by Darcy Coates
“Okay, that’s promising. I like bending rules.” Mara could imagine Jenny, already sweet on Neil, being more than happy to cut through red tape.
“She gave me the contact details for the last occupants. Well, their daughter, Chris, specifically.”
“Wow, seriously? It’s been twenty years. Wouldn’t the details be out of date by now?”
“They were, but the people at the number I called were able to give me the daughter’s mobile. So I called her, and she agreed to meet us.”
“Seriously? You managed all of that? I was in that store for no more than ten minutes. You’d make a killing working in a call centre.”
Neil beamed at her. “You’re okay with it, then?”
“Hm.” Mara pursed her lips. “I guess there’s no reason not to meet. But I reserve the right to yell at her if she tries to say there was a ghost.”
“She was only eight when they moved into the house, so she might not remember much, but I’m hoping she can tell us about the building—whether she heard anyone walking through the attic and things like that.”
“That’s clever thinking. We might pick up some clues from her. At the very least, she can tell us why they left their dinner on the table.”
“There. Just because I’m not allowed to be your sugar daddy doesn’t mean I can’t be useful.”
Neil took them out of town. The houses were gradually replaced by trees, which occasionally parted to give them a view overlooking a lake.
“Where’re we meeting her?” Mara asked.
“She gave me directions to a cafe that overlooks the water. Apparently, it’s a popular stopping place for families that travel through the area. Shouldn’t be far now—”
They rounded a bend in the road. Ahead was a large shack-like structure with a dozen picnic tables arranged haphazardly on one side and a grassy parking lot on the other. Mara thought it looked precariously close to the cliff’s edge, as though a solid gust of wind could send it tumbling into the lake.
Neil parked, and they rounded the building to the eating area. It was empty save for two families, an elderly couple, and—at the table closest to the overlook—a lone woman. She waved to them.
“Chris?” Neil asked as he shook her hand. “Thanks for meeting us. This is my girlfriend, Mara.”
Mara shook the woman’s hand as well. Chris looked younger than twenty-eight and had a pale, pinched sort of face, but her smile seemed genuine. “No problem. Sorry for dragging you out here instead of inviting you home. My pop’s going into Alzheimer’s, and I don’t want to remind him about Blackwood if I can avoid it.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” Neil said at the same time as Mara asked, “Why not?”
Chris blinked at Mara then laughed delightedly. “Wanna dive right in, huh? Okay. Let’s.” They slid into their seats—Chris on one side of the table and Mara and Neil on the other—and leaned close together as though it were a discussion that couldn’t survive eavesdroppers. “Before I share my side, I want to know—how long have you been in Blackwood?”
“Uh…” Mara counted the days and was surprised at how few there were. She felt as though she’d already been staying there a month. “Today’s the third day.”
“Wow. And it’s already bad enough to call me?” Chris propped her sharp chin on her laced fingers as her eyes darted between them. “My family made it a solid two weeks before running.”
“Why?” Neil’s troubled expression had returned. “What happened?”
“A whole buncha stuff. My parents—bless ‘em—tried to shield me from most of it, but I still saw plenty. At first there were footsteps and slamming doors in the night. No one thought much of it at first. There were five of us: my mum, my pop, and my two younger brothers—though James was only a baby at the time—and we all thought it was one of the others making the noise. Then there was that infernal rocking chair that wouldn’t stay quiet. Dad eventually threw it out.”
Neil frowned. “We have a rocking chair, but I can’t say it’s been loud.”
That’s right; he hasn’t heard it yet. Mara opened her mouth to say something but decided to let Chris continue her story instead.
“Mum says she felt cold spots and sometimes even presences. But she only told me that years after we moved, so I don’t know how accurate it is. What else? Uh, sometimes the tap water would run red.”
“Rust,” Mara said, and Chris shrugged.
“Could be. My younger brother said he heard crying at night. I remember my parents arguing a bunch, but I’m not sure about what. Mum was convinced our house was haunted, and she tried to call local priests, but none of them wanted anything to do with it. One thing that really freaked us out was the master-bedroom door. It had scratches over the wood. Dad sanded them off on our second day in the house, but on the tenth, the marks were back.”
“Seriously?” Neil’s face looked calm, but he’d clasped his hands on the table, and his knuckles bulged white from the tension. “We’ve seen that door. You’re saying the marks… reappeared?”
“Are you sure we’re talking about the same door? Because Pop destroyed it. When the marks came back on the tenth day, he pulled the door off its hinges, took it out to the backyard, and chopped it into little slivers. I remember being really scared. My pop was a meek, nerdy accountant—he never even yelled at me when I misbehaved. And there he was, down to his undershirt and pyjama bottoms, dragging this huge axe towards the door with a look of such intense… ugh, what’s the word? Hatred? Malice? My mum locked the door and didn’t let him back in until he calmed down, which was hours later.”
Neil was chewing at his lip, so Mara wrapped her arm through his to calm him. “Well, we’ve got a door in the master bedroom with scores across it. You don’t know how they could have gotten there?”
Chris shook her head. “Sorry.”
“Might’ve been a vandal after you left. What else happened?”
“Well, with everything going on, Mum wanted to move. But my pop had spent a lot on the place and insisted we could stick it out. Things just got worse, though—we were getting hardly any sleep and yelling at each other during the day. James, who was just a baby, cried incessantly. Then my other brother, Paul, started acting odd and saying things that didn’t make sense. He told me children came to visit him in the middle of the night. He called them the red children.”
“Bad dreams?” Mara asked.
“Guess they might’ve been. Mum says I started sleepwalking, though of course I don’t remember it. She also says things were moved around the house. There was a bunch of junk in the attic which we mostly threw out that turned up again after a few days, and no one’s sure who brought it back in.”
Mara was engrossed. She leaned even closer to Chris, despite the tension in Neil’s arm. “What made you leave? There was a whole dinner spread over the table.”
“Ha!” Chris slapped the bench, startling Neil. “Really? No one threw it out? Sorry about that. The last day was pretty crazy. Mum and Pop had been arguing a bunch, and James seemed even more unsettled than ever. So Mum cooked up this huge meal. I think she was trying to reunite us as a family or something. But we’d barely started eating when Paul excused himself. He said he needed to get something from his bedroom. But he didn’t come back and didn’t answer when Pop called him. Mum got really worried and went to look for him. She was barely out of the dining room when she started screaming her head off.”
For every inch Mara drew nearer, Neil seemed to shrivel back an equal distance.
“We all ran out, of course, and saw Paul at the top of the stairs. He was standing on the bannister. Not beside, mind, but on. He was a plump six-year-old; it’s a miracle the wood didn’t break. Anyway, he’d somehow found a length of rope and had one end tied to the bannister and the other around his neck.”
Chris flicked a speck of dirt off the table. “I’ve never seen Pop run so fast. He got to the top of the stairs in what seemed like less than a second and pulled Paul back
just as he started to teeter forward. Good thing, too; the fall probably would have broken his neck. Mum was still screaming. The baby was crying. I saw Pop staring at Paul with this look of absolute despair. Paul’s eyes were blank. It was like the person inside had been sucked out and left nothing but a human husk. He didn’t seem to know where he was or what he was doing.”
Neil made a faint, anxious sound in his throat.
“Pop looked from Paul to us and back again then said, ‘We’re going.’ That was it. Mum took James, Paul, and me and bundled us into the car. Dad grabbed an armful of our clothes and our more important memorabilia. We stayed in a hotel room until we could rent an apartment. Then we sold Blackwood for a pittance and never went back—not even to collect our furniture.”
“Wow,” Mara breathed.
Chris shrugged and pulled a cigarette pack out of her pocket. She offered the box to Mara and Neil, both of whom declined, then lit one and took a deep drag. “My parents don’t like talking about it if they can help it, but I’ve caught snatches over the years. My pop said the house made him incredibly, irrationally angry—like he was always half a moment away from snapping. Mum says she never felt safe there. Once we were away from the building, Paul seemed to lose most of his memories of it, and James finally started sleeping through the night again.”
“Do you have any idea what could have caused that?” Neil’s voice was raspy, and Mara squeezed his arm in an effort to comfort him.
“I did some research afterwards, but I didn’t come up with any convincing theories. I’m glad we got out, though, considering its history.”
“You didn’t know about the murders when you moved in?” Mara asked.
“I didn’t—I was just a kid, remember—and Mum and Pop had only been told about the first ones. That murderer. Rob, uh—”
“Robert Kant.” Neil’s mouth was in a firm line. “What do you mean by first ones?”
“Well, he was just the beginning, wasn’t he?” Chris glanced between her companions and swore. “No one told you about the others? There’ve been a whole bunch of violent deaths in Blackwood. Some suicides. Some murders. If deaths could stain a place, consider Blackwood saturated.”
“The house is nearly a hundred and fifty years old,” Mara said, speaking carefully. “It’s a rural property that, for most of its history, would have been a long way from any hospitals. Of course you can expect a certain number of deaths to occur in it.”
“How many were there?” Neil asked, and Mara shot him a glare.
Chris shrugged. “I didn’t look into it very thoroughly. It was starting to weird me out, plus my research options were limited before the internet. But I was able to confirm eight deaths in addition to Robert’s murders.”
“Jeeze,” Neil said.
“There’s nothing wrong with the house.” Mara was starting to feel attacked as though the criticisms levelled at Blackwood applied to her personally. “I’m sorry you didn’t have a pleasant two weeks there, Chris, but everything you’ve told me is explainable. Of course you were all on edge after a fortnight of disturbed sleep and a crying baby. And Paul—you said he was only six, right? Kids often do stupid, bizarre things. If you’re trying to imply he was possessed or—”
“I never said he was,” Chris said.
Neil leaned close. “Mara, calm down.”
“Okay.” Mara inhaled deeply and tried to force her voice back to its previous subdued volume. “Sorry. But I really do think your experiences were a combination of bad luck, a stressful situation, and group hysteria. No offense.”
“None taken.” Chris exhaled a plume of smoke and gave Mara a searching look. “I get the impression you don’t believe in ghosts.”
“I’d put more stock in the tooth fairy being real.”
“I never believed in them when I was a kid,” Chris said, turning to gaze over the drop-off to the blue lake below. “And truthfully, I have no clue what I believe now. But, for those two weeks I was inside Blackwood, every shred of my being knew that ghosts were real. I wouldn’t return there for all the money in the world.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Dusk
“For those two weeks, I knew ghosts were real,” Mara mimicked around a mouthful of the burger Neil had bought her before leaving the eatery. “Could she even hear herself?”
“Hmm.” Neil kept his eyes on the road. The hardness hadn’t faded from around his mouth.
“Clearly, something weird was happening to them—but it wasn’t supernatural. They were strung out and stressed and went into it with preconceived notions of the house being tainted by previous deaths. I mean, how ridiculous is that?”
Neil glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Did you know about them?”
“The other deaths? No. And I don’t want to. As Chris so elegantly showed us, becoming obsessed with a supposedly grisly history can only build up ideas about what your own experience should be like.”
“Hmm.”
Mara watched Neil’s face. Her rants weren’t producing the usual smiles and chuckles. She pulled a chip out of the bag and held it towards him. “Here.”
He opened his mouth, and Mara slipped it inside. She was relieved to see his face soften as he chewed it.
“Don’t let Chris worry you, okay?” She took a chip for herself and turned her attention back to the road. “It’s been twenty years since she was in Blackwood. People naturally embellish stories over time—plus, a lot of it came second-hand from her parents.”
“What about the scratches on the door? And the rocking chair she says they threw out?”
A wicked grin spread over Mara’s face. “Well, I guess Blackwood could be home to ghosts who also happen to be interior decorators. No, darling, we simply must have a rocking chair by the fire; otherwise, the house’s feng shui will be completely thrown off! Oh, and look how precious these bloody handprints are when coupled with the sinister wall writing! We simply have to add more!”
Neil finally laughed though he shook his head at the same time. “C’mon, Mara; don’t joke about stuff like that.”
“What? You can’t seriously think Chris is right.”
“I…” He hesitated. “I want to keep an open mind.”
Mara felt hot frustration bloom in her chest but squashed it. Calm down. He’s anxious. Let him process this at his own pace.
“Anyway,” Neil continued quickly, “we’ll get your surveillance equipment set up. At the very least, that should be a solution for the footsteps if they happen again.”
It was midafternoon by the time they arrived back at Blackwood. While Neil installed the webcam and generator, Mara moved through the house to reassure herself that the night-time visitor hadn’t returned during her absence. The strip of shirt was still tied around the attic trapdoor’s lock, and the rooms seemed untouched. She stopped to examine the prints on the walls of the recreation room and pressed her hand over one to measure the size. It didn’t match exactly—her hand seemed slightly larger—but the marks were smudged and overlapping, making it hard to get an accurate comparison.
“Come and have a look,” Neil called from her bedroom. Mara jogged up the stairs and found he’d set up their makeshift surveillance centre on top of the bureau.
“Sweet.” She bent to look at the setup. The laptop connected to a series of extension cords that ran out the window and down the side of the building to the generator Neil had installed in the backyard. A USB cord snaked out of the room, down the hallway, and up the stairs to the attic. The laptop showed a hazy, low-contrast image of the attic.
“It’s bad quality right now because the lighting is inconsistent,” Neil said, indicating the shafts of light coming through the holes. “Its night vision isn’t great, either, but it’ll be good enough to see anyone who’s up there.”
“I’m not expecting them to be back tonight,” Mara said, thinking about the indent in the grass. “But better safe than sorry.”
“Right. Now, if there’s nothing else I can help you with, I
’ll go and fix that hole I abandoned yesterday.”
Mara pecked Neil’s cheek and watched him leave. She then took one final look at the laptop screen, on which the cluttered furniture and decaying boxes seemed to blend into each other, before turning to follow Neil downstairs.
She’d been procrastinating because she knew it would be a slow, labour-intensive task, but it was time to clear out the kitchen drawers and clean what she could. As she plucked dead insects off the cutlery, she marvelled at how different it felt to know the person who had owned them. She’d had no scruples about adopting the furniture before, but the more intimate knowledge of the family that had purchased, used, and enjoyed the knives she was polishing made her feel vaguely squeamish. Relax. It’s no different than second-hand. And you’ve owned a lot of second-hand stuff over the last few years.
She could hear Neil whistling between the whine of the circular saw and the drill. It was a comforting sort of noise and made her feel less alone. The daylight gradually turned to grey tones as the sun dipped behind the trees. The light was affecting Mara’s eyes, so she set aside the still-to-be-cleaned plates and shelved the washed ones in the freshly scrubbed cupboard. Neil appeared in the doorway.
“Well, your dining room is officially whole,” he said as Mara wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his chest. “And I got partway through the rotten patch in the foyer, too. I can finish it off tomorrow.”
“Heading home now? Say hi to your mum for me.”
“Don’t worry; I’m coming back. I’ll have dinner with Mum and make sure she’s settled then spend the night with you.”
Mara frowned. The talk with Chris really unsettled him. But this is my house, and they’re my house’s quirks. I can’t rely on Neil; I’ve got to figure this stuff out for myself. “As much as I appreciate the offer, I’m pretty well set up here. I’ll call you if there’s any sign of trouble, okay?”
“Mara—”
“No, come on. I’ve got to draw a line somewhere. You already skipped work today because of me. I don’t want to suck up any more of your time.”
