The house was not in perfect shape. It had been without life for too long to keep itself pristine. There was a faint smell of rat droppings but not as strong as Tom expected. The air was still and oh, so very cold in the deep dark heart of the place. He wasn’t sure past the eyeholes in his hockey mask, but he thought he could see Larry’s breath as he exhaled past his batman cowl.
Sam honked out a breath and then took a deep sucking gasp off his asthma pumper. Tom managed not to let out a shriek, but it took a lot of effort.
They looked around the barren living room for several moments. It wasn’t really empty. There were still pieces of furniture, end tables and bookshelves and a rolled up rug along one wall, but everything else had been taken. The rumors that the house was still full of furniture weren’t quite true. But there was enough left to hide a hundred monsters if Tom had to guess; enough, surely, to make his nerves moan.
“Let’s go. Come on. I don’t wanna be here all night.” It had been Larry’s idea, but he didn’t seem so psyched about hanging out in a haunted house any more.
They settled on the ground with the unconscious grace that only children and contortionists are allowed to share, disturbing the thin layer of dust that painted everything in the house, and Larry opened his Ouija board’s box with a flourish. The old board had been his mom’s before it had been his and the edges of the cheap cardboard were stained with dust and mildew. That just made it seem more authentic in Tom’s eyes.
“So, who are we calling on?” Sam’s voice shook, but the gasping quality was gone.
Tom opened his mouth to answer and realized he had no idea. He turned toward Larry.
“All of the Walkers. Any of the Walkers. Who else, dude? What other ghosts are there?” His voice was confident again, and as abrasive as ever. There was some comfort in that simple fact.
Tom started to speak a second time and let out a squeal instead as the flashlight he’d been holding in a death grip—hard enough that his hand ached from squeezing, though he was barely aware of it—was torn from his hand and thrown across the room. He watched the beam of light flip end over end into the darkness, saw bare floorboards and then the black soulless eye of a window that refused to send back a reflection of the light, and then the ceiling and then the wall and then the light exploded into darkness amid a tinkle of thin plastic.
“You trying to fucking kill me?” Larry’s voice was sharp and he’d used the F word, which was normally absolutely unthinkable, but at the moment Tom barely even noticed.
“I didn’t throw it! Someone took it from me!” Tom bristled. The light had never even come close to Larry, whose hand was clutching at his chest like he was afraid his heart would explode.
Sam scoffed. “You did too, I saw you! Well, you can’t have mine!” Sam’s voice was sounding mousy again and he’d pulled the sheet from his face and left it lowered, his eyes glassy in the glimmer from his flashlight. He waved the light like a sword. “You’re gonna have to walk home in the dark!”
Maybe he planned on saying something else; maybe he was done with his rant. Whatever the case, the light he’d been wielding soared away and skittered down the long hallway toward the back of the house. Long before it reached its destination the lens broke and the bulb beneath followed suit.
The Ouija board slithered across the ground and hissed along the hardwood floor as it vanished toward the back of the house. It’s possible that a group of adults would have discussed options, but the boys were only ten and they did exactly what they should have at their age. They panicked.
Larry stood up and held his light in both hands, trying to aim at every shadow at the same time. He let out a nervous moan that seemed to go on and on as Tom ran toward the door they’d used to enter the house and Sam let out a braying sob while he tried to pull himself into a ball on the ground.
The voices came from everywhere. The walls, the ceiling, the floor beneath his feet. As Tom clutched the doorknob and tried to twist it frantically to the left and the right without any success.
“Who are you? Why are you here? Did you want to play with us?” The words merged into a mass of sounds, young and old voices speaking over each other, a nearly meaningless cacophony.
Tom looked back toward his friends, his heart thudding madly and breaths lost in a cloud of panic. He could barely see Larry behind the flashlight’s erratic beam, but he could see Sam clearly enough. Sam was still curled in on himself, his hands over his head to ward off any possible blows—sometimes Sam had bruises and no one ever talked about them—his eyes were closed and his mouth was open in a breathless scream.
And then Sam flipped over onto his stomach and his left leg lifted high into the air. The impact was unexpected and Sam’s nose and chin smacked into the flooring hard enough to make him wince. His eyes flew wide and his hands left their place around his head as he started moving backward, dragged by the darkness toward the hallway.
“Larry!” Sam’s voice was loud and clear as he looked toward the remaining flashlight and the boy who held it. Larry trained the light on him and let out a sound that wasn’t at all like his normal voice, not at all calm or in control and this time around Tom found no comfort in that unsettling noise.
“Sam, what’s happening?” Larry’s voice shivered.
“Don’t let them get me! Don’t let them get me!” Sam’s hands clutched at the floorboards, fought to get a proper grip on the old wood, and failed. His skin squealed as he was yanked brutally backward, and his voice echoed the sentiment.
He vanished into the darkness of the long hallway. His scream did not peter out. It ended abruptly.
“No fair,” the voice whispered near Tom’s left ear. “No fair, Daddy always takes the best ones.”
Tom jumped away from the doorway as surely as he’d have backed away from an angry cobra. His skin felt cold and his heart, well, his heart was working as hard as a hummingbird’s. “Uhh.”
The light disappeared. Maybe it was taken away, maybe it was simply turned off. He had no idea. All he knew was that by the time he’d turned to where the light should have been, Larry was screaming. Not a little yelp of fright, but a wrenching bellow of terror that surely tore at vocal chords and left his throat bloody and raw.
Tom stood perfectly still and looked around wildly, wishing for more light, praying to somehow be allowed to see in the darkness.
His wishes and prayers were not answered favorably.
“Larry?” His voice was a gasp. He cleared his throat and tried a second time. “Sam?”
“They’re here with us now.” The voice belonged to a little girl, maybe his age, maybe even younger, it was hard to tell when he couldn’t see anyone.
Through the one window in his range he could see a faint glimmer of orange. The jack-o-lantern on the stoop of the Lambert house still flickered in the late night, despite the cold air and the strong breeze.
He took a trembling step toward the glow of the pumpkin’s light and a second later the darkness ate the light from the window completely. Tom froze, afraid to touch whatever might have blocked his view of the one window.
“I’m sorry.” He cried, tears stinging his eyes as they started down his face. “Please let me go. Please let me go. I want my mommy.” Because the words sounded too distant, he pulled off his Jason mask and gasped in the musty air. “I want my mommy.”
The voices kept talking, the words mixed into a twisting whisper of noises.
And then the first hand touched his face, feeling the features. Tom tried to back up, to recoil from the cold contact, but something pressed against him from behind. More hands, perhaps, or just maybe a wall. He couldn’t tell for sure.
Cold hands touched his face again, cupped the back of his head and forced him to look up, into the darkness that buried any hint of light or the outside world.
“Shhhh. Your mommy isn’t here. But I am. We are. We’ve been waiting for you. All of you. We have been so alone.” The voice was kind, the words meant to be loving, but the
hands of ice that held his face stole away any possible warmth. “We are always so alone.”
Tom tried to scream but the hands that held his head were not alone and cold fingers covered his mouth before he could utter another sound.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
The Walker Place
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
The Walker Place
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
The Walker Place
The Walker Place: A Short Story Page 2
