Her laugh was raw. She swiped at an eye.
We walked to the end of the hallway, where another door was locked.
“I’d show you Miles’s room, but I don’t have a key,” she said simply. “Also, I’m too scared.”
She forced another laugh. It wasn’t convincing; it didn’t have enough energy to even pose as a laugh. We went up to the next floor, which was a series of rooms, wallpapered and painted, with fine-boned Victorian furniture arranged haphazardly. One room held only a litterbox. “For our cat, Wilkie,” Susan said. “Luckiest cat in the world: his own room for his own crap.”
“You’ll find a use for the space.”
“He’s actually a sweet cat,” she said. “Almost twenty years old.”
I smiled like that was interesting and good.
“We obviously have more room than we need,” Susan said. “I think we thought, there might be another … maybe adopt, but I wouldn’t bring another child into this house. So instead we live in a very expensive storage facility. My husband does like his antiques.” I could picture him, this uptight, snooty husband. A man who bought antiques but didn’t find them himself. Probably had some classy decorator woman in horn-rims doing the actual work. She probably bought those books for him too. I heard you could do that—buy books by the yard, turn them into furniture. People are dumb. I’ll never get over how dumb people are.
We climbed some more. The top floor was just a large attic space with a few old steamer trunks all along the walls.
“Aren’t the trunks stupid?” she whispered. “He says it gives the place a little authenticity. He didn’t like the renovation.”
So the house had been a compromise: The husband wanted vintage, Susan wanted new, so they thought this outside/inside split might settle things. But the Burkes ended up more resentful than satisfied. Millions of dollars later, and neither of them were happy. Money is wasted on the rich.
We went down the back stairs, cramped and dizzying, like an animal’s burrow, and ended up in the gaping, gleaming modern kitchen.
Miles sat at the kitchen island, waiting. Susan started when she saw him.
He was small for his age. Pale face and pointy chin, and black eyes that reflected twitchily, like a spider’s. Assessing. Extremely bright but hates school, I thought. Never gets enough attention—even if he got all of Susan’s attention it still wouldn’t be enough. Mean-spirited. Self-centered.
“Hi, Momma,” he said. His face was transformed, a bright, goofy smile cracking through it. “I missed you.” Sweet-natured, loving Jack. He was doing a perfect version of his little brother. Miles went to hug Susan, and as he walked, he assumed Jack’s slump-shouldered, childish posture. He wrapped his arms around her, nuzzled into her. Susan watched me over his head, her cheeks flush, her lips tight as if she smelled something nasty. Miles gazed up at her. “Why won’t you hug me?”
She gave him a brief hug. Miles released her as if he were scalded.
“I heard what you told her,” he said. “About Jack. About the babysitter. About everything. You’re such a bitch.”
Susan flinched. Miles turned to me.
“I really hope you leave and don’t come back. For your own good.” He smiled at both of us. “This is a family matter. Don’t you think, Momma?”
Then he was clattering in his heavy leather shoes up the back stairway again, leaning heavily forward. He did scuttle as if he bore an insect’s shell, shiny and hard.
Susan looked at the floor, took a breath, and looked up. “I want your help.”
“What does your husband say about all this?”
“We don’t talk about it. Miles is his kid. He raised him. Anytime I say anything remotely critical, he says I’m crazy. He says I’m crazy a lot. A haunted house. Maybe I am. Anyway, he travels all the time; he won’t even know you’re here.”
“I can help you,” I said. “Shall we talk pricing very quickly?”
She agreed to the money, but not the timeline: “I can’t wait a year for Miles to get better; he may kill us all before then.” She gave that desperate burp of a laugh. I agreed to come twice a week.
Mostly I came during the day, when the kids were at school and Susan was at work. I did cleanse the house, in that I washed it. I lit my sage and sprinkled my sea salt. I boiled my lavender and rosemary, and I wiped down that house, walls and floors. And then I sat in the library and read. Also, I nosed around. I could find a zillion photos of grinning-sunshine Jack, a few old ones of pouty Miles, a couple of somber Susan and none of her husband. I felt sorry for Susan. An angry stepson and a husband who was always away, no wonder she let her mind go to dark places.
And yet. And yet, I felt it too: the house. Not necessarily malevolent, but … mindful. I could feel it studying me, does that makes sense? It crowded me. One day, I was wiping down the floorboards, and suffered a sudden, slicing pain in my middle finger—as if I’d been bitten—and when I pulled it away, I was bleeding. I wrapped my finger tightly in one of my spare rags and watched the blood seep through. And I felt like something in the house was pleased.
I began dreading. I made myself fight the dread. You are the one who made this whole thing up, I told myself. So cut it out.
Six weeks in, and I was boiling my lavender in the kitchen one morning—Susan off to work, the kids at school—when I felt a presence behind me. I turned to find Miles in his school uniform, examining me, a small smirk on his face. He was holding my copy of The Turn of the Screw.
“You like ghost stories?” He smiled.
He’d been through my purse.
“Why are you at home, Miles?”
“I’ve been studying you. You’re interesting. You know something bad is going to happen, right? I’m curious.”
He moved closer, I moved away. He stood next to the pot of boiling water. His cheeks flushed from the heat.
“I’m trying to help, Miles.”
“But you agree? You feel it? Evil?”
“I feel it.”
He stared into the pot of water. Traced a finger on its edge, then snatched the finger away, pink. He assessed me with his shining black spider eyes.
“You don’t look how I thought you’d look. Up close. I thought you’d be … sexy.” He said the word ironically, and I knew what he meant: Halloween fortune-teller sexy. Lip gloss and big hair and hoop earrings. “You look like a babysitter.”
I stepped farther back from him. He hurt the last babysitter.
“Are you trying to scare me, Miles?”
I wished I could reach the stove, turn off the burner.
“I’m trying to help you,” he said reasonably. “I don’t want you around her. If you come back, you will die. I don’t want to say more than that. But I’ve warned you.”
He turned away and left the room. When I heard him hit the front stairs, I poured the scalding water down the drain, then ran to the dining room to grab my purse, my keys. I needed to leave. When I picked up my purse, a foul, sweet heat hit my nostrils. He’d vomited inside—all over my keys and wallet and phone. I couldn’t bear to pick up the keys, touch that sickness.
Susan banged through the door, frantic.
“Is he here? Are you OK?” she said. “School called, said Miles never showed. He must have walked in the front door and straight out the back. He doesn’t like it that you’re here. Did he say anything to you?”
A loud smash came from upstairs. A wail. We ran up the stairs. In the hallway, hanging from a ceiling hook, was a tiny, primitive figure made of cloth. A face drawn in magic marker. A noose made from red thread. Screaming came from Miles’s room at the end of the hall. Nonoooooooo, you bitch, you bitch!