The Haunted

She knew how irrational that was, but it didn’t make it any less true. From the first day they’d moved into this house, she’d found the cellar creepy. Most of it was probably cultural accumulation: all those horror movies about monsters living in basements, all those news stories about old ladies who killed their tenants and buried the bodies in their cellars, or those insane men who impregnated their own daughters and kept them chained up for years under their houses. But there seemed something off about the room itself. As a lawyer, she was used to dealing with facts. And she was not by nature a touchy-feely kind of person. But she got a vibe off the basement, a feeling that the room had been used in the past for unsavory purposes.

She hadn’t said a word about this to Julian, who would have laughed at her, or to the kids, who would have been spooked, but she’d considered speaking to the realtor shortly after they’d moved in, to find out whether anything untoward had occurred in that spot. In the end, however, she hadn’t made the effort. It would have been too embarrassing. Besides, what would she have done if something weird had happened in the basement? Insist to Julian that they sell the house immediately? Try to sue the realtor or the seller for lack of full disclosure? She’d have no grounds.

No doubt this was all just a result of overactive imagination.

She rinsed off a cup, glanced again at the closed door.

Actually, earlier in the week, she’d had a dream about the basement, probably just a stress dream related to work and the unusually difficult Seaver divorce case she was handling, but no less unnerving for that. In the dream—nightmare, really—the basement had been used not for storage but as a pantry. This was where they kept their foodstuffs, and she was going down to get a package of spaghetti when the door slammed shut behind her. Startled, she nearly fell down the steps. “Hey!’ she called out, but there was no response. She suddenly felt scared, and almost turned around, but she was close to the bottom, and instead hurriedly stepped onto the cellar floor, intending to grab the spaghetti and head back up.

The light went out.

She let out a startled cry, stumbling and nearly falling.

Within the basement, something moved. She felt it as much as heard it, but she heard it, too. A shifting, a rustling. She was about to yell for help when she saw a lightening in the darkness before her. Teeth. An eerie white smile.

And then a hard hand grabbed her wrist.

And then she woke up.

For several seconds after she awoke, Claire had difficulty determining where she was. She could still feel that hard hand holding her, still smell in her nostrils that musty cellar odor. But though the bedroom was just as dark as the basement had been, she was lying down, in her nightshirt, in her bed. Julian was next to her. Gradually, her brain sorted through the details of the two competing realities, and she came to realize that she had been asleep and dreaming. She had not been in the basement at all. It had just been a nightmare.

Ever since, however, the basement had made her even more nervous than before. She made an extra effort now to steer clear of the door that led to it.

Claire finished washing the dishes, rinsing them and setting them to dry on the plastic rack. She wasn’t sure when Julian and the kids would be back, but thought she might sweep and mop the floors before they arrived, so she dried her hands on the dish towel hanging on the hook next to the stove and walked out into the hall—

Where the laundry basket was sitting on the floor.

She stopped, stared, her heart pounding. It had not been there earlier. She had walked down the hallway from the bedroom to the kitchen, and the floor had been clear. The basket had been in a cupboard in the laundry room, where she’d put it away after last washing a batch of clothes two days ago.

Claire knew the house was empty. No one else was here. No one could have done this. Still, she checked the front and back doors, went from room to room, upstairs and down, even peeking into the basement, but she was alone. She ended up in the hallway again, in front of the laundry basket, staring at the empty rectangle of white plastic.

A chill washed over her, a feeling she had not experienced since … since …

She took a deep breath.

“Miles?” she said softly.

“Do you feel anything at our house?”

“Not this again.”

Claire and her sister were standing in their parents’ backyard, looking toward the mountains. Behind them, their father was weeding the garden. Their mother was in the house, preparing lunch. Claire had come over because she knew Diane would be here—it was her weekend to check in with the folks—and she hadn’t wanted to remain home by herself. She’d left a note for Julian telling him where she was, and her cell phone was on, but so far he hadn’t called.