Specter

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“You all right?” I’d let out a gasp, and the girl at the desk next to me—Emma? Emily?—was eyeing me warily. I shook my head at her, my tongue dry, then rose from my seat and walked over to the sub on shaky legs.

“C-can I go to the nurse?”

I was in luck: the head nurse, crotchety from decades of calling malingering teenagers’ bluffs, had left early, leaving her younger, kinder cohort in charge. I rattled off a few symptoms—nausea, headache—and she pointed me into a dark, quiet room adjacent to the main room with a few empty beds.

I kept my eyes screwed shut as I tried to make sense of the memory. How old had I been? Why had I been in that doctor’s office? But the memory was too hazy, too mashed-up to give me any answers.

I jumped when my phone vibrated. The screen shone bright as a spotlight in the darkness.

Message from Edgar Holt: Not me, sorry. Good luck with that.

Well, it had been naive to think I would find the right one straightaway.

* * *

In fact, it took almost a full twenty-four hours before the right Edgar Holt finally replied. I was in the library again, buried in Ghosts and Monsters, when my phone buzzed, earning a glare from the librarian. She had good hearing, this woman—probably more curse than blessing in her line of work.

That’s me, the message read. What do you want to know?

In his profile picture, this Edgar Holt was a balding man smiling at the camera. His cheeks were a bit pink from what looked like a touch of sunburn.

I frowned down at my phone. What exactly did I want to ask him? Opening with ghosts seemed like a sure-fire way to shut down the conversation.

In the end I settled for the same story I’d fed my mom and Mr. DeBraav. I’m doing a project about all the different people who have lived in my house—what brought them to Enville, what their lives were like when they were here, etc. My family’s owned the house ever since you sold it in 1989. It would be really helpful if you could tell me how long you lived in it, who lived there with you, stuff like that. Thank you!!! I wasn’t normally the three exclamation points type, but I needed all the help I could get.

Half a minute passed, then an ellipsis bounced in a new bubble underneath my message. I drummed my fingers on the desk, waiting for his response.

How about talking on the phone about the details? I don’t mind sharing, it’s just that the later years in the house were a complicated time for my family.

A thrill coursed through me. A complicated time—what could that mean? I was close; I could feel it.

And then, once I knew why my house was haunted, I could figure out my next step—hopefully nothing that involved digging up unmarked graves in the backyard.

We exchanged phone numbers and arranged to talk at seven. My stomach was fluttery as I set my phone down and reached for Ghosts and Monsters.

“Lanie!” Ryan waved to me from the next table over. I hadn’t even noticed him sit down.

“Oh, sorry,” I whispered back. “Didn’t see you.”

He shook his head at me in feigned disappointment, hazel eyes twinkling. “How’s it going? All that texting for your ‘personal research?’”

I laughed quietly. “Yeah, actually it is. Got myself a hot phone date tonight with this old guy. I’m interviewing him for a history project.”

He made a face. “Have fun with that.”

“Thanks. How’s Dracula?”

“Oh, you know… Terrible.” He had his finger in the book to mark his spot. It looked like he hadn’t read more than ten pages since yesterday.

“Hey, you know…” I could hardly believe I was saying this. “Umm… If you ever need help with that class, horror’s sort of my thing. I-I’ve read Dracula like three times.”

He raised an eyebrow as his eyes slid from me to the book. “This book? Three times?”

“Don’t hold it against me!” The librarian gave me a furious shush, and I flushed, then lowered my voice. “I promise I’m not a vampire. I’m just saying I could look over your paper if you want.”

“You’d do that?”

“Yeah, why not? But you said you’re good at math, right?”

“Yes…?”

I picked at a piece of lint on my jeans. Just ask him—no turning back now. “Math’s sort of kicking my ass right now. Turns out doing homework matters. So maybe you could look over my math homework, and I can check your paper?”

Ryan leaned back in his chair and grinned. He was definitely cute, in an infrequently-combs-his-hair kind of way. “Okay, why the hell not? It’s a deal.” He sighed when the bell rang, then looked back to me. “See you back here tomorrow?”

“Sure. See you then.”

I gathered my things and left the library, slightly dazed. The interview with Holt, the study date with Ryan—it was an unprecedented amount of social commitment for Lanie Adams, loner extraordinaire.

But maybe it was time to try some new things. A brush with death can give you funny ideas, I guess.

* * *

“Did I get sick a lot as a little kid?” We had all just sat down to dinner. My dad gave me an amused look as he spooned a heaping portion of lasagna onto his plate.

“Sick? No, not as far as I recall. Wait, there was the time that girl was being mean to you in second grade, and you kept saying you had a stomachache because you didn’t want to see her in school. Was it Julia…?” He squinted in thought. “Or Jennifer…?”

“Jessica Acker,” my mom replied, spearing a green bean a tad too forcefully. “I’d forgotten all about that. Can’t say I was mad when her family moved.”

I sighed lightly. “I mean, were there any times I was actually sick, not just faking?”

“Well, sure,” my mom said. “I mean, every kid gets sick. You got the chicken pox in first grade, of course. Oh, and then you got a few plantar warts on your feet—from the showers at the YMCA pool was always my guess.”

Gross. “But never anything serious besides that?” I said, eager to leave the topic of my warts behind. “Where I had to see a specialist?”

My dad stabbed a finger in the air. “Oh! What about that one visit to the psychologist?”

My breath caught. The memory—this had to be it. “I think I sort of remember that… But why did I have to go?”

“You were having nightmares,” my mom said, and I felt something shift within me. Like shining a flashlight into a long-abandoned room. Like dusting off a once-beloved book, the details now just wisps of memory.

“Nightmares?”

“That’s right,” my dad said, looking to my mom. “How old was she?”

“Third or fourth grade,” she answered. “You don’t remember that?”

“N-no!” I sputtered. Cold dread slithered from the back of my neck down my spine, pooling in my gut as a hard, solid weight.

My dad smiled. “You started waking us up in the middle of the night yelling, ‘Go away! Go away!’ And you told us that some people were messing with you in your dreams, making them scary. We tried a bunch of different things, but nothing really worked. Truth be told, we were a bit concerned.” He chuckled. “Not least because your daughter developing the habit of screaming you awake at three in the morning isn’t exactly ideal. All three of us were zombies after a couple days, and that kept on for… oh, a week, at least.” He took a bite of lasagna, then looked up at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I sure hope you’re not thinking about starting that up again.”

“Not really.” Inside I was reeling. “And you took me to go see a psychologist about it?”

He nodded. “That’s right. Your mom here was quite worried about what was going on in that sleepy little head of yours!”

She scowled at him. “Don’t you think that’s downplaying it a bit? Lanie, you were telling us all sorts of things about the people in your dreams. You said they were real. It felt like…” She shook her head, frowning. “It felt like you were starting to believe in Santa Claus again. You were a young kid, but you weren’t in kindergarten. You had a good sense of what was and wasn’t real. And I got worried how you were telling us all about these people in your head, how they were talking to you, bothering you. I thought maybe… Well, I don’t know what I thought, but it wasn’t good.”

My jaw dropped. What must she have suspected? That her daughter was beginning to suffer from schizophrenic episodes?

“In any case,” my dad continued, “the psychologist wasn’t concerned. The appointment was just a one-time thing, really to reassure us nothing serious was going on. She gave us a few ideas to try, and I guess they worked, since the bad dreams stopped for good a day or two later.” He took a sip of water. “Anything else you were wondering about?”

I steeled myself to ask my next question. “Did I say anything about the people? Who they were? What they were doing?”

He scratched his head. “Hmm. Well, this was a while ago, but I think you said they were a funny color. Green or blue or something.”

* * *

I felt near-catatonic for the rest of dinner, picking listlessly at my lasagna. The ghosts had visited me in my dreams when I was a little girl—which meant they could just as easily storm my dreams tonight. Waking or sleeping, I wasn’t safe anywhere.

Perhaps I really was going crazy. Or maybe I was slowly realizing the ability to commune with spirits. Well, at least if it were the latter, I had a back-up plan if I didn’t get into college: holding séances.

“Didn’t like it?” my mom asked as I set my half-finished plate on the ground. Mustard wouldn’t complain.

“No, it was good,” I said. “Just wasn’t feeling very hungr— Oh, that’s my phone.” I could hear it ringing upstairs; I’d put it on max blast, not wanting to miss Edgar Holt’s call.

I took the stairs two at a time, closed the door, and snatched up my phone from my bed.

North Carolina number.

“Hello?”

“Hello, this is Edgar Holt calling for Lanie Adams?” His voice was deep and even-toned.

“Uh, yes, that’s me. Thanks for agreeing to talk to me.” I opened up my laptop to type some notes.

“Well, I think it’s a fantastic sort of project that you’re doing,” he replied. “This for a high school class or something?”

“Yeah, for history.”

“Seems like a great idea. Fire away.”

“Umm, okay. Let’s start at the beginning. When did you buy the house?” The county’s website didn’t list any information predating the ‘89 sale.

“August of ‘75,” Holt said. “I’ll never forget it. Must’ve been a hundred degrees on moving day.”

My heartbeat picked up. The female ghost, at least, had looked to be from the time of Michael Jackson and jazzercise; that placed Holt as the undeniable owner of the house when she’d died. “And do you know the name of who you purchased the house from?” I continued. “Or what year it was built?” Honestly, the answers didn’t matter, but I’d pitched the project as a full-blown historical analysis, so it was best to keep up appearances.

“Sorry, can’t help you with that,” Holt said. “Of course my wife has stashed away copies of all the documents from when we bought the house, but God only knows where she’s storing ‘em. It was built in the twenties, that I do know, but I don’t remember the exact year. Oh, we did a kitchen expansion in ’83; maybe that’s something you need to know. We wanted to do it earlier, but the city kept dragging its heels on letting us dig, since Avanic was so close. It was our land, but you know how it is with these big companies. They still over there?”

I snorted. “Yeah, they are.” The pharmaceutical company Avanic was headquartered close to our house. An easy jaunt north through the woods behind my house would land you at a high chain-link fence, beyond which lay Avanic’s sprawling complex of buildings, all slick in architecture and fronted with mirrored windows. I frowned. “Wait—why would Avanic impact the home renovation?”

“Underground utility lines. They were worried the digging might cause an electrical outage. Way I always heard it, their labs draw a fair bit of power.”

I typed a few notes. “Um. So why were you living in Enville?”

“Actually I was born and raised in Enville, as was my wife, Linda. We both went to Enville High School, started dating freshman year, married at twenty. We were living in an apartment for a while. I started work as a plumber, and she was a secretary for some doctor—can’t remember his name. Then we had our daughter in ‘74.”

“What’s her name?”

The answer came quieter, lower. “Becky. Full name Rebecca Anne Holt.”

“Do you have any other children?”

A pause. Something unvoiced hung in the air. “No. We bought the house in 1975, thinking we’d need the space for more kids. Well, even with just Becky it felt nice to leave apartment living behind.” He was right: it was a big house for only three people, though I’d never known it any other way. Holt cleared his throat. “We were planning on having more kids, but we couldn’t.”

What did you even say to something like that? Here I was, prying open people’s pasts, hoping for some answers—when all I was doing was unearthing sad memories. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”

His voice took on a false brightness. “Well, best to leave the past in the past.” Not an option for me, unfortunately. “So we bought the house, then a year later business was really picking up, so my wife quit her job to stay home full-time with Becky.”

I skimmed my notes. “And how was life in Enville while you were living in the house—normal? Any, err, notable current events?”

“Hmm.” Silence on the line for a few seconds. “No, I don’t think so. You know Enville… It’s a pretty sleepy town.”

“Why’d you move?”

“Well… I’m sorry, I should’ve said earlier. Becky had leukemia.”

Oh. “That’s terrible.”

“And… sh-she died in 1985. She put up a good fight, but…” I stared at my keyboard dumbly, suddenly wanting nothing more than to hang up the phone. At last I typed out a few sparse notes as I did the math. Dying in 1985 would put his daughter at eleven years old—far too young to be one of my ghosts.

“Anyway,” Holt continued, “Linda and I stayed in Enville for a few years after that, but it was hard. The house felt too big, too empty. Linda went back to work for some distraction, but she was having a real rough time. So we decided to go for a complete change of scenery. Moved to North Carolina, and we’ve been there ever since.” The line was quiet for a moment. “Is there anything else you wanted to ask?”

I glanced at my notes. “This might sound strange.”

“That’s all right. Ask away.”

“Did you ever see some teenagers hanging out by the house? Wandering through the woods? Anything like that?”

“You mean loitering around? No, don’t think so.” He sounded certain. “You know, the forest there makes for decent hiking, so people did pass by. But I don’t remember anything unusual… Is this important? I could ask Linda about it.”

“Sure, thanks. And just one last thing. Please don’t take this the wrong way; I’m not asking about your daughter. Just… did anything spooky ever happen at the house? Anything weird or unexplainable?”

“Like ghosts?”

“Yes.”

“No.” His voice was resolute. “Believe me, those last few years felt like something was there. If you lose a child, you’re always ready for them to come around the corner. You want some sign. Things in a different spot on the table than where you left them. A voice down the hall. Your mind plays tricks on you. They say the same thing about people who lose a limb… You feel like it’s still there. But no—no ghosts, not of Becky, not of anyone.”

And with that we said our goodbyes, Holt promising to get back to me once he asked his wife if she remembered any teenagers skulking around in the woods.

I’d reached a dead end, with nothing to show for it besides a sparse document of sad, useless notes.