The Haunted (3 page)

“It’s closer to Grandma and Grandpa’s, too,” James said.

“That’s true.”

Claire was nodding in agreement, and she did not look displeased. Julian glanced around at the downtown businesses. Most people in Jardine, themselves included, bought their groceries at Safeway and shopped for
everything else at The Store. The downtown district was just an area they drove through in order to reach those locations. But as his gaze took in the used-book store, the children’s clothing boutique, the sandwich shop, the ice-cream parlor, the plumbing supply store, the thrift shop, the tax preparer’s office, he could see himself taking a break from work and walking down here during the day, maybe meeting Claire for lunch. The idea appealed to him.
This
was close to the small-town life he’d originally imagined.

They drove past City Hall and around a park before turning onto Rainey Street. Two blocks down, they saw their realtor, Gillette Skousen, waiting next to the For Sale sign in front of the house. Julian pulled into the driveway and parked, bracing himself. Gillette gave off a distinct Up With People vibe. Blond and perky, with white teeth and perfectly smooth skin, she reminded him of a Disneyland tour guide, circa 1970. He hadn’t liked her before and still didn’t like her now, but she seemed competent and was a friend of Claire’s sister, so he put aside his personal antipathy and got out of the van to meet her.

She was already on her way, smiling, hand extended. He shook her hand—he always felt weird shaking women’s hands—as did Claire, and Gillette held forth the clipboard she was carrying. “I have some great news! The owners have agreed to come down an extra twenty-five hundred. I talked to them last night, and if you decide to take it today, they’ll drop the price. How perfect is that?” Her smile grew brighter. “What say we take a look around?”

As before, they started off outside. Like many older houses, particularly the ones in this neighborhood, it had a big yard. Julian liked that. The home itself was set back from the street, and a shade tree grew in the center of the green lawn. A tire swing hung from one of the tree’s lower branches, and off to the side was a birdbath
in which two sparrows were loudly fighting. In the backyard, the realtor reminded them, were several blooming rosebushes, as well as tall hedges that gave them privacy from the neighbors on either side. An alley ran behind the property, and the garage opened onto both the alley in back and the driveway in front. An adjacent storage shed provided enough room for a lawn mower, garbage cans and gardening implements, leaving the garage itself free for other uses. “You could even convert it into a rec room,” Gillette had suggested last time.

Inside, the house seemed nicer than Julian remembered. There’d still been a few pieces of leftover furniture on their previous visit, as well as assorted trash and debris, but all that was gone and the place was now clean and empty. He had a much better sense of what the rooms looked like. The living room, he saw, was nearly twice the size of the one in their current house, with a hardwood floor, and a picture window that looked out on the tree in the front yard.

And Claire was right—the fireplace was impressive. Made of flagstone, it was built into the east wall and was large enough to accommodate a midsize tree stump. To either side of the hearth were rock benches, and above was a mantel, also rock. On the opposite end of the living room was the dining room and, beyond that, the kitchen. Homey, with a small, windowed breakfast nook that protruded into the backyard, the kitchen had been recently remodeled and featured plenty of cupboard space as well as a state-of-the-art gas stove.

Claire and the kids remained with the realtor, who took them outside on a reprise tour of the backyard, while Julian left to explore the upper floor of the house by himself. It, too, was bigger than he remembered, and though the master bedroom was downstairs, there were
three more bedrooms up here, as well as a full-size bathroom. One of the rooms, the one in the middle, was perfect for his office. It had a large window overlooking the backyard, was agreeably square and functional, and had multiple electrical outlets and plenty of wall space. Opening the narrow but deep closet, then walking around the room, he could envision where his computer desk would go, and his printer table, and his filing cabinets and his bookcase.

He could get a lot of work done here. Unlike his current office, it was far away from the family room with all of its attendant noise and commotion. He might actually have some privacy.

And he
needed
to get a lot of work done. Right now, he was reconfiguring a Web site for the music publishing company Darwin-Huxley, and if he wanted to keep that account, he’d better get busy. House hunting had been consuming far too much of his time over the past week, and the actual process of moving would take up even more time. The sooner he could put this all behind him, the better.

He also needed to finish the project as quickly as possible so he could get started on upgrading the interactive Web site of a midsize municipality, which had a looming deadline in less than a month.

Peeking out the window, Julian saw Gillette leading Claire and the kids from the garage onto the lawn. If he recalled correctly, the garage had a sort of attic, an A-shaped storage area accessed by a wooden ladder attached to one of the walls. James probably loved that. Just as he probably loved the basement in the house. Although it was very unusual for this area, the home had a small cellar beneath the kitchen. James had recently discovered James Bond and
The Prisoner
and a
whole host of 1960s spy shows that some cable channel had been running, and was in a phase where he was fascinated by secret hideouts and underground rooms.

Through the window, Julian watched his family head back into the house, and he met them at the top of the stairs a few moments later when they came up to see the second story. Together, they accompanied the realtor through an airy corner room that Megan immediately claimed as her own, through his potential office, and through the square-walled room overlooking the front lawn that was next to the bathroom and that James announced would be perfect for his bedroom.

Julian was not one of those decisive guys who made split-second decisions on matters of major importance. He was a worrier and an incrementalist, and he liked to weigh all options, liked to study and think and play devil’s advocate with himself before eventually choosing a course of action. Claire was probably the one who would have to pull the trigger on this and make the final decision. Still, he could tell that the house was not only a good bargain but a great place to live. There might be minor problems or inconveniences, small flaws that he’d probably fret over incessantly given the chance, but if they bought the house today and moved in tomorrow, he was sure he could be happy living here.

Downstairs, he walked through the backyard and garage with Gillette while Claire and the kids noisily went through the house yet again.

“You know,” the realtor said as they stepped onto the rear patio, “I am so thankful I got this listing. I knew it was going on the market, but RE/MAX had it before, you know? So I figured the owners would want to go the same way again. But I was blessed that they chose me to sell their home.”

“It’s a nice house,” he agreed.

“I’m blessed,” she repeated.

Julian tried to keep a pleasant smile on his face, though already it felt strained. He was uncomfortable with people who used the word
blessed
as part of their everyday speech. The implication was that God was intervening in the minutiae of their lives, hanging around and helping them with their jobs or children or household chores as though He had nothing better to do.

Maybe it was true, Julian thought wryly. Maybe that was why there were wars and murders and earthquakes and hurricanes: God was too busy helping real estate agents find new listings to deal with those other issues.

He and Claire asked whether they could look again at the other two houses, and Gillette took them all in her car, leaving the van behind in the driveway. This time, the McMansion seemed gaudy and overly indulgent even to Claire, and Julian had to admit that while his first choice did have a lot of land, the house itself was really too small for their needs. Returning to the home on Rainey Street, Julian felt like Goldilocks. One house was too big, one was too small, but this one was just right.

“So,” Gillette said brightly. “Are you ready to get the paperwork started?”

Julian hesitated. The house was great, but what if something even better came on the market next week? Or what if the neighborhood wasn’t as nice as it seemed and they ended up living next to white-trash losers who were even worse than the Willets? Or what if …

Claire looked at him, and he read the expression on her face.

He nodded.

She smiled.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

James sat on his bed, playing a
Star Wars
game on his DS until his mom called him for lunch. The sun was shining through the window, illuminating his desk, bookcase and the movie posters on his wall. He loved his new room. It was away from Megan’s, for one thing, and it definitely felt good to be free from her. In the old house, their rooms had been right next to each other, and she had always been walking in uninvited or pounding on the wall, yelling at him to turn down his television. This room was also bigger than his old one, with space on the floor for his beanbag chair—which had previously sat in his closet, to be brought out only for special occasions—and a built-in wall cabinet for his TV and his Wii—if he ever saved up enough money to get one.

“James!” his mom called a second time.

“Coming!” he yelled back. He finished blasting the last of the clones, then closed his game and went downstairs to the kitchen. He expected his mom to hand him a sandwich on a plate, expected to see his dad eating at the kitchen table, Megan in the living room in front of the TV. But both Megan and his dad were out in the backyard, and his mom was just carrying a dish of baked chicken drumsticks outside, pushing the screen door open with her rear as she backed out into the yard.
“Wash your hands,” she told him. “We’re eating on the new picnic table.”

James was surprised both by the type of food and by the fact that they were eating outside and all together, but he nodded and walked over to the sink, where he squirted some antibacterial soap into his hand and turned on the water. Seeing his parents and his sister through the window made him realize that he was alone in the house, and he glanced nervously to his left, toward the closed door that led to the basement.

He didn’t like the basement.

James scrubbed his hands quickly. It wasn’t something he’d admit to, and he was embarrassed that he even felt this way, but for the week since they’d moved in, he hadn’t been able to set foot in the underground room, and though he’d successfully hidden it from everyone else, he had made a conscious effort to stay away from the door that led to it.

He’d had a nightmare about the basement when they’d first started taking things over to the new house. In order to save money, his parents had decided not to hire movers but to bring the small stuff over by themselves a little bit at a time, then rent a truck and have friends and family help them haul the beds, couches and heavy furniture. That first day, they’d made three or four trips, bringing over boxes of books, knickknacks and a lot of tools and things from the garage. His mom and Megan had stayed home, packing up more stuff for them to take, while he and his dad had ferried the boxes over, unpacking some so the cartons could be reused, leaving others in the rooms where the contents belonged. Neither of them had been sure where a grocery bag full of his mom’s old cooking magazines was supposed to go, so they left it in the basement, which his dad said they were probably going to use as a storage
room anyway. The basement was pretty small, approximately the size of the kitchen above, and they’d put the sack of magazines in the far right corner of the otherwise empty room.

That night, James dreamed that he was being summoned to the basement, though by whom or what he did not know. All he knew was that one moment he was lying in his bed, and the next he was walking down the street in his pajamas, making his way toward the new house because he
needed
to be there. He reached the house quickly—the city’s dream topography made things closer together than they were in real life—and he strode up the walkway into the darkened, empty living room, heading straight for the kitchen, where he opened the basement door and started down. There was a dirty man standing in the corner of the room, grinning, his teeth eerily white against the dark grime of his skin. The man was as still as a statue; even his tattered clothes did not move, but he was alive and he was
hungry
. This was what had called James to the basement, and though he wanted to run away, his feet carried him forward, toward the corner, toward the grinning man.

And then he awoke.

Even thinking about the nightmare gave him chills, and he turned off the faucet and hurried outside without drying his hands, dripping water on the floor as he ran. Outside, Megan was complaining to their parents, asking why
he
got to have one of
his
friends stay overnight before she did.

“You know the Caldwells needed a babysitter for Robbie tonight,” her mom told her. “Besides, Kate and Zoe are
both
coming over next week.”

James sat down next to his dad and grabbed a drumstick. From across the table, Megan glared at him. He
smiled back at her, taking a bite of his chicken. She turned away angrily.

He was anxious for Robbie to come over. It was the first time his friend would see the new house, and James was looking forward to showing off his room. Maybe he’d even take him into the basement. It wouldn’t be that spooky with the two of them together.

Of course, they’d have to go down there in the daytime.

“What are we having for dinner tonight?” he asked. There was a lot of food on the table, and he was afraid they’d be eating leftovers. The thought embarrassed him.