The Ghosts of Mertland (An Angel Hill novel) Read online

  Horror author C. Dennis Moore returns to the town of Angel Hill, site of his #1 bestselling haunted house novel THE THIRD FLOOR, for another tale in the ongoing saga of this dark and twisted place.

  Mandy is about to start as a caregiver at the Mertland Childrens’ Home in Angel Hill, Missouri, a town that keeps its secrets by hiding them in plain sight. For the Mertland Home, this means ghosts. Word around town is the place is haunted, and for the workers at Mertland, they make no bones about it: it is. There are menacing reflections, the third floor hallway, and a dark force lurking in the woods out back. But if Mandy can keep her wits and remember the rules of dealing with the ghosts, she just might have found her calling.

  However, unbeknownst to Mandy, she’s brought a few ghosts of her own, and when she discovers the truth at the heart of the place, all she wants to do is go home.

  Unfortunately, as her co-worker Lynn tells her, “the building likes you.”

  C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances were in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window and The Third Floor.

  THE GHOSTS OF MERTLAND

  C. Dennis Moore

  Saturday

  Mandy wondered if the little boy with the bright blonde hair and thick black glasses was real, or if he was just another ghost. She watched him across the wide open space of the foyer that separated them. She sat on a bench against the wall outside the office of Mr. Winters while the boy sat at a small table thirty feet away, reading a book.

  She thought he looked real enough, but for all she knew he could just be a phantom, reliving the same few minutes of time over and over.

  Other than the reader, the place seemed surprisingly empty. It smelled like old books and the walls were lined with a deep dark brown wainscoting against high off-white walls, which made the entryway and main hall feel warm and cozy.

  She ran a slender hand through her short, unruly blonde curls, checked her cell phone, telling herself she wanted to check the time, but knowing in her heart she was checking to see if Sam had sent her a text and she’d just not felt the vibration.

  No messages. She held the phone cupped in her left hand, dangling limp from the wrist wedged under the other arm, just waiting. Someone pulled a chair across the floor and it made a loud jerky rumble sound. She looked up and didn’t see where it had come from, but she told herself that just might have been enough of a racket to momentarily cause her not to feel her phone vibrate, so she checked it again.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”

  Sam still hadn’t contacted her.

  Did she expect him to? That last fight had been the one, she knew it. She felt it that night when he walked out. She felt it again when she woke up the next morning after having slept maybe two hours on the couch, her eyes flying open too early to see she was still in her apartment and Sam still wasn’t here. That moment of waking, and the realization that came with it, sent her heart careening out of her chest, down into her stomach, where the two of them then sank further, into a black hole that had formed somewhere near Mandy’s spine.

  She had wished so badly to go back to sleep and dream the last twenty-four hours away, but it hadn’t happened. And she hadn’t heard from him since.

  She had come home a couple of times since then to find he’d been over, little things were missing, things that were his, things he knew she would notice were gone. It was like he was communicating with her without actually doing it. And every time it happened, she cursed herself for missing him again. It got to the point where she wanted to stay in the apartment all day, just waiting for him to show up so she could apologize.

  She hadn’t meant the fight to go that far. She hadn’t meant to fight with him at all, but things just escalated too far too fast and before Mandy knew it, she was single.

  And tired of waiting.

  She looked at her phone again, this time actually checking the time, to find she’d been out here almost fifteen minutes. What in the hell could be taking so long in there?

  She looked over at the reader again and saw he was still there, still at it. She thought about going over to him, see if he would talk to her. She really wanted to know if he was real or not. But the door finally opened and Mr. Winters poked his head around the corner, saw her, and said, “Miss Malone? All ready. Please come in.”

  She thought he had looked at her rather crookedly and she wondered if she had dressed right for the occasion. Surely the cream button down over the khakis was appropriate? Maybe it was black low-top Converse on her feet. That had been force of habit; she told herself to wear dress shoes, but had slipped her feet into the Chucks unconsciously before walking out the door.

  Mandy tossed her phone into her purse, grabbed the straps and followed Mr. Winters into his office. He shook her hand, then closed the door while she sat down in the dark blue vinyl seat across from him. He took his place on the other side of the desk and said, “I’m sorry that took so long. Sometimes I think the official end of things here is even more complicated and hectic than what goes on out there,” and he nodded outside his office. “Oh, and you can have these back,” and he handed over her birth certificate and social security card, which she slid into her purse.

  She had meant to check her phone one last time before coming in. She had to put Sam out of her mind, at least long enough to get through the orientation process. Once things calmed down, she knew her mind would go right back to him, carrying on the same conversations she’d been having with his memory for the last couple of weeks, all the things she wished she’d said. For now, she knew she should welcome the distraction.

  “So, have you ever done this sort of work before?” Mr. Winters asked. Her application lay on the desk in front of him; he could see by her work history she hadn’t. Mandy had worked her way up through the ranks of menial jobs from fast food cashier to the slightly more grand grocery store cashier, then out from behind one keyboard and onto another working in a call center for two years before meeting Sam.

  She shook her head.

  “Not like this, no.”

  He looked at her application again and asked the question she knew was coming.

  “You’ve got quite a gap in your work history. Two years since you left your last job.”

  She nodded. “I was living with someone during that time. He made really good money.” She stopped there, as if that were explanation enough. She cracked her knuckles nervously, a habit she’d fought for years, always in vain. “We’re not together anymore,” she added, closing the book on that section of the Q&A.

  “I see. And what made you apply for this job?”

  Jesus, she had answered all of these questions at her interview. She had the job already. Was all of this necessary?

  “It sounded like something I would not only enjoy doing, but I think I’ll be pretty good at it. I love working with kids, I love being around kids. I used to want to be a teacher, but that didn’t work out.”

  Damn, she shouldn’t have said that; it made it seem like she’d tried and failed when in reality she had simply changed her mind when she met Sam.

  He picked up her application and set it on top of a small pile of other papers, picked them up, tapped them square, and put them into a file folder, then turned to her and asked, “How much do you know about this place?

  “If you mean the ghosts, yes I know about the ghosts.”

  He nodded. That had been exactly what he’d meant.

  “What do you know about them?”

  She sh
rugged. “I don’t know. I know they’re here. I guess I know all the same stories everyone else knows.”

  He waited. He seemed to be expecting her to elaborate, so she said, “Just that there are ghosts in the building, a lot of them.”

  “That doesn’t exactly sound like ‘all the same stories everyone else knows.’ What kind of stories? I don’t get to talk much with people from outside about what they hear goes on here and, well, since this is still just an orientation, you’re still, technically, from outside. I’m curious.”

  Mandy glanced over his shoulder, out the window at the bright Spring Saturday afternoon. It looked like a beautiful day to be outside.

  “I guess the one I hear the most is about the maid who got raped and murdered by the gang of boys.”

  “Carlotta,” Mr. Winters said. “Carlotta Vasquez, although the residents called her Carlotta Valdez.”

  Mandy waited for the rest, but the look on Mr. Winters’s face said he had expected some kind of reaction. Judging by his smirk, she guessed she was supposed to be amused.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t get the reference.”

  “Hitchcock?” Mr. Winters said. “Vertigo? Really? Oh. Well, anyway, she wasn’t a maid--we don’t have maids here; she was one of our older girls, only a few months away from leaving us. She was in the laundry one day. It was before my time, so I never met her personally, but from what I understand one day a few of the older boys cornered her in the laundry room and tried to . . .”

  Mandy nodded, understanding.

  “Anyway, she fought them off and escaped. They chased her through the building, but most everyone else was outside at the time. It was the fourth of July and the fireworks were just beginning to go off, so no one heard her screams. The boys were fast, though, and she couldn’t get near the doors, so she ran upstairs.”

  “Why not just break a window or something?” Mandy asked. “That would have got someone’s attention.”

  Mr. Winters shrugged; he hadn’t been here, he’d said.

  “However it happened, whether she was pushed or had just been so scared she didn’t realize what she was doing and went through it on her own, Carlotta smashed through a third floor window and fell to her death.”

  Mandy frowned.

  “Her ghost showed up not long after. The thing about the ghosts here,” he said, about to impart some great knowledge, she felt, “is that they’re not here to scare you. They don’t really haunt so much as they just appear from time to time.”

  “I heard they were always around.”

  He shrugged again.

  “The point is, they’re not here to hurt anyone. In fact, it’s pretty much understood they probably don’t even realize where they are, what they are, or anything else. From what we’ve observed, the ghosts here are nothing more than excess energy, just reliving particular moments over and over. For Carlotta it just happens to be she keeps falling from the third floor window.”

  Mandy made a face and said, “That can’t be a pleasant sight for the kids.”

  “It’s always from the window she fell from. That room’s been converted to storage.”

  Mandy nodded.

  “And what other kind of things do they do? So they don’t catch me off guard.”

  “There are a lot of them, and their moments are varied, but the important thing to remember is they’re not here to hurt or to scare you. For example, in one of the rooms upstairs, there is often heard the sound of two girls arguing. We’re never able to make out what they’re so upset about. We can hear their voices, and the agitation in them, but never what they’re arguing about. No one has ever seen anything in that room, it’s just voices, and we’re not sure who they were, when they were here, or what happened to them. Another one, an especially . . . tragic young boy, cut his wrists in the hallway one night while everyone slept. Whatever you see or hear, just keep in mind you’re watching nothing more than an old recording and just go about your business.”

  “Got it,” Mandy said. “I can do that. They’re not here to hurt me and just go about my business.”

  Mr. Winters nodded and smiled, then spread his hands and said, “I’ll show you around and we can discuss what you’ll be doing here.”

  Mandy smiled too. She followed him out of the office, snagging her phone from her purse once she was behind him and checking the display. Nothing from Sam.

  “Um, can I ask something,” Mandy said, catching up to him in the hall.

  “Of course.”

  “Have there really been that many people that have died here? It just seems like an awful lot of talk about ghosts, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about a lot of deaths on the property.”

  “It does seem that way, doesn’t it?” he said, nodding, but not really answering her question.

  As they walked, he talked.

  “The Home is a privately funded operation. That means we get by on donations. It’s not always easy, but we’ve managed so far. Our kids range from five years old to eighteen, and the State says that, for those ages, we need one caregiver for every sixteen children.”

  Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Mandy thought. That’s a lot of kids to look after by yourself.

  “This building was constructed in the 1950s,” he said, “but the Mertland Childrens’ Home has been around since 1910 when Jacob Keeper established the home to care for troubled or abandoned children. After losing his twins when they disappeared from his home--”

  “I read he kicked them out.”

  Mr. Winters shrugged. “Whatever the case may be,” he continued, “with their absence, he was determined to fill that loss by helping the children of his adopted home any way he could. He purchased a house that used to sit here--not right here; it was on the grounds--and converted it into a home for children. As the years passed and the contributions grew, as well as the number of children who needed a place to stay for whatever reason, this facility was built and we’ve been here ever since. We have several acres, but most of it goes unused. The back of the property is wooded, and the residents are absolutely not allowed into them. But we have a basketball court and playground out back. The main building is separated, with the boys on one side and girls on the other. In the middle here is the common area with offices and cafeteria, etc.”

  They went down a hallway lined with framed photographs, girls in all of them.

  “These are some of our past residents,” Mr. Winters said. “We cherish our kids here, and we want to make sure they know that.”

  He led her into the kitchen, saying, “The residents line up here to get their food, then go to their seats. We’re all accountable for ourselves here, but we like to maintain order, so everyone stays seated until the end of the meal, then they line up along this wall here and make their way to the trash. We encourage clean plates, of course, but . . . their trash goes here, the silverware in the first tub, plates in the next one, then trays are stacked up over here.”

  She could see the kitchen from here and she watched for a moment as vague people-shaped shadows moved around back there.

  The smell in here was familiar, that industrial strength sanitizer she’d grown so used to having spent her high school years working various fast food jobs.

  Next they toured the halls so she could familiarize herself with the room numbers and see what the rooms looked like. The halls gave off the faint scent of pine, like a disinfectant and her Converse squeaked against the tile floor. Everyone slept two to a room. “Sometimes we’ve just got too many people here. Our goal, however, is no more than two at a time.”

  She passed maintenance closets, offices where staff worked, she met the resident nurse, Mrs. Beaman, whose cache looked capable of handling nothing more serious than a skinned knee.

  Mandy nodded, remembering those days well.

  Finally they wound up in the common room where he explained, “This is where they spend most of their time. It’s got the TV, but the remote for the television will be in your possession, you or one o
f your colleagues, and it will be up to you to decide how best to handle the viewing choices. We don’t have many, only basic cable, but there’s a VCR and DVD player with a collection of movies. There are books and games in here. We encourage them to use what’s here and not bring their own; we’ve got some young kids here, so we like to keep things age-friendly.”

  Mandy nodded.

  The common room was empty except for three girls, the first residents she’d seen except for the reader.

  “This is Sarah, Alison and Monique. These three,” Mr. Winters said, “just got off suspension from school for fighting, which means they’re stuck here while the rest of the girls are at the water park for the day. They’re not bad kids, just brought up in unfortunate circumstances, and as I’m sure you know, other kids aren’t always the most understanding about others’ misfortunes. However, we can’t reward their suspension, so, while the fights might not have been entirely their faults, they are still responsible for their own actions and as such, the consequences of those actions are keeping them here while everyone else is away.”

  “I’m Mandy,” she said to the three teens. They all offered weak waves of their hands, one said, “Hi,” but none of their eyes left the television.

  “I’m going to be working here,” she said.

  “Kinda figured that,” Sarah--she had long black hair and wore too much black eye makeup--said.

  The girl next to her, Alison, a brunette with bobbed hair and freckles splattered across her nose, chuckled but said nothing.

  “Anyway,” Mr. Winters said, leading Mandy away, “So we’ll have you start the day after tomorrow, if that’s good. You’ll be here five to one AM Monday through Friday, but we do require twelve hours every other Saturday. That’s one to one. It’s over forty hours, but you do get overtime for those last four.”

  “I can handle that,” Mandy said, thinking the extra cash every two weeks would be nice now that she was managing on her own. They had made their way back to Mr. Winters’s office. She didn’t see the boy who’d been reading earlier and Mandy decided that yes, maybe he had been a ghost after all. She suppressed a shudder at the thought it could have looked so much like a real person and she suddenly felt almost nervous at the thought of not being able to tell a ghost from a real boy.