Echoes of the Dead

by Aaron Polson

  “Push the door open,” Kelsey said. “We can see well enough.”

  The room was empty. The ceiling dropped in a rather steep slope toward the outer wall, more of an attic room than a proper floor. Enough hallway light spilled inside to reveal a dusty wooden floor, devoid of footprints, and stark window without a curtain on the outer wall.

  “Nobody’s touched this room,” Kelsey said.

  “But it’s directly above my room—the blue room.” Erin frowned. “Maybe the next?”

  But the next room wasn’t locked either. They opened the door to find a suitcase, half-unpacked, and several items of clothing strewn about on the floor. A black t-shirt lay draped over a wooden chair. The plain brown curtains hung from a wooden rod above the window, and the walls were a subtle tan, pale enough that they once might have been white.

  “Johnny’s room,” Kelsey said. She stood at the door, held back by a sense of intrusion into Johnny’s private world.

  “How do you know? Isn’t Ben staying up here, too?”

  “Johnny’s shirt.” Kelsey waved to the chair. “And there are no closets in these rooms. No hidden passages. It’s hardly big enough for the bed, let alone somebody hiding up here. Aren’t there empty rooms on the second floor?”

  “You’re down there with Sarah… Me in the blue room… Daniel and Johnny are up here.” Erin moved into the room. “Where is Ben staying?”

  “There wasn’t any space in the RV. No room for the crew, either. Not unless they wanted to move all their equipment every night.” Kelsey leaned against the door jamb. Fatigue hung about her shoulders thick and heavy. “I don’t get it.”

  “Me either. I should have checked into Mr. Wormsley a little better—I guess I saw stars.”

  Kelsey shifted her weight from one foot to the next. Her fingers played at her sides, feeling the hem of her jeans. Erin needed to leave Johnny’s room, to show a little respect at least. She felt like she was ten years old again, digging through her older brother’s bedroom when he wasn’t home and finding a collection of Playboy’s in a shoebox under the bed. She’d stolen one—just an act of curiosity from a little girl—but when he found it missing—

  “We should check the other rooms.” Erin rose and moved for the door. “Kelsey?”

  “Sorry. Just remembering.”

  “Kelsey… I’ve been wondering. What’s the story with you and Johnny?”

  Kelsey drew back into the hallway.

  “Sorry to pry. I’ve just notice the way you look at him.”

  Kelsey shrugged. “Nothing. Not between us, anyway. He used to date Sarah, but then the house happened. Sarah quit school—one semester left. Johnny joined the Army. I hid my head and kept moving forward.”

  “Sorry.” Erin dropped her eyes and put on a sheepish expression. “I can’t imagine why the four of you—Mr. Wormsley included—would want to come back to this place.”

  Kelsey looked down the hallway. Even with the lights on, darkness owned the third floor, the half-attic. “It was the money. Dad’s death… His funeral. It was just too hard to say no to that much money.”

  “Money?”

  “’fraid so. If I don’t have the money, I can’t finish my research.”

  “With the rats?”

  Kelsey nodded. “I know it sounds stupid. After my dad died, I wanted to make sure I made him proud. He was my biggest fan.” She held her breath.

  Erin smiled. “I’m sure we’ll be okay, Kelsey. Let’s take a peek in the rest of these rooms and get back down—”

  “Kels!”

  The two women exchanged a startled glance. Someone—it sounded like Johnny—shouted Kelsey’s name from below. Her name. Kels. Johnny was calling for her.

  “Get down here! We’ve found him!”

  Chapter 27: Descent

  “Go,” Erin said, stepping toward the next door. “Go and see what’s going on. I’ve got to check these last couple of rooms, just in case.”

  Kelsey hesitated. No one was to be alone in the house.

  “Kels!”

  “Go,” Erin repeated. “I’ll be fine. See you in five, okay? Nothing’s going to happen to me up here. You’ve seen the nothing for yourself, right? No blizzard in which to get lost—no heart disease. I’ll be there in five.”

  Kelsey nodded. Once she made the landing, she almost fell down the stairs as she bounded with such quick steps. Erin would come tumbling after. She promised. The dread of dark, quiet hallways, and phantom knocks chased her down. She should have never come back to the house and now, now they were trapped. The wrecked RV and Ben’s poor decision making doomed them—she shook her head to lose the word doom. Fear was not a rational thing. Neither were memories, even though most people spent their lives lying to themselves. Kelsey knew these things to be true, facts checked against dozens of research proposals and journal articles in the last ten years. Good solid research.

  But she was scared.

  “Who have you found? Who is it?” Kelsey’s voice bubbled over as she hopped from the bottom step.

  “On the radio—”

  “We haven’t found anybody,” Ben said. “John’s just being a bit melodramatic.”

  “Melodramatic, Wormsley? I didn’t make this shit up. Howard called in on the radio.” Johnny glared at Ben. “He’s alive, at least. We know that much. Earlier, when we found his tools, the radio was missing, the two-way Ben had the crew use.”

  “So he still has it with him?” Kelsey asked.

  “Seems like it,” Johnny said.

  “I found a radio in the RV… I thought it was Howard’s.” Ben shook his head, his face still pale and surly. “We can’t seem to speak to him, though, just like the others. It’s just him, talking. He’s just talking… Expecting a reply, maybe. He’s probably expecting us to contact him…”

  “Where is he?” Kelsey asked as she pushed stray strands of curls behind her ears. “Did he say where he was?”

  “Just that he was cold. He asked us to talk to him. We tried. He asked us to say something, anything, so he’d know we were looking for him.” Ben’s voice was lifeless and stiff.

  “We were,” Kelsey said. “Erin and I were on the third floor.”

  “What?” Johnny turned to the stairs. The blackness in his eyes sent a shudder through her bones. Johnny’s eyes burned through her with that faraway look, the impossible thousand-yard-stare. “The third floor?”

  “I went up to check on Erin, you remember? She wanted to go outside and start a search party for the crew.” Kelsey rubbed her arms. “We heard something on the third floor. Knocking, like wood on wood.”

  “So?” Ben asked. He’d slumped into the high-backed chair again and was pulling at the nape of his hair. “So what?”

  “We thought somebody was on the third floor.” Kelsey looked at her hands.

  Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “Did you find anything? A clue? Something which might lead to Howard?”

  Kelsey shook her head. “Dust. Your bedroom. Nothing else.”

  “Jesus, Kels. Where’s Erin now?” Johnny moved toward her, the empty look in his eyes vanishing, replaced with a feverish, living black.

  “She’s still… She said she wanted to check the other rooms before coming down. You called for me…”

  Ben snorted.

  “I’m sure she’s fine.” A crawling heat crossed Kelsey’s back and worked up her neck. “She has to be fine. I was just with her—not five minutes ago.”

  “Fuck. We can’t leave anyone alone—” Johnny strode to the foot of the stairs. “I’ll get her. Stay put, all of you, until I come back.”

  “But there was nothing,” Kelsey said. “We looked up there and found an empty room. We checked in your room, Johnny. That’s where the sound appeared to come from, but nothing. No one was there. She’ll be down in minute.” She wanted to reach out and grab his arm, hold him in place. He’d called her name, not Erin’s. It wasn’t fair.

  “I’ll bring her down.”

  Johnny disappeared,
thumping up the stairs toward Erin. Toward the beautiful, young blonde. Kelsey’s shoulders dropped. Her stomach turned sour and sank to her feet.

  “What about the other rooms?” Daniel asked. “You said you checked others, yes?”

  Kelsey stood frozen, statue-like, for a moment. When she looked at Daniel, the near-panic in his eyes, a wild, wide-eyed stare, surprised her. He was the last one. If something happened to Erin, it would just be the four of them. The four of them and then…

  “Did you check my room?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Kelsey said. The words were stale and tasteless in her mouth. She glanced back toward the stairs. A loud bang echoed from above followed by stomping feet. Johnny’s feet. Erin didn’t stomp like that. “We made it to two rooms, and then Johnny yelled. He called out my name.”

  Another bang came from upstairs. Johnny’s muted voice dropped from above, too indistinct to make out.

  “Erin’s gone,” Ben said, slumping in the high-backed chair. “She’s gone like the others. Poof. Poof. Poof. The fucking snow is still falling outside. We’re here, inside. This is mine. My mess. I’ve done this. I’ve stirred up a world of shit.”

  Kelsey knelt at Sarah’s head and stroked her hair. She looked peaceful, sleeping. Someone—Johnny or Ben or Daniel—had cleaned and bandaged her head. They were alone now, just Sarah and her. Erin knew what was coming—she feared it more than anything else. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was the fear which found her.

  Footsteps thumped on the stairs. Johnny clutched the rail as he landed on the bottom step. “She’s not up there.”

  “No. This is not possible,” Daniel said. He shrunk toward the wall. “People do not vanish—Howard was lost, yes? I can understand this. Then the others. The snow. It is all possible. But Erin, she was just here. This is not possible. The house did not swallow her.”

  Johnny pulled a hand across his face, massaging his cheeks. He stepped off the stairs and started into the living room. His eyes fixed on Kelsey.

  “Tell me everything, Kels. Tell me what happened to Erin.”

  “I don’t know what happened to Erin. The last place I saw her was the third floor,” Kelsey said. “She was up there with me. I followed her. I’d gone up to her room when she was determined to go outside and find the crew. I wanted to stop her. We started talking. There was a noise from above, sort of like a piece of wood banging against the floor above us. Kelsey talked about seeing Howard—or seeing what he saw—”

  “What?” Johnny grabbed her arms in both hands and stared into her face, as if he was willing her eyes to meet his. “What do you mean, seeing what he saw?”

  “I—Erin said she could see things.” Kelsey tried to pull away. Johnny’s hands pressed into her flesh. Her arms began to go numb. “See things in the future. Other stuff.”

  “She was a telepath. Maybe a psychic. Whatever you want to call it.” Ben’s mouth moved as he spoke, but he didn’t budge from the big chair. “I cast her because of her interest in the paranormal. Because she’d had experiences. I thought it might make things more interesting around here.”

  “Fuck.” Johnny dropped Kelsey’s arms and stomped to the window. He swept the curtain aside. The dark, outside sky threatened to swallow them all. Threatened with its otherness, its complete emptiness. Without any lights outside in the yard, it was impossible to tell if the snow continued to fall. It was blank, a black wall, cold and utterly unconcerned with their tiny struggles in the big brick house.

  Kelsey sleepwalked to the chair opposite Ben and collapsed into it.

  “This is fucking impossible, Ben. All of this.” Johnny rubbed his hand across the window. His skin squeaked against the glass. “People don’t disappear. She’s still in this house. Maybe in a room… A closet… Somewhere.”

  “Were there any lights on?” Kelsey asked.

  “What?”

  “Lights on upstairs—in one of the rooms. Even on the second floor.”

  Johnny shook his head.

  A silence stole into the room, a quiet thick and tense and as anything Kelsey had felt in her twenty-seven years. Ben had cracked, broken down the seam until what was left didn’t seem to have the will to do anything. Something inside Johnny wound like the spring from an old children’s toy, coiling until it threatened to break. Kelsey had never seen him with such fire, such anger and frustration boiling under his skin. Daniel had dissolved into a frightened rabbit in the corner, ready to play dead or bolt if given half a chance. Sarah was…

  The lights flickered and died.

  “Great. Fucking great,” Johnny said. “Now snap—no power.”

  “What now?” Daniel’s voice quavered.

  A tiny penlight clicked to life in Ben’s hands. “We have other lights and plenty of batteries.”

  “In the RV?” Johnny asked.

  Ben covered his forehead with his free hand.

  “At least we have a few spare flashlights on the dining room table. We left them there after the search for Howard.” Kelsey rose from her chair feeling as though she needed a way to ally with Johnny again. Erin was gone now. Erin gone and Sarah hurt... Kelsey pressed her hands against her temples and shook her head.

  “What’s going on, Kels?” Johnny asked.

  “Nothing.” She caught a sob in her throat and turned to face him. “Nothing.”

  “We will freeze.” Daniel stepped from the shadows; a pale glow from the window framed his face. “We will freeze in this house without power.”

  “The furnace is natural gas,” Kelsey said. “Erin and I checked down there earlier when looking for Howard.”

  “The pilot will be out then,” Johnny said. “If it’s forced air, we’ll need power for the fan, too. Give me the light, Ben. Just for a second.”

  “What the hell are you going to do with it?”

  “Get a flashlight and then check in the basement for a breaker box or fuses.” Johnny reached out for the light, his face tight and serious. “I doubt it will help, but it’s the first step.”

  “No breakers,” Kelsey muttered, but Johnny didn’t take notice.

  “And then what? What happens if it’s outside, a down line or blown transformer?” Ben dropped the light in Johnny’s outstretched hand.

  “I don’t know.” Johnny shook his head. He moved across the room toward the dining room opening. “Break up this furniture and start a fire.”

  “I’m going with you,” Kelsey said.

  Johnny stared at her for a moment. “You don’t need—”

  “No one goes alone,” Kelsey said, her jaw set. “I already messed up once. I’m not going to let it happen again.”

  ~

  They headed into the basement with flashlights in hand, Kelsey leading the way. Perhaps it was the night’s effect or accumulated snow outside the basement windows, but the basement felt darker than it had before. Deeper, Kelsey thought, as though it was a bottomless well from which neither of them would return. Dark thoughts led to cold chills, and her body shook and shuddered before making the last step.

  “Damn, Kels. Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” she said. “It’s just a basement.”

  “Not in this house. Nothing is just in this house.” He squeezed her shoulder and pushed by onto the concrete floor. His flashlight beam traveled around the room, revealing stacks of boxes, some brown cardboard and others wooden and aged like old fruit crates. “Damn. You didn’t say this place was stuffed with all this old shit.”

  Kelsey felt it again, the cold, furry thing which moved about in her guts. Her tongue dried like a piece of sun-bleached leather. She moved it in her mouth, hoping to find words. The basement hadn’t been full of all those crates and boxes. It had been empty.

  “Kels?” Johnny turned and blasted her face with his light. “What’s the matter? You’re pale as seagull shit.”

  “None of this was here. None of these boxes,” she said, stepping to the floor beside Johnny. “Nothing—just the furnace and a few bare walls, unfinished walls.�
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  “Maybe you were in a hurry and didn’t notice.”

  “No.”

  “You must have missed them. Maybe only looked on one side of the room.” Johnny swung his flashlight beam in the other direction. A yellow disk skirted across a stone wall and cobweb-covered wooden case with round divots in each shelf to fit the necks of wine bottles. “Too bad there’s nothing left. Looks like a former owner might have been a bit of a wine connoisseur.”

  “No—Johnny, none of this was here. Believe me.” Kelsey said, waving her flashlight at the wall. “Not the wine rack or the boxes or any of it. It’s bigger, too.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “The bathroom upstairs wasn’t impossible. What about Erin vanishing, Johnny? It’s this fucking house, you said it yourself a moment ago. ‘Nothing is just in this house.’”

  Johnny turned his back and moved toward the nearest stack of boxes. Thick motes of dust danced in their flashlight beams, tumbling through the air. An odor hung about everything, the smell of age and rot and mildew. The basement hadn’t smelled of anything before—it was clean and fresh and untouched. Kelsey closed her eyes, remembering, and couldn’t conjure one microbe of dust when she’d descended with Erin earlier that day. It wasn’t the same basement. It couldn’t have been, just as the bathroom wasn’t the same as she’d remembered it from years before, but this—this happened in the span of a few hours, impossible for Ben to conjure even with the full spell-making power of Hollywood at his disposal. No magic had happened; no one else had been in the house except one lone, hunched figure in a second floor window.

  “Maybe when we left in the RV…”

  Johnny turned around. He’d opened the top box and his hands were lost inside. “What are you talking about?”

  “All this,” she said, stepping closer to Johnny. “The basement, the bathroom. Maybe even the disappearing people. Maybe it’s all part of the show.”

  Johnny frowned. “The show? Are you nuts, Kels? If something happened to this basement—if—Ben didn’t have anything to do with it. He couldn’t have. It’s more likely you were just freaked out earlier and didn’t pay much attention.”