The Haunted

Twenty-nine

Julian met Claire for lunch again at her office, bringing takeout tacos this time, and it felt just as awkward as it had the day before. He didn’t think she was still mad at him, but there was not much talk while they ate, and when they did talk, the conversation seemed forced. He hated this feeling of estrangement, but he knew that the only cure would be for him to leave the house and stay with her and the kids at her parents’ place, and that he was not willing to do.

At least, not yet.

Although … he was not sure why. After his experience last night—an experience he was definitely not going to tell her about—he should have been falling over himself to get out of there. But something was keeping him in the house. He told himself that it was the hope, the possibility, that he was close to finding out what was really going on and figuring out a way to stop it. But he didn’t believe that, and whenever his mind even approached the subject, he quickly steered it in another direction. He didn’t want to think about what he was doing or why.

Lunch today didn’t last as long as it had yesterday. They both avoided talking about the big-ticket items, and their efforts to discuss small stuff were downright painful. Julian didn’t jump up and leave immediately after finishing his tacos, but shortly after she finished and he sucked the last of his Coke through the straw, he stood, wadding up his napkin and throwing it in the wastepaper basket. He told Claire he still had to finish work on that Web site and had better get going, and they parted amicably but without hugging.

He was outside and had just unlocked the driver’s door of the van when Claire stopped him. “Julian?”

He looked up to see her standing in the doorway of her office. “Yeah?”

“I don’t want you to stay there. You’ve proved your point. Whatever it was. You’re a big macho guy, and you’re not afraid of anything.”

He felt himself hardening against her. She must have sensed his antipathy, because she quickly added, “I’m just afraid for you. It’s dangerous there. And you have two kids, you know. They should be your priority.”

That hit him where he lived, and he tried to come up with a response that made sense, but she was right. Nothing was more important than Megan and James.

Still …

“Something’s happened,” he told her. “Something’s changed. You’re not there, so you haven’t noticed it, but it’s like …” He tried to verbalize what he’d been feeling. “You know how the basement used to be creepy? It’s not anymore. The garage is. It’s like this new ghost somehow deposed the old one. I don’t know what it is about our house that makes the spirits of dead people hang around, but it seems like the people who die there stay there. At least until someone else takes their place. And right now, the guy who killed himself in the garage is our ghost du jour.”

Claire gave him a hard stare. “You think that’s cute? You think you’re being funny?”

“I’m not trying to be. I’m sorry. But I think I’m onto something here. I think I might be able to—”

“I don’t care if you find a way to exorcise every single ghost in every haunted house in the country. It’s not worth the risk. You have two kids who need you. I need you. That house is just a house. We sell it, get rid of it, find another. People do it all the time for all sorts of different reasons. It’s not a big deal. Let it go.”

They’d attracted attention. A couple who’d just exited the sandwich shop were walking slowly down the sidewalk, pretending not to look or listen but doing both. In the van’s side mirror, he could see the owner of the used-book store across the street pausing in his rearrangement of the outside paperback rack to watch.

Julian didn’t want to talk in front of them, and he moved back onto the sidewalk, where he stood in front of Claire, putting his hands on her shoulders. “I’m close,” he told her.

“No!”

“Yes.”

She pulled away from him and went back into her office. He thought of following her, but she wasn’t going to change his mind, he wasn’t going to change her mind, and it was probably better if they didn’t get into a shouting match right now.

He walked back to the van and got in. The bookseller was arranging his paperbacks again; the couple from the sandwich shop had left. Julian backed into the street. Intellectually, he knew Claire was probably right, but emotionally, it felt wrong, and he drove home convinced that he had made the correct decision.

The sight that greeted him when he pulled onto Rainey Street was completely unexpected.

Every single house was up for sale.

Except theirs.

He’d been gone for a little under an hour, which hardly seemed to be enough time for something like this to have happened. Of course, every For Sale sign was from the same real estate agent at the same real estate office—Randolph Wilson at RE/MAX—so it would have been easy for the agent to have simply gone down the sidewalk planting signs. And for all Julian knew, some of these sales may have been in the planning stages for days or weeks or even months, and the realtor may have just found it more convenient to list them all at the same time. But that hardly seemed likely. What seemed most probable was that, like Cole, the rest of his neighbors had been frightened and had all decided to move at once.

Julian drove slowly, looking to see whether anyone was home. A lot of people weren’t. The Allreds’ car was still in their driveway, but he doubted that either Spencer or Barb would talk to him. Harlan Owens’s red Jeep was parked in his driveway, and his pickup was on the street in front of the house, so he was definitely home. Julian didn’t know Harlan well, but he knew him enough to speak to, and after parking the van in his own driveway, he walked down the street to Harlan’s house.

“Go away!” was the response he received when he knocked on Harlan’s door, and the words were spoken with such force and anger that Julian didn’t even try to argue. He stepped off his neighbor’s porch and headed back to his own house, glancing down the street in disbelief at the row of identical For Sale signs in each yard.

Maybe Claire was right, he thought. Maybe they should get out now. Leave and not look back.

But Randolph Wilson of RE/MAX had just made that harder. Who was going to want to buy a house on a street where every home was for sale? They wouldn’t be able to get back anywhere near the amount of money they’d sunk into the place. If they could sell it at all.

Julian unlocked the door and stepped inside. The mail had arrived in his absence, and he bent down to scoop the envelopes off the floor, where they’d fallen after coming through the slot. He glanced at the return addresses to see whether any of them were checks rather than bills, then went into the living room to dump them on the coffee table with yesterday’s mail.

Someone had been here. There was a note written on the back of an envelope, leaning against the TV screen, and with a pounding heart he walked over, picked it up and read it:

I will cut off Megan’s head and use it to decorate my mantel.

I will stuff James with straw and use him as a scarecrow in the garden. I will rape Claire until she likes it. And I will kill you when I am finished.

There was a scribbled signature at the bottom of the message, though it was indecipherable and he could not even tell with which letter it started. Was it from John Lynch? His gut feeling was yes, which meant that apparently he’d been wrong: Lynch’s ghost was not confined to the garage where he had killed himself.

Or had he killed himself?

Despite the unbelievable brutality of Lynch’s death, Julian had assumed from the beginning that all of his wounds were self-inflicted, an opinion with which the police seemed to concur. It was hard to believe that anyone could stab himself in the face the way he had and then go on to thrust the knife into his own throat. But there’d been no evidence whatsoever that anyone else had been involved or even present, and as one of the detectives had told Julian, a man committed to killing himself will go to incredible extremes in order to accomplish his goal.

The police had been looking for human assailants, however, and Julian wondered whether the killer of John Lynch had been human.

He should get out of here now, right now, head over to Randolph Wilson’s office—or even Gillette Skousen’s—and put this place up for sale immediately.

But he didn’t.

Music was coming from his office upstairs, a record he recognized but had not played in a long time. The Smiths. He caught a stray piece of lyric: “. . . such a heavenly way to die …”

Again, he knew he should leave. But he remained where he was, not fleeing the house, not going upstairs to investigate the mysterious music, but just … waiting.

And then the music shut off and everything was back to normal. Julian stood in place for several moments, but when he saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing, he began searching each room for anything that might be amiss. He started upstairs, but his office was clean, as were the kids’ bedrooms and the bathroom. The Smiths record was out and on the turntable, the orange album cover with its haunted-eyed street urchin staring up at him from the floor, where it had been tossed, but nothing else seemed out of place, and the room was quiet. He went downstairs, through the living room again, the dining room, the kitchen, the hallway, the bedroom, the bathroom. All clear. He saved the basement for last, but it, too, seemed completely normal, entirely free from all evil influences.

Evil?

It was a word and concept that had been floating around the periphery of his thoughts for a while, but he had never allowed it concrete residence in his mind until now. It fit, though. It was the word that best applied, and he had never felt so relieved as he did when he stood in the basement, looking around at the bags and boxes, sensing nothing unusual, feeling no fear.

Julian walked back up the steps, shutting the door behind him. He was thirsty, and he got himself a glass of water from the sink in the kitchen. As he drank, he looked out the window at the backyard. He knew what was next—the garage—and for the first time since starting his search, he felt real trepidation. Putting down his glass, he considered taking out a knife and bringing it with him, but a weapon wouldn’t be much use against a ghost, and he decided it would probably be better to leave his hands free.

He needn’t have worried. There was nothing out of the ordinary in either the main body of the garage or the upstairs loft.

Was it over?

That seemed too much to hope for, and, indeed, the note left by the TV and the Smiths record playing by itself indicated that whatever haunted this house was simply taking a breather. But he was encouraged by the fact that he hadn’t felt anything in any room he’d checked, and he thought it was possible that the ghost—or ghosts—had gone. Or perhaps writing the note and putting on the record had used up too much energy, and any entity was dormant now and had to recharge.

That was information that might be useful in the future.

He spent the rest of the afternoon actually working on the Web page he was supposed to be finishing, and was able to do so unmolested. There were no creepy messages on his computer screen, no mysterious noises in the house, no flickering lights, no murderous intruders, and after the first hour, he was almost able to forget that anything weird had happened here at all.

Almost.

For dinner, Julian heated up a frozen burrito in the microwave and ate it while he watched the news. Afterward, he phoned Claire and the kids, but the call did not go as well as it had the night before. Claire was still angry with him, and both Megan and James seemed resentful and withdrawn. He was hurt by their reaction, and after the conversation dwindled and sputtered to a stop prematurely, he almost went over to see them. But something kept him from it, and he sat there with the phone in his hand, staring into space, and by the time he put it back down, the news was over and Access Hollywood was on TV. He looked over at the clock, shocked to discover that a half hour had passed.

Where had the time gone? It was nearly night outside now. He had not yet closed the shades, and as he looked out at the darkness of the street, he realized that most, if not all, of his neighbors were gone. He might very well be the only person on the street.

Suddenly grateful for the noise and companionship of the television, Julian turned up the volume. From the corner of his eye, he saw that the light was on in the kitchen. He had taken his plate and glass in there after eating, but he could not remember whether he had left the light on. Ordinarily, he turned off the lights automatically as he left a room—habit—but he might have left them on this time.

Or he might not have.

Julian decided he would feel more comfortable if all of the lights in the house were on, and he stood and went from room to room, downstairs and up, until the entire house was illuminated. As an added precaution, he checked to make sure that all windows were closed and that both the front and back doors were locked.

He’d intended to work a little more on the Web site before going to bed, but now he decided that he wasn’t in the mood—

was afraid

—to do that, so he sat down on the couch, picked up the remote and flipped through channels until he found The Daily Show on Comedy Central. He needed a comedy right now, something he could laugh at, and he put down the remote and settled back on the couch to watch.

He was asleep before the first commercial.

When he awoke, another commercial was on, so he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He glanced toward the clock, but his attention was drawn by movement outside the window.

James.

Julian leaped to his feet as his son hurried across the front yard to the side of the house. He knew exactly where the boy was going, though he had no idea how James had sneaked out of his grandparents’ house and made it all the way over here, and Julian sped through the living room, through the dining room, into the kitchen, where he quickly unlocked and opened the back door.

There was no sign of James—he must have already gone into the garage—and Julian dashed across the patio and through the backyard. He reached the small door of the darkened garage and was about to pull it open when there was a sharp cry behind him. He turned to see a deep, wide hole in the center of the dead grass. How could he have missed it before? Julian didn’t know, but he ran the few feet over to it and peered down. An arm’s length below the surface, holding desperately on to a small protruding root, was his son.

Instantly, Julian flopped onto the ground on his stomach, stretching his arm down in an effort to grab the boy’s hand. But his fingers would not reach. There were still several feet between them, and he inched forward until he was overhanging the ledge at a dangerous angle, but the distance remained insurmountable. The pit beneath his son’s dangling legs appeared bottomless.

“Don’t move!” Julian ordered. “Hang on! I’m going to get a rope!”

“Daddy!” James’s voice sounded exactly like an older version of Miles’s, and Julian cried out in alarm as the boy slipped several inches, the root he was grasping pulling out from the sidewall, dropping dirt onto his face.

“Daddy!”

Julian’s heart sank in his chest as he realized that history was about to repeat itself. He was filled with a despair so deep and black that it rendered him immobile, and he did not even reach down again and try to grab his son’s flailing arms as the boy screamed and disappeared into the depths.

And then—

He was sitting, and he felt the couch cushion against his back. It had been a dream, just a dream, though it took his brutalized mind a moment to process that fact, and when he opened his eyes, he was not sure at first that they were open. He swiveled his head around, used a finger to check that his eyelids were up. They were. It was just that all of the lights were off, and it was impossible to see anything. The entire house seemed to be dark—the entire neighborhood seemed to be dark—and Julian reached under the coffee table for the flashlight he kept on the shelf there in case of blackouts. His searching fingers couldn’t find it, but seconds later, a lamp atop the end table opposite the couch switched on, bathing the area in a weak yellowish glow.

He was not alone in the living room.

There were shadows galore in the dim light, but there was one shadow that did not correspond to any object in the room. It lurked next to the fireplace, a formless, undulating darkness that appeared flat but somehow had heft.

He stood slowly, observing it. He was afraid, but also fascinated, and as he watched, the formlessness took on a shape, folding in on itself and wobbling crazily from side to side until it resembled nothing so much as a sideshow fat man with multiple arms and a thick tubelike tail that extended into and up the fireplace. Julian backed slowly away, moving toward the front door.

And the shadow thing was right there, an inch in front of his face.

He started, gasped.

The shadow smelled. An odor of mold and dirt that seemed almost familiar. One of the waving arms reached out and touched him, and in that moment, Julian had a clear sense of it. This wasn’t the ghost of John Lynch, although Lynch’s spirit was there and dominant. This was something else. It wanted him to know what it was, and though he did not fully understand, he knew that this was a being comprised of spirits and souls, one that absorbed the dead but was of them, not separate. It was a creature that was ancient but evolving, that changed and grew with each addition, and though his comprehension of its complexities was imperfect, he knew that, at its core, this thing was evil.

And it wanted him dead.

It didn’t want to kill him, though. It wanted him to kill himself. He wasn’t sure why, didn’t get the distinction, but the knowledge was sure and definite, delivered directly to his brain by the cold, shadowy appendage that lay against his forearm. He was supposed to commit suicide. That impulse, however, was one he’d never had, and he jerked away, stood in the center of the room, pulled himself to his full height and loudly said, “No.”

The attack was immediate.

The lamp on the end table flew toward him, its cord pulling out of the wall socket and throwing the room into darkness. He lurched to the right and felt the object whiz past, heard it smash into the coffee table. All around was the sound of movement—squeaks, scrapes, creaks, crashes, thumps, thuds, knocks, bangs—and Julian dropped to the floor and began crawling toward the area where he thought the front door should be. He ran into something heavy and immobile—the Southwestern pot containing Claire’s ficus tree—hitting the vessel with his head, pausing for a second to get his bearings, relieved not to feel the wetness of blood on his face.

This is what it’s like to be blind, he thought, and scurried as fast as he could across the floor, angling left.

He hadn’t realized until this moment how powerful a being this was, hadn’t known it could wield physical objects against him, although, in a weird way, such a real-world concern took some of the edge off the fear he felt, giving a tangible specificity to the more primal terror he’d experienced until now.

Something brushed past him, something hairy, and in an instant that primal fear was back. He let out an involuntary cry of horror and revulsion, and then he was kicked in the side, the air knocked out of him as he was sent flying. But he was kicked in the right direction, and he rolled over, gasping for breath, discovering that he was lying against the front door. Forcing himself to ignore the pain, even as a sharp blow was delivered to the small of his back, he found the door handle, pulled himself to his feet and flung open the door, staggering forward.

He made it out of the house, slammed the door behind him.

And collapsed.

He awoke half on the front lawn, his head resting on the cement of the driveway, one arm twisted under and used as a pillow. He knew where he was and what had happened, was not groggy at all, although his back, neck, side and shoulders all hurt, and immediately upon wakening, he got in the van and drove to Claire’s parents’ house. Her dad, Roger, answered the door, greeting him with a frown, but over the old man’s shoulder, Julian saw Claire, Megan and James eating breakfast in the kitchen, and with only the most perfunctory of greetings, he pushed his way past Roger into the house and hurried over to his family, filled with gratitude that they were all here and all right.

James looked up as he entered, and the expression of joy and relief on his son’s face—joy that he was here, relief that nothing had happened to him—made Julian rush over and give his son a big hug. The strong hug he was given in return almost made him feel like crying. “I love you,” Julian said.

“I love you, too,” James said instantly.

It was something they had always said to each other, but its usage had fallen off in the past year, and Julian vowed to himself that he would never stop saying it to his son.

Or his daughter.

He let go of James and grabbed Megan, holding her close. “Love you,” he said.

“Love you, too, Dad.” Megan was crying, and he pulled back and used his index finger to wipe the tears from her cheeks, the way he’d done since she was a baby.

Claire was looking at him over Megan’s shoulder, and her eyes were tearing up as well. He pulled out a chair and sat down next to her. “You were right,” he said. “I’m not staying there anymore, either. We’ll sell the house, take the loss if we have to, and find someplace else to live.”

“Hold on a sec. Did I hear what I think I heard?” Claire’s dad stood in the kitchen doorway, glaring at him disapprovingly. “Are you actually going to sell your house because you think it’s haunted?”

Julian faced him. “Yes,” he said calmly.

“Well, I’ll be—”

“Dad,” Claire warned.

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

“You read the article in the paper. And I told you what else happened there.”

He waved her away, still glaring at Julian.

“Roger …” Claire’s mother said warningly.

Julian ignored them both. “I’ll work there in the daytime,” he told Claire. “Like a regular office. But I’ll sleep here at night. With you.”

“Why do you have to go there at all?”

“Yeah, Dad,” Megan chimed in.

“Because my computer and all my work’s there.”

“You have a laptop,” Claire said.

“I need all my stuff. I’m down to the wire and have to get this done. Afterward, I’ll quit.”

She looked at him. “The house is still manipulating you. You think you’re thinking for yourself, but you’re not.”

“I’m not being manipulated. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“You’re not thinking of keeping the house?”

“No,” he assured her. “Of course not.”

“Because it sounds like—”

“No. I told you. But it’s not the house that’s the problem. It’s what lives in the house.” He didn’t want to describe in front of her parents and the kids what had happened, so he took her arm and led her out of the kitchen, down the hall to the room in which she’d been sleeping. He closed the door. In the mirror above the dresser, he saw his reflection: he looked like a homeless man, his clothes wrinkled, his hair disheveled, his entire appearance one of unruliness and disarray. He looked like he’d spent the night on the front lawn.

He sat her down on the bed, took a deep breath. “I saw it,” he said. “I felt it. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but the thing that’s haunting our house is much bigger than a ghost. It’s made up of ghosts. It’s … it’s an entity of some kind that … that takes the people who died at our house or on our property and … and they become part of it. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s big, it’s old, it’s dangerous, it’s evil.”

She was nodding. “So those massacres, those suicides, those murders, all those men who died there over the years, they’re part of this.”

“Yes!” he said, relieved that she understood despite his stumbling description. “Exactly!”

She looked at him. “Is there any way to get rid of it? Exorcise it?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t think so.”

Claire took a deep breath. “You are not going back there to work.” She fixed him with a face that brooked no disagreement.

He nodded. Thinking about what he’d been through, he realized that he didn’t want to go back to the house. Maybe she was right; maybe he had still been under the influence when he’d arrived. But he wasn’t any longer, and he readily agreed to do his work here at her parents’ house. “I still need my disks and files and CDs,” he told her. “But I’ll call Rick and have him go over with me this morning. The two of us should be able to get everything I need in a few minutes. Is there anything you need? You or the kids?”

“Not right now, but we will have to start moving our stuff out of there sometime soon,” she said.

“I’ll look around, see if there’s anything else I can bring with me.”

“No. Things are too … hot there right now. Just get your equipment and go. We’ll let things cool down for a few days, then decide what to do.”

Julian offered her a half smile. “We can’t stay at your parents’ forever.”

She smiled back. “Nor do we want to. But let’s just take it easy for a few days. Think about things. We shouldn’t make any rash decisions. You just get your Web site done. I’ll work my way through this district settlement; then we’ll figure out where to go.”

“I love you,” he said. He realized he hadn’t said it to her when he first came over.

“I love you, too,” she replied, and kissed him on the nose. “But let’s get out there now and rescue the kids from my dad.”

Julian took a shower, then had breakfast. Claire went to work shortly after eight, and as soon as she was gone, he gave Rick a call. The print shop didn’t open until ten, which gave them plenty of time, and Rick promised to meet him there in fifteen minutes.

“Can I go?” James asked as soon as he hung up the phone.

Julian put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “No,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.” He heard Roger’s snort of derision from the couch and chose to ignore it. “But don’t worry. I’ll be back pretty quickly.”

It was quick. Rick must have been able to tell that he wasn’t really needed, as there was no heavy lifting and everything they took out of the house could have been just as easily carried by one person, but he had seen the ghost that night of the party and had no doubt read between the lines and figured out that something else had gone down. He didn’t ask any questions, though, and for that Julian was grateful.

“I’ll explain it all later,” Julian promised when they were finished.

Rick nodded, looked down the street, then over at the house. “Whatever it is, I think you made the right decision,” he said.

Julian spent the rest of the morning setting up his equipment in the room he’d be sharing with Claire, using her mother’s sewing machine table as a desk. He spent the afternoon working, trying to ignore all the distracting intrusions, taking occasional breaks to hang out with the kids. To thank her parents for their hospitality, he took everyone out to Fazio’s for dinner, and afterward all six of them sat in the living room watching television until, one by one, they drifted away.

The last thing he wanted was to be left alone with his father-in-law, but it was nine o’clock and the kids were in bed, Claire was in the bathroom taking a shower, and Claire’s mother went into the kitchen. Julian pretended to be concentrating on the procedural crime show that was on TV, but Roger leaned forward, blocking his view. “You pathetic fruit fly,” he said disgustedly. “I always knew you weren’t a man, but now you’re afraid of your own house? Because you think it’s haunted? What are you, three?”

Julian said nothing. He didn’t want to get into it right now. They were going to be living at Claire’s parents’ for a little while, and it would not be a good idea to antagonize her father on his first day here.

Still, the old man kept pushing. “Is this how you take care of your family? Huh? I’ll put up with this sort of talk from my daughter and my grandkids. But I want you to know that I have no respect for you at all—”

“You think you’re brave enough to stay in that house alone?” Julian confronted him. “One night in there, you old buzzard, and you’ll be weeping like the scared little girl you really are.”

“Get out!” Roger bellowed. “I will not be treated this way in my own house!”

Julian stood. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll leave.”

“Not them, you!”

“We’ll leave,” Julian repeated. “And we’re going to move back to California, where you most definitely will not be welcome in our home.”

Claire’s mother had come in from the kitchen and heard the last of this. “Julian! Roger! I won’t have that kind of talk in my house. You two apologize and make up right this minute!” She glared at her husband. “And you be a gracious host, or so help me God I’ll …” She left the thought unfinished.

The two men looked away from each other, focused their attention on the television and sat silently. But moments after Marian returned to the kitchen, Roger’s grumbling started again, snide asides to himself that Julian was obviously meant to hear. Julian tuned him out, ignoring him completely, and finally, unable to put up with it anymore, Roger stood, taking out his keys. “Come on,” he said disdainfully. “Let’s see your house. Prove to me that it’s haunted.”

Claire had just returned, wearing pajamas and a robe, and she stepped between them. “No one’s going there. Especially at night!” She turned to her father. “You can check it out tomorrow, Dad. It’s safer in the daytime.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Roger!” Claire’s mom called out. She stood in the kitchen doorway, frowning at him. “The Lord’s name.”

“Hell’s bells, Marian. I’m supposed to put up with this … childishness and be polite?”

“Yes!”

He threw up his hands. “Fine.” But as soon as the two women left the room, Claire following her mother into the kitchen, the old man turned on Julian. “This is idiocy. You two are going to lose a fortune; then you’ll come crawling to me, and …” He must have seen from the look in Julian’s eyes that continuing along this line of reasoning would cause big trouble, because he let the sentence trail off.

“Go,” Julian said. “Check the house out. Try to prove me wrong.”

“I will.”

Julian looked straight into his father-in-law’s eyes. “It’s your funeral,” he said flatly.