The Haunted

It really was just the basement that was creepy, and James thought he could probably learn to live with that. There were plenty of people who lived in haunted houses and coexisted with ghosts. He’d seen a Discovery Channel show about celebrity ghost stories, and there were famous actors and rock stars who’d been living with ghosts for years. Some of the spirits were even friendly.

James recalled his dream of the dirty grinning man in the basement. He certainly wasn’t friendly. But even if he existed, he was probably trapped there in the basement, and as long as James stayed out of that room, there should be no problem.

“Check it out!”

Robbie had climbed up the ladder and was peering down through the hole in the ceiling. James hurried up after him, and though he’d been up here before, he saw it now through new eyes and realized that he and Robbie really could make this into some sort of secret hideout. Maybe they could be detectives, he thought, and he imagined turning this room into a crime lab, with beakers and test tubes, microscopes and chemicals. Excitedly, the two of them began planning out what they needed to do to turn the loft into their crime-fighting headquarters.

Time passed quickly, and it seemed they’d been up there for only about ten minutes or so when James’s dad called, “Boys!” Hurrying to the small window that looked out over the backyard, they saw both fathers standing on the back patio, waiting for them to come out of the garage.

“We need one-way glass on this window,” Robbie said. “So we can see out but no one else can see in.”

“Yeah,” James agreed. “Coming!” he yelled down to his dad, and the two of them climbed back down the ladder and exited the building.

After Robbie left, James snagged some potato chips from the kitchen—trying not to look toward the closed door of the basement—and took them out to the living room to eat in front of the TV. But there were no good movies on, and only baby cartoons, and he soon got bored. He returned the Pringles canister to the kitchen, then headed upstairs, figuring he’d play on his computer or DS. His mom was still at work, and his dad was back in his office, but Megan was sitting on the floor of her bedroom, and, as he walked by, she asked in a voice loud enough for their dad to hear, “Want to play a game?”

That was weird.

It wasn’t unheard-of—in fact, they used to play board games a lot during the summers when they were younger, before she’d turned into such a brat—but it was unusual, and he figured she was trying to show their dad how bored she was in order to get him to agree to let her go somewhere or do something with one of her friends. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, however, and he did like playing games, so he agreed, stepping into her room. She pulled something off a shelf, then sat down on the rug, showing him what she held in her hands.

Old Maid.

He looked nervously at the battered red box. He’d never liked Old Maid. It wasn’t the game, which was kind of fun; it was the Old Maid herself, the way she was depicted on this particular pack of cards. All of the other characters were humorous caricatures of cartoonish boys and girls. But the Old Maid was old, and the expression on her wrinkled face was one of barely suppressed rage: a flat hardness in the small eyes, a mouth set in a thin, angry line. He’d been afraid of that visage ever since he’d been little, and while he wanted to tell himself that he wasn’t afraid of it anymore, he knew that wasn’t true.

She was on the cover of the box, and even seeing her eyes peering out over Megan’s fingers gave him the creeps.

He sat down on the floor as his sister took out the cards, shuffled them, then dealt them. He was directly across from her, and before picking up his own pile, he watched her sort through her cards. Megan was not good at hiding her emotions, and he knew he’d be able to tell whether or not she’d gotten the Old Maid. Seeing her smile after she’d fanned out the cards in her hand, he knew that she hadn’t.

And he had.

He looked down at the flat blue backs of the cards on the floor before him, not wanting to pick them up, wishing he’d continued on to his own room, where, right now, he could be happily playing Star Wars on his DS, or LEGO Harry Potter. But he reached down, gathered up the cards from the floor and turned their faces toward him so Megan couldn’t see.

There she was.

Between Hungry Henry and Sleeping Sam was the wrinkled countenance of the Old Maid. He could see only the left half of her face, but that was enough. Divorced from its twin, her left eye had an even crueler cast, and the flat portion of wrinkled mouth that was visible seemed not merely angry but malevolent. He pushed Sleeping Sam over so that the dozing boy was covering the Old Maid, then sorted through the rest of his cards, looking for doubles. He found two sets and discarded them, then, holding the remaining cards in front of him, fanned them out in his right hand and told Megan to pick.