Page 3 of His to Haunt

Bullshit.

Somebody hurt my sister. Whoever it was is still out there.

Still. Out there.

Chills tingle my spine, creeping over my shoulders. But there is another car here, and any moment now, Stacy, the estate handler, will appear like a beacon of light to guide us through the foreign shadows.

I get out, scanning the driveway. The gusty air smells like the end of summer, like fallen, withering petals, leaves, and vines, and with a hint of rotting trash. It never gets or stays cold enough in California to freeze out the smell of rot.

But it does feel chillier here than what I’m used to inland. Proximity to the ocean creates a different atmosphere. The air is thicker. The sky moodier.

The old house hulks, creaking in the wind.

Other than legal stuff, Stacy only told me only a bit about the place. It was repainted a year ago—and that is a whole damn lot of grey paint with black trim. Kudos to whoever tackled that beast. She said it has a new front door. Yay, I guess. Other than that, the house is ancient. Built in 1890-something and served as a funeral home for over a hundred years.

But the picture attached to the legal papers didn’t capture the asymmetrical enormity of it, with wings and bays in every direction—I mean, holy shit, Batman.

A countless array of windows spanning one, two, three, four stories, forming a glass mosaic—half-circle sunbursts over rectangles, spindril-topped squares, oval peek-a-boos, a tiny pyramidal window at the base of the tower. Too many windows. Dark and murky undead eyes within the recesses of a great, leaden skull.

Hauntophobia comes to mind. But that unofficial term is usually applied to children who fear haunted houses. I am not a child, and the house isn’t the real reason this place gives me the creeps. My reasons are much worse.

I’ve had three months to prepare for this relocation mentally and physically. But I’m still baffled that Rachel gave this monstrosity to me and that she had already planned a will at such a young age. We’d barely seen each other in years.

She was sixteen, eight years older than me, when she left home and didn’t look back. Then, one day, the cops showed up, asking my dad questions. He was livid. Punched a hole through the wall after the cops left. Mom and I knew to stay away from him when he was in a violent mood.

Apparently, he’d been accused of abuse. A couple of weeks later, the charges had been dropped. Mom wouldn’t tell me more than that, and I didn’t ask again. I didn’t want to know, I guess. Even today, it’s too disturbing to let my mind explore the possibilities. Who did he abuse? Rachel? In what way? Thesequestions comprise a small, guiltily-avoided dark corner in my mind.

What good will knowing Dad’s secrets do me? I barely talk to him. He hasn’t been a real father; more the sperm donor type.

Deep down, it’s not hard to imagine him hurting people. He was never really around for us. Distant. Manipulative. Into hard drugs. Always cheating on Mom. Though he came from money, he squandered his wealth.

But whatever. None of this explains why Rachel singled me out in her will, a half-sister from her forgotten past. Surely, she had relatives on her mortician dad’s side that could have taken the house? Like her cousin, or maybe they were not on the best of terms. I wouldn’t know much about her life.

At least, for a time, I knew she was alive and well in the world. I didn’t know how much that mattered until she was gone.

I didn’t expect the shock of the news to hit me like a hurricane, knocking the wind from me. I went from not breathing to hyperventilating. Consoling Mom sobered me. I didn’t cry after that first night. But I know it’s still in me, a well of uncried tears threatening a deluge if I let down my guard.

She should be alive. Rachel was only thirty years old. No kids.

When we were little, we used to sing and dance around, and she would invent games for us to play before the parents got home from work.

I’m still trying to shake the freaky dream I had of her recently, where our roles or sibling order were reversed. I was no longer the baby of the family; she was. I mean, she looked like herself, but she was younger and smaller than me, rather than the reverse. In the dream, I felt protective.

But she was angry, her bright brown eyes darkening beneath thin, zig-zagged brows, her braided dark hair pinned below the chest under crossed arms, wearing a yellow jumpsuit. All blackand yellow and full of sting like a little angry bee—is this how she saw me when I was a girl?

It was that man again, the stranger, coming between us; he was the reason we were at odds. We both heard his deep voice commanding us. She didn’t want him to go away. She liked him watching over her. She would smile and try to impress him with how well she spun her toy top. The old-fashioned toy that Great Grandpa had given her before he died.

But I didn’t trust the stranger.

He wasn’t really a man, more of a misshaped shadow, far taller than an ordinary human, with an enlarged head, creeping away again like a recurring nightmare. Even now, I feel the lingering sense of having had this dream before. Which is so weird because this was the first time I’ve had it.

“I’ll get the luggage,” says Mom at the trunk as I shuffle in my soccer sandals along the hedge-lined drive toward the white car, keeping my nerves calm with controlled breathing.

A shiny black vintage Camaro sports car is parked further back. One of these cars must belong to what’s his name, which reminds me of the weird part of the terms of this inheritance.

Rachel intended to give me the house and the five acres it sits on, but her cousin contested the will to where there is an added stipulation: the groundskeeper is to remain, his salary written into the estate’s will. He is entitled to the carriage house where he lives, which I’m assuming is that smaller grey building on the other side of the drive, like a dollhouse version of the main house.

Stacy was very clear that, at least for now, there’s nothing I can do about this arrangement legally unless I have the money to fight it for who knows how long in court. She said that my other option was to attempt to sell the house. But she warned me a funeral home isn’t an easy sell and could sit for years on themarket. She said the other, easier option would be to work out a deal to give the home to the cousin who contested the will.

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