by Dan Poblocki
The slide show continued on. The next shot revealed what appeared to be a piano bench. A stack of sheet music stood precariously on the edge, ready to topple. The top sheet read Superstition, music by Stevie Wonder. In another picture was a fireplace. Three decorative birch logs were arranged just so upon a set of plain andirons.
“What is it?” Wesley asked, rushing back. But by the time he reached Neil’s shoulder, the screen had turned blue. The slide show was over. Neil stared at the camera for several seconds. Then he quickly told Wesley what he’d seen.
“You’re sure those shots aren’t from your aunts’ house? Maybe someone took them last night after you got home.”
“I’m positive,” said Neil, feeling queasy. “And besides, the camera wasn’t working last night. Remember?”
“Let me see.”
Neil scrolled quickly through the pictures. The catalogue of Graylock photographs appeared, but the last three, the ones Neil didn’t remember taking, were now missing.
“They were right here,” said Neil, totally confused.
The screen went black. A gust of wind rustled the grass all the way down the hill. Neil clutched the camera tightly. He felt a hand against the small of his back. He turned to look at Wesley, who clearly was not touching him. Neil felt pressure between his shoulder blades. His sneakers dragged forward as the swing began to move. Neil turned his head to see who was pushing him.
No one was there.
Neil leapt off the seat and ran from the swing set. The swing beside Wesley moved back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. As if someone had taken his place. Then the swing suddenly stopped, the chains hung straight down. Neil almost fell backward, but caught himself just in time. “Someone pushed me,” he said. Wesley stared at the seat in astonishment.
For some reason, Neil turned and glanced down the hill. In the middle of the street, a hundred yards away, a figure was watching him. She was dressed in white. He held his hand above his eyes to shield the sun, but he couldn’t make out her face.
Fingers clutched his wrist, and Neil shrieked. It was Wesley. Wesley laughed and then asked, “What are you looking at?”
“That woman …” Neil pointed. But the street was empty. His skin felt as if it had been replaced by sandpaper. He was itchy all over.
“What woman?” Wesley stepped forward. “Neil? You’re acting weird.”
“She was right there! Don’t tell me I was the only one who saw her.”
“Sorry.”
Neil didn’t want to hear anymore. He tossed the camera back into the satchel. “I’m not imagining things. Let’s go find her.”
The boys explored every alley on the way back, but they found no woman wearing a white uniform.
When they burst through the shop’s front doors, several customers looked up at them. Neil realized that his chest was heaving and his eyes were wide. He slipped into the booth near the front door, where he put his head in his hands, trying impossibly to hide. He couldn’t come in here acting like a total freak, but that’s exactly how he felt. Even Wesley “Green Man” Baptiste was looking at him funny.
He’d hoped that seeing the ghost again would take him away from everything of which he was frightened. Now he was worried that he was seeing things: first the phantom photos in the camera and then the woman in the street. You’ve got to get us out of here, his dream mother had said. But, it seemed, Neil had only traveled farther into the padded room.
Claire waved at the boys as the café’s phone rang. She picked it up. Thankfully, she hadn’t noticed their dramatic entrance.
“What do we do?” Wesley whispered.
“We have to tell Bree,” said Neil.
“Eric too,” said Wesley. “Maybe they’ll have an idea about those extra pictures. Try the camera again.”
Neil pulled the device out from the bag, but the screen wouldn’t change from black no matter how many times he hit the power button. He shook his head, disappointed. Dead batteries — again! This had to mean the woman he’d seen in the street had been a spirit, didn’t it? He clicked open the camera’s small side panel, slid the batteries out, and handed them back to Wesley.
“You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?” he asked.
Before Wesley could answer, Claire approached and slid into the booth next to him. “So!” she said. “It turns out we’re having a party tonight. And guess what?”
“What?” the boys asked at the same time.
“You’re both invited.”
EVERY MONTH, THE AUNTS AND THEIR FRIENDS GOT TOGETHER to drink and eat and watch their favorite “Best Bad Movies.” With the arrival of their niece and nephew that week, Claire and Anna had forgotten that the movie night was upon them. And worse, it was their turn to host. A group of at least eight adults would be showing up around seven thirty that evening, expecting hors d’oeuvres.
After a stop at the grocery store, Neil felt a chill as he walked through the aunts’ front door. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to meet their friends. What if they asked him why he was staying in Hedston for the summer?
Claire followed Neil into the house, calling out, “Anna, turn on the oven! We found some frozen snacks.”
Anna peeked her head out from the kitchen. “Frozen?” She screwed up her face.
Neil stood at the bottom of the foyer staircase, holding a paper grocery bag. His cheeks burned with embarrassment. “Easy there,” said Claire, lugging the rest of the load down the hall. “Neil picked out the menu. And I have complete trust in him.” He couldn’t help but smile at that. Claire was actually pretty cool. He decided then that he needed to start giving her more of a chance.
A bang sounded upstairs, followed by a frightened scream.
Neil grabbed the banister, steadying himself. Claire and Anna raced from the kitchen, looking up at the ceiling.
“Bree?” Claire called. “Everything okay?”
Bree careened to the top of the staircase and dashed halfway down before realizing that everyone was there staring at her. “I — I,” she stammered, trembling, unable to continue.
Anna raced to the bottom of the steps, nearly knocking Neil out of the way. She climbed the stairs, meeting Bree where she stood. She grabbed her shoulders and gave a brief hug. “Honey,” she said calmly, “what’s wrong?”
Bree took a deep breath. “I was in the bathroom. I lifted the toilet seat.” Neil wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the rest of this. “And inside …” Bree shuddered. “Snakes!”
That was not what Neil was expecting her to say.
“Oh my god,” said Claire.
“Like, tons and tons of long green snakes!” Bree seemed to become aware of herself. She held her palms in front of her face, rubbing at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m acting like a kid.”
Anna steadied herself, glancing up the stairs with shoulders squared, as if she had to deal with this kind of thing every day.
“I’m not going back in there,” said Bree, wriggling away from Anna, descending the rest of the steps to stand by Neil. But now Neil was curious.
“I’ll go,” he said, following Anna up the stairs.
Bree had managed to close the bathroom door in her desperate scramble to escape the alleged toilet snakes. Anna and Neil stood in the hallway, staring at the knob, worried together what might happen when they pushed the door open. Would a mass of wriggling green serpents spill forth, mouths open wide, fangs dripping with venom, ready to chomp their ankles? Would they make a good snake-stomping duo? Anna certainly looked as if she was ready to destroy something. She pressed her ear to the door, then shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.” She glanced at Neil. “Feeling brave, kiddo?”
Neil nodded, even though he wasn’t sure. He reached out, turned the knob, and pushed.
A lightbulb glowed dimly from the ceiling above, Bree obviously having forgotten to turn it off. The toilet sat beside a purple porcelain claw-foot bathtub. Of course, the lid was down.
Anna crept forward, reaching for the bowl s
crubber perched just behind the pipes next to the tub. A weapon. Neil stayed behind her now, happy that Anna had decided to become the brave one here. He heard a rustling sound from the hall, and he turned to find Claire watching from just outside the door. Standing several feet from the toilet, Anna used the scrubber handle as a prop, slowly raising both the lid and the seat. They clinked against the water tank behind the bowl.
From where he stood, Neil could not see over the lip. He looked at Anna’s face to get a clue what was inside. She looked disgusted and confused, but not afraid.
“What the …,” Anna whispered. Stepping closer, she used the scrubber to reach inside the bowl. When she lifted it, tentatively, slowly, something long, green, and slightly fuzzy hung from the scrubber’s plastic bristles. “Lake weed.”
“How the heck did that get in there?” said Claire, stepping into the bathroom.
Neil’s mouth went dry. He clenched his fingers against his palms, trying to stop them from going numb. He leaned forward to get a better view. He needed to see exactly what his sister had seen.
The toilet bowl was filled with long strands of the noxious-looking grass bunched up in clumps. They looked almost alive in the water, serpent-like.
The weed was the same type he’d seen one day earlier, swirling just below the surface of the lake out by Graylock Hall.
“STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN OUT HERE IN THE COUNTRY,” said Anna, arranging small quiches on a baking tray next to the open oven door. Neil and Bree worked near the sink, mixing a packet of ranch dip with a carton of sour cream. “A long time ago, when I told my family I was moving to New York City from Nowheresville, Pennsylvania, they asked me if I was scared. I guess I was, but the city is a particular kind of scary, where you have several simple rules to stay safe. Watch your back. Be aware of your surroundings. Don’t ride the subway alone late at night. I even carried around a can of pepper spray, which thankfully, I never used.
“When I left New York to move up here with Claire, my friends had the same reaction that my family’d had when I’d gone to the city: Are you scared?” Anna slid the tray into the oven and closed the door. “To be honest, I find the country to be much more frightening. Up here, you never know what you’re going to get, so it’s nearly impossible to prepare the way you can in the city. Mysterious sounds in the woods at night. Strange lights in the sky.”
“Lake weed in the pipes,” said Bree, blushing again. She’d cleaned the stringy grass out of the toilet bowl herself, embarrassed that she’d caused such a scene.
“And no one can hear you scream,” said Claire in a low, dramatic voice. She opened a cupboard and pulled down a stack of mismatched china plates. “I know people who are scared by the sound of nighttime crickets.” She laughed. “We got used to it fairly quickly. You find ways to feel less alone. Mostly by maintaining the few friendships you have … by getting together with people who understand you.”
“Seems to me that you guys have plenty of friends,” said Bree, popping a piece of celery into her mouth.
“Speaking of which,” Anna said, glancing at the clock above the refrigerator, “those friends will be here soon. Television’s working, right?”
“It was working this morning,” said Bree.
“That’s right!” said Claire. “Are you two planning on getting up at the crack of dawn again tomorrow?”
Neil blinked, thinking to himself, Hopefully, we won’t have a reason to. He watched his sister out of the corner of his eye — she wore a blank smile, appearing to have recovered entirely from The Great Toilet Snake Incident. He wondered if she’d be so cool when he and Wesley told her everything that had happened that day.
The doorbell rang. The first of the guests had arrived. Others quickly followed. Neil recognized a few of them from the pie shop. Soon, a small din rose from the living room, where the adults sat and ate and drank and laughed. Claire and Anna introduced Neil and Bree to everyone, and thankfully, no one asked about their mother or father. The guests all seemed genuinely pleased to meet them. There was a young couple, Barry and Libba, who had driven forty-five minutes from outside of Albany; an older woman, Gladys, whose black dress was covered with white cat hair; a few other shop owners from downtown Hedston; a quiet man, named Olivier, who sometimes helped Anna in her studio.
Last but not least was Andy — the man who had come upon the battered, bloody group the day before. Today he was dressed in a black polo shirt, dark jeans, and work boots — cleaned up from the plaid-shirted, woodsman look he’d worn when they met him. He smiled mischievously at Neil and Bree when they realized why they recognized him.
“How’s that leg feeling?” Andy asked.
“It’s better,” said Neil, his heart racing. He didn’t feel like telling the story of his injury to this group of strangers. But Andy was kind enough to drop it.
“What movie are you all watching?” Bree asked, boldly sitting beside Gladys, risking a staticky cat-hair transfer.
“Aren’t you going to watch it too?” Gladys asked.
“Depends on what it is.”
“It’s the hosts’ choice,” said Andy, waving for Claire and Anna to answer.
Sitting on the arm of the couch, Claire turned toward Bree. “We have some ground rules. This is ‘Best Bad Movie Night,’ remember. The film has to be campy, trashy, scary, over-the-top. It has to be at least as old as any of us. We try to weed out anything too gory or nasty.”
“Sometimes unsuccessfully,” said Andy, laughing.
“All that being said,” Claire continued, “I’ve pulled a classic from our personal catalogue that, for some reason, this group has not experienced together.” Everyone leaned forward, as if Claire was about to spill a life-changing secret. “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”
The room filled with oohs and aahs. And a couple groans.
“Now, now,” said Gladys. “Hosts get final say.”
“We didn’t have a lot of time to plan,” Anna muttered, almost to herself.
“I’ve never heard of it,” said Neil.
“Never heard of Baby Jane?” Anna’s mouth dropped open. She continued excitedly, “Bette Davis plays a psychotic former child actress who locks up her paralyzed sister, played by Joan Crawford, in a decaying Hollywood mansion.” When Neil and Bree stared back, blankly, she went on, “Oh, come on! You must have seen the dead-rat-on-a-dinner-plate scene somewhere on the Internet. What else is YouTube good for but silly little things like that?”
“Stop, Anna! You’ll spoil it for them!” said Claire.
Dead rats on dinner plates? Neil cringed. The word psychotic made him nervous.
“Are you convinced to watch with us now, Bree?” said Gladys, smirking.
There was a knock at the door. Wesley! Finally. Neil leapt up from his chair. “I’ll get it.”
When Neil opened the door, he was surprised to find Eric standing beside his brother. “Hey, Neil,” Eric said. “Looking good. Better than last time I saw you.”
Wesley looked a little embarrassed. “He borrowed Mom’s car to drive me. Is it all right if he stays?”
Neil glanced into the living room. Bree’s antennae were up. She craned her neck to see who he was talking to. Neil forced a smile. “Sure,” he said to the brothers. “Come on in.”
NEIL LED WESLEY AND ERIC INTO THE KITCHEN, offering them something to drink. Curious, Bree snuck in behind them.
Accepting a glass of Coke from Neil, Eric glanced into the living room. “This is weird,” he said, then took a swig.
“I can get you something else instead,” said Neil.
“Not the Coke,” said Eric. “Them.” He nodded at the small group of adults. “What are they all doing here?”
“Having fun,” said Bree, crossing her arms. “What are you doing here?”
Wesley took a step toward Neil, as if bracing himself for an explosion.
Eric frowned. Placing the glass on the counter, he said, “I’m sorry. Did I do something to you?”
Bree shrugg
ed. “Besides leaving us alone in an abandoned mental hospital?”
“I didn’t leave you alone.”
“You went off by yourself. Neil got hurt. We’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”
“You’re right,” said Eric. “It could have been worse. But it wasn’t. So what’s your problem?”
“I don’t understand why you’d come to someone’s house for a party and then call everyone weird. That’s all. Maybe this is why your band kicked you out? You seem a little bit … insensitive.”
“They didn’t kick me out,” Eric said, exasperated. “I quit.”
“Guys!” said Neil, waving them quiet.
But Eric went on, “To answer your question, Wesley asked me to come inside. That’s why I’m here. I wasn’t planning on staying.”
Wesley finally spoke up. “We need to talk. All of us. Together.”
Bree and Eric paused, and then looked at Wesley as if he’d poked them with a stick.
“Something happened today,” said Neil nervously. “Something really weird.” He told Eric about the ghostly visitor the night before, about the puddle of water at the end of his and Bree’s beds. He explained that an invisible hand had pushed him on the playground swing, that a woman dressed in white had vanished while watching them from Bennett Street. He described the pictures that had disappeared from the camera, and the weeds that had come through the pipes into the upstairs bathroom.
When Neil was done, an uncomfortable silence hung in the kitchen. “What if something happened when we went to Graylock yesterday?” Neil added, lowering his voice. “Is it crazy to think that whatever appeared in room 13 followed us home?”
“Nurse Janet?” said Eric, as if considering the possibility for the first time.
“I can’t stop thinking about the legend,” said Neil. “That her ghost drowns kids out in the lake.” Bree held her hand up to her mouth. Eric dropped the cocky mask he’d worn since he’d arrived. They both looked truly frightened.
Neil felt oddly pleased with their reaction. At the very least, it made his theory seem reasonable.