The Haunted (29 page)

James had already used the remote to shut off the TV.

“Come on. Let’s go.” Julian took the key ring out of his pocket, jingling it so both kids could hear.

“Okay,” James said, getting up off the floor.

“Where?” Megan asked, suspicious.

“Out for lunch. We’ll go to McDonald’s. Then I need to stop by the library and look a few things up.”

Megan wrinkled her nose in distaste. “McDonald’s?”

“Taco Bell, then.”

“
I
want McDonald’s!” James announced.

“We’ll flip for it. But come on; we gotta go.”

“
I
gotta go,” Megan said, and headed down the hallway to the bathroom.

Julian found himself still jingling his keys. He hadn’t realized how nervous he was, how much he wanted to get out of the house, until his daughter said she had to use the bathroom. James looked in that direction and started to say something, but Julian cut him off. “
You
can go at Taco Bell.”

“McDonald’s!”

“Whatever.”

As soon as Megan finished, he ushered the kids out of the house, not relaxing until they were safely in the van.

“You said we were going to flip a coin,” James said.

Julian nodded. “We will.”

“But how will we know where we’re going unless we do it first?”

Julian pushed himself up from the seat in order to get a hand in his pocket. He pulled out a dime. “Okay, call it.”

“Heads!” they both said in unison.

“One person gets heads; one person gets tails,” he said patiently.

“I want heads,” James insisted.

Megan sighed melodramatically. “Fine.”

Julian flipped the coin, called it. “Tails.”

“Ha!” Megan said, pointing a finger in her brother’s face and grinning.

“Taco Bell it is.” Julian drove to the fast-food restaurant, where they ate a reasonably harmonious meal before heading over to the library. James parked himself in front of one of the computers and Megan wandered into the young-adult stacks, while Julian went over to the reference desk to talk to the librarian. As he’d suspected, the library did have a lot of items dealing with local history. There was actually a closet-size “history room” that held nothing but books, brochures, pamphlets and magazines related to the history of Jardine and Tomasito County. Most of the items could not be checked out, but they could be studied in the library, and Julian pulled out two volumes that looked promising: the relatively recent
New Mexico Ghost Stories
and the considerably older
Tales of Tomasito County
. Behind a glass case were stacks of old newspapers, and he asked the librarian whether he could look through them, but she said the papers were in fragile condition and were kept in the case for protection. There was microfiche of the newspapers available, however, and a viewer near the computers, and she showed him the file cabinet
containing the microfiche, explaining how they were organized by year.

Julian couldn’t spend all day in the library, and even if he could, he still wouldn’t be able to read everything. So he skimmed the books, neither of which was as helpful as he’d hoped, before grabbing a handful of microfiche and sitting down to scroll through the headlines of Jardine’s early days. The newspapers didn’t go back as far as he wanted—maybe not enough people could read back then—but he began at 1900 and started working forward.

Megan came up while he was still halfway through the year 1901 and asked whether she could go to her friend Kate’s house for the afternoon. Kate was standing next to her; the two had obviously run into each other.

Or they had purposely planned to meet here.

It was impossible to keep up with the cell phone shenanigans of teenage girls.

Kate smiled shyly. “Hi, Mr. Perry.”

Julian looked from one to the other. “You can go,” he told Megan. “If your mom is home,” he said to Kate.

“My mom’s right here. Mom!” she called.

There was a chorus of shushing from annoyed patrons, and the librarian at the front counter frowned at her, but seconds later, Kate’s mother was standing before him, and the two of them talked over logistics. She and Kate were going to The Store first, but then they were going home, and Megan was welcome to come with them.

“What time should I pick her up?” Julian asked.

“Oh, I’ll drop her off. What time do you want her back?”

“Five o’clock,” Julian decided.

After saying their good-byes, his daughter happily
went off with her friend, and Julian paused for a moment to check on James and make sure he was all right. Sitting between two other boys, his son was deeply engrossed in the cartoony mayhem of a computer game, and, satisfied, Julian went back to his microfiche.

Sometime later, Julian became aware that a person was standing behind him. Assuming it was another patron who wanted to use the microfiche reader, he was all set to apologize for hogging the equipment when he turned to see James standing there. In a first, James said he was tired of playing games and wanted to leave. Usually it was the other way around, and Julian glanced at his watch, shocked to see that it was almost three o’clock. He hadn’t really come across anything useful yet, and didn’t want to feel as though he’d wasted the entire afternoon, so he said, “Ten more minutes.”

“I’m bored, Dad.”

“I know. But …” He had a sudden idea. “Hey, do you want to hang out at Mom’s office?”

James’s face lit up. “Yeah!”

Perfect. Claire could watch James, while he could continue looking through these old newspapers. Julian took out his cell phone. He wasn’t supposed to use it in the library, but he leaned into his carrel, close to the microfiche reader, and called Claire, speaking softly. He explained the situation, and she agreed to come by the library to pick up their son.

While he waited, James checked his summer reading program status on the wall chart and picked out another book to read. Julian continued to scroll through headlines, but before he’d gotten past another month, Claire was there. James hurried over with his new book. “You rescued me,” he declared with exaggerated gratitude.

Julian stood. “Thanks,” he told Claire.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“There might be something. That’s why I want to stay a little longer.”

“I don’t,” James announced.

Smiling, Claire put an arm around her son. “Why don’t we get some ice cream?” she suggested.

He grinned. “Excellent!”

“Do you want me to pick him up when I’m finished?” Julian asked.

Claire shook her head. “We’ll meet you at home.”

She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek; then the two of them were off, and Julian turned back to his newspapers. The “something” he had told her about turned out to be a pattern. It wasn’t anything specific, probably not anything they could even use, but for a period of years in the early 1900s, the majority of murders and violent crimes seemed to take place on their street. He didn’t think it was a pattern that had continued through the present day, but he thought about the man who’d died in their basement and wondered whether other deaths—mysterious or not—had occurred in or around their house over the decades, unrecognized by the newspapers.

It was getting late, and since he finally had something he could show to Claire, Julian decided to call it a day. He shut off the machine, picked up the pieces of scratch paper on which he’d scribbled notes, and started to put away the stack of microfiche.

“I’ll take care of that,” the reference librarian said, walking over. “We like to refile everything ourselves, just to make sure it’s all in the right order.”

“Okay. Thanks.” He handed over the microfiche sleeves, as well as the two books he’d looked at, and left the library, heading home.

He was the first one back, and he was glad of that. Before Claire and James returned, before Megan was
dropped off, he went through every room in the house, even the basement, looking for anything even slightly out of the ordinary. He was more creeped out than he wanted to be or than he would ever let on, but he was the husband, he was the father, and he needed to make sure that it was safe for his family to be here. He even went into his office and turned on the computer again, waiting to see whether anything weird showed up on his monitor, and he was gratified when, after he accessed several different screens and retyped his e-mail message, nothing did.

Downstairs, he heard the front door open and close, heard the happy voices of Claire and James, and he shut off the computer, satisfied that—for the moment, at least—the house was clear. He took the steps two at a time, and—

The first floor was empty.

There was no one else home.

Julian heard voices again, from the living room, and goose bumps prickled on his neck and the skin of his arms, making him shiver. Even this close, the voices
still
sounded like Claire and James, and a wave of despair washed over him as he wondered whether that meant they were dead. Claire had walked to work this morning, and in his mind he saw the two of them crossing the street on the way home and being hit by a drunk driver or a car with bad brakes, James flying forward and cracking his head open on the asphalt, Claire crumpling as the bumper forced her down, tires rolling over her midsection, crushing her organs and bones.

Numbly, he stepped into the living room. His worries about Claire and James vanished. Whatever spirit was here, it was not one of them. There was a heaviness to the atmosphere, a palpable malevolence that would never be associated with either his wife or his son. He
could imagine this thing
imitating
them, though, trying to make him believe they were here, trying to torture him.

His first instinct was to flee, but he forced himself to stand his ground, and he looked carefully around the room. There was nothing to be seen, nothing out of place, no visible apparition, but there was a bad energy suffusing the living room, making the light seem darker, making the furniture seem old and creepy.

And it appeared to be emanating from the fireplace.

Once the most impressive aspect of the living room, perhaps of the entire house, the oversize fireplace now just seemed threatening. The opening was like a maw, and it was much blacker than it should have been at this time of day, black enough that it seemed to go back farther than the wall of the house, black enough to hide the presence of unspeakable creatures. Julian reached out and switched on the ceiling light, but it did nothing to further reveal what lay hidden in that space.

Slowly, nervously, cautiously, he stepped forward.

He heard the voices. They were male and female, young and old, but they weren’t James and Claire. They weren’t even speaking real sentences. Like the man’s voice he had heard in Megan’s room, they were saying actual words but not in a way that made sense.

“. . . 
mail slot luggage …”

“. . . 
first come table slime …”

It was a conversation between crazy people, delivered in competing monotones, and it was coming from within the fireplace. Close now to the hearth, Julian crouched down to peer into the opening.

A whoosh of air flew over him, around him, past him.

Only …

It wasn’t air. There was volume to it, heft, and a sentience that he sensed but did not understand.

Then it was over. The room was back to normal; the fireplace was just a fireplace; there were no more voices. Seconds later, the front door opened, and Claire and James
did
walk in. Julian went over to greet them, grateful and unexpectedly elated that they were here and alive.

Claire frowned at him. “What’s wrong with your hair?”

James laughed.

Julian reached up and patted the top of his head. His hair was sticking up where that
thing
had blown over him. He used his fingers to comb it back down. “Wind,” he lied.

“It wasn’t windy—” Claire started to say, but she caught his look over James’s head and cut herself off. “Oh.”

They discussed it later, though he downplayed his description of the event and left out his real reaction completely. The kids were in another room, and before Claire could quiz him further, he quickly told her what he had learned at the library. She seemed excited to hear that there was a history of death and violence on their street, though he had no idea how she could possibly use that information to help solve their problem, and for the first time her sense of hope seemed stronger than her fear.

He almost told her about the face on his computer screen, but at the last moment decided against it. Enough had happened today already, and he chose to let it go.

They made love that night, and it was normal, tender, comfortable, the way it used to be. There were no bizarre urges, no inexplicable compulsions, no external pressure of any kind. He could almost believe some of their more recent encounters had never happened, and they fell asleep holding each other, happy.

*   *   *

Julian was awakened after midnight by the sound of laughing. It was soft, whispery, and might in other circumstances have been mistaken for the rustling of wind outside. But he knew it for what it was and sat up in bed, listening to the eerie laughter as it swirled around their bedroom, then left through the door and moved down the hall.

There was nothing he wanted more than to hide his head under the covers, the way he had as a child, and wait for morning. But Megan and James were upstairs alone, and he immediately pushed off the covers and hurried after the noise.

It was in the kitchen now, and he went there, turning on the lights as he did so. He saw nothing in the kitchen, but the door to the basement was open, and from the room down there he heard laughter. It was louder now, less whispery, and though he had not been able to determine anything about its character before, the laughter definitely sounded masculine to him now.

Julian looked around for a weapon. It obviously wouldn’t help against something unseen, but it would make him feel braver, and he opened the middle drawer and settled on that old standby: the carving knife.

He was about to proceed to the basement door when something outside caught his eye. Through the window above the sink he saw movement, and he flipped on the patio lights just in time to see the little garage door close. He stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do. The smart thing would be to call the police. But he wasn’t sure this was something the police could help with, wasn’t sure that whatever had gone into the garage was … human. Of course, if it
wasn’t
human, the smartest thing to do would be to stay here in the house.