Nightmares



It was the sort of morning where she had to piece the night before together based upon the contents of her pockets. This wasn’t to say that she had nights like this often, but on occasion she had admittedly gotten a bit too wasted and fallen asleep fully clothed, and in the morning the pockets of her jeans usually provided some clues as to her blackout activities.

This morning she rolled off the mattress feeling quite sore. With each year that passed, partying exacted an exponentially increasing toll. She first assessed that she was indeed in her rather nondescript bedroom. The framed Sin City poster on the wall was the focal point she used as a tether to her location. She was still wearing skinny jeans that were cutting into her hip in an uncomfortable way, so she popped the button while she sorted through her pockets. Her first discovery was a half a dozen snuffed out cigarette butts and she realized with a sigh of sorrowful acceptance that she had given into her nicotine addiction again. Another pocket yielded a soggy one dollar bill, and in her back pocket was a torn ticket stub from a punk show.

She was getting too old for her behavior and she knew it. But life was boring, and drinking made it less so. At least, for once, she had not had any dreams. Or if she had, she could no longer remember them.

Skinny jeans allow no space for a cell phone, so it took her awhile to locate it. She was relieved to find that it was still in the pocket of her beat bomber jacket, which she had apparently thrown on the kitchen floor when she got home. The phone still had a bit of battery left, so she combed through her searches and messages to discover that she had A. tried to order a pizza at 3 AM, and B. drunk texted her ex.

“Fuck” was all she said, and with this eloquent utterance the phone suddenly came to life as said ex’s face displayed on the screen. She quickly hit reject and decided to scrounge for food, but unfortunately her refrigerator was light on actual substance, though heavy in condiments. When the phone vibrated again she sighed and looked at the text she had sent the night before. All it said was “miisss u”, and he had not responded, which was no surprise. They had been broken up for over eight years, and both had been in various relationships since then. While they had made attempts to stay friends it always fell apart, likely because friendship wasn’t what she really wanted with him.

She rejected the call again, but when a third ring came through she realized that it might be important so she answered, doing her best impression of a not-hungover person. “Hi James” she said, and there was a pause before he responded, “Hello Riley”.

Another long pause resumed and Riley was about to fill it with idle banter but he suddenly said, “I have some bad news. It’s about your father… he passed away last night.”

Riley wasn’t sure this was “bad news” per say. She certainly wouldn’t classify it as good news, but she had not talked to her dad since she’d broken up with James and moved away. Her childhood had been less than idyllic. Not sure what else to say, Riley responded with, “Okay, thanks for calling”, speaking in a tone one would use when hoping to get a persistent telemarketer off the line.

She was about to hang up when James said, “I didn’t want you to hear it first from your sister because I know she can be… drama. In fact, she’s already posted about it on Facebook, but I know you deleted your account so she’s probably going to be calling you soon.” As though on cue a beeping sound emitted from the speaker of Riley’s phone and when she looked she saw the exquisit, pale features of her sister staring back. Although it was just a photo, Riley had the unnerving sense that her sister could see her, so she made some excuse to James and reluctantly picked up the incoming call.

“I know Dad’s dead,” Riley said as way of greeting.

“A ‘Hi Cara’ would have been nice” Riley’s sister, Cara, said while sniffing indignantly. “We haven’t talked in forever.” Forever was an extreme exaggeration. They had just shared the compulsory holiday phone call a few months earlier, during which Cara had gone into detail about each of her children, a seemingly endless list of nieces and nephews that Riley had been too horrible to get to know.

“Well, how did it happen?” Riley asked, trying to sound engaged but not caring much. Riley barely knew her father, she couldn’t say that she was feeling any real reaction to this news of his demise. Maybe it will hit me later she thought. Maybe I’m in shock. Or maybe I’m as cold a person as Cara has always told me I am. James had never called her cold. He had referred to her as “delightfully frosty”, but she liked that. Reminded her of a cold beer on a hot day.

Cara went into details about a failing liver and a drinking problem, and didn’t miss the chance to mention that maybe this should be a wake up call for Riley. Riley rolled her eyes. True, she could find her way into a bender from time to time, but overall she was a responsible person. She had a sizable bank account and a nice (though rather empty apartment) to prove it. When Riley didn’t rise to Cara’s bait, Cara spun off into funeral details.

“You don’t need me there right?” Riley asked. “I mean, I’m happy to send money to help with funeral costs.”

Cara jumped from her usual nagging bitch tone to full fuck-you mode without a pause. “You can’t BUY your way out of this Riley” Cara said, managing to emphasize her sister’s name in such a way that it sounded like a dirty word. “Besides, we need to talk about The House.”

Riley didn’t need to ask which house Cara was referring to. The House had been in the family for many generations. The House was where they had moved when Grandma Murphy had passed away, but when Riley’s parents split her mom moved them into a two bedroom apartment with brightly painted walls, new carpets, and a notable absence of decay. Riley had not missed living at The House, and she had not been back there since. 

The House was creepy; Riley had no desire to own it, and didn’t even care much about profiting off selling it. But she didn’t dare bring the topic of money up again with her savage sister, so she agreed to fly back to the city, and when she hung up she poured herself another drink.

It was a grey morning when she landed at TF Green Airport outside of Providence, Rhode Island. It seemed fitting. She picked up her car rental and made good time driving to her hometown of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The drive should have taken twice as long based on usual traffic, but the foggy, shitty weather seemed to have everyone hiding away and the highway was almost disturbingly vacant of fellow travelers. She came barreling off I-195 and onto the pothole ridden ramp that would take her to The House, where she had agreed to meet James and Cara. James flipped houses for a living, and Cara had insisted that he give them his thoughts on the potential value of decrypted Victorian.

Riley pulled up to the curb of The House, which was one of a row of homes built during the city’s whaling era glory days. However, unlike the other houses on the block, this one was ridden with peeling paint, and overgrown hedges nearly obscured the granite steps leading to the front door. She tilted her head back to look up at the enclosed Widow’s Walk that stood as a dark silhouette against the steely gray sky. She felt a chill pass down her spine at some memory that was just out of grasp and probably best left there.

Walking inside the house she was greeted by the same musty mothball scent that had been a feature of her childhood. She stood in the main foyer a moment, letting the dark sadness of the house sink into her, and then a piercing, obnoxious giggle emanated from the back room. It was Cara’s flirtatious laugh, a sound Riley knew all too well from high school phone calls that she had endured back in those years when the sisters had been forced to share a bedroom. Riley rolled her eyes and headed towards the noise, passing through a room so dark that she nearly tripped over some unseen object before stumbling into the kitchen where James was lying beneath the sink, and although only his legs were sticking out he was still quite recognizable to Riley.

The mirth in Cara’s eyes died off as soon as she spotted Riley. “You’re late” she frowned.

“My plane just landed” Riley replied, wanting to note that she was in fact exactly on time, but knowing it was a waste of breath. “So, what’s the deal James, is this place worth selling or should I grab the gas and matches now?”

“Riley!” Cara said in a scandalized tone, but James shimmied out from under the sink and seeing his smiling face was like a punch to the gut. She had thought herself prepared to see him again, but there really is no preparing for being reunited with a lost love. She would call him “the one that got away” but that would suggest that he had done the running away, when in fact it had been she who had flown across the country to start a new life.

His brown hair was slightly ruffled but greying at the temples, and his brown eyes were still kind but now there were crows feet at the corners. Time had passed, time she had not been prepared to face. Silence fell over the kitchen and the “tick, tick, tick” of the grandfather clock emanated from the foyer.

James’ smile faltered and he tore his gaze away from Riley, giving Cara a shy shrug. “It would be a lot of work to restore this place. Someone might be up to the challenge. The city is gentrifying you know.”

“I do!” Cara responded, sounding gleeful. “Though Riley probably has no idea since she took off before all the changes really started happening.”

Took off. Fled. Ran. Deserted. Choose a verb. Riley thought these things but did not say them. Instead she said, “well, put it up on the market then.”

“Oh, I will” Cara said, and she gathered her purse as if about to leave but then she faltered. “Riley, wouldn’t you at least like to see the house one last time?”

“Not really,” Riley replied.

“Oh… well then.” Cara stopped talking and Riley nearly fainted from surprise. Cara never stopped talking.

“So… I guess I’ll go check into the hotel and start exploring all this gentrification I’m hearing about” Riley said to fill the silence.

“Yeah I guess… I mean, we haven’t seen you in forever! Shouldn’t we have a drink or something?” Cara asked.

Now Riley knew something was wrong with Cara. Cara wasn’t a prude but she wasn’t one to party either. And the use of the royal “we” really had Riley sketched out. Were James and Cara an item? The thought made her feel sick. Besides, Cara was married, and even though her husband was a bit of a boring lump of a man, Riley never thought James would be the type to engage in an affair. The word affair made her feel even more queasy but she agreed to the drink because now she simply had to know what was happening.

Cara opened a bunch of cabinets before she scored a bottle of Jameson. Clearly Cara had not spent much time at The House either. She scrounged about some more before finding three glasses and poured them each a drink, which they took into the adjoining room; a place that had once been called a “parlor”. You couldn’t really call it a parlor anymore though; that sort of nomenclature was reserved for fancy places. This room had a fireplace that had been boarded over many years ago, a wall of broken and dusty bookshelves, and a couple sofas that looked like they should have the words “BED BUGS” sprayed across them in neon orange.
Despite the filth of the couch, Riley flopped back onto it and found it quite comfortable. James sat beside her and his proximity filled her with a warm feeling that had nothing to do with the whiskey that she had already started to consume. Cara sat across from them, perched on the arm of the adjacent sofa like a little bird ready to take flight.

It was silent for a while and Riley could feel the darkness of the house pushing in against her until it became hard to breathe. She could barely remember living in the place; the faint memories she did have were like shadows flickering about in the corners of her thoughts. When she thought of the house she remembered being very cold, and she remembered feeling terrified, and she remembered screams. But those screams must have been from her parents fighting. She sipped her whiskey again and then broke the silence by asking Cara about her children.

This topic gave way to discussion of the Whaling City Youth Baseball League, which James had played in as a child, and then onto the high school and memories of teenaged antics, and soon they were refilling their glasses and laughing together as though they were just three old friends catching up in a local bar, and not three ghosts sharing a dead man’s whiskey in a rotting mausoleum of a house.

Riley waggled the bottle in Cara’s direction as way of asking if she would like a refill. “Oh, I shouldn’t” Cara said, her face red and her posture relaxed now that she had slid from the arm of the chair and into the comfort of stained couch cushions. “On the other hand, it may help me sleep.”

“Always helps me” Riley hiccuped.

“Do you have trouble sleeping too?” Cara asked, and Riley realized that Cara’s reluctance to return home had nothing to do with a torrid affair with James and everything to do with an effort to connect with her sister. 

Riley felt ashamed of her presumptions about her sister and responded, “I have always had trouble sleeping”. James nodded, clearly having remembered this fact about the woman he once shared a bed with. “I have these nightmares…”

“Me too” Cara said, and now she tossed her drink back like a seasoned pro. “It’s always the same dream too. A woman trapped under… something. Like she’s in a crawl space and she’s screaming and…” Cara stopped, her pretty green eyes drifting off as though caught up in thought.

“And she’s clawing at the board above her,” Riley said, feeling horror well up inside her. “Her nails are breaking off and her hands are bloody but she keeps clawing and screaming, and she’s suffocating.”

The hazy look in Cara’s eyes disappeared and she looked at Riley with terror in her gaze. “How is it possible we could have the same dream? Or… are you fucking with me? Did I tell you about this dream before?”

Riley didn’t bother to respond. Of course Cara had not told her about the dream, even when they were kids Cara never told her about anything that didn’t have to do with how perfect Cara was or how not-perfect Riley was. But the fact that they had shared these nightmares deeply disturbed Riley. Silence slipped into the room again and every shadow in the vast space surrounding them seemed to have malice hidden within it. Riley felt a familiar but nearly forgotten icy sensation fill her body and goosebumps ran up and down her arms. From upstairs, there was a creaking sound and they all jumped.

“Probably just--” James began, but he never finished that thought because a moment later came a loud THUD from just above their heads and they all held their breath as they heard a sliding sound followed by another THUD. Thud, drag, thud, drag… it repeated several times before James whispered, “There’s someone up there.”

He stood up and looked around the room frantically before spotting a dusty set of fire pokers beside the non-working fireplace. Arming himself with one of these he headed for the staircase that led up to the second floor.

“What are you doing?” Cara hissed, but James hushed her and disappeared into the darkness. For the first time ever, Riley agreed with Cara that James seemed to be out of his mind, but his macho protector routine was also more than slightly endearing, and before Riley realized what she was doing she began following him into the shadows.

The staircase was unlit, but a faint blue glow came from the window at the end of the hall as they were now entering the twilight hours. James walked up the stairs with a silent, athletic grace that Riley attempted to mimic. The sound seemed to have stopped and she was about to say that maybe it was nothing, when they heard it again. THUD. Now James sprinted up the steps and she followed, balling her fists as though ready for a fight.

At the top of the landing they gazed down a long, barely visible hallway adorned with peeling wallpaper. At the end of the hall a hideous painting of two little girls stared forlornly down at them. James stopped, poker held high as though about to clobber someone. Riley half hid behind him as the distinct sound of footsteps echoed from down the hall. “Who’s there?” James asked in a husky tone, but nobody responded. Thud, drag. Thud, drag. The footsteps drew nearer but there was nothing to be seen.

She felt James tense as though about to swing at thin air. The footsteps grew louder and if Riley didn’t know better it sounded as though someone was just feet away from them. She let out a shaky breath, and even in the poorly lit corridor she could see her breath turn to frost. James exhaled as well, his breath an even larger cloud, and in it the outline of a face could be seen just inches from where they stood. Riley screamed and James took her by the hand, turning to run. They sprinted down the staircase with impossible speed, nearly colliding with Cara, who was sobbing into her phone.

Riley grabbed her sister by the arm and the girl continued to blubber into the phone’s receiver, but her words were indistinguishable behind the roar of Riley’s heartbeat in her ears. The three of them emerged out onto the sidewalk as street lights flicked on, one at a time, and in the cold New England April air, Riley felt suddenly sobered. She realized Cara was calling the police and she felt embarrassed; clearly they had just been drunk and gotten spooked by silly talk of nightmares.

But it was too late to call off the cavalry as now sirens could be heard, and a police car filled the street with piercing rays of blue and red light. The officer got out and Cara began reporting a home invasion. Riley wanted to say no, it was all a mistake, but then she figured the officer was already there so he might as well check it out. As he entered the house, Riley realized she was still holding James’ hand tightly and she moved to let go but he continued to hold on. Another cruiser arrived and James said there appeared to be someone in the house but it was dark and they hadn’t been able to see well.

When the first officer emerged from the house he announced that it was all empty and James shook his hand and apologized for raising the alarm. “Well, I don’t blame you for getting a little freaked out kid,” the officer said. “This house has always weirded me way the fuck out. Back when my father was on the force, the owner was suspected of abducting a young woman but they could never pin it on him. It’s crazy talk I know, but kids used to say you could still hear her screaming if you walked by the house at night.”

Screaming. As soon as he said the word old memories came rushing back to Riley; nights spent burying her head beneath her pillow, humming, singing, doing anything to drown out the screams. A revelation came upon her so clearly that she felt herself go numb; the screaming had not come from her parents fighting; it had never been about that. The screaming had come from above her... It had come from the Widow’s Walk. 

Before she knew where her feet were leading her Riley was running back into the house, charging through one dark room after another, pounding up the stairs and racing down the icy corridor to a door at the end of the hall; a door she had been told as a child that she was never to open. A narrow wooden staircase was illuminated by a swinging lightbulb and though her feet suddenly felt impossibly heavy she walked up the steps slowly, barely noticing that James was now behind her, asking a barrage of questions that she could not decipher answers to. She climbed the steps until she came upon a thin door with an aged brass doorknob.

With her hand on the doorknob she felt her heart race as she slowly turned it. It gave way with a loud creak and then they were in the much neglected Widow’s Walk, a tiny room perched at the top of the house. A room that she had once thought looked like the turret of a castle; a place where a princess might be trapped in a fairytale, waiting to be saved by her prince.

But this was no fairytale and a cold sinking feeling came over her that had nothing to do with the evening breeze that crept in from a broken window. She looked down at the floor where shredded carpet barely concealed warped boards. She pulled the carpet up and she felt like she was lifting the skin off a rotted corpse. Beneath the carpet the outline of a hatch could be seen; it had been sealed with now rusted nails.

Apparently James had not let go of the fire poker, because now he thrust it beneath the rotting edge of the hatch and he pried upwards. A horrible sound, like nails against a chalkboard, was emitted and then the board broke loose.

And there, beneath the floor, was the princess who had never been saved. The girl of Riley and Cara’s nightmares. The skeleton corpse of the screaming woman.

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