EERIE

by Blake Crouch Jordan Crouch

  Grant stopped scrubbing. Let the plate sink into the dishwater.

  “Then you know I don’t blame you for any of this.”

  “I know that if it comes down to my word against your partner’s, I’m fucked.”

  “Hey, who’s chained to a chair in your living room? You’re my sister, all right? You get the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Why even bother? I’m a wreck, right? That’s the word you used. A drug addict. A prostitute who fucked her own life from every position.”

  He said, “I was defending you, Paige,” but it even sounded weak to him.

  Her plate dropped into the water with a violent splash.

  She put both hands on the edge of the sink.

  “You’ve never defended me,” she said.

  “What are you talking about? I raised you.”

  “Not the same thing.”

  “That hurts more than you mean it to.”

  “Your crusade to fix me has always been about what I need, but never about what I need from you.”

  “I don’t even know what that means, Paige.”

  “It means that I didn’t need to be your project. I needed your support. I needed you to stand beside me.”

  “All I’ve ever wanted is to help you.”

  “I believe you think that. Just like any good doctor. But I’m not your patient. Want to know why I left the first time and why I kept leaving every time you found me?”

  “Been asking myself that question for years.”

  “That’s the problem. You don’t have the answer, but you could never see that. I left because I got tired of watching you fumble with my problems like they were yours. Like you had the first clue about how to fix them. You’re sicker than I am, Grant. All I wanted was a brother and all you wanted to be was a mechanic. We were both addicts.”

  “That’s what family does. They try to help each other.”

  She turned to him.

  “I got clean on my own, Grant. You show up and now we have a dead body upstairs and a police officer handcuffed in the living room. What exactly have you fixed?”

  He grabbed the damp dishtowel from the counter and dried his hands.

  “You make it sound like you’ve got your whole life sorted out. I just watched some guy use you, Paige. Maybe you’re off drugs, but you’re a helluva long way from clean.”

  The words were out before he could stop them. He was shocked by their venom, their precision. They had come from a place he didn’t know existed, a place where there was no love for his sister. Just anger and disappointment.

  Utter devastation arrived on her face.

  She shook her head in bewilderment. “Fuck. You.”

  Chapter 30

  “Everything okay?” Sophie called from her chair as Grant stormed through the foyer and into the living room.

  “Fine,” he said, selecting a short, squat candle that smelled like lavender from the flickering legion on the coffee table.

  Grant went back into the foyer and made his way down the hall beside the stairs, stopping at the door to the basement. The tap continued to run in the kitchen. He listened for the clink of plates and glassware but there was no other sound. Imagined Paige standing frozen by the sink, the same mosaic of hurt across her face.

  During that last intervention in Phoenix, when Paige was in the throes of a spectacular crash and burn, she had leaned over to Grant with tears in her eyes and whispered that she wished the car accident had left him a vegetable too. Then she’d kissed him on the cheek. That was Paige at her worst. Paige out of her mind. It hadn’t made it any easier, but at least he’d known it wasn’t his little sister saying those things.

  So what’s your excuse, pal? Around what can you hang the blame for your poison?

  And yet still, it was there.

  Unquenchable rage.

  He stared across the kitchen at Paige’s back.

  Knew he shouldn’t say it. Knew he should just let it go. Walk away. Punch a wall in private, but he couldn’t stop himself. He never could. The acid wanted out, and it was coming.

  He said, “Did you ever think for a minute that maybe I needed you? That maybe I needed a sister? Instead of a train wreck of a child who has not for one single day since I’ve known her had control of her own life? Has that thought ever crossed your mind? I guess I’m lucky I’ve never really needed you.”

  He opened the door and headed downstairs.

  The candleflame faltered.

  In the weak light, a few fragile stairs offered the way down before disappearing into darkness. Grant remembered how easily they had flexed under his weight before and placed his feet gingerly on the first step.

  It bowed.

  He could hear Paige crying in the kitchen. He hated it, but he wanted it.

  He started down the stairs, staying at their edge and spending as little time on each step as possible without rushing the descent.

  The darkness at the bottom was even thicker than he remembered. It seemed to congeal with the dank air like a viscous ether, cold and clammy on his skin.

  Grant held the candle up and squinted, realizing that his eyes had already done all the adjusting they were going to do.

  In the corner, the piano loomed, barely visible in the feeble illumination.

  Something about its presence unsettled Grant, a part of him actually afraid that the darkness might blurt out some old rag time, the keys moving but no one at the helm. Sour notes where the hammers were missing or lame.

  Grant put the brakes on that train of thought.

  All those nights lying awake in bed, just a kid and no adult in the house, afraid to close his eyes—it was the same fear. He always thought he’d grow out of it. Still hoped he might. Hell, wasn’t owning that fear part of the reason he’d been drawn to law enforcement? But adulthood had a way of making him feel like more of a child than when he’d actually been one.

  Thirty-eight years old and still afraid of basements.

  He took a moment to gather himself, and then made his way across the uneven stones to the window Sophie had smashed.

  The fluorescent orb of a streetlight peered down at him through what remained of the glass.

  Hunkered in the dark below it lay the buckled mass of the workbench. It was crudely made, a sheet of particleboard nailed to a pair of wooden sawhorses. The crew who’d done the remodel had probably left it behind. When Sophie had fallen through, she’d split the table top so that the two halves now met at a ninety degree angle. He didn’t know if it would be enough, but it looked like perfect firewood.

  Grant gave one of the halves a kick, hoping the wood might be soft enough to split with his foot.

  The particleboard barely flexed.

  A tremor of pain shot up his leg.

  He turned and scanned the rest of the room for something he could use to break it up.

  In the corner beneath the stairs, a cluster of long-handled tools rested against the wall.

  He walked over and picked through the pile, finally selecting a sledgehammer which he hoisted and carried back to the workbench.

  Grant set the candle on the floor beside him, and with his free hand, pulled both halves of the table away from the wall.

  On the exposed brick in front of him, the unsteady light made his shadow tremble and curl onto the ceiling, the sledgehammer grotesquely elongated like a malformed limb.

  The silhouette moved when he moved but it didn’t feel like it belonged to him.

  He threw an impulsive look back over his shoulder at the piano, but it was lost somewhere in darkness behind him.

  He squared himself up in front of the bench.

  Got a solid, two-handed grip—right hand under the head, left down toward the end of the handle—and raised the sledgehammer over his head.

  The blow fell with such force that he didn’t even feel it pass through the bench, splinters of wood exploding as the head crushed into the stone floor and sent a jarring shockwave up through his arms that rattled the fill
ings in his molars.

  Eight more swings and the workbench had been reduced to a pile of kindling.

  Panting, he leaned on the handle of the sledgehammer and examined the damage.

  A good start, but not enough to burn through the night.

  More importantly, not enough resistance to fill his need to destroy something.

  Grant picked the candle up, threw the sledgehammer over his shoulder, and approached the corner where the piano sulked.

  Up close, it was a gorgeous instrument. An upright Steinway of mahogany construction with brass gilding on the bass and treble ends. Must have been exquisite in its youth. Now, decades of exposure to the elements had stripped away most of the varnish and rusted its fixtures.

  He propped the sledgehammer against one of its legs and ran his hand across the keyboard.

  It was rough where the lacquered ivory had worn down to the wood beneath.

  His index finger came to rest on middle C.

  He pressed it.

  The key sank with a gritty resistance, and for the first time in what Grant guessed might be decades, a single, decrepit note moaned from somewhere deep inside the old piano. It filled the basement, taking so long to dissipate that he began to feel unnerved at its continued presence.

  It was still hanging in the air when the basement door opened and Paige’s voice came to him from the top of the steps.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing. Just getting some firewood.”

  Silence for a beat.

  The door slammed.

  Grant gave the piano one last look.

  The note was gone, leaving only the hush of rain creeping in through the broken window.

  He lifted the sledgehammer, heaved it above his head, and sent it crashing through the wooden lid, down into the guts where it severed the remaining strings in a horrible twanging cacophony.

  The resistance was glorious.

  He drank it in.

  Ripped the head out, swung again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Chapter 31

  It took him three trips to carry up all the fruits of his rage.

  As he sat on the hearth arranging balls of newsprint and kindling under the grate, Sophie said, “You’re drenched with sweat. Everything okay?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Paige has been crying in the kitchen.”

  “We had words.”

  “Yeah, I heard some of them.”

  He laid two legs of the piano bench across the grate and grabbed the box of matches.

  Struck a light, held it to the paper.

  As the flame spread, it suddenly hit him—exhaustion.

  Total, mind-melting exhaustion.

  The kindling ignited.

  “I’m gonna be turning in soon,” he said. “You need to use the bathroom or anything?”

  “You just destroyed her in there. You know that, right?”

  He looked at Sophie.

  Dishes clanged in the kitchen sink.

  “I know she’s hurt you,” Sophie said. “I know she’s disappointed you. I know she’s been a pain in your ass since the two of you were on your own. I get all of that. But for whatever reason, you got one sister in your life, and there won’t be anymore. I got none. I envy you.”

  “Sophie—”

  “I understand that I don’t understand what it’s like.”

  “The things she does to herself,” he said. “That she lets these men do to her for money.”

  “I know.”

  “I remember when she was six years old. When she had nothing in the world but me.”

  “I know.”

  “And now this?”

  “Grant—”

  “I love her so much.”

  He wiped his eyes, piled more wood onto the fire.

  Grant took Sophie to the bathroom and then set her up in a leather recliner. He cuffed her right ankle to the metal framework under the footrest and buried her under a mass of blankets.

  Her phone vibrated in his pocket.

  He tugged it out, swiped the screen.

  Art had sent another text, this one carrying an attachment.

  It was a photo of the interior of a diner.

  Four men seated at a booth.

  “What is it?” Sophie asked.

  He showed her the pic and pointed to the frumpy-looking man seated next to Jude Grazer.

  “Steve Vincent,” she said.

  “Yep. The gang’s all there.”

  A local number appeared on the screen.

  “Recognize it?” Grant asked.

  “That’s Frances.”

  He answered with, “That was fast.”

  “I aim to please.”

  “You got something?”

  “Mr. Flowers has a couple of DUIs.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. No ViCAP hits. No NCIC. But … I did run everyone through the Social Security Death Index on our Ancestry.com account.”

  “Good thinking, and?”

  “Williams, Janice D., died March 2, 2007. She was forty-one. I don’t know if that’s helpful. I don’t have any other information.”

  “The other tenants are still warm and breathing?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is super helpful, Frances. Thank you.”

  “I’ve got another call coming in—”

  “Take it. I owe you big time.”

  Grant ended the call.

  Sophie looked up at him, eyebrows raised.

  “One second,” he said.

  He hurried out of the living room, through the foyer, and into the dining room, where he grabbed Stu’s manila folder off the table.

  Through the open doorway, he caught a glimpse of Paige still at the kitchen sink.

  He jogged back to Sophie and sat down in proximity to the only decent light in the house—the roaring fire—and opened the folder.

  “Talk to me, Grant. What are you suddenly cranked up about?”

  “No meaningful hits on any database, but Frances ran all the names to see if anyone had died. One did, five years ago.”

  “Do you know how old they were at time of death?”

  “Only forty-one.”

  He scrolled the list.

  Four names down from the top, he found Janice Williams.

  “Hmm,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Ms. Williams died while she was still living here.”

  “So? People die. It happens.”

  “You aren’t a little bit curious for more details?”

  “Is there contact info on the spreadsheet?”

  “Just a phone number. Must be next-of-kin.”

  “Call ’em up.”

  Grant dialed. “Five-oh-nine area code,” he said. “Recognize it?”

  “Spokane.”

  It rang five times, and then went to the voice mail of a gruff, tired-sounding man with a blue-collar twang. Grant pictured a mechanic.

  You reached Robert. I can’t get to the phone right at this moment. Leave your name and number and I will call you back.

  After the beep, Grant left his name and Sophie’s cell.

  “You warm yet?” he asked her.

  “Getting there. What now?”

  “We sleep. Then first thing tomorrow, we’ll call every resident on that list. We’ll find out what happened to Ms. Williams, have Stu dig up her death certificate, whatever it takes.”

  “And Rachel.”

  “What?”

  “We call Don’s wife. No matter what.”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  Her skin was beautiful in the firelight, and in that moment, if Sophie had asked him to let her go, he probably would have done it.

  • • •

  Grant crawled onto the sofa and under a blanket.

  He took out Sophie’s phone—the battery charge had dropped to thirty percent—and powered it off.

  Then he rolled onto his sid
e, faced the fire.

  The movement of the flames was mesmerizing.

  He shut his eyes for a minute, and the next time he opened them, the fire was low and Paige was lying on the mattress below him, staring up at the ceiling.

  “What if she’s right, Grant?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Sophie.”

  “About?”

  “About me.”

  He wasn’t following. He’d been sleeping too hard.

  “What are you talking about, Paige?”

  “About all of this having to do with me. What if it’s not the house that’s haunted?”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Because you don’t want to?”

  “Look, I don’t know what this thing is, but I do know you, Paige.”

  “Do you really?”

  Chapter 32

  It is the strangest sensation, the closest thing to a lucid dream she’s ever experienced.

  She is aware of herself asleep on the recliner.

  She feels the leather cushions beneath her but also the sensation of existing outside of herself. Like being in the audience of a play while she’s also onstage.

  There is another, more ominous sensation.

  Someone standing over her.

  She can feel their presence.

  Hovering.

  Watching.

  She wants to turn her head but won’t, thinking that whatever is standing next to the chair is waiting for her to look, and that as soon as she does, it will do the thing it wants to do so badly.

  This must be limbo, she thinks.

  This is what forever is going to be like for me.

  But that idea is somehow worse, and she’s already turning her head.

  Sophie looks up and opens her eyes.

  The fire is so low that the room stands in virtual darkness.

  Rain drums against the windows.

  It stands beside the chair, staring down into her face.

  Not Paige. Not Grant.

  Just a pure black shadow shorter than either of them, with long, skinny arms that nearly touch the floor.

  She tries to speak, but her mouth won’t open.

  Tries to turn away, but she has lost the mobility of her lucid dream, now locked in a stare with the shadow.

  That she cannot see a single detail of its face is somehow worse.

  Her mind runs in terrible directions.