Karma House

Karma House

Laura A. Ellison

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Other Smashwords Titles by Laura A. Ellison:

The Last Girl

Time Immortal: Tales of Marcus, The Blind Vampire

A Foreign Body (short story)

Books written by Laura A. Ellison can also be obtained through the author’s official website:

http://spiritimmortal.weebly.com

or through select, online book retailers.

For my parents, Patsy and Larry Ellison, who taught me to believe. Thanks to the Rocks-Jim, Lynne, and Lilda-who did it first. Also, the family, friends and teachers who encouraged me to write.

*****

Chapter One

Belinda Hart had known her whole life that death was not a simple thing.

Belinda, the quiet, chubby daughter, had studied philosophy in college. She was the best educated among her brothers and sisters. However, like her brother Will, she had distanced herself from the rest of the family. She spent some time at graduate school in Florida, found the hot, sticky weather unbearable, and moved on to Nevada. She heard by then Will was living with Nicole and the kids in Colorado. She did not stop to visit on her way to Las Vegas.

She got a job at the front desk of the Excalibur Hotel. She saw Celine Dion perform, and later Wayne Newton. She found an apartment and a new roommate. She celebrated the New Year, followed by her thirty-second birthday in February. The following week, she cut her wrists in the bathtub. Her roommate came home to find Belinda dead, soaking in the murky red water.

The roommate, a young black woman named Pam, tried to contact a family member of Belinda’s, but could not find a phone number. When the police had left with Belinda‘s body, she frantically looked through Belinda’s purse and sparsely furnished room, but all she found were a few business cards. One card was white with a figure eight stenciled in silver with black lettering, Molly Hart, psychic. Trustworthy and discreet. Another card read, Sarah Hart, world-renowned psychic and medium. First reading free.

Pam knew these people could be Belinda’s family, although she knew so little about the tall, sad-eyed woman who wore glasses and was more likely to stay home than go out. Pam was unsure about how old Belinda was, she had not told anyone about her birthday. Pam, who was twenty-seven, guessed they were about the same age. Belinda mentioned something about being from Michigan.

Belinda’s body was taken to the morgue; Pam stuck with the mess in the bathroom. The police had come and gone.

Pam decided to call Molly Hart’s number.

She was walking out of Belinda’s room in the small apartment when the phone rang. Before picking up the cordless phone from the base, she glanced at the caller I.D.:

MOLLY HART

1-616-###-####

The phone rang four times before Pam picked up. Hello?

The voice of an older female answered. Hello. She’s dead, isn’t she?

Pam was taken aback for a moment. Who is this?

My daughter Belinda is dead, right?

Y-yes.

Tell them I’ll be there later in the day. I had to book a last minute flight.

Pam sat on the old couch in the living room, grateful with relief. I’m sorry, Mrs. Hart. Belinda was a nice person.

Yes, she was a good girl. Thank you for being her friend. She didn’t have very many.

She didn’t tell me much about her family. You’re all from Michigan, right?

Yes, we are. We’re all here, except for her brother, Will. He’s in Colorado, but I’m sure he knows.

Did the police tell you Belinda had...died?

Pam heard the woman sigh on the other end. She’s only been dead a few hours, dear.

*****

The Harts all came for Belinda’s funeral, which was paid for by her parents, John and Molly.

Will arrived as soon as he could, without Nicole and their children. Molly knew Nicole would not want to attend a Hart funeral, especially a suicide. Especially Belinda. Nicole never liked Belinda, thinking Will’s sister selfish and strange, but all the Harts were a little selfish, strangeness was in the genes.

Molly had spoken briefly to the police in Las Vegas, but suicide was given as the only cause of death. She was asked if she knew whether Belinda had ever been depressed. Her mother said yes, often.

Molly flew home in coach with her daughter’s body in baggage. Molly could hear Belinda’s voice, coming in faintly while she was dozing on the plane. The white noise comforted Molly, although she had prepared herself years ago for outliving her oldest daughter.

Molly had dreamed of Belinda’s death when she was pregnant. She saw the lights of a modern Las Vegas, so different than in the seventies. She floated down the Strip of the future; white tigers and drive-thru wedding chapels, water and blood, a young black woman with braided hair and red nails. Molly had tried to forget those dreams, blaming them on pregnancy hormones. However, she was well past blaming her dreams on anything but herself, because her dreams always came true.

Chapter Two

Belinda was born with her mother’s brown eyes and her father’s dark hair. She was shy as a small child, and by the time she was three-years-old, she started to see faces in the walls and mirrors of the Harts’ old house, or in other places. She could hear voices, sometimes many voices, all talking at the same time. As she grew older, she shared these sights and sounds with her brother, Will. By then, Will was almost eight, Belinda five, and their mother was pregnant again. John had told Molly this could happen; their children would be odd. By then, Will was almost eight, Belinda five, and their mother was pregnant again. Belinda told her mother that she would have twins, a boy and a girl. Molly refused to believe her.

John’s family, the Harts, was psychic, dating back to his paternal grandmother, Nedra Hart. Molly’s father was a famous medium and psychic healer, Samuel Murdoch. Her mother had also been psychic and the Murdochs taught their children that reincarnation was possible. Molly believed she was the reincarnation of her own great-great-grandmother Murdoch. John did not believe in those things, but the voices and faces in the walls were typical of his side of the family.

Will, named after his great-grandfather William Hart, an osteopath and husband of Nedra Hart, had spent his early childhood in an almost constant state of wonder and terror, unable to understand why he could see and hear the things he did.

One of Will’s earliest psychic experiences happened at the age of four while attending a family funeral. He looked up from where he was sitting in his father’s lap, several feet from Great-Aunt Emily’s open coffin, and heard the old lady’s voice whispering, I am dead now, completely dead. Will started screaming, wetting his pants. His father took him into the restroom and Will tried to explain what he heard. John told him he heard the same words being whispered to him, although he later admitted to Molly that he had lied to the boy. Will was still too young to know anything about death and he was so traumatized, John and Molly never brought their children to funeral homes or cemeteries again. Will and Belinda were only little children, they had yet to understand their own gifts.

Will and Belinda were still adjusting when the Harts moved out of their first house, which was relatively new compared to the older, two-story house with four bedrooms and one bathroom on 1225 Gable Road. The house was old and the young family soon began to share strange and identical experiences. Will and Belinda would play together or alone upstairs and witness a door suddenly open and close on its own or a light switching on and off. A rotten smell came out of the furnace vents at the start of winter, but the Harts attributed the odor to the age of the house. All of these disturbances were minor at first, so John and Molly chose to ignore their mild haunting.

Molly, however, became increasingly nervous during the remainder of her pregnancy, especially after her obstetrician informed them that he heard two heartbeats in his stethoscope during a prenatal exam. The idea of having twins filled her with dread and anxiety.

Her sister Pauline had been a twin, her brother dying at birth. Pauline, sixteen years older than Molly, always had problems, including childhood seizures and almost dying of pneumonia twice, both times going through frightening near-death experiences. When Molly’s twins were born, she thought Pauline might have been in a mental institution, but she was not certain. She later received a letter from her sister, postmarked Phoenix, Arizona. Molly spoke to her mother Colleen over the phone while still in the hospital, recovering from the Caesarean section.

Mom, did you know Pauline was living out West? Molly asked.

Yes, I know.

Molly hated it when her mother played mysterious with her. Have you spoken to her?

No, I haven‘t heard from her since your father died.

The twins were born December 15, 1979, a boy and a girl, both healthy and normal. Samuel, named after his grandfather, was born first, at ten-fifteen p.m., and Sarah followed at ten thirty-five. Sam, like Belinda, had the caul around his head at birth, the membrane that resembled a little crown.

The delivery was not half as difficult as the discomfort Molly experienced towards the end of her pregnancy, with the painful swelling in her legs and ankles. When her obstetrician discovered she had toxemia and high blood pressure, she was put on bed rest. However, she was too uncomfortable to be active and was becoming anxious by the impending birth of twins, along with the frequency of disturbances in the house.

Molly could not sleep at night because of the noise, the sound of footsteps pounding on the staircase, going up and down every night around two in the morning, going on until almost two-thirty. She would have to wake up later to get Will and Belinda off to school, and all the kitchen cupboards would be open, the heavy table pushed against the wall, the chairs tipped over in the dining room. She would be alone in the house until Belinda came home from morning kindergarten, the anxiety making Molly exhausted. She did not tell John her feelings; she wanted him to think she was happy. Molly was never one to share her doubts with anyone, even John. Because of this, she gave off the impression of being positive and upbeat most of the time. However, she was scared to be alone in the house as summer and fall dragged on, refusing to admit her fear to herself; she was a Murdoch, her mother and sister used to take her, as a small child, to houses and places reputed to be haunted. She did not understand why she was afraid. She would try to ignore it, but the harder she tried, the more frustrated she would become.

Before her bed rest, Molly repainted the upstairs hallway and took on other projects around the house, including preparing the twins’ nursery. She worked alone during the day but became nauseous from her growing sensitivity to the paint fumes. She tried to nap in the late mornings, before Belinda came home from kindergarten, but she just could not relax. This pregnancy, so different from the others, became a mental and physical torment, although Molly knew the fault was not with her unborn babies.

She walked from room to room on those autumn mornings. She looked forward to the days being cooler; the summer had been so hot. One October day, after walking Will and Belinda to the bus stop at the end of the driveway, she stood in front of the house and studied the modest structure she and John had chosen because of the generous number of bedrooms.

Molly turned suddenly to the sound of tires rolling on the gravel driveway. She just glimpsed an old red pickup backing out. She did not see who was driving the truck.

Must have wanted to turn around, she thought. But there are shorter driveways on this street to back out of.

A breeze picked up, tossing some yellow and red leaves across the front yard, up to the porch. The old porch swing moved gently, back and forth.

This house doesn‘t like me, she thought.

John had suggested that a dog could keep her company during the day, but pets did not last long around Molly and the children could not seem to understand that.

How would I explain? she asked herself. Should I tell Will and Belinda, as young as they are, about when I was five-years-old and saw a little terrier thrown into a burning fireplace by a poltergeist in Scotland? That could certainly traumatize a kid.

Molly looked up at that little attic window, fascinated by its unique stop-sign shape. If she had not been so afraid, she would go up to the attic, but even John refused to go up there with her. The noises would always start there; the footsteps pounding pounding pounding until everyone awakened, Will and Belinda running to John and Molly’s room. When the noises stopped, the sound of objects moving in the kitchen continued for a half-hour or more. Finally, peace would descend, John and the children falling asleep, oblivious to Molly’s quiet sobbing.

She was still thinking about these things when the sparrow smacked against the attic window, its fine-boned, tiny body falling on the ground. Molly gasped, becoming suddenly nauseous, although she had suffered little or no morning sickness. She walked slowly over to the little bird; its beady eyes were blinking in shock, the wings still trembling. Looking down at the dying bird, she felt a kind of black dread she never felt before in her life. However, the encroaching nausea intruded on her emotional state, and she found herself running into the house to the bathroom.

*****

John’s mother, Edna Hart, came to help with the house and the children in March of 1980, the twins only three-months-old. Will and Belinda excitedly told their grandmother tales about the house, including the noises in the attic and on the staircase, along with the obnoxious smell in the cellar, although John had already explained to his mother about the house.

Edna stared at the front of the old house after getting out of John’s Chevy station wagon. The previous owners, the Browns, had renovated the place a few years ago. She moved her gaze from the big front porch to the white siding and the small, octagon-shaped attic window. She followed her son inside and was struck by the musty smell of rotting leaves. Edna felt the ’badness’ of this place, something terrible had happened here.

Will and Belinda had only met their Gramma Ed a few times in their short lives. The fifty-year-old woman was tall and had a kind of nervous energy, but was also gentle and warm. She had the same eyes as their father, a deep gray that widened in moments of surprise, anger, or laughter. Her hair was a deep brown, worn in a bun on top of her head. She favored pants suits and low-heeled shoes. She smelled like talcum powder.

Will and Belinda fell quickly for Gramma Ed, following her all around the house while their anxious, distant mother remained bed-ridden. John, after work, could be found in the bedroom with his wife, nursing a martini. Edna thought his attention to Molly was touching, but he gave little time to his children.

John had been an only child, a companion and mascot to his parents. When his psychic abilities began to intrude, he became even more alienated from children his own age. Edna and John’s father, Robert Hart, sent John to a boarding school in Connecticut, but he did not last long, especially after the suicide of a classmate. John attended the school for almost a year when unpleasant rumors had started about his friendship with another boy. John refused to talk about it and asked only to come home. He finished his education at a public high school in 1966. He went off to the University of Michigan, where he met Molly Murdoch, the daughter of the famous Samuel Murdoch. He was smitten with the brown-eyed, red-haired girl who effortlessly understood him and desired him at the same time. They married after only one year at Michigan.

John, without a degree, took many jobs in sales, eventually settling on insurance. He used his psychic, highly empathic abilities to sell life, auto, and health insurance policies through Oracle Insurance. He started his own business with his partner Max Henley, which proved successful. He made an almost unconscious decision to repress his psychic ability, ignoring the disturbances in the house, letting Molly and the children indulge themselves in ghosts and reincarnation. However, he was not above using his talents to bluff at poker or using the cards to impress potential clients by telling their fortunes during a three-martini lunch.

He did not have Molly’s dramatic flair, he seemed almost dull, although Molly was one of the few people who really understood him, she would listen when he would try to express himself. In their most intimate moments together, Molly could feel his loneliness and despair.

The house rarely had a moment of peace and John knew his wife was depressed. She neglected her appearance and seldom helped his mother very little with housekeeping or the children after the birth of the twins. John had heard of people having nervous breakdowns, but he knew little about the subject. Molly’s father had suffered from mental problems for most of his adult life, as did Pauline. John started to feel helpless, working longer days and drinking more.

Edna had agreed to stay and help with the twins, who were so tiny and colicky, but she hated that madhouse. The children were spooked and Edna was simply terrified. The rotting-leaf smell was always in her nose unless she went outside. She slept upstairs on a cot in the hallway and was awakened every night to the hard thumping on the stairs, followed by the crying babies. Whatever was in the house disliked the twins. Their empty cribs were often knocked over. Edna would neaten the nursery, only to find toys and clothes scattered around the room later. The dresser drawers, painted blue and pink by Molly before her bed rest, were found overturned on the floor.

One night Sam started screaming in the nursery, followed by Sarah; the bursting of the light bulbs overhead and in the hallway drowned out their piercing shrieks. This activity was accompanied by a snapping sound moving up the staircase, as if something was trying to come through the wooden steps. Molly, pushed out of bed by the babies’ screaming, almost bumped into Edna on her way to the nursery. Molly flipped on the wall-switch, but no light appeared. The next morning, they would find pieces of the bulbs on the rug. Edna and Molly retrieved both babies from the dark room, not noticing the cracks in the walls until morning.

Colleen Murdoch came to visit, and practically begged for a séance. John rolled his eyes and mixed another martini. He told Molly that if his mother-in-law insisted, he would go with the kids to Max and Rita’s house for the evening. Rita was Max’s wife and the childless couple were quite enchanted by John and Molly’s strange children.

Fortified by a few of John’s potent martini’s, Colleen, Edna and Molly pulled out Colleen’s battered Ouija board. The formidable Colleen, with her own skill and techniques learned from her late husband, believed she could get to the bottom of this haunting. However, it was uncertain what would occur with the women’s talents combined. Molly, who was already a little drunk, had stumbled around the downstairs of the house, switching off the lights after having lit several candles in the living and dining room. Colleen and Edna laid their fingertips on each side of the pointer of the Ouija board; Colleen, with her manicured nails, bouffant hair-do and smelling of Shalimar; Edna, with her bun and dishpan hands. Molly put down her martini glass, and joined the older women at the dining room table, her small fingers resting on the remaining space on the pointer. The room was dark, except for the candlelight. Molly looked at her mother and mother-in-law, and was reminded of the three Weird Sisters in Mac beth.

Colleen called out,Who haunts this house? Show us who you are!

Only the silence answered them.

The neighborhood where the Harts lived was quiet, with several