The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Horror, Thriller, Supernatural) (The Harrow Haunting Series) by Douglas Clegg

laughed at me. Most people don’t believe what I believe,” Alice said. “I don’t expect them to. But I do not expect to be laughed at.”
    “Did you read him at all? The Nightwatchman,” Thad asked, saying the word “nightwatchman” as if it were a joke. “Was he easy?”
    “You don’t believe any of it.”
    “Well, I believe you believe. Did you?”
    “He had a block, but somehow I got through some of it. Something about his son. Something about the girl in the car.”
    “There was a girl in a car?”
    “More darkness. Nightwatchman. Bui his name came to me. While we were talking. He has a German name, I think. But I’m not sure. It sounded like Spider.”
    “Spider?”
    “Or Speeder. I’m not sure.”
    “Tell me about the girl. Are we talking over twenty or under?”
    “Over, but not by much. She is tied to him in a way I don’t understand.”
    “You read all this by being near him?”
    She laughed lightly, breaking the dark mood that had descended. “No, I saw her. She was in the old station wagon, parked right in front here. She looked twenty-two. Maybe. I can’t tell anymore.”
    “How old was he?”
    “Fifty, easily. He looked almost like a farmer. Why did I think that, I wonder? He wasn’t wearing any clothes that were like a farmer’s.”
    “But he had the farmer’s daughter with him. Maybe she’s his daughter? Or else she’s his son’s girlfriend or wife.”
    “Oh. That never occurred to me. Maybe. She’s pregnant. They’ve been running for awhile. Trying to find work.”
    “Okay, so a guy takes his pregnant daughter, whose boyfriend has run off, and tries to get a job for himself so he can support her. You think he’ll be the caretaker?”
    “I hope not,” she said. “I suggested he leave. I told him about a job working for a church—as a janitor. In Poughkeepsie. Better pay, I’d guess. Free room.”
    “‘The Nightwatchman,’” Thad said, nodding. “I should put that in a book. I should write a book called The Nightwatchman and I bet everyone would want to read it.”
    “If only you could write a book.”
    “I tried once,” he said. “You never know, I might try again. There’s a new teacher in town who wrote a book. I met him the other day. Young and all full of himself. Still has the damn rose-colored glasses of life on him. That’s who writes books about nightwatchmen. Men like me simply read them.”
    “Oh, I hate those kinds of people,” Alice said, mildly. “Those happy-outlook people. I much prefer seeing shadowy, scowly people who drink bad coffee.”
    “I could not agree more,” Thad said, and then closed his eyes, feeling a slight headache coming on. In the darkness behind his eyes, he saw a purplish-yellow image forming and then it became the mansion—Harrow, with its spires and towers and domed roof and many gables, not decayed and overgrown as he knew it to be, but with a shine to it. He opened his eyes, shot a sidelong glance to Alice, but didn’t mention the thought that had come to him.
    “Someone has to take care of that place,” Thad said. “I think legally they have to. If someone fell in a hole over there or something, there’d be hell to pay. People sue all the time. And you know how kids go up there at Halloween.”
    “They’re stupid, those children.”
    “Maybe, but someone needs to be there to chase them off.”
    “It’s a terrible place,” she said. “I was here through all that. When the school had its trouble. And a few years ago, those people. So crazy to go there.”
    “I heard a lot of it was just made up,” Thad said. “Some writer blew it all out of proportion and made it sound like we were out of a Shirley Jackson story.”
    “Who?”
    “You never read “The Lottery”? The Haunting of Hill House? She wrote a book about a haunted house. But it’s all fiction. It’s irrational to think it happened, simply because if it had happened, no human being could’ve stopped it. And supposedly it