I hate haunted houses. I’m talking
the real ones: houses no one lives in anymore, the kind they don’t
offer ghost tours to, the ones so old and run down that even rats
won’t live in them. They are the places locals talk about only
after the pubs have closed, the tales never told to children and only
mentioned when lights are bright and burning. It makes it harder to
find out about them. It makes it harder to deal with them. And it
also means that said places are going to be less comfortable than a
0-star motel run by Norman Bates.
Dyer had chatted with the locals in
pubs while I’d broken into the towns records department for files.
I’m trying not to think too hard about that division as I hop the
fence around the property after the ghost. Obediah died in 1918, body
thin and eaten away from the inside-out by sickness. Paler than
death, with bones and veins standing out against flesh, a voice
little more than a rasp and no hair at all – he looks like he
should be dead or barely survived dying, and people talk
to him, the way they talk to magicians, but without his using any
magic at all. He’s also the only ghost I’ve run into that can be
solid enough to fool most anyone into thinking he’s alive.
“The
house was built in 1886
by one Jeremiah Baker, a banker by trade who amassed a small fortune
and retired. According to a couple of microfilm reels,
telling people no to their mortgages just got to be too much for him.
No wife, no kids, died ten years later. House passed into the care of
his younger sister,
Jennifer. Her son,
Alexander, killed himself two years later; she beat her husband and
his mistress to death with her bare hands four months after that and
threw herself off of the roof. Three stories, hit the ground and only
broke her legs. Died in jail several years later; everyone else who
tried to settle in the house left and refused to talk about why.”
“Huh.”
Dyer studies the house. It isn’t much to speak of: old wood siding,
crumbling brick, but the plans had shown fairy-tale like turrets and
even a small moat complete with drawbridge leading into the home.
Jeremiah had ever been – or decided to become – a local
eccentric. Possibly for privacy. In
its day it would have looked like Walt Disney had shat some princess
castle right in the middle of Michigan.
“The
locals fenced it off in the sixties after
two more deaths,” he says. “Officially, they fell through the
floor. Unofficially, they ran into at least one ghost and
died trying
to flee the house. Last month
two local kids decided to explore it for a YouTube video. Neither
has left their home or talked since, mostly making whimpering sounds
and cowering from any kind of noise. That’s when someone sought out
CASPER.”
The
Centre for Secure Poltergeist Elimination Research is, at least on
paper, some branch of the department of education dealing with hoaxes
and telling people how ghosts are really animals, odd noises, weird
sounds and the like. And to be fair, more than half of what we do is
that. The rest is getting rid of real ghosts on a budget that makes
welfare checks look like a windfall.
“You’re
the ghost eater.” I give him a light push into the brambles. “Go
inside, find ghost, eat it and we’re done.”
He
shoots me a hurt look. “It’s not that simple. We don’t know how
many ghosts there are or which ones are actually hurting people. The
world has no shortage of weird creatures that might hide in this sort
of place and scare kids by accident.”
I sigh
and begin shoving brambles out of my way as I head toward the house.
I could rip through them: I
have a monster inside me, a thing of claw and shadow, a god forged of
fear and flame, but the ghost might notice. And it seems kind of
silly to to call up for brambles, but less so as Dyer just wanders
through them, his already ripped leather jacket barely touched by
them while my winter jacket gets ripped and torn up to match his. I’m
in a mood by the time we reach the house.
“I should go
first,” Dyer offers in his soft rasp as we reach what the
perpetually open drawbridge leading into the old home. I turn and
raise one eyebrow; he falls back a couple of steps and licks his
lips.“Charlie, no one has lived here for close to a hundred years.
The floors could well collapse –”
“They wouldn’t
dare.”
Ghost-boy
is good at sounding nice; I’m good at sounding like I’m a few
seconds from doing something the other person is going to regret. He
snaps his mouth shut and says nothing else as I head across the
doorway and into the house. The
walls are crumbling wood reeking of rot, the floor bowed and twisted
as I walk in. Wood shudders a little but holds together; gaps
oin the floor offer hints
toward a finished basement
below us. The stairwell up to the second level is a complete
write-off for going up unless I was ten again. And dieting. Which
sounds less funny in my head since I’d lay bets that there’s some
ten year old girls who do diet
these days.
The
whole place feels not empty enough, as if the shadows were judging
us, but I’m good at judging right back. I look about slowly,
thinking. I’m not Dyer. He eats ghosts; I eat gods. And other
things, if and when I have to. He’s concerned with stopping the
ghost; I’m wondering who the ghost is and how they got this way. I
gesture and he follows my lead, slipping up the stairs to the second
level in silence as I look around.
Huge hallway, vast
staircases to the second floor, drawing room, living room. The
kitchen is is in the back, most of it having fallen through the
floor, the stairway to the basement being far off to the side. In its
day it would have been half-hidden by a stove or fridge, if I have
the layout right. I move back to the stable flooring and crouch down,
staring through the missing boards and holes. I draw on enough of the
god inside me to see through shadow and move slowly along the floor,
getting a feel for what the basement looks like.
“I think the kids
got to the second floor and ran down,” Dyer says behind me. I don’t
jump; I’m getting used to him not making a sound when he walks.
“The servant stairwell leading to the kitchen is more solid than
the main stairs; they tried to hit the back entrance, fell into the
basement and scrambled back up through an exit that was probably
storage for firewood.”
“I bet they broke
the lock on their way out,” I say slowly as I stand. “And the
door is shut tight now.”
He pauses at
something in my voice but nods. “It looked like that; I didn’t
want to test it alone.”
“Yeah. Drop down
into the basement. Look around. Come back up. Don’t do it in the
normal way.”
Dyer blinks, but
doesn’t ask questions. He’s gone between one moment and the next,
and beside me less than thirty seconds later, pale eyes wide in
shock.
“Jeremiah
Baker is down there, then.”
“His ghost is
hiding, yes.” Dyer heads outside; I follow without a word, fighting
back a grin. A hundred years dead and he looks so shocked it’s hard
not to laugh. “You saw?” he says.
“Chains. Benches.
Enough to know it was a dungeon, though most of it has rotted away
with time. He lived alone and was wealthy: I imagine people into the
S&M scene found out about his dungeon because he wanted them to.
He was rich, so such things never made the papers then, and
eventually someone tried to blackmail him. He kills himself and
haunts it to hide his shame from his own family.”
“His
shame became
part of the house he built. Infected
it. Drove
his own nephew to suicide and his sister into madness. Their ghosts
aren’t here. Just his and he’s too terrified and angry to talk,
so afraid of being discovered that he terrifies people away from his
own home.”
“And every piece
that rots away increases the chances people will learn his secrets.”
“Yes.”
I grunt and pull
out a cigarette, lighting it. Like all bad habits, it’s one I can’t
quite quit. This job doesn’t help. “How strong is Jeremiah?”
“I don’t know.”
I take a deep drag,
blow smoke, a second, and thread power into my voice. “Ghost: I am
giving you a way out. Use it,” and toss the cigarette through the
open door onto the floor.
Dyer lets out a
shocked yelp. “This isn’t how we do things!”
The fire catches in
record time and begins burning bright and hot, enough to consume the
house and not a single brush around it as we watch. Dyer repeats
rules and prohibitions from the CASPER workbook, as if I’ve ever
read the damn thing, until his voice gives out entirely.
“You could have
stopped it,” I say once the fire has crumpled even stone and metal
into little more than memory. The ghost says nothing at all, lips
drawn and tight as he walks out of the property.
I follow; the ghost
of Jeremiah Banks says nothing, offers up less. I don’t know if it
was destroyed and I don’t think Dyer will tell me the truth if I
ask. I could point out that most people would react the way he did to
the basement, that it would have destroyed the reputation of a dead
man, but I’d be saying nothing Dyer doesn’t already know. I put
my cigarettes away and get into the old RV I bought a week ago.
Dyer slinks into
the passenger seat and puts his seat belt on. “Thank you.”
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