by Val Crowe
For whatever reason, she wanted to catch up.
I couldn’t think of an excuse not to talk to her, and I didn’t know anyone else at the bar, so I was forced to talk to Charlotte for what felt like several agonizing eternities.
The last I’d heard of her, she was apparently engaged or something, but she told me that hadn’t worked out. Now, she was taking a break from “anything romantic,” she said.
She wanted to know what I was up to, and I told her that now I was crisscrossing the country looking for ghosts instead of running from them, and she said that was cool of me, and that she would always be grateful for what I had done for her with that “barney-thing or whatever you called it.”
Which meant that I was forced to relive, in my head, the most awkward sexual experience of my entire life.
Lucky for me, a miracle happened, and Rylan showed up right around then. Rylan Vincent was a friend of mine who used to have a youtube channel documenting hauntings and now was settled down with her girlfriend remodeling a bed and breakfast or something.
When I saw her, I waved at her like a drowning man beckoning a lifeguard.
She came over to me, flipping her long red braid over her shoulder. She looked pissed off. And hot. She always looked hot. But I pretended not to notice that because it was poor form to be attracted to her. Also, I was pretty sure she could kick my ass, and I was afraid of her.
“What the hell are you doing in town?” she greeted me with.
“Hello to you, too,” I said. “And didn’t you move away? I thought you were playing house with Mundy.”
“Well, Mundy is fucking smothering, so I left her ass.”
“Oh.” I turned back to my beer.
Charlotte smiled at Rylan. “Hi? Do I know you?”
“Wait, you guys didn’t meet?” I said. “Seriously?”
“I don’t think so,” said Rylan.
“This is Charlotte,” I said.
“Like Wade’s Charlotte?” said Rylan.
“Oh my God, we were not together like that,” said Charlotte. “It was a casual thing.”
Rylan nodded at her. “Good girl. You keep it casual. Never commit. It’s like surrendering your soul.”
I cleared my throat.
“What?” said Rylan. “As if you’d know. You’ve, like, never had a relationship.”
“That’s not true,” I said. I had a very steady live-in ghost girlfriend, thank you very much.
Rylan rolled her eyes.
“Well, um, it was nice seeing you, Deacon,” said Charlotte, and she winked at me.
I furrowed my brow. What the hell was that about? “Yeah, nice seeing you too,” I said, but my voice sounded pretty worried.
“Do you have my number?” said Charlotte. “You should text me sometime.”
“I, uh, what?” I was reeling here. “That’s cool. I don’t think we’ll need to text each other.”
“Oh,” said Charlotte, taken aback. “Okay.” Looking embarrassed, she left Rylan and me alone.
“You have no game, Deacon,” said Rylan, who was waving money at the bartender.
“Um? You think she was coming onto me?”
“She was throwing herself at you,” said Rylan.
“But we had the worst sex in human history,” I said. “And besides, Wade never forgave me for hooking up with her in the first place. If I did it again, he’d disown me.”
Rylan considered this. “Well, I guess that makes sense.”
“I can’t figure why she’d want to come onto me,” I said, taking a drink of my beer. “The sex was really bad. I couldn’t even make her come.”
“I think that’s kind of typical for men,” said Rylan. “You’re probably no worse than the rest of your gender.”
“That’s…” I shook my head. “Sad.”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s a real drawback to hetero sex, I think. The lack of knowledge about the way the other person’s body works.”
“Uh, I don’t really see it as a drawback.”
“Yeah, but you’ve never even tried to have sex with another guy.”
“No, but I know that I don’t want to do that, so…” I eyed her. “You’re in a weird mood. Maybe you and Mundy should make up.”
“No, I’m fine,” said Rylan. “I’m totally fine. I’m free, and I’m never going back.”
The bartender finally noticed her. Rylan ordered two shots.
When the bartender brought them, she took them both, one after another. Then her shoulders slumped and she put her forehead down on the bar.
“Rylan?” I said, worried. “You okay?”
“Mmmph,” she said. She rolled her head sideways, so that she was facing me, but her cheek was still pressed into the bar. “I’m thinking about calling her.”
“Who?”
“Mundy,” she said. “I thought it would be easy, you know? I thought, ‘I can leave. I can leave.’” She shook her head. “But now I think I was wrong. Because I miss her.”
I took a drink of my beer. “If you want to call her, I think you should.”
“No, it’s a weak move,” she said. “I’ll have to apologize and grovel and shit.”
“Well,” I said, “you miss her. Which is worse? Missing her or grovelling?”
She grimaced. “I don’t know.”
“It seems to me that the grovelling would only last a brief period of time, but the missing her could go on indefinitely.”
Rylan nodded slowly. “That was a surprisingly smart thing you just said there, Deacon.”
I shrugged. “Yeah? Well, don’t expect me to say anything smart again. I’m usually pretty dumb.”
“Yes,” said Rylan. “Yes, you are. Especially about girls.”
So, Rylan called Mundy.
Mundy wanted her to come home.
But Rylan was too drunk to drive, so she had to wait for Mundy to come pick her up. I sat out in front of the bar with Rylan and waited for her.
After Mundy picked her up, I went back to the Airstream.
The lights were off when I opened the door, but I could still see Mads. She was glowing a little bit. She was sitting on my bed.
I went over to her, and I put my hand against her cheek. Not really against her cheek, because then she’d start to flicker and lose shape. A fraction of an inch away, so close that I could feel the coolness radiating off her form. “Hey,” I said in a soft voice.
“What are you doing, Deacon?” she murmured.
“I missed you,” I said.
She sighed. “You’re the one who’s been avoiding me.”
“Because I know what you’re going to say,” I said. “And… let’s just not, okay? Lie down with me.”
She looked away. “We shouldn’t do that.”
“Fuck should,” I said.
I got into my pajamas, and I climbed under the covers and she reappeared next to me, facing me, stretched out as if she was lying down too, even though she wasn’t making contact with the bed.
I looked into her eyes.
She looked into mine.
And then I shut them. I liked her close.
* * *
Wade didn’t come back to Sanford House with me the following day. He couldn’t keep missing class, he said, and I told him it was no big deal, because I could walk through the house without him.
I wasn’t sure what to hope for. I half-wanted there to be ghosts there, because then Wade wouldn’t be compelled to go after Tex Sanford. But I didn’t want to think of Cheyenne having been overtaken by malevolent spirits. I’d been under the influence of them too often in my life, and it was always awful. Committing suicide because ghosts had forced her, it was a terrible end. I barely remembered Cheyenne, but she’d seemed like a really nice girl, and I didn’t wish anything so harrowing on her.
Anyway, I hadn’t felt anything when we’d been to the house before. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. Sometimes, I didn’t see a manifestation of a haunting right away. But with Ridinger Hall, I�
��d felt something right away, and the same with Point Oakes, the haunted amusement park. So, I wasn’t necessarily expecting anything.
When I arrived, Wren Bentley met me at the door. “Philip wanted to stay home and take off work,” she said. “He was worried about me being alone in the house with you. But he took off work yesterday to put the crib together and paint the baby’s room, and I told him to save up his leave time for after the baby’s born. I said that I didn’t think you would hurt me.”
“Of course not,” I said. “But I can understand why your husband would be concerned. I’m a stranger. You don’t know me.”
“You’re just going to walk through, right? You said fifteen minutes.”
“That’s right,” I said. “It shouldn’t take any time at all.”
“Well, okay, I’m going to go out in the garage, because I can’t stop worrying about how disorganized the shelving is out there. They call it nesting, but I think it’s some kind of prenatal OCD.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but I just smiled and nodded.
“Anyway, look around,” she said. “And when you’re done, no need to tell me. Just let yourself out, all right?” She smiled at me.
“Great,” I said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she said and left through the front door. The garage wasn’t connected to the house, owing to the fact that the house was so old. The garage looked a lot newer than the house itself.
Once she was gone, I took a deep breath and looked around the foyer area. There was a coat rack attached to one wall. Coats hung there and shoes were sitting on the floor beneath it. The floor was hardwood. It had been sanded down and refinished, but it still was a little warped and imperfect in some places. It was probably the original floor.
On either side, there were doorways. I decided to go through the left doorway first.
I stepped into what must be a den of some kind. There was wallpaper on the wall—a maroon motif pattern. A dark wood antique desk with a locking cover sat against one wall. There were a few sitting chairs, upholstered in a maroon velvet fabric. A rug on the floor in front of a fireplace. On the mantle were pictures of Wren and Philip and a framed picture of a strip of sonogram photos.
I walked through the room slowly, running my fingers over the backs of the chairs and over the mantle.
I didn’t feel anything. This room seemed normal enough.
What I did have, however, was the odd sensation that someone was watching me.
I turned to face the doorway I’d come through, but there was nothing there. And it didn’t extinguish the sensation. I was compelled to turn around, to make sure something wasn’t climbing out of the fireplace.
Unsettled, I swallowed.
Now, it was possible this sensation meant something. Maybe something was there, watching me. Or I could be psyching myself out. This house was creepy, considering that Cheyenne had shot herself here.
Come to think of it, why had Wren and Philip even bought the place? Who wanted to live in a place where a woman had died?
Whatever the case, I was now feeling as though I didn’t want to linger. I told Wade I’d walk through this place. I wanted to get that over with. I went through a doorway on the far wall of the den and found myself in the kitchen.
The kitchen was small. It had a fireplace too, back-to-back with the one in the den. There was another mantle, but here it was being used for storage of various kitchen gadgets. A coffee maker, a blender, and a toaster oven all sat up there. Probably because the kitchen had so little counter space as to be criminal. It had been outfitted with modern appliances, but they seemed a little out of place in the old kitchen, almost as if the room wasn’t pleased with the intrusion of modernity. Almost as if it was trying to block those things out or expel them.
And I still felt like someone was watching me.
There was a table in the corner of the kitchen, and two other doorways. One led to the right side of the house. The other was closed.
I went to that closed door and put my hand on the doorknob. I opened the door and I saw dark steps leading down to the basement.
And then something seemed to move out of the corner of my eye. I raised my gaze to see what it was, but there was nothing there. But I shut the basement door to follow whatever it was I had almost seen.
I hurried into a small hallway. A door off that led to a bathroom. It was a half bath with only a sink and a toilet. The tile was black and white and there was a photo of a black-and-white cat on the wall. The cat was stretching, looking pleased with itself, and something about its expression was unsettling.
I shut the door on that stupid cat.
And then looked back into the kitchen, because I was sure there was someone there.
Except the kitchen was empty. Of course.
I squared my shoulders. Okay, this place was either haunted or I had turned into a coward.
If I was afraid, you couldn’t really blame me. I had bad experiences with ghosts. I wished Mads was with me. She hadn’t been there when I woke up that morning. She did that sometimes. She’d run off and not speak to me for a few days, especially after I did things like I’d done last night.
I worried that one of these times, she’d never come back.
She obviously wanted to leave me alone, at least part of her did. She was never strong enough to really do it, though.
I hoped that thoughts of Mads would chase away my feeling of unease in the house, but it didn’t work.
I left the bathroom and made my way into the living room, which had another motif pattern on the wallpaper, this one deep green. There was a high-backed green couch with curling wooden legs and a television on the wall.
A portable crib or playpen thing was already set up in one of the corners.
Man, I really hoped there weren’t bad ghosts in this place. I didn’t like the idea of a baby being born into a nasty place.
I hurried through the living room and now I had made a circle. I was back at the steps.
I started to ascend them. They were even steeper than they looked. I had to clutch the railing to keep my balance.
At the top, there was a hallway that led back to the end of the house. I walked all the way there. A window was at the end. It looked down over the backyard. The grass was brown and dry because it was winter. I could see the garage, where Wren was working.
I put my back to the window.
The Bentleys hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary, and they lived here. If there were ghosts so powerful that they’d made Cheyenne kill herself, then surely the Bentleys would have seen them or felt their presence. This place couldn’t be haunted.
I squared my shoulders and turned to the door on my right. I opened it. It was a baby’s room.
There was a crib and there was a mural on the far wall, painted elephants and tigers and giraffes against the sunset. It was very nice.
I stepped into the room.
She was behind the door.
She came at me, moving in that stuttering way that ghosts sometimes did, lurching and gliding at the same time. Her face was ruined. Half of her skin wasn’t there, leaving behind bloody meat and a shattered jawbone. One of her eyes was bloodshot. The other was milky. Her hair was matted with blood and her clothes were bloody too.
She grabbed me by the shoulders and she moved what was left of her mouth, like she was trying to talk to me. But all that came out was a garbled, awful noise.
I tried to back away, afraid she was going to try to feed on me.
Instead, she threw back her head and let out an ear-piercing shriek.
CHAPTER SIX
“So, it’s haunted,” I said into the phone. “It’s definitely haunted.”
Wade sighed. “So, she did kill herself?”
“I… I don’t know,” I said. “She’s the one I saw. It was Cheyenne. She looked pretty messed up. She had a gunshot wound and her whole face was…” I shuddered. “It was bad.”
“Well, that’s we
ird,” said Wade.
“Why is it weird?”
“If Cheyenne is the one haunting the place, then she can’t have made herself kill herself,” said Wade.
“Look, it’s not really like that,” I said. “I’ve told you this before, right?”
“You say a lot of stuff, but whether I listen to it or not is another thing. What are you talking about?”
“So, like a haunting is really just an imprint of energy that’s left on a place, usually if something violent happens,” I said. “The spirits come because they’re attracted to that energy. And if the energy changes, the spirits can change form too. The stronger the spirits, the more they want to feed. They’ll sometimes arrange for bad or violent things to happen by influencing the living, that way it adds to the energy of the haunting.”
“I think I follow that,” he said. “So, you’re saying that after Cheyenne died, then the spirits that were already there could change into her form.”
“Right,” I said.
“So, what? That means it’s not Cheyenne?”
“It’s…” I paused, trying to think about it. “It’s like a recording of Cheyenne, only it records more than just her image and her voice. It also records her emotions and her desires. It’s limited, though. It’s Cheyenne in one moment. It’s not all of Cheyenne.”
“Huh,” he said. “Interesting.”
“Sometimes, though, the ghosts retain a remarkable amount of the person they’ve recorded,” I said. “Macon Symonds, for example, was so much Macon that he thought he was still alive. That was how I managed to get him to release his form, by convincing him he was a ghost.”
“So, you’re saying that Cheyenne did kill herself?”
“Well, I think so,” I said. “But one thing bothers me about it all. If there were ghosts there powerful enough to manifest and influence Cheyenne to kill herself, then the people living in the house now should have witnessed some kind of haunting.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because those are some powerful, angry ghosts,” I said. “And if they had just managed to feed the haunting’s energy by getting Cheyenne to kill herself, then they’d be even more powerful. But the Bentleys have been there for over a year, and they haven’t seen anything.”
