by Mark Lukens
“Here,” Kristen told him. “Take this.” She picked up the lantern from the floor and handed it to him. The thought of making her way back to Shane through the darkness sent shivers of fear through her body, but it was only through the foyer—she would hopefully see the light from their base of operations from there.
If they left a light on for Shane, she thought. Or if Shane is even there.
But she pushed those thoughts away.
“Hurry,” Warren said and then he was running up the stairs.
Kristen didn’t hesitate; she turned and bolted through the darkness, her hands out in front of her as she ran. Even though it was dark, she could still make her way through the vast ballroom. A flash of lightning lit up the sky outside and she saw the room for enough of a moment to see the archway to the foyer.
Once in the foyer, Kristen saw the faint glow from a lantern coming from the archway that led to the dining hall. She ran past the stack of drywall and heap of equipment stuffed into the corner. For a second she thought she sensed something moving in the darkness near the front door, something running towards her, ready to intercept her before she could make it to the base of operations.
Just keep running, she told herself. Her mind was a buzzing nest of static right now as everything shut down for a moment except the physical need to survive.
She made it to the dining hall, and she ran towards the lone lantern on the floor near the computer tables. She saw Shane tied up on the floor, vigorously trying to escape.
“Shane, it’s me,” she told him as she crouched down beside him to help.
Shane rolled over onto his side to give her access to his bound hands. The cloth strip around his wrists was already a little loose, and she thought that if he would’ve had ten more minutes he might have gotten himself free. His skin was sweaty and warm, and she figured his wrists were pretty raw from his struggles. Hers were, too.
“We need to help Laura,” Shane said as soon as he was free.
“I know, but we need to help Warren and Nigel first.”
He froze. “What’s wrong?”
“I untied Warren and he untied me. But Nigel is still upstairs in Room 214. Warren said there’s somebody … or something up there with him.”
She saw the confusion on Shane’s face.
“Warren went up there to help Nigel,” she said. “He told me to get you and bring you back with me. You would know what to do.”
Shane nodded like he understood. “We need to grab the lantern and another flashlight. Some cartons of salt … as many as we you carry.”
Kristen did as Shane instructed, she grabbed an extra flashlight and two cartons of salt. Shane had two lanterns and another flashlight. They ran out of the dining hall and into the foyer, and then to the ballroom. Shane led the way with the lanterns and flashlight, the lights bouncing around in the darkness as they ran.
They rushed up the stairs and then down the hall to Room 214. The door was wide open, a glow shining out from the doorway from Warren’s lantern. And before they even got inside, Kristen heard the sounds of commotion from the room, shouts of alarm and grunts of struggle.
Shane bolted inside the room first, with Kristen right behind him.
As soon as she was inside the room, Kristen froze as she stared at the horrible sight across the room.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Kristen felt the flashlight and the cartons of salt slip from her fingers as the strength rushed out of her body. The flashlight landed on the floor with a thud … luckily it didn’t break. The two cartons of salt rolled away into the darkness. From Shane’s two lanterns and his flashlight, there was plenty of light to see that Warren was holding on to Nigel’s legs, trying to keep him out of the hole in the wall. Something big and dark was crammed inside that hole, some kind of person, and he was pulling on Nigel’s body, trying to drag him all the way inside.
“Help me!” Warren yelled at them.
Shane was across the room in seconds, dropping his lanterns and flashlight down on the floor to free up his hands. He grabbed on to Nigel’s body, pulling on it.
Kristen watched in horror. For a split second this reminded her of yesterday when Warren had been trying to wrestle the metal clipboard out from inside the hole, only now he was trying to wrestle a person out of the hole. And that hole seemed so much bigger now, so much deeper, as it tried to swallow Nigel alive.
“The salt!” Shane yelled at Kristen. “Get the salt!”
Kristen jumped, fully alert now.
“Kristen, pour the salt into the hole!” Shane told her.
Kristen looked down at the floor and saw the flashlight, but she didn’t see the containers of salt. They had rolled away. She grabbed the flashlight and panned the beam of light around until she saw one of the cartons of salt.
“Hurry!” Shane yelled. “Once he gets him inside these walls we’ll never get him back!”
Kristen darted over to the carton of salt and picked it up from the floor. She tore the tab away from the top of the container as she ran across the room to Shane, Warren, and Nigel. She got to the hole and shook the container of salt at it, shaking salt at the hole, the salt sifting down onto Shane and Warren and Nigel. She thrusted her hand into the hole and poured the salt into the darkness, afraid that something in there was going to let go of Nigel and grab her hand. She found herself yelling at the hole, her words coming from a place of anger deep inside of her that she never knew she had. “Take that, you son of a bitch!”
Shane and Warren fell back in a rush with Nigel, all of them collapsing into a heap on the floor. Nigel was out of the hole now, his head hitting the floor with a solid thump on the way out.
A long arm clothed in tattered black cloth reached out of the hole, a gigantic pale hand trying to grab Nigel one last time.
Kristen was frozen for a moment as she stood beside the hole, watching the arm flail around, searching for Nigel. She poured the rest of the salt right onto the thing’s hand. The arm shot back inside the hole.
Shane and Warren dragged Nigel away from the hole, all the way to the middle of the floor.
Nigel stared up at the ceiling, breathing hard, his eyes wide with shock. He had scratches all over his face, nothing too deep, but those wounds were probably just the beginning of what had been coming for him once he got all the way inside that wall.
Warren worked furiously at the strip of cloth tied around Nigel’s wrists and then practically tore the strip of cloth off of Nigel’s ankles. Nigel wasted no time pulling the rag out of his mouth once his hands were free.
Shane picked up the other container of salt that Kristen had dropped earlier and tore the tab off the top. “That thing’s going to come out of that hole again.”
He rushed over to the hole in the wall. Nothing lurked inside the hole that Kristen could see, but she heard a hissing noise coming from somewhere deep inside, like a giant coiled-up snake. The salt hadn’t driven it away completely, whatever it was, but it had hurt it for a moment.
Shane dashed more salt into the hole, and then he poured a thick line of salt in front of the hole on the floor in a semi-circle … a barrier to keep the thing inside. He dropped the empty container on the floor and hurried back to them in the middle of the room beside Kristen, Nigel, and Warren.
Everything was quiet for a moment except for the storm still raging outside.
“What was that thing in there?” Kristen asked Nigel.
“An old childhood friend,” he answered. Then he patted himself down like a man looking for a pack of cigarettes, a sudden expression of fear on his face like he’d lost something. Then he smiled as he pulled his flask out of his pocket. “I really need this right now.”
“What do we do now?” Warren said.
“What do you mean, what do we do now?” Nigel said, practically spitting the last swallow of his whiskey out. “We get the hell out of this place, that’s what we do now.”
“Not without Laura,” Shane said.
Nigel sighed l
ike he had forgotten all about Laura.
Shane looked at Nigel. “I understand if you don’t want to go after her. You can get the chain off the front gate so we can all get out of here once I have Laura. There’s got to be a pair of bolt cutters or a hacksaw in those tools down there to cut the chain with.”
Nigel didn’t answer. He took another swig of his whiskey. The flask sounded nearly empty now.
Shane looked at Kristen. “I understand if you don’t want to go with me, too. You can help Nigel if you want to.”
“I have to try and get my uncle back,” she told him.
“I’ll help Nigel with the gate,” Warren said. “Then I’ll come down there with you.”
“What about those … those things outside the fence?” Kristen asked. “How are we going to get past them once we open the gates?”
Shane nodded like he’d forgotten about them. And then his eyes lit up. “We don’t have to get past them. We just need to let them inside.”
“Inside?”
“Yeah.” He looked at Kristen. “I think you’re right, those things are the ghosts or zombies of the slaves, workers, and eventually the fishermen that the Thornhills lured here. The fence … it keeps them out because it’s made of iron. Magnetized iron, I suspect. But if we open the gate and cover the threshold with something … a poor conductor like wood, then they could cross the line and come inside.”
“We could all work on getting the gates open,” Warren said. “And then we could all go down there and get Laura back together. I don’t think we should split up right now. You said before that we shouldn’t split up.”
“We need to get my uncle, too,” Kristen said. “I need to try to talk some sense into him.”
“I think it’s a little late for that,” Nigel said, rubbing the raw marks on his wrists as if to show her proof of his words.
“I know I said we shouldn’t split up, but now I don’t think we have a lot of time,” Shane said and then the house shuddered around them, the wood creaking and popping louder than ever. It seemed like an answer to Shane’s observation. “I think it’s better if we split up right now.” He looked at Nigel and Warren. “You guys work on cutting the chain off the fence and finding some kind of wood to lay down over the opening, but wait at least ten minutes before you open the gates—give me time to get down into the basement and find Laura before you let those … those things in here. And, another thing you need to do before you open the gates is to make sure you make a circle of salt for each of you to stand inside of. I don’t think the dead out there would do anything to you—I think they want the Thornhills—but there’s no sense in taking any chances.”
Warren nodded. “Okay. I’ll help Nigel. But then I want to come down there and help you.”
Shane nodded. “Hopefully by then I’ll be on my way back up with Laura.”
“I’m going with you,” Kristen told Shane.
“Kristen …” he began.
“No,” she snapped at him, cutting his words off. “He’s my uncle. I know he’s turned into a crazy man. I know his mind has been warped either by his disease, or by this house, but he’s still my uncle, and I’m going to make him come back with us somehow.”
“Nothing’s going to make that man see reason,” Nigel said.
“What about Billy?” Warren asked Shane. “He’s probably with them.”
“He’s going to have to come back with us or he can stay here.”
“What if he tries to stop you? He might have a gun too.”
“I’m sure I can take him if I have to,” Shane said. “I’ll find something in the tools to take with me … some kind of weapon. At least we’ll have surprise on our side.”
Just then something pounded against the longer wall of the room … whatever was inside the hole—the thing that had been trying to pull Nigel inside—it was pounding on the wall from the inside. The wall buckled out, the plaster cracking and dust falling, the being inside threatening to burst through the wall.
“Come on,” Shane said. “We need to hurry.”
They rushed out of the room and down the stairs.
In the foyer, Kristen and Shane ran over to the pile of tools in the corner as Nigel and Warren looked through the stacks of materials.
Shane found a screwdriver and stuck it into his back pocket. “Better than nothing,” he told Kristen. “Wait right here,” he told her. “I’m going to get some more cartons of salt.” He was running towards the dining hall before she could say anything.
Warren stood a piece of plywood up on end near the front doors while Nigel walked over to Kristen and the pile of tools.
“Where’s he going?” Nigel asked.
“To get some cartons of salt.”
“Or maybe going down there on his own,” Nigel said.
Kristen’s breath caught in her throat—she hadn’t thought about that. She was almost ready to run after Shane when she heard him coming back from the darkness, the weak beam of light roaming back and forth in front of him.
Kristen turned towards the pile of tools and spotted a black rubber-coated handle. “There,” she said. “That looks like a hacksaw.”
Nigel pulled the hacksaw out of the clutter. It wasn’t a huge saw but it looked like it would do the job.
“You two know what to do?” Shane asked them as he handed Nigel the two containers of salt he had with him.
“Yes,” Warren said, taking one of the containers. “Now go get Laura back.”
Another tremor shook the house; this was the strongest one yet. It almost knocked Kristen off balance. Something snapped inside the far wall—it sounded like the wood studs were breaking in half.
“Look,” Warren said.
Kristen shined her flashlight beam at the wall across from them. A crack ran along the wall as more wood snapped inside. Plaster dust rained down all around them. They could even hear the chandelier in the base of operations tinkling from the vibrations.
“This house isn’t going to last too much longer,” Warren said. “These tremors are leading up to an actual earthquake.”
Shane nodded and he looked at Kristen. “You ready?
She nodded back at him. She was as ready as she would ever be.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Nigel watched Shane and Kristen dart into the base of operations, disappearing into the darkness, the lights from their flashlights getting dimmer and dimmer the deeper they went.
Nigel held the hacksaw and one of the two cartons of salt in his hands. Warren picked up the large piece of plywood with the other carton of salt cradled under his arm. They stepped out onto the front porch.
They stood there for a moment on the porch as the rain poured down outside. In the distance the shapes of dozens of people moved around in the darkness beyond the fence.
“You ready for this?” Warren asked Nigel.
He gave a solemn nod.
“Do you believe in ghosts now?”
Nigel didn’t answer. He took his metal flask out of his coat pocket and opened it. He drank the rest of the whiskey down in a few swallows then screwed the lid back on. He tucked the flask back down inside his suitcoat pocket—he was ready to go now.
They walked out into the rain and wind, marching down the wide walkway of stone pavers. They were soaked within minutes, their clothes sticking to their skin. They passed by the tilted and moldy concrete fountain. The tiers of the fountain were overflowing with rainwater, yet even with all the rainwater the water in the fountain was still black and Nigel swore he saw small eel-like creatures swimming around in the muck.
Nigel couldn’t believe what had happened here at the Thornhill Manor. He couldn’t believe what he’d seen tonight up in Room 214, the Tall Man, the nightmare from his childhood, coming back to life. And he’d almost been pulled inside the walls by the Tall Man … by that thing, almost buried inside that house forever. For a moment, while his head was inside the wall, he’d caught a glimpse of their world. A strange light that was only perceptible ou
t of the corner of his eye stretched off for what seemed like miles into the gloom inside that wall. The air had felt different in there too, colder and thicker, like it was a weighted blanket pressing down on him. He had noticed a metallic taste on his tongue, like he was sucking on a spoon. A rushing wind had howled in his ears. It was a different world in there, such a fundamentally different place that his mind couldn’t understand it, a different plane of existence.
But Nigel pushed those thoughts and images from his mind as he walked away from the Thornhill Manor. Right now he focused on their task; he could try to understand everything he had seen and felt here later … if he lived through this. The farther he walked outside in the rain and humid air, the clearer his mind felt. The more distance he put between himself and the Thornhill Manor the more he fell back into the familiar ruts and patterns of explaining supernatural occurrences away with rational explanations. He thought of the invisible poisonous gasses escaping from the earth underneath the manor (another reason to get out of this place—maybe the best reason of all). Maybe they were all seeing hallucinations from those gasses. It wasn’t that hard to believe; it wasn’t any more improbable than believing he’d seen an imaginary childhood bogeyman. Maybe in his hallucinatory delirium he had wriggled across the room and pushed himself inside the hole in the wall. Maybe they were all having mass hallucinations, seeing what others saw through the power of suggestion. And now, through that power of suggestion and being poisoned by toxic gasses, they were all seeing the same hallucinations. Or maybe he was the only one … who knew what the others were really seeing? How could he really know? He could only see things through his own eyes, experience reality through his own perception.
It was just a mass hallucination, he told himself as he marched through the driving rain towards the gate, the spikes on the top pointing up at the night sky that was now a low ceiling of constantly swirling storm clouds.
It’s just a hallucination, he repeated to himself like a mantra as he and Warren stepped up to the massive gates, the new chain with the gold padlock coiled around the bars like a metal snake.
