Aftersight

by Brian Mercer

I removed my pack of cigarillos with the hidden digital recorder. "Well, maybe I'll just have to keep my smokes handy."

  Tommy looked at the box disapprovingly. "All right. Just be careful."

  "Always, Boss."

  "Okay, here's the plan: One of us will monitor Emily's room at all times in one-hour intervals. The family all goes to bed between eleven and midnight. You'll take the first shift, between lights-out and one o'clock. Then you spell me at two and so on. The person not assigned to Emily's room will cover the ground floor and the cellar. Technically, the person monitoring Emily will be covering this floor and the attic, but unless a Hell Hound materializes in the guest room, I don't think it's a good idea to leave Emily alone."

  I glanced at my watch. "That gives us about another hour. I want to do one more walk-through and then hit the head. Don't you know it, I'll take a break to drain the weasel and that's when the manure will hit the spreader."

  I took another tour of the house, from basement to attic. Lord Humphreys looked up from the desk as I ambled by his study. The glow from his computer washed his face in a ghostly blue light, his narrow-eyed look showing irritation at my presence.

  Emily's mother, meek and matronly, reclined in the lounge, her pallor similarly paled in the light of the TV. Emily, who sat in the formal dining room finishing her schoolwork, looked up from her textbook and smiled as I passed. She was a sweet kid, I thought, feeling the same sort of big brother need to protect her as I’d had for Jake when we moved to Sarasota.

  By the time I'd finished my sweep of the attic, Emily had gone to bed. I plopped down in the brightened hallway, leaning against the wall in front of her room. I removed my concealed audio recorder and my lighter, doing my ritual triple-flame flick, before setting them both down on the floor.

  Emily lay in bed on her side, facing me. The shadows were too deep for me to tell if her eyes were open or closed, if she was awake or asleep. After about a minute of watching her, she waved to me. I smiled, waved back.

  Within a half-hour her mother turned in, then finally Lord Humphreys, just before midnight. The house was completely dark. Quiet.

  I tuned my senses to the house, using what I thought of as my mental feelers to probe the darkness, taking the house's temperature. There was definitely an unsettling mood to the place. I could almost feel someone keeping an eye on me. I removed my EMF gauge to check for electromagnetic fields that might be affecting my perception. High EM fields could bring on exactly the symptoms I was experiencing, but like Tommy and my baseline reading earlier that evening, the hallway was clean.

  My feeling of being watched increased as the minutes passed. I could sense something at the end of the hall, a formless presence. I stared into the darkness, failing to detect a darker patch in the overall blackness, but I nonetheless felt something there.

  A runner like a long Persian rug lined the corridor. I could just pick out the gentlest shuffle of footsteps approaching me, like the kiss of slippers on plush carpeting. The presence was growing stronger now, something tall and looming and oppressive. For a full minute I waited in the dark, peering back at whatever peered at me, but the thing — if there'd been anything there at all — gave no further hint of its location.

  After another five minutes a sound did splinter the silence, a terrific wheeze that was both roar and rattle. It came out of Lord Humphreys' bedroom. The vocal Member of Parliament was snoring.

  "It's terrible, isn't it?" Emily said from her murky bedroom.

  "How can anyone possibly sleep with all that racket?" I asked in a stage whisper.

  "My dad sleeps like the dead," Emily said. "And Mum, by necessity, has learned to remain unconscious through a hundred-decibel windstorm."

  "It's a wonder they hear you hollerin' for help."

  "Sometimes they don't."

  The snoring continued, impossibly loud, even here down the hall. How was I going to hear unexplained noises over this? I thought of the digital recorder by my side. Useless now.

  "You can come in if you want," Emily invited.

  "I don't think that's a good idea. Your old man wants us to stay in the hall."

  She sighed exasperatedly. "Don't be daft. Please just come in."

  I heard a desperate tremor in her voice but stayed put.

  "Please," she pleaded. "It will make me feel better."

  I picked up my stuff and relocated to a spot just inside her bedroom doorway. It felt markedly different in the room, colder, as if I'd just walked into a refrigerator. I pulled my leather jacket closer.

  "That better?" I asked.

  "Yes. Thank you."

  Emily's breathing evened out and lengthened. I decided that Tommy had been wrong about her not being very mature. Despite the stuffed animals and kitten posters, she was bright and didn't seem to rattle easy. She was just scared, that's all.

  I used my flashlight to examine the room, making sure everything was where I'd left it a few hours before. Lord Humphreys' snoring had lessened in volume as he moved deeper into sleep. I could hear the faintest creak of movement downstairs, probably Tommy patrolling the main level.

  It was nearing one o'clock and I was expecting Tommy to relieve me so I could go downstairs and stretch my legs. I'd just glanced at my watch when I heard it: the deep, feral growl of a dog. From the sound of it, a big dog and very close.

  I started to reach into my jacket pocket for my flashlight when the growl repeated, louder now, as if whatever crouched there in the dark near Emily's bed took the hand movement as a threat.

  I moved my hand back down and reached for the portable two-way radio at my side. The bass canine rumble continued ominously, hinting at imminent attack. Rather than risk a conversation, I pressed the call button three times, Tommy and my signal for Come quickly; approach with caution.

  "Tyson, are you all right?" Tommy called from the top of the stairs.

  The growl turned into a snarl. I backed out of the room, leaving the concealed digital recorder behind. As soon as I was past the door's threshold, the growling silenced.

  "What were you doing in the girl's room?"

  "Emily was scared. She asked me to come in there. Did you hear it?"

  "I heard something. What was it?"

  "Growlin'. You might not be too far off about that Hell Hound. I think we've got to seriously consider the possibility that what we're dealin' with ain't human and never was."

  "Those ghostly boys that are harassing Emily certainly seem like they were human once."

  "Okay, maybe. But they may be just the start of it."

  ****

  Tommy and I camped out in front of Emily's doorway for the next ten minutes, silent and listening. Emily had somehow managed to remain asleep through all the commotion. The only sounds we heard were the steady tempo of her breathing and Lord Humphreys snoring at the opposite end of the hall.

  I was tempted to go in and get my recorder and play it back to hear if it had documented the unsettling growling sound, but Tommy thought it might be too risky. Besides, it was best to leave it where it was in case more disturbances broke the stillness.

  After another five minutes, I felt my way through the dark downstairs to the kitchen. I drank a very cold glass of water before settling onto a reading chair in the lounge. The glow from a streetlight in front of the house reached past the curtained window to silhouette the room's furniture — a sofa, rocking chair, coffee table, TV, and upright piano — throwing grotesque shadows on the fancy woven carpet.

  It took more than ten minutes for me to simmer down. By then the adrenaline that had flushed through my system had started to fade and the shaking in my hands had lessened to a mild tremor. After years of paranormal investigations, I could still be startled but rarely did I get truly scared. The paranormal phenomena I routinely encountered was seldom threatening, but in the near total darkness of Emily's bedroom, the snarling animal — be it dog or Hell Hound — felt as if it actually had been in the room with us. For a moment, I’d thought I'd even heard the
quick exhale of breath that would signal an attack. I'd been bitten once by a feral dog in Louisiana and the growling sound wakened memories that I'd just as soon stay asleep.

  A wild dog, a gang of phantom thugs, and a dark priest who liked to scare little girls via spirit board. How were me and Tommy supposed to "eliminate this little problem"?

  About a year before, Tommy and his team had helped the Laremy family with a similar issue. After fourteen years living at the same residence, the Laremys had started having paranormal experiences that included disembodied voices, ghostly shadows, missing and misplaced objects, and an overall feeling of despair that came over the house like an ooze. The team eventually traced the start of the problem to the purchase of an antique desk at an estate sale that, when removed from the house and destroyed, had rid the family of their troubles. It had been James Laremy who’d referred Lord Humphreys to Tommy.

  Unlike the Laremys, Lord Humphreys' problems seemed to have always been present in the house, likely even before they’d moved in. The neighborhood's long history would suggest that the neighborhood was rife with paranormal activity and had been for hundreds of years. It didn't seem likely that it was going to end anytime soon, whatever me and Tommy did.

  The case seemed more like a poltergeist disturbance than a classic haunting, though. Traditional hauntings could go on for decades, even centuries, and were more like recordings played back from the ether than an active and interactive presence, like poltergeist activity. Poltergeist phenomena were usually centered on an emotionally troubled adolescent, usually a girl in her early teens or preteens. Emily didn't seem like she carried a lot of emotional baggage, but she nonetheless fit the standard profile. The good news was that poltergeist activity was usually short-lived. I guess whoever was the subject of the activity grew out of the awkward phase they were in that allowed the phenomena to manifest in the first place. Still, that wasn't going to happen overnight.

  I made another sweep of the downstairs before returning to the lounge. I leaned back and forth in the rocking chair, listening and feeling, trying to reclaim the sense of presence that I'd felt upstairs. I was deep in thought when, from across the room, there was an audible click. The music box perched on the tall piano began to play.

  I was on my feet so quick I almost jumped clean out of my boots. The song — a tune from Phantom of the Opera — played on in the darkness, unnervingly loud compared to the perfect silence that went before it. I did feel a presence now, a sense that something unpleasant was grinning at me from the shadows, amused at the fear it had rustled up inside me. I was a little chagrined at how unnerved I'd become.

  The music box gradually played itself out. The ping of the last few notes echoed in the darkness, surrendering to a hostile quiet, stiff with tension.

  Just when I started to settle down, a menacing growl went ballistic upstairs, followed by snarls and thunderous barking. Emily screamed, a shrill cry that set me in motion faster than any alarm. I stumbled up the stairs, tripping on the first landing before regaining my way and reaching the top of the stairs.

  Tommy was struggling with something unseen at the border of Emily's bedroom. I tried to help him push past it, bowling into the unseen wall like a linebacker. I could feel something thrusting and thrashing in front of us, something with fur and teeth and a hot breath that smelled like melting wax. A howling roar arose from it, furious snarls that mixed with Emily's terrified shrieks.

  A seemingly unstoppable force slammed into us from behind, pushing us past the doorway and into the darkness beyond. The barking cut short at once, along with any resistant pressure, and me and Tommy, bolstered by Lord Humphreys, tumbled into the middle of Emily's bedroom.

  Emily was quiet now. She was pressed into the corner of her bed among a platoon of stuffed animals. Her weak sobs seemed directionless in the dark.

  "Emily, are you all right?" Lord Humphreys asked, pushing his way to her side. "Did they touch you? Did they hurt you?"

  She shook her head and sank into her father's arms. Tommy motioned to the door and we moved out into the hallway. As we stood there, the light in the corridor snapped on, revealing Emily's mother strapping on her robe. She moved into Emily's room and sat on the bed.

  Me and Tommy waited in respectful silence for several minutes, listening to Emily's muffled whimpers. Any resemblance to the composed preteen's voice we'd heard when we interviewed her five days before was gone. The girl we heard now sounded much younger. I shifted from one foot to the other, gritting my teeth, my hands restlessly pumping into fists.

  "Mr. Banks, Mr. Allard, will you please come here?" Lord Humphreys demanded.

  "How she doin'? She all right?"

  "No, she is most definitely not all right! Look at her." Then, his voice softening. "Princess, please tell them what happened."

  "He tried to strangle meeeee..." Emily blurted, her voice breaking down into sobs.

  "Who tried to strangle you?" I asked.

  "The pale, long-haired boy," she replied fitfully. "The one with the blood on his face."

  I exchanged glances with Tommy, not even trying to hide my anger and frustration.

  "Tell them what he said to you, Princess."

  "They, they, they are a-angry that they are here." Emily pointed to me and Tommy. "He said to send them away." To her father. "You won't send them away, will you, Daddy? You won't, will you?"

  "I most certainly will not! Not until we get to the bottom of this."

  One of the few books sitting in Emily's bookcase went flying off its shelf without apparent cause, gliding roughly in the direction of me and Tommy. I dodged it so that it flapped harmlessly onto the floor. Emily shivered and buried her face in the mass of Lord Humphreys' chest. Emily's mother scooted closer, putting her arms around Emily protectively.

  When Emily's tears had lessened, Tommy asked, "Emily, you said they are angry that we're here. Who are they?"

  "The boys in the house. The boys that are bothering me."

  Tommy motioned for Lord Humphreys to join us outside and together the three of us moved into the lighted hallway, leaving Emily and her mom clinched on the bed. The three of us huddled close.

  "Lord Humphreys," Tommy said in almost a whisper. "I think, given the situation here, you should seriously consider a move."

  "No, no, I won't—" Lord Humphreys began in a shout. Tommy gestured soothingly and he lowered his voice. "I won't be tossed out of my own home. I paid for it and it's mine. What I want is to get rid of them. That's what I'm paying you for."

  "I understand your frustration," Tommy continued softly, "but this is your daughter we're talking about. Every day you remain here, you're putting her at risk."

  "We're not leaving."

  With Lord Humphreys' declaration, a musical banging erupted from downstairs. It sounded exactly as if someone were smashing their fists hard up and down the piano keyboard.

  "Stay here," I said. "I'm on it, Boss."

  In three steps, I'd reached the shadowy landing and was making the turn to the ground floor. My anger and adrenaline were so thick that I could barely feel my legs. All fear had pumped out of me and I hit the ground floor with murderous intent. Someone or something was going to pay. My fury would have obliterated a speeding bus right then. I was taking this puppy down.

  I made three long strides toward where the piano was shuddering in the dark. I'd just entered the lounge when I saw it, a black mass at the room's exact center. At first it was merely a splash of ink hovering in space, but then its upper half took on shape and character. The silhouette was roughly human, blurred and transparent at the edges. But the image at the peak of what I conceived to be its torso could only be a face, something that had once been alive; formerly encased in flesh, it was just a shade now of what it had been in life.

  Hate drove it; anger sustained it. Long, wiry white hair outlined an oblong head, pointed features, an expression distorted with a rage that seemed to propel a wave of frost before it. Had it been only me, every sphincte
r in my body would have tightened and I'd have high-tailed it out of there fast. But I was defending Emily and I charged thoughtlessly forward, matching, if not surpassing, its fury.

  The impact was like running all-out into a wall of electrically charged ice. The jolt was singular in its intensity. I seizured, quivering in place, before getting knocked back with what felt like an enormous club that seemed to strike my entire being. The last thing I remembered before being knocked senseless was flying end-over-end in the dark.

  ****

  "Tyson, I think you'd better come over and take a look at this."

  I propped myself up from the cot in Tommy's headquarters, where I'd all morning been recuperating. The pressure in my head felt as if it had expanded my skull to twice its natural size. I squinted to where Tommy and Archie sat behind a trio of computer monitors. I felt like that night in Cincinnati, when I'd mixed whisky and tequila.

  I slipped on my hat but then thought better of it and set it back down on the nearby coffee table. "Whatda ya got?"

  "Something you should hear."

  I recognized the sound wave displayed on Archie's computer monitor. It was the output from the digital recorder I'd left running in Emily's room.

  "This is what your recorder picked up when you were downstairs getting smacked about by that fiend."

  A blast of white noise emanated from the loudspeakers that made it feel like a steel file drilling through the center of my head. I heard the banging piano in the distance and my own howl and then a scratchy noise that was unquestionably a voice.

  "Did you catch that?"

  "Naw. Play it again."

  The raspy whisper repeated, but in my brain-swollen state I couldn't quite make sense of it.

  "Listen carefully now. It says, 'The girl is mine.'"

  They looped the sound fragment so it played again and again and now the meaning was unmistakable. "The girl is mine. The girl is mine. The girl is mine. The girl is mine."

  "Are you sure you don't want to see a doctor?" Archie asked.