Echoes of the Dead (10 page)

Johnny folded his arms and cleared his throat. “Enough chit-chat, Wormsley.  You promised a little insight into what we’re doing, other than camping out for a week. I signed a waiver and the contract, reading every word of both. The contract—slick and vague—said I would spend seven nights in this house under the parameters you, the countersigned, dictated. I don’t know about the others, but you didn’t dictate much.”

“Except your fee, John. I made it clear how much each of you could earn should you decide to stay.” Ben stopped his slow looping of the room behind the couch and took a drink from his glass. A grin spread his lips. “That was enough to get each of you here. If you don’t agree with the stipulations, please feel free to leave now.”

 “So what are the stipulations,” Erin asked. “What exactly do we do?”

Ben shrugged. “Stay here. That’s it.”

“That’s it?” Sarah asked. “Stay here?”

“For a week.  No leaving the house for any reason. No stepping onto the porch, no taking a stroll through the backyard, no sneaking out a window and climbing down the trellis for a midnight rendezvous. You must stay inside the house for a week. I ask that you wear the microphones you’ll find in your rooms between breakfast and bed.”  Ben reached behind his back and produced a small black box with a wire trailing under his shirt. “Just attach the transmitter and microphone cord. With the personal mics, we won’t need the boom after tonight. It will be set up during family meals but no other times.”

“Wait—no fresh air for a week?” Sarah asked. “That’s the twelve thousand dollar stipulation?”

Ben smiled.

“So we’re locked in, I suppose?” Johnny asked. He’d dropped his arms, but his face still wore a cold, hard expression.

“Locked? No. You are free to leave at any time. If you step through the door before noon on the 22nd, the contract is considered null and void.”  Ben set his glass on an end table next to the couch. “It’s quite simple. You stay in the house with the cameras watching, and at week’s end, I cut each of you a cashier’s check for twelve thousand dollars. The cameras click off at midnight, and the crew sleeps outside.  We’ve rented an RV. They’ll work out there. They’ve also set up a smaller base of operations inside.”

A week. A solid week locked in the house with no fresh air, no escape, no sunshine. Kelsey’s esophagus tightened. She shifted in her chair.

Erin sat forward on the couch, began to raise a hand, but thought better of it and dropped it to her side. “So we’re not to leave at any time, but what about the interior of the house?  Do we have any restrictions on where we can go inside?  Any out of bounds areas?  What about a curfew?”

Ben pulled at his lip for a moment. His eyes—cold and dark but full of fire—fell on Kelsey. She shifted in her seat. “You are free to go anywhere—except, of course, the bathroom on the second floor. I’m sure most of you won’t want to step inside that room, anyway.  The ladies are staying on the second floor; the men, including yours truly, have rooms on the third, the attic floor. Anywhere you go, just remember, the cameras are invited, too.”

“We can’t use the second floor bathroom?” Erin’s head tilted to one side. “Why?”

Ben turned to her, his smile never wavering. “Let’s just say it’s locked. For now.”

The hall clock ticked, echoing through the room for a few moments in which Kelsey studied the faces of her friends and the new acquaintances. Her eyes roved away from the surrounding group. The parlor or sitting room or whatever it was supposed to be had changed since she was last in the house. The change was subtle, perhaps a different color on the wall or furniture arrangement, but it bothered her like a bit of sandpaper rubbing tender skin.

“That’s it, Wormsley?” Johnny scratched the side of his face. “Just stay inside and everything’s fine. What about my tires? Was that part of the show?”

“What?”

Johnny looked at the others. “I guess you weren’t in the room—I blew two tires on the county road coming in. I’m not going to try and explain it. Funny coincidence, though.”

Ben circled the end of the couch and sat on the arm. “Are you suggesting—”

“You and your Hollywood tricks had something to do with it? Yeah, maybe. My car’s not even ten-thousand miles old, and to blow two tires within five miles… Something’s rotten in Denmark. Or wherever the hell we are in north-central Kansas.”

“Really, John. If I would have done anything, you can trust a camera would have been there to catch your reaction.” Ben gave an offhanded laugh. “Seriously—I had no idea.”

Johnny’s façade didn’t break, but he shut his mouth. No one spoke for what seemed like a long time. It was a handful of ticks from the big grandfather clock against the wall near Johnny, but Kelsey felt each one in her chest.
Tick, tick, tick
… The heavy meal and mounting anxiety during her drive brewed in her stomach. She thought about her twin bed in the yellow room, how she could fall into it and wake in the morning, one-seventh of her job done without any trouble.
Tick, tick, tick
…

She aimed her gaze at the floor.

The others had begun talking in smooth, even tones. They’d relaxed, taken down their guards. Sarah giggled, but she was a universe away. They spoke a universe away.

Kelsey was sitting in a chair in the house where they’d found a dead man, a mysterious John Doe with slashes on both his arms. It was an absurd thing, really, a monster of a farmhouse in the middle of rolling nowhere with a dead man inside. No, too big for a farmhouse—it had once been an inn or hotel. They’d found it by accident. They’d needed a place to escape the snowstorm, that’s all. Coincidence. Jared made a bad choice. He’d wandered into the snow and lost his way. That’s all. There wasn’t anything wrong with the house. There was no reason for Kelsey to let the cold, furry thing in her gut continue to crawl around and send cold tendrils through her skin.

Only a house.

Only a week.

She could go home, then. Go home and forget all of it. Maybe even invite Johnny for a visit.

She lifted her eyes and examined each of them again. Their mouths moved, but she didn’t hear the words. Ben smiled. He was always smiling, always selling something. Sarah held as much bitterness as ever—she’d always felt in some competition with her, a competition Kelsey wanted no part of. Johnny was hiding a secret, a wound which was new and raw. He hadn’t let anyone else know about it. What had happened in the war? The other two, Erin and Daniel, seemed just what Ben suggested: young fresh faces for the camera. Erin had spunk, though. Daniel might as well been a strip of wallpaper so far. Horribly mean, but true. He hadn’t said more than a handful of words since before dinner.

One week. Twelve thousand dollars. She would be safe and sound and so would her mother.

“I’m not anyone’s nurse maid, so I won’t tell anyone when to hit the sack, but I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day.” Ben rose from the couch. “You have free reign over the house—anywhere inside the house you find an unlocked door.” He placed a special emphasis on the word inside.

Inside the house for seven days. Easy enough for the monster to swallow you.

Kelsey shook her head to dislodge the thought.

The house was just a house. Not a monster.

“I’m done, too.” Sarah stood. “Kels, what about you?”

“Sure,” Kelsey said. “Sounds good. It was a longish drive and… I’m pretty sleepy after stuffing myself.” She glanced at Johnny. He smiled.

Ben was halfway up the stairs to the first floor when Erin stopped him.

“Um, Ben? One quick question… Something I’ve wondered since agreeing to this thing, but haven’t asked.”

“Shoot.”

“Why this house?  I mean, you could have picked some out of the way place just about anywhere and stuffed five people inside with cameras. Why here?”

Ben’s usual smile wavered. His eyes caught Kelsey’s and he looked away quickly. “This house has history, Erin. History best discussed over our coffee at breakfast. We shall have a proper tour in the morning.”  

~

A wind-blown December rain pelted the yellow room’s windows as Kelsey lay awake, unable to sleep in the house—unable to sleep a few doors down from the bathroom where they’d found a dead man five years before. The rain tapped a constant, simple rhythm. The window panes were thick and blocked the wind’s brute fury. The sound would have acted as a lullaby on any other night at any other place, but not in the house. Not on December 15th, her first of seven nights.

Dinner—meatloaf and homemade mash potatoes—sat in her stomach. She didn’t understand what had driven her to eat so much. Swallowing the tension in the room, perhaps. And there had been tension—Erin and Sarah sparred, but also a few fiery moments after dinner, as they sat in the parlor and batted small talk through the room. Johnny all but suggested Ben had something to do with his blown tires.
Drama
. She’d tuned it out well enough—tuned it out or memories had swallowed it.

Memories and bad dreams.

Shadows danced outside. Naked branches blew in the wind and played with moonlight.

Kelsey rolled over and faced away from the window. Sarah lay in a bed four feet away, a lump moving up and down under her covers.  They’d never been close, not even in college when they hung out with the same crowd. Sarah had always been different somehow.  Edgy.  Almost as though she wasn’t comfortable in her own skin. Kelsey closed her eyes. Not being comfortable in one’s skin was a common theme.

A heavy gust rattled the thick window glass. Kelsey flipped in bed. Her eyes fluttered open. Thin curtains covered the windows, but offered little to hold back the dancing shapes. They’re just shadows. Just shadows, Kels, she told herself. Shadows of trees and moonlight. She held her breath for a moment, almost expecting something else, perhaps the icy fingers of a ghost or a dark, clammy ghoul lurking in the dark. She expected a sound at least, maybe the creak of old wood or groan from a settling foundation. 

The house held its whispers close.

The little-girl fears from her childhood drew life from the quiet house, little-girl fears amplified by the extra hours she spent lost in Wind Cave as a child. How old had she been when she strayed from the tour and turned into a dark shaft? How long did she wait in the pitch black, afraid to move because it—the thing with sharp, tearing teeth waiting for her in under the black curtain—could find her? But no, this was not Wind Cave, this was not a stony maw under the Earth’s skin.  The house—while lonely and a little strange—didn’t house any monsters save those which they may have brought with them. Ben perhaps.  He had the potential to be a monster. But Kelsey wasn’t a little girl anymore. She’d celebrated her twenty-seventh birthday, and was only a few years shy of completing a doctorate in psychology.

There was nothing to fear. She was a God-damned expert.

But yet, in the house’s quiet slumber, a voice came to Kelsey.  This sound crawled through the frame and walls, over the polished hardwood floors, into the sheets and comforter on Kelsey’s bed. It whispered in her ears.

I’m here.

Come play with me.

Morning broke into the yellow room with sharp razor-points of light. At some moment in the night, well past two, Kelsey had fallen asleep. She rolled over, not ready for the sun, and pulled the comforter over her head. She remained cocooned for a few more minutes until, finally, the futility of resistance forced the blanket from her face.

She blinked at the bright light.

She was alive and unharmed. One night down and six to go.

Her feet slid from the bed’s edge and touched the cold, firm hardwood. Sarah was gone already, perhaps downstairs with the others having breakfast while she, Kelsey, tried to hide from the world and make up for a sizable hunk of her night lost to silly fears and speculation. She grabbed her cell phone for the time.

“Only 6:40?” she muttered aloud.

The door clicked open. It was Sarah with a towel wrapped around her chest and another folded over her damp hair. “Welcome to the world of the living. Don’t worry. You didn’t snore.”

Kelsey rubbed her eyes, wondering how she’d missed Sarah waking and heading for the bathroom. A faint smell of lilacs wafted through the room, perhaps Sarah’s shampoo or lotion. Her nose wrinkled—the odor always reminded Kelsey of her grandmother’s house, a stuffy, cob-web strewn bungalow always smelling of lilacs.

Sarah slipped into a bra and panties and rubbed her hair with a towel. She paused, studied Kelsey for a moment, and said, “Medusa, right?”

“Huh?”

“My hair. Looks like Medusa.” Sarah frowned. “You know that bit Ben said about ‘free reign’ last night?”

Kelsey dragged her toes in small circles on the floor. “Yes.  He said we could go anywhere inside the house.”

“Yeah, well except for the bathroom right on this floor.”

“The bathroom?”

“You know the one, Kels. We all remember that night.” Sarah tossed the wet towel aside. “Well never fear. It’s locked solid. I had to go downstairs to use the shower.”