The Skeptic: Part 1

A Tale of a Haunting

Continue to Part 2…

Present Day

They are going to wreck Sparrowgate.

“Tear it right out of the ground like a rotten tooth,” says Ford Waterhouse. “Foundations and all.”

The timbers and plaster they’ll burn, even the gorgeous wainscoting and the smoke-darkened moldings stacked a foot high to the ceilings. They’ll cart the foundation stones away and scatter them across the hills, bury them in the laurels of the forest. Nothing will be salvaged, nothing used again. Sparrowgate will be excised from the landscape, and no one will speak its name afterward.

“There’s still blood in the floorboards,” Ford says. “They never could get it out. And a chill on the air that no fire can warm away. It can’t be lived in, and believe me, plenty of folks have tried.”

Ford believes in ghosts. He studies them, teaches classes on their detection and exorcism, pursuits I scoff at even though he’s a well-known author on the subject. I tease him about his expeditions and lectures. Where’s your medicine show going next? Or, Got any new snake oil for the rubes? He looks at me with sad eyes and shakes his head.

“I wish you could believe,” he says. “I wish I could make you understand.”

We don’t speak often. We both travel a lot, Ford on the colorful paranormal circuit, and me because I’m restless. A few times a year, he calls, checking on me. I drop in to visit him, compelled by my sentimental heart. Old feelings never seem to grow duller for me, however unreciprocated. We stay in touch, linked by the old blot of horror that is Sparrowgate. They can tear it down, but it will stand forever in our minds, the only structure in the dark country of Memories-Best-Forgotten.

*****

“It’s scheduled for demolition in the spring, as soon as they can get the equipment back on Carver Hollow Road.”

I don’t want to talk about it. Ford has called me for weeks, his pleas unheeded. Only my old longing for the place, stirred up violently like sparks from ash, induces me at last to answer him.

Hating the weakness of my curiosity, I ask, “What’s wrong with the road?”

Carver Hollow is a lonely dead end that tracks into the Johns Woods with only Sparrowgate along its seven-mile stretch. The county plows don’t bother with it, and where the forgotten hay fields lie open to the sweep of the wind, the snow drifts in like eternal sleep. But there is no snow yet, two weeks from Christmas, despite the brittle quality of the air.

I feel the hesitation before Ford says, “You realize the house has been empty for several years? The road is in bad shape and the bridge over Sugar Camp Creek washed away two summers ago. The only way back now is on foot.”

I am shocked, the way I suppose we always are when the vagaries of passing time are suddenly superimposed on the unchanging pictures we carry of childhood homes or faces. As the silence between us spins to awkward length, Ford clears his throat.

“You never talk about it, but I assumed you knew how things were with the house. I thought you might have gone back, you know, just to look around.” He is tentative, feeling his way over hazardous terrain. “I mean, it’s been empty so long. People just couldn’t live there … you understand?”

“Yes, you said.”

My tone is curt. What do I care about silly, superstitious people? I could have told them how it happened, the terrible thing that tainted Sparrowgate, and that it had more to do with bad whiskey and weak minds than with demons. I’d told Ford as much in the days after it happened, while he lay stricken amid the professorial jumble of his office, wrapped in a cat-frazzled afghan. I told him it was human dysfunction, not haunting or some medieval idea of possession, that had wrought such darkness. I tried to soothe his shattered nerves, but all he could say was I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, over and over until he was hoarse.

A vague fear touches me, a stirring like the hair-raising creep of the air before a massive storm. In a flash of clarity, I understand what Ford is planning before he speaks.

“Listen,” he rasps, excitement and terror robbing his voice. “This is our last chance to try to set things right. Once the house is gone, well, I just don’t know. We can go back now, while it’s all still there, and … and fix things.”

“Ford, we’re too old for this nonsense.”

I’ve just turned sixty, and though I don’t feel much different from when I was younger, the years have surely left their mark. Perhaps I am vain, but I find myself avoiding mirrors, afraid my grandmother’s face will look back at me. Ford is seventy-two, an old man, and never mind how distinguished in his field.

“We won’t even be able to get across the creek,” I say, “let alone hoof through the wilderness to the house. If it’s as bad as you say, it’s probably falling down.”

I hate the bitter taste of the words. In spite of its death sentence, the thought of Sparrowgate sagging and broken open to the elements is painful.

“I didn’t say the house was in bad shape. Oh, a little down-at-the-heels, but solid. And the creek is frozen, easy to cross.”

“You’ve been out!” My voice is accusatory, even to my own ears.

He chuckles. “I’m still fit enough for hiking. Of course, it might mean camping, too. There’s no electricity.” The mirth drops from his voice. “Come with me. Just the two of us, no camera crew, no students. We’re the only ones who need to be there now.”

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Devil’s Night, 1966

I was a cynical twelve-year old. It had been a few years since I’d seen behind the curtain of the family business, and all the shadowed, fairy-tale magic of ghosts and goblins had turned to cheap flummery designed to rook the marks. Table-knocking, spectral voices, and clammy phantom breezes. Ectoplasmic eruptions, devil lights, and the head-lolling mediumship of my mother in the darkened parlor. They came from near and far to be fleeced, the curious and the grieving, a steady trickle of seekers that swelled to a torrent each October. Halloween was the night of nights at Sparrowgate.

The members of the Waterhouse Paranormal Studies Group weren’t like the others, though. They’d heard of my mother, but Ford had taught them to be skeptical of self-proclaimed mediums. What really interested them was the house, or to be more precise, the land.

“The area is rich in quartz and limestone which is often present in neighborhoods of frequent paranormal activity,” Ford had told my father over the phone, a conversation I eavesdropped on from the extension in my parents’ bedroom. “There’s a great deal of local anecdotal evidence, things like strange sounds and apparitions in the woods and fields around Sparrowgate, and not to frighten anyone, stories about the house, too. It’s been on my list of study sites for a while now, and given your wife’s, um, abilities, now is the perfect time to investigate.”

When Daddy didn’t sit up and pant for a visit from what he thought of as academic ghost groupies, Ford was quick to dangle the carrot of easy cash.

“Look, I’ve got a grant. It’s not huge, but I can compensate you for your trouble. My team is small, and we’ll only stay Halloween night.”

Mama came on the line, enthusiastic and breathless. “Oh, Mr. Waterhouse, we’ll be thrilled to have your group stay, even several nights if you like. I’ve spoken with many of the spirits here, and you’re right. Sparrowgate is a portal. I’m happy to act as medium for you, and my daughter is a gifted clairaudient…”

Daddy spoke, cutting her off. I imagined them with their heads together over the telephone receiver and Daddy suddenly turning his shoulder to her before she could scotch the deal with her Madame Cassandra routine.

“I think something can be arranged. You understand, this is our most active time of the year. We’ll have to turn away other clients to accommodate you.”

In the background Mama called, “Tell him about Juliet, dear. Her gift is very strong.”

Daddy went on to secure a much larger chunk of Ford’s grant money than the investigator had intended, but I hung up, not caring if they heard the click on the line. I was furious with Mama for mentioning my name. Anyone could hear voices if they concentrated, voices made up of ambient sound and imagination. I’d made a game of it, secretly proud of my acute hearing. It was a personal amusement, not something to add yet another layer of razzle-dazzle to Mama’s spiritualist silliness. I thumped the mattress in a temper, swung my sneakers to the gold shag carpet and stormed downstairs to share my feelings.

*****

I could have saved myself the effort. Mama was over the moon about the Waterhouse group’s interest and there was no reasoning with her, no leading her back to reality.

“The spirits are real! Jules, baby, don’t be mad, it’s not all tricks, I swear,” Mama said, her words crowding up the staircase in an agitated rush, trying to catch and soothe me before I slammed into my room.

From outside my locked door, her long tomato-red nails made kitten scratchings. “Honey, come and talk to me. I know you have the gift, too. Mr. Waterhouse and I can teach you how to use it.”

I dropped the needle on my new Animals album, and I Put A Spell On You growled out at full volume. I fell back on the bed, retreating behind the wall of sound. There was no gift. Despite Mam’s dead-eyed channeling of various spirits, her hollow-voiced proclamations and warnings flung out at random, her obsessive sage-ing of the rooms until the house smelled like a hippie pot den, I maintained staunch non-believer status. Daddy, busy running wires under the carpets, his cigarette hanging at the corner of his hard mouth, had cautioned me often enough. Never fall for your own patter, Sugar Bear. Sooner or later, it’ll eat into the profits.

The days of belief, days when Mama’s spook show shenanigans had scared and awed me, had evaporated like the ghostly mists Daddy puffed down on the clients from concealed vents in the séance room. Now, when one of Mama’s spirits spoke to me, shambling after me in her loose-limbed body, I knew it for what it was: a combination of harmless eccentricity and practice for the next performance. I understood that Mama more than half believed her own patter – in fact, was well on the way to believing it wholly – and that Daddy, an ex-carny with a lizard eye on the profits, exploited her madness.

I lay on the green and brown daisy print coverlet and listened to the open space at the end of the album, a calming empty-air white noise that seemed at times to contain a conversational whisper. He’s coming, he’s coming, a soft shush of the needle over the vinyl, and then a little skip as the whisper elided into a hiss. He’s gotta eat, he’s gotta eat. Or maybe, Beasts gotta eat. I couldn’t quite make it out, straining my ears and playing the game until it wasn’t a game anymore and the hair began to rise on my arms. The thud of Daddy’s fist on the door sent a jolt of bright terror through me, and I sat up half sick with adrenaline.

“Jules, open this door. We need to talk.”

I opened the door to Daddy’s characteristic workday fragrance of sweat, cigarettes, and the strange flash-of-ozone smell from his workshop. He wore his usual uniform of jeans, steel-toed boots, and a white tee shirt stiffened in spots by a satiny crust of egg white from his experiments in the creation of a more realistic ectoplasm. His unapologetic swindler’s face, the audacity of the coochie dancer tattooed on his bicep, the squashed pack of Raleighs rolled in his sleeve and sitting at his shoulder like a hoodlum’s epaulette, were like gravity, putting my feet firmly back in the practical.

“This is a business meeting, kid. I’ve hooked a big one with this Waterhouse guy, and I need a partner.”

He drew the half-smoked butt from behind his ear, fished a match from his pocket, and struck it alight with a dirty thumbnail. In the sulfurous flicker, he was a charming, but disreputable, devil, and I was instantly ready to agree to any scheme he might propose.

“Well, come on in, then.”

We sat on the edge of the bed, shoulder to shoulder, and stared at the floor together. After a moment of smoking and thinking, Daddy said, “Jules, your mom is pure nuts, God help us, but she’s brilliant at what she does. She believes all that shit, and so others believe in her. It’s psychological, or something. Now we got this egghead and his cronies coming to eat it all up with a spoon, and yeah, they’re paying a wad, but I think there’s more to be got from them. You diggin’ me?”

“You think they’ll want to come back again?”

He inhaled his cigarette down to his fingers before grinding it out on his boot heel. “Yeah, I do. Even better, if we give them something to sink their teeth into, they might just see us right through the whole winter.”

Winter was slow business, and I’d been wanting a new bike for Christmas, a blue Schwinn Deluxe Breeze 2-speed that stood gleaming in the window of Shepphard’s Hardware in town. I thought about it, and Daddy inspected his fingernails and let me think.

“You promised Mama you wouldn’t use any tricks on the Waterhouse group,” I pointed out.

“No physical tricks, Sugar Bear. No illusions. I never said nothing about mind tricks.”

“And I can help you with that?”

“You sure enough can.” He was grinning at me now, smelling a sale. “All that baloney your Mama wants to feed them about you being able to hear spirits, well, who’s to say you can’t? Who’s to say you can’t hear ‘em real good, and they might say all kinds of interesting things.”

I didn’t like it, but with Daddy sitting right there, smiling at me, confiding in me, I heard myself say, “What’s in it for me?” Just like he’d taught me.

“That’s my girl,” he said, cocking a finger and thumb at me. Bang.

*****

Daddy and I struck a deal, and although it meant that I would have to be a part of the show (Daddy always called what he and Mama did the show), I was proud of my ability to bargain for a stack of new albums and a guitar in addition to the coveted bicycle.

“You promise,” I asked, slanting a wary gaze at him.

Daddy looked wounded. “My word is good. When I give it, it stands. Now that we’ve reached an agreement, how about you take a look at this.”

He pulled out a script he must have crafted while Mama and I were having our argument. He’d had it in his back pocket all during our negotiations.

“You knew I’d help,” I said. Suddenly my amazing horse-trading skills seemed as false as the phosphorous hands that sometimes emerged from Mama’s spirit cabinet. “How high would you have gone?”

He laughed and pinched my cheek. “A sure thing is the best thing, Jules. But don’t get mad; you did pretty well for yourself.”

He smoothed the paper out on the bed. “Now look, these are just suggestions. This is your game. You don’t have to do any of the physical stuff; your mom’s got that covered. We’re not claiming you’re a medium, just clairaudient. Keep it simple and pure. That’s the ticket with these university types.”

I glanced over his bulleted lines. “Daddy …” I hesitated.

“What’s wrong? You don’t think you can pull it off?”

I shook my head. I could do this. I’d just play the listening game, like I’d done with the album.

“No, it’s just, well, these aren’t really the kinds of things I hear.”

He stared at me, and I rushed on.

“I mean, you know how if you listen to sounds sometimes you can make a voice out of them?”

He shook his head, and I felt the heat of a blush rise out of my collar.

“Well, you can if you really try. It’s just pretend, but you can make out words. Some really weird things, too … creepy.”

“And you can do this anytime?”

I nodded, wishing I hadn’t said anything.

“You ever mention this to your mom?”

I nodded again.

“Well, that explains a lot.” Daddy stood, smiling down at me. “Hey, if you think you can do this more, you know, authentically, I trust you. The Waterhouse people will be here tomorrow, so get your act smoothed out. Not too much, now,” he cautioned. “If you need any help, you just come get me. Good to have you on board, partner.” He dropped a kiss in my hair and left whistling.

Daddy didn’t have to warn me about overplaying it. I had a deep dislike of Mama’s histrionics and no desire to emulate them. I went off to practice in different rooms, listening for the tonal quality of each space, how the sound flowed around the objects and furnishings. The dining room had a cavernous voice, all hard maple surfaces and no rug to buff the edges off sounds that chimed against glass and china. The drapes there were a softly hissing taffeta, too cool and slick to muffle sound, and one of the windows rattled in its frame, a fragile alto that most people didn’t seem to hear.

The séance room, swathed in velvet and fully carpeted, was a box of plush, round exhalations, so quiet that the candle flames beat against the air like moths’ wings. The slide of the melting wax was like someone talking in their sleep. In the hallway, I identified a voice like the low boom of the sea, felt on the sensitive machinery of the ear and in the chest rather than heard. I moved on to the kitchen and found Mama sitting at the dinette table with her head in her hands. I stopped in the doorway, struck with sudden guilt.

“I’m sorry I was mouthy, before,” I said. “Mama? I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

Mama wagged her head slowly back and forth, the heels of her hands to her forehead and her face turned toward the tabletop, eyes closed. She sniffled a bit. I stepped over to the table, so filled with remorse for making her cry that I barely realized I was walking on tiptoe and holding my breath.

“Mama? I’m going to help with the Waterhouse group. Okay? I’m going to be a clairaudient for them.”

I reached out to touch her shoulder and stopped. A little electric tingle scurried up my arm and I felt my scalp prickle. Mama was still sniffling, only now I could hear that it was a kind of laughter shuddering behind her closed lips. The tips of my outstretched fingers went white with cold.

“He’s coming,” Mama said.

I recognized the voice of the control she used during her seances, a voice lively with mischief that she insisted belonged to a spirit called Rumkin. I’d heard it often, and wondered how people could be gullible enough to fall for it, but now it sounded different. It sounded real.

“He’s coming. Little girls should run.”

“Mama? Stop it.”

Rumkin slammed Mama’s hands flat on the table and looked up at me with glittering eyes.

“You know better, you know better, you know better,” it sang. “Too many mediums richen the broth. He’s gotta eat.”

My lips were numb. I would have screamed for Daddy, the way I used to when I was a little girl and Mama, channeling Rumkin, followed me around the house babbling nonsense, but it caught like a bone in my throat. Instead, I asked, “What are you talking about?”

Rumkin nodded approvingly. It drummed the tabletop with the fingers of both hands, tapping out two distinct rhythms.

“One can hear, one can see, one can speak. That’s the ladder.”

“I’m no good at riddles.”

Rumkin looked away from me, watching Mama’s drumming fingers.

“Mama? Rumkin? I don’t understand.”

The spirit seemed to have fallen into a reverie, mesmerized by the rhythmic motion of the hands in front of it.

“Blood or whiskey,” it finally said, giving a woeful sigh. “He’s been down so deep, but he’s coming now. If you won’t give him blood, better use the whiskey.”

Mama’s eyes had rolled back in her head so that only a sliver of their deep blue was visible. A shudder passed over her body, and she stood as though jerked to her feet on marionette strings. Her chair fell backward with a crash. I shrieked and danced away from her, but Rumkin was faster. It snatched me by my shirt and leaned toward me, staring into my face with Mama’s unseeing eyes.

“Don’t let him come. The seer.” It shook me. “The seer.” Shake. “Three is the ladder.”

A final shake, and I heard the thin plaid rip as Rumkin dragged me toward the cabinets. Mama’s other hand shot out and wrenched open the door to the liquor cupboard so hard that one of the old hinges snapped. Bottles trembled against one another, a faint ringing like tiny bells, and then Rumkin was knocking them aside to shatter on the countertop and floor. A reek of booze rose up, so powerful my eyes watered. Rumkin seized on a bottle near the back of the cupboard and drew it out with a triumphant cackle. It thrust it into my hands.

“Use the whiskey. Make him quiet.” Mama’s hand twisted in my torn shirt until the fabric was like a tourniquet on my arm. “MAKE HIM QUIET,” Rumkin shouted.

A spasm released Mama’s fingers, and I was free. I turned and fled for my room, clutching the whiskey to my chest like a priceless treasure, past Daddy who had appeared in time to catch Mama as she toppled forward.

*****

Mama lay on their bed, waxy as a funeral lily. Daddy sat beside her, warming first one of her hands in his, then the other, rubbing them briskly but with great tenderness.

“Rest now, Sandy. No more spirits, okay? Save something for the show. I’ll get you a sleeping pill.”

“No!” Mama clutched at him, struggling to sit up. “If I’m drugged, there’s no one to manage Rumkin.”

“Okay, okay. Lie down. I’ll stay with you.”

He ran a hand through his hair so that it stood out in all directions. His face was tight and tired, and for a moment I saw what he would look like as an old man. Mama’s eyes found me where I leaned in the doorway, ready to retreat if Rumkin made another appearance. She lifted a languid hand toward me.

“Come sit by me, Jules. It’s gone now.”

Daddy tried to overrule her, but Mama shushed him. “You’ve got a lot to do. Let me talk to Juliet, and then I’ll take a nap.” When he hesitated, she patted his thigh. “Go on. I’m fine now.”

He stood and I took his place. Mama waited until he’d left and closed the door before taking my hand.

“I’m so sorry, baby. Are you hurt?” When I shook my head, she touched my shoulder where Rumkin had torn my shirt. “Do you remember what it said?”

“No,” I lied.

Another time, I might have rolled my eyes at her, pointed out that Rumkin wasn’t real and so hadn’t actually said anything. But I was still shaky from the incident in the kitchen, and Rumkin seemed less like a con and more like some bizarre relative whose visits are dreaded. Mama relaxed against her pillows and closed her eyes.

“You’re a skeptic, Jules. That used to worry me, that you would never develop your gift, but now I think it’s a good thing. I don’t want you taking part in the Waterhouse session tomorrow. Stay away. Stay in your room.”

“Why Mama? I thought you’d be happy about me working the show.” When she didn’t answer, I plucked at her sleeve. “I can help you, so you don’t get … overtired.”

Crazed, that was the word that had filled my mouth, the word I’d swallowed whole. She looked at me from under her lashes, a look both weary and wise.

“This is a house of illusion, Jules, but some things are real. Under the glamour, under the patter, there is another house with other inhabitants. Today, you saw a little bit of it. Now I want you to forget about it.”

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Visit the Palace on Friday, October 18 for the conclusion of our story.