by John Everson
Later, as an adult, she’d researched the house and found the probable cause. In the Forties, there had been a horrible crime committed in that room. Domestic violence that had turned into a murder-suicide.
That had always given Jillie proof and validation that her ‘feelings’ were not imaginary. She had lived with ghosts and felt their frozen rage. The dead were not gone, she knew. The dead were everywhere. So now, when she reached the end of the basement and felt something twist in her stomach, and a chill begin to creep up her back, she trusted her instinct. There was something here.
She walked through a tableau inspired by The Exorcist, pushed an old dresser out of the way and stepped behind the construct to the other side of the aisle, toward the back wall of the basement. It was a newly constructed wall. A quickly thrown together barricade of plywood and 2x4s.
What was it here to hide?
She moved the light along its length until she found a hinge. Three hinges actually. She moved the phone around until she discovered the foot-long piece of board that served as the knob and lock. It was positioned horizontally to hold the door in place, but when she twisted it vertically, the plywood swung inward. There was another small room here in the basement, hidden away from the ‘attraction’ area.
Jillie stepped down a few inches from the wooden floor to an earthen one. The air here was immediately more dank and chill than in the rest of the hastily ‘finished’ portion of the basement.
There was a coffin against the wall to her right, but she barely noticed it because in the middle of the small room, lying with her face to the ground, was a teenage girl. She looked like one of the kids in the group that had entered the haunted house before her earlier tonight – the girl wore a thin Oak Forest High School jacket, and a swirl of long brown hair covered her eyes and cheek before cascading to the dirt.
“Hey, are you okay?” Jillie called softly. When the girl didn’t answer, she repeated the question, a little louder. And then she stepped closer.
There was blood on the girl’s neck. Jillie bent down and brushed some of the hair from the girl’s face; her skin felt cool and Jillie could now see the long gash that cut across her neck. The ground beneath her chin glistened with the girl’s blood. She hesitantly reached out her hand to touch the darkened earth, and her finger came back wet with blood.
“Oh no,” Jillie whispered, just before her spine suddenly turned cold as ice water.
A woman’s voice spoke from behind her. It sounded deathly serious.
“Get out!” it said.
Jillie looked behind her but saw nothing. However, her legs suddenly felt like wet spaghetti. The ice spread from her spine to her chest, and Jillie held a hand to her breastbone as she found herself struggling to breathe.
“Get out now!” the voice demanded again. She couldn’t see where it was coming from, though it sounded like it was right next to her. She backed away from the girl.
Jillie staggered to the door and dove through the furniture to return to the haunted house path. It felt as if two fists were beating her back, and she stumbled and half-ran back along the aisle until she came to a door. It was locked, but she fumbled with the doorknob until the metal latch turned. Then she ran up the steps, not closing the door behind her.
When she reached the grass, she fell to her knees. When she got back up, she realized the pressure inside her was gone, and the hands no longer pushed her. But she wasn’t going back. Jillie moved quickly toward the front of the house. Behind her, she heard a door slam shut.
“There you are,” Ted’s voice said from across the clearing. “I was looking for you. Are you ready for us to set up?”
Jillie shook her head vigorously. “No,” she gasped, bending over and putting her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. “Call the police. There’s a dead girl in the basement.”
Ted shook his head. “They did a really good job decorating the place,” he said. “But I can’t believe they freaked you out.”
“I’m not joking and the body wasn’t a prop,” Jillie said. “I touched her face. There was blood all over the ground. Somebody was murdered in there tonight. And that’s not the worst of it.”
“What could be worse?” Ted asked.
“I felt her,” Jillie said. “Physically. She wanted me out of there so I wouldn’t interfere. She actually pushed me. But I know it was her, and I think I know what she wants.”
“She who?” Ted said.
“The witch of Bremen Coven,” Jillie said.
“She died fifty years ago,” Ted said.
“Exactly,” Jillie said. “And she’s been trying to come back ever since. I think that girl in the basement was a sacrifice, and if I’m right, she won’t be the last one.”
She looked at him with wide eyes. “Now call the police!”
Chapter Twenty-One
Two cop cars arrived a few minutes later, with red and blue lights flashing, but no sirens. They pulled past the gravel onto the grassy clearing just in front of the porch, where Jillie and Ted waited.
Four officers emerged. A tall, thin one with a day’s growth of stubble and tired eyes walked quickly toward them. He introduced himself as Officer Mulkin and pointed at Ted. “Did you call in a homicide?”
Ted tilted his head at Jillie. “I did, but she’s the one who saw the body. It’s in the basement.”
The cop nodded and looked directly at her. “You’re sure you saw a body and not a prop?” he asked. “This is a haunted house, after all. I’m sure they have some very realistic-looking stuff in there.”
Jillie shook her head vehemently. “It was real,” she said. “It was a girl from Oak Forest High. Her throat was cut.”
The cop looked skeptical. “What were you doing in the building after hours?” he asked. “Are you working in the house?”
“No,” Jillie said. She looked at Ted and made a face before continuing. “I’m a paranormal investigator, and I was here trying to see what kind of impact turning this place into a circus has had on the ghosts inside.”
“Uh-huh,” Mulkin said. “So you were trespassing.”
“I think the fact that there’s a dead girl in there is more important right now,” she said. “I bought a ticket to go inside tonight, and then I waited until the house was closed to look around.” Briefly she explained how she had hidden beneath the bed and then used her cell phone to explore the house in the dark.
Mulkin pursed his lips and nodded. “Show me.”
Jillie stepped down the deck and began to walk around the perimeter of the house. Ted and the four officers followed right behind her, but then they stopped as two headlights cut through the forest and moved straight up the gravel path toward the house.
A silver Mitsubishi stopped right next to the police cars, and a stocky man in Dockers and a blue polo shirt got out.
“What’s this all about?” the man called, as he walked toward the group.
“Are you in charge of this place?” Mulkin asked, as the man reached them.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m Perry Clark. Someone from the police station called and told me there was a problem out here.”
“This woman has reported a dead body inside,” Mulkin said.
“There are all sorts of ‘dead bodies’ in there,” Perry said angrily. “It’s a haunted house, for Christ’s sake. And it’s closed. Nobody should be here at all right now. I don’t want anyone messing with our sets for tomorrow.”
“This is county property, so we were going to take a look,” Mulkin said. “You can join us and make sure we don’t damage anything if you like.”
Perry glared at Jillie. “I should have known,” he said.
“Do you know this woman?” Mulkin asked.
Perry snorted bitterly. “Yeah, she’s the ghost hunter nut who tried to get the house shut down last month before we opened,” he said. “I’
m guessing this is another one of her stunts.”
“You’re welcome to press trespassing charges if you like,” Mulkin said. “But first let’s see exactly what she saw.”
He pointed at Jillie. “Let’s go,” he said.
Jillie walked around to the side of the house and led the way down the steps to the door. She paused at the bottom and took a breath. She did not want to go back in there. When she put her hand on the knob and turned, it didn’t budge.
“It’s locked,” she said. “But I didn’t lock it. In fact, I left the door open when I left.”
Mulkin showed no expression. “Do you have a key?” he said to Perry.
The businessman nodded. “Yeah, but it’s to the front door, not this. C’mon.”
They walked back up the steps and around the house to the front. Perry let them in and flipped the switch for the lights. Then he led them down the hall to the basement stairs. When they reached the bottom, Jillie pointed to the far end. “It’s over there,” she said.
When they threaded through The Exorcist exhibit and reached the false back of the basement, she lifted the wooden latch and pushed the door.
Mulkin stepped inside, followed by the other three officers. Jillie did not go in. Instead, she looked around the area, now that the lights were on. She didn’t feel the sensations she had down here just fifteen minutes before.
“Ma’am,” Mulkin called. “Can you come in here please?”
She stepped down onto the dirt and walked over to where the officers huddled over a figure on the floor.
“Is this what you saw?” he asked, looking up from the body to meet Jillie’s eyes. She could see the legs and pale bare feet, but the rest of the girl was blocked.
“Yes,” she said. But then she saw the face through the gap as Mulkin straightened up and her forehead creased in confusion. “I mean, no! That’s not the girl who was here before.”
The body on the floor was clearly a manikin. It wore jeans and an Oak Forest High School jacket. But the face was clearly plastic. A wig lay slightly askew, covering part of the face, and a line of red – maybe lipstick – cut across the neck.
“Somebody took her. This isn’t what I saw.”
“The basement lights were not on when you were here, were they?” Mulkin asked.
She shook her head. “No, I used my iPhone as a flashlight.”
One of the cops was grinning and Jillie closed her eyes for a moment to still her frustration. “You have to believe me,” she said finally. “This is not the body that was here earlier. I touched the skin, I had blood on my finger. Somebody moved this here after I left – probably the same person who shut and locked the cellar door. There must have been someone else in the house with me.”
“If it’s okay with you, we’ll take a quick look around,” Mulkin said to Perry. “Make sure nobody else is in the house.”
Perry nodded.
“You can go outside, but don’t leave the premises,” Mulkin told Jillie. “We’ll want to talk further with you.”
He motioned to one of the officers who started walking the perimeter of the basement, as the other three headed upstairs.
“Let’s wait outside,” Jillie said to Ted.
Perry glared at the two of them, but held his hand out to point the way to the stairs. “After you,” he said with mocking politeness.
Ten minutes later, the officers all returned to the porch.
“Well?” Perry said.
Mulkin shook his head. “There’s nobody else in there. You have some very sick artists, however.”
Perry grinned. “They’re the best.”
Mulkin turned his attention to Jillie. “Breaking and entering is a crime. Filing a false police report is a crime. It could be a felony.”
“I didn’t file a false report,” Jillie said. “And I didn’t break and enter…I just didn’t leave on time.”
Mulkin ignored her and looked at Perry. “Would you like to press charges?”
The other man frowned and opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it. After thinking another moment, Perry shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to waste any more time on this and I don’t want to encourage any other stunts through media coverage of this.”
He turned his gaze on Jillie. “However, I don’t ever want to see you near this house again.”
She opened her mouth to protest and he put a hand up. “Seriously. You had your say to the county and they ruled against you. I do not appreciate getting calls from the police at one in the morning. If you cause any more trouble here this month, I will make sure they throw you in jail.”
Perry turned and thanked the officers and then walked back to his car.
“I think you’d be best served by listening to him,” Mulkin said.
“Do we have to go to the station with you?” Ted asked.
Mulkin shook his head. “Not this time. However, I would advise you to not come back here again.”
Ted nodded and took Jillie’s arm in his hand. “C’mon,” he said, and guided her across the grass to his car.
“There was a body there,” Jillie said. “I’m not lying.”
“I believe you,” Ted said, though he didn’t sound one hundred percent convinced.
Neither of them saw the curtains in the attic of the house move as they pulled out onto the path around the cemetery.
But Jillie felt a tremor in her heart. The witch who had led Bremen Coven had been associated with other murders at the house in the past. Jillie knew all the stories, and more than one said the witch had been working with an incarnation spell that needed blood. Lots of blood.
“Something bad happened in there tonight,” she whispered. “And I think it is going to be just the beginning.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mike lay beside Katie on the bed of nails. With one hand, he traced the puckered lines of her ravaged body. She shifted next to him, and then tilted her head to gaze into his eyes.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy,” Mike whispered.
In answer her hand reached down to his thigh and with one fingernail drew a line from his knee to his balls. Then she cupped his manhood in her hand and squeezed just a little.
“I’m glad,” she said. “It’s hard to find a good guy when you’re dead.”
“I still don’t buy the dead thing,” Mike said. “You seem perfectly alive to me. And you’re not some brain-eating zombie or anything.”
Katie slipped her fingers around the knuckles of his right hand, and drew it up to her breasts. She held it between them, and whispered, “What do you feel?”
“A beautiful woman,” he answered.
“No,” she said. “What do you feel? Do you feel warmth? Is there a heartbeat?”
Mike paused. He let his fingers spread out, for once not with erotic intent, but simply to feel more of her. And then he finally had to admit the answer to both questions.
“No.”
“There you go,” she said.
Both of them were silent for a minute. Mike ran his hand over her breast, lingering for a second on the hard nub of a nipple before slipping his fingers across her bellybutton and down into the soft hair of her pubes. He was so confused. She felt so good; she wasn’t some rotting corpse. How could he be making love to a dead woman? How could a dead woman talk to him? For a moment, he thought about all of the beer he’d been drinking. Could he be hallucinating? For two months? That thought was more disturbing than lying with a dead woman who talked to him.
“Okay, then how did you die?” he asked finally. Maybe knowing more about how she had gotten this way would help?
“Does it matter?” she asked. “The end result is the same no matter what.”
He shrugged. “I’d like to know.”
“My husband s
tabbed me with a butcher knife because he thought my baby wasn’t his.”
Mike’s eyebrows rose. “Why did he think that?”
Katie’s lips gave a faint smile. “Because it probably wasn’t.”
Mike’s eyes bugged a little. “Oh.”
“I loved a lot of men,” she said. “I didn’t want to only give myself to one and he said he could handle it. But in the end, he got jealous and crazy.”
“Did it happen…here?” Mike asked.
She nodded. “Downstairs, in the master bedroom. I’d just come home from being with some friends and he had been drinking. He was passed out on the couch when I came in, so I just went to the bedroom. I had just taken off my clothes to put on my nightgown when he came in. His eyes looked all wild. ‘Slutting around again?’ he asked me, and I just ignored him. But that just made it worse. ‘Who was it this time?’ he asked. ‘Randall? Ted? That black guy? Tell me you haven’t been sleeping with him at least. I will not be the laughingstock of this town walking around with you holding a little mulatto. Because that bump in your belly isn’t even mine, is it? Tell me the truth.’
“I told him, ‘It could be from any of you, but it won’t belong to any of you. The baby will be its own person, just like me.’”
She shook her head. “Things got ugly then. He slapped me around and I kicked him. Then he raised his fist to punch me and stopped. He got a look in his eyes that was just pure crazy, and he walked out of the room. I should have run then, but I didn’t. And he came back a minute later holding the butcher knife. ‘I should never have married you,’ he said. I can remember every word. ‘You’re the devil herself,’ he said. ‘You probably conceived that kid on the altar during one of your pagan rituals that you never want me to be part of. But I have eyes and ears. I’ve seen things when you didn’t know. But I’m not going to be the cuckold for someone else’s brat. I won’t do it. We’ll just cut that thing out of you right now and be done with it.’
“I screamed and threw stuff at him but he was bigger than I was, and eventually he caught me and pinned me to the bed. He smelled like a whiskey bottle and I pleaded with him to see reason, but he was seeing something else entirely. He had the knife at my throat and then all of a sudden, he raised it and jabbed it just below my chest. ‘We’ll see if you’ve got that dirty black guy’s kid right now,’ he said. ‘Or maybe that Mexican you were hanging around last fall.’
