fleet, which consisted of two schooners and several skiffs that would tie up at what is now the Snowflake Pier.
“Jebediah was apparently quite the taskmaster, increasing his fisherman’s hours and paying them later and later each week. There was little industry in this area beyond fishing at the time, and few options for the men to go elsewhere and earn a decent wage. But when several weeks had gone by without payment, the fishermen rose up and came to Slocum Manor to extract their due…”
By now we’re in the vacant field next to Slaughter Manor, a weed infested lot where I normally pause to finish my tale, allowing guests to soak up the spooky vibe here at the end of Arctic Avenue.
Beside us four stories of frights await, windows dark and broken, paint long since peeled away from the walls and wood rotting to the original rusty nails.
“Slocum was home at the time,” I continue eerily, “reading a newspaper on the widow’s walk there on the fourth floor, as was his nightly ritual. He saw the men, emptied a pistol into several but was unable to quell the crowd of some three dozen angry, hungry, needy, greedy sailors.
“They entered the house through that door there,” I point, “and proceeded to gut Slocum’s wife, his maid and his grown son Lester like fish on the end of their lines. By the time they had reached Slocum, they were robbed of their just desserts.”
Greg has lost his smirk and, for once, seems genuinely interested in my tale. “Well, w-w-what happened to him?”
Now it’s my turn to smirk. “He hung himself from that very widow’s walk with a pair of his favorite suspenders. The men took out their revenge on his possessions, stealing, looting and pilfering everything of value they could find, from his wife’s jewelry to the copper fittings in the kitchen to the glass doorknobs…”
Our feet crunch on dried weeds and broken glass as we step onto the Slocum’s property. Peering into the darkness illuminated only by my rubber lamp, Greg asks, “It looks like there was a fire.”
“How perceptive of you,” I tell him. “The men tried to burn the house down to hide their crime of passion, but it’s said that Slocum’s spirit was already so strong that they couldn’t get the fire to stick. Eventually they gave up and ran away, never to be seen – or heard from – again.”
I guide him gently up the four creaky steps to the front door. The night is still and every sound is amplified in this desolate corner of the street.
Two houses down children might be bobbing for apples or screaming in terror at rubbery monsters on their 50-inch plasma flat screens, but here at Slaughter Manor, all sound seems to fade away.
I generally pause at the top of the steps, look my guests in the eye and ask, “Is anyone too afraid to go on? There are no refunds at this point, but… at least you won’t have to come face to face with the ghost of Jebediah Slocum!”
It usually gets a chuckle or two. But Greg looks so distressed I ask, “Are you okay?”
He blows it off with a gush of minty air from his mouth and a roll of his eyes, but I can feel him sticking close by my side as at last I reach for the door.
A gentle hand on my shoulder makes me pause with my hand on the doorknob.
“Who haunts this house?” he asks, sounding like Scrooge to one of the three ghosts on Christmas Eve.
“Why, the ghost of Jebediah Slocum, of course. They say he lies in wait, hoping that one of the descendants of his murderers will unwittingly pass across this very threshold…”
With that I open the door, screaming – screaming!! – as the sound of a barking dog literally makes me leap, if not into Greg’s arms then at least three steps down the warped, splintered stoop.
“Bark! Bark! Bark!” sounds the savage yapping of a giant dog. We’re talking genetically enhanced Doberman pincher or German shepherd here.
“Bark! Bark! Bark!”
But when I look, Greg is standing there, door open, peering inside, shoulders heaving and bent over at the waist from laughing so hard.
Laughing at me!
“Oh my God,” he finally cries, reaching down off the top step to help me back up onto the porch. “That was worth the price of admission right there.”
It’s hard to hear him over the constant barking, but by now I’m beginning to smell something fishy going on at Slaughter Manor.
“Do you do that every night?” he asks through teary eyes. “Because, seriously, that takes some mad acting skills!”
I slap him on the shoulder and point my lantern at the source of the sound, which seems to be a bright and shiny new speaker just on the other side of the door.
A small red eyelet attached to it must be a sensor, and as I stand in front of it – blocking the little red laser as the door might in the closed position – the barking suddenly stops.
When I move my hand, the barking resumes; louder than ever.
“This isn’t part of the show,” I insist, planting one foot in front of the sensor for some peace and quiet. “Usually, Slaughter Manor is spooky enough on its own right.”
Greg nods and walks inside. “Maybe it should be,” he says as he passes me by. “I mean, it sure gave me a thrill.”
There is a dusty table in the foyer where I usually rest my lantern before giving the guided tour. I put it down amid the clatter and inch away from the door, hoping that when it shuts… the barking will magically cease.
It does the trick, and the only sound remaining is that of our sneakers on the ancient floorboards of the musty old house.
I find the switch on the wall and flick it upward, igniting several more flickering – and equally fake – “flames” strategically placed along the walls to give just enough light for folks not to bump their knees or scrape their ankles, but not enough to reveal that Slaughter Mansion is really just another abandoned building one or two inspections away from being condemned.
My heart is still hammering from the barking speaker, and I make a mental note to give my boss the tongue lashing of his life for installing it without giving me fair warning.
“After the house sat vacant for decades,” I resume my tour, throat dry with anxiety as Greg clings near, “an enterprising realtor bought up the property and converted it into a boarding house.”
“Smart thinking,” says Greg, touching a dusty leather chair in the main parlor and fingering the dust that remains at the end of two fingertips.
“You might think so, but after only a few weeks in business, Jebediah’s ghost could no longer stay silent. Guests began complaining of night noises, scraping sounds on the floorboards, scratching on the windows. They lost sleep, and their imaginations grew. One man woke up to find a tall, silent creature at the foot of his bed. Another was tripped in the hallway to the sound of dry, guttural laughter. Soon no one would stay here and the owner lost his shirt. The house has been vacant ever since…”
We’re in the kitchen now, complete with rusty knives and broken dishes and moldy tea kettles on an old stovetop, remnants of a simpler, sparser time.
I move slowly, feet soft on the rust colored tiles of the sandy kitchen floor. A flickering electric candelabra above a rotted butcher’s block is the room’s only light as I inch toward the pantry door.
“When the fishermen broke down the front door,” I begin, softly at first, voice rising with each turn of the tale, “the maid ran where she felt the most comfortable; in the pantry. She thought she’d be safe. And she was; at first. But after the men were through slaughtering the family and began looting and pillaging the house, they finally made their way down here. They found her, in this very pantry, and—”
I open the door to finish my story with my usual dramatic flair, and suddenly a rattling skeleton sails into the air, practically knocking me down as it flies right past.
I stand to one side, Greg to the other as the skeleton flits here, flits there, groaning and moaning as I stifle another scream with not one but two hands pressed in a death grip over my open mouth.
“Dammit!” I curse as the skeleton sails back into the pantry, t
he door closing on itself as if on a timer. “I can’t believe they’d do this without telling me first.”
“Who?” Greg asks, inching toward me for comfort. “Do what?”
“All these new bells and whistles,” I complain, straightening my bonnet after one of the skeleton’s elbows knocked it sideways. “My boss and his handyman must have installed these overnight. They certainly weren’t on my last tour, and I have no idea what else is waiting around the other corner…”
“Well, isn’t that what a ghost tour is all about?” he teases, chocolate eyes wide with amusement.
“Sure, for the guests! But I’m not supposed to get my wits scared out of me every night!”
He is chuckling again, but the sound is so warm, so friendly, so sincere, I can’t help but join him.
“I’m sorry,” I confess, looking into his soft brown eyes. “I’m not normally so… dramatic.”
“No worries Gemma,” he says, eyes flickering upward from the Frightening Footsteps nametag pinned to my old-fashioned collar. “But… what’s Halloween without a few frights, right?”
“If you say so,” I grin, inching into the next room.