Free House Haunted by Al Sarrantonio

this?” And then suddenly he was crying. “I love you! Can't you see they're gone? I'm here for you now.” His sobs consumed him. “They're dead , Laura!”
    She looked at the countertop, at the paring knife jammed into the center of it. She head Peter, but his voice had suddenly become very distant. She wondered if something was wrong with the phone lines. Peter's voice grew thinner and higher, like a mouse's. She held the phone receiver away from her ear, but it wasn't a phone receiver anymore. It was a boomerang, a smooth polished curve of hardwood. She was about to throw it. It seemed the right thing to do. She threw the boomerang and it made a long, graceful half circle into the bright sunlight. She was standing in a field that had just been mowed. It smelled like cut dry grass. There was a single apple tree off to her left, growing fat with apples that she would soon pick. She knew her father had had this field mowed just for her, because she wanted to play in it. It was her favorite place.
    There was only one cloud—a fat, lazy white one, hovering high above the apple tree. Behind her, partly visible over the lip of a sloping hill, stood their house, with open windows in the kitchen. There was a blueberry pie on the sill.
    She laughed, and her father laughed, still dressed in his long pants from the office and his suspenders, his white shirt open at the collar, his tie thrown down at his feet, his white thinning hair framing his full face, his mouth laughing under his white mustache. He reached up for the ball he thought she was throwing to him, the one she had tossed behind her as she pulled the hidden boomerang from under her sweatshirt. He watched the boomerang spinning a curving circle up and over him, curling back in a neat helicoptering sweep to land at his daughter's feet. And he stood there with his hands still up for the feinted catch, laughing at her joke, jumping up to make the grab that would never be.
    â€œOh, Laura,” he shouted to her, “you make me laugh so.”
    Her mother appeared on the hill behind her, shouting, “Supper, you two!”
    â€œComing, M!” she shouted, beginning to run. She called her parents M and P, short for Mom and Pop because of their age, a term of affection they cherished. “Coming, M!”
    Her mother's smile turned to pained concern. “Oh, Laura, don't run! You know you're not supposed to run!”
    Laura stopped, gasping at the shooting pain in her right foot, and slowly hobbled back to the boomerang. Tears of pain filled her eyes. She wanted to throw the boomerang again, wipe the anxious looks from M's and P's faces, stop them from running to her, make them laugh, make them forget that she had run, had disobeyed them, disappointed them, wanted to make the pain in her foot go away, the blue day with the mown grass and single beautiful high white cloud come back, the happiness come back.
    She bent over and picked up the boomerang. There was a mouse's voice coming from it. She put it to her ear and the voice grew loud into Peter's voice. Her eyes stared at the knife standing straight up in the countertop. She heard Peter, but she didn't listen to him. There were lines etched in the wood around the paring knife. She moved closer to the counter. She heard Peter very loud in her ear. “For God's sake, Laura!” he screamed.
    Laura's hand dropped the phone. The receiver hit the floor, springing up and then tapping the floor again before settling into a slow, bobbing swing. Peter's voice was far away, a mouse's voice again.
    She stood over the countertop, staring at the deep gashes that had been carved in shadowed relief by the paring knife. She put her hand on the knife, feeling as she yanked it out like the boy who drew the sword from the stone. The knife resisted, then pulled free.
    She stood back, the knife limp in her hand. Thawed hope welled up into tears in her eyes. Reaching out a single, trembling finger, she