The Haunted

by Frank Peretti

  © 2017 Frank Peretti

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-3132-1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Gearbox

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  1. Clyde Morris

  2. The Phenomenon

  3. Encounters

  4. Earthsong

  5. Gustav Svensson

  6. The House

  7. Explorations

  8. During the Night

  9. Four Messages

  10. A Heated Debriefing

  11. Daniel

  12. One Final Message

  13. The Prison

  14. The Third Death

  15. A House Afire

  16. The Monster

  17. A Hero

  18. Reflection

  Selected Books by Frank Peretti

  CHAPTER

  1

  Clyde Morris

  Clyde Morris looked entirely the part of a wraith: neck tendons tuned like a harp, white hair wild, fogging corneas following unseen demons about the old dining room. “My life, my years, all over. Done! Can’t reach them from here, can’t change them, no more chances!”

  His frumpish wife, Nadine, could make no sense of his ravings, his clenching and unclenching hands, his rising, pacing, sitting again, his seeing horrible things. She reached across the table to touch him but drew her hand back—it felt chilled as with frost.

  He leaned, nearly lunged over the table, his face close to hers. “It knows me! It knows all about me!”

  From down the hall came the shriek of door hinges. Clyde’s eyes rolled toward the sound, his veiny face contorted. A wind rustled the curtains, fluttered a newspaper, swung the chandelier so it jangled.

  Clyde stood and the wind hit him broadside, pushing him toward the hall.

  “Clyde!”

  He reached across the space between them but the wind, roaring, carried him down the hall along with cushions, newspapers, the tablecloth.

  A doorway in the hall, glowing furnace red, pulled him. He craned forward to fight it, stumbled, grappled, and slid backward toward it.

  The doorway sucked him in like a dust particle. A high-pitched scream faded into infinite distance until cut off when the door slammed shut.

  The wind stopped. The newspaper pages settled to the floor. A doily fluttered down like a snowflake. The chandelier jangled through two diminishing swings, then stopped and hung still.

  Now the only sound was the wailing of the widow, flung to the floor in the old Victorian house.

  CHAPTER

  2

  The Phenomenon

  When A.J. Van Epps first called to relate what had happened—or allegedly happened—to crusty old Clyde Morris, I fidgeted, perused lecture notes, indulged him. Why would a learned academic and researcher like Van Epps trouble himself—and now me—with a campfire tale too easily debunked to warrant the effort? The largely one-sided conversation took a feeble turn toward interesting only when I discerned in Van Epps’ voice a tone of dread so unlike him, and it was after that hook was set that he sprang his proposal: Would I come and assist in the investigation? Would I help him regain his objectivity? Would I lend my knowledge and experience?

  Oh yes, exactly what my frayed nerves needed. Being in a near plane crash and hauled into a misadventure in a so-called “Institute for Advanced Psychic Studies,” not to mention having my personal and deepest fears vivisected by one and the same, was a sleepy, monotonous ordeal. I needed the change.

  Besides . . .

  We were old friends and associates. I would be lecturing at Evergreen State College in the Puget Sound area in the next few days. Of course I could afford a side trip to help him look into the matter. I agreed to come—and kicked myself the moment I ended the call.

  McKinney here. Dr. James McKinney, sixty, professor of philosophy and comparative religions, emeritus, at large, published, and so on and so forth. Generally, a scholar of religious claims and systems, but specifically, a skeptic, and it is to that last title I devote the most attention. This, I trust, lends explanation for why I and Andrea Goldstein, my young assistant, drove our rental car through the meandering and sloping village of Port Avalon and located the quaint Victorian residence of Dr. A.J. Van Epps.

  Van Epps, thinner and grayer than I remembered, took our coats, then expended no more than a minute or two on greetings and how-are-yous before he led us to his kitchen table and brought up a photograph on his computer: A two-story Victorian home, dull purple, richly detailed, turreted, with a covered porch and sleepy front windows.

  “My interest, of course, is to ascertain how it works, what empowers it, what measure or means of controlled stimuli will produce predictable results.”

  Andi and I studied the photo. I saw a house; it was Andi’s way to see more, always more, which was one reason I took her along.

  “Seven panels in the door,” she said. “Each window has seven panes. There are seven front steps.”

  Not that I appreciated her timing. “Save it for later,” I advised, then asked Van Epps, “So this is a house here in town?”

  Van Epps inserted an artful pause before answering, “Sometimes.”

  This whole affair was ludicrous enough. “A.J., I’m not known for my patience.”

  “Check out the landmarks: This tree with the large knot; this fire hydrant; this seam in the street.” He arrow-keyed to a second photograph, what one would call a vacant lot: some brush, some trees, nothing else . . . save for the same knotted tree, fire hydrant, and seam in the street in front. “I took this soon after the first. The house was there, and then it wasn’t.”

  I didn’t stifle an irritated sigh. “If I may—just to cover the obvious—these photos are digital.”

  He sighed back. “I didn’t alter them. No Photoshop.”

  “And you’ve presented them in the order you took them?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I’m to take you seriously?”

  He leaned back and held my gaze with his own. “I’ve found something, James, something atypical. As you’ll observe, Port Avalon is one of those . . . alternative kinds of town that attracts all brands of superstition, so the locals have their legends about the House, how it’s a harbinger of death, how it knows you, follows you . . .” With an unbecoming cryptic note, he added, “Takes you.”

  I rubbed my eyes, mostly to buy time. I was at a loss.

  “I came to Port Avalon with the specific objective of encountering this House in order to study it, know it. I saw it for myself a month ago, even before the incident with Clyde Morris, and yes, there is something about it that would trigger such legends, so I have to ask, what is it really? And can we control it—maybe harness whatever powers it?”

  “Harness? What are you ta
lking about?”

  He fidgeted, composing an answer. “Some friends and I are interested in occult power—not as occult power, you understand, but as . . . power. Power that could be useful.”

  “Friends?”

  “Investors, shall we say.”

  I knew he wouldn’t go any further into it. Maybe another time. “A.J., if you want me to bring balance to this—”

  “Absolutely! I can see the handwriting on the wall, this is no plaything.”

  “Then I’ll be skeptical. Digital photographs? Legends? To waste my time is to insult me. Show me evidence beyond this.”

  “There’s Nadine, Clyde Morris’s widow. You should hear her account. She was there, in the House, when it took him.”

  I rose deliberately. “Then we’ll go there now.” I turned to get my coat.

  The closet door was locked.

  “Other door,” Van Epps said.

  I found the closet, grabbed and put on my coat. Andi threw hers on.

  “There’s more,” said Van Epps, clicking on another file.

  It was my role to get him on track and I persisted. I recognized his favorite jacket in the front closet: fine leather, and a distinctive smell. I grabbed it and held it out to him.

  With his eyes turned away from his computer, he swiveled it to show us another photo, that of a ghostly old man with glassy eyes and hunched shoulders glaring at the camera. The lighting was rather dim, the photo taken outdoors at dusk or later. “Clyde Morris.”

  I would have none of the chill I felt and shook it off. Andi showed the same chill plainly. “He could have been dead already.” I was being sarcastic.

  “He was,” said Van Epps. “He died a week before I took this.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  Encounters

  Nadine Morris took one look at Van Epps’ photo of the House and looked away, tears once again filling her reddened eyes. She nodded yes, and Van Epps gave me a look.

  “And where was it?” he asked her.

  We were sitting in her small, long-dated living room. She pointed through her front window at the woods across the street. “It was right there, like it was waiting, like it was watching me.”

  Andi immediately pointed out the knotty tree, fire hydrant, and concrete seam.

  I had to look around Andi’s explosive red hair—like a sea urchin with a perm—but I expected as much.

  Nadine continued, “And then it was here. It wasn’t our house anymore, it was that house, and I was sitting in it and . . .” She trembled. “There was Clyde, sitting in the dining room.” She broke into a whimper. “But he was only a spirit. His time had come.”

  “He’d passed away a week before—” Van Epps began.

  I cut him off. “I want to hear it from her.”

  “At Daisy Meadows,” she said. “The assisted living facility. He died in his sleep. But the House wouldn’t let him rest. It chased his spirit around town until that night when it caught him . . . and sucked him into hell.”

  Ravings. I ventured a challenge. “How do you know he was sucked into hell?”

  “He was a difficult man, wasn’t he?” Van Epps asked.

  Nadine stiffened. “He didn’t mean to hurt me. It was the drink, you know.”

  “Objectivity! Scientific method!” My voice was raised. It gets that way when people don’t think. “You are a researcher, a debunker! What’s come over you?”

  Van Epps sat hunched and self-protective at his kitchen table while I paced about the room. “I thought it could pertain.”

  “Whether Clyde Morris was deserving of hell? What bearing could that possibly have on an explainable phenomenon?”

  He had to work up an answer. “I was exploring the phenomenon through her point of view.”

  “You were leading the witness!”

  Van Epps and I had had our heated discussions before. I took it in stride when he lashed out, “I came eye to eye with a posthumous manifestation of Clyde Morris! I photographed it! I felt the intensity of it! There is a human element here and we have to consider it.”

  “From an objective base, which you no longer have.”

  He halted, then raised a hand in surrender. “No. No, I don’t. That’s why I need you here.” He drew a breath, recovering a measure of professionalism. “The House exerts a strong effect on the human psyche, and I could be a case in point. When it first appeared, I truly felt it was looking into me as if it knew me. As if—note this—it knew my sins. And that look I got from Clyde Morris . . .”

  I sat next to him. “Religious guilt?”

  He smiled, nodded. “I’m sure you can relate.”

  “Of course.” Van Epps knew of my ill-fated days in the priesthood, and he’d shared a little of his Sunday school background. “I’ve found a good dose of reason and logic can make it go away . . . usually.”

  “And the power of suggestion can bring it back. In this town there’s plenty of that.”

  I rose. “Which, if I’m to be clinical, I need to apprise. Andi, get online. Find out if there’s any precedent for what we’re seeing here, any other cases of a house appearing and disappearing and . . . holding people morally accountable.” I looked at Van Epps. “Fair assessment?”

  He nodded, chagrined.

  “Want to come along?”

  “No. I’ll write up what we have so far. That should clear my system of . . . whatever this is.”

  “Good enough.”

  Port Avalon was a small town nestled on the forested hillsides above the Puget Sound. I drove less than four minutes to reach the town center, and could surmise from the boats, docks, and harbor the town’s origins as a fishing village.

  That, I guessed, had to be before the sixties and the influx ever afterward of the mystical set who favored seclusion, nature, and the nearness of the sea. Such mundane businesses as an Ace Hardware, a pharmacy, and a floral shop held precious ground amid a disproportionate measure of Eastern, animist, and mystical enterprises: tarot readers, fortune-tellers, psychic healers, shamans, meditation centers, and pagan temples. Here the objects of worship were goddesses, ascended masters, Mother Earth, any growing thing.

  I walked about, “fishing” for data and beginning to understand Van Epps’ conundrum. Port Avalon was saturated with the human need for explanation, for an answer to the question Why, for a basis of knowing good and evil or even the existence of such things. I had long ago established to my comfort that such cosmic questions developed only from our need for survival and holding our societies together, but as this town demonstrated, those who could accept morality as a matter of utility and not “truth” were few, and the pervasive norms of this place could easily aggravate the old “pang of conscience.” Poor Van Epps. This place was getting to him.

  And getting to me as well, I thought, halting on the sidewalk. Across the street I saw what an unprepared mind could take to be a cosmic coincidence.

  There, engaged in conversation with the gypsy-costumed proprietor of Earthsong’s Psychic Readings, was the brusque and urbanesque tattoo artist, Brenda . . .

  I’d forgotten her last name and that was fine with me, but her dreadlocks and slinking posture were unmistakable.

  A plague on this town! In that moment I nearly believed some game master somewhere was moving us about like chess pieces. It was more than enough that she’d been on the same plane Andi and I took to Seattle, and not only she, but the wide-eyed giant we called Tank, and all by happenstance. Yes, I argued with myself—and the town—happenstance, even if Tank should show up in Port Avalon as well.

  Perish the thought. The last time Andi, the tattooist, the giant, and I were lumped together, it was to invade that ridiculous Institute—trespassing, vandalizing, and resorting to pointless acts of heroism. Heroism! Now there was another conundrum: If in this random and purposeless universe there was no basis for right and wrong, how could there be any point to heroism?

  I deliberately gave my head a shake to cast off all this tizzy. I thought I
would turn away.

  If anyone ever attributes my decision to fate, luck, God, or any other capricious power, I will fervently deny it. I was, after all, “fishing,” and if the fish might be across the street . . .

  I crossed, though it pained me.

  “Well—” was as far as my greeting went before Earthsong got whammy-eyed.

  “Ohhh!” she said with serpent-handed histrionics. “You are looking for someone!” She reeked of incense and her bracelets jangled. It was strictly carnival. “Would you like to know more?”

  Brenda—I recalled her last name was Barnick—seemed pleasantly surprised at the sight of me. “Oh, this is the guy! I was—”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d like to know more, anything you have to say.”

  Brenda made a face that telegraphed are you putting me on?

  I’d been struck in that moment by another coincidence. I had a fish on the line, tugging. I wanted to land it.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Earthsong

  I felt in violation of my own precepts, sitting in Earthsong’s mystical, candlelit parlor, listening raptly as she went through a well-rehearsed spiel. Yes, the crystal ball was there in the center of the table; the incense was burning and tainting everything, including ourselves; a carved, ruby-eyed raven perched above our heads lending mood and . . . vibration? Brenda shot me many a sideways glance through the proceedings, but I suggested by my own behavior the role she should play: gullible, enraptured. She fell into it quite well.

  “I see . . . a child!” said Earthsong, waving her fingers over the crystal ball. “Young . . . innocent . . . blond hair. Strangely silent.” She then sneered. “Ha! He is thought to have a gift, but next to me, he is nothing! He knows nothing of the real powers! It was a waste to consult him! A waste!”

  I was not experienced in discerning drug-affected behavior, but I had to suspect she was high on something. I would definitely consult the streetwise Brenda afterward.

  The fortune-teller continued. “He was a prisoner but broke his bonds and is free! And now . . .” She made eye contact for effect. “You seek him!”