True Ghost Stories and Hauntings 3

by Simon Murik

  And then he was gone.

  He hadn’t drowned; he’d just vanished into the horizon like a magic trick.

  I scratched the back of my head. Had I really seen anything? I’d been up since 4:00 a.m. with the move and it probably wouldn’t be hard for the sun and water to get my mind to play tricks on me. I stared out there for another minute and then went for a walk down the beach.

  When I got home I set up my computer desk and laptop in the patio room and tried to do some outlining, but after an hour I gave up. Nothing solid was coming to me—just glimpses of ideas that I couldn’t get a hold on. I got up, went to the fridge, and grabbed one of the Budweisers from the six-pack I’d brought with me before wandering back outside. The sun was setting now and I leaned against one of the big rocks as I savored the beer. Afterwards I went back to the computer but still couldn’t get anything going. I leaned back in my chair and my eyelids got heavy. The next thing I knew I’d woken up to the late morning sun shining over the beach.

  I showered, had a quick breakfast of eggs and toast, and then headed out to the beach to get a jog in. When I got back to where the hill’s path met the beach I stopped cold. The blurry boy-like shape was thrashing around in the water again..

  And then I noticed that no water was splashing around him. It was as smooth as the rest of the sea. Like he wasn’t even there.

  And then he wasn’t.

  Like yesterday, he hadn’t drowned and he hadn’t swam away. He’d just vanished into the horizon of sea and sky.

  I went back up to the cabin, grabbed a beer, and went back to the computer. I was positive I’d seen a kid out there this time, but that was impossible. I shook my head and took a good swig. As if the writing wasn’t hard enough, I now had a vanishing drowning boy stuck in my mind

  Just drink more beer and get back to work.

  Two hours later I still had nothing.

  I ran my hands through my hair and looked out at the water. The waves were a little lower today and a couple of seagulls trotted along the sand past the cottage. Screw it, break time.

  I went outside and about halfway down the trail, I froze. A set of child-sized foot prints ran from the water to the trail. I looked back up at the cottage but saw no one. My heart beat a little faster as the wind picked up with a bit of a chill. I walked to the water’s edge and stared at it closely. I then turned away and went back up to the cottage. The sun had dropped a bit and an orange light ran over the dimmed sunroom. Taking another beer from the fridge, I quickly went through the cottage, but there was no one here. I went back outside and hurried down the hill. A few goose bumps popped up on my arms as I started walking next to the second pair of footprints.

  I decided a trip to the market might help normalize things a bit.

  I went back up the hill and through the cottage to the Jeep. I’d seen a place yesterday called Seaside Foods a couple of miles from here. Firing up the Jeep, I backed away from the cottage and headed towards it. After a few minutes I could see the market along the side of the road, and I drove up to a dusty parking lot that looked like it could only handle eight or ten cars at a time. Parking the car, I got out and walked towards the entrance. There was a row of green carts at the front of the store and I grabbed one as I walked in.

  The place was great—a ton of fresh fruits and veggies, a nice bread section, and a little butcher counter with some nice-looking cuts of beef and fish. I spent about twenty minutes picking out what I wanted and grabbed a couple six-packs of fancy-looking microbrews from the cooler. I headed to the checkout back at the front of the store and a gray-haired man with tan, weathered skin smiled as I started putting things on the counter.

  “How you doing today, son?” he asked.

  “I’m great. How about you?” I asked as I set the beer down.

  “I’m doin’ just fine. Haven’t seen you here before. Are you new to the area?”

  “Yeah, I am. I’m renting a cottage on the beach for the summer.”

  “Oh, yeah. Which one?”

  “Um, it’s at the far edge of the beach, can’t remember the address right now. I just moved in yesterday.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “A white-and-blue place?”

  “Yep, that’s it,” I said.

  “Well, I’ll assume you got a good deal on the place.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You don’t know the history?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  The man shook his head. “Damn shady realtors. That figures. Well, about nine years ago a boy was left to drown by his alcoholic parents. He went swimming one day, got caught in a rough tide, and as he screamed and waved for help his parents laughed from the top of the cottage hill because they were too dumb and drunk to realize what was happening. They moved away a week later. But the boy …”

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “The boy’s still there, hauntin’ whoever tries to live there. Hell, they haven’t been able to get anyone to stay in that place longer than a week since the kid died.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “No kidding, son.”

  I paid the man and got out of there.

  It was around sunset when I got back to the cottage. I threw a steak on the grill, popped open one of the new beers, and started putting together a salad. I knocked out the first beer, which was pretty strong at 7.2% alcohol, and grabbed a second. With a nice little buzz already going, I went to the sunroom and sipped the drink as I looked over the ocean.

  I didn’t know what to make of the old man’s ghost story but it didn’t matter. The cottage was mine for the summer and I had to start getting some ideas together. Writer’s block had never hit me like this before and it was a bit unnerving. What if this was it? What if the well had run dry? I sighed, finished off the beer, and went to take the steak off the grill.

  After I’d finished dinner I went for a walk on the beach and, when I got back, grabbed another beer and sat down at the computer. The purple sky over the ocean had a few remaining traces of red in it and a half moon had risen over the mountains. I rubbed my hands together and prepared to let the creativity flow.

  And nothing happened.

  Fragments of images skirted in and out of my mind but nothing cohesive, nothing exciting. I drank another beer and gazed out at the ocean. Time seemed to move in slow motion and as the sky turned black I could feel myself falling asleep again. Maybe if I just lie down for a bit, I thought.

  I got up and went upstairs to the bedroom. A sliver of moonlight crept through the window onto the bed and without bothering to close the bedroom door I crawled onto it and quickly fell asleep.

  My eyes popped open when I heard a creaking noise in the room. I lay there for a few seconds and my skin froze when a high-pitched voice murmured in the hallway. I couldn’t tell what it was saying; it was just a frenzied mishmash of words. I reached over and turned the lamp on.

  The bedroom door was closed.

  Sitting up, I listened as the voice moved along the outside of the bedroom wall and then back to right outside the door.

  The voice slowly became clear.

  “Yooou left me. Yooou left me. Yooou left me.”

  Over and over again.

  I slid out of bed and moved to the door. The words flowed into the room like a whisper and a scream at the same time. After about a minute the voice faded and then went silent. I opened the door a crack. Nothing.

  And then I heard water rushing from the bathroom faucet.

  I pushed the door open and went into the hallway. Through the darkness of the bathroom I could see a thick line of water streaming into the sink. I flipped the bathroom light on.

  In the mirror the boy stood right behind me.

  My heart pounded as we stared at each other. After a few seconds I turned around and he was gone.

  It was just after 2:00 a.m. and I badly needed to get out of the cottage. I hurried downstairs and walked towards the sunroom, my skin chilling when I saw the soft white glow of
my computer.

  Lines of giant question marks filled up the page.

  I looked over at the doorwall. It was locked.

  I went into the kitchen, made some coffee, and spent the rest of the night sitting on the front porch.

  When the sun started to come up I went back inside and took a quick shower. That old man hadn’t been kidding, and I now knew my eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on me when I saw the disappearing kid in the ocean. After I got dressed and went back downstairs, I half-heartedly tried to get some writing in but gave up after about a half hour. My lack of sleep had caught up with me and I went over to the recliner and closed my eyes. When I woke up I could tell from the bright yellow sun that it was around noon, so I got up, had lunch, and then went out onto the beach.

  The waves were about three feet high. As I gazed down the empty stretch of beach towards the mountains, a scream that could shatter glass shot thought the air. My eyes snapped back to the water and I saw the boy neck deep in the ocean and frantically waving his arms.

  What the hell was I supposed to do? I’d rented a haunted beachfront cottage, couldn’t write a book to save my life, and now had to watch a ghost kid go through the motions of drowning every day.

  And then it hit me.

  I hurried over to the rowboat and pushed it into the water. The waves smacked against the boat, causing it to jerk up and down, but I managed to climb into it and started paddling towards the boy. It was a real bitch fighting the tide and my arm muscles burned like fire as I pushed over the waves. I looked back at the cottage and then at the boy again. He didn’t seem to see me and he kept going through the same waving motion like he was stuck in some kind of repeating loop. After a lot of thrashing and queasy ups and downs I cleared the rough part of the water and could now see just how frail his blurry white body was. I rowed to within about ten feet of him and he looked at me and stopped going through the drowning motions.

  I stopped rowing and he smiled and started to glide through the water towards me.

  When he got to within a few feet of the boat he faded like a mirage and vanished.

  I sat in the boat and stared at the spot of water where the ghost boy had been as the breeze blew through my hair and the boat gently bobbed over the current. After a few minutes, I pushed the paddles through the water and started rowing back to shore. Maybe I’d see the kid again and maybe I wouldn’t. But I knew I didn’t have anything to fear. Hell, I owed the kid.

  I now had my story.

  I smiled, let out a chuckle, and let the tide carry me back to shore.

  I stood in front of the old barn and waited. The noise had been like a heavy moan and my little sister, Becca, and I had heard it a good fifty yards away while we’d been wandering through the pumpkin field.

  “Do you think a hurt man is in there?” Becca asked.

  Becca was only six but she clued into things pretty quickly. I rubbed my chin and stared at the big, red, wooden door. “I don’t know what’s in there. But we both heard it.” I guess I should check it out.

  “I want to come too,” Becca said with a bit of a whine.

  “No, Becca. You stay here.” I walked to the door and wrapped my hand around the handle. Taking a deep breath, I pulled the door open and peered into the barn. The late afternoon sun lit up the rows of haystacks and shined against the big green tractor that sat in the middle of the barn. It didn’t look like anybody was in there.

  “Hello!” I called out.

  No answer.

  “Is a man in there?” Becca asked.

  I waved my hand at her and walked in. This was only the third time I’d been in the barn since we’d moved to New England from Tennessee two weeks ago and it was a hell of a lot different coming in here alone. It was mustier in here than the last time and the air felt thicker, almost like you could actually step on it, but unless someone was hiding underneath the stacks or the locked loft in the roof, no one was in there.

  But I’d heard that moaning.

  I turned and walked out.

  That night at dinner my older brother, Zack, flung a spoonful of mashed potato at Becca, and when the white goop hit her square in the forehead the nightly dinner show began. Becca started crying and threw a piece of broccoli at Zack, my mom smacked Zack in the back of the head—he was already fourteen years old so I couldn’t blame her—and my dad sentenced him to 5:00 a.m. chores in the morning.

  But I was barely paying attention to any of that.

  My mind was on that moan I’d heard in the barn.

  After dinner my parents watched TV while Becca played in her room and Zack struggled with his algebra homework. Without saying anything to anyone, I slipped outside into the night and walked over to the barn. The face of the barn had a soft white glow from the moon and I stood about ten feet in front of the door, deciding whether or not to peek inside again. A coyote howl rang out from the woods on the other side of the pumpkin field and I heard the moaning again. My heart raced and I took a step forward but stopped. If someone was really in there it would be pretty dumb to go in alone.

  But I didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell my dad yet. He hated surprises and was tired from all the work the farm was giving him. I walked back into the house, went into my room, and lay down on my bed. Even though Zack was the third most intelligent of the three of us, I’d tell him about the noise tomorrow and we’d go back in there and really take a look around.

  I read my comics for a while and ended up falling asleep with Spiderman #172 covering my face. The next morning I got up, showered, and went downstairs to the kitchen just as Zack was coming through the front door.

  “Have a good time with the cows, Zack?” I asked.

  “Shut up, Braylan,” Zack muttered. He followed me into the kitchen, took the Corn Flakes out of the pantry, and sat down at the breakfast table.

  “Look, Zack, I’ve got to talk to you about something,” I said.

  “Yeah, what’s that?” he asked as he poured milk into the plastic bowl.

  I rubbed my hands together. “I think someone’s in the barn.”

  “What, like a hobo or something?” he asked as he stuffed a spoonful of cereal in his mouth.

  “I don’t know. Me and Becca heard a weird moaning sound when we were out in the field yesterday and last night when I went out there I heard it again and saw the doors rattle.”

  “And you need your big brother to check it out and make things safe for you,” Zack said.

  I rolled my eyes. “I want you to take a look in there with me to see if we can find anything.”

  Zack lifted the bowl and slurped down the rest of his cereal. He put the bowl back on the table and threw his left hand at my face; I flinched just as he stopped before he hit my cheek. “Sure, wimp. I’ll make sure the barn is safe for you.”

  Zack got up, tossed his bowl and spoon in the sink, and I followed him out of the kitchen and into the hallway. We walked out of the house into another sunny October day and headed straight to the barn.

  “You ready, little man?” Zack asked as put his hand on the barn door handle.

  “Just open it,” I said.

  Zack flung the door open and I detected the faint scent of blood and gunpowder in the barn.

  “Jesus,” Zack said, scrunching his face. “It smells like there was a gun fired in here.”

  He stepped forward and put his hands on his hips. “But I don’t see anything. Just hay and the stupid tractor.”

  “I know,” I said as I stepped up next to him. “That’s what it was like yesterday but it definitely didn’t smell like this.”

  Zack scratched his shaggy brown hair and walked around the tractor. The scent got stronger as he looked around the hay bales. “Nothing. Clean as a whistle. But that smell has got to be coming from something.” Zack came back towards me—he was acting surprisingly mature—and walked past me out of the barn.

  “You said you heard moaning in here last night?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah, late
in the afternoon too.”

  “And Becca heard it too?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Zack folded his arms and looked out at the pumpkin field. “OK. If the barn didn’t smell like the showdown at the OK Corral I would have whacked you in the head by now, but it does, so here’s what we’re going to do.”

  Zack looked me in the eye which was something he rarely did—to me or anyone. “Mom and Dad are going to the movies tonight and they’re leaving me in charge. After they go, I’m going to take the loft key—”

  “The loft key,” I interrupted. “How do you know where dad hid it?”

  Zack huffed. “Because I went snooping around their room the day after we moved into this place and found it in one of his old work boots in his closet.”

  I bit my lip and nodded. Typical.

  Zack gave me a little shove in the chest. “Come on. Let’s get back inside before mom and dad ask what we’re doing.”

  I spent the rest of the day in my room writing a book report for school. A few minutes before five, a wide-eyed Becca came into my room. “There’s an army man in my bedroom,” she said.

  “Oh yeah, what does he want?” I asked as I went back to typing. Becca already had a big imagination and no doubt the weird barn was helping it run wild.

  “He said you shouldn’t go back into the barn and that he wants our family to move away.”

  My hands froze and I looked over at her. Her eyes had started to water.

  “Does Zack know about this?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “OK. Show me,” I said as I got up from the chair.

  I followed Becca down the hall into her room and looked it over. Her pink bed was made tight and her stuffed animals were lined up against the wall like little furry soldiers.

  “He’s over there by the closet,” Becca said.

  I looked to my left but all I saw was the open closet door and her clothes hanging on the two metal racks.