“Why do you say things like that when you know well enough that I will?” He sat up, kissed her, and plopped back down again next to her. "I don't know what to do about it. Maybe we'll have someone else come and check. If they say there's nothing up there, we'll take it that they know what they're talking about. I guess."
Sure, Liz thought. We'll get someone else to go up there, and they'll tell you there's something up there all right. But you're not going to get that from an exterminator. Get a psychic in here. There'll tell you what's up there.
But she didn't say any of that.
She got up a while later to make dinner. Jack went to restring his guitar. Joey played in his bedroom.
Jack got the string changed and tuned up, then played for a few minutes, strumming random chords, shrugging off work's stress and losing sense of the world--the only time he allowed himself to do so.
While his hands and fingers worked the fretboard, Jack's eyes went to the mattress. He watched, as if expecting the book to peek out. When it didn't, he set his guitar aside and pulled it from the bed. He flipped through the pages, wondering what was so special about this book that Charley Clark made a point to tell him about it.
Every town's got its stories, he thought. Why are Angel Hill's any different?
Skimming the first chapter told him why. At least it gave him an idea that Angel Hill's stories might not be like other towns'.
There was a hill on the block surrounded by Rand and Ellison, between F and H Streets. Fett Technologies was on Ellison, crossing with I and J Streets. Jack realized this was the hill he saw every morning turning into work.
The Outsider's Guide to Angel Hill called this hill Splatter Mountain.
The sight commonly known as Splatter Mountain, the book read, was originally the center of Angel Hill. When the town was founded and the ground broke, Patrick Day drove a shovel into the earth, announcing the official founding of Angel Hill, Missouri. The crowd cheered and drank champagne and no one at first noticed the red stuff coming up from the ground. The one who saw it first was reported to have been Eleanore Gladys, wife of the town's first doctor. Eleanore Gladys screamed, pointed, and fainted dead away. Someone looked to see what she had screamed about and saw, coming up from the ground, a thick red liquid. Someone else screamed, "It's devil's blood!" and the crowd roared with fear and everyone began to go hysterical. There was chaos as everyone scattered to flee the cursed spot.
Jack flipped forward, passing the detailed account of the town consecration and whatever the people there saw. He found a section break and read.
Soon after the groundbreaking, the details on how long after are vague, but it was within a few weeks, the town hired a geologist from Kansas City to take a sample of the stuff. It had issued from the ground for nearly an hour, running in red streams down the hill, soaking back into the dirt, or drying on the grass. The geologist found plenty of samples to take with him. The crusted powder was scraped from grass and rocks and tested. Results were inconclusive, which is to say no one ever discovered exactly what had spilled from the ground that day when Angel Hill was founded.
Jack closed the book. Odd, he thought. It's bullshit, but it's odd. Unidentifiable red ooze doesn't come from the ground. They probably stabbed a mole or a gopher or something when they broke the ground. And I doubt it bled for an hour. And after a few weeks, the rain would have washed it away. What else you got?
He flipped through the book, stopped in the middle, and read some more.
There was a series of animal mutilations in the late 1800s. During the end, two people were killed, one more presumed dead. A local woman was found dead in her home. The local minister, Pastor Mullins was also found torn to shreds in his living room. His son, Billy Ray, was never found.
Soon after, the town brought in a new minister, Pastor Keeper. Jacob and his family (a wife and four children) were moved in from the small town of Green Lake West across the river in Kansas, about a hundred miles south of Angel Hill.
Jack turned the page, then quickly dropped the book and stood up, grabbing Lily and placing her on her stand. Liz came into the bedroom.
"Supper's ready," she said.
"I was just coming," he said, weaving his pick between the strings just under the nut.
"Come on, Joe," she called into his room. She heard him drop his toy and clomp into the hall.
"Are we having spinach?" he asked.
"No," she said, laughing. "I don't think so, why?"
"Because I like spinach."
"Okay," she said. "I'll remember that next time I go to the store. Tonight we're having tacos. You want hard shells or do you want a burrito?"
"Brito," he said.
"Brito, it is."
"We get any mail today?" Jack asked after dinner.
Everyone was lying in the living room watching television. Joey had a Batman figure on the floor in front of him, ready should he decide to play with it.
"I don't know," Liz said. "I didn't even think to check."
"I'll do it." Jack got up, groaning as he stood. "I'm too young to make old man noises," he said as he strode into the hall. The light was out and he had to see the hall in his head to figure out where he was going. He almost tripped up the first step, but caught himself on the rail.
He unlocked the door, leaned onto the porch, grabbed the mail, and locked the door again. Then he noticed the second floor kitchen light was on. He went up and tossed the mail onto the counter, then shuffled through the envelopes. Here was a bill. Here was an offer for a pre-approved home loan. Here was a letter for this address, but the wrong name. And another envelope for what he figured would be the empty lot next door.
I wonder if there was ever a house there.
He grabbed the two for him, then the other two in the opposite hand. He'd put them back into the mailbox for tomorrow. He turned off the kitchen light and went to the stairs. Then he stopped, watching a bowling ball-sized orb of green light drifting up the wall next to the stairs. It rounded the landing and Jack watched it, trying to see the beam it traveled on, trying to figure out where it was coming from. But it didn't appear to be moving up the wall itself. It looked like it was floating free of the wall, a ball of light hovering in midair, making its way to the third floor.
It vanished over the top banister and Jack stood, listening, wondering.
What the hell was that?
He went to the windows in the main room and looked down. Was someone down there with a flashlight? He cupped his hands against the glass, but couldn't see anyone. And the empty lot was just that; empty. No trees or piles of scrap metal, nothing. No one would be able to hide there. And the lot was empty.
He went back to the stairs, up midway to the third floor landing, then turned and looked up. The light was gone. But his eyes fell on the top banister and Charley Clark's story came to him.
Hung himself. Tied a rope to the top of the banister and just let himself drop.
"There's no way that thing would hold a man," Jack said, staring up at the thick wooden rail. But, standing there in the dark, Jack thought he heard something creak above him. Like taut rope against wood.
"I'll have to make Charley work through first break tomorrow," Jack thought. "That's what he gets for suggestion."
He replaced the mail, took his own mail downstairs, and forgot about the green ball of light.
Liz woke up that night with cool air swirling about her face. She kept her eyes closed and turned over, but the air followed. She knew opening her eyes would prove pointless. She wouldn't see anything, but she'd still feel it.
Forget a second exterminator, she thought. I've got to do something about this now.
I'm getting this house blessed, tomorrow if I can.
She moved next to Jack, pressed her face against his shoulder. The air stopped swirling around her and she eventually went back to sleep.
Chapter Five
As soon as Jack left for work, Liz was on the phone, calling every church she could find
. Her search for someone to bless the house revealed something to Liz she‘d never have thought about Angel Hill. Listed among the Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows and First Church of East Angel Hills and a few Angel Hill Assemblies of God were some that made her stomach do a roll. Church of the Hollow Earth? Church of the Priory of Scion? Temple of the Thirteen Holy Attributes?
“Where’s a good old St. Patrick’s when you need it?” she wondered.
When no one in Angel Hill could help her, she tried the surrounding towns, Gower, St. Joseph, Helena, Easton, Cosby, Cameron. Most of the churches in the smaller towns were Christian. She finally found someone at a Catholic Church in St. Joseph who could do the house blessing. The priest said the soonest he could schedule it would be the following Monday.
"Thank you," Liz said. "I'll be here all day. Is there a certain time I should expect you?"
"Sometime a little after noon," he said.
"That's perfect. My son will be sleeping. I'll assume you need directions."
"Yes, that would probably help."
She told him to take US 169 into town and gave him directions to the house from there.
He said he would see her Monday. Liz thanked him again, then hung up.
Joey asked if he could play outside for a little bit.
"Tell you what," she said. "I'm gonna go up and paint for a while. Why don't you play in your room? Then, as soon as I'm done, we can go down to the park."
"I don't want to go to the park," Joey said. He sounded as if she'd suggested they go play on the highway during rush hour.
"You don't? Okay. Well, then when I get some work done upstairs, we'll both go outside. Maybe we can take your tee to the lot next door and you can hit the ball."
"Yeah, yeah," Joey said. "Let's do that. I wanna hit the ball."
She left him in his room, then went to the second floor.
Everything was as she'd left it, what was it, two, three days ago?
"My God," she said to the room, "I can't believe I haven't done anything up here in so long." The burgundy paint was long dry. She was pleased with the outcome. Not bad for a first coat. It was darker than she'd thought it would be, but it suited the room. She imagined thick, classy furniture--a couch, a couple chairs--with a bar and maybe they could have the fireplace rebuilt. The mantle was there, but the fireplace itself had been bricked up. With some decent lights and music, this could be the perfect entertaining room. Not that they did a lot of entertaining, but they never had the perfect room before.
"Course, we'll have to make some friends in town first."
She looked down at the wood floor, scuffed and scratched from years of who knew how many different people living here. A big enough rug, she thought, would take care of that, and bring the room together at the same time.
She still had the other three walls to paint and then a second coat. Then again, she thought, looking at the first coat, the one might be enough.
She went to the finished wall and ran her hand over it. Up close, she realized she'd been wrong. Impossible as it seemed, after all those days left alone, the paint still hadn't dried. She pulled her hand back, thinking, Great, and I just screwed it up. Now I'll have to do the second coat. She looked at her hand, covered and sticky with red paint. She went toward the bathroom, then swerved away and into the kitchen instead. Since seeing the boy in the shower, Liz hadn't been back. She flipped on the light over the sink and turned on the water. Then she stopped in the middle of putting her hand under the flow.
This wasn't the burgundy she'd used. She stared at it. This was brighter, more vibrant, more red. Her mind played a cliche where the wall had been covered in blood instead of paint and Liz's hand was now covered with it. She thrust her hand under the stream and washed it off. She dried it on her shirt and went back into the main room.
The wall was no longer burgundy and Liz's mind brought the cliche around again. Except this time it wasn't her mind.
She watched as the color on the wall changed, brightened, became red and full and began to drip down the walls as if it had just been applied, and too thick at that. A child laughed behind her and she turned, but she was alone. Liz looked back and watched blood pour off the wall, not just down it, but she could see it seep from the wall like sweat through skin.
She backed up and looked to the side, up the stairs. She didn’t know what she expected to see there, but she knew she wasn't alone.
The child laughed again.
Blood ran over the baseboards and began soaking into the wood floor.
The child laughed again. This time the sound came from the stairs.
She looked over to the empty stairs, then back to the wall. The blood was gone.
The wall was burgundy and dry. The baseboards and floor were clean. She went to touch it and found it true. The laugh came again.
She ran to the stairs, then up them two at a time. At the top, she stood brave, waiting for whatever was about to happen. She imagined all sorts of things. Ghosts would rush her and knock her over the rail and she'd break her neck in the fall. Dead arms would reach out from the walls and floor and drag her away. A portal would open in the room and Liz would fall through it into Hell.
The child's laugh echoed up from the landing. She looked back, then quickly turned around to face the third floor again.
"You can't hurt me," she said. "I don't care what you think you can do. But you can't touch my family, or me. This is our house now."
You can't save yourself, the house whispered.
Forgive me--pant pant--forgive me--pant pant--forgive me, it whispered.
Can I get in bed with you? it whispered.
"You're just memories," Liz said. "You're just energy. You can't hurt me."
Everyone will suffer now, the house whispered.
Liz turned and went down the stairs, slowly, almost daring the house to do something, but trying to show she wouldn't back down. Still, she left the paint and the walls to themselves that day. On the first floor, she told Joey to get his shoes and they'd go outside for awhile.
Charley asked, “How come with all the witnesses to just about everything you read about, you still can’t believe any of it?”
“First,” Jack told him, “I haven’t even read that book. I’ve skimmed it here and there, but I haven’t sat down and read it cover to cover. I haven’t even looked at half the stories in there. As for why I can’t believe any of it . . . it’s not that I don’t believe any of that stuff happened, I’m just saying there’s an explanation for all of it, if anyone cares enough to really look deep into it. But everyone seems so set on this ‘strange things just happen in Angel Hill’ line that when someone comes to them with the easy explanation of ‘Oh, it’s an act of God’ or ‘It’s just one of those unexplained Angel Hill mysteries’, that’s what people grab hold to and y’all are a stubborn bunch. Really, if you got someone in here from the outside, someone who’s not stuck on this Weird Angel Hill kick, someone with an objective mind, I’d bet you’d get actual answers to this stuff in no time.”
Charley shook his head and smiled, then turned back to screwing the nuts over the toggle switches on the box faces.
Jack was about to head over to the cable cell when Charley said, “And since you’re Mister Objective Opinion, what do you say? Let’s start with that house of yours?”
“What about it?” Jack asked. “There’s nothing wrong with ‘that house’ of mine.”
“That’s not what the people are saying.”
“The people? The people don’t live in my house. Believe me, the biggest problem in my house is some squirrels in the walls and a front door I can’t get to stay closed.”
“Nothing else? No voices, no weird lights? Nothing like that?”
Jack stopped for a second and thought about the glowing green ball he’d seen just last night. Was that what Charley meant? But that had been a reflection from outside, a car driving by or something like that.
“No,” he said. “There are squirrels and drafts
, but that’s it. I’m telling you, stuff like what you’re talking about just doesn‘t happen without something--and I mean something real, something you can touch or see--causing it.” He picked up a control panel, hooked it up to the tester. “This is reality,” he said. “You think the world got to this point, civilization and technology and control panels by some unexplained occurrence? It got here because the world makes sense. One thing leads to another leads to another until you’ve got . . .” He flipped a toggle switch and a light on the tester glowed red. Jack made a face of mock surprise.
“If you say so, boss,” Charley said. He set down the face he’d completed and moved on to the next one. Jack walked away. Under his breath, Charley said, “Wonder if your wife feels the same. Wonder what she’s seen.”
Jack would be home soon. Liz went upstairs and brought in the mail. As she closed the door, she heard a tap upstairs. She wanted to ignore it and go back down to the living room, but she knew she wasn’t going to do that. She climbed the stairs.
In the main room on the second floor, she stopped.
Standing across the room, staring out the window, was a girl. She couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. Her back was to Liz. The girl was just standing there. Her hands were raised and her open palms rested on the glass. Her fingers tapped at it making the noise Liz had heard at the front door. She stood and watched the girl, silent, trying not to be afraid. The girl’s tapping grew stronger, more insistent, until in seconds she was slapping the window with her palms. Liz wondered if a ghost’s hand would be strong enough to break the glass. The girl swung at the glass with such force, Liz thought for sure she would shatter it. She grunted with every swing. The pane rattled in its frame, but it didn’t break.
Liz lost her concentration and the letters in her hand slipped and fell to the floor. She stooped to pick them up. The noise made the girl stop and turn around. She looked at Liz and Liz looked at her, then the girl looked higher and her eyes grew wide. Liz watched in shock as the little girl’s features fell apart. Her pink skin turned grey and cracked. Her hair went limp. Her eyes grew yellow.
The Third Floor Page 8
