The Neighbor: A terrifying tale of supernatural suspense

by London Clarke

  I close my eyes. “I don’t know if I can go back to the house, Dawn.”

  “You could spend the day with me. We’ll go Christmas shopping.” Dawn pours herself another cup of coffee and holds the pot toward me.

  I hold up a hand. “No, thanks. I’m jittery enough.”

  She replaces the pot and leans against the counter. “Are you going to call the police? About Steel?”

  “And say what? My boyfriend lied to me, yelled at me, made me feel creepy? He engineered some sort of website and sent it to me?”

  “What about the Frankensons?”

  “All I have is that I saw the same cards with that URL in Tommy’s room. It’s not real evidence of anything.”

  “Well, there’s cyberstalking.”

  I shake my head. “Other than the fact that he had those cards, I don’t have any proof.”

  Dawn pulls out a stool and sits. “Maybe this website is like, a thing, and we just don’t know about it.”

  “Can’t be a good thing. But I mean, otherwise, Steel hasn’t done anything to me that I can prove or that would warrant an arrest or something. At least not yet. He just seems weird, unhinged. There’s a lot of creepy stuff in his house, objects, shadows.” I shudder. “I’m staying away from him.”

  Dawn holds her coffee mug between both hands and blows off the steam. “Well, listen, Ed and I leave this week for Arizona, and we’ll be there for two weeks. Abby will be here off and on, but she mostly hangs out at her boyfriend’s. You and the girls are welcome to stay here.”

  I rub my eyes. “Thanks, I may take you up on that.” The girls would love to stay with Abby. She used to babysit them a few years ago.

  I suddenly realize that I never contacted Abby’s boyfriend about the paranormal investigation. I don’t even know what I did with the number. Now, in light of last night’s clearly abnormal incident, I’m ready to delve deeper into this situation, find out what is in my house, and get rid of it.

  I slide off the stool. “Hey, is Abby here right now?”

  “FRONT DOOR IS OPEN,” my security system announces as I enter. When the security company reset the alarm, they must have updated it to vocalize its status report. Great. One more freaking voice in the house.

  I swing my gaze toward the fireplace. The mantel is empty.

  Of course it is.

  “You little bastard,” I whisper, scanning the room for a glimpse of black fur. “Where the hell are you now?”

  In addition to my mounting anger, paranoia has set in. I imagine that somehow Steel can see through my house walls and watch me—that he’s sitting over there laughing, getting off on it. I feel duped and totally betrayed. He lured me in with charm and kindness that I obviously craved, and then he threw off his cloak and showed his scales.

  Abby has arranged for her boyfriend Jax and his paranormal team to come to my house in the evening. I call in sick to work ... and then I wait. I never thought I would look forward to having a team of people coming to my house to investigate for spirits, but there’s a first for everything. I’ve tried the denial—there’s nothing here; there’s a logical explanation; it must be something environmental.

  Steel’s disclosure to me about trafficking with evil coupled with Hyo’s Korean ghost tales have broken the spell. Now, I feel certain there’s something in my house. I can finally say it: My house is haunted.

  The clock ticks through the day slowly, and I find myself peering through the windows, checking to see if Steel’s truck is still gone. I have no idea how I’m going to navigate living next door to him now. Awkward doesn’t even begin to describe the situation. Maybe I should call Bob Philips, the owner, and tell him his renter is cluttering his house with old junk and trinkets from potentially dead women. But Bob and I never exchanged more than two words, and I have no idea how to get in touch with him.

  By the time Jax and his partner arrive that night, my nerves are frayed and raw. The two men standing on my front step look more like teenagers going door to door securing funding for their high school band trip than paranormal investigators.

  “Hey. Are you Claire? I’m Jax.”

  Jax is tall and gangly with a helmet of blue-tipped hair gelled into a trendy style. His friend Mickey carries a backpack at his side.

  I motion them both into the kitchen, where they can spread their equipment on the table.

  “So, it’s just the two of you? I don’t know why, but I expected more.”

  “Yep. Just the two of us.” Jax unpacks what looks like a set of walkie-talkies from his case. “I run the investigative equipment—the EMFs, the EVPS and that kind of stuff—and Mickey does all the filming.”

  Mickey pulls a digital recorder from his bag.

  “Mickey’s a film student,” Jax adds.

  These guys are Abby’s age, I’m suddenly reminded. But then, I’ve had plumbers and AC companies use young employees too. “How long have you guys been doing paranormal investigations?”

  Jax rubs the tip of his nose, slanting his eyes toward the ceiling. “About nine months. This is our eighth investigation.”

  Less than a year. I’m only the eighth case?

  “How did you train to do this?”

  “Well, we have a mentor,” Jax laughs. “Julie Havner—we’ve done some investigations with her here and there. But she’s like, kinda famous.” He breaks off and bounces his gaze to Mickey.

  Mickey is burly and barrel-chested, and when he laughs, he sounds like a baritone singing an operatic tune. “Yeah, uh, she’s a big-time psychic. She has her own show. Like, she’s been called in to investigate celebrities’ houses and stuff.”

  “Yeah, she’s way above us,” Jax confirms. “We felt really lucky just to trail in her wake for a night or two when she was taking students.”

  I’m not feeling any better about their credentials just because they spent a couple of days under the tutelage of a celebrity psychic. “So, no real formal training then.”

  Jax shrugs. “Just trial and error, you know. Each case is different, so we try to work it out as we go along.”

  At the end of the day, beggars can’t be choosers. I’ve already struck out once with the psychic who told me nothing is here. I quickly fill in Jax and Mickey on what’s happening in the house and where.

  Jax holds up a device that looks a little like a portable landline phone. “It’s an EMF reader. To measure the electromagnetic frequency in the air,” he explains. “EMF readings help us determine if there’s any spirit activity around.”

  As soon as he turns it on, a green light flickers, and as he moves from the kitchen into the hallway, a high-pitched squeal echoes.

  “Activity—right off the bat,” Jax announces. He passes the reader up and down the walls as it howls high, low, and high again. “Definitely something here.”

  Sylvia, you were dead wrong.

  Mickey follows Jax with his recorder, filming their trek up the steps. The floor creaks as they walk overhead. Jax narrates. The EMF reader beeps.

  “Can we get into the attic?” Jax calls from the landing.

  “Oh, yes, of course.” I rush up and unlock the door, slap my hand to the wall, and find the light switch.

  They climb the stairs into the attic, and I follow slowly, feeling the temperature drop with each step. “I never come up here.”

  “This is the cleanest attic I’ve ever seen,” Mickey says.

  “We don’t really use it. We didn’t have a lot of stuff to store.” I ascend another couple of steps until my eye level bobs above the floor line, and then I freeze.

  Mr. Kitty. Sitting on a chair right in front of me. His green eyes sparkle in the bright attic light. A gasp rakes the back of my throat.

  Jax turns his head, looks at me.

  I point. “That—that stuffed cat. I threw the damn thing out, tossed it in the trash can, but it keeps showing up.” I feel the blood draining from my face.

  Jax ping pongs his gaze between Mr. Kitty and me.

  My fingernails
sink into my palm. “I know I sound crazy. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

  “A haunting can make you feel like that.” Jax steps forward, extending his electronic wand toward the cat. The device’s green lights blink, squawk, click.

  He slants his head. “This cat is hot.”

  “It moves around—all over this house.” My voice quakes. “It moves on its own. Shows up in all kinds of places. And now it’s here.”

  “Could anyone have moved it?” Mickey says from behind his recorder.

  “No one was here but me.”

  Jax waves the device on all sides of the cat. “It’s got plenty of juice.”

  Mickey lowers his camera. “Maybe it’s possessed.” He glances over at Jax. “We learned that from Julie, remember? She said spirits can transfer into inanimate objects.”

  Jax nods. “I remember.”

  I drop my arms to my side. “How can I get rid of it? Throwing it away didn’t work.”

  “I’ll take it.” Mickey stares at the cat and nods. “I’d like to do some more tests on it. You know, demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren had a whole room filled with cursed and possessed objects.”

  “Be my guest,” I say. “Please take it. Burn it. Do whatever you want. I just want it out of my house for good.”

  Mickey grabs the cat and stuffs it into his backpack.

  “Just be careful.” Jax darts his eyes toward his friend. “Remember, Julie also said spirits can transfer from inanimate objects to humans. That’s what they really want anyway—to attach to a human.”

  “I’ll be careful.” Mickey rubs his hands together and sticks his tongue out. “I have a glass aquarium at home. I’ll put it in that.”

  In contrast to my deflated spirit, the two guys seem keyed up. They talk fast, excitedly—two boys ready to go out on the football field and play a home game. They continue their investigation, the machines going off intermittently.

  Finally, all three of us congregate in the kitchen.

  Mickey sets his recorder on the island. “Holy shit, you’ve got a lot of activity going on in this house.”

  Jax clicks off his equipment, and the blinking green lights fade out. Then he removes the batteries, places two new ones into the slot, and turns it on again. “Yeah, there’s barely an inch of the upstairs that doesn’t have some EMF readings, so I can see why you’re not sleeping well.”

  I lean against the island, worried that if I don’t, I’ll fall over. “So, how do I get rid of it—whatever it is?”

  Jax gazes past me. “Mickey and I don’t actually get rid of any paranormal entities. But we can give you some tips—like burning sage—and if you need a house cleansing, you can probably contact a local minister or a priest. We have a few names of people willing to do it.”

  People like my dad? Exorcists? Disappointment floods my chest. I hoped their investigation would solve my problem tonight—without having to involve the church. Now I realize that was a naïve assumption.

  Mickey shrugs out of his jacket, preparing to stay a while. “Can we check out the basement?”

  “Sure.” I lead them to the door, motion them through it, and we make our way down.

  A terrible smell permeates the stairwell, and it’s not something I can attribute to damp, mildewed basements. It’s something rancid. Maybe the girls left out food, and it’s moldered. Or maybe a dead mouse?

  “I’m sorry about the smell.” My face burns. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Doesn’t bother us. We’re college students,” Mickey says. “We’re used to weird smells in the dorms.”

  Jax wrinkles his nose. “Actually, that smell. That’s . . . specific. I’ve smelled that before. On an investigation with Julie.”

  “What does it mean?” I ask.

  A few beats pass before Jax answers. “Sometimes it means—a malignant spirit.”

  My lungs deflate as a long-buried memory blows over me. My dad discussing signs of demonic activity. “A sulfurous smell—like rotten eggs.”

  Once we reach the main room, I flip the switch and the room floods with light.

  Cushions from the sectional sofa lie on the floor. Papers litter every surface, covering the coffee table, the sofa, the carpet. Pages ripped from old magazines are scattered, some of them completely shredded.

  “What the hell?” Mickey breathes. “What happened here?”

  “Shit. Did we have an earthquake recently?” Jax asks.

  I scan the room in disbelief, and for a moment, I can’t speak. My first thought is the girls. Could they have done this? “I have no idea . . . what happened.”

  “Could be a poltergeist.” Mickey’s voice fills with awe as he hoists his digital recorder. “A very, very powerful one.”

  As I gawp, Mickey films and Jax narrates.

  “It’s 9:38 p.m., and we’re investigating the Vogel basement. Poltergeist activity suspected. Ripped up magazines everywhere. Furniture in disarray. Pictures mutilated.”

  Several photographs of the girls lie on the floor among smashed shards of glass—the photos slashed and ruined.

  “Oh no!” I kneel down and pick up a photo of Annalen and Ravi—the boy who went with her to her eighth-grade dance last year. In the photo, she wears a blue dress Gunnar bought her. I took her to get her hair done that day, and she wore it up, strawberry blonde tendrils curling around her face.

  The broken glass has scratched through the middle of the picture. What looks like claw marks bisect her midsection and Ravi’s face. I shift my gaze from the scratches on the photo to those on the top of my hand. They’re just starting to scab over.

  “Something down here is angry,” Jax observes, his voice flooded with adrenaline. “Mickey, are you getting this?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it.”

  All of the air has seeped out of the room, replaced with a cold, musty vapor.

  Mickey lowers the camera and stares back and forth between Jax and me. “Do you feel that?”

  Jax clutches his midsection. “I feel sick, man. Really sick.”

  My stomach curdles too, like I’ve just gotten off a roller coaster.

  Mickey raises his eyes to the ceiling and then swiftly crouches, dropping his camera. Shielding his face with one hand, he swipes at the air with the other and lets out a scream that raises every hair on my body.

  “No, stop! Stop! Get away from me!”

  “What? What is it?” I watch in horror as Mickey falls onto his back, his legs and arms kicking and swatting.

  For an instant, he stops. The room is silent. Mickey stills, his limbs frozen in the air, a dead roly-poly bug. And then his entire body rises from the carpet as though lifted with a crane. He hovers for several seconds suspended until his body rotates facedown.

  I try to cry out, but there’s no time before Mickey drops belly-down onto the floor. The violent contact audibly knocks the wind from his lungs.

  Immediately, he claws and flails at the carpet, attempting to push onto his hands and knees.

  Jax scrambles toward him. “What’s happening? Mick, what the hell’s going on?”

  Jax grasps his friend’s shoulders and attempts to pull him to his feet, but Mickey’s body jerks, his arms give out, and he again slams against the ground.

  From the depths of my lungs, I draw breath and scream, “Leave them alone!” It’s a gut reaction, maybe even maternal, but it’s swiftly followed by the urge to get out of the basement. I spin around and run—past the struggling men, down the hall, and up the stairs.

  Lunging up each step, scraping my nails against the wall to hold my balance, I scrabble to the top. Whipping around, I cast a glance down at Jax and Mickey crawling up after me, using their hands to help them as they pant and grunt their way up the steps. Then, all three of us burst as one into the living room. I feel my body fold, my bones turn to rubber, and I collapse on the floor.

  Several minutes pass. We sit on the hardwood, our shoulders rising and falling, clutching our shirts.

  Pain in t
he center of my chest makes every breath difficult. I look over at Jax. He holds a hand to the side of his face where a bruise purples and swells just under his jawbone.

  “Damn thing hit me.”

  “Do you need some ice?” It’s the first thing that comes to mind—a small thing I can do to help.

  Jax shakes his head, waves me off, claps a hand over Mickey’s shoulder. “You all right, man?”

  Mickey’s pants are like howls, air whistling and wheezing in and out of his lungs. “No, no.”

  “What happened?” A shudder rips through me at the recollection of Mickey on the floor, helpless.

  “It attacked me. I...” He breaks off. “I couldn’t get up. Couldn’t see it. Couldn’t fight back.”

  I grab the edge of the table and push up to stand on shaky legs.

  Jax’s face is white and pasty. He licks his lips, draws himself up from the floor, his eyes grazing mine. “This is way over our heads, Claire.”

  I nod. “I know.”

  He stays bent over, his hands on his knees. “Whatever’s here—poltergeist or demon—it’s like nothing we’ve ever dealt with before.”

  I let my head loll forward. Guilt fills my chest for subjecting these boys to whatever evil is in my house.

  Mickey twists and contorts to maneuver onto his knees. Finally, Jax offers him a hand and yanks him to his feet.

  A sheen of sweat trembles on Mickey’s upper lip. “Just get me out of here.”

  As Mickey silently packs up his equipment, his backpack falls open and he stuffs his video camera inside. The bag is otherwise empty. The black cat is no longer there.

  “Did you take the stuffed animal out of your bag?”

  Mickey opens his backpack wider, peers in. “No, it must have fallen out.”

  My mouth hangs. “I watched you zip the bag when you first put it in, Mickey. It couldn’t have just fallen out.”

  He eyes me apologetically. “I don’t think I should take it anyway. Not after what just happened. Something doesn’t want me to have it.”

  Helplessly, I shake my head. The cat has won again. “No, you’re right. You should both just go. Before someone else gets hurt.”

  The three of us approach the door, all in a line, elbows touching, and I realize I’m standing between them because I’m scared. I hover on the threshold, contemplating leaving with them.