House Haunted (6 page)

Ricky had never believed any of it. Spook did, which was why they all called him Spook. He believed in demons and ghosts. He read Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Ricky and the rest of his friends told him his head was filled with nonsense.

Old Mr. Harvey pooh-poohed—the stories, except when drunk on his weakness, rum, which was the reason his wife wished they had never come to Bermuda. She said that at least in Ireland he drank rye, which she favored, and could share with him, but rum made her sick. Old Harvey didn't drink often, but when he did, he became a different man, all his stuffy manner evaporating as his face flushed and his brogue surfaced. “I was clearing out the cellar once,” he told Ricky one day, when the house was closed and they were supposed to be cleaning the cellar themselves. But it was August, and the heat so blinding hot, that they went out on the back porch and watched the flowers and the trees, and smelled the water, and waited for whatever wind might blow at them from the east, “when I swear something touched me on the shoulder.” Harvey's eyes got wide and he ran his hand back through his thinning hair. “Oh, Ricky, I jumped like a frog, I did.” He leaned over in his wicker chair, giving Ricky a hard, unmistakable tap on the shoulder. “It was just like that. And the hell of it was, when I turned around, I saw something fly away from me like a ghost in the storybooks, white gauzy linen and all, in the shape of a dress. When I blinked it was gone.” He ran his hand through his hair again, then picked up his rum glass. “Ten minutes later I was in the fresh air out here and looking at the blue of the sky and trying to believe I'd seen it at all.” He drank and put the glass down. “And I've heard things, seen things fall where no one pushed them, found things moved when I opened up the house the next day, after closing it myself.”

The next day Mr. Harvey was sober as a calf. When Ricky asked him about the stories, he just waved his hands and said, “Bah.”

As Ricky stood staring at the shutters the shadow passed across them again.

He rushed to the window, pressing his face to the angled wooden slats. He saw nothing. He could view the entire room from where he stood. It was the cooking cellar, next to the kitchen, and there was little in it to begin with—two chairs, a table used for cutting vegetables, a deep, waist-high fireplace with a thick iron grate over it.

“Hey now,” he called nervously, “anyone there?”

He felt foolish—as if Spook had gotten him scared with one of his stories. Spook had a scary story about everything from the full to the new moon and back again.

As Ricky stood, staring into the room through the shutters, the shadow passed once more, an invisible yet substantial thing.

A fist of fear formed in Ricky's stomach. There was nothing in that room, and yet theme was. He wondered what Mr. Harvey would say if he went home and begged off sick. He already knew the answer. He would lose his job. If he could catch Mr. Harvey in his rum, there might be a chance of getting away with it, if he told him what had happened with the shadows, but there was little chance of that since Mrs. Harvey had gotten him to give the rum up, saying the very smell of it made her ill. And without the rum in him, Ricky had no chance with the old gent. Especially since he wasn't here today and was relying on Ricky to get the house ready for tomorrow's visitors.

So the choice was between losing his job or staying and doing his duty.

The shadow hadn't reappeared. Ricky turned around and saw a close-hanging tree branch that could have thrown its shadow, even with the near absence of sun, across the window.

He waved his fear aside and unlocked the back door and went in.

The green-painted door banged shut solidly behind him. It didn't bounce and bang again the way it normally did. Ricky looked back at it. It looked as though it were glued. He resisted the urge to go and check it, and then remembered that with the humidity in the air from the coming rain, the wood would swell, making the door stick.

“Foolishness,” he said out loud, to himself.

Stepping into the kitchen, he peeked into the cooking cellar.

It was empty. But as he turned his head away, he saw something move.

“No way,” he said, inspecting the still-empty room. He shook his head and walked out.

The house was dark. The big overhanging window shutters in front and on the side windows were fastened down. He lifted a few of them, letting light and air into the house. It didn't help much; the air was muggy, the day so cloudy that the rooms stayed gloomy. As he straightened and dusted one of the back bedrooms he sang, his voice pleasantly high. He liked Bob Marley, and performed, “I Shot The Sheriff,” beating out the rhythm on his chest or a passing piece of furniture.

As he finished the song, his hands slapping the last reggae beat on a chest of drawers, there was a crash in another room. He stopped cold, fighting off a rush of fear.

Finally, he went to investigate, his hands continuing to slap the beat of Marley's song nervously against his side. The sound had come from one of the middle rooms. When he looked in, he saw a vase he knew had been centered on a small rectangular table in pieces on the floor, the table unmoved.

He heard another crash, at the front of the house. Slowly, breathing through his dread, he edged down the hall and stared into the main dining room.

The heavy glass door in the center of the china hutch was open on its hinges. On the oriental rug lay the smashed shards of one of the dinner plates that nested inside.

Ricky snapped his head up at a sound. Above him, the tin-plated chandelier began to swing on its chain, slowly and then with widening arcs. One of the candles flew from its beaten-tin holder to break beside him.

“Lord Jesus,” Ricky whispered, crossing himself. Another dinner plate tipped out of the hutch, crashing beside the first. One of the side doors of the cabinet opened leisurely, and a heavy gravy boat and ladle tipped out and fell to the floor.

From the rear of the house he heard his own voice singing “I Shot the Sheriff,” and then there was a heavy crash.

The singing voice moved closer. When it reached the room where Ricky stood, shivering, the singing stopped.

In the adjoining living room, a painting fell from the wall over the couch, the corner of its frame cracking.

He backed cautiously out into the hallway. Silence fell and stayed. His body tense, waiting for the next assault, he took another step backward.

He felt a tap on his shoulder.

Gasping, he slapped his hand at the spot, whirling about in time to see the retreating leg of a figure vanish into one of the back bedrooms.

From the same room, his own voice began to sing Bob Marley's “Redemption Song.”

There was a shuttered window in the dining room, and he walked to it. He was sure it was one of the windows he had opened when he came in. It was closed now. There was a hook and eye holding the large green shutter down; to open it, he had to slip the hook and then push the shutter out.

His voice in the other room continued to sing, louder.

He fumbled with the hook, not getting it to come out the first time. It had gotten very dark in the house. He thought he heard a roll of thunder, the first tentative splatters of big raindrops. He wanted to be in the midst of that storm, speeding home on his bike, hot wet rain falling on him. The rain would wake him up from this nightmare, and then the warming sun, later, would make him forget.

If Spook had told him a story like this, he would have laughed. Spook had told him lots of stories, on nights when they sat on lawn chairs in front of Spook's house, Spook sipping rum from his father's bottle, pulling it out every once in a while from the bush behind the chairs, leaning back his big wide frame and laughing, keeping one ear open for his parents. Spook made Ricky scold or laugh with his stories about ghosts in trees, or the ghosts of dead buccaneers that were supposed to inhabit one corner of Hamilton Harbor, asking a penny of any passing soul on a certain late summer night, slitting their throats if the penny wasn't offered.

This was worse than any of Spook's stories, and it was no comfort to know that if Spook had told him this he would have laughed long and hard.

From the bedroom down the hallway, the singing became very loud. It was as if an amplifier had been turned up. Then, abruptly, in mid-lyric, the singing stopped.

The hook on the shutter slipped from its eye in Ricky's fingers. The window shutter moved out a half foot before stopping.

Something touched Ricky's shoulder and stayed there this time.

“Ricky,” a voice whispered, “don't you want to listen?”

Ricky screamed, pushing futilely at the shutter, banging it with his fists, before giving up and suddenly turning around to face his attacker.

The dining room was empty.

But someone's finger was still pressing into his shoulder. “Ricky,” someone whispered in his ear.

He cried out and turned, ramming both fists ineffectively at the shutter. Outside, rain fell just out of reach. Thunder growled.

“Jesus, Jesus,” he pleaded, pushing with all his might as the shutter began to close.

He could not hold it back. It shut, and the hook slipped back into its eye.

The finger on his shoulder became a heavy, bruising grip. “Come, Ricky.”

The hand on his shoulder pushed him to the back of the house. He stood before the whitewashed door that led to the cellar. The wooden latch flipped up and over, and the door creaked open. Ricky was propelled toward the stairway, forced down one step at a time.

The light at the bottom snapped on, its pull chain swinging wildly. The light was brighter than Ricky remembered it.

The cellar was chilly, musty smelling. Along one wall, library shelves stored house records; rows of visitor registers and account books jutted out into the room. Behind them was an area bordered by stacked boxes and furniture in storage or in need of repair.

The hand on Ricky's shoulder pushed him toward the storage area.

The overhead bulb blinked on, flooding the area like a spotlight.

Ricky screamed, covering his face with his hands.

In the neat square area lay the mutilated bodies of everyone he loved. Charlie and Reesa were face down in one corner, hands tied behind their backs. The skull of each had been crushed like a robin's egg. Reesa's face was closest, her head on its side, her eyes staring into nothingness. Spook sat with his back against an unused chest of drawers, his eyes wide open, his severed head not quite aligned with his blood-washed neck on which it rested. Mr. and Mrs. Harvey sat on chairs directly under the light; they had been bound together back to back, their blue-strangled faces staring sightlessly around the world at one another, tongues licking out for air that wasn't theirs. Worst of all was his mother. She was on top of a dining table, laid out neatly like a waked corpse, with three screwdrivers set into her body in a line down her chest; her hand was frozen around the sunken handle of one, vainly trying to remove it. Her mouth was an open cry, eyes pleading unseeing with the ceiling.

“No, God, no!”

Ricky fell to his knees, burying his head in his arms. The hand on his shoulder bowed him to the floor, and he lay there, weeping.

Suddenly, the grip on his shoulder was gone.

Ricky looked up, and the storage area was empty, save for an open box of discarded magazines supporting the leaning handle of a sweep broom.

Ricky slowly got to his feet. He was shivering, unable to drive what he had seen from his mind.

From near the stairs, the voice that had whispered came to him. It didn't whisper now. There was nothing subtle about it.

“Go to New York, Ricky,” the voice said. It was a woman's voice. “If you don't, I'll bring you down here again, and what you see will be real. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.” He shivered as if he were naked in the snow.

“Maybe you'll even dance on Broadway. Would you like that, Ricky?”

Ricky did not answer. Tears pressed at the corners of his eyes. His mouth worked a silent prayer.

From upstairs, he heard his voice singing “Redemption Song.” He heard the muffled taps of his feet, dancing a routine he had created in the style of Ben Vereen.

“Leave, Ricky.” The voice sounded amused. Upstairs, the singing and dancing ceased.

All was quiet.

Ricky took the stairs two at a time. Through the back door it seemed the day was bright again, but when he pulled it open, he saw that the sky was black overcast. There was a deft cut of lightning, followed by the deep booming sound of thunder, its mate. The drops of rain were large and insistent, cold against the skin.

He ran to his bike, ramming it into life, and fled. As he passed the front of Chambers House he saw that the green shutter in the dining room window was thrown wide open.

He sobbed, his crying mixing with cloud-tears of rain.

He bounced down the driveway and into the road, nearly skidding into a pink Hamilton-bound bus as he made his too-quick turn. The rain and thunder made a sound, but it was not loud enough to block out what he heard behind him: his own voice singing, and a laughing voice that said, “Boo.”