The Haunted

She looked around, her gaze indicating the entire house surrounding them. “So far.”

“How’re your parents?”

“Don’t even pretend to be interested,” she told him.

He laughed, though he didn’t really feel like laughing. In an hour or so, they would be eating dinner. In the dining room.

Where that lunatic with the knife had been staring in at him.

What would happen if the man did get out on bail, if the cops couldn’t hold him, if he was let out on the streets again?

Julian didn’t want to think about it. He got himself a beer from the refrigerator and walked back out to the living room, but the homey domesticity of a few moments before had disappeared, and now he saw his children as fish in a barrel, waiting to be shot. It was all he could do to pick up a section of the newspaper that he hadn’t yet read, sit down on the chair opposite the couch and scan today’s headlines.

It was almost a normal evening. Maybe it was normal for Megan and James, but he and Claire had to work hard to maintain that surface regularity, and while several times the routine unfolded naturally enough to feel organic, by the time the kids went to bed, his muscles were tense, and he had the beginnings of a headache.

When he went into the kitchen to take an Advil, he avoided looking at the basement door.

Stress was supposed to inhibit libido, but, inexplicably, he found himself aroused, and while Claire was in the shower, Julian took off his clothes and began masturbating, stroking himself until he was hard. He thought about finishing before she came out, but then had a better idea and forced himself on her while she was brushing her teeth. She’d already showered but had not yet put on her underwear or nightgown, and when he opened the bathroom door, he saw her standing naked before the sink, her beautiful pale ass shining out at him.

Within seconds, he was across the small room and behind her, adjusting himself and shoving into the first hole available.

“Nmmmn!” she grunted through the toothpaste, trying to swat him away, but already he was thrusting, and she dropped the toothbrush in the sink, crying out, though whether from pleasure or pain he could not tell.

And did not care.

She held on to the sides of the sink with both hands to steady herself, and he plunged deep, taking her hard and fast until, finally, he exploded inside her.

Without saying a word, Claire picked up her toothbrush and resumed brushing, while he pulled a length of toilet paper from the roll and used it to wipe himself off.

Julian walked back out to the bedroom.

That definitely wasn’t normal.

He lay down on the bed. What was wrong with them? He didn’t know, but he didn’t want to think about it. All roads led back to the house, to the man’s voice in Megan’s room, to James eating dirt, to that shambling horror from the party. Whatever was haunting this house—and he agreed that something was—it did not just rattle its chains and moan, like a specter in a movie. It affected them, their dreams, their thoughts, their actions. That made it more dangerous, but also more difficult to detect, and he wondered now whether he had done or said other things not of his own volition, things he might not have noticed or recognized at the time. Had he really wanted to stay here this afternoon instead of going with Claire to her parents’ house? Had he even wanted the pancakes he’d had for breakfast? Why had he chosen the room he had for his office?

Julian forced himself to drop this line of reasoning before it headed into craziness and obsession. This was not the time to go there. He would revisit it tomorrow, when his mind was clearer. Right now, he needed to get some rest.

He thought it would be hard to fall asleep, but it wasn’t. He dozed off immediately, and was dead to the world well before Claire came out of the bathroom.

He dreamed about the house.

Seventeen

The plants in the backyard were dead.

Every last one of them.

James was the first one to discover it. He saw it initially from the kitchen window while pouring himself a glass of orange juice, and if he had needed any proof that the thing in their house had the power to carry out its threats, the simultaneous expiration of every single living organism between the house, the garage and the alley was it. Stunned, still in pajamas and slippers, he stepped outside onto the patio, looking across the suddenly brown grass to the spiny, leafless twigs that had been the rosebushes, and the dead hedges that ringed the border of the property. It was impossible, but he could see that it had happened, and he felt a chill in his bones as he surveyed the lifeless yard.