So Fell The Sparrow

by Katie Jennings

  As it was, she saw nothing of that sort on the first floor. It was time to venture underground.

  “The basement…” she murmured, half in a trance as she turned back to the basement door, hand extending toward the knob.

  Alex came up beside her to film her face, to capture her every reaction to what was happening around them. Suddenly, he saw her freeze as though hit by an icy wave.

  “Jackie?” He reached out to touch her shoulder to comfort her. She had the most incredible look of pain and alarm on her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh my,” she whispered, her eyes focused on something about waist level next to him. A shudder visibly ran through her body, and Alex nearly interrupted whatever she was witnessing just to rescue her from it.

  Before he could, she let her hand fall from the knob as she kneeled. Compassion filled her eyes and a single tear fell down her cheek.

  “I understand,” she said to no one in particular. At least no one the rest of them could see.

  “Jackie, what do you see?” Ian interrupted, impatience getting the better of him. He held out his Mel Meter, startled to see it spike to absurd levels and shrill loudly. There was something there. Something very strong.

  “She’s just a child,” Jackie told him. “She’s upset and doesn’t want us to go into the basement.”

  “Why not?” Ian asked.

  Jackie looked up at him, the camera catching the haunted dread in her eyes. “She’s afraid we’ll let him out.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Him?” Grace’s voice lost all confidence, but she stood tall regardless. Despite what Jackie said earlier to her about the little boy, Grace still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t an act. After all, there was no way to explain it using a rational mind and proven science, so how could it be true?

  Doubt swirled in with the fear that had taken home in her gut, settling in like a hissing snake. “Can I just say, for the record, that I have been down in that basement several times and have never seen or heard anything unusual.”

  Ian turned to her. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t something there.”

  Grace frowned. “So, you’re just going to take her word for it? We don’t even know her. She’s probably making all of this up.”

  “Have a little faith, Doc.” Ian dismissed her with a wave as he focused back on Jackie. “We need to go into the basement.”

  Jackie rose to her feet, sadness still etched in the lines of her face. She lifted her eyes to meet his while Alex continued to film. “Unfortunately, what she’s afraid of has already found its way into the house. It isn’t confined to the basement any longer.”

  “Good, so there’s nothing stopping us from going down there,” Ian affirmed, reaching for the door himself and pulling it open. He didn’t wait for a response as he charged down the steps, ready to wage war on whatever entities were there.

  He felt along the wall as he descended the stairs, stopping as he felt his feet hit the dirt. His eyes stared purposefully into the darkness. “Alex, hand me the Spirit Box.”

  Alex followed him and reached into his equipment bag for a small, black device with a speaker on it. He handed it to Ian, then stepped back to film. In the opposite corner, one of the static night vision cameras was set up.

  Jackie and Grace stepped down into the room, both looking wary.

  Then Jackie doubled over in brutal agony. She cried out, but raised her hand to keep Alex and Grace back, not wanting them to help her. She sucked in air through gritted teeth as she absorbed the pain, the shock of it being transferred into her by the spirits present.

  One of them wanted her to know how it felt to die.

  Images flashed over her eyes of a young woman chained to a chair, writhing in fear as a man inflicted great pain upon her. Torture of the worst imaginable kind. He beat her with a leather strap, the whoosh of it cutting through the air, deafening as airplane engines. She felt the contact of the strap on her face, her chest, her legs. The pain was impossible to work through, impossible to comprehend. It triggered something dark and buried deep within her, demons that festered. They threatened to explode out of her, to overtake her senses.

  Everything became a nightmare.

  She forced her eyes open and fought with all the energy she had against the pain, needing to see what force brought this on her. She spotted it, skittering like a hunched over gremlin along the walls. Its shadowy mass vibrated with pure evil, its eyes glowing like fiery embers in the dark.

  Her heart clenched with fear as she gaped at it, mortified. Never had she seen something of this magnitude, of this concentration. The only explanation she could surmise was that it was the coalescence of one man’s dark hatred and morbid nature. It was the sum of all his vile acts, thoughts, and desires. His malevolence was so awesome in power, so vile against the laws of nature, that it had broken free of him and manifested itself into the form of this thing. This creature that wreaked havoc on the living and represented a lifetime of horrendous torture.

  “What are you seeing, Jackie?” Ian asked, troubled by her reaction and equally as concerned when his Mel Meter soared to impossible levels, sounding off the alarm in the presence of spirit energy. The temperature reading bumped up to 66.6 degrees. He thrust it at Alex so they could catch it on film.

  Jackie swallowed the bile that rose in her throat, trying to cope with the onslaught of emotions, bad energy, and threats that came her way from the spirits around them. It wasn’t just the creature that plagued her. The basement was filled with dark voices, with lost stories of suffering never told. They strained against the confines of the walls like prisoners trapped by a sheet, desperate to get at her. Desperate to be heard.

  Samhain had given them this much, and the desire to walk among the living powered them like rabid hounds.

  “A young woman was tortured here,” Jackie began, her eyes unfocused as she tried to get more information from what she was witnessing. It was all so frantic, like a Ringling Brothers Circus. The creature scurrying over the floor, the bodies attempting to push through the walls, the images of the woman being violently tormented, and the sound of her screams.

  Her eyes drifted to the staircase, and she saw something beneath it, something violently unstable. Death—old, brutal death—hung in the air over the dirt like a deformed, warped cloud.

  She felt suddenly faint, her knees buckling under her. She staggered back, her hand flying out to balance herself against the wall. Nausea hit like a punch to the gut, and she realized hysterically that she had to get out of the basement. Any longer and she would be overwhelmed to the point of insanity.

  Without another word, she stumbled up the stairs and left the others. Alex immediately tossed his camera at Grace and raced up after her, his panic a vice contracting his insides. When he burst out of the basement, he found her crumpled to the floor.

  He hesitated, then gathered her into his arms. Tears of grief fell in streams down her face.

  “What happened?” he asked, shocked as she buried her face into his chest, clinging to his T-shirt like a woman who’d just narrowly escaped tumbling off a precarious cliff.

  Jackie squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the demons that had nearly claimed her. Her voice cracked as she spoke, but she fought to get the words out. “I think there’s someone buried in the basement.”

  “Wow,” Alex managed, unable to do anything but hold her as he digested her words.

  * * *

  Back in the basement, Ian faced off with the spirits. “I’m going to turn on this device and I want you to speak into it,” he ordered, holding up the Spirit Box. He shot an intense look at Grace. “Keep that camera on me.”

  Grace gaped at him, unsure what to do. The only light source came from the camcorder’s screen, and it glowed over her face as she lifted the camera. Ian filled the screen, visible in the green light of night vision. “All right, I got it. I think.”

  Ian flipped on the Spirit Box and immediately a loud, static sound poured out of i
t. He held it out and turned slowly, his eyes searching the dark. “This device emits radio frequencies. It passes over several stations a second. Use this to speak to me.”

  Grace didn’t realize she was holding her breath, but she let it out slowly as she watched him. The static sound echoed deafeningly off the cement walls, grating on her senses and disorienting her. It didn’t help that worry and doubt over what happened to Jackie was nagging at the back of her mind.

  On the screen, Grace watched Ian turn to face her, his eyes lit with adrenaline. “I can feel cold spots all over. I’ve got goose bumps on my arms, the hair the back of my neck is standing up. What about you?”

  Grace shivered, though she tried to shrug it off. “No, I’m okay.”

  Ian’s lips curved in a knowing grin. He turned away from her and spoke out loud to the darkness. “Did you torture a young woman here?”

  A man’s voice warbled almost instantly out of the device. Certainly.

  “Shit,” Ian cursed, jumping at the sound of the voice. He glanced over at Grace, just able to make out the shock in her eyes. “Why did you do it?”

  Control.

  Nothing in the world could have prepared Grace for that voice. As much as she wanted to tell herself that it was some pre-recorded nonsense that Ian had put into the device to say just the right things, she almost believed that less than the idea that it was real.

  That it was an actual ghost.

  “Ian…” Grace called out, distressed. “I can’t stop shaking.”

  “You’re scared. Embrace it,” Ian declared boldly, enjoying his own rush of fear and exhilaration. His voice took on a darker tone as he addressed the spirit yet again. “Why are you still here? Why won’t you move on?”

  A few seconds passed with no response. Ian started to ask another question only to freeze as a different voice came through. It was still a man, but somehow softer, less aggressive.

  The good doctor.

  Ian stared immediately at Grace, astonished by what he had just heard. He shut off the Spirit Box then let his arms fall to his sides.

  Grace frowned as she lowered the camcorder. “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head. “You’re the good doctor.”

  One of her eyebrows shot up as he suddenly went to turn on the light. The single bulb burst to life above them, and the alarm in his eyes truly frightened her.

  “What does that mean?” Grace stammered, rubbing her arm with her free hand. She felt singled out and vulnerable, especially under the weight of Ian’s intense stare. He was looking at her like he was seeing her for the very first time, like she was a stranger.

  “I’ve heard those words before. In fact, we heard them in an EVP we captured the day before we came here,” he explained, still not sure what it all meant. His brow furrowed as he rubbed his face.

  “Just because I happen to be a doctor doesn’t mean this ‘ghost’ is talking about me,” Grace reasoned, not willing to believe a single word of it. “This is ridiculous.”

  With fire in his eyes, Ian called out once again to the dark spirits residing in the basement. “Grace doesn’t believe you. Do something to prove that you meant her when you said those words.”

  Grace let out a shaky laugh, but it was cut off as the door to the basement suddenly slammed shut with a resolute bang. The camcorder slipped from her grasp as a scream caught in her throat, terror exploding through her like dynamite.

  Ian wasted no time and grabbed her arm. He dragged her toward the staircase, pulling her up the steps.

  “Ian?” They heard Alex’s voice from far away then the sound of his footsteps pounding over the wood floor.

  When they reached the door, Grace tried to push it open, but found it stuck. “Oh, my God,” she gasped, forcing all her weight onto it. Ian shoved her aside and tried it himself, only to fall through the doorway as Alex opened it from the other side. He stumbled through with Grace right behind him.

  “What the hell happened, guys?” Alex asked, shutting the basement door once again.

  Grace fled to the living room where Jackie was sitting on the sofa, a cup of tea in her hands. Grace collapsed beside her and buried her face in her hands.

  When Jackie attempted to touch her, Grace pushed her hand away. “Don’t.”

  Jackie nodded. She looked at Ian and Alex as they came into the room. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Heard one,” Ian corrected her, brushing back strands of his dark hair restlessly. He panted, out of breath from the struggle and the rush of panic he’d felt from the door slamming. Never had he experienced something of that magnitude.

  Alex patted him on the back. “Why don’t we call it a night. I think we’re all a little shaken up.”

  Ian grimaced, not wanting to give up. The night was still young. But even he couldn’t deny that there was no way he’d get any of them to go back into the basement just yet. In fact, he didn’t think he could even manage it.

  “Whatever’s in this house is way worse than anything I could have imagined,” he said to Alex, shaking his head. “And whatever it is, it led us here.”

  “How’s that?” Alex’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.

  “Remember that EVP we got at Bellhurst that said the good doctor?”

  “Of course.”

  Ian’s face tightened. “I just heard it again downstairs out of the Spirit Box. A similar voice, most likely the same spirit.”

  Alex sat down on the armrest of the sofa in shock. “Do you think it followed us here?”

  Ian nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. And I think Grace is the doctor the voice referred to.”

  “No way,” Alex turned around to look at Grace, who was still collecting herself in silence. “That’s cool. So maybe we were meant to come here.”

  Jackie smiled up at him. “Always trust in fate.”

  * * *

  While the others continued to discuss what happened, Grace wandered to the wide windows of the living room. She opened each of them, shoving the oak-lined glass panels up in a fevered attempt to let in the night air.

  Or, perhaps, to let out whatever it was that had slammed that door.

  She stood in front of the windows, embracing the rush of chilled wind that came in from the harbor. It caressed her skin like ice, frigid and shocking, but she absorbed the tremors it gave her and let it awaken her senses. She needed some semblance of reality to wake her from this nightmare. Surely, that’s what it was. Just a horrid, dreadful nightmare.

  Behind her, Jackie was explaining in detail what she had witnessed. Hearing the words brought back Grace’s cynicism, her skepticism. None of it could have possibly happened the way Jackie was describing it. How could it? Gremlin-like creatures and bodies pushing themselves out of the walls...it was like something out of a horror movie.

  It wasn’t real life.

  “The creature is a manifestation of this cruel man’s violent nature and his evil deeds,” Jackie said. She sipped her tea peacefully from her perch on the sofa. Grace envied her ability to recover so quickly from what appeared to be a traumatic event. Then again, it only gave credence to her deeply rooted suspicion that Jackie was nothing but an elaborate, imaginative liar. “Whoever he is, he is the spirit the little girl is afraid of. Something released the creature from the basement, but I don’t know what…”

  Ian frowned and scratched his chin. He looked over at Grace, lost in thought. Then it hit him. “Hey, Grace. Have you brought anything up from the basement besides those boxes of photographs?”

  She let out a tired sigh, but didn’t turn to face him. “The furniture. It all came from the basement.”

  Jackie nodded. “That’s likely the cause.”

  “You think the spirits were attached to the furniture?” Ian asked, running with the thought. “That would explain why the activity started when Grace came to the house and not before.”

  “I believe they are thriving on Grace’s energy, as well,” Jackie continued. “They are u
sing her emotions to build their strength.”

  Grace’s hands shook with one, quick tremble as she turned around. “That’s ridiculous. I told you, I haven’t felt anything in this house.”

  Jackie eyed her curiously. “Nothing?”

  Grace crossed her arms defensively, images of her own depressive breakdowns flashing in her mind. They had only gotten more frequent since she’d come to the Sparrow House, but the more plausible explanation for it was that she was simply depressed. Which was a perfectly normal condition given the circumstances.

  Then there was the furniture. She had noticed scratches on the surface of the coffee table, and more aging on the sofa, but shrugged it off as being there before. But what if it wasn’t?

  “Nothing,” she answered flatly.

  Anger hardened Ian’s face as he rounded on her. “Are you seriously going to stand here and act like what just happened to us was not the work of paranormal forces?”

  A chilly frost settled over Grace as she met his eyes. “Honestly, I’m still not convinced. Sorry.”

  “What the hell will it take to convince you, then?” he demanded, throwing up his hands. “Because if you’re going to be this fucking blind, I’m not going to waste my time helping you.”

  She winced at his words. “I didn’t ask for your help. Nellie did.”

  “That’s right, because Nellie isn’t an idiot. I can’t say the same for you,” he snapped, his temper getting the better of him. When he saw both shock and grief flare within those storm gray eyes of hers, regret swam in to join the anger he felt.

  Grace visibly trembled and clutched her torso even tighter. She felt, yet again, like she was being singled out. She despised him for making her feel that way. “Do you call all people who disagree with you idiots?” she asked coldly, lifting her chin. “Or just those who fight back?”