“Thanks a lot, Mr. Gartner. Congrats on the new place,” said the mover. “Appreciate your business.”
“I appreciate you guys’ saving my back. Drive safe.” Adam added a cash tip to his handshake.
“Thank you again! Take care.”
“Bye!” Mia waved at him.
Adam walked the mover out and closed the door. “Well, we’re officially home.”
“Yeah. Home.” Mia glanced over her shoulder to her right at the thin white door covering the basement stairs at the corner of the kitchen. Childhood trauma. I’m going to be afraid of basements for the rest of my life.
“The living room and dining room can wait for now. I’ll get started in the bedroom.”
“Okay,” called Mia. “Save your back? You’re what, twenty-nine going on fifty?”
“Ha. I am a psychology professor, not an athlete.”
“Hey, what are we going to do for food? It’s almost four and we haven’t eaten a damn thing.”
“We went past a diner on the way here. Pine something…”
Mia shrugged. “We just got here and you want to go out?”
“We don’t exactly have a choice.” He walked in, pulled the empty fridge open, and gestured at it like a game show hostess. “There has to be at least one pizza place. We’re not that far out in the sticks they won’t deliver.”
“This is pretty far out in the sticks. Only way we’d be even more remote is if we’d bought a log cabin.”
“Hah. We still have cellular signal, so we haven’t left civilization.” Adam’s face flickered different shades as he browsed his smartphone. “Yep. There is one pizza place.”
“Do your magic.” She winked.
Adam paced around with the phone to his ear. “Hi, yeah. Do you guys deliver? Six Minstrel Run. Uh huh. Yeah, we just moved in, why? Heh. I’ll take you up on that. Okay, can we get a large with pepperoni and an order of garlic bread? Mm-hmm. Yeah, cash. Thanks.” He hung up.
“What was that about?” Mia glanced at him.
“Oh, nothing. The owner just said he’d send us a free pie if we last six months in here.”
She stared at him. “What?”
“I don’t want to needlessly alarm you…” Adam flashed a sly smile. “But apparently, people who move into this house usually leave fairly soon, according to local folklore.”
“If you are going to keep priming me with stuff like this, I’m going to start jumping at shadows. Do you want to have to peel me off the ceiling every time a cloud goes by overhead?”
“Aww, babe.” He walked over and hugged her. “It’s nothing Joe didn’t already mention. Past few people to own this house have all been fast turnover.”
“Yeah, yeah…” Mia shook her head.
While Adam ran upstairs to start unpacking their clothes, she continued stacking mugs in the cabinet, then moved on among the various boxes of kitchenware. The stove seemed brand new, barely used, an electric range with a ceramic cooktop. She remembered reading somewhere the house had been built in the early 1960s. No way was it the original range. Whoever installed it couldn’t have gotten much use out of it before they sold the place.
“Hmm. Odd.” Mia crouched in front of it and pulled the oven open. “Still smells like ‘new appliance.’”
When she closed the door, a dark spot in the reflection on the window made it look like someone stood behind her. She whirled, clinging to the oven door handle… and stared at an empty kitchen. Her heart resumed beating in a few breaths. Gradually, she turned back to look at the glass, dreading what she’d see.
The reflection appeared normal, no trace of anything standing behind her.
“Ugh.” She covered her face with a hand. “Dammit, Adam. You’ve put ghosts and spookies in my head, so I’m going to be imagining crap for weeks now.”
A soft thud shook the ceiling along with a short grunt of exertion from Adam.
Mia gathered loose packing paper back into the boxes. “These are so much easier to carry without all the dishes.”
Click.
She spun, staring at the basement door. It remained closed, but she couldn’t help but get the feeling someone had recently been standing in the corner and slipped out of sight with no sound other than the snap of the latch.
“Hey, look…” Mia bit her lip. “If there are any ghosts here, we don’t want to get in your way, okay? The last time I lived in a house instead of an apartment, it had a bunch of ghosts and we got along pretty well. So, play nice with me and we won’t have any issues.”
Nothing moved, made noise, or answered.
Another thud from overhead almost made her jump onto the counter.
“Dammit, Adam.” She glared up. “Do you have to throw stuff around like that?”
The kitchen no longer felt like someone stood there with her. Though, she expected that would change as soon as the sun went down.
3
Safe Place
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Mia crawled into bed feeling like a pizza-stuffed whale settling onto the sea floor.
After an entire day spent running around the house unpacking, she barely managed the strength necessary to roll on her back. Adam climbed in the other side and let out a hard breath.
“You sound exactly how I feel,” said Mia.
He squeezed her hand. “It’s good to be home.”
“It’s good to be in a real bed.”
“We only had to put up with one night of sleeping bags.”
“One night too many.” She closed her eyes and smiled.
“Any creepiness?”
“Not at the moment. But I did feel watched all night.”
“So did I. It’s starting sooner than I expected.”
She looked over at him. “What’s starting?”
“Activity. I should probably try capturing EVPs or something tomorrow night.”
Mia poked him in the side. “You kept saying stuff to make me think about ghosts. It could all be in my head.”
“Yeah, that’s another possibility. If the recordings come back without any unexplained voices on them, that will tend to agree with the ‘all in your head’ idea.”
“But you’ll be disappointed.” Mia’s voice slowed with oncoming sleep.
“True enough. So, do you want there to be ghosts, or not?”
She swished her feet side to side. Her need for normality conflicted with an inexplicable sense of hope. For a moment, she shared Adam’s enthusiasm like a kid about to get something they’d desperately wanted for a long time—but that sense of anticipation faded under the memory of how intimidating the house had seemed when she looked at it the other day.
“I dunno. Guess I’ll just try to keep an open mind and not jump to any conclusions.”
Mia found herself awake without explanation.
She glanced left at the clock. 11:58 p.m. To her right, Adam lay asleep. They’d put the headboard against the front wall between the two windows on that side. Mia lifted her head off the pillow enough to peer past her feet at the bedroom door. Nothing appeared unusual, or even felt strange, so she started to settle back down—but a sudden smear of darkness zipped out the door into the hallway.
“Hello?” whispered Mia.
She waited four breaths before sitting up. The door hung open only a few inches, not enough for a person to have fit past it. Worse, she couldn’t remember if they had closed it or left it ajar. Adam typically preferred to have the bedroom door closed since he said it would be safer in the event of a fire. It had taken her years to get used to that. Her parents hadn’t allowed either her or Timothy to close their bedroom doors at night, and became irate if they even asked about it.
Desperately terrified we might touch ourselves and go straight to hell.
Grumbling mentally about her parents, she let her head sink back down and closed her eyes. Her brain focused on the sensation of fullness in her bladder, distracting her enough from sleep that she relented after only a minute or two.
> Mia slipped out of bed and padded over to the door. She hesitated, nervous about what might be waiting for her in the hallway. Still seeing stuff. Just Adam and his fascination with ghosts. She pulled the door open and stepped out.
The door across the hall from their room remained closed, though the next one to the right on that side was open. Okay… I know we closed the other ones. At least… I think we did. Moonlight from the window at the head of the stairs illuminated the whole stretch of hall. Other than the one door open that shouldn’t be, nothing appeared out of place. She shook her head and walked four steps left to the bathroom.
When she’d gotten halfway to the toilet, a tingle ran down her back as if someone else had walked into the room with her. She paused, certain someone stared at her from behind. Most of the left wall consisted of a storage closet with a recess on both sides. The alcove in front of the door had a window, the other one in the far corner held the toilet. The tub/shower took up the middle of the right wall, open and empty. A faint hint of bubblegum scent crossed her nose.
Mia turned to look at the open door behind her. Despite there being only Adam in the house, the urge to close—and lock—the door hit her. Too tired to ask questions of herself, she did so, then hurried to the toilet.
She struggled to stay awake while peeing, her head constantly lolling forward and bouncing back up.
A whisper floated out of the bathtub. “Shh…”
Mia jumped and stared at the shower curtain. I’m only half awake and dreamed that. Holy crap. Good thing I’m already on the toilet.
She kept watching the bathtub for as long as it took to finish. The floor in the hallway creaked like a man walking up to the bathroom door.
“Adam?” asked Mia.
“Shh…”
Mia froze at the second whisper from the tub, too frightened to even stand off the toilet. Her brain raced for any explanation of what could possibly have made that sound. The shower curtain moving an inch might’ve sounded like a harshly whispered ‘shh’—but the curtain hadn’t moved, and she couldn’t even reach it from the toilet. If it did move, that would mean someone else hid in the bathtub. Someone neither her nor Adam.
Maybe it’s a branch at the window?
Sitting on the bowl didn’t offer a great view of the small window on the wall to the left, but it didn’t look like any trees came close enough for a branch to make contact. Again, the floor creaked in the hall. Mia opened her mouth to call for Adam, but the sudden fear that something bad would happen if she made a sound kept her mute.
An increasing sense of anger wafted from the opposite end of the bathroom, seemingly coming from behind the closed door.
Mia stared at the knob, paralyzed with dread at the thought—no expectation—that she would see it start to turn on its own. The unmistakable feeling that an enraged man loomed right outside kept her pinned to the seat.
A rustle came from the bathtub.
She snapped her gaze from door to shower curtain.
It twitched as though someone behind it fidgeted.
Mia gasped.
Another creak came from the hall.
“Who’s there?” whispered Mia. “Is someone here?”
“Shh,” whispered no one.
Mia sat there for a few minutes, unsure what to do, mentally kicking herself for not turning the light on. As long as she kept hidden in the bathroom, she’d be safe. The instant that thought crossed her mind, she sat up straight and blinked. Where the hell did that come from? She eased herself to her feet and approached the sink in front of the toilet. Nothing reacted or made a sound while she washed her hands and dried them on a towel hanging from a ring between sink and bathtub.
She padded past the tub, her bare feet squishing into the plush bathmat. Three steps later, a sharp tug on the left side of her nightgown made her jump away with a startled yelp. She stumbled against the closet doors, gawking at the still-closed shower curtain.
“Adam?” she called in a not-quite yell. “Adam!”
Silence hung over the bathroom for another minute. No response came from her husband, but the not-voice also hadn’t shushed her again. Mia swallowed a bit of saliva, steeled herself, and approached the door. The anger she sensed in the area had faded away along with the sensation of not being alone.
“I’m not fully awake and highly suggestible. Maybe I was sleepwalking.”
She opened the door to an empty hallway… and the faint smell of beer. Eyes narrowed, she backed up to the tub and pushed the shower curtain aside to look in—at nothing.
“Yeah. I definitely need sleep.”
4
Pancakes
Monday, August 27, 2012
Sunday went by in a blur of grocery shopping, curtain shopping, curtain hanging, more unpacking, and Adam exploring the house with a digital sound recorder while talking to the walls. Mia couldn’t tell if all the activity and running around simply kept her too busy to notice anything weird or whatever might be here disliked the commotion and avoided them. Of course, she also considered the possibility that having real, physical things to focus on prevented her brain from teasing her with imaginary spooky stuff.
On Monday morning, the horrible screech of the alarm clock dragged Mia out of a bizarre dream. It hadn’t lasted long, and all she remembered of it upon opening her eyes had been walking along an official-looking corridor, surrounded by people in suits or professional attire. She’d been looking down at her arms, covered in a plain brown coat. A pastel blue purse dangled from her hands. She went past several doors and a stairwell before a man in a police uniform stepped in front of her. She stopped.
“Are you sure?” asked the man.
“Yes,” replied Mia.
“You understand what will happen.”
“I do,” said Mia.
The officer nodded and reached for something under his jacket. Before his hand came out, the alarm had gone off. She groaned and sat up, whining at herself for putting the alarm clock all the way across the room on the chest of drawers. Every day she got up for work, she hated that she’d done that… but by the time she ambled over to make it stop blaring, she gained enough consciousness to realize she needed to stay up. Putting the alarm within reach of the bed would get her fired.
Mia grumbled at forgetting to change her alarm after moving. She didn’t need to get up that early anymore. No point going back to sleep for an hour and a half, so she took a nice, relaxing shower, then returned to the bedroom while Adam ran in to clean up. She sat by her little cosmetics desk, ran the blow-dryer, then… proceeded to hunt around for the hairbrush. Grumbling, she gave up on it and borrowed Adam’s, then got dressed. He breezed into the room right as she stood to go downstairs.
“Have you seen my hairbrush?”
“All the time.” He flung off his towel and opened his underwear drawer.
“Smartass.”
Adam wagged his butt at her.
“I mean today.”
“Can’t say I looked for it. Why? It’s not on the thing?” He stepped into a pair of boxer briefs, then turned to face her.
“For a psychology professor, you’re astoundingly obtuse. If it was ‘on my thing,’ why would I be asking you where it was?”
“When a guy asks ‘it’s not where you think it is?’ that basically means we have no idea where the missing object is.” He pulled on a T-shirt, then moved to the closet. “Probably lost in the move.”
“Ugh.”
“Your hair looks fine.”
“I used your brush.”
“So, what’s the emergency then?”
She pointed it at him. “Your brush isn’t my brush.”
He stepped into his slacks and shot her a smirk.
“And on that note… what do you want in your oatmeal?”
“Raisins are fine… or raspberry jam, or plain.”
Mia headed down the hall to the stairs, but froze at the top. She glanced back at what she thought she’d seen… and blinked. The middle door on the
right had once again opened. Adam’s been in and out of that room all yesterday. It’s become a giant closet. Despite the house having far more space than their apartment, a handful of boxes and other stuff (like lamps) wound up in there for the time being until they’d settled in enough to look at unpacking all the stuff that formerly sat forgotten in closets.
“Adam probably left it open.”
Shaking her head, Mia went downstairs to the kitchen and set about preparing two bowls of oatmeal. She set them in the huge microwave and stood there watching the tray spin around. Their microwave—another object sitting in the storage room upstairs—was about half the size of the one the prior occupant of the house left behind.
A sudden craving for pancakes came out of nowhere. She eyed the box of mix on the counter, then the clock. Mia blinked at it, unable to remember buying pancake mix when they’d gone to the store, or even why she would have. Neither she nor Adam had pancakes at home once since they’d married. Yet, there it was, so clearly they’d bought it. Maybe seeing the pastor had caused her to think of her brother, which somehow triggered a subconscious memory. The last time she’d had pancakes had been when she’d made them for him, a couple months before they left home. Damn. I haven’t had pancakes in forever. Tempting… but there isn’t enough time and I’ve already got the oatmeal cooking.
The craving proved distracting enough that she picked up the box of mix and read over the directions, re-familiarizing herself with how to make pancakes. At a ding from the oven, she set the box down and took the bowls out—unprepared for how warm they were.
“Hot! Crap! Crap! Crap!”
In her haste to set the bowls on the counter before she involuntarily dropped them and spilled oatmeal everywhere, she accidentally elbowed the pancake mix off the counter. It hit the floor with a loud whap, popping open and spewing a light dusting of powder on the tile.
“Dammit.” Mia sighed. At least she hadn’t wasted much mix.
The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run Page 3
