The Skeptic: Part 2

A Tale of a Haunting

Oct 18, 2024

Present Day

Ford’s old Volvo sits in the middle of Carver Hollow Road, perched on the dirt hump above ankle-turning ATV ruts that end in a scribble of frozen earth where the bridge used to be. Sugar Camp Creek is silent, locked in ice, and the hemlocks throw their shadows over the edge of the embankment with Gothic drama. Somewhere high in the grey that hangs swag-bellied into the forest, a crow calls. The lonesome sound sums up how I feel, standing by the car at the end of the world. I don’t see Ford at first, and his absence is an opportunity to turn back. I look behind me at the ravaged road. A fog has crept in, erasing the way, an insubstantial bulk that squats on the road and digests the fringe of the woods.

A scraping sound and the dull, emphatic clack of a stone falling on the ice draw me to the creek. When I look over the embankment, I see Ford dragging a backpack up the opposite side. I haven’t seen him in nearly a year. He has always been lanky, but now he is thin in a way that suggests illness. He reaches the top of the short slope and huffs out a breath, stretches with his long hands in the small of his back, and sees me. I raise a hand and wave, unwilling to break the quiet.

“I was afraid you’d stand me up,” he says, and although his voice is not loud, it carries clearly on the cold air.

With it comes the scent of snow, and I look up at the pewter ceiling of cloud and see one perfect flake waltzing down. Almost immediately, a second and a third join it, and then the air is populated, though sparsely. Ford is looking at me as though afraid I’ll vanish, his smile slipping a little. I sigh and step toward the trail he’s flattened in the dun-and-speckle weeds.

“I’m coming. Can’t let you go alone; you might need a medium.”

I mean it as a joke, but it sounds ominous in my ears.

*******

Three miles further on, Sparrowgate hulks into view, broad-shouldered and blank with that drowsing introversion that abandoned houses adopt. Black-eyed dormers stare out at the frisking snowflakes and the two tiny people trudging down the long drive, and the house’s dream state shivers. Echoes stir – I hear them, like the sound of silk dragged over flesh, and a tremor runs along my nerves. Ford is quick to notice my half-step hesitation.

“Do you feel something?”

I give him a long-suffering look. “I was kidding with that medium crack. What’s to feel except sorrow, and even that’s worn thin by the years.” I toss him a sharp glance. “Are you afraid?”

He walks on, and I think he isn’t going to answer, but he says, “Yes. Jesus, yes. This place, it made my career, you know? It very nearly ended it, too. Dear God, the nightmares I had after … well, it was nothing compared to your experience. That’s what I want to put right.”

We go up the front steps together and stand at the door. Ford pulls his glove off with his teeth and fumbles in his coat pocket for the key, offers it to the lock. It skitters across the ornate escutcheon and falls to the peeling planks of the porch. Ford curses and I hear the tightness in his throat. I bend down for the key, raise it to the lock, turn it.

“Ford, we don’t have to go in. You don’t owe me anything; there’s nothing to put right. This is just an old, bad memory. Let it go.”

In answer, he reaches out and turns the knob. The door swings in with the appropriate haunted house groan. Darkness rushes away down the entry hall, retreating from the snowlight. Ford steps inside where the air is even colder and turns to extend a hand to me.

“I can’t let it go anymore, Jules. This is the last stand.”

I look past him at the shadowed honeycomb of Sparrowgate. I can hear them clearly, here at the threshold, and I want more than ever to leave and never look back. I ignore Ford’s hand and walk past him into night.

*******

His camp is in the old séance room, naturally. It doesn’t look any different from the other rooms now, its tall windows naked and the carpet ripped up exposing the red pine planks of the floor. My gaze goes right to the stains where they creep out of the wood in faint rusty ripples, the ghosts of terrible blood angels thrashed irrevocably into the fiber of the house. Seeing them makes me feel thin and watery, as though I will melt into their voracious patterns. One delicate wash in particular draws my eye, paler than the rest and silent while the others crackle and hiss. There is a message written there if only I could read it, but seeing was never my talent.

“Don’t look at them,” Ford says and throws a painter’s cloth over them, kicking the folds out of it until most of the floor in the small room is covered.

I am shaking inside, and Ford is staring at me. Why did you make me come back here? I want to scream at him. Why did I listen to you? Instead, I look around the bare room and gesture at the wood laid in the fireplace, more heaped in a messy tumble beside it.

“You’ll burn the house down if you try to start a fire in there. The chimney’s probably stuffed full of bird’s nests.”

Ford lets out the breath he’s been holding. “I’ve been out here many times in the last few years, since it was abandoned. I keep the chimney in here as clear as I can. You can see sky if you look up it.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

There are folding camp chairs in their nylon bags lying against the baseboard. I nod at them.

“How about setting some of those up?”

When we are settled in front of an ambitious blaze, a rickety card table between us, Ford offers me cocoa. He knows I have an insatiable sweet tooth. Always, when we are together, he has little gifts of candy or cake for me. I can’t think about such simple pleasures now. I feel frozen inside, a cold that cannot be thawed by the cheerful fire snapping on the hearth.

“I’ll just have a sip of yours, if you don’t mind.”

He pushes the fragrant mug across the card table to me, watches as I lean into the steam.

“Can you hear anything, Jules,” he asks, and for the first time, I notice that his hands are trembling.

“What’s wrong with you? You don’t look well. This was a mistake, coming here. We should go.”

I stand up, but Ford only smiles and shakes his head.

“We can’t go. Look out the window. We only just got here in time.”

I rush to the windows and stare out through their time-rippled glass. The snow that had been so inconsequential is now falling thick and fast. The woods catch it and spin it into a web of fog and crystal. The road is gone. Sparrowgate floats in a white void, and its voices sob and moan like the wind.

“Jules, can you hear anything?” Ford repeats his ridiculous question, hammering at me.

I turn to look at him, huddled in his camp chair by the fire in what may very well become his tomb. How could I not have seen how frail he’s become, his skin like parchment showing the blue veins beneath, his eyes burning in the hollows of a skull? I am not strong enough to drag him miles through the snow, and no one will come this way until spring.

“Ford, what have you done?”

He waves the question away. “It should be quiet. I’ve worked so hard to release them, and there is only one left.”

Halloween, 1966

The Waterhouse Group arrived at sunset, three of them in a white panel truck. The empath, Minette LeClerc, was slim and stylish with a cloudy purple scarf knotted about her throat (the canary in the coal mine, Ford later told me). The recording technician, Joel Candless, lurched about like a bear in brown corduroy, bearded and walled away behind black-framed glasses. Ford, tall and athletic, looked more like a rock climber than an academic. The air around him sang like the best of summer nights, crickets and the low throb of strobing fireflies, the joyful sliding scale of a shooting star. I hovered nearby, entranced, as Mama met them at the door.

“Welcome, everyone, welcome to Sparrowgate. I’m Cassandra Pinkney. My husband won’t be joining us this evening. Business called him away.”

This was a typical bit of subterfuge. Daddy was in his workshop, but he’d be hidden behind the spirit cabinet when the show began in earnest, just in case a trick or two was needed to keep things interesting. Mama noticed me lurking in the gloom of the big staircase, and a pained expression flitted over her face. But she reached out to me, drawing me into their circle.

“This is my daughter, Juliet.”

“Ah, the clairaudient,” Ford said, and bent his dark gaze on me. He was only twenty-four years old, but he had Rasputin’s own eyes. I felt boiled down to an essence by their perusal. The idea of running a game on this man seemed suddenly ludicrous.

“Um, no, I mean, not really,” I stammered. The scrutiny continued, and I blurted, “Everyone calls me Jules.”

He smiled. “I see,” he said, and I was left in no doubt that he did see, very clearly. “The ability to hear what others cannot is rare, Jules. I’m very happy to meet you.”

I floated on his smooth, faintly British baritone, pulled toward him like sand drawn under a strong tide.

“Where can I set up the equipment?” Candless interrupted and the intense beam of Ford’s gaze lifted from me as he turned toward his colleague. “Sun’s about gone and the wind’s picking up. I want to get everything hauled inside before we get rain, too.”

“Right this way,” Mama said, and led him toward the séance room.

Ford made to follow but was stopped by Minette’s white hand on his arm. There was a possessiveness in that hand, a certain ease in its delicate caress, that I found I didn’t like. Ford looked down into Minette’s face with more affection than I felt a working relationship warranted.

“There is something here, Ford,” she said, her voice a quick undertone. “It’s watching.” She glanced at me. “The girl can hear it.”

The girl. Humiliation and rage swept over me at the words. I didn’t fully understand the emotional maelstrom swirling inside me. I only knew that in that instant I hated Minette LeClerc. I stepped past them, pausing to look into her wide eyes.

“That’s Rumkin,” I said. “It’ll probably talk to you all night. It likes blondes.”

I noted the surprise on their faces before I bolted up the stairs, Ford’s deep laugh flying at my heels.

*******

The house was a blaze of candles. Mama never allowed the house lights during her sessions, claiming that the cold electric glare created a barrier between the spirit world and us. It was, in reality, one of Daddy’s simple disorienting tactics. Deep pools and swags of shadow filled the rooms, their edges shifting in constant inky fluidity with the stirring of the candle flames, making the familiar strange and tricking the senses.

I sat at the top of the stairs and watched as they brought in the recording equipment, trundling it along the hall to the séance room. Candless cursed the lack of light, and I thought Ford would demand the abandonment of the Halloween theatrics of the candles, but he seemed content to leave things as they were.

“Well, give me the damn flashlight, then,” Candless grumbled. “I can’t see my hand in front of my face.”

The men disappeared into the séance room, their voices fading to murmurs. Mama and Minette stood together in the hallway. Minette glanced about, her shoulders tense, and drew her sweater closer around her.

“How can you live here,” she said. “It’s oppressive. The atmosphere is so … hostile.”

“I’m accustomed to the ways of the spirits,” Mama said. “They want only to speak, to be heard. What you feel, what you perceive as hostility, will dissipate and become peaceful when they are able to speak. You’ll see.” Mama’s face was calm, her voice dreamy and nearly toneless. She was already into her act.

Minette paid little attention. She was taut and thrumming with nervous awareness, a vibration that shivered on the air like a tiny moan that I could hear. She reminded me of a rabbit that had ventured too far from safe cover and now cowered in the grass, every sense searching wildly for danger. Her distress, obviously genuine, irritated and amused me. She wasn’t part of the show, but she would have been great at it.

“I should walk the house,” she said, her voice tight with reluctance. She cringed away from a fluttering banner of shadow, her hand going out to grip Mama’s. “Will you come with me?”

The two women moved away, and I sat alone, hoping Ford would emerge from the séance room and see me there in the dark. Hoping he would talk to me. Instead, another voice slithered over my ear.

Scared the pretty one, it said. Sweet, like candy, but we don’t like her.

I gasped, my breath puffing out in a cloud of vapor on frigid air. “Rumkin?”

My whisper was barely a sound. The spirit had never spoken without Mama as its vehicle. How could it? I rose stealthily to my feet and pressed myself to the wall as though I could sneak away from the presence at my ear.

Flesh like sugar. He’s gotta eat. An idiot giggle. Take a rung from the ladder. Use the whiskey.

A flurry of hard knocks from behind the wainscoting tumbled down the stairs. The men ran into the hallway, Candless waving a boxy instrument. Ford’s gaze flew upward. He couldn’t have seen me there, flattened into the black as I was, but his eyes found mine before sliding away to fix with frightening intensity on something over my left shoulder. A sense of doom, of time run out, iced my body. I turned and ran.

“Wait! Jules, wait!”

I heard Ford’s quick sprint on the stairs behind me, and the heavy thud of Candless’s sneakers. I ran along the upper hall toward my bedroom, but before I reached it a terrible peal of laughter broke over my head, and the squeal of it unhinged my knees. I crashed to the floor clutching my ears.

Eeeeeheeeee! It shrieked, swooping close to my face before winging down the corridor. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the unlit chandeliers that marched along the ceiling in winking splendor, their crystals catching the crazily swinging beam of Candless’s flashlight as he and Ford jogged toward me.

Ford fell to his knees beside me. “Are you okay, honey? Can you sit up?”

I was sick and shivering. “Did you hear it,” I asked.

“No, but I saw it. Okay? I saw it.” He smoothed the hair out of my eyes and lifted me against his chest. “Is that your room?”

I nodded, listening to the steady drum of his heart. It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

Ford looked up at Candless. “I’m going to help Jules to her room and get her settled. Get everyone together. We’re going to go to work. Now.”

Candless lumbered away, and Ford helped me to my feet and steered me through the doorway into my room. I clung to him, fighting the fog that had crept into my head.

“Lie down, Jules,” he said.

I fell onto the bed, and he swung my feet onto it and pulled a throw over me. Breaking Mama’s rule, he switched on the rose-shaded bedside lamp, and a weak glow suffused the room.

“What did you hear? Did it speak?”

I grabbed at his sleeve. “You’re the seer, aren’t you? You saw it. I heard it. Mama can speak for it. We can’t all be here together. It can climb up now, from wherever it’s been.” My voice rose on a little thermal of hysteria. “Rumkin said not to let you come here.”

“Is that its name?” The wind howled and flung itself against the house, and Ford looked out the window at the tossing trees. “It’ll be okay, Jules. I’m trained to handle this kind of thing. Go to sleep.”

He left me there in the blush of the lamplight. I listened to his footsteps retreating down the hall, and I sat up. I heard him descending the stairs, and I bent over to look between my feet at the dim space under the bed. The bottle Rumkin had given me stood there, its contents an amber flare in the murk, the black bird on the label fixing me with an evil eye. Like everything, it had a sound: rough and thick with aggression. Blood or whiskey.

Their voices lifted through the old plank floors – Mama and Minette, Ford and Candless – meaningless mutters as they took their places around the table in the séance room. Daddy would be watching from his place behind the spirit cabinet. If I concentrated, I could hear him shifting his weight into a more comfortable position in the cramped space, and the sizzle of the sweat that slipped over the stubble on his face. I could hear each throbbing heart, the rasp of their feet on the carpet, and the muted tinkle of the charms on Mama’s bracelet.

I reached under the bed and pulled out the bottle of Old Crow, hoping it wasn’t too late. From the hallway came the sound of footsteps, slow and heavy, with the wood cracking under them. No one else could hear them. I stared at the label on the whiskey bottle as they stopped at my open door.

“Rumkin? Is that you?”

I knew the answer. I’d gone beyond my own disbelief and into the land of terror. I listened to the sound of its harsh breath, like an animal smelling for its prey. An unfamiliar voice replied.

“No.”

I unscrewed the cap and held the bottle up, sloshing a little over my hand and wrist.

“This is for you, then,” I said, and tipped it to my lips.

The thing in the doorway entered the room. The liquor walked down my throat in boots of flame. A freezing bolt of darkness struck me in the heart.

Nothing was ever the same after that.

Present Day

I flit from the window to kneel at Ford’s knee. I put my hand there and he shivers. The room is cold and growing colder, despite the fire.

“Where is your phone,” I ask, struggling to keep my voice even.

“There’s no service out here, Jules.” He reaches out as if to stroke my cheek, but he doesn’t touch me. “You break my heart, do you know that? You always have. All these years, I’ve only wanted for you to be happy. I wanted to stop the voices for you.”

Waspishly, I say, “Well, you haven’t. They’re all still here.”

I intend to make a sweeping gesture that encompasses the room, but instead I tap my own skull. Can a gesture gone awry be an acknowledgement of madness? The pain of it is instantaneous and searing, and a tear slips down from the corner of my eye. I dash it away and glance at the snowfall that has become an impenetrable white flocking with a noise like radio static. Sleet.

“We’re in trouble here, Ford. We have to get back to the car.”

He looks at me, silent for so long I begin to worry that he’s suffered a stroke. Then, with a sigh, he says, “It’s cancer. The doctor says I only have a few months at best. So, you see, I had to do this.”

He takes a stoppered vial from his vest pocket and sets it on the card table where it glows like absinthe in the gloom. A single air bubble rises through it with the soft sound of a door closing forever. It may as well have the skull and crossbones on it. Ford strokes it with an unsteady finger.

“I won’t be going back,” he says.

*******

I am stunned. Grief like a cold sea washes over me, along with the impulse to throw myself into Ford’s arms. Death is in the room with us. Perhaps it has waited here for us for forty-eight years, the ones who got away that bloody night. One frosty pearl of fear glides down my spine.

“Ford, this is crazy. Do you hear how crazy you sound? Look, maybe I can make it to the car and go for help.” I stand and try to gather coat and gloves, a hat. “Give me the keys.”

He doesn’t move. I am angry, frightened the way I was all those years ago.

“Damn it! You can’t just come out here in the woods and die, like some old wolf. Do you want to take me with you? Give me the goddamned keys!”

My voice is a sob. The ice is rattling against the windows, blown by a screaming wind, and I know that even if he relents, I can never make it.

“Jules, do you know why I was spared that night?”

He stands, and despite how the illness has gnawed at him, he is still handsome. I stop pawing at the coats and gloves – they are suddenly so heavy. I know something that I don’t want to know, and it squeezes my heart in a cruel gauntlet.

“Because I loved you,” I say. “I loved you the first minute I saw you.”

The voices, the echoes of Sparrowgate’s horror, cease. The implications are unbearable and I cry out as though stabbed. Ford comes to me, his face filled with sorrow and the poignant light of hope. He points at something behind me.

“Look, I want to show you something.”

I turn and see a sheeted shape. It’s familiar, this tall slender object with a sound like a lullaby. I know what it is – it’s my mother’s cheval mirror.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Don’t.”

Ford is already reaching past me to pull the drape away, and I must look. I raise my eyes and see us reflected there, a gaunt old man and a skinny twelve-year old girl with blood in her hair, blood smeared on her face, blood dripping from her hands. I stare at the girl, at my real self, and something shatters and falls away from me. Some chain I’d forgotten I wore.

“The last one,” Ford says. “It wasn’t your fault, not any of it. I was arrogant. I thought I was strong enough to stop what dwelled here.” He reaches out and strokes my matted hair. “You can go now, Jules. If you like, we’ll go together.”