The Haunted

by Bentley Little

  Where had the time gone? It was nearly night outside now. He had not yet closed the shades, and as he looked out at the darkness of the street, he realized that most, if not all, of his neighbors were gone. He might very well be the only person on the street.

  Suddenly grateful for the noise and companionship of the television, Julian turned up the volume. From the corner of his eye, he saw that the light was on in the kitchen. He had taken his plate and glass in there after eating, but he could not remember whether he had left the light on. Ordinarily, he turned off the lights automatically as he left a room—habit—but he might have left them on this time.

  Or he might not have.

  Julian decided he would feel more comfortable if all of the lights in the house were on, and he stood and went from room to room, downstairs and up, until the entire house was illuminated. As an added precaution, he checked to make sure that all windows were closed and that both the front and back doors were locked.

  He’d intended to work a little more on the Web site before going to bed, but now he decided that he wasn’t in the mood—

  was afraid

  —to do that, so he sat down on the couch, picked up the remote and flipped through channels until he found The Daily Show on Comedy Central. He needed a comedy right now, something he could laugh at, and he put down the remote and settled back on the couch to watch.

  He was asleep before the first commercial.

  When he awoke, another commercial was on, so he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He glanced toward the clock, but his attention was drawn by movement outside the window.

  James.

  Julian leaped to his feet as his son hurried across the front yard to the side of the house. He knew exactly where the boy was going, though he had no idea how James had sneaked out of his grandparents’ house and made it all the way over here, and Julian sped through the living room, through the dining room, into the kitchen, where he quickly unlocked and opened the back door.

  There was no sign of James—he must have already gone into the garage—and Julian dashed across the patio and through the backyard. He reached the small door of the darkened garage and was about to pull it open when there was a sharp cry behind him. He turned to see a deep, wide hole in the center of the dead grass. How could he have missed it before? Julian didn’t know, but he ran the few feet over to it and peered down. An arm’s length below the surface, holding desperately on to a small protruding root, was his son.

  Instantly, Julian flopped onto the ground on his stomach, stretching his arm down in an effort to grab the boy’s hand. But his fingers would not reach. There were still several feet between them, and he inched forward until he was overhanging the ledge at a dangerous angle, but the distance remained insurmountable. The pit beneath his son’s dangling legs appeared bottomless.

  “Don’t move!” Julian ordered. “Hang on! I’m going to get a rope!”

  “Daddy!” James’s voice sounded exactly like an older version of Miles’s, and Julian cried out in alarm as the boy slipped several inches, the root he was grasping pulling out from the sidewall, dropping dirt onto his face.

  “Daddy!”

  Julian’s heart sank in his chest as he realized that history was about to repeat itself. He was filled with a despair so deep and black that it rendered him immobile, and he did not even reach down again and try to grab his son’s flailing arms as the boy screamed and disappeared into the depths.

  And then—

  He was sitting, and he felt the couch cushion against his back. It had been a dream, just a dream, though it took his brutalized mind a moment to process that fact, and when he opened his eyes, he was not sure at first that they were open. He swiveled his head around, used a finger to check that his eyelids were up. They were. It was just that all of the lights were off, and it was impossible to see anything. The entire house seemed to be dark—the entire neighborhood seemed to be dark—and Julian reached under the coffee table for the flashlight he kept on the shelf there in case of blackouts. His searching fingers couldn’t find it, but seconds later, a lamp atop the end table opposite the couch switched on, bathing the area in a weak yellowish glow.

  He was not alone in the living room.

  There were shadows galore in the dim light, but there was one shadow that did not correspond to any object in the room. It lurked next to the fireplace, a formless, undulating darkness that appeared flat but somehow had heft.

  He stood slowly, observing it. He was afraid, but also fascinated, and as he watched, the formlessness took on a shape, folding in on itself and wobbling crazily from side to side until it resembled nothing so much as a sideshow fat man with multiple arms and a thick tubelike tail that extended into and up the fireplace. Julian backed slowly away, moving toward the front door.

  And the shadow thing was right there, an inch in front of his face.

  He started, gasped.

  The shadow smelled. An odor of mold and dirt that seemed almost familiar. One of the waving arms reached out and touched him, and in that moment, Julian had a clear sense of it. This wasn’t the ghost of John Lynch, although Lynch’s spirit was there and dominant. This was something else. It wanted him to know what it was, and though he did not fully understand, he knew that this was a being comprised of spirits and souls, one that absorbed the dead but was of them, not separate. It was a creature that was ancient but evolving, that changed and grew with each addition, and though his comprehension of its complexities was imperfect, he knew that, at its core, this thing was evil.

  And it wanted him dead.

  It didn’t want to kill him, though. It wanted him to kill himself. He wasn’t sure why, didn’t get the distinction, but the knowledge was sure and definite, delivered directly to his brain by the cold, shadowy appendage that lay against his forearm. He was supposed to commit suicide. That impulse, however, was one he’d never had, and he jerked away, stood in the center of the room, pulled himself to his full height and loudly said, “No.”

  The attack was immediate.

  The lamp on the end table flew toward him, its cord pulling out of the wall socket and throwing the room into darkness. He lurched to the right and felt the object whiz past, heard it smash into the coffee table. All around was the sound of movement—squeaks, scrapes, creaks, crashes, thumps, thuds, knocks, bangs—and Julian dropped to the floor and began crawling toward the area where he thought the front door should be. He ran into something heavy and immobile—the Southwestern pot containing Claire’s ficus tree—hitting the vessel with his head, pausing for a second to get his bearings, relieved not to feel the wetness of blood on his face.

  This is what it’s like to be blind, he thought, and scurried as fast as he could across the floor, angling left.

  He hadn’t realized until this moment how powerful a being this was, hadn’t known it could wield physical objects against him, although, in a weird way, such a real-world concern took some of the edge off the fear he felt, giving a tangible specificity to the more primal terror he’d experienced until now.

  Something brushed past him, something hairy, and in an instant that primal fear was back. He let out an involuntary cry of horror and revulsion, and then he was kicked in the side, the air knocked out of him as he was sent flying. But he was kicked in the right direction, and he rolled over, gasping for breath, discovering that he was lying against the front door. Forcing himself to ignore the pain, even as a sharp blow was delivered to the small of his back, he found the door handle, pulled himself to his feet and flung open the door, staggering forward.

  He made it out of the house, slammed the door behind him.

  And collapsed.

  He awoke half on the front lawn, his head resting on the cement of the driveway, one arm twisted under and used as a pillow. He knew where he was and what had happened, was not groggy at all, although his back, neck, side and shoulders all hurt, and immediately upon wakening, he got in the van and drove to Claire’s parents’ house. Her dad, Roger,
answered the door, greeting him with a frown, but over the old man’s shoulder, Julian saw Claire, Megan and James eating breakfast in the kitchen, and with only the most perfunctory of greetings, he pushed his way past Roger into the house and hurried over to his family, filled with gratitude that they were all here and all right.

  James looked up as he entered, and the expression of joy and relief on his son’s face—joy that he was here, relief that nothing had happened to him—made Julian rush over and give his son a big hug. The strong hug he was given in return almost made him feel like crying. “I love you,” Julian said.

  “I love you, too,” James said instantly.

  It was something they had always said to each other, but its usage had fallen off in the past year, and Julian vowed to himself that he would never stop saying it to his son.

  Or his daughter.

  He let go of James and grabbed Megan, holding her close. “Love you,” he said.

  “Love you, too, Dad.” Megan was crying, and he pulled back and used his index finger to wipe the tears from her cheeks, the way he’d done since she was a baby.

  Claire was looking at him over Megan’s shoulder, and her eyes were tearing up as well. He pulled out a chair and sat down next to her. “You were right,” he said. “I’m not staying there anymore, either. We’ll sell the house, take the loss if we have to, and find someplace else to live.”

  “Hold on a sec. Did I hear what I think I heard?” Claire’s dad stood in the kitchen doorway, glaring at him disapprovingly. “Are you actually going to sell your house because you think it’s haunted?”

  Julian faced him. “Yes,” he said calmly.

  “Well, I’ll be—”

  “Dad,” Claire warned.

  “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

  “You read the article in the paper. And I told you what else happened there.”

  He waved her away, still glaring at Julian.

  “Roger …” Claire’s mother said warningly.

  Julian ignored them both. “I’ll work there in the daytime,” he told Claire. “Like a regular office. But I’ll sleep here at night. With you.”

  “Why do you have to go there at all?”

  “Yeah, Dad,” Megan chimed in.

  “Because my computer and all my work’s there.”

  “You have a laptop,” Claire said.

  “I need all my stuff. I’m down to the wire and have to get this done. Afterward, I’ll quit.”

  She looked at him. “The house is still manipulating you. You think you’re thinking for yourself, but you’re not.”

  “I’m not being manipulated. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “You’re not thinking of keeping the house?”

  “No,” he assured her. “Of course not.”

  “Because it sounds like—”

  “No. I told you. But it’s not the house that’s the problem. It’s what lives in the house.” He didn’t want to describe in front of her parents and the kids what had happened, so he took her arm and led her out of the kitchen, down the hall to the room in which she’d been sleeping. He closed the door. In the mirror above the dresser, he saw his reflection: he looked like a homeless man, his clothes wrinkled, his hair disheveled, his entire appearance one of unruliness and disarray. He looked like he’d spent the night on the front lawn.

  He sat her down on the bed, took a deep breath. “I saw it,” he said. “I felt it. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but the thing that’s haunting our house is much bigger than a ghost. It’s made up of ghosts. It’s … it’s an entity of some kind that … that takes the people who died at our house or on our property and … and they become part of it. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s big, it’s old, it’s dangerous, it’s evil.”

  She was nodding. “So those massacres, those suicides, those murders, all those men who died there over the years, they’re part of this.”

  “Yes!” he said, relieved that she understood despite his stumbling description. “Exactly!”

  She looked at him. “Is there any way to get rid of it? Exorcise it?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t think so.”

  Claire took a deep breath. “You are not going back there to work.” She fixed him with a face that brooked no disagreement.

  He nodded. Thinking about what he’d been through, he realized that he didn’t want to go back to the house. Maybe she was right; maybe he had still been under the influence when he’d arrived. But he wasn’t any longer, and he readily agreed to do his work here at her parents’ house. “I still need my disks and files and CDs,” he told her. “But I’ll call Rick and have him go over with me this morning. The two of us should be able to get everything I need in a few minutes. Is there anything you need? You or the kids?”

  “Not right now, but we will have to start moving our stuff out of there sometime soon,” she said.

  “I’ll look around, see if there’s anything else I can bring with me.”

  “No. Things are too … hot there right now. Just get your equipment and go. We’ll let things cool down for a few days, then decide what to do.”

  Julian offered her a half smile. “We can’t stay at your parents’ forever.”

  She smiled back. “Nor do we want to. But let’s just take it easy for a few days. Think about things. We shouldn’t make any rash decisions. You just get your Web site done. I’ll work my way through this district settlement; then we’ll figure out where to go.”

  “I love you,” he said. He realized he hadn’t said it to her when he first came over.

  “I love you, too,” she replied, and kissed him on the nose. “But let’s get out there now and rescue the kids from my dad.”

  Julian took a shower, then had breakfast. Claire went to work shortly after eight, and as soon as she was gone, he gave Rick a call. The print shop didn’t open until ten, which gave them plenty of time, and Rick promised to meet him there in fifteen minutes.

  “Can I go?” James asked as soon as he hung up the phone.

  Julian put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “No,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.” He heard Roger’s snort of derision from the couch and chose to ignore it. “But don’t worry. I’ll be back pretty quickly.”

  It was quick. Rick must have been able to tell that he wasn’t really needed, as there was no heavy lifting and everything they took out of the house could have been just as easily carried by one person, but he had seen the ghost that night of the party and had no doubt read between the lines and figured out that something else had gone down. He didn’t ask any questions, though, and for that Julian was grateful.

  “I’ll explain it all later,” Julian promised when they were finished.

  Rick nodded, looked down the street, then over at the house. “Whatever it is, I think you made the right decision,” he said.

  Julian spent the rest of the morning setting up his equipment in the room he’d be sharing with Claire, using her mother’s sewing machine table as a desk. He spent the afternoon working, trying to ignore all the distracting intrusions, taking occasional breaks to hang out with the kids. To thank her parents for their hospitality, he took everyone out to Fazio’s for dinner, and afterward all six of them sat in the living room watching television until, one by one, they drifted away.

  The last thing he wanted was to be left alone with his father-in-law, but it was nine o’clock and the kids were in bed, Claire was in the bathroom taking a shower, and Claire’s mother went into the kitchen. Julian pretended to be concentrating on the procedural crime show that was on TV, but Roger leaned forward, blocking his view. “You pathetic fruit fly,” he said disgustedly. “I always knew you weren’t a man, but now you’re afraid of your own house? Because you think it’s haunted? What are you, three?”

  Julian said nothing. He didn’t want to get into it right now. They were going to be living at Claire’s parents’ for a little while, and it would not be a good idea to antagonize her f
ather on his first day here.

  Still, the old man kept pushing. “Is this how you take care of your family? Huh? I’ll put up with this sort of talk from my daughter and my grandkids. But I want you to know that I have no respect for you at all—”

  “You think you’re brave enough to stay in that house alone?” Julian confronted him. “One night in there, you old buzzard, and you’ll be weeping like the scared little girl you really are.”

  “Get out!” Roger bellowed. “I will not be treated this way in my own house!”

  Julian stood. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll leave.”

  “Not them, you!”

  “We’ll leave,” Julian repeated. “And we’re going to move back to California, where you most definitely will not be welcome in our home.”

  Claire’s mother had come in from the kitchen and heard the last of this. “Julian! Roger! I won’t have that kind of talk in my house. You two apologize and make up right this minute!” She glared at her husband. “And you be a gracious host, or so help me God I’ll …” She left the thought unfinished.

  The two men looked away from each other, focused their attention on the television and sat silently. But moments after Marian returned to the kitchen, Roger’s grumbling started again, snide asides to himself that Julian was obviously meant to hear. Julian tuned him out, ignoring him completely, and finally, unable to put up with it anymore, Roger stood, taking out his keys. “Come on,” he said disdainfully. “Let’s see your house. Prove to me that it’s haunted.”

  Claire had just returned, wearing pajamas and a robe, and she stepped between them. “No one’s going there. Especially at night!” She turned to her father. “You can check it out tomorrow, Dad. It’s safer in the daytime.”