The kitchen window remained empty. Thomas crossed to it. The house’s insides were dark. Did Louise turn the lights off?
His chest was tight enough to make breathing difficult. His fingernails itched, but he resisted the temptation to chew on the stubs. He pressed himself to the kitchen window.
The sink was still full of soapy water and dishes. Louise had started to wash up from dinner, but evidently, she hadn’t gotten far. She’d finished glazing a chocolate cake, though, and left it, ready to cut, on the chopping board beside the sink.
“Louise?” Thomas rested his fingertips on the windowsill and craned his neck to see through the open door at the back of the kitchen. “Lou, is everything all right?”
He couldn’t hear anything from inside the house. The suds in the sink were starting to burst, and amongst the cups and saucers was a broken plate.
His heart ached as he tried the kitchen door. It was locked, as it should have been. He jogged around the house to test the front. It was also sealed. Thomas rattled the handle then beat on the wood. He held still, ear pressed to the door, listening for any sign of footsteps moving through the building. He heard none. “Louise! Answer me!”
Thomas waited for only a beat before he leapt off the porch and kept moving. The setting sun cast a veil of oranges and bloody reds over the scene. He looked through the windows he passed, but they showed only his family home, undisturbed and empty.
“Louise!” His voice cracked. The prickles spread from his neck to his arms and his legs.
He stopped by the family room, where Louise lounged on the couch. Her hair was swept over one shoulder, and her hands were folded in her lap. Thomas drew a sharp gasp as relief overwhelmed him, but it didn’t last for long. His wife wasn’t sitting naturally; her head lolled to the side, and her back and shoulders held no tension, making her seem to crumple in on herself. Her eyes were open but staring towards the wall, unblinking. Thomas banged on the window. She didn’t respond.
Then he noticed the vivid, dark patch of red spreading across the couch. At first glance, it looked as though she might have sat there specifically to hide it, but as he watched, it grew, creeping across the fabric.
“Louise!”
He snatched a rock out of the garden border and smashed it into the glass. Pain burnt across his arm as the glass shards sliced into him. He wrestled his jacket off, wrapped it around his hand, and used the padding to knock the largest shards free. Then he vaulted through the opening, senseless to the cuts, and reached towards his wife—
* * *
Guy opened his eyes. His heart thundered, and sweat stuck his shirt to his back. He took a quick, sharp breath, surprised to find his lungs ached from lack of oxygen.
Another dream? It was clearer than the others and didn’t fade as fast. He blinked and saw the image on the back of his eyes: a woman crumpled on the family room lounge, blood leaking from her back to stain the fabric. Shudders ran along his limbs, and he rolled onto his back.
The moonlight gave his room faint illumination, highlighting the age spots and cracked plaster. Guy traced the patterns as he waited for his heart to slow. Obviously, the kids’ story affected me more than I thought. My mind’s trying to recreate the murder scene while I sleep.
For a brief second, Guy considered the idea that he might be seeing the family’s actual deaths. He’d heard of emotional imprints before. One of his college friends had spent some time experimenting with psychedelics and had tried to explain the concept to him while on a trip. A strong, emotional moment could leave a memory of itself in a location. Someone with the right disposition and openness—or the right drugs—could relive the experience.
Guy snorted and pulled the sleeping bag higher around his shoulders. The theory was easy to dismiss. While his dream had recalled a series of clues scattered around the house, including the dish-filled sink, it had failed in a major area—the wife. In the dream, she had been plump, with sandy hair, unlike the taller, dark-haired woman in the family photographs.
Put it out of your mind. It probably happened nothing like that.
No matter how much Guy tried to force his body to relax, he couldn’t get the tension out of his limbs. Adrenaline still beat through him. Every little sound in the house seemed magnified at night. The animal living in the attic had woken again, and it moved through the space above him, claws clicking on the boards.
Don’t let your mind do this again. Guy tried flexing his hands, squeezing them into fists before slowly relaxing them again. You’ve got a lot of work to do in the morning. Another night of broken sleep won’t help anyone.
Somewhere to his right, a door latch clicked. Guy kept his eyes closed, but he couldn’t stop his eyebrows from pulling together. Just the wind bumping an open door. Ignore it.
The door’s hinges creaked. The note hung in the frosty air, teasing Guy and wearing at his patience. I’ll have another search for the door tomorrow. It’s obviously not the wardrobe in the girl’s room, and it’s not the master bedroom. But I’ll find it, and I’ll jam it shut.
A board creaked above his bed as the animal moved through the attic. Guy tried to imagine the beach house he and his mother would move to, somewhere with a pleasant, relaxed community. He would get a job. He would get his own place again. It wasn’t too late to correct the path his life had taken.
Another floorboard flexed. The sound was subtle, but in the dead of night, it was all Guy could hear. A thick drop of some cold liquid landed on his cheek. Guy reached up to wipe it away. It was viscous and slimy, and it had a sour odour. He tried to squint at it in the dim moonlight. Then he looked towards the ceiling.
A long, bone-thin creature clung to the plaster above his head. Its body had contorted, its spine twisted into an unnatural loop, but the fingers digging into the ceiling were unmistakably human. Light glinted off two wide, dark eyes. The creature’s head had been tilted back, far more than a human’s neck could endure, to stare down at him between sheets of long, oily hair. Another drop of liquid fell from its gaping mouth to hit Guy’s forehead.
He screamed and scrambled back. The sleeping bag clung to him; he fought it off, freeing his limbs, and pressed his back to the wall.
The ceiling was empty.
“What the hell?” Guy twisted, scanning the walls and the windows, hunting for the malformed woman. The dampness still clung to his face and fingers. “What the f—”
A door slammed. The impact shook the walls and made Guy flinch. He staggered to his feet and moved towards the room’s exit. When he reached for the handle, he touched air; the door was already open.
I’ve got to get out. The thought pounded through his aching head, consuming him. He dashed into the hallway, eyes squinted nearly closed, and braced to feel the scratch of claws across his back. He barrelled around the hallway’s corner and towards the stairs. Static crackled from the master bedroom as the baby monitor came to life.
Impossible. I threw it out.
He took the stairs too quickly and stumbled on the last few. He hit the landing on all fours, dragging in ragged gasps and shivering. He caught the sound of feet being scraped along the second floor’s hallway runner.
The front door was immediately ahead of him, but he still hadn’t finished clearing the vines or removing the boards nailing it shut. He went left, into the dining room. The stairs creaked as something—or someone—came down them.
Guy swore under his breath. The dining room chairs were stained red. The fresh liquid glistened in the moonlight as it dripped off the backs and trickled onto the seat and legs. The stench turned his stomach. He clamped a hand over his mouth.
The dragging, scraping footsteps reached the base of the stairs. Guy pressed his eyes closed and squeezed around the bloody furniture, keeping his back as close as he could to the walls and cabinets. The kitchen door was almost within arm’s reach.
“Thomas?” The voice, raspy and low, floated from the hallway. It sent a spike of fear through him. He reached the kitchen an
d ran through it, barely noticing the speckles of red gore dotting the sink’s dishes and dribbling down the fridge. The back door was open. He leapt through and ran to this truck. He’d draped the tarp over its supplies without tying it down, but he didn’t stop to fasten it. The equipment might fall out on the drive home, but he wasn’t going to spend even another second on Rookward’s ground.
He leapt into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and locked it. Then he reached across the seat and did the same to the passenger’s door. His gasps echoed through the vehicle, deafening him to the outside world. He spared a glance at the house. Nothing materialised in any of the doors or windows.
Guy reached into his pants’ pocket for the keys. It was empty. His heart dropped in a dizzying, lurching motion. He fumbled through every pocket on his person as he tried not to hyperventilate.
He knew where the keys were. He’d left them on the table beside his bed… on the house’s second floor… the room farthest from the door.
“Damn it. Damn it!” He slammed his fist on the horn. The noise shocked a cluster of birds out of the nearby shrubs. They shrieked as they spiralled away, and Guy, panting and shaking, pressed his back into the seat. His vision had turned red. As he sat, it gradually faded to black, then cleared.
Rookward remained dark and silent, a massive but sedate monster crouched at his side. Guy flicked his attention between the black windows and open, empty doorway, but nothing disturbed its stillness.
The anger leeched out of him like a toxin. He regained control of his arms first, then his legs, and pulled them up onto the seat so that he could hug his knees against his chest. There was almost no room with the steering wheel in front of him, but he didn’t care. He felt safe in the truck. The doors were locked. The only thing it couldn’t give him was what it had been designed for: a way to leave the house.
Chapter Nineteen
Dawn came slowly. Guy had thought the fear and adrenaline would keep him alert through the night, but he managed to fall into a dozing state several times with his head rested against the door. When light finally bled over the horizon and spread across the thigh-high weeds and hulking building, he was freezing cold, stiff, and irritable.
Did last night even happen? If he hadn’t woken in the pickup truck, he might have been tempted to imagine it was all a dream. The crazed dash through the building held all of the hallmarks of a classic nightmare; the unseen entity stalking after him, the surreal imagery, and even the way every chance to fully escape was foiled.
He felt calmer, at least. When he lifted his hands, they no longer shook. I’ve got to go back in there. There’s no way around it. I’m not going anywhere without the keys.
He eyed the side of the building, idly wondering if it would be possible to climb the vines and break through a window, but he had to dismiss the idea. This isn’t the day to push my luck. I’d end up with a broken neck or worse.
Guy inhaled to brace himself, then unlocked and opened the door. The car had been cool, but the outside air bordered on freezing. He wore only a shirt and pyjama pants, and goose bumps puckered his skin.
He flipped the tarp off the back of the truck and found a hammer. It had a good weight, and he gave it a couple of experimental swings before turning towards the kitchen door.
Guy squared his shoulders and marched up to the still-open doorway. The sun was at a bad angle to illuminate the space, but even through the shadows, he saw the blood was no longer splattered across the fridge and sink.
“Hello?” He didn’t expect a response, but he tried anyway. The house felt peaceful. He turned to the dining room and found the chairs just as clean as they’d been the previous day.
What happened? Did I have another one of those vivid, sleepwalking nightmares? Even if someone had been trying to prank him and put the blood there to scare him, they would have had no way to clean it off without also removing the layer of dust covering everything. Guy ran a finger through the grey powder. It clearly hadn’t been disturbed in fifty years.
He chewed on the inside of his cheek as he moved into the foyer. He wasn’t ready to fully drop his guard, but the tension was leaving his shoulders, and the hammer in his hand was starting to seem like overkill.
The stairs complained but carried his weight. He stopped on the landing and nudged the master bedroom door open. The space looked surreally calm in the morning. The spot where the bed had once stood was still empty, but the bedside table—which he’d left—held the faded blue baby monitor.
Guy stared at it, and suddenly, the hammer didn’t seem so silly. “I threw you out. I remember…” He mimed the motion of dropping it into a bag. The memory had grown fuzzy, though. Did I really bin it? Or was that a part of a dream?
Why wouldn’t I get rid of it? The thing creeps me out. It should have been one of the first items to go.
A floorboard shifted behind him. Guy backed out of the room and stared along the hallway. Shadows caught on the peeling wallpaper, making him see things that couldn’t exist.
Keep calm. Get the keys.
He flexed his grip on the hammer and paced along the runner, keeping his footsteps slow and soft. Dust rose around him, catching in the light and tickling his nose. He scanned the children’s rooms as he passed. The space that had once belonged to the girl caught his attention. He’d moved a crate in front of the wardrobe to keep its door closed, but the crate had been pushed back and the wardrobe hung open.
So it’s this door, after all. He swallowed. I definitely shut it. Did the teens come up here? I don’t know how long they’d been in the house before I woke up. They might have snooped around a bunch of rooms. Maybe they returned the baby monitor, too?
The idea was like a gust of fresh air. They could have found the plastic speaker in the bags of rubbish he’d thrown out and brought it back into the house. He had no idea why, but at least it explained how the little blue box was still in Rookward and not at the local garbage dump.
Guy turned the corner. The door at the end—the one leading to his room—stood open. As he stepped through it, his gaze was drawn to the ceiling.
The creature had hung above his bed, her fingers digging into the plaster. But the ceiling was spotless, save for the age stains and a crack in one corner.
That proves it. Last night was a hallucination. Some kind of bad dream that mingled with sleepwalking.
Guy placed the hammer onto the table and picked up his keys. He hadn’t thought he was the kind of person to get scared by an old house, and he prided himself on his rationality. So why am I turning to water in this place? I’ve been here for less than five days, and I feel like I’m going crazy.
He tossed the keys up and caught them again. The truck was less than a minute away, waiting for him to rev its engine and speed through the weed-choked path.
Could I live with myself if I did that? He moved into the hallway and leaned against the doorframe. I’ve paid for all of those supplies. The house is nowhere near liveable in its current state, and, if the building’s history is as widely known as Tiff suggested, it’ll be tough to sell. Putting it on the market the way it looks now will only make that worse.
An immense sense of exhaustion fell over him like a weighted blanket. He squeezed his lips together and paced along the hallway towards the girl’s room. He shut the wardrobe door and shoved the crate back in front to block it.
No more running away from my problems. I may not love this place, but I’m not in any sort of danger here. And as long as I’m not in danger, I’ve got to follow through on my commitments.
And I’m committed to Rookward.
* * *
Guy prepared himself a simple breakfast in the dining room. He heated the beans, knowing that something warm in his stomach would make the difference between a ghastly morning and one that was only moderately unpleasant. As he ate, he thought.
What’s the chance that the teens are pranking me? Tiff had been nice enough, but Blake had come off as a bit of a jerk. It wasn’t hard
to imagine the pair of them sneaking back in the middle of the night to slam doors and move things around. Blake would probably find Guy’s fear hilarious.
He pushed his plate aside and opened one of the plastic crates stacked at the end of the table. He’d brought a small bag of flour under the misguided assumption that he would feel like cooking on the portable stove. He opened its top and crossed to the kitchen door, where he scattered two handfuls of flour across the wood. It would be hard to see amongst the scuffed dust unless someone knew it was there and was looking for it, but it would show if anyone tried to walk through it.
Guy also put another patch of it at the door between the dining room and hallway. He made it large enough that it would catch any intruders but narrow enough that he could step over it without straining himself.
Satisfied, Guy dropped the flour back into the crate and finished his breakfast. As he ate, a faint droning noise intruded on his awareness. He frowned and tilted his head as he tried to locate it. It sounded like insects or a conversation heard from a long way away.
Or a TV…
He looked towards the family room. Even if the blocky TV still worked after all that time, it wouldn’t have any electricity to power it. And yet, the crackle persisted. It really sounded like a talk show turned down to the lowest audible volume.
Guy moved towards the closed door. As he drew near it, individual voices became audible. A laugh track played. He twisted the handle and pushed open the door.
The noise ceased instantly. The TV’s screen was black. The couch still stood at the opposite wall, waiting for its family to return to it for a night of entertainment.
Am I actually going crazy? Guy pressed his sleeve over the lower half of his face to protect against the mould. Maybe the fungus is hallucinogenic. Can you be sent on a trip just by inhaling it? I thought psychedelic mushrooms needed to be eaten.
The Haunting of Rookward House Page 11
