Crimes by Moonlight

“Right,” the detective at the table said. “End of story, but not of lesson.”

“What lesson?” the other detective asked.

“That these nice little villages and towns, they can have the darkest and bloodiest secrets imaginable. Even a pretty little town like Salem Falls, with a fancy-schmancy downtown, nice little computer firms in the old mill buildings, still doing fine. Right, Chief?”

I smiled. “Right.”

THERE came a moment, then, when the Logan house was empty, and I went back upstairs, past the blood-stained floor, and then upstairs again. I opened up the door and felt a blast of cold air on my face, and then took a set of very narrow and creaking steps up to the attic. There were boxes up there, piles of junk, and even though it was now daylight, it was still dark, with very little light streaming in from slats at either side of the attic. I rubbed my hands and looked into the darkness, and then let my eyes adjust to the lack of light. There was something off to the right. I ignored it. Kept staring into the darkness, thinking about the night, thinking about what had happened, thinking of what I had learned.

Thought about the cassette recorder, and what I had heard, the shaky and frightened voice of Peter Grolin: “Something’s going on up here, I don’t know, I’m freezing Josh, I’m freezing, and oh Christ, something’s coming down the stairs… it’s coming near me… it’s coming after me… it’s coming after me!”

Then the sound of something falling, something gurgling, and then the whisper of static.

And what I had seen on the camcorder viewing screen, filmed in night vision: the same narrow steps leading up to the attic, the door opening, and an illuminated shape, oozing down, coming closer, closer…

An illuminated shape.

Like the one I could see from the corner of my eye, in the attic with me.

I took a breath. “You didn’t have to do that. I know you were provoked. But you didn’t have to do that.”

The shape flickered, moved. I took another breath. “I promise you, things won’t change. They won’t get a permit for the bed-and-breakfast. And there won’t be any more ghost hunters. No more trespassers. I promise. Okay?”

The shape flickered one more time and then disappeared, but not before I saw what was there, the slightly out-of-focus image of a man wearing a turn-of-the-last-century frock coat and pants, with a head that looked like a bloody, shattered pumpkin.

AS I went back out to the porch, I had a warm thought, that maybe the weekend could be salvaged after all. My wife and girls would be pleased. Outside, Josh was slowly loading some gear into his white van, the Toland couple was having a heated discussion at one end of the porch, and the two state police detectives were conferring over their notebooks. I came down the stairs, yawning, and then the younger state detective-the one who had finally got the coffee machine up and ru

“Nice to have met you, Chief,” he said. “And I’m sure you hope you don’t see us again, any time soon.”

I gave his hand a firm shake, smiling, since he was right, since you only saw state police detectives in my line of work for serious matters. “If you don’t take offense, yeah, you’re absolutely right.”

He gri

“That we have,” I said.

Then the younger detective gave a forced little laugh, like he was trying to make a joke and knew he wasn’t succeeding. “You know, somebody might say that those old devil worshippers, they’re still around, making sure the town still stays prosperous.”

I looked at him, kept my expression slightly amused, and finally said, “You’re right. Some might say.”

Madeeda by Harley Jane Kozak

The August air was hot and heavy with the scent of jasmine the morning my children toddled downstairs and told me a lady was sleeping in my bed.

It was 9:30 a.m. I remember that prosaic detail because I was telling myself it wasn’t an hour for the heebie-jeebies. Nor the season for cold dread. Even in a remote California canyon with no neighbors within screaming distance, no humans but the twins tugging at my hands and the baby in my belly. And there were chickens outside, left by the previous owner, hardly the trappings of a haunted house. It was a faux-rustic house, 1970s casual chic. Very unscary. Chickens. Don’t be one, I told myself and let the children pull me toward the staircase. Our overfed dog, Tooth, lumbered behind.

If someone were in the house, I’d have heard. That’s the beauty of old, ratty, creaky, in-need-of-renovation, soft pine floors. And an old, ratty, paranoid spaniel. I climbed thirteen steps from the landing to the second floor, each one a warning system, the boys ahead of me, Tooth’s toenails clattering alongside me.

The bed was in disarray. The comforter, all bunched up on my husband’s side of the bed, could hide a couple of bodies. I moved closer, telling Tooth to stop whining. The twins were there already, standing on tiptoe to look under the covers.

“She’s not here,” Charlie said, at the same moment Paco said, “Where did she go?”

“She went back to twelvey twenty-one-y,” Charlie added.

One down pillow still bore the imprint of a head. I tossed it aside and yanked the sheet toward the wrought-iron headboard, smoothing it down and tucking it in. A faint scent-Shalimar?-seemed to waft upward, but that had to be my imagination. Pregnant nose. “What did the lady look like?” I asked, adopting a cheery, sitcom-mom voice.

“She has purple hair,” Charlie said. “Curly.”

“All of her is purple,” added Paco.

The boys’ consonants, like their numbers, were still works in progress, so the words came out “coolly” and “poople.” I found the description reassuring.

“Part of her is green,” Charlie said. “She has a fancy dress. A blue dress.”

“A ugly dress,” Paco said. “She’s a mean lady.”

Charlie nodded. “A mean witch.”

That night, when I told Richard, my husband, that the boys had seen a green and purple witch in our bed, he did not express concern. He did not, in fact, look up from the Dow Jones Industrials. “Hm. What’d you do?”

“I made the bed.”

I did not mention to him that I’d already made the bed earlier that morning.

NOT that the boys couldn’t drag a chair across the room in order to climb onto the bed and undo the sheets. This is what I told myself the next afternoon at the farmers’ market, two freeway stops away. Except the chair had been in its usual place by the closet, and the boys, at age two plus, were not in the habit of covering their tracks. It wasn’t age-appropriate behavior. Even now Paco, in the double stroller, was brazenly throwing grapes at a sparrow while telling me he wasn’t throwing grapes at a sparrow. But I couldn’t think of another explanation, except for pregnant brain. Could I swear that I had made the bed? Not absolutely, but beyond a reasonable doubt. You made your bed and now you have to lie in it, my grandma would say, but in fact, I made my bed every morning precisely so I wouldn’t be tempted to lie in it, minutes later, for a quick two-hour nap. Sleep was a siren song these days, my drug, my crack cocaine. Sleep was more seductive than sex, food, or True Love. The only thing stronger was the biological imperative to answer the cry of “Mommy!”

“Mommy, Charlie see Madeeda,” Paco said.

“Who’s Madeeda?” I glanced down at my son’s upturned face. Charlie was slumped next to him, asleep, mouth open.