The fear would return soon enough.
Robbie grabbed a bag of Chips Ahoy! cookies, and the two of them returned to the bedroom, where they were planning to play games on Robbie’s computer until it was time to eat. Entering the room a half step behind his friend, James saw something he hadn’t noticed before. He suddenly felt cold. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing. A small reddish box was protruding from the top of Robbie’s bedspread, its upper third resting on the pillow.
Robbie frowned. “I don’t know.” He walked over, picked it up—
—and James saw the frightening face of the Old Maid on the cover of a battered box of cards. She was not smiling, as she had been on the card he’d found on his bed, but possessed instead the terrifying rage of the Old Maid he remembered from when he was little. The hag glared at him, and he felt like a kindergartner again, afraid of supposedly benign pictures that to him revealed sinister import.
“That’s weird,” Robbie said, but he didn’t seem overly concerned. “I never saw that before.” He turned the box over in his hand. “That old lady looks kind of creepy, huh?”
James nodded dumbly. He was filled once again with the urge to call home, the certainty that something horrible had befallen his family, and, finally, he gave in. His mom answered when he called, and she turned out to be fine. So did his dad. So did his sister. His mom seemed slightly confused as to why he’d called, so he made up an excuse, a weak fictional distillation of the truth, telling her that he’d heard a siren coming from the direction of their neighborhood and wanted to make sure the house hadn’t burned down. She laughed. “No, nothing’s burning,” she told him. “Don’t worry. Have a good time.”
But he did worry.
Robbie’s mom made them tuna sandwiches for lunch, then drove them to the Municipal Plunge, where they spent the better part of the afternoon playing in the water, leaving only when a lifeguard announced that the pool would be closing for a private party. They changed in the boys’ dressing room, and on the way home, Robbie’s mom stopped off at Dairy Queen, where all three of them got sundaes.
James stayed late at Robbie’s, and did try to invite himself to dinner, but they were going out for pizza with Max’s baseball team, and Robbie’s dad politely but firmly insisted that James had to go home.
He was dropped off at his house just after five, and, looking at the front yard as he got out of the car, seeing the tree with the tire swing, the green grass and full foliage, knowing that the backyard was brown and dead, he had the uneasy feeling that the house was putting on a show, presenting a cheery false face to the public while keeping its ghastly secret self hidden. He stared up at the structure. It had a porch and a door, windows and walls, the same elements all houses had. But were they arranged in an eerie way? Could you tell the house was bad just by looking at it?
No, not really.
That was the truth. He wanted to ascribe malevolence to the building, wanted to see a face in the arrangement of windows and door. But those things weren’t there. The truth was not that simple. The house was haunted, but it wasn’t alive. Whatever evil resided in this place, it lived in his home; it was not his home.
And it had control over the backyard.
“See you later!” Robbie’s dad called out.
“Thanks for coming over!” his mom said.
James waved at them as the car pulled away. Robbie, he noticed, hadn’t said anything. He, too, had been looking at the house.
James started slowly across the lawn, walking toward the front door, feeling like a man stepping up to the gallows, a fearful heaviness settling over him the closer he got to the building. Summer was nearing its end, but though it was after five, the day was still bright, the sun still fairly high in the sky. So there was no reason for the lights in the house to be on. But the fact that they weren’t made him feel anxious, and he took a deep breath before opening the front door. Would he find his sister lying on the floor of the living room in a pool of blood? Would his parents be locked in the basement, begging to be released? He didn’t know, but he pushed open the door, prepared for anything.
And saw Megan and his dad on the couch, she reading a magazine, he watching the news.
His mom was in the kitchen, where a light was on, and she’d obviously heard the door open, because she stepped into the kitchen doorway and looked at him from across the dining room, across the living room. “Why are you so late?” she wanted to know. “Did something happen?”
“No,” he said, and exhaled the breath he’d been holding.
“Is something wrong?”
He smiled at her, not a strong smile but a real one. “No, Mom. Everything’s okay.”
Eighteen
Oscar Cortinez wanted to sue the school district.
He was a longtime history teacher at the high school, and his contract had not been renewed for the coming school year. The district claimed it was for purely financial reasons—across-the-board budget cuts had been made throughout the district—but Oscar contended that it was the fact that he’d taught “the truth” about local history that had cost him his job. He’d gotten in hot water before for teaching off-curriculum material, but had successfully defended himself by pointing out that he had covered the required subject in the required way and had simply taught his students additional facts that inconveniently conflicted with the conventional narrative. The principal at his school had not liked that, and neither had the suits at the district office, and he and his union rep had had several more meetings with various administrators over the past few years.
He needed more than a union rep this time, though, and that was why he’d enlisted Claire.
It was easily the biggest and best case she’d had since leaving Los Angeles, and Claire was grateful that it had fallen into her lap at this time. Ever since the party, she’d been completely obsessed with monitoring everything that happened in or around their house. Every. Single. Thing. Scrutinizing the children for any unusual behavior, jumping at every stray noise, mentally cataloging the slightest shifts in the shafts of sunlight that streamed through their windows. Julian said she needed to back off and calm down or she’d go crazy, and she agreed, so it was good to have something else to focus her attention on, good to be able to direct more of her attention toward work.
Besides, if this case had a big payday—not an unreasonable expectation—they might be able to get out of the house and find someplace else to live.
The thought fueled her.
They met in her office for a consultation that lasted most of the day. Oscar explained that he believed he had been singled out and let go solely because of the subject matter he taught, a blatant infringement on his academic freedom. He’d been a model instructor until he started teaching an enhanced version of the standard syllabus, but after that he had become a pariah in the district, although his work had been recognized and rewarded by interested outside parties. He had documentation to back this up: a series of e-mails and memos covering the controversy, a stack of glowing evaluations from a period of fifteen straight years that suddenly grew harsh and critical when the current principal came on board four years ago, commendations from various teaching organizations and historical societies. His complaints seemed legitimate, and when he pointed out that no other history teachers in the district had been let go and that two of them had less seniority than he did, she told him that she thought he had a case.
Over the next two days she did some research, and the news when she saw him again wasn’t encouraging. “They might have a case,” she admitted. “They’re claiming that test scores in your classes have been falling consistently for the past three years, and that in this era of accountability, they could not justify protecting your position at the expense of instructors whose students have been performing better on the tests.”
He snorted. “Tests? What tests? That standardized pap the politicians foisted on us? My tests are twice as hard and three times as comprehensive as those generic multiple-guessers we
’re supposed to teach to.” He leaned forward. “For over ten years now, America’s been scapegoating teachers: ‘We’re falling behind the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans because there are too many bad teachers, and we can’t get rid of them because they have tenure. Oh, and they’re bankrupting the country because they have good pensions.’ Well, the teachers in China, Japan and Korea have tenure and good pensions! Has that caused their educational systems to fail? No. Because their societies value education! They treat their teachers with respect. How do you expect American students to treat us with respect when their parents don’t, when the politicians don’t, when the media doesn’t, when all they hear is how bad our country’s teachers are? You know what? The Asian kids in my class do just as well on those standardized tests as the ones actually in Asia! You know why? Because their parents make them study and do their homework. If every parent did that, maybe we wouldn’t be falling so far behind!”
“We’re getting a little offtrack here,” Claire said gently.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I’m a good teacher. I always have been. And the reason I was let go is not the test scores of my students. That’s just cover; that’s just the excuse they’re giving. The reason is, I teach real history. Yes, I teach the requirements. But I go deeper. And these days, if you deviate at all from the party line, you’re penalized for it. Initiative used to be rewarded; now it’s not only discouraged, it’s punished.”
“But the test scores of your students have fallen since you began teaching this ‘real’ history. I have them here in front of me.”
“Sure,” he admitted. “You know why? Because I went from teaching honors history to regular history.” He leaned forward again. “You know how politicians always talk about the importance of merit pay and rewarding ‘good’ teachers? Well, the ‘good’ teachers are the ones whose students do well on the standardized tests. And here’s the dirty little secret: teachers who teach the smart kids have students who do better on those tests than those who teach the low learners. I was one of those ‘good’ teachers. Now I’m not. Because the principal assigned me a different class. Not because my teaching skills suddenly deserted me. And not because I’ve expanded the class curriculum to include information outside the scope of the textbook.”
Claire nodded. “Okay.”
“So we’ll sue?”
“I think you have a legitimate grievance, and it’s quite possible we can get your job back. But this is by no means a slam dunk. Judges and juries, if it gets to that point, are notoriously unreliable. It’s not like you see on TV. There’s a chance the court could rule against you. Then you’d not only be out of a job, but you’d be out quite a bit of money.”
“But you think I have a shot?”
“I think you have a shot.”
“Let’s do it.”
She nodded. “All right. We’ll go after them. As long as you know the risks.”
He smiled. “What’s life without a little risk?”
Claire stood, and they shook on it. She hadn’t had much time to delve into the substance of the teacher’s lessons—she’d been focused more on the legalities of his case—but she knew from their discussions and from her brief perusal of his classroom notes that the “real” history Oscar Cortinez taught involved ethnic slaughter and very bad deeds by some very famous men. She wasn’t aware of any of this. When she’d gone to school here in the mid-1980s, it was a much cheerier version of the town’s history they were spoon-fed. Which meant that she was going to have to do a lot of reading up in order to familiarize herself with the issues that she planned to argue were the heart of this case.
She walked Oscar to the door and said good-bye, promising to call him as soon as she put together a rough draft of their complaint. Standing in the doorway, she saw Pam wave to her from across the street. Claire purposely looked away, walking back to her desk. One of these days, she was probably going to have to speak to Pam again, maybe even talk about what happened, but that day was not today.
She sat down, attempted to concentrate on the work before her, but the sight of Pam had brought back to her everything that had happened at the housewarming party, and she was overcome with a heavy feeling of dread. She tried to ignore it, but she couldn’t, and finally she broke down and called home in order to reassure herself that Julian and the kids were all right and everything was fine.
After dinner that night, Claire got on her laptop. She fully intended to access some of the historical sites to which Oscar Cortinez had given her the addresses, but once her browser opened, she decided instead to look up information about their house. Julian had already attempted to research the previous owners, and while he had not been able to locate or contact any of them, he had managed to find several articles and a police report about the man who had died in their basement. There were no pictures of the man—though there was little doubt that he was the figure they had seen shuffling down the hallway and into the living room—but the background information on him was pretty complete: Jim Swanson, age fifty-six, unemployed pipe fitter, Jardine native, divorced, ex-wife living in Tucson, parents dead, no brothers or sisters, house repossessed two years prior. The one thing no one seemed able to figure out, however, was why Swanson had decided to break into the house, take off his clothes and go into the basement. And the cause of death was still sketchy. “Organ failure” was the official explanation listed on the coroner’s report, but since the toxic screen came back clean and there was no evidence of any illness, the exact reason for the organ failure remained unclear.
What Julian had discovered was a good start, but that was all it was. A start. If they were ever going to find a way through this mess, they would need a lot more information, and Claire decided to start by seeing whether she could find Swanson’s ex-wife. The woman had apparently been divorced from her husband for twelve years before his death, so it was doubtful that she could shed any light on the details of his passing, but maybe Claire would be able to discover whether he had any previous connection to the house.
She started to type in the woman’s name, Elizabeth Swanson, but before she got past the z, her screen went black. For a second, she thought the power cord had come unplugged. Then, suddenly, the screen was filled with a single word: Don’t.
She frowned, perplexed and, at the same time, frightened. She wanted to believe that it was a technical glitch of some sort, totally unconnected to her. But it was a command, and it applied to what she was doing, and it made it seem as though something was trying to stop her. She was reminded, also, of the message on Megan’s phone—
Take off your pants.
—and she forced herself to calm down and breathe normally as she turned the machine off, then started it up again. The four-colored Windows logo appeared, all her little icons popped up … then the screen went black.
I told you.
The words appeared in the center of the screen and were instantly replaced by another message that filled the entire rectangular space.
DON’T.
Meekly, she shut off the laptop, closing it up. Her hands were shaking, and she went out to the living room, where Julian was reading Time magazine, James was reading a book and Megan was watching Access Hollywood. She tapped Julian on the shoulder, got his attention and motioned for him to follow her to the kitchen. Once there, she told him what had happened. He believed her without seeing proof, which was good, because she wasn’t about to turn on that laptop again. Who could tell what type of response she’d get if she attempted to access the Internet one more time?
“Nothing from the house,” he said, and she shivered, feeling cold, because he was whispering. He, too, was worried that their conversation might be overheard. “Look things up at your office or the library or one of those wi-fi cafés.”
“You, too,” she told him.
Julian nodded.
She wanted to say more. She was starting to feel like a prisoner, constantly under surveillance, and her gut reaction was to fight back, to say whate
ver the hell she wanted, to confront the ghost in this house by threatening it. But that wasn’t a smart move, she knew, and she stared into Julian’s eyes, telling him everything she could with that one meaningful look, and he nodded and kissed her, and the two of them left the kitchen and went out to the living room to watch over their children.
Nineteen
Megan awoke with the dawn and quickly checked to make sure nothing had happened to her during the night. No. She was okay. Still wrapped up like a mummy, comforter tucked into the sides of the bed, blanket and sheet tucked in below that, sleeping bag still zipped.
She emerged from her cocoon, sweating. Her parents did not know it, but she’d taken to wearing her clothes to bed rather than her pajamas. Why? Because pajama bottoms were pull-ups—pants had snaps and zippers and belts. Pajama tops were pullovers—regular shirts could be buttoned and sealed in with sweaters.
She needed the extra protection. That thing she’d seen the night her friends had come over, the formless camouflaged shape that had detached itself from the wall to examine and assault the other girls, had never been far from her mind.
Take off your pants.
Nor had the text message that had been sent to her and James.
I will kill you both.
Her life was a nightmare of fear and worry, and the worst part of it was that her options for dealing with the situation were so constricted. She could not tell her parents. She could not tell her friends. There was no one she could go to for help, and the creature that lived in this house could be anywhere, watching her at any time.
She had to go to the bathroom, and it was with a feeling of dread that Megan went into the one on the other side of James’s bedroom. She would have preferred to use the one by her parents’ room, but for some reason her mom had put that off-limits. As always, she closed and locked the door behind her, then took a towel from the rack and held it in front of her with one hand while, with the other, she pulled her pants down the bare minimum. She placed the towel on her lap while she used the toilet, so nothing could see her, then quickly pulled her pants back up when she was finished and sped downstairs, washing her hands in the kitchen.
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