The Spite House(50)

* * *



The central building of the orphanage smelled of neglect and reemerging nature. The dust inside tickled Eric’s nose. The Houghton family’s devotion to the upkeep of the Masson House was not reflected in the condition of the orphanage. It wasn’t quite in shambles, but inside it proved far from livable. Shattered slates of ceiling plaster lay scattered on weak, rotting floorboards. He entered through the open front doorway, which was barely holding on to a jamb that was barely holding on to the rest of the building. The walls looked fragile and had water stains that looked like they’d burst into brackish fluid if poked.

There were no furnishings left behind. No writings or markings defaced the walls. No evidence of squatters or vandals, or that the place was abruptly abandoned. The building was in about as ordinary a state of disrepair as it could be.

The narrow entryway fed into a broader, circular foyer. An open doorway ahead led to a long, windowless hallway, while another doorway to the right opened to a brighter, shorter hallway littered with shattered glass from the series of broken windows along its outer wall. To the left of the foyer, Eric saw a wider doorway that led to what he presumed was a dining room, given its proximity to what had evidently been the kitchen. It seemed strange to him, now that he considered it, that so many doors were missing. Was this normal for an abandoned building? Leave some exterior doors to possibly discourage trespassers, but take out the interior doors that otherwise would have no use?

Not wanting to walk across broken glass or trek down an unlit hallway he couldn’t quite see the end of, Eric opted to explore the dining area. It was a large space with a higher ceiling than the foyer, and tall windows that faced the Masson House. He pictured being a child here, eating breakfasts with your fellow orphans, the glare of the sun reflected in the windows of the odd house on the hill. And then in the evening, near supper, returning here to see the sun set early behind the broad side of that thin house. Masson built his home to antagonize and torment the orphans and their caregivers. Why? What did he gain from this? Had he simply despised children?

This last consideration brought a microquake up through Eric’s spine. He let his daughters sleep in the bizarre, haunted home of a man who might have hated kids, and whose niece and nephew seemed to haunt the house with him. That would explain the phantom children who taunted his girls the last two nights. How had those kids died? What did Masson do to them?

Eric felt a flush of shame and shook his head at the magnitude of his mistake. He shouldn’t have allowed Stacy and Dess to spend one hour in that place. He stared up at the house through the windows of the dining hall, protected from its balefulness by the distance. Then he saw it.

A figure stood in the window of the spite house’s master bedroom on the top floor. Even from afar and through the glass, Eric could make out enough of its features to know it was a man, older, as gray-faced as he was grizzled. His gaze was made of ice, and Eric felt unnaturally numb, like he’d been pulled from his body and flung into space and was seeing all of this through some form of telepathy. He was drawn closer, close enough to see the years of pain on the old man’s face. Pain born of anger, regret, solitude, and fear. So much fear, but that hadn’t always been the dominant emotion.

Behind him, he felt a presence in the room, not entirely unlike what he would feel on the frigid nights in the house his grandfather rebuilt, when the fire tried to come alive again. This presence was more unfamiliar, though, and older. As old as the man in the window at least. It moved closer to him and Eric felt its decades of emotions too. He brought his hands to his head, pressed them to his temples, and shut his eyes tight like he meant to squeeze these foreign feelings out of his skull. He opened his mouth to scream, but a presence behind him spoke first.

“Tell him to leave us alone.” A young woman’s voice. It carried its own echo ahead of it. “Tell him to leave us alone,” she said again, a little louder and deeper with age.

“Tell him to leave us alone.” An older woman now. Still the same woman? He couldn’t tell. His muscles strained when he turned, like he’d lifted a weight right at the threshold of his strength. The room was visibly empty, yet filled by the presence and its voice.

“Tell him to leave us alone.”

Did the building shake that time? Or was it just his body shaking, his head rattling? At least he could feel something again, awful as it was. Cold as it was.

He ran out of the building, stumbling a few times as he went, his legs feeling not quite connected to him. The voice followed him, growing older with each utterance until it rasped with the last energy of a bitter, dying person. “Tell him to leave us alone tell him to leave us alone TELL HIM—”

He fell to the ground a few feet past the front entrance. A pervading grief and sickness spread through his body. He clenched his fists to dig his fingernails into his palms, physically rejecting any sensation that did not originate with him. He knelt in the grass, gagged and dry heaved, but managed not to vomit.

After the stomach pangs subsided, he remained on the ground for a time, as though praying toward the Masson House. The wind pushed the swings on the playground behind the orphanage’s central building. The rusted chains gave off a metronomic creak as they swayed. Eric locked on to the rhythm of the sound, ignoring its sharpness. That steadiness helped to settle him.

A flush of anger came over him as he stood. This was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that he’d let something run him off. Last night he had the excuse of needing to protect his daughters. What was his excuse now? He had come here because he was afraid to enter the spite house again, and ended up so scared he had to find his way out. He made himself turn and face the orphanage, almost took a step toward it. He imagined himself going back inside, a taller, broader, braver version of himself. A man with fists like bricks, a stare that could stop a heartbeat. The man he wanted to be.