The Haunted

covered the photos on the page, and drew the sheet back, peeled off the photograph and put it in his shirt pocket.

He missed Miles. It was a loss that time had not softened or made easier, and there was a physical pain in his chest right now, as though his heart actually ached. The depth of the hurt was why he and Claire never discussed their first son, why he tried so hard to live in the present and not think about the past. He knew from a lifetime of media exposure that such an attitude was probably unhealthy, that it was always better to let emotions out than keep them in, but he didn’t feel that way. This was the approach that seemed to work best for him, and while it might not be politically correct or socially acceptable, it was how he had chosen to do it.

It kept the guilt at bay.

He’d thought more about Miles in the past month than he had in the last thirteen years. It was the house’s doing, and Claire was right: once or twice, at the beginning, he had considered the idea that it was the ghost of their son who was haunting them. But that was obviously not the case, and with that possibility excluded, he was left with the discomforting memories that thoughts of Miles dredged up within him.

Memories of Miles’s death.

Julian closed the photo album, closed his eyes, tried to get his mind to go somewhere else.

It wouldn’t.

“Daddy!”

It was the last word Miles ever said, and it remained as fresh in his mind today as it had when his son shouted it, two terrified syllables that cut straight through his heart and would be perfectly preserved in his brain until the day he died.

As a college student, as a young man, Julian had enjoyed hiking. He’d belonged to the Sierra Club, had met one of his former girlfriends on a club-sponsored hiking trip, and had enjoyed taking Claire on backpacking excursions to various wilderness areas throughout the state. Even after they had Miles, they’d continued hiking on weekends, although, necessarily, closer to home.

It was on one of these treks, into the Santa Monica Mountains, that it had happened.

They’d been stupid to go that day at all. It was a Sunday, and though the Saturday before had been nice, for the entire week prior it had been raining. They should have known better.

But it had been a hard few days at work for both of them, and they’d wanted to get away from the city and out in the open air, if only for a couple of hours. Griffith Park would be too crowded, they knew, Angeles Crest too treacherous, so they’d opted for the Santa Monicas. They’d hiked there before, many times, liked the views and were familiar with many of the trails.

They were an hour in and pretty high up, Claire ahead, he moving more slowly, at Miles’s speed. He was letting Miles walk on the outside of the trail, though he’d never done that before. He’d also allowed the boy to walk without holding on to his hand, and he’d never done that before, either. Afterward, Julian asked himself why he’d been so negligent, asked himself a thousand times, but he had never been able to come up with an answer.

He remembered they’d been talking, he and Miles, laughing about something Oscar the Grouch had said on Sesame Street earlier that morning. And then, not more than a foot away from where he stood, the saturated ground under Miles’s shoes had given way, and Julian had watched in impotent horror as an entire section of trail slid down the side of the mountain, taking his son with it.

“Miles!”

Crying out, Julian dropped to his knees, leaning over the newly formed edge, expecting to see his son’s body sprawled at the bottom of the ravine below.

But Miles was only a few feet down, lying flat against the collapsed section of muddy trail, arms raised instinctively as though grasping for purchase.

“Daddy!”

He would never forget the look on his son’s face at that last second, the pleading, the fear, underpinned by the hope and belief that Daddy would be able to stop this and save him. It was a look that would haunt him until the end of his life, an expression of complete and utter trust, the purest faith he had ever experienced or ever would experience. But he had hesitated. He could have reached down and grabbed his son’s hands, but he’d been afraid that the section of ground on which he knelt would give way, claiming him, too, and he’d thought that it would be safer if he moved a little to the right first.

Then the mud had slipped, and Miles was swept away, tumbling down the slope, buried under an avalanche of sludge.

Claire was screaming, her piercing cries echoing off the walls of the canyon. He had no idea what she was doing, could only hope she had the presence of mind to go for help or call 911 on her cell phone. But he had no time for any of that. He was rushing down the side of the mountain, in defiance of all safety precautions and common sense, stumbling, falling, getting up again, crying out himself, keeping his eye on the sliding section of trail, trying to determine where under all of that mud and rubble Miles was located. He was pretty sure he knew the right spot, and when the slide stopped at the bottom of the ravine, he dropped to his knees and began digging frantically, using both hands to scoop up as much mud as he could, flinging it aside and immediately scooping up some more. He kept expecting to see his son’s fingers or glimpse the blue of his shirt, but he didn’t, and he dug deeper, aware in the back of his mind that the boy had been down there for too long, and filled with the growing fear that he was searching in the wrong spot.

He’d still been digging through the mud, sobbing, when the rescuers arrived, though he didn’t know when that was or how long he’d been there. Sometime later, someone had found Miles’s body, but it hadn’t been him, and all he remembered after that was kissing Miles’s cheek before the stretcher carrying him was lifted to a helicopter, the gritty, bitter taste of mud on his lips.

And Miles had been gone.

The next time Julian had seen him had been at the morgue, where he and Claire had been required to identify the body.

Pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes and taking a deep, shuddering breath, Julian willed himself not to cry. It took a while, but he managed to stem the tears, and, breathing slowly and evenly, he placed the photo album in the Hefty bag underneath the maternity clothes, putting everything back the way it was.

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the photo he had put in there, looking at it.

“Miles,” he said aloud, and it felt good to say the name again. “Miles.”

Julian dreamed that night of the garage, and in his dream he climbed up the ladder to the loft, where dozens of animal skeletons were arranged over the crimson-soaked floor. The stick-figure cardboard cutout of the Wimpy Kid, still splattered with blood, was smiling at him and winking, pointing toward the broken exercise bike, on which sat a small human skeleton, pedaling slowly.

The skeleton was Miles.

Awakening to the fading sound of his own scream, Julian sat up, disoriented for a moment by the fact that he was alone in bed. Then he remembered where he was, where Claire and the kids were, and he settled back onto the pillow, wondering why he had decided to stay here, why he hadn’t gone with them. He’d had a reason, he knew, something besides the fact that he didn’t get along with her dad, but at the moment that rationale eluded him, and he worried that, as Claire had suggested, it was the house that had kept him here.

Or the garage.

For he sensed now that the locus of power, the source of whatever was going on, had relocated there from the basement.

Thinking about the nightmare he’d just had, he got out of bed, walked over to the window, pulled the curtains aside and looked across the backyard toward the garage.

Where the man who had killed himself was standing behind the window of the loft, staring back at him.

Julian let the curtain drop and ducked out of the way, moving to the side, heart hammering in his chest. He waited a moment, then pulled the curtain back and peeked around the edge of the window frame, hoping the figure would be gone. It wasn’t. The ghost of John Lynch, still wearing that backward yellow baseball cap, remained in place, staring at him across the yard, and in an attempt to prove his bravery, Julian opened the curtains all the way and stood directly before the window, staring back himself. He waited there for several minutes, expecting the figure to fade and disappear, but it did not, and the ghost staring back at him looked as solid as the man himself had been.