The Haunted

was no way Julian and Claire could afford this much cocaine.

Frowning, he walked around the side of the table to the opposite end. Someone had drawn in the powder with a finger, and it wasn’t until he was looking at it from the proper angle that he could read what it said: Sniff some, you stupid old fuck.

Roger felt his face grow hot with anger. Julian had written this and had left it here for him, knowing he would come by the house to investigate, knowing it would cross his mind that the powder resembled cocaine. He bent over, put his face near the tabletop and breathed in.

It smelled like rat poison.

Sniff some, you stupid old fuck.

Julian was trying to kill him.

Roger felt chilled. He and his son-in-law didn’t like each other, but he never would have thought Julian capable of such cold-bloodedness, and he straightened up, looking around, seeing the entire house as one gigantic booby trap. What waited for him in the kitchen? Upstairs? In the basement?

Roger shook his head to clear it. That made no sense. Julian had fled the house because he was afraid, because he thought the house was haunted. He hadn’t been pretending. And he certainly hadn’t poured rat poison all over the dining room table on the off chance that Roger would come over alone and inhale a big nostrilful to test whether it was cocaine.

Maybe the house was haunted.

That made no sense, either.

Roger had no explanation for anything that was going on, but he was warier now than he had been when he’d first arrived. He felt uncomfortable here, and while he still wasn’t willing to concede that Julian and Claire might be right about the house being dangerous, he was starting to think that it might be a good idea to leave and come back later, maybe with Rob.

Suddenly there seemed to be a smoky smell in the air, one that was faint but growing stronger. At first he thought it was coming from somewhere outside, but when he turned around, sniffing, trying to determine its origin, he saw a small plume creeping out from the fireplace in the living room. The sight made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. It was not just that there’d been no fire in the fireplace a moment ago and there was no way one could have been lit; it was the behavior of the plume of smoke itself. For rather than emerging from the flue and dissipating, or floating up toward the ceiling, the thin gray tendril moved out and into the room, solid and well- defined, turning left, then right, like a snake exploring a new environment. There was something alive about the smoke, and Roger was gripped by the certainty that it was searching for him.

All thoughts of showing Julian to be a pathetic coward with an overactive imagination had fled. Roger was filled with the single-minded desire to get out of the house as quickly as possible. There was no way he was going back through that living room. Which meant that in order to get out of the house, he had to exit through the back door.

The tendril of smoke was five feet long now and nosing its way toward the dining room.

Feeling the panic well within him, Roger turned and hurried into the kitchen.

Except it wasn’t the kitchen.

He was in a dark, low-ceilinged space that looked like the interior of a tent. Before him, in an indentation, was a fire, and though the smoke issuing from the blaze was wafting upward, it looked completely normal and not tendril-like at all. It was the only thing that looked normal, however. The floor was bare ground, dirt, and the material of the tent walls seemed to be dried skin, skin that looked too smooth and light to be animal.

He whirled around, intending to run back through the doorway, but the doorway was no longer there.

A stifled sob escaped his throat. He thought of what Julian had told him—

You’ll be weeping like the scared little girl you really are.

—and wondered whether his son-in-law had planned this. Maybe that powder on the tabletop had been cocaine, and he had accidentally snorted some and now he was hallucinating. The timing was right, and it would explain everything that had happened afterward, including this.

But he didn’t really believe that. He wanted to believe it, and right now he hated Julian more than he ever had, but somehow Roger knew in his heart that this was really happening, that Julian and Claire were right about this house, and all he wanted at this moment was to escape and go back home, to see his wife again, to spend the rest of the morning reading the paper and watching TV before having lunch with his grandkids.

He was weeping now, was nothing more than a frightened old man, but he focused on the situation before him, forced himself to think through it. Maybe all of this was illusion. If so, if he was in the kitchen but simply couldn’t see it, the door that led outside was …

He stood in place to get his bearings.

There.

Roger faced a section of tent wall, stepped around the fire in the center of the room and moved forward to reach out and touch the flesh-colored material in front of him. He half expected his hand to pass through it, for it to be nothing but illusion. It was real, though, very real, and his fingers pressed against a smooth, springy substance that reminded him of his own upper arm. Instinctively, he recoiled, grimacing in disgust. His touch revealed a parting in the tent wall, however, and this close he saw that there was a seam in the material. There was a door in front of him, albeit a tent door, and though the feel of the material made him sick to his stomach, he took another half step forward and, using both hands, pulled apart the flaps.

Behind the flap was a man standing in front of a space that was pitch-black and lifeless, a man wearing a backward yellow baseball cap and holding a knife.

“Hello, Roger,” he said in a voice that sounded impossibly old. “Glad you could join us.”

Thirty-one

Claire was at her office and had just answered an e-mail from the school district’s attorneys when the phone rang. It was Diane. Her sister was calling to tell her that their father had phoned, asking Rob to go with him to Claire’s house. “You know Dad. He said he needed a witness to prove to, quote, that pansy Julian, end quote, that your house wasn’t haunted. Luckily, Rob was at work and wasn’t home, so I answered the phone. I told him not to go, but …”

“Yes. We know Dad.”

“I’m with you on this, Claire. I don’t like that house. Now, after everything that’s happened …” She drew in a loud breath. “I don’t think Dad should go there. He’s getting old, and … I just think it might be dangerous.”

“It is dangerous. But it’s daytime and he’ll only be there for a few minutes. I think he’ll be okay.”

There was a weird pause on the other end of the line, and Claire’s heart lurched in her chest. “Di? There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“After Dad hung up, the phone rang again, and when I answered it, there was this voice. It was all deep and spooky, and it said, ‘He’s a stupid old fuck.’ That’s it. That’s all it said. Then the person hung up. I checked the caller ID, and … it was your number. At your house.”

Claire was filled with a sensation of panic, but she managed to keep her voice calm. “You stay there. I’ll get Julian, and we’ll go and see what’s up.”

“I’m going, too.”

“Di …”

“I’m going, too. I’ll call Mom; then I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay, but if you get there before we do, just wait until we arrive. I think it’s better if all three of us go in together. Safer.”

“Gotcha.”

There was no way Diane would make it there before she did. Their house was the next street over on the other side of the park. Call Mom? “Shit,” Claire said aloud, and quickly dialed her parents’