The Haunted

Twelve

Since it was Julian who suggested they should invite the neighbors to their housewarming party, it was his responsibility to ask them. The Allreds and the Harrisons, two older couples from across the street, agreed to come, as did two younger couples from down the block, although the only family with children, the Armados, bowed out due to a scheduling conflict.

As usual, the neighbors to either side of them weren’t home.

Or weren’t answering their doors.

Julian suspected the latter. Cars were parked in both driveways, but drapes were drawn and front doors were shut. He knocked, he rang, he waited, but no one came out. He had no idea why the neighbors might be trying to avoid him, and he even hinted around about it to Cole Hubbard, the single man who lived in the small house on the other side of the Ribieros. Cole said that the Ribieros, at least, were probably scared. “Ever since that homeless guy died, they’ve been a little freaked-out, I think.”

Julian frowned. “What homeless guy?”

“You don’t know?” Cole seemed surprised. “I thought real estate agents had to reveal that kind of stuff.”

Julian was starting to feel uneasy. “What kind of stuff?”

“Deaths, murders, suicides.” Cole sipped from the Starbucks cup he was holding. “He died in your basement. It was all over the newspaper. I’m surprised you didn’t read about it.”

Our basement? Julian thought of Claire. “When was this?”

“It was a few years ago now. Before the previous owners.”

“So the house was empty and this guy just—”

“No,” Cole said. “That’s the weird part. It wasn’t empty. The couple was home. Robert and Shelley Gentry. They’re the ones who were living there then. Nice people. They were in bed, asleep, when the homeless guy broke into their house—I keep calling him ‘the homeless guy’ because I don’t think anyone ever found out who he was. The door was unlocked. … He broke a window. … I can’t remember exactly how he got in. But the Gentrys didn’t wake up, and he just went down into the basement and … died.”

“He killed himself?”

“Not exactly. He just … died. He took off all his clothes, sat down in the corner, and when they found him in the morning, he was dead. There were no marks on the body; he didn’t hang himself; I don’t think they even found any drugs in his system. It was as if he knew he was going to die that night and for some reason wanted to die in your basement. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it. It was kind of a big deal.”

Julian thought maybe he had read something about it in the paper, but there were so many deaths reported these days, so much crime and tabloid news not only nationally but locally, that everything kind of blurred together and he didn’t really pay as close attention as he used to.

He wondered which corner of the basement the man had died in. The one where he’d stacked the boxes of the kids’ old children’s books?

He needed to keep this from Claire. At least for the time being. She was already stressed out and thought the house was haunted. If she found out that someone had died in their basement, she’d want to sell the house immediately.

“Anyway,” Cole continued, “Robert and Shelley moved soon after that, and those other people bought the place. I’m not even sure anyone in the neighborhood ever met them. They really kept to themselves. I don’t even know their names. But I gather they had some kind of run-in with the Ribieros, who were already freaked-out by the homeless guy. Bob and Elise have never talked about it, but … something happened.”

“I got a weird vibe the one time I talked to them. The Ribieros, I mean. They were nice and all, but …”

Cole nodded. “They’re nice. I get along with them. But I don’t think you’re wrong. They definitely seem weirded out by your house, and that’s probably carried over to their attitude toward you. I mean, they’ve never said anything to me about any of this—in case you haven’t noticed, we all kind of keep to ourselves around here—but reading between the lines, I think they probably have a problem not just with your house but with anyone who lives there. They’re a little superstitious, I think. Or more than a little superstitious.”

Julian glanced down the street. “What about the people on the other side of us?” he asked. “Do you know anything about them? We’ve tried to go over there a couple of times and introduce ourselves, but no one’s ever home.”

“Oh, they’re home, all right,” Cole said. “But they’re very strange. Don’t even give them a second thought. They keep their yard up, their house looks nice, but they never come out and no one ever sees them. I’m not even sure when they mow their lawn or go to work, or anything about them, really. But at least they’re quiet and don’t bother anyone. I lived next to some hard partyers before—up at all hours of the night, stereo cranked full blast—and let me tell you, it was no picnic. Be grateful for the Boo Radleys of the world.”

Julian liked Cole. He was glad that he’d invited Cole to the party, glad Cole was coming, glad they’d had a chance to talk. This was a friendship worth nurturing. Claire always said that men were much bigger gossips than women, even if they pretended to be above such pettiness, and Julian thought that was probably true. Cole obviously kept close tabs on everything going on in the neighborhood, and Julian was only too happy to be able to find out details about the neighbors from him.

He smiled. No, men didn’t gossip. They shared intel.

Walking home, he wondered about the people who had owned the house before them. He and Claire had never met the previous owners, had only seen their signatures on some of the countless forms they’d been required to sign upon purchasing the property, and though he’d thought nothing of it at the time, that now seemed odd. He recalled the way the house had looked on their first visit, the trash and debris on the floor, the discarded furniture. Claire was right. Something was going on there.

And it had nothing to do with Miles.

He wished Claire had not mentioned Miles. The whole horrible incident had been on his mind ever since, and in the background, behind everything he did or said or thought, like a low hum, was an unyielding sadness, an emotional blackness that threatened to bloom into depression should he pause to examine it.

Last night he’d had the Dream again.

But this wasn’t Miles; this was something else, and as he walked across the grass toward the front door, he forced those thoughts down and looked up at the house itself. Even knowing what he knew, there was nothing spooky about it. The front of the structure did not resemble a face; no spectral figure flitted through the darkness behind one of the windows. The building looked like what it was: the home of a normal, middle-class family.

Thirsty, Julian walked through the living room, through the dining room, into the kitchen, where he got a Heineken out of the refrigerator. He glanced over at the basement door. Had a man really died down there? It seemed impossible to believe. While standing on a neighbor’s porch and talking about it, the idea had been incredible enough. But here, inside the house, intimately close to the location where it had occurred, the notion was truly horrifying. Though it had happened several years and two owners ago, the fact that someone had died within the walls of their home seemed like the grossest and most personal invasion of privacy.

Julian walked over, opened the basement door, switched on the light and headed down the steps. On the wall before him, he saw white scratches where Claire had scraped off the moldy face. Otherwise, the cellar appeared unexceptional, a storage room, no more, no less.

Which corner had the man died in? he wondered. The image was strange: a naked man, sitting in the corner, dead. He tried to picture it, but the jumble of boxes and bags made it nearly impossible.

He stood in place for several minutes, trying to feel something, trying to sense something, and when he didn’t, he walked back upstairs, turned the light off and closed the door.

It was Sunday, and Claire and Megan had gone to Claire’s parents’ house for lunch, so he and James were on their own. Julian checked the clock. It was nearly noon; no wonder he was getting hungry.

Where was James? he wondered. Before Julian had gone out to issue invitations, the boy had been in the living room, watching TV, although he’d said that he might go out to his “headquarters” after the show was over. Julian smiled. He and his friends had had a secret hideout when they were James’s age—a lean-to in a vacant lot, built with discarded materials from a nearby construction site—and he understood the allure. Some things never changed.

He looked out the window above the sink, intending to see whether he could spot movement in the garage’s upstairs, but James was on the ground, on his knees, bent over a hole in the backyard. Was he eating dirt? It looked like it, but that didn’t make any sense. Frowning, Julian walked outside. At the sound of the screen door’s creaking hinges, his son looked up. There was a ring of dirt around his mouth.

“What are you doing?” Julian demanded.

“Nothing,” James said, getting to his feet. But there was a guilty expression on his face, and Julian could see confusion mixed in with the guilt, confusion and fear.

“What’s going on here?” he asked, less harshly this time.

“I don’t know, Dad,” James said, and started to cry. Julian could not remember the last time his son had just burst into tears like this. Although his initial reaction to the fact that the boy was apparently eating dirt had been one of anger, the anger shifted to concern.

Julian walked over, looked into the hole, saw nothing unusual. He put his hands on James’s shoulders. “Why were you eating dirt?”

“I don’t know.” James was still crying.

“Well, don’t do it again.” He was aware that his admonition was lame and ineffectual, that he should be saying something else to his son, something more, but he was at a loss here and didn’t really know what to say or how to react. Eating dirt was something that usually came up when dealing with toddlers, not twelve-year-olds. It occurred to him that there might be a deeper problem here, but he prayed that wasn’t the case and that this would be the end of it.

James nodded, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I won’t, Dad.”

Still worried, still concerned, Julian forced himself to smile, wrapped an arm around the boy’s shoulder and steered him back toward the house. “Wash your face off, then. I’ll make us some lunch.”

They went inside. Julian prepared macaroni and cheese, the only food he really knew how to make, and the two of them ate in the living room while they watched an episode of The Twilight Zone.

When Claire and Megan returned, James was upstairs in his room, playing some game. Julian didn’t say anything about his eating dirt, but he did tell Claire that he’d made the rounds and invited their neighbors to the housewarming party, and that most of them would be coming. Except the Armados. And the people next door.

He did not tell her what Cole had said about the homeless man dying in their basement.

“That’s great,” she said happily. “I’m glad Pam talked me into this. I think it’s going to be fun.” She gave him a quick kiss on the nose.

“Yeah,” he said. He kissed her back. He realized that he was keeping a lot of secrets from her all of a sudden.

He didn’t like that.

But he had no choice.

On Monday, Julian called Gillette Skousen, the realtor who’d sold them the house. She didn’t sound happy to hear from him, her chipper greeting transforming into distant formality as soon as he identified himself. “What can I do for you?” she asked coolly.

“I have a few questions about our house—” he began.

“I don’t know anything about it.”

That was certainly suspicious. “About what?” he challenged her. “I haven’t asked you a question yet.”

The realtor was silent.

“I just want to know if there’s a way I can get in contact with the previous owners.”

“There are privacy issues. …”

“You thought I was going to ask about the dead man in the basement, didn’t you? The one you didn’t tell us about.”

She was silent again.

“I just want their e-mail or a mailing address or a phone number. That’s all I’m asking for. They sold their house to us. I have the right to contact them.”

Gillette sounded angry. “Fine.” After spending several moments looking up the information, she gave him all three: e-mail address, mailing address, phone number.

“Thank you,” Julian said.

Gillette hung up on him.

The previous owners, Bill and Maria Worden, had moved to Colorado. Although Julian initially thought about calling them, he could think of no way to ask what he had to ask without sounding … well, stupid. So, forgoing the instant gratification a phone call would have given him, he did the next-best thing and sent an e-mail, which allowed him to compose his thoughts in a logical manner yet still transmit the communication instantly and, hopefully, receive a quick reply.

He spent the latter half of the morning carefully wording a message that started out by saying how much they loved the house and then gradually segued into a recitation of some of the odd experiences they’d had here. He mentioned that Cole Hubbard had told him how the couple who’d lived in the house before them had discovered a dead man’s body in the basement, and he wondered whether they had ever experienced anything unusual while living in the house.

The e-mail’s tone was friendly and mildly inquisitive, filled with none of the worry that he actually felt, and he sent it off immediately after proofreading it.

Instantly, a message popped up on his screen telling him that the address to which he’d sent the e-mail did not exist. He checked it against the address he’d written down, but the two were identical. He hadn’t accidentally left out a letter or put in a wrong number; he’d typed exactly the same e-mail address Gillette had told him. Frowning, he thought about dialing the realtor again to double-check, but, looking at the screen, he saw his thoughts laid out logically and decided to call the Wordens directly and just read his letter to them.

After half a ring, three discordant tones rang in his ear and a woman’s voice announced: “I’m sorry, but the number you have called is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again.”

This time, he did call the realtor, but she insisted that even if the information she gave him was not correct, it was the only information she had. He hung up, frustrated.

There was one option left, and Julian converted his e-mail into a Word file, added a return address and a phone number, and printed it out. He drove to the post office to mail the letter, and waited anxiously all week for a phone call or a return letter, all the time checking his e-mail.

Several days later, as he’d feared, his letter was returned, a red post office stamp on the envelope stating that it was not deliverable as addressed.

That night, he dreamed that the Wordens called to say they were coming over. They had important information to tell him. They promised to arrive by midnight, but he waited and waited and still they did not show. Claire and the kids were asleep, so he went around the house, checking doors and windows, making sure everything was locked. In the kitchen, he saw that the door to the basement was open, and he walked down the steps to make sure nothing was wrong.

At the bottom, he found the Wordens, both naked, sitting in opposite corners of the room, dead.

Maria Worden looked like Claire.

Bill Worden looked like him.