Malefic Read online

  The girl's room, I judged then and there, was especially drafty, and any strange noises issuing from therein had to be the result of a persistent wind meddling with its contents. I felt confident in this appraisal because I felt the draft myself—or, I should say, I encountered something that reason demanded I interpret as a draft.

  Joseph had turned back into the hallway and I'd been a few steps behind him when I'd felt the air about me shift subtly. The hairs on my exposed forearms twitched against this sudden disturbance; the gust was like that created in the wake of someone walking by very quickly, and I had the sense that an individual—unseen, but very much a material entity—brushed past me as I went to exit the room.

  The feeling was so unmistakable that I actually halted, like I'd been elbowed by a stranger in a crowd, and looked around in search of the guilty party.

  But I was alone. Joseph was already starting down the stairs.

  Five

  We chose for our dinner a variety of pies from a local pizzeria, each of them delicious, and spent the hours before nightfall catching up and reminiscing. I shared several embarrassing stories about Joseph in his childhood, which he weathered with a red face, and which left Melissa and Megan cackling. The biggest hits of the evening were the supreme pizza with thin crust, the cold cans of pilsener from a local brewery and my oft-told chestnut about the time I took a young Joseph fishing and dropped a large walleye into his lap—a shock, I suspect, for which he's never fully forgiven me.

  It'll sound a bit conceited perhaps, but as the hours passed and my hosts loosened up, I got the impression that my presence in the house was behind this thaw, and that the three of them—having just dealt with a stressful move into their first home—were not in need of a ghost-hunter at all, but of the warmth and guidance of a trusted family member. Well-fed and seemingly pleased to carry on with another adult, Joseph and Melissa were more animated now, and for that I was very glad.

  My initial alarm in regards to the girl, Megan, also appeared to have been premature. Having the opportunity to speak with her a good deal, and to carry out subtle examinations of her physical and mental states, I felt certain of her good health. No deficits in her fitness could be found; like her parents, she was merely sleep-deprived and stressed by the change in environment. By the end of my stay, which I was willing to extend as long as necessary, I hoped that the three of them would be able to put this silly ghost talk behind them and return to normalcy.

  My life is too often one of solitude. Knocking on the door of sixty-five years and living alone, I do my best to keep in touch with friends, to fill my time with hobbies and the occasional bit of volunteer medical work. Even so, my days are on the whole spent quite alone, and it would be a lie for me to claim that the isolation of such a life is in any way enviable. My wife and I were never blessed with children, and since her passing I have known more of loneliness than I should like. As such, spending time with my nephew's family in this way did me more good than I can say, and in remembering years long-passed I felt that old, familiar nostalgia creeping through me, dampening my eyes and tightening my throat.

  Luckily, at my age, one can blame their unsightly sentimentality on one too many beers.

  Megan proved quite curious about my wife, who'd passed on six years ago, not long after the girl's birth. “Was she nice?” she asked at the tail end of one of my stories.

  “She was. I think you two would have gotten on well,” I replied, digging an old photo out of my wallet and presenting it to her.

  This photo of my late wife had outlived several wallets, and had been run through the wash in my carelessness. Despite its many creases it remained intact. Photos of Constance were not in short supply, but this one had always been my favorite. I'd snapped it myself, shortly after our marriage, in the first house we'd ever lived in. She was seated on the edge of our bed, hands piled in her lap, back-lit by the glow of the midday sun. Her golden hair spilled over the shoulders of a black sweater. My wife had never liked being photographed, and at posing for this impromptu shot, she'd met me with a smile that was half amusement and half annoyance.

  “This,” I said, “was your great-aunt, Constance. She was about your mother's age in this photo.”

  Megan examined it only briefly, before remarking, “She was pretty.”

  I smiled. “I always told her she looked like a blonde Chantal Goya.”

  “Who?” asked the girl.

  “Sorry, I'm showing my age.” I chuckled and polished off my pilsener.

  At one juncture, when the only thing she could think to fill the silence with was the ghostly elephant in the room, Melissa asked me what my plans were for the night. “What will you do? Do you plan to hold your séance tonight? You mentioned doing some automatic writing. Can we watch?”

  I shook my head. “No, not tonight. Tonight my plan is simply to observe—to see if anything worthy of further action presents itself.” I cleared my throat. “And, as I told you before, it's hardly as dramatic a process as what you find in films. When—if—such a thing proves necessary, I'll be conducting it in private. Please understand, the interference of other parties can complicate things. It's better if I go it solo.”

  When Megan had nodded off in her seat, a slice of pepperoni pizza still clutched tightly in her hand, Joseph carried her off to bed, sparing me a nervous smile. “She's sleeping like an angel right now,” he said, “but it's hard to say how long this will last.”

  Some minutes later, when we'd cleared the table, the three of us decided to make like the girl and turn in for the night. I thanked the two of them for their hospitality and told them to wake me in the event of any noises or queer happenings.

  “If things go like normal,” said Melissa, “then you won't need us to wake you. You'll hear it.”

  The two of them were on edge again, convinced that our pleasant evening was about to be followed by a horror-filled night. Nothing had spooked us since the falling of those two dolls shortly after my arrival, but they were sure that a fresh terror was lurking just around the corner, and they seemed to want to prepare me for it. They asked me repeatedly whether I needed anything, if the room was really comfortable enough, and even offered to switch rooms for the night. By the tenth such exchange, I had to order them to bed like children.

  Joseph and Melissa retreated into their room, the one nearest the top of the stairs. I bid them goodnight before peering into the girl's room. The door had been left ajar, and I could see Megan slumbering peacefully with a stuffed fox in the crook of her arm. I took some minutes in the bathroom and changed into a set of flannel pajamas. When I'd brushed my teeth, I stepped back into the hall and prepared to enter my room. I'd meant to switch off the bathroom light, however a slight movement in the hall distracted me from the task and I paused in the threshold.

  The movement had come from my shadow, I now realized, and for a moment I was extremely amused at having been taken off-guard by it. My amusement waned, though, as I took stock of the thing as a whole and discovered that the light had taken some interesting creative liberties with the silhouette of my body.

  In a word, the shadow was misshapen. It was simply too lengthy, and the effect set my limbs—especially my arms—so out of proportion as to be grotesque. I waved both hands, conscious of the vanity light still shining to my back, and puzzled over the strangeness of this shadow. Surely the light, bending around the doorway—and perhaps issuing from bulbs of subtly non-standard shape—was responsible? I backed in and out of the door, but my shadow continued behaving strangely. Like black rubber, the thing stretched all the way to the end of the hall, and seemed to creep up the wall. Had I remained there, it might have continued rising like a tide of brackish water.

  I wrote it off. The effect was curious, and I could understand how it might seem unnerving under certain circumstances, but having traveled hours by train and imbibed three beers, I reckoned the look of the shadow had more to do with my beleaguered perception than it did some ominous force.

/>   I put out the bathroom light, slipped into the guest room and shut my door.

  Seated at the white folding table that Joseph had earlier put up in the guest room, I began my nightly ritual.

  Years ago, before my wife's passing, I'd been a practicing surgeon. The long hours required by such a job had left their mark on my marriage; there were days—weeks—when Constance and I only managed to see each other in passing. Looking for a way to bond and keep the romance alive despite my busy schedule, the two of us devised a sort of game.

  I would bring a notebook with me to work—usually a leather-bound one that the two of us had chosen together—and on my long shifts I would find the time to write my wife a loving note. Then, upon my return home in the small hours, I'd leave it on the kitchen counter for her to find. While I slept and prepared for my next shift, Constance would read my message and pen her own reply, which I could then read once I got to work. This habit, which we kept on for years, allowed us to feel present in each other's lives when my work was at its most demanding.

  And it was a ritual that my wife was determined to maintain even from beyond the grave.

  One night, shortly after her death, upon revisiting our years of correspondence in a number of these old notebooks, I discovered what appeared to be a new message—this one written on a napkin, beside which I'd left my favorite black fountain pen. I hadn't seen her write it, but that it was in her handwriting I had zero doubt. It had been short, simple, and had brought me immense comfort in my destructive, alcohol-soaked mourning.

  I'm still with you, my love.

  It was in this fashion that I discovered my wife still remained in this world, at least in some capacity. I responded to the note, thinking I might simply be insane. The next morning when I arose from hungover sleep however, I saw she'd left a response.

  And so our game of exchanging the notebook continued.

  The mechanisms behind this sustained presence were a mystery to the both of us, and my growing interest in paranormal phenomena have largely stemmed from a desire to understand our arrangement. Constance's access to the world of the living was limited. She existed in a different space—a parallel world of a kind—where restless souls remained in uncomfortable stasis. Why her soul—or anyone's—remained in this sphere years after death was hard to say. Perhaps the world she lived in was like Purgatory, a waiting room for souls.

  Whatever the case, it was from that waiting room that she was able to reach out to me nightly, penning me fresh notes and sharing insights from this other, spectral world.

  In the years since her death, my wife's soul had been strongly associated with my black fountain pen, which she herself had gifted me on one of my birthdays. I can only imagine that her spirit chose to migrate there because she knew how precious the thing was to me, and that it would always be close at hand. This closeness, of course, would then apply to her by extension; wherever I brought the pen, I brought Constance with me as well.

  From my messenger bag I took my newest leather-bound journal and set it open to a clean page. Locating my fountain pen, I licked the nib and wrote a note to Constance, letting her know of the day's events.

  Dearest Constance, I began, it is well after dark as I write this. I arrived in Detroit without incident and have passed quite a joyful evening with Joseph and his family. The house is lovely—it reminds me of our first home, in fact. Joseph, Melissa and Megan seemed at the end of their tether when I arrived. To be honest, I don't know what has them so uneasy. The house is lovely, as is the neighborhood. In my time here, I've heard no strange or inexplicable noises, have seen no phantasms. Though, I will say this—and mind you, it isn't proof of any psychical malady in and of itself—the shadows in this home do behave somewhat strangely. Just before I sat down to pen this message, I noticed it in the upstairs hallway, with the bathroom light to my back. The shadows here lengthen, seem to have a mind of their own. I'm convinced that there's a natural explanation for this, though I've been racking my brain these past few minutes and I can't for the life of me say what it is. I wonder, my love, what your impressions of the house are? Have you sensed anything? How do things look from the other side? All right, I'm off to bed. I'm hopeful that I'll see you in my dreams. Marcel.

  Turning to the next clean page, I left the fountain pen sitting in the seam of the open journal and rose from my seat, putting out the light. The spartan guestroom was plunged into complete darkness, and it was only after I'd situated myself in the cot and stared at the window awhile that my eyes began to detect the faint moonlight drifting through. It must have been a cloudy night, for only a weak glow issued from the panes, settling here and there like a thin film of moon-colored dust.

  I closed my eyes, stretched out and took a deep breath, inviting sleep.

  I didn't have to wait long.

  Six

  Scratch-scratch.

  Scratch-scratch.

  I awoke to the familiar and comforting sound of my fountain pen skating over crisp paper.

  Constance was replying.

  Through squinting eyes I peered across the room and caught the glint of the pen's gold trim in the faint moonlight; I watched it bob and shift in her unseen hand as though suspended by a string.

  I'd nearly slipped back to sleep when I heard the pen drop inertly onto the notebook with a thud, signaling the completion of her missive. Late though it was—my Seiko told me it was just past two in the morning—I thought about getting up to read it. There comes a time in a man's life when his body gets finicky and he has to take his sleep where he can get it however, and having happened upon the one really good position on the tiny cot that kept my back from seizing up, I gave my pillow a quick fluff and resolved to read it in the morning.

  And I would have done exactly that, except for what I heard as I sank once more into sleep.

  I heard a noise outside my door. At first, it struck me as a voice, and seemed to be accompanied by a great, almost impatient sigh. In the ensuing stillness, knowing only that I was too tired to know what I was hearing, I explained it away as the far-off groan of a hinge, or some facet of the house settling against the wind.

  I'd begun drooling on my pillow when I heard it again, and this time it woke me completely. It was louder, more insistent, though no clearer than before. Hard though it was to classify, my ears inexplicably took it for a voice. And if it was a voice, then it didn't belong to anyone I knew to be living in the house. My chest grew tight and I hesitated in leaving the bed to investigate.

  The trouble was that voices—at least, human voices—didn't sound like this. Maybe, if one could train a bullfrog to croak out a couple of familiar syllables the effect could be reproduced, but as I listened from the cot I couldn't make sense of what I was hearing. Frogs in the yard? Had someone left the television on downstairs?

  I amassed sufficient courage to throw off my covers, and I sat at the edge of the cot until my head felt clear enough, and my legs steady enough, to approach the door. The floorboards singed the soles of my feet with cold like blocks of ice as I paced across the unlit room. Reaching out blindly for the door and the light switch in tandem, I yanked open the former and batted pitifully at the latter. The sudden influx of light was painful and my vision was filled with spots; I supposed that if something had been lurking outside my door, it would have found a prime opportunity for assault in my subsequent fit of blinking, squinting and cursing.

  No attack came from the hallway however, because there was no one there—a fact that I blearily confirmed some moments later.

  I peeked out into the dark hallway but could turn up no trace of anyone. Still shaken, I stood in the doorway for close to a minute to make absolutely sure. Joseph and Melissa still had their door closed. Megan's remained ajar, as before. The air was alive with the even sighs of pleasant sleep. The hall, lit solely by the moonlit window at its terminus, was empty.

  Back in the room, easing the door shut, my weary gaze found the notebook on the table. The pen sat upon it and a fresh
message was scrawled across the page I'd left open. Now that I was up, I saw no reason to put off reading it and sought out my glasses.

  Not that I needed them. The message was brief, and was written in a larger, more aggressive hand than was the norm.

  DARLING, I WISH WE HADN'T COME HERE. THEY HAVEN'T LEFT ME ALONE SINCE WE ARRIVED. THEY'RE ALWAYS HERE. EVEN NOW I CAN HEAR THEM CALLING ME—

  The note ended there, as if Constance had been interrupted in its writing and had suddenly dropped the pen. The handwriting was hurried, choppy; the penmanship of one under duress.

  I thought to write a response, but my hands were too unsteady to make use of the pen. Gnawing on my thumbnail and pacing over the creaky floors, I tried in vain to dispel the air of alarm that now filled the room. My mind was racing with questions that I desperately wanted answers to—“Are you OK?” was chief among them. Moreover, who, exactly, had she been referring to in her note? She sounded harassed, pursued, but had told me nothing about her stalkers. How many were there? What did they want? How were they interacting with her? Did this mean that the house was truly haunted, then? The confused nature of the note kept me from making any concrete judgements.

  My pacing had reached a maniac stride when I was distracted yet again by a noise in the hall—the same sound that had drawn me out of bed in the first place.

  A voice—low and croaking—mumbled from the hallway.

  I watched the door intently, and then stood bolt upright as the knob began to rattle.

  “Joey?” I asked, voice wavering. “Is that you?”

  The knob began to turn, and at that moment my fists were balled till the veins in them quivered.

  “Melissa? Megan?”

  No reply. My mouth felt dry as chalk. Without realizing it, I'd begun holding my breath.