Every House Is Haunted (40 page)

My people eat each other. My building grows.

It’s almost time to move on.

The people outside the city have set fires.

They say the spirit of the city is dead.

They say I killed it.

I will show them.

The spirit of the city is alive.

Alive and well.

Alive and well fed.

Daniel Ramis thought the only thing he inherited from his father was insomnia, but as it turned out, he got a house, too.

He received this news at three o’clock in the morning, about a week after his father collapsed in his London flat of an apparent heart attack. He had grabbed onto a china hutch for support and ended up taking it down with him; the sound of it crashing on the floor was what prompted the neighbours to call the police. Daniel was notified the following day, but had made no arrangements to attend the funeral. To say that Daniel and his father weren’t close would be like saying the Chernobyl nuclear power plant suffered only a minor mechanical problem.

It should have ended there, but it seemed his father had come back to deliver one final lick—this one via a probate lawyer, a Brit named Kingsley who seemed oblivious of the time difference between London and Seattle.

“Strange as it may seem,” Kingsley said, “your father actually left instructions for you to be contacted at this exact time.” He chuckled good-naturedly. “It seems that he wanted to wake you up.”

Daniel had not been awakened by the call. He had been sitting in his favourite chair and watching a thunderstorm perform its final act over the bay. Having lived with insomnia for almost twenty years, he knew that a window helped pass the time much better than a television.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Kingsley?”

“First of all, let me tell you how very sorry I am for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“I had the opportunity to meet your father, and he was an exceptional man.”

Daniel thanked him again; he hoped the man would get to the point before the sun came up.

“I had planned to speak with you after the funeral, but I understand you were unable to attend.”

Daniel said nothing.

Kingsley went on as if he had spoken. “That’s most unfortunate. I had hoped to discuss your father’s will. He’s left you considerable assets, as well as instructions that he wished you to carry out after his passing.”

“What instructions?”

“It’s more of a request, actually.” Kingsley cleared his throat. “Your father would like you to return to Sycamore, which I understand is the name of a town.”

“Yes,” Daniel said evenly.

“According to his records, you have a house there.”

“
Had
a house,” he corrected. “My father sold it years ago. Before he ran away to London, as a matter of fact.” He closed his mouth before anything else came out.

Papers rustled on the other end of the line. “Actually, Mr. Ramis, according to the last codicil, which was drawn up in March of this year, the deed to the Sycamore property is still in your father’s possession. I verified ownership myself. Perhaps he merely closed it down for—”

“He told me he sold it,” Daniel said brusquely.

“Be that as it may, he has requested that you return there.”

“Why?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. I can send you the documents on the transfer of the deed, as well as the keys and—”

“Save yourself the trouble, Mr. Kingsley. I have no intention of going back to that house.”

Kingsley was silent for a moment. Thousands of miles of air hissed between them. “It was your father’s wish,” he said finally.

“Yeah, well he can keep on wishing.”

He hung up.

Well done!
a voice cheered in his head. It sounded like Beth.
You sure put him in his place. Teach him to do his job.

“Shut up,” Daniel said to the empty living room.

You hung up on him
, she said.
You like hanging up on people, don’t you?

“I didn’t hang up on you. I just . . . I just didn’t want to talk about it.”

He stood up and went over to the calendar on the wall. The November sheet showed Rainier Avenue at night in the rain—in fact, every month showed some prominent Seattle landmark in the rain. Beth had given it to him as a gag after she moved to Reno, where the annual rainfall was measured in single digits, when there was anything to measure at all. They had been married for three years before deciding they couldn’t live in the same house together anymore. A year after that, Beth decided the city was too small for them, too. They still exchanged birthday cards, the occasional phone call, and Daniel thought that was better than some couples who had gone through the train wreck that is divorce.

You asked a lot of questions about my dad
, he thought, turning back to the window.
Too many
. He ran an unsteady hand over his stubbly cheek and decided to call it a night—or a morning, if you wanted to be technical about it.

He dragged himself up the stairs to bed. The storm was breaking up, anyway. The good parts were over.

The following morning the sky was clear and the sun etched the tops of the mountains with red filigree. He glanced over at his alarm clock and saw he had gotten an hour of sleep. He grinned wearily.

It was a good night.

Kingsley’s package arrived a week later. Postmarked London and stamped half a dozen times by the customs people, it contained a number of curious items: documents pertaining to his father’s will (written in a British legalese Daniel couldn’t make heads or tails of), a folded map with a note paperclipped to it, three keys attached to a cracked-leather fob, and a thick stack of Polaroid pictures.

Daniel picked up the map and shook his head.
I can’t believe he sent directions. Does he really think I don’t remember?

It was true, Daniel had been trying to forget the house in Sycamore (and everything that had happened there), but the basic truth about memories still held: the things you wanted to forget were often the same ones you remembered most clearly.

He tossed the map on his cluttered desk and picked up the Polaroids. He flipped through them, not really looking at them, and put them down as well. He started to crumple the big padded envelope everything had come in, and realized there was something else inside. He turned it over and shook out a small key. He looked at it closely and wondered why it wasn’t on the key ring with the others.

The number
089
was engraved on the tiny keyface.

He picked up the map again and read the note attached to it.

Dear Mr. Ramis,

First of all, I would like to apologize if I upset you in any way during my telephone call last week. The loss of a loved one, especially one’s own father, is a terrible experience, and I apologize if I conducted myself poorly.

I have forwarded you the documents pertaining to the house at Sycamore, along with the deed and keys to the property. I have also included a number of photographs your father took of the house. He wished for you to have them. Likewise, I have included a key to a safe-deposit box located at the post office in Sycamore. I have attached a map with directions, supplied by your father, to help you find it. I don’t know what is waiting for you there, only that, like the house, your father wanted you to have it.

Respectfully yours,

Philip P. Kingsley

Daniel put down Kingsley’s letter, feeling abashed. He wasn’t exactly choked up with guilt, but he thought he probably owed Kingsley a letter of apology.

On the other hand, he still felt he owed his father nothing. And even though he spent the next hour gathering items for the trip to Sycamore, he told himself the only reason he was going was to find out what was waiting for him in safe-deposit box 089. If he decided to continue onward to the house (which was actually located on the outskirts of town), he probably wouldn’t even get out of the car. He’d just cruise up the driveway, take a quick swing around the dooryard, and leave.

Daniel put an overnight bag in the trunk of his car, next to his toolbox. He didn’t intend to spend the night in house, nor did he plan to complete any repairs, but he thought it was best to be prepared for anything. He had no intention of making a return trip.

With his gear stowed, he slipped behind the wheel, catching his reflection in the rearview mirror.

Drive up and drive down and that’s all
, he told himself.

But his eyes seemed to say something else.

Daniel left Claremont Bay and travelled east on the I-90. He left the turnpike at Ellensberg and headed north on US 97. After an hour of trees, fields, and lakes, he started passing rows of tract houses set tastefully back from the road. Each one seemed to have a picket fence or a board fence or a natural border of trees or hedges. The houses were alike in another way, too. Each one had a garden gnome or pink flamingo or some other piece of cheap statuary standing on the front lawn.

He passed a trailer park where rows of double-wides gleamed in the late-morning sun like miniature Quonset huts.

Finally, he passed a green reflectorized sign that said
SYCAMORE POP. 2400
. The post office was in town, but Daniel knew he wouldn’t be stopping. The urge to see the house was too strong.

Main Street was in rough shape. Peeling facades, crumbling brick, and shifting foundations had turned the buildings into enormous tombstones canted on ominous, horror-movie angles. He passed the post office, one of the few buildings that looked as if it had been built sometime after the Depression, and the sign in the window said it was open until nine. Daniel continued on.

On the other side of town, Main Street turned back into US 97 as it climbed a steep hill.
Hunter’s Hill
, Daniel thought, grinning in spite of himself.
I don’t remember if that was its real name, but that’s what Sissy and I called it.

At the top of the hill, the road zigzagged around thick copses of trees before disappearing into the mountains. The feeder road which branched off to the house was still there, but the mailbox—and the post it sat on—was gone. In its place stood a pair of metal posts with a length of rusty chain hanging between them.

This is new
, he thought, and pulled off to the side of the road.

He sat in the idling car, fighting a powerful urge to drop his foot on the gas and simply plow right through. It wasn’t about the time it would take to remove the chain; what bothered him was that his father had put it on in the first place. The chain was proof that he had been back to the house. The house they had vowed never to return to again. The house where Sissy had died.

There it was. The part of his past that had pushed Beth away. The part that almost certainly was the cause of his sleepless nights. Death was supposed to be the end, but it hadn’t been in Sissy’s case. She was still with him, riding his shoulders like a bad habit he couldn’t kick.

Eighteen years ago Sissy had gotten sick and died. Daniel didn’t know the exact nature of her disease, except that it kept her indoors. He had asked his father about it on only one occasion, not long before they went their separate ways, and he had replied vaguely: “Cancer.”