The next two weeks went by rather quietly. No one worried about the “ghost,” no one even spoke about it. The door to the attic was forgotten and no one even so much as mentioned the strange smells that sometimes wafted through the house.
It was exactly two weeks after the first time Larry had seen the ghost. Mitch and Liz needed a break that night and decided to go out for dinner. The three kids stayed home, all of them sitting in the large family room next to Brad’s room on the second floor. Larry sat at the computer, typing an article for the local paper where he worked as a free-lance writer. Marian was listening to the TV disinterestedly, while sketching Brad who was reading a book on ghost stories. Suddenly the mechanical click of the computer keys stopped. Larry sat back and listened.
“What’s that?” he asked. Marian listened for a moment.
“Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor,” she said disinterestedly. She had taken music history last semester.
“It sounds wrong,” Larry remarked. “It’s a piano, not an organ like on Mom’s tape.”
“So, they’ve arranged it for piano,” Marian shrugged. “Maybe someone left the radio on downstairs.”
“It’s not coming from downstairs,” Brad said monotonously. “It’s upstairs.” Suddenly everyone looked at each other. The strains of the famous piece filtered down to them. Abruptly it changed.
“Beethoven’s fifth,” Larry remarked. It was his favorite piece of classical music. Brad got up silently. The other two quickly followed him. The melody changed again before they reached the stairs. It had become something none of them recognized, or did they? The melody went around and around, ever faster.
Suddenly Marian called out, “Grieg! I know it’s from Peer Gynt, ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King!’” Brad opened the door and the three crept up the narrow stairway, Brad first, Larry last, and Marian in the middle. The whole room was lit brightly by candles. An incense burner sat on top of the table and a strange mask was propped up beside it. The ghost sat at the piano, hammering out the music to Peer Gynt. Abruptly it changed back to the Toccata. The melody made their hair stand on end. The ghost turned and looked at them, a hideous grin fixed on its face.
“Sing along,” came a scratchy voice. The melody changed again, now Beethoven’s ninth. “Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium...,” sang the scratchy voice in the original German text. The three looked at each other and ran down the stairs and out the door. Larry remembered to lock it. A hellish laughter seemed to explode from the house as they ran out the gate and to the small house across the street, number 25.
• • •
The door opened almost as soon as Brad had knocked on it to reveal a kindly lady.
“Why, hello,” she said pleasantly. She noticed the shocked looks on the face of the three young people. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“You won’t believe this, but...,” Larry began.
“You saw the ghost,” the woman finished.
“How’d you know?” they asked in unison.
“Everybody knows that place is haunted,” the lady said shrugging. She stepped away from the door. “Won’t you come in?” she asked, beckoning them inside. They entered mutely.
“I’m Mrs. Lundin,” she said with a smile. Each of the kids introduced themselves. “You know I warned your father about it when he came to pick up the keys for the inspection,” she said.
“He doesn’t believe in stuff like that,” Marian said with a wave of her hand.
“Well, he should and for a good reason,” came a rasping voice from another room. The three turned just in time to see a wheelchair roll into the room. An old man was seated in it. His hair was long and shock white, uncombed, so it gave him an almost maddened look. He had a large, hooked nose and his face was crisscrossed with many wrinkles. He hunched over in his wheelchair, wearing a pair of old-fashioned pants, shirt, and cardigan. But the most disturbing thing about him were his eyes. They were a crystal-clear blue, that seemed to be able to look through anything. They had a look in them that reminded Larry of the eyes of the ghost, and yet they seemed tamer.
“Sit down, sit down,” he croaked at them in a commanding manner.
“Oh,” Mrs. Lundin said quickly. “This is my father, Mr. Druin. He’s descended from one of the original founders of the settlement.”
“Enough formalities,” the old man barked. “Sit!” They sat.
“All right, now what are your names and what happened with the ghost?” he interrogated them. Larry introduced himself, his sister and brother and told of the encounters they had with their “house guest.”
“Heh, heh,” the old man wheezed. “Looks like old Jacob still wants his mansion!” He wheezed again and Brad concluded that the old man was trying to laugh. “Well, since you young whippersnappers now live over there, I think I should tell you the story.” Mr. Druin settled himself in his wheelchair, closed his eyes for a moment and began his tale in a scratchy voice.
“Jacob Druin was a distant relative of mine who lived back in the 1800’s. He was an asset to the community back then, being the mayor, the judge, and holding other offices at other times. He was also a wizard.” The old man cackled at the looks on the faces of the kids. “Yes, a wizard,” he repeated and cackled again.
I knew this was going to come in somewhere, Marian couldn’t help thinking.
“Well,” the old man continued, “he wasn’t a bad wizard, mind you, but a good kind, who would use his powers to help the people of the village, at least, that is, until he had the mansion built. It is said he built it by pure magic and then moved in. After that things began to change. First of all, his wife went insane and drowned herself. Then some of the young girls, girls your age,” he said, pointing at Marian, “started disappearing. ‘Tis said he sacrificed them to the devil. He was then hung for sorcery by the new mayor, but Jacob wasn’t afraid of dying, because he had bonded his soul to the house. ‘I’ll be back!’ he said when he died and a few weeks later he was, playing his piano as usual, doing what he did best: scare the people.” The old man chuckled. “And he still does it, as you got to see.”
“But what’s that growling thing?” Marian wanted to know.
“It’s said that that’s his watchdog,” Mr. Druin answered. “It only warns you once. Then,” he said, tightening a wizened hand into a fist, “it kills you.” He reveled in the shocked look on their faces. “Others may tell you it’s a demon or some such hokum. But believe me, little ‘uns, it’s a ghost.” He turned the wheelchair. “All right, enough for now,” he said leaving the room. “Remember the ghost!” They could hear him laugh as he rolled into the next room.
“Some ghost story,” Brad remarked. “Sounds a lot like those ones in the book.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Lundin said, coming out of the kitchen with some milk and cookies, “but he hasn’t told you the rest of the story.” She sat down in the seat across from Brad. “It is said that Jacob Druin still sacrifices his girls to the devil, because now and again some high school-age girls disappear, and they are always found somewhere in or around the mansion.”
• • •
They spent the rest of the evening watching the TV at Mrs. Lundin’s, but Larry and Marian’s thoughts were far from the flickering screen. Larry’s thoughts chorused around the old man’s words, Others may tell you it’s a demon. Demons! He hadn’t thought or heard about them since a couple of months before moving here. Wasn’t there something in the youth group about that? he wondered.
“Yeah, I guess there was,” Marian said abruptly. Had he been speaking out loud?
“Huh?”
“You just said something about demons and the youth group,” Marian answered.
“I didn’t realize I had spoken out loud,” Larry admitted.
“But,” Marian said, sunk in her own thoughts, “couldn’t it be true? I mean, Chris said that they were real and that they had weird powers, sort of like ....”
“Ghosts,” Larry finished.
“Yeah.” She shuddered. “But the story seems so much like the other ghost stories, it’s unreal.” She ran a hand through her short blond hair. “It’s weird, Larry, and I’m scared of it.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said in a near whisper.
• • •
Mitch and Liz arrived back at about 11:30 and the kids returned to their “haunted” mansion. Mitch was his usual unbelieving self and Liz seemed slightly unnerved at the prospect of a ghost in the house.
“Ghosts don’t exist,” Mitch said for the twentieth time as he shooed the kids into their rooms. “They’re just a bunch of fairy tales.” Even so, that night Marian and Larry found themselves praying for the first time in a long time.
Brad slid into his bed and turned out the light.
It’s actually pretty cool living in a haunted house, he thought with a grin. Wonder what they’d say about that? “They” were his friends, left behind from the move. He rolled over, looking toward the large bank of windows. Somewhere out there the body of the ghost was buried, and he wanted to find it. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again.
What’s that? he wondered. On the floor beside his bed lay something fairly large. In the half-light it looked almost like... a body?! Brad reached out to touch the thing but drew his hand back.
• • •
“Mom!” Liz came awake.
“What is it, hon?” she asked sleepily.
“There’s a body in my room,” Brad said excitedly.
“What?”
“Come and see. Rian and Larry are already there.” Liz shot out of bed and stumbled into Brad’s room.
• • •
Larry wasn’t surprised that Brad had seen a body. What surprised him was that it was real, not an image like the ghost of Jacob Druin, only a real human body. Marian had screamed when he turned on the light, because of the blood covering the white robes it wore. With her help Larry lifted the lifeless form onto the bed. Lifeless? No! The body was still warm. Either it had only died moments ago, or it was still alive. In that case ...
Oh my! he thought as the light spilled over the face. It was a girl with long red tresses framing an oval face. Freckles were sprinkled over her nose. Dark lashes accentuated the edges of the closed eyes and rosebud lips were just slightly apart. A rasping sound came from her throat, and it made Larry jump.
“She’s alive,” he said to Marian. At that moment Liz came into the room.
“Oh, my word!” the woman breathed, looking at the form on the bed. She turned and hurried back to her own room.
“Randy!” Mitch groaned slightly. “Randy, wake up!”
“What is it?” he said, coming fully awake. Liz only called him by his first name when there was real trouble.
“There’s a dying girl in Brad’s room,” she said quickly. “Call 911 and take the boys downstairs and wait.”
“Okay,” he said reaching for the phone.
As soon as the men had gone downstairs, Liz and Marian began loosening the white robes around the girl’s body. Liz was surprised to find no knife or bullet wounds anywhere. The sight of the blood sickened them, even though they realized it probably wasn’t human blood, it still turned their stomachs. Suddenly a siren howled outside the window and seconds later the paramedics came running up the stairs. One knelt beside the bed, preparing an IV, the other one bent over the girl, checking her eyes, shining a light into the partially open mouth.
“There’s something in her throat, John,” he said to his partner. “We’ll need to do the Heimlich, but it might be too late.” The other paramedic nodded, and they performed the Heimlich maneuver. It was successful, and moments later the air passages were cleared. John reached into the girl’s mouth and pulled out a black membrane.
“Wonder why she swallowed that?” he mused. “We’ll have to take her to the hospital, Mrs. Mitchell,” he said turning to Liz. “What’s her name?”
“I don’t know,” Liz said lamely. “We just found her here a few minutes ago.”
“She’s not one of your family?” Liz shook her head.
“Well,” John’s partner said, quickly packing up his gear. “You’re lucky you found her when you did. A few more minutes and she’d be dead.”
A police car had pulled up outside the house, alerted by the 911 service. The officers questioned the Mitchells and then left with the inert form of the young woman. They didn’t stay up for long, quickly returning to their beds.