Sarah

by Polen, Teri

  Falling deeper towards sleep, I sensed my hair being stroked back from my forehead with a cool hand and it felt wonderful against my heated skin. This was how Mom used to relax me after a nightmare when I was younger or couldn’t sleep. She hadn’t done this since I’d been sick with the flu a couple of years ago.

  Except …..

  Deep down my subconscious was screaming, telling me something was wrong. What was it?

  I struggled to wake myself, frantically climbing toward consciousness as I brushed at my forehead, expecting to feel someone else’s hands. Bolting straight up, fully awake now, I scrutinized the room, peering into the corners with their murky shadows. I fumbled across the nightstand in search of the lamp and switched it on. Light flooded the room, chasing away the darkness. No one else was here. Looking on the floor, thinking maybe it had been Eby brushing against my face as he’d jumped down, I failed to locate him. He was nowhere in sight.

  My heart was pounding and deep within my gut I knew what I’d just experienced wasn’t a dream. Still looking around the room for Eby, my gaze fell on the attic door. The chair that had been wedged beneath the knob was now turned over on its side, the door wide open, revealing the heavy, threatening darkness behind it.

  Chapter 4

  What. The. Hell. What just happened? Was it paranormal? A very vivid dream? Did I sleepwalk and open the door to the attic myself?

  As a fan of horror books and movies, I was fully aware of the rule stating the guy who checked on the creepy noises coming from the basement/next room/outside alone never came back, so what I did next could be looked at in a couple of ways. Either I had a healthy curiosity about who or what kept opening the door and apparently lived in the attic, or I was a stupid moron who didn’t know any better, like the guy in the horror movies. Whatever the case, it was fight or flight time and I was just curious or stupid enough to go investigate.

  I inched closer to the open door, the humid, stifling heat nearly pummeling me back towards the bed. The frigid air of last night and this morning would almost be welcome. Reaching for the light switch, I noticed a quiver in my hand, but ignored it, my eyes probing the shadows at the top of the stairs. I’d felt much braver with Finn here last night, when I didn’t really think the cold air and door opening on its own could really be related to anything supernatural. Now, thoughts of something upstairs didn’t seem completely out of the realm of possibility.

  I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, steadying myself before beginning my trek up the narrow stairway. Why did noises always seem amplified in the middle of the night? The creaking of the stairs might as well have been a sledgehammer pounding into the walls, it seemed so loud. Part of my brain thought flight sounded pretty good right about now and tried to kick into self-preservation mode, telling me to shut the door, get a padlock, and pretend nothing ever happened. The other part made contingency plans in case I really saw something in the attic.

  My chest tightened and I half expected something to come at me once I reached the top of the stairs. I felt a trickle of sweat trailing down my back, no doubt from a combination of nervousness and heat. My foot landed on the top step and I fumbled for the light switch on my right. It wasn’t there.

  I was panting, running both hands over the wall, grasping for the switch. It was there somewhere - it had been there last night, light switches don’t just disappear, but the stupid, over-imaginative part of my brain pictured something creeping up behind me, meat cleaver in hand, ready to hack me into a thousand little pieces. I hunched over slightly, imagining the cleaver slicing through the air toward the back of my skull, when my hand finally located the light switch and snapped it on.

  Whirling around to face whatever was in the attic, I found myself staring at the same stacks of boxes from the previous evening. No hulking serial killers. No meat cleavers. Exhaling loudly, I slumped against the wall. The hair on the back of my neck was soaked with sweat and I might as well have been standing in the middle of the desert, the heat was so unbearable.

  Laughing both from relief and at my overreaction, I remembered that Eby hadn’t been lying beside me, the attic door had been open, and his curiosity had gotten him in trouble more than once, so I needed to look around for him. Stepping forward, a loud crunch sound echoed in the room and every hair on my head stood on end. Looking down, I carefully lifted my foot and saw a packing peanut that must have fallen out of one of the moving boxes. If Finn were here, he’d be laughing his ass off at me.

  I shook it off and peered around the dusty, dark-cornered attic and its numerous stacks of boxes and called out, “Eby?” My voice cracked as if I were a 13-year-old again.

  No response from him, so I checked between the boxes to see if he was hiding, waiting to jump out on me. He loved playing that game. No sign of him, but other than the storage boxes, all I saw was dust and some bits of insulation. Nothing out of the ordinary. Scanning the room one more time just to double check, I decided I’d experienced a very vivid dream.

  Moonlight was streaming through the window in the far left hand corner, drawing my gaze in that direction. A large box sat by itself, the lid open and filled to the brim with my old soccer balls, some smaller ones from when I’d first started playing. Smiling, I went over to look at them and maybe relive some good memories.

  Squatting down to sort through the box, my elbow nudged one of the balls and it bounced across the floor a couple of times before I stopped it. When I picked it up to toss it back in the box, I noticed a splotch of red on one side. It was glistening, like the spot was wet, and after running my finger across the ball, I brought it closer for a sniff.

  I knew that smell. With the multitude of soccer injuries I’d received over the years, the copperish tangy aroma of blood was all too familiar. Wait - blood? Was Eby injured somewhere up here? But I’d looked around and knew for certain he wasn’t here. Had I stepped on something and cut myself? When I looked down to check my feet, that’s when I saw it. A circular pool of blood on the floor about a foot in diameter. How had I missed this? It hadn’t been here when Finn and I were looking around last night. One of us would have noticed it.

  So how did blood get here in the past twenty-four hours?

  Then I felt it. Frigid air wrapped itself around me, like it was a living, breathing entity, causing me to gasp. When I let out a shaky exhale, I could see my breath. In a 90 plus degree attic. My gaze shot down to the floor where the blood had been.

  It was gone.

  I lifted a trembling hand to check my finger. Clean.

  Staggering backwards, I knocked over a stack of boxes, but didn’t stop to pick them up. Nothing could have kept me from getting back downstairs.

  . . . . .

  After stumbling down the creaking stairs and nearly diving headfirst down the last several, I slammed the door shut, and wedged the chair back under the door knob. I hadn’t even turned off the lights, but my hands were shaking so badly, I probably couldn’t have managed it.

  My chest was heaving and I lurched over to the bed, close to collapsing as the adrenaline left my body. I sat staring at the blocked attic door, just in case someone – or something – tried to come through. The chair. I’d been so relieved at not finding anything upstairs, I’d forgotten about the chair being turned over.

  I’d like to think I’m a level-headed kind of guy, but what was going on? What just happened? How could it be….? What did I feel…? How did the door…?

  Questions rolled around in my head, bouncing off the walls, seeking some sort of logical explanation. Maybe Eby had jumped on the chair and knocked it over, pulling the door open. It was possible, but the chair hitting the floor should have woken me. If Eby hadn’t been responsible for opening the door, what had caused the chair to fall over? Then I remembered how Eby had acte
d this morning when he’d been playing with the Skittle in my floor and batted it under the attic door. Something had scared him and he’d high-tailed it out of here. He’d been staring at the door when he’d hissed. Like something had been behind it. And the blood?

  I couldn’t come up with a logical explanation. And I was possibly hallucinating.

  I’d watched tons of horror movies and sat through those ghost hunter show marathons on TV and knew what the cold areas were supposed to mean. Did I believe in ghosts? I didn’t disbelieve. I’d never personally seen a ghost, but there seemed to be some compelling evidence out there that some people had. I was open to the prospect of their existence.

  Okay, I’d just say it - maybe our house was haunted. We’d only lived here a few months and with Mom being a realtor, I knew we’d gotten a good deal, but it had never occurred to me to ask why, because it wasn’t high on my list of priorities. It was a place to live that didn’t hold sad reminders of my Dad in every room. Didn’t people sell houses for major discounts when there was something wrong with them? Like if they were haunted, built on an Indian burial ground, or inhabited by demonic spirits? Look at what happened to those people in The Amityville Horror, Poltergeist, and all the Paranormal Activity movies.

  Was I crazy for considering this? Talking to Mom was at the top of my agenda for tomorrow. For tonight, though, I wasn’t comfortable being in my room and thought maybe I’d sleep on the couch in the living room, just in case. You could never be too careful.

  . . . . .

  Slamming cabinet doors in the kitchen woke me the next morning. Mom wasn’t known for her stealth mode when she was cooking, so Maddie and I were used to hearing pans rattling, drawers banging, and the occasional string of words Mom preferred I didn’t use when something would go wrong with a recipe or she cut herself.

  Blanket wrapped around me, I trudged into the kitchen and saw Mom bending over one of the cabinets, shuffling around numerous pans, the ear-splitting clanging causing Eby to whiz past me in search of cover.

  “Morning, Mom. What are you doing up so early?” I asked, sliding onto a bar stool.

  “Good morning, sweetie. Did I wake you? Have you seen my muffin pan?” she asked, moving on to another cabinet.

  “I wouldn’t know a muffin pan if it smacked me in the head. So why are you up so early?” I repeated.

  “I have to drop off Maddie at her friend’s house and then show a couple of houses. I’ll be finished in time for your game, though.”

  “Um, yeah, about showing houses. Remember when we moved a few months ago and you said we’d gotten a great deal on the price of this house? Why was that?”

  She’d finally found what must have been the muffin pan, because she began putting those paper cup things in it. “What, you don’t think your mother’s mad negotiation skills were enough to get a good price?” she teased.

  “Not dissing your negotiation skills, Mom, but were there any other reasons? I remember you saying the builder was really motivated. It’s a new house, so why was that?”

  She stirred the batter and I thought maybe she wasn’t going to answer. “You’re right. There was a reason the builder was anxious to get rid of the house. It was completed in early spring, but he was anxious to get it off his inventory,” she said, spooning strawberry-flavored batter into the muffin cups. Maddie’s favorite

  “Why? The other houses around here seem to move pretty fast.”

  Still working with the batter, she glanced up at me through the bangs that had fallen over her eyes. “There was another reason. Although it might have kept other buyers away, it didn’t have any bearing on my decision to buy this house.”

  “You’re killing me here, Mom, what was the reason?”

  “Remember the teenage girl from your high school that went missing around the same time? Sarah Butler?”

  “I didn’t know her, but I remember when she disappeared. There were flyers everywhere and the police were at school searching through her locker. Didn’t they find something that made them think she’d been hurt?”

  After putting the pan in the oven, she turned to face me again. “Yes, they did. Some blood was found in a house under construction and it was a match with Sarah’s DNA.”

  It felt like a brick had settled in the pit of my stomach. “You’re not saying this was the house.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Why would you still buy it, knowing something must have happened here?”

  “I thought about it and discussed it with some other realtor friends and decided that even if something had happened in this house, it wouldn’t be a factor in our decision to buy it. This is a beautiful home, one that would have been out of our price range if the builder wasn’t in such a rush to sell, and it kept you and Maddie in the same school district with your friends. After your father’s accident, I knew staying in our old house wasn’t an option, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you going through any more disruptions. Besides, the police were never able to prove what may or may not have happened here. There were no witnesses, no one knew why Sarah had been in this house, and her body was never found. As far as I know, the case remains open and there’s still the possibility she was a runaway.”

  Mom could think whatever she wanted, but I was almost sure Sarah wasn’t a runaway and whatever happened to her may have occurred in this house. And she might not have left. “It doesn’t bother you that a teenage girl might have been killed here?” I asked.

  Mom came around the island and sat beside me, placing her hand over one of mine. “Cain, it would be a horrible, horrible thing if that’s what happened to her. That’s probably why the house didn’t sell earlier, but I’m not a superstitious person. The police found no other evidence of foul play. If Sarah was a runaway, maybe she was hiding out here and accidentally hurt herself. At this point, it’s all speculation.

  “Whatever happened, it’s in the past and if you want to get into all that stuff about residual negative energy, or whatever they call it, I don’t believe in it. Even if it were true, we’re a family that’s struggling to move on after suffering a tremendous loss and giving off positive energy should cancel out anything negative, right?”

  “I don’t think it works like that,” I muttered, running my other hand through my hair.

  “I choose to believe maybe that poor girl was hiding out here for a period of time and is still alive out there somewhere. It’s tragic for her parents, not knowing what happened to her, and I can’t imagine what they must be going through.”

  Mom paused for a moment and looked out the window, absently chewing her bottom lip, her shoulders heavy, and I knew she was thinking of Dad. Every now and then, I’d see her tear up, but she’d try to hide it from Maddie and me. Sometimes at night when I left Maddie’s room after reading to her I’d hear Mom crying in her room. She and my Dad were married for over twenty years, but they were still gooey in love with each other and acted like teenagers at times. I thought it was embarrassing, but Finn said I should appreciate it after what happened between his parents. Although his mom had seemed to love his dad, he’d discovered she’d been having affairs for years and the divorce was bitter and ugly. Finn was right. I hadn’t realized how lucky I was that my parents’ marriage had been so stable.

  Wherever she’d gone, she snapped back to the present. “Anyway, I’m not bothered about what may or may not have happened here and I didn’t think you would be either. What’s wrong, Cain? A big boy like you afraid of ghosts?” she asked, a teasing grin on her face. “I set the timer on the muffins. Can you get them out of the oven when they’re ready while I shower?”

  “Sure, Mom,” I replied, as she left the kitchen. Now I had something else to add to my agenda for today. Finding out all
I could about Sarah Butler and what had gone on in this house.

  Chapter 5

  If Sarah’s ghost was really living in the attic, it seemed a little rude and all kinds of wrong to be researching her on the Internet, like she’d be looking over my shoulder or something, so I took my laptop outside on the screened porch. As embarrassing as it was to admit, I remembered when she’d disappeared, because everyone had been talking about it at school, but then I’d lost interest. Sarah hadn’t been someone I’d really known - yes, it was awful something bad might have happened to her, but it wasn’t anything that directly affected me, so I went on about my life. Now I was wishing I’d paid more attention.

  I went to the Post and Courier website and found several articles, the first from February of this year, stating how Sarah’s parents had reported her missing and the police were asking for any information that might help in locating her. They’d received a lot of tips, but nothing had led to her being found.

  The next article talked about the possibility of Sarah being a runaway. She’d hadn’t had a cell phone, a fact that was totally surreal to me in this day and age, so there were no records pulled or signals to track. She’d been somewhat of a loner at school and didn’t have many friends who could offer any reasons as to why she might have run away. Her parents and teachers stated she was an excellent student, at the top of her class, there was no trouble at home, and Sarah had never been a disciplinary problem either at school or home. Her parents were convinced she’d been kidnapped, or worse.