Old Bones: A Collection of Short Stories

by Steve Campbell

  #

  A Haunting

  WHAT A CRIME it felt to Reverend Gloria Jackson to believe such a beautiful house could be haunted. To know the place, it looked no different from any other Victorian country house in Ridgewood, Pennsylvania. As Gloria walked the sunny grounds that October evening, she sensed the leftover energy of a time when wealthy Victorians spent an incredible amount of time socializing inside their homes. In Victorian America, nothing displayed one’s status like their house, and the house of a successful Victorian family was more than merely a home; it was a statement of their taste, wealth, and education.

  Fiona Bay’s house was one of them, preserved to remain impressive through time by superb craftsmanship and great care. Standing in front of Gloria and surrounded by a neatly manicured lawn and shrubbery that sprawled over half an acre, the stately house seemed at first glance the most unlikely of places to house demonic spirits.

  “Fiona was calling forth the dead,” Melissa Bay told Gloria after dinner later that Friday night. Melissa, a strong-backed woman, sat across from Gloria at the long table. Richard sat to Melissa’s right inside the spacious dining room.

  “That’s an alarming statement,” Gloria said.

  “It’s true.” Richard sounded ashamed. “She wrote all about her occult doings in her diary.”

  When Gloria asked what diary he meant, he fetched a black leather book atop a china cabinet. Gloria leafed through the diary and listened over a glass of tawny port.

  Melissa said, “As you know, reverend, when her husband Charles died this past summer, Fiona withdrew. But she seemed happiest inside her library, so we left her alone to paint and read there. It was the library she withdrew to after the funeral. She barely ever left that room.

  “Then I discovered this morning that she had locked herself inside. She refused to let me in. Her voice sounded agitated … upset, so I called Richard.”

  “I had to kick in the door,” Richard said. “And that’s when, crazy as it sounds, she wasn’t there—and all the windows were locked. I checked.” He stared at his glass standing empty on the table in front of him. “Even crazier was when we found a Ouija board and tarot cards inside, as well as her diary which tells of how she has been trying over the past several months to conjure up my father’s spirit.” Sadness and confusion twisted his features into a horrible grimace. “What’s happening?” he asked. “What has she done?” He shook his head and groaned before Gloria could answer. “Until today, I never believed in the paranormal, the metaphysical.” He searched Gloria’s face for answers. “What happened to my mother?”

  Gloria’s wine glass flew from the table and shattered against the stone fireplace across the room. The Bible she had brought with her—which she had placed the diary on top of—followed her glass. The diary remained unmoved.

  Surprised, Gloria and Melissa yelped. Richard cried out, “Mother.” He jumped to his feet. “Is that you?”

  The air turned frigid and burned against Gloria’s cheeks. She felt a winter-blooming nip at the tips of her ears and nose.

  Richard yelled at the room. “Where are you? Show yourself. Please.”

  Large and heavy books thumped to the floor inside the library across the hall from the dining room. Then the chill left and all quieted.

  Richard settled his nerves with a hearty gulp from the wine bottle—glasses and etiquette be damned, Gloria reckoned, considering the circumstances. Richard went to the library door where either he or Melissa had nailed a cross to the damaged door as Gloria had instructed earlier during their phone conversation. Richard looked at the cross and cursed all that is holy. When he finished, he said, “Exorcise the place, reverend. Whatever my mother has done, fix it. Please.”

  Gloria joined him at the door. It had taken great force to open the large oak door. She fingered the splintered wood. “Tell me about the voices,” she said.

  “Whispers,” Melissa said as she joined them. “Vague chattering whispers.”

  “And laughing,” Richard added. “A woman’s laugh, but not my mother’s.”

  Gloria removed the cross from the door and stepped inside the library. A chandelier lit the room and seemed to turn the oak bookshelves and furniture to gold. She helped Richard and Melissa replace the toppled books, many of them art history texts and artists biographies. Outside the room’s tall, rectangular windows, the night had become pitch black. A clock inside the dining room chimed seven o’clock.

  A painter’s large easel stood near a window. As Gloria looked at the portrait, the unfinished canvas showed the swift strokes of a seasoned painter. Fiona Bay had sketched her subject with lines of umber and sienna, whisked in golden hues next to gentle blues and pink, and had started forming the glow of flesh with buttery mounds of paint. The woman in the unfinished portrait seemed to be dressed in multicolored satin linens and silk scarves. Her face was promising the color of the finest gold, ruby and sapphire. Her eyes sparkled emerald green and sky blue. Her unpainted long hair flowed down a seemingly endless body of shapely beauty.

  “Absolutely beautiful,” Gloria said of the painting and the subject. “She looks familiar. Who is she?”

  “I don’t know,” Richard said. “No one has been coming to the house to sit. My mother likes her time alone, even before father died.”

  Gloria looked back at the painting. The cheeks and mouth looked refined, as though someone had added paint to the portrait while she had looked away.

  She turned away and looked back again. There was no mistaking it: The painting appeared to be painting itself.

  Melissa screamed. “The light. At her easel. What is it?”

  Gold light grew suddenly in front of Fiona’s easel. Inside the brightness, Gloria saw an apparition of Fiona wearing a blue denim painter’s smock and holding a large palette in her left hand. Seemingly unaware of the people in the room, Fiona rushed her canvas and painted, and then stepped back to admire her work before repeating the process.

  At Fiona’s side and facing Gloria was her soul-stealing succubus dressed in a multicolored chiffon robe—a female demon Gloria hoped never to see again.

  “Keeley.” The color fell from Gloria’s face. Even the fearful cry of the demon’s name somehow permeated the room with beauty. But Gloria knew that this beauty was fleeting. Her throat tightened as she thrust her Bible at arm’s length. She had to save Fiona, no matter the consequences. “Set her loose, demon.”

  Keeley laughed. Tittered, actually. “The poet is a ministrant. Oh, my long-ago lover, what have I done to you?” She took a step forward and her robe flowed with her.

  Gloria yelled for her to stay back. Keeley advanced slowly, her gaze fixed on Gloria.

  Melissa grasped Gloria’s left arm. “Who are you talking to?”

  Gloria pulled from Melissa’s grasp. “Count to ten, then you and Richard go to Fiona. Get her out of here while I distract the demon. Then lock the door and bar it with another crucifix.” She thrust her Bible into Melissa’s arms.

  “I see no one,” Melissa said, looking at the light.

  “What is it?” Richard cried out. “What is that light in front of my mother’s easel?”

  “Go into the light, Richard,” Gloria said. “Your mother is there. You must pull her out while I distract the demon.”

  Before he could object or ask any more questions and put all their lives at risk, Gloria rushed into Keeley’s warm, tender and passionate embrace. Evil was not always cold.

  “I knew I’d find you again,” Keeley said. Her fervent kiss fell hard upon Gloria’s lips.

  The demon’s spicy smell and taste were more delicious than Gloria remembered. Her long, soft hair—now a gorgeous mélange of burnt sienna, gold, and black—brushed Gloria’s face. It aroused her, but not as quickly as it had done more than twenty years ago when she and Keeley were college students.

  Within Gloria’s concerned gaze, she watched Richard and Melissa pull Fiona from the room. Fiona struggled but Keeley’s hold on her had weakened. Gl
oria expected Keeley to intervene. She didn’t. Her mouth writhed wickedly against Gloria’s and her eyes fluttered with passion.

  As Gloria’s eyesight weakened with the rest of her body, she heard the door slam shut. Fiona was safe on the other side.

  The kiss ended and Keeley’s embrace softened. Gloria felt Keeley take the cross from her hand. “We won’t need this where we’re going,” the demon said. Her teeth penetrated Gloria’s neck.

  Gloria’s concerns for her own safety fell away as she plunged into a familiar world of darkness she found both sinful and heavenly.