by Hunter Shea
I nodded, slightly afraid of the corpulent, old doctor. His body and his personality filled the room.
He snorted. “This is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Not counting Esther, I thought.
“How on earth could an animal waltz right in and do something like this without either of you noticing? It makes no sense.” He reached into his valet, extracting a bottle of clear liquid and a thick pad of gauze. “Your mother is going to be disoriented when I wake her up. I need you both to keep her calm and help me get her to my carriage.”
He poured the liquid on the gauze and wafted it under her nose. Mother’s eyes fluttered open and she sat up gasping.
When she saw the blood, she asked excitedly, “What’s this? Why is the doctor here? What have you done?”
We did our best to sooth her, but when she saw her hand, she began to wail until she was in full hysterics.
“Get her on her feet and help me walks her downstairs,” the doctor ordered.
It wasn’t easy, and her blood, flowing once again, spattered the walls and floor. Once she was in the doctor’s carriage and sedated , he turned to us and said, “I’ll send word to your father. You mother will have to go to hospital. I don’t want what’s happened to your charwoman to repeat itself. Keep your doors and windows barred and be wary of any stray animals about. Do you hear?”
We both nodded. Before we could ask a single question, he cracked the whip over his horse and rumbled out of sight.
That night, the Old Manse was bathed in gloom. Not just from the moonless night, but from the heaviness in our hearts.
Normal sounds, like wind against the eaves or the bark of a stray dog, made us jump. We lit as many candles as we could to defy the dark. Jessamine suggested we spend the night in the parlor, surrounded by our family’s books, craft works and piano.
“We could play music until dawn. That always cheers you up,” Jessamine said. Her fingers nimbly braided my long hair.
“I’m not in the mood for music,” I said. I sat on the settee with Lucy in my lap. Her painted blue eyes looked into my own. Lucy wasn’t afraid. I so wish I could be like Lucy, a creature of porcelain and fabric, fearless and unaware of the dangers that lurked about our home.
Jessamine sighed. “It’s just as well. I don’t think I have the mind to play anyway. What should we do?”
An idea blossomed. I exclaimed, “Father always said that knowledge is power. We’re afraid because we don’t know what’s happening. Like when you were…”
“Possessed,” she said, staring at the floor.
I didn’t want to hurt her, but most of all, I didn’t want to open the doorway for the evil to return, not even the slightest crack, just as Father had warned me.
But then, I thought, wasn’t some form of evil alive in the Manse yet again?
“Well, when it first started, we were all so terrified. We spent weeks in a kind of daze, ” I continued.
“I remember, at least in the beginning.”
“It wasn’t until father began reading, searching for the cause of your sickness, that things began to get better. Once he knew what was happening to you, he also knew what needed to be done to stop it.” I was beginning to grow bold, bolstered by my own logic.
“Do you think the demon is back, within me? Do you think I’ve done this to Esther and Mother?” Jessamine’s eyes were wide and wet, shivering like disturbed pools with terror.
I violently shook my head. “No, of course not. Believe me, I would know if that was the case. You were unrecognizable when you were under the devil’s spell. No, this is something different. Maybe if we look in the books that Father gathered back then, we can find our answer!”
The old grandfather clock chimed nine o’clock. We both let out a sharp cry.
“Look at us, afraid of clocks,” Jessamine said with a quivering laugh.
“Not for long,” I said. I pulled an armful of books from one of the shelves and poured them onto the floor. “After you.”
We read deep into the night, skimming through Bibles, books on witchcraft, Medieval monsters, essays on chimeras, beasts and tales of shape shifters. They should have frozen our blood with their stories of godless creatures and death, but we remained true to our task.
To find the truth of the matter.
Some time after midnight, I closed a heavy book with a loud thunk and leaned back against Father’s chair.
“My eyes are going cross,” I said with a yawn.
Jessamine didn’t reply. Her head remained within the pages of a black, leather bound book that was almost as big as me.
“What do we know so far?” she asked, her voice muffled behind the book.
“That Esther and Mother both had parts of their bodies eaten by a supposed animal. Yet no one has seen or heard anything.”
She slammed the book down on the floor and pointed. “I think I found our culprit.”
I moved round to sit by her side.
Her finger rested on a drawing of a horrid creature. It was short, standing on two deformed legs, skin the sickly color of an algae-infested pond, with warts suppurating along every inch of vile flesh. Sharp fangs sprouted from the overbite in its mouth and talons dangled from fingertips that were twisted like an old tree.
“That’s disgusting!” I gasped.
“Most ghouls are,” she said. “They can transport from one place to another with merely a thought, and people claim they are able to change shape in order to camouflage themselves within the real world. Here’s the part that caught my eye.”
I read aloud. “Ghouls exist for one thing: to consume the flesh of humans, whether dead or alive. Demonic in nature, ghouls have been known to lead people, especially small children, astray so they can feast upon their flesh. Once a victim has been marked by the bite of a ghoul, it will come back often, taking what it can, until life can be sustained no more. A man or woman marked by a ghoul is marked for death.”
I felt hot tears well up in my eyes and my vision blurred. “Mother’s going to die?”
“Not necessarily,” Jessamine said. “Read on.”
“To free a victim from the ghoul’s poison, one must catch the ghoul in the act of extracting its scrap of human meat. The ghoul can be destroyed by the kiss of flame to its evil eyes. Be wary! Ghouls are as hard to restrain as they are to find. Beware of its bite, lest you be marked as well.”
I wiped a tear from my eye. “That’s little help. It doesn’t tell us how to find or catch one, if that’s truly what’s plaguing our family.”
“But it does say it’s demonic in nature. Mercy, I’ve already danced with a demon. I know that I would be able to feel its presence if it came near. I think that’s why it’s gone after Esther and Mother. It’s kept clear of me to remain hidden.”
“So what do we do?” Despair began to take hold of me and all I wanted to do was saddle our mare and find Father, even if it meant riding all night, alone in the dark.
Jessamine closed the book and pulled me close. “Tonight, you stay by me. I doubt any ghoul would dare come to you as long as you’re in my embrace. I’ll stay up and watch over you. Get some sleep. Tomorrow, we’ll think of something.”
I fought sleep for as long as I could. I desperately wanted to stay awake. However, my eyelids felt like great slabs of stone and I couldn’t stop from yawning.
“You promise you’ll hold me all night, and never take your eyes off me?” I asked.
She smiled, and brushed a lock of my hair from my face. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
I nestled my head into her lap, pulled Lucy under my arm, and let the sandman in.
The striking of the clock woke me from a deep, bottomless sleep. The sky outside the lone window was still a dark gray, lightened ever-so-slightly by the threat of the dawn. I stretched my arms above my head and rolled my eyes, attempting to shake off my slumber.
My heart thudded in my chest.
I was alone, and on the opposite side of the parlor fr
om my sister.
All of the candles were out.
How did I get here? The pile of books we had been reading lay a good seven feet from where I sat.
Jessamine was in the far corner, asleep and on her back.
I felt a tug at my ankle and stifled a yelp. I instinctively recoiled. In the dark, I couldn’t see what had gained purchase of the bottom half of my nightgown.
There followed the sounds of hurried clacking, as if a pair of rocks had skipped across the wood floor.
The ghoul!
Despite my inability to see it, I knew it had to be in the room with us. It must have waited until Jessamine fell asleep, then separated us so it could do its dirty deed.
“Jessamine,” I hissed, wanting to wake her, yet terrified of alerting the ghoul, lest I become its latest morsel.
There was no answer.
Willing my legs to stand, I inched my way upwards, using the bookcase shelves to hoist myself up inch by inch.
I heard a tearing sound, followed by something far worse.
The wet, meaty strain of mastication, broken by eager, glutinous breaths, filled the parlor.
“Jesssamine!” I shouted.
Still no reply.
I needed light. It was impossible to face the ghoul in the dark. My spirit wavered between bravery and death by panic. I fumbled around the desk until I found the matches.
I struck one against the desk. It sputtered for a moment, then fizzled out.
The sounds in the corner stopped.
I could feel the ghoul’s penetrating gaze cut through the dark.
I grabbed another match, and with unsure hands, tried again.
The matchstick broke in half, falling to the floor.
Clack, clack, clack, clack.
Those odd footsteps again.
Now a gurgling sound, a bubbling death rattle of a cry.
“Please, dear God, help,” I whimpered as I reached to pick out another match.
My cry was answered, as my thumbnail flicked across the match head, a brilliant flame roared to life.
And in that same instant, I wished I’d never brought light into the parlor.
“Lucy!”
My doll, my porcelain companion, stood on two small legs, leering at me. Its face had turned a mottled green. Bloody teeth sprouted from a mouth that was never designed to open. Weeping warts covered it from head to toe.
Worst of all, a strip of flesh, Jessamine’s flesh, hung loosely from its mouth.
I yelled in horror upon seeing my sister’s exposed throat. She lay, still as death, as her blood pumped onto the floor.
The demonic ghoul had truly left my poor, dear sister.
But it hadn’t gone to hell.
It had made a vile home within Lucy.
The ghoul clenched and unclenched its gnarled hands, slurping up the shredded flap of Jessamine’s throat.
I don’t know what overcame me then. I had been living for half a year under the specter of Satan and his damned minion. Fear, as much as Lucy, had been my constant companion.
There was no longer room for fear. This abomination had destroyed my family, and I knew at that moment that I would never again be the same. My heart turned cold while my temper flared like the center of a great bonfire.
Snarling like a mad person, I grabbed the candle and leapt for the ghoul. Cackling, it tried to sidestep from me, but I snared one of its slimy legs.
Warts burst open like blossoming flowers and a vile, hot fluid leaked onto my hand, burning my skin.
Still, I held on.
It shrieked. It hissed. It chomped its jaws and just missed snagging its teeth into the back of my hand.
With a flick of my wrist, I managed to get it to flop on its back.
Lucy’s blue eyes had been replaced by obsidian pools of hate. I moved my hand that held the candle onto its throat. Once I had a firm grip, I transferred the candle to my other hand.
“This time, go back to hell where you belong!” I shouted.
I brought the flame’s tip to its eye and heard a satisfying sizzle as the onyx orb melted. I moved the candle to its other eye and didn’t stop until both eyes were gone.
Suddenly, the ghoul’s protests and flailing stopped. Its tiny body twitched once, and was still.
Reluctantly, I let it go so I could rub the burned skin on my hand. The ghoul was dead.
Keeping a close eye on it, I walked on unsteady legs to my sister. Her face looked so peaceful, as if she had died in the midst of the most wonderful dream.
The tears came in a torrent, and I held her head in my lap, ever watchful for signs of the ghoul’s return.
I stayed there, in the corner with Jessamine’s cooling body, for two days.
When father returned, I was too weak to run into his arms.
His face was aghast.
“What…what…what?” he stammered.
“It was the demon in Jessamine. It became a ghoul. When it left Jessamine, it hid inside Lucy. You can see it, right there!” I screamed, pointing at its lifeless body.
But when Father picked it up, he held only my Lucy, her little head fractured but still the Lucy I’d always known. Her eyes were tiny points of ash, but Jessamine’s blood had somehow been cleansed from her porcelain face.
Despite my anguish and exhaustion and vexation, I began to laugh.
I laughed while my father pulled me away, and in his carriage, all the way into town. I laughed when he brought me to hospital, and even when they carried me to a room that smelled funny and was so bright, it felt like I had been thrown into the center of the sun.
And I still laugh now, ten years later.
They think I did it.
Esther passed on from infection.
Jessamine perished from her wound at the ghoul’s hand.
Mother never regained her sanity. In fact, she’s in a room not very far from my own. I pass her in the yard sometimes. She spits curses at me and blames me for the evil that befell our family.
Only I know it was the ghoul; the demon that slipped into our Old Manse and within my departed sister, the love of my life. And when it tired of a human host, it found Lucy.
I tell everyone but no one will believe me.
Evil is real.
The ghoul was real.
And Lucy is still somewhere, outside these four walls. If you see a doll with burned eyes, run. Run and pray your soul hasn’t been tainted.
Run.
And pray.
And now we come to the end of our tour of the asylum. I’m an enormous baseball fan. Over the years, I’ve tinkered with various baseball themed stories, but never got to the point where I thought it was worth seeing the light of day. I wanted to end this collection with both a bang and a hearty WTF??!! I think you’ll agree, this fits the bill.
FOUL BALL
“Time! Time! The ball went down the sewer.”
“Jesus, Jimmy, stop hitting it over there.”
Jimmy tossed the newspaper-filled Wiffle ball bat into the air with a melodramatic sigh. “How about Bobby actually catches it before it rolls in the sewer?”
The boys, Jimmy, Bobby, Kevin, Alan, David and Chris gathered at the curb. Bobby stood with his hands on his slight hips, peering into the dark opening.
“David, don’t you have another ball?” Kevin asked, lifting his Reds cap to scratch his sweaty, black hair.
David, the tallest of the bunch and the first to grow an actual, manhood-affirming pubic hair under his armpit, shook his head. “I hit it over my backyard fence last night. It landed on Mr. Scala’s pigeon coop roof.”
“We should get it,” Jimmy said.
“That roof is so rotten, a rat would fall through. You’ll break your stupid head,” Alan said. He tugged at his lower lip, blinking rapidly for a few seconds – just a couple of the tics that had developed over the past year. None of them spoke about the day his father left. Leave that feeling crap for the girls.
Chris lay on his belly, trying to see into the s
ewer. Bobby couldn’t resist poking him in the side with the tip of his sneaker. “Cut the shit, Bobby,” Chris barked, not needing to look to know who was doing it.
It may have been ninety degrees under the dogwood trees in Kevin’s yard, but that hadn’t stopped the boys from having their start-of-summer-vacation Wiffle ball tournament. They played three-on-three, rotating sides and keeping track of each trio’s success. Whoever was on the most winning teams was the World Series winner of the day. This was repeated on most summer days, except for breaks to watch the 4:30 Movie when they had Monster Week and Planet of the Apes week.
Wiffle balls, especially this early in the season, were a prized commodity. Definitely not one to be lost to the sewers.
“I could go in my aunt’s purse and grab a couple of bucks. Who wants to walk with me to the corner story to buy a couple of balls?” Jimmy said, angling his wiry frame so he could gaze past Chris’s prone form.
“That’s my lucky ball,” Kevin said. “I pitched it against the older kids last year and struck out the side four times. There’s no way I’m leaving it down there.”
The sewer on the other side of the street had a thick steel grate with holes big enough to slip a coat hanger through and rescue lost balls, army men and Matchbox cars.
This side was a different story. A narrow cut in the concrete was the only access point and it was much, much deeper. Too deep for a bent coat hanger to reach.
“I’ll be back,” Alan said, sprinting to the side of his house.
A small delivery truck trundled by. The boys turned their faces to catch the passing breeze.
When Alan returned carrying a rusted tire iron, they stared at him as if he’d sprouted Godzilla’s tail.
“What the heck do you want us to do with that?” Bobby said.
He pointed at the round sewer cap embedded in the sidewalk. “If we pry the lid, I think there’s a ladder we can go down.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure none of the adults around here will mind watching us pull up the sewer cap,” Chris said, brushing bits of gravel from the front of his AC/DC shirt.
