The Haunted

They were too far along to pretend that they were overreacting to a settling of the house or similarly rational events that could explain what they were going through. This was bigger than that, more concrete. Multiple people had seen a ghost walk down their hallway and into the living room. It was time to look for real answers, not logical explanations.

They talked about it for a while, not really coming to any conclusions, agreeing only that they needed to investigate the situation more, watch the kids carefully and be very, very cautious.

Julian was tired, had a headache, and went to bed early, but Claire was wired and wide-awake. She worked on a few pretrial motions for the Seaver divorce and tried to determine the starting point for a settlement with the school district. Her mind wandered, though, and she found herself thinking about something she’d read, a strange small detail she’d come across in two of the books, the one written by the farmer and the one penned by the Mexican historian.

As a test, Claire went outside. Everyone in the house was asleep, so she unlocked and opened the front door very quietly, closing it behind her. She walked onto the lawn, then to the sidewalk. She had been out after dark before, but she’d never had any reason to study the sky. Now, however, she looked up.

The night was black.

No stars.

She tried to recall whether she’d seen the moon since moving to their new home and couldn’t.

Shivering, she walked down the sidewalk until she was in front of the Ribieros’ house, where she stopped, looking up.

The Little Dipper and Orion’s belt were right where they were supposed to be, and a half-moon hovered just above the roofline of a house across the street.

She’d been afraid this would happen, on some level had known it would happen, but the sheer concrete fact of it took her breath away. This wasn’t some nebulous experience that could be interpreted in many different ways. It was a measurable truth: the moon and stars could not be seen from their house.

Why this was the case, she had no idea, but she walked very slowly along the sidewalk, looking up all the while. The sky was clear and beautiful, the kind she remembered from childhood. She expected to find a specific cutoff point beyond which the stars and moon could no longer be seen, but instead the lights in the sky did a slow fade, as though they were gradually being obscured or turned off. By the time she reached the boundary of her yard, the sky was jet-black.

What did this mean? No answers suggested themselves, but the scope of the phenomenon left her feeling small and helpless. This was far bigger than just having a ghost in their house. She walked down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, and the same thing recurred: the moon and stars gradually reappeared as she moved away from her yard.

She returned to her driveway and stood there for a moment, not sure whether she wanted to go back inside. At the moment, however, she felt safer inside than out, and she stepped onto the porch, opened the front door and walked into the living room—where the lights suddenly turned on, revealing the laundry basket sitting in the center of the floor.

From the kitchen area, she heard a door swing open and hit the wall. Hard.

The door to the basement.

She couldn’t deal with this now, and she ran quickly down the hall to the bedroom, not bothering to check the cellar door, not bothering to turn off the lights in the living room. Breathing hard, she closed the door behind her and instinctively pressed her back against it to prevent anything from getting in. She thought about waking Julian, thought about telling him to go upstairs and get the kids and have them sleep with them for the night, but she saw him on the bed, and both her fear and those thoughts fled instantly from her mind. For he had decided to sleep naked, and had kicked off the sheet and blanket. He was on his back and his erection stuck straight up in the air.

Forgetting everything else, she walked forward, stripping off her clothes before climbing onto the bed.

She sucked him while he slept, working feverishly on his erection, and he came in her mouth, still asleep.

She swallowed, masturbated, then closed her eyes and dreamed of a world where there were no stars, no moon, no sun, and the sky was always black.

Twenty-four

Once again, Julian spent the better part of the morning trying to look up information about their house, their street, the town. His deadline was real and it was nearly here, but Claire wanted him to investigate further and try to find out what he could about the history of their property. She wouldn’t specify what she hoped to do with such knowledge, but he knew how her mind worked, and knew she probably had a plan. Although whether that plan was to sue the realtor and the seller for not revealing that their house was haunted, or whether it was to perform some sort of ritual to exorcise the ghost, he couldn’t say.