The Haunted

He opened the door, then stepped back quickly, knife extended, but nothing leaped out at him. After waiting a beat, he moved forward, walking into the garage and turning on the light. He glanced around. Everything seemed to be in order; nothing looked out of place. Since the van was parked in the driveway, and the lawn mower and most of the gardening implements were in the storage shed, the garage was relatively bare. With the light on, it was easy to see everything within the open area, and Julian wondered whether he had been lured in here purposely. His grip on the knife tightened.

No. Whoever—whatever—had gone into the garage had not known that he was watching. He’d caught someone—something—sneaking in and closing the door. It had not been part of some elaborate show put on for his benefit.

Although the laughter had lured him into the kitchen …

No. Something was here in the garage. He just couldn’t figure out where it had gone.

His eyes alighted on the ladder.

Upstairs.

Julian’s heart started thumping. He knew he shouldn’t go up there. It was stupid. Possibly dangerous. He didn’t even want to do it. But he found himself walking over to the wall where the wooden ladder was attached. He looked up.

The trapdoor was open.

Why hadn’t he noticed that before?

Upstairs it was dark. Beyond the square entrance to the loft, he could see nothing, only blackness. It was impossible for him to climb the ladder and still hold the knife in such a manner that it could be used, and he had decided to quit, go back to the house, and return in the morning, when he could see and it would be safer. But he felt a drop of warm wetness hit his forehead, and he touched it with his finger and it was blood.

Someone or something was bleeding up there.

What if it’s James?

The thought had not even occurred to him before this moment, but he realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he had not checked on the children after being awakened by the laughter. It could be James. The area upstairs was where he and his friend played, their “headquarters.” He could have been the one sneaking into the garage and closing the door behind him.

Julian wiped the blood from his forehead with his palm. A half-formed plan to wake Claire and call 911 was jettisoned immediately, and he quickly shifted the knife to his left hand, placing it in the crook next to his thumb so he could use his other fingers to grasp the ladder’s rungs. He sped up to the top, and only then, only when his head and shoulders were protruding from the floor of the loft and he was at his most vulnerable, did he realize that it couldn’t have been James. The back door of the house had been locked. If James had gone out first, the door would have been unlocked.

Julian braced himself for a blow, but even as he winced in expectation, he was pushing himself up into the loft and frantically searching for a light switch or a pull chain attached to a bulb. He’d been up here only in the daytime, and only on a few occasions, so he didn’t even know whether there was a light in the loft.

Nothing hit him as he got to his feet, and since he was next to a wall already, he pressed his right hand against it, feeling around, even as his left hand gripped hard the handle of the knife. Amazingly, his fingers encountered a switch, and he pushed it up as a shielded bulb in the center of the room turned on, bathing the loft in a light that was probably soft and weak, but that after the blackness of a moment before seemed as bright as the sun.

Julian stood where he was, rubbing his eyes, and as soon as they adjusted to the brightness, he saw where the blood had come from.

A dead body on the floor.

It was John Lynch, the intruder he’d seen through the dining room window. Julian recognized the yellow baseball cap.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered.

The man had stabbed himself. Not just once but multiple times. In the face. A slice through his left cheek had widened his mouth to clown proportions; another in his forehead revealed skull beneath skin. What was left of his nose resembled chopped raw hamburger, and a hard stab near his right eye had continued down the side of his head and taken off a sliver of skin with hair, as well as a piece of ear. He had finished himself off by plunging the knife into his own throat, from whence it protruded now, the wound around the blade revealing a thin, ragged strip of ripped cartilage, blood covering not just the remnants of his neck but his arms, his chest and the surrounding floor. A thin rivulet ran across the uneven floorboards to the trapdoor opening, which was where it had dripped onto Julian’s head.

There was even blood splattered five feet away on a stand-alone cardboard cutout for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and the stench in the loft was so strong Julian marveled that he had not noticed it immediately upon coming up.

He gulped in air, trying not to gag.