The Third Floor Part 12

"Really? Like what?"

Charley told her about sneaking upstairs and about the machine gun pounding on the roof he'd heard.

"On the roof?" she asked. "That's weird."

"Might have been in the crawls.p.a.ce," he said. "I was right under the door. I don't remember anything about any crawls.p.a.ce."

"What do you think it was?"

"I don't know. If anything, I hope it was one of those twins and not one of the kids."

"But what if they really did just vanish? Went off somewhere and started over? Couldn't have been too hard back then."

"If that happened, then it was one of the kids, but I can't imagine what it would be doing up in the ceiling."

"I don't know," his sister answered.

"Anyway, I just wanted to tell you I was up there tonight. There's stuff in that house, that's one story you can definitely believe from now on. I'm gonna call Ron and tell him."

"Okay, I'll talk to you later."

Charley hung up and talked to his brother Ron for twenty minutes before finally going back to his wife in the living room.

"What happened?" she asked.

He told her and she shook her head and said the same thing everyone said.

"Those poor kids."

Later, everyone lay in bed.

Jack was dreaming of flowers growing wild when footsteps next to the bed woke him up. He opened a bleary eye and leaned his head up.

"Joe?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

Before he got an answer, he'd gone back to sleep and the footsteps retreated out of the room.

Liz heard them, too. She wasn't asleep yet and doubted she would be by morning.

The footsteps weren't the first noise that night. Something was going on upstairs. Two floors below, Liz could hear them up there, knocking the walls, thumping the floors. She snuggled closer to Jack, not so much for protection, but for the simple presence of another living person.

Joey dreamed, too. But he didn't dream of flowers. He dreamed of running. He ran because he was being chased.

The dead girl was screaming at him, "Your father's a killer, your father's a killer!" She chased him but when he looked back, she was smiling. Her face didn't show the least sign of meanness. In fact, she looked pretty happy. She laughed as she screamed at him.

He searched the park as he ran, hoping someone else might be here, anyone who could get the dead girl away from him. A grown-up. As soon as the thought formed, he spotted someone. A man stood under a tree at the other end of the park.

I'll never make it, Joey thought. She'll catch me before I get there.

And what would she do, he wondered. He hadn't thought of that. All he knew was that she was chasing him, and when people chased you, you ran. So that's what he did, ran full blast for the man under the tree.

The girl was at Joey's heels, screaming, "Your father's a killer!" But he managed to stay ahead of her. His foot slipped once in wet gra.s.s, but he kept his balance and pressed on, pumping his legs and swinging his arms, wishing for faster shoes, and then finally collapsing in front of the tall man under the tree.

"That girl's after me," Joey panted. "She's chasing me and screaming."

He looked up into the adult face and then back at the girl who had stopped just behind him. The faces were the same, dead and green. Puffed, broken skin. Crazy smiles.

"I've been looking for you Adam," the man said.

"I'm Joey," he replied, hoping this correction would save him.

That's when he woke up. His first inclination was to cry, but he decided then that he'd done enough of that and if he ever wanted to get bigger, he'd have to stop crying, because bigger kids didn't cry. Instead, he lay under his thin blanket, his eyes open, his breath even, but his heart fluttering as he listened to the whispers from upstairs, inviting him to play with them.

Chapter Eight.

The heat came to Angel Hill that Monday. Liz was beginning to think summers here would be wonderful. Nice weather. Neither too hot nor too humid, breezes every now and then, like an extended, warmer spring. Their house in Texas had had central air, so the Kitches had no fans. Liz would have to buy some when Jack came home from work. She went upstairs once that day, she couldn't remember why, but when she came down again, she thanked G.o.d they lived on the first floor. It was darker down there, and cooler. For all its warmth on the bottom floor, the second floor was plain hot. She imagined the third floor was sweltering.

She busied herself the whole morning cleaning, straightening things, and making sure the dirty clothes were actually in the basket, instead of hanging out like limp tongues. Joey spent most of the morning on the floor in front of Cartoon Network. Finally, she was able to give him his lunch and tell him it was naptime.

She'd closed his closet door while she was cleaning. She didn't mention it to him. If he noticed, he might remember whatever had happened yesterday and not want to go to sleep. She had about an hour before the priest should be here, and she wanted Joey plenty gone by then.

She took a chair to the second floor and sat at one of the front windows, going through one of her books while she kept an eye on the front yard, waiting.

He pulled up in a new car, a Cadillac, it looked like. She wondered where priests got such nice cars all the time. She'd never seen one in a Datsun or some ancient piece of c.r.a.p. It was always nice new cars.

He knocked and she shook her head, loosening all thoughts of cars so they fell out, and she went to answer the door.

He was tall. She had to look up to see his face. His head was rectangular with short-cropped hair. He was thin. She thought he looked like a cardboard cutout in need of a display. He smiled and introduced himself and she showed him downstairs, telling him her son was asleep, but they could go into the living room.

They talked for a few minutes, but Liz wished he'd just get on with it. If this didn't work, she'd have to think of something else, and so far none of her books were offering any suggestions. She told him they were new in town, that they were starting over in Angel Hill, and that she wanted to start with having their new home blessed for their family.

"Always a good idea," the priest said.

"Where do we start?" she asked.

"Nothing you need do," he said, "except have pleasant thoughts. I'll start in the kitchen, if you'd like, and just work my way through to the stairs."

"Okay."

He went into the kitchen and set a small case on the counter. Liz hadn't noticed the case at first, then she decided it must have all his stuff. Surely he'd need stuff, wouldn't he? She didn't know. She didn't even know what blessing a house entailed.

She heard him muttering something, but couldn't tell what. She imagined it was a prayer. What else would a priest use to bless a house? He stopped and she thought he was on his way back through. Before he did, she left the room to find something to do. She was curious about the process, but she wasn't sure how he felt about someone watching him work. Instead, she'd go about her business and keep praying it worked.

She went upstairs to check the mail. It hadn't come yet. She stepped out to the end of the porch and looked down the street, searching for the mail truck. It wasn't there. The summer air surrounded her in a coc.o.o.n and she wished for Jack to get home so she could buy some fans. Maybe they could get central air by next summer. She turned back to the house and froze, wondering if anyone across the street could see the man standing in the doorway, staring at her. He was grey, vague, but his eyes were all there and they pierced her, full of hate.

"You can't hurt me," she told him.

He sneered and nodded his head once.

What did that mean? Could he? What could he do? No, Liz thought, the blessing has to work.

He went dim and stepped back into the house. Liz heard the priest mounting the steps and the man turned toward the second floor, then vanished. The priest rounded the landing, looked up, smiled at Liz, and went about his prayer, sprinkling holy water onto the stairs. He climbed to the second floor.

Liz went inside and closed the door behind her. The priest blessed the main room. Liz heard a crack behind her. She turned to see the beveled gla.s.s in the front door had a lengthwise hairline split down one side. She frowned at it.

The priest blessed the second floor bedroom, the room Jack would use for an office. Liz felt a rumbling in her stomach, a burning that threatened to burst through her skin. She put her hand to it, hoping to calm the pressure. She went downstairs, hoping she didn't puke in the hall.

The priest moved to the second floor bathroom. Liz dashed to the toilet and unloaded a flood of toast and oatmeal.

The priest blessed the second floor kitchen. Liz heaved again, but her stomach was empty and all that came up was a thin trickle of stomach acid. She put her head against the rim and wondered what had made her so sick.

Then she saw the face again, the p.i.s.sed off man in the doorway. She knew what he meant now. He could do something. He could do this to her. What else could he do?

She heaved again, so violently she ended up coughing out the rest of it, her lungs empty of breath. She wanted to go tell the priest to stop, that he was finished, so this would end, but another part of her said Let him finish and it will be over for good. No more midnight footsteps, no more thumping, no more dead people in the house.

She grabbed onto the bowl and heaved once more. She coughed out a wad of blood, then suddenly the pressure in her stomach was gone and she felt fine, if exhausted. A layer of sweat covered her like another skin. She flushed the vomit, then got a drink from sink, swishing it in her mouth and spitting it out. She went into the living room and collapsed on the couch.

She heard the priest going to the third floor. Somehow, down four flights of stairs and a hallway, she heard him muttering his prayers. She sat up with her head in her hands, wondering, for the first time, where they came from, these ghosts. Who were they? Why were they here? She'd never wondered that before. That surprised her. Now she wouldn't know. And she was glad. If it ended everything in the house, she'd give up the chance to know forever. Just end it.

She heard crying. Joey was awake.

What's happened now?

Joey lay curled in his bed, tangled in his sheet and sweating. He wasn't just crying, he was bawling, as if he'd just watched his favorite dog get obliterated by a semi. Liz asked what was wrong, but Joey ignored her and kept crying. She sat on the edge of his bed, rubbing his shoulder, his back, and his head.

"Joe, what's wrong?" she asked. Hadn't they done all this already? "Come on, Joe. Tell me what's the matter."

Then she noticed blood on his pillow. She looked at his face and saw his nose was bleeding. "s.h.i.t," she said, and went to the bathroom. She came back with a wad of toilet paper and held it to his nose. But the paper was soon soaked and the blood kept pouring out. She sat him up, still wailing. "Did you hit your nose on something?" He didn't answer, just let go another torrent of howls.

She tilted his head back and held another wad of paper to it, pinching him high on the nose. He squeezed his eyes shut and blood oozed out from between the pressed lids.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Liz said.

The wad at his nose was full again. She left and came back with the entire roll, holding one wad to his nose while another wiped away the blood that had replaced his tears.

What's he done, she wondered. Was he crying so hard that he burst a vessel? What's going on?

Blood trickled out his ear. Drops of red dotted the sheet. Liz looked at him in horror.

She heard footsteps upstairs and knew this was punishment for bringing the priest.

"f.u.c.k you," she said to the ceiling. "He'll be done soon and when he is you'll be gone. You can mess with us, but you can't really hurt us."

She picked up Joey and carried him outside, through the back door. She took him to the far end of the yard and sat cross-legged in the gra.s.s with Joey resting in her lap. He was still crying, still bleeding.

Liz looked back at the house. The man she'd seen on the porch, he was staring down at her from one of the third floor windows. He looked like he was smiling. She stared back at him, her face trying to throw back all the hate she felt, to make him feel it, trying to kill him all over again.

Who was this? Why was he in the house? What the f.u.c.k had happened here before they moved in? She decided she had to find out.

She rocked Joey in her lap. His cries were still wild, his nose, eyes, and ears still trickling blood. Then he coughed. She'd known that was coming. He'd cried himself sick. He leaned up and coughed again, a great, hacking cough, reaching down into his core and bringing up a wad of blood that flew from his mouth, hit the gra.s.s with a splash. She looked up at the window again and the man was gone. But the house itself stared back at her now and she realized, while the evil may be concentrated on the third floor, it had really penetrated every board and pane of gla.s.s, it was in the sheetrock, in the framing, the shingles on the roof.

The house loomed in front of her, daring her to re-enter.

She wondered if the priest had seen anything.

And what was taking so long?

Please hurry, she thought, I don't know if Joey can keep going. Please finish so it will all go away.

Joey hacked up another wad of blood, some of it dribbling down his chin. He was in pain, she could tell.

"Christ." She hugged him tighter. What else could she do? Take him to the hospital? For what, upsetting an already angry ghost? How could they treat that? She had to hold out until the priest was done.

And what if it doesn't stop? What then? How do you tell Jack his son bled out while you sat in the back yard and watched it?

"Please finish," she said again.

He stopped crying, leaned up out of her lap, onto his knees, and retched, a violent surge from his gut that brought a wave of vomit and blood all over the gra.s.s. It steamed and the smell hit Liz like a fist.

She looked at the house again.

Everything looked different.

It was just a house.

The priest was coming out the back door, smiling. Joey was asleep on the gra.s.s, the puddle of vomit inches from his head. She looked at the third floor window, but it was empty.

Was it over? Finally?

She wiped away the blood from Joey's ears and eyes.

The priest came over and said, "Is that your son?"

"Yes."

"Oh, is he okay?"

"He wasn't feeling good. I think the heat was getting to him. Got a nosebleed, then he threw up. I think he's okay now."

"Yeah, the summers in these parts aren't kind."

"I've noticed."