The House of Long Shadows Read online

  Having cleared the house, Tanner accompanied me back downstairs as I hurriedly packed my valuables. I stuffed a backpack and duffel with my laptop and camera gear and snatched my clean clothing as well. As I did so, the cop proved more talkative, and leaning against the bannister he drummed a beat against the wood with his fingers. “No sign of an intruder. Make sure to keep your doors and windows locked from here on out. That should keep people out. Say, they found the body in there, right? Behind a wall? An old woman?”

  I nodded. “That's right.”

  Tanner chuckled. “Well, if nothing's out of place, then maybe you aren't dealing with a flesh and blood intruder at all,” he joked. “Could just be the old girl's spirit coming by to make sure she didn't leave the stove on.”

  I paused in my packing of the bags just long enough to curse under my breath. “Say,” I went on to ask him, “do you know if anything ever came of that? The body, I mean. Did they manage to identify her?”

  Tanner crossed his arms. “Dunno. That's not under my purview. Last I'd heard, she was still Jane Doe. If you call the station and speak to the detectives working the case, they might be able to fill you in. Then again, they might not. They don't often comment on ongoing investigations.”

  I'd packed up all of my important belongings and was taking a look around the living room in search of anything else I might need at the hotel when my gaze settled on the wall behind the folding table. I'd printed and taped up the exciting email I'd received from Mona Neeb at HIN there, but as I scanned it blankly, I realized something was wrong.

  Someone had written on it.

  No, not written on it, exactly.

  Someone had taken a pen to it, had crossed off large portions. The few sections that remained legible spelled out a very different message, and for a time I couldn't hear Tanner's voice as he rambled on from the stairs.

  Mona's email had been pleasant and thrilling to me; I'd printed it to remind myself of the potential reward that might await me after the job's end. In scratching out the bulk of it, the vandal had left behind a brief message, quite unlike the original in tone. Only these three chunks of readable text were left. The rest had been blacked out in gouging lines of ballpoint that had marked up the drywall behind:

  WE WANT YOU

  MANY OF US

  The last line of the email had been left mostly intact, but taken along with the previous unblocked passages, it took on a sinister, rather than encouraging, air:

  ALL OF US WILL BE WATCHING

  Tanner walked into the room just as I tore the paper from the wall and stuffed it into my pocket. “You all set in here?”

  “Yeah.” I slung my bags over one shoulder and tried to hide my unease. I don't know if I fooled him—my hand shook as I clutched at the straps—but I did my best to look calm.

  “Like I said,” continued the officer, starting for the door, “just try and keep the doors and windows locked.”

  As if I didn't.

  I followed him out onto the porch. “Thanks for coming by, I appreciate it.”

  “No problem. You have a good evening, now.” Tanner marched back to his cruiser, but I stopped him before he left the drive.

  “Officer?”

  He turned and looked at me tensely, like he loathed the idea of assisting me any further.

  “If I wanted to... to learn about who owned this house before I did... where would I look?” I asked, dropping the bags into the passenger seat of my van.

  “Oh,” he said, pausing. “If I were you, I'd look into contacting the Wayne County recorder's office. They're bound to have something. In fact, it's all automated these days. You can print files online for a small fee.”

  “The Wayne County recorder's office,” I echoed. “All right, I'll look into that. Thanks.”

  Relieved that I had nothing further for him, he waved and hurried back to his cruiser. Moments later, he was gone.

  I didn't waste any time, either. When I was sure I had everything I needed, I backed out of the driveway and tore down the street. I didn't dare look back at the house as I left for the hotel.

  Twenty-Two

  My favorite amenity at this hotel wasn't the super-plush bed, nor the in-room jacuzzi—although I enjoyed those both a great deal. The best part of staying there was the hotel bar, which was staffed by a friendly and seemingly inexperienced guy named Chas. I say inexperienced because he allowed me to order glasses of Glenfiddich 16 for the same price as a Johnnie Walker Red, and he poured them extra tall. His boss would probably throw a fit later on when he realized the barkeep's costly error. I played dumb and thanked him, sitting in a corner and drinking like a king behind my laptop. When I was through, I made sure to tip extra well.

  The hotel bar was a nice spot; dimly lit, quiet and—perhaps most importantly—almost empty. Save for a middle-aged man in a corduroy jacket who sat in the corner opposite mine, smiling into his third or fourth long island iced tea, I was alone in the place. There were ten or twelve tables spread out before the well-stocked bar, all of them covered in neat, white tablecloths. The wi-fi was very good here, and free. Nursing my scotch, I got to work.

  The first thing I had to do was upload a video to my VideoTube channel so that I could keep the challenge rolling. I'd had one video in reserve that I could use on just such an occasion, and I got it uploaded within a few minutes. Up to this point, my viewers had no idea of the trouble behind the scenes, and I intended to keep it that way.

  The next order of business was more involved. Pulling up the website for the Wayne County recorder's office, I whipped out my credit card and began looking for files in their database pertaining to 889 Morgan Road. I had to pay a few bucks just to access their database, and when I found some files minutes later—a deed for the property dated to 1975, along with some tax filings—I had to pay a few more to access them. So long as the documents contained something useful, I didn't mind getting nickeled and dimed to death.

  I had Chas pour me another criminally cheap Glenfiddich and then returned to my laptop to study the paperwork. It was all contained in a single PDF file, somewhat grainy and difficult to read. Or maybe it was the scotch that was making it hard to focus. I paged through the document, four pages in total, and made some notes on a napkin.

  According to these official documents, the house had been built in 1975. The first—and only—owner listed was one Willard Weiss, who'd purchased the lot and had the house constructed between May and August of that year. I jotted down the name “Willard Weiss” and underlined it, but aside from that the deed didn't offer much info.

  The attached tax documents were more illuminating, but just barely. Property taxes had been routinely payed on the house until 1990. Judging by the lack of other names or any further tax payments beyond that year, I supposed that the house had been vacant since around 1990 or 1991. It's likely been almost thirty years since anyone's officially lived in the house, I thought.

  These documents hadn't given me much to work with, but I did have a name now—Willard Weiss—along with a pretty good guess of how long the house had sat empty. I took this name to Google, searching “Willard Weiss, Detroit”, in the hopes of finding more information on the house's previous owner. This search spawned a number of results that ultimately furthered my investigation—and also left me with more questions.

  The first result was for an individual named Willard Weiss who—as of the year 2010—had been listed as living in Detroit. There was a phone number listed, and for a second I got mighty excited, but an attempt to call said number got me nowhere. It was disconnected. The site listed an approximate age of eighty years for Mr. Weiss; given that his most recent listed contact info dated to nearly eight years previous, I presumed he was no longer among the living. And if he was, then it was possible he had an unlisted name and address. Considering his age, it wouldn't have been a stretch to say that he'd moved out of the area to live with family, or was in a nursing home somewhere.

  A second search result helped me t
o fill in some blanks. It was an obituary dated to 1991—not for Willard Weiss, but for an Irma Weiss. Willard Weiss was listed as the husband of the deceased, who had passed in January of 1991 after “a brief illness” at fifty-four years of age. There was no photograph accompanying the obituary, and the listing itself was sparse. It made mention of a sole daughter—one Fiona Weiss, age 29—who at the time of the writing was reportedly some years “estranged”.

  For a time, I felt like I'd hit a dead-end. I took a sip of scotch and read through the brief obituary once more. Only then did I notice something. It was a small detail, probably inconsequential, but something about the name “Fiona Weiss” stood out to me. The initials for that name were “F.W”. In the crawlspace to the house, I'd discovered a chalked handprint accompanied by those very initials. This Fiona, then, had probably been the one to leave that marking behind as a little girl. Well, thank goodness that mystery has been solved, I scoffed.

  Without any other working leads, I took what I'd learned from my various sources and pieced together a timeline of events. This, I wrote down meticulously in a Word document.

  The house had been constructed in 1975. Willard Weiss (born approximately 1938), Irma Weiss (1937—1991 according to the obituary) and their daughter, Fiona (born approximately 1962), had presumably lived in the house. At around the time of Irma's death in 1991, the house was abandoned, and by then Fiona was no longer speaking to her parents. There was no telling whether Willard Weiss was still alive; I couldn't pull up an obituary for him, which was encouraging, and yet I couldn't find anything else on him, either. Searches for Fiona Weiss were a dead-end. Depending on the nature of her estrangement, it was possible she'd moved out of State. Maybe she'd even changed her name.

  OK, so I had a rough sketch of the house's history. Now what?

  There were, as I'd initially suspected, almost thirty years since the house had last been occupied in any official capacity, and those years were all unaccounted for. The body in the wall—and the spirit that now haunted the place—didn't necessarily have anything to do with the Weiss family. It was more likely that the murder and hiding of that Jane Doe I'd found had taken place in that dark, thirty-year period.

  I made some half-hearted searches for missing people in Detroit over the past thirty years, but the sheer volume of listings made it impossible to sift through them all. Moreover, if Jane Doe had been on a lower rung of society's ladder—a homeless woman, for instance—then it was unlikely she'd ever been reported missing in the first place.

  I reviewed my notes once more after closing my tab at the bar. The timing of the house's abandonment—roughly at the same time as Irma's death—struck me as meaningful. Had Irma died in the house after this “brief illness”? The specter that haunted me, that turned up in my dreams and spoke in terrible voices—was it the spirit of Irma Weiss? The more I considered it, the less likely it seemed that this was the case. Irma had died at 54. The body I'd found had looked far older than that. Then again, the body had been sickly...

  No, that didn't make sense. Irma's death had been reported—there'd been an obituary and everything. Unless her body had been scooped up after the funeral and stashed behind the house's walls, rather than receiving a proper burial, the Jane Doe had to be someone else. Still, I wished I could just name the ghost “Irma” and call it a day. It would have been so much more convenient that way.

  I sighed a great, whiskey-soaked breath and packed up my computer. The detectives had been right; the way things were going, the body—and the spirit roaming the house—was likely to remain a Jane Doe.

  Twenty-Three

  I was up before the sun, and couldn't remember the last time I'd slept so peacefully.

  You're getting started early today, I thought as I rolled out of bed. Dad would be proud.

  I awoke with a nasty headache thanks to all the scotch I'd imbibed the night before, but thankfully it was nothing that a strong cup of Tim Horton's couldn't handle. I showered, dressed and headed out to the house before the sun had fully risen, but I didn't go straight there. Instead, I found my way to the old graveyard on Morgan Road and enjoyed a couple of breakfast sandwiches amidst the tombstones while the sky brightened.

  The morning was pleasantly cool, and the peacefulness of the graveyard was a welcome start to what was sure to be a busy and exhausting day. It was funny that I found more comfort in a graveyard than in the house I was set to work in.

  The overgrown paths between the graves and the crumbing of the monuments, however depressing, had started to draw me in. There was sadness there, no shortage of dereliction, but there existed something like intrigue, too. Maybe I just liked wondering about the people who'd been buried there so many years before, but as I paced through the lonely stretch, the dew leaving my pant legs wet, I couldn't help feeling that I was supposed to be there. Something was calling out to me, and I needed only to listen to find out what.

  With the sun out, I—barely—found the courage to head to the house and begin my work. I'd already decided that today I was going to work my ass off to get the bathroom squared. I'd work through lunch to get as much of the tile torn up as possible, and get rid of the toilet and sink. When the shower had been razed and I'd replaced the undoubtedly damaged wall behind it, I'd call it a day.

  Pulling into the driveway and idling out front for several minutes, I eventually grabbed up my camera gear and moseyed to the door. I passed by the dumpster, its rusty exterior flecked in mist, and peeked over the edge at the refuse I'd thrown in previously. I hoped there would be enough room for everything; I still had to dispose of the bathroom fixtures and all of the cabinetry. The busted kitchen appliances, too, if there was room.

  I stood outside the entrance for another minute or two, fiddling with my keys like I didn't know which one to use. Finally, I went inside. The door eased shut behind me, and when the deadbolt clicked I couldn't help but feel trapped. The light through the window seemed less bright than it had a moment ago; the fresh, cool air had been replaced with the house's musty air, and my nostrils itched at the change.

  I threw on my tool belt, and tried to act natural.

  It was early in the day, and I reminded myself that there was no reason to feel jumpy. Pacing back and forth between the living room and dining room as I screwed together the parts of my tripod, I looked constantly for anything out of place, for signs of the ghostly woman. Then, when I'd hauled my camera and tripod up the stairs, setting it up in the bathroom doorway, I made a quick trip to each of the rooms along the hall. They were empty, undisturbed since my last visit with Officer Tanner.

  I returned downstairs and began gathering my tools for the job. Breaking up the old tiles on the floor and shower with a crowbar would be easy enough, and once they'd all been lifted I'd bag them and run them to the dumpster. While looking for my crowbar I got distracted by my phone, and paused in the living room to check my email. What awaited me there took me by surprise, and I immediately plopped down into the folding chair to read more closely.

  It was another message from Mona Neeb at the Home Improvement Network. She wrote:

  Hello, Kevin! Just wanted to let you know I've been enjoying your daily uploads. One of the producers here, Jack Hearn, has been following your work too. He's expressed some interest in having one or two of our representatives visit you there in Detroit, to tour the house and see your work first-hand. Jack is looking to produce a new program for the network and is very interested in what you're doing. Would you be open to meeting some of our representatives on the job site? When would be good for you? I was thinking we'd send them in a week or two, that way you'd have more time to get the house ready. Drop me a line and let me know your thoughts!

  Was I interested in meeting a handful of TV people to show them the work I was doing, she asked?

  Is the pope Catholic?

  When I'd calmed down and my thumbs were steady, I tapped out a short—and overly optimistic—reply. Sure, Mona! That sounds great! I wrote. I'm free to meet
with network representatives whenever is good for you. It might be best to wait a week or two so that I have more to show them, but the work is going smoothly and I expect the job may even be complete before the thirty days are up. I included my cell phone number so that we might discuss the specifics later on, and thanked her for her support.

  Obviously, the work had not been going smoothly. The renovation had been fraught with bullshit since day one.

  That didn't matter, though. I had a week—two weeks, tops—to put all of the unpleasantness behind me and get this sorry old house fixed up. If this producer wanted me to show him an impressive thirty-day renovation, then I was going to show him precisely that. It didn't matter if ghosts or demons started peeking out of every doorway to spew pea soup in my face. The work was going to get done. There was too much on the line for me to keep dithering.

  As I regarded this new message, I was reminded of the old one—the one I'd printed off and left hanging on the wall. I'd found it defaced the evening before during my walkthrough with the cop. It'd been a chilling message, potentially a threat. It had read, “WE WANT YOU. MANY OF US. ALL OF US WILL BE WATCHING.” What that meant specifically was anyone's guess. It certainly seemed to clash with my admittedly limited understanding of the haunting. Were there multiple spirits in the house, or was the specter simply fond of referring to herself as a plurality? She had spoken in multiple voices, hadn't she? So, maybe...

  “Nope,” I said aloud. “I don't give a shit.” Raising my voice so that any unseen occupant of the house might hear, I shouted, “I don't care what you want. Leave my stuff alone, let me do my work, and maybe we'll manage to get along. How does that sound?”

  Plucking my crowbar from a nearby box, I practically skipped up the stairs. I adjusted the camera, did a quick test, and when I had the shower in focus, I broke out my narrator voice. “Hey, there! This is FlipperKevin, here to continue this thirty day renovation challenge. Thanks for tuning in!”