The Haunted

One

“They’re here again, Dad.”

Julian came out of the kitchen, coffee cup in hand, and walked across the living room to where his son, James, was holding on to the edge of the curtains, peeking through the crack and out the front window. Julian reached for the cord to pull open the drapes.

“What are you doing?” James cried, panicked. He flattened against the wall so as not to be seen.

Ignoring him, Julian opened the drapes. Sure enough, three skateboarders were on their driveway, one of them flipping his board into the air and then landing on it, the other two preparing to race down the sloping concrete to the street. It was the second time in two days that this had happened, and though theirs was the only driveway on the street not blocked by permanently parked cars or pickups (their vehicles went in the garage), that didn’t give neighborhood punks the right to use it as their own personal skate park. Angry, he started toward the front door.

“Don’t go outside, Dad. Please!”

“Get some ’nads,” Megan told him. She was sitting on the couch watching TV—a tween show on the Disney Channel—and she smiled derisively at her brother before turning back to her program. The two of them fought constantly, and even before Claire had become pregnant with James, Julian had known this would happen. He and his brother had battled throughout their entire childhood, especially during the teenage years, when his dad would sometimes have to break up honest-to-God fistfights. They still didn’t get along today. But Claire had read in some parenting book that it was better for siblings to be near in age, and she insisted that if they were going to have two children, the kids had to be spaced twelve to fourteen months apart. “That way,” she told him, “they’ll be closer. And when they grow up, they’ll be friends.” She’d since seen the error of her ways, although, of course, she would never admit that she’d been wrong.

“Did you hear what she said?” James cried, pointing at his sister.

“I heard. Megan, knock it off,” Julian admonished.

She snickered.

“Megan,” he warned.

“Ground her!” James said.

Julian opened the front door. “Both of you. Stop.” Walking outside, he closed the door behind him. On the driveway, the three teenage boys were spinning in circles, the backs of their boards scraping the ground, the fronts thrusting proudly in the air. He recognized one of them as Tom Willet’s kid from down the street, and though he didn’t know the other two boys, they were the same ones he’d had to kick off his property yesterday. “Excuse me!” he said loudly.

The Willet boy glanced casually over at him, spinning around. “Hey, dude, where are your daughters?” He stressed the plural, laughing, and Julian hoped James wasn’t listening.

“Get off my driveway.”

The three skateboarders ignored him.

“Now.”

“Make us.” The Willet kid stared back defiantly, still spinning.

Julian felt a hot rush of anger course through him, though he knew the boy had him trapped. He could yell at the skateboarders until his voice was hoarse, but if they didn’t listen, there was nothing he could do, since any attempt he made to physically remove them would have their parents calling the cops and filing assault charges. A middle solution suddenly came to him and, without saying a word, he walked over to the faucet at the end of Claire’s flower bed, turned on the water and picked up the hose. He twisted the nozzle three clicks, from “shower” to “jet,” and squeezed the trigger handle. A stream of water hit first one skateboard, then the others, as he swung his arm from side to side. He aimed higher, and the water shot into the boys’ legs.

The skateboarders started yelling.

“Hey!”

“What are you doing?”

“What the hell?”

“I’m hosing off my driveway,” he said calmly.

The boys quickly boarded down the driveway to the sidewalk.

“You squirted us!”

“On purpose!”

“I’m hosing off my driveway,” he repeated. “You happened to be in the way.” He smiled. “I told you to leave,” he said innocently.

“Fuck you!”

“Douche!”

Middle fingers raised in defiance, the kids sped away, racing down the sidewalk. Still smiling, Julian remained where he was for several minutes, until he was sure that the skateboarders were gone and not coming back. Finally, he walked over to the flower bed, turned off the faucet, switched the nozzle back to “shower” and drained the rest of the water, dripping the last of it onto Claire’s chrysanthemums.

When he walked back into the house, James was grinning. “That was great, Dad!”

He smiled back at his son. “That’s my job.”

Claire was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, looking concerned. “I don’t like this,” she said.

Julian nodded, saying nothing, not having to. They’d talked about the situation before. It wasn’t just the teenagers. It was everything. The entire neighborhood was going downhill. There’d been several foreclosures over the past few years, and more than half of the houses were now rentals. The kids who lived in them were much rougher than the kids who had been there before.

“Maybe we should move,” Claire suggested.

He’d been thinking along the same lines, though he’d hesitated to bring it up. Claire was sentimental, and not only was this the house they’d picked out together when they’d moved to Jardine, but both Megan and James had spent their entire lives in this place. There were a lot of memories here. The neighborhood was getting bad, however, and despite the terrible economy, their family was actually in pretty good financial shape right now. He and Claire were both employed, their house was worth much more than when they’d bought it fifteen years ago, and if they were ever going to move, this was probably the time to do it. There were bargains to be had, and they were in the fortunate position of being able to take advantage of that.

“I think we could do it if we wanted to,” Julian said.

“No!” Megan shouted, overhearing the discussion. “I don’t want to move!”

“I do,” James said.

Julian looked over at his son, and their eyes met. A wave of sympathy washed over him. The past few years had been hard on the boy. Due to budget cuts, school boundary lines had been changed, and at the start of fifth grade, James had been plopped down in a new school, where he didn’t know anyone and where he hadn’t really made any friends. The year before, his two best buddies, Omar and Logan, had moved: Omar to Phoenix, where his dad had gotten a job, and Logan to Santa Fe, to live with his grandmother when his dad had lost his job. His other friend, Robbie, was still around, but Robbie was enrolled in a series of camps this summer because both of his parents worked and he needed someone to watch him during the day. So, since school let out, James had been spending most of his time alone, indoors, on the computer or in front of the television.

Julian could relate to his son’s situation. He was out of his element as well. He’d grown up in California, in a large metropolitan area, and he’d moved here only because this was where Claire wanted to live. She was from Jardine, and since her parents were getting older, her sister lived here and many of her childhood friends had remained behind to work or get married or both, she’d been longing to return for as long as they’d known each other. As a Web designer, he could work anywhere, and after what had happened had … happened, after he’d quit his job at Automated Interface and gone freelance, after she’d decided to leave the Los Angeles law firm where she worked in order to set up her own private practice, he’d finally agreed to move to New Mexico with her. It meant downsizing their lifestyle, but they were both still young, and if they weren’t willing to take a chance now, when would they be?

Unfortunately, Jardine didn’t offer quite the bucolic rural experience he’d expected. He’d pictured himself waking up to the sound of birdsong and walking downtown with his laptop to sip flavored coffee at a cute café next to an art gallery on a tree-lined street. But the city was bigger than he’d thought it would be and resembled one of the lesser Los Angeles suburbs more than the cinematic country burg he’d imagined.

He wasn’t unhappy, though, and he realized that, with two kids, their family would probably have exactly the same sort of lifestyle no matter where they lived.

“I like it here,” Megan whined. “I don’t want to live somewhere else.”

“We’re not moving,” Claire reassured her daughter. “We’re just talking.”

But it was more than just talk, and that night in bed when Julian brought it up again, Claire admitted that she’d actually gone online the other day to look up available local properties. “I wasn’t really looking,” she said. “It was more like … browsing. I was just checking to see what was out there. No real reason. But …” She let the thought trail off.

Julian saw in his mind those teenagers flipping him off, thought about James spending his summer hiding in the house. “Maybe we should start looking,” he said.

She smiled, kissed him. “Maybe we should.”