by catt dahman
She hoped Tim held her hand soon.
At Al’s house, they climbed out of the van, laughing. Al’s house was huge, beautiful, and already filled with some kids from school who cheered when Al came in. They all had beer or glasses of various liquors, and the scent of pot was thick in the house. Music thumped.
Everyone smiled at Lisa and said they were glad she was there.
“Wow, you’re really here,” A boy muttered with a grin.
Lisa shrugged, “Sure I am.”
Al turned the music down.
“Now, I am really please you all could be here. For all the doubters, I want you to rethink and admit, some of us are far more talented than you’ll ever be,” Al said.
“What’s he talking about?” Lisa asked.
“Shhhh,” Judy said, “Listen.”
“For best supporting actress, we have a tie: Trish and Tammy. Best supporting actors: Me, Steve, and Dustin.”
Some of the kids cheered.
“Best actress on Earth award goes to Judy.”
Al handed her a half-empty bottle of vodka that she held up like a statue award. With fake shock, she gushed, “I can’t tell you what this means to me. While it was difficult, I can’t thank you enough for this opportunity.”
Lisa didn’t understand.
“For best actor, this award goes to Tim , because he really had to work hard on his demeanor and…his gag reflex.” Al handed the Vodka bottle to Tim who opened it and took a long drink. Everyone in the room cheered and laughed hard.
“I’m lost,” Lisa said. Something about not understanding the jokes made Lisa’s stomach feel fluttery and nervous. What were they talking about? Why did everyone understand, except for her? Even Tim, from out of town was in-the-know.
“I give you…the Whore of Miller’s Trailer Park!” Al yelled. He pointed at Lisa. Everyone cheered, clapped, and laughed. Someone snapped a picture.
Judy was grasping Tammy’s arm and laughing so hard that tears ran down her cheeks as she pointed, too.
“What is going on?” Lisa asked. Her face flamed as dread filled her and her stomach flipped again.
“You made the greatest show of all time, Lisa. Congratulations. This was the funniest gag of all time,” Steve called out.
“Gag? We’re friends…what…why are you….” Lisa couldn’t find the words. He was confused, her face was red, and she felt ill. Was she again the butt of a joke, the biggest joke of all time? Was she losing her new friends? Worse, was she going back to being a nobody again? Was it all fake?
“Friends? With you?” Tammy giggled madly.
“You should see her trailer. Her dad sits around watching game shows and drinking and he was in his underwear! It’s a pig sty and Lisa’s closet is like a Salvation Army place with worn out clothes and look what she’s wearing and the make-up….” Judy could hardly speak for laughing, “That stuff was two for a dollar.”
Lisa caught her reflection in a mirror. Her skirts was much too short and her top was too tight. She did look like a slut. She was embarrassed. Her face was caked with cosmetics. She looked ridiculous and like a cheap street walker.
“Like mother, like daughter,” someone called.
Tears burst from Lisa’s eyes. She could hardly breathe as her chest tightened; she wanted to vomit but was frozen in place.
“You get it now? Oh hell, the look on your face,” Al roared with laughter. “The girls had the worst end of this but this is the best gag we’ve ever pulled and I want thank you all for the support.”
“It was the least boring week of school ever,” A girl cheered.
“You’re all horrible people,” Lisa said. She was going to run away or something, but she was never going back to the school. No one could make her. If she could, she would shoot them all right here. Without that option, she walked to the door and ignored the jeering and cat-calls. Had anyone tried to stop her, she would have fought them. She walked down the long driveway, but hearing the door open to the house, and afraid they would follow her, she cut to the side and, kicking off her shoes, ran barefoot across the lawn and into the woods.
No one followed her, and the pine needles on the ground provided a decent trail until she hit a field, knowing just where she was. The Kingsborough House was just ahead and that was a popular place for tourists. Once there, Lisa could call home and if Frank were sober, he might come pick her up, but if not, she could call her mama and wait for the café to close.
Lisa stopped a few minutes to finish crying. She kind of wondered if she would ever stop crying. Giving her something and taking it away was far worse than had she never known having friends and popularity; it was beyond cruelty. Maybe she’d wake up and this was only a nightmare.
She noticed, as she walked, she had lost the path, but she knew where she was headed, so she didn’t stop going. Her feet were sore from stones and sticks and they bled but she didn’t worry; her eyes ached from crying and she had a dim headache.
Lisa felt as if someone hit her in the head, but blinked, trying to figure out why, all at once her head pounded, pine needles and weeds were all in her face, and she was trapped. One of her arms was up around her neck, as if she were lying against her forearm, but the other was hurting, and while she could move her fingers, her arm was stuck. She was stick. Turning her head made her chin suddenly snap on the ground.
Wiggling her feet, she felt nothing at all.
In horror, she realized she had fallen into a hole and only her head and an arm were above the hole; her chest felt smashed but her ample breasts were keeping her stuck in the hole. From the way her legs swung free, she was glad that she was stuck because the hole might be very deep. She tried to grab for the ground, but her shoulder gave and Lisa had one last look at the star-filled night sky just before she fell a half dozen feet, landing on a hard surface.
For a few seconds, she was so glad it wasn’t a deep hole, that she sat there, scared out of her mind, but grateful to be alive.
Lisa wasted several more seconds screaming with fury and frustration; this night was already so horrible that she couldn’t believe bad things kept happening. What had she ever done to deserve a night like this? It smelled badly down here and her head throbbed, but she didn’t seem to be injured, so she got to her feet to see what her situation was and how to get out.
It was dark. It dawned on Lisa that no one knew where she was, and those who knew she went across the woods and forest didn’t care, anyway, so unless she figured out how to get out of the hole, she might be stuck for a few days. It didn’t cross her mind, yet, that she could die down there.
Lisa slipped on suddenly sloping ground and went rolling and sliding, screaming the entire way. Pebbles and rough ground cut and scraped her skin away as her head banged around. She cried again, this time with pure agony; her hand felt as if it were on fire and she clasped it to her chest and broken bones made her screech.
“Please, help me,” she said aloud. She didn’t know if it were a prayer or just that she was going crazy.
She got back to her feet, wincing with pain, and took a few steps.
When she took the third step, her feet stepped into mid-air and she fell again, this time, a long way down, screaming until she was knocked out by a hard landing that snapped her ankle and wrist.
She didn’t know she was unconscious until daybreak, but awoke to a world of pain, sick to see she wasn’t in a nice, clean hospital bed but in a stinky, horrible place where every broken bones, cut, scrape, and bruise had a loud personality. She dimly wondered how she could hurt so badly and still be alive. Thinking about her misery made her realize how thirsty she was and that became a new agony for her.
Sounds made her turn her head a little. Lisa was afraid it might be a rat, but it was too big and she heard muttering. The sounds were fully human and she wept with relief, “Thank you. Please help me.”
The noise was closer.
Lisa wondered how they found her and wished they would hurry and get her out and hooke
d up with some pain relieving medicine. Time was going by slowly as she waited, wondering why they weren’t using flashlights, but she was too tired to ask. The calmer feelings remained until she felt a hand grasp her broken hand, fingers, and wrist; whoever it was suddenly jerked Lisa and she shrieked. Another hand yanked at her by her broken ankle making her scream again, but it didn’t stop. Hands, tipped with what felt like razored claws, continued to pull at her even when she tried to fight back.
It was Lisa’s worst night ever. Her heart and bones had been broken, her skin was torn, she felt hopeless and alone, but all of that was nothing compared to what was coming. She wouldn’t have believed it could be worse if she had been told. She couldn’t imagine greater pain until the first set of teeth sank into her calf.
Lisa never went back to the high school, never had to deal with her stepfather again, never faced the mean kids, never heard gossip, and never understood where she was. Although she was reported missing and her mother looked for her for a few days, everyone assumed Lisa ran away, and no one really cared.
The entire was unimportant but for one interesting thing: Judy’s older sister ended up in approximately the same place two years later, proof that everything in life is connected.
Chapter One: The House
“With the history of our house, I’d think it would be haunted. I’m excited about staying at a real haunted house,” Vivian said as watched for road signs that would direct them to the resort-house they planned to stay at until her husband, Sheriff Virgil McLendon, solved the mysteries concerning vanishings and wild stories about the home.
“You don’t really think it’s haunted, do you?” Virgil asked with total seriousness. He didn’t believe in the supernatural, but admitted that his belief didn’t validate reality. He was curious. His wife was level-headed, but she might think such a thing was possible, and if she did, he wished to understand.
“No. Well. I think something creepy is going on that no one can explain yet. But that doesn’t mean it’s supernatural. I know there has to be a logical reason for people to vanish in the house, as in maybe they just run away or get hopelessly lost and trapped, but the sheer amount of vanishings…hundreds over the past ninety five years…It sounds impossible that no one has figured out what is going on.”
“They’ve tried. Maybe they didn’t look at it the right way or maybe it’s one of those things that has no answer.”
“Everything has an answer,” she said, making him laugh.
“So I always say, but Viv, this has been investigated a lot.”
“Why not close the damned thing? I can’t believe they have a bed and breakfast there and tours, and people keep going missing or are found dead. Why would anyone pay to go spend the night there?” The idea was silly to her. It was if someone wanted to enter a lion’s cage, knowing it was potentially lethal, but then she had done her share of foolish things as well.
“Maybe that’s the draw. They are tempting fate, don’t believe the facts, and think it’s a clever gimmick, or they don’t think it can be them who vanishes or dies.”
Vivian rolled her eyes, “Still…it’s not safe and people pay for this. It’s crazy. I saw the prices on the brochure and it’s expensive and it’s set up so people want to stay a full ten days. I would never pay that much to stay in a place that might make me vanish.”
Virgil laughed, “And yet, we’re going to stay there.”
“Well, yes, because you took this case, but I don’t know I would want to stay there otherwise. What if you vanish?” It was her worst fear. She loved Vigil and couldn’t imagine a life without him, yet he always took dangerous cases, like the deadly case that brought them together to meet. Had he not been working on that case, and had she not volunteered to search for a missing child, she would never have met her husband.
“First, you’ve seen the pictures. It’s an amazing house, beautiful, interesting, and a real challenge for me. As for me vanishing…I sure don’t intend to, but then, if I did vamish, I would have it solved, right? I’d find a way to get unvanished and come explain.”
Vivian laughed with him.
She smiled, “Why did you take this case? You turn down almost all that you are asked to look into.” He was a full-time sheriff and didn’t have time to accept many others, but once in a while, a case fascinated him and he accepted.
Only a year before, Virgil found himself as lead sheriff and in charge of solving one of the most brutal crimes waves to ever hit the United States that involved murdered children. With no clues, he was left to try his unusual ideas of “profiling” a possible suspect, and reading a crime scene so that it told a story, which was such a strange concept, that most in law enforcement who heard about his style, openly laughed. The sheriff he trained under laughed, too. As he worked on that first case, alone, as the lead lawman, it wasn’t easy, and the death toll was high through no fault of Virgil; his unorthodox methods not only solved the crime but caught the attention of the FBI in a positive way.
He was frequently asked to teach his methods now and to solve “unsolvable cases”, but being the sheriff of his own town and with his family was his first priority; he accepted only a few speaking engagements, ones that made him a nervous wreck, but that would reach the most law officials. He wanted to share his tactics if people wished to learn them and somehow, they did help with the cases that seemed impossible to crack.
As for cases, he simply couldn’t drop everything and go work on the other crimes, but he felt a camaraderie with Special Agent Mason Lord of the FBI, and tended to accept those cases when Mason asked favors. In California, Virgil helped Mason Lord and the Sierra Blanco Sheriff’s department find a heartless killer who tortured and murdered over sixty men while; Virgil also solved a case for the military police, on the side.
Most recently, he and Vivian solved a case for Agent Lord that involved staying in an institute for the criminally insane, and finding a secret worth killing for; it was a secret that could potentially rewrite American history. It was also a case that tested Virgil’s limits as he was faced with brutal insanity and murderers that he tried to pity but felt disgusted by as he delved far into the world of mental insanity.
“I think it’s the same as you said…it’s pretty exciting to try to figure out the secrets of a haunted house, but it’s not just haunted, it’s a place where people go missing forever.”
“In a way, that is haunted, right there. Haunted is when we don’t understand and hang on to the questions. Maybe,” She shrugged.
“The inability to let go,” he tested the words.
Vivian shrugged, “Maybe they intend to disappear. Maybe people go there, and use that as a way to run away and get away from bad marriages or debt.”
“I could buy that for one or two, but not for the children or the rest. There have been several hundred who have vanished….” Virgil stopped talking as they drew within sight of the Kingsborough House.
Built in the 1800s, it was a discordant, rambling mansion of Victorian style with parts built with of a dark fieldstone, a reddish brick imported from New England, and creamy-white, painted wood. The original parts harmonized, but because so many wings, floors, turrets, balconies, and glass-covered areas had been added for years, the result was over-whelming. Some parts soared five to seven stories high, turrets rose seven to eight stories, and some spots were left at only two stories in height.
With so many elements to take in, it was like a sensory overload when trying to look at the house. Virgil felt his eyes jumping around as he looked over the house; it wasn’t possible to take it in as a whole, because certain parts fought to dominate. If a house ever looked haunted, it was this one. It didn’t look like a nice place and no doubt tourists were thrilled to have the spine-chilling feelings upon first sight.
“The gardens are pretty at least,” Vivian said,” This house hurts my eyes…there is way too much detailing to take in and it’s…well, Virg, it feels like a mean house. Doesn’t it look…hateful?”
“Yes, but our house is a good house. It just had bad water,” Vivian said, “Okay, it was built by bad people and lived in by bad ones, but…it’s just a house. Right?” She shivered, “Now I don’t know what I think.”
Flowering pear trees, crepe myrtles and old red bud trees filled the lawns alongside sweeping magnolias; rock lined flower beds over flowed with pink azaleas, gardenias and hundreds of types of roses. There were persimmon, lemon, orange, wild plum, walnut, pecan, peach, and pear trees that always filled out with fruit and nuts that the managers carefully crated and sold to guests. Gardeners also harvested all kinds of berries and herbs, and filled vases with roses of every color.
Vivian did like seeing all the fruit trees and roses. The grounds smelled wonderful as the gardenias and honey-suckled added to the fragrance, combining with herbs like rosemary, lavender, lemon balm, and others to make a harmonious scent. She was envious of the citrus fruits, but knew that the grounds men had to use heaters, even in this fairly warm climate to grow those here.
Stone, life-sized statues of Greek gods and goddesses, waterfalls, and sweeping emerald lawns lined a fieldstone driveway and walk. The rest of the acreage was allowed to grow into a sort of forest with enormous, old trees and cascades of wisteria that cast a bluish-purple background for the estate. There were a few nature trails in the woods, but visitors were strictly ordered to remain on the trails to prevent snakebites, poison ivy, and other injuries.
