The Haunted

Twenty-three

There was no courthouse in Jardine, so anytime Claire was required to appear before a judge, whether for a hearing or a trial, she had to drive the fifty miles to Amarejo, the county seat, an arduous trip that inevitably consumed the better part of a working day. Even early morning appearances required an hour’s drive there and back, in addition to the waiting time in court and the length of the meeting itself, so the best she could hope for was a return to Jardine by noon or one o’clock.

Today’s preliminary hearing for Oscar Cortinez was not scheduled for the early morning. It was set for eleven thirty, which meant it would probably be postponed until after lunch. In court parlance, that meant two o’clock. So she doubted she’d be home before five. To make matters worse, she had to attend an eight-o’clock deposition for the Seaver divorce, which the lawyer of her client’s soon-to-be-ex-husband refused to conduct in Jardine. So she needed to get up early, leave the house early, and spend the entire day in Amarejo, with probably a significant amount of downtime between the deposition and the hearing.

She let the kids sleep in, but if she had to get up early, Julian had to get up early, and she prodded him awake, telling him to make coffee and get breakfast ready while she dressed and put on her makeup. Breakfast consisted of an overtoasted bagel, but at least the coffee was good, and she drank two cups to ensure that she would remain awake for the long, boring drive. “I may be back late,” she warned Julian. “So if I don’t get back in time, or the kids get hungry, there’s leftover chicken in the refrigerator and fish sticks in the freezer. If you guys want, you can make Pasta Roni or macaroni and cheese.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Julian told her.

She double-checked her briefcase to make sure she had all pertinent forms and paperwork for both the deposition and the hearing, packed her laptop in its case, made sure she had enough money to buy lunch, turned on her cell phone and gave Julian a kiss before stepping outside. “Be careful,” she told him. She wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by that, but he nodded, and that reassurance buoyed her as she walked out to the van in the driveway and pushed the button on her key to remotely unlock the doors. She waved good-bye to Julian one last time before he went back into the house.

To her left, Claire sensed movement, and she quickly turned her head in that direction. There was a man walking down the sidewalk toward her, an average-size man of medium build wearing a backward yellow baseball cap. She’d seen him around before, but it seemed odd for him to be out this early in the morning. He could be exercising, she thought, but he was not running, jogging or even walking fast, and the closer he came, the more uncomfortable Claire felt.

She quickly got in the van and locked the doors before starting the engine.

The man passed by without even glancing in her direction, and Claire relaxed a little.

She watched him walk away. She was so worked up that these days anything even slightly off from the usual routine had her seeing threats where none existed. Arranging her purse, briefcase and laptop on the passenger seat next to her, she turned on the satellite radio, tuned in CNN, then started off.

The sun was up, but the day was still young, and much of the morning’s light hid behind clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon, creating billowing silhouettes that stood out sharply against the gradations of pink and orange behind them. More vehicles than she’d expected were on the road, and that caused a slowdown where the highway narrowed to two lanes in Yucca River Canyon. Truth be told, she was glad for the company, happy she was not all alone on the road. For the thoughts in her head were the type that inspired fear and dread. She was not planning out questions and exceptions for the deposition, was not going over in her mind opening statements for the hearing. She was going over the history she had read about in Oscar Cortinez’s books, the tales told by Spanish explorers and Mexican missionaries.

She found the supernatural aspects of the various accounts disturbing. She knew that most of it could be put down to the superstitions of the time and the fears that probably befell all sojourners through what were then unexplored lands.

But …

But in her mind, as she read, she imagined the area as it must have appeared back then, without the buildings, without the people, without the roads, and in her conception, the focal point of the horrific events was the land on which their house now stood.

Of course, that was ridiculous. No church had ever been constructed on that spot. Still, the events described in those histories possessed an unnerving correlation to the events that were transpiring between the walls of her own home, and thinking about them left her feeling cold and anxious.

She was determined to bring it up to Oscar when she saw him, and, luckily, they both arrived early to the courthouse, which gave them a chance to talk. He, of course, wanted to go over the particulars of the hearing, wanted her to once again walk him through everything that was going to happen, as well as reassure him that they would eventually emerge victorious. Hand-holding was an important component of the practice of law, and though they’d had the exact same conversation just last night, they did it again until his nerves were soothed and he was ready to play his role.

With some extra time to kill, Claire saw her opportunity and cleared her throat. “Oscar,” she said cautiously. “I’ve been reading the material you provided me. These stories about evil spirits and haunted places …”

He waved her away. “Justifications. A way to rationalize the murder, brutality and atrocities committed by first the Spanish against the native Americans and then the English against the Spanish. Don’t worry. They won’t hurt our credibility. History texts are full of references to ghosts and demons and the supernatural. It was how the people in those days explained events and phenomena they did not understand—if you read some of the accounts of the California Gold Rush written by the men of that time, they would curl your hair. Often such stories are excuses for bad behavior, defenses for violent societal overreactions that seem indefensible to us today. And, in this case, they were used to justify the slaughter of opposing societies.”

Claire nodded, as though in agreement. She wanted to pursue this line of questioning, but chose to wait until after the case had been decided before probing any deeper. She could not afford to engender any doubt in her client, and she knew that by asking what she really wanted to ask, she would risk losing Oscar’s confidence. It was clear that he disbelieved in the supernatural and put no stock in any paranormal explanations. If she indicated that she felt otherwise, it might make him think that she was unstable.

Maybe she was.

At home, Julian and the kids had eaten by the time she returned.

“How’d it go?” Julian asked.

“Good,” she said. “The deposition went well, and the district is already indicating that they might be willing to settle. We have a strong case, and they know it.”

“That’s great,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, though without much enthusiasm. She opened the door of the refrigerator and took out a head of lettuce, intending to make herself a salad.

“What’s wrong?” Julian asked.

She looked at him. “You know what’s wrong.”

“There hasn’t been anything—”

“Don’t,” she told him. She chopped the lettuce, got out some tomatoes and carrots, and he wandered back out to the living room, where Megan and James were fighting over control of the TV.

Both of the kids went to bed early, while it was still a little light out. Granted, the days were long and it didn’t get dark until sometime between eight and nine, but it was totally out of character for either of them to voluntarily go to bed at this hour, and Claire had a sneaking suspicion that they wanted to be asleep before night truly fell.

She didn’t blame them.

Julian was watching a movie on HBO. She watched it with him for a while, and when she was sure the kids were asleep, she told him about what she’d been reading, the historical accounts of ghosts and demons and unexplainable phenomena. He was skeptical, of course, but not that skeptical, and she knew that while he wanted to disbelieve, he probably did not.

“It has to be connected to what’s happening here, to us,” she said. “It makes sense that if those sorts of things were occurring on this land hundreds of years ago, they’re probably affecting what’s going on now.”

“What is this, a monster movie?” he tried to joke. But he knew as well as she did that what was going on was closer to that reality than anything else, and when she stared at him disapprovingly and said nothing, he apologized.

They were too far along to pretend that they were overreacting to a settling of the house or similarly rational events that could explain what they were going through. This was bigger than that, more concrete. Multiple people had seen a ghost walk down their hallway and into the living room. It was time to look for real answers, not logical explanations.

They talked about it for a while, not really coming to any conclusions, agreeing only that they needed to investigate the situation more, watch the kids carefully and be very, very cautious.

Julian was tired, had a headache, and went to bed early, but Claire was wired and wide-awake. She worked on a few pretrial motions for the Seaver divorce and tried to determine the starting point for a settlement with the school district. Her mind wandered, though, and she found herself thinking about something she’d read, a strange small detail she’d come across in two of the books, the one written by the farmer and the one penned by the Mexican historian.

As a test, Claire went outside. Everyone in the house was asleep, so she unlocked and opened the front door very quietly, closing it behind her. She walked onto the lawn, then to the sidewalk. She had been out after dark before, but she’d never had any reason to study the sky. Now, however, she looked up.

The night was black.

No stars.

She tried to recall whether she’d seen the moon since moving to their new home and couldn’t.

Shivering, she walked down the sidewalk until she was in front of the Ribieros’ house, where she stopped, looking up.

The Little Dipper and Orion’s belt were right where they were supposed to be, and a half-moon hovered just above the roofline of a house across the street.

She’d been afraid this would happen, on some level had known it would happen, but the sheer concrete fact of it took her breath away. This wasn’t some nebulous experience that could be interpreted in many different ways. It was a measurable truth: the moon and stars could not be seen from their house.

Why this was the case, she had no idea, but she walked very slowly along the sidewalk, looking up all the while. The sky was clear and beautiful, the kind she remembered from childhood. She expected to find a specific cutoff point beyond which the stars and moon could no longer be seen, but instead the lights in the sky did a slow fade, as though they were gradually being obscured or turned off. By the time she reached the boundary of her yard, the sky was jet-black.

What did this mean? No answers suggested themselves, but the scope of the phenomenon left her feeling small and helpless. This was far bigger than just having a ghost in their house. She walked down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, and the same thing recurred: the moon and stars gradually reappeared as she moved away from her yard.

She returned to her driveway and stood there for a moment, not sure whether she wanted to go back inside. At the moment, however, she felt safer inside than out, and she stepped onto the porch, opened the front door and walked into the living room—where the lights suddenly turned on, revealing the laundry basket sitting in the center of the floor.

From the kitchen area, she heard a door swing open and hit the wall. Hard.

The door to the basement.

She couldn’t deal with this now, and she ran quickly down the hall to the bedroom, not bothering to check the cellar door, not bothering to turn off the lights in the living room. Breathing hard, she closed the door behind her and instinctively pressed her back against it to prevent anything from getting in. She thought about waking Julian, thought about telling him to go upstairs and get the kids and have them sleep with them for the night, but she saw him on the bed, and both her fear and those thoughts fled instantly from her mind. For he had decided to sleep naked, and had kicked off the sheet and blanket. He was on his back and his erection stuck straight up in the air.

Forgetting everything else, she walked forward, stripping off her clothes before climbing onto the bed.

She sucked him while he slept, working feverishly on his erection, and he came in her mouth, still asleep.

She swallowed, masturbated, then closed her eyes and dreamed of a world where there were no stars, no moon, no sun, and the sky was always black.