House Haunted

by Al Sarrantonio

  But for the toiling push of the windshield wipers against snow, and the crunch of crushed snow beneath the tires, there was silence in the car. His father sat immobile, his face unreadable in silhouette. Ray turned his attention back to the highway; once again the car had wandered, and this time he pulled behind the offended sedan and stayed in the right lane. The guardrail off the service lane had reflectors; he could gauge his position by those. He drove for five minutes, and then his hand strayed toward the radio to turn it on, to have sound.

  His father's hand was on his wrist, and for a foolish moment he thought there was tenderness in the touch. “Do what I want, Ray.”

  He shook his hand out of his father's grasp. “Fuck you.”

  “We'll go to your little cabin in the woods and talk all about it—” his father began sarcastically.

  “I said, fuck you.”

  “Turn the car around.”

  Ray pulled over into the service lane abruptly and braked the car. His father sat motionless.

  “Is that what you want—”

  “Turn the car around,” his father repeated. “And when I'm through with you, Ray, you'll wish you were dead.”

  The engine idled. Ray turned to stare at the rigid, tightlipped, unspeaking statue in the passenger seat, and then he put the car into drive and pulled back onto the highway. He began to search for an exit ramp.

  As he saw a sign for an approaching exit, he felt a touch on the back of his neck. This time it was not a bead of water. He felt her fingers, thumb and forefinger, circle the back of his neck and squeeze, almost tenderly. He felt her breath close-by, felt her heat as she leaned over toward him.

  “Ray,” she whispered into his ear.

  He began to shiver. His tears had dried to salt on his face, and there was only fear now.

  “Ray,” she whispered, tenderly kissing the back of his ear, “I'm going to help you.”

  The exit ramp appeared, curling into darkness off the highway, thicker with snow than the traveled macadam. He felt Bridget lean over him to his left, between him and the door, and saw her grip the wheel in her hands.

  Ray cried out, and his father stared at him. His eyes widened. Later, Ray was sure his father had seen her. She laughed and turned the wheel sharply. The car took the exit ramp in a curving skid.

  Ray pushed his foot to the brake. Bridget laughed—it was not the brake but the accelerator pedal, which had switched places with it, that his foot hit. The car sped up and skidded sideways. The headlamps, piercing falling snow, picked up covered roadway and the lip of the exit roadway. Something indistinct was parked ahead, off to the side.

  Ray jammed his foot from accelerator to brake, but there were two accelerator pedals. He alternated between them, screaming for one of them to be the brakes. He took his foot from the pedals, but it was too late; they had locked. The car continued to whine against the icy roadway, sliding sideways toward the thing parked on the side of the exit ramp. Through the snow and lights it resolved into a bed truck bearing a yellow, snow-covered bulldozer. The bulldozer had been thrown sideways, facing them, its shovel dropped over the side of the bed.

  They glided toward it.

  Senator Garver said, “Oh, my dear God,” as the white-black sky became filled with the curving hard metal solidity of the huge shovel. Ray ducked as he saw the straight bottom edge suddenly outlined starkly in the slipping beams of the headlights. They slammed straight into it. His father screamed and Ray turned to see him beheaded, and felt the crushing weight of the collapsing car against his mortal legs—

  “Go back to your cocaine, Ray,” Bridget said. With the phone receiver clutched in his hand, he felt her grip on the back of his neck, pushing him toward the rest of the cut line of coke on the desk. She pushed his nose into it, and he felt the tickle of white powder against his nostrils. He dropped the phone on, the desk and began to cry, turning his head- sideways on the desk and closing his eyes. Her hand let him go with a departing caress, and he heard her voice, half distinct through the receiver.

  “Here's what to do,” she said. “Here's where to go to destroy me . . .”

  He listened, and in a while she had stopped talking and there was nothing but hissing on the line, and faint, unrecognizable laughter and screams, and soon Ray had turned his face to the table and found his tiny straw, and was pulling the medicine up into his nose to his brain and making himself strong for the journey.

  9. NORTH

  Somewhere in Montreal, Peter Wayne got lost. First, the jerkoff at the border-crossing booth gave him the wrong directions, probably for fun (Peter had sensed his leg was being pulled—”You go about eighty miles west, hey?” the idiot had said, saying it in such a way, by going back to the paperback book he was reading, that Peter knew he wasn't going to get anything else out of him), and then when he finally got into Montreal and needed directions to Ottawa, the fog had rolled in so thick that he could barely see all the new construction going on around him (What is it with these Canadians—they made of money?), and the proprietors of the two 7-Elevens he'd stopped in had pretended they didn't know a word of English (Bilingual bastard country.). And by now he was lost good, and asked the last person he felt like asking anywhere, anytime, about anything, especially with an open cooler of beer on the floor behind the driver's seat, with empties scattered around it, a cop. But, to and behold, the cop had smiled and said, “Sure, what you want to do is ...” and had given him exact and precise directions to Ottawa, and then Laura's building, that had gotten him to the capital city in less than ninety minutes.

  The upshot of which was it was two-thirty in the morning when he finally pulled into a parking spot in front of Laura's apartment complex, instead of ten o'clock as he'd planned. By this time he didn't give a damn if she wasn't expecting him; he just wanted to sit down and drink two or three more of the beers in the cooler behind his seat and then start yelling at her.

  Pulling his jacket and the cooler from the back seat, and cursing when he banged his head standing up, he slammed the car door and trudged to the front lobby of the building.

  He had to admit Ottawa didn't look too bad—at least at night. There was no fog here, as in Montreal, and the canal looked beautiful, a perfect river of dark, clean-looking water reflecting the pretty lights of the city from its cool surface. Everything in Canada looked clean and brand-new. It was as if America had opened for business twenty minutes ago.

  He shrugged. Maybe it looks shitty in the daytime.

  Somehow, he doubted it.

  The lobby had a new panel of lighted buzzers. He cursed when he couldn't find Laura's name. He knew she had moved in only five days before—exactly five days, since the last time he'd spoken to her had been Thursday, when she had hung up the phone on him and started mumbling garbage about that jerk Brennan and all that poltergeist stuff being real. Peter's drinking jag had started the next day, which he had been unlucky enough to have off (or lucky, if you considered drowning your sorrows in Coors good medical treatment), and by the time Monday morning had come around, he'd been in no shape to go to work. He'd had a little time coming to him anyway, and when he'd called in sick, he'd sounded sufficiently lousy that there would be no questions. “What the hell good are you to me on the floor if you're going to puke on the customers?” Charles had said, and when Peter said he'd take the whole week off because he'd felt run-down anyway lately, Charles had just said, “What the hell, it's slow now anyway.”

  “Goddamnit, Laura, where are you?” Peter said to him-self, studying the panel. There were names in all but two panels, and he put the cooler down on the lobby floor and pushed the first. There was no answer. He counted to thirty and then pushed it again, longer. Still no answer.

  He turned his attention to the other buzzer, and again there was no reaction. Once more he counted to thirty, then leaned on it for a count of twenty. Nothing.

  He cursed and began to study the panels with names in them, looking for a clue, when the light on the second blank panel lit an
d a voice said sleepily from the speaker, “Hello?”

  “Laura?”

  “Yes?”

  “It's me, Peter.”

  “Peter . . .” The grogginess didn't leave her voice. He waited for it to, but when she spoke again, her words were still heavy. “What do you want?”

  “Laura, let me come up.”

  “Go home, Peter . . .”

  Before he could think, his hand had slapped at the speaker. “Goddamnit, let me in!”

  He thought she had turned the intercom off. There was a long silence, and then she said, no more brightly, “Okay.”

  He grabbed the cooler and yanked at the door as the buzzer unlocking it went off briefly. If he hadn't lurched at it, he would have missed it. He was halfway into the open elevator when he realized that he didn't remember what number her room was. 1212 or 1221? He held the elevator door open with his hand, trying to visualize the number next to the empty name panel. He couldn't do it.

  “Shit.”

  He stalked back to the lobby door, opened it, and wedged the cooler into the opening so it wouldn't close. The number was 1214.

  He went back to the elevator and took it to the twelfth floor, reflecting that an optimist would have pointed out that he'd at least gotten the floor right.

  Fuck optimism.

  The elevator door opened, and he walked resolutely to 1214. There was no answer. A brief fear that he had read the wrong number on the panel downstairs assailed him. No, he was sure at least of that. He felt cold, and shivered; there was an open window down the hallway and he closed it.

  “Come on, Laura,” he said impatiently, knocking on the door again.

  He leaned close, listening, but there was no sound from within.

  The doorknob turned and the door opened.

  “Laura?”

  It was pitch black inside. He waited for her to appear in the doorway. He could hear the muted hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, but nothing else.

  “Laura?” he called into the apartment.

  “Peter?” he heard from somewhere in the back.

  “What the fuck—” he cursed, stepping in, feeling for a light switch on the wall. There was one, and it was up. Fucking Canadians probably do it ass backward. He flipped the switch down. There was the tiny click of the mercury element inside, but no light went on.

  He switched it up and down a couple of times. Nothing happened.

  “Laura?” he called again, not hiding his annoyance.

  “Hmmmm . . .”

  She sounded half asleep. Or drugged.

  He stepped into the darkened apartment. Immediately, he tripped over something. As he regained his balance it abruptly occurred to him that there might be an intruder in the apartment.

  “Are you all right, Laura?” he said, worried now. “Yes . . .”

  Peter felt someone behind him, put his hand out suddenly—and there was someone there. A hand touching his, then pulling away.

  “Who the hell—”

  He backed away from the door. There were other objects in his path. He tripped and fell. There was a noise behind him at the doorway. He got up and walked to it and looked down the hall. It was empty.

  Whoever it had been was gone.

  He returned to the apartment and found himself in the entrance to a room. There was a green glow, and his heart jumped—then he saw it was a digital readout over a stove. He was in the kitchen.

  He yelled, “Laura?”

  “Yes, Peter,” she said.

  He checked the bathroom, but there was no one there.

  Next to the bathroom was a door that proved to lead to a linen closet. Another door stood open at the end of the hall, filled with darkness. There was another light at the end of the hallway. He flicked it on. The shadows retreated into the room at the end of the hall. He saw the outlines of disarray: pulled-down bed sheets, clothes on the floor, drawers on a dresser against the wall pulled out, a bra hanging forlornly from one of the pullout knobs.

  “Christ,” Peter said. The implication of what had happened dawned on him. He remembered the felt touch in the front room, hoping the intruder had indeed left. A tendril of fear told him his hope might not be right.

  “Laura?” he shouted, loudly, hoping that any neighbors might be awakened. “Lau—”

  “Here, Peter.”

  Her drugged voice, close-by, in the bedroom.

  “Where are you?” His voice was tinged with hysteria now. “I'm here.”

  He entered the room and groped for the light switch. There wasn't any. There was an overturned lamp near the dresser; he picked it up and twisted the switch. Nothing happened. He felt along the cord till the plug came into his hand. He patted the wall for an outlet but couldn't locate one.

  He yanked the dresser away from the wall in frustration. The tepid light from the hallway wouldn't reach. Cursing, he moved the flat of his hand around for the protrusion of an outlet. It was there, at the far end. He butted the dresser away viciously to get at it.

  He pulled the lamp into his self-made cave, turned it on. Light hurt his eyes. He blinked and stood up, putting the lamp onto the dresser.

  “Jesus.”

  The room was a bigger mess than he had imagined. Everything had been tossed around or rearranged. Kitchen utensils were scattered about on the floor, glasses and plates in low piles near the bed. The sheets had been pulled from the bed, exposing the mattress, which had seemingly been raked with a sharp instrument. Tufts of padding were pulled from ragged holes. A chair lay broken by the clothes closet.

  “Laura, where in God's name are you!”

  “Here,” she said weakly, from the closet.

  He pushed his way across the room and yanked on the closet door.

  A smell hit him as he saw her, and the odor, as much as the sight of her, repulsed and shocked him. But then his eyes became the dominating sensors.

  “Oh, God!”

  She lay in the back corner of the closet, huddled like a child, naked. Her hair was matted thick with blood and what looked like human waste, her body covered with bruises. She was smeared with a coating of excrement that in some places caked her flesh completely.

  “Oh, Jesus, Laura.”

  “Hello, Peter.”

  Her eyes were open and too clear. She smiled up at him, moving her hands, which had been holding her knees, up over her thighs to her breasts. She rubbed at them, exciting the nipples before reaching down with one hand to pick up one of the turds that lay nearby and bringing it up to her mouth and putting it in.

  She chewed slowly, lowering her hands to cup her breasts and held them out to him.

  Peter began to tremble. Shock gave way to outrage. He reached down to lift her out of the closet, but she suddenly stretched her body out lengthwise on the floor and pulled her legs apart, bending her knees. She felt around on the floor and found another turd, thrusting it into the encrusted cavity between her legs, trying to work it into her vagina. She moaned, putting her weight on her toes and shoulder blades and lifting her pelvis off the floor.

  “Peter, that feels so good, please do it again.”

  She searched for another turd with one hand, still writhing, her other hand working between her legs.

  Peter bent down and grabbed her hand. He turned his face away to avoid the odor. He began to gag.

  “No! What are you doing?” She fought him, trying to make him let go. His stomach heaved, but he held on. She clawed at him and he cried out, but he retained his grip, hoisting her up and then securing her under the arms, walking her back out of the closet.

  “No! No!”

  “Goddamnit, Laura!”

  “Leave me alone!”

  He pulled her toward the bed. Suddenly she said, “For you, Peter,” in a silky voice and he felt wetness on his leg. She had spread her legs and was urinating on him. He cursed, continuing to drag her body, and she said, “And this for you, Peter,” in the same sex-drugged voice, and she pressed her buttocks against him. He heard and felt the s
ourness of excretion as a runnel of shit left her and ran onto his leg.

  “Oh, God, oh, Jesus,” he said, fighting the urge to vomit. But suddenly it was too strong, and he loosened his grip on her, setting her down on the floor. He turned his head away and threw up. All the beer he had drunk during the ride up churned up into his throat and out, all the rotten sour food he had eaten the past twelve hours came up and out of him in a thunder of revulsion. He heaved endlessly, doubled over, until there was nothing left in his stomach. He heaved dryly, eyes closed, hands on his middle, then gagged, spitting bile, trying to blind himself to the sour taste in his mouth.

  “That's good, Peter,” Laura said. She had turned over at his feet and was lapping like a dog at his vomitus. “Good!” she cried, pulling herself forward into the puddle, covering her body, rolling over to look up at him with a horrible inhuman face. She smoothed vomit over her breasts, her belly, into the thatch of hair between her legs. “Yes!” she shouted excitedly, opening her mouth, vomiting, gagging out bits of dried waste and sour food.

  “No more!” Peter shouted. He bent down and hit her. The blow caught her on the cheek. Her eyes brightened and she said, “Yes!” before he hit her again, flush in the face.

  She fell back unconscious.

  He stood shaking, wanting to vomit again, bending over but unable to bring anything up. He moaned and stepped over Laura's unconscious form. He stumbled out of the room, hands on the walls for support, to the bathroom.

  He turned on the hot and cold water, making a hard jet run into the sink. He took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He cupped his hands under the water and washed his face. He looked for soap. There was none, so he brought great handfuls of water up and scrubbed into his pores and his neck and into his hair, then washed around his wrists and lower arms. There was one towel thrown over the bathtub; it looked unwashed but he didn't care, and he dried himself with it, ignoring the moldy smell of it.