Sequoia

Four friends prepare to clean up the ancestral home of one of their number. But the old house isn't as empty as they think.

A pale silver moon peered through the dead, skeletal branches of the forest, branches that stretched their bare limbs beseechingly to the black night sky above.

 

The moon was cold and the stars were cold and the night was cold. In that part of the coastal country, winter had latched onto an otherwise pleasant autumn with a death-grip, pulling the temperature down to an early grave. The breeze that rattled through the density of the branches with their dying leaves stung the eyes and bit at the face whenever it chanced to pick up.

The headlights of a dark blue Jeep cut through the indomitable darkness. Lauren, sitting in the passenger side of the car, felt as if the very presence of the Jeep was an affront to the quiet, watchful solitude of the surrounding woods. The sound of the tires crunching over the long, twisting gravel drive felt almost deafening in the quiet; Elise had turned off the stereo almost the second she'd turned her Jeep off the highway and onto the seemingly never ending path towards her family's ancestral home.

 

That had been twenty minutes ago. She, Lauren, Andy and Matthew hadn't said a word to one another in as many minutes. Somehow it felt wise, in the engulfing darkness, to keep as quiet as possible. Even now, Lauren felt as if they were giving themselves away to something that lay in wait just beyond the line of the dark, dead trees that surrounded them.

It was stupid to feel so apprehensive. In these parts of the woods, the only thing to fear was the odd bull-moose. Not even bears came this far away from the mountains. Perhaps it was simply the idea of being somewhere so desolate; perhaps it was because the weather wasn't clement for anybody to be out in the woods unprepared. But deep down in the part of her mind that still made her turn every light on when she was home alone, Lauren knew that her nervousness (she refused to acknowledge it as fear) was due to the fact that she knew what lay at the end of the driveway.

Elise knew it, too. She knew it far better than any of the four of them, having spent her summers and several Christmases at the house growing up. That was why--at least as far as Lauren could tell--she had her eyes fixed on the driveway illuminated by the headlights. She was the oldest out of the four, and the most accomplished inasmuch as career plans went. Elise was practical and driven. Which was why it had shocked Lauren so much when her friend had told her, several years ago, that her family owned a haunted house.

Lauren had scoffed at the notion for months. She and Elise were soul mates as far as they were both concerned. They espoused most of the same viewpoints, and had been friends for nearly a decade. But Elise had always been less of a skeptic than Lauren when it came to things like ghosts and witches and the Loch Ness Monster. Lauren believed that there were more than enough monsters in the world. People didn't need to go inventing them for campfire tales.

Indeed, she'd humored Elise whenever she had regaled her with tales of a disembodied baby crying and of inexplicable cold spots and apparitions, but only up to a point. There was only so much that Lauren could handle, after all. She'd been perfectly content to laugh off Elise's tales...at least until she'd spent a long weekend at the house known in Elise's family as Sequoia, herself.

The memory of the experiences Lauren had had over those three days made her shiver inadvertently in her seat. She pulled her sweater closer around her and, more for something to take her eyes off of the winding road before the Jeep, looked quickly in the rearview mirror at Andy and Matthew.

Neither of them had ever been to Sequoia. Lauren had known them almost as long as she'd known Elise. The four of them, while not inseparable due to the constraints placed upon them by young adult life, were thick as thieves.

 

Lauren and Elise had both told Andy and Matthew multiple times about their experiences at Sequoia; Andy, the youngest and most emotionally driven out of the four of them, had always listened with the wide, believing eyes of a child at a hearthside horror yarn.

 

Matthew on the other hand...well, it was hard to tell how he felt about things on the best of days. Every answer from him was layered in sarcasm and razor-sharp wit. Still, while he didn't look early as tense as Andy at the moment, he was looking out the windows, almost expectantly, at the passing trees, as if staring down the vast force of Nature herself. Lauren didn't know if he believed in the ghosts of Sequoia, but he would find out one way or another.

Their excursion into the woods and to the home of Elise's family had been a sort of two-birds-with-one-stone scenario. Elise's family was hosting a big barbecue that coming weekend; Lauren had been visiting during Dead Week from college and Andy and Matthew had both been looking for an excuse to get the four of them together almost all throughout the previous fall and winter. In addition to cleaning and opening the property over the next several days, Lauren and Elise wanted to show Andy and Matthew once and for all that something altogether Other dwelled within the old hallways of Sequoia.

The trees began to thin as Elise steered the Jeep down a gentle bend in the gravel driveway. The white light of the moon spilled unobstructed over the dark land below it. At one point, looking through the thinning trees, Lauren saw the silhouette of an old, many-storied house that was set against the black sky.

In the seat behind Elise's, Andy let out a sharp intake of breath; he had seen the house's silhouette as well. Out of the corner of her eye, Lauren noticed Matthew put his big hand over Andy's and give it a gentle squeeze.

If anything did chance to happen, Matthew would be enough to keep Andy calm. They had been together two years and their relationship ran hot and cold. Luckily for the four of them, it was running hot on that weekend.

Elise drove her Jeep around one last bend. The trees gave way to a vast field. Dark knolls rolled in gentle slopes, topped with black thickets of trees. Rising up from one of the denser patches of trees was the house, looming over the fields and trees like some despotic tyrant. The moon shone down upon the rooftops and the gables of the house, making it look spectral and half-dead. It was a plantation house, from what Elise's parents had told her, although neither she nor Lauren or even Andy and Matthew had ever heard of there being plantation houses so far north. Indeed, Lauren found it ironic that anything had ever grown on the property; Sequoia always reminded her of death and desolation, even on the days when it was occupied by Elise and her happy family.

Elise had been to Sequoia far too many times to let the sight of it affect her. She paused only to shift gears and took the Jeep farther up the driveway and into the woods that surrounded her ancestral home. Lauren felt half tempted to tell her friend to turn around, but reigned in the desire. Sequoia might not even yield the results that they were all hoping for. Indeed, the last time Lauren had visited, not so much as a mouse had disturbed the peace and quiet of the house.

The tall windows of the attic floor loomed over the Jeep as Elise parked it. They were always watching, those windows, even though they looked nothing like eyes the way some haunted houses' did. Sequoia didn't need windows for eyes to give the impression that it had you locked in its gaze. It wasn't that the gaze was particularly menacing, either. It was simply expectant, watching your every move, stewing in its own quiet solitude until it decided what it wanted to do with you.

Elise cut the Jeep's engine and the headlights went out. Lauren had gotten so used to the hum of the motor and the glow of the headlights that she felt momentarily lost without them. Utter silence and stillness was almost appalling, far worse than the obtrusive noise of the Jeep's crawl through the night.

But Elise, of course, was far too used to the effect that Sequoia had on the uninitiated. She swung her long, dark hair over one shoulder, cinched up the buttons of her dark denim jacket, and opened the door with emphatic carelessness.

 

The noise and the motion served to break the spell of the long silence; Andy cleared his throat; Matthew gave an affected yawn as if rousing himself from sleep and Lauren chuckled softly to herself. Still, she felt a need to keep near Elise, at least until they'd gotten some lights on. She opened the passenger side door and stepped out into the crisp late autumn night. Side-stepping Matthew, who had likewise left his place in the car, Lauren half-jogged to the cargo hold of the Jeep. Elise had already opened the hatchback, and was piling their bags on the ground with the kind of respectful negligence for personal property that came from being friends for years and years.

Matthew stretched, his long limbs cramped from the hour-long drive from town. The breeze lifted his ash blonde bangs from his forehead; in other company he worked meticulously to keep his appearance highly presentable. Among friends, he simply let himself be as comfortable as possible.

"Catch, pretty boy," Elise said teasingly as she launched Matthew's backpack at him like a basketball. Matthew was reflexive enough to just catch his bag by the hand strap.

"You're lucky," he said with an air of mock severity. "If you'd dropped this and broken my crystal tea set, I would have your a*s."

"You may have that anytime you wish," Elise replied.

They were talking the silence away. Lauren knew the signs all too well. Matthew and Elise possessed the remarkable ability that came among close friends of being able to carry on an entire conversations without saying very much. In the shadow of Sequoia, however, there seemed to be too much void space, and they needed to fill it with as much presence as possible in order to feel secure.

Andy came trotting up behind Elise, and quietly took his bulging duffle bag from her. His eyes were fixed on the front of the house before them, as if attempting to stare it down.

Elise slammed the hatchback closed; the resulting bang echoed through the empty, cold night, cutting the silence with all the violence of a knife. Lauren found it odd that the closing of the heavy hatchback door would make her think of anything being cut; a gunshot would have been a more appropriate metaphor. Certainly the bang had been loud enough. And yet, in spite of its gradual modernization, Sequoia seemed far too old to be associated with anything as industrial as a shotgun. The very presence that lay over the property brought in mind images of a time before the oceans had been crossed, when those more in tune and adherent to the primeval forces of nature lived in these woods. Sequoia, at least in Lauren's mind, had never been built, at least not the very essence of it. It had simply always been, as natural as the fir and beech trees that grew around it.

 

Whatever it was that beat within the heart of the house had simply been contained by the beams and walls.

Involuntarily, Lauren shivered. The breeze was playing with the strands of her long, auburn hair. She, like her friends, had dressed for the cold of the night, and yet she still felt as if she'd stepped onto the surface of a frozen lake. Andy, who was still locked in a staring match with the front windows of Sequoia, said in a quiet voice, "Are we gonna be able to see in there?"

"Course we are," Elise said with a bracing smile. She, as the oldest, protected their little brood, even in moments like this when they were no longer thinking and acting like rational adults. "The electricity was outfitted years ago. We'll just have to go around and turn the lights on in every room we're in after I get the generator up and running."

"Why?" Andy sounded appalled at the very idea.

"Because," Elise said patiently, "the heating comes through the same generator as the power. If we turn the lights on, we'll get the added bonus of the heat."

Even in the darkness Lauren could practically hear Matthew rolling his eyes. "Sounds primitive," he said. Elise shrugged, hefted her own backpack over her shoulder, and began leading them to the front doors. "It's a hell of a lot better than when my Dad was growing up here. They had to use space heaters in every room that didn't have a fireplace."

Lauren added her filler to the silence. She felt that if she didn't she would suddenly cease to exist in the eyes of the house. She had to let it know that she too was present. "Did you ever tell them about the time your Dad and uncle set their bedroom rug on fire?" Lauren was quite sure that Elise had, but again the silence begged to be filled. Even the crunching of their feet over the gravel and dead leaves wasn't enough to make her feel content. In any case, she was killing two birds with one stone: filling the silence and also providing a means to distract Andy, who was practically tripping over Matthew's shoes in his desire to stay as close to the group as possible.

Elise, of course, took the bait. She gave a little laugh, genuine and somehow comforting, and said, "Oh yeah. They were trying to roast marshmallows with their space heater and--"

At that moment, a loud, yammering cackle filled the air from the left. All four of them jumped, and Andy let out a little yelp. Lauren stared into the dark, dense trees, her heart pounding in her ears as yet more and more howling cackles filled the night air. It was unnerving, these jubilant, animalistic laughs. Lauren felt as if the underbrush was mocking the four of them for being here of all places on this kind of night. She could envision an entire congregation of witches and imps, leering out at them, dancing round and about and tugging at their wild hair and sinuous, forked tails.

But, of course, that was simply the curse of an overactive imagination. Even as the cackles continued, Lauren's rational mind reigned in on her childish fears. Elise, as if to add credo to Lauren's sudden understanding, said with sincere irritation, "God damned coyotes."

Lauren laughed nervously and turned back to the house. Of course it was coyotes. The wilds around Sequoia were filled with them. She and Elise had heard them plenty of times in the night when they'd stayed here before. Lauren had, in fact, heard actual wolves and alligators when she'd grown up in the South. Coyotes, although alarming, were no more threatening than a hungry housecat. Elise's family regarded them as household pests, in the same league as the black fly and the packrat.

Andy and Matthew, however, were not used to such sounds. As the coyotes’ deranged howls subsided, Lauren became aware of a ragged gasping noise. Only when she looked back to the right did she realize that Andy was the one making them. He was breathing heavily, staring at a spot just near Lauren's shoes, his face ashen and stony. He was trying to get a grip on himself. Matthew had an arm around his shoulders, and was speaking to him quietly, although not altogether patronizingly. "It's okay, baby. It's just a bunch of ugly coyotes is all..."

"Why are they doing that?" Andy said, his voice thick. He was a city boy; he had been his entire life. It struck Lauren as odd that he could hear police sirens and domestic squabbles and still sleep peacefully, and yet the noises of nature were what disturbed him.

"They're laughing," Elise explained. She'd recovered a microsecond after the coyotes had started their jamboree. Already the door to the front hall was wide open, the darkness inside spilling out onto the porch.

"If I was them, I'd be laughing at us too," Matthew said quietly, his arm still protectively around Andy. "This isn't exactly gunning for sanest experience in my books. You okay now Andy?"

The other man nodded, gulping down night air to steady himself. "I'll live," he said. Then, with a pathetic attempt at a noncommittal laugh, added, "Just need to change my briefs once we get settled down."

"Don't worry," Elise said as she hefted her begs across the threshold with all the air of a Valkyrie charging into battle. "This place will look a lot more friendlier once we get the lights on."

"And who gets the honors?" Matthew asked as he, Andy and Lauren followed suit.

"I'm not volunteering myself," Andy said in a whisper. If Lauren hadn't also felt what she knew Andy was feeling, she would have rolled her eyes at his finding it necessary to speak in hushed tones. But there was no denying that the watchful expectation increased once you crossed the threshold into Sequoia's entrance hall. The chill, too, seemed to grow all the more biting, snaking through the warm layers of Lauren's sweater. It was a rushing cold, as much as the darkness was a rushing darkness. Any and all light cast from the ghostly moon outside seemed to be swallowed up by the gaping, yawning darkness. And when Elise shut and locked the door behind them, Lauren couldn't even see a foot in front of her. All she heard was the sounds of Matthew and Andy and Elise breathing. Anything could be looking at them from the dark hallways around them, watching and waiting in the blackness that seemed to thicken with each passing second. Lauren knew that the staircase to the second floor was less than ten feet away, and that the balcony of the second floor loomed over their heads. And yet she still could not see.

A pale light suddenly sprang up in front of Lauren's eyes, momentarily blinding her. Spots danced before her vision, and as they cleared she saw Elise's face, seemingly hovering headless several paces in front of her. Her long, chestnut hair framed her pretty face, but the face appeared too pale, her lips too thin and her eyes sunken in. For a moment, Lauren locked eyes with the thing that should have been her friend. She heard Andy let out a sharp hiss from somewhere to her left. Had he seen it too? Or was he simply smarting from the sudden, pale glow of light?

The impostor in front of Lauren took a pace forward, drawing the small, electric camp lantern closer to her face, and suddenly it was Elise again, the features full and warm and living and flushed with the pink of life. "The other one burnt out sometime after the Labor Day," she explained, gesturing with the hand that held the lantern aloft. The ethereal light swayed over the walls and across Elise's face, which morphed with shadows until the lantern stilled. "Otherwise," Elise went on, "I'd leave it here while I turned the generator on."

"Oh great," Andy hissed. "We're going to have to wait in the dark."

"It's only for a minute," Elise said. "Try not to kill each other while I'm gone."

"No promises," Matthew muttered. Elise stuck her tongue out at him and then turned and disappeared, carrying the lantern with her. She faced the darkness and the silence of Sequoia, not as a child frightened by the memory of a bad dream, but as a lackadaisical as if she were doing nothing more than watering a flower garden. Years in the house had strengthened her resolve against the ever-present otherness, and Lauren was quite sure that her friend would have walked down the hallways blindfolded and not batted an eyelash.

The light from Elise's lantern bobbed and shrank as she walked down the leftmost hallway. When it was nothing more than a will-o-wisp at the end of the corridor, it disappeared altogether. Lauren knew, from past experience that the entrance to the basement, where the generator was, was just down the hallway that Elise gone.

It was a pragmatic thought, one that she made herself think. After all, it was quite disconcerting to see their only source of light vanish without any preamble--as if the shadows of the house had swallowed Elise and the lantern whole.

They were left in darkness, with only sounds to discern anything at all about and around them. Lauren heard, from what seemed a great distance, the sounds of Elise descending the stairs to the basement. Sequoia was old and creaked and groaned as if in a fitful sleep. Beside her, Lauren heard the gentle sigh of fabric against fabric, and knew that Matthew had likely put his arms around Andy again, most likely to keep them both anchored against the onslaught of their imaginations. The darkness was vast, and in it, one could dream themselves mad if they weren't too careful.
Lauren surprised herself by a feeling of momentary envy at Andy and Matthew's closeness. She'd never been jealous of them before. And yet, it wasn't so much their relationship that she felt jealous of, more the fact that they, at least, had one another to seek consolation in in this moment. There was no doubt in Lauren's mind that her two good friends would offer her any comfort if something at all happened to elicit any kind of terror in her. But it wouldn't be the same; there was no protection like that offered by one who loved you unendurably.

The seconds ticked by without a sound other than their own even breathing and the muffled rattle of the dead and dying leaves outside the house. Lauren remembered a time when she had been helping Elise clean the halls of Sequoia in preparation for another family gathering. She had been mopping the floor on this very spot and something had poked her in the small of the back with enough force to make her gasp. She had been alone on the ground floor at the time; Elise had been upstairs and her mother outside pulling up weeds. To Lauren, the most unsettling part of the whole experience wasn't necessarily that something otherworldly had bodily attacked her, but that Elise's mother, upon seeing Lauren's stricken face, remarked, "Something poked you in the back in front of the stairs, didn't it? Don't worry, Lauren. That happens to everyone."

Standing in the dark with Matthew and Andy, Lauren felt a creeping sense of expectation snaking up her spine. At any moment, something unseen could prod her right in the small of the back again. She anticipated its icy touch, felt the hard, brief stabbing pain as if the very memory had carved itself into the bones of her spinal cord. Her shoulders tensed, her breath hitched in her throat. The air in the front hall seemed to be closing in around her, pressing hear eardrums into her skull, forcing her eyes inward and constricting her throat. Every noise seemed to amplify, from the rapid drumming of her heart to Andy and Matthew's breaths, which sounded ragged and as gasping as the cold wind outside.

The whole house groaned and rattled as if turning over in a sleep disturbed my nights of endless nightmares. Andy gave a small squeak from Lauren's side; Matthew's own breath caught in his throat. A muffled whir, as if a whole murder of crows had taken flight in the rafters, sounded over their heads and Lauren started. A split second later, Sequoia began to hum, unevenly at first and then, slowly, as it were laughing low in the throat of the staircase before them, steady. Frozen to the spot, Lauren stared searchingly into the darkness, wondering what in the world was taking Elise so long.

Footsteps began to tread steadily from far down the hallway, only Lauren had forgotten in the darkness just where the hallway was. Sequoia's darkness had swallowed all of them whole, plummeting them into the depths of a black sea where time had no meaning and evil, ancient things lurked. The footsteps were getting closer and closer, louder and louder; the house itself was coming after them, rising from its own depths to meet them and spirit them away like a lifeless goblin in the night. Lauren's mind was filled with a primitive desire to flee, but all she could do was stand and stare and look and listen.

The footsteps suddenly stopped. Lauren forgot to breathe; something was with them in the front hall, gathered up in the gloom, looking right at them. Lauren knew that if she so much as blinked it would find her and claim her. The presence laughed, a low chuckle.

There was a low click, followed by a spitting sound and all at once bright light illuminated the hallway, and Lauren was pulled out of the panic of her own thoughts as the dark void around her gave way to the homey reality of the physical and pragmatic.

Elise was standing in the entrance to the west wing of the house, her finger still hovering over the light switch. She stared at Lauren, Andy and Matthew with an amused smile and said through her laughter, "Your faces, though! Jesus, this place is haunted, not possessed."

"You sure about that?" Matthew muttered.

"Positive." Elise replied. "C'mon. Let's drop this stuff off and then I can take the two of you on a grand tour."

"Two?" Lauren repeated. "What about little old me?" She was filling something again, but this time it wasn't silence: it was the irrational panic she had felt. She cast a quick glance at Andy and Matthew. Andy had the same stone-faced expression he'd had when the coyotes had started their din outside, but Lauren could clearly see the lingering fear in his eyes. And, of course, it was impossible to tell just what Matthew was really feeling. He'd recovered himself in the brief time it had taken for Elise to turn the lights on. But still, he seemed to be taking great care to keep as close to Andy as possible.

"If you don't mind being the porter, you could take our stuff up to my bedroom," Elise said. "You remember where it is?"

Lauren wanted to laugh off the remark. Of course she knew where the bedroom was. She'd only visited this house three or four times so far. Why should she forget? But humor seemed to have evaporated from the vocabulary of her emotions. She simply nodded at Elise and quietly accepted the other woman's bags.

 

“Are you going to be alright going off by yourself?” Andy asked.

 

Again, Lauren replied non-verbally, even though she wanted nothing more than to break her own silence and let the house know that she was still there. She cleared her throat once or twice, and, looking at the lights on the ceiling, she said, “Yeah. I know the way.”

 

“It shouldn’t take to long to give them the grand tour,” Elise assured her with a grin. “At least if nothing jumps out and…GRABS THEM!” She yelled the last words, and suddenly lunged at Andy, tickling his ribs the way a mother would tickle a precocious toddler. Andy let out a yelp that dissolved into a fit of laughter.

 

Lauren managed to roll her eyes. Leave it to Elise to know exactly how to break the tension. With a half-wave at her three friends, Lauren turned and headed up the staircase. The voices of Elise, Andy and Matthew comforted her as she made the ascent up the steps, but all too soon, they disappeared. Elise was leading them away, and before Lauren had reached the second floor landing, she felt the prickling feeling of utter loneliness burrow its way into her mind. It was foolish to feel so, she knew; her friends weren’t even that far away from her, and although Sequoia was a big estate, it wasn’t as sprawling as some of the mansions Lauren had toured with her family when she’d lived in the South. If anything were to go amiss, it would be a stone’s throw to find the others…

 

But of course, nothing was going to go amiss, she made herself think as she lugged Elise’s traveling bag down the hall. The lights were all on, and the house was warm and normal and livable the way any other house was supposed to be. She needed to outgrow this ridiculous fear; they all did, for that matter. Elise had done so through years of becoming acquainted with the various odd happenings around the property, and even if there were…other-worldly things--for Lauren refused to acknowledge them as ghosts until she got definitive proof�"living in the halls of Sequoia, they’d never shown the residents or guests any kind of harmful molestation.

 

Only somewhat bolstered by these thoughts, Lauren opened the door to Elise’s bedroom. The door swung inwards a little more forcefully than Lauren had anticipated, and she all but staggered across the threshold. For one wild, heart-stopping moment, she half fancied that something had pushed her bodily in the small of the back and sent her tripping over her own feet. The moment she righted, Lauren whirled around to face whomever it was who had pushed her, but found nothing but an empty, dusty hallway.

 

Her heart pounding in her eyes, Lauren shook her head, and silently reproached herself for having once again succumbed to such a childish notion. She had only opened the door too forcefully. Nothing had shoved her into Elise’s bedroom.

 

And yet, for some unbidden reason, she decided to close the door behind her, even though she would only be in Elise’s room for a few moments.

 

Lauren flicked on the light switch. Elise’s bedroom was, for all intents and purposes, incongruous to the very makeup of Sequoia. The first time Lauren had visited the house she had expected all the furnishings to be old world, even though the notion had been completely ridiculous. And yet it seemed almost a surprise to her, whenever she visited, to find the same kind of modern conveniences and luxuries that she had in her own home. Sequoia was permanently fixed in her mind as being stuck in antiquity. It would have made more sense for Elise’s family to have inherited the place furnished with spinning wheels, wooden benches for couches, and old fashioned, four-poster beds.

 

But Lauren knew that there was an enormous, high-definition flat screen television in the main living room downstairs, and that the entire kitchen had been remodeled with top-of-the-line appliances only two springs previously. And the only really old-fashioned things in Elise’s bedroom were the quilt that covered her bed, the drapes covering the window, and the large, oak armoire in place of a closet.

 

As Lauren placed Elise’s bag on her bed, she did her utmost to not look at the closet. It had always been rather ugly to Lauren; the wood had been treated long ago to be darker than its natural hue, almost black rather than a woodsy brown. Elise, whose own apartment was often decorated in monochromes and darker tones, didn’t seem bothered by the ochre shade of her closet. She had spent several years as a teenager stuck in a Goth phase, wherein she wore dark clothes and consumed vampire fiction like popcorn. A piece of that had carried over into her adulthood, albeit in a less obvious way.

 

For the life of her, Lauren couldn’t understand why in the world Elise could sleep peacefully in with the ugly wardrobe so close at hand. The very appearance of the thing was enough to make the back of her neck prickle, and not just because of how hideous it was.

 

Elise may not have minded the outward appearance of the thing, but it still carried a bad memory for her, one that came floating to the forefront of Lauren’s mind just as she turned and made to leave the room.

 

Once, when Elise had still been in college, she had come to Sequoia with her family for their annual summer stay. One night, she had woken up from a peaceful sleep to see a shadow hovering in front of the wardrobe. She had described it as being darker than the wood, and vaguely human shaped. It had stood there for minutes, while Elise, frozen in terror, had stared at it, unable to move or cry out or do anything. The shape had moved at one point, sliding sibilantly across the floor, drawing closer and closer to Elise’s bed until she’d finally sprung into action, turned the lamp on, and sat bolt upright in her bed, at which point the shadow had vanished.

 

Although the event had left an impression on her, Elise had eventually rationalized the experience as simple sleep paralysis. But still, the tale was chilling in and of itself, and it was the absolute last thing in the world that Lauren wanted to remember at the moment.

 

She stared at the black wardrobe, and she felt that it was staring right back at her. Suddenly she felt trapped within the confines of Elise’s brightly lit, cheery room. She took a tentative step backwards, her hand feeling out blindly behind her for the doorknob. There was something inside the closet, she knew that without a doubt, something would crawl out and pounce upon her at any moment. The doors would bang open and the shadow that Elise had seen would lunge at Lauren, and envelope her and drag her into the depths of Sequoia along with the rest of the tortured spirits that lived there…

 

Lauren pivoted and yanked the door open, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. She slammed the door to Elise’s bedroom behind her; the echoing bang resounded through the hallways and made Lauren wince. Her rational mind was rapidly catching up with the fact that she had once again acted childishly, but just before she could formulate the thoughts to chastise herself, a new danger presented itself.

 

The echoes had subsided in the hallway, but the silence was far from absolute. As Lauren stood outside Elise’s bedroom door, trying to calm herself down, a new noise caught her sensitive ear, one that seemed to be coming from the floor beneath her feet.

 

It was laughter, the high pitched, tinkling laughter of a woman. It carried through the floor, muffled, but still distinct enough for Lauren to comprehend the fact that she was hearing this distressing noise. The laughter didn’t end, was not punctuated by a pause for breath the way normal, human laughter would be. And, as Lauren listened, beads of sweat forming on her forehead, more laughter joined that of the woman’s, deep laughter, the laughter of a man, and they were laughing together, laughing through the floor…laughing at her, because she was alone.

 

Lauren’s feet moved before she was aware that she was running. One moment she was staring at the wall opposite Elise’s bedroom, and the next she was half-sprinting down the hall, the horrible laughter ringing in her ears. The house was laughing at her, watching her run, waiting for her to make one false move. Gripping the railing of the stairs, Lauren practically stumbled down the stairs, the awful, awful laughter following her, spiraling overhead like a specter. She had to get out of the house, had to find Elise and Andy and Matthew, and save them from the terrible laughter, but where were they?

 

Panic-stricken, Lauren ran right past the front door, hearing the laughter get louder and louder as she ran. She had no idea where to find her friends, but she was not going to leave them to those horrible voices. She raced down another hallway, through the wide, open doorframe of the living room…and stopped dead in her tracks.

 

Elise, Andy and Matthew were all gathered in the living room around the square coffee table. Elise was half-slumped over the arm of the sofa, her hair over her face, her whole body quaking with laughter. Andy had his hand buried in his face; Matthew was still laughing as well, his head tilted up to the ceiling.

 

It was their laughter that Lauren had heard on the second floor. The living room was right beneath the upstairs bedrooms.

 

For a moment, Lauren stood and stared. Then she too began to laugh, a nervous, half-hysterical sound that drew the attention of her three friends. Elise, her face still slightly pink, was on her feet in a moment.

 

Lauren lost track of what exactly happened next; she was quite sure that Elise put a reassuring arm around her and gently guided her to the armchair near the newly installed electric fireplace, already flickering gently with artificial flames and providing the room at large with a cozy heat. Andy, suddenly tense and worried, disappeared into the adjoining kitchen and returned a moment later with a mug of apple cider that, upon tasting, Lauren realized had been spiked with orange liqueur. Matthew, meanwhile, found a crocheted blanket in the linen closet and draped it over Lauren’s shoulders. She couldn’t stop giggling, the laughter spilling from her lips in sporadic, nervous bursts.

 

It was all so ridiculous: the paranoia she’d had in the front hall, the nervous fear of Elise’s ugly, black wardrobe, the assumption that the laughter was that of ghosts…it was all too much, and for nearly ten minutes, Lauren floated on a wave of mild hysteria.

 

When the realization of how ridiculous that was hit her, she took a long, deep breath, had a liberal gulp of the piping hot, spiked apple cider, and said quietly, “What was so funny, anyway?”

 

Elise, Andy and Matthew had all been silent since Lauren had settled down, and all looked highly relieved that she’d gone back to her old self again. Elise cleared her throat and said, “Andy was telling us that story about his first day of high school, is all.”

 

Lauren smiled weakly; the thought of the story was enough to almost make her feel completely at ease. She half-closed her eyes, thinking of how nice it would be if she were to drift off in the warm living room, surrounded by the soft plushness of the armchair. Her sight became slightly blurry as she made to close her eyes and give into her sudden weariness…and then, as if she’d been jolted by lightning, her eyes flew open, all thought of sleep racing from her mind.

 

Lying quite innocently on the coffee table before Matthew and Andy was a long, thin, board game. The surface was stark white, with the entire alphabet and numerals from one to nine emblazoned across it in faded, black, Gothic letters. The words “Hello,” and “Goodbye,” were printed in the same font at the left and right bottom corners, “Yes” and “No” at the topmost. A sun and moon, both with whimsical faces, leered out at Lauren from the sides of the board. A wooden triangle was in the center of the board, the pointed end directed straight at Matthew.

 

“What is that?” Her voice sounded far harsher than she meant it to.

 

Andy and Matthew glanced at each other nervously, and Elise bit her lip. It was Matthew’s turn to clear his throat; he made a valiant stab at his typical sarcasm, but it was lost on Lauren, who sat up straight in her seat, leaving her half finished mug of spiked cider on the end table next to her.

 

“Well, it’s obviously a Ouija board, isn’t it?” Matthew said. “See? Says so on the front.”

 

“Shut up,” Lauren said hotly. “I haven’t forgotten how to read. Why do you even have it out in the first place?”

 

“I found it,” Elise said firmly. “It was in the DVD cabinet for some reason. I think Chester might have left it there the last time he was out here.”

 

Elise’s brother had a curiosity when it came to anything involving the supernatural. He continuously attempted to poke at the dark aura of Sequoia, heedless of how uncomfortable it made others. But then again Chester, much like Elise and their parents, had lived his whole life in and out of the ancestral home. He had no need to fear Sequoia the way Lauren and all outsiders who ventured over its threshold did.

 

“You’re not actually thinking of using that, are you?” Lauren was appalled at the very idea.

 

Matthew rolled his eyes and leaned forward on his seat. “Get a grip,” he said. “It’s just a piece of wood.” He placed his front fingers on the planchette. Suddenly, Matthew convulsed; his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he said in a loud, hoarse voice that echoed all around the living room, “F**K ME SATAN, F**K ME SATAN, F**K ME SATAN!!!”

 

Elise, Lauren and Andy all gasped in horror, but only Elise and Lauren�"both in spite of themselves�"joined in Matthew’s laughter the second he ceased his histrionics. Andy gave his boyfriend a piercing stare and slapped Matthew on the shoulder.

 

“Not funny!” He snapped. He, having been raised by Christian parents, still possessed something of a reverence for the faith, even if lived a lifestyle that was contradictory to various parts of Leviticus.

 

“Aw c’mon,” Matthew said with a goofy grin. “I was just trying to get Lauren to loosen up a little.”

 

“Well it didn’t work,” Lauren said, still grinning slightly to herself. Once again, she felt somewhat ashamed that she’d let herself got so carried away with the notion of Sequoia’s evil. Still, Matthew’s theatrics made the back of her neck prickle uncomfortably. It felt almost profane to have made light of evil powers while within the veritable belly of the beast, and even as she leaned closer to the coffee table, Lauren felt as if the watchful eyes of Sequoia were pinning them all with a calculating stare.

 

“It’s all smoke and mirrors anyway,” Elise said, also moving closer to the Ouija board. “Chester’s never gotten anything off of it…although there’s something in the rules about needing more than one person, and he’s never been able to convince anybody else to play with him so…”

 

“What, not even you?” Matthew asked.

 

Elise shrugged, and said nothing. Lauren, however, knew what had kept her friend from joining in her brother’s experimentation with the Ouija board. Chester was young, and innately curious. He needed proof, needed solid, concrete evidence before he completely allowed himself to believe. Elise, having lived longer in Sequoia than he, clearly held the house’s effect in a sort of twisted reverence; she didn’t like disturbing things that ought not to be disturbed.

 

Somehow, they all ended up around the board, each with two fingers on the triangular planchette. Lauren hesitated longer than the others, and then stole herself to join their little circle. Nothing at all remarkable happened, and for a moment, they all sat in stupid silence.

 

Lauren caught the eye of Andy, who was sitting directly across from her, and they both grinned at each other.

 

“How do we start?” Matthew asked the room at large.

 

“I, uh, guess we ask a question,” Elise said, sounding somewhat unsure of herself. She brushed a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Chester usually says hello to them before�"

 

“Them?” Andy said, his voice suddenly high pitched and edgy. “Who is them, Elise?”

 

“The ghosts,” Elise replied bluntly. “What else did you think we were trying to talk to here? There’s supposed to be lots in this place.” She paused and added, “We should try to talk to Addison.”

 

“Who?” Andy asked.

 

It was Lauren who answered. She’d heard the tale just about every time she visited Sequoia, either repeated by Elise’s family or retold by one of their other guests. “She was a housekeeper back in the Thirties. She threw herself off of the second floor balcony after she found out that the guy she was in love with was already married.”

 

“Why would we want to talk to her if we already know how she died?” Andy said. Then, as though remembering common sense, he gave himself a little shake and added emphatically, “Whatever! Nothing’s going to happen because this stuff isn’t real!”

 

“And yet you were the one who hit me in the shoulder for making a joke out of it,” Matthew said teasingly.

 

“Let’s just get on with it,” Elise said with a sigh. None of them had moved their fingers from the planchette, and Lauren felt her hand starting to tingle from the lack of movement.

 

“Right,” Lauren said. “So we…we really just say hello?”

 

“We introduce ourselves. It’s respectful,” Elise replied somberly.

 

Lauren let out a wistful sigh. Somehow the idea of telling the supposed spirit of Addison the housekeeper her name seemed like a perversion. Her name, after all, was hers, and she didn’t want anything otherworldly floating around with the knowledge of it. In order to stall for time�"and also because seeing Andy squirm was making her feel less apprehensive�"she said, “You go first Andy.”

 

“What!?” Andy yelped. “Why me?”

 

“It’s alphabetical,” Matthew said. “Besides, everybody knows that ghosts pay more attention to the most handsome person in the room.” He shot his boyfriend his innocent, goofy, little boy smile.

 

Andy turned faintly pink and tried to roll his eyes, but it came off rather pitiful. He shuffled forward in his chair and said. “Uh…hello? Addison? I’m Andy…”

 

Matthew chuckled and said, “I’m Matthew.”

 

“This is Elise. You already know me.”

 

“And I’m Lauren,” Lauren replied with a resigned sigh.

 

Not even a draft whispered through the cozy living room. The electric fire shimmered soundlessly behind its screen; outside the windows, the branches of the skeletal trees swayed back and forth, dancing in a mournful waltz as they moved with the cold breeze. The ticking of the kitchen clock filled Lauren’s ears as she waited, tongue between her teeth, for anything to happen.

 

“This is bullshit,” Matthew said in disgust. He made to move his fingers off of the board, but Andy shot him a sharp look. His gaze returned to the board, intensely focused. Lauren felt her heart beating against her ribcage; next to her Elise, let out a sharp breath. Both had realized what had possibly gone wrong, and judging by the look in Andy’s eyes, he had to. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes as if stealing himself against an insurmountable fear, and said, in an almost apologetic voice, “My name is Andrew.”

 

The Ouija board suddenly rattled as if something had hit the coffee table beneath it. Lauren, Andy, Matthew and Elise all gasped, and Lauren tried to tear her fingers off the planchette, but was prevented by the feeling of a force pressing down on her hand. Her eyes sought out Elise’s, and she felt her heart sink at the wide-eyed look in her friend’s normally level gaze.

 

Slowly, very slowly, the planchette moved from the neutral center of the board to the HELLO written in the top left corner. All four of them cast accusatory glances at each other, trying to determine who had moved the wooden triangle, but Lauren knew without really knowing how that there wasn’t a chance a single person could have directed all four of them to the same point with the power of two fingers.

 

Elise recovered her shock first. She cleared her voice and said, “Addison…is it you?”

 

The planchette moved diagonally across the board, and stopped at the NO position. Andy went pale and stared at Matthew, who suddenly looked as though he wished he hadn’t made his crack about demonic possession earlier.

 

Again, it was Elise who spoke. “Who…who are you, if you’re not Addison?”

 

Again, the wooden triangle moved. Unbidden, Lauren felt herself calling out the letters, her voice coming in a rattling whisper that sounded as loud as gunfire in the still, deathly silence of the living room.

 

“A-L-E-X,” she said. “Alex…who’s Alex?”

 

Elise shook her head, still staring at the board. “Why can’t we talk to Addison, Alex?”

 

B-E-C-A… “Because…” S-H-E…D-O… “She does not…” W-A-N-T… “Want to…talk…to you.”

 

Andy gulped heavily. Lauren stared between him and Matthew. She became dimly aware of the heat from the electric fireplace dissipating; her face began to prickle from the sudden chill that had invaded the living room.

 

Elise stared at the Ouija board, her expression guarded but still devoid of any palpable fear. As long as Elise kept her calm, Lauren felt that she would be able to maintain her hold on the planchette.

 

“How old were you when you died, Alex?” Elise’s voice was forcefully clear and calm. Lauren felt the temperature in the room drop several more degrees and she shivered in spite of her thick sweater. The skin of Andy’s exposed arms was riddled with gooseflesh, and he seemed unable to do anything but stare with his mouth slightly agape as their hands were moved by the invisible force.

 

The planchette moved down to the letter 8, and again, Lauren felt herself reading it aloud. She heard her voice as though it was coming from a great distance; it sounded hollow and unlike her own, much in the way that the laughter she had heard from outside Elise’s bedroom hadn’t sounded like any voice she had heard before.

 

“How did you die, Alex?” Elise said. Lauren narrowed her eyes as their fingers once more moved the planchette around the Ouija board. The lights in the living room had grown dim, along with the weak light from the electric fire. Sequoia seemed to be pressing in around them again, squeezing the air from the room as it loomed over the four of them, eavesdropping on their private conversation with one of its many spirits.

 

The wooden triangle moved to the letter P, and then to the letter B, and then finally to M. Lauren looked at her three friends, and saw her own confusion reflected in their faces.

 

Then suddenly, Matthew tore his fingers away from the planchette. His eyes, so intently focused during the entirety of the séance, slid back to being alert. He shook his head, and said, almost to himself, “Screw you guys,” and sank back into the cushion of the sofa, his hands stuffed inside the pockets of his hoodie.

 

Lauren felt momentarily envious of Matthew. She wanted more than anything to break free of the spell of the spirit board, but somehow she was more afraid of letting go then she was of hanging on. There was a peculiar safety in communicating with the spirit of Alex. He was a child, and children were innocent. Innocence was a light in the darkness of Sequoia, and Lauren wanted to be as near to that light as she possibly could, especially given that the great gloom of the house was pressing in ever closer, extinguishing the lights from the hallway and the kitchen and the fireplace, which now stood cold and empty at one side of the room.

 

Andy’s hands were shaking, but he still did not move away from the planchette. Elise’s eyes, bright and keen as ever in the gathering shadows, remained fixed on the wooden pointer. Lauren felt the great weight push down on her fingers, and by extension the Ouija board, filling in the space that Matthew had left behind.

 

“Did you know Addison?” Elise whispered, but even before she finished her question, the planchette had already started to move about the surface of the board.

 

Again, Lauren read the message that Alex was giving them.

 

“S-H-E W-A-S M-Y N-A-N-N-Y…She was my nanny…”

 

“What happened to her?”

 

“H-E T-H-R…He threw her…O-V-E-R T-H…over the balcony…”

 

Lauren felt a new wave of cold wash over her, only it wasn’t just pressing in from the outside anymore. Her lungs seemed filled with the frigid air, and she knew that she was trembling. A fine mist had formed in the living room, and she could feel rather than see Andy and Elise shivering from the cold. A pale blue light was shining from beside Andy, illuminating Matthew’s handsome face through the darkness and the fog. In it, he looked spectral and far off, his head seeming to float without a body.

 

Elise’s voice reached Lauren’s ears, sounding as if it were coming from the bottom of a dank, dark well. “Who is he, Alex?”

 

“T-H-E S-T-A-B…The stable boy…H-E K-I-L…he killed�"

 

“No,” Andy groaned, and suddenly Lauren felt the weight of his fingers slip away from the planchette. It was just her and Elise now…her, and Elise and the spirit of Alex and the ever-threatening presence of Sequoia’s darkness, spiraling over their heads, watching in cruel delight as the horrible secrets that lay buried in its aged, cracked walls came to light.

 

“Why did he kill her, Alex?”

 

The planchette moved so fast around the board that, had she been in a more present frame of mind, Lauren wouldn’t have been able to decipher it properly. But her mind, she realized as if in a dream, was somewhere else, possessed of a knowledge not her own. She no longer needed to read the letters out loud as they were spelled out to understand what Alex was trying to tell them; she knew well enough, could almost hear the gentle, echoing voice of a little boy whispering the answers into her ear, his cold breath tickling her cheek.

 

“Because of his wife.” The living room melted away into an endless chasm of blackness and mist. Lauren could hear a multitude of voices, all of different timbres and emotions, playing out in her head like a warbling record. She wanted to follow the voices, to know more, to see what had actually happened to Addison and Alex; to dwell within Sequoia’s history, to be a part of it, to know it and to love it. She could stay in this darkness forever; learn all she ever wanted to know, if only she would give in, if only she could tear her fingers off of the planchette. A new voice was added to the din of the ones she could hear, a voice that made her think of home and warmth and light, and suddenly she was afraid of the sibilant mist and the twisting darkness and the wrenching cold. Somebody was calling her name; somebody was asking her to come back. Feeling as light as a ghost, Lauren’s fingers slipped off of the small, wooden triangle.

 

Everything came back into focus with the abruptness of a lightning flash. She was sitting in the armchair again, the coffee table before her. Andy and Matthew were both across from her, Andy’s head on Matthew’s shoulder. Matthew had his smartphone in front of him, but he was no longer looking at the blue-white glow of the screen. He was staring at the windows behind Lauren, all mirth and charisma drained from his face.

 

 The lights in the house were gradually coming back on; the cold was retreating back to the October night outside.

 

Lauren felt as though her head weighed a ton as she turned to look at Elise. Her friend was sitting in her same armchair, her knees drawn up to her chin, still staring at the Ouija board before them. None of them spoke for a very long while; the fear of disturbing something was long since gone. Lauren knew full well that they had already disturbed the shadows of Sequoia; they were merely keeping silent to avoid giving themselves away.

 

Then, when the stillness had drawn to an unbearable point, Matthew let out a shaky breath and said, “Meningitis.”

 

Lauren stared at him dumbly. “What?”

 

“Pediatric bacterial meningitis,” he repeated again, his voice forcibly calm. “That’s what PBM meant. I looked it up on my phone. That’s what Alex died from.”

 

Lauren’s chin fell against her chest. As the light and warmth had returned, she had once more tried to get her rational mind to play catch-up with what had transpired over the past several minutes. The flicker of hope that their experiment with the Ouija board would have a rational explanation was extinguished. Elise had never told her about any children dying in Sequoia; neither had Elise’s parents, nor anybody else who had ever visited. Sequoia was old, and Lauren realized that not every one of its lost souls had been accounted for over the years. She was filled with a rushing empathy; to be wandering the long, dark halls of this house for eternity, forever alone and forgotten, was a worse fate to her than death.

 

“We should probably turn in,” Elise said, sounding as exhausted as Lauren felt. She made to sit up, when a noise from the top of the house made all four of them freeze.

 

A loud thump had sounded from high above them, coming from the attic floor of the house. It sounded to Lauren as if somebody had made a great leap from the edge of a bed onto the floor, landing with all of their body weight on the creaky, wooden boards. This was followed by a series of consecutive thumps clear across the attic, echoing through the empty, upstairs hallways.

 

Somebody was clearly running along the floors of the third story. The great clattering of footsteps echoed through the wooden floorboards; they were unorganized and disjointed...the careless running of a child.

 

The four of them looked at each other, and all at once, stood up and moved towards the front hallway, keeping as close together as they could. Elise shut the light in the kitchen and living room off as they went, and as they reached the foyer, Lauren stared at her in appalled horror.

 

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

 

“We can’t leave the power running,” Elise hissed through gritted teeth. Now a peal of high pitched, childish laughter was ringing from the top of the second floor. “Even if we’re just gone for the night the house could burn down.”

 

It was on the tip of Lauren’s tongue to tell her friend that Sequoia could burn to a pile of ashes for all she cared, but she reigned in the retort. Sequoia was still a part of Elise’s family, and the loss of the house would be a crippling blow to them. Lauren took a deep breath, stealing herself against her panic and the continued, disembodied laughter and running feet. Andy and Matthew had already half-ran to the front door, and were staring back at the two women with mingled disbelief and impatience.

 

“I’ll turn off the generator in the basement,” Elise said. “Did you leave our bags in my bedroom?

 

Lauren gulped, and nodded, feeling as though she could kick herself for being so blind.

 

“Do you want to get them, or should I?”

 

The notion of her friend being inside Sequoia alone in the darkness for even a second made Lauren’s stomach churn. She shook her head, and this time she actually felt her courage come to her. “I’ll get it,” she said. “It’s not that far. Will you two be okay waiting for us by the Jeep?”

 

“Okay?” Matthew said with half a laugh. “I’ll be over the moon about it. Just hurry the hell up.”

 

Lauren gave Elise one last look, one last nod, and then turned and hurried up the stairs. She did not look back as Matthew and Andy opened the door and headed into the cold October night. The door shut with an emphatic bang behind them, and at the exact same moment, Elise shut the light to the foyer off. Lauren was only halfway up the stairs when she was plunged into darkness for the second time that night. The running and the laughter from the very same floor died away in that same instant, and once again Lauren found herself feeling completely and utterly alone.

 

She kept her hand on the bannister all the way up the staircase. The only light in the second floor hallway came from underneath Elise’s closed bedroom door. The thin spread of that light cut across the floor like a grin, and did nothing at all to stave off the empty, stretching feeling of the corridor. Lauren felt the whole of Sequoia watching her from the shadows that skirted the edge of the light that reached almost desperately out from Elise’s bedroom. Lauren forced herself to look at the floor beneath her feet. The echoes of the little boy’s laughter still rang in her eardrums, though no noise uttered within the grasping silence.

 

Her hand found the doorknob, which felt colder than ice to her. The shadows pressed in around her, and she wished wildly that she could summon Matthew and Elise and Andy up to her. Searching deep within herself for a courage that she still did not fully feel, Lauren opened the door to Elise’s bedroom for the second time that night.

 

She had a lightning-brief view of the bedroom, with Elise’s queen sized, quilt-covered bed and the ugly black wardrobe. The luggage she’d brought up earlier was on the floor, much as she’d left them. Lauren took a step across the threshold, feeling that she could turn around and scamper back down the stairs faster than the speed of sound if she had to.

 

Then, the light went out, and the door shut behind her. The gasp died in Lauren’s throat as cold dread seized her by the neck, strangling all other emotion out of her aside from the fear.

 

She became hyper aware of the sounds of Sequoia; of the floorboards creaking and groaning as the heat that had been coursing through the house since their arrival died; of the deathly-cold wind from outside as it battered against the sides of the house, and of the rattling of the windows as the wind shook them in their panes.

 

Lauren found herself staring with wide eyes across the room at the window overlooking the front lawn. Not so much as a spider scuttled across the area rug on Elise’s bedroom floor to suggest their being anything alive around her. The hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle. Something, the same other sense that had been pulling at her pragmatism and rationality all night long, slithered into the crevices of her brain, alerting her to the notion of their being a presence gathering outside the closed door to Elise’s room.

 

Sequoia was coiling itself up in the hallway beyond, readying itself to pounce on Lauren, who was alone and in the darkness. Without knowing why, she walked with heavy feet across Elise’s bedroom to stand in front of the window. The illusion of freedom from this beastly house was far more preferable to simply standing and waiting. The skeletal trees and lonesome silver moon seemed more welcoming as Lauren stared out the window.

 

From her vantage point at the second story, she could just see Andy and Matthew, standing nervously by Elise’s Jeep. Matthew’s arms were around Andy, whether for warmth or comfort, Lauren couldn’t tell. She felt warmed herself by the sight of her two friends. How wonderful must it be to be loved and safe right now, Lauren thought, her fingers brushing the dusty glass. To not be alone...

 

Lauren felt her terror well up within her; the faint reflection she cast in the window stared back it her, wide-eyed and with a face drained of all color. She could hear footsteps again, and they weren’t the rambunctious, excited steps of a child. They were careful, methodical and predatory…and they were coming from the opposite end of the hall to the front staircase. Something was coming down from the third floor.

 

Lauren wanted to move, to cry out and bang on the window to get Andy and Matthew’s attention, but she couldn’t. She could only stare at her own horrified, half-corporeal reflection, listening with baited, expectant breaths as the footsteps stopped on the second floor landing and began to pad down the hallway.

 

It was looking for her; the entire house was looking for her because it knew that she was alone and in the dark.

 

There was nothing she could do. She could hide somewhere, but where? Under Elise’s bed? She thought wildly of climbing into the black closet, but the thought appalled her even more than what was now coming down the hall and right to Elise’s bedroom door.

 

Lauren closed her eyes, her hand still on the cold glass. She would never get out of here; never see Andy or Matthew or Elise again. Sequoia surely would devour her this time, and she would be worse than dead then, trapped just like the spirits of Addison and Alex, and all the other restless ghosts of the house.

 

Something creaked behind Lauren. Was it the door opening, or was it just the floorboards settling? Sounds became jumbled as her heart continued to pound against her ribs, flooding her ears with an erratic, terrified rhythm.

 

Footsteps padded softly across the floor, muffled by the area rug. Lauren braced herself for the inevitable hand of something cold to come down on her; she kept her eyes firmly shut, not wanting to see, not wanting to know…

 

A hand fell on her shoulder.

 

And it was a warm hand, a soft hand; a hand that Lauren knew at once was feminine. Relief spread through her, and she smiled tremulously.

 

Elise…it was only Elise. She had come up the stairs for her after turning off the generator in the basement. In her panic at the lights going out, Lauren had, once again, allowed herself to fall victim to the nameless fear that lingered over Sequoia. Between the coyotes and the Ouija board, Lauren felt that she would die of a needless heart attack before the night was over. And for what? A few misplaced fears?

 

Still smiling, still with her eyes closed, she placed a hand over Elise’s on her shoulder.

 

The door opened behind Lauren.

 

From just on the other side of the threshold, she heard Elise’s voice say, “Hey? Why are you waiting here in the dark? Let’s go.”

 

The hand on Lauren’s shoulder gripped her tightly for the briefest of moments, and then disappeared. Lauren opened her eyes; her fear was paramount, making it impossible to think or speak or remotely process what was happening. One moment she was looking at her own indistinct reflection in the window, and the next, Elise was dragging her out of the bedroom, their luggage forgotten.

 

They half stumbled into the dark, cold hallway. Sequoia watched them from the rafters and from around every corner, grinning as they made their way across the floor, which seemed to have gotten longer since Lauren last tread over it. Lauren was half-leaning against Elise for support. They reached the balcony where the young housekeeper had been thrown to her death, and then stopped, standing stock still as a new wave of laughter spiraled out of the darkness all around them.

 

It wasn’t the same laughter that Lauren had heard when first she’d been in Elise’s room. That laughter had been human and brimming with cheer, even if it had been ghostly distorted by distance and her panicked mind. The laughter that reached her and Elise’s ears was languid and heady, filled with intoxication and lust. It was the laughter of a woman, a deep-voiced woman, brimming with mockery and ridicule.

 

“Addison…” Elise whispered in confusion. Then, all at once, a volley of loud, thundering footsteps sounded from behind them. A door banged open, sounding like a crack of thunder in the confined space. Elise re-doubled her grip on Lauren’s wrist, but did not move; neither of them moved. They stood frozen, listening to the tangled thunder of footsteps and the muffled, indistinct voices. Lauren did not know how many seconds passed; time meant nothing to her at that moment.

 

Then, just as the pressure of Elise’s hand around her wrist brought tears to her eyes, the voices stopped. The footsteps grew heavy, as if their owner was suddenly greatly weighed down. Lauren shook like a dry leaf in a hurricane, clinging to Elise, her only anchor to the last shred of courage that she possessed. A cold washed over them, coming out of nowhere, like a blast of long-trapped, stagnant air, the kind of air released after the opening of a sealed crypt.

 

A scream filled the air, a high-pitched, desperate scream; the scream of somebody faced with the last moments of life. This was followed by a pronounced thud from the floor of the foyer directly below them.

 

That did it for Elise. With a strangled cry, she all but wrenched Lauren away from the bannister, and together, they stumbled down the stairs. This final descent was the worst test of their mettle, for something�"the murderous groom who had thrown Addison to her death�"was pursuing them. Every time they stumbled or paused for breath or leverage, it quickened its pace; every time they moved with hurried footsteps, it lagged behind, reveling in the cat and mouse chase.

 

Not once did either Lauren or Elise turn back to see what it was that followed them. Both kept their eyes down as they reached the main floor for fear of the pursuing horror that they knew they would see lagged behind on the stairs.

 

With shaking hands, Elise opened the door of Sequoia, and both she and Lauren stumbled down the drive and towards Andy and Matthew, both of whom were waiting patiently inside Elise’s Jeep.

 

The cold night air whipped Lauren’s hair around her face. After the horrible oppression of the house behind, it felt incongruously refreshing. Against her better judgment, she stopped just as she reached the hood of Elise’s car, and turned around to look at Sequoia.

 

Gathered up in its own solitary gloom, Sequoia looked right back at her, grinning in evil triumph.

 

-THE END