1Under the Master Bedroom
The house had been on the market for a year. The woman, Carolyn, who had owned it, died in her bed. I offered a substantially lower price and to my surprise it was accepted. Carolyn had been the second wife of George who built the house for his first wife, Eleanor, while never experiencing the joys or trials and tribulations of having children. When Eleanor disappeared without a trace popular speculation was that she had simply run off. Her desertion apparently did not devastate George for he immediately married Carolyn, and the house resumed entertaining once again in the same style as it had with Eleanor, but now had gained a huge outdoor swimming pool that apparently caused the demise of George—who was found one day tranquilly floating face down at the shallow end. It was surmised he had been skimming the pool with a long handled net when he slipped, and as he fell, struck his head on the concrete edge of the pool, and drowned.
Soon after his death, Carolyn claimed to have heard unusual noises throughout the house—from within the walls and from down below. Even the few steps from the foyer to the master bedroom creaked and groaned as though being trod on—with no one there. Windows and doors rattled as though an attempt was being made to gain entry. Fear-stricken, she enlisted the aid of her nephew to have the entire house wired with an alarm system–all fifty-four windows and six exterior doors were integrated into a cob web of wires terminating in a security control panel sequestered in a clothes closet. The panel, in turn, connected to the police station and two outdoor sirens, all triggered when she pressed one of the many emergency buttons located throughout the house. Which, we were told by town people and police, she frequently did in a frightful state all days of the week at any hour. She also asked her nephew to get her a pistol, but he convinced her that the only real defense was a sawed off shotgun since it had greater stopping power and thereby less likely for a wounded assailant to take it away and use it on her. Consequently, she did not get a firearm or any other protective means, but relied on the automated alarm system, sirens, and daily visitations by her nephew and his wife for personal care, meals, and medication.
Her hallucinations were further aroused by a local historian who told her the house was built on an Indian burial ground. She then professed to hearing ghost-like Indians signaling to one another outside the bedroom windows at night, which her nephew attributed to horned owls hooting back and forth as they hunted for rodents. But what about the shrieking she also heard outside her window at all hours of the day or night, she asked him. He told her it was made by the branches of two adjacent trees rubbing together, one planted by her, the other by Eleanor, each in conflict with the other—wailing in the process. None of his explanations suited her, but she would not leave. She was a stubborn person, who would die in her own bed no matter the Hell of it. And so she did: found by her niece-in-law, dead, bug-eyed, frothing at the mouth.
Before Lora and I moved in I had all the drafty windows replaced, which resulted in disemboweling the alarm system. Instead, we depended for security on our dog, part wolf, part German Shepard, with the wolf strain predominating to where no one in their right mind would come close to the property even though the dog was constrained in a fenced yard from which it would leer through any one of the three gates, snarling and barking. At night it would howl so to cause chills as far away as at houses on the farther side of the marsh.
Shortly after we moved in the paint on the ceiling of the master bedroom began to flake and fall. It was the only room in the house where it happened—it was the room in which Carolyn died, and where Lora and I slept. I scraped and painted, but it happened again. I had a professional painter in, but it wasn’t long before it started all over again until the ceiling was down to bare plaster; with no paint left to fall off . Then, slight cracks began to appear—not significant enough to indicate the ceiling might fall on us—as like a fleeting network running hither and thither creating an interesting pattern; actually captivating me as I lay in bed on bright mornings looking up, enthralled by a painting as might be displayed in art galleries.
When Lora mentioned the phenomenon to Wanda, a friend of hers—who thought herself a psychic—I relented to allow Wanda to stay in the house while we went away for a week. Wanda intended to sleep in our bed to experience whatever there was to experience. On the morning of the second day she called us saying she wouldn’t stay in the house any longer, but would come in daily to feed the dog. Of course, we immediately returned to get a full accounting of what had unnerved her.
She told us she had a dream while asleep in our bed in which a woman’s voice told her she did not belong there; it was not her house; it was not her bed; it was not her room. Then the ceiling came down in the dream and suffocated her. She awoke sweating and shaking. She also claimed to have heard scratching under the floor. I told her it had to be mice. I had previously heard them in the wall and had thrown rat killer packets into the crawl space, and although the bags were gnawed and the contents gone, I hadn’t found any dead mice, presuming they went off in need of water and died. I figured Wanda had been hallucinating in her characteristic fashion during which she drove herself into mind boggling states—imagining the craziest things in her fervor to believe she was psychic and could communicate with the dead.
Lora felt the same as I did and so we slept that night in the master bedroom without any qualms. But I did notice on the following morning, new cracks in the ceiling, as well as paint beginning to peal from the ceiling of the adjoining walk-in closest.
I decided to go into the crawlspace with a flashlight. Crawling about on hands and knees, at places on my stomach, I found it to be a rather intricate arrangement of chambers with cinder block walls. The surface of the ground was even everywhere except under the master bedroom where there was a slight mound having a depression next to it. Perhaps someone was buried there! But on closer scrutiny I came away convinced the depression and mound were made when the sewer line was redirected from going to the septic tank behind the house to the city sewage line in the street. Still and all, it gave me a start. When I told Lora, she was sure that Wanda might be right about a woman being buried under the master bedroom—letting us know her presence by way of the flaking and cracking ceiling. But why couldn’t we hear her as Wanda said she had, I asked Lora; which triggered her to invite Wanda back onto the scene. Whereon Wanda recommended we hold a séance in the master bedroom. But it turned out not to be a seance; but instead, a Ouija board shared by the three of us. I played along fairly without trying to manipulate the heart shaped piece of wood upon which we placed our fingers. One time it spelled out the name ‘George,’ another time ‘Louis,’ and finally, ‘murder’. I had watched Wanda closely while this was happening, suspecting she was maneuvering the heart shaped thing to where she wanted it to go, but saw, that with the light touch she had on it, she would not have been able to force it to go as she wanted it to.
So what did it prove? Nothing, as far as I was concerned. And what could I do about it?— Again. Nothing. Besides, I didn’t care one way or the other. Why ask for trouble, although the ceiling was disintegrating and the clanging and creaking had become more noticeable throughout the house. It was an old house. It had the right to express itself in senility. And I enjoyed the view and the many places where I could sit and read and have a few drinks with Lora when she came home from work.
And so it went for about another month, when we got word that Wanda had died of a heart attack while doing a psychic reading. Wanda’s death unnerved Lora to where she became convinced there was a dead woman buried under our bedroom who had caused the death of Wanda. Dig, she insisted. Dig under the bedroom. I told her I was not one of the seven dwarfs who might be able to dig in such cramped quarters. Besides, where would I put the dirt? And if I found bones, what then? Our house would become a curiosity shop, no longer a quiet retrieve. The police would dig up the property looking for more bones. Besides, didn’t the first wife, Eleanor, have a suitor she was supposed to have run off with? No! In no way was I doing a
ny digging. But I was not left any peace as Lora continued to pester me, until one day she thrust a shovel at me. I blew my stack and struck her across her head with it—practically taking off the top of her skull.
I should have been grief stricken; but instead, was relieved. I could get along without her. In fact, I was tired of our quarreling. But I then had her body on my hands. What to do with it? The answer was obvious: bury her under the bedroom. I dragged her into the crawlspace and rolled her into the inviting open depression, sprinkled quick lime on her to keep her from smelling and reeking up the house as decomposing corpses are prone to do, and covered her with dirt from the mound—it was made to order. If there were then two or three bodies under the crawl space they could keep one another company, and be less inclined to destroy the master bedroom ceiling.
Lora had no relatives as far as I knew. Better still, the gossips in town were quick to tell the police she had been frequently seen in a parked car on her lunch breaks from her secretarial job with a stranger. I had no idea! Didn’t even