The Haunted

it back down, the news was over and Access Hollywood was on TV. He looked over at the clock, shocked to discover that a half hour had passed.

Where had the time gone? It was nearly night outside now. He had not yet closed the shades, and as he looked out at the darkness of the street, he realized that most, if not all, of his neighbors were gone. He might very well be the only person on the street.

Suddenly grateful for the noise and companionship of the television, Julian turned up the volume. From the corner of his eye, he saw that the light was on in the kitchen. He had taken his plate and glass in there after eating, but he could not remember whether he had left the light on. Ordinarily, he turned off the lights automatically as he left a room—habit—but he might have left them on this time.

Or he might not have.

Julian decided he would feel more comfortable if all of the lights in the house were on, and he stood and went from room to room, downstairs and up, until the entire house was illuminated. As an added precaution, he checked to make sure that all windows were closed and that both the front and back doors were locked.

He’d intended to work a little more on the Web site before going to bed, but now he decided that he wasn’t in the mood—

was afraid

—to do that, so he sat down on the couch, picked up the remote and flipped through channels until he found The Daily Show on Comedy Central. He needed a comedy right now, something he could laugh at, and he put down the remote and settled back on the couch to watch.

He was asleep before the first commercial.

When he awoke, another commercial was on, so he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He glanced toward the clock, but his attention was drawn by movement outside the window.

James.

Julian leaped to his feet as his son hurried across the front yard to the side of the house. He knew exactly where the boy was going, though he had no idea how James had sneaked out of his grandparents’ house and made it all the way over here, and Julian sped through the living room, through the dining room, into the kitchen, where he quickly unlocked and opened the back door.

There was no sign of James—he must have already gone into the garage—and Julian dashed across the patio and through the backyard. He reached the small door of the darkened garage and was about to pull it open when there was a sharp cry behind him. He turned to see a deep, wide hole in the center of the dead grass. How could he have missed it before? Julian didn’t know, but he ran the few feet over to it and peered down. An arm’s length below the surface, holding desperately on to a small protruding root, was his son.

Instantly, Julian flopped onto the ground on his stomach, stretching his arm down in an effort to grab the boy’s hand. But his fingers would not reach. There were still several feet between them, and he inched forward until he was overhanging the ledge at a dangerous angle, but the distance remained insurmountable. The pit beneath his son’s dangling legs appeared bottomless.

“Don’t move!” Julian ordered. “Hang on! I’m going to get a rope!”

“Daddy!” James’s voice sounded exactly like an older version of Miles’s, and Julian cried out in alarm as the boy slipped several inches, the root he was grasping pulling out from the sidewall, dropping dirt onto his face.

“Daddy!”

Julian’s heart sank in his chest as he realized that history was about to repeat itself. He was filled with a despair so deep and black that it rendered him immobile, and he did not even reach down again and try to grab his son’s flailing arms as the boy screamed and disappeared into the depths.

And then—

He was sitting, and he felt the couch cushion against his back. It had been a dream, just a dream, though it took his brutalized mind a moment to process that fact, and when he opened his eyes, he was not sure at first that they were open. He swiveled his head around, used a finger to check that his eyelids were up. They were. It was just that all of the lights were off, and it was impossible to see anything. The entire house seemed to be dark—the entire neighborhood seemed to be dark—and Julian reached under the coffee table for the flashlight he kept on the shelf there in case of blackouts. His searching fingers couldn’t find it, but seconds later, a lamp atop the end table opposite the couch switched on, bathing the area in a weak yellowish glow.

He was not alone in the living room.

There were shadows galore in the dim light, but there was one shadow that did not correspond to any object in the room. It lurked next to the fireplace, a formless, undulating darkness that appeared flat but somehow had heft.

He stood slowly, observing it. He was afraid, but also fascinated, and as he watched, the formlessness took on a shape, folding in on itself and wobbling crazily from side to side until it resembled nothing so much as a sideshow fat man with multiple arms and a thick tubelike tail that extended into and up the fireplace. Julian backed slowly away, moving toward the front door.

And the shadow thing was right there, an inch in front of his face.

He started, gasped.

The shadow smelled. An odor of mold and dirt that seemed almost familiar. One of the waving arms reached out and touched him, and in that moment, Julian had a clear sense of it. This wasn’t the ghost of John Lynch, although Lynch’s spirit was there and dominant. This was something else. It wanted him to know what it was, and though he did not fully understand, he knew that this was a being comprised of spirits and souls, one that absorbed the dead but was of them, not separate. It was a creature that was ancient but evolving, that changed and grew with each addition, and though his comprehension of its complexities was imperfect, he knew that, at its core, this thing was evil.

And it wanted him dead.

It didn’t want to kill him, though. It wanted him to kill himself. He wasn’t sure why, didn’t get the distinction, but the knowledge was sure and definite, delivered directly to his brain by the cold, shadowy appendage that lay against his forearm. He was supposed to commit suicide. That impulse, however, was one he’d never had, and he jerked away, stood in the center of the room, pulled himself to his full height and loudly said, “No.”

The attack was immediate.

The lamp on the end table flew toward him, its cord pulling out of the wall socket and throwing the room into darkness. He lurched to the right and felt the object whiz past, heard it smash into the coffee table. All around was the sound of movement—squeaks, scrapes, creaks, crashes, thumps, thuds, knocks, bangs—and Julian dropped to the floor and began crawling toward the area where he thought the front door should be. He ran into something heavy and immobile—the Southwestern pot containing Claire’s ficus tree—hitting the vessel with his head, pausing for a second to get his bearings, relieved not to feel the wetness of blood on his face.

This is what it’s like to be blind, he thought, and scurried as fast as he could across the floor, angling left.

He hadn’t realized until this moment how powerful a being this was, hadn’t known it could wield physical objects against him, although, in a weird way, such a real-world concern took some of the edge off the fear he felt, giving a tangible specificity to the more primal terror he’d experienced until now.

Something brushed past him, something hairy, and in an instant that primal fear was back. He let out an involuntary cry of horror and revulsion, and then he was kicked in the side, the air knocked out of him as he was sent flying. But he was kicked in the right direction, and he rolled over, gasping for breath, discovering that he was lying against the front door. Forcing himself to ignore the pain, even as a sharp blow was delivered to the small of his back, he found the door handle, pulled himself to his feet and flung open the door, staggering forward.

He made it out of the house, slammed the door behind him.

And collapsed.

He awoke half on the front lawn, his head resting on the cement of the driveway, one arm twisted under and