Dark Side: The Haunting

by J. M. Barlog

  She checked the clock. It was after midnight. She shifted her upper body to reach the lamp without having to stretch. Pain punished her and forced her to recoil once the lamp was switched on. She sought to penetrate that darkness beyond her bedroom and focus on the source of the sound.

  “Warren?” she called.

  No response. The sound, however, grew more persistent.

  “Warren, is that you?”

  The hall beyond her door was a black curtain.

  Outside her window, a limb scratched the glass.

  Jenny jerked back. She could hear heavy footsteps, someone moving about in the den.

  “Mr. Chips? Warren, come on.”

  The footsteps grew steadily closer, along with the sounds of breathing—breathing that was not her own. Something was in the hall, nearing her room. Jenny fixed her eyes on the door. Her mouth went suddenly dry. Why wouldn't Warren answer her?

  ****

  Mr. Chips lifted his head out of his shallow sleep on the sofa; something he enjoyed previously only when Warren was out of the house and had forgotten to lock him in his cage. The dog turned immediately toward the stairs, pricking his ears.

  The tapping had fooled him into thinking Warren was working in the den. But there was no way Chips would have slept through the front door opening and besides, Warren would have swatted him off the sofa before going upstairs.

  Chips sampled the still air. Nothing. He whined when he heard Jenny's voice. But the last thing he wanted was to give up his warm corner of the sofa. This had been the only time in months he had been able to lay up there untouched by Warren's wrath. But still she called him again.

  ****

  Jenny's thoughts turned morbid. Had someone broken into the house, killed Chips, and was now ransacking Warren's office? She was helpless here in her bed. Her eyes moved quickly to the bathroom door. It had a lock. She'd be safe in there.

  But before she could move, she saw it.

  The spirit bloomed into existence, filling the open doorway. That hideous face was clearly her own. It wore ragged, grimy clothes. The presence stopped, rotating its head ninety degrees until the two black sockets bore down on Jenny.

  “No... please... no...”

  Jenny's heart surged inside her chest. Her breathing came in wild gasps.

  The spirit's mangled hand rose and leveled a crooked open hand menacingly at Jenny.

  “No please!” Jenny forced out of her raw throat. Without words, Jenny knew inside what the ghost was attempting to communicate.

  The spirit slowly floated around to face her. It moved through the doorway and approached her bed. The face sent off an eerie glow as it fell within the light of the lamp beside the bed.

  “No, p-l-e-a-s-e.”

  ****

  Chips rose to all fours. It was up there. The thing that had terrified him so—was up there. So was Jenny. He knew it was up there. He knew it was...

  ****

  Shivers shuddered through Jenny's terrified body. The image lifted a hand and reached out for her. The bottomless sockets looked straight at her as if they could somehow see. Jenny felt the coldness of death precede the hand edging closer to her own.

  She leaned away from the oncoming hand, and at the same time, she tried to slip out of the bed to get to the bathroom.

  She screamed when it shifted to block her way.

  Mr. Chips bounded off the sofa. He had to help. He had to do something to protect Jenny from that thing. The stench of rotting flesh flowed down the stairs like a thick blanket of fog. Chips padded up the stairs firing off an aggressive growl of warning.

  As the dog reached the last stair, he saw the thing beside Jenny's bed. Jenny was struggling to escape.

  Mr. Chips was a stride from the entry. His lips had receded to expose fangs poised to tear into flesh.

  Suddenly the chair beside the door flew over, knocking the door closed.

  Chips crashed headlong into the wood. Yipping in agony, braying in anger at being isolated from his master, Chips clawed fervently at the door.

  Jenny watched the door bang shut. Chips had been trapped outside. The spirit stood over her bed reaching down. It issued a vile lament as Jenny sought to evade its outstretched reach. She felt lifeless flesh take her arm.

  Then the cigarette lighter from her night table—Warren’s lighter—sparked once, then twice. A sallow flame shot up and ignited her flannel sleeve.

  “No!” Jenny screamed with a strength and anger she never knew existed inside her. In a flash of light, flames spread to her bed and leapt to the nearby lamp shade.

  Jenny rolled off the bed, hearing the smoke alarm blaring in the hall outside her door. Despite the burning agony, she rolled back and forth on the floor to extinguish the flame on her arm.

  The spirit vanished, leaving Jenny in a room filling with smoke.

  She felt numb except for the instinctive drive for survival. Risking more burns, she tossed the burning lamp out the bedroom window, feeling a rush of cold night air sweep in around her. Then she smothered the blanket, grabbed it away from the dying flames, and also flung it out the window.

  Warren saw the flaming lamp arc out the bedroom window and plummet to the ground as he turned the corner. He slammed the pedal to the floor and screeched to a sideways halt on the front lawn just before the stairs.

  It took precious seconds to unlock the door.

  Warren threw it back with a crash and assaulted the stairs two at a time. The bedroom door was closed with Chips bouncing off it in a frenzy. Warren threw the door open to find Jenny in the corner, struggling to get the mattress from the bed.

  He moved her away, and in one motion, pulled the mattress from the frame and forced it out the window into the night-enshrouded yard.

  Below, warbling sirens filled the night. Red and white emergency lights danced across the face of the house as the first engine company arrived. Men in yellow suits raced up the stairs and into the smoky bedroom. But the fire had been removed. All that remained now were smoldering remnants.

  On the lawn outside the bedroom window, firefighters dragged the mattress and debris away from the vulnerable structure and doused it repeatedly.

  Inside, Warren held a trembling Jenny while a paramedic cut away her sleeve to attend the burns on her arm and hands.

  “You were very lucky, ma'am,” the paramedic said. “Your flame retardant clothing protected most of your arm. It could have been worse.”

  The burned flesh was right now the furthest from Jenny's mind. She felt no pain, only a terror that wormed its way like a plague into her heart. The spirit had attempted to kill her!

  “What about there?” the paramedic asked, indicating the blood stains over her abdomen.

  “My wife's recovering from an auto accident,” Warren said.

  “I'm okay. It's just my arm.”

  “Do you want to go to the hospital?” the paramedic asked when he finished bandaging the arm. He began re-packing his instruments into his case.

  “No, I'm all right. It's just my arm that was burned. I'm all right.”

  “Ma'am, I suggest you see your doctor, just to be safe.”

  Jenny's eyes went to Warren's.

  “Where were you? How come you weren't here?”

  “Jenny, baby, I'm sorry. I just ran out for smokes. I ran down to the gas station on Willis Ave. I was only gone maybe ten minutes.”

  “Warren, she was here. She tried to kill me!” Jenny kept saying in a whisper, while men removed the window curtains, bed frame and anything else touched by the fire.

  Warren tried in vain to comfort her.

  The house, now quiet, reeked of smoke.

  While Jenny rested on the rollaway bed in the den, Warren met with a fire department supervisor downstairs on the front lawn.

  “Your wife was very lucky to be awakened so quickly. Usually it's too late. Another minute or so and this whole place would have gone up. Oh, and rest assured Mr. Garrett, your fire alarm system is working. The Honeywell cen
tral station dispatched us when they got the alarm. I guess it pays to put in the best.”

  “I'll be sure to thank them. I don't understand why Jenny...”

  “Your wife was smoking in bed. My men found smoking materials on the floor near where the fire broke out.”

  “My wife doesn’t smoke. Those were mine from earlier.”

  Warren thanked the fire marshal again for their quick response, then raced up the stairs to be with Jenny.

  “Jenny?”

  “Warren, listen to me. It's not what you think. I was sleeping when noises in the den woke me up. I thought it was just you. I didn't know you weren't here. But it wasn't you, it was her. She was here!“

  “Jenny, this is crazy! Dr. Rosenstein said this vision is nothing more than a hallucination.”

  “Damnit Warren, hallucinations don't set you on fire! She was here. She kept Mr. Chips out. She tried to kill me. Don't you understand?”

  Jenny could no longer contain her tears.

  “She set me on fire. She...”

  Jenny winced from the pain, choking down a torrent of tears.

  “I'm not imagining this. There is a ghost of me in this house. It tried to kill me tonight.”

  “Jenny, I’ll call Rosenstein. He'll come right over. Please try to relax. He'll give you something to help you sleep.”

  “Warren, I want Dwight Mackenzie. Tell him what happened. He needs to know that the ghost tried to kill me tonight.”

  A short while later, with Jenny resting on the cot in the den, Warren sat in his overstuffed chair in a completely dark living room, hiding behind the smoke from his cigarette. The air was thick with the odor of charred wood and smoke. He blamed himself. He was supposed to be here. He was supposed to make sure she was safe. These things were not supposed to happen.

  As Warren tamped out his cigarette, he sought another from the pack beside him—the pack that had taken him from the house. It was then that he realized he had gone into her bedroom earlier. He was hoping to find a cigarette, but the pack on her night stand was empty. Why didn’t he remove the lighter and stick it in his pocket?

  Upstairs, Mr. Chips stationed himself outside the den door. The dog had refused to leave even when Warren offered him his favorite Liver Snaps treat.

  Finally, Warren withdrew the card from his pocket, turned on the lamp and dialed the number. It was well after midnight, but Warren knew sleep would not come until he made the call.

  “Mackenzie.”

  “Yes. Who's this?”

  “Warren Garrett. We need to talk.”

  “I'm listening.”

  “I don't know if you can help, but...”

  18

  Morrison's grim face let Jenny know he was anything but pleased to see her so soon after her discharge. Displeasure poured out of his stone face and less than gentle eyes. He said nothing as he inspected the burned tissue on her arm.

  Jenny complained of moderate lower abdominal pain that radiated out from her healing incision. And the burn on her forearm was a matter for concern.

  While a nurse waited silently near the door, Morrison opened Jenny's gown and gently probed the immediate area surrounding her scar. One corner of the incision had split open, accounting for the seepage of bright red blood onto her clothing. Even after all this time, Jenny still refused to face the hideous sight.

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  Jenny hesitated, scrambling to line up the words in her mind before offering them up. How could she possibly tell him the truth?

  With two fingers, Morrison pressed a sensitive area.

  Jenny winced and shifted to ease the pressure.

  “Well, it would appear that most of my hard work is still intact. You may have just overextended a healing muscle. I don't think this is cause for alarm. But you still haven't told me how you got that nasty burn, or why I'm having to re-examine you so soon after discharge.”

  “A freak accident,” Jenny offered up feebly. “I... dropped a flaming lighter on my sleeve. The material caught fire before I could get it out. In the flurry to extinguish the flame, I strained something.”

  “Well, you see, there's another reason to pitch those blasted cancer-sticks once and for all. You'll live a lot longer.”

  “I don’t smoke. Warren’s the smoker. I was using his lighter to light a candle on my nightstand.”

  “I see.” Morrison raised a brow. “Is that to suggest that there is romance…”

  “It suggests nothing.”

  The dejection in Jenny’s voice smothered any spark of relief that might have ignited in Morrison.

  “Jenny, be patient. Warren will come around.”

  “I’m n-not s-so s-sure.”

  Jenny’s sudden regression to her stutter caught Morrison unguarded. His face released more of his surprise than he would have wanted known.

  “W-what?”

  “I would have thought the stutter would have faded by now. Do you want me to arrange for therapy?”

  “N-no. I’m fine. I j-just stutter when I’m n-nervous.”

  “What are you nervous about? You know, you have to take care of this walking miracle.” Morrison indicated her body. “I do marvelous work, don't I?”

  “I'm just having sort of a p-problem.”

  “A problem? Sounds ominous, maybe you'd better tell me about it.”

  Morrison closed Jenny's gown and stepped to a side table, where he began recording his findings into her records.

  “Dr. Morrison,” Jenny started out weakly, but strengthened with each word, “what happened to me in the operating room?”

  “What do you mean? Here, let's get you up now. I'm confident you did no serious damage in there.”

  Jenny grimaced when a jolt of electric shock shot through her midsection.

  “I mean, what really happened in there? Did anything unusual... happen?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I...” Jenny faltered, where to begin? If she told him the truth, would he believe her? She suspected even Rosenstein doubted the veracity of her story.

  “I keep hearing voices inside my head.”

  “Voices?”

  “Yes, fragments really. Parts of sentences, a few words.”

  “Like what?”

  “There is one that says: ‘the pressure... we can't...’ and there's another that I thought might have been your voice.”

  “Mine? What did that one say?”

  “Just damnit. You sounded very angry.”

  “Jenny, you were unconscious when they wheeled you into the emergency room. Then we put you under a potent anesthetic for about five hours while we worked on you on the table. We had a lot of patching up to do in there,” Morrison said, indicating her stomach.

  “But why do I hear these voices? Why are they plaguing me so?”

  “I don't know.”

  Morrison shifted his eyes quickly to Jenny's record.

  “Are you seeing someone about them? A professional?”

  “Yes, Dr. Sy Rosenstein.”

  “Good man. I've heard of him. So how can I help?”

  “I was hoping you might tell me what happened at the hospital that night they brought me in.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't know. I just think the voices have something to do with the operating room.”

  “The operating room?”

  The more Jenny listened to Morrison's voice, the more it convinced her that his words were somehow trapped inside her mind. They were vexatious when they arose to torment her, and then as quickly as they came, they would evaporate.

  “Jenny, you were in bad shape when they brought you in. Dr. Rashad in emergency worked on you for a time before you were brought up to surgery. I was on call; I arrived within an hour of you're being wheeled in.”

  “Dr. Morrison, the words won't go away. I don't know what else to do.”

  “What does Dr. Rosenstein say of this?”

  Jenny shifted on the table. She hoped to avoid vocalizing t
he words, as if saying them somehow gave them the air of credibility.

  “He says it's trauma related. He believes it's just part of the brain's healing process.”

  “I'm no psychiatrist, but I would agree with him.”

  “Dr. Morrison, did anything unusual happen in that operating room?”

  “Unusual? Jenny, you were barely clinging to life for about the first hour. We weren't sure we'd be able to save you. But we did, and you're alive and recovering. You're going to lead a normal and productive life.”

  “Then nothing happened in there that might explain why I'm plagued by these voices?”

  “Nothing Jenny. I think you need to trust Rosenstein. Let him help you through this difficult period in your recovery.”

  With that, Morrison jotted a line of scribbles in Jenny's record and closed the file with a certain sense of finality.

  “Our brains are slow healers, Jenny. Give yours time to mend and return to normal. And I don't want to see you in here again until your normal visit, okay?”

  Morrison squeezed Jenny's hand, hoping it would ease her anxiety. Then he rose off his stool to leave.

  Although she started to open her mouth to speak, Jenny couldn’t bring herself to tell Morrison that she was being tormented by a ghost. He, like Rosenstein, would think it nothing more than a hallucination brought on by a healing brain. And the last thing Jenny could stand right now was more cold, clinical rationalization. She never felt more alone than at this moment.

  “I'll help you dress,” the nurse offered as the doctor departed.

  Jenny nodded.

  The nurse held Jenny's blouse without saying anything until Morrison had completely left the room and the door closed.

  “You know,” the nurse began cautiously, helping Jenny get her bandaged forearm into the sleeve, “there were other people in that operating room. Nurses, an anesthesiologist, and maybe even other doctors.”

  Jenny stared at her quizzically. What was the nurse really trying to say?

  “You could talk to them.”

  “Would they be able to help?”

  “Don't know. But I tell you this, doctors aren't gods, even if they think they are. Dr. Morrison's not perfect—nobody is. Sounds like...” She stopped with an arresting suddenness.