The Haunted (38 page)

But he didn’t really believe that. He
wanted
to believe it, and right now he hated Julian more than he ever had, but somehow Roger knew in his heart that this was really happening, that Julian and Claire were right about this house, and all he wanted at this moment was to escape and go back home, to see his wife again, to spend the rest of the morning reading the paper and watching TV before having lunch with his grandkids.

He
was
weeping now, was nothing more than a frightened old man, but he focused on the situation before him, forced himself to think through it. Maybe all of this was illusion. If so, if he was in the kitchen but simply couldn’t see it, the door that led outside was …

He stood in place to get his bearings.

There
.

Roger faced a section of tent wall, stepped around the fire in the center of the room and moved forward to reach out and touch the flesh-colored material in front of him. He half expected his hand to pass through it, for
it to be nothing but illusion. It was real, though, very real, and his fingers pressed against a smooth, springy substance that reminded him of his own upper arm. Instinctively, he recoiled, grimacing in disgust. His touch revealed a parting in the tent wall, however, and this close he saw that there was a seam in the material. There
was
a door in front of him, albeit a tent door, and though the feel of the material made him sick to his stomach, he took another half step forward and, using both hands, pulled apart the flaps.

Behind the flap was a man standing in front of a space that was pitch-black and lifeless, a man wearing a backward yellow baseball cap and holding a knife.

“Hello, Roger,” he said in a voice that sounded impossibly old. “Glad you could join us.”

Claire was at her office and had just answered an e-mail from the school district’s attorneys when the phone rang. It was Diane. Her sister was calling to tell her that their father had phoned, asking Rob to go with him to Claire’s house. “You know Dad. He said he needed a witness to prove to, quote, that pansy Julian, end quote, that your house wasn’t haunted. Luckily, Rob was at work and wasn’t home, so I answered the phone. I told him not to go, but …”

“Yes. We know Dad.”

“I’m with you on this, Claire. I don’t like that house. Now, after everything that’s happened …” She drew in a loud breath. “I don’t think Dad should go there. He’s getting old, and … I just think it might be dangerous.”

“It is dangerous. But it’s daytime and he’ll only be there for a few minutes. I think he’ll be okay.”

There was a weird pause on the other end of the line, and Claire’s heart lurched in her chest. “Di? There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“After Dad hung up, the phone rang again, and when I answered it, there was this
voice
. It was all deep and spooky, and it said, ‘He’s a stupid old fuck.’ That’s it. That’s all it said. Then the person hung up. I checked the caller ID, and … it was your number. At your house.”

Claire was filled with a sensation of panic, but she managed to keep her voice calm. “You stay there. I’ll get Julian, and we’ll go and see what’s up.”

“I’m going, too.”

“Di …”

“I’m going, too. I’ll call Mom; then I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay, but if you get there before we do, just wait until we arrive. I think it’s better if all three of us go in together. Safer.”

“Gotcha.”

There was no way Diane would make it there before she did. Their house was the next street over on the other side of the park.
Call Mom?
“Shit,” Claire said aloud, and quickly dialed her parents’ number, hoping to get through before her sister. She did. Her mom answered the phone and Claire asked to speak with Julian. She kept all traces of worry out of her voice—she’d let Diane explain to their mother what was going on—but as soon as Julian came on the line, she told him exactly what had happened and asked him to meet her in front of the house. She was expecting an argument, probably because it involved her dad, but Julian agreed right away. His voice had changed its tone after she’d repeated what Diane had said about the phone call from their house—

He’s a stupid old fuck

—and she could tell that he was as worried as she was.

“I love you,” she said before she hung up, and meant it.

Claire
was
the first person to arrive at the house, and when she saw her parents’ car in the driveway, she knew she couldn’t wait around for Julian and Diane to show up. She had to rush in there and get her dad out.

For some reason, however, her key didn’t seem to fit in the lock, and she was still fumbling with it—in
between bouts of pounding on the door and yelling, “Dad!”—when Julian swerved next to the curb in front of the house, driving her father’s old truck. Diane was mere seconds behind him.

Julian tried her key, then his, but when neither seemed to work, he led them around the side of the house to the backyard.

Where the kitchen door was not only unlocked, but open.

Claire’s heart skipped a beat, restarting its rhythm at a much more rapid pace. This couldn’t be good. “Dad!” she called.

She hadn’t expected an answer, and she didn’t get one. On the white cement of the patio, she saw muddy footprints. Or muddy prints of
some
sort. They were clumpy and ill defined, and it was impossible to tell whether they came from a shoe, a foot, a claw, a hoof or something else.

They led into the house.

Julian and Diane had to have seen them, too, but neither of them said a word. Claire stepped past her husband. “Dad?” She walked inside, Julian and Diane right behind her.

The mud disappeared. Before her, the kitchen seemed perfectly normal, nothing out of place, exactly as it should have been. Despite the promise of the muddy prints, the clean kitchen was not really a surprise. What was a surprise was that the living room appeared to be in impeccable shape as well. She could see it through the doorway, past the dining room. From Julian’s description, she had expected broken lamps and overturned furniture, but from what she could tell, the room was immaculate.

Julian noticed it, too. “What the hell … ?” He hurried over, turning about, an expression of complete confusion on his face.

That should have been good news, Claire supposed, but somehow it scared her far more than a trashed room would have. They were dealing with something here that could
change
things. Julian was right. It wasn’t a ghost. Or wasn’t
just
a ghost. For the being that occupied this house was able to destroy objects and put them back together again. Its powers were not merely supernatural but godlike, and she realized that there was no way they could ever hope to fight against something like that. She discarded once and for all any thought of vanquishing the spirit. She just wanted to find her dad and get him out of here. After that, she didn’t care what happened to this place. It could burn to the ground for all she cared. In fact, burning to the ground would be the
best
possible outcome. She wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of pawning this evil place onto another unsuspecting soul, and they might even get some insurance money out of it. But what would happen after that? The land itself was cursed. Any new home built on the same spot would have the same problem. And what if the entire neighborhood was razed? What would the city do with the land? Expand the park? Put in a shopping center? Each of those was a disaster in waiting. The only useful possibility she could foresee would be a landfill, but the council certainly wouldn’t have one in the center of town.

Diane tapped her shoulder, and she jumped, startled out of her reverie.

“I’m checking upstairs,” her sister said.

“Not alone you’re not.”

“No one’s going upstairs,” Julian said, coming back into the kitchen. “We check the ground floor first. Together. If we don’t find him here,
then
we’ll go upstairs.”

“Dad!” Diane called at the top of her lungs.

There was no answer.

“He’s not in the dining room or the living room,”
Julian said. “I was just there. We’ll check the basement, then our bedroom and the bathroom. After that, we’ll go upstairs. If we don’t find anything in the house, we’ll check the garage.”

“Dad!” Diane called again.

Julian walked over to the basement door, pulling it open. “I don’t understand it,” he told Claire as he flipped the switch to turn on the cellar lights. “The living room was trashed. That lamp on the end table was thrown at me, and it smashed on the coffee table. Pieces were everywhere. …”

“I believe you,” she said honestly, and that was all she needed to say.

Julian walked down the steps while Claire and Diane waited at the top. “Roger?” he called.

“Dad?” they yelled together.

There was no response, but Julian spent several minutes moving boxes aside to make sure he—

his body

—wasn’t hiding somewhere down there.

The basement was empty, and Julian came back up. The three of them passed by the deserted laundry room, then moved out into the hallway and on to the master bedroom. It was daytime, but the drapes were drawn, and Claire turned on the lights. They were all calling for her father yet receiving no response.

“The bed,” Claire said, pointing.

“That was me,” Julian said, embarrassed. “I didn’t make it.” He flipped up the covers, though, just to make sure no one was under there, then dropped to his knees, lifted the ruffled skirt and checked beneath the bed, shaking his head as he stood to indicate there was nothing.

Claire moved over to the bathroom and turned on the light in there as well.

Her heart leaped. On the floor, she saw the muddy prints again, threateningly brown against the lightness of the white tile. The mirror was fogged up, as though someone had just come out of the shower, and on the clouded glass was the imprint of … a face, she supposed, although it did not look like any face she’d ever seen. The elements were all there—eyes, nose, mouth—but they were in the wrong place, in the wrong order, and the scary thing was that for a brief moment she didn’t know why they were wrong, because she couldn’t remember where those parts were supposed to go. It was not until she saw the blurry contours of her own face in the corner of the mirror that she remembered the nose went over the mouth, and the two eyes were above that. For a terrible second, that awful face had seemed … right.

Behind her, Diane saw the same thing and let out a short, sharp cry, which sent Julian running over from the closet where he’d been searching.

“What
is
that?” Diane wanted to know, but neither Claire nor Julian had an answer.

“Let’s just find your dad and get out of here,” Julian said grimly, and the three of them hurried out of the bedroom and up the stairs.

“Roger!” Julian called.

“Dad!”

“Dad!”

He was not in Julian’s office, James’s room, Megan’s room or the bathroom. They saw nothing unusual upstairs, and though Claire thought she heard a weird tapping in Julian’s office, it might have been her imagination, since neither Julian nor Diane heard a thing.

As agreed, they went out to the garage together, but by now what little hope remained in Claire of finding her father had vanished. She didn’t know where he was
or what had happened to him, but something had certainly occurred, because he seemed to have disappeared.

He was not on the ground floor of the garage, they saw instantly. Julian went up to the loft by himself, and though he stayed up there several minutes longer than she thought he should have and returned looking pale and shaken, he claimed that he’d seen nothing out of the ordinary.

“So he’s not here,” Claire said.

“Maybe he went home,” Julian suggested.

“His car’s still in the driveway.”

“Maybe he walked away. Or got scared and ran.”

“We need to go to the police,” Diane announced.

“The police aren’t going to believe—” Julian began.

“I don’t give a shit what they believe. My dad is missing, and it’s their job to find him, and if they happen to discover the existence of ghosts on the way, well, good for them. But Dad’s gone. And we need to get him back, no matter what it takes.”

Claire agreed, and instead of arguing the point, she grabbed her sister’s arm with one hand, Julian’s with the other, and pulled them both out of the garage. Just in case. Once in the driveway, she took out her cell phone and dialed 911. She looked up at the sky, wondering why the sun and clouds were visible from here but the moon and the stars were not. Did it mean something?

A police dispatcher came on the line. “What is your emergency?”

“My father’s missing. He disappeared about an hour ago—”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” the dispatcher said, and there seemed to be a tone of smirking condescension in her voice, “but an adult male is not considered missing until he has been gone for forty-eight hours. Your father has
been out of contact for one. I suggest you wait. I’m sure he will turn up later this morning.”

“You don’t understand,” Claire said. She saw the anxious expression on her sister’s face. “He disappeared
inside
our house.” She hadn’t intended to bring any of this up, hadn’t wanted the police to think her crazy and not take her seriously. But there wasn’t going to be any action taken to find her father for two full days, and she knew she needed to spell everything out. Still, she had to be careful what she said. “We’ve had some incidents at our home recently,” she began.

“Vandalism,” Julian whispered.

“Incidents of vandalism,” she said more confidently. “Someone shut off our lights and attacked my husband in our living room. This is the same house,” she added with sudden inspiration, “where an intruder named John Lynch committed suicide several days ago.”

Julian gave her a thumbs-up.

Now it was her turn to be condescending. “I’m sure that crime is in your records,” Claire told the dispatcher.

“You may report the assault and file a claim regarding the vandalism. Although, since they occurred previously, neither incident is considered an emergency. I can transfer you to an officer who will take your statement and arrange a meeting. As for your father, a person has to be missing for forty-eight hours before the police can open an investigation.”