The Haunting of Ironwood Read online

  When she shrugged and headed back for the stairs, she paused by the wall partition and looked at the floor. The stack of boxes that she'd accidentally tipped over the night before were neatly stacked back up.

  Her heartbeat picked up again. Had she cleaned the boxes up? She couldn't remember.

  She hurried up to the ground floor and looked out the kitchen window at the driveway. It was empty.

  What kind of car did he drive again? It must have been a Ford. Maybe an old Hyundai.

  Or a Volvo.

  No, no it wasn't. Katie cleaned up the boxes last night—she was sure of it. She probably left the basement door open, too. She knew she never had the greatest memory and often forgot important things, so the small, almost unnoticeable stuff didn't stand a chance.

  She closed her eyes a moment and forced herself to take deep breaths and settle down. She calmed herself, realizing she was just a big goof and reminded herself not to mess around anymore; Earl wouldn't pay her if she didn't do what she was supposed to. She went upstairs, promising herself that she wouldn't leave the house again until he returned.

  But Josh's invitation to meet at the bar that night lingered on her mind.

  Katie sat at the dining room table playing with her phone as it was charging in the wall outlet. Night fell over the house and unnerving shadows crawled everywhere. She'd turned on a few more lights on the ground floor this time, but she was careful not to turn on too many, not wanting to blow any fuses again.

  She shifted uncomfortably on the hard wooden chair (probably made out of ironwood, she guessed with a roll of her eyes) and moved her elbows farther out on the table's surface. An unpleasant smell wafted and made her twist her nose up.

  "Ew," she said. "I think I need a shower." She looked toward the ceiling and considered the prospect of showering in the strange home. She usually wasn't a big fan of using amenities somewhere other than her own apartment, but the bedroom she had slept in and the bathroom she'd used seemed to be kept quite clean. It had also been at least a few days since the last time she showered, so she was certainly overdue. She bent down and lifted the cuff of her jeans and felt her leg. Hair prickled her fingertips like a cactus plant. "And maybe a shave."

  Double-checking to make sure the front door was locked, she went upstairs and undressed. She turned the hot water on in the shower and stepped in, humming a Taylor Swift song as she lathered herself. When she was all shaved and clean she dried off then wrapped the towel around her head. This time she had the light on in the hallway for extra comfort as she stood in front of the mirror and applied lotion to her skin. She took a hairbrush that Earl had laid out for her and inspected it closely. She saw no hairs in it; it didn't look like anyone had used it before.

  "I guess this will do."

  Before she took the towel off her head, she held the brush up to her mouth and stared at her reflection in the mirror. She belted out a Taylor Swift song and began dancing, knowing there wasn't a soul around that could hear her. She really got into it and danced out into the hallway, for the first time feeling comfortable in this creepy house. She danced and sang halfway down the hall then turned and danced back toward the bathroom.

  A red light softly glowed up in the corner of the ceiling at the end of the hallway. Katie noticed it and froze.

  A security camera was perched up in the corner, watching the hallway. The red light next to the lens told her that it was active.

  "Oh shit!" Katie blurted, crouching in front of it. She frantically pulled the towel off her head and wrapped it around her body before holding her hands out in apology toward the camera. "Sorry!"

  She darted into the bathroom and watched herself in the mirror as her face turned as red as a beet.

  God I hope he doesn't check the footage when he gets home, she thought. That was assuming it was being recorded, which she dismally told herself it probably was.

  Suddenly all the joy had drained from her and she wanted to get as far away from the hallway and that camera as possible. But she realized she had left her clothes in the bedroom she'd slept in the night before and she would have to walk the length of the hall to get to it with the camera at her back.

  She made sure she was finished in the bathroom and that the towel was covering as much of her as possible, then she trotted to the bedroom and shut the door. She leaned the side of her face against the door and slid down the wood. She was so embarrassed she could die. She was also a little angry.

  Katie understood Earl wanting to be cautious, but he never told her there was a camera in the house.

  Even still, why did he have it watching the second floor hallway of all places?

  Decisions

  When Katie was fully dressed she took a deep breath and stepped out into the hall. She kept her head down, ignoring the camera at the other end as she made her way to the stairs leading up to the third floor.

  She wanted to know more about the man that built this house. Even after only being here for a couple days, this already ranked as the weirdest job she'd ever had, and she wanted to know more; why he would go to such lengths to build a house like this; why he would put pictures of this woman everywhere. All the frames alone must have cost a fortune.

  She stood in the hallway on the third floor and looked in each direction. At one end was the empty bedroom overlooking the front of the property. The rest she hadn't explored yet. She instinctively looked up in the corners and saw another camera above the door to the empty room.

  So he was watching the hallways... but why?

  Katie walked to the room at the back of the house and found it was filled with piles of boxes and junk to such an extent that she could barely get a foot inside. She closed the door and turned around.

  A small bathroom sat next to the room. It was pretty unremarkable aside from a large portrait of the blonde woman on the wall in front of the toilet.

  Next she passed a guest bedroom that seemed similar to the one she slept in. The room was entirely clean and tidy, if not a little dusty; checking in the closet, rifling through the drawers in the dresser and the two bedside tables flanking the bed, even checking under the bed, there wasn't anything of note.

  But where did Earl sleep, she wondered? There had to be somewhere that he kept personal effects. Somewhere she could find out more about him.

  She opened a linen closet and found a few shelves of towels and boxes of tissues, then she turned into the short hallway off the main one and found a single door near the end of it on the right; the whole stretch of wall on the left oddly had no door and no room. She shook her head once again at the strange design of the house as she pushed open the old door on the right and peered into darkness.

  Katie flipped the light switch on and saw another bedroom, this one a little bigger than most she'd seen. A four-poster bed sat against the back wall with a large window overlooking the side of the property. A pair of men's jeans was sloppily laid out over the foot of the bed and the two closets were filled with men's clothing. It looked about Earl's size, too. A smell lingered in the air like bad aftershave and that sealed the deal in her mind. There was some junk and personal effects and she sat on the bed delicately sorting through some of it. She found piles of receipts, some dating back decades. Old chess boards. Empty jars, books on boring subjects, boxes, blank DVDs, a few candles, and many, many pictures of the woman.

  She rifled through some of the boxes without trying to rearrange the order of things, but she didn't find what she was looking for. Finally, when she was about to give up and leave, she noticed something sitting in the thin gap between the bed and the nightstand next to her. It look like some kind of book.

  Katie pulled it out. It was a binder. She opened it and found a dedication page with only one thing written in a scratchy hand: To my love.

  Turning the page revealed a large inserted picture of the strange woman, a familiar portrait Katie had seen in some of the frames downstairs. The woman stared at her with her blue eyes, her blonde hair flowing past her sh
oulders. She wore an ugly pink dress that was straight out of the seventies. Like all the other photos, the quality seemed like it was probably taken about that same time, too.

  Katie scrutinized the photo, remarking to herself that the woman looked close enough to her to be her sister. She flipped through the book and found that it was filled with nothing but pictures of the woman pasted to the pages. Underneath some of them were more scratchy notes. Most of them were fawning adoration for the woman, calling her "my love", "my wife", "my soulmate", and other common things.

  Katie turned another page and saw a picture of the woman in a bikini sitting on a blanket at the beach. A pair of sunglasses rested on her head and she flashed a smile at the camera. Her skin was bronzed. In another photo, she wore a sweatshirt and short shorts, sitting at the end of a dock with her feet in the water. Another one of her in the kitchen fixing something in a bowl. Then a picture of a bra and a pair of panties with a plastic bag next to them, sitting on a grimy tiled floor.

  "Whoa, jeez," Katie said. "What's with this guy?"

  She flipped through some more pictures and found one very peculiar. The woman was sitting under the shade of a large tree. Her body was pointed to the side, but her face was twisted around to the camera, like the picture caught her by surprise. She wasn't smiling.

  Katie got a bad feeling in her stomach. She closed the binder and slipped it back between the bed and the nightstand where she'd found it. The smell of the room was getting to her and she turned off the light and returned to her bedroom on the second floor. She sat on the bed looking at her phone and reading Josh's last text to her, which she hadn't deleted yet for some reason. He said he was going to be at the bar at eleven, and she knew he would show up. The red flags about the house compounded and she seriously considered ditching the job and meeting Josh.

  But that would mean crawling back. She'd already done it at least a few times, but even now there had to be some scrap of dignity in her that she didn't want to relinquish. She was tired of being subservient to him. Tired of jumping at his every want and need. But she still felt her heart moan for him as she read his words. What if he had really changed his mind? What if she could do better as a girlfriend? Maybe she could give him more space or try to be more attentive to him—whatever he wanted.

  Katie stared at the message for a long time, wondering what to do. Ultimately, the stronger side of her won out and she put her phone down, determined not to let herself cave. Even if she wanted to leave the house and find something else to do for money, she realized it was late and she was tired, and she knew she wasn't in a rational mind to make that kind of decision right now.

  So she got undressed and turned out the light, shuffling over to the bed. As she did, she thought she saw something out the corner of her eye.

  She paused, looking around the dark room to see what it was. At first she saw nothing but darkness. She looked out the window at the trees gently swaying. Everything was peaceful. Katie took a few steps back and leaned side to side, trying to catch the room from different angles.

  Just when she was convinced it was her imagination, she saw it.

  A faint red light glowed from somewhere in the darkness next to the window.

  Katie hurried back to the light switch and turned it on. A bookshelf sat in the corner of the room next to the window, facing her bed. It was half-filled with dusty literature and a few trinkets. A teddy bear sat on one shelf, but she couldn't find the red light. After rifling through some books, she nudged the bear to the side and found the red glow behind it in the shaded space between two books leaning against each other. She pulled the books apart and saw a small camera sitting on the shelf, an attached wire going out a hole drilled in the bookshelf's backing.

  "You've got to be kidding me," Katie said. She stood before the camera in nothing but her underwear, staring at it. She was too angry to even move. Eventually she grabbed the bear and slammed it against the camera so hard that some of the books on the shelf jumped.

  Katie walked to the middle of the bedroom and looked around for any more cameras, but she didn't see any.

  "A camera watching the bed?!" she shouted. "You need to watch me sleep?" She was so angry she could punch something.

  All of this was too much for her and she didn't even have to think twice about leaving. She snatched up her clothes and put them on, but then she paused. If she left now, that would mean having to not only trek out of these woods and along the edge of town in the dark, but it would also mean a long walk back to her apartment building. She was already exhausted and had been anticipating her head hitting that pillow, and her sudden burst of anger and adrenaline didn't do too much to change that.

  Katie flexed her fingers at her sides, trying to drain the anger away. "He's still gone for the week," she told herself. "I can sleep one more night in this stupid house. But in the morning I'm gone." Her affirmation sounded good to her even though it echoed strangely off the walls. She piled as many books over the camera on the bookshelf as she could. When she was satisfied, she turned the lights back off and slipped under the covers. She was so upset that it took a long time to fall asleep, but when she finally did she slept soundly.

  Voices in the Night

  "...Elizabeth."

  Silence.

  "Your name is Elizabeth."

  More silence in between.

  "Your name is Elizabeth."

  Katie's eyes swam in the darkness. She lifted her head off the pillow and looked around.

  "Your name is..."

  She perched up on a stiffened arm and listened. Even after what seemed like a full minute, there was nothing but quiet in the room. But she swore she heard something. Had she left the TV on? Nearly every cell in her body told her to flop back down and fall asleep, but she decided she better check.

  She got out of bed and rummaged through the grocery bag she brought from her apartment. She pulled out a housecoat and wrapped it around her, then she walked down the dark hallway for the stairs.

  The stairs groaned on her way down. When she reached the ground floor she didn't hear anything coming from the living room. She folded her arms into each other and hurried along the hallway past the basement, coming out into the living room and looking toward the corner.

  The TV was off. The house was silent, except for that distant hum coming from the basement, from beyond the chained door.

  Katie lingered a moment longer. She wiped the sleep out of her eyes, then she turned around, thinking she must have startled herself out of a dream. She used the squares of moonlight coming through the windows to guide her and she returned upstairs, closing the bedroom door behind her. She took off the housecoat and slipped under the covers. She lay awake for another minute with her eyes closed, just listening. But she didn't hear anything at all; she had just imagined it. And then she fell asleep.

  Two minutes later: "Your name is Elizabeth" filled the room.

  Caged

  The morning sunlight spilled through the window beside her, banishing the darkness and every ill thing that came with it. Katie awoke gently. She writhed and stretched under the covers until she felt awake enough to get out of bed. She glanced at the bookshelf and saw the pile of books she had made the night before. The memories of what had happened as well as her anger came back to her, but they seemed greatly diminished in the morning light. She recognized this and immediately promised herself that she wasn't going back on her promise to leave, but she did have some hesitation. If she left, it would mean she wouldn't get paid the thousand dollars Earl had promised her. And she could really use that money. She also didn't know where else to stay in the meantime, especially if she was broke. Her landlord wouldn't let her back. Maybe she could see if she could stay with Josh for a while until she got back on her feet and found something a little more permanent.

  No, she told herself. But she immediately softened. What other choice did she have? She didn't have many friends, and certainly no close ones. Her relatives were out of the picture, an
d she had always felt like an outcast. Maybe that was why she'd always been so needy with Josh, so eager to please him. And suddenly all of her defenses against her boyfriend broke down. She had to go see him. Had to. She would ask for his forgiveness and try to be a better girlfriend to him. Try to find some way to make him love her more. And she would find a proper job, one that would make him proud, not one spent shacked up in a creepy house like this, owned by a creepy and perverted man.

  She was leaving; no matter how good the money sounded, there was no way she was going to give that pervert a week's worth of footage that he could upload to some porn site.

  Still dressed, Katie got out of bed and grabbed the grocery bag, hurrying downstairs. She put her shoes on, but before she left, her eyes turned toward the kitchen and then up at the ceiling.

  She hurried upstairs to the bathroom and began stuffing the brand-new toiletries Earl had provided for her into her plastic bag, then she went down to the kitchen and rifled through the cupboards and the fridge, stretching the bag until it almost burst. She opened the front door and paused.

  A thought crossed her mind: if Earl had cameras in his house recording her, there were probably more that she didn't know about. He might have even had her on camera stealing things from him. Footage he could take to the police. He also knew her full name and where she lived. A chill ran up her spine. Even more reason for her to live with Josh for a while.

  Grudgingly, Katie bent down and emptied everything she pilfered onto the floor inside the doorway. When she was left with just her clothes and the few supplies she'd brought from her apartment, she stepped out the door.

  But then she paused again. Her phone. She felt around her pockets, but realized it wasn't on her. She rifled through the bag, but it wasn't there either. Then her mind set on the exact location where she had left it: the nightstand in the bedroom. She left the front door open and hurried upstairs. She jogged to the bedroom, not wanting to spend another minute in the house than she had to. But when she got to the bedroom and looked at the nightstand, all that was on it was a lamp and a picture of that woman looking at her.