The Haunted

She had just awakened, but she was feeling tired already—it was most likely the medicine—and she asked her parents whether it would be okay if she took a short nap.

“Of course,” her dad said.

Her mom gave her shoulder a squeeze and then went back to her chair. “Go ahead, honey.”

When she awoke, it was dinnertime. A nurse was using a button on the remote-control panel at her bedside to raise her into a sitting position so she could eat the wretched-looking meal placed on a tray that was attached to her bed by a metal arm. Both of her parents were still in the same seats, although her dad was watching CNN on the TV mounted to the wall and wasn’t aware that she’d woken up until her mom nudged him with an elbow.

The nurse left, and they all had a good laugh about the awful food as Megan attempted to eat it. No mention was made of her cutting herself, and everything that was happening outside this hospital room seemed distant and unconnected. The snoring man had awakened and was eating his dinner. Loudly. Her dad saw her glancing over there, distracted, and he stood up from his chair to pull the curtain between the beds, blocking her view. Megan smiled at him. “Thanks.”

There was nothing to do and there wasn’t much to say, so after eating as much as she could, Megan used the remote-control panel attached to the armrest of her bed to flip through the channels and see what kind of cable the hospital had. It wasn’t very good. There were the networks, several news channels, several sports channels and a bunch of other stations she wasn’t much interested in. She finally gave up and switched it back to CNN. “It’s my TV and I was going to make you watch one of my shows,” she told her dad, “but there’s nothing on. So it’s all yours.”

It was boring just lying there in bed, and after a while Megan felt guilty for making her parents be bored, too, so she told them they should go home. They both looked at each other uncertainly. “I’m tired anyway,” she lied. “I want to go to bed. You can come back in the morning.”

“I’m spending the night,” her mom said.

“In that chair? Go home. I’ll be fine. Check on James and make sure he’s staying out of trouble.” She’d meant it as a joke, but the second after she said it, a host of unwanted images sprang up in her brain: James cutting himself in the same way she had … James returning to their house to dig a hole in their backyard … James wearing a backward yellow baseball cap and holding a knife.

Her parents, too, looked worried.

She decided to be honest. “I’ll be safe here,” she said softly. “Look after James. And Grandma.”

Her mom nodded grimly. “Julian,” she said. “Go.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll sleep here.”

“Mom …”

“Megan’s right,” her dad said.

“It’s just a cut—” Megan began.

“It’s not just a cut. That’s why you’re here. They had to replace over a liter of your blood. And they’re monitoring you to make sure you don’t develop any blood clots.” She gestured around. “Although I don’t see a whole lot of monitoring going on. I don’t know whether they’re understaffed or what, but these nurses and doctors don’t come by anywhere near as often as they should, and I need to be here in case something happens.”

“Actually, ma’am, we check your daughter on a very specific schedule, and the likelihood of her developing blood clots while being administered the medication that’s in her IV drip is highly unlikely.”

The nurse appeared behind her mom, and her mom’s face turned red. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

The nurse smiled kindly. “Nothing to be sorry for. I know you’re concerned. I just want to put your mind at rest. This is a precaution against a very remote possibility. Your daughter’s going to be fine. She’s only here right now because we want to make sure we guard against all potentialities.”

“See?” Megan said.

“Besides, visitors are not allowed to stay overnight in the rooms. All visitors must leave at ten. You’re welcome to remain in the lobby, but it’s probably better if you go home, get some sleep and return in the morning.”

“I’ll be fine,” Megan said.

“I’m staying until ten,” her mom announced.

“You know your mother.” Standing up, her dad gave her the closest thing to a hug that was possible in the bed, kissing her on the forehead. “I’ll be back to pick your mom up later,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

“Give me a kiss if I’m asleep,” she told him.

He smiled, nodded. “And I’ll be back for breakfast,” he promised. “Love you.”

“Love you,” she returned, and felt the tears well up as he headed out the door, waving.

The nurse checked the monitors, wrote some information down on a chart, drew some blood and changed the drip bag. Her mom talked to the nurse for a few minutes in the hallway, beyond her hearing range, and Megan flipped once again through the television channels. There was nothing good, so she left it on Jeopardy, and the game show remained on in the background while she and her mom talked. She asked whether any of her friends had been told that she was in the hospital, and her mom said no, not yet, but she’d let them know tomorrow so they could come and visit. Megan asked whether there was any news about Grandpa, and her mom grew quiet and sad and merely shook her head.

That opened the floodgates, and they talked about the house, really talked about it, for the first time. She held back a little, afraid that if she told everything it might endanger the rest of her family—

I will kill you both.

—and she was pretty sure her mom held back a little, too, probably for the same reason, but they did discuss their feelings about the house, little things they’d seen and heard, and the way it had all sort of built up until it was what it was today. Her mom said that Mr. Cortinez at the high school had given her a lot of information about the history of Jardine and that it seemed as though people had been dying there, killing themselves and killing others, since before the town was a town.

“We should have moved as soon as you found that out.”

“That’s what I told your dad. Although it was only a week or two ago, to be fair. Besides, who knew that some lunatic would kill himself in our garage.”

“It happened before,” Megan pointed out.

“That’s true.”

“So are we going to sell the house now?”

“I guess so. If we can.” Her mom paused. “But I’d feel guilty pawning it off on someone else, wouldn’t you?”

“No!” Megan said instantly, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the numbers of her heart rate accelerate on the monitor. If the nurse hadn’t turned down the sound, it would probably be beeping. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down, not wanting a team of doctors and nurses to rush into the room to see what was wrong with her. “No,” she said more softly. “We can’t live there again.”

“We won’t,” her mom assured her. “It’s just …” She shook her head, tried to smile. “We’ll think of something to do with it.”

Megan wanted to ask about her grandpa. It was the big question hovering over everything. But whether it was because she was just a kid or because her mother wasn’t ready to face the subject, Megan understood that it was something her mom would not discuss. She hadn’t gotten any details from either of her parents, but she could tell by the way they’d been acting that his disappearance was unexplainable and frightening and somehow involved their house.

Maybe—hopefully—things would just work out and her grandpa would return on his own, none the worse for wear.

But she doubted it.

They’d gone as deep as they were going to go. Besides, Glee was about to be on, and Megan wanted to watch it. Her brain hurt from worrying, and right now she just wanted to relax and enjoy some mindless entertainment. It was a two-hour episode, and for those two hours she forgot everything else, even enjoying the commercials when they came on. After that, she flipped through channels before stopping on back-to- back reruns of The Office, which she and her mom both liked.