Noel looked up at the glass sitting on the piano and saw that it was full; he hadn't drunk anything yet. He was sober.
"I heard it, Daddy," Noel responded, trying to stay calm. "Can you look?"
Walter stared at the piano—through the piano—all of his movements and speech delayed. "It's just the wind," he repeated solemnly.
Noel's heart sank again. He didn't know what he could do to persuade his father, and it was all starting to seem completely hopeless.
A queer noise echoed in the room, coming from somewhere on the other side of Walter. There was a buzz like a furious swarm of bees protecting their hive, and then a sharp but light chopping sound.
Noel leaned to the side and peered behind his father to the poker table pushed up against the wall.
Three men were sitting at the table, one of them shuffling a deck of cards. The sound chopped through the air, then buzzed as the man quickly folded them into each other. He pressed the deck neatly together, then he dealt a few cards to each of the two other men. All three of them were young, looking to be in their late twenties or early thirties, and all were dressed in strange clothing, like they were from a bygone era.
Noel was paralyzed. His eyes were frozen into wide saucers, his mouth agape. After a few moments of the three men playing cards and Walter obliviously staring forward, playing the piano, Noel managed to tap his father on the arm.
It took a few taps for Walter's head to slowly twist over to his son. "What is it?" he asked.
Noel couldn't believe that he hadn't heard the man shuffling cards, and he managed to point to the shocking scene.
Walter turned and looked at the poker table for a few moments, then he replied, "What is it? What are you pointing to?"
"The people sitting there!" Noel said, just below a shout.
The three men at the table suddenly looked up from what they were doing and stared at him.
Walter looked again, confusion racking his face. All he saw was the empty table, its surface clear. "Noel, there's nothing there," he said, turning to him. "Are you feeling all right? I think you're seeing things again."
Noel's shock remained, but now it was caused by his father rather than the strange men sitting at the table. He could see them clear as day, and it chilled his bones to see them staring back. How his father could say they weren't there was unbelievable, but his next realization hit him like a sack of bricks: there weren't any monsters or strangers in the house; they were ghosts. And only he could see them.
Walter stared at Noel for another moment, then his scrunched eyebrows smoothed out and he turned back to the piano, playing it again. The three men turned their attention away from him too and went back to their card game.
Noel slowly backed away from all of them, heading for the doors. When he stepped through them, he turned and ran. The cottage blurred around him as his feet thundered against the floor. Where he was going, he didn't know.
He bounded up the stairs to his bedroom door, shoving it open and hurtling inside.
Then he stopped dead.
The girl in the pink coat who had been skulking around the property since they got there was standing right in front of him.
The Lake
"Who... who are you?" Noel asked.
The girl stared at him, apparently as frightened as he was.
"Sorry, I... I didn't mean to scare you," she said. "The front door was unlocked. My name is Emily."
"What are you doing here?"
She looked as if she had just been caught doing some terrible act. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were as scared as a cornered animal. Her skin was pale like she'd been out in the cold for too long, and her cheeks were rosy. Blond hair as light as the sun flowed down over her shoulders.
"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I should go." She made for the door, but Noel backed up into the frame and blocked her, more out of shock than obstruction.
"Wait," he said.
She stopped.
"But why are you here? In my room?" he elaborated.
Emily took a step back and fiddled with her gloved fingers. "This used to be my friend's room," she said. "I haven't seen it in a while. It's been a long time since anyone's lived here."
"Where do you live?" Noel asked. "I didn't know there was any other houses around here."
"I live over there," she said, pointing in the direction Noel had spotted her in the woods before. "It's on the other side of the trees."
"So... do you know about this house?" he asked, hopeful that she could shed some light on the strange occurrences he'd been having.
She nodded. There was trepidation in her every movement, like she squirmed just being in this cottage even more than he did.
"Have you seen them, too?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. "Sometimes when I'd come over and play with Rachael, we would see them."
"Rachael was your friend?"
Emily nodded. "She lived here with her mom and her little brother. He was a little bit younger than you are, I think."
"How old are you?" he asked.
"Seven." She was a little taller than Noel, and for being so young there was a certain wisdom in her eyes, like she knew far more about this place than she wanted to.
"What happened to her? Your friend, I mean."
She looked at her feet. "I don't wanna talk about it."
"Was it because of the ghosts?"
She looked up at him suddenly. "You're not safe here," she said. "You and your dad have to leave."
"Why are they here?" Noel asked. "Who are they?"
Emily turned around and sat on the edge of his bed. "They all used to live here. Not at the same time. There's something wrong with this house."
Noel leaned his head out the door and heard the faint notes from his father's piano, quieter now. He stepped inside his room and softly closed the door, then he joined Emily on the bed. "What's wrong with it?"
"I don't know," she said. "It just makes people... bad. And then when they die, sometimes they stay."
"Is that what's gonna happen to us?" he asked, feeling the color flush from his face.
She didn't answer the question. She just said, "You have to leave."
"I tried telling my daddy, but he won't listen."
"You have to find some way to convince him," she said. "He's not safe here either. Some of the ghosts are very dangerous, especially the nurse."
"The nurse?"
Emily nodded. "She's usually in the upstairs bathroom. She's the one who broke the mirror."
The memory Noel had of standing on the stool in front of the sink came back to him, and the reflection of the sickly woman in the white nightgown played across his eyes.
"I saw her!" Noel said.
"You did?"
"Yeah! I was in the bathroom last night and she walked behind me in the hall!"
Emily's eyes narrowed. "What was she wearing?"
"Um... like a long white dress, I think."
A strange consternation fell over her face.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"That wasn't the nurse," she said.
"Who was it?"
"You want to go outside and play?" Emily asked suddenly, changing the subject.
Noel was taken aback, but he replied that he would. "Hold on, let me go downstairs and see where my daddy is," he said. "I don't want him knowing you snuck in here."
Emily nodded and he opened his bedroom door. The piano had fallen silent, and he crept down the stairs. Peering down the long hallway to the living room, he didn't see any sign of his father, but when he rounded the corner and peeked through the archway between the living room and the den, he saw Walter sitting in an armchair in the den facing away from him.
He had a drink on a little table next to him, and he held a thick photo album in his lap. The sound of laminated pages peeling apart from each other filled the room, and Noel could see that he was looking at old photos of his mother.
Noel couldn't see his father's face, but he suddenly
felt unbearably sad watching him go through those old memories. Walter had been right that he never forgave him for that car crash that stole his mother away from him, and Noel never trusted his version of the events. But now standing here looking upon his father in such a morose state, Noel felt a deep sense of regret. The feelings battled inside of him like two monsters from a Godzilla movie. In that moment he wished he could put the past behind him and forgive his father, trust him again, but he couldn't, and he didn't.
He quietly went back to the front of the cottage, holding that glum feeling in his belly. Emily stood on the staircase landing, waiting. He put on his coat and boots. They nodded at each other, staying quiet, and Noel opened the front door.
They walked through the snow, and the crisp air felt refreshing on their faces.
"It's always nice to get out of there," Emily said. "When Rachael was still here, we always liked to play outside a lot more."
"What did you do out here?" Noel asked.
She shrugged. "Play tag in the field, played in the woods, went swimming in the summer. There's a boat by the lake, too. We would go out there with her mom and her little brother, but we only did it once or twice."
"What was her brother's name?" Noel asked.
"Cameron," she said. "And yours is Noel, right? I heard your dad call you that when I came in the house."
"Yeah," he said.
"It's a funny name," she replied.
"Daddy named me that after Christmas. He writes songs on the piano for commercials, and he wrote a Christmas one before I was born that made him famous. So he changed his last name to Jingle and named me Noel."
Emily smiled.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said. "I'm just happy. I haven't had anyone to play with for a long time."
"There's no other kids around?" he asked.
"No. Your house is the only one close to mine, and no one's lived in it for a while."
"How long have you lived in your house?" Noel asked.
"Almost my whole life," Emily replied.
The two of them curved around the side of the property, heading toward the lake. They passed the shed that Noel had investigated earlier, and he shuddered at the sight of it. The snowfall had ceased for the moment, and the field and lake sparkled. Trees in the woods shook off their light dusting of snow as the soft breeze rolled through and any birds that hadn't migrated hopped from branch to branch.
"You don't seem like you like your dad very much," Emily said. "Is that true?"
"I guess," Noel said.
"Why not?"
"My mommy died in a car accident a year ago, and it was his fault. He was driving."
"Maybe it was just an accident," she suggested.
"He should've brought her home that night," he said under his breath. "I miss her." They walked for several paces in silence, then he said, "What about your parents?"
"They're okay," Emily said. "They're kinda strict sometimes, and they don't like me bringing anyone home. But they don't mind me going out and playing a bit, so sometimes I go out in the woods, and that's how I saw you. But you have to be careful in the woods, though."
"Why?"
"Sometimes there's wolves around here. Not often, but I've seen them before."
Noel stopped. "And what's that?"
Emily followed his line of sight to the wooden cross stuck in the ground. She stared at it solemnly. "It's a grave."
"A grave?" Noel asked, shocked.
"Yeah, for the man who built your house. He died a long time ago."
He turned his attention to the lake. The water shined and rolled, and it should have put him at peace, but he felt the same tension as before.
Emily noticed. "You feel it too?"
He looked at her with sharp eyes. "What do you mean?"
"When I used to play around here with Rachael, I could feel certain areas where bad things happened."
"What happened here?" Noel asked.
Emily scanned her eyes over the water as if lost in reverie, finally stopping on the distant shore on the other side. "His sons died on the water."
"The man who built the cottage?" Noel asked.
She nodded. "I heard they were fighting over who got to keep it. All three of them were in a boat on the water and—"
"Three of them?" Noel said. His mind raced to the three frightening young men sitting at the poker table, all dressed in clothing that seemed about a century removed from reality.
"Yeah," Emily said. "They had an argument on the boat and they killed each other."
Noel took a step toward the shore. The closer he got to the water, the stronger his dread grew. But he also felt the edges of a revelation coming on.
A rush of blood went to his temples and he felt faint. The world around him melted away and his consciousness zoomed across the water to the middle of the lake. He saw a rowboat in front of him, filled with the same three men from the poker table. They stared at each other with looks that barely contained their hatred. All three brothers snuck a knife out on the water with him. All three harbored the same intention, unbeknownst to the others. Each of them subtly reached for their blade. In one moment there was silence, and then in the next there was chaos. Screams and hollers erupted and echoed across the water as one of the brothers stabbed another. The third one joined in, stabbing the first. The attention taken off of him, the second brother found the strength to slash the throat of the third. The blades were withdrawn and plunged and withdrawn and slashed over and over again until each of them resembled messy slabs of beef. A small pool of blood lay on the bottom of the boat as it gently rocked. The smell of death rolled over the surface of the water. All three of them collapsed. All three of them were dead.
Just as soon as it had gone there, Noel's consciousness was sucked away from the water and back into his body as if from a natural vacuum. The impact of it was so strong that his legs wobbled and he staggered. The slope leading down to the water was steeper than the land proceeding it, and Noel took a hard step. His foot plunged deep into the snow and his boot became stuck. Then in the next moment, he keeled over as the last vestiges of his consciousness were torn away from him and he blacked out.
He hit the icy water face-first. A splash shot up and misted Emily's face as she took a step back in shock.
"Noel!" she cried. She ran to the edge of the water and bent down, trying to pull him out of certain death. But his boot was firmly lodged in the snow, and she couldn't get his face out of the water.
Terror and panic came over her, and she stared at his motionless body with huge, bulging eyes. She staggered away from him, fear gripping every molecule in her body, and then she fled for the woods, leaving Noel to die.
Broken Down
A glimmering beam of light crested over the blackness and drew closer to him until it touched him. He felt the pull of the light in his solar plexus, and his whole body rolled in a wave. His arms and fingers were stretched out and dangled in an unknown medium of suspension. His feet felt rooted to something, like they were buried in the ground, but the rest of him was floating in space. The black expanse stretched out in front of him, marked increasingly by shining stars of an unknown origin. He watched as they moved and warped, turning into bubbles.
He opened his mouth and the vacuum of space sucked all the air out of his lungs. It was replaced by something else. Something heavy. He choked and struggled to draw in breath, and the more he did so, the more he drowned in the nothingness. Then the blanket of darkness around him gradually shifted into a murky grayish-blue. A strong light shone from above, and he knew it to be the sun.
It was that moment that he realized he was drowning.
He moved and thrashed, bucking his whole body and trying to effect escape with his arms and legs, but one of his feet was stuck. He used his other one to kick off the ground, but it slid in the snow. His whole body was frozen, and he couldn't feel his skin or his face. He screamed, but no one could hear him.
Then another hea
vy pull gripped his solar plexus, and he thought it was the light. But as he was plucked out of the water, he knew it was a hand gripping the back of his coat.
A huge splash of water shot up into the air and then rained down in fine droplets. Noel's body was soaked, and he coughed and spluttered.
Walter smacked a heavy hand on his back and Noel coughed up the water in his lungs. "Easy there," he said.
Noel faced the snow, his body braced over his father's knee. He winced in pain with each blow to his back, and he dreaded each cough that brought up more water, but he slowly found himself returning to life.
"Are you all right?" Walter asked, studying him.
Noel coughed one last time, but all the water had already cleared out of his lungs. He slowly nodded then looked up at his father.
"How many times will I have to tell you not to come out here by yourself?" Walter asked.
Noel ignored the question. Though he was saved from his icy grave, the panic still held him. He searched around for Emily, but he couldn't see her. The last thing he remembered was his vision about the three brothers in the boat and nothing after that. He tried to lean and look past his father toward the woods, but wherever she was, she was already gone. "Where is she?" he muttered. He began crying, his face twisting into a wretched mask of an ice-burned redness.
Walter pulled him close and hugged him. "Stay with me, kiddo," he said. "Just trust me. Trust me that everything will be okay."
Noel regained himself and he pushed away from his father. "I can smell it," he said, choking back the tears.
"Smell what?"
"The bad smell. On your breath. You were drinking it again, weren't you?"
"Only a little. It was just a pick-me-up."
"I saw the box," Noel said.
Walter stared at him, but the emotion behind his eyes was undetectable. "Let's go back inside," he said. He pulled Noel up to his feet and rose to his, then he turned and headed for the cottage.
"The smell was on your breath when mom died too, wasn't it?" Noel said.
Walter stopped in his tracks. He turned around and fresh tears were dripping out of his eyes. "No it wasn't," he said.
The Box Set of Hauntings and Horrors Page 25
