The Haunted

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Sarah stared at him dully, as though she didn’t know him. Lightning flashed again, brightening the room. The light washed across her, making her face for an instant as gray and lifeless-seeming as the ghoulish faces of the ghosts he had seen downstairs.

  He blinked, trying to chase away the image. But it wouldn’t leave him. It felt like a premonition, a prophecy of doom. He was going to lose Sarah.

  No. He shook his head. He wasn’t going to lose her. He wouldn’t let anything come between them.

  He looked at her again and was relieved to see that the lightning was no longer touching her with its deathly hues.

  “What now?” said Sarah.

  Cap put a finger to his lips, signaling for silence. He thought he heard something. Not the chanting, not the crash of thunder. Something else.

  Sarah nodded. She put a hand protectively over her belly. Cap ached for her. He couldn’t imagine what she must be going through right now.

  He pushed that thought away. It led to stultifying fear, to giving up. He wasn’t going to give up. He was going to fight.

  The sound came again. A creak, low and almost unheard. But it was there. The sound of someone climbing stealthily up the stairs.

  Cap braced himself against the door, ready to hold it shut against the next onslaught. His eyes lit upon the baby monitor, still on the nightstand where he had left it. The power indicator glowed blood red in the gloom of the bedroom.

  Cap felt a surge of hope. The baby monitor was plugged in, so did that mean…?

  He flicked the nearby light switch. The room remained dark.

  Then why was the monitor working?

  He let go of the door. Sarah immediately took his place. “What are you doing?” she asked, her words a harsh whisper as he walked slowly toward the device.

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t know what he was doing any more than she did. But he felt as though he was being led. Guided by an unknown force.

  He picked up the television remote that sat beside the baby monitor. Aimed it at the television. Clicked it.

  The television turned on. Impossible. Nothing else was working, so why would the TV turn on? Yet there was no denying that that was exactly what was going on. Static swirled across the screen in a frenzied dance that seemed as though it would never end.

  Cap touched a button on the television remote. Touched it again. Six. Six.

  The television screen flickered. The baby’s room appeared.

  He heard Sarah gasp, though whether from fear or hope or simply exhaustion he could not tell. The baby’s room was empty. Normal-seeming in a way that Cap thought had disappeared from this house forever.

  Lightning flashed. He looked around, checking the bedroom windows – as well as the glass door – automatically. No ghostly faces appeared. The rain stitched the shroud of the night with silver threads, but there were no dead people staring at him or Sarah from outside the house. Nor were there any dark figures without face or feature. They were alone.

  He looked back at the television. Nothing was happening in the baby’s room, but he felt compelled to watch it, hypnotized by the space.

  The door to the baby’s room swung into frame. Something had opened it. Cap glanced at Sarah. She was looking at him as well, her face pinched and drawn. Something bad was coming.

  They both looked back at the television. The chanting that had chased them through their home grew in volume once more, but this time the noise had a source: it was coming from the baby monitor on the nightstand.

  On the television, the window in the baby’s room slid up as an unseen hand opened it. The ungodly chorus continued to grow. A picture on the wall in the baby’s room pulled away from the wall, as though someone was looking behind it. Then the picture fell with a crash, a tinkling of cracking glass that Cap heard both through the speaker on the monitor and through the door. The sound cut at him. Violence being done.

  Lightning flashed again, and the television picture dissolved into a series of lines and bars. Cap changed channels, flipping up and then down on the selector in the hopes that getting off the monitor channel and then returning to it would reset the picture. It didn’t work. The channel continued to malfunction.

  Cap wanted to see what was going on in the baby’s room. He needed to see what was happening there. He felt as though what was going on in there might well be the difference between life and death.

  He went to the television and looked behind it, checking the connectors to make sure the cables that carried the closed-circuit television feed were securely connected. They were. He felt them anyway, checking to see if they were loose. They were tightly attached, wed to the back of the television like cords to an umbilicus.

  “What’s wrong?” Sarah asked. “Why can’t we see anything?” She sounded panicked, apparently feeling the same drive to see what was happening in the unborn child’s room.

  “I don’t know.” He straightened up and returned to the front of the television. Sarah took his place behind the device, a stunning manifestation of her concern since he could not remember the last time she had touched an electronic device other than to turn it on.

  While Sarah fiddled around behind the TV, Cap watched the shifting white and black patterns, hunting in them for an image, for a clue to what was happening outside this room. He felt like he was falling into the static, his mind descending through a white-and-black tunnel into a netherworld that was both terrifyingly repulsive and overwhelmingly attractive all at once. He leaned in closer to the television screen, as though propinquity might bring clarity. He was within a foot of the screen. Then within six inches.

  Three.

  Sarah grunted and cursed behind the television.

  Two.

  One.

  A face appeared on the screen. Or rather, not a face. A familiar figure, a shadowed shape, its features hidden in darkness. But there was no denying that it was looking directly into the camera. Directly at him.

  Cap yipped and backpedaled, moving away from the television as fast as he could. He backed into the bed and almost fell on it, but managed to remain upright.

  “What?” said Sarah. She came around from behind the television. “What did you see?”

  She looked at the screen, and Cap looked back at it as well.

  Nothing was there. The baby’s room was empty again.

  Then the door to the baby’s room slammed shut. Again Cap could hear the sound in a strange kind of stereo as the crack of wood on wood shot out of the monitor speaker and also punched through the air itself. He jumped.

  He heard thumps in the hall outside. He and Sarah both raced to the door, bracing themselves against it in a desperate gesture of defiance. The thudding continued outside the door. It was followed by a sliding, shuffling noise. The sound was unfamiliar, almost alien, and a xenophobic terror welled up in Cap’s heart. He didn’t know what was going on, but something deep within him was shouting at him that it was wrong all wrong all wrong wrong wrong wrong! Cap wanted to scream. Time drew out, elongating around him as he listened to the sounds outside the door.

  He looked at Sarah. Her eyes were closed and her breaths were coming in shallow gasps, panic written clearly on her face and in the way her muscles clenched and unclenched. Her belly was still large in front of her as she pushed her back against the door, but Cap wondered how long she could deal with what was going on around them before sheer terror forced her body to go into labor.

  Sarah reached out as though she could feel Cap’s gaze on her, her hand searching out his own, then holding tight to it. He drew strength from her, from her love and her need. He would protect her. He had to.

  He was still holding the poker in his other hand. It seemed like a million years had passed since he had grabbed it downstairs, but somehow he had retained his grip on it through the subjective eons that had gone by. He didn’t know why he had kept it. He doubted a poker would frighten or even faze the things that were haunting them. Hunting them.

  The sounds from
the hall stopped suddenly.

  The doorknob was next to Cap. It rattled in its casing. He knew he had locked it, but didn’t expect a few bits of metal and a sheet of wood to provide much protection.

  The doorknob rattled again, as though something was trying to turn it. Another moment of silence. More thuds outside the door. Whatever was out there now sounded like it had company.

  Then there was a click, the unmistakable sound of a lock disengaging.

  Cap finally dropped the poker as he grabbed the doorknob with both hands. The poker clattered against the floor, its ends rattling a quick tattoo against the wood. Cap barely heard it. Every synapse, every neuron was focusing on one thing: the slick doorknob that his fingers had locked themselves around.

  The knob started to turn in his hands. Cap’s forearms bunched, muscles contracting as he exerted all his strength to stop the deadlatch from pulling away from the strike plate. Just a small piece of metal was all that stood between his family and whatever threat now sought to gain entrance.

  His hands started to sweat. Moisture made his palms grow slick.

  “Don’t let it in,” whispered Sarah, her face a mask of terror. “Don’t let it in,” she repeated, as though her words might somehow encourage him to greater endurance and strength.

  The knob started to turn. He couldn’t gain purchase on it. He bore down even harder, calling upon unknown reserves of energy, forcing his fingers to become unyielding vises. He held the knob so tightly that even the smallest movement of the brass sphere caused heat to scorch his palms and fingers. His hands were on fire.

  The doorknob stopped moving.

  Cap breathed a sigh of relief, but didn’t let go. Not yet. He didn’t trust the momentary cessation of movement.

  A familiar sound began buzzing in his ears. The same searing he had heard downstairs, the same acid-burning in his nostrils.

  For some reason the scent of the burning smelled familiar. That thought scared him as much as anything else.

  Dark lines bloomed on the door, crawling like viscous worms across the wood. And at the same moment, the warmth of the doorknob exploded into scorching heat.

  Cap screamed and let go of the knob, waving his hands in the air. His palms began to blister, as though he had put them on a hot stovetop.

  The searing sound ceased, but the lines in the door did not disappear. Cap grimaced through the pain in his hands, forcing himself to look at the black etchings. They seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  Beside him, Sarah gasped. He looked at her. She was pointing at something behind him. Cap turned, and saw a full-length mirror propped against the wall. He also saw why she had gasped. The door was visible in the mirror. And viewed this way, through the backwards lens of reflection, the lines suddenly made sense. They were words. Crudely formed, as though done by a blind child, or written by someone who had his eyes closed, but they were legible.

  “LeAVe tHiS plaCE.”

  15

  The Third Day

  2:27 am

  ***

  Sarah clapped a hand over her mouth. But it wasn’t enough. Wasn’t enough to hold back the fear, the terror that threatened to burst forth and overwhelm her. Her hand twisted of its own accord, and suddenly it wasn’t over her mouth but in it. In it, and she was biting it, her teeth grinding through the flesh. The pain was good, it reminded her that it wasn’t over yet, that all wasn’t lost, that she was still alive. And where there was life, there was hope.

  Her other hand dropped to her stomach. She was still holding the phone, as though it was an anchor that would tether her to the fleeting remnants of reality. Now she dropped it on the floor beside her, and she held her belly. The baby was there. More life. More hope.

  But even as she thought the words, she could feel them like a bitter pill. Because they weren’t true. How could they be? How could hope exist in a world that had turned so badly inside out?

  This is worse than The Before.

  The thought startled her. She thought it might be true. And that terrified her even more. Could what was happening now be worse than….

  She shied away from the idea. It couldn’t be. Nothing could be worse than what had happened, than the tragedy that had changed her forever.

  She realized that blood was dripping around her mouth. She had bit her fingers until they bled. It was good. It got her mind away from the terror of now… and from the worse terror of The Before.

  She forced herself back to what was happening. She had to pay attention. She had to keep watch. If she and Cap were going to get out of this situation, it would require all their work and care.

  Cap was still staring at the mirror, his mouth agape, his face slack. Then his mouth closed and his lips drew into a thin line. Rage – anger so pure she had never before seen its like cross his features - pulled a white sheet across his skin. Only his eyes had color, that deep brown that was almost black glittering in the faint light of the moon through the window. He didn’t look like a man in that instant. He looked like a beast in the darkness, eyes reflecting like mirrors.

  He threw himself against the door with his shoulder, attacking it like it was the source of all the ills they had passed through. “Screw you!” he screamed. “You leave!” He hit the door again. And again. Between every word, his shoulder pounded at the solid door, punctuating each syllable. “You –” (slam) “– leave! You –” (slam) “– leave!”

  As though fleeing before the fearful exhibition of Cap’s wrath, the black lines that had burnt furrows in the door disappeared, leaving the door whole and unmarked. In only a few seconds, it was as though they had never been. As though they had been nothing but imagination.

  She looked at Cap, and saw him staring at the blank wood, and knew he was thinking the same thing. But it wasn’t imagination. It couldn’t be. Because she was locked in this terror with her husband, and who had ever heard of an imaginary threat affecting more than one person?

  She was struck by the sudden thought that maybe it wasn’t threatening more than one person. Maybe this wasn’t happening. Maybe it was all in the imagination of a single person. Maybe she was insane, maybe what had happened in The Before had driven her mad, maybe she was living in a white cell somewhere, and none of this was happening anywhere but in the subjective reality of her mind.

  Sarah rejected that thought almost as fast as it came. This was real. It had to be. It was all too stark and too vivid to be the convoluted imaginings of a deranged mind.

  Her hand throbbed where she had bitten it. Another proof that this was really happening. Because bites shouldn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t hurt in a dream – or nightmare – would they? Dreams could be powerful. They could move a person to tears, they could make someone laugh or scream. But she had never heard of a dream world that had raw power and influence over her senses on the same level as what she was now experiencing.

  As though to confirm this, a new sensation assaulted her. Her face crinkled as a smell attacked her nostrils. It was rank, rotten.

  When she was a child, Sarah had lived near some railroad tracks. She would walk along them on her way to school, balancing on the rails like a gymnast on a beam. One day, she had come upon a bit of something sitting on the rails. It looked like a white stick partially covered by a spongy mass of red and brown. She continued on, and soon came to another, similar object. A moment later she realized what it was: a cow from one of the nearby farms must have escaped and walked across the tracks and been struck by a train. The train had literally shredded the animal into chunks, which she found scattered across and around the tracks for the next half-mile. The wind was at her back, so it wasn’t until she was well into the carnage that the smell hit her. It was a Monday morning, so the carcass could have been there since Friday night, festering and rotting. The smell was a physical presence, like a fist battering at her face. She had never smelled anything like it, before or since.

  But the smell that now pervaded the bedroom was worse
. Far worse. It smelled vaguely like that long-ago stench, both of them bolstered by an underlying foundation of putrescence. But mixed in with this stench were others. Sarah thought she could smell the ripe effluvium of fecal matter, the scent of sulfurous vapor, the odor of a city dump. And others, even more rank and less easily categorized.

  “What’s that smell?” she whispered. She kept her voice low, as though afraid to awaken a new threat that might come and attack her and Cap.

  “What smell?” said Cap, his voice also barely a sigh in the darkness. Then his face changed, his nose crinkling and his mouth twisting. “Oh, shit,” he said. “That’s terrible. Just….”

  Cap stopped speaking, apparently unable to continue. He hiccupped, then suddenly vomited, streams of bile and the remnants of his last meal erupting from his mouth and nose.

  At almost the same moment, Sarah felt her own gorge rise. She retched and then threw up as well, managing to avoid getting any on her top, but making a mess of her pants. She didn’t have to wonder what was causing the sudden illness. It was the smell. It was growing worse by the second, making her feel not only nauseous, but as though something was pushing her physically. She felt a palpable desire – a need – to leave the room. To run into the hall, then out of the house. Cap put a hand on the doorknob, and she knew he was feeling the same thing.

  She resisted the urge. Whatever was waiting in the hall, whatever the shadowed thing that had come from the forest might be, she knew it was far worse than any smell, no matter how noxious. It meant her harm, and worse. She didn’t know how she knew, but she was certain that the dark thing in the forest had come not merely to steal her safety and her home, but her very existence. To succumb to it, to run to it, would be to seek safety in the fires of Hell itself.

  She clenched her jaw and held her ground. Cap, still vomiting, started to fumble with the lock on the door. She grabbed his hand in her own and held it fast, though she wanted more than a little to do the exact same thing.

  The smell reached a crescendo. A peak of horror, an apex of redolence. And as it did, the chanting, that throbbing, pounding chanting that was nonsense but still managed to send a clear message, began again. Louder this time. Then louder still. A club of sound that battered at them.