Just like Stanley Shump before him, Roger spent most days fixing cars at Four Corners Auto and most nights drinking whiskey at the Bloodhound Tavern. But that night, instead of pulling into his detached garage, Roger Shump plowed into his 19th-century farmhouse, killing himself and taking with him his wife Irene, who’d been watching TV in the living room.
I’d been in that living room once, years ago.
Joyce Shump and I met the first day of sixth grade. I was the new kid who nobody talked to; she was the quiet kid who never talked to anyone. Then, she talked to me.
Joyce was sad — a burdensome sadness that seemed to saturate her clothes, weighing down each of her steps and chilling her to the bone.
We began sitting together at lunch and soon were inseparable. It became my mission to make Joyce laugh. When I succeeded, it was like watching the sun rise in her spirit, the sadness evaporating like morning dew. My secret weapon: knock-knock jokes.
During recess, while most boys played kickball and most girls giggled about the boys playing kickball, Joyce and I created chalk drawings on the cracked concrete or searched the drifting clouds for galloping horses and towering castles and wizards with swirling beards and angels with outstretched wings. Sometimes we played Uno, sometimes we read — poetry for Joyce, fantasy for me. Whatever we did on that playground — even nothing at all — was the best part of my day.
Then one Monday, Joyce wasn’t in her seat when the bell rang. Same thing Tuesday and Wednesday. At dismissal Thursday afternoon, Ms. Riley asked if I’d take Joyce’s homework to her house. I agreed before she finished the question.
“Ben, I’m not sure anyone’s home,” my mom said that night as we rolled along the driveway toward the darkened Shump farm. A single lamppost bathed the house and garage in pale green light, a dilapidated barn looming in the deep shadows behind the garage.
Mom parked beside a wood-paneled wagon and I noticed a dim light from the basement window of the house. As we approached the door, gravel crunching beneath our feet, the blue glow of a TV filtered through the front window. I looked down and wondered when I’d started holding my mom’s hand.
I pushed the doorbell but no sound came from inside. I knocked gently on the wobbly screen door, the noise drowned beneath the clamor of the crickets and other unseen insects surrounding us.
Rap-rap-rap! Mom knocked louder, the door banging against the frame. The porch light flicked on and someone unlocked the door before it creaked open.
Joyce stood inside wearing a tattered nightgown, her eyes buried within the infinite shadow her long, dark hair cast across her face.
“J-J-Joyce,” I said, taking a half step forward. “How are you? I’ve missed you at school.”
Her voice was flat, her lips barely moving. “Daddy says I’ll be back Monday.”
“Okay. Umm….” I looked at Mom, who frowned as she stared at Joyce, and then down at the papers in my hands. “Oh. Right. Ms. Riley asked me to bring over your homework.”
“Is anyone home with you, sweetie?” my mom interjected. Joyce didn’t respond. Mom pulled the screen open and knelt in front of Joyce. “Are you home by yourself?”
“No.”
Mom peered inside the door and turned back toward me. “Ben, put her stuff on that table.” When I hesitated, she tilted her head toward the door. “Now, please.”
I brushed against Joyce’s arm as I squeezed through the doorway into the silent house and quickly found the table.
“Oh, I didn’t see you there,” my mom called as I set the homework down. I turned and followed her gaze to the far corner of the room, where a woman sat in a recliner watching a soundless TV.
A voice rumbled from deep inside the house. “You need to leave.”
The large silhouette of a man stood in front of an open door across the room, his face lost to the shadows. The light in the doorway revealed steps leading to the basement, and through the hallway to his left, I saw a kitchen sink overflowing with dishes.
Mom nearly shrieked as she tried to mask her panic. “Oh, hello! Ben just brought Joyce her homewor–”
“Now,” he growled, unmoving. “Leave. Now.”
I slipped past Joyce and grabbed Mom’s hand on my way outside, yelping as the screen door slammed behind me. On the porch, I turned to see Joyce standing, still and silent, in the doorway.
“Joyce?” I said quietly.
“Please go, Ben,” she whispered.
Moments later, we were racing down the driveway and, that Monday, Joyce was in her seat at the bell. But she was never the same. We were never the same. Dozens of questions filled my head but I didn’t know where to start. I knew she wouldn’t answer them anyway.
Our lunches were mostly silent after that, and she hardly ate anything. She wouldn’t draw during recess and she said she didn’t like the things she saw in the clouds anymore. Her sadness turned into a corrosive hopelessness that even my knock-knock jokes couldn’t wash away.
Four months later, Joyce vanished from our classroom.
Ms. Riley said Joyce’s parents decided to homeschool her. I was heartbroken, but more than that, I was terrified. I wanted to save Joyce from whatever was happening inside that house, to make up for leaving her alone because I got scared. I prayed for her protection, that my friend would just show up in class again one morning.
But I didn’t see Joyce again until Liam and I pulled up to the Shump farm several days after her dad’s accident. I’d learned from the article online that Joyce still lived at home, and that she’d survived the accident because she’d been upstairs when Roger crashed into the farmhouse.
“Where are we going?” Liam asked when we took a different route from the high school.
“To see an old friend.”
Liam was a curious and helpful young man who settled in almost immediately after his Air Canada flight had landed. My construction company had given Sandra and me the means to build a 3500-square foot home on a couple acres outside of town, and since we had no kids, Liam had one whole wing of the house to himself.
Sandra and I talked about having children when we got married, but then the depression set in. Watching Sandra retreat deep within herself reminded me of watching Joyce whither away all those years ago.
Sandra and I never fought. We also never made love, and she once flinched when I tried to hold her hand. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d kissed my wife.
I convinced myself the counseling would work, that the medication would clear the clouds and we’d finally start building our family. Instead, I built my business while trying to talk Sandra into fostering or adoption. Eventually, she agreed to an exchange student program.
It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I was thrilled to be matched with Liam, a 16-year-old from Saskatchewan who had an interest in construction. And two weeks into his 10-month stay, an unexpected home renovation had fallen into our laps.
“Whoa,” Liam said when we drove down the Shump driveway and first caught sight of the farmhouse, yellow police tape stretched across the gaping hole left by Roger’s wagon.
And there, in a folding chair in the yard, sat Joyce. Her dark hair hung around her face like it had that night, but instead of the nightgown, she wore jeans and a yellow t-shirt. She watched us pull around the corner but when Liam and I got out of the truck, her eyes continually shifted between her bare feet and us.
“Hi Joyce,” I said, approaching slowly. “It’s Ben. Ben Samson.”
She momentarily locked eyes with me before her gaze darted back down.
“And this is Liam.”
He waved. “Hi, ma’am.”
“I read about what happened, Joyce, and I’d really like to help.”
She lifted her eyes and tilted her head. “Help? How?”
I motioned toward the home and smiled. “Looks like you need some remodeling. That’s my specialty. I can fix this up better than it ever was, and it won’t cost you a cent. Call it the friends-from-way-back discount.”
“No thanks,” Joyce replied curtly before standing and shuffling toward the house.
Liam looked at me, confused. “You’re going to fix her house for free?”
“If she’ll let me,” I answered, watching Joyce walk through her backdoor. I followed, Liam behind, and then knocked, the rap-rap-rap reminiscent of my mom banging on the front door years earlier. “Joyce? Can we come in?” After waiting for a response, I pulled the screen door open.
The dishes I saw in the sink that night didn’t compare to the mess Liam and I encountered in the kitchen. The refrigerator sat wide open and empty, most of the cabinet doors hung off hinges or were missing completely, and trash piled up along the walls.
“Yech!” Liam said, his hand covering his nose and mouth. “It reeks in here.”
I walked into the hallway, glancing at the closed basement door as I passed, and found Joyce standing motionlessly in the demolished living room.
“You shouldn’t be here, Ben,” she said flatly. “Nobody should. This house belongs to them.”
“Who?” I asked slowly. “Your parents are gone now, so it belongs to you. And I can make it into whatever you want.”
“This place was never my home.”
I searched for some kind of helpful response in the lingering silence.
“What happened to you here?” The words came before they fully formed in my mind. She turned toward me, tears forming in her eyes. “I never should have left that night,” I admitted.
“You couldn’t have done anything, Ben. Nobody could. Not even my mom.”
A door creaked behind me and Joyce’s eyes bounced over my shoulder. “NO! Don’t go down there!” I turned to see the basement door swung open, and I heard Liam making his way down the steps. Joyce turned back to me, terrified. “Get him. NOW.”
The accident had knocked out the electricity so I turned on my phone’s flashlight and followed Liam down the steps, the old wood groaning beneath my feet.
“Liam?” I called in a whisper.
Once my feet found the basement floor, I spun the flashlight around the vast and cluttered room. A large workbench stood against the wall, its surface littered with screwdrivers and pliers, several different saws, a couple of hammers and other old tools. More instruments, ancient and stained, hung on a pegboard behind the bench, and a collection of digging tools stood on the floor alongside countless plastic containers, gas cans and empty liquor bottles.
A shadow flashed across the wall, accompanied by the shuffling of feet. “Liam?” My heart thudded against my sternum, my pulse vibrating in my ears as I tried to slow my breathing. “Joyce?”
I followed the sound to a dingy twin mattress on the floor where a blanket sat crumpled atop a yellowed pillow. Someone had left a small cup of water on the ground next to the bed.
CLICK. A nearby TV suddenly came to life, the voices from the screen muted as flickering blue light fell across the mattress. “Hello?” I stepped forward, my foot colliding with something heavy that sent me sprawling to the floor, knocking the wind from my lungs. The room spun as I desperately gasped for air.
Several intense seconds later, my breath finally returned and I slowly sat up, grabbing my phone from the ground beside me and breathing deeply. I turned to see what had tripped me and spotted a pair of large work boots covered in what looked to be oil stains.
“Ben.”
I stood slowly, my ribs sore from the fall. “Liam?”
“Over here.”
I spotted Liam’s flashlight across the basement and picked my way around boxes and forgotten furniture until I reached him.
“Have you seen Joyce?”
“Yeah.” He turned his light toward a doorway and shone it into a small room where Joyce stood, her back to us. I stepped inside.
A folding chair leaned against a small table where two empty baby bottles stood. But Joyce’s attention was on the abandoned crib along the wall. I couldn’t see her face but I heard her quietly crying, her arms wrapped around her waist.
“He wouldn’t even let me name him. But I did anyway.” She paused, gently wiping her cheek. “Daniel.”
“Daniel,” I said after a moment of silence. “That’s nice.”
“Mom called him an abomination. She was probably right.”
We stared at the handmade crib, Liam shifting his weight behind us as I tried to work out what had happened here. “I only held him once,” Joyce continued, “right after he was born. But I could hear him crying upstairs.”
“That had to be hard.”
“Dad stopped bringing me down here after he was born, but then one day, the crying stopped. And the next day, he started bringing me down here again. But he was more careful after that.”
My mind drifted back to the mattress, to the boots with the oil stains. “So,” I began, unsure if I should continue. “Your dad…was Daniel’s –”
“Terrible things have happened in this house. For hundreds of years. My dad and his sisters were tormented down here by my grandfather, and his father was even more of a monster. Generations of Shumps are buried under this floor, including Daniel, their ghosts whispering madness into the ears of whoever calls this place home.”
“I’ll tear it all down, Joyce.” I promised. “I’ll build you something completely new. You can be free from all this.”
She slowly shook her head. “You two need to go.”
“I’m not leaving this time.”
She grabbed my arm, her fingers tight around my wrist. “Ben, leave. PLEASE!”
I wavered, staring at Joyce, before turning and climbing the steps with Liam. A minute later, he and I were in the yard, eyes fixed on the farmhouse.
A flicker of orange light caught my eye from the basement window. In a moment, the light blazed brighter and I saw tendrils of black smoke rising through air.
I sprinted toward the house. “Joyce!”
She emerged from the shadows behind the back and walked toward us. There we stood and watched, warmed by the flames that ignited the Shump farmhouse and devoured centuries of old wood and evil deeds within minutes.
“Knock-knock.” Joyce’s voice was quiet beside me.
I hesitated, then answered. “Who’s there?”
“Closure.”
I turned and chuckled. “Closure, who?”
“Closure mouth while you chew.” Joyce smiled, her eyes wet and her face orange in the firelight, as the sound of sirens rose in the distance.
Submitted during round 1 of NYC Midnight’s 2021 Short Story Challenge.
Prompts:
Genre – Ghost story
Theme – A home renovation
Character – An exchange student
Photo by Carlos de Miguel on Unsplash
