All the curtains and blinds in the house were drawn shut—I did not ask why—and the interior of the house darkened considerably, but with enough light still scratching through from outside.
Once Sam and Dale were in position upstairs, Miller asked me to turn off the fuse box.
It was located in the hallway that led to the garage.
I opened it.
I breathed in as I shut off the power.
Walking quickly back to Miller’s side, I realized that this was the quietest the house had ever been.
During this thought all three EMF meters started beeping—instantly, in unison.
According to the flashing red digital numbers I saw a reading jump from 0 to 100 in what seemed like less than a second.
Immediately the cameras sensed something and started whirring, moving in a continuous circular motion atop the tripods.
“We have liftoff,” I heard one of the guys whoop from upstairs.
The beeping suddenly became more insistent.
The cameras kept flashing as they turned.
The locks on the French windows in the living room made a cracking sound.
Another cracking sound and the windows swung outward, causing the green curtains to start billowing even though it was a cold, still November afternoon.
But then they stopped billowing.
The curtains weren’t there last night, the writer said. Don’t you recognize them? the writer asked. Think back.
Air gusted over us, and the faint sound of something being pounded echoed throughout the house.
The pounding continued.
It was moving through the walls and then into the ceiling above us.
The pounding was competing with the sounds from the EMFs but the pounding soon overtook it.
I shut my eyes, but the writer told me that the pounding culminated when a huge puncture appeared in the wall above the couch in the living room.
(Later, the writer told me that I had screamed while standing perfectly still.)
And then: silence.
The EMF monitors stopped beeping.
“Hoo-ah!” This from one of the guys upstairs.
The other whooped gleefully again.
They had been on this ride before.
Miller and I were breathing hard.
I didn’t care if I appeared afraid.
“I’m sensing a male presence,” I heard Miller murmur, scanning the room.
“The lights are flickering, Bob,” Sam called down from the upstairs hallway.
From where Miller and I stood we looked up and could see the flickering lights of the sconces reflected in the massive window near the top of the stairs.
It seemed as if something knew we had noticed this and the flickering stopped abruptly.
Miller was now standing in front of the freshly punctured wall.
He stared at it, humbly.
“An angry man . . . someone very lost and angry . . .”
I was so afraid I could not feel myself. I was just a voice asking: “What does that mean? What’s going on? What does it want? Why is it stopping?”
Miller scanned the ceiling with his EMF.
“Why did it stop?” I kept asking.
Miller answered quietly.
“Because it knows we’re here.”
This was part of his performance. He was trying to project self-assurance, confidence, a sense of command, but there was one lucid fraction within me peering through the fear that knew whatever resided in the house was going to defeat us all in the end.
(I flashed on: You resided in this house, Bret.)
“Because it knows we’re here,” Miller murmured again.
Miller turned to me.
“Because it’s curious.”
We waited for what felt like eternity.
The house seemed to grow darker as time passed.
Finally, Miller called up. “Dale—anything?”
“It’s quiet now,” Dale called back down.
“Sam—anything?”
Sam’s answer was interrupted when the EMFs resumed beeping again.
This was followed by the cameras whirring.
And then a sound announced itself that unnerved me more than the pounding or the noise emanating from the meters.
A voice was singing.
Music began playing throughout the house.
A song from the past, flowing from an eight track on the long drive up the California coastline to a place called Pajaro Dunes.
. . . memories light the corners of my mind . . .
“Did we unplug the stereo?” I asked, wheeling around in the semidarkness.
. . . misty water color memories . . .
“Yes, we did, Mr. Ellis.” This was Miller, holding his EMF as if it was guiding him toward something.
. . . of the way we were . . .