The Haunting of Willow House

by Anthony M. Strong

  They pushed back toward the trail.

  It felt like they were walking in a hurricane, one step forward, two back, but Sarah didn’t care as long as she was putting some distance between them and the grave. She had no idea what Becca had seen, but she knew it couldn’t be good. She also knew it was dangerous to stay. Maybe it was intuition, a sixth sense, but Sarah had the overwhelming feeling that if they lingered in that place, something awful would happen. It was like the woods didn’t want them there.

  “Where’s the path?” Becca shielded her face, looked around. “I don’t see it.”

  They had reached the edge of the clearing, but found nothing but a wall of trees and undergrowth. Thick bushes clogged the forest floor, the way forward impassable.

  Sarah searched the tree line, but could not find a way out. She battled a rising sense of panic, resisted the urge to run blindly. That would do no good. And then, as the wind threatened to topple her and stray branches flew left and right, she saw a dark gap in the trees. “Over there.”

  “Come on.” Becca pulled her along. They skirted the edge of the woods, reached the narrow path, and stepped from the clearing.

  At once the wind died down.

  It was as if they had passed some invisible threshold. Without pause, Becca kept going, running down the path as fast as she could. Sarah struggled to keep up, feeling the first stabs of a stitch in her side. She cast a glance back over her shoulder, toward the clearing, and was surprised to see that everything looked calm and peaceful. Gone was the raging wind, the swirling glut of debris and plant matter. The gravestone stood silent and serene, as if nothing had ever happened.

  When they reached the stream, Becca slowed. She bent over, chest heaving, and gulped large mouthfuls of air.

  “What the hell was that?” Sarah leaned against a tree, her lungs burning.

  “I don’t know. But I never want to see that gravestone again.” There was a strange expression on Becca’s face. “We have to keep moving. We need to get to the house.”

  “What exactly did you see back there?” Sarah followed her friend across the stream, using the same rocks as before.

  “I’m not sure.” Becca scrambled up the bank, used a tree trunk for support. “A figure. It was only there for a moment, and it was hard to tell what I was looking at with all the crap flying around, but it looked like a woman.”

  “No way.”

  “I’m serious.” They were on the trail now, leaving the stream far behind. “It was so quick. A glimpse, that’s all. But I swear, she looked right at me. There was something about her, so much anger.”

  “Do you think she was…” Sarah trailed off. She didn’t want to finish the sentence, to say what they were both thinking.

  “Who knows?” Becca said, her voice shaking. “I know one thing though, I’m sure as hell not going back there to find out.”

  They were at the edge of the woods now. Up ahead, across the grass, was the house. The third floor windows cast rectangles of yellow light onto the lawn. Sarah had never been so pleased to see a building in all her life. She took Becca’s hand and led her from the forest, an overwhelming sense of relief passing through her. For a while she thought they would not make it out, that whatever had caused the furious wind would not let them leave. But now, with the house in sight, she knew that they would.

  Even so, a cold, dark dread lingered.

  There was something evil in the woods behind her house, and even though they had escaped it this time, there was no guarantee that they would be so lucky again.

  Chapter 31

  Jake was sleeping when the girls snuck down from the attic room and made their way along the hallway toward the main staircase. By the time they slipped from the house though, he was wide-awake.

  The telephone, which he’d moved to the dresser near his bed for ease of access – he now viewed it as some kind of otherworldly bat phone – gave out a shrill ring, pulling him from his slumber.

  He was groggy at first, the noise weaving itself into his lingering dream, but then he recognized the sound, and jumped from the bed.

  He lifted the receiver to his ear, grateful that the ringing had not awakened his father, and waited for the familiar voice to whisper to him.

  And whisper it did.

  He listened with a concentration unusual for a boy of his age, and when the phone had said all that it was going to say, he put the handset back on the cradle and went to the door. He cracked it open, peeked out into the hallway.

  Satisfied that he was alone, Jake stepped out and padded toward his father’s writing room. The window there overlooked the back yard, unlike his own window, which had a view of the side of the house.

  He paused when he reached the den. The light was off, the door closed. It was unlikely his father was inside. Even so, he was careful to keep quiet and only open the door wide enough to pass through before closing it again.

  He went to the window, looked out.

  Two bright beams of light bobbed across the lawn in the direction of the woods. He couldn’t make out the identities of the dark shapes behind the flashlights, but he knew it was his sister and her friend. They had been ensconced in Sarah’s attic room for hours. At one point when he needed to pee, he’d stopped at the bottom of the third floor staircase and listened to them talking and laughing, but soon lost interest. He didn’t care about girl stuff. Now though, they were on a late night adventure.

  He stayed at the window for a few minutes, watching as the girls entered the forest, and then retraced his steps, sneaking back along the hallway. When he neared his room, however, he turned left and climbed to the attic.

  Sarah’s room was nicer than his. It was spacious and new, with large windows and a walk-in closet. Normally this would irk him, maybe park a tantrum, but not this time. He liked the room at the end of the hallway. It felt welcoming, like he was at home. He didn’t know why, but he had the sense that he wasn’t the first boy to occupy that space. The third floor room, on the other hand, didn’t feel welcoming at all. It had sloping ceilings that made him feel closed in, and was too far from the rest of the house.

  Jake shuffled over to the bed, circling the blow up mattress that had been inflated for Becca to sleep on. He opened the nightstand drawer, peeked inside.

  There was nothing interesting, just a lipstick, a few pieces of jewelry, and the diary that Sarah had never bothered to write anything in. He knew this because he’d snooped before, and unless she’d taken up journaling in the last month, all the pages would be blank.

  On top of the nightstand was a framed picture of his sister grinning next to a freckle-faced boy with dark hair. This was her boyfriend. In the year prior to their mother’s death, Tyler had spent a lot of time at the brownstone. After the accident, Jake hardly saw him anymore. That was a shame. He liked Tyler, who always took the time to chat to him. One time Tyler had taken him to Boston Common and they had thrown a football around for a while.

  Jake turned away from the photo. He could snoop anytime. Right now there were more important things to do. He was on a mission, and he didn’t want to fail.

  He glanced around and soon saw what he’d come for.

  The Ouija Board was on the bed, half covered by the sheets. Jake perched on the mattress, pulled the board close, and unfolded it. He studied the intricate details of the stenciling, read a couple of the letters aloud. It was an odd looking thing, with the alphabet and numbers printed across the face. It reminded Jake of the posters they put up on the walls in elementary school to teach kids to read, except that he had a feeling this was not some overdone teacher’s aid. This felt dark. Ominous.

  He wondered what Sarah and Becca had been doing with it. Was the board some kind of game, like Scrabble? He didn’t think so. He could ask them about it, but then they would know he’d been up here. Besides, he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself, especially since he was about to do something bad.

  Jake pushed the board back across the bed, folded the co
vers back over it so that it looked like it had never been moved, then reached over and snatched up the planchette. He turned it over in his hands. This was what he’d come here for.

  He stood up, took one last glance around the room, just to make sure there was no sign that he’d ever even been there, and tiptoed back down the stairs.

  When he reached his room, Jake closed the door, went to the closet, and leaned in. He pushed a toy truck to the side, reached past a couple of pairs of sneakers, and found what he was looking for. The leather baseball glove he’d used in little league the year before.

  He hadn’t worn it in months, had lost interest in the game. He didn’t put the glove on now either. Instead, he pushed the planchette deep down inside of it, and then leaned into the closet, depositing the glove as far back as he could reach. Finally, he moved the toy truck back in place, arranged the sneakers over the glove, until it was out of sight.

  Mission accomplished.

  Jake stood, feeling pleased with himself, and walked over to the bed. He crawled under the covers and pulled them tight around his body, a warm cocoon.

  By the time Sarah and Becca returned from the woods, drenched and scared, Jake was already asleep and dreaming of his mother.

  Chapter 32

  Sarah lay in her bed with the covers pulled up to her chin.

  She could hear Becca’s gentle breathing on the air mattress. If her friend was awake, she showed no sign of it, but Sarah suspected that she was.

  How could either of them sleep after the night’s events? She wished she had never agreed to use the Ouija board or go into the woods in the middle of the night.

  It was crazy.

  It had almost gotten them killed.

  For she had no doubt that whatever they had encountered out in the woods, whatever malevolent energy had summoned up the maelstrom, it was dangerous. She also suspected that something was here too, lurking in the darkest corners of the house, watching and waiting.

  She glanced at the clock next to her bed. Two hours had passed since they had tumbled into the kitchen, terrified and cold, closing the door and pulling the bolt across, against whatever Becca had seen. For a while they talked in scared whispers. Sarah made them both cocoa, and they sat at the table in a kind of nervous disbelief. Sarah felt as though she had gotten punched in the gut. It was one thing to hear a few odd noises or feel like someone was watching you, that stuff could be rationalized, but it was quite another to encounter the kind of angry energy they had witnessed. She was still shaking when they climbed the stairs, crept to the third floor, and slid into their beds.

  Sarah left the light on – neither girl had any desire to sleep in the dark – and for a while they exchanged brief snippets of conversation. But eventually the room fell silent. There was nothing left to say, because no matter how much they analyzed it all, there simply was no rational explanation.

  Chapter 33

  When Sarah woke the next morning, she was surprised to find that she had eventually succumbed to a fitful, restless sleep.

  She opened her eyes. Yawned.

  At first the events of the previous evening were nothing more than a hazy fog, but when she sat up the Ouija Board was there, sitting on the dresser, and everything came flooding back in horrific detail.

  She shuddered.

  It looked so innocent. A piece of harmless wood with some stuff stenciled upon it. Only she knew that it wasn’t. Whatever they had contacted the previous evening – and she was starting to believe that it was the spirit of Martha Ward – was not friendly, of that she was sure. She could no longer pretend that all was right at Willow Farm, and that thought terrified Sarah. Was it Martha in the cellar with her? And what about the nightlight? Someone was in the room with her that first night. Sarah didn’t even want to think about that. Maybe it was time to have a talk with her father, voice her concerns about the house. But right now there were other, more pressing matters, like her need to pee.

  She slipped out of bed, was about to make her way down to second floor bathroom when she noticed Becca’s empty sleeping bag. It sat on the floor, atop an inflatable mattress they kept for situations such as this, the zipper open and flap folded back. Becca was standing at the window in her nightgown. She seemed to be looking at something in the yard.

  “Hey.” Sarah approached her friend. “What are you looking at?”

  Becca didn’t answer.

  Sarah reached out, touched her friend on the shoulder.

  Becca jumped, turned around, a startled look upon her face. “Crap, don’t do that.”

  “Sorry,” Sarah said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Then don’t creep up on people.”

  “What were you looking at?” Sarah peered over her friend's shoulder but could see nothing untoward.

  “A bird.” Becca turned back to the window. “I woke up and there was this big old bird sitting there, on the window sill. I swear, it was looking right at me.”

  “Newsflash. We have things like that out here in the country,” Sarah said. “You’re not in Boston now.”

  “I know that,” Becca said, the indignation in her voice clear. “This was different. It was actually peering in, beak pressed up to the glass. It had this unwavering stare. Ugh. Gives me chills just thinking about it.”

  “What did this bird look like?” Sarah asked, although she had a feeling she already knew. Could it be the same one that had swooped down at her on the driveway the day Tyler visited? Surely not, but even so, she dreaded the answer.

  “Big. Black,” Becca replied. “It flew off when I got out of bed. Landed on the old swing set in your back yard.”

  So it was the blackbird. A lump caught in Sarah’s throat. She glanced over Becca’s shoulder, fearful of what she would see, but the swing set was empty, much to her relief. “It’s not there now. Must have flown away.”

  “Good riddance.” Becca walked over to the bed, sat on the edge. “Listen, about last night-“

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Sarah said, her stomach churning when she thought about the gravestone.

  “I was thinking, we should do some digging, see what we can find out about Martha Ward.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to cause more problems.”

  “You won’t,” Becca said. “There must be historical records at the library in Danvers. Don’t you want to know why there’s a grave in the woods?”

  “Sure, but—“

  “Then we need to go to the library, especially since your crappy house doesn’t have Internet yet.”

  “Dad said it will be a few more days. The house was empty for years before we bought it, and there are issues with the Internet line.”

  “It’s settled then. We’ll go to Danvers after breakfast.”

  “How can you eat after what happened last night?”

  “You’re not still scared are you?”

  “Of course. You were there, are you telling me you’re not scared?”

  “I don’t know.” Becca shrugged. “All we really saw was some wind during a rain storm.”

  “The board spelled out the name on the grave. It got the date of Martha Ward’s death correct. Besides, you said you saw a figure in the clearing; that was nothing to do with the rain.”

  “I know. But there can’t really have been anyone there. Maybe I imagined it.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “I don’t know what to believe,” Becca admitted. “Which is why I want to find out some more about your resident corpse.”

  “Okay. We’ll go.” Sarah knew it was pointless to argue. Besides, it would get her away from Willow Farm for a few hours, and that could only be a good thing. “We’ll have to ask my dad first though.”

  “No problem. I’ll ask him. He likes me.”

  “He tolerates you,” Sarah shot back. “We all do.”

  “Either way, I’ll put on my girlish charms.” Becca twirled a lock of hair above her forehead. She cocked her head. “He’ll be
putty in my hands.”

  Chapter 34

  Andrew woke up to a raging headache. He stumbled from the bed and went to the bathroom, found the bottle of painkillers. Downed two.

  The evening before was a blur, at least the last part of it. He remembered putting Jake to bed, going to the writing room. The bottle of booze was there, as usual, full to the brim and ready to go. He should take that bottle and open up a bar. He’d make a fortune.

  Whelan’s – Where the booze never runs low no matter how much you drink.

  Only it wasn’t a laughing matter.

  If Sarah found him with the bottle again she’d have a fit, and rightly so. He had a responsibility to her, and to his son. Which meant that from now on, no more drinking. At least he’d woken up in his own bed this morning and not slumped over the desk in the den. That was something.

  It was not enough.

  Andrew went back to the bedroom, sat down and waited for the orchestra in his head to cease its racket, and then got dressed.

  Downstairs, he went to the kitchen, gulped down a large glass of juice, and was making toast – somehow that took the edge off his hangovers – when the girls appeared.

  “Hi, Mr. Whelan,” Becca said, all smiles.

  She came up behind him, just a little too close. He hoped she didn’t smell the stale alcohol on his breath. “Hello, Becca. How did you sleep? I hope the blow up was comfortable.”

  “I slept like a dream.” She stretched, ran a hand through her hair. “Your new house is neat.”

  “Thanks.” A faint burning smell reached his nose. He remembered his breakfast, looked back toward the toaster oven. The bread was now black and smoking. Dammit.

  “Oops. Looks like you will have to start over.” Becca reached past him, plucked two more slices of bread from the bag, offered them to him. “Here you are.”

  “Much appreciated.” He tossed the burnt toast and dropped the fresh slices into the toaster.