Office on the left, laundry room on the right. Each was empty. He walked the hallway, the living room opening up to the right; glancing over the railing, he could see down into the sparsely furnished area and the dark windows inside.
Two more bedrooms ahead at the end of the hall, before the stairs began. He checked each quickly, his heart rate increasing as he went, knowing he was moments from the stairwell.
Turning a corner he glanced down, expecting to see a figure frozen still on the steps. He knew he was being unrealistic, that any intruder would likely have fled once they heard him up and about, but his mind was racing with possibilities, keeping the fear alive, unstoppable.
The stairs were empty. He descended, stopping at the landing where they branched, one leading to the kitchen, the other to the front foyer.
He took the kitchen route, and turned on lights as he went. Slowly the entire house lit up as he made his way through each room. When he finally reached the front door, he paused, knowing the entire exercise had been futile; no one was there.
Behind him he heard a faint noise, a small whirring that caused a shiver to slide down his spine. He turned and walked into the living room, looking for its source.
It was the camera, sitting on top of the Ikea shelves, tracking him as he went. He stopped in front of it, watching as it centered on him. Then the whirring noise resumed, and the lens slowly rotated away, panning to the left and aiming slightly downward. It had turned to the foyer.
I’m the only movement, he thought. It should be tracking me.
He looked to the left. At the end of the foyer sat the large front door of the house, wood with an oval inlay of glass cut into patterns to provide privacy. He felt his legs moving, taking him down the hallway toward the door as his mind raced. I might have dreamt the footsteps on the stairs, he thought, but I’m not dreaming now. The camera moved. It doesn’t do that on its own. Something caused it to move.
As he neared the door, he scanned the surface of the glass, wondering if he might see movement beyond. Like the other windows, light from inside the house was reflecting in the cut patterns, making it difficult to see beyond.
Maybe all the lights attracted something, he thought. Maybe one of the deer came up onto the porch, drawn by the light. The camera would respond to that, wouldn’t it?
Frustrated that he couldn’t detect anything through the glass, he flipped on the porch switch, realizing he was holding his breath. Light from the fixtures outside streamed in through the oval.
He reached for the deadbolt and threw it, then pulled on the handle. The door opened, and his alarm system began to beep, wanting a code. The keypad was next to the door, so he stopped to punch it in, and then looked out.
He wasn’t surprised to see the porch empty. Slowly he exhaled. Of course it’s empty, you dolt.
Light from the porch illuminated part of the front yard, which seemed still and quiet. His car sat in the driveway to the left, and he could just make out the road that led into the woods. Beyond that, it was too dark to see a thing.
He shut the door, deadbolted it, and reactivated the alarm. Behind him was a faint buzzing sound; it was the camera, moving once again. He turned to look at it; its domed lens was slowly panning, swiveling to point into the living room.
He expected to see the camera track back to focus on him as he walked toward it, but it didn’t move; it was pointed past the fireplace, to a set of windows that faced the back yard.
With his eyes he followed the angle of its lens, looking at the particular window it had settled on. The hairs on his neck stood straight up.
There was a face in the window, looking in at him.
Gooseflesh rapidly spread across his body as the face quickly withdrew, swallowed up by the darkness.
For a moment he wasn’t sure exactly what to do next. Finally his body kicked into gear, and he ran for the switch that would turn on the flood lights. When he flipped it, the entire yard lit up, looking exactly as it had the night before when he first discovered the switch; quiet, dark, and entirely empty.
The side of the house! he thought, feeling unprotected in a robe, but wanting to catch whoever he’d seen.
As he passed the base of the stairs in the foyer, he grabbed a hammer that he’d been using earlier in the day to remove tack strips. He turned off the alarm and unlocked the front door, stepping out, his bare feet coming into contact with the cold decking. First to the right, then the left, he watched, hoping to see whoever had been in the window, running away to the road. He waited, but no one appeared.
They could be hiding on the side of the house, he thought, and went back inside. Near the door was a muddy pair of shoes; he slipped them on over his bare feet and walked back out, feeling the laces slap his bare ankles as he moved quickly through the front yard to the north side.
Things were darker here, but there was enough light spilling over from the back yard to see if anyone was hiding. He walked as far as the derelict heat pump to make sure no one was crouched behind it, then continued around to the back of the house.
Bugs were already congregating around the flood light, set high at the roofline. He glanced into the bramble, not detecting any movement. Quickly he ran to the south side, knowing that if anyone was there, this was the only place left.
A pile of abandoned wood sat in the shadows, too short to hide anything. He checked the side door to the garage, the spot where vandals had broken in before he bought the place; it was secure.
Rounding the edge of the house, he came back to the front yard and scanned it again. He’d circled the entire place, but found nothing. Stepping onto the porch, he saw the front door wide open, as he’d left it.
Unless they circled the house ahead of me, and have now gone inside.
He was aware that paranoia was getting the best of him. He intended to double-check every single room and corner of the house again before making his way back to bed – there was no way he would be able to sleep if he didn’t – but he knew the outcome was going to be the same. No one would be there.
Could it have been an animal in the window? he wondered as he secured the house, moving through the ground floor, turning off lights, mentally clearing each area. No – it was a face. You’re trying to rationalize it, to find a way to make it OK in your head.
It was a face.
Ascending the stairs, he tried to remember features, but those details were fleeting and becoming more indistinct by the moment. His rational mind was busy, forcing what he’d seen to comport with his perception of the world, the things he believed were true and not true. By the time he finally reached the master bedroom, the pale image he thought was a face had become more of a blur, a quick retraction from the window that could have been most anything.
Still carrying the hammer, he placed it on the bed stand and slipped off the robe, tossing it at the foot of the bed. As he slid between the sheets, he wondered if leaving the hammer in that particular spot was a good idea. If someone does break in, he thought, and they somehow silently make their way into my bedroom, they might see it there, and use it to smash in my skull.
A gruesome image of his body lying in the bed – red splashed across the white pillow, his head a pulpy mess – suddenly filled his mind. He hated when he thought this way, when he entertained horrific possibilities, knowing it would only make things worse.
Jake will find my body lying here tomorrow when he arrives, my head a flattened cantaloupe, blood everywhere, my brain pulverized, the hammer discarded on the floor, pieces of my skin still attached to its claws. All because I stupidly left it right there, easy pickings for an invader to use.
He sat up and grabbed the hammer, choosing instead to hide it under the bed where he could still reach it if needed, but not sitting there like an advertisement, begging an intruder to commit a crime of opportunity.
As he closed his eyes, he heard a scream in the distance. It wasn’t anywhere nearby; it sounded far, far away, as though it was travelling over the hill
from a property miles in the distance. He listened carefully, wondering if perhaps it was just another emanation of his imagination, another in a growing list of self-produced horrors. He strained and heard it again, fading in and out due to the wind, too weak to remain sustained, too far away to be distinct. It was a woman’s scream; it sounded full of horror and pain, and he wondered if it was someone living in a house nearby, someone who had endured night after night of imagined terrors just as he was experiencing, and was relieving herself in the only way she was able.
He closed his eyes. None of it is real, he thought, repeating it over and over in his mind until it became a calming mantra, meaningless, just repetition, and he finally drifted off into uneasy slumber.
Chapter Five
Ron walked through the house in his robe, padding over the kitchen tile on his way to the coffee maker. Through the windows he could see patches of fog still clinging to the trees outside. Sunlight was rapidly burning it off.
The previous night’s events haunted him as he scooped coffee into the machine, but the concern was burning off, too, just like the fog. In the daylight, the very palpable fear he experienced just hours earlier seemed silly and remote. Of course everything is fine, he thought. Nothing to be frightened of here. In fact, there’s no one around for acres in any direction. It’s what you wanted. It’s stupid to be afraid of something you worked so hard to achieve.
Once the machine finished, he poured a mug and walked into the living room, intending to sit in an oversized chair and browse on his phone while enjoying the caffeine.
Halfway to his destination, he stopped.
A door to a storage space under the stairs was ajar, exposing an inch-wide crack of darkness. Having carefully scoured the house multiple times the night before, he knew he hadn’t left it that way.
Last night’s fear returned. As he walked to the open door, a pricking sensation danced along his spine.
Inside, near the back, was a piece of black wood mounted under silver metal ducting. He’d noticed it before, but thought it was the back of the closet.
He placed his coffee on the ground and walked in. It’s not the back, he thought. It’s something that has been pushed under the duct work. He reached for it, grabbed, and pulled. It slid toward him. To his surprise, it was the side of a short dresser, abandoned furniture from previous tenants. The way it had been placed under the ducting, it almost looked like it belonged there.
He kept sliding until the entire unit had been pulled from the closet and into the hallway. The empty space behind it was dark, so he went for a flashlight and shone it inside. Aside from a few cobwebs, he could now see all the way to the underside of the bottom stair. It was empty.
Turning his attention to the dresser, he noticed a missing handle on one of its drawers. He tried the others, finding ephemera; tiny screws and washers, double-stick tape, and a couple of electrical wire connectors. In one of the larger drawers there was a stack of old catalogs for seeds and essential oils.
When he tried the drawer with the missing handle, he found it stuck. He dug the tips of his fingers around the edge of it, trying to gain a spot to pull, but it was wedged tight.
Resuming his coffee, he considered the dresser’s shape. Its appearance was poor; he could see why it was abandoned. However, it was made of solid material, and didn’t have the look of pressboard or laminate. While the front, sides, and drawers had been painted black, its back was unfinished wood which appeared thick and substantial.
I don’t like it, he thought. And Elenore will hate it, having belonged to someone else.
But it is a big house, and we do need to fill it.
He lifted one side and found it to be heavy. His back was already in agony from the boxes he’d moved, so he decided to wait until Jake showed up and ask him to help haul it upstairs. The master bedroom was so large, it could go against a wall in the sitting area there and the room would still feel sparse. In the meantime, in order to get it out of the hallway, he slid it into the guest room.
Ah, the cleaner, he reminded himself as he parked it in a corner. Gotta get that stuff soaking right away.
He walked to a small bathroom adjacent to the kitchen, opened a gallon jug of enzymatic cleaner, and poured it slowly over the room’s tile, watching as it pooled and ran into the grout. Then he set a timer for an hour, to remind him to return and add more.
I don’t care how much of this shit I have to sink into that flooring, he thought. I’m gonna get that cat piss smell out if it’s the last thing I do.
- - -
“Dad!”
The sound of his child’s voice on the line was happy and enthusiastic – an immediate balm, reversing any guilt he felt for calling in the morning instead of at night, when his mother-in-law preferred. He felt his worries about the house suddenly drift away, and he realized how much he missed his son, how painful the short few weeks they would be separated were beginning to feel.
They chatted about school. Robbie asked about his mom, and Ron told him what he knew. The kid lost track of why she was gone, but he did remember she was in England, and was excited at the prospect of what souvenir might be his when she returned.
“Can’t I come now?” Robbie asked.
“No, the house isn’t ready,” Ron replied, trying to sound comforting. “Soon.”
“But I really want to. I could help you work on it.”
“School is more important than that. Tell you what, when you do finally get here, I’ll let you help on projects. There’s a lot to do.”
“Like what?”
“You name it. There’s wood work, plumbing, painting. I’ll put you to work.”
“OK,” Robbie agreed. “Do you have a TV there? Will I be able to set up my PlayStation?”
“As soon as everything gets moved in,” Ron replied. “That’s part of the process. I gotta get all this work done before we move things in, because it’s harder to do the work if the house if full of stuff. Get it?”
“Yeah.”
Once I don’t need to hide a hammer under my bed, he thought. Then it’ll be OK.
They chatted for a while longer, Robbie telling him that his grandmother was too strict about certain things, but that she let him watch any TV show he wanted. Ron reminded Robbie of the favor she was doing them, letting him stay there so he could keep going to school, and that just because Grace might say it was OK to watch something violent on TV, didn’t mean he should watch it.
By the time the call ended and he hung up, he was feeling more like a regular dad again, and not just the caretaker of a house. It made him resolve to get the work done, and ensure that by the time Elenore returned, they could both move in and sleep soundly throughout the night. No septic problems. No cat piss smell on the stairs.
No faces in the window.
- - -
What are the odds? Ron thought, standing at the counter in the McLean Post Office.
“Yeah, we bid 347,” the postal worker said. “Didn’t get it. You’re the 351 bid, huh?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Ron replied, feeling sheepish.
The bank sold the house using an online auction site. The entire time Ron had been bidding, there was another bidder he’d battled against. It was blowing his mind that the other bidder was now standing across the counter from him, wearing a postal worker uniform. His name badge read “Randy.”
“My wife wanted a view,” Randy said. “We liked the view of town you could see over the trees. And Mount St. Helens.”
“Yeah, the view is nice,” Ron replied, still shocked and feeling very awkward.
“You got assholes for neighbors,” Randy continued. “We got lost trying to find it, and they called the sheriff on us. The guy actually put me in cuffs, if you can believe that. My little girl was in tears. But, I’m kind of glad we didn’t get it. Everything about Mt. Soltis seems to be a problem. You know the city considered annexing it once, but the people were such pricks about it the town just threw up their hands.”
/> Sour grapes, Ron thought, looking down at the form Randy had slid across the counter. He began to fill it out while the man kept talking.
“And even though the view was nice, my wife didn’t like the vibe of the place, she didn’t like the history. Some places just make you feel depressed, you know?”
“I noticed there was a set of mailboxes by the highway, where the road turns off into the hill,” Ron said. “Is that where we get our mail?”
“It’s all private, so you’ll have to talk to the locals. There’s an HOA that maintains the roads; they probably run the mailboxes, too. We don’t have any say in that, we don’t have any of the keys.” Randy had a sort of and good luck with that! tone that made it obvious dealing with the HOA was going to be problematic.
Well, they did call the cops on him, Ron thought. More sour grapes maybe.
“You know that address is always going to be a problem, right?” Randy continued. “That road is completely inaccessible; it’s why we got lost trying to find it. A fire truck would never reach you. Cops might have trouble, too. You should go to the county and have them assign a new number, maybe something off that dirt road where the driveway starts.”
Ron slid the completed form back to him, wanting to leave. “I’ll consider that.”
“Yeah, sure glad I didn’t get it,” Randy replied, looking over the form. “Woulda been an albatross around my neck. I don’t care how good the view was.”
“Thanks for your time,” Ron said. He forced a smile, and turned to leave.
Randy didn’t reply, just motioned for the next person in line to come to his window.
How many people have I met in McLean? he thought as he walked to his car. Ten? Twenty? There’s fifteen thousand people in this town, and I run into the one guy who bid against me for that house?
The Coldwater Haunting Page 4
