Haunted (2 page)

The House on Rivermet

In September of 1992, just seven days after my second bio-child was born, we had to move from our apartment into a small duplex on Rivermet.
 
Things were pretty tough back then.
 
I’d been working at a local bar as a bartender/waitress and my boss felt it was too dangerous for me to continue once I’d really started showing.
 
With only my husband’s income, we couldn’t afford the expensive apartment.
 
We went house hunting and found this quaint little duplex.
 
It was definitely a fixer upper, but the price was right.

I’ll never forget the first time I walked into the place.
  
It was dingy and small, but with two bedrooms and a decent sized living room, it was good enough.
 
Except for the smell.
 
The air was thick with must.
 
I knew I had some major cleaning ahead of me, and just seven days after having a baby, I wasn’t sure I was up to the challenge.
 
We signed the lease, took the kids to his parents, and went back to clean.
 
By the end of the day, we were ready to move in.

Now I have to admit that the place was really cute once the layers of dust and crud had been removed.
 
It had all kinds of potential.
 
Or so I thought.
 
I was uneasy being there, but who actually likes being in an empty, dirty house?
 
I sloughed it off and the next morning we moved in.

Looking back (because we all know the hind sight adage), the strange happenings began that very first day.
 
My oldest daughter refused to sleep in her room.
 
She was only 3, so that’s to be expected in a new place.
 
However, she also refused to play in her room.
 
And that was pretty weird.
 
I didn’t like that room either.
 
I can’t tell you why, I just didn’t.
 
It made me terribly uncomfortable to be in there.
 
So much so, that I wouldn’t put the baby in there either.
 
I tried a few times, but found myself continuously checking on her to make sure she was still breathing.
 
Probably normal behavior for a new mom, but then again, I wasn’t the freaking out kind of person.

The disappearances started immediately.
 
The baby’s pacifier, bottles, everyone’s shoes, and even silverware came up missing all the time.
 
I mean every day, ten times or more a day, something would go missing.
 
I could lay the baby down, stick her pacifier in her mouth and go to the kitchen.
 
I’d go to the sink, or fridge, or wherever, and the pacifier I’d just given her would be sitting right in front of me.
 
The first few times it happened, I laughed about it.
 
Maybe post partum or something?
 
Obviously, my mind wasn’t working right.
 

Five days after we moved in, the scary stuff began.
 
Chrissy, my friend’s 3 year-old, had come for a sleep over.
 
My husband had left to bowl with his brother, leaving just me and the three little ones at home.
 
The baby napped on the couch while the toddlers and I played.
  
Both sat on my lap as we practiced the alphabet song.
 
All of a sudden, Chrissy glanced over my shoulder toward the door.
 
She stopped singing and her face went white.
 
She looked terrified.
 
I turned to see what she was looking at, and the face of a man peered through the small window in the front room door.
 
His shaggy, dirty-blond hair hung limply around his narrow face.
 
The dark circles under his eyes could have been bruises.
 
His face was really pale.
 
I mean hadn’t seen the sunlight in 100 years white.
 
Unblinking, he stared at me.
 
Then he was gone.
 
Poof.
 
Nothing.
 

The girls had already started crying, but before I could put them down and get my gun (which was what I had every intention of doing), his face appeared in my living room window.
 
I was stunned and couldn’t move.
 
He disappeared again, and my body went into overdrive.
 
I shoved the girls behind the couch, grabbed the phone and dialed 911, and headed into my bedroom to grab our gun.
 
By the time dispatch answered I was locked, loaded, and back in the living room with the children.
 

Standing in the middle of the room gave me a clear view of the kitchen and the back door.
 
That’s what I was waiting for.
 
I figured he’d try to kick in the back door if he intended to enter.
 
As expected, his face appeared in the kitchen window.
 
He looked right me.
 
Now a normal person, even a peeping Tom, doesn’t just stand there and stare at you when you have a loaded 45 pointed at their head.
 
But this guy did.
 
No expression on his face whatsoever.
 
No fear, no recognition that I was about to shoot him, nothing.
 
And then he was gone.

I still had the phone to my ear and the dispatch officer told me the police had arrived out front and that I was to secure the weapon.
 
My reply?
 
“No way!
 
You tell them to get someone around back and when they knock on my door, I’ll put it away.
 
Hell, I’ll hand it to them, but there is NO way I’m putting this down until one of them is in the house.”

When they knocked, I released the chambered round, dropped the clip, and opened the door.
 
I handed the officer the gun butt first.
 
He came in and I was finally able to sooth the terrified 3 year olds.
 

Several minutes went by, and the other 3 policemen called the one talking to me outside.
 
They were out there a long time.
 
Finally, he returned and looked like he was trying not to laugh.
 
He asked me again exactly what I’d seen.
 
Frustrated, I repeated the story.
 

When I’d finished, he laughed.
 
“Mamm, have you taken a good look at the outside of this building?”

“No, we haven’t lived here that long.”

“Well, I’ll tell ya what.
 
I’m not sure what you thought you saw, but the ground on the west side over here slopes down.
 
The man you think you saw would have been 9 feet tall to look in those windows.
 
There’s no footprints out there anywhere.”

My jaw dropped.
 
I wasn’t crazy.
 
And it wasn’t just me!
 
The girls saw him too!

“When will your husband get home?”

“He’s on his way now,” I answered.

“Okay, that’s good.
 
Now you need to put the gun away, and I’ll wait outside until he gets here.”

It was blatantly obvious he thought I was a whack job.
 
But what could I do?
 
He was right about the slope.
 
I hadn’t thought of it when I’d seen the man, but it was there.

After that, it got weirder.

***

For the next several days, different items continued to disappear.
 
Now I want to make sure I’m very clear about these so-called disappearances.
 
We could be sitting at the table eating, put down a fork or spoon, reach to pick it back up--and it would be gone.
 
I realize this does happen from time to time.
 
Especially when there’s a 3 year-old around.
 
However, when it is occurring during every meal, and you can’t find the utensil on the floor or stuck in the high chair, it’s a bit unnerving.
 
In addition to the silverware, shoes, clothing, and other things would go missing too.

Our visitor (and by that time I was certain we had an unseen visitor) seemed particularly fond of my makeup.
 
But it only messed with it, while I was putting it on.
 
If I put down an eye shadow, and went to check on the children, it would be gone when I returned.
 

Except for the man in the window, most of the activities seemed playful and childlike.
 
At times I nearly convinced myself that it must be the ghost of a youngster playing pranks,
 
Other times, it was difficult to live in that delusion.
 
The overwhelming feeling of dread and fear that emanated from the bedroom could be completely debilitating.
  

The feelings weren’t subtle and came on quickly.
 
I could walk by the bedroom door 10 times and feel nothing.
 
The eleventh time?
 
It would hit me full force, stopping me in my tracks.
 
Almost like I’d ran into a tractor beam or force field.
 
In an instant, I’d be freezing and paralyzed with fear.
 
My racing heart would thud against my chest so hard it was actually physically painful.
 
It only lasted a few seconds, but that was long enough to scare the crap out of me.

On Friday, we’d lived there two weeks.
 
By then, our ghost had added something new to his bag of tricks.
 
No matter which room I was in, I would see this white mist in my peripheral vision.
 
As soon as I’d realize it was there, I’d turn to look and it would be gone.
 
I got smart after a while.
 
I stopped looking head on and would watch it from the corner of my eye. The mist itself was nearly transparent.
 
Almost like a sphere shaped cloud of smoke, it hovered about a foot from the floor.
 
As long as I didn’t look at it directly, it would stay for several minutes at a time.
 
Floating in and out of my blind spot as if it were trying to get my attention.

Friday night we decided to get out and have some fun.
 
My nerves were wrangled and my husband was sick of hearing me gripe about the haunted house.
 
It’s not that he didn’t believe me, he saw the mist too.
 
He was there when things disappeared.
 
He just didn’t believe there was anything to be afraid of.
 
And if it weren’t for that occasional heart pounding fear, I’d have agreed with him.

We took the kids to his parents for the night and went out on the town.
 

The next morning, he was working on the bathroom floor.
 
I walked up to the door to ask him a few questions.
 
He started to answer me and abruptly stopped talking.
 
His eyes locked on something over my shoulder and his jaw dropped.
 

“What is wrong with you?” I asked.

He didn’t say a word but all the color drained from his face.

I spun around to see what he was looking at.
 
A tall shadow, shaped like a man, paced along the kitchen wall.
 
I gasped and the shadow stopped and turned to face me.
 
It looked as if it were staring right at me.
 
Within seconds it took off and went down the wall disappearing into the pantry.

Both of us were silent for a moment.
 
“Did you see that?” he finally asked.

“I told you.”

“I know.
 
But did you SEE that?”

“Yes, I saw it.
 
This house is haunted!”

He shook his head and pulled himself to a standing position.
 
“Now honey,” he said.
 
“Don’t get all freaked out.
 
It’s just a ghost.
 
They can’t hurt you.”

But he was very wrong.
 
Very very wrong.

***

It was dark and stormy that night.
 
(Okay no it wasn’t, but it should have been!)
 
I jest, but truly it was a horrifying experience.
 
Even now, it freaks me out to think about it.
 
Worse, the fear that most folks will believe I’ve completely flipped my lid after telling of those awful events, nearly throws me into a panic attack.
 
Exactly one week after we saw the shadow, things escalated again.

My 3 year-old was asleep on a palate on the floor and the baby was snug in her crib.
 
My husband’s rhythmic snoring irritated me at first, but finally lulled me to sleep.
 
I don’t know what woke me up.
 
One minute I was sound asleep, and the next sitting straight up in bed.
 
I listened intently for a noise or some sign of what was wrong.
 
Something had to be wrong.
 
I could feel the wrongness of the situation deep within me.
 
My heart raced so fast and hard that it made it difficult to hear much of anything.