“IT really is a beautiful house; nowhere near a mansion, but elegant nonetheless,” Vera reassured her husband, turning her head to him.
Though Steven focused his attention on the road ahead, his wife noticed how the bright, late-morning, November sunlight was cutting through the crisp, cold air outside and piercing the driver’s side window. The sunlight landing on Steven somewhat illuminated his earlobe-length, chestnut hair, leaving Vera to relish how nice he’d look with a moustache of the same color. She also noticed the sunlight flickering off of the thick, 24K-gold chain and Christ-bearing crucifix around his neck; she also felt that such pure gold would look far better on a black T-shirt instead of the white one he was wearing, with his worn Levi’s denim jeans.
“Why hasn’t your sister sold it to somebody else, by now?” Steven asked, anxiousness in his voice. “Plus why so cheap? And even so much more cheaper to us?”
“I already told you,” she firmly yet patiently replied, “Mom and Dad made Alley promise that she’d somehow keep the house in the family.”
Neither said anything more after that, until they reached Charlottetown.
Although Vera didn’t mind leaving Toronto, Steven did. His psychiatrist told him to either get away from the stressful urban setting or eventually be admitted to a hospital psyche-ward. He’d studied for and earned an advanced degree in structural engineering, and now it seemed that he didn’t have the nerves to cope with the stress-load of designing, mostly, large bridges—i.e. with many lives depending on his competence—throughout Canada and the United States. (He did, however, feel good and particular pride in having played a large role in the construction of the longest bridge in the Western hemisphere: the thirteen kilometer Confederation Bridge, which he’d likely be crossing fairly often while living in the ‘Garden Province.’) He felt even worse knowing that Vera had sold her small seamstress business to have more time for her on-the-edge husband.
Regardless, both intended to try to make the best of their big move from Ontario to Prince Edward Island.
“Make a left here, on Hemlock,” she instructed, while pointing. “There it is—#476—the one with the old oak in the backyard. The place hasn’t changed a bit.”
Getting out of the car, Vera walked towards the front door while gazing at the three-leveled structure (including the attic floor but not the basement). Despite its considerable age, the house’s recent white coat of paint gave it a respectable appearance, somewhat like a brand new three-piece suit and snazzy tie on an old man. Perhaps most noticeable was the double-door, front entrance being preceded by a small portico.
Her hand shading her eyes from the sunlight, Vera was hypnotically-like fixated on the house, penetrating its walls with her memories.
“C’mon, Steve; let’s go in!” she enthused, spinning around to lead him in by the hand. “Steve?”
Vera looked to her right and left, then made a full rotation: “Steve?” she called out, making her way towards one end of the house, then the other. “Where are you?”
Becoming a bit impatient, she peeked around the corner, where she found him squatting and staring down into the house’s basement, past the opened root-cellar shutter doors.
“Steve? Didn’t you hear me call? … Steve!?” Vera insisted on receiving a reply from hubby, though before looking up to the house’s two attic dormer windows. It was as though she’d been mentally beckoned to acknowledge a presence beyond from those windows. Staring into them, a blank expression on her face, she thought how those windows, each sectioned into quarters by perpendicular wood strips, looked to her like angry eyes; and the root cellar entrance, through which Steven was still looking down, looked like an angry mouth. She recalled how twenty-eight years earlier (especially around Halloween), she, a little five-year-old, and her sister Alley would pretend that the house was indeed possessed by an aggressive spirit, which expressed its displeasure through those angry eyes and mouth.
Inhaling deeply, Steven looked up to his seemingly entranced wife. “Look at these doors,” he said, breaking Vera from her hypnotic gaze at the windows. “They must be at least a couple hundred years old.”
Vera, ignoring the old shutter doors themselves, peered down the stairway leading into stark darkness. As she gazed, her straight, chest-length, thick, blond hair—indeed so shiny clean and smooth that one could tell she meticulously grooms it—slipped onto her light-brown brows, somewhat covering her baby-blue eyes. Pulling her hair back, she said, “It’s so bright out here, you can’t see a single thing down there.” Shutting the root-cellar doors, she asked Steven, “How did you unlock them? Weren’t they locked?”
“Ahhh, no, they were unlocked.”
“Alley must’ve left them unlocked—I can’t believe it!” Vera incredulously assumed, without hesitation. “Figures; she never did give a damn about my security … Whatever; let’s get inside.”
They went back around to the front of the house, to its main entrance door, where Vera futilely searched her purse for the house key she was sure Alley gave her before they’d left Toronto.
“Where’s that damn key?” she muttered with frustration. “I know I didn’t leave it behind at Alley’s.” And Steven standing right behind her, though not saying anything, seemed to only agitate her somewhat over the matter.
“I can’t find the damn key Alley gave us!” she snapped, pulling her hand from her purse, shrugging her shoulders in angered bewilderment. “I must’ve gotten it from her.”
“Calm down, hon. We’ll get a locksmith over,” he reassured her as he, perhaps out of instinct to ensure that it was in fact locked, grasped the doorknob and turned it. “Hey, look—it’s unlocked.”
Vera stood there rather stunned. “I don’t believe it,” she said, exasperated, looking at her husband, “That bitch! How could she be so careless and inconsiderate?!”
“Well, we might as well go inside,” Steven suggested, pushing open the door.
Inside, the house was left waiting for them indeed the way promised by Alley. All of the furnishings were covered with plain-white, cotton sheets; and everything expected was there: the carpeting, beds, cleaned bathrooms, electricity and water works. Directly ahead from where they stood, across the living room, was the kitchen entrance, an opening in the shape of a stereotypical gravestone. The kitchen had checkered, light-orange and dark-brown linoleum floor tiles, on which stood the General Electric appliances, all eggshell white. However, the walls, which had the same orange color of the floor tiles, were bare of any paintings, pictures, portraits or ornaments, etcetera.
Adjacent to the kitchen entrance by about two meters was a plain, solid-wood door to the stairwell leading to the completely-below-ground-level basement. And adjacent to that door was the beginning of the rather-extensive hallway, which itself led towards one side of the house but then made a ninety degree left turn towards the rear of the residence, ending near a sliding-glass, back door. On the other side of the kitchen entrance, again by about two metres, was the ground floor’s sole washroom, with all of its contents (including the walls) of a uniformly, bright peach pink colour. The hallway, like the rest of the house (except the kitchen and attic), was covered with crimson-red carpeting; and its walling, from which hung an old family portrait, was painted beige.
The living-room was unremarkable, with its all-maple furniture consisting of a leg-less coffee table (with a beverage-cup ring stain at one end), a dominating compartment at its mid-section, a long black-leather couch which appeared quite comfortable, two lamp tables (basically looking much like the coffee table though holding atypically plain-looking lamps), one at either end of the couch, and a twenty-four inch Electrohome color television set. The living-room walls were an off-white color with another though more recent family portrait (the subjects of which were all about five years older than they were in the first portrait) hanging a meter above the TV set; a large sliding-glass door faced the street, its curtains, not surprising, crimson red quite like the residence’s dominating carpeting color.
Opposite of the basement stairwell door, at the hallway’s entrance near the kitchen entrance, was the stairwell leading up to the second floor—a stairwell followed up on both sides by the fancy, Cherry-wood railings. The second floor’s three sole bedrooms and one bathroom, to fulfill the wishes of Vera’s mother (while alive), were all painted sky blue. Just past the third and final bedroom, at the end of the hall, was the stairwell (albeit relatively short) to the attic, and except for its two dormer windows and the cardboard boxes brimming with old things and outgrown clothes, everything sat Oak-wooden and vacant.
Vera wasted no time in going through the house, ASAP, to pull off all of the covers from whatever they were covering and opening every closed set of curtains. The curtains opened, bright daylight burst into each room, illuminating all of the disturbed films of dust. Man, look at that dust! she thought, deciding that the house’s every orifice should be opened for much-needed ventilation, though she settled for a couple windows.
On her way to the kitchen to check on the appliances, Vera recalled her sister telling her that the refrigerator would be freshly stocked the day before they were to arrive. It was all so convenient—until she opened the refrigerator door and was greeted by a blast of foul, rotting odor. All perishable foods inside (the meat, vegetables and fruit) were of the ghoulish, gray-green color of mould. It’s as though they’ve been sitting in a dead fridge for months, she noted to herself. “My God! How!? … Oh, shit!”
Pulling suitcases from the car, Steven mentally experienced an irresistible compulsion to gaze up at the second-floor bedroom window. His chestnut-brown eyes stared through the window as though he might see his wife up there looking back down at him. “Hmmm … ,” he hummed before getting back to business, grabbing the last suitcase. Locking the car doors, his arms full, he made his way back to the house; and that’s when everything in his head began to spin.
Instantly dropping the suitcases, he closed his eyes for a moment then slowly opened them. Rather than subsiding as he’d hoped, the spinning decided to suddenly
move to his stomach, which he covered with his arms. It was like there was a rodent down in there, racing along the walls of his stomach, causing the organ to rapidly rotate. He was sure he would vomit.
“Steve?” The sudden sound of his wife’s gentle voice seemed to release his whirling gut. Steven inhaled deeply, then picked up the suitcases lying all around him on the gravel driveway.
“I must’ve gotten up too quickly,” he mumbled to himself, making his way back to the house.
Closing the door after him and leaving the suitcases on the living room floor, Steven’s attention was attracted to the sudden activation of the television set. He stared at the set with mystified eyes as the stations changed, one by one, about a second between changes.
There must be a crossing of remote signals with one of the neighbors who are watching TV, he thought, dismissively. That thought, however, was just before he noticed that the TV-set channel knob was turning by itself. And this isn’t even a remote-controlled set, he realized. “What in the hell is going on?” he quietly demanded, just prior to being startled by a tap on the basement stairwell door behind him.
“Steve?” came the muffled voice from the other side of the door.
“Oh; it’s Vera,” he said, with considerable relief, and opened the door for her.
“What’re you watching, Steve? Babewatch?” Vera snickered, knowing full well that her husband did not in the least like her suggesting that he watched such carnal programming (“I was only checking out the boat they’re driving,” he would claim when caught watching Baywatch).
“No, I’m not watching ‘Babewatch’,” he snapped, sarcastically. “The TV’s going crazy. Look,” he said, turning his head to the television set.
“What? What’s wrong with it?” she asked, peering around Steven’s five-foot-eleven-inch frame, and at the set. “It’s not even on.”
Steven was quite perplexed and very much looked it. “A second ago, it was … ,” he explained, but paused, “ … it was changing channels by itself. I’m telling you.”
Vera was too enthralled by being back, after so many years, in her childhood residence to worry about the crossed wires, or whatever, of a television set. She turned around and looked down at the knob of the basement stairwell door. “Oh, yeah; that’s right—it locks from this side,” she realized. “We’ve got to change the doorknob or something.”
Steven was still left mesmerized by the mystery of the changing channels but nevertheless turned his attention away from the set and onto his wife. “What were you doing down there, anyway?” he questioned her.
“I went to see if there’s any unspoiled food in the deep freeze, but the lid’s jammed.” She shrugged her shoulders, before realizing that she still hadn’t informed her husband of the rotten food. “We were left with a fridge full of moldy food, you know.”
“What do you mean, ‘full of moldy food’?” Steven asked. “All of it? What, isn’t the fridge working?”
“Yup,” Vera returned, shaking her head, “and I called the power company; they said this area hasn’t had an outage in over six months.”
“Well, I guess I’ll have to go to the store, then; though I’m not at all hungry,” he reluctantly volunteered, recalling the recent urge to throw up onto the driveway. “But I still want to try and pry open the deep freeze … ” He then smiled and interlocked his fingers onto the back of his head: “Actually, I think I’ll take a nap first; do you mind?”
“Not at all,” his wife replied, sympathetically. “You do look tired.”
As Steven hauled the suitcases upstairs and helped himself to one of the beds, Vera emptied the spoiled food from the refrigerator into a Glad garbage bag and dumped it into the waste can outside.
Although he slept well the night before, Steven was sleepy and felt that he needed a daytime nap, as though he was four years old rather than his thirty-four years. He didn’t even think about exploring what may be for him and Vera the rooms of a house in which they would live for quite some time. Right now all I need is a bed, he thought, turning into the closest bedroom. It was only one-thirty in the afternoon, but he nonetheless needed some decent shut-eye.
Unlike Steven, though, Vera was hungry; and, not feeling like making the trip into town to the grocery store, she decided to whip up a batch of pancakes from the Aunt Jemima dry mix she’d found in the cupboard. The mix, and the adjacent preservative-filled pancake syrup, didn’t appear to be too old for human consumption.
As Vera poured the mix into a bowl—“at least Alley didn’t screw me up in the dish department,” she mumbled—an uncontrollable stream of memories and thoughts flooded her mind. She went into such deep memory and thought that all she could see were the images in her mind’s eye—a mental plane on which she was simultaneously conscious and lost in a trance.
Vera found herself standing before a heart-shaped mirror in the bathroom of what appeared to her to be a hotel honeymoon suite. She donned nothing but a purple, thigh-length nightie (the one her new husband had just bought for her), and she was slowly brushing her just-washed hair. In the mirror, she could see, through the open bathroom doorway, Steven standing by the double bed and releasing a few drops of Old Spice onto his hands. He rubbed his palms over his bare, muscular stomach and neck before running his fingers through his hair.
Turning to his fresh bride, he smiled at her reflected face, pulling and snapping the elastic waist band on the front of his poppy-red boxer shorts (the ones his new wife had just bought for him). She smiled back at him as he tiptoed up behind her, pretending that she couldn’t see him. She looked back at her own reflection as she made one last brush stroke.
She then looked back at the man—for he now was some stranger she’d never seen before—who wrapped his brawny, tanned arms around her neck and passionately kissed her neck, while sliding his hands onto her breasts. His arms and hands were chilly, which somewhat puzzled Vera, for she didn’t feel the environment’s temperature to be any less than comfortable.
He looked up into her reflected face, his dark brown eyes piercing her eyes, and he gave her a mischievous grin. His hair was thick, intensely feathered and as dark as his heavy moustache. Who is he? Vera thought; however, her feelings toward him were the same feelings she felt for Steven and, hence, felt no reason to resist. In fact, she was quite turned on.
The coldness of his hands caused goose pimples to erect on her skin, yet Vera—for some reason, she hadn’t a clue as to why—did not at all mind, but in fact rather liked it. The coldness seemed to her to make her feel ever more alive. His hands then slid down the front of her nightie as she closed her eyes and titled her head to one side to allow her lover’s face as much room as possible. With his hands on the front of Vera’s bare thighs, he slowly ran his hands up under her nightie and up onto her firm belly; he began sliding his hands onto her waist, then back onto her belly, making ever so sure that he caressed her smooth skin without tickling her.
“Mmmm,” she moaned with pleasure, as his hands slowly moved up onto her breasts, pressing her nipples.
The image of their lovemaking in the heart-shaped mirror grew fainter, with the effect of some sort of worsening tunnel vision. The kitchen counter suddenly appeared to her, but she still felt the hands.
“Steven—come on, I’m busy.” But the hands continued. “Steven, I’m not into it right now,” she blurted and broke free of the engulfing arms and hands. However, the groping was instantly replaced by what felt to her like an abrupt rush of blood up into her head; and she supported herself by leaning onto the counter while taking deep breaths.
“Steven?” she asked, between breaths, gradually regaining her composure. “Steven, where are you? … Steven, you’re acting like a clown, you know.”
Finally able to stand on her own, Vera turned and started towards the living room. Just when she was walking through the tombstone-shaped kitchen entrance, she quite clearly heard heavy footsteps racing up the stairs and into the bedroom, in which Steven was napping, followed by the door shutting. Looking up the stairwell, Vera grinned; she dismissed the entire event as an erotic daydream resulting from a very spontaneous urge for sex and her husband’s great timing. “Stevie, you prankster,” she said, and went back into the kitchen to her pancake mix.
STEVEN awoke into darkness. He thought about the nightmare he had just endured and rubbed the back of his hand on his lower back. It felt sore, as though he had been poked. Although he couldn’t really understand why, he felt rushes of fear, like alternating hot and cold flushes, surging through his entire body. “That is weird,” he mumbled. And why can’t I remember even coming in here? Man, I must’ve been really sleepy.
Again, Steven thought about his bad dream—one unlike anything he’d had before: In it, he was laying on an inflatable mattress floating about what seemed to him to be a mile up in the air. As he lay there, something—it was like a bony finger, he recalled hypothesizing while in his dream—was jabbing him up into his lower back; something which must have been inside the mattress, he thought. He recalled freaking out in the dream at the very idea of there being something alive in the inflatable mattress.
Steven began to feel quite on edge; and he also felt like he was starting to dislike the house. “Get a hold of yourself, Steve,” he demanded of himself, turning on his watch’s night light to check the time, then getting up out of bed. It was ten-nineteen at night. “And get that freezer opened so you might not have to go to the store.”
Opening the bedroom door and starting down the stairs, he could hear the sound of stations changing on the television set. The channels are turning again, he mentally alerted himself.
“Oh, shit, not again,” Steven groaned, loud enough for Vera to hear him.
“Steve? Is that you?”
“Vera?” he returned, very much relieved. He continued down the stairs, and he bit by bit could see his wife kneeling on the carpet with her hand on the TV set’s knob; her head was slightly turned facing Steven.
“So, did you have a good snooze? Or are your hands still tired?” she asked, insinuatingly, with grinning lips.
“What do you mean ‘tired’ hands?” he returned, rubbing his still-sore back. But ignoring her query, he inquired, “Did you try the deep freeze again?”
“No; I thought you were going to,” Vera innocently replied. “The flashlight is on the kitchen table.”
With reluctance, Steven made his way below with flashlight in hand (he never did like going down a flight of stairs into a basement, especially a basement so new to him). He could hear the light buzzing of the freezer’s motor and moved the light beam towards the noise until the light connected with the cream-colored, cubical appliance. He hesitantly made his way towards the machine.
It was then that his heart stopped. The icy thing that ran up along his forehead and into his hair was not what Steven was at all expecting. His arms went out of his immediate control and spastically thrashed at the light bulb and the on/off chain, both hanging from the ceiling, breaking the bulb in the process. With pieces of bulb glass raining down on him, Steven instinctively shielded his head with his arms. For a couple of seconds, he didn’t know what the hell had happened.
Back in control of his senses, he stepped up to the freezer and pulled up on the lid’s handle. It wouldn’t budge, and yet there was no keyhole or apparent locking mechanism.
Then came a mental voice in his mind saying that the problem may be located behind the deep freeze. He illuminated the sides of the freezer and moved himself around to one side where he could feel the rear of the lid. Stretching his fingers, he could decipher that there was about twelve inches between the freezer and the brick wall behind it. The root cellar must be on the other side, he figured. He moved into a position in which he could shine the light behind the freezer to get some sort of clue as to what might possibly be holding down the lid—the little bit of effort couldn’t really hurt, he thought.
“What the Hell’s that?”
The dimmer outer edges of the ring of light caught the object wedged between the wall and freezer. Shifting the flashlight to his left hand, he reached down, grabbed the book-shaped object and pulled it out from its hiding spot. “It’s a photo album,” he said, shining light on it.
Steven was too curious to bother dusting off the album’s vinyl surface. He opened it and held the light to it. The first page held four photographs: one was of a baby; two were of Vera’s younger sister, Alley, in her mid teens; and the fourth photo, taken at about the same time as the previous two pictures, was of Alley and Vera. Vera being only one year older, they could have passed as childhood friends. Steven anxiously flipped a clump of pages, which led him near the album’s end; there, he found another photo of Alley (again in her mid teens) standing outside the house, adjacent to the front door. Also on the page, below the photo, was a yellowed newspaper clipping which read:
CHARLOTTETOWN, October 14, 1967—The bodies of two men and a woman, all appearing to be in their late twenties, were discovered yesterday morning inside a residence at the north end of town. The deaths have been classified as a double homicide and suicide or, according to police Constable Jeff O’Hagal, “possibly a homicide and double suicide”. The two deceased males, each of whom had a gunshot wound on the right side of his head, were known to be good friends.
The bodies were discovered by a neighbor who had heard gun shots in the early morning hours. The neighbor, who wishes to remain anonymous, minutes later went next door where he found the female laying in the open doorway of the residence’s rear entrance, bleeding from a bullet wound to the back of her head. Police, who were immediately called to the scene at 476 Hemlock Drive, believe she was trying to flee the scene when she was shot.
“Oh, Jesus, that’s right here,” murmured Steven. “This must’ve happened just a couple years before Vera’s family moved in.”
Upon entering the basement of the residence, the story went on, police discovered the two deceased males, one of which tightly held a handgun. Police found identification on the bodies but would not release their names until the notification of next of kin. The residence is owned by the currently vacationing parents of one of the deceased males.
Police did however disclose that the female was a local Sunday school teacher whose husband had reported her missing the night before; and the two males were known to authorities and some area residents as having been involved in occult activity. “They [dead men] often referred to themselves as ‘Beelzebub’s Boys’,” said O’Hagal.
Steven stood there quite stunned. Nonetheless, he immediately felt compelled to turn the page, where he found another yellowed newspaper clipping:
CHARLOTTETOWN, October 18, 1967—Police investigators have discovered that finger prints gathered at the scene of a grisly Island murder in June, 1965, match those of the two men found shot dead along with a woman last week at 476 Hemlock Drive. “They’re definitely a match,” said police Constable Jeff O’Hagal.
The two deceased males have been identified as life-long Charlottetown residents Billy Snarden and Lorne Pettersberg, aged 27 and 29, respectively; the deceased female, a city resident who appears to have been raped before her murder, has been identified as 26-year-old Susan McPhelson.
The June, 1965, murder of drifter Thomas Parks, whose carcass was discovered in downtown St. Peters with its skin completely removed, had until now been unsolved.
“That bitch,” Steven grumbled. “No wonder she has this place so cheap on the market.”
He snapped the album shut, with intent to whirl around and run to and up the stairs. But he was violently foiled: Steven found himself falling hard onto the cement floor and gasping for breath; it felt to him like a fist had smashed into the mid section of his back. The flashlight was history, and he knew it, for it was launched out from Steven’s grip and into some dark corner of the basement, its small bulb shattered.
“Oh, God,” he groaned in pain, desperately gasping for air. Gradually, he collected himself up onto his hands and knees, but only to receive a swift kick up into his gut. It took a good thirty seconds for Steven to get back up on his feet and twice turn around. “Where the hell are you, you son of a bitch?!” he screamed into mostly darkness. His left arm was embracing his battered abdomen as he held up his clenched right fist. “Where the Hell are you?!”
The only light leaking into the basement’s darkness was that coming down the stairwell from the living room.
But no one was there. He looked up at the stairwell door and decided to make a run for it. He thought he was going to make it; however, when he reached the top of the stairs and the open doorway, it was as though he’d run hard head first into an invisible wall.
IT was at the bottom of the stairwell that Steven regained consciousness. He gave his head a slight shake and noticed that daylight from the now overcast sky was illuminating the light-brown curtains covering the two basement windows. Looking at his watch, he saw it was nine-fourteen in the morning.
The creep must be long gone, Steven concluded. However, it was ever so much occurring to him that perhaps nobody—at least not in physical form—was there.
It was during that thought that Steven suddenly felt a deep cold all around him, accompanied by a very foul odor, which reminded him of those rotten-egg-like farts that reek up the entire room when released. With the chill and stink, which were getting even worse, came two shoves to Steven’s chest—not hard enough to knock him down but enough to (he would later say) knock a little dose of reality into him.
Having observed that the shoves originated out of nothingness, Steven decided that’s it, I’m getting the Hell out of this house.
He looked up the stairwell and went for it, thinking that if he very soon did not get out of that basement he might not live to greet noon. He made it up the stairs, through the doorway and into the living room. Surprised that he wasn’t intercepted by whatever had attacked him, Steven turned around to look down the stairs to see if he was followed by anything receivable by the eye’s retina. Nothing. Except for that coldness and stench, which had become even more intense.
Then came the convincing sign of what he had most feared: On its own accord the basement stairwell door slammed shut with such great force that the house shook as though hit by an earth tremor.
“Why did you slam the door?” came the inquisitive voice from behind him. Vera, who had just awoke from the couch, stood there with an innocent and bewildered facial expression. “What’s the matter? Were you down there all night?”
“Vera, we have to get out of here—out of this house!” Steven insisted, still breathing heavily. “There’s something very wrong with this place. My God, this can’t be happening.” He now seemed to be addressing only himself.
“What do you mean, get out of here?” she asked, incredulously, “we just got here.”
“Vera, let’s go!” he frantically ordered her. “I’ll explain in the car.” He gripped her arm and started gently pulling her towards the front door.
“Steven, what’s with you? Let go!” she shouted, yanking her arm out from his grip.
“Vera, come … ,” he began to say but was interrupted by thumping—then becoming loud banging—within the hallway wall. The banging, a couple seconds apart, moved down the hall and around the bend, a ninety-degree right turn towards the back door. There, near the back door, a last thunderous slam inside the wall reverberated throughout the entire house.
The two looked into each other’s wide-open eyes. Steven, with his wife right behind him, crept down the hallway. He flicked on the hall light and clenched his slightly raised fists. Reaching the bend, he poked his head forward to peek around the corner.
Nothing was there (visible, anyhow); except for the back door, which held a twenty-square-inch window and led out to a small patio. Steven was just turning his head to look at Vera when the gold chain around his neck instantaneously, and firmly, tightened. Whatever had Steven’s necklace strangling his throat also pushed him back against the wall and held him there.
“Vera,” he gasped, trying desperately but unsuccessfully to slide his fingers between the constricting gold chain and his choked neck. The small amount of air he managed to inhale through his nose revealed that familiar cold, foul stench. “Vera, help me.”
Steven was beginning to feel the consequences of a brain almost completely deprived of oxygen. A cynical voice in his dying mind reminded him that he wouldn’t be in this deadly mess had he not been so materialistic and vain in his insistence on acquiring a thick and very strong gold chain to go with the gold Christ-bearing crucifix; and, added the cynical—the evil—mental voice, was it not bitterly ironic that this symbol of Jesus Christ the Savior, rather than ‘saving’ him, was going to kill him.
Starting to black out, Steven, realizing that this was his very last chance at sustaining his life, allocated all of his remaining strength in finally getting his fingers underneath the constricted gold chain and lunged his upper body forward.
The gold chain snapped, and he was left on his hands and knees. His neck gradually allowed more and more air into his lungs. Following a head rush, his vision and cerebral capacity slowly normalized.
“Vera?” He turned his head to look at his wife. “Why didn’t you … ,” Steven said before drifting off.
His eyes met the broken gold chain and crucifix lying on the carpeted floor, and he slowly reached out his shaky hand to retrieve the gold. But he was beaten to it. The broken trinket appeared to throw itself up, on about a forty-five degree angle, into the air and around the hallway bend.
“What the … ,” he muttered in utter disbelief. He saw it but still couldn’t really comprehend what was happening—his human instinct wanted to deny anything that was unnatural. And what to him was almost as unnatural as a self-propelling inanimate object was the sight of his stone-faced wife appearing from around the bend. Both of her arms hung at her sides, but one of her hands held his broken jewelry. Then her blank stare at Steven, who could once again sense that cold stench, became bold, yet quite unwarranted, rage.
“Why are you playing these head games with me, Steve?!” Vera demanded. “Either you settle down in this damned house or leave!”
Steven was astonished by what he was hearing. Can’t she see that something very wrong is happening here? he thought.
“There’s something in this house,” he told Vera. “I’m going to leave, but I am not going to leave you here.”
“I want you to leave, now,” she replied bluntly. “You never did want to live here. This is where I’m going to live forever.”
“What’s got into you, Vera? Why are you talking like this?”
“Leave, now, Steve.”
“I’m not leaving you behind,” he insisted, gripping her arm.
“Let go!” she yelled, pulling her arm free. “Now get the hell out!”
Though completely stunned, Steven realized that his wife, in her current state of mind, was not about to leave the house willingly, and he wasn’t about to physically force her. He knew that he had to leave, immediately, on his feet, or else he would be leaving in a body bag. And maybe when she comes back to her senses, he thought, she’ll see the proverbial light and then want to leave.
“If you don’t come back to me,” he solemnly promised, “I will come back for you, hon.”
Steven turned, and, before he could reach for the doorknob, something twisted the knob and slammed the door open, barely missing him as he jumped back. The force of the door slamming open drove a pocket of cold outdoors air accompanied by that rotting stench into his face.
He marched through the doorway and onto the patio. There he saw what he always had thought was only seen in movies like Poltergeist. And he finally saw what had been viciously assaulting him almost to death.
The four entities—and Steven was sure they were indeed ghosts—stood (or, more accurately, floated) on the lawn only about two meters from the Oak tree. Although they were translucent—like holograms which were devoid of color and seemed to fade into nothingness just below the knees—Steven could discern that two of them were male; both stared at Steven and were approximately his own build and height. The third entity was female, and the fourth was but a complete blur.
One of the male spirits was standing to the fore, and he beheld a facial expression—and only their faces could be made out—which a living, decent human being could only describe as malevolent and sinister. The second, adjacent male entity stood about three feet to the left and two feet behind the first entity (as though he was somehow subservient to the first); the look on his face was one of somewhat subdued contempt and malice. The female spirit, which stood at a height of around five foot six and about three feet behind the second male ghost (they could not be called men), had a pitifully sad expression that stared down at the grass.
My God. Could these be … ? Steven asked himself, could these be the three people that … ? He then looked at the fourth entity. But who—what—is that?
It was then that the female and two male spirits drifted, one behind the other, over the lawn toward the house. Gradually, each sunk into the ground as he or she approached the side of the house; and, one by one, each was absorbed into the wall and down into the basement where, some three decades earlier, each left the physical world for eternity.
“Holy shit,” Steven whispered. He then looked back at the remaining entity, which had until then been faceless. The spirit drifted towards Steven and revealed its nature. Its face, becoming clearer, was one from a hairless and frightening being: its eyes were small, black and completely circular like coat buttons; its nose and mouth appeared to be somewhat humanoid but were definitely non-human, and the lips on what must have been its mouth were very thin and expressed unconditional malice.
The entity—a demon? Steven thought—moved forward up to the two stairs of the patio, only a couple meters from Steven. There, it simultaneously screamed and groaned—Steven was sure it was communicating its hatred of him—before bolting away at high speed, following the path of the three human spirits down into the basement.
For some seconds, Steven stood there feeling a mixture of utter astonishment and enlightenment. He then looked at his car and went for it. Starting the engine, he put it into reverse and floored the pedal, leaving behind a trail of airborne gravel dust.
On the highway out of Charlottetown, Steven recalled how he first met Vera, courted her—loving every second spent with her—and then married her, until death would them part. He clearly remembered all of the great times they had together. But then he chastised himself for recalling such great times as though they’d be the very last.
If you don’t come back to me, then I’ll come back for you, he insisted of himself. You can count on it.■
[Frank G Sterle Jr, written in Autumn 1992]
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