“Where,” the spirit repeats as it continues down the staircase. “Where is the one I love the most?”
The girl’s head drops in disappointment. “I’m here,” she says weakly. “Why didn’t you help me?”
#
As the ghost reaches the bottom of the stairway, a wide spotlight follows the small raised lantern, illuminating different sections of the studio.
The scenes roll forward in sequence, like a movie montage that conveys various events in rapid succession. In each scene, a teenage boy pulls open curtains or shifts aside piles of clothing or stacks of paper; he uses a stethoscope to open a safe, or taps against walls to locate a secret panel.
Whatever item he finds, he places in a large rusty wheelbarrow.
The dream unfolds like an out-of-body experience. No longer seeing through Melissa’s eyes, I watch myself as if I’m the star of a movie.
In the Antique Shop, my character reaches to the top shelf and pulls down the plastic model of a human heart. I grip the model with both hands and twist in opposite directions until it opens. A withered human heart sits inside the hollow plastic shell. I remove the heart, and place it in the wheelbarrow.
I lift the crystal ball from the medium’s circular table, then pull off the gold-fringed purple tablecloth. A deep depression creates a hiding place in the central support post. I reach in, grabbing a hank of hair. The item’s stuck, like cork in a bottle, and I brace my other hand against the table and lean back to tug harder.
The spirit’s lantern flickers and wavers. “Where,” she says, and I tug harder, shaking and twisting the hank of hair until I hear a wet pop like the sound of meat sliding off a bone.
The decayed, severed head finally breaks loose from its compartment. I hold it up, the same way the ghostly woman holds up her lantern. Even given the head’s advanced state of decomposition, I’ve seen enough behind-the-scenes photographs to easily recognize my favorite director.
“Bring him back,” the ghost says.
“I’ll try.” I reach into the compartment to retrieve the ear that had sloughed off when I tugged the head free. Then I put head and ear into the wheelbarrow, with the rest of the body parts I’ve uncovered.
#
The front wheel tilts awkwardly as I push the wheelbarrow over the unfinished studio floor. My cargo looks somewhat like a sleeping man, except the ingredients are scrambled. A severed leg, crooked at the knee, hangs over the side and kicks distractedly as I push.
The ghost isn’t much help either. Her lantern sways as she follows, and the swirl of shadow and light makes me dizzy. A wind like an aging woman’s eager breath brushes the back of my neck, and she begs for me to hurry.
I’m going as fast as I dare. It’s not wise to rush dark magic. The slightest mistake could be disastrous.
I roll the wheelbarrow onto the simulated stone floor of the dungeon set. I’ve already prepared a raised coffin at the center, strange chalk symbols radiating from it and black candles waiting to be lit around the circumference.
As if from a distant mountaintop, a girl cries for help. I can’t let her bother me right now.
I’ve lined the coffin with unspooled strips of celluloid—precious seconds of film spliced and sacrificed to cushion the bed of their creator. I lay the different pieces of Bud Preston’s corpse into the coffin, inventing chants in a long-forgotten language as I try to place limbs in their proper order.
Binding chants, to assist the curled strips of film that crackle under the weight of bones and desiccated flesh.
The ghostly woman leans forward and attempts to mimic my magical phrasings. I do not understand the language that passes through me, but worry that her imperfect pronunciation will undermine the effect of the spell.
I light a match, and visit the thirteen candles at the circumference of the chalk circle.
A dim light rises from the floor of the dungeon. Since I no longer need the illumination from the spectre’s lantern, I knock it aside.
I grab her, my fingers tangled in air, then cobwebs, then coarse hair—then muscles and sinew and flesh and bone. I twist and pull, and the ghost-woman screams while I tear her apart as if ripping a damp rag into strips. I pull her arms from her torso, rip off the fabric-flesh of her neck until her head falls off ghostly shoulders. I open an awful seam in her bosom, splitting her torso down the middle. One leg comes off whole, while the other breaks above the ankle and above the knee.
As I pull the rag woman apart, the arranged pieces of Bud Preston’s body magically stitch together inside the coffin.
And still the spirit screams, her unattached head face up on the dungeon floor, her eyes accusing me.
I raise my foot over her head, press the heel of my shoe into her open mouth. Beneath me, the head feels hollow and airy, like an abandoned wasps’ nest. I lean into my foot, crushing the nest. The spirit’s lantern extinguishes, and finally her screaming stops.
Then I hear a sharp intake of breath from inside the coffin. The corpse’s eyelids flutter and struggle to open. Its stomach begins a slow pattern of rise and fall, rise and fall.
Success!
The eyelids open completely.
I realize with horror that I’ve made a dreadful mistake. I’d moved too quickly; the language of my chants was incorrect.
Because the eye sockets are empty.
The body in the coffin begins to convulse. Freshly attached limbs discover an agony of contorted motions.
He thrashes and writhes. My hero. I’ve brought him back to life, to suffer the torments of hell.
In a panic, I reach to the ground and grab one of the black candles. I throw it into the coffin.
Celluloid is highly flammable. The contents flash bright in a burst of magician’s smoke. A hiss of escaped steam rises shrill in the air as the body parts writhe and burn.
He’s still in agony. I don’t know how long he will suffer, but I can’t look away.
For a moment, I consider staying with him as the dungeon burns.
The stone of an actual dungeon would be resistant to flame. A wooden floor, painted to resemble marble, catches easily. The scent of cooked flesh rises from the coffin-cauldron, unnaturally bound limbs separating into a wriggling stew, and the area grows increasingly warm.
My eyebrows begin to singe.
And I turn tail and run.
#
No. What am I doing?
There’s too much here worth saving.
I grab the soothsayer’s purple tablecloth, spread it on the floor and toss items onto it: a native statue, the hideous mask of the deformed shopkeeper, the bound pages of an unfilmed script. I gather the four corners of the cloth and pull it into a makeshift sack that I can drag onto the next partitioned set, to rescue more treasures.
Flames light the areas I’ve left behind. The trees of the simulated forest set mimic an actual outdoor fire.
I have to hurry. With a cry of joy, I locate the spider model on the edge of the reporter’s desk, and I bundle it with the other plundered items.
As I walk past the Victorian storefront, hot smoke thickens like drifts of English fog. I’m having trouble breathing, but can’t cover my mouth—I need both hands to drag the heavy sack.
I’ll feel better when I climb higher. I cross to the stone stairway and take my first steps.
The makeshift bag drags heavy behind me. What else had I taken—more books, the reporter’s typewriter, the giant limb of the Haunted Oak? I grabbed whatever I could lay hands on. There wasn’t time to sort and judge each item’s value.
The sack gets heavier the higher I go. I’m not sure I can make it to the top without jettisoning some of my precious cargo.
But I persist, even though my arms almost feel ready to pop out of their sockets. The bag thumps up each step. Every dozen or so steps, I get a brief respite as I drag the sack across the landing.
Still, it feels almost as if I’m dragging the weight of a dead body.
Almost at the top. I strain and pull.<
br />
The bag pulls back.
It’s stuck on something. I tug harder to twist and rip it free.
And it says, “Brendan, you have to help me.”
Melissa holds onto the cloth. She lies on the ground, her legs at an odd angle. A snapped bone sticks out the side of a bloody tear in one leg of her pajamas.
I pull again at the bag. It’s too heavy with Melissa attached.
Her eyes glow bright as flames rise from below. “I thought we were friends,” she says. “What have you stolen this time?” Melissa scratches at the cloth, trying to pull the corners apart and reveal the contents.
I won’t let her. “You don’t know what it’s worth,” I say. “You never appreciated your father the way I do.”
She’s a girl, and she’s wounded. I have to be stronger.
But I feel like she’s winning. She has the desperate strength of someone in a crazed panic.
She’s fighting for her life, but so am I.
Keeping one fist firm around the gathered corners of the cloth, I reach my other hand down to her wounded leg. I grab the snapped protrusion of bone and twist it.
Melissa screams, and I’m thinking about how she made my parents mistrust me. How she manipulated me, taunting me with a tiny fraction of the secrets in her home, then closing the curtain over the rest.
“I’m taking what I can.” I twist my hand, agitating the wound in her leg. “It belongs to me.”
Melissa’s screaming in pain, and a glow from the rising fire illuminates the tears that stream down her face. But she won’t let go of the tablecloth. One of the gathered corners slips from my grasp, and all the items spill out.
“Look at it, Brendan. It’s all junk!”
What if she’s right? Stolen pages covered with meaningless scratchings, plastic bottles wrapped with tinfoil, wooden boards coated with flecked and fading paint. Taken from the studio, far removed from the movies that brought them purpose, these items lose all their significance. My friendship with Melissa should be more important.
“They’re treasures,” I insist. “They’re rightfully mine.”
Melissa summons all her remaining strength and pushes at the cloth and the pile of spilled items. They sail over the edge of the stairway and into the inferno below.
A distant crash, and I’m left with nothing.
I grab Melissa’s arm to help her up from the ground. Perhaps she thinks I’m apologizing.
She’s much lighter than the bag of items I’d attempted to rescue from Budget House.
I lift then toss her over the side of the stairway. She screams all the way down.
#
In my dream, I push into the hidden hallway, where accusing eyes watch from patterns in the wallpaper. I open the thin latched door and step into Melissa’s home.
The ordinary home. Sterile and windowless.
My nostrils burn from the odor of smoke mixed with artificial fragrance. I head to the end of the hall, to the bland carpeted stairs that lead down to the foyer exit.
Melissa’s mother waits for me at the top of the stairs. Unlike the airy spirit I’d encountered in the studio, her hair is gray and disheveled, and her face is lined with wrinkles. She is the Withered Hag.
“I’m not who you think I am.” She crosses her arms and blocks my way down the stairs.
“You’re such a disappointment,” I tell her. “Your beauty. Where did it go?”
She winces from the force of my words. As I watch, strange cracks appear at her neck and where her arms join her shoulders. A leg snaps at the hip, and another falls into three separate pieces. Her torso splits down the middle, divided along the same line I’d torn through the fabric-spirit of her younger self.
The segments tumble down the soft carpet of an ordinary staircase. I step over the pieces as I descend to the exit.
Hurrying onto the porch, I don’t bother to shut the front doors behind me. I run across the field, and before I turn down the access road, I pause to take one last look at the shell of Budget House.
It looks like a scale model on a miniature set. I wish the bristled legs of a giant spider would skitter over the roof, an animated monster crushing the building in spectacular fashion. Or the forbidden chemicals in the mystic scientist’s laboratory could combust in a huge fireball, prompting the audience to erupt in spontaneous applause as the end credits roll.
I am the only audience. A puff of smoke curls from the open doors of the building, accompanied by the sound of a sickly cough.
#
The Axe Maniac
As usual, Melissa moves quickly down the road from her bus stop. I never could keep up with her.
She’s way ahead, the size of a fluttering moth in the distance. I don’t yell ahead to ask her to wait. My voice would only make her run faster.
It’s almost like she knows I am behind her, and she’s afraid to slow down.
As usual, the road is essentially abandoned. There’s no one nearby she could call for help.
In a movie she would stumble, giving her pursuer a chance to trod closer. She would almost make it to the door of her house, but would fumble and drop the key. As she curses and bends to pick it up, a shadow will loom over her. The shadow holds an axe. The girl screams and puts her hands over her face—as if that weak gesture could shield her from the sharp edge of descending steel…
At some point, Melissa must hear the rush of approaching footsteps, my exhausted breathing getting closer and closer. She won’t stop, won’t glance over her shoulder.
I’m frustrated that she ignores me. She’s been this way at school, too. She will hug close to the opposite side of the hallway as she passes; in class, she deliberately places students or teachers between us to avoid a private conversation. She’s begun to talk with other kids at lunch—a group of girls she’s complained about in the past, so I know she doesn’t really like them.
It’s time to put an end to this foolishness.
I’m stronger than she realizes, and my legs are longer. I kick up gravel and dirt as I run.
Melissa was the size of a moth, but now she seems as large as a human infant. The illusory perspective changes as I approach: she ages into a child, then a pre-adolescent.
As she nears normal size, I raise the axe over my head.
If she turns around, I will hide the axe behind my back. Pretend to be normal. Her friend again.
We’ve reached the “Dead End” sign.
#
Melissa stops. Her shoulders slump, and she lets her backpack slide off and to the ground.
There’s a weariness to her posture, and I notice the same attitude in her face, particularly around her eyes.
Perhaps, like me, she hasn’t been getting too much sleep lately.
“Why did you do it?” I ask her. I could be referring to any number of things, but she catches what’s uppermost in my mind.
“My mother did it, mostly, but she made me help.” She looks to her left, and I know she can see Budget House at the end of the access road, its front porch drably painted over. Melissa must have held the ladder steady as her mother climbed to deface the bas relief in the overhanging mantle. “I’m most saddened about the tree. It’s been there since even before our house was built. Cutting into a healthy living thing is wrong. I painted black tar over the wound, because I read that’s supposed to help a tree heal—but who knows what long-term damage we did…”
“It’s all like a living thing to me.” I have to force myself to stay calm. She should know this already—how much the items from her father’s movies mean to me.
I ask if she’d heard about my disastrous visit with Thomas Hendricks.
Melissa shrugs. “My mother works at Evergreen.”
I wonder what Mrs. Preston offered as payment for Hendricks’ performance: more pillows or blankets? an extra serving of Jell-O at dinner?
Melissa seems shy in front of me, like I’m a stranger. Maybe I am. Maybe I’ve always been. Her eyes look down, or off in the distance. Th
ere’s an elusive emotion that she’s trying to suppress, and I can’t decide if it’s lingering affection for me, or regret over what’s happened to our friendship.
“The studio,” I say. “Please tell me the rest of it’s still there. Even if I can’t see it again, I want to know the studio still exists.”
Melissa still can’t look me in the eye. “After our parents talked on the phone, my mother went a little crazy. It was the middle of that terrible storm when she sawed off part of the tree. Rain poured all around us as she splashed paint over the front porch. ‘All this junk,’ she said. ‘Never brought me anything but grief.’ She went inside and found a folder with scraps of paper inside. Phone numbers of people who’d inquired over the years. Collectors.”
My heart sinks.
“When you visited with your dad, I told you she was in a strange mood. Mother bought empty boxes from K-Mart, and several rolls of shipping tape. And huge garbage bags, too. She was in a frenzy, packing some things up to sell, stuffing other things in bags to take to the dump. Brendan, I don’t think she cared which items were worth selling or which she should toss away. I couldn’t stop her.”
Horrified at what she tells me, I raise my arms in frustration. Melissa takes a step back.
As if she could see the axe I’d imagined holding earlier.
In that instant, I can pinpoint the elusive emotion in her expression.
It’s fear.
She’s afraid of me. She’s backing away from a threat.
“I don’t have what you want anymore,” Melissa says.
She reminds me of a kidnap victim in a movie. Her captors torture her to reveal the lock’s combination, the stash of stolen money or drugs, the hiding place of a dead scientist’s secret formula. But they’ve kidnapped the wrong person. I don’t have the information you need. Hurt me all you want: I can’t tell you what you want to hear.
I lower my arms gently, and try to show her that I’m puzzled. I try to assume a calm, reassuring expression, hoping it looks natural instead of making me seem even more like a crazed murderer.
Life in a Haunted House Page 17