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

by Douglas Clegg

  “Gravesend kept her hidden from the world, even hidden from his wife, the girl’s mother. He created a separate house within the house, a home asylum for her, and he used all his knowledge of arcane ritual and occult artifact to keep her there, to hold back whatever evil he felt she contained. But as you can guess, this kind of imprisonment therapy only made the girl worse, and as Matilde grew older, her personalities seem to have manifested themselves in terms of an unusual kind of haunting. In my opinion she had a very definite paranormal ability, and perhaps each of her distinct personalities had one, as well. One of them was psychokinesis. One was astral projection. Another was sort of a reverse psychometry.”

  “Reverse?” Cali asked.

  Jack nodded. “She could bring the histories of certain sacred objects to some form of ectoplasmic life. Well, that’s what was claimed, anyway. And then she died when she was in her forties, still living in a prison that her father had created for her, still not knowing that she had created several distinct personalities, all of whom had an astral reality.”

  ‘This all sounds made up.” Chet shook his head. “This is like hearing a fairy tale. Maybe someone believed this, but if a guy is a hundred years old and writing this stuff down, well, all I can say is, I bet he wasn’t as sharp as you think.”

  Fleetwood shot him a glance. It was businesslike, and Cali noticed that the entire group had somehow lost its sense of humor down there, beneath the house. It was as if this was beginning to seem real. Not the house, not the haunting, but the job.

  We’re here as bait, she thought, and wanted to say it aloud but was almost afraid to do it.

  “Goggles on,” Fleetwood said.

  9

  “It’s a green world,” Cali said as she glanced over at Chet, who looked like a shimmering yellow-green fog. “You’re the green man, Chet.”

  “You callin’ me Kermit the frog?” Chet asked, chuckling. “And you’re green with envy.”

  “And I’m just green with nausea,” Frost said, behind them.

  Ivy turned about and seemed about to say something, but then turned back around and led them down what seemed like a long flight of rickety stairs. Frost mumbled something about “Doesn’t anyone believe in electricity down here?” The stairs led to what seemed like a sloping room—the floor had been damaged, not in the fire, but in a later flooding—and here, Jack explained about the floor and the walls and the water and the fire and everything, until Cali was about to tell him enough already. As she thought about how tired she was of the waiting game, and how she wished she could get away from the house for just one night (one night, and maybe a coffeehouse or a movie or something other than this house), she realized that she had a sense from the others:

  The level of frustration was rising.

  The house may not contain anything other than a somewhat colorful history, Gallic thought.

  10

  They went through room after room, some small and narrow, a few large and deep—and Chet whispered aloud, “We’re going down farther,” and Ivy moved ahead of them in the green glow of all that Chet could see—for all he could follow were the flashlight beams and the wispy green of the outlines of things. The rooms seemed unreal with the goggles on; at first Frost giggled too much; the rooms were damp, and what felt like a stone floor was slightly sticky.

  “What’s so funny?” someone asked, and Chet wasn’t sure whose voice it was. Wearing the goggles brought on a sensation of disorientation—they went through a green darkness and only the yellow-green forms of the others kept Chet aware that he wasn’t alone. Because there was something about these tunnels and rooms that seemed desolate, that made him imagine that they were all marching, singly, to their own graves.

  “Here,” Ivy said, in the next room. Jack held up his hand at the doorway—which was stooped and narrow, so they had to duck their heads to go through it. Ivy shone the flashlight up at the ceiling.

  It was vast, this room. It was as if they’d gone through a small series of hallways and closets to come out in an enormous ballroom. The ceiling was shiny and black.

  This was the entrance from the crypt,” Ivy said.

  “You mean—?” Cali gasped.

  “Jesus,” Chet said. “We’ve walked beyond the house?”

  “The entire hillside, basically,” Jack said.

  And then Ivy brought them over to a far wall.

  There, scratched into the surface, glyphs and symbols.

  “It’s a mix of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and what I’d generously call black magic mumbo-jumbo,” Ivy said. “Well, it may all be mumbo-jumbo. None of it really makes sense and none of us are archaeologists. I’d place this room as the main temple. The Egyptian period of Harrow, if you will. I will take a not-so-wild guess and say that those”—she pointed specifically to a line of hieroglyphs that showed an ibis, a jackal, and what might’ve been a crocodile—“are from the Aegyptian Book of the Dead, or perhaps one of the books upstairs. And this”—she waved her hand around another part of the wall—”this is some ritual about Harrow itself. See the H within the design? It’s repeated in the front gate of the house, and if you look at two of the stained-glass windows in the front, it’s there as well. And that”—she pointed off toward what might’ve been a series of squiggles and lines that reminded Chet of forks and S-shapes and backward 3’s—”is occult language, basically. It’s the Chymera Magick ritual he developed, I have no doubt. Gravesend kept his daughter in these tunnels, but he also had his worship.”

  “He worshipped the Devil?” Chet joked, and swiftly wished he hadn’t said it.

  “Well, whatever he worshipped,” Ivy said, “it remained behind, didn’t it?”

  “What’s that?” Chet asked.

  “What?” Cali said, turning toward him again.

  Chet pointed to something in midair. “That thing. That...”

  There, slightly above and in front of Ivy, was what looked like a light mist—as if someone had just taken a puff of a cigarette and it floated there in the still air.

  Then it was gone.

  Jack held up his EMF, but when he read it he said, “Nothing.”

  Frost snickered a bit, and when Cali asked him what was so funny he said, “Nothing is so funny.”

  11

  Frost saw her, of course. The girl with the hot body standing there, watching them.

  Picking out which one of them. Who would be her dance partner?

  But Frost knew on the inside that he would be the one chosen because he was the most special of all of them. No one else saw her.

  She’s revealing herself only to me.

  She wants only me.

  He knew about Snapping Jaws and Voices and why one man sees smoke in the air while the other sees the truth in the form of a pretty girl who looks like she’s sixteen and is only revealing herself to her one, true, snapping love.

  12

  It was hours before they returned to the aboveground house. Cali was growing weary of the goggles and took them off at one point and nearly tripped over herself in the absolute darkness. Instead of putting the headgear over her scalp, she carried it in front of her for the rest of the trip, which ended as they went up a series of narrow stone staircases. When they finished they were in the tower room, the one in which Cali had first met Ivy. The story of little Matilde and her life in the darkness and bowels of the house as she grew to middle age, her personalities getting loose in some kind of astral projection nightmare, her ghost opening the way for other ghosts to enter the house—it had all been told and retold, and at one point, Chet gave Cali’s hand a squeeze, which made her feel better.

  Back in the hall near their bedrooms, Ivy stopped in her tracks and turned to face them. “Nothing?”

  Cali shook her head. “I still haven’t felt anything—nothing in terms of psychometry or even a slight sense or intuition, since I got here. It’s like it’s gone.”

  “Me neither,” Frost admitted. “It’s like I never had it now. Sometimes I guess it
goes away.”

  Ivy rubbed at a spot just above her wrist as if she itched there.

  Cali nodded. “I’ve tried concentrating ... but this has never happened before. Not since I knew I had the ability.”

  Ivy glared at Cali as if she was ready to spit. Cali wished she could say something, or do something, that would help ease the frustration, but she just stood there with the others in the hallway. “I have spent the past year withdrawing every fund I have for this house, for what I think may be here. I know this is a psychic place. I know it is.” Even her anger had grown anemic by the time she finished speaking, and she seemed on the verge of collapse.

  Jack grasped her elbow, nearly holding her up from collapse. “You’re tired. You haven’t slept well for days. Look, I’ve got some Ambien, and you can take it and get at least one good night’s sleep while you’re here.”

  “I don’t want to,” Ivy said, but something in her voice lacked resistance. “Jack. I don’t want to, I really really don’t want to.”

  13

  Cali felt comfortable enough, alone in the parlor, that she decided it would be all right to fall asleep near the hearth, like a cat curled up on the rug. She stared into the flames, hoping they’d help her block out other thoughts, but it was too much—Det’s face seemed to be there in the yellow fire, and Chet’s, also. Chet and Det. They rhyme. There’s some symmetry there: Chet and Det. Both are “et” words. What if I get Chet and Det. Debt. Chebt. Dead. Chead. Threat. Met. Fret. Set. Pet. Let. Wet. Bet. Net. The words that were born from her playing with the names seemed to lull her to sleep, and then, as if she had invoked him with her thoughts, Chet came to her and sat beside her.

  After that, she could not sleep at all.

  14

  So he had returned, just as she was afraid he would, hoped he would, and they’d begun talking and revealing themselves: She talked about Det and how she didn’t love him the way she knew he needed to be loved; about the stresses of her work; and Chet told her about St. Chris and the Big Woman and the legend within his own mind of who his mother was. “If your mothers such a ... well, not much of a mother, why would you look for her?” Cali asked.

  “Here’s the thing,” Chet told her. “Ever since I was little, I’ve had this feeling. I mean, I lived with people who were not exactly loving. I saw some bad things, too. Some awful things. A lot of human ugliness.”

  Cali took a sip of cognac. It burned on her tongue but felt like a sweet, delicious warmth as it went down her throat. She felt a luxuriousness that she hadn’t been sensing before; Harrow seemed as much a retreat as it was an investigation. This was a rich place. This was a treasure, and the cognac and the warmth that went from her throat down into her body added to the wealth of this moment. The rest of life was distant and not particularly appealing. Finally, nearly smiling, she said, “Human ugliness. That’s the world for you.”

  “No, there’s more than that. There’s human beauty and strength and kindness. There were times when I saw beautiful things, too. When even another person, maybe a kid, maybe even the mother of a friend, did some small thing. Not for anyone. Not for someone to see or notice. But some really beautiful thing. And then I figured: That’s what my mother did for me. She gave me up because she was probably worse than the places I ended up in. She was probably more miserable than even my foster mother. But she gave me up because she loved me enough. Now, I don’t think I’d ever let go of my lad if I had one. Ever. But I’m different. That’s one thing Rustic Acres and St. Chris taught me. I’m different, and part of me being different is me understanding that human ugliness and misery are what gets put in most peoples’ paths. And they embrace it. And maybe I’m different, so I see that, and instead I know that whoever or whatever gets put in my path, I’m going to hug it to me like there’s no tomorrow. Misery isn’t in my path. I don’t know why. It never has been, no matter what else goes on around me. But I really believe, for better or worse, when life—or God—or whatever runs this universe, even fate, puts someone in your path, to avoid it is some kind of death. I think my mother did that. I was put in her path, and she avoided me. That was probably best when she had me. But now I’m going to find her again, and she’s going to be in my path this time, and I am going to make sure I love her and I let her know it, and that I’d rather have her crazy and hard to deal with in my life than on some other path.”

  Cali watched the fire crackle and sputter; outside, the first rays of dawn were coming up. She felt like weeping, from hearing this and from sleepiness, but no tears came. She thought of her own mother and father, and all the difficult years. She wondered about the paths of life, and how they twisted and grew wild. “Damn it,” she said.

  Chet chuckled. “I pour my heart out and that’s all you have to say?”

  “No, I mean, damn it, because you’re making me think about my dad and mom and how I love them anyway. They were always there for me, even after they divorced. My nosy sister, Bev. And my brother ...”

  “Where’s he?”

  “Dead,” Cali said, and realized it was actually the first time in her life she had said that aloud about him. Usually, she avoided the subject, or used words like gone or passed on. “His name was Ned. He was my twin.”

  “I’m sorry,” Chet said. “I don’t want you to think about sad things. Not now.”

  Cali shrugged. “It happened a long time ago. We both had it.

  The famous Ability X. His was a little different, I guess. His drove him ... to do things ... bad things, to himself and others. He had to be put in a special home, because his mind went haywire ... and ... well, he killed himself, finally.”

  They were silent. The fire crackled in the fireplace.

  “It’s funny,” Cali said after the long quiet. “I’ve felt guilty all this time because I feel like I shouldn’t have outlived him. Not if I had this ability to see things, to connect with objects and their histories, just like him. Why didn’t I become insane, too? Why? I had the same visions he had. I got scared, too. I didn’t understand it. Why did I stay sane? That’s what I’ve always been thinking. Inside.”

  “Maybe it’s—”

  “If you say ‘God’s will,’ I will slap you,” she said, and it sounded as if she meant it.

  “No. Maybe it’s because your sanity and his state of mind had nothing to do with the ability,” Chet said. It sounded so simple, but Cali had never considered it.

  “Could be,” she said softly. “You know, Chet? You’re a sharp cookie.”

  They talked some more, vented a little about Ivy and her strange mania, Frost and his google eyes, Jack Fleetwood with his pipe and little techno-gadgets ... Cali felt lazily sleepy and didn’t even notice how much she had fallen in love with Chet, from a foolish lust to a genuine sense of love, and all within a couple of days. The subject of Death, once introduced by Cali, seemed to weave in and out of the conversation, and not evaporate as Cali had hoped it would.

  “I think about dying sometimes,” Chet said. “Sometimes I wonder if after we die, we’ll miss just breathing. We’ll thank anyone for bringing us into the world to have the adventure we were meant to have. And we’ll even miss suffering in the afterlife—we’ll get jealous of people who are still alive, and think: What a blast, what a screwed-up and wonderful trip it was, to be able to hurt over something, to cry and feel a little pain. And then experience joy, too.”

  “How’d you get to be so wise, kiddo? You don’t even talk like most teenagers I know.”

  “I’m almost twenty,” he said with mock-indignity. “Mira told me I’m an old soul.” Chet grinned, winking. “Just this morning. She said I probably had several incarnations, and she told me she didn’t really believe in it, but she thought if it was true, then I was an ancient soul.”

  “Oh, that little vixen.” Cali wagged her finger at him. “She’s after you. She’s got a crush.”

  Chet scratched at his side and said, “Yeah, I know. Crushes are nice. My first one was when I was eight. This girl who
sometimes babysat for the Big Woman took me to the local grill. She was fourteen or fifteen, and she had guys crawling all over her, but when she put her song on the jukebox, all she wanted to do was dance with me. I had the biggest crush.” “I once had a crush on my gym teacher.” “Oh,” Chet said, his eyes brightening. “One of those crushes.” “It was a man.” Cali blushed. “My lesbian crushes came later. No, I was eleven, and in the little school I went to you had your English teacher for gym. He was smart and handsome and probably only twenty-three, but he seemed so mature and ... well... well-developed. Bulging muscles. Great smile.” She sighed. “It’s sweet to have crushes. I guess when I think of Mira that way, it’s cute.” “Don’t worry, I’m not into fourteen-year-olds,” Chet said. “Sixteen,” Mira said. Cali glanced up from the fire.

  Mira stood in the doorway. God, how long had she been listening? Cali felt terrible. What kind of game am I playing? I’m too old for Chet, he’s a baby, and Mira’s a child, and I’m a moron.

  “Aw,” Chet said. “Damn.” He rose, fumbling a little with his balance. “Mira!” he called out, and went after her.

  15

  Chet found her out among the statues, with Conan whimpering at her side as if he, too, was crying for his mistress. Mira was crumpled into a bench, her hands covering her face.

  “Mira,” Chet said. He sat beside her and touched her shoulder. She shrugged him off.