Chapter Eleven

Later that night, Ginger awoke to the sound of a crash. It was loud enough to make her leap from the bed and instinctively hunker down beside the bedframe. She was in the bedroom below the stairs—and terrifyingly alone on the first floor. The sandals she had neglected to take off before falling into bed hours earlier caught on the threadbare, braided, Navaho-style rug that covered most of the floor, and she pitched forward in the dark room before hastily righting herself.

Taking up her cramped position between the bed and the wall, she held her breath and listened for any sign of movement in the room. The blast-like noise had sounded really close. She forced herself to remain still for a full sixty seconds, eyes wide as she peered into the thick black shadow that seemed to swallow the room. Nothing. No further crash or bang or whisper of sound reached her straining ears.

"Ginger?"

"Chris?" she called out, her voice a thin squeak in the dark. She cleared her throat and tried again. "I'm in my room!"

"You okay?"

"I'm fine, but did you hear that?" Her voice shook, fear coming back when she heard her brother descend the stairs. What if some crazy person had broken into the house?

"I heard it, too," Chris affirmed, slowly opening the door and reaching into the room to flip the light switch. "What are you doing hiding behind the bed?"

"I'm not hiding," Ginger retorted, using the curved bedpost to pull herself up, her eyes quick to adjust to the piercing glare of the overhead light fixture. "I was assuming a defensive position while I assessed the situation."

"If you say so."

Adam came barreling into the room before Ginger could respond. "Did you guys hear that?"

"Is that a baseball bat?"

"I found it in an upstairs closet a few days ago. What's going on down here?"

"We don't know yet. You heard a loud crash, too, right?"

"Yes, and it sounded like it came from somewhere down here."

"I don't hear anything now," she told them, her gaze darting around the room, "and I know there's nothing in this room. Should we stay in here and call the police?"

"Does anyone have their cell phone on them?" Chris asked, his voice steady and calm.

"Mine's in the kitchen, charging." Ginger frowned, catching her bottom lip between her teeth.

"Ditto for mine." Adam nodded.

"Well, I left mine in the living room, so it looks like we're going to have to leave this room either way. Unless you'd rather send smoke signals out the window."

"Very funny, Chris."

"He's right. We might as well search the house."

"Ginger, you stay put and close the door behind us. You hear anything funny, jump out the window and make a run for it."

"Oh, just get out of my way. I'm going with you guys."

"Fine," Adam was already moving toward the door, "but stay behind us. I'll take the lead since I'm armed."

"I'm not sure an ancient baseball bat is considered armed and dangerous." Ginger rolled her eyes, creeping behind him into the silent dining room.

"Of course it is," Adam shot back.

"Haven't you ever heard the expression 'don't bring a stick to a gun fight'?"

"If you don't think—"

"Can we please finish searching the house? Quietly for once?" Chris glared.

"Wait. Did you hear that?"

"It's coming from the kitchen."

"Stay behind me."

Adam and Chris burst into the room, bat and muscle poised, while Ginger flipped the switch, bathing the large room in fluorescent light.

"There's nothing here."

"Shh. There it is again."

"Is that … water running?" Ginger whispered.

"It's coming from the basement."

They looked back and forth between each other and the locked door.

"Who has the key?" Chris sighed.

"It's in the cabinet—by the sink," Adam said.

She took a deep breath. "I'll get it."

"Ginger, you stay put up here," Chris ordered after unlocking the basement door. "And no arguing. If we get into trouble down there, we'll need you up here if you're going to be of any help."

"Okay. God, be careful." Don't leave me up here alone, she wanted to shout, feeling panicked at the thought.

Adam turned back and placed a kiss on her forehead before turning and following Chris into the damp basement. Ginger watched, her hands clenched into tight fists at her sides, until he was swallowed up by the dark. She stood to the side of the door, focusing on drawing air into her constricted lungs, waiting and trying to listen for any sound, any movement, anything at all that would give her a clue as to what was happening in the basement.

The swishing sound of running water ceased a few minutes later, and soon after that, Ginger slumped in relief when both men appeared at the top of the stairs, inspecting the mechanism on the door one final time before locking it and placing the key on the counter.

"Well? What happened?" she blurted, arms wrapped around her waist.

"The shower was on in the basement."

"There's a shower down there?"

"It's in the south west corner. It's just an old faucet coming out of the wall, with a drain cut into the floor."

"W-well, who turned the shower on?" she stammered.

"It wasn't any of us," Chris responded dryly, dropping his tall frame into a folding chair.

"So. Someone broke into the basement to, what? Take a shower?"

"The doors are all locked up tight. The windows down there don't open and none were broken."

"What are you saying?" she demanded, gripping the edge of the table.

"He's saying that no one broke into the house tonight," Adam told her gently, prying her fingers from the table and rubbing at the indentations her fingernails left on the canvas.

"That doesn't make sense."

"The knob on the shower was rusted almost beyond use," Chris told her. "Adam and I found a pair of pliers down there and that's what we used to shut the faucet off."

"Wow," she breathed. "Are you serious?"

Chris nodded. "Come on, let's try and get some sleep. We're filming early tomorrow."

"Gin, are you okay?" Adam took her elbow and walked with her, stopping at the door to her room.

"I'll be fine. Don't worry about me. It's … part of the job, right?"

"Right." He brushed her hair back from her face. "I'm upstairs if you need me."

"Thank you," she managed with what she considered to be remarkable dignity, "but I am a mature, grown woman. I will see you in the morning." She shut the door and stood with her hand on the knob until the sound of Chris and Adam's footsteps faded and both upstairs doors were closed before she turned off the light and crawled into bed.

The lilting sound of a woman's laughter filled the room, whispering through the shadowy corners like pearls on silk. Ginger's eyes flew open, her body tensing beneath her thin blanket.

She was a mature, grown woman. She was a mature, grown…

The shuffling sound by the closet a moment later was her breaking point. She sprinted to the bedroom door, not daring to turn around or even turn the light on, not stopping until she was halfway up the stairs, expecting at any moment to be grabbed from behind.

"Adam! Get your crap out of the way! I'm sleeping in there with you tonight."

* * *

They did indeed have an early start the following morning. Elizabeth and Peter Scott had parked their four boys with family for the weekend. Chris already had hot coffee set out, and as soon as everyone was seated around the table, he launched smoothly into his opening preamble.

"Accounts of hauntings and possessions are both common and can be frightening. Many of us have a hard time imagining a ghostly being, or entity, having the power to cause harm. Lots of people shun the very notion of spiritual activity, understandably so, for one very basic reason—that what we know the least about often unsettles us the most." He smiled sympathetically into the camera.

"But theories on the paranormal are numerous and diverse. Some are rooted in science, while others are borne of legend. From the ridiculous to the extreme, no two theories are alike, and paranormal activity remains a controversial subject to most. Some types of paranormal activity—hauntings—are thought to be a kind of 'imprint' in nature, much like a recording that continually replays itself over a period of time.

"In some cultures, these hauntings are attributed either to spiritual beings who have passed on without realizing they are dead, reliving the same patterns from when they were alive. These are referred to as residual imprint memories. They're not classified as hauntings, per se, but rather memories or events that took place in a particular location that have been recorded into the fabric or material composition of the location. The Stone Theory and the more modern Water Theory are classic examples of this belief. Limestone Theory is another variation on this school of thought…"

Ginger sat on the sidelines of the dining room turned informal film studio, her full attention focused on her brother and the lecture he was delivering on the paranormal. His words flowed over her frayed nerve endings, a focal point of sanity in a place that of late had little to do with reason. She hadn't expected him to make so much … sense.

"Other hauntings are thought to be more interactive in nature. Reports of disembodied voices that interact with the living and display at least some level of free and intelligent thought and response fit into this category.

"It can be the stuff of horror movies and age-old superstition. Television shows glorify it. Documentaries portray it. Hollywood loves it." Chris smiled for the camera again, and Ginger couldn't help but admire what could only be called his TV personality. It was little wonder he had achieved the measure of success that he had, she thought with sisterly pride.

"Hauntings of this nature are believed to be caused by a variety of forces, from ghosts of the deceased to entities that were never alive to begin with. Angels and demons may sound far fetched to most, but the reality is they've cropped up in everything from the Holy Bible to oral recitations of the Ojibwa tribe of the North American Upper Great Lakes, who recounted tales of spiritual entities they called the Manitou.

"Another area of speculation: Are some people more receptive than others? Is it possible to trigger an event unknowingly? These are some of the questions that investigators strive to answer. One possible explanation has been dubbed the Renovation Theory—the idea that renovations done to a property can disturb or awaken the spiritual entities who reside there. Extreme variations of this theory speculate that such renovations can open the door to spiritual realms and actually create an event."

He paused to take a sip of water from a mug to his left. "Elizabeth? Peter? Can you tell us a little bit about the renovation of your home, and the events that followed?"

"Sure," Elizabeth replied, "but I really don't know where to start."

"Why don't you start with the dream you had when your family first moved into this house?" Chris asked, gesturing to the stairwell behind him.

"The dream … okay. Ah, in my dream the house was beautiful." Elizabeth spoke clearly into the microphone Chris was holding out. "Everything we had talked about doing was completed. The hardwood floors had been stained a rich, deep chestnut. It looked so luxurious, almost gleaming like a mirror. And the thick oak trim practically glowed. New double-paned windows had been installed throughout the lower level, and the lighting we'd talked about looked so good on the front porch."

Elizabeth's eyes were unfocused as she recaptured the dream in her mind. "The second floor, though, was state-of-the-art modern with white enamel and red wall coverings. There was thick carpet on the steps, and a master bath with a jetted tub. For some reason, the center of the spare bedroom door had a triangular-shaped window…"

She brought her mind back to the interview and smiled apologetically at Chris. "Anyway, in the dream, we had gotten the house just the way we wanted it, and settled in. And at first everything was fine, until the noises began—mysterious thumps at odd hours of the day and night."

Her smile had gone, and a note of dread crept into her voice. "The first time we heard the laugh—it was a woman's laugh, but there was no humor in it—we froze. This female spirit, or whatever she was, grew more active and angry with each passing day. We knew it wasn't real. It couldn't be real, because things like that just did not happen, yet she refused to go away."

Liz paused, searching the room until she met Ginger's stare. "I'm sorry, but may I please have a drink of water?"

"I'll get it," Ginger mouthed, nodding and hurrying to fetch the requested drink. She located a blue-and-silver mug in the kitchen and filled it with cold water from a jug in the fridge.

Back in the dining room, Ginger handed her the water, while Chris waited patiently for the woman to continue with her retelling of a nightmare that seemed to be giving everyone a serious case of the willies.

"The dream went on and on," Liz continued. "Before long, she—this unseen entity—began to set fires in the house. We couldn't find any way of preventing her. Sometimes, she could be heard laughing menacingly and other times she was screaming with rage. I'd smell smoke, or a smoke alarm would go off, and there would be another fire with no apparent cause. I remember thinking we couldn't all go out, for fear that the house would burn down."

She looked helplessly at Chris. "Of course I ran around putting the fires out and making up possible reasons why they might have somehow spontaneously combusted in those spots. But we were at our wit's end. Then the dream shifted, and we were all huddled together in the master bedroom, desperate to find a way out." She shuddered.

"The demon was in the bathroom, of all places, and she wasn't alone. The screams of terror and pain echoed through our polished house as she slaughtered them. Somehow, we knew it was a previous set of owners—a family—that was being attacked. Finally, a loud crash was followed by a moment of silence before her voice rang out one final time…" Elizabeth accepted the microphone from Chris's hand and closed her eyes. "It said, 'I am Belzephar—bow to me!'"

Elizabeth closed her eyes, remembering the morning after the dream, when she'd confided her fears—her nightmare—to her husband…

"Why didn't we use the front door?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why didn't we just use the front door to get out of the house? " Peter wanted to know.

"Are you … didn't you… Peter, you're missing the point."

"I am not. It's a valid question. There are eighteen windows and three doors in this house. Why were we trapped upstairs?"

"Because … because it was a dream, that's why," she snapped in exasperation. Leave it to Peter to zero in on something like that.

"Listen, I'm not trying to downplay your experience."

"What experience? It was just a dream."

"You seem pretty shaken up, Liz."

"Well, sure—that dream was horrible." She shuddered, wrapping both hands around the steaming coffee mug her husband offered. "I've never had a dream like that. It felt so real."

Peter was silent for several moments before asking, "Who is Belzephar?"

"I don't know." Liz frowned. "It was what that thing called itself, I think. It's not a name I'm familiar with. I'm not even sure if I'm saying it correctly, but that's what it sounded like."

"Well, you must have heard it somewhere." Peter snapped the morning paper shut and rinsed his cup before placing it in the dishwasher.

"Amazing."

"What's amazing?"

"You can remember to rinse your own dishes—"

"Oh Lord, she's going to nag," he muttered under his breath.

"Yet, you leave socks on the floor for me to pick up every day."

"There she goes," he sighed.

Liz couldn't suppress a grin. "You had better watch your step, or I'll do more than nag," she warned in mock severity.

"Like what?" he countered.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"You don't even know, do you?" He laughed.

"Nope—I've got nothing," she confessed.

"I figured as much. For what it's worth, I will try and remember to pick my socks off the floor."

"That's great," she replied, even though she knew it would never happen.

"Hey, it's eight thirty. We need to leave now if we're going to get the boys to the sitter by nine. I want to get to the hardware store early today."

"We could cancel the sitter and do all of this next weekend." The suggestion was made in a quiet tone.

"Liz, what's going on? We've had this planned for two weeks."

"I know we said we would start working on the house this weekend, but…"

"What's wrong?"

"Maybe we should wait."

"If we wait to go to the store to get our materials, we won't get anything done for another week," he sensibly pointed out.

"I'm not talking about holding off on the trip to the hardware store. I meant that maybe we should wait to do any work on the house."

"Why? I thought you were excited to start on this project." Peter was nonplussed.

"I was. I still am," Liz corrected.

"Then what is the problem?"

"Peter, there was more to the dream than what I just told you."

"I don't follow."

"Sit down, please."

"The sitter…" he protested.

"I know, but this won't take long." She took a deep breath. "In my dream, the demon appeared because we fixed up the house. We let it out."

"Let it out?" he asked, incredulous. "Where on earth did we let it out from? Was it the hall closet, or a box from the Home Depot?"

"Actually, it was the basement. Peter, are you laughing at me?"

"A portal to hell in the basement," he choked out. "Come on, Liz, you don't buy into that crap any more than I do."

"Of course not, and I am not suggesting we are on the verge of literally opening a portal to hell in our basement by redecorating."

"Then I repeat—what's the problem?"

"What if the dream is symbolic? What if something is trying to tell me we should wait to work on the house because, for some reason, now is not a good time. Maybe the car will break down, or you'll lose your job and we'll need the money we're about to spend."

"Elizabeth. The car is fine. My job is fine. Dreams are just that, dreams. They don't foretell the future."

"Haven't you ever had a bad feeling about something?"

"No."

"Fine, then what if my subconscious mind is trying to tell me that working on the house right now is not a good idea?"

Peter seemed to consider the possibility for a brief moment before discarding it. "I promise you everything will be all right. No one can tell what the future holds. We make our own way in this world. Never forget that."

* * *

"Can you tell me a little bit about the renovation itself?" Chris prompted when Elizabeth grew silent. She blinked, coming abruptly back to the here and now.

"Well, the renovation officially commenced the morning after the dream, Saturday, the fifth of September, and continued through the better part of March, two thousand ten. It was a drawn-out process and a steep learning curve."

She smiled ruefully at her husband. "For example, we learned that if you want to stay married, you don't attempt to remodel an entire house together. There's something about undertaking a home project that causes even the most devoted couples to turn on each other. Add two toddlers and two new babies to the mix and things really get interesting.

"There were a lot of things that we just could not do with the boys in the house, like painting and staining, stuff like that, and anything that kicks up dust."

Ginger and Chris nodded understanding.

"We ended up paying out a small fortune on babysitters and hotel stays over those hectic renovation months. Don't even get me started on the joys of a hotel stay with four little boys. The first night is usually not too bad, but by the second day things start to get ugly."

Peter took up the story. "You know, I blame the DIY network and those home store commercials. They made it look so easy. They never show what happens when all those poor unsuspecting 'do it yourselfers' return home with their hammers, finishing nails, tiles, and tub surrounds. Just once I wish they would show the poor sap who misses the mark and busts a water line." That earned a laugh from the rest of the people in the room.

"The bathroom on the second floor was one of the first projects we took on. Along with the second-floor hallway, it had old asbestos tiles on the floor. The entire bathroom was, with the exception of the shower, outdated and in poor repair. We worked around the clock for nearly a week and a half to make it functional. It wasn't easy.

"The first problem we hit was the layers upon layers of old material in the room. Removing the old flooring was virtually a never-ending task. We would tear out one layer of tile or sheet floor only to be met with another … and another. There were seven layers of floor in all, with each layer showing a different era.

"The bottom layer was bizarre," Peter recalled. "It wasn't flooring at all, but old newsprint. They were all dated nineteen thirteen, yellowed and thin with age, but the creepy thing was they were all obituaries." He shrugged. "Anyway, the wooden planks underneath were in great shape. We gave them a thorough scrubbing, dried them off, and coated them in polyurethane."

Elizabeth looked sheepish. "Unfortunately, I forgot to shut of the faucet at the pedestal sink after I had washed my hands. Of course that was also the day Peter and I discovered a clog in that sink. The water ran for nearly two hours before we noticed there was a problem. The bathroom was flooded, and the walls and ceiling of the bedroom below were water stained."

She looked around at them all, as if bolstered by their sympathetic expressions. "So, we took it from there. Other highlights included cutting four sheets of paneling backwards in one night, fishing two rolls of carpeting out of a ditch after the tailgate on the truck flew open, and falling butt-first into a tray of red paint." She shook her head. "But all good things must come to an end—thank God. Like I said, sometime near the beginning of April of two thousand ten, we were finally done. We had survived home repair hell, we thought…"

"That's when things began to go wrong?" Chris asked.

"Yes, almost immediately. Late one night we noticed an odor in the upstairs hallway. It smelled like something was burning, and it was coming from the hall light fixture. Several of our downstairs light fixtures had also begun to flicker intermittently."

Elizabeth knotted her hands in her lap.

"The electrician was unable to find anything wrong with our wiring. It was older wiring—we knew that—but it wasn't unsafe. He suggested using lower wattage bulbs and told us to call him if the smell persisted. Oddly enough, the burning smell was gone about an hour later.

"Peter and I both agreed a long-deserved rest was in order. As much rest as a person can get with a house full of children, anyway. I pictured sun-filled spring and summer days, lounging on the porch or in the newly fenced backyard. Peter imagined getting a dog. I was certain he had inhaled paint fumes and lost his mind, but we ended up getting two dogs from a local rescue organization.

"Almost immediately, both dogs exhibited extremely protective behavior toward the boys. Several times I noticed the dogs would suddenly stand at full attention and stare at a wall or an empty doorway. The stairwell seemed to be the major source of their aggression."

"How so?"

"Sometimes they would stop and stare up the stairs, bristle, and dash up there. At first, Peter and I didn't give much thought to it. But then, one night, one of the dogs darted up the stairs and then began yelping. It was a horrible sound—like he was really in pain—and we collided with him on his mad dash back downstairs.

"Nothing was out of place upstairs, and the boys were still sleeping. We looked the dog over, but we didn't find any injuries.

"The rest of the days immediately following the renovation were blessedly uneventful. We rented videos, took the family out to eat, and got to know our next door neighbors. We didn't know it at the time, but Heaven and Harley Feldman were about to become our closest allies."

"Okay, that's a wrap," Chris said a second later. "Great job, Liz. You did just fine today."