Throwback Thursday Feature: A Haunting in Baltimore

Throwback Thursday Feature: A Haunting in Baltimore

It all started with a whisper in the dark… A Haunting in Baltimore was the first story in my H. H. Horowitz series, setting the stage for mystery, ghosts, and the secrets that refuse to stay buried. If you haven’t read it yet, now’s the perfect time to dive into the eerie world of Horowitz & Co.

What was your favorite moment from the story? Or if you’re new to the series, are you ready for a supernatural thrill?

Read it below.

#ThrowbackThursday #AHauntingInBaltimore #HorrorFiction #GhostStories #SupernaturalThriller #ParanormalMystery #IndieAuthor #SelfPublished #Bookstagram #HorrorReads #EerieTales #HHHorowitz

September 8th, 1950

The phone rang in my office on North Amity Street at ten ‘til five on a Friday. I considered letting it ring and leaving to start my weekend, but I’d only had one job that week and had only made a c-note after expenses. So far that day, all I’d done was a number of repetitions of my exercise routine on the pull-up bar and other equipment I kept in the office. And though that helped me stay fit and sharp, a necessity in my line of work, it didn’t pay the bills. So I went over to my desk and answered the phone.

“H. H. Horowitz Investigations,” I said.

“Mister Horowitz, this is Anne.”

Anne was an employee at the answering service I used. My advert in the phone book listed a number that was routed to them, then they called me, which was necessary to filter out prank calls. It was a daunting task, considering how many of the dummy calls I received, but I paid them a fair fee. I only gave clients my direct office line after meeting them in person.

“Hello, Anne,” I said. “What’ve you got for me?”

“A Missus Perry called about some strange activity in her home out in Barclay-Greenmount. She sounded serious. Even choked up a little on the phone while I was on with her.”

“All right, let me have her number.”

Anne gave it to me. I pressed the hook flash button, then dialed out again. I heard only part of a single ring before the line connected.

“Hello?” a soft voice said.

“Hello, this is Mister Horowitz from H. H. Horowitz investigations. I’m looking for a Missus Perry, who left a message with my answering service today.”

“This is she.”

“Well, hello, Missus Perry. I understand you’ve been having some trouble. Can you tell me about it?”

There was a pause, which was pretty common. People had trouble talking about the type of thing that brought them to me. I gave the woman a moment to collect her thoughts.

“Yes… Well, Mister Horowitz, it’s just that…” She drifted off and there was another, longer pause.

“Ma’am, I assure you, whatever your situation might be, I’ll never discuss it with anyone else. Our dealings will be kept confidential.”

“Yes, thank you. Well… here it is then. There have been…unexplainable things happening in my home. It started as just noises…open doors I was sure I had closed. I ignored it. But then I began to hear whispers, as if people were talking in hushed tones, when I was sure I was alone. There were…strange shadows. My children witnessed and heard these things as well, and understandably became frightened by it all. We put up with it for a while, but then things got…worse.”

I jotted notes on a steno pad as she spoke.

“When did you move into the house, Missus Perry?” I asked.

“Three months ago.”

“And how long before you noticed these things?”

“Right away.”

“And what about Mister Perry? Has your husband witnessed any of these occurrences?”

“Oh, no, he’s… Mister Perry passed away…a year ago now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay. Listen, Mister Horowitz, I’m at my wit’s end here. I didn’t know where else to turn. I can’t afford to move again. Can you help me?”

“I’ll do all I can, ma’am. When would be a good time for me to come out and take a look at the place? I can do it as early as Monday morning.”

“Oh, no… Mister Horowitz, I need help right away. I… Something terrible happened last night. My children are staying with my mother for now, but she’s elderly. I have three children. It’s a terrible strain on my mother and I can’t ask her to keep watching them, but…it’s not safe for them to come back here either.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment. I had plans to spend the weekend with my father out on the lake. He’d be upset if I was late, he liked to put lines out in the water right at dusk, and I still had the drive out to his lake house to consider. But something in the woman’s voice made me unable to turn her away.

“Alright, Missus Perry,” I said. “What’s your address?”

She gave me the address and I wrote it down on the steno pad. I ended the call, grabbed my briefcase, then threw in some of the devices and tools I’d need for the job. I put on my hat, straightened my tie, and was out the door, down the steps to the lobby of my building, and out into the autumn air of Baltimore. I stepped onto North Amity and dodged between two Yellow Cabs as I crossed the street to where my nearly dead, 1934 Buick Coupe was parked. It wasn’t the greatest automobile, but it was what I could afford, and despite its condition, it had served me well over the years. I got in, pulled away from the curb, and headed for Barclay-Greenmount, Missus Perry, and her ghosts.  

I arrived in just under fifteen minutes. The neighborhood was one of Baltimore’s oldest, and even the newest houses lining either side of the street on which Missus Perry lived were at least half a century old. When I pulled up to the place, I founda petite blonde woman in a blue dress standing out in front of a fancy Victorian home waiting for me. I parked the Buick near the curb and got out. The blonde woman hurried over.

“Mister Horowitz?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, holding out a hand. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Missus Perry shook with me and spent a long moment studying my face until the silence became awkward.  

“Forgive me,” she said. “It’s just…you don’t look how I expected.”  

I laughed. “How did you expect me to look?”

She smiled and looked away as color rose in her cheeks. “Well, your ad said, Paranormal Investigator…I imagined you’d look like a carnival magician, or a gumshoe from one of those dime novels, or a combination of the two.”

I laughed again. “I’m sorry to disappoint.”

“No, not at all, I’m relieved that you look normal. This all seems so crazy to me, it puts me at ease that you look more like a soldier than a mad scientist.”

I started walking toward the house, grinning.  

She hurried after me and continued to speak. “Where did you serve? Germany? Or was it the Pacific Theatre?”

I exhaled through my nose. “Ma’am, the only time I’ve left the United States in my life was on a trip to the Holy Land my father took me on as a child, back when he still had aims for me to become a Rabbi. I never served in the military either. And I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but I’m probably closer to a mad scientist than a soldier, if it were down to just the two.”

She stopped following and stood still in the yard. I turned to look at her.

“But your face,” she said.

She was referring to my crooked nose and the heavy scarring over the left side of my forehead and down onto my cheek.

“I was on the Harvard Boxing Club when I was a student there,” I said. “That accounts for the nose.” I motioned vaguely at my face. “The scars I got in an accident back when I was a professor for the Harvard Physics Department.” I took a card from my breast pocket and handed it to her, hoping to change the subject. “This is my card. It has the direct line to my office on it.”

She took the card and looked it over, then looked up at me with an odd expression on her face. “You were a professor at Harvard?” She held up the card. “How in the world did you end up becoming a paranormal investigator?”

“I was fired from the university. The accident I mentioned happened during a study the University had begrudgingly funded, and its failure didn’t go over well. Believe it or not, a doctorate in physics doesn’t have many career options attached to it. When I wasn’t able to be a professor anymore, I thought about leaving the field altogether. But then I had the opportunity to help someone in a situation similar to yours. The rest, as they say, is history.”

I turned and walked the last few feet to the front door of the house. I placed my hand on the doorknob and looked back at her, raising an eyebrow. She nodded. I opened the door and wentin. Missus Perry followed a moment later.

“But what does science have to do with the paranormal?”she asked.

“Nothing,” I admitted, then added, “there is nothing in this world that can’t be explained by science, and therefore, everything is normal. There’s no such thing as paranormal. But I can’t go around calling myself a normal investigator, can I?”

“You could always call yourself a private investigator.”

“I tried that,” I said as I looked around the foyer. “Kept getting jealous husbands trying to hire me to follow their wives around. I probably should’ve taken the jobs, they paid better, but alas, my expertise would’ve gone to waste, and my ego just couldn’t accept that.” I looked at her. “And besides, if my ad said private investigator, would you have called me?”

She was silent a moment, then shook her head.

“There you go,” I said, and stepped further into the home.

The Perry residence was exactly what one would expect from an older place in a neighborhood like Barclay-Greenmount. Beautifully stained hardwood floors, high ceilings, lavish brass fixtures, the works… Some of the windows were even stained-glass, which made interesting beams of light color the walls. But underneath it all, I could feel something foul. I knew right when I crossed the threshold that the woman wasn’t imagining things. There was indeed a disturbance in the energy fields here, and soon it began to manifest itself as a cold chill up my spine and a feeling of fear in the pit of my gut. Missus Perry put a hand on my shoulder.

“Mister Horowitz, are you alright?” she asked.

“You seemed in a daze for a moment. Didn’t you hear me speaking to you?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m fine,” I said. “Just getting a feel for the place. Listen, please don’t be offended when I ask you this, but how did you afford this place? Did your husband leave you a large estate?”

“Well, no, but there was a little insurance money.”

“But this place,” I motioned around the fancy house, “how did you have enough for it?”

“I got a good deal, I suppose. The realtor said it had been on the market a long time and the previous owner lowered the price to make a quick sale. I have three children, MisterHorowitz, I needed the space. And the neighborhood is so nice, I jumped at the opportunity.”

“Did they give you any history about the house?”

“No, not really. I didn’t think it mattered.”

I nodded and checked my watch. It was almost half past five.  

“Missus Perry, I need to make it down to the Peabody before it closes,” I said. “Do you have somewhere to stay while I’m gone? I’ll have to ask you not to come back here until I’ve finished my work.”

She had begun to shake her head before I even finished speaking and gave me a stern look. “I’m not leaving your side until this is done, Mister Horowitz. If you’re going to the library, I’m coming with you, though I don’t understand why something like that can’t wait.”

“Ma’am, this will go much faster if you let me work alone.”

“Be that as it may, I mean to see this through. Why do you want to go to the library?”

“I need to access the newspaper archives. If I have an idea about what happened to cause the disturbance here, I’ll be better suited to stop it. We’re losing time. If you insist on coming, then let’s get a move on.”

I walked out of the house without another word. I could hear her following close behind, the hard souls of her shoes clicking on the cobblestone walkway. I got to my Buick and opened the passenger door for her. She nodded her thanks and stepped in. A few minutes later we were headed down St. Paul Street toward the library. We rode in silence for the first five minutes. I could see her watching me out of the corner of my eye.

“Back there you said you were getting a feel for the place,” she said, breaking the silence. “And something about a disturbance. What did you mean?”

“I felt a…call it a rift in the energy around your home.”

She exhaled audibly. “But see…that’s just it. That sounds more paranormal than scientific.”

My hands tightened on the steering wheel, and I had to fight down a wave of frustration. Jobs like this were difficult enough already without having to play the role of professor again. I collected my thoughts into something I thought would be cohesive to someone who’d never studied the sciences as extensively as I had.

“Have you ever watched a large flock of birds in the sky when they’re readying themselves for migration in the fall?” I asked.

She gave me an odd look, tilted her head, and said, “I guess so.”

“Did you ever wonder how the whole flock was able to turn as one? How the individual birds all knew to turn in the same direction, seemingly at the same moment?”

“Well, no, I suppose I never thought about it that deeply.”

“Schools of fish are known to do the same thing in the ocean. Insects too. Large numbers of individuals that seem to have the same thought at the same time.”

“Okay, go on.”

“There is a theory that there is a collective consciousness at work in these groups of individuals. That they seem to have the same thought at the same time because they actually are sharing the thought. Everything in the universe is made up of, and controlled by, energies. Even our very thoughts are really just little electrical impulses firing off in our brains. The theory of collective consciousness states that these energies aren’t strictly maintained within an individual, but that they are everywhere, in a sort of webwork of thought that can be accessed by anyone.

“I don’t believe is spirits, Missus Perry. I don’t believe in ghosts or poltergeists. But I do believe in science, and according to my scientific studies, if a person dies violently, or if they were particularly malevolent in life, they can leave behind a kind of rift in the web of consciousness we all share. Think of it as an echo, or a stain, which the electrical impulses that make up the consciousness leaves behind in the web. Living people can have reactions to these echoes. They can manifest as sights, sounds, and sometimes even kinetic energy. It’s the real explanation for all the so-called paranormal phenomenon people experience.”

Missus Perry put a hand to her mouth and rubbed at her bottom lip for a spell, then said, “So these echoes, these stains, you’re saying they’re what made the noises and the whispers that my children and I heard?”

“The doors moving around too, but manifestations of kinetic energy are much rarer.”

“And you can feel when something like this is at work?”

“Anyone can, if they know what to look for.”  

“I see.” She turned away and stared out through the passenger side window for a moment. “But I don’t think that’s what is happening in my home, Mister Horowitz. Not after what happened last night.”  

She continued looking through the window and avoided eye contact. I suspected she may have had tears in her eyes and didn’t want me to see.

“What happened last night, Missus Perry?”

She took a deep breath, then began speaking slowly and deliberately, as if it were a strain to do so.

“I heard my children screaming,” she said. “They each have a bedroom upstairs, but lately they’ve all been sleeping in my oldest daughter’s room. All in the same bed, in fact. They’re so frightened by everything we’ve experienced since the move... Anyway, they were screaming, and I rushed upstairs and burst into the room. My youngest, Valerie, was…” Here her voice broke, and she paused a moment before continuing. “She wasfloating upright in the air above the bed…kicking her legs and holding her throat as if something were choking her. The otherchildren were on the floor just…watching, screaming. Valeriefell back to the bed after a few moments, and I went to her. She was seized in fear, and there were…bruises on her neck. She hasn’t spoken a word since.”

I pulled my Buick to the side of the road. The scars on my face began to tingle, and a cold sweat crept up all over my body.  

“Repeat that last part again,” I said.

Missus Perry finally turned away from the window to face me and glared.

“I don’t care if you believe me or not, Mister Horowitz,” she said. “I know what I saw.”

I shook my head and my hand rose to my face without my telling it to and fingered the scars there. “No. I’m not saying I don’t believe you. Just repeat it, please. Every detail, leave nothing out.”

She wiped at her eyes and then started from the beginning.I asked a few questions here and there and she answered them. My stomach was turning summersaults by the end of it. It became clear to me that I had gotten myself in over my head with this case, something that hadn’t happened in a long, long time. I tried to ignore that fact and remembered that the Peabody wouldn’t be open much longer. I pulled away from the curb and drove the rest of the way on a mental autopilot while my mind replayed over and over the awful night in Boston all those years ago that had ended with my face torn to shreds and three of my students cold and dead.

We pulled up to the Peabody in the nick of time. I knew the head librarian, Melvin, and as long as I made it in before he locked the doors, he would let me stay until he himself went home for the night. We ran inside just as Melvin was walking toward the front doors to lock them. He was short and stocky, with a ring of white hair lining his otherwise bald pate, and he peered at me through the thickest glasses known to man.

“I wondered when you’d be back in,” Melvin said. “I have some of those books you requested in the back room on hold for you.” He noticed my companion then, flashed a grin, and raised his eyebrows. “Who’s your friend?”

“She’s a client, Mel. I just need to get into the newspaper archives.”

The old librarian hooked a thumb back over his shoulder. “They’re all yours, Herman. I’ll be here an hour at least finishing up. You need anything?”

“No, you’ve done enough already, Mel,” I said.

“I owe you one.”

“Don’t mention it.” He turned to Missus Perry.

“And you, Missus…”

“Emily,” she said, holding out a hand. “Just Emily.” She turned to me. “I suppose that goes for you too, now that we’re acquainted.”

Melvin shook the offered hand. “I’m Melvin, but you can call me Mel, everyone does. Can I get you anything? I’m about to make myself a nice cup of Earl Grey, can I bring you one?”

“Please, don’t trouble yourself.”

“It’s no trouble at all. In fact, I insist. I’ll bring it to you when it’s finished.”

“Thank you.”

He gave her a warm smile, glanced at me, raised his eyebrows again, this time in two, quick motions, then shuffled away in the direction of his office.

Emily turned to me, stifling a grin.

“He’s an odd duck, but you’ll get used to him,” I said.

She made no reply to this, but raised a hand to cover the grin she could no longer seem to stifle.

“What?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t have figured you for a Herman…”

I rolled my eyes.

“What does the other H stand for?”

“If you’re laughing at Herman, I’ll never tell you that.”

“Tell me.”

“Let’s just say that in addition to the Torah and the Talmud, my father always had a soft spot for the Greek classics.”

Emily turned her eyes to the side for a moment, her mouth working silently, then she smiled widely and said, “Your name is Herman Hermes Horowitz?”

“You know your classics…wonderful. Go on, you can laugh, I’m used to it.”

She didn’t laugh, but she pressed the hand back over her mouth and I could see immense amusement in her eyes. Her quite beautiful eyes, I noticed, now that she had a reason to be quiet long enough for me to do so.

“C’mon, let’s get started,” I said. “We don’t have much time.”

“We better hurry then. Should you fly us there on winged sandals?” 

“Very funny…”

Back in the archives, there were rows and rows of newspapers, all hanging on flat boards. The ones nearest us were fresh and new looking, with the presses progressively growing a darker yellow as they ran back to the oldest. Emily stared at them for a moment, then turned to me.

“There’re so many,” she said. “How are we ever going to find anything?”

I walked down the aisle, looking for the spot I wanted to start based on the age of the house. “It’s not as bad as it seems, so long as you know where to start and which part to look at.”

“Alright, where do we start?”

I stopped halfway down the row I was scanning and pulled out two newspapers, one for each of us.

“Here,” I said, handing her one of the papers.

She took it. “Okay, and which part do I look at?”

“Front page stories about violent deaths, and then…the obituaries.”

An hour later we were headed back to my car with no new intel. The only thing we had gained from the visit to the library was Mel’s delicious Earl Grey tea. There were no reports of any terrible tragedies at the Perry home, and no strange deaths in the obituaries for anyone who’d ever lived at the address. The trip had been a monumental waste of time, which meant I’d have to go about the case a different way.

“All right, Mister Horowitz, what now?” Emily asked, as we arrived at my car.

I opened the passenger door for her, then went around and got in behind the wheel.

“Now, we go back to your home,” I said, “and I do this the hard way.”

“What’s the hard way?”

“I don’t have a name for it, really. I’ve been considering calling it web gazing, but I’m not sure that will stick. It sounds too elegant for a scientific process.”

“What does it mean?”

“You remember that web of consciousness I told you about?”

She nodded.

“I’m going to tap into it. I’ll be able to catch flashes of the history of your home. Well, that’s the hope anyway. It doesn’t always work.”

“What do you hope to find if it works?”

“Whatever it is that’s causing the rift in the web of consciousness around your home. If I can do that, I can get rid of it, and you and your children will be left alone.”

“Is it dangerous?”

My hand went to my scars again before I could stop it.

“It can be,” I said.

Back at the Perry residence, I readied the experiment. My briefcase lay open on a countertop in the kitchen, and I took out a pair of headphones and an eye mask and brought them to the kitchen table. Emily watched as I worked.  

“Do you listen to music while you do this?” she asked, eyeing the headphones.

“No, I hook those to a broken tube radio,” I said. “I use it for white noise. I can’t have any outside distractions while attempting this.”

She picked up the eye mask and examined it. I went to a kitchen window and looked outside. The sun had almost set, which was good, the process worked better at night when there weren’t so many waking minds full of workday worries crowding the collective consciousness. I turned and looked at Emily. She was leaning over my briefcase, looking at the various instruments inside. A lock of blonde hair fell over her face, and she reached up with a slender hand to tuck it behind her ear. The pretty blue dress she wore wasn’t tight, exactly, but it did show the gentle curves of her body. Talk about a distraction… I went to her.

“Emily…” I began, “I know you want to be here to see this through, but I would really appreciate it if you could wait outside while I do this part. The slightest distraction can botch the whole thing and it takes too long to try it twice in one night. I know time is a factor for you, so it’s better that I work alone for the next few hours.”

Her expression told me she did not like this, but my warning about the possibility of not being able to finish tonight had its intended effect, and she agreed.  

I handed her the keys to the Buick. “You can sit in my car. The radio’s broken, but the heat works if you get chilly.”

She took the keys and went to the front door with a sour look on her face. When she closed it behind her, she gave it a little more English than needed, and the sound made me jump.

“Keep it together, Double H,” I muttered to myself, “This isn’t going to be like Boston…nothing could be as bad as Boston…”

I went to the kitchen table and gathered my tools, then brought the headphones, the broken radio, and the eye mask to a chair I’d set in what I’d determined to be the exact center of the house. I sat down and put on the headphones, then set the broken radio on the floor, and switched it on. My ears were filled with the hiss of a dead station. I pulled the mask on over my eyes and adjusted myself until I was comfortable. Then I let my mind drift off, thinking of nothing and emptying my consciousness. Then I waited.  

For a long time, nothing happened, which was normal. Eventually, with no warning beforehand, my mind was pulled up and outward. The feeling of it had nauseated me the first several times I’d attempted the process, and I had been pulled right back into myself and ended up in a heap on the floor, vomiting and pouring sweat. But that was a long time ago, andthese days I could move on with relative ease. When the upward flowing of my consciousness was complete, I was no longer Herman Hermes Horowitz. Instead, I was all living, sentient beings…and a few dead ones. I aimed my attention at the Perry house, and the images that began to flash through my mind nearly sent me into that heap I mentioned before.  

A man had lived here once. A very bad man. I saw him not only from the outside and from above him, but also from within him and in his head and through his eyes. I was him, and as him, I lured poor children from the poverty-stricken parts of the city into my car and brought them home…where I strangled them, their innocent faces staring at me with terrified expressions as I did so. And I was also those children. I felt the bad man’s unbelievably strong hands choke the life from me again and again, first as a little boy, then a girl, a girl again, then a boy, and so on, for far too long. The vision changed, and suddenly I was back above, and watched down as the bad man carried dead children out into the yard behind the house, where he chucked them down a derelict well as if they were simply detritus.  

I wanted it to stop. I couldn’t stand it anymore. But it wouldn’t let me go. The whole thing started over again and I murdered those children, and I was those children being murdered, and I watched them go down the well one by one. It wouldn’t stop. Over and over it went…on and on…and eventually I knew by heart the faces of twenty-three children, whose tiny skeletons were in a deep hole in the ground not thirty yards from where Emily Perry and her children had slept each night for the past three months.

I began to lose any grip I had on my sanity. In a last-ditchdesperate effort, I gathered all of my energy and ripped myself away from the visions. It was dangerous to do this. You were supposed to ease out of a viewing, allow your consciousness to flow gently back into your body. But it worked. Finally the dead children, the evil man, and the dark well were gone, and I was back in the Victorian home, lying on the floor, sobbing like all those children had so many years before. I wept harder than I ever had, so hard that the sobs hurt me as they tore their way out from my body. I couldn’t tell you how long I stayed that way. The concept of time was beyond my grasp while I lay there. When I finally did come to, it was pitch-black outside, and all the lights were out inside the house.

Angry whispers seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

I rolled to my belly and crawled across the floor in what I hoped was the direction of the kitchen. I found the kitchen, stood, located my briefcase of the countertop with blindly searching hands, then reached inside, and brought out my flashlight. I switched it on and pointed it in front of me. The beam of light fell onto the crying face of a small boy whose neck was crooked and broken. I stumbled backward and dropped the flashlight. Something immensely heavy hit me in the back so hard it knocked all the breath from my lungs, and I went sprawling to the floor. The flashlight hit hard on the tiled floor and went out. I had to work hard to get my breath back, then I searched around on the floor for my flashlight. As much as I hate to admit it, the sounds that came out of my mouth were nothing a grown man should ever make.

I eventually found the flashlight again. I waited a moment before switching it on. With my eyes shut, I worked at calming myself and steeling my nerves. I was a god-damned scientist, not some superstitious schoolboy. When I had control of myself,I opened my eyes and switched on the light. The beam fell upon a small girl. Her neck was heavily bruised and distorted as if it had been crushed. Her head tilted at an unnatural angle. She looked at me, and this time I kept my cool. The little girl pointed a finger behind her. I moved the beam of the flashlight in the direction she indicated, and as I did, I saw more dead children. Their necks were all ruined, some so badly that their heads hung down and lay against their backs or chests. It was the type of scene that would send some people gibbering and pissing themselves to a loony bin. But I was a scientist, I reminded myself again, and as awful as it all was, I knew what I was seeing was only an echo in the web.

I looked at each of the children. They were all pointing to the stairwell that led from the foyer up to the second floor. I walked through the apparitions toward the stairs and shined the light up. The angry whispering came back, harsher now. I went back to my suitcase and grabbed a small, metal box with only asingle button marring its otherwise smooth surface. The box had taken years of research and study to design. The final product created a strong blast of electromagnetic energy, which disrupted the energy in the web of consciousness in a ten-foot sphere, allowing it to knit itself back together without the rift. My goal now was to find the exact point of the rift that was causing the disruptions in the house. And it seemed the echoes of the murdered children had come out to help me locate the spot.  

I went back to the stairwell, took a deep breath, and started up. More children stood on the steps as I ascended them. They were also pointing, guiding me along. When I arrived at the second-floor landing, the small boy I had seen downstairs upon awakening stood there. He wasn’t pointing at anything. I recognized him now. He was the first. The very first victim the terrible man had brought to this house. The boy stood there with his hands at his sides, crying. I looked around with the flashlight. No more children were on the second floor. I would have to find the rift myself from here. I checked the box in my hand again. Once pressed, the button had a ten second delay before it activated the electromagnetic blast. I had installed thisfeature after discovering the machine had negative effects on people standing too near when it went off. The first test had ended with me having a seizure and nearly swallowing my own tongue.

I shined the flashlight down the hall to my left. There were several closed doors on either side. I’d have to check each one. I started to take a step down the hall, when suddenly I was hit again, this time in the stomach, and the next thing I knew, I was tumbling down the stairs backwards. My head hit hard on a wooden step, my vision flashed white, and then my flashlight was gone, the electromagnetic blast generator was gone, and I was still falling, pain leaping out all over my body as I hit each step.  

After what felt like an eternity, I finally came to a stop on the bottom of the stairwell. I tasted blood in my mouth and the pain in my ribs told me that some of them were broken, something I hadn’t experienced since my days on the Harvard Boxing Club. I hadn’t missed the sensation. I turned my head and found my flashlight laying there. Somehow it had stayed on through its tumble down the stairs, and its beam pointed above me, the light illuminating the metal box, which lay only a few feet away. My ribs screamed in protest, but I dragged myself toward the box. Blood dribbled from my mouth and pattered on the hardwood floor as I went.

Something heavy landed on my back, stopping my forward motion, and a split second later a vice-like grip squeezed around my neck. It seemed the rift I was looking for had found me instead. It was so strong that it immediately cut off my ability to breathe, and also hindered the blood flow to my brain, which I knew by the hot pressure building in my face. The memory of being those children flashed through my head again as I seemed to be about to meet their same fate. But through it all, I fought hard and crawled forward, albeit much more slowly now, toward the box. The children stood around watching with their dead eyes, some of them crying. My vision began to darken. Then, the first victim was there, standing over the metal box in the beam of my flashlight, looking down at the device. He looked from the box to my face, then he bent down and gently slid it across the floor to me, bringing it just outside of my reach. I lurched forward the last inch, grabbed it, and pushed its button.  Nothing happened. The ten second delay… Everything went black.

When I woke sometime later, I lay on my back and there wasn’t a single part of my body that didn’t hurt. Which meant I wasn’t dead. Though to be honest, at that moment I think I might’ve preferred death. I opened my eyes and found that I was still on the floor near the bottom of the stairwell. The lights in the house were back on. I groaned. Heavy footsteps rushed toward me, and I began to panic, afraid the electromagnetic pulse generator hadn’t worked. Relief washed over me when Emily Perry’s beautiful face appeared above me.

“Oh, thank God,” Emily said. “I thought you were dead. I was about to call the police.”

“Not dead yet,” I croaked. “Help me up.”

She did, then she helped me over to a chair in the living room. Once I was seated, she knelt on the floor in front of me and looked me over.

“What in God’s name happened in here?” she asked, then began to ramble. “I was coming in to check on you when I heard this awful ruckus, but when I tried to come in, the front door was locked. I was about to go to the neighbors to call the police, but then…I don’t know, something like a wave hit me, made me dizzy, and then the door just opened by itself. I found you inside looking like you’d been run over by a car. What happened to you?”

“I got rid of it,” I said. “For now. I still need to take care of the physical link the rift has to this place, otherwise it might come back.”

“Physical link?”

I thought of the derelict well out back and the skeletons of the twenty-three murdered children at its bottom. “It’s better if you don’t know, Emily, especially if you plan on staying here. I’ll call a friend on the Baltimore PD and have it taken care of. Can you and your children stay at your mother’s place for a few more days?”

“Well, yes, I suppose. But I want to know what you’re talking about.”

I looked at her intensely, as small faces and ruined necks flashed through my mind’s eye, and said, “No, ma’am, you don’t.”

Something in my face seemed to have gotten the point across and she didn’t press the issue any further. Instead, she helped me up and out of the house. We walked to my car. I started to ask for my keys, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She drovemy Buick while I road shotgun down to St. Agnes Hospital. She even came in and waited in the waiting room with me until thestaff took me back. I hardly slept a wink for the two days I was there, despite all the meds. I was afraid to sleep. I knew the nightmares would be terrible for a long time. They certainly had been after the grizzly events in Boston that had eventually led me to my profession.

I didn’t send Missus Perry a bill for my services. I had debated at least trying to get my hospital bills reimbursed, but whenever I thought of the poor widow out there raising those three children on her own, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I figured I would just have to make do. But then, two weeks after the awful night in the Perry house, the mailman came to my office with an envelope from Emily. Inside was a handwritten letter, folded around five, crisp, one-hundred-dollar bills.  

The note read:

Mr. Horowitz,

Enclosed you will find payment for your services. We never discussed a fee and I assume you didn’t bill me out of some sort of pity, which is a little insulting to be perfectly honest. But I forgive you for that because there have been no more strange occurrences in my home since the night you were here. My children are even sleeping soundly in their own beds again. Besides a large patch of dirt that now mars the backyard, which I found after returning from my mother’s, everything is back to normal.  

When I decided to buy a home for myself and my children, I had a set amount of money with which to do so. After negotiating for this place, I ended up spending five hundred dollars less than that set amount. I am sending the difference to you, Mr. Horowitz. My reasoning is that this home would be unlivable if it weren’t for your help, so the money really belongs to you. Do not try to send it back, I will refuse it. I hope you are healing up nicely and that this money helps with your medical bills.  

P.S.

I doubt I could ever truly thank you enough for what you’ve done for us, but if you’d like to let me try, you can take me to dinner some time. I’ll wear my blue dress. I noticed you seemed to like it.  

Sincerely,

Emily Perry

I smiled, folded the letter, and put it in my desk drawer. The bills went into my wallet. Then I picked up the phone and dialed Emily’s number.