He sat up a little straighter and forced himself to face the boy. “You just have to make the best of the weather. And if you work hard, if you play your cards right, you sometimes get to make weather of your own. Understand?”
The boy’s frown twisted to a scowl that in a second’s time melted into a hopeful smile. “You mean like a wizard?”
A genuine laugh escaped the invisible noose tightening around his father’s throat. The force of it nearly broke the man. “Yes. Exactly like a wizard. Now, go find Ella. I have some work to do.”
It was a longer private audience with his father than he had ever been privileged. He nodded without complaint and went skipping toward the door.
“Walter?” his father called behind him.
The boy turned expectantly, his smile falling at the corners. He’d done something wrong. “Yes, Father?”
His father sat in his tufted leather chair, holding his pipe. The posture of the man looked as it always did—larger than life, commanding, demanding, unrelenting—but it also didn’t. His face, though cleanly shaven and matching the dimensions of the man he knew, wasn’t quite his father’s face. The skin was stretched too tight, as though the lips held back a scream. The eyeballs looked ready to burst open. Fear and doubt took root inside the boy as he waited for this imposter to speak.
“Be good,” the man said with a smile that was not a smile at all.
Gently, Ella shook his arm. “Wake up, shavo!”
Still dead eyed, he muttered, “Be good. Be good. Be good. Be—”
“Shh, shh. It is alright. Wake up, now. Walter, wake up!”
He sprang awake, cracking his head against a rafter on his way to his feet. His eyes shot back into focus as the pain reverberated down his spine.
“Oh, no. Oh, my sweet boy.” She folded him into her arms, pressing his wail into her breast. “Ssss. I know that hurts. I sorry I startle you.”
He let her hold him there as he trembled and slowly regained himself. “Where are we?” he whispered, pulling away from her.
“The attic. You were sleepwalking again, shavo,” she murmured, smoothing his hair. A hard lump was forming under his black curls. She held him by the shoulders and scanned his blue eyes for damage. If it weren’t for the blue, he could have been her own grandson with his dark hair and heavy brow. She made a mental note to speak to Mrs. Rawlings about locking his door as he slept. The lady of the house was right that it was a fire hazard, but this was worse. She patted his cheek. “You decided to take a nap.”
“I didn’t decide to.” He looked at her with those eyes. Ella had once told the boy that you could see a person’s soul if you peered carefully enough through those windows. If that was true, Walter’s soul was an ocean.
“It is no wonder,” she told him. “You have not been sleeping at night, have you?”
Even from her new room over the garage, she could hear him wandering at all hours to and from his bookcase, his closet, the water closet, unable to settle down.
“I . . .” He studied his hands, black with the grime of the crawl space. “I have bad dreams.”
“Hmm.” She nodded. “We go and wash up. I give you some cookies, and you tell Ella about these dreams.”
Walter thought about this. She could see him calculating what he might tell her. He was just learning to lie, this boy. “Okay.”
“Good.” She nodded. Let him lie, she decided, narrowing her eyes at him ever so slightly. Even liars told the truth; they just didn’t know it. It came out in their faces. It hid in the things they dared not say. These things often told more than the truth. But she said none of this. “I have chocolate.”
He forced a smile for her, and she loved him for it. Brave boy, she thought. Brave boy without a father to be brave for him. She waited for him to crawl out before clicking off the light. As she reached for the chain, she surveyed the floor where he’d been sitting. A piece of dull metal sat on the loose boards next to the disturbed dust. She reached for it, then stopped herself as the shape registered.
It was his father’s gun.
Rolling her eyes to the rafters in a hundred unspoken curses, she squeezed her hands together, refusing to touch it. “Prikaza!” she hissed, and she whispered a series of chants under her breath. Where did he find it? She shoved it with her foot until it disappeared into the insulation between the rafters.
A gun in the house was the worst kind of luck, but little Walter was waiting.
19
The Spielman Family
July 30, 2018
“What do you mean your house is ‘haunted’?” Caleb smirked at Hunter from the flat screen. The boy in Boston pulled out his vaporizer and took a long drag. “Like, full-on ghosts and shit?”
“Not exactly.” Hunter took a sip of the whiskey he’d stolen from his dad’s cabinet and gazed longingly at the metal tube in his friend’s hand. “Just weird shit. Lights turning on by themselves. Weird sounds at night. That phone ringing. I’m telling you, man. It’s not normal. This place does not want us here.”
“What’s the address again?” Caleb asked, holding another hit in his lungs.
“14895 Lee Road, Shaker Heights.”
“Right.” The muffled clicking of the keyboard in Boston filled the space between them for a while. Hunter took another sip and looked up at the ceiling vent over his head. The attic was quiet that afternoon, but then again, it was still early. He wanted to go back up there to get his comics, but he couldn’t quite muster the nerve. As if to prove something to himself, he stood up and peered out into the hallway. His parents’ room was empty as usual. His father had long left for work, and his mother was sitting in the den staring blankly at the television, debating what to do with herself for the day.
“Hey! You still there?” Caleb called out from behind him.
“Yeah.” Hunter slumped back in his chair and took another swig of liquor, trying not to grimace. It was more for his friend’s benefit than his own. He didn’t really like the taste. “Find something?”
“That’s a big friggin’ house!”
“Yep.” Hunter found the size of the house embarrassing, especially since there were only three of them living there. “And like a hundred years old. Jealous?”
“Hell no. You’re in fucking Ohio.” Caleb leaned in toward the screen. “Dude. I wonder how many people died in that place.”
Hunter drained his glass.
“I mean, you figure that in a hundred years a bunch of people lived there, right? Some of ’em must’ve died inside. People die in their sleep and shit. Babies get that crib death, especially back then. Like, maybe one of ’em died in your bedroom!”
“Shut the fuck up.” Hunter tried to sound cool, but the thought sent a wave of revulsion through him. His eyes involuntarily circled the room, stopping on the closet door that hid the writing inside. DeAD GiRl. DeAD. PRetty. DeAD. DeAD. His gerbils scurried through a plastic tube from one fish tank to a smaller one on the windowsill. Base Camp 1. They still hadn’t figured out how to navigate the full maze. Hunter shook his head at them. Idiots.
“Hey, listen to this. Do you know why they call it Shaker Heights?” Caleb’s eyes scanned the screen in front of him.