The Haunted

Seven

Robbie wasn’t talking.

The two of them were sitting on the field in the park, drinking Slurpees, while Robbie’s younger brother, Max, practiced baseball with his Little League team. Robbie’s dad was the team’s coach, and he was having the kids take turns batting. James had just asked his friend about the night he’d stayed over, about why he’d been so desperate to leave. He was hoping to hear that Robbie had felt the same thing he had, and the reason he hadn’t brought up the crying was that he didn’t want Robbie to get all defensive. He wanted an honest answer.

But Robbie wasn’t saying a word.

James changed the subject, talked about the latest episode of a Cartoon Network show they both watched, asked about the day camp where Robbie had spent the past week, complained about his annoying cousins who’d come over the other night, wondered about whose class they’d be in this year at school. But then he brought it back again: “How come you wanted to go home so bad?”

Robbie shrugged.

James tried another tack. “Do you want to stay overnight next weekend?”

“No!” his friend said quickly, then hastily added, “Maybe you could stay over at my house this time,” saying it in a way that tried to make the notion seem casual and unimportant.

Actually, that sounded like a fine idea. Although James had managed to convince himself that their new home was friendly rather than creepy (with the exception of the basement—which he would never like), the truth was that he was often tense inside the house. If he was with Megan or one of his parents, or if he was busy with something such as reading, watching TV or playing a game, he was fine. But when he was by himself with nothing to do and time on his hands … well, then he started noticing things. Like the way the stairs creaked sometimes, even though no one was on them. Or the way some of the windows didn’t let in as much light as they should. Or the way he saw movement out of the corner of his eye when nothing was there.

So the thought of staying overnight at Robbie’s sounded like a relaxing respite.

“That’d be fun,” James admitted.

“I’ll ask my dad.”

Robbie refocused his attention on the batting practice, and James saw his chance at a real discussion slipping away. Glancing over at his friend, he decided to come clean. “I don’t like the basement in our house,” he said. He watched for a reaction but saw none. “I think it’s creepy.”

Robbie didn’t respond, continued to watch his brother’s teammates swing at softly lobbed balls.

James didn’t know what more he could say. Maybe he’d been wrong all along. Maybe Robbie hadn’t been scared by the basement.

“I thought I saw something,” his friend said finally. The boy spoke so softly that at first James wasn’t sure he’d heard right. Robbie refused to look at him, his eyes remaining focused on the Little Leaguers. “In the cellar. Not when we first went down there. That was cool. But later, before we went to bed, when I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. I was the only one in the kitchen, and it was kind of dark, and the cellar door was open. I didn’t think it was open before; I remembered it being closed, and then I thought maybe your mom or dad was down there, getting something. So I walked by, peeked in. …” Robbie’s voice trailed off. He stopped talking, suddenly becoming very interested in the latest batter, and for a moment James thought he was going to have to prod his friend to continue. But then Robbie said, “It looked like there was a man down there. Maybe there wasn’t, but it looked like there was, and I got scared and hurried back to where you were.”

James suddenly felt cold.

“I had a nightmare about it when I fell asleep. You were right about that, but I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“What was it about?”

“The same thing that happened. I went to get a drink of water, the cellar door was open, and I walked past it and saw a man down there. It wasn’t your dad. I couldn’t see all of his face, but I could see his mouth. His smile. He was smiling up at me and it was like his teeth were glowing, and … and I knew he wanted me to go down into the basement. I think … I think he wanted to kill me. Then he said my name. …” Robbie sucked in his breath. “That’s why I wanted to go home.”

Even here in the park, in the open, surrounded by people, James was frightened. But he refused to give in to fear, forcing himself to be brave. He decided not to tell his friend that he, too, had had a nightmare about the cellar and that their two dreams were very close. Too close. Instead he said, “It’s just a dream.”

“You’re afraid of the basement, too,” Robbie pointed out.

“But it’s just the basement,” James insisted. “My room’s not scary at all. In fact, it’s great. I’d live in there twenty-four hours a day if I could.”

“I like your room,” Robbie admitted.

“See?”

“And your garage.”

“Me, too!”

“Last year, my dad read me this book. It was one of his old books, and it was about these two kid detectives, about our age. One of them was this genius named Brains Benton, and he had a secret lab above his parents’ garage. That’s what yours kind of reminded me of.”

“We could do something like that!” James said excitedly. “No one really goes into the garage, and I bet my dad would let us use the loft!”

“That would be cool!”

They started talking about what they could do, how they could make a secret entrance, have a couch and a TV up there, and they forgot all about the basement.

After baseball practice ended, Robbie’s dad drove both of them back to James’s house, telling Robbie that he’d be back to pick him up in around an hour, after he dropped Max off at home and ran a few errands. James announced to his dad that they were back; then he and Robbie went over to the garage, letting themselves in through the small side door. The garage was cool, he decided, looking around. Despite everything he’d said, he thought for a moment, when he first opened the door and his eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness, that it might be scary, but it looked the same as it always had, and he gazed appreciatively at the wooden ladder attached to the far wall that led through a hole in the ceiling up to the loft.

It really was just the basement that was creepy, and James thought he could probably learn to live with that. There were plenty of people who lived in haunted houses and coexisted with ghosts. He’d seen a Discovery Channel show about celebrity ghost stories, and there were famous actors and rock stars who’d been living with ghosts for years. Some of the spirits were even friendly.

James recalled his dream of the dirty grinning man in the basement. He certainly wasn’t friendly. But even if he existed, he was probably trapped there in the basement, and as long as James stayed out of that room, there should be no problem.

“Check it out!”

Robbie had climbed up the ladder and was peering down through the hole in the ceiling. James hurried up after him, and though he’d been up here before, he saw it now through new eyes and realized that he and Robbie really could make this into some sort of secret hideout. Maybe they could be detectives, he thought, and he imagined turning this room into a crime lab, with beakers and test tubes, microscopes and chemicals. Excitedly, the two of them began planning out what they needed to do to turn the loft into their crime-fighting headquarters.

Time passed quickly, and it seemed they’d been up there for only about ten minutes or so when James’s dad called, “Boys!” Hurrying to the small window that looked out over the backyard, they saw both fathers standing on the back patio, waiting for them to come out of the garage.

“We need one-way glass on this window,” Robbie said. “So we can see out but no one else can see in.”

“Yeah,” James agreed. “Coming!” he yelled down to his dad, and the two of them climbed back down the ladder and exited the building.

After Robbie left, James snagged some potato chips from the kitchen—trying not to look toward the closed door of the basement—and took them out to the living room to eat in front of the TV. But there were no good movies on, and only baby cartoons, and he soon got bored. He returned the Pringles canister to the kitchen, then headed upstairs, figuring he’d play on his computer or DS. His mom was still at work, and his dad was back in his office, but Megan was sitting on the floor of her bedroom, and, as he walked by, she asked in a voice loud enough for their dad to hear, “Want to play a game?”

That was weird.

It wasn’t unheard-of—in fact, they used to play board games a lot during the summers when they were younger, before she’d turned into such a brat—but it was unusual, and he figured she was trying to show their dad how bored she was in order to get him to agree to let her go somewhere or do something with one of her friends. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, however, and he did like playing games, so he agreed, stepping into her room. She pulled something off a shelf, then sat down on the rug, showing him what she held in her hands.

Old Maid.

He looked nervously at the battered red box. He’d never liked Old Maid. It wasn’t the game, which was kind of fun; it was the Old Maid herself, the way she was depicted on this particular pack of cards. All of the other characters were humorous caricatures of cartoonish boys and girls. But the Old Maid was old, and the expression on her wrinkled face was one of barely suppressed rage: a flat hardness in the small eyes, a mouth set in a thin, angry line. He’d been afraid of that visage ever since he’d been little, and while he wanted to tell himself that he wasn’t afraid of it anymore, he knew that wasn’t true.

She was on the cover of the box, and even seeing her eyes peering out over Megan’s fingers gave him the creeps.

He sat down on the floor as his sister took out the cards, shuffled them, then dealt them. He was directly across from her, and before picking up his own pile, he watched her sort through her cards. Megan was not good at hiding her emotions, and he knew he’d be able to tell whether or not she’d gotten the Old Maid. Seeing her smile after she’d fanned out the cards in her hand, he knew that she hadn’t.

And he had.

He looked down at the flat blue backs of the cards on the floor before him, not wanting to pick them up, wishing he’d continued on to his own room, where, right now, he could be happily playing Star Wars on his DS, or LEGO Harry Potter. But he reached down, gathered up the cards from the floor and turned their faces toward him so Megan couldn’t see.

There she was.

Between Hungry Henry and Sleeping Sam was the wrinkled countenance of the Old Maid. He could see only the left half of her face, but that was enough. Divorced from its twin, her left eye had an even crueler cast, and the flat portion of wrinkled mouth that was visible seemed not merely angry but malevolent. He pushed Sleeping Sam over so that the dozing boy was covering the Old Maid, then sorted through the rest of his cards, looking for doubles. He found two sets and discarded them, then, holding the remaining cards in front of him, fanned them out in his right hand and told Megan to pick.

Unfortunately, she did not pick the Old Maid. In fact, she never picked the Old Maid, and at the conclusion of a surprisingly short game, James ended up holding in his hand the one card he didn’t want. He turned it facedown, placing it atop his discards, then stood. “I don’t want to play anymore,” he said.

Megan shrugged. “Fine. This is boring anyway.” She said it loud enough for their dad to hear, and once again James thought he was probably just a pawn in his sister’s bid for more freedom.

He walked over to his room, automatically closing the door as he went in, and picked up his DS. Through the window, he saw an elderly couple walking down the sidewalk. The woman turned her head to look at their house, but James quickly looked away, not wanting to see her. In his mind, she looked like the Old Maid, and, feeling cold, he walked back across the room, opening the door wide before turning on his DS and hopping onto his bed.

They ate that evening in the dining room. Ever since they’d moved, his mom had been on this kick, because she’d read somewhere or heard on the news that kids from families who ate dinner together every night turned out happier and more successful. In their old house, she’d been a lot more flexible. Sometimes he and Megan would eat in the living room and watch The Simpsons while his parents ate in the kitchen. Sometimes his dad would eat on the couch while watching the news or a basketball game. Sometimes James would play with his DS while he ate. Things weren’t so rigid then. But these days, they all ate together, and more often than not, James found himself wishing that they didn’t.

Tonight, Megan kept kicking him under the table while maintaining an expression of calm interest on her face as their mom endlessly described a lawsuit she was working on. Finally, he’d had enough and kicked his sister back hard—but his foot missed and hit the leg of the table, causing his milk to spill and everyone’s chili beans to splash out of their bowls onto the tabletop. He got in trouble, despite his explanation, while across from him Megan smirked maddeningly.

They didn’t speak to each other the rest of the evening, and James was happy when she went upstairs to her bedroom early. He remained with his parents, and the three of them watched TV together until his mom said, “It’s getting late, and you stayed up way past your bedtime last night. I think it’s time for you to go to bed.”

He didn’t feel tired, and, truthfully, his mom seemed sleepier than he did, but he wanted to go to bed while they were still awake, so he said good night and headed up to his room. Megan was in the bathroom, so he changed into his pajamas first and, after she got out, went in to brush his teeth. Returning to his room, he pulled down the covers—

And there, sitting on his pillow, was the Old Maid card.

He cried out, startled, jumping back and practically tripping over the shoes he’d left in the middle of the floor. He knew it was just a joke, Megan’s doing, but his heart was pounding so hard that his chest hurt. He wasn’t sure how she knew he was afraid of the card, but obviously she did, and she’d put it here to scare him. Which it had.

Breathing deeply, recovered from the initial shock, James took a step forward, intending to pick up the card, take it over to his sister’s room and throw it in her face.

Only …

Only it wasn’t the card from their deck. On his pillow, the creepy old woman wasn’t staring angrily out at him, the way she always had. She was smiling slyly, as though she knew something about James that no one else knew, something that she was going to use to hurt him.

This grinning Old Maid was even creepier somehow, and looking at her hard eyes under arched eyebrows, he was almost afraid to pick the card up. But he did and turned it over, and the pattern on the back was exactly the same as on their deck. How was this possible? he wondered. Had his sister somehow altered the card? Had she secretly bought another deck with a different picture?

Had Megan been involved at all?

Logically, he didn’t see how she could be, but any alternative was too frightening to even contemplate.

He still wanted to throw the card in her face, but instead he tore the card up, took it to the bathroom and flushed the pieces down the toilet, watching to make sure they all went down. Coming out, he saw that although Megan’s door was closed, the light was on in her room, and he felt like going over there and confronting her, demanding to know how that card had ended up on his pillow.

But in the end, he went back into his bedroom without saying anything.

Because he was afraid she didn’t know.