The Third Floor

by The Third Floor (epub)

  "He's upstairs, isn’t he?"

  Liz laughed out loud, and said, "I don’t think so. He's gonna play up there all by himself? Not in this lifetime."

  "Yeah he is," Jack replied, nodding. "I saw him in the window when I was coming up the walk. And I heard him knocking around up there when I was looking at the paint. Where'd you think he was?"

  "He's outside," Liz said. "I'm the one who let him out. Let me get the food and I'll yell for him."

  Sure enough, when Liz returned with the pizza, Joey was in tow.

  While Liz got plates and Joey sat swinging his legs at the table, Jack said, "I'll be right back," and he went upstairs.

  He made a circuit of the rooms, but all he found was that he was alone. He walked to the window he'd seen Joey in and stared down at the yard. Then he turned back to the room and it was still empty. He made another round, looking in the closets, too, but Joey was still downstairs and when Jack returned, he asked, "Joe, you didn't go upstairs a little bit ago, did you?"

  "Huh-uh," Joey said around the food in his mouth. "I don't want to go up there."

  "Then we got raccoons or something," Jack told Liz, "'cause I heard something moving around up there."

  “What about mice?”

  “I haven’t found any in the traps yet.”

  "I thought you said you saw him, too."

  "I thought I did, but I guess not. I know I heard something, though. I’ll call an exterminator tomorrow. We can't have raccoons and I don't even want to consider that it might be rats."

  "Don't say that," Liz cautioned.

  "Well, I'm pretty sure the realtor said the house had been empty for six years. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out something was living in the ceilings up there."

  "Why was it empty so long? A big place like this?"

  "I don't know. I didn't think to ask. At the time, I was only interested in finding us a place and this seemed the perfect one."

  "Perfect and spooky as hell sometimes," Liz commented.

  "What's so spooky about it? I mean, it's big, but so what? I think it's a nice house."

  "Me too," Liz said. "I'm not saying it's a dump. I just wouldn't want to spend a night here alone."

  The phone rang, then, cutting off Jack's response. They both looked at each other, wondering who could be calling when they still didn't know anyone.

  "It's gotta be work," Jack said, then looked at his watch. "It's awful late though. There shouldn't even be anyone there still."

  "Maybe it's burned down and they're calling to tell you not to come in tomorrow."

  "Right," Jack said, smiling. "Hello?" he said. He was silent a moment, listening, his face growing more twisted with his frown. When Jack pulled the phone away from his ear and turned it off, Liz caught a bit of sound, a loud, distorted screech.

  "Who was it?" she asked.

  "Just kids," he answered, "playing with the phone."

  "What did they say?"

  "Just stupid shit. Some moron. Immature crap, that's what it is," he said, turning away from the phone and biting into his pizza. "People have got way too much time on their hands."

  Joey took his bath while Liz sat sideways on the toilet reading to him. Jack was in the bedroom with his headphones on, strumming away.

  After Joey was dried off and in his underwear, Jack told him it was bedtime. Joey whined, but knew it wouldn't do any good. Bedtime was bedtime was bedtime. Jack tossed him onto the mattress and Joey bounced, laughing. Jack covered him up and asked him, "How much do I love you, Joe?" Joey spread his arms wide and Jack said, "That's right. And who's your hero?"

  "You," Joey said.

  "And who's my hero?"

  "Me," Joey said.

  "Good job. Now get some good sleep. And don't let the bedbugs bite."

  Jack was almost out of the room when Joey asked, "Aren't you gonna tell me to have sweet dreams?"

  "I was getting to it," Jack covered. "Sweet dreams, Joe."

  "Sweet dreams."

  The door closed and Jack crossed the hall to the bathroom. While he was standing there, he heard a click and a whoosh. He stood still, listening. What the hell was that? Raccoons? No, his mind said. You forgot to lock the front door when you came home.

  When he went up the landing, the front door stood wide open, welcoming anything the night might see fit to admit. He closed it, locked it, and went down to his wife.

  In the living room, he found her standing, staring at the wall. When he looked, he saw she was looking at a family picture they'd taken just a few weeks after getting married.

  "What'cha doing?" he asked.

  "Just looking."

  "What for?"

  "I was wondering if people in town, since we're new, wonder if maybe we kidnapped Joey and are hiding out from his real parents."

  "The hair?" he asked, knowing the answer.

  "Of course. I mean, really. We just got here, no one knows us, and we’re not the most social people ever. You got the dark hair, I got the red. And here we are with this little blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid."

  "Who is not the least bit nervous about where he is, because he's with his parents."

  "Parent and a half," she corrected.

  "Would you stop? He'll do it when he's ready. All right?"

  "I know he will," she said, moving away from the picture and leaning back on the couch. "Ignore me. I'm just goofy right now. I think I sniffed too many paint fumes today; I started seeing things in the bathroom."

  "Oh, yeah?" he asked, curious. "Like what?"

  "Nothing you want to hear about," she said. She rolled her eyes and raised her eyebrows.

  "A big sexy guy?"

  "Not even close," she said. "Trust me, though, honey, it was nothing I need to see again."

  He sat at her feet and rubbed them through her socks. Liz moaned and stretched her back, arms above her head. Then she collapsed in a heap of exhaustion and closed her eyes.

  "You ready for bed?" he asked.

  "Almost," she said. "I wanna finish this movie first."

  "Record it and watch it tomorrow while Joey's taking his nap."

  "Hey," she said, "you want this house to look nice, or not? I'll be in in a little bit."

  "Well then," he said, leaning up off the couch. Her feet dropped from his lap. "I'll go play some more."

  He blew her a kiss and disappeared into the bedroom. The door closed behind him.

  He didn't bother plugging in. Instead, he leaned back against the headboard, Lily cradled in his lap, with her neck resting against his bent left knee. Jack's hand went to the fretboard, fingered a G chord, and he strummed. The high E string snapped.

  "Shit," he said, looking down at the broken string. He removed his fingers from the fretboard and strummed again. He shook his head; he'd heard right. The other five strings were out of tune. They'd been perfect earlier.

  Jack turned the guitar toward him, staring at the snapped string hanging dead from the tailpiece, the other end dangling from the tuning head. A broken string doesn’t knock the rest out of tune.

  He’d just been in here twenty minutes ago . . . It didn’t matter anyway how the others were knocked out, the high E was broken. He reached under the bed and pulled out his case. There was a compartment inside where he kept his extra strings, but when he opened it, they were gone. He knew he had them. He’d just bought them, what, two weeks ago?

  He got on the floor and looked under the bed. Not there. He turned on the bedroom light and looked around the room, but didn’t find them.

  He went into Joey’s room.

  Joey turned his head, still awake.

  "Hi, Dad."

  "Joe," Jack asked, "do you know where Dad’s guitar strings are? They’re in a little square package.” He held his fingers up to the show the approximate size of the pack.

  Joey answered, "Huh-uh."

  “You didn’t see anything lying around and picked it up to play with it?”

  “No,” Joey said, rubbing a tired eye.
>
  Jack scratched his head.

  “Hmm. I just bought them and now I can’t find them.”

  “Are they upstairs?” Joey asked.

  Jack looked at him for a second and wondered why he would think they’d be upstairs.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. Well, I’ll just get some more, and if I find them I’ll have them, I guess.” He leaned over and hugged Joey, kissed his cheek, and squeezed the boy's face in his hand. His fingers grazed the wrinkled bit of skin above Joey's neck, at the juncture of his neck and jaw, a thin pink birthmark. Jack had always thought it looked like a scar, but it had been there since Joey was born. He ruffled his son's hair, then went back to his own room. He stood Lily against the stand and went into the living room where Liz had dozed off during the end of her movie.

  The phone rang and he snatched it up.

  "Hello?"

  He held it to his ear a minute, silent, then hung it up again, shaking his head, a disgusted look on his face.

  "Same thing as earlier?" Liz asked.

  "I thought you were out," he said.

  "No, just dozing off a little bit. The phone woke me up. So was it the same?"

  He nodded and said, "I can't believe we've been in town three weeks and already we've got to put up with stupid shit."

  "Every town's got teenage kids," she said.

  "Yeah, I know."

  Heading into the bedroom, they heard a soft click and a whoosh. They looked at each other, confused.

  "What the hell was that?" Liz asked.

  "I don't know. I'll go see."

  Liz's mind's eye saw Jack going upstairs only to come down seconds later with a machete buried in his skull and blood running down his face as if it had been poured on. She shoved the bad movie aside and turned on the bedroom light while she waited.

  Jack went up the stairs to the landing and stopped, staring, even more confused now.

  "Didn't I just lock that," he asked the house. He pushed the door closed and deliberately, consciously, locked it, CLICK. He turned to go back down and a chill skittered through him. He wondered where the draft was coming from and decided he'd have to find it before winter. "But not right now," he said.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped to flip on the bathroom light and left the door open a foot; he'd heard Joey, on more than a dozen nights now, coming back from the bathroom in the middle of the night. At least he's getting up to do it, Jack thought.

  "No serial killers up there?" Liz asked as he slid into bed next to her.

  "Just an absent-minded husband," he answered. "By the way, I'm going by the music store on my way home tomorrow, so I'll be a little bit late."

  "What'cha going there for?" She yawned, stretched, and draped a leg over him.

  "I broke a string tonight."

  "Nice going."

  "I know."

  They slept.

  Liz woke up in the middle of the night and lay staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to come again. She checked the clock. 3:25. She listened to Jack's breathing, hoping it would lull her back to sleep. She looked at the clock again. 3:58.

  As she waited for sleep, her thoughts went to the telephone and Jack's prank calls. What was it he said they'd done?

  Everyone will suffer now.

  That's right. And something else, he said, someone else speaking, too.

  You can't save yourself.

  Who was it calling? No one in town had their number except Jack’s work, so obviously it had been a random call. But most pranks started with something like, "Is your refrigerator running?" or "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"

  She hadn't been on the phone, but the voices had been loud enough, she'd caught their tone. They'd been raspy voices, as far as she could tell. Loud and raspy.

  Everyone will suffer now. As she lay in the dark, listening to the sounds of the house all around her, wishing she could just go back to sleep and not wake up until the bedroom was flooded with sunlight, she began to hear that raspy-voiced phrase in her head, over and over.

  Everyone will suffer now, everyone will suffer now, everyone will suffer now.

  When she was in middle school, Liz had been home alone one afternoon when the phone rang. It was her first prank call and all the voice said was, "You're dead."

  It had caught her so by surprise, she'd dropped the phone and hid in her parents' room, ducking between the wall and the bed. That had been the year before they divorced.

  Those two words, "You're dead," had terrified her, but even that ominous phrase didn't carry the weight of doom of “Everyone will suffer now." And then even that one wasn't as bad as, "You can't save yourself."

  For the first time since moving in, Liz wished their yard weren't so big. It kept the streetlights from shining in. A month ago, she would have killed for a dark room to sleep in. That was before we moved into the Angel Hill Tomb, she thought. Now she just wanted something glaring in, something throwing light bars across the wall, something to prove the dark mass in the corner was just dirty laundry.

  She rolled over and moved close to Jack. His warmth spread to Liz and after a few minutes, she finally felt herself sinking into sleep. She was about to give in and descend into unconsciousness again, but something nagged at her, keeping her from taking that last step.

  "Dammit," she whispered. She wanted to ignore the pressure, and she knew she could do it, if she just pushed it away, she'd go back to sleep. But she knew the sleep would be light and troubled if she didn't get up.

  "Crap," she said, rolling out of bed. She tried to keep her steps light as she crept down the hall. She stepped into the bathroom, shut the door, then turned on the light. Hadn't Jack turned that on before bed? Joey must have turned it out after getting up to pee. The pressure wasn't great, but she knew it was enough. Liz sat and the tinkling of the water sounded incredibly loud in the middle of the night. The sound faded and Liz was standing and flushing the crumpled wad of paper. She stood staring into the mirror while the toilet filled up again. When it was quiet, she went to the door.

  Liz froze just inside, listening to the footsteps coming down the hall. She'd tried to get up without waking Jack, but now that she had, he had to go, too.

  She heard him step across the cold air vent and she opened the door to light the rest of his way. She stepped back to let the light shine into the hall so she could see him. But Jack wasn't there.

  The hall was long, dark, and empty.

  He's stepped to the side, she thought. He's going to try to scare me.

  Liz leapt out, ready to attack. But Jack wasn't there.

  She stood unsure in the hall, watching, listening. Jack hadn't been coming down the hall. "But I heard something," she said. Her voice scared her. It wavered and came out unlike her voice. And in the dead of night, the sound was out of place with the rest of the world.

  She flipped off the light and walked, a little quicker than she'd come the first time, back to the bedroom. As she reached the door, Liz heard something behind her. She froze, then whirled, hoping to see Joey coming toward her.

  The hall was still black, still empty, still menacing. Liz knew there was nothing there, even if she couldn't see. But the footsteps continued, down the hall, away from her, and on up the stairs. She heard them round the landing before she leapt into the bed, buried herself under the covers, and wrapped herself tight around Jack.

  He grunted in his sleep, pressed back against her, and was still again.

  Liz lay there, praying for sleep or a stroke or anything that would render her unconscious. She knew that, in the light of morning, none of this would seem as terrifying. But for now, while it was still pitch black in the house, a million horrible things seemed all too possible.

  She dozed after a while and, as she felt herself slipping, she welcomed it, opened herself to the oblivion, and fell freely into its arms. Until she felt Joey's small hands nudge her shoulder and ask, "Liz?"

  She came out of her stupor and rolled back, asking, "Huh, ba
be?"

  Joey wasn't there. But the voice was.

  "Can I get in bed with you?" it asked. It wasn't Joey's voice this time, but it was a child's.

  The tiredness fell away from her like a limp suit that hangs too loose. She stared into the darkness wide-eyed. Her heart pounded and she wanted to shake Jack, to make him get up and check every floor, every room, and every closet of the house. But she knew Jack well enough.

  Get real, she told herself, using Jack's way of thinking. You were almost asleep. You dreamed it. That's exactly what he'd say, too. She knew it.

  But I didn't dream it, she thought. I was almost asleep. But I know what I felt, and I know what I heard.

  She lay wide-awake in the dark, clutching her husband. She finally began to feel safe again, and dozed off just as the first morning light crept through the windows.

  Chapter Three

  In her sleep, tiny hands nudged her again.

  Liz jerked awake with a gasp and rolled out of reach. She was wide-awake and staring. Joey beamed into her sleeping face.

  "Time to get up," he said.

  "I'm up," she murmured into the mattress.

  "Time to get up on the floor."

  Liz slid her leg out of bed and her bare foot hit the floor. "There." She pushed herself up and stretched. Her back popped. Her other foot hit the floor. Joey bounded off into the living room.

  Jack poked his head in. He was buttoning his shirt.

  "You gonna get up sometime, lazy bones?"

  "Not if I can help it," she said. "Oh, my God I didn't sleep at all last night."

  "You didn't? Man, I was out."

  She pulled clothes from her dresser and slid past him into the hall, heading for the bathroom.

  When she came out again, Jack was in the living room, looking through the phone book.

  "Are you going to be here if I can get someone to come and check for squirrels?"

  "I should be. Joey can play in the yard if he wants to. Or if they come early enough I can take him to the park later."

  Jack found a listing, called, and hung up.

  "He said the soonest he could come would be tomorrow."