Night Shadows Page 16

  I didn’t believe it at first, but I was convinced to try it one night.

  I live in a house that was built in 1908. It’s a California Craftsman bungalow that has been my home for the past year. Shortly after I moved in, I noticed that the house seemed to have a life of its own. At first, I thought it was charming; the squeaking floors and the popping and creaking noises made me feel as if I were part of its history.

  Things were fairly normal for the first eleven-plus months. And then I began dating Nance Crawford. She was a medical equipment salesman and had just moved into town. We met at a grocery store, of all places. We both liked Camembert cheese. She always came over to my place since hers was in a bad part of town and she said she was in constant battle with cockroaches.

  Since she was new, she didn’t have any friends, but integrated easily into my circle.

  I remember that it was the night after Nance and I met when I was lying in bed alone, just about to fall asleep, and my bedroom door started to open. The windows were all closed, so I knew it wasn’t an errant breeze. I watched it slowly opening, creaking slightly as if announcing its intent. It finally stopped, making a tapping sound as it touched the wall. I lay there staring at it, wondering how that could have opened. Ten seconds later, the door closed and latched.

  I sat up, stunned that whatever momentum that opened the door had somehow reversed itself.

  I’m no scholar in physics, but I don’t think that’s supposed to happen.

  The next day, I told some coworkers about it and one of them was convinced I had a ghost in the house.

  I laughed it off but he shook his head and said, “Just wait. More things will happen.”

  And more things did happen.

  In that week, I saw a shadowy figure walk the length of my hallway and watched every door open and close on its own at least once. Finally, I tried this EVP stuff.

  I bought a digital recorder and, like my coworker had instructed me to, I asked questions, leaving silence in between in case there were answers. I asked a lot of questions and heard nothing but static. Then, as if my ears had grown accustomed to the background noise, I heard something. I had just asked, “How are you?” and played it back. There was a faint voice but I couldn’t make out what it said. Excited, I replayed it over and over. On the fifth or sixth time, the word became clear. “Other.”

  I was surprised and a little scared. Was this a ghost? Was it standing right next to me or behind me? And what did other mean? Over the next week, when I wasn’t out with Nance, I was using the recorder. I’d gotten a number of responses, all being of few words in length: the answer “I am with you” or “I am here” when I asked who was opening doors, and, after I greeted my paranormal entity by saying, “nice night we’re having,” getting the response, “cold.”

  Things were going really well for Nance and me. In our second week of dating, she was over at my house quite a bit. She didn’t have to work that much because she had already met her sales quota. And the night we first had sex was amazing…up to a point.

  It wasn’t Nance, really. Things were going great up until the middle of the final act. That is, she was between my legs and doing all the right things, but all of a sudden, I heard a loud thump and she raised her head, yelling, “Fuck!”

  She picked up a book that lay on the bed next to her. I was confused because the book hadn’t been there when we started.

  “I just got hit in the back of the head with this,” she said.

  “Really?”

  She looked at me, glaring. She must have been skeptical about my response.

  “I didn’t move it. It’s been on my dresser,” I said, which was behind her, about four feet away.

  “Things don’t just fly through the room.” She rubbed her head, clearly not happy.

  “They kind of do,” I replied, not really wanting to admit that the house seemed to be alive.

  But I told her about the activity in the house and explained the recordings I’d been doing.

  “So these EVP things you do, is that what was causing all this other activity?”

  “I’m not sure. I think so.”

  “It’s evil,” she said. “All of it. Evil.” Needless to say, she didn’t stay that night.

  After she got dressed and left, I lay there in bed wondering about her last comment.

  The house was very quiet.

  I got the tape recorder out. It was the first time someone had been hurt by the house. Granted, it was only a knock on the head, but nevertheless, it was stranger than the normal strange.

  I clicked the Record button and asked, “Are you evil?” I knew I might be inviting the equivalent of a Ouija board monster into my house, but I had to ask.

  An answer came. “Ancy. DonDan Yells.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  I turned up the gain, to increase the sensitivity of the audio segment that had the EVP.

  “Ancy. Dondan Yells.”

  “What am I supposed to do with that?” I asked.

  There was no answer.

  “Is your name Dondan?”

  Nothing but static.

  So I said, “Are you just having fun making nonsensical words?”

  This time, a clear answer punctuated the white noise. “Kill you.”

  I dropped the tape recorder and moved away from it.

  It had been amusing up to that point, but now I was spooked. Did the ghost want to kill me?

  Sleep didn’t come that easily but by morning, I was happy to get up and go to work.

  Nance was over a lot in the next few days and I tried to forget about the last transmission. It seemed the stakes had suddenly changed, and I didn’t know why. Was it another voice from out there that had commandeered the recorder? Doubtful, because it sounded exactly the same as the voice I’d always heard.

  And what did “Ancy. Dondan Yells” mean? Was it someone’s first name? Last name? Was it the name of a place? I searched Dondan on the internet and got, literally, six billion eight hundred million hits for Don Dan.

  When my girlfriend knocked on the door later that evening, I shut off the computer and let her in. I could tell right away that she was in a solemn mood. I poured her some wine, led her to my couch, and as we sat, I asked her what was wrong.

  “My checking account. They’ve put a hold on the direct deposits of my monthly paychecks because they’re from out of state.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” She took a rather large swig from her glass. “I’m overdue on my hotel bill and they want to kick me out.”

  “Hotel? I thought you had an apartment.”

  “I did. That is, until they kicked me out for the same reason. My checks weren’t clearing.”

  “That’s horrible. I’m so sorry, Nance.”

  She cuddled up to me. “I can’t use my credit card because it’s a business account.”

  “I could loan you some money, I guess.” I said this mostly because she didn’t have any other friends and she needed help. I added “I guess” because it had come out of the blue and we had only been dating a little over two weeks.

  “Would you? Really? I hate to ask.”

  “You didn’t ask. I offered.”

  Nance put down her glass and stood. Taking my hand, she led me to the bedroom, where she promised she’d thank me for my generosity. I didn’t quite get the thanks I was hoping for because this time, a long-stemmed candle somehow unlodged itself from a holder on my nightstand and whacked her in the temple. And I happened to have my eyes open when it levitated and flew through the air. Part of me wanted to laugh because it was so damn surreal, but I also felt a tremor of shock and disbelief at the bizarre occurrence.

  “What the fuck?” she yelled. And this time, she got off the bed. “This house is fucked up!”

  I could do nothing but open my mouth and raise my hands in a sort of “I’m sorry” grimace.

  “You’ve been playing around with that EVP stuff, haven’t you?”

  �
��A little…”

  She picked up the candle from the floor. “Why?”

  “You made a comment that you thought it was evil, so I was trying to find out.”

  “If it’s evil? Of course it is!” She shook the candle at me. “Don’t mess with that shit!”

  “I’m sorry, Nance,” I said. “I won’t anymore. Just come back to bed.”

  With a bit more coaxing, she did. We talked for some time, both of us not really wanting to turn off the lights. I told her about my childhood, growing up in town, playing hide and go seek with my two brothers, and eventually attending college here as well. She talked about moving around a lot as a kid, with no father and a drunken mother who beat her repeatedly. The two stories were so diverse that I felt bad for her. Maybe there was a way to find common ground.

  “What’s your favorite ice cream?” I said.

  She looked at me a moment and replied, “Vanilla.”

  “Mine’s chocolate. Favorite color?”

  “Black.”

  Black? “Blue. Middle name?”

  “Dawn,” she said.

  “Mine’s Maria.”

  “Best subject in school?”

  “Science.”

  “Ah! I was bad at science. Mine was art.”

  “Listen, I’m a little tired. Do you mind if we shut the lights out now?”

  “Sure,” I said. And she immediately curled up to my side and was asleep before I could count to twenty.

  I lay there, thinking about her childhood and how bad it must have been. So many abused kids get so messed up in life. They turn to crime or destroy themselves with drugs and alcohol. Nance seemed to have turned out pretty well.

  Nance Dawn. I tried out her first and middle names in my mind. It sounded a bit odd. Maybe she’d been born Nancy Dawn. That sounded more logical.

  I remembered a little friend named Nancy from first grade who had been called Nancy Pantsy. She hated being teased. Maybe Nance had been teased as well and changed her name to just Nance. Nancy Rancy. Nancy Fancy. Ancy Nancy.

  I stopped my rhymes. Ancy. The EVP had said “Ancy. Dondan Yells.”

  Ancy. Dondan.

  Nancy Dawn.

  Strange coincidence, I thought. Or was it? The ghost obviously hadn’t taken a shine to Nance other than to use her as target practice. Or, at the very least, didn’t want her and me to do the deed.

  Was there a connection?

  Luckily, Nance was sound asleep, so I quietly got out of bed, grabbed the recorder, and made my way to the back of the house. Once in the laundry room, I stood by the dryer and turned the recorder on.

  “Dondan, are you there?”

  I played back the tape.

  “No,” it said.

  I chuckled. “How can you not be there and answer?”

  No response.

  “Do you dislike Nance?”

  “Kill you.”

  I jumped. There it was again. Hearing the disembodied voice throwing out such a threat was chilling.

  I shook off the fright and said, “Why do you want to kill me?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Ancy. Dondan Yells.”

  I shook my head. Damn.

  I listened again. It was pretty much the same as when I had heard it before. Being the longest string of words I’d recorded so far, I tried to make sense of different versions of what I’d heard.

  Ancydon. Ancydondan.

  Ancy. Don. Dan. Yells.

  I stopped, suddenly taken aback.

  Nancy Dawn Daniels?

  What was Nancy’s last name? Certainly she’d told me, but sheepishly, I admitted that I’d forgotten it. I silently scolded myself for bedding a woman whose name escaped me so easily. I made my way back to the bedroom, trying to avoid the creaky floorboards I was becoming accustomed to. Her very large and heavy satchel lay on the dresser and, stealthily, I lifted her wallet out of a side pocket and peered at the driver’s license through its plastic sleeve. Nancy Dawn Edwards.

  Okay, not the same name.

  Placing everything back, I went to my den and flicked the computer on. As it warmed up, I unplugged the speakers so the bleeps and dings wouldn’t wake Nance. It felt a bit awkward, looking up a name that I’d heard from a ghost. But there were too many strange things happening and, anyway, what harm was a little surfing? I typed in what I thought the EVP was telling me, Nancy Dawn Daniels. I blinked at the top twenty or so hits.

  I clicked on the first listing. A local Columbus, Ohio, newspaper said that a Nancy Dawn Daniels had committed the murder of a local woman. There were no pictures but the article went on to say she hadn’t been caught.

  What a creepy coincidence. But the name certainly had to be a common one.

  The next listing was from Philadelphia and the third was from Memphis. They both cited the Columbus murder and called Nancy Dawn Daniels a serial killer who had swindled women she’d become lovers with and when they began to figure things out, she had killed each of them before moving on. So far, the articles said, she’d murdered victims in seven cities around the U.S. I read on to find that Nancy Dawn Daniels was currently at large.

  The Memphis article had a link for photographs, so I clicked on it. The first was of the Memphis victim. She was pretty, with blond hair and a winning smile. The next was the Philadelphia victim. Five more clicks and I had seen all the women this killer had left dead in her monstrous wake. I clicked again.

  I stared as my body grew cold and my ears began to ring. The woman staring back had shorter hair but there was no mistake that this same person was currently lying in my bed.

  I had to get out of the house and call the police. I immediately closed the computer window and when I jumped up, I came face-to-face with Nance.

  “What are you doing?” she said. I barely heard her because she held a menacing-looking butcher knife that hadn’t come from my kitchen.

  There was no reason to answer her. She’d seen the computer screen over my shoulder.

  We were both dressed in underwear and T-shirts but I had never felt more naked and vulnerable.

  “This is an unfortunate circumstance,” she said, scaring me with eyes black and malevolent.

  My pulse raced and I knew I had to do something, so I pushed her as hard as I could and dodged to the right. She jabbed downward and caught my arm with the blade of her knife. Bleeding and frightened for my life, I made it to the kitchen, but she was right behind me.

  I was able to grab my own knife from the counter, one that was much smaller and wouldn’t outreach hers. My blood splattered and I knew the cut was deep.

  She stopped about three feet from me. I could tell she was thinking about her next move and then she let out a big sigh. “This changes things, of course. Now I’ll need your credit cards and checkbook. Oh, yes, your ATM card and PIN number as well.”

  This was the evil that the ghost tried to warn me about. Nancy Dawn Daniels was evil personified.

  “And don’t think about screaming,” she said. “I’ll slice your throat open so that the only noise you’ll be able to make is the expulsion of the last bit of air from your—”

  A silver flash came from the left and, before I could register what it was, hit Nance in the head. One of the pots that hung from my pot rack had somehow freed itself and clobbered her. She bent over a moment but before she could stand, two more pots flew by me and struck her. She went down on her knees, head down, but her knifed hand stabbed at the air right in front of me. She was desperately trying to attack, but the kitchen suddenly erupted in retaliation. The drawers opened and silverware launched out, stabbing her all over. The cabinet doors flew open and dishes pummeled her, each one breaking as it connected with her skull and shoulders. This time, it was her blood that splattered the cabinets and the floor and even me.

  Now both of her arms were flailing as she tried to fend off the attack. I was pinned against the sink with no way to escape without her stabbing me in her frenzy. Her butcher knife kept me from t
rying to kick her, but I was also too surprised at what was occurring in my kitchen to think of much. Blood started to dribble from her wounds as the onslaught of tableware and plates sliced and gashed more holes in her. Finally, everything had been emptied from the drawers and cupboards and everything went eerily quiet.

  She was on her knees in a heap on the floor. The knife I was holding was the only object that hadn’t assaulted her, and I gripped it as hard as I could.

  She raised her head. Her eyes were bloodied and her hair matted grotesquely against her face. The look she gave me was of confusion and anger. Slowly, she raised her weapon and I knew she was going to take one huge swipe at me.

  Something like an electrical charge suddenly made my hand begin to buzz and the pain made me loosen my grip on the knife. And just as quickly, the knife flew out of my hand and impaled itself in her chest. Her eyes grew so large, I thought they would pop out. As if in slow motion, she fell forward and I heard the horrible, wet scrunch of the knife skewering her even further as she landed face down at my feet.

  I stepped over her, holding my arm to stanch the blood flow. I called 911 and sat at the table to wait for help to arrive. After a moment where my brain tried to make sense of what happened and failed miserably, I turned the recorder on and said, “Thank you.”

  When I played the tape back, there was no response.

  The strange door openings and other paranormal occurrences have stopped. I’ve tried the recorder since but with no results. I suppose I should be happy, but I admit, I miss my invisible roommate.

  Filth

  ’Nathan Burgoine

  “What are you doing?”

  Noah froze. The voice was calm. He looked up and saw his father on the stairs. He’d obviously come home straight from work. His father was still wearing his mechanic’s overalls, the ones with his name on the white patch over his heart. Jake, though everyone called him the Judge.

  It wasn’t done out of camaraderie.

  Noah hadn’t heard the door, hadn’t heard the Judge hit the third step, which always squeaked.

  Had he?

  His dick didn’t soften. The magazines—health magazines, muscle magazines, wrestling magazines—were scattered around the workout bench, opened to the pages he’d chosen. His jeans tugged low, his dick in hand, Noah looked at his father and thought, I should have heard the squeak.