The Haunted

against it, feeling around, even as his left hand gripped hard the handle of the knife. Amazingly, his fingers encountered a switch, and he pushed it up as a shielded bulb in the center of the room turned on, bathing the loft in a light that was probably soft and weak, but that after the blackness of a moment before seemed as bright as the sun.

Julian stood where he was, rubbing his eyes, and as soon as they adjusted to the brightness, he saw where the blood had come from.

A dead body on the floor.

It was John Lynch, the intruder he’d seen through the dining room window. Julian recognized the yellow baseball cap.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered.

The man had stabbed himself. Not just once but multiple times. In the face. A slice through his left cheek had widened his mouth to clown proportions; another in his forehead revealed skull beneath skin. What was left of his nose resembled chopped raw hamburger, and a hard stab near his right eye had continued down the side of his head and taken off a sliver of skin with hair, as well as a piece of ear. He had finished himself off by plunging the knife into his own throat, from whence it protruded now, the wound around the blade revealing a thin, ragged strip of ripped cartilage, blood covering not just the remnants of his neck but his arms, his chest and the surrounding floor. A thin rivulet ran across the uneven floorboards to the trapdoor opening, which was where it had dripped onto Julian’s head.

There was even blood splattered five feet away on a stand-alone cardboard cutout for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and the stench in the loft was so strong Julian marveled that he had not noticed it immediately upon coming up.

He gulped in air, trying not to gag.

How had there been no screams? How had the entire neighborhood not been awakened by Lynch’s shrieks of pain?

Julian felt like screaming himself, and even as his brain was logically processing the information being fed to it by his eyes, he was scrambling back down the ladder. Halfway to the bottom, the lights winked off above him, and he realized that somewhere along the line he had dropped his knife.

All the lights in the garage went out.

Willing himself not to panic, he reached the bottom of the ladder. Stumbling over his feet in the darkness, he found his way out of the garage and ran back to the house to call the police.

Twenty-five

“We’re moving,” Claire said flatly.

“We can’t—”

“Can’t what? Sell the house? Oh, yes, we can. I don’t want to hear any more of your rationalizing bullshit. I’m not spending another night in this place. We’re taking the kids, and we’re going to my parents’.”

The police had just left, after several hours of questioning and investigation, and the four of them were gathered in the living room, sitting on the couch and the love seat, though Claire didn’t feel comfortable even doing that. She wanted no part of this house, and even if they had to unload it at a loss, even if they had to live in an apartment, she wanted to get rid of it. There was no way she was going to live in a place where someone had killed himself. And in such a gruesome way. Neither she nor the kids had seen the body—she had not allowed Megan or James to even look out the window when the covered gurney was wheeled out—but they all knew what had happened, and the very thought of such violence made her queasy.

The fact that this was the second person to have died here in the past few years was even more disturbing. Of course, when you came down to it, unless you were moving into a new home, someone had probably died in virtually every house in the country, especially in those that were more than fifty years old. These days, a lot of people died in hospitals, but in her grandparents’ day, most people had probably died at home.

Their house was not merely haunted, though. It seemed to be a death magnet, attracting people who were about to die or wanted to kill themselves, and there was no way in hell she would allow her children to be exposed to such an influence. Beyond the immediate fears, it was only a small stretch to imagine that influence expanding to include violence against others rather than just oneself. It might seem ridiculous to imagine Julian stabbing the kids in their sleep, or Megan or James beating their parents’ brains in with a baseball bat, but she was not willing to take any chances.

“I understand how you feel,” Julian said. “I don’t think it’s good for the kids to be here, either. I think you should pack up, and I’ll take you guys over. But—”

“No ‘buts’!” Claire shouted at him.

“But I think I should stay here,” Julian finished.

“What the hell for? You’re just being an asshole! We need to get out of here! All of us! Right. Fucking. Now!”

She was aware that she was swearing in front of the kids, something that she had never really done before, something both she and Julian had always taken pains to avoid. She was aware, also, that they were staring at her in shock because of it. But the most important thing at this moment was to get far away from the house as quickly as possible, and she was willing to do whatever she needed to do to make that happen.

“I think I might be able to—” Julian began.

“You’re not going to be able to do shit! It’s over. We’re done. A man just killed himself in our garage. We have ghosts walking down our hall. There’s nothing to do but get out.”

She hazarded a glance toward Megan and James. Neither of the kids looked surprised by news of the ghost, but they looked both frightened and worried, and that made her wonder whether they’d witnessed more than they’d told her. She faced them straight on. “Have either of you … seen anything here before?” she asked carefully.

“I want to go,” James quickly responded.

“Me, too,” Megan said emphatically.

“Yes.” Claire nodded. She stood. “Come on,” she told Julian. “Let’s go.”

She actually wasn’t sure how long she could spend at her parents’ house before their smothering drove her out, but even if she had to endure a week or two of her mother’s nagging or her father’s complaining before they found someplace else to stay, it would be worth it.

She was not going to live in a place where a man had committed suicide.

“I’ll drop you off,” Julian said. “Then I need to come back and clean up—”

“The blood?” Megan said, horrified.

“No,” he assured her. “The police’ll do that. I just need to check things out and make sure everything’s okay.”

“And then you’ll come over to Grandma and Grandpa’s.” James’s voice was at once insistent, worried and hopeful.

“We’ll see,” Julian said, but Claire could tell from the expression on his face that he had no intention of doing any such thing.

“Stay if you want,” she said, her mouth set in a hard, straight line. “But we’re leaving.”

When she arrived at her parents’ house just before dawn, after calling ahead to explain the situation and tell them that she and the kids were coming over to stay for a while, both her mom and dad thought that she and Julian were separating. Especially when Julian dropped them off and unloaded the luggage but did not remain himself. Neither of them said anything in front of Megan or James, but they both brought it up when the kids went into the guest rooms to unpack their suitcases. Her mom was worried, her dad happy, and though she told them, specifically, that there were no marital problems, she could tell they didn’t believe her.

Claire understood why. She and Julian were not a perfect couple; they fought like everyone else. And back in Los Angeles, they’d gone through some pretty rough times. But they had never slept apart, not once since getting