Dead Echo

  Chapter 21: A Shot at Redemption

  Miles Placard looked at the clock on the nightstand, not that surprised to see it was almost 4:30 in the morning. He wouldn’t be going to work today. He was just going to lay awake and stare at the ceiling, ticking off the minutes until he could safely call Shelly, the personnel director, and let her know he was sick. Jesus Christ, was he. In fact he’d never felt worse (almost as bad as when he’d found Debbie…but still…). He rolled over to his side and flicked the switch on the lamp. He only kept a twenty-watt bulb in here but the gossy, threaded light it sent into the room helped a little. A very little.

  He’d gotten home last night in time to catch the 6 O’Clock News on Channel 9. The report had been sketchy, but in its brevity had said enough. He’d listened like someone standing outside a room at first, unsure whether or not to enter, but it hadn’t mattered, he hadn’t been gone from the neighborhood that long. He recalled its details, staring there at the ceiling: the family of four found dead. No signs of foul play. A dogcatcher (the one who’d found them) crazy and railing from his gurney. Miles knew the street, thought he vaguely remembered seeing the man who’d lived there a time or two. Probably because Miles had gone through a phase about a year ago (right after Debbie’s death) when he walked every night. Never out of the neighborhood, just circling, always circling. He walked to tire himself out, in the hope that when he went back into that dark, lonely hole of his house he’d be able to sleep. Undisturbed. But that, however, hadn’t happened very often. No, my friend, it hadn’t. That was indeed the truth. The shuffling footsteps, the laughter from the attic, things scratching at this or that window and rummaging through the backs of closets. All that had been a constant, only growing worse after Debbie died. Hell, several times he thought he’d caught a glimpse of her, just around a corner, in the depths of a mirror. He remembered her expression then, terrible, wide-eyed, terrified. He knew. He’d felt himself start to spiral down into that limitless hole the dogcatcher had obviously found unawares. He’d felt his feet slip just on its verge while his nails dug furrows in the vision to keep him out.

  Now he could feel the pull again.

  The pull he thought he’d escaped when the house was sold, but he should have known. Evil like that would not let him go, not until it’d sucked the marrow from his bones. He sat up in bed and stared at the wall. You fucking coward, he thought. You knew how dangerous that fucking house was and you sold it anyway. What if a family lives there? What if it’s kids, you selfish, cowardly prick? He shook his head, tried to throw off the terrible accusation. Tried to convince himself there was nothing else he could have done. He knew he couldn’t have stayed, not after Debbie…. No, that had not been an option. I had to sell it, he told himself. No, no, that was exactly inaccurate. You should have burned the motherfucker down to the foundation, taken a fucking bulldozer to that and scraped the whole place clean. He shook his head again. Uh uh, now that was ridiculous. He’d never committed a crime in his life, never anything more than an occasional speeding ticket. Nothing he would have ever had to worry about going to prison for.

  So where the hell are you now? the voice asked.

  “I had to sell it,” he said very plainly, as if seated at an interrogation table right this minute, laying out his alibi. “Either sell it or go crazy. And I didn’t want to do that.” So here he was, 4: 38 in the morning, planning on skipping work because the guilt of selling a haunted house had him. Talk about crazy. He actually laughed then, a high-pitched humorless thing. The laugh of a doomed man on the way to the gallows, taking the secret of where the gold was buried to his grave. Only thing was, there was no gold.

  And the news last night hadn’t been the only time either. No, even here, these many miles away, he’d felt the tendrilled fingers of his past pinching at his coattails, whispering from the eaves at night. He hadn’t seen anything yet (and he felt the key word here was ‘yet’), but he was old enough now to know that was subject to change.

  Things could just go on getting worse, and worse, and worse….

  He thought of the metal box he’d left in the attic. All those nasty little secrets. Of course the new owner would have found it by now, of that there was no doubt. All the unexplained nasties of the neighborhood, all printed and put away in black and white. Not that it would make a hill-of-beans difference, he was afraid. The new people (person?) would only wonder what kind of fucking kook used to live there until it was too late and the house, hell, the whole fucking neighborhood began to work them down. Too late, too late. How many would be dead by then?

  And then, unbidden: You set those people up to die and you know it.

  He shook his head again, much more violently this time. No, that was absolutely incorrect. He had just sold it and left. Simple and direct, to the point. Nobody before him had left anything to warn him, and so what if they had? Would he have simply up and sold the house? Hell no. Houses weren’t something you bought and sold frivolously unless you were rich beyond description, or at least that’s as far as he was concerned. And no one in that neighborhood qualified. If they did they wouldn’t live there in the first place.

  Okay, so what? Now that you’ve had all this time to think things through, what are you going to do about it? Keep skipping work, claiming you’ve got the flu? How long is that going to hold out?

  He looked down and noticed he was wringing his hands. He forced himself to stop, placed them flat on the blanket against his legs. He looked to his right and saw the remote. He’d probably still be able to catch a recap of what happened (Channel 9 ran their latest news programs back-to-back all night long), but he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to go to sleep, just to lie back in his bed and sleep dreamlessly. The sleep of the dead.

  The idea sent a chill up his spine. He threw back the covers and got out of bed, moved down the hall to the kitchen. He turned on the light in the doorway and made his way to the refrigerator. Opened it and took out the gallon of orange juice that had become a half-gallon. Drank it straight out of the bottle. A little spilled down his chin and he wiped it off with the back of his hand. He put it back and closed the refrigerator. No, he couldn’t run from this thing. He could try to close his eyes and pretend nothing ever really happened but that would stop nothing. Some night soon he’d hear the scratching at his window screen, he’d see a shadow at the back of his closet. He glanced up at the clock above the pantry. Almost five. Still several hours before he’d be able to call work and tell them he wasn’t coming in.

  And in the meantime, what?

  That was the thing; that was the crux of the matter. What was he going to do about it?

  “Nothing,” he whispered, but as soon as the word appeared he knew it a lie. He’d run from something that had taken his wife. Simply tucked his tail on his two hundred and five pound, six foot one frame, and run. Even against her protests, he’d made them stay and it had cost her her life. He could not forget that, would not forget it. Whatever there was to do, he’d have to be the one to do it. Case closed.

  He left the kitchen and walked back to the bedroom, climbed back into bed and pulled the blanket up to his chest. And it came to him. If he was to seek any redemption whatsoever, regardless of the reason or motivation, it would have to come from going and talking to whoever lived there. Of course, he had no hope the intervention would come to anything, but the simple fact of doing so laid a clear path in his mind. He looked across the room, above the bureau where the picture of Debbie hung. It was his favorite, the two of them together at a fair some time in the Early Days, the Ferris wheel slightly blurred in the background. Jimmy Sams had taken it less than a year after they’d been married, back in the prehistoric times when Miles had known no fear of the future. He looked hard at those smiling lost faces, remembering with a clarity that threatened to suffocate him. Her brilliant smile, the laugh lines around her eyes, that spark of love and life she had breathed like air. All gone now. And partly, he had to figure, because he’d been unwilling to act. On
ce was a mistake, twice would be an unpardonable sin.

  He knew that now, had felt it waiting at the core of his being since the ink was spilled on the sale documents. And with that his resolve set; all he had to do was move from passive to active. He’d go to the house. Today. Odds were no one would be there (it was a working-class neighborhood) but that didn’t really matter in the grand course. He’d leave a message. He’d pin the motherfucker to the front fucking door and then he’d wait again. At least this way there was the chance no one would call, that his note would be thought nothing more than the raving of a mad man. That part didn’t matter. He was prepared for questions from the police. He’d committed no crime by selling the house and was pretty sure there was nothing legally binding in his direction, especially with the hilarity of hauntings and its like. If they laughed or cursed him, that was all right; he would just relay a message and whomever would have to take it from there. Just as he had.

  Just as he still did.

  He nodded sadly in the quietude of his room. Even enveloped in the safety of thinking that it would perhaps rid him completely of the whole mess, there was an inner wail that refused to die away. But it was a finality he was now prepared to face. He threw the covers away and stood up, flexed his shoulders and looked at the wall. His face drew into granite, his teeth hard in his jaw. And with that he walked into the bathroom and turned on the water for a shower.

  This day, he could feel in his bones, would be a doozy. He had no idea how right he was, or how horribly bad it was not to be completely aware of such things.