The Haunted

by Michaelbrent Collings

Sarah yelped as something pounded on the ceiling, a heavy footstep directly above them. More thuds and thumps followed. And then a worse, far worse sound.

  A creak. The sound of a foot on an old stair.

  Something was coming for them.

  Sarah grabbed a cordless phone off the sofa. Cap held the lamp over his head, ready to strike if anything should come into the room through the hall.

  He heard Sarah pounding the keys of the phone, three hard jabs, and knew she was dialing nine-one-one.

  “Hello?” she said. And again, “Hello?” The urgency and fear in her voice sent even more adrenaline shooting through Cap’s system. The lamp trembled in his hands and his vision seemed to double for a moment. “There’s no dial tone,” whispered Sarah.

  “What?” he shouted, even though he had understood perfectly well what she said.

  “The phone’s dead!” Sarah wailed.

  The sound of whoever or whatever was coming down the stairs grew louder. Cap kept his eyes on the hall, but darkness seemed to gather there like a thunderhead in a storm. It was almost a living thing, turning the hall into a black pit of mystery and fear. Anything could be there.

  He heard a whispering, the same low muttering that he had heard several times before.

  The muttering got closer. Approaching with the threat that was coming down the stairs.

  It got closer, and closer. Chittering and gasping that set Cap’s teeth on edge. It made him want to run and fight at the same time. Made him want to grab Sarah’s hand and get the hell out of here as fast as he could, but also called up something primal within him, something angry that pushed him to seek out the threat and beat the life out of it with the lamp he still held in twitching hands.

  The muttering was like a fingernail across his eyeball, an almost physical pain that ripped through his head and pierced his mind. He was going mad, he knew. Insane.

  “LEAVE!”

  The voice came from nowhere and from everywhere at once. He knew this must be the same voice that Sarah had told him she had heard. It was enough to break the standstill he had been in the throes of. Cap dropped the lamp and grabbed his wife’s hand. He pulled her with him as he ran for the hall –

  (oh god, not the hall, not in the hall, the thing is in the hall, not the hall!)

  – and into the inky blackness. It was like falling into a pit, like descending into a mine shaft deep below a mountain. Darkness so thick and perfect it was almost a tangible object, something that wrapped itself around him, forced itself through his mouth and into his lungs, drowning him.

  But it was the fastest way out.

  He felt blindly. Had to find the front door.

  (and a part of him screamed in fury and pain and terror because it was happening again just like The Before it was happening again)

  The steps creaked. Only a few feet behind him. The evil was near.

  He found the front door. He grabbed the brass knob, twisting it in a palm slick with sweat.

  It wouldn’t turn.

  Then he remembered that it was locked. He had locked it himself before going to bed.

  He fumbled with the lock, managing to turn it only after what seemed like an eternity of searching. He kept throwing terrified looks over his shoulder, trying to pierce the darkness and watch the stairs for the inevitable moment when something more horrifying than death itself would walk off the last step and reach for him and Sarah.

  The lock turned. He spun the knob in both hands. The latch clicked. He yanked the door open. Grabbed Sarah blindly. Propelled her with him out onto the front porch. He pushed her safely away from the house, then turned back to grab the front door again and yank it shut.

  Sarah screamed.

  He looked back. Dark clouds had gathered outside. A storm hung above them, waiting only for the right moment to begin.

  But that wasn’t what she had screamed about.

  It was the dark figure at the edge of the forest.

  It was only half-visible in the thick mist that now coated everything like cotton batting. But there was no denying it was there. A shadowed form, like a reaper come for their souls. Death personified, and come to dance its deadly dance.

  The dark figure began to approach. Still easily a hundred feet away, but there was no denying that it was coming closer, seeming to swim from shadow to shadow under the trees, slinking forward like a piece of night come to life.

  There was a flash, and Cap turned to see that the house lights – all of them – had turned on. The door stood open again, as though welcoming them.

  He didn’t want to go back in there.

  But he sensed far worse danger from the strange figure that still moved on unseen feet, flitting from shadow to shadow, but steadily coming toward them.

  He looked at Sarah. This was what she must have seen from the porch. And knew the terror she had felt, because he felt it too.

  Cap looked at the house again. Inviting. But was it the invitation of a spider, luring a fly into its parlor?

  He looked back at the black form, and couldn’t help but retreat a step. In the blink of an eye, it had travelled to the edge of the woods. It stood at the demarcation between the trees and the clearing, the edge of darkness. He grabbed Sarah’s arm.

  “What do we do?” she asked, and he could feel the terror in her like an electrical current, surging through him as he touched her.

  She screamed. Cap followed her gaze with his own, and saw that the figure was now standing in the thick fog in the clearing itself. It stood motionless now, as though it would only surge forward when no one was looking.

  Cap came to a decision. He grabbed Sarah and pushed her at the still-beckoning front door. “Inside, quick,” he said. “Don’t take your eyes off it until we’re inside.”

  He felt more than saw Sarah nod, his own eyes glued to the figure in the clearing. It seemed to work, for the thing remained motionless. But he didn’t feel any safer. He felt like he was watching a deadly viper that was coiled and ready to strike.

  He backed into the house, Sarah behind him. And felt the driving fear that had pushed him into the house dissipate slightly once he passed over the threshold of his home.

  He closed the door, blocking any view of the spectral being outside. He glanced behind him, looking up the stairs. There was nothing there. The lights in the second floor hall shone brightly, driving away fear.

  Cap locked the door. He didn’t know if that would do much good, but it made him feel marginally better.

  He glanced out the window beside the door. The figure was still there, like a dark monk of a demonic religion, standing motionless in the mist. It was not coming any closer, its black-hooded head tilted downward as though engaged in some evil rite. Cap couldn’t make out what the thing was, and he suspected that even if he could have seen it clearly, he was better off not knowing.

  He moved away from the window, and followed Sarah into the now brightly lit living room. The house felt again like a refuge, the feeling that something evil was waiting for him inside overshadowed by the more powerful fear engendered by the silent form outside.

  Sarah was crying. Cap wanted to go to her, to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right and he would protect her no matter what. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He had never lied to her, and he feared that if he should say those things, they would be the first untruths he had ever uttered to his wife.

  But he needed to do something. His body cried out to move, to attempt to fix whatever had gone so dreadfully wrong with their lives. He walked to the fireplace, and picked up the poker that hung there. He had put it there after looking in the closet, and he wanted it again. He took a few practice swings with it. Much better than the lamp had been. The poker felt good in his hand, comfortable and comforting.

  Something knocked on the door.

  Cap had an image in his mind, a mental picture of a skeletal hand reaching out from a dark robe, of moon-bleached knuckles rapping on the thick wood of the front door. He s
hook his head, as though by doing so he could shake the disturbing image loose from its moorings in his mind. At the same time, he stepped forward, moving back into the hall.

  “Where are you going?” said Sarah. Hysteria tinged her voice, turning it into a shriek.

  Cap didn’t answer. His teeth were gritted so tightly together that speech was impossible. He sidled up to the door. Slowly. Carefully. Peeked around the edge of the window beside it.

  The porch was dark. Black. Couldn’t see anything.

  Another knock. This one louder, more insistent.

  Cap forced his jaw to relax enough that he could speak. “Who’s there?” he said.

  No answer. Then….

  The door shook in the jamb as something seemed to attack it from the other side. The wood shimmied back and forth, then almost grew blurry as the attacks on the other side shook it so fast that Cap’s eyes could no longer follow its movements.

  Even worse, though, was the noise that writhed through the door. The sound was low, barely audible over the shaking and pounding of the door beside him. But just barely was far too loud. The sound was… he groped for a word to describe it, if only to himself.

  Evil was the closest he could come. Anathema. Enmity incarnate. The noise rose and fell, sounding strangely rhythmic, almost like dark chanting. And he knew that whatever was out there, whatever hideous thing was making this noise, there was no room in this universe for both Cap and the thing singing this dreadful song. He felt the sound as an almost physical blow, and had to grip the nearby staircase bannister to keep from running haphazardly away, tearing through the house and through the back door and into the woods, to run and run and run until the sound was lost behind him.

  So this is what going crazy feels like, he thought.

  He looked at Sarah, and saw her face was white. She was half doubled over, her arms protectively encircling her swollen belly, and he knew that the sound was affecting her as well. The sight of his wife and unborn child seemed to inject courage into him, filling him with steel. He stood straight against the aural onslaught.

  A new sound joined the chanting, a noise like a million tiny bones falling on the roof. It took a moment for Cap to realize it was raining. As though the very climate was weeping because of the power of the dark song.

  The door shook again. And then Cap saw the most horrifying thing he had ever seen.

  The knob clicked. Unlocked. Cap reached to stop it, but he was too slow. The knob turned.

  Cap pushed Sarah behind him. He would die before he let anything touch her. He pushed her back as they retreated from the door, moving backward down the hall.

  The front door slowly swung open.

  And as it did, the lights in the house all turned off again. Darkness, inside and out. Darkness so pure and simple that Cap felt like he must be looking at what the universe was before God said, “Let there be light.”

  But unlike that time, this was a darkness with form, a blanket that hid something within its folds.

  They were not alone.

  13

  The Third Day

  2:07 am

  ***

  The baby the baby the baby the baby….

  The words pumped through her mind like blood through her overstressed heart. Indeed, the words were her heartbeat to a certain extent. Because she knew she would die if anything happened to the baby, just as surely as if her heart had stopped.

  Still, even as frightened as she was for the child within her, not to mention for Cap and for herself, Sarah’s mind focused on the door as it swung open. The darkness outside seemed like an inky pool of some unknown liquid, held sideways by an impossible form of gravity. The world had turned not merely upside down, but sideways and inside out. The universe she had been living in was gone, and she had to come to terms with the new reality, a reality where the driving force was fear.

  The rain continued pounding on the roof, and that was very nearly a miracle. That rain should still fall down when all the world was misbehaving was almost impossible to believe.

  Lightning flashed, and it illuminated the doorway.

  The thing in the doorway.

  Rain fell like slivers of quicksilver in the lightning, though the thing on their doorstep was dry.

  It was the figure that was cloaked in a robe of purest darkness. The dark demon she had first seen when alone on the porch. But where it had been silent before, now a nonsense chanting issued from deep within the shadows that hid its features from view. And somehow, though she could not understand the words, she felt like she knew their meaning.

  Flee this place. Fear me.

  Her body tightened, and she felt the baby shift within her. Part of her wanted to scream, “All right, we’ll go!” But at the same time, she knew that wasn’t all the strange creature at her door wanted. It wanted her gone, it was true, but not merely gone from this house. It wanted her gone from the entire world. It wanted her existence to end.

  Cap maneuvered himself between her and the beast, the thing, but she knew that was useless. Cap was no match for this monster. Perhaps nothing was.

  The chanting got louder. More insistent. The words became barbs, sharp points jabbing at her mind.

  She screamed.

  Cap screamed, too, but his was a different kind of sound. He raised his poker high, and she couldn’t tell if he was just readying for the inevitable attack, or if he was going to rush the monster that faced them. Either way, she knew they were going to die.

  Then the lightning was gone. The porch – and everything else – fell back to the thick darkness from which it had come. She could feel Cap nearby, feel his warmth and life. But she could not feel the thing on the porch. Its attack could come from anywhere. Her body tried to draw up into itself, like a snake swallowing its own tail, like the end of the universe as everything fell into itself and became a singularity and disappeared.

  The lightning came again. Thunder came with it, crashing down around them and shaking the house on its foundations. Sarah barely felt the rumbling, barely registered the noise.

  The doorway was empty.

  Cap darted forward. He grabbed the front door and slammed it closed. Sarah didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one. Where had the dark figure gone? Was Cap locking it out?

  Or locking them in with it?

  He engaged the deadbolt with a click.

  Sarah turned to look behind her. She was gripped by the sudden belief that the shadowed monster was there. Reaching out to her, to grip her with fingers of naked bone, to steal her soul and the soul of her unborn child.

  Nothing was there.

  Then she caught a glimpse of something, just a flash out of the corner of her mind. Sarah turned to look toward the movement. And shrieked.

  There was a window at one corner of the living room, close to the hall and the front door. And another window a few feet away from that. Then there was a stretch of wall to accommodate the fireplace and chimney, then another window. Under normal circumstances, the windows allowed bright sunlight to stream in, or at night allowed a beautiful view of the woods and the stars.

  Not now. Not in the strange, otherworldly darkness that had clutched the house in a black fist. The stars and the woods were gone.

  But there were faces.

  They were gray faces, bloodless and gaunt. Faces of men who had had their blood drained, faces of men who had been laid down in the hopes that they would rest, but for some reason found they could not.

  The faces of the dead.

  Ghosts.

  She didn’t know how she was so certain, but something inside her cried out that this was what she was seeing. The dark figures, the cloaked beings that had surrounded their home and invaded their sanctuary, were something different. Something alien. But these faces, these staring faces at the windows, they were the souls of the damned, spirits that had refused to leave this world when their bodies died.

  The faces of the dead men glowed dimly. The light was cold, though. Not bri
ght, not cheering. Sarah’s mind struggled to describe to itself what she was seeing, and the words that came to mind were that this was a dark light, a light that refused to send itself forth, but rather gathered other light unto it, and stole it away.

  One face, the one nearest the hall and the front door, had red hair. The hair hung loose and lank, dyed to a crimson by the darkness that surrounded it. The face smiled, but it was a cold smile, bereft of humor or warmth or humanity. One of its eyes was gray, just as the eyes of the man in the stovepipe hat from Sarah’s dream.

  (but was it a dream, oh god, was it a dream or did that really happen, god please save me)

  The other eye was twisted and ruined by the knife that stuck out of it, a seeping, oozing mass of dark ichor that wept freely onto the ghost’s gray face.

  Sarah turned to the next one. She didn’t want to, but felt compelled. Look at me, the ghosts seemed to be calling, though none of their mouths moved. They were still as stone, as silent as the grave. And yet their voices sounded in her mind, calling upon her to stare at them. As though by her sight they might gain a new kind of life. Or perhaps (and her stomach twisted at the thought) make a new friend with whom they could play during the long nights of their damnation.

  The next face was darker, bruised and swollen. Its eyes were the same cataract-covered shade of gray as the others, but they were impossibly large, popping out of the skull like the eyes of an insect. Its cheeks hung slack, but at the same time somehow seemed stretched tight over its cheekbones. She didn’t understand why it could look that way, until she saw the dark thing wrapped around the ghost’s neck. A noose. This ghost had died on a gallows, the blood trapped in its head by the noose’s tight embrace, its eyes bulging out of its skull and its tongue lolling from its blood-red mouth.

  Sarah shivered and turned away, but the next ghost was no better. It looked like a young man – a boy perhaps, no older than fourteen or fifteen at the most. Long hair, thick and curly, the kind of hair that girls would envy, the kind of hair that women would want to run their fingers through. But the hair ended abruptly at the edge of the grisly cavity that covered much of the side of the boy-thing’s head. A gunshot wound, a crater that had been carved out of his skull with all the delicacy of a jackhammer. White could be seen at the edges of the gory wound, and Sarah knew she was seeing the boy’s skull, and between the edges the gray and red and black swirled in a knot of clotted blood and brain mass that had been curdled by the heat of a bullet’s passing.