The Haunted (24 page)

Julie looked at her mother, who nodded her approval.

The two girls went to the library, where Megan got her reading program form signed by one of the librarians and received her prize: a “Night at the Movies” pass, which included free entry to the theater, a free small popcorn and a free small drink. “Wow,” Julie said. “I
didn’t know they gave out such good prizes. I’m going to do the reading program next year.”

The librarian smiled. “Tell your friends.”

They went on one of the library’s computers, sharing it, and checked out the Facebook pages of some of their frenemies until Julie’s mom found them and told Julie it was time to go.

Megan walked out with them to the parking lot, where Julie’s mom had parked her car. “I had fun,” she said. “We should do this more often.”

Julie smiled. “Yeah.”

They said good-bye, and Megan walked back to her mom’s office. She expected to see a client or two, or find her mother on the phone, but her mom was alone and writing something in longhand on a yellow pad of paper. Megan went to the bathroom, and at the same time checked the cuts on her legs. Once again, there was a vague stirring in the back of her mind, a sense that she had inflicted those wounds upon herself, though she still could not remember doing so and had no idea why she would.

They looked ugly, she thought, and that was good. It made
her
look ugly. Now maybe whatever had been exhorting her to take off her pants would not want her to do it any longer. In fact, maybe if she cut herself some more, it would provide her with additional insurance and keep that thing away from her.

Was that the reason she had done it in the first place,
if
she had done it in the first place?

No.

Something told her that if she had cut herself, she had done it because she wanted to, because she liked it.

Liked it in
that
way.

Horrified, embarrassed, ashamed, Megan looked up
from her bare legs and focused her eyes on the bathroom wall. That wasn’t possible, was it? People didn’t really do things like that for
those
reasons, did they? She didn’t see how, but something about it still rang true, and she was even more afraid of the house than she had been before. She did not want to go back, and wondered whether she could camp out here in her mom’s office, convince her parents to let her have a sleepover here with her friends, and then perhaps stretch that out to a week or so.

She was being ridiculous. Nothing like that would ever happen. She had to face the fact that she had to live in the house.

But maybe …

Reaching over, she started opening the drawers in the sink cabinet. Most of them were empty, but in one she found an old box of Band-Aids, a tube of Neosporin and a small pair of scissors. She took all of them out and placed them on the edge of the sink. The scissors, she saw upon further inspection, might be short and thin, but they were sharp, and the blades came to points. She picked them up, then looked down at her thighs. Her legs were ugly now, but she could make them even uglier, so that
nothing
would want her to pull her pants down.

She gathered her courage. Grimacing, she pressed the blade against her skin.

Pushed it in.

And, biting on her hand to keep from screaming, quickly pulled it through the flesh toward her hip.

The man with the knife was named John Lynch.

And he had been released from jail two days ago.

Julian learned about it only because he called the police station and asked to talk to Officer Rodriguez in order to find out the status of the case. Claire was at work, Megan was with her, and James was at his friend Robbie’s. For the first time in three days, Julian had the house completely to himself, and, taking advantage of this temporary freedom, he decided to check on his would-be attacker and see what was happening. He was shocked to discover that, contrary to what he’d been told, the man was neither in jail nor in a psych ward but had made bail and had been released on his own recognizance.

Rodriguez was on patrol and not available, but the case was no longer his anyway and had been assigned to a Detective Pena, who was the one to take Julian’s call. Pena was understanding and apologetic, but Julian was still angry that Lynch had been released, and he started lecturing the detective, describing in detail how he’d seen the man with the knife staring in at him while he was eating lunch. All of this was no doubt in the report, but Pena listened patiently before explaining that because there had been no specific verbal threats made
and no overt attempts to attack, Lynch had been automatically eligible for bail.

“He was holding a knife!”

“I understand that, Mr. Perry. And he will have a trial, and even if there is a plea deal, I can guarantee you that he will serve time. But until then, he is out on bail. If you see him again, however, if he makes any attempt to contact you, let us know immediately. In that case, we may be able to do something.”

“So if he terrorizes my wife or stabs my children, then you’ll be able to put him away. That’s good to know.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Perry—”

Julian hung up on him.

Immediately, he went outside and walked around the house, checking behind bushes, in the garage, even in the alley to make sure that that lunatic wasn’t lurking about. He’d asked the detective whether the police had any idea
why
Lynch had come to his house with a knife, but Pena said that the man had offered no explanation, had seemed confused, and had claimed that he meant no harm.

The guy was clearly crazy. What if he
did
return and try to attack Claire? Or Megan? Or James?

Julian should have told Claire everything that day, as soon as she came home. What the hell was wrong with him? Now it was too late to tell her about it. He’d made a huge mistake in not coming clean right away, and there was no way he could possibly explain what had happened and why he’d kept it a secret. Probably the best thing to do at this point was maintain his silence. He seldom went anywhere, was almost always home when Claire and the kids were there. He could keep an open eye out, watch for any sign of Lynch, and if the man showed up, he’d call the police and
then
tell Claire,
maybe even make it seem like it was the first time it had happened.

It was a chickenshit plan, the coward’s way out, but Julian justified it by telling himself that it would be wrong to stress out Claire even more. She was already freaked about the house and practically jumping at her own shadow. She was also troubled by the fact that, despite all of the modern research options at their disposal, neither of them had been able to dig up any significant information about their home or property. Her mental and emotional plates were full to overflowing. He didn’t want to add to her burden.

The garage was clear, as was the yard, and Julian closed all windows, locked the back door and walked out to the sidewalk in front of the house, scanning the neighborhood for a sign of anything unusual.

Nothing.

He went back into the house. He hadn’t found a baseball bat, as he’d originally planned, although he knew there was one somewhere in the basement or garage amid the surplus clutter of their storage items, but he did go to his tool chest and take out a hammer, just in case he needed a weapon. He doubted that he would have to use it, even if Lynch came back, but it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.

Julian still had that deadline and had been planning to spend the morning catching up on all the work he’d let slide lately, but the news about Lynch had thrown him off, and once upstairs in his office, he found himself staring dumbly at the screen, not an idea in his head. He reviewed the last changes he’d made to the page, thinking that a walk-through of recent work might help get his thoughts on track, and it seemed to help. He found a mistake he’d made, corrected it, and was suddenly back
in the game. He knew what he needed to do next, and he knew how to get the result he wanted.

Then he heard a voice from the hallway.

A man’s voice.

Julian stood, heart pounding, and grabbed his hammer, clutching the handle tightly. His first thought was that John Lynch had somehow gotten into the house, although he had no idea how that was possible. But as he cautiously approached the doorway, he could hear the voice talking—it had not
stopped
talking—and though he could not make out individual words, he recognized the tone and cadence.

It was the voice he had heard talking to Megan while she was asleep.

A chill crept up Julian’s back all the way to his neck. He entered the hallway, half expecting the murmuring to be silenced, but instead it grew louder, and once again it was coming from Megan’s room. He looked toward her doorway. It was daytime, but the hall was in shadow, and the hint of cool sunlight that emerged from the open doorway of his daughter’s bedroom made the surrounding corridor seem that much darker.

His hand hurt, but Julian refused to loosen his grip on the hammer. He continued moving forward slowly, not wanting to alert whatever it was to his presence. He could discern every third or fourth word now, but they made no sense.

“. . . comforter … canyons … cinnabar … sleep …”

Reaching Megan’s door, he peeked his head around the corner. There was movement in her mirror, a whitish blur that moved too fast for him to see, and then the voice was gone. From the opposite side of the house, not from his office but from farther out, the backyard, perhaps, came faint high laughter.

Hammer in hand, Julian explored Megan’s bedroom,
then James’s room, then the bathroom, then his own office. But he found nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing.

Maybe they needed to find some sort of exorcist.

A month ago, a week ago even, he would have laughed at the absurdity of such a thought. But then was then and now was now, and Claire was right. Something was wrong with their house and they needed to do something about it.

If there was a ghost in Megan’s room, a male ghost, did it …
he
… spy on her at night while she slept?

The thought was untenable, and Julian decided then and there that he and his daughter were going to exchange rooms. It might not help, it might be a complete waste of time, but this was the second instance when he had heard a man’s voice in Megan’s room, and this time he had also seen something in her mirror. There was no way he was going to allow her to spend another night in there.

In the back of his mind was the idea that, as Claire had said, they should sell the house. No room was probably safe. But that thought was muted, and did not possess the urgency it should have.

Claire.

For some reason, the image in his brain was one of her naked and spread wide, shaved in the way she had not been since having kids. Suddenly, he was erect and aroused, and before doing anything else, he went into the bathroom, pulled down his pants, knelt on the floor in front of the toilet and masturbated. He finished quickly, spurting into the bowl and flushing it, and after buckling his pants, he called Rick and Patrick and asked whether they could come over to help him move some furniture.

Rick was always up for playing hooky—besides, the print shop was his own business; he could do whatever
he wanted—and Patrick was planning to take an early lunch anyway, so his two friends came over, and within an hour, they had the furniture of the two rooms switched. Claire and Megan returned just as they were finishing, and though Megan reacted with shock and dismay—at least until Julian pointed out that her new room would be bigger—Claire merely looked at him with an expression indicating that, while she might not know the specifics, she did know why he was making this change.

Claire offered to feed Rick and Patrick, but Patrick said he needed to get back to work, and Rick said he was just going to grab a burger on his way to the print shop. The two men left, with Julian’s heartfelt thanks, and Megan went upstairs to hang up her posters and redecorate, leaving Julian and Claire alone in the kitchen. She started making sandwiches while he explained about the voice he’d heard. He made no mention of John Lynch, but he didn’t need to—this new news was frightening enough as it was.

“Maybe the kids should sleep in our room,” Claire said.

“Then where would we sleep?”

“Maybe we should
all
sleep in our room.”

Julian shook his head. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? We’re living in a haunted house. We should get out of here, leave and never come back. But if we don’t, we need to start making some accommodations to the situation.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“I don’t like their being upstairs, that far away from us.”

The truth was, he didn’t, either. But there was little they could do about it—that was how the house was built—and while he intended to take every precaution,
he said nothing to Claire, not wanting to frighten her even more.

The whole embrace of secrecy, this willingness—no,
desire
—to keep Claire out of the loop was not like him. He had never acted this way before in his life, and this line of thought seemed foreign to him, not his own. A dull pounding in his temple suddenly flared up into full-fledged pain. Thinking about this subject was giving him a headache. He squinted against the throbbing, trying at first to ignore it, then told Claire that his head hurt and he needed to take something for it. She nodded. She was grimacing herself, and they both went into the kitchen, where they found a bottle of Tylenol behind the vitamins in the spice cupboard.

The two of them made lunch together the way they used to, an assembly line of turkey sandwiches, before calling Megan to come down and eat. Now over the initial shock, Megan was excited by the possibilities of her new room, and she chatted happily through lunch, describing how she was thinking of putting a plant by the window so the bedroom would be more “green.”

Lunch was nice, and his headache had subsided, but immediately afterward, Claire started opening windows around the house to let in fresh air. “This place is stuffy,” she told him. “Don’t you think it’s stuffy?” She opened the back door so air could come in through the screen, and Julian found himself going out to the patio to scan the yard for any sign of John Lynch.