Billy was reluctant to approach the house because it appeared to be a ramshackled wreck in such dire disrepair; he doubted anyone actually lived there any longer. They did notice, however, there was an inviting light glowing on the paint-chipped ceiling of the dilapidated front porch, which was a signal all kids immediately recognized as the universal beacon of welcome for young costumed children on that most mysterious of nights.
The two boys approached the front stairs apprehensively, Jimmy taking the lead and Billy following a few cautious steps behind him. Billy suggested, “Jimmy. I think we should skip this place . . . it sort of gives me the creeps. Something just don’t feel right about it.”
“Aw, c’mon,” Jimmy insisted. “Stop bein such a baby, Biwwy. Theao ain’t nothin wong with dis pwace. Pwobably some owd guy wivves here oa somethin wike dat.” Billy had been so accustomed to hearing Jimmy speak with his baby-like quality, that he had understood every single word the boy had said, even though he doubted others would have.
Ignoring Billy’s protests, Jimmy boldly walked up to the rickety front door and knocked hard on its surface several times. The door seemed to rattle in its frame and the broken front window tinkled from the vibration as if threatening to fall out and come crashing onto the porch. When he didn't get a reply, Jimmy knocked yet again, harder.
Eventually, a gruff-sounding voice called out, "What d'ya want?" The tonal quality of the voice, a man’s voice and a sinister sound that seemed to lie just beneath the spoken words, made Billy quake with fear. The voice sounded very wrong and Billy got a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach. But Jimmy was not intimidated in any way by the strange tone and simply replied, "Twick oa tweet, Mista."
For a moment, nothing happened. Billy pleaded with Jimmy to leave the place and head home. He even considered turning and running away himself, but his feet felt heavy like they sometimes did in bad dreams. Then, before he could do or say anything several things occurred in a matter of just a few seconds. Billy saw these horrifying things played out as if watching a movie in slow motion. Suddenly the overhead porch light switched out, plunging the boys into total darkness. Before their eyes could completely adjust to the sudden blackness, and before they could even consider turning and running, the front door burst open inward with a rattling bang, the already cracked glass shattering and falling in a tinkling rain of shards somewhere inside the house.
As his eyes came into focus, Billy saw two grimy, scab-covered hands reaching out from the darkness of the house. They grabbed Jimmy’s arms and pulled the now screaming child inside. For a moment, Billy stood in terror, mouth agape, unable to comprehend what he should do next. It was so much like a bad dream as he stood frozen with fear.
Then, suddenly reacting, not thinking, Billy did what any young defenseless boy would likely do in a similar situation. He turned screaming, dropping his cache of candy to the ground, and ran home in terror. The street was dark and deserted so there was no one around to hear his cries for help. He ran madly, occasionally venturing a glance behind him assuming some horrible denizen of the night was bearing down upon him. As he ran toward his house, the streetlights glistened like stars through his tear-filled eyes.
When he finally arrived home, Billy was confused and uncertain about what to do next. He wanted to scream for his mother and father but he felt ashamed of the tears flowing down his face. He wanted to be alone, just for a little while to figure out how he should handle everything. He was terribly worried about Jimmy but was mixed up and unsure of what to think. He didn't want his family to see him crying like a baby, so he bypassed his brothers and sisters and hurried directly up to his bedroom where he crawled into his bed, pulled the covers over his head, and sobbed uncontrollably.
After a few minutes, his mother came into his room and asked Billy what was wrong. He tried to hold back his emotions but instantly broke down. Tearfully, he recounted the events with as much detail as his terrified young mind would allow. His mother immediately called the local police then called Jimmy’s parents. Within ten minutes, both had arrived at the Elverson home, and with Billy’s guidance the group found the house where Billy said Jimmy had been abducted. Their spilled sacks of candy still covered the front porch, but Billy was no longer hungry for candy and didn’t ever want to think of Halloween treats again.
The police eventually discovered the house was a vacant property but had not actually been abandoned. Its owner had recently passed away after years of being aged and infirm. That explained the dilapidated condition of the property. However, the electricity had not yet been disconnected. Upon examining the house that night the police found it was unoccupied, although they discovered the back door lock was broken, obviously the route the perpetrator had used to gain entrance and likely the same door he had used to make his escape. It was located on the forest side of the house so the vagrant was able to enter unseen. Other than the spilled bag of candy they found no trace of Jimmy.
Billy overheard one police officer tell his mother, “If your boy would have just told you sooner, maybe we could have gotten here in time to help Jimmy. But too much time has been allowed to pass. And now to be honest, I’m afraid it just doesn't look very good.” Billy was stricken with guilt and grief at the thought that his inaction was likely responsible for whatever might have happened to his best friend. But Billy knew he was just a little kid, he wasn’t supposed to know what to do in such a situation. Heck, stuff like that wasn’t supposed to happen to little kids. But this knowledge didn’t help ease his young conscience.
After several weeks of futile searching, a hunter inadvertently came upon the boy’s decomposed remains buried in a shallow grave in a nearby forest, still dressed in his Halloween cowboy costume; filthy with coagulated blood, rotting flesh and dirt. The young boy’s corpse had been partially consumed by rats, birds, insects, and a variety of other small forest creatures.
The medical examiner was able to determine that prior to his death; young Jimmy had been tortured and sexually assaulted. Eventually he mercifully succumbed to his injuries. Then even more than previously, young Billy found himself wracked with guilt, hearing the police officer’s comments about him echoing in his mind over and over again. “If your boy would have just told you sooner . . . would have just told you sooner . . . told you sooner . . . sooner.”
From that day on, Billy never went out trick or treating on Halloween night again and each year stayed locked in his room, in bed with the covers drawn tightly over his head until the night was over. And as he hid in terror, in his mind Billy relived the horrible events of the night he lost his best friend.
Sometimes on the more disturbing Halloween nights, Billy believed he could hear tapping at his window and imagined he also heard a small voice in the wind saying “Biwwy . . . Biwwwy . . .” He imagined the small skeletal hands of his long dead friend scratching on the windowsill, trying his best to find a way inside; to get to Billy.
As an adult, each year for past forty years, William Elverson did everything in his power to avoid Halloween. When the rest of his neighborhood was busy greeting the throng of costumed children, William would instead leave his house for the evening returning only after the 9:00 pm curfew; it was the only way he could make sure no children would come ringing his doorbell. He could not bear the thought of seeing them; he was filled with the irrational belief that one fateful day his long-dead friend might be hiding somewhere among them, waiting for his chance to get back at Billy for his unforgivable act of cowardice.
This Halloween night it had been raining heavily and although it was only eight-thirty, William was certain there would be no more kids about, so he decided to break tradition and head back to his house a bit earlier than normal. As he suspected, his street appeared to be deserted. He pulled his car into his garage and quickly closed the door, keeping all of the lights turned out. William sat in his family room at the rear lower level of his, home watching TV, out of site of the street. As far as anyone outside was concerned, his house
appeared to be uninhabited, which was just fine with William.
After a few minutes, as he sat and watched television with the sound turned way down, William heard a light knocking at his front door. He tried to ignore it, until he heard it again, but louder. And then he heard the knocking once again even more forcefully. William became irritated. He had his lights turned off and there was no reason for anyone to be knocking on his door. He had just about had enough of the neighborhood and the damned kids who lived there. Who did they think they were? Didn’t he have a right to his own privacy?
William decided he would go upstairs to the front door and give the apparently impudent child a stern lecture about his inappropriate behavior. He approached the front door and looked out through the peephole but could not see anyone at first. Then straining to look downward, he saw what appeared to be the top of a hat; a red felt cowboy hat of a variety he had not seen since his childhood. The hat appeared to be caked with dirt and grime.
William Elverson stood silently for a moment, a sick sinking feeling forming in the pit of his stomach. Cold droplets of sweat began to bead on the back of his neck quickly trickling along his flesh as an icy chill crept down his spine. He suddenly no longer felt like lecturing anyone and he heard himself asking uncertainly though the door, "What d'ya want?"
He immediately realized how frighteningly similar his now older croaking voice sounded to that horrible murder's he had heard coming from behind the door of the abandoned house on that Halloween night, so many years ago.
“Twick oa tweet, Mista,” The voice said from the front porch with a baby talk quality William immediately recognized, and he was certain what awaited him on the other side of the door. He realized after so many years of avoidance, fate had finally caught up with him. He had tried to run for forty years but he could run no longer. It was time for him to face his destiny and if necessary to beg for forgiveness. His hands trembled with terror as they tried to grip the doorknob while wet with sweat.
William slowly opened the front door and looked upon the rotting remains of his once best friend, Jimmy Jensen, standing in his filthy shredded cowboy costume, his skeletal hand extended as if in anticipation of a treat. William looked into the creature’s black-ringed dead eyes and imagined he saw the flesh sliding from the child’s rotting face, as worms squirmed just below the surface of his skin, actively boring holes through the decaying flesh. In his mind he could smell the deep earthen odor from the undead child's former shallow forest grave.
The hideous creature again looked up at William and with a gap-toothed grin and said, “Twick oa tweet.” The incredible shock of this hideous ghost from his past was too much for William to bear, as he collapsed to the floor in a heap, his heart stopping instantly dead in his chest from the inconceivable horror of the blasphemous specter before him.
Later, after the ambulance had removed William's still cooling body and the police were asking their questions, the young boy, named Sammy Wilkins, still dressed in his amazingly realistic zombie cowboy costume cried openly, cradled in his father’s arms. The boy was confused, not knowing what had happened to the strange man in the house who had come to the door, and feeling like he might have done something to cause it to happen. His father assured him it was not his fault and that the man was probably sick.
Both Sammy and his father knew his Halloween costume was scary. After all, they had both worked very hard for several weeks to make it so. Sammy’s father was a big Halloween enthusiast and amateur make-up artist, who enjoyed making costumes as terrifying and realistic as possible. However, he never thought that one of his costumes could have been realistic enough to have the potential to cause someone to die from fright. But apparently, he had been tragically wrong.
The Path
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
—Buddha
The hot, stagnant space was almost black as Winston slowly regained consciousness. The only available light came from a single candle burning at the far end of the blackened cave. He instantly knew by the stinking hot and humid feel and the vile, recognizable odor that he was in a cave. Then again, each time Winston was forced to endure what he knew was coming it was always in one cave or another. A familiar sulfurous, noxious stench permeated the air, along with the coppery scent he recognized all too well as the reek of coagulating blood.
As he gradually awoke each of his nerve endings began sending rapid-fire messages to his sensory receptors and he started to feel the pain grow from an unpleasant discomfort to overwhelming agony. When he finally regained awareness Winston screamed with a painful howl as the tendrils of fiery hell shot up and down his body like a relentless storm of white-hot electric anguish. It was always this way, again and again, time after time, seemingly without end. He had no idea for how long or how many times he had been forced to endure similar suffering; he had lost count a long, long time ago.
Winston couldn’t understand the physics of how he was made to feel the horrible effects of the relentless torment; yet the pain was nevertheless always present and very real. He was aware that he was dead and had been for what seemed to him like an eternity. He understood he was now nothing more than a spirit, a tortured soul. He was no longer corporal and as such—had no flesh, no bones, no no brain, no physical apparatuses whatsoever—yet he was somehow forced to constantly endure the sensation of pain which felt as agonizingly real to him as if he were still a living, breathing, physical human being. Winston comprehended that for some unexplainable reason he had been plunged into his own personal version of Hell, which apparently was to be his fate for time without end. He couldn’t imagine what he had ever done in his life to deserve such constant torment, but it must have been more severe than he realized. Why else would he have been forced to tolerate an existence of such never ending suffering?
Tears flowed freely down his haggard face and when he tried to move he realized that, as was typical, he had been tightly secured and was incapable of any motion. Near the back of the coal-black cave Winston saw another candle slowly come to life; then another and another. These unbearable sessions always progressed in the same manner. Winston would awaken to find himself cast in total darkness and suffering with intolerable misery. Then slowly the candles would begin to light one by one until the room was awash with light. When all the candles were ablaze Winston would once again see for himself what manor of torture had been put upon him as well as what type of heinous demon was assigned the responsibility of inflicting his pain.
Once that had been revealed, the fire in his non-existent body would steadily grow to a level even more unbearable, if such a thing were possible, spurred on by the addition of this visually terrifying aspect of his torture. Eventually he would succumb to his pain and fall back into the blessed blackness. When his time in whatever particular room of torment was over he would find himself outside of the cave on what he thought of as the Path. Then he would once again be required to walk along the Path to the next available room, where, once inside, a new and even more horrifying form of torture awaited him. Oh yes, Winston had no doubt this was Hell.
As more of the candles sprang to life the room became ablaze with their glow and in his immobile state, Winston could only see directly in front of him. Against the far wall of the cave was a large area with an irregularly-shaped reflective stone embedded inside. At first Winston could not see well, but after a few moments of blinking away his blurring tears he saw his own reflection—and then wished he hadn’t.
Earlier, Winston had felt some pain in his forehead, but had not known, nor could he imagine the cause, but now he suddenly understood the horrid truth. Winston could see in the reflective stone there was some type of rusted barbed wire wrapped in a circle around his head and its sharp spines had dug deep furrows into the flesh. Dried blood tracks covered his face. He looked strangely like pictures he had seen of Christ with his crown of thorns. But there was no Jesus Christ in this unholy place. Then he n
oticed something previously inconceivable happening above the encircling barbed crown.
He had to strain to look more closely to make sure he was not imagining what he was seeing. He could not believe the site before him. The entire top of his skull had been removed and his brain sat completely exposed. As if that fact alone was not disturbing enough, he realized that dozens of thin rusted metal pins or rods of some sort were scattered about and imbedded deep into his unprotected brain. And although the horrifying sight repulsed him beyond his worst imaginings, strangely he could not feel any pain in his skull, other than the superficial pain he originally felt from the barbed wire. What he did feel however, was a fiery misery in his arms.
Winston followed his gaze in the reflective stone down along his body and saw he had been placed in a large wooden-framed chair, curiously resembling the electric chairs used in the early days of Earth’s death penalty executions. The wood was thick and heavy and deliberately uncomfortable. Winston could tell by the pain he was starting to feel in his buttocks that something had likely been placed on the seat to increase his level of discomfort; they always used something that felt like broken glass, metal shards, razor wire, or hot coals, but for some blessed reason he was not quite able to feel it as intently as believed he should have. And that was fine with him because the pain he already felt in his arms was unbearable enough.
As he continued to try to determine the level his unfortunate situation, Winston saw that he was naked, which also was not a surprise, as he had been naked since arriving in this horrible place so long ago. In fact, it seemed like everyone in Hell was naked. But there was no sexual reason for the nudity. The obvious purpose for the exposure was to make access easier for the armies of pain inflicting demons.
Then in the foggy mirror-stone Winston saw why his arms had been hurting him so badly. Oh my God, no! he thought as he bellowed out yet another blood curdling scream. In the matter of a second, time seemed to stop as Winston took in the extent of what the vile demon of this particular torture chamber had done to him.
Ghost Shadows Page 5
