The People in the Rickety House

By Lani Lenore

By age 17, Leah has lost everything.
Her mother left three years ago and has not been heard from since. She is at risk of losing her relationship with her younger sister, Tabitha, who suffers from injuries that Leah blames herself for. Not only has she lost her family, but her home. After their father’s unexplained suicide, the girls are sent to live with their reclusive aunt, Claire, who seems to live as far from civilization as a person can get.
They are sent to the rickety house.

While dealing with the idea of her father’s death and her mother’s absence, tolerating her handicapped sister as well as her despondent aunt, Leah finds out that there may be more to the old house than she suspected. She begins to find letters and photographs that tell of the family who used to live in the house, and her interest is drawn in further when she finds she can communicate with the ghost of a teenage boy through a window in the attic. In order to distract herself from her own troubled life, she delves fully into his, trying to uncover the mystery of his death in the house – but it remains to be seen how that will affect her own sanity, or if she will lose what little of her own life she has left.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lani Lenore
• Release date: Mar 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301018451

Lani Lenore

Lani Lenore is a writer of gothic horrors and dark fantasies. In addition to rewriting well-known fairytales with a twist, she also writes original stories in a style she calls 'dark fairytale', which uses fairytale elements to build horror and fantasy stories. Most of her tales, though horror, have a subplot of romance. She loves to immerse readers in worlds of beauty and horror.

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The People in the Rickety House

by Lani Lenore

Text copyright 2010-2013 Lani Lenore

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

Preview of Roses and Black Glass: a dark Cinderella tale

Prologue

As Leah slept, she dreamed a familiar dream.

Darkness and fog were thick around her as she trudged up the drive to the rickety house. A harsh wind was blowing against her, pushing her back, but she knew that she had to reach the porch. That was her focus.

The big, bad wolf is in the woods, she thought. Reaching the house will save me.

When she was finally on the porch, she felt relief. The doorknob was neither cold nor warm, but she felt it in her grasp. Without turning the knob, she was able to push the door open by the simple weight of her hand.

It's already open. Someone has been here.

The creak of the hinges was long and loud, like a cat’s yowl of warning. She could not heed to any possible danger, however. Leah stepped inside, onto the scarred wooden floor.

The interior of the house was as dim and sparse as she remembered. The wide, open room beyond the door held only a couch, a chair, and an old TV on the far end. The furniture was like a group of outcasts communing around a fire, sorrowfully recollecting better days.

I’ll bet dead soldiers don’t care for TV, she thought without much feeling, but soon lost that musing as she recalled why she had come here – why she had come so far in the pouring rain that had just started up outside.

Mom?

She called out into the bowels of the house. The silence was so deep that her voice was enough to send a shock through it, even startling her own ears when it looped through the hallways and returned to her. The lingering amount of her voice was absorbed by the distant walls and rooms, where monsters devoured it.

Leah waited patiently, but no answer returned from her mother, or anyone at all. Why had her mother come to this place, and did Leah herself even know where she was? Of course; how could she forget the house she'd feared when she was young, which was so drafty and foreign? Gulping cool air and warm saliva forcefully down her throat, Leah raised her voice once again.

Mom? Are you here? The rain snickered behind her, amused by her desperation. I came here to find you.

There was only silence stirring in the house, twisting and curling until it nearly hissed against itself. The girl pushed back her damp hair and pressed farther, leaving wet footprints on the hardwood from the bottom of her sneakers – little puddles that shone like rainbows. She did not close the door to shut out the rain. Somehow, the sound of it consoled her against the deep nothingness she was headed into.

She did not search the bedroom to the right, but passed across the entrance room to a doorway at the far end where the furniture stood. The square space beyond was small and cramped, with boxes piled about, stacked to the ceiling. Leah had the sensation that she had shrunken suddenly. She was Alice after sipping on tonic. Everything was oversized. The boxes would soon fall down on her if she did not leave this room. In fact, they were already beginning to teeter just from the force of her breath. The kitchen was in front of her; there was a hallway to her right and she did not know which way she wanted to go. Leah did not have time to make her own choice.

Leah! Over here!

The high-pitched voice propelled downward, rattling the crooked chandelier above, making the crystals tap together musically. They played Brahms. The boxes were jolted until they seemed ready to tumble, and though Leah feared that they would fall, they did not. The call had come from down the hallway where, around the corner, the stairs led upward. The voice that had called her was familiar, but it was not her mother.

Tabitha… Why is she here? Leah wondered.

She moved down the hallway, burdened with heavy feet that weighed a hundred pounds each. When she reached the stairs, she saw the one who had called to her. Standing upright on the banister with her bare feet curved like talons that held her steady to the rail, was Tabitha. The younger girl peered down at her sibling triumphantly, holding a crutch in front of her like a balancing rod. She was a tightrope walker in a playtime circus.

Look at me! Tabitha beamed, her short black hair hanging across her forehead wildly – like in former days when she was an active daredevil.

Tabitha, you’re going to get hurt, Leah warned, though she heard no emotion in her own voice. She knew too many of her sister’s ways to have hope of changing her now. The girl was a risk-taker – fearless. Tabitha shifted from one foot to the other, the braces that supported her knees rattling and clanging as they smacked together.

Don’t be so boring. Come play with me, Leah! Tabitha insisted, doing a strange dance. It looked fun, but Leah wasn’t a child anymore. She had to be strict, because she was the one in charge today.

No, Tabby. I’m looking for mom. You should too.

You won’t find her, the child sulked, but quickly let the matter go. She spread her arms and began to wave them as a bird in flight.

Get down from there, Leah scolded. You know you can’t fly.

You can’t tell me what to do! cried Tabitha, her face twisted with indignation. "You’re not my mother!"

An instant after the harsh shout had come from her mouth, Tabitha began to twist and reel. The girl had lost her balance. Her weak legs with their helpful braces would no longer hold her up on the banister, and her flapping arms could not muster flight. She was a baby bird about to plummet from the branch.

She’s going to fall, Leah realized. It will be my fault. I can’t disappoint dad again.

Leah tried to move her legs and feet in an effort to catch her unsteady sister, but she could not move. Tabitha fell forward through the musty air and Leah stretched out her arms in a last desperate attempt, but could do nothing. At the moment before the cracking of bones was expected, the younger girl gasped and disappeared into the floor like dust through the cracks. She was gone, and there was nothing left of her.

Leah stood still, struggling to control her breath after her sister’s abrupt vanishing act – but was able to forget the entire ordeal when a noise from the second floor drew her attention.

Mom? The next sound in Leah’s ears was that of her own feet pounding against the stairs as she carried herself up.

Three sections of steps led her to the top of the enclosed stairwell and onto the second floor. She looked around anxiously, but there was no one she could see. The landing was a large open space, but there were several rooms around her. She was sure her mother was in one of them. Pausing, she listened for the sound she had heard to repeat itself. It was an unnatural buzz from some otherworldly creature, a repetitive and steady mating call.

Where are you, mom? I’m here to bring you home.

Leah rushed to the first door in her sight and wrapped her hands around the knob. The strange sound she’d heard was coming from behind this door, growing louder.

There’s someone inside.

Mom! Twisting the knob did no good, and pressing her weight into the solid old wood was of little help.

Let me in! the girl cried frantically, feeling much like the child she’d claim she no longer was. "Why are you hiding? Why did you leave us, mom? Mom!"

Her fists pounded on the door, exerting all the rage and confusion that had been pent up inside her for so long. She had to get inside – to confront this! She had to know why!

Beneath her ferocious effort, she heard a small click as the door was unlocked from the inside, and she did not waste a single moment in putting her hand to the knob again.

Leah opened the door as the sound grew louder and more insistent to her ears.

There was no one there.

***

Chapter One

The sharp, jabbing buzz of the alarm clock stung Leah until she came out of her dream, but did not stop until she became fully aware of where she had been. Her hand drifted along the tabletop to halt the torture, and when she had stopped the alarm, her head was free to rest back on the pillow in soothing silence. She sighed, safe in her own bed with the blue and white damask sheets, and she began to breathe easier.

A dream. Just a dream.

She wiped her matted eyes and stretched out her legs, but though she had come back to her reality, things were not right in Leah’s world.

What day is it? she wondered, just as lost now as she had been in her sleep. After some thought, she recalled that it was Tuesday – which would make it the 154th Tuesday since her mother had been gone, and nothing had been the same since. It had been another night of terrible dreams – she’d had variations of this particular dream several times – and yet nothing new had been revealed to her.

Rising up, Leah pushed back the blankets and put her legs over the side of the bed, ready to pry herself up. Faint sunlight was shining in from the translucent drapes over the window and a gentle breeze was rustling the leaves outside. It was another summer day. There was no reason for her to have set her alarm, no reason to rise so early, but she’d decided weeks ago that she wasn’t going to waste her break by sleeping all day.

I will not turn into a pile of dough over the summer, she'd resolved, though often found herself wondering why she bothered to get up at all. It was harder every day.

Giving her body a little push, she rose up from her sunken mattress and crossed over to her dresser, where she recovered a pair of shorts and a white tee to cover the underwear she’d slept in. That done, she went into the adjoining bathroom that she shared with her sister. Tabitha would not be awake yet. The younger girl liked to stay up until early morning and then sleep the day away, which didn’t bother Leah much. Tabitha was easily bored and desperate for company, but the older sister did not mind being alone. Solitude was quiet. It was not judgmental.

The tiles of the bathroom were cold to her feet. In fact, everything was cold – the toilet seat, the faucet handle, and the water she used to wash her hands – despite the heights of temperature outside the house. That had always amazed her about the little white room. There had been times when she’d felt sick or anxious and she’d only to press her cheek against the cool floor to feel relief. She'd spent hours here in the cold silence, listening to her own thoughts. Sometimes they whispered back to her.

Leah dried her hands with a lavender hand towel and looked up, catching herself in the mirror. She was glad to see that the little pimple on her chin was starting to vanish. She fluffed her wavy hair, examined the shape of her lips and eyes. People had always told her that she looked like her mother, and on some days – like today as she was still under the influence of the dream – she would notice the resemblance herself. In the past, she had thought little of it, but now it never failed to upset her.

She was in the dark, left with a hint of the woman who was only a shadow in her memory.

Though Leah felt she was old enough to know the circumstances of her mother’s departure, her father had only been vague concerning it. She’d been told that her parents had gotten into a terrible fight – about what was still unclear – and in the night while her father was asleep on the couch, her mother had walked out of their lives. The woman had only taken a few things with her when she’d fled so suddenly, which had led them to assume that she would return. She was only angry and needed time to cool down. Leah had tried calling her, but she hadn't answered.

Days passed and they didn't hear from her. No one else seemed to know where she had gone. Janet West had fled, and she had not tried to contact them since. It had been nearly three years. Leah was troubled by the situation – and there were the dreams – but she had learned, not to cope, but to simply exist in this world of broken family.

Okay, it’s time to move, she told herself quietly with a sigh. Saying it aloud seemed to give the words more weight. Time to face the day.

Leah turned away from her own reflection. She was determined not to depress herself. Instead, she tried to focus on planning the day. She’d check her email; maybe she’d try to work on the short story she’d been writing. Perhaps she’d go for a run before it got too hot out. Her room could use a bit of organizing. Later she’d read, or even call her friend, Miranda, and go to a movie. A constructive and active summer: that’s what she wanted and, for that to happen, there could be no prolonged periods of depression.

Those things decided, Leah went back to her room and sat down at her computer. She checked her messages, but there was nothing interesting. After that, she opened her story file, read over about half a paragraph of what she’d already written and then closed it out again. She wasn’t in the mood to write.

Maybe I’ll go for that run, she decided. She’d told herself that she would exercise this summer, but hadn’t gone any farther than the deck out back where the smooth, blue surface of the pool twinkled at her. Leah wasn’t much of a runner, and in fact the run would probably turn out to be a walk, or at best a sporadic jog. She wasn’t a heavy girl, but any effort helped to alleviate the guilt of cookies and chips.

She pulled her sneakers out from under the edge of the bed, put them on and laced them up. She was –

- calling for her mother in an old house, searching frantically, knowing the woman was close but unable to find her.

Leah shook her head. She began to wonder if she would make it through the day without upsetting herself.

Get over it, Leah, she coached. She tied her shoe a bit too tight and had to start again. You’ve had three years to get over it. She’s not coming back. You may as well forget her.

If Janet West had wanted to stay with her family, she would have. If she had wanted to be here in this house, she would have been. All she had to do was come back, but obviously she did not have that desire. For unknown reasons, she had stopped caring about them, and it may have been her father’s fault, but it was not Leah’s own. She had to tell herself that, though she had often wondered if her mother had left them for another family – a man who didn’t work so much with kids of his own – that Leah’s mother had decided to take on instead. Perhaps her mother had replaced her with another daughter who hadn’t refused to take piano lessons, who did a better job of looking after her younger siblings…

Shaking her head shortly, she disrupted the thoughts like flies collected on a rotten fruit. Leah stood up and grabbed her iPod. Some exercise would do her good and something upbeat in her ears was sure to keep the terrible thoughts away.

Guess I’ll go say hi to dad first. I wonder if he’ll respond today.

Leah could not deny that she missed her mother, and even though her father was only a few doorways down, she missed him too. The woman had disappeared like a vapor, but it may as well have been her father’s soul that had escaped. He had been increasingly low ever since – a slowly-evaporating well.

Someone once said that time heals all wounds, but Leah didn’t believe that anymore. The wounds in this house had only festered over time, but perhaps that was because none of them could stop picking at the scabs. This was definitely true for Leah’s father. He’d been a fairly successful writer once, but hadn’t turned out anything new in what seemed like ages. He spent his days shut up in his office in front of his laptop, but Leah didn’t think he ever wrote a word - or perhaps he produced stories of anger or sorrow-filled thoughts all day long. She couldn’t say. All Leah knew for certain was that if it were not for Mrs. Lowery, their housekeeper, she and Tabitha would have lived the neglected lives of orphans.

Moving down the hallway past her sister’s room, Leah approached the door on the end, where her father had made his study. It was a small space compared to other rooms in the house, but Dave West had always liked it for that. He’d joked that he could write faster when he felt that the walls were closing in on him. He had made a lot of observations before – some witty, some philosophical. Now he hardly said anything at all.

I had a weird dream last night, dad. I dreamed I was in Aunt Claire’s house and I was looking for mom. It was terrible. I couldn’t find her. Please tell me that it’s okay now.

But Leah would not say those things that were on her mind, because she would not receive the comfort she sought from the man who was hardly there.

Leah tapped lightly on the door, but didn’t wait for a response before gripping the knob. Her knock wasn’t a request for entry, but a polite warning. She did not wait to be welcomed. Unlocked, the door came open according to her guidance.

Morning, dad, she said, leaning in against the doorframe lazily.

She hadn’t gathered the air to speak – hadn’t guessed she would need it – but she quickly forgot how to breathe.

Inside her chest, her lungs collapsed. Later, Leah would remember the feel of the doorknob more than anything else, and the way that her hand was frozen to it, hot but yet damp with cold sweat.

Her father’s body hung suspended before her from the light fixture, now torn from the ceiling and hanging by wires and ripped screws. The bulbs strained to blink, dying as well, not receiving the proper flow from their wire guts.

This isn't real… No, no; it can't be…

Leah stared wide-eyed for what seemed like hours. Her father’s eyes were open, watching her reaction, and she could not break her stare into his dead eyes. She saw the way his tongue was hanging out from his sagging lips, more expressionless than she had seen him in past days. The blue hue of his face made him look like a different man, and then Leah decided that he was. Yes, this was not her father. Some depressed stranger had hung himself in the house her father had built.

Finally, she breathed again, though shallowly, and she did the only thing she knew to do. Leah backed up out of the room, beyond the threshold, and pulled the door shut once again.

She was blank, in shock. She wandered back to her room absently. Her heart was pounding but her breath was calm as she lifted her cell phone and called 911. She would never remember what she’d told them.

After that, she sat on the edge of the bed with the blue and white sheets, and waited. She did not think of Tabitha snoozing away in the next room. She did not think of anything, but there was a rhyme running through her head, playing in an endless loop. Her brain focused on that as her fists gripped the mattress and she stared forward at the wall.

London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down…

Even as the paramedics rushed through the house, calling out for her and for each other, she was not disturbed. Even as she heard Tabitha’s voice demanding to know what was happening, she did not move. Leah’s world had crumbled, collapsing in a personal apocalypse. But how could it be a surprise? This destruction had been set on course long ago.

That bridge had already fallen.

***

Chapter Two

The pictures might as well have had