The Haunts & Horrors MEGAPACK®. Lawrence Watt-Evans

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “I went…Wendy…I—” He shook himself and said, “Buhuhuhuh.” Then: “I went into the crawl space under the house, and there isn’t any water there. I looked at the foundation. No cracks. It didn’t figure to me that the lady would keep the yard in such great shape and let the house fall apart. I went through the wood and I didn’t see a single termite. I checked the insulation in the roof, and it’s not even asbestos, it’s foam. The inspector was wrong about all those things, Wendy. The house is perfect.

      “So I figured, no problem. We’ll move in. I wanted to find a good place for storing the locket. I walked into the family room, and old lady was sitting there reading a play, and he was looking over her shoulder and muttering. ‘Anna,’ he said, ‘you can’t do this to me. We swore we’d end our days in this house. I built it for you.’ She just turned a page without paying any attention. ‘Anna!’ he yelled. Then he looked up and saw me. ‘Get out, you damned home wrecker!’ he screamed. His eyes started glowing red and he got bigger and, and, I don’t know, I felt like I had a heart again and it was going to burst.” He was quiet for a minute. “I was ready to run a sixty yard dash in five seconds, but I didn’t know which way to jump.

      “Then he went raging out of the house and I had time to get calm again. I thought, how awful for him that she doesn’t even know he’s there.”

      She looked at him and he looked at her. She leaned closer. After dark, he got solid enough to hold her. He slipped his arm around her, easing closer than he would have been able to when he was alive; he could go through the seat back and still hold her tightly. It was something they had been practicing. “Then,” murmured Malcolm, “I heard you squeak.”

      * * * *

      The realtor didn’t want Wendy speaking with the owner directly. It was the part of the negotiation that bugged Wendy the most, yet she understood that realtors didn’t want a buyer and a seller to work out their own deal and cut the realtors out of their percentage. After all, the realtor had taken Wendy to fifteen other houses. She was working for her money.

      Summer twilight was finally seeping into night. Wendy clutched Malcolm’s locket in her hand and rang the doorbell.

      The old man’s face, features twisted into a gargoyle’s grimace of anger, thrust out through the door. Wendy stepped back and fell off the edge of the stoop, but Malcolm steadied her from behind, his hands on her shoulders.

      The door opened, pulling back through the old man, and Anna Jericho, the owner, peered out through the screen door. “Hello?” she said.

      “Uh, hi,” said Wendy, straightening and tugging the front of her dress down—her half-fall had hiked it up.

      “May I help you?” Anna said.

      “Well, uh—I’m the buyer, Mrs. Jericho. We met this morning.

      “I know that, dear.”

      “And I just wanted to—to—” Wendy glanced over her shoulder. The neighbors weren’t all staring out their windows, but some were watching. “May I come in?”

      “All right.” Anna unlatched the screen door and held it open.

      Her husband stood in the doorway, his hands up in fists before him. “You may NOT come in! No, keep your distance, you evil young woman!”

      Wendy took a deep breath and walked through him.

      Other than a faint fizzing on her skin, the experience left her none the worse. She thought she might even be making up the fizzing because she had expected to feel something. She glanced behind her, and found the old man staring at her in horror, clutching his chest and breathing loudly with his mouth open. Psychological, no doubt, since his heart and lungs weren’t sustaining him any longer. She offered him a smile, but that just made him madder.

      “Come into the family room, dear,” Anna said.

      They settled on the red sofa which sat on the red plaid rug. “My husband was partial to red,” said Anna.

      “I want to talk to you about him,” Wendy said. “Are you sure you want to sell the house?”

      “Yes. It’s just too much for me to keep up. The garden takes a lot of looking after…well, I have a good yardman for that, but he doesn’t weed. And there’s so much space without Arturo to fill it, and so many things to keep clean, and I don’t even want to own them anymore. I’m sure Arturo would want me to take care of myself.”

      “Well, I’m not,” Wendy said. “He doesn’t want you to sell the house. He says he built this house for you and you swore you’d end your days here.”

      Anna paled. “What do you mean, ‘he says’?”

      “His ghost says, I guess would be more accurate. His ghost is making the house look like it’s going to fall apart. His ghost has been screaming at me and my husband not to be home wreckers.”

      Anna held up her hand, palm out. Her eyes shifted back and forth as if looking all around her. “Now, wait,” she said. “Now, wait. What are you talking about?”

      Wendy leaned forward, putting her feet flat on the floor. She clasped her hands, put her elbows on her knees, let her clasped hands dangle in front of her. “I know this is hard, Mrs. Jericho. Maybe you won’t even believe me. But I thought the best thing to do was to tell you about it.” Her shoulders slumped and she stared at the red plaid rug.

      “Are you some kind of psychic? I never even knew you were married.”

      Wendy glanced up and discovered only lively interest in the older woman’s face. “Well, the two are kind of connected. I never knew I was psychic until my husband died, but, you see, he’s with me, even now. I started seeing him during his funeral. He’s sitting over there in the rocker.”

      Malcolm obligingly rocked the rocker, and it moved.

      “HOW are you doing that!” screamed the old man. “TELL ME!’

      “Oh, my goodness,” said Anna. “Oh, my goodness!”

      “And your Arturo has been yelling at me for being an evil woman since I rang the doorbell. Right now, actually, he’s yelling at my husband because my husband knows how to make things move and your husband doesn’t.”

      “He was always terribly competitive. Had to have a greener lawn than Rusty and Mrs. Kay, had to have a better barbecue, had to have a bigger office at work,” said Anna.

      “That’s right. Betray me. Stab me in the back!” Arturo cried.

      “Had to have a prettier wife,” said Anna, and smiled, showing her dimples.

      “How can you talk like this to strangers, Anna! I was always respectful of you!”

      “He says he was always respectful of you,” Wendy relayed.

      “Of course, of course. He knew what a prize he had in me.” She dimpled again, her eyes dancing.

      “Well, you see, if he doesn’t find relief somehow I don’t know how I can move into your house. I can see him, and he keeps screaming at me.”

      Anna looked up, glanced around. СКАЧАТЬ