Chapter 13
Mike took a shower and got dressed; all he could think of was Teddy and Mary. He couldn’t let this twisted ghost take them from him; he was having regrets now for even taking this house from his aunt. When she died the lawyer that handled the estate gave him a sealed letter from her explaining that whoever lives in the house, from time to time has to bring a ghost named Uncle Silas someone to murder. He was powerful and had an appetite for killing that didn’t stop after his death.
Mike didn’t take it very serious and assumed that he wouldn’t have to deal with anything like this; he never believed in ghosts and found it laughable that she would even leave such a letter as this. He got into his vehicle and went to town, he looked at one of the papers in his briefcase and seen that one little girl had lunch on the back steps at the school parking lot. Mike pulled up and she was there, sitting on the steps alone. The girl had short blonde hair and was wearing a skirt and a thin jacket.
“Hi, can you tell me how to get to the bridge that crosses the river from here?” He said while holding a map and talking to her out of the passenger window.
“Yes, you go out of here and make a right, then stay straight and you can’t miss it,” the girl said with a smile.
“Can you please show me on the map?”
“Sure,” she said leaning into the window looking at his map trying to find where they were on it.
Mike grabbed her by the back of her hair and her jacket and pulled her inside and rolled up the window while speeding off. The girl was screaming for help, but Mike still had a grip on her and slammed her face into the dash knocking her out. He couldn’t believe that he was doing this again, this was someone’s little girl, but at least it wasn’t his little girl and he had to protect his kids. This is how it had to be. His mind raced, what if he had been seen taking her, what if the police were on their way right now. He couldn’t go to jail. He couldn’t take that. All these things and more raced through his mind as he drove home.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Sarah was at the food bank and it was a slow day, Stephanie came down and told her that she didn’t have to stay all day today. That was okay with her since she had some writing that she wanted to get finished. She left and stopped at a grocery store to pick up some soda and bread, the whole way home she thought about how much she missed Chicago. She missed her friends and having most everything within walking distance, all of this open farmland was alien to her still and she just couldn’t get used to it no matter how hard she tried.
When she pulled up to the house she seen Mike’s vehicle around back, and it was parked at the basement door. She got out and walked slowly around the back of the house and looked inside the window of the car and noticed blood on the dashboard. Everything froze and went silent, it was like the whole world stopped and she was dreaming, but she wasn’t dreaming and that was real blood in his car.
She went into the basement not making a sound, she heard something in the back corner at the little room, it was Mike unlocking the door and then he picked up something , slinging it over his shoulder, she looked closer and seen that it was a young girl. Her knees got weak as she watched the man she loves carrying a little girl over his shoulder. A little girl who’s face is covered in blood and running down his back. Sarah inched closer to see what he was doing inside the room, and then she heard him talking.
“Here you sick bastard. This is what you wanted isn’t it?” Mike asked sounding out of breath and coughing.
“Yes! This is exactly what I want. Good job Mikey, I can’t wait to tear into her,” Silas said laughing and pulling out a huge knife. Mike left the room and went upstairs and closed the door; she thought she could hear Mike laughing upstairs. Silas was stabbing the girl, cutting every inch of her as the blood sprayed over the walls of the little room, he would stop to lick the blade and start stabbing her again as the light in the room turned bright red.
Sarah tried to hold in her tears but couldn’t, this poor innocent girl that her husband had kidnapped was dead, and in such a terrible way. She didn’t dare move, afraid that he would hear her and do the same to her. Silas finally calmed down and stood over the girl’s body, and then the girl started to sink into the dirt floor of the basement, until she was gone.
Sarah turned away fast hitting one of the boxes that was hiding her and knocking it over. She looked and didn’t see Silas in the room anymore, good maybe he’s gone and I can get out of here she thought to herself. She turned toward the door and there he was, standing right beside her, she screamed and fell back on the ground and sat there in fear.
“Did you come to play, Sarah?” Silas said smiling.
“Stay away from me you sick pervert, you killed that little girl,” Sarah screamed.
“That isn’t the first little girl that I killed, and it will not be the last,” he laughed.
The light in the basement shined bright red and out of every shadow of the room dark figures walked out into the red light, there were so many of them standing there staring at her.
“See, Sarah, there are so many more than you know, and they want you to join them,” Silas started laughing so loudly that it hurt her ears.
Sarah looked down at her hands and feet and seen them starting to sink into the basement floor and she screamed, “No!” while pulling as hard as she could to get them out of the ground. She crawled toward the steps fighting against sinking into the cold earth; Silas was coming at her with the knife as she screamed uncontrollably climbing the stairs.
Sarah made it to the basement door and got it open, she pulled herself into the hallway and slammed the door shut and leaned against the wall breathing heavily. She looked down at her leg and seen it was cut wide open and pouring blood out all over the floor.
“I love your blood, Sarah,” Silas said through the door. She could see his tongue sliding under the door and licking up her blood.
She screamed and got up limping to the kitchen; she got a towel and wrapped it around the cut on her leg tying it tightly. Sarah turned to go toward the front door to leave and there was Mike, standing in front of her and his face was painted like Uncle Silas’s, blue nose and red eyes and mouth and a white face.
“Where are you going Sarah?” Mike said with a crazy look on his face.
“Mike, what’s happened to you? You’re a good man you’re better than this.”
“It’s what I had to do Sarah, it’s gotta be this way,” he said.
“No, it doesn’t, please come back to me, let’s get out of this place and go back home, please Mike,” Sarah pleaded.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” Mike said then lunged at her knocking her to the floor; he was on top of her and put his hands on her throat choking her. He had a crazy look in his eyes that she had never seen before, then it hit her, she was going to die here on the floor and her kids will come home and he will kill them too. With a burst of desperation she threw him back and he hit his head against the table, she got up and grabbed a knife and held it up so he could see it. He came at her again and she buried the knife in the side of his chest and he fell back squirming.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” she cried. Sarah made her way to her car as Mike came into the front doorway standing there with the knife still in him.
“Sarah, please, come back,” he pleaded.
She sped out of the driveway and down the road, she called the school on her cell phone and told them not to send Mary and Teddy home on the bus, that she would pick them up, then she called the police and told them that her husband killed a girl and tried to kill her and she was cut open.
The police picked up Teddy and Mary at school and brought them to the hospital where Sarah was getting her leg stitched, they both ran to her and were worried if she was going to die or not, she smiled and said, “Everything is going to be alright, we are going to go back home and stay with grandma for a while, daddy is sick and needs help.”
The police arrived at the house and seen the front door open, inside th
ere was a trail of blood through the house, they also found the vehicle out back with the girls blood on the dash and the bloody room in the basement just as Sarah had described. They took blood samples from the walls of the little room and found there were three blood types. One was Missy, the first girl that was missing, the second was the blonde girl that was kidnapped from school that day, and the third matched Mike. No bodies were found even after digging up a lot of the basement floor and checking the land around the house.
Sarah and her children went back to Chicago and never returned to the old rock house. No one ever heard from Mike again but Sarah knows that he and Uncle Silas are still in that house; trapped there like the rest of the ghosts that walk the hallways.
Epilogue
There was an investigation concerning what happened to the two kidnapped girls and Mike. Sarah was tried for the murders but the juries could not convict her because all the evidence was circumstantial and it was proven that the days the children were kidnapped Sarah was working at the food bank, so she had solid alibis.
Sarah now lives in Illinois with her two children Teddy and Mary. Mary sometimes misses the little boy who would come into her room at night. Unfortunately for Teddy, Uncle Silas is still a part of his life; since moving back to Chicago he has been plagued with night terrors and other sleeping disorders and is now regularly seeing a child psychologist.
The Red Light Page 6
