The Third Floor Part 18

"I'm telling you, I haven't been up there all day. You can ask Joey if you don't believe me."

"I never said I didn't believe you, I'm just--"

"Obviously you don't," she said, "if you're standing here arguing with me over whether I was upstairs when I've just told you how many times I haven't been."

Jack set his food on the table, closed his eyes, and took a breath.

"I'm not saying you're lying," he said. "I'm just saying when I got out of the car, I saw a light on up there and then it went out. That's all."

"Well I don't know where it came from," Liz said, "'cause it wasn't me."

"Fine. Then there's some other explanation for it. We'll figure it out later."

He sat on the couch, unwrapped his sandwich and set it on the armrest. Joey came back from the bathroom, climbed into his chair at the kitchen table and Liz sat across from him. She wanted to tell Jack she could explain it easily. There were ghosts in the house, mainly on the third floor. But she could also easily predict his response. He'd dismiss that quicker than if she'd said a million fireflies had invaded the third floor.

After dinner, Joey took his bath while Liz folded laundry. Jack went upstairs. Liz wanted to tell him not to bother, but she knew he wouldn't listen. Jack unable to explain something was Jack on a mission.

He stopped on the second floor and admired everything Liz had done to it. As far as he could tell, this floor was finished. He knew she had more decorating to do, a number of other little things to get to liven up the s.p.a.ce, but overall, he was ready to move their things up here.

Then he went upstairs. He turned on the bathroom light, then propped open the door and headed into the front two rooms where he'd seen the light. The bathroom gave light to one room, but the other was shielded from it in the corner of the house. He walked into the corner room, searching the floor for a flashlight, a desk lamp, a candle, anything. But Liz was right; the room was empty.

Maybe it was the streetlight, he thought. It could have been the streetlight shining on the window and when I moved toward the house, the angle from which I was viewing it changed and I didn't catch the light anymore. I guess that might be it.

Going back toward the center room, he noticed a large crack running down the door to the corner room. He stopped and inspected it, trying to move it into the light, but the door swung the other way and no matter which way he looked or moved, or how he tried to position the door, he couldn't see as clearly as he wanted. But he could see enough to know the wood was split.

"Man, I don't remember that," he mumbled.

He closed the door and headed back downstairs, still not completely convinced it was the streetlight he'd caught reflecting off the gla.s.s.

Chapter Twelve.

The next day, Joey's naptime dream found him on the third floor again. And again he was in the corner room with the other children. The house rumbled around him as the man searched its corners and nooks while Joey hid upstairs, knowing he'd be found in seconds, but unable to make himself leave the room. He looked around at the other children and realized he knew them. Not from his old school in Houston, nor from the park, he didn't know how he knew them, but he did. And it wasn't just in the way you know strange people in dreams, he knew he'd seen them before. But where? The girl, he knew where he'd seen her--she was the one from his dreams about the park--but the others. He'd seen them in his dreams before, but he knew them from somewhere else, too.

There were two doors in the corner room and when the man barged through one, kicking it open and splitting it in two pieces, Joey finally found his legs again and darted out the other one. The girl grabbed his shoulder and Joey tried to jerk away from her, but her grip was too strong. He looked back and saw her thrusting something at him.

"Take it, Adam," she said.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her hands and took off, through the center room, and down the stairs. He glanced down and found she'd given him a rag doll.

Then the man's fingers closed around Joey's shirt and he was yanked off his feet. He dropped the doll and looked up to see the man sneering down at him. His eyes were yellow and bulging. Then Joey woke up.

He lay there, trying not to cry from the nightmare, and wondering why he still had to take naps every day.

The first thing Jack did when he came home that night was head upstairs. He came in the front door and walked quietly up. It wasn't that he didn't believe Liz, but he'd spent the day trying to convince himself he'd probably seen the streetlight and he couldn't do it. Because he didn't believe it really was the streetlight, but that didn't give him any other explanations for the light he'd seen. He didn't know what he thought he might find by sneaking upstairs. Liz wouldn't leave anything up there that might prove him right. Still, he had to check one last time.

He hadn't known what to expect, but he sure as h.e.l.l didn't expect to find the door to the corner room lying broken on the floor. The half that was still attached hung crooked by one hinge. The other half lay on the floor, halfway across the room.

He stood there staring at it, numb from anger.

"Who the f.u.c.k did this?" he whispered. He looked around the room. Granted, they didn't use this floor, and they didn't know if they ever would, so a broken door was no big loss, really. But it was the principle. "You just don't go around breaking doors," he said to the house. "What the f.u.c.k was she thinking?" Why would she even do something like that? And how? Liz was no wuss, but you don't just break a door in half.

It was cracked last night, he reminded himself. Had Liz done that? Had she been trying to break the door for some reason? No, he couldn't convince himself there was any reason in the world to want that. But there was evidence, lying in the middle of the room.

No, he argued back, that wasn't evidence of any kind of motive, that only showed it had been done. But why? He had no choice but to confront her.

He headed back downstairs, lost his traction when he slipped on something lying on the stairs, and hit his tailbone on the edge of a step.

"f.u.c.k!" he grunted.

He got up, rubbed his tailbone, and looked around to find what he'd slipped on.

It was a doll. He didn't remember Joey having any dolls like this. This was a girl's doll.

He grabbed it and headed downstairs, rubbing his tailbone until he rounded the bottom landing.

Liz was in the kitchen rolling pieces of chicken into croissants. Jack tossed the doll onto the counter.

"You left this upstairs."

Liz glanced at it, then went back to the food. "That's not mine."

"I know that. I a.s.sume it's Joey's."

"I don't think so. I've never seen it before."

"Neither have I, but I don't recall having any other kids."

Liz shrugged. Then she asked, "Did you say I left it upstairs?"

Jack took a c.o.ke from the refrigerator. "Uh-huh."

"Where upstairs?"

"Third floor stairs."

Liz put the chicken aside and looked at the doll. She didn't pick it up; she didn't want to touch it. "I've never seen it before."

"Then Joey left it up there."

"Ask him."

Jack got a cookie, bit off half, and said, "I'm going to."

It's not his, Liz thought. He won't know where it came from any more than I do. I wish I could tell you what's going on, Jack. I'm not entirely sure myself anyway.

"But the doll's not what's bothering me the most," he said.

Liz went back to her croissants, asking, "What is?"

"The door that's been broken in two up there."

Liz stopped again and looked at him. "What?"

He nodded. "You can act surprised all you want, but unless there was someone here today you didn't tell me about, the only two people here all day were you and Joe, and I know he didn't do that."

Liz was lost now. What the h.e.l.l was he talking about? Strange dolls? Broken doors?

She folded the last piece of chicken into the last croissant, then turned to her husband and said, as calmly as she could, "Jack I haven't been upstairs all day--." He started to break in, but she held up her hand and he shut his mouth. "I haven't been upstairs all day. If fact I spent most of the day just sitting on the couch. Now, whatever's broken upstairs, or whatever you've found, or whatever whatever, it didn't come from me, and it didn't come from Joey." She could tell he wanted to say something, but she pressed on. "You're gone most of the time and I can tell you, being here, there's a ton of weird s.h.i.t that goes on here, but until now I haven't bothered even trying to tell you about it because I know how you are. But I'm telling you now, whatever is up there, it isn't from either Joey or me. h.e.l.l, maybe the storm broke it. It broke the window, didn't it? Which, by the way, is still a nice sheet of plastic now."

"They'll be here Friday. The storm didn't break the door," Jack said. His voice came out calm, but his tone said, You're a moron. "I was up there last night. The door wasn't broken, but it was cracked. Now it's broken."

Joey came in then and asked, "Are we gonna eat sometime? I'm starving. It feels like I haven't eaten in thirty years."

"It'll be done in a little bit," Liz said. She and Jack exchanged a look they both knew meant, This is over for now, but we'll pick it up here later.

For the second night, they ate mostly in silence, broken by Joey's attempts to get someone talking. After all, he was six and could rarely stand a silent room.

"Dad, we went to the park yesterday and, um, I climbed to the top of the tornado slide and I looked over the top. I'm tall enough now to see over the top. And I saw Liz on the ground and I waved to her, but she didn't see me."

"That must have been when that annoying woman was bugging me," she said.

"What woman?" Jack asked.

Liz had just begun her recount of the smiling woman at the park when the phone rang. Liz cut off her words and Jack leaned back in his chair, tipped the phone from its cradle with his fingertips, caught it, and answered. "h.e.l.lo?"

Liz could hear the coa.r.s.e voice coming through, even across the table. Jack squinted against the noise, held the phone away from his head, then hung it up and set it aside on the table.

She almost asked who it was, but Liz remembered the screaming girl in the phone yesterday asking, "Why did my daddy kill me?"

"We've got to get caller ID or something," Jack said. "Then again, I'm sure whoever that is, they're calling anonymous anyway."

Something like that, Liz thought.

Jack went back to eating as if nothing had happened.

You're so d.a.m.ned oblivious, Liz thought. She decided then to tell Jack everything she'd seen and heard in the house. He may not believe her, probably wouldn't, in fact. But she would tell him anyway. And then, with it in mind, at least, maybe he'd start to realize, too, all the spooky s.h.i.t going on here.

"Maybe we should get our number changed," he was saying, "but we just moved here, it's too soon for juvenile c.r.a.p like this already. Maybe if we ignore it, it'll all go away."

I doubt this is gonna go away on its own, she thought.

He mumbled something else about stupid kids with too much time on their hands, but Liz was already ignoring him, trying to decide how best to go about telling him about the house.

Joey said he was full, could he have a cookie?

"No," Liz said. "Finish your supper, and, if you eat all of it, you can have ice cream later."

"But I'm full."

"Then you don't need any cookies," Jack said.

Joey slumped into his chair, but reluctantly shoved a piece of chicken into his mouth.

Tonight, Liz decided, she'd tell him tonight after Joey went to bed.

When Liz went to tuck in Joey, Jack went upstairs to get the broken chunk of door. You can't argue with solid proof, and like it or not, Jack had proof someone had broken it. Let's see her say no one was up here now, he thought.

He banged the end on the doorframe as he carried it out of the room and the sudden noise in the stillness made him jump.

A large stained-gla.s.s window hung over the landing and from the top of the flight, Jack could see the second floor reflected in it. But for a second, he thought he saw a body. Then he remembered Charley's story about the guy hanging himself. He stopped at the top and looked into the window again, but the image, the hallucination, whatever it had been was gone.

Then he leaned the door against the top rail and went back into the corner room.

He stood in the middle and listened, hearing nothing, but there was something there, just below the surface of what he could pick up. He could almost feel it. He looked around the room, not seeing much in the dark, but the streetlight outside gave enough light to pick out the outline of the walls. He imagined the bodies of the man's four children lined up against the wall like Charley said. For a second, he thought he saw them sitting there, but he blinked and they were gone.

Man, four kids. That must have been a h.e.l.l of a load to take care of. No wonder the guy snapped.

He shook his head. What am I thinking? That's no reason to kill them. Guy was a nut.

"There's nothing here now," he said to himself. He took a last look around, then turned and left. He grabbed the chunk of door and carried to downstairs, thinking, There's a draft on those stairs. I'll have to get that taken care of, too. This house may turn out to be more trouble than it's worth in the end.

He dragged the door into the living room where Liz sat with the television gray and silent, and the light shone bright on her.

"Now, you're gonna tell me no one in the world did this, then?"

"Jack, put the door down," she said. "I'll tell you who did it. At least I'll tell you as well as I can."

"That's right," he said. The door-half went on the floor again and Jack sat on the couch across from her.

"It wasn't me. And you're right, Joey didn't do it either. There's someone else in the house. Actually, I think there's a few of them, but there's one in particular I worry about."

Jack held up a hand. "Now you're getting entirely off the subject, because there's no one in this house except the three of us. We've been over this. The door is broken and you did it."

Liz flared at his accusation.

She rolled her eyes, shook her head, and got up. She was halfway to the doorway when Jack said, "Okay, for the sake of argument, let's say you're right. Who do you think did this?" He held out his hand toward the plank against the wall, as if Liz needed help figuring out what he meant.

She stopped and turned around, staring at him, daring him to interrupt her again. He kept his silence, but raised his eyebrows, asking Well?

"Hang on," she said, and disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with a cup of hot tea, blew into it, and took a small sip.

She set the cup on the table next to the chair, but she didn't sit. She glanced at Jack who was still standing in the middle of the room, waiting.