The House of Long Shadows Page 12

  But that find didn't scare me half as much as what awaited me further in.

  Standing fully now between the living room and dining room, I had a perfect view of the former, and discovered there was someone sitting in my chair.

  A woman.

  The woman.

  Somehow, I remained standing, but as I stared at the seated figure—with her tangled, winter-colored hair trickling down the backrest of the chair—I lost all feeling in my legs. The figure sat unmoving in the metal chair, directly before my open laptop as if preparing to do some work. Her body, angular for its profound thinness, was cloaked in a stained white gown.

  I wasn't sure if time stood still, or if a hundred years leapt by as I stared at the back of her head. And somehow—from the black screen of my open laptop, it appeared—the woman stared back. Though she did not turn to face me, and made no acknowledgement of my presence, that she was watching me intently from that screen, or else by other means, was plain. In the moments that I stood frozen, anchored to the floor, I let my gaze wander towards that screen and I gleaned the broadest strokes of the figure's terrible face reflected therein.

  She lacked eyes, but the gaping sockets where eyes had once resided, now partially crusted over with leathery skin, were nearly as expressive. The bulk of her once-elegant nose had largely crumbled away, but asymmetrical nostrils remained. The two holes looked like something left behind by a burrowing parasite. A yawning mouth—too large, too deep, for a human being's—twitched at the corners in silent speech, or perhaps laughter.

  I had seen this monster of a woman before, in my dreams.

  I'd also captured her on camera, briefly, leering from the window of the master bedroom. The kitchen window, too.

  Now, she was seated before me, a mere fifteen feet away. A smell not unlike the stench of the Callery pear tree—though a good deal more rank—met my nostrils as I gawked. It smelled almost like ground beef a few weeks past its sell-by date.

  Her mouth continued twitching. She nodded her head in erratic little bobs, like she was either in absolute agreement with some unseen conversation partner, or else dodging psychical punches. Her arms, stick-thin and the color of new notebook paper, were wrapped around her midsection as though she were holding herself together at the waist. Blue, spidery veins traveled up and down her limbs, from the tips of her bare feet to the rigid ends of her skeletal fingers.

  Like hers, my mouth moved but no sound came out. My tongue turned to lead and the very concept of language flew out the window.

  There was a voice in my head—I think it was mine—still repeating that old, hopeful refrain.

  It's not possible.

  It's not possible.

  It's not—

  I was still staring at the woman when I felt a cold hand against the back of my arm, along my tricep. Two frigid, unseen fingers pinched my skin, leaving my arm tingling with pain. My heart did a somersault; my heartbeat suddenly doubled, like I'd just dunked my head in a bucket of ice water, and my vision went spotty.

  A voice—hideous and croaking—sounded from behind me, bringing with it a cold that singed my earlobe like frostbite. “It's not a dream.”

  Losing my footing, I made a drunken half-turn and clutched reflexively at the back of my arm, ready to face the horror behind me.

  There was no one there.

  A scream was born in my throat, but I couldn't draw the breath to voice it. Choking on the sound, I whipped back around to the woman in the living room.

  The chair was empty.

  She was nowhere to be seen.

  Considering what happened next, I'm inclined to consider it a miracle that I stopped to grab my keys and wallet from the living room table before running out of the house. No sooner had I discovered the living room empty of any presence did I hear a swell of laughter in the upstairs. Doors began to slam, footsteps charged along the floors of the upper level, and countless voices—all of them infernal—screeched in delight. One by one, all of the lights in the house were put out. The light in the kitchen blinked off, then the other living room light. By the time the dining room and stairwell lights went out, I was racing through the door, into the fog.

  I struck the van head-on, knocking the wind out of myself, and had to limp into the driver's seat.

  When I'd made it into the vehicle, I backed out immediately. Bouncing over the curb, I shifted into drive and put the pedal through the floor.

  Twenty

  Everything in the motel smelled like cigarette smoke.

  Even the ice from the ice machine tasted like fucking Camels.

  I'd made quite a scene when I'd rolled into the motel the night before. Shaken, barely coherent, I'd only gotten a room at all because I'd thrown a fair bit of cash at the tired guy working the counter. Literally, I'd thrown bills at him like he'd offered me a lap dance, too freaked out to even count them. He'd asked if everything was all right, made sure I wasn't drunk or violent, and then helped me to a room, where I'd confined myself. It was only at noon that I finally emerged, taking a tentative glance down the hall and finding my way to the vending machines.

  I hadn't gotten much sleep, and what little I had gotten had been awful. Burrowing into the crusty bedclothes, I'd tossed and turned the whole night, plagued by what I'd seen and the burdensome knowledge that I had, in fact, seen it. For hours I'd been able to feel cold fingers pinching the back of my arm. The voices of guests carrying on in nearby rooms sounded, at times, like that low, croaking voice I'd heard back at the house. Laying in bed with a pillow pressed over my face, I feared that I'd find myself back in the living room with the woman seated nearby the moment I dared remove it.

  I checked out of the motel at almost one in the afternoon, looking like shit. When I walked to a small bar across the street to order some stiff drinks, the bartender almost refused to serve me. Once more, it was only because I had a fair bit of cash on me that he acquiesced and poured me a few glasses of Jameson. Thankful that the bar was quiet this early in the day, I enjoyed my drinks in near silence, listening occasionally to the oldies playing overhead. Roy Orbison's “Crying” came and went; by my third glass, it was Simon and Garfunkel.

  The Jameson felt like it was going to burn a hole in my stomach, but it gave me the courage—or reinstated the necessary naivete—to ask some tough questions about what had transpired less than twelve hours ago in that God-forsaken house.

  A ghost. I'd seen a ghost. Specifically, the ghost of the woman I'd found buried in the wall. The resemblance was undeniable. Her reasons for haunting the place and her identity were a mystery to me. Up until that point, I'd preferred it that way. My go-to plan had been to renovate the house as quickly as possible and then to dump it. I hadn't cared an iota about its history. The sooner I could forget about the corpse, the look of that shitty, abandoned neighborhood, the better.

  And yet, so long as I had any dealings with the house, this spirit wasn't going to let me off the hook. I could feel it in my gut. Every time I'd set foot in that house, something had happened. If I continued hanging around, I was going to keep inadvertently recording things, would be plagued by visions of the dead every time I set foot there. The clear solution to all of this was to simply stop working on the house. If I never went back, the problem would be solved, no?

  Perhaps that was true, but I'm the kind of man who likes to both have his cake and eat the shit out of it. Hell, I like going back for seconds if the mood strikes me. Despite all I'd been through, I wasn't ready to just abandon the project. I was scared, but I was angry, too. Angry that this thing had scared me away from my own house; angry that I'd gone running like a child. There was a lot riding on this renovation, and I wasn't quite ready to call it quits. Not until I was sure this ghost problem was insurmountable.

  The voices. There was something about this woman—or this phantom that had been a woman, once—that really terrified me. She seemed capable of speaking in many voices. On the tape, and in my dreams, I'd heard an assortment of hellish voices comi
ng out of her—and last night, too, I'd heard a number of them in the upstairs. It was like she had a whole town living inside of her—like her body was home to a whole cast of characters.

  Could she harm me? Were ghosts capable of injuring the living? Aside from the psychological torment she'd been putting me through with her frightening appearances, I hadn't incurred any physical harm yet. If the spirit was capable of hurting me, it probably would have done so earlier in my tenancy. I'd slept there, would have been a sitting duck on numerous occasions. There'd been no shortage of opportunities.

  A fourth glass of Jameson—and my last, if the bartender's stern look was any indicator—instilled me with a bit more bravado.

  My father wouldn't have been scared off by some ghoulish thing. He'd have laughed in its face, gone on working despite it. I didn't look to my father's example for a whole lot in life, but if there was any time that it made sense to emulate him, then this was it.

  I was close to landing that TV show. And I wanted it. Badly. If I turned my back on this house, it was possible I'd never get an opportunity with the Home Improvement Network again. Of course, even if I bailed on the project and said goodbye to stardom, I'd be able to find work elsewhere, but ultimately I wanted to level up, to take my career to new heights. I didn't want to piss away the rest of my life doing low-key renovations for clients like my father had done. I wanted to be a star, and pursuing my dream would require sacrifice.

  It would require a TV show.

  I thought about sobering up and heading back to the house, but the whiskey alone wasn't enough to ratchet up my courage.

  It became clear that I was going to have to go into this project with a plan if I was going to do it at all. You don't just march into a building full of asbestos without planning ahead; so too would I have to prepare to deal with this house's particular problem. While funneling cocktail peanuts into my mouth, I tried thinking of ways I could make peace with the situation. How can you fix the house and get your videos made, while minimizing your contact with this thing?

  Why, I wondered, were spirits sometimes leashed to places after death? The dead woman in that wall had likely been a victim of murder; even the detectives had said as much. Did she carry some sort of grudge towards her murderer that kept her soul tethered to the property? Or, did she linger on because she wanted to reach out to the living—to let them know what had really happened to her? I tried, believe me, but I couldn't envision this hideous spirit in the house as some innocent ghost in search of closure. In all my dealings with her, it seemed her main focus had been to scare the hell out of me. I'd detected nothing but malevolence in her from the very start—malevolence directed at me.

  Without knowing who had lived in the house previously, or what had transpired there during its years of abandonment, I had no way of knowing who or what I was dealing with. If I did some digging, learned about the house's past and managed to uncover something about this mysterious woman, then maybe I could turn things around. I didn't have a lot of time for that, however. The renovations were going to dominate my schedule for the remainder of the month.

  Realizing that I had no intention of sleeping there ever again, or even spending time there after nightfall, my plan began to take shape. Each day, bright and early, I'd dive in and do as much work as possible until sundown. When evening came, I'd head off to a hotel to work on my videos, and spend the rest of my nights trying to get to the bottom of things. Returning to the house at all was a terrifying proposition, and yet I felt confident in my ability to work there by day. The greatest horrors—the nightmares and manifestations—only seemed to take place at night. By keeping to this schedule and not staying after dark, I could effectively minimize the threat.

  I still didn't want to go back.

  Most of my valuables, including my phone and laptop, were still at the house. I hadn't thought to pack a bag when running scared at 3AM. If I wanted to check my messages and get a new video uploaded, I had to at least get ahold of those and bring them back to the hotel with me. I had an extra video, comprised of odds and ends, that I could upload for the day, thus keeping up my streak. I could re-start work tomorrow and spend the remainder of my day looking into the house's past.

  What would happen if I actually figured out who the dead woman was? Would it be like the movies, where the vengeful spirit happily goes onto the next world because the truth of her murder has been revealed? It was doubtful. The way I looked at it, digging into the history and finding some answers—putting a name to the hideous face—could only help matters, though.

  I idled in the bar until I could walk a straight line and then ate about fifteen dollars' worth of McDonald's across the street. When I was finally sober enough to drive, I went looking for a nice hotel—one with a bar and strict no-smoking policy, for starters—and reserved a room for the night.

  All that was left then was to go back to the house.

  The day was wearing thin, though. By the time I got there and grabbed up all of my most valuable things, the sun would be perilously close to setting, and I realized that my odds of coming face to face with something horrifying would increase substantially.

  I'm not proud of this, but before heading to the house, I used the phone in my hotel room to call the non-emergency police line. I introduced myself, explained that I was an out-of-towner renovating a house on Morgan Road, and that I was fairly sure there was an intruder inside. I asked that an officer come by to accompany me while I gathered some of my things. The dispatcher promised that an officer would be by in the next hour, and I immediately set off for the house.

  I was parked outside 889 Morgan Road much sooner than I expected. I parked far enough up the drive to allow the cop car room behind me, but not so far that I was close to the house. Until I had someone else beside me, I wanted to give the place some distance.

  The house looked undisturbed. The Callery pear swayed, the windows were all empty—at least, for the moment—and the sun was beginning to dip.

  I waited for roughly half an hour before the police cruiser drove up and parked at the curb. As I'd sat waiting, I'd stared at the house expectantly. Its ghostly occupant didn't show, though. Nothing horrific reared its head.

  Even so, I hated that damn house, and I wished I'd never laid eyes on it.

  Twenty-One

  Officer Tanner met me half-way up the drive. He was a young guy, perhaps younger than me, with a blond crew cut and a bit of acne scarring on his cheeks. With a severe, narrowed gaze, he looked to me and then to the house. His first words to me?

  “You're the guy from the video!” Tanner cracked a smile. “This is the house where they found the body, right?”

  Embarrassed, I tried laughing it off. “Yep, that's me. Luckiest guy in the world. This house is a gift that keeps on giving.” Shame hit me square in the cheeks, leaving them red. I imagined this officer—along with the rest of his department—watching the video I'd given to the detectives. They'd probably laughed long and hard at my freak-out. I'd become a department-wide joke, as I'd feared.

  Mercifully, Tanner changed the subject. He pointed to the house, asking, “So, what's the story here? Something about an intruder?”

  The truth was that I hadn't called him over to help me deal with a run-of-the-mill intruder. I simply hadn't wanted to go into the house alone since my last encounter with its resident phantom. Of course, I couldn't let him know that, and so I fed him a half-truth, leaving out all of the paranormal bits. “Yes, last night there was a strange woman in my house. An older woman. I don't know how she got inside. I've been seeing her around the property for a little while, in fact. I thought she might be homeless, that she was looking for shelter, but she's gotten more and more insistent. It's like she's hellbent on living here, no matter what. I changed the locks and put in this motion-activated light outside the front door, but it hasn't deterred her. I'm at wit's end with this.”

  That last part, at least, was entirely truthful.

  Tanner scratched at hi
s ear, walking up to the house until he was a few steps from the porch. “Pretty weird,” he replied. “Why didn't you call last night?”

  Not wanting to admit that I'd run from the house in terror, I offered another lie. “W-Well, I meant to call, but she disappeared. Snuck out of the house, I guess. I just came back to grab some stuff tonight, but it's possible she's returned, so I wanted to have a police officer with me before entering.”

  “OK,” said Tanner. “I'll do a quick walk-through with you.” He stepped aside, inviting me to open the door.

  I hadn't had the presence of mind to lock the front door before fleeing, and I opened it with a mere push.

  Tanner clicked his tongue and stepped inside behind me. “Now, I'm going to have to recommend that you lock your doors if you want to keep out intruders.”

  I ignored him.

  Together, we walked through the downstairs, and I was relieved to find that nothing much had changed. My valuables were still there, and there were no clear signs of the woman. I spent some time staring at the folding chair where she'd materialized the night before and the back of my arm tingled for the memory of her spectral pinch, but I eventually snapped out of it and focused on gathering my things.

  Tanner whistled now and then, remarking on the house's decrepitude. “She's a real heap, isn't she? Renovating this house is going to be a hell of a job. I commend you for it, but I have to wonder why someone would bother with a house in this part of town. There's hardly anything you can call a neighborhood for miles around—”

  “The house had good bones,” I replied, effectively cutting him off. By this point, I was tired of explaining my reasons to perfect strangers.

  We went upstairs together. Tanner was a good sport and went into each of the rooms, the closets, turning up nothing of note. Not that I'd expected him to; somehow, I felt sure that the ghostly manifestations in this house were my own private hell to witness.