The September House

Every September, like clockwork, the walls of the house start bleeding. Then the moaning starts and progresses to loud screams that are audible all night long. At first, Hal tries to pretend that the blood is some kind of mysterious leak, but eventually he becomes fed up. This year, he disappears at the beginning of the month, while Margaret remains and does her best to deal with the ghostly interruptions. On this particular morning, she wakes and tries to paint, then gives up and decides to have breakfast instead. Fredricka, the housekeeper, helps her. Fredricka is a ghost with a large bloody gash running down one side of her head; Margaret and Hal inherited her when they bought the house. Margaret also encounters another ghost, Elias, in the kitchen. Elias is a small boy of nine or 10 years; he does not speak, but he sometimes tries to bite Margaret if she invades his personal space. The ghosts have always chosen to bother Margaret more than Hal. She does not mind Fredricka’s presence but has never known quite what to make of Elias. She also sees Angelica, a young girl prone to irksome pranks. Angelica is always trying to draw Margaret down into the basement, but Margaret does not fall for that ruse anymore.

Suddenly, Katherine calls. She is upset because she has tried unsuccessfully to reach her father all week. The two are not close, but Katherine maintains a cursory relationship with him. Margaret tries to be vague, but eventually, the narrative reveals that Hal is gone and Margaret has no idea where he is. To Margaret’s chagrin, Katherine immediately books a flight home. Katherine does not know about the houses’ peculiarities, and Margaret does not want her daughter to see the blood, hear the screams, or meet the ghosts.

The narrative shifts into the past to explain that the house revealed its haunted character only by degree. Margaret first became aware of the pranksters because they moved objects around secretly, not because they showed themselves to her. She and Hal both noticed the mysterious happenings but pretended (privately and to each other) that nothing was amiss. They also developed a fear of the basement that they did not admit to or discuss. Each would avoid going down there, but each refused to admit to being frightened. Eventually, the pranksters began to show themselves. Fredricka revealed her presence kindly, by making Margaret a cup of tea and leaving it by her bedside. In all of their years of marriage, Hal never once made Margaret a cup of tea without being asked, nor did he ever correctly add enough milk and sugar. Margaret decided in that moment that perhaps she was going to like Fredricka.

The narrative returns to the present. Margaret sits on the front porch, fretting about Katherine’s imminent arrival. She hopes that her friend and neighbor, Edie, will notice her and come over. Edie comes over almost as soon as Margaret sits down. Margaret explains the situation to Edie, who commiserates. Edie does not think that Margaret will be able to keep the secrets of the house from her daughter and is equally sure that Katherine will insist that her parents move out of the house. Margaret acknowledges that her daughter is strong-willed and that she shares Edie’s worry. However, she is determined to keep Katherine from finding out too much and even more determined to keep her out of the basement. Edie is also worried about the basement and doesn’t want Katherine to meet “Mr. Vale.” Edie suggests slipping Katherine sleeping pills at night, but Margaret balks at the idea. She resolves to prevent her daughter from learning about the deep problems hidden in the cherished Victorian house.

The narrative shifts to the past to explain that Margaret and Hal met at a gallery opening. He was writing a piece about the event, and Margaret had a painting in it. He lavished the piece with praise and asked her out. They went on a series of dates, which Margaret enjoyed. She was drawn to Hal even though her friends were not sure about his height or his extreme thinness. On one of their early dates, they went to see The Exorcist. Hal was terrified, and afterwards, he expressed his horror at the film’s special effects and creepy plotline. Margaret confessed that she found the film entertaining, then waxed philosophical about the nature of horror films. She told Hal that she thought horror films revealed what individuals and societies found to be terrifying. The Exorcist, she argued, was a meditation on the horror of losing children and on the nature of sacrifice. Hal didn’t agree with her analysis, but their discussion remained amiable. Margaret was happy when Hal extended the date after the movie and asked her to get a drink. Conversation lightened over drinks, and they even came up with an inside joke about the film that they lobbied back and forth for years.

Father Cyrus arrives at the house, and Margaret recalls how he first became involved in her current problems. Margaret and Hal first sought his help when the house began to reveal its peculiarities. They were not Catholic, nor were they particularly religious, but they figured that a Catholic priest might be able to perform an exorcism. Father Cyrus was receptive to their story of bloody walls and ghosts and agreed to cleanse the house. For about a week after the cleansing, there were no more strange sightings. Hal was relieved, but Margaret recalls feeling as though they were merely in the eye of a hurricane. Soon, the ghosts began to come back and the walls began to bleed again. They invited Father Cyrus back every so often, whenever the ghosts became too much for them; this pattern continued for years. Eventually they figured out a schedule, and Father Cyrus began to visit the home at fixed intervals. His efforts seemed to affect the worst of the ghosts more powerfully; the basement and the pranksters directly connected to its evil would be the quietest after one of his visits, but Fredricka would not disappear at all.

Now, on this particular morning, Father Cyrus’s visit does not proceed as it usually does. In the process of dispelling evil from the basement, he opens the door. Margaret is alarmed and stands back. Father Cyrus is blown backwards and lifted into the air by an unseen force. He begins to expel a black fog from his mouth that turns into a large swarm of flies.

The day of Katherine’s arrival is finally here. Fredricka has not shown herself, and Margaret has dug up the bones of Elias’s mother. Being reunited with his mother’s bones usually quiets him for a while, and Margaret hopes for the best. Katherine arrives in a foul mood after a series of delays. She is upset that her father is missing and that her mother seems to care so little about his absence. She suggests filing a police report, but Margaret explains that it would be easier to wait until the police station opens the following morning. Katherine looks older, and Margaret knows that she is constantly under stress in a demanding upper management position at a bank. Katherine and Hal never got along, and after she left for college, she rarely returned to see her parents. This is her first visit to the house. They have kept her away because of the hauntings, and her own lack of interest in seeing them contributed to her lack of visits. Margaret has carefully selected the guest room that is least likely to produce a terrifying apparition, and Katherine unpacks. After dinner, Katherine finds a bottle of wine in the pantry and angrily asks if Hal is drinking again. The two sit down to talk, and Katherine reveals that she and her girlfriend broke up. Mother and daughter speak more plainly than they ever have about Hal’s drinking, Katherine’s wild mood swings and tantrums, and Katherine’s own alcohol use. During their conversation, Fredricka quietly makes Margaret a cup of tea. As promised, she remains a helpful presence without revealing herself to Katherine.

The narrative shifts to the past. Once it became evident that Father Cyrus’s exorcisms only went so far to mitigate the house’s horrors, Margaret came up with a series of plans and rules. She rationalized that everything is bearable if it is approached in the right way; she also resolved to ignore what she could not change. She did her best not to notice the ghosts and prepared herself mentally for the house’s cycles. September was the worst month: the only month when they were disturbed by moans and shrieks. During the rest of the year, she and Hal could go about life mostly as usual. The basement was the only part of the house that was always dangerous, and they kept it shut with nails and boards and papered the door with Bible pages. Margaret rationalized that the house wasn’t really harmful; it was just upsetting. And she could deal with that.