The Spite House(14)

“There it is,” her dad said.

“Yeah.”

Marked with signs reading PRIVATE PROPERTY, the road snaked one way then back the other multiple times during the remaining fifteen minutes of the drive. Despite those many turns, the thin house high above never seemed to move far from the center frame of the windshield.

They did not drive fully onto the site, stopping short when the road forked just before the valley. Dess glanced at the buildings to their right, down below, but they couldn’t hold more than a second of her attention. She couldn’t even remember what her dad had said about them yesterday. They didn’t matter. It was the place where they might live, the oddity up above them, that held her.

This close, she could see something that hadn’t been present in the picture. A bulge in the building that ran broadside along the third floor, like a long balcony that had been walled up ages ago. Goose bumps rose on her arms.

Her father looked back at Stacy and said, “Think I should wake her up? Might be better for her to see it earlier instead of later.”

“I don’t know,” Dess said. “I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know anything. I don’t know about this.”

“What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “This just feels really too real right now. I guess I thought it would look more like a goofy tourist trap or something. Like the pictures might look one way, but then in person it wouldn’t be this. It’s just wrong, right? I mean who builds a house like that? What kind of house did you say it is again?”

“A spite house,” her dad said. “That’s what it said on the sites I went to.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Pretty much what you think. A place built just to make someone upset or show the world how pissed you are. Apparently, there are several of them.”

“Here?”

Her dad laughed. “No, sorry. I meant around the country. Even the world from the little bit I read. Don’t think any of the others look quite like this though. This had to be put where it is and built how it is for a reason.”

“What reason?”

Her dad shrugged.

“You couldn’t find that out when you were looking stuff up?”

He smiled. “It’s like those stories your mom used to tell you about that old hospital in Mississippi. There are still some stories that only make it about halfway to the internet.”

Dess nodded, even though she felt like this was different. Her mother’s tales of the haunted hospital in Biloxi, where she’d grown up, had felt a little too personal to be part of internet lore. The reason why this spite house had been built felt more like something that should have belonged to the historical record unless it was being deliberately suppressed. Then she remembered Emily Steen all but accusing Eunice of just that—suppression of information—in that article. Just the idea made her about as uneasy as the idea of spending the night in that house.

“You’re sure about this?” Dess asked her father.

“I’m sure that we at least need to try. I think this is our best chance.”

She started to ask, What about Pa-Pa Fred’s house? Once they’d left Virginia, after their early scare with almost being spotted Dad had doubled down about where they should end up if another, better opportunity didn’t fall in their laps. Odessa, Texas. The house his grandfather had rebuilt after it had burned down. He’d talked about it like there was something important there. A secret stash of money under a floorboard? His grandmother’s jewels hidden in the walls? No, something more precious than that. She hadn’t asked precisely what. She trusted that he would tell her when the time was right, though if he held out much longer, she’d take the initiative to try to get it out of him.

For now, she held her tongue. She knew she wouldn’t be able to mask any sarcasm and suspicion in her voice. The last thing she wanted to do now was invite an argument between them, however mild. They needed to support each other, they were all that they had, and he had something important to do today. Regardless of her concerns and skepticism, she agreed with him that this was an opportunity they couldn’t ignore.





CHAPTER 6



Eunice



The interview was running long, despite Eunice knowing within the first few sentences that this four-person “paranormal investigative team” wouldn’t be any more suitable for the job than any of the others she’d met with in recent days. It was running long, and it was her own fault, but she couldn’t help herself.

This group of four comprised three men and one woman. The one who sat closest to Eunice’s desk, in the center chair of the row arranged in her mansion’s sizable office chamber, was a stout bald man with a goatee. Beside him, on his right, was the “cool geek” of the crew, something Eunice was used to seeing. Younger than the leader, with hair dyed a harsh blond and arms sleeved in tattoos. He was the one who went into false depths every time the bald man pitched him a look that gave him the green light to speak. To the bald man’s left were the big guy and the woman of their group. The big guy, well-muscled and wearing a shirt that had to be a size too small, looked like a bouncer on loan. He was working hard to hold his smile. The woman, Meredith, the only name Eunice really tried to retain, was doing a much better job of maintaining her practiced enthusiasm than the big guy was. Eunice wasn’t sure what role either of these two had in this party, but if they fit the mold of most of the others that had come in before them, the woman was supposed to be the reasonable one, while the big guy was there to be surprisingly easy to scare when the cameras were on.