The Haunted

by Michaelbrent Collings

  And over it all, the scratching continued. The soft pawing at the door. Urging him, pleading with him, to open the door. Just open the door.

  Cap gritted his teeth and pushed even harder against the door. Sarah was sobbing, still bent double, arms crossed protectively in front of her pregnant stomach. The world felt like it was collapsing in on him, walls of grotesque laughter almost physically pushing him down.

  Then the laughter stopped. It was gone instantly, and the unnatural scraping of the cancerous ghost-child ceased at the same moment. Cap heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, treading so ponderously that the entire house seemed to buckle with every step. The laughter was gone, replaced by screaming as the merriment of the undead beyond the door seemed suddenly to devolve into a chorus of pain.

  Something hit the door from the other side. A darkness settled over Cap, a blackness of thought that made him feel utterly hopeless and lost.

  Then the voices disappeared. All was silent.

  Cap realized that the hole he had punched in the door with the poker was still there. He peeked through it, almost allowing himself to hope that they were safe – for the moment, at least.

  He saw nothing in the hall. He exhaled in relief. Lightning illuminated the hall as he watched, banishing the shadows for a moment. Nothing. They were alone.

  “What do you see?” he heard Sarah say, and looked at her. She had her hands on her knees, wheezing as though she had just run a marathon.

  “Nothing,” said Cap, and looked back into the hall. “They must be gone again.”

  Then an eye appeared. It was ghostly, gruesome, staring directly at him. He stumbled back automatically, surprise and fear conspiring to yank a scream out of his throat. The door rattled as something tried to turn the knob.

  “Leave us alone!” Cap yelled. He took hold of Sarah’s arm and pulled her back, as far away from the door as possible. Fear greater than any he had known settled over him, squeezing the breath out of him. He felt like he was dying.

  The handle jiggled again. Then there was a click, the sound of a key turning in a lock. The door slammed open.

  It was the cloaked figure, the darkness incarnate. It stood in the open doorway, and though Cap could no longer see a face, he knew that the eye he had glimpsed belonged to this creature.

  The thing’s arm extended, pointing at Cap and Sarah. Strange sounds issued from within the its murky depths. Cap’s eardrums felt like they were going to burst, and both he and Sarah screamed in pain. Cap threw himself backward. He didn’t think about what he was doing. All that mattered was getting away from the sound that came at them like a weapon.

  He hit something that stopped him for a moment, then yielded. Cap crashed through it with a shriek of terror. He fell, and hit something hard and wet. It took him a moment to realize what it was. The chanting still filled his mind and body with a stabbing pain. Only gradually did he realize that what he had felt at his back was the sliding glass door that led to a small balcony outside the master bedroom. He must have smashed through it, and now lay on the balcony. Sarah was pawing at him, and just as he hadn’t known where he had fallen, he wasn’t immediately aware that she was pulling at him, trying to get him to his feet.

  “Get up, get up!” she screamed, but the sound barely registered through the terrible noise emerging from the dark thing that had come for them. Rain fell all around him, pattering against the wood of the balcony, making his footing treacherous as he fought to stand.

  He glanced through the shattered glass door. The dark outline could be seen, coming slowly toward him and Sarah, the horrible sound still emanating from within it, as though it had a direct pipeline to whatever radio station Satan listened to.

  The sight flooded Cap with adrenaline. He managed to get to his feet and pulled Sarah close.

  “What do we do?” she screamed.

  Cap knew there was no way to get through their room. The demon that was coming for them would catch them, and all would end. Only one other avenue of escape presented itself to his mind. He didn’t want to give voice to it. It was dangerous. Sarah could hurt herself. Could lose the baby.

  But there was no choice.

  “We jump,” he said. He backed away from the room, until the railing of the light balustrade that enclosed the balcony pressed against his lower back.

  “Cap, no,” said Sarah. “I can’t, the baby –”

  “We have to,” he insisted. The sound coming from inside their room was growing stronger, getting closer. “We don’t have a choice, and it’s only a couple….”

  His voice drifted off as he looked below.

  A row of dark figures stood below them. A dozen exact copies of the cloaked figure in their room. And even though he couldn’t see any faces in the perfect midnight of their bodies, Cap knew they were watching him. Waiting for him to jump, to give himself up to their dark ministrations.

  Beyond the row of creatures, deep in the mist, Cap could make out the wandering figures of the undead: the hanged man, the killer, the conjoined ghost. A tiny shadow crawling among them that made his stomach twist. “Daddy, play,” he could almost hear it say.

  The ghosts paced back and forth beyond the dark demons ringing the house. As though they, too, were afraid of the black creatures. Beings of lesser evil crawling at the feet of the greater devils, who were so dark that the night itself seemed bright beside them.

  Two rows of danger, one worse than the other. There was no way to escape.

  Sarah screamed, and Cap looked up to see the demon in their room drawing closer, each step bringing with it a stronger wave of panic.

  Then Sarah’s scream changed. No longer wordless, she was saying a single thing over and over. “The attic! The attic! The attic!” She pointed. Cap followed the line of her arm, and realized what she meant. The roof sloped down near one side of the balcony. If they could jump onto it, they could try to crawl across the roof and make their way to the attic window, which was set into a dormer that jutted out of the roof about twenty feet away and ten feet above them. But he could see water sluicing in thick streams down the steep pitch of the roof. The wood there would be slick and treacherous, and a single misstep would lead inevitably to a fall that would be worse than simply jumping down from the balcony would have been.

  Cap shook his head. “No,” he said. “No way. Too dangerous.”

  “Not more dangerous than staying here!” Sarah shouted back, and before he could stop her she had moved the single chair that was the balcony’s only furnishing to the side of the rail nearest the roof. She put one foot on the seat and stepped from there to the top of the rail. Her arms extended for balance, she pushed off and landed on hands and knees on the roof. Cap had a horrible moment when he was sure she was going to roll over and fall off, but she managed to steady herself. She waved at him to come with her, and started crawling up and over, toward the attic window.

  At that moment, the chanting that had been coming from the bedroom ceased. Cap was vaguely aware of a flurry of movement in the room. That decided him. Whatever was going to happen next, it couldn’t be anything good. Indeed, he felt the heaviness that accompanied the fiend in their room increasing, and he knew it was close. He heard a crashing noise as it pushed through the shards of glass that still clung to the edges of the balcony door. He didn’t look back, but he knew it was there. He could feel it reaching out, a dark hand grasping at him.

  Cap leapt atop the chair, then put a foot on the rail and pushed off, flying through the air. He hit the roof hard, the wood shingles biting into his knees and then chewing up his palms as he slammed down to his hands. But the pain only lasted a second. In the next instant, the thing that he had feared became a reality. His hands slipped off the slick roof, and he tumbled sideways.

  Cap reached out to grab something that would arrest his fall, but there was nothing to hold onto. Just wet wood. He rolled once. Twice.

  Then he tumbled over the edge of the roof.

  19

  The Thi
rd Day

  3:49 am

  ***

  “No!”

  Sarah felt as if her spirit were tearing in two as she saw Cap slip and then tumble from the roof.

  And then he was gone.

  She turned and crawled as fast as her pregnant belly would allow, not wanting to see what the dark beings on the ground below would do to him, but even more afraid of the prospect of not seeing it. Twice she slipped, nearly falling to join Cap as she crawled to the edge of the roof. Each time she threw herself flat to the wet roof, sliding a foot or two before stopping. Each time her heart beat so fast that she felt certain it would give out. But she made it to the edge of the roof. She looked over.

  And Cap was there.

  He was hanging from the roof, dangling and kicking, his feet hanging only inches above the grasping arms of the monsters below him. He was trying to pull himself up, she could tell, but panic and the wet roof kept him from making any headway.

  “Help!” he screamed.

  As if in response to his cry, the dark creatures drew together into a tight mass, reaching for Cap’s kicking feet. He bent his knees, pulling his feet as high as he could, but Sarah knew that he couldn’t be able to maintain such a position for long.

  The chanting began anew. Worse than before. The voices of all the demons on the ground joined together in a thrumming, thudding sound that drove spikes of pain into her skull. She glanced to the side and saw the original creature, the one that had followed them into their room, standing beside the chair that she and Cap had climbed atop in order to jump to the roof. It joined its voices to those of its brethren below.

  Still hanging from the roof, Cap screamed. Blood burst from his ears, an explosion of red that streamed down his jawline and dripped to his shirt. Sarah could feel her own eardrums bursting, and the sound all around her grew strange, as though she was hearing everything through a metal tube. Warmth trickled down her cheeks, and she knew she must be bleeding as well.

  She clenched her teeth, grinding them together as she tried to ignore the pain that pressed on her. She reached for Cap’s hands, grabbing them and then pulling. She felt something tear within her and a pain ran through her right leg. But she didn’t let go. She kept pulling.

  “Leave us alone!” she cried. Then again, as though repetition would convince the evil that surrounded them to return to whatever dark dimension that had spawned it: “Leave us alone!”

  Surprisingly, her scream appeared to affect the dark demons below Cap. Their chanting cut off, and the arms that had been grasping for him suddenly withdrew. Sarah glanced to the side and saw even the black creature on the balcony standing motionless, as though transfixed by the sound of her panic.

  They didn’t pause long, and almost as quickly as they pulled away the creatures below were once again reaching for Cap. But the small respite had been enough to allow Cap to pull himself up. She kept holding onto his wrists, adding her strength to his as he maneuvered himself high enough that he could kick one leg onto the roof.

  The chanting began anew, and Cap’s movements halted for a moment. She felt sure that he was going to slide back off the roof, this time plummeting all the way down to his doom. But he managed to retain his position. He continued levering himself up.

  A tremor ran through the roof. A thud that Sarah felt as much as heard. And she knew instantly what it was. She didn’t look back, but she knew.

  The thing from their room had come after them. It was on the roof.

  “Come on, Cap!” she screamed, and yanked him the rest of the way to the roof with a strength she had not known she was capable of. She had heard stories of women performing Herculean feats when in the grips of terror – pulling children out from under heavy timbers that had them pinned, holding back cars that threatened to roll over a baby – but had always assumed they were just urban legends. Not anymore. She felt suddenly as if she could have bench pressed a big-rig truck. But the strength did not lend her a corresponding sense of invulnerability. If anything, she grew more aware of the danger that was coming across the roof.

  She turned back toward the roof and began crawling as fast as she could. She could hear Cap behind her, scrabbling over the wood tiles with her. And behind them, she could hear the other thing, the dark thing, also making its way over the rain-slicked surface. She did not dare to look back at it. To do so would sap her of her drive, would envelope her in a despair that would stop her progress as surely as a chain around her waist. She could only press forward, clawing her way across and up, praying that neither she nor Cap would fall.

  The attic window seemed like it was receding from her. She knew it must be a trick of her panicked mind, but it seemed to run from her almost as fast as she approached. Still, she eventually managed to get close enough to grab the lower sash.

  “Open it,” Cap screamed behind her, and she heard the terror in his voice. The thing was close.

  She pushed at the bottom of the window, hoping that it wasn’t latched. Under normal circumstances they could have broken it open, but she suspected that they didn’t have time to do so. The thing behind them was coming too fast. A latched window would be a death sentence.

  The window didn’t open for a fraction of a second that seemed to last for days. “Open it!” Cap screamed again, and the raw fear of his words scraped at her wounded ears. She strained, and then almost fell forward when the window suddenly slid upward. Cap joined her at the same time, helping her push the window open.

  She felt his hands, pushing her forward, forcing her through the window so fast that she nearly fell face-first to the floor of the attic. She caught herself at the last second, skinning her hands in the process. She turned, and reached for Cap, who was halfway through the window himself.

  He reached out to her.

  Then he screamed. Disappeared from sight as something pulled him away. Sarah lurched back to the window, dizziness striking her a hammer blow as she stood too fast for her pregnancy to allow. She screamed, and thought she had lost her husband this time, but then realized she could still see his fingers holding tightly to the bottom and side edges of the window sill.

  She leaned out and saw Cap stretched tight, one of his legs disappearing into the midnight shadows of the dark figure behind him. A prickling smell made her nose wrinkle and Cap screamed. Smoke wafted up from the leg that was being held by the dark thing below him, an inky curl that dissipated quickly in the rain. But more smoke came, and more and more.

  Cap was burning.

  Sarah grabbed his arms and pulled. She couldn’t let him fall, couldn’t let him burn alive in the black grasp of the demon that was trying to steal her husband from her. She yanked harder. Then Cap lost his grip on the sill and all that held him up was her. Her hands slipped from his forearms to his hands as the thing behind him slowly drew her husband away. The strength that she had felt before abruptly abandoned her.

  And Cap was still burning. Screaming. Shrieking.

  The chanting began again, and her strength waned even further, leached away by the sound.

  She was going to lose him.

  Then, abruptly, something smashed into the dark thing behind Cap. At first all she saw was darkness on darkness, and thought that one of the black creatures must have turned on its brother/leader. Then she saw a flash of white and a face looking at her. It was Father Michael! She didn’t know how he could have escaped from the noose of the hanged man, but there he was!

  Father Michael planted his feet against the roof and stood upright, pulling not only with his muscles but with his entire body weight as he tried to yank the dark creature away from Cap. The creature shrieked, and Father Michael screamed as well. Smoke was pouring off the priest everywhere he was in contact with the dark demon, but he kept wrestling with it, even as the thing wrestled to pull Cap away from Sarah.

  Then the thing let go. Cap slammed to the roof, the wind exploding from his lungs as he hit the wood. The thing teetered for a moment, twisting to hold Father Michael in a full b
ody grasp. The priest screamed, and Sarah could see most of his body charring, blackening in the inferno grip of the fiend that had almost stolen Cap from her.

  Then both slipped. They fell, dropping over the edge of the roof. There was a distant, bone-crushing thud as they hit the ground. The chanting of the dark creatures below grew suddenly louder, more urgent. Father Michael shrieked, a hideous, pitiful scream of purest agony. A howl of eternal torment, body and spirit joined together in an agony that no living thing could possibly survive.

  Then the scream ended. The end was abrupt as the edge of a cliff. The chanting came to a stop at the same time. Sarah glanced at Cap, knew she should help him in, but couldn’t move. Cap didn’t make any move to pull himself into the attic, either. He was staring over his shoulder at the edge of the roof.

  Movement.

  Sarah looked down. Past Cap. Past the edge of the roof. Into the mist. She saw the dark creatures that had congregated below Cap’s hanging form moving away. Back to the trees. Whether the original one, the thing that had tried to pull Cap away, was among them she could not say.

  Father Michael was not among them.

  Sarah heard the priest’s voice in her mind, telling them of what had happened to the previous inhabitants of the house. “Not just dead. Gone,” he had said. “And believe me, gone is much worse than dead.” She knew now what he had meant. The priest had fallen prey to the things below. And he was truly gone.

  Cap moved. He got his knees under him and pulled himself into the attic. He tumbled through the window, falling to the floor with a gasp of pain. His arms were curled around his leg, the leg that the beast had grabbed.

  Sarah leaned over him, and pulled up the hem of Cap’s pants. The cloth of his pants was unmarked, but the flesh underneath it was burnt, a blackened patch just below his calf with four lines extending from one side of it and spidering around his leg. Another line jutted from the other side of the main burn.