“Why? Who is this guy?”
“I’ve said too much already.” And with that Eliza turned and fled, leaving Jack all on his own.
He sat for a moment, stunned at the strange turn of events, then reached out and picked up the cell phone. Eliza was right. He should call Emily, but not to tell her he was leaving – he would not be frightened off that easily – but rather to find out with who he was dealing with, and why someone seemed hell bent on scaring him.
He found the slip of paper Emily had given him and dialed the number, waiting while the call connected. When it did, the phone rang four times, then clicked. An automated voice answered.
Damn. She wasn’t there.
Jack took a deep breath and waited through the greeting, recorded by the recently passed Mrs. Waltham senior. This is a dead woman, he thought, listening to the scratchy, phlegm filled voice. Even from beyond the grave she still wants people to leave their name and number.
And that was exactly what he did as soon as the greeting played out, adding that Emily needed to call him back right away, that some unsettling things had happened and he must talk to her. He was about to mention the dead rat, but then thought better of it. No point in upsetting her needlessly.
After hanging up he sat for a long while, waiting for Emily to return his call, which she didn’t. Then he wrote for a while, but he was distracted and his mind kept wandering. The words refused to come, and he found himself deleting everything he had written, then starting again, only to repeat the process. After three hours he gave up and went to the kitchen, finding enough ingredients to pull together a chicken salad, and ate it at the small dining table. He felt frustrated. Afterward he cleaned up and went back to the computer, where he sat for what seemed an eternity, just staring at the screen. He knew there was no hope of getting any work done now. Worse, he was overcome by a heavy tiredness, possibly brought about by his lack of sleep the night before. In the end he gave up entirely and made his way to the bedroom, where he flopped down on the bed, thoughts of the dead rat, and the strange message on his computer screen, swimming around in his head.
Despite his unease he must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes again it was dusk. Long shadows crept along the floor. The apartment was dark and oppressive. He reached out and fumbled for the switch that turned on the bedside lamp, squinting for a moment when the light came on, then stood and made his way back to the computer, checking his phone on the way. There was still no call from Emily, which surprised him.
He settled at the desk and brought up the web browser. An idea had struck him. It was a long shot, but he might be able to find out a little more about his unwelcome visitor.
When the browser opened he typed a name into the search bar.
HAROLD CREACH.
He hit enter.
The computer pondered his request for a moment, and then returned a page of results. He clicked each one, looking for answers.
The first two were irrelevant. A plumber in Cleveland, Ohio caught cooking the books, and a high school student in Los Angeles. The third result caught his attention. It was an article from the New York Times dated June 3, 1943. The headline read:
TWELVE KILLED AS FIRE BREAKS OUT AT HOTEL ROOSEVELT.
But it wasn’t the headline that piqued his interest, but rather the article itself, and a name that stood out among the text.
Harold Creach.
He read the brief article, and then read it once again just to be sure he wasn’t seeing things.
Fire broke out today at the grand old Hotel Roosevelt on Park Street. The inferno, which spread quickly, consumed much of the top floors of the structure. Twelve people lost their lives before the blaze could be brought under control. The NYPD have released the names of several of the dead, including local businessman Harold Creach, and an elderly couple from New Jersey, Theodore and Dorothea Crantz. The identities of the other victims have not been released pending notification of their families, but it is believed a mother and daughter were among those trapped inside the building. A full inquiry into the cause of the blaze will be carried out.
Jack leaned back in the chair and exhaled. This couldn’t be correct. Was it a different Harold Creach that died in the fire? That seemed unlikely. So what about the Crantz’s? Dorothea seemed very much alive when he spoke to her just hours before, so if she were at the Roosevelt in 1943, she must have been very young. Besides, the article quite clearly reported her death, so young or old, how could she have spoken to him last evening, unless there was a second pair of Crantz’s living here all those years ago. Now things were getting into the realm of the impossible. The odds of that happening were staggering. And yet…
He leaned over the laptop. He hit the back button and watched the screen change to the list of search results once more. There must be something else, something he was missing, but what?
Jack’s eyes scanned down the list of results, but he saw nothing else on the first page. He clicked the link for page two and perused these as well. He was about to move on to page three when he saw another headline. This was also from the Times.
DECEASED BUSINESSMAN HAROLD CREACH MAIN SUSPECT IN DISAPPEARANCE.
Jack clicked through to the article.
Local businessman Harold Creach, who lost his life in the fire at the Roosevelt Hotel on June 2nd of last year, has been implicated in the disappearance of long-term girlfriend, Eliza Bright. Miss Bright disappeared without a trace in May of last year, a month before the tragic blaze, from the suite of rooms the couple shared at the Roosevelt. The NYPD interviewed Mr. Creach three days after his girlfriend was reported missing by her parents, but dismissed him from their inquiries. That changed last month with the discovery of several bodies, in various states of decomposition, on a rural plot of land owned by Creach, in upstate New York. Miss Bright’s body was not among those recovered, but police did find articles of clothing and personal effects that link Creach to the disappearance.
Jack leapt to his feet. One coincidence he was willing to believe, two would be strange, but still within the realm of possibility, but three? Despite how crazy it sounded, he was sure that the woman he’d spoken with earlier that day was the same Eliza who went missing all those years ago. There was something very wrong in this apartment building, what with the dead rats and weird tenants that should have been dead and buried years ago.
He didn’t want to be here anymore. He paced back and forth, wondering what to do, how to proceed, and then came to a decision.
He would gather up his belongings and leave right away, find a hotel for the night. The cats would be fine if he left a bowl of food for them and topped up their water. He would call Emily once he was safely tucked up in a warm hotel room far away from this place and let her know what happened, tell her that she would need to find somebody else to mind the old building and care for the cats.
He hurried to the bedroom and gathered up what few clothes he’d already removed from his backpack and stuffed them back inside, then unplugged the laptop, closed it and slid the computer into its thin black case, pushing the cord down into the front pocket and zipping it shut. He went to the kitchen, intending to grab the groceries he’d purchased a few days before, but thought better of it. It was just some eggs, milk and a few bottles of beer. It was not worth his time.
He hitched the backpack and computer bag over his shoulders and hurried to the door, drew back the deadbolt, and stepped into the corridor.
“Don’t tell me you’re leaving so soon?” A male voice, low and full of gravel, echoed down the hallway. “I’m so disappointed.”
Jack spun around.
There, standing with his hands on his hips, was a burly man in a white cotton shirt and dark slacks held up by black suspenders. His hair was greased back over his scalp. A five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw line.
Somehow Jack knew who he was looking at, and the realization sent a chill through him. “Harold Creach?”
“The one and only.”
“We’re all dead here,” Creach replied, his eyes glinting with unholy light.
That sentence, those four small words, each so innocent on their own, but somehow terrifying when spoken together, made the hairs on Jack’s arms stand straight up. But that wasn’t the only thing that made his hairs stand on end. Behind Creach, half hidden in the dark hallway, were the undeniable, familiar outlines of people. Vague at first, almost wispy, they seemed to solidify, to pull themselves together from within the blackness, and take form right in front of his eyes. He didn’t recognize most of them, but he did pick out the familiar face of Dorothea Crantz, and next to her, with a look akin to sadness on her face, Eliza.
A freight train of cold, hard fear slammed into him. His knees threatened to give way. He fought to stay upright, reaching out and using the wall for support. This could not be real. Surely he must be dreaming. Any moment now he would wake up in his bed, warm and comfortable under the covers, and this would all fade away into the ether, soon to be nothing more than a few half remembered snatches. Only it wasn’t a dream, some deep part of him knew that, no matter how much he wished it were. He opened his mouth, and for a moment nothing came out, but then he found his voice. “What do you want with me?”
Creach grinned, a wide smirk that wrinkled his face in all the wrong places and gave him the countenance of a demon. “We haven’t had anyone new to talk to for such a long time.”
“Better make the most of it.” Jack inched backward toward the stairs, never letting his eyes stray from the tall man and his cohort of ghosts. “I won’t be staying.”
“We’ll see about that.” Creach seemed closer now, despite Jack not having seen him move.
“I don’t think so.” Jack finally found the will to run. He turned and bolted for the emergency exit at the end of the hallway, and tugged on the door. For a moment it didn’t budge, and he wondered if it was locked, but then it swung open and he almost fell through.
Fighting the urge to glance backward, knowing what he would see, Jack bounded down the steps, taking them two at a time, until he reached the floor below, then turned the corner and started down the next flight.
“There’s nowhere to run.” Creach’s voice reverberated down the concrete stairwell. “Nowhere you can hide.”
We’ll see about that, thought Jack, rounding the third floor landing and continuing down at a breakneck pace.
“Come back to us Jack. Eliza is waiting for you Jack.”
Yeah right. The lobby was in sight now. Just one more flight of stairs and he would be safe. Jack catapulted himself down the final steps and ran toward the main doors, his feet loud on the tiled floor. When he reached the entrance he almost crashed into it, pulling up just short. He turned the latch and pulled on the doors.
They did not budge.
He tried again, frantic.
Still they remained firm in their refusal to open, which made no sense. They always opened from the inside. It was only from the street side that a key was needed.
“The building doesn’t want you to leave Mr. Brannan. It likes you.”
Jack swiveled in the direction of the voice, and was horrified to find Creach less than three feet away. Crantz and the others huddled behind him like a flock of ghastly sheep.
“Get away from me.” He tugged at the doors, beads of perspiration dripping down his forehead, his breath labored.
“You really are making this so much harder than it needs to be.” There was a hint of satisfaction in Creach’s voice. “Why can’t you be more like the rat?”
“What?” Jack pounded his fists on the doors, one last-ditch attempt to force them open.
“The rat knew when its time was up. It just sat there and let me crush its skull,” Creach said. “It accepted its fate.”
“I’m not a rat.” Jack looked around, desperate to find another escape route.
“Oh, I know you’re not.” Creach moved closer, the others fanning out behind him to form a semi-circle around Jack, trapping him against the unyielding door. “That’s what makes it so much fun…”
Emily Waltham inserted the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the heavy double doors open. The pale early morning sunlight spilled through them onto the polished tile floor of the lobby, as if it had been lingering, waiting for a way in.
She picked up her overnight bag and turned to the taxi, which idled a few feet away, waving him off, then watched the cab nose its way back into the thick city traffic.
When she stepped over the threshold, into the building, she stopped in her tracks. The bag fell from her grip and she let out a long, drawn out wail. “Oh no. No, no, no.”
She’d had a bad feeling ever since receiving Jack Brannan’s message the afternoon before. If only she could have gotten back sooner, but Wildwood, New Jersey, was a long way away.
She shuffled across the floor, over to the crumpled shape that lay near the elevator doors. She bent down, noticing the thick, dark halo of blood around the man’s head, and raised her hands to her face, wiping away a tear.
“I’m so sorry Mr. Brannan. I should never have left you alone here with them.” She whispered the words, her voice laden with remorse, and then she raised her head and spoke again, this time loud and angry. “Harold Creach, I told you to leave him alone. I warned you not to do this. You were a monster when you were alive, and you’re no better dead.”
She straightened up and went back to the front doors, pushing them closed and turning the latch, then focused her attention on the man standing in the shadows, the man who stared in silent disbelief at the sprawled corpse.
She reached out, beckoning to him. “Come now Mr. Brannan, let’s find you an apartment. You’re going to be with us for a very long time…
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Some places should be left alone.
It’s been fifteen years since Ben and his father buried the time capsule in the woods. Now Ben is returning to dig it up. But things have changed. The woods are not the happy place they once were. What starts out as a weekend camping trip to rekindle old memories and have some fun turns into a nightmare for Ben and his girlfriend, Sally. By the time they realize their mistake, it’s too late. There’s something evil at the old campground, and it doesn’t want them to leave.
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Also by Anthony M. Strong
What Vengeance Comes
John Decker left Wolf Haven, Louisiana, to escape the memories of his troubled past, believing he would never return. But after twenty years working for a big city police department, he suddenly finds himself back in Wolf Haven, taking the reigns as the town’s sheriff. Expecting to spend his time dealing with the trivialities of small town life, the occasional drunk, cats stuck in trees, and domestic altercations, he instead finds a vicious killer picking off the residents one by one. Scrambling to find answers before anyone else dies, Decker stumbles across an age-old superstition, a terrifying creature conjured from the depths of hell to seek revenge.
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The Remnants of Yesterday
Life can change in the blink of an eye. Just ask Hayden Stone. One minute he’s on his way to visit his brother in New York, the next he’s running for his life. Previously normal people are becoming mindless killers, at least, those that don’t vanish into thin air. Worse, there are other things out there, frightening things that should not exist.
Thrust into a world in which nothing works, no phones, no internet, no cars, Hayden and a ragtag group of dazed survivors must pull together to achieve the impossible: Survive.
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About the Author
Anthony M. Strong is a British born writer with a passion for writing horror, science fiction, and speculative fiction.
Always up for a new adventure, Anthony’s travels have taken him through much of England, France, Spain, Yugoslavia, Canada, Puerto Rico, Italy, Germany, Austria and most of the United States.
He has worked as an artist, designer, magazine editor, playwright, and actor. And of course, a writer.
When he's not writing, traveling, or making a mess of home improvements, he spends his time reading, watching documentaries, photographing, and occasionally enjoying a beer while watching American Football.
He currently resides most of the year outside New Orleans, Louisiana, and some of the year in beautiful New England, with his girlfriend Sonya, and three demanding but loveable pooches named Gidget, Tiki, and Hayden.
Connect with Anthony, find out about new releases, and get free books at www.anthonymstrong.com.
The Apartment: A Haunting in New York Page 4
