“And Jacqueline forgave you, Colonel. Your wife had just died. You were being called off to war. What else could you have done but let her leave with Susannah? You might have felt guilt and regret, but that beautiful, innocent child understood. She grew up, she lived her life, and she forgave you. And now it’s time you forgave yourself. You don’t have to be angry anymore. You were still loved.”
The house was eerily silent. Nate lowered his phone and put his arm around Anna, who was staring at him with curious awe. Nate didn’t know if his little exposition would make a difference. He had only been able to connect the dots a few hours before while sipping bourbon with Shelby. But it was what he had.
And if it didn’t work, Nate was going to come back as a ghost himself, and torture Rufus’s ass for all eternity.
A rumble began to vibrate through the house. It started as a distant thumping before quickly increasing to ear-splitting volume, filled with screeching whistles that reminded Nate of an old steam engine signaling All Aboard. The walls began to tremble and the floor shook sideways. Anna covered her ears to block out the noise. Des crumpled into a little ball at their feet. Matt crouched down as if the ceiling was going to cave in.
So this was it. His little gambit had failed, and now they all were going to be sucked through a temporal rift and slopped into some dumpster in a back alleyway of Hell.
Nate clutched onto Anna and hugged her with all his might.
Goodbye, World.
In an instant, the ceiling split open diagonally between the staircase and the corner that was on fire. An old lead pipe cocked out, squealed hideously, then burst open to rain forth a torrent of water across the room. Nate watched in awe as the crackling flames gradually became smaller, smoldered, then were finally extinguished. Smoke and steam filled the room, obscuring visibility to just a couple feet.
“What happened?” Des coughed.
Heavy, deliberate footsteps thudded down the stairs. They were coming closer.
Nate swished the smoke away in an effort to see. “Rufus?”
The footsteps stopped.
It couldn’t be. Could it?
“Hello?” Nate called again.
The reply came in a raspy cough. The smoke parted and out came the rambling form of Nate’s dad, dressed only in his boxers and an unbuttoned shirt. He held a dripping plunger in one hand.
“Damn, son. That blocked toilet was one for the ages! I had to plunge that sumbitch like a pumpjack on an oil well! But, on the good news front, after flushing it like forty times, I finally got it unblocked. Good as new.”
Nate stared at his father. Then they both looked up at the water raining from the ceiling.
“Looks like you got a problem with your pipes, son. How’d that happen?”
“I wonder.”
A commotion sounded out on the front porch. The shadowy form of Brad appeared in the doorway—holding Anna’s hunched-over ex-husband by the neck in some sort of MMA submission hold. Adolf was trotting on the side as an escort.
Anna stiffened. “Rick?”
“Let go of me,” Rick started to say.
Brad, who was naked, tightened his hold. “Don’t talk to me, pal. I’m a little freaking on edge right now!”
Sarah appeared right behind them, still clutching her bedsheet. “We found this creep out in the yard, pouring gasoline on Matt’s truck.”
Adolf growled.
“Rick!” Anna shrieked. “Did you start this fire?”
“I ain’t got nuthin’ to say.”
“Good, then you can say your nuthin’ to the judge who’s gonna lock your ass up,” Brad said, jerking Rick’s head upright.
The heavy wet air had helped clear the smoke, and Nate quickly glanced around the parlor. Shelby stood confused by the couch. Elvira looked like a drowned hedgehog. His mom still held her bucket and was scowling at his father. Matt was trying to wipe his glasses clear of the water so he could see. Anna and Des were right next to him, safe.
The fire was out.
The storm had passed and the night air was still.
And the chickens, the ghoul, the Mantazyx—all the ghostly invaders who had been about to devour their souls—they were all gone.
And somehow, Nate felt there was finally some strange sort of peace around him.
Act 6
The House That Jac(queline) Built
33
One Year Later
Sunlight streamed through the window past the paisley curtains on the far wall. Nate opened his eyes with reluctance. As he stretched his groggy body under the bedsheets, he cast a quick glance over at his phone on the nightstand.
8:24 a.m. He had overslept.
Nate kicked the sheets off and pulled on some jeans and a red sweater. As he staggered to the bathroom across the hall, the smells of bacon and coffee assaulted his nostrils in a symphony of fragrances that made his stomach rumble like a Hemi. He tried in vain to smooth down an impressive bedhead over the sink before stepping back into the hall and walking the short distance to the kitchen.
Anna had her back to him as she worked the various frying pans on the stove. Nate came up behind her. He slid his arms around her waist in a surprise embrace that made her jump.
“Jeez, Nate! Be careful, I’ve got all kinds of hot grease over here.”
“Good morning, beautiful.”
“Good morning, babe. Nowgetoffame.”
Nate let go, giving one last caress of the baby bump that was beginning to form under Anna’s apron. Fifteen weeks. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought of a miniature Nate, swaddled up in a baby blanket and cradled in his arms. Who would have thought that he’d be settling down and working on a family? Ever?
He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down next to Des at the breakfast table. Des had graduated from Barbies and was now working on baby dolls. She had a blanket around “Sophie” and was pretending to shake the toy bottle onto her forearm to test the temperature.
“Hi there, Des.”
“Hi, Nate.”
“Are you practicing again for your baby brother or sister?”
“Oh, yes,” Des said proudly. “I’m going to take real good care of her.”
“Her, huh? You think it’s going to be a girl?”
“Yes, it’s definitely going to be a girl, my girl. I’m going to help do everything,” she said. Then she took the toy bottle and jammed it into the doll’s face, with all the gentleness of a paramedic injecting adrenaline into a heart attack victim.
“Huh. Well, let’s hope the baby’s a tough little nut,” Nate said.
Anna cleared her throat. “Nate, would you go check on the guests? Tell them I’ve almost got another batch of bacon and eggs ready.”
“Sure.”
Nate stood and went through the swinging door to the dining room. Three of the oddest-looking couples were busy eating, drinking, and arguing over the large breakfast table.
Richard Ross, from New York, saw him come in and pointed an accusatory sausage link at him. “Hey. You.”
“Good morning, Richard.”
“What kind of bed-and-breakfast is this? Ginny and I expected turn-down service last night and instead our bed looked like burglars broke in and trashed the place.”
“I’m sorry, Richard. It must have been the ghost. He doesn’t always play ball. We’ll do our best to keep him distracted tonight.”
Claire Washington clutched her husband Miles’s arm. “The ghost visited your room?” she whispered, astonished.
“Maybe,” Richard said, “if ‘visiting’ means beating the shit out of everything.”
Claire and Miles looked longingly into each other’s’ eyes. Their room, they mouthed to each other.
“Again, sorry Richard. I’ll try to get it fixed. In the meantime, Anna’s got another pile of food ready if anyone is still hungry.”
Richard licked his fingers and flung his black and white scarf back over his shoulder. “Sure.”
Running a B&B had never be
en in Nate’s wildest imagination when he had come to Louisiana. But in the time since The Incident, which had required another six months of repair and construction, he and Anna had fallen wildly in love. Going back to work would have been a problem. There were no tech jobs nearby. Anna was unwilling to leave anyway. So, when Matt made an offhand suggestion one day about taking advantage of the house’s heritage, it seemed like the logical thing to do.
And so here they were, the proprietors of one of South Central Louisiana’s few Historical Haunted Plantations. Nate had learned his lesson and hired Matt as general contractor, and what a job he did: the rooms looked great, the plumbing worked, even the doors and windows were square. And the incredible irony of it all was that thanks to Rick’s little arson incident, insurance had paid for it all.
Nate strolled back into the kitchen just as Anna finished loading up another platter.
“I don’t think Rufus likes the Rosses,” he said.
“Do you blame him?” Anna paused. “Wait. Why?”
“He trashed their room last night.”
Anna wiped her hands on her apron. “If I see Gilligan, I’ll ask him to pass the word along to tone it down. We still have two more nights before the next guests.”
“Okay. What’s on the schedule for tonight again?”
“Haunted hayride through Frightening Forest.”
“Elvira's scheduled as the guide?”
“Yep.”
“Oh Lord help us,” Nate said.
“It’s what we have, honey. Isn’t Matt almost done with the barn renovation?”
“He said he still had a good two weeks to go before he’s comfortable that the joists aren’t going to, uh, collapse. But yeah, once that’s finished and all the staging is done, I think Rufus will have a blast.”
“Maybe you should go check on it.”
Nate thought about that. “Yeah, sure. Okay.”
He ate a hurried breakfast and grabbed his jacket to head outside. The autumn air was crisp and clear, with birds singing and leaves showing off a wide array of color. Shelby was going to have a blast making Fall centerpieces.
“The Barn,” as it had come to be known, was the old carriage house that while referenced in Susannah’s diary had remained hidden for the better part of a year. Nate had only discovered it by accident after Adolf had taken off chasing some rabbits, and there it was, hiding behind some evergreen trees as a nice little gem. Originally the idea had been to fix it up and use it as part of the haunted tour.
More recently, with guests coming to the house on a regular basis, it had served as a refuge for a certain member of the deceased.
Nate opened the door to reveal what was clearly still a construction zone. Stalls on the far wall had trash and rubble in them, while the joists had temporary supports to reinforce what had previously been a sagging roof. A pair of saw horses held lumber planks next to a miter saw. Most importantly, a small card table was pushed against the wall with an all-too-familiar communication device unfolded on top.
Nate put his fingers on the Ouija shuttle and started to move it in a figure-eight.
“I heard the Rosses’ room got trashed last night, Rufus,” Nate said aloud. “Was that you?”
The shuttle began to pause on individual letters. A-S-S-H-O-
“I got it, I got it. I don’t disagree, either. But try to tone it down a little—at least until the last night, okay? These people are paying us money. And I promise Matt will be done with all the noise out here soon. Okay?”
The shuttle jerked around in agitation until it finally rested on the word Maybe.
“Good enough.”
Nate stood. As he headed back out the door, a faint scratching echoed from the rafters. Nate looked up and saw Gilligan carefully making his way down from the old hayloft until he reached the ground. The tabby rubbed against his pant leg.
“Up to no good, I see,” Nate said. “Don’t give him any ideas, little buddy. You know he’ll do it.”
Meow.
Back outside, Nate closed the door and once again took in the fresh air. For some odd reason he thought back to that Thursday so long ago, when Mr. Chalmers had booted him to the curb. How dark things had seemed back then. Now he had nothing but an exciting future full of possibilities, with a wife he had never expected to meet, and the very strange group of people that apparently came with her.
That Thursday had turned out to be the best day of his life. And he couldn’t have been happier.
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There is a nugget of true horror in the pages you just read. But more on that in a moment.
First, thanks for reading The House That Jack Built. I truly hope you enjoyed the story. If you did—please leave a review online! It only takes a minute and would mean so much. You can get yours started by clicking HERE.
It’s a lot of work to write a novel. Lots of looooooooooooong work. So thanks to my wife Kristi for her continual encouragement (or, depending on the circumstances, “tolerance”); my beta readers—especially (again) Chris, Scott, and Brian; and all of my friends and family for their unending, misplaced support.
So what’s so horrific about this novel? Chapter One. All inspired by true events from adventures in the software industry. Yep. Now if that isn’t scary, I don’t know what is.
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Dedication
To Kristi, Garrett, Karys, and Hudson
who put up with all my crap
Copyright and Disclaimers
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT
Copyright © 2016 by Jonathan Paul Isaacs
All rights reserved
Table of Contents
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Act I
1
2
3
4
Act 2
5
6
7
8
9
Act 3
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Act 4
19
20
21
22
23
24
Act 5
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
Act 6
33
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Dedication
Copyright and Disclaimers
Table of Contents
The House That Jack Built: A Humorous Haunted House Fiasco Page 21
