The Haunted

Huffing with disapproval, she made the bed around him, then took her clothes out of the closet and went into the bathroom to change. He picked up the phone, tried to call again, but Rob wasn’t home, and he got Diane instead. He told his daughter to have her husband call him back, because he wanted Rob to go with him to Claire’s house, then changed his mind and said he’d go over there alone.

“Dad—” she began.

“Good-bye,” he said, and hung up on her before she could give him a lecture.

He turned off the TV, then picked up his keys and wallet from the dresser.

“Roger?” Marian called from the bathroom.

Hurrying out before she could quiz him about where he was going, he passed through the living room, where Julian was playing some kind of card game with his kids. Roger smiled and waved at Megan and James, but he and Julian ignored each other as he walked out the door.

Driving side streets instead of main roads, he was there in five minutes. He parked the car in the driveway and got out to check the lay of the land. All of the houses except theirs were for sale, and all of the yards, including theirs, were dead. Weird, he had to admit, but except for the lawn problem, nothing about Claire’s house looked unusual at all. He walked up to the front door and took out his key, thinking about Julian. How could that pansy be afraid of his own house? Roger was embarrassed that his daughter had married such a pantywaist. No wonder their boy was turning out the way he was.

Unlocking the door, he stepped inside. It looked like a tornado had hit the place. Lamps were broken, tables and chairs overturned. Broken glass littered the floor. That gave him pause. Julian had described this, but hearing about it and seeing it were two different things. He recalled that nightmare he’d had about their basement, and though he hated to admit it, he felt less secure than he should have because of the dream.

He was getting to be as bad as they were.

Dreams weren’t real. He had nothing to be afraid of. The only thing that had happened here was that there’d been a blackout, and Julian had stumbled around in the dark like an asshole, knocking things over.

Roger made his way through the debris. In the dining room, the table was covered with a fine white powder that looked like flour but, considering his hippie son-in-law, could just as easily have been cocaine. Although there was no way Julian and Claire could afford this much cocaine.

Frowning, he walked around the side of the table to the opposite end. Someone had drawn in the powder with a finger, and it wasn’t until he was looking at it from the proper angle that he could read what it said: Sniff some, you stupid old fuck.

Roger felt his face grow hot with anger. Julian had written this and had left it here for him, knowing he would come by the house to investigate, knowing it would cross his mind that the powder resembled cocaine. He bent over, put his face near the tabletop and breathed in.

It smelled like rat poison.

Sniff some, you stupid old fuck.

Julian was trying to kill him.

Roger felt chilled. He and his son-in-law didn’t like each other, but he never would have thought Julian capable of such cold-bloodedness, and he straightened up, looking around, seeing the entire house as one gigantic booby trap. What waited for him in the kitchen? Upstairs? In the basement?

Roger shook his head to clear it. That made no sense. Julian had fled the house because he was afraid, because he thought the house was haunted. He hadn’t been pretending. And he certainly hadn’t poured rat poison all over the dining room table on the off chance that Roger would come over alone and inhale a big nostrilful to test whether it was cocaine.

Maybe the house was haunted.

That made no sense, either.

Roger had no explanation for anything that was going on, but he was warier now than he had been when he’d first arrived. He felt uncomfortable here, and while he still wasn’t willing to concede that Julian and Claire might be right about the house being dangerous, he was starting to think that it might be a good idea to leave and come back later, maybe with Rob.