Two Weeks: A True Haunting (True Hauntings Book 3)

by Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  Mom and I had talked about Laura’s house on the drive home, about how something had felt “off” in it.

  “Did you feel something there?” she’d asked me. I knew my mother–she was fishing for information before she revealed her own thoughts.

  “Maybe,” I’d hedged, unsure of what I’d seen or felt but wanting her to share what she’d felt.

  She didn’t.

  I cried when I went to bed, remembering Laura lying on the other end of my daybed, her sometimes smelly feet up in my face. Her pillow was still down there, plumped the way she left it. I held it next to me like a security blanket. I hadn’t been able to make any friends yet in my new town and didn’t have neighbors my age. For a whole week I’d felt like I had a sister. And now I was all alone. Feeling sorry for myself was pathetic, I kept telling myself, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t help it.

  Mom left for work the next day and I slept in. Even after I woke up around noon I didn’t feel like doing anything else. Morose and bored, I moped around the apartment in my nightgown. Not even “Swans Crossing,” my favorite television show, could cheer me up.

  “You’ve got to find something to do,” my mom said when she returned home that evening to find me sitting on the couch and staring at the TV. “She’ll be back soon.”

  I sighed, miserable. I’d thought of a million things to tell her, if only she had a phone. A couple of times I’d even pretended she was still there, using the bathroom or down in the laundry room. I figured I might lose my mind by the time summer was over.

  Mom was right. I needed a hobby.

  We were just sitting down to dinner when our phone rang. Not many people called us so it was a surprise to get a call that late in the evening. We looked up at one another in surprise, neither one of us sure we should answer it.

  “It might be your dad,” Mom said at last. “Better get it.”

  I answered on the third ring and was shocked to hear Jimmy on the other end of the line. “Rebecca?” he shouted into the receiver. There were background noises on the line, like he was standing outside on a crowded street. I could barely hear him over the roar of traffic. “I was calling to see if you could come back to get Laura.”

  Shocked, I turned to my mom. “Mom? It’s Jimmy. He wants us to come get Laura.”

  Concerned, Mom quickly walked over to me and stood by the phone. We put our heads together to listen. “Is everything okay?” I asked. I thought I could hear Laura beside him, whimpering, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “She’s, uh, just having a hard time right now and I think she needs to be away,” he said, although his vagueness told us very little. “Here, talk to her.”

  “Rebecca?” she sobbed into the phone. It was hard to understand her. I didn’t think I’d ever heard Laura cry before. “Can your mom come get me?”

  Mom nodded her head. She walked away from the phone and began slipping on her shoes and searching for the car keys.

  “Yeah, we can come. You want us right now?”

  “Y–yeah,” Laura cried. “We’re up at the gas station but I’ll be at the house. Can you please hurry? Please!”

  “What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Laura replied quickly. The line went dead.

  Mom and I worried for the duration of the ride. Laura had sounded terrible and Jimmy didn’t sound great himself. “What do you think happened?” I asked.

  Mom pursed her lips. “I have some ideas but I’d rather not say.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’re too young to worry about such things,” she said. “Let’s just see what she says.”

  When we got to Laura’s house it was ablaze with light, every room lit up like a Christmas tree. Mom and I both scrambled to exit the car but before we could make it to the porch Laura was soaring out the front door, her long hair flying behind her in the moonlight. She attacked my mother in a bear hug, clinging to her and sniffing. I awkwardly patted her on the back and tried to give her a hug. Seeing her upset made me upset and soon I was in tears as well.

  “It’s okay,” Mom cooed. “You can come with us.”

  Jimmy hobbled out the door a few seconds later, bent forward and clutching his back. He looked like he’d aged ten years since the night before.

  “Thank you all for this,” he said. “She needs some time away.”

  “When do you want me to bring her home?” Mom asked.

  He scrunched up his face and looked up at the night sky, as though searching for answers in the stars. Finally, he let out a big sigh. “I don’t know. I’ll call you in a couple of days and check on her. See how things are going.”

  I was shocked. They’d always given us a deadline to have Laura home by. This had never happened before.

  Mom just nodded and didn’t ask any questions. We didn’t hang around to see the rest of the kids. Laura was already pulling us towards the car, moving as quickly as she could drag us.

  It was only after we got on the interstate and zoomed towards Richmond that I realized she hadn’t brought a single thing with her, just the clothes on her back.

  Laura’s Story

  Laura was in one of my nightgowns and planted firmly on our couch in the safety of our living room with a cup of apple juice in her hand before she’d talk to us.

  She’d been quiet on the ride over and barely said a word as I rummaged through my dresser drawers and found her something that would fit. I was slightly larger than her.

  “You want to talk about it?” Mom prodded gently. “It’s okay if you don’t.”

  Laura trembled and inched closer to me. “You might not believe me,” she whispered, looking down at her hands.

  “Oh, I’m sure we will,” Mom assured her. At this point, she was almost certain it was someone who had caused Laura some kind of harm.

  I nodded my encouragement and patted her on the hand. “You can tell us.”

  To be honest, I was dying of curiosity. I wanted to know what happened not only because I was a little nosy at that age but because I wanted to help her as well. I didn’t know how without knowing what was wrong.

  Letting out a big sigh, Laura put her drink on the coffee table and then leaned back against the couch cushions.

  “It started as soon as you all left,” she began. “Mary and I were in our bedroom. We had the windows up because it was so hot. We were just sitting on the bed, talking, when both windows slammed shut so hard the glass broke on both of ‘em. We jumped, you know, and screamed a little. Mary got up and walked toward the one by our dresser, real slow like, so that she didn’t step on any glass. It was everywhere and made a real mess. When she got up to it, though, there was a face staring back. It was just there for a second and kind of blurry, like maybe it was out of focus. But we both saw it. It was there and then it wasn’t.”

  Mom looked at Laura in confusion, not knowing quite where the story was going.

  “We ran downstairs then to tell Daddy about the windows but he was laying on the couch. His back was arched and he was crying, moaning in pain. There was sweat pouring down his face and it was all red. ‘They’re killing me, they’re killing me,’ he yelled. Jenny stood over him, trying to wipe his face off with a wet washrag. She was crying.” Laura’s eyes teared up now as she remembered. “It was awful. He kept crying for ‘them’ to make it stop. He told me this morning that it was like being beaten with a hammer all over his body.”

  “Laura, who is ‘them’?” Mom asked.

  “The ghosts,” Laura shrugged. “They were beating Daddy. Jenny said it’s been happening for days. They’re attacking him. All us kids sat around him and I held the Bible in my hands. She said she’d called our preacher out to bless the house while I was gone. He came with his Bible and walked around, praying over everything.”

  “Did he say anything about the house?” I asked.

  Laura nodded. “He said it had some bad energy, like maybe something that wasn’t good happened there. But he prayed a lot an
d the little kids said they felt better when he left. But then Daddy just got sicker. We didn’t know what to do. We linked arms and prayed for him, prayed he’d stop hurting but he just kept screaming. Candy was scared and hid behind the chair and Brenda cried. The louder we prayed, the louder he screamed. Finally he stopped. He’d gone to sleep. Jenny told us to go upstairs, let him rest. Natalie helped us sweep up the glass in our bedroom.”

  Mom and I sat in stunned silence, both of us envisioning a group of young children, sitting around their sick father in the dark, offering childhood prayers above his wailing.

  “Mary and I locked our bedroom door. It took us forever to fall asleep. We kept the lamp on so it wouldn’t be dark. It was so dang hot, though,” Laura said, shaking her head. “We moved the fan and plugged it in by our bed. We put it in the middle, between our beds, so it would blow in our faces. When I fell asleep it was there between us, almost close enough to touch. A little while later I felt something on my feet. It woke me up. I was kind of groggy, you know, so I wasn’t sure what was going on at first. Then I looked down at my feet and saw the sheet was off me. The fan had blown it off. It was moved then, all the way at the foot of the bed. Moved probably six feet or more.”

  “Fans can move like that on hard floors,” Mom explained. “Their vibrations maybe?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” Laura agreed. “I kind of liked it down there blowing on my feet cause they were pretty hot so I left it and went back to sleep. Then I woke up again.”

  Laura paused to take a sip of apple juice. Her color had returned a bit and she was looking better, although she still hugged the afghan she had around her tightly. “Mary woke me up screaming. She was sitting up in bed, kind of looking around the room with her eyes all big and terrified. Her sheet was off her, but it was all the way on the other side of the room, wadded up in a little ball. But now the fan was by her face. It had moved all the way around both beds and was blowing air right onto her head.”

  I tried to imagine a dancing fan, vibrating its way around the bedroom. The idea might have been funny if Laura hadn’t looked so terrified talking about it.

  “But still,” Mom persisted. “It could have moved on its own. The floor slanted? The fan was unstable?”

  “Maybe,” Laura said. “Only it hadn’t just moved, it was plugged into a brand new socket.”

  We sat there and let this news sink in, dumbfounded.

  “We didn’t sleep the rest of the night,” Laura said. “We stayed up in bed together, talking about movies and trying to remember all the lines from ‘Grease.’ Daddy likes that movie, especially ‘Grease Lighting.’ He dances around and sings it. When he’s feeling better.” Laura’s eyes teared up again at the thought of her dad, back at home, sick and in pain.

  “Has anyone else seen anything?” Mom asked.

  Laura nodded. “Yeah, we all have. When we heard others up Mary and I unlocked our door and went down. The whole family was trying to find Lulu. We could hear her, but we couldn’t find her. She was barking up a storm and we looked everywhere outside we could. The little ones were running around, checking in the barn and shed, even looking under the couch. Candy kept saying she was somewhere in the house, even though we thought that wasn’t possible. We’d checked all the rooms and closets.”

  Lulu was a big dog. It wasn’t like she could’ve disappeared behind a chair.

  “Jenny finally gave up. ‘She’s not outside,’ she said. ‘We’ve looked everywhere. That damn dog is just trying to trick us.’ So we all quit looking and went back to the kitchen. Jenny had been making biscuits and gravy and bacon. I got out the dishes and was putting them on the table when Lulu started up again. Only, this time I thought Candy was right. She did sound like she was in the house. She sounded like she was right underneath us.”

  Laura’s face grew a little pale again and I patted her, wanting her to go on and stop at the same time.

  “Daddy got off the couch and came into the kitchen. We were all real quiet, listening. ‘She’s in the cellar,’ Daddy finally said. ‘How the hell did she get down there?’ Sorry, but that’s the word he used,” Laura apologized. “We went outside and looked but the window was covered up in dirt. We haven’t found another way to get in there. Daddy got down on his hands and knees, though, and poked at the floor. The linoleum was cracked in one big spot so he pulled at it. When he did, it came up and we all saw a door, like one of those trap door things.”

  I could envision it as she spoke, the dirty linoleum being peeled back, the kids crowding around the door and watching as Jimmy shimmied it loose with a butter knife and then tugging it open. Everyone peering down the old wooden steps to the darkness beyond. And then Lulu darting up the stairs and bounding into the kitchen, barking with joy at seeing her family.

  “Daddy and Bobby went down there and looked around to see if they could find another door that Lulu could’ve gone in at. They were going to block it off or something. They didn’t see one, though. By the time they’d come back up the whole kitchen was filled with that nasty smell. Everyone was gagging and Natalie puked right there in the floor. It was a mess.” Laura shook her head.

  She went on to describe how they’d closed the trap door and all the kids had stomped on the linoleum to make it lay flat again. Then they’d move a table leg on it so that it would stay closed, just in case.

  “We were all too sick to our stomachs to eat so Jenny gave the food to the dog. She liked it. Daddy had some things for us to do out in the yard. He wanted to mow and wanted us girls to rake up the grass. Bobby was going to help Jenny with her flowers. So, we cleaned up the kitchen and then started to leave…”

  Laura stopped talking then and looked down at the couch, her face reddening. My mom offered her something else to drink but she declined. We all sat together in the silence while Laura attempted to gather her thoughts, and maybe even her courage. When she finally continued, my mom and I were shaken.

  The entire family had been together the whole time, nobody had been on their own since they’d gathered back in the kitchen. When they’d all filed into the kitchen to let Lulu out of the cellar the living room had been perfectly intact, nothing moved. Jenny and Laura both prided themselves on their cleanliness. Though they had few furnishings and like ours, what they had was older and worn, it was always in order. Laura herself polished the wooden pieces at least once a month and dusted nearly every day. There was no clutter, no disorder.

  But now something had definitely changed.

  Natalie was the first to notice it and when she did she squealed. Had the morning sunlight not filtered through the window in just the right way it might have gone unnoticed for some time. But with the way the rays of summer sun shone through and landed on the little gold cross right above the couch it illuminated it as though it were a spotlight. The gold sparkled, casting its own light across the couch and coffee table. It had never looked as radiant as it did at that moment.

  And it was turned completely upside down.

  The family stopped in their tracks after Natalie’s initial shriek and stared at the cross in wonder. It was Jimmy who turned and looked for the handmade wooden cross that hung over the archway leading into the kitchen. When he coughed and sputtered, everyone else turned as well. It had also been turned 180 degrees and was now facing downwards. The archway was too high for the children to have bothered it; none of them could reach it. Jimmy knew he hadn’t done it and Jenny swore it wasn’t her.

  Then who?

  Jimmy quickly jumped into action and climbed onto the couch to fix the gold cross first. When he reached his hand out to touch it, however, he snatched it back in pain. Everyone had seen the sparks of static electricity that flew from the object as soon as he touched it. He stood on the cushions, gingerly nursing his tender hand and staring at the wall in confusion. “What the hell was that,” he mumbled to himself.

  When he attempted it a second time he wrapped a dishtowel from the kitchen around his hand. Even then, he w
inced in pain, both from the heat of the cross as well as from his aching back.

  “It’s like that thing is on fire,” he said in wonderment. “Like touching a hot burner.”

  Next, he moved to the cross over the doorway. The girls moved aside, giving him room. When he jiggled it off the nail, however, it came loose too quickly and fell. Not wanting it to touch the floor, Jimmy caught it on his forearm and then shouted in agony. “Oh dear god, dammit,” he swore, quickly moving it back to its rightful place. When Jenny moved to him and examined his arm where the cross had landed, she was shocked to see an angry red welt already swelling up from the skin.

  “What’s going on Jim?” she asked. “You turning into a vampire or something?”

  “I ain’t no vampire. You touch the damn thing. See if it happens to you.”

  Later, he apologized for snapping, blamed it on his back and how lousy the day was already going.

  Laura’d spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon outside with her siblings. “None of us wanted to go back into the house much,” she explained. “Daddy ended up not being able to mow the yard ‘cause his back was bothering him so bad. Jenny made him another bed on the couch and he wanted TV.”

  Jenny brought lunch out to them and they’d had a picnic on the grass. “Y’all make a mess with them tater chips and boloney and I don’t want to have to be cleaning up the kitchen again,” she’d said when she brought the food out. “I’m still trying to get rid of that smell.”

  But Laura didn’t think that was the reason Jenny was feeding them outside. “I think she was afraid of being in there too,” Laura said. “She kept going in to check on Daddy but most of the time she stayed out there with us, working on her flowers and yard stuff. I think Daddy would’ve been with us too if his back hadn’t been out like it was.”

  It was nearly five o’clock when they all trooped back in the house. The kids were streaked with dirt and grime and needed to wash up for dinner. The only bathroom in the house was upstairs. It was small and cramped with loose tile and antiquated features but the claw foot tub was big enough to hold two kids at once, sometimes three if they weren’t squirming around.