Tangle and Rowdy: A Halloween Story
[This is the 4th in a series of Halloween stories. Follow the link to start with the first.]
Early fall sunshine with a fleeting chill fading before the afternoon. Unseasonably hot until the last two days. Only the vaguest hints here and there of a few leaves with a change of color on their mind. It was four weeks ago when I sat down to comb through people’s stories in my email, looking for candidates to attend our yearly gathering to celebrate all things mysterious and frightening. I came to the task reluctantly, wondering how we’d gone from charming stories told among friends to wild tales of truly terrifying tragedy. I came to the task weighed down by an unaccustomed despair.
But miraculously I found a story I liked. Now, it’s time to share. At the same time, I’m looking back, wondering what was wrong with me. Wondering too why Steve’s story affected me when so many others, some more spectacularly macabre, fell flat.
The beating heart of good ghost stories is a search through the dark. You know the type of scene I’m referring to. The protagonist wakes to a strange sound. Or comes home to find the door open. Or enters a spooky house as a show of courage or to find a lost sister. The shadows move in a way they shouldn’t. You hear noises impossible to identify. Edging in and out of our peripheral vision, something horrific. The mysterious lurker in the dark. These are the scenes that make us hesitate to leave our beds in the wee hours to go wee. But here’s the problem: after hearing dozens, maybe hundreds of these stories, the search-through-the-dark scenes had begun losing their ominousness. I can’t even watch a scary movie around Halloween anymore without sighing and rolling my eyes at all the hackneyed devices for making a walk through a poorly lit house scary.
When I’m in an analytical mood, I wonder whether the purpose of these narratives isn’t to add some new dimension to the mundane, as Steve suggested in the midst of telling us this year’s featured installment. For kids, I get the sense that the appeal comes from the intensity of the emotions they evoke. If you manage to master feelings of terror induced by an experience you can end by closing the book, turning off the TV, or tuning out your friend, then you’re one step closer to being able to master yourself when the horrors are tougher to evade. In a sense, you’re one step closer to adulthood. Not that kids think all this exactly. They must just have the intuition that the stories they obsess over provide lessons worth learning—or rather training in preparation for what’s in store for them, what most of us for whom adulthood is already an inescapable reality are all too familiar with. That’s why it doesn’t matter that the premises are far-fetched. The point isn’t acquiring some new conceptual understanding of life or the world. The point is to develop the capacity for equanimity in the face of life’s inscrutable and uncontrollable reversals and transformations. The fact that it’s monsters after you and not some chaos engulfing your whole life makes the powerful emotions less confusing to grapple with. It’s not randomness and entropy. It’s a fight, hopefully one you can win.
For us grownups, it’s more subtle. What difference does it make after all whether you die an excruciating death at the hands of some otherworldly beast with glowing transparent flesh or from some nauseatingly soul-withering combination of cancer and chemotherapy? Are ghosts more frightening than car crashes? Is it worse to have a demon possess you than to have your identity unravel from dementia? But if we can get a little bump of adrenaline from something that’s not even real, if something interrupts the unrelenting grinding down of our day-by-day existence into so many slick and polished ruts, we feel nothing but gratitude—even though most of us never bother to partake after a certain age. Defamiliarization is what literary critics call it: turning everyday experiences we barely take any note of anymore into something new and mysterious. In this case, you’re turning a walk through your house into a terrifying adventure, because the novelty is worth the terror, up to a point. Storytellers are careful to reveal their ghosts and creepy creatures gradually. The mystery is the powerful element, not the monstrosity.
I think that’s why one part of ghost stories I still enjoy is the initial effort at setting a scene and establishing a tone. I love to read about old, eerily gnarled trees remembered from childhood. Or dilapidated abandoned houses kids once dared each other to break into. Or backcountry roads in the middle of nowhere with bizarre flashing lights. Or musty old basements. Or attics. I love the sense that something happened in this place, something consequential, a harbinger of even more consequential happenings to come. Each one of these scenes represents an exquisite promise. The problem is I can no longer help suspecting these promises will invariably be broken.
Whether you’re a believer or not, when you hear as many ghost stories as I do, you can’t help finding most of the details painfully tedious. After spending a couple months every year collecting tales of the unexplained for almost a decade, I’ve slid back from the edge and sunk deep into the back cushion of my seat. Now, I begin wondering at the midpoint of each new story how I would direct the scenes myself if I were authoring it, how I would make it optimally surprising, maximally horrifying, the most profoundly indelible. Beyond the upcoming turning point, I look ahead to the finale, and on to the big picture of the plot. How would I shape this material? Should the entire premise be scuttled?
When I first started trying to anticipate upcoming developments, my guesses were terrible, and the actual stories usually turned out better. But over time, I started becoming disappointed near the one-third point of most, because my own twists were better integrated thematically, more impactful. Eventually, the stories just started generally falling short of what I thought they could have been. The odd thing about all this was that the stories I was hearing, the ones I was considering writing up and sharing with my not huge but not completely insignificant following, well, they were all supposed to be true. I began to wonder if ghost stories are like a drug. You need more concentrated doses over time to get the same effect.
Last year’s contribution introduced a new element. It wasn’t really a story so much as a cry for help. Ken, our storyteller, came to find out what our group would make of his daughter’s dealings with her imaginary friends. He knew from previous years’ stories, which I’d written up and posted on my blog, that we were a mix of skeptics and believers. He was particularly interested in what my mom would have to say, since of all the storytellers we’ve hosted over the years she seemed to have the most wisdom, at least according to my own biased accounting. The story and the ensuing interventions, led by my mom, entailed such a farrago of fiction and true facts, of a child’s fancies and an adult’s realized fears, that I’m still trying to force the details into some viable formulation. But that will have to wait until another time.
This year, our Halloween gathering featured a story by a man I’m calling Steve. He too seemed to want something from our group besides a sympathetic hearing. For some reason, I’ve started taking that as a sign of authenticity, this reluctance to speak, this mild embarrassment, the impression that the teller is suffering under a heavy burden. Is it also a sign of truth? That’s an entirely different question, one I’m realizing more every year it’s impossible to answer. Steve’s story opened with a creepy warehouse loft, one that reminded him of a spooky attic in his grandparents’ house. That caught my attention. I couldn’t help steeling myself for the ensuing disappointment.
Here’s the story as Steve told it:
“That loft looking out over the Sentech warehouse always gave me the creeps. I think it was because for some odd reason it reminded me of my grandparents’ attic. Until I was ten, they lived in this house they’d bought right before my dad was born. Apparently, it had quite a history, but I wouldn’t find that out until much later. Back then, all I knew was someone in the family who lived there before had hanged himself in the attic. I knew this because my younger cousin Shelby told me, claiming she’d heard it straight from our grandma’s lips. I only bring this up because that attic was the eeriest place I’d ever been. You could put floodlights in every corner up there and somehow it would still be dark. What was up there? Scraped, splintery gray wood floors. Exposed beams and joists, appropriately covered in dust and cobwebs. Light beaming through the lone window as if through glue. Lots of boxes. And naturally some furniture covered in fraying sheets. I can’t picture it in my mind without conjuring the smell, a combination of musty old clothes and something sharp, cedary, almost chemical. Old cigar smoke maybe. There were tons of knickknacks scattered about, but I never got far in my sifting explorations because I was only ever up there on a dare, and I couldn’t resist bolting down the stairs for more than a minute or two at a time.
“Once, when two of my older cousins, Mike and Derek, slammed and bolted the door behind me before, for all I knew, taking off—I later found out they were listening outside the door the whole time—I managed to look around long enough to see that I could have gotten to the roof through the window, if only I could get it to open. As much as I strained and grunted though, the damn thing wouldn’t budge. When I turned back toward the center of the attic again and saw it from this new vantage within the dormer, I was simultaneously struck with two conflicting impressions: first, that this place looked completely normal, that it was just a bunch of junk in an old house, and second, that something was very wrong with this scene, like it had somehow been contaminated. I knew if I stayed up there, I would be totally safe. But I also knew if I didn’t get out of there soon, I might never be the same.
“I know, it’s silly kid stuff. Any one of us could go into that same attic now as adults—though I’m pretty sure they tore the house down—and we wouldn’t think anything of it. As a kid, though, your memory isn’t so cluttered with the detritus of years, so your perceptions are slower to sink in and more impactful once they do. Experiences you have when you’re young are higher resolution. Untrained in what to look at, your vision has much more scope. Plus, you have yet to discover that most of the stories you hear aren’t true, that they tend to be comprised of plagiarized elements of old fictions rearranged to varying degrees, so hearing about things like people killing themselves in a particular place really adds dimension to what you see.”
Steve’s seemingly jaded speculations about why the old attic stayed with him into adulthood struck a chord with me. Outwardly, his appearance was amazingly average: late 30s, slightly overweight, jeans, a hoodie, a beard that looked to be less about style than minimal effort, and an overall unassuming aspect. When he spoke, though, you almost couldn’t help leaning in to listen close. His conspicuous lack of interest in getting or maintaining anyone’s attention made it seem like he had some sort of secret wisdom. He wore glasses with nondescript frames and thick lenses that magnified his otherwise minute expressions. His nonchalance promised profundity. His speech, though rambling at times, often flirted with the literary.
He went on:
“Aside from a few nightmares after getting locked in there by my cousins, nothing happened in that attic—that I’m aware of anyway. I mention it here because there was such a distinct feeling associated with it. You all must have places like that you remember, haunted places from childhood that remain haunted in your mind no matter how cynical and disenchanted you become in later years. I had glimmerings of that feeling whenever I stepped onto the loft overlooking the warehouse at the Sentech office.
“Let me explain the layout of the building. It was offices in front and a big warehouse in the back. The office ceilings were low, so there was a lot of space on top of them where the loft extended. If you were up there and stood at the railing, you’d see the large overhead door where the trucks would back up to drop off or pick up our products. Around the walls of the warehouse, large racks held pallets of shrink-wrapped boxes high up, and lower down were rows of boxes the guys back there would take products from as they prepared shipments to our customers. It was a huge open space with a few workstations. When you came in the back door or through the overhead, you could see the wooden stairs leading up to the loft along the back wall, close to the door to the front of the building. From down on the warehouse floor, the area up there was usually completely dark.
“I was the last to leave the building most evenings, so I’d walk through the warehouse, which afterhours was itself only lit by a few safety lights, and over my shoulder was this entirely black space looming. Then there were the sounds. Sitting in my office, I could hear pretty much whatever was going on in the loft above my head. I seldom paid any attention. But I remember more than once being relatively sure I was alone in the building when I heard pounding or shuffling. A couple times I even wandered out to the bottom of the stairs out in the warehouse to investigate. Neither time did I end up climbing those stairs.
“When I first started working at Sentech, they told me there was an older guy who used to manage the warehouse, picking, boxing, and stacking all the products to ship out and unpacking and sorting all the incoming inventory. The company was just a four-man operation when it began, and Glen was the one in charge of keeping product moving in and out. Ten years on, there were enough guys back there helping for him to retire without feeling like he was leaving anyone in the lurch.
“The company sells these infrared and sonar sensors that manufacturers put on cars and trucks. They hired me to work on the website and do some basic marketing for them, which meant I spent most of my time in an office. I only met Glen once, when he stopped in one day while I was working. Nadine, the woman who did a lot of the order processing, introduced us. That’s when I found out Glen had stored a bunch of his old belongings in the loft. He looked to be in his sixties or seventies, with thin whisps of white hair over what must have at one time been a square-jawed, hard-featured visage. He made irreverent jokes, first about how it was too bad they’d had to hire another dude who looked like everybody else in the building, and then about the decline in the quality of music sounding over the workstation speakers. But he seemed kind and had a gentle, almost peaceful way about him. He struck me as a pretty typical country grandfather type—maybe nicer and more at ease in company than most of that sort. Wittier.
“Glen had stopped in that day to pick up a snowblower from his little area upstairs, so I went up to help him get it down the stairs. I hadn’t been in the loft more than once or twice helping one of the other guys move stuff around. It was creepy. I don’t want to exaggerate. It wasn’t like some old, haunted house by any stretch. It was just a big space with particle board floors and the usual girders holding up the high roof. It took the lights up there a few minutes to warm up, and when they were burning full steam, they cast this sepia light over the sundry boxes and parts and materials. Mixed in with the typical warehouse stuff, though, were children’s toys and old lawnmowers and snowblowers. Apparently, Glen had a side hustle where he bought old equipment, refurbished it, and sold it for profit. But he had personal stuff up there too. I wasn’t ever told not to touch it, but there was a general attitude of avoidance when it came to that space. Plus, like I said, I barely ever went up there. We got the snowblower to Glen’s truck, said our goodbyes and nice-to-meet-yous, and that would be the last I ever saw him.
“Then some weeks later I get a call late in the afternoon. I don’t know a delicate way to say it, but the guy on the other end of the line had a—ahem—thick rural accent, if you catch my drift. He told me his name was Tim and that he was Glen’s grandson. Glen had just died in the hospital from a stroke, and now Tim was trying to locate a book his grandpa may have stored with his belongings upstairs. He seemed impatient when I offered my condolences, because he was so eager to locate the book.
“‘What does this book look like?’ I finally asked.
“‘You’ll know it when you see it,’ was his response.
“My first thought was to send Sam, our new warehouse guy, up there to look for it. But Sam wouldn’t be in again until the next morning and Tim was pressuring me for an answer. Finally, I told him I’d go up there and look, though I might need some more information. Glen had quite a bit of stuff up there.
“‘Well, I bet it’ll be someplace safe,’ was all he said.
“So I jogged out to the warehouse and back to the circuit breaker by the overhead to flip on the lights. They were just starting to produce their low yellow glow as I reached the top of the stairs. Everything had that sepia hue and was contoured by darkest shadow. Glen’s stuff was in the corner straight back from the stairs, and when I saw how much of it there was back there in the slowly intensifying light, I said aloud, ‘Well, are you going to stay late trying to find this damn book?’ Just as I said it, the phone started ringing again. I grumbled and headed downstairs to grab the handheld at the shipping station.
“It was Tim again. ‘Hey, do you mind if I run over there and help you look—or I could just look for it myself. I know you must be busy.’
“‘Listen, I’m just finishing up here for the day,’ I told him. ‘I’ll need to be on my way home in about ten minutes. Why don’t you call tomorrow when Nadine will be able to help you out?’
“‘No, no, not Nadine,’ he blurted. ‘Come on, man. This is something I have to do quick. I can’t explain, but… how about I pay you a hundred dollars to stick around and help me find the book?’
“‘A hundred dollars? Listen, I’m not even sure I should be letting you take anything from here. I only met Glen once. I’ve only been working here a few weeks. I’m going to need to talk to someone before I let some guy I’ve never met rifle through Glen’s stuff. And I definitely can’t let you just wander off with anything. It sounds to me like this book is valuable. So how do I know it’s not meant to go to some other family member?’
“‘It’s not. It’s for me. I swear. And I need it tonight. I need it as soon as possible. How’s this? I’ll give you two hundred dollars. I’m on my way now.’
“I started to shout at him not to come but the line went dead. I was irritated as hell because I wanted to go back to my office, sign out, and drive home. The only problem was my finances weren’t in a state that would allow me to turn down two hundred dollars for twenty minute’s work. The smart thing to do would have been to go back to my office get my stuff, lock the doors, and be on my way. But that’s not what I did.”
Here I lost focus on Steve’s voice and got wrapped up in a thought: this is another trope common to ghost stories—the good person making a bad choice. To win your sympathy, protagonists must have some virtue, some quality that makes you want to see only good things happen to them. But there has to be a fork in the road where the character takes a wrong turn. They make a deal that brings on a curse. The rest of the story details the playing out of that curse, including its ultimate resolution. Recognizing the common device and anticipating the upcoming search through the dark, I relaxed back in my chair, resigning myself to the budding disappointment.
“Instead,” Steve spoke over my thoughts, “I went back upstairs and searched with some urgency, hoping to find the book before Tim got there, just to have a better sense of what I was dealing with. The lawnmowers and snowblowers created a barrier separating the main part of the loft from where Glen’s boxes were stacked. Two tall shelves with more boxes in a variety of sizes stood in the corner. These seemed promising, so I shuffled and hopped my way back there. Later, I would attribute the sound I heard to all the stuff I’d pushed and moved around. It was a series of clicks. At least, that’s what it sounded like at first. They came at a slow pace that didn’t correspond to any movement on my part. After a few moments of doubt, I froze. Then I whipped around to scan the rest of the loft. By now, the lights were at about half power, bright enough for me to see I was alone up there, unless someone was going out of their way to hide.
“All at once, the dilemma Tim had presented me with was no longer taking up enough space in my mind to crowd out my typical reaction to the loft. What the hell was I doing up there anyway? I should just get my stuff from my office and leave, making extra sure to lock the door and set the alarm on my way out. But I had begun my search, and now I wanted to have a look at this book. Tim had said I’d know it when I saw it. Did it have a gilded cover? Was the artwork horrific? Was the damn thing bound in human flesh? Once I had the book in hand, I would be in a better position to decide on a course of action. That’s what I told myself anyway. It could have been that I just wanted to find the book and hand it over for the two hundred bucks before my better sense kicked in.
“The moment I turned back toward the shelf I’d been searching I heard the slow series of clicks again. More curious than startled this time, I pricked my ears to see if I could tell what direction it was coming from. The clicking came in intervals of a few seconds. It didn’t sound mechanical, and it came too slow to be from something tipping or falling. I walked all around Glen’s section of the loft looking for the source, but the sound ceased almost as soon as I stepped away from the shelf. When I returned to resume my search for the book, though, it started again. And it was more recognizable. Once again, I was frightened, petrified. The sound wasn’t clicking. It was growling, almost like a deep muffled groan. Unmistakably angry. No sooner had I identified the sound—though I’d later question myself—than I heard a pounding at the back door. Under other circumstances, I may have been reluctant to open the door. At that moment, though, I was glad to have a reason to rush down the stairs.
“‘Hi, I just talked to you on the phone,’ the man said as I pushed open the door. I said my name as I offered my hand. He took it enthusiastically. He was on the short side and skinny, wearing clothes that were way too big for him. Baggy jeans and a hooded jacket his slouching shoulders formed into a pouch for his pocketed hands. His hair was cropped close to his scalp, and his skin looked papery. He darted a glance at my face before looking up toward the loft, his eyes almost twitching with eagerness. Giving my hand a quick squeeze, he said, ‘Hey, I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression—I’m not up to anything underhanded, you know. It’s just that I have to leave for a few days, and I’d really like to have this book so I can use it to write a eulogy. My cousin says the funeral will be right around the time I get back into town.’
“It occurred to me this sounded like a story you’d cook up on the drive here if you wanted to keep someone like me from asking too many questions. ‘In that case, you really don’t need to pay me anything to take it. But I really do have to call Nadine or whoever else I can reach before I can just hand it over.’ Tim looked stricken. ‘Why don’t you run up there and look for the book while I make the call? It’s right up these stairs and back on the right. You’ll see the lawnmowers and snowblowers.’
“Without a word, Tim rushed up the stairs. I opened my mouth to say something about the sound I’d been hearing but wound up turning to head back to my office without saying a word. What would I have said anyway? Now that the two hundred dollars was off the table, I shifted my efforts back to getting home as quickly as I could. I wanted to get my dogs out to the park in our neighborhood before my wife got off work. I’m always trying to squeeze in a bit more time with them, but I obviously want to be around for my wife too. Looking back now, it’s clear I shouldn’t have left Tim alone up there without getting more information. I didn’t even know if he was really Glen’s grandson.”
Chris, seeing Steve’s expression brighten, chimed in for the first time, saying, “What kind of dogs do you have?”
Steve reached for his pocket to pull out his phone. “Here, I’ll show them to you,” he said, brimming with pride, overcome by a surge of joy incongruous with his usual demeanor, a sunbeam poking through a storm cloud. “This is Rowdy—he’s the kid brother. He just turned three. And this is Tangle. He’s the wise old man. He’s 8. Rowdy is an Australian shepherd. Tangle is a border collie.”
“They look like trouble,” Cindy said through a fawning smile.
“They’re my boys. But, yeah, they’re a pain in the ass most days too, especially when they don’t get enough play time.”
“I see why you were so eager to get home,” I said, momentarily disarmed.
“Exactly. Anyway, I returned to my office and sat down at my desk to call Nadine. She’d left to pick up her daughters from school just a couple of hours earlier, but her phone rang through to voicemail. I left her a message and began to steel myself to deliver the bad news to Tim: even if you find the book up there, I’m not going to be able to let you take it until I talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. I figured I could persuade him to leave it here with me until tomorrow at least. Before I went back to the warehouse, though, I logged out of my computer and gathered up my stuff to go home. Not two steps from my desk, I heard the office phone ring. I rushed to grab it.
“‘Nadine?’ I said.
“‘What? I’m sorry, no, this is Sarah. Is this Sentech?’
“‘Yes, it is. I’m sorry, I was expecting a call from someone else. What can I help you with Sarah?’
“‘Well, I think my cousin might try to reach you. You see, he’s after a book he should know isn’t his. I don’t even know if it’s there, but if it is, it should be up with my grandfather’s stuff on that second floor you have. Did you work with Glen?’
“‘I started after he left, I’m afraid, but I did meet him once. And I should tell you, there’s a guy here now who’s up there looking for the book. What’s your cousin’s name?’
“‘His name is Tim, and if he’s there you shouldn’t let him out of your sight.’
“Just as she said this, I heard a commotion overhead, like a shelf being knocked over and its contents spreading across the floor. I froze for two beats to listen. But Tim’s scream startled me. I was already in the hall when I heard his feet stomping down the stairs. I picked up my own pace, hoping to head him off if he was running toward the door, but then another sound stopped me in my tracks. Something else was moving from Glen’s corner of the loft to the top of the stairs. At least, that’s what I thought it sounded like. And I could have sworn I could hear claws clicking against the wood flooring with each step. I reasoned that Tim must’ve brought a dog in with him to help him search—but that would mean he came down the stairs, went out to his truck, and then came back in without me hearing any of that, without me hearing the dog at all before Tim decided to rush down the stairs.
“When I finally managed to force myself to open the door to the warehouse, it was just in time to see Tim stepping through the door into the sunlight. By the time I reached the backdoor of the warehouse myself, all I could do was watch him drive away in his rickety old Ford pickup. Remembering the woman on the phone, I hurried back to the office and picked it up again.
“‘He’s gone. Something crashed upstairs and—and…’
“‘Did he have the book?’
“‘I didn’t get that good of a look at him. He may have. I’m sorry, I need to go upstairs and see if he broke anything.’
“‘What did you hear?’
“‘There was a loud crash followed by what must’ve been stuff sliding across the floor. Then it sounded like something was chasing him.’ I’d blurted it out before I could think better of it. The other end of the line remained silent for what seemed like a long time. Finally, I said, ‘Sarah, I’m going to run upstairs to see what happened. Then I’m going to go home. Please stop by sometime tomorrow and we’ll see if we can’t find that book.’
“‘I hate to ask,’ she replied, ‘but could you call me back and tell me what you find?’
“I was annoyed by the request, but in the circumstances, it seemed perfectly reasonable, so I agreed. I hung up the phone and went back to the warehouse. By now, the lights in the loft were on full blast, and when I reached the top of the stairs, I was surprised to see that both the large shelves remained upright. What had I heard crashing down and spilling its contents? Or had I completely misconstrued the sound? I approached Glen’s corner, and the mystery only deepened. There didn’t seem to be anything on the floor that wasn’t there before. In fact, after a quick scan of the corner and then the loft as a whole, I couldn’t detect any sign that Tim had been up there at all. So what had all that noise been?
“Rather than calling Sarah back from my office, I typed the number into my personal phone so I could talk to her on my way home. From work to home is a twenty-minute drive for me. Even with the phone to my ear, I managed to catch a glimpse of something on the floor. It was a tiny piece of metal in the shape of a bone with a loop at the top. Being a dog owner myself, I knew what it was right away—a tag for a collar. It had some flecks of red on it still, but it was so dinged up I couldn’t find any legible words on it. I stood there squinting for lettering for a few seconds before it hit me: the tag must have fallen out of the book. It must have been tucked in the pages like a bookmark. Where else would it have come from?
“And that meant Tim had indeed fled with the book in hand.
“I returned to my office to grab my things, came back out to the warehouse to switch off the lights and activate the alarm, and then went out and got in my car. I waited till I was on the highway before calling Sarah back. I told her I was pretty sure Tim had the book and that a dog’s tag had fallen out of it. ‘What’s the name on the tag?’ she demanded, cutting me off mid-sentence. I told her it had worn off. All I knew was that at some point the tag had been red. Sarah wanted to come to the warehouse and confirm that the book wasn’t there, but when I told her I’d already left she agreed to come the next morning.
“‘What’s this about?’ I asked before letting her hang up. ‘What is it about this book that makes it so special?’ After a long silence, I raised my voice to say, ‘Are you still there?’
“‘I’m still here,’ she said. ‘I just don’t know where to begin.’
“She told me Glen had brought the book home from his travels after he finished his tour in Vietnam. He’d really gotten around apparently, finding menial jobs in several countries, not feeling enough like himself to return to his old life. He’d bought the book as a gift for the love of his life back home, the woman he’d go on to marry. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with leukemia two years after the wedding, and she was dead a few years after that. Glen remarried quickly, but almost as quickly got divorced. Tim, it turned out, was the son of one of his ex-wife’s daughters, so sort of a step-grandson. A few years after the divorce, Glen got remarried, to the woman who would become Sarah’s grandmother. Decades after that, when Sarah was just a little girl, Tim, already in his twenties, somehow found out about the book. He did some digging and discovered it was worth a lot of money. When he brought this information to his grandpa, suggesting they sell it, Glen dismissed the idea out of hand. Tim got mad and was later caught trying to steal the book. That was when Glen moved it out of his house. Sarah hadn’t been sure the book was in the Sentech loft until I told her about the tag. But she assured me Nadine would corroborate much of the story I’d just heard—which I realized was why Tim reacted so strongly when I said I needed to talk to her before letting him leave with any of Glen’s belongings.
“‘But what is this book?’ I asked just as I was pulling into my driveway. ‘What’s so special about it?’
“After another pause, Sarah said, ‘What’s special about it is that my grandfather gave it to his first love, his first wife, a woman he cherished right up until the time he stood by watching her lowered into the ground. It was a sort of scrapbook, but not that exactly. What makes it valuable is that it’s a few hundred years old and contains sections from some ancient mystics, but the format also encourages you to make your own contributions, if that makes any sense.’
“‘It doesn’t really,’ I said. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever heard of anything like that. It seems once someone started writing in it, the value would depreciate.’
“‘Oh, you don’t write in it,’ she said. ‘That’s not the kind of contribution it invites.’
“With that, I thought I understood: the book must lay out rituals or prayers or incantations. It didn’t encourage contributions so much as participation. But I figured it was pointless to keep trying to pull any more information out of her. ‘And the tag I found?’
“‘Baltus,’ she said, almost whispering.
“Now I was parked in the garage. I knew my own dogs would be going nuts inside. ‘Your grandfather’s dog?’ I asked.
“‘Well, yeah, originally, but reportedly he came to be quite devoted to Vivian—Grandpa’s first wife. Grandpa used to say he was afraid if he ever raised his voice to his wife, his own dog might maul him. I guess he was a big rottweiler, intimidating in appearance but gentle and sweet—most of the time. After Vivian died, Baltus was soon to follow. Losing them both in such a short span nearly ruined my grandfather. But he only started talking about them both when I was in my late teens.’
“Impatient to get in the house to let my dogs out, I realized there was something I needed to say before hanging up. ‘Listen, Sarah, I’m sorry I let Tim run off with that book. It was stupid of me. I was in a hurry to get home, so I just didn’t want to deal with it. It was irresponsible. But I’ll help you look for it tomorrow—even though I’m pretty sure he got away with it. I’ll do whatever I can to help you find it.’ I didn’t mention the two hundred bucks Tim had offered me.
“She assured me she understood and that it wasn’t my fault before signing off. Between the car and the door from the garage into the kitchen, I had a thought that induced a shudder. The sounds I heard above me when I was in my office. The clicking noise while I searched the two shelves—the growl. The crashing and shuffling and sliding as Tim fled. The nails on the floorboards. And that damn tag falling out of an ancient book of spells. But ten seconds later I was inside the door being smothered inside a Tangle and Rowdy tornado.”
Cindy chimed in here to ask, “Did you ever get confirmation from this Sarah woman that it really was a book of spells? Did you ever see it?” Our demure and giggling Cindy—she looked worried as she spoke, making me realize my fellow group members were less lacking in enthusiasm for our old Halloween storytelling ritual than I’d grown. Of course, they weren’t the ones responsible for sifting through dozens of stories sent in by email every year in search of someone who may make a worthy contribution to our ever-growing collection.
Steve replied, “I never spoke to Sarah again after that, and I never saw the book. I talked to Nadine about all of it, and Sarah was right about her corroborating what she told me about Glen. But Nadine didn’t know anything about the book.”
“Wait, so Sarah never showed up the next day to look for the book?”
“Nope, she never did. But I found out from two police detectives that the book was found with Tim.” Steve paused as we all looked back at him with stunned expressions. “I’ll get to that part,” he said. “Let me put this all in chronological order.”
“So what happened after you got home?” Mike asked.
“Well, first, as is my normal routine, I leashed up the dogs and got them over to the park in the middle of our neighborhood so we could play for about half an hour before heading back home to greet my wife. When we got there, the weather was beautiful, and throwing the ball around for them both, I finally stopped thinking about Tim and feeling guilty for letting him in to steal his grandfather’s book—his step-grandfather’s book. It was difficult for me to wrap my head around how enticed I’d been by the promise of money. That’s not me; at least I didn’t want to think it was. At the time, though, I was more strapped than usual. But that’s another story. Anyway, we had our fun at the park. By the time we were heading home, there were rain clouds rolling in. We jogged home.
“By seven o’clock, as I was sitting down to dinner with my wife, the rain was pounding against the windows and the sides of the house. Crashes of thunder had the lights in our dining room flickering, and we got up from the table long enough to get out some candles and find a couple flashlights to keep close at hand. The most intense part of the storm only lasted about half an hour, but the dogs were stuck inside, which meant they were both play fighting in the kitchen and living room most of the night.
“Now, I know you said you’d alter any identifying details before you publish this story, and I’d prefer not to reveal anything too personal. But I have to add some backstory for what happened next to make sense. You see, my wife and I had been trying to have a baby for a couple years. When all this happened with Glen’s grandson and his book, we’d already been to see a doctor on a few occasions. Meanwhile, at thirty-seven, after years of freelancing as an online marketer, and now with my second full-time gig, I was looking down the barrel of an established career—one I hadn’t chosen for myself but instead fell into as I tried to make ends meet. This despite my long-held ambition to be a serious journalist and all-around writer: poetry, novels, travelogues. I still have boxes filled with notebooks bursting at the seams in my attic. Ha, another haunted attic. There are other aspects to what was going on I could mention here, but that should suffice.
“While I was running the dogs up and down the stairs with their tennis balls to wear them out, and then while I was sitting on the couch watching TV with my wife, I kept having these horrible thoughts. I brooded over the two hundred dollars and how it had led me to make such a stupid decision. That line of inquiry led me straight to a bone-deep sense of self-loathing. I was a failure. I had nothing to contribute to the world. I was a burden, the weight tied around my wife’s neck, dragging her down, ensuring her unhappiness. The idea was a poison coursing through my intestines, casting a pall over everything I saw, felt, or thought. I couldn’t even fulfill the one function that accounted for my biological existence. The world would be a much better place without me in it.
“My self-hatred radiated from my guts to contaminate every cell in my body, transforming each into a tiny black hole gulping down all the surrounding light. My wife noticed me sinking into myself on the couch and asked what was wrong. I lied and said I had heartburn and was a little worn out from not having slept well the night before. So when the power went out again—even though the thunder had eased to a series of intermittent drawn-out rumbles—and didn’t come back on, she said, ‘Why don’t we just go to bed?’ It was only about a half hour before our usual time, so I figured it was a good idea. I was hoping to feel better the next morning.”
This inward shift to Steve’s story had me sitting up and listening more intently. I knew a second search-through-the-dark scene was next, but the route through Steve’s own doubts and disappointments struck me as not just revealing with regard to his own story, but as providing a larger insight into the hidden workings of these narratives in general. As a kid, you read Poe’s overheated stories about beauty and lost love as if they were a play on abstractions, their power deriving from the staggering vastness contained within the symbols. When you grow up and read stories about hauntings and possessions, though, you respond as you would to real individuals who’ve experienced real losses, because you have experienced similar ones yourself. So much heartbreak in even the most blessed lives—how can you not be haunted by it? Isn’t the instant of starkest, most all-consuming terror preferable to facing the reality of the inevitable demise of everyone you love as you struggle through your own drawn-out decline? All of this is to say I found it easy to relate to Steve’s inner turmoil.
“My wife went upstairs cupping a candle flame, the dogs close behind. I meanwhile set to my ritual of flipping off the light switches, turning down the heat, and checking to see if all the doors were locked. But after walking out into the garage to check the back door at the far corner, I got stuck. I felt so bad I could barely move. I found myself scanning the length of a beam along the ceiling, looking for a place I could fasten a rope. Then my gaze gravitated toward my car. My key fob was still in my pocket. I could start the engine and wait. With the noise from the rain, my wife probably wouldn’t hear. I had taken two slow steps toward the driver’s-side door when I heard scratching at the locked door I’d just checked.
“I was relatively certain both dogs had gone upstairs with my wife, but what else would be scratching to get in? I was in no state for caution or fear. So I walked over, unlocked the door, and turned the knob. Just then a gust of wind hit like a freight train, pushing open the door and knocking me back against the hood of my car. I rushed back to force the door closed, but then I remembered the scratch. So I put my hand against the door frame and thrust my head out into the lashing rain to see which of the dogs had managed to get trapped in the storm. Not seeing anything, I turned back to look for a coat or something to drape over myself. I ended up grabbing an old gray tarp, wrapping it over my shoulders, and running out into our backyard.
“The rain had intensified again, and the wind was batting me around with powerful gusts. The motion sensor by our door from the garage kicked on as I stepped past—meaning the power must be back on—but I could still barely see anything. Making a circuit of the yard along the fence, I saw that neither of our dogs was outside. I was in the back corner, farthest from the gate and the door to the garage, when I thought I caught a glimpse of something moving by a stand of trees about fifty yards outside our fence. Straining my eyes, I could just make out the outline. It was black. An animal. Maybe a dog. If it had come from somewhere around our house, its trajectory would take it right to the highway running alongside our neighborhood. So I ran to the gate and then to the stand of trees, clasping the corners of the tarp to my chest.
“I made it all the way to the sidewalk beside the highway, a few hundred feet from the neighborhood entrance. Out of breath, I stood staring through the curtain of rain, turning from side to side to see if I could spot the dog in the streetlights. But there was nothing. With nothing left to do but get back to the house and out of the rain, I found myself stuck in place again, thinking I’d failed at yet another task. It took me right back to the loathsome mental place I’d been before leaving the garage. When a semi’s headlights appeared on the distant highway, two menacing yellow eyes burning through the wet gloom, I thought, you can step right out in front of it. Gloria will wonder what you were doing out here, what you might have been looking for or chasing, but she probably won’t suspect you killed yourself. So this is it. Just wait for the right moment and step out into the road. It’ll be over before you know it.
“I have to say here I’d been down for a while, as I explained. But aside from some overdramatic episodes in my early dating life, I’ve never been the type to even think about suicide. I’ve always considered myself a writer, so all experience is good, you know. When things are bad, I try to focus on how I can turn what I’m going through into something poetic or literary, something to sharpen my perspective, make my engagement with life in all its facets more profound. More beautiful. But when I tried this thought on as I stood waiting for the perfect time to step in front of that truck, it led me straight to the fact that I was old enough now to know I’d never really be a writer, not one who got paid anyway. Meanwhile, my life insurance would pay my wife a lot more than two hundred bucks. I felt so horrible I couldn’t see beyond any of this. My mind had squeezed tight like a fist,” he held his up to demonstrate, “crushing this one idea in its palm. I had stopped breathing.
“Now, here was the truck approaching at last. My lungs finally loosened enough for me to draw in a sharp breath and hold it. The only way I can describe the feeling is that my despair and my pain were so intense, the prospect of oblivion promised bliss. I was desperate to be squashed, blotted out of existence. The lights whooshed closer. Five more seconds. Three. I lifted my foot and felt it moving forward. I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to the abyss.
“The next thing I knew, I was stumbling backward. There was a flash of white. And a sound like a roar. I watched the truck hiss and splash along the road in front of me as I sat with my butt in the soaking grass and fallen leaves. My missed opportunity. Maybe there’d be another soon. But the sound I’d heard wasn’t from the truck, I was sure. It sounded like an animal. It sounded like a larger and angrier version of what I’d heard up on that loft earlier in the day. At last, I started to come back to myself. And I was scared. I looked around frantically and saw Tangle, drenched, facing away from me, toward something I couldn’t see behind a wall running along the sidewalk. Tangle, ha, my bestest buddy. He’d poked in his nose and run right between my legs as I was stepping into the road. Only a border collie would think to do that. He knocked me backward. He fucking saved my life. Then Rowdy was there too, turning one circle around me as I sat in the grass beside the sidewalk, then another. I got to my feet and saw him bolting back toward our house.
“I must’ve left the door from the house to the garage open—or they found a way to open it. The door from the garage to the backyard, the gate, I was sure I’d pulled them both closed behind me. But Rowdy and Tangle had found a way. Maybe they’d just come to investigate when they heard the door open. Maybe they knew something was wrong.”
Here Maddy interrupted to echo in a mutter: “They know.”
Steve went on: “And now Tangle still looked like he was facing off against something obscured by the rain and shadow. I stepped forward to see what had his hackles up, staring deeply, but then drew back when I heard that fucking growl again. It set Tangle to barking wildly.
“I was still in an odd state, which must be why I was eager to see what was there. I’d left the flashlight in the kitchen, but the street was lit well enough. There was only so much darkness behind the wall to hide in. But I couldn’t see anything. Tangle finally stopped barking and turned to look back at me. As he did, my mind cleared even more. Suddenly, I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was doing out here. Trying to save a dog I wasn’t even sure I saw?
“I bounded past Tangle to have a look behind the wall. When it was clear there was nothing to be seen, I turned back, pulled the tarp tight over my shoulders, and called for Tangle to follow me back to the house. I ran, feeling the squish of the wet grass, my thoughts weighing heavy, my whole body feeling—I don’t know—shaky. Buzzing. And this is where things got scary. I was maybe a third of the way from the sidewalk to my yard, running along the back of my neighbor’s fence, with Tangle well ahead of me. That’s when the tarp caught on something. My feet tried to whip out in front of me as I twisted my body, but I managed to stay upright. I still had the edge of the tarp gripped in my hand and I turned to see what it had gotten snagged on. That’s when it was violently jerked out of my hand. Here I question my own memory. Or maybe it was some trick of the darkness and the driving rain. I thought I saw the opposite edge of the tarp dart back and forth, as if in the jaws of a huge dog shaking it side to side. But there was no dog. There was nothing to be seen at all.
“Tangle ran up and stopped by my side, his hackles up again, and we both stood dumbstruck as the tarp was pulled back toward the road, by the wind obviously, because what else could it have been? The rain picked up, breaking the spell, and I ran back toward the gate with Tangle. We were just behind our own fence when I heard Gloria calling me from the back door. I shouted back telling her I was there and heading for the door to the garage. Rowdy, still soaking wet, had alerted her that something was wrong, and she’d come to look for me.
“Inside, I explained to Gloria I thought I’d seen a dog heading for the road and gone to save it. I didn’t tell her the rest. The lights kept flickering as we were toweling off the dogs. I no longer felt any desperate urge to bring my existence to a halt. I was confused. Stupefied even. And I didn’t get much sleep that night. But that horrible feeling was gone, and I’m happy to report it’s never come back. Not really.
“The next morning before work I went out to look for the tarp. I found a few pieces scattered behind the line of yards and out into the highway. There were only a few strips, but I imagined the whole tarp being shredded. I never found any more of it.
“Naturally, I was anxious to see Sarah the next day at work. I wanted to ask her for some more details about that damn book her cousin had stolen. Would I have told her what happened to me the night before? As embarrassing as it might have been, I think I would have, if only because I remember being worried it might happen again. Unfortunately, she never showed up. She never called. I went home feeling apprehensive. But it was a peaceful night. I left work early so I could spend some extra time with the dogs.
“The day after that I got a call asking if I would be willing to answer some questions posed by a couple of detectives. I suspected it had something to do with the stolen book, but obviously thought it was odd that detectives would bother with such a thing. I agreed to talk to them at work and show them around the warehouse. When they got there, I was surprised how normal they seemed. Just two guys asking simple questions and writing notes, no good cop-bad cop games or anything. It was from them I found out Tim had been found hanged to death in his neighbor’s barn. I told them everything that had happened, minus the strange events of the night before last. Before they left, they asked me if I had a dog. I told them about Tangle and Rowdy. They wrote something down in their notebooks, thanked me, and left through the back door.
“The question about my dogs made me wonder. I got online and looked for any accounts of the death in the news. Sure enough, there was a short piece on the website of our hometown’s lone newspaper. The death was clearly a suicide, but the police were investigating some odd details. In particular, it appeared as though the man, before climbing up and slipping his head through the noose, had been attacked by some kind of animal. He had bite marks on his left ankle and thigh. And his jeans had been ripped at the cuffs.”
Steve looked down, seemingly dazed. We all waited, but he didn’t seem as though he had any more to say.
“Did you get anymore answers?” Tom asked. Tom’s own story for the group had been cast into doubt two years earlier when my dad informed him the ghosts he thought he heard out in the woods belonged to living women. “Did anything else happen after that?”
“Let me tell you,” Steve said, “I had some sleepless nights for a while. And for about a week I made sure to keep Tangle and Rowdy close by wherever I went. But that was the last of it.”
“How long ago was all this?” Mike asked.
“Year before last.”
“I’d say you’re in the clear.”
“Here’s hoping,” Steve said, chuckling.
Chris, standing up from the couch, said, “Now we’re all wondering what you personally make of everything that happened to you.” He went over to the kitchen island where the snacks were arranged, ladled himself another cup of spiked punch, and turned back toward Steve. “And what did your wife think of it all?”
“I never told my wife any of it. She believes in all that crap, and I didn’t want to scare her. That’s why it’s been so nice to talk to you all about it. As for what I personally think happened, that’s not so easy to answer. My general attitude toward supernatural stuff is that it’s bullshit. But I admit I’m as susceptible to getting freaked out as anyone. The sounds are really the only thing I can’t explain, the animal sounds, the growling and later the roaring. Still, I was standing by a road, in a storm, when I heard the roar. The noises up on the loft—it wasn’t like there was no one else there who could’ve made those sounds somehow. The tarp could have been caught up in the wind and torn when cars ran over it. And it’s not that big of a mystery why I had a sudden attack of self-loathing. I’d just let a stranger come into work and steal something because I was tempted by the prospect of earning a couple hundred bucks doing essentially nothing.”
“So you don’t believe any unseen forces were at play?” Maddy said. “You have it all down to natural explanations?”
“I wish I could say that. But I’m not so sure. For all I know, I had some kind of”—he twirled his hand in the air as he searched for the word—“psychological episode. Maybe I was poisoned and hallucinating. Maybe it really was just a bunch of unlikely and weird events happening in sequence. But damn—it didn’t seem like any of that. At the time, it felt like something truly strange, something truly inexplicable was happening. So let’s just say I wasn’t a believer before all this happened, and I’m not really one now—but I’m far more open to the idea than I was.”
“And now for the really important question,” Cindy said. “How are Rowdy and Tangle doing today?”
Steve laughed, and his big cheesy grin remained even after his mirth faded. “They’re doing great. Though I can’t believe Tangle is ten now. That’s a little hard to accept, because I know—well, five or so years doesn’t seem as long a span of time as it used to. And I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you if it weren’t for him. It wasn’t just the maneuver to knock me back away from the road, you know. It was like he gave me his vote to continue living, at a time when I felt like nobody would care if I died. Even if he and Rowdy hadn’t been as deft in their intervention as they were, their determination to save me was enough to make me see through the shadows in my head.”
I felt my eyes welling, so I turned away. You may be thinking I chose Steve’s story this year because it included dogs, like the other stories I’ve chosen over the years. Maybe I did. But there were at least three features of the tale that appealed to me, aside from Tangle and Rowdy. It began with a recollection of a haunted attic remembered from childhood. The search-through-the-dark scene came with a twist, an inward shift that made it truly affecting. And, finally, it ended on a note that reminded me of my mom’s contribution to our Halloween storytelling event a few years ago. What ultimately makes these stories worth telling and hearing, she’d opined, is not that they point to meanings and beings beyond our mundane existence; it’s that they show our willingness to face off against the most extraordinary and monstrous of perils to protect the ones we love; it’s that we’re willing to follow the most unbelievable and inscrutable of prompts if they point to a possible avenue for us to save the ones we hold dear from danger. For whatever reason, Steve had a deadly bout of suicidality. You could say Tangle saved him by poking his snout behind his knee to prevent him from stepping in front of a truck. But that dog saved him just as much by being there to show he wasn’t going to let his master, his friend, die without a fight.
When you’re young with the boundless expanse of your undetermined future yet to live out and your fate perfectly mysterious, it’s so easy to feel like you’re the author of your own story. You hold the pen. You create the next turning point in your own character development. You’re responsible for the overall structure of the plot. You decide how it ends. The older you get, though, the more you realize that the most significant parts of the story will be authored by characters and developments that are not only beyond your control but, moment by moment, tend to operate outside of your awareness. Being happy or fulfilled isn’t about exerting the awesome cosmic force of your own willpower to wrangle the best possible story for yourself into existence; it’s about taking all the elements that get thrown in while you’re barely paying attention and arranging them into a story you can live with. The most blessed of us all are the ones lucky enough to have a character or two show up at some point who just desperately want to see us get to a happy ending without going through too much awfulness along the way. And it hardly matters what species those characters are.
“Now that I think about it,” Steve said, “I can’t really say nothing else has happened—I’ve been hearing those damn shuffling noises above my head after everyone leaves the warehouse almost every day.”
Yes, I thought, and our whole lives are a search through the dark.
***
