The Haunted

by Michaelbrent Collings

  The lightning winked again, a bright eye appearing at each of the windows, and the figures disappeared. They reappeared again when the bright needles of electricity faded, and then some were there and some were gone. They disappeared and reappeared in a random pattern that came close to setting free the panic that so far Sarah had successfully bound within herself.

  She felt a hand on her stomach and screamed. The fingers clenched, and she realized in the next instant that it wasn’t the hand of some new beast or horror from beyond. It was Cap. He was pushing her, moving her back, away from the doors and windows. He backed out of the living room with her. Into the hall.

  Lightning illuminated the whole house now, writhing through the building in strobing flashes that made it possible to see, but at the same time made Sarah wish she couldn’t see. Everything danced in the light, the walls themselves seemed to move back and forth, nothing was static, everything was moving and changing around them.

  Sarah felt her mind beginning to shut down. She knew that insanity or even oblivion were beckoning to her, and she wanted to go to them. Because either of those options would allow her to stop thinking, to stop being responsible for processing the terrible images being forced upon her.

  Only the baby saved her. Only the fact that if she died, so would the life within her. Even Cap wasn’t enough to hold her fast to reality. Being a wife didn’t matter to her in this moment of extremity. Being a mother was all that kept her going.

  The three doors in the hall stood open, dark maws waiting to pull her and Cap into the terror beyond them. Then, one at a time, the doors slammed shut.

  Sarah and Cap spun around and she felt like she was trying to keep her eyes everywhere at once. She realized vaguely that she was still gripping the phone in her hands, holding it like some kind of talisman that might keep her and the baby safe.

  Dimly, she was aware that the chanting had returned – if it had ever stopped. It still pushed into her mind, jabbing at her with sharp fingers that scraped nails across her thoughts.

  Get out leave get out flee get out leave get out….

  Pounding noises sounded above her and Cap, slamming thuds coming from somewhere on the second floor. She knew instinctively that the nightmare was coming in, coming for them. There was nowhere they could go, nowhere that was safe.

  Get out leave get out flee get out leave get out….

  The chanting was scratching at her thoughts, tearing them from her head. She couldn’t think straight, she felt herself disappearing in the nightmare cacophony.

  Then she and Cap both turned as something knocked on the door. The lightning flashes seared her eyes, and the door seemed to wax and wane, to come close and then leap away. The knocking continued. Grew louder.

  The thuds above became frantic, frenzied.

  The chanting grew more charged.

  She and Cap backed away from the front door. They were beside the closed bathroom door, and something slammed against it from the other side, rattling the door in the frame. She saw Cap reach out for the handle, as though to open the door.

  “Don’t!” she screamed.

  Now scrabbling could be heard from behind the bathroom door. It sounded like a dog trying to get out, claws raking furrows in the wood. But Sarah knew that there was no dog in there. Nothing so terrestrial or so harmless as that.

  She and Cap kept backing up.

  The thudding upstairs got louder.

  The chanting grew more violent.

  Get out leave get out flee get out leave get out….

  They were beside the closed door to the spare room. A growl came from inside the room, human but wild at the same time. Like someone had been stripped of all their culture and civilization, leaving behind only a thing of pure ferocious wrath.

  Sarah jumped backward, her body trying to flee from the sound without giving her mind a say in the matter. She bumped into Cap and felt herself trip over one of his legs. They got tangled up in one another, falling in a jumble of flailing limbs. She felt Cap’s arms go around her, and knew he was trying to save her, or, failing that, to make sure she fell on him rather than on the unforgiving wood floor.

  They tripped back in a mad dance of lost balance, a jig of knotted limbs that allowed neither of them to regain control. She felt something unyielding hit her shoulder, but it wasn’t the floor. Couldn’t be that, she was still standing. Or not standing, but at least not fallen. Not yet.

  So what was it?

  The door. The last door. The door to the sewing room. Her shoulder hit it with the force of her entire falling weight, and she felt something twinge deep within her. Then the door cracked, and gave behind her.

  She and Cap fell together as the door opened. They fell into the open doorway. Into the sewing room, with its ghost-sheets covering the furniture, flapping in a wind that should not have existed in the four confined walls of the room.

  Lightning flashed again.

  Then it dimmed.

  All was suddenly silent. The chanting gone, the thumping and thudding above halted.

  Sarah was on the floor with her husband, both of them still tangled up in one another. She was too afraid even to move, and suspected that Cap felt the same way. The only sound was the ragged sawing of their breathing as air rushed in and out of them in harsh gasps.

  The lightning came again.

  And the room was as it should be. Sheets limp and loose. Sewing table and sewing machine just where Sarah remembered them. Life had returned to normal.

  The lightning fled, and darkness returned.

  “What’s happening?” said Sarah.

  “It’ll be okay,” said Cap. “It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.” His voice sounded thick and strange, like he had been drugged somehow, or hypnotized. He must be in shock.

  Sarah wanted to put her arms around him. To comfort him. But she could barely move. She felt like she’d been tied in a knot, her arms and legs wrapped up with Cap’s longer limbs. He was half on her, she was half on him.

  “It’ll be okay,” Cap kept saying. “It’ll be okay.”

  She pushed herself away from him, trying to free the trapped parts of her body. She managed to get out from under Cap, but it felt like she was pushing an anvil. He was completely dead weight for a moment, as though his body and mind had caved in as soon as the threats were gone.

  Buzzzzzzz.

  Sarah froze on the floor. She heard Cap’s breath as he gasped.

  Buzzzz-zuzzzz-zuzzzzz.

  The sound was low, coming in waves that rolled over her. It took a moment for Sarah to realize what it was.

  The sewing machine.

  Lightning crashed again, coming once more in a series of brilliant flashes that lit the room.

  Buzzz-zzzuzzzzz-zuzzzz-zuzzzz.

  The needle on the sewing machine pumped up and down, faster and faster. She looked at it in horror, and saw Cap sitting up to look as well.

  The man – the ghost – with the stovepipe hat was sitting behind the sewing table. His grin was the same, the smile tugging at the edges of his slit throat. His head weaved back and forth as though he was slow-dancing to the rhythm of the sewing machine, the hum of the needle as it stitched its way along.

  The ghost was sewing his fingers together.

  Sarah screamed.

  The lightning flashed again. It flared, burning bright tumors of light into her eyes, pink globules that swum through her vision, making sight impossible. Then all was dark.

  Then another flash. The stovepipe hat was gone, along with the specter that wore it.

  Cap, apparently jarred to action by the return of the supernatural, leapt to his feet. He grabbed Sarah’s arms and practically yanked her upright. Rain tick-tacked on the window, like penny nails against the glass.

  They ran out of the sewing room. Sarah did not look back.

  The hall was still dark. But totally silent now. Cap skidded to a halt, and Sarah almost crashed into him. She almost yelled at him, almost demanded to know what he was thinkin
g, stopping like that! But then she realized: there was nowhere to go. Where would they be safe? The demons, the cloaked figures, were outside. The ghosts of hideously murdered men and children stood watch at the windows. And in the rooms around them….

  The lightning came again, accompanying that thought, and she saw that the fiend with the stovepipe hat had reappeared. He was standing in the open door to the sewing room. He held his hand in front of him, and Sarah saw thread trailing from it, the fingers sewn impossibly together, creating a mitten out of his hand.

  Cap backed away from the sight, pulling Sarah with him. But not before the ghost raised his other hand. This one had not been stitched like a frayed coat. It held a knife. The lightning flashed off the edge of the knife, and Sarah knew that whether the ghost was from their world or some other place, the edge of that knife was real. Deadly.

  The ghost stepped toward them. The hat atop its head was higher than the header of the doorframe, but when the ghost glided forward, the hat simply passed through the wood as though it were a picture projected onto mist. Sarah’s throat tightened, and she felt the baby kicking within her. Fear was passing from her to the child, and it was trying to escape just as she was. A contraction almost rocked her backwards, but she gritted her feet and stood fast. She couldn’t fall. Not now. Not with this twice-grinning killer coming toward her.

  The knife slashed down at them. Cap moved fast, faster than she would have thought possible. Somehow he managed to push his arm between the knife and her, blocking the blade with his own flesh.

  Cap cried out as the knife bit deep, slashing through the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing and slicing into his arm. Blood flew in the dark, dripping from Cap’s arm even as the ghost drew back. A dark tongue came out of its mouth, and it licked the blood off the knife. Then raised the blade for another strike. This one would end her or Cap or both of them, she knew. There was no way to get away.

  The chanting started again. Louder than before, blasting through the house like an explosion. Sarah saw Cap’s hands go to his ears, and felt her own hands follow suit. She shrieked, but the sound was drowned out by the chanting.

  Get out leave get out flee get out leave get out….

  She saw the killer-ghost do the same, its mouth opening in an airless cry of agony as it clapped mottled hands over its ears. It dropped the knife. Sarah tried to track the blade as it fell, but somehow her eyes seemed to slide off it, and she lost sight of it. The killer writhed in place, its head moving back and forth so quickly it looked like a horrific cartoon, expanding and contracting as spasms wracked it and wrenched it from side to side.

  The chanting grew in volume. Grew and grew until it was the only thing that existed.

  Get out leave get out flee get out leave get out….

  Lightning flashed. Brightness blinded her.

  Get out leave get out flee get out leave get out….

  She fled, Cap at her feet. They ran back into the living room. The incomprehensible chanting continued, gibberish sounds that pierced their minds.

  Another noise invaded her ears when they entered the front room. It pounded at her, falling on her ears like an avalanche of heavy stones.

  Krrrrick-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic.

  Get out leave get out flee get out leave get out….

  She kept screaming, Cap was screaming beside her. Their voices silenced by the chanting, and the strange clicking noise she now heard.

  Krrrrick-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic.

  Get out leave get out flee get out leave get out….

  Krrrrick-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic.

  Get out leave get out flee get out leave get out….

  Silent screams.

  Lightning shards.

  Rain like spider threads at the windows.

  Ghost-faces, shrieking behind the glass.

  Krrrrick-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic.

  Get out leave get out flee get out leave get out….

  Then silence. So sudden it was more deafening than the noise had been.

  Creeaaakkkkk.

  The front door swung open. There was no one there. The porch was empty.

  Then the door slammed shut.

  Sarah walked toward the door. Cap didn’t try to stop her. He went with her, and she knew that he was feeling what she was: a compulsion to go to the front of the house. Not curiosity, nothing so mundane as that. She had lost control for a moment. As though the chanting had conquered her, had forced her even in its absence to do what it said.

  Get out leave get out flee get out leave get out….

  The sound was gone, but it echoed in her mind, strange and horrible even in memory.

  She stood before the front door. Closed now. Nothing threatening about it.

  “Do you smell something?” said Cap.

  The sound of his voice startled her, normalcy in a place that had surrendered to madness some time ago. She shook her head. But even as she did, she smelled it. A hot, prickling odor that made her nose wrinkle. Something was burning.

  A hissing wriggled through the air. The smell intensified.

  Two dark patches appeared in the lightly stained front door. They were small at first, just shapeless blobs about the size of quarters that appeared about a foot apart. The edges expanded, like ink on a white towel, and soon the quarter-sized masses had grown to the diameter of silver dollars. Still they grew, and darkened. The hissing sound intensified, as did the smell of burning, and Sarah realized it was coming from these blobs. Something was etching like acid through the door.

  Pin-thin extrusions started to push out of the central mass of the two dark spots on the door, reaching upward. The dark lines thickened as well, and Sarah started to feel sick to her stomach as the dark shapes congealed into recognizable forms.

  Handprints.

  Something about them terrified Sarah, spread fear through her body in a way that made all the terrors of the last few minutes seem soothing in comparison. She retched, as though by vomiting she could expel the horror that threatened to overcome her – to become her.

  She felt Cap pawing at her, his normal steadiness apparently gone as he pulled her back, away from the door. The handprints still visible, even in the darkness. She suspected they would be in her mind forever, signs of some evil so vast that it was unforgettable.

  She felt something at the backs of her legs and a small part of her – the only part that was left of her rationality – told her that it was the stairs. She climbed with Cap, instinctively trying to get as far away from the handprints as possible. Fleeing upward like animals in a tree whose trunk had been set ablaze. Knowing that to climb was not an escape, but to remain was death.

  Sarah stumbled up the stairs with Cap, her stomach still cramping periodically as waves of nausea overcame her. She tried to calm down, tried to force herself back into control of her thoughts and actions, for the baby’s sake if not for her own.

  She couldn’t do it. The only thing that existed was those damned handprints.

  She backed up the stairs, unwilling – or unable – to look away from the door, as though if she did the handprints would tear loose from the door and hurtle at her, wrap themselves around her throat and choke the life out of her.

  Cap was right behind her. She let him guide her, pulling her up the stairs, then to the side. She managed to yank her gaze away from the front door for a fraction of a second. Looked around. They were on the second floor. All the doors in the hall were closed. Except one.

  Cap pulled her toward the open door. Toward the bedroom. Their bedroom.

  But that wasn’t really the case. Nothing here was theirs. Not anymore.

  It’s my house! Mine!

  The thought was small and weak, a candle beside a bottomless pit, casting only the barest sphere of illumination before being swallowed up in the nightmare darkness.

  Mine....

  No. Not hers. Not anymore.

  Cap pulled her into the bedroom. The door slammed in front of her. They were in the room. But not safe.

&n
bsp; Nothing was safe.

  14

  The Third Day

  2:22 am

  ***

  Cap pulled the door shut and locked it, then stared at it in terror, as though the wood of the door had been replaced by a six-foot-tall block of C-4 that was primed to explode at any moment.

  Given what had already happened, the thought wasn’t entirely unreasonable.

  But what had happened? What was going on? When had reality disappeared, replaced by a nightmare so black and evil that only Satan himself could have dreamt it?

  He could still hear the chanting, even with their bedroom door shut, but it was a bit quieter. He was glad of that. He didn’t know how much longer he could have put up with that sound, that hideous noise. It felt like someone physically punching him, stabbing him. Trying to force him to leave.

  Cap didn’t want to leave. Not just because this was his house. He wanted a place of his own, but he wasn’t about to risk his safety and the safety of his family over something as banal as pride of ownership. But he suspected that to leave would be worse than to stay. The chant wasn’t simply a warning, it wasn’t trying to keep him from somewhere dangerous. He knew instinctively that it was a trap. A siren song, pushing him to dash his soul upon black rocks that would tear him apart and leave behind only the barest traces of existence.

  He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t let Sarah leave. He had to protect her.

  Cap clung to that thought. It was all he had. His life didn’t matter. Only Sarah’s. Only the baby’s.

  He tore his eyes away from the bedroom door. He looked at Sarah. She was shaking, her teeth clicking together as trembling wracked her body. He touched her shoulder. She jumped away and looked at him with wide, frightened eyes, the gaze of a small creature cornered by a wild beast of prey.

  “Just me,” he said, raising his hands in front of him.