The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run

by Matthew S. Cox

  “He was always mean to Mommy.” The girl glowered off to the side, saturating the kitchen with paranormal dread.

  Electromagnetic detectors in the dining room erupted in a cacophony of wailing beeps.

  Mia yelped.

  Robin looked back at her, once again a complete vision of innocence. The squealing electronics in the other room fell silent. “Daddy’s a different kind of monster now. He’s a puddle of black stuff that crawls around the basement, an’ won’t do anything ’cept sit there ’til he gets mad. Then he does bad things.”

  “What makes him mad?”

  “Mommy.” Robin bit her lip. “An’ runnin outta beer. An’ bein’ on fire, an’ the man next door makin’ a fence too close.” She shrugged. “I guess everything makes Daddy mad.”

  “Being on fire?” Mia blinked, and shot a worried look at the stove.

  “No. Not that kind of fire. Like bein’ on employed.”

  “Oh.” Mia almost laughed. She’s so creepy she’s adorable… and I think I’m going insane. She raised her right hand, pinky extended. “Pinky swear. No trying to make Adam or me into ghosts, and we won’t leave you.”

  The girl smiled and reached out, stopping an inch short of touching pinkies. “What if Daddy makes you a ghost?”

  “Robin…” said Mia in a scolding tone.

  She went wide-eyed. “I don’t want him to, but I can’t stop him.” She shivered. “He has the hammer, an’ I’m scared of it.”

  “Oh you poor…” Mia choked up.

  Robin curled pinkies with her, an odd gleam in her eye. “Pinky swear.”

  22

  The Darkest Moment

  Saturday, September 1, 2012

  A woman hovered over Mia, her smile exhausted and frightened.

  She appeared to be in her later thirties, dressed in a blue-green uniform like a waitress from a 1960s diner, her strawberry blonde hair up in a dated style that matched. Hints of a bruise ringed her left eye, poorly concealed under a hasty layer of foundation.

  Mia snuck a hand out from under the blanket and waved goodbye, then clung to a battered stuffed rabbit.

  “Tomorrow, I promise,” whispered the woman. “Grandpa couldn’t get down here tonight, so we’ll go visit them in the morning, okay?”

  “Okay,” chirped a child’s voice from Mia’s mouth.

  No… I’m dreaming.

  The woman shut the light off and backed out of the room, closing the door.

  Mia struggled to get up, but her body wouldn’t move. No matter how much she refused to be a spectator watching the events of the past, she had no control. Her eyes closed, her arms cuddling the plush rabbit tight. She knew Grandpa would’ve come whenever Mommy asked, even if he lived really far away. Most likely, Mommy had been too scared of Daddy to go away at night. He should have been home already, and would’ve caught them carrying things to the car. Mommy didn’t like leaving her home alone, but she was a big girl now and could take care of herself for the little while it would take Daddy to get home from work.

  I don’t want to see this. Please, no. Please don’t make me see this, shouted Mia’s voice in her thoughts.

  A heavy crash came from downstairs.

  Mia’s eyes opened. Fear propelled her tiny body out of bed. Every time Daddy stomped around hitting stuff in the house, she hid because Mommy told her to. She dashed across the room and climbed into her big toy chest.

  In what felt like a mere second, the lid flew open. Daddy stood over her, but he didn’t look angry—he looked scary. Mia cowered, trying to hide behind Princess Rabbit. Daddy’s giant hand reached down and grabbed her by a fistful of her nightgown.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” screamed Mia in Robin’s voice. “What did I do?”

  With all the emotional expression of a corpse, he hauled her out of the toy chest and dragged her across the room, tossing her to the floor at the foot of the bed. Her head bounced off the wall and she slid down, flat on her back, staring up at him, sobbing, begging to know why he’d gotten mad at her.

  A glint of moonlight flashed from the face of a small one-handed sledge.

  She abandoned the stuffed rabbit, reaching both hands up toward his arm. “Daddy, don’t. Please!”

  No! screamed Mia in the back of her mind.

  He grasped her wrists together in his left hand, pushing her arms down to her chest and pinning her to the floor with so much force she couldn’t draw a breath in. Mia-slash-Robin kicked and squirmed, but he weighed too much for her to move.

  The instant the hammer started to come down, Mia’s absolute refusal to watch any more erupted as a mental scream that hurled her out of the awful nightmare. She sat up in bed, screaming. For a few seconds after her lungs emptied, she stared into the darkness of her bedroom. Adam lay beside her, stirring in reaction to her cry of terror. Her right arm had gone numb, as cold as if it had been in a fridge. The reality of what she’d witnessed crashed into her psyche and she lapsed into heavy sobs.

  Adam sat up and blearily put an arm around her, patting her back while rocking her. “You’re okay. Just a bad dream.”

  “Oh my God,” whimpered Mia.

  “Ack. Are you okay?”

  She sniffled. “Not really.”

  “Must be bad if you invoked God.”

  “Stop.” Mia sighed. “I grew up hearing it all the time. It’s just something to say. After what I just saw, there’s no way he’s real. That was so horrible… She’s so little. She couldn’t get away, couldn’t breathe.” She broke down in tears again.

  He squeezed her close, holding her until she calmed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “How could any parent do something like that?”

  “Your parents were awful to your brother.”

  She ran one hand up over her head until she clutched the back of her neck. “Not even approaching the same degree of awful. Mommy was going to take—umm, I mean Evelyn was going to take Robin out of there the next day. Holy crap that was horrible.” She struggled to breathe past the weight of grief.

  “Mommy?” asked Adam.

  “Just had a nightmare from her eyes.” Mia rubbed her thawing arm. “Pretty sure she curled up next to me after I fell asleep. Not sure if she tried to show me that on purpose or if I just picked it up from being near her, but I was watching the murder from her perspective.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I couldn’t handle it. Snapped awake before the hammer came down.”

  “That’s fairly typical for nightmares of death. Our brains have a defense mechanism. We’re programmed for survival, to fight death as much as we can… even in dreams. The brain won’t process it, so it kicks us out of any nightmare right before we’d see ourselves die.”

  “Yeah, well… it worked. That poor child…”

  The bed shifted to Mia’s left. A handprint sank into the mattress, then another, and a knee. Mia stared at the approaching indentations, stuck between an instinctual urge to flee an invisible child stalking toward her and her need to comfort the girl after such a dream.

  A frigid spot in the shape of a small hand touched Mia’s side, straight on the skin as though she didn’t have a night shirt on. Her arms and legs grew leaden, nearly impossible to move. Her head lolled forward, as heavy as a bowling ball. The chill migrated inward, enshrouding her core, sweeping over her into a state of full-body numbness. Mia’s arms moved without conscious command, tucking her hands beneath her chin in the posture of a frightened little girl.

  Robin wants to be held…

  Mia mentally relaxed, deciding not to resist the girl taking over her body.

  “Hon? Are you…” Adam gestured at her childish posture.

  “Not… regressing…” whispered Mia with no small degree of effort to control her lips. “Robin…”

  “Oh, hello there.” Adam resumed rocking Mia and rubbing her back.

  Mia let the girl soak up the sense of loving contact, content to watch from somewhere inside her brain. She’d lost all sense of touch
, and couldn’t even control where her eyes pointed. An ephemeral sense of crying came from an indeterminate place, simultaneously internal and external. No sound reached the outside world; Mia pictured Robin clinging and wailing as if Vic had merely punched her in the head and she’d run to Adam for comfort.

  A sense of confusion accompanied it, the girl not quite able to comprehend a man who didn’t act mean to her. Unlike the way Vic had treated Evelyn, the men who had taken this house had been kind to the women with them. Robin had thought them nice at first, but they’d all been nasty to her, even if they didn’t hit the women. Those men had called her bad names and screamed. Some had done bad things, like going away and leaving her all alone.

  Minutes later, Mia swooned, dizzy. The sensation of pins and needles swept over her entire body. Feeling returned, and along with it, a tremendous chill. Barely able to move, she scooted under the covers.

  “Are you Mia again?”

  “Y-yeah. S-so cold.”

  Adam lay back down. “I guess she’s decided to give me a chance.”

  “She’s still nervous, but I think you’ll be good as long as you don’t freak out at having a ghost in the house.” Mia attached herself to him like a koala bear clinging to a tree. “I’m not scared. This is purely in the interest of warmth. She sucked up all my body heat.”

  “Hon… when have I ever freaked out about ghosts? Except in the sense of being excited to find one.”

  “How’s your toenail?”

  “Missing. It’s a giant scab at the moment. And touché. So one time.”

  “That asylum in New Jersey you went to with the group… what was it two years ago?”

  “Oh. Well… there’s a distinct difference between ghosts and shadow figures. That thing might’ve had the power to kill.” He cleared his throat. “I maintain that anyone would have screamed in that situation.”

  The repeating image of glint flashing off the face of the hammer kept her from laughing, or even smiling. “I think we might have one of those in the basement.”

  “Vic?”

  “Yeah… or what’s left of him.”

  Adam hissed air in between his teeth. “Ooh. That’s going to be fun… not. Any idea how dangerous he is? Odd we didn’t notice any sign of him earlier when we smudged.”

  “Robin said he just kinda slithers around aimlessly, ignoring the world.”

  “Hmm. Sounds like his mental state after the killing. Just sitting there drinking, not caring about anything.”

  “We’re not safe.” Though Robin pinky-swore not to try to kill her or Adam, children could lash out in anger without thinking. More than ever, she’d become convinced that Robin was an actual child, but one who’d developed a dark streak. Perhaps the house also had a creature akin to a demon… and that demon ticked like a bomb.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Vic.” Finally free of the paralytic chill, she relaxed her death grip on Adam, though remained close. “The way she made it sound, anything might randomly set him off.”

  “Well, we have a plan then.” Adam kissed her. “It’s seeming more likely that they’re separate entities, and the child isn’t dangerous.”

  Mia bit her lip, but kept quiet.

  “So, all we have to do is see if Wilhelmina can get rid of Vic.”

  “Hon?”

  He looked over at her. “Yeah?”

  “I think that’ll probably piss him off.”

  “Yeah. Most likely. But if we don’t, something out of our control will eventually do that.”

  Mia closed her eyes. “Maybe. It could be thirty years, or three days. Who knows?”

  “Exactly the problem. I think we should deal with him on our terms.”

  “Robin seemed afraid that getting rid of him would make her go away, too.”

  He yawned. “We haven’t seen any absolute proof that they’re separate entities. I’m still not sold entirely on that girl being what she appears. Not until we see both her and the shadow entity in the same place at the same time. It’s possible we’re dealing with a combined entity with aspects of both her and him… like a Dissociative Identity situation.”

  Mia shook her head. “No. Doesn’t feel right. But why did she tell me not to go down there?” Is she afraid I’ll not see Vic and discover that she’s the source of the darkness? I can’t believe that. She’s too genuine as a child to be faking it.

  “Well,” said Adam, “Either she knows you won’t find Vic down there, or you will and she’s afraid he’ll hurt you.”

  “Why would she be afraid he’d hurt me? Then I’d just wind up as a ghost and I could be with her forever… and able to touch her.” She tried to kill me, but doesn’t want Vic to? Kid logic.

  “Hmm. What if his presence is what’s trapping her here, and she’s not moving on to wherever it is that most people do after death because of him? Get rid of him, it’s like pulling out the drain plug and she can go somewhere else… but doesn’t want to?”

  “That’s an idea…”

  “As far as protecting you goes, she might be afraid you wouldn’t end up haunting the house and would go away like her mother did. Or, she’s traumatized and is phobic of him.”

  “Can you blame her?” She’s not afraid I won’t haunt the house… or she wouldn’t have chucked the hair dryer at the tub. I should really tell Adam about that… She sighed. Tomorrow.

  “Not really.”

  “I can’t stop seeing that damn hammer.” Mia shuddered. “I’m probably going to freak out if I see Vic.”

  “So, stay out of the basement.”

  Mia smiled. “You don’t have to tell me that twice.”

  A few minutes passed in silence.

  “Night, hon,” said Adam.

  She exhaled. “Night, babe… if I can sleep.”

  A moment later, a slight weight settled into the bed between them.

  “Night, sweetie,” whispered Mia.

  23

  The Pinecone

  Monday, September 3, 2012

  The giant impressionist painting had so many tiny holes in it, Mia wondered if it had pulled duty as a BB gun target. Most of the holes measured about three millimeters across, though numerous pinholes and a few larger rips marred the canvas as well.

  She’d finished cleaning it last week, so today, she started the process of patching all the holes. Scrubbing a surface the size of a refrigerator door with a Q-tip offered endless tedium, but no less so than cutting out tiny pieces of canvas to match each hole and gluing them in place on patch backing.

  Mia got to work, but found herself unable to fully immerse in her usual trance that made the monotonous repetitiveness slip into a groove and the day race by. The nightmare remained fresh in her thoughts. The more she tried to push it out of her mind, the more it devoured her thoughts. Never had she felt as helpless as that moment where Vic crushed her into the floor, no way to escape the hammer about to smash her head.

  Her father had sometimes held her down, but not like that… not crushing her arms into her chest so she couldn’t breathe. Mia’s father had bent her over the side of her bed, or the couch, or a table, and taken his belt to her bare backside often enough to leave deep mental scars. As long as she lived, she’d never be able to look at him with any trace of familial affection. He had made himself an object of fear, and as such he would stay.

  However, as much as she found him terrifying, he had nothing on Vic. Even at his worst, her father never intended to kill her or even inflict serious injury. That man merely had one way to deal with children who had conflicts of opinion with him. He wouldn’t talk, or debate, or bargain. The leather belt would make his point for him. The last time he’d strapped her, she’d been around thirteen, maybe fourteen. She’d riled him up plenty often after that, but she’d become old enough to treat like an adult. Shouts, threats, and guilt had become his weapon of choice then. Fortunately for Mia, she lacked the fear that his promises of God punishing her would mean anything. Her parents had been quite aus
tere and frugal, so they couldn’t exactly deny her much in the way of toys, money for niceties like movies and fancy clothes, or going out. All of those things would have had to exist for them to be taken away as a punishment.

  The worst thing she’d done in their eyes had been rejecting their religion and taking Timothy’s side. Some of the girls she’d grown up with had experimented with drugs. One girl she didn’t really know in her high school had robbed a place and went to juvenile prison. Two girls she’d known since first grade got pregnant before they turned eighteen, but as far as her parents were concerned, she’d been the antichrist for questioning God, more evil than any of those other kids. Getting knocked up or coming home high would’ve been fine—as long as she had faith.

  Each time Mia settled into the task of patching a hole, muscle memory took over. She didn’t need to think about the work anymore, so her mind ran off to the nightmare. Mia dropped the tweezers she used to position the tiny canvas patches and grabbed her hair, shaking her head like she could make the bad memory fall out of her ears. After a run to the coffee machine in the break room, she returned and tried to focus on her job.

  It worked for a little while until a new distraction gnawed at her thoughts. She’d never had a strong urge to have a baby. Some of her high school and college friends already had kids before graduating. A few planned to spawn as soon as they reached a point of being comfortable in their careers. A handful wanted kids less than they wanted brain tumors. Mia considered herself in the middle group, no strong feelings either way. Though, she had been leaning toward the ‘nah’ camp. Even after meeting and falling in love with Adam, they’d both been otherwise occupied. Finding jobs, worrying about life in general… then the ridiculous commute, now the insecurity of his being new at the university and of course, having to deal with a house that had at least one—probably two, maybe even three—ghosts in it. Though she had yet to see concrete proof of Evelyn, she couldn’t otherwise explain why she felt the woman’s presence.