Chapter 2: The Thing in the House
If I ever visit Japan, I will make a pilgrimage to the headquarters of the Honda Motor Co., Ltd. to pay my respects to their engineers. They will line up in their white lab coats and hard hats, smiling with polite nods as I move up and down the line, shaking their hands with undying gratitude.
Because when that nightmare flitted past the window and erupted from the house, I ran to my Honda, flung open the door, and shoved the key in. The car started right up. Despite more than 150,000 miles on the odometer, Mr. Reliable never failed me. Tire slashing aside, it never let me down, come rain, frost, freeze, or hail. That car, Pookie, and Netflix were about the last reliable things in my life. That’s not much to live for, but in that moment, I realized that I did not want to die.
Tires squealing, I backed down the driveway, fast. I craned my neck backwards, steering with one hand while looking out the rear window. Going twenty in reverse is not smart and accounted for what happened next. But I needed distance between me and that thing. Miles, even. Entire states. I wanted to be continents away.
But even as my tires crunched across the gravel, I doubted my own eyes. Was I having a nervous breakdown? Did I hallucinate that thing? No, I hadn’t. I crashed the accelerator down.
A glance back at the house showed nothing. No shapeless horror stood on the porch. No impossible creature stared out the broken window, mouthing the unspeakable with a hole that was not a mouth.
Then a figure darted across my rear-view mirror. I jumped on the brakes. Tires squealed. Autumn leaves flew up in a cloud of red and gold. Too late.
I lurched forward as the Honda’s rear bumper struck something, hard. A man-like shape flew backward, rolling down the road.
Was that the monster? Had I run it over? But the figure in the rear-view mirror hadn’t been a horror. It had been a man.
I almost kept going. I wanted to turn the car around and barrel down the driveway back to the real estate office, hand Jill my resignation, go to my apartment, pack up Pookie, and my needful things and vanish into the rain. But what if I’d run someone over? I couldn’t just leave a person on the side of the road, injured, maybe dying. It could be a deer, maybe even someone’s dog.
Fingers trembled as I unlatched the seatbelt, then opened the door. Cautious footsteps brought me along the side of the car. Terrified glances up and down the driveway, back toward the house, and into the trees to either side of the road revealed no mysterious enemy, no shambling horror.
Behind the Honda lay the crumpled form of a man. The bumper must have thrown him ten, twelve feet down the road. He lay still, head turned away, dressed in ordinary, human clothes: a brown bomber jacket, blue jeans, and work boots. No visible blood, but no movement either.
I ran to his side, a thousand thoughts in my throat: I just hurt someone with my car. I’ll lose my job. They’ll send me to prison. I ran him down in a psychotic episode—how could I live with myself? I fell to my knees and searched for my phone. Damn. I’d dropped it on the porch.
He moaned, turning his head towards the sound of my steps. His face looked well-traveled, strong, solid, almost square, with deep lines set around narrow, close-set eyes. Curly hair receded from a strong forehead, dancing on the edge of brown and fair. Broad shoulders filled out the bomber jacket. The eyelids remained shut tight.
Handsome, in a rugged, seasoned way—if he hadn’t been dying on the road. My God, I’ve killed him. He’ll die on the drive of 213 Lotomaw. Trivialized, his death would be linked forever to the house’s deadly lore. I could see the headlines: Lotomaw Murder Mansion Claims Fresh Victim—Hallucinating Realtor Sees Monster, Slays Pedestrian.
His eyes fluttered open, deep as a clear blue sky: focused, strong, and aware. They fixed on me. Half a grin split his face and he popped up onto one elbow. Brown leather crunched against the gravel road, but pain darted across his features.
“I’m sorry—please don’t die!”
“No worries, lass. I’m just a bit racked.” He winked, pulled himself to a sitting position. “That’s one way to clear the cobwebs, eh?
“I lost my phone. Do you have one?” I asked, babbling in my panic. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
“Let me sit a spell, and I’ll be fine.”
I had watched enough BBC to pick up a trace of an Irish accent, one faded perhaps by decades of living in North America. His rapid recovery astounded me. Maybe he was putting on a show, acting like a tough guy. I must’ve been doing twenty miles per hour when I plowed into him. Not even a football player in full pads should get up and walk away after a hit like that.
But that’s what he did. He scrambled to his feet, dusted off his pants and jacket, and looked up the road toward Lotomaw House. He stood an inch or two either side of six feet, looked about thirty-something, and could shake off car accidents like Superman.
I got to my feet, too. Maybe the Honda hadn’t hit him that hard. It must have only clipped him with the fender and he dove clear.
A more frightening idea popped into my mind. I tried to suppress it, but once the suggestion took root it wouldn’t be denied. I’d just run over my stalker.
Seriously. Why else would he be here on private property, on foot, moving through the woods? He might even have a knife in his pocket right now. He might slash my tires again. He might even slash me.
But why? What had I ever done to him—apart from hitting him with my car? I’d never seen him before. I would remember a good-looking Irishman. Wary, I took a few steps back.
His head pivoted from the house on the hill back to me. “What’s wrong?”
My fists clenched at my sides. “I thought I killed you.”
“Nah, just a scratch. But why’d you come tearing down the road like a bat out of hell?”
“I—I saw something in the house.”
“Saw what?”
Dammit. I should’ve said I heard something. More believable. “A door slammed. Someone’s in there.”
“Tell me what you saw,” he said, his voice softer. Taking one long stride, he stepped toward me. A hand reached out to touch my arm but stopped short. “Might be important.”
I tilted my head up to meet his eye. I saw no malice there, only worry. Concern for me, perhaps—but worry about what I’d seen. He kept glancing back toward the house.
I wanted to unburden myself, to tell him everything. Every instinct in my gut told me this was no stalker, not the man who’d knifed my tires or broke my windows. His face for all its lines looked open and honest. But how could I be sure? Burke had fooled me—he’d enchanted me so thoroughly and completely I couldn’t trust my own instincts anymore.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just a sound. A shadow in the window.”
“You’re an awful liar, lass,” he said. Then he was off, taking long strides towards Lotomaw House.
“Wait, where are you going!” I shouted. “This is private property. You can’t just walk up there. Unless you’re the owner. Are you the owner?” Unusual in real estate, but I’d never met the owner of Lotomaw House, someone named C. Braden. Jill managed that relationship. “Do you have permission to be here?”
The stranger ignored me, his work boots crunching up the gravel drive. No need to call an ambulance. He didn’t even limp.
I followed him because I had to do something. After all, I was in theory a trusted professional, responsible for this property.
“Wait, will you?” I called after his broad back. “Something’s up there. It could be dangerous.”
That stopped him in his tracks. He waited for me to catch up. Again, his eyes found mine. “What’s up there?”
“I don’t know,” I said, voice dropping.
“What did you see?”
“A shadow, moving real fast.”
“The shadow of a man?”
“No.”
“A ghost?” He said this with seriousness, without a touch of mockery.
“No, not a ghost. Just a … thing.” I had tried to banish that apparition from mind, but it lingered like a bright flash from looking at the sun. I shivered at the recollection though no longer believed it. It had been just a trick of the light, a psychotic break triggered by stress. Things like that didn’t exist.
He nodded, accepting my answer but looking as if he wanted to ask more. He took another step towards the house and we resumed walking. “Is anyone else here?”
“No one.”
“Nobody else been out today?”
“Just my clients. I was supposed to meet them at ten but I was—delayed. They came early, left a note. They’re the only showing I have today.” We’d reached the base of the steps. I wrung my fingers. “It’s a hard place to sell.”
“Aye, there’s a coldness here. A wrongness.”
His expression troubled me, reminded me of my own thoughts from earlier, in the gun store. A wrongness indeed. Sunlight flashed on glass and I spotted my smartphone. Darting toward the porch, I put my hand through the railing and grabbed it.
Just then, a tremor ran down my spine—a wrongness indeed. Why did I return to this house? Why oh, why did I doubt my own eyes?
Looking up, I saw that thing in the window again, that wrongness. Before I could even scream, the man—whose name I didn’t even know—grabbed my arm.
“We go, now!” he shouted.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. We rushed down the hill, toward my car. Still shaking, I made one of those split second, life-changing decisions. I unlocked the passenger side door and let him in. We piled into the Honda.