Her heart was thumping so hard that she clutched a pillow to her chest in the hope of quietening it. She'd been deep in a nightmare—that nightmare—when wakefulness had made a merciful reprise. She was thankful to have been spared the worst of the dream, to have been booted from it just as it had reached its frightful crescendo. And yet, even as cognizance made a swift return, she found her terror was not lessened for having returned to the waking world. Rather, she felt certain her awakening was owed not to good fortune, but to an unseen agency—still present—in this very room.
It was just a nightmare, she told herself. You're awake now. You're safe.
Sadie gulped the air in labored breaths, her hold on the pillow growing vice-like, and grappled with a terror that simply wouldn't retreat. The room felt unnaturally cool and the air she sucked in had about it a terrible staleness. Up to this point, she hadn't opened her eyes; sleep had left them glued together and the suspicion that something sinister dwelt nearby only kept them so. But as she got a handle on her breathing, eased her grip on the pillow, her eyelids ceased their squeezing and she chanced a narrow glance at the ceiling.
The first thing she noticed was that the lights were off. All of them. Hadn't she left them on before climbing into bed?
Bands of pale moonlight stole in through the edges of her blinds, creeping across the popcorn ceiling. The tiny button on the smoke detector mounted there gave off its usual dull red glow, and the sight of it was somehow reassuring to her. She turned very slightly to her right, looking to the clock on the nightstand, and found it was nearing four in the morning. There was time enough yet to get a little more sleep before work. It was going to be a rough shift, but—
There was a long, low creak as of someone shifting their weight upon the carpeted floor.
Sadie's heart lurched to a stop; two, maybe three beats were skipped before it staggered back to harried life. Her mind abandoned every thought and was plunged into silent, fearful anticipation. She pressed herself into the cushioning of her mattress as though gravity had increased ten-fold and shut her eyes so hard that she saw stars behind her lids.
The floor squealed once more and the air about her courted a sudden shift. Something was looming very close; she didn't need eyes to sense someone actively intruding into her space, weighing down the atmosphere with their presence.
When the floor settled for a third time beneath unseen feet, Sadie opened her eyes. It had only been reflex that'd eased them open, and she took in her surroundings with teary glances upward, then to the left—where she found the ceiling and nightstand intact, unchanged. It was when she turned her gaze to the right that she spied the culprit poised just paces away.
Someone was standing between the window and the edge of her bed. It took her several breathless moments of study to make sense of what she was looking at. The lurker stationed at her bedside was of an unimaginably dark cast, and so rigid in posture that it might have been a gnarled sapling rooted in the carpet. Thin, black arms were held awkwardly at its sides, seeming almost fossilized for their stillness and fixedness. Its face was not in view; instead, it faced the window, giving the impression that it had been approaching her bed in reverse.
Sadie couldn't breathe except in fits and starts, and with what little oxygen she managed to take in she dared whisper, “W-What do you want from me?”
The ghoulish figure stirred at the sound of her voice and took a backward step, standing now within spitting distance of her. Movement throughout the gnarled body did not end there; it continued up into the trunk, the shoulders and neck, as each inch thereof began to shudder and bend in reverse. Like the jointed segments of an immense millipede, the twisted black body slowly lolled astern until a white ovoid face dawned into view and the rigid, hook-like arms wheeled feebly in the air. The figure, thus positioned, began loosing a soupy, ghoulish laugh. The mouth from whence it came teemed with the rabble of flies and the from every pock in its paper-thin skin there peeked maggots like so many squirming grains of rice. “AH-AH-AH-AH-AH-AH—”
Screams piled up in her throat and then tumbled back into her stomach in such volume that she felt she might vomit. Sadie rolled to her left, hitting the floor with a thud, and made a mad dash for the hall, the vile laugh growing in volume all the while. As she burst out of the room and groped her way through the dark apartment, a flurry of movement sounded to her back. She tried steadying herself against the wall to gain her feet, but they gave out on her within a few steps and she was left to crawl into the living room.
Sadie threw up a hand and raked wildly at the counter while backing toward the front door. She felt out the strap of her purse and yanked it down from its perch while grasping at the doorknob, and had the wherewithal to snatch her shoes from the door-side mat she'd clambered over in her retreat. Hauling herself up with the knob for a crutch, she threw the door open and took a shaky step out into the hall, casting some of the yellowish light from the passage back into her pitch-black apartment. The laughter erupted from deeper in with renewed gusto as she fled. “AH-AH-AH-AH-AH-AH—”
Before she slammed the door shut and all but tripped down the stairs, Sadie turned and looked into her place, her eyes locking onto movement in the hallway she'd blindly navigated only moments ago. In that dark passage, brought to light by the glow in the hall, the laughing figure of Mother Maggot was seen giving chase. The body remained bent backward, and the stiff limbs shot up and down in shaky sequence, propelling it in a sort of spider-walk through the corridor. Where its withered hands met the carpet, black smears like oil stains were left behind, and with every jerking pace, pests came tumbling out of its pores.
Drunk with fear, Sadie slid down the stairs, exited the building and crawled across several feet of sidewalk until she could negotiate her legs into a run. She clutched her purse and shoes in one arm, the soles of her bare feet aching as she sped over rocks and debris in the parking lot. Eventually, when she'd put some distance between herself and the apartment building, she stopped long enough to step into the shoes. Once they were on, she resumed her run, and she didn't stop again until she arrived, breathless and shaking, at the edge of a dim strip mall.
Dropping to the curb, she fumbled with her phone for the better part of an hour, assailing August's voicemail box with hysterical messages. A light rain began to fall, which led her to take shelter beneath the awning of a closed business. Better still, at half-past five, the coffee shop on the opposite end of the strip mall opened and she took refuge inside, paying the concerned-looking cashier for a coffee she didn't touch and then claiming one of the booths near the window, where she both nodded off and kept vigilant, terrified watch outside at turns.
By eight in the morning, an hour before her shift was set to start, she'd managed to regain her composure. Begging a phone charger off one of the baristas, she plugged in her phone and did something she'd never done before. She dialed her manager and called in sick. In her year as a librarian she'd never once considered taking a sick day.
Shortly thereafter, August returned her calls, sounding almost annoyed. “Sorry I didn't answer,” he replied groggily. “I accidentally left my phone on silent. I didn't listen to all the messages, figured I should just call you back. What's going on?” He paused. “Oh, and I just got a call from Marsha, too—she says you called off today?”
The sun had long risen in the hazy sky. Raindrops beat the window as she tried to sum up the night's events succinctly. “I found Ophelia,” she began. “She's safe, and she's free of this thing. Now it's after me, though.”
August chuckled at first, as though she were setting up for some joke, but when she didn't continue he tensed up. “Wait... you serious?”
“As a heart attack,” she replied, pressing a fist against her pounding brow.
“You found the girl?” he asked.
“She showed up at my place. No explanation for it. The doors were locked and she just appeared. And she was herself—not possessed anymore.”
“And...” August
sighed, shouldering the phone. “And the thing is after you now? How do you know?”
The whole terrifying scene—the nightmare, awakening to something in her room, being chased out of her home—flashed through her mind once again. She wanted to curse at him, to berate him for not answering sooner, but instead let out a long sigh. “I thought you knew: I'm popular with ghosts.”
“All right,” said August. “Try and stay safe, and get ahold of me if you need anything. I can talk to you during lunch today, and I'll use any spare moment I have to look into this mess. The house, this Mother Maggot—hell, I'll see if I can't get some credible info on ghost hunting. You... just try and relax, yeah?”
“Try to relax?” Sadie echoed with a frown. “You know, I hadn't thought of that.”
“I'll get back to you, promise.” August cut the line.
She took a swig of her cold coffee and rested her forehead against the table. What does this thing want with me? Hell, what did it want with Ophelia?
This twisted thing had been inside the girl; presumably it wanted inside Sadie now. What havoc it would wreak if it got its way remained to be seen, but that it would try again—that it would prove relentless—was assured. And the next time it reared its head, it was possible she wouldn't escape it.
She sat in the booth a long while, just watching the rain fall.
18
If she was going to get through this situation unscathed, Sadie would have to come up with a plan. Before leaving the cafe in the late morning, she'd done her fair share of thinking and had devised a basic course of action. Whether it would keep her from becoming possessed by the parasitic Mother Maggot remained to be seen, but feeling as though she had some handle on the matter, some concrete steps she could take to at least temporarily assure her safety, made her feel better.
Daylight seemed a crude defense against so horrific an antagonist as this, but it occurred to her that the thing had never manifested before her in full daylight. It had appeared in the gloomy hospital room during a black and rainy day, and she had come face-to-face with it in the shadow-packed rooms of the house on Beacon Hill. It had turned up in her apartment after dark, as well, but it occurred to her that her daylight hours had been relatively peaceful.
It was a grey and misty day, though the sun had made frequent rallies and asserted itself over the prevailing shade. She'd spent all morning in the cafe, surrounded by other people, and had seen nothing of the specter since being chased out of her home. What this meant precisely Sadie couldn't be sure, but that Mother Maggot operated under some kind of limitations seemed clear enough. Otherwise, she'd have been assailed at every turn, would have been possessed in broad daylight. Ophelia's initial encounter with the thing, which had seen her dominated by its will, had taken place in the old house, and in the night. Taking all this into stock, the idea that Mother Maggot should have less freedom in the daylight than in the hours of darkness was as reasonable an inference as any.
Even if true, this alone was not a solution to all her ills. Day would invariably give way to night, brightness to gloom, and Sadie would find herself eventually isolated. It was at such a time that the spirit was likeliest to strike. What's more, she had to sleep sometime. Had she not awakened that very night to find the spirit at her bedside, what might've happened? She shuddered to think...
And so, time was clearly of the essence. For some reason, Sadie had been marked by the spirit. It had happily forfeit its iron grip on Ophelia and was now actively pursuing her. To what end? What made Sadie a more attractive target? Ever since she'd begun seeing the dead, encountering those beckoning apparitions, it was clear that spirits had a particular interest in her, though she'd never struck upon the root cause for their solicitations.
What's more, looking back on her many experiences, she realized she'd encountered many such spirits even in the daylight—and this realization only refreshed her dread. Usually they'd been found in shaded spaces, lurking in spots where shadow prevailed, but that they'd sometimes turned up and beckoned to her in the daytime was a fact. Perhaps there were limits to her hypothesis, limits to the protective nature of sunlight...
Unless Mother Maggot was presently close-by, biding her time, unseen, then where was she lurking at that moment? Was her spirit still in the apartment? Had it returned to the house on Beacon Hill? Was she across the street, staring at the cafe from the shade of a tangled copse of trees, ready to pounce? These were questions Sadie couldn't hope to answer with any thoroughness; it was all she could do to wish that the sunlight would keep her away until she could stumble onto a workable solution.
She spiraled further into thought, and with every question that reared its head her despair grew manifold. What if there was no “solution”? What if her lot was to be hounded by this and other monstrosities until her dying day? What kept such spirits rooted in the physical world, and how might they be dismissed? Was there any true antidote to what people referred to as “haunting”? Had she not spent the past several years running from the supernatural, perhaps she would have stumbled upon some answers to these questions by now. And how she longed to return to that feigned ignorance, to that time of active forgetting! But there could be no running from it any longer, not in any meaningful way. Now she was being hunted by something, actively. There was nothing to do but learn, to experiment, in the hopes that something would stick.
Despondent, she eventually left the cafe. The rain had quit and the sun was trying its damnedest to push through the grey haze overhead. Keeping to the sidewalk, she made a slow walk back to her apartment, though no sooner did her building enter into focus did she dither by the road, too fearful to even step into the lot.
Her arrival happened to coincide with the mailman's daily visit. He was a kindly older gentleman she'd spoken to a number of times in the past. Watching as he left his truck and entered the building, she found courage enough to follow his lead, and she started between the parked cars in the lot for the entrance.
He spared her a warm smile as she stepped inside—and then, noting her haggard appearance, her damp pajamas, his eyes narrowed in concern. “Good afternoon,” he said, unlocking the wall-mounted mailboxes and pulling a stack of pre-portioned letters from his satchel. “Long night?”
Sadie's face reddened, and she looked away from him as she started for the stairs. “Yeah, you could say that,” she replied.
The postman thumbed through the mail and handed over her things—a few circulars and a utility bill—as she climbed upstairs. “Well, have a good one!” He returned to his work, whistling and tucking letters into the appropriate boxes.
Sadie hadn't even bothered to lock the door in her flight. Pushing it open and immediately reaching for the light switch, she took a very hard look inside before setting foot in the living room, and even when she did enter after an awkward thirty seconds—and another weird glance from the mailman—she left the door open behind her.
The apartment was still, home only to a punishing and provocative quiet. She took a few paces into the living room, leered over the kitchen counter and then continued deeper in, to the bathroom and bedroom. As far as her eyes were concerned, all were empty, though her spine still tingled with the memory of what'd occurred only hours before and some deep-seated instinct seemed to warn her against lingering.
Jamming the bedroom door so that it couldn't be closed behind her, Sadie quickly threw off her pajamas and changed into fresh clothes. Then, marching through the apartment, she gathered a few essentials—her phone charger, her keys, a bit of food and water. When this was through, she rushed back out into the hall, locked her door, and promptly left the building.
After some waffling on the sidewalk, where she considered her next move, she ultimately decided to give Rosie a call. She wanted to make sure Ophelia was still doing well, that she hadn't reverted to her suicidal state.
Rosie answered after a few rings, and with more cheer in her tone than Sadie had heard since their recent reunion. “Hey, Sadie!” she answer
ed.
“Hello, Rosie. I was just calling to check up on things. How are you and Ophelia doing?”
“Oh, we're good,” replied Rosie. She sighed into the phone with no little relief, chuckling. “Not that things could have gotten much worse! How are you, sweetheart? You get some sleep?”
Sadie laughed a little caustically. “Just a bit.”
Rosie continued unprompted. “We got back here last night. I told the staff that Ophelia turned up at my door and she was re-admitted. Of course, since she wandered off like that, they've decided to take a lot more precautions. She isn't allowed to have any visitors—except for me—and they've got a patient sitter in with her. Still, she's doing really well and even the doctor noticed how she's brightened up. I expect they'll let her out soon.”
“That's wonderful to hear,” said Sadie—and she meant it, too, but the dread welling in her gut robbed her tone of conviction.
“It's been a wild ride. If not for you, I don't know what would have happened,” said Rosie. “To think that this all started in that dank old house. I hope she's learned her lesson. I can't imagine she'll ever do something as foolish as this again. I don't know what you did, Sadie, but it worked. I have my daughter back.” She was tearing up, her voice dripping with gratitude.
Something Rosie said struck her as she listened—warranted a second look. “To think that this all started in that dank old house.” This nightmare had begun in the house on Beacon Hill, it was true, but up to this point Ophelia hadn't been in the right mind to discuss her actual encounter with Mother Maggot. The spirit had wormed its way into her, had driven her to self-harm and warped her personality, but where, exactly, had this change taken place? Did the girl have any memory of the initial encounter—and, if so, might such testimony shed some light on the nature of the spirit?
“Say, Rosie,” began Sadie, “I know that they aren't letting her have any visitors, but... Do you think I might be able to come and see her somehow? Is there any way that the staff might be willing to clear me for a visit? Just... for a little while? There's something I want to ask Ophelia about—something I need her help with.”
The Haunting of Beacon Hill Page 15
