Return to Rockfield

“Hon, we don’t even know if they were the Rockes or not. We never met them in person,” Claudia tried to console Emma. Erik stood back. He was always too analytical to offer good comfort. Claudia called it emotionally repressed, but the result was the same.

Now the troublesome couple had been gone for a half hour, and the solution came to him. Analytical. “We can resolve this really fast,” he said. “They had printouts. I’ll bet that news article is nowhere to be seen online. At least not in the paper’s real website.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” Claudia said.

“And we can prove it right now. No censoring, no holding back,” he said as he turned his phone on. Claudia and Emma sat on the sofa across from him, watching as he started the search. But Noah’s voice rang out from his room.

“Yeah it is!”

“He can’t hear me when I tell him to clean his room,” Claudia grumbled.

Erik finished typing. The auto-finish helped speed him to the web site. There they were, in a few local and statewide papers. Even the Boston Globe had a paragraph about it in Around Mass. “What are you seeing?” Claudia asked him as she held one arm around their daughter. She didn’t have to for long. Emma wanted nothing to do with it, and ran to her room.

“I wish I knew,” Erik said.

Morning came, and Erik set off for Rockfield early. It was looking like an easy three hours, but one pile up could change that in the time of a final heartbeat. At least it was an excuse to drive the Audi. With the top down and the summer season starting, it was a fine day to soak in the glorious and wondrous countryside. He could even put the question aside for a time. There was nothing to be done on the drive but drive. He made only one call, to the property management company, but they weren’t even in Rockfield. Even so, if he wanted to drop into their Pittsfield office, he didn’t need an appointment.

It was all obviously wrong. Whatever else may have happened, they weren’t dead. “I breathe, therefore I live,” he said, aloud as the fresh air whipped around him. Beyond that, the old town didn’t give him enough comfort to enjoy seeing it again. Trading off one old New England town for an older New England town didn’t seem like much of a change, but it already made a difference. All four of them felt the freshness every day. Rockfield was never fresh. Not since colonial days, maybe earlier. Fittingly, the clouds thickened as he drove over the last hump and the trees faded into housing and the old dairy farms gave way to the village gothic. Starting with the old asylum turned care center, right before the turnoff to the animal park.

A short drive through town brought him past the house. There sat the car the Rockes drove to Portsmouth just a day ago. Short of checking the plate number, there wasn’t much more he could verify. It was them. His renters thought he was dead. Driving on before they looked out the window, what else could he really do? There was no legal way to do a surprise inspection. They had a lease for three months of Massachusetts summer, Memorial to Labor Day. Of course, he could go up and ask.

Or he could ask Mrs. O’Reilly, watering her flower garden at the corner. What could he say? Roll up and ask if she’d heard about his murder? But she saw him and waved, forming a smile, so at least he wasn’t a ghost to her. “Erik, hi! I didn’t think you’d be back. Where’s Claudia?”

“Oh, she’s home. I had to come by and check some stuff,” he said.

“Well, how about some lemonade. You can at least tell me how you’re all doing. How’s Portsmouth treating you?”

“Can’t complain,” he said. It was treating him fine, and she happily listened as he shared the highlights of a mundane, tiring move. And her real lemonade was more than welcome. The hot day had turned cloudy, but three hours in the car left him parched.

“I can tell,” she said. “Moving was the right call. Sometimes a place just isn’t a good fit. There’s nothing wrong with it. It just doesn’t suit you. My nephew went off a few years ago to live in Santa Fe, in New Mexico. It’s such a nice postcard town, but he couldn’t stand it and moved to Des Moines instead. Now, does that sound normal to you?”

“I guess it depends on your opinion of sand,” he said.

“Ha, yes. But you seem so much happier now. It’s like someone lifted that burden off you.”

Burden? She kept talking, about her kids, but what did she mean? “Sorry, I need to back up a bit,” he said. “Lifted a burden off me? I’m not sure what that means.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t pry, but you all were so stressed half the time. A big family full of frowns and gloom to light down the room. That was Noah’s poetry, wasn’t it? Not that you were as bad as that.”

“I didn’t realize we were that morose,” he said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t put it bluntly. I’m just glad to see you so relaxed now.”

“Well, thanks,” he replied. “Say, not to change the subject completely, but you’ve lived here a long time. Have you ever heard about our house being, this sounds silly, about our house being haunted?”

“Are you pulling my leg?” Mrs. O’Reilly asked. “Yanking my chain, as the young people say?”

“I hope not.”

“Well, Erik, you know, I always assumed it was the house that had you all down in the dumps. I can’t speak to it actually being haunted. The good book says that’s not how these things work, but just between us, that’s not necessarily the last word on it. Yes, though. Rumors of hauntings at your place go back, I don’t know. A long time. I figured all those sleepless nights were at least partly from dragging feet or rattling chains, or whatever it is.”

“No. I never heard or saw anything.”

“Oh. Okay. Sorry then, but I could have sworn you did. I guess I wasn’t paying much attention. It’s not something you ask about, like ‘Hi neighbor, is your toilet backed up?’ Or ‘Howdy neighbor, hear any bloodcurdling screams at the stroke of midnight?’” She laughed. “I guess my answer is yes, though. I’ve heard of your house being possessed. It’s just one of those things, I guess.”

“I guess,” he said. Apparently, it wasn’t just the Rockes. Newcomers and old-timers alike knew about his house having ghosts. He’d never felt a thing. It took a few minutes to extract himself, but Wendy O’Reilly wasn’t the type to talk a man to death. He moved on and circled back to town. The whole time, he repeated the same few thoughts. Was he morose? Did his family come off that way?

He also needed gas, and headed back into town to the Mobile station a mile off. Maybe Jason Hill still worked there, one final summer before college, assuming that was his future. He’d dated Emma only a few months in their junior year, but as far as he knew the boy didn’t fear him. It wasn’t crowded, and he pulled up in front of the store after fueling.

Luck was with him. Jason was there behind the counter. “Oh, hi Mr. Hartman,” he said.

“Hey, Jason. And you can call me by my name now if you want. You’ve graduated, right?”

“Not for a couple weeks,” he said. Right. The school year ended in mid-June. “But I am eighteen. Erik!” He said it like it was a test, to see if he could be lured into informality.

“Any plans?” Surprise, he had none. Almost none. It wasn’t college, but the kid described some vocational training he was starting. Something with engines.

“Hey, Jason, let me ask you a weird question,” he said. “Back when you were dating Emma, did you think I came across as too grumpy to you?”

“Nah. You were cool,” Jason said. “Maybe too stressed to be grumpy? Why? What did Emma say, because that was a mutual break-up, okay? All I said was that she was dragging me down. I get it, okay? I fully, totally understand. And, and you’re not mad at me,” he finally concluded, like he figured it out mid-sentence. Now he smiled again. “Sorry, bit of a tangent there. Nah, you weren’t grumpy. It’s cool. Erik.”