Someone was approaching the abandoned house. At first it seemed yet another hallucination from a fevered mind, and the watcher pressed one eye to the knothole, blinking against the gathering darkness. A sharp autumn wind stripped leaves from the nearby oak and one plastered over the hole. A hard knock and the leaf fell away.
Two strangers ran along the gravel drive. A teenage boy and girl, laughter floating up, flashlight beams pinging over the yard, and then footsteps pounding across the porch.
The watcher strained to listen, eyes closed, praying for the sound . . .
The front door slapped open. And the watcher smiled.
***
“Welcome to the house of nightmares,” Ethan said, waving Charlotte into the old house.
He’d lowered his voice to what she figured was supposed to be an ominous tone, but it sounded instead as if he had a head cold. She mentally rolled her eyes at “house of nightmares,” but the last time Ethan had watched a horror movie was in fifth grade, and she still felt bad about talking him into it.
Tonight was for her. For all the times she’d said that someday she wanted to spend Halloween in a haunted house. It was the first year they finally had to admit they were too old for trick-or-treating, and this was Ethan’s surprise. So, no matter how cheesy it got, she would appreciate every second.
Ethan had picked the perfect spot. An abandoned farmhouse, a notorious one with a delicious legend attached. When they were younger, they used to ride their bikes along this road pedalling faster as they passed the laneway, and Charlotte would turn just long enough to glimpse the rooftop of the big house, hidden down the long, tree-lined drive.
Ethan left the front door ajar just enough to cast the hall into shadow, and every strip of mouldering wallpaper seemed to writhe and whisper as a breeze slid through with the moonlight.
“This was the home of William Miller,” Ethan said as he walked down the hall. “In 1964, Miller hanged himself over the stairs. His wife had left him two years earlier, taking their young children, and so he was living alone. His body hung there for nearly two weeks, rotting as it swayed.” He shone the his flashlight beam up to show a length of rope tied around the bannister.
“When distant relatives came to collect his belongings, they made a horrifying discovery. Miller’s wife and kids had not left after all. Their bodies were buried under the floorboards.” Ethan pressed his sneaker down, and the wood creaked, the sound echoing through the hushed house.
Charlotte shivered, but did not mention that this was only local legend—Miller’s family had in fact been found living happily in Vancouver a few months after his death. Nor did she point out that the rope hanging from the bannister looked remarkably clean after fifty years.
“That was only the beginning of the nightmare,” Ethan intoned. “They say that Miller and his family never truly left. New owners reported cries at night and scratching sounds, coming from under the floor, as if the family had not yet been dead when he hammered in the nails. Then there was the smell. The stomach-churning stink of death. So they ripped up the floors…”
He gestured, as if tearing up a board, and fumbled his flashlight, catching it before it fell. “New floors were installed. Carpet. Linoleum. Wood. Still, the stench seeped through, and the cries continued. The scratching. The banging. Anyone who dared stay more than a week would hear Miller himself, coming up the stairs at night.”
Ethan looked around and then raced back to the steps to enact the appropriate stair-thumping effect.
“If they were still foolish enough to stay, they might even see his ghastly figure in their bedroom doorway, brandishing the bloodied axe he had used to slaughter his family.”
Ethan hesitated, as if realizing the inconsistency in his story. “I mean, the axe he used to force them to lie under the floorboards…” A pause. “But then he’d have to…”
“He wounded them?” Charlotte suggested. “Left them lying unconscious in pools of their own blood and then laid them under the floorboards, so they woke, discovering themselves entombed.”
“That’s it. Thank you.” Ethan cleared his throat. “For years, the house would stand empty, until another greedy soul could not resist the bargain, only to suffer the nightly torments of the deranged Miller and his hapless victims, endlessly screaming for help that would never come.”
Charlotte clapped.
Ethan pushed back his sweat-dampened hair. “That was okay?”
“That was brilliant.”
He exhaled. “Good. I have more. Further tales of murder and ghostly revenge. But first, we must search the house, to see if we can find any signs that the dead do not yet rest.”
***
They did find those signs.
In the living room, the words “Help Me” in blood, which would have been much more convincing if Ethan hadn’t used spray paint to write them. A hunting knife embedded in the kitchen wall—the untarnished blade dripping a viscous red that bore the signature sweet smell of fake blood. Still more “blood” dripped over the dusty hardwood. One puddle showed a footprint … one with the Nike symbol from Ethan’s sneaker.
Charlotte ignored any proof of Ethan’s staging, and gasped and shivered appropriately, even smudging the footprint before he noticed it.
They were heading for the stairs when Ethan stopped, his head snapping up. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“It sounded like scratching.”
She fought to keep from smiling. “Like the trapped souls of the Miller family?”
“No, that’s just a—” He stopped. “I mean, sure. Maybe it’s them.” He paused. “You don’t hear it?”
Charlotte shook her head. “Is it coming from upstairs?”
He nodded.
She climbed three steps. Then she did hear scratching. Or that was one way to describe it. The problem was that while she knew the Miller family tragedy was fiction, its image lingered, so when she heard what could be nails scraping against wood, that’s exactly what it sounded like.
“You do hear that, right?” Ethan whispered as he climbed up beside her.
“I do.” She was about to say again that it must be the ghosts of the Miller family. Then she saw his face had paled. “It’s probably mice.”
He swallowed. “Right. An old place like this must be full of them. Okay, so . . .” He started back downstairs. Then he stopped, and his dark eyes glinted. “But it could be the ghosts of the Millers.”
Charlotte smiled. “It could.”
“Trapped forever beneath the floorboards. Praying for rescue.” Ethan paused. “We should go check it out.”
Her smile turned to a grin. “We should.”
They were halfway up the stairs when Ethan lurched forward, the wood giving an ominous crackle beneath his sneaker. She grabbed his arm, steadied him and pointed down at the rotted step. He nodded and lifted his foot over it.
By the time they reached the top, the scratching had ceased. They poked about, but the house stayed silent.
“The spirits are resting,” she said.
“Then let’s see if I can conjure them up. It’s time to retire to the living room for more stories.”
***
“They say, late at night, if you look out the attic window, you’ll see the headless ghost of Old Lady Peters, dressed in white, crying out for vengeance against the mob that cut off her head.”
Charlotte did not point out the impossibility of calling for anything while lacking a head. It was a good story — a mishmash of local legends, embellished with grotesque flourishes. Ethan had definitely done his homework. And, naturally, in his version, all of the tales occurred right here at the Miller house.
“As for the curse that taints this house of horrors…” Ethan tilted his flashlight to shine under his chin, contorting his face into a mask of light and shadow. “Do you dare guess its origin?”
“Native burial ground?”
“You, my child, have watched too many horror movies. The truth is far darker, far more sinister —”
A bang sounded overhead, and Ethan’s head shot up.
“I think the mice like my answer better,” Charlotte said.
He let out a nervous laugh. “Yeah. Okay, so where was—”
Another bang, and Charlotte swore she felt the wall shudder. As they both went still, a softer sound came. A low moan that seemed to slide through the room.
Charlotte leapt to her feet. Ethan was already up, wheeling as he listened.
“The wind,” Charlotte said. She pressed her hand to the front window and felt the cool glass under her trembling fingers. Sure enough, as she shaded the glass, she could see branches whipping in the gust outside.
“See?” She pointed. “It’s just the wind.”
The noise came again. This time it did not sound like wind.
The word “keening” came to mind, a term she’d only encountered in books. A low and mournful cry that set every hair on her body prickling.
“We could go check upstairs again,” Ethan said.
That sound came again, and her gut spasmed, and she wanted to say no.
Let’s stay right where we are. Better yet, let’s leave.
Can we leave now?
Please?
“Unless you’re scared.” Ethan’s grin sparked, and there was no malice in it, no mockery. He was teasing her. Of course Charlotte wouldn’t be frightened. Not the Charlotte he knew.
She should tell him that, actually, she was scared. Ethan was the one person who would never hold that against her. Yet when she opened her mouth, instead she heard herself say, “I’m not afraid if you’re not.”
“Upstairs it is, then. We must fulfill our destiny as clueless teens in a haunted house and go toward the scary noises.”
***
It was definitely not the wind.
Charlotte and Ethan stood at a second floor front window, while the noise continued, seemingly right above their heads—but outside, the trees had stopped shaking.
“It’s coming from the attic,” Charlotte said.
Ethan hesitated. Then he strode off, leaving her jogging after him.
“It’s a cat,” he said.
“What?”
“There’s a cat trapped in the attic. These old houses have huge ones with lots of holes for wildlife to sneak in, especially when it starts to get cold. We’ve had raccoons in ours, squirrels, bats, even an opossum. Once, I heard crying over my bedroom. Mom thought I’d been watching horror movies with you again. When I convinced her to go up with me, we found the neighbour’s cat.”
“And it sounded like this?”
He nodded as he walked, flashlight shining on the ceiling. “There’s an animal trapped in the attic. I’m looking for the hatch to let it out.”
Charlotte exhaled. That was the advantage to not being the one who loved horror movies. While her mind whirled through the worst possible explanations, his went straight to the logical.
Ethan found a hatch in the hall ceiling. There was no hook to tug it down, so he boosted Charlotte up. She pulled, and a ladder rolled out with a screech that set her flailing. Ethan tumbled backward, and both of them hit the floor.
They looked at each other, and Charlotte gave a ragged laugh as she rose, dusting herself off.
The keening had stopped, the cat undoubtedly sent scurrying by the racket. Charlotte began to climb. When a thump sounded downstairs, she spun around and nearly knocked Ethan off the ladder.
No other noises came. Charlotte turned, steeling herself with a deep breath and . . .
She clamped a hand over her mouth and nose.
“What is that?” Ethan said.
“It smells like . . .”
Death.
Of course, Charlotte said no such thing. For one, it sounded ridiculously overdramatic, even if it was the truth. It did smell like dead things. Like that corner of the basement where her dad had laid out mouse traps in the fall and then forgot about them until spring. All the stored lawn furniture smelled like this. The stink of decomposition.
Like Ethan said, animals got into the attic. Not all would get out. The circle of life, nothing sinister about it.
Charlotte took another two steps, until the attic floor was at waist-height. As she peered around, her gaze swung past a dead rat. She gave a start but then thought, Well, that explains the smell. It probably also explained the scratching noises, from the rodent’s more lively brethren.
“Could it have been rats we heard?” she asked. “That crying noise?”
Ethan didn’t reply, and she took that as a no. She finished climbing the last steps, and when he shouted, “Char! No!” she thought he’d spotted the dead rat, which she was already hopping over and —
Something hit her in the face. She clawed at it, and her fingers wrapped around fur. Bristly fur with cold flesh beneath.
Charlotte staggered back, but the thing swung towards her again. As Ethan pulled her away, she saw it.
A huge rat.
Dead and decomposing and hanging in midair.
She lifted her light to see twine around the rat’s neck.
“What the — ?” Ethan began as their shaking flashlight beams stuttered over a half-dozen dead rats, hanging from the rafters.
“I didn’t do this,” Ethan said. “I did not —”
“I know,” she said.
“I put up the rope. I wrote that word and left the knife and the blood, but I did not —”
“I know.”
A bang came from deep in the attic. They both jumped, their lights sweeping through the pitch black.
A moan sounded. A low and terrible moan.
They raced down the ladder so fast, they nearly tripped each other. At the bottom, they stood, catching their breath.
The sound from the attic had stopped.
As Charlotte strained to listen, she heard a slow, deliberate scratch, like nails on wood.
“Trapped under the floorboards,” she whispered.
“It’s a story!” Ethan blurted. “Just a story. They found the family. Alive. They were fine. None of it’s true.”
She nodded. She knew that. Knew it.
“It’s mice,” he said. “Or more rats.”
Mice. Rats. Raccoons. Cats.
That’s all. That’s all.
Ethan squeezed her hand. “We’ll leave now, okay?”
She nodded mutely, and they headed for the stairs, trying not to race out like children in a carnival spook house.
Don’t be foolish. Take it slow on the rotted steps, one at a time.
The front door was there. Right there.
Open and waiting . . .
The front door was shut.
“Ethan?” Charlotte whispered, slowing. “Didn’t you leave the — ?”
A shape charged from a shadowy doorway. Something swung at her head. She saw a man. A stranger. Clutching the hunting knife Ethan had embedded in the kitchen wall.
Not real. Not real. This cannot be real.
The knife slashed, and Charlotte flew off her feet as Ethan dragged her along the hall. She twisted and saw where he was going.
The stairs.
No, no, no.
Never run upstairs.
The front door was right there… Past a stranger with a knife. A wild-eyed stranger now barrelling after them.
Ethan pushed her ahead of him, and she caught her balance and tore up the stairs. She saw the rotted step. The one they’d been avoiding. She scrambled over it and then —
A crack as Ethan’s sneaker slammed down on the rotten wood. Charlotte spun to see him falling. To see the knife-wielding stranger right behind him.
She grabbed for Ethan. Her hand snagged his jacket sleeve, and he righted himself, but the man was lunging at him, knife raised —
Charlotte kicked. It was all she could think to do, her hands still clutching Ethan’s sleeve. She kicked, and her foot struck the man square in the stomach.
He flew backwards, and there was a deafening crack as he hit the floor below. They kept running up. At the top, Charlotte turned.
The man lay motionless at the base of the stairs.
“He’s faking it,” she whispered.
Because they were always faking it. That’s how this went. You ran upstairs to escape and maybe you managed to fight off the madman, but if you saw him lying there, he was just waiting for you to come down, and then he’d leap up and…
That’s how it happened in the movies.
But this wasn’t a movie.
This was a man lying at the foot of the stairs, his eyes wide and staring.
Ethan shone his light down into the man’s eyes. They didn’t blink.
“Dead?” Charlotte whispered. “No, that’s not . . . How — Where —”
“He looks like a vagrant. He must have been squatting here. That’s what we heard. The banging and the scratching. It was him. And now…”
And now…
“We need to call the police,” she said.
“But we broke in,” Ethan said. “That’s trespassing. What are we going to say? That this guy chased us with a knife? My own knife? That sounds crazy.”
It was crazy.
Charlotte stared at the body.
A man with a knife. A dead man.
Ethan took her arm. “No one’s going to find him for weeks, Char, maybe months. By then there won’t be any sign we were here. Let’s just go. Please.”
Numb with shock, she nodded and let him lead her stumbling out.
***
The watcher heard the thud below. A thud and a rush of whispered voices. Footsteps had followed, slow at first and then breaking into a run.
Footsteps pounding along the hall. Onto the porch. Down the front steps.
No.
No!
She pressed her eye to the wood and struggled against her bonds, the rope rubbing her raw and bloodied wrists. She cried out against her gag, and when the footsteps stopped, her heart almost did, too.
They heard me. They’ve finally heard me.
She’d tried so hard to make noise. Shouting behind the gag. Thumping her bound feet against the floor. Even scratching at the wood. Anything to make the teenagers hear her. They’d seemed to, and she’d heard the squeal of the ladder and waited for them to come into the attic, to find her, to rescue her.
Instead, they’d stopped at the attic doorway. She’d heard a shriek and a stumble and the boy’s voice rising as he insisted he hadn’t done something. Then they’d raced back downstairs.
But now they’d stopped just out front, and she could hear them talking. They were saying something about a man. A man they had not meant to kill.
Kill?
She remembered that thud. The sickening thump.
The man.
The man who’d put her here. Who held her captive.
She banged her feet on the floor and then smacked her head against the wall.
Hear me. Please, please, please —
The pound of running footsteps.
She put her eye to the knothole and saw the teens tearing down the lane. They disappeared into the night, and as their footsteps faded, the house fell silent.
Completely silent.
Behind the gag, the woman began to scream.
Kelley Armstrong is the #1 bestselling author of the Otherworld series, as well as the bestselling young adult trilogy Darkest Powers, the Darkness Rising trilogy and the Nadia Stafford series.
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