Short and Creepy 2: Short and Creepy, #2

SHORT and CREEPY

2

––––––––

by J.M. PEDRI

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual people, living or dead, or to actual events or locales are purely coincidental.

––––––––

Copyright 2018,  J.M. Pedri. All right reserved.

––––––––

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and is not to be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with others, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

––––––––

To Rick Engel, without whom this book might have stayed trapped in my mind with all the other voices, and to my mom, for letting me watch all the scary movies my friends weren't allowed to.

Table of Contents

1. The Camera

2. Growing Darkness

3. The Haunted Trails

4. The Veil

5. Thou Shalt Not Steal

6. Clara

7. Pest Control

8. The Interrogation

9. The Sinkhole

10. Texas Terror

Author’s Note

1

The Camera

My youngest daughter is about to go missing, and there's nothing I can do about it. Cassandra, my elder daughter, is already gone and everyone thinks she ran away. Maybe that's not uncommon with 13-year-olds these days, but it's not what happened. Whenever I tell the truth though, my wife gets angry and says I need to stop talking nonsense, that I'm just crazy with grief over Cassandra. She refuses to move out of the house or send Rhonda elsewhere.

The police are no help. At first they investigated me when I stuck to my story, but now they're just like Jen: they think I need grief therapy. They're still looking for Cassandra. They won't find her, and Rhonda is next.

We shouldn't have moved into the new house. If we hadn't, Cassandra would still be here, but Jen and I had been worried about the rising crime rates around our inner city apartment, so we found a nice place in the suburbs that seemed ideal.

It was an older house with an attached garage, plenty of yard, and enough bedrooms that the girls could each have their own for once. Of course, that sold them on the idea of moving, and my wife loved the big kitchen, but I think it was the attic that attracted me more than anything else.

I'd always loved rummaging through yard sales, flea markets, and antique shops, so when the Realtor showed us the fully-packed attic, I was ready to buy the place then and there. She explained that the previous owner  had died, and the nephew who'd inherited the place didn't want to bother with the attic when he'd cleaned out the rest of the house. I can't say I blamed him, assuming he wasn't interested in old things. There was so much stuff up there we couldn't take more than three steps past the stairs.

The things right in front of us — a double bed with pregnant garbage bags leaking clothes across its yellowed mattress, and a dam of boxes holding back an army of plastic holiday decorations for the lawn — were fairly modern, but the items farther back in the pile looked a lot older, creating a veritable time capsule of past decades.

Jen complained about the amount of junk we'd have to pay to have hauled off, but I couldn't wait to sort through it all. Sure, most of the things were destined for trash bins or donation boxes, but there was bound to be some good stuff too. I found what I considered to be the best item on the day we moved in.

While the sounds of moving-day activity raged on below, I was in the attic and had just figured out a sorting system when Cassandra thundered up the stairs behind me.

Daaad, tell Ronnie she can't have the biggest room.

Rhonda, Dad's not in this fight, I yelled over my shoulder, assuming that my younger daughter was within listening range.

Cassandra huffed in frustration. That's totally unacceptable. You are the parent, so it's your job to intervene.

I ducked my head to hide a smile, and started to dig through the nearest box. Cassandra liked to use big vocabulary words and a grown-up tone when she was riled, but she wasn't too old to punctuate them with a pout or the stomp of a foot. The contradiction never failed to amuse me, and it's something I miss now.

Cass, it's only bigger by six inches on the closet side, and that's just because it doesn't have built-in shelves like the other one does. I thought you'd want the shelves for your bear collection anyway.

A flicker of uncertainty crossed her face. Clearly this was something she hadn't considered. I thought you weren't in this fight, she said as if she'd won a point.

I'm not. I was just thinking about all those bears, living out the rest of their lives trapped in a cardboard box, never experiencing the joy of being up high enough to see the great outdoors through the windows.

That is so not funny.

It's a little funny.

It's not, and Mom's not going to like you messing around up here when there's still stuff in the car to bring in.

True, so why don't you start unloading the car while you think about how you and your sister can figure out the room situation on your own? It will give you something to do with all that energy besides argue.

Fine. Cassandra tossed a final glare at me and stomped back down the stairs.

Not ten minutes later, Jen came up. Why are you unpacking all this stuff when we've still got a mess to deal with downstairs?

If I clean out the attic, you'll have somewhere to put all the things you unpack and then repack because we're never going to use it anyway.

She didn't even bother to deny it. Jen was a hopeless pack rat, never wanting to get rid of anything good that somebody might be able to use some day.

You just like looking at old junk, she teased.

Guilty, I admitted. Wanna play?

Not now. She glanced around with a critical eye. You know, there's a lot of room up here. Maybe we could section off a part and turn it into a den or something.

I started to answer her but I'd been opening another box at the same time, and what it contained excited me so much I lost track of the conversation. Hey, look at this! My dad had one of these when I was in grade school. I always wanted to try it out but we kids weren't allowed to touch it, and by the time I got in high school and signed up for Photography classes, he'd already gotten rid of it. I held the vintage 35mm camera up for her to admire.

Jen smiled. Nice. Now you have one of your own to touch, but do you think it can wait until you help me hang curtains? It gives me the creeps thinking about how anybody who drives by here tonight will be able to look in and see what I'm doing.

Sure, I'll... Wow, Jen, look! There's some lenses, filters, a tank, processing trays, tongs, and OH WOW!

I'd just caught sight of what was lying on its side in the bottom of the box. Jen, it's an enlarger! I've got everything I need to process my own pictures here, aside from the chemicals and paper, but I can probably pick those up at a camera shop. I'm pretty sure I saw one in that strip mall behind the supermarket.

She laughed. You're like a kid at Christmas, and you don't even know if the camera works.

It seems to. My hands had already focused, wound, and clicked it several times. I'll look for that shop tomorrow and get it tuned up though.

Sounds like a plan, but how about doing the curtains now? We have a lot of windows to cover before dark.

We hung curtains, and the next day I came home from the photo shop armed with six rolls of film, a fully-operational camera, and everything I needed to develop and print my own photos. I was so eager to try it out I had Jen gather the girls on the front porch for a group shot right away, and then spent the rest of the evening taking pictures of anything else that looked even vaguely photo-worthy while I helped around the house.

Later that night, I hauled the equipment into the master bathroom to develop my first roll of film. All the pictures turned out great except for the one of Jen and the girls on the porch. There was some sort of shadow behind Cassandra that didn't line up with anything else in the shot.

I put the negative back in the enlarger, printed a bigger picture, and felt a little uneasy at the results. It looked like the figure of a man standing behind my daughter, but when I showed the picture to Jen, she didn't seem to see it the same as I did.

You think it's a shadow? she asked.

Maybe. It's too big to be her shadow though, I pointed out, and there aren't any shadows behind you or Rhonda.

Too big? You can barely see it. Jen looked at the picture more thoughtfully, and then smiled in a knowing way. Her hair clip, she nodded, Cassandra had a clip holding her ponytail, and I think it was one of the ones with glitter on it. I'll bet the light reflected off that and made it look like there was a mark on the wall behind her.

You don't think it looks like a person's shadow?

No, it's just a blurred spot or something. This is a good picture though, I think I'll put it in the dining room.

I let the subject drop, feeling more than a little confused. Reflections could cause light anomalies, but what I saw was large and dark, not like Jen described. Maybe something outside of the picture's edges had cast the odd shadow, I thought.

~~~~~

We spent the rest of the week getting the house in order, and then Jen surprised me by joining in to work on the attic. It wasn't that she had any interest in the room, she just didn't want me stinking up the master bathroom with photo processing anymore. Her plan was for us to wall off part of the attic and have sinks and lighting installed to accommodate my new hobby. It took us almost a month, and a couple of different handymen, but the results were great.

I took a lot of pictures during that time but didn't get around to developing them until the darkroom was done. When I did, I was totally freaked out, as Rhonda would say.

Eleven of the photos had Cassandra in them, each with the same shadow standing behind her. Its position varied with the poses I'd caught her in, but it was always there, and I was sure it was a man's shape. There was something more at play here than lens spots or tricks of light.

I found Jen in the kitchen, and asked the question before I'd even thought it through well: Have you noticed anything weird about the house?

Ha! Where should I start? she said. There's a hatch under the sink in the girl's bathroom that covers a sheer drop into the basement. The door to the basement is hidden in a closet and has four deadbolts on it, while the back yard door won't stay shut and yet has no deadbolts on it. The light switch for the kitchen is in the living room, and we have hot water in the toilet in our bathroom. Did I miss anything?

No, I knew about all that. What I meant was, has anything strange happened when I wasn't home? Like... Well, I don't know. Backtracking was never my strong suit, and I stood there feeling as stupid as I sounded. Jen, always the intuitive one, was on to me though.

Oh I get it. Like furniture flying around and voices telling me to get out. She rolled her eyes. Don't tell me you think the house is haunted now.

I don't know. I just can't explain what's going on with the pictures of Cassandra.

I told you. She was wearing a ponytail clip that day, and the light must have reflected oddly because it. That's all, babe.

In every photo? I asked, handing the new pictures to her. She leafed through them impatiently, shook her head, tossed most of them on the table.

I don't see anything wrong with those, she said, and in these three she's got her hair pulled back, probably with that same glitter clip again. Look, in this one you can see she has it on, and there's the glint from it. She pointed to the little flare of light.

I took her finger and moved it farther up the photo, guiding it to trace the outline of the shadow man. There, that's what I'm talking about. See it?

See what? She looked at me with her forehead corrugated in concern. Are you ok?

Yeah, sure, I guess my eyes are just overtired, I said, knowing that it was futile to push the subject. Whatever this thing was, my wife was simply incapable of seeing it.

"Well go take a