*****
First, John imagined what was behind this door at the end of the hallway...well, tried to anyways but he could not turn up anything useful. Just after the little girl at the top of the stairs and the howls and that feeling of being watched, he wasn’t content with taking chances on going into an unknown room blindly. Of course, he must do so anyways since his mind drew a blank.
He attempted to reassure himself some. He told himself: There is nothing there...or here. And in just a few more minutes—he looked briefly to his watch, 9:26 p.m.—nine minutes...I’ll be safely back at the entrance, at the fountain with Eric, swapping stories.
He twisted the knob and pushed inward as softly and slowly as possible, even lifting up on the door itself a little in the process, trying to prevent it from creaking. He wanted to maintain the element of surprise, even though he repeatedly told himself there was nothing or no one to surprise. However, the door creaked eerily and noisily.
John peeked around the door, holding his breath. It was simply just a small, empty room. Really, it was just some sort of extension of the hallway. A steel swinging door lay straight ahead. Another smaller wooden door was located to his right. No more portraits, though, and he viewed that as a good sign. He wasn’t sure if he could handle anymore portraits.
He presumed the steel door led into the kitchen. And why not? He had only seen these particular types of doors leading to kitchens, only in restaurants, though. But he also imagined this kitchen ran like a restaurant: full staff, order anything you wanted, and of course, receive the utmost courtesy and prompt service as possible. He would check it later.
He also had an observation of what lay beyond the other door as well. The dining room. What else would possibly be this close to the kitchen? He headed towards the wooden door first. He twisted the knob and pushed inward. Of course, it creaked open. By now, he didn’t expect anything else.
Amidst the creaking, the steel door behind him began to open. John peeked his head in through the crack between the wooden door and its frame and flicked the switch just to his right. As the lone light above the dining room table fluttered on (another chandelier, these people were obsessed with chandeliers), a small boy appeared from beyond the steel door.
The boy was dressed in a tuxedo, most likely a church outfit. The white button down shirt beneath the tuxedo jacket was stained red. The collar of the jacket appeared darker than the rest. A gaping hole stood out in his throat where his Adam's apple was supposed to be. A distraught, vengeful sneer occupied his face.
John, still completely oblivious to the figure lurking behind him felt the feeling of being watched return (just not nearly as strong as before). He took a step into the dining room. The little boy took a step closer as well.
The room appeared ordinary compared to the standards set forth by the rest of the manor. It was without a doubt a dining room. Three chairs sat to each side of the table, one at each end. Placemats rested on the table in front of each chair. Silverware—a butter-knife, a spoon, and two forks of different sizes—laid out perfectly on each mat. A plate—top of the line, fine China, of course—and a saucer of the same design sat on the mats as well. Two glasses sat on coasters in front of each of the placemats. A portrait of the entire Cahill family in their Sundays’ Best hung on the wall behind each end of the table.
John ventured even further into the room. The little boy crept closer as well, never making a sound. The feeling of being watched grew stronger, but he ignored it. Why not? There were more portraits in here after all. Family portraits. He was paranoid…that’s it.
A large brick fireplace sat to the right. Of course, another family portrait rested in the center of the mantle nestled between two porcelain Jesus figurines.
John walked over to the table. A beautiful vase acted as the centerpiece. A dozen or so dead and wilted flowers draped over each side of the vase. He imagined it had once been an exquisite dozen of roses that occupied the vase and now just a—
“AAAAAAGGGHHHHH!”
*****
Eric bent over even further, until his head disappeared beneath the television, to examine the find. It was a DVD. Not a single parcel of dirt or dust had tainted it, which by Eric’s standards could only mean one thing. Someone watched it recently. But who? This house had been abandoned for several years now. He flipped it over:
RAYMOND’S BIRTH
Raymond, he thought. He did not recall a Cahill child named Raymond. No matter how odd it seemed, somewhere deep, down inside, he just could not shake the feeling Raymond was—or had been—a Cahill; mostly because of one question, and one question alone: Why would the Cahills keep a DVD of someone else’s child’s birth in their home?
They wouldn’t, he quickly answered his own question. This was the only thing even remotely resembling a modest answer, but he began deducing anyways.
There was Gregory Cahill, the twins—
(what were their names again?)
—Isabella and Annabella, Tiffany, Deanna, and of course, Jeff, Jr. Who was Raymond? Raymond made seven. There were only six. He found himself counting the children repeatedly, coming up with six each time. He dug even further into his own memory bank but could not remember having seen a seventh child in any of the portraits lining the hallway. He hadn’t taken too much notice of the portraits, true enough, but surely he would have noticed an unfamiliar face, a seventh child.
Eric made himself comfortable by collapsing into a sitting position, Indian-style with his legs crossed, folded, and tucked, rather than crouching as he initially did. His head lingered right beside one of the speakers on the television set. All of a sudden, the television switched on. The volume set to MAX. Speakers all around the room, including the ones on the television itself and the two sitting next to the CD player boomed out.
“C’mon, Raymond,” an innocent sounding, motherly voice boomed sweetly out of the speakers.
“AAAAAAGGGHHHHH!” Eric screamed as loud as possible as he fell backwards to the surface of the hardwood floor.
“Walk to Momma, honey” was the last thing he heard before the world around him faded to black.
The scream echoed throughout the entire manor.
“Eric!” John mumbled frightfully as he shifted immediately towards the door, bumping his hip on the corner of the dining room table and knocking over the vase in the process. Dingy, murky and smelly water spilled out across the table, soaking into the finely knitted tablecloth before dripping off onto the floor.
Outside of the dining room, the little boy, who made his own way across the extension of the hallway to the dining room door, reached out and eased the door shut, still avoiding making any noise whatsoever.
John tugged frantically at the handle. Nothing. It’s locked. No, that wasn’t right. He had not locked it. Then what? Maybe it’s stuck. But he hadn’t confronted any problems with opening it on his way in. Someone is holding it...from the other side. That was impossible, though. But something was definitely preventing it from opening once more, and he doubted if it was merely a catch from the house shifting over the years.
“No! No! No! Please, no!” he cried out. He jerked. Pushed it. Pulled it. Kicked it. Punched it.
Tears fell freely down both of his cheeks as he spit out, “Please, let it open.”
He tried the handle once more, and finally, it pushed open. He sprinted out of the dining room.
The little boy reached out for John as he passed in an attempt to grab his shirt, but came up with only air.
John sprinted through the next door that led back in to the main hallway. There was no resistance with this one, and that was a miracle in disguise. He didn’t care this time what lay beyond it and not just because he had come from this way. Only Eric mattered now. John’s heart raced. He had wisely closed the pocketknife and shoved it into one of his pants’ pockets at some point between the dining room and here; he could not remember when or why but was glad he had because he refused to stop now. Not until...he didn’t want to
think about it anymore.
The beam from the flashlight bounced vicariously from ceiling to floor and wall to wall as he ran. He passed the two doors, the spiral staircase, the front door from which they entered the home, the fountain, and onto the section of hallway Eric had ventured down. He passed another staircase, identical to the one on his end of the hall; he passed two more doors (one to each side of the hall).
“C’mon, baby,” a sweet, motherly voice boomed from the room beyond the door at the end of the hallway.
John’s heart threatened to stop, but it was beating too fast to even slow up. If he didn’t stop soon, he imagined it would burst, and he would...would—
It did not matter. He would just have to take his chances.
He hadn’t heard anymore screams and was not quite sure if that to be a good or bad sign. He did know this much for sure: that was Eric’s scream; there was no doubt in his mind about it, and he supposed this was all the knowledge he needed for now.
John bowled through the open doorway and into the room at the end of the hallway. More panic set in at the realization that he could not see Eric right off the bat and had no clue as to where to start looking for him. “Eric?” he screamed, not quite as loud as Eric had but still vibrant enough to echo shrewdly throughout the manor.
However, John heard no response except for the beautiful voice from the speakers. Now that he could see the television clearly, he realized the woman—Mrs. Cahill popped into his mind—to be as lovely and beautiful as her voice incurred.
“You can do it, baby,” the woman encouraged. It booms from all around the room, vibrating his body and making his heart jump and his skin crawl.
Surround sound.
“Eric?” he shouted as he searched around for a way to turn off the television set since it had no visible buttons anywhere on it.
“C’mon, baby,” she rambled on.
John searched the floor directly out in front of him.
“Just one time.”
John searched the back wall hoping for a shelf, all the while believing it would not be that easy and realizing he was correct when he discovered only more family portraits. The feeling of those watchful eyes judging him crept back over him. This time, despite being terrified and fighting an insatiable urge to run away screaming, he embraced the feeling with open arms. Not because he succumbed to the feeling, but because he had an intuition that one of these sets of eyes—if there were even multiple sets, or any at all, for that matter—that watched him more than likely belonged to Eric. An elaborate prank. One in which John, unfortunately had the honor of being the butt of. Honestly though, as crude of a prank as it may have seemed to be, John could live with it. It was typical Eric Richardson behavior, and at this point, John welcomed the idea of Eric jumping out laughing.
“Just one step, baby,” the woman said.
Prank or no prank, this damn racket was driving John insane. He no longer just wanted to turn the television off but needed to. He peeked over the back of the couch that sat out in the middle of the living room floor.
“Do it for Momma, Ray.”
Lying on the middle cushion was a long, blackish-gray remote control.
“Please, baby.”
John scooped up the remote without a moment’s hesitation.
“Just take one step for Momma.”
He struck the power button rather abruptly. The larger than life television screen went black at once.
“He’s not gonna do it, honey,” a man’s voice now boomed from the speakers surrounding the room.
The surround sound still boomed vibrantly. John checked over the couch cushions once more.
“He might,” the woman replied angelically.
John found a much smaller grayish remote and immediately notices the OPEN/CLOSE button in the top left corner. He knew he had struck pay dirt. This was a bit premature because he knew a television as high tech as this probably had its own surround sound hookups on the back somewhere. Then again—
“C’mon, son,” the man demanded in a much harsher tone than he would use to address his wife.
—had it been hooked directly to the television, it would have shut off when the television did.
“Just take one step so your mother will be quiet.”
“Eric?” John shouted once more.
The man and woman both laughed as John struck the power button on the grayish remote. The speakers are went silent and a hush fell over the room.
A not-so-distant moan sounded off from somewhere on the opposite end of the room, somewhere behind the television, filling the serene silence and sending goosebumps up John’s arms despite the long sleeves concealing them. He looked in that direction. All of the previous thoughts he’d had about this possibly being an elaborate hoax perpetrated by Eric escaped him as he saw his friend lying on the floor behind the television, unconscious; or worse; de—...not dead but possibly dyi— No, that was impossible.
John hopped over the couch and ran over to kneel beside his friend.
“Eric?” John whispered as he raised Eric’s head up and placed it in his own lap. The back of Eric’s head was wet. Probably sweat. “Eric, c’mon!”
Eric didn’t move.
“Wake up, man.”
Tears fell. Eric remained still as John shook his shoulders violently. He screamed into both of Eric’s ears. Nothing. John slapped him across the face, and finally, Eric’s eyes fluttered. John wiped his own tears away quickly as Eric finally came to. Even in a time like this, he didn’t want Eric to see him cry.
“What happened?” Eric muttered as he stared up to the ceiling, past the blurry face hovering above his own.
“I dunno, E.” The words startled Eric but being called E was soothing because even in his present state, he knew there was only one person that called him that. “I heard you scream, man. I came running as fast as I could.”
Eric glanced around the room. His mind was still a thick blanket of fog. It took a few moments for him to realize where he was. He could not remember what happened, and truthfully, he found it difficult to remember much at all from today. That was until he took one more seemingly harmless glance around the living room (it was definitely a living room, even in his groggy state, he could deduce this much), and there it was. High up on a shelf on the back wall beyond the couch was a picture. A family portrait. Two small, blonde-headed girls—twins—smiled back at him. “Isabella and Annabella,” he whispered too low for John to acknowledge that he had spoken at all, and he was right. He knew he was right. But how? He wasn’t sure. More memories rushed in as one of the girls—Isabella; it was definitely Isabella—faces moved from its glass imprisonment of the picture frame on to a similar canvas.
The face remained trapped behind glass, but now there were four panes and she was alone. It’s a window. She’s standing in front of a window. It wasn’t just any old window either, but the window. The face cracked. Glass shattered. The face exploded. Blood. Blood everywhere. Oh God the blood.
“What happened, Eric?” The words startled Eric as he had forgotten he was no longer alone.
“I-I dunno,” Eric stuttered. He felt as if he was lying, but he wasn’t. He could not be. It had taken a moment or two, but he remembered nearly everything—in fact, everything—about this day up until fainting or being knocked unconscious or whatever happened. What had happened?
“I heard you scream, man. You got—”
“I don’t remember, John.” Eric’s voice was full of anger; his head ached, and the last thing he wanted right now was badgering with a barrage of answerless questions and impossible demands.
“You must have hit your head then."
The statement struck a nerve in both boys. John, now remembering the wetness he felt when he lifted Eric’s head into his lap suddenly felt woozy. His stomach croaked nervously. Every breath he drew in and slowly exhaled felt as if it would be his last. He looked to his hands. Red. He wanted to faint; his eyes fluttered rapidly, but he managed to maintain
consciousness.
Eric, however, had not thought of that possibility a single time and felt foolish since it seemed to be the most reasonable explanation. Furthermore, it settled some of the disquiet he felt. He reached to the back of his head, half-expecting to feel a tender knot reducing quickly in swelling at the worst. What he found, to his own surprise, was a small gash; at least he hoped it was small. He didn’t exactly spend time examining the length or width or depth because the tenderness and soreness was present, but it felt small. The hair surrounding the gash stuck together with the body’s own self-producing adhesive in some cases. It felt as if someone had poured an entire tube of super glue back there attempting to seal up the gash but missed it badly. He looked to the floor where his head had been. Although he had been unconscious, the exact spot was simple to find due to the puddle corrugated atop the hardwood. It took no second glance or further investigation for him to know what it was.
“Yeah. I guess I did,” Eric said.
John glanced to the puddle at about the same time as Eric and could only remark, “Holy shit, E!” His voice was dry and cracked, much like during the early stages of puberty, which ironically enough, was not far gone from John Parker. “That’s blood, man.”
“I’m fine.” And he was. Other than the short lapse of memory loss, which was commonly associated with blows to the head, he felt...GRRRRRREEEAAT! in his most prolific Tony the Tiger impersonation. “It’s just a little cut.”
“You sure. That looks like a lot of blood.”
“Yeah. I’m good. I just need something to drink.”
“We don’t have any—”
“In one of my bags,” Eric interrupted.
John stared back confused.
“I told you I was prepared.” A reassuring twinkle surfaced in his eyes as he spoke.
Huff Bend Hell House Page 8
