Waiting

by Stephen Jones

  He had been surprised to find that the house had running water and electricity, although neither the pipes nor the wiring were concealed within the walls. It was hard to imagine that anyone had ever actually lived here. Even painted, carpeted, and furnished, Frank couldn’t see it being at all livable.

  After a quick glance around, the boy stuck out his hand. “I’m Gregory,” he said, “and this is Val.”

  The girl smiled as she peeled herself free of all the bags she was carrying and dumped them on the floor.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Frank said, shaking both their hands. “I’m Frank Edwards. Are you twins?”

  They both laughed.

  “People always ask us that,” Gregory said.

  “But I’m actually a year older,” Val finished.

  Frank looked down at all the luggage they had brought. “I take it you’re the ghost hunters.”

  Val winced. “Paranormal investigators, please,” she implored.

  “Yeah,” Gregory said. “No one takes you seriously if you call yourself a ghost hunter!”

  Frank didn’t have the heart to tell them that no one took “paranormal investigators” any more seriously, but he didn’t want to spoil it for them. Leland really must be off his rocker, sending a skeptic and two kids to explore his haunted house.

  Gregory ran his hand over the nearest wall. Red flakes came off on his palm. “Yuck!” He laughed as he dusted it off on his jeans. “It’s like being inside a brick.”

  “Or something collapsing on a pottery wheel,” Val added, a description Frank thought was apt. “Have you had a look around yet, Mr. Edwards?”

  Frank bristled a little at the name. Well, he supposed he was old enough to be their father. He chuckled. “Please just call me Frank. And no, I just got here too. I’ve seen the kitchen, which is fully stocked, just as our host promised. But that’s it.”

  Gregory was still trying to wipe away the red dust from the wall. Now he was scrubbing his hands on a towel. “Who’s missing?”

  “Missing? Oh, you mean our fourth?”

  “The psychic. Mina . . . something.” He looked over at his sister.

  “I think Mr. Leland said her last name was Cloudminder.”

  Oh brother, Frank thought. He tried not to look too disdainful at the mention of a psychic. Would she turn up in a riot of colorful, swirling skirts, a headscarf, and huge golden hoops in her ears? Would she have a crystal ball? More to the point, how was he supposed to interact with these people? Him, the sole nonbeliever?

  Val had already begun unpacking the first of many bags, pulling out odd-looking devices and electrical equipment, scattering them haphazardly across the table. Some were patched with duct tape. Others just looked homemade. There was something that looked like a hybrid of an old box brownie camera and a circular saw. It all gave the impression of a school science project gone wrong, and Frank decided not to ask what any of it was.

  “Come on, Sis,” Gregory said, pulling Val away from the table, “we can set up later. Let’s explore the house first!”

  “Good plan,” Frank said. He was eager to see for himself how the interior looked, given the appalling appearance of the exterior.

  Gregory grabbed the two suitcases that looked as if they might actually contain clothes and headed for the stairs. Val followed, taking one of the smaller bags with her.

  “When was this place built?” Gregory asked.

  “No one knows for sure. The locals claim it’s always been here.”

  The stairs were of the same material as the walls and floor. Frank could almost imagine giant fingers hand-sculpting the house and everything in it out of the same wet red clay. The image made him feel a little queasy, and he steadied himself against the wall as they reached a bowl-shaped landing.

  “Hey, you okay?” Val asked.

  He shook off the feeling. “Yeah. Just lost my footing for a second.”

  The upper floor was even uglier than the lower one, and Val’s pottery image came back to him. The walls looked like they were in the process of disintegrating. Perhaps they had been ever since the place was built. And the floor was even more concave than the landing, as though worn by the passage of many feet, over many years.

  The girl clutched her arms and gave an elaborate shudder. Frank was grateful for the display, as it disguised his own similar reaction.

  “It’s so cold,” she said, pulling her sweater tightly around herself.

  “Aww, don’t be a wet rag,” Gregory said, giving her a shove down the hallway. He turned to Frank, affecting a world-weary expression. “If it’s not too cold, it’s too hot. Or too dark. Or too bright.”

  Val glared at him. “Or too full of brothers,” she grumbled.

  Frank closed his eyes as he realized he was probably going to end up playing peacekeeper all week. He ignored their squabbling and opened the first door that looked like it might lead to a bedroom. To his surprise, it actually contained a bed, along with a dresser and a chair. A pile of folded linen rested on the bare springs beside the rolled-up mattress.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” he said. “At least we won’t be sleeping on the floor.”

  “It looks like a prison cell,” Gregory said. He sounded excited at the prospect.

  Frank went to the window and pushed aside the tattered brown curtains, releasing a shower of red dust that made him cough. The light was fading, turning the trees into clutching shadows. He followed the line of the path all the way to the forecourt and smiled at the one spot of color in the bleak landscape.

  “Say,” he said. “Now that is a thing of beauty.”

  Gregory hurried to see. “What is?”

  Frank pointed at the jazzy blue and white convertible.

  “Oh,” Gregory said, a huge grin spreading across his features. “Yeah, isn’t she sweet?”

  “I’ll say! Buick Skylark, right? What is she—’53, ’54?”

  “’53,” Gregory said, beaming with pride. “I spent all summer restoring her.”

  “I helped.”

  Frank saw Gregory spare his sister a grudging glance to acknowledge her contribution. “Yeah, a bit,” he allowed, and she slugged him in the arm.

  The kids clearly had money. Cars like that didn’t come cheap, not even fixer-uppers. Frank felt a wave of envy as his eyes drank in every detail. “Just look at those lines. Does she have the new Nailhead V8 under that hood?”

  “Sure does! Lowered beltline and the new Sweepspear too.”

  Val shoved in between them. “Her name’s Smiley,” she said.

  Gregory rolled his eyes. “You call her Smiley,” he grumbled. “I cal her Bettie.”

  The girl gave a snort and looked to Frank for support. “Don’t you think she looks like she’s smiling?”

  Frank took another look. The polished chrome grille did resemble teeth, with the headlights either side giving the appearance of wide, inquisitive eyes. Such a young, beautiful car. And sitting next to his battered old Chrysler. Suddenly he felt very old and obsolete.

  “She sure does, kid,” he said wistfully. “She sure does.”

  Val left them discussing every minute detail about Smiley and went to find the best bedroom for herself. There were five in all, and she laid claim by dumping her stuff on the bed that looked the least rickety. It was also the smallest room, which she hoped meant it would be the warmest. For once she was glad she’d listened to her mother and packed an extra blanket.

  The bathroom was primitive, but at least it had hot water. She supposed they were lucky the house had electricity too. She didn’t like the idea of watching for ghosts by candlelight.

  She was setting up the first of three cameras downstairs when a noise made her jump. She froze, listening intently, but all she could hear were the muffled voices of Frank and her brother upstairs. Jeez, were they still going on about cars?

  “Hello!”

  The unexpected female voice made her cry out and she dropped the tripod she’d been assembling. It clattered noisi
ly to the floor. Val whirled around, half-expecting—and half-hoping—to see a spectral figure floating behind her. But it was only a woman. A flesh-and-blood one.

  The stranger laughed softly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Val blushed, pressing a hand to her chest to calm her galloping heart. “Oh,” she panted, “you didn’t scare me.” Then she blushed even deeper at the ridiculous lie. She’d only jumped straight out of her skin.

  But the woman was kind enough to ignore it. “I believe you were expecting me,” she said. “I’m Mina Cloudminder.”

  Val drank in her appearance: her stylish dress and black gloves, her upswept auburn hair and elegant dove-gray coat. She didn’t look like a psychic. But then, Val really had no idea what a psychic should look like. Maybe they all looked like they’d stepped off the cover of Vogue.

  The noise had brought Gregory and Frank running, and they drew up short when they saw their guest.

  Val took special pride in introducing the glamorous newcomer to the others, as though they were old friends.

  Mina clasped her gloved hands as she gazed around the room. She looked as out of place as Marilyn Monroe would at a truck stop.

  “Well,” Mina said after a while, “this really is quite an unusual house.”

  “Are you picking up any psychic vibrations or anything?” Gregory asked eagerly.

  Oh boy, Val thought, suppressing a giggle, he’s in love.

  Mina only offered him an enigmatic little smile in response as she made a circuit of the room, peering into the crooked corners and gazing up at the sagging ceiling. “Extraordinary,” she said after a while. “It’s like melting wax.”

  Frank nodded in agreement with her description. “I don’t know what keeps it from collapsing,” he said. “I had a look upstairs and there’s no evidence of any internal support or reinforcement. No studs or beams. I think the whole thing was molded out of clay from the hill.”

  “Like an adobe house?” Val asked. They’d learned about it in school and she was keen to show off her knowledge.

  “Not quite. Adobe houses are essentially mudbricks stacked together and then covered with more mud. They’re extremely durable. This place behaves almost like a liquid. A very slow-moving one.”

  “Melting,” Gregory mused. He grabbed Val by the arms and shook her excitedly. “What do you think about that, Sis? A melting house!”

  She could barely contain her own excitement. “A haunted melting house,” she added.

  Frank looked faintly embarrassed, while Mina smiled indulgently at them.

  “You two seem eager to meet a ghost,” she said, her eyes sparkling. She slipped off her gloves one by one to reveal immaculately manicured hands, with scarlet nails to match her lipstick. “I do hope the house won’t disappoint you.”

  “I’ve always wanted to see a ghost,” Val gushed.

  Gregory nodded, sharing her enthusiasm. “Can you sense them? How many are there?”

  “Are they trapped here? Are they sad? Can we help them?”

  Mina laughed softly and held up her hands to ward off their barrage of questions. “One thing at a time. As you must know from your previous paranormal investigations—” she gestured at the equipment arranged around the room “—the spirits will only make contact when—and if— they’re ready.”

  Val felt herself positively glowing at the fact that Mina had used their preferred term and not the dismissive “ghost hunters.” But she could see Frank scowling and shaking his head behind Mina’s back. Before Val could say anything, Mina beat her to it.

  “I gather we have a skeptic among us as well?”

  Frank looked startled for a moment before regaining his composure.

  Mina turned to him, still smiling. “It’s all right. You’re part of a grand tradition of people who don’t follow blindly, and who don’t just take the word of others for things that can’t be explained by conventional means.”

  He seemed surprised by her praise. “That’s true,” he said. “And I’m a big believer in those conventional means. So unless one of these alleged ghosts appears right in front of me . . .”

  “You trust the evidence of your own senses,” she said. “That’s perfectly reasonable. So do I. It’s just that my senses . . . show me more.”

  She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, as though scenting the air in the room. “When you heard the sound, you thought it was an explosion. Paul jumped out of the way first, but one of the beams hit Jerry. No, Jimmy. But he wasn’t seriously hurt. All you could hear was the rattle of the plastic sheeting as it tore away from the collapsing posts. The rhythm made you think of a song, which you found funny, but only for a moment.”

  The room was silent. Val and Gregory exchanged a wide-eyed glance before turning back to Frank, whose mouth had fallen open.

  “What song?” he whispered.

  She met his eyes. “‘Sing, Sing, Sing.’”

  Val had never heard of it, but Frank clearly had. For long moments he just stood there, gaping at Mina. His face was like a movie screen, all his emotions playing out across it in plain sight.

  Mina went to him and touched him lightly on the shoulder, as though to wake him up. “Sometimes our eyes aren’t enough,” she said softly.

  Gregory had chosen the bedroom next to Val’s, but he was too excited to sleep. After a brief argument over whether or not they should sleep in shifts (Val said no way), he’d decided to move his stuff downstairs and stay with the equipment. Honestly, she was such a lightweight. She got all excited over the idea of staying up all night watching for ghosts, only to start nodding off after half an hour.

  He’d actually been hoping that Mina would stay up with him. Her performance earlier had knocked his socks off. Whatever she’d been talking about with Frank, she’d obviously been right on the money. He was dying to ask her all about it, to ask what she could pick up from the house. But she’d cried off, saying it had been a long journey and she was tired. She’d let him carry her bags upstairs for her, and it was only once he was back in the main room that it occurred to him that she could probably read his mind as easily as she had Frank’s. The thought made his ears burn.

  He fiddled with the cameras and microphone to make sure they were ready to go. This was nothing at all like their previous adventures, when they were just kids creeping around derelict buildings with their dad’s old camera. The first time they’d encountered something supernatural, they’d been acting out spy stories in an old factory. Gregory was a G-Man and Val was a Russian agent who’d hidden a Soviet decoding device somewhere on the premises.

  At first he’d thought the strange knocking sounds were Val, trying to lure him into a trap. But then he ran into her on the factory floor and she looked as surprised as he did. When they realized that neither of them was responsible for the knocking, they’d run home to get their father’s recording equipment. It had sounded like Morse code, but when Gregory transcribed it, it proved to be only gibberish. It didn’t deter them, however. They knew it was a ghost. And while the ghost didn’t seem to know Morse code, it was nonetheless clearly trying to communicate with them.

  Ever since, they’d been wild about the paranormal. They believed they were sensitive to the presence of spirits, if for no other reason than that they were both desperate to experience something not of this world. They had felt cold spots in rooms and a host of minor incidents had convinced them that they shared a psychic link. People told them that was normal for siblings as close as they were, but they were positive that it was more. Fortunately, Mr. Leland had agreed. And Iverson House was probably the best opportunity they would ever have to put their skills to the test. Their first professional gig.

  It was pretty boring sitting here by himself, though, waiting for footprints to appear in the flour they’d sprinkled by the windows and doors. Or for the motion sensor to trigger one of the cameras. Gregory could hear the trees outside rustling in the wind, but inside all was silence.

 
Deep and deathly silence.

  He found himself getting sleepy in spite of himself. He could pretend he was a sentry on guard duty, like he had when he was a little boy. But pretending was no fun without his partner in crime. He missed the old days of acting out stories with Val, and he found himself thinking of the time they built a rocket ship and went to Mars. The planet’s surface was covered with hot red lava and they had to jump from rock to rock—well, from the couch to a chair to a rug—to avoid stepping in the shifting pool of liquid death. When the Martians attacked, they fought back with ray guns and escaped into a forest where dinosaurs lived.

  He stood up, intending to patrol the room like a soldier to keep himself awake. But as soon as he moved, he felt the floor shift beneath his feet.

  He froze, staring straight ahead, afraid to look down. In their Martian adventure, the floor had never actually moved. But if it had, he was sure it would have felt just like this.

  Like melting wax.

  The house was warping underneath him. The movement was subtle, and for a few moments he almost managed to convince himself that he’d imagined it. But then it lurched hard enough to make him stumble. He fell to his knees, grimacing as he landed, but there was no pain. The floor was all wrong. It was soft and yielding. He pressed a hand against it and found it was as malleable as clay. When he drew back, a perfect imprint of his hand remained. Then it faded as the substance slowly reformed itself, erasing the evidence of his touch.

  The walls were wavering, too, shifting and oozing, as though the whole place was about to slump into an enormous pile of goo. What had Frank said about it behaving like a liquid? The table and chairs were sinking, the level of the floor inching slowly up their legs.

  Gregory scrambled to his feet, backing away. But there was nowhere he could go to escape the spongy floor. It moved like thick red waves, tripping him. He fell more than once as he made for the stairs, and he would have welcomed the pain of bony knees against unyielding stone rather than the doughy give of the awful substance he was mired in. He seemed to sink deeper each time he moved. He thought of a fly trapped in syrup, burying itself farther with its frantic struggles. The image horrified him and he finally cried out.