Malefic

by Ambrose Ibsen

  Unable to breathe, I stood in the doorway, knowing that it could see me in the darkness. A gaze so sharp it may as well have been broken glass cut into me from the shadows. Numbly, I bumped the light switch with my hand more than I flipped it, and my bedroom was suddenly illuminated.

  Laying prone on the floor was a withered human corpse. Its limbs were broken at the joints and bent at wrong angles. It was draped in a filthy, worm-eaten garb, and bits of drywall clung to its thinning mop of half-grey hair. Without warning, the cadaver began to spasm, and in doing so raised its head.

  The eyes had long decomposed, leaving deep, cobweb-choked sockets. Even so, the brittle hollows seemed to stare with intensity. A mask of leather-like flesh clung to the thing, peeling from the skull at its foundation like bad papier-mâché. It possessed a large and contracting mouth that had been stopped up by a bolus of white fluff, cotton. Slowly, the cadaver retched and a torrent of the white fibers began to spill from its depths. Free of its gag, the thing looked up at me, let its mouth drop open, and revealed a dark void from whence there stared unnumbered human eyes. They were arranged against and atop one another—growing from the papery leather substrate of the mouth and throat like pores filled to bursting with pus.

  There were sounds to my back—a clatter in the kitchen as my cabinets were slammed. The faucets in the nearby bathroom could be heard to come on at full blast, and voices drifted in from all around me. The air was pregnant with movement; drafts were kicked up where previously there'd been none, and I felt foreign bodies brushing past me.

  “Let me in. Let me in. Let me in.”

  “Can you hear me, Paula? This is your Edward—Edward Franklin Ames.”

  “It's me, sweetheart. Bradford from Annapolis. I just want to talk, Sarah.”

  “Hey, VideoTube! This is FlipperKevin, your favorite fixer-upper.”

  Falling to the floor, I stared at the corpse as it lurched away. Dragging itself like an insect that'd been stepped on, but not quite dispatched, it scraped its way under the bed. As it did so, I got one look of its shriveled face from the side. Worn and decomposed though it was, it seemed familiar to me—and one of the voices I'd just heard in the hall told me why.

  “Hey, VideoTube! This is FlipperKevin, your favorite fixer-upper.”

  The corpse bore a striking resemblance to Kevin Taylor.

  My chest seized and I lost consciousness before I could decide what that meant.

  Thirty-One

  The house was dark when I opened my eyes. The dull thud of my pulse told me I was still alive, but for a moment there I hadn't been sure. Maybe, I thought, I'd passed on—entered that “waiting room” between worlds where Constance was.

  A crack of thunder told me the score, though, and I soon remembered how I'd gotten to the floor in the first place.

  The corpse.

  Jumping to my feet, I barreled out of the room. Bursting into the hallway, the living room, I searched for lamps and light switches, but found none in my blind scrabbling. Instead, I only managed to injure myself, earning bruises on my legs and head as I bumped into things. Even as I made a fool of myself in the dark house, the place did not feel empty to me. When I paused, head spinning, to gain my bearings, I felt the presence of other bodies squeezing in from all around me. The feeling came and went, but at times I thought myself standing at the center of a massive crowd I couldn't see.

  I found my way to the side table beside my easy chair, and from its drawer I drew up my lighter. Flipping it on and holding it out in front of me like a torch, I saw that I was alone in the living room, even if I didn't feel like it. I glanced at my Seiko, trying to figure out how long I'd been out. The face of it had been cracked, though, and the hands weren't moving.

  Woozy, I eased myself into the chair, lighter still burning in my grip, and took a deep breath. On the table to my right, reflecting the glow of the lighter, was my fountain pen. The cap was off, and I noticed that a mess of ink had gushed from the thing, all across the tabletop. I peered at the mess, pawing at my forehead, but soon noticed that it wasn't a mere spill.

  Someone had written on the table with the pen.

  My heart soared before I could make out the messy, splattered text. “Constance, have you written me?” I gasped, leaning over the table.

  SHE'S WITH US NOW, read the message.

  In a rage, I swiped at the ink, smearing it over the arm of my chair. “Damn you! What have you done to her? I tried to help you, Fiona! Why have you come here?”

  There was a croaking laugh from the direction of the kitchen, but no other reply.

  Somehow, that thing—that animate corpse that looked like Kevin Taylor—had gotten into my valise. Thinking back upon my last days at 889 Morgan Road, to our excavation in the living room wall, I realized what I'd done.

  Constance had warned me not to open the wall, not to “let her out”. But I'd done it anyway, searching for that wooden bird I thought to contain souls.

  The bird had not been used by Fiona Weiss in transporting spirits, however. It'd been a mere trinket, a decoy.

  The souls had been stored in a human body.

  There were too many blank spots in the house's history to be sure of much, but recalling the way that the corpse had opened its mouth to stare at me with that endless succession of eyes told me I was on the right track. Fiona had brought ghosts with her from Annapolis—not in a wooden toy, but within her own body.

  Somehow, Fiona's body, still teeming with foreign souls, had been found in the house by its next owner, Kevin Taylor. I'd wondered what'd happened to the young man who'd purchased the house before my nephew ten years ago—but I didn't wonder anymore.

  After finding the body of Fiona Weiss, he'd come to house those souls. They'd infested his body, turned him into something truly monstrous. Somehow, his body had been hidden within that house—I'd heard his movements numerous times behind the walls and written them off as the clamoring of vermin. When the wall had been opened however, the spirit-infected cadaver had been allowed to exit.

  And that morning before I'd left Joseph's, it had entered my valise.

  I grabbed my phone, staining the screen with ink, and stood. I stumbled into the kitchen by the lighter's faint glow and went looking for my keys. I had to get out while I still could—before the thing chose me as its newest vessel. Extending this haunting, gathering more souls, was likely its aim, and I could not give it what it wanted. Perhaps I'd burn down the house to put an end to it, or consult true experts in the field for a solution, but that was all to be dealt with later.

  My immediate course of action was clear as could be.

  I had to go.

  I burned my hand as I shoved the lighter into my pocket. Scrambling for the front door, I gave the knob a yank and began to exit.

  I'd been one foot out the door when I heard something—a voice—calling out to me from the direction of my bedroom. I stopped to listen, the rain pelting me as I stood in the entryway.

  “Marcel, don't leave me with them. Please, come back. Let's talk, my love.”

  I held my breath, sure that I must be hallucinating.

  I hadn't heard that voice in six years.

  It came again, drifting through the air like the smell of the storm. “Please, dear. Come here. I've missed you so. Won't you sit with me and talk awhile? I've so much to tell you. Listen to me, Marcel!”

  I was so drawn by the voice—the dulcet voice of my dead wife—that I neglected to close the front door. Rain dripped into the kitchen as I wandered trance-like into the unlit living room. I felt my way to the hall, into my bedroom.

  “Constance?” I asked, half-choked. “Is it... is it really you?”

  A flash of lighting lit up the room. I saw the bed, the open valise, the trail of fluff and debris the corpse had left behind as it had fled beneath the bed.

  “Down here,” she said, giggling. “Come down here.”

  The voice was coming from under the bed.

  My hesitance was sapped at th
e sound of her voice, and so I knelt, leaning till I was level to the floor. “Yes, my love? You... you're really here?”

  “I am,” was her breathy reply. “I've missed you so, Marcel. Let's talk, shall we? There's so much to discuss...”

  And we talked.

  Oh, did we talk.

  My days were filled with reminisce, with the sweet music of her voice, and I wanted for nothing. Meals became infrequent, drinks and cigars unheard of. How many days I spent in the bedroom, speaking to the one beneath the bed, I can't say.

  At night, when I slept, she'd speak to me. Sometimes, she'd sing. Other voices would interrupt our dialogues from time to time, but I listened to them patiently, waiting for Constance to start talking again. How many voices—how many souls—were contained in Kevin Taylor's body! There must have been dozens. These, Constance confided, had been gathered from many sites, many sources, in the pursuit of creating something wonderful.

  During one conversation, she asked me if I'd be willing to help her with something—if she could make a test of my devotion. Of course, I agreed. I'd do anything for her, and anything to ensure that our bond was never again interrupted. She assured me that I was doing precisely what she wished; that I was listening to her, and to the others within the vessel.

  One day, when the rain had stopped and the sun was out in full-force, I understood.

  I had been eating and drinking little, and had not so much as left the house in a week's time. My body reminded me of this in the aches and pains that sprang up everywhere; in the sudden whitening of my hair. Fearful that I might have pushed my old body too far, I drew upon my medical knowledge and did a brief assessment. Taking my old stethoscope from its case, I sat in my easy chair and tried listening to my heart.

  I set the thing against my bare chest and listened. A quiet lub-dub lub-dub could be heard. I then shifted the instrument so that I could listen to my lungs, but instead heard something else.

  Another heartbeat—this one distinct from the first.

  Baffled, I shifted the stethoscope once more, this time to a lower spot.

  There, too, the beating of another heart.

  All told, I heard dozens of them. Mixed in with my gut sounds were the beatings of still more.

  I rose, sure that I must be losing my mind. Journeying to the bathroom, I filled a glass with water and attempted to drink. I got only a few sips in before I began to cough, dropping the glass and nearly collapsing in a sputtering heap. Something had pushed the water back—had protested in my throat. Possessed by a horrible itchiness near my soft palate, I stood before the vanity mirror and opened my mouth to have a look.

  Sprouting from those moist tissues, I found a sharp, green eye staring back at me.

  My breath hitched in terror. But then, gradually, I drew in a glad breath.

  I knew that eye. It was the very same I'd admired all those years in my favorite photograph of Constance. I stroked at my throat, swallowing carefully.

  She was inside me.

  I was the vessel now.

  A smile spread across my lips. “I'll never lose you again, my love.”

  Thank you for reading!

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  About the Author

  Once upon a time, a young Ambrose Ibsen discovered a collection of ghost stories on his father's bookshelf. He was never the same again.

  Apart from horror fiction, he enjoys good coffee, brewed strong.

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