrow footpath led through the scrub and to the cabin door.

  As brave as he was, he found himself afraid to enter the cabin.

  Something lived in there.

  The tattered cloth billowed in an unfelt breeze, and the glow behind the creeping smoke flickered. For the first time in his life, his urge was to turn tail and run, to get away from this village as quickly as he could. But that meant only that this place did have power, that the stories he had heard were true, and he would be forfeiting his duty as an agent of the government if he did not follow through, enter that building and find out whether that power could be used to promote the interests of the United States.

  Gathering his courage, he stepped onto the footpath. But when he announced to the Utes that they were going in, the Indian soldiers shook their heads and remained in place. They would do anything else he asked, they said, ride into battle with him against overwhelming forces, but they refused to enter that cabin. He understood, and though he could have had them both executed for such insubordination, he had no intention of doing so. This was beyond the limit for almost any man, and he told them to wait by the end of the street with their guns drawn to make sure that none of the villagers attempted to interfere. This they promised to do, and he steeled himself and strode briskly up the path toward the cabin, his own pistol out and ready.

  This close, the smell of the smoke was stronger, an odor heavy with the knowledge of mortality, with the weight of years and places long gone. He was afraid of the smoke, afraid of the smell, afraid of the colorless light within the dilapidated structure that could not have come from any lamp or fire. If he paused, he knew he would not have the fortitude to continue, so Kit marched directly up to the cabin, pushed the tattered cloth aside and stepped over the threshold.

  Inside, it was dark, that eerie glow nowhere in evidence, the windowless interior so dim he would have sworn that it was night outside. There did not even seem to be any smoke, though the air was filled with whispers, soft words spoken by unseen presences that came from nowhere, came from everywhere, and made no sense to him at all.

  Before him, the single room was meanly furnished—cot, table, chair—though he could make out little more than outlines in the gloom. The only aspect of the cabin that struck him as unusual, beyond the absence of any visible resident, was the odd sense that the interior of the ramshackle structure was older than the outside, and that the room in which he stood stretched far beyond the walls that enclosed it.

  Near his ear, one of the whispers spoke his name.

  “Hello!” he called. His voice seemed to echo, as though he were in a cave, and it took his brain a moment to realize that the whispers were repeating his cry, mocking him.

  This was not what he had expected, and it was not something he could understand. Until this very second, the tactical value of this site in combat had been his sole focus, the idea that had led him here and that had lain in his mind since the first rumors of this village had reached him all those years ago. But his plans seemed foolish now, small. He suddenly realized that the power here could not be used, harnessed or contained. It was too big, too deep, too dangerous. He understood why the villagers kept away from this spot, and he wanted more than anything to get out of this cabin and as far away from here as possible.

  A colorless fire sprang up in the center of the room, in a shallow hole he had not been able to see in the dark. It had no fuel, no kindling, but seemed to come from the earth itself, a blaze of indeterminate origin and pallid illumination that revealed words scrawled on the wall in what appeared to be blood, words he had never seen before and did not understand. On the cot, he saw now, was a low mound of whitish powder in the shape of a man’s body.

  “Kit,” something whispered. And then his given name: “Christopher.”

  Panic welled within him as he recognized that the thought on which his mind was focusing was not his own.

  Using all of the strength and will he possessed, he stumbled back through the doorway, becoming tangled for one terrifying, heart-stopping moment in the tattered cloth before staggering up the footpath to where the Utes still stood.

  It was dark now. He had been inside the cabin for a few minutes only, but in the open air it appeared as though more than an hour had passed. He was breathing heavily, and, grabbing the canteen from its strap around his neck and shoulder, he unscrewed the cap with trembling fingers and drank.

  One of the Utes asked him what had gone on inside the cab
in, why he had been in there for so long, but Kit shook his head, not wanting to answer. He stared before him at the buildings of the village, arranged around the cabin, the way hunters surrounded a bear or some other dangerous predator. Motioning for the Utes to follow him, he marched back down the empty street to the center of San Jardine.

  In the windows of each adobe house, he saw as he drew close, were statues, figures carved from rock or molded from mud, sitting or standing behind small burning candles. He had not noticed them earlier, and they looked to him to have been placed there to guard the homes and protect the inhabitants within.

  From him?

  He felt a stirring of anger. As he knew from his wife, Mexicans proclaimed themselves Catholic, but this was even more pagan than that. It was bad enough worshiping all those graven images, all those “saints.” Hell, they’d even turned Jesus’ mother, Mary, into some kind of goddess that they prayed to. But what they had here had no connection to Christianity. It was primitive even beyond the religions practiced by Indians, and the figures in the windows looked like little monsters: creatures with oversize heads and spiky teeth, triangular bodies and multiple claws. From inside one of the homes, he heard the whimper of a woman, then a slap to shut her up, then silence.

  The Utes were right. These Mexicans deserved to die.

  He’d known it the moment he emerged from the cabin, but the feeling grew stronger as he looked at the various statues in the windows, those little blasphemies against God.

  There was the thundering of hooves from far away, faint yelps of exhilaration that grew louder and closer by the second. As instructed, if he did not return by sundown, the volunteers were to come after him. And they had. Horses galloping, torches flaring, voices hollering, they came riding into the village from the opposite end, and Kit met them in front of the mercantile. He bade them dismount, then explained what they were to do.

  A man emerged from the store, the man he had spoken to earlier, the law. The man had his gun drawn, and Kit shot him where he stood. The man fell, not dying right away, screaming in Spanish, and then the shooting really started. Other men came out of their homes, and volunteers took them down, moving quickly on to other houses and busting in doors, guns blazing.