by Ron Ripley
Carl took a nervous step back. “You cannot, Shane. No one speaks with her.”
“I have to know.”
“Then go to the root cellar,” Carl said grimly. “You will have a better chance there than with her.”
Shane’s heart beat so loudly, the sound of it nearly drowned out his own breath as it raced in and out of his lungs. “I’ll have to, won’t I?”
“I cannot go with you,” Carl said, fear thick in his voice. “I went down once for you.”
“I know,” Shane said, smiling tightly. “I know. And I thank you for it. I do not ask you to come, Carl.”
Shane let out a shaky laugh.
“You will wait until the morning?” Carl asked.
“I will.”
“Will you speak with me?” Carl said. “It has been a long time since I have had the pleasure of your company.”
“Yes,” Shane said, nodding. “Yes. It has been far too long.”
“When last we spoke you were joining the United States Marine Corps,” Carl said. “Tell me, how was it? Did you taste the bitter draught of war, my young friend?”
“I did,” Shane answered. “And I would rather be in combat than preparing to descend the ladder into the root cellar.”
He looked at Carl, pleased to have the ghost with him once more. After a moment he said in a low voice, “I’m afraid, Carl.”
The dead man nodded. “You should be, Shane. You should be.”
Chapter 19: Shane, October 1st, 1986
Shane was alone in the house.
Specifically, he was alone in the butler’s pantry. He glanced at the boxes of dry goods, the different cans of soup and vegetables, some bags of chips, some of his father’s beer and his mother’s wine.
Shane focused his attention on the far left corner, though. The dark shadow where the servants' door remained hidden. He stood perfectly still and waited.
Soon, the door opened.
It swung out into the room, and an ancient hinge screamed. Shane winced and turned his head slightly. Someone spoke, and Shane strained to understand the words.
“What do you want, child?” a man asked in German. Shane had been studying the language from the books found in the library. But for some reason, he found he understood a great deal of it, especially when he heard people speak it.
“I wanted to talk to you,” Shane said hesitantly. He shifted the picture he had hidden behind his back from one hand to the next, the wooden pyramids on the frame smooth beneath his skin.
The ghost snorted. “About what would you have me speak, child?”
“I found something,” Shane said, pausing between words to make sure he was speaking correctly. He remembered the skeleton at the bottom of the oubliette. He recalled what had been written on the door, how the dead man would be forgotten.
From behind his back, Shane pulled the photograph in the curious wooden frame. A photograph of a young man in a soldier’s uniform. He had seen the ghost before. He recognized his lean face in the younger man’s.
The dead man said nothing for a long time.
Shane’s hands shook as he held the picture out and waited to see what would happen.
Finally, the ghost asked in a whisper, “Where did you find it, child?”
“In the parlor,” Shane answered. “It was on a low shelf, by the fireplace. I almost didn’t see it.”
He stepped out of the darkness and once more Shane recognized the suit he had seen at the bottom of the oubliette. The ghost looked up from the photograph to Shane and asked, “Would you like to know my name?”
“Yes,” Shane said.
“I am Carl Wilhelm Hesselschwerdt, and I was murdered by Mr. Anderson,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Shane responded.
Carl smiled. “You’ve no need to be sorry, Shane. You will remember me?”
Shane thought of the lonely skeleton and the horrible thing Mr. Anderson had written, and Shane nodded. “I’m going to put the picture by my bed.”
“Thank you,” Carl said with a sigh. “Thank you.”
Chapter 20: The Morning Arrives
While the nightmares had not gotten worse with his return to the house, they had not gotten any better either.
Shane put his toothbrush back, ran his hand over his bald head, and left the bathroom. He went to his bedroom, poured himself a second shot of whiskey and downed it quickly. For a moment, he contemplated a third, but then he put the tumbler back on his bed table. Shane made his way to the kitchen to make some breakfast.
Dishes rattled in the cabinets and Shane sighed.
“Why are you here?” the old man asked, his voice seeming to come from all corners of the room at once.
“To eat breakfast,” Shane said.
“I’ll not accept sass, young man,” the old man said, and the empty chairs at the table shivered.
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” Shane replied. He wasn’t in any mood for the old man’s harassment.
“What are you doing back at the house?” the old man said. “I am curious. Tell me why.”
“I want to find my parents,” Shane said, taking a drink of coffee.
“Ask her,” the old man said, chuckling. “Ask her what she’s done with them.”
“You ask her,” Shane said, cutting the ghost’s laughter short.
The doorbell rang.
Shane frowned and looked at the clock on the stove.
Six thirty.
He took a bite of his toast, washed it down with a bit more of his coffee and stood up. He made his way to the front door and had just about reached it when the bell rang again.
Shane rolled his eyes at the sound, waited for it to finish and then he said through the door, “Who is it?”
“Mr. Ryan,” a woman said. “This is Detective Lafontaine, and I’m here with a warrant to search your premises.”
Shane groaned inwardly, undid the locks and opened the door.
Detective Lafontaine stood on the doorstep with a dozen other police officers and forensic personnel behind her. They all looked terribly serious.
For a moment, Shane had an urge to crack a joke, but he resisted.
Detective Lafontaine had an extremely severe look on her attractive face, and Shane wondered what she might look like when she wasn’t being a police officer. In her hand, she held a warrant, which she offered to him. Shane nodded, accepted it, and stepped out of their way. She came in and stood beside him as he opened the warrant and read it.
Any and all evidence relating to the disappearance of Richard Michael Ryan and Rita Joan (Sanderson) Ryan, Shane saw.
Of course, he thought, managing to keep his sigh bottled up. Of course.
“Mr. Ryan,” the detective said. “Is there anything you’d like to tell us before we begin searching the house?”
“No,” Shane said honestly. “But I am going to go back to the kitchen and finish my breakfast. You’re welcome to join me for a cup of coffee. Any of you are.”
He folded the warrant and tucked it into his back pocket. Detective Lafontaine followed him into the kitchen.
“Do you want coffee, Detective?” he asked.
“Yes please,” she said, shrugging off her coat and hanging it on the back of one of the chairs.
Shane brought down a mug, filled it and handed it to her.
“Sorry,” he said, setting it down on the table, “I don’t have cream or sugar.”
“Thank you,” she said with a polite smile. “I drink it black.”
Shane returned the smile, politely, and sat down.
“So, Mr. Ryan,” she said after taking a sip, “you haven’t heard from your aunt or uncle?”
Shane shook his head. “If I had, I would have let you known, Detective.”
“And they’re not here?”
Again he shook his head.
“Is anyone else living here with you?” she asked.
“No,” Shane said. “Just me and the ghosts.”
She frowned. “What do y
ou mean?”
“This place is haunted,” Shane said, leaning back in his chair. “Has been since before I moved in.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t believe in ghosts?” Shane asked her.
“No,” she answered. “No, I don’t. You do?”
“Of course, I do,” Shane answered. “And if you lived here, Detective, you’d believe in ghosts too.”
“I’ll have to take your word on it, Mr. Ryan,” she said, giving him a tight smile.
A moment later, a young woman hurried into the kitchen. “Detective Lafontaine?”
“Jen?” the detective asked.
“Um, there are secret passages in the house.”
The two women looked at Shane.
He put his coffee mug down and smiled at them. “Servants' passages. They run through the walls of the house. Just be careful, though. Some of them don’t go where they’re supposed to.”
“What do you mean?” the detective asked.
“Just what I said,” Shane said. “They don’t go where they’re supposed to. You think the passage from the pantry leads up to the floor above. You go up a few steps and suddenly there’s a wall. Tomorrow, though, it might go all the way up, or it might go down into the cellar.”
Detective Lafontaine looked at him with a suspicious frown, then she turned her attention back to the technician. “Check them out, and make sure you guys work in teams. It’s an old house and who knows what’s in the walls, or how safe they are.”
“Okay, Detective,” Jen said, and she left the kitchen.
Detective Lafontaine looked at him. “How long were you in the military?”
Shane knew the question was meant to catch him off guard, but it didn’t.
“Twenty years,” he said in French. “When did you move to the States?”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “When I was six. How did you know? I don’t have an accent.”
“You do,” Shane said, hiding his satisfaction. “Only a hint of one, though. I’m a linguist, Detective. I listen to people and how they talk. It’s how I knew you were born in Canada, Quebec City, if I hear it properly.”
She nodded, chuckled and took a sip of her coffee. “Well done, Mr. Ryan. Well done.”
He gave her a short bow.
“So,” she said, settling back in her chair and crossing her legs. “Twenty years in the Marines. Did you do language work there, too?”
Shane nodded. “Later on, though. My first enlistment I was all gung ho. I went straight zero three eleven, infantry. When my captain learned about my language skills though, he browbeat me until I got a slot in the language program. Saw some combat here and there, working as an interpreter. Running and gunning when I had to.”
“How many languages do you speak?” she asked.
“Speak?” Shane said. “Seventeen.”
“Seventeen?” Marie asked, incredulity in her voice.
Shane nodded and smiled. “Not as difficult as you think. Languages can be grouped into families. As for myself, I read and write fluently in the romance languages, but I focus my translating work on German, French and Spanish too. Just the languages I like. With my pension from the Marines and translation jobs, I do okay.”
A yell from the pantry startled them both.
Detective Lafontaine was up and out of her chair before Shane, and she opened the pantry door. An older police officer stumbled out, his eyes wide and his face pale. Once in the kitchen, he paused and blinked his eyes.
“The kitchen?” he asked.
“What’s wrong, Dan?” Detective Lafontaine asked.
“The kitchen?” he repeated in a lower voice. Then he looked at the detective and said, “Marie, I was in the library.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Marie, the library’s on the second floor. Other side away from the kitchen. I walked three steps to the right and saw another door. I went through it, and I found myself in there,” he said, jerking his thumb back at the dark interior of the pantry.
Marie frowned. “You’re kidding.”
Dan shook his head.
The technician, Jen, hurried into the room. “Detective, Bob’s missing!”
“What?” Marie asked, twisting around to face her. “What do you mean?”
“He went into a passage in a bedroom upstairs, and the door closed behind him. When we opened it, he wasn’t in the passage,” Jen said, her face pale.
“Why the hell did he close the door?” the detective snapped, frustrated.
“He didn’t,” Jen said softly. “It closed by itself.”
“What room?” Shane asked, taking a step towards the technician. “What room did he go into?”
“It had a fan in it,” Jen started.
“Damn it,” Shane spat. “Parlor.”
Without waiting for anyone he hurried out of the kitchen and heard the others follow him. He made straight for the parlor, and when he opened the door, he saw a young man. The man’s hair was white, and he sat on the floor by the hearth.
“Oh my God,” Jen said as she came in behind Shane. “Look at his hair.”
Bob seemed to notice them for the first time, his eyes wide and unfocused. The room stank of fear.
Jen, Dan and the Detective all raced to Bob, who continued to sit numbly on the floor.
“Bob,” Dan said, squatting down. “Bob.”
Bob looked at Dan.
“Bob,” Dan repeated. “What happened?”
“She wanted to know who I was,” Bob said hoarsely. “And what I was doing in the house. In the walls. She plays in the walls.”
“Who plays in the walls?” Detective Lafontaine asked gently.
“Eloise,” Bob said. He looked at Shane. “She took my hand and dragged me through the floor. Straight down. The girl wants us to leave you alone.”
“How old is this girl?” the detective asked.
Bob blinked. “She’s eight, I think. I couldn’t really tell. But, she’ll never get older, Marie.”
“What?” Detective Lafontaine said. “Why not?”
“Because she’s dead. She said they’re all dead here,” Bob whispered. He pointed a trembling finger at Shane. “He’s the only living one here.”
Chapter 21: Forced to Wait
It was nearly eight o’clock in the evening when the police finally left, empty handed.
And Shane couldn’t go into the root cellar. As much as he wanted to find information on his parents, he wanted to be alive when he did it.
If he descended into the root cellar at night, he would risk his life needlessly.
Shane would have to wait again.
The police had found nothing, however, just as the dead had promised him. He felt bad for the man named Bob, and for Dan as well. A few others had been frightened, but not to the extent of those two.
Detective Lafontaine would be back. The house had both intrigued and enraged her. She wanted to know more.
So did Shane.
He grabbed a bottle of whiskey and a tall glass out of the cabinets and carried them upstairs to the library. He turned on the light, adjusted the thermostat in the room and smiled at the loud clank the steam radiator made, as the furnace rumbled into life far below him in the basement.
Shane sat down in the large chair behind the desk, set his glass on the leather blotter and poured himself a drink. He sipped the whiskey slowly, and the liquor went down as easily as water. Soon, he would make his way to bed, make sure all the lights worked properly, and turn on the fan before he faced the nightmares again.
First, though, he told himself. First, we’ll have a little more whiskey.
The day had been long. Terribly long. He had been able to get some work done, but only a bit. The police and their technicians had more questions than Shane had answers for when it came to the house. The police had not, of course, found the remains of his aunt and uncle. Nor had they found any traces. Not even with black lights or anything else in their bag of tricks were they able to f
ind anything.
The dead had made sure of it.
The police had remarked on it.
Something, the police had said, should have been found. Not just evidence of his aunt and uncle, but evidence of people having lived in the house for decades. Even old blood would have shown up.
Yet not a single drop had been visible.
Detective Lafontaine told him she would be back soon, and Shane didn’t doubt her.
He sighed and then he took a long drink of whiskey. Within a few minutes, he finished the glass, put it down beside the bottle and closed his eyes.
The floor creaked, and the stench of mildew and rot filled the library.
Shane opened his eyes.
It was ten past nine. He had fallen asleep.
His nostrils flared, and he realized the smell hadn’t been part of a dream. The library actually stank. Shane sat up straight and looked around the room and then he froze.
On the floor by the desk were small, wet footprints. They circled the desk and then led out the library door and into the hallway.
Cautiously, Shane got to his feet and followed the trail. The tracks seemed to have started at the desk itself, as though the owner had suddenly appeared. In the hallway, the prints turned to the right, towards Shane’s room. He found a large puddle just outside of his doorway, but the trail continued on to the left and did not enter.
Part of him breathed a sigh of relief as he followed the footprints farther down the hall, towards an empty front bedroom. Just before the closed door, however, the footsteps disappeared.
Shane stopped beside them and looked at the wall. A large, gilt-framed painting of a forest hung upon the wall. The piece of art was huge, perhaps four feet in width and another seven in height; the woodland scene was dark and grim; terrible things hinted within the shadows.
The canvas rippled in front of him, and a cool breeze slipped around the edges.
Shane licked his lips nervously and reached out. He had never liked the painting. In fact, he had avoided it as much as possible as a child.
Perhaps there’s more to it, he told himself.
He reached out with his right hand and as he slowly traced the frame with his suspicious fingers, he immediately discovered a small protrusion. The tiniest hint of a lock he had suspected would be there.
