Haunted Housekeeper

First of all, you should know that a haunted house can’t choose to be a haunted house. A house has to reflect the character of the people inside them. And if someone lives in them with evil thoughts and evil actions for long enough…well, it comes out of the floorboards, literally.

I’ve found that Comet, or some other type of abrasive cleanser works well on things like that. Of course, yes, the title on my desk says Camila Cortez, Haunted House Restoration Expert, but that’s really just a fancy way of saying that I clean scary houses for a living.  People think you need magic, but nothing fixes a haunting like a comfy personage cleaning the house and showing it a bit of love and care.

It’s a nice job. It pays well, leaves me time to watch the grandkids for my daughter most Thursdays. Their names are Grayson and Charlotte, and Grayson is four and a half and Charlotte will turn three next week! That’s a picture of them beside my computer, there. Aren’t they adorable? And so smart.

But you wanted to know about last week’s house, of course. I’m sorry. I must say, it looked like a difficult case before I’d even gotten into it. A Mr. Thomas Brown had moved into the house two years before with his wife, Addie Brown. It was a lovely property back then, big old rambling manor house with a lot of elm trees around it, of course, since that’s how it got its name: Elmwood. By the way, that’s a common theme I’ve noticed, after twelve years of haunted house cleaning—name a house and it starts to form a personality. And then you’ve got to be careful what kind of personality you help it form, the poor dear thing!

Now Mr. Brown was convicted of murdering his wife, Addie, and that’s when I was called in. He’d done it in the house, you see, and the police could barely manage to get in for all the creaking staircases and shifting rooms and blood leaking down the walls. From what I understood when I got the file, the murder had been particularly brutal, and so of course, we assumed the house must be fairly corrupted. So they called me in on Monday, as I recall. Monday morning. I’m not a foolish woman, no matter what my job is, and I don’t care to be in haunted houses after dark.

And I almost always clean with my coworker, Reba, because you see, haunted houses need to see people interacting in a friendly way. Kind of leading the way for them, you know, modeling good behavior. But Reba’s got a terrible habit of not answering her phone and…well, she’s a dear friend and she’d tell you herself she’s not the most organized sort. And I couldn’t get hold of her, and the young policeman on the phone was just so upset about the house. Nobody trains the boys in blue for these types of things. It’s a shame. Anyway, when the police had faxed me the file, I waited as long as I could and then I just left her a note that I’d be at Elmwood and set off.  

Well even in daylight it was a miserable sight. The windows were dark, as if there wasn’t any light getting in at all. The bushes and vines were clambering up the walls, creeping in through the cracks. The door was crooked and squeaking back and forth. I think the last policeman in had left in a bit of a hurry.

So I went in. I filled up my bucket with hot water and soap in a bathroom I found in the hallway. And that surprised me, to find the bathroom so close, because most houses try to hide their bathrooms from cleaners—they don’t want to be changed, see, and sometimes they fight back.

I filled my bucket and I went back to the entrance, because it’s safest to work forward into a house and have what’s at your back already cleaned. I sat my cleaning caddy down, right on the doorstep and started on the lintel. Just a good scrubbing with hot water and soap to start with. I worked my way into the house, starting with dusting the walls. Always move from the top down, you know.

I brushed my duster over the pictures on the wall, noting with half my attention the faces inside. There were a few stolid faced old couples in black and white, and then, abruptly, with such bright, modern colors, there was a picture of a young woman in purple, her head tipped back as if she were about to burst into laughter, her elbows resting on the railing behind her. Her dark hair tangled behind her in a gust of wind. She looked so alive, so happy—I have seen many horrible things in the frames of haunted houses, but they are never beautiful.

And it stopped me in my tracks to see her. Not only because she was beautiful, but also because I had seen the case file for Mr. Brown. I knew, at once, you see, that this was Addie, his wife, that he’d murdered.

Now I will say—normally I am very situationally aware. Sometimes…unpleasant things happen if you don’t keep an eye out in my job. But when I saw this picture—I suppose I let down my guard. Because while I was looking at her photo, the door shut. The front door. So slowly and so quietly that I didn’t notice it until the sunlight cut off. And it was quiet—quiet except for a tiny squeak of a floorboard far away in the house.

The thing to do in these moments is to take charge and behave like a normal, unfrightened person—chat, you know, and maybe hum a little.  I checked my phone, but I didn’t have service to see if Reba had texted. I picked up my hot water bucket and scrub brush and started on the stains on the walls.

And as I started, I realized—they were sticky, and rust red. I started looking down the hall and saw huge rust-red sticky stains everywhere. Had those been here the whole time, or was the house leaking blood where the murder had been committed?

That’s when I noticed that the door to the hall bathroom had vanished, leaving me only in a long corridor with the front door and the entrance to the sitting room behind me. Well, I thought, take a deep breath, no need to get in a rush; I’ll get started in the sitting room. I backtracked.

As I cleaned that dark, gloomy old sitting room—wiping the spiderwebs down from the ceiling, sweeping the floor, vacuuming under the sofa covers—things began to change. A sunbeam fell through the window onto the Persian rug. There was a vase of withered flowers on the mantlepiece. I stepped out to get an extra rag and when I returned, they were bright and blooming.

“Oh, how sweet,” I said to the house, “That is just the nicest touch for this room.”

And I swear to you, the walls swelled with pride. I looked around and noticed that the couch was a pretty floral pattern, with rolled arms. “That’s a very classy looking couch.” I said. “An antique, maybe?”

The stain I had been scrubbing at vanished beneath my hands.

I never did see a house so eager to please. It didn’t fight me at all. It sealed up the cracks in the ceiling, and it reformed the bathroom in the hallway when I moved my cleaning supplies out of the sitting room. I heard a little tinkle in the hallway and popped my head out of the bathroom to see a China cabinet sitting demurely against the wall, full of delicate figurines.

We were getting along just fine. I’d finished with the parlor and was halfway down the hallway. Originally there had been a bare, burnt bulb hanging from the ceiling, but then it flicked on when I moved the light switch, and next thing I knew there was quite a pretty light fixture up there. I complimented its taste (a little ornate, honestly, but I was hardly going to offer criticism) and I swear the thing sparkled at me.

And that’s when the bloody footprints began forming slowly down the hallway. I started back—things had been going so well, but suddenly I was aware all over again that the front door had shut and had not yet opened. And now, sticky and dark against the wood floors, a trail of prints materialized, leading down the hall into the darkness. The hallway loomed, the light fixture vanished and the lightbulb went out with a pop. I was in near darkness.

In other circumstances, I would have left immediately. The most dangerous situations are the ones where the house begins to play tricks. But things had been going so well, see, and I had been pleased with the house’s response. So I didn’t leave. Reba would surely be here soon. I should have left, I admit that now.

“Now,” I said, “Let’s not act like this, dear, it’s not nice…” 

And I picked up my cleaning caddy and started down the hallway. I heard creak down the hall. A single footstep. I kept talking to the house as I slowly walked towards the dim light that seemed much further away than any reasonable hallway would extend. Finally, the bluish light showed me a kitchen counter, sink, and a pair of windows, the white curtains shivering in a breeze. A teacup, lying on its side on the counter rattled. There was a movement, just a hint of a shape—

And then doors shot out of the walls and slammed inches from my face, locking me into the dark hallway.

“Doors!’” I said. “There weren’t doors here before!”

Which is a foolish thing to say to a haunted house, but by this point I was truly frightened. In the kitchen that was now blocked off, I heard a loud crash.

I ran back towards the front door and rattled the handle. Nothing. Locked. I ran into the sitting room. Strangely enough, it was still clean, still sunny—I ran for the window. The shrubbery rose halfway up the windows, but surely, here, in the sitting room, where it had been so nice, it would let me out—I climbed on top of a chair to get to the window latch (they were quite tall windows). It was stuck, painted shut. I rattled at it, sweat getting in my face, muttering, “Let me out, let me out—”

And then a face was inches from my face. Brown hair, a white gleam of teeth in a snarl or a deranged smile—and his eyes, hungrily staring into me through the glass of the window. I screamed and fell backwards. He was gone. Shutters slammed shut on the door and I was in darkness again.

In the dim light that showed between the shutters, I reached for my cleaning caddy and the file I had there. But I had recognized the face. I didn’t really need to look at the photo paper clipped to the front page. It was of a young man, in his late twenties, soft, straight brown hair, weak chin. In the picture his eyes looked happy, cheerful. I knew better. This was Thomas Brown. The house’s owner.

I heard a window smash somewhere back in the house and I knew he was inside with me. And that meant that other than spraying disinfectant in his face, my cleaning supplies were worthless. Houses reflect their inhabitants, especially their owners—no amount of scrubbed baseboards and polished mirrors will cancel out an owner in residence with murder in his heart. I didn’t know why it had been so friendly, but it was clearly changing its mind about me.

Trying to stifle my panicked breathing, I put my back to the wall behind a curtain, shut my eyes, and prayed. I hoped the house wouldn’t use the curtain tassels to strangle me. Reba was supposed to be here any minute. If she came, if she understood that I was trapped, if she didn’t panic and called the police immediately—it was a thin hope, and I knew it.

I heard his footsteps coming down the hall. I heard a tiny, stifled giggle of delight, and then I knew he was in the room with me, breathing, a little hitch of a giggle in his breath every now and then. I saw a glint of light on a long knife. I shut my eyes.

The chandelier in the center of the room blazed out in a blinding white light. I flinched, putting my hands up to my eyes. Thomas Brown stumbled—and then the chandelier dropped with a crash. Thomas Brown jumped to the side—and tripped over a large wrinkle in the carpet that hadn’t been there before. He landed on his elbow on the fireplace and screamed in pain—but that put him at the right height to see me, huddled up in the corner against the wall.

He fixed his eyes on me and that pleasant, guy-next-door face of his twisted into a hideous smile.

 He leapt to his feet, lunged towards me. With a flick, the coat closet door opened and whacked him on the head, sending him reeling backwards. The curtains were billowing up around me as if in a furious breeze, reaching out and flicking him with tassels. He batted them away, cursing. The floor wrinkled under his feet again, sent him reeling sideways.

And there was the couch, suddenly, artfully available to catch him in comfortable cushions—and fold in on him like an angry, flower-print origami. It jumped up and down, punching him with its rolled arms, and finally heaved him onto the floor.

As he fell, the carpet rolled back, the floorboards slid away, the smell of mildew and mice and darkness penetrated the room—then he was gone with a shriek. The boards snapped shut as if they’d never been open. The carpet neatly rolled back over the floor and fluffed itself a bit, like a woman dusting herself off.

The couch trotted back into place. The curtains subsided, gently settling on my shoulders. The broken chandelier had vanished into the floor with Mr. Brown and a new one began slowly wriggling out of the ceiling. The front door quietly unlocked and swung open, and Reba fell through the doorway, pure terror on her face and her eyes as wide as saucers. She rushed over to me, hands out.

“Camila! Camila! I’m so sorry! I got stuck in traffic and my phone died, and I tried and tried to call you—”

“I didn’t have service,” I said, still swathed in my curtain blankets and not really feeling ready to try out my legs just yet.

Reba continued, near tears. “There was a mix-up with the paperwork and some rookie panicked, and they sent the House Restoration order before they’d got him in jail and then he escaped!! He’s still loose somewhere! We have to get you out of here!” She started pulling at my arms.

Behind her a SWAT team pounded through the hallway. I winced. The poor house clearly loved its bric-a-brac and finery and I didn’t feel like those men in riot gear would take much care of its China.

“He’s in the basement!” I said. Using Reba’s shoulder, I scrambled to my feet and followed them down the hall (helpfully lit up again, I noticed). They had already found the basement door, and after a moment of tense creeping, someone shouted, “Hey, he’s right here on the floor, all tied up in a bunch of old fishing line!”

Reba turned to me with her mouth open like a fish.

“This house didn’t like him.” I told her. “Can we go outside? I’ve had a rough few hours.” We turned and walked slowly down the hallway. I looked up at the picture frames. “Didn’t like him at all.” I said, noticing a rearranging of the pictures.

“That’s impossible!” She said. “He owns the house! It can’t decide it doesn’t like him! Maybe you misunderstood—it must have been terrifying—”

The picture of the beautiful woman was center of the portraits, beautifully framed in a gold oval easily twice the size of the other pictures. I smiled back at her. “I could be wrong, Reba, but I think we’re going to find out pretty soon that his wife was the one who owned this house. And she was a very different kind of person than her husband. Whatever he did to her…she leaves a better legacy than he ever will, I think. At the very least, she saved my life today.”