My Life Across the Table (15 page)

I think she was too freaked out to ever ask me what happened, so there became an unspoken agreement between us, never to speak of it again. We never opened the door again, and from that day forward, it was as though that room simply didn’t exist.

Everything else about the move went on as scheduled, and as the furniture was being delivered, we decided to turn the sunroom into a very lovely bedroom for my mother. I secretly hoped that the bedroom would be the only anomaly we would have to deal with, because we both loved the house. Though I was very conscious about the terrifying energy in the bedroom, the “creep factor” was quickly becoming a non-issue, seeming to fade a little, with every box we unpacked.

Within the first week, a handy-man took care of my mother’s short of things she needed done in the house for her peace-of-mind, including the installation of a deadbolt on the door between the kitchen and the service porch. We cheered as we checked the last thing off her list. We were finally done with the move, and could really enjoy our new home.

For the first month or so, everything appeared to be pretty normal. I was busy giving readings, we had a housewarming party, along with a couple of small dinner parties with friends. It was a quiet and peaceful period for us, and it felt like life had finally returned to normal.

One afternoon I went in to the kitchen to find the door between the kitchen and the service porch, standing wide open. The door that we had a deadbolt lock installed on for security, so I thought that maybe my mother had forgotten to lock it, I would ask her about it when she got up. A few minutes later she wandered into the kitchen to join me, though she was still sleepy, I asked her about the door being left open, she said, “How could I have left the door open, Sweetheart? You have the only key to the lock, remember?”

I dropped what I was doing, running to get my keys out of my purse. There it was. The one and only key to the deadbolt, hanging on my key ring, and it had been in my possession since the day it was installed. Now I was completely baffled. I went back to the kitchen with my keys, looking closely at the door to see that it had definitely been unlocked. I closed it, locking it and unlocking it two or three times. I turned the doorknob pulling on the door, but it held fast. I know it seems like a small thing, but this was just crazy, and I knew for sure that the deadbolt didn’t spontaneously unlock itself, so how in the world could this happen? Since we could find no logical explanation for the deadbolt being unlocked, we made it a habit to check the door, every time we went near the kitchen.

One of the many jobs I held while building my practice was at Canter’s Deli, in Los Angeles. Because I gave readings during the day, I worked the eight in the evening to four in the morning shift, five or six days a week. Canter’s wasn’t very far from the house, so every night when I got home from work I would grab the newspaper, sitting cross-legged, on my antique four poster bed, reading before I went to sleep. One morning as I quietly sat reading the paper, I started hearing footsteps. They were soft at first, so I tried to ignore them, but as they became increasingly louder, and more persistent, sounding as though there was someone walking around my bed, I became startled. I looked around the room, for what I don’t know, because I couldn’t see anyone, but there was definitely someone, walking very closely around my bed. They were so close that, I thought if I reached my arm out, I would touch them, but I was frozen in place, and didn’t move. For about ten minutes they continued walking back and forth, loud enough for me to hear the floorboards creaking under their measured footsteps. My mind was racing, who was this, and what did they want? All of a sudden the walking stopped, just as suddenly as it had begun. I turned off the lights, lying in bed the entire night, with my eyes wide open. My heart felt as if it was about to beat out of my chest, as I tried to make sense out of what had just happened.

My mother slept through the first time someone was walking around my bed, but the next time was on one of my days off, so it was earlier in the evening and she happened to be awake. I was reading in bed as the footsteps started, there was no question that they wanted me to know they were there, they were loud, very close, and deliberate, causing the wood to creak incessantly, as they strode around my bed. I sat up, softly calling out for my mother to please, come into my bedroom, the footsteps continued as she made her way across the living room. I didn’t move a muscle, staring at the doorway in anticipation. I wanted her to hear them. The moment she stepped into my room, with, “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” The footsteps abruptly stopped. I looked around, attempting to explain the two incidents, but unless she could actually hear the footsteps herself, it sounded ridiculous, and was impossible for her to understand.

The footsteps had stopped, but I knew that the energy in the house had definitely changed. I simply wasn’t ready to look at it, or deal with it, just yet. I started planning another dinner party, and wanted to set the food up buffet style, in the dining room. There were six French windows lining the wall, and I wanted to have them open for the evening. When I went to open them several days before the party, I was surprised to find that every one of them had been nailed shut, from top to bottom, at three or four inch increments.

I ran into the owner the next afternoon, and asked him if he could have the nails removed, so I could open the windows in the dining room. He told me that they had been nailed shut for as many years as he could remember, and unfortunately he couldn’t do it, because the windows, and the frames were so old, there was no way of removing all those nails, without destroying the wood. I went back and looked at the window frames, and he was right. The nails had been hammered deep into the wood, with most of the nail heads below the surface of the frame, so that was the end of that, or so it seemed.

About four days after my conversation with the owner, my mother and I had run some errands, to get ready for the party. We were gone about three hours, and walked into the house laden down with groceries. As I stepped into the dining room, I noticed that every one of the windows were open, and open at exactly the same angle. I dropped the bags inside the kitchen door, spinning around to look at the windows, but before I could walk around to them, I noticed the nails on the table. They weren’t just strewn on the table, these rusted and bent three or four inch long nails had been laid out in some odd pattern, as though they had purposely been placed in some kind of order, lined up next to each other like little soldiers. They were not only on the table, but the orderly line flowed onto the chair, and finally onto the floor. I stood there for a minute studying the bizarre layout. Finally pulling myself away, I went over to check the extent of the damage that had been done to the window frames. I touched the wood where the nails had been, and couldn’t believe that there was no splintering, there were no gouge marks around the nail holes, and, though I knew it wasn’t possible, there was no damage to the wood at all! The wood looked like the nails had been pulled straight out! Leaving only the small holes they had been driven into. Mystified, I gathered up the bent and rusted nails, rubbing my fingers over the smooth wood, one more time. I wanted to believe that the owner had come into the house, and magically done this.

I was so happy to have them open that when I saw the owner again, I thanked him for taking the nails out of the window frames for me. He looked like he was going to faint, but didn’t, instead he stepped back, started fidgeting, and wouldn’t look at me again. I waited for him to say something about the windows, but when he finally spoke, his voice was tight, and he made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about it, “I told you that I couldn’t take those nails out, so I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I definitely had nothing to do with it. Have a good day, Karen,” and with that, he turned and walked away.

From that day forward, the strange and unexplainable events in the house became increasingly more terrifying, started happening with much greater frequency, and were quite clearly directed at me.

Mother’s Day was coming, and because my mother had been a florist for many years, I always went out of my way to have beautiful flower arrangements delivered to her on that special day. My friend David owned several flower shops, so he was my go-to guy for my mother. I asked him to do something spectacular for this particular holiday, and he definitely did. The arrangement was so big that when it was placed on the table in front of my mother’s bed, they blocked the entire view into the living room. Many years earlier, my mother had given me a beautiful, turquoise glass ashtray from Sweden. It was quite large, and very heavy, weighing about eight pounds. It had been a decorative piece on the table in my mother’s room, so when the flowers were delivered, the ashtray was sort of tucked under the long flower stems, next to the base of the container holding them.

Late in the afternoon, the day after the flowers were delivered, my mother was dozing in the sun room, and I was lying on the sofa, reading a book. It was very quiet in the house, and I must have been reading for about half an hour, when out of nowhere, and just barely missing my head, my beautiful turquoise ashtray came whizzing past my head, and with a loud “boom,” slammed into the fireplace, shattering into a million pieces. It was as though someone had picked it up, and thrown it full force toward my head, like a baseball! I was terrified!

My mother jumped up, yelling “What was that? Are you okay?”
I wasn’t okay, but I couldn’t even begin to tell my mother that someone, or something, had thrown my ashtray at me, and now it was in a million pieces all over the floor. Thankfully the flowers had blocked her view, so I went in to comfort her, trying desperately to keep my shaking to a minimum. I didn’t want her coming into the living room to see what had happened, so I told her that I was a klutz and had dropped something. Making light of the noise, I kept her company until she had calmed down, and I could get the dust pan and broom, and clean it up.
The series of incidents that had occurred up to now, I could almost ignore, because they were small in comparison, and they hadn’t been violent. This flying ashtray episode though was something entirely different. If their aim had been better, they would have killed me. I had to figure out what to do about this, whatever this was.
Three days after Mother’s Day I was taking my mother to a doctor’s appointment, and on my way out of the house, I remembered that I needed to take the flowers into the kitchen, to get rid of the few flowers that had died, or were wilting, and clean up the arrangement. We were running short on time, so I picked up the arrangement, took it into the kitchen, and set it on the counter, to deal with when we got back. We were gone about two hours, and when we got home, I noticed the empty table, and headed for the kitchen, with my mother following me. When I got to the kitchen door, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I could hardly breathe as I blocked the doorway, looking into the kitchen. I spun around, calmly asking my mother not to look in the kitchen, and to please, go relax in the sun room, I’ll take care of it. I stepped into the kitchen to find, every single one of the beautiful flowers that had been in the Mother’s Day arrangement, were strewn all over the kitchen floor! Dead! They were dry, grey and brittle, with every bit of color drained out of them. They looked like they had been dead for a month! The now empty container was the only thing left, and it sat alone on the counter, exactly where I had left it. A knot of fear began settling in my stomach as I collected the dead flowers from the floor. The menace in the house was escalating, and now I was worried that it was going to turn on my mother.
Though it appeared to have calmed down in the house, at least for a couple of weeks after the flower killer episode, I was so on edge that sleep had become nearly impossible. I was sitting cross legged on my bed one evening, reading the paper, when suddenly a familiar sound, broke the quiet of the night. Someone was walking around my bed. The footsteps were louder than ever, and this time I was going to make sure that my mother heard them. I called out to her, once again asking her to please come to the door of my bedroom, because I wanted her to hear something. I asked her not to come in, just to come to the door. In a minute, she was at my door, sleepily placing one hand on either side of the doorway, asking me, “What is it, Sweetheart?”
I looked at my mother intensely, bringing my index finger up to my lips, signaling her to be quiet, softly saying, “Listen.” I watched as she listened, her eyes widening with fear, as she finally realized that the sound she was hearing, were actual footsteps.
She didn’t move from the doorway, now trying to make sense out of it, “Who’s doing that?”
I was really freaking out inside, because this time, the footsteps didn’t stop when we spoke. I was trying very hard to remain calm, so I smiled at her, hoping she would remain calm, too, “I don’t know Mom, we haven’t been formally introduced.”
My mother abruptly turned out of the doorway, yelling, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m calling the police!”
I scrambled off the bed, trying desperately to stop her, but to no avail. The police were there in five minutes. My mother was very upset as she told them that someone had been walking around my bed. When they asked where I had been when it happened, I told them that I was sitting on the bed, reading. That just made them smile. One of the policemen put his hand on my shoulder, looked in my eyes and asked, “Miss, have you been smoking any of those funny cigarettes? Or have you been drinking, tonight?”
I was furious, but polite, “No, officer, I don’t do drugs, and I don’t drink, and I don’t expect that you would understand this situation, so I don’t think you can help us, but thank you for coming, anyway.” They finally left, and were never called again.
I was completely petrified, and though we had only been living in the house for a little over three months at this point, I knew I was going to have to make arrangements for us to move. Unfortunately, the owner was out of the country, and wouldn’t be back for two weeks, so we had no other choice but to wait.
Unfortunately, we were having a birthday party for a friend that had already been scheduled for a few days after our visit from the police. Since it was too late to cancel, we went ahead with it. The party was great until later in the evening. It started when one of our friends came into the kitchen, with a terror stricken look on her face. She leaned into me, and in a desperate whisper, “Something is wrong with your bathroom.”
Walking through the kitchen, I crossed the hallway into the bathroom, where everything looked fine. I went into the living room to find out from her, more detail about what had happened. She was standing with four other friends, with the same terror stricken looks on their faces. I knew this wasn’t going to be good. Each one told me the same story: that when they went to use the bathroom, as they were sitting on the commode, it would spontaneously and repeatedly flush, along with all of the water turning on at full force, from every faucet, including the bathtub. Each one of them had come running out of the bathroom, shaking and scared. I told them I would take care of it. I stepped into the center of the bathroom, quietly standing there for a couple of minutes. My friends gathered outside the door, filling up the hallway and spilling into the kitchen to watch.
I looked around at the quiet bathroom, and in a loud, clear voice, I said, “I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT, BUT STOP SCARING MY FRIENDS! YOU NEED TO LEAVE THIS HOUSE, NOW!” The words were barely out of my mouth, when the fury was unleashed! Simultaneously, the toilet flushed, every faucet turned on full force, including the tub, the valance, and curtain on the window, and the shower curtain, came crashing to the floor! As though someone had grabbed them and ripped them down with force!
Everyone was still screaming, as they grabbed their coats off my bed. I ran into the living room, profusely apologizing, trying to explain that there was definitely something wrong with the house, quietly adding that we would be moving shortly. I don’t think any of them heard me, because there was practically a stampede out the front door.
I closed the door knowing that I couldn’t wait for the owner to return from his trip. We would be out of this house, as soon as humanly possible, no matter what. I lived in terror every day, and my mother had been a nervous wreck since the police incident, and the last straw was them terrorizing my friends. We started looking for a new place the next day, and were moving ten days later.
He never asked me why we were moving, but agreed to come over on the day of the move to collect the keys. The movers were loading the last pieces on the truck when he showed up. I told him to come into the house, but he refused. Instead he stood nervously in the driveway, sweating profusely. I walked up to him, standing uncomfortably close, asking him, “Who died in the back bedroom of that house?”
He stepped back, refusing to look at me, nervously saying, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I stepped forward, and grabbed his lapel, pulling him close, so he couldn’t avoid looking in my eyes, “Stop lying, and tell me who died in that back room!”
Now, he just looked scared. Sputtering, and trying to pull out of my grasp, he twisted around, but I wouldn’t let go. He stopped moving around when he realized that he wasn’t going anywhere, until he told me. He took a deep breath as he tried to look away, and as his shoulders slumped forward, he finally gave in, emotionless, “My aunts took every penny they had, and built this house. Both of them died in it, in that back room.”
Now it all made sense, but I wanted to know who they were, and why they were still so attached to this house. “What did they do that they built that huge kitchen?” I let go of his lapel.
All of his fear faded, as he finally let go of the lies connected to the house, “They were vaudeville dancers, and after that they did USO shows for the troops, until they got sick. They entertained half of Hollywood, and as many of the armed forces as they could in that house. It was their dream house.”
I was so angry that he didn’t tell me when we moved in. I looked at him and said, “Just so you know, they will keep terrorizing every person you rent their house to, until you rent it to people like them. They almost killed me! So don’t even think of renting it to anyone, unless it is a pair of sisters that are dancers, because they won’t let anyone else live in their house in peace.”
As I handed him the keys, I was grateful to find out the source of my four months of terror in this house, and to finally understand that the reason we had been chased out was because the vaudeville dancing sisters, had never really left.
Over the years I have driven by the house on Fountain a thousand times. I found out that the house had been sold to two sisters that were dancers on television in Hollywood.