The quarry closest in to town was the worst for swimmers’ accidents.  That would stand to reason due to its proximity.  Whenever a child went missing in the hotter months, the quarry was the first place the police would look.  Too many times, these young bodies would be dragged from the depths, their injuries evident in the bumps on their heads, or in the case of those caught between the oucroppings, scrapes and broken bones.

The parents in the area wanted the place destroyed.  So, the owner came up with the idea to turn the whole thing into an apartment village.  The spring after I turned twelve, work began on the complex.

The pit was drained, then the whole south side was blasted and graded gently down to the level of the road below.  A winding drive snaked through the area and building sites began to dot what used to be the floor of the workings.  Bull dozers and cement trucks, lumber flatbeds and contractors’ pick-ups drove in and out.  Structures began to rise above the fertile soil of the quarry.

We would go down and watch them build.  There was little enough to do in town, and construction of this magnitude drew more than childish on-lookers.  People lined the sides of the pit or poked around on the uneven hillsides.  Deaths, of course, came up and people would point out the place where so-and-so had last been seen alive, or the particular outcropping which had trapped such-and-such.  Indeed, the worst spot for trapping swimmers was still intact, jutting out ominously at the north end of the basin.  With the water drained you could see how the large over-lip and jagged under-margin, so close together and irregular, could trap a leg or slender waist.  But back then, when it could only be seen from above through greenish water, it just looked like a simple ledge.

They worked on through the hottest days of summer and into the fall, quitting only when the weather made it impossible to continue.  They gated off the place using the perimiter fence once used to block access to the quarry, mending the holes where the kids used to sneak in, and adding new barbed wire to the top.  The snow came and covered the construction with thick blankets.

The project took three years total to complete, and gave jobs to more people than anything other than the road crews.  For once, we even had to bring people in to fill all the positions.  At the end of the undertaking, four buildings with four apartments each took up the land.  Each building had a long carport at the back with space for eight cars, a laundry room in the basement, slots for visitors’ cars, and a large amoeba-shaped island of land ringed by the curving drive.  A landscaper, whose usual job was to cut down diseased elms, had planted vast fields of grass and a few evergreens on each plot.  An office building with two apartments attached, stood sentinel at the head of the drive just where it split into its east and west arms.  One of these apartments was always on display.  The other one housed the manager of the moment.  And on the plot behind it, which snaked its way through the center of the complex, was the beginnings of the tennis court and small swimming pool, and clubhouse with a spa.  It was attractive, and in line with the rents of the rest of Prairie Cross.  The only difference was the gate at the front, and the membership dues to keep the gardens neat.

People began to move in.  Most of them were recent graduates of Prairie Cross High, anxious to get away from the folks but nervous enough to stay close at hand.  Young couples also, just starting married life, took apartments in the buildings not already overrun with carousing teens.  By the end of that first summer, all the apartments were rented and a pattern had emerged:  The building farthest east housed four groups of recent grads, with their loud music and louder cars; the rest of the complex housed newly-weds and a couple of retirees.  By the time the snows came, the complex was a settled community within the rest of the community of Prairie Cross.

But then, something strange began to happen.  People began to move away.  By spring, more than half of the apartments were vacant, and the atmosphere around the quarry was hushed.  Even the teens were quiet.  I remember visiting there with a friend whose sister lived in one of the teen-agers’ apartments at the time.  The first time we went, there was loud music along the communal hallways and guys out back tinkering with various old cars, laughing and talking and spewing beer all over each other.  Now, the halls were as somber as a hospital’s and people walked with the furtive bend of someone waiting fearfully for something to occur.

Not that we really noticed this enough to be impressed.  We were barely seventeen, and still full of life and vigor.  We talked loudly, laughed, and played around thinking we were so sophisticated.  Janice, Lori’s sister, kept shushing us and telling us to settle down.

“You make enough racket to raise the dead,”  she shrieked at us in panic. 

“You sound just like Mom,”  Lori griped.

“Well, if the shoe fits, Brat-brain.  If you can’t behave like adults, you can leave.”

We finished our pops and talked like miniature ossuaries, silent and sepulchral.  We could scarcely contain our giggles as we left the building and got back into Lori’s car.
 

Other people moved in, other people moved out.  Soon stories spread around that the places were haunted.  As time went on, the stories got way out of proportion, attributing the hauntings to ancient Indian burials, and saying that the quarry had closed down because of them as well.  Never mind that the kids who used the place for swimming had never heard or seen a thing.  By the time Autumn came around, it was being whispered that a graveyard had been unearthed back in the dim old days and the bodies re-interred in a less than compassionate manner.  The stories were so persistent that the local tribes started looking into the claims.

Lori, who had graduated with me the spring before, started pestering her sister Janice to let her move in with her:  “Come on, Jan.  Mom’ll give me a hassel about it unless I move in with you.”  “I’ve got my own job, I won’t be a bother.”  “Please, I’ll even do the dishes!”

Janice, who had been spending more time at her parents’ house, would wave her off.  “If I wanted to be stuck babysitting you, I would have stayed home,”  she would say.  And no matter what Lori would say after that, Janice would stick her nose in the air and pretend she didn’t hear her.

Lori and I started hanging out together more, staying in my parents’ garage, which we’d fixed up as a sort-of apartment.  We even had a phone back then, not really needing most of our income for things like bills since we both lived at home.  One night, while we were watching movies, Janice called.

“Could you guys come over?”  she asked.  “I’ve got some popcorn, we could watch TV and have a party.”

Lori was still smarting from their last arguement over the prospect of her moving in and said,  “I thought you didn’t want to bother baby-sitting me.”

“This is different, Brat-brain.  I’m inviting you.  But if you don’t want to come over, well...”

“Wait.”

We looked at each other.  The garage was nice for a short respite, but it was late in the year and pretty cold with the wind coming in underneath the automatic door no matter what we put in front of it.  And there was no bathroom in the garage either, and no kitchen.  It was really inconvenient, come to think of it, and Janice’s apartment would be so much better.  I nodded and Lori told Janice we’d be over in a minute.

My mother wasn’t keen on the idea of us going over there so late at night.  “I’ve heard some pretty spooky things about that whole complex.”

“We’ll be at Janice’s, Mom.  She’s expecting us.”

“I don’t know...”

She was being infuriating.  We were only letting her know to be polite, since we were both eighteen now and by law capable of deciding things like this for ourselves.  I stomped my foot while Lori almost vibrated with impatience.  Finally my mother relented, but told us to call her when we got there and again before we left.  She was sure the spooky things going on around there were man-made, and didn’t want us getting into any trouble.

We agreed and were off.

To be polite, we stopped and bought a couple of six-packs of pop and some chips and dip.  Then we left the parking lot and headed north, up the state road and out of town.

The land seemed more hilly here, surrounded as it was by nothing but fields and pastureland.  The complex was blocked from the view of the closest neighbors by a low rise.  While only seven minutes from my house including the stop at the store, it seemed as though we were miles out.

The gates were closed at night and required either a key, or someone inside to buzz you through.  Lori pressed the buzzer and told Janice we wer here.  There was another buzz, and the heavy iron gate slowly rolled back to let us enter.

“Boy, am I glad you guys are here!”  Janice said when we came into her apartment.  “Gerdy’s at her aunt’s, and Julie’s at the sleep-over for Deb’s batchellorette party, and I don’t want to be here alone.”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared,”  Lori said sarcastically, putting the pops in the fridge and taking three out for us.

“Yes, I am.  And that’s part of being grown up, being able to admit that.”

“Well, what are you afraid of?”

Janice shrugged, but it was more of a cringe than a shrug, as though protecting herself with her back.  “Things,”  she answered.

We went out to the living room and sat down, Lori and I in the chairs which flanked the couch, Janice in the middle of the couch, the chips and dip in front of her.  She had made a bowl of popcorn too, and there was a crystal bowl of butter-mints as well.  The accessories were festive, but the mood in the apartment was dark.

“I guess you’ve heard all those rumors,”  Janice said.  “Well, they’re true.  There’s something haunting this place, something weird.  You don’t notice it during the day, but at night when things quiet down, then you start to hear strange things.  Like people walking down the hall when you know no one’s home, or knocking, or voices from far away, but when you walk past a certain place, they’re suddenly behind you.  There are times when the bedrooms get really cold, too, other-worldly cold like the hand of death is touching you.  And the screams...  Some nights you can hear them really good... well...”  Janice corrected herself.  I remember that, because it broke the mood her words were forming.  “They just echo all around the place!  It’s creepy.”  She faced Lori.  “W hy do you think I don’t want you moving in here?  I might move out myself, if I can get the money up for another place.”

“Is it really that bad?”  Lori asked, leaning forward intently.

“It’s really that bad.  It doesn’t happen every night, just some nights.  But I just don’t want to hear those noises if they come tonight!”

Lori looked concerned, and to tell the truth, I was as well.  Janice had lost her sisterly sarcasm and her words were bare of all emotion other than the truth.  It’s a strange thing to hear words stripped as though they’d been soaked in an astringent.  It made them more real, more ominous.  Especially coming from Janice, whose favorite nick-name for her sister was Brat-brain.

“Anyway, could you guys call home and ask if you can spend the night with me?  Tell them we’re watching TV, or having a sleep-over.  Just don’t get them upset, or they’ll make me move back home and I’m not ready to do that!”

Lori and I took turns with the phone.  Lori’s mom was surprised that Janice wanted Lori’s and my company.  My mom was still sure that there were some deviants roaming the north side of town.  I told her we would be in Janice’s apartment until morning and promised not to leave it for anything.  Then we settled in for the night.

Janice’s bedroom was adequate for one person and all her effects: bed, dresser, vanity and chair; but hardly large enough for the three of us to sleep together.  The other room, the larger one, belonged to the other two girls.  They were out, but we didn’t feel right invading their privacy.  And besides, as Janice pointed out, the bedrooms were the places where those pools of chilling air would grow.  We got blankets and pillows and set up in the living room on the floor in front of the TV.

We waited for ages for the sounds to start.  I was beginning to wonder if they’d come at all.  Janice had said they didn’t always show up.  In a way, I couldn’t wait for it to start, the prospect was exciting; yet at the same time, I was afraid.  It was that same fear you get when you’re small and you think there’s something in the closet and you hide your head under the covers until you fall asleep.  I just wanted to bury my head beneath those almost-new blankets and stay that way til morning.

We watched TV a little, but at last the droning noise made us turn it off.  We settled down, a budoir lamp casting faint shadows in the darkness, talked little, and waited.

Near midnight the sounds began.  First an ambiguous moaning that could have been the heat register in an older house, then it became more distinct.  It sounded almost like a dog...

“That’s the sheepdog at the DuPres place,”  Janice whispered.  The DuPres (how do you pluralize that?) owned the land abutting the quarry and they ran some sheep nearby.  We relaxed again until Janice said,  “He always howls before the sounds start.”

It wasn’t long before we heard the footsteps coming down the hall.  I had thought that Janice meant the main hall of the building, but these were in the apartment, coming down the hallway leading to the bedrooms.  We stared involuntarily at the gaping doorway, waiting for someone or something to round the curve, but nothing showed itself.  It just kept walking until the footsteps faded from our hearing.

“That was weird,”  Lori whispered.

Someone answered her, or seemed to.  The low murmur of voices came from somewhere behind us and could have been outside in the main hallway, or in the kitchen.  Janice was watching us, Lori threw a frightened look in my direction, and I looked back at Janice probably as wild-looking as Lori.

“Go check,”  Lori hissed at Janice.

“Me?  I’ve done all that, thanks.  You check.”

“I don’t want to!”  Lori’s voice grew more insistent.  “You go!”

Janice was closer to the hall than Lori or I.  It was clear that Lori wouldn’t be moving for a while so I got up and went to the front door.

The front door opens almost directly across from the kitchen pass-through, to the side of the living room.  It was between the kitchen proper and the more open space of the living room.  I could still hear the voices mumbling, but Lori and Janice had stopped.  I looked back at them and found them watching me.

I couldn’t back down now.  I felt resistance in my own hands, but opened the door and peered out in the hallway.  No one was there, but the voices still continued from behind me.  I looked into the kitchen, but no one was hiding in the narrow galley.

“No one’s there,”  I shrugged and hurried back to my blanket-roll.  Silence settled down again, but the air was potent with presence.

The murmurings continued until the footsteps came again, going away from us down the hallway.  Since I’d already shown myself to whatever it was that was out there, I got up and followed at a discreet distance.  The hall was dark, but enough light spilled around the corner to show shadows, and there was no one there.  I went farther and found myself outside of Janice’s room.

At a hunch I opened the door and was greeted by a wall of freezing air.  The hallway air was close, and the main hall had been slightly chill with the onward thrust of autumn.  But this was the deepest cold of death not even hinted at in winter.  There was something dead about it and I closed the door and retreated back down to the living room.

“Well?” Janice asked, watching me almost with satisfaction.

“Nothing’s there.  But your room’s freezing.”

Lori jumped up and hurried down the hall, checking behind her every so often to make sure I was still standing in the doorway.  She opened the bedroom door and I could see her shiver.  Then she closed it and ran back down to the living room.

The DuPres’ dog began to howl again.  I jumped and knocked Lori into the wall.  She was still regaining her feet when the screams began.

They were piteous sounds, full of the most aching sorrow.  They reverberated through the apartment and I think, outside.  Someone’s heart was breaking and we were terrified.

The screams continued for some minutes, intermixed with the howls of the dog.  But there was no way we could have mistaken one for the other, for the dog only sounded alarmed.  Those screams were something else.

At last the night grew quiet and, somehow, empty.  The air closed in on us like a vacuum sucking the sides of a bag together and I realized I was exhausted.  We checked the clock.  It had lasted more than half an hour.  Janice sighed and leaned back against the couch.

“It’s over for tonight,”  she said.  She was almost asleep.  We helped her to her side on the sculpted carpet and she was soon lost in dreams.

Lori and I stayed up the rest of the night, waiting.
 

My mother wouldn’t understand.  She was a firm believer in human agency.  The only other option in her mind would be demon possession, and I didn’t want to raise that one with her.

My father, on the other hand, would listen.  He sat quietly until I’d finished my story, then leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin.  He hadn’t shaved yet that morning and the motion made a scratching sound.  I began to associate it with other sounds, then with those sounds.  He frowned and I tried to look attentive.

“You say the DuPres’ dog would howl before those sounds start?  Are you sure they weren’t the dog scratching at the fence?”

“I’m sure,”  I said, although I wondered.  We hadn’t even considered a normal explaination.  But on reflection, I wondered how a dog’s light digging might be carried down the hall that way.  “Anyway, what about those voices?  The talking?”

My dad shook his head.  “I didn’t hear it.  What do you think?”

“I think it was someone talking.  But when I looked out into the hallway, there was no one there.  And the voices sounded like they were coming from the kitchen then.”

“Then there were more footsteps?”

“Yes.  They went back down the hall.  I followed them, but there was no one there.  I looked in Janice’s room, and it was cold.”

“Did you look in the other girls’ room?”

“No.”

“Could someone have been hiding in there?  Or climbed out their window?  Does their room face out on the carport?”

“No, and besides, we would have heard the window open and them hitting the carport roof.  It’s aluminum sheet.  Anyway, I was looking down the hall when those footsteps were still walking and I didn’t see anyone, or see a door open.”

“What about the bathroom?”

“That’s at the front of the hall, facing down toward the bedrooms.  It was behind me when the footsteps were in front.”

“Those screams could have come from the land surrounding the quarry.  That bowl those apartments sit in is a natural amplifier.  Are you sure the screams were human?  Or could they have been a bird, or an animal caught in a trap?”

“I don’t know if they were human or not,”  I admitted.  “The dog was howling too, but it sounded different.  You could tell between them, the screams and the dog’s howling.”

“Well, it sounds like at least two of the sounds you heard have no explaination you could find.  The screams could be anything.  Why don’t we go and talk to Granny?”

I raised my eyebrows at that.  My father and his grandmother never got along.  He was polite to her, and treated her with respect.  But he didn’t really like going to visit with her.  But he got up from the table and grabbed his jacket and I followed him out.
 

You can’t see it in pictures, but the resemblance between my father and his grandmother was pronounced.  The same nose, the same mouth, the same direct and sometimes frightening eyes.  He was what is nicely called ‘portly’, she was (and still is) a thin little woman.  She was as surprised to see him with me at the door as I had been at his coming, but she stood aside and let us in.

Her house was small and tightly packed with all sorts of memorabilia.  Curios on the wall, tiny figurines, decorative plates on larger shelves.  Her thick furniture wore dainty antimacassars, her windows sported old-fashioned Venitian blinds.  She led us to her kitchen, where the copper cookware and molds shone from hangers on the wall and from the ceiling, and plugg ed the percolater in.  Then she sat down with us and we listened to the old pot breathe.

“Well.  What brings you here, Bill?”  she asked in that rich gutteral accent our family has.  My father leaned heavily on the table and she glared at his elbows.  He shifted around politely and she raised her eyes.

“Have you heard the rumors about those apartments up at the old quarry?”  he asked.

She nodded.  “I always said it was a bad idea, putting people there.  I hear they’re losing renters.”

My father nodded.  “I talked to Sam Johnson, he’s the manager there, and he said the people sign the leases then they want out.  They don’t even mind losing their deposits, and he can’t blame them.  If he didn’t have a family to support he’d be out of there as well.  He’s been looking around for another job.”

“I’ve heard that it’s the Indians.”

My father nodded.  “That’s what I’ve heard.  But...  I don’t know, I just don’t know.”  He nodded in my direction.  “Sis here spent the night up there and heard some things.”

My grandmother locked that piercing gaze on me.  I gulped and wished the coffee was made.  But I told her what I’d told my dad, adding the information he’d prompted me to recall when we’d talked at home.  I hoped she’d have no more questions for me, I only wanted some coffee.

My father got up and started getting cups down.  My grandmother checked the sugar bowl, then looked through me long and hard.  “Well.”  She sat back and crossed her arms.

“Janice said she wants to move.”

“I can imagine.”

My father rattled the cups in the kitchen.  Otherwise, I guessed she wanted me to speak.  I cleared my throat.  She waited.

“I don’t know what you want to know,”  I said at last.

“How did it feel?”

“What?  Hearing that?  Scary.”

“No.  The air.  The apartment.”  She took out her pipe and a leather pouch and put her blend into the bowl.  She was the only woman I have ever known to smoke a corn-cob pipe.

“Well, when I checked Janice’s room it was cold.”

“Did you get a blast of it when you opened the door?”

I thought about it.  “No,”  I said at last,  “It was in there like a wall.  You know, like in the cartoons when they open the bathroom door when the tub’s overflowed and the water hangs there a minute before it comes out...”  My voice faded.  She was glaring at me with The Look.

“I don’t watch cartoons.  What about the rest of the apartment?”

My father hiccuped and covered his mouth.  I think he was laughing at me.  He brought the coffee in and set it down on the table.  Then he got his own and sat down with us.

They were waiting.  I opened my mouth and finally found the words.  “Um... close. Stifling.  Not hot, just... thick.  I only noticed because when it was over, it thinned out again.”

Granny rubbed her neck and turned her head.  She regarded the table as an enemy.  She looked at my father, then out at the living room beyond his head.  Finally she re-lit her pipe and puffed a mist of smoke.  “Sounds like a haunting, then.”

My father sipped his coffee.  I sipped mine.  Granny held hers in front of her and talked over the rim.

“I knew it was a bad idea to begin with.  Ever since they closed that place it’s been nothing but death and a haven for the disobedient.”  She looked pointedly at me again.  “I don’t know such about old Indian burial grounds, I’ve never heard of one around there.  I think those spirits that you heard were of those children who were drowned.”

I stared at her.  Not quite as romantic as a desecrated burial ground, but still romantic.

“What can be done about it?”  my father asked.

“Well, you could bring in some exorcist and get the spirits moving.  Or you could tell them yourselves to get along.  You could hang a charm in the apartment so they couldn’t come calling like that, and get out as quick as possible.”

“I’ll mention all that to Sam,”  my father said.

“How would you make a charm?”  I asked.

My grandmother rose slowly and went out to the kitchen.  She reached down under the sink and brought out an old spice bottle and unscrewed the lid.  “Run upstairs and get my sewing basket,”  she ordered me, and I was off.

She took some pins and bent them, then cut up some string.  She put them in the bottle, then poured fennel seeds inside.  She then screwed on the cap and handed it to me.  “The pins’ll prick them and the strings will tie them.  The fennel will keep them busy counting so they can’t cause harm.  Tell your friend to prick her finger and add some drops of blood in there, to keep her safe as well.  Then hang it near the doorway that she uses the most.”

My father sighed, but said nothing.  We finished our coffee talking about other things.
 

I took the bottle out to Janice.  She looked at it, turning it around in front of her face and taking stock of what was inside.  “And, I’m supposed to prick my finger and bleed in this?”

I nodded.  She shrugged.  My grandmother’s reputation was well-known.  She got a needle out of the kitchen drawer and, closing her eyes, stabbed a tiny hole in her finger and dripped into the bottle.

“Now, I hang it on the wall by the door?”

She tied a nice red ribbon around the neck of the bottle and hung it behind the door.  That done, she offered me a pop and we talked about the haunting and whether the bottle would work or not.  Then I left, since I had to get to work.
 

Janice and her roomies didn’t have any more problems with the ghosts, but the complex was failing.  Janice got enough money to move into a small utility apartment down on Main Street, and her roomies went their seperate ways.  More and more people moved away and they finally shut the place down.

The place went up for sale and after a while one of the tribes bought it for a school.  They did some remodeling, I heard, converting units into classrooms.  But no one stays there at night and the gate is always locked at dusk.