The Haunting of Beacon Hill

by Ambrose Ibsen

  “I was a dumb kid,” interjected Sadie. “I said a lot of things, but... you know, that was a difficult period in my life.” She hadn't focused on this particular bit of her history for quite some time, and revisiting it now, with nothing in her stomach but acidic black coffee, made her feel queasy.

  “No, I remember it well. You were the genuine article. You always had this sense about you—you could see and hear things that the rest of us weren't aware of. Even though your grandparents forbid you from speaking about it, you would talk to me, or to kids in the neighborhood, about things you'd seen.” Rosie's teary eyes were lost in the clouds for a moment as she reminisced. “Once, you were out with some of the neighborhood kids, catching fireflies after sunset. You were new to the area then, hardly knew anyone. When you all came back to my place for popsicles, you mentioned seeing a tall man standing across the street, remember that?”

  Sadie grit her teeth.

  “You described him down to what he was wearing, even. You mentioned his long neck, the bluish color of his skin. Now, I doubt you knew about it then, but in one of the houses thereabouts an older man had recently hung himself. I'd known him, had seen him from time to time during walks through the neighborhood. You described him to a T despite never having met him. I was stunned.” Rosie went on, smiling sheepishly. “From that point on, I was convinced that you weren't just spinning yarns—you were actually seeing the things you described. Once, your grandfather said something to me about it. He mentioned in passing that your mother could see things, too. Is that true?”

  Up to this point, Sadie had done a good job of hiding her discomfort, but at that moment, she balled up the thin tablecloth in her fists and replied, shrilly, “I—I don't really want to talk about that.” Her tugging on the cloth nearly knocked her mug from the edge of the table.

  Her reaction had been so visceral that even August had taken notice. He turned to the pair at the other table with an arched brow, a chicken bone half-lodged in his mouth.

  “I'm sorry,” said Rosie, smoothing out the table cloth and rescuing the mug from ruin. “I forgot that you didn't like discussing your parents. I didn't mean to...” She smiled as if it might smooth out the wrinkles in the conversation, too, and pressed on. “Anyway, I know this is a big ask for someone you haven't spoken to in years, but I'm desperate. My daughter isn't herself anymore. I can't help feeling like something has gotten its claws into her—that she isn't bluffing when she says she's being haunted by something.

  “Up to this point, Ophelia has been a lovely girl with a good head on her shoulders. She's never had the slightest inclination toward self-harm, has always been easygoing. But after she went into that house—the one on Beacon Hill—with some friends, she changed. I noticed it the minute she got back home. She locked herself in her room, had this hunted look on her face. And then, in the kitchen, she hid in one of the cabinets and tried to kill herself, as if dying were somehow preferable to... whatever she was running from.

  “I'm not saying that she really did see something in that house, or that she's possessed, cursed, whatever... But she believes it. She believes it so strongly that it's warped her. I barely recognize her! Her personality, her way of speaking—everything has changed ever since she went into that house. Again, I know that I'm asking a lot, but if anyone can get to the bottom of this—can tell me whether there's anything to her claims—it's you.”

  Sadie had pulled her chair away from the table. Plucking apart a paper napkin, she forced a tight smile and found she couldn't meet Rosie's gaze. “I understand what you're saying, but I won't be of any help to her. What she needs is a good doctor that'll—”

  “But the doctors aren't helping her,” insisted Rosie. She leaned forward, palms on the table. “She's only gotten worse! They're drugging her up, spinning all these theories about her psychiatric history, and meanwhile she's only spiraling.” Teeth grit, she added, “I'm losing my daughter, Sadie! Please! Consider talking to her. She says that something is in her. She told me that. She said, 'She's in me, mama'. What could that mean, if not...”

  So pale in the face that August had put down his food and asked, “Are you all right?”, Sadie wiped at her brow. “I... I don't think I can help her. Even if she thinks...” She gulped. “I'd be of no use, Rosie. I don't see things like that anymore. I don't see... ghosts. And I never did.” The words leaving her quivering lips were lies; she winced at their utterance. “The truth is, ghosts aren't real. There's just no such thing.”

  Rosie sank back into her chair with a thud. She wore a stunned look, and her cheeks were as red as if she'd been slapped across the face. Crunching a napkin in her hand, she gave a little shake of the head and cast a narrow look at Sadie under tear-heavy lids. “You're lying.” She sniffed loudly, cleared her throat. “You're lying, Sadie. I don't believe you. Whatever your reasons for denying that—” She stopped herself and blew out a deep breath. “You know what? It doesn't matter what you believe. Something is happening to my daughter. I don't know what it is. It was foolish and rude of me to go looking for you at a time like this, but...” She rummaged in her purse and took out a pen. “I don't have a right to ask you this, but do me a favor.

  “Come and see her. Just pop in. She might remember you, and a visit from an old neighborhood friend might do her some good. She always looked up to you, you know.” Rosie began jotting down a note on her crumpled napkin. “When you've seen her, you can tell me whether or not what's happening to her is normal. I won't ask you for anything else. I promise. Just... come and see her with your own eyes. Then we'll see what you think.” She passed the napkin over and then returned to her purse, producing a few twenties. “Here, dinner's on me. And keep the extra.”

  “Rosie, that's not necessary—” began Sadie.

  The woman dropped the money onto the table and stood. Slinging her purse over one shoulder, she pushed in her chair. “I hope you'll come, Sadie. You've grown into a beautiful young woman after all these years. I know I've been nothing but a bother tonight, but I'm still glad to have seen you.” Her smile crumpled as she turned to leave the restaurant. “It's just that I want to see my daughter grow up like you one day.”

  “Wait—”

  Rosie started across the room for the door.

  Sadie peered down at the hasty notes on the napkin. Ophelia's room number and the psych ward's visiting hours had been outlined there, along with Rosie's cell phone number.

  August tapped her on the shoulder and brushed a few crumbs from his shirt. “Are you OK? What was that about?”

  Sadie only looked back down at the napkin.

  7

  The car ride back to her place was an awkward one.

  “So, you could see ghosts as a kid?” chanced August at one of the red lights, cracking his window. “Like, for real?”

  Sadie avoided answering the question and merely looked out across the street, tugging at her seatbelt.

  “Sorry,” he added, sensing the mood. “I can see it's not the kind of thing you want to talk about. Don't pay me any mind.” Then, letting his foot off the brake and coasting a few dozen feet, he turned to her. “But, if you want to chat about it, I'm totally game. We've worked together almost a year now but it occurs to me I don't really know much about you. You grew up here in Montpelier, huh?”

  Sadie wasn't about to take the bait and turned up the music a few clicks as a means of drowning him out. Even so, the longer she ignored him—and the subject at hand—the more she felt an urge to talk. It'd been so long since she'd actually sat and talked with someone about herself. She had no close friends to speak of, with the last of her college buddies having flown the coop and moved abroad. She had no family, either. She'd been an only child, her father had died so many years ago now that she struggled to recall his face without the aid of a photo, and her grandparents had gone, one after another, while she'd been in college. And, of course, she'd never really known her mother to begin with...

  She pressed her forehead against the pa
ssenger side window and smiled ruefully into the side mirror. “In a small way, August, you're the closest thing I have to a friend. I don't have buddies like normal people do. I never had much of a family and they're all dead and gone now. I'm single and I don't even have a pet. I spend my time at work, playing around with books, and when I get home I dive right into the pages of another. Living this way, I get to feeling sometimes like I can't separate fiction from reality, you know? I forget about my childhood, my history...”

  August pulled into her apartment complex and parked in a spot a few steps from her door. “I'm not so different in that regard. I've got a few school buddies floating around, some family living within an hour's drive, but my existence is hardly what I'd call exciting. If not for the library, I'd probably never leave my house. It's the hip thing, though, isn't it? Us modern folk, we're into our solitude and escapism, aren't we? It's easier than ever to live apart from other people, to embrace isolation even in the middle of a bustling city.”

  Sadie nodded at this and clouded up the window with a sigh. “I feel like I've been more or less alone for my whole life. Usually, I like it that way. Solitude doesn't bother me. But there are times when I wish I had someone to talk to. They needn't even listen, necessarily. Just... someone for me to throw words at, someone to vent to.”

  “I get ya.” August rested his hands on the wheel. “Sounds like you need a cat.”

  “I'm allergic.”

  At this, he chuckled. “Well, not to be a pest, but like I said: If you ever wanna chat, I'm all ears.”

  “Yeah?” Sadie sat up, picked her purse off the car floor. Looking at the apartment building outside and knowing all too well the silence and loneliness that awaited her therein, her stomach soured at the thought of entering alone. “How about now? Got a free evening?”

  August shrugged. “Tonight? Sure, why not?” He killed the ignition and stepped out of the car. “You picked up dinner so it's the least I can do.”

  Sadie plucked her keys out of her pocket and left the car. “I'm going to apologize in advance—the apartment's a little messy.”

  “No worries. Can't be any worse than my place.”

  She started through the main door and led him up the landing to her second-story apartment. “I've got a bunch of books everywhere. Give me a minute and I'll put them away. I've got tea and coffee, too, if you're into that.” Unlocking her door, Sadie stepped into the apartment and flipped on the lights. Tossing her purse down onto a side table, she swept into the room immediately and began gathering scattered books in her arms. She'd left hardcovers stacked on her sofa, paperbacks on the floor and TV stand. Heaping them into piles on the opposite corner of the room, near the kitchenette, she offered August a seat on the newly-cleared couch and shut the door.

  “Nice place,” he said, plopping down. “You know what would really bring it together, though?” He did a dramatic pan of the bare walls, of the scarce furniture, then grinned. “A bookcase.”

  Sadie dropped into her worn-out papasan chair—and dug still another book from beneath its tattered circular cushion. Bringing someone into her apartment felt strange; come to think of it, except for the maintenance man and the cable guy—and perhaps a delivery person or two—she hadn't ever invited anyone into her place. Now that she had August here, she began second-guessing herself. The whole idea of letting him in, of discussing her life's history, struck her as dumb and embarrassing. Hesitating—and wondering if she shouldn't just kick him out and pick up a book to read—she gave a little shrug. “Well, welcome.”

  August leaned back and crossed his legs, tenting his fingers. “So,” he began, affecting a deep, serious tone, “tell me about yourself, Miss Young. Who are you really?”

  She laughed, looking down at her hands. “I don't know where to start.”

  “How about the beginning, then?” he suggested.

  Her reticence ebbed away just enough for her to get started. “I was born about forty minutes from here,” she said. Then, like she'd just knocked a hole in a dam, the rest of it flowed forth more easily.

  “I never knew my mother,” she began, picking at one of her fingernails. “My father told me a little; she had a difficult pregnancy and died in childbirth. So, from the very beginning, it was always just my dad and me. We were pretty close. I mean, we had to be, right? We only had each other. I went to school, made friends like any other kid and except for not having a mom my early childhood was... normal. And for quite a few years there, everything went well.

  “When I was sixteen years old, I got sick, though. Like, really sick.” Sadie donned a weak smile. “I ate a can of tainted pineapple and ended up with botulism. They put me in the ICU for a month, and at one point I even coded.”

  “You coded?” asked August, sitting upright. “You died?”

  “Technically,” she replied. “For a little while, anyway. They resuscitated me and I made a full recovery afterward, but it was pretty scary.” Rubbing at her upper arms, Sadie paused to clear her throat. “It was after that that things started to...” Another pause, longer than the last. “Something started happening to me after I got out of the hospital.

  “You know, I mentioned my mother earlier. Like I said, I never knew her. And from the very beginning, my father didn't talk about her a whole lot. If I asked about her, he'd say the usual generic stuff; that she'd loved me very much, that she'd be very proud of me—that sort of thing. But he always got this look in his eye when he spoke of her that made me wonder if he wasn't holding something back. Virtually everything I knew of my mother came from old photos, but even those were pretty scarce. My dad was the kind to take pictures of everything—I have enough photos of me and him to wallpaper this room—but there were only two or three of my mother in all those albums of his. Where the rest had gone—or whether there'd been any to begin with—he never said.

  “Anyway, when they let me out of the hospital, I began having these dreams every night. Dreams of my mother.” The air conditioning kicked on at this point, and Sadie nestled deeply into the warm chair cushion. Glancing up at August and feeling her mouth go dry, she blurted, “Sorry, I'm probably boring you. We can talk about something else.”

  “No, go on. Tell me about these dreams you had.”

  Her pulse hiked up and her scalp began to itch. Truthfully, she hadn't stopped talking for fear of boring her guest; she'd only stopped because she hadn't wanted to go on. This particular topic wasn't one she'd discussed with anyone in many years, and revisiting it—reliving it—made old wounds ache.

  More than that, it awakened old fears that had long laid dormant.

  “Right, so, I started having these dreams,” she continued after a time. “And in them, I'd see my mother. They were short dreams but very vivid, and they always played out the same way. The scene was black and white, and I'd walk into a room—a small, empty room. Think of a closet. Barely enough space to move around, to stretch, right? And my mother would be in there, just standing in the dark, like she'd been waiting for me.

  “I'd always wanted to know more about my mother, had always been curious about her, but these dreams were, well, frightening. I didn't find any comfort in them, and when I saw her in my sleep, I was fearful for some reason. Every time, she'd look straight at me with wide eyes and tell me one thing and one thing only. It was always the same. She'd stand real close to me and say, 'I'm coming back to see you.' The only change from dream to dream was in her delivery. Each time, she'd get more insistent, her eyes would get wider—and wilder. It got to the point where I'd fall asleep and the next thing I knew my mother was screaming in my face with her eyes bulging out of their sockets. Then I'd wake up, crying out for my dad. This went on for awhile.”

  “Huh,” said August, balancing his chin on his palm. He stroked at his beard for a moment. “Sounds like a repeating nightmare. Maybe a night terror or something. A lot of kids have 'em; I did for a little while, too. They tend to go away in time. It's no surprise you'd start having those during such a st
ressful time in your life.”

  “Maybe,” replied Sadie, “but my dad didn't see it that way. When I told him about it, he got really upset. I'd never seen him react this way to anything; even when I got sick, nearly died, he hadn't been this distraught. The dreams went on for a little while and eventually, without giving me a good explanation why, he told me that he was sending me to live with my grandparents.

  “I moved in with my grandparents shortly after I'd recovered, and no sooner did I start staying at their place did the dreams stop. I think the change in scene helped me break the cycle of recurring nightmares.” She sighed, offering a tired smile. “But it wasn't long before the nightmares started showing up for me during the day, while I was awake.

  “As you can imagine, during my convalescence I didn't hardly leave my room. I was cut off from the world, confined to the same four walls. But when I'd recovered and moved in with my grandparents, I was allowed a modicum of freedom, and would wander the neighborhood with other kids. I started going back to school, went shopping or ran errands with my grandfather. Normal stuff. It was nice to be out in the world again.

  “But the world had changed—or, maybe, just my perception of it. What I mean to say is that I began seeing things from time to time. Things—people—that others never noticed. Once, while walking through the old neighborhood just after sunset, I saw a figure—it seemed to me a very tall man—standing alone in a cul-de-sac. For whatever reason, he started to wave at me—beckoned to me. I thought it kind of weird, freaky, and pointed him out to the girl I was walking with at the time. To my surprise, she couldn't see him.

  “It would be easy to write this sort of thing off if it only happened on occasion, but in my case, it kept happening. Once, I got up in the middle of the night for a drink of water and happened to look out my bedroom window. My room was on the second floor of the house, and I had a good view of the road. It must have been three or four in the morning, but I caught sight of someone directly across the street, on the sidewalk. It was a woman that time, and she was laying face-down on the ground. I watched her for a few moments from above, and as if she sensed my gaze she suddenly got up and outstretched a hand to wave. I couldn't see her face from where I stood—it was dark and my eyes were heavy with sleep—but something about the way she stood there, trying to call me over, left me shaken up. I told my grandfather about it the next morning and it didn't go over too well.