The Haunted

unexplored lands.

But …

But in her mind, as she read, she imagined the area as it must have appeared back then, without the buildings, without the people, without the roads, and in her conception, the focal point of the horrific events was the land on which their house now stood.

Of course, that was ridiculous. No church had ever been constructed on that spot. Still, the events described in those histories possessed an unnerving correlation to the events that were transpiring between the walls of her own home, and thinking about them left her feeling cold and anxious.

She was determined to bring it up to Oscar when she saw him, and, luckily, they both arrived early to the courthouse, which gave them a chance to talk. He, of course, wanted to go over the particulars of the hearing, wanted her to once again walk him through everything that was going to happen, as well as reassure him that they would eventually emerge victorious. Hand-holding was an important component of the practice of law, and though they’d had the exact same conversation just last night, they did it again until his nerves were soothed and he was ready to play his role.

With some extra time to kill, Claire saw her opportunity and cleared her throat. “Oscar,” she said cautiously. “I’ve been reading the material you provided me. These stories about evil spirits and haunted places …”

He waved her away. “Justifications. A way to rationalize the murder, brutality and atrocities committed by first the Spanish against the native Americans and then the English against the Spanish. Don’t worry. They won’t hurt our credibility. History texts are full of references to ghosts and demons and the supernatural. It was how the people in those days explained events and phenomena they did not understand—if you read some of the accounts of the California Gold Rush written by the men of that time, they would curl your hair. Often such stories are excuses for bad behavior, defenses for violent societal overreactions that seem indefensible to us today. And, in this case, they were used to justify the slaughter of opposing societies.”

Claire nodded, as though in agreement. She wanted to pursue this line of questioning, but chose to wait until after the case had been decided before probing any deeper. She could not afford to engender any doubt in her client, and she knew that by asking what she really wanted to ask, she would risk losing Oscar’s confidence. It was clear that he disbelieved in the supernatural and put no stock in any paranormal explanations. If she indicated that she felt otherwise, it might make him think that she was unstable.

Maybe she was.

At home, Julian and the kids had eaten by the time she returned.

“How’d it go?” Julian asked.

“Good,” she said. “The deposition went well, and the district is already indicating that they might be willing to settle. We have a strong case, and they know it.”

“That’s great,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, though without much enthusiasm. She opened the door of the refrigerator and took out a head of lettuce, intending to make herself a salad.

“What’s wrong?” Julian asked.

She looked at him. “You know what’s wrong.”

“There hasn’t been anything—”

“Don’t,” she told him. She chopped the lettuce, got out some tomatoes and carrots, and he wandered back out to the living room, where Megan and James were fighting over control of the TV.

Both of the kids went to bed early, while it was still a little light out. Granted, the days were long and it didn’t get dark until sometime between eight and nine, but it was totally out of character for either of them to voluntarily go to bed at this hour, and Claire had a sneaking suspicion that they wanted to be asleep before night truly fell.

She didn’t blame them.

Julian was watching a movie on HBO. She watched it with him for a while, and when she was sure the kids were asleep, she told him about what she’d been reading, the historical accounts of ghosts and demons and unexplainable phenomena. He was skeptical, of course, but not that skeptical, and she knew that while he wanted to disbelieve, he probably did not.

“It has to be connected to what’s happening here, to us,” she said. “It makes sense that if those sorts of things were occurring on this land hundreds of years ago, they’re probably affecting what’s going on now.”

“What is this, a monster movie?” he tried to joke. But he knew as well as she did that what was going on was closer to that reality than anything else, and when she stared at him disapprovingly and said nothing, he apologized.

They were too far along to pretend that they were overreacting to a settling of the house or similarly rational events that could explain what they were going through. This was bigger than that, more concrete. Multiple people had seen a ghost walk down their hallway and into the living room. It was time to look for real answers, not logical explanations.

They talked about it for a while, not really coming to any conclusions, agreeing only that they needed to investigate the situation more, watch the kids carefully and be very, very cautious.

Julian was tired, had a headache, and went to bed early, but Claire was wired and wide-awake. She worked on a few pretrial motions for the Seaver divorce and tried to determine the starting point for a settlement with the school district. Her mind wandered, though, and she found herself thinking about something she’d read, a strange small detail she’d come across in two of the books, the one written by the farmer and the one penned by the Mexican historian.

As a test, Claire went outside. Everyone in the house was asleep, so she unlocked and opened the front door very quietly, closing it behind her. She walked onto the lawn, then to the sidewalk. She had been out after dark before, but she’d never had any reason to study the sky. Now, however, she looked up.

The night was black.

No stars.

She tried to recall whether she’d seen the moon since moving to their new home and couldn’t.

Shivering, she walked down the sidewalk until she was in front of the Ribieros’ house, where she stopped, looking up.

The Little Dipper and Orion’s belt were right where they were supposed to be, and a half-moon hovered just above the roofline of a house across the street.

She’d been afraid this would happen, on some level had known it would happen, but the sheer concrete fact of it took her breath away. This wasn’t some nebulous experience that could be interpreted in many different ways. It was a measurable truth: the moon and stars could not be seen from their house.

Why this was the case, she had no idea, but she walked very slowly along the sidewalk, looking up all the while. The sky was clear and beautiful, the kind she remembered from childhood. She expected to find a specific cutoff point beyond which the stars and moon could no longer be seen, but instead the lights in the sky did a slow fade, as though they were gradually being obscured or turned off. By the time she reached the boundary of her yard, the sky was jet-black.

What did this mean? No answers suggested themselves, but the scope of the phenomenon left her feeling small and helpless. This was far bigger than just having a ghost in their house. She walked down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, and the same thing recurred: the moon and stars gradually reappeared as she moved away from her yard.

She returned to her driveway and stood there for a moment, not sure whether she wanted to go back inside. At the moment, however, she felt safer inside than out, and she stepped onto the porch, opened the front door and walked into the living room—where the lights suddenly turned on, revealing the laundry basket sitting in the center of the floor.

From the kitchen area, she heard a door swing open and hit the wall. Hard.

The door to the basement.

She couldn’t deal with this now, and she ran quickly down the hall to the bedroom, not bothering to check the cellar door, not bothering to turn off the lights in the living room. Breathing hard, she closed the door behind her and instinctively pressed her back against it to prevent anything from getting in. She thought about waking Julian, thought about telling him to go upstairs and get the kids and have them sleep with them for the night, but she saw