The Haunted

by Bentley Little

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Roger!” Claire’s mom called out. She stood in the kitchen doorway, frowning at him. “The Lord’s name.”

  “Hell’s bells, Marian. I’m supposed to put up with this … childishness and be polite?”

  “Yes!”

  He threw up his hands. “Fine.” But as soon as the two women left the room, Claire following her mother into the kitchen, the old man turned on Julian. “This is idiocy. You two are going to lose a fortune; then you’ll come crawling to me, and …” He must have seen from the look in Julian’s eyes that continuing along this line of reasoning would cause big trouble, because he let the sentence trail off.

  “Go,” Julian said. “Check the house out. Try to prove me wrong.”

  “I will.”

  Julian looked straight into his father-in-law’s eyes. “It’s your funeral,” he said flatly.

  Thirty

  As always, Roger was the first one awake, and the house was silent as he got out of bed to do his business. By the time he came out of the bathroom, Marian was in the kitchen, starting the coffee, though Claire, Julian and the kids were still asleep.

  “You’re not really planning to go over to their house, are you?” Marian asked worriedly as he sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Of course. Why not?”

  “I just think—”

  “Their house isn’t haunted, Marian. Jeez Louise.”

  She didn’t respond, but the stiffness of her back told him that she disagreed, and she remained silent as she started making the waffle batter.

  Claire entered the kitchen a few moments later, wide-awake and wearing a bathrobe, and Marian said, “I don’t want him going over to your house.”

  “It’s not a good idea, Dad,” Claire agreed. She sat down next to him at the table.

  “There’s no such thing as a haunted house.”

  “Whether you believe it or not, we saw what we saw. And we’re selling the place no matter what you say.”

  “That’s just stupid. You’re going to take a bath because—”

  “Because we have to get rid of that house.”

  At the counter, Marian turned around. “Don’t do it, Roger.”

  “I’m going,” he said stubbornly.

  “Then take Julian with you,” Claire said. “He can show you where everything happened, explain it to you.”

  Roger grunted. He knew what her plan was. If he went with Julian, that fairy probably wouldn’t even let him into the house. They’d walk around the yard, look into windows and leave.

  “That’s a good idea,” Marian seconded.

  He nodded, pretending to agree. But after they’d all finished eating and Claire had gone off to work, the first thing he did was sneak into the bedroom and call Rob. If he was going to go with a son-in-law, it might as well be the one he liked. The line was busy, though, and he hung up, sat down on the edge of his bed and watched the Today show for a while. He liked that Ann Curry.

  He got distracted, lost track of time, and by the time Marian came in looking for him, nearly a half hour had passed. “Why are you hiding in here?” she demanded.

  “I’m busy,” he told her.

  Huffing with disapproval, she made the bed around him, then took her clothes out of the closet and went into the bathroom to change. He picked up the phone, tried to call again, but Rob wasn’t home, and he got Diane instead. He told his daughter to have her husband call him back, because he wanted Rob to go with him to Claire’s house, then changed his mind and said he’d go over there alone.

  “Dad—” she began.

  “Good-bye,” he said, and hung up on her before she could give him a lecture.

  He turned off the TV, then picked up his keys and wallet from the dresser.

  “Roger?” Marian called from the bathroom.

  Hurrying out before she could quiz him about where he was going, he passed through the living room, where Julian was playing some kind of card game with his kids. Roger smiled and waved at Megan and James, but he and Julian ignored each other as he walked out the door.

  Driving side streets instead of main roads, he was there in five minutes. He parked the car in the driveway and got out to check the lay of the land. All of the houses except theirs were for sale, and all of the yards, including theirs, were dead. Weird, he had to admit, but except for the lawn problem, nothing about Claire’s house looked unusual at all. He walked up to the front door and took out his key, thinking about Julian. How could that pansy be afraid of his own house? Roger was embarrassed that his daughter had married such a pantywaist. No wonder their boy was turning out the way he was.

  Unlocking the door, he stepped inside. It looked like a tornado had hit the place. Lamps were broken, tables and chairs overturned. Broken glass littered the floor. That gave him pause. Julian had described this, but hearing about it and seeing it were two different things. He recalled that nightmare he’d had about their basement, and though he hated to admit it, he felt less secure than he should have because of the dream.

  He was getting to be as bad as they were.

  Dreams weren’t real. He had nothing to be afraid of. The only thing that had happened here was that there’d been a blackout, and Julian had stumbled around in the dark like an asshole, knocking things over.

  Roger made his way through the debris. In the dining room, the table was covered with a fine white powder that looked like flour but, considering his hippie son-in-law, could just as easily have been cocaine. Although there was no way Julian and Claire could afford this much cocaine.

  Frowning, he walked around the side of the table to the opposite end. Someone had drawn in the powder with a finger, and it wasn’t until he was looking at it from the proper angle that he could read what it said: Sniff some, you stupid old fuck.

  Roger felt his face grow hot with anger. Julian had written this and had left it here for him, knowing he would come by the house to investigate, knowing it would cross his mind that the powder resembled cocaine. He bent over, put his face near the tabletop and breathed in.

  It smelled like rat poison.

  Sniff some, you stupid old fuck.

  Julian was trying to kill him.

  Roger felt chilled. He and his son-in-law didn’t like each other, but he never would have thought Julian capable of such cold-bloodedness, and he straightened up, looking around, seeing the entire house as one gigantic booby trap. What waited for him in the kitchen? Upstairs? In the basement?

  Roger shook his head to clear it. That made no sense. Julian had fled the house because he was afraid, because he thought the house was haunted. He hadn’t been pretending. And he certainly hadn’t poured rat poison all over the dining room table on the off chance that Roger would come over alone and inhale a big nostrilful to test whether it was cocaine.

  Maybe the house was haunted.

  That made no sense, either.

  Roger had no explanation for anything that was going on, but he was warier now than he had been when he’d first arrived. He felt uncomfortable here, and while he still wasn’t willing to concede that Julian and Claire might be right about the house being dangerous, he was starting to think that it might be a good idea to leave and come back later, maybe with Rob.

  Suddenly there seemed to be a smoky smell in the air, one that was faint but growing stronger. At first he thought it was coming from somewhere outside, but when he turned around, sniffing, trying to determine its origin, he saw a small plume creeping out from the fireplace in the living room. The sight made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. It was not just that there’d been no fire in the fireplace a moment ago and there was no way one could have been lit; it was the behavior of the plume of smoke itself. For rather than emerging from the flue and dissipating, or floating up toward the ceiling, the thin gray tendril moved out and into the room, solid and well-defined, turning left, then right, like a snake exploring a new environment. There was something alive about the smoke, and Roger was gripped by
the certainty that it was searching for him.

  All thoughts of showing Julian to be a pathetic coward with an overactive imagination had fled. Roger was filled with the single-minded desire to get out of the house as quickly as possible. There was no way he was going back through that living room. Which meant that in order to get out of the house, he had to exit through the back door.

  The tendril of smoke was five feet long now and nosing its way toward the dining room.

  Feeling the panic well within him, Roger turned and hurried into the kitchen.

  Except it wasn’t the kitchen.

  He was in a dark, low-ceilinged space that looked like the interior of a tent. Before him, in an indentation, was a fire, and though the smoke issuing from the blaze was wafting upward, it looked completely normal and not tendril-like at all. It was the only thing that looked normal, however. The floor was bare ground, dirt, and the material of the tent walls seemed to be dried skin, skin that looked too smooth and light to be animal.

  He whirled around, intending to run back through the doorway, but the doorway was no longer there.

  A stifled sob escaped his throat. He thought of what Julian had told him—

  You’ll be weeping like the scared little girl you really are.

  —and wondered whether his son-in-law had planned this. Maybe that powder on the tabletop had been cocaine, and he had accidentally snorted some and now he was hallucinating. The timing was right, and it would explain everything that had happened afterward, including this.

  But he didn’t really believe that. He wanted to believe it, and right now he hated Julian more than he ever had, but somehow Roger knew in his heart that this was really happening, that Julian and Claire were right about this house, and all he wanted at this moment was to escape and go back home, to see his wife again, to spend the rest of the morning reading the paper and watching TV before having lunch with his grandkids.

  He was weeping now, was nothing more than a frightened old man, but he focused on the situation before him, forced himself to think through it. Maybe all of this was illusion. If so, if he was in the kitchen but simply couldn’t see it, the door that led outside was …

  He stood in place to get his bearings.

  There.

  Roger faced a section of tent wall, stepped around the fire in the center of the room and moved forward to reach out and touch the flesh-colored material in front of him. He half expected his hand to pass through it, for it to be nothing but illusion. It was real, though, very real, and his fingers pressed against a smooth, springy substance that reminded him of his own upper arm. Instinctively, he recoiled, grimacing in disgust. His touch revealed a parting in the tent wall, however, and this close he saw that there was a seam in the material. There was a door in front of him, albeit a tent door, and though the feel of the material made him sick to his stomach, he took another half step forward and, using both hands, pulled apart the flaps.

  Behind the flap was a man standing in front of a space that was pitch-black and lifeless, a man wearing a backward yellow baseball cap and holding a knife.

  “Hello, Roger,” he said in a voice that sounded impossibly old. “Glad you could join us.”

  Thirty-one

  Claire was at her office and had just answered an e-mail from the school district’s attorneys when the phone rang. It was Diane. Her sister was calling to tell her that their father had phoned, asking Rob to go with him to Claire’s house. “You know Dad. He said he needed a witness to prove to, quote, that pansy Julian, end quote, that your house wasn’t haunted. Luckily, Rob was at work and wasn’t home, so I answered the phone. I told him not to go, but …”

  “Yes. We know Dad.”

  “I’m with you on this, Claire. I don’t like that house. Now, after everything that’s happened …” She drew in a loud breath. “I don’t think Dad should go there. He’s getting old, and … I just think it might be dangerous.”

  “It is dangerous. But it’s daytime and he’ll only be there for a few minutes. I think he’ll be okay.”

  There was a weird pause on the other end of the line, and Claire’s heart lurched in her chest. “Di? There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “After Dad hung up, the phone rang again, and when I answered it, there was this voice. It was all deep and spooky, and it said, ‘He’s a stupid old fuck.’ That’s it. That’s all it said. Then the person hung up. I checked the caller ID, and … it was your number. At your house.”

  Claire was filled with a sensation of panic, but she managed to keep her voice calm. “You stay there. I’ll get Julian, and we’ll go and see what’s up.”

  “I’m going, too.”

  “Di …”

  “I’m going, too. I’ll call Mom; then I’ll meet you there.”

  “Okay, but if you get there before we do, just wait until we arrive. I think it’s better if all three of us go in together. Safer.”

  “Gotcha.”

  There was no way Diane would make it there before she did. Their house was the next street over on the other side of the park. Call Mom? “Shit,” Claire said aloud, and quickly dialed her parents’ number, hoping to get through before her sister. She did. Her mom answered the phone and Claire asked to speak with Julian. She kept all traces of worry out of her voice—she’d let Diane explain to their mother what was going on—but as soon as Julian came on the line, she told him exactly what had happened and asked him to meet her in front of the house. She was expecting an argument, probably because it involved her dad, but Julian agreed right away. His voice had changed its tone after she’d repeated what Diane had said about the phone call from their house—

  He’s a stupid old fuck

  —and she could tell that he was as worried as she was.

  “I love you,” she said before she hung up, and meant it.

  Claire was the first person to arrive at the house, and when she saw her parents’ car in the driveway, she knew she couldn’t wait around for Julian and Diane to show up. She had to rush in there and get her dad out.

  For some reason, however, her key didn’t seem to fit in the lock, and she was still fumbling with it—in between bouts of pounding on the door and yelling, “Dad!”—when Julian swerved next to the curb in front of the house, driving her father’s old truck. Diane was mere seconds behind him.

  Julian tried her key, then his, but when neither seemed to work, he led them around the side of the house to the backyard.

  Where the kitchen door was not only unlocked, but open.

  Claire’s heart skipped a beat, restarting its rhythm at a much more rapid pace. This couldn’t be good. “Dad!” she called.

  She hadn’t expected an answer, and she didn’t get one. On the white cement of the patio, she saw muddy footprints. Or muddy prints of some sort. They were clumpy and ill defined, and it was impossible to tell whether they came from a shoe, a foot, a claw, a hoof or something else.

  They led into the house.

  Julian and Diane had to have seen them, too, but neither of them said a word. Claire stepped past her husband. “Dad?” She walked inside, Julian and Diane right behind her.

  The mud disappeared. Before her, the kitchen seemed perfectly normal, nothing out of place, exactly as it should have been. Despite the promise of the muddy prints, the clean kitchen was not really a surprise. What was a surprise was that the living room appeared to be in impeccable shape as well. She could see it through the doorway, past the dining room. From Julian’s description, she had expected broken lamps and overturned furniture, but from what she could tell, the room was immaculate.

  Julian noticed it, too. “What the hell … ?” He hurried over, turning about, an expression of complete confusion on his face.

  That should have been good news, Claire supposed, but somehow it scared her far more than a trashed room would have. They were dealing with something here that could change things. Julian was right. It wasn’t a ghost. Or wasn’t just a ghost. For the being that occupied t
his house was able to destroy objects and put them back together again. Its powers were not merely supernatural but godlike, and she realized that there was no way they could ever hope to fight against something like that. She discarded once and for all any thought of vanquishing the spirit. She just wanted to find her dad and get him out of here. After that, she didn’t care what happened to this place. It could burn to the ground for all she cared. In fact, burning to the ground would be the best possible outcome. She wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of pawning this evil place onto another unsuspecting soul, and they might even get some insurance money out of it. But what would happen after that? The land itself was cursed. Any new home built on the same spot would have the same problem. And what if the entire neighborhood was razed? What would the city do with the land? Expand the park? Put in a shopping center? Each of those was a disaster in waiting. The only useful possibility she could foresee would be a landfill, but the council certainly wouldn’t have one in the center of town.

  Diane tapped her shoulder, and she jumped, startled out of her reverie.

  “I’m checking upstairs,” her sister said.

  “Not alone you’re not.”

  “No one’s going upstairs,” Julian said, coming back into the kitchen. “We check the ground floor first. Together. If we don’t find him here, then we’ll go upstairs.”

  “Dad!” Diane called at the top of her lungs.

  There was no answer.

  “He’s not in the dining room or the living room,” Julian said. “I was just there. We’ll check the basement, then our bedroom and the bathroom. After that, we’ll go upstairs. If we don’t find anything in the house, we’ll check the garage.”

  “Dad!” Diane called again.

  Julian walked over to the basement door, pulling it open. “I don’t understand it,” he told Claire as he flipped the switch to turn on the cellar lights. “The living room was trashed. That lamp on the end table was thrown at me, and it smashed on the coffee table. Pieces were everywhere. …”

  “I believe you,” she said honestly, and that was all she needed to say.