The Haunted (19 page)

“What the hell are you doing?” Claire screamed.

There was a sudden cessation of movement. Both of them blinked at her dumbly, almost as though
awakening from a trance; then they grabbed and pulled on their clothes, embarrassed. No, more than embarrassed. Ashamed. Pam met her eyes for a brief second, and what Claire saw there was confusion and humiliation. It was as though she’d been completely unaware of what she’d been doing and had only now realized it.

But that did not excuse her and her husband’s actions. Claire looked disgustedly at the shiny, worn-out Barbie in Pam’s hand, at the fouled Christmas decoration Joe had dropped. “Get out of here!” she ordered.

She marched back up to the kitchen and stepped to the side of the door to let them pass. Janet, standing opposite her, looked shocked by what had happened down there, but, unsettlingly, also intrigued. Claire glanced away, not wanting to meet her gaze.

Pam and Joe emerged moments later, hurrying past without looking at either of them, and Claire followed the couple into the living room, watching as they rushed out toward the street and their car, slamming the front door behind them. Julian had appeared from somewhere and was sidling next to her, drink in hand. “What was that all about?”

She wanted to tell him, but not here, not now, so she shrugged it off and asked him where he’d been.

“Upstairs.” He grinned. “Showing off. I convinced Cole to check out my record collection. He was suitably impressed.”

Claire looked around. The house suddenly seemed much more crowded, and she saw several people who had been in the backyard only moments before. Her first thought was that something had happened out there, something that had chased them all inside, but though the men and women around her seemed subdued, they appeared neither frightened nor upset, and she supposed it was possible that they had come in
because they were looking for food or drink, or perhaps preparing to leave.

The lights flickered.

Claire froze, half expecting the electricity to go off. It was rare to have a blackout unless there was a thunderstorm or a major wind, but it was not unheard-of, and she thought with resignation that this would probably be an appropriate ending for their party, which seemed to be heading rapidly and steadily downhill.

The lights continued to flicker, making the living room seem as though it were being lit by candles. Glancing through the front window, Claire saw that none of the houses across the street appeared to be affected.

Of course not.

“Do you think it’s—” she started to ask Julian, but her question was interrupted by a loud roar from the rear of the house, a sudden harsh, lionlike sound that made her jump and caused Julian to spill his drink.

“What the hell was
that
?” he asked. He didn’t sound frightened, but she noticed that he wasn’t going back there to investigate, either. Everyone, in fact, had frozen, as though waiting to see what would happen next.

The sound came again, only lower this time, and halfway through, it began fading away until it dwindled down to nothing.

Wafting in from the rear of the house was a strong scent of burned toast.

Almost as one, the guests moved to the left in order to see down the hallway, the area from whence the noise and the smell seemed to have come. They were looking at one another, talking quietly, wondering what was going on. Claire and Julian shifted over, too.

A tall man was shuffling down the hall.

They all grew quiet.

The man was dressed in heavy clothing,
inappropriate for the weather, and he moved slowly, as though his legs did not work properly. Claire tried desperately to figure out who he was, but it was hard to see his face because the hallway was so dark.
Too
dark, she thought, and she realized that once again something was wrong with the lights, although this time they were merely dim, not flickering.

The shambling figure moved slowly toward the living room.

Claire squinted into the gloom, but his features grew no clearer to her. It was as though she needed glasses, and while he continued to come nearer, his face never emerged fully enough from the shadows for him to become recognizable. His clothes were sharply defined, however, and she thought there was something familiar about them, although she could not immediately say what.

Gasps greeted his appearance as the man shuffled into the living room.

Now he could be seen. People were moving away, backing up. It was a face that should have remained in darkness. Dark, sunken eyes revealed no whites. A flattened nose seemed lost amid the swollen folds of mottled flesh that made up the forehead, cheeks and chin. The mouth, too large, was grinning, teeth inappropriately bright. Behind her, the front door opened, then closed as someone left.

Escaped
.

The man stopped. She recognized him now. She still had no idea where she had seen those clothes before, but that grinning mouth was unmistakable. This was the man from her nightmare, the man from the basement.

Someone else left the house.

Claire stared in horror. That grinning mouth was opening impossibly wide, wider than the muscles of his
face should have been able to stretch. From it issued that horrifying roar, only, this close, the volume was practically unbearable.

The lights went out, and the house was thrown into darkness. Someone screamed. Seconds later, the lights came on again and the figure was gone. Everyone was looking around frantically, afraid he might suddenly pop up right behind them, but there was no sign of the man.

Cole was the first one to speak. He was close by, and he turned to Julian. “That’s the man who died in your house.”

Claire had no idea what he was referring to, but she knew he was saying that the man was a ghost, and she looked at Julian. “See?” she said. “What did I tell you?” She was breathing heavily, as though she’d just run up several flights of stairs. She could hear the amplified sound of her crazy-pumping heart in her ears.

The party was breaking up. People were leaving without saying good-bye, and the few who did stop to speak with them made no mention of what had happened, simply offered perfunctory congratulations before they quickly departed, like guests ashamed of a drunken host’s behavior. In moments, the house was all but empty.

Rick, surprisingly, was the only one with an honest reaction. He was the last to leave, and he shook his head as he looked back toward the hall. “What the hell
was
that?” he said.

Claire and Julian shrugged helplessly.

“That was a fuckin’ ghost, man. We all saw it.”

It felt good to hear the word spoken, even if it was by Rick.

“Shit! Did anyone get a picture? I didn’t even think about it. I shoulda whipped out my phone. Did anybody else take one?”

“I don’t know,” Julian admitted.

“People always wonder why those UFO photos are always grainy and shit, why no one ever gets a good picture of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or whatever. It’s because when it’s happening, when it’s going down, you don’t think of stuff like that. You’re too scared to even move.”

“You’re right,” Claire told him.

“But we were here,” Rick said. “We saw it. All of us. So don’t go second-guessing yourself tomorrow, telling yourself you imagined it or it didn’t really happen. It happened. I’m a witness. That was no figment of your imagination. That was a ghost. And there were a good dozen or so people who stood here and watched the whole thing.”

“He’s right.”

Surprised, Rick turned to see who had spoken. Cole Hubbard was standing on the stoop behind him, and Claire wondered whether he had gone and come back or had been there the entire time. She could not recall seeing him leave.

“That
was
a ghost,” Cole said. “And we all saw it.” He looked from Julian to Claire. “I can’t say I’m all that surprised, and probably most of the other neighbors aren’t, either. In fact, that might even be the reason some of them came.” He motioned toward the two houses on either side of theirs. “Or didn’t come.”

“What are you talking about?” Rick said.

“A lot of old neighborhoods have a ‘haunted’ house. Well, this is ours.”

“I told you.” Claire faced Julian. “I told you.”

“You want my advice?” Cole said. “Sell the house. Sell it now before the word spreads. Get out while you can.”

They weren’t saying anything to Megan or James. Julian was adamant about that. They didn’t know what was really going on here, he argued, and he didn’t want to frighten the kids needlessly.

Though initially reluctant, Claire finally agreed. “But we
do
know what’s going on here,” she told him pointedly. “Our house is haunted. We saw a ghost. We
all
saw a ghost.”

“Not necessarily,” he argued. “There were a lot of people, some of them who weren’t invited. You caught that man in James’s room. This guy might’ve been a party crasher, too. Everyone had had a little too much to drink; those lights were flickering. We might not’ve seen what we thought we saw. And when the lights went out, he might’ve just gone out the back door.”

“Come on! This wasn’t some teenage keg party. Guys from other neighborhoods weren’t sneaking into our house to meet chicks and score free booze. This was a housewarming party with a countable number of people attending. And just because I didn’t recognize that man in James’s room doesn’t mean you didn’t invite him. I’m pretty sure he’s a neighbor. But that ghost …” She glared at him. “Cole said it was a man who died in our house. You didn’t even tell me about that.”

“I didn’t know,” he lied.

“Right.”

“I didn’t.”

“I don’t care right now. But I do think Cole’s right. I think we should sell the house.”

Julian sighed. “We just bought it. We can’t—”

“We can’t what? Sell it? Of course we can. We’ll find another house.”

“We can’t afford it.”

“Our house is haunted! What part of that don’t you understand?”

“Even if it is haunted,” he told her, “and I’m not saying it is, a ghost can’t hurt anyone. They might frighten people, but they can’t physically harm a person.”

“Fear can cause heart attacks. And ghosts can make people trip and fall if they startle them. If they can also play records and move laundry baskets …” She exhaled heavily, disgusted. “I’m not going to argue with you about the physical properties of ghosts. What I’m saying is, I’m not going to live in a haunted house.”

“You’re going to have to. Look, I don’t have any jobs lined up after this one. And the town of Jardine is not exactly a hotbed of legal activity, so your phone’s not ringing off the hook, either. We have to be realistic. If we were in California, we might both have enough business that we could afford a do-over. But right now, that’s not an option. We have enough money coming in, and in the bank, to make our house payments and pay our monthly bills, with a little bit left over. But that’s it. The down payment for this place pretty much cleaned us out. We can’t afford to do it again. Or pay all those points and fees. Even if we
did
qualify for another loan. So we can’t just pull up stakes and move. It’s financially impossible.”

He could tell from the expression on her face that he’d gotten through to her, but she wasn’t going to
simply give up. “Contracts are made to be broken,” she said. “I should know. I’m a lawyer.”

“And you can somehow weasel us out of those hundreds of pages of rules and obligations that we signed? That
you
signed? Face it, unless we win the lottery, or Bill Gates hires you as his personal attorney and hires me to completely revamp Microsoft’s Web presence, we’re stuck here. At least for now.”

“Fine,” she said. “But we need to come up with a plan. I don’t feel safe here. And even if we don’t tell the kids anything—
yet
—they need to be protected.”

“Agreed.”

“So … ?”

“So we keep our eyes open. We try to find out ourselves exactly what’s going on, research the house, the neighborhood, whatever, and we make sure that Megan and James are never in the house alone, especially at night.”

“That’s about the lamest plan I ever heard,” Claire said. But she didn’t have anything better, and, for the moment at least, they seemed to have called a truce.

It was daytime, though. Morning. Tonight would be a different story, and he had no doubt that, mentally and psychologically, they would each end up facing once again what had happened. Megan and James would be home as well, and as he thought about it now, it seemed to him that their bedrooms upstairs were much too far away from the master bedroom.

He wasn’t about to mention that, however. He might be just as frightened as Claire, but it was his job to be strong, not only for her but for the whole family, and he needed to put a good face on everything, needed to pretend this was no big deal.

He had expected Claire to get up from the couch and leave, to get a drink or go to the bathroom or start doing
the breakfast dishes or do whatever it was she would usually do when a conversation was over. But she remained in place, and there was a look on her face that he didn’t trust. He knew even before she spoke that he was not going to like what she was about to say, a feeling that intensified when she met his gaze, then immediately looked away. “You know,” she said, “I thought for a while that it might be Miles. Obviously, it’s not,” she added quickly. “But …” She let the thought dangle.

Julian didn’t trust himself to speak.

“I’ve thought I’ve felt him before. Not just here and not just on Farris Street, but back in California, in our old house.” She spoke rapidly, as though afraid he might cut her off. “I’ve never seen him, but there’ve been signs. Little indications that he was around, watching over us. I know you’ve seen them, too. Or heard them. Or felt them. And that last time? I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I just … I just wanted to tell you. I guess I wanted to know if you were thinking the same thing.”

She looked at him hopefully, but he turned away, unable to face her. Of course he’d thought the same thing, but he’d never allowed himself to dwell on it, and he would never admit it to her. Even now, the tears were close, and he forced his mind to change the subject, think about something else, before his eyes overflowed and he started to cry and he found himself unable to stop.