The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books)

She doesn’t know how she gets there, but the house is suddenly right in front of her – tan brick split-level with a black shingle roof, big picture window in the front that, like the rest of the windows, is always dirty because no one will take the time to wash it. No one will take the time for a lot of things in this house, but she has nowhere else to go, no one else to whom she can turn. All she has is old memory and deeper instinct, a compulsion in her bones that won’t let her keep on going past the driveway; she has to turn, has to go down the steps to the back door which she knows will be unlocked during the day. It’s as if she has only one eye and she’s pushed it tightly against one end of the discarded cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels – there is nothing beyond that small circle of light at the end and whatever images fill it.

The steps.

The door, brown and dusty.

The doorknob.

Her own hand – such an amazing thing – reaching for it.

She stops and stares at it for a few moments, turns the palm upward, checks for non-existent dirt under the fingernails. It looks . . . OK, about the same as it did back then. What about her face – does that look the same, too? She is wearing the same clothes, but is her hair still light brown, does her nose tilt upward, is her mouth too wide, are the eyebrows she’d always wanted to arch still straight across? Is she still pretty? She’s been gone a long time, and she wishes she had a mirror so she can check, because it won’t do to have any big surprises. Well, any more – she is certainly going to be one all on her own, isn’t she?

She opens the door and steps inside the house.

Nothing has changed, at least in the utility room. It’s still too dark and full of cobwebs and dust along the concrete floor, still lightens up a bit by the double laundry sink. The air down here is cooler than in the rest of the house. She sees that across from the sink the dog’s bowls are there, where they are always kept, and that there is fresh water in one and bits of dog food scattered on the floor around the other – for an old, small dog, a Pomeranian, Greepers always had been a messy eater.

And there he is, standing in the doorway at the other end of the utility room, staring at her.

They’ve shaved him for the summer and he looks like a puppy, enticingly soft and cuddly. It seems like it’s been years since she felt any warmth and she can’t wait to pick him up . . . but there is something in his stance that makes her hesitate, even though he’s old and he’s been hers for over thirteen years. How has he been all these months, when she was always the only one to give him affection, to keep him company? She tries to speak his name and her voice is an unintelligible croak, so she clears her throat and tries again, takes a small step forward.

“G-Greepers.”

He growls at her and backs away.

She freezes, and now it’s her turn to stare at him. Greepers keeps backing up until he bumps into the short flight of stairs that leads up to the kitchen, then he gives a single, shrill bark.

She hears footsteps then, overhead and hurrying down the upstairs hallway to the stairs, going to the living room, turning the corner to come down to the utility room—

And she sees, at last, her mother, at the same time as her mother sees her.

And screams.

“You need to come home,” Amber O’Shannon says into the phone. Her voice is shrill, louder than it’s been in eight months. That’s how long it’s been since— “You need to come home right now!” Her fingers are closed around the receiver in a death grip, as though the cold plastic has become some sort of lifeline, the only thing anchoring her to the world. If not for that, perhaps she would float away, simply drift up into the clouds. The notion is about as realistic as anything else going on here in her well-kept home.

“I’m in the middle of an important meeting,” she hears her husband say. “For God’s sake, Amber—”

“I don’t care!” she shrieks, then realizes what she is doing and makes a conscious effort to regain control. Already it’s starting, she thinks. Already. “I can’t tell you why – just do it. It’s an emergency.” She will pay for it later, but she slams down the phone before he can argue further, because she can’t deal with this, can’t deal with him and his questions, and most of all, she can’t deal with—

She turns.

Her daughter Mara still sits, silent and patient, at the kitchen table.

Amber doesn’t know how the young woman got there, or what happened in the moments between seeing her standing down in the utility room and now, what was said to get her from there to here, sitting at the kitchen table like some kind of speechless question mark. It figures that she would be home all by herself when something like this happens – an absurd thought to begin with, because who would have expected something “like this” ever to occur anyway? She wants to ask a question, the question, but she is nervous and afraid. Maybe it would be better to wait until Bill gets home, or Andy. Even Brianna, although God knows what help that girl could give.

So she says nothing.

Instead, she sits across the table and she and her daughter stare at each other and wait for the others to arrive.

“Yoh, Mom!” Andy O’Shannon shoves open the basement door and barrels into the house, making sure that the noise level goes up along with his bellow. He likes it when his mother comes hurrying down the stairs to meet him, to make sure he had a good day, ask if he’s hungry, whatever. It’s a standard routine perfected over the last six months and—

He frowns.

Car’s in the driveway, but where is she? He drops his stuff on the dryer and climbs the stairs to the kitchen. “Mom?” Then he sees her, sitting quietly at the table with someone else. He starts to walk towards her, then she turns a shocked gaze on him. But any explanation she might have mouthed is forgotten the instant he focuses on the other person.

“Jesus God,” he breathes. “I—” He can’t think of any words to finish the sentence and so he doesn’t, just stops and lets his back push up against the kitchen wall. Finally he slides down, settles on the floor, and stares.

Brianna walks in on it without warning.

She is the only one who insists on using the front door “like civilized people” and never mind the extra work it makes for her mom, because that’s not the point, damn it. So she comes through the other doorway from the living room and, even so, she recognizes the back of her older sister’s head immediately and is not pleased. “What is this?” she demands. “Some kind of sick joke? A mind fuck?” She turns to her mother accusingly. “This is so not funny.”

But her mother doesn’t even say anything about her language. “No,” she says slowly. “I don’t know what it is . . . but I don’t think it’s a joke.”

Brianna scowls and steps up to Mara. “You . . .” she begins, but then they all hear the slam – intentionally hard – of the basement door. “Daddy’s home,” Brianna says instead, with as much sweet sarcasm as she can muster.

Her mother nods. “I called him.”

Brianna gives an unladylike snigger. “What – like you think he’s gonna fix this?”

Bill O’Shannon storms into the kitchen of his home purposefully, the same way he storms into the boardroom in the real estate firm of which he is president. He is a controlling man and it angers him to the core that his wife has had the nerve to call and demand that he come home, without even giving him a reasonable explanation. It can’t be one of the kids – she would have simply told him. What the hell could be so important that she would interrupt his Friday status meeting to—?

And there, sitting with the rest of them around the table, he finally sees the reason Amber called him.

Mara sits at the table and watches her family watch her, but she feels nothing. No love, no fear, certainly no comfort. The closest thing she’s felt to emotion was that fleeting desire to pick up Greepers, and that died with his nasty little growl – of all the things in her life, he had been the only one she’d always believed she could go to for comfort. But, like everything and everyone else, even he has failed her.