House Haunted

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Who lived there before the Simmons family?”

  “The Fitzgeralds. Very nice family. Two boys and a girl. Before them, the Rileys. They had eleven children. They were there when Carl and I moved here, in the early forties. No one heard noises then. He was a marine. I think two of the boys became marines . . .”

  “Mrs. Williams, did anyone ever die in the house?”

  She concentrated. “The Rileys, no . . . The Simmons's, no . . . The Fitzgeralds . . .” A flush of memory reddened her face. “Oh, yes.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  Mrs. Williams closed her eyes. Brennan thought she was concentrating, but a tear had traced her cheek. She produced a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes, demurely blew her nose.

  She rose, walked to her writing desk and took something from the shelf above it. She returned to Brennan, handed it to him, and sat back down on the couch.

  “The Fitzgerald's daughter gave me that music box the year before she died,” Mrs. Williams said. “She was a wonderful girl. I'm embarrassed to say it's been too long since I've thought of her . . .”

  Again she used the handkerchief. “She was a beautiful young thing. She went with my boy Carl awhile in high school. That was when she gave me the music box. She loved the music it played.”

  On the cover of the box was painted a night scene: a church in the foreground, tiny village houses on hills rolling down away from it. Dark blue night with pinpoint stars.

  When Brennan opened the box, nothing happened. He turned it over, found a metal key on the bottom, and wound it. He turned the box over and opened it again.

  The mechanism, visible beneath a thin pane of glass, began to play a plaintive lullaby. On the inside cover were lyrics, painted black on a white background:

  Why do you weep?

  The bells are not ringing,

  The town is asleep.

  The night at your window

  Is nestled in deep.

  The stars in the heavens

  Are gently singing—

  Why do you weep?

  Brennan felt a strange stirring; felt himself on the edge of a precipice with revelation at the bottom. But he did not go over. When the lullaby ended, he closed the box, and saw that Mrs. Williams was snuffling again.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “She was a lovely girl.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Mrs. Williams had folded her hands properly on her lap again. “She and Carl broke up just before she went to college. It was a mutual thing. They had been more friends than anything, and they were heading to different schools. She was eighteen, I believe. That would have been . . . 1951.

  “My Carl told me later that she had begun to act strangely just before she went away to school, as if something was bothering her. The only thing she ever said to him about it was that a voice was calling to her. Carl admitted that that was part of the reason they drifted apart.

  “At Christmas that year, she came home from college for vacation. She didn't go back to school again. There were rumors, of course, that she was failing her grades, or had gotten in trouble with a boy. Carl even tried to see her, but the Fitzgeralds became very protective of her and wouldn't let anyone in. And then, in the following autumn, she apparently . . . killed herself. The Fitzgeralds moved away soon after, and then the stories began. I believe they even said in the beginning that that poor girl was haunting the house, keeping people away from it.” Mrs. Williams's hands opened, sadly. “People can be so uncaring.”

  “You said she was a nice girl?”

  “A lovely girl. Carl used to say she was too nice. A quiet, lovely girl.”

  “Was her name Bridget, Mrs. Williams?”

  Mrs. Williams blinked in surprise. “Why, yes, it was.”

  “We have to go,” Falconi said to Brennan. He stood, and so did Brennan, smarting at the pain in his side.

  “Thank you for all the help, Mrs. Williams,” Falconi said.

  “That's quite all right, Lieutenant. I'm only sorry something like this had to happen. As I said, the Times the other day—”

  Brennan held up the music box. “May I borrow this, Mrs. Williams?”

  “I suppose so. It is a lovely melody. But may I ask why you want it?”

  “As odd as this may sound,” Brennan said, “I may be able to help Bridget with it.”

  In the car, Falconi started the engine and turned on the windshield wipers. Then he turned to Brennan. “I'll tell you why I haven't gone in to get Gaimes. I talked to the landlord Beauvaque in Ottawa. He doesn't much like cops, but he corroborated your story about Laura Hutchins. We found the car Laura Hutchins took from her boyfriend in the bushes behind the house. There's a limousine out front that brought two KGB agents here, looking for an escaped Polish prisoner. The Russians are missing. Also, we have two reliable eyewitness reports on Gary Gaimes; one that he picked up a young man at the Forty-sixth Street pier debarking a cruise ship from Bermuda, the other that he met a man in a wheelchair at LaGuardia Airport. From the terminal we were able to find the flight; there was only one passenger in a wheelchair, a man named Ray Garver from California.”

  Falconi reached under the seat and pulled out a dog-eared paperback world atlas. He opened to a two-page spread showing the world. On the map was a pencil line from Ottawa down to Bermuda. Another ran from the middle of Poland across the Atlantic, intersecting the first line in New York and continuing west to California.

  “The two lines cross where we're sitting,” Falconi said.

  Brennan grinned. “You believe me?”

  “I found out a long time ago that sometimes you have to turn things over to the experts. Minkowski convinced me that you're the expert. So I'm letting you go in with me. Also . . . Falconi stopped, seemingly disconcerted.

  Brennan waited.

  Falconi tapped the spot where the lines crossed on the nap. “There's just too much happening here that can't be coincidence. If you're right, if there is life after death, it could . . . make everything better. Give it meaning.”

  “Then trust me,” Brennan said.

  Falconi stared at Brennan for a few moments, his face still red with embarrassment. Then he turned, threw the car into gear and pulled away from the curb.

  “Besides,” he said, a slight smile creeping onto his face, even if you're wrong, I still get Gary Gaimes.”

  25. WEST

  Remember, Ray.

  The house was coming alive. From the cellar there were screams; they melted up through the floors, were eaten and expelled by the walls and the ceiling into his ears. The walls themselves radiated light, were alive with red, pulsing blood-light, were veined and pumping with each earth-deep drum boom of the heart of the house.

  The blood veins hummed, a deep, rushing, pulling flow. The heart pushed the blood—a pounding death-clock pump. The house was coming alive.

  Remember.

  Fighting to keep his thoughts, Ray rolled to the table next to the bed, pulled the drawer out, and removed the plastic bag. His hands shook. He held the bag up in front of his face, staring at the granules, seeing each individual grain, studying the power in it.

  Remember, Ray.

  With a pain-fed, growling sound, he clutched the cocaine bag closed and rolled the wheelchair to the bathroom.

  He flipped up the toilet seat, which vibrated in his hand.

  Take the cocaine, Ray. Make it easy. Remember.

  With a wrenching, pained cry he threw the bag down into lie toilet water and pulled the flush.

  Should have taken it, Ray.

  Immediately he wanted to thrust his hand in and retrieve it. He bit his knuckles, closed his eyes, rocking in his wheelchair until the flush was complete.

  “Should have taken it, Ray.”

  He wheeled around to see Bridget standing in the doorway of the bathroom. She was outlined in red, pulsing light. She looked more substantial, flushed, her voice deeper, more resonant, as if coming from a fast-closing distance. Her smile was that of th
e surrogate mother she had used on him long ago. “I only want to help you, Ray.”

  He held his hands over his ears and screamed, trying to block out the sound of her voice, the lure of the cocaine. He could see her in his mind, even with his eyes closed, just as he had seen her that first day at the Haunted Hut, an eternity ago.

  “Ray,” she said. She crossed to him, stroked his head like true mother. “My poor little Ray.”

  He saw her as if his eyelids had been sliced off, heard her s if his hands did not exist over his ears. He saw her as she was then, the kindness in her eyes, the understanding the . . . love.

  “It's time to remember, Ray,” she said. She stepped behind his wheelchair, rolled it slowly into the bedroom.

  “I have something that can help you.” He saw, right 'rough his hands, through his tears, the neat white bag of cocaine, identical to the one he had flushed down the toilet, on the bedside table. She stopped him before it.

  “NO!!” He lashed out, sweeping the bag of white powder from the table top. It hit the wall and opened, a puff of powder rising from the bag to settle in the light of the room like red-tinted talcum to the floor.

  “Are you sure you don't want it?”

  “Damn you!” He rolled to the bag, picked it up, ripped it open, letting the powder fly out.

  She pointed to the white dust settling to the floor. “Are you sure?”

  Crying, he bent down and brushed at the powder, sending tiny clouds of it in all directions.

  When he looked at her, his eyes were hard. “Without it, I can beat you.”

  She sighed. “You should have taken it.” She put her hand on his head. “Remember, Ray.”

  Memory . . .

  Tony's birthday. A day with a sky so blue that even Ray's unhappiness could not make it any less so. In the early morning, when the trucks started to come in with the tent and the bandstand, he had run away into the woods, despite Anne's having told him he had to stay nearby. “Your father will need you when he gets in from Washington, there will be a lot of people to meet,” she'd said, and then added, when she saw his glare, “I know this might be a little hard on you, Ray, but please be good. I have a feeling Tony won't enjoy it, either; I'm sure he would much rather have the kind of small party you did. But you know the way your father is. It's an election year. Some things just get out of hand.”

  His glare hadn't left, and when she tried to put her hand on his head, he had slipped out beneath it and run through the back door, ignoring her cries after him.

  But Bridget was waiting for him at the Haunted Hut, just the way she always did. Her smile widened to enclose him, her arms out, embracing him.

  “How's my boy?” she said.

  He sat next to her, his head down. “They're having a party for Tony today.”

  “Are they now?” The faint odor of rosewater reached Ray. “Does that bother you?”

  He shrugged.

  “Didn't we talk about that?” she asked mildly. “Didn't we talk about being jealous?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  She narrowed her eyes in faint accusation. He could tell that she was ready to smile. “But what?”

  “I can't help it,” he said.

  She put her arm around him, drew him close. “Oh, Ray, there's so much you don't understand. Do you really hate Tony so much?”

  “Sometimes I do . . .”

  “And Anne?”

  He shifted uncomfortably, but the scent of rose kept him close to her, drinking her in. “She's not that bad.” He turned his head, looked seriously up into her face. “I wish you were my mother.”

  Her smile never faltered. “Oh, Ray! You know I love you. Isn't that enough?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Well, then,” she sighed, hugging him, “maybe we can do something about it.”

  When Ray got back to the house, the tent and bandstand were already up. The tent was huge: a circus-sized, yellow and white striped canopy with open sides. Beneath it, tables were being set up and decorated. The band was unpacking 'heir instruments; one large black man already had his trumpet out, playing bluesy scales up and down. The drummer next to him said, “Better get that out of your system, now, Willy; you know Senator Garver ain't going to want any of that for his white friends tonight.”

  Willy laughed, lowered his trumpet. The drummer winked at Ray as he walked by.

  The kitchen in the house was deserted. Ray poured himself glass of lemonade from a pitcher on the table and went into the living room. Tony's playpen was empty. Then he heard the baby cry upstairs, Anne's giggling scold for him to be quiet and let her change him. In another few moments Anne descended the stairs, Tony following, holding her hand, a halting step at a time.

  Tony smiled and said, “Ray-ray!”

  Anne stared hard at Ray. “Didn't I tell you not to leave the house?”

  “Yes,” he said. Despite himself, he felt guilty.

  The doorbell rang. The caterers arrived. Anne was swept up in a flow of metal trays and huge, round, plastic-covered hors d'oeuvre platters.

  “We'll talk about it later,” she said to Ray. “Right now I need you to keep an eye on Tony.”

  She stared at him until he nodded. She put Tony down in his playpen and ran off to investigate a crashing sound coming from the pantry leading to the kitchen.

  Tony crawled to the side of the playpen, hoisted himself up, inched his way over to where Ray was standing. “Ray-ray!” he said, grinning, a trickle of drool escaping his mouth to land on the plastic playpen pad.

  Ray ignored him. Sipping his lemonade, he went to the front window. A second catering truck had pulled up. Two girls were climbing out of the open back doors, balancing either end of an enormously long platter covered a half-foot thick in cold cuts. Behind them came a third girl bearing a huge birthday cake, seven decks, as tall as Tony himself, frosted in yellow and white.

  Pulling up behind the catering truck, nearly hitting the girl with the cake, was a television news van. Behind that, his father's limousine. A moment later his father appeared. His father waited for the television cameras to set up, then let them follow his waving, smiling form up the steps to the front porch, into the house.

  “Hey! Ray!” his father said, striding to where Ray stood. The senator tousled his hair. Before Ray could respond, his father's eyes had found Tony, and he was shouting “Tony boy! Birthday lad!” lifting the drooling, laughing baby up for the benefit of the cameras and lights.

  Anne appeared, straightening her dress, and the three of them posed for the cameras as his father sang happy birthday and kissed Tony on the cheek loudly, laughing right into the lenses.

  Ray went upstairs.

  With the door closed, it was quiet in his room. The windows looked out on the front of the house. When he pulled the shades, he could almost make believe it was nighttime.

  Maybe we can do something about it, she had said. Ray lay down on his bed and soon was fast asleep.

  He awoke in true darkness.

  He heard what sounded like the hissing of snakes. For a moment he was afraid; he thought he had wandered into the woods, clouds had covered the night stars, Bridget had left him, and the snakes were slithering toward him and ready to strike. He'd killed a copperhead once; perhaps its family had come back for revenge

  He rubbed at his eyes, felt his clothes still on him, his bed beneath him.

  The hissing continued. It was mingled with cheers. Someone said something in a loud, echoey voice. His father, speaking into a microphone.

  More hissing; more cheers.

  Ray rose from the bed, opened the door to his bedroom. He was flooded with hallway light. He squinted against it, rubbed his eyes some more.

  Yawning, sullen, he descended the stairs.

  Tony's playpen sat abandoned in the empty living room. A scatter of toys lay outside its perimeter. A discarded, changed diaper was rolled in its adhesive tabs next to a soiled pair of bib overalls.

  Ray walked into the kitchen.
<
br />   A fresh pitcher of lemonade stood on the counter. He drew a plastic tumbler, poured himself a glass, and walked out into the night.

  He heard hissing, saw a streak of trailing fire cut the sky. Cheers greeted the high explosion of light that briefly illumined the yellow and white striped tent and the thick carpet of guests sitting on the sloping back lawn.

  His father's voice boomed over his microphone again.

  “My friends, I can't tell you how good it is to be with you tonight! This is a great occasion for me, and to share it with 30 many of my closest friends is something I will not soon forget!”

  The senator paused. Ray moved down toward the tent and caught sight of him now: a large, tall, salt-and-pepper-haired man with a hand aloft, an open smile on his face, highlighted by a single strong spotlight mounted on a tripod at the back of the crowd. A television camera was filming. His father was transfixed by light. He looked, in the night, like a larger than life character on a movie screen.

  Another rocket went off. The senator paused to turn and look at its sizzling flight, laughing with the crowd as it sputtered and popped, forgoing its explosion.

  “My friends, my fellow citizens!” his father continued, turning back to his constituents, turning his face to sudden grimness. “I wanted you here tonight not only to share this great day with my family—” his body language indicated Anne, who stood with arms folded, hugging herself against the night's descending chill; and Tony, who sat at her feet, picking at grass, a bottle stuck firmly in his mouth “—but to share this great message that we hope to convey to all of our friends around this great state of ours. This is the birthday not only of my son but also of a new idea: that freedom, and goodness, and decency, have not left America!” His smile began to return. “That we will win again in November! I thank you!”

  He put his hands into the air, like a runner crossing the finish line. The applause flowed over and around him, seemed to lift him from the podium. Ray saw his quick look and nod toward the man running the fireworks. His father kept his hands in the air, waiting.