The Haunted

by Bentley Little

  She wished she had an answer, but she didn’t. “I don’t know,” she admitted, and started to cry.

  Her mom came over to the bed. She couldn’t give Megan a hug—there were too many tubes and monitors in the way—but she did the best she could and curled an arm around Megan’s shoulder on the pillow. “It’s all right,” she said, and used a finger to wipe away tears. “We’ll talk about it some other time, when you’re feeling better.”

  Megan didn’t want to talk about it at all. Postponing the conversation would give her time to come up with better answers, but she doubted whether she would ever be able to come up with a real reason. The house was reaching out, she thought again, and that was probably as close as she would ever come to the truth.

  She had just awakened, but she was feeling tired already—it was most likely the medicine—and she asked her parents whether it would be okay if she took a short nap.

  “Of course,” her dad said.

  Her mom gave her shoulder a squeeze and then went back to her chair. “Go ahead, honey.”

  When she awoke, it was dinnertime. A nurse was using a button on the remote-control panel at her bedside to raise her into a sitting position so she could eat the wretched-looking meal placed on a tray that was attached to her bed by a metal arm. Both of her parents were still in the same seats, although her dad was watching CNN on the TV mounted to the wall and wasn’t aware that she’d woken up until her mom nudged him with an elbow.

  The nurse left, and they all had a good laugh about the awful food as Megan attempted to eat it. No mention was made of her cutting herself, and everything that was happening outside this hospital room seemed distant and unconnected. The snoring man had awakened and was eating his dinner. Loudly. Her dad saw her glancing over there, distracted, and he stood up from his chair to pull the curtain between the beds, blocking her view. Megan smiled at him. “Thanks.”

  There was nothing to do and there wasn’t much to say, so after eating as much as she could, Megan used the remote-control panel attached to the armrest of her bed to flip through the channels and see what kind of cable the hospital had. It wasn’t very good. There were the networks, several news channels, several sports channels and a bunch of other stations she wasn’t much interested in. She finally gave up and switched it back to CNN. “It’s my TV and I was going to make you watch one of my shows,” she told her dad, “but there’s nothing on. So it’s all yours.”

  It was boring just lying there in bed, and after a while Megan felt guilty for making her parents be bored, too, so she told them they should go home. They both looked at each other uncertainly. “I’m tired anyway,” she lied. “I want to go to bed. You can come back in the morning.”

  “I’m spending the night,” her mom said.

  “In that chair? Go home. I’ll be fine. Check on James and make sure he’s staying out of trouble.” She’d meant it as a joke, but the second after she said it, a host of unwanted images sprang up in her brain: James cutting himself in the same way she had … James returning to their house to dig a hole in their backyard … James wearing a backward yellow baseball cap and holding a knife.

  Her parents, too, looked worried.

  She decided to be honest. “I’ll be safe here,” she said softly. “Look after James. And Grandma.”

  Her mom nodded grimly. “Julian,” she said. “Go.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll sleep here.”

  “Mom …”

  “Megan’s right,” her dad said.

  “It’s just a cut—” Megan began.

  “It’s not just a cut. That’s why you’re here. They had to replace over a liter of your blood. And they’re monitoring you to make sure you don’t develop any blood clots.” She gestured around. “Although I don’t see a whole lot of monitoring going on. I don’t know whether they’re understaffed or what, but these nurses and doctors don’t come by anywhere near as often as they should, and I need to be here in case something happens.”

  “Actually, ma’am, we check your daughter on a very specific schedule, and the likelihood of her developing blood clots while being administered the medication that’s in her IV drip is highly unlikely.”

  The nurse appeared behind her mom, and her mom’s face turned red. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  The nurse smiled kindly. “Nothing to be sorry for. I know you’re concerned. I just want to put your mind at rest. This is a precaution against a very remote possibility. Your daughter’s going to be fine. She’s only here right now because we want to make sure we guard against all potentialities.”

  “See?” Megan said.

  “Besides, visitors are not allowed to stay overnight in the rooms. All visitors must leave at ten. You’re welcome to remain in the lobby, but it’s probably better if you go home, get some sleep and return in the morning.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Megan said.

  “I’m staying until ten,” her mom announced.

  “You know your mother.” Standing up, her dad gave her the closest thing to a hug that was possible in the bed, kissing her on the forehead. “I’ll be back to pick your mom up later,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

  “Give me a kiss if I’m asleep,” she told him.

  He smiled, nodded. “And I’ll be back for breakfast,” he promised. “Love you.”

  “Love you,” she returned, and felt the tears well up as he headed out the door, waving.

  The nurse checked the monitors, wrote some information down on a chart, drew some blood and changed the drip bag. Her mom talked to the nurse for a few minutes in the hallway, beyond her hearing range, and Megan flipped once again through the television channels. There was nothing good, so she left it on Jeopardy, and the game show remained on in the background while she and her mom talked. She asked whether any of her friends had been told that she was in the hospital, and her mom said no, not yet, but she’d let them know tomorrow so they could come and visit. Megan asked whether there was any news about Grandpa, and her mom grew quiet and sad and merely shook her head.

  That opened the floodgates, and they talked about the house, really talked about it, for the first time. She held back a little, afraid that if she told everything it might endanger the rest of her family—

  I will kill you both.

  —and she was pretty sure her mom held back a little, too, probably for the same reason, but they did discuss their feelings about the house, little things they’d seen and heard, and the way it had all sort of built up until it was what it was today. Her mom said that Mr. Cortinez at the high school had given her a lot of information about the history of Jardine and that it seemed as though people had been dying there, killing themselves and killing others, since before the town was a town.

  “We should have moved as soon as you found that out.”

  “That’s what I told your dad. Although it was only a week or two ago, to be fair. Besides, who knew that some lunatic would kill himself in our garage.”

  “It happened before,” Megan pointed out.

  “That’s true.”

  “So are we going to sell the house now?”

  “I guess so. If we can.” Her mom paused. “But I’d feel guilty pawning it off on someone else, wouldn’t you?”

  “No!” Megan said instantly, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the numbers of her heart rate accelerate on the monitor. If the nurse hadn’t turned down the sound, it would probably be beeping. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down, not wanting a team of doctors and nurses to rush into the room to see what was wrong with her. “No,” she said more softly. “We can’t live there again.”

  “We won’t,” her mom assured her. “It’s just …” She shook her head, tried to smile. “We’ll think of something to do with it.”

  Megan wanted to ask about her grandpa. It was the big question hovering over everything. But whether it was because she was just a kid or because her mother wasn’t ready to face the subject, Meg
an understood that it was something her mom would not discuss. She hadn’t gotten any details from either of her parents, but she could tell by the way they’d been acting that his disappearance was unexplainable and frightening and somehow involved their house.

  Maybe—hopefully—things would just work out and her grandpa would return on his own, none the worse for wear.

  But she doubted it.

  They’d gone as deep as they were going to go. Besides, Glee was about to be on, and Megan wanted to watch it. Her brain hurt from worrying, and right now she just wanted to relax and enjoy some mindless entertainment. It was a two-hour episode, and for those two hours she forgot everything else, even enjoying the commercials when they came on. After that, she flipped through channels before stopping on back-to-back reruns of The Office, which she and her mom both liked.

  At ten o’clock, an orderly arrived to escort her mom out. Promising to return first thing in the morning, she gave Megan a kiss on each cheek and a kiss on the forehead “for protection,” the way she had when Megan was small, and they both blew each other another kiss as she backed out the door.

  Feeling alone and a little sad, Megan sniffled, wiping tears from her eyes. But a nurse arrived almost immediately to administer a checkup, and after using the bedpan, Megan found that she was suddenly extremely tired. There was nothing she wanted to watch, but she left the television on anyway, turning down the volume until it was white noise.

  She closed her eyes, letting the indistinct murmuring lull her to sleep.

  She awoke in the middle of the night, the curtains pulled not only on her left but on her right, to block the sights and sounds of the corridor outside her room so she might sleep in peace. High on the wall, her television was still on, but no movie or show was being broadcast. Instead, the monitor was white with black letters moving from left to right across the screen.

  It looked like the screen of her cell phone.

  Megan squinted at the message through bleary eyes, then quickly reached for the remote control. She pushed the red “off” button, pressing it over and over again, but the television refused to obey.

  I told you, Megan, the words repeated, I will kill you both.

  Frantic, she pressed the button that called for the nurse.

  It didn’t seem to be working, because no one came. She wanted to get up and out of bed, walk down the hallway until she found someone to help her, but she was connected to the monitors, and a plastic tube dripped medicine into her wrist.

  On the other side of the curtain, the snoring had stopped.

  Was the man dead?

  She needed to calm down. The words on the TV were just that: words. They couldn’t hurt her. They might frighten her, but they couldn’t cause her any harm. She took stock. Did she feel like cutting herself or hurting herself in any way? Did she have any suspicious or unusual thoughts? No.

  Megan glanced up at the screen again, and the words were gone. An infomercial was being broadcast, some type of cleaning product.

  Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing.

  She closed her eyes, settled back down. Just the possibility that it had all been in her head allowed her to forget about it and fall back asleep. Which she did almost immediately.

  She dreamed of the man with the yellow baseball cap. He was in a small, primitive shack, a wooden hut with no furniture and no windows, and he was roasting her grandpa over a fire in the center of the floor, preparing to eat him. Her grandpa was screaming, his clothes and hair burned off, sweat and blood oozing from his reddening skin, falling sizzling onto the flames. He was tied to a spit of some sort, and every so often, the man in the yellow cap would turn him over and poke him with a fork to see whether he was done.

  When she awoke, the curtains had been pulled back, the snoring man’s bed was empty, and sunlight was streaming through the window. She called for a nurse, used the bedpan, ordered breakfast, endured a checkup and was told she was doing well.

  The chairs next to her bed were empty and remained empty. She kept looking from them to the doorway. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Twenty. A half hour. Forty-five minutes.

  Her breakfast arrived—cereal, toast and orange juice—and she started eating. She was worried but pretended to herself that she wasn’t.

  Finally, just after her tray had been removed, her mom arrived.

  Alone.

  Crying.

  Thirty-three

  His grandparents’ house seemed lonely. Grandpa was missing, Megan was in the hospital, and his mom was staying with her. Only he, his dad and his grandma were home for dinner. His dad bought pizza in an effort to cheer him up, and let him watch The Simpsons instead of the news, but it didn’t really work. It made him feel sadder, in fact, made him more aware that things weren’t normal, that everything was out of whack.

  He didn’t really understand what had happened to Megan. He’d seen her in the bathroom before her parents rushed her to the hospital, and it looked like she’d stolen a steak knife from the kitchen and was using it to cut up her legs. Had she been trying to kill herself? What would have happened if Mom hadn’t walked in on her? Would she be dead?

  Did the house make her do it?

  That was what he really wanted to know, but she hadn’t been awake when he went to see her, so he’d been unable to ask. He remembered what it had felt like when he’d been compelled to dig, when he’d obsessed over holes in the backyard, and he needed to let her know that he understood, that he knew what she was going through.

  He didn’t like the fact that she’d been cutting herself here at Grandma and Grandpa’s. As far as he was concerned, that meant there were two possibilities, neither of them good. Either whatever lived in their house had the power to reach all the way out here to make them do what it wanted. Or they’d been infected and carried within themselves a part of that thing, which could manifest itself at any time.

  Both thoughts terrified him.

  Throughout dinner and afterward, he kept examining his every thought and movement, as well as the words and actions of his dad and grandma, looking for any sign that they had been influenced or corrupted in any way. He saw no evidence of it, but that didn’t assuage him. It could happen at any moment, and he became more and more worried as time passed and nothing weird happened. It had been almost twenty-four hours since his mom had found Megan bleeding in the bathroom, and he was on edge, waiting for something like that to happen again.

  After The Simpsons, King of the Hill came on, then Family Guy, then The Simpsons again; then his dad told him it was time for bed.

  James got up from the couch and looked down the long, dark hallway. The guest room he’d been using was at the far end. “I don’t want to sleep in that room,” he said.

  His dad started to say something, probably that there was nothing for him to be afraid of, but they all knew that wasn’t true, and when his grandma spoke up and said that he could sleep in her room—she and his grandpa had separate beds—James looked over at his dad, and his dad didn’t object.

  His dad went with him while he got his pajamas out of the guest room, and stood outside the bathroom while he changed. His grandma had put new sheets on the bed and had brought over the blanket he’d been using from the other room. He said good night to both his dad and grandma, giving each of them a hug, then got into bed, leaving the door open and the hall light on. It took him a long time to fall asleep, and he was still awake an hour later when his grandma came in and got into her bed. He pretended to be asleep, however, and eventually he did drift off.

  In his nightmare, it was midnight and he was back at their house. He had gotten up, thirsty, and walked downstairs to the kitchen to get a drink of water, which made no sense because he always kept a water bottle next to his bed. But he got a drink from the kitchen sink nevertheless, then went over to the basement door, opened it and walked down the stairs. Only the basement wasn’t scary. There was no sign of that grinning man in the corner, and whatever it was that had made the cellar cree
py seemed to be gone.

  It was the garage that was scary now.

  He knew it instantly, and he walked up the stairs and outside, through the backyard, past small holes packed tightly with the bodies of dead animals, and plants so desiccated they resembled the skeletons of misshapen creatures. Both garage doors were open and the building was filled with light, but even the light was scary, and he knew that he should not go in there alone. He did, though, walking through the lighted open area straight to the ladder against the wall. There was darkness at the top of the ladder, and he didn’t want to go up to the headquarters, but he couldn’t stop himself, and, putting one hand over the other, he climbed the rungs. The trapdoor was already open, and he poked his head up through the space.

  Headquarters had changed since the last time he and Robbie had been up here. All of the junk they had collected was gone, and instead of the items they had scrounged from alleys and garbage cans, the room was filled with primitive furniture that looked like it had come out of some settler’s cabin two hundred years ago. There was a bench made from a split log, a table of hand-hewn wood, a copper bathtub filled with water, a rocking chair made from the branches of trees, a low wooden bed with a homemade quilt thrown atop the mattress. There were no lamps, but light seeped in from below through cracks in the floor, making everything look even older and spookier than it already was.

  James wanted to climb back down, but there was something he knew he had to do, and he pulled himself through the trapdoor and onto the floor, standing. The light from below created weird shadows on the walls and ceiling, and at first he thought that was what was making him feel slightly off balance. But then he realized that something in the room was moving. He glanced around, trying to figure out what it was.

  The rocking chair.

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the rocking chair was rocking. No one sat in it, but it was rocking nevertheless, its slatted shadow swinging like a pendulum among the others on the ceiling, back and forth, back and forth. The wood creaked, the only sound in the stillness save for his own breathing.