Bentley Little - The House

His heart was pounding with fear. "Get out!" he screamed. "You're dead! Get out and don't come back!"

He'd heard from one parapsychologist on some New Age pseudo-documentary that ghosts were people who were hanging around terrestrial life because they didn't know they had died and weren't ready to move on. He figured it was worth a shot. "You're dead! Leave me alone!"

But the ghost only smiled down at him, lifted her foot, pressed it into his face j--and disappeared.

He'd seen her several times a day ever since. She was everywhere, all over the house, and he tried ignoring her, tried talking to her, tried yelling at her, tried praying.

He tried everything he could think of to get rid of her, but she would not go away.

He was getting desperate, and he considered calling a priest or an exorcist or someone from a tabloid TV

show. He had to do something.

She appeared that night in his dream.

It was a kinder, gentler ghost in his dream. There was not that overwhelming sense of wrongness that he'd experienced in the presence of the figure in life. Instead, the ghost was the same as the real Carole--only dead.

She was standing in a field, next to a haystack, the kind of haystack that wasn't used anymore, and she was pointing toward a far-off light in the darkness.

"Return," she whispered.

He knew what she was telling him to do, and goose bumps popped up on both his arms. She was telling him to return home, to the house in Oakdale, the house of his birth. He did not know how he knew this, but he did, and even as he accepted its dream logic he was fighting against the request.

"No," he told the ghost.

"Return," she repeated.

Panic welled within him. Not because of Carole's ghost but at the prospect of returning to the house in Oakdale.

"Return."

Norton awoke, breathing hard, drenched with sweat.

He sat up in bed, reached for the cup of water he always kept on the nightstand and drank it all. He hadn't thought about the house in Oakdale for ... hell, decades.

He hadn't consciously avoided thinking about it-- at least he didn't think he had--but he realized now that that was probably exactly what had happened.

He had not been back to Oakdale since moving forty years ago.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. If he'd been so grounded and logical and rational, if he hadn't believed in ghosts, why had he never gone back?

Why had he been afraid to go back?

Those were not questions he could answer.

He got out of bed, walked over to the window.

Carole was there.

She was not in his dream now. She was outside, on the grass, next to the tree, her ghost skin absorbing rather than reflecting moonlight.

"Return," she whispered, her words echoing in his head far louder than they had any right to do. "Return."

Frightened, he shivered, turned away.

The next day was Saturday, and he decided to walk across town to Hal Hicks's place. Hal had taught biology and algebra at the high school for thirty years and had retired a few years back when Ralph Stringer came in as principal. He was a good man and Norton's best friend, and if there was anyone he could tell this craziness to it was Hal.

The farther Norton got from the house, the sillier the notion seemed, however, and before he was halfway there he had pretty well decided not to mention anything about Carole's ghost. Around him, men were mowing their lawns, women were weeding flower beds, kids were riding up and down the sidewalk on bikes, trikes , and skates. Ahead, on Main, young couples and middle-aged women were shopping in the downtown business district.

Here, in the real world, around other people, he started to believe again that it was all in his head, a figment of his imagination. There was no such thing as ghosts.

But Hermie had seen it.

He pushed that thought from his mind.

Hal was outside, in his yard, watering his fruit trees.

"Summer's over," Norton said, walking up.

"They still need their water." Hal grinned. "Don't mess with me on biology."

Norton held up his hands in surrender.

"How you holding up?" Hal asked seriously.

He shrugged. Here at his friend's all of a sudden, the events of the past few days no longer seemed quite so silly. He thought once again about telling Hal what was going on.

"Tough time sleeping?"

"Of course," Norton told him.

"You look tired." He put down the hose, walked over to the faucet, turned it off. "Come on in, I'll put on a pot of coffee."

Norton followed his friend into the house. As always, there were piles of newspapers on the couch, leftover dishes on the dining-room table. Books were scattered everywhere.

He wondered if his house would look like this in a few years, as the female influence faded.

Probably.

They walked into the kitchen. Norton sat down at the table in the breakfast nook while Hal dumped the old grounds out of the Mr. Coffee machine and put in a new filter.

Norton just came out and said it: "Do you believe in ghosts?"

He surprised even himself by bringing it up, but he did not backtrack, and he watched Hal's hands as his friend measured out the coffee, not wanting to see the expression on his face.

Hal poured a potful of water into the machine, switched it on, and walked over to the table, wiping his hands on his pants. He sat down, stared at his friend levelly. "Have you felt Carole's presence?"

Norton nodded. He wanted to retract what he'd said, wanted to pretend this was all a joke, wanted to get off this subject, but he couldn't. "Yes."

Hal sighed. "You know, after Mariette died, I thought I felt her presence around the house, too. I didn't tell anyone, didn't talk about it to anybody, but I knew she was here. I felt it. I didn't see her or anything, but it was always as if I'd just missed her. I'd walk into the living room, and it'd be like she'd just walked into the kitchen the second before. Or I'd go into the bedroom, and I knew she'd just gone into the bathroom. I can't explain it, but you know how you can tell when a house is occupied, how it feels as if someone's there even though they're in another part of the house and you can't see them? That's what it was like. I never saw her, but I knew she was there."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Would you have believed me?"

Norton didn't answer.

"I figured everyone'd think I was crazy, want to put me in a home or something. Old widowed man thinking he's being haunted by his wife's ghost?" He shook his head.

Norton was silent for a moment. He cleared his throat.

"I haven't just felt her, I've seen her."

Hal raised his eyebrows.

"This isn't just a 'presence.' It's a full-body apparition, a naked apparition, and it appears all over the house, at different times of day, in different places and positions."

"Naked, huh?" Hal chuckled. "Maybe you just need to get yourself a littlepoon ."

Norton frowned at him.

"I'm sorry," Hal said quickly. "I'm sorry. I know it was insensitive and inappropriate. I didn't mean to offend --"

Norton waved him away. "You know me better than that, Hal."

"What is it, then?"

He hesitated. "She asked me to do something. Told me to do something."

"You've seen her and heard her?"

Norton nodded.

"What'd she say?"

"Well, it was just one word--'Return'--but I understood that she wanted me to go back to Oakdale, to my parents' old house."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"You believe this? You think it's real?"

He hesitated only a second. "Yes."

Hal thought for a moment. "Maybe you'd better go."

Norton was already shaking his head. "I can't go back there."

"Why?"

"I just can't."

"When was the last time--"

"I haven't seen it since I left."

"How long ago was that?"