Echoes of the Dead

by Aaron Polson

  A large rock or a cave wall.

  Kelsey shivered. The other door beckoned—the closet door. It curled a finger toward Kelsey and asked her to open it. She moved through the empty, smooth-floored room. Her feet padded until they brought her to the threshold. Empty, that’s what Erin had said. The little closet in the not-bathroom had been empty when Ben checked. Kelsey wrapped her fingers on the knob, turned, and pulled.

  The space behind the door opened black and deep, impossible for her eyes to measure.

  Knock, knock.

  “Help,” a voice said. It was tiny, a little girl’s voice. “Help me, Daddy.”

  Chapter 30: A Light in the Dark

  Kelsey stepped forward; one hand extended in front while the other clung to the doorknob. Her fingers slipped away from the metal. The door hung in space, a portal to somewhere else, a place of wood and glass and logic. The other hand, the one which groped in the darkness, moved through unreality. This was no closet, no small, empty opening. She bit her lip and waited, listening for the voice.

  “I’m lost,” it said—she said, a girl of nine or ten from the voice’s tone and volume.

  Kelsey glanced once more at the door, took a breath, and plunged into the dark, groping with both hands now, reaching in front and to the sides to find the walls. Her knuckles dragged against stone. She stopped, felt on both sides, and noted a rough, circular cavern. Her hands played with its boundaries. Behind her, the door had vanished, leaving no lingering ambient light.

  She found herself in a cave.

  Impossible.

  “No, Kels, it’s not.”

  The voice was just as impossible. Maybe more so.

  “Dad?”

  “Here.” A flame danced. A man appeared next to her in the dark, her father as he was fifteen years ago. Smooth skin covered his face with hints of crinkled crow’s feet near his eyes. His blue eyes shimmered with the light. A pair of thick-framed glasses rested halfway down his nose. He held a lighter—a gunmetal grey Zippo—in his right hand. Its light warmed his face. She knew the inscription on the lighter, To Hank with Love, from her mother. It had been a gift for their fifteenth wedding anniversary, the year he gave up smoking.

  “I always thought it was a bit ironic,” he said, nodding toward the lighter.

  “I was just thinking about the lighter. Mom gave it to me after your…” Kelsey’s tongue felt as though it was made of sponge, thick and dry and uncomfortable in her mouth. She couldn’t say the word funeral. The lighter was in her suitcase. She remembered putting it in her suitcase. “How did you—”

  “Shhh. Don’t worry about the little things. I have someone you need to see.” He moved further into the tunnel. The yellow flame cast a halo on the rock walls as he walked.

  Kelsey hurried after the retreating man.

  “Dad,” she called.

  He turned and pressed a finger against his lips. A piece of Kelsey cried out, saying no, this couldn’t be her father. He was dead. She’d watched the coffin drop into the ground, a coffin whose high gloss polished surface she’d run her fingers across. Before that, she’d looked upon his wax-mannequin lips and folded hands. She knew dead. This man—this replacement father—was an illusion.

  “A ghost,” she said, surprising herself with her own voice.

  “You don’t believe in ghosts,” her father said as he continued through the tunnel.

  Kelsey’s eyes narrowed. “But my father is dead.”

  “Yes. So I am. But…” He looked over his shoulder. “Here I am, saving my little girl from the dark cave again.”

  The chill which shot through Kelsey’s stomach did so with wrathful intensity, like a spear of ice forced through her intestines. This man, be it specter or ghost or figment of her imagination, brought her memories to the fore. She knew the little girl’s voice, the tiny voice crying for help behind the black veil.

  It was her voice—her own ten-year-old voice.

  They entered a high-ceilinged chamber, the roof high enough her father’s tiny light got lost among the shadows. Kelsey looked to her side and touched a railing. Her fingers played along the cold steel bar.

  “This isn’t possible. I know this place.”

  “You should.” Her father smiled and moved the lighter closer to the stony wall. “Where are we, Kels?”

  “Wind Cave. I haven’t been here since I was a little girl. I know it’s Wind Cave because of the box work, the calcium formations up there.” One finger pointed toward a web of intricate white stone. “Wind Cave doesn’t have typical stalactites or stalagmites, but plenty of box work.”

  “You were lost here,” he said.

  “And you found me. It was dark and cold and I was afraid.”

  “Not at first.”

  “No… No, I wasn’t at first. I explored and then the lights went out. I’ve never been anywhere so dark. You came and found me with your lighter. You found me before the park rangers.”

  Her father smiled.

  Kelsey’s lips wavered on the edge of a smile, but turned downward. “But that’s a memory. Impossible. I’m not in a cave—I can’t be. This is a house, a rather big brick house in the middle of nowhere. I’m in north-central Kansas, seven-hundred miles from Wind Cave. Seven-hundred miles and seventeen years from you finding me.”

  “Really?”

  The voice changed, slid into something different. It was no longer her father’s voice, but that of an old friend, a man she hadn’t seen in years. She spun, her eyes scanning the cavern for the exit, but just as fast, she was no longer in a cavern. The room was plain and simple and covered in dust. From the sloping roof, she reckoned it must be the third floor.

  “Kelsey?”

  Jared stood five feet from Kelsey, his face pale and clean-shaven as it had been five years ago. He moved toward her in the blue room, arms open and hands extended. She backed away.

  “Oh, God. Kelsey. I’ve been waiting for you…”

  Her head spun. His hands clasped her arms.

  “There’s something you should know.”

  Chapter 31: An Old Friend

  Kelsey pulled Jared close and gave him a crushing hug. She pushed away a moment later, searching his face. “You’re cold. Your skin—it feels like ice.”

  “I’m just a memory.”

  “That’s impossible. I’m touching you—you’re right here. Of course we remembered you—we all did. We thought you were dead. Five years ago… Oh my God.” Kelsey’s face twisted as the realization dawned on her. “Have you been in this house for five years? How did you survive—”

  “You aren’t listening, Kelsey. I’m just a memory. This house… This house shapes itself to memories. I’m so lonely Kels.”

  A flood of thoughts merged in Kelsey’s brain. Dizzy, she held her forehead with one hand and backed away from Jared. He didn’t move. “The house… Memories? How—that’s not even possible.”

  “Always the scientist.”

  “Memories can’t stand in front of me. They’re locked away here, in your skull. I can’t touch my memories, but I can touch you.” Kelsey waved at Jared’s chest. “You’re flesh and blood—a little cold, but real.”

  “Real. Of course. Just like your father.”

  “He’s dead,” Kelsey said. “He died about a month ago—complications of a stroke. Are you trying to say that both of you are dead? That you’re a ghost then? I don’t—”

  “Believe in ghosts. I know.” Jared nodded. “I don’t know how else to explain, Kelsey. This house…”

  “I’ve seen things—illusions.”

  Jared shook his head. He had yet to move from the spot where Kelsey first hugged him. “Memories, Kelsey. Your memories. Everyone else, too: Johnny, Sarah—”

  “Erin. Jesus—the basement was Erin’s. Her memory at least. She mentioned her uncle’s house in California. But tonight, after she vanished, it took the shape of my new house in Springdale. The boxes were there… Everything. They even had Mom’s handwriting on the sides.”
/>   “It was hers, now yours. You’ve got a powerful mind, Kelsey. You’ve brought me here.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ve been here all the time. The house has kept me.” Jared looked at the wall. “It wants you, too. All of you.”

  “My God… Where is Erin?”

  “She’s not lost. She’s still here if you look hard enough. She’s still here just like I am.”

  Kelsey wagged her head back and forth. “That’s impossible. Johnny looked for her. He checked every room on the second and third floors. She’s not here. The crew is lost, too.”

  “They’re not lost either. The house needed a break, that’s all. Too many memories in one place.”

  Kelsey gestured toward the darkness behind her, imagining the tunnel back to the second floor bathroom must be hidden somewhere within. “They couldn’t find their way back to the house. Ben and Daniel heard them on the radio. They couldn’t find the damn house.”

  “Maybe the house didn’t want to be found. Too many memories…”

  “Didn’t’ want to be found?”

  Jared nodded.

  Kelsey’s right hand touched the side of her neck. She began to feel sick, a slow, rising stomach fluid cocktail tainted with fear and anxiety. “So what about us, then? Me—the others downstairs.”

  “You’ll be missed. They—someone outside the house—might mount a search. No one will find you in here. Eventually, the house will take all of you. It’s hungry. It’s lonely, like I’m alone.”

  “You sound like it’s alive.” She patted her arms, fighting the chill. “You talk like this house has an appetite, like it’s an animal. That’s too weird, Jared. I don’t believe—”

  “This place doesn’t care if you believe or not, Kels.”

  She closed her eyes and imagined a maze from the animal lab on campus—one of her mazes. What did the rats see when they scurried through her puzzles? Did they imagine anything beyond the maze walls? Could they plan ahead, speculate about the future when they might be free of the maze? Did they think at all? Did they ever imagine the maze was alive? Her eyes opened. “We’ll die. We’ll be lost in this house and die. We’ll starve to death. If no one is able to find us—”

  “Yes, eventually. Memories live, though. It’s not bad.”

  “I don’t want anyone to die…”

  “I didn’t either—five years ago.” The shadow of a smile grew on Jared’s cold lips.

  “We didn’t—we fled the house after finding the body. We trekked through the snow to the highway and flagged down the first vehicle and found help.”

  “I know.”

  “The body…”

  “My uncle,” Jared said. “He committed suicide when I was ten. It was an awful mess and a powerful, powerful memory. I was the one to find him, dead, in his tub. I erased the blood in my memory, but the rest remained strong. When the house had me, once I knew it wouldn’t let me go, I left you my uncle’s body. I wanted all of you to leave and not return.”

  Kelsey began tugging her bottom lip and pacing a small path in the dark space. She understood, at least as much as she could. “We’re in danger here.”

  “Danger is a strange word.”

  “Am I lost?”

  Jared tilted his head. “Your father found you.”

  “So I can save the others—Johnny and Ben and Sarah and Daniel? I can still save them?”

  “Possibly.” Jared shrugged. “But dying’s not so bad.”

  “Like hell. We’ll all die. I mean, of course we will—but we don’t have to die here. We don’t have to die in this stinking pest hole.” Kelsey punched a balled up fist into the opposite palm. “What about Erin?”

  “She’s here.”

  “But I need to find her.” Kelsey narrowed her eyes. “I need to find her and get the others out of this fucking house.”

  “I’ve been lonely, Kelsey. Please, I don’t want you to leave.”

  Realization sparked in Kelsey’s mind. Her mouth dropped open. “My God—you were the man on the road. You made us wreck.”

  “I didn’t want you to leave me this time.”

  She closed her eyes. His skin had been cold when they hugged. There wasn’t a spark of life in the thing she’d touched. It was Jared and not-Jared. Her eyes opened again, and the thing was gone. “We’re not beaten yet,” she muttered, and the world around her swirled to black.

  Chapter 32: Ben is Broken

  Ben woke with a start.

  Somewhere inside the house, a door had slammed, waking him from a thick, dreamless blanket of sleep. He turned his head from side to side, working the kink from his neck. His arms and legs sagged like they were infused with lead. The house listened. A slight wind buffeted the windows, but everything else was still. He scooted from the chair and stood. His throat burned where Johnny had held him down. He needed water… Something to drink.

  Sarah lay with one hand across her forehead. A pallid cast hung over her features, and her hair spilled in a silver mass over the arm of the couch. She was breathing. He watched the slow rise and fall of her chest for a moment before turning to Johnny.

  Soldier boy was out, too.

  Some hero.

  Johnny… Sarah… Ben found Daniel, too, asleep lie the others. But Kelsey was gone. A creeping coldness wound through his stomach, the same sensation which started to grow after hearing the crew’s distressed voices over the radio. Kelsey… He looked to the stairs and front foyer. She wouldn’t have left. She couldn’t have, not in this mess. His shoeless feet padded across the parlor rug, past the others fast asleep, and brought him to the foot of the stairs. Again, he listened.

  Nothing. Not even the dull thump of footsteps anywhere else in the house.

  How was it possible? How could five people—now six if he counted Kelsey among the number of missing—just disappear. Ben frowned. The creeping chill collided with a hollow pit in his gut and spread like hoarfrost over his skin. Kelsey was gone, too. He’d lost five on this trip to the house. Jesus. They were being picked off, one by one. He glanced toward the three in the parlor. His gaze swept toward the stairs. Darkness watched him from the second floor landing. Darkness waited for him.

  He broke through the frost and climbed.

  ~

  Kelsey opened her eyes.

  She was lying in the second floor bathroom, but this time it wasn’t empty. A tub had returned, along with a sink and small medicine cabinet with a mirror. The bathtub was free of corpses—just an ordinary white-porcelain tub. She studied her image in the mirror.

  Kelsey pushed herself upright and stood. For a moment, she listened to the house—listened to a great, slumbering beast. She was still in the monster’s belly, but now, at least, she possessed a weapon against the monster. She’d seen behind the curtain. The house couldn’t manage all of them, not a once. Too many memories filled the house. Kelsey left the bathroom, headed down the hall, and turned into the yellow room. She’d last seen Erin on the third floor, and she would look again. She needed light. The old hesitation lingered, the old fear of darkness. Once inside the room, she worked her way to the window and pushed the curtains open. The snow-covered world glowed like a child’s toy. Stars twinkled overhead. Light enough.

  Her suitcase was still on the chest at the foot of her bed. She threw open the cover and rummaged inside. Although she’d placed some of her clothing in the dresser, she’d kept a few items in the suitcase, including the small box her mother had given her after the funeral. She found the box. Her fingers fumbled with the lid, pulling it open. Inside, she found her father’s lighter wrapped in a wad of old newspaper. She picked out the lighter, leaving the paper in the box. Her thumb raked across the rough wheel. Sparks jumped, and an orange flame rose, casting flickering shadows on the yellow walls.

  She clicked the lighter shut and headed for the stairs. Her feet pounded up at first, toward the third floor. She’d last seen Erin there. Erin wasn’t lost… Not if Jared spoke the truth. Could she trust him—it? Wha
t if the house was playing with her, another illusion from the God-forsaken maze? She needed a test to prove Jared was real, even as a memory. She needed a test before she did anything else—before she even went back down and spoke with the others.

  She froze. A tiny light danced in Johnny’s room, its yellow haze spilling into the hallway. Her gaze raked across the hallway wallpaper. The pineapples were gone—had they even been there in the first place? She shook her head, trying to dislodge broken thoughts—to dislodge them or force them together like a stubborn puzzle, a puzzle with missing pieces.

  Her mouth opened; she meant to call Erin’s name, but held back. Her throat constricted. She touched her skin with a finger and found lumps of gooseflesh. She had to check. She had to know. She moved closer to the light, the open door. Her hand touched the wainscoting, rubbing across the seams in the wood panels. She paused, heart pounding. Breath would not come—her lungs had frozen.

  Go on.

  She found Ben when she turned the corner. He shined a flashlight in her face. His other hand clutched a black pistol.

  “Fuck—Kelsey… I thought you were gone, too.”

  She shielded her face from the light. “Put it down, okay?”

  “Sorry.” The yellow beam pointed toward the floor. “Where have you been?”

  Kelsey’s eyes wouldn’t leave the gun. “Looking for Erin. What’s with the pistol?”

  Ben sat on the bed and dropped the flashlight beside him. He cradled the pistol in front of him, examining it like one might a fossil or rare archeological find. “It’s John’s. I found it in here. He had it buried in his suitcase, covered up with a bunch of t-shirts. Why do you suppose he’d bring a gun, Kels?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s loaded, too.” Ben’s voice drifted like the sound of a television in another room. He shook his head as he spoke. “I don’t know either.”