20
Jon and Carlie spent the next five hours reading Edith’s entries. Jon stopped long enough to heat a can of soup for Carlie. After the two had eaten, Jon started jotting something down on a yellow legal pad. As he turned the pages of the journal, he quickly wrote what appeared to be notes.
After watching him for almost an hour, Carlie finally asked, “Are you finding something interesting?”
Standing, he picked up his pad and walked across the room.
Handing it to Carlie, he casually said, “I’m not really sure. Why don’t you take a look at this and tell me what you think?”
Carlie took the pad and began reading.
We’re being watched. We both know we’re not alone, so I think it’s important that we be very careful what we say out loud. Whoever or whatever it was made it pretty clear that it does not want you selling this house.
When she finished reading, she looked up at him and nodded in agreement. She lowered her head for a moment, then looked up at him again. “Jon, I’ve wanted to say something about what happened last night, but I couldn’t find the right words. First off, I honestly don’t have any idea who that man in the hallway was, but I have seen flashes of him before in my dreams.
“Consciously, I didn’t recognize his face—but I did recognize his eyes. Subconsciously, though, when I looked into his eyes, I knew everything about him and I knew deep in my soul exactly what unspeakable horrors he was capable of. Does that make any sense?”
“Actually, it makes perfect sense. I can’t remember ever seeing so much hatred in anyone’s eyes.
“So it wasn’t merely the fact that we had a ghost standing in our hallway last night that caused you to faint?”
“After watching the words ‘please help us’ materialize on our bathroom mirror? I don’t think so. Even though the whole experience was brief, I felt like I had just come face to face with someone’s worst nightmare.”
Jon could see that their conversation and the pain were wearing Carlie out. Taking her by the hand, he lifted her to her feet, pulled her close, and gave her a gentle squeeze. She laid her head on his shoulder as they walked upstairs to the bedroom.
Wrapping her arm around Jon’s waist, Carlie pulled herself tight up against him in the bed and dropped off to sleep.
The snow was up to her calves. However, it wasn’t the chill of the snow nor the icy wind sweeping across the open land that was making her shake. She had been crying.
Sitting alone with her knees pulled up tight against her chest and her chin resting on folded arms, she watched as the older boys played games in the front yard of the farmhouse below.
She would hike across the road to this remote spot on the hill every time they allowed her to go outside to play. She was never included in the games the other kids played, at least not in the real sense of being their equal. On occasion they would include her, but it always turned out to be a cruel joke at her expense. She always ended up hurt, crying, and feeling rejected.
She could hear the peals of high-pitched laughter as the boys chased each other across the yard. They were extremely handsome boys; she envied how they looked, so strong and masculine, completely unlike her. They were boys any mother would love and any father would brag about. She wondered why she had even been born.
As she watched the boys, she heard a twig snap somewhere behind her. She sat perfectly still, waiting. On rare occasions, a deer would walk past her. If she was still enough and the wind was blowing in the right direction, it might walk up and sniff her.
As she daydreamed, a powerful hand grabbed her neck from behind. Its massive fingers and long, ragged nails bit deep into the side of her neck. Her mind’s eye flashed instantly to a bear; she could imagine its massive jaw as it wrapped itself around the base of her skull. Any second now she expected it to clamp its jaws shut, snapping her neck like a twig.
As she waited to die, something awkwardly yanked her from the ground. The vise-like grip around her neck released and spun her around by the shoulder. There he was, standing in front of her. Worse than any bear, it was her tormenter.
Yanking her completely off her feet by the front of her jacket, he pulled her up against his massive chest. As she stared into his pale gray eyes, she could see the loathing he felt for her. As he spat his venomous words directly into her face, she could smell the hatred that oozed from every pore in his body and the foulness of his breath.
“You miserable little fuck, we’ve been looking for you everywhere. What in the hell are you doing up here? Are you spying again? You little piece of shit, I should have drowned you like a fucking barn cat the day you were born.”
It wasn’t the words that terrified her; she had heard those before, and worse. It was something else, something in his eyes. This could be the day—the day he actually killed her.
Before she realized it, she was flying backward through the air. When she hit the ground, a cloud of soft, white ice crystals plumed into the air from the impact of her small body. She felt the soft snow as it rained down on her face.
Her head snapped back hard against the frozen ground, and the world went black.
Carlie’s eyes popped open, and she sat straight up in bed. It took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did, she looked around the room and then over at Jon, who was stirring slightly in bed next to her. Turning onto her side, she shook his shoulder.
“Jon? … Jon! Wake up.”
Jon was instantly awake and sitting straight up in bed. In the back of his mind, he expected to find the young woman or the huge man hovering over him. He was relieved to find that they weren’t. He was surprised, though, to see that the clock showed it was exactly midnight and Carlie was sitting up in bed next to him.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Jon, I think I’ve figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
“The ghost of the young girl—even the ghost of the man in the hallway—I think I know the answer to all of it, everything that’s going on in this house.”
Jon ran his hand through his hair. “How? What happened?”
“I had another dream. I truly believe that the nightmares I’ve been suffering from are in reality me, reliving this poor, abused girl’s life while I’m asleep.”
Jon sat in bed watching Carlie as she slipped on her robe. When she was finished, she turned and looked at him.
“Well, are you coming?”
“Give me a couple minutes. I’ll be right down.”
When Jon walked into the kitchen, he smelled freshly brewed coffee. Carlie and two cups of the aromatic brew were already at the kitchen table waiting for him.
Jon sat silently as Carlie told him her nightmare.
When she got to the end of the story, she stopped for a moment and looked at her husband. “I’m not positive, but he may have killed her that day. I remember everything going black, and then I woke up in bed.”
Jon sat staring into his cup as he listened. When Carlie finished, he looked across the table at her and asked, “What do you think it all means?”
“This is purely speculation—I don’t have all of the facts yet—but I believe that whoever the ghost is that we saw in the hallway, he and the young girl are what these hauntings are all about. I really believe that she was one of his children.”
“If she was—and I’m saying if—what on earth could she have done to make this man hate her so badly that he would want to kill her?”
“God only knows, Jon. All I know right now is that he does, and she is trying to tell me the only way she knows how. If I’m not mistaken, she’s the one that led me to the journals. I think the answers are somewhere in those books, and she knows it.”
“Well, this should keep us busy for a while.”
Carlie smiled at his insight. After pouring each of them another cup of coffee, she pointed toward the living room. “There’s no time like the present to get started.”
Jon felt that what Carlie had dreamed was important; however, it was still only the tip of the iceberg. It was hard for him to imagine that everything he had seen was merely two feuding spirits. Then, of course, there was still the writing on the bathroom mirror: “Please help us.” Jon knew without a doubt that the man from the night before did not want their help. So that still left the nagging question—who was the us?