Harrow: Three Novels (Nightmare House, Mischief, The Infinite)

by Douglas Clegg

  “We all have a guardian angel,” she said. “When I was a child, I had a special candle that I lit for my guardian angel. I would ask the angel to take care of me and my mother.” She brought her hand up to the side of my face. “Those hornets made a meal of you, Ethan.”

  But I wanted to talk about angels. “She’s pretty and warm and she protects me,” I told her.

  “That’s the job of angels,” Hildy sighed, and later, when she nodded off in the rocking chair, I thought about my angel and why she hadn’t protected me from the bites. She wasn’t a very good guardian angel, even though I had felt cared for when the yellowjackets surrounded me. I felt cared for and guarded. And bitten half to death.

  3

  That night, I lay back in that treasure box of a bed, and began creating imaginary playmates for myself, out of thin air. First, I thought of a giraffe with two heads who spoke a quaint version of French—what little I knew of the language—and then I imagined a jaguar from South American jungles speaking perfect English to me.

  I grew thirsty, and was about to call out to Hildy, but she snored so loudly and had worked so hard to force feed me her awful cabbage and broth, that I let her rest. My fever was not burning quite so strongly. I marshaled what energy I could.

  I fumbled with my nightshirt, drawing my shivery, scrawny legs over to the floor.

  Catching my balance, I grabbed one of the bed posts, and nearly crawled over to the big pitcher and bowl.

  Once I reached the chiffonier, I lifted the pitcher up to my face to drink directly from it. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of my own reflection in the mirror.

  I was parched and burning up again. I had half a mind to pour the entire pitcher over my head in order to cool my blood. The candles in the wall sconces lent a hazy glow to the shadowy room (and my even more shadowy vision) like streetlights through heavy fog.

  I saw my face, waxy and yellow in the candlelight.

  My eyes were sunken, my hair greasy and pressed flat against my face although some of it stuck out at the top of my scalp. My face was puffy from the bites, and my left eye still looked swollen shut, although I could see fairly well through it.

  I could neither laugh nor shudder at this vision of myself. I felt sorry for it and at the same time, I felt that I looked like someone other than myself: this wasn’t me, after all. It was some other boy who had stepped into a nest of flying monsters, and he looked funny and pathetic.

  Then, I noticed a movement back by the lamp near my bed. Just a blur. My vision followed the movement in the mirror.

  What was it? I found that I could not take my eyes away from the mirror. It was the old sort, with an oval and beveled glass, which distorted the edges of what it reflected.

  Was it a sparrow trapped in the room? What moved so frantically at my bed?

  I could see Hildy in the chair, her head lolling back a bit against the blanket she’d propped as a pillow. I told myself that I was just imagining things. I was fine. There was no one and nothing else in the room.

  I saw the blurred thing again, only this time, it was in bed, and I realized, suddenly, that there were two indentations in the bed – mine, that I had just left—and this blurred thing, this smudge of something, next to where I’d been sleeping off my fever.

  I quickly glanced back, nearly toppling over in the process, to see what was on the bed, but the bed was empty. Then, I checked the mirror.

  A little girl sat in the bed. A little girl with a round face and long dark curls, and eyes that seemed impossibly small. I watched her in the mirror, to see if I really saw her. I kept repeating something to myself – perhaps even aloud – something about the girl not being real, that she was imaginary just like the jaguar and the two-headed giraffe. But she sat there, her head resting on one of the pillows. Not watching me. Not watching anyone. It was as if it was her bed, and she lived in the mirror all the time.

  When I turned around, she was right behind me. Her hollow eyes. The look of yearning and pain within her flesh.

  In the blink of an eye, it was not a little girl at all.

  4

  Now, after the memory returned to me, I can look back on what I saw, and know that it was probably induced by the venom of those insects within me.

  But then, all I knew was fear, and the heat beneath my skin that seemed to steam as I saw it. It was, very simply, a wisp of smoke hanging in the air. Smoke and a voice, which said in a man’s voice, “Esteban, you belong to us.”

  I dropped the pitcher to the floor. It shattered at my feet, and the smoke dissipated.

  I felt the full force of fever hit.

  Hildy jumped from the rocking chair and grabbed me up in her heavy arms. She brought me back to the bed, scolding me for getting out of it. I spent the rest of the night, huddled in a corner of the bed, staring at the pillow, my teeth chattering from fear and fever.

  A slight indentation remained along one of the pillows in my bed, as if the little girl still lay there, beside me. I even imagined that I could hear her breathing.

  My fever burned, and what—of my body—was not swollen was on fire. Every ounce of my being ached and felt as if the bones wanted to tear from my flesh.

  Yet, after an hour or two of this, I became very detached from my body, and felt as if I were watching this little boy toss and turn in yellowjacket-inspired fever.

  I saw the nurse, with her round fish eyes and her cold Watch Point manner as she hesitated to put the cool, damp hand towel on the boy’s forehead.

  I watched myself—the boy—open his eyes briefly, looking as if he were fighting to wake from a dream. And knowing that somewhere in the room, the little girl waited for me. I didn’t know why, or what she wanted, or who she was.

  All I knew was that I didn’t want her to come near me again.

  5

  That was the memory I had suppressed. The same one that returned to me, like the remembered odor of hot cocoa on a winter’s day of childhood, like a pleasant memory, nearly, because it brought with it a feeling a familiarity and comfort even with the nightmare aspect.

  And now, I will return you to Ethan and Constable Pocket and young Alf, as they are still in the kitchen, recovering from the beginning of a night of mystery.

  Even now I can watch myself, the man called Ethan, and even now I wish to caution him:

  Everything is not as it seems.

  Chapter Eight

  1

  Ethan felt his heart race, as he stood, still clutching Alf.

  The boy’s eyes had closed, and he had gone silent. Ethan heard his gentle, steady breaths.

  He was in a deep sleep. Ethan glanced about the kitchen. A strange silence continued, as if all sound in the world had ended.

  “It’s like a game,” he said, finally, a thought that had come from nowhere. He wasn’t sure why he had said it. His voice echoed along the tile floor of the kitchen. He looked at the great Easter range that had seconds ago been an inferno.

  Then, behind him, to the constable, who stood there, looking every inch the man who had just been thrown from the train wreck of a dream. “Let’s take the boy somewhere he can rest,” Pocket said.

  2

  Ethan had grabbed a silk throw from the large overstuffed chair in the parlor, and wrapped Alf up in it.

  The boy showed signs of exhaustion, with a sweat so heavy that it soaked through his trousers and shirt. His eyes remained closed. He was at peace in some dream. Pocket helped raise the boy to the loveseat. Ethan set a pillow beneath Alf’s head.

  The child looked so peaceful, it was as if nothing had happened.

  “I’m sure she’s somewhere nearby,” Pocket said. “It’s too much,” Ethan said, looking at the sleeping child, and then to Pocket. “What in god’s name was that? It’s not a hallucination. It’s not a dream. It’s real. Whatever that was. Whatever was…inside him…was real.”

  Pocket went to the lamps and turned them up – the shadows had overtaken the room, and the sudden burst of lamplight create
d a warmth in the parlor.

  Ethan sat down in the overstuffed chair.

  “He said the house ate her.”

  “I’m sure she’s somewhere nearby,” Pocket repeated, as if this were a chant to comfort himself.

  “Do you think he’s all right?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir.” Pocket went to the window where rain and wind battered the pane. He drew the sash. The heavy curtain fell across it. “It’s a terrible night, just terrible.”

  “She must be in the house somewhere,”

  Ethan said, and felt mindless even suggesting it. He had only just remembered something from his own childhood – the little girl in his sick bed, the voice of the smoke telling him that he was one of them. “I believe,” he said, as if struggling with these thoughts.

  “Believe?” Pocket asked.

  “In ghosts,” Ethan said.

  3

  Ethan returned to the kitchen, hoping to find some evidence of Maggie Barrow, but there was none at the small door at the back that led out to the Holy Land, nor along the great fireplace.

  Outside, in the garden, he called to her as lightning battered the sky, lighting up the trees and abbey like the bombs of the war; rain came down in great slashes, and he was soaked to the skin when he finally went back inside, muddy with defeat.

  Next, he began going hall to hall, and floor to floor. He had been calling for Maggie for nearly an hour, wandering corridors, room to room, hoping to see some sign of her, but there was nothing.

  Every door seemed to be locked, although a quick try with the master keys managed to open all of them.

  The rooms were empty, or filled with dustcovers, or simply packed with dusty furnishings.

  When he reached the tower room, he had a sense of dread. He didn’t want to see the dead woman again—Matilde—and in some small way, he didn’t want to go up there by himself.

  4

  Show some courage. It’s a corpse. It’s nothing more. It’s just a corpse. It’s a dead body that has probably been there for at least a year. It’s someone who is no longer in that body. She’s long dead. You could call down to Pocket, but he needs to stay with Alf. You don’t need to go up there. Why are you going up there? Why are you afraid?

  His thoughts circled in his mind, and then he just blocked them. He was going up there. He had to check every part of the house.

  5

  Ethan went back up those stairs, past the small outer room, and, holding his lamp up, stepped inside the turret room.

  He felt a strange tingling as soon as he was within the walls. He saw the writing in chalk.

  It said, “Feed Harrow.” Beneath this, “Help the Lady of Shallot.”

  Ethan closed his eyes for a moment. Don’t let it get to you. Don’t let whatever this is get inside you. They want to get inside you, and you aren’t going to let them. He felt the small hairs on the back of his neck rise. His spine seemed to crackle with electricity.

  A light static wind came from nowhere.

  He looked at the place where the woman’s body should’ve been.

  6

  Perhaps the worst thing something within him whispered, isn’t that you think you’re going insane the way your grandfather must have been insane. And it isn’t that she’s not lying there, this dead woman named Matilde. And it isn’t that you’re feeling the knots in your stomach or the nausea or the dizziness in your head or the tightening in your fists or the sense that every hair on your body is standing on end. It’s that you know that somehow you are part of this.

  From behind him, he heard a hissing noise like steam, and something slithered along the dark floor, something moved toward him, crawling, some creature on the floor sliding over toward him from a dark recess of the room.

  “Esteban, come to me, my darling, my precious, my only one,” and then Ethan felt a hand grab his ankle.

  7

  Ethan turned cold as he looked down into the shadows to see what creature held him.

  It was Maggie.

  8

  She had on some elemental level become more beautiful in the flickering light of the room. Her hair was swept back, a red so fiery as to see give off its own flame. Her face was chalk white and shiny, nearly reflective, like a mirror lit with a brilliant lamp, her eyes a crimson red stone. Her clothes had been shredded around her so that he glimpsed her bare shoulders and back as she lay there, moving like a snake as she held tightly to his ankle. Her tongue, long and lascivious - and yes, he thought, serpent-like—darted along the edges of her thick bee-stung lips as she whispered obscenities to “my Esteban, my dearest, my precious one, my most loved.”

  She rose up in a shocking way, her hips and buttocks rising, her dress torn in strips about her thighs so as to reveal her tender and beautiful flesh.

  She moved like a cat in heat, her hindquarters first, and then she pressed her free hand to the floor, her breasts, barely covered with her torn blouse, nearly visible to him.

  She was suddenly a demon - a sexual, supernatural being within the flesh of Maggie Barrow, and rather than feel the animal fire that this creature no doubt meant to inspire, Ethan felt a tremendous sadness for Maggie to be so humiliated by the demon that possessed her body. Her fingernails dug into the flesh around his left calf, drawing blood.

  “Maggie,” he gasped. “Stop. Let go.”

  She leaned into him, nuzzling his calf. “Oh Esteban, you have returned at last to your home, to the ones who love you.”

  “Matilde,” Ethan finally managed to say, and his whole being trembled. “Matilde, leave me. Leave this place. Leave Maggie.”

  “Who’s Matilde? Who’s Matilde?” Maggie looked up at him, a wicked smile upon her face, her head nodding back and forth as she spoke with the voice of a deranged teenager.

  As if she were somehow a spray of liquid, Maggie seemed to grow from a crouching position.

  Her flesh flowed upward, and she stood before him, the image of Maggie as she had been before - the pure Maggie, the sweet face, the hair falling along her shoulders, her aspect neat and presentable.

  Even her eyes were back to normal.

  Tears streamed down her face. She moved her lips as if trying to speak, but no words came out. And then, her eyes went wide. Her arms went to her sides as if she were being bound by unseen rope.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but again, all was silence. Then, something pulled her - something drew her so quickly it was as if she’d been jerked back. Something drew her against the far wall - swiftly. And then every lamp and candle extinguished, including the one in Ethan’s hand.

  He dropped it to the floor, but did not hear the glass break. Ethan stood in the darkness and began hearing the voices.

  9

  At first, they were faint, and then they began to get loud enough to understand. They seemed of indeterminate sex - one moment, Ethan felt sure they were women’s voices, then children’s, and then men’s.

  “You were supposed to wait. He could’ve waited.”

  “I am so hungry.”

  “Please, just a spoonful?”

  “A taste?”

  “The child was mine. The child was mine. I could’ve tasted his blood.”

  “Mirror cracked. Mirror cracked. Side to side.”

  “He’s scared now. Watch him. He’ll come to us soon.”

  “I want to play. I’m tired of this game,” a little girl said, almost

  haughtily. “I want to play my game.”

  “Don’t let her have her way. Wicked, wicked child,” someone - an elderly woman? - said. “She’ll bring them out again and then there’s no way to put them back.”

  “I am starved. Give me some life. I want it now. I want the taste. She doesn’t need to live.”

  “The other one is coming. I can hear her. That devil. That devil!”

  A man bellowed, “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!” again and again, and the voices all began chattering.

  Ethan felt frozen to the spot.

  The entire room was
dark, and even the candles in the outer room had been snuffed. He was afraid to move. He felt his throat go dry. He wanted to call out, but he didn’t know to whom he would call.

  Maggie?

  Pocket?

  God?

  There is no God, he thought.

  There is no God. No one is going to come help you. No one is going to rescue you. You must do this yourself.

  Or die.

  And then, he felt it as he stood there.

  Despite his trembling, despite his abject fear, he had a sense of something beyond the room, beyond the house.

  Was it God? He hated to even think it, but it felt as if there was something within him - some inspiration - that was not part of his physical being. A sense of not being alone against this.

  A sense that he was here for a reason.

  margin-left:1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:.25in; He stood in this dark room for a reason greater than mere survival. He knew it. He felt it.

  There had to be more to this life than standing in the darkness with the terror he felt.

  The dread.

  There had to be something more.

  He stood there, and managed to clasp his hands together. He knew no prayer to offer. He knew no magical words of religion.

  All he knew was that if there were a God listening, to just be there. To just be there with him.

  On one hand, he felt as if he were fooling himself. On the other, just the thought of God - the thought of some being taking care of this, watching this, protecting him in some indefinable way - comforted him.

  And then, it was gone, and he felt a growing panic in the dark. Fear split his being. He thought his mind might be playing tricks—casting shadows within the dark. Ethan began to feel his mind unraveling, showing memories like moving pictures, all the way back to his childhood, all the way back to lying in his bed as a toddler, and even further, he was there in a nearly dark room as a woman screamed and beat against a wall with her fists as two men and a woman stood over her.