Hollow House

by Greg Chapman

  Megan looked to the ceiling, and the fireplace and saw how old they were. “This is the house across the street?”

  “Indeed,” Darryl said. “But it’s more than just a house. Behind these walls is a welcoming darkness.” He nodded toward the moonlight splitting the curtain. “Through those windows you will see him.” He gestured to the staircase. “And up those stairs, he is waiting to take you into his arms—if you’ll let him.”

  Megan had no desire to understand Darryl’s insanity, but she had to if she wanted to survive. She prayed Ben hadn’t heeded her goodbyes. “So, he’s some sort of god?”

  Darryl leaned forward. The leather chair creaked. “There are no gods,” he said. “Only darkness and light.”

  “And you’re a worshipper?”

  “I am his vessel here on earth. By building his temples, he granted me resurrection so I could continue to spread his word and grant him more souls.”

  “But you can’t have built this place. It’s too old.”

  Darryl stood and smoothed back his balding pate. “He resurrected my soul, not my body. Darryl is purely a shell, but in time this body too will wither and die.” He crouched to grab her bonds and pull her to her feet. Megan gasped. “Which is where you come in, my dear.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The hills were silhouettes against the dawn, but even Ben could see the Kemper House was the greater monument to time.

  Ben stepped out of the Jeep, mesmerised by the structure that had taken over his mind, his life. He studied the street. Each house seemed an extension of the older house, like megalithic stones on an endless plain. The birds didn’t sing and there was no wind, not a sound, and it was at this moment that Ben feared he was too late; that every soul had been lost to Kemper’s evil. He looked upon the house with hatred.

  “I’m going to burn you to the fucking ground,” he said.

  A sudden chill breeze buffeted Ben’s face and he couldn’t help but feel it was the house laughing at him.

  Shivering, he closed the car door and turned his back on the building. He walked across the street to his house, thinking about his plans. His own home was quiet, the curtains drawn, the door closed.

  The Kemper House always looked that way too. Lurking in silence.

  He put his key in the lock, and looked over his shoulder at the black edifice across the street. He twisted the key, a slight smile on his face. The Kemper House didn’t know what was coming.

  Ben opened the door, stepped into the foyer and dropped his keys to the floor. The front door slammed closed behind him. His house had been hollowed out; replaced with the crumbling insides of another, one built from darkness. Panic set in as he understood where he was. He whirled back to the door, pulling on the handle to no avail. His house had become the Kemper House and it wasn’t about to let him leave.

  “Fuck!” He slammed his palm against the door. Flecks of paint crumbled to the dust-covered floor. He looked around the foyer, trying to decide what to do. The space surrounding him was dark, and when he parted one of the curtains to look outside, he discovered the Kemper House was even defying the rising sun. He saw only stars in an ebony sky. Everything about the house was impossible, but Ben hadn’t believed in ghosts either until four of them had tried to kill him. Cursing his misfortune and stupidity, he scooped the keys off the floor and put them in his jacket pocket.

  “Ok, you’ve got me. Now what?”

  The fireplace in the living room erupted with a whoosh of flame. Ben stared at the fire and saw it did little to light the room.

  “Neat trick,” he said. “But that’s all this is—trickery.”

  Floorboards creaked.

  Ben stiffened in readiness, his heart flooding with adrenalin.

  Fight or flee.

  He knew full well the house was locked tighter than a tomb.

  A figure appeared from around a corner, a short man dressed in a woollen three-piece suit.

  “This way,” the man said, and about-faced before Ben could object.

  The reporter didn’t move at first, and listened as the footsteps moved away. The sound of the footfalls swelled and mingled with other sounds—voices—men talking. Ben took a step in their direction, his desire for answers overcoming his instinct’s need to escape. He could feel the house reaching out to him, and swallowing his trepidation, he followed in the man’s wake and entered the drawing room.

  A group of men, thirteen of them, huddled together around a table, dressed in suits and frock coats. Wafts of tobacco smoke hovered in the air like a storm cloud. They whispered to each other and sipped from crystal glasses. But only the man Ben had first encountered bothered to acknowledge him.

  “You’re just in time, Mr. Traynor,” the man said.

  The rest of the group turned to look at him.

  Ben approached, intent on getting a glimpse of what lay within their circle. “What’s going on? How did I get here?”

  “All in good time,” the first man said.

  He regarded the men carefully, the cut of their jackets, the fob watches in their vests. One man wore a monocle. “Who are you people?”

  “This is my home,” the man said.

  “But it is His temple,” said the others in unison.

  It became hard to breathe. The men were close. They stood tall and patient. Still, Ben wanted to know what they were hiding. He stepped forward and tried to push them aside, but they jostled together like links in a chain. He felt a hand grip his shoulder, and found the man with the accent at his back.

  “She is no longer your wife, Mr. Traynor,” he said. “She belongs to Him.”

  An ache settled inside Ben’s head. “What?”

  “She was born for this moment,” one of the other men said.

  “A divine purpose,” said another.

  Ben’s chest tightened. He needed to know what was behind the wall of madmen. “What are you hiding?”

  He leapt at them and met a wall of resistance. The men were stronger than they appeared. Although he couldn’t get through, he saw more than enough.

  “Megan!”

  ~

  “Ben!”

  Megan saw the terror in her husband’s eyes as he struggled. The men held him firmly, and pulled him away from the circle.

  “What are you doing to my wife!?” Ben said, thrashing against them.

  Megan’s naked body shivered beneath the creeping cold, beneath bonds that lashed her to the table. All she could move was her lips.

  “Ben, stop!” she said, trying to calm him.

  Instead, he struck one of the men in the jaw. He lurched forward, but two more of the group were quick to restrain him. Their leader slapped him hard across the face and her husband fell to his knees.

  “You should listen to your wife, Mr. Traynor,” the man said. “There is nothing you can do to prevent this. The moment has long been prepared for.”

  “I’m going to kill you!” Ben yelled.

  Megan was terrified by the hatred in his eyes.

  “I’m going to kill all of you!”

  “Shall we begin, Mr. Kemper?” another of the group said.

  Megan’s heart quickened. She saw the same look of disbelief cross her husband’s stricken face.

  “You’re Kemper?” Ben tried to regain his feet, but the men shoved him back down.

  Kemper removed his coat and handed it to one of his party. “This is my house,” he repeated. “I built it for Him, and in return he gave me eternal life.” He slipped off his suspenders and began to unbutton his shirt. “It has been this way for almost two hundred years. And with every generation I am reborn as his vessel on earth.”

  Kemper turned to Megan. She felt his eyes ogling her. She didn’t know how Darryl had transformed into Kemper, or where the other men had come from. The last thing she remembered was her neighbour, reaching for her. Nothing seemed tangible, like she was suspended outside her body, and as Kemper produced a large, knife from out of nowhere, she prayed her beliefs were true. />
  ~

  Ben saw the keen edge of Kemper’s knife. “Don’t you fucking touch her!” he screamed. “Megan! Nooo!”

  The insane architect flashed Ben a sneer. The blade was poised over Megan’s pale flesh.

  “This is his house,” Kemper said.

  “Where he shall live evermore,” the other thirteen resounded.

  “Ben!” Megan cried.

  Fear-tinged tears streamed from his wife’s eyes. He had to stop this. He had to save her. She was all he had, and he hadn’t understood that until now. The house had fed on his neglect.

  He began to writhe and scream, twisting his arms and kicking out at Kemper’s acolytes, but they might as well have been made of stone. Three of them made him stand and wrenched his arms behind his back. One of his shoulders tore from its socket. The reporter bit his tongue from the agony, and his mouth filled with blood at the very moment Kemper’s knife kissed Megan’s skin.

  “Megan!”

  The knife opened her abdomen in a horizontal incision.

  Megan shrieked.

  Ben screamed along with her. He pulled on his injured arm, dug in his heels and spat blood in his captor’s faces, but their gazes were locked on the spectacle.

  He collapsed to his knees in shock. He vomited. His blood and sputum coalesced with his wife’s essence on the floor, while Megan’s screams threatened to shatter his ear drums.

  “This is his house,” Kemper said, as he spread the edges of her wound apart. “Where he shall live forever more.”

  Ben lifted his head when Megan’s screams ceased. “You fucking killed her…”

  Kemper shook his head. “She lives. She is enamoured by His grace.”

  “Bear witness,” the group rejoiced.

  The house shook. The world shuddered beneath his feet. Dust showered from the walls, along with paintings and other ornaments. A china cabinet spilled its contents and fell with a great crash. The group of men stood still. Ben forced himself to rise. On unsteady feet he made a run for his wife, but Kemper blocked his path.

  “Wait and see!” Kemper told him, knife in hand.

  There was a violent crack of thunder and a flash of lightning and Ben looked skyward. The entire roof of the house was ripped away; it disintegrated into a million pieces. They were exposed to the blackest of nights, save for one distant white luminescence, which shone down, casting even darker shadows. The house stilled, and Ben dropped to his knees again.

  Kemper stood at the end of the table and held his hands up to the light. “He is here!”

  The house shifted, tilting at an angle so harsh that Ben fell on all fours. The house moved towards the light so fast, that for a moment all the air in room was lost. The reporter gasped in a lung full of air when the light came into colossal view, and he beheld the face of Kemper’s god. The abomination was constructed of human souls tangled like twine, trapped in a sea of nothing. But that was false. There was a world inside the darkness, and Ben could see it all. Kemper’s God lived in the house on the corner of Willow Street, and in the house on Mayne Avenue, but the construct was as expansive as heaven itself. Where Ben stood was not simply inside Kemper’s House, but rather inside the temple; inside the God’s soul.

  Tears of trepidation rolled down Ben’s cheeks as he stood at the temple’s door and beheld its dark architecture. It was an homage to all the dark houses through time; every house, wherever an abomination had been committed or conceived. He saw rooms within rooms: attics with corpses resting on beds of lye, bedrooms with cupboards full of spindly fingers, basements wet with mildew and blood, spiral staircases adorned with the broken bodies of virgin brides.

  Other buildings, too. Ben saw the West Plains hospital, and heard dying patients calling out Kemper’s name. Through the coil of time, he was shown asylums full of men and women, pulling out their hair and muttering His name. Houses of horrors hatched inside the temple; Ben could smell death coming from each and every one.

  The temple took hold of Ben’s body and his feet left the floor. Paralysed, he floated through the insane construct and was forced to enter each house and room. In one, he saw a man in a Georgian wig and frock coat, garrotting his wife, a blank stare on his powdered face. In the basement of another, a timber house, surrounded by a woodland forest, were endless stacks of books for summoning the black God, each page scrawled with innocent blood. He witnessed torture in a nursery, torment in a master bedroom—all in the god’s name.

  Some houses were plain, others decadent, but they all bore the mark of Eric Kemper’s God. The rooms orbited the deity like the dust of shattered moons. They were books on a shelf that the creature could indulge in whenever it pleased, to the calamity of all within. Ben was ushered into each and every one, and his mind was etched with every window, every door, and every death. He would have forgotten his own name inside the houses of the temple, if not for Kemper’s voice, which eventually drew him away from its terrible visage.

  “I live through him and he lives through me!”

  The darkness surrounding the house bled inside, through the cracks in the windowsills, through gaps in the wood, and up through the floor. It snaked through Kemper’s body and out of his eyes and mouth, where it coiled and caressed the wound in Megan’s torso.

  She came awake with a scream.

  ~

  Megan contorted in agony, and her back arched as tendrils of blackness entered her body. Every blood vessel burned cold as the black void crept in, like ink infiltrating water. The great undulating face loomed over her and smiled. The human souls which comprised its lips rolled apart to make the gesture. They too wailed in pain, but their cries were soundless in the vastness of space.

  The god’s blood spread into Megan’s mind and she was presented with countless images of humanity, suffering in the darkness of every house. The strobing sights left her paralysed and she succumbed, powerless to resist the god’s infiltration. Her head lolled. Her husband struggled against the man who’d damned them all.

  She shuddered briefly as the god’s blood settled inside and watched as Kemper knocked Ben to the floor and straddled him, his knife raised. Kemper’s followers looked on, but their visages had changed, and Megan saw the truth.

  No longer were they men of aristocracy. She recognised the Campbell family from across the street—Max, Carol, Matthew and Zachary. An elderly couple stood beside them. She saw a young girl, and of course, Darryl. On the other side of the circle, were a mother and her son, another couple clasping hands, and one solitary man in a hospital gown. The god’s blood told her who they were—all of them victims of the Kemper House, destined to stand in for the thirteen men who’d sacrificed themselves to Kemper’s religion so many years ago. Megan watched as Kemper pressed the blade to Ben’s cheek.

  “There is nothing you can do,” Kemper said to her husband.

  Ben tried to move, but straining inched the blade closer to his eye, which ran freely with tears. “Please…” Ben said. “Please…”

  “You can beg,” Kemper sneered. “Or you can give yourself to him.”

  The dark god shivered in ecstasy at the possibility of another soul, and the wave radiated down into the house like an aftershock. Ben looked to the god and then to her. His eyes begging for her forgiveness.

  She willed him to feel her but he turned away, back to the vile Kemper who waited so patiently.

  “I’m not going to beg anymore.” Ben said. He raised his knee and caught Kemper in the gut.

  The architect wheezed and dropped his knife, but before Ben could get to his feet, the ghosts of Mitchell Cross and Darryl Novak pinned him to the floor. The spirits turned Ben on his back and held his wrists down.

  An enraged Kemper drew a determined breath and grabbed the knife. This time there was no hesitation, and he inserted the tip of the knife into the corner of Ben’s left eye. Unable to look away, Megan was forced to watch, and listen to her husband’s screams as the knife slid slowly into his skull.

  “I won’t kill
you,” Kemper told Ben, who went limp and docile. “You will serve as a witness to this rebirth, the chronicler of a new age.”

  From the amount of blood on the knife, Megan discerned that Kemper had only inserted it far enough to incapacitate her husband, rather than kill him. But when Kemper, Cross and Darryl withdrew, she saw Ben lying on the floor, as good as dead, and she wished she was, too.

  Kemper came to her side. He smiled, and the skin of his chest and arms cracked and split—a centuries-old husk that had reached its end.

  “Behold the Mother of Darkness,” he said, before falling to pieces.

  His followers, the residents of Willow Street, encircled her and spoke as one.

  “Behold the Mother of Darkness.”

  ~

  Megan picked up her bags and opened the front door. The early morning sun streamed in, and she blinked against the brightness of the new day. A breeze tousled her hair, and its pine scent reinvigorated her senses. She was ready to move on, and begin the next chapter of her life.

  And yet, something didn’t feel right.

  Megan frowned at the odd sense of detachment she felt, but quickly put that down to the anxiety of taking the first step in a new direction. She stepped outside and closed the door to her old house. She checked her watch, expecting her cab to arrive at any moment. She saw the people from number 70 Willow Street, the two boys Matthew and Zachary, washing their father Max’s truck and splashing water on one another. Max and his wife, Carol, stood on the lawn laughing at the boys’ horseplay, as happy as any couple could be. A nice elderly couple, Richard and Maggie, walked past the Campbell’s, offering the family a friendly wave.