Every House Is Haunted

by Ian Rogers

  The dog thing was there, by the fence. Its head was down and its jaws were working in a mad frenzy. It didn’t eat like a normal animal—it didn’t chew. It was like a machine that had caught something in its gears and was now ripping it to pieces.

  I must have made some kind of sound, because it suddenly snapped its head up and glared at me. I raised the rifle, socking the butt into the crook of my shoulder, and fired. The bullet went through the dog thing’s mouth and out the back of its head.

  It fell on its side, twitching. My second shot caved in its chest. There was no blood. Not even a drop.

  Dec 28

  The days are getting chilly. Something that tends to keep people indoors. Not me! I spend most of my days outside, in the hammock. If it weren’t the danger it is, I’d probably sleep out here.

  The dog didn’t bleed. That thought keeps coming back to haunt me. I don’t have any answers. I don’t even have theories anymore.

  The tentacles found me today. They came over the railway embankment. One big one and four or five little ones. The big one stayed on the tracks. I prayed for a train to come. The little ones were farting around in the cinders at the foot of the embankment. One of them found an old rusty shopping cart and dragged it back over the tracks. Finders keepers.

  I’ve come to the conclusion that the tentacles are not guided by any deep-rooted intelligence. This comes after spending the day watching them fight over the patio chairs I had tossed over the fence . . . what? A month ago? Has it been a month?

  They seem to operate solely on instinct—which is why I haven’t taken any shots at them. Not until they give me a reason. They took the chairs back over the tracks and I haven’t seen them since.

  Will they be back? I wonder. To which Barney would have said: Does Howdy Doody have wooden balls?

  December 29

  Tentacles stole my Christmas tree.

  Sounds like one of those tabloid headlines, doesn’t it? Except this one is true.

  Of all the post-Christmas chores, taking down the tree is the one people put off the most. Not me! I came outside this morning to do that very thing and found half a dozen tentacles (including the big one) dragging it over the fence. They didn’t even knock the angel off. Who do you call to get rid of your Christmas tree? 1-800-T-E-N-T-A-C-L-E-S!

  Looks like I won’t be staying outside anymore.

  December 30

  Dreamed of God again last night—several of them, in fact. They were asleep in a warehouse very similar to my own, lying in row upon row of hammocks. There must have been hundreds of them. On the wall was an enormous digital alarm clock ticking that cast an eerie red glow over everything. Next to the clock was a sign that said QUIET PLEASE.

  I gotta find a way to wake them up.

  December 31

  Stayed outside last night. Was curious to see if anyone would light off any fireworks. Didn’t see any.

  It’s becoming harder to stay indoors. I was sitting in the hammock, staring at the stars, and they didn’t look right. I don’t know anything about constellations, but I can’t shake that feeling. They just don’t look right.

  The tentacles are getting closer. They’re sliding along the outside of the warehouse right now. The sound is driving me crackers.

  I’m going to try and sleep. I’ve got work to do. No snooze button for the gods. Time to roll them out of their hammocks.

  January 3?

  The gods are not in my dreams—they are here! I think that’s the message—what Barney would have called the real-life truth.

  I know what the tentacles are. They’re not attached to anything. They’re the highways to the gods! And the ramblers are their disciples, travelling door to door and spreading the word and selling Avon products.

  I will survive, I will survive, I will survive.

  Was Gloria Gaynor ever an Avon Lady?

  Jan 34 (?)

  Soooo tired.

  Hammock rejected me today. Spit me out like a watermelon seed. God, I want a watermelon. If I can only hold on until summer.

  Tentacles are loud tonight. They could wake the dead, ha-ha!

  I will hold on . . . for watermelon . . .

  A NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY

  WITH THE GODS

  First there was darkness. Then a series of deep, ratcheting clicks and clacks, followed by a low hiss of escaping air that buffeted his face and tousled his hair. Then, slowly, the darkness not so much lifted as swung away to his left as if an enormous door were opening.

  Lights sputtered to life from somewhere overhead, and he saw it was a door. A big one. Not quite as large as the one on a bank vault, but similar in appearance.

  He stepped into a long, windowless room with five tall metal bookcases at the far end. Before him was a long table. Not the fancy kind like in an executive conference room. Just an ordinary reading table like you’d find in a library.

  Was he in a library? He had an idea he was, but he didn’t know for certain. He couldn’t seem to recall exactly where he was—or how he had gotten here. There was something strange about the bookcases. It was so slight that he couldn’t tell precisely what it was, but there was definitely something odd about them.

  He heard someone cough, and turned to see a tall woman standing in the doorway behind him. She was dressed entirely in black—black topcoat, black blouse, black slacks, black gloves, black pointed-toe shoes. Her face was a pallid mask that only served to make her red hair that much brighter.

  “Good evening,” she said in a cool, crisp voice.

  “Is it?”

  “Well, it’s more of a greeting than a description.”

  “No, I mean, is it the evening? I can’t seem to remember.” He looked down at himself, saw that he was dressed in a ratty plaid bathrobe and a pair of slippers. “I can’t seem to remember very much, actually.”

  “I apologize for that,” the redhead said, and slipped past him into the room. Her poise and demeanour exuded an air of indifferent professionalism. As if she belonged in that executive conference room rather than this strange little library. “I realize all of this must be very unsettling. But I assure you, the alternative is much worse.”

  The man in the bathrobe nodded, even though he still had no idea what was going on. “Who are you?” he asked. Then: “Who am I?”

  “Names aren’t important.”

  “Are you sure?” The man’s voice wavered. “Because I think it’s actually pretty goddamn important.”

  The redhead waved her hand dismissively. “There’s a difference between knowing a thing and understanding a thing,” she said. “Knowing isn’t as important as understanding. In this instance—in regards to all of this”—she indicated the entire room—“understanding is key.”

  The man gazed into her cool green eyes for a long moment. His mind felt like a newly washed chalkboard, and the redhead was the teacher about to impart some important lesson. Strangely, he found it wasn’t difficult at all to put things aside and simply go with the flow.

  “First,” she began, “I will tell you something—something you don’t necessarily need to know, but maybe it will help to put you at ease.”

  The man nodded mutely.

  “You’re not in trouble,” she said in a voice that was both calm and firm. “I’m not with the police or any government body. Nor have you been kidnapped. Your life is not in danger.” She raised her hands again. “You’re standing in a little-known room within the Fisher Rare Book Library.” She added: “That’s at the University of Toronto.”

  The man nodded even though he didn’t know where that was exactly.

  “To those who know of its existence, it’s simply called the Restricted Collection. You don’t need to know what it is, but you need to understand why it is. Understanding is key. It’s very important that you’re here tonight.”

  The man nodded again.

  “You won’t be called in often,” the redhead went on, “but those times tha
t you are will be extremely important. I can’t stress to you how important—and there would be little point even if I could—but I can assure you that your involvement is integral.”

  She turned slightly and swept her hand across the room. “Notice anything unusual?”

  “Something,” he said in a low, ruminative voice.

  She motioned him to follow her, and they walked around the long table to the middle bookcase. Closer now, he could see what made these cases different from the ones he had seen before—the shelves were encased in glass. On the left side of each shelf there was a raised metal panel.

  “Hermetically sealed,” the redhead explained, then startled him by slamming her gloved fist against the glass. “Shatterproof.”

  “How do you open it?”

  “See the pad?” She pointed at the raised panel. “Put your finger on it.”

  The man in the bathrobe started to raise his hand, then hesitated.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “It won’t bite you.”

  He raised his hand slowly, extended his index finger, and placed it gently against the panel. There was a sharp, ratcheting click (not unlike the one he heard before entering this strange little room), and then the long glass panel rose up like a garage door and slid back into the housing in the top of the shelf.

  “Abracadabra,” the redhead said.

  “Did I do that?” the man asked a little timidly.

  “You did that,” the redheadsaid. “Only you.”

  He turned his head and looked at her. “What does that mean?”

  She ignored the question and continued to stare at the line of books. “Take one out,” she said. “Any one.”

  The man fidgeted. The books looked very old and delicate. “Don’t I need gloves or something?”

  She shook her head. “It’s okay.”

  She said that, but he couldn’t help but notice that she herself made no gesture toward the shelf, as if there was something in there that might bite. Until now she had made gestures as she spoke, at the room, at the bookcases, but now, standing in front of one of the open shelves, she kept her hands strictly behind her back.

  He felt a sudden need to leave this place, to just turn around and walk out. Something made him stay. He was supposed to stay. He didn’t know why.

  He reached up and pulled down a large book. It was bound in leather that was cracking in several spots. The pages were yellow and uneven, some of them sticking out unevenly, as if the book had been constructed in haste, or maybe by a publisher who didn’t know his craft. There was no title on the cover, which was withered and shrunk like the skin on some strange dried fruit. It was a heavy volume, and he carried it over to the reading table with both hands, holding it close to his chest. He breathed deeply and inhaled a musky aroma of mildew and millennia.

  The redhead came over and stood behind him on his left side. She watched over his shoulder as he opened the book. The first page was blank. He turned to the next page, and it was blank, too. He flipped further ahead, then back again. They were all blank.

  “Is this a joke?” he asked.

  “Keep going,” she said. Her breathing was faster and deeper.

  He continued to turn the pages. After a few moments of finding nothing but more blank pages, he looked up and saw someone standing in the doorway. She was a short elderly woman who would have looked at home in a country kitchen baking banana bread. She was plump in that pleasant way only elderly women seem able to pull off. She had a round, friendly face and her grey hair was done up in a tall Tower of Babel beehive that almost reached the top of the doorway.

  “Spank my ass and call me Betty!” she cried out in a voice that seemed incongruously soft compared to the words she had spoken. “What have you got this poor, young man doing? Are you mad, woman?”

  “I’m in the middle of his orientation.” The redhead’s voice remained cool and calm, but the man in the bathrobe detected something beneath that polished surface . . . something that sounded a bit like fear.

  “I need to speak with you,” the old woman said urgently. Her eyes moved fretfully between them.

  The redhead let out a frustrated sigh. “Keep looking,” she said to the man in the bathrobe, and went around the table to talk to the old woman.

  The man watched them. He tried to figure out what they were saying, but they spoke in low, hushed voices. He looked back at the book, expecting to see another blank page, and saw this instead:

  DO YOU SEE RED?

  The lettering was so ornate he almost couldn’t read it. The first three words were printed in black ink, while the fourth word, RED, was printed in red. So he supposed he was seeing red.

  He looked up from the book, and he was seeing red again. The redhead. He looked back down at the book, and the words had changed. Now they said:

  DO YOU SEE HER BLOOD?

  This time the word BLOOD was printed in red—and not just red, but dripping red. The ink (if that’s what it was) was running down the page in thin rills like . . . well, like blood.

  He raised his head and started to say something to the redhead, but she cut him off with a briskly upraised hand. He looked down at the book again, and the word HER was bleeding now. He looked up at the redhead and then back down at the book, and what he saw written there this time was enough to cause his breath to catch in his throat.

  DO YOU WANT TO?

  He stared at this question, feeling a strange species of shock, not because he was looking at a book that appeared to be writing itself before his very eyes, but because a part of him did want to see her blood. It was a small part, to be sure, but it was there, and he could feel it growing within him like a tumour.

  As he continued to stare at the page, the words changed . . . unravelled . . . as if they were made of string. The black and red lines streaked across the page like contrails. Reaching the top of the page, they began to move in more purposeful manoeuvres—loops and curlicues and smooth curves that seemed to have no meaning at first. He soon realized that this was because they were not forming words this time, but a picture. The black lines were becoming the portrait of a woman’s face—her face—while the red lines spun themselves like eldritch silk into her hair. The finished product was a simple but perfectly executed sketch of the redhead.

  Below the sketch, the black lines that formed her long, slender neck began to unravel. They sagged down like falling spiderwebs and twined together to form words:

  OPEN HER UP

  They unravelled again and reformed.

  SEE HER BLOOD

  The man let out a low sigh that was almost a moan. He felt nauseated. His legs threatened to buckle and spill him to the floor. There was something stupidly evil about those words. They reminded him of those children’s readers, the ones that told the adventures of Dick and Jane and their dog Spot. See Dick run. Run, Dick run. Except this was the adult version. Open her up. See her blood.

  Scarier than the thought of a book that not only wrote itself but wrote such horrific things, was that growing desire to do exactly what it said. It was a desire strong enough to be considered lust—bloodlust. He lusted to open her up and see her blood. But another part, one that seemed to be growing smaller and distant with each passing moment, told him it was wrong, it was inhuman. That other voice was like a transmission sent from deep space; it was becoming more garbled and incoherent as he stared at the book.

  He shut his eyes tightly, counted to five, and opened them again, hoping the words would be gone. They were, but new ones replaced them.

  STOP THINKING ABOUT IT AND DO IT!

  The letters unravelled (more harshly this time, almost impatiently) and reformed, except now they were in a jagged, less attractive script.

  KILL HER! OPEN HER UP!

  The man in the bathrobe looked up from the book. The desire was like a bushfire burning in his head. It was, he realized, the best idea he had ever had in his life—the only idea, really. It was so great that he co
uldn’t figure out why he hadn’t thought of it before. It didn’t matter. It was there now, beating a poisonous pulse in the centre of his mind. He could feel the vein in the middle of his forehead standing out like some strange brand. He could see himself doing it. Dragging her down to the floor, driving his hands into the smooth pale skin of her chest, ripping, tearing, punching through her ribcage and then pulling it open like an old book. He could even hear the sound it would make: a crunching, ratcheting sound like a key turning in a lock.

  He slammed the book shut with a loud, portentous boom. His hands were slick with perspiration, and he could feel drops of sweat running down the sides of his face. Part of him wanted to open the book again—the same part that wanted to take the redhead apart like a Thanksgiving turkey—but it was becoming the dimmer voice now, the one moving farther down the dark tunnel of his mind.

  Gradually, he felt his mind reasserting itself. He took a deep, steadying breath and let it out. See Dick walk, he thought as he went around to the other side of the table. The redhead and the old woman had finished talking. The old woman gave him a fretful look, then turned and left the room.

  “Well,” the redhead said in a bright, cheery voice, “where were we?”

  She walked over to the table and placed her hand on the book, fingers tented on the cover. The man winced a bit when she did that. He hadn’t liked touching the book himself, and watching someone else do it wasn’t much better. It was like watching someone stick their hand in a terrarium full of tarantulas.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  The man looked at her quizzically. “About what?” he asked.

  “About the rising gas prices,” she said seriously. Then she laughed and shook her head. “About the book, of course.” She tapped the cover and the man felt his stomach do a backflip. “What did it say to you?”

  The man opened his mouth but nothing came out.

  “Did it say Hello? Did it say Mars Needs Toilet Paper? Did it tell you to save air miles?” A strange little smile crept across her face. “Did it tell you to kill yourself? Or Lorna? Or me?”