The Haunted

by Danielle Vega

  Hendricks could hear the words prestigious and exclusive in the way Portia’s tongue curled around the name. The Walter School. Hendricks had dressed down for her first day at Drearford High—boyfriend jeans slung low on thin hips, messy blond hair tucked in a topknot—but she could still see Portia studying her, weighing her assets, placing her somewhere on the inevitable social ladder.

  Hendricks knew what she saw. Beneath the slouchy clothes and messy hair, she was still blond and thin and tan, pretty enough that Portia wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen with her, generic enough that she wouldn’t be a threat.

  “I’ve heard that place is amazing,” Portia said, hooking Hendricks’s arm with her own. “You’re slumming it here. Why didn’t your parents move to Manhattan?”

  “They flip houses for a living,” Hendricks explained. “They came up here to look at an old property and decided they liked it so much they wanted to keep it for themselves. I guess they couldn’t resist the whole quaint small-town thing.”

  It was the truth, but only half the truth. Hendricks was quickly becoming an expert at lying by omission.

  Portia paused for a fraction of a second, something flicking across her face. “Well, this is definitely a change,” she said. “Let’s get the tour out of the way so you can get in to see Principal Walker and get your schedule set up. The school’s tiny, so it’ll only take a second. This here is a hallway, similar to hallways you may have seen in Philadelphia. You’ll find most of your classes here, or down one of two other hallways.”

  “Fascinating,” Hendricks said, deadpan. Portia snickered.

  “Right? It’s a good thing they sent me out to meet you or you’d have never found your way around.” She paused in front of an empty cafeteria. “We eat here in the winter, at that table in the back corner, but juniors are allowed to take their lunches outside so we move to the fountain as soon as it gets—”

  Portia stopped talking abruptly and rose to her tiptoes, waving. The school doors whooshed open and a line of boys in tracksuits streamed into the hall. Sneakers squeaked against the floor, and deep, laughing voices reverberated off the walls.

  “Hey, Connor!” Portia called, and the tallest, blondest tracksuit-clad guy broke into a shockingly wide smile and separated from the others to jog over to them. Hendricks felt her shoulders stiffen. She pretended to study a cuticle.

  “Ladies,” Connor said, brushing the hair back from his forehead. “How are you this morning?”

  Hendricks looked up, frowning slightly. Normally, she hated it when guys called girls “ladies.” They either used the word mockingly or like they were reciting a line from that playbook on how to pick up women. But Connor hadn’t said it like that. His tone had been a touch formal, and there was something old-fashioned and all-American about his crew cut and cleft chin.

  Wholesome, Hendricks thought. Then again, Grayson could seem wholesome, too. When he wanted to.

  Connor dropped an arm around Portia’s shoulders. “Are you going to introduce me to your new friend?” he asked.

  And then he was staring at Hendricks, his face so animated that, for a moment, Hendricks wondered if she’d said something hilarious without realizing it.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, taken aback. “I’m—”

  “He’s joking.” Portia smacked him lightly across the stomach. “He already knows who you are.”

  “Ow.” Connor pretended to double over, cringing. To Hendricks, he said, “Hendricks Becker-O’Malley, right? You’re sort of famous.”

  Hendricks felt a shot of nerves. “Famous?”

  “We don’t get a lot of new students.” Connor tilted his head. “You know, technically, you don’t exist.”

  This threw Hendricks off guard. She said, blinking, “What?”

  “I looked you up. Hendricks Becker-O’Malley is a unique name, so I figured I’d find something, but you’re not on Instagram, or Facebook, or Snap . . .”

  He’d looked her up? Hendricks glanced at Portia, wondering what she thought about her boyfriend internet stalking some other girl. The girls at her old school would’ve freaked. Not that it would’ve stopped their boyfriends from doing whatever they wanted. But still.

  But Portia’s face remained impassive as she lowered her voice and said, conspiratorially, “We figured you were hiding some deep, tragic secret.”

  Hendricks shrugged, trying for casual. “I’m just not into social media. It . . . keeps you from living in the moment.”

  Which was a lie, and not even a good one, but they weren’t getting her deep, tragic secret that easily. Or ever.

  “Living in the moment,” Connor repeated, like this was a sage piece of wisdom he’d never heard before. He jostled Portia’s shoulder, adding, “See? I told you she’d be cool.”

  Portia rolled her eyes. “You just cost me twenty bucks, new girl. I was sure you were going to be some snooty rich kid, but Connor had a feeling about you.”

  Connor looked irrationally pleased with himself. “I should hit the showers before next period,” he said. “We’re all hanging after school. Want to join? We can introduce you around.”

  Hendricks opened her mouth, and then closed it. This all felt so easy, so normal. It was starting to sink in. No one knew about her here. She could start over again, be absolutely anybody she wanted to be.

  Despite everything, she felt a thrill of relief.

  But then she remembered—she couldn’t tonight. She groaned and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t. My parents have to check out a property in Manhattan, so I’m watching my baby brother.”

  Connor’s smile flickered. Portia stared at her. “You’re going to be home?” she asked. “All by yourself?”

  Hendricks frowned. “Well, yeah. Why, is that bad?”

  Portia touched her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. “I wouldn’t want to spend the night alone at Steele House.”

  A nasty shiver moved down Hendricks’s spine. “Steele House?”

  “Didn’t you know your house had a name?” Connor asked.

  Hendricks hesitated. She didn’t realize everyone already knew where she lived.

  A bell rang then and students spilled out of the doors lining the hallway, surrounding them.

  Connor ducked his head, abashed. “Okay, now I really do have to hit the showers. Catch you at lunch, O’Malley.”

  He said her last name with a wink, like they were sharing an inside joke. And, with another insanely wide grin, he turned into the crowd.

  Hendricks didn’t realize she was staring until she heard Portia’s voice in her ear: “It’s okay. Everyone at school is a little in love with him.”

  Hendricks blinked, cheeks reddening as she pulled her gaze away. “Everyone at school is a little in love with your boyfriend?”

  Portia released a short, hard laugh. “Boy and friend, yes, but not my boyfriend. Connor’s currently unattached, although I should warn you that we’re all very protective of him. That nicest-guy-on-the-planet thing wasn’t an act. He’s pretty much like that all the time. Anyway,” she continued, jerking her chin at a door to her left. “That’s Principal Walker’s office. He’s expecting you. See you around.”

  She wiggled her fingers and turned on her heel, stepping into a classroom halfway down the hall. “Good luck,” she called back to Hendricks, and pulled the door shut behind her.

  Hendricks stood for a moment, frozen, after Portia had gone.

  Suddenly, the school doors crashed open, hitting the wall so hard it made Hendricks jump and turn around, her heart pounding in her throat. Cool winter air gusted around her.

  For a second she’d been so sure there would be someone there, coming down the hall toward her.

  But it was just the wind.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Hendricks stood on the curb outside her new house, shivering despite her puffy down coat. P
ortia and Connor hadn’t been the only ones who’d mentioned the house to her today. Everyone seemed to know where she’d moved. Everyone seemed to know it had a name.

  Steele House.

  “Weird-ass town,” Hendricks muttered. Nothing about the house looked special. It was two stories high, with three bay windows and a wraparound porch. Only the porch looked wrong. It was newer than the rest of the house, its white paint much brighter than the siding, the green trim shiny and glossy where the shutters had already faded with age.

  Hendricks hitched her backpack farther up her shoulder and started up the steps. They were new too, but unpainted, splinters still jutting out of the raw wood. She pushed the front door open and heard the television blaring from the living room. Then there was a shuffling sound, and the television switched off.

  “Mrs. Becker-O’Malley?” called a voice.

  “No, it’s just me.” Hendricks kicked off her shoes and walked into the living room. Her baby brother’s nanny, Gillian, was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, a pile of laundry heaped beside her. “My parents aren’t back until late.”

  “Oh, right.” Gillian folded the sweatshirt she’d been holding. She was in her twenties, a junior at St. Joseph’s University, but she was pint-sized and looked a lot younger. She wore an old band T-shirt tucked into thrift-store Levi’s. Her short hair was dyed lavender and pulled back from her face in a vicious ponytail, spiky strands escaping around her neck.

  “Also, nobody’s going to care if you watch TV,” Hendricks added, plopping onto the floor to help fold.

  Gillian looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t really watching anything, I just wanted the noise. Brady went down for his nap about twenty minutes ago, and it gets so quiet in here. Well, mostly.”

  She pulled a doll out from behind a pillow on the couch, sheepish. “This was in Brady’s room, but it started, um, talking earlier? It was really creeping me out, so I—”

  “Hid it,” Hendricks finished, taking the doll from Gillian. “Good call.”

  It had been her grandmother’s, one of the first talking dolls on the market, and she knew it was special, but she’d only ever found it disturbing. There were deep cracks all along its porcelain face, cutting across its mouth and nose. And the doll wasn’t smiling. Its lips were pressed together, tight, like it was hiding something.

  But the worst thing about the doll was that its voice box was broken, which meant it started talking on its own sometimes.

  Truly, Hendricks thought, these were the things nightmares were made of. It was like her parents wanted their son to develop a phobia.

  Gillian looked around, shivering. “It’s kind of a strange old house, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Hendricks put the doll aside and absently balled a pair of socks. “A bunch of kids at school said it had a name. Steele House?”

  “Really?” Gillian raised an eyebrow without looking up. “Do all the houses around here have names?”

  “I was sort of hoping you could tell me.”

  “Sorry. I’ve only been here since fall semester, so I’m not up on the local history yet. When do you think it’ll be finished?”

  Hendricks shrugged. The house was mid-renovation. There were heavy plastic sheets hanging over the doorways and covering the windows, and some of the drywall hadn’t gone up yet, leaving the boards beneath gaping and bare. Her parents had been so desperate to get out of Philadelphia that they’d decided to move in before their new house was even finished.

  Because of me, Hendricks thought. She suddenly, desperately wanted to be alone.

  “I can take it from here if you want to head out,” she said, pulling a fresh stack of laundry onto her lap. It smelled so strongly of the lemon-scented soap her family always bought that, for a second, she wanted to bury her face in the fabric and breathe. It was the first thing that’d felt familiar all day.

  It took her a second to realize Gillian was talking again. “ . . . have this pop quiz in astronomy, which I only took because I thought we’d be, like, looking at stars and shit, but apparently it’s mostly math. So I have to study.”

  “Good luck,” Hendricks said. Gillian made a face as she stepped outside, and then Hendricks heard the porch creak as she jogged down the steps. She slipped a hand into her pocket, her cell phone warm beneath her fingers.

  If anything about this move had been normal, now was when she’d be texting all the people she’d left behind.

  Oh my God this place suuuuucks!

  Followed by the inevitable sympathetic responses.

  Come back! We miss you! Wish you were here!

  Half of her wanted to take the phone out, to check her messages. There would be a few, she knew. Her old friends had tried to keep in touch after what happened, but she’d ended up pulling away. Everything felt tainted by Grayson.

  She pulled her hand out of her pocket, chest twisting.

  Clean slate.

  She held those words in her head as she pushed herself to her feet, looking around for something to like about her new home. A plastic sheet hanging over the front window rustled, and then went still. Hendricks frowned, the skin on the back of her neck tingling. But it was just the wind.

  She walked into the kitchen, eyes moving over the brand-new steel appliances. It was all very modern, everything sleek and clean, the lines sharp. But the old parts of the house were still there, not quite hidden beneath the slate tile and the sculptural light fixtures. The floorboards creaked and the walls groaned and cold air leaked in from the windows, no matter how tightly you closed them. It made Hendricks think of an aging actress who’d gotten too much Botox, desperate to maintain her youth.

  Water dripped, steadily.

  Hendricks listened, something crawling very slowly up her spine. The sound was hollow and heavy and it seemed to be coming from directly behind her. But the only thing behind her was wall.

  Her dad said the acoustics in this place were weird. Old-house noises, mixed with half-finished construction. And then he’d shrugged and thrown his hands up, a smile quirking his lips, like this was all charming, somehow.

  It’s not charming, Hendricks thought. It’s creepy.

  She went to the sink and jerked the faucet handle down. The dripping sound stopped, but now there was a smell coming up from the drain. A dank, rotten smell, like food going bad in the garbage disposal. But the sink didn’t have a garbage disposal.

  “Gross,” Hendricks muttered, stepping away from the sink. Her nose itched as she walked down the hallway.

  She suddenly understood why Gillian had been so weird about the television. It wasn’t a normal sort of quiet in this house. It was the kind of quiet that was made up of a dozen small noises. Wood creaking and faucets dripping and windows groaning from the wind.

  She needed something—music or reality television or even the news—to drone it all out. She went back into the living room and started digging around in the couch cushion for the remote.

  There was a sound above her.

  Hendricks looked up at the ceiling, frowning. The sound had been a clear, even creak. Like a footstep.

  As she stared upward, she heard another creak. And then another. They moved from one corner of the ceiling to the other, like someone was walking down the second-story hall. And then, abruptly, they stopped.

  Hendricks stood, her sudden fear blotting out everything else. She told herself Gillian must’ve forgotten to mention that a construction worker had come by. Workers had been in and out of the house since they’d moved in, setting up the internet and checking the wiring and fussing with the boiler.

  Her eyes ticked off everything near the front door. No muddy worker boots on the welcome mat, no dirty parka hanging from the hooks on the wall. She looked out the window and saw that there wasn’t a truck in the drive, either.

  Her skin began to creep. Hendricks crossed the livin
g room and walked into the kitchen. There was supposed to be a door separating the staircase from the kitchen, but it hadn’t been put up yet. Instead, a sheet of plastic blocked the way. Hendricks yanked it aside.

  “Who’s there?” she shouted up the stairs.

  The house was silent in response.

  Hendricks was very aware of the sound of her heartbeat, the way her breath seemed to catch in her throat. Slowly, she made her way to the second floor, and leaned her head against Brady’s bedroom door. She could hear the soft whir of his white noise machine, but that was all.

  Then, behind her, a long creak. She jerked around.

  No one there.

  She stared into the shadows for a long moment, her heartbeat slowing, her breath growing calmer. And then—

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  This time, the sound seemed to come from downstairs. Hendricks took the stairs two at a time and whipped open the plastic partition. She was trying to think of what she could use as a weapon—her dad’s golf club in the hall closet, the butcher knife in the kitchen—when her eyes landed on the window, and she saw Portia standing on the porch. Laughing.

  Hendricks threw the front door open, her pulse still fluttering. “You scared the shit—”

  Connor stood directly in front of her door, wearing jeans and a faded T-shirt instead of his track uniform. He held a basket of clearly homemade muffins, and his cheeks were slightly flushed, but that might have been from the cold.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “My mom wanted me to bring these over. Sort of a welcome-to-the-neighborhood thing.”

  He gestured to the muffins. As though Hendricks could have possibly missed them.

  Portia stumbled over to his side, smile wide. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. You said you were going to be all alone in there, and . . .” She shook her head and rose to her tiptoes, craning her neck to see past Hendricks. “Aren’t you going to invite us in?”

  Hendricks stepped aside, dumbfounded, holding the door open.

  “Nice,” Portia said, but in a way that seemed to mean something else. Connor shot her a look.