The Haunted

dining room.

Where that lunatic with the knife had been staring in at him.

What would happen if the man did get out on bail, if the cops couldn’t hold him, if he was let out on the streets again?

Julian didn’t want to think about it. He got himself a beer from the refrigerator and walked back out to the living room, but the homey domesticity of a few moments before had disappeared, and now he saw his children as fish in a barrel, waiting to be shot. It was all he could do to pick up a section of the newspaper that he hadn’t yet read, sit down on the chair opposite the couch and scan today’s headlines.

It was almost a normal evening. Maybe it was normal for Megan and James, but he and Claire had to work hard to maintain that surface regularity, and while several times the routine unfolded naturally enough to feel organic, by the time the kids went to bed, his muscles were tense, and he had the beginnings of a headache.

When he went into the kitchen to take an Advil, he avoided looking at the basement door.

Stress was supposed to inhibit libido, but, inexplicably, he found himself aroused, and while Claire was in the shower, Julian took off his clothes and began masturbating, stroking himself until he was hard. He thought about finishing before she came out, but then had a better idea and forced himself on her while she was brushing her teeth. She’d already showered but had not yet put on her underwear or nightgown, and when he opened the bathroom door, he saw her standing naked before the sink, her beautiful pale ass shining out at him.

Within seconds, he was across the small room and behind her, adjusting himself and shoving into the first hole available.

“Nmmmn!” she grunted through the toothpaste, trying to swat him away, but already he was thrusting, and she dropped the toothbrush in the sink, crying out, though whether from pleasure or pain he could not tell.

And did not care.

She held on to the sides of the sink with both hands to steady herself, and he plunged deep, taking her hard and fast until, finally, he exploded inside her.

Without saying a word, Claire picked up her toothbrush and resumed brushing, while he pulled a length of toilet paper from the roll and used it to wipe himself off.

Julian walked back out to the bedroom.

That definitely wasn’t normal.

He lay down on the bed. What was wrong with them? He didn’t know, but he didn’t want to think about it. All roads led back to the house, to the man’s voice in Megan’s room, to James eating dirt, to that shambling horror from the party. Whatever was haunting this house—and he agreed that something was—it did not just rattle its chains and moan, like a specter in a movie. It affected them, their dreams, their thoughts, their actions. That made it more dangerous, but also more difficult to detect, and he wondered now whether he had done or said other things not of his own volition, things he might not have noticed or recognized at the time. Had he really wanted to stay here this afternoon instead of going with Claire to her parents’ house? Had he even wanted the pancakes he’d had for breakfast? Why had he chosen the room he had for his office?

Julian forced himself to drop this line of reasoning before it headed into craziness and obsession. This was not the time to go there. He would revisit it tomorrow, when his mind was clearer. Right now, he needed to get some rest.

He thought it would be hard to fall asleep, but it wasn’t. He dozed off immediately, and was dead to the world well before Claire came out of the bathroom.

He dreamed about the house.

Seventeen

The plants in the backyard were dead.

Every last one of them.

James was the first one to discover it. He saw it initially from the kitchen window while pouring himself a glass of orange juice, and if he had needed any proof that the thing in their house had the power to carry out its threats, the simultaneous expiration of every single living organism between the house, the garage and the alley was it. Stunned, still in pajamas and slippers, he stepped outside onto the patio, looking across the suddenly brown grass to the spiny, leafless twigs that had been the rosebushes, and the dead hedges that ringed the border of the property. It was impossible, but he could see that it had happened, and he felt a chill in his bones as he surveyed the lifeless yard.

His parents were still asleep, but Megan was up, and he went back inside, intending to show her what had happened, but at the last minute, he changed his mind. She was sitting on the floor of the living room, leaning over the coffee table as she ate her Honey Nut Cheerios, and the way she looked up at him when he walked in, the worry he saw on her face, made him decide against telling her anything.

He turned away, heading back into the kitchen, where he made his own breakfast of cocoa and toast, which he ate while staring out the window at the yard.

Both he and Megan had been walking on eggshells for the past week, spending as much time as possible at their friends’ homes, not using phones or computers, not saying anything within the walls of their house that could be overheard by … it.

He was living the most stressful existence imaginable, and if he didn’t have a heart attack, he was going to get an ulcer. He and Megan avoided each other, afraid to communicate by either speech or note, and for the first time in his life he was really looking forward to the beginning of school. The chance to be away from the house nearly all day, five days a week, sounded like heaven, and already he was considering joining after-school clubs, programs or teams in order to stay out even longer.

His dream was to move again—even returning to their old neighborhood would be better than this—but he could figure out no way to facilitate such an outcome. His parents seemed to like it here, and, after they’d invested so much money in the place, it was highly unlikely that they’d be willing to give it up.

He did tell his mom and dad when they woke up several minutes later, showing them through the window what had happened. Still afraid that he was being watched, that his every word and gesture were under scrutiny, James did not editorialize, did not indicate that he was frightened or that he thought anything out of the ordinary had occurred. He just stated the facts, letting them draw their own conclusions, hoping those conclusions would be the right ones. But his parents looked at each other as though they’d already known about this, or at least knew what had caused it, and instead of the shock and disbelief for which he’d been hoping, there was only a grim matter-of-factness as they talked about how much work it would be to replace the plants.

Megan came into the kitchen to rinse out her cereal bowl, heard what they were talking about and looked out the window for herself, but she said nothing, offered no opinion, simply shot James a quick frightened look and then moved on.

He had to talk to someone; he couldn’t keep everything bottled up like this forever, and later that morning, he finally told Robbie about all that had happened.

But he told Robbie at his house.

They were hanging out in Robbie’s room, and the conversation drifted around to the headquarters and their detective agency, which neither of them seemed to be very excited about anymore. James sensed some ambivalence in his friend, maybe even a trace of fear, and without preamble, he said, “My house is haunted,” and blurted everything out. The words tumbled from his mouth as though poured from a pitcher, events out of sequence, descriptions over thoughts over feelings. He received no ridicule, just nods of acknowledgment that told him his friend had some of the same misgivings and had experienced the same sorts of feelings he had.

James had started with the text threat on Megan’s phone, and he ended with it as well, explaining for probably the third or fourth time that he was afraid to even think bad thoughts in their house. “Like that Twilight Zone,” he said, although Robbie didn’t get the reference.

“I knew there was something wrong,” Robbie admitted. “All that stuff with the dirt. It’s why I didn’t want to do that anymore.”