The Haunted

The talking continued, and Julian frowned as he drew closer. That didn’t sound like Megan’s voice. It didn’t even sound like a girl’s voice.

It sounded like a man’s voice.

He sprinted the last few feet to his daughter’s bedroom and, frantic, panicked, pushed open the door.

She was asleep, in bed, alone. Enough light shone in from the hallway for him to see that there was no one else in the room, but just to make sure, he walked around to the other side of her bed and even crouched down on the floor to look under it. The talking had stopped, and he wondered whether he had imagined it. Probably not. Megan was a sleep talker. But some fearful part of his brain, stimulated perhaps by the Dream, had no doubt lowered her voice a few registers in his mind and given him the impression that a man was in her room.

Moving quietly, he opened her closet and moved his hands through her clothes, feeling along the wall to make sure no one was hiding there. No one was. And the windows, when he checked them, were closed.

Megan was safe and sound.

He bent over her sleeping form and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. If she’d awakened at that moment, she would have recoiled and told him to go away, frowning in disgust. He felt a small twinge of sadness as he recalled how she used to like him to kiss her, especially before she went to sleep at night. He missed that younger Megan and wished, not for the first time, that she never had to grow up and would remain his little girl forever.

He patted her back, then went over to James’s room to check on his son. The boy had kicked off his blanket and was sprawled out on his bed in what looked like a very uncomfortable position. Julian drew the blanket back up and kissed his son on the forehead. James wasn’t big on kissing, either, although right now he didn’t mind hugs. It was going to be sad when that changed.

Just in case, he searched James’s room for an intruder, too. And though there was no way anyone could have passed by in the hall without his seeing it, he looked through his office and the bathroom as well.

The upstairs was clear, all was safe, and Julian went back down the steps, returned to his bedroom, crawled in bed next to Claire and, though he expected to remain awake for at least another hour, promptly fell asleep.

In the morning, he woke late, although it was a summer Saturday and so didn’t much matter. Claire was already up, her side of the bed cold, and the aroma of toasted blueberry bagel permeated the house. Julian pushed off the covers, put on his bathrobe and headed out to the kitchen, where he was greeted by empty plates in an empty breakfast nook. Through the windows, he could see Claire, still in her robe and slippers, checking out her herb garden. The kids, he assumed, were in their bedrooms getting dressed or in the family room watching TV.

The package of precut bagels was still open on the counter, and he pulled two apart and popped them into the toaster oven, pouring himself some orange juice from a carton he took out of the refrigerator. As he waited for the bagels, he glanced over at the Nature Conservancy calendar Claire had tacked up on the wall next to the door. Beneath the July photo of a mother and baby coyote was a red X marking the date on which they’d moved into the house. It had been more than three weeks already, and he realized that they had yet to meet a single one of their neighbors. There’d been no welcome wagon when they’d arrived, no one had come over to say hello, and though Claire had made an effort to stop by the houses on both sides that first week, no one had been home. Things had been so hectic ever since, what with the unpacking and settling in, that they’d kind of forgotten about introducing themselves to the neighbors.

Julian thought about the Willet boy and his skate-punk friends in their old neighborhood and decided that they really should try to get off on the right foot here. Today was as good a day as any, since they had no plans and would all be home. The toaster rang; he took out his bagels, buttered them, put them on a plate and walked barefoot into the backyard to discuss his thoughts with Claire. She, too, thought it would be a good idea to meet the neighbors, and they decided to visit the houses to either side of them around ten o’clock. It was a civilized hour, not too early, not too late.