by Kim Bowman
Helen took another step and the chill from the basement stole her breath. There was a scraping sound across the floor. She thought it came from downstairs, but she wasn’t sure.
“Last chance. Let the boy go or I’ll shoot you,” she warned.
More scuffling. Fear that the intruders were going out the cellar door taking Jack with them propelled her forward and she stepped down with her right foot.
As she picked up her left foot, an icy hand wrapped around her ankle in a vice-like grip and jerked. She let out a blood-curling scream.
There was a gasp from both Millie and Charlie and her heart dropped to the floor.
My children! she thought as she tumbled over.
Chapter Eleven
Fear is the parent of cruelty.
~James A. Froude
“Jack Foster, I should turn you over my knee for scaring me to death like that. I could have shot you.” Helen Foster took the first easy breath she’d taken in since finding the boys weren’t in their room. She laid the shotgun on the kitchen tabled and pulled her middle child to her, kissing the top of his head and ruffling his hair.
“I’m sorry, Mom. When those red lights flashed in my eyes, I couldn’t see. I fell over and rolled until I felt the curtain from the sink, then I scooted under there, like Charlie had told me to do earlier when the spooks came in the back door. I must have hit my head because everything went black.”
Helen searched his head for bumps. “Do you feel okay now? Do you have a headache?”
“No, I’m fine. It’s just—” Jack broke into sobs.
“What? What is it, sweetheart?” Helen hugged him tighter.
“I heard Charlie scream and then a door slammed shut. I was sure the ghosts had him.” Jack cried harder. “I’m sorry, Charlie. I got scared and covered my ears and closed my eyes tight. I tried to yell for help but no sound would come out. It was so d-dark and I c-couldn’t see.”
Charlie punched him in the shoulder. “It’s all right. I was screaming because I thought they had you. I was scared too. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“Me too,” Millie piped in.
“And I think you’ve all had enough excitement for one night. You boys have school tomorrow followed by a long day of chores, starting with mopping and polishing this kitchen floor. I don’t even want to know what you were doing with my flour or why it’s all over the place. I just know you boys will work until you clean it out of every crack and crevice it’s in.”
The boys groaned and bowed their heads.
“Okay, let’s head upstairs to bed. Charlie and Jack, you can sleep in my room, if you’d like, so get your pillows and blankets. I have a long day of working at the hospital tomorrow and I want to get some sleep tonight.”
“But, Mommy, what about the bogies downstairs?” Millie asked.
“Oh for the love of—do you see what you’ve done, boys?” Helen rolled her eyes and placed a protective arm around her three children, ushering them toward the front hall. “Millie, there’s no such thing as ghosts or bogies. Which is why before I head upstairs to join you three adventure seekers, I’m going to call the sheriff to come and escort what I’m sure are the Thompson children home. And believe me when I say their mother will be getting a call from me fir—”
There was a deafening crash in the basement that sounded like metal slamming into wood. All four of them jumped, and the kids screamed.
“Mommy!” Millie clawed at her, wanting to be picked up.
Whole body tense and on alert, she scooped the scared girl into her arms and turned in the direction of the noise, shielding Charlie and Jack behind her. She noticed the door leading downstairs was still open. A loud thumping started, and Helen sighed in relief, recognizing the racket as the door leading outside the cellar slapping against the ground. Whoever had broken in was gone.
She cuddled her daughter, nuzzling her neck. “I’ve got you. It’s all right. Someone forgot to latch the door leading outside the basement is all. Boys, take your sister and go wait in the front hallway. Stay together. I’m going to go down and lock the door.”
“No, Mommy, don’t,” Millie begged.
“It’ll be okay, sweetie. I just wanna shut the door and lock it. Now, go with your brothers.” She set the little girl down and gave her a gentle push.
The children hurried from the kitchen. Once they were out of site, Helen picked the gun up off the table, pointed her flashlight at the basement doorway, and crept down the stairs step by step. With each rung, she rethought her decision to descend into the cellar, leaving the kids alone. They were already scared, what if something happened to her? Maybe she should go back upstairs, call the police, and let them investigate.
She was ready to turn around and do just that when her foot landed on the next step and she was low enough that the ceiling no longer obstructed her view. Moonlight streamed through the open door leading outside, illuminating the space enough so that she could tell the storage room was empty.
She sighed, relief settling across her shoulders. Anxious to get back to the kids, she hurried down the last few steps and across the floor to close the door. As she leaned out to grab the door and swing it closed, her heart slammed against her chest and goose bumps covered her skin. A dark shadow crossed in her line of vision headed toward the graveyard. The figure seemed dark, but she was sure she could see right through it to the cemetery, and she swore she heard the faint sounds of hysterical screaming and crying. It sounded so real she became alarmed thinking it was the kids and someone had them. She shook her head and did a double take, but there was nothing there and there was silence except for the wind blowing through the trees.
It couldn’t be. Could it…
“Pfst, ghosts,” Helen said to herself as she pulled the door shut, unwilling to consider the possibility that the kids had been right. As the door closed, she noticed a small red light flickering on the ground. Hadn’t Jack said something about red flashing in his eyes? She quickly pushed the door open, but saw nothing.
Now my imagination’s running away with me, making me see things.
She let the door fall back into the frame, and the sudden darkness with only her dim flashlight to see by made her fumble with the lock several times before sliding it in place. Once she was sure the door was secured, she rushed to the stairs, ran up them, raced out of the kitchen, and down the hall, eager to join the children and put the last few hours behind her.
Relief washed over her when she walked into the entryway and found Charlie, Jack, and Millie huddled together by the stairs. Helen squeezed them tight and planted a kiss on the top of each kid’s head.
Once she assured herself that they were okay and none the worse for wear, she held out the flashlight to Charlie and said, “See, told you it was nothing. No spirits or ghosts running amuck in our basement. The doors are all locked. You kids just let your imaginations run wild with you. I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Now, run along upstairs and get ready for bed. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
Charlie handed Jack the flashlight and bend down so Millie could climb on his back. Helen watched as the three of them went up the stairs, not looking away until they were out of site.
Helen removed the shells from the shotgun and opened the closet under the stairwell, securing the weapon and ammunition in the built-in cabinet. She then picked up the receiver to report the intruders.
Chapter Twelve
I don't know that there are real ghosts and goblins,
but there are always more trick-or-treaters than neighborhood kids.
~Robert Brault
“Crazy kids.” Officer Brewster shook his head as he stared down at the two teenagers sprawled out in the grass.
The sun was just starting to break the horizon, barely even visible, most of the sky still black and star-filled rather than streaked with light blue. It would be a good two hours before full daybreak. Not soon enough, in Brewster’s mind. He was ready to put this Halloween behind him.
&n
bsp; After a quick glance around, he turned his attention back to the boys crying and shaking on the dew-covered ground. The red, black, and green face paint they wore had been smeared down their faces onto their necks and black sweatshirts as the EMTs flushed their eyes with water. Brewster had mistaken the strip of red across their eyes for blood, until it washed away. They were trembling uncontrollably as if they were freezing. Probably were after being doused with water on a cold autumn night. “Every Halloween it’s the same thing. They never learn.” He squatted down in front of the boy with brown hair. “Son, can you give me your name?”
Nothing.
“They won’t speak, sir. Besides yelling that their eyes were burning when I first found them, they haven’t done anything but cry and scream,” Deputy Morris said.
“And they’re not going to.” Brewster stood as two EMTs rolled gurneys up to the boys.
Both officers were silent as the teens were loaded. In no time, the technicians were wheeling the kids toward the ambulance.
Deputy Morris glanced at the teens. “What do you think’s wrong with them?”
“Shock.”
The young officer pulled a small tablet and pen from his pocket. “Well, I saw a woman watching out the window of the house on our left. Maybe I should see what she can tell us, see if she was the one who called about the intruders—”
Brewster laughed and faced the house. “Yeah, good luck with that, Morris.”
Morris jerked his head up from his notepad and stared at the veteran officer. “Come again?”
“I’ve been called to this same grassy field for more than twenty years on Halloween to find teens in this shape. They’re rushed to the hospital in a catatonic state, all have salt and fireplace ashes in their eyes. Do you know what all of them were doing just before being attacked?”
“Well, since it’s Halloween and there’s a graveyard behind us, my guess would be vandalism.”
“Nope. Deputy Morris, they were breaking into that house where you saw the woman looking out the window. That vacant house.” Brewster let his words sink in.
The young officer’s head swivel from the house to Brewster several times before speaking. “Y-y-you mean the rumors are true. That house is haunted. I saw her! I freakin’ saw her with my own eyes.”
“Let me guess, short hair pulled back with a large headband, long sleeves with a ruffled collar. Kinda like a nightgown your grandmother would have worn.”
Deputy Morris stared at his boss slack-jawed, face pasty white.
“You look like you’re about to lose your supper, Morris.” Brewster slapped the younger man on the back then gave him a gentle push in the direction of the graveyard.
“I don’t understand. So the kids weren’t in the graveyard? They were in the house?” Morris asked, halting and turning to stare at the home again.
“Trust me. It’s better if I show you rather than trying to explain. Follow me,” Brewster said, pulling the flashlight from his utility belt and heading toward the cemetery.
Chapter Thirteen
It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.
~Virginia Woolf
When they reached the edge of the field and Brewster started through the gate of the cemetery, he noticed Morris hurrying to remove his own flashlight and turn it on. The beam wobbled up and down, evidence of the young officer’s discomfort. After weaving through several rows of graves, Brewster stopped in front of three small stones faded by age, the writing barely readable. To the right stood a headstone of the same gray, although some of the letters still held flecks of black to make the name Helen legible. On the left of the small markers stood a white stone with the writing still intact.
Brewster read the inscription of the white tombstone out loud. “Charles Foster I, Born 1879, Died 1957.” He moved his flashlight to the other larger marker. “You can only make out the first name and the year 1918 on this one, but it used to say Helen Foster, Born 1886, Died 1918.”
The veteran officer squatted in front of the three tiny graves and spotlighted their headstones. He reached out his hand and rubbed the dust away from the markers. Although he could feel the ridges indicating where the stones had been engraved, the words were illegible. “You can’t make the names on these three out at all anymore, but this one on the left says Charles Foster II, Born 1908, Died, 1918. The one in the middle, Jack Foster, Born 1910, Died 1918. And then by her mother is Millicent Foster, Born 1914, Died 1918. Charles Foster came home after World War I to find his wife and all three children had died a few months earlier from the Spanish flu. Helen worked as a nurse at the hospital and probably caught it and brought it home. It nearly destroyed him and he refused to leave the house. Died in his sleep at the age of seventy-eight.”
“He never left the house?”
Brewster locked eyes with the young deputy. “Not once. He had a housekeeper who took care of buying groceries and anything else he needed, and when he got older, he hired a nurse to care for him. But it’s rumored neither woman would stay in the house after sunset. Flat out refused to enter it on Halloween.”
Morris’s eyes darted from the graves to Brewster. “I—you—he—”
“So you see where I’m going with this.”
Morris furrowed his brow. “Are you telling me that the mom and kids haunted him—the house—even then?”
Brewster shrugged and turned, heading toward the exit. “My guess would be yes, but no one knows for sure. But the fact that Charles Senior willed all his money to pay the taxes on that old house and left specific instructions that the residence is not to be sold or occupied makes me think he was providing for someone not of this world. As does the fact that he died in the winter of ’57 and with Halloween in 1958, reports starting coming in about seeing people in the windows of the Foster home, hearing laughter, crying. A few years after that, people started to report seeing flickers of light, moving shadows, and small patches of fog drifting in front of the windows. The other suspicious thing is he died more than fifty years ago, yet the house still stands untouched, not even classified as condemned. I mean, I have a hard time believing there’s still money in a trust somewhere.”
Morris furrowed his brow but followed. Both men were silent as they walked out of the cemetery and headed across the field toward the Foster home. Out of the corner of his eye, Brewster noticed the young deputy was using his flashlight to scan the house.
“I don’t get it. How do ghost sightings turn into teens being rushed to the hospital because they’ve had something thrown in their eyes? Ghosts can’t do that. Can they?”
“Dumb teenage pranks. Kids getting braver over the years and trying to prove how tough they are by spending the night in the haunted house on Halloween only to find that they aren’t as brave as they thought.” They were only about one hundred or two hundred yards from the house, so Brewster pointed his flashlight to the right of the back door. “See that door on the ground.”
“Yeah. Is that the basement door?”
“Yep. They all come out of the house through the cellar. I’m guessing by that point their flashlights didn’t work, and like the others before them, they didn’t so much have anything thrown in their eyes as they roused up dust, salt that had been stored down there and been spilled or been torn open by mice. Those old houses had ash dump doors that emptied in the cellars, so there’s probably quite a lot of fireplace ashes scattered all around. And I’m sure the basement is overrun with cobwebs that got tangled up on them as they ran out. Especially once that door was opened and it created a back draft. Those kids were pretty dusty and looked liked they’d rolled around in a few feet of dirt. They probably had to beat on that door and kick it open, causing debris to drop in their eyes.”
Morris aimed his flashlight at the top row of windows on the Foster house and started scanning. “I guess that makes sense. The kids probably got scared and let their imagination run wild with them. But I know I saw someone in that window—Holy—did you see that!” He turned to Brew
ster, eyes bugged out. “There was a kid in that second window. When my beam landed on that windowpane, he dropped the curtain. Did you see him?” Morris’s voice was getting louder as he spoke.
Brewster did think he saw a movement from the upstairs window like the curtain falling back into place. It was brief and fast so he hadn’t been sure, until the young officer confirmed it with his excited exclamation.
“D-d-did you see that?” Morris asked again, his voice trembling. He continued to scan the house with the flashlight.
The veteran officer placed his hand on the deputy’s arm and pushed the flashlight down so it glowed on the ground. “Nope.”
“But, I—we—you just told me—”
“Your eyes must be playing tricks on you, Morris. I didn’t see a thing.” The two men stared at one another for several tense moments. Brewster hoped he’d made his point and that the younger man dropped it.
He relaxed when Morris nodded and continued to his cruiser. Before they’d taken more than a handful of steps, the flashlight caught the gleam of something shiny in the dewy grass.
