A Haunted House of Her Own #3
As she descended the stairs, the music got louder, the thump of the bass and the wail of the singer.
Seventies heavy-metal music. Hadn’t the Rowe kid—?
She squeezed her eyes shut and forced the thought out.
Like she’d know seventies heavy-metal from modern stuff anyway.
And hadn’t Nathan picked up that new AC/DC disc last month?
Before they came to live here. He was probably listening to that, not realizing how loud it was.
When she got downstairs, though, she could feel the bass vibrating through the floorboards. Great. He couldn’t sleep so he was poking through those boxes in the basement.
Boxes belonging to the Rowe family. To the Rowe kid.
Oh, please. The Rowes had been gone for almost thirty years. Anything in the basement would belong to the Sullivans, a lovely old couple now living in Florida.
On the way to the basement, Tanya passed the kitchen.
She stopped. She stared at the drawer where Nathan kept the knife, then walked over and opened it.
Just taking a look, seeing if she remembered her sister giving it to them, not making sure it was still there.
It was. And it still didn’t look familiar.
She started to leave, then went back, took the knife, wrapped it in a dish towel and stuck it under the sink. And, yes, she felt like an idiot. But she felt relief even more.
She slipped down to the basement, praying she wouldn’t find Nathan sitting on the floor, staring into nothing, nodding to voices she couldn’t hear.
Again, she felt foolish for thinking it and, again, she felt relief when she heard him digging through boxes, and more relief yet when she walked in and he looked up, grinning sheepishly like a kid caught sneaking into his Christmas presents.
“Caught me,” he said. “Was it the music? I thought I had it low enough.”
She followed his gaze and a chill ran through her. Across the room was a record player, an album spinning on the turntable, more stacked on the floor.
“Wh-where—?” she began.
“Found it down here with the albums. Been a while since you’ve seen one of those, I bet.”
“Was it…his? The Rowe boy?”
Nathan frowned, as if it hadn’t occurred to him. “Could be, I guess. I didn’t think of that.”
He walked over and shut the player off. Tanya picked up an album. Initials had been scrawled in black marker in the corner. T.R. What was the Rowe boy’s name? She didn’t know and couldn’t bring herself to ask Nathan, would rather believe he didn’t know either.
She glanced at him. “Are you okay?”
“Sure. I think I napped this afternoon, while you were out. Couldn’t get to sleep.”
“And otherwise…?”
He looked at her, trying to figure out what she meant, but what was she going to say? Have you had the feeling of being not yourself lately? Hearing voices telling you to murder your family?
She had to laugh at that. Yes, it was a ragged laugh, a little unsure of itself, but a laugh nonetheless. No more horror movies for her, however much her sister pleaded.
“Are you okay?” Nathan asked.
She nodded. “Just tired.”
“I don’t doubt it, the way you’ve been going. Come on. Let’s get up to bed.” He grinned. “See if I can’t help us both get to sleep.”
The next day, she was in the office adding her first bookings to the ledger when she saw the folder pushed off to the side, the one Nathan had compiled on the Rowe murders.
She’d set it down that day and never picked it up again.
She could tell herself she’d simply forgotten, but she was never that careless.
She hadn’t read it because her newly traitorous imagination didn’t need any more grist for its mill.
But now she thought of that album cover downstairs. Those initials. If it didn’t belong to the Rowe boy, then this was an easy way to confirm that and set her mind at ease.
The first report was right there on top, the names listed, the family first, then the housekeeper, Madelyn Levy, and finally, the supposed killer, seventeen-year-old Timothy Rowe.
Tanya sucked in a deep breath, then chastised herself. What did that prove? She’d known he listened to that kind of music, and that’s all Nathan had been doing—listening to it, not sharpening a knife, laughing maniacally.
Was it so surprising that the Rowes’ things were still down there? Who else would claim them? The Sullivans had been over fifty when they moved in—maybe they never ventured down into the basement. There’d certainly been enough room to store things upstairs.
And speaking of the Sullivans, they’d lived in this house for twenty-five years. If it was haunted, would they have stayed so long?
If it was haunted? Was she really considering the possibility?
She squeezed her eyes shut. She was not that kind of person.
She would not become that kind of person.
She was rational and logical, and until she saw something that couldn’t be explained by simple common sense, she was sending her imagination to the corner for a time-out.
The image made her smile a little, enough to settle back and read the article, determined now to prove her fancies wrong. She found her proof in the next paragraph, where it said Timothy Rowe shot his father. Shot. No big, scary butcher—
Her gaze stuttered on the rest of the line. She went back to the beginning, rereading. Timothy Rowe apparently started his rampage by shooting his father, then continued on to brutally murder the rest of his family with a ten-inch kitchen carving knife.
And what did that prove? Did she think Nathan dug up the murder weapon with those old LPs? Of course not. A few lines down it said both the gun and knife had been recovered.
What if Nathan bought a matching one? Compelled to reenact—
She pressed her fists against her eyes. Nathan possessed by a killer teen, plotting to kill her?
Was she losing her mind? It was Nathan—the same good-natured, carefree guy she’d lived with for ten years.
Other than a few bouts of confusion, he was his usual self, and those “bouts” were cause for a doctor’s appointment, not paranoia.
She skimmed through the rest of the articles. Nothing new there, just the tale retold again and again, until—the suspect dead—the story died a natural death, relegated to a skeleton in the town’s closet.
The last page was a memorial published on the first anniversary of the killings, with all the photos of the victims. Tanya glanced at the family photo and was about to close the folder when her gaze lit on the picture of the housekeeper: Madelyn Levy.
When Nathan came in a few minutes later, she was still staring at the picture.
“Hey, hon. What’s wrong?”
“I—” She pointed at the housekeeper’s photo. “I’ve seen this woman. She—she was outside, when we were looking at the house. She was picking raspberries.”
The corners of Nathan’s mouth twitched, as if he was expecting—hoping—she was making a bad joke. When her gaze met his, the smile vanished and he took the folder from her hands, then sat on the edge of the desk.
“I think we should consider selling,” he said.
“Wh-what? No. I—”
“This place is getting to you. Maybe…I don’t know. Maybe there is something. Those workers certainly thought so. Some people could be more susceptible—”
She jerked up straight. “I am not susceptible—”
“You lost a job you loved. You left your home, your family, gave up everything to start over, and now it’s not going the way you dreamed. You’re under a lot of stress and it’s only going to get worse when we open.”
He took her hands and tugged her up, arms going around her.
“The guy who owns the Beamsville bed-and-breakfast has been asking about this place. He’d been eying it before, but with all the work it needed, it was too much for him.
Now he’s seen what we’ve done and, well, he’s interested.
Very interested. You wouldn’t be giving up; you’d be renovating an old place and flipping it for a profit. Nothing wrong with that.”
She stood. “No. I’m being silly, and I’m not giving in. We have less than three weeks until opening, and a lot of work to be done.”
She turned back to her paperwork. He sighed and left the room.
It got worse after that, as if in refusing to leave, she’d issued a challenge to whatever lived there.
She’d now stopped laughing when she caught herself referring to the spirits as if they were real.
They were. She’d come to accept that. Seeing the housekeeper’s picture had exploded the last obstacle.
She’d wanted a haunted house and she’d gotten it.
For the last two nights, she’d woken to find herself alone in bed. Both times, Nathan had been downstairs listening to that damned music. The first time, he’d been digging through the boxes, wide awake, blaming insomnia. But last night…
Last night, she’d gone down to find him talking to someone.
She’d tried to listen, but he was doing more listening than talking, and she only caught a few um-hmms and okays before he’d apparently woken up, startled and confused.
This morning, they’d made an appointment to see the doctor.
An appointment that was still a week away, which didn’t do Tanya any good now, sitting awake in bed alone for the third night in a row, listening to the strains of distant music.
She forced herself to lie back down. Just ignore it. Call the doctor in the morning, tell him Nathan would take any cancellation.
But lying down didn’t mean falling asleep.
As she stared at the ceiling, she made a decision.
Nathan was right. There was no shame in flipping the house for a profit.
Tell their friends and family they’d decided small-town life wasn’t for them.
Smile coyly when asked how much they’d made on the deal.
No shame in that. None at all. No one ever needed to know what drove her from this house.