The Haunted Read online

  “Bentley Little keeps the high-tension jolts coming.”

  —Stephen King

  “On a par with such greats as Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Peter Straub.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Praise for the Novels

  of Bentley Little

  The Academy

  “A tightly allegorical piece of horror.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Vanishing

  “A plethora of gore and perversion.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Burning

  “Stephen King–size epic horror.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Dispatch

  “Little has the unparalleled ability to evoke surreal, satiric terror … should not be missed.”

  —Horror Reader

  The Resort

  “An explicitly repulsive yet surrealistically sad tale of everyday horror.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Policy

  “A chilling tale.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Return

  “A master of horror on par with Koontz and King … so powerful that readers will keep the lights on day and night.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “If there’s a better horror novelist working today, I don’t know who it is.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  The Collection

  “A must-have for the author’s fans.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Little’s often macabre, always sharp tales are snippets of everyday life given a creepy twist.”

  —Booklist

  The Association

  “Haunting … terrifying … graphic and fantastic … will stick with readers for a long time. Just enough sex, violence, and Big Brother rhetoric to make this an incredibly credible tale.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Walking

  “Wonderful, fast-paced, rock-’em, jolt-’em, shock-’em contemporary terror fiction with believable characters and an unusually clever plot. Highly entertaining.”

  —Dean Koontz

  “Bentley Little’s The Walking is the horror event of the year. If you like spooky stories, you must read this book.”

  —Stephen King

  “The Walking is a waking nightmare. A spellbinding tale of witchcraft and vengeance. Scary and intense.”

  —Michael Prescott, author of In Dark Places

  “Flowing seamlessly between time and place, the Bram Stoker Award–winning author’s ability to transfix his audience … is superb … terrifying. [The Walking] has the potential to be a major sleeper.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Little possesses the uncanny ability to take everyday situations and turn them into nightmares.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  The Ignored

  “This is Bentley Little’s best book yet. Frightening, thought provoking, and impossible to put down.”

  —Stephen King

  “A singular achievement by a writer who makes the leap from the ranks of the merely talented to true distinction with this book. This one may become a classic.”

  —DarkEcho

  “Little is so wonderful that he can make the act of ordering a Coke at McDonald’s take on a sinister dimension. This philosophical soul searcher is provocative.”

  —Fangoria

  The Revelation

  Winner of the Bram Stoker Award

  “I guarantee, once you start reading this book, you’ll be up until dawn with your eyes glued to the pages. A nail-biting, throat squeezing, nonstop plunge into darkness and evil.”

  —Rick Hautala

  The Store

  “Frightening.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  The Mailman

  “A thinking person’s horror novel. The Mailman delivers.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  University

  “By the time I finished, my nerves were pretty well fried, and I have a pretty high shock level. University is unlike anything else in popular fiction.”

  —Stephen King

  ALSO BY BENTLEY LITTLE

  The Disappearance

  His Father’s Son

  The Academy

  The Vanishing

  The Burning

  Dispatch

  The Resort

  The Policy

  The Return

  The Collection

  The Association

  The Walking

  The Town

  The House

  The Store

  The Ignored

  The Revelation

  University

  Dominion

  The Mailman

  Death Instinct

  THE

  HAUNTED

  Bentley Little

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

  Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, April 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Bentley Little, 2012

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-101-58018-9

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of
the author’s rights is appreciated.

  THE

  HAUNTED

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Epilogue

  One

  “They’re here again, Dad.”

  Julian came out of the kitchen, coffee cup in hand, and walked across the living room to where his son, James, was holding on to the edge of the curtains, peeking through the crack and out the front window. Julian reached for the cord to pull open the drapes.

  “What are you doing?” James cried, panicked. He flattened against the wall so as not to be seen.

  Ignoring him, Julian opened the drapes. Sure enough, three skateboarders were on their driveway, one of them flipping his board into the air and then landing on it, the other two preparing to race down the sloping concrete to the street. It was the second time in two days that this had happened, and though theirs was the only driveway on the street not blocked by permanently parked cars or pickups (their vehicles went in the garage), that didn’t give neighborhood punks the right to use it as their own personal skate park. Angry, he started toward the front door.

  “Don’t go outside, Dad. Please!”

  “Get some ’nads,” Megan told him. She was sitting on the couch watching TV—a tween show on the Disney Channel—and she smiled derisively at her brother before turning back to her program. The two of them fought constantly, and even before Claire had become pregnant with James, Julian had known this would happen. He and his brother had battled throughout their entire childhood, especially during the teenage years, when his dad would sometimes have to break up honest-to-God fistfights. They still didn’t get along today. But Claire had read in some parenting book that it was better for siblings to be near in age, and she insisted that if they were going to have two children, the kids had to be spaced twelve to fourteen months apart. “That way,” she told him, “they’ll be closer. And when they grow up, they’ll be friends.” She’d since seen the error of her ways, although, of course, she would never admit that she’d been wrong.

  “Did you hear what she said?” James cried, pointing at his sister.

  “I heard. Megan, knock it off,” Julian admonished.

  She snickered.

  “Megan,” he warned.

  “Ground her!” James said.

  Julian opened the front door. “Both of you. Stop.” Walking outside, he closed the door behind him. On the driveway, the three teenage boys were spinning in circles, the backs of their boards scraping the ground, the fronts thrusting proudly in the air. He recognized one of them as Tom Willet’s kid from down the street, and though he didn’t know the other two boys, they were the same ones he’d had to kick off his property yesterday. “Excuse me!” he said loudly.

  The Willet boy glanced casually over at him, spinning around. “Hey, dude, where are your daughters?” He stressed the plural, laughing, and Julian hoped James wasn’t listening.

  “Get off my driveway.”

  The three skateboarders ignored him.

  “Now.”

  “Make us.” The Willet kid stared back defiantly, still spinning.

  Julian felt a hot rush of anger course through him, though he knew the boy had him trapped. He could yell at the skateboarders until his voice was hoarse, but if they didn’t listen, there was nothing he could do, since any attempt he made to physically remove them would have their parents calling the cops and filing assault charges. A middle solution suddenly came to him and, without saying a word, he walked over to the faucet at the end of Claire’s flower bed, turned on the water and picked up the hose. He twisted the nozzle three clicks, from “shower” to “jet,” and squeezed the trigger handle. A stream of water hit first one skateboard, then the others, as he swung his arm from side to side. He aimed higher, and the water shot into the boys’ legs.

  The skateboarders started yelling.

  “Hey!”

  “What are you doing?”

  “What the hell?”

  “I’m hosing off my driveway,” he said calmly.

  The boys quickly boarded down the driveway to the sidewalk.

  “You squirted us!”

  “On purpose!”

  “I’m hosing off my driveway,” he repeated. “You happened to be in the way.” He smiled. “I told you to leave,” he said innocently.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Douche!”

  Middle fingers raised in defiance, the kids sped away, racing down the sidewalk. Still smiling, Julian remained where he was for several minutes, until he was sure that the skateboarders were gone and not coming back. Finally, he walked over to the flower bed, turned off the faucet, switched the nozzle back to “shower” and drained the rest of the water, dripping the last of it onto Claire’s chrysanthemums.

  When he walked back into the house, James was grinning. “That was great, Dad!”

  He smiled back at his son. “That’s my job.”

  Claire was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, looking concerned. “I don’t like this,” she said.

  Julian nodded, saying nothing, not having to. They’d talked about the situation before. It wasn’t just the teenagers. It was everything. The entire neighborhood was going downhill. There’d been several foreclosures over the past few years, and more than half of the houses were now rentals. The kids who lived in them were much rougher than the kids who had been there before.

  “Maybe we should move,” Claire suggested.

  He’d been thinking along the same lines, though he’d hesitated to bring it up. Claire was sentimental, and not only was this the house they’d picked out together when they’d moved to Jardine, but both Megan and James had spent their entire lives in this place. There were a lot of memories here. The neighborhood was getting bad, however, and despite the terrible economy, their family was actually in pretty good financial shape right now. He and Claire were both employed, their house was worth much more than when they’d bought it fifteen years ago, and if they were ever going to move, this was probably the time to do it. There were bargains to be had, and they were in the fortunate position of being able to take advantage of that.

  “I think we could do it if we wanted to,” Julian said.

  “No!” Megan shouted, overhearing the discussion. “I don’t want to move!”

  “I do,” James said.

  Julian looked over at his son, and their eyes met. A wave of sympathy washed over him. The past few years had been hard on the boy. Due to budget cuts, school boundary lines had been changed, and at the start of fifth grade, James had been plopped down in a new school, where he didn’t know anyone and where he hadn’t really made any friends. The year before, his two best buddies, Omar and Logan, had moved: Omar to Phoenix, where his dad had gotten a job, and Logan to Santa Fe, to live with his grandmother when his dad had lost his job. His other friend, Robbie, was still around, but Robbie was enrolled in a series of camps this summer because both of his parents worked and he needed someone to watch him during the day. So, since school let out, James had been spending most of his time alone, indoors, on the computer or in f
ront of the television.

  Julian could relate to his son’s situation. He was out of his element as well. He’d grown up in California, in a large metropolitan area, and he’d moved here only because this was where Claire wanted to live. She was from Jardine, and since her parents were getting older, her sister lived here and many of her childhood friends had remained behind to work or get married or both, she’d been longing to return for as long as they’d known each other. As a Web designer, he could work anywhere, and after what had happened had … happened, after he’d quit his job at Automated Interface and gone freelance, after she’d decided to leave the Los Angeles law firm where she worked in order to set up her own private practice, he’d finally agreed to move to New Mexico with her. It meant downsizing their lifestyle, but they were both still young, and if they weren’t willing to take a chance now, when would they be?

  Unfortunately, Jardine didn’t offer quite the bucolic rural experience he’d expected. He’d pictured himself waking up to the sound of birdsong and walking downtown with his laptop to sip flavored coffee at a cute café next to an art gallery on a tree-lined street. But the city was bigger than he’d thought it would be and resembled one of the lesser Los Angeles suburbs more than the cinematic country burg he’d imagined.

  He wasn’t unhappy, though, and he realized that, with two kids, their family would probably have exactly the same sort of lifestyle no matter where they lived.

  “I like it here,” Megan whined. “I don’t want to live somewhere else.”

  “We’re not moving,” Claire reassured her daughter. “We’re just talking.”

  But it was more than just talk, and that night in bed when Julian brought it up again, Claire admitted that she’d actually gone online the other day to look up available local properties. “I wasn’t really looking,” she said. “It was more like … browsing. I was just checking to see what was out there. No real reason. But …” She let the thought trail off.