The Haunted

Thirty-two

“What the hell are you doing?”

Jumping at the sound of her mother’s voice, Megan cut herself.

Deep.

She’d thought the bathroom door had been locked, and she was sitting on the toilet, pants down, steak knife in hand, making small, light incisions on the inside of her thigh, just above the knee, when the door swung open. Startled by her mother’s shout, Megan let her hand slip, the knife drawing not just across the surface of the skin but slicing through fat into muscle. The pain was incredible, and she cried out, her eyes tearing up even as they caught the stricken look of horror on her mom’s face.

“Megan!”

She hadn’t been doing it to make herself unattractive this time. She’d been doing it … Well, she didn’t know why she’d been doing it. It had seemed like a good idea ten minutes ago, but now, with the blood gushing down her leg onto the linoleum, she realized how crazy it was. She reached for the toilet paper, pulled and pulled until she’d unspooled enough for it to pile into folds on the floor, then grabbed the entire mass of tissue and shoved it against the flowing cut, shocked to see how quickly the blood soaked through.

Her mom was screaming, calling for her grandma and her dad, and in seconds they were there. Megan was in so much pain that she wasn’t even embarrassed for them to see her with her pants down.

“Oh, my God,” her dad said.

By this time, her mom had soaked a washcloth in cold water from the sink and was pressing it against the wound, having tossed the toilet paper aside.

“I’ll get ice,” her grandma said quickly, and now Megan knew she was really hurt, because James was standing in the doorway and she didn’t even care.

She’d never felt such intense agony, and she was no longer crying, because she was gritting her teeth against the pain, squinting her eyes so tightly she could not see.

“We’re taking her to the hospital!” she heard her mom tell her grandma, and Megan opened her eyes to see her grandmother handing over a fresh hand towel filled with ice cubes. Her mom let the bloody wet washcloth she’d been pressing against the wound drop onto the floor, replacing it with the ice-filled hand towel. “Hold this,” her mom ordered. “Press it hard to stop the bleeding. Do you think you can stand?”

Grimacing, Megan nodded. The cold ice made the cut feel a little better.

“Stay here with James!” her mother said. Her grandma nodded.

With her dad on one side and her mom on the other, each holding a hand under her armpit to support her, Megan got off the toilet, still bent over, keeping the makeshift ice pack pressed firmly against the slice on her leg. “Make sure she doesn’t fall,” her mom said to her dad, and crouched down, taking over ice-pack duty and encouraging her to stand up straight. Megan pulled up her pants, pausing as her mom adjusted the hand holding the ice. She let out a sharp yelp as a flash of pain stabbed through her.

“Do you want me to carry you?” her dad asked.

Megan nodded.

“Maybe that would be better,” her mom said quickly. “I’m not sure we want that blood to be pumping.”

“Start the van and open the door,” her dad replied, grunting as he picked her up, one hand under her neck, the other under her knees.

Megan saw a steady stream of blood streaming over her father’s arm, saw a frightening amount of red puddled and smeared on the floor. She reached out and held the ice-filled hand towel against the cut while her mom ran through the house and outside.

“Megan?” James said worriedly.

“I’ll be okay,” she reassured him, though she had no idea whether that was true or not. The bleeding hadn’t stopped or even slowed down, and that was getting very scary. Had she sliced open a vein or something? Was she going to die?

“Where’s Grandpa?” she asked as her dad carried her down the hall.

“We don’t know,” he admitted.

“Is he dead?” Maybe that was why she’d been cutting herself.

It was an uncharacteristically blunt question to have asked, and her dad’s answer was equally blunt. “We don’t know.”

The house was reaching out, Megan thought. She and James should have kept quiet.

I will kill you both.

Even though they were away from it, they should not have revealed its secrets. Now they were going to have to pay. She started to cry, though whether it was over her grandpa or because of the pain or it was simply a reaction to the totality of everything that was going on, she could not say.

The van’s engine was running and the side door was open. Her mom was inside, laying towels over the back bench seat. Between both parents, they got her onto the seat and laid her down on the towels. They weren’t sure how to hook up the shoulder harness and didn’t have the time to figure it out, so her mom sat on the floor next to her, holding her in place and making sure she didn’t move while her dad slammed the side door shut, got in the front, backed quickly out of the driveway and took off.

Megan started feeling woozy on the way to the hospital. It suddenly seemed hard to keep her eyes open, and she closed them for a moment.

After that, sounds and images came in short staccato bursts, some of which remained in her brain, others of which were forgotten as soon as they appeared. A wheelchair. A bed. A curtain. A doctor. “She’s lost a lot of blood.” A shot. Her mom crying. A television. A Geico commercial. A nurse. A plastic bag hanging from a hook with a tube coming out of it. Beeping. Her dad in a chair, watching her. James. Grandma. Two doctors talking. Mom. Dad. Mom.

Eventually, things sorted themselves out. She was in a hospital room, and it was daytime. Sunlight streamed through a window to her left, above a bed in which an old man lay snoring.

“She’s awake!” her mom said excitedly, and as weak as she felt, Megan had to smile. It was nice to hear her mom’s voice. Her dad was there, looking down at her, and a moment later a nurse was there, too, smiling, telling her everything was going to be okay.

Apparently she had lost a lot of blood because she had hit a vein, although, luckily, it was a small one; otherwise she would probably be dead. Doctors had repaired the damage and sewn everything up. The lost blood had been replaced, and she was being given some kind of medicine to make sure no dangerous clots formed. She would have to remain in the hospital under observation for a few more days.

“How … ?” She tried to speak, but her throat was dry and the word came out a croak. The nurse picked up a plastic cup from a tray that sat suspended to the right of the bed and placed a straw in Megan’s mouth. She sipped water through the straw, the coolest, freshest, best tasting water she had ever had. Her throat felt better, and she swallowed before trying to speak again. This time her voice was weak but clear. “How long have I been here?”

“Since last night,” the nurse told her.

Last night? She’d been knocked out for most of the time she’d been here, but still, it felt like days.

After the nurse left and the three of them were alone, save for the snoring man in the next bed, they were silent for a moment. Her parents looked at each other; then her mom cleared her throat, speaking in a careful, considered way that indicated she had spent time preparing her topic of conversation. “Honey? I know you don’t want to be here. I know this is hard for you, and I don’t want to make it any harder, but your dad and I have a few questions we’d like to ask you.”

Megan knew what was coming next.

“This was all an accident, I know. And I’m sorry I startled you and made you slice your leg open. I should have knocked first. But, sweetie, why were you cutting yourself in the first place?”

She wished she had an answer, but she didn’t. “I don’t know,” she admitted, and started to cry.

Her mom came over to the bed. She couldn’t give Megan a hug—there were too many tubes and monitors in the way—but she did the best she could and curled an arm around Megan’s shoulder on the pillow. “It’s all right,” she said, and used a finger to wipe away tears. “We’ll talk about it some other time, when you’re feeling better.”

Megan didn’t want to talk about it at all. Postponing the conversation would give her time to come up with better answers, but she doubted whether she would ever be able to come up with a real reason. The house was reaching out, she thought again, and that was probably as close as she would ever come to the truth.

She had just awakened, but she was feeling tired already—it was most likely the medicine—and she asked her parents whether it would be okay if she took a short nap.

“Of course,” her dad said.

Her mom gave her shoulder a squeeze and then went back to her chair. “Go ahead, honey.”

When she awoke, it was dinnertime. A nurse was using a button on the remote-control panel at her bedside to raise her into a sitting position so she could eat the wretched-looking meal placed on a tray that was attached to her bed by a metal arm. Both of her parents were still in the same seats, although her dad was watching CNN on the TV mounted to the wall and wasn’t aware that she’d woken up until her mom nudged him with an elbow.

The nurse left, and they all had a good laugh about the awful food as Megan attempted to eat it. No mention was made of her cutting herself, and everything that was happening outside this hospital room seemed distant and unconnected. The snoring man had awakened and was eating his dinner. Loudly. Her dad saw her glancing over there, distracted, and he stood up from his chair to pull the curtain between the beds, blocking her view. Megan smiled at him. “Thanks.”

There was nothing to do and there wasn’t much to say, so after eating as much as she could, Megan used the remote-control panel attached to the armrest of her bed to flip through the channels and see what kind of cable the hospital had. It wasn’t very good. There were the networks, several news channels, several sports channels and a bunch of other stations she wasn’t much interested in. She finally gave up and switched it back to CNN. “It’s my TV and I was going to make you watch one of my shows,” she told her dad, “but there’s nothing on. So it’s all yours.”

It was boring just lying there in bed, and after a while Megan felt guilty for making her parents be bored, too, so she told them they should go home. They both looked at each other uncertainly. “I’m tired anyway,” she lied. “I want to go to bed. You can come back in the morning.”

“I’m spending the night,” her mom said.

“In that chair? Go home. I’ll be fine. Check on James and make sure he’s staying out of trouble.” She’d meant it as a joke, but the second after she said it, a host of unwanted images sprang up in her brain: James cutting himself in the same way she had … James returning to their house to dig a hole in their backyard … James wearing a backward yellow baseball cap and holding a knife.

Her parents, too, looked worried.

She decided to be honest. “I’ll be safe here,” she said softly. “Look after James. And Grandma.”

Her mom nodded grimly. “Julian,” she said. “Go.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll sleep here.”

“Mom …”

“Megan’s right,” her dad said.

“It’s just a cut—” Megan began.

“It’s not just a cut. That’s why you’re here. They had to replace over a liter of your blood. And they’re monitoring you to make sure you don’t develop any blood clots.” She gestured around. “Although I don’t see a whole lot of monitoring going on. I don’t know whether they’re understaffed or what, but these nurses and doctors don’t come by anywhere near as often as they should, and I need to be here in case something happens.”

“Actually, ma’am, we check your daughter on a very specific schedule, and the likelihood of her developing blood clots while being administered the medication that’s in her IV drip is highly unlikely.”

The nurse appeared behind her mom, and her mom’s face turned red. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

The nurse smiled kindly. “Nothing to be sorry for. I know you’re concerned. I just want to put your mind at rest. This is a precaution against a very remote possibility. Your daughter’s going to be fine. She’s only here right now because we want to make sure we guard against all potentialities.”

“See?” Megan said.

“Besides, visitors are not allowed to stay overnight in the rooms. All visitors must leave at ten. You’re welcome to remain in the lobby, but it’s probably better if you go home, get some sleep and return in the morning.”

“I’ll be fine,” Megan said.

“I’m staying until ten,” her mom announced.

“You know your mother.” Standing up, her dad gave her the closest thing to a hug that was possible in the bed, kissing her on the forehead. “I’ll be back to pick your mom up later,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

“Give me a kiss if I’m asleep,” she told him.

He smiled, nodded. “And I’ll be back for breakfast,” he promised. “Love you.”

“Love you,” she returned, and felt the tears well up as he headed out the door, waving.

The nurse checked the monitors, wrote some information down on a chart, drew some blood and changed the drip bag. Her mom talked to the nurse for a few minutes in the hallway, beyond her hearing range, and Megan flipped once again through the television channels. There was nothing good, so she left it on Jeopardy, and the game show remained on in the background while she and her mom talked. She asked whether any of her friends had been told that she was in the hospital, and her mom said no, not yet, but she’d let them know tomorrow so they could come and visit. Megan asked whether there was any news about Grandpa, and her mom grew quiet and sad and merely shook her head.

That opened the floodgates, and they talked about the house, really talked about it, for the first time. She held back a little, afraid that if she told everything it might endanger the rest of her family—

I will kill you both.

—and she was pretty sure her mom held back a little, too, probably for the same reason, but they did discuss their feelings about the house, little things they’d seen and heard, and the way it had all sort of built up until it was what it was today. Her mom said that Mr. Cortinez at the high school had given her a lot of information about the history of Jardine and that it seemed as though people had been dying there, killing themselves and killing others, since before the town was a town.

“We should have moved as soon as you found that out.”

“That’s what I told your dad. Although it was only a week or two ago, to be fair. Besides, who knew that some lunatic would kill himself in our garage.”

“It happened before,” Megan pointed out.

“That’s true.”

“So are we going to sell the house now?”

“I guess so. If we can.” Her mom paused. “But I’d feel guilty pawning it off on someone else, wouldn’t you?”

“No!” Megan said instantly, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the numbers of her heart rate accelerate on the monitor. If the nurse hadn’t turned down the sound, it would probably be beeping. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down, not wanting a team of doctors and nurses to rush into the room to see what was wrong with her. “No,” she said more softly. “We can’t live there again.”

“We won’t,” her mom assured her. “It’s just …” She shook her head, tried to smile. “We’ll think of something to do with it.”

Megan wanted to ask about her grandpa. It was the big question hovering over everything. But whether it was because she was just a kid or because her mother wasn’t ready to face the subject, Megan understood that it was something her mom would not discuss. She hadn’t gotten any details from either of her parents, but she could tell by the way they’d been acting that his disappearance was unexplainable and frightening and somehow involved their house.

Maybe—hopefully—things would just work out and her grandpa would return on his own, none the worse for wear.

But she doubted it.

They’d gone as deep as they were going to go. Besides, Glee was about to be on, and Megan wanted to watch it. Her brain hurt from worrying, and right now she just wanted to relax and enjoy some mindless entertainment. It was a two-hour episode, and for those two hours she forgot everything else, even enjoying the commercials when they came on. After that, she flipped through channels before stopping on back-to-back reruns of The Office, which she and her mom both liked.

At ten o’clock, an orderly arrived to escort her mom out. Promising to return first thing in the morning, she gave Megan a kiss on each cheek and a kiss on the forehead “for protection,” the way she had when Megan was small, and they both blew each other another kiss as she backed out the door.

Feeling alone and a little sad, Megan sniffled, wiping tears from her eyes. But a nurse arrived almost immediately to administer a checkup, and after using the bedpan, Megan found that she was suddenly extremely tired. There was nothing she wanted to watch, but she left the television on anyway, turning down the volume until it was white noise.

She closed her eyes, letting the indistinct murmuring lull her to sleep.

She awoke in the middle of the night, the curtains pulled not only on her left but on her right, to block the sights and sounds of the corridor outside her room so she might sleep in peace. High on the wall, her television was still on, but no movie or show was being broadcast. Instead, the monitor was white with black letters moving from left to right across the screen.

It looked like the screen of her cell phone.

Megan squinted at the message through bleary eyes, then quickly reached for the remote control. She pushed the red “off” button, pressing it over and over again, but the television refused to obey.

I told you, Megan, the words repeated, I will kill you both.

Frantic, she pressed the button that called for the nurse.

It didn’t seem to be working, because no one came. She wanted to get up and out of bed, walk down the hallway until she found someone to help her, but she was connected to the monitors, and a plastic tube dripped medicine into her wrist.

On the other side of the curtain, the snoring had stopped.

Was the man dead?

She needed to calm down. The words on the TV were just that: words. They couldn’t hurt her. They might frighten her, but they couldn’t cause her any harm. She took stock. Did she feel like cutting herself or hurting herself in any way? Did she have any suspicious or unusual thoughts? No.

Megan glanced up at the screen again, and the words were gone. An infomercial was being broadcast, some type of cleaning product.

Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing.

She closed her eyes, settled back down. Just the possibility that it had all been in her head allowed her to forget about it and fall back asleep. Which she did almost immediately.

She dreamed of the man with the yellow baseball cap. He was in a small, primitive shack, a wooden hut with no furniture and no windows, and he was roasting her grandpa over a fire in the center of the floor, preparing to eat him. Her grandpa was screaming, his clothes and hair burned off, sweat and blood oozing from his reddening skin, falling sizzling onto the flames. He was tied to a spit of some sort, and every so often, the man in the yellow cap would turn him over and poke him with a fork to see whether he was done.

When she awoke, the curtains had been pulled back, the snoring man’s bed was empty, and sunlight was streaming through the window. She called for a nurse, used the bedpan, ordered breakfast, endured a checkup and was told she was doing well.

The chairs next to her bed were empty and remained empty. She kept looking from them to the doorway. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Twenty. A half hour. Forty-five minutes.

Her breakfast arrived—cereal, toast and orange juice—and she started eating. She was worried but pretended to herself that she wasn’t.

Finally, just after her tray had been removed, her mom arrived.

Alone.

Crying.