The Siren and the Specter

by Jonathan Janz

  He woke with a start, saw it was only 1:00 a.m., and though he tried to fall asleep again, he gave up around 3:30 and went out to the dock. From there, he could see the Alexander House, which was dark and apparently abandoned. He gave it another fifteen minutes, at which point his resolve crumbled and he went into Ralph’s bedroom.

  Ralph had his back to David, and David experienced a momentary fear that Ralph, too, had been decapitated. Then he heard a sharp intake of breath. Ralph jerked his head around, and stared at David in the semidark.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Ralph snapped.

  “It’s time.”

  “I never said I’d go over there.”

  “Then I’ll go alone.”

  “You do that.” Ralph resumed his sleeping position.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know whether it’s something supernatural over there or just a run-of-the-mill psycho?”

  Ralph remained facing away from him.

  “If I go and something happens to me, that detective will be over here pounding on your door.”

  The white head on the pillow lifted fractionally.

  “Plus, if I’m at the Alexander House, you’ll be here. Alone.”

  “So?” Ralph asked, still not turning.

  “That’s why you had me stay, isn’t it? You wanted the company, living so close to the murder site?”

  Ralph threw off the covers and sat up. “Darn it. What makes you so ruthless?”

  “I’m just trying to solve the murder.”

  “You’re trying to get rich,” Ralph said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, his white hair poking up at crazy diagonals. “You’re no better than that buddy of yours.”

  “Chris isn’t my friend,” David said. “Not anymore.” He took a knee before Ralph, the older man gazing down at him in surprise. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to propose.”

  “Let me sleep.”

  “Sorry. I need your help.”

  “For what? We set up that equipment and don’t find anything, we’re no better off and they know we trespassed on a crime scene.”

  “They won’t know we were there.”

  “They always know! You’ve seen those shows. I’ll leave a fingerprint or a lock of hair or maybe I’ll piss myself. Hell, I do that every time I sneeze.”

  “I need someone with me.”

  “What the hell for?”

  David opened his mouth, but no believable lie presented itself. He sighed, regarded the hard wooden floorboards. “The truth is, I’m scared.”

  “You’re right to be,” Ralph answered. “But at least you get to leave soon. I’m stuck here. I’d sell this place, but the thought of relocating makes my head throb.”

  “Isn’t that a reason to get to the bottom of the mystery?”

  “You mean risk our lives.”

  “If there are two of us…”

  “…then two of us could die. That sounds fantastic.”

  “Just go with me,” David persisted. “We’ll only be there long enough to set up the thermal camera and the grid scope.”

  “The what?”

  “Five minutes. Ten tops.”

  “That’s what Alicia said.”

  David grabbed Ralph’s pajama-clad knee, which was bony and trembling. “Isn’t that reason to do this? For her?”

  Ralph knocked his hand away. “You’re a manipulative prick.”

  David sighed. “You believe certain things your whole life. Those beliefs, they dig grooves in your brain, like a record player, and the needle doesn’t leave the grooves. For many years you don’t see anything – even in sites that are supposedly haunted – to knock the needle out of place.”

  Ralph was watching him, interested.

  “Then you start to see things to disabuse you of your beliefs.” David laughed humorlessly. “The two sides – believers and non-believers – they’re so contemptuous of each other. The non-believers, they look at the believers with scorn, like they’re beneath contempt. Not only do they buy into fairy tales, we argue, but they do it knowing how illogical they are.”

  Ralph’s mouth twisted. “Tell Alicia your logic.”

  David nodded. “Alicia’s at the heart of this. I keep thinking about who could’ve done that to her, and I can’t sort it out. No one had a motive.”

  Ralph didn’t answer.

  “There’re the Shelbys, but I can’t see either of them doing it. Michael is too…inoffensive. Honey would be strong enough, but why the hell would she hurt someone?”

  “Jealousy? Alicia must’ve liked you to drive all the way out here.”

  “I just don’t see it. Whoever did this is either unhinged or so full of rage that…but that doesn’t work either. There was hardly any blood up there. This thing, it was done with the precision of a surgeon. The stitches in her mouth and—”

  “Do we have to talk about that?”

  “How do you hide all that blood? How do you—”

  “Enough.”

  “Then you’ve got the outlier possibilities. Someone following her here, an angry ex-boyfriend. He kills her and frames me. Or you.”

  “Hey.”

  “You’ve got Chris and Katherine. They want this place turned into an attraction. A gruesome murder falls right in line with that, but I can’t believe they’d do such a thing.”

  Ralph rubbed the back of his neck. “The part I get stuck on is us stealing over there in the middle of the night and trespassing on a crime scene.”

  “I’m not too keen on it either.”

  “Then why—”

  “You want me to say it, I’ll say it. I’m crossing over into belief.”

  Ralph grunted. “Took you long enough.”

  “I’m not saying I believe in everything. I’m not wearing a tinfoil hat and fiddling with Ouija boards. I’m just allowing that there might be more going on here.”

  Ralph cocked an eyebrow. “That’s mighty big of you.”

  “Something unnatural is happening over there, and I want proof.” He gave Ralph’s knee a squeeze. “Please help me.”

  Ralph gazed back at him for several seconds. Then he sighed. “Well, fuck.”

  He rose, groaning with the effort, and shuffled out of the bedroom.

  A few minutes later he was dressed and walking with David toward the truck. “I’m sure as hell gonna have a way out of there if something goes wrong,” he explained as he climbed behind the wheel.

  They crunched down the lane without headlights. There were clouds, but what moon and stars bled through provided enough illumination to make the two hundred yards without rolling off the lane.

  In the driveway, the truck idling, Ralph said, “Maybe I should wait here. That way we can leave as soon as you set up.”

  David just looked at him.

  “Dammit,” Ralph muttered and cut the engine.

  They got out and peered at the third-floor dormer. The house looked more imposing than ever.

  “They’re just gonna take your equipment down once they find it,” Ralph said. “Then you’re gonna be in bigger trouble than you already are.”

  “We’re coming back at dawn to collect it. They’ll never know we were here.”

  Ralph didn’t respond. David moved toward the house, reached the police tape strung around the porch pillars, ducked under it, and drew out his key. He unlocked the door, wrapped the knob with the belly of his shirt, and opened it. Inside, he glanced back to see if Ralph had followed.

  He had. The older man looked miserable, but at least he’d come.

  Cool air rolled down the stairs.

  Beside him, his eyes raised, Ralph asked, “You running the AC up there?”

  David shook his head. “All on the same unit.”

  “I rescind my offer.”

  David reach
ed out and put a hand on Ralph’s shoulder. “I need you.”

  “I’m dead weight,” Ralph murmured.

  “Hey,” David said. “I’m as scared as you are.”

  Ralph licked his lips but didn’t speak.

  David moved down the hall to the charging area, disconnected the thermal camera and grid scope and brought them back to the base of the stairs, where he found Ralph still gazing upward in dread.

  “It’s time,” David said.

  “Aw, man.”

  “In and out.”

  “Can’t I wait down here?”

  “Alone?”

  Ralph’s shoulders sagged. “Shit.”

  They crept up the stairs, David in the lead. Halfway up, he froze, listening. “Did you hear that?”

  Ralph’s voice was cracked. “Don’t make it worse.”

  David cocked his head, listening. “It came from downstairs. My bedroom.”

  As if in answer, something above them creaked.

  Ralph stared at the open doorway of the long bedroom. “That didn’t come from downstairs.”

  David swallowed. “Come on.”

  “Let’s leave,” Ralph croaked.

  David reached the top step. “We’ll be fast.”

  The look of abject fear on Ralph’s face brought on a pang of guilt. He hadn’t taken Jessica along because, yes, Jessica meant more to him.

  You’re a rotten bastard, a voice in his head declared.

  I’m trying to solve Alicia’s murder!

  And dragging a terrified septuagenarian with you.

  He had no answer to that.

  But Ralph was making his way up the steps, his face so plagued with terror that he looked like an engraving from some nineteenth-century ghost story: ‘The old man climbs to his doom.’

  David reached out, helped Ralph up the last step. He expected Ralph to smack his hand away, but he didn’t seem to register David’s touch. He was gazing at the doorway with wide-eyed dread.

  “The tripod’s already set up,” David explained in a whisper. “I’ll just mount the camera, position the grid scope, push record, and then we’re out of here.”

  Ralph showed no sign of having understood.

  Selfish, the voice said.

  Too late now, he thought. He crossed the threshold and the cold washed over him, a punishing February cold, the kind that bypasses the skin and goes straight for the bones.

  Ralph made an inarticulate sound. David paused a few feet from the tripod and looked back at his friend, who in turn was peering at the nearest single bed. David glanced that way, saw the indentation of where a body had lain, told himself the shape wasn’t different than the last time he’d been here.

  The floorboards creaked as Ralph tottered deeper into the room.

  The clouds outside shifted, the room brightening, but rather than buoying David’s spirits, the change dampened them. Much better to sneak in here than to make their presence known. Better not to rouse whatever dwelled here.

  Judson.

  David moved to the tripod with barely controlled panic and made to screw the thermal camera onto the mount, but his fingers trembled so violently he needed several attempts before the camera revolved smoothly on the threaded screw.

  The light from the windows was absolutely pouring in now, casting the beds and the rest of the room into stark relief. David attempted to keep his eyes on the camera, but his peripheral vision betrayed him. He kept stealing sidelong looks at the pools of darkness between the beds, the spawning ground of the leering thing.

  “David?” Ralph asked, causing him to jump and damn near upset the tripod.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “I forgot the gun.”

  “Never mind that.”

  Ralph’s voice was querulous. “There’s something else. I can’t keep it to myself any longer.”

  “Not now.”

  “It has to be now,” Ralph said. “I’ve seen him. He came to me the night I moved into my house.”

  David’s guts did a somersault. “What are you talking about?”

  “He made me promise…”

  “Ralph.”

  “…made me promise to send him people every now and then.”

  The words scarcely registered. The air in the long bedroom was kissed with frost.

  “I went by The Crawdad,” Ralph said, his voice a brittle whisper. “Alicia mentioned you, and I suggested she bring you the candy.”

  Something rustled above them.

  He glanced at Ralph, but Ralph’s gaze was riveted on the trapdoor.

  The groan of a floorboard. The unmistakable sound of a footstep.

  “Oh my God,” Ralph moaned. “I wasn’t supposed to tell.”

  The trapdoor swung open and the ladder crashed down. David threw out his arms, upsetting the tripod, and sprawled sideways against a bed. The carved mahogany footboard thumped his rib cage, and as he lay on his side he saw a figure descending the ladder. Work boots. Jeans. Not the same as the figure of the other night, but the minutiae didn’t matter, what mattered was the shotgun leveled at him, the crazed rolling eyes. David scrabbled back, cast a glance at Ralph, who looked waxen, corpselike, ravaged by terror.

  “On your feet, you sick fuck!” the wielder of the shotgun bellowed.

  David realized with a sense of unreality that this wasn’t Judson Alexander, wasn’t Chris Gardiner or some actor he’d hired to play Judson.

  It was Alicia Templeton’s father.

  Templeton looked to be in his mid-fifties, his hair prematurely white, his face deranged, the eyes darting from David to Ralph and back again. To David the twin bores of the shotgun seemed as large as bathtub drains.

  “They say killers revisit the scene of the crime,” Templeton muttered. “That what you two doing? Coming back to relive my baby’s murder?”

  David remained paralyzed. Any response he auditioned in his brain was certain to bring about their doom. There was no give in Templeton’s face, no leeway for bargaining.

  This was the end.

  Templeton nodded. “On your feet.”

  David somehow managed to stand.

  Templeton motioned with the barrel of the shotgun. “Over there. Next to Ralph.” A hunger permeated Templeton’s features. “That’s right. Two sick, twisted fucks huddled together. You two mess with my baby before you killed her? You sons of bitches touch my little girl?” His voice became a raw plea. “How could you do that? All the people in the world, you had to prey on my Alicia. She’s all I had! You understand, goddamn you? She was all I….”

  Templeton’s expression changed. He was staring, David realized, out the southern window, and when David turned he beheld a sight that knocked his breath out, erased thought, the man holding him at gunpoint momentarily forgotten.

  The woman floating outside the window could only be Anna Spalding.

  The flowing white dress undulated as she hung in the air, staring in at them with unblinking white eyes. Unable to stare at the apparition for long, David shifted his gaze to Ralph, who had his back to the window. The older man’s eyes rolled to the extreme corners of his vision. Then Ralph performed a slow, tottering pivot, and when he faced the figure in the window, he said in a breathless voice, “Oh my.”

  Ralph crumpled to the floor.

  Heart thundering, David looked up at the figure, realized it was watching him.

  “Make it go away,” Templeton urged.

  David couldn’t answer, could only gaze at the apparition. He watched in terrified fascination as a pale, pellucid hand reached out and brushed the windowpane with long black nails. They grazed the pane slowly, leaving razor-thin gouges in the glass.

  “My…Jesus,” Templeton said.

  David managed to say, in a low, thick voice, “I didn’t kill your daughter. I came here
to find who did.”

  Anna hovered outside the window.

  Something nudged his forearm. Templeton was kneeling beside him, reaching for Ralph. “Got to get him out of here,” Templeton murmured. “He’s still breathing.”

  David nodded. Bent to help.

  Ralph’s body was motionless as David grasped him under the armpits. Templeton took Ralph by the ankles, and they carried the older man toward the door. David started down the stairs, backpedaling, and beyond Templeton’s shoulder he saw the window of the landing, waited for the floating wraith to appear there, the pupilless white eyes to batten on his.

  He looked away before it could appear.

  Soon they reached Ralph’s idling truck. “You get the door,” David said.

  Templeton did, and with some trouble they muscled Ralph into the truck. David hustled around, got in.

  David had just reached for the gearshift when Templeton seized his arm. “Listen.”

  David heard it immediately, couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before.

  The song. A woman’s mournful voice. As he and Templeton sat forward, something caught David’s eye. He glanced and saw, from the western side of the house, something white materializing near the roof.

  “Drive,” Templeton said.

  David jerked the truck into reverse, swung the back end around, and gunned it down the lane.

  Neither he nor Templeton spared the wraith a backward glance.

  Part Five

  The Specter

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Ironically, without Templeton’s account of the incident, Sheriff Harkless might have murdered David.

  At just after six a.m., outside Ralph’s room in the intensive care ward, David faced the sheriff with Templeton at their sides like a referee preparing to step in should the conflict escalate.

  Harkless was ranting, “…and ignored the fact that my people will need to get back in there. I oughta arrest your dumb ass on the spot.”

  “I was just getting my things,” he said. “I left my computer and my—”

  “Don’t lie to me!” Harkless shouted, drawing the attention of a passing nurse. Harkless glared at her. “And you can fuck right off.”