The Haunted

He looked nervously at the battered red box. He’d never liked Old Maid. It wasn’t the game, which was kind of fun; it was the Old Maid herself, the way she was depicted on this particular pack of cards. All of the other characters were humorous caricatures of cartoonish boys and girls. But the Old Maid was old, and the expression on her wrinkled face was one of barely suppressed rage: a flat hardness in the small eyes, a mouth set in a thin, angry line. He’d been afraid of that visage ever since he’d been little, and while he wanted to tell himself that he wasn’t afraid of it anymore, he knew that wasn’t true.

She was on the cover of the box, and even seeing her eyes peering out over Megan’s fingers gave him the creeps.

He sat down on the floor as his sister took out the cards, shuffled them, then dealt them. He was directly across from her, and before picking up his own pile, he watched her sort through her cards. Megan was not good at hiding her emotions, and he knew he’d be able to tell whether or not she’d gotten the Old Maid. Seeing her smile after she’d fanned out the cards in her hand, he knew that she hadn’t.

And he had.

He looked down at the flat blue backs of the cards on the floor before him, not wanting to pick them up, wishing he’d continued on to his own room, where, right now, he could be happily playing Star Wars on his DS, or LEGO Harry Potter. But he reached down, gathered up the cards from the floor and turned their faces toward him so Megan couldn’t see.

There she was.

Between Hungry Henry and Sleeping Sam was the wrinkled countenance of the Old Maid. He could see only the left half of her face, but that was enough. Divorced from its twin, her left eye had an even crueler cast, and the flat portion of wrinkled mouth that was visible seemed not merely angry but malevolent. He pushed Sleeping Sam over so that the dozing boy was covering the Old Maid, then sorted through the rest of his cards, looking for doubles. He found two sets and discarded them, then, holding the remaining cards in front of him, fanned them out in his right hand and told Megan to pick.

Unfortunately, she did not pick the Old Maid. In fact, she never picked the Old Maid, and at the conclusion of a surprisingly short game, James ended up holding in his hand the one card he didn’t want. He turned it facedown, placing it atop his discards, then stood. “I don’t want to play anymore,” he said.

Megan shrugged. “Fine. This is boring anyway.” She said it loud enough for their dad to hear, and once again James thought he was probably just a pawn in his sister’s bid for more freedom.

He walked over to his room, automatically closing the door as he went in, and picked up his DS. Through the window, he saw an elderly couple walking down the sidewalk. The woman turned her head to look at their house, but James quickly looked away, not wanting to see her. In his mind, she looked like the Old Maid, and, feeling cold, he walked back across the room, opening the door wide before turning on his DS and hopping onto his bed.

They ate that evening in the dining room. Ever since they’d moved, his mom had been on this kick, because she’d read somewhere or heard on the news that kids from families who ate dinner together every night turned out happier and more successful. In their old house, she’d been a lot more flexible. Sometimes he and Megan would eat in the living room and watch The Simpsons while his parents ate in the kitchen. Sometimes his dad would eat on the couch while watching the news or a basketball game. Sometimes James would play with his DS while he ate. Things weren’t so rigid then. But these days, they all ate together, and more often than not, James found himself wishing that they didn’t.

Tonight, Megan kept kicking him under the table while maintaining an expression of calm interest on her face as their mom endlessly described a lawsuit she was working on. Finally, he’d had enough and kicked his sister back hard—but his foot missed and hit the leg of the table, causing his milk to spill and everyone’s chili beans to splash out of their bowls onto the tabletop. He got in trouble, despite his explanation, while across from him Megan smirked maddeningly.

They didn’t speak to each other the rest of the evening, and James was happy when she went upstairs to her bedroom early. He remained with his parents, and the three of them watched TV together until his mom said, “It’s getting late, and you stayed up way past your bedtime last night. I think it’s time for you to go to bed.”

He didn’t feel tired, and, truthfully, his mom seemed sleepier than he did, but he wanted to go to bed while they were still awake, so he said good night and headed up to his room. Megan was in the bathroom, so he changed into his pajamas first and, after she got out, went in to brush his teeth. Returning to his room, he pulled down the covers—

And there, sitting on his pillow, was the Old Maid card.

He cried out, startled, jumping back and practically tripping over the shoes he’d left in the middle of the floor. He knew it was just a joke, Megan’s doing, but his heart was pounding so hard that his chest hurt. He wasn’t sure how she knew he was afraid of the card, but obviously she did, and she’d put it here to scare him. Which it had.

Breathing deeply, recovered from the initial shock, James took a step forward, intending to pick up the card, take it over to his sister’s room and throw it in her face.

Only …

Only it wasn’t the card from their deck. On his pillow, the creepy old woman wasn’t staring angrily out at him, the way she always had. She was smiling slyly, as though she knew something about James that no one else knew, something that she was going to use to hurt him.

This grinning Old Maid was even creepier somehow, and looking at her hard eyes under arched eyebrows, he was almost afraid to pick the card up. But he did and turned it over, and the pattern on the back was exactly the same as on their deck. How was this possible? he wondered. Had his sister somehow altered the card? Had she secretly bought another deck with a different picture?

Had Megan been involved at all?

Logically, he didn’t see how she could be, but any alternative was too frightening to even contemplate.

He still wanted to throw the card in her face, but instead he tore the card up, took it to the bathroom and flushed the pieces down the toilet, watching to make sure they all went down. Coming out, he saw that although Megan’s door was closed, the light was on in her room, and he felt like going over there and confronting her, demanding to know how that card had ended up on his pillow.

But in the end, he went back into his bedroom without saying anything.

Because he was afraid she didn’t know.

Eight

Saturday morning, Claire decided to sleep in. It had been a long week, and she’d stayed up late last night watching an old Audrey Hepburn movie after Julian had gone to bed. Sabrina. They didn’t make movies like that anymore. They didn’t make stars like that anymore. It was an old- lady thing to think, and she wondered idly whether she had been born in the wrong era, whether her taste in popular culture would have been more mainstream had she been born forty years earlier.

There was noise from the kitchen, the exaggerated sounds of annoyed children forced to make their own breakfast, and Claire smiled, closed her eyes and promptly fell back asleep.

When she finally woke up for good, the noises were gone and so, apparently, was her family. The house was quiet and felt empty, and when she called out, no one answered. She pushed off the covers, stood and picked up her bathrobe from the back of the chair next to the bed. She’d bought that chair at an antique store in Pasadena with money her parents had sent her for her twenty-fifth birthday, and she found herself wondering whether that antique store was still there. Back in California, on free Saturdays like this, she often used to go antiquing with her friends, not necessarily buying but looking, window-shopping, and that was something she genuinely missed. Although she had to admit that moving back to New Mexico had been the smartest move they’d ever made. Especially after …

She didn’t even want to think about it.

Staring out the window at an army of billowy clouds stretched across the endless deep blue sky, she realized