Night Society

1

Going for walks after midnight always left him humming Patsy Cline songs. Mike wasn't usually a smoker, but that night as he walked the moonlit streets with one earbud in, he took the occasional drag from a cigarette, mainly because it gave his hands something to do.

The wind had bite to it. The decay of summer was in full swing, and the changing leaves on the trees rattled in uproarious applause with every gust of the breeze. He popped the collar of his flannel shirt so that it shielded his neck from the chill and buried his free hand in the pocket of his jeans, ashing the cigarette as he prepared to cross the street. He'd been wandering for almost an hour with no clear destination in mind, and the scenery was getting to look a bit unfamiliar. He was unconcerned; he'd been walking the streets of Port Townsend for the bulk of his life and knew it was nearly impossible to get lost there. Soon enough, a known landmark would present itself and he'd regain his bearings.

The headlights of a passing car washed over him, painting the whole of his world a frail yellow for a few seconds. He caught a lungful of exhaust as it sped past. The silence was reinstated soon thereafter, and would have settled over the road with something like real permanence if not for the staggered rustling of the trees.

Mike hated the town, always had. The only way he could see to tolerate it, to make peace with the pastoral scenery, was to take it in after dark. With the setting of the sun, even boring Port Townsend, Ohio took on intrigue. Or maybe he just liked it better because the suburbanites all fled into their homes and the entire town was his alone to wander.

He tossed the smoldering cigarette butt into the street and then paused to reorient himself. A Hank Williams song started in his ear as he looked to the crooked street sign that glistened in the moonlight just ahead. It read ANDOVER.

Oops, he thought. You went and wandered into the boonies.

He knew Andover Lane well enough to know that there wasn't hardly a thing on it. Houses were hard to come by, separated by as much as a mile of empty space. He'd wandered far from the nearest strip mall, gas station or cafe. Wishing he had a hot coffee to sip, he cursed especially his distance from the latter.

He considered turning back. If he followed this road long enough, he'd end up leaving town altogether and would likely end up in the middle of a corn field. He warmed his hands in his pockets and hesitated on the curb, looking up and down the potholed stretch. Where to, then?

The noisome foliage parted in the wind, giving him a partial glimpse of something that lurked just beyond. Across the street, couched in a nest of closely-grown trees and tall grass, was a house. A boarded window stared out at him like an unblinking eye.

He squinted at it through the shuddering greenery for a beat and gradually came to the realization that he knew the place.

Nestled within a copse of trees some miles from any major landmark, the degraded two-story house had a strange reputation. It was known chiefly for its decrepitude, and its renown—if you could call it that—sprang almost wholly from the fact that no one in town spoke of it or knew of its history.

This house was a chameleon, largely vanishing into the background scenery of Port Townsend so that it could only be seen in part from a nearby overpass. He'd seen it in the corner of his eye on many a drive from above. From where he stood, one couldn't usually see it for the explosion of unchecked deciduous green that shielded it on all sides; and later in the year, when all the leaves had fallen, the house had a way of easing into the bleak palette of winter, where its colorless, wind-stricken facade was nigh indistinguishable from the rough, snow-blown trunks that surrounded it.

The wind rattled the trees afresh and the boarded window entered once more into view.

If a house could beckon, could invite someone of its own accord, then the abandoned house on Andover Lane was doing just that. It was peeking through the wall of trees like a mischievous kid. Even the twisting of the tree limbs seemed to resemble to him a come hither motion.

His night was open. He didn't have to work, and had gone out on an aimless night walk precisely because he'd had nothing better to do with his time. Mike weighed the pros and cons of crossing the street and paying that shadowed house a visit, and ultimately started towards it. It seemed a more interesting use of his time than trekking back home and logging more hours on his Xbox.

Popping out his earbud, he pushed through the trees and approached the knee-length grass fronting the house. From up-close, and with the light of the moon bringing its features into glowing relief, the place's emotiveness only increased. The slouching of its eaves gave it the look of a face with a furrowed brow, and the front door would have gaped like a mouth if it had been open. Lower story windows were shut up by bulging lengths of plywood, but an unblocked window existed on the second story, and green vines grew from the sill in dark tendrils.

The house had seen better days, no doubt, but it still retained that je ne sais quoi. It was a remote wart of a place that clashed against everything that surrounded it. In a land of manicured lawns and uneventful town hall meetings, where defects were routinely hidden, this house bore its flaws with a kind of pride. In its ruin there was a quiet triumph. In a word, it was authentic.

Where most would have turned away from such a tottering house with a shiver, Mike trudged up the overgrown lawn and approached the entrance.The thought that he might be trespassing never crossed his mind. There were no exterior signs of habitation, and besides, the cast of the house was that of a place long-yearning for company. The concrete steps leading up to the porch were lopsided, and he was forced to brace himself against the ragged siding. As his fingers brushed the weatherbeaten planks, he felt a slight jolt of pain, and examined his hand in the moonlight. He'd brought away a black sliver. Wincing, he stood before the door and placed a palm against it.

It opened without the least resistance.

He hadn't prepared ahead of time to do any urban exploration and so had to rely on his cellphone for a flashlight. Holding the device out in front of him, he took a slow step inside, and then another, until he'd eased himself into the foyer like a nervous kid slipping into the shallow end of a pool. When he was sure he wouldn't drown, he sampled the dusty air and started deeper in.

His tour of the house, he soon learned, would be limited to the lower story. The stairs leading to the upper level were hanging on by a thread, and the slightest pressure would probably see them collapse. But in his survey of the first floor, something stuck out to him. This house looked as though it'd never been lived in. In one room, he'd found the amber remains of a shattered sixer. In another he'd found a tattered t-shirt and a snack wrapper for a confection some decades out of production, but that was all. The dust on the floorboards, so thick it may as well have been plush carpet, was undisturbed except for those spots where his size 11's had imprinted, and the stained walls oozed in places where the roof had failed.

Why was this house here? Who had it belonged to, and where had they gone?

Standing in the ruined house, Mike probably should have felt nervous, vulnerable. However, as he paced about the empty rooms, he felt at ease in the place. That it had sat empty so long, descending into disrepair, was a tragedy. The house had potential.

Three rooms comprised the lower story. There was a large living room with a fireplace choked completely by crunchy leaves; a space that had been intended for a kitchen, but which lacked even cabinetry; and a small room that led to the rickety stairwell. Standing at the bottom of the stairs and glimpsing hints of moonlight issuing from above, Mike wondered what the upper story might be like. The settling of the house in the autumnal breeze caused a sudden creaking, and he found himself wondering, too, whether someone or something didn't exist on the second level.

There was a change in the air. It was subtle, but unmistakable.

It was only for an instant that the feeling washed over him, and that it must have been borne of his loitering about a dark place so unaccustomed to human occupation was soon accepted. However, as he stared up at the second floor landing, he thought he could sense something staring back. Something from within the nest of shadow that sprouted in the corner. He turned his narrowed gaze upward, studying the landing, and found that the shadows there seemed unnaturally dense. A loud creak—merely the settling of the floors, he would go on to tell himself—resonated from the upper floor, and his imagination filled in the gaps. He pictured a single foot perched upon the topmost step, its owner bathed completely in darkness. If he waited, another creak would likely ring out. And another. If he waited long enough he'd see the occupant of the upper floor up-close.

And then he heard something that was more difficult to dismiss as mere settling.

From somewhere in the upper story there came a series of hard, frantic knocks. They were the poundings of one trapped, the hysterical blows struck by one seeking to escape confinement. The knocks cut through the air like bursts of machine gun fire, before ceasing as quickly as they'd begun.

His heart did a somersault in his breast. What was that? He considered the possibilities while eyeing the exit in his periphery. An animal had gotten inside and was throwing its weight around; or maybe the surrounding trees had struck the outside of the house in a particularly fierce gust of wind.

But there was no denying that it had sounded like a knock at an unseen door. He could envision the shape of a lone figure, bathed in darkness, standing in a small room. Locked inside. Striking the door repeatedly, desperately, in the hopes of being heard. A prisoner. The Prisoner of Andover House. No, that was ridiculous. The stairs weren't likely to hold up to the weight of a grown adult, and he was sure that no one had lived in the house for ages. The undisturbed dust, the leaks and the mold; no one could possibly live under such conditions.

He backed away from the stairs, almost dropping his phone, and suddenly decided he'd gotten his fill of the house. Shuffling back towards the foyer, floors creaking awfully with his every step, he stopped to pocket his phone and pull the door open.

As before, the door opened without any trouble, but in the moment before he stepped out onto the porch, there was a burst of movement in the dark space to his back. The floorboards, which had grown silent in his pause, suddenly groaned anew, as some unseen load tested them from across the room. Mike glanced reflexively into the shadowed depths of the house, unable to make out anything without the help of his light. Losing his nerve, he shot onto the porch and was across the street in some few bounds.

When he'd jogged a mile or so away from the house and the lights of town were entering into view again, Mike allowed himself a laugh. Poking around in an abandoned house like that has your imagination on overdrive, he thought.

Despite his scare, the house remained firm in his thoughts for the remainder of the night. There was an unmistakable allure to the place, and he considered returning there soon for further explorations.

Next time, he wouldn't go alone, though.

Andover Lane brought him back into town, and some minutes later he was pacing across the near-empty parking lot of the local Tim Horton's, humming a Patsy Cline song and eager to tuck into a coffee and bagel.

Mike started looking for more information about Andover House in his free time.

Inquiries into its current ownership took him nowhere. There were claims that someone had bought the house just before the housing crisis, only to lose it within mere months, before they could even begin the thorough renovations that would be necessary to make it livable. There were stories of its being used as a make-out spot for teenagers a generation before his time; a former meth lab; a haunt for urban hobos who'd somehow managed to make the pilgrimage into suburbia, but he was unable to corroborate any of them.

There were other stories, too. Stories that should have scared him away.

An old man living close by told him that the house had once been owned by a young family. That family, in the 40's or 50's, had allegedly died in their sleep due to a gas leak. Then, a conversation with a former high school teacher in town yielded rumors of another death—that of a junkie who'd taken up residence in the abandoned house only to be found there months later by wandering Mormons. Once again, web searches and studies of old newspapers yielded no evidence of these deaths. The house, in fact, never came up in the press. It was like a severed finger with no prints; untraceable. This, of course, only added to its allure.

During his long nights working the laundromat, when he was staving off sleepiness, he'd Google the address and sift the results for anything of worth. To his surprise, the house didn't even come up in real estate or tax listings. For all intents and purposes, it was a blank spot on the map of Port Townsend.

So, as best he could tell, no one owned the house, and no one cared about it. If he decided to spend time there, no one was likely to object. One night, while nodding off at the counter of the laundromat and skimming an article about conspiracy theories, he got an idea.

Intrigued by the outre rites of well-known cults and secret societies, Mike decided he would create his own—something akin to Skull and Bones, or Bohemian Grove—and that he'd center it in Andover House. Reading up on the ritualistic behaviors of such groups, he realized he lacked the imagination to come up with long-winded rites and procedures, and settled instead on a simpler course for his Night Society.

He'd invite people there to play a game. What better way to pass the autumn nights in this boring suburb than to get together for an eerie bout of show-and-tell? The house's sinister aesthetic was not to be wasted, and he drafted plans for a bi-weekly meeting of this Night Society, in which one person would be assigned the task of bringing something frightening or macabre to share with the rest. All he needed was a couple of willing participants.

In selecting inductees, Mike sought to recruit only those who could contribute something of value to the group, and he chose the first member of the Night Society from his existing pool of acquaintances. Jim, an old school friend, was on board with the idea from the onset. Working nights at a local nursing home and having just split with a long-time girlfriend, he was looking for distractions from his daily life. Jim went on to suggest an acquaintance of his by the name of Russell as a potential member.

Russell, a soft-spoken and antisocial guy just a few years out of high school, worked the closing shift at Port Townsend's only remaining video rental store—the old Spectrum Video on Sullivan Avenue. A chronic night-owl like the others, Russell's affinity for the violent works of filmmaker Takashi Miike made him a shoo-in for such a club.

Plans were drawn for the inaugural meeting. Every other Friday night, at one minute past midnight—sharp—the three were to meet outside the front door of Andover House. When all three members had arrived, the week's assigned curator would share his macabre yield. Once they'd all examined the item and discussed it, the meeting would be adjourned.

The trio had drawn straws to see who would play curator for the first meeting, and the role fell to Russell. The date was set—that Friday, they would make the pilgrimage to Andover House for the very first meeting of the Night Society.

2

Jim's nights began with the droning of the alarm. He'd sleep till 5PM—5:45 if he really felt like trying his luck—and then trudge into the shower. When he'd stood in the lukewarm water for ten minutes, he'd pick his wrinkled grey scrubs off the floor and, provided they passed the sniff test, throw them on. On those occasions when he didn't have time to do laundry and his uniform still possessed the eau de last shift , he'd go extra hard on the body spray before heading out the door.

He liked to leave