The Neighbor: A terrifying tale of supernatural suspense

by London Clarke

  “Yes!” Paris continues to celebrate.

  “I . . . guess.” The cadence of Gretchen’s voice dips and rises with questioning apprehension.

  Despite my best efforts to keep all of the girls with me in the living room tonight, Annalen has chosen to stay upstairs.

  “She says she’s not coming down,” Gretchen says, reaching for the television remote. “She says she’s bored with Gilmore Girls.”

  I go to the bottom of the stairs and call up. “Annalen? Are you sure you don’t want to join us?”

  Silence.

  Paris slides off the couch and comes toward me. “Annalen got in big trouble at Daddy’s.”

  I suddenly remember Gunnar telling me she was grounded. “What happened?”

  Paris lowers her voice. “She called Martina a bad word.”

  “What word?”

  “I can’t say it, Mommy,” she whispers. “Daddy says it’s a horrible word and we’re not allowed to say it.”

  Well then, I can probably guess which word. “Did the word begin with a B?”

  “No,” Bridget and Gretchen say in unison.

  “It started with a K—or maybe a C,” Bridget says.

  “C,” Gretchen confirms.

  I feel my mouth drop open. “Annalen called Martina that word?”

  They nod in unison.

  “She got in so much trouble,” Gretchen adds, wide-eyed.

  Paris whispers again. “Daddy says she must be hearing the word from you, but we told him you never use that word.”

  I groan inwardly. “You’re right, Paris. You will never hear me use that word.” I gesture toward the television as I start up the steps. “Go ahead and watch the episode without me. I’ve seen them all anyway.”

  Maybe this is the beginning of what many of my clients call “frightening fourteen,” the time when girls change, rebel. From a medical standpoint, fluctuations in hormones in girls around this age can make them withdraw with feelings of inferiority or insecurity or sometimes they may feel overly confident. But I also know she’s negatively affected by whatever’s in this house.

  I want to give her a break. She’s the oldest, she truly adores her father, and when he so quickly married Martina, it must have thrown her off her game.

  But that word. I can’t let it slide.

  Loud music plays from her bedroom. “Cat’s in the Cradle.” The door is closed, and I tap my knuckles against the wood.

  “Annalen?”

  When she doesn’t answer, I turn the knob and enter.

  Annalen stands at her closet, holding a pair of jeans that look as though they’ve been chewed up in a blender. I haven’t seen them before.

  I sit on the edge of her bed. “Hey,” I say as casually as possible.

  “Hey.” She pulls a black sweater out of the closet and shakes it out.

  “Where did you get the jeans?”

  “Martina bought them for me.”

  Surprising, especially in light of what I just heard. “Oh. I thought maybe you borrowed them from one of your friends.”

  She makes a noncommittal sound as she moves to her chest of drawers.

  “Was everything okay at your dad’s?”

  “Yeah. It was fine.” She tosses all of the clothing items onto a chair.

  I scan the miscellaneous items scattered across her bed. Papers, a laptop, and an oblong box with a picture of hands touching a planchette on a board and the letters O-U-I-J-A spelled out across the top.

  I press my fingertip to the box. “What’s this?”

  Annalen glances over at it. “It’s a game—it’s like a board with a bunch of letters on it.”

  “I know what it is. Why do you have it?”

  “Well, if you know what it is, why did you ask?” she snarks. “It’s for my science project. I’ve been testing it to see if it really works.”

  My mouth drops open, and I try to remain calm, keep my voice level. The song is putting me on edge. “Can we turn down the music, please?”

  With a roll of her eyes, Annalen trounces across the room to the cylindrical speaker and presses the volume button. The sound lowers slightly.

  “How did you get the board?”

  “Our neighbor, your boyfriend. He was getting rid of some stuff a few weeks ago. He gave it to me. He gave me the Rubik’s cube too.”

  I feel myself falling, falling, falling. My mind’s eye returns to Steel’s basement—the rows and rows of cursed and possessed objects. Then I think about what Julie said to me. She’d asked me point-blank if I had a spirit board, and I’d said no. I suddenly worry that my ignorance may have tainted her investigation.

  Annalen stares at me. “He’s your boyfriend, Mom. I figured it was okay.”

  I extend my finger toward the board. “Do you understand what this actually does?”

  “Of course, I know what it does.” Another eye roll. “Like I said, I’m doing a science project on it.”

  “These are dangerous—especially in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.”

  She lunges forward and grabs the box. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Have you used this—in our house?”

  She leans against the dresser. “Actually, I used it over at Tommy Frankenson’s house. He was my lab partner.”

  It’s like I’m taking one punch after another. I can barely form words. “You never told me that. When were you at his house?”

  “A few days before Mr. Frankenson was murdered.” Her voice doesn’t carry an ounce of remorse or even grief. “You were working late. Tommy drove me home from school, and we used the board at his house. I was home before you even knew I was gone.”

  “I didn’t know Tommy was your lab partner. Was the Ouija board his idea?”

  She shrugs. “It was mine, actually. After Steel gave it to me.”

  How dare Steel give my daughter anything without asking me first? Especially something like this. “Why didn’t you tell me he gave you these things?”

  Again, she jerks her shoulder. “It didn’t seem important. I tried the board with Gretchen once. But it was boring. We were just sliding the thingy around and asking dead people to talk to us. But once Tommy and I started playing with it, it worked. We actually contacted people.”

  A chill runs down my spine, and I push off from the bed. “What people?”

  “Someone who lived in this neighborhood a long time ago—someone named Silas Crouter, he spelled out the name on the board. And someone else named Levi.”

  I catch on to the side of Annalen’s dresser. Is this how the spirits spread to the Frankensons’ house? Is this why Tommy killed his father?

  “Levi talked to us for a long time. He was our age when he died in the eighties, and he even liked a lot of the same music as Tommy, and—”

  “Annalen, I want you to promise me you’ll never use that board again, okay?”

  She glares at me. “I have to finish the project. Now that Tommy’s dead, I have a new lab partner, and—”

  “No. I don’t care. Find another topic. Ouija boards are dangerous. I don’t want you using them.” I reach out my hand. “As a matter of fact, give me the board.”

  “Mom, no, I—”

  “Give me the board, now!”

  Annalen shoves the board toward me, jabbing me in the midsection. Grasping the edges of the box, I spin around and carry it downstairs.

  “I’ll just get another one!” she shouts down the stairwell. “Or I can make one. You can’t stop me.”

  “Yes, I can!” I shout back. But I can’t, not really. Just like I can’t really protect any of my children. Julie said the demon could appear in different forms—as a child to Paris, as a teenager to Annalen. Whatever is here is much stronger than all of us. We have a perfect storm of supernatural entry points. My relationship with Steel, open portals, Annalen’s communing with spirits...

  I pass by the girls in the living room, arranging their sleeping bags and blankets. “Girls, get ready for bed.
I’ll only be a second.”

  “Where are you going?” Gretchen calls after me as I exit.

  With each step, anger builds inside me. Damn Steel, or Patrick, or whatever his name is. The idea that he had any dealings with my children without me knowing solidifies everything I suspected about him. He doesn’t just have evil things in his house—he is evil. Maybe even a pedophile—like Silas Crouter.

  His truck is parked in the driveway. I march up the steps of his house and slam my fist against the door. “Steel! Get out here, damn it! Right now, you asshole, come out and face me!”

  I stare up at the house. Lights illuminate the top half. I wait, but he doesn’t come to the door. I rattle the handle. Locked. “Steel! You evil bastard, don’t you ever come near my kids or me again!” I kick the base of the door and drop the box on the top step. Then I crane my neck and look up at the windows once more. His shadow hovers, faceless, but the presence of intimidation is unmistakable. I can’t see his eyes, but I know he’s staring down at me. A ripple of fear rushes over me along with déjà vu.

  This is just like the night Tina banged on my door. Except now, it’s me screaming.

  53

  It’s 9:38. The kids are snuggled into their sleeping bags. We are on our second bowl of popcorn, our fourth or fifth—I’ve lost count—episode of Gilmore Girls. I pretend to watch, but thoughts are chasing around my brain. Why would Annalen choose the Ouija board for a science project? She’s always been so practical and level-headed and . . . scientific.

  Gretchen sits up, glances at the stairwell. I can tell she’s thinking the same thing I am. “Is Annalen ever going to come down? She’s missing all the popcorn.”

  I leave her question unanswered while I joggle my leg, twirl a lock of hair. Finally, I stand. “I’ll go up and check on her.”

  I approach the staircase, linger at the bottom, my hand on the railing, dreading going back up there, afraid of what I’ll find. My oldest daughter has changed into something alien to me, and now I know it’s not just hormonal.

  I climb with somber and deliberate steps until I reach Annalen’s bedroom. The door is open, and she faces her closet, staring into it. The song is still playing.

  “Annalen.” My voice is nearly a whisper. “Are you coming downstairs?”

  “No,” she says robotically.

  “We need to finish talking.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “I know you’re angry with me—for a multitude of reasons. And I want you to know that I understand your anger.”

  “You don’t know shit.”

  I flinch but force myself not to give in to a reaction. “I’m not proud of myself right now either. Steel was a huge mistake. In this case, my judgment was way off.”

  The song ends and starts again. I sink down onto her bed.

  Annalen continues to stare into the dark closet. “What did you do while we were at Dad’s? Hang out with Steel?”

  I answer quickly. “No, like I said, he was a mistake. I’m not seeing him anymore.”

  Annalen makes a scoffing sound. “I’d hardly call spreading your legs for him seeing him.”

  I bolt off the bed. “Annalen! That is not acceptable. I know you’re upset, and you’re allowed to be upset—you’re allowed to be mad at me, but you are not going to talk to me like that.”

  “What?” She pivots to face me, her upper lip raised in a sneer. “It’s the truth. He only wanted to screw you. He told me that.”

  Annalen’s words slap me with the force of a leather strap. Heat floods into my face. Suddenly, I feel uncentered, and my focus is clouded. Steel is every bit as unhinged as I thought. What kind of man tells a teenage girl something like that about her mother?

  I mash my lips together and raise my hands to my hips. “This is why I wanted to talk to you earlier. Paris told me you called Martina the C-word.”

  Annalen’s face is foreign to me. Arched eyebrows, mocking grin. “The C-word? Come on, Mom. How old are you? Twelve?”

  The intensity of my anger surprises me as I heave toward her—ready to—to what? I’ve never hit my children. I’ve never needed to.

  Annalen doesn’t recoil. She draws herself up, and she’s practically my height. Her mouth tightens, and her eyes are dark, daring me to act.

  My voice barely sounds like my own as I repeat my warning from before. “Don’t you ever speak to me like that. Do you understand?”

  “Or what? You’ll hit me?” Her mouth turns up at the ends. “Come on, Mom, why are you being such a . . . C-word?”

  When the cords of restraint inside me snap, I actually think I hear them. It’s a pop, a transformer in my brain exploding. It happens so fast that later I will have only a fragmented memory of it. I won’t remember grabbing Annalen’s shoulders and shoving her so hard that she crashes backward into the chest of drawers, toppling the lamp and sending shards of porcelain spinning across the floor. I won’t remember screaming at her until my voice shreds or her screaming back at me, or the sight of her lunging at me like a wild animal. I won’t remember us falling down in a full-on struggle, Annalen punching and kicking me, slamming my head against the ground. I’ll have no recollection of Gretchen screeching and pulling her sister off of me. And I definitely won’t recall the girls crying as Annalen and I sit on the floor panting, our hands and arms bleeding from the broken ceramic shards.

  But I will never forget the sight of Annalen rising to her feet, standing over me with bloodstained teeth from a torn upper labial frenum, pointing her finger at me and saying in a voice that chills me with its calmness, “Just wait until I tell Daddy what you did. He’s already said he’s going to get custody of us. Now just think of how easy it will be for him to do that.”

  54

  My senses return to me slowly, nearly one by one—hearing, vision, pain. My wits are the last thing to come back. When they do, I take in my surroundings. I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, staring out through the open door into the hallway. Standing is painful, but on trembling legs, I shuffle into the hallway toward Annalen’s room. The door is shut. The song is no longer playing.

  “That did not happen. That did not happen.” But when I look down at my hand and see the actively bleeding gash from the broken lamp, I know that it did. Paris, Bridget, and Gretchen will never forget what they saw. Annalen will never forgive what I did.

  She will tell her father, and he will take them away from me.

  I don’t deserve them.

  I attacked my own daughter. Or did she attack me? I don’t remember, and it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but making sure she’s okay.

  I stand with my ear against the door and knock quietly. “Annalen?” From inside her bedroom, I hear humming. A two-note sound. I force breath in and out of my lungs. “Annalen?” She doesn’t respond, but the humming continues—the same two notes over and over. Then it stops. I reach for the knob. Left, right, left. Locked.

  Of course it is. Who can blame her?

  “Annalen.” I breathe against the panel in the softest voice I can use and still be heard. “Annalen, honey, are you okay? I’m”—I swallow a sob—“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry, baby. I don’t know what came over me.”

  The words are so inadequate, so pathetic.

  Like a zombie, I move down the steps one by one. In the living room, Gretchen comforts the two younger girls, speaking to them in low, soothing tones as they gather like birds against her.

  “It’s okay,” she whispers. “Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t cry. It will all be better tomorrow.”

  Words I’ve said to them at one time or another as I rocked them to sleep from a crying fit. Or after Gunnar left, when all four of them wanted to sleep in the bed with me.

  None of them look up as I pass.

  Outside, sirens wail. Did Annalen call the police? Or one of the other girls? Will I be arrested for child abuse? My heart feels like it has stopped beating. But as I near the window, I see the red lights pass by. They’re n
ot coming for me. Maybe someone else died...

  55

  I don’t know what time it is. I don’t know where I am. The smell of moss and earth is strong in my nostrils.

  My entire body shivers with cold. Raising my head, I open my eyes and extract my fingers from mud that threatens to devour them. I push up onto my hands and knees and lift my eyes. White and blue roses shimmer in the moonlight above me. A funeral wreath. One of the markers that the woman sets out for her daughter every week.

  I’m at the fence line separating my property from the construction lot. Beside me, a mound of wet earth sits next to a small indentation in the ground. It appears that a dog or some other animal has been here, digging. But as I lift my hands, covered in soft, tar-like mud, I realize that I am the animal. And I have been digging, turning up the earth in search of . . . what?

  Sleepwalking again. The horror of the fight I had with Annalen creeps into my consciousness and fills me with nausea, sorrow, and fear. I grasp the fence post and pull myself to stand on trembling legs.

  The girls are in the house alone.

  I plunge forward, leaping over the ditch filled with wet leaves and littered with plastic soda bottles. As I shoot through my yard, I involuntarily glance through the gap in the fence. A light blinks on and off from Steel’s basement—like a lighthouse beacon.

  I spring onto my deck and burst into the house, my lungs deflating. In the living room, all of the girls are sleeping on the floor. All except Annalen. When I trek upstairs, I find her bedroom door still closed. In the morning, I will have to deal with the aftermath. The gravity of my sins is not lost on me. This is bad. It would be bad enough in any instance, but understanding who I am—a therapist—a mother of four...

  I wash my hands, change into clean sweatpants and a shirt, and return downstairs to slip into my sleeping bag and cuddle up behind Paris. She protests groggily.

  “Mommy?”

  “Hm?”

  “Why are we doing this? Sleeping on the floor. This isn’t that much fun now.”