The Siren and the Specter Page 3

  David hesitated, half turned.

  A creaking sound from above.

  Feathery fingertips brushed his spine.

  That cranky, pragmatic voice spoke up, louder this time. Sure, David. Be terrified. Because it’s totally abnormal for an old house to creak. Jesus, it would be a marvel if you spent ten minutes in here without hearing a creak. But go upstairs, by all means. Investigate the eerie noise and prove to yourself there are no ghouls on the second floor. And while you’re at it, why not fling some salt over your shoulder and chant a few incantations. You fucking child.

  He rolled his eyes at his skittishness. He was receptive – he’d told Ralph the truth about that. What he’d failed to mention – perhaps because he didn’t like to admit it – was that he was also, on rare occasions, a bit jumpy. He descended the risers, passed through the den, and reentered the master bedroom. He was retrieving M.R. James when he heard a sound through the open window.

  David stared out the sliver of screen and realized what it was he was hearing.

  A woman’s voice. Singing.

  You’ve lost your damned mind.

  But he hadn’t. It was faint, it waxed and waned as it drifted on the night breeze. But it was, unmistakably, a woman singing.

  A radio on the screened-in porch? Had Chris or his wife left it on?

  There’s no radio out there and you know it.

  The voice swelled, diminished. He could nearly make out the words. Its tone was sorrowful, elegiac. He realized his skin had broken into gooseflesh.

  Locking in on the voice, David crossed to the window, grasped the wooden frame, and with an effort, forced it a few inches higher. Damn thing needed oil.

  Like whatever’s creaking upstairs?

  “Stop it,” David muttered.

  He bent at the waist and peered into the night. For a moment he lost the voice, the chill breeze kicking up. When it died, however, he detected the nocturne again. There was something fragile about it, something lost. He screwed up his eyes to see beyond the screened-in porch, beyond the sparse but gigantic hickory and elm trees in the backyard, where the Rappahannock sprawled like a depthless tarn. Far away on the opposite shore he made out glowing pinpricks, the private security lights like earthbound stars. It struck him again just how vast the river was, how cut off he was from those on the opposite bank.

  The voice came to him, insistent now. There was something vaguely Celtic about the song, something lilting and pagan. He imagined pre-Roman hills, a seething pyre. Tear-streaked faces. Flames and a sacrifice.

  Or, he thought wryly, someone was blasting a stereo from a distant dock. He knew sound carried over water with uncanny power.

  The wind barreled in, the great hickory shivering. A bench swing he hadn’t noticed before teetered in the wind as though occupied by an invisible child.

  David swallowed, his shoulders tingling. The voice…it was in the yard. He grasped the window frame, strained to slide it higher, but it was jammed fast, the years of grime and disuse stubbornly refusing to loose their hold. He moved to the corner of the master suite, manipulated the lock and deadbolt on the door, and stepped out onto the fake turf of the porch.

  Here he felt unaccountably exposed. Despite the lack of neighbors – Ralph was two hundred yards away and screened by a dense grove of trees – David sensed eyes upon him, and yes, the voice was still audible, and not at all distant. Heart ticking along like a frantic metronome, he slipped outside, the dewy grass frigid on his toes. The voice resonated more strongly out here among the burled trees and the undulating shadows. He made out a few consonants, but the language was no more discernible than the singer.

  There is no singer. Someone is cranking a stereo across the river, likely a bachelor lothario attempting to penetrate some woman’s defenses.

  But this wasn’t seduction music. This wasn’t Marvin Gaye or sweaty jazz. It was a mournful dirge beyond time, a threnody of myth and loss and cruel fate.

  Conscious of his racing pulse, rankled by his witless physiological reaction despite the fact that there was nothing whatever to be scared of, David trudged through the wet grass, stopped when he’d ventured to within twenty feet of the rocky shore.

  His heart beat harder. The clarity of the voice was striking. It couldn’t be projecting from across the river. The aching loss, the unforced sultriness…it was coming from….

  He swiveled his head to the southwest, toward the tip of the peninsula. His stomach gave a lurch. Had he glimpsed a hint of flesh? A forearm receding into the darkness? Pallid fingertips beckoning him closer?

  His feet refused to obey his commands, his knees locked stupidly. Mouth dry, he stared into the darkness of the river and told himself he didn’t see a glimmer of hip, a milky swash of throat as it caught the moonlight.

  Drawn by some mysterious gravity, David followed the receding object that couldn’t possibly be real, a wraith that dwindled and skimmed over the surface of the water.

  When he reached the river’s edge, he craned forward to see what had been hovering on the shoreline.

  He didn’t see anything. Of course he didn’t. But he did make out the melancholy strain as it danced on the night breeze. To his right lay the river bend, the dense forest packed on the nearer shore. To his left, the Rappahannock opened to oceanic breadth, the far shore a barely recalled memory. But straight ahead, he now discerned a wild, hoary bank, choked with deadfalls and bizarre humps that could only be uprooted trees. Farther in, cupped by the deep-set bay, he made out an island. It was toward the island that the figure—

  There was no figure!

  —had drifted. It was there that the woman lived.

  Listen, David. If you really believe a woman just floated over the water from that island and back, you might want to head into urgent care for a toxicology test. Maybe Ralph laced your burgers with hallucinogenic mushrooms.

  David stared at the distant island. What about the song? he wondered.

  You already solved that mystery. It was a stereo. Someone’s idea of a soothing late-night mix.

  David grunted. Soothing? If the song were so goddamned soothing, why did he feel like he’d just escaped death?

  Bed, the practical voice ordered. Now.

  He backpedaled a few steps, his eyes never leaving the island. The trees there were even larger and older than the ones in his yard. He turned and headed for the screened-in porch. He didn’t hear the voice again. But he did walk a little faster until the door clacked shut behind him.

  Chapter Six

  From the Introduction of The Last Haunting: The Curious Disappearance of John Weir:

  …and it seems that Weir’s own haughtiness proved his downfall. The dismissiveness that had made his reputation among like-minded academics (and, incidentally, had ruined the lives of those whose authentic experiences with the supernatural were labeled hoaxes by the contemptuous Mr. Weir) is the quality that doomed him in his final case. The Alexander House, like many of the supposed ‘hoaxes’ Weir debunked, attracted Weir like a blowfly to carrion. Half a dozen serious-minded researchers had already established the presence of paranormal entities in the isolated peninsular residence; more than two centuries-worth of inhabitants had fled the house in mortal terror.

  This brings to mind one of Weir’s most egregious sins: his recklessness. Weir fancied himself enlightened, a voice of reason in a wilderness of superstition and fear. However, it is precisely this quality – Weir’s willful ignorance of hard evidence – that motivated him to accept the invitation of Geoffrey Mansfield, the Alexander House’s owner from 1916 to 1940, with the intention of pronouncing the house free of psychic manifestation. Had Weir succeeded, how many future residents would have been, at best, emotionally scarred by their experiences in the Alexander House? Or worse, how many future lives would have been claimed because of Weir’s temerity, the way that Weir himself was ultimately claime
d by the house?

  With a muttered curse, David shut the book with a thump on the table of the screened-in porch. He poked at the Caesar salad he’d picked up at the grocery store, but though there was nothing demonstrably wrong with the food, he found his appetite was weak.

  The morning’s writing hadn’t gone well. The beer and the late night and – though he was loath to admit it – the incident with the mysterious voice had conspired to fog his brain. He’d only managed eight hundred words before abandoning the project and heading into town. While Lancaster had proved larger than he’d assumed, it was still a twenty-minute drive from the house, and the journey ate into his day.

  Now it was past one and sweltering. What he needed was exercise.

  He went in, changed into red athletic shorts and his well-worn running shoes. He retrieved his adjustable dumbbells from the Camry’s trunk and bore them into the yard. Four sets of military presses, four sets of curls. He jogged inside, a fine sheen of sweat making his forearms gleam in the gloomy kitchen, and poured himself a tall glass of water. He guzzled it, drew himself another, and carried it outside. Eschewing the dumbbells, he selected a low-hanging elm bough that would support his weight and performed three sets of pull-ups.

  There. He no longer felt like a cadaver. He stretched lightly and started off at a leisurely trot. Moving away from the Alexander House, he discovered a spindly dock protruding into a miniature inlet. The wood was gray and weathered, but it looked trustworthy enough to support him. More excitingly, there were multiple metal buckets tethered to the dock posts.

  He grinned. He hadn’t been crabbing since his early twenties, and he resolved to reacquaint himself with the hobby this afternoon. Hell, if he got lucky and caught something he could invite Ralph for a crab bake. That, he decided as he chugged past the dock, would go beautifully with the case of Budweiser he’d purchased.

  As he moved, his muscles loosening, he discovered another surprise: a pair of yellow kayaks half hidden in the tall grass. Even better.

  He pelted along the shoreline, the dirt path giving way to grass. Still, the terrain was level enough for him to jog without fear of a twisted ankle. To his left the Rappahannock’s brown waters rolled along companionably.

  Unbidden, a voice whispered, Anna loved the river.

  David’s smile evaporated.

  The park you used to visit is nearby, the voice continued. You know you’re in the general area.

  Maybe so, David agreed, chugging faster. But that’s ancient history.

  Like Anna’s death?

  “Aw, hell,” David said. He put his hands on top of his sweaty hair, got control of his breathing.

  You can’t pretend it didn’t happen, the voice persisted.

  He got moving again. Maybe, he thought dourly, he could outrun his conscience. But he’d only jogged a few steps when he detected a stirring in the forest ahead, just a few feet from the riverbank.

  It’s the Siren.

  “Shut up,” he growled.

  A small shape stepped onto the strip of grass. “Why’d you tell me to shut up?”

  The boy was maybe seven, with shaggy black hair and dark, resentful eyes.

  David halted. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “We’re the only ones here,” the boy countered.

  David opened his mouth to answer but decided against it. The boy had a point.

  “You from town?” the boy asked.

  David nodded toward the woods. “I’m staying at the house over there.”

  The boy’s eyes narrowed. “Bullshit.”

  David blinked at him, suppressed shocked laughter. The boy wore a light blue Captain America tank top, green shorts with a faded Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles insignia on one leg.

  “Why were you in the woods?” David asked.

  “Mom and Dad are fighting again.”

  That’s because people aren’t meant to be married.

  David stared beyond the boy’s shaggy head but couldn’t see a house. “Won’t they be worried about you?”

  “Worried, hell,” the boy said.

  David glanced at him, adjusted the boy’s age up a year. He was too world-weary for seven. Eight, maybe, but small for his age. Malnourished. David felt a tremor of disquiet.

  “Come on,” David said. “I’ll walk you home.”

  The boy’s face spread in a lewd grin. “Mom is sure gonna like you.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Shelby property was like a vinyl record played at the wrong speed. The flats were too flat, the sharps downright earsplitting. There was nothing overtly wrong with the place, not that David could spot from fifty yards distant, but the closer he and the boy ventured, the more powerfully the wrongness resonated. The boy – Mike Shelby Jr., the kid told him – kept watching David for his reaction. As though the boy understood there was something wrong with this place but needed someone older to articulate it for him.

  David had just about decided to say his goodbye when the kid asked, in that same petulant drawl, “Aren’t you comin’ in?”

  David took in the big river house, which was somehow obscene looming here among the native plants and the water. Two stories, brick, probably worth half a million. It was like a contractor had plopped the house here to strike back at a conservationist with whom he’d been feuding. The lawn was tufted and weed-strewn, making it difficult to tell where the countryside ended and the property began.

  The boy said, “Come on. Mom’ll wanna check you out.”

  David eyed the house warily. “You said they were fighting.”

  The kid stared up at David in challenge. “I thought that’s why you wanted to walk me home. You turning chickenshit?”

  David stared down at the kid.

  “I wanna show you my cars,” Mike Jr. said.

  “What kind of cars?”

  The kid put his hands on his hips. “You a retard or something?”

  “That’s a lousy word.”

  “Mom uses it.”

  “She shouldn’t.”

  Mike Jr. shrugged. “Tell her yourself.”

  David sighed. He’d be here a month. Even in a place this remote, he was bound to run into Mr. and Mrs. Shelby eventually. Why not get it out of the way?

  They crossed the yard, where numerous faded toys lay like the corpses of soldiers from some long-ago battle, and onto the porch, which was crisscrossed with fluorescent sidewalk chalk. Bright pink suns were scarcely discernible beneath green and blue monsters with guns. Chalk victims with Xs for eyes sprawled at the feet of gun-wielding werewolves. David was reminded of the Itchy & Scratchy cartoons, wondered what the hell kind of parenting the Shelbys were doing.

  David expected to hear raised voices when Mike Jr. opened the door, but instead he heard loud music, not from a stereo – too tinny – but from a television. Beneath that….

  You’ve gotta be kidding me, David thought.

  He followed Mike Jr. through a white tiled foyer littered with mismatched shoes and sandals, and when they came around a corner, the sounds clarified.

  The sounds of people having rough sex.

  The acid of his stomach boiling, David followed Mike Jr. past a staircase. At the rear of the house he made out a wall of windows, the Rappahannock beyond. To the right was an expansive kitchen full of granite and stainless steel. To David’s left spread the family room. It was from here that the music and moaning emanated.

  David found it difficult to process what he was seeing.

  On a giant projection TV, the kind that was in vogue during the younger Bush presidency, an over-tanned guy with a blue mohawk was butt-fucking a blond woman with pendulous breasts.

  Mike Jr. nodded at a leather sectional couch, where a woman in her late thirties sat staring at the porno. She clutched a glass of some dark liquid. Across the room from her, seemingly oblivious
of the sex show, a girl no older than four lay coloring in a My Little Pony book.

  “Who’s our visitor?” a voice called.

  David turned and discovered a nondescript man of perhaps forty. The guy had wire-rimmed spectacles, a balding hairline, and a gnomish belly. His clothes were conservative, his expensive shoes in need of a good polish.

  Above the mohawked man’s grunts, Mike Jr. explained, “This here’s our neighbor.”

  “Ah,” the man said. “It’ll be diverting to have someone next door.”

  On the enormous television, the woman rolled onto her back, told her mohawked lover to fuck her harder.

  David fought off a wave of nausea. The man and the boy continued to study him. The woman on the couch continued to study the porno.

  The man raised a glass. “Drink?”

  “I’ve….” David began, realized he’d have to be louder to be heard above the grunting. “I’ve got to be going.”

  The man slapped himself in the forehead. “Where are my manners? I’m Michael Shelby. I see you’ve met my boy.”

  “You’ve got nice arms,” the woman on the couch said.

  David turned, regarded her, and with an inward start remembered he was as shirtless as the guy with the mohawk.

  “Hard abs too,” she said, eyes crawling down David’s torso. Her ivory dress hung loosely on her chest – no bra that David could see – and was hiked up nearly to her crotch, revealing thighs that were strong and opalescent.

  David turned away, said to the husband, “I was on my run. I better….”

  Michael Shelby smiled. “We have different ideas here, Mister….”

  “Caine,” David supplied.

  “Mr. Caine. We’re…ah…more open. Honey feels that’s best.”

  “Honey?”

  “My lovely wife,” Shelby said, gesturing toward the couch with his drink. A gout of clear liquid sloshed onto David’s sneakers. David realized how slurred Shelby’s speech was.

  It’s early afternoon, he thought.