A Haunted House of Her Own #2
She tossed her keys onto the table. They hit with a jangle, the sound echoing through the silent hall.
When she turned on the light switch, the hall stayed dark.
She tried not to shiver as she peered around.
That’s quite enough ghost stories for you, she told herself as she marched into the next room, heading for the lamp.
She tripped over a throw rug and stopped.
“Nathan?”
No answer. She hoped he wasn’t poking around in the basement. He’d been curious about some boxes down there, but she didn’t want to get into that. There was too much else to be done.
She eased forward, feeling the way with her foot until she reached the lamp. When she hit the switch, light flooded the room. Not a power outage then. Good, though it reminded her they had to pick up a generator. Blackouts would be a little more atmosphere than guests appreciated.
“Nathan?”
She heard something in the back rooms. She walked through, hitting lights as she went—for safety, she told herself.
“Umm-hmm.” Nathan’s voice echoed down the hall. “Umm-hmm.”
On the phone, she thought, too caught up in the call to realize how dark it had gotten and flip on a light. She hoped it wasn’t the licensing board. The inspector had been out to assess the ongoing work yesterday. He’d seemed happy with it, but you never knew.
She let her shoes click a little harder as she walked over the hardwood floor, so she wouldn’t startle Nathan. She followed his voice to the office. From the doorway, she could see his back in the desk chair.
“Umm-hmm.”
Her gaze went to the phone on the desk. Still in the cradle. Nathan’s hands were at his sides. He was sitting in the dark, looking straight ahead, at the wall.
Tanya rubbed down the hairs on her neck. He was using his cell phone earpiece, that was all. Guys and their gadgets. She stepped into the room and looked at his ear. No headset.
“Nathan?”
He jumped, wheeling so fast the chair skidded across the floor. He caught it and gave a laugh, shaking his head sharply as he reached for the desk lamp.
“Must have dozed off. Not used to staring at a computer screen all day anymore.”
He rubbed his eyes, and blinked up at her.
“Everything okay, hon?” he asked.
She said it was and gave him a rundown of what she’d found out, and they had a good laugh at that, all the shopkeepers rushing in with their stories once they realized the tourism potential.
“Did you find anything?”
“I did indeed.” He flourished a file folder stuffed with printouts. “The Rowe family. Nineteen seventy-eight. Parents, two children and the housekeeper, all killed by the seventeen-year-old son.”
“Under the influence of Satan?”
“Close. Rock music.” Nathan grinned. “It was the seventies. Kid had long hair, played in a garage band, partial to Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. Clearly a Satanist.”
“Works for me.”
Tanya took the folder just as the phone started to ring. Caller ID showed it was the inspector. She set the pages aside and answered as Nathan whispered he’d start dinner.
There was a problem with the inspection—the guy had forgotten to check a few things, and he had to come back on the weekend, when they were supposed to be away scouring estate auctions and flea markets to furnish the house.
The workmen would be there, but apparently that wasn’t good enough.
And on Monday, the inspector left for two weeks in California with the wife and kids.
Not surprisingly, Nathan offered to stay.
Jumped at the chance, actually. His enthusiasm for the project didn’t extend to bargain hunting for Victorian beds.
He joked he’d have enough to do when she wanted her treasures refinished.
So he’d stay home and supervise the workers, which was probably wise anyway.
It was an exhausting, but fruitful, weekend. Tanya crossed off all the necessities and even a few wish-list items, like a couple of old-fashioned washbasins.
When she called Nathan an hour before arriving home, he sounded exhausted and strained, and she hoped the workers hadn’t given him too much trouble.
Sometimes they were like her fifth-grade pupils, needing a watchful eye and firm, clear commands.
Nathan wasn’t good at either. When she pulled into the drive and found him waiting on the porch, she knew there was trouble.
She wasn’t even out of the car before the workmen filed out, toolboxes in hand.
“We quit,” the foreman said.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“The house. Everything about it is wrong.”
“Haunted,” an older man behind him muttered.
The younger two shifted behind their elders, clearly uncomfortable with this old-man talk, but not denying it either.
“All right,” she said slowly. “What happened?”
They rhymed off a litany of haunted-house tropes—knocking inside the walls, footsteps in the attic, whispering voices, flickering lights, strains of music.
“Music?”
“Seventies rock music,” Nathan said, rolling his eyes behind their backs. “Andy found those papers in my office, about the Rowe family.”
“You should have warned us,” the foreman said, scowling. “Working where something like that happened? It isn’t right. The place should be burned to the ground.”
“It’s evil,” the older man said. “Evil soaked right into the walls. You can feel it.”
The only thing Tanya felt was the recurring sensation of being trapped in a B-movie. Did people actually talk like this? First, the old woman. Then the townspeople. Now the contractors.
They argued, of course, but the workmen were leaving. When Tanya started to threaten, Nathan pulled her aside. The work was almost done, he said. They could finish up themselves, save some money, and guilt these guys into cutting their bill even more.
Tanya hated to back down, but he had a point. She negotiated twenty percent off for unfinished work and another fifteen for the inconvenience—unless they wanted her spreading the word that grown men were afraid of ghosts. They grumbled, but agreed.
The human mind can be as impressionable as a child.
Tanya might not believe in ghosts, but the more stories she heard, the more her mind began to believe, with or without her permission.
Drafts became cold spots. Thumping pipes became the knocks of unseen hands.
The hiss and sigh of the old furnace became the whispers and moans of those who could not rest. She knew better; that was the worst of it.
She’d hear a pipe thump and she’d jump, heart pounding, even as she knew there was a logical explanation.
Nathan wasn’t helping. Every time she jumped, he’d laugh. He’d goof off and play ghost, sneaking into the bathroom while she was in the shower and writing dirty messages in the condensation on the mirror. She was spooked; he thought it was adorable.
The joking and teasing she could take. It was the other times, the ones when she’d walk into a room and he’d be standing or sitting, staring into nothing, confused when he’d start out of his reverie, laughing about daydreaming, but nervously, like he didn’t exactly know what he’d been doing.
They were three weeks from opening when she returned from picking up the brochures and, once again, found the house in darkness.
This time, the hall light worked—it’d been nothing more sinister than a burnt-out bulb before.
And this time she didn’t call Nathan’s name, but crept through the halls looking for him, feeling silly and yet…
When she approached the kitchen, she heard a strange rasping sound. She followed it and found Nathan standing in the twilight, staring out the window, hands moving, a skritch-skritch filling the silence.
The fading light caught something in his hands—a flash of silver that became a knife, a huge butcher’s knife moving back and forth across a whetting stone.
“N-Nathan?”
He jumped, nearly dropping the knife, then stared down at it, frowning. A sharp shake of his head and he laid the knife and stone on the counter, then flipped on the kitchen light.
“Really not something I should be doing in the dark, huh?” He laughed and moved a carrot from the counter to the cutting board, picked up the knife, then stopped. “Little big for the job, isn’t it?”
She moved closer. “Where did it come from?”
“Hmm?” He followed her gaze to the unfamiliar knife. “Ours, isn’t it? Part of the set your sister gave us for our anniversary? It was in the drawer.” He grabbed a smaller knife from the wooden block. “So, how did the brochures turn out?”
Two nights later, Tanya started awake and bolted up, blinking hard, hearing music. She rubbed her ears, telling herself it was a dream, but she could definitely hear something. She turned to Nathan’s side of the bed. Empty.
Okay, he couldn’t sleep so he’d gone downstairs. She could barely hear the music, so he was being considerate, keeping it low, probably doing paperwork in the office.
Even as she told herself this, though, she kept envisioning the knife. The big butcher’s knife that seemed to have come from nowhere.
Nonsense. Her sister had given them a new set, and Nathan did most of the cooking, so it wasn’t surprising that she didn’t recognize it.
But as hard as she tried to convince herself, she just kept seeing Nathan, standing in the twilight, sharpening that knife, the skritch-skritch getting louder, the blade getting sharper…
Damn her sister. And not for the knives, either.
Last time they’d been up, her sister and boyfriend insisted on picking the night’s video.
The Shining. New caretaker at an inn is possessed by a murderous ghost and hacks up his wife.
There was a reason Tanya didn’t watch horror movies, and now she remembered why.
She turned on the bedside lamp, then pushed out of bed and flicked on the overhead light. The hall one went on, too. So did the one leading downstairs. Just being careful, of course. You never knew where a stray hammer or board could be lying around.