The Haunting of Pitmon House (27 page)
Read The Haunting of Pitmon House Online
Authors: Michael Richan
She walked from the break room to her station at the ticket
counter relieving Alice from covering for her.
“Thanks, Alice,” she said. Alice just checked her watch and
waddled slowly back to the gift shop.
Things were picking up; she’d issued twice as many tickets
today alone as she had last week.
Soon we’ll be swamped, like every summer,
she thought.
She missed Rachel. She’d spent an inordinate amount of time
trying to locate her, and trying to figure out why she’d disappeared. She suspected
it was Rachel’s doing, not something nefarious.
Rachel was upset about the
attack,
she reasoned,
and she didn’t want to talk to me about the whole
thing anymore. I can understand. If I’d been burned like she was, I’m sure I’d
reconsider what I was doing. I might not want to explain myself.
Still, it bothered her a great deal, and she wished somehow
she could talk to her.
She issued more tickets and tokens. Every time she handed the
tokens to a customer, she worried that they might be gifted, and they might
experience what happened to Shane once they were inside the exhibit. Robert was
making a form of the counter agent that she could paint onto the music machines
that showed signs of activity. It wouldn’t help with the ones that didn’t come
from Kendall Pitmon, but with Rachel and her Tapura gone, she had no way of
knowing which ones did and which ones didn’t, with the exception of the fishing
scene that had been responsible for Shane.
I’ll fix that one first,
she
thought as she dropped tokens into a woman’s hand, and the woman divvied them
up between her children.
She looked forward to seeing Robert later that night. They
were meeting so he could show her how to apply the counter agent paint. It
wasn’t formally a date, but it kind of felt like one; he was driving out to
Spring Green, and had offered to take her to a restaurant for a late dinner
after their business was done. She felt optimistic about the possibilities.
There was also the allure of Aceveda. When she returned the
lockpick, the woman had invited her to her home for further studies. She
suspected there were ulterior motives in the invitation that Aceveda didn’t
explain, but she was nonetheless intrigued by the things the woman might be
able to share with her. As unpleasant as learning the lockpick had been, she
was proud that she’d been able to wield it successfully.
She stood up straight, realizing that by this point in the
day she usually felt tired. Not today.
The old man notwithstanding,
she
thought,
I’ve been sleeping pretty well. No bad dreams. No waking up in a
sweat, worried that we’d be penniless and living in a camp.
“Code 66, Mikado Room,” she heard from the radio, faintly in
the background. It meant that a child had become frightened inside the exhibit,
and was freaking out. It happened occasionally. Most children were scared by at
least some of the dark displays, but few had meltdowns over it. Security had a
policy of helping mothers with extremely distraught children to find and use
employee exits, if they chose.
Poor kid,
she thought.
I know how scary it can be in there.
Yet, she didn’t feel scared. She thought of the figure on the
riverboat. Just a few weeks ago, seeing the ghost had frightened her deeply;
now, it seemed trivial.
I’m not afraid,
she thought, handing out another handful of tokens to a
father leading a family of five, who appeared as though he might be.
###
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Seattle, Washington.
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The
book that started The River!
Discover this amazing series! Pick up
The Bank of the River
, and discover how the adventures of
Steven and Roy first began! Eliza joins them in subsequent titles.
Sample chapters have been included at
the end of this book.
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The River
series:
A Christmas Haunting at Point No Point
The Downwinders
series
:
The Dark River series:
All three series are part of
The
River Universe,
and there is crossover of some characters and plots. For a
suggested reading order, see the
Author’s Website
.
Chapters from The Bank of the River
Steven Hall slowed down his Accord as he approached the
trailer court. It was dark and rainy and a little difficult to make out
directions. He noticed reflective numbers on stakes near the ground by each
trailer: 7, 8, 9…he was headed to 56, the trailer of John and Debra Peterson.
He turned a tight corner, and no less than four signs encouraged him to slow
down (“Children play here!”). He tapped the brakes and let the car idle forward
over the first of many speed bumps.
The time on the car’s display read 7:20. He was too early. He
didn’t want to get there before 7:30, the time Debra had said she would meet
him, after John left for an evening shift.
Originally Steven wanted to talk to John. Earlier that day
Steven had called him, asking if he would meet with him to discuss John’s
father. John had hung up on him, but later Debra had called back to say she
would talk with him — only after her husband left for work.
Surely it won’t take ten minutes to drive through this
trailer court,
he
thought, but as the car inched along past empty lot 15 he was beginning to
wonder. Up ahead he had to turn either left or right, but he couldn’t make out
which direction the numbers ran. He chose right and drifted until the next
reflective sign appeared. If he had to backtrack, no problem; in this case,
better to be a little late than too early.
John’s father used to own the house where Steven now lived.
Fifteen years earlier, he committed suicide in the house; since that time, the
house had gone through a succession of owners, ending with Steven. Steven
bought the house two months ago. He was fully aware of its history (no thanks
to the agent) and fully discounted the idea that it was, as a previous owner
had described it, unlivable.
Just after he moved in, Steven received notice from his
company that their office was shutting down and relocating overseas. He was too
highly paid to be offered a transfer – overseas, all costs would be cut,
especially labor. So he found himself in a new house with a moderate severance,
time on his hands, and a desire to relax and enjoy a sabbatical before entering
the next phase of his life.
The relaxation never happened. The first few weeks he was in
the house, he wrote off most of the occurrences (he hated that word; it made things
sound supernatural, but he didn’t know what else to call them) as normal
adjustments to a new house. Every house makes noises. This house, built in the
1950s, creaked and popped throughout the day as the temperature changed.
Plumbing could make banging noises for a variety of reasons. There were sounds
from the neighborhood that he wasn’t accustomed to yet. None of this was
unusual, and Steven tried to adjust to the idiosyncrasies of the place.
Recently, however, there had been some occurrences (ugh) to
which he had not been able to adjust.
The worst was last night, and it had spurred him to make
phone calls this morning to try and find out if there was more about the house
than he knew from the research he had conducted before he bought it.
From the first night he’d lived there, Steven had endured the
sound of someone knocking in the middle of the night. When it happened, it was
loud enough to wake him up, and for a moment he’d think he must have dreamt it.
But then it would come again: four distant raps, muffled, as though coming from
the front door of the house. The first time it happened he went to the door,
expecting someone to be there. When he found no one, he inspected the house
thoroughly and went back to bed. When it happened the next night, he began to
suspect neighbor kids, so he set up a webcam and let it run for several days.
It showed nothing. The knocking continued every night. It always woke him up,
even if he tried to sleep through it. Four knocks, twice in a row, separated by
about ten seconds.
A week ago he had the old galvanized pipes in the house
replaced with new plastic ones. The plumber assured him this would resolve the
problem. Galvanized pipes slowly corrode inside, and his were sixty years old,
constricting the water flow and likely creating a banging sound now and again.
Eight thousand dollars and four days later he went to bed hoping he’d solved
the problem, but at 3 AM the knocking came again. Steven had, for weeks,
convinced himself that whatever was causing the disturbance was something
structural about the house, and that if he could find the problem and fix it,
it would stop. Now he was running out of options. If he was being honest with
himself, it never really sounded like pipes. It wasn’t a banging sound, it was
a knocking; it sounded like a human knuckles rapping on a door when someone is
announcing their presence or wants to be let in.
He passed trailer 32.
Maybe I should just rent a trailer
and leave the house
, he thought. A rent payment in addition to a mortgage
doesn’t make sense when you’re unemployed. Steven’s house had quickly gone
underwater after he closed, so he knew if he tried to list it he wouldn’t get
what he owed. Even if he did, it would be a hard sell; its history was the
reason he’d been able to buy it so cheaply in the first place. For some reason,
people don’t like living in houses that have experienced death — or worse,
suicide. This seemed completely irrational to Steven at the time he bought the
place. Now he was beginning to wonder.
Steven was always rational, circumspect, skeptical. It was
the thing that had, at first, attracted but eventually repelled his wife. They
divorced seven years ago in what had seemed to Steven a completely ridiculous
way; suddenly, with a barrage of complaints from left field that left him
bewildered, and no willingness to explore solutions. Jason, his son, was now in
college learning to be levelheaded like his dad. He was a busy student, and
Steven saw him only occasionally when Jason could fit him in between his
studies, part-time job, and friends. He knew Jason loved him, but at twenty he
was enjoying life on his own with friends and roommates, and his priorities
were his own. He often missed appointments they made, just forgetting about
them. Steven felt that leaving him with his independence for a while was the
best thing.
He was now deep in the park, where the trailers were newer.
At the entrance they looked fenced in with little patches of grass, as though
they were trying to be houses with permanence. Back here they looked ready to
leave on a moment’s notice. Trailer 48 on the left, and it was 7:28. He was
fine.
Debra had seemed friendly on the phone, the opposite of John.
She told him that John had received similar calls over the years and had
developed a method for handling them. Sometimes he saved the “fuck off” until after
he hung up on them, sometimes not. She said she always felt sorry for them and
had called a few of them back, as she had done with Steven. Her voice seemed
full of pity. He quickly agreed to meet her that night, and she warned him not
to come before John left for work.
Number 56. 7:30, right on the dot. No vehicle sat next to the
trailer, and the lights were on inside. He pulled his car into the short
driveway.
He couldn’t be sure, but as he stepped out he thought he saw
people peeking through the blinds from neighboring trailers.
This is like
living in a fishbowl
, he thought. He walked to the door and knocked. There
was nothing outside except a few children’s toys scattered around the cement
slab that extended from the trailer to form a small porch.
This has to work,
he thought.
I don’t know what else I can try. She has to
have some answers.
◊
“Debra?”
“Hi, come in,” Debra said, stepping back from the door.
Steven stepped up twice into the trailer and was assaulted by the smell of cat
urine.
“Well, have a seat over there,” she said, motioning to a
small couch that was half occupied by Walmart bags. Steven noticed how crammed
the place was – stacks of papers, boxes, storage tubs. The living room held the
couch and a television which was tuned to
Jeopardy
. Debra pulled a
chair out from under a kitchen table about six feet away from Steven and sat.
She lit a cigarette.
“I hope you don’t mind if I smoke,” she said. “It is my
house.”
“Of course. No, I don’t mind,” Steven said. “Thank you for
calling me back.”
“Well, as I said, John doesn’t want to have anything to do
with it anymore. He’s tired of it, and I understand. It’s bad enough to lose
your father let alone a suicide. Not to mention the shame. I spent some time in
that house, so I have some idea.” She picked up a remote from the table and
turned off the television.
Steven swallowed. The cat piss smell stuck in his throat. The
cigarette smoke was preferable. “What did you hear there?” he asked.
“Hear? I never heard anything. It’s what I felt. We’d go over
to help Ben, John’s dad. He was getting worse and worse, dying slowly. He had a
nurse come in and visit him each day, but John was real close with him, and
wanted to visit every day too. At first I would go with him, but after a while
I stayed home. It got to be too much.”
“I imagine watching him die would be difficult,” Steven said.
“Well, yes, it was, but that wasn’t the reason. I liked Ben,
and I wanted to help. But every time I’d walk in that house, especially those
last few weeks, it felt miserable. Not because Ben was dying,” she paused. “It
was something else, something in the house with him. You could feel it in the
air, like a thickness. Very dark, very evil.”
Steven cleared his throat and adjusted a little on the couch.
He was never comfortable when people brought up irrational things like the word
evil, or the word God, or anything supernatural, and he was a little
self-conscious of how he appeared to people when they did. He was sure they
could see his reaction, his discomfort, and this bothered him. He noticed a few
other things in the trailer: a cross over the door, little pictures of Jesus
here and there. Religious tracts on the table next to the couch. His comfort
level was falling rapidly.
“Oh, you don’t believe, I take it?” Debra asked.
“It’s that obvious?”
“Like I sprayed you with vinegar,” she replied.
“I guess not. I mean, I respect that you do, and —”
“Yeah,” she cut him off. “You don’t gotta do that. You don’t
believe, that’s fine, I don’t care. I didn’t used to believe either, so I know
exactly how you feel.”
“Something changed your mind?”
“Yeah,” she snorted. “That house.” She stood and crushed her
cigarette. “Look, I’m gonna tell you the same things I told the other two who
came to see John about that place. And I can’t pretend it was something it
wasn’t. There’s something seriously wrong with that house. And I don’t mean
it’s built wrong, or the electric don’t work right. It’s an evil in the air
inside. You can feel it. And it’s still there. I felt it even after Ben died.
If there’s anything that qualifies in your book as evil, you need to apply it
to that house.” She walked to the refrigerator. “You want something to drink? I
got lemonade or beers.”
“A beer would be nice.”
Debra pulled two beers, popped one for Steven, and handed him
the can. She sat back down and started another cigarette. Steven took a sip and
asked, “You never saw anything? Heard anything, like knocking?”
“Never heard any knocking, but I didn’t need to. The sound of
Ben gasping for air was enough to send chills down your spine, make you realize
how awful dying can be. All you had to do was look at him to know something was
wrong. The doctors couldn’t figure it out. They tested him for everything, but
in the end they said he just lost his will to live, that’s what was causing him
to deteriorate, to kill himself,” she scoffed.
“You don’t think that was true?” Steven asked.
“Mister, he took a spoon from the kitchen drawer and gouged
out his eyes before he killed himself. Bet the real estate agent didn’t tell
you about
that
,” she said, flicking an ash into the tray beside her.
“Does that sound like depression to you?”
“Maybe. Or maybe psychosis,” Steven replied.
“Or maybe there was something he didn’t want to see anymore,”
she said, becoming a little irritated. “Something that drove him to blind
himself, so he wouldn’t have to see it. And when that didn’t end it, he took a
steak knife from the same drawer and cut through his own throat. And I’ll tell
you something. Ben wasn’t crazy at the end. At that point he knew what he was
doing. No dementia, no weird behavior, nothing like that. You could tell. The
longer I stayed in that house, visiting him, the more I understood it. It
didn’t surprise me that he did it.”
“Honestly, that seems a little crazy,” Steven said. “I mean, I
understand how the doctors would think that.”
This approach didn’t seem to sit very well with Debra. She
stood again, this time a little more quickly. “Listen, I’ve told you. I’ve
warned you, that’s what I felt I should do when you called, ’cause I know what
that house is like and I’m sympathetic, even if John isn’t. So there, I’ve done
right by you. Whether or not you believe me is up to you, but I’ve done my
part, told you what I thought you should know. So I guess we’re done now.” She
moved toward the door.