Miller was explaining what the various pieces of equipment were for, and I strained to pay attention but couldn’t focus on anything except the fact that we were heading back to the house. There were infrared digital cameras and motion detectors and electromagnetic field meters (EMFs as the crew referred to them); there was something called a laser thermometer as well as an audio recorder that could be fed into a frequency analyzer and read off a laptop. I tried to steady myself by asking questions—but this was just a way to pretend that we weren’t rolling toward a situation the writer had already witnessed and was calling, with chilling ambiguity, complicated. I heard samples of Miller’s dialogue skipping through my mind. Vaguely gesturing at something, I asked, “What does that do?”
“An EMF,” I heard. “It filters out normal electromagnetic frequencies.”
“What do you mean?” I inquired dreamily.
“Like from a computer or a TV or a phone or even a human body—all of which can give a false reading.” Miller’s voice had a rubbery quality and it was bouncing around inside the van, moving away from me, echoing.
“And what’s that?” I found myself pointing at a large, bulky machine that resembled an oversized air-conditioning unit.
“A galvanometer. It registers unexplained energy flow.”
Of course. Of course that’s what it is. You knew that, Bret.
I was now hunched over and about to lose it again as the van was gliding around the corner of Bedford and onto Elsinore.
The house sat innocently in daylight, but even in daylight the house seemed menacing.
I was scowling with fear because I couldn’t help studying it as the van pulled into the driveway.
“Here goes,” one of the guys said. They both eagerly exited the van. They had been filled in on the various particulars of “the situation” and they were ready to party. They moved to the doors at the back of the van and started unloading equipment with frat-boy expectancy.
I wasn’t aware I had left the van and was floating toward the house until I was standing so close to it that I could have touched the thing.
The front of the house was now the same color as the side of the house.
The writer forced me to notice this since I was blind.
Look, the writer said. Touch it.
The wood had turned to stucco.
Because of this, I couldn’t go back into the house.
I walked away.
Miller followed me out into the field behind the house, and then I was pacing, and then I was standing still again. I couldn’t control my breathing. My mouth was dry and chalky from chewing the Klonopin tablets.
“You’ll be protected,” Miller promised.
“This was not a case of possession,” he assured me.
“You need to be in the house” was his gentle order.
“Why?” I pleaded. “Why?”
“Because you are its focus. Because we need to find out what the source of the haunting is.”
They needed to invoke the spirits.
And you’re being used as bait. Do you get it now, Bret?
I didn’t even crave a drink at this point—I would have thrown up if I swallowed alcohol.
Pass that sage advice along: Want to stay sober? Move into a haunted place.
Miller impatiently redirected me to the house, because there was nowhere I would be safe if this was not dealt with.
(The writer prodded me along with a reminder of the ashy handprint on the pillow.)
My response: “If there’s anything inside the house, I don’t think I can take it.”
I hesitated then shuffled quickly toward the front door.
I slipped the key into the lock.
I opened the front door.
I stepped into the foyer.
The house was silent.
Miller stood beside me.
“Where have the main occurrences taken place?” I was asked.
The three men were waiting for me to guide them to the hallway of flickering lights, the master bedroom that had been invaded, the living room that was now the living room of Valley Vista—just a brief intake of breath as I glimpsed the dark green shag that was still growing, and then I had to turn away.
Miller was studying the office door, unhinged, gnawed on.
“Yeah,” I said. “It happened.”
While Dale and Sam began setting up equipment throughout the house, I showed Miller the video attachment I had received.
I couldn’t look at it so I wandered. Upstairs I peered into Robby’s and Sarah’s rooms and then (delicately—I did not go in) the master bedroom.
The unmade beds in all three rooms relieved me.
There was no sign of the Terby anywhere, but that didn’t mean anything.
Back in my office the video was ending.
My father was staring out at us.
“Robby . . . Robby . . .”
Miller turned to me wordlessly, unimpressed.
“All electrical appliances need to be unplugged” was all he said.
“Why don’t we just turn off the fuse box?” I asked.
“We’ll do that as well.”
The equipment would be plugged into the generator that had been dragged into the foyer and was sitting at the bottom of the staircase.
While we began the process of unplugging anything connected to a power outlet, everyone began feeling it.
(I pretended not to.)
There was a new pressure in the house.
It was weighing down on us.
I tried to ignore the moment our ears started popping.
But when Sam and Dale laughed I had to accept it.
Once everything was disconnected, Sam and Dale began plugging various cords into the generator.
The infrared video cameras and sound-activated microcassettes were mounted on tripods.
Sam would oversee the one placed in the upstairs hallway.
Dale would oversee the one placed in the master bedroom.
And Miller would oversee the one placed in the living room with the widest field of vision, including the foyer and the staircase.
Each of them held an electromagnetic field meter—an EMF.
All the curtains and blinds in the house were drawn shut—I did not ask why—and the interior of the house darkened considerably, but with enough light still scratching through from outside.
Once Sam and Dale were in position upstairs, Miller asked me to turn off the fuse box.
It was located in the hallway that led to the garage.
I opened it.
I breathed in as I shut off the power.
Walking quickly back to Miller’s side, I realized that this was the quietest the house had ever been.
During this thought all three EMF meters started beeping—instantly, in unison.
According to the flashing red digital numbers I saw a reading jump from 0 to 100 in what seemed like less than a second.
Immediately the cameras sensed something and started whirring, moving in a continuous circular motion atop the tripods.
“We have liftoff,” I heard one of the guys whoop from upstairs.
The beeping suddenly became more insistent.
The cameras kept flashing as they turned.
The locks on the French windows in the living room made a cracking sound.
Another cracking sound and the windows swung outward, causing the green curtains to start billowing even though it was a cold, still November afternoon.
But then they stopped billowing.
The curtains weren’t there last night, the writer said. Don’t you recognize them? the writer asked. Think back.
Air gusted over us, and the faint sound of something being pounded echoed throughout the house.
The pounding continued.
It was moving through the walls and then into the ceiling above us.
The pounding was competing with the sounds from the EMFs but the pounding soon overtook it.
I shut my eyes, b
ut the writer told me that the pounding culminated when a huge puncture appeared in the wall above the couch in the living room.
(Later, the writer told me that I had screamed while standing perfectly still.)
And then: silence.
The EMF monitors stopped beeping.
“Hoo-ah!” This from one of the guys upstairs.
The other whooped gleefully again.
They had been on this ride before.
Miller and I were breathing hard.
I didn’t care if I appeared afraid.
“I’m sensing a male presence,” I heard Miller murmur, scanning the room.
“The lights are flickering, Bob,” Sam called down from the upstairs hallway.
From where Miller and I stood we looked up and could see the flickering lights of the sconces reflected in the massive window near the top of the stairs.
It seemed as if something knew we had noticed this and the flickering stopped abruptly.
Miller was now standing in front of the freshly punctured wall.
He stared at it, humbly.
“An angry man . . . someone very lost and angry . . .”
I was so afraid I could not feel myself. I was just a voice asking: “What does that mean? What’s going on? What does it want? Why is it stopping?”
Miller scanned the ceiling with his EMF.
“Why did it stop?” I kept asking.
Miller answered quietly.
“Because it knows we’re here.”
This was part of his performance. He was trying to project self-assurance, confidence, a sense of command, but there was one lucid fraction within me peering through the fear that knew whatever resided in the house was going to defeat us all in the end.
(I flashed on: You resided in this house, Bret.)
“Because it knows we’re here,” Miller murmured again.
Miller turned to me.
“Because it’s curious.”
We waited for what felt like eternity.
The house seemed to grow darker as time passed.
Finally, Miller called up. “Dale—anything?”
“It’s quiet now,” Dale called back down.
“Sam—anything?”
Sam’s answer was interrupted when the EMFs resumed beeping again.
This was followed by the cameras whirring.
And then a sound announced itself that unnerved me more than the pounding or the noise emanating from the meters.
A voice was singing.
Music began playing throughout the house.
A song from the past, flowing from an eight track on the long drive up the California coastline to a place called Pajaro Dunes.
. . . memories light the corners of my mind . . .
“Did we unplug the stereo?” I asked, wheeling around in the semidarkness.
. . . misty water color memories . . .
“Yes, we did, Mr. Ellis.” This was Miller, holding his EMF as if it was guiding him toward something.
. . . of the way we were . . .
The living room instantaneously became hot. It was a greenhouse, and the smell of the Pacific slowly traced itself in the muggy air.
. . . scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind . . .
Suddenly, from upstairs: “There’s something here,” Sam called. “It just materialized.” Pause. “Bob, did you hear me?”
. . . smiles we gave to one another . . .
“What is it?” Miller called up.
Sam’s voice, less enthusiastic: “It’s, um . . . it’s a human form . . . skeletal . . . it just exited the little girl’s room . . .”
Actually, the writer informed me, Sam was wrong. It came from Robby’s room, since Robby is, in fact, the focal point of the haunting.
Not you, Bret.
Did you grasp that yet?
Not everything’s about you, even though you would like to think so.
From Dale: “I see it too, Bob.”
“What’s its location now?” Miller called up.
. . . the way we were . . .
“It’s moving toward the staircase . . . it’s gonna head downstairs . . .”
Their excited cries were suddenly replaced by what sounded like a choked awe.
“Holy Christ,” one of them shouted. “What the fuck is it?”
“Bob.” This was Sam, I think. “Bob, it’s coming down the stairs.”
The song stopped midlyric.
Miller and I were facing the grand staircase that flowed into the foyer and the adjacent living room.
There were clicking noises.
(I am not going to defend what I’m about to describe. I am not going to try to make you believe anything. You can choose to believe me, or you can turn away. The same goes for another incident that occurs later on.)
The only reason I witnessed this was because it happened so quickly, and the only reason I did not immediately turn away was because it seemed fake, like something I had seen in a movie—a prank to scare the children. The living room might as well have been a screen and the house a theater.
It was lurching down the staircase, pausing on various steps.
It was tall and had a vaguely human form, and though it was skeletal it had eyes.
Rapidly my father’s face was illuminated in the skull.
And then another face replaced it.
Clayton’s.
I was stunned into rigidity.
My panting could not be heard above the meters or the cameras.
The skeleton-thing was now standing at the bottom of the staircase.
It was making the clicking noises with its teeth.
Within the skull were eyeballs.
Suddenly, it launched itself toward us.
Miller and I quickly backed away and when we did, the thing stopped.
It began raising its arms, extending them upward.
The arms were so long that finger bones scraped the ceiling.
I was moaning.
What were we waiting for? I didn’t understand what we were waiting for it to do.
My father’s face flashed on again, followed by Clayton’s.
As the faces rapidly interchanged, sharing the skull, the resemblance between the two men could not be questioned.
It was the face of a father being replaced by the face of a son.
It kept clicking its teeth, as if chewing something invisible.
Its fingers started trailing across the ceiling as it moved toward us.
When it started lowering its arms, both Miller and I noticed something.
It was carrying a scalpel.
As it lunged toward us I braced myself, my eyes locked open.
“I hear you,” I whispered. “I hear you.”
And then the lights in the house flickered for a moment.
When the house was suddenly reborn with light the thing stopped and tilted its head before swirling into a cyclone of ash.
Sam and Dale watched this from the top of the stairs.
The moment the house burst into light they raced toward us.
Miller was asking me, “Did you turn off the fuse box?”
“Yes, yes.”
Miller breathed in. “There are two spirits at work here—”
At the moment Miller said this, the door to my office—visible from where we now stood—flew off its hinges with such force that it sailed across the room and dented a wall.
(I did not see this because I was staring at the ash that had sprayed across the generator. The writer described it to me later on the plane.)
The ceiling above us suddenly cracked open in a long, jagged strip, dusting our hair with plaster.
(I don’t remember seeing this but the writer insisted I had. The writer said, You were gaping.)
Paint began to peel and curl in waves off the walls.
No one knew where to look.
And as I watched this in a dream, I saw that underneath the paint was the green-striped wallpaper that had covered the wall
s of the house in Sherman Oaks.
When I whispered to myself the words “I hear you” the house was again plunged into darkness.
Outside, I stood on the lawn, dazed, muttering to myself.
Outside, Dale and Sam were pacing the sidewalk excitedly, talking into cell phones, recounting what they had seen to the rest of Miller’s staff.
Outside, Miller tried to explain a situation to me.
It involved a ghost who wanted to tell me something.
It involved a demon who did not want this information imparted to me.
There were actually two forces opposing each other within the house.
It was fairly simple. Yet what Miller defined as “simple” did not apply to anything in my life.
But I didn’t believe in my life anymore, so I was forced to accept this as if it was standard.
Outside, on the lawn, Miller was chain-smoking.
Miller tried explaining things but you wouldn’t listen.
You just said, “Get rid of it.”
You were standing in one place.
You weren’t aware of anything.
You didn’t admit that the words you’d whispered made the thing dissolve into ash.
You were thinking that you would come back later in the afternoon.
You were thinking of burning the house down.
“The house will need to be fumigated,” Miller was saying.
It would need to be fumigated because the spirits could enter any living thing in the house—and this included any animal or insect life—in order to continue their existence.
After the fumigation it would take twenty-four hours to set up the equipment required to cleanse the house. The entire process should take less than two days.
But what was happening after the fumigation? Had I missed something? Did any of us still exist? What world had I moved to? What was occupying my mind?