The Haunted

Twenty-four

Once again, Julian spent the better part of the morning trying to look up information about their house, their street, the town. His deadline was real and it was nearly here, but Claire wanted him to investigate further and try to find out what he could about the history of their property. She wouldn’t specify what she hoped to do with such knowledge, but he knew how her mind worked, and knew she probably had a plan. Although whether that plan was to sue the realtor and the seller for not revealing that their house was haunted, or whether it was to perform some sort of ritual to exorcise the ghost, he couldn’t say.

She was smart, though, and tenacious, and she had a much better chance of figuring a way out of their predicament than he did.

Of course, she didn’t want him to be looking up things here, in the house, not after what had happened to her. But it was daytime and he was feeling brave.

Besides, part of him wanted something like that to happen to him.

As was often the case with Internet research, Julian ended up scrolling through a list of articles and sites that had nothing whatsoever to do with the subject at hand. And chances were that when he did find pertinent information, it would be a brief generic overview, the equivalent of a Reader’s Digest article.

It was his job to design Web pages, but even he had to admit that there was a lot of useless crap out there on the Web.

After fifty fruitless minutes, Julian reset his parameters to narrow down the search, but there were still some twenty-eight thousand hits, and it wasn’t until the fifth page that he found one that even applied: an official town Web site sponsored by the chamber of commerce that, in a bid for tourist dollars, played up the local history angle. There was nothing mentioned about hauntings (although with the popularity of so many ghost-hunter shows on cable, that would definitely have been a draw), but the site did describe Jardine as a former frontier town populated by the likes of the legendary Kit Carson and originally founded by the Spanish.

It wasn’t much, but it was a beginning, and Julian hoped to expand upon that with subsequent references in other linked sites.

No such luck.

He scrolled through Web page after Web page for the next hour without encountering anything even remotely helpful. Finally he decided to take a break, and he went downstairs, where, miraculously, Megan and James had found a show to both of their liking and were lying down on the living room couch and floor, respectively, watching television.

Julian did his fatherly duty and chided them for watching too much TV, telling them that, when this show was over, they had to turn off the television and find something else to do. They muttered their assent, and he went into the kitchen, where he grabbed an apple and a can of Dr Pepper.

Back in his office, he took some time off to write an e-mail to his client, detailing everything he’d accomplished so far, setting up an excuse for himself should he miss the deadline, which looked increasingly likely. He paused, reread what he wrote before sending it, took a sip of Dr Pepper—

—and the text on the screen moved.

As he watched, uncomprehending, individual letters separated themselves from words, moving up, moving down, moving out, the pixels that created them flattening and shifting, coming together in a dark mass that slowly resolved itself into a face.

The face of the ghost who had crashed their party.

The man who had died in their basement.

Julian pushed his chair away from the desk as the face looked up, looked down, looked around, then pressed against the monitor, grinning. It looked for all the world as though someone were actually trapped behind the screen, and Julian recoiled at the unnerving reality of the illusion.

Then the face became pixilated, broke apart, losing mass, losing color, fracturing into fragments that once again rearranged themselves into his e-mail message.

Julian reached over and quickly turned off his computer before backing away again, more unnerved than he would have expected to be by such an experience. He stood, then paced around the room, taking deep breaths, thinking. Maybe Claire was on the right track. Maybe there was something connecting the haunting of their house to events in the past, and maybe the thing in this house saw what he was trying to look up and wanted to scare him away.

Just as it had her.

He was scared. No doubt about that. But he also didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with his research, and it occurred to him that a more fruitful approach might be to check the library. Public libraries often had books and documents pertaining to local history, as well as reference librarians who themselves were repositories of information. He glanced at the Beatles clock on his bookcase. It was just after eleven. Julian paused for a moment, deciding what to do, then headed downstairs.

The kids were still camped out in the living room. “All right,” he told them. “Turn it off.”

“But the show’s not over,” Megan complained. “You said we could wait until it was over.”

James had already used the remote to shut off the TV.

“Come on. Let’s go.” Julian took the key ring out of his pocket, jingling it so both kids could hear.

“Okay,” James said, getting up off the floor.

“Where?” Megan asked, suspicious.

“Out for lunch. We’ll go to McDonald’s. Then I need to stop by the library and look a few things up.”

Megan wrinkled her nose in distaste. “McDonald’s?”

“Taco Bell, then.”

“I want McDonald’s!” James announced.

“We’ll flip for it. But come on; we gotta go.”

“I gotta go,” Megan said, and headed down the hallway to the bathroom.

Julian found himself still jingling his keys. He hadn’t realized how nervous he was, how much he wanted to get out of the house, until his daughter said she had to use the bathroom. James looked in that direction and started to say something, but Julian cut him off. “You can go at Taco Bell.”

“McDonald’s!”

“Whatever.”

As soon as Megan finished, he ushered the kids out of the house, not relaxing until they were safely in the van.

“You said we were going to flip a coin,” James said.

Julian nodded. “We will.”

“But how will we know where we’re going unless we do it first?”

Julian pushed himself up from the seat in order to get a hand in his pocket. He pulled out a dime. “Okay, call it.”

“Heads!” they both said in unison.

“One person gets heads; one person gets tails,” he said patiently.

“I want heads,” James insisted.

Megan sighed melodramatically. “Fine.”

Julian flipped the coin, called it. “Tails.”

“Ha!” Megan said, pointing a finger in her brother’s face and grinning.

“Taco Bell it is.” Julian drove to the fast-food restaurant, where they ate a reasonably harmonious meal before heading over to the library. James parked himself in front of one of the computers and Megan wandered into the young-adult stacks, while Julian went over to the reference desk to talk to the librarian. As he’d suspected, the library did have a lot of items dealing with local history. There was actually a closet-size “history room” that held nothing but books, brochures, pamphlets and magazines related to the history of Jardine and Tomasito County. Most of the items could not be checked out, but they could be studied in the library, and Julian pulled out two volumes that looked promising: the relatively recent New Mexico Ghost Stories and the considerably older Tales of Tomasito County. Behind a glass case were stacks of old newspapers, and he asked the librarian whether he could look through them, but she said the papers were in fragile condition and were kept in the case for protection. There was microfiche of the newspapers available, however, and a viewer near the computers, and she showed him the file cabinet containing the microfiche, explaining how they were organized by year.

Julian couldn’t spend all day in the library, and even if he could, he still wouldn’t be able to read everything. So he skimmed the books, neither of which was as helpful as he’d hoped, before grabbing a handful of microfiche and sitting down to scroll through the headlines of Jardine’s early days. The newspapers didn’t go back as far as he wanted—maybe not enough people could read back then—but he began at 1900 and started working forward.

Megan came up while he was still halfway through the year 1901 and asked whether she could go to her friend Kate’s house for the afternoon. Kate was standing next to her; the two had obviously run into each other.

Or they had purposely planned to meet here.

It was impossible to keep up with the cell phone shenanigans of teenage girls.

Kate smiled shyly. “Hi, Mr. Perry.”

Julian looked from one to the other. “You can go,” he told Megan. “If your mom is home,” he said to Kate.

“My mom’s right here. Mom!” she called.

There was a chorus of shushing from annoyed patrons, and the librarian at the front counter frowned at her, but seconds later, Kate’s mother was standing before him, and the two of them talked over logistics. She and Kate were going to The Store first, but then they were going home, and Megan was welcome to come with them.

“What time should I pick her up?” Julian asked.

“Oh, I’ll drop her off. What time do you want her back?”

“Five o’clock,” Julian decided.

After saying their good-byes, his daughter happily went off with her friend, and Julian paused for a moment to check on James and make sure he was all right. Sitting between two other boys, his son was deeply engrossed in the cartoony mayhem of a computer game, and, satisfied, Julian went back to his microfiche.

Sometime later, Julian became aware that a person was standing behind him. Assuming it was another patron who wanted to use the microfiche reader, he was all set to apologize for hogging the equipment when he turned to see James standing there. In a first, James said he was tired of playing games and wanted to leave. Usually it was the other way around, and Julian glanced at his watch, shocked to see that it was almost three o’clock. He hadn’t really come across anything useful yet, and didn’t want to feel as though he’d wasted the entire afternoon, so he said, “Ten more minutes.”

“I’m bored, Dad.”

“I know. But …” He had a sudden idea. “Hey, do you want to hang out at Mom’s office?”

James’s face lit up. “Yeah!”

Perfect. Claire could watch James, while he could continue looking through these old newspapers. Julian took out his cell phone. He wasn’t supposed to use it in the library, but he leaned into his carrel, close to the microfiche reader, and called Claire, speaking softly. He explained the situation, and she agreed to come by the library to pick up their son.

While he waited, James checked his summer reading program status on the wall chart and picked out another book to read. Julian continued to scroll through headlines, but before he’d gotten past another month, Claire was there. James hurried over with his new book. “You rescued me,” he declared with exaggerated gratitude.

Julian stood. “Thanks,” he told Claire.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“There might be something. That’s why I want to stay a little longer.”

“I don’t,” James announced.

Smiling, Claire put an arm around her son. “Why don’t we get some ice cream?” she suggested.

He grinned. “Excellent!”

“Do you want me to pick him up when I’m finished?” Julian asked.

Claire shook her head. “We’ll meet you at home.”

She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek; then the two of them were off, and Julian turned back to his newspapers. The “something” he had told her about turned out to be a pattern. It wasn’t anything specific, probably not anything they could even use, but for a period of years in the early 1900s, the majority of murders and violent crimes seemed to take place on their street. He didn’t think it was a pattern that had continued through the present day, but he thought about the man who’d died in their basement and wondered whether other deaths—mysterious or not—had occurred in or around their house over the decades, unrecognized by the newspapers.

It was getting late, and since he finally had something he could show to Claire, Julian decided to call it a day. He shut off the machine, picked up the pieces of scratch paper on which he’d scribbled notes, and started to put away the stack of microfiche.

“I’ll take care of that,” the reference librarian said, walking over. “We like to refile everything ourselves, just to make sure it’s all in the right order.”

“Okay. Thanks.” He handed over the microfiche sleeves, as well as the two books he’d looked at, and left the library, heading home.

He was the first one back, and he was glad of that. Before Claire and James returned, before Megan was dropped off, he went through every room in the house, even the basement, looking for anything even slightly out of the ordinary. He was more creeped out than he wanted to be or than he would ever let on, but he was the husband, he was the father, and he needed to make sure that it was safe for his family to be here. He even went into his office and turned on the computer again, waiting to see whether anything weird showed up on his monitor, and he was gratified when, after he accessed several different screens and retyped his e-mail message, nothing did.

Downstairs, he heard the front door open and close, heard the happy voices of Claire and James, and he shut off the computer, satisfied that—for the moment, at least—the house was clear. He took the steps two at a time, and—

The first floor was empty.

There was no one else home.

Julian heard voices again, from the living room, and goose bumps prickled on his neck and the skin of his arms, making him shiver. Even this close, the voices still sounded like Claire and James, and a wave of despair washed over him as he wondered whether that meant they were dead. Claire had walked to work this morning, and in his mind he saw the two of them crossing the street on the way home and being hit by a drunk driver or a car with bad brakes, James flying forward and cracking his head open on the asphalt, Claire crumpling as the bumper forced her down, tires rolling over her midsection, crushing her organs and bones.

Numbly, he stepped into the living room. His worries about Claire and James vanished. Whatever spirit was here, it was not one of them. There was a heaviness to the atmosphere, a palpable malevolence that would never be associated with either his wife or his son. He could imagine this thing imitating them, though, trying to make him believe they were here, trying to torture him.

His first instinct was to flee, but he forced himself to stand his ground, and he looked carefully around the room. There was nothing to be seen, nothing out of place, no visible apparition, but there was a bad energy suffusing the living room, making the light seem darker, making the furniture seem old and creepy.

And it appeared to be emanating from the fireplace.

Once the most impressive aspect of the living room, perhaps of the entire house, the oversize fireplace now just seemed threatening. The opening was like a maw, and it was much blacker than it should have been at this time of day, black enough that it seemed to go back farther than the wall of the house, black enough to hide the presence of unspeakable creatures. Julian reached out and switched on the ceiling light, but it did nothing to further reveal what lay hidden in that space.

Slowly, nervously, cautiously, he stepped forward.

He heard the voices. They were male and female, young and old, but they weren’t James and Claire. They weren’t even speaking real sentences. Like the man’s voice he had heard in Megan’s room, they were saying actual words but not in a way that made sense.

“. . . mail slot luggage …”

“. . . first come table slime …”

It was a conversation between crazy people, delivered in competing monotones, and it was coming from within the fireplace. Close now to the hearth, Julian crouched down to peer into the opening.

A whoosh of air flew over him, around him, past him.

Only …

It wasn’t air. There was volume to it, heft, and a sentience that he sensed but did not understand.

Then it was over. The room was back to normal; the fireplace was just a fireplace; there were no more voices. Seconds later, the front door opened, and Claire and James did walk in. Julian went over to greet them, grateful and unexpectedly elated that they were here and alive.

Claire frowned at him. “What’s wrong with your hair?”

James laughed.

Julian reached up and patted the top of his head. His hair was sticking up where that thing had blown over him. He used his fingers to comb it back down. “Wind,” he lied.

“It wasn’t windy—” Claire started to say, but she caught his look over James’s head and cut herself off. “Oh.”

They discussed it later, though he downplayed his description of the event and left out his real reaction completely. The kids were in another room, and before Claire could quiz him further, he quickly told her what he had learned at the library. She seemed excited to hear that there was a history of death and violence on their street, though he had no idea how she could possibly use that information to help solve their problem, and for the first time her sense of hope seemed stronger than her fear.

He almost told her about the face on his computer screen, but at the last moment decided against it. Enough had happened today already, and he chose to let it go.

They made love that night, and it was normal, tender, comfortable, the way it used to be. There were no bizarre urges, no inexplicable compulsions, no external pressure of any kind. He could almost believe some of their more recent encounters had never happened, and they fell asleep holding each other, happy.

* * *

Julian was awakened after midnight by the sound of laughing. It was soft, whispery, and might in other circumstances have been mistaken for the rustling of wind outside. But he knew it for what it was and sat up in bed, listening to the eerie laughter as it swirled around their bedroom, then left through the door and moved down the hall.

There was nothing he wanted more than to hide his head under the covers, the way he had as a child, and wait for morning. But Megan and James were upstairs alone, and he immediately pushed off the covers and hurried after the noise.

It was in the kitchen now, and he went there, turning on the lights as he did so. He saw nothing in the kitchen, but the door to the basement was open, and from the room down there he heard laughter. It was louder now, less whispery, and though he had not been able to determine anything about its character before, the laughter definitely sounded masculine to him now.

Julian looked around for a weapon. It obviously wouldn’t help against something unseen, but it would make him feel braver, and he opened the middle drawer and settled on that old standby: the carving knife.

He was about to proceed to the basement door when something outside caught his eye. Through the window above the sink he saw movement, and he flipped on the patio lights just in time to see the little garage door close. He stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do. The smart thing would be to call the police. But he wasn’t sure this was something the police could help with, wasn’t sure that whatever had gone into the garage was … human. Of course, if it wasn’t human, the smartest thing to do would be to stay here in the house.

But he had a knife in his hand, his adrenaline was up, and Julian unlocked the back door and stepped outside. He was barefoot and in his pajamas, but that didn’t slow him down. The dead grass was cool beneath his toes as he moved stealthily toward the garage. He glanced from side to side as he approached, making sure nothing else was out here, looking up to see whether the lights in the garage had been turned on.

He opened the door, then stepped back quickly, knife extended, but nothing leaped out at him. After waiting a beat, he moved forward, walking into the garage and turning on the light. He glanced around. Everything seemed to be in order; nothing looked out of place. Since the van was parked in the driveway, and the lawn mower and most of the gardening implements were in the storage shed, the garage was relatively bare. With the light on, it was easy to see everything within the open area, and Julian wondered whether he had been lured in here purposely. His grip on the knife tightened.

No. Whoever—whatever—had gone into the garage had not known that he was watching. He’d caught someone—something—sneaking in and closing the door. It had not been part of some elaborate show put on for his benefit.

Although the laughter had lured him into the kitchen …

No. Something was here in the garage. He just couldn’t figure out where it had gone.

His eyes alighted on the ladder.

Upstairs.

Julian’s heart started thumping. He knew he shouldn’t go up there. It was stupid. Possibly dangerous. He didn’t even want to do it. But he found himself walking over to the wall where the wooden ladder was attached. He looked up.

The trapdoor was open.

Why hadn’t he noticed that before?

Upstairs it was dark. Beyond the square entrance to the loft, he could see nothing, only blackness. It was impossible for him to climb the ladder and still hold the knife in such a manner that it could be used, and he had decided to quit, go back to the house, and return in the morning, when he could see and it would be safer. But he felt a drop of warm wetness hit his forehead, and he touched it with his finger and it was blood.

Someone or something was bleeding up there.

What if it’s James?

The thought had not even occurred to him before this moment, but he realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he had not checked on the children after being awakened by the laughter. It could be James. The area upstairs was where he and his friend played, their “headquarters.” He could have been the one sneaking into the garage and closing the door behind him.

Julian wiped the blood from his forehead with his palm. A half-formed plan to wake Claire and call 911 was jettisoned immediately, and he quickly shifted the knife to his left hand, placing it in the crook next to his thumb so he could use his other fingers to grasp the ladder’s rungs. He sped up to the top, and only then, only when his head and shoulders were protruding from the floor of the loft and he was at his most vulnerable, did he realize that it couldn’t have been James. The back door of the house had been locked. If James had gone out first, the door would have been unlocked.

Julian braced himself for a blow, but even as he winced in expectation, he was pushing himself up into the loft and frantically searching for a light switch or a pull chain attached to a bulb. He’d been up here only in the daytime, and only on a few occasions, so he didn’t even know whether there was a light in the loft.

Nothing hit him as he got to his feet, and since he was next to a wall already, he pressed his right hand against it, feeling around, even as his left hand gripped hard the handle of the knife. Amazingly, his fingers encountered a switch, and he pushed it up as a shielded bulb in the center of the room turned on, bathing the loft in a light that was probably soft and weak, but that after the blackness of a moment before seemed as bright as the sun.

Julian stood where he was, rubbing his eyes, and as soon as they adjusted to the brightness, he saw where the blood had come from.

A dead body on the floor.

It was John Lynch, the intruder he’d seen through the dining room window. Julian recognized the yellow baseball cap.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered.

The man had stabbed himself. Not just once but multiple times. In the face. A slice through his left cheek had widened his mouth to clown proportions; another in his forehead revealed skull beneath skin. What was left of his nose resembled chopped raw hamburger, and a hard stab near his right eye had continued down the side of his head and taken off a sliver of skin with hair, as well as a piece of ear. He had finished himself off by plunging the knife into his own throat, from whence it protruded now, the wound around the blade revealing a thin, ragged strip of ripped cartilage, blood covering not just the remnants of his neck but his arms, his chest and the surrounding floor. A thin rivulet ran across the uneven floorboards to the trapdoor opening, which was where it had dripped onto Julian’s head.

There was even blood splattered five feet away on a stand-alone cardboard cutout for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and the stench in the loft was so strong Julian marveled that he had not noticed it immediately upon coming up.

He gulped in air, trying not to gag.

How had there been no screams? How had the entire neighborhood not been awakened by Lynch’s shrieks of pain?

Julian felt like screaming himself, and even as his brain was logically processing the information being fed to it by his eyes, he was scrambling back down the ladder. Halfway to the bottom, the lights winked off above him, and he realized that somewhere along the line he had dropped his knife.

All the lights in the garage went out.

Willing himself not to panic, he reached the bottom of the ladder. Stumbling over his feet in the darkness, he found his way out of the garage and ran back to the house to call the police.