Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
As usual, traffic on a snow day was insane. No matter how many times we’d had snow in the past years, it was still infrequent enough to wipe out the short-term memories of drivers and turn them into floundering idiots. That, combined with the steep streets of the city, the lack of snow plows because they weren’t cost effective for the amount of snow we got, and the caffeine-buzz of commuters, turned the city into a skating rink.
To be fair, the steep streets were a serious issue, and the city couldn’t justify a fleet of snowplows that seldom saw use. The topography of the city wasn’t ice-friendly. Losing control on a hill with an eighteen percent grade, well…that was a terrifying prospect. I, like ninety percent of my fellow Seattleites, didn’t own snow tires, and though my car did all right on water-slicked roads, like any other two-ton vehicle, it was a lot of weight to steady when gravity and frozen water collided.
I managed to get to work in one piece, though I passed several fender benders and a couple spinouts on the way. As I headed inside, stomping the snow off my boots, Orik emerged from the building, a bag of salt in hand.
“Isn’t it the building manager’s responsibility to salt the parking lot and sidewalk?” I asked.
“Yeah, but he’s stuck in North Bend and can’t get here. He told me where to find the salt and asked if I’d take care of it. We don’t want anybody falling out here.” Orik ducked his head and forged into the snow flurry. Even with his weight, he managed to steady himself firmly on the ice and snow.
I took the elevator, for once, and as I entered the office, I stripped off my coat. Sophia was at her desk, and she waved a piece of paper at me.
“We finally got Yinny to pay!” She waved the check. “I remotely deposited the check, so here’s hoping it goes through.”
Yinny was a little weasel—literally, he was a weasel shifter—who had stiffed us for the work we did for him. I finally sent Lazenti over to visit him a week or so ago and Yinny had quickly changed his tune.
“Good. Mark his file closed, as soon as the payment clears, and put him on the list of clients we’ll never work with again.” I glanced out the window behind Sophia’s desk. It was coming down hard. “Call Caramite and make certain we’re still on for the day, will you?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
“What do you think of the snow?” I asked.
“I’m not much of a fan. My car’s not the best in snow, so Orik picked me up this morning. He’s in the breakroom with Carson and Dante.”
“Oops,” I said. “All right, let’s get moving with the day.”
“So, Carson, can you make certain the equipment we’ll need is in working order?”
“Sure,” he said. “EVP and all of that?”
“Anything to do with ghosts or spirits, yes.” I glanced at my email. Lazenti had left me a message. “Lazenti’s good for the Lord of the Rings party. Let’s mark it as official on the calendar.”
“Noted,” Sophia said.
“All right, let’s hear what you found out about Michael’s home,” I said, turning to Carson.
“Okay, here goes. Caramite lives at 7259 Lakesmith Drive. The house was built back in 1926, and the first owner, the man who commissioned the house, was Jack Farquar. A stockbroker, he and his family moved into the house in 1927. Jack and his wife, Mary, were wealthy, popular, and members of the upper social elite. They had two sons and a daughter. Everything was wonderful until October 29, 1929, when the stock market crashed and everything he'd worked for went down with it. Jack Farquar and his family lost everything they had, and he lost a lot of money for his clients.”
Carson turned his laptop around, showing us a headline from that day. stocks hit lowest levels glared out from the screen.
“Not only did Farquar’s clients lose their money, but apparently, he had been hedging his bets, speculating without having the funds to back it up, and he lost everything in one day. He went from being one of the richest men in town to being dead broke.”
“That’s scary,” Sophia said. “A lot of men killed themselves during the Great Depression.”
“And that’s what happened. Except that Jack Farquar decided to take his family with him. He went home from the office that night and, according to his sister-in-law, who was there for dinner, he didn’t mention what had happened. She hadn’t heard about the news, and nobody said anything about it. Next morning, he asked his wife to keep the children home from school and he made her promise not to read the news. We know this because she wrote it in her diary—she didn’t know why, but figured he’d tell her when he got home.”
“So, he didn’t want his family knowing,” I said.
“Right,” Carson continued. “The morning of October 30 th , Jack went into the office as usual. He verified that everything had collapsed, and told a coworker that he was going to lose everything.”
“Uh oh. I sense a bad end here,” Dante said.
“You sense correctly,” Carson said. “After realizing their finances were in ruins, Jack Farquar paid a visit to his doctor, where he asked for a prescription for his wife. Back then, doctors were generous with drugs. Jack went home and pretended like everything was normal. And that night, he laced the soup his wife made for dinner with Brallobarbital, one of the first barbiturates created. He didn’t eat any, and after his family passed out, he carried the children and his wife to their beds, where he shot them in the head. He then sat down beside his wife, put the gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. He left a note, telling the police what he’d done.”
I grimaced. “I just love how others think they can make life and death decisions for their families. At least he left a note,” I said. “Do they…”
“Yes, there’s a copy of it in the archives of the newspaper. The archives were kept on microfiche—which was a surprisingly early invention.” Carson said.
“I take it you went down the research rabbit hole?” Orik said.
“Yep. Microfiche has been around a long time. Anyway, during the thirties, the paper started filming everything on record for the archives. So, they have a record of the note.” He tapped away on the keyboard, then sent us the link.
I brought up the copy of the note on my tablet.
To whom it may concern, including the Seattle police:
I am leaving this note so that you won’t have any questions as to what has happened to my family and me. I have always been a tidy man, and I don’t appreciate riddles. I don’t want anyone else to be blamed for my deeds, and so let this be the official record in this case.
I, Jack Farquar, confess to the authorities, and to my Maker, that I killed my wife, two sons, and daughter, and I plan to kill myself after I’ve written this. I cannot face the disgrace and the loss that I’ve brought upon my family. And I cannot ask them to face it either. My wife has never known anything but luxury, nor my children. And they never will.
As head of the household, I make this choice for us. I’m a weak man, and I can’t begin to figure a way out of this. My family are paupers, and my wife’s family would help us, but never let me forget my shortcomings.
Do not blame anyone else, this is my last act, in order that we flee this life while still in comfort and peace.
Jack R.S. Farquar
I stared at the letter. The spidery handwriting was eloquent, overly embellished, and spoke to me of a man who would never be able to face problems harder than what to choose for dinner, or what color of suit to wear.
“There was a wave of suicides during that time, right?” I asked.
“You would think, given the reports,” Carson said. “But, no. There were a few cases of suicide, but the concept that stockbrokers were throwing themselves out of windows is a myth. But for Farquar, well…that he couldn’t conceive of life without money speaks to his character. They could have sold their house and moved in with relatives. His sister-in-law was interviewed by the police and she said that he married her sister for money. The couple got along. He knew that her family would always help, but never let him forget that he failed to provide.”
“So, we have five deaths in that house. Or rather, four murders and a suicide. Anything else?” I had learned, over the years, don’t just stop at the obvious.
Carson consulted his notes. “Yes. Before the house was built, there was a small store—a mom and pop grocery store. It burned down, killing the owner. His wife was out of town, visiting her family, and he fell asleep in the apartment over the store. He was smoking a cigar, and didn’t put it out before he dropped off. The cigar fell onto a carpet, and caught fire. He was trapped in the bedroom and when he made it to the window, it was nailed shut. He couldn’t escape.”
“So, another death in that space—by fire,” I said, wincing. Events were certainly setting themselves up for a haunting. “Anything else?”
Carson tapped away on the laptop. “Yeah…this one goes a long ways back. Before Seattle was Seattle, there were a number of indigenous tribes that lived in the area. In addition, there were also several shifter packs. One of the wolf shifter packs was feared by all the others in the area.”
“Why?” Dante asked.
“Because they were predators. They preyed on everyone else in the area. While the Blood Moon pack was small, each member was absolutely terrifying. They prided themselves on their number of kills, and when the alpha grew weak, there would be a tournament between the strongest members and the winner would publicly execute the former leader and take the mantle.” Carson shuddered. “I would not want to run into a group of them.”
“Do they still exist today?” I asked.
“Yes, but they stay hidden, for the most part and nobody really knows what they’re up to. However, back then, they held elaborate rituals, summoning Xetanbu, the?—”
“The wolf shifter god of chaos,” Dante said. “Very few wolves even know of him, anymore, but he used to be a popular god. Coyotes coopted him.”
“What was Xetanbu like?” I asked.
“He was terrifying. He demanded blood sacrifice, and so the shifter pack would raid the tribes and other shifter packs and haul their victims back to what they called the Bleeding Rock—a large granite slab on which they tortured and killed their victims.” Carson gave me a long look. “Guess where the Bleeding Rock was located?”
I groaned. “On Michael’s land?”
“Correct. Once the Blood Moon Pack retreated to the mountains, as the tribes grew stronger and were able to resist them, the tribal leaders of the area cast the Bleeding Stone into Puget Sound and then cordoned off the area. Nobody lived there until the settlers began coming into the area.” Carson shrugged. “Whatever the case, that plot of land has seen a lot of damage over the years.
I thought over what he had said. “So, the Bleeding Rock. Do we know if there was a creature attached to the rock? Was Xetanbu attached to it? Or do you think the manifestations might be due to the build up of psychic chaos?”
“That, I don’t know,” he said. “It could be one, the other, or something entirely different.”
Orik rapped his knuckles on the table. “If we’re facing a god, this isn’t going to be easy.”
“Understatement of the year,” Carson said with a laugh. “Sophia, do you think you could pinpoint what we’re facing?”
“I can try,” she said. “I do know that hearing about these events set off my alarm bells. No wonder they’re having issues.”
“Did anybody research the previous owners? Did they have to deal with hauntings as well?” It seemed odd that they would only appear now.
“I did,” Sophia said. “So, the house was built in 1927. After the incident with Farquar, a family by the name of Klempner owned it. I couldn’t find much about them—they bought it in 1930, but they sold it four years later when the father passed away. He developed pneumonia and died, but I can’t find any other mention of them. The wife sold it in 1934, and Commander Pierce bought it. He had been in World War 1, and was a bachelor. He owned the house for seven years, when he was called back into action and sent overseas. We had just gotten involved in World War II. The house set empty—he had a housecleaner come in every two weeks to freshen the house and keep it from building up dust.”
A silent house often brought out the latent spirits.
“When did he return from the war?” I asked.
“He didn’t,” Sophia said. “He was killed in action, in Germany. He was shot four days before V-E day. The house passed on to a cousin of his from the east coast, and she sold it, sight unseen. That took place in 1946, when a family named Burroughs bought it. I couldn’t find out anything about them. They owned it for eight years, until 1952, when the bank foreclosed on them.”
“The turnover on the house is pretty amazing,” Dante said. “When was it sold again?”
“The bank sold it as-is in 1955. This time, a family of four bought it. Suburban straights—real Leave It To Beaver types. They lasted one year, and they sold it in 1956 to an eccentric artist named Ravel Johanson. He was a painter, and surprisingly, he lived there for forty-seven years until he died in 2003. Either the ghosts left him alone, or he knew how to handle them.” Sophia sifted through her notes. “I have some information on him…I need to find it.
I’d heard of Ravel Johanson. He was well-known in avant-garde circles. His paintings were supposed to be brilliant, but the few times I’ve seen exhibits featuring his work, I left confused. His work was abstract and dark, leaving me with the disturbing suspicion that I had seen things I wished I hadn’t.
“Ravel, hmmm. Judging from the work that I’ve seen of his, I think he might have scared the ghosts,” I said.
“Or maybe, the ghosts influenced him,” Sophia said. “Here we go.” She found the references on her tablet she’d been searching for.
Ravel was well known for his gothic imagery, and his work often featured the torments of the soul, in abstract form. Often compared to Goya, Ravel was considered a modern-day spiritualist, and more than once he mentioned that he lived in a haunted house, and that he had ‘ectoplasm’ in his veins instead of blood. Tormented by memories of his childhood abuse, Ravel examined them through the motifs and imagery he used in his work.
Sophia looked up from the article. “Whatever he meant by that, the author didn’t say.”
“Sounds like he and the ghosts coexisted. They may well have played into his artistry. So, after he died, what happened to the house?”
Sophia laughed. “It increased in value—by 2003 it was worth eight times what he bought it for. At that point, it was left abandoned again, because there was a probate fight over possession. Two of his nephews both claimed it should go to them. That lasted for seven years, and in the intervening years, the house fell into disrepair.”
“Did anybody win the case?” Orik asked.
“Eventually,” she said. “But he immediately sold the house to a landlord—Dwight Minor—who rented it out. I called him and talked to him. He recently retired and sold the house to Michael. But he said that it was the damnedest house to maintain. He couldn’t keep a renter for longer than seven months. He said he made most of his money on lease-breaking fees. He rented the house out on a yearly lease, and not once did anybody make it that long. Dwight got tired of hunting up new renters and decided to retire and unload the house.”
Dante leaned forward, pulling his coffee toward him. “So, it sounds like the house wasn’t good for anybody except for Ravel.”
“I would question whether it was good for him.” I thought for a moment. “Well, at least we’re armed with the background. I suggest we take all the equipment we have at our disposal. We might as well set up cameras and see what we can find. Orik, Sophia, you’ll come with Dante and me. Carson, do you mind holding down the fort?”
“Not at all,” Carson said with a grin. “The more I hear about this house, the less interested I am in meeting it.”
We gathered our things and headed back to our offices. I couldn’t get my mind off the painter. He had died in the house—though his death had been of old age, apparently—but what percentage of his depression and gloom had gone into feeding whatever was in those walls? Was his spirit mixed up with whatever else was there? And were we dealing with a ghost? A god? A jumble of everything suicidal and murderous that had passed through those walls? Whatever the case, as I settled in to journal my thoughts, it occurred to me this wasn’t going to be an easy fix.