“The rift is behind you!” said a voice that sounded like Elvira.
“What?” Nate said.
Matt shouted through the confusion. “Run, Nate!”
“Huh?”
“That ghoul whore-bitch is coming toward you!”
All Nate saw was white smoke. He swung the fire extinguisher canister out in self-defense. But as the canister finished his arc, Nate lost his footing on the floor slick with rain, and he was falling backward, falling, falling...
Nate sat down hard on the floor, only he wasn’t in the parlor anymore. There was no smoke. There was no noise. There was no light, yet somehow he could still see. He looked around at a room that greatly resembled his attic.
Confused, Nate pushed himself up. The act of standing made everything blurry and dreamlike. Rafters turned to shadow. The window nearby rotated. What was going on?
He heard noises coming from the far end. Nate crept forward with a timid pace, hunched over, ready to go down swinging with the fire extinguisher.
“… and cue the Mantazyx. Wait for it, Cat, wait for it … ha! Look at how small she can bunch herself up! That’s outstanding! Heh, there’s her boyfriend, he’s climbing the walls like a circus monkey!”
Nate had difficulty seeing very far. The whole world around him was blurry and indistinct like he was scuba diving deep underwater. He stalked toward a ghostly silhouette of a man standing in front of a big table. The figure had his back to him and was studying a pile of maps on the tabletop.
“Oh, that’s grand!” the figure chortled. “She’s nekkid!”
Nate now stood just a few feet away. He could barely discern through the blur what appeared on the papers to be a plot of a building and surrounding area. Nate suddenly realized it was a drawing of his house’s floorplan, and the ghostly man was deeply engrossed in studying some unseen detail.
Another set of eyes was also staring at the maps. Nate realized with a start that it was—
“Gilligan!”
Startled, Gilligan popped straight up. He landed a split second later and scrambled off the table in a mad frenzy. In the process, the cat knocked over a bottle of some kind of brown liquid that quickly began to saturate the drawings.
“Cat! What the—” said the ghostly figure.
He turned around. His figure was transparent and shimmering white, but Nate could clearly see his chin beard, features, and old-timey clothes.
The ghost’s eyes narrowed. “You.”
“What are you doing to my guests?” Nate said. “This is my house!”
“This is my house!” roared the ghost. “You think you can come in here and rip up the whole place? I told you before to get out. Now it’s time you reap the consequences of your refusal!”
“Consequences?” Nate frowned and leaned over to get a better view of the maps on the table. “What are you doing?”
The ghost stepped to the side to block him.
“Move,” Nate said.
“No,” said the ghost.
Nate bobbed his head back and forth. The ghost shuffled, and raised his hands to obscure Nate’s line of sight.
“Oh, come on, this is ridiculous.” Nate could manage glimpses of the papers, given that the ghost was transparent after all. He looked at the bottle that Gilligan knocked over and the mess it had made.
“You drink Dr. Pepper?”
The ghost was puzzled for a moment. “Well … hell yeah,” it replied. “Nectar of the gods, it is—oh, tarnation, look what you’ve gone and done! It’s running all over my battle plans!”
Nate watched as the ghost frantically tried to blot up the spill. The sequence was bizarre. Some things the ghost could interact with and touch, others his hands just seemed to pass right through. Nate stood momentarily dumbfounded until he felt something brush up against his leg.
“Gilligan!” he whispered. “Where have you been? You’re hanging out up here? With … with …”
With the ghost of Colonel Rufus McAuliffe? Nate rubbed his temple. This was crazy.
“No, no! This is all wrong now. No!” Rufus was trying to wipe the spill from the map and just making a bigger mess. He turned on Nate. “Look at the muddle you’ve caused, fool! My reanimation powder was all set for me to sprinkle onto to the cemetery, but now it’s oozed into the chicken coop! Dang, that’s going to be weird. And my rift I inked up is all smeary!”
They blinked in silence at each other.
“Look, asshole,” Nate said, “this is my house. Stop jacking with us and leave us alone!”
“Oh, no-no-no. I thought we just established the facts. I was here first. What do you think gives you the right to be here, to sell off my belongings, to rip down my walls and make all sorts of racket into the night?”
“My Aunt Edna willed it to me. This place is mine now.”
Rufus laughed. “Oh, Edna. She was total crackers. I let her live here because I felt sorry for her. The house wasn’t hers to give.”
“The tax office of Acadia Parish says otherwise.”
“Well, good for them. You can ruminate on your supposed legal rights after I suck your ass down into Hades.”
Gilligan batted Nate’s leg. He picked him up and held him under one arm. “And another thing. Leave Gilligan out of this, too.”
“Gilligan?” Rufus seemed puzzled. “You told me your name was Emperor Felix Stormtail Sabreclaws.”
Meow, said Gilligan, ears back and head down.
A strange sort of steam was rising from the plans on the table. Nate stared at it, and Rufus’s ghostly hands went up to his forehead as the Dr. Pepper popped and fizzed.
“Time for you to get out of my way, cretin,” Rufus said. “Your lesson ain’t done quite yet.”
“Hold on there,” Nate replied. “I know a lot about you. I know Edna was your great-great-grandniece on your brother’s side.”
“How do you know that?”
“Ancestry.com. I worked on our family tree every time I went to town to do laundry.”
Rufus scrunched up his brow. “You talkin’ about that on-the-line thing, ain’t ya, with your little dot-com words?”
“Yes, I am. Edna’s branch of the family tree got really confusing, by the way. Your brother’s son Xavier had a ton of illegitimate kids.”
“He always had trouble keeping his pecker in his pants.”
“Edna was more than just some tenant you allowed to live here at your whim. She was family.”
Rufus scowled in thought.
“She also willed this house to your great-great-great-grand … uh … second nephew … something like that. That’s me. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“No. What? Speak plain.”
“We’re related.”
“You and Edna?”
“You and me.”
The ghost bristled for a moment before folding his arms across his chest. His expression projected defiance.
“Listen here, you whipper-snapper. I wasn’t born yesterday. I ain’t gonna give you no slack because you invented some story about being kin. I know a tall tale when I hear one.”
“Oh, it’s true,” Nate insisted. “I’ve learned lots of things over the past couple months. I know you ran a cotton plantation—”
“Common knowledge.”
“You fought in the Civil War—”
“That’s War of Northern Aggression, and so what, it’s an obvious association.”
“You got eaten by an alligator—”
“An unfortunate, if ignoble end.”
“I know Susannah adopted your retarded daughter—”
“DON’T TALK ABOUT JACQUELINE THAT WAY!”
Without warning, Rufus punched Nate in the nose.
… And Nate was falling, falling backward through the rift, with a blinding white light all around him.
32
Nate found himself standing in the hallway on the second floor. How had he arrived here?
He was confused about what had just happened. Had he jus
t dreamed about Rufus? Maybe he got knocked on the head and had momentarily blacked out?
A woman was screaming and cursing from somewhere on the other side of the house. Nate trotted toward the noise. On the way, he stopped next to a closed door from which strange grunting sounds were emanating.
“Huuuunnnnnnnhhhhhh.”
The upstairs bathroom.
“Dad?”
“Huuuunnnnnnnhhhhhh.”
“Dad!”
“What is it?” said a muffled voice.
“You okay in there?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
A pause. “Yeah. Just … working hard.”
Nate wrinkled his nose as a faint vapor escaped from under the door. “Can I get you anything? Laxatives? Uh, matches?”
“Nope. I got my Sudoku book, I’m good!”
“Okay,” Nate replied, not really sure what else to say.
The screaming woman’s voice was joined now by that of a man dropping F-bombs, so Nate left his dad to his work. The noise was coming from Brad and Sarah’s bedroom. He edged up from the side and gently pushed open the door. Almost immediately Sarah burst out of the room, clutching only a bedsheet to her naked body.
“Hey, are you okay—”
Sarah didn’t slow down in the slightest. She ran past Nate at full bore, screaming wildly, until she disappeared down the stairs.
The sounds of scuffling and glass breaking caught Nate’s attention. He stepped into the bedroom just in time to see Brad’s bare backside jumping out the window onto the front balcony. Nate almost called out after him except that standing on top of the bed was the thing.
Rufus had said something about a Mantazyx. Apparently, that was some kind of giant praying mantis-looking thing, and the ghost version was currently straddling the bed and gnashing its mandibles in a terrifying way. With Brad flopping around outside like a fish out of water, the Mantazyx turned its huge, ugly bug-eyes toward Nate.
Nate suddenly got very, very mad.
“Get out of my house, motherfucker!” Nate looked around the bedroom and grabbed a broom out of the corner. He swatted at the ghost. “Get out! You, and Rufus, and your ghoul-friend! And definitely your rift! Get. Out!”
The Mantazyx looked confused at how some corporeal meat bag could possibly think to attack it. Every broom strike went through as if its body were made of mist, creating mini vortexes that wisped through the air for a moment before settling back into their original shape. Uncertain as to the danger, it apparently decided discretion was the better part of valor. The Mantazyx propelled itself off the bed in a giant leap. Its ghostly form galloped straight through Nate on its way into the hallway. It felt slimy.
There was more commotion still coming from downstairs. Nate took a breath and steeled himself with his broom. He almost didn’t notice the small creature rubbing against his leg.
“Gilligan!”
Meow.
The cat swiped his tail around Nate’s calf.
“Gilligan, you’ve got some explaining to do later.”
Meow.
Nate marched out the door and back down the staircase.
The front parlor was absolute mayhem.
Flickering orange light filled the room from the substantial fire burning in the far corner. Nate saw his mom sling a bucket of water at the flames before she dashed back toward the kitchen. Meanwhile, the Mantazyx had positioned itself in the front doorway as if it intended to keep anyone from leaving. Elvira was squaring off with it, holding some ridiculous looking wooden box that sprouted handles and a feather duster out one end. And Shelby was standing by the couch, screaming like a girl and hurling pillows at some unseen threat in the dark.
Nate heard Anna’s voice shout get off my daughter, you bitch from the other corner. He turned to see her and Matt grappling with the ghoul-like corpse that had clutched his arm earlier. Racing around the couch—and dodging a decorative pillow—Nate dog piled onto the ghoul. Elbows flew with the intensity of a WWE match until finally Matt stood up. He was holding an arm and a leg. They weren’t attached to anything.
“Hell yeah,” Matt yelled. “Get ‘er done!”
Nate helped Anna to her feet. She in turn pulled up little Des, looking disheveled and bewildered.
“Are you okay?” Nate asked Anna.
An odd noise rolled nearby through the room. Bok bok baaaahk.
“Anna! Are you okay?”
Though she was looking directly at him, it took a moment for comprehension to set in. “Nate?”
“Yes.”
“That thing was trying to steal Des,” she said in a weak voice.
“Well, not anymore!” Matt declared, and he let out a rebel yell.
Nate turned to the redneck. “I thought you were scared of ghosts?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I checked my security footage and saw you running out of the house.”
“You saw that?”
“Yes.”
“With the bath?”
“Yes.”
Matt wiped his brow with his forearm, still holding a femur. “Please erase it.”
Bok bok baaaahk.
“Okay, never mind. Done.” Nate knelt down to Des. “You okay, darling?”
“Yeah,” the little girl sniffled.
The splash of another water bucket came from the other corner, followed by the hiss of steam.
“Get out of the way, you foul beast!” said Elvira, threatening the Mantazyx with the feather duster box.
Shelby shrieked unintelligibly as he threw a ceramic knickknack across the room.
“Nate,” Anna said, clutching her daughter. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
He peered over her shoulder. Elvira had managed to corner the Mantazyx to the side of the doorway.
“The front door is clear.” Nate pushed Des into Anna’s arms. “Matt, help her make a break for it.”
Anna’s eyes grew wide with shock. “You’re … you’re not staying, are you?”
Nate looked at her with resignation. “I can’t leave, Anna. This is my house. I’ve put too much time and sweat in to run away. I’m not going to let the Colonel take it from me. I’m going to fight.”
“Let’s do it!” shouted Matt, caught in the exhilaration of battle. He was ready to rumble.
“The Colonel?” asked Anna.
Bok bok baaaahk.
“What’s that noise? It’s getting louder,” Des said.
“It’s the chickens!” babbled Shelby. He threw a metal candlestick through the air like a cruise missile.
Nate stood up and gasped. A row of chickens was marching through the front door—except it was more accurate to say they were staggering, and twitching, and glowing a fluorescent lime green like they had been hatched from a coop inside Chernobyl.
And they were clucking their way toward him.
“What the hell are those?” Anna demanded.
Matt, Anna, Nate, and Des all retreated until they felt their backs against the wall. Trapped.
The leading zombie chicken was just five feet away now. It twisted its head three-hundred-sixty degrees before it looked up at Nate and, with bulging eyeballs, hissed at him like a cat.
“This is the most absurd fucking way to die,” Anna said.
A throw pillow came sailing over the couch and took the chicken out with a startled BOK. But there were more of them, dozens, streaming through the front door and on the hunt for blood, or brains, or whatever it was zombie chicken went hunting for.
This was it. The Colonel was going to win.
The Colonel.
Nate stood straight up. Staring straight at the ceiling, he shouted, “She forgave you, you know.”
Bok bok baaaahk. The next chicken was getting close. Matt swung his femur like a five iron and sent the chicken tumbling into Elvira’s backside.
“What are you doing, Nate?” Anna said.
“She forgave you, Colonel,” he continued. “Little Jacqueline. She
knew you were in an impossible situation. She knew what she was, that she was different. It’s called Down Syndrome now. Her mind might have stayed at the level of a child for her whole life, but it doesn’t mean she wasn’t intelligent in her own way. Susannah helped her understand. She accepted it, and forgave you for having to give her up.”
The air in the parlor immediately dropped in temperature. The Mantazyx stopped sparring with Elvira and stepped back into the corner. The ghoul, now without an arm and a leg, popped up into a sitting position on the floor and turned its hideous head to listen. Even the zombie chickens paused in their murderous chicken bloodlust.
“Explaaaaaaain. Bok!” said the nearest chicken.
“Did that chicken just talk?” Des asked.
Nate pulled out his phone and quickly scrolled through some of his notes. “I found Susannah’s diary up in the attic. I know it ends upon her departure—she forgot to take it with her. But luckily Susannah continued to write throughout her life. She liked to write a lot. And a large number of her later notes were found and put online as part of the National Archives, believe it or not.”
The flames crackled defiantly in the corner, blackening the paint on the walls, but everything else was still.
“When Susannah got back to Tennessee, she insisted on raising and taking care of Jacqueline herself. She wrote how much she acted like Sophie as she grew up, too. Her smile, her personality, her sense of humor. Not the temper, luckily, though she liked to play jokes on people. Well, it turns out that little Jacqueline grew up and got married, believe it or not. She met a nice fellow named Will who accepted her for who she was, and fell in love. Even though you abandoned her, she still turned out okay!”
The chickens lowered their heads and started to growl.
“Nate!” Anna hissed.
“Sorry—forget I said that,” Nate said. “Anyway, Will and Jacqueline lived a very happy life. And they had children. And grandchildren. And eventually they had my father, who had me, and here I am.”
The zombie chickens fanned out into attack position.
“Look, don’t you understand, Rufus? I’m sorry about the noise. I’m sorry about the disruption to your peace and quiet. But Edna wanted me to come here. Not to punish you. Not for me to flip the house. She wanted me here because I’m descended from Jacqueline. I’m descended from you. Really. Edna was trying to reunite us. She was trying to bring you the family you never had a chance to have. In her way, she was looking to bring Jacqueline home to you.
The House That Jack Built: A Humorous Haunted House Fiasco Page 20
