Читать книгу Finding the Sun Through the Clouds - Dawnmarie Deshaies - Страница 24

Chapter 19

The Haunted House

Robert sold his company to another software company, and following his sale, we were moving to New York. We lived in this little town called Port Jefferson. We moved in to a little house right across from a beautiful Catholic church. This house was perfectly charming. The house had a wraparound white porch with two rocking chairs next to the front door. It was a light baby-blue color with white shutters. It sat on a small hill and had trees and flowers all over the front of the porch. There was also a graveyard in our backyard, where the church would bury the people who had passed away. I didn’t think much about it at that time.

We unpacked and settled into a new house and adventure once again. There were only one bedroom and a guest room upstairs. I made that my closet. The funny part of this faux guest room was the location of the sink and toilet taking up so much room in this minimal space. The roof of the house was one side of this space, so thank goodness I am only five feet, two inches. If I were any taller, I would’ve hit my head every day just trying to get dressed for the day. I would have been the perfect fourth member of the Three Stooges. The full bathroom was downstairs to the side of the den. Robert’s office was set up near that. It had an old bathtub with claw-feet. In the corner was a makeshift shower with a shower curtain alongside the sink that was original to the home.

The floors in the house were all original as well, except the kitchen floor; it was tile. After settling in to our home, Robert and I started to get to know the small town and all the roads. Soon after that, I started working right away. I would drive into the big city every day. I transferred from my current job at Victoria’s Secret in California to another Victoria’s Secret in New York. I was a store manager once again. My team was amazing, and the store was doing so well. The one thing that was always a hassle for me was the drive. The traffic in NYC is like a personal hell for anybody who drives those roads. Some days, I would listen to books on tape. This made my drive much easier for me. I did love seeing all the changes in the weather again in California. We had differences of climate, but nothing like the East Coast; this was refreshing to me at first. From seeing the first rusted leaf fall, to the first glistening of snow, and then the shimmering of rain during the early spring, the East Coast always was full of pleasant change.

On most days after work, I would drive home and the weather was pretty normal since the time Robert and I moved in. However, there will always be one drive home that I always will remember. It was a rainy day, so the traffic was backed up to the city edges. It was insane! Even as my car crawled its way home, the wind was thrashing and blowing my car all over the road. I was driving a Honda Accord at that time; it was dark green and had a tan interior. I’ve always had cars with colors that would cheer me up, especially when I was stressed out. When I look at brightly colored vehicles, my mood increases 1,000 percent or some ridiculous number like that. Anyways, that night, I got home and the entire sky was like something out of a horror film. The rain was falling, the wind was blowing waves of fury, and I was terrified. Every noise I heard scared the living hell out of me. I was walking up the stairs to the front door of my home when lighting struck the tree directly across the street. That scared the shit out of me, and I ran into the house. As I stumbled inside, I found the power was out, because the lights obviously weren’t working. This sounds like I’m about to be set up like any victim in a horror flick, right? Just wait. I went into the kitchen and looked for the flashlight so I could see where I was going. I found it and then pulled out some candles. I proceeded to light them and put one in the living room, one in the den, and one in the kitchen.

The house felt cold and desolate, void of life. Robert was on his way home from a long week of working in Boston. To make matters slower, he drove instead of flying. I was definitely going to be “Friday the thirteenthed” now. I called him when he was on the ferry coming back from Boston to Port Jefferson and told him the storm was terrible. As I tried to hold back my terror, I spoke into the phone, saying, “Robert, the wind and trees are swinging all over, a-a-and we don’t have electricity. I’m kind of scared.” Knowing very well I was absolutely petrified. The house was super creepy and was making lots of unnerving noises. Every room in the house seemed unfriendly and emotionless. I remember sitting in the living room and thinking to myself, This house is definitely haunted.

As I sat there, my thoughts imagining the most horrific endings imaginable, Robert arrived home two hours after our call. I was so happy he was back with me. I told him the house was haunted; he just laughed and said I was letting my imagination run wild. I felt much calmer with Robert in the house. We talked about our workweek, and we were both exhausted, so we went to bed. In the middle of the night, as Robert and I were sleeping, I heard someone at the front door screaming, “Let me in!” Again, this scared the shit out of me. I could not get any relief, it seemed. Robert confronted the man at the door and told him to leave. The man refused to go, so we had to call the police. The very next day, Robert called the local alarm company to come out and install a security system in the house. I was praying this would make me feel better.

Robert traveled all the time, and I was commuting back and forth to work. I drove over four hours each day to work and home. This alone was so stressful. Work made me happy and gave me purpose. I truly loved my job, and being surrounded by beautiful things all day made it all the better for yours truly. How could one not be happy? I was working with women and selling them sexy lingerie to make them feel confident and beautiful. That was the essence of Victoria’s Secret, and I loved every minute of my job. The women I worked with daily all had one another’s back. It was long hours and weekends, but it kept me busy and entertained. So on my days off, I started to explore the town. It was like going back in time. All the houses were old, and so were all the cities around us. I would visit the little shops and walk around the small villages in Stony Brook. The name of the small town we lived in was Port Jefferson. It was an incorporated village in the town of Brookhaven in Suffix County, New York, on the north shore of Long Island. Officially known as the Village of Port Jefferson, it had a population of 7,750. Port Jefferson was first settled in the seventeenth century, so this small town had some deep history, and so did our house.

When Robert was out of town on business, I didn’t like being in the house by myself. Some of you reading this part of my story may think, “Wow, she really is crazy!” and I wouldn’t blame your for thinking such things. I would hear noises all the time, like someone walking up and down the stairs and hallway, even when I was the only one in the house. Every room was always super cold even with the heat on blast. This house gave me the jeepers creepers. When we moved in to the house, there were so many locks on every door of our home. We both thought this was crazy; there were five kinds of locks on every door, and the windows were all old as well. The only remodel the house had even been through was the kitchen. It had one of those old, scary basements like Norman Bates’s house. Don’t even get me started on the creaks and noises while going down the stairs. They were old and spaced far between one another. Every time I had to go downstairs, the movie Carrie by Brian De Palma would play in my head, and I could imagine a hand coming up and grabbing me. On the first day moving in to the house, I moved some boxes of Christmas stuff down to the basement. It had a dirt floor, but it was the ground itself. The bricks stacked underneath were holding up the house, so we couldn’t even get rid of it.

I really hated this basement. When I was down there, I seriously thought to myself that I could feel negative energy all around me. Not only was the basement freezing all the time, but I would hear weird noises behind the stairwell as well. When Robert traveled, I never wanted to go home, because the house really scared me.

I always felt like someone was watching me. I was having all the phantom pains all over my body and continued to think I was going crazy. So to make me feel more comfortable at home, we decided to get a German shepherd. We named him Zeus, after the Greek god of Olympus. He was so adorable and fluffy. He was colored black and light tan and was a bucketful of energy. We took him to puppy-training classes in town. Robert did most of the training because Zeus listened to him more than me. I still totally loved having him around me; even when he was a little brat, his warmth and playfulness made me feel safe. Zeus was like a fluffier and smaller Robert. Every day, when I would leave for work, Zeus would stay in the kitchen. We put up a puppy gate for him so he could roam a little bit without feeling too cramped. The funny thing was that Zeus would always bark at the basement door and the hallway adjacent to Robert’s office.

When Robert was gone on overnight trips, Zeus would sleep in the bed with me. I remember one night, when Zeus stood at the entrance to the hallway and growled, the hair standing up across his back; he was in full protection mode because obviously something was there, lurking in the dark. I knew there was something wrong with this house, and I could feel every inch of it. I had always had a good sense of understanding the waves of energy emitted by my surroundings and the people I surrounded myself with even when I was a little girl. I could feel when someone was a bad or good person. Call it a gut feeling. I have always relied on this throughout my entire life, and I’m pretty sure I’m 98 percent right all the time. I know that something terrible happened in this house.

There was a day when I had two days off from work. I remember taking Zeus for a walk up the hill behind my house. The graveyard for the church was also located there. Zeus didn’t like it there, and I didn’t either, and before I knew it, Zeus had taken off. I couldn’t hold the leash. He went running down the street, and I chased after him. My legs felt so weak, and they came out from under me. I fell and started to cry. I had scratches all over my legs and hips. Thankfully, someone up the street saw me fall and went after Zeus and brought him back to me. We went back home, and I cleaned up all the cuts all over my legs. I took some Tylenol and lay down. I called Robert and told him what had happened. We laughed on the phone together, I even through the stinging pain. He could always make me laugh. I really missed Robert every time he would have to travel, but at least I had Zeus to keep me company. Although I had Zeus with me, I remember I was playing with him after work one night when he started to bark at the staircase again. This sent an immediate red flag through my body. I was shaking with fear as I imagined a grotesque face staring at me, even though nothing was there.

Robert would laugh at me every time I told him my stories, except they weren’t just stories. There was one day when after I came home from work, Zeus was going crazy. He was barking at nothing—well, nothing I could see, at least. He ran to me rapidly, like he was protecting me from someone. I said to him, “Zeus, it’s okay, darling,” and began to pet him to calm him down. I got his ball and thought he would chase after it but stopped suddenly as the ball rolled down the hallway. Zeus started barking again, and the hair stood on his back like sharp blades. Then suddenly, the ball came rolling back down the hallway by itself. Now, I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I might have peed myself a little at this point. There was a step in the middle of the hallway, so there was no way the ball could roll back without hopping a few steps backward. It was Zeus and me, alone, in the devil’s residence. I was trembling, like rocks falling from a cliff, and it felt like I was going to shit myself. But I didn’t. I called Zeus to come to me, but he wouldn’t stop barking in the hallway. There was something in the house, and it wasn’t an entity I wanted to be around with. It was malevolent, and Zeus could see it. I reached for Zeus with great hesitation and pulled him into the living room. I was so scared. I thought, Shit, something is going to appear from the hallway, and I am going to scream in terror! I made Zeus sit next to me on the couch until Robert got home.

Robert doesn’t believe in “ghosts.” Robert’s brother, Donald, did, though. So Donald moved in with us while he was searching for some new work. This made things easier for me, and he loved Zeus. Donald would take care of him in the long days when I was working. If Robert was out of town, I had a company to talk to as well. I remember one night, we were watching TV and Zeus started barking at the stairwell. I asked Donald if he thought the house was haunted. After all the stories I shared with him, Donald concurred that there was something haunted about this house. He, too, could feel specific energies around himself, so he was just as sensitive to the changes in the house as I was. Validation at last! I would talk to Donald about my anxiety and nervousness when I was in the house alone. He was the brother I had always wanted, and he understood where I was deriving my feelings from. We talked about the phantoms haunting me since I was a late teenager, and he reassured me that I was not going crazy. Like Jenna, he suspected the doctors were missing something. This helped my confidence out a lot. I was being assaulted internally by my own phantoms and externally by whatever was in the house.

Robert’s mother, Judith, came for a visit one weekend from Massachusetts. She thought the house was cute, but also had strange feelings when stepping inside. The three of us, Donald, Judith, and I, all thought the house was haunted. It was built in the early 1800s and was located next to a damn graveyard. Who knows what could have happened in the house or near the property? For all I knew, the house could be sitting on ancient Native American burial grounds. I remember going to the library and looking up deaths in our home. It said that people have passed away in the house, but I couldn’t find anything about any murders in the house. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.