The Third Floor

by The Third Floor (epub)

  “And how old was he?” Liz asked.

  “I don’t know exactly,” Judy said. “Young, just getting into his teen years, I think.”

  Liz was thinking that she hadn’t seen this one. She’d seen the man, and two of the children, but none that old. The ones she’d seen had been children.

  “And then Sarah,” Judy said. “She doted on her big brother. She was pretty young, maybe ten. She used to practice her piano and if I walked my dog past the house at the right time, I could hear her from the sidewalk. Let me see . . . Jason was the eight-year-old, and then Kyle was five, I believe. I mean, they were a terrific family, they had everything in the world going for them. But that cancer, you know, it just swoops in and takes all that away.”

  “Yeah,” Liz said. She wasn’t listening anymore, she was thinking about the children. This woman was taking away their anonymity; they were no longer nameless shapes that touched her in the night. She pictured Joey, perfect and sleeping downstairs, and then she imagined having that four times over and what kind of hole does your life have to sink into before you do something so horrible?

  She glanced over and Judy’s lips were moving, so Liz tuned in.

  “--this color, too. It all looks so different, but I really like it. Are you going to open up the house and finish all three floors?”

  “I don’t really know yet,” Liz said. “We’ve been living on the bottom floor and that works out just fine so far. There’s really no reason to move anything up here, other than we’ve got the space and we might as well utilize it. But, to be honest, we don’t need this much room. I love the house, but sometimes I wish we’d bought a smaller place.”

  “Yes,” Judy said, nodding. “And knowing what happened here can’t make it any easier.”

  “No,” Liz confessed. “It doesn’t.”

  Judy looked at her watch.

  “Oh, I should be going, I’m going to be late. I just wanted to say hello, and to make sure everything was okay. You know, you see an ambulance down the street where something so awful happened once before . . .”

  “Oh, God no,” Liz said. “That’s too horrible to even think about.”

  She walked Judy back to the door and said goodbye, stood there watching as the woman went down the steps to the sidewalk, then turned up the street heading back to her own house.

  She locked the front door, then turned and went up to the second floor.

  She looked around at all the work she'd done up here, and for what? How could she move up here? And if Jack ever got it into his head that they should use the third floor, what then? She couldn't do it.

  She climbed the stairs again, toward the third floor, and her mind asked, What are you doing?

  I have to see, she thought. I have to see where it happened.

  Why?

  I don't know. But I know I have to.

  Well, leave me out of it.

  Come on. Let's go see.

  She rounded the landing and stopped, frozen again.

  At the top of the stairs, sitting with her chin in her hands, looking solemnly down at Liz, was the little girl. Sarah? Her hair hung dead and dirty around her shoulders. Her dress was faded and grungy. Her eyes hollow, sunken.

  Liz stared back, waiting, wondering what was going to happen.

  And for the first time in months, Liz wasn't afraid. She saw the girl now as she was, a victim, not some menacing figure sent to torment her out of the house. She suddenly found herself feeling sympathy for this girl.

  Then Sarah’s lips parted, mouthing the silent question: why?

  Liz felt the lump rise into her throat and she wanted to give a reason, but she didn't know. She would have done anything then to make the girl feel better, but she found herself empty of solutions.

  "I don't know," she said back.

  The girl stood up and Liz didn't know whether she should stand her ground or run.

  The girl took a step back, away from Liz. Liz took a step up, too. The girl moved back another step, and before Liz could follow, Milo Dengler was hanging dead and green beside her, dangling from the top rail and staring at her, his face full of anger. Liz caught him from the corner of her eye and as she turned to look, Dengler lunged toward her, arms out and his mouth open in a roar.

  Liz backed away, then leapt to the landing and turned, suddenly aware she couldn't get downstairs without passing him, without going under him. What if he dropped from the rail and landed on top of her?

  He's a ghost, her mind said.

  That doesn't make it any less terrifying.

  He can only scare you, he can't hurt you.

  I hear a heart attack hurts plenty.

  Dengler hung limp above her now, his arms at his sides and his head lolling forward on a broken neck. But his eyes were open and rolled up to stare at her.

  She looked up and saw the girl had vanished from the landing. She was alone with the killer and any empathy she'd felt for the girl was replaced by bald fear. And Joey was alone downstairs. Were the others down there with him? Was the man just a distraction to keep her from Joey while the children did something to him?

  No, she tried to convince herself. The sorrow in the girl's face had been real. Whatever all this was about, it wasn't something they'd done, but something that was done to them, something they were led into. At least, she hoped.

  She watched him, waiting, wondering. The body turned sideways in a breeze Liz didn't feel, but a chill still ran up her back and gooseflesh rose on her arms.

  The dead eyes still stared at her, but he hadn't moved again since she'd reached the landing. She took a cautious step down, ready to leap back again if he even twitched. Another step down and Dengler was still. But the eyes followed her. She imagined she could see the evil grin beginning to spread across his cracked lips, but another look proved her wrong; his face remained the same solemn, dead look.

  She'd gone down five steps now and Dengler's body hung a foot from her face, her head even with his chest. Liz wished he'd vanish into whatever other place he'd come from, but it didn't look like he was going to, and she couldn't stay here all day, trapped on the stairs by a ghost. She swung her feet over the rail and used the overhang on the stairs to climb down, inching past him. She slid her hand down the rail and her feet off the edge of the step, down to the next one. Her eyes stayed on his body, watching for any sign of movement.

  She kept trying to tell herself He's just a ghost, he's just a ghost, he's not really there, it's just an image, not real. But a smell came from him that contradicted that. And a heat washed over Liz's face when she passed him. The body swung sideways again and she glanced up quickly. His face was only two feet above Liz's, and his eyes were still locked on her. She stared into them and this time she didn't imagine it; the lips really did part and he showed a row of ugly teeth sneering at her.

  She gasped and her foot slipped off the stair. Her knee banged the banister and her arm flung out to catch something and keep her from falling and breaking her back.

  Maybe that's what he wants, she thought, to kill us all so there's more of them.

  But why, she wondered. What would be the point in that?

  Maybe there isn't a point. Who knows? Who cares?

  Right. Get out of here. That's all.

  Her arm found the banister for the flight of the stairs leading to the bottom landing, right behind her, and she hauled herself backward over it, flinging her feet over and backing up toward the wall, then she looked up and saw Dengler was still hanging there.

  His head was cocked sideways, his face dead, his eyes staring at her, and his arms were outstretched, the fingers flexing, reaching, grabbing for her. She heard the knuckles pop when he curled the fingers. She leaped down the stairs to the landing, then took the last flight down to the first floor three at a time, trying not to trip over her feet and land on her head.

  Is that what happened to Joey? He'd come up here that night and he'd seen something? What? Dengler? The little girl? Something worse?

/>   What could be worse?

  Nothing she could think of.

  She stopped in the hall midway to the living room and put her back against the wall, her face in her hands, and she cried, as silently as she could. When she realized the torrent was too much for her, she went into the bathroom--the light was off now, and Liz had to turn it on--and closed door. She sat on the edge of the tub, bawling into her hands and wishing all of it would go away. She thought she'd be able to handle it, that she was strong enough to deal with a ghost or two, but the scope of it turned out to be bigger than she'd thought.

  This wasn't the ghost of some unfortunate person who'd died in the house, it was a man who killed his four children and then himself, and anyone who could do that wasn't someone Liz wanted to have to deal with.

  She knew there were things she would have to do now, things she was hoping to avoid. If Jack didn't want to believe it all, that had been fine, but now it was getting to the point if she didn't convince someone else she was going to have a nervous breakdown.

  Blessing the house hadn't worked. So what would? She'd have to find out. How? The library's resources had been limited and she'd come away with nothing.

  Okay, maybe Jack would have something--he was good at thinking his way through things--once she convinced him. So that was the first thing.

  What would make Jack believe the ghosts were more than just house-settling creaks or the wind or prank phone calls?

  He'd have to see it.

  From the living room, the sound of the ringing phone came dull through the walls and Liz got up, wiped her eyes, and went to answer it.

  "Jack's probably at work, isn't he?" Allen asked.

  Liz smiled. Finally, something familiar. She was homesick for Houston, and their old neighbors, and their old non-haunted house.

  "Yep," she answered. "He said he might be a little late tonight, too. Do you want me to have him call you when he gets here?"

  "That's alright," Allen said. "I didn't really want anything. I just had some free time and thought I'd see how Missouri's going for you. How's Joey?"

  Liz almost said I'm not sure; he's not Joey anymore, but she caught the words in her mouth and changed them to, "He's fine. Do you want to talk to him?"

  "Sure, for a second."

  She handed the phone to Joey, then sat back in the chair, listening to Joey's one-sided conversation, asking if Allen was going to come up or if Joey could come down there. She smiled and breathed easy for a while, happy for the distraction.

  The second Judy was in the door, she went to the phone. The front door stood open and she came back to shut it as she dialed, but the phone was her first priority. She had to call her brothers. Charley was first.

  "It's me," she said. "I just came from the house."

  "The house? How'd you manage that?"

  "I saw the ambulance there last night--did you know the boy went to the hospital?"

  "Yeah," Charley said. "I work with his dad, remember?"

  "Right. Anyway, I met her at the park a few days back, talked to her a little bit. Told her today I wanted to make sure everything was okay, play the concerned neighbor type. She brought me inside and we went upstairs--"

  "Did you hear it?" Charley asked. "That pounding in the ceiling?"

  "No," Judy said. She went into the kitchen and poured some tea, then dropped a handful of ice cubes into it. "We were only on the second floor. She's really done a nice job on it."

  "Yeah it looks great. No pounding, then? Did you see any of them? You know sometimes they're seen standing at the windows, especially Sarah."

  "No," Judy told him. "That was the only problem, I didn't see or hear anything. And she didn't talk about it. She did ask me about them, though."

  "What did you tell her?"

  Judy pulled the phone away from her face for a second and took three long gulps of the tea. Then she filled in her brother on the conversation, at the end of which he said, "I wonder what she's seen. If she's asking about them, do you think that means she's seen the kids? He never talks about them, but I get the feeling he wouldn't believe it if he did. But I don't know her. What's she like?"

  "She seems nice enough, I guess. I wasn't sure that first day in the park, but today she seemed a lot friendlier. But all she wanted to talk about was the house and the kids, so maybe she was just curious."

  "But you didn't see anything?"

  "Not a shadow." She sat on her couch and leaned back. She sighed. “You think that maybe it is all just talk?”

  Charley was silent a second, thinking. Finally he said, "No, what I heard up there wasn't just talk. There was something up there. I know it."

  "You could be wrong. Raccoons?"

  "Could be," he admitted. "But what I heard didn't sound like any animal. I swear it sounded like something knocking on the ceiling, trying to get it."

  "But if they're there, then they're already in. Aren't they? What do you think it could have been?"

  "I don't know," he said. "I don't know anything about any of it, except that I'm ninety-nine percent sure they're still there."

  "I wish we could help them."

  "I know. You gonna call Ron and tell him? He'll want to know, too."

  "Yeah," Judy said. "I called you first, but I'm calling him next."

  "You know, I took Jack to see Ron a few days ago."

  "What for?"

  "I wanted him to see that apartment. That guy is a rock. He came out of there thinking we'd played some trick on him."

  "I hate that apartment," Judy said. She shivered.

  "Yeah."

  Judy got up and went to her front window. She looked down the street at the Kitch house, formerly the Dengler house, formerly the Keeper house. "But if those kids are still in there and that house is holding them, I hate it even more."

  "You and me both," Charley said. "You call Ron.

  Jack had a crisis and didn't even realize it. Aurora had called while he was gone and asked for twenty intercoms to be sent next day air. B.B. Whitaker had answered the call. He'd only been moved to Jack's department a few days earlier and hadn't had to deal with Aurora yet. He didn't know not to promise them something without discussing it with the cell in charge of that part first. Better yet, B.B. shouldn't have been promising them anything at all; that wasn't his job.

  Granted, Jack had been nowhere around--still at the hospital at the time, or driving Liz and Joey home--but B.B. was new and should have passed the phone to anyone else who'd dealt with Aurora before.

  And just two minutes ago, Jack found out their UPS pick-up for next day air items had been moved back an hour. That gave them forty-five minutes to finish the intercoms and get them boxed and moved to the shipping area.

  And all Jack could think of was the house.

  He'd dreamed those things last night, that's what it had been. He knew it because, in his dream, the house had been cold, but that house hadn't been cold in weeks. He'd only dreamed he couldn't sleep. And that was an odd thing to dream, but given the things he dreamed he'd seen upstairs, it was nothing.

  And that was why he was so tired today, because his sleep had been so troubled with nightmares, not because he'd been up all night trying to sleep. It had to be why because the alternative was to listen to Liz's claims and say the house was haunted, which it wasn't, because ghosts weren't real.

  What about all the times you've gotten up in the morning and found the bathroom light on?

  That doesn't mean anything. Joey could have went to the bathroom in the night and left the light on. His room is right across the hall from it.

  And the sounds in the walls?

  Squirrels. Mice.

  The exterminator said there was nothing.

  The exterminator's a moron.

  The light you saw go out on the third floor that night?

  That was a streetlight reflection. We've been over that one already.

  While the cut-off for the UPS load got closer--Jack normally would have been on the floor helping ge
t the intercoms done in the time crunch--he sat at his desk playing "What about" with himself, trying to convince himself the house might be haunted, then coming back with an explanation as to why that didn't mean the house might be haunted.

  When he got home that night, Liz told him to come upstairs with her.

  "I want to show you something."

  He followed her, wiping sweat from his forehead. The heat the higher in the house you went was almost unbearable at times. If they ever moved anything to the top, they'd need an air conditioner up there for sure, maybe two.

  On the stairs from the second floor to the landing, Liz skittered up them far ahead of Jack, once glancing over her shoulder as if she expected someone above her. Jack glanced up, too, when he passed under the rail, thinking, That's the spot. If the story was right, that's where he hung himself.

  At the top, Jack asked, "What is it?" He looked around, expecting to see something different, any noticeable change, but everything looked exactly as it did the night before. When he'd been up here alone, in the dark, when something touched him.

  He repressed a shiver and told himself again that he’d dreamed it. Of course he dreamed it because this house wasn't haunted. Ghosts weren't real.

  "This," Liz said, and he turned toward her, then squinted and backed away from the flash of light shot into his face. The Polaroid clicked, hummed as the picture slid from it.

  "What are you doing?" he asked. He hadn't even noticed it in her hand before now.

  "Just taking some pictures," she said.

  "What for?"

  She shrugged in answer and aimed the camera at him again. He blocked the sight with his open palm. "You're gonna blind me."

  "You'll be fine," she said, and raised the camera. He moved his hand and turned away. Liz shot another picture, then set the prints on the top step while she shot a few more.

  "You a photographer now?"

  She shook her head, but took another picture, set it aside, and aimed the camera at him again.

  "What are you doing?" he asked again. His voice had raised. He hadn't meant it to happen, but he was tired, he was hot, and he was stressed.