The Haunted

Three

James sat on his bed, playing a Star Wars game on his DS until his mom called him for lunch. The sun was shining through the window, illuminating his desk, bookcase and the movie posters on his wall. He loved his new room. It was away from Megan’s, for one thing, and it definitely felt good to be free from her. In the old house, their rooms had been right next to each other, and she had always been walking in uninvited or pounding on the wall, yelling at him to turn down his television. This room was also bigger than his old one, with space on the floor for his beanbag chair—which had previously sat in his closet, to be brought out only for special occasions—and a built-in wall cabinet for his TV and his Wii—if he ever saved up enough money to get one.

“James!” his mom called a second time.

“Coming!” he yelled back. He finished blasting the last of the clones, then closed his game and went downstairs to the kitchen. He expected his mom to hand him a sandwich on a plate, expected to see his dad eating at the kitchen table, Megan in the living room in front of the TV. But both Megan and his dad were out in the backyard, and his mom was just carrying a dish of baked chicken drumsticks outside, pushing the screen door open with her rear as she backed out into the yard. “Wash your hands,” she told him. “We’re eating on the new picnic table.”

James was surprised both by the type of food and by the fact that they were eating outside and all together, but he nodded and walked over to the sink, where he squirted some antibacterial soap into his hand and turned on the water. Seeing his parents and his sister through the window made him realize that he was alone in the house, and he glanced nervously to his left, toward the closed door that led to the basement.

He didn’t like the basement.

James scrubbed his hands quickly. It wasn’t something he’d admit to, and he was embarrassed that he even felt this way, but for the week since they’d moved in, he hadn’t been able to set foot in the underground room, and though he’d successfully hidden it from everyone else, he had made a conscious effort to stay away from the door that led to it.

He’d had a nightmare about the basement when they’d first started taking things over to the new house. In order to save money, his parents had decided not to hire movers but to bring the small stuff over by themselves a little bit at a time, then rent a truck and have friends and family help them haul the beds, couches and heavy furniture. That first day, they’d made three or four trips, bringing over boxes of books, knickknacks and a lot of tools and things from the garage. His mom and Megan had stayed home, packing up more stuff for them to take, while he and his dad had ferried the boxes over, unpacking some so the cartons could be reused, leaving others in the rooms where the contents belonged. Neither of them had been sure where a grocery bag full of his mom’s old cooking magazines was supposed to go, so they left it in the basement, which his dad said they were probably going to use as a storage room anyway. The basement was pretty small, approximately the size of the kitchen above, and they’d put the sack of magazines in the far right corner of the otherwise empty room.

That night, James dreamed that he was being summoned to the basement, though by whom or what he did not know. All he knew was that one moment he was lying in his bed, and the next he was walking down the street in his pajamas, making his way toward the new house because he needed to be there. He reached the house quickly—the city’s dream topography made things closer together than they were in real life—and he strode up the walkway into the darkened, empty living room, heading straight for the kitchen, where he opened the basement door and started down. There was a dirty man standing in the corner of the room, grinning, his teeth eerily white against the dark grime of his skin. The man was as still as a statue; even his tattered clothes did not move, but he was alive and he was hungry. This was what had called James to the basement, and though he wanted to run away, his feet carried him forward, toward the corner, toward the grinning man.

And then he awoke.

Even thinking about the nightmare gave him chills, and he turned off the faucet and hurried outside without drying his hands, dripping water on the floor as he ran. Outside, Megan was complaining to their parents, asking why he got to have one of his friends stay overnight before she did.

“You know the Caldwells needed a babysitter for Robbie tonight,” her mom told her. “Besides, Kate and Zoe are both coming over next week.”

James sat down next to his dad and grabbed a drumstick. From across the table, Megan glared at him. He smiled back at her, taking a bite of his chicken. She turned away angrily.

He was anxious for Robbie to come over. It was the first time his friend would see the new house, and James was looking forward to showing off his room. Maybe he’d even take him into the basement. It wouldn’t be that spooky with the two of them together.

Of course, they’d have to go down there in the daytime.

“What are we having for dinner tonight?” he asked. There was a lot of food on the table, and he was afraid they’d be eating leftovers. The thought embarrassed him.

His mom smiled. “Don’t worry. You guys won’t starve. We’ll order a pizza or something.”

Feeling better, James dug in, eating four drumsticks, three rolls and a bunch of sliced cucumbers, washing everything down with multiple glasses of iced tea. Ordinarily, he would have returned to his room after finishing his meal—that Star Wars game was addicting—but the images of the dream were still in his mind, and he did not want to go back into the house alone. So he wandered around the yard, pretended to be interested in some new flowers his mom had planted near the fence, and waited until his parents started carrying the dishes inside before finally following them into the kitchen. He hazarded a glance at the basement door as he passed by—

Had the door been ajar before?

—and hurried back up the stairs to his room.

Robbie was supposed to come over around three, but he was late, and it was after four when his family’s car finally pulled into the driveway. James had spent the last hour alternately slouching in a chair in front of his computer desk, lying down reading a book on his bed, and sitting on the floor with his back against the wall while he played with his DS, unable to decide which pose would make him look cooler when his friend arrived.

He heard the parents talking downstairs, and though he wanted to wait here until Robbie came up and discovered him casually lounging in his slammin’ new bedroom, James discovered after several seconds that he didn’t have the patience, and he ended up hurrying downstairs and meeting his friend in the living room. He couldn’t help grinning when he saw how Robbie was looking enviously up at the stairs. The Caldwells’ house had only one story.

“Thank you so much for this,” Robbie’s mom was saying.

“We’re glad to do it,” his own mom replied. “James has been very excited that Robbie’s coming over.”

“Hey,” James said, reaching the bottom of the steps and nodding hello to his friend.

“Cool house,” Robbie told him.

“Right?”

“Why don’t you show him around?” his dad suggested. “You could start with the basement.”

Robbie’s eyes widened. “You have a basement?”

James nodded, his smile fading.

His dad elbowed him playfully. “I’m surprised you didn’t tell him. Wanted to keep it a secret, huh?”

“Yeah.” Again James nodded, trying to maintain what was left of his smile.

“Let’s check it out!”

Feigning an enthusiasm he did not feel, James led his friend through the living room, through the dining room and into the kitchen. “That’s the door,” he said, pointing.

“Cool!” Robbie pulled it open. “It looks like it’s going to be a closet, but there’s stairs!” He immediately started down, and, reluctantly, James followed, flipping on the light at the top of the steps before descending.

Maybe he’d been building it up in his mind into something it wasn’t, but when he reached the bottom, James felt a distinct letdown. This wasn’t the spooky chamber he’d been dreading but merely a small storage room lined with boxes and sacks filled with unpacked junk from their old house. He glanced toward the corner where the dirty man had been standing in his dream. An exercise bike was pressed against the wall.

“This is killer!” Robbie was walking up the narrow open space in the center of the cellar. “You should ask your parents if you can make this into your room!”

James shook his head. “Not enough light. Besides, I like to have a window.”

“You could put extra lights in here. And you’d have tons of privacy. And if a tornado hit, you’d be totally safe.”

“Come on. How often does New Mexico have tornadoes?”

“Sometimes.”

“In Jardine? Never.”

“But this is so great! And it’s underground!”

While the basement wasn’t what his mind had made it out to be, James still didn’t want to stay here any longer than he had to, so he said, “You want to see great, check out my real bedroom. It’s upstairs. You can see the street from my window.”

Robbie grinned. “That’s cool, too.”

“We can spy on people.” James led the way back up the steps to the kitchen, and the two of them hurried past the parents, still talking in the living room, and headed up to the second floor. James pushed his door open wide and stood proudly to the side as his friend entered the bedroom.

“Wow,” Robbie said, taking in the posters on the wall, the built-in television cabinet, the beanbag chair on the large expanse of floor between the bed and the desk.

“Look over here.” James went over to the window, pointing down. On the sidewalk in front of the house, an elderly couple was walking slowly, arm in arm. On the street beyond, two men in racing gear bicycled past, going the opposite direction.

“This is awesome.”

“And they can’t see us that good because the tree branches kind of block us. Even if they were looking in our direction—which they aren’t.” James grinned. “This is my room. This is where I live.”

“You are so lucky.”

“And when I get my Wii, the only time I’ll leave my room is for meals.”

“Will I be able to come over?”

James fell into the beanbag chair in a way that he thought was impressively smooth. “Sure.”

Robbie leaned against the windowsill. “So, are you really coming back to Fillmore this year?”

“Yep. Thank goodness.”

“Was Pierce really that bad?”

“I told you—it’s a horrible school. I had no friends there. None. The kids are all—I don’t know—losers. I’m just glad to be out of there.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re coming back.”

There was a shout from downstairs. Robbie’s parents were leaving. The two of them hurried down. Robbie reddened with embarrassment when his mom gave him a hug, and he promised her he would behave. He took his suitcase and rolled-up sleeping bag from his dad, who playfully punched his shoulder and said, “We’ll pick you up in the morning, sport. Have fun.”

“Robbie can spend the day tomorrow if he wants,” James’s mother said. “We can bring him home in the afternoon or evening.”

“That’d be fine, if he wants to. That sound good to you, buddy?”

Robbie nodded happily.

“All right, then.” His dad smiled down at him. “Come home when you want to.” He looked over at James’s parents. “Whenever you get tired of him. We should be home all day.”

“Six o’clock at the latest,” Robbie’s mom said.

Good-byes were said, and after his parents left, Robbie toted his suitcase up to James’s room, where the two of them hung out and played computer games for the next hour.

For dinner, they had pizza, James and Robbie going with James’s dad to pick it up, and afterward they watched The Fantastic Mr. Fox, a movie they’d both seen a million times but that they both still thought was hilarious. Megan pretty much hid in her room for the entire evening, and that was another great thing about tonight—James hardly had to see her. BBC America was having a Doctor Who marathon, and they watched that until eleven, when James’s mom told them it was time to go to bed.

Robbie had already unrolled his sleeping bag on the floor, and while James’s mom had given him an extra pillow to use, he decided to rest his head on the beanbag chair instead. James, of course, slept in his bed. The two of them talked for a while in the dark—it was their goal to stay up until midnight—but they were tired, and within ten minutes both of them were fast asleep.

“James!”

The cry sliced through sleep and into his dream, waking him.

“James!” It came again.

He sat up groggily, opening his eyes. There was an edge of annoyance or desperation in his friend’s voice that indicated Robbie had been trying to wake him up for a while, and he had the sense that the other boy had been calling his name for some time.

James leaned over the side of the bed. “What is it?” he whispered.

“I want to go home.” It sounded as though Robbie was about to cry.

James squinted over at the clock Ms. Hitchens had given him last year for reading more books than any other student in the class. The multicolored numbers indicated that it was two thirty. “It’s the middle of the night!” James said.

Robbie did start to cry. “I want to go home!”

James felt scared. He had never seen his friend like this before and didn’t know what he was supposed to do or how to react.

But he was scared for another reason as well.

He was suddenly sure that Robbie had had a nightmare about the basement.

It was not something he would ask about, for the simple reason that he didn’t want to know, but the possibility frightened him, and he imagined his friend dreaming about the dirty man standing in the corner, grinning.

Maybe if they ignored the problem, it would go away. “Just go back to sleep,” James said. He felt sure that if they could just make it to morning, everything would be all right.

“I can’t!” Robbie cried.

There was a knock at the door, and James’s dad gently pushed it open. “Everything all right in here?”

“We’re fine,” James offered quickly.

“I want to go home,” Robbie said, sniffling.

His dad turned on the light, and the room was suddenly filled with a brilliant glare that, coming after the darkness, caused James to squint. “What’s the matter?” his dad asked kindly.

“I want to go home,” Robbie repeated.

The look on his father’s face told James that his dad thought the boy was probably just homesick. That was a possibility—but Robbie had stayed overnight at their old house before and nothing like this had happened.

“I have an idea.” His dad left for a moment and came back with a cordless phone, which he handed to Robbie. “Here. Let’s call your parents.”

Nodding assent, Robbie took the phone. In the silence, James could hear the beeping of the numbers as his friend dialed, and then several rings before a faint voice answered.

“Dad? I want to come home.” Robbie was no longer crying, but his voice still quavered with emotion. There was a pause. “I know.” Robbie sniffed into the phone. “Yeah.” There was a long silence. James could hear the faint chipmunk chatter of his friend’s dad on the other end of the line. “Okay,” Robbie said finally. “Okay. I will.” He handed the phone back. “Here. My dad wants to talk to you.”

“Kent?” James’s dad moved into the doorway and lowered his voice so the two boys couldn’t hear the conversation.

James looked at his friend quizzically. “So?”

“My dad said I have to stay.” Robbie sounded resigned but no longer frightened. He’d not only stopped crying, but the panicked edge was off his voice.

James couldn’t help himself. “Why do you want to go home?”

Robbie shook his head, not willing to answer.

Did you have a nightmare? James wanted to ask. Was it about the basement?

But he didn’t say anything, and seconds later his dad came in, cheery smile in place, and told them both to go to sleep, waiting until Robbie was back in his sleeping bag, and James was in his bed and under the covers, before turning off the light. “Good night,” he said. “See you in the morning.”

“Night, Dad,” James said.

“Good night, Mr. Perry.”

James heard his dad’s footsteps retreat down the hall. He almost asked Robbie if the reason he wanted to go home was because he was homesick … or because he was afraid of something. But once again, he didn’t. Instead, he lay there silently, staring upward into the gloom.

Thinking about the basement.

And the dirty grinning man in the corner.