Haunted Houses

by Robert D. San Souci

  “We left them open!” cried Kat. She shook free of Larry’s hand and grabbed hold of the twin doorknobs, pulling with all her might. Neither of the doors budged.

  “Let me help!” said Larry. He tugged at one side while Kat gave her full attention to the other. Nothing yielded.

  Ikikikikikik, chattered the dark figure inching along the hall.

  The scrape-slide sound of the body hauling itself through the shadows was totally unnerving. Larry and Kat tore more frantically at the doors.

  “Use the crowbar!” Larry hissed.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Kat, whose self-assurance seemed to have melted away and taken some of her wits with it. She pulled out the tool—but found there was no longer space enough between the doors to insert the chisel blade. The thin opening between the matching doors seemed to have healed like cut flesh.

  Ikikikikikik.

  It was close, Larry realized. He yanked the crowbar from Kat’s hands and began gouging the wood. Chips flew, but the wood resisted his desperate blows as if it were now made of material far harder than natural wood.

  IKIKIKIKIKIK!

  Kat was banging her fists against the wood.

  “We’ve got to find another way,” said Larry.

  “Oh . . . ,” said Kat, who had suddenly stopped pounding on the door.

  Something in her voice compelled Larry to turn and look to where she was staring, letting his flashlight beam follow.

  Kat was facing the darkened hall. At first he couldn’t see anything. Then he followed her line of sight up.

  The ghost—the nightmare version of Mrs. Jirohei—was crawling toward them across the ceiling, spiderlike. But her head was twisted around so that she was regarding them dead-on with her blazing red eyes as she scuttled across the sagging panels. Now one arm snaked down toward them. The fingers flexed. The claws glowed in the flashlight beam.

  “Window!” he shouted. He pulled Kat toward the nearest one, where the still-intact rice-paper-covered glass revealed the boards beyond, moonlight gleaming between the warped slats.

  IKIKIKIKIKIK—the spider ghost was above them now. Larry couldn’t tell what that twisted face showed more of—hatred, rage, eagerness—but it frightened him beyond anything he’d felt before. Escape was now or never, he knew.

  “Follow me,” he shouted. He put his arms over his face, started running, and smashed into the window. There was a jolting pain in his left shoulder, which took most of the impact, then papered glass and boards exploded out onto the veranda, and Larry went sprawling on the deck amid debris, getting jabbed with nails and cut with glass fragments. Dazed and groaning, he twisted around to look at the window gap in the wall above him. A moment later Kat appeared in the space, scrabbling over the jagged remains of the window frame and barricading slats. She quickly worked herself partway over the sill, ignoring the splinter ends that snagged her clothes and dug into her stomach.

  Larry, still shell-shocked, struggled uncertainly to his feet, stretching out his shaking arms toward Kat. He felt like he was moving in slow motion when all his nerves were shouting, Haul it! But he moved quickly enough when Kat screamed, “She’s got me! By the ankles!” Kat began to squirm frantically. Larry grabbed her flailing wrists.

  “It hurts!” Kat sobbed.

  Still holding her wrists, Larry threw himself backward. Kat flew through the ruined window. An instant later, the ghost hopped froglike into the window frame, hands and feet bracing her crouching figure at the window’s four corners, clearly unmindful of the glass and splinters. Hardly pausing, the horror leapt after the kids, who were already fleeing down the stepping-stone path.

  Near the lifeless cherry tree, Larry snagged his foot on a displaced stepping stone, stumbled suddenly, and sprawled onto the ground. He bellowed as his chin struck another stone. For a moment he was too stunned to catch his breath or focus his eyes. His head just kept spinning.

  IKIKIKIKIKIK.

  He felt the woman creature spring onto his back, felt her claws dig into him. He saw Kat stop, stare, gasp, pick up a stone, and start forward, ready to do battle with the ghost, though raw terror flooded her eyes.

  Then there was a sound, as if someone was playing a flute, from his left, where the dead cherry tree remained.

  The talons digging into his side loosened mercifully.

  The music played.

  The weight lifted from Larry’s back.

  He raised his head. His blurred vision swam from triple, to double, to clear focus. But he wasn’t quite sure he believed what he was seeing: an old man, in a shining white robe, playing a bamboo flute. He was seated on the roots of the cherry tree, which appeared to be in full bloom, the masses of blossoms shining pale pink in the moonlight.

  But it must be true—clearly Kat was seeing it, too. She let the stone in her hand fall to the ground with a soft tunk.

  As they both watched, the old man abruptly broke off his playing. He looked very unhappy—angry, even. He pointed the flute, as if it were a magician’s wand, at the pursuing ghost.

  The spirit woman was frozen in a half-crouch a few feet from Larry and Kat. Her eyes were fixed on the old man’s face. Her head jerked from side to side in puzzlement, reminding Larry of a dog given two conflicting commands. She took a tentative step forward, but stopped when the old man gestured angrily with his flute.

  A warm cherry-scented wind began to blow toward the woman from behind Larry and Kat. Abruptly, with the power of a gale, it picked up the woman, spun her around, and hurtled her through the now-windowless opening back into the darkened interior of the tea house.

  The old man raised the flute to his lips and resumed his soft playing. He began to melt like mist into the air; in a moment, his music had faded, too.

  “Is it over?” Kat asked, casting a nervous glance at the spot where the ghostly woman had been lost to sight. Nothing stirred in the empty window.

  “I think we’re safe now,” said Larry. But he and Kat continued to hug each other as though it was the only way they could keep from shaking apart after all they’d witnessed.

  “I thought they loved each other,” Kat said suddenly. “That must have been Mr. Jirohei. And the ghost had to have been his wife.”

  Larry, digging deep into what he could know or guess, said thoughtfully, “Yes and no.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Kat, sounding more like her old self.

  “Their real souls may be in heaven, or wherever,” Larry said, recalling a discussion he had once heard on the Discovery Channel. “What we saw tonight was leftover anger and a need for revenge from her. And he was some kind of echo of his one-time love for this place. Maybe those are things that have no place in the next life. But hate and love are such different kinds of energy, I guess they cancel each other out. I think that’s what just happened.”

  Kat gave him a long look. “You sure have a lot of strange ideas,” she said. Then she smiled. “That’s okay. I’ve got plenty of unusual ideas of my own.”

  Bone-weary, Larry turned toward the way out. “I just want to get home. I could sleep for a week,” he said.

  “A month for me,” Kat agreed.

  “I think—” He suddenly froze, his words chopped off in mid-thought, as a sound like a cross between a sigh and a moan reached his ears. Seeing Kat go rigid with tension, he knew she had heard it, too.

  Together they turned and looked back at the tea house.

  To their dismay, they saw a clutching hand, the fingers twitching like a knot of pale worms at the end of a skeletal arm, reach shakily over the windowsill from the darkness inside.

  “She’s not gone,” croaked Kat.

  “She’s weak, but some part of her is still there,” said Larry. Renewed fear hardened to a lump of ice in the pit of his stomach.

  A second clutching hand gripped the sill. As if this was a signal, the two spun around and fled, hand-in-hand. Unhesitatingly, Larry kicked out the rotting gate, no longer caring who or what heard.

  The park was unnaturally qu
iet around them. They ran faster, nearly losing balance in their haste. They didn’t dare pause to catch their breath until they stood in the comforting glow of a streetlight outside the park entrance. To their mutual relief, a few moments later a bus came lumbering along.

  With nervous glances toward the shadowed park, they clambered aboard, flashing their passes at the driver.

  “You all right?” the man asked, genuinely concerned. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  To his surprise, the two burst out in hysterical laughter. They were still laughing when they took their seats.

  “Kids,” the driver muttered, shaking his head. “Everything’s a laugh to them. Must be nice not to have any real worries.”

  He popped the bus into gear and pulled away from the curb, the sound of the engine muffling the nervous laughter from his only riders.

  Dust Creatures

  On a late afternoon in August, two girls, who would be entering fourth grade when school started later that month, strolled along the verge of Bauer Lane.

  “I should be going home now,” said the smaller girl, Erika Nordstrom, whose family had moved to the small Maine town of Morgan Grove only two weeks before. She was ignored by the taller girl, Abby Newsom, a naturally friendly person, who loved to meet new people. When the Nordstroms bought a house three doors down from hers, Abby was delighted to find that Erika, one of the five kids in the family, was her own age and would be enrolling in Hathaway Elementary, Abby’s school. “We’ll have Mrs. Ogilvy as teacher,” Abby informed the newcomer. “My brother, Jay, had her two years ago and said she’s great!” She had quickly taken Erika under her wing, showing her around, filling her in on the neighbors, and giving her a crash course in the town’s history. It seemed the least she could do for her new best friend.

  But Abby had saved the best surprise for last: the old, long-deserted Fanning place, which was reportedly haunted. The house fascinated and frightened the children of Morgan Grove. And this was the perfect time of day to check it out, she assured Erika. There were no cars on the quiet back road that twisted and turned away from the town; there wasn’t anyone else in sight.

  Erika, not at all sure she was up for this adventure, anxiously glanced at her watch. “I don’t want to be late for dinner, and it’s a long walk back.”

  “It’s just around the next bend—Jack-T, no!” This last comment was directed at her little white-and-black Jack Russell terrier, who had suddenly veered to the right and was straining at his leash. All the time he kept up a frantic barking at something unseen in the grass berm that separated the tarmac from the dense mass of trees and brush that walled both sides of the road.

  “What’s there?” asked Erika anxiously. She had been born and raised in Boston; Morgan Grove was her first experience of small-town living. Abby was often amused at the other girl’s worries about wild animals or bats with rabies or getting lost when Abby led them exploring in the woods around town. Her list of fears included snakes, falling rocks or branches, and crazy people living in back-country shacks just waiting to kidnap unwary children. “If half the things you were afraid of were real,” Abby had teased her, “Morgan Grove would be a ghost town. It’s only dangerous when people do stupid things, like Billy Noonan taking a double-dog dare and jumping off Hag’s Rock into Witchy Pond. The rock and pond are called that because people said that in olden days witches built bonfires on top of the rock on Halloween to bring up the devil; later, they’d send him away by tossing the still-burning parts of their fire into the water below.”

  “What happened to Billy?”

  “Oh, he belly flopped big time,” Abby replied with a disgusted sound. “Knocked the air out of himself, so he couldn’t breathe for a few seconds. He would have drowned if some of the bigger kids hadn’t pulled him out.” She didn’t add that she had been one of the kids urging Billy to jump.

  To ease her friend’s jitters, Abby, tugging on the leash, said, “He probably smelled a rabbit.” She gave the leash a final, impatient yank. Jack-T got the message. With a final sharp bark at the unseen whatever, he returned obediently to Abby’s side and gazed up at her with what she called his I’m-so-cute expression. As usual, this prompted her forgiveness.

  A minute later, they rounded a stand of trees that grew almost to the edge of Bauer Lane.

  “Ta-da!” Abby trumpeted.

  Jack-T added his own yip of support.

  “It’s only a wall,” said Erika, disappointment and relief in her voice as she gazed at the stretch of crumbling brick higher than a man’s head.

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Abby promised. “Follow us,” she added, since the terrier was pulling her forward, apparently just as eager to show off what lay ahead.

  A little farther on, they reached a huge double gate; metal pickets topped with wicked-looking spikes looked like spears rising up from the fancy scrollwork at the bottom. It had been black once, but time had turned most of the gate rust-brown. One half was slightly ajar, but the weeds and grass growing to knee-height all around gave the impression that it hadn’t been opened in years, maybe decades.

  Beyond was a three-story mansion topped by a central tower with a single round window. The place was pretty much a ruin now. What little was left of the pale yellow paint was peeling off the gray wooden walls. There was a huge shadowed porch, its sagging roof supported by six pillars. All the windows were framed with fancy carving; the roof beams and corner posts were sculptured, too: The whole thing gave the impression of a huge wedding cake left too long in the wind and rain.

  “So what do you think?” asked Abby. “Isn’t it cool?”

  “It’s old. But it doesn’t seem very scary,” her friend said with a shrug. “Just sad.”

  “That’s because you don’t know about it,” Abby said smugly. “At night, they say you can see spook lights all around the place. My cousin who’s in high school said that once he and some friends were driving by at night, and they saw a weird, pale man—probably a ghost—holding on to the lightning rod at the top of the tower. He kept moving his arm, like he wanted them to come closer.”

  “Did they?”

  “No way. People say the ghost is always trying to get kids onto the property, but any kid who was stupid enough to get too close to the house has disappeared.”

  “That really happened?”

  “Lots of times,” said Abby. “The stories have been around for ages.”

  Erika gazed at the house with new respect.

  Abby, on a roll with her storytelling, continued, “The place was built a bazillion years ago by an old sailor named Captain Fanning. They say he traveled all over the world when he was younger, to some really weird places. He was into black magic and junk, and learned a lot of secret stuff from guys like wizards and witch doctors and medicine men. He had three daughters. When he built the house here and settled down with his family, he taught those girls everything he’d learned. His wife died right after the house was finished.” Abby dropped her voice and said, “They said he poisoned her because she tried to stop him from teaching the girls how to use magic.” Her voice dropped again, so that Erika had to lean close to hear. “His wife called it ‘the devil’s work’ and didn’t want her children to have anything to do with such ‘wickedness.’

  “Anyhow, she didn’t get her wish,” Abby said offhandedly, letting her voice return to normal. “When she was dead, Captain Fanning used his powers to turn his daughters into witches. You see those windows?” She pointed to the double row of windows, mostly boarded up, that fronted the first and second stories of the building. They were all exactly alike: tall, narrow, and tapering at the tops to a point like an upside-down V. “Well, they were built like that so the three witches could fly in and out on their brooms without knocking off their witchy hats.”

  “That’s silly,” said Erika. “I think those are all made-up stories and you’re just trying to scare me. I’ve really got to go or my folks will have a cow.” She started to walk away from t
he gate.

  Abby sighed. Sometimes, there was no figuring out her newest friend. Erika could imagine snakes and bats and crazies, but she couldn’t see the old house as the possible home of deliciously scary things, like witches and ghosts. She kept telling herself that she’d have a better grasp of Erika’s thinking in time. Suddenly, she realized Erika was serious about heading for home.

  “Hey, wait!” she cried, halting her friend’s departure. “Don’t go yet. We should watch for the spook lights, at least. I’ve heard this is the absolute best time to spot them.” She grabbed hold of Erika’s shoulder and tried to pull her back to the gate.

  “I’ve got to leave now. If I’m late, I’ll be grounded for a week!” Erika twisted free of Abby’s grip.

  At that moment, while Abby’s attention was elsewhere, Jack-T, with the instinct for mischief that seems to go with the breed, suddenly jerked the end of his leash out of the girl’s hand. An instant later, he squeezed through the gate opening and went charging up the weed-choked road that ended in a gravel loop in front of the ruin.

  “Jack-T! Bad dog,” Abby shouted.

  The dog turned to give her an I’m-so-cute look, then continued racing up the road toward the looming house. To Abby, he was acting like something was calling him.

  “I’ve got to get him,” she said to Erika, who hadn’t moved as she watched the terrier bound up the front steps to the gloomy porch and promptly disappear from view. Meanwhile, Abby tried to force her way through the gap in the gate, but what was barely wide enough for the dog was too narrow for his mistress. “Help me push the gate open,” Abby ordered Erika.

  “It’s rusty and dirty and hasn’t moved in ages,” Erika protested. “I told you I’ve got to go home.”

  “You have to help. This is your fault,” Abby insisted. She was never above getting her own way at times by any means, fair or foul. Even with someone she really, deep down liked and wanted as a friend. At the moment, guilt-tripping Erika seemed the best way to get the reluctant girl to go with her program. She also knew that she didn’t want to face Fanning place alone.