The Haunted

Thirty-eight

Just like that, the hospital room was back to normal. Everything was back to normal, and a nurse came in to escort Megan to her room, apparently oblivious to all that had just occurred. Megan and James were crying. Claire was crying. Was it over? Was all of it over? She was filled with the certainty that it was, and she called Diane and her mom, asking whether they could watch the kids. As soon as they arrived at the hospital and she’d told them what had happened, and Diane was safely ensconced in Megan’s room, her mom in James’s, Claire drove the van over to their house, her heart sinking as she saw her parents’ Civic in the driveway.

She knew Julian had come here.

The front door was unlocked and wide-open. The second she stepped through it, she heard music. Julian’s music. A record was playing. She didn’t remember the name of the album, but she recognized the song—“Girl of My Dreams” by Bram Tchaikovsky—and she ran upstairs, buoyed by a sudden hope.

Dashing down the short hall, she ran into Julian’s office. The room was empty. The stereo was on, but it had obviously been on for a long time, probably for hours. It was just that the “repeat” button had been pushed—she saw the little red light—which meant that each time the needle reached the end of the record, the arm lifted up, moved back and started again at the beginning.

“She’s the girl of my dreams. …”

Claire turned off the stereo.

The house felt … empty. There was nothing here, no spirit, no monster, no creature, no consciousness. She was all alone, and she was filled with the certainty that it was Julian who had done this, who had exorcised the house. How, she had no idea. But in the end he had figured something out.

And it had killed him.

Even thinking the thought was like a stab through her heart.

Claire wandered into James’s room, then Megan’s, overwhelmed by the prospect before her. How was she supposed to raise them both by herself, without any help? Despite her frequent complaints that she did everything, she knew in a way that she never had before that it wasn’t true, that they had always both raised the kids together.

Until now.

“You bastard,” Claire sobbed, though she didn’t know whether she was speaking to Julian or to the house that had taken him.

She knew it was wrong to be mad at Julian, but she was mad at him. There’d been no reason for him to come over here. They could have taken off, moved to another town, another state, someplace where they could not be found. Even if they had left the house untouched, abandoned all of their furnishings and belongings, lost every dime they had, ended up poor and living in a cramped apartment, they still would have been together. They would have still been a family.

“Fuck you!” she yelled, stomping down the stairs. This time she was addressing Julian. “Fuck you, you selfish bastard!”

She went through the first floor of the house, room by room. On the dining room table was a box of pictures, and next to the box was a photo of Julian and James taken at the county fair, the two of them sitting on canvas sacks and speeding down a giant slide in adjoining lanes: Julian laughing, James screaming. She would never see Julian laugh again, Claire realized, and she stared at his face in the picture as though trying to burn the image into her brain so she would never forget it. Picking it up, she brought it to her mouth and kissed it.

She felt guilty for being mad at him, and though she had no idea whether his ghost or spirit or whatever part of him lived on after death could hear her or was even around, she spoke to it, addressed it, as she began running from room to room.

“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. …”