The Killing Room

by Manning, John

  For the entire half-hour ride, neither Douglas nor Carolyn said a word. Douglas gazed out the window, thinking back to the day his father died. He remembered being wakened slightly by his father’s kiss on the forehead. That must have been right after he’d been selected in the lottery, and right before he went down to the room. He was coming to say good-bye, Douglas thought, his eyes filling with tears at the realization, though he would not let himself cry. And Mom…so terrified, so grief stricken, that depression took over and caused her to end her life. She couldn’t bear to live with the thought that I, too, might someday have to spend a night in that room….

  Carolyn sat looking out of the other window, consumed by her own thoughts. What if I can’t find an answer? They’ll hold the lottery again. Someone will go into that room…. And what if it was the young man sitting beside her?

  At last they pulled up in front of a small cottage along a marshy inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. The sky had gone gray, and Carolyn felt chilled suddenly as she stepped out of the car. The air felt damp. Tall yellow reeds swayed along the soggy banks. A heron touched down into the water ahead of her, flapping its wide wings.

  The driver waited in the car as Carolyn and Douglas headed up to the door. Even before they’d had a chance to knock, it was opened by a man wearing a beige cardigan sweater and blue jeans.

  “Hello, Kip,” Carolyn said.

  They embraced. Douglas was surprised by how young Kip Hobart was. He’d expected an expert in the supernatural would be an old man with a white beard. But Kip couldn’t have been more than forty, and was quite handsome, with a broad smile and a strong jaw. His sandy hair was fading to white at the temples, and there was a weather-beaten feel to his skin, but his eyes were very young. Watching the affectionate greeting Kip gave Carolyn, Douglas found himself a little jealous. The suddenness of the feeling surprised him.

  “Kip,” Carolyn was saying, “this is Douglas Young.”

  The man’s eyes filled with compassion as he extended his hand. “Your father was a good man. A brave man. Not a day passes that I don’t think of him.”

  Douglas shook his hand. He couldn’t speak. He just nodded.

  Inside the cottage, the walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books, many of them old and dusty. Douglas had expected to see skulls and crystal balls in the home of a guy who made his living chasing the supernatural, but the most unusual thing in the place was a framed movie poster of Freaks, complete with pinheads. Other than that it was a simple place, with an old sofa covered with a striped afghan, wicker baskets on the walls, and a big conch shell sitting on top of the old television set.

  A woman that Kip introduced as Georgeanne served them all hot cups of coffee. “The days are getting cooler out here,” Kip said, and they all nodded. Georgeanne was maybe thirty, a beautiful dark-skinned woman with short hair. Her accent sounded Caribbean. From their intimacy, the way they smiled at each other and gently touched each other’s arms, Douglas assumed that Kip and Georgeanne were either married or in a relationship. It chased away any lingering thoughts of jealousy.

  They sat on the back deck overlooking the marsh. Another heron had joined the first, and a dozen or so ducks paddled along the perimeter. Carolyn held her coffee mug in both hands to warm them. She couldn’t shake the chill.

  Douglas just sat there, staring at Kip, at this man who knew more about his family’s secrets than he did.

  “I wish I could have saved your father,” Kip said, speaking the words they were all thinking.

  “I’m sure you did what you could,” Douglas replied. And sitting there now across from the man, looking into his compassionate eyes, he felt certain that Kip had done everything in his power. He couldn’t blame him for his father’s death.

  “I’ve reviewed all your notes and the log you kept,” Carolyn said. “But I still have some questions…. That’s why I felt a meeting would be helpful.”

  “Of course,” Kip said.

  Douglas leaned forward. “I haven’t read anything, so maybe you can just tell me a couple things first, okay?”

  Kip nodded.

  “When did my uncle approach you? How long did you investigate the room? What made you think you had ended the curse? And why do you think you weren’t successful?”

  “Why don’t I begin from the beginning, and I’ll tell you as much as I can?” He settled back in his chair, and Georgeanne moved down to sit on the arm, seemingly as a gesture of support. “Mr. Young found me through an article I’d written about psychic phenomena. I had investigated a strange case of a woman who was apparently the reincarnation of an earlier self, and was compelled to do things that the earlier self wanted. I wrote about how we can distinguish between true psychic phenomena and mental illness, and I suggested ways in which we can corral the psychic energy, contain it, and if necessary, eliminate it.”

  “I see why Uncle Howie might have thought you could help.”

  “Unfortunately, I only had about a year before the lottery was to take place….”

  Carolyn made a small, bitter laugh. “Try dividing that time in twelve, and you’ll see how much time I have.”

  Kip gave her a sympathetic face. “Your dilemma is far more difficult, Carolyn, as I told you on the phone. Especially because it seems every route has been tried before. If not by me, then by others over the years. There have been a dozen exorcisms conducted in that house, by Roman Catholic priests and Hindu Brahmins and Wiccan practitioners. None of them ended the power of that room.”

  “So there’s no hope,” Douglas said, giving in to despair. “No way to end the curse.”

  Kip sighed. “There is always hope, Douglas.” He rubbed his forehead as he struggled for words. “I’m not even sure you can call it a curse, though certainly it feels that way. If it was a curse, we might have been able to end it—because there are ways of removing curses.” He looked over at the woman sitting beside him. “Georgeanne is perhaps the best curse remover on the planet.”

  “He flatters me,” she said, a small smile on her lips. “This case was actually how we met. Kip had heard of my work and asked me to accompany him to the house in Maine.” She shook her head. “I have never felt such energy in one place before. The hold that woman has over that family is extraordinary.”

  “Okay, hold up,” Douglas said. “What woman? Are you talking about Beatrice? Is she the one who makes the horrible things happen in the room? Because I figured her to be a victim. I figured the bad guy in all this was the creep that people have seen holding the pitchfork. Did he kill Beatrice? Was he the one that did it? Who was he? And why do you say it’s Beatrice who has the hold—”

  Kip held up his hands as if to calm him. “Perhaps it’s best that I continue on with my narrative,” he said softly. “Carolyn has read my account. She knows the conclusions that I have drawn. Whether she accepts them or not, time will tell. But for your sake, Douglas, I will continue to share what I experienced and what I believe I discovered.”

  Carolyn took another sip of the coffee. It felt good going down, warming her. But its effects were temporary. Within moments she was cold again. She began to think it wasn’t just the raw air coming in off the marsh that chilled her. It was fear.

  “I conducted a series of communications in that room,” Kip said. “I did so by rather traditional means, at least in terms of psychic research. I held several séances and brought in two different channelers. I also communicated through untraditional means.” He stood and walked back into the cottage for a moment. They watched as he removed a small device that sat on the shelf of the bookcase. The device looked like an old-fashioned walkie-talkie.

  “This was invented by a colleague,” Kip explained as he came back outside. “It transmits frequencies that are beyond the range of the human ear. It also allows our voices to penetrate that frequency. And as a handy-dandy tool, it also records the communication.”

  He set the device on a wicker table. Douglas stared at it as Kip pushed a small button. The tape insid
e the device whirred. Then a piercing sound suddenly filled their ears. It was some kind of a whistle, extremely high-pitched. They all winced.

  “What is it?” Douglas asked, covering his ears.

  “Listen,” Kip told him.

  The whistle continued on for nearly a minute, making Douglas want to bolt from his seat. Then it stopped abruptly and was replaced by a voice.

  A woman’s voice.

  “Love,” she said.

  Even Carolyn looked perplexed.

  “Love,” the voice said again. “It is love. Love. It is love.” The voice sounded sad, terribly sad, as if it might break at any time.

  “Are you saying love?”

  This was Kip’s voice, crackly and higher than the way he spoke normally, but clearly him. The device had recorded him trying to speak to whatever force was in the room.

  “Love,” the woman’s voice repeated. “It is love.”

  “Love,” Kip echoed. “Love. L-O-V-E.”

  “Love,” the voice said once more, and then the whistle returned.

  Kip switched off the device.

  “That didn’t sound like a force intent on the kind of evil that has taken place in that room every ten years,” Carolyn said.

  Kip shook his head. “Not at all. The voice was sad. Heartbreaking.”

  “So she’s not the one who’s killing people then?” Douglas asked. “It’s the man with the pitchfork. The one who killed her in real life.”

  “There’s no conclusive evidence that the voice we just heard was Beatrice,” Carolyn said. “Kip, I know you made that conclusion, but in the kind of investigations I’ve been trained to do, we can’t make any assumptions. We need direct evidence.”

  “True,” Kip said. “The voice may have been another spirit, or force, or whatever we want to call it. But we held a séance after this communication. I’ll let Georgeanne take over from here.”

  Georgeanne was quiet a moment before continuing the story. “I called upon Beatrice to appear to us. And she did. And she was crying. We asked her if she wished the killings to stop, if she wanted to release the room from her power. And she nodded that she did. So I used the words to invoke the ritual for ending a curse and asked Beatrice to follow along with me. She remained there, visible to both Kip and myself, and seemed to accept the words. Then I asked her to come with me out of the room. She did so. Kip and I walked up the stairs, and Beatrice followed us. I will never forget the experience. She was crying softly. Her long black hair fell over her shoulders. We walked through the foyer and out onto the yard. We walked all the way to the cliffs and turned to Beatrice and told her she was free now, that she was no longer trapped in the place where she had been killed. She smiled and continued walking—directly off the cliff. She vanished then.”

  “So you can see why we had hope that the curse was ended,” Kip said softly.

  “She was playing you,” Carolyn said. “She played along, let you think that she was really gone….”

  Douglas put his hand to his forehead. They all knew he was thinking of his father again.

  “Possibly,” Kip said. “Possibly she played us for fools.”

  Georgeanne was shaking her head. “But I felt the energy in the room. When she appeared to us, there was no malevolence in her spirit. I, too, have been trained in my own kind of investigations. And I would recognize malevolence. The energy in that room that day was sadness. Grief. I believed her when she said she wanted the killings to end. But perhaps she is prevented somehow from doing so.”

  “Yes,” Douglas interjected. “She’s prevented from doing so by that man with the pitchfork. He’s the evil force here! Why do you focus on Beatrice? He killed her. So he’s keeping her spirit trapped there and won’t let her go.”

  “It might seem that way, yes,” Kip admitted. “But we focused on Beatrice because she was the only one who appeared when we summoned the forces in that room. The energy we felt there was feminine. The overwhelming presence in that room is Beatrice. And although we spoke with family members who reported seeing the man with the pitchfork, we never encountered him ourselves. We never saw him. We never felt his spirit. Only Beatrice responded when we called.”

  “Though there is another force there,” Georgeanne said.

  Carolyn was nodding. “The baby.”

  “The baby?” Douglas asked. “What baby?”

  Carolyn looked over at them. “In Kip’s notes, there was mention of a baby. That some in the family reported seeing the apparition of a baby.”

  “Uncle Howie didn’t tell me anything about a baby,” Douglas said.

  Kip sighed and stood from his chair, walking over to the edge of the deck. “It appears that Mr. Young picks and chooses the details he shares. For example, we never knew about the man with the pitchfork until other family members reported him to us. Then Mr. Young admitted he knew about him as well. We also did not know the manner of Beatrice’s death. Mr. Young only said that it was a tragic accident.”

  “That was the same for me,” Carolyn said.

  “So how did you find out?” Douglas asked.

  Kip smiled. “Luckily, ten years ago, there were still a few old-timers in Youngsport who remembered the events of seventy years earlier. I’d doubt if you’d find any of them still alive today.”

  “Why didn’t you include any of this in your report?” Carolyn asked. “I had no idea of the manner of Beatrice’s death either. There was nothing of it in your notes.”

  “I discovered it at the very end of my research,” Kip told her. “By then, events were proceeding quickly. We had already cast Beatrice out of the room—or thought we had. I never had time to go back and write a conclusive report.”

  Carolyn thought that was odd. Kip was one of the most thorough psychic investigators she knew. But for the moment, she let it go. “What did these old-timers tell you about what happened?” she asked.

  “I could tell you,” Kip said, “but I think it would be better in their own words.”

  Once again he stepped back inside the cottage. This time he returned with a much more conventional tape recorder. Placing it beside the other device, he switched it on.

  “I had it ready in anticipation of your visit,” Kip said. “Listen.”

  Kip’s voice floated from the machine.

  “Will you state your name and age, please?”

  “Harry Noons, and I’m eighty-eight,” came another voice from the tape recorder. It was a fragile voice, as dry as old leaves.

  “And will you tell me everything you remember about the night in question and the events that took place at the Young mansion in September 1930?”

  “Ayuh. I’ll tell ya what I know and what I can remembuh.” Harry Noons cleared his throat, a loud rattling sound that went on for nearly thirty seconds. “I was working up on the estate as a groundsman. I was a young man, barely eighteen, and times were tough. We had the Depression back then, you know. And old Mr. Young, the current Mr. Young’s father, he hired me and gave me some work trimming hedges and the like, and I was very grateful. And I noticed the girl they had working there. She was very beautiful. I admit I kind of fancied her myself. All the men who saw her did. She was just that kind of girl. To see her was to make your heart stop for a moment.”

  “And her name was?” Kip asked on the tape recorder.

  “Beatrice. I never knew her last name. She lived at the house. She did the housework and all that. She was very young. And here’s why she caused such a stir in town in them days. She wasn’t married. But she was in the family way.”

  “She was pregnant?” Kip asked.

  “Ayuh, sir, she was. And all the busybodies gossiped in town, wondering why Mr. and Mrs. Young, such pillars in the community, would keep her on. They thought she should have been cast out for disgracing their house in that way. But Beatrice stayed, and I’d see her walking around fluffing clothes and hanging them on the line, and she had her big belly right there, plain as day, for anyone to see it.”

  �
�This was how many months before September?”

  “Well, I think she had the baby sometime in the late spring. By September, of course, the baby was born and living there in the house with her.”

  “Mr. Noons,” Kip asked, “there is no record at town hall of a birth of a child born to a woman named Beatrice in that year. Moreover, there’s no mention of a child in the newspaper notice of Beatrice’s death. Why is that?”

  “Dunno. Guess they never filed no birth record. And if Mr. Young didn’t want something mentioned in the newspaper, it wasn’t.”

  “Okay. Please proceed with your story.”

  Harry Noons cleared his throat again, leading to a major coughing fit. The sound of phlegm being hacked up in his throat was plainly audible on the tape. Finally he found his voice again.

  “It was getting near to fall, you know, kind of like now. Still hot enough most days to call it summer, but a chill would come in now and then. And I remembuh it was chilly that day. Windy. The skies were gray. And Miss Beatrice, she was crying. All day long, every time I seen her, she was crying. And so I asked Clem—”

  “Who’s Clem?”

  “Well, he was the one who done it.”

  “Done what, Mr. Noons?”

  “Killed her.”

  “Who was he, and why did he kill Beatrice?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m telling ya! Clem was kind of a slow-witted man, you know. Big and thick. Body and head, you know. Thick-headed. Clem worked on the grounds, like me, though he did the heavy work and was in charge of the barn. He was always chopping wood or hauling hay for the horses. Those were his jobs. Clem hoped to marry Beatrice, even though that baby was not his. He said he didn’t care, that he loved Beatrice and would be a good father to her baby. So one day I asked him what was wrong with Beatrice. He said he didn’t know. I believe he was telling me the truth then. But later I saw them arguing.”

  “Where were they arguing?”