The Siren and the Specter Read online

  Had that really been this morning? The day had stretched to ludicrous proportions, and it wasn’t even half past ten yet.

  Shaking his head ruefully, David screwed the thermal camera onto the tripod mount and opened the camera window. He fussed with the viewer for a few seconds in an attempt to encompass as much of the room as possible, then went over and selected the grid scope.

  Knowing what was coming made his heart beat faster, so before he could lose his nerve, he switched off the lamp. There was still the meager glow from the hallway light, but that didn’t help much. The long bedroom seemed to swallow illumination like a black hole. His movements unsteady, he returned to the camera and tripod, which he’d positioned near the fireplace, and situated the grid scope on the mantle. He thumbed on the button, experienced a childish thrill of excitement. Multitudinous green lights of varied size and brilliance shone on the walls, the nightstands, the beds.

  He went out and doused the hallway light.

  There was a small writing desk beneath the southern window. David removed the chair, swung it around, and after a quick debate, he shuffled toward the tripod, arranged the chair beside it, and sat.

  After a few moments’ silence, however, he grew anxious. True, part of the room was spangled with green lights, but to his right there were roiling motes of Stygian gloom.

  The silence deepened.

  Now what? Ordinarily, he’d get on his iPhone to surf the internet, but out here in the boonies he couldn’t get a signal, not even on the extended network. Still, he brought out his phone, used his thumbprint to activate it, and opened a voice memo.

  He cleared his throat, quoted Hawthorne: “‘What other dungeon is so dark as one’s heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!’”

  He pushed pause, opted to delete that one. Too bleak.

  Poe, then. “‘The boundaries which divide Life and Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?’”

  Uh-uh, he thought. Even worse.

  He deleted it, started another. In his best southern twang, he began to croon George Strait’s ‘All My Exes Live in Texas.’

  A rustling sound from above.

  David’s arms went slack, his legs nerveless stalks.

  Footsteps sounded directly overhead. Moving toward....

  With a fathomless dread, he turned in his chair. Glanced at the trap

  door in the ceiling. Holy God, he thought. He’d never investigated the third story.

  He wanted to rise from the chair, to tiptoe out of the room before the presence revealed itself, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He’d lost the ability to move. Or think, for that matter. Only rudimentary sensory input remained. The sound of the grandfather clock ticking downstairs. The whisper of frigid air on his arms. The vulgar green stars dotting the walls.

  David watched in sick fascination as the green lights rippled, as if they reflected on water rather than solid walls. His breathing came in rapid sips, his heart a thundering herd running roughshod through his chest. He stared at the single beds, gape-mouthed. The green lights there were...undulating. As though bodies lay there. Bodies in pain. Bodies being tortured.

  The trapdoor in the ceiling flew open and the ladder crashed down beside him.

  David screamed, tumbled off his chair.

  A footstep sounded from the third floor. Another. A shiny black work boot appeared on the top ladder rung, the wood groaning. Another black boot appeared on the second rung, the figure’s pants, dark cloth breeches, now visible.

  David moaned and crawled toward the door, conscious of nothing save the figure descending the ladder. David reached the threshold of the long bedroom as the figure’s broad waist revealed itself, then the stomach, sturdy and thickly muscled. His whole body tremoring, David clawed his way into the hall, around the corner, his numb legs barely able to navigate the stairs. He heard heavy footfalls from the long bedroom, the creaking of rungs. When the boots reached the floorboards, David was on the third stair. He clambered down the steps, nearly plunged headlong into the closed front door. Then he was fumbling with the locks, certain he hadn’t locked the door himself. From above he heard a figure step through the threshold of the long bedroom. David tore the door open, dove toward the porch. He bolted down the lane and didn’t look back until the Alexander House was completely out of sight.

  Part Three

  Changeling

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  David had damn near passed Ralph’s house before he spotted it in his periphery. Unthinkingly, he veered that way, on some level worried he’d throw a fright into the older man by showing up unannounced at 11:00 at night. But this concern was buried under a slagheap of terror. Whatever David had seen stalking down that ladder had frightened him as badly as had the leering thing of the night before. And that was saying something.

  He hustled through the gloomy dooryard and pounded on Ralph’s door. When no answer came, he stepped off the porch and peered through the front windows. No sound from within, no light at all.

  Was the man asleep?

  Such a possibility wasn’t farfetched, but in his gut David doubted it. The night they’d drunk beer and gobbled burgers, Ralph had been going strong well into the darkness and had shown no signs of sleepiness. That could have been exuberance over having a visitor in his home for the first time in a blue moon, but David didn’t think so. Ralph was a night owl. He’d stake his reputation on it.

  The thought made him stop and stare into the massed trees that enclosed Ralph’s property.

  His reputation. What would happen to David’s reputation should this incident become public? Aside from little Ivy, he was the only person who’d witnessed anomalous happenings in the long bedroom.

  David frowned. Had Ivy seen anything? It dawned on him they hadn’t even discussed the matter. He’d been so freaked out by the abomination crawling toward him that he hadn’t applied his usual logic….

  He couldn’t finish the thought. The phrase usual logic was farcical in this situation. There was nothing remotely usual or logical about what was happening in the Alexander House.

  But how to admit that without becoming a laughing stock?

  For one thing, his writing career was predicated on not seeing things, on not hearing things go bump in the night. How clownish would he seem to his editor, his agent – hell, his readers – when he claimed to have been terrorized by not one, but two supernatural entities?

  Don’t forget the Siren.

  Well, shit, he thought. How could he forget the Siren?

  David ambled about the yard with no particular goal in mind. It occurred to him how very few his options were. He liked Ralph, but he didn’t know the man that well. He couldn’t exactly rummage around for a spare key and let himself in. If Ralph owned a gun, David might get shot.

  But the lack of a car – he’d again left the goddamned keys in the house – and the lack of civilization, compounded by the late hour, meant he was effectively screwed. He couldn’t go to the Shelbys’. Hell, Honey might try to hump him on sight. Or hurt him. If Harkless had visited the Shelbys, there could be no doubt who’d sent her. If the Shelbys distrusted David before, they would despise him now.

  With a quickening of hope, he remembered The Crawdad. Granted, it was seven miles away, but it was a safe haven, and he suspected Alicia Templeton would help him.

  But how exactly?

  “Shit,” David muttered as reality set in. For one, it was already 11:00, and if The Crawdad weren’t closed, it would certainly close by midnight. David was in good shape for a man in his mid-forties, but there was no way he could make seven miles through hilly, tortuous terrain in a single hour. And that was assuming The Crawdad stayed open until midnight, a dubious proposition at best. No, Alicia had most likely closed a while ago.

  Which left him alone.

  Th
e nearest civilization was fifteen miles away. Running at a decent pace, David figured he could make it in two hours, more likely two and a half. Which would put him there at 1:30 a.m. What would be open then? Not the mom-and-pop motels, surely. And he didn’t even have money in his pockets!

  He glanced down and received another nasty surprise. He’d worn his sandals, and they sure as hell weren’t built for running long distances. Short of finding a hollowed-out oak tree and curling up inside it for the night, what the hell could he do?

  David reached into his pocket, checked for the iPhone he knew wasn’t there, knew was lying on the floor of the long bedroom, where he’d dropped it in mortal terror. He was in serious trouble, and far beyond the immediate trouble of having no place to sleep.

  Katherine Mayr had brought him here to prove to him the existence of the supernatural, and in persuading the foremost skeptic in America that ghosts inhabited the Alexander House, the place would become a bona fide tourist attraction. Folks would come from around the world to see the house that defeated him.

  But what did he believe? Now that he’d seen…inexplicable things…just what did he believe?

  That, he realized, was the burning question. Aside from having nowhere to sleep tonight, aside from the worldwide humiliation of being thwarted by the unseen, aside from his careers being derailed – both his writing career and his job at the university, which would surely be forfeit the moment they caught wind of his crackpot conversion – aside from all that…what did this mean for him? For his view of the universe? His thoughts on the afterlife? His belief in the nature of—

  His thoughts broke off. There’d been movement from the side of the house, a few feet from the woods. David peered into the tenebrous shadows, a surge of fear-sweat peppering his skin.

  The figure was broad-shouldered, it wore work boots, it—

  “That you, David?”

  Ralph Hooper. David exhaled, the energy sluicing out of him.

  Ralph’s voice was shaky. “I got a…I got a gun.”

  “Do you really?” David asked.

  Like a delayed mirror image, David saw the older man’s shoulders slump. “I’ve got one, but it’s in the house.”

  “Why didn’t you bring it out with you?”

  “I wasn’t in the house.” Ralph gestured behind him. “I was fishing.”

  “Any luck?”

  “I damn near shat my pants a second ago. Do we have to stand out here making small talk?”

  They entered the house via the screened-in porch, and Ralph fetched them beers. David cracked his open gratefully, took his accustomed chair. Funny, he thought, but neither of them suggested turning on a light. Sure, the illumination might have been comforting, but in another way, it would have felt like revealing their whereabouts to whatever dwelled in the Alexander House.

  They sipped their beers in near silence, the only sound the gentle burble of the Rappahannock.

  The constancy of the river soothed David’s overtaxed nerves. He needed to regroup, to relax, and as long as no more spectral visitors assaulted him tonight, he thought he might make it to dawn with his sanity intact.

  Ralph was the first to speak. “I take it this isn’t a random moonlight visit.”

  David sipped his beer. “Not much moonlight tonight.”

  Ralph was silent awhile. Finally, he shifted in his chair. “Come on, man. We both know something over there spooked you.”

  David stared down at his sweating Budweiser can. Sighed. “It did.”

  And he told Ralph both stories, the huge figure tonight and the leering thing of the night before. David could tell by the man’s bated silence that he was hanging on every word, but dreading each word and wishing he weren’t hearing what he was hearing.

  It emboldened David, Ralph’s fear. Ralph didn’t want these things to be true any more than David did. Less, if possible. Ralph had to live here, after all. In a month David would be gone, and Ralph would have to live with images of the leering thing, with the incident of the ladder chunking down from the ceiling and the black work boots inexorably descending.

  “…and then I rapped on your door,” David finished. “So what do you think?”

  Ralph peered out over the river. “I think that’s the creepiest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “The leering thing or the—”

  “Does it matter?” Ralph snapped.

  David gave a shrug. “Guess not.”

  “Question is,” Ralph said, “what are you going to do about it?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning,” Ralph said, “your stuff is still in there. I assume you’re not gonna walk back to Indiana.”

  “I’ll return to the house in the morning.”

  “Just walk right in.”

  David glared at him. “Of course. What else?”

  “You ever seen a horror movie? You’re like those morons who keep going back into the haunted house even though the walls are bleeding and little Asian children are jumping out from under the beds.”

  David made a face.

  “You telling me I’m wrong?” Ralph demanded.

  David couldn’t meet the older man’s eyes. “Those are movies.”

  “Did you listen to the shit you just told me? You have any idea how dreadful it is?”

  “Why you think I’m over here?”

  “So you admit to seeing those things, but you’re going back over there anyway. How’d you get to be a professor with shit for brains?”

  “Daytime is better.”

  “Ohhh,” Ralph said, chin upraised, “daytime is better. And what about when dusk creeps in tomorrow? You gonna bunk with me again?”

  “I hadn’t gotten that far.”

  “David, listen to me.” A pause. “Are you listening?”

  David returned the man’s frank stare.

  “There’s something wrong with that house. People who go there are in grave danger. Including you.” Ralph sipped his beer. “Maybe especially you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Maybe the house wants to flex its muscles for you.”

  David grinned. “Huh?”

  “You heard me. Stop being an asshole.”

  “I’m not—”

  “It’s showing off for you, okay? It wants to prove how strong it is. How real it is. Whatever lives there—”

  “Nothing lives there.”

  “Yeah? ‘And then the creature opened its dripping mouth, its fleshless jaws pale in the moonlight’—”

  “Okay.”

  “Your words, David. Your words.”

  “Take it easy.” David glanced uneasily through the screen at the murky shadows of the trees.

  “You can’t reason away the unreasonable.”

  “I’m not ready to embrace the irrational.”

  “Of course you’re not. You’ve gotta be a stubborn dipshit and have more proof shoved in your face.” A mirthless chuckle. “Maybe get a couple of your friends killed.” Ralph leveled a finger at him. “I’m not going over there with you, by the way, so I’ll save you the trouble of asking.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  David set his beer aside with a clank. “There’s got to be an explanation.”

  “All ears.”

  “Maybe I ate something….”

  “Sure,” Ralph agreed. “Food poisoning.

  “Projected images….”

  “Right. A prank. Or a twisted new reality show.” Ralph flourished a theatrical hand. “‘Join us next Saturday, when we subject a renowned skeptic to the ultimate paranormal hoax!’”

  But David scarcely heard this last. One word Ralph had said had stuck in his mind, and the more he pondered it, the more distinct it became.

  “Prank,” he
murmured.

  Ralph cocked an eyebrow at him. “You being that dull-witted movie guy again?”

  “Hold on—”

  “You’re gonna convince yourself it was all a big put-on, and you’ll end up just like John Weir.”

  “You know about Weir?”

  “I know all of it, David.”

  “Then you’ve heard of Judson Alexander.”

  Ralph sipped his beer.

  “Chris – my friend Chris Gardiner,” David explained, “he used to play pranks on people. He was mainly the straight man, the guy who laughed at my jokes. But on occasion he could really startle you with something unexpected.”

  “Like a crawling, burned-up creature.”

  “Ease up for a second,” David said. “Let me think.”

  Ralph grunted but didn’t otherwise interrupt.

  “Ever since he contacted me,” David resumed, “Chris acted like he was against all supernatural stuff, that his wife was the fanatic. Chris has been the good cop. The one aligning himself with my beliefs. But the other day, I realized he was – is – angry with me. He blames me for something that happened a long time ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that Chris has a motive to hurt me. To mess with my head. His allegiance would be to his wife, not to me.” David mulled it over, nodded. “It makes sense.”

  “It’s like magic,” Ralph said. “Just like that you’ve got it all explained.”

  “It’s easier to swallow than—”

  “Than the possibility you don’t know everything?”

  David picked up his beer can.

  They sat in silence for a couple minutes before Ralph said, “I’ll let you sleep on my couch on one condition.”

  David glanced at him. “I’m not giving you a foot rub.”

  “Dumbass.”

  “What’s the condition?”

  “If anything comes for you, you stay the hell out of my bedroom.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  David slept poorly. After a breakfast of bacon and toast, Ralph shooed him out the door and climbed into his faded red pickup. He claimed he needed groceries, but David suspected Ralph was yearning for a few hours away from the peninsula.