Slattery Falls Read online

  We were just about finished when I heard a metallic clanking sound below us. A resounding toll like someone had dropped a heavy chain on a hardwood floor, and it reverberated throughout the house. Not that I had much doubt—it was deafening in the silence—but one look at Josh told me he’d heard it, and the gears in his head were already turning.

  “We make our way downstairs, but we do it slowly,” he said.

  I followed him toward the stairs.

  Clank.

  Again, but this one rang further away. Was it leading us somewhere? My ears were at attention, awaiting the next occurrence. My other senses remained on high alert as well. The shadows, which hadn’t grabbed my attention before, were creeping across the floor. I attempted to step around them because, at that moment, I convinced myself something lived in that darkness. Situational superstition at its finest, but my lizard brain knew no earthly good could come from getting too near. Whatever dwelled there had watched us the minute we first set foot on the property, and now the time for waiting was just about up. Right there, my skepticism died, and what began as something to do on a three-day weekend became serious business.

  A substantial part of me wanted to hightail it out of there and not look back, but I shut it down. Something was trying to get our attention, and this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

  Clank.

  A third time. We heard it as we reached the bottom of the stairs. The sound grew closer. We could pinpoint its location as coming from the basement. I remembered Josh saying something about rattling in the basement. The story contained bits with Hale’s brother and a navy ship. Forgive me if I’m a little fuzzy on the details.

  The moon’s light, which had graced this room only twenty minutes earlier, made a hasty retreat and the creeping, crawling shadows returned. A portrait of a broad-shouldered man, balding, but sporting an enormous bright-red beard shone through the darkness, and I wondered how I could have missed it before. As we crossed the room to the basement door, I could’ve sworn the man in the portrait’s penetrating sea-green eyes followed me.

  Three more clanks sounded, one immediately after another, as though a chain were being dragged down a set of steps. Josh reached out to grab me, and I think we both knew something was luring us to the basement. About fifteen feet from the basement door, he signaled we should sit.

  I half expected he might give me the safe word, and I felt a momentary disappointment that surprised the hell out of me. Instead, he spoke just above a whisper and said, “This is why we planned. We don’t lose our heads just because there’s activity. We’re going to take on the basement just like all the other rooms, but slower. More cautiously. We’re going to sit here for another minute, collect ourselves, then make our way to the basement door, and you’ll follow my lead.”

  Josh delivered the speech in a way that left me wondering whether he was talking to me or just himself. I didn’t pick up on it, but later I would think about him not giving me an out. I’ve thought a lot about the motives, or maybe lack of motives, he had. Even ten years later, I still can’t come to a solid conclusion. The guy is a mystery.

  We stood and crossed the last fifteen feet to the basement door. As we closed the gap, the moon reappeared and the outstretched arms of the shadows rescinded. I barely picked up on this, though. My eyes were locked on the door. It was a dull blue or gray, paint peeling, and the colors indistinguishable in the limited light. This struck me as strange in a museum regularly open to the public, like a single small corner of the house fallen into disrepair. Josh tapped the knob three times with the flat of his hand, as you might do when looking for a safe exit during a fire. Satisfied, he looked in my direction, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

  Chapter Seven

  Whatever I expected—some grisly, decaying nightmare creature or maybe the ghost of Nathan Hale with an elongated neck—on the other side of the door didn’t come to fruition. The door swung open toward us, and the narrow staircase descended into a murky darkness. Even straining my eyes, I couldn’t see the bottom.

  “After you,” I said.

  Josh eased down the creaking set of stairs, shining the flashlight toward the basement, but also side to side, never keeping it in one area for more than a couple seconds. Given the shabby condition of the door, we weren’t confident about the upkeep of what lay behind it, and took each step with care.

  “Do you smell that?” he said.

  I inhaled deeply and caught a faint scent of cold, salt air. I’m not sure I’d ever thought of a smell as cold before, but there was no other way to describe it. Going down the stairs, the scent became stronger and stronger, and I had to remind myself that we were not actually descending into the hold of a ship. When we reached the bottom, we paused and got an idea of the layout. No windows of any kind appeared to be letting outside light in, and the open door at the top of the stairs wasn’t as generous with its luminescence as one might expect.

  Josh held up a hand to signal I should stay where I was and then maneuvered around me so that we were standing back-to-back. We were in a position of defense.

  “If there are any spirits here, please make your presence known,” Josh called out.

  No response.

  “Don’t all speak up at once,” I said.

  “Shut up.”

  As soon as I said it, the room grew darker. I could concede the movement in the upstairs shadows could be attributed to adrenaline and an overactive imagination. I doubt I’ll be able to convince anyone that imagination wasn’t a factor in the basement. The darkness became absolute. Even our flashlights no longer cast light. They simply became pinpricks in the Stygian black.

  “No husky yet,” he murmured, as if reading my thoughts.

  Josh reached out with his free hand, grabbed the sleeve of my sweatshirt, and started inching away from the stairs. Despite their ineffectiveness, we kept the flashlights on.

  A thunderous clank came from the base of the stairs, where we had stood only a moment ago. It had the clear timbre of metal crashing down on wood despite the basement’s concrete foundation. When the reverberation settled, a sound like a foot dragging across the floor emanated from the same location.

  A step. A shuffle.

  A step. A shuffle.

  Coming closer.

  A step. A shuffle.

  “I’m calling it,” I whispered, “We’ve got to go. There’s fucking somebody down here.”

  The door at the top of the stairs slammed shut.

  Our flashlights returned from the dead, revealing a figure hunched over, facing the corner of the room. The burst of light lasted for less than a second, but that image etched itself into my mind, perfectly detailed. Something about its stance struck me as inherently male, though I couldn’t see the face. Long, dark, dirty hair would have obscured the features, even if it had been looking toward us. It wore a trench coat, tattered along the bottom, which hardly concealed a pair of bare, filthy feet.

  We continued moving to the stairs, eyes locked on the pitch black spot we’d seen the specter in. The flashlights lit up again for a split second. Just long enough to divulge that the previously inhabited corner stood empty now.

  It’s funny. I recall every second in the basement of the Hale House so clearly, but the exodus is a blur. I remember getting to the stairs, scrambling up on hands and knees. I don’t know who got to the top first, but the door didn’t open right away. Maybe whatever was in the house was keeping us in. Maybe the door just didn’t fit correctly in the frame. Hell, maybe we even momentarily lacked the capacity to push in the right direction. After what felt like forever, it opened and we sprinted through the entrance room and outside, putting some distance between ourselves and the house.

  One last thing I remember about getting out of there. I felt watched, even after we got outside. A chill, like icy fingers running up my spine, kept me from looking back and made me move like the devil was chasing me until I hit the woods.

&
nbsp; Chapter Eight

  “What the fuck was that? You saw that, right? Jesus!”

  We burst out of the woods toward the car, moving at a brisk pace that somehow didn’t feel brisk enough.

  Josh walked behind me without answering, listening patiently to the same questions asked over and over with slightly altered phrasing and different placements of the ‘fucks’ contained within. He didn’t say a word until we got to the car. I expected him to be angry or loud, even if that was outside the box. When I didn’t get those reactions, I expected him to act scared or upset. I did not expect frustration, especially geared in my direction.

  “Travis,” he said, a sigh, then a pause before he continued. “A glass can only spill what it contains.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Look, I know you’re worked up, but can you stop saying fuck so much? It’s exhausting.”

  “Sorry,” I said, feeling a bit scolded and trying to figure out what to add next. “I…”

  Nothing came to mind, and the silence lingered a moment. Finally, Josh answered for me.

  “You didn’t come because you felt pressured, or you thought I’d be mad if you said no. That’s not you. You certainly didn’t come because you felt the need to wander around bored in the dark. I think you agreed to come because you wanted what just happened, to happen. A glass can only spill what it contains. We can’t help what’s innately inside of us—our darkest desires.”

  I tried to interrupt, but he waved his hand, letting me know not to bother.

  “Yeah, I know it’s a kind of ridiculous assertion, but as Sherlock Holmes always says, ‘once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’”

  “I’m supposed to be the psych major.”

  “Well, no worries, you’re safe there. That’s more in line with philosophy or English in its nature. Don’t change the subject, though. There’s a part of you that wanted to have an experience with the supernatural, to see a ghost. And, Travis?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We saw a fucking ghost.”

  The frustration left Josh’s face and the half smile that occasionally cut through the glibness made an appearance. He added, “You’re supposed to use fuck, and it’s derivatives to show emphasis. That seemed an appropriate place.”

  “Yeah. I don’t disagree.”

  Chapter Nine

  We had a few drinks back at Josh’s place to unwind and ended up falling asleep near four or five in the morning. The sunshine and noise of the house collaborated to pull us out of bed in the early afternoon, and after a small lunch, we packed our belongings and got on the road back to Storrs.

  We didn’t talk about what happened at the Hale House. Not at Josh’s house, not on the ride back to campus, not even in the coming weeks. Speaking it aloud would somehow diminish the personal nature of the experience, and I wanted nothing more than to hold it close and tight. Throughout the course of our third school year, I ran the events over repeatedly in my head, trying to process what we’d been through. It wasn’t until spring semester that I finally brought it up.

  “I think we should do it again.”

  “I’m not a fan of the pronoun game. I’m going to need context.”

  I couldn’t tell whether that was Josh being sarcastic or just the blunt way he phrases most of his output on display. It’s a personality quirk that takes some getting used to.

  That night, we had a few people over to my room to partake in adult beverages and watch 1408. I haven’t seen that movie in years, maybe even since we watched it then, but I always loved the idea of a haunting being isolated to a single room. Plus Samuel L. Jackson. The movie ended and everyone stumbled into the night to study for exams, or at least sit in front of books and make up excuses for not studying. As was customary, Josh stayed behind to have one more drink and talk. In a short amount of time, he’d done an impressive job of getting me caught up on all things paranormal. I still had trouble holding a conversation without my eyes going crooked, but I could follow most of what he said now.

  “I think we should do it again,” I repeated, emphasizing the pronoun mainly because I knew it would annoy him. “Like in October, with the Hale House.”

  “You want to go back to the Hale House?”

  “Yes! No, I… I don’t know. Maybe there, maybe a different place? I mean, I know you’ve done this before and probably in a few different places. So you’re the expert. What do you think?”

  “I think I’m surprised,” laughed Josh. “Look, I’ve actually been inside a couple houses with purported activity since October.”

  “Jesus. Alone or…?” Of course it had been alone. He didn’t have anyone else to go with.

  “Well, yeah. I didn’t think you’d want to go after what happened last time.”

  “But you could’ve checked. We haven’t talked about this in months. Months and months.”

  “Why didn’t you bring it up?” Josh cocked his head slightly to the side.

  “I don’t know. I guess I thought we’d get there, and this thing came up and that fucking class, and I don’t know, man.”

  Josh sat silently for a moment, just long enough to make sure I had nothing else to add.

  “We kind of sound like a bickering couple,” he added softly.

  “Yeah, no shit. I just… I consider you a really good friend. All the people who walked out the door twenty minutes ago? Casual acquaintances. Bailing on each other is not something friends do.”

  Josh sat silently, staring at a point past my right shoulder. “I don’t have a lot of friends. I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you. I don’t know how to act around people, and I never have. When I was young, maybe six, I learned how to copy what the people around me were doing—to look at people when I talked to them, to laugh even when I didn’t find something funny, to talk about something another person was interested in when I didn’t care about it. The list goes on. It’s exhausting, though. It’s like wearing a mask all the time.

  “When I look someone in the eye, it’s like… there’s just too much happening. It’s so much easier to listen to what they’re saying if I can look at something stationary and just let my ears focus. That probably doesn’t make any sense.”

  As much as it sounded like a place to jump in, I suspected he had more to say, so I let him go on.

  “The thing is, that no matter how hard you try, you can’t keep the mask on all the time and it wears you down. Eventually, when you spend a lot of time with a person, they get to see the real you. It’s not socially acceptable if the real you is more interested in conducting research on ghost sightings that have occurred within twenty-five miles than, I don’t know, playing a pick-up game of basketball or discussing what top the girl at the table behind you is wearing. Potential friends tend to drift away. I hit a point around my sophomore year of high school where I gave up, so to speak.”

  “It came down to acting in a way that made me comfortable and pushing people away, or covering myself up and then pushing them away eventually, anyway. High school is not the best time for self-discovery though. I got deemed a freak and a retard and the few people who associated with me, stopped.”

  “When I was sixteen, I tried to kill myself. It doesn’t matter how, but I was told it was a ‘cry for help’, and I spent four months as a patient at a hospital in Rhode Island. I learned a lot of great coping techniques honestly, tried some medications. Some worked well, some didn’t. When the doctors felt like I was in a good place, they discharged me, but I didn’t go back to school. I wrapped up my last two years of formal education as a homeschooler.”

  “What was that like? The home school thing?” I asked, sensing we had hit a point in the conversation where it was safe to jump in.

  “It was great, actually. Everything I did was self-directed, and I could tailor it to the type of things I wanted to learn and the way I wanted to learn them. I ended up in an
okay place, but I also lost the ability to trust new people. Even when I first met you, I just assumed you were making fun of me or you were just temporary. Honestly,” and he smiled here, “I have a hard time not telling the truth. In a lot of instances it’s out before I can stop it, and most people bail on me because they don’t enjoy hearing it. You seem to thrive on it. You’re a glutton for punishment, Travis.”

  “You’re not wrong. I don’t really know what to say. It pisses me off that there are people in the world who need everyone to act just like them. I’m sorry you had to go through all that. But I’m your friend, man, and I won’t bail on you.”

  Josh simply nodded. “I appreciate that.”

  “So the next fucking time you’re planning a haunted weekend excursion, you damn well better include me.”

  “Okay,” Josh said. “I’ve got a few places in mind that I was hoping to visit over the summer. If you’re up to go, so am I.”

  Chapter Ten

  Josh handed over the names of a few places, none of which triggered any recognition on my part. He had some more research to do on the history of each location, but we agreed to keep in touch about it and eventually plan a weekend at his house to organize and try our luck.

  We kept in contact regularly, but didn’t get together until after the July 4th holiday. We planned a day and time for my arrival. What we hadn’t planned on was Elsie.

  When I turned into the driveway at the Costa residence, Josh stood outside by the walkway, waiting. I always expected a hunched stature on his tall frame, but today his shoulders hung lower than usual. If you’ve ever seen the guilty look a dog gets, just waiting to be caught, you know what I mean. Knowing Josh as I did, I steeled myself to drag whatever was wrong out of him. After all, we had big plans and it wouldn’t do to put ourselves in a tenuous situation with an elephant taking up the better part of the room.