A Haunting In Wisconsin

by Michael Richan

  “You might say that,” Eliza replied.

  “How exciting!” Don replied. “How’s the investigation coming?”

  “Better, now that you’ve given us all this,” Granger answered.

  “Glad I can help,” Don said. “If you want me to look up anything else from my father’s archives, I’m happy to do it.”

  “Actually, I can think of something,” Eliza replied. “Horace Lyons.”

  “Horace Lyons,” Don repeated, suddenly producing a pad and pen from a pocket in his jacket. “What about him?”

  “Let’s just say he’s a person of interest,” Eliza replied. “If you can dig up anything on him, that might be useful.”

  “Is he associated with the place?” Don asked.

  “His name has been mentioned a few times,” Robert said, warming up to the idea of Don knowing more about their work than he’d originally intended him to know.

  “We think he was a guest there,” Granger offered. “It might be difficult to find anything on him if that’s the case.”

  “I’ll give it a go,” Don replied, slipping his pen and notepad away, and resuming eating. “I’ll call you if I find out anything.”

  Chapter Eight

  When they returned to the B&B, they found Milton out front, working in the yard. Eliza looked up at the building as they walked from the car. It was creepy to know of all the ghosts inside, their story still active, their personalities still driven by some force. She glanced at the upstairs window over the flowerbed, half expecting to see a face staring down at her, but relieved to see nothing beyond the panes.

  Milton stopped working to greet them.

  “Any new guests?” Eliza asked.

  “A call, but that was all,” Milton replied. “So, I’m glad I stayed. Sometimes they call back and book.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Eliza replied, smiling.

  “You find out anything from the historian?” Milton asked.

  Granger raised the packet. “A lot. Most of it is about previous owners.”

  “Oh, I’d enjoy seeing that,” Milton replied. “I know the place sat empty for many years before the guy who owned it before me remodeled things, but that’s about it.”

  “Well, come inside,” Robert said. “We’re going to spread these documents out on a table so we can all see them.”

  They went in, and Milton prepared glasses of iced tea for them to drink while they perused the photocopies. They reviewed the ownership timeline, and arranged the documents in chronological order. Milton went through them all, as did the rest of them, pointing out interesting things to each other. After an hour they’d exhausted most of the new information.

  “Well, it’s fascinating,” Granger concluded, “but it doesn’t really help us much, as far as I can tell.”

  “Yeah,” Robert agreed. “I wasn’t expecting a historian to find info on Wanda, but I was hoping for something that could lead us in a new direction.”

  “OK, then,” Eliza said. “I’m returning to what we learned from the trance.”

  “Not much there, either,” Robert replied.

  “The circles mean something,” Eliza said. “We just have to sort it out.”

  “I’m highly reticent to try a trance again,” Granger replied. “That smell was so bad, I think it killed brain cells.”

  “What is that smell?” Eliza asked. “It keeps coming up in connection with Wanda.”

  “All the ghosts complained about it, too,” Robert added.

  “What’s it smell like?” Milton asked. “I know you said it’s horrible, but can you make out its source?”

  “Honestly,” Granger replied, “it smells to me like death. Something rotting.”

  “I think it smells more like sewage,” Eliza said. “I remember a broken sewer main in Madison once. Smelled the same.”

  “I’m with Eliza,” Robert added. “It’s closer to sewage than anything else.”

  “This place is so remote,” Eliza said to Milton, “I can’t imagine you’re on a sewer line.”

  “No, it’s septic,” Milton replied. “The previous owner said he put in a new system when he remodeled. I believe it’s in a spot just past the back yard.”

  “Maybe we should take a look at it,” Eliza said. “Do you mind showing us?”

  “No, not at all,” Milton replied, and stood. “This way.”

  He led them to the back door, then out across the yard until they came to the edge of the lawn, where bushes grew up from the forest floor. He began pushing them aside until he found an access cover that rose three inches from the ground. “Here it is,” he said. “Tank is under here, and the leach field is out that way.” He waved toward a small clearing beyond. “Never had a problem with it.”

  “I don’t smell anything at all,” Eliza replied. “Have you ever noticed anything coming from the leach field?”

  “No,” Milton replied. “It’s a relatively new system, so I wouldn’t expect any trouble with it. Sometimes you have to treat them, or have them pumped, but this one is so new, there have been no issues.”

  “No smells, ever?” Granger asked.

  “Nope,” Milton replied.

  “Was there a septic system here before he remodeled?” Eliza asked.

  “No idea,” Milton replied.

  “Might have been,” Granger said. “When this place was built, septic systems were becoming common. Before that, they used cesspools. You still run into them on older properties.”

  “Cesspool?” Eliza asked. “Like a pool of waste?”

  “More like a deep, vertical shaft,” Granger replied. “They’d drill two or three of them, line them with bricks, and then pipe the house’s sewage directly into them. The waste would eventually leach out. They sometimes ruined the water supply, however. That’s why septic systems were better, they spread out the leaching, down just a couple of feet, away from the water.”

  “That’s what those are!” Milton said. “I always wondered!”

  “What?” Robert asked.

  “Come this way,” Milton said, leading them to a spot about a hundred feet from the side of the house, into the brush. “I found this boarded over, and I checked under it when I first bought the place.” He stopped next to a large sheet of thick plywood that had been staked into the ground on each corner. “Help me, would you? We’re just gonna lift it up.”

  Eliza moved to one corner while the others each found another. On Milton’s count, they lifted, pulling the board up, the stakes sliding out of the ground.

  “My god!” Eliza exclaimed when she saw what was underneath.

  “Let’s move this to the side,” Milton said, and they guided the plywood to a spot on the ground.

  It had covered three round holes in the ground, each about three feet in diameter. Dirty red bricks lined each hole.

  “The three circles,” Eliza muttered.

  “I thought they might be old wells,” Milton said. “Makes sense they were the old cesspools. I left it covered up so no one would fall in, of course.”

  Eliza walked to the edge of one of the holes and looked down. It went deeper than she could see.

  “You know what this means,” Eliza said, as she stared down.

  “Yeah,” Robert replied. “You intend to go down there.”

  “Oh, no!” Granger replied. “Not like last time, not like that well at Black Creek! These old cesspools are notoriously unstable. They collapse all the time. They weren’t meant for people to go down!”

  Eliza wondered if, being away from the house, she might be able to enter the River more successfully than inside the building. She slipped into the flow, and instead of feeling the tilt and the nausea, she found the River to be halfway normal. She tried to focus on the cesspools, listening.

  I hate you! she heard faintly, drifting up from the bottom of one of the holes. She tried to move out of her body, wanting to approach the hole and maybe drift down into it, but she found herself unable to separate.

  She left the Ri
ver and turned to Granger and Robert. “You can drop into the River here. Jump in and listen.”

  She waited while they followed her instruction. When they returned, she could tell they had heard the voice.

  “That’s a little girl,” Eliza said. “Trapped down there!”

  “The remains of a little girl,” Granger corrected.

  “We have to get her out!” Eliza said.

  Neither Granger nor Robert replied; they looked at each other, coming to grips with the inevitability of what Eliza was suggesting.

  “I’ll do it,” Eliza said. “I’ll go down.”

  “No,” Granger replied. “You can’t just tie a rope around your waist and jump in. It’ll collapse on you.”

  “Then how?” Eliza asked.

  “To do it safely we’d need to make a winch or something,” Milton said.

  “And brace it above the hole,” Granger replied. “We can’t just stretch something over the opening. The pressure might cause the top layers of bricks to give in. It’s gotta be suspended above it.”

  “Good, sounds like you two can make this happen,” Eliza said.

  “I’ve got some wood in the old garage,” Milton said. “We could see what we could make out of that.”

  “Come on,” Granger said, turning to walk with Milton. He stopped, and turned to Eliza. “And you,” he said, pointing his finger at her, “do not go near those holes until we have something rigged. She’s long dead down there; we’re not in a rush. We’re gonna do this safely!”

  ●

  Eliza felt the strain of straps against her shoulders from the makeshift harness Robert had constructed. Above her, a thin wire was being slowly released from the spool of the winch, and she dropped inch by inch into the shaft. Light from her headlamp illuminated the bricks that lined the hole.

  I’m descending into a cesspool, she thought. She kept expecting to smell something bad, but whatever contents the hole had held many years ago had leached out through the bricks into the cleansing soil.

  It just smells like earth, she thought. Damp earth.

  She continued lower. Robert called down every few feet, expecting a reply, and she called up to reassure him that she was fine.

  Once or twice she reached out with her glove-covered hands to push back from the sides of the wall; Granger had cautioned her about touching the bricks at all, but when the cord swayed a little, she found herself drifting, and she figured that bracing herself with her hands was better than slamming into the bricks with her body.

  They paused several times. After what felt like an eternity, she could see the bottom, slowly rising under her feet. She made contact with it and called up. The cord went slack.

  There was barely enough room to lean down and examine the bottom without bumping into the sides of the hole. She angled her light down, and began scraping at the bottom with her shoe. It seemed to be soil, scraping up from her toe as she moved her foot back and forth, trying to dig.

  I can’t bend over to dig properly, she thought. Maybe they’ll have to lower me face-first.

  She kept scraping at the soil until her toe kicked up something large. She angled the light until she could see it.

  Bone? she wondered.

  She dropped into the River. The figure of a small girl materialized next to her. Her hair was matted with something wet, and her hands were raw and bloody from attempting to climb up the bricks.

  I hate you! the child screamed. I hate you! I hate you!

  Wanda? Eliza said. Wanda, is that you?

  The child didn’t respond to her; she kept yelling and clawing at the sides of the pit. Something wet descended from above, and the girl stepped aside to try and avoid it landing on her. For a moment Eliza wondered if Granger and Robert had kicked something accidentally into the cesspool, but then she remembered she was in the River.

  That was waste, falling into the cesspool, she thought. It made her shiver with repugnance, and it steeled her determination to get Wanda out of the hole.

  Wanda! she yelled, trying to get the girl’s attention. The child didn’t respond.

  She dropped from the River. The white of the bone she had uncovered at her foot was reflecting in the light of her headlamp.

  Let’s get this over with, she thought, and bent down to pick up the bone. She rose and removed a plastic bag from her pocket. She dropped the bone into the bag.

  “Eliza?” she heard from above.

  “I’m fine!” she called back. “Working on it!”

  Returning her attention to the soil below her feet, she continued scraping until she had uncovered another bone. She lowered herself until her fingers could pick it up, trying to avoid touching the bricks that lined the pit.

  The process continued for a while. When she found the pelvic bone, the enormity of the child’s death began to weigh on her; when she found the skull, she began to cry.

  She tried to accumulate as many bones as she could find before signaling them to raise her up. She knew there were still more bones, smaller ones that she hadn’t been able to reach, but she couldn’t get to them all, given the diameter of the hole. Someone would have to descend and collect the rest.

  She felt the cord go taut, and she prepared for the harness to tighten against her shoulders. Soon she was rising slowly, the plastic bag cradled protectively in her arms.

  She dropped into the River, thinking she might see Wanda below her, still on the ground. Instead, she was startled to find the child in her arms.

  Wanda? she asked.

  Thank you, the girl muttered weakly. I thought I’d never get out.

  Eliza felt herself begin to cry. No problem, she replied.

  Is Mack still there? she asked.

  Mack? Eliza replied. No, honey, he left long ago.

  That’s too bad, Wanda replied. He was fun to play with.

  Wanda?

  Yes?

  How did you wind up in this hole? Did you fall in?

  No, Wanda replied. He pushed me.

  He? Eliza asked. Who?

  That man upstairs. He dragged me here with his hand over my mouth, and threw me in.

  Horace? Horace Lyon?

  I don’t know his name, Wanda replied. He had a flamingo on his tie. Eliza saw her smile a little, her eyes drifting off.

  Why? Eliza asked. Why did he push you down here?

  Eliza saw Wanda’s lips press together, and the child’s eyes darted downward. She didn’t want to say.

  It’s all over now, Eliza said. There’s no reason not to tell me.

  Still the child didn’t want to respond.

  Was it because you’d been bad? Had you done bad things? Was he punishing you?

  I never did anything bad, she replied. Well, except…

  Except what?

  I took something from him, she said sheepishly. I only wanted to play with it; I wasn’t going to keep it.

  What was it?

  A ka-lie…she started, stopping before she finished the word. A ka-lie…she tried again.

  What? Eliza asked. You don’t know what it was?

  I can’t pronounce it right.

  What did it look like? What did it do?

  You look through it on one end, and you hold the other end up to the light, and turn it. Its looks pretty. He thinks I have it, but I don’t. Not anymore.

  The girl paused. Eliza was about to ask her another question, when the child said, I’m sorry I took it. I never should have. I should have given it back. He was so mean and so angry, I was afraid to.

  What did you do with it? Eliza asked.

  I’m sorry…the girl repeated, and as Eliza watched, her image began to fade. I’m sorry, I really am. I’ll never do anything like that again, ever. I’m so sorry…Within seconds Wanda was gone, and she found herself holding the plastic bag of bones.

  Wanda! she called. Wanda!

  Eliza dropped from the River, and felt the tug of the cord overhead as it finished her extraction from the old cesspool. She clutched at the bag, cra
dling it as if she was holding the girl herself.

  Wanda, freed from the hole, and released by her confession, was gone.

  Chapter Nine

  “We’ve got Wanda all wrong,” Eliza said, pacing in the kitchen. “I was thinking she was some kind of child demon, based on what all the ghosts had said. She was actually a sweet little girl.”

  “Who stole things,” Granger added.

  “For which she was sorry,” Eliza replied. “She apologized and admitted she never should have taken the kaleidoscope. What kind of person punishes a child for such a thing by pushing her down a cesspool?”

  “You think that’s what happened?” Robert asked. “It was a punishment?”

  “That’s how she made it sound,” Eliza replied. “Either he put her there, or she was hiding from him. I doubt the latter.”

  “So, she stole a kaleidoscope from the salesman,” Granger said. “Those were her words?”

  “Essentially.”

  “Did you see anything like a kaleidoscope in the cesspool? You said you didn’t get all of the bones; do you think it might still be down there?”

  “I didn’t see anything like that,” Eliza replied. “I don’t think it was in there with her. She said she didn’t have it anymore.”

  “Maybe she gave it back to him?” Robert asked.

  “No,” Eliza replied. She stopped pacing and looked at the plastic bag on the table. “She wished she had, but she didn’t.”

  “Why would a salesman care so much about a child’s toy?” Granger asked. “Assuming he had a role in Wanda winding up in the cesspool, and she didn’t just fall in.”

  “I don’t know,” Eliza replied. “But there might be a way to find out.”

  “How?” Robert asked.

  “We fall asleep,” Eliza replied. “We question the ghosts, see what they might know about this, specifically.”

  “Hmm,” Granger replied. “OK. I’m willing.”

  “Milton?” Eliza asked. “Can we use that room upstairs again?”

  “Let me make a pot of coffee first,” Milton replied, rising from a kitchen chair.

  ●