The Haunted

Opening the cupboard doors beneath the sink, she took out the scrub brush and a spray bottle of Lime-A-Way. She coated the sides of the bowl with foaming suds, but before she could even start scrubbing, the froth began dripping irregularly down the porcelain, forming Alice Cooper eyes and an ever-widening smile, not merely maintaining the face but giving it a mocking, defiant appearance. She scrubbed the toilet as hard as she could, putting her back into it, spraying more Lime-A-Way, and more, and more, but the face remained, and though she told herself it was nothing, wasn’t really a face, was just a coincidence, an arbitrary confluence of hard water mineral stains, she realized with a sick sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that those eyes would be looking straight up at anyone who sat on the toilet.

She was going to make sure the rest of the family did not use this bathroom.

Especially Megan.

Putting away the brush and cleanser, Claire started down the hallway toward the kitchen, intending to tell Julian everything, but her eye was caught by the newel post of the staircase, and, on impulse, she walked past the kitchen doorway and headed up the steps, wanting to make sure there was nothing … strange in the kids’ bathroom upstairs.

At first glance, there wasn’t.

She checked the toilet first, and while it wasn’t as clean as she would have liked (she’d have to talk to the kids about that), there was no face. She looked in the sink, glanced around at the walls, peered into the mirror.

All clean.

Relieved, she exhaled deeply. She let her gaze wander over the remaining sections of the room.

The face was on the shower curtain.

It was there for only a second—long enough for her to identify it as the same one in the other bathroom, long enough to note that it was formed from abstract design elements on the curtain itself—and then it was gone, rendered invisible by a minute shift in perspective or a slight change in light. She screamed anyway, a gut reaction, and this time Julian heard her. In seconds, his heavy steps were thundering up the stairs.

“Claire!” he called.

She stepped into the hall.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded, heart still pounding. But his presence gave her courage, and she went back into the bathroom to once more examine the shower curtain. She looked at it from the left, from the right, from straight on, from a crouched position.

He followed her in. “What in the world are you doing?”

Claire stood, faced him. “Maybe we shouldn’t have bought this house,” she said.

“What?”

“Have you considered the idea that it might be … haunted?”

Julian just stared at her.

“James doesn’t like the basement,” she continued quickly. “I don’t, either—”

“It’s dark,” he interrupted. “It’s small. It’s claustrophobic. But it’s not haunted.”

“Megan and her friends were all screaming—”

“They’re teenage girls on a sleepover who were playing with a Ouija board and telling ghost stories. What did you expect?”

“What about your record? And what about those things that keep getting moved around?”

“Are you serious?” He frowned at her, obviously annoyed. “You’re acting like a three-year-old. First of all—”

“I saw a face in the toilet downstairs. And on the shower curtain here.”

“Oh, my God …”

“The one in the toilet’s still there!”

“Show me.”

Grimly, they walked downstairs, Claire in the lead, Julian muttering disbelieving, disparaging remarks under his breath. When they reached the bathroom, the face was still there, and it looked as disturbing as ever.

Julian shook his head. “That’s just a stain. It happens to sort of, almost, kind of, semi-look like a face. But it’s like those people who claim to see Jesus in rusty drips on a water heater or Mary’s outline on a fogged-up storm window. Those things aren’t really there; people just want to believe that they are.”

He reached for her, but she pulled away. “I don’t want that face to be there! But it is!”

“Calm down. You got scared. You spooked yourself, and now you’re all rattled. I’m just trying to explain that there’s nothing supernatural going on here.”

“Don’t patronize me!”

“I’m not,” he said, in a voice indicating that he was. “But our house isn’t haunted, and that thing”—he gestured toward the toilet—“isn’t some ghostly manifestation. It’s hard-water deposits on porcelain. Whatever you saw upstairs was obviously some trick of the light. The basement—”

“The basement’s creepy.”

“Come on. Act like an adult, for God’s sake.”

“I don’t see you ever going in there.”

“There’s no reason to.”

“You know, my dad even had a nightmare about our basement.”

He threw up his hands. “Oh! Well! If your dad had a dream, then it must be true!”

“There’s something in this house, Julian.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“You’ve felt it, too, and you’re just pretending that you haven’t.” She glared at him, and there was a loaded pause between them. She saw understanding dawn in his expression. He knew what she was about to say. “What if it’s—”

“Don’t say it!” he ordered. “Don’t even think it!”

“We’re both thinking it!”