The Spite House(47)
Eric let a moment pass, silent condolences, Eunice figured, then he said, “So I’m really here to prove the place is haunted so you can talk to the spirits or something? Ask them what’s next?”
“Something to that effect. The next step won’t really involve you. If you do your part, document what you see, give me something substantial I can take to the ones who’ll take over after you, you can walk away after that and never worry about any of this again.”
Eric nodded. “What if I wanted to be part of that next step, though?”
“One thing at a time, Mr. Ross. Focus on what you were hired for. When you’re done I’m sure you’ll want to rest and recover, and we’ll both be moving on from each other.”
They continued in silence for the last minute of the walk until they reached the clearing. There, Eunice pointed to the gray stone, six feet tall, shaped like a chipped incisor. “Here’s the memorial.”
Eric approached it while Eunice kept her distance. She knew every name etched into it by heart already. She’d visited it often after Aunt Val died, when her father and uncle followed the guidance of a fringe preacher who told them to pray before it. Pray until they wept and then pray harder, every single day. They did this until more terrible, screaming deaths in the family taught them it was futile.
Eric, grazing the stone with his fingers, said, “Why did Emily tell me to ask you about this?”
“I don’t try to understand what motivates her anymore. My best guess is she thought it would force me to tell you my family history. Or maybe it was something else. There was an old incident related to this monument and to the spite house. Maybe that’s what she wanted me to tell you.”
He turned to her. “I see. Well, if you didn’t want to tell me, it would have been easier to lie and say you didn’t know what I was talking about, wouldn’t it?”
Eunice sighed, then smiled. “This happened in 1969, when my father ran things with a heavier hand than I do now. The memorial was in the city park then. Some people in some nearby towns weren’t too keen on anything that called attention to the South’s war crimes. I suppose that hasn’t changed much even today. One day, our sheriff at the time—my mother’s cousin—received word that some hooligans planned to desecrate our monument, after night fell at the park. The sheriff came to my father about it and my father, with the approval of my mother and other local leadership, advised the sheriff to gather some deputies and volunteers and wait for the troublemakers to show up, to show them that we weren’t going to stand for such nonsense, but in a way that sent a clear message.
“They caught the bastards, rounded them up, and my father’s idea for their punishment was unexpected. Already at that time the spite house was thought to be haunted. Even people outside of Degener knew of it. The rumor went beyond the house having ghosts. They said it would make you disappear if you went inside. How they came to that, I have no idea. Obviously you’ve been in and out, so you know that much is a lie, but it was all fresh in everybody’s minds because its owner died just a year earlier. The story going around was that after he’d been buried some people saw him walking down the road going back to his house, looking grim about it, like he didn’t want to but had no choice.”
Eunice saw Eric stiffen at this and added, “Even I never believed that one, and I’ve known spirits are real for most of my life. Anyway, the men who came here to deface the monument were taken to the house and told they could either spend one night there, or several at the jailhouse, but once they made their decision they were stuck with it. They all made the mistake of choosing the spite house.
“Not two hours went by before the first of them tried to come out. They didn’t try to sneak out—not that you could. There’s no way in or out but the front door, or breaking through a window, I suppose. Either way it would be obvious. Those men tried to walk out the front, right past the sheriffs and deputies and others parked outside. From what I’ve heard, after our folks raised their guns at them, it really looked for a moment like those men would rather be shot than forced back inside. They kept saying that they wouldn’t go back in, that the place was wrong.” That they heard two children laughing and telling them that the house was going to eat them, she thought, but did not share. “They apologized and begged to go to the jailhouse, as long as they didn’t have to go back inside. It took the sheriff threatening to shoot their legs out and drag them back in for them to go in on their own, crying the entire time. These were all grown men. They ended up staying the whole night and all of them came out in the morning. None of them disappeared after all.
“But later, after they got home, one of them, a man named Clyde, kept talking to his family and even his preacher about how he had to go back because he left something in the house. They didn’t know what to make of it at first and just told him that it couldn’t be that important. He still had his wedding ring, his father’s watch, the most important things that he’d had on him at the time. What could he have left behind that could make him think he needed to go back? He couldn’t tell them, or wouldn’t. He just kept saying he had to go, until one day his wife and children woke up and couldn’t find him in their house, and didn’t see his truck out front.
“Since he’d talked about it so much, the spite house was the first place they asked the authorities to look for him. Sure enough, his truck was parked right by it, but they searched that house, the valley, and everything nearby, and found no trace of him. People said all sorts of things to explain it away, even accusing some of our good citizens of killing him and stashing the body someplace where it would never be found, but I don’t think anyone would have done that without my father’s approval, and he might have okayed some intimidation, but he’d have had too much sense to green-light a murder, especially since the message had already been sent.