Gasping for breath, Janie shook her head to clear the cobwebs as she floundered along the limb. It dropped down to waist level as she got further from the trunk and she used it for support as the staggered onward. She didn’t dare fall again. At the same time, she was no longer sure of her situation and risked a glance back at her pursuer.
That’s when it caught her.
She found herself looking almost straight into those black sockets, as the dead thing reached across the limb and grabbed her sleeve. It hadn’t ducked under the branch, but had been pacing her from the other side! And now it had caught up.
Janie screamed and tried to jerk away but the fabric of her blouse turned out to be made of sterner stuff than she thought. The sleeve held without tearing.
A black grin of triumph spread across the horrific visage. It had her. The revenant pulled a loop of rope off its shoulder while tightening its grip on her blouse.
“Blood for blood,” it intoned with savage finality.
Janie struggled against the wraith’s surprising strength with despair. She knew a horrible end loomed only seconds away. It didn’t matter whether she considered her sharing of the Danford guilt to be fair or not. That verdict had already been rendered. Whatever she did next would be her last chance to survive.
In one last desperate burst of effort, she swung her foot up and put it against the branch separating her from her would be executioner.
“Let…me…go!”
She strained, pushing against the limb with her foot for all she was worth. It felt like she was pulling against the tree itself. Nothing gave, and she screamed at the sight of the phantasm leaning over the limb toward her. At this range she could see its eye sockets were deep wells full of flies, and its mouth now drooled them as well. The stench of it gagged her. The girl clenched her eyes shut, turning her head away from the leering horror.
Then suddenly she was stumbling backwards from the branch, the blessed sound of ripping cloth in her ears.
Janie didn’t hesitate, but sprinted for daylight. She covered the distance to the edge of the tree in a couple of seconds. The low foliage parted before her and the gasping woman burst out into the brighter twilight of the park.
Freedom!
The park spread empty around her, but she didn’t slow down. Panic fueled her legs. The girl shot away from the tree, letting instinct guide her way.
Janie realized she had emerged on the side away from Magnolia Rise and wasted no time in altering her course to race around the tree in that direction while giving it a wide berth. She wanted to have the mansion at her back to retreat to. Besides, Jacqueline said the old graveyard lay back in the trees on this side and she had had quite enough of historical landmarks for one day.
But her main priority was to put space between her and this hellish tree.
She didn’t stop running until she had reached a point halfway between the mansion and the great oak, and only then because she finally ran out of breath. Her lungs heaved like bellows as the girl doubled over and fought to replenish her air. Even then, she kept a sharp eye on the mass of foliage that dominated the center of the clearing.
It now brooded about seventy yards away, the space under the branches shrouded in gloom. But even as her breath began to steady, Janie spied the pale face staring back at her from the murk beneath the tree. She shuddered at the pure hate she could feel directed at her, even from this distance.
A second later her cell phone rang, causing her to shriek again in surprise.
To her amazement, the half hysterical woman realized she still clutched her shoulder bag in one hand. Sometimes the habits of civilization overrode even the most primal of situations. She tore into the bag, spilling items due to shaking hands before fishing the ringing phone from its depths.
“Hello?” she panted.
“Miss Galtz! You need to…”
“Jacqueline!” Janie gasped, turning to look up at the mansion’s balcony across the treeline. “It’s real!”
“I suspected that, but you need to get back here…”
“There is a ghost!” Janie rushed on. “But it’s not Anton Puscasu…it’s his son! It’s the boy!”
“I already know that, Miss Galtz! Now listen to me, come back to the mansion. It won’t come in here, but you’re not safe yet!”
“Wha…?”
“Janie, be quiet and listen! You stopped running so I’m guessing it hasn’t followed you from the tree yet. But…”
“YET?!” Janie shrieked and spun back toward the distant tree.
“…it will! It’s not confined to that tree!”
At that moment the dead monstrosity exploded from under the branches, howling straight for her at a dead run. Its black mouth hung open, far wider than a living man could ever manage, and if possible the dark sockets seemed wider as well. A stream of flies flooded back from its head as the nightmare sped toward her, like long locks of ebony hair flowing in the wind.
In one hand it held the loop of rope, now fashioned into a noose.
Janie wasted two precious seconds, frozen in pure horror, before turning and fleeing toward the tree line. The wraith had almost halved the distance between them by then. This time the girl couldn’t help herself and used valuable air screaming as she plunged into the darkness of the trees and toward the footbridge crossing the creek.
She didn’t need to look back to know the phantom gained on her. It had been running faster than she ever did in her life. And she could hear its droning howl drawing nearer. All she could do was put every last thing she had into increasing the tempo of the crunch of pea gravel underneath her shoes.
The girl raced across the small wooden bridge and her heart quailed at the sound of the horror’s boots hitting its boards just as she reached the other side. And she was so close to sanctuary. The gate lay just around the upcoming turn in the path, but it seemed like miles and Death now dogged her very heels.
Janie realized she had no hope of reaching the gate and getting it open before the foul thing drug her down. Still, she had to try.
The young woman scrabbled around the bend in the trail. She cried out as she saw her ghastly pursuer reach for her out of the corner of her eye. Directly ahead, the side entrance to Magnolia Rise awaited—with a surprised looking Rosaline holding the gate open.
“Oh thank God!”
Janie dove for the opening. At the same time she felt a hand grab at her back. It got a bit of cloth, enough to jerk her blouse painfully up against her throat, before momentum tore her free and she tumbled through the gate.
“Close it, now!” Jacqueline’s voice barked from the balcony above, followed by the metallic sound of the gate crashing shut.
Janie tumbled on the ground, then rolled to her back and crabbed her way backwards to get further from the gate. She didn’t know whether to trust Jacqueline’s claim of this being safe ground or not. But the elder Danford woman had known of her continued danger before, and it appeared she was correct about the ghost’s limitations now.
The phantasm had stopped, and now glared in fury at her through the metalwork. Its black teeth clenched in frustration. The horrific thing grasped the bars in its fists, as if willing them to part and let it through. She was surprised it didn’t try and shake the gate.
“Rosaline!” Janie cried. “Get away from the gate! It can reach you through the bars!”
The blonde took a hurried step away from the side entrance, but looked at Janie in confusion.
“What will reach me through the bars?”
Janie was dumbstruck. She looked from the woman to the very tangible entity at the gate in disbelief. How the hell could the Rosaline miss it?
“You don’t see that?”
“See what?” Rosaline now stared at the gate in curiosity, “Are you saying the ghost is right there, right now?”
Janie couldn’t answer, now only capable of staring at the phantom in despair. Apparently it existed for her…and her alone. It ignored the other woman, still glari
ng in at her like death with a vengeance.
And then, as if accepting the race were over, it stopped. The dead boy released the bars and let its hands fall back down to its sides. Its thin, pale face became calm. For a moment it did not move, and just stared at her through the bars as if memorizing every detail. Then it lifted one hand and pointed a meaningful finger at her.
“Blood will answer for blood.”
It wasn’t a threat, it was a promise. A promise the terrified girl realized it had carried out many times before. Then it turned and walked back down the path and into the darkness.
It was gone.
She was safe.
Or at least as safe as she ever would be again.
***
One week later, the new lady of Magnolia Rise stood on her balcony and gazed out through the night at the distant lights of Houston.
I guess I should consider myself lucky, she mused. At least it’s the twenty-first century, and a person can do a lot without ever leaving the house.
The stack of journals on the little table behind her told the tales of previous heirs, and the lives they lived in this house—if you wanted to call them lives. They were how Jacqueline had known the nature of the phantom and the curse. Now they were her responsibility. She figured she would start one of her own someday.
So many dead.
So many destroyed lives.
All because the inhumane greed of one man had unwittingly twisted the soul of a mentally challenged boy into a hate filled monstrosity. And all because his family couldn’t risk losing the wealth they never earned by walking away and starting over for themselves. They just couldn’t let it go. So they sacrificed their own on the altar of their avarice, and when they ran out of their own they came looking for her.
They live in a different world with different rules, and that makes them different people. Her grandmother’s voice rose unbidden again. Don’t ever forget that. Just stay away from those types because they will eat you up. That’s what they do. That’s who they are.
“Yep,” Janie sadly agreed. “Only I’m one of them now, Grandma. Funny how life works out, huh.”
Most of the heirs had been much older than her, some of them too old to win the race back from the tree. And most of them had died within three to five years of taking ownership. Staying in a house seems like a simple thing, until that house becomes a prison—even when that house is a mansion.
Sooner or later, they all tried to escape.
Some lasted a few hours, others actually made it a few days. But in the end, Andre Puscasu got them all. Each one died of some form of strangulation or suffocation.
Evelyn Danford died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in her car in traffic. Karl Danford somehow hung himself in a movie theater bathroom, even though nobody saw him go in with a rope. Roger Danford ran straight to the airport and made it all the way to Venice before mysteriously drowning two days later in a canal. And on, and on, and on…
A century worth of corpses that decorated a tree somewhere in hell.
A tree that had a rope with her name on it.
Janie picked up a glass of five thousand dollar wine, downed it in a gulp, then flung the crystal vessel far out into the night. She looked down into the darkness of the trees on the other side of the fence. Somewhere out there, she knew a hollow pair of eye sockets stared back in patient anticipation. Sooner or later…sooner or later.
Her turn would come.
It could wait. It had all the time in eternity.
Maybe that would give her time to figure out who the monsters really were.
Storm Chase
September 1961
Bernie Morlin clutched the top of the old sawhorse by the toolshed, and stared through the gathering darkness at the white figure down the hill.
The thing flapped wildly in the wind, yet remained fixed in one spot…near the tractor in the back corner of the tilled field. The howl of the rising storm swept away any noise it may have produced. Hurricane Carla approached from the south, its massive clouds already turning the late afternoon into dusk, and that presented a problem. If the Brazos River rose in the coming downpour, it could wash the tractor away and he couldn’t afford to replace it.
But there was another problem, as well. Maybe a worse one.
The other problem was, the pale shape near the tractor stood exactly where he had buried Charlotte, three years ago..
Bernie chewed a knuckle and squinted against the gale. The wind already felt heavy with moisture. The rain approached, and when it got here it would be too late. The radio inside blared about the looming monster storm and warned all listeners to seek shelter.
He needed to get that tractor quickly.
But Bernie had no eagerness to face the figure he could feel staring back up the hill at him from her anonymous grave. At this distance, the logical part of his mind told him it could be a lot of things. Yet his gut knew better. He had buried Charlotte in her nightgown and wrapped her body in a bedsheet…
…just like the one flapping around the distant figure rocking back and forth across the field.
Indecision churned his guts, his pragmatic nature at war with the fear of the unknown. A thin volley of wind whipped drops stung his face. Time had run out, and if he intended to still own a tractor tomorrow then he needed to act at once. No tractor meant no spring planting…and that would mean no more farm. He would lose it all. He needed to go down there.
Down there where the figure waited.
Blam!
Bernie almost leaped out of his hide at the sound. He whirled to see Millie descending the back steps of the little farmhouse. She grasped her thin wrist and flexed her fingers where a gust had torn the back screen door from her grip. Her delicate features were gathered in an irritated scowl, as if the cyclone screaming around them only existed to vex her. She looked as incongruous on this lonely farm as a china doll on a shelf of clay pots. Bernie wondered why she left the relative comfort of the house.
“Bernie!” she called through the roaring din. “The lights just went out!” She clutched the useless scarf covering her hair while trying to shield her face from windborne dirt and debris. “Why are you still out here?”
Bernie couldn’t care less about the electricity. The only answer he had for her was to point down the hill, where the distant thing whipped wildly in the howling gloom.
“What?” She frowned as she approached. Following the direction of his pointing finger, she squinted against the storms assault. “Oh, I see. What is it?”
He didn’t answer, preferring her to arrive at her own conclusion. She had assisted in Charlottes burial, so she had the same facts at her disposal as him. Perhaps she could come up with a different answer than his. Maybe her agile mind could concoct a simple explanation that would allow him to retrieve the tractor without fear.
Instead, she suddenly grabbed his arm, her nails piercing his chilled skin.
“Holy God, Bernie! What is that thing!”
The edge of hysteria in her cry told him she already had her answer, and it looked an awful lot like his. A quick glance revealed her already pallid face to be white with fear. Her stricken eyes met his, begging him to answer with anything but her own conclusion. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do that.
“I think it’s Charlotte,” he choked out. “I think she’s waiting for me down there.”
“Millie swayed as if he struck her. Her nails now drew blood from his arm, and she squeezed her eyes shut as if she could deny this by refusing to see it. Her nature leaned toward being high-strung, and Bernie wondered if she was about to faint.
“That is crazy,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “That woman is dead, and she isn’t down there waiting for anybody! It’s just a canvas tarp that blew off some farmer’s trailer when he drove by. Or a sheet from some neighbors clothesline”
Bernie examined her face warily as he pried her fingers off his arm. Already terrified himself, he certainly didn’t need for her to dissol
ve into hysterics. Keeping this in mind, he chose not to point out that a tarp would require a pole or some other object to catch on…something that didn’t exist in the plowed furrows of the field.
Her eyes opened, meeting his with a look of desperate determination.
“It’s only a tarp,” she insisted. “It’s only…Oh, my God! Bernie!”
She shrieked as she looked past him toward the field. Bernie struggled to disentangle himself from her retightened grip, and twisted around in an effort to see what she screamed about. This proved difficult since Millie practically scrabbled up on top of him. He finally managed to push her off, and only then spotted the cause of her frenzy.
The figure had moved.
The shape now appeared, still motionless, in the middle of the plot. Somehow, the apparition had advanced halfway across the field in the seconds he had taken his eyes off of it. Now that he could see it a little better, he could no longer deny what swayed in the howling landscape below. It could only be a woman, shrouded in a dirty white sheet. Distance and the failing light obscured her face, but he could now make out Charlotte’s long, dark hair whipping around against the background of the tilled field.
“Jesus, Bernie! She’s coming to get us! We gotta to get out of here!”
Bernie continued to stare in mute horror at the phantasm, unable to reply. He couldn’t believe this was happening. Really happening. Terror and indecision robbed him of words. On the other hand, Millie suffered no such problem…
“Stay away from me!” she screeched against the gale. “It wasn’t me! I didn’t do it!”
“I don’t think she’s going to look at it that way,” Bernie managed to gasp. After all, Millie had been the other woman during the last eight months of their marriage, and the cause of the fight that had resulted in Charlotte’s death. And it was Millie who had hustled over after his despairing phone call and hatched the scheme to cover it up—packing up Charlotte’s clothes and toiletries to give the appearance she had left him. Finally, it was Millie who made a point of throwing the first shovelful of dirt into Charlotte’s anonymous grave.
Shades: Eight Tales of Terror Page 15
