A Man Among Ghosts

by Steven Hopstaken

Genres: Dark Fantasy; Horror

Synopsis

You'll love this if you like the movie Jacob’s Ladder, Stephen King’s The Dead Zone or Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.

After surviving a near-death experience, David finds himself haunted by ghosts in the old Victorian house he is renovating. These tortured souls beg for his help and offer him protection from a demonic presence that wants David dead for a crime he doesn’t remember committing. Even more surprising, he soon learns these are spirits of people who are not yet dead. Is this real, is he hallucinating, or is someone trying to drive him insane? As his paranoia ramps up, he discovers the truth is even more bizarre. The haunting won’t stop until he kills a man named “Fitz.”

 

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Release date: March 7, 2023

Publisher: Flame Tree Press

Print pages: 264

Sample

Chapter One

A Change of Venue

When David first saw the house, he felt no fear. Others might look at a neglected Victorian house as possibly haunted, or at the very least a potential money pit, but that thought never entered David’s mind.

The house beckoned him to approach. It had a large, open front porch, begging for a pair of wicker chairs and a small table, where its owners could sit with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and wave to their neighbors. The two ornate second-story windows were a pair of friendly eyes watching over the urban neighborhood.

It was smaller than the other houses on the street. At one time, the neighborhood had been upscale, and the street lined with mansions. Now, most of those stately homes were divided into multifamily units or abandoned entirely, boarded up with graffiti-tagged plywood.

This house stood out as a jewel of stained glass and solid construction, ready for the urban renewal and gentrification poised to come.

The house to the right looked well-maintained and freshly painted. The lush garden in front and solar panels on the roof told David that the neighbor at least cared about the environment.

The house on the left was another story. Boarded-up windows shut it off from the world. Its sagging roof looked as if it were about to collapse under its own weight. Having this dilapidation next door was a concern to him, but he knew the struggling neighborhood was why this house might be within his budget. Houses rarely came up for auction in the Bay Area unless they were having trouble being sold the traditional way.

David stood on the sidewalk, admiring the house, then joined a group of people milling around on the porch.

There were two couples and a single man also taking the tour, which didn’t bode well for David’s chances.

“Seems like a lot of work,” one woman said to her husband, as she poked at a broken floorboard on the porch with her foot. She had leaned against the porch railing and was unaware that it left a brown smudge on her yellow dress.

“It’s a fixer-upper,” her husband said. “But I’m good at that stuff.”

David hadn’t noticed the broken floorboard, and once pointed out, all the other flaws of the house jumped out at him: peeling paint, a crumbling sidewalk, a cracked window.

“Needs a new roof,” the single, older man said, looking up. “Yep. That’s ten thousand right there.” His plaid shirt, work boots, and tape measure made David think he knew what he was talking about. The guy looked like a host of one of those house-flipping shows. Although David knew the roof comment might be a ploy to discourage the other bidders, it did give him pause.

“I love it!” another woman said to her husband. Both were dressed more like they were at a gallery opening than a house auction. David had seen them getting out of a Mercedes earlier.

“If the neighborhood were better, it would make a great B and B,” her husband replied. “But we could divide it into two apartments, I think.” David swallowed his irritation. Typical rich folks, looking for an investment opportunity where others just wanted a home.

A woman in a gold blazer approached and smiled at him. “Are you here for the auction?”

David smiled back at her. “I am.” He held out his hand. “David Dusek.”

She shook his hand. “Tammy Barnes. Come on. We’re about to start a tour.”

Tammy led David and the rest of the group into the house, joyfully pointing out its assets.

“The house was built in the Victorian style by a bookstore owner in 1900. It survived the 1909 earthquake and every earthquake after that, so you know it is well constructed,” she said.

As she pointed out the elaborate crown molding in the large living room, David ran his fingers over the blue velvet couch. He imagined himself welcoming party guests, or curling up on the couch to watch a movie with his wife.

He pushed away the thoughts that threatened to bring him back to reality. The truth was, David didn’t know what friends he would invite to a party if he had one. He’d lost touch with most of them once they married and started having children. The exception was Gary, and even he was moving away soon.

As for that wife, he didn’t even have a girlfriend at the moment.

It had been Gary’s idea for David to go to the auction. “If you can get a property for three hundred thousand or less, the house payment will be less than your rent. It’s about time you started making an investment in your life.”

He was right. As a software developer, David was making good money. He shouldn’t be throwing it away on rent when he could build equity.

Gary was now making Las Vegas money and was investing it like a responsible adult. The only investing David had done was in collectible Star Wars figures and a 401(k) from his company.

This could be my thing, he thought. “Oh, you know David. He’s that guy with the Victorian house he’s fixing up.”

Tammy rattled on. “Original oak beams, hardwood floors, and that large brick fireplace is in working condition. A new chimney was put in just two years ago. The gravity furnace has been red-tagged by the inspectors and will have to be replaced, but a prior owner installed all the ductwork for a forced-air gas furnace in 2001. And I have names of some reliable heating contractors if you need them.”

“That’s another six to eight grand,” the house flipper muttered.

The group of bidders followed Tammy into the formal dining room, taking notes. David felt stupid. He hadn’t brought a notebook, and made a mental note to get one for the next auction.

“All the furniture is included in the auction. Some are antiques, I would imagine,” Tammy said. “So, you’ll save money on furnishings.” The mahogany dining room table was big enough to seat eight comfortably. David imagined Thanksgiving dinner laid out along its length, and every chair filled with guests laughing and passing around the potatoes.

Tammy moved them briskly along into the kitchen. “Yes, the kitchen is small by today’s standards, but it has newish appliances.”

“So outdated,” the woman in the yellow dress whispered to her husband.

David thought the kitchen was cozy and charming, with green-tiled walls that looked like jade, and a hardwood floor painted yellow. True, it was small, but there was a bistro table and two chairs under a window. A great place to drink coffee and read the news in the morning.

“Shall we take a look at the backyard?” the real estate agent said, opening the creaky door and stepping out into the sunlight.

It was overgrown with weeds and there was a large walnut tree in the center that needed a good pruning. David imagined having friends over for a barbecue or to hang out around a fire pit and drink beers.

“Nice and private,” Tammy said, pointing to the large wooden fence that enclosed it. There was a board or two missing here and there, but it still looked in good shape to David.

They reentered the house, and the tour continued. “The basement is unfinished and has a dirt floor, but plenty of room for a washer and dryer.”

She led them to a padlocked door, unlocked it, and led the group into the basement’s depths. It seemed odd to David it was padlocked, but he guessed it was easy for burglars to break into the basement and gain access to the house.

“Easy enough to finish,” Tammy said as she moved to the back of the basement to make room for the group. “Pour a cement floor, put up some drywall and you could make the space quite livable.”

It was a large basement with a higher ceiling than other basements David had seen. Most of it was taken up by an enormous octopus of a gravity furnace and an old coal bin from when the house had a coal-fired boiler. David peered into the bin, amused to see there were a few lumps of coal still in it. Coal that might have been in there for over a hundred years.

There was a chute sealed with a metal hatch where the coal must have come down. How weird to have your fuel delivery once a week, David thought. We take central gas heating all for granted.

The single man was busy feeling the cinder-block walls for dampness. “Seems okay,” he told David. “No cracks that I can see.”

The woman in the yellow dress shrieked as a mouse ran over her feet and disappeared around the furnace. That was it for her. She took her husband by the hand. “Not for us,” she said.

The two of them hurried back upstairs. David smiled at their leaving. Easy enough to call an exterminator, he thought.

The only electric light in the basement was a single bulb hanging from a wire over the stairs. It flickered and went out with an audible pop, leaving the group in darkness. Four small basement windows let in very little light through their dingy lace curtains.

“These old bulbs,” Tammy complained.

David felt someone shove him forward.

“Hey, watch it,” he said, pushing back. There was no resistance.

“Watch it,” a voice whispered into his left ear, mocking David’s tone. David wheeled around just as Tammy was turning on her cell phone light.

No one was behind him. The single man was at the other end of the basement, still inspecting the foundation. The rich couple was ahead of him, already walking up the stairs and out into the kitchen.

“Shall the rest of us go upstairs?” Tammy didn’t wait for an answer and marched up the back stairs to the left of the kitchen. David followed, but the single man remained in the basement. He had taken out a flashlight of his own and was checking out the ductwork from the furnace.

As the tour continued up the back stairs to the second level, David became a little worried he wasn’t checking out the house thoroughly enough. Not that he knew what to look for. He made another mental note to bring a measuring tape and flashlight for the next tour. It would make him look like he knew what he was doing, if nothing else.

“There are three bedrooms up here and a full bathroom,” Tammy said. “You don’t see an upstairs bathroom often in these old Victorians.” She lowered her voice. “They used commodes, went right in the bedroom, carried it out in the morning.”

She swung the bathroom door open. “Just look at that marvelously deep clawfoot bathtub.”

David only had a shower in his apartment, and the tub looked inviting. He supposed the bathroom was close to how it was originally decorated. Like something out of a Dickens novel: ornate woodwork, a window trimmed with stained glass, and velvet wallpaper that somehow held up to years of humidity without peeling. It looked more like a bedroom than a bathroom to David, but he had to admit it had style.

They all shuffled into the master bedroom, which had a large, canopied feather bed at its center.

“Nice big master bedroom,” Tammy said. “And notice the fireplace. How cozy is that?”

The room smelled a little musty, but a good cleaning and airing out should fix that. David imagined himself in bed, reading a book by the light of the fire. This was his room, in his house. He suddenly wanted this house more than he had wanted anything in a long time. The thought of losing the auction made him strangely sad.

His therapist had told him, “When you feel sad about losing something, that means it is important to you.”

Tammy took them to a second, smaller room that David thought would make a great office.

He decided the third one would be a guest room. Gary and his girlfriend, Shannon, could come spend weekends. Maybe even his father would come and stay for Christmas.

They headed down the hallway toward the other set of stairs.

“Downstairs there is a room off the dining room that could be another bedroom or office, along with a quarter bath under the stairs.”

They came down the front stairs, which had an ornately carved banister and newel posts. A finial topped by a gargoyle stood guard, watching the big oak front door where fairies frolicked in the frosted-glass panel.

The man from the basement was walking toward the front door, mumbling to himself. He looked agitated.

“Find any cracks?” David asked him.

“No. Foundation is fine. Still, something about this place doesn’t feel right. You get a sixth sense about these things when you’ve been at it as long as I have.”

He left through the front door.

David was glad to see the competition go, but felt like the man had insulted his house. Sure, it needed a new roof and furnace, but that was an expense he could handle, and all old houses needed that kind of work.

Tammy gestured toward the front door with a cheery, “Shall we start the auction?”

The rich couple that remained stepped outside with him. An auctioneer was at a podium. David was discouraged when he saw there were two more couples already gathered for the auction. They must have had an earlier tour.

The gray-haired auctioneer banged his gavel on the podium.

“Before we start, we must disclose the house needs a new furnace and roof,” Tammy said at the auctioneer’s side.

With that information confirmed, one of the couples left the circle and headed back to their minivan.

The auctioneer shouted, “We will start the bidding at six hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

David did not have to wait for the others to outbid him. His own bank account did that. He almost turned to leave himself when he realized no one else was bidding either.

“No?” the auctioneer said. “Do I hear five hundred thousand?”

Still no one raised their hands.

“It’s worth at least that,” the auctioneer protested.

David seized the opportunity and shot his hand up. “Two hundred thousand!”

“Now we’ve got an auction,” the auctioneer said. “Do I hear two fifty?”

“Two fifty!” a man behind David yelled.

“Do I hear three fifty?”

“Three hundred!” the rich man shouted. His wife gave David a smug look as if to say, “We can do this all day.”

The higher bid caused the other couple to walk away.

Tammy, who had been looking over notes in a big binder, stopped the auctioneer and whispered something to him.

“Really?” he said. He gave a sigh and turned back to what was left of the crowd. “The State of California requires me to disclose that there was a murder—”

“Killing,” Tammy corrected.

“A killing in this house.”

“What kind of killing?” the rich woman in the remaining couple asked.

“Does it matter?” her husband asked her.

Tammy stepped forward, reading from her binder. “A man was shot by the police and died in the house. That is all the information I have.”

“How are we going to rent two units in a murder house?” the rich man asked his wife.

“Some people like that sort of thing. Maybe it’s haunted,” she said.

A bang rang out from down the street that might have been a car backfiring, but sounded like a gunshot.

“Neighborhood is too dangerous,” the rich guy said. “We’re out.”

“I hope no one stole our tires,” his wife said as they walked back to their Mercedes.

“The blood was professionally cleaned,” Tammy shouted. “And it was two years ago!”

The auctioneer slammed his gavel down and pointed at David. “Sold to the young man in front for two hundred thousand dollars!”

David stood, stunned, for a moment. Five minutes ago, he had been about to walk away, and now he owned a house. This house.

Tammy led him back into the house to sign the paperwork. David stepped inside, not believing it was going to be his.

Even with the additional cost for the roof and furnace, it was much less than he had budgeted for.

His amazement was punctured, however, by a buzzing in his ears and the blurred vision that foretold a migraine was coming. It hit him full on like a freight train full of bees, and Tammy noticed the sudden grimace on his face.

“Are you okay?”

“No, I’m having a migraine. I need to sit down.”

She led him over to the blue velvet sofa in the living room.

“My sister gets those. They’re terrible. Can I get you a glass of water?”

“Yes, thank you.” He fished through his pants pocket for his pills. He’d had migraines for years, but they were coming on more frequently lately, so he made sure to always have his meds with him.

She went off to the kitchen, leaving David on the sofa with his head in his hands.

He thought he heard Tammy come out of the kitchen and looked up. Even through his blurred vision, he could tell it was not Tammy. The person was man-shaped. He was talking to David, but the buzzing in his ears was so loud he couldn’t make out what the man was saying.

“What?” David said. He was doing his best to focus his eyes, but the man was still just a hazy blur. “What did you say?”

“If you are going to be living in my house, you will have to do your part,” the man said in a husky whisper.

A smaller shape came up from behind him, a little girl from what David could see through his squinted eyes. “Don’t let him in,” she said. Her voice sounded frightened.

His headache spread across his entire skull and David felt as though he might throw up, which did happen sometimes. He put his head between his legs and the sick feeling subsided.

The buzzing in his ears suddenly stopped, and his focus returned.

He returned to an upright position to see that the man and girl were gone.

Tammy bustled in from the kitchen. “Here we go,” she said, handing him a glass of brownish water. “It’s a bit rusty, but safe to drink. We had it tested.”

He thanked her but, after seeing the swill in the glass, swallowed his pill dry. “Who was that guy?”

“What guy?”

“He was just here. Had a kid with him. I think it might have been the previous owner because he told me it was his house.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I thought the bank changed the locks when they seized the property.” She looked around. “I don’t see them here now.”

The auctioneer entered, and she asked him if he’d seen anyone leave through the front door. He hadn’t.

“He didn’t go out the back. He would have had to pass me in the kitchen,” Tammy said.

“I’ll check upstairs and make sure he’s not still here,” the auctioneer said.

He came back down a minute or two later. “No one was up there either. Maybe they went down the back stairs and slipped out the back door after you’d left the kitchen.”

“I’ll have the locks changed today,” Tammy said.

David asked if he could use the restroom before they continued with the paperwork.

She smiled. “It’s your bathroom now. Use the one under the stairs. The upstairs toilet isn’t in working order at the moment.”

He knew that would be the first thing he would have to fix.

The bathroom under the stairs was just a toilet and pedestal sink. Tammy had put a small bowl of potpourri on the sink and there were clean hand towels.

With the door shut it was cramped. He was six feet tall and had to bow his head while he peed to avoid hitting the slanted ceiling. The toilet had a pull-chain flush with a ceramic handle dangling at the end, making him think it might have been original to the house.

He washed his hands, then splashed some brown water on his face. It was refreshingly cold and chased away what was left of his headache.

He dried his face and shook water out of his sandy-brown hair. The mirror had minor chips and cracks, but wasn’t in too bad shape for an antique. People at Pottery Barn pay a lot for faux finish mirrors like that, he thought. He had accidentally splashed water on the glass and wiped it off with the hand towel. It smeared a trail of soap across the surface of the glass. As he went to wipe again, markings began to appear in the soap trail. It looked like writing. David peered at it as letters took shape: Fitz and Kang. His soap-brushed artwork amused him. Wasn’t Fitz Kang an old-time director? he thought. As he wiped it away, he remembered it was Fritz Lang who was the director.

David emerged from the bathroom and went to find Tammy in the dining room. “Feeling better?” she asked.

“Yeah, thanks,” he said. “That was a bad one. They always pick the most inopportune moments.” He made a mental note to call his doctor’s office for an appointment.

They finished going through the paperwork, and David signed the purchase agreement and went home to his apartment.

Looking around, he realized it was not the home of a thirty-year-old man. Movie posters were the only art on the walls. A whiskey-barrel coffee table, left over from his college days, sat in front of his threadbare sofa. His TV and PlayStation were sitting on old milk crates.

He couldn’t wait to leave this place behind him and really start adulting.

The cloud that had hung over him most of his life felt like it was lifting. His depression, while not gone, was at least taking a back seat and, ...