Ghostwriter (16 page)
In some ways he felt as dead as Lucy.
That afternoon, walking through the crowds at Geneva Commons, deliberately surrounding himself with life and activity, a terrifying
thought struck him.
How will I know if I’m going insane?
He used to have Lucy and Audrey as sounding boards and voices of reason. Now it was just him.
And he was cracking up, losing it. Having nightmarish visions from the books he had written. Terrifying dreams from the book
he was reading.
What if I’ve already lost it and don’t know it?
The fear didn’t leave, no matter how many strangers surrounded him, no matter how busy life was around him.
He opened his eyes. For a second he could see nothing but black. But then, little by little, he was able to discern shadows
and shapes, outlines and overtones in the suburban night.
Dennis sat up, and instead of finding himself in bed, he was on the freshly cut lawn staring up at the midnight sky. The grass
beneath him was wet and cold. He could hear cars in the distance, the steady rush of the river, a train passing on the nearby
tracks.
I’m not dreaming. Not this time.
He patted his face to make sure. The last thing he could remember was reading that unholy tale Cillian had left by his door.
The one he kept reading even though he swore he wouldn’t continue. He must have drifted off in the armchair.
And then what? How’d I get out here?
He stood, his back aching, his mind foggy. The dampness on his backside was real. The chill in the air was real. And the light
in the third-floor room of his house was real.
I didn’t turn that on.
Long hair draped over pale skin and bruised arms came to mind. So did Cillian’s glaring face.
I’m losing it.
He closed his eyes hard and opened them again as if that might help, but saw once more that the light was on. It was the second
room on the third floor used for storage. He and Lucy had always intended to turn it into a memory room or a room for Lucy’s
crafts. Now it just contained echoes of the past.
Echoes.
Dennis hadn’t been in that room since Lucy passed away. The door was always shut, the blinds closed. But those blinds were
now open.
And a figure stood at the window, looking down.
Dennis almost choked on his breath as he backed away before forgetting everything and sprinting back toward the house.
Whoever was in there was going to get hurt. Whoever was in his house messing with his mind was going to be messed with.
Dennis was tired of this. Tired of being afraid.
He hated feeling helpless.
He bolted onto the deck and tried the back door but found it locked.
He turned and ran around the side of the house to the front door, but it was locked as well.
I didn’t lock myself out of my own house.
There was a spare key under the deck. He used it on the back door, his hands shaking, then searching out the light switch
since it was pitch-black inside.
Just as he turned on the light, a black creature sprang at him from the kitchen island.
It was a creature of the night, a creature from hell, with bright red dead eyes.…
But as the fur brushed him and he noticed the missing claws, he realized it was just Buffy. The cat Audrey had gotten after
Lucy passed away, the cat he couldn’t say no to, the cat that came and went as it pleased.
He was lucky he didn’t snap the cat’s furry neck.
“All right, Buffy. You need to learn not to jump on people.” He put the cat down and thought about getting the gun.
You keep thinking about it, don’t you? When are you just going to go get the thing?
But he refused. If Cillian was upstairs trying to scare him, he’d deal with it his own way. A gun would complicate things.
And could make things messy.
As he started to go upstairs, a noise stopped him.
It was laughter.
And it made his already chilled body break out in bumps.
It was the laughter of an old woman. Hoarse, ragged, haunting—the laughter smothered him.
I didn’t just hear that.
But it came again, a scratching cackle that sounded ancient.
Someone’s just trying to spook me out. That’s all. That’s all it is.
He went up the steps slowly, barely breathing, his body quivering from the cold, his eyes wide.
The laughter came again.
The step underneath him creaked.
So did the house.
This house doesn’t creak like that.
On the second floor he began ascending the twisting narrow stairs to the third level. His bad knees, thanks to years of baseball
and softball, prevented him from making the climb very often. But now someone was playing with him. Someone was trying to
scare the guy who made a living scaring others.
Someone was playing with his fears even though Dennis had few of them.
I’m not scared.
So he tried to tell himself. But the creaks and the laughter and the wind outside continued. And the light upstairs glowed,
the sliver of illumination visible beneath the closed door.
As he reached the top of the stairs, everything suddenly went dark. He held onto the railing, afraid he would go tumbling
if someone suddenly jumped out at him.
Or if someone decided to push me.
He waited, straining to hear anything. But there was sudden silence. No wind outside, no groaning in the floor or the walls,
no children laughing.
He stepped up to the door.
He opened it slowly, carefully.
I know where you are.
His finger found the switch and flipped it on.
And nothing.
There was nothing.
Nobody was in this room. There wasn’t anywhere to hide either. No closet up here. No bed to hide under. Just boxes and a couple
of bookshelves and an overhead light.
Even the blinds were closed.
Dennis scanned the room, listening, waiting, watching, but nothing happened. He opened the blinds and looked outside, but
could barely make out anything in the darkness.
The darkness he had just awoken in.
I’m losing my mind.
As he started to head back downstairs, déjà vu struck him.
He remembered his haunted house story.
And the scene that happened almost just like this one. With the man awaking outside, going into the house to the empty room
on the third floor only to find nothing.
That was the start of the haunting, the start of the story, the start of everything.
But I made that story up. I wrote that almost a decade ago.
Climbing down the stairs, Dennis knew he needed to see someone, talk to somebody. To make sure he wasn’t going insane, like
the character he had written about so many years ago.
Cillian had never felt so cheated. So infuriated.
You might as well have come to my house and stolen twenty-five bucks from me and slapped me in the face and peed on my carpet
while you’re at it.
He didn’t bother to toss the book across the room. No. He was going to do something else with it. But he needed to decide
what first.
His man had lost it. Officially lost it.
Book seven—actually, book nine but the first two didn’t count—jumped the shark. It was a sellout. It was autopilot land. It
was clichéd. It was beyond horrific—it was
boring.
It was about as scary as a Girl Scout. Scratch that—even those could be scary. This was dull city.
Maybe he would cut the book into pieces and mail it back to Dennis Shore. No, that would be far too obvious.
He needed to do something different.
He needed to make an impression on a man who had obviously stopped trying to make impressions.
Cillian had a few ideas. And they made his mind and his mood feel much better.
He was parking his SUV on Third Street when he saw her.
The curly brown hair, the slender frame, the bouncy walk.
It was only from behind, but Dennis knew it was Lucy walking down the sidewalk.
She was right there, across the street. In person. There to touch.
He wanted to run after her, but instead he stayed in the car, backing up the Volvo and driving down the street, racing to
see her face, already knowing the truth but hopeful anyway.
When he finally passed the woman, he instantly saw that she very much
wasn’t
Lucy. She was younger, and her features were completely different.
Dennis shook his head as he looped back around onto Third Street. Once out of the car, the sun shining on his face, he felt
ridiculous.
He had deliberately gotten out of the house. Every moment he spent there he feared someone ringing the doorbell to tell him
the truth was out. He had stolen something, and the world finally knew. He was everything those pages strewn across his lawn
had said: a liar, a fraud, a hack.
And the only thing left for him to write would be his obituary.
Away from the house he could worry less. A deli on Third served an amazing egg salad sandwich that Lucy turned him on to years
ago. Today he enjoyed the sandwich even though he was still shaken from thinking he’d seen her earlier.
His mind was getting away from him.
He just didn’t know who to talk to or where to go.
Everything else going on in his life paled in comparison to the feeling of being alone.
The phone rang as he drove to the bookstore.
“How was the sandwich, Dennis?”
He was being watched. Somewhere Cillian was spying on him.
“Don’t you have a life?”
“As much as you do.”
“Where are you?”
“Answer me something, Dennis. Where do you get your inspiration?”
It wasn’t just a simple question. It was a taunt, a jab.
“Where do you get yours?”
A low, seething laugh answered him.
“What’s so funny?”
“You answer me first, Dennis. Where do you get your inspiration?”
“Lots of places.”
“Lots of places? Like the loving arms of a beautiful wife? Or the angelic eyes of an adorable daughter? Places like that?”
“Don’t go there,” Dennis threatened.
“I know what inspired
Breathe.
But what about your next few books? The ones that were still written with passion?”
Dennis shook his head. “They all have passion.”
“Really, Dennis? Do you really believe that? Come on. Hard work does not necessarily mean the book has a soul. Words on the
page does not necessarily mean they have a heart.”
“Your story is as soulless as they come.”
“Maybe. But you’re still reading it, aren’t you? Did you have some sweet little dreams last night?”
“I swear on my life—”
“Why did you write Echoes?”
The question surprised Dennis.
It surprised him because he knew exactly why he wrote that book.
How can this guy know? How can he keep pushing the right buttons?
“What are you trying to do?”
“Something you can’t. To bring something you can no longer bring.”
“You’re insane.”
“And you’re sane? Really, Dennis? Isn’t it awful trying to create something out of nothing?”
Dennis didn’t answer.
“You have to live life in order to write about it. You can’t just turn everything off and expect to be able to create.”
He remained silent.
“You lost it several books ago, didn’t you? But you didn’t tell anybody and you still have the name, and those poor schleps
still buy your books, but you lost it some time ago, didn’t you?”
“Leave me alone.”
“You brought this on yourself, Dennis Shore. You brought this on your house and your family.
You
invited me into your life without asking if I even wanted to be there anymore.
You
had a chance, but that chance died and so will everything else in your precious, deliberate life. I am never going to leave
you alone.”
It was 1995 and since the owners wanted the house sold quickly, they were willing to sell it far below the listed price. It
needed some work, sure, but Dennis was willing to put in the time. To buy something like this in the upscale town of Glen
Ellyn for this price was amazing. But this was back when the housing market was booming. Dennis was still working at the advertising
firm in Chicago, taking the train back and forth to the city. This house was a short walk from the train station.
Everything was ideal. The only thing the owners neglected to tell them was that the house was haunted.
He hadn’t thought about it for some time. Lucy once told him if there was a contest for being able to box up and misplace
memories, Dennis would win it. And even to this day, after everything that went on in that place, Dennis wouldn’t admit the
house was haunted.
Why did you write Echoes?
Cillian’s question still resonated in his head that evening even after running into an old colleague at the coffee shop in
Geneva. He hadn’t seen Kevin Ward since Lucy passed away. Everyone simply called him Ward. They used to work at the ad firm
together, and while Dennis ended up leaving to try to make it as a writer, Ward started his own design firm and was still
going strong.
Seeing Ward reminded Dennis of the house and all the strange occurrences that happened in it.
He didn’t write
Echoes
to document that period. Just to try to make sense of it. But that didn’t happen, even after the book became a national bestseller,
avoiding the sophomore slump some predicted after the blockbuster success of
Breathe.
Not once during all the interviews did he ever tell anybody that Echoes was about the house he lived in. But even though Lucy
didn’t read all of it, she skimmed enough of the novel to know it was about the two of them.
“So you did believe me,” she once told him.
“I never said I didn’t believe you.”