17
Sitting Jon down at the table, Carlie reheated the soup. His complexion looked better, but he still had the appearance of being slightly distant.
“Is everything all right?”
“Well, I guess that depends on your definition of all right.”
Pulling out the chair across from him, she sat down and began again. “Okay, let me rephrase that. Is there something wrong?”
“I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.”
Carlie stared at him in disbelief. For Jon to say something this out of the ordinary and not be joking was more than a little disturbing.
“What do you mean, you’re having a nervous breakdown? What could possibly give you that idea?”
“I’m starting to see things. I’m seeing things that can’t possibly be there, because they don’t exist.”
Carlie sat silently waiting for him to continue. Seconds and then minutes passed, but Jon just sat there staring into space.
“Okay, don’t keep me in suspense. What do you mean?”
“Ghosts—I’m seeing ghosts. Let me rephrase that. I think I saw a ghost. It started last night.”
Carlie’s eyes lit up and she started to respond, but Jon held up his hand and silenced her.
“I know this will sound ridiculous, especially coming from me, but I know what I saw.”
It took a little over a half hour for Jon to recount the events of the night before and what had just happened to him less than an hour earlier.
Carlie was at a loss for words. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say in response. She watched Jon’s expression; he seemed to grow more agitated as he related his story.
Finally looking up and making eye contact with his wife, Jon said what he was hoping to avoid. “Carlie, I’m afraid this house is haunted.”
Carlie stared at Jon in disbelief. Shaking her head, she broke into a muffled, choking snicker that escalated quickly into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
During a brief pause in her laughing fit, she caught her breath long enough to ask, “What the hell gave you an idea like that?”
More than shocked by Carlie’s reaction, Jon was hurt. Carlie’s offhand dismissal of what had happened to him was almost more than he could handle. Again, Carlie had reacted in a way that was completely out of character for her.
Jon slid his chair back and stood up. “Thanks for all your support and understanding. Nice talk. Let’s do it again sometime real soon.” Turning away from his still-snickering wife, he walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
Once in the bedroom, Jon had to suppress an overpowering urge to pack a suitcase and leave. In eight hours he could be back in Chicago, and he could leave this living nightmare behind him. What would happen to Carlie if he left? Could he possibly leave her in this house alone? Whoever or whatever was haunting this miserable place also possessed Carlie, not all of the time, but enough to scare the hell out of him.
The shower was running when Carlie walked into the bedroom. It had taken a few minutes for her to realize how much she had hurt Jon with her reaction. Jon had been serious; he had honestly believed what he had told her. Maybe, just maybe, he would forgive her.
Quickly undressing, she hoped she would be able to catch Jon before he got out of the shower. As she opened the bathroom door, the steam coming from the shower overpowered her. Jon had forgotten to turn on the switch to the two exhaust fans. Flipping the switch, she waited a minute for the fans to clear out most of the steam from the room.
In the shower, she could see Jon sitting on the seat in the far corner. He was just sitting there with his head down and the hot water pouring down on him.
“I’m so sorry, Jon. I shouldn’t have dismissed you. There really is no excuse for my actions.”
At this moment, being sorry was not the solution. She needed to be willing to listen to him. She needed to accept, at least in part, whatever he told her as being probable.
As the hot water pounded down on the two of them, it came to him. Jon knew exactly what he needed to do to convince her. If this house was indeed haunted, there had to be accounts of it. There would surely be tales of ghosts and things that go bump in the night scattered throughout the journals in the living room.
Standing, he lifted Carlie to her feet. “I’m not positive that I actually saw what I thought I did. As Ebenezer Scrooge said, what I saw may have been nothing more than an undigested bit of cheese. I’m paraphrasing of course.”
“A nervous breakdown is serious, Jon, so please don’t act like it’s nothing.”
A screeching sound caught their attention. Directly in front of them, a clear spot began to form through the condensation on the bathroom mirror.
Slowly at first, their eyes followed the droplets of water as they raced to the countertop just ahead of the disappearing haze.
There was a brief pause, and then the screeching began again. This time a ragged half-circle formed. The water droplets trailed their way to the countertop along the ridge of the first line.
The screeching and the tempo of straight lines, swirls, and half-circles escalated as the pair looked on in amazement.
In less than a minute, a complete series of lines and jagged patterns had materialized on the mirror. They had Carlie’s rapt attention. Jon, on the other hand, watched the scene unfold before his eyes in dazed disbelief.
Carlie was the first to speak. “My God, Jon, look what it says!”
Jon stared at the markings on the mirror. His mind had gone numb. At first he couldn’t make out a pattern, let alone words, but then it came to him.
He watched Carlie as she tentatively traced each letter with the tip of her finger. Backing away, Jon could see the letters scrawled on the fifteen-foot mirror with greater clarity.
P L E A S E H E L P U S
As quickly as the letters had formed, they began to disappear. The exhaust fans were rapidly sucking the moisture from the air. Carlie raced across the bathroom as fast as she could run without losing her footing. She reached out and shut off the fans before the words disappeared forever. As valiant an attempt as it was, when she turned around, her heart sank. The words were gone.
Jon was still staring at the mirror, his lips moving silently, repeating the words that were no longer there. His complexion had turned pallid, and he was beginning to shake uncontrollably.
Carlie waited for a response from Jon. When it didn’t come, she turned to see what he was doing. She could clearly see he wasn’t doing very well at all. Cinching her robe around her waist, she hurried across the floor, afraid that Jon would pass out before she could reach him.
Holding on to his arm, Carlie followed Jon as he sank to the floor. His face contorted in pain as his stomach balled into a tight, burning knot. He let out a gasp. His stomach roiled. Jumping up, he ran toward the toilet. Before he could reach it, he threw up the soup he had eaten for dinner.
Humiliated, he turned to Carlie. The look on his face was a mixture of both fear and helplessness.
“Jon? … Jon! Look at me.”
It took a few seconds before Jon’s eyes focused on Carlie’s face. When they finally did, she continued. “You’re not having a nervous breakdown. If you are, then we both are, because we both just saw the same thing.”
Tenderly, she placed her hand on the back of his head and pushed down until his face was resting on her shoulder.
“Shhhhh, I want you to tell me everything. This time, start from the very beginning—and don’t leave anything out. Do you understand me, Jon?”
His voice was muffled in the heavy fabric of her robe. “Yeah, I understand. Carlie, did it say what I think it did? Did it really ask us for help?”
“Yes, I believe it did.”
Jon retold everything he had told her earlier, but this time in explicit detail, leaving out nothing. When he eventually described the conversation he had had with Loretta, Carlie was on the edge of her seat. She had a million questions, but she knew Jon didn’t have the answers.
Walking across the living room, Jon picked up the heavy leather-bound journal that Carlie had been reading. Flipping through it, he scanned the impeccable handwriting of Edith McPherson. Turning, he handed it to Carlie. “Catch me up!”