Psycho Thrill--Girl in the Well (2 page)

But, since the noise had stopped so suddenly, she assumed that a small avalanche of snow had slid from the roof or that an animal, a cat perhaps, had knocked something over in the attic. She nestled back under the covers.

THUMP! She heard it again, and this time it didn’t stop. Footsteps. As if someone with heavy shoes or boots were walking up and down the room. One step, almost quietly, so that only the floorboards creaked. And then a heavier step.

She woke up her husband, but when he opened his eyes, the sound suddenly stopped and Robert fell back to sleep.

She lay awake for a while, but the steps were gone and it was quiet.

The next morning, she found a few dead flies in Lukas’s empty room. She was sure that the room had previously been entirely empty and swept clean, because she had wanted to paint. But the carcasses were totally dry, and the flies fell apart when picked up, as if they had been lying there for a long time.

She shook it off. She didn’t mention it to Robert, and, eventually, she simply forgot about the footsteps and the flies.

Until the thing with the door started. It was early December. They had already renovated and fixed up the children’s rooms. They had turned out quite lovely: Ben’s room had two small dormers, with windows overlooking the garden, and Lukas’s room was large and spacious — a proper bedroom for a young man.

Sabine had just cleaned the antique kitchen cabinet, which she and Robert had purchased at an antique shop, when she heard a bang from upstairs.

“Lukas? Ben?” she called, because she thought they were both actually in the garden, but maybe they had fought and gone to their rooms. But no one answered, and, even though she had really forgotten all about it, she flashed back to the footsteps in the night and wished that Robert were home.

She went to the stairs and called their names again. No answer. Instead, she heard a door slam. Ben’s bedroom door. She nearly fainted with fright.

“Ben?” she called out timidly and imagined him in a rage of anger at his brother and sulking in his room. He didn’t answer. Maybe he was really upset. She climbed the stairs and looked up at the hall. She saw the door opening inward. Slowly. Very slowly … .

She was about to tell Ben to stop this little game when the door slammed shut in front of her. With such force … Ben would have never been able to slam it like that.

The ensuing silence seemed threatening, as the door opened again. The handle slowly moved downward and the door opened, as if being pushed by a light breeze. It creaked softly.

Sabine summoned all of her courage and took a step into Ben’s room.

Through the dormer window, she caught sight of Lukas in the yard and Ben at the edge of the woods building a snow fort.

Who had slammed the door?

Despite her fear, she brought herself to peer behind the door.

And what she saw there was no less terrifying.

There was no one. Nothing. The room was empty.

She takes a sip of water, starts to put the glass down, but then drinks the entire glass in one gulp.

“Are you following me?” she asks.

“Yes, I think so,” Henning answers. “You doubted your own mind. This fear, coupled with the previous fear of what had already happened … .” He nods and purses his lips. Mrs. Falkner takes a breath.

“Yes. Yes, exactly. I stood there in the room for a while. Completely unable to move, I stared at the door and waited. Waited for it to move, but nothing happened except that I was cold. And I saw a fly lying on the floor by the door. It was dead. And, again, I said nothing to Robert because I was afraid that something was wrong with me.”

The fact that something else was wrong occurred to Sabine a few nights later. She tossed and turned in her sleep and woke up. She immediately groped around for Robert, but the bed was empty, the sheets cold.

She quietly ran out of the bedroom, listened, and peered into the darkness.

An old house makes a lot of noise, glass rattles, wood creaks, but she still heard an extremely quiet voice coming from the children’s rooms.

“Robert?” she whispered.

“Shhh!” she heard him answer from upstairs. But it wasn’t his voice she heard speaking. It was a child’s voice, modulating louder and softer, which resonated throughout the house. As if a child were talking to someone. She crept up the stairs and only saw Robert as a shadow beside Ben’s door.

“Ben is talking to that Marie again,” he whispered to her. She didn’t understand, and Robert told her that Ben had often been in his room talking in the last few nights.

Talking to
someone
. First, Robert thought that Ben was just having bad dreams and talking to himself, but then he listened in and realized that Ben was talking
to
someone. Marie.

Sabine put an ear up to the door and also tried to understand something. She could clearly make out Ben’s voice:

“I told Lukas. He thinks I’m stupid, and that it’s not right.” She heard Ben with his blanket rustling and the creaking of the bed frame and could picture him sitting on his bed under his reading lamp. The light was visible from under the door.

“You already said it, I’m not stupid, Marie. But they won’t believe it”

—

“No. Why?”

—

“He’s already here? Right now? Marie? No, don’t go!”

Sabine wanted to ask Robert something when she was hit by a cold draft blowing down the hall from Ben’s room. A coldness that she immediately knew she had never felt before.

“Robert, something here is not …” They both heard Ben as he got up from he bed, ran to the door, threw it open, and screamed in terror. He was way too fast for them: they’d been discovered.

“Mom, Dad, what are you doing here?”

“We heard you talking, Ben. What’s going on?”

“Can I sleep in your room tonight?” His question immediately turned into sobbing and he fell into Sabine’s arms.

Before Robert could argue, she firmly said, “Yes, of course, darling.”

She left Ben with Robert and went into his room to turn off the lamp. It was still cold. On her way out, she closed the door behind her, and a shiver ran down her back.

Later, she and Robert questioned Ben about Marie. Robert told her he’d already listened at Ben’s door three times and heard Ben talking to his imaginary friend, Marie, every time. Ben was seven now. About three or four years earlier, he had had an imaginary friend named Banscho. At that age it was normal, but at seven?

Marie worried her even more. According to Ben, she was constantly on the run from the fly man who would come into her house and wanted to hurt her. But not only her. Marie told Ben that the fly man also wanted to hurt him.

“When did you first meet Marie?” Robert asked.

“I … I don’t know anymore. She just stood there and I slept. Then I woke up.” Ben thought about it.

“She said her name was Marie and that she lived here. And watched us. She wanted to know everything. Where we come from and stuff like that.”

“And what did you ask Marie?” Sabine asked.

“Why she came to me.”

“And why did she come to you?” Robert asked.

“Because she died on that day a long time ago, when she still lived in my room. Before me.”

Sabine couldn’t breathe. Blackness danced before her eyes. Later, she couldn’t remember fainting and falling to the ground.

From then on, they all worried about Sabine, especially Robert, who thought she should take it easy and cut back on all the renovation work and the move.

No one worried about Ben and his new friend Marie anymore. Robert took her to be the seven-year-old’s stress-induced vision and pushed it out of his mind.

Sabine also tried to suppress thoughts of Marie, because she just couldn’t believe the story. Nevertheless, Marie would return to haunt her.

On Saturday, the first day of Advent, Lukas came to Sabine and Robert in the living room, late at night.

“Ben — he’s not doing well.” He sounded upset.

“Did you make him mad at you again?” Robert looked sternly at his offspring. The boys had been quarreling more often lately.

Lukas shook his head.

Robert and Sabine looked at each other. Somehow, they both felt that this was something serious. They followed Lukas.

Ben was sitting on his bed and crying. He had turned on his reading lamp and pulled the blanket up to his nose.

“Ben! Sweetie! What’s wrong?” Sabine sat down and put her arms around him. Robert stood indecisively beside the bed and Lukas hovered near the door, curious.

“I won’t tell!” Ben was stubborn. Sabine snuggled up to him and could feel him trembling.

“Ben, is everything all right?”

“I don’t want to be here anymore, Mom!” he cried and buried his face into her arm.

“What’s wrong, dear? What happened, Ben?”

“Marie …” he gasped, and then couldn’t speak at all.

“Marie!” Robert snorted, and Sabine gave him a stern look. It was clear that Ben was serious about the girl from his dreams.

“What going on with Marie?” she asked Ben.

“Marie is dead because the fly man is coming soon. He … he … he killed her!” he sobbed.

“Ben! There is no Marie. And no fly man either. You’re imagining it all!” Robert rebuked him and the tone of his voice was enough to actually keep the boy from talking back at first.

“But Marie really does exist! And the fly man, too! Marie lived here. Even before we were alive!” He then cried in frustration.

“Ben!” Robert threatened.

“Ben knows where Marie used to live, Dad! Really!” Lukas stood up for his brother.

“Now don’t you start with it too, Lukas!”

“Ben, tell Mom and Dad!” Lukas said and Ben nodded.

“She lived up in the attic over your room when the fly man lived inside her. The fly man crept into her and then she did stupid things. She used to live in Ben’s room. Pretty spooky, huh?” Lukas was still standing in the doorway and now entered the room to escape the darkness behind him.

“Lukas, you don’t really believe in this nonsense,” Robert barked at him.

“Even Marie’s bed is supposed to be there,” Lukas answered quietly. Robert went silent.

“Ok, then tomorrow we can take a look in the attic,” Sabine suggested. Robert agreed and Ben calmed down.

“Can we sleep with you?” Lukas asked and Sabine was happy to hear it.

“Excuse me, would you mind if I closed the window?” Henning interrupts.

“No, no, go ahead.” Henning shuts the window, turns back, looks questioningly at Johanna and inconspicuously rubs his forearm to show that he’s freezing.

Johanna is also cold, more specifically, getting colder since Mrs. Falkner started talking. She can’t tell if it has to do with the story, but she has already taken note of it.

“May I continue?” Mrs. Falkner asks, as Henning is just sitting back down.
She seems rushed
, Johanna notes.
As if she doesn’t have much more time and wants to tell her story to the end.
Henning nods and Johanna keeps writing.

The next morning, Ben woke up first and demanded that Sabine keep her promise. The four of them entered the huge attic, which extended over the entire house. Three staircases led up there, and one of them was almost completely piled with furniture and boxes that they still hadn’t unpacked. Here, there was a small skylight, while further back, over the former stables, where the possessions of the previous owners had been left behind, it was darker. The objects mostly looked like furniture, but there were also things that Sabine couldn’t identify in the early morning light.

“Wow!” Lukas marveled. Ben held Sabine’s hand tightly.

“Where did Marie have her room?” Robert asked.

“Back there,” Ben answered and pointed to the collection of antique furniture. Robert turned on a flashlight, stepped between the piles of their moving boxes and lit the way. Everything really looked as if it came from another world, from the past.

Even Robert was amazed. “Funny that we didn’t notice all of this junk up until now — even though we dragged all the moving boxes up here.

Sabine didn’t answer. She was too busy processing their discovery. On top of that, she could feel the fear again. The same fear she’d felt when no one was standing behind Ben’s door.

She forced herself to suppress the fear. After all, she wasn’t alone this time. Ben walked ahead and called her to him. Behind a couple of wardrobes that had been pushed together, they discovered a separate area. Wood panels had been put up to make walls, forming a partition.

“There’s a door,” Robert whispered, and lit up a massive, white wooden panel that somehow looked fake in the dark.

“This is her room,” Ben said, and hid behind her. Robert went ahead, Lukas followed him, and she and Ben stayed behind. She suddenly heard chains rattling and was frightened.

“You won’t believe it, Sabine — someone put chains here … so they could not only shut the door, but also secure it,” Robert called out from inside the makeshift room. She could only see the beam from the flashlight jumping up and down.

“Robert, please be careful!” she called to him.

“Wait, Lukas. Now!” There was a crunching sound. Lukas and Robert had opened the door; the beam of light disappeared, Ben’s hand squeezed hers.

“Everything is all right, Ben. Come, we’ll go after Dad,” she told him.

“Dad! What is that?” Lukas’s voice trembled. Since Robert didn’t answer right away, she got scared and ran after them, but Robert was just standing stunned in the room. It looked like a child’s room. Wooden horses and dolls sat and stood on a shelf on the wall. In the middle, there was a bed.

“A child’s room! Ben was right!” she breathed, but Robert just shook his head.

“Lukas, Ben, you get out of here. Now!” The tone in his voice made Lukas grab Ben’s hand. They went out.

“What is it?” she asked him.

“Sabine, this isn’t a child’s room,” Robert answered, “it’s a prison.” He shone the flashlight on the metal bed frame, on the chains that fastened it to the wall, on the chains and handcuffs meant to bind someone who had lain in the bed.

Sabine was speechless. She pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from sobbing.