The House Next Door

by Joel A. Sutherland

  We needed to help Chris. I needed to step up and be the type of person I admired so much in movies and books.

  “I don’t know what he’s done, so there’s only one thing to do,” I told Nick. “Let’s go find out.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I led Sophie and Nick to the back of the Creightons’ house, where we joined up with Chris’s footprints. Each print was pretty far apart. He’d run. The tracks led to a sliding basement window.

  “There,” I said, motioning to the others to follow me.

  The window was still open a crack. I slid it the rest of the way open. It would be a tight fit, but the three of us were small enough to squeeze through.

  “C’mon,” I said. “I’ll go first.”

  “Wait, what’s the plan?” Sophie asked.

  “Plan?” Who had time to come up with a plan? “We go in, find Chris and get out. That’s it.”

  Sophie looked queasy but nodded in agreement.

  Nick was still wide eyed but his nerves seemed to be calming down a little. “Thank you.”

  “Thank us once we’ve found your brother,” I said.

  The open window was like a mouth waiting to swallow us up. A draft of air that somehow felt colder than the air outside streamed out of the basement. I couldn’t see anything inside, only darkness.

  Go in. Find Chris. Get out.

  I hesitated. Could I actually do that? I had no idea what lay in wait in the old house.

  Something touched my arm. I jumped. It was Sophie. She’d placed a hand on my shoulder and offered me a thin smile.

  “You’ve got this,” she said. “We’re with you. WWBD?”

  I nodded. My fears didn’t vanish like in the movies. They were still very much within me, but I pushed them down and covered them up. Hopefully they’d stay that way long enough to do what I had to do.

  “WWBD,” I said.

  “WWBD?” Nick asked, clearly confused.

  “Never mind,” I said. And then, without wasting any more time, I slid through the window and into the darkness.

  ***

  I met my first surprise when my feet touched down. The ground was soft. Not concrete, like I had expected. Dirt. I took a step to the side and helped Sophie down, then offered a hand to Nick. He waved me off and jumped in on his own.

  A soft beam of blue moonlight illuminated their faces but I couldn’t see much else. My eyes needed time to adjust to the dark, but time was something I didn’t have. Chris could be in danger. No, Chris was in danger. This was not a safe place, and he was alone. I pictured Danny and Jack in their beds, their bodies crushed, mangled and bloodied. How much time did Chris have before the same thing happened to him?

  We had to find him, and we had to find him fast.

  “If only we could follow his tracks,” I said, “like we did in the snow.”

  “If only we could see,” Nick added. “It’s so dark in here.”

  “Do you guys have your phones on you?” Sophie said. “Mine’s still in my room.”

  Nick and I both reached into our pockets and pulled out our phones. I turned on my light a moment before Nick.

  Sophie smiled and raised her eyebrows.

  “Go on, say it,” I said.

  “Someone’s gotta be the brains of the group.”

  I nodded. Nick and I scanned the basement.

  The dirt floor was uneven. The walls were made of old, crumbling stone. Pipes and rough wooden beams criss-crossed above our heads. A rickety-looking staircase led up to the only door.

  An old wood stove with a wide black pipe that ran through the ceiling sat in one corner. It wasn’t giving off any heat. My fingers throbbed from the cold. White clouds of fog streamed out of our mouths and noses with every breath.

  Horseshoes hung from pegs on the wall and an assortment of gear — a couple of saddles, a pile of stirrups, leading ropes — was heaped on the ground.

  I turned around and flinched. It took all my strength not to yell and drop my phone. A pair of dead black eyes stared at me from a face covered in cobwebs.

  It was an old, homemade Santa Claus statue made out of papier mâché. His skin was wrinkled and cracked and he appeared to have been chewed by mice over the years.

  “That’s the scariest Christmas decoration I’ve ever seen,” I said.

  “Scarier than anything I’ve ever seen on Screamers,” Nick said.

  Part of me wanted to turn my back on Santa and put him out of my mind, while another part wanted to keep both my light and my eyes on him to make sure he didn’t blink or move the moment I looked away. After a brief internal struggle, I reluctantly moved on.

  A bunch of old furniture was stored in a corner. Covered in dust were three wicker chairs, a small wooden table and a floor lamp with no shade. Its light bulb was shattered. Jagged edges of glass jutted up from the lamp’s socket.

  “What a pigsty,” Sophie said.

  I agreed with Sophie; the place was a dump.

  “Hey, look at the lamp. The bulb is broken but the cord’s plugged in,” I said, pointing at the lamp. It was connected to an extension cord that ran up the wall and into an electrical outlet screwed into one of the ceiling’s wooden beams. “I think the table and chairs were set up to be used, and not just tossed down here for storage.”

  “Why would anyone want to sit down here in the dirt?” Sophie said.

  Something big skittered across the floor between us and the furniture.

  This time I screamed. So did Sophie and Nick.

  It was an opossum the size of a large cat. Its fur was grey and wiry and its snout was long and white. Its eyes, like Santa’s, were as black as ink. It opened its mouth, exposing sharp, pointy teeth, and hissed at us. Then it scurried across the basement, knocking the Santa statue over as it fled.

  I didn’t have time to catch my breath or calm my nerves. Santa had been hiding something. In the corner, hammered into the dirt floor, were two wooden crosses.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “What are those?” asked Nick.

  Sophie swallowed. “Crosses,” she said quietly.

  “Please tell me they’re fake,” Nick said. “You know, Halloween decorations.”

  “If they were decorations, they wouldn’t be buried in the ground.” I approached the crosses hesitantly. “There’s a name carved into each one.”

  Ernest Creighton.

  Hazel Creighton.

  Sophie shook her head. “They’re buried in the basement? Not only is that gross, but the obituary said they were buried in a Toronto cemetery.”

  An old, crinkled photograph was nailed onto each cross. Ernest’s and Hazel’s faces stared sternly back at me, their black-and-white eyes appearing to penetrate deep into my soul.

  “They look about the same age as their ghosts,” Sophie said.

  I held my light up to the pictures and looked a little closer at the Creightons. There was a bit of damage on Hazel’s photo, right on her left cheek. Their eyes seemed to follow me as I moved the photos side to side. But despite that effect and the feeling that they were looking into my soul, their eyes looked … “Their eyes look dead,” I said. I dragged my nail over Hazel’s left cheek, but I didn’t feel any damage. I looked closer than I had before and felt my stomach drop. “These photos were taken after they died.”

  Sophie looked over my shoulder and groaned in disgust. “I think you’re right.”

  “How do you know?” Nick asked.

  I pointed at Hazel’s cheek. “Her flesh was already decomposing when it was taken. You can see her teeth through this hole.”

  It dawned on me that Hazel’s hair was spread out around her head, resting on the ground. I looked down at my feet. “Is this the same floor as in the photos?” I asked.

  Sophie and Nick looked at the photos, then the ground, and then backed away from the crosses, watching very closely for any subtle movement in the dirt.

  “She looks a little different than she did the other day,” I said.

 
“Yeah,” Sophie said, pointing at the photo. “That’s a corpse. We talked to her ghost. You saw how Danny was able to change how he looked.”

  Being reminded of Danny, here in the Creightons’ basement while standing next to a couple of graves and looking at two pictures of dead people, raised my panic level to new heights.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  My heartbeat was so loud in my ears I wouldn’t have been surprised if Sophie and Nick had been able to hear it.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  They had both fallen silent and their mouths gaped open. They looked at each other, then at me.

  I began to wonder if they actually could hear my heartbeat.

  I was about to make a joke when Nick spoke.

  “You hear that?”

  Sophie looked up at the ceiling.

  “Footsteps.”

  Thump, thump, thump.

  ***

  Nick and I both turned off our phones and the three of us waited in the dark for what felt like an eternity. We didn’t speak for fear of being discovered. But if anyone was in the basement with us, our heavy breathing would’ve given us away.

  I was just about to ask the others what we should do when I heard a muffled conversation above our heads. I couldn’t make out the words, but I heard two different voices — an old woman and a young, frightened boy.

  “That’s Chris,” Nick said.

  “And Hazel,” Sophie added.

  A light turned on upstairs and shone through the cracks around the basement door.

  I raised a finger to my lips to show Sophie and Nick to be quiet, then gestured to them to follow me. We crept up the stairs slowly, trying not to put too much weight on each step. One or two creaked loudly. I hoped the closed door was enough to block the noise.

  As soon as I reached the top step, a pair of feet passed by on the other side and briefly cast shadows under the door. I froze until I heard Hazel speak again. I pressed my ear against the door. Sophie and Nick did the same on my right and left.

  “You might as well talk,” Hazel said, “since you can’t leave.”

  “Please let me go,” Chris said.

  “I’ll make you a deal: you tell me why you broke into my house, and I’ll let you go.”

  Silence. I imagined Chris was deciding whether or not Hazel was telling the truth. “Do you promise?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Don’t believe her, Chris,” Nick whispered through his teeth.

  Lie or not, Chris bought it. “Okay. My friends found out about you and Ernest. I came to find out what happened to your daughter.”

  “My daughter?” Hazel said with a chuckle. “Thank you. I was in need of a laugh. I don’t get out much — well, ever.” There was another pause and I imagined Hazel regarding Chris coolly. “You said your friends found out about me and Ernest. What did you mean by that?”

  “That he died after a couple of boys accidentally killed Shade. And that you and Ernest — and the horse too — are ghosts.”

  “You’re a little right,” she said slowly, “and a little wrong.”

  “Where is she?” Chris asked. “Where’s Clara? Have you hurt her? Have you kept her locked somewhere in this house all these years since you died?”

  “Clara is … Clara is fine,” Hazel said. “Can I ask what you’d do if you found her, still alive and all grown up?”

  Pause.

  “Don’t do it, Chris,” I said quietly. “Don’t tell her the truth.”

  “I …” Chris said. “I would get her out of here. I’d call the police and tell them what is going on in this house.”

  “Thank you for being honest with me,” Hazel said with a sigh. “Honesty is so rare these days, especially among children. Take, for example, those two boys who you said ‘accidentally’ killed Shade. They said they just wanted to go for a quick ride. They said they didn’t mean to hurt Shade. They lied. Boys can’t be trusted. They meant to hurt my horse.”

  “When did they tell you that? They were killed in their sleep by Shade’s ghost.”

  “How do you know that? And please remember how I feel about honesty.”

  “Danny — the older brother — his ghost is still next door. He told my friends everything.”

  “Danny’s ghost has been there all these years? He doesn’t deserve to remain here. He should have been sent straight to the Netherrealm,” Hazel said in disgust. “I believe you, so I’m going to pay you back by letting you in on a secret. Yes, Shade trampled them in their beds. But I was there, hiding in the hallway, when they pleaded for their lives and lied about what they’d done — yes, they tried reasoning with a horse, and a dead horse, no less. Like your attempt to rescue my daughter, that gave me a good laugh.”

  “You were there? And you let Shade kill them?”

  “My dear boy,” Hazel said. “I didn’t let Shade kill them. I led him to do it. He always was such a good, obedient horse. Even in death. And now I believe it’s time to prove that to you.”

  The sound of a chair scraping across the ground was followed by the crash of a chair falling over.

  Hazel said, “Let’s take a short walk out back to the stable, shall we?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Nick grabbed the handle but I stopped him from opening the door.

  “Wait,” I said. “If we barge in there now she’ll have the upper hand.”

  “So you just want to stay here and do nothing?” Nick said, understandably angry.

  “No,” I said. “If we hurry, we can go back out the window, beat them to the stable and ambush Hazel as soon as she enters.” Even if we reached the stable first, I still had no idea how to stop a ghost. I hoped Nick and Sophie weren’t as scared as I was.

  Nick nodded, as did Sophie.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket as I walked back down the stairs. Not to light my way, but to make a call. “Things have gotten out of hand. We should’ve called the police sooner.” I dialed 9–1–1 and stepped off the bottom step onto the dirt floor.

  I held the phone to my ear and heard it ring once.

  That was as far as the call got. My phone crackled and hissed and went dead.

  At the same time, I felt an intense pain in my wrist. The sensation was cold, so cold it burned, and the icy feeling spread through my forearm, over my elbow and up to my shoulder. Sophie and Nick both screamed as if someone had plunged a long knife deep into their chests. Maybe someone had — I couldn’t move or turn my head to look. My entire body was rigid, like I’d suddenly turned into a statue.

  Suddenly Ernest stepped into my line of sight and I saw that he was holding my wrist. I yelled and tried to pull myself free but his grip didn’t falter. He held me in place tightly. I felt as if my body had been set in concrete.

  “You feel that?” Ernest rasped. “You can’t move, can you?”

  I tried to shake my head but couldn’t, and barely managed to say, “No,” through my tightly drawn lips. The icy burn spread throughout my entire body. The pain was quickly becoming unbearable. My skin was cold — so cold — but it also felt like it was being electrocuted. Consciousness was slipping away.

  “What you’re experiencing is a ‘death touch,’ and I’m sure it’s quite unpleasant. But don’t worry, the pain won’t last long since you’ll be dead soon. I did warn you that I’d kill you if you ever returned here.”

  I tried to beg and plead for my life but I couldn’t speak, not even a single word.

  “Your phones will no longer work,” Ernest said. “I can fry any electrical device in my vicinity, if I want — one of the advantages of being dead.”

  The basement was growing colder, blacker.

  Death touch, I thought deliriously. Where have I …?

  “Batman,” I mumbled, unsure whether I’d actually spoken aloud or was still only thinking to myself. “Gentleman Ghost. Death touch. Nth metal. Horse. Horseshoe.” I faded for a moment then snapped back awake. “Iron.”

  Ernest frowned and smil
ed at the same time. “Sounds like you’re losing your mind. You’ve actually stayed conscious longer than I’d expected.”

  Sophie ran past us. Ernest watched her go without trying to stop her. He was probably too surprised to move, or maybe he simply didn’t think she could do anything to harm him.

  But I knew then that I had spoken out loud and she had caught my meaning.

  She grabbed a horseshoe off the wall and spun to face us. “Catch,” she shouted as she threw the horseshoe like a Frisbee at Ernest. In his surprise he released my wrist, and I regained control of my body almost immediately. The horseshoe passed through his shoulder and he howled in pain. Sophie tossed a horseshoe to me and another to Nick, then picked up a final one for herself.

  Ernest looked at each of us, armed as we were, and retreated back to his grave, where he vanished through the dirt.

  “Matt, you’re a genius!” Sophie said.

  “What just happened?” Nick said in disbelief, staring at his horseshoe as if it was the first one he’d ever seen in his life.

  “Old horseshoes like these are made of iron,” Sophie said. “Some people think iron repels ghosts. Well, I guess now we know it does.”

  The feeling was slowly working its way back through my body as the pain from Ernest’s grasp faded away.

  “What was that stuff you said about Batman and a gentleman and some sort of metal?” Nick asked me.

  I briefly filled him in, then added, “Like Ernest, Gentleman Ghost calls his power a ‘death touch.’ It made me think that if that was the same, maybe the same things that hurt one ghost would also hurt the other. And since we didn’t have any Nth metal in the basement I hoped that the horseshoes would work the same way.”

  “But how did you know they’d be made from iron?” Sophie asked.

  “I didn’t. I had no idea what metal horseshoes are made of.” I shrugged. “But we had nothing to lose. It’s ironic that a horseshoe stopped a ghost who loves horses so much. Think it will work on Shade?”