Close to Nowhere (Larry Stylinson)

three

...

Ashland ranch consisted of four hundred acres of land tucked into the mountains of Tennessee. According to the rudimentary map the sheriff had provided, only part of the property was in the valley, the rest ruled by forests and steep inclines.

The valley part used to be cultivated, but by now the farming practices had long since diminished, leaving empty fields behind. It looked like a wasteland.

Louis and Harry stopped and stood halfway to the house, an unconscious agreement between the two of them. They were quiet.

The house was old and decaying, a sense of malaise clinging to it in a way that worried Louis. The wood was rickety and lopsided, decomposing right in front of their very eyes. They hadn't been able to find the year the house was built, but the estimation was somewhere during the mid to late nineteenth century.

This doesn't feel right, Louis thought. Something is wrong here. He didn't say it out loud because there was no use, but he knew Harry was thinking it too. Neither of them needed to be psychic to feel how fucked up the atmosphere was.

They fought over who had to knock on the door. Sometimes touching objects, especially ones that had laid dormant for a long time, could bring unexpected and often painful visions.

Harry lost, and had to knock on the door. He did so with a grimace on his face, but there ended up not being a vision attached to the door, and Louis watched as his shoulders heaved with relief.

No one answered. They stood on the front porch for at least ten minutes before they agreed to wander around back to the barn. Which was where they found Tex, the man they were looking for. The owner of the property.

Well, more like Tex found them. A voice sounded out behind them and they both jumped.

Louis resisted the reflex to put his hand over his racing heart, but he couldn't say the same for Harry.

"For psychics, you all sure are jumpy."

You came out of fucking nowhere, Louis snarked internally. He prided himself on his self-control, though. Most of the time.

"Just caught us off guard is all," Harry drawled, and was it possible he sounded more southern than he should've, considering he grew up in California? Louis rolled his eyes at the way he was playing up the part of a country boy or whatever. Harry would never fit in here and they both knew it.

Tex said he was doing work on the barn, so they followed him over there, their shoes squelching in the mud. Wearing boots would've been a good idea.

Tex was doing something with planks of wood that Louis didn't understand. As he worked, he told them what had been going on lately and why Louis had even been called here in the first place.

It was a fairly standard ghost story. Tex couldn't resist buying the property because it was an offer he couldn't refuse, the price so low there had to be a catch. Turns out the house had all this bad history to it that no one ever talked about, and the realtor hid as best as she could.

Tex didn't know much about the previous owners, except that they were the ones to build the house. It was a big family, a husband and wife and a whole hoard of daughters.

That was all the information he had. It didn't seem so sinister. Which is why he didn't think much when he started noticing things.

"Things like what?" Harry pressed, leaning against the side of the barn with one leg crossed over the other. He was wearing boots with his jeans tucked in, and the way he was leaning made him look like he had any idea of how to be a Tennessee ranch owner. Louis glowered at him. Harry could be so ridiculous sometimes.

"Just little things. Misplacing things, and having them pop up somewhere else, in a strange position."

"Huh. How so?"

"Lost my keys to the tractor a few weeks back, couldn't find 'em anywhere. Then one day I go down for breakfast and where do I find 'em? On the kitchen table."

That didn't seem too out of the ordinary.

"Standing upright. Just balancing like that."

Harry and Louis shared a look. That was more like it.

"Can we see these keys?"

"Got 'em right here," Tex said, pulling them out of his back pocket and offering them to Louis.

Before Louis could reach out to take them, Harry swooped in and grabbed the keys using the hem of his shirt to cover his hand. Louis glared at him, sending daggers his way, even though Harry wasn't looking back at him.

Tex told them more as he continued working on the wooden planks. He explained the pattern of objects going missing, and then turning up in unlikely places and unlikely positions. Sometimes the horses would spook in the middle of the night, for no reason at all. The burner in the kitchen would turn on and catch flame when no one was around it, and Tex would have to go over to the stove and manually shut it off. Sometimes he heard footsteps coming up the stairs at night, but when he would check the hall, no one was there.

"These footsteps," Louis said quietly. "How would you describe them?"

"They sound like someone wearing boots going up the stairs. A grown man. Not a child. They happen at the same time in the night, too. Wake me up at two o'clock in the morning."

"Exactly two?"

"No. After two."

"Next time it happens, try to remember the exact time," Harry suggested. "Might help us figure out what's going on."

"Next time it happens?" Tex laughed. "Don't worry, you'll see. You'll hear them too, tonight."