Hunter crept up the stairs one at a time with the bewilderment and uneasy wonder of a child. He’d clearly never been in an attic before. Despite his aloof shrug to his father, the house impressed him, especially as he caught sight of the long cavern under the roof. The wood plank floor was covered in traces of construction debris and hidden footprints. Dust draped itself like curtains over the four windows that protruded up through the slanted roof.
“Hello?” he called out to no one in his embarrassed baritone. He listened to the echo of his voice reverberate in the hollow of the room. The loneliness of the sound mirrored the lost look on his face.
The stairs strained under his large feet as Hunter climbed up and out into the open attic. A tiny room to his right stood empty. Hunter approached the open door and figured it for a closet—low ceiling, tight walls, tiny window. He felt trapped the moment he stepped inside it and didn’t linger.
The door next to it was locked. Hunter tried the handle and pushed his bony shoulder against it for good measure, but it stuck. Frowning, he pressed his ear to the wood and listened for no reason.
The sound of approaching footsteps pulled Hunter’s ear from the door. He turned and scanned the attic floor behind him. Dad? his eyes said. But there was no one there.
A shiver rose up on his skin. Fear flickered behind his eyes. He’d seen the graffiti on the walls, now buried under layers of paint. Murder House!
“Hello?” Hunter said again, this time not for the echo. “Somebody there?”
He turned to the bathroom over his shoulder. Its yellowed pine door stood open several inches, lit by the slanted light of the window on the other side. The dirty floor tiles and porcelain sink peeked at him through the gap.
He took a timid step toward the washroom, braced for something or someone to lunge at him. The pine door hung perfectly still in its frame, waiting. Untouched by the renovation, traces of so many people—the contractors, the vagrants, the past owners, the servants—still lingered in the fibers and the varnish of the wood. Fingerprints. Sweat. Cigarette smoke. Hunter pressed his palm to it slowly, as though it were alive, and swung the door open.
Nothing, except—
“Hunter?” his mother’s voice called from the floor below. “Hunter, where are you?”
Hunter turned away from the empty bathroom, his trance broken by the nagging sound of her voice. “Yeah?”
“Myron, have you seen Hunter?” his mother muttered, not hearing him. “I swear we’re going to lose that kid in this place. Hunter!”
As he lurched his ungainly body toward the stairs, he felt a pair of eyes on him. He stopped and faced the empty rooms again, not knowing who or what peered back.
“Hunter!” his mother bellowed.
“Coming,” he called, dragging himself back down the steps to where his mother stood in the hallway, tapping her foot.
“I need these boxes unpacked by dinner. Okay, honey?” She motioned to the stack of cardboard bins on the floor of his room. Clothes. Books. His computer. Two gerbils sat shell shocked in an aquarium off to one side, eyes twitching.
There was no use in putting her off. Her tone made clear that she would harangue him endlessly until he did her bidding. Or worse, she’d sit down and try to have a mother-son talk to see if he was “okay.”
His eyes drifted up to the ceiling and the creepy attic above it. “Yeah. Okay.”
“I know it’s tough, honey, but everything’s going to be alright. You’ll like it here. You’ll see.” It was more of a plea than a comfort. Please be okay! Her eyes bent toward him with motherly concern and buried guilt. I’m sorry about all this. I don’t want to be here either. She gave him a pained smile and opened her arms for a hug. He returned the gesture with an awkward one-armed embrace.
“School starts in a few weeks. You’ll make some friends. Right?”
“Yep.” He nodded dutifully, anxious for her to leave him alone. Once she did, he closed the door and plopped onto his bare mattress. The room was enormous, big enough for two beds and then some. In comparison, he looked like a boy on a raft drifting along a dark sea of refinished wood. A stately oak mantel mocked him from the far wall with an arrangement of scented candles in the fireplace. He shook his head at them. Scented candles. Gee, thanks, Mom. Sighing, he gathered them up and pulled open the door to the closet he’d been allotted.
DeAD GiRL!
DeAD GiRL!
RuN!
“What the fuck?” Hunter whispered. He clicked on the light bulb and took a step back from the slashing red letters. He narrowed his eyes at the bizarre epitaphs, then glanced at his bedroom door as though debating whether to call for his mother.
The walls inside the closet had been left unfinished in the contractor’s rush to complete the work and turn over the keys. The final walk-through and punch list wouldn’t be completed for three more weeks, and his mother had been too distracted with the movers to notice the oversight.
She’d be furious, Hunter realized, squinting at the smaller print:
SepT 2 1990 386 cARs 2 yeLLow
AuG 8 1989 223 cARs 5 MissiNG
Hundreds of bizarre notes and stats covered the walls. Some of it was too small to read. Some of it so large he had to stand back. Most of it was crooked and written in the unsteady hand of a small child. Morbid curiosity etched over Hunter’s face as he stepped inside for a closer look.
BAD BeNNy BeNNy
BAD BENNy KicK. MoM. MoM. MoM.
SoRRy so soRRy sosososo.
HeLp NeeD HeLp NeeD HeLp NeeD HeLp
DeAD GiRL. DeAD. PRetty. DeAD. DeAD.
GiRL oN tHe Bike. RuN. RuN!
DeAD GiRL!
Must teLL. MusT
Lighter markings in a much finer hand covered a few of the spaces in between the scribbled madness. Hunter narrowed his eyes to read the smaller notes:
Did you see them, Benny?
Did the old religion cast a spell?
When the dead speak, what do they say?
Benny, Bad Benny, did you see them too?
Did your dead girl come back and haunt you?
9
The Klussman Family
June 18, 1980
“Look, Benny! Sweetie, look. See what Daddy brought you?” Frannie stood in the doorway to his bedroom holding a small plastic tank filled with water. A tiny goldfish flitted between her two hands. Flashes of yellow and orange flickered between a stone castle and a sprig of greenery.
Benny’s face broke into a wide and crooked grin. He clapped his two curled hands together to show her how much he liked the fish. He’d never had a pet but desperately wanted to touch the animals he’d seen on TV. The furry dogs and sleek cats fascinated him endlessly. He often tried to pet them through the cadmium-coated glass. And now here was another living, breathing thing. A miracle. His eyes followed its every move, hungry for more.
The boy’s broad smile almost undid his mother. Her green eyes glistened behind her frizzled red hair. It had been weeks since she’d seen him so happy. “So where should we put him? How about here?”
It was a rhetorical question. She’d already considered the safest spot and carefully set the fish tank down on his desk, far from any edges, far from his bedside, where he might flail an arm and knock the small tank over.
Utterly transfixed by his new companion, Benny didn’t consider the placement of the tank until much, much later. His mother busied him with the task of gathering a pinch of fish food between his two fingers. It was clearly another planned opportunity to strengthen his fine motor skills, but he didn’t mind.