Unliving Love

by Jason A Grimm

  Chapter 8

  Time to go home

  The drive to Wes’s house was a quick one and much to Mike’s un-liking they were there before they knew it. When they pulled in to the driveway all he could think about was when he was there yesterday. He was only there for a short time but a few things he felt and saw were hard for him to explain, but like all things paranormal he chalked it up to tricks of the mind.

  “Your parents were right this place is absolutely beautiful.” Jen was in awe of the large Victorian house that had been restored to like new condition. “How can you think this place is creepy?” She unbuckled her seat belt and was out of the car before he had time to shut off the car.

  “You didn’t see it before.” He was now out of the car too. “I did. It was a giant rundown creepy house that should have been dozed over.”

  “Even if it was rundown it’s obvious that it didn’t need torn down. It is absolutely… I mean wow. He must have put a lot of money into it.” Jen was now making her way to the porch. She walked around it admiring the flowers before she made her way up the steps. “Did he hire designers or was all this, his idea?” She was cupping her hands trying to see in the window. She couldn’t see much though because the window was partially covered by a thick curtain. She turned around to say something to Mike and saw that he was still standing by the car. “What are you doing? Come unlock the door.”

  Mike reluctantly walked up the driveway and onto the porch in silence. When he made it to the door he pulled the key out of his pocket and slowly unlocked it.

  “You are something else Mike.” She was watching him from her spot in front of the window and couldn’t help but laugh at him. “You are this big bad manly man football star, but you’re afraid of a house.”

  He glared at her. “For starters… I’m not scared of a house. It just rubs me the wrong way. Secondly even big men are allowed to have emotions thank you very much.”

  Jen smiled and walked to the door bumping him out of the way, opened it, and walked in. “Wow.” When she walked in the house the first thing that she saw was a giant staircase that led to the upstairs. The first room was small, yet beautiful. The floor was shiny hardwood. In the back of the room sat a large bench that looked like it came from a fifties era park but was completely redone to look brand new, and under it was an old looking rug. To her immediate right sat an antique coat rack with a jacket and an umbrella hanging off of its hooks. “Is all this stuff real antiques or are they replicas?”

  Mike bent over and picked up a pile of letters that had been slipped through the mail slot on the door. According to the dates they had been sitting there for a couple days. He sat them on a small table that was sitting next to the stairs. “Mom told me it’s a mixture. He got whatever he could find refurbished but some of it had to be replicas just because he couldn’t find the antique.” Mike walked to the set of double doors to their right and opened them up. “This way to the rest of the downstairs.” The set of doors opened to a huge rectangular room that was divided in half only by the different furniture in each section. The front section had a large couch and two old time rocking chairs that were arranged not around a TV but a large fireplace with beautiful marble trim all around it that went up into a marble mantelpiece. The large room had beautiful shining hardwood floors throughout its entirety.

  “This is absolutely amazing.” Jen said as she ran her fingers across the cold marble stone of the mantel.

  “Yeah it is. I haven’t been through the house since it’s been done.” Mike still stood in the doorway. “Last time I was here was when we were teens.

  “Oh so it will be a first for us both then?”

  “Um… no it won’t actually.” He stood his ground as she looked at him with a puzzled gaze. “I told you I’d bring you over and let you look at it, which I am, but this is as far as I go.”

  “You’re not going to show me around?” Are you absolutely serious right now is what she might as well been saying with the look she was giving him.

  “You can give me dirty looks all day long and it’s not going to change a thing.”

  “So you’re telling me that you are going to let me walk alone, around a house that you’re afraid of?”

  He smiled still standing his ground in the doorway between the front room and the large room. He pointed his fingers down the length of the room. “The back half is the dining room and through that doorway right there is the kitchen and there are a couple rooms right off of that.”

  “You’re serious?”

  He stood his ground.

  “Fine… whatever ass.” She shook her head as she began to walk towards the kitchen.

  Mike stood there and looked around. It was like he was bound and determined to not let anything get the jump on him. His gaze made its way to the stairs behind him more than any place else. Every time he turned away from it he got an eerie feeling that started at the base of his spine and made its way up spreading goose bumps to every inch of skin it touched. Screw this! I hate this place. He thought to himself as he turned his back to the wall so he could keep a constant eye on the stairwell. The downstairs had never really given him the feelings that the upstairs had, even before when Wes and he came when they were young. It was never until they went upstairs that the eerie feelings took hold and the fear crept in. Even though he couldn’t remember in detail what had happened that night there were just a few fuzzy memories about them being scared and that was more than enough to keep him creeped out by the place. This is why he was bound and determined that there were no such things as ghost and spirits and it was all in his head. If there really was some life altering moment where they saw a ghost he would have surely remembered it. So it’s that he has convinced himself there is something to be afraid of in this house rather than there actually being something to be afraid of, and so he is. His overzealous imagination even turned normal tripping like yesterday into something abnormal. The thought of all that was actually making him angry now, the idea of being afraid of nothing and knowing there is nothing and still being afraid frustrated him. That’s it I’m going to find Jen. He thought to himself and just as he took a step into the large room beyond the double doors he heard her.

  “Mike!” Jen yelled from the other side of the house. “Come here!”

  Her voice was muffled so he knew she was in one of the rooms off of the kitchen. He began to jog after the muffled yell. “I’m coming!” He yelled back to her. He was making his way through the kitchen and when he turned left and walked through the doorway leading to the room she was in, there she stood eerily still looking intently at a small table that sat beside a very old looking chair. “What? What is it?” He asked as he came to a stop a foot away from her.

  “There.” She pointed at the table.

  Mike followed the invisible line that extended from her finger and landed on a cell phone that sat next to a stack of magazines.“What?”

  “The phone.” She turned and looked at him like it should mean something to him.

  When he glanced back down is when it hit him, the text last night and this morning. The look on his face must have confirmed that he understood why she was yelling for him.

  “Yeah exactly!” She looked back down at the phone. “Is it his?”

  “I’m not sure but I don’t know who’s else it would be.”

  “Well aren’t you going to check?”

  He looked at her then took a deep breath and reached down for the phone. He picked it up and it was still plugged into the wall. He pressed the button bringing it to life and the first image was a dark picture with a bright white mist that formed a silhouette.

  “Yes that’s his phone.” Mike said as a large lump began to develop in the back of his throat and the hair on the back of his neck began to stand. “Here.” He handed it to her.

  “Were his parents here?” Jen asked as she looked questionably at the phone. She held the phone closer to her face. “What…” She stopped her question as she answered
it herself. “Oh my God.” She turned the phone so that Mike could see it and pointed at the lit screen with the picture on it. “It’s a girl.” Jen’s face lit up and she began to smile.

  “Yeah it’s her apparently.” Mike sat down in the chair that was next to the table. “It’s Emily.”

  Jen turned the picture back around and stared at it. “This is incredible. I mean I’ve seen stuff like this on TV but never a real picture. I wonder if there is more.” She touched the phone here and there and started flipping through the pictures on the phone.

  Mike started thinking about the text he had gotten in the middle of the night and the one on his phone when he woke up. They seemed odd at the time but not knowing the full details he could spin it anyway he wanted to. Now though, knowing that the phone was here and judging by the stack of letters that were piled up on the floor when they first came in, his parents hadn’t been there in at least a few days and it made the text a lot harder to explain way.

  “This is definitely the phone that sent you those texts I did see that but there are only like three pictures on here.” She said, interrupting Mike’s thoughts as she continued to scroll through the phone. “Guess you can only have so many considering.” She finally pulled the phone away from her gaze.

  “Your girlfriend is dead? Yeah puts a bit of a damper on picture day.”

  “Ass” Jen gave Mike a look. “For starters… she could be right around us and you’re being mean. Secondly, I thought you didn’t believe in this stuff.” She said as her voice trailed off into a whisper.

  “I don’t.” He stood up. “You about ready to go?”

  “No I’ve barely even started to look around.” She sat the phone back down and turned around to make her way to where there were two doors. One sat at the end the short hall while the other door to her right, combined with the small frame around it made up the entirety of the right wall. She opened the door that was straight ahead and saw that it led to a laundry room. She closed the door and turned to her right. The door was smaller than the rest of the doors that she had seen in the house.

  “I don’t remember that door.” Mike said as he saw her reach for the knob. He took a few steps and was now standing beside her.

  She smiled at him as she turned the knob and opened the door. The door opened to a small dark space that was about two and a half feet wide. The light shining into the house from the windows on the far side of the room barely made a dent in the darkness of the small hallway. Jen began to search the inside of the door for the light switch. Finally finding it she flipped it on and the dark space lit up revealing a small stairwell. The steps went up and flattened out on a small platform and disappeared in a ninety degree angle to the right. Looking up the stairs she noticed a large dark spot on the wall up the steps and as she looked closer it appeared to be a large hole but from its perfectly square shape it was more likely to be some kind of cubby.

  “Oh this is cool.” Jen said as she looked up the stairwell. “You didn’t know about this?”

  “Nope must have been boarded up or something. Can’t imagine it’s been added. It looks old, just look at the dust.”

  “Wonder where it goes.” She asked as she turned to Mike and smiled. “Only one way to find out.”

  “You can’t be going up there? It looks like it’s unsafe.”

  “Will you stop being such a giant pansy?” Jen pulled down the side of her shorts and looked at her hip.

  “What are you doing? You scratch yourself or something?”

  “Nope.” She let her shorts snap back and then looked up the stairs again. “I was just making sure I was the one wearing the panties.” She turned to Mike and gave him a sly smile.

  He shook his head. “Just walk.” He said as he pointed up the stairs.

  Jen laughed and started walking up the steps. The steps did look a bit worn and the hall was thin. She could walk up normally but Mike had to side step his way up. The open area on the wall at the end of the first section of stairs ended up being a big open cubby that went back in the wall a couple of feet. In the cubby were stacks of old books and a few antique looking figurines all of which were covered in a thick layer of dust.

  “These look really old.” She said as she picked up one of the figurines and began to wipe off the dust. It was easy to tell that the items on the shelf had been sitting there untouched for years.

  The one she picked up was made of some type of smooth stone and was about six inches tall. It had a face like a feral dog and with four small horns that came out of the top of its head. The body of it was very lanky and seemed disproportionate as far as its width and height went. Its arms were long, very thin and stretched down past its waist and ended with long fingers at its knees which were in the middle of legs that looked very similar to its arms. The torso looked like a stretched, starved torso of a human.

  “What is that?” Mike asked as he looked at the figurine. “The other ones look almost just like it too.”

  “I have no idea.” She sat it down and slid it back into its original spot. “It’s creepy though.”

  “Yeah it is, let’s keep moving.”

  They continued up the second half of the stairs. These ones however ended at a door that was very similar in size to the first one. She reached for the knob and turned but the door wouldn’t budge.

  “It won’t open.” She turned the knob again and pressed her shoulder against the door pushing with all she had. “The handle turns but it won’t budge at all.”

  “Let me try.” The idea was easier than the actual task of switching places. They tried a couple different times then ended up succeeding as he slid by her belly to belly. Mike grabbed the knob turned and shoved having the same amount of success as Jen did. “It’s weird…” He put his shoulder in the door and shoved. “Even if it was locked the door should have some give but it doesn’t.” He gave it one more big shove with his shoulder but again nothing. “It’s not going to open babe.”

  Jen’s look turned to one of disappointment. “I guess not.” She turned to walk down the steps. “Maybe there is a door on the other side of the room we can get to if we go up the stairs by the front door.”

  Mike followed her down the steps. “Yeah one can only hope.” He said in a very sarcastic tone.

  As Jen placed her foot down on the platform that separated the two angles of steps there was a creaking sound that started behind them and they both instantly froze. She was the first to turn around and leaned slightly to the side so she could see behind Mike. There at the top of the steps stood a wide opened door. The room behind the door was pitch black. It was as if the light that illuminated the stair well couldn’t penetrate the area past the door frame.

  “That isn’t what I think it is, is it?” Mike was staring down at Jen’s wide eyed face already knowing the answer.

  Unable to talk she began to nod her head.

  Mike began to slowly turn around when the door slammed shut.

  Jen let out a barely audible squeal as it began to open again and then like before slammed itself shut. Jen backed into the wall as she stared wide eyed and now with her mouth gapping open. As she hit the wall and mike started to walk down the steps the door began to violently open and slam itself over and over. The noise was echoing in the tight stairwell and began to hurt their ears.

  Just as he was about to step down onto the platform where Jen stood the figurine that She had picked up to examine was flung by an invisible force out of the cubby slamming into the ceiling then falling to the floor missing Mike’s head by mere inches.

  “You ok?” He asked Jen as she flung her arms up to her head to protect herself from the flying figurine. He squeezed by her and grabbed her hand. “Let’s go.” He lead her down the stairs as quickly as he could. The door at the top of the steps was still slamming, the noise still echoing through the stairwell hurting their ears. When they finally reached the bottom Mike pulled Jen out and slammed the door to the stairwell closed. As the door closed the so
und of the door at the top of the steps stopped and was now replaced with an eerie silence. When Mike turned around he saw Jen slouched down in old looking chair that sat next to the table with Wes’s phone.

  “Jen?” Mike walked over to her and kneeled down in front of her. “Babe?” He grabbed her hand.

  She raised her head as tears rolled down her checks, her eyes still as wide as they had been in the stairwell.

  “Jen are you ok? You’re not hurt are you?”

  She shook her head in response.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded.

  Mike stood up “I think it’s time to go home.”

  Jen stood, still not speaking and he lead her by the hand through the kitchen back through the long double room and then quickly out the front door. “Go to the car, I’ll be right behind you.”

  Her grip tightened on his hand as she began shivering. “No!” She answered in a voice that was louder than normal but not quite a yell. “No I’m staying with you.”

  “Ok” He reached his free hand into his pocket and pulled out the key then slid it into the lock of the door and turned it, locking the front door. He then lead Jen back to the car, opened her door and helped her back into the car. Her hand was still clinched on his. ”I need my hand back babe. I am just going around the car to get in ok.”

  She reluctantly let go.

  He made his way to the driver’s side, opened the door, and climbed into the car. He looked over at her and saw a look of sheer terror on her face one hand covering her mouth, as if to hold back a scream. “What?” He asked his tone breaking and questionable.

  She raised the hand that wasn’t covering her mouth and pointed towards the house.

  Mike’s gaze followed down her arm, down her finger, and traced the invisible line that led his gaze to the large porch. There standing in the middle of it was a large black figure. It was hard to make out much about the body; however the detail of the figures face was clearly visible. The features suggested a middle aged man that was clearly from a different time. He had a receding hairline and a thick handlebar mustache. The most notable feature of the face and probably the most frightening were the eyes. The eyes glowed blood red and they were fixed right on him. Mike felt a chill rise up his spine and his stomach begin to churn.

  “Please go, please, please, please, please go.” Jen said in a trembling voice tears streaming down her face.

  He grabbed the keys out of the middle console inserted them into the ignition and turned them bringing the car to life. Mike looked at Jen, her head now in her arms. He looked up as he put the car in reverse; the figure on the porch was gone but on the railing in the spot the figure stood, sat the very figurine that Jen had examined on the slender stairwell. He mashed his foot down on the gas chirping the tires as he began backing out of the driveway. When he was in the street he slammed the car in drive and again mashed the gas pedal squealing the tires once again as the car drove off down the road.