by Dana Richard Freeman
There it was again, a slow, methodical sound somewhere in the walls; every night at the same time, a rhythmic ‘bump, bump.’ It was enough to drive her crazy. She had just moved in three days ago.
Damn, the former owner never said anything about a haunted house.
Looking for something to throw, she reached instead for her cell phone.
“Josh?” she asked impatiently into the phone. Her voice was frightened and angry all at the same time.
“Connie? Is that you?” a familiar, but half-dazed voice answered.
“Yes, did I wake you up?” she asked, trying to be a little conciliatory now, but still quite agitated.
“No, I’m always up and about at…” the voice hesitated, “… 3 a.m. What’s up?” Josh was becoming more awake as confusion replaced the mild annoyance in his voice often reserved for friends.
“I’m scared.”
Josh was now fully awake. His friend sounded like she was in some kind of trouble. He hoped it wasn’t her ex-husband.
“What’s going on Cece?” he asked, hoping that using her nickname might make the conversation just a little more intimate and maybe calm her down. Ever since high school, Constance Corinne Welsh was Cece and Wallace Joshua Alexander was Josh.
“I think my house is haunted,” she replied, “It’s really scary. This wasn’t how I envisioned home ownership. If I hear that…”
“Wait, wait… back up a second. Are you seeing ghosts or something?”
“No, I’d be banging on your door right now if I was.”
“What’s with the ‘haunted’ thing then?”
“The walls are banging.”
His voice trailed off with just a slight hint of condescension, “The walls are bang-”
“Yes,” she interrupted emphatically before he could even finish. “Ever since I moved in Saturday, right around this time of night there’s, a kind of muffled ‘bump bump’ from somewhere in the walls,” she continued as her voice gradually descending into agitated, yet frightened, disbelief.
There was a long silence and she knew he was trying to think of a logical explanation to calm her down. She thought about how he had used that same logic to pace her through a rather difficult divorce. The fact that he was her best friend in high school and now a lawyer, made him the best, and of course the most logical, choice to help her. When she signed both the divorce papers and the mortgage agreement on Friday, Josh was there. When she moved in on Saturday, Josh was there. He even took her out to dinner to celebrate once they got all the boxes off the U-Haul® and the bed set up. They planned to get the rest of her furniture out of the storage bin next weekend.
The divorce, while a bit messy, did provide her with enough money to put a nice down payment on the Jensen’s house. Josh was able to convince the court that she was entitled to a major portion of her ex-husband’s assets since she worked to help put him through dental school. The ‘Ex’ was a successful dentist now so the judge agreed that he wouldn’t be significantly damaged by a generous, one-time settlement. But now this…
“I’m sorry, what did you say,” she asked as his voice shook her out of her musings.
“I said, did you check the plumbing?” he replied.
“The plumbing?” Her voice sounded more confused now than upset. “Josh, the home inspection checked that. The house did pass, y’know,” she answered, sarcastically.
“I know,” he said, “I was there, Cece.”
“Then what does this have to do with the plumbing? It’s working fine.”
“It could be working fine like you and I would think and still be making weird noises…” he paused, as if to collect his thoughts. His lawyer mind was contemplating the right way to explain how a toilet can make a banging noise. “I saw an episode of This Old House™ once where a house had banging walls even though the toilet seemed to be working fine and the plumber guy said a valve…”
“Josh… Josh,” she interrupted him. “This is not even near the bathroom and it’s not a banging. It’s like a dull thud.”
“Bang. Thud. They can all sound alike to a person in their new home, especially at three in the morning,” he said as a gentle reminder that it was an unusual time for a conversation about noisy walls.
“And you don’t think this is potentially upsetting in the middle of the night three days after a long weekend of hauling most of my worldly belongings into a new house after a full day of work?” Her voice crescendoed to a peak ending on the word ‘work.’
“I’m sorry, it is an upsetting thing,” he said, feeling more guilty now. “Have you tried to actually locate the sound? Like, walk around and pinpoint it?”
“It doesn’t thud that often, and every time I think I can tell where it is, it stops for a long time. If I’m falling off to sleep, it sounds like it’s downstairs somewhere. Then when I try to locate it downstairs, it sounds like it’s upstairs. You have no idea how maddening that is.” She almost seemed to be on the verge of hysteria. Something in her voice begged him to fix it like he had done with so many things before for her.
“Why didn’t you call Saturday night? Why did you wait so long?” he said.
“I just thought it was new house sounds, so I was actually able to get to sleep cuz’ I didn’t feel this upset. But this time it seems like it’s trying to get my attention, like there’s a purpose behind it or something. Geez, listen to me, I sound like a loony. Josh…,” her voice once again rising to a peak on his name.
“You’re not a loony, Cece. Listen,” he said, as he slipped into that counselor, logician tone that he knew would calm her down, “You want me to come over and stay for a while until you can get to sleep?”
“Josh, it’s three in the morning, I can’t ask you to do that now,” her voice softened as she tried to retain a sense of responsibility. “Just convince me that nothing bad can be happening here.”
“Well I really can’t think of how this can be harmful in any way, but if you want my honest opinion, I‘m not really sure from this far away” he said more to assure her that her conclusion was a valid one more than anything else. Lawyers worked on evidence and there was no evidence here, one way or the other, for good or bad, no matter how he looked at it. Lawyers also worked on logic, one of his strengths especially when evidence seemed to be lacking. It was something he first learned from reading Conan Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in middle school: strip away everything that is not the truth and what is left has to be the truth. The only problem: she was there and he was not.
“Josh, can ghosts do any physical harm to a live person?” she asked tentatively. Her voice was so soft that she thought he might not have heard her right.
“What…?”
“Can ghosts do…”
“I heard you the first time,” his voice rising to just below incredulous as he cut her off. “Cece, that’s a relatively new house, like about 10 years old or so if I remember the Warranty Deed correctly. That’s not one of those old American Revolution-era houses where someone was hacked up by an insane relative.”
“I know, but this is not a random sound, Josh. It‘s intelligent.” she said.
“Intelligent? Like it’s following you around?” he asked.
“No, remember I said it seems to be able to avoid me,” she reminded him. “It’s not following me. It acts like it knows how to stay just out of reach, just out of hearing, but loud enough to make sure I hear it anyway.”
“Okay, that’s it, I’m coming over,” he said with a measure of finality, “I’ve got to see this for myself. This is even beyond logic.”
“Josh, I’m okay. You don-”
“I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
“Are you sure?”
“More than sure. Bye.”
“Thanks Josh, drive care-” Click!
* * *
He didn’t remember the weather channel forecasting snow, but there it was. It must have just started because it was a light dusting on the pavement, just like it did in New Jersey. First it would swirl around on the pavement and sidewalks and then it would start to turn the grass into tufts of white and green. He could see that it had already started to stick on some grassy areas. Of course, this was South Carolina and, although snow was not unheard of, it was a little unusual in March so, he planned his stops and turns very carefully, unlike many of the natives. He used to tell friends from New Jersey that he wasn’t sure they taught the Laws of Physics in the south.
He could hear his father’s words ringing in his ears every time forecasters even hinted that snow might be in the offing: you have to drive for the other guy, because ‘the other guy’ might be racing to the grocery store for bread and milk, another “southern thang” that must be dated back to the flood of Noah. Just as he was musing about the differences between life in New Jersey compared to his adopted home, he arrived at Cece’s. He almost slipped on the snow-covered pavement as he practically leapt out of the car and ran up the front walk. The house was completely dark. He banged on the door.
“Cece! Open the door,” he shouted. He moved towards the window to look in and then went back to the door, banging even harder. Just as he was thinking about breaking the door down, it flew open and Cece lunged into his arms. She was sobbing hysterically. Her mouth opened and her lips were working, but nothing came out.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong? Why is the house dark? What’s going on babe?” His voice almost matched her hysteria. Thinking it better to go back in the house than create a neighborhood panic, he gently steered her back through the open front door even as she resisted his urgings. She looked horrified.
This is worse than I imagined, he thought.
“The ceiling…” is all she could get out, in between great gasps of air, as she pointed towards the kitchen. Josh could see that she was now on the verge of hysteria.
“Cece, you’re going to hyperventilate. What about the ceiling?”
All she could do is point to the kitchen. He tried to lead her slowly in that direction, but she resisted again even stronger. He was finally able to overcome her hysteria-induced strength and succeeded in moving her towards the kitchen.
“Come on, we’re okay together. Show me. What’s wrong with the ceiling?” he urged her onward.
“No, no Josh, I don’t…” she cried.
“We’re okay babes. Show me the ceiling,” he gently insisted, not quite sure what could be so upsetting as he led her towards the kitchen, his arms firmly around her for protection as well as assurance and comfort; he wasn’t sure that was working.
Once they got in the kitchen, he turned the light on. As he looked up at the ceiling, nothing seemed to be wrong. He looked at her quizzically wondering if she had been hallucinating. She shook her head vigorously and pointed to the laundry room.
“It’s not as loud now and…” her voice trailed off the closer they got to the laundry room. He tried to lead her into the laundry room, but she resisted even more. He didn’t want to push her, but he didn’t want to leave her alone either. He decided to hold onto her with one arm and reach around and flip the light on in the laundry room with the other.
Almost as soon as Josh flipped the light on in the laundry he saw the red drops on the dryer. Cece was clinging to him tightly as she pointed towards the ceiling where there was a large crimson stain half on the ceiling and half on the wall in the far corner of the room.
“Oh my god!” Josh spat out.
Thud.
* * *
Max Jensen finished packing his gym bag at the airport motel room and was confidently on his way out of the country. He decided to lay low for a few days after selling his house to that ditzy broad in what had to be record time for a house sale thanks to her lawyer friend. Freedom would soon be his. Two weeks ago he had hatched a brilliant scheme to hide the body of his bitchy wife; she had pushed him too far. The floor boards in the newly-renovated, upstairs TV room were easy to pull up and replace. Her petit body fit perfectly in the body bag he fashioned out of trash bags. They’ll never find the body until he was long gone. She deserved every stab wound.
* * *
With her last ounce of energy, Jennifer Jensen was able to make only one final, desperate attempt to bang on the ceiling. Max Jensen thought he had completed the job of stabbing his wife to death. Unfortunately, she would never know that her earlier attempts to attract attention, anyone’s attention, had caused a rip in the trash bags her husband had stuffed her into. There wasn’t enough blood left in her to let her lift her arm a second, desperate time. With her last dying breath, she heard a horrified voice exclaim, “Oh my god!” It was too late. Jennifer Jensen’s heart stopped at exactly 3:38 a.m. just before her final attempt to call for help.
* * *
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to UAE’s flight 12 for Dubai. We will now begin boarding our business class passengers as well as those who need assistance first, followed by passengers with small children. Will all passengers have their boarding passes available to be checked by the gate attendant.” Max looked at his watch. Then he looked around as casually as he could. It was then that he first noticed several policemen at every boarding counter in the terminal.
8:00 a.m., right on time.
He was actually glad to see the increased police presence at the gate, no doubt making one last check for terrorists, or extremists as they now were calling them. As he passed his boarding pass to the gate attendant, she looked at it, hesitated and nodded in the direction of the waiting officers.
One of the policemen stepped forward, “Mr. Jensen, could you step over here, please?”
About the Author
A retired science teacher of 39 years, Dana uses knowledge of the sciences to fashion stories “…with a twist.” The endings take one where they might not have expected to go.
©2009 Dana Richard Freeman
